December 19, 2014 • 49 mins
Are psychic powers actually possible? Join Ben and Matt as they investigate the truth about clairvoyance.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Oh hi,
I can't say that I didn't know you were going
to be here. After all, we are experimenting in the
(00:22):
studio right now with psychic powers, not psychedelics. No, no,
no no, that's an entirely different actual study that you
can partake in with psychedelics and the mind. But this
one we just wanted to see who was going to
show up and listen to this episode. So thanks for
being here. We knew you'd be here, whoever you are.
(00:44):
My name is Ben, and I'm Mat and we're here
with our super producer, Noel, our mascot, who is a
skeleton named after Agents Scully and the X Files, which
makes this ladies and gentlemen stuff they don't want you
to know. But hey, even if you were psychic, you
might have already known that. Yeah, that's true, you already
(01:05):
know all the things we're about to say, which has
got to be a real hassle. When you're doing small
talk at dinner parties and stuff, you know, you can
see the night stretching before you if that is indeed
the way that psychic powers work. So let's open up
today's podcast with a story about a scientist named Emmanuel
(01:26):
Swedenborg or would that be Sweidenborg. You know, I'm not
sure man, Well, Swedish listeners can correct us if and
let us know if it is Feedenborg or Swedenborg. But
point being this guy tremendously influential scientists, philosopher um and
also a theologian and mystic. He believed that he had clairvoidabilities,
(01:50):
and so did many of his friends. Who was born
in six so at the age of sixty three he
began to experience these dreams and these visions, culminating in
what became for him a religious experience and epiphany. But
you can hear various different stories about speed and Borg's predilections. Here.
(02:13):
One of my favorites as something I read as child
in a series of time life books that maybe only
three or four of you guys listening will remember that
is Mysteries of the Unknown. Nice you remember these, It
sounds so familiar, though I don't know that I can
pinpoint a single story or issue. Well, you and I
(02:35):
were working together a while back, Gosh, this must be
maybe three or four years ago now, and I caught
a wild hair. I went back on eBay after watching
a commercial from you know, the late eighties early nineties
about these books on YouTube. I I ordered all of them.
(02:55):
I hunted every single issue book down and I had
the complete set. It was a childhood dream come true.
And in one of those books. All of these books
have titles that will drive the more skeptical members of
our audience wild with rage, things like mystic Places, psychic power,
psychic phenomena, and many of these seem related, they overlap,
(03:19):
but whatever, I love these things, Matt. And one of
the stories I read in a book called Psychic Powers,
had this party. It was like a dinner party in
town in Sweden, and one of the guests there, all
of a sudden got up, walked out, was increasingly distressed,
(03:41):
walked back in the room and said that a fire
was consuming his neighbor's house and that it was going
to consume his own house as well, and he knew
it with certitude. The people in the you know, in
the room with him, of course, reacted a bit skeptically
because at this time there was no way this man,
(04:02):
Emmanuel Swedenborg could know that a fire was consuming his
house they were far away from his place of residents.
Allegedly it was true. So what Sweet Speeding Board claimed
to have experienced here and in other instances was clair
a voyance, which is a I don't know, um kind
of inner side I guess, yeah, sure, we could just
(04:25):
say clairvoyance is anytime you're aware of something that happens
far away, either in the time frame or in spatial difference. Um. Allegedly,
you know, it's one of those things that are called
psychic powers, which, like you said, makes the lights go
off in a skeptically minded person because well, there haven't
(04:46):
really been any psychic power has proven as of yet.
Right now you already know what a psychic power is
if you're listening to this show. It's an umbrella term
for several different kinds of alleged abilities. So he said
one would be clairvoyance. What's another one, man, Well, telekinesis moving,
being able to move something physical with your brain somehow. Uh,
(05:12):
then there would be telepathy, being able to hear people's thoughts.
I think I forget what they call it, but it's
a form of pyrotechnics where you can use, you can
create fire pronesis thank you. Um. Then there would be
what's the one where you're able to, oh, psychometry, where
(05:32):
you would be able to touch something right and learn
things about orbit yea, absorbits youah, absorbed, the memory surrounding
it and stuff. I like to think a lot of
these as being able to if it were one day
to be proven scientifically somehow that there is some kind
of uh, quick leap into a fourth or fifth dimensional
(05:54):
understanding that like if a third dimensional being could just
understand it momentarily or something some kind of slip in
that reality I guess, or in that constraint on perception.
So maybe something like climbing a little bit higher into
the fourth dimension just for a second to see the
flat circle that is time, or something like sure, yeah,
(06:18):
that's the only way in my head that I could
imagine it ever becoming an actual thing that was proven. Yeah,
And there's some there's some interesting things will get into
here as well about the nature of perception itself. But
maybe it's better to call this stuff non linear perception
(06:38):
because it's still experienced through the framework of other human senses, right,
Like what happens when you have a vision yeah, you
it's almost a dream like experience from what I've read, right, yeah,
And everybody has had a dream before. So you encounter
these senses or these experiences through the same sensory inputs
(06:59):
that you inarguably possessed today. You if you are speedinborg,
you hear the fire, you see it burning, you feel
the temperature, you hear the screams, and so on. It's
just not in a way that most scientists would argue
is based in your perception of the facts, right, Yeah,
And that's why mainstream science considers these kinds of psychic
(07:22):
powers or purported powers, and even research into these powers
as just kind of bunk, and they're dismissed unfortunately or fortunately,
depending on how you think about it. But there are
a lot of things that are, let's say attributed that
these things are attributed to. One would be a misattributed cause,
(07:45):
So having some kind of seizure or something with your brain,
a neurological issue that causes you to experience something differently
than how you imagine it, or you imagine it differently
than how it actually is. Sure, there's also the idea
of myss true being a psychic power to a mundane cause,
such as you know, maybe you had earlier heard some information,
(08:10):
but you got you heard it, but you retained the information.
So it sounds like you're reading someone's mind, but where
you're the only mind you're reading really is your own.
And you know that's similar to the idea about UFOs
being weather balloons. Right, And for some reason you get
a small concussion and become unconscious for a few moments,
and in that that time frame where you're unconscious, which
(08:33):
would only be a few seconds, you you know, your
brain inspiring so rapidly. It's happened to me before where
I was unconscious just for a moment, but I felt
like I had dreamed for a night or days even
um and the things that I saw and heard felt
real to me, but in reality, it was just a
moment where my brain kind of rebooted. And then there's
(08:54):
also sloppy science, right. Sure, you can look at in
experimentations if there were poor controls over certain things, or
maybe there was a confirmation bias in one of the
researchers that wanted to prove that it's true. You could
even look at flawed methodology. There are all kinds of
things that could go wrong inside an experimental setting, right
(09:16):
with the best of intentions. And this brings us to
the idea of the third the third pillar that mainstream
science typically uses to dismiss psychic powers, which might be
one of the more fun ones for a lot of people,
the idea of active deception. Oh yeah, you've got to
love the swindlers and the Charlatan's I always think of
(09:36):
in particular, and nothing against the guy, but Uri Geller
and some of the parlor trick mental gymnastics that he
would do on stage for people, and like what the
whole bending of the spoon thing. There were a couple
instances where he could, you know, tell you about your
(09:56):
you're dead loved one or something, and you know the
using cold reading and other techniques like this. We've seen
that it's just something that anyone can do if you
learn the techniques. Yeah, so cold reading would be noticing
the minute reactions, typically unconscious, that people have when you're
(10:17):
speaking to them, which is why sometimes when you will
see self professed mediums like the Long Island Medium or
what was that guy's named, John Edwards specially dead Yeah, yeah,
to show for a little while, you'll see them, guess
with some pretty open ended things and intently studying the
other person. But despite the dismissal of the mainstream scientific
(10:41):
world visa VI psychic powers, mainstream America take psychic powers
as a four granted fact of life from guy. Great
statistic for you here. Yes, six of them at least
believe that it is true. They believe at least one
type of psychic power is real. And this sort of
stuff drives the really zealous, self righteous types of skeptics
(11:02):
crazy and matt. They can't seem to understand that no
matter how rude or loud or bullish they are to people,
those people still don't seem inclined to agree with them. Yeah,
I mean, it's a tough stance to be hard lined.
I mean, yeah, I'm you know, I'm playing a little
bit because there's a touchy subject for people. But the
truth of the matter is that if you are if
(11:24):
you are rude or smug or you know, condescending to people, uh,
then you have to ask yourself if you're really trying
to persuade them um to change their opinion or evolve it.
Because often and listeners, skeptics, true believers like you guys
know that Matt and I spent a lot of time
(11:45):
on the Internet reading forums from people who say things
that I will just go out and say, you're bonkers.
And then and then people who UM say things that
are you know, that are that are clearly clearly possible?
Right uh? And and on both sides of that spectrum
that we're talking about, one thing that crops up is
(12:06):
that people often have a UM, a bizarrely contentious emotional
stake in it. And regardless of whether you consider yourself
a skeptic or someone who has unlocked the hidden mysteries
of the psychic mind, we can tell you that the
way to persuade people is to have a conversation with them.
(12:31):
No one you know, no, Okay, well, first, no one
wins an argument on the internet. We know that, and uh,
and we also know that UM. The implication is is
only that something happened to them in their childhood and
they're mad about it and they want it to be
your fault. And with that in mind, then we have
to say this um, and we're not going seriously, there
(12:58):
has been no comprehensively except the scientific validation of any
kind of these psychic powers, or let's call them like
you said nonlinear perceptions. Yes, there have been approximately well,
by which we mean exactly zero. And what do we
mean though, you see, you hear all those qualifying terms
(13:18):
comprehensively accepted or universally accepted validation of this scientific validation,
scientific validation, So something that we could quantify that could
be empirical. For such a test to be accepted, it
would have to conform to some very rigorous methodology. And
you know, a point that becomes sticky sometimes is this
(13:41):
idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which I'm on
board with. Um it Also, it's also something that you
hear often when um, someone is making a controversial claim
because this is such a third rail in in scientific
fields that often just asking the question would be dangerous
(14:07):
for your career. Yeah, that could invalidate anything else you
want to do to study. Yeah, which is to me
a really sad and um. You know, it says a
lot of things about the state of current society, and
not many of them are good. Yeah, it means the
boundaries of a lot of these things won't get pushed,
but it is I do however, with that being said,
(14:29):
I do agree with the idea that if there is
something that is extraordinary or or up to this point unproven,
then yeah, get the paperwork right, get the evidence, compile
the data, and and another thing. Speaking of this paperwork
and compiling data, this I think is maybe the most
(14:50):
important point for any test of psychic powers to be
universally accepted, to be something that people at M I
T and Harvard and um people well, well, most people
aren't reading M I T and Harvard press releases for
something that John Stewart would talk about on the Daily Show.
For for it too gain some kind of credibility, it
(15:12):
would need to be reproducible. And what what do we
mean when we say that, Well, you'd have to be
able to have an independent group of people take your methodology,
your study, and reproduce it to the t in a
completely separate setting with different people. Um, maybe they'd use
the same variables and everything, um, but you'd have to
(15:32):
be able to get the exact same result. Like That's
a that's a very very reasonable thing to ask, and
I think it's crucial and unfortunately, uh, it has not
to our knowledge from everything we could find, it has
not happened yet. And we have talked about psychic powers
of various types. Right now, we looked at psychotronics and
(15:53):
the USSR's attempts to figure out what the heck is
going on, if there's anything going on, and then Projects
star Gate in the US trying to make psychic soldiers
with all various different types of psychic abilities. Right, and
this has all been uh, this has all been skull
duggery so far. So to be fair, there's a lot
(16:13):
of stuff there that's still classified. But today we're gonna
be talking about a very specific type of alleged psychic power.
It is called clairvoyance. So, Matt, what what is that really? Well,
it's several things. Uh. One of them is precognition. That's
the ability to see into the future, to tell when
(16:34):
something's going to happen and to whom. Um. Then you've
got retro cognition, which is the ability to look into
the past and see something that maybe nobody else would
have been able to see something a private moment, let's say.
So an example of that would be, Uh, somebody is
walking through a field in I don't pick a country, Yugoslavia.
(16:59):
So I was walking through field in Yugoslavia and all
of the sudden they are struck with this vision of
a peasant running out of the woods into a into
the field, and let's say it's the same field, and
then digging a hole and putting a sack of coins
in there, and they walk a little further, they see
(17:20):
the field and they walk right to where the coins
are and they dig them up. That would be retrocognition. Absolutely.
I've heard it used a lot of times when someone
experiences the death of someone who perhaps died of violent death,
and they were able to relive that moment to find
out who the killer was. I mean, that sounds like
(17:40):
a horrible power, but it does crop up in fiction fiction.
It happens all the time. Then the third one is
remote viewing, and this is the one that US and
the Soviet Union both looked into pretty heavily. And that's
the ability to, uh, to imagine a place that that someone,
(18:01):
let's say you're higher up, wants you to imagine where
some hostages are being held. And you don't know where
that place is. Nobody knows where that place is on
your team, But you can write, just by writing a
little sketches down on a piece of paper, you visualize
the thing and somehow or another you were able to
(18:21):
almost astray, project yourself to where that place is, draw
a picture of it, and then you can help your
team find the guys. And you know, there's uh, there's
a lot to be said about that, which will we'll
say a little bit later because someone interrupt the flow here.
But just think of men new stereo goats that film, Yeah,
and watch it if you haven't. It's pretty fun. There's
(18:42):
one more, Yes, the final one is the ability to
communicate with the dead whatever that means, right, yeah? What
what does what does that mean? Exactly? I mean, come on,
we we just talked about it earlier. Who who's the
Long Island medium? The Long Island people who can just
(19:04):
tell you what your grandfather is thinking right now? Yeah,
And that offends quite a few people when they see
a medium as some sort of snake oil salesman, right uh,
and believe that they're exploiting the folks that they're claiming
to help. Yeah, anytime there's money exchanged for that kind
of service. Um, frowny face is what I would say
(19:28):
to me. This is this is the one that I
am the absolute most skeptical about ever happening. And and
I'll say why a little bit later, but we should
go ahead and differentiate between one other thing. Many people
confuse clair avoyance, the alleged experience of clairvoyance, with the
very real experience of deja vu. Oh yeah, deja vu
(19:51):
is a real thing. Uh. The let's say, the things
that happen in our lives tend to pete themselves, at
least in small variations. Right walking by a storefront and
seeing a thing cat maybe, or walking by and seeing
someone in a certain place because that person frequents that
(20:15):
place very often. And there's always the woman in the
blue dress with the yellow uh summer hat. Sure, whatever
you know, and you it's one of those things that's
tough too to throw away. As Hey, this is just
completely bunk because a lot of people experienced deja vu.
(20:36):
I'm pretty certain that you have experienced de ja vu. Listener, yes,
and perhaps maybe experiencing it at this very moment. But
what is time? Time? Time? There's another thing that many
many people have had experiences with, and it's the following. So, Matt,
let's say you have a dream, tell me tell me
(20:59):
about this stream. Well, in this dream, I am jogging
on a treadmill and I am standing on the treadmills
on top of a building in a city that I
don't know exactly where it is, but I'm very familiar
with it. Uh. And down on the street, I see
all of these cars going extremely fast on this highway
(21:22):
and there are no other cars. They're just it's this
one group of cars and they're all going the same
direction down this highway, traveling in like a pod or
and all of a sudden, they just stop. They just stop,
and there's a light at the very front of all
the cars flash like a traffic lighter. It's not it's
(21:42):
not traffic. It's almost this glowing blue light that happens.
And my treadmill, my treadmill like stops working. So let's see.
You have that dream and you remember specifically the moment
where you look down you see the pod of cars
move being the bright light, the blue glow rather uh,
(22:04):
And then your treadmill stops working, and you don't think
about it, but this image stays with you, right and later,
I guess later in the sense of line or time,
and this stuff is true. Then a week, two weeks,
a year, twenty years, you're on a treadmill, you're in
(22:24):
a tall building, and you look down and you see
how that's weird, just a couple of cars, and then
party goes way as you feel you can almost you
feel happening. It's the very tip of your tongue sensation
where you're about to just name the future before it
occurs for you. And even if it doesn't come all
the way to fruition, like the blue light doesn't happen,
(22:44):
the treadmill stops or anything, still, that feeling of familiarity
is what you would consider deja vu. Yeah, and I
don't want to invalidate anybody's experiences here, even if I
will say that if you leave that you have the
power to communicate on a routine, consistent basis with the dead,
(23:06):
then you should contact uh, you should contact people among
the living who could help you learn more about this ability,
because you would you could be the first person proven
to do this. Yeah, it would mean probably a lot
of lab time, but it would be for the greater
good of everyone. So we talked about these studies, right,
(23:29):
these studies of clairvoyance. So let's let's talk a little
bit more in depth. So he talked about this idea
of clairvoyance and these studies of psychic powers, and you
and I have actually done quite a few videos on these.
So just to recap there's a guy named Dean rad
and I believe was uh he thinks that parapsychology, which
(23:50):
is also a name for PSI researchers, which is also
a name for people who are researching psychic powers, which
is also a name to their opponents for pseudoscience. Raydon
believes that parapsychology is just as repat repeatable as any science,
but it's also subtle and complex. And it's subtle and
(24:14):
complex because we have an incomplete understanding of it, which
can make a lot of sense logically, because to me,
it's possible that there could be some things that we
have so little information on that we don't really have
a way to um observe, observer or effectively tested, you know, yeah, exactly.
(24:36):
I mean it's possible. We have to leave it open
that it's possible, right, I mean, you have to. I
think that's one of the rules of this planet is
that you have to leave room that anything is possible.
Something about Georgia Guidestones episodes in Thole's documentary. Whenever somebody says, uh,
(24:57):
leave room or I always think they're gonna say, leave
room for nature, leave room for nature. Well then, and nature,
as we've seen with nature, sometimes it's fairly randomized, right, yeah,
or at least appears so right, Yes, it appears. And
this is all because of our so far limited understanding
(25:17):
of a lot of the minute processes that that speed
nature and time along. We're getting there, we're getting closer
to a lot of these answers, but we've still got
a long way to go. Like in our video that
came out earlier this week, I think it was the
three things about your brain that no one understands. Uh.
(25:39):
We found that despite living in the twenty one centuries
we record this, some of the smartest neurobiologists in the
world are still trying to figure out some of the
basic cognitive things that happened to you every single day.
Unless you're a robot listening to this now, Yeah, every
memory that you create, how does it physical? We become
(26:00):
a memory every every decision you make? What makes it
for you? Yeah? And doesn't happen like a second before
you choose to do something, is you're like, how does
where where does your consciousness come into free will? That
was one of the most fascinating things that you talked about. Ready,
(26:21):
what is it? Readiness? Uh, potential, readiness, potential, that's fascinating. Yeah,
you know, if we could have a little bit of
tripping music here. So regardless of where you're sitting now
or walking, you might be working out, you might be
(26:42):
making something to eat, you might be in your car
on the train. They take a second and and try
to feel where you and where the world begins. So
you can feel your clothes, right, if you're wearing clothes,
you can your clothes because those are one of the
(27:03):
closest things to your body. But then where does your
body end and where do you begin? Is there a division?
All those neurochemicals and synapsis firing in your brain? What
part of them is you? How much of that stops
before you stop? Because we know a person can live
(27:26):
without legs, we know a person can live without arms,
We know that people can live without large parts of
their brains. So what are you that's actually listening to
this podcast and without understanding what the nature of consciousness
actually is. It's it's damnably difficult to try to understand
(27:50):
what consciousness also does. Right, Yeah, man, Okay, this is
the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. Uh, well,
a lot of these things that we talked about keep
me up at night, but this one in particular because
just trying to nail down what what I the thing
I big I is? Yeah? Is it? Is? It sort
(28:13):
of a just an extension of a young Gian arc
type with the super consciousness really being one What was
the Bill Hicks quote? Was just one super entity continually
experiencing itself kind of deal the universe experiencing itself just
over and over and over again. Right when? And you
know how would we even begin to measure or prove that? Right? Sure?
(28:36):
So with uh with the raiding guy with Dean raiding,
one thing that he was associated with I believe was
pair Right. These are the guys that United did a
video on earlier, who found or argue they found, um
what was it? It was a connection between probability and
a conscious observer and whether or not if let's say,
(28:59):
I think the experien it was they had ball bearings
dropping down into where they did little buckets, and if
you they had people sit there and consciously want the
ball bearings to fall in certain buckets or a certain order.
And they said that they got a measured a measured
difference and when someone was consciously trying to make it happen. Yeah,
(29:22):
a measurable effect, not a large one, mind, And they're
not again, they're not touching or manipulating the thing at all,
the ball bearings or the box. They're behind glass so
they can be blown on or something like that. But
this this stuff, although raiding and the team sort of
went to went to quantum mechanics as some sort of explanation.
(29:44):
They looked at non locality, backwards causality and stuff like that.
They've been heavily criticized by physicists and psychologists and especially
physicists who studied quantum mechanics because you know, you know
that those physicists have to be so tired of quantum
mechanics being whipped out as just the quote unquote scientific
(30:07):
explanation behind everything. It's a fun word, and it's a
ridiculously complex subjects And yeah, I can imagine it would
be quite annoying if someone is just applying your field
that it's so complex to this thing that seems probably
pretty mundane and has nothing to do with it. And
we know one of the other big studies that you
(30:27):
briefly mentioned was Project Stargate. Could you tell me a
little bit about that. Yeah, it was the idea that
we I think the conclusion that we came to, and
we discussed this earlier, was that during the Cold War,
both sides thought that the other one was, you know,
making some kind of gains in whatever this psychic soldier
(30:49):
thing was, and in order to stay ahead of the game,
you know, ahead of your enemy at least, both sides
had to put money into this, and they were studying
all kinds of things, like we said, telekinesis, remote viewing,
just astro projection, all that kind of stuff, being able
to spy, make a superspy essentially um And it didn't
(31:12):
go so well, at least at least if you read
some of the reports. But we can't get all the information,
as you said earlier, it's some of it's still classified.
We we ran into something interesting here because for a
time people in charge of the program believed it was working.
And then you know, you have to ask yourself, do
(31:32):
they believe it's working because it's a solid paycheck, you
know what I mean? Or are they getting measurable data?
This this idea of traveling via the mind and using
a sketch to depict what you have found is tricky
because there's a little bit of subjectivity or interpretation there
(31:54):
where someone could look at a triangle and say, you know, oh,
he went to the pyramids or uh, oh he went
to the top the very tip top of the Washington Monument. Right. Um,
it's it's difficult, but we do know that there was
a lot of money poured into it, and for a
time at least people seemed happy with the results facets
(32:15):
of the United States government. The most successful of those
people was a guy named Ingo Swan. We also know
that Sony researched this as well, Which when do we
we talked about that with Pair or was that a
different video there they kind of jumbled together, but the
Sony one, I think was a completely different video where
(32:37):
they're looking at esp Yes, but that that's still is
weird to me because these children and the testa, but
it all seems to be. It seemed to me like
I think the big question that we asked was why
the heck would Sony get into that? Right at the time,
they were making electronics. I mean, they still largely make
(32:59):
electronic xt and movies that enraged the dprk um but
you know, why, why the heck would Sony get into that?
And it made me, it made me just think about
their CDs. Remember the SP technology on CDs, the idea
that the machine would read far enough into the CD
that if it's skipped, if it physically skipped, it wouldn't
(33:22):
miss and beat because it already knows what's going to
happen to ten seconds ahead of time. Yeah. So I thought,
when I've initially heard about that subject that maybe there
were it was just some kind of miscommunication that they
were actually just studying the ESP for that some uh
mistranslation because those acronyms stand for very different things. Yeah,
and it turns out, no, they really did. Yes, they
(33:45):
really did. And when they stopped this program, which went
on for a while, when they finally stopped this program,
and I want you to picture something like, I don't know,
it's the beginning one the Ghostbusters movies were dr vank
and is holding up those cards and uh, and the
person has to guess what's on the card. It was
(34:06):
kind of similar to that. And ultimately Sony's reason for
folding the program was just bizarre and fascinating to me.
They shamalan to me, you guys, because they didn't stop
the program because it was unsuccessful or had middling results. Indeed,
in the memos where they talk about the cancelation of
(34:28):
the program, they say they found something that works and
that is at least worth researching more if they were academics,
but they're not. Their business so weird and they said,
we can't figure out how to make money off this,
therefore we're not going to do it anymore. I feel
(34:48):
like they just got a big budget surplus for a
year and they just went, you know what, let's prove
psychic powers. I don't know, but you're like a little
more skeptical with this stuff than I am, for sure.
Oh sure, I don't know. I lived too long, Ben,
He lived too long. Matt. There's another study that was
(35:09):
pretty interesting that came out from a Cornell professor named
Darryl Bim, which we mentioned in one of this week's episodes,
and professor ben I almost said instigating he created a
very uh fascinating study where he would do the following,
check this out. So he would give these student volunteers
(35:31):
a list of words and these could just be like
random words, not to be fancy, so they could be
like brim, exit, gazebo or whatever. And then he would
give them this list of words and they would just
he would give him a few minutes to read it.
And then what he didn't tell them is that he
was giving them a surprise quiz at the end after
(35:52):
they've read these words, where they would be given um
the surprise quiz to test their memory the words, what
words are, etcetera. But here's where it gets crazy, because
at the heart of the third you remember this. I
think we talked about this. The third step of the
test was that after they had taken the quiz, Uh,
the computer program randomly selected a few of the words,
(36:17):
not all, but a few of the words for additional study.
And it had the students retyped this word. So you
would maybe out of um brim, exit and gazebo, you
would need to type exit like three times or several times. Right,
This would be a much longer. It's a much longer
less than just three. Yeah, and Uh, this weird thing
(36:39):
happened in the data. When he looked at it and
the way he compiled it, he said, Wow, these students
are doing better on the test based on the words
that they you know, studied or rehearsed after the tests,
them selected words, the randomly selected ones. Yes, so students
(37:00):
didn't know there was going to be a test, they
didn't know they would have to study after the test,
and somehow their performance, perhaps possibly by coincidence, went up,
possibly by you know again sloppy science, which is the
running accusation that happened. Um. The paper was first day
(37:21):
in the news in two thousand and ten, published in
a fairly prestigious journal in two thousand eleven, and since
that point people have been arguing about if this is true,
and multiple multiple studies come out again saying that there
there's no such thing as psychic powers. But we think
that for those of you who believe in these sorts
(37:44):
of cognitive abilities, that keeping up with folks like Darryl
Bem is going to be gonna be interesting, perhaps even
instrumental to your argument in the future. Awesome, Ben, I
think this is the time where I'm going to do
the thing that you usually do to me. I've been
(38:05):
talking the whole time, I know, but that's too bad.
This is the part where I say, been is there
a psychic power? Maybe all of them or just one
that you really believe in, one that you think we
just don't have the grasp on yet. You know, I've
I've quarreled with that question because this is a little
(38:28):
bit of biography. But in my family, I'm not going
to say which side, or which relatives or whom in
my In my family, there's been this long tradition, going
back a weirdly long amount of time, of people my
(38:49):
family being accused not by people in our family but
outside the family of being some sort of you know
which person or things like that. Warlocks. Sure, and I
think a lot of that goes back to them luncheon thing. Honestly,
it's just some sort of mothering. But uh, I have
(39:09):
a I have a hard time saying that there is
a silver bullet everybody has her in one can do
it kind of power, because what we know about the
human body every other thing the human body can do,
is that most people can do the same things, but
(39:30):
only to varying degrees. Right in the detail, we find
the heroes and the villains right the degree of their ability,
which is why some people are Olympic runners and other
people heave when they get upstairs. So if there were
some sort of psychic power. Then logically it follows that
this ability would have to be present in some way
(39:54):
in the majority of the human population. Right, that that
makes sense. I'm building up to the answer. Um, so
the next I gave you my my bias, which is
pretty anti this stuff growing up just because of of um,
my personal life. But I will also say that, given
(40:14):
how little we know about both the nature of reality
and the nature of perception in the human brain, it
is completely possible that we understand the skin of perception
or the surface of it, but we don't know the
machinery behind it. Now. Of course, I know that some
(40:36):
people could say, well, you're just dwelling on a few
uncertainties and making them bigger than they are, but we're not,
because there are just these massive, massive gaps and knowledge
about cognition, and that's not even verging on the metaphysical stuff. Right.
(40:58):
So is it possible then that there is something about
our perception which we do not understand, or is there
there's some alleged potential or or some possible thing. Then,
while I'm carefully hedging that, what I am saying is
is that, yes, it is possible that given the lack
(41:19):
of understanding we have about consciousness, that our our cognitive abilities,
that our ability to think, you know, who am I?
What am I? That self aware part of us may
be able to do, or see or encounter more stuff
than than we know. And I know that sounds kind
of hippie dippy, but I'm not saying that there are
(41:40):
any psychic powers I believe in. What I'm saying is
that it's just as credulous and naive to say that
the possibility categorically does not exist. Saying something hasn't been
proven and saying it will never be proven or does
not exist. Those are two very very different things that people,
(42:01):
sometimes with the best intentions and sometimes conveniently confuse. Very
nice Ben, what about you? I'm gonna submit to that answer.
I just need to write down a few things. Um.
I I have just a very simple observation. And I think,
just like you said, with our holes and understanding and perception,
(42:23):
and I think time, the way we understand time is
a bit wonky. Still, Um is it an actual thing?
Does it really exist? Or is it just something and
apple and a name that we have applied to a dimension.
And I think that perhaps the way that our brain
functions in our neurons. Because we've got so many questions there.
(42:47):
I think there may be some kind of link between
a fourth dimensional understanding or excuse me, a fourth dimensional plane,
and perhaps the way that our brain functions. That you know,
that's a really interesting point. But try and scientifically prove
that ideare you, because you probably won't be able to
(43:07):
do it, at least not for a while yet. To
prove something, we would need to have again an observable, reproducible,
measurable effect, cause and effect, and a thing that we
know always produces thing be But here's the thing. What
if it just doesn't work that way? Then that would
(43:28):
mean that it's not real? Right, But it's I guess.
I guess my head goes to things like holographic universe theory,
some of the more abstract ideas about the universe as
a whole and in general reality. Um, that would be
my only the only reason that I can would allow
(43:52):
for this type of thing to be real unless it
was proven to me. It would be more like if
if it seemed that these things we're not reproducible at all,
but if just for argument's sake, we knew that something
was real it doesn't matter. We can take uh, I
don't know, and just make one up telepathy, and you
(44:13):
take telepathy for the sake of arguments, say that somehow,
you know, I everybody listening knew that telepathy was real,
but we couldn't we couldn't reproduce it because it didn't
work that way. Then what that would make me go
back to would be the methodology of the science, because
it seems like if something does not appear to be
(44:34):
reproducible then and you know it is a real thing,
then you find a way to reproduce that stuff. I
was gonna see. You find out what other variable is
in there that's dirty in the test too, because that's
probably what's happening. And I think, um, Dean Raiden's argument
about this sort of stuffing real but subtle and complex
(44:58):
is an argument toward that perspective that there are multiple
variations or excuse me, multiple variables that we have yet
to find. UM. With with that being said, UM, I
have I have, like most people, been in some really
(45:19):
weird situations. Sounds like the beginning of a totally different story. UM,
But I always have gone to the idea of what
I would call the boring stuff. First. You know, maybe I,
maybe I somehow unconsciously knew that there was always a
(45:39):
lady in a blue dress with a yellow hat somewhere right.
Maybe you saw a similar pack of cars stop on
the interstate on TV four years ago, stuff like that.
And you know, we have to be honest that there
there are a lot of Charlottetan's out there who want
to um prey on people who are emotionally vulnerable, so
(46:01):
you have to be careful. But also also you and
I have talked about this long time, and I think listeners,
if you're if you're still on board with us at
this point in the game, you agree with us when
we say that, um, there are very few questions that
are not worth asking, are So let's put it to you.
(46:22):
What do you think? Is there any truth to any
of this stuff? Have you had an experience where at
least that you can't explain scientifically of why you saw something?
One more thing, though, I'm sorry, I have to jump
in and say this one more thing, the absolute craziest,
craziest stuff that I read about. Okay, Matt, what if
(46:45):
this ability to see through time and space and influence
events and non linear perspectives. What if it's real? And
what if someone doesn't want you to know? And what
if these people dare we call them time lords? Uh?
One of these? Seriously? What if these people are are
these entities are retroactively discrediting the ability of psychics around
(47:09):
the world? Which is this week's craziest thing been read
on the Internet. For the record, I don't believe it, okay,
but maybe I've been influenced by the future. How would
you know? How would you know? Um? There's one thing
that you can know for sure, though, and it's news
about the show about stuff they want you to know. Yes,
(47:32):
you have asked for it, and we've finally got it.
Guys and ladies. We have a store where you can
buy T shirts stuff they don't want you to know,
customized T shirts. They are awesome. There's a Global Illumination
Global Unlimited shirt. And you know, if I am ever
walking around on the street and I see somebody with
one of those shirts on, I don't know, I'm just
(47:54):
gonna I'm probably just gonna have to run up and
hug them because that's the coolest thing ever. I'm not
a hugger. I'll buy you a beer, though, oh, I'm
gonna give you a hug watch out. Um. Yeah, and
we'll be adding more designs to this. We did a
couple of these designs ourselves. Um, we'll be adding more stuff,
and we want to hear from you. We want to
if here what you would like to see on a
(48:15):
T shirt, um, or if you know if you want
a hoodie or what we should do. It's really sky's limit. Yeah,
and it helps support us. So you know, if you
do spend some money there, we really appreciate it. There
are so many other ways you can spend your money,
and uh, if you you know, if you give us
some to support our show, we are just really grateful.
(48:36):
So go to stuff they don't want you to know
dot spreadshirt dot com, check out our stores. If there's
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of those you can send us a message that way,
or you can always contact us through our email. We
are conspiracy at how stuff Works dot com. Mm hm hmmm.
(49:02):
For more on this topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube
dot com slash conspiracy Stuff. You can also get in
touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff,
From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Oh hi,
I can't say that I didn't know you were going
to be here. After all, we are experimenting in the
(00:22):
studio right now with psychic powers, not psychedelics. No, no,
no no, that's an entirely different actual study that you
can partake in with psychedelics and the mind. But this
one we just wanted to see who was going to
show up and listen to this episode. So thanks for
being here. We knew you'd be here, whoever you are.
(00:44):
My name is Ben, and I'm Mat and we're here
with our super producer, Noel, our mascot, who is a
skeleton named after Agents Scully and the X Files, which
makes this ladies and gentlemen stuff they don't want you
to know. But hey, even if you were psychic, you
might have already known that. Yeah, that's true, you already
(01:05):
know all the things we're about to say, which has
got to be a real hassle. When you're doing small
talk at dinner parties and stuff, you know, you can
see the night stretching before you if that is indeed
the way that psychic powers work. So let's open up
today's podcast with a story about a scientist named Emmanuel
(01:26):
Swedenborg or would that be Sweidenborg. You know, I'm not
sure man, Well, Swedish listeners can correct us if and
let us know if it is Feedenborg or Swedenborg. But
point being this guy tremendously influential scientists, philosopher um and
also a theologian and mystic. He believed that he had clairvoidabilities,
(01:50):
and so did many of his friends. Who was born
in six so at the age of sixty three he
began to experience these dreams and these visions, culminating in
what became for him a religious experience and epiphany. But
you can hear various different stories about speed and Borg's predilections. Here.
(02:13):
One of my favorites as something I read as child
in a series of time life books that maybe only
three or four of you guys listening will remember that
is Mysteries of the Unknown. Nice you remember these, It
sounds so familiar, though I don't know that I can
pinpoint a single story or issue. Well, you and I
(02:35):
were working together a while back, Gosh, this must be
maybe three or four years ago now, and I caught
a wild hair. I went back on eBay after watching
a commercial from you know, the late eighties early nineties
about these books on YouTube. I I ordered all of them.
(02:55):
I hunted every single issue book down and I had
the complete set. It was a childhood dream come true.
And in one of those books. All of these books
have titles that will drive the more skeptical members of
our audience wild with rage, things like mystic Places, psychic power,
psychic phenomena, and many of these seem related, they overlap,
(03:19):
but whatever, I love these things, Matt. And one of
the stories I read in a book called Psychic Powers,
had this party. It was like a dinner party in
town in Sweden, and one of the guests there, all
of a sudden got up, walked out, was increasingly distressed,
(03:41):
walked back in the room and said that a fire
was consuming his neighbor's house and that it was going
to consume his own house as well, and he knew
it with certitude. The people in the you know, in
the room with him, of course, reacted a bit skeptically
because at this time there was no way this man,
(04:02):
Emmanuel Swedenborg could know that a fire was consuming his
house they were far away from his place of residents.
Allegedly it was true. So what Sweet Speeding Board claimed
to have experienced here and in other instances was clair
a voyance, which is a I don't know, um kind
of inner side I guess, yeah, sure, we could just
(04:25):
say clairvoyance is anytime you're aware of something that happens
far away, either in the time frame or in spatial difference. Um. Allegedly,
you know, it's one of those things that are called
psychic powers, which, like you said, makes the lights go
off in a skeptically minded person because well, there haven't
(04:46):
really been any psychic power has proven as of yet.
Right now you already know what a psychic power is
if you're listening to this show. It's an umbrella term
for several different kinds of alleged abilities. So he said
one would be clairvoyance. What's another one, man, Well, telekinesis moving,
being able to move something physical with your brain somehow. Uh,
(05:12):
then there would be telepathy, being able to hear people's thoughts.
I think I forget what they call it, but it's
a form of pyrotechnics where you can use, you can
create fire pronesis thank you. Um. Then there would be
what's the one where you're able to, oh, psychometry, where
(05:32):
you would be able to touch something right and learn
things about orbit yea, absorbits youah, absorbed, the memory surrounding
it and stuff. I like to think a lot of
these as being able to if it were one day
to be proven scientifically somehow that there is some kind
of uh, quick leap into a fourth or fifth dimensional
(05:54):
understanding that like if a third dimensional being could just
understand it momentarily or something some kind of slip in
that reality I guess, or in that constraint on perception.
So maybe something like climbing a little bit higher into
the fourth dimension just for a second to see the
flat circle that is time, or something like sure, yeah,
(06:18):
that's the only way in my head that I could
imagine it ever becoming an actual thing that was proven. Yeah,
And there's some there's some interesting things will get into
here as well about the nature of perception itself. But
maybe it's better to call this stuff non linear perception
(06:38):
because it's still experienced through the framework of other human senses, right,
Like what happens when you have a vision yeah, you
it's almost a dream like experience from what I've read, right, yeah,
And everybody has had a dream before. So you encounter
these senses or these experiences through the same sensory inputs
(06:59):
that you inarguably possessed today. You if you are speedinborg,
you hear the fire, you see it burning, you feel
the temperature, you hear the screams, and so on. It's
just not in a way that most scientists would argue
is based in your perception of the facts, right, Yeah,
And that's why mainstream science considers these kinds of psychic
(07:22):
powers or purported powers, and even research into these powers
as just kind of bunk, and they're dismissed unfortunately or fortunately,
depending on how you think about it. But there are
a lot of things that are, let's say attributed that
these things are attributed to. One would be a misattributed cause,
(07:45):
So having some kind of seizure or something with your brain,
a neurological issue that causes you to experience something differently
than how you imagine it, or you imagine it differently
than how it actually is. Sure, there's also the idea
of myss true being a psychic power to a mundane cause,
such as you know, maybe you had earlier heard some information,
(08:10):
but you got you heard it, but you retained the information.
So it sounds like you're reading someone's mind, but where
you're the only mind you're reading really is your own.
And you know that's similar to the idea about UFOs
being weather balloons. Right, And for some reason you get
a small concussion and become unconscious for a few moments,
and in that that time frame where you're unconscious, which
(08:33):
would only be a few seconds, you you know, your
brain inspiring so rapidly. It's happened to me before where
I was unconscious just for a moment, but I felt
like I had dreamed for a night or days even
um and the things that I saw and heard felt
real to me, but in reality, it was just a
moment where my brain kind of rebooted. And then there's
(08:54):
also sloppy science, right. Sure, you can look at in
experimentations if there were poor controls over certain things, or
maybe there was a confirmation bias in one of the
researchers that wanted to prove that it's true. You could
even look at flawed methodology. There are all kinds of
things that could go wrong inside an experimental setting, right
(09:16):
with the best of intentions. And this brings us to
the idea of the third the third pillar that mainstream
science typically uses to dismiss psychic powers, which might be
one of the more fun ones for a lot of people,
the idea of active deception. Oh yeah, you've got to
love the swindlers and the Charlatan's I always think of
(09:36):
in particular, and nothing against the guy, but Uri Geller
and some of the parlor trick mental gymnastics that he
would do on stage for people, and like what the
whole bending of the spoon thing. There were a couple
instances where he could, you know, tell you about your
(09:56):
you're dead loved one or something, and you know the
using cold reading and other techniques like this. We've seen
that it's just something that anyone can do if you
learn the techniques. Yeah, so cold reading would be noticing
the minute reactions, typically unconscious, that people have when you're
(10:17):
speaking to them, which is why sometimes when you will
see self professed mediums like the Long Island Medium or
what was that guy's named, John Edwards specially dead Yeah, yeah,
to show for a little while, you'll see them, guess
with some pretty open ended things and intently studying the
other person. But despite the dismissal of the mainstream scientific
(10:41):
world visa VI psychic powers, mainstream America take psychic powers
as a four granted fact of life from guy. Great
statistic for you here. Yes, six of them at least
believe that it is true. They believe at least one
type of psychic power is real. And this sort of
stuff drives the really zealous, self righteous types of skeptics
(11:02):
crazy and matt. They can't seem to understand that no
matter how rude or loud or bullish they are to people,
those people still don't seem inclined to agree with them. Yeah,
I mean, it's a tough stance to be hard lined.
I mean, yeah, I'm you know, I'm playing a little
bit because there's a touchy subject for people. But the
truth of the matter is that if you are if
(11:24):
you are rude or smug or you know, condescending to people, uh,
then you have to ask yourself if you're really trying
to persuade them um to change their opinion or evolve it.
Because often and listeners, skeptics, true believers like you guys
know that Matt and I spent a lot of time
(11:45):
on the Internet reading forums from people who say things
that I will just go out and say, you're bonkers.
And then and then people who UM say things that
are you know, that are that are clearly clearly possible?
Right uh? And and on both sides of that spectrum
that we're talking about, one thing that crops up is
(12:06):
that people often have a UM, a bizarrely contentious emotional
stake in it. And regardless of whether you consider yourself
a skeptic or someone who has unlocked the hidden mysteries
of the psychic mind, we can tell you that the
way to persuade people is to have a conversation with them.
(12:31):
No one you know, no, Okay, well, first, no one
wins an argument on the internet. We know that, and uh,
and we also know that UM. The implication is is
only that something happened to them in their childhood and
they're mad about it and they want it to be
your fault. And with that in mind, then we have
to say this um, and we're not going seriously, there
(12:58):
has been no comprehensively except the scientific validation of any
kind of these psychic powers, or let's call them like
you said nonlinear perceptions. Yes, there have been approximately well,
by which we mean exactly zero. And what do we
mean though, you see, you hear all those qualifying terms
(13:18):
comprehensively accepted or universally accepted validation of this scientific validation,
scientific validation, So something that we could quantify that could
be empirical. For such a test to be accepted, it
would have to conform to some very rigorous methodology. And
you know, a point that becomes sticky sometimes is this
(13:41):
idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which I'm on
board with. Um it Also, it's also something that you
hear often when um, someone is making a controversial claim
because this is such a third rail in in scientific
fields that often just asking the question would be dangerous
(14:07):
for your career. Yeah, that could invalidate anything else you
want to do to study. Yeah, which is to me
a really sad and um. You know, it says a
lot of things about the state of current society, and
not many of them are good. Yeah, it means the
boundaries of a lot of these things won't get pushed,
but it is I do however, with that being said,
(14:29):
I do agree with the idea that if there is
something that is extraordinary or or up to this point unproven,
then yeah, get the paperwork right, get the evidence, compile
the data, and and another thing. Speaking of this paperwork
and compiling data, this I think is maybe the most
(14:50):
important point for any test of psychic powers to be
universally accepted, to be something that people at M I
T and Harvard and um people well, well, most people
aren't reading M I T and Harvard press releases for
something that John Stewart would talk about on the Daily Show.
For for it too gain some kind of credibility, it
(15:12):
would need to be reproducible. And what what do we
mean when we say that, Well, you'd have to be
able to have an independent group of people take your methodology,
your study, and reproduce it to the t in a
completely separate setting with different people. Um, maybe they'd use
the same variables and everything, um, but you'd have to
(15:32):
be able to get the exact same result. Like That's
a that's a very very reasonable thing to ask, and
I think it's crucial and unfortunately, uh, it has not
to our knowledge from everything we could find, it has
not happened yet. And we have talked about psychic powers
of various types. Right now, we looked at psychotronics and
(15:53):
the USSR's attempts to figure out what the heck is
going on, if there's anything going on, and then Projects
star Gate in the US trying to make psychic soldiers
with all various different types of psychic abilities. Right, and
this has all been uh, this has all been skull
duggery so far. So to be fair, there's a lot
(16:13):
of stuff there that's still classified. But today we're gonna
be talking about a very specific type of alleged psychic power.
It is called clairvoyance. So, Matt, what what is that really? Well,
it's several things. Uh. One of them is precognition. That's
the ability to see into the future, to tell when
(16:34):
something's going to happen and to whom. Um. Then you've
got retro cognition, which is the ability to look into
the past and see something that maybe nobody else would
have been able to see something a private moment, let's say.
So an example of that would be, Uh, somebody is
walking through a field in I don't pick a country, Yugoslavia.
(16:59):
So I was walking through field in Yugoslavia and all
of the sudden they are struck with this vision of
a peasant running out of the woods into a into
the field, and let's say it's the same field, and
then digging a hole and putting a sack of coins
in there, and they walk a little further, they see
(17:20):
the field and they walk right to where the coins
are and they dig them up. That would be retrocognition. Absolutely.
I've heard it used a lot of times when someone
experiences the death of someone who perhaps died of violent death,
and they were able to relive that moment to find
out who the killer was. I mean, that sounds like
(17:40):
a horrible power, but it does crop up in fiction fiction.
It happens all the time. Then the third one is
remote viewing, and this is the one that US and
the Soviet Union both looked into pretty heavily. And that's
the ability to, uh, to imagine a place that that someone,
(18:01):
let's say you're higher up, wants you to imagine where
some hostages are being held. And you don't know where
that place is. Nobody knows where that place is on
your team, But you can write, just by writing a
little sketches down on a piece of paper, you visualize
the thing and somehow or another you were able to
(18:21):
almost astray, project yourself to where that place is, draw
a picture of it, and then you can help your
team find the guys. And you know, there's uh, there's
a lot to be said about that, which will we'll
say a little bit later because someone interrupt the flow here.
But just think of men new stereo goats that film, Yeah,
and watch it if you haven't. It's pretty fun. There's
(18:42):
one more, Yes, the final one is the ability to
communicate with the dead whatever that means, right, yeah? What
what does what does that mean? Exactly? I mean, come on,
we we just talked about it earlier. Who who's the
Long Island medium? The Long Island people who can just
(19:04):
tell you what your grandfather is thinking right now? Yeah,
And that offends quite a few people when they see
a medium as some sort of snake oil salesman, right uh,
and believe that they're exploiting the folks that they're claiming
to help. Yeah, anytime there's money exchanged for that kind
of service. Um, frowny face is what I would say
(19:28):
to me. This is this is the one that I
am the absolute most skeptical about ever happening. And and
I'll say why a little bit later, but we should
go ahead and differentiate between one other thing. Many people
confuse clair avoyance, the alleged experience of clairvoyance, with the
very real experience of deja vu. Oh yeah, deja vu
(19:51):
is a real thing. Uh. The let's say, the things
that happen in our lives tend to pete themselves, at
least in small variations. Right walking by a storefront and
seeing a thing cat maybe, or walking by and seeing
someone in a certain place because that person frequents that
(20:15):
place very often. And there's always the woman in the
blue dress with the yellow uh summer hat. Sure, whatever
you know, and you it's one of those things that's
tough too to throw away. As Hey, this is just
completely bunk because a lot of people experienced deja vu.
(20:36):
I'm pretty certain that you have experienced de ja vu. Listener, yes,
and perhaps maybe experiencing it at this very moment. But
what is time? Time? Time? There's another thing that many
many people have had experiences with, and it's the following. So, Matt,
let's say you have a dream, tell me tell me
(20:59):
about this stream. Well, in this dream, I am jogging
on a treadmill and I am standing on the treadmills
on top of a building in a city that I
don't know exactly where it is, but I'm very familiar
with it. Uh. And down on the street, I see
all of these cars going extremely fast on this highway
(21:22):
and there are no other cars. They're just it's this
one group of cars and they're all going the same
direction down this highway, traveling in like a pod or
and all of a sudden, they just stop. They just stop,
and there's a light at the very front of all
the cars flash like a traffic lighter. It's not it's
(21:42):
not traffic. It's almost this glowing blue light that happens.
And my treadmill, my treadmill like stops working. So let's see.
You have that dream and you remember specifically the moment
where you look down you see the pod of cars
move being the bright light, the blue glow rather uh,
(22:04):
And then your treadmill stops working, and you don't think
about it, but this image stays with you, right and later,
I guess later in the sense of line or time,
and this stuff is true. Then a week, two weeks,
a year, twenty years, you're on a treadmill, you're in
(22:24):
a tall building, and you look down and you see
how that's weird, just a couple of cars, and then
party goes way as you feel you can almost you
feel happening. It's the very tip of your tongue sensation
where you're about to just name the future before it
occurs for you. And even if it doesn't come all
the way to fruition, like the blue light doesn't happen,
(22:44):
the treadmill stops or anything, still, that feeling of familiarity
is what you would consider deja vu. Yeah, and I
don't want to invalidate anybody's experiences here, even if I
will say that if you leave that you have the
power to communicate on a routine, consistent basis with the dead,
(23:06):
then you should contact uh, you should contact people among
the living who could help you learn more about this ability,
because you would you could be the first person proven
to do this. Yeah, it would mean probably a lot
of lab time, but it would be for the greater
good of everyone. So we talked about these studies, right,
(23:29):
these studies of clairvoyance. So let's let's talk a little
bit more in depth. So he talked about this idea
of clairvoyance and these studies of psychic powers, and you
and I have actually done quite a few videos on these.
So just to recap there's a guy named Dean rad
and I believe was uh he thinks that parapsychology, which
(23:50):
is also a name for PSI researchers, which is also
a name for people who are researching psychic powers, which
is also a name to their opponents for pseudoscience. Raydon
believes that parapsychology is just as repat repeatable as any science,
but it's also subtle and complex. And it's subtle and
(24:14):
complex because we have an incomplete understanding of it, which
can make a lot of sense logically, because to me,
it's possible that there could be some things that we
have so little information on that we don't really have
a way to um observe, observer or effectively tested, you know, yeah, exactly.
(24:36):
I mean it's possible. We have to leave it open
that it's possible, right, I mean, you have to. I
think that's one of the rules of this planet is
that you have to leave room that anything is possible.
Something about Georgia Guidestones episodes in Thole's documentary. Whenever somebody says, uh,
(24:57):
leave room or I always think they're gonna say, leave
room for nature, leave room for nature. Well then, and nature,
as we've seen with nature, sometimes it's fairly randomized, right, yeah,
or at least appears so right, Yes, it appears. And
this is all because of our so far limited understanding
(25:17):
of a lot of the minute processes that that speed
nature and time along. We're getting there, we're getting closer
to a lot of these answers, but we've still got
a long way to go. Like in our video that
came out earlier this week, I think it was the
three things about your brain that no one understands. Uh.
(25:39):
We found that despite living in the twenty one centuries
we record this, some of the smartest neurobiologists in the
world are still trying to figure out some of the
basic cognitive things that happened to you every single day.
Unless you're a robot listening to this now, Yeah, every
memory that you create, how does it physical? We become
(26:00):
a memory every every decision you make? What makes it
for you? Yeah? And doesn't happen like a second before
you choose to do something, is you're like, how does
where where does your consciousness come into free will? That
was one of the most fascinating things that you talked about. Ready,
(26:21):
what is it? Readiness? Uh, potential, readiness, potential, that's fascinating. Yeah,
you know, if we could have a little bit of
tripping music here. So regardless of where you're sitting now
or walking, you might be working out, you might be
(26:42):
making something to eat, you might be in your car
on the train. They take a second and and try
to feel where you and where the world begins. So
you can feel your clothes, right, if you're wearing clothes,
you can your clothes because those are one of the
(27:03):
closest things to your body. But then where does your
body end and where do you begin? Is there a division?
All those neurochemicals and synapsis firing in your brain? What
part of them is you? How much of that stops
before you stop? Because we know a person can live
(27:26):
without legs, we know a person can live without arms,
We know that people can live without large parts of
their brains. So what are you that's actually listening to
this podcast and without understanding what the nature of consciousness
actually is. It's it's damnably difficult to try to understand
(27:50):
what consciousness also does. Right, Yeah, man, Okay, this is
the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. Uh, well,
a lot of these things that we talked about keep
me up at night, but this one in particular because
just trying to nail down what what I the thing
I big I is? Yeah? Is it? Is? It sort
(28:13):
of a just an extension of a young Gian arc
type with the super consciousness really being one What was
the Bill Hicks quote? Was just one super entity continually
experiencing itself kind of deal the universe experiencing itself just
over and over and over again. Right when? And you
know how would we even begin to measure or prove that? Right? Sure?
(28:36):
So with uh with the raiding guy with Dean raiding,
one thing that he was associated with I believe was
pair Right. These are the guys that United did a
video on earlier, who found or argue they found, um
what was it? It was a connection between probability and
a conscious observer and whether or not if let's say,
(28:59):
I think the experien it was they had ball bearings
dropping down into where they did little buckets, and if
you they had people sit there and consciously want the
ball bearings to fall in certain buckets or a certain order.
And they said that they got a measured a measured
difference and when someone was consciously trying to make it happen. Yeah,
(29:22):
a measurable effect, not a large one, mind, And they're
not again, they're not touching or manipulating the thing at all,
the ball bearings or the box. They're behind glass so
they can be blown on or something like that. But
this this stuff, although raiding and the team sort of
went to went to quantum mechanics as some sort of explanation.
(29:44):
They looked at non locality, backwards causality and stuff like that.
They've been heavily criticized by physicists and psychologists and especially
physicists who studied quantum mechanics because you know, you know
that those physicists have to be so tired of quantum
mechanics being whipped out as just the quote unquote scientific
(30:07):
explanation behind everything. It's a fun word, and it's a
ridiculously complex subjects And yeah, I can imagine it would
be quite annoying if someone is just applying your field
that it's so complex to this thing that seems probably
pretty mundane and has nothing to do with it. And
we know one of the other big studies that you
(30:27):
briefly mentioned was Project Stargate. Could you tell me a
little bit about that. Yeah, it was the idea that
we I think the conclusion that we came to, and
we discussed this earlier, was that during the Cold War,
both sides thought that the other one was, you know,
making some kind of gains in whatever this psychic soldier
(30:49):
thing was, and in order to stay ahead of the game,
you know, ahead of your enemy at least, both sides
had to put money into this, and they were studying
all kinds of things, like we said, telekinesis, remote viewing,
just astro projection, all that kind of stuff, being able
to spy, make a superspy essentially um And it didn't
(31:12):
go so well, at least at least if you read
some of the reports. But we can't get all the information,
as you said earlier, it's some of it's still classified.
We we ran into something interesting here because for a
time people in charge of the program believed it was working.
And then you know, you have to ask yourself, do
(31:32):
they believe it's working because it's a solid paycheck, you
know what I mean? Or are they getting measurable data?
This this idea of traveling via the mind and using
a sketch to depict what you have found is tricky
because there's a little bit of subjectivity or interpretation there
(31:54):
where someone could look at a triangle and say, you know, oh,
he went to the pyramids or uh, oh he went
to the top the very tip top of the Washington Monument. Right. Um,
it's it's difficult, but we do know that there was
a lot of money poured into it, and for a
time at least people seemed happy with the results facets
(32:15):
of the United States government. The most successful of those
people was a guy named Ingo Swan. We also know
that Sony researched this as well, Which when do we
we talked about that with Pair or was that a
different video there they kind of jumbled together, but the
Sony one, I think was a completely different video where
(32:37):
they're looking at esp Yes, but that that's still is
weird to me because these children and the testa, but
it all seems to be. It seemed to me like
I think the big question that we asked was why
the heck would Sony get into that? Right at the time,
they were making electronics. I mean, they still largely make
(32:59):
electronic xt and movies that enraged the dprk um but
you know, why, why the heck would Sony get into that?
And it made me, it made me just think about
their CDs. Remember the SP technology on CDs, the idea
that the machine would read far enough into the CD
that if it's skipped, if it physically skipped, it wouldn't
(33:22):
miss and beat because it already knows what's going to
happen to ten seconds ahead of time. Yeah. So I thought,
when I've initially heard about that subject that maybe there
were it was just some kind of miscommunication that they
were actually just studying the ESP for that some uh
mistranslation because those acronyms stand for very different things. Yeah,
and it turns out, no, they really did. Yes, they
(33:45):
really did. And when they stopped this program, which went
on for a while, when they finally stopped this program,
and I want you to picture something like, I don't know,
it's the beginning one the Ghostbusters movies were dr vank
and is holding up those cards and uh, and the
person has to guess what's on the card. It was
(34:06):
kind of similar to that. And ultimately Sony's reason for
folding the program was just bizarre and fascinating to me.
They shamalan to me, you guys, because they didn't stop
the program because it was unsuccessful or had middling results. Indeed,
in the memos where they talk about the cancelation of
(34:28):
the program, they say they found something that works and
that is at least worth researching more if they were academics,
but they're not. Their business so weird and they said,
we can't figure out how to make money off this,
therefore we're not going to do it anymore. I feel
(34:48):
like they just got a big budget surplus for a
year and they just went, you know what, let's prove
psychic powers. I don't know, but you're like a little
more skeptical with this stuff than I am, for sure.
Oh sure, I don't know. I lived too long, Ben,
He lived too long. Matt. There's another study that was
(35:09):
pretty interesting that came out from a Cornell professor named
Darryl Bim, which we mentioned in one of this week's episodes,
and professor ben I almost said instigating he created a
very uh fascinating study where he would do the following,
check this out. So he would give these student volunteers
(35:31):
a list of words and these could just be like
random words, not to be fancy, so they could be
like brim, exit, gazebo or whatever. And then he would
give them this list of words and they would just
he would give him a few minutes to read it.
And then what he didn't tell them is that he
was giving them a surprise quiz at the end after
(35:52):
they've read these words, where they would be given um
the surprise quiz to test their memory the words, what
words are, etcetera. But here's where it gets crazy, because
at the heart of the third you remember this. I
think we talked about this. The third step of the
test was that after they had taken the quiz, Uh,
the computer program randomly selected a few of the words,
(36:17):
not all, but a few of the words for additional study.
And it had the students retyped this word. So you
would maybe out of um brim, exit and gazebo, you
would need to type exit like three times or several times. Right,
This would be a much longer. It's a much longer
less than just three. Yeah, and Uh, this weird thing
(36:39):
happened in the data. When he looked at it and
the way he compiled it, he said, Wow, these students
are doing better on the test based on the words
that they you know, studied or rehearsed after the tests,
them selected words, the randomly selected ones. Yes, so students
(37:00):
didn't know there was going to be a test, they
didn't know they would have to study after the test,
and somehow their performance, perhaps possibly by coincidence, went up,
possibly by you know again sloppy science, which is the
running accusation that happened. Um. The paper was first day
(37:21):
in the news in two thousand and ten, published in
a fairly prestigious journal in two thousand eleven, and since
that point people have been arguing about if this is true,
and multiple multiple studies come out again saying that there
there's no such thing as psychic powers. But we think
that for those of you who believe in these sorts
(37:44):
of cognitive abilities, that keeping up with folks like Darryl
Bem is going to be gonna be interesting, perhaps even
instrumental to your argument in the future. Awesome, Ben, I
think this is the time where I'm going to do
the thing that you usually do to me. I've been
(38:05):
talking the whole time, I know, but that's too bad.
This is the part where I say, been is there
a psychic power? Maybe all of them or just one
that you really believe in, one that you think we
just don't have the grasp on yet. You know, I've
I've quarreled with that question because this is a little
(38:28):
bit of biography. But in my family, I'm not going
to say which side, or which relatives or whom in
my In my family, there's been this long tradition, going
back a weirdly long amount of time, of people my
(38:49):
family being accused not by people in our family but
outside the family of being some sort of you know
which person or things like that. Warlocks. Sure, and I
think a lot of that goes back to them luncheon thing. Honestly,
it's just some sort of mothering. But uh, I have
(39:09):
a I have a hard time saying that there is
a silver bullet everybody has her in one can do
it kind of power, because what we know about the
human body every other thing the human body can do,
is that most people can do the same things, but
(39:30):
only to varying degrees. Right in the detail, we find
the heroes and the villains right the degree of their ability,
which is why some people are Olympic runners and other
people heave when they get upstairs. So if there were
some sort of psychic power. Then logically it follows that
this ability would have to be present in some way
(39:54):
in the majority of the human population. Right, that that
makes sense. I'm building up to the answer. Um, so
the next I gave you my my bias, which is
pretty anti this stuff growing up just because of of um,
my personal life. But I will also say that, given
(40:14):
how little we know about both the nature of reality
and the nature of perception in the human brain, it
is completely possible that we understand the skin of perception
or the surface of it, but we don't know the
machinery behind it. Now. Of course, I know that some
(40:36):
people could say, well, you're just dwelling on a few
uncertainties and making them bigger than they are, but we're not,
because there are just these massive, massive gaps and knowledge
about cognition, and that's not even verging on the metaphysical stuff. Right.
(40:58):
So is it possible then that there is something about
our perception which we do not understand, or is there
there's some alleged potential or or some possible thing. Then,
while I'm carefully hedging that, what I am saying is
is that, yes, it is possible that given the lack
(41:19):
of understanding we have about consciousness, that our our cognitive abilities,
that our ability to think, you know, who am I?
What am I? That self aware part of us may
be able to do, or see or encounter more stuff
than than we know. And I know that sounds kind
of hippie dippy, but I'm not saying that there are
(41:40):
any psychic powers I believe in. What I'm saying is
that it's just as credulous and naive to say that
the possibility categorically does not exist. Saying something hasn't been
proven and saying it will never be proven or does
not exist. Those are two very very different things that people,
(42:01):
sometimes with the best intentions and sometimes conveniently confuse. Very
nice Ben, what about you? I'm gonna submit to that answer.
I just need to write down a few things. Um.
I I have just a very simple observation. And I think,
just like you said, with our holes and understanding and perception,
(42:23):
and I think time, the way we understand time is
a bit wonky. Still, Um is it an actual thing?
Does it really exist? Or is it just something and
apple and a name that we have applied to a dimension.
And I think that perhaps the way that our brain
functions in our neurons. Because we've got so many questions there.
(42:47):
I think there may be some kind of link between
a fourth dimensional understanding or excuse me, a fourth dimensional plane,
and perhaps the way that our brain functions. That you know,
that's a really interesting point. But try and scientifically prove
that ideare you, because you probably won't be able to
(43:07):
do it, at least not for a while yet. To
prove something, we would need to have again an observable, reproducible,
measurable effect, cause and effect, and a thing that we
know always produces thing be But here's the thing. What
if it just doesn't work that way? Then that would
(43:28):
mean that it's not real? Right, But it's I guess.
I guess my head goes to things like holographic universe theory,
some of the more abstract ideas about the universe as
a whole and in general reality. Um, that would be
my only the only reason that I can would allow
(43:52):
for this type of thing to be real unless it
was proven to me. It would be more like if
if it seemed that these things we're not reproducible at all,
but if just for argument's sake, we knew that something
was real it doesn't matter. We can take uh, I
don't know, and just make one up telepathy, and you
(44:13):
take telepathy for the sake of arguments, say that somehow,
you know, I everybody listening knew that telepathy was real,
but we couldn't we couldn't reproduce it because it didn't
work that way. Then what that would make me go
back to would be the methodology of the science, because
it seems like if something does not appear to be
(44:34):
reproducible then and you know it is a real thing,
then you find a way to reproduce that stuff. I
was gonna see. You find out what other variable is
in there that's dirty in the test too, because that's
probably what's happening. And I think, um, Dean Raiden's argument
about this sort of stuffing real but subtle and complex
(44:58):
is an argument toward that perspective that there are multiple
variations or excuse me, multiple variables that we have yet
to find. UM. With with that being said, UM, I
have I have, like most people, been in some really
(45:19):
weird situations. Sounds like the beginning of a totally different story. UM,
But I always have gone to the idea of what
I would call the boring stuff. First. You know, maybe I,
maybe I somehow unconsciously knew that there was always a
(45:39):
lady in a blue dress with a yellow hat somewhere right.
Maybe you saw a similar pack of cars stop on
the interstate on TV four years ago, stuff like that.
And you know, we have to be honest that there
there are a lot of Charlottetan's out there who want
to um prey on people who are emotionally vulnerable, so
(46:01):
you have to be careful. But also also you and
I have talked about this long time, and I think listeners,
if you're if you're still on board with us at
this point in the game, you agree with us when
we say that, um, there are very few questions that
are not worth asking, are So let's put it to you.
(46:22):
What do you think? Is there any truth to any
of this stuff? Have you had an experience where at
least that you can't explain scientifically of why you saw something?
One more thing, though, I'm sorry, I have to jump
in and say this one more thing, the absolute craziest,
craziest stuff that I read about. Okay, Matt, what if
(46:45):
this ability to see through time and space and influence
events and non linear perspectives. What if it's real? And
what if someone doesn't want you to know? And what
if these people dare we call them time lords? Uh?
One of these? Seriously? What if these people are are
these entities are retroactively discrediting the ability of psychics around
(47:09):
the world? Which is this week's craziest thing been read
on the Internet. For the record, I don't believe it, okay,
but maybe I've been influenced by the future. How would
you know? How would you know? Um? There's one thing
that you can know for sure, though, and it's news
about the show about stuff they want you to know. Yes,
(47:32):
you have asked for it, and we've finally got it.
Guys and ladies. We have a store where you can
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(47:54):
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(49:02):
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