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Speaker 2: Evening, And sometimes an angel gets its wings and on
Speaker 2: with the show.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 4: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 4: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 4: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 5: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 5: my name is.
Speaker 6: Don't they call me Ben?
Speaker 1: We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, mission
Speaker 1: control decands. Most importantly, you are you, You are here.
Speaker 1: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: We're so glad you came over, fellow conspiracy realist. Good evening, Humans,
Speaker 1: AI Inspectors alike. We've got a special one for you tonight.
Speaker 1: It's for the spirits, the skeptics, and the ghostbusters. It's
Speaker 1: a little gooey, it's a little gross. It's a literal
Speaker 1: sticky subject on me. Yeah, Yeah, We're finally doing something
Speaker 1: we talked to about in a previous couple of previous episodes.
Speaker 1: We talked about star Jelly, remember and angel hair phenomenon,
Speaker 1: the weird stuff that falls from the sky series.
Speaker 2: Oh, how could we forget? It was a golden time,
Speaker 2: It was a golden age, and the history of stuff
Speaker 2: they don't want you to know. A couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 3: And we've talked about ghosts extensively on this show, and
Speaker 3: photography and the history of attempting to capture whatever it
Speaker 3: is that the spiritualism movement was so into all those
Speaker 3: years ago.
Speaker 2: Or does all of that stuff the idea of capturing
Speaker 2: somebody's particular color that they emit. They can only be
Speaker 2: captured with a certain photographic process crillion photography.
Speaker 1: Yes, I love it, and the idea of EVP like
Speaker 1: that famous Michael Keaton I think Michael Keaton film from
Speaker 1: way back when we also, what we see here is
Speaker 1: a common theme, the idea of chasing some tangible proof
Speaker 1: of intangible spirits, and that leads us to tonight's exploration,
Speaker 1: what on earth is ectoplasm? Exactly? Here are the facts.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys, but I think we
Speaker 1: should dive in straight to the cool part. Ectoplasm can
Speaker 1: mean several things, but well that's a bit of foreshadowing.
Speaker 1: But for now, maybe we start with ectoplasm and the
Speaker 1: paranormal or supernatural sense, the slime that covers you know,
Speaker 1: the breakout star of Ghostbusters slimer.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I have questions.
Speaker 2: I said that at the top, but like, how come
Speaker 2: the ectoplasm went from green to pink between Ghostbusters one
Speaker 2: and two?
Speaker 6: It's never really explained. I wouldn't know. I just learned
Speaker 6: it when you said it. Now, Yeah, this lineman, you
Speaker 6: don't know Ghostbusters to it? This lime that fly but
Speaker 6: I don't know the colors. Yeah, Oh, I'm sorry. Ben
Speaker 6: I forget. Yeah, well that's true.
Speaker 2: The slime and Ghostbusters two is pink, and they don't
Speaker 2: really differentiate it from the slime in Ghostbusters one.
Speaker 6: So it's a little bit odd.
Speaker 2: That just kind of an odd contribution to the lore
Speaker 2: without really much justification.
Speaker 1: Oh so not the slime on the character Slimer, but
Speaker 1: the actual.
Speaker 6: Slimer is still Slimer.
Speaker 2: But he's barely in Ghostbusters two, if he's in it
Speaker 2: at all, I want to say. But it's like slime
Speaker 2: fills the sewers of the city and starts, you know,
Speaker 2: oozing out of everything, and if you go the carpathi
Speaker 2: and I guess it is responsible. But it's an entirely
Speaker 2: different kind of ectoplasm.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I can't remember. I can't remember if it
Speaker 3: has anything to do with actually conjuring any of the
Speaker 3: ghosts or like, do the ghosts come out of it?
Speaker 3: Or is Slimer being made out of slime somehow ectoplasm?
Speaker 2: It's like a byproduct, right, like of a supernatural encounter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ghostbusters one, We'll get this out of the way
Speaker 1: quite Ghostbusters one. It's it's always bugged me. They don't
Speaker 1: have a huge backst worry for slimer. But in Ghostbusters one,
Speaker 1: I believe as gooser Spoiler is coming to end the world,
Speaker 1: more spirits are gathering. And then in Ghostbusters two, when
Speaker 1: Vigo the Carpathian the Scourge of Moldavia or the Sorrow
Speaker 1: of Moldavia, the Scourge of Carpathia or whatever.
Speaker 6: When he's come guy in the painting right, when he's.
Speaker 1: Coming back, they discover this huge river of ghost goo
Speaker 1: and that can be charged with positive or negative energy,
Speaker 1: and then that also brings back a bunch of ghosts
Speaker 1: we have spoiled Ghostbusters.
Speaker 2: It is representative of what we're talking about today. And
Speaker 2: I guess maybe they go more into detail with the
Speaker 2: ectoplasm and Ghostbusters too, because you mentioned the positive negative
Speaker 2: charge and they actually like experiment with it and stuff.
Speaker 2: And Ghostbusters one it's much less of a plot point,
Speaker 2: and then two it really is a big deal because
Speaker 2: they find that river, it seems stuff seems to emerge
Speaker 2: from it. In one, it's more of an afterthought and
Speaker 2: something that you get stuck all over you when you.
Speaker 6: When a ghost, you get slimed. That was sort of
Speaker 6: the joke, right, I've been slimed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, do you do?
Speaker 6: You guys. Not Like.
Speaker 3: My immediate thought when I hear ectoplasm now is of
Speaker 3: South Park. Of course Crim Fresh?
Speaker 2: Right, No, isn't it the episode No, but the one
Speaker 2: where he's covered in ghost go like with Randy.
Speaker 6: I thought it was the Crim Fresh I was a member.
Speaker 5: Oh maybe it is, Maybe it is. I think of yeah, whatever,
Speaker 5: whatever it is.
Speaker 3: Back in the day, I think it's season twelve, like eight,
Speaker 3: maybe oh nine, and it was. Yeah, that's what I
Speaker 3: think of now every time I think of ectoplasms.
Speaker 6: It was a spooky ghost. It was.
Speaker 1: It's weird because the term dates back pretty far. It
Speaker 1: was it was nineteen thirteen when a French physiologist named
Speaker 1: Charles rashe R I see came up with or he
Speaker 1: used this to describe something paranormal. It comes from the Greek.
Speaker 1: For all our etymology nerds, it's a portmanteau of the
Speaker 1: two words ectos, meaning just outside, and plasma, which means
Speaker 1: anything molded or formed. So outside molded or formed. And
Speaker 1: this was a huge deal. It reached its haiti and
Speaker 1: popular culture.
Speaker 6: It's hey evening.
Speaker 1: During the movement of a pseudo religious thing called spiritualism
Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and we're
Speaker 1: going to have an episode on the rise and fall
Speaker 1: of that movement in a future evening. I think either
Speaker 1: I don't know, it might be here. It might be
Speaker 1: ridiculous history because it's one of those Venn diagram explorations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did do something on that though recently, Ben
Speaker 2: I swear where we talked about the methods of kind
Speaker 2: of the hacky kind of methods that were used to
Speaker 2: take people in with mentalism and some of the tricks
Speaker 2: that were used, like in the Tables and the Peppers
Speaker 2: go moist illusions and things like that. I cannot recall though,
Speaker 2: which show we talked about this on or what the
Speaker 2: nature of the episode was, but it's all kind of fresh.
Speaker 2: But I'm glad that you mentioned the origin of the word,
Speaker 2: because in my mind I was thinking of another term
Speaker 2: that's been in the Newslet lady is like ectopic, the
Speaker 2: idea of like an ectopic prectic pregnancy. And I'm glad
Speaker 2: you have officially taken all doub out of my mind
Speaker 2: that those words are related, that it is just about
Speaker 2: something that happens outside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ecto as in something you're currying outside in this
Speaker 1: paranormal context, Ectoplasm is what the three of us have
Speaker 1: been talking about here, a mysterious substance that is manifested
Speaker 1: by individuals with some sort of extrasensory ability, most notably mediums,
Speaker 1: specifically physical mediums who commune with the dead or sometimes
Speaker 1: completely non human incorporeal spirits. Which is an interesting thing
Speaker 1: because these mediums were, you know, for the most part,
Speaker 1: they were saying, we are in communication with a dead
Speaker 1: human being, but they would also sometimes be talking to
Speaker 1: a sentient thing that did not exist on the mortal plane,
Speaker 1: which I thought was fascinating.
Speaker 6: It's a weird trip.
Speaker 1: I didn't know there were other categories of ectoplasm. There's
Speaker 1: teleplasm that's when the medium is emitting ectoplasm at a distance,
Speaker 1: like across the room or in some stories, in a
Speaker 1: totally different locale. And then idioplasm that's that's when the
Speaker 1: ghost goop molds itself into the likeness of a person,
Speaker 1: you know what I.
Speaker 3: Mean, yeah, or just some other you know, face, an
Speaker 3: entire body in some cases. And it's weird stuff too,
Speaker 3: because it's I like, this idea of teleplasm like just
Speaker 3: shows up in different places because you can stories and
Speaker 3: they are stories. Let us assure you of this stuff,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, we're about to describe it showing up
Speaker 3: on the medium, like you said, Ben, across the room,
Speaker 3: on the table, underneath the table, in the belly button,
Speaker 3: in the face, just weird in the butt.
Speaker 6: Oh oh, if you must.
Speaker 2: You guys, remember that line in True Detective Season one
Speaker 2: where Cole where rust Cole says, I smell the psychosphere
Speaker 2: and then his partner thinks he's saying he smells a
Speaker 2: psycho's sphere. And for the longest time I thought that
Speaker 2: was because the subtitles say that, But psychosphere is a
Speaker 2: thing that refers to it's like the sphere surrounding psychic energy.
Speaker 6: And reality around the Earth.
Speaker 2: And I think that term psychoplasm ban that you mentioned
Speaker 2: probably pertains to that. The idea of this being some
Speaker 2: sort of byproduct of these this sort of clustered bubble
Speaker 2: of like supernatural energy, I guess right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, being the light fantastic, right, Going from from
Speaker 1: everything that science tells humanity death is a one way street, right,
Speaker 1: and two from a you know, the idea of scientifically
Speaker 1: exploring allegations of the afterlife and the paranormal, you would
Speaker 1: want as a scientist, physical reproducible, measurable proof, something tangible
Speaker 1: of returning from beyond death, and so ectoplasm or ecto
Speaker 1: as the cool kids called it, not to be confused
Speaker 1: with ecto cooler.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 1: It was for many people, many very intelligent people. It
Speaker 1: was considered the smoking gun of the afterlife, of proof
Speaker 1: of something beyond the physical plane. And if you you
Speaker 1: can see pictures of this, and as as you were saying, Matt,
Speaker 1: you can read all sorts of stories and anecdotes. Uh,
Speaker 1: and when you see the photographs it, uh, maybe we're
Speaker 1: spoiled in the world of special effects and CGI. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't exactly take your breath away. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a gauzy substance and usually it comes from some orifice
Speaker 1: of the medium's body. And it's cool because it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like symbiat suit in comic books, right, like the
Speaker 1: venom symbia.
Speaker 6: It coats the The.
Speaker 1: Idea is it coats the spirit, right, like a like
Speaker 1: a translucent mech.
Speaker 3: Well, it's almost like it is the medium, the physical
Speaker 3: medium through which the spirit plane can enter this realm.
Speaker 5: Like that's kind of the idea. It's it's I was
Speaker 5: trying to.
Speaker 3: Come up with a metaphor, and ill I have one
Speaker 3: dot if you guys have been thinking about it, but
Speaker 3: likelub well almost but the idea of you need to
Speaker 3: be covered in this stuff in order to get through
Speaker 3: through a barrier of some sort.
Speaker 2: I know, there's this stuff that people like stunt actors
Speaker 2: when they set themselves on fire in movies, they coat
Speaker 2: their skin with this particular type of material that keeps
Speaker 2: the fire from actually touching them.
Speaker 6: It's like the reverse of that kind of I guess
Speaker 6: in a way. I mean, you know, I think that
Speaker 6: I think that gibes that tracks.
Speaker 1: There's also from the idea of tangible manifestation of otherwise
Speaker 1: invisible energy. You could think of the way that you
Speaker 1: can see sound waves by vibrations in sand, Like if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen that experiment where there's a disk of
Speaker 1: sand and then people start playing sounds and you can
Speaker 1: sound Yeah, yeah, you can see the waves of sound
Speaker 1: reflected there.
Speaker 2: I think between those two we pretty much got it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because it is I see what you're getting at mad Itism.
Speaker 2: That's a little hard to put into words because it's
Speaker 2: like a it's something it's almost like a space suit
Speaker 2: in a way. It allows you to traverse a particular
Speaker 2: boundary that you should not be able to exist in.
Speaker 2: Like it's almost like without this stuff, the ghosts either
Speaker 2: couldn't make it. The spirits couldn't either make it into
Speaker 2: this realm or this plane, or they would they would
Speaker 2: perish in some.
Speaker 6: Way, or they couldn't be perceived.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the other thing.
Speaker 3: The other thought is that when one of these beings, otherworldly, spiritual, ghost, whatever,
Speaker 3: when they show up in our physical realm, this is
Speaker 3: what they leave behind.
Speaker 2: What they're wearing that allows them to be perceived at
Speaker 2: all too, right.
Speaker 1: Like their fingerprints or the way that you can see
Speaker 1: you can see human oils after flesh touches glass. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a residue. And then like to make a
Speaker 1: I'll dumb it down because I think this is maybe
Speaker 1: this is the dumbest example I can think of. It's
Speaker 1: why people throw sheets over ghost the laziest ghost costume
Speaker 1: in the history of Halloween. Now that you have the
Speaker 1: sheet on, you can see the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like there's a whole big sequence at the end
Speaker 2: of it follows where they're in this school swimming pool
Speaker 2: to the gym and they.
Speaker 6: Have to follow the ghost around.
Speaker 2: They keep throwing stuff over it so they can like
Speaker 2: track it, and then they shoot it because I guess
Speaker 2: you can shoot ghosts in modern movies.
Speaker 3: It's interesting that we're describing it as gauzy because that
Speaker 3: is where like that is how it has been described
Speaker 3: a bunch, but there's almost another another version of it
Speaker 3: that is more And you described it as lubeanole like
Speaker 3: a but almost as a louby substance, almost translucent, slightly white.
Speaker 3: Hesitating talking about other excretions of the human body here,
Speaker 3: because that is kind of the way it's described in
Speaker 3: other instances.
Speaker 1: Milk going bad. Almost it's like an off AIRYA product.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because what's that gross Japanese fermented soybean ben Nato Nato. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it has kind of that tacky like it gets stuck
Speaker 2: on your fingers, you know. And by the way, I
Speaker 2: was saying lube not to be gross, but just the
Speaker 2: idea of it helps you.
Speaker 6: Get through something.
Speaker 2: It's like it is a protector, a protection that kind
Speaker 2: of helps you navigate a tight boundary.
Speaker 6: Now that sounds like I'm being grosser.
Speaker 1: Well no, no, you know, if somebody thinks it's gross,
Speaker 1: then maybe it's time for you, fellow listener, and take
Speaker 1: a self inventory, because they're all kinds of lubricants.
Speaker 6: Now, I just made it weirder spiritual lubricut.
Speaker 1: I'm bringing up milky patches there, because that is the
Speaker 1: phrase that Charles Rushet, the guy who coined the term,
Speaker 1: used when he first started describing ectoplasm in a paranormal sense.
Speaker 1: He began by observing a physical medium named Usapia Palladino,
Speaker 1: very cool name, and her ecdoplasmic projections were to him
Speaker 1: white veils and milky patches, so he called them examples
Speaker 1: of ectoplasm. And because every sidy is at heart a
Speaker 1: doubting tabas, people wanted to touch this, they wanted to
Speaker 1: engage with it, to take samples right, and to analyze
Speaker 1: those samples, which gets tricky later. But we have accounts
Speaker 1: of people that you would consider otherwise skeptical who totally
Speaker 1: believe this, and you can read first hand accounts of
Speaker 1: them saying, I visited a medium. They extruded ectoplasm. I
Speaker 1: touched it. It's cool to the touch, it was viscous,
Speaker 1: it was slimy, and everybody was on board.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And well, we'll get into the reasons why it
Speaker 3: might be so slimy but also somehow you know, look
Speaker 3: like a a gauzy almost cloth of some sort, but
Speaker 3: it is really sticky and wet because of maybe where
Speaker 3: it's been.
Speaker 2: And that's interesting too, because a lot of historical burials
Speaker 2: involved like shrouds and kind of gauzy coverings that would
Speaker 2: be placed over top of the of the body. I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's just an interesting connect and I'm saying
Speaker 2: it's like means anything.
Speaker 1: Necessarily, people totally leaned into it because at least part
Speaker 1: of this so it was branding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because again, we have a ton of proof of
Speaker 2: the existence of this stuff. I don't want to spoil
Speaker 2: it right now, but this is sort of a lot
Speaker 2: of there's a lot of Laura wrapped up in this,
Speaker 2: and a lot of like historical telephone. I think those
Speaker 2: early burial traditions may well have played a part in
Speaker 2: what people have described as as having seen.
Speaker 1: There's another aspect here. Folks like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
Speaker 1: who is famous for a couple of other things, he
Speaker 1: was also big into the investigation of ecdoplasm and mediums
Speaker 1: and spiritualism. He worked with a medium who was identified
Speaker 1: as ev c her full name Eva Correri, but at
Speaker 1: first he was just calling her ever c. He touched ecdoplasm,
Speaker 1: this medium created and he said, holy smokes, jeepers, you guys,
Speaker 1: that's what he said at jeepers. This feels like a
Speaker 1: living material, right, I'm not just touching something cool to
Speaker 1: the cool to my fingers. The tactile sensation alone is
Speaker 1: not the end of the story. This is moving and
Speaker 1: responding to my touch. This thing, whatever it is, is
Speaker 1: kind of like a gunkier version of T one thousand
Speaker 1: in Terminator two. It's changeable, it's mercurial.
Speaker 2: Oh so reminds me of the black goo from the
Speaker 2: Alien films that has sort of a sense shant quality
Speaker 2: to it as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or X files, the black oil goo stuff. That's
Speaker 3: very interesting that Arthur, I was gonna say, Arthur C. Clark,
Speaker 3: and that Arthur Conan Doyle like touched it and he
Speaker 3: did like write about it. And it's a weirder thing
Speaker 3: than even I'm imagining when I'm looking at these historical photos,
Speaker 3: at least for this episode, where we'll get into those
Speaker 3: and like what those look like specifically and why there's
Speaker 3: some weirdness with the photography going on there and the
Speaker 3: experiments and the quote controls and all that stuff. But
Speaker 3: that is very that's very interesting to me because it
Speaker 3: would be i don't know, as a writer like that,
Speaker 3: if that were real and that we're true, or if
Speaker 3: you wanted people to believe it was true, you could
Speaker 3: come up with some very compelling stories.
Speaker 6: Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean also, he's the creator of Sherlock Holmes, right,
Speaker 1: And one of the mortal sins in writing fiction is
Speaker 1: to write a character who is the smartest person in
Speaker 1: the room, because it's so difficult to do. No, it's true.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it. Every time you see a
Speaker 1: super smart character that isn't actually behaving as though they
Speaker 1: are super intelligent, it's because the smartest character in the
Speaker 1: room can only ever be as smart as the person
Speaker 1: writing that character, which is it's just tricky. It's very
Speaker 1: difficult to pull off. So shout out to sir Doyle himself.
Speaker 1: He wrote Sherlock Holmes, and he was still, for a
Speaker 1: time very convinced about this ecoplasm stuff.
Speaker 6: For a time.
Speaker 1: We also know that kind of like how star jelly decays,
Speaker 1: this stuff seemed to decay at first. It was like
Speaker 1: clear phlem or snot.
Speaker 6: It was almost divisible.
Speaker 1: And again under those conditions that we just teased the
Speaker 1: second and go, it would become gradually more gradually translucent,
Speaker 1: from transparent to translucent, and then it would start darkening
Speaker 1: and becoming more visible as the medium's connection to the
Speaker 1: spirit world intensifies. Some people said it would glow kind
Speaker 1: of like bioluminescence from beyond the grave.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 1: It only happened in low light. The problem with taking
Speaker 1: samples is it would dissipate very quickly under exposure to light.
Speaker 1: Side note Also, we found a lot of people reporting
Speaker 1: that ectoplasm had a peculiar strong odor, but no one
Speaker 1: seemed to agree on what that odor is like. No,
Speaker 1: there's not a single universally accepted description of the smell.
Speaker 1: They're just a lot of people saying it kind of smells.
Speaker 1: We're laying some really gross foreshadowing points here, folks. Now,
Speaker 1: this like the brief history as we're diving in. This
Speaker 1: can all sound somewhat ridiculous as we hear it laid
Speaker 1: out in this manner. No, I mean, it's it's crucial
Speaker 1: that we remember a lot of the proponents of ectoplasm
Speaker 1: and spiritualism. They didn't think this was woo woo hippie stuff.
Speaker 1: They didn't think it was a cult or in any
Speaker 1: way necessarily infernal. In their mind, this was a marriage
Speaker 1: of science and spiritual world. The guy we mentioned Rashe,
Speaker 1: for example, he's a legit physiologist at this time. He
Speaker 1: later goes on to win a Nobel Prize for his
Speaker 1: work on anaphylaxis. So he's not just you know, he's
Speaker 1: not just the ghost snut guy.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, imagine there are rumors of folks down at this
Speaker 3: building somewhere downtown that are allegedly conjuring spirits with their
Speaker 3: methods and their boxes and their curtains and their seances. Oh,
Speaker 3: we need to get down there and investigate. Let's use
Speaker 3: scientific rigor to prove that this stuff's real, because if
Speaker 3: it is, my God, this is world changing.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they're these investigators, because that's what they were.
Speaker 1: These investigators and enthusiasts are good faith actors. The height
Speaker 1: of public interest in ectoplasm is inseparably intertwined with the
Speaker 1: rise and fall of spiritualism. You don't hear too much
Speaker 1: about in the modern day, but this has that people
Speaker 1: felt like they were on the cusp the bleeding gooby
Speaker 1: gooey edge of a breakthrough that would fundamentally change human civilization.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the smartest people in the Western world.
Speaker 1: They were convinced that if they took modern methodology right,
Speaker 1: the scientific method, they could understand and finally answer the
Speaker 1: fundamental questions of the human experience that haunt poor choice
Speaker 1: of words, everybody listening tonight. What happens when we die?
Speaker 1: Does some vestige of the consciousness persist when the body
Speaker 1: itself becomes an empty house? It is a cool story,
Speaker 1: But is.
Speaker 6: There anything to it? Yeah, I mean sort of. We'll
Speaker 6: get into that after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy, all right, fellow conspiracy realist,
Speaker 1: that is a little bit of a fake out. Ectoplasm
Speaker 1: is it turns out very very real, just not perhaps
Speaker 1: in the way the spiritualist hoped or claimed it to be.
Speaker 6: I think we could.
Speaker 1: Look at two genuine examples of ectoplasm, and maybe do
Speaker 1: you want to just start with the most boring one.
Speaker 6: It's the one we can actually prove.
Speaker 3: And for this one, let's go to biology. Oh, let's
Speaker 3: talk more about ectoplasm also known as exoplasm. What is
Speaker 3: that huh Ben, what's exoplasm, right?
Speaker 1: Or ectoplasm, Matt. You know, it's positively telepathic that you
Speaker 1: would ask that it is, as any person who's awesome
Speaker 1: at biology mixers knows. The non granulated we're quoting here
Speaker 1: the non granulated outer part of a cell's cytoplasm. The counterpart,
Speaker 1: the granulated inner layer, known as the endoplasm. So it's
Speaker 1: cell biology. It's kind of a bait and switch because
Speaker 1: ectoplasm in the world of ghost means what we described
Speaker 1: before the break, and ectoplasm in the world of biology
Speaker 1: is a very real thing that is in so many cells,
Speaker 1: an innumerable number of cells.
Speaker 6: It's the outside goo.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, it's like the cellular wall.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this was coined by a guy named Ernst Haeckel
Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth century, so it actually is a
Speaker 1: predecessor to the use of ectoplasm in the world of
Speaker 1: the paranormal. And he, you know, he was super into
Speaker 1: this phrase as a way of describing unicellular organisms like amoebas.
Speaker 1: And just like you said that, the real ectoplasm it's
Speaker 1: both a shield and sort of a transit platform for
Speaker 1: all the stuff bouncing around inside a cell, which means
Speaker 1: that if you are a human or another form of
Speaker 1: organic life, you are absolutely riddled with ectoplasm. You are
Speaker 1: inundated with it. You're dripping and drowning in ectoplasm right
Speaker 1: now as you listen to tonight's program. I mean, don't
Speaker 1: think about it too too much. If you're a jerpophobe
Speaker 1: or you know, you get squigged out easily. But it
Speaker 1: turns out we're all sort of slimers, yeah, dude.
Speaker 6: In our own way. The slimer within.
Speaker 1: Slimer within ghost is coming from inside the house. So
Speaker 1: that's the boring one. But that is that is the
Speaker 1: real ectoplasm we can prove. Do we want to talk
Speaker 1: about the more interesting I don't know, is this interesting
Speaker 1: or is this more of a downer?
Speaker 5: It's a donor, but it's we got to talk about it.
Speaker 3: So to talk about this other real ectoplasm, we have
Speaker 3: to talk about some of the famous photographs. Just like
Speaker 3: if you go back to nineteen oh six, there's this
Speaker 3: thing called the instantograph Belows camera, and it is a
Speaker 3: camera that was used in some of the most famous
Speaker 3: photographs of alleged ectoplasm. And this is a pretty simple
Speaker 3: machine that uses a plate, a photographic plate that gets
Speaker 3: exposed when you expose the lens of the camera and
Speaker 3: then you put it back. Then you close it right
Speaker 3: after this plate has been exposed to light, and whatever
Speaker 3: light goes through that lens and hits the plate, that's
Speaker 3: what you get. Well, some of these plates saw stuff
Speaker 3: that if you just looked at the photograph and you
Speaker 3: weren't in the room, it looks I'm going to say it,
Speaker 3: hella weird. It looks like this white, weird, gauzy, maybe
Speaker 3: clothy substance emanating from a medium's nose or a medium's
Speaker 3: mouth who's just sitting in a chair, sometimes directly in
Speaker 3: front of a weird darkened box, sometimes directly in front
Speaker 3: of weird darkened curtains. Sometimes their hands are being held
Speaker 3: by other people off camera. Sometimes their hands are even
Speaker 3: like clasped to a chair or something so that they
Speaker 3: cannot interfere and create whatever this thing is. But man,
Speaker 3: it looks like it's just material like cheesecloth or linen,
Speaker 3: some kind of like really thin linen or it often
Speaker 3: it looks like fabric to.
Speaker 5: Me, at least to my eyes.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The second version of real ectoplasm, actual ectoplasm version two.
Speaker 1: We're happy to say there were genuine physical substances present
Speaker 1: during those trances, those seances, other exhibitions of physical mediums
Speaker 1: at the height of spiritualism in particular, and we know
Speaker 1: that from photographic evidence, like you're mentioning there, Matt. The
Speaker 1: thing is, none of this stuff was ever proven, ever,
Speaker 1: in any case, without exception, to be anything other than
Speaker 1: mundane material with a heck of a lot of showmanship
Speaker 1: and performance. Eat your heart out, Vents offer, Eat your
Speaker 1: heart out, Billy Mays. Do you guys remember who Vent's
Speaker 1: offer is.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Slapchop, guys, slap slap chop, Yeah, with the garlics or
Speaker 2: the Billy Mays was the showtime the rotissary chicken guy, right?
Speaker 1: I think that was another guy. Billy Mays is oxy cling.
Speaker 6: Oxy clean.
Speaker 2: But there was another guy that was like all about
Speaker 2: the rotissary chicken.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, case but.
Speaker 1: But oh I missed that halcyon era of made for
Speaker 1: TV commercials. And the showmanship of these physical mediums was
Speaker 1: not too different, because, like you were saying, I teased
Speaker 1: it several times. In some cases, this ectoplasm, we know
Speaker 1: for sure was straight up cheese cloth in other cases,
Speaker 1: it might be a fabric or textile of some sort
Speaker 1: smoothed up with potato starch.
Speaker 6: Or it might be paper. It might be.
Speaker 1: Still cloth but with egg white mashed into it instead
Speaker 1: of potato starch. Or it might be something I was
Speaker 1: not familiar with called butter muslin. Butter muslin part of
Speaker 1: my accent. I'm still learning English, not Muslim Muslin.
Speaker 6: M U s l I N. That's like a higher
Speaker 6: end cheese cloth.
Speaker 2: It's that shroud material I was talking about earlier, that
Speaker 2: kind of transparent, translucent rather textury kind of material that
Speaker 2: you'd see draped over you know, bodies and you know
Speaker 2: historical kind of burial ceremonies.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 3: And we're going to get into why. Sometimes it even
Speaker 3: looked like it was coded with egg whites or just
Speaker 3: biological material because it was hanging out in somebody's stomach
Speaker 3: and or throat and or you know sinuses.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was in their holes. Yep, it was in
Speaker 6: their roles.
Speaker 1: And the story of ghostly ectoplasm is inherently unfortunately, folks.
Speaker 1: It is a story of cons and frauds. And that
Speaker 1: was the stuff the vast majority of these mediums did
Speaker 1: not want their audience to know. It turns out a
Speaker 1: lot of these folks were quite adept at old school
Speaker 1: close up magic, sleight of hand and to understand how
Speaker 1: these conspiracies worked, because conspiracies they were. We have to
Speaker 1: get our heads around two aspects of the con and
Speaker 1: the first and I think for for all four of
Speaker 1: us with a love of film and cinematography, the practical
Speaker 1: effects are just amazing because we got to talk about
Speaker 1: the case conditions. Just like a mentalist, right, just like
Speaker 1: Darren Brown always has very specific conditions, or pen and
Speaker 1: Teller always have very specific conditions, these folks were no different.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, it makes so much sense.
Speaker 3: You're going in to attempt to scientifically study something that
Speaker 3: has to occur under as you said, these conditions where
Speaker 3: maybe for the medium to perform the act of connecting
Speaker 3: with the spirit world, they have to let's say, get
Speaker 3: inside a specific box, like a human sized box, or
Speaker 3: let's say they have to have a table behind them
Speaker 3: with specific instruments on it, specific things and items on it,
Speaker 3: and there has to be a curtain that separates them
Speaker 3: from that box, which could be maybe that's just how
Speaker 3: it happens, that's how this person does it, but it
Speaker 3: could also be a very a very calculated way to
Speaker 3: insert manipula via either themselves or another person.
Speaker 1: And all of these conditions, by the way, are non
Speaker 1: negotiable circumstances.
Speaker 5: Yes, so I can't do this without my stuff.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work in the lights, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And the fact that you're questioning this means that you're
Speaker 1: non believer and you're kind of screwing up the vibe.
Speaker 1: So if it doesn't work this time, it's your fault.
Speaker 5: That's Harry exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of a conversation who Denie actually had
Speaker 1: with people. Yeah, the manifestations often only occurred in very
Speaker 1: low light, very specific seating arrangements, and some of these
Speaker 1: conditions were placed on the audience as well, like you
Speaker 1: would have to I don't want to call these people roubs,
Speaker 1: but the participants were required to stay seated often and
Speaker 1: they kind of had to kind of had a pure
Speaker 1: monitoring system because you had to join around the table,
Speaker 1: so you couldn't move your hands, you couldn't move your
Speaker 1: physical location, you could not change your perspective, you couldn't
Speaker 1: stand up and like walk behind the medium.
Speaker 3: God, that's so important that the just the idea of perspective.
Speaker 3: And we know this from modern close up magic, from
Speaker 3: any modern magic television show. Right where we're watching illusions
Speaker 3: Michael on the television, the audience is in a very
Speaker 3: specific spot and with a specific as you said, perspective.
Speaker 3: I think perspective is maybe one of the most important
Speaker 3: even words to imagine and think about when we're considering
Speaker 3: ectoplasm at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's that's one of the big parts of
Speaker 1: the next step in the con The practical effect of
Speaker 1: the illusion is to make it seem as though the
Speaker 1: manifestation is coming somehow from or through the medium, appearing
Speaker 1: in the same sinity as though you know, it just
Speaker 1: came in the room with you. That's fine, it's mids
Speaker 1: you could say, you know what I mean, like, it's disappointment, right,
Speaker 1: you're you're It's kind of like if you your parents
Speaker 1: got you a car when you turn sixteen, like, hey,
Speaker 1: we got you a car. Oh my gosh, thank you parents.
Speaker 1: And then they say it's a Geo Metro and then
Speaker 1: you go, oh, well, I mean.
Speaker 6: It's a car. Yes.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's a Dodge Caravan, okay, and that's fine.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's a it's a gremlin. No, what's one of
Speaker 2: those like notoriously dubious cars of yesterdyear.
Speaker 1: Gril pentol. So this was not peak showmanship. Peak showmanship was,
Speaker 1: as we were saying, to have that ghostly substance appear
Speaker 1: to extrude from the body. You know, now you've got
Speaker 1: your twitching. You know, you've got your maybe some glossal alia,
Speaker 1: speaking in tongues, some eolulations, all that kind of stuff. Ones, Yeah,
Speaker 1: eye rolling, and then like you're spasming and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, coming out of your mouth there appears.
Speaker 5: Ghost Yeah.
Speaker 3: Hardcore mode is if you can get the ectoplasm to
Speaker 3: emanate from the scientist who's there to study you.
Speaker 5: Which I don't think it's happened yet.
Speaker 6: What why, I don't know.
Speaker 5: That's weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, heck of a coincidence that. And here's the thing,
Speaker 1: I don't know we teased it here. We should just
Speaker 1: say it for anybody who is wondering why we keep
Speaker 1: mentioning the shiny appearance. Why does this stuff look shiny?
Speaker 1: Because if you look at regular cheese cloth, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a sine, So where did it get the viscosity?
Speaker 5: Snochine until you put it in your mouth for a
Speaker 5: while and roll it around and then spin it back out.
Speaker 3: Eh.
Speaker 5: Sorry, that's true.
Speaker 1: Regurgitated just like a feed in a baby bird.
Speaker 6: Baby bird, which.
Speaker 1: Helps explain some of the spasms, right, because your flexing
Speaker 1: your diaphragm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, are these ecdospasms?
Speaker 6: These are.
Speaker 1: So this was a common practice and people were people
Speaker 1: were doing this were quite talented at it.
Speaker 6: Credit where it's a due.
Speaker 1: If you did not know the mechanics behind this, and
Speaker 1: the show was good enough, you might even if you're
Speaker 1: not entirely convinced, you might think, well, there's something going on.
Speaker 6: I don't know what it.
Speaker 1: Is until you see people who get busted like a medium,
Speaker 1: a Danish guy named Einer Nielsen who was exposed as
Speaker 1: a fake when he was caught hiding at plasma in
Speaker 1: his rectum.
Speaker 5: Uh like cheese cloth.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he boofed it.
Speaker 5: Okay, Well that's one way to do it.
Speaker 6: I feel more.
Speaker 1: Difficult though, right, Yeah, Well you can make yourself regurgitate,
Speaker 1: but how do you get it?
Speaker 6: Like, what's your sleight of hand at that point?
Speaker 3: You know, of I don't know, core muscles, just shoving
Speaker 3: it out of there. And I it's interesting because now
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about the interaction between stomach acid and cheesecloth,
Speaker 3: And I wonder if it had the ability to break
Speaker 3: down some of that a little bit, but probably not enough.
Speaker 6: Depending on maybe how long you kept it in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is so weird, it kind of gross. So
Speaker 1: we know that, we know we still haven't answered the
Speaker 1: question that we're telling you some of the mechanics of
Speaker 1: the purported substance. But what about the the idioplasm. What
Speaker 1: about the stuff that wasn't just milky patches or gauzy veils?
Speaker 1: What about the things that looked like people's faces or hands,
Speaker 1: you know, suspended in the air.
Speaker 6: Is this you're missing child? Things like that.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: They didn't have projectors per se back then, the same
Speaker 3: way we have them. Hmm, how could they have possibly
Speaker 3: done that? Photography plates that have been double explosed what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what you might call trick photography, right, Yeah, Ghosts
Speaker 2: were not proven to exist at this point, but magazines
Speaker 2: were very much proven to exist, and scissors also existed,
Speaker 2: so wasn't too difficult to cut out Like in the
Speaker 2: case of Ava C that we mentioned earlier, she was found.
Speaker 1: To use magazine cutouts suspended in the air in the
Speaker 1: darkness with pins and carefully placed string, which.
Speaker 6: Sounds dark in the dark.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's the key part in the dark and it
Speaker 1: might sound like, you know, low budget acts of chicanery,
Speaker 1: but we have to remember these practical effects are only
Speaker 1: one part of the operation. The second aspect is arguably
Speaker 1: more important and more dangerous and can be weaponized. Today
Speaker 1: we talked about the physical perspective, but the key to
Speaker 1: really getting the grift to work was the psychological perspective.
Speaker 1: In a very real way, these mediums were manipulating in
Speaker 1: tangible forces, but they were manipulating the minds and the
Speaker 1: spirits of the living rather than the spirits of the dead.
Speaker 3: Yes, oh my god, do you guys mind really quickly
Speaker 3: before we get into this the psychology, because that is
Speaker 3: absolutely the most important thing here. Just when it gets
Speaker 3: to the photography, when we're talking about those plates that
Speaker 3: I keep kind of mentioning but not fully talking about
Speaker 3: what you can do with those plates if you expose
Speaker 3: them really briefly to something like imagine imagine someone in
Speaker 3: complete darkness except for a small light that's illuminating someone
Speaker 3: wearing all white or being painted white even or wearing
Speaker 3: a white mask or having white gauze all around them
Speaker 3: or lacey substances materials. Imagine someone standing in the darkness.
Speaker 3: Then you use your camera and you barely expose it
Speaker 3: to this light of this person in the darkness. Then
Speaker 3: you close it really quickly again. Then you take that
Speaker 3: plate and you transfer it into the place wherever you
Speaker 3: are going to take the photograph of let's say the
Speaker 3: medium or the person who was attempting to contact a spirit.
Speaker 3: Then you expose that one fully. You are going to
Speaker 3: have the literal light ghost of that previous exposure on
Speaker 3: that plate. And no one may be the wiser if
Speaker 3: they believe, at least if you did a little bit
Speaker 3: of psychological work to make people think, oh, this is
Speaker 3: a brand new photo plate that I'm now opening and
Speaker 3: I'm placing into my camera.
Speaker 2: Well, it's before people really were wise to a lot
Speaker 2: of that stuff too. I mean right, yes, in terms
Speaker 2: of like you know, now we know photoshop. Everybody knows
Speaker 2: that images should all be just you know, viewed with
Speaker 2: a grain of salt. But like back then, it was
Speaker 2: a lot less you know, common knowledge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you need to study how photographs are made and
Speaker 3: how they work. You need to be in that in
Speaker 3: a business or connected to a business likely that uses
Speaker 3: photographs for some purpose, to have a full understanding of
Speaker 3: how the light actually, you know, changes that plate so
Speaker 3: that it creates an image.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point, because it's still it's still
Speaker 1: rarefied air at this at this juncture in history, right
Speaker 1: to the degree.
Speaker 5: We're talking nineteen twenties. Still in nineteen.
Speaker 1: There's still such a new car smell on the technology
Speaker 1: that even people who are seasoned professional photographers could be fooled, right,
Speaker 1: because very few people knew the panopoly of techniques available.
Speaker 1: And you could say, hey, I am a I consider
Speaker 1: myself a pretty crackerjack photographer, and I can't explain this.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean these people were in any way less
Speaker 1: intelligent than anyone. They just didn't have the same familiarity
Speaker 1: with a technology that's much more familiar to the average
Speaker 1: person today.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's all about intent too, I mean, these
Speaker 2: are techniques that were employed in order to fool people.
Speaker 2: I mean I took a dark room photography class when
Speaker 2: I was in college, and I have a picture hanging
Speaker 2: in my bedroom that I really like or took. I
Speaker 2: was in a dark basement with no lights and had
Speaker 2: a camera on a tripod and just opened the shutter
Speaker 2: for a series of exposures and lit a cigarette lighter
Speaker 2: and moved around the room. And in the image there's
Speaker 2: like six of me and it's really cool looking. But
Speaker 2: if you show that to somebody in these days, they
Speaker 2: be like, what witchcraft is this?
Speaker 6: You know? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Quite possibly, Yeah, unless you unless you were there to
Speaker 1: explain to people, to the observer what happened, and that
Speaker 1: would defeat the purpose, as you said, that would defeat
Speaker 1: the intention of these of these mediums. And with all
Speaker 1: of this, and Noel, I love the point about the
Speaker 1: intention of the of the mediums and their colleagues or
Speaker 1: their co conspirators. We talked about the practical effects and the
Speaker 1: importance of physical perspective. We're going to take a break
Speaker 1: to hear some words from spirits of our own, our
Speaker 1: sponsor spirits, and then we'll return with the other more
Speaker 1: dangerous perspective, the psychology. And we're back psychology one oh
Speaker 1: one colon Grifter.
Speaker 2: Addition, so, while it's certainly possible that a handful of
Speaker 2: these mediums truly believed in their abilities, again, there's something
Speaker 2: that we've talked about anytime this topic comes up like
Speaker 2: they're not all grifters. There are certainly ones that like
Speaker 2: truly believe they have a gift and that they are
Speaker 2: sharing that gift with others and helping people. But then
Speaker 2: the vast majority of them are kind of hucksters and
Speaker 2: people that are trying to make a buck off of folks.
Speaker 6: Insecurities and or you know, grief, and that sucks.
Speaker 5: But there may be real mediums. We just haven't been
Speaker 5: able to prove it yet.
Speaker 6: There a shadow beyond the shadow of dow.
Speaker 1: There's no like done equivocal test for it, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And let's let's take a second there because we were
Speaker 1: talking about this off air, so it could be a
Speaker 1: little bit confusing. The folks that we're speaking of here
Speaker 1: this evening are called physical mediums, and during the spiritualism
Speaker 1: movement and even now today with some of the with
Speaker 1: some of the instrument free faith healing kind of things
Speaker 1: that you see, you know, that's where someone lays on
Speaker 1: hands and they pull out some gunk purportedly from.
Speaker 6: A human being.
Speaker 5: That a whole episode we do.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a kissing cousin of a physical medium.
Speaker 1: So a physical medium here is defined as someone who
Speaker 1: is a like door man in the Great Lakes Avengers.
Speaker 1: They're a portal through which physical manifestations of the spiritual
Speaker 1: can be seen well.
Speaker 2: And therefore, you know, especially since all the things we've
Speaker 2: said about what the idea of ectoplasm is, it makes
Speaker 2: sense that they might have some that would come out
Speaker 2: of their body because it's they are literally the ghosts
Speaker 2: or the spirits are passing through them, and that's where
Speaker 2: the remnant might the resident. I guess the spiritual residue
Speaker 2: might end up.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In that episode, by the way, is called what is
Speaker 3: quote laying on hands unquote If you want to look
Speaker 3: that up, it's from September twenty twenty. But I know
Speaker 3: I interrupted you well.
Speaker 6: I think I got there.
Speaker 2: Just the point being is that we certainly aren't trying
Speaker 2: to say anyone who believes that they possess these types
Speaker 2: of intuitions or skills are completely full of it. You know,
Speaker 2: that's not what we're here to say or to prove
Speaker 2: or disprove. But historically the fact remains that a vast
Speaker 2: majority or a very large number of these folks purporting
Speaker 2: to have these abilities.
Speaker 6: We're doing just what I.
Speaker 2: Said, trying to pray on people and they're you know, misfortune,
Speaker 2: you know, So think about it this way. Your most
Speaker 2: you know, ardent supporters are going to be people navigating
Speaker 2: a significant loss, a dead child, a dead spouse, dead parent, whatever,
Speaker 2: it might be, a needing some kind of closure, and
Speaker 2: therefore there's that just absolute opportunit for that confirmation bias
Speaker 2: and if you know how to play into that, you know,
Speaker 2: the cold reading of it all. You know that we
Speaker 2: see on these kind of Hollywood psychic type shows, which
Speaker 2: I think are ninety percent of the time absolutely bogus
Speaker 2: and manipulative. It's really easy to see how someone is
Speaker 2: very open to being manipulated in that way when they're
Speaker 2: already weakened, their defenses are already weakened because of going
Speaker 2: through a trauma.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's absolutely it. As the old line from X
Speaker 1: Files goes, they want to believe. And you know this
Speaker 1: is very cold, but it's necessary to say. You can
Speaker 1: see the attempts at grifting folks just by the content
Speaker 1: of the purported messages. Very few returning spirits, for example,
Speaker 1: say stuff like hey, I miss you and I was
Speaker 1: bad and now I'm burning in hell. Right, very few
Speaker 1: people give a terrible message about the afterlife. Very few
Speaker 1: people give specifics that could not otherwise be derived from
Speaker 1: the sith level arts of hot or cold reading. And
Speaker 1: so long as you don't look just like the photographs,
Speaker 1: so long as you don't look too closely at the
Speaker 1: method and the message of the medium, these conversations and
Speaker 1: experiences feel right, they feel reassuring. They're better than the
Speaker 1: silence of the grave.
Speaker 3: Dude, did you guys see that movie from twenty either
Speaker 3: twenty twenty or twenty twenty one called Nightmare Alley?
Speaker 2: The gear model are so good and the original is
Speaker 2: good too. Guys like the actual fifties I believe version
Speaker 2: it's it's incredible, But I like the Gaiamo version two.
Speaker 2: But it's all about these kinds of things. Yes, it's fantastic.
Speaker 3: It reminds me a lot of exactly what you're talking about, Ben,
Speaker 3: where it's just it looks into the characters that are
Speaker 3: figuring out these techniques and figuring out you know, very
Speaker 3: complex versions to I mean, it is to fool someone.
Speaker 5: In order to make money, right, that's the idea.
Speaker 3: Fool and fool and audience people so that you can
Speaker 3: make their money.
Speaker 5: You put on a show.
Speaker 3: But it does make me wonder about I don't know,
Speaker 3: not necessarily a motivations, because ultimately it is like a
Speaker 3: spectacle performance that you're going to watch the way you
Speaker 3: would if you were going to see a play or something.
Speaker 5: In my mind, at least in some ways.
Speaker 1: Or for the more atheistic amidst us gives you the
Speaker 1: same similar kind of reassurance as a religious ritual would.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, it doesn't have to be evil, right,
Speaker 1: A panacea is not always given in bad faith, These
Speaker 1: blue sky pills of the mind we could call them.
Speaker 1: And also this might be kind of a hot take here,
Speaker 1: but I'm still not okay. So the physical medium, ectoplasm,
Speaker 1: spiritualism stuff, I'm confident that we can say, not easily
Speaker 1: ninety plus percent of it is a bad faith drift.
Speaker 1: But I'm still on the fence about spiritual mediums, like
Speaker 1: I'm still on the fence about vibes or you know,
Speaker 1: non tangible inexplicable messages and information and knowledge.
Speaker 6: I like, I'm so.
Speaker 1: On the fence about it that I am uncomfortable talking
Speaker 1: about it on air. We know, I mean, we know
Speaker 1: that there were grifters because the message was always reassuring
Speaker 1: and always kind of hitting those dopamine triggers. Right, not
Speaker 1: only can I help you talk to this person that
Speaker 1: you miss so deeply and profoundly, but you can come
Speaker 1: visit them any old time you like. You can talk
Speaker 1: to them again and again and again, so long as
Speaker 1: you bring some coin along with you, which is just brutal,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean?
Speaker 6: Do you guys?
Speaker 1: Ever, one example of very controversial people like this in
Speaker 1: the modern day would be that guy John Edwards.
Speaker 2: Do you remember it was kind of describing I think
Speaker 2: he's a TV guy, right.
Speaker 1: He was, Yeah, he was on Oprah, Larry King, Candy's
Speaker 1: own TV show.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not going to name names, but I worked
Speaker 2: closely with a producer on some podcast stuff in the
Speaker 2: past who had a background in TV I think, in
Speaker 2: that exact kind of sphere that you're talking about, and
Speaker 2: worked with someone very similar to this fellow, and was
Speaker 2: absolutely disgusted by the whole thing and just described it.
Speaker 2: And I'm not going to throw anybody in the bus
Speaker 2: or anything, and I'm not trying to be like who
Speaker 2: I have inside info, but this is a person who
Speaker 2: worked closely and saw these tricks being plied and and
Speaker 2: you know, and to be around a person like that
Speaker 2: who probably pretty openly when people aren't listening and the
Speaker 2: cameras aren't rolling, talks trash about the people that they're manipulating.
Speaker 2: Oh like that you imagine, Yeah, that's to the imagine unfortunately.
Speaker 6: Can Yeah.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of like the televangelist or faith healers
Speaker 1: who have the little hidden earbud where they get information
Speaker 1: about people in the audience and then claimants divine inspiration.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, this shows us something strange
Speaker 1: about this period of history. There are several reasons the
Speaker 1: belief in ectoplasm is nowhere near as popular now as
Speaker 1: it was back then, and a lot of it is
Speaker 1: because the interested nerds who brought scientific principles to these
Speaker 1: seances ultimately proved the falsity of these claims. Our boy
Speaker 1: who coined the term ectoplasm in the paranormal sense rashe
Speaker 1: was once the president of a outfit called the Society
Speaker 1: for Psychical Research. They really wanted this stuff to be true.
Speaker 1: They wanted it to be true so so bad. However,
Speaker 1: because they were scientists and they were trying to be objective,
Speaker 1: they were bummed out over and over again. They found
Speaker 1: sleight of hand, psychological manipulation, good old fashioned grifting, and
Speaker 1: basic material science. Those were the things that Wind combined
Speaker 1: and a certain recipe created the appearance of ghost. And
Speaker 1: then they published it. Oh, there was a book burning.
Speaker 1: We need to get to that. This is this is
Speaker 1: a huge milestone because these guys who sought to prove
Speaker 1: this stuff or investigate it and wanted it to be true,
Speaker 1: they just kept disproving it. And there was a book
Speaker 1: that was originally published anonymously called Revelations of a Spirit Medium.
Speaker 1: And it was like when a stage magician breaks the
Speaker 1: big code. Is there like a magic code where you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to explain the tricks?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And like you know, I'm at the Magic Castle in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, which like a private magicians club. No photographs
Speaker 2: are allowed inside, and they have like a really it's
Speaker 2: a very hush hush kind of world. And if you
Speaker 2: there was like a TV show where there was a
Speaker 2: magician that would debunked a lot of those kinds of
Speaker 2: tricks and he wore like a hood over his.
Speaker 6: Head and didn't Yeah that's right. He didn't want to
Speaker 6: be exposed. Maybe that was just part of it.
Speaker 2: But no, it's definitely frowned upon, and you certainly could
Speaker 2: get blacklisted from what is already a pretty niche performing community.
Speaker 3: I would say that's why Penna Teller are household names,
Speaker 3: because they would show that you can be tricked by
Speaker 3: us and by other illusionists. Michael, and because this is
Speaker 3: how sorry, I'm gonna do that every time for the
Speaker 3: rest of my life because that show is so important
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 2: How much could have banana cross im Sorry, this show
Speaker 2: is just infinitely.
Speaker 6: Quotable and applicable.
Speaker 2: List is why you leave a note sorry too many?
Speaker 3: But I mean so, that's why they're important, because the
Speaker 3: would actually show you, like they do a trick with
Speaker 3: opaque cups, and then they would do the same trick
Speaker 3: with transparent cups so that you could see through and
Speaker 3: see what.
Speaker 5: They were doing.
Speaker 3: But it's also why somebody like Randall James Zwinge, I
Speaker 3: don't know how to say it, Yeah, James, Randy why
Speaker 3: he was so important because he was attempting to show
Speaker 3: there are no at least in his mind, there are
Speaker 3: no psychic powers, there are no spiritualism powers, there are
Speaker 3: no other powers. Because I am sitting here offering a
Speaker 3: million dollars to anybody that can prove it scientifically, and
Speaker 3: I'll give you a million dollars. You just got to
Speaker 3: prove that you've got those powers, and it never happened.
Speaker 3: But still, I don't know. I'm just going back to
Speaker 3: that code, right. You don't want to show how trick's
Speaker 3: work because it takes away from everybody's ability to pull
Speaker 3: those illusions off to either make money and have a
Speaker 3: career or just to keep a little magic in people's minds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're blowing up the spot basically, right. And also,
Speaker 1: just for a side note, I don't know about you, guys.
Speaker 1: I completely agree with the Amazing Randy's mission objectively, but
Speaker 1: I found a lot of his bedside manner to be
Speaker 1: a little bit militant and unhelpful.
Speaker 2: He's a guy with no I'm thinking of the amazing Jonathan,
Speaker 2: the guy with the headband, And.
Speaker 6: Who is the amazing Randy. It's the skeptic James Randy.
Speaker 6: Oh of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we all have assigned Simpson's five cartoon images of
Speaker 2: him on our walls that some listener or a colleague
Speaker 2: or somebody sent us.
Speaker 6: That's pretty cool. Sorry, I should look more into thee Tyler. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 6: there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so thank you, thank you, Tyler, and we also
Speaker 1: you know again, I just want to say, like I know,
Speaker 1: his bedside manner, Randy's wasn't for everybody, but the mission
Speaker 1: is noble, that's the main takeaway. And what he's trying
Speaker 1: to do and what he spent most of his life
Speaker 1: doing was attempting to prevent people from being manipulated or
Speaker 1: built into further heartbreaking tragedy.
Speaker 6: So there is something noble to that.
Speaker 1: And to this day, I think as a state continues
Speaker 1: with the offer. Right to this day, no one has
Speaker 1: successfully proven something to the standards set out in that
Speaker 1: challenge or that proposition. Going back to the fall of
Speaker 1: spiritualism and the fall of ectoplasm as a popular craze,
Speaker 1: there was a book that broke the medium code. It
Speaker 1: was published anonymously at first. It was called Revelations of
Speaker 1: a Spirit Medium, and just like the books by you
Speaker 1: know or the performances by the mass magician or pen
Speaker 1: and teller, this revealed behind the scenes easily reproducible methods
Speaker 1: for creating a ghost, and the psychic industry in that
Speaker 1: rarefied spiritual air. They were super pissed about it. This
Speaker 1: was not a would look for them, so much so
Speaker 1: that they bought up almost all the original copies of
Speaker 1: that book and they destroyed them on mass. The larger
Speaker 1: public like they censored it. They tried to erase it
Speaker 1: from history because this was their livelihood. The public only
Speaker 1: learned about this when these two researchers, Eric Dingwall real
Speaker 1: last name and Harry Price managed to save if they
Speaker 1: found one copy, they saved it from destruction. They republished
Speaker 1: it widely, and that's when the public learned, Hey, maybe
Speaker 1: that's really not you know, my mother has passed away,
Speaker 1: or my child that I lost, or my spouse or whatever.
Speaker 1: And the tide turned.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you have time and you're interested in this stuff,
Speaker 3: look more into Harry Price. There is an amazing article
Speaker 3: that goes into his nineteen thirties research attempting to use
Speaker 3: X rays specifically to investigate psychic mediumship in this kind
Speaker 3: of thing where there's either ectoplasm created or a spirit
Speaker 3: that manifests and using X rays to try and prove
Speaker 3: that the medium may or may not actually have something
Speaker 3: inside their person right that they are using to fool everybody.
Speaker 3: Really great stuff. You can find an article on the
Speaker 3: website for the Science and Media Museum. It's called spirit
Speaker 3: Photography and the Occult Making the Invisible Visible.
Speaker 1: And if you want to see some kind of gonzo
Speaker 1: fiction in this regard, if you're a fan of graphic
Speaker 1: novels at all, please check out BPRD and hell Boy,
Speaker 1: which goes deep into the spiritualism movement or uses it
Speaker 1: as inspiration for some crazy adventures. I say, crazy adventures, hijinks.
Speaker 1: It's deep stuff. It's maybe not appropriate for kids all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: I was also going to suggest a movie that came
Speaker 2: out pretty recently that I thought it was pretty good call.
Speaker 2: I think it's called Late Night with the Devil, where
Speaker 2: it's like about like an exorcism that takes place on
Speaker 2: a late night show, but there is a James Randy
Speaker 2: esque character who is there like trying to talk and
Speaker 2: crap about the whole thing all along the way, So
Speaker 2: it's very seventies kind of vibes, and I think it's
Speaker 2: good if interested.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm clearly I'm cartoonishly in the demographic for
Speaker 6: the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I thought it was well done and it
Speaker 2: was entertaining, and it's actually got some humor in it,
Speaker 2: but it's it's definitely a bit of a dark uh
Speaker 2: exploration of these types of things.
Speaker 1: And so with the fall of spiritualism, which we'll explore
Speaker 1: in a later evening, uh, the wave the tide turned,
Speaker 1: and the wave of belief at ectoplasm never fully returned
Speaker 1: to the shore of the public zeitgeist.
Speaker 6: So with all this in.
Speaker 1: Mind, we can say the following, Yes, ectoplasm is real,
Speaker 1: But that answer depends entirely on what we mean by ectoplasm.
Speaker 1: A basic part of cell structure, for sure, an agglomeration
Speaker 1: of mundane materials exhibited under specific physical and psychological conditions.
Speaker 1: Apps of frickin lutely the physical traces of ghost eh.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I haven't seen any.
Speaker 3: I've seen lots and lots of weird photographs of cheese cloth.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course, that is unless you listening tonight, fellow conspiracy realist,
Speaker 1: unless you happen to have inarguable physical proof of spirits
Speaker 1: visiting this realm from beyond the grave and leaving tangible
Speaker 1: evidence behind. If so, we would love to learn more,
Speaker 1: reach out, tell us, show it to us. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to share it with the world, or just let
Speaker 1: us know what you think. We'd love to hear your
Speaker 1: stories about encounters with mediums and psychics, and we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear where you fall on the spectrum of spiritualism
Speaker 1: and skepticism. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 2: You can find us to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
Speaker 2: we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group. Here's where
Speaker 2: it gets crazy, on xfka, Twitter and on YouTube with
Speaker 2: video content coming at you on the regular on Instagram
Speaker 2: and TikTok. However, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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