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.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nol.
They called me Ben. We're 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. Welcome back to the show, fellow conspiracy realist. We might be embarking on a two part episode this week. We're not sure. We have a lot of thoughts about this. It's something pretty important to
all of us. We wanted to begin tonight's exploration with a question, do you believe in guardian angels or do it was someone who does.
Jeez, that is a big question, because it's like, you know, you could think of someone in your life who looks out for you as like a corporeal embodiment of the idea of a guardian angel, and you could certainly use that like as a stand in conversationally, like so and so my best friend is my real guardian angel. But then you have to think about it too from the kind of more spiritual side, and that's where things get a little trickier to kind of parse out for me.
Anyway, Yeah, Matt saved my life a couple of times.
Actually, same, same, same, you guys, same you guys. I I don't necessarily believe in an angel, right, which is an interesting part of the show, because the thing that would be described as an angel can be described and thought of in so many other ways, and it's depending on the lens.
Yeah. Yeah, the cultural framework is a huge deal. Is this just a a higher educational power? Is there a demon? Right? You know? Whether not a given deity is considered demonic or angelic kind of depends on the culture and the
way the Great Game of Telephone works out. It's weird, right, It's a question that is automatically divisive, because if you answer yes to the idea of guardian angels, then you're also required to say yes to a lot of other things, the presence of an afterlife, the concept of supernatural forces, and as we always say, your personal spiritual beliefs are your own. No one has ever had a spiritual belief that the rest of the world one hundred percent agrees with.
Oh, well, you know, and also, like I mean, we're talking about what one belief kind of then begets. Is if there is a guardian angel on one shoulder, like the classic cartoon example, is there also a demon on your other shoulder fighting against your best interests?
Yeah? Yeah? What What are the mechanics of a given spiritual system? Right? Is there some kind of new tone in relationship between good and evil such that an equal and opposite force shall always be generated? That's weird. I sound a little off base there, but we have to say this. The bulk of human science has yet to acknowledge an afterlife, much less the idea of purportedly spiritual guardians, or have they. We're doing a setup. That's a setup.
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
Here are the facts. Welcome to the story of the third Man syndrome. Sometimes also called a third man factor. The name is derived from a passage that ts Elliott wrote in his haunting poem The Wasteland, which also if you like good stuff, you should read it in full, but specifically third Man factor is inspired by this passage.
Who is the third who walks always beside you. When I count, there are only you and I together.
But when I look ahead up the white road, there was always another one walking beside.
You, gliding wrapped in a brown mantle, hooded. I do not know whether a man or a woman.
But who is that on the other side of you?
All right, because it's poetry, we're gonna do finger snaps instead of claps. Hey, good job ts.
Yeah, that's a beautiful poem. I've been you've You've mentioned that, or at least referenced that several times because it is a long poem, right, I think this is in like the fifth section of the poem. It's wonderful. I just reread it. I'm sure you guys did too.
It's just guys, I can't help but think of that footprints thing people talk about, you know, about Jesus with He's like he was standing walking alongside you all the time, and the other set of footprints when they went away with when he was carrying you. That's kind of I feel like reference this.
The Lord replied, my son, my precious child, I love you, and I would never leave you during your times of trial and suffering. When you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you exactly.
I don't want some dude carrying me around.
Hey, come on, man, he's yoked, man, he can he can pull it off.
It's okay, Yeah, it's uh. He's a classic persistence hunter. It just weird.
Uh.
This idea both a poem and the prayer that we're citing there, they describe a bizarre phenomena across time and culture. During traumatic experiences, human beings often report sensing an unseen presence, sometimes hearing a voice, sometimes walking or encountering something they think they do see a human stranger. Yet when this
third man appears, it is never a threat. It is a comforting in spe irene or helpful ally, and it only shows up at critical life or death moments, and afterwards the survivors often claim this thing, whatever it is, this helpful stranger, saved their life.
Yeah, that's really weird. And it's almost always like a human or a human like thing. That's why you get the angel, right, that's why you get that entity, that other entity, but is human like. So it's not I don't know, it's it's corporeal in some way and humanoid.
Yeah, yeah, this is There are so many stories about these occurrences with just with a couple of quotations there
you can see this date's deep back into history. One of the best books about this and shout out to our pal Dylan Fagan, there is the third Man factor, Surviving the Impossible by a guy named John Geiger, and in his book, which definitely should read if you're interested in this stuff, you'll see a litany of car helicopter playing crashes, people lost in the wilderness, people getting shot with firearms, other traumatic injuries. Whatever the case may be.
It appears that in any situation there are at least a handful of instances involving a mysterious presence that shows up at just the right time and then disappears once the danger is passed, and the survivors this is a
weird thing. The survivors are certain of what they've experienced, and they might ask family members, They might ask first responders, what happened to that person who pulled me from the fire, what happened to that person who led me out of the building on September eleventh, And the response is always there was no one there.
There's a perk you can get in one of the fallout games called the Mysterious Stranger Perk, where like this dude in a Fedora will come and like, you know, take out a bunch of the means that are coming for you and then vanish like Kaiser soose.
Oh yeah, I think that character has always got like a long coat on. Yeah, always shows up in the VATS system when you exactly that's.
What I'll ail the VAT system. Yeah.
Well, well, okay, So this book is fantastic and if you want to check out a video version of it, if you've got some time to hang out, there's I think it's called Idea City, a talk that John Geiger gave about this book and about the findings, and it's just great. You can look at up on YouTube right now.
You could also, if you're a little more pressed for time, there's a great primer interview he has on NPR with our buddy guy Roz. Guy. We haven't met, but we do have a parasocial relationship with you. Sorry, sorry, Bud, Welcome to the show. So one of the most famous documented examples about this As a matter of fact, we were talking about fair One of the things that likely informed ts Eliot was a guy named Sir Ernest Shackleton.
He was.
For anybody who's seen The Terror, I know we all love that novel series and that show. This guy Shackleton is in his prime around the time that Europe was sending a lot of people to all sorts of whack could do places. He was in a nineteen fourteen to nineteen seventeen Antarctic expedition and their boat, the Endurance, became trapped in ice for about two years. It kind of now, I hope this is in the hot take. It kind of sucked.
Yeah, oh boy, that would suck. So this is definitely the actual historical event that influenced The Terror, because that's that's what happens. They get like locked in ice and they begin to starve and run out of provisions and also lose their minds.
Unfortunately. Yeah, this was not a singular occurrence, so Simmons is kind of writing about a genre of bad stuff happening. When Shackleton and his crew get jammed up literally in the ice, he and two companions say, the only way we're going to make it out of here is if we take a very dangerous journey on foot. So they trek across mountain ranges where humans are not meant to be.
The humans have not been to right, there's no names for these things that we know of, well, at least he describes it in that way. I think like unnamed mountainous.
Yes, yeah, very lovecraftied the Mountains of Madness right right exactly.
And they go across glaciers and the whole thing is they're hoping, hoping against the odds that they can reach a whaling station in Stromness Bay. Somehow they survive. There's three of them, and after they survive, when they return to civilization, they unanimously credit their survival to an unidentified fourth traveler whom they all thought. They were all convinced this guy they did not know was with them every step of the way and was their guide, was telling them where to go and how.
To get there, basically encouraging them the entire way.
Right.
It's almost like it's the problem solving part of all of their minds where it went together into this fourth person and they just said, this is what we do, now go, you know, like that.
Kind of thing they so much shared between three people three moves.
But I mean, is the idea that this is some sort of collective delusion, This is some sort of product of ice madness.
This is the thing that haunts these explorers for the rest of their natural lives. As a matter of fact, we have a couple of quotations, one from Shackelford's seminal work on his expeditions, called simply south because you know it's Antarctica. This is kind of a long quotation, but I suggest we round robin it because it gives us a real sense of place.
When I look back at those days, I have no doubt that Providence guided us not only across the snowfields, but across the storm white Sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing place on South Georgia.
I know that during that long and racking march of thirty six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that there were four not three.
I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, balss I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.
Cream confessed to the same idea. One feels the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech in trying to describe things intangible. But a record of our journeys would be incomplete without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts.
And before we get to the next part, let's remember, let's acknowledge that during this particular era of exploration, it was not uncommon for authors to embellish, to judge up their stories a little bit so that they could sell books and do lectures more successfully. However, this case is different. It's not one of those, because, as our buddy indicates,
his companions one hundred percent unanimously agreed with him. In fact, one of them, Frank Worsley, who he just mentioned, he later went on to write something eerily similar.
He said, there was indeed one thing about our crossing of South Georgia, a thing which I have never been able to explain. Whenever I reviewed the incidents of that march, I had the subconscious feeling that there were four of us instead of three, and.
Guys, I couldn't help. But you know, remark on in the in the beginning of the previous quotation, the word Providence is capitalized, and I just for a second I was like, is was that the name they gave to this unseen helper? But it is a religious word that is imbued with like godlike power, and it really does refer specifically to divine guardianship from a deity or a god, and often people of faith thank God for his quote unquote providence exactly.
Yeah, Providence is in this milieu. It is a way to attempt to explain how you managed not to die when the odds were so against you.
Right, yeah, Well, I before you move on to another example, just there's another one that I'm coming that's coming to mind because it's so old and I'm trying to imagine like these older written down experiences like this. It's like nineteen fifteen, nineteen seventeen kind of era. Back in eighteen ninety five, there was this guy, Joshua Slocumbe that is also described by John Geiger in his book Who He
It's just so weird to me, this one. All of these are weird, but this one was particularly strange to me because of maybe the physical aspect of it. This is a dude who's he's a sailor. He's like a captain of a ship. He stops off in port eats a bunch of cheese. Apparently some of that cheese starts to mess with his system. He gets really really really sick cheese madness. Well as as he gets back onto a ship and sails it out in the Indian Ocean, and as he's going there's a terrible storm and he's
so sick that he basically passes out. And then he has this remembrance of waking up and seeing a person, a tall man, manning the wheel and the dude says to him, hey, we're I'm gonna get you through this night to safety basically where and the dude passes back out slom and then wakes up and he's safe and everything's cool.
Yeah, well, you know it's funny too, though. There are often also accounts of people at death's door, you know, at the very ends of their lives, seeing a third person that does not rescue them from death, but rather shepherds them into death.
Or tells them to turn around. It goes And I love that we're mentioning Slocum, who is an historical figure that I wish more people read. His book Sailing Alone around the World. Is a stem disturned banger. Yes that's a ship joke. There's also a there's a great song about him by a group called rail Yard Ghost and it's the Ballad of Joshua Slocomb. It's also great. But this is I love that we're pointing this out because it seems that we see already one thing in common.
People are not having this happen on a regular Tuesday, right. No, you're not not late for Blockbuster. That's a dated reference. You're not like late to go by a case ada and then a mysterious stranger shows up and helps you through traffic. The stakes have to be pretty high for the third man to appear.
It reminds me of the veil concept that's referenced a lot in several different religious sets of beliefs, as well as in popular culture. Where as you get closer to that, the actual veil that separates this world from whatever the next one is, sure, it's almost like you become visible to that other side, and perhaps something from the other side comes into either again, as you were saying, pull you in or put get you out of there, it's not your time yet or something, or maybe just guide your ship.
The void stares back, right, And so much fiction is full of this idea. Again. Lovecraft really dug this concept that if that the idea of true perception or enhanced perception is a two way street. The ability that a human may have to see beyond the mortal pale also makes them more visible. And this is to your excellent point, Matt. This is something that we see across cultures and across spiritual belief systems.
Yeah, that's the thing that always gets me. When you start seeing all of those parallels and synchronicities between cultures and religions separated by you know, thousands and thousands of miles and language barriers and all that. That's where my head really starts to begin to believe in this kind of thing.
It's fascinating. Right, will pause for a moment for a word from our sponsors, and we'll be right back. And we've returned. While we're sticking with explorers, do we want to talk a little bit about Frank Smith?
Oh dude, mister Smithe yes, yes Smith, if you yes, because that's smyt still an explorer nineteen thirty three, he is.
We don't want to talk trash about him. Okay. Way before climbing Mount Everest became an environmentally dangerous proposition for the world, this guy was one of the front runners to summit Everest, which means reaching the top of this cartoonish mountain, and the journey to the top was an absolute disaster and honestly not surprising it would be. So he had a hiking party with him. They fell back as they ascended the mountain because the wind was brutal.
There's snow everywhere, there's dangerous unstable ice, and of course there's a lot of low oxygen, which we'll play into our exploration tonight. Our buddy Frank, though he continues, is on when the others fall back, and he does not summit Everest. He misses it by just one thousand feet. But unlike many other people in the past and you know in the present who attempt to climb Everest, he survives, and he thinks he survives because somebody helped him.
It's really weird because he did have a bunch of companions with him, right, so he already has this sense of companionship as he's making his way up. Then he gets to that point you're talking about Ben, where he he's like, now, okay, I'm now I'm on my own, and something stays with him there and it's not like he just had that sensation, right, he acted.
On it, right. Yeah, and this is something that you know right to us with your own accounts here. We think this will be personal to a lot of our fellow conspiracy realist conspiracydiheartradio dot com. Have you ever had a moment where you knew that you might be losing it, like a couple badgers might be falling out of your
cognitive bag, because Frank does. He is later writing his diary and he says, Oh, I had this moment where I realized something was not all the pistons were firing the way they should because I pulled out a slab of something called kindle mint cake.
I've heard it's like a not a candy bar, but something similar to that. That's what I think about it.
Yeah, peppermints, brittle of some sort perhaps.
Something like Yeah. And he breaks it in half and he turns around. He's like, Oh, I'm gonna give the other half to this guy's with me and there's no one there, and he thinks.
Oh, whoops.
Isn't that funny though? The idea of thinking about the moment where you you're the you meta cognitively, No, you're right, you're not experiencing things accurately, and yet there you are having that experience in media arrests.
I look forward to it, fellas I look forward to being aware of my own descent into madness.
You say that now, but I know you guys from the front lines. It's I'm not having a grand.
Now, I'm not even wait wait a minute, and now you're fine, man, don't don't don't worry.
I can't count on my looks forever. But I appreciate that. Well.
I want to get back into Smith because he's got a great quote here. Yes, but just I want to
add this one thing. When my grandfather was on his deathbed and we talked about this, I think in a couple other episodes, but that thing that happens right as you're about to pass over, where he was referencing things that he was seeing in the ceiling and people and stuff and objects, and he was seeing it and experiencing it in real time, and it just you know, that's another common thing, right, Oh oh, you'll hear someone who's on their deathbed exclaim oh there you are, and talking
about someone specific. It does make me also make a connection to that here where he is, Smith is on the edge. He is not doing great. The reason he has to turn back is because he's almost dead. Its terrible conditions. There's no way he's gonna make it if he keeps going. But whatever this thing is he feels is there.
Yeah, he says. All the time that I was climbing alone, I had a strong feeling that I was accompanied by a second person. The feeling was so strong that it completely eliminated listen to this part, completely eliminated all loneliness. I might otherwise have felt.
Whoa and like you.
Were saying, no, he's he's aware.
Yeah, Well, it's encouragement, right, It's it's someone is pushing someone, someone physically is essentially that you have the sensation that someone is physically pushing you to keep going.
Yeah, and these guys are not crackpots. We gotta point that out. These are not These are not the hippies of their time by any measure or means. These are, in the case of explorers in particular, hard practical individuals. Sure, they probably all have their own set of closely held spiritual beliefs, but that just means they're the kind of guys who will pray while they're also double checking their gear.
That's right.
Yeah, these are guys that are experienced, seasoned, you know, wilderness he dudes. They know how to survive in a pinch and would not rely on the divine you know as such.
Yeah, their idea being that whatever divine forces may exist, you still have to prepare yourself for life in the real brutal world. And look, we're talking about this often rose colored glasses age of exploration. It launched a thousand novels and a thousand travelogues and so on, but it's important to the third man factor still exists in the modern day. You'll hear stories from yeah, historical figures, a
lot of them. Actually, you'll hear stories from a lot of military veterans, and some of the audience may have had this experience as you're hearing this tonight. You'll also hear much more recent stories like people who survived nine to eleven. We refer to this at the start of our exploration, but maybe we should talk a little bit more about Ron de Francesco.
Ron de Francesco has this crazy story where he's working in the South Tower. He is a money market trader. It is nine to eleven.
He's on the eighty fourth floor.
Yeah, he's above the impact that occurs in the South Tower that day. So he goes into the stairwell. It's filled with smoke, there's fire down below in the stairwell. He has to get down on his stomach and he's just there, as you would, panicking, right, what the heck am I gonna do here? And he said there were people around him who had just kind of given up.
There were people who were just you know, crying, wailing, and he felt something someone physically touch him, grab his hand and pull him down towards the fire, and this thing, whatever it was, gave him courage and just said, come on, we have to go. If you want to live, go now. And he went down through the fire like push through the fire and debris that was there, made it down the stairwell where it looked normal and everything was fine.
And he ended up being the final person out of the South Tower before it collapsed.
The last person out of the South Tower before it collapsed. Yeah, and Thomas S. Geiger talks about this quite quite in depth. Also. You know, if we assume Ron's perspective here, then it makes sense that you wouldn't see the person because of all the smoke and the chaos. So now it's just an any port in a storm situation.
But it wasn't a person. It was just him.
That person, if they do indeed exist, have never identified themselves. They have never been found. There is no record of a second person accompanying Raun outside of the South Town.
Well, guys, do you think there's a difference or a separation between third man syndrome and just good old fashioned divine intervention?
That's the question, Guardian Angel Or is there another explanation.
Well, I guess I just mean like not manifesting as an individual, but maybe like getting a premonition, you know, hearing something on the radio that you interpret in such a way that leads you to take an action that ultimately ends up saving your life. Things like that.
Yeah, it's difficult because often when people explore or navigate or interrogate the idea of divine intervention, they're doing so with the benefit of retrospect.
That's very true.
Yeah, you can get our full divine intervention ideas. I think an episode that came out last year. It's way October November last year.
Yeah, and this actually harkens back to many other episodes we've done, we'll recommend them as as we're as we're exploring this. But our question now is, what's the deal? Why have so many people from widely disparate backgrounds, Why have so many people throughout history encountered this phenomena even before it had a name? Is the third Man syndrome just a more secular way of believing in the supernatural? Could it somehow be possible for us to truly understand what's going on here?
And with that, we're gonna break just for a moment here from our sponsors. We'll be right back, and we've returned.
Where it gets crazy. Maybe, you know, maybe we all have very spiritual people or very religious people in our lives. And after talking with some of those folks, you know, I was speaking with some monks about this a while back out there in Knyr's Georgia. For people of that, you know, pre existing belief system, all the explanation you
need is helpful spirits or angels or divine intervention. Why would you look at gift horus in the mouth just thank your lucky stars that you survived, you know what I mean?
Yeah, it's true, it's true, And I mean so often, you know, these types of phenomenon that we describe are kind of ways of codifying or of like, you know, making manifest things that religions can explain, you know, in and of themselves. They don't need science, they don't need any other like rational explanation. But you know, as thinking individuals, we oftentimes are looking for that if we're not fully just able to just on faith. Right.
Yeah.
The way I like to put it is science attempts to answer how a thing occurs. Religion attempts to answer why.
Hmm.
I like that because it does feel as though if you experience something like that, this third Man syndrome, whatever it is, you feel as though it helped you through and survive a situation. In my mind, that individual who survived would want to in some way devote themselves to whatever that thing was.
Right.
If is this a part of some religious belief? Is this part of some spiritual thing that I'm currently not connected to that I maybe should be more.
Like MDes near death experiences, the transform the transformative, the transformative thanks folks still learning English. The transformative aspects of this are similar to the overview effect that astronauts encounter when they see the world from above. It makes you rethink your priorities in your place in reality.
You know, we talked about this pretty recently, at least this year, the overview effect, And I think it came up that William Shatner, you know, who went into space. He had a very distinctly different experience of the overview effect, where he experienced it very negatively, not in a way of like the grandeur of the universe, but in a way of like, boy, are we fucked right?
Also, the overview effect is not super friendly to people with big egos, not saying that's will I haven't met.
Him, but hey, well not also that feeling that, oh shoot, we're alone on that thing.
Yeah, this is everybody is living on a non consensual spaceship. Welcome to Earth. Other people, though, are not immediately just taking this as it is. A lot of folks will not look a metaphysical gift horse in the mouth. Right. Whatever happened, however it came to be, whatever providence smiled upon me, Thank you. I'll keep it moving, I'll try to be better. But other folks are increasingly interested in solving this mystery. Can we explain the thing? The humans
are the great artificers. We want to know the mechanisms, they say. So there's this interview we mentioned on MPR with Guy Roz talking with Geiger. You can hear a bunch of other stuff. Again, we cannot overemphasize how good this book is. He is one of the world's foremost experts on third Man factor, and he says, look, science may provide some answers. Spirituality and science do not have
to be diametrically opposed. They can coexist. And he says, look, first, you don't have to be spiritual to have these kind of inexplicable experiences. If that was true, then how come atheists and skeptics and other non believers still have the same thing happen?
Dude, another great place of throwing an example here Jerry Lenninger, who was on the Mere space Station in the late nineties, I think ninety seven. There were a series of like terrible events that occurred on the Mere space station. We're talking like big old fires when you're floating around there in orbit on the Mere space station. And Jerry, who is at least is described by Geiger as very scientifically minded. You know, this is a dude with PhDs medical degrees.
Very serious. Again, Geiger describes him as scientifically minded. He's up there going through these things, and he says he's guided by some other presence that is not physically on you know, mere space station with him, but is guiding him and telling him solutions to problems. Right, Yeah, like these, in these terrifying situations. There's this other presence that he
kind of attributes to his father. So for somebody who isn't isn't religiously minded, perhaps it's like a in ancestors kind of connection or someone else he's passed on because his dad had died a couple of years back when he was going through this, and he attributed this presence.
To his dad.
Yeah, because he was primed to do so. As we'll get to as we'll see. You know, this is a big point. The first clue to solving this case hinges upon perspective to kind of what you're saying. Earlier survivors all experience this presence, however they may explain it as something outside of them external. So our question begins with most of critical thoughts, or a lot of it is reinterpreting how you frame a question. So what if the answer to the third Man mystery can be found not
outside but within the person experiencing it. That's where we get to the science.
Yeah, at its core, third Man syndrome is really most easily described or explained as a coping mechanism. I think we've been hinting at that kind of all along. When we as you know, thinking, feeling terrified, often human beings are in a situation that threatens our existence. Our minds are pretty malleable and can play some pretty interesting and
often functional tricks on us. They can create these worlds, these hallucinatory sensory experiences that help us parse something that feels unparsable.
Yeah. I have a side question has nothing to do with our exploration this week. What is cope? Like? I see it on the Internet where they say, oh, that's a cope? Is it bad?
Well, I do you know copium? People talk about sometimes are opium, But I don't know. I think a cope is just like a way of getting by. It's just like it's very much what we're talking about here. It's just like a method of powering through. Okay, I think and I know, Ben, I haven't actually seen that in internet to parlance, but I'll be on the lookout. I bet you the moment. Now that I'm mind aware of this, I'll see it everywhere. What's that one called that's the one.
Yeah, it might happen. Shout out to our Shout out to our friends on our Facebook page. Here's where it gets crazy. You who have been having a lovely discourse about better Minehoff as well, We see you. We're on there. This idea of science is fascinating. I love you're bringing this up because we know that if you look at just the way a human brain functions, take third man experiences out of the equation for a moment, you see
things get weird when you're really sleep deprived. You know, I love sleep deprivation because it helps your mind go to really weird places. It's kind of meditation. It's probably not good for you. But exhaustion, high altitude environments, you know that lack of oxygen, they all can disrupt normal brain functions. So your point, nol, perhaps that does lead to well we know it provably leads to vivid hallucinations, sensory experiences. What was that voice over there? What's that
on the edge of my peripheral vision? So, because this can alter your normal brain function, these extreme conditions may be fundamental to the third man factor. They may be the crucial piece that has to happen, because again, the third man only shows up when you're in a very high stake situation. Right.
Have you guys ever seen the Orson Wells film The Third Man?
Yes, yes, I haven't.
I've just seen clips from it. I know it's like a classic noir and I've been meaning to I was reading up on it a little bit, and I'm not sure if it actually has anything to do with who we're talking about today, but I had to bring it out just because of the name alone.
Yeah, there are a couple third Man things, right, There's one by Carol Reid. I think the idea first off, it's just a really great title, you know what I mean.
Well, there's also, of course Jack White's record label Third Man Record.
Ah nice?
Who is this muse up there somewhere that is inspiring all of this music and film mckery what but no? But yeah, intense situations at the cusp of potentially death right where there are stories in the era of people who were floating on a raft for thirty days for months, who experience this thing because they're experiencing all the things you just described there, exhaustion, sleep, deprivation, starvation, all of
that occurring simultaneously. And it is it does appear to be some kind of no it's I would I would say cusp of death. Really. I mean, you're right there on the edge.
You're right there on the edge. And it's it's huge in a lot of fiction too, for anybody who is still kind of trying to rock what what we're describing. Think of novels like the Life of or the film adaptation, right, we all remember that just as you're describing their Matt, there's someone unfortunately stranded on a boat in the open ocean. And are their animal companions real or is it a hallucination?
I mean a tiger of the mind.
Well, and it's almost the way your conscious mind can't get you to do the actually your body needs to take It's functional. I love that well, because your body is so let's say, just exhaustion, right and maybe potentially hypothermia if you're talking about Shackleton and his crew, just to get your legs to keep moving right like, sometimes maybe your conscious mind won't allow you to do it, so you need something else in.
There because your conscious mind is a grand tapestry of fears and safeguards and constraints, which is why your unconscious mind, if you're human, does so much excellent work at night while you're asleep. So look, we know that oxygen deprivation on its own will give you crazy experiences. To be clear, do not try this at home. This is not medical advice. Try to just keep breathing oxygen the way you already do, and hold the phone. Call the third man. This is
part one of a two part series. Guys, Let's be honest, we're not exactly sure how we're going to break this up yet. Wow. I can't believe that we went so deep on this. This is fascinating, I think, very personal to all of us.
Oh, I couldn't agree more. I mean even outside of just like the facts as you put it, Ben, I mean, we all have so much visceral, very personal connection and experience with this kind of stuff.
Oh yeah, I just want to encourage everyone to keep that open mind as we go through this, because it is way more interesting as we encourage you to do in the show in every episode, just allow yourself to think about some of these things if they don't match up exactly with either your scientific or religious beliefs. Just let yourself go there.
Yeah, we're coming into this as we always endeavor to do with humility, with respect, with great affection, because this is a very sensitive, heavy topic, so much so that we didn't share a lot of our own personal experiences. I don't know why I had a Maryland accent on own there, but maybe I'm being possessed by a third entity. We will explore more of this in the future, and we want to hear your personal stories inasmuch as you
feel comfortable sharing them. Find us on email, call us on the phone, Find us on the Internet.
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