October 25, 2022 • 52 mins
Nowadays many people are familiar with the US government's bizarre psychic experiments -- but what about China's? Join the guys as they explore the strange phenomenon of China's psychic children. They don’t want you to read our book.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, So, Matt, since the moment we met, you and
I have both been fascinated by the idea of government's
researching psychic powers, right, Am, I am I on base
with that? No, you're so off base. Uh. And I
knew you were going to say that I am psych No. No,
(00:21):
that's that's exactly right, and in particular because we know
after years of reading that all of these governments are
really just motivated by each other because everybody thinks it's
really paranoia. Everybody thinks the other person might have some
kind of weird access into another energy. Right. Oh, yeah,
(00:44):
it's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, well it's it's pretty bad
for the accountants involved, but it does it does definitely
drive a lot of the world. So if you were
listening to this show, first off, thank you by our book. Secondly,
you should know that the US government has done a
(01:04):
lot of things of films like The Men Who Stare
at goats Is it's based on a real project that
the US paid for called uh Stargate, And there are
other additional attempts to plumb the depths of the human
mind and to suss out whether or not people may
(01:24):
have powers that we would consider extraordinary like psychic powers, clairvoyance, telekinesis, telepathy,
astral travel, etcetera, etcetera. Today's classic episode concerns just what
we're describing. It turns out the People's Republic of China,
(01:45):
just as Matt said, wanted to keep up with the Joneses. Yeah,
this is some real X Men stuff. Kinda right, yes.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history has
riddle with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(02:18):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noman, my name is Ben. You're you, you
have a name. The name of this show is stuff
they don't want you to know. Uh, welcome back if
it's uh. If you're a longtime listener, and if you're
listening for the first time, boy, we got a doozy
for you today. This is a real weird one. If
you're listening to this show, then the odds are you
(02:41):
are much more likely than the average person to already
know about something called operations. Stargate that movie with James Spader, Yes,
and the guy from the Crying Game and move with
James Spader and the guy from The Crying Game, who
I thought I did a great job, and both of
those films, The Power, Powerhouse, Powerhouse sam as much anymore
(03:03):
these days, though he's off counting money. I think it
was also a long running TV show. You guys come
on with like seven different iterations Crying Game. Yes, so
somebody would watch it, and it has to have the
breakdown in the shower every episode. Operation Stargate, which can
(03:24):
be confused with with the TV series and and a
great film with James Spader, was a name that the U. S.
Army employed for a secret initiative to investigate what's known
as remote viewing, clairvoyance, or astral travel, all kinds of
different paranormal phenomena. Very much theremony, Yeah, exactly. I mean
(03:50):
it makes sense if you think about it. If we say, okay,
just what if what if people can travel outside of
their bodies, be aware of things without physically being in
the location or having some device that physically transmits that
information to them, just like a feat on a camera. Well,
that would be great. You could see nuclear facilities from
(04:10):
enemy countries. You could find out where different resources are hidden. Uh.
Today most of the world considers these programs to be
examples of just huge financial mistakes, government boondoggles. They're held
up as evidence most of the time of just how
strange and weird and wasteful the Cold War became. There's
(04:31):
a film that really popularized operations stargate for a lot
of people, and that was The Men Who Stare At Goats?
Did you guys ever see that one? Did? Yes, George Clooney,
And it goes into some of the specifics, although it's
you know, it's based on the actual events, right, like
Texas chainsaw maskers based on actual events. I always wonder
(04:53):
if that's different. You know, sometimes you'll see something that's
based on a true story, and then when it gets
super wild, they have to say inspired by a true story,
which I always thought was a very It's a little
difference that you might not notice. It's like cheese versus
cheese food products, sort of like saying based on a
short story by Stephen King, right, and shout out to
(05:14):
Stephen King. You know, if you are a student and
you have an idea to turn one of his short
stories into a film, he will sell the rights to
you for one dollar. Wow, Just tof that anybody out
there is putting off your next big magnum opus because
you thought you couldn't afford Stephen Kings the rights to
his work. Well, it's a go time. So the reason
(05:37):
why there was so much spending on on this stuff
during Cold Cold War times is because if your enemy
has the capability to do this and you do not,
you just don't spend any money because you think it's hogwash,
then you're going to be in serious trouble because your
enemies are looking at your nuclear basis. Yeah, they have
a gap, right, so you have to bet that even
(05:57):
though it's probably not real, it might be what if
it is? Right? In previous episodes, we'd covered Stargate as
well as earlier Soviet research into the paranormal, which was
one of the episodes I personally liked the most. Is
that quest for Shambalah and seeking to control Eurasia. Uh.
The Nazis also had an esoteric experimentation ring that was
(06:21):
more focused on the occult rather than psychic powers. But
there's one country that gets weirdly skipped over in most
of these conversations, China. You think that it would be
in the conversations, right, It's one of the biggest, at
least the most numerous humans in the world are there,
(06:41):
You'd think, you know, there's a lot of money that
goes into military there and a lot of innovation and there,
you know, with superpower and militarily speaking as well. Yeah,
so one would think that of course they would be
participating in this too, uh, And they were for decades.
The Chinese government has research psychic and paran normal phenomena,
and many of their focus areas differed from programs in
(07:05):
the West. So what do we know about China's Let's
see if I can say this right, China's psychic child
warrior research. Awesome, it's a mouthful. Well, first of all,
we have to throw caveat out here that none of
us are fluent in Chinese in any of the forms,
Mandarin or otherwise. Ben has a little bit of experiments
(07:27):
experience in college, but uh, you dabbled in college. Well yeah,
I still I still study Mandarin. But I think it
would be ridiculous to say that, you know, we were,
we were fluent A lot of the a lot of
the information about this stuff and this phenomenon uh comes
from you know, as printed in Chinese, and still isn't translated. Yeah, so,
(07:48):
but we do have some translated stuff that we found
via the CIA, via a couple writers from the eighties,
I believe, right. And there's some interviews as well. So
we we did some we did some digging, uh, and
we're gonna give it. We're going to give it the
old college try. If you happen to be fluent in
(08:10):
written Chinese, we would love to hear your thoughts on
a few things that I could send you so right
to us. The Western public learned about these programs for
the most part in January of nineteen eighty five, because
there was a magazine called Omni, which may have heard of,
and a journalist called Marcelo Truzi, and Truzi wrote an
(08:33):
essay about quote China's Psychic Savants, and he traces in
the says a traces the rise of modern interest in
psychic powers amongst Chinese children specifically, and there's an interesting
story about how this occurs. The story begins with an
eleven year old named Tang You. On one day, Tang
(08:56):
You was walking and happened to brush against his friend's
coat pocket. He then received an immediate vision of two
Chinese characters. Um written characters shining with stark clarity in
his mind. He discovered his friend's pocket contained a cigarette
pack with two such characters printed on the package. Um.
(09:18):
He was intrigued, understandably, and began to play a guessing
game yeah with the swishes um with his fellow villagers,
and he would ask them to write random Chinese characters
on pieces of paper, crumpled the paper into balls, and
let him hold the wads of paper next to his ear,
and then he would guess the message and apparently with
(09:41):
one accuracy. And we'll get to that a little more later. Yeah,
And that's that's absolutely it. So he was this is
something you don't really hear about when people in the
West talk about psychic powers or these sorts of abilities,
you know, being able to see I guess through your ear.
That was a focused point for him. Uh. Words spread.
(10:05):
The Regional Science Commission asked to examine this child, and
allegedly they were also convinced and also, hang on, you know,
I think we we should spend a second on this.
She has notice this eleven year old and his friend
are smoking. At eleven years old. I didn't want to judge,
(10:27):
but I definitely felt like come on, guys, let's not
do that. Were they on the Island of Lost children? Know? Right? I? Yeah,
I just you know, I don't know how old the
friend is, right, maybe he's twenty three. Maybe maybe he's
twenty three. Maybe it's a big brothers big sisters being
his kids. Smoking is bad. Don't do it, whether you're
(10:50):
eleven of fifty three, and you know it. The smoking
is probably not the source of the guy's claimed powers.
So don't don't smoke for superpowers either, just to be clear. Well, okay,
So word spread and the Science Commission in the region
was also convinced. So the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee it's
(11:14):
like a local government organization, backed the results, and the
story was published in a regional newspaper called The Sichuan
Daily in ninety nine on March eleventh, and this led
to more and more and more and more children across
China being identified as psychics, possessing some variation of what
the state officials and scientists referred to as extraordinary functions
(11:38):
of the human body. That's very important. Yeah, yeah, what
is it e F h B yeah, or e h
F e h B yeah, extraordinary human functions? Yeah, instead
of e sp so they have Some say they have
powers that are similar to tanks, but not not quite
(11:59):
the same. Yeah, talking about deciphering hidden messages on from
various places and with various parts of their bodies, with
their fingers, the palms of their hands, their tops of
their heads, their scalps, their abdomens, their feet. Even try
how about an armpit. Throw something in your armpit. I
can tell you exactly what's hidden inside that container. No. Um.
(12:21):
Also the butt talk, what a what an inconvenient superpower? Like? Look,
I can read secret messages or I can read through
my butt. Yeah, I could read through it. But I
just don't sit on anything sensitive and you'll be fine.
I mean, it's a weird one, but people were claiming that,
and other reports surface claiming the kids were capable of
(12:42):
telepathy or X ray vision, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis. So the
kids typically ranged from nine to fourteen, with some of
them actually as young as four and as old as
twenty five. It was estimated by feng Hua, a traditional
Chinese physics, that there were about two thousands such gifted
(13:03):
kids within the Chinese population of a billion, which is,
you know, a very very very small minuscule ratio if
you think about it. So they weren't claiming that, you know,
one out of five or whatever children can read through
their armpits, or can you know, move objects with their minds.
(13:24):
But this became a widespread belief in people examined it
in night. This is when it gets national, like countrywide attention,
because they're mentioned in what is thought to be one
of the more prestigious journals at the time, China's Nature Journal.
And we have a quote from the article in Omni
(13:47):
the trus you wrote, which I think sums it up
pretty well. That February, the surge of interest prompted Nature
Journal to sponsor a huge conference, the first Science Symposium
on the Extraordinary Function of the Human Body, for participants
from more than twenty colleges and medical schools. The proceedings
were filmed by the Shanghai Science and Education Studio, and
(14:08):
the film called do You Believe It? Was shown over
national television two millions of Chinese people. And once that happened,
oh you thought that, you thought those first two thousand
were it? No surre Bob, children with alleged psychic powers
came out of the figurative would work so this is
the beginning of the modern outbreak of interest in Chinese
(14:32):
PSI or you know, as you say, the extraordinary human functions. Ben,
I just want to say that number that we're quoting,
two thousand out of one billion, and then an increasing
number after it became more and more popularized or at
least known it. Really, as someone who watched and read
X Men growing up, it feels like an X Men ratio.
(14:56):
And that's uh, that's before was it decimation when all
the people lose through powers or m day? Excuse me? Spoilers? Oh? Man,
this again? All right? No, you're right, you're right, You're right, guys,
I just ruined the world of comics. It's okay, man,
(15:18):
it's okay. I guess that maybe that's our collective power
is to spoil stories, spoilers, the spoilers that's probably already
and our cat and our our rallying cry will be
spoiler alert. Yeah, it's right, that's not bad at all.
You know, I'm worried though. Does that make us sound
more like, you know, if there were a commercial for
(15:42):
ziplock bags or something, would we be the bad guys
like the spoilers? Yeah? You know, our tupperware or something.
I don't know. We would be like the annoyed three
versions of any really fast that film. Do you believe it?
I did some searching around trying to find the even
clips of it or anything, and I was unsuccessful. And
(16:04):
I think maybe it's a translation thing. I need to
find the the actual translation of Mandarin and not you know,
a Google version of the translation. But if you find it,
any of you out there, please send it our way.
Conspiracy and how Stuff Works dot com. And so this
interest in extraordinary human functions or extraordinary functions of the
(16:30):
human body, excuse me, this comes out here in the eighties.
And before we go further into the modern outbreak of
interest in Chinese side or extraordinary functions, we have to
look at some of the context. So operations Stargate remote
(16:52):
viewing it tended to, at least as we know, concentrate
almost exclusively on that. And what we have to say
as far as we know, because we only know what
was declassified. And some of the people who I think
the program really worked, or claiming that Uncle Sam still
is holding back the stuff that works. Yeah, the stuff
that worked. Um, the Chinese programs took a wider more
(17:15):
varied approach, and at least some part of the pursuit
was widely publicized. There was a TV show that's like
if Operation Stargate was occurring, and they had a television
show called way a Second. Uh yeah, So this the
thing is, though, this modern version is rooted in something much,
(17:39):
much older, because research in the Middle Kingdom in this
area of of energy, right, intangible energy and extraordinary functions
dates back to ancient times, long before the existence of
the People's Republic of China, long before the USA or
what we recognize as many European countries. Chinese scholars and
holy figures research the concept of ch So what what
(18:03):
what does we've discussed g before on this show. Well,
you may think of it as energy, which is the
way most people do. I think some kind of life force.
It's it's the thing. I'll tell you what it is.
What is it? It's Medicalrean's good old George Lucas. Yeah,
he ripped that off from this, this Eastern idea of
(18:25):
the no punch knockout right, yes, right, Because we've seen
ch um tested on different shows, right, television shows. Uh,
Darren Brown I think is one of the people who
test she James Randy, the world famous skeptics, had people
testing chi and while those examples we just named usually
(18:51):
end up with him saying nah, it might just be
the power of suggestion, people do believe it, and we
have seen um neurological changes like genuine mind over matter
in people who meditate in certain ways over time. It's
not like eight minutes, but you know, yes, exactly or
(19:12):
longer or longer. Yeah, So if we look at it
in this ancient context, then it seems pretty understandable that
someone would tie culturally the idea of modern psychic powers
or extraordinary human abilities to uh, the pre existing ideas
of a person's energy which is capable of extraordinary feats. Right,
(19:36):
And it goes back to mythology, It goes back to medicine.
It goes way way way back. Yeah. Some of the
earlier dates could be traced back as far as four
hundred BC in a book called the Yellow Emperor's Classic
on Internal Medicine. So the idea of using using chi
(19:57):
to produce some sort of otherwise supernatural or extraordinary effect
didn't seem quite as implausible to to some folks. And Matt,
as you mentioned, we have a video on she Uh,
check that out if you like more info. In our defense,
I think that's one of our older ones. It's so
(20:18):
little old, there's not it's not too crazy old. It
ends up coming. That topic comes up a lot in
various other wider things that we discuss, right right, Uh,
you know we see it here in fiction even in
the modern day. Right. The one thing that's coming out
as we record this, I believe pretty soon Netflix is
(20:41):
releasing another another Marvel show called Iron Fist, which is
controversial for some other reasons. The important part for it
in this conversation is that he's basically a cheese superhero. Right.
It's kind of cool, you know. And that's that's not
that's not a spoilers. Is it a spoiler? That he's white? Done?
(21:02):
Done done? That's the other controversial part, right, But you know, cheat,
it's it's a round, That's what we're saying. It's the
thing it is. And since we're talking about our YouTube channel,
let's quickly jump in here. Guys. We've been making videos
for a long time, way before we begin this podcast,
and we switch it over to our YouTube channel a
(21:24):
while ago two thousand twelve, I think, and we have
not put anything out in several months. And that is
because we've been working on the Guide Stones video as
a longer piece, and that is really where we've been
focusing all of our attention. When I say we, I
mean us. But unfortunately I'm taking a lot longer than
I should be on it. Well, and let's not forget
(21:44):
that it takes time and effort to produce this podcast
every week and we've been putting a lot into that
as well. And you know we we we all wear
a lot of hats like we say, um and yeah,
but look for some cool, longer form deep die videos
instead of the usual um, you know three and have
five six minute videos. We're gonna really give you some
stuff to chew on. But those are coming back, the
(22:06):
the chewy ones that are the les, the snack of all, Yes,
the by size, the Halloween, the fun size, like the
Dunk Dunk a Ruse, the video. We just really want
to finish this big one. Yes, yeah, we absolutely do.
But thanks to everyone who asked, we are we are alive.
No one has forced us to the like no one.
(22:27):
I don't know about you, guys, No one showed up
in my life. And you know, a dark suit and
told me to stop. I just get phone calls where
there's just someone breathing. On the other hand, still, I
think it might be might be me calling myself from
the future and in a very weird way. Huh. Well, hey, guys,
(22:53):
I don't know if this is a good time or not,
but should we take a commercial break? I mean, we've
gone totally off the rails, as good a time as any.
We'll be back, and we're we're back. They for join us.
(23:13):
We're back in the game here. So we said, there's
this vast and storied and beautiful cultural underpinnion of interest
and belief in in this concept. But there's also often
in this part of the world a very very controlling government. Uh.
Some cheer related practices were banned under the tenets of
(23:35):
the Cultural Revolution after the During the Marxist take over,
nine authorities put a clamp on belief in the supernatural,
and they had some pretty cross things to say about it. Yeah,
the the official critics thought parapsychology was superstitious, mystical nonsense,
labeling it religion without the cross. That's a rough one. Uh.
(23:57):
They even accused the U s and the U s
s are so the Union of vigorously promoting psychic phenomenon
to distract citizens from essentially the world's real problems. So,
you know, as as we know, a propaganda got kind
of weird in the in the Cold War era, but
(24:18):
it's even weirder today. You could argue it's harder to
even detect today, I think, right, So when when did
this change? This attitude of the government hating any exploration
of the supernatural, All of this finally changed in nineteen
right around the time that psychic abilities were given a
(24:38):
little more credence, got some more attention. Um, when the
Beijing Review wrote that quote, so long as these activities
do not affect the political and productive activities of the collective,
the government will not prevent them by administrative means. So
essentially they're saying, look, if you don't ness with what
(24:59):
we consider the real stuff, we're not going to make
it illegal, and uh, you know in in many cases,
uh well we'll get We'll get to the modern cases
here too. So they didn't say we're definitely gonna help
you at first, we just made it not illegal, And
so Chinese journals would continue to publish papers on tigong
or other you know, psychic related phenomenon. They often did
(25:22):
so without government support, you know, just sort of this
implicit do as you will um, but don't ask us
for money. And despite this occasional lack of institutional support,
the studies produced results that initially impressed American scientists and
frightened some other members some other members of American institutions. Yeah.
(25:46):
In nineteen eighty one, report came out by the Committee
for the Study of Exceptional Human Functions on experience with children,
and this inspired US scientists to visit China at the time,
and they looked at children, a group group of children
that were aged seven to twelve, all of whom had
alleged psychic abilities, which is kind of cool. They got
(26:06):
to study them or again see some demonstrations or figure
out ways to improve the testing would be one of
the one of the main approaches. And then there were
experiments relating acupuncture and ESP at the Institute of High
Level Physics in Beijing, and they demonstrated that acupressure points
(26:27):
you know when you stick the needle. Yeah, sure, I've
not have you guys ever done acupuncture. It was done
on my ear at our office. Actually, what was it like?
I felt like someone put a needle in my ear
and it supposedly was supposed to make my back feel better,
and I swear to you my back started feeling better.
And I guarantee you it was my brain making it happen.
(26:50):
Maybe that's how it works. The needle makes your brain
makes it happen. Psycho somatic, addict, insane. So I mean
that that is an interesting argument. And Josh and Chuck
have uh, Josh and Chuck over stuff you should know,
have a a good episode on how acupuncture works. Which
(27:12):
can you know it's a controversial thing for a lot
of people. Did you do it as a demonstration for
a video or no? No, we had a health and
wellness thing back when Discovery owned our our website and
they had some people come out. I don't you guys
don't remember this, Okay. I did not opt for the
acupuncture that that that stuff freaks me out. I think
(27:34):
I just went to the free stuff they had, like
bags of good Yeah, yeah, I got you. It was
a good day in March. I think I got a
BackRub too for free. Pretty awesome, right, Yeah, it doesn't
have it very often at work, but you are persuaded somehow.
You did notice a difference, And yes, I created a difference,
I believe, and the this Institute of High Level Physics invasion.
(27:57):
What they what they demon straighted was that ACU pressure
points show a lower skin resistance to electricity and a
high conductivity to electricity during periods of increased psychic activity.
That's a quote because that last part is a little dodgy.
(28:17):
What is increased psychic activity? Does that just mean you're
thinking diligently? You know what part of your brain are
you using? What is the what is the specific mechanism?
Is it a choker thing? I mean, we gotta get
into this. I don't know. We should do an episode
on chokers. I'd like to UM interview someone who is
(28:39):
well versed in that these abilities we're not just limited to,
you know, reading through the armpit or moving stuff in
the mind. There are specific examples, they kept popping up
over and over. Yes. Another power was to influence the
mind of someone else UM, either to like, let's say,
(29:04):
focus on some decision maker, someone at the top of
either a company or a government, maybe maybe a foreign diplomat,
and you could focus on them and through some kind
of telepathic or subconscious means, you could make them do
what you wanted. Yeah. Like, imagine for a comparison, if
you had if you had brothers and sisters and you
(29:28):
were all little kids and your parents told you that
you could not go to what's something fun? What's something
fun that children knew? They yeah, you cannot go sledding
at this yeah. Yeah, And so uh, you get your
siblings together and go, well, you know what, talking, it's
(29:49):
gone past talking. We're gonna take it to the next level.
And you go to the room next to wherever your
parents are saying. You're sit in a circle, hold hands,
you focus your che on the decision. And then later
mom and dad or whomever come out and they go, guys,
we're we're gonna go sledding Disneyland, disney World World, go
(30:10):
to Wally World. That's something that, as the rumors go,
the government was actually encouraging it as as a test.
And in that regard, this is where I got past
the point of interesting experiments with kids and got to
the point of the US government starting to keep an
(30:33):
eye on it. But there were other things, um that
we're not quite as disturbing, you know, like the harnessing
of cheat energy to accelerate healing and plant growth, which
always reminds me of that r M song. Uh, there's
some line in rum songers like I'm keeping flowers in
full blue. Michael Stipe, all right, would know this. It's
(30:54):
the one from the anti Kaufman movie Man on the Moon. Yeah,
but it's not that one. It's like I'm pushing it
in a fan up the stairs. That's it. Yeah, that's it.
Good Savior and Encyclopedia. Yeah, it's I'm bending spoons, I'm
(31:14):
breaking through, I'm bending spoons. I'm keeping flowers in full bloom.
There we go, There we go. Now this is just
so satisfying to you know, when you have something in
the cusp of your mind like that. Yeah, so that
reminds me of arim. I don't want to get two sidetrack,
but people honestly have claimed that they can use the
(31:35):
same energy to read without their eyes and too, you know,
practice clairvoyance. They can also accelerate healing, and they can
make plants grow faster. Another one that was really big
was the ability to, under certain circumstances, break through physical barriers.
(31:58):
So this is really cool. It feels like something that
could be tested pretty easily, and it apparently was tested.
The CIA has documents that show how it was tested,
or even screenshots, well, if they're not screenshots, their photos
of their at least rough looking photos of thirty five
millimeter canisters of film. Are you guys, Is anyone out
(32:21):
there familiar with these? They're either they're usually gray or black.
Their cylinders and they've got a top that goes on them,
and then film would go inside these things, and depending
on what what age you grew up in, uh, what
age of technology grew up in, these were used to
take film and take shots and transport it or to
(32:41):
like high drugs. Yes, that was a huge thing, but
the big the main thing was to protect things because
they're dark and the film wouldn't get so any of
They would put random things into these thirty five millimeter
canisters and then put them in a box in a
room that was separated from the person they were testing,
and they would have that person use their abilities to
(33:04):
pull objects out or put objects into that canister that
was separated. And apparently, according to this it was shown
over and over and over and over to to work.
They did it with some glass jars. Um. I'm looking
at this thing from the CIA dot gov website. That's
(33:25):
literally where I am right now looking at this, and
there are tables here that are showing how many times
it got correct the dates of the experiment in November. Um,
I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy because it shows that
the it shows that the documentation was taken seriously at
(33:47):
high levels, you know, and the spatial barrier thing it
was it's very specific. Okay, so the people are the
people are moving relatively small objects like the largest stuff
would be maybe a film canister again that we know of.
But there's here's where we start to see a divide,
(34:10):
which may depend upon your personal perspective. So you could
argue that these experiments are set up in this way
because there's some kind of easy cheat that's happening, you
know what I mean, maybe some way for an object
to appear to be outside of the thing when it's
already in there, in a trick of perspective, or one
(34:33):
of the people coming in and saying this is the
only way I can do this, not one of the
persons that they're testing exactly. But then on the other side,
you could make the argument, which is pretty valid argument,
that for something to be reproducible. For something to we
have to be conducted with any manner of rigor. It
does have to be specific, and everybody has to do
it the same way. So everything is the same except
(34:56):
for the one effect we are trying to find. So
you can see why this would already be something that
people go back and forth about. And here's the big, big,
big question. So we did did it work? Did it actually?
You know, is there is there this cadre of children
(35:17):
who were far far grown, right older than us now?
Is there is cadre of I guess former child psychic
stars who right now are capable of doing things like this.
Is there someone in the next studio sitting in a
circle influencing our podcast? Do you want me to go check?
(35:40):
I don't know, but they're certainly not doing us any favors. Guys, kid,
But no, I mean the journalist wasn't persuaded, right, I mean,
he and his whole team noted that until the experiments
could actually be reproduced in the West, that it would
be given a low evidential wait, which is a nice
(36:02):
way of saying, I want to be polite, but you
know there's no evidence for this. Well, it was It's
a bit of a call of of Shenanigans. Yeah yeah,
in a in a very polite way, just said I'm
not convinced they went heat. The author went to China
and saw several of these kids and said, all right, well,
it seems like there are different opportunities where these kids
could cheat the system, you know what I mean. And
(36:24):
then also keep in mind, these are these are kids.
You know, how how long are you gonna expect, uh,
six or seven year old to sit still and do
the same weird thing over and over and over again
and remain focused. I mean, it's it's tricky, you know. Now.
(36:48):
One thing we haven't mentioned that all this is eleven
from stranger Things and the experiments that she was subjected to. Uh,
and that's what I picture. If you're dealing with a kid.
Kids throw temper tantrums and eventually you poke them enough,
they're gonna throw a table at you with their mind. Yeah,
who knows what happens. So I'm really interested in how
(37:11):
much how much of these these psychic powers that these
kids are purported to have, how how does that match
up with street art that that is was really big
at the time is still really big in places in
China and places in the US where you're going to
set um. Let's say you manipulate a newspaper that has
(37:34):
some chemicals wrapped up inside of it, and then you
put it on the ground and you use your g
to set it on fire, except what you're actually doing
or combining chemicals that are in there. I see what
you're saying, you know, or um some parlor trick, right,
or like mediums and spiritualists in the UH eighteenth and
nineteen centuries who would generate ectoplasm. Yeah, things like that, right, Yeah,
(38:00):
move a table. I mean, I'm we're not saying, we're
not saying all this is fake. We're saying that there
are there are possibilities, there are ways that it could
be faked unless it had really really methodical testing. Yeah,
and it would. I can imagine being a kid, especially
and being excited to be a part of an experiment
like that, even if even if I wasn't actually you know,
(38:23):
showing off psychic powers. So the person wrote the article
that brought this to the West wasn't persuaded, right, Members
of the Chinese government weren't always persuaded. People went back
and forth on whether this was nonsense or not. But
let's let's dive in to what Uncle Sam thought. After
(38:47):
a word from our sponsor, the US government actually appeared
to think all of this psychic children business was legit um.
There are numerous documents under Freedom Information Act that you
(39:10):
can obtain showing that Uncle Sam in fact had an
eye on these programs and as far as they could tell,
the very minimum, factions of the Chinese government and numerous
scientists believe that this was a real and measurable phenomenon.
So some example here, Yeah, so like even if their
most skeptical, they said, well, the other guys believed this.
(39:35):
They were like, guys that Chinese government believes this, Do
we need to get some kids? Do we need to
grow some elevens? Just in case? And yeah, specific examples
as as you saidnal Uh. The CIA has reports on
a fellow named Shong Bao Shing who was born in
nineteen fifty eight. He was one of the most famous
(39:57):
Chigong grand masters during something called the chee Gong Fever
in China, and the Chigun fever was also known as
the Cheegung boom, was a social phenomenon in China during
the eighties and nineties, and that's where that's where practicing
chi gong became extraordinary popular, extraordinarily popular. Like groups and
(40:18):
groups of people, a lot of people would get together
and practice in you know, I guess uh, in step
with one another, right, And the popularity of this reached
between like almost two hundred million and founded this this
(40:38):
other subculture. So this guy was pretty famous already. People
thought that he could check this out, read with his nose,
see through people's bodies, and like Matt said earlier, place
objects in close containers without touching them. And you can
read reports where in the CIA is asking as this
(41:00):
like China's psychic Warrior? Are they have they taken these
practices into adulthood? Is it possible that certain techniques, certain
chegoing techniques, could give almost anyone Andy Joe Schmo these powers?
What are they gonna do? I mean reading with your
eyes closed through your nose. That doesn't sound I mean
(41:22):
that's not like how easy is it to peak? Right?
But what strategic advantage does that offer? Right? Like, no
one's gonna come in and say, uh, we need the
American easy son, we need someone who can read with
their But you know what I mean, which I know
I keep harping on that, but the idea that you
(41:43):
could sense information um without your eyes that way is
is fascinating. Uh. Clothes putting things in close containers without
touching them. That's a little different, right, And Uh, while
they sound like small subtle things, think about it. If
you wanted a spy or an assassin that used telekinesis right,
(42:06):
no weapons, no traceable um, no traceable thing to the
target except like how close they had to be. You
don't need somebody who throws a bus. You don't need
somebody who collapses a school. You need someone who has
just enough force to close a windpipe, that's it, or
to stop a heartbeat, or even you know, getting a
(42:29):
small amount of poison into a closed container like a
closed soda or a close something like that. It's in
there now, I didn't even think about that. That's a
very good point. Um, it's maybe some sad pellegrino. I
don't know now, that's what no calls it the pelly. Uh. Then,
(42:52):
on a lighter note, for an example of someone who
is pullying the Michael Stipe and using their powers to
affect plants, a study published in the American Journal of
Chinese medicine and was also seen in the U. S.
National Library of Medicine. Has A examines the case of
someone named Chun Lan's son, who apparently is able to
(43:15):
accelerate the germination of seeds using your cheat soci'll take
like a seed and then it will Something that would
have taken you know, hours and hours just happens in
like twenty minutes. That's incredible. Well, it's you know, it's
incredible if we I know, the stereotype of Americans is
(43:36):
we always want bigger and better stuff, right, isn't Dennis
Leary the guy who said this is the only country
that would invent crack rock. You know, the people are
walking around going, you know, cocaine is great, but I
just I don't know, he's something a little more pep.
So like with that, I'll be the stereotypical American here.
I would love to see, you know, an acorn or
(43:57):
something that turns into a tree. I'd like to season
one touched one of those and then sprouted. True. We'll
imagine if you could take Chinn's son and hook her
up to some kind of vertical farming operation where she
channels her g throughout the entire system. WHOA, I think
we just made a really cool, uh sci fi idea.
(44:19):
I'm talking about saving humanity. Oh, I was like feeding
everybody talk. I was talking about making a sci fi stuff. Yeah,
you know, I respect you. So we have we have
to point out though that the CIA, it's not like
the CIA is right all the time. No one's right
all the time. They've they've made some missteps and for
(44:41):
many of the folks are audience who are considering selves
a little more skeptical right than you might say. Well,
the CIA also hired Uri Geller. Um. Uri Geller, famous, famous,
famous um mentalists and uh mentalist in person, alleged to
(45:03):
have psychic powers, clairvoyance, the ability to bend spoons. Um.
That's he's one of the most well known people for
this practice. He has also for a long time a
personal and bitter enemy of the arch arch skeptic James
Randy So. Uri Geller actually convinced the CIA that he
(45:26):
had extraordinary abilities and in you know, this came out
pretty recently, uh in January seen a set of declassified
documents show that after a week of experiments that conducted
on Geller in nine seventy three, as part of Stargate. Uh.
(45:47):
They thought, you know what, there's something to this guy. Uh.
They did not ask him to stare down goats during
this period, but his handlers concluded this. I have the
quotation here. As a result of Deller's success in this
experimental period, we consider that he has demonstrated his paranormal
perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner. Of course,
(46:13):
now the official stance of the US government is that
that stuff did not work. So now we are in
the modern age. What happened to all these Chinese programs
when your research continued and may continue in several universities
and factions of the government have gone back and forth
(46:34):
on whether or not these exercises should be considered nonsense,
a waste of money, or interesting research to conduct for
researcher's sake. We don't know too too much, you know.
It's it can be difficult to separate at times rumors.
So we looked at the stuff we know actually happened,
as controversial as it was, And I gotta ask you, guys,
(46:57):
what does this sound like? Does this sound like, uh,
a real thing, or does this sound like maybe an
outbreak of hysteria, a bunch of kids being excited to
be part of something bigger. To me, it sounds like
the mythology ancient ancient mythology in China. There were there
are numerous, I mean, I can't give you a ton
of examples, but there's one named person named Kang gang
(47:19):
zy gung z I don't know how to say correctly, ganji.
Maybe he was a mystic that could see, uh seeing
here without using his eyes or his ears. Um. And
that's just one example. There are a lot of examples
of really it's it's u parapsychological things that are occurring
(47:40):
throughout their history in like legend for yes, and we
have to remember the history of China dates back into legend. Yeah,
you know. And so I appreciate you saying that's a
good that's a good point. I I really like to
to think of it this way, that the idea of
(48:03):
people having psychic powers is presented in the movies, is
it has it been conclusively proven? Nope, or at least
not so far as we know. But does that mean
it's impossible? Absolutely not. You know, it would be arrogant
to think that we know everything. Uh, there's a one
journalist who makes a great point where they say, you know,
we can't forget that as late as you know, the
(48:27):
eighteenth century, so people said there were no way meteorites
could come from space. Yeah, right, And uh, and that's
that's just the world we live, and we were constantly
trying to at least be a little bit less in
the dark, just a tiny bit, and we don't always
get it right. But what do you think, Neil, You know,
(48:49):
I certainly don't believe it is beyond the realm of
possibilities that there are individuals with abilities like these. Um,
as far as government sanctioned harnessing of these abilities and
sort of rounding up of specimens individuals children specifically that
exhibit these kinds of powers. It it really does feel
(49:10):
like something out of aut of a graphic novel to me. Um.
But I know that, you know, there have been cases
where law enforcement agencies have employed psychics and you know,
desperate situations to use you know, remote viewing techniques to
find a body or you know, find a suspect that's
on the run or something like that. So you know, uh,
(49:33):
it's it's it's very hard to say. I am, as
as usual a little skeptical, but I don't think it's
beyond the realm of possibility. No, So we're all we're
all like cautiously optimistic that this could be this could
be something. There's that video. I'm trying to find the
video again. I was watching it yesterday. I was looking
(49:55):
at some of the stuff. It's it's a man who
was intervi you by British documentarians who allegedly could He
claimed to be able to create an electrical current in
his body and in the lower part of his body,
and these documentarians, at least to their satisfaction, he was
(50:17):
able to demonstrate it. So they tested it. They tested
in multiple different, multiple places. They did it while he
was almost completely naked. But at the same time, this
same guy showed off that he had piro he could
do pyrokinesis, and it was the same exact thing I
was talking about earlier, where it's mixing. I think he's
mixing chemicals. So yeah, But the fact of the matter
(50:40):
is there are extraordinary human abilities, right and you might
be surprised, ladies and gentlemen, what you find when you
start digging into the capabilities of certain practitioners of of
metadative arts. There's there's a lot more to it than
(51:01):
just you know, sitting and and humming. But we want
to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening.
Let us know what you think about, not not just
this Chinese program and this phenomenon, but let us know
what you think about, as Noll said, the interaction between
governments and civilians when they're seeking I guess like the
(51:23):
outer limits would say one step beyond. I might be
quoting the wrong show. It sounds good, but you know
when the government gets all thereman right? Uh? Should should
this research be pursued? Is it a waste of money?
Is there's something they don't want you to know? If
you and that's the end of this classic episode. If
(51:44):
you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you
can get into contact with us in a number of
different ways. One of the best is to give us
a call. Our number is one eight three three std
w y t K. If you don't want to do that,
you can send us a good fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at I heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't
(52:06):
want you to know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Okay, So, Matt, since the moment we met, you and
I have both been fascinated by the idea of government's
researching psychic powers, right, Am, I am I on base
with that? No, you're so off base. Uh. And I
knew you were going to say that I am psych No. No,
(00:21):
that's that's exactly right, and in particular because we know
after years of reading that all of these governments are
really just motivated by each other because everybody thinks it's
really paranoia. Everybody thinks the other person might have some
kind of weird access into another energy. Right. Oh, yeah,
(00:44):
it's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, well it's it's pretty bad
for the accountants involved, but it does it does definitely
drive a lot of the world. So if you were
listening to this show, first off, thank you by our book. Secondly,
you should know that the US government has done a
(01:04):
lot of things of films like The Men Who Stare
at goats Is it's based on a real project that
the US paid for called uh Stargate, And there are
other additional attempts to plumb the depths of the human
mind and to suss out whether or not people may
(01:24):
have powers that we would consider extraordinary like psychic powers, clairvoyance, telekinesis, telepathy,
astral travel, etcetera, etcetera. Today's classic episode concerns just what
we're describing. It turns out the People's Republic of China,
(01:45):
just as Matt said, wanted to keep up with the Joneses. Yeah,
this is some real X Men stuff. Kinda right, yes.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history has
riddle with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(02:18):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noman, my name is Ben. You're you, you
have a name. The name of this show is stuff
they don't want you to know. Uh, welcome back if
it's uh. If you're a longtime listener, and if you're
listening for the first time, boy, we got a doozy
for you today. This is a real weird one. If
you're listening to this show, then the odds are you
(02:41):
are much more likely than the average person to already
know about something called operations. Stargate that movie with James Spader, Yes,
and the guy from the Crying Game and move with
James Spader and the guy from The Crying Game, who
I thought I did a great job, and both of
those films, The Power, Powerhouse, Powerhouse sam as much anymore
(03:03):
these days, though he's off counting money. I think it
was also a long running TV show. You guys come
on with like seven different iterations Crying Game. Yes, so
somebody would watch it, and it has to have the
breakdown in the shower every episode. Operation Stargate, which can
(03:24):
be confused with with the TV series and and a
great film with James Spader, was a name that the U. S.
Army employed for a secret initiative to investigate what's known
as remote viewing, clairvoyance, or astral travel, all kinds of
different paranormal phenomena. Very much theremony, Yeah, exactly. I mean
(03:50):
it makes sense if you think about it. If we say, okay,
just what if what if people can travel outside of
their bodies, be aware of things without physically being in
the location or having some device that physically transmits that
information to them, just like a feat on a camera. Well,
that would be great. You could see nuclear facilities from
(04:10):
enemy countries. You could find out where different resources are hidden. Uh.
Today most of the world considers these programs to be
examples of just huge financial mistakes, government boondoggles. They're held
up as evidence most of the time of just how
strange and weird and wasteful the Cold War became. There's
(04:31):
a film that really popularized operations stargate for a lot
of people, and that was The Men Who Stare At Goats?
Did you guys ever see that one? Did? Yes, George Clooney,
And it goes into some of the specifics, although it's
you know, it's based on the actual events, right, like
Texas chainsaw maskers based on actual events. I always wonder
(04:53):
if that's different. You know, sometimes you'll see something that's
based on a true story, and then when it gets
super wild, they have to say inspired by a true story,
which I always thought was a very It's a little
difference that you might not notice. It's like cheese versus
cheese food products, sort of like saying based on a
short story by Stephen King, right, and shout out to
(05:14):
Stephen King. You know, if you are a student and
you have an idea to turn one of his short
stories into a film, he will sell the rights to
you for one dollar. Wow, Just tof that anybody out
there is putting off your next big magnum opus because
you thought you couldn't afford Stephen Kings the rights to
his work. Well, it's a go time. So the reason
(05:37):
why there was so much spending on on this stuff
during Cold Cold War times is because if your enemy
has the capability to do this and you do not,
you just don't spend any money because you think it's hogwash,
then you're going to be in serious trouble because your
enemies are looking at your nuclear basis. Yeah, they have
a gap, right, so you have to bet that even
(05:57):
though it's probably not real, it might be what if
it is? Right? In previous episodes, we'd covered Stargate as
well as earlier Soviet research into the paranormal, which was
one of the episodes I personally liked the most. Is
that quest for Shambalah and seeking to control Eurasia. Uh.
The Nazis also had an esoteric experimentation ring that was
(06:21):
more focused on the occult rather than psychic powers. But
there's one country that gets weirdly skipped over in most
of these conversations, China. You think that it would be
in the conversations, right, It's one of the biggest, at
least the most numerous humans in the world are there,
(06:41):
You'd think, you know, there's a lot of money that
goes into military there and a lot of innovation and there,
you know, with superpower and militarily speaking as well. Yeah,
so one would think that of course they would be
participating in this too, uh, And they were for decades.
The Chinese government has research psychic and paran normal phenomena,
and many of their focus areas differed from programs in
(07:05):
the West. So what do we know about China's Let's
see if I can say this right, China's psychic child
warrior research. Awesome, it's a mouthful. Well, first of all,
we have to throw caveat out here that none of
us are fluent in Chinese in any of the forms,
Mandarin or otherwise. Ben has a little bit of experiments
(07:27):
experience in college, but uh, you dabbled in college. Well yeah,
I still I still study Mandarin. But I think it
would be ridiculous to say that, you know, we were,
we were fluent A lot of the a lot of
the information about this stuff and this phenomenon uh comes
from you know, as printed in Chinese, and still isn't translated. Yeah, so,
(07:48):
but we do have some translated stuff that we found
via the CIA, via a couple writers from the eighties,
I believe, right. And there's some interviews as well. So
we we did some we did some digging, uh, and
we're gonna give it. We're going to give it the
old college try. If you happen to be fluent in
(08:10):
written Chinese, we would love to hear your thoughts on
a few things that I could send you so right
to us. The Western public learned about these programs for
the most part in January of nineteen eighty five, because
there was a magazine called Omni, which may have heard of,
and a journalist called Marcelo Truzi, and Truzi wrote an
(08:33):
essay about quote China's Psychic Savants, and he traces in
the says a traces the rise of modern interest in
psychic powers amongst Chinese children specifically, and there's an interesting
story about how this occurs. The story begins with an
eleven year old named Tang You. On one day, Tang
(08:56):
You was walking and happened to brush against his friend's
coat pocket. He then received an immediate vision of two
Chinese characters. Um written characters shining with stark clarity in
his mind. He discovered his friend's pocket contained a cigarette
pack with two such characters printed on the package. Um.
(09:18):
He was intrigued, understandably, and began to play a guessing
game yeah with the swishes um with his fellow villagers,
and he would ask them to write random Chinese characters
on pieces of paper, crumpled the paper into balls, and
let him hold the wads of paper next to his ear,
and then he would guess the message and apparently with
(09:41):
one accuracy. And we'll get to that a little more later. Yeah,
And that's that's absolutely it. So he was this is
something you don't really hear about when people in the
West talk about psychic powers or these sorts of abilities,
you know, being able to see I guess through your ear.
That was a focused point for him. Uh. Words spread.
(10:05):
The Regional Science Commission asked to examine this child, and
allegedly they were also convinced and also, hang on, you know,
I think we we should spend a second on this.
She has notice this eleven year old and his friend
are smoking. At eleven years old. I didn't want to judge,
(10:27):
but I definitely felt like come on, guys, let's not
do that. Were they on the Island of Lost children? Know? Right? I? Yeah,
I just you know, I don't know how old the
friend is, right, maybe he's twenty three. Maybe maybe he's
twenty three. Maybe it's a big brothers big sisters being
his kids. Smoking is bad. Don't do it, whether you're
(10:50):
eleven of fifty three, and you know it. The smoking
is probably not the source of the guy's claimed powers.
So don't don't smoke for superpowers either, just to be clear. Well, okay,
So word spread and the Science Commission in the region
was also convinced. So the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee it's
(11:14):
like a local government organization, backed the results, and the
story was published in a regional newspaper called The Sichuan
Daily in ninety nine on March eleventh, and this led
to more and more and more and more children across
China being identified as psychics, possessing some variation of what
the state officials and scientists referred to as extraordinary functions
(11:38):
of the human body. That's very important. Yeah, yeah, what
is it e F h B yeah, or e h
F e h B yeah, extraordinary human functions? Yeah, instead
of e sp so they have Some say they have
powers that are similar to tanks, but not not quite
(11:59):
the same. Yeah, talking about deciphering hidden messages on from
various places and with various parts of their bodies, with
their fingers, the palms of their hands, their tops of
their heads, their scalps, their abdomens, their feet. Even try
how about an armpit. Throw something in your armpit. I
can tell you exactly what's hidden inside that container. No. Um.
(12:21):
Also the butt talk, what a what an inconvenient superpower? Like? Look,
I can read secret messages or I can read through
my butt. Yeah, I could read through it. But I
just don't sit on anything sensitive and you'll be fine.
I mean, it's a weird one, but people were claiming that,
and other reports surface claiming the kids were capable of
(12:42):
telepathy or X ray vision, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis. So the
kids typically ranged from nine to fourteen, with some of
them actually as young as four and as old as
twenty five. It was estimated by feng Hua, a traditional
Chinese physics, that there were about two thousands such gifted
(13:03):
kids within the Chinese population of a billion, which is,
you know, a very very very small minuscule ratio if
you think about it. So they weren't claiming that, you know,
one out of five or whatever children can read through
their armpits, or can you know, move objects with their minds.
(13:24):
But this became a widespread belief in people examined it
in night. This is when it gets national, like countrywide attention,
because they're mentioned in what is thought to be one
of the more prestigious journals at the time, China's Nature Journal.
And we have a quote from the article in Omni
(13:47):
the trus you wrote, which I think sums it up
pretty well. That February, the surge of interest prompted Nature
Journal to sponsor a huge conference, the first Science Symposium
on the Extraordinary Function of the Human Body, for participants
from more than twenty colleges and medical schools. The proceedings
were filmed by the Shanghai Science and Education Studio, and
(14:08):
the film called do You Believe It? Was shown over
national television two millions of Chinese people. And once that happened,
oh you thought that, you thought those first two thousand
were it? No surre Bob, children with alleged psychic powers
came out of the figurative would work so this is
the beginning of the modern outbreak of interest in Chinese
(14:32):
PSI or you know, as you say, the extraordinary human functions. Ben,
I just want to say that number that we're quoting,
two thousand out of one billion, and then an increasing
number after it became more and more popularized or at
least known it. Really, as someone who watched and read
X Men growing up, it feels like an X Men ratio.
(14:56):
And that's uh, that's before was it decimation when all
the people lose through powers or m day? Excuse me? Spoilers? Oh? Man,
this again? All right? No, you're right, you're right, You're right, guys,
I just ruined the world of comics. It's okay, man,
(15:18):
it's okay. I guess that maybe that's our collective power
is to spoil stories, spoilers, the spoilers that's probably already
and our cat and our our rallying cry will be
spoiler alert. Yeah, it's right, that's not bad at all.
You know, I'm worried though. Does that make us sound
more like, you know, if there were a commercial for
(15:42):
ziplock bags or something, would we be the bad guys
like the spoilers? Yeah? You know, our tupperware or something.
I don't know. We would be like the annoyed three
versions of any really fast that film. Do you believe it?
I did some searching around trying to find the even
clips of it or anything, and I was unsuccessful. And
(16:04):
I think maybe it's a translation thing. I need to
find the the actual translation of Mandarin and not you know,
a Google version of the translation. But if you find it,
any of you out there, please send it our way.
Conspiracy and how Stuff Works dot com. And so this
interest in extraordinary human functions or extraordinary functions of the
(16:30):
human body, excuse me, this comes out here in the eighties.
And before we go further into the modern outbreak of
interest in Chinese side or extraordinary functions, we have to
look at some of the context. So operations Stargate remote
(16:52):
viewing it tended to, at least as we know, concentrate
almost exclusively on that. And what we have to say
as far as we know, because we only know what
was declassified. And some of the people who I think
the program really worked, or claiming that Uncle Sam still
is holding back the stuff that works. Yeah, the stuff
that worked. Um, the Chinese programs took a wider more
(17:15):
varied approach, and at least some part of the pursuit
was widely publicized. There was a TV show that's like
if Operation Stargate was occurring, and they had a television
show called way a Second. Uh yeah, So this the
thing is, though, this modern version is rooted in something much,
(17:39):
much older, because research in the Middle Kingdom in this
area of of energy, right, intangible energy and extraordinary functions
dates back to ancient times, long before the existence of
the People's Republic of China, long before the USA or
what we recognize as many European countries. Chinese scholars and
holy figures research the concept of ch So what what
(18:03):
what does we've discussed g before on this show. Well,
you may think of it as energy, which is the
way most people do. I think some kind of life force.
It's it's the thing. I'll tell you what it is.
What is it? It's Medicalrean's good old George Lucas. Yeah,
he ripped that off from this, this Eastern idea of
(18:25):
the no punch knockout right, yes, right, Because we've seen
ch um tested on different shows, right, television shows. Uh,
Darren Brown I think is one of the people who
test she James Randy, the world famous skeptics, had people
testing chi and while those examples we just named usually
(18:51):
end up with him saying nah, it might just be
the power of suggestion, people do believe it, and we
have seen um neurological changes like genuine mind over matter
in people who meditate in certain ways over time. It's
not like eight minutes, but you know, yes, exactly or
(19:12):
longer or longer. Yeah, So if we look at it
in this ancient context, then it seems pretty understandable that
someone would tie culturally the idea of modern psychic powers
or extraordinary human abilities to uh, the pre existing ideas
of a person's energy which is capable of extraordinary feats. Right,
(19:36):
And it goes back to mythology, It goes back to medicine.
It goes way way way back. Yeah. Some of the
earlier dates could be traced back as far as four
hundred BC in a book called the Yellow Emperor's Classic
on Internal Medicine. So the idea of using using chi
(19:57):
to produce some sort of otherwise supernatural or extraordinary effect
didn't seem quite as implausible to to some folks. And Matt,
as you mentioned, we have a video on she Uh,
check that out if you like more info. In our defense,
I think that's one of our older ones. It's so
(20:18):
little old, there's not it's not too crazy old. It
ends up coming. That topic comes up a lot in
various other wider things that we discuss, right right, Uh,
you know we see it here in fiction even in
the modern day. Right. The one thing that's coming out
as we record this, I believe pretty soon Netflix is
(20:41):
releasing another another Marvel show called Iron Fist, which is
controversial for some other reasons. The important part for it
in this conversation is that he's basically a cheese superhero. Right.
It's kind of cool, you know. And that's that's not
that's not a spoilers. Is it a spoiler? That he's white? Done?
(21:02):
Done done? That's the other controversial part, right, But you know, cheat,
it's it's a round, That's what we're saying. It's the
thing it is. And since we're talking about our YouTube channel,
let's quickly jump in here. Guys. We've been making videos
for a long time, way before we begin this podcast,
and we switch it over to our YouTube channel a
(21:24):
while ago two thousand twelve, I think, and we have
not put anything out in several months. And that is
because we've been working on the Guide Stones video as
a longer piece, and that is really where we've been
focusing all of our attention. When I say we, I
mean us. But unfortunately I'm taking a lot longer than
I should be on it. Well, and let's not forget
(21:44):
that it takes time and effort to produce this podcast
every week and we've been putting a lot into that
as well. And you know we we we all wear
a lot of hats like we say, um and yeah,
but look for some cool, longer form deep die videos
instead of the usual um, you know three and have
five six minute videos. We're gonna really give you some
stuff to chew on. But those are coming back, the
(22:06):
the chewy ones that are the les, the snack of all, Yes,
the by size, the Halloween, the fun size, like the
Dunk Dunk a Ruse, the video. We just really want
to finish this big one. Yes, yeah, we absolutely do.
But thanks to everyone who asked, we are we are alive.
No one has forced us to the like no one.
(22:27):
I don't know about you, guys, No one showed up
in my life. And you know, a dark suit and
told me to stop. I just get phone calls where
there's just someone breathing. On the other hand, still, I
think it might be might be me calling myself from
the future and in a very weird way. Huh. Well, hey, guys,
(22:53):
I don't know if this is a good time or not,
but should we take a commercial break? I mean, we've
gone totally off the rails, as good a time as any.
We'll be back, and we're we're back. They for join us.
(23:13):
We're back in the game here. So we said, there's
this vast and storied and beautiful cultural underpinnion of interest
and belief in in this concept. But there's also often
in this part of the world a very very controlling government. Uh.
Some cheer related practices were banned under the tenets of
(23:35):
the Cultural Revolution after the During the Marxist take over,
nine authorities put a clamp on belief in the supernatural,
and they had some pretty cross things to say about it. Yeah,
the the official critics thought parapsychology was superstitious, mystical nonsense,
labeling it religion without the cross. That's a rough one. Uh.
(23:57):
They even accused the U s and the U s
s are so the Union of vigorously promoting psychic phenomenon
to distract citizens from essentially the world's real problems. So,
you know, as as we know, a propaganda got kind
of weird in the in the Cold War era, but
(24:18):
it's even weirder today. You could argue it's harder to
even detect today, I think, right, So when when did
this change? This attitude of the government hating any exploration
of the supernatural, All of this finally changed in nineteen
right around the time that psychic abilities were given a
(24:38):
little more credence, got some more attention. Um, when the
Beijing Review wrote that quote, so long as these activities
do not affect the political and productive activities of the collective,
the government will not prevent them by administrative means. So
essentially they're saying, look, if you don't ness with what
(24:59):
we consider the real stuff, we're not going to make
it illegal, and uh, you know in in many cases,
uh well we'll get We'll get to the modern cases
here too. So they didn't say we're definitely gonna help
you at first, we just made it not illegal, And
so Chinese journals would continue to publish papers on tigong
or other you know, psychic related phenomenon. They often did
(25:22):
so without government support, you know, just sort of this
implicit do as you will um, but don't ask us
for money. And despite this occasional lack of institutional support,
the studies produced results that initially impressed American scientists and
frightened some other members some other members of American institutions. Yeah.
(25:46):
In nineteen eighty one, report came out by the Committee
for the Study of Exceptional Human Functions on experience with children,
and this inspired US scientists to visit China at the time,
and they looked at children, a group group of children
that were aged seven to twelve, all of whom had
alleged psychic abilities, which is kind of cool. They got
(26:06):
to study them or again see some demonstrations or figure
out ways to improve the testing would be one of
the one of the main approaches. And then there were
experiments relating acupuncture and ESP at the Institute of High
Level Physics in Beijing, and they demonstrated that acupressure points
(26:27):
you know when you stick the needle. Yeah, sure, I've
not have you guys ever done acupuncture. It was done
on my ear at our office. Actually, what was it like?
I felt like someone put a needle in my ear
and it supposedly was supposed to make my back feel better,
and I swear to you my back started feeling better.
And I guarantee you it was my brain making it happen.
(26:50):
Maybe that's how it works. The needle makes your brain
makes it happen. Psycho somatic, addict, insane. So I mean
that that is an interesting argument. And Josh and Chuck
have uh, Josh and Chuck over stuff you should know,
have a a good episode on how acupuncture works. Which
(27:12):
can you know it's a controversial thing for a lot
of people. Did you do it as a demonstration for
a video or no? No, we had a health and
wellness thing back when Discovery owned our our website and
they had some people come out. I don't you guys
don't remember this, Okay. I did not opt for the
acupuncture that that that stuff freaks me out. I think
(27:34):
I just went to the free stuff they had, like
bags of good Yeah, yeah, I got you. It was
a good day in March. I think I got a
BackRub too for free. Pretty awesome, right, Yeah, it doesn't
have it very often at work, but you are persuaded somehow.
You did notice a difference, And yes, I created a difference,
I believe, and the this Institute of High Level Physics invasion.
(27:57):
What they what they demon straighted was that ACU pressure
points show a lower skin resistance to electricity and a
high conductivity to electricity during periods of increased psychic activity.
That's a quote because that last part is a little dodgy.
(28:17):
What is increased psychic activity? Does that just mean you're
thinking diligently? You know what part of your brain are
you using? What is the what is the specific mechanism?
Is it a choker thing? I mean, we gotta get
into this. I don't know. We should do an episode
on chokers. I'd like to UM interview someone who is
(28:39):
well versed in that these abilities we're not just limited to,
you know, reading through the armpit or moving stuff in
the mind. There are specific examples, they kept popping up
over and over. Yes. Another power was to influence the
mind of someone else UM, either to like, let's say,
(29:04):
focus on some decision maker, someone at the top of
either a company or a government, maybe maybe a foreign diplomat,
and you could focus on them and through some kind
of telepathic or subconscious means, you could make them do
what you wanted. Yeah. Like, imagine for a comparison, if
you had if you had brothers and sisters and you
(29:28):
were all little kids and your parents told you that
you could not go to what's something fun? What's something
fun that children knew? They yeah, you cannot go sledding
at this yeah. Yeah, And so uh, you get your
siblings together and go, well, you know what, talking, it's
(29:49):
gone past talking. We're gonna take it to the next level.
And you go to the room next to wherever your
parents are saying. You're sit in a circle, hold hands,
you focus your che on the decision. And then later
mom and dad or whomever come out and they go, guys,
we're we're gonna go sledding Disneyland, disney World World, go
(30:10):
to Wally World. That's something that, as the rumors go,
the government was actually encouraging it as as a test.
And in that regard, this is where I got past
the point of interesting experiments with kids and got to
the point of the US government starting to keep an
(30:33):
eye on it. But there were other things, um that
we're not quite as disturbing, you know, like the harnessing
of cheat energy to accelerate healing and plant growth, which
always reminds me of that r M song. Uh, there's
some line in rum songers like I'm keeping flowers in
full blue. Michael Stipe, all right, would know this. It's
(30:54):
the one from the anti Kaufman movie Man on the Moon. Yeah,
but it's not that one. It's like I'm pushing it
in a fan up the stairs. That's it. Yeah, that's it.
Good Savior and Encyclopedia. Yeah, it's I'm bending spoons, I'm
(31:14):
breaking through, I'm bending spoons. I'm keeping flowers in full bloom.
There we go, There we go. Now this is just
so satisfying to you know, when you have something in
the cusp of your mind like that. Yeah, so that
reminds me of arim. I don't want to get two sidetrack,
but people honestly have claimed that they can use the
(31:35):
same energy to read without their eyes and too, you know,
practice clairvoyance. They can also accelerate healing, and they can
make plants grow faster. Another one that was really big
was the ability to, under certain circumstances, break through physical barriers.
(31:58):
So this is really cool. It feels like something that
could be tested pretty easily, and it apparently was tested.
The CIA has documents that show how it was tested,
or even screenshots, well, if they're not screenshots, their photos
of their at least rough looking photos of thirty five
millimeter canisters of film. Are you guys, Is anyone out
(32:21):
there familiar with these? They're either they're usually gray or black.
Their cylinders and they've got a top that goes on them,
and then film would go inside these things, and depending
on what what age you grew up in, uh, what
age of technology grew up in, these were used to
take film and take shots and transport it or to
(32:41):
like high drugs. Yes, that was a huge thing, but
the big the main thing was to protect things because
they're dark and the film wouldn't get so any of
They would put random things into these thirty five millimeter
canisters and then put them in a box in a
room that was separated from the person they were testing,
and they would have that person use their abilities to
(33:04):
pull objects out or put objects into that canister that
was separated. And apparently, according to this it was shown
over and over and over and over to to work.
They did it with some glass jars. Um. I'm looking
at this thing from the CIA dot gov website. That's
(33:25):
literally where I am right now looking at this, and
there are tables here that are showing how many times
it got correct the dates of the experiment in November. Um,
I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy because it shows that
the it shows that the documentation was taken seriously at
(33:47):
high levels, you know, and the spatial barrier thing it
was it's very specific. Okay, so the people are the
people are moving relatively small objects like the largest stuff
would be maybe a film canister again that we know of.
But there's here's where we start to see a divide,
(34:10):
which may depend upon your personal perspective. So you could
argue that these experiments are set up in this way
because there's some kind of easy cheat that's happening, you
know what I mean, maybe some way for an object
to appear to be outside of the thing when it's
already in there, in a trick of perspective, or one
(34:33):
of the people coming in and saying this is the
only way I can do this, not one of the
persons that they're testing exactly. But then on the other side,
you could make the argument, which is pretty valid argument,
that for something to be reproducible. For something to we
have to be conducted with any manner of rigor. It
does have to be specific, and everybody has to do
it the same way. So everything is the same except
(34:56):
for the one effect we are trying to find. So
you can see why this would already be something that
people go back and forth about. And here's the big, big,
big question. So we did did it work? Did it actually?
You know, is there is there this cadre of children
(35:17):
who were far far grown, right older than us now?
Is there is cadre of I guess former child psychic
stars who right now are capable of doing things like this.
Is there someone in the next studio sitting in a
circle influencing our podcast? Do you want me to go check?
(35:40):
I don't know, but they're certainly not doing us any favors. Guys, kid,
But no, I mean the journalist wasn't persuaded, right, I mean,
he and his whole team noted that until the experiments
could actually be reproduced in the West, that it would
be given a low evidential wait, which is a nice
(36:02):
way of saying, I want to be polite, but you
know there's no evidence for this. Well, it was It's
a bit of a call of of Shenanigans. Yeah yeah,
in a in a very polite way, just said I'm
not convinced they went heat. The author went to China
and saw several of these kids and said, all right, well,
it seems like there are different opportunities where these kids
could cheat the system, you know what I mean. And
(36:24):
then also keep in mind, these are these are kids.
You know, how how long are you gonna expect, uh,
six or seven year old to sit still and do
the same weird thing over and over and over again
and remain focused. I mean, it's it's tricky, you know. Now.
(36:48):
One thing we haven't mentioned that all this is eleven
from stranger Things and the experiments that she was subjected to. Uh,
and that's what I picture. If you're dealing with a kid.
Kids throw temper tantrums and eventually you poke them enough,
they're gonna throw a table at you with their mind. Yeah,
who knows what happens. So I'm really interested in how
(37:11):
much how much of these these psychic powers that these
kids are purported to have, how how does that match
up with street art that that is was really big
at the time is still really big in places in
China and places in the US where you're going to
set um. Let's say you manipulate a newspaper that has
(37:34):
some chemicals wrapped up inside of it, and then you
put it on the ground and you use your g
to set it on fire, except what you're actually doing
or combining chemicals that are in there. I see what
you're saying, you know, or um some parlor trick, right,
or like mediums and spiritualists in the UH eighteenth and
nineteen centuries who would generate ectoplasm. Yeah, things like that, right, Yeah,
(38:00):
move a table. I mean, I'm we're not saying, we're
not saying all this is fake. We're saying that there
are there are possibilities, there are ways that it could
be faked unless it had really really methodical testing. Yeah,
and it would. I can imagine being a kid, especially
and being excited to be a part of an experiment
like that, even if even if I wasn't actually you know,
(38:23):
showing off psychic powers. So the person wrote the article
that brought this to the West wasn't persuaded, right, Members
of the Chinese government weren't always persuaded. People went back
and forth on whether this was nonsense or not. But
let's let's dive in to what Uncle Sam thought. After
(38:47):
a word from our sponsor, the US government actually appeared
to think all of this psychic children business was legit um.
There are numerous documents under Freedom Information Act that you
(39:10):
can obtain showing that Uncle Sam in fact had an
eye on these programs and as far as they could tell,
the very minimum, factions of the Chinese government and numerous
scientists believe that this was a real and measurable phenomenon.
So some example here, Yeah, so like even if their
most skeptical, they said, well, the other guys believed this.
(39:35):
They were like, guys that Chinese government believes this, Do
we need to get some kids? Do we need to
grow some elevens? Just in case? And yeah, specific examples
as as you saidnal Uh. The CIA has reports on
a fellow named Shong Bao Shing who was born in
nineteen fifty eight. He was one of the most famous
(39:57):
Chigong grand masters during something called the chee Gong Fever
in China, and the Chigun fever was also known as
the Cheegung boom, was a social phenomenon in China during
the eighties and nineties, and that's where that's where practicing
chi gong became extraordinary popular, extraordinarily popular. Like groups and
(40:18):
groups of people, a lot of people would get together
and practice in you know, I guess uh, in step
with one another, right, And the popularity of this reached
between like almost two hundred million and founded this this
(40:38):
other subculture. So this guy was pretty famous already. People
thought that he could check this out, read with his nose,
see through people's bodies, and like Matt said earlier, place
objects in close containers without touching them. And you can
read reports where in the CIA is asking as this
(41:00):
like China's psychic Warrior? Are they have they taken these
practices into adulthood? Is it possible that certain techniques, certain
chegoing techniques, could give almost anyone Andy Joe Schmo these powers?
What are they gonna do? I mean reading with your
eyes closed through your nose. That doesn't sound I mean
(41:22):
that's not like how easy is it to peak? Right?
But what strategic advantage does that offer? Right? Like, no
one's gonna come in and say, uh, we need the
American easy son, we need someone who can read with
their But you know what I mean, which I know
I keep harping on that, but the idea that you
(41:43):
could sense information um without your eyes that way is
is fascinating. Uh. Clothes putting things in close containers without
touching them. That's a little different, right, And Uh, while
they sound like small subtle things, think about it. If
you wanted a spy or an assassin that used telekinesis right,
(42:06):
no weapons, no traceable um, no traceable thing to the
target except like how close they had to be. You
don't need somebody who throws a bus. You don't need
somebody who collapses a school. You need someone who has
just enough force to close a windpipe, that's it, or
to stop a heartbeat, or even you know, getting a
(42:29):
small amount of poison into a closed container like a
closed soda or a close something like that. It's in
there now, I didn't even think about that. That's a
very good point. Um, it's maybe some sad pellegrino. I
don't know now, that's what no calls it the pelly. Uh. Then,
(42:52):
on a lighter note, for an example of someone who
is pullying the Michael Stipe and using their powers to
affect plants, a study published in the American Journal of
Chinese medicine and was also seen in the U. S.
National Library of Medicine. Has A examines the case of
someone named Chun Lan's son, who apparently is able to
(43:15):
accelerate the germination of seeds using your cheat soci'll take
like a seed and then it will Something that would
have taken you know, hours and hours just happens in
like twenty minutes. That's incredible. Well, it's you know, it's
incredible if we I know, the stereotype of Americans is
(43:36):
we always want bigger and better stuff, right, isn't Dennis
Leary the guy who said this is the only country
that would invent crack rock. You know, the people are
walking around going, you know, cocaine is great, but I
just I don't know, he's something a little more pep.
So like with that, I'll be the stereotypical American here.
I would love to see, you know, an acorn or
(43:57):
something that turns into a tree. I'd like to season
one touched one of those and then sprouted. True. We'll
imagine if you could take Chinn's son and hook her
up to some kind of vertical farming operation where she
channels her g throughout the entire system. WHOA, I think
we just made a really cool, uh sci fi idea.
(44:19):
I'm talking about saving humanity. Oh, I was like feeding
everybody talk. I was talking about making a sci fi stuff. Yeah,
you know, I respect you. So we have we have
to point out though that the CIA, it's not like
the CIA is right all the time. No one's right
all the time. They've they've made some missteps and for
(44:41):
many of the folks are audience who are considering selves
a little more skeptical right than you might say. Well,
the CIA also hired Uri Geller. Um. Uri Geller, famous, famous,
famous um mentalists and uh mentalist in person, alleged to
(45:03):
have psychic powers, clairvoyance, the ability to bend spoons. Um.
That's he's one of the most well known people for
this practice. He has also for a long time a
personal and bitter enemy of the arch arch skeptic James
Randy So. Uri Geller actually convinced the CIA that he
(45:26):
had extraordinary abilities and in you know, this came out
pretty recently, uh in January seen a set of declassified
documents show that after a week of experiments that conducted
on Geller in nine seventy three, as part of Stargate. Uh.
(45:47):
They thought, you know what, there's something to this guy. Uh.
They did not ask him to stare down goats during
this period, but his handlers concluded this. I have the
quotation here. As a result of Deller's success in this
experimental period, we consider that he has demonstrated his paranormal
perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner. Of course,
(46:13):
now the official stance of the US government is that
that stuff did not work. So now we are in
the modern age. What happened to all these Chinese programs
when your research continued and may continue in several universities
and factions of the government have gone back and forth
(46:34):
on whether or not these exercises should be considered nonsense,
a waste of money, or interesting research to conduct for
researcher's sake. We don't know too too much, you know.
It's it can be difficult to separate at times rumors.
So we looked at the stuff we know actually happened,
as controversial as it was, And I gotta ask you, guys,
(46:57):
what does this sound like? Does this sound like, uh,
a real thing, or does this sound like maybe an
outbreak of hysteria, a bunch of kids being excited to
be part of something bigger. To me, it sounds like
the mythology ancient ancient mythology in China. There were there
are numerous, I mean, I can't give you a ton
of examples, but there's one named person named Kang gang
(47:19):
zy gung z I don't know how to say correctly, ganji.
Maybe he was a mystic that could see, uh seeing
here without using his eyes or his ears. Um. And
that's just one example. There are a lot of examples
of really it's it's u parapsychological things that are occurring
(47:40):
throughout their history in like legend for yes, and we
have to remember the history of China dates back into legend. Yeah,
you know. And so I appreciate you saying that's a
good that's a good point. I I really like to
to think of it this way, that the idea of
(48:03):
people having psychic powers is presented in the movies, is
it has it been conclusively proven? Nope, or at least
not so far as we know. But does that mean
it's impossible? Absolutely not. You know, it would be arrogant
to think that we know everything. Uh, there's a one
journalist who makes a great point where they say, you know,
we can't forget that as late as you know, the
(48:27):
eighteenth century, so people said there were no way meteorites
could come from space. Yeah, right, And uh, and that's
that's just the world we live, and we were constantly
trying to at least be a little bit less in
the dark, just a tiny bit, and we don't always
get it right. But what do you think, Neil, You know,
(48:49):
I certainly don't believe it is beyond the realm of
possibilities that there are individuals with abilities like these. Um,
as far as government sanctioned harnessing of these abilities and
sort of rounding up of specimens individuals children specifically that
exhibit these kinds of powers. It it really does feel
(49:10):
like something out of aut of a graphic novel to me. Um.
But I know that, you know, there have been cases
where law enforcement agencies have employed psychics and you know,
desperate situations to use you know, remote viewing techniques to
find a body or you know, find a suspect that's
on the run or something like that. So you know, uh,
(49:33):
it's it's it's very hard to say. I am, as
as usual a little skeptical, but I don't think it's
beyond the realm of possibility. No, So we're all we're
all like cautiously optimistic that this could be this could
be something. There's that video. I'm trying to find the
video again. I was watching it yesterday. I was looking
(49:55):
at some of the stuff. It's it's a man who
was intervi you by British documentarians who allegedly could He
claimed to be able to create an electrical current in
his body and in the lower part of his body,
and these documentarians, at least to their satisfaction, he was
(50:17):
able to demonstrate it. So they tested it. They tested
in multiple different, multiple places. They did it while he
was almost completely naked. But at the same time, this
same guy showed off that he had piro he could
do pyrokinesis, and it was the same exact thing I
was talking about earlier, where it's mixing. I think he's
mixing chemicals. So yeah, But the fact of the matter
(50:40):
is there are extraordinary human abilities, right and you might
be surprised, ladies and gentlemen, what you find when you
start digging into the capabilities of certain practitioners of of
metadative arts. There's there's a lot more to it than
(51:01):
just you know, sitting and and humming. But we want
to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening.
Let us know what you think about, not not just
this Chinese program and this phenomenon, but let us know
what you think about, as Noll said, the interaction between
governments and civilians when they're seeking I guess like the
(51:23):
outer limits would say one step beyond. I might be
quoting the wrong show. It sounds good, but you know
when the government gets all thereman right? Uh? Should should
this research be pursued? Is it a waste of money?
Is there's something they don't want you to know? If
you and that's the end of this classic episode. If
(51:44):
you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you
can get into contact with us in a number of
different ways. One of the best is to give us
a call. Our number is one eight three three std
w y t K. If you don't want to do that,
you can send us a good fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at I heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't
(52:06):
want you to know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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