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 iHeartRadio.
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nolan.
They called me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. We're gonna do something a little different this evening. We got that big Friday energy that BFE and we wanted to do a
thought experiment. I think it's fair to say that we as well, like all of us recording this evening and all of us listening at home, we're all fans of the idea of psychic powers, right, I'd be absolutely.
I mean, I think some of us would go so far as to say it's likely in the world to some degree. It's a what do you call it? A spectrum? I think that exists in terms of at least this is where I land on it with the human mind is capable of beyond maybe the stuff that's on the label.
Well, I think about the world's fascination with psychic powers, and immediately to mind comes Stranger Things, and think about the popularity of that show. But then that was twenty sixteen or maybe twenty seventeen, I don't know, it was a while ago, right, but just how popular that show became, and you could argue all these reasons of why the show is popular and the nostalgia and all that stuff.
I think at the heart of it is this like nebulous psychic powers thing that you get to discover when you watch that.
Show, right, similar to Firestarter novel Twisted Fires, which is clearly your president for stranger Things, I think, and I oh yeah, yeah.
And also I mean, just like even back to the X Men and folks like Professor Xavior, who are essentially a psychic weapon that is on the side of the United States and he has like cerebros giant supercomputer that he can manipulate and control matter. And honestly, my favorite depiction of that kind of stuff that is Professor x adjacent is Legion, the show on Effects, which is like about literally trying to keep these psychic weapons under wraps and keep them from like exploding, you.
Know, and that mythology is great because he is Charles Xavier's right.
I think it's a badass. I love that actor too, by the.
Way, And the reason why I bring up Stranger Things specifically is because it is a group of people trying to harness that form as a weapon to weaponize whatever that thing is that we call esp.
Yeah, so let's imagine then that this is all real Tonight's thought experiment, as in, yeah, a world where some people can hear the thoughts of other living things, or can conduct precognition, project their minds across space and time, and you know, astral travel, remote viewing, clear matter. Yeah, telekinesis, psychokinesis, pyrokinesis, and of course obviously psychometry, the power most notably wielded by Jeff Goldbloom in the smash nineteen eighty cinematic masterpiece Vibes.
I was gonna say greg kinesis, referring to the actor Greg Kinnear because that.
Oh, okay, I do things.
I like the idea like you can push the Gregs, only the Gregs, Gary Senesis. That's such a that's such a Charlie Dave power too. He's like, I push all the Gregs.
I just imagine those guys like, do it as an interview or something real important, and then somebody's on the other side of their screen.
It's psych with their hand.
Up and let's get meta with it. What about canisius cansis.
A million percent got you can never forget Canisis canisis right.
It's real kinesthetic. That's what we're going for.
Boom, you nailed it, h Mike Droppindean.
Jeez, well, we are responding to a wonderful message from our fellow conspiracy realist Joe in our weekly listener mail program. Joe asked us a question that just sent us down a rabbit hole, which was the following, did world governments ever take psychic powers? Seriously? If they did experiment with psychic powers, would they not also evolve countermeasures to protect themselves?
Sh I got all of us going, man, the moment that came in. I think we discussed it on a Strange News briefly, but like, oh man, what a what a blessing it is to have like a playground to romp in this thought experiment for an evening.
I can't wait to get into this.
Oh yeah, but we do have to wait though, because this is our cold open. Yeah, yep, here are the facts. Longtime listeners, we do know the first part of Joe's question. Multiple governments have in the past experimented with the idea of psychic powers in one degree or another. Matt, we're talking off air and you know this as well. One of our a decade plus old episode is entirely about Russian or Soviet I should say, investigations into this for
Americans in the crowd this evening. The most notable example of government funded psychic research is the Stargate Project.
Yes, and right before we jumped on super producer Tennessee Palell Dylan, he told us that he just reread The Men Who Sterry Goats, which is based on the Stargate Project.
Yes, excellent two thousand and four book, and folks, the goats are largely okay, just if there's any sensitivity. Also later adapted into a film, but very much based on a real thing. And it might sound whack a doo, but let's learn some more, right. I think that's the first part of answering Joe's question. What is the Stargate Project? It is not based on the film Stargate.
Oh it was?
I do too.
Man.
I rewatched that.
And it's just.
Terrible but also great.
It's great the way the vibes is great.
Yeah.
Who was the main guy? Was it? Kurt Russell?
Kurt Russell is in the original stay right of the Thing Fame.
You know, James Spader.
I do like, he's great in the office.
But also the dude from the Crying Game, right, the big twist in the Crying Game it plays the raw, the kind of overlord, big bad if I'm not mistaken in the film.
Yeah. Unfortunately, the Stargate Project in the real life, the United States never did nail an ancient alien thing depending on who you ask, right, But it was a real army unit created in secret in nineteen seventy seven in Maryland. It was run by our friends at the DIA Defense Intelligence Agency. It officially ran until nineteen ninety five, when
it was both declassified and terminated. If you are a voter in the US at that time who's very concerned about government waste, this is a real rug pool because they say, hey, guess what, For a minute, we wondered if psychic powers are real. Now we spent millions of dollars on it, but don't worry we're not doing that anymore.
And it was super cool. It was like really cool when we were doing it.
I bringing up every time we talk.
I think one of my favorite memories of the show and episodes that anyone should revisit is when we spoke to Russell Targ about his participation in training operatives, you know, within the CIA to Astral project and to hone pre
existing psychic abilities. And it was the first time where I think I personally had spent time speaking with someone who comes from a purely academic background and yet has this incredible crossover where he straddles the world of academia and the world of kind of the unknown in a very Molder esque kind of way. I really have a lot of respect for that guy.
Tremendous individual. Yeah, do check out that interview, because you know, somebody understands something when they're able to explain it simply. Yeah, right, And that I think is the art of high thought, and Russell Targ is simply amazing. That's one of the ones I think know that we have both gone back and listened to just for funzies. Absolutely, I'm driving somewhere and I want to I want to I actually, I fast forward past the parts where I'm talking actually.
Get to.
Yeah, great hair too. I think I've mentioned this as well.
Forgive me for being redundant, but gotta be the influence for the design of the character of a gun Spangler and in the Ghostbusters universe.
And we're saying this to establish again the reality of this. Regardless of how you feel about psychic powers or an esp spectrum, we do know that governments and very very intelligent people were also interested in this concept. Stargate focused on remote viewing. Remote viewing is the idea that certain human individuals may be able to non physically transport their
consciousness across vast distances or even through time. You know, there were some very fascinating sessions or remote viewing sessions where people visited Mars right and described things in detail there.
But one of those, if you want to listen to.
It, Oh, yes, that's right, created a.
Remote viewing session from this project where someone got to go to Mars in the past and it looked a lot like Earth with giant megalithic structures, and then they were brought back. Oh, and they also encountered shadow creatures of some sorts that were exiting the planet because the planet was dying, and you.
Did such kick ass sound design on that one man.
It was a group effort that made something special, I.
Think, and one day hopefully we'll get to Mars physically as long as they start Project Stargate back up. This project was as wild as it sounds. This project was pretty small in the grand scheme of things, like when you think of other experimental projects the world governments do I think at the at the height there were maybe something like fifteen to twenty individuals who are considered, as
you said, no operatives. But one thing that a lot of people miss when we talk about this is the unit the Stargate project was neither unique nor the first of its type. It was a culmination of a bunch of other similar things that have awesome names.
A flame grilled whopper. No, it was literally called grill.
Flame, which is safe.
Yeah, yeah, it really just makes me think of those sweet, sweet grill lines. Yeah, sun Streak Stargate, like we said, which was kind of became the catch all for all of these gondola wish that's like, that's someone that's.
Really hankering for a vacation to Venice. They've got that Gondola wish.
Caribbean Suction exactly.
Caribbean Suction would be a great name for an op.
And also scan It yeah, scan It yeah, Scannon Yeah.
They all came together in nineteen ninety one and sort of a wu tang of weird government investigations.
Seemingly picking the least objectively bad name of the bunch to go with.
Right.
I can't believe you're anti Gondola Wish.
Sorry, man, Gondola Wishes. I just want to know more because these these feel like superhero names or something, right, Like you're trying to create a weapon that is specifically grill flame or.
Grill Flame is a superhero spokesperson for a grill company.
But I mean, I'm looking at it thinking about some of the types of powers. You know, you can imagine that the project was attempting to harness and build and you know, I don't know, I'm super into it. Scan It to me just feels like someone that someone or a group of people that they're trying to train to be able to scan literally scan, maybe even like senators.
Like the film Scanners. You'll recall the ta is all like their only power was making people's heads exploded.
Maybe they could also just kind of immobilize them, but that the scanners in the Cronenberg film are kind of these like covert operatives.
Yeah, because you can see the vast opportunity posed if this stuff worked at all. And you get to a philosophical dilemma too, because concurrently, even before this, throughout the Cold War, Soviet forces and to a degree the Chinese government as well as several other governments, were investigating these alleged abilities, and each did in turn put a degree of funding into this investigation. In fact, you can argue that the paranormal arms race was largely ignited by Soviet
intro in a individual named Nina Kuligina. And this is someone we've talked about in the past, but she was considered to be side capable espionage asset. This was all very controversial. Again, it sounds nuts to hear tax dollars and government attention or getting poured into stuff that modern
science still doesn't really agree upon. But we have to remember, man, it doesn't sound as nuts when you consider all the other strange things that governments have tried to do, Like, hey, can we turn bats into bombs?
Yeah?
You know, cats go places. What if we mic them up through surgery?
Dude, can we use gain of function research to put HIV stuff into this coronavirus?
I was wondering the same thing.
Man, Sorry, a little too real. Yeah, that actually happened.
There's also the idea of the increasingly acme level cartoonish concepts about how to discredit or assassinate Fidel Castro and other dictators. What if we pipe LSD into the recording studio and hope he just sounds weird, and then everybody will be like boom right exactly. You know, it's like that old Internet meme where it's step one, step two,
question mark, step three profit. But I don't know. It seems like if we put ourselves in the shoes of the world's war makers past and present, then we understand that dilemma they have to address. You know, an idea might sound bonkers, but what if other forces take it seriously? And what if they figure out there is some sand to it? And now, because we were dismissive, we are pushed to a reactionary position, which you never want to
be in. We have a defense gap, and then you know, the same people who refuse to let us investigate in the first place, are calling us to Congress and asking why we didn't figure this out earlier. It's a dangerous game.
While we're all under some kind of esp attack, trying to have a hearing.
And everybody's rubbing their temples, you know what I mean. That means it's necessary right to at least get something to the drawing board stage, even if all we figure out is that something doesn't work. So like the cats By experiment turned out not to work, but they had to know that it wouldn't work because if it did, us forces were worried that there would be a swell of Soviet cats invading your alleyways.
Yeah, and where your mind?
I mean, it's a can we sit here and talk about psychotronics just for a second, because I just rewatched the video that we made in January twenty fourteen, and guys, I forgot some of this stuff.
Ben.
You found a paper in your research from a guy named Serge Kernback titled Unconventional Research in USSR and Russia, and we went through that and just broke down some of the research there. I forgot that the Soviet research into ESP powers in general, and like the weird science of it all goes back to nineteen seventeen, so like way way back before, there was this fight between you know, hegemonic powers of the US and the USSR, and they
were interested in it. They were creating all kinds of things, including almost a belief system, a science pseudoscience belief system in this unknown energy that's it's vaguely defined, but this energy that they are researching that can have an effect
somehow on the nucleus of a hydrogen atom. And that's the thought of how whatever these powers that are occurring, again vaguely defined, they have effects on the actual hydrogen atoms within human bodies and animal bodies and within you know, walls, within stuff like that, and that's how you actually are creating the things like the powers we define telekinesis, power, kinesis,
all that stuff. It's just somehow this unknown power. And they they even built ben You've you found something about specific devices they were building that could like harness this.
Power that they believed.
Yes, that is very important, but still there was money, as you're we're talking about here, being pumped into this stuff for decades and well it's likely turned into centuries, but it you know, supposedly ended around the same time the US decided to end their research into stuff allegedly.
IM all right, we'll get to it, but I like all of us questioned that. I mean, you can hear us with our italics when we say officially, I think it's pretty clear. But yeah, perhaps this Shenane is afoot again. And so we know that budgets are always a sensitive issue in government affairs, and there are you know, no government really is a monolith. There are different departments what we call stakeholders with competing interests. They're always in turf wars.
They all want a bigger slice of the same financial pie. And that means a lot of things get mothballed at any point in their evolution, and they're not really Most of the stuff that goes to the drawing board stage and languishes in the military industrial complex of production. Hell, most of it is pretty mundane, you know, and they just say, okay, well we thought this would be a better coding for a gas tank, but we're done with that. And yah.
Yeah.
Recently in the news there stories think we're gonna talk about them pretty soon in an episode, but stories about how major government organizations like FEMA are running out of funding and stuff like that, and you think about, like, FEMA's pretty important, no matter how you feel about FEMA emergency response, especially after a hurricane or something crazy important. But then you can also imagine why everybody thinks, why would you spend a single taxpayer's dollar on this nuttery.
Right when there are real world problems? Right, you know, we could do things like address illiteracy or work for water safety, maybe build back some of those bridges before they inevitably collapse. But no, you have someone who persuaded you they can kill a frog's heart with their mind.
God, it'll be cool.
I mean, that'd be awful for the frog.
Yeah, it's not great for the frog. But that's what Nina to the Soviet interest in this, That's what Nina Coleigina did. At least she convinced people that she was able to do one of the most valuable things. Who would want a side capable operative to do, which is to without physical interference, kill someone stopping cardiac function? Right, You don't need a gene Gray level psychic or telequen
who can move an ABRAMS tank. You need someone who can just stand in the back of the crowd during the speech and just close that artery and there would be.
No signature for anything like that. There would be no way to detect it. Like the reality of something like that existing would be an absolute national security nightmare.
Yep.
And this is we're outlying the very real motivations behind things like Stargate, at least for you know, JASOK and then those sorts of decision makers. But Stargate did end officially, primarily do to a CIA report in the mid nineteen nineties. And the CIA report said, look, this never generated any useful intelligence for us. A lot of it was vague, you know, and we love a good story, but we
can't move on just playing vibes. Shut it down. Yeah, which is funny because the you know, there have been equally out there kind of initiatives by all sorts of government agencies.
Shutting down the X files guys shut it down.
Yeah.
And this was the Defense Intelligence Agency back in the day, right, So like the overarching Defense intelligence thing. It does make me wonder if somebody smaller within that organization could then raise a hand and say, well, actually we have a little bit of a budget for a thing.
So sabrella ed under something else. Perhaps they're kind of somewhere in the basement.
Yah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
In the closed down subway in the heart of the Pentagon.
Oh, where the turtles become teenagers and learn to kana exactly.
Uh, and they're still teenagers.
They just wanted a childhood, guys, come.
On, they just man. Splinter what a father figure, you know.
I don't know.
Splinter was probably bad. I mean, Shredder was put them to work, guys.
Splinter put those those kids to work.
It was but a SIMPI it was. It was a tough love, dude. I respect that.
Okay, Okay, you must work together.
So d I A runs this. It's under the auspice of d I A. And the CIA report is really what puts the nail in the coffin of funding. And this is a high level summary of the facts, but it takes us further through the rabbit hole. For tonight's experiment, Fellow conspiracy realist, let's ask what would happen if things like Stargate did continue. If psychic powers were agreed to
be a genuine, reproducible, provable aspect of military function. Wouldn't governments want to develop both offensive and defensive capabilities in a world with slippery telepaths, assassin telequens, roaming astral spies. Day one is discovering it. Day two and the next decade is figuring out how to protect yourself from what you have discovered.
Ooh, but how do you do that if it's even real?
I mean, did they even really discover it?
If you're not willing to put money into making the offense, who's putting money.
Into the defense?
Wheels within wheels, why don't we take a quick break and hear word from our sponsor and then dive right into these murky psychic waters.
Here's where it gets crazy. All right, again, this is a thought experiment. So we are we are playing a game, and we're thinking through this together. Play along with us at home, by all means sure, yes, yeah, getting our heads. I also think it would be without really good training. I think it would be terrible to be a telepath.
Oh yeah, you sneeze and you know, set your house on fire.
Right, people don't edit their inner thoughts. Yeah right, so you'd be walking around It's like you would live in Twitter and you can't log off.
Yeah, you'd have to talk about distance, right, how far away? Can I intercept messages as telepath and you just have to isolate yourself or get one of those metal helmets you know?
Also, is it language dependent? Like if you're a telepath and you can hear people's thoughts, but you're and you don't speak Cantonese or Mandarin, then be useless.
It would also be would.
Be galling to have your head full of like stuff you couldn't even understand. I mean, you know one theory about folks experiencing perhaps visions, you know, people like Joan of Arc. In addition to the idea that they likely were experiencing some form of undiagnosed mental illness, perhaps there is the possibility that these were folks who were interpreting messages from others those around them, and then ascribing those
two being messages from the divine. But Matt, you you bring up something that never really occurred to me, the idea of it being a distance based thing. I guess you first have to understand the mechanism of it all to really understand how distance might play a part in such a such an exchange.
Yeah, is it a wave or is it a particle?
Man? Or is just a vibe?
I think it's is it an emanation of energy? Is it somehow quantum super positioning, it's yeah, it's a whole bag of badgers. So the first, the first countermeasure answer is the most simplistic, which makes it the most reliable. It is also by far the most brutal suite of solutions.
If you have individuals capable of such extraordinary feats, you have to build in a method of controlling them so that you can prevent because now they're humans as weapons, so you've got to stop them from going rogue, and you have to be able to by hook or by crook, make sure they cannot be turned against you.
Or if that is not on the table, you have to neutralize them, whether that be by keeping them in some sort of cell that perhaps has lead walls or whatever it might be that would prevent those kind of signals from getting in or out.
Or if you really get to the point where they're just an absolute.
Liability, perhaps perhaps execution would be on the tube.
I think it's the old suicide squad method, with an explosive charge embedded in the net, you know, or whatever.
Yeah, Yeah, a kill switch is unfortunately the most one of the most plausible things. I mean, before you get to that, I think you should do that from day one. And for being honest, before you get to that, you we have to look at precedent. How did various governments
and regimes control scientists in the past. They did it not necessarily through threatening the scientists, but by exercising continual monitoring of their loved ones and the scientist activity, and then extorting the scientists to you know, make them play ball, by not threatening them but threatening their children.
That's gross, is that the old?
Hey, we saw your spouse and your children at the park the other day. They looked great. That those blue pants on your daughter just they're gray? And where did you buy those?
Just an envelope with a with a picture of your kid at a playground?
Yeah, yeah, be a shame if something happened to your mint condition Ken Griffy Junior rookie card. If you don't have any kids, just.
A baseball garden enthusiasts, And it wouldn't be any different with esp capable humans. As a matter of fact, you probably also want to do some behavioral modeling. Be very diplomatic on that one, but the real term is brainwashing. And then you know, we mentioned you want to build in a kill switch. The most simple is a remotely activated device that can cause fatal brain trauma or interfere with the circulatory system, an evil version of a pacemaker.
Keep him away from microwaves. You can see the future, but he can't eat hungry man.
Another thing you see too a lot of times is folks kind of being exposed to some of the things we might think of as torture mechanisms, like sleep deprivation or sensory overload, where they've got like TV screens surrounding them in three hundred and sixty degrees and like death metal blasting at all times because it's screened, you know, theoretically would scramble their equipment in a way that would not allow them to focus and then exercise their powers.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good point too, because this series of unique capabilities would still only be one part of the person entire and we know very well the vulnerabilities of the human mind and body. So there's also there's also another nasty thing. This has happened before in different spheres.
You could also get them hooked on a chemical of some sort, exactly on a substance that they are reliant upon you for you know, and that's that's terrible because then we have someone who is you know, maybe capable of remote viewing, but they have also been turned into a junkie as a matter of national security, God forbid.
Then they escape from the facility and they are crazed because of addiction and then lashing out. And can you imagine someone going through withdrawals chemically who also is an extremely powerful psychic with telegenetic abilities.
This is like the whole compound v thing.
Right, yeah, yeah, compound view from the voice. And then also ideally, and we're just being honest here, you would want withdrawal from that substance to be fatal, ah, so that they would have to keep coming back to you. You would chemically assure their loyalty. Very dirty thing and super messy. To your point, Noel, I don't think that's a reliable one. But there's another point you made that I think is key here, the idea of the padded room.
The second countermeasure is material science. Right, if astral travel is real, to that earlier question you were talking about, Matt, what sort of energy defines the traveling mind? Is it a force that emanates from a physical location. Is it something quantum and interacting in dimensions and time and space
in a way that we don't understand. If everything is indeed energy, then figuring out this kind of energy the platform or the medium is key because we know certain materials can block the passage of different types of energy. Shout out to our Timfoil episode.
Yeah, well I think we figured it out recently from the story you brought to us, Noel. The was that time crystal thing or was the.
Crystal memory crystal?
Yeah, the memory crystal sub five D baby, Yeah, you make some kind of five D prison yikes?
No, was it? Didn't that play a part in one of the Christopher Reves Superman movies?
Wasn't there like some yeah yeah, yeah, that's where they put gen that's right, yes, thank you.
Yeah, but it's like really bad CGI kind of trapezoidal box, right, okay?
And it was in general, he was, and check it. I'm not up to date on Kryptonian chain of commands him. Yeah, that's right, that's right.
Need a fifth dimensional distortion field chamber.
I like it. I love it. Let's go star trek with it, you know, whenever they need some dius x macana. They just get the most science y sounding words and yes, right, so we without getting to sciencey word science. Wow, still learning English, folks. A Faraday cage is a real thing. It can create a reliable barrier against electromagnetic radiation. Shout out to our buddy Michael Faraday back in the eighteen hundreds who figured this out. That's it's pretty simple principle
that candidly I would have never figured out. So thank you again, Michael.
Yeah, well, it's incredible because again we talk about this energy matter everything it exists in, sometimes in particle forms, sometimes a waveform, as science has shown us, and waves are everything, right, They're just on different frequencies. The frequency is how close together the wave actually is. And then what's the other thing looking at you know, maybe talking about sound like the that's frequency.
And then amplitude.
Amplitude Okay, those are the two major things you would have to control for because those waves constitute everything from the lowest possible sound you can make, and then you keep going up and you get into the light range, right, and then you keep going up and then you get into all kinds of other rays and things like that. If you can control for those waves and not allow them to exit or enter a space. Then you win when it comes to controlling basically any energy that can come in or escape.
Yeah, build a wall one hundred percent.
But once again, that pre suppo is that we understand the mechanism of executing these type of abilities, Like if it's something that's sciency, you know, or is this something that's well beyond the realm of science that we can fully understand. Is this stuff, like you said, Ben in some way superposition based or or beamed in and bounced off of other things?
I mean, you know what I mean, Like I just yeah, we just don't know.
I love the idea that they finally they finally figure it out, because it's always the academics who saved the day. I love the idea that they try all this material science to protect information from astral travelers, and then out of nowhere comes in this seventy some year old retired professor and he has figured out the right Sumerian derived sigils. Yes, so you have to paint on the inside of the wall, and now that's our skiff.
That's why I think we all love stuff like hell Boy and like the League of Extraordinary gentlemen, because it's sort of like these crews that are based they're working for the government, but they understand the magic is real and they wield you know, appropriate countermeasures, you know, to deal with the infernal forces.
Where sciences doesn't have a role.
You know, I love it. I love it. I'm a government exorcist, you know what I mean. I look getting rid of these demons and infernal powers. It's just a job. I'm running the clock down for my pension. Every day is Monday when you deal with the devil.
Right there are clergy, you know, on payroll for the government.
I imagine do you can't you imagine that somewhere in a program of black op whatever.
So maybe we're not aware of they do have exorcists on staff.
It's it's a really cool question. And I love the idea to your bpr D hell boy reference. But I think it depends on you know what, It depends on the ideology or the spiritual school of thought or the exorcism, because if it's the Western idea of exorcism as we recognize it today, then it has to be approved by the Catholic Church. Right. Well, we know the veticant definitely has an exorcist squad.
Maybe they just sub it out, you know, when they just reach out to third party or to the Catholic church.
It's a contractors. Yeah, we got some exorcists, but they're from Halliburn exactly.
Hmmm.
I want to bring up another thing in the material science world that again comes from a fictional space, from the video game Control and it makes me think of the HR or the Hadron resonance amplifiers, which are mobile devices like a backpack that somebody would wear that then sends out a signal, almost creating a signal bubble for whoever's wearing it that prevents these bad waves whatever they could be, from entering that bubble.
Yeah.
No, that's a really good call. I totally forgot about that. Yes, that makes sense.
It's almost the way sound canceling headphones work or stuff like that. You you basically take in the signal or you receive a signal and you flip it and when you play that signal out as an incoming signal is hitting you, it can't the waves cancel each other out.
Yeah, there's signal interference you could you could create and that's These concepts still are somewhat similar to the idea of Faraday cage. Right, you're building a barrier, how do you build it? A Faraday cage is like a raincoat, but for certain types of invisible energy instead of rain. And what we're talking about here, actually, I think we're doing a very good job with this thought experiment, and I think we're being pretty reasonable. I got a little
out there with Samerian academia, and that's my bad. But it would We had to do it. We had to do it. And if you like, so what we're talking about is, how would you build a skiff scif? How would you side proof something? How would you make a senative compartmented information facility that is able to stop psychic
powers and astral travelers? I mean that's the other thing too, Like what I love about when you're pointing out control, we have to ask is it possible to train people or build machines that can detect these kind of reconna tempts, you know, like having someone round this. This is the weirdest thing. Okay, this is like, uh, this is so surreal.
But if this was possible, you would build the you build the room right to protect your secrets and you get to this really silly situation where you end up with three guys who are trained to do the vibe check and they just sleep and sh yeah hopefully, I know. Would you want to be trapped in a room with Jeff Goldblum twenty four to seven right off of you.
That's his superpower.
He's got the power to move you. Yeah, So this would mean you'd have to have twenty four to seven monitoring, and if if it was some kind of capability that was unique to certain human brains, you would have to find like three of those people and just keep them in that room or in that proximity where they could somehow tell you if someone's wrong. And then you would need to train or harden individuals even if they're not
side capable against possible interference. You know, you have to have and sometimes I think under the Hickman run of X Men they talk about this. You would have to have some kind of protocol or attempt to have it embedded in the mind so that you could detect when someone got when someone pinged you, and you would have maybe some kind of mantra that you repeat, like name, rank and serial number, you know, the quick brown fox jumps over the dog. Yeah, is that the one one
that uses all the letters of the letters? Yeah, you would have to have something like that. I don't know if that would even work. I'm getting a little spooped out thinking about it.
Obviously, Well, I think you would have to have that, and just going back to our earlier discussion when researching the offensive capabilities versus the defensive capabilities, I think it would have any of that research. I know we don't have official documentation for a lot of it, or it's heavily redacted. When it comes to the psychotronics stuff that so the Union was doing, or the start some of the Stargate stuff that we were doing, a lot of it still has that lovely black.
Marker across it.
But I imagine that there are there are in tandem projects that are solely based on what you're talking about. Ben individuals that essentially become the beacon that ends up getting
the ping when the signal comes in. Right, they can just have that sixth sense thing something's off, something's happening, and it wouldn't have to be as strong as oh, there's a person in Wisconsin and they are It would just be something's off and it's like shut it down mode, like you're talking about, everybody reverts back to whatever that default thing is.
That intuition, right weaponized, and we do know, you know, it leads us to another thing, the concept that some people have electromagnetic sensitivity right explored and better call Saul, perhaps most famously recently, which.
Is not fully accepted or understood by science.
Right, right, We do know that there has been also, I think we talked about this in the past, there's been a surprising amount of government sponsored research into the concept of intuition, right into the concept of the internal vibe check. And and that gets us to another answer for our pal Joe, another countermeasure that would inevitably come into play, and we have returned so speaking of monitoring.
The third thing, and we've been talking about this too, right, you would want predictive ability, not quite the same as telling the future. You would want intense knowledge about the origin, the current location, and the capabilities of every single side capable person on the planet.
So it'd be a registry or some kind or you know, I mean serious database, likely robust tracking monitoring. You know, Privacy would be out the window. And that's you know, honestly, that is the world that is depicted in things like X Men. You know, the idea of the mutant registry and this like backlash and.
Persecution of folks seen to have mutant abilities.
Dude, dude, can I bring some of the other I just thought about guys.
Yes, Yes, I just.
Imagined an iron Man's style figure based on existing directed energy weapons that we talked about in twenty fourteen. By the way, the EHF were extremely high frequency wave weapons that were that were developed, like the active denial system. Imagine the way bluetooth technology and miniaturization of extremely good
speakers has evolved. Now, imagine somebody that on their hands have like directed speakers in the palm of their hand to where they could at any time like push their hand out towards a crowd of people, and this active denial system is emanating from the palm of their hands, and then you could but it wouldn't affect the user because of the directional nature of it, and then you could just bring it right back in ulcer ray.
Basically, Yeah, this would be a deterrent mechanism in and of itself, not some sort of like device designed to enhance a pre existing ability.
I'm imagine.
Yeah, well, yeah, I'm imagining it's a it's almost like creating a specter of someone like you're in a conflict zone or something, and then some some person just like comes out of nowhere and just aims their hand at you, and you don't see a speaker on their hand. You just see them raise their hand at you, and then your brain starts to hurt.
I hope it's good. I hope when the side effects is a weird, silly sound, like you see the hand and then you hear yeah, they spent millions of dollars building this.
And your eyes turn into like spirals.
Yeah, they're like, we can't get rid of the sound.
You could build in a terrifying sound que that plays at the same time that the high frequency sounds are playing, and you would just you could terrify talk about terrorism.
Cheez Okay, sorry, just had that thought.
Yeah, it's perfect thought.
It always reminds me of stuff like that.
Reminds me of that scene in Back to the Future where Marty dresses up like the spaceman from another time, you know, wearing like a hazmat suit and he just puts the headphones on, uh George McFly's ears and then presses play on the walkmen, and he's like, you like, it's bad to be like brain scram because he's never heard heavy metal before.
You know.
And this this gets into some really deep water. The registry idea is dangerous. Yes, Historically registries have a lot of danger to them. You would want to take all the data about any known side capable individual as much as you can get, like figure out when and how they poop, right, and then run that algorithm or run that run pattern recognition through some massive database and find
anything that these people might have in common. Is it maybe a specific genomic expression, like how most people with blue eyes can trace their origin back to a single mutation. Is it, yes, something like that. Is there an injury, an event, perhaps a specific type of neurological condition that increases the likelihood of this functionality?
Is it the surge intake when they were in their adolescent.
We sure hope, so, we sure hope so, but yeah, you know, the idea, like going back to that excellent example about prophetic figures like Joan of Arc for instance, was there something that could be mistaken for epilepsy if you don't look closely enough, some kind of you know, a traumatic brain injury, is there, Like, imagine if the right kind of concussion gives you some ability, just like in the Stephen King novel The Dead Zone where the guy comes back and has psychometry.
Dude, or even self reporting of hearing voices or something like that. You know, just something small that then becomes a Oh, that's something we can actually track.
Right, we found a bread crumb, and that's what you're searching for. And then the next question is is it possible to reliably reproduce those factors? And you know, people would experiment with this if there was a specific type of brain injury or combine with you nomic expression that did the right thing. Would you, for the greater good, subject you know, children or civilians to traumatic brain injury in search of growing your own telepath squad.
The creepy and messed up answer is somebody would. Absolutely somebody would.
Somebody are thinking about it.
Yeah, somebody me. I mean, that's the it's like the flying car idea. Also, you would want to control those factors if you can. You would want to prevent that from happening unless you knew about it. Just like that line from a Blood Meridian, all that exists without my knowledge, exists without my consent, man, I have all the way three.
Yeah, but I've been watching a lot of YouTube video essays about The Judge in particular, and I need to dig into that novel.
It seems like an absolutely horrifying specimen.
I think there was going to be a film adaptation at some point.
That's what a lot of the videos are about, about how unfilmable it is because the way it's written is in this sweeping biblical language with very little punctuation and like very little quotation marks, so you don't even know if this is an internal monologue or a character speaking. And it's part of Corman McCarthy's whole deal. But like, yeah, it seems like it'd be a tricky one to adapt.
Yeah, paigeing the Cohen brothers right, they're the guys for the job. Absolutely, This this idea that you could control or reproduce or prevent these factors that lead to a side capable person not even an operative. It reminds us a lot of the old pickle about the flying car. A flying car is a great idea as long as you're the only person who has a flying car. If everybody has a flying car, it's a nightmare, it's chaos.
It'd be real hard to paint a bunch of lines in the sky somehow.
Well, we'll get there, I'm confident. Yeah, let's just save the sky.
Just perpetual drones that form like lanes that you can fly in.
And since multiple flying cars are a disaster, just like multiple SI capable operatives, you don't want anybody else up there in the proverbial air with you. And if you find them without hesitation, you swat them down, you remove them from the sky.
I know this episode is full of fictional references, but it reminds me of Doctor Sleep and whatever that group is that goes in and tries to take out all the people that have the shining or.
Yeah that rose the hat. Yeah.
I liked that book quite a lot, and I thought the movie by Mike Flanagan was a lot of fun, and I like the way it depicted the shining stuff. I thought it was real digue tool that steam, Well, steam is what they want, Yeah, exactly.
But it ultimately just makes sense that you would want to eliminate anybody that could potentially have this capability.
Yeah, and then the spoilers, folks, Doctor Sleep is great. But in the doctor's sleep example three two one spoilers, there's an added incentive, right, They're not just preventing the growth of rivals, it also consuming them provides power.
Yep.
So what if you could eat a sole or eat a mind.
What if that's what's going on here?
Man?
But if that's it, you get the psychic berry out the inside of their head, and now you've got more berries.
There we go. That's basic economics, you know what I mean, it's berry economics. I mean, this sounds dystopian, but if we look at the real world, we see that there are plenty of terrifying precedents for all the stuff we've outlined. In terms of countermeasures. Much of what we've discussed tonight applies one to one with nuclear weaponry. Like, yeah, a nuclear weapon is cool as long as I'm the only guy who has one. Yep.
See you see it all the time.
No, it's so true, and it mirrors. It's weird that it mirrors the US USSR whole conflicts Cold war thing in the very same way.
It's very same motivations.
Yeah, I mean, I guess you know. On an optimistic note, we could say there are more peaceful options if you are part of some covert program to do any of the stuff that we're talking about. You could also try international agreements. You know, you could try to make some kind of regime of norms and laws and policies to prevent sigh powered disaster. You know, people did it kind of with nuclear agreements. It worked for a little bit.
Well yeah, Voldemort was like, yeah, I know, we got like norms and treaties and stuff, but I'm Voldemort.
I don't care about any of that.
Hey, guys, it's me Voldemort. Earlier I told you I've been doing that, right.
I've been stealing it. Ben, I'm not gonna lie in my my normal day to day.
Life, I say from earlier all the time. Apropos. Yeah, it's fun.
It works because if you're ever in a situation well anyway, yeah, that's a different that's a different game.
As you say, Ben, we do tend to get into situations here on stuff they don't get into.
Yeah, yes, sir, and there's no escaping it. We were talking about this earlier. Humans do not know most things, and Matt, I remember very very vividly when you said that, and I said, that's not a ding. There are just a lot of things to know. We don't know most of them, but we know there is no reliable evidence of psychic powers at the level that we see in
all the beautiful fiction and film we've made. But we have argued in the past, and I think with a lot of validity, it is increasingly plausible that technology will create something like these capabilities in the real world, and sooner than many of us would like to think.
Right yeah, we're already seeing some of that stuff. We've talked about technologies in play right now and studies in play that are attempting to what transcribe and then represent dreams via brain wave function, and that's happening in a clinical setting and that's happening with up close technology right now. But the way stuff moves, things get smaller and further apart from whatever it is they're meant to manipulate, and I don't.
Know, maybe it's another handheld device, right because we know again, in a clinical setting, there are methods to read a person's thoughts and translate them, especially with visual imagery, like hook them up to the right equipment. Say, think of a case idea, and then the computer will show you a picture of the case idea they're thinking of.
Yeah, now you just need to get you know, individual users to wear things on their head for long periods of time that can scan those same brain waves, like oh, I don't know, some Apple earbuds.
Yeah, yeah, you know, shout out neurolink. Not everybody involved in those experiments has died a little bit of faint praise there. But then also to your very diplomatic thank you, sir, thank you, But to the earlier example about the handheld, like the economy of scale, right, the miniaturization the handheld aspect of this, you could have what's the old thing, like the right hand gives, the left hand takes. You get your repulsor ray in your right hand and then
your left hand. When you need to get intel from someone, all you have to do is put that palm on their head and then pull out what you need and then you know, boom, boom, scramble the eggs.
Yikes, you get both hands at once, goes in, scramble comes out.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's I mean, it's strange, but it is. It is such a great question. We can't thank you enough, Joe for introducing us to this concept.
It's fun for us, Joe, it's fun hopefully.
Yeah. Yeah. And guys, if you could have one psychic power, do you have a draft pick? Do you have one? You want to?
There's caveats though, right, because it's like, it'd be cool to be able to read people's thoughts, but not all the time and not with with no fill. That would be terrifying and Tantama would probably drive you mad. It'd be cool to have like the force esque power telekinesis.
Yet you Oh, I'll have to think of it.
No, not gonna let it happen. No opting out this time.
I I I said, like you, No, I agree anti telepathy. Telekinesis would be useful. It would depend telepathy would be useful again, I'm going back to Firestarter. You know, telepathy would be useful if you were able to push people in certain into certain actions. Right, that's a dangerous thing. I'm still thinking in terms of military capability. For sure, I think it. I like, I kind of like psychometry, but maybe that's too much.
What is that one again?
That's where you touch things and you know what happened in the past, So like you touch it a murder? I don't know, because that's kind of like telepathy.
It is.
You take that one, Okay, you go vibes. I'm gonna go directional mind reading that is switchable. You can turn it on or off. Then we become you guys, the three of us become detectives and all we do is interview subjects. So you just like touch the person, I read their mind. And Noel, what are you gonna do.
Bad cop? I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do, bad cop.
Just fire in your hand and you just stand there menacingly.
With fire or like some sort of bludget one of those truncheon type deals.
You know, yeah, yeah, oh do it like Skyrima Jack honjure a blackjack or spiritual Blackjack. That's a shout out to our pal Dylan Fagan.
I mean it almost makes me think of like what if you add, through some freak occurrence or whatever, maybe a past friendship, access to someone's social media account, and you are no longer friends with this person, but you still have that access. Wouldn't it be like really hard, really too tempting to not look. It's the same as like the power, How are you going to not use it? Even if you have the ability to shut it off? It seems like it would be just a really tricky, dangerous path to walk.
Yeah.
And the problem with paths of that nature is you don't often realize that you should have taken a different direction right until you're very far down the path. Yeah, and that's another question about path dependency, which we've talked about in the past. Maybe some of the things that we're discussing have in some version happened already. If so, for now, that's the stuff they don't want you to know. I am going to have to take some time and
really cogitate on this psychic power idea. But in the meantime, folks, we want to hear from you, what are the coolest psychic powers? What would be your suite of powers? If you want to do some really good character creation, give yourself a caveat too, you know what I mean. That's what makes people heroic is having some you know, like an achilles heel. You can read all the thoughts, but you can't speak all the languages. Right now, make it interesting.
Hit us up. We try to be easy to find online.
You can indeed find us online at the handle conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on Facebook, where we.
Have our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy.
Join the conversation, make some new conspiracy realist friends. We would love that for you and I think you would enjoy it. You can also find us at that handle on x fka, Twitter as well as YouTube, where we have video content galore for you to enjoy. On Instagram and TikTok. However, we are conspiracy stuff a show.
If you want to call us, you can call one eight three three st DWYTK. It's our voicemail system. When you call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if we can use your name and the message on the air. Got a specific request. If there are any occurrences that you've seen reported in the news overall of time that you think could have possibly been a covered up ESP event or ESP related event, call
us and tell us about that specifically. If you don't want to do that, or maybe you want to do that and send the link and some other stuff, why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back, can't wait to hear from you, and as a matter of fact. I'm getting I'm getting opinion. Jajune Us wrote in JIU join us out here in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.