Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with Me, Richard acclaimed Smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In our last episode, Mobius Stripped,
Speaker 1: we learned about the curious work of Stephen A. Schwartz
Speaker 1: and his fascination with the nature of human consciousness. Over
Speaker 1: decades of work in various fields, Schwartz has become convinced
Speaker 1: that all life is interconnected and that consciousness is not
Speaker 1: a local thing that exists only within ourselves. Instead, according
Speaker 1: to Schwartz, that sense of consciousness that we experience individually
Speaker 1: is in fact part of a much larger universal plane
Speaker 1: of consciousness that we can supposedly access. Schwartz has dedicated
Speaker 1: much of his time to researching the possibilities of remote viewing,
Speaker 1: a practice that has been described as the ability to
Speaker 1: acquire information about spatially and temporally remote geographical targets otherwise
Speaker 1: inaccessible by any known sensory means. It is Schwartz's belief
Speaker 1: that it is the existence of a universal consciousness that
Speaker 1: enables people to successfully perform remote viewing by essentially allowing
Speaker 1: their minds to wander through it with the potential to
Speaker 1: effectively see things happening anywhere at any time. At first,
Speaker 1: Schwartz directed his attention to the past, asking participants in
Speaker 1: a number of experiments such as the Alexandria Project as
Speaker 1: featured in last week's episode, to see if they could
Speaker 1: use remote viewing to look back in time. Then, in
Speaker 1: nineteen eight, satisfied that this was indeed possible, he had
Speaker 1: an epiphany. If experienced remote viewers could look back in time,
Speaker 1: could they also look into the future, And so he
Speaker 1: decided to try and find out. Throughout the late nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, Stephen Schwartz occupied a number of roles
Speaker 1: within the American geopolitical community. At some point in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, the US Secretary of Defense at the time
Speaker 1: and the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology invited
Speaker 1: Schwartz to take part in a committee they were putting
Speaker 1: together under the label Innovation, Technology and the Future. After
Speaker 1: taking part, Schwartz became fascinated with future studies, or strategic foresight,
Speaker 1: as it is also known, the study of potential social
Speaker 1: and technological advancement. Futurists are concerned with predicting future trends,
Speaker 1: and often work closely with governments and businesses analyzing relevant
Speaker 1: data to try and make predictions about future local and
Speaker 1: global landscapes. To try and stay ahead of the curve
Speaker 1: with its unwieldy and highly unpredictable subject matter, considering all
Speaker 1: the many variables and unforeseen consequences that might impact what
Speaker 1: happens in the future, most futurists prefer their analysis to
Speaker 1: be based on solid, tangible facts and quantifiably predictive data.
Speaker 1: There certainly little appetite within the future studies community for
Speaker 1: trying to apply something so numinous and scientifically nebulous as
Speaker 1: so called remote viewing, to the equation, but Schwartz had
Speaker 1: other ideas. In nineteen seventy nine, fresh from the apparent
Speaker 1: successes of his various remote viewing experiments through the Mobius Project,
Speaker 1: he began gathering participants for a new study, which would
Speaker 1: become known as the twenty fifty Project. From nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine to nineteen ninety one, over four thousand people would
Speaker 1: take part in it from countries all over the world,
Speaker 1: including Russia, Germany, France, Jamaica, Mexico, Canada, and the United States.
Speaker 1: The participants were also drawn from all manner of backgrounds,
Speaker 1: from scientists and engineers to stay at home individuals, government bureaucrats,
Speaker 1: and medical doctors. All were given the same simple instruction
Speaker 1: to enter a meditative state and imagine themselves on the
Speaker 1: same exact day they were undertaking the exercise, but the
Speaker 1: year twenty fifty, and then tell Schwartz what they saw there. Incredibly,
Speaker 1: despite the various professional, cultural, and geographical differences of the participants,
Speaker 1: according to Schwartz, many of their answers were strikingly similar.
Speaker 1: Whether you believe in the legitimacy of Schwartz's methods or not,
Speaker 1: or dispute what it was exactly that led the participants
Speaker 1: to say what they said, there's no denying the results
Speaker 1: certainly make for some startling reading. With the test subject
Speaker 1: placed in a comfortable setting, Stephen would wait for them
Speaker 1: to enter a meditative state and then invite them to
Speaker 1: try and send their mind into the future. Twelve percent
Speaker 1: of those who participated immediately claimed they were unable to
Speaker 1: do so since they no longer existed in the year
Speaker 1: twenty fifty. Those that did would invariably get to a
Speaker 1: point when they claimed to have arrived in the assigned
Speaker 1: temporal location, at which point Stephen would begin his interviews.
Speaker 1: His method was to make sure never to offer a
Speaker 1: leading question that could influence the answer, So rather than
Speaker 1: ask what does your house look like, for example, he
Speaker 1: would instead say something like, stand in front at the
Speaker 1: place where you sleep and tell me what it looks like,
Speaker 1: since it was always the first thing on his mind.
Speaker 1: Stephen would begin by asking the participants if there'd been
Speaker 1: a nuclear war, or if there was any evidence that
Speaker 1: such a thing had taken place. Time after time he
Speaker 1: was staggered by their response. No, they would say, but
Speaker 1: that's not all. The Soviet Union has disappeared. It's hard
Speaker 1: to comprehend to day just how strange that sounded back
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine when Schwartz began conducting the study,
Speaker 1: and at first he couldn't get his head around what
Speaker 1: that meant exactly. When he asked how and in what way,
Speaker 1: the participants responded that it simply no longer existed. Rather
Speaker 1: than making the world a safer place, however, as Schwartz
Speaker 1: had hoped, according to the subjects, the disintegration of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union had led to a far less stable world.
Speaker 1: Prone to increased incidences of terrorism. Schwartz then asked his
Speaker 1: participants to detail the other major concerns of the day
Speaker 1: with regards to global safety. All unanimously stated that the
Speaker 1: main threats were outbreaks of disease and infection, which would
Speaker 1: lead to numerous epidemics that plagued the globe for many years.
Speaker 1: The first of these would be a blood disease, which
Speaker 1: they described as something that had crossed over from primates
Speaker 1: to humans at the time nineteen seventy nine nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: When the participants first started reporting this, Stephen apparently consulted
Speaker 1: a friend of his, who worked as the deputy director
Speaker 1: of cardiovascular research at the US's National Institute of Health,
Speaker 1: to ask if he knew of any such thing currently
Speaker 1: in circulation in the global population. He knew of nothing
Speaker 1: like it. It was sometime later in the June nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one edition of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
Speaker 1: published by the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Speaker 1: that five young men in Los Angeles, California, were reportedly
Speaker 1: being treated with strange cases of pneumocystis pneumonia. Two would
Speaker 1: die soon after. All were around thirty years old with
Speaker 1: no previous health complications. The five men are thought to
Speaker 1: be the first reported individuals in America to have been
Speaker 1: infected with HIV, and the apparent revelations kept on coming.
Speaker 1: When Schwartz asked his participants again back no later than
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, but most from nineteen seventy nine and
Speaker 1: the early eighties, how people traveled, the response was again surprising. Overwhelmingly,
Speaker 1: the subjects responded that people didn't travel much at all
Speaker 1: since technology had read did it mostly unnecessary? How so
Speaker 1: Stephen had asked, well, they would reply, there was a
Speaker 1: sort of apparatus you could use to project yourself into
Speaker 1: other spaces, like a kind of virtual reality. You could
Speaker 1: have meetings there or communicate with loved ones. Computers too,
Speaker 1: or at least the peculiar devices they saw that resembled
Speaker 1: computers in their functionality were no longer huge, unwieldy things,
Speaker 1: but small and pocket sized that you could easily carry
Speaker 1: around with you on a daily basis. Concern about the
Speaker 1: climate was a frequent topic of conversation. By twenty fifty,
Speaker 1: many said we no longer burned carbon. As a result,
Speaker 1: all air travel had been significantly reduced cars were not
Speaker 1: so much cars, but devices constructed from a combination of
Speaker 1: a chassis and another device that was some kind of
Speaker 1: box that powered it like a battery. The same device
Speaker 1: was used to power houses and larger buildings too. A
Speaker 1: much changed climate had also apparently left many coastal towns
Speaker 1: under water, and in places where the temperature had become
Speaker 1: too hot to exist in the ways were used to
Speaker 1: large domes had been built to regulate the climate inside,
Speaker 1: much in the manner say as Dubai's More of the
Speaker 1: World project, which was first proposed in twenty sixteen. Many
Speaker 1: also described a world in which pharmacological medicine had almost disappeared,
Speaker 1: since most genetic predispositions such as cystic fibrosis or muscular
Speaker 1: dystrophy had been engineered out before birth. As for governments,
Speaker 1: they still exist, but the processes of power were much
Speaker 1: changed and much more devolved. In the US specifically, although
Speaker 1: a federal government was said to exist, most power was
Speaker 1: exercised by the states or larger bioregions that had vested
Speaker 1: ecological reasons to keep their policies aligned. All in all,
Speaker 1: they said the global population was much smaller, and cities
Speaker 1: had become relatively smaller too, with people choosing instead to
Speaker 1: live in communities or communes with others who shared their
Speaker 1: values and interests. This in turn had led to a
Speaker 1: hardening and tribal attitudes, since people tended to travel less
Speaker 1: and mix with other people outside of their chosen spheres
Speaker 1: of interest. Despite the increased polarization and entrenched views, many
Speaker 1: participants nonetheless reported that twenty fifty world in which gender
Speaker 1: imbalances had been largely eradicated, but one in which that
Speaker 1: had also been a complete shift in the way that
Speaker 1: gender was defined. This comprises only a fraction of what
Speaker 1: Stephen Schwartz gleaned from his research. You can find out
Speaker 1: more by searching the twenty fifty Project online. Thank you
Speaker 1: to Diane Hope for suggesting this week's story Unexplained. The
Speaker 1: book and audiobook, featuring stories that have never before been
Speaker 1: featured on the show, is now available to buy worldwide.
Speaker 1: You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes, and Noble Waterstones, among
Speaker 1: other bookstores. All elements have Unexplained, including the show's music,
Speaker 1: are produced by me Richard McClain Smith. Please subscribe and
Speaker 1: rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel
Speaker 1: free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas
Speaker 1: regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
Speaker 1: You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com
Speaker 1: or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com.
Speaker 1: Forward slash Unexplained Podcast