From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
A production of iHeart Radio.
Hello, welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission control deck, and most importantly, are you. You are here that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Fellow conspiracy realist. We are beginning tonight's episode with a disclaimer, and a strong one. Please listen closely. Tonight we are exploring the concept of so called auditory hallucinations, meaning at base, the idea of experiencing
sounds that do not provably exist. And you know, Matt, the vast majority of human beings at some point have all felt they heard something with no discernible physical origin. Often when you're like almost falling asleep or you're almost waking up, you know, just a gut check. Has that happened? Have you ever occasionally just had one of those auditory hallucination hiccups?
Yeah? I think the sleep aspect of it feels right to me. Where you're somewhere between being awake and being asleep, and maybe something from a dream creeps in and almost wakes you up, and then you think you heard it in real life, but it may have just been something that you were experiencing, which is interesting because I guess I don't know the idea of hearing things in a
dream is interesting to me. You often hear people describing like I wrote a song in my dreams, but I've always struggled to be able to explain how sound occurs in Yeah.
I mean, it's almost like the exploding head syndrome that we've discussed before, where you think you hear a loud crash or something like late at night or as you're falling asleep. You go and check it out and absolutely nothing has happened, but your mind has created that sound. I get a thing in this house. It's usually like an ice maker. That's yeah, down the way, I get
that too. Yes, it will just be a random like sounds like a crash right of just ice hitting down and you just go, oh, what, what the heck was that somebody just opened a door?
Well, that ice sound is such a racket, you know, for being such a small sound. It really does seem to take on a much more kind of large scale quality.
You know, what is it appropriateception? Your sense of yourself in space also gets a little wonky in that liminal spot, you know. That's why sometimes you might jerk in your sleep because you feel like you're falling or you're moving while your physical body is simply prone. And look, you know again, the vast majority of people have heard something at some point. Oh, I thought I heard a voice.
I turned around, No one was there. My life continues, nonetheless, And folks, while you, me and our cohort Matt, Noel and Paul do technically function as voices in your head tonight via an audio podcast. We are not doctors, to be very clear before we explore any of this. If you are experiencing things that bring you distress or discomfort, immediately contact medical professional. Here are the facts. What do
we mean when we say hearing voices? This is a kind of auditory hallucination or word of the day paracusia, nice one, right, But this is a genre of these. This is auditory verbal hallucinations. That means not just the sound, not just an ice machine to your point, Matt, but something vocalizing towards you in your head, a signing a thing, and there's some really interesting science spoiler, we're not going to get into it about what it means when you hear it.
It just like in mono.
Versus in stereo. There's there's a lot of deep water here. But obviously, in the modern world, perhaps unfairly, this is often associated with some sort of sort of deletarious medical condition.
Yeah, I mean typically things like psychosis, some form of dementia perhaps, or schizophrenia. You know, I think many times schizophree is obviously sort of a catch all term. Lots of different little subtle, you know, things that can exist under that umbrella. But I think a lot of folks have the understanding of schizophrenia as even going so far as to assign it like some form of multiple personality syndrome,
which I think is a bit of a misnomer. But to your point, Ben, about these audio hallucinations, they're not just sounds. They have personalities, and a lot of times those personalities can be aspects or sort of multiplicities of
your own personality. You know, insecurities that are calling out to you and you know, chastising you or trying to shame you for certain things that you're insecure about, and there can be positive ones too that try to kind of lift you up, and sometimes those voices compete.
Yeah, and there is it is true that schizophrenia as an umbrella term is. It's been challenging to modern neuroscience to really define this, to understand it, and that challenge remains in the modern day, to be clear. But there are other potential diagnoses that can be related to auditory verbal hallucinations or this specific genre of peracusia, depression, disassociative identity disorder, generalized anxiety PTSD, obsessive compulsive substance induced psychoses.
A lot of times people will experience non consensual hallucinations, meaning purpose they did not purposely seek these out. A lot of that information comes from a number of self reported polls found one from twenty fifteen that notes this. And to your earlier point, Noel, there are other possible causes that are purely hardware causes, things like tumors in the right or wrong part of the brain, dementia, epilepsy, and so on. But there is a pickle in this porridge.
A great many people, it turns out, who experience what we would call auditory hallucinations, have no discernible mental illness, have no diagnoses regarding that they are simply otherwise normal individuals who seem to at are regular intervals hear voices they cannot scientifically explain. And these are not always bad
voices at all, right, They're not all created equally. Over the years on this show, we've mentioned many people, normal people as well as world leaders, who felt that they occasionally heard a voice that guided them towards some better outcome. Winston Churchill always comes to mind to this.
Mh or Joan of arc is another good example, or I think even Mahama Gandhi is said to have heard voices. And oftentimes some of these folks are, you know, like especially with Churchill and Gandhi credited as being great orators, you know, or a scene as being you know, really high level thinkers as opposed to being cast off as you know, the mentally ill.
But there's also just one other thing to add to the list.
There have been we're talking about a hardware issue because they're I think hearing loss. Antonitis can also be associated with greakpoint like almost like the hardware picking up some kind of signal right, or or maybe even it's not something with an actual origin point, you know, physically in the environment, but because of the way the hardware is like attempting to pick up signal almost it like creates music in somebody's head or even vocalizations, which is really fascinating to me.
It's confusing to me too, because as someone who has lucid dreams when on the few occasions I do sleep, I am one of those people who walks out with like a fully formed idea and says, oh, crap, that's not that's not a thing yet, and have to frantically search to make sure my brain was not just being super unoriginal. But yeah, I have auditory hallucinations.
And I think to your point, Matt about tonights and things of that nature, I think that's a really interesting point because I have a really dear friend who does experienced to nitis and is a huge fan of music, which should be a real bummer, right. You know, you basically have this high frequency that never goes away, but this person has essentially trained themselves to tune it out, which is something that people who experience these type of
auditory hallucinations also have to do to varying degrees. And we'll get more into the specifics around that a little later. But you know, maybe there's some of them you don't want to tune out because they're helpful, but the real bad ones you got to figure out a way to separate. You know. Okay, some of them may tell you to do bad things and you have to essentially contend with that and decide which ones to listen to and which ones not to.
Well, the reason why, sorry, guys, So, the reason why I bring it up is because in that case with tonitis, there is stimulus, but it's self generated, right, And there's and when we're defining what this is, you know, you one perceives a sound within an environment where that sound there is no stimulus for that sound, right, But as we're going to find and as we dig deeper into this,
often there is sound being generated. It's just not sound that anybody else in the environment can hear, and it is self created.
Very weird, And we should note, folks that if you are hearing this and you have struggled with or encountered things like this, we're not here to dismiss nor to disprove. What we do want to note is that these things which science describes as hallucinations, if you are a person that is considered to hear voices, then that means those hallucinations are not one offs. What they are instead is a recurrent, if not ongoing experience. It happens more than
once if you are hearing voices. History is riddled with people who have been affected by these we'll get to the Joan of arcs later in tonight's show, and in some cases, of course, purposely seeking them out. There's a huge cultural context too, how do you understand the world around you or the world inside you in the evenings of your People who heard voices were treated very differently
depending on their cultural context. For example, if you're a person like let's say, what's a famous example, there's a sailor back in the past who who just all of a sudden hears a voice and knows that they must return to shore to convey great news from the gods. If you heard something just once, you may interpret it as a side from something supernatural, heavenly or demonic forces. You make a prediction, and then other people, like the oracles of old, they would purposely attempt to trigger a
hallucinatory state by doing things like inhaling vapors. You know, they would Basically, I'm not trying to be, you know, dismissive of their experience, but the current guests from history is that they would they would huff stuff. They would huff stuff and that would make them see and hear things, and that worked out for them, and they were lauded, they were sought after. Their advice was important. They had
values sociologically. But if you experience this in the wrong cultural context, you're vilified, you're shunned, your outright executed for trafficking and dark magic.
Yeah, it's similar to certain like sweat lodge rituals in Native American cultures, where you know, hyahuasca or certain psychedelic substances are inhaled or consumed under the supervision of some sort of leader, you know, someone occupying like sort of a guide role, and that's done intentionally to experience hallucinations that take you somewhere and teach you something.
And for thousands of years this was the case. Your mileage would vary depending upon the culture in which you lived, and as a result, we will never know how many people died over the thousands of years as a result of these cultural contexts. I mean the idea that hallucinations visual or auditory or you know, kinesthetic, the idea that they might have some hardwire, hardware physiological cause it didn't really occur to humanity until way late in the game.
We're talking like the Enlightenment in Western Europe in the late seventeen hundreds. Finally some people started saying, maybe we treat these experiences as symptoms of diseases or neurological conditions. And although that is good, now there's an important step for humanity. These treatments were very bad. They were terrible, terrible things.
Yeah, trepanation, drilling holes in the skull to release demonic forces. That would be probably the most quack kind of version. But then you get into things that are more supported by quote unquote science, like lobotomy is where literal pieces of the brain are removed of very blunt instrument kind of operation that's left many folks absolutely unable to cope with life.
Asylums were prisons.
Yeah, prisons where there's human experimentation going on. Not that there isn't that going on at prisons, regular old prisons.
Right, good point, Matt.
Yeah.
Also, you know, imagine you are the equivalent of a doctor in the late seventeen hundreds, and you say, this person's obviously distressed. Let's always throw them in cold water, and let's not feed them for a week. Surely i'll get them in a good s Oh my good idea.
There are a couple of live wires that I noticed last time we were in room seven B. Why don't we take some of those live wires, attach them to their skull on both sides and see what happens.
Yeah, give them this spoon to bite down on. It'll be fine.
Yeah, you know, just for science. Also branding the skull with a hot iron, which I don't understand. But there's the other question here. Is it always a bad thing to hear voices? Right? Without integrating anybody's personal experience, there's a tricky question.
You know.
In many cases you could say this is one's own brain conspiring against you. But more and more often people are asking, is hearing voices always a bad thing? We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Actually, no, not always a bad thing, And that is according to people who actively encounter auditory verbal hallucinations on a regular or even daily basis.
I mean, there's a pretty cute little animated character by the name of Jimminy Cricket from a Pinocchio who sings always let your conscience be your guide. And I would argue that that's what Jimmy Cricket represents is Pinocchio's conscience, you know, telling him when to not do the bad things and what good things are. And it's you know, our conscience is a little voice inside of us that tells us the difference between right and wrong.
Unless we be quick to judge on the idea of oh, these folks are unbalanced there something like that. Before you paint with a broad brush, folks, let's remember there is a very high likelihood that you yourself experience a kind of hallucination at all times, your own internal monologue. For the vast majority of folks, this internal monologue is recognized as an internal voice. This is me doing like a wonder years thing to myself, they say, instead of some
external voice. And that's where I want to shout out. This excellent conversation we had years back with our pal Joe McCormick of stuff to blow your mind on the bi camera mind theory.
Yeah, excellent episode. Definitely listen to that. Is it a two parter?
I think it is, Yeah, not one hundred percent, sure, it feels like it was really good stuff.
Uh yeah, So okay, so we're going to get into
some of this, guys. But in that episode, one of the things that is discussed, in one of the ways that the by camera mind has been explored over the years, is to question the possibility is it is there any way possible that there is some kind of outside force, right, or is it the brain itself, the two hemispheres of the brain communicating with each other in some way that we can't consciously perceive, or is it possible that well this is so weird, but is it possible that sometime
in the past, is there interference in some way, either divine or you know, physical of what metaphysical, I don't know what you call it, Sure, some kind of thing that is either causing the hardware to function, the ears, or you know, the voice, or the brain itself.
I mean, I think in those days it was maybe people just didn't know people did know what to call it, you know, I mean, like that internal monologue or that conscience, that little voice, you know, telling you what to do again to the good. Often people would assume that it was some external force because they didn't understand this metacognition, which I think is what it all boils down to. You're thinking about thinking, so you're kind of having these
little conversations with yourself in your mind. But it's I would argue, I think, and probably scientists would argue for the most part, that it's all you. But it's just different parts of you kind of trying to weigh, you know, what you should or should not do.
Yeah, the call is coming from inside the house. By Cameral mind theory comes from Julian Janes and Julian. The reason it's called by Cameron is because this theory argues that without it argues that the human species until about three thousand years ago, almost said three grand years ago, until about three thousand years ago, your average factory human being did not have self awareness, did not have introspection, and they were hearing messages from one hemisphere of the
brain transmitting to another. So instead of your internal monologue saying, oh that that cliff is coming up, I should stop running, you would feel as though there were some ghostly force saying there's a cliff stop.
And that's theoretically right. It's because it is right.
Very much so. And and a lot of Janes, uh. We talk about this in the in the conversation it's a wild ride, but a lot of a lot of Jane supporting evidence comes from ancient literature and myth, So that can be sticky for people because it's always going to be explored through a modern context anyway. Point is, if you believe Jane's then the idea is that your internal monologue does not exist. There every the voice you hear in your head is a god in the heavens,
a demon in the depths, maybe a dead ancestor. And what what I find fascinating about this is that there is a not insignificant amount of human beings today who say that they have no internal monologue. They don't hear their voice thinking. And that's that's a very difficult thing, I believe for a lot of people to rock.
I think it's difficult to quantify though, right because like we you know, we understand what sound sounds like, and I think when I'm thinking about words or I'm thinking about sounds, I'm not hearing it exactly. It's sort of a vague approximation. It's like remembering what things sound like instead of actually hearing a sound, right, hmm.
Yeah, And it's difficult because then it would it would be like asking people who cannot mentally visualize things to draw a picture of their experience. You know, it's to color, you know, like, yeah, just so, and so there's this weird bag of badgers. The science is all over the place right now. The prevalence of auditory hallucinations and the general human population is thought to range somewhere from five to twenty eight percent. That's a hell of a march.
That's a range. Yeah, And I think I heard something in some of the research that I was doing on the side here that I think only around two percent of people like get treatment for it. Sure it was something even lower than this, because again, this is a range,
it's like a spectrum. Right, So maybe that twenty eight percent would be more of a traditional internal monologue, right, and then like the smaller numbers would be genuine auditory hallucinations where people are hearing conflicting voices that they're having to contend with.
It's difficult because to measure this. We'll get into it. But it comes from what we're seeing as one symptom or occurrence. I don't even want to call it a symptom that can come from or originate from a wide variety of situations. We know that there's a stigma associated with this, a stigma that some of our fellow conspiracy realists this evening may have encountered firsthand. And it's simply this. The reports of auditory verbal hallucinations are most prevalent in
patients diagnosed with some sort of psychosis. However, it is by no means limited to people with those conditions. The science continues, I mean, thankfully this objective study of it became more accepted in the modern world. In the late nineteen eighties and nineties, there was a crazy thing that happened. Reality television actually helped a little.
Bit with this.
There were these Dutch researchers in the nineteen nineties that ran Approach on Dutch TV. It was probably the most exciting thing that ran on TV that year, because if you've ever seen Dutch television outside the news, it's not great. So beside, this ran a program on TV and they said, look, if you have heard voices, we're watching this program. If you've heard voices. Contact us, call us, tell us what
your experience is like. And a lot of the people who contacted them said, you know, yeah, I hear voices, but they're not disruptive and your point, Noel, They said, I never felt a need to consult medical or mental health services. Again, a small but vocal group proportion of the group said, wi fi, these experiences to be positive, to be inspirational, they add value and quality to my life. This is not what the researchers were expecting.
Yeah, probably not.
Uh yeah, you would almost always expect to a negative thing. And maybe that it's because of the way hearing voices is portrayed often in popular media and the way it's spoken about so closely associated with mental illness, probably for a lot of people going through medical school. So there's a stigma to it that goes far beyond popular media. It's within the textbooks.
Yeah, and people are still there's sort of rowing against the tide here because fiction is always the court of public opinion, right, so there's no shortage already in the nineties of copaganda basically saying if you hear a voice, you are crazy. That voice is telling you to do bad things, but that doesn't seem to be the case for a lot of humans. So let's go to a
psychologist at the University of Manchester, Eilsh Campbell. They were very interested in this study, this Dutch TV study, and so she and her colleagues said, all right, why does the experience of hearing voices, why does it vary? It's sort of like Senastasia. You know, No, two versions of Senastasia are really alike. And although there is a genetic component, writers like Nabokov were very upset when they learned that their children had senesasia, but at completely different associations with
letters and colors and stuff. And so Campbell says, Okay, you might have a childhood trauma. You might have, for one reason or another, some kind of PTSD, some inherent suspicion about other people being untrustworthy or dangerous. You might have insecurities or vulnerabilities that cause you to interpret voices you hear however they arrive. You may interpret those as
negative things. But if you have a positive outlook, if you have an overall positive life experience, then the voices you hear may be a lot more like at a boy, great work, nice one, Carol malmacchiato.
Yeah, I mean you reward yourself, right, give.
Me a pat on the back. We should give ourselves a pat on the back. And we were talking about that kind of early at the top of the episode, the idea of there being competing voices, some good, perhaps some bad, some neutral. You know. I've even heard people in you know who are part of this community, which
you're going to get to. It really is becoming more of a community, talking about how when they meet somebody new, that person could then become a voice in their head, like if they're being interviewed, for example, they might be hearing a version of that person's voice in their head kind of giving them a hard time or saying that your answers are stupid, you're doing a bad job at
this interview. It was actually specifically in a piece that I saw from NBC News hearing voices other can't how a growing movement fights mental health, and one of the Genie Bass, who is the kind of main subject of the piece, literally said to the person interviewing her, I'm hearing your voice now in my head as I'm watching you talk to me. And the person asked, how do you differentiate between my voice and the version of me
that's in your head. And Genie said, I'm watching your mouth move so that I know when your mouth's not moving, that's the version in my head. And then the person interviewer also asked how long that my voice might stick around. She said it might be forever, or it might just be Typically, it's like a couple of weeks.
Right, with a fade off, a window of time. And the point is this idea of positive versus negative experiences, and we're using that in the non scientific means. We're saying feeling good versus feeling bad. It strikes me as being similar to ingesting hallucinogens. Seen and setting may play a role. So let's say you have a pre existing set of religious beliefs, you may find that the voice visiting you, like the voices Joan of Arc allegedly heard,
are helpful rather than a hindrance. The voices in your head are in short, not created equally. And this is something that was very interesting to a Stanford University anthropologist named Tanya Lherman, and doctor Lhrman has done some amazing work. What she found was the culture plays such a key. You can see her, you can hear her rather in MPR. You can read about her in Atlantic. You can read
her studies online. She went around the world and found people who were diagnosed with schizophrenia in three very different cultures, the United States, the capital of Ghana, and part of India. And she had these She had some pretty salient observations that I think are worth highlighting tonight.
Yeah, you can probably kind of figure where this is going, but I mean, you summed it up beautifully already. Been just the idea that your cultural background and the way you view certain forces, external forces, like you mentioned earlier, the idea that back in the day folks might have thought it was always the voice of a god. While the question is which god and what do they represent? And what lens cultural lens are you filtering these voices
that you're hearing through? And Leerman I had this to say. The Americans I spoke to felt assaulted by horrible voices that told them they were worthless and they should die. Those voices were full of violence. And Ghana, the Africans heard an audible God who told them not to ignore those evil voices. And in Chennai, which is the part of India you've mentioned, Ben people heard annoying relatives who told them to douce chores and clean up.
To me, that last part is so weirdly wholesome. Yeah, it is like, don't think just because I've passed on to the afterlife that you get out of laundry, you know. And she continues and points to this idea of individualism versus collectivism in society. She says, so, I think Americans think of their minds as a private fortress, and they have this model that when you hear an audible voice,
it means your mind, your sanctum senatorum. Is it sanctum sanatorum, doctor Strange, I don't know that one well enough to know well well, your sacred space, your mind is somehow being broken or invaded. And then Lherman says, I think they're different social invitations in Chennai and in Akra, capital of Ghana where this occurs. Says, I think there's much more of an invitation to think about things supernatural, to
think about the religious world. To interpret these experiences as the voice of a spirit.
Or you're annoying relatives or yes.
Who are now spirits and are still so mad about the laundry.
Well, you know, we talked a little bit about Joan of Arc and a lot of the folks that I think we've we've been reading about, you know, who are talking about their experiences with these types of auditory hallucinations. There's often a voice telling people they are some sort of messenger from God. That's a commonly reported thing, like really common, and probably more common in folks who are devoutly religious or have had some religious upbringing. To again,
interpret it through that lens. Obviously, Joan of Arc went all in on that interpretation. The person I was referencing from the NBC piece mentioned something similar and said that for a time she thought she was the living embodiment of Mary Magdalene, but then came to realize that, you know, think about it differently, but still appreciated it and felt
spiritually connected to Mary Magdalen. There's a really disturbing but excellent a twenty four horror film called Saint Maud about a young woman who has these types of voices, and the whole play of the film is is it real or is it in her head? And what ultimately comes down to is it doesn't really matter. It's real to them, and it's all about how you behave with that information.
It's lived experience.
Do you guys remember speaking with David Ike and just how he seems to be fully convinced that he had that exact experience where he was given a message and a goal and all this other stuff from like directly from a higher power, and then changed his entire life and went on that path. I thought that was really interesting to hear that, you know, hear someone explaining it to you directly, like this is what happened to me.
Agreed, Yeah, it's funny because this is probably a conversation for off air right now. But as a teaser we are going to explore in an upcoming episode coming to an evening near you, we are going to explore the
idea of divine intervention. And as you guys know, Matt nol way back in the day, my biological father was convinced he had discovered his own religion, and it came about with the idea of these of these visions, of these you know, these divine interventions, these statements from supernatural, scientifically unprovable powers, and it all hinges on a very very and be diplomatic interesting Now, it's not one of those interesting interpretation of the mechanics of reincarnation. And it's
a cool ride. It's a cool ride. But in this case, with this cultural context, what Luhrmann found is that it seems societies that are a little more openly collectivist, a little more get by with a little help from your friends. The folks in those places, even when diagnosed with schizophrenia, they have a higher rate when it comes to encountering voices in their heads that do not aggressive, frightening, or evil. And I think that's such a profound statement.
I do jap into something they feel right, Yeah, it's collective unconscious of some kind.
Yeah, And you know the the other ideas about delusions of grandeur and megalomania, those are real. But let's let's leave them for a moment, because I think we need to get to a lot of caveats. Do you guys want to take a break or do you want to Shall we power through?
I just wanted to add one little thing, if I might, just we're talking about some examples of these things in your birth father's example and Joan of Arc and all of that. Philip K. Dick, the science fiction writer, has a whole book. It's called Vallis where it's sort of like autobiographical to a degree, and he believes fully that he received divine information that was shot into his brain by a pink space laser that imbued him with the
knowledge that his son had some sort of test cancer. Uh, and he felt as though he was given that information and then did something about it. And also I think there's one part of a story where he says it taught him how to speak Greek and things like that. So I mean there are actionable examples of people getting this stuff and feeling much more like wow, maybe that was an external force. I just think it's all very fascinating.
And we are going to encounter some caveats some current science about these cognitive conspiracies. Yes, I'm paid by the alliteration on that one. We'll be back after a co sign from our co conspiracy kidding there, it's an outbreak. We have returned. Caveat, caveat, caveat. While cultural context is key, while it is important science, we cannot forget the hard, continuing science of neurology as well. You know, we talked
about this before. In recent years, there's been a lot of interest in determining something you alluded to earlier, Matt, whether people with schizophrenia in particular are experiencing subvocal speech in short, and this happens in sci fi all the time. In short, when we're hearing these voices, are our speech muscles engaging in normally imperceptible ways.
When you say speech muscles, do you mean literally the muscles that we use to move our mouths to form sounds, or we're talking about more brain patterns and things that are engaging in language centers of the brain firing.
Basically, the question is what is there a physical thing that is occurring in the body, whether it's your larynx, your vocal cords, or just signals right right, yeah, even your the tiny bones within your ears, Like, is there vibration occurring in there so that you're because that's how you hear everything, right, Is there something going on in there?
It's really interesting. I'm sure that we've got an answer. I would just back to my point earlier about at least my experience. I don't feel like I hear sound when I think about it. It's like a memory. It's more of an approximation. It's not like I'm actually can play a symphony in my mind with every multi polyphonic sound fidelity. Maybe there are some people that can, but to me it just feels experientially different than actually hearing something.
Well, somebody did this, Ben.
You found a study from Lewis Gould, and this is the most fascinating thing I think that I read for this episode.
Ben.
This study on what you just mentioned, their subvocal speech, the possibility or the hypothesis that perhaps there's actual movement within those vocal chords, air being pushed through even when the person the subject doesn't believe they're pushing air through and making sounds, but it could actually be happening.
Just tell us about this is crazy.
Oh yeah.
Second word of the evening electro myography electromigraphy EMG as the street name, and it's exactly as you described that the muscles around the trachea you're you know, your neck
junk is moving when you are thinking. So Gould gathers a group of people diagnosed with schizophrenium and a group of patients who do not have a schizophrenia diagnosis, records their muscle, their vocal muscle activity low and behold when he looks at the EMG recordings of schizophrenic patients as the experience hallucination as they hear voices, and we'll learn hallucination is kind of a sticky term to some people. He found that when these patients were hearing voices, their
EMG recordings showed their vocal muscles were activating. This means that when people again diagnosed with schizoph are hearing voices in their heads, their vocal muscles are contracting, they're engaging in subvocal speech, even if they are not aware of it. It's very important scientific clue. But also if you're in a cultural context that says there may be possession, then this means you're just possessed.
Well, and just just to clarify too, like they're not they're not opening their mouths. This stuff is happening without them opening their mouths and actually make It's almost like it sounds to me like throwing your voice inside your own head.
That's a good way to put it. Yeah, but like on a micro scale, yeah, assassinating.
So these are like really subtle movements, right, These are very It's just it's almost like the intimation of those muscles wanting to do their thing because the brain thinks it's actually speaking.
Well, Wow, According to the Slate article that you linked to Ben titled when people with schizophrenia her voices, They're really hearing their own subvocal speech. It's from March second, twenty sixteen. In there, they actually went further and not just tested, you know, whether or not those muscles were moving.
They placed a microphone up to the place where the spot where Adam's apple is if you've got one, or just you know, right behind that area of your throat, and they were able to actually pick up whispers essentially, like the tiniest, like I was saying, air moving through those vocal cords. When they enhanced it enough to where the person experiencing hallucinations was making audible sound, just nobody else could hear it, and it was almost like minor vibrations in their own head.
It's literally a subtle flex. Is it not.
Really fascinating?
It takes you again.
This is where you made a kind of aside there about what was it been someone? Is it something else possessing the vocal cords? Is it the person doing it? Because you know, in the patients who were going who were being tested for these things, the patients hear that their own vocal cords moving in a way that they believe it is something else, someone else speaking to them, right, But it is in fact physically them making informing those things.
The weird question is and that if you want to take it further and get even more metaphysical, it's is it something speaking through the vocal records, like when we think about culture geyst or different types of ghosts being able to inhabit with energy other things?
Right, I don't.
I just watched Talk to Me I'm all about That was so good.
It was so good. I really loved it. Yeah, yeah, Well, these.
Are things that are going to come up in our Divine Intervention episode as well. In the meantime, please check out our episodes on possession and the cultural context in which that perhaps supernatural conspiracy occurs. There's there's something else too that I think is important to remember. This is not at all when when scientists are looking at this, they're not at all trying to devalue nor dismiss the
lived experience of other people. And if you want to play along at home, fellow conspiracy realist, if you want to practice subvocalization, then all you have to do I think three syllables will fix it. All you have to do is take a three to four syllable word, like let's say, uh, bonder room. So think of the word bonder room and don't open your mouth, don't exhale breath. But flex is though you're saying it aloud to yourself without engaging you know, your wind bag, parts of your body.
And then that that flex you feel in your throat. That's what's being measured in subvocalization, just on a much smaller level. The science is there, But wouldn't it like, I.
Mean, I think I would. I'm understanding this like that it is the brain sort of really treating this, believing that this is a physical process. But it's not like it's an enough movement for it to create the kind of sound you might if you're doing a voice in your head without opening your mouth or like mmmm humming
or something like. It wouldn't be enough to register vibrationally, Like I understand that there's a parallel here, and then it sort of represents the fact that these things are thought of no pun intended, or I guess not really a pun, but by the brain as real speech. But you're not hearing sound, you're not doing impressions in your head with your voice. It's just sort of like there's a parallel there, there's a connection.
I would say, without waxing too philosophic, I guess my response would be that we talk a lot about culture as a result of other human interaction, but we have to realize that every individual human mind, any higher order mind, honestly is a culture all its own. So you may not, you know, your your brain is a lot like a big house or a space shuttle. You live in a very small part of it, the you that you think of as you, and you don't know what happens in
the other stairwells, in the other rooms. So not to say that everyone's a haunted house, but everyone's a haunted house. And there's this thing. We got to get to, this full disclosure at bias here. This personally means a lot to me, and it's quite controversial. You alluded to it a bit earlier. Right now, in the meantime, while the science is ongoing, while it is important to figure out these possible internal conspiracies, there are organizations that are seeking to,
if not normalize, humanize this experience. I think they're doing very important work by far the most prominent is the Hearing Voices Movement HVM, which started in nineteen eighty seven, and the organizations affiliated with this, the event individuals a film with this, are saying, let's find a more holistic, alternative way of understand the experience of people who hear voices. We don't want to call them hallucinations, and we definitely don't want to paint with a broad brush and call
all of these people crazy, because they're normal people. You know, why don't we treat this experience if you're not hurting anyone, Why don't we treat this experience as maybe having tonight to Matt's point, or having freckles, you know, like, why
do we have to other people who? In fact, what's quite inspiring, I would argue is that the HVM folks, the Hearing Voices movement, they see this holistic approach as a matter of human rights, and they say, you can live a full, healthy life with quote unquote voices in your head, and you shouldn't be treated as unusual, nor dangerous, nor someone who is you know, off their rocker or out there squash about it, out there squash, I love American English. We just made that up, but I think it works.
I love it. But I think you came across this one as well. But there's a really good ted X talk out of Australia Hearing Voices, An Insider's Guide to auditory Hallucinations from a woman named Deborah Lampshire who has lived most of her adult life with these these voices. And really, I mean it's not she doesn't go into the science. That's not what it's about. It's an experiential discussion about how it has affected her life and it's
really fascinating. It's only like I think it's like ten, ten, twelve minutes something like that, but it's absolutely worth it if you want to hear someone's perspective. She talks about a lot of this stuff, the other inqualities of it, the you know, being able to live a full life, makes a lot of references to great people figures throughout history.
But one thing that she said that I thought was interesting in terms of the negative voices, she ended the talk by using this term or describing herself as having a mutinous mind, which I thought was really just kind of poetic and really just hit the nail on the head for the negative self talk. Kind of versions of these voices. But we also know people that have depression experience cyclical negative self talk that maybe doesn't quite push
into the realm of hearing voices per se. So there is a connection and a continuity with all of these things, Ben that you listed at the top of the show, these kind of conditions that are now starting to be treated with more nuance. But back in the day, we're maybe painted with a much broader brush.
Yeah, we can starve people into being happy, or you know, just stick a stick an ice pick through their eye. Yeah, you've come a long white humanity, right, go team the thing about the Hearing Voices movement, and you're absolutely right, Noel. That is a great TED talk. You can see another TET talk by Eleanor Langen. I want to say in general, these movements prize what we'll call holistic health solutions. However, to be absolutely fair, they have received a lot of
criticism from other aspects of science. But despite the ongoing debate which continues as we record this evening, the intentions of the Hearing Voices movement do seem good. They are good faith actors. Plus it might change the conversation a little bit if we realize that as of twenty seventeen, science has proven that you can teach people to hallucinate and they will not be able to tell the difference. Their lived experience will become that of someone hearing voices.
Wow. Yeah, I don't know about this. That's fascinating. You're talking about the thing we reference here the paper from journal Science Phil Corlitt and al. Powers from Yale. Yeah. I'd love to hear more about this. This is not something that got a chance to dig into yet.
Well, well, craignth im wrong here. Basically, the study is saying most people walk around in the world and they just kind of use their senses and they interpret what they see.
They take it in Oh hey.
There's some I forget the term for a high some high density sound absorbing sponge or whether looking at it, I see it. It's the color for me, and my perception is gray. It looks as though it's squishy. I think I understand what that is. But then people who tend to hallucinate, or or do hallucinate on a regular basis, interact with the world rather than just taking what their senses are giving them right as fact, they often will perceive the world as what they almost anticipate confirmation bias.
There you go.
Yeah, and it's funny too, because we all operate this way. It doesn't matter who you are. You know, you hear a you hear a really barnstorming fart on a crowded elevator, you clock it, and then you anticipate, you anticipate there will be a spell and some social awkwardness unless somewhat is particularly all gas, no breaks, and they're like, that was me, you know, have a good ride to the fourteenth floor well, which is actually the third Whatever got.
Them, get them every time, every one of those architects. It makes a lot of sense to me, or this connection right here specifically why post traumatic stress can be a reason someone experiences auditory hallucinations because you are anticipating something possibly negative.
To creming the bad thing right, Yeah, I'm.
Gonna I'm not gonna be surprised again by whatever this thing is or a similar situation.
I'm gonna know that it's hell, it's coming.
Yeah.
Auditory hallucinations occurred and estimated forty percent of individuals diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder PTSD. And it's it's such a real thing, even like I think we're doing a good job exercising empathy and saying don't dismiss these experiences. If someone is telling you that they are hearing something, they're not being a crackpot. They are a rational actor.
They are encountering sensory stimulus from somewhere, you know. And this, this study, I think is a real equalizer for humanity because these folks that you mentioned their nol phil Corla and OWL powers. They start by conditioning these subjects to hear a tone. Just imagine a tone in your head if you hear sound in your head every time they see a checkerboard pattern, pretty simple. And then what they slowly do over time, somewhat insidiously, is they remove the
actual sound, but they keep the visual stimulus. So they start asking people, do you hear the sound when you see the checkerboard? And participants who already regularly heard voices were five times more likely to say they heard the tone when none was played, and they were overall they were like thirty percent more confident in their choice, like, yes, I definitely heard this, but they found something else fascinating.
Over the course of the experiment, all of the participants, every single one experienced hearing a tone that was not there because they have been conditioned to hear it.
See, I'm struggling with this and I think it's been clear and what I've been saying, like I'm having a hard time, Like I'm trying to think of a sound or a tone or words, and I just don't know if I'm doing it right quote unquote, like I'm trying to.
Picture if you're remembering it, Yeah, exactly right.
But I'm also thinking, like if I did something like this where I tried to like hear the tone, then think about the tone, and then play the tone on time, Like could I continue that on in my mind when the tone was muted? And I'm thinking kind of yes, Like that's starting to get my head to wrap around this idea of what a internal sound is. You know, it's really cool obviously, you know, Like I mean, I'm
just a giant sound nerd. It's like passion and it's something that I just have been a part of my life since I was very little, and I just it's this is a really real noodle scratcher. I love this one.
This isn't exactly the same thing, but guys, do you ever encounter some kind of mechanical like hum or were let's see, uh, let's say it's a washing machine or you know, dry dishwasher, a fan, just something that has a constant like kind of sound.
Do you guys ever build that into a word?
Yeah?
Or yeah, okay, of course you guys do that too, absolutely.
Yeah.
I think a lot of people come up with song ideas that way from processing little things they hear and they're now surroundings, you know, or things that are rapid repetitive, and then they start to assign rhythm to that. I can't remember what it was. It was like sting or it was somebody talking about the difference between a musical mind and like a non musical mind, and he was like, if you hear a looping, cyclical sound like that, do you immediately start building it into a beat? Or to
you is it just background noise? Well, if it's background noise, you're not a songwriter, you know what I mean, You're not someone that processes the world like that. I think all three of us have musical intuition, and I think that's that's probably why we do process it like that.
And there's a there's another wrinkle. There's one more badger in the bag. We should say the spoiler. Our very last thing is going to be from that Slate article that you mentioned earlier, Mex because it's just beautifully put. But before we get to that, future technology may mean that everyone hallucinates or encounters a voice in their head head the role of implants. It's on the horizon, you know, Matt,
you have mentioned a little bit. We've talked about this in the past, but like DARPA is dealing with it. Forget the scuttle, but about Elon Musk experimenting on terminally ill primates, which was not cool. But so imagine a world wherein it is normalized, or it is mandatory to have technology implanted in your head that allows near instantaneous connection to the Internet. The voices of old, supernatural and
infernal deities may become a real thing. The Guardian Angels will functionally, in practice be there, except they'll be sponsored by dictators, state powers, tech corporations, ad clients. The voice in my head needs me to buy RB's.
Now Arby sounds good, but here's the question, you know, and I'm also picturing like picking up cell phone static get it, just like inside your head all of a sudden but like, would again, I know we're not there yet, but these implants, would they be audio implants that would vibrate your cocklear you know, bones, or would you be hearing these sounds quote unquote in your mind?
Mm hmmm, yeah, you would. Unfortunately, it would be case by case basis, because every every person is their own spaghetti bowl of cognitive variables. So you know, there's there's a real mental health danger to the way this stuff is being rolled out, and the legislation will get there about ten years after it should. Uh, it's definitely going to happen. And you know, Matt, you were alluding to some experiments that we already know have been ongoing for quite some time now.
Well, there there are some experience, but there are also real technologies you can find right now. You can't find the actual original article unless you have a magazine, so you'd have to go to probably your local library maybe though I guarantee the library or Congress will have it, or you know, if you're in a major city, you can find it. But it is a It's an article from the New York Times magazine from two thousand and three.
March two thousand and three. Article is titled the Sound of Things to come In Here there is a description of an invention from this person named Woody Norris. It's titled Hypersonic Sound or HSS. It is an invention that was awarded the Popular Science Grand Prize for New Inventions in two thousand and two. Popular Science gave this thing, gave this guy who invented this a Grand Prize thing.
It is a beam of sound that you can hold up and it acts like a speaker and it shoots sound out like a laser beam, and you can target someone walking down the street and nobody else will hear what is being played. But you can literally hook it up to a CD player, to a microphone and you can be sound into someone's brain.
But again I have to ask, like, is it hitting them and causing vibrations the way we think of perceiving sound or is it something bigger than that? Is it something more advanced than that.
I don't know, but I do know that DARPA in two thousand and seven was working on something called a sonic projector that does something very similar, and it was specifically being developed for sonic deception, an age old tactic that.
Is scized right, They're like, yeah, yes, it's.
Been used since the biblical days before that to trick an army or individual.
That is my dog.
That is not an auditorial illusination, is it? That is my dog sleeping and dreaming real hard. But it's just something that's been around for a long time and powerful. You know, militaries know that you can trick people with sound. So if you have the capability to either trick on an individual level or on a mass level, it creates doubt for all of this other stuff. One of the most common things that's reported with hearing hallucinations is that
it's an exterior force, some bad person. Right, we're talking about how Americans specifically experience that. I just it bothers me so much that the waters get muddied by actual, real technological advancements that have been around for well over twenty.
Years, and it can be deployed easily their cost effective. Imagine, for instance, if you are a religiously motivated partisan and all of a sudden, you hear what you think to be the voice of God telling you to do a specific thing. These are imperative statements that are meant to be made in this kind of in this kind of asymmetrical warfare. It's a very real thing, like the voice. If you don't have voice in your head yet, they're
on the way within a few generations from you. As you hear this today, it's so interesting.
You got me thinking about the psyops angle, Matt, and it made me think of the Operation Wandering Soul, where the US, you know, basically planted speakers in a Vietnamese forest and played these ghost tapes that were essentially, you know, ghostly sounds trying to get Vietnamese soldiers to defect because they thought their ancestors were coming to kill them or
were disappointed with them in some way. But like what you're talking about, Matt, would take that weaponize that to another level, especially considering, you know, the cultural aspect of it that we've been talking about this whole time. Well you're talking about like a reverse of all this like induced oral hallucinations. I think it's wow.
Well yeah, yeah, And this is where we leave it. We've taken you to the edge of the rabbit hole. Folks. There there's one less thing. Will end on this and go right to right to our outro, because we need your help. We are doing an episode about divine intervention. We want to hear your favorite stories or purported divine intervention, and we want to hear any personal experience you feel you yourself may have had. All Right, the very very
last thing. Let's leave the very last word to Eliza Sternberg, writing for Slate, who says the following. The brain is a masters storyteller, designed to make sense of the chaos of our lives. It compensates for the presence of auditory hallucinations caused by a defect and self recognition by writing a narrative to account for them. It's no accident that schizophrenic patients reach for spy agencies, religious entities, or supernatural
forces when describing the voices in their heads. These are theories that the brain can cox to explain how a foreign voice could infiltrate a mind, know it intimately, and torment its victim with relentless surveillance. Either way you look at it, there's a conspiracy afoot. What do you think? Folks? Tell us we're easy to find online.
It's right. You can find us at the handle conspiracy stuff on YouTube, Facebook and x nay, Twitter, Twitter and AXX. You know the one. You can find us at Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
Hey, if you want to give us some auditory stuff, whatever it is, you can do that too. Call went eight three three s t d WYTK. It's a voicemail system. Give yourself a cool name. Let us know if we can use your name end message on the air. If you don't want to do that, why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
We are the people who read every single email we get at conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production of iHeartRadio from More podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.