February 17, 2017 • 51 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.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:23):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Nolm, 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
(00:46):
are much more likely than the average person to already
know about something called operations. Stargate that movie with James Spader, yes, uh,
and the guy from the Crime Game and Move with
James Spader and the guy from the Crying Game, who
I thought did a great job, and both of those films.
Powerhouse Powerhouse Sam as much anymore these days, though he's
(01:09):
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 star Gate, which can be confused with
(01:30):
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, And I mean
(01:55):
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
(02:16):
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
(02:36):
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
(02:59):
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
(03:19):
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 to fet 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, as you go time. So the reason
(03:42):
why there were 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
(04:02):
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
(04:26):
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,
(04:46):
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 up and they were for decades.
The Chinese government has research psychic and paranormal phenomena, and
(05:06):
many of their focus areas differed from programs in the West.
So what do we know about China's Let's see if
I 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
(05:30):
been has a little bit of experiments 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,
(05:50):
as printed in Chinese and still isn't translated. Yeah. So,
but we do have some translated stuff that we found
via the c I a via couple writer from the eighties,
I believe, right, And there's some interviews as well. So
we we did some we did some digging, uh, and
(06:10):
we're gonna give it. We're going to give it the
old college try. If you happen to be fluent in
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 eight five, because
(06:30):
there was a magazine called Omni, which may have heard of,
and a journalist called Marcelo Truzi, and Truzi wrote an
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
(06:53):
story about how this occurs. The story begins with an
eleven year old name Tang You, and one day Tang
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
(07:15):
his mind. He discovered his friend's pocket contained a cigarette
back with two such characters printed on the package. Um.
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
(07:37):
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, apparently with 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
(07:58):
West talk about psychic powers or these sorts of abilities,
you know, being able to see I guess through your ear.
That was a focus point for him. Uh. Words spread.
The Regional Science Commission asked to examine this child, and
allegedly they were also convinced and also, hang on, you know,
(08:19):
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,
but I definitely felt like, come on, guys, let's not
do that. Were they on the island of Lost children? Right? I? Yeah,
(08:42):
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. And whether
you're eleven of fifty three and you know it, the
smoking is probably not the source of the guy's claimed powers.
(09:04):
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
like a local government organization, backed the results and the
story was published in a regional newspaper called the Sichuan
(09:27):
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
of the human body. That's very important. Yeah, yeah, what
is it e F HB Yeah, or e h F
(09:52):
e h B Yeah, extraordinary human functions, Yeah, instead of
e SP. So they have saw say, they have powers
that are similar to tangs, but not not quite the same. Yeah,
talking about deciphering hidden messages on from various places and
with various parts of their bodies, with their fingers, the
(10:12):
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 that's now um also the
but talk what a what ann inconvenient superpower? Like? Look,
(10:34):
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
telepathy or X ray vision, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis. So the
kids typically ranged from nine to fourteen, with some of
(10:56):
them actually as young as four and as old as five.
It was estimated by Feng Hua, a traditional Chinese physician,
that there were about two thousands such gifted kids within
the Chinese population of a billion, which is, you know,
a very very very small, minuscule ratio if you think
(11:18):
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.
But this became a widespread belief in people examined it
in Night. This is when it gets national like countrywide attention,
(11:40):
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
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
(12:02):
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
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
(12:24):
were it? No, sure, 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
PSI or you know, as you say, the extraordinary human functions.
Then I just want to say that number that we're quoting,
what two thousand out of one billion, and then an
(12:47):
increasing number after it became more and more popularized or
at least known. It's really as someone who watched and
read X Men growing up, it feels like an X
Men ratio. Uh and that's uh, that's before was it
detonation when all the people lose their powers? Or m
day excuse me? Spoilers? Oh man, this again? All right? No,
(13:13):
you're right, you're right, you're right, guys, I just ruined
the world of comics. It's okay, man, it's okay. I
guess that maybe that's our collective power is to be
spoil stories, spoilers, the spoilers that's probably already, and our
cat and our our rallying cry will be spoiler alert. Yeah,
(13:35):
it's 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 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
(13:56):
like the Annoyed would be like three versions of Annoyed
really fast? That film? Do you believe it? I did
some searching around trying to find even clips of it
or anything, and I was unsuccessful. And I think maybe
it's a translation thing. I need to find the the
actual translation of Mandarin and not you know, a Google
(14:17):
version of the translation. But if you find it, any
of you out there, please send it our way. Conspiracy
at how stuff Works dot com. And so this interest
in extraordinary human functions or extraordinary functions of the human body,
excuse me, this comes out here in the eighties. And
(14:43):
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 viewing
it tended to, at least as we know, concentrate on
most exclusively on that and what we have to say
as far as we know, because we only know what
(15:06):
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
varied approach, and at least some part of the pursuit
was widely publicized. There was a TV show that's like
(15:27):
if Operations Stargate was occurring, and they had a television
show called Wade a Second. Uh yeah, So this the
thing is, though, this modern version is rooted in something
much much older, because research in the Middle Kingdom in
(15:47):
this area 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 researched the concept of CHI. So what what
(16:08):
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 Meddiclarean's good old George Lucas. Yeah,
he ripped that off from this, this Eastern idea of chi,
(16:30):
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.
(16:50):
And while those examples we just named usually end up
with them saying nah, it might just be the power
of the gestion, 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
(17:14):
like eight minutes, but you know, yes, exactly or 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
(17:37):
a person's energy which is capable of extraordinary feats. Right,
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
(17:57):
on Internal Medicine. So the idea of using using chi
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 ch Uh,
(18:17):
check that out if you like more info in our defense.
I think that's one of our older ones. It's so
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
(18:39):
the modern day, right. The one thing that's coming out
as we record this, I believe pretty soon, Netflix is
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
(19:02):
that's not a spoilers. Is it a spoil that he's
white done done Dune? I mean, 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
(19:24):
we begin this podcast, and we switch it over to
our YouTube channel a 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
(19:47):
lot longer than I should be on it. Well, and
let's not forget 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 dive videos instead of the usual um you know,
three and a half five six minute videos. We're gonna
really give you some stuff to chew on. But those
(20:09):
are coming back. The the the chewy ones that are
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
(20:31):
the like no one. 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
(20:52):
weird way. Huh. Well, hey, guys, 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 rail as as good a time as any. We'll
be back, and we're back. They for join us. We're
(21:16):
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
(21:38):
the Cultural Revolution after the During the marchist takeover, 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.
(22:00):
They even accused the U S and the U S
s R so the Union of vigorously promoting psychic phenomenon
to distract citizens from essentially the world's real problems. So,
and you know, as as we know, a propaganda got
kind of weird in the in the Cold War era,
(22:21):
but 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 eight, right around the time that psychic abilities were
(22:41):
given a 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
(23:01):
ness with what 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.
(23:25):
They often did 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
(23:47):
of American institutions. Yeah. In nineteen 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, big group of children that were aged seven
to twelve, all of whom had alleged psychic abilities, which
(24:08):
is kind of cool. They got to study them or
again see some demonstrations or figure out ways to improve
the testing maybe 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 you know when you stick the needle. Yeah, sure,
(24:32):
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's 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. Maybe that's how it works. The
(24:55):
needle makes your brains 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 can you know it's a controversial thing
(25:17):
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 I just went to the free stuff they had,
(25:39):
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. Yes, I created
a difference, I believe. And the this Institute of High
Level Physics, Beijing, what they what they demonstrated was that
(26:05):
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. What is increased psychic activity? Does that
just mean you're thinking diligently? You know what part of
(26:26):
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 well versed in that these abilities we're
(26:48):
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, and other
power was to influence the mind of someone else, UM,
either to like, let's say, focus on some decision maker,
(27:09):
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
(27:30):
brothers and sisters and you 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? And yeah, yeah, and so, uh,
you get your siblings together and go, well, you know what, talking,
(27:52):
it's 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 chat 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 to Wally World. That's something that, as
(28:16):
the rumors go these 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 eye on it. But there were
(28:37):
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, it's the one
(28:57):
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
(29:18):
breaking through, I'm bending spoons. I'm keeping flowers in full
bloom beyond. 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 are you. I don't want
to get two sidetrack, But people honestly have claimed that
(29:38):
they can use the 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 arrears. So this is really cool.
(30:02):
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 screenshot. Well, if
they're not screenshots their photos of their at least rough
looking photos of thirty five millimeter canisters of film. Are
(30:23):
you guys, is anyone out there familiar with these? They're there,
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, what age of technology grew up in,
these were used to take film and take shots and
transport it or to like high drugs. Yes, that was
(30:46):
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 pull objects out or put objects
(31:09):
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 I'm looking at this thing from the CIA dot
gov website. That's literally where I am right now looking
(31:30):
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 high levels, you know, and the
(31:54):
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, which may depend upon your
(32:15):
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 of the people coming in
(32:37):
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 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
(32:58):
is the same except 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 who are far far grown,
(33:25):
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? I don't know,
but they're certainly not doing us any favors. Guys, kid,
(33:51):
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 be
given a low evidential weight, which is a nice way
of saying, I want to be polite, but you know
there's no evidence for this. Well it was it's it's
a bit of a call of of Shenanigans. Yeah, yeah,
(34:13):
in a in a very polite way, it 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
then also keep in mind these are these are kids.
You know, how how long are you gonna expect uh,
(34:37):
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.
One thing we haven't mentioned that all this is eleven
from stranger things and the experiments that she was subjected to. Uh,
(35:00):
that's what I picture. If you're dealing with a kid,
kids through 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
much how much of these these psychic powers of these
(35:20):
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,
in places in the US where you're going to set um.
Let's say you manipulate a newspaper that has some chemicals
wrapped up inside it, and then you put it on
the ground and you use your g to set it
(35:42):
on fire. Except what you're actually doing or combining chemicals
that are in there 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 general
right ectoplasm things like that. Right, Yeah, move a table.
(36:04):
I mean 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
(36:24):
even if I wasn't actually you know, 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 and whether
this was nonsense or not. But let's let's dive in
(36:47):
to what Uncle Sam thought after a word from our sponsor,
US government actually appeared to think all of this psychic
children business was legit um. There are numerous documents under
(37:09):
Freedom Information Act that you 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 examples here. Yeah,
so like even if their most skeptical they said, well,
(37:33):
the other guys believed this. 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
(37:53):
who was born in nineteen fifty eight, and he was
one of the most famous chigong grand masters during some
thing called the chee Gong fever in China, and the
chigun fever was a 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 chigang became extraordinary popular,
(38:16):
extraordinarily popular. Like groups and 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 other subculture so this guy
(38:40):
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 closed containers
without touching them, and you can read reports where in
the CIA is as skin? Is this like China's psychic Warrior?
(39:03):
Are they have they taken these practices into adulthood? Is
it possible that certain techniques, certain cheegoing techniques, could give
almost anyone, any 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 that's like how
(39:23):
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 could sense information um without
(39:47):
your eyes that way is is fascinating 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. No weapons, no traceable um, no
(40:10):
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 small amount of poison into a closed container,
(40:33):
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 Sam Pellegrino.
I don't know. That's what no calls it the pelly. Uh. Then,
on a lighter note, for an example of someone who
(40:55):
is pulling the Michael stipe and using their powers to
affect aunt's 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 Chunlan's son who apparently is able to accelerate
(41:16):
the germination of seeds using your cheat. So she'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
we always want bigger and better stuff, right, isn't Dennis
(41:39):
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
something that turns into a tree. I'd like to see
someone touched one of those and then sprouted. True. We'll
(42:02):
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.
I'm talking about saving humanity. Oh I was like feeding
everybody talk. I was talking about making a sci fi stuff.
(42:27):
I respect you. So we have we have to point
out though that the C I 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 many
of the folks in our audience who are considering selves
a little more skeptical right than you might say. Well,
(42:51):
the CIA also hired Uri Geller. Um Uri Geller, famous famous,
famous um mental list and U mentalist in person alleged
to have psychic powers, clairvoyance, the ability to bend spoons. Um.
That's he's one of the most well known people for
(43:13):
this practice. He has also for a long time a
personal and bitter enemy of the arch arch skeptic James Randy. So,
you'y Geller actually convinced the CIA that he had extraordinary
abilities and in you know, this came out pretty recently,
(43:33):
uh in January, a set of declassified documents show that
after a week of experiments that conducted on Geller in
nine three as part of Stargate, UH, they thought, you
know what, there's something to this guy. Uh. They did
not ask him to stare down goats during this period,
(43:56):
but his handlers concluded this, I have the quotation and here,
as a result of Geller's success in this experimental period,
we consider that he has demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability
in a convincing and unambiguous manner. And of course now
the official stance of the US government is that that
(44:18):
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 on
whether or not these exercises should be considered nonsense, a
(44:38):
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, what
does this sound like? Does this sound like uh, a
(45:01):
real thing or does it 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 Zy gung Zi.
(45:21):
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 throughout their
(45:42):
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
(46:04):
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
(46:28):
eighteenth century, so people said there were no way meteorites
could come from space, 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, I certainly
(46:51):
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 like something
(47:11):
out of at 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,
(47:34):
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. Now, 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
(47:56):
at some of this stuff. It's it's a man who
was interviewed 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 able
(48:17):
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 pyrachinesis,
and it was the same exact thing I was talking
about earlier, where it's mixing. I think he's mixing chemicals.
(48:37):
So yeah, But the fact of the matter 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.
(48:59):
There's there's a lot more to it than 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 Nol said, the interaction between governments and civilians when
(49:20):
they're seeking I guess like the 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 Freman 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? So if you guys have
(49:42):
anything that you think they don't want you, or us
or anyone to know, hit hit us up on Facebook.
We are stuff they don't want you to know. On Facebook.
On Instagram we are Conspiracy Stuff Show. We're trying to
do a little bit more diligent work of keeping that
thing updated with some spooky picks here and there, um,
and we hope that you check it out. Also submit
(50:05):
pictures to us and maybe we'll screenshot and put them
up there. Oh that's a yeah, that's great. See anything
pertaining to anything interesting, We can always just take a
screenshot and put it up there. We just kind of
want to keep images. It's hard, Like you know, we
don't encounter the paranormal and unusual in our day to
day so it's sorry to know what to put up
there sometimes. But help us out. Conspiracy Stuff Show, and
(50:25):
you can check out every audio podcast we've ever done.
By visiting our website. Hey, Ben Nole, Matt, you might
be saying, I've got this great idea, but I'm not
too into the social media is maybe because of an
episode you heard from us earlier. If so, we completely
get it. You can write to us directly. We are
conspiracy at how stuff works dot com
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:23):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Nolm, 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
(00:46):
are much more likely than the average person to already
know about something called operations. Stargate that movie with James Spader, yes, uh,
and the guy from the Crime Game and Move with
James Spader and the guy from the Crying Game, who
I thought did a great job, and both of those films.
Powerhouse Powerhouse Sam as much anymore these days, though he's
(01:09):
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 star Gate, which can be confused with
(01:30):
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, And I mean
(01:55):
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
(02:16):
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
(02:36):
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
(02:59):
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
(03:19):
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 to fet 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, as you go time. So the reason
(03:42):
why there were 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
(04:02):
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
(04:26):
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,
(04:46):
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 up and they were for decades.
The Chinese government has research psychic and paranormal phenomena, and
(05:06):
many of their focus areas differed from programs in the West.
So what do we know about China's Let's see if
I 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
(05:30):
been has a little bit of experiments 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,
(05:50):
as printed in Chinese and still isn't translated. Yeah. So,
but we do have some translated stuff that we found
via the c I a via couple writer from the eighties,
I believe, right, And there's some interviews as well. So
we we did some we did some digging, uh, and
(06:10):
we're gonna give it. We're going to give it the
old college try. If you happen to be fluent in
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 eight five, because
(06:30):
there was a magazine called Omni, which may have heard of,
and a journalist called Marcelo Truzi, and Truzi wrote an
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
(06:53):
story about how this occurs. The story begins with an
eleven year old name Tang You, and one day Tang
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
(07:15):
his mind. He discovered his friend's pocket contained a cigarette
back with two such characters printed on the package. Um.
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
(07:37):
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, apparently with 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
(07:58):
West talk about psychic powers or these sorts of abilities,
you know, being able to see I guess through your ear.
That was a focus point for him. Uh. Words spread.
The Regional Science Commission asked to examine this child, and
allegedly they were also convinced and also, hang on, you know,
(08:19):
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,
but I definitely felt like, come on, guys, let's not
do that. Were they on the island of Lost children? Right? I? Yeah,
(08:42):
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. And whether
you're eleven of fifty three and you know it, the
smoking is probably not the source of the guy's claimed powers.
(09:04):
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
like a local government organization, backed the results and the
story was published in a regional newspaper called the Sichuan
(09:27):
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
of the human body. That's very important. Yeah, yeah, what
is it e F HB Yeah, or e h F
(09:52):
e h B Yeah, extraordinary human functions, Yeah, instead of
e SP. So they have saw say, they have powers
that are similar to tangs, but not not quite the same. Yeah,
talking about deciphering hidden messages on from various places and
with various parts of their bodies, with their fingers, the
(10:12):
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 that's now um also the
but talk what a what ann inconvenient superpower? Like? Look,
(10:34):
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
telepathy or X ray vision, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis. So the
kids typically ranged from nine to fourteen, with some of
(10:56):
them actually as young as four and as old as five.
It was estimated by Feng Hua, a traditional Chinese physician,
that there were about two thousands such gifted kids within
the Chinese population of a billion, which is, you know,
a very very very small, minuscule ratio if you think
(11:18):
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.
But this became a widespread belief in people examined it
in Night. This is when it gets national like countrywide attention,
(11:40):
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
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
(12:02):
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
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
(12:24):
were it? No, sure, 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
PSI or you know, as you say, the extraordinary human functions.
Then I just want to say that number that we're quoting,
what two thousand out of one billion, and then an
(12:47):
increasing number after it became more and more popularized or
at least known. It's really as someone who watched and
read X Men growing up, it feels like an X
Men ratio. Uh and that's uh, that's before was it
detonation when all the people lose their powers? Or m
day excuse me? Spoilers? Oh man, this again? All right? No,
(13:13):
you're right, you're right, you're right, guys, I just ruined
the world of comics. It's okay, man, it's okay. I
guess that maybe that's our collective power is to be
spoil stories, spoilers, the spoilers that's probably already, and our
cat and our our rallying cry will be spoiler alert. Yeah,
(13:35):
it's 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 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
(13:56):
like the Annoyed would be like three versions of Annoyed
really fast? That film? Do you believe it? I did
some searching around trying to find even clips of it
or anything, and I was unsuccessful. And I think maybe
it's a translation thing. I need to find the the
actual translation of Mandarin and not you know, a Google
(14:17):
version of the translation. But if you find it, any
of you out there, please send it our way. Conspiracy
at how stuff Works dot com. And so this interest
in extraordinary human functions or extraordinary functions of the human body,
excuse me, this comes out here in the eighties. And
(14:43):
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 viewing
it tended to, at least as we know, concentrate on
most exclusively on that and what we have to say
as far as we know, because we only know what
(15:06):
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
varied approach, and at least some part of the pursuit
was widely publicized. There was a TV show that's like
(15:27):
if Operations Stargate was occurring, and they had a television
show called Wade a Second. Uh yeah, So this the
thing is, though, this modern version is rooted in something
much much older, because research in the Middle Kingdom in
(15:47):
this area 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 researched the concept of CHI. So what what
(16:08):
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 Meddiclarean's good old George Lucas. Yeah,
he ripped that off from this, this Eastern idea of chi,
(16:30):
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.
(16:50):
And while those examples we just named usually end up
with them saying nah, it might just be the power
of the gestion, 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
(17:14):
like eight minutes, but you know, yes, exactly or 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
(17:37):
a person's energy which is capable of extraordinary feats. Right,
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
(17:57):
on Internal Medicine. So the idea of using using chi
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 ch Uh,
(18:17):
check that out if you like more info in our defense.
I think that's one of our older ones. It's so
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
(18:39):
the modern day, right. The one thing that's coming out
as we record this, I believe pretty soon, Netflix is
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
(19:02):
that's not a spoilers. Is it a spoil that he's
white done done Dune? I mean, 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
(19:24):
we begin this podcast, and we switch it over to
our YouTube channel a 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
(19:47):
lot longer than I should be on it. Well, and
let's not forget 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 dive videos instead of the usual um you know,
three and a half five six minute videos. We're gonna
really give you some stuff to chew on. But those
(20:09):
are coming back. The the the chewy ones that are
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
(20:31):
the like no one. 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
(20:52):
weird way. Huh. Well, hey, guys, 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 rail as as good a time as any. We'll
be back, and we're back. They for join us. We're
(21:16):
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
(21:38):
the Cultural Revolution after the During the marchist takeover, 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.
(22:00):
They even accused the U S and the U S
s R so the Union of vigorously promoting psychic phenomenon
to distract citizens from essentially the world's real problems. So,
and you know, as as we know, a propaganda got
kind of weird in the in the Cold War era,
(22:21):
but 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 eight, right around the time that psychic abilities were
(22:41):
given a 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
(23:01):
ness with what 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.
(23:25):
They often did 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
(23:47):
of American institutions. Yeah. In nineteen 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, big group of children that were aged seven
to twelve, all of whom had alleged psychic abilities, which
(24:08):
is kind of cool. They got to study them or
again see some demonstrations or figure out ways to improve
the testing maybe 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 you know when you stick the needle. Yeah, sure,
(24:32):
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's 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. Maybe that's how it works. The
(24:55):
needle makes your brains 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 can you know it's a controversial thing
(25:17):
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 I just went to the free stuff they had,
(25:39):
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. Yes, I created
a difference, I believe. And the this Institute of High
Level Physics, Beijing, what they what they demonstrated was that
(26:05):
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. What is increased psychic activity? Does that
just mean you're thinking diligently? You know what part of
(26:26):
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 well versed in that these abilities we're
(26:48):
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, and other
power was to influence the mind of someone else, UM,
either to like, let's say, focus on some decision maker,
(27:09):
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
(27:30):
brothers and sisters and you 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? And yeah, yeah, and so, uh,
you get your siblings together and go, well, you know what, talking,
(27:52):
it's 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 chat 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 to Wally World. That's something that, as
(28:16):
the rumors go these 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 eye on it. But there were
(28:37):
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, it's the one
(28:57):
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
(29:18):
breaking through, I'm bending spoons. I'm keeping flowers in full
bloom beyond. 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 are you. I don't want
to get two sidetrack, But people honestly have claimed that
(29:38):
they can use the 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 arrears. So this is really cool.
(30:02):
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 screenshot. Well, if
they're not screenshots their photos of their at least rough
looking photos of thirty five millimeter canisters of film. Are
(30:23):
you guys, is anyone out there familiar with these? They're there,
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, what age of technology grew up in,
these were used to take film and take shots and
transport it or to like high drugs. Yes, that was
(30:46):
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 pull objects out or put objects
(31:09):
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 I'm looking at this thing from the CIA dot
gov website. That's literally where I am right now looking
(31:30):
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 high levels, you know, and the
(31:54):
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, which may depend upon your
(32:15):
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 of the people coming in
(32:37):
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 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
(32:58):
is the same except 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 who are far far grown,
(33:25):
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? I don't know,
but they're certainly not doing us any favors. Guys, kid,
(33:51):
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 be
given a low evidential weight, which is a nice way
of saying, I want to be polite, but you know
there's no evidence for this. Well it was it's it's
a bit of a call of of Shenanigans. Yeah, yeah,
(34:13):
in a in a very polite way, it 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
then also keep in mind these are these are kids.
You know, how how long are you gonna expect uh,
(34:37):
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.
One thing we haven't mentioned that all this is eleven
from stranger things and the experiments that she was subjected to. Uh,
(35:00):
that's what I picture. If you're dealing with a kid,
kids through 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
much how much of these these psychic powers of these
(35:20):
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,
in places in the US where you're going to set um.
Let's say you manipulate a newspaper that has some chemicals
wrapped up inside it, and then you put it on
the ground and you use your g to set it
(35:42):
on fire. Except what you're actually doing or combining chemicals
that are in there 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 general
right ectoplasm things like that. Right, Yeah, move a table.
(36:04):
I mean 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
(36:24):
even if I wasn't actually you know, 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 and whether
this was nonsense or not. But let's let's dive in
(36:47):
to what Uncle Sam thought after a word from our sponsor,
US government actually appeared to think all of this psychic
children business was legit um. There are numerous documents under
(37:09):
Freedom Information Act that you 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 examples here. Yeah,
so like even if their most skeptical they said, well,
(37:33):
the other guys believed this. 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
(37:53):
who was born in nineteen fifty eight, and he was
one of the most famous chigong grand masters during some
thing called the chee Gong fever in China, and the
chigun fever was a 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 chigang became extraordinary popular,
(38:16):
extraordinarily popular. Like groups and 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 other subculture so this guy
(38:40):
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 closed containers
without touching them, and you can read reports where in
the CIA is as skin? Is this like China's psychic Warrior?
(39:03):
Are they have they taken these practices into adulthood? Is
it possible that certain techniques, certain cheegoing techniques, could give
almost anyone, any 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 that's like how
(39:23):
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 could sense information um without
(39:47):
your eyes that way is is fascinating 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. No weapons, no traceable um, no
(40:10):
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 small amount of poison into a closed container,
(40:33):
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 Sam Pellegrino.
I don't know. That's what no calls it the pelly. Uh. Then,
on a lighter note, for an example of someone who
(40:55):
is pulling the Michael stipe and using their powers to
affect aunt's 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 Chunlan's son who apparently is able to accelerate
(41:16):
the germination of seeds using your cheat. So she'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
we always want bigger and better stuff, right, isn't Dennis
(41:39):
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
something that turns into a tree. I'd like to see
someone touched one of those and then sprouted. True. We'll
(42:02):
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.
I'm talking about saving humanity. Oh I was like feeding
everybody talk. I was talking about making a sci fi stuff.
(42:27):
I respect you. So we have we have to point
out though that the C I 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 many
of the folks in our audience who are considering selves
a little more skeptical right than you might say. Well,
(42:51):
the CIA also hired Uri Geller. Um Uri Geller, famous famous,
famous um mental list and U mentalist in person alleged
to have psychic powers, clairvoyance, the ability to bend spoons. Um.
That's he's one of the most well known people for
(43:13):
this practice. He has also for a long time a
personal and bitter enemy of the arch arch skeptic James Randy. So,
you'y Geller actually convinced the CIA that he had extraordinary
abilities and in you know, this came out pretty recently,
(43:33):
uh in January, a set of declassified documents show that
after a week of experiments that conducted on Geller in
nine three as part of Stargate, UH, they thought, you
know what, there's something to this guy. Uh. They did
not ask him to stare down goats during this period,
(43:56):
but his handlers concluded this, I have the quotation and here,
as a result of Geller's success in this experimental period,
we consider that he has demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability
in a convincing and unambiguous manner. And of course now
the official stance of the US government is that that
(44:18):
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 on
whether or not these exercises should be considered nonsense, a
(44:38):
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, what
does this sound like? Does this sound like uh, a
(45:01):
real thing or does it 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 Zy gung Zi.
(45:21):
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 throughout their
(45:42):
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
(46:04):
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
(46:28):
eighteenth century, so people said there were no way meteorites
could come from space, 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, I certainly
(46:51):
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 like something
(47:11):
out of at 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,
(47:34):
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. Now, 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
(47:56):
at some of this stuff. It's it's a man who
was interviewed 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 able
(48:17):
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 pyrachinesis,
and it was the same exact thing I was talking
about earlier, where it's mixing. I think he's mixing chemicals.
(48:37):
So yeah, But the fact of the matter 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.
(48:59):
There's there's a lot more to it than 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 Nol said, the interaction between governments and civilians when
(49:20):
they're seeking I guess like the 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 Freman 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? So if you guys have
(49:42):
anything that you think they don't want you, or us
or anyone to know, hit hit us up on Facebook.
We are stuff they don't want you to know. On Facebook.
On Instagram we are Conspiracy Stuff Show. We're trying to
do a little bit more diligent work of keeping that
thing updated with some spooky picks here and there, um,
and we hope that you check it out. Also submit
(50:05):
pictures to us and maybe we'll screenshot and put them
up there. Oh that's a yeah, that's great. See anything
pertaining to anything interesting, We can always just take a
screenshot and put it up there. We just kind of
want to keep images. It's hard, Like you know, we
don't encounter the paranormal and unusual in our day to
day so it's sorry to know what to put up
there sometimes. But help us out. Conspiracy Stuff Show, and
(50:25):
you can check out every audio podcast we've ever done.
By visiting our website. Hey, Ben Nole, Matt, you might
be saying, I've got this great idea, but I'm not
too into the social media is maybe because of an
episode you heard from us earlier. If so, we completely
get it. You can write to us directly. We are
conspiracy at how stuff works dot com
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.