The Principality of Sealand - an old military tower off the coast of England which has stood for decades since World War II. On its own, it would likely attract little attention from anybody other than dedicated history buffs. Yet, the tower has gained quite the reputation and following over the years. Why? It has to do not just with the tower, but some very interesting people, and of the symbol into which they made it. Prince Roy, Princess Joan, Prince Michael - just some of the "royal family" ...
Sep 22, 2022•35 min
"Killware" - the name for a new breed of cyber attacks aimed not just at computer systems, but particularly those whose disruption could cause harm to people who depend on them. Ransomware is already a pressing security issue, and now some cyber security experts are warning the situation could be compounded as actual lives could be at stake. This video discusses the security implications of connected systems and their vulnerabilities. Depending on who you ask, the first deaths from killware atta...
Apr 19, 2022•11 min
Cloud seeding is a form of weather manipulation to encourage cloud formation and increase rainfall in a given area. Although cloud seeding has been experimented with in one form or another for decades, a recent example of weather manipulation in Dubai has made news. Videos have been released by the Emirate's national meteorological center purporting to show rain made by drones. Although drones making rain sounds far fetched, millions of dollars have been poured into research to advance the techn...
Nov 19, 2021•6 min
Top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh had long been a target of assassination plans, as it was feared his work would lead to the creation of nuclear weapon systems for the country of Iran. In November of 2020, Fakhrizadeh was killed by gunfire as he drove down the road. The placement of the shots were precise, killing Fakhrizadeh while leaving his wife unharmed in the passenger seat. When it was first reported that the assassination had been carried out with use of a satellite-control...
Oct 27, 2021•9 min
The phrase "Lying Flat" doesn't immediately make the impression as a form of social and economic protest which is causing concern among industrialist elites, but it's the relatively simple nature of the movement which creates its power. Lying flat, or "tangping" in Chinese, is a very simple philosophy created by some very complex social situations in the country of China. Workers in China are often compelled to work gruelling hours for productivity, although this is usually done by intimation ra...
Aug 31, 2021•15 min
Fatal Familial Insomnia - a disease you may have heard of, as it's gained some notoriety on the internet despite its incredible rarity. I'm sure we've all felt insomnia before and know the frustration and the impact that just one or two bad nights of sleep can have on our functioning. Fatal Insomnia has two forms, sporadic and familial, although the very large majority of cases are familial. The genes for FFI have been identified in fewer than 80 families across the world. Fatal Insomnia is thou...
Aug 16, 2021•17 min
More and more, advertisements are an inescapable force in life. There is almost no part of our life that advertisers won't touch - including our dreams. This video is about targeted dream incubation - the practice of intentionally implanting material for a person to dream about - and its potential future in advertisement. Sound worrying? You're not alone. A group of prominent sleep and dream researchers have just published an open letter citing concerns about the misuse of this technology to man...
Jul 26, 2021•12 min
US Missile History during the Cold War is quite expansive, due to a frenzy of activity during that time. However, today's discussion is around an incident that's little discussed despite being potentially problematic for international relations. This is the history of the Athena Missile Flight #122 , which overshot its destination and landed in the Mapimi Desert in Mexico. This is the story of the conditions leading up to the failed launch, the political environment in which it occurred, and of ...
Jul 18, 2021•15 min
Life, death, love and loss are some of the defining factors of the human experiences. But as we enter the age where progressing technology comes to a crossroads with the promise of escaping the problems of conventional paradigms, many have begun to wonder how some of these issues can be resolved. As with many things, people are turning to AI (artificial intelligence) as a possible means for preserving a person's life, or at least their characteristics and experiences, so that the end of a person...
Jun 19, 2021•14 min
John Quincy St. Clair is a Hyperspace researcher responsible for invention mechanisms for space travel, remote viewing, teleportation, and many other highly-advanced technologies - or at least that's what he claimed in submitting these designs to the US Patent and Trade Office. For someone with such lofty claims, John St. Clair remains a mysterious figure. Why did he file a large batch of patent applications for mysterious technologies in the span of only a few years, while abandoning every sing...
Jun 05, 2021•13 min
Living Funerals, celebrations of life, Seizenso - 3 words that all describe roughly the same idea - holding a ceremony to honor the end of a person's life, while they're still alive. It's often said that "funerals are for the living" because the person being honored is already dead and gone, and only the living benefit from the ceremony of remembrance. Doesn't this seem a bit backwards though? Why is it that a person usually never gets to hear their own eulogy, the very words that are supposed t...
May 17, 2021•9 min
Content Warning: Nuclear, chemical and biological warfare; human experimentation; global war World War 2 was a war marked by rapid advancement of technology, newly destructive weaponry, and changes in tactic as the militaries of the nations involved learned to adapt to a new era of warfare. Some of the atrocities of the war are well publicized - such as nuclear weapons, firebombing, and concentration of labor camps - while others aren't. In particular, chemical and biological warfare had a much ...
May 09, 2021•7 min
The Dark Night of the Soul and Positive Disintegration are two concepts which are closely tied together - the belief that some forms of extreme emotional duress are unfortunately necessary for growth and reaching a higher, more preferable state of the human condition. The Dark Night of the Soul is a phrase that came to be popularized based on a poem by St. John of the Cross, and represented a religious and spiritual journey. On the other hand, positive disintegration is a theory of personal and ...
May 03, 2021•11 min
The panopticon - a place where all contained can be watched at any time, unaware of the status of their observers. First proposed by social theorist Jeremy Bentham, the idea of the panopticon was that the constant potential for being observed would lead to behavior which would fall in line with the moral requirements of society. Although this concept applied to many different building types proposed by Bentham, the one that we are most familiar with today is the panopticon style prison. The conc...
Mar 26, 2021•7 min
Having your head taken off and surgically implanted onto another body sounds crazy, right? Maybe, like me, you remember hearing about plans by an Italian neurosurgeon to perform the first human head transplant, but what happened to that? It seemed to have dropped out of the news cycle one day. So I decided to find out.
Feb 28, 2021•7 min
The weapon systems we see in science fiction inspire awe, fear and wonder about the power of humanity and the boundaries we push. As technology advances, sometimes real life technology comes closer than we expect to the capabilities imagined in science fiction. Today's episode is the first in the series where we talk about real science-fiction weapons. The subject is the orbital kinetic bombardment system - sometimes referred to ominously as "Rods From God". This system imagines tungsten rods th...
Feb 27, 2021•4 min•Ep. 1
