Speaker 1: In the Phenomenon of Man, written in nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 1: the idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Tilhard to Chardin
Speaker 1: makes the claim that evolution is a process that gives
Speaker 1: rise to increasingly complex organisms, which in turn leads to
Speaker 1: expanded consciousness. At the book's core is the theory that
Speaker 1: as humans evolve and society becomes more elaborate, a collective
Speaker 1: space is formed that allows us to hold and share
Speaker 1: our ideas in order to better communicate with one another.
Speaker 1: Although an abstraction, Tilhard to Chardin imagined this thinking layer,
Speaker 1: as he called it, much like the atmosphere and the biosphere,
Speaker 1: to be as integral and real as any material aspect
Speaker 1: of the planet. Borrowing a term from the pioneering biochemist
Speaker 1: Vladimir Vanatsky, Tilhard de Chardin called this space the new sphere,
Speaker 1: taken from the Greek NEOs, meaning mind. He believed that
Speaker 1: through this organized web of thought, as he termed it,
Speaker 1: our disparate cultural knowledge and perspectives would become so diffused
Speaker 1: and universally understood that they would effectively converge into one
Speaker 1: singular point of human awareness. In late October nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine in the University of California's computer lab, twenty one
Speaker 1: year old UCLA student and programmer Charlie Kleine sat on
Speaker 1: the phone in front of a keyboard connected to a
Speaker 1: computer so large it would barely fit inside a garage.
Speaker 1: Shortly before nine thirty PM, Kline pressed the letter L
Speaker 1: on the keyboard and waited. A moment later, the voice
Speaker 1: of fellow programmer Bill Duval came down the line from
Speaker 1: his base at the Stamford Research Institute, letting Cline know
Speaker 1: that the L had been received. Next, Kline typed the
Speaker 1: letter O. After a moment's pause, Bill came back on
Speaker 1: the line to confirm that it too had been received.
Speaker 1: The following attempt to send another letter resulted in a
Speaker 1: complete system meltdown, but by then the test had already
Speaker 1: been a success. Klein and Duval were working on a
Speaker 1: project set up by the US Department of Defenses Advanced
Speaker 1: Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPER. Their aim was
Speaker 1: to help build a digital communication network that could accommodate
Speaker 1: more than two computer terminals at one time and transmit
Speaker 1: information across large distances. They'd been attempting to send the
Speaker 1: word loggin before the computer crashed as it tried to
Speaker 1: process the third letter, like a biblical proclamation. The resultant
Speaker 1: low became the first communication across what would later be
Speaker 1: known as Arpernett, the foundation for what we know to
Speaker 1: day as the Internet. It shouldn't surprise us that, like
Speaker 1: many of our most advanced technologies, the Internet began as
Speaker 1: a military project. However, it is fairly certain that the
Speaker 1: Pentagon had not envisaged the opening up of their secretive
Speaker 1: systems of communication to the wider world. So although we
Speaker 1: have them to thank or blame for developing the structural
Speaker 1: underpinnings of the Net, the spirit that gave rise to
Speaker 1: the Internet as we broadly understand it today is more
Speaker 1: closely related to the utopian ideals of Pierre Tilhard de
Speaker 1: Chardin emerging from the fertile corridors of the European strategy
Speaker 1: for particle physics is cern Laboratory. The Worldwide Web was
Speaker 1: first proposed by Tim berners Lee as an open system
Speaker 1: whereby we could all store and share information freely and
Speaker 1: globally without interference. On the sixth of August nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: berners Lee launched the world's first website at HTTP. Colon
Speaker 1: forward slash info, dot cern Dota, which explained the concept
Speaker 1: of the web as an open invitation to all, even
Speaker 1: providing instructions on how you might get started on building
Speaker 1: your own website. Teel hard to Chardin was criticized for
Speaker 1: his erroneous reading of evolution as a process which leads
Speaker 1: inevitably to a singular point of higher intelligence. It is
Speaker 1: a common misconception evolution is simply a process in which
Speaker 1: the cumulative mutations of a species will result in an
Speaker 1: organism that is better suited to its environment. There's no
Speaker 1: guarantee that it would be intellectually smarter than any previous iterations. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: it is hard not to see something of teel hard
Speaker 1: to Chardin's so called thinking layer, at least in the
Speaker 1: functionality of the Internet, this networked repository of data from
Speaker 1: which we now store, share, and receive so much of
Speaker 1: our information, our personal lives and minds becoming increasingly merged
Speaker 1: and atomized into this space, all our records, experiences, and
Speaker 1: even thoughts backed up on clouds, shared and available for
Speaker 1: all to see. Furthermore, with the rise of web two
Speaker 1: point o, a term coined by web pioneer Dale Doughty,
Speaker 1: that describes platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit,
Speaker 1: which facilitate user generated content. It has never been so
Speaker 1: easy to share that information. Never before, as a species
Speaker 1: have we been so interconnected and exposed to each other.
Speaker 1: In an echo of the new sphere concept, tech writer
Speaker 1: Tim O'Reilly, in his two thousand and five article what
Speaker 1: is Web two point o published on O'Riley dot com,
Speaker 1: describes the leading Web two pointoo companies as those that
Speaker 1: embrace the power of the web to harness collective intelligence.
Speaker 1: Visionary utopian thinking, as media scholar Ethan Zuckerman notes in
Speaker 1: his twenty fifteen book Digital Cosmopolitans, drawing on the work
Speaker 1: of historian Langdon Winner, is often catalyzed by the emergence
Speaker 1: of major new technologies, and never more so than when
Speaker 1: those technologies promise to make the world more connected. As
Speaker 1: Zuckerman states, today, the Internet stands alone as the fundamental
Speaker 1: component at the heart of most of our visions for
Speaker 1: a world made better through connection. Such cyber utopianism can
Speaker 1: be seen in mission statements like that of Facebook, an
Speaker 1: archetypal platform of Web two point zero, which read simply
Speaker 1: bring people closer together. Much in the manner of the
Speaker 1: new sphere. The cyber utopian sees the Internet as the
Speaker 1: medium through which we will globally combine us one no
Speaker 1: longer restricted by status, class, power, wealth, and geography. As
Speaker 1: Heather brooknotes in her twenty twelve book, The Revolution will
Speaker 1: be digitized. It will be a promised land, they believe,
Speaker 1: where all of our oppressive and arbitrary social barriers will
Speaker 1: finally be transcended. However, as our lives become ever more
Speaker 1: entangled with this digital realm, some have been left fearing that,
Speaker 1: rather than providing us with the tools of our next
Speaker 1: evolutionary step forward, the Internet is in fact ensnaring us
Speaker 1: in an evolutionary colder sac, a trap from which we
Speaker 1: might struggle to ever escape. Amplified by the accelerated nature
Speaker 1: of technological development, many have become unnerved at the way
Speaker 1: the tools of the Internet seem to be undermining the old,
Speaker 1: more stable ways, as some see it, fearing that the familiar,
Speaker 1: supposedly solid world they once knew is disintegrating before their eyes,
Speaker 1: ushering in a much less certain one, governed by processes
Speaker 1: that are out of our control and beyond the comprehension
Speaker 1: of most It is as if from that laboratory at
Speaker 1: the University of California back in nineteen sixty nine, when
Speaker 1: that first digital message was sent, a portal to an
Speaker 1: abyss was opened, and from its depth the siren call
Speaker 1: of a hopeless future emerged that has been growing steadily
Speaker 1: louder ever since. That feeling of uncertainty is the true
Speaker 1: horror of the unknown, the fear of chaos, and a
Speaker 1: fear of all the monsters that we are convinced a
Speaker 1: lurking in the shadows, just waiting for that chaos to descend.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and nine, something monstrous did materialize on
Speaker 1: the Internet that might yet prove our worst fears about
Speaker 1: where this new world is taking us. He is the
Speaker 1: personification of the unknown, a messenger of the medium, at
Speaker 1: once new but also strangely archaically familiar. Some say he
Speaker 1: first appeared one night centuries ago in Germany's Black Forest
Speaker 1: of Baden Wurtemburg. Others that he lives in a mansion
Speaker 1: deep in the heart of Chiquamigan Nikolay National Forest in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: He is unnaturally tall, dressed in a dark suit with
Speaker 1: distended limbs, and in some cases has grotesque cathonic tentacles
Speaker 1: emanating from his back. His face is blank, but some
Speaker 1: claim it appears differently depending on the observer. It isn't
Speaker 1: clear exactly what he wants, but the triggering a profound
Speaker 1: nausea and nose bleeds when he is near suggests that
Speaker 1: whatever it is, it isn't good. Some also believe it
Speaker 1: is only possible to see him in the brief moment
Speaker 1: before he takes your life. His name is the slender Man,
Speaker 1: and one way or another he is coming for us.
Speaker 1: Awe you're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard McClean smith.
Speaker 1: The first evidence of slender Man came in the form
Speaker 1: of two deeply unsettling, low resolution black and white photographs
Speaker 1: posted to a forum thread on the website Something Awful.
Speaker 1: Something Awful was created in nineteen ninety nine by Richard Kyanka,
Speaker 1: better known by his screen name low Tax. It began
Speaker 1: life as little more than a website for Kyanka to
Speaker 1: share his comedic and irreverent take on the world, primarily
Speaker 1: through the lens of Internet cultures and video games. As
Speaker 1: the site grew in popularity, its forums became a breeding
Speaker 1: ground for irreverent, in jokey Internet humor. Long before Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook. Something Awful forum users, self described as goons, pioneered,
Speaker 1: for want of a better word, the care stick and
Speaker 1: mocking humor that has come to define much of online culture,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether you find the material on Something Awful
Speaker 1: funny or not. The website, whose motto is the Internet
Speaker 1: Makes You Stupid, has been described by Daily dot Com
Speaker 1: as one of the single most important websites in the
Speaker 1: history of Internet humor. Given or that and its relatively
Speaker 1: archaic status in the life of the Internet, it feels
Speaker 1: a somewhat fitting Locusts for the birth of slender Man.
Speaker 1: The first picture claiming to show him appeared on June tenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine. The photograph seemed, at first glance
Speaker 1: to depict twelve anguished children walking towards an unknown destination.
Speaker 1: The odd, disturbed look on their faces was unsettling enough,
Speaker 1: but what was really creepy was the wraith like figure
Speaker 1: standing behind them. Dressed in a smart black suit with
Speaker 1: strangely distended limbs and a faceless head. It appeared to
Speaker 1: be shepherding the children on their way like some kind
Speaker 1: of ghoulish pied piper. The caption below declared we didn't
Speaker 1: want to go, We didn't want to kill them, but
Speaker 1: its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us
Speaker 1: at the same time. The photo was marked nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three and accredited to photographer unknown, presumed dead. The second
Speaker 1: photo to appear, which again seemed fairly innocuous at first,
Speaker 1: showed a young girl climbing to the top of a
Speaker 1: slide in a small park in Sterling, Australia, while other
Speaker 1: children play happily around her. An authentic looking watermark for
Speaker 1: the City of Sterling Libraries Local Studies collection is printed
Speaker 1: in the corner. Looking closer, however, you'll find a mysterious shape,
Speaker 1: shrouded in darkness, standing under the trees at the back
Speaker 1: of the shot. Once more, the figure who appears to
Speaker 1: be keeping a watchful eye on the children is oddly
Speaker 1: elongated and dressed in a black suit. But here there
Speaker 1: was something else, a set of cephalopodden arms reaching out
Speaker 1: from behind his back. This time the caption came with
Speaker 1: a little more detail, one of two recovered photographs from
Speaker 1: the Sterling City Library Blaze. It said, notable for being
Speaker 1: taken day which fourteen children vanished, and for what is
Speaker 1: referred to as the slender Man. Deformities cited as film
Speaker 1: defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later.
Speaker 1: Actual photograph confiscated as evidence photographer Mary Thomas missing since
Speaker 1: June thirteenth, nineteen eighty six. As much as they may
Speaker 1: have looked like unearthed pieces of a peculiar lost history,
Speaker 1: the pictures were in fact the work of regular Something
Speaker 1: Awful forum user Victor search birth name Eric Knudsen, who'd
Speaker 1: posted them as part of a paranormal pictures contest set
Speaker 1: up by another user. The caption for the second photo
Speaker 1: marked the first direct mention of the terrifying that was
Speaker 1: soon to become a global phenomenon. For the next few days,
Speaker 1: Surge continued to post further images and allusions to the entity,
Speaker 1: from hysterical police reports to an archive newspaper article about
Speaker 1: a young boy from Whichita who'd apparently gone missing in
Speaker 1: two thousand and four. Within hours, Surge's creation started to
Speaker 1: draw attention from other forum users, and before long the
Speaker 1: legend was spreading. Other Something Awful members suggested modifications and
Speaker 1: refinements to the physiognomy, while others made changes themselves or
Speaker 1: chimed in with their own apparent experiences and found pieces
Speaker 1: of evidence. Throughout all of this, something extraordinary was taking place,
Speaker 1: although this creature had only come into existence a few
Speaker 1: days previously. Through the repetity of proliferation enabled by the Internet,
Speaker 1: as more people began to add to the mythology with
Speaker 1: every passing day, it was as if it were being
Speaker 1: inserted into pockets of history stretching back centuries. One particularly
Speaker 1: striking image, posted a few days after the original, showed
Speaker 1: a bizarre sixteenth century woodcutting print titled de Ritter that
Speaker 1: was claimed to have been unearthed at a Haltzburg castle
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty three, Purportedly made by famed artist of
Speaker 1: the day, Hans Frekenburg. The picture appeared to show a
Speaker 1: night doing battle against the skeleton of a mysterious creature
Speaker 1: with distended limbs not too dissimilar to those of slender Man.
Speaker 1: Over the next few months, the slender Man universe expanded
Speaker 1: way beyond the Something Awful forums onto various social media
Speaker 1: and content sharing networks in all digital mediums, from photoshopped images,
Speaker 1: text to videos, and online games. Today, the breadth of
Speaker 1: the tentacle like reach of the slender Man mythos has
Speaker 1: left many, including Slender's original creator, Eric Nulsen, and academics
Speaker 1: like folkloreist Jeffrey Talbot, suggesting that the slender universe could
Speaker 1: reasonably be considered the first genuine example of digital folklore,
Speaker 1: a myth that has been realized almost entirely through the
Speaker 1: utility of the Internet. Certainly, if you ask anyone who's
Speaker 1: heard of slender Man to explain what he is, they
Speaker 1: would describe something much like any other folk legend, his
Speaker 1: origins vague and timeless, the story mutating as it is
Speaker 1: passed from person to person, both wildly or subtly, but
Speaker 1: always with the central figure remaining consistent, much like tales
Speaker 1: of the Slavic witch Baba Yaga, who sometimes flies in
Speaker 1: the pestle and mortar other times on a broom. One moment,
Speaker 1: she's benign, while the next monstrously wicked. To think of
Speaker 1: her today, it might feel, like slender Man, that she's
Speaker 1: always been there, lurking in the darkest peripheries of our nightmares.
Speaker 1: Many academics have bought at the idea of something so
Speaker 1: recently conceived as slender Man being considered folklore, despite their
Speaker 1: apparent timelessness, Even the most ancient tales had an origin,
Speaker 1: but traditionally this ageless sense of time is significant. A
Speaker 1: term first thought have been coined by writer William Toms
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty six. Folklore, as the Oxford English Dictionary
Speaker 1: has it, is broadly considered to encompass the quote traditional beliefs, customs,
Speaker 1: and stories of a community passed through the generations by
Speaker 1: word of mouth. Such stories can be waited in old superstitions,
Speaker 1: serving to impart useful life lessons, or merely the passing
Speaker 1: on of rituals, customs, and traditions shared through a common ancestry.
Speaker 1: As the term denotes, it is quintessentially about the folk
Speaker 1: the people, but more specifically about the passing down of
Speaker 1: the shared histories of specific cultures through oral transmission. In
Speaker 1: the traditional mode of thinking, folklore is passed down vertically
Speaker 1: through generations. How then, might the myth of slender Man,
Speaker 1: conceived as recently as two thousand and nine, possibly constitute
Speaker 1: such a thing. Two academics from the University of Southern
Speaker 1: Denmark proposed an extraordinary theory that, although not specific to
Speaker 1: the slender Man, mythos goes some way I think to
Speaker 1: explaining how he might consider it a true example of
Speaker 1: folklore in the digital age. Their idea has profound, unsettling,
Speaker 1: and for some truly terrifying implications. In May two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, Thomas Pettit, associate professor of English at the
Speaker 1: University of Southern Denmark, presented a paper at an MIT
Speaker 1: media conference titled before the Gudenburg Parenthesis Elizabethan American Compatibilities.
Speaker 1: Pettit's paper marked the first formal outing for the Gutemburg parenthesis,
Speaker 1: a controversial and radical understanding of the digital age. The phrase,
Speaker 1: coined by Pettit's colleague, professor Lars ole Sauerberg, encapsulates the
Speaker 1: idea that the five hundred year period following the invention
Speaker 1: of Johannes Gutenberg's printing press in the fifteenth century was
Speaker 1: not the beginning of a change in the way that
Speaker 1: we share information, but was in fact an anomalous blip.
Speaker 1: Inherent in this neat phrase is the idea that, if
Speaker 1: we imagine the history of communication as a sentence, everything
Speaker 1: leading up to the invention of the printing press comes
Speaker 1: before the parenthesis. The five hundred years or so following
Speaker 1: its invention is the interruption within the parenthesis, and anything
Speaker 1: since the emergence of the Internet comes after, in effect
Speaker 1: continuing the historical sentence from before. Many believe that Johannes
Speaker 1: Guttemberg's ingenious invention, which provided the means to mass produce
Speaker 1: and share information, marks the true beginning of the information age,
Speaker 1: of which the Internet is simply the latest phase of
Speaker 1: its evolution. What Thomas Pettit and Lars O. A. Soerberg recognized, however,
Speaker 1: was how the Internet, albeit in a far more rapid
Speaker 1: and advanced manner, through its various mediums the mechanisms through
Speaker 1: which information is shared on it, has not been a
Speaker 1: progression into the future, but rather has returned us to
Speaker 1: a more medieval and unstable past. In effect, according to
Speaker 1: the Guttemberg parenthesis theory, rather than providing us with the
Speaker 1: place we confined the true fixed truth of everything, the
Speaker 1: digital age has in fact returned us to the fluid,
Speaker 1: mutable way in which information used to be shared before
Speaker 1: mass print and the supremacy of fixed authoritative texts reigned supreme.
Speaker 1: As Thomas Pettitt noted in his two thousand and seven talk,
Speaker 1: prior to the printing press, most knowledge was shared orally.
Speaker 1: It was, as he said, sampled remixed, borrowed, reshaped, appropriated,
Speaker 1: and continually recontextualized the worthy authorial texts of religious institutions,
Speaker 1: and for a select minority access to authoritative academic texts.
Speaker 1: But broadly speaking, for most people, from the plays and
Speaker 1: the songs we wrote to the sharing of news and
Speaker 1: life events, knowledge was communal, with no fixed origin, and
Speaker 1: subject to severe mutation. Its provenance was always questionable. The
Speaker 1: expansion of the slender Man mythos was fueled in part
Speaker 1: by our copy and paste meme sharing culture, which epitomizes
Speaker 1: the way in which information is often shared online, in
Speaker 1: particular through the phenomena of creepy pasta, which first emerged
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands. Creepy pasta is the sharing
Speaker 1: and proliferation of short form horror stories, usually in the
Speaker 1: tone of an urban legend, written as if true events
Speaker 1: are being recounted. Creepy pasta can take the form of
Speaker 1: anything from prose to multipart video, but serves only one
Speaker 1: purpose to freak you out. One famous example is a
Speaker 1: video titled the Scariest Picture on the Internet Brackets Reel,
Speaker 1: uploaded to YouTube sometime around twenty ten. The video depicts
Speaker 1: a painting of a young woman with long brown hair
Speaker 1: and azure blue eyes that was purportedly drawn and then
Speaker 1: uploaded by a teenage girl from Japan shortly before she
Speaker 1: committed suicide. Viewers of the video, which runs at just
Speaker 1: over five minutes, are warned that quote it is hard
Speaker 1: for a person to stare into the girl's eyes for
Speaker 1: longer than five minutes. There are reports that some people
Speaker 1: have taken their own lives after doing so through websites
Speaker 1: such as creepy pasta dot com, created in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight and later creepy Pasta dot Wikia. Users are
Speaker 1: encouraged to make their own contributions, create mashups of other stories,
Speaker 1: or extend the universe of someone else's original idea. Creepy
Speaker 1: Pastor therefore thrives on the fluidity of information, unofficiated, unverified,
Speaker 1: and passed around from person to person in the manner
Speaker 1: of the oral tradition, where the story is free to
Speaker 1: mutate with no discernible author. Key to the fluid transference
Speaker 1: of information in the digital age has been the dominance
Speaker 1: of web two point er platforms that facilitate user generated content.
Speaker 1: Platforms such as TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have for
Speaker 1: many been a liberating tool. Many argue that it allows
Speaker 1: thoughts and ideas to be heard, regardless of financial means
Speaker 1: or the necessity of having to satisfy by the gatekeepers
Speaker 1: of old, be they publishing companies, record companies, TV executives,
Speaker 1: or the stringent ethical codes of conduct which might otherwise
Speaker 1: have dictated what content can be seen or heard. Some, however,
Speaker 1: have voiced concern over the way in which Web two
Speaker 1: point zero, rather than broadening our awareness and understanding of
Speaker 1: the world, is in fact making us more stupid and
Speaker 1: diluting culture. In the Cult of the amateur, how today's
Speaker 1: Internet is killing our culture, Internet critic Andrew Keane argues
Speaker 1: that rather than enabling us to pool our intelligence, the
Speaker 1: explosion of amateur user generated content has given us a
Speaker 1: world in which sketchy Wikipedia entries are given prominence over
Speaker 1: the perceived erudite authority of the Britannica Encyclopedia, which, as
Speaker 1: Keene says, is leading us to superficial observations of the
Speaker 1: world around us rather than deep analysis. What the Gutenberg
Speaker 1: parenthesis theory suggests, and what Keen is alluding to, is
Speaker 1: that prior to the rise of the Internet, as noted
Speaker 1: by media critic Deek Starkman in his twenty twelve paper
Speaker 1: The Future Is Medieval. Information came with a degree of
Speaker 1: permanence and containment, which is to say that, regardless of
Speaker 1: how undemocratic and elitist it was, information was set, meaning
Speaker 1: the receiver of it could hold it to account and
Speaker 1: interrogate its veracity. The printed words that stemmed from Gutenberg's
Speaker 1: printing press, as Starkman puts it, were unalterable and thus
Speaker 1: given a new author authority, whether it was deserved or not,
Speaker 1: that oral communication didn't have in its own way, though
Speaker 1: not nearly as much as the Internet. The printing press
Speaker 1: was also hugely democratizing and egalitarian, to fueling literacy and
Speaker 1: empowering people by allowing for a wider access to the
Speaker 1: words that had previously been controlled by the authorities of
Speaker 1: the day. For the first time, many people who hadn't
Speaker 1: had a voice before could spread their ideas and be heard.
Speaker 1: This in turn allowed for more solid foundations from which
Speaker 1: to build our collective knowledge, which, as Starkman also suggests,
Speaker 1: led directly to the Enlightenment, the foundations for democracy, and
Speaker 1: a rapid explosion of scientific advancement, as well as allowing
Speaker 1: for challenges to the authority of the religious and feudal
Speaker 1: author oxyes of the period. A post Guttenberg parenthesis world, however,
Speaker 1: some believe we are now living in, is one in which,
Speaker 1: through the manner in which information is exchanged on the Internet,
Speaker 1: the authoritative, immutable word has been completely untethered. It is
Speaker 1: a return to a world in which there is virtually
Speaker 1: no way of confirming a story's origin or, in other words,
Speaker 1: it's truth. It is a world in which the so
Speaker 1: called stable, reassuring authority of the old established orders are
Speaker 1: being undermined and replaced by gut feeling and entrenched tribalism.
Speaker 1: A place where for some people things might feel a
Speaker 1: little less certain than they did before. A world, you
Speaker 1: might say, in which the specter of the Slender Man
Speaker 1: can be felt pushing in from the shadows, and if
Speaker 1: you listen now through the silence, you might just hear
Speaker 1: him coming. You've been listening to Unexplained, Season six, episode
Speaker 1: twenty eight. The new Sphere, Part one of three, Part
Speaker 1: two will be released next Friday, February tenth. If you
Speaker 1: enjoy Unexplained and would like to help support us, you
Speaker 1: can now do so via patroon to receive access to
Speaker 1: add three episodes. Just go to patron dot com Forward
Speaker 1: Slash Unexplained Pod to sign up. Unexplained, the book and
Speaker 1: audio book, featuring stories that have never before been featured
Speaker 1: on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You
Speaker 1: can purchase from Amazon, Barnes, and Noble Waterstones, among other bookstores.
Speaker 1: All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced
Speaker 1: by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the
Speaker 1: show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to
Speaker 1: get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the
Speaker 1: stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an
Speaker 1: explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can
Speaker 1: reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or Twitter
Speaker 1: at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward
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