STDWYTK Presents: A Conspiracy of Sound, Live in Brooklyn

Fellow conspiracy realist, we are returning with an adventure. Now often you will hear Matt and Nol and myself refer to one of us as on adventures. Turns out, on Wednesday, February nineteenth, twenty twenty five, we had quite an adventure together and we're proudly presenting it to you this evening.

Yeah, we hung out together at the National Sawdust in Brooklyn, New York as part of the on AirFest twenty twenty five.

Brooklyn.

Guys, this has been called the Coachella of podcasts. Company your company, Yes, and Wired called it the future of podcasting.

Man.

Oh, I like the latter one the best.

Yeah, for that one, to be clear, not this specific show you're about to listen to, but on AirFest.

On AirFest, which is a fantastic thing. I think we got a second date. We put our heads together and we started asking about the conspiracies inherent in the concept of sound and Noel, you put together a team that played live music, responding to the audience for about an hour before we even opened, with help from our friends at Force got Hey.

I know, less of a team, more of a ragtag bunch of synth nerds. But yeah, my buddy Eric from the band fors Ghosts so done some production work with if you want to check out. They've got an EP out actually called Recycled Hearts that I did a remix of one of their songs on if you want to check that out, And I think we'll probably put the music stuff out eventually that we.

Did for this event.

But the live show itself actually also contained some fun sound design and some original music by mister Eric Kinlaw and myself as well in this cool kind of radio play that you wrote, Ben, and that we actually figured out how to perform live with live sound effects and music and surround sound and everything.

With the PlayStation five controller, and I made a pretty fun little compilation of our old YouTube videos to go over top of when Nol and team were playing music. And it was a delightful thing to behold in this all red place. But you're not going to experience any of that. What you were going to hear is the moment we walked on stage as stuff they don't want you to know. To do our episode.

Yes on a Conspiracy of Sound, and we talk a little bit about the science of sound and psy optics of sound along with all kinds of other things, including a fun game we played with some backwards masking messages.

And we have a third act, a legendary guest at the end of the show, none other than Justin Richmond.

Yeap from the Broken Record podcast.

Part of why we are giving you just like the quick, skinny context of this is this performance does contain what stand up comedy calls blue or strong language.

We've just had a real potty mouth.

There are some wild language in hereio indeed, all right, then on with the show.

From ufons to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained defense. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hey, check, check.

What everybody doing?

Yeah, human being, how did you like our music?

Concrete performance?

Okay, okay, big ants, my pal nole there as well as we've got Scott and a.

Rick, You guys, all of you, indeed.

Anybody with the courage to reach it into U, your heart of hearts, your soul of souls and share a story into that microphone.

There were fragments.

This told a whole story in some form or fashion, maybe just a word someone say.

He immediately, Yeah, it was yeah, of course it was. Yeah, I said a bunch of times.

Oh yeah, Well I felt like you were summoning me. I was was doing stuff. Then I was deeping and booping.

Who are you though?

Hi? My name is Matt, my name is Nola.

They called me Ben. Most importantly, you are you. You are here that makes this stuff. They don't want you to know live that the legendary national sawdust here in Brooklyn.

Is it legendary? Yes?

It is?

Now, yeah it is.

It feels Look at this place, I know, look at the whole. I can't tell which way is up. It's very Yeah.

Did anybody ever play mass effect? Anybody in this room? Not a single one. It feels like we're on a ship in mass effect.

That's all I say.

It feels cool up here. And it also hears cool, which is a thing I think I can get away within the English lagus Here's cool.

Here's true.

Why not?

It's a malleable thing, the English lange us here cool around here?

I heard tell it here's cool, and we are excited to join you guys tonight with something we call the conspiracy of sound. Sound is everywhere around us. We can notice it, especially here in this legendary venu. We also ignore a lot of sound, and it's so strange. It reminds me a little bit of the old David Foster Wallace quote where a fish goes up to the other fish and is like, what it's crazy. We're swimming around water and the fish says, what's water?

Yeah? It just kind of exists in that medium. They don't really give it too much thought.

Is there a technical definition of what a sound is?

You know, there is mass, you know, we've got it right.

I don't know as science ever nailed down what a sound is.

Oh my gosh. All right, so we have some problems with this one. We'll give you the actual facts definition of sound. Sound is a mechanical disturbance from a state of equilibrium that propagates through as an elastic material medium.

It's a disturbance that sounds negative.

It's also technically accurate, which means it's practically not helpful.

So in the way that the water is medium, the medium for us the fish to swim around, and obviously sound can travel through water as well.

For us, it's just.

Literally we're picking up our ear machines or picking up vibrations in the air.

It's all this stuff because there's a lot of stuff out there, you just can't see it in particulates.

It's true.

I mean, I'm a giant music nerd, as you can maybe tell, but I still to this day am mystified and baffled by the idea of You know, we literally can interpret vibrating particles of air.

As like beautiful music.

That can like move us to tears, and language that can hold concepts like acoustics.

Right, well, let's okay, We've got a lot of stuff to get into tonight, folks, and the best way to do it shout out to our old alma matter, an outfit called how Stuff Works. If you remember that.

That's nerds.

Yeah, all right, welcome back. We wanted to give just a more helpful, more practical definition of what sound is. It's a constant experience for a lot of us. It is also a widely misunderstood thing. So, guys, if we were going to talk about the building blocks of sound, right the notes in the composition of the idea of sound, what will we be talking about.

There's a couple of different terms. I mean, you can plot this on a graph. If anyone's ever messed within a scilloscope. It's a way of visually interpreting and understanding and measuring sound waves that travel through the air.

And there's a couple of different terms.

We've got frequency, so the number of sound waves that can pass a given point. That's measured in wave lengths, you know, so you've got like the peak and the

But I'm okay with that.

I think that's why this performance is so cool and fits what we just did, because you're manipulating specifically those those sound waves in like sine waves.

Well yeah, right.

And it's interesting because frequency in music can be registered as pitch, Like if you've got an oscillating sound.

Wave, and if it's really slow, it's going to be a low tone.

And as it gets faster and faster and faster, it can change to a higher pitch. And it's frequency is something that is used all kinds of ways in sound design, whether it be you know, creating a tremolo effect that is registered as a speed. You know, like the frequency is how fast or slow that oscilla is. But if once you get into what it's called audio rate, that's when you start perceiving it as pitch.

I'm done, end of end of music. Nerd rants.

Way more So we got to talk about this term hurts because a lot of people have heard this, and you're not in you know, the audio industry in some capacity, you probably don't know what that really means.

So I still don't really know, not the not the rental company.

Well that it's a measurement of the frequency of sounds. So it's the number of those waves that pass per cycle. Yeah, persiton, which is generally measured in a second if you're using hurts right. And then when human beings walk around, we can only hear between what's the spectrum that humans can hear between? Like you guys, yes, most of us are humans.

I think don't we have a thing? I think we have a thing? Right, should I play the thing?

Not yet?

Yet an experiment, but I just want to establish this between twenty hurts and twenty thousand hurts is generally accepted to be the human beings hearing spectrum.

That's what I have a thing for that. You know, we are going to talk about it. I really want to do the whole point, guy, I know.

The whole point is to set up that there are things called infrasound which are below that level that you can hear, and they're what's the ultra Ever had a child, You are familiar with that term, but it just means higher than you can hear from.

Why did I just immediately and not think about that, but just thought about it like mega cool sound?

It's ultraed.

And then there's no, there's decibel. That's just the unit used to measure the intensity of a sound.

Yes, yes, yes.

And we can we can go back and forth comparing sounds, and everybody this is the thing. Everybody in this room has a unique experience. What we have described to you are the scientific commonalities, objective stuff, the language, the language, yes just so, the notes and the composition. However, your sonic mileage may vary even right now in here and

Yeah, yeah, naughty boy.

I heard about a study the other day that apparently jen z are losing that ability because of noise canceling headphones.

WHOA have you guys heard about this? You hear about this, You know about this.

It makes sense if you think about it, because the noise canceling headphones use some kind of phase technology to cancel out the noise outside in the world. So when you're constantly experiencing that, your brain almost like kind of loses the ability to do it naturally. And it's causing some simulation, yes, exactly. And then there was a name for it in the article that I completely should have remembered. But there's a particular type of condition that is being developed more and more by folks.

Who used noise canceling heads called getting hit by cars.

Well, that's its own things, that's its own occupational hazard. But but I just made me think of that, because it really our brains are designed to filter out those sounds. But when we use technology to do it for us, the brain kind of atrophies are that part that does it, you know.

Yeah, And that's the thing Earth is not to get too woo about it. Earth is alive. Collectively. We can call this planet its own huge living mago organism. And like every other living thing, Earth is constantly making noise. Right, it's never gonna shut up. You know, you're not going to win that conversation with the planet. You can have some headphones and get hit by a car.

White noise machine. Some people use noise to mask noise.

Yeah, Like my good buddy Jordan run talking, I hope it is here is He has a white noise machine by his bed and I never understood it until I go at his place and now I can't go back.

It's like it's weird. It's like it's comforting in some way.

But when you live in a big city and you have this constant from right, that's a way of masking out.

Also, therapists like to use.

This so the people in the waiting room don't hear your deepest, darkest secrets.

Well hopefully so there's an ambient sound level that exists wherever you are, right sure, and in this city I watched on the plane goal I watched what was it called quiet Place to No, it was a quiet place, the earliest quiet place the first day. And there's a title card when you when that movie first starts, and it says the average decibel level in New York City is ninety hurts, so sorry, but it says that that

Oh and by the way, shout out to the guy who just somberly nodded, like, why did you already know.

That it is? Just watched it too on a plane. I'm sure so it.

Uh.

The whole point is a conversation.

So if we're just sitting here talking, not yelling into a mic the way I am, at least right now, this is about seventy decibels. If you're standing across from you having that conversation, and if I'm screaming at you, that's about ninety decibels.

And that is.

Sands Mike sounds like just walking around.

That just blew my mind.

And that means you have to, as a matter of survival and sanity, you have to cut yourself off from a lot of the noises that surround you, right, And I'm not talking about like arguments with a significant other. I mean just walking down the street. I'll talk about or not I saw you not. And so we also we know though that there's still a lot of science people have not figured out about this, right, There's still a lot of noises that we can't explain. Have you guys ever heard of the bloop?

Mm? Yes, okay, that's the bluep you guys, let's talk about the bloop. Now, that's what the blue is, Matt. It's so funny in that clip.

You can't even really hear the there it is.

It's a really weird sound.

It's athlu askue creature coming coming at us from the deep.

Well.

Yeah, it was a sound that was recorded by microphones that are in the ocean, and scientists were baffled, like what in the heck made that sound? And you know, some of the weirdos thought, hey, maybe that was like.

A see maybe a creature out there in the sea.

Esque tentacled demons in the depths, craft, some large mammal, you know, some large fish that we just haven't discovered yet.

They could exist in the deep deep ocean because it was such a long and strange sound that seemed to raise up I was looping it.

By the way, it doesn't just go on forever like that.

Yeah, it is like a singular it is deep sea farr it is it is?

Yeah what an ended up being, Matt.

It ended up It ended up being U the glacial version of a tectonic plate ship. The glaciers were cracking, and scientists had abstractly predicted this but kind of got the time window wrong. So this was a real oh shit moment when they figured out, hey, it's not a cool sea monster from our buddy HP Lovecraft.

It's really thought that though it was just us.

It's a glacier going mobile man, okay, and now and now this brings us. So we explained that one. But there's another noise that still has not been explained, and it's one of the one of the weirdest continual phenomena across the planet in the world of sound.

We're talking about the hum. We got the bluep and we got the hum. These are great the um has anyone.

Here ever experienced, just like while you're in your apartment, just here like this background.

Well, Matt, do you remember earlier we were in a coffee shop or something or pizza guy in front of us goes, do you hear like this sixty.

Cycle hum right now? And we were like, you have no idea. We've been like literally thinking about nothing but that, and no, I do not hear it. You're losing your mind, sir.

Well, And in what what we do as humans, we try and find a source, right, So if there's event or you know, you can tell there's a fan somewhere, like maybe there's a homecoming from over there, maybe it's some other mechanical device that's just causing that standing wave. But in this case, it's like a standing wave that is just outside somewhere.

Tell us what a standing wave is, Matt. We've talked about sound waves. They can actually collect like and sort of hang out in corners. If anyone's ever been to a recording studio, there's a lot of techniques that are used to keep standing waves from happening because they can totally mess with the way that you perceive other sounds by interfering with them. So basically, low frequencies can collect in corners and in studios, they use things called base

Than This makes me think of one of my favorite sound conspiracies, which is infrasounds.

Yes, right, it's the lol right ultra.

And this is just real quick, I don't know, just show of hands. Does anyone hear no judgment, genuinely believe in ghost Yeah?

Okay, write it down. You gotta got some true believers, Okay, all right.

So it turns out that once upon a time a guy who is very skeptical, his name Big Tandy, engineer, super skeptical. Uh you you have to prove something to me beyond the shadow of a doubt, no matter how innocuous you.

Say, Vic Tandy. Yes, yeah. And this is also James Randy, who's also a real skepticist.

Yeah.

Different, what's the deal of that, guys?

I think it's their last names, right?

Something us about Big Tandy?

As I was saying, he is working alone kind of late at night in this rectangular lab, and it's not a super impressive lab. It's not like super duper high security, take your biometrics or anything. He's walking in, he's working alone, and he starts to get a creepy sensation. It's a sensation that occurs more than once. It haunts him. He begins to believe that he's seeing things move out of the corner of his eye.

He's carrying chills.

He has the sense of a presence always just behind him, always just out of view. And he says, Okay, first off, I've built like my whole personality on saying ghost are not real. So I got to figure out something to explain this. And he looks everywhere around, he goes outside. He's talking to like the power company, the utilities company, and then he finds out that there is a fan in the very back of the room that is generating

And there are lots of folks that will like to set up tape recorders in these houses and let them run, and there will be these sounds that they will pick up that can't be explained by just like what's going on in the house.

Yeah, tell us, well, it's odd because you're it's kind of two different things.

But just to get the infrasound.

If you've heard a fan that's just running, let's say, a highly metal fan, you know, maybe one of the older ones, and you hear the high pitched tones that it creates, but there's harmonic stuff going on on the lower end because of the mechanical movement of that thing. And that's the stuff he's talking about. You can't hear it right, And it can physically. What Vic Tandy found is it can physically vibrate your eye like you're squeishy

Like you saw something.

That's what he was experiencing, what he was seeing out of the corner of his eye, and it was freaking yeah.

Okay, but it's you can sense that infra sound right, sure causes fight or flight. Yeah, often on a primal level. Yeah, without like feeling like you actually need to leave. You'd get that sensation when you were talking about Ben. It was such a fascinating thing to discover that. And I think we talked to his son for the book we did.

We talked to his son when we were researching researching my book named in a burst of creativity stuff. They don't want you to go the book because we had the title for the show earlier anyway, So this is this is the parable or the moral here is if you feel you are encountering in ghosts, because we want to give you practical applications and ideas, the first thing you should do, As silly as it sounds, it's like jack, if there's a.

Fan, oh, or a bus it was there was a bus stop right outside another place that was reported to be super haunted. Yea, the bus's engine was creating infrasound, in standing waves inside the basement of this area. And he, you know, he proved it. It's just crazy.

One thing I've noticed since I've been working on a lot of more music and recording, and like mixing records and things like that. Is I wouldn't say I hear better, but I hear differently and say dead people who welcome that.

That's okay, that's fair.

But like i will be in my house and I'll be in my living room and I'll hear this sound and I'm like, what is that? It's driving me crazy and realize that it's a bathroom fan on on the other side of the house, and it's because it's creating this kind of standing wave thing that travels a lot farther than you would think, and I'm experiencing it more like not necessarily, like my ears are.

Better, but my brain's processing this sound differently.

This okay, And speaking of going back to like our point about hearing things differently, can we do the experiment?

I think? Must we do an experiment with you? Okay? All right, all right?

So okay, as we said, not everybody can hear the same sounds. Diplomatically put as we age, our hearing abilities change. And so what we'd like to do here with you tonight is play a brief clip for you. We're going to start at the lowest sound a human being can register. We're going to go into the higher ranges, and as we play this, listen along closely. When you can no longer hear the sound, just raise your.

Hand and we'll play too. We'll play two. It's going to be interesting. Yeah, let's see if I'll play let's see the thing. I'm ready, all right, trying to make this. It doesn't hurt anybody. It's okay, I'm not hurting yet. I guess we'll hear it, guys. Yeah, okay, get.

A little higher higher, yeah, okay, okay, okay, still there, Okay, here's no it's.

Just where you can't explodes like in scanners, I think so. Yeah, stretch it. It is no, not quite gone for me, not quite gone for me. Okay, it's gone for me. I got it for you, to be honest, guys, still got it. I still hear it.

You still hear it.

Okay, that's still going. Okay are you joking? Yeah?

Okay, all right, I's going for me. Here's what happened.

So it's pretty cool, guys. I've never done that with actual people before. It must have been.

It was probably a little weird for some of us to see the hands go up earlier and realize that the person may be sitting next to you could no longer hears as siren sound of wine that was, no doubt becoming increasingly disturbing and irritating.

Right, No, I've lost most of my hearing from a ride symbol that sits right here, usually when I'm just crashing it. I and I can't believe I heard that as long as I did.

That was Are we sure that was accurate? No?

No, it is that is accurate? Confirmed podcast accurate. Okay, okay, so this is wow.

That's good.

So here's the here's the thing. For those of us who could hear the sound almost to the entirety of the time, you will need to avoid parts of the Scottish railway network because a few years back, true story, now, a few years back, they got tired of all these young loiterers and so they they weaponized the system called

Like our friend at the pizza shop. But she the thing we couldn't hear for sure. I don't think any of us get here. So that's kind of wild man. So did it work?

It did work? It did we know that? Well? I guess as a kid would age out.

They would regain the ability to loiter.

Okay, fair enough, But then it's like elderly are a lot less threatening.

It's a lot less cute, Like what are you doing when you're thirty eight? Just there?

I dig that, I actually really dig that.

Well, yeah, I'm forty one and I could hear it almost till the very end.

So I'm still going to go loitering Scottish train stations.

What if all the kids had sound canceling headphones.

See, this is where we're tying things together.

Okay, Okay, I get it. I guess we're.

Also noting that that's one that's one real world example of how sounds can be weaponized, how they can be used against you. However, that is a fairly innocuous example, because no one on that train station is forced to be there. No one is being forced to stay there or encounter sounds that they do not consent.

To hear it.

And will pause for a word from our sponsors, and we've returned with a conspiracy of sound. Well on you guys, do we want to talk about the for another experiment? Do we want to talk about the sound of silence? Or we want to go straight to weaponization.

Let's go to weaponization.

Can we do Simon and Garfunkle first?

I mean, actually, it's funny. You don't know about this, but I've been writing a terribly nasty parody of Homeward Bounds. I'll share it with you after the show.

Wow, it's too much.

Quite frankly, it's pretty good. Whatever, it's good, So okay, all right, weaponized sound then, right, yeah.

Let's do it. Actually it is really nice and quite.

Legendary. Yeah.

Wow, thanks y'all for having that's a cool space.

Yeah, we don't have to do it. Let's talk about dangerous stuff. But you already did it. We got to at least talk about the world's quietest room. All right, let's do it.

Let's do it over in ore Field Labs in Minnesota. Some we, I think several of us audio files know about this. Some of the world's smartest experts in audio built the literal quietest room in the world. And that silence we just heard together what passes for silence, you know, with the slight hung there, we could hear some breathing, some coughs, things of that nature that doesn't happen in the quietest room, and it makes the quietest room an

The sound of your blood like flowing through your body. Yeah, you guys ever have.

Those like orchid Tho's rooms in orchestra class, like in school, the little practice.

Rooms or whatever.

It's like that, but like fifty x, you know, and it is so intense that if you it could be considered torture to a degree if someone was forced to stay in there for long enough.

Can you imagine seriously locking somebody in there. Oh my god, that's terrifying. Yeah.

We talk about being alone with your thoughts.

I mean, well, this solitary confinement is one of the worst things you could do to somebody, right, right, We've learned that over time.

But at least you can talk through the pipes to your neighbor.

You know.

There's little notes and stuff not in this.

Not in this room, and people do kind of like a really scary haunted house. People do make the decision to pay to go into the room for some amount of the was a bravado. It's a bragge docio, you know what, Like, I'm already a very quiet person. How bad could this be? You know, it never works out spoiled.

No, no, it's not good.

It's cool that it exists. But yeah, you're gonna learn a lot about yourself in that way. And that's like, okay, it's because humanity exists in somewhat of a of a Goldilock zone of sound. The absence of sound is terrified, right, and the wrong sounds use the wrong way are not just terrifying, but physically dangerous. This is where we get to the real weaponized stuff. I think one of our

It's absolutely diabolical, is what it is.

It is in classic rock and heavy metal. True story. That's what broke Manual Noriega in nineteen eighty nine. They look it up, they played classic rock.

It was the Scorpions well and enhanced interrogation techniques. We don't want to get you know, in too much trouble here, but those were used with extremely loud metal music playing right in order to make somebody feel extremely.

Non sensory overload.

And then there's also the part about using sound in a way that weaponizes not just your auditory mechanisms, but also the culture in which you exist. This is another military thing, Operation Wandering Soul and the ghost tapes. Know you want to talk a little.

Bit about, Yeah, this is There was a podcast that worked on back in the early days of podcasts when they were only one billion podcasts, and it was called The Stuff of Life with a good friend Julie Douglas over at House Stuff Works, and we actually did an episode on what's called ghost tape number ten or the one but what is it to Operation Wandering Soul, And it was essentially a US psyops effort to freak out the vietcom by planting these little speakers in trees in

Yeah, you're attempting to at least so.

Yeah, and they did it by physically sneaking in in planting devices.

Right, that's terrifying.

Spooky stuffs too, even if you don't believe in ghosts. They're imagineer in the woods. Yeah, that's a that's a clip of this. Imagine you're in the woods, you're already set a koto, you're already in a combat zone. You've seen people die, right, you might die today, and you hear something like this. There's also the clip of the little Girl, which I think is creepier.

I think that's a little map that's the warning.

Yeah, but just coming from the tree tops, right, Like if you imagine that low file least somewhat.

Right, and you're already keyed up, you already know the sounds of the environment around you. So this is even for the most skeptical of your Kong, this is a very frightening experience.

I agree with you, but didn't we also kind of determine that a lot of people kind of thought it was bullshit, and then it wasn't particularly effective and maybe a little bit you know on the part of Uncle Sam dismissive.

And super well, yeah, it was all of those things for sure.

Yeah.

Whether or not anybody believe that, I don't, but it is.

An example of it is another example of the immense amount of time, money, and energy spent on weaponizing sound against people and turning sounds you hear against you. And sometimes this stuff doesn't work. But honestly, in some cases it works way better than you might assume. This is where we introduce a guy named Woody Norris. Matt, do you want to you want to kick some guy Norris?

This guy I've become obsessed with, y'all, and I highly recommend you do a search for Woody Norris and something called hypersonic sound. This is uh, this is an inventor. He has a third grade education, at least that's what he states. He one time took a part a transistor radio when he was about eight years old, and he's been inventing things ever since, well back in the nineties, I think it was ninety six. Specifically, he patented a thing called hypersonic sound. And uh, give a little Ted

We think we should? Well, let's just say. Let's just say that.

He developed a way to turn soundund into a beam the way we can turn lights into a laser, right, really focus it down, or we can turn it into with a lens, you know, focus it down on something like this and you can get pictures.

It makes sense.

Well, he found a way to make a device that he can point at you and sound can travel through the air to exactly where you are, as far away as you are. If you're in this beam.

And the person next to you won't hear a thing.

You only you will be able to hear when he is shooting at you.

Can I say, Matt, I don't know if this is exactly connected. But have you guys heard of this place, the sphere in Las Vegas?

Yeah?

Directly what directly connected?

Okay, great, Well that they apparently have this sound system that it like whatever your seat is, you get a sound mix that's in whatever your language is or whatever.

Like preferences you might have. Can you yeah, get so this is the same technology, then yes, but.

We're talking about the nineties when he patented it. And then he's going to tell you a little something in this clip we pulled from his ted talk that he gave in the early two thousands that, uh, let's extrapolate maybe together a little bit what he means.

We've got the military had just deployed some of these into a rack where you can put fake troop movements a quarter of a mile away on a hillside, or you can whisper in the ear of a supposed terrorist some biblical verse.

I'm serious.

Yeah, you can make someone think they're hearing God. Yeah, with a weapon that the military has had since before you know, we invaded a rock.

Decon and like have him tell you to do stuff.

Yeah, which goes back to the by Caramel Mind, which is a different episode.

Sure, Sorry, this has blown my mind so much that it's even a possibility, and really thinking about it being weaponized and purchased by the Pentagon for such activities.

Yeah, it's cool, it's fine, everything's fine.

It also reminds me of one thing that has been on everybody's mind a few years ago, Havana syndrome. We've all heard about that, right, Yeah, just real quick show of hands, all right, I think it's real it.

Who's got it?

Okay? Okay, yeah, okay, who thinks it's malarkey? As Biden would say, Okay, surprisingly closer than I thought.

We get it. We talked extensively about this.

We're going to again in a little bit and an additional segment of the show that we're going to do later.

Now, do a little bit.

Oh yeah, we'll set this up. Beginning in twenty sixteen, individuals who I want to say this diplomatically, were in some way associated with intelligence communities in the State Department. Right, they started reporting, Okay, I need they started reporting all these debilitating symptoms associated with what they thought was as it yet unexplained weapon that could target target them in some way. Was this some kind of microwave energy directed?

Yeah, okay, I can buy that. Maybe.

Yeah, everybody else went along with it. We don't know what's happening, Brooklyn. As we hang out tonight, the top intelligence agencies of the world don't agree on what's happening. Some people are saying they made it up, you know, it's just they had them malaise and now they can put a word on it.

Well, can we just say, like, it's similar to Gulf War syndrome, for example. It's this like kind of amorphous collection of symptoms that are hard to pin to a particular thing in general. So we're starting off with a disadvantage in that respect.

Sure, maybe a bit of confirmation bias.

As you know, I honestly thought I heard it once in the house. Honestly, for real, I thought I heard it, and I got nervous, and I guess a paranoia I heard what?

So what? Fine, it was a sound.

If you're not paranoid, you should that's probably it was my PS four. My PS four was the fans within it were generating such a terrible tone that was so high pitched, and I didn't understand that it was causing it because I heard it coming from the far side of my house like a standing wave.

Sure, but it was just this high pitched tone from the fans, and it scared the crap out of me.

But now you've got in Havana syndrome, and you weren't even in Havana.

Not at all.

I thought I was in Atlanta syndrome.

That's a different kind of syndrome, bro.

This is our PSA for Atlanta syndrome. No, well, you'll have to listen.

To the recording. Strew chicken wings everywhere you go. Peperwtt.

I'm telling you. I'm telling you the hype is real.

Just so we know that thing, that hypersonic sound. But what he made it can only register what is it? It hurts above two hundred.

So pepperweight, yes, thank you by them. Sorry, I are gonna let that go. That is the way, Sorry, Matt, Please get totally fine.

Two hurts and above is the targeted like sound you can create at crazy high decibel levels, which sounds a lot like habana.

But we do know that these types of weapons exist for like crowd dispersement. Sure, and their quote unquote non lethal right.

Less than lethal would be the better.

Your head doesn't.

Scanners explode instantly, but it may not be good for you long term.

Bits picture, it's a thing where the manufacturers can say, legally, we're not trying to kill people.

Yeah, like rubber bullets, you know.

Yeah, Look, pain hurts or hurts?

Pain does?

Everybody hurts?

Sometimes add a docibel level one hundred and twenty five. That's when pain begins to register in your mind when you're like being hit with.

A followed by scanner's head explosion right after that. So I'm not gonna let it go.

Fine, So we know that there can also be messages conveyed in this way, right, There can be messages that are sent out maybe in plane at your shot, to this entire audience, but for one reason or another, maybe only a few people would register it.

Right.

And we're not talking about just a just like a high shrill notes or something. We're talking about the possibility of certain encoded things. Matt, I see what you have there.

Is It's just my phone.

I'm just going to make a call. No, no, no, my son was obsessed with this, is obsessed with this. He thinks is the coolest thing. He wants to take it in for show and tell. This is a transistor radio. Yeah, that's all it is. It's not connected to Wi Fi. It doesn't do anything else. It's got batteries and it's a transistor radio. It's got a fancy little thing here we call an antenna.

And you know what it does.

What does it do?

It translates all the hidden waves that are flying through the air right now, and it turns them into audible music. And Howard Stern, I guess sometimes and other people. You know, I've heard folks that are awesome and you can listen right now. I think it's one oh five point one here in New York.

You gotta listen.

I heard We Have to the Breakfast Clubs, one of the best shows on the radio. It's I don't even want to do it. I was gonna put it on and show. It's just it's amazingly cool that you can turn this thing on and you can just pick stuff out of the air that is flowing through us right now. It doesn't stop flowing through us when you go to sleep. It's flowing through us. When you take a shower, it's flowing through us, and that.

Happens pretty much anywhere in the world you go.

It kind of freaks me out, but it's also amazing.

It kind of should freak you out. It's weird that it became normalized.

Hey, let's take a quick break from the show. Here a word from our sponsor, and then we'll be right back with our Conspiracy of Sound. That live show from National Sawdust at on AirFest.

Oh those were great, Right, we're back, let's jump in.

We don't even need much more technology to do a real hidden message that can go around the world.

It's time for us to talk about number stations. Yes, really quickly though, I.

Man, lest we leave you terrified that we're all being, like you, bombarded with these radio frequencies and that they're like dangerous or something.

There are no different spectrums.

There are, of course, microwaves things like that that are very tiny because they can penetrate your body in ways that are dangerous.

But these are comparatively large waves.

Right, yes, wait, which ones?

We're talking short wave?

Right?

The short waves what they're called.

But like the type of things that are flying around, most of the stuff that we encounter when we're sleeping, like you're talking about, these are not things that we should be worried No, we shouldn't be worried about.

Just but Wi Fi is a fairly new thing when you think about another kind of ra existence frequency.

Yeah, someone in the crowd right now just thought, oh god, five.

We're not going there, five G, seven G.

But no, just think about the the amount of waves that we send out from all these giant places that broadcast them and from you know, our individual devices and all that stuff.

And there are a lot of people that.

Are freaked out about that, which leads to ones of the quiet zone.

Yes, Radio D we went there, We got launched, We got hell one of the.

Last places with actual landline pay phones in this country because there are no cell phones allowed to exist.

And they have literal vans people whose job it is to roll around scanning for these type of frequencies and figuring out who the hell broke the rules and brought this you know, forbidden device into the quiet.

And we will get to number stations.

Sorry, I'm so sorry. Now why are you sorry?

I'm the one that brought us to the radio HEAs wanted to, don't want to think they were like getting cancer from you know, uh Star ninety seven.

No, hell no.

The greatest thing is if, ever, if all the technology just broke right, huge blackout or something.

If you've got one of these, you.

Know what's going on, because there's there're gonna be human beings in a radio station broadcasting some important message.

Out hopefully like in Fallout what's the guy's name? The DJ and the Fallout game you have to go find three dogs. That's true, you got to find a three dog and then he'll tell you where your dad is.

And there's an entire system of automated there's an entire system of automated messages that are supposed to continue like after civilization falls.

That's exactly right.

There's like twelve people and now they have to listen to the same recorded message over and over again, which kind of becomes an accidental signe.

And there's usually like a plot point where you realize they record it and it's on a loop and everyone's dead and you're fucked.

It's yeah, So so if I tune my radio to one O five point one, I can hear Charlemagne?

What else gets played on some of these radio bands?

Oh, gosh, yeah, we'll fast forward through this real quick. You don't need a uh, you don't need a dangerous frequency to do dangerous things. Numbers stations are an active conspiracy right now. I accidentally I just tuned into one when I was in Japan a little while back. There is this Cold war relic that is entirely meant to communicate with spies. Anybody can tune into these radio stations, at which point you'll hear something like this.

Awesome.

Nope, hold on, we had a screen saver.

There's only cool beaps. There's one with the cool beap.

We like the one with the beeps. So it's a radio station that's quiet most of the time. I feel the people nod in the heads. Yeah, except every so often something like this.

Will come out.

You can hear this because of the hotel, because of the nature radio. You can hear this almost anywhere in the world. And there are entire communities, often online, dedicated to figuring out what's happening here. But the most likely answer is that at least once upon a time, these were one way messages to agents of espionage right, largely Russian, and they're written with what's called the one Time Codebook.

It like a cipher like I mean that you have to have a key to scratch.

I got it, So Echo Hotel, a couple of numbers you might be able to say, possibly that sounds like latitude and longitude. Unless you have that little book, you're never gonna know. And if you ever get bored and bibe your vice of choice and get thee to YouTube.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's a collection of these is called the Connet Projects, and it's very fascinating, really interesting listens.

Some of them are actually kind of beautiful.

If anyone's familiar with the Wilco record Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, there's a sample at the end of one of the crazy songs called I'm Trying to Break Your Heart that gets really wild, and then there's the sample Yankee Hotel Foxtrot that is from the Connt Project. So you can find all of those in playlists on YouTube, and they're really interesting.

And we're pretty sure it's fine to listen to these, because we did a few episodes on them, and no one is content.

These are old. I mean these are from you know, like these are yeah, all right?

Have you listened to the new ones? That's that's the most pretentious thing.

Of whoa you ever heard the new numbers? Listen to music on my mini the trolla?

Yes.

So this is where this is where, this is where we we have to ask ourselves. Knowing that there is at least some grain enough truth to all of these conspiracies we just explored together, we have to ask ourselves when it comes to hidden messages, right, how far does this conspiracy ankle play? That's why. To learn more, we're going to join some folks at their house right now.

Okay, Now, can I just say that's really cool as Scott, he's like our Paul Schaeffer. He just really gave such a boisterous laugh like Paul Wood for David Letterman. Oh, they feel like a million bucks. So big ups, the big ups this guy. Oh, it's really sweet.

I think some other folks could do better. I'm just I'm telling you.

Okay, all right, obviously it's falling apart, so.

We're leaving the stage.

We're doing different place.

It's time for a word from our sponsor.

Two guys at their house.

We opened on a common place. See an evening familiar to red household. You've just returned from a hard day at work, and now it's time to kick back to unwide soaking in the comforting background of your favorite television programs. Yet, as we'll see, you're always just one step away from the stuff they don't want you to do.

Man, what a day?

All right here you time to take a break. What's on the two?

Let's see?

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In the.

Attention.

This is a test of the emergency conspiracy system. This is a test of the emergency conspiracy system.

Oh I was waiting for this, waiting for what?

Man, this noise is driving me crazy? What the missu phoonio mean?

I'm sorry, dude, it's the national headphone Alert. Don't you read the news.

It's illegal for you to ask me that.

The Transparency and Audio Act, remember the new secrecy laws. They say that some people finally get to hear what's really being broadcast.

It's thanks to these dose issued headphones.

Oh right these Wait, I thought it was a scam and not everybody gets these headphones.

Yeah yeah, And it turns out there's an entire hidden world of sound and only a few people get to learn about it every year.

Okay, so why us though?

I think it's because we went to that on air fest a little while back. Like right now, this just sounds like a beep. Yeah yeah, Check this out again.

If you are hearing this message, congratulations, you have successfully passed the emergency conspiracy broadcast test. With these headphotes, you will be able to hear the true messages embedded in your programming. We the secret government, invite you to use these devices and explore the signals sent through public airwaves.

Have the best part about the chroom?

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Wherever you find your favorite Conglomco products. What in the holy Kellogg's diners going on here?

Pretty cool?

Right? No?

Dude, no, it's not pretty cool at all. You're saying there's an entire conspiracy to hide secret What are these messages? Instructions in plain in sight?

Technically plane earshot?

Wait you can hear us?

Oh yeah, I can hear you. We can always hear you.

What the That guy sounds like me? And we're supposed to act on this like we're being conscripted into some sort of secret army.

Don't think of it that way. Think of it more like it's good to know things.

It's good to know things.

Are you in on this?

It's twenty twenty five, man, everything's crazy. I guess you just watch regular commercials or you know, oh I love this one.

Has this ever happened to you? In traffic?

And gosh darn it, someone else has a better car. Don't be a knucklehead. Check out the brand New twenty twenty five Honda odist.

Now you got to hear the real message here.

Put them on bye obey, consume bye Okay, consume bye obey, consume bye obay, consume bye obay, consume bye.

So we're doing a they live thing.

Yeah, this is a they live thing, but with sound.

We're sort of booking fun and how easily audio can be manipulated to push human behavior, sometimes without the conscious mind registering what's happening. We're having a lot of fun with it, but it's a very real, potentially dangerous thing.

Also, we're doing the matrix. What you'll see, you'll see.

Man, I'm so glad we're in on this.

I don't know if I I want to be Matt. Is it fair for us to keep such a massive revelation secret.

It's a choice you got to make for yourself. You can choose to keep going the way you were, or you can oscillate just a little further down the rabbit hole.

But what about everybody else?

Don't people deserve to know what's happening?

I mean, you can try and tell them, but they literally can't hear you.

That's correct.

If there was any way to genuinely help people learn about the conspiracy surrounding the power of sound without incurring the wrath of the powers that be. You'd probably have to, you know, make it part of a show, maybe in Brooklyn. This is a test of a conspiracy broadcast. This is

Whoa guys, hold on, I think we need to take a break before we move on.

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

Isn't that back masking?

Oh shit, we have a show to do. Yeah, let's keep going.

That's right, folks.

We would like to welcome our very special guests for this evening, the host of Broken Records, the man who knows everything about music and has decided to join us live tonight.

Please join us.

And welcoming the one and only justin Richmond. Who you are, sir?

Wow, I don't know how I got you. I just heard a sound I was compelled to come. Yeah, I think I agreed to this.

Well, we can't thank you enough for coming. We were we were talking back and forth earlier when we were working on the idea of the conspiracy of sound. We wanted to touch on some of the weirdest sounds that people like our friends and family and the audience tonight have heard and tie that into of course, music conspiracies, maybe a little Havana syndrome, but justin let's start here. We were talking earlier and we were asking you what are the weirdest sounds that you have heard?

Yeah?

So, uh, you know, I live in Long Beach, California, which you know is that cool?

Oh, it's great, It's amazing.

A short beach. I've always wanted to ask, is it a short beach?

Is there a short is a short beach? Seal beach?

Oh? But they don't they don't, Yeah, they don't advertise them.

Maybe someone of the beach is nice.

Also, apparently Long Island, like is just New York? Here is Manhattan rather right, like the Long Island. If you heard this what somebody told me about this? Like maybe I'm totally wrong, but like Long Island was originally like referring to the island of Manhattan. But I digress tell us about what happens sonically in Long Beach.

Well, Long Beach, for those who don't know, is it's a port town. So we you know, it has the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, and so it's like, you know, beside it's like one of the biggest ports in the world.

And so in addition to the the you know, there's all cons of things going on Long Beach.

There's the port, there's the airport. There's all kinds of going on with the port. You know, most of us day to day we probably about five miles from the ports. We're not we're not always over there. We don't really see it. But at night a lot of times I'll wake up three am and just hear like a weird like foghorn, like the most unsettling you know, like when you're in a horror movie and it's like, uh, it's it's it's misty or foggy and it's a full moon and the leaves are bare on the tree.

Have you seen the lighthouse that Rabbert Egger's yes, okay, right, Like that soundtrack.

Is fog horn, Like it is indeed unsettling, and you'll just wake up, you know, when we're like three blocks in the beach.

WHOA.

I wonder if you hear the hum the rumble of some of the ships and stuff that roll through there too, and the mechanisms that are like on the dock itself.

Well, you know that's that's the thing, like the foghorn, as unsettling as it is, Like you know, you wake up three am to go to go to go use the restroom, go back to your.

Bed, and you're hearing a foghorn.

At least I know what it is and why, Yes, and I can identify that sound.

There's also an abnormal for the longest simon.

I haven't heard it in a while, but for a while I would wake up around four or five am, between four or five am and six am, six thirty am, there'd just be a high pitched what's oh, And everyone in Long Beach who's up at that time can hear it, but no one can.

No one can tell me what it is.

There's just a rogue, no one there was also, by the way, I know we're not talking about smells, but there's a smell that floats in from off the coast okay that no one can tell you what it is. I mean, it smells like there's a gas Like sometimes I've come home like there's a gas like what I left the and I'll go look and there's nothing, and I'll call the you know, uh, you.

Know, I'll call it.

Just wants to call in the ghast, lik, right, So I'll call you know, what do you want to sense now to check this out?

Oh?

No, we're getting calls left and right, like it's everywhere. We don't but they don't know what it is. No one knows what it is. The government, the local government can't tell us. Like California, ask people go down to investigate.

They can't tell us.

Doesn't smell bad, smells like gyas.

It's like like like likes like sulfur. Oh I got bad news. Your whole town is haunted. Yeah, this is actually not surprised me.

What we brought you on the show to talk.

This is terrible news. I'll be leading, I will not be returning home themselves.

Tell us what connects you directly to music and to Broken Record into just what you do?

What I do well?

I am the host of Broken Record, a music podcast that I started with Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell, WHOA, yeah.

That's cool. And Rick Assentce.

You know, he's still involved at high level, but he's he's hosting a new show now and so I'm left to host.

He's just meditating, levitating somewhere in Malibu right now we speak.

We don't even know where he is. We're yeah, and I mean, yeah, there were But like, you know, music is. We talked about what sound is, sound waves and all of that.

I'm a huge music fan, and the idea that music is just this scientifically quantifiable bunch of vibrating air, you know, molecules still just.

Kind of blows my mind.

And when I put a needle on a record, the process by which grews scratched into a piece of plastic are then transmuted through a needle into a thing that goes into speakers and becomes music that then hits our ears absolutely blows my mind constantly, and I more or less understand the science of it, but it doesn't make you feel any less magical, right, It.

Blows you know. What's funny?

We always talk about this in a negative sense, but I'm always astounded by it, and I wish we could go back to it.

But We always think.

A lot of books or documentaries just about music, or if you talk to people who are at a certain age, you made music at a certain time, they'll tell you. By the time when recording studios were run by people in lab coats.

Beatles were always pissing them off.

We're using the equipment wrong, right, and the the the narrative in music is like at some point the Beatles and other people we were we were freed by the tyrannical lab coat engineers like democratize it.

Democratize it, right, and you get like, you know, the kind of you know, then you get more the engineer just looks more like a like a you know, like a run of the mill like hippie or something, right like yeah, yah, yeah, Well the thing that's need about that, I should go back to that, I should go back

Was so much louder than the last one. But then somebody went around behind the lab co guy's back and figured out how to crank that thing up and make it sound cool. And that's like the sound of led Zeppelin slappy drums, or like the Beatles plugging a guitar right into the console and cranking the game up so they get a fuzz on revolution.

You know.

That is that is what we did liberate from the lab. You know some of there's certain sounds that aren't proper sounds or correct sounds that that that are make music invigorating to us. Right, it's sort of this weird we we people who don't even you know, it's funny, like you talked to someone.

And my people in this audience. There's no there's no shame in this.

I can't even remember a time in my life where I love music, but we hear things and I couldn't differentiate between the instruments. Like if you say, oh, like that's an interesting bass on, I don't know what what is the bass? You have to really sit and explain it to me, like, oh, that's what that is. And I sometimes I still talk to people, I'm like, the song is great. It's great because listen to arrange, listen to the bass.

And the guitar on the way that the horns the piccolo.

Let's talking about the magic flute by the way. No, but you know, it's like in the same way, like there are sounds that aren't that weren't proper sounds, and we can't necessarily readily identify what's proper or not proper as a listener. But sometimes that that those weird the distortions or the weird things that were mistakes in the studios make the songs that we love better.

Keith Richard's got his guitar tone by slashing a speaker with a switchblade, like literally ripping the cone, the paper cone of the speaker and making it vibrate against themself to get a cool tone.

Yeah.

Yeah, a lot of times that would happen, right, And I think, like something I can't remember the Zach specifics, but if you go and listen to the Kinks song really Got, Really Gotten, really got me, Like there's a really great distorted guitar on that. That's one of one

You know, that's that's a good question too, because we often more and more now we we kind of hear and accept these allegations of cabal running a music industry. Right, So in your experience, we'll get to that the truth or falsity of that in a second, But in your experience personally, do you think those imperfections are more or less frequent to emerge in a finish song now? Like

You know, you know, that's a that's a that's that's a tricky question.

I mean, in some ways, there's in some ways there's more freedom to make mistakes because everyone's just like, we've now gone from making a record in a studio you paid a lot of money for with guys and lab coats running the studio, to you're making a record in a studio for a lot of money with dudes who look just like they're in the band running the recording studio to the recording studios just at your house, and you may or may not even know exactly what you're

Or yes, and I'm obsessed with Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson. Just a crazy sounding record, and it's because they were using all of these sixteen bit samplers that were kind of by our standards today low fi, right. But Jimmy Jams, a producer, like it sounds like an industrial record. There are sounds on this sound like drills or you know, beating on trash cans.

And it was a massive pop record. When you listen to it now, it sounds fucking weird.

Yeah, Janet Jackson, you can't get I mean, when when Rhythm Nation came out, could you get any bigger than Janet Jackson, like one of the most popular artists on Earth at the time. Experimental yes, yes, And I mean even you know, if you go back and you listen to you know, it's funny. I heard single Ladies recently and you're like, I like.

How did this? How did how did this get released? Like this?

Like this is not in a bad way, like a fascinating way, Like there are some weird sounds on that record, yes, that make like you're.

Like, what is it?

Like? Why?

Who did who did this? I don't even know if I like it?

I guess, but I'm I'm glad it has the studio just that impro training and they just kept saying like yes and at this other.

Thing, yes, and he's Samberg in a leotard go in the video.

I don't know about that.

You know, it's funny that it depends on who you are and how much kind of clout you have, because you've got like Billie Eilish and like Phineas or brother. They make records, they make weird records, but they got big organically through like TikTok or whatever, and some people say they were that's fair.

I don't have no knowledge.

I'm because they found it organically just but my point is, though, it's like because of that cloud, they can kind of make records that sound the way they want to make them. And he's all about samplings, snack, you know, matches, striking and things like that, which is not the norm.

I would it makes weird sounds.

You said, one of my favorite phrases in these kinds of conversations. Some people say, you.

Know what I mean. That's what people say.

I heard.

Who am I to say?

Right?

We're talking a lot about this, the beat boops. What about the messages and the lyrics?

Guys nine, number nine, nine.

Number nine, nine, familiar nines, number nine. I'm familiar with the number nine. I feel like number nine. We were talking about the Beatles. They're talking about misusing equipment. A song like this.

Number Revolution, number nine or whatever on the White album is what you would call music concrete or it uses these concepts of misusing tape machines, playing things backwards, you know, manipulating sounds more like an experimental way, and that is sort of the genesis of this idea of hidden messages,

Yeah, this is the This is the concept that there's two guys in the couch and encountered earlier back masking.

Right.

It's something that it's almost like someone is speaking a language that is very close to a language you speak, and you're kind of you're hearing parts of it. And what we wanted to do tonight with you and with all of us here is to explore some back masking examples.

I don't know if I can hang around with this guy. Come on, I don't know. There's a pentagram underneath the coach. I don't understand.

But there is a precedent for this, and the Beatles really kind of set the groundwork for it. We just heard is a very experimental track from the White album, and it started these rumors that Paul McCartney was dead because when you play number nine back, where as you get this.

Turn me on dead man?

Right?

Right?

Or?

Or are we are we practicing pattern recognition?

Well we're going to get to that too, for sure.

What do you think a conspiracy that kind of created itself? But you're familiar with.

This, I know about the Paul's that conspiracy.

I gotta say, I either have never actually heard that the where it comes from, or it's just been a long enough time that I just forgotten.

It's free stretch. Someone's a little too high and ran away with it.

Started people talking. It started these rumblings of this idea of hidden messages. Most of them are a stretch, I would argue, and we're going to get through some and then we're going to see if we can kind of identify what they're supposedly saying. A lot of these messages were identified by Mothers Against Metal and these similar groups who believe there were hidden messages trying to convince kids to do horrible things or worships sat.

They had a little bit of an agenda like underestimate parents with time on them.

It's exactly.

Hands Jesus, well my child, let's hear let's hear another one.

Okay, let's do this is just another Beatles one really quickly. This is just also FeAs into the Paula is dead and.

I'm with you.

That that's a real miss miss Okay, I don't whoa what do you think? Well?

I put in my rational cap on, all right, If I'm John Lennon. Yeah, and I hear that people heard that heard what they heard in that other message, and Paul is dead then yeah, I'm gonna I'm just gonna criterally say Paul is dead man, like in a kind of a weird way, but like Paul, Paul's dead man.

Well, that's funny you say that, because a lot of the stuff that we're gonna hear too is people responding to the bullshit and making a little joke out of it to him Paul, and I mean, I'm sorry, John was the kind of guy that would do exactly.

Yeah, you have to take him, take the piss, taking the fists.

Indeed, I'll turn other one. This is actually this is one of my favorites. Let's see if you can guess who make it a game? See if you can guess who the artist is or the song is and what they're supposed to be saying, we'll work together on it. The best part the next line, it sounds like he's saying there was a little tool shed where he made us suffer. Oh my sad, sad satan, Yeah, tool shed.

There is a bustle in your Yeah, I think that works for multiple Why are these words for.

Things topiary, perhaps make a shape.

Like something a well groomed bush, like you know, keep it up.

But Jimmy Page and Robert playing like it's hard enough to make music forwards.

How are you gonna like hide stuff backwards? But that sounds like you say years to my sweet Satan. You guys, I don't know.

I think it's a coincidence, and it is that pattern recognition Ben's talking about.

But I think that one's pretty neat. I don't know. I just want to play it forward when I hear that. I love that. Who's sitting playing Zeppelin backwards? Yeah?

It is funny though, Just this this concept of learning that if something is taboo and you put it in your music, you can probably generate enough controversy that you might.

Have a hit. Right. I think that might be the real conspiracy at play.

Well.

I mean you can feel in because these are big bands we're talking about, right, some of man for sure. But they didn't need this to become hits. No, but it is a way to keep them.

In the news.

Maybeelin Zeppelin was a guess Jimmy Page was into the culture.

That's true, right.

And so therefore either I mean, you know, maybe it's just taking the piss again and.

Maybe uh or maybe yeah, maybe.

Do you think it's something? Do you think it's something? Where he was seriously trying to sell the rest of the band on it, and they were like, come on, man, it's four thirty, it's a Friday. Can we just sure, fine, fine do it. I'm sure. I'm sure they capitulated to Jimmy a lot.

The tricky thing though, is like Stereoid Heaven's a really great song. It's beautiful, the melody is great, everything about so to make it sound super cool and beautiful and perfect forward just to have this secret hidden backwards message and.

That's a lot.

That's a tall order, tall order. It's also kind of cool if they did do it. If they did do.

It, it's kind of cool Floyd Dark Side of the Moon sinking up with the Wizard of Oz, Like I really truly don't believe they could have pulled that off, but.

It really does work. Great happy accident, I think so. But it's really neat.

That's a really neat one's experience here. Let's let's do another. So, oh, actually, before we get to this, what I wanted to point out, so Matt said the idea of, you know, trying to do this to get some attention, whether it's wanted attention or on wanted attention.

Judas Priest actually sued at.

The Best of Mothers against Metal because they had a song that, supposedly, when played backwards, says do it, do it, and some unfortunately very disturbed young people took their own lives, and the Mothers blamed this hidden message that Judas pre supposedly had used to target youths to do horrible things to themselves.

That's not how I would have interpreted that message, as you.

First, Yeah, that's not what I would have gone with that you never got I would have done before I got through that.

But okay, Nike never got in trouble and the judge threw it out because there was no sufficient evidence. And Rob Halford and their attorney said, look, if we were gonna hide hidden messages in our music, it would be like.

Buy more records, not you know, he did.

Take your own life to our listeners. It didn't really help us out very much.

So have you guys seen those videos that supposedly are like older musicians talking about how there were some weird rituals going.

On with Matt.

Yeah, I'm so on board.

There's some weird stuff out there that you can find, and there are actual musicians, and I cannot discern if they are joking.

About what are we talking We're talking.

To seventies, Yeah, in the seventies, eighties, sixties, eighties.

Where you know they're it's like a single artist saying well, yeah, there there was a ritual room, did some stuff and we were putting on a new record.

But anyway, it was just I never do it too seriously and you're just like a type stuff.

What I can't discern if they're joking or not.

Well, also, did they just go to a really weird house party? Like I think it's been at weird parties right.

So very very odd.

Yeah, let's do another one, Shelly, Yes, let's go back to they love.

It sounds smoke marijuana.

Okay, behind that that's great for you.

Do you know the song and the artist Queen? That's Queen.

Another one that groove ship Backwards forward silent No one, another one.

So good?

Wait, so where is that backwards part in the song?

It's that the break.

Wait, so it's just that backwards that's the reason.

That's another one who writes the guests.

Okay, but remember hearing it in the song when I listened to it.

But hold on. So even though I support that message, so I want to believe that was really We're on. I want to believe that was real. But okay, so what's the process though? So like.

That Freddie Mercury was in the studio and goes into mic and says, smoke marijuana, goy guys, guys played backwards and then it goes and he's like, and then.

He yeah, that sounds kind of like that. Get back in that vocal booth. Yeah, I mean maybe.

But then then the question becomes, why does the cadence sound so correct in the in the forward version? Right if the backward version was the original one.

And it is an odd phrase?

I got that, I mean another one by I mean, it's not that weird, but it's kind of like it's a little.

They've done so they had some weird choices and lyricism, like seven seas Awry. So that what is that song about? I guess I'm reading into it too much.

It's probably just I just want to ride my bicycle all the time.

It's a great song.

But despite that, it's like it's like that's could be a bat song very easily. I mean the line between like like greatness and like ship is like the Beatles is a ship name, like if you were like everyone, like everyone worries about naming things like the most incredible thing.

Everybody's like gotta come up with the name for these things. It's gotta be like revolutionary, and it's gotta be short.

It's gotta have a hit, a message, and it's like the Beatles, I wouldn't be the fucking Beatles and it's gonna be like it sucks, but it's honestly the greatest name ever. So it's like it's just what they did with the name, you know, like they became the greatest man ever, were like the Beatles.

That's fucking awesome. It's kind of easier.

It's kind of easier to back back then because there were fewer bands that had already called names even.

Which makes it even more of like egregious, like pick a better fucking name. I just had Smoking Robinson in the podcast. He was like unbroken Record and he was like, you know, I started like listening back to motown stuff again. I'm like the Supremes the Miracles, the four these are fucking names.

These are this is incredible.

But then we had the Indy Sleeves era where the thus came back and we got the Strokes, the yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's more. I just wanted a snake why why different?

If you guys don't mind, though, I would love to end the game on a couple of intentional ones that I think are really fun. Because we talked about Yeah, I think you're right, it's a tall order to get this in there in the way that you would be intended to be heard and communicate a subliminal message. But this legacy of this is legendary in the music world, and so there's folks kind of picked up on that sort of made that a little fun with it.

So let's try. Let's hear a couple of those.

Carry car.

Can you guess who the artist is?

At least?

Can you play it again? Yeah? What you said you two is a two in it? Who the B fifty two is? Okay? Okay, that's right, Let's play it here. That's that's the forward versions got the backwards message in it. Here is what it sounds like. We used to play the record backwards.

Record watch out.

So that one clearly done on purpose. Leaning into this. You play your record backwards, watch.

Out, you might ruin your needle.

But I buried my parents.

I buried my parakeet in the backyard.

You get in situations.

It's true, it's true. Okay, And this is the last.

One guy, and arguably the horniest song of all.

Time, darling nicky.

And this is at the end of the song as a f u to the record industry and to these puritanical folks. And he's obviously a devout religious man. Jeh whit is when I'm mistaken.

But not he was lapsed. I think this fair enough, but this is what But well do you tell me? And when you hear this, I.

Like that song.

It's the end of that Doctor basically hit a Bible verse in horning a song of all time.

I just love that's so Prince, Well, the Lord is coming. We could talk about the phrase. Maybe it's not talking. That's good.

Yeah, yeah, again open to interpretation, but we see we see something here through this exploration that shows us there's like music is technically math, but there's something inexplicable about it. There's something that I think naturally lends itself to the conspiratorial and when we were talking about it didn't take us long, folks. We were hanging out and talking about

I mean, yeah, yeah, it was in in in I mean, it was a huge scandal and we worked for iHeartRadio.

We had to take classes about pale We did we.

Know they were They were very specifically for people more famous.

Old school though Paola is a product of old school radio, right, old school broadcast.

I mean it apparently continued in forms and such. I mean, you know, but yeah, it was like it was like I wasn't there were like congressional hearing. It was like a big deal, like this was happening because it was distorting in the marketplace.

D mean that you pay to play, right, you pay to play yeah, right.

You go to a disc jockey and it's like here's this new record and here's uh, here's a hundred bucks you know, or whatever would have been equivalent a hundred bucks.

Oh, Wow, day right, we got to adjust for inflation.

Yeah, he's he's yeah, here's a nickel.

Okay.

I have to admit I'm guilty of this. When I was in a band in college, I tried to pay the disc jockey at eighty eight point five in Atlanta.

That's that's our college radio station.

I didn't know.

I just was like, will you take money and take my record?

Did it work?

Like?

No?

Cc no? But justin what do you say as we wrap up the show?

Do you have any conspiracy theories in the music industry that are like you gotta just get off your chet?

Ah? Do I have any?

Well?

You know, I don't know.

Man, you're comfortable talking.

I can't talk about anything that I know about. I don't know anything well, you know, I mean, I mean.

You know, I mean think about what we think about like Kendrick Lamar Okay, Drake manufacturer? Is there some manufacturing going on or is that a real I don't know what record. Everyone's mad at Drake, I mean from I'm from l A. My family's from Compton, So you know, come on, what am I gonna say? I'm gonna say anything against Kendrick, But everyone's mad about the Drake lawsuits.

I'm kind of interested. I'm kind of like, I'm interested what will come out of that. I don't know if much will because I think will.

Drake is suing Universal Music Group, which is like they have their their and let me let me please, guys, I love Universal Music Group, by the way, so I don't want to love music Universal Music Group. I mean they have a wonderful catalog. I think they have wonderful leadership, wonderful teams. Yeah, there wonderful facilities, incredible, let me job. I love Universal Music Group. But their market share is like, you know, over like roughly a third and sometimes more. Sometimes rightly call them.

Yeah, they're huge.

You know, there's only three major record labels, and they're far and away the largest and most important, and both Drake and Kendrick are signed to them, and Drake is now suing them, saying that they basically engaged in modern forms of payola, which is like using bot farms to create and and and influencers to you know, sort of increase the places of Kendrick Lamar's not like us in order.

To defame Drake, and so that's his thing.

The additional conspiracy on top of that that the Internet is running away with is that Universal did it because Drake's due to renegotiate his contract with UMG, and obviously Drake is worth a lot of money. And if I'm Drake and I got to renegotiate with Universal Music Group, who I know is like the biggest, you know, most.

Money making, most wonderful and beautiful and excellent.

Music company out there, along with Warner and so like that like as like there's a lot of money here, Like let me like what like and I've made a lot of money for you, Like this contract is going to be a contract, and so like they're saying that they purposely you know, boosted that and maybe maybe even manufactured to remove his leverage, to move his leverage and contract.

And the British would call that.

Dirty pool, Yeah they would. Well, I've got one follow up there. There's this dude, Jason Pargan and if you wrote yeah daily so he's he makes these fun little YouTube videos just kind of commenting on pop culture type stuff.

I don't want I don't want to go again again again.

I got my my rooster on content, man, So I don't really want to really disparage Kendrick in any sort of way. But I feel like this is a safe place to say this. Sure, And I'm not really saying anything. I'm just sort of like wondering in questioning, I'm wondering. I'm just curious in general about our society's obsessional with pedophil Like obviously, like it's a terrible thing, like obviously, right, got it?

Like, but it's like why are universally bad?

Yeah, but why why do we all walk around like we, I mean people walk around like talking about it, like as if like to say, like, I am not a pedoph It's like, well, I.

Don't assume most people that I meet are, Yeah, but we are obsessed with it. And it makes me wonder like maybe there are more. I don't know, Like it just freaks me out.

But there's a lot of conspiracies around pedophilia, absolutely, especially in the political world, the music world, I'm sure in all the other worlds. But what is our society's obsession with pedophilia? I wonder if in twenty Houston I will look back at it. I think it's kind of weird and if that like a minor you know line is not just like the peak pinnacle strangeness of it all, Like why are we obsessed with this?

It's say, it's an iteration of I mean, part of it, we could argue is it's the following phase one. It's a It's something that despite any demographic difference, everyone can agree is just horrific and bad. Right, unite, right, So.

Why do we need to watch? So why do we need to be dead? We know he doesn't know what this is. I mean, you we'll do it, but we then.

We Here's what Because it is so bad, it can be weaponized to like associate, being right to associate?

So what was like the nineteenes because okay, so like what was like in the nineteen seventies, what was a scoundrel?

That's that's like a philanderer? Like what was like what was the great like the thing that they just yeah, like leverage, Yeah, gotcha, gotch.

So we we made a show about the Atlanta missing murdered case back several years ago called Atlanta Monster. And in the coverage from the late seventies in Atlanta, like nineteen seventy eight, when they're talking about those who abused children, they didn't have the word pedophile and it wasn't used, and a lot of these the terminology wasn't even used for this kind of thing because it wasn't in the zeitgeist to think about that type, that specific type of heinous.

Abuse of children. And it was that wasn't like investigated. It wasn't like a unit of the police department.

No, no, it is not.

No.

But again, like sex crimes in general, that kind of stuff like that that comes later where there's specialization in that kind of stuff. So I think what I'm just my only argument is that the Internet revealed a lot of horrifying things to humanity.

Sure, there aren't more skeletons in the closet, there are just more flashlights, yes, And then.

We find out things about very prominent individuals you know that people grew up watching for decades or you love that well, I'm just saying, you learn those things right, and then all of a sudden a bit of the illusion is shattered what reality is.

So maybe you start to assume there's a higher likelihood than you once assumed, or something like that.

Because like the way, we don't like hitchhike anymore, because we kind of understand that's actually.

We don't walk around like we don't like I mean, I guess maybe do we. I don't know, we don't.

We don't talk about it all that much anymore, right, Like would be great to get to that place where we're not constantly It's.

Kind of like my own second. It's more like I don't know, like we're.

Not constantly warning each other about hitch hiking. Yeah, no, no, and we all understand, hey, what are you doing after the show? Better not be hitchhiking.

Another way, in another way, though, haven't we lost a lot when we lost like the hitch hiking as a good thing, Like this is a very romantic thing.

Like maybe I wish I could, I wish I could hitchhike. But you're right, that's why it's such a great comparison. The zeitgeist got in my head. I am convinced that if I if I tried to hitchhike in this country, then the only people who would pick me up would be people I don't want to hang out.

We take ubers all the time, and somehow that's safe and.

That's more transactional, Like it's true.

I'm just saying it's it's by the way, Like just like if anyone who picked.

Up a hitch hiker was like a serial killer, Like I'm pretty sure like the police would get that pretty squid, that pretty easy, open and shut, like send the undercover out the hitch the undercover hitchhiker.

Yeah maybe maybe maybe maybe that exists.

That exists, but we do know something that exists for sure. We've had Thank you so much for being with us, folks.

The audience exists.

Exist also a conspiracy at foot big thanks to National saw Dust. Big thanks to you, and big thanks to you. Justin here's one of my favorite conspiracies. I hear it's true that you are making another appearance at this very venue.

Oh wow, that was masterful.

Oh goodness, I know with this, Yes, yeah, yeah, I'll be here Friday night at seven thirty seven thirty seven thirty start time.

With Daniel Lanoi who so coo great, great, great producer, incredible, you know, one of the originals of ambient music along with Brian Eno and you know together they produced You Too.

And he did the Dylan comeback will.

He did Old Mercy and Time out of Mind, which is like the big nineties come back Dylan record, and like you.

Know, Peter Gabriel so and so many other things. I just really interesting guy.

He's gonna have his pedal steel, all lot of stuff and we'll talk about some stuff.

We can't be here, I got we gotta go to another thing. Don't tell people that don't actually they will be here, to be here. That'll be here.

Every huge Brian and a fan, huge Daniel and one fun Really that's awesome that you're gonna get to to talk to him and so again, thank you.

Justin we're gonna hang out. Uh, the bar is open for a little while if you like, if you like to hop Okay, cool, I was yeah, I was just trying to push that one. Yeah, that's great if I say it loud enough, big big thanks of course to Scott and Eric. Let's have a hand Yay.

We got Garth up in the booth here. We got Mary.

We got Mary l who else we got up there whilst.

We got up there, Cody, we got Tandy. Oh, we got so many cute amazing that helped out. They just work here in her cool.

We got you.

You're Matt, my name's Matt. We got you to me, no hright, we got Scott.

We got Eric Eric sounds.

I got a great band on Sports Code And if you're into a weird ambient.

Music, you should talk to him and buy one of his records.

And thank you guys so much for being.

Called me Ben.

Thank you so much.

Folks.

We'll see you soon.

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