STDWYTK Presents: A Conspiracy of Sound, Live in Brooklyn

True story - for years, Ben, Matt and Noel have wondered about the concept of sensory experience. Turns out On Air Fest was listening, and called them to New York. In tonight's episode, the guys present their live exploration: A Conspiracy of Sound, at Brooklyn's legendary National Sawdust.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist, we are returning with an adventure. Now
often you will hear Matt and Nol and myself refer
to one of us as on adventures. Turns out, on Wednesday,
February nineteenth, twenty twenty five, we had quite an adventure
together and we're proudly presenting it to you this evening.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, we hung out together at the National Sawdust in Brooklyn,
New York as part of the on AirFest twenty twenty five.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Brooklyn.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Guys, this has been called the Coachella of podcasts. Company
your company, Yes, and Wired called it the future of podcasting.

Speaker 4 (00:43):
Man.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Oh, I like the latter one the best.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, for that one, to be clear, not this specific
show you're about to listen to, but on AirFest.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
On AirFest, which is a fantastic thing. I think we
got a second date. We put our heads together and
we started asking about the conspiracies inherent in the concept
of sound and Noel, you put together a team that
played live music, responding to the audience for about an

(01:15):
hour before we even opened, with help from our friends
at Force got Hey.

Speaker 5 (01:20):
I know, less of a team, more of a ragtag
bunch of synth nerds. But yeah, my buddy Eric from
the band fors Ghosts so done some production work with
if you want to check out. They've got an EP
out actually called Recycled Hearts that I did a remix
of one of their songs on if you want to
check that out, And I think we'll probably put the
music stuff out eventually that we.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Did for this event.

Speaker 5 (01:42):
But the live show itself actually also contained some fun
sound design and some original music by mister Eric Kinlaw
and myself as well in this cool kind of radio
play that you wrote, Ben, and that we actually figured
out how to perform live with live sound effects and
music and surround sound and everything.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
With the PlayStation five controller, and I made a pretty
fun little compilation of our old YouTube videos to go
over top of when Nol and team were playing music.
And it was a delightful thing to behold in this
all red place. But you're not going to experience any
of that. What you were going to hear is the
moment we walked on stage as stuff they don't want

(02:21):
you to know. To do our episode.

Speaker 5 (02:24):
Yes on a Conspiracy of Sound, and we talk a
little bit about the science of sound and psy optics
of sound along with all kinds of other things, including
a fun game we played with some backwards masking messages.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
And we have a third act, a legendary guest at
the end of the show, none other than Justin Richmond.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeap from the Broken Record podcast.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Part of why we are giving you just like the quick,
skinny context of this is this performance does contain what
stand up comedy calls blue or strong language.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
We've just had a real potty mouth.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
There are some wild language in hereio indeed, all right,
then on with the show.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
From ufons to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained defense. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hey, check, check.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
What everybody doing?

Speaker 5 (03:47):
Yeah, human being, how did you like our music?

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Concrete performance?

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Okay, okay, big ants, my pal nole there as well
as we've got Scott and a.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Rick, You guys, all of you, indeed.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Anybody with the courage to reach it into U, your
heart of hearts, your soul of souls and share a
story into that microphone.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
There were fragments.

Speaker 5 (04:11):
This told a whole story in some form or fashion,
maybe just a word someone say.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
He immediately, Yeah, it was yeah, of course it was. Yeah,
I said a bunch of times.

Speaker 5 (04:21):
Oh yeah, Well I felt like you were summoning me.
I was was doing stuff. Then I was deeping and booping.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Who are you though?

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Hi? My name is Matt, my name is Nola.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
They called me Ben. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here that makes this stuff. They don't want you
to know live that the legendary national sawdust here in Brooklyn.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Is it legendary? Yes?

Speaker 6 (04:46):
It is?

Speaker 3 (04:46):
Now, yeah it is.

Speaker 5 (04:47):
It feels Look at this place, I know, look at
the whole. I can't tell which way is up. It's
very Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Did anybody ever play mass effect? Anybody in this room?
Not a single one. It feels like we're on a
ship in mass effect.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
That's all I say.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
It feels cool up here. And it also hears cool,
which is a thing I think I can get away
within the English lagus Here's cool.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Here's true.

Speaker 7 (05:10):
Why not?

Speaker 3 (05:10):
It's a malleable thing, the English lange us here cool
around here?

Speaker 1 (05:15):
I heard tell it here's cool, and we are excited
to join you guys tonight with something we call the
conspiracy of sound. Sound is everywhere around us. We can
notice it, especially here in this legendary venu. We also
ignore a lot of sound, and it's so strange. It

(05:36):
reminds me a little bit of the old David Foster
Wallace quote where a fish goes up to the other
fish and is like, what it's crazy. We're swimming around
water and the fish says, what's water?

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah? It just kind of exists in that medium. They
don't really give it too much thought.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Is there a technical definition of what a sound is?

Speaker 3 (05:57):
You know, there is mass, you know, we've got it right.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
I don't know as science ever nailed down what a
sound is.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Oh my gosh. All right, so we have some problems
with this one. We'll give you the actual facts definition
of sound. Sound is a mechanical disturbance from a state
of equilibrium that propagates through as an elastic material medium.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
It's a disturbance that sounds negative.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
It's also technically accurate, which means it's practically not helpful.

Speaker 5 (06:25):
So in the way that the water is medium, the
medium for us the fish to swim around, and obviously
sound can travel through water as well.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
For us, it's just.

Speaker 5 (06:33):
Literally we're picking up our ear machines or picking up
vibrations in the air.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
It's all this stuff because there's a lot of stuff
out there, you just can't see it in particulates.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
It's true.

Speaker 5 (06:43):
I mean, I'm a giant music nerd, as you can
maybe tell, but I still to this day am mystified
and baffled by the idea of You know, we literally
can interpret vibrating particles of air.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
As like beautiful music.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
That can like move us to tears, and language that
can hold concepts like acoustics.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Right, well, let's okay, We've got a lot of stuff
to get into tonight, folks, and the best way to
do it shout out to our old alma matter, an
outfit called how Stuff Works. If you remember that.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
That's nerds.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yeah, all right, welcome back. We wanted to give just
a more helpful, more practical definition of what sound is.
It's a constant experience for a lot of us. It
is also a widely misunderstood thing. So, guys, if we
were going to talk about the building blocks of sound,
right the notes in the composition of the idea of sound,

(07:42):
what will we be talking about.

Speaker 5 (07:44):
There's a couple of different terms. I mean, you can
plot this on a graph. If anyone's ever messed within
a scilloscope. It's a way of visually interpreting and understanding
and measuring sound waves that travel through the air.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
And there's a couple of different terms.

Speaker 5 (07:56):
We've got frequency, so the number of sound waves that
can pass a given point. That's measured in wave lengths,
you know, so you've got like the peak and the
trough of a wave. There's different kinds of waves, like
in synthesis, you've got like a sine wave, which is
sort of a pure tone, it's like, and then you
got a saw tooth wave, which has more harmonic so
it's more like and all of these sounds that are

(08:19):
used to make weird beetboop music is literally just recreating
things that occur naturally in nature when you're redundant.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
But I'm okay with that.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
I think that's why this performance is so cool and
fits what we just did, because you're manipulating specifically those
those sound waves in like sine waves.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Well yeah, right.

Speaker 5 (08:37):
And it's interesting because frequency in music can be registered
as pitch, Like if you've got an oscillating sound.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Wave, and if it's really slow, it's going to be
a low tone.

Speaker 5 (08:48):
And as it gets faster and faster and faster, it
can change to a higher pitch. And it's frequency is
something that is used all kinds of ways in sound design,
whether it be you know, creating a tremolo effect that
is registered as a speed. You know, like the frequency
is how fast or slow that oscilla is. But if
once you get into what it's called audio rate, that's

(09:10):
when you start perceiving it as pitch.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
I'm done, end of end of music. Nerd rants.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Way more So we got to talk about this term
hurts because a lot of people have heard this, and
you're not in you know, the audio industry in some capacity,
you probably don't know what that really means.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
So I still don't really know, not the not the
rental company.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Well that it's a measurement of the frequency of sounds.
So it's the number of those waves that pass per cycle. Yeah, persiton,
which is generally measured in a second if you're using
hurts right. And then when human beings walk around, we
can only hear between what's the spectrum that humans can
hear between? Like you guys, yes, most of us are humans.

Speaker 5 (09:53):
I think don't we have a thing? I think we
have a thing? Right, should I play the thing?

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Not yet?

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yet an experiment, but I just want to establish this
between twenty hurts and twenty thousand hurts is generally accepted
to be the human beings hearing spectrum.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
That's what I have a thing for that. You know,
we are going to talk about it. I really want
to do the whole point, guy, I know.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
The whole point is to set up that there are
things called infrasound which are below that level that you
can hear, and they're what's the ultra Ever had a child,
You are familiar with that term, but it just means
higher than you can hear from.

Speaker 5 (10:29):
Why did I just immediately and not think about that,
but just thought about it like mega cool sound?

Speaker 3 (10:33):
It's ultraed.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
And then there's no, there's decibel. That's just the unit
used to measure the intensity of a sound.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
And we can we can go back and forth comparing sounds,
and everybody this is the thing. Everybody in this room
has a unique experience. What we have described to you
are the scientific commonalities, objective stuff, the language, the language,
yes just so, the notes and the composition. However, your

(11:06):
sonic mileage may vary even right now in here and
outside of here. The world is riddled, so there's so
much sound that just to survive your average day, your brain,
without your knowledge nor your consent, actively works to make

(11:27):
you ignore I'll say it. We're live a bunch of
shit so much.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Yeah, yeah, naughty boy.

Speaker 5 (11:33):
I heard about a study the other day that apparently
jen z are losing that ability because of noise canceling headphones.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
WHOA have you guys heard about this? You hear about this,
You know about this.

Speaker 5 (11:45):
It makes sense if you think about it, because the
noise canceling headphones use some kind of phase technology to
cancel out the noise outside in the world. So when
you're constantly experiencing that, your brain almost like kind of
loses the ability to do it naturally. And it's causing
some simulation, yes, exactly. And then there was a name
for it in the article that I completely should have remembered.

(12:07):
But there's a particular type of condition that is being
developed more and more by folks.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Who used noise canceling heads called getting hit by cars.

Speaker 5 (12:16):
Well, that's its own things, that's its own occupational hazard.
But but I just made me think of that, because
it really our brains are designed to filter out those sounds.
But when we use technology to do it for us,
the brain kind of atrophies are that part that does it,
you know.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah, And that's the thing Earth is not to get
too woo about it. Earth is alive. Collectively. We can
call this planet its own huge living mago organism. And
like every other living thing, Earth is constantly making noise. Right,
it's never gonna shut up. You know, you're not going
to win that conversation with the planet. You can have

(12:53):
some headphones and get hit by a car.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
White noise machine. Some people use noise to mask noise.

Speaker 5 (13:00):
Yeah, Like my good buddy Jordan run talking, I hope
it is here is He has a white noise machine
by his bed and I never understood it until I
go at his place and now I can't go back.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
It's like it's weird. It's like it's comforting in some way.

Speaker 5 (13:14):
But when you live in a big city and you
have this constant from right, that's a way of masking out.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
Also, therapists like to use.

Speaker 5 (13:21):
This so the people in the waiting room don't hear
your deepest, darkest secrets.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Well hopefully so there's an ambient sound level that exists
wherever you are, right sure, and in this city I
watched on the plane goal I watched what was it
called quiet Place to No, it was a quiet place,
the earliest quiet place the first day. And there's a
title card when you when that movie first starts, and

(13:45):
it says the average decibel level in New York City
is ninety hurts, so sorry, but it says that that
is the basically decibel level of a human screen. So
then upon further looking into it.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Oh and by the way, shout out to the guy
who just somberly nodded, like, why did you already know.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
That it is? Just watched it too on a plane.
I'm sure so it.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
The whole point is a conversation.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
So if we're just sitting here talking, not yelling into
a mic the way I am, at least right now,
this is about seventy decibels. If you're standing across from
you having that conversation, and if I'm screaming at you,
that's about ninety decibels.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
And that is.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Sands Mike sounds like just walking around.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
That just blew my mind.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
And that means you have to, as a matter of
survival and sanity, you have to cut yourself off from
a lot of the noises that surround you, right, And
I'm not talking about like arguments with a significant other.
I mean just walking down the street. I'll talk about
or not I saw you not. And so we also
we know though that there's still a lot of science

(14:52):
people have not figured out about this, right, There's still
a lot of noises that we can't explain. Have you
guys ever heard of the bloop?

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Mm? Yes, okay, that's the bluep you guys, let's talk
about the bloop. Now, that's what the blue is, Matt.
It's so funny in that clip.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
You can't even really hear the there it is.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
It's a really weird sound.

Speaker 5 (15:16):
It's athlu askue creature coming coming at us from the deep.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Well.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, it was a sound that was recorded by microphones
that are in the ocean, and scientists were baffled, like
what in the heck made that sound? And you know,
some of the weirdos thought, hey, maybe that was like.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
A see maybe a creature out there in the sea.

Speaker 5 (15:35):
Esque tentacled demons in the depths, craft, some large mammal,
you know, some large fish that we just haven't discovered yet.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
They could exist in the deep deep ocean because it
was such a long and strange sound that seemed to
raise up I was looping it.

Speaker 3 (15:50):
By the way, it doesn't just go on forever like that.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, it is like a singular it is deep sea
farr it is it is?

Speaker 3 (15:59):
Yeah what an ended up being, Matt.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
It ended up It ended up being U the glacial
version of a tectonic plate ship. The glaciers were cracking,
and scientists had abstractly predicted this but kind of got
the time window wrong. So this was a real oh
shit moment when they figured out, hey, it's not a

(16:21):
cool sea monster from our buddy HP Lovecraft.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
It's really thought that though it was just us.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
It's a glacier going mobile man, okay, and now and
now this brings us. So we explained that one. But
there's another noise that still has not been explained, and
it's one of the one of the weirdest continual phenomena
across the planet in the world of sound.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
We're talking about the hum. We got the bluep and
we got the hum. These are great the um has anyone.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
Here ever experienced, just like while you're in your apartment,
just here like this background.

Speaker 5 (16:56):
Well, Matt, do you remember earlier we were in a
coffee shop or something or pizza guy in front of
us goes, do you hear like this sixty.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
Cycle hum right now? And we were like, you have
no idea. We've been like literally thinking about nothing but that,
and no, I do not hear it. You're losing your mind, sir.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
Well, And in what what we do as humans, we
try and find a source, right, So if there's event
or you know, you can tell there's a fan somewhere,
like maybe there's a homecoming from over there, maybe it's
some other mechanical device that's just causing that standing wave.
But in this case, it's like a standing wave that
is just outside somewhere.

Speaker 5 (17:28):
Tell us what a standing wave is, Matt. We've talked
about sound waves. They can actually collect like and sort
of hang out in corners. If anyone's ever been to
a recording studio, there's a lot of techniques that are
used to keep standing waves from happening because they can
totally mess with the way that you perceive other sounds
by interfering with them. So basically, low frequencies can collect

(17:50):
in corners and in studios, they use things called base
traps to keep that from happening. They're like really expensive
pieces of insulation, is what they basically are. But they
keep the those waveforms from collecting and changing the shape
of the room and the way sound waves kind of
bounce around and refract. I'm sorry, I asked you to
describe it, and then I went and described it.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Than This makes me think of one of my favorite
sound conspiracies, which is infrasounds.

Speaker 5 (18:18):
Yes, right, it's the lol right ultra.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
And this is just real quick, I don't know, just
show of hands. Does anyone hear no judgment, genuinely believe
in ghost Yeah?

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Okay, write it down. You gotta got some true believers, Okay,
all right.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
So it turns out that once upon a time a
guy who is very skeptical, his name Big Tandy, engineer,
super skeptical. Uh you you have to prove something to
me beyond the shadow of a doubt, no matter how
innocuous you.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
Say, Vic Tandy. Yes, yeah. And this is also James Randy,
who's also a real skepticist.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Different, what's the deal of that, guys?

Speaker 1 (18:59):
I think it's their last names, right?

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Something us about Big Tandy?

Speaker 1 (19:06):
As I was saying, he is working alone kind of
late at night in this rectangular lab, and it's not
a super impressive lab. It's not like super duper high security,
take your biometrics or anything. He's walking in, he's working alone,
and he starts to get a creepy sensation. It's a
sensation that occurs more than once. It haunts him. He

(19:28):
begins to believe that he's seeing things move out of
the corner of his eye.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
He's carrying chills.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
He has the sense of a presence always just behind him,
always just out of view. And he says, Okay, first off,
I've built like my whole personality on saying ghost are
not real. So I got to figure out something to
explain this. And he looks everywhere around, he goes outside.
He's talking to like the power company, the utilities company,

(19:55):
and then he finds out that there is a fan
in the very back of the room that is generating
a sound he cannot consciously hear. This is infrasound, and
multiple investigators have gone to haunted houses and discovered that
at least in those instances, something like that fan has
produced something that very much appears to be a ghost

(20:17):
when you experience it in the moment.

Speaker 5 (20:19):
And there are lots of folks that will like to
set up tape recorders in these houses and let them run,
and there will be these sounds that they will pick
up that can't be explained by just like what's going
on in the house.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, tell us, well, it's odd because you're it's kind
of two different things.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
But just to get the infrasound.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
If you've heard a fan that's just running, let's say,
a highly metal fan, you know, maybe one of the
older ones, and you hear the high pitched tones that
it creates, but there's harmonic stuff going on on the
lower end because of the mechanical movement of that thing.
And that's the stuff he's talking about. You can't hear
it right, And it can physically. What Vic Tandy found
is it can physically vibrate your eye like you're squeishy

(21:00):
squeeze eye, that eyes that we all have. And that's
one of the reasons you get almost that floater feeling
when you move your eye just a little bit and
you you feel.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Like you saw something.

Speaker 5 (21:10):
That's what he was experiencing, what he was seeing out
of the corner of his eye, and it was freaking yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Okay, but it's you can sense that infra sound right,
sure causes fight or flight. Yeah, often on a primal level. Yeah,
without like feeling like you actually need to leave. You'd
get that sensation when you were talking about Ben. It
was such a fascinating thing to discover that. And I
think we talked to his son for the book we did.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
We talked to his son when we were researching researching
my book named in a burst of creativity stuff. They
don't want you to go the book because we had
the title for the show earlier anyway, So this is
this is the parable or the moral here is if
you feel you are encountering in ghosts, because we want

(21:55):
to give you practical applications and ideas, the first thing
you should do, As silly as it sounds, it's like jack,
if there's a.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Fan, oh, or a bus it was there was a
bus stop right outside another place that was reported to
be super haunted. Yea, the bus's engine was creating infrasound,
in standing waves inside the basement of this area. And he,
you know, he proved it. It's just crazy.

Speaker 5 (22:18):
One thing I've noticed since I've been working on a
lot of more music and recording, and like mixing records
and things like that. Is I wouldn't say I hear better,
but I hear differently and say dead people who welcome that.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
That's okay, that's fair.

Speaker 5 (22:32):
But like i will be in my house and I'll
be in my living room and I'll hear this sound
and I'm like, what is that? It's driving me crazy
and realize that it's a bathroom fan on on the
other side of the house, and it's because it's creating
this kind of standing wave thing that travels a lot
farther than you would think, and I'm experiencing it more
like not necessarily, like my ears are.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Better, but my brain's processing this sound differently.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
This okay, And speaking of going back to like our
point about hearing things differently, can we do the experiment?

Speaker 3 (23:02):
I think? Must we do an experiment with you? Okay?
All right, all right?

Speaker 1 (23:07):
So okay, as we said, not everybody can hear the
same sounds. Diplomatically put as we age, our hearing abilities change.
And so what we'd like to do here with you
tonight is play a brief clip for you. We're going
to start at the lowest sound a human being can register.

(23:28):
We're going to go into the higher ranges, and as
we play this, listen along closely. When you can no
longer hear the sound, just raise your.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
Hand and we'll play too. We'll play two. It's going
to be interesting. Yeah, let's see if I'll play let's
see the thing. I'm ready, all right, trying to make this.
It doesn't hurt anybody. It's okay, I'm not hurting yet.

(23:59):
I guess we'll hear it, guys. Yeah, okay, get.

Speaker 8 (24:03):
A little higher higher, yeah, okay, okay, okay, still there, Okay,
here's no it's.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
Just where you can't explodes like in scanners, I think so. Yeah,
stretch it. It is no, not quite gone for me,
not quite gone for me. Okay, it's gone for me.
I got it for you, to be honest, guys, still
got it. I still hear it.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
You still hear it.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Okay, that's still going. Okay are you joking? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (24:42):
Okay, all right, I's going for me. Here's what happened.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
So it's pretty cool, guys. I've never done that with
actual people before. It must have been.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
It was probably a little weird for some of us
to see the hands go up earlier and realize that
the person may be sitting next to you could no
longer hears as siren sound of wine that was, no
doubt becoming increasingly disturbing and irritating.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Right, No, I've lost most of my hearing from a
ride symbol that sits right here, usually when I'm just
crashing it. I and I can't believe I heard that
as long as I did.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
That was Are we sure that was accurate? No?

Speaker 1 (25:15):
No, it is that is accurate? Confirmed podcast accurate. Okay, okay,
so this is wow.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
That's good.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
So here's the here's the thing. For those of us
who could hear the sound almost to the entirety of
the time, you will need to avoid parts of the
Scottish railway network because a few years back, true story, now,
a few years back, they got tired of all these
young loiterers and so they they weaponized the system called

(25:48):
the Mosquito. They conspired against the Utes of Scotland and
they they put these speakers in that would play a
noise that would drive people on the younger side of
the human ana e spectrum absolutely insane.

Speaker 5 (26:02):
Like our friend at the pizza shop. But she the
thing we couldn't hear for sure. I don't think any
of us get here. So that's kind of wild man.
So did it work?

Speaker 1 (26:13):
It did work? It did we know that? Well? I
guess as a kid would age out.

Speaker 3 (26:18):
They would regain the ability to loiter.

Speaker 5 (26:21):
Okay, fair enough, But then it's like elderly are a
lot less threatening.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
It's a lot less cute, Like what are you doing
when you're thirty eight? Just there?

Speaker 3 (26:30):
I dig that, I actually really dig that.

Speaker 5 (26:32):
Well, yeah, I'm forty one and I could hear it
almost till the very end.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
So I'm still going to go loitering Scottish train stations.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
What if all the kids had sound canceling headphones.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
See, this is where we're tying things together.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
Okay, Okay, I get it. I guess we're.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Also noting that that's one that's one real world example
of how sounds can be weaponized, how they can be
used against you. However, that is a fairly innocuous example,
because no one on that train station is forced to
be there. No one is being forced to stay there
or encounter sounds that they do not consent.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
To hear it.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
And will pause for a word from our sponsors, and
we've returned with a conspiracy of sound. Well on you guys,
do we want to talk about the for another experiment?
Do we want to talk about the sound of silence?
Or we want to go straight to weaponization.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Let's go to weaponization.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Can we do Simon and Garfunkle first?

Speaker 1 (27:34):
I mean, actually, it's funny. You don't know about this,
but I've been writing a terribly nasty parody of Homeward Bounds.
I'll share it with you after the show.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
Wow, it's too much.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Quite frankly, it's pretty good. Whatever, it's good, So okay,
all right, weaponized sound then, right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
Let's do it. Actually it is really nice and quite.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
Legendary. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Wow, thanks y'all for having that's a cool space.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah, we don't have to do it. Let's talk about
dangerous stuff. But you already did it. We got to
at least talk about the world's quietest room. All right,
let's do it.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Let's do it over in ore Field Labs in Minnesota.
Some we, I think several of us audio files know
about this. Some of the world's smartest experts in audio
built the literal quietest room in the world. And that
silence we just heard together what passes for silence, you know,
with the slight hung there, we could hear some breathing,

(28:30):
some coughs, things of that nature that doesn't happen in
the quietest room, and it makes the quietest room an
incredibly disturbing place. People can hear themselves blink and hear.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
The sound of your blood like flowing through your body. Yeah,
you guys ever have.

Speaker 5 (28:45):
Those like orchid Tho's rooms in orchestra class, like in school,
the little practice.

Speaker 7 (28:50):
Rooms or whatever.

Speaker 5 (28:51):
It's like that, but like fifty x, you know, and
it is so intense that if you it could be
considered torture to a degree if someone was forced to
stay in there for long enough.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Can you imagine seriously locking somebody in there. Oh my god,
that's terrifying. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
We talk about being alone with your thoughts.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
I mean, well, this solitary confinement is one of the
worst things you could do to somebody, right, right, We've
learned that over time.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
But at least you can talk through the pipes to
your neighbor.

Speaker 9 (29:20):
You know.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
There's little notes and stuff not in this.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Not in this room, and people do kind of like
a really scary haunted house. People do make the decision
to pay to go into the room for some amount
of the was a bravado. It's a bragge docio, you
know what, Like, I'm already a very quiet person. How
bad could this be? You know, it never works out spoiled.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
No, no, it's not good.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
It's cool that it exists. But yeah, you're gonna learn
a lot about yourself in that way. And that's like, okay,
it's because humanity exists in somewhat of a of a
Goldilock zone of sound. The absence of sound is terrified, right,
and the wrong sounds use the wrong way are not
just terrifying, but physically dangerous. This is where we get

(30:10):
to the real weaponized stuff. I think one of our
favorites the PsiOps. The fact that, okay, I think it's funny,
the fact that the US military, at multiple times, not
just the US, multiple world militaries have been trying to,
you know, lay siege to some nay force. They've been
trying to straight up torture people. And they've said, oh,

(30:33):
we've tried everything, right, you know, we've done all these
horrific interrogation techniques. What should we do next? And someone goes,
I can play the Barney song. Yeah, yeah, it's just
they keep playing it it's true. Don't stop, just keep
it going.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
It's absolutely diabolical, is what it is.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
It is in classic rock and heavy metal. True story.
That's what broke Manual Noriega in nineteen eighty nine. They
look it up, they played classic rock.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
It was the Scorpions well and enhanced interrogation techniques. We
don't want to get you know, in too much trouble here,
but those were used with extremely loud metal music playing
right in order to make somebody feel extremely.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
Non sensory overload.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
And then there's also the part about using sound in
a way that weaponizes not just your auditory mechanisms, but
also the culture in which you exist. This is another
military thing, Operation Wandering Soul and the ghost tapes. Know
you want to talk a little.

Speaker 5 (31:40):
Bit about, Yeah, this is There was a podcast that
worked on back in the early days of podcasts when
they were only one billion podcasts, and it was called
The Stuff of Life with a good friend Julie Douglas
over at House Stuff Works, and we actually did an
episode on what's called ghost tape number ten or the
one but what is it to Operation Wandering Soul, And

(32:01):
it was essentially a US psyops effort to freak out
the vietcom by planting these little speakers in trees in
the forests of Vietnam and playing like spooky ghost sounds. Essentially,
I'm simplify oversimplifying it a little bit, but the idea
was there's a lot of ancestor worship in that culture,
and there's a lot of belief in ghosts that it

(32:24):
runs very, very deep, and the US government essentially weaponized
that against them by making them believe that the ghosts
of their ancestors were coming for them or haunting them,
or lurking in some way in the forests.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah, you're attempting to at least so.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, and they did it by physically sneaking in in
planting devices.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
Right, that's terrifying.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
Spooky stuffs too, even if you don't believe in ghosts.
They're imagineer in the woods. Yeah, that's a that's a
clip of this. Imagine you're in the woods, you're already
set a koto, you're already in a combat zone. You've
seen people die, right, you might die today, and you
hear something like this. There's also the clip of the

(33:05):
little Girl, which I think is creepier.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
I think that's a little map that's the warning.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Yeah, but just coming from the tree tops, right, Like
if you imagine that low file least somewhat.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Right, and you're already keyed up, you already know the
sounds of the environment around you. So this is even
for the most skeptical of your Kong, this is a
very frightening experience.

Speaker 5 (33:28):
I agree with you, but didn't we also kind of
determine that a lot of people kind of thought it
was bullshit, and then it wasn't particularly effective and maybe
a little bit you know on the part of Uncle
Sam dismissive.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
And super well, yeah, it was all of those things
for sure.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Whether or not anybody believe that, I don't, but it is.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
An example of it is another example of the immense
amount of time, money, and energy spent on weaponizing sound
against people and turning sounds you hear against you. And
sometimes this stuff doesn't work. But honestly, in some cases
it works way better than you might assume. This is

(34:08):
where we introduce a guy named Woody Norris. Matt, do
you want to you want to kick some guy Norris?

Speaker 2 (34:17):
This guy I've become obsessed with, y'all, and I highly
recommend you do a search for Woody Norris and something
called hypersonic sound. This is uh, this is an inventor.
He has a third grade education, at least that's what
he states. He one time took a part a transistor
radio when he was about eight years old, and he's

(34:38):
been inventing things ever since, well back in the nineties,
I think it was ninety six. Specifically, he patented a
thing called hypersonic sound. And uh, give a little Ted
talk about it. Should we play the clip before.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
We think we should? Well, let's just say. Let's just
say that.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
He developed a way to turn soundund into a beam
the way we can turn lights into a laser, right,
really focus it down, or we can turn it into
with a lens, you know, focus it down on something
like this and you can get pictures.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
It makes sense.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Well, he found a way to make a device that
he can point at you and sound can travel through
the air to exactly where you are, as far away
as you are. If you're in this beam.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
And the person next to you won't hear a thing.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
You only you will be able to hear when he
is shooting at you.

Speaker 5 (35:27):
Can I say, Matt, I don't know if this is
exactly connected. But have you guys heard of this place,
the sphere in Las Vegas?

Speaker 3 (35:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (35:33):
Directly what directly connected?

Speaker 5 (35:36):
Okay, great, Well that they apparently have this sound system
that it like whatever your seat is, you get a
sound mix that's in whatever your language is or whatever.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
Like preferences you might have. Can you yeah, get so
this is the same technology, then yes, but.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
We're talking about the nineties when he patented it. And
then he's going to tell you a little something in
this clip we pulled from his ted talk that he
gave in the early two thousands that, uh, let's extrapolate
maybe together a little bit what he means.

Speaker 10 (36:04):
We've got the military had just deployed some of these
into a rack where you can put fake troop movements
a quarter of a mile away on a hillside, or
you can whisper in the ear of a supposed terrorist
some biblical verse.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
I'm serious.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yeah, you can make someone think they're hearing God. Yeah,
with a weapon that the military has had since before
you know, we invaded a rock.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
Decon and like have him tell you to do stuff.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, which goes back to the by Caramel Mind, which
is a different episode.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Sure, Sorry, this has blown my mind so much that
it's even a possibility, and really thinking about it being
weaponized and purchased by the Pentagon for such activities.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah, it's cool, it's fine, everything's fine.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
It also reminds me of one thing that has been
on everybody's mind a few years ago, Havana syndrome. We've
all heard about that, right, Yeah, just real quick show
of hands, all right, I think it's real it.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Who's got it?

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Okay? Okay, yeah, okay, who thinks it's malarkey? As Biden
would say, Okay, surprisingly closer than I thought.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
We get it. We talked extensively about this.

Speaker 5 (37:19):
We're going to again in a little bit and an
additional segment of the show that we're going to do later.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Now, do a little bit.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Oh yeah, we'll set this up. Beginning in twenty sixteen,
individuals who I want to say this diplomatically, were in
some way associated with intelligence communities in the State Department. Right,
they started reporting, Okay, I need they started reporting all

(37:45):
these debilitating symptoms associated with what they thought was as
it yet unexplained weapon that could target target them in
some way. Was this some kind of microwave energy directed?
Was its being more associated with sound. People were looking
for all kinds of explanations, including this one guy who said,

(38:06):
with a lot of misinformed confidence, the crickets in Cuba
are weird.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
Yeah, okay, I can buy that. Maybe.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, everybody else went along with it. We don't know
what's happening, Brooklyn. As we hang out tonight, the top
intelligence agencies of the world don't agree on what's happening.
Some people are saying they made it up, you know,
it's just they had them malaise and now they can
put a word on it.

Speaker 5 (38:34):
Well, can we just say, like, it's similar to Gulf
War syndrome, for example. It's this like kind of amorphous
collection of symptoms that are hard to pin to a
particular thing in general. So we're starting off with a
disadvantage in that respect.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Sure, maybe a bit of confirmation bias.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
As you know, I honestly thought I heard it once
in the house. Honestly, for real, I thought I heard it,
and I got nervous, and I guess a paranoia I
heard what?

Speaker 3 (39:00):
So what? Fine, it was a sound.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
If you're not paranoid, you should that's probably it was
my PS four. My PS four was the fans within
it were generating such a terrible tone that was so
high pitched, and I didn't understand that it was causing
it because I heard it coming from the far side
of my house like a standing wave.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
Sure, but it was just this high pitched tone from
the fans, and it scared the crap out of me.

Speaker 5 (39:30):
But now you've got in Havana syndrome, and you weren't
even in Havana.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
Not at all.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
I thought I was in Atlanta syndrome.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
That's a different kind of syndrome, bro.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
This is our PSA for Atlanta syndrome. No, well, you'll
have to listen.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
To the recording. Strew chicken wings everywhere you go. Peperwtt.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
I'm telling you. I'm telling you the hype is real.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
Just so we know that thing, that hypersonic sound. But
what he made it can only register what is it?
It hurts above two hundred.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
So pepperweight, yes, thank you by them. Sorry, I are
gonna let that go. That is the way, Sorry, Matt,
Please get totally fine.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
Two hurts and above is the targeted like sound you
can create at crazy high decibel levels, which sounds a
lot like habana.

Speaker 5 (40:12):
But we do know that these types of weapons exist
for like crowd dispersement. Sure, and their quote unquote non
lethal right.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Less than lethal would be the better.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
Your head doesn't.

Speaker 5 (40:25):
Scanners explode instantly, but it may not be good for
you long term.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Bits picture, it's a thing where the manufacturers can say, legally,
we're not trying to kill people.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
Yeah, like rubber bullets, you know.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Yeah, Look, pain hurts or hurts?

Speaker 3 (40:40):
Pain does?

Speaker 1 (40:43):
Everybody hurts?

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Sometimes add a docibel level one hundred and twenty five.
That's when pain begins to register in your mind when
you're like being hit with.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
A followed by scanner's head explosion right after that. So
I'm not gonna let it go.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
Fine, So we know that there can also be messages
conveyed in this way, right, There can be messages that
are sent out maybe in plane at your shot, to
this entire audience, but for one reason or another, maybe
only a few people would register it.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
Right.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
And we're not talking about just a just like a
high shrill notes or something. We're talking about the possibility
of certain encoded things. Matt, I see what you have there.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
Is It's just my phone.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
I'm just going to make a call. No, no, no,
my son was obsessed with this, is obsessed with this.
He thinks is the coolest thing. He wants to take
it in for show and tell. This is a transistor radio. Yeah,
that's all it is. It's not connected to Wi Fi.
It doesn't do anything else. It's got batteries and it's
a transistor radio. It's got a fancy little thing here

(41:49):
we call an antenna.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
And you know what it does.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
What does it do?

Speaker 2 (41:55):
It translates all the hidden waves that are flying through
the air right now, and it turns them into audible music.
And Howard Stern, I guess sometimes and other people. You know,
I've heard folks that are awesome and you can listen
right now. I think it's one oh five point one
here in New York.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
You gotta listen.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
I heard We Have to the Breakfast Clubs, one of
the best shows on the radio. It's I don't even
want to do it. I was gonna put it on
and show. It's just it's amazingly cool that you can
turn this thing on and you can just pick stuff
out of the air that is flowing through us right now.
It doesn't stop flowing through us when you go to sleep.

(42:34):
It's flowing through us. When you take a shower, it's
flowing through us, and that.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Happens pretty much anywhere in the world you go.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
It kind of freaks me out, but it's also amazing.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
It kind of should freak you out. It's weird that
it became normalized.

Speaker 5 (42:47):
Hey, let's take a quick break from the show. Here
a word from our sponsor, and then we'll be right
back with our Conspiracy of Sound. That live show from
National Sawdust at on AirFest.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Oh those were great, Right, we're back, let's jump in.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
We don't even need much more technology to do a
real hidden message that can go around the world.

Speaker 3 (43:13):
It's time for us to talk about number stations. Yes,
really quickly though, I.

Speaker 5 (43:20):
Man, lest we leave you terrified that we're all being,
like you, bombarded with these radio frequencies and that they're
like dangerous or something.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
There are no different spectrums.

Speaker 5 (43:30):
There are, of course, microwaves things like that that are
very tiny because they can penetrate your body in ways
that are dangerous.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
But these are comparatively large waves.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
Right, yes, wait, which ones?

Speaker 3 (43:45):
We're talking short wave?

Speaker 6 (43:46):
Right?

Speaker 3 (43:46):
The short waves what they're called.

Speaker 5 (43:47):
But like the type of things that are flying around,
most of the stuff that we encounter when we're sleeping,
like you're talking about, these are not things that we
should be worried No, we shouldn't be worried about.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
Just but Wi Fi is a fairly new thing when
you think about another kind of ra existence frequency.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah, someone in the crowd right now just thought, oh god, five.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
We're not going there, five G, seven G.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
But no, just think about the the amount of waves
that we send out from all these giant places that
broadcast them and from you know, our individual devices and
all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
And there are a lot of people that.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
Are freaked out about that, which leads to ones of
the quiet zone.

Speaker 6 (44:26):
Yes, Radio D we went there, We got launched, We
got hell one of the.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Last places with actual landline pay phones in this country
because there are no cell phones allowed to exist.

Speaker 5 (44:42):
And they have literal vans people whose job it is
to roll around scanning for these type of frequencies and
figuring out who the hell broke the rules and brought
this you know, forbidden device into the quiet.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
And we will get to number stations.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Sorry, I'm so sorry. Now why are you sorry?

Speaker 5 (44:59):
I'm the one that brought us to the radio HEAs
wanted to, don't want to think they were like getting
cancer from you know, uh Star ninety seven.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
No, hell no.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
The greatest thing is if, ever, if all the technology
just broke right, huge blackout or something.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
If you've got one of these, you.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Know what's going on, because there's there're gonna be human
beings in a radio station broadcasting some important message.

Speaker 5 (45:22):
Out hopefully like in Fallout what's the guy's name? The
DJ and the Fallout game you have to go find
three dogs. That's true, you got to find a three
dog and then he'll tell you where your dad is.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
And there's an entire system of automated there's an entire
system of automated messages that are supposed to continue like
after civilization falls.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
There's like twelve people and now they have to listen
to the same recorded message over and over again, which
kind of becomes an accidental signe.

Speaker 5 (45:56):
And there's usually like a plot point where you realize
they record it and it's on a loop and everyone's
dead and you're fucked.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
It's yeah, So so if I tune my radio to
one O five point one, I can hear Charlemagne?

Speaker 3 (46:08):
What else gets played on some of these radio bands?

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Oh, gosh, yeah, we'll fast forward through this real quick.
You don't need a uh, you don't need a dangerous
frequency to do dangerous things. Numbers stations are an active
conspiracy right now. I accidentally I just tuned into one
when I was in Japan a little while back. There
is this Cold war relic that is entirely meant to

(46:34):
communicate with spies. Anybody can tune into these radio stations,
at which point you'll hear something like this.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
Nope, hold on, we had a screen saver.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
There's only cool beaps. There's one with the cool beap.

Speaker 11 (46:58):
We like the one with the beeps. So it's a
radio station that's quiet most of the time. I feel
the people nod in the heads. Yeah, except every so
often something like this.

Speaker 3 (47:13):
Will come out.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
You can hear this because of the hotel, because of
the nature radio. You can hear this almost anywhere in
the world. And there are entire communities, often online, dedicated
to figuring out what's happening here. But the most likely
answer is that at least once upon a time, these
were one way messages to agents of espionage right, largely Russian,

(47:40):
and they're written with what's called the one Time Codebook.
Not to get too into the weeds here, but what
that means is there's effectively no way for you to
figure out the what they're saying unless you also have
your handy little book, which we're not gonna is.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
It like a cipher like I mean that you have
to have a key to scratch.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
I got it, So Echo Hotel, a couple of numbers
you might be able to say, possibly that sounds like
latitude and longitude. Unless you have that little book, you're
never gonna know. And if you ever get bored and
bibe your vice of choice and get thee to YouTube.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (48:17):
There's a collection of these is called the Connet Projects,
and it's very fascinating, really interesting listens.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
Some of them are actually kind of beautiful.

Speaker 5 (48:24):
If anyone's familiar with the Wilco record Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,
there's a sample at the end of one of the
crazy songs called I'm Trying to Break Your Heart that
gets really wild, and then there's the sample Yankee Hotel
Foxtrot that is from the Connt Project. So you can
find all of those in playlists on YouTube, and they're
really interesting.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
And we're pretty sure it's fine to listen to these,
because we did a few episodes on them, and no
one is content.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
These are old. I mean these are from you know,
like these are yeah, all right?

Speaker 1 (48:50):
Have you listened to the new ones? That's that's the
most pretentious thing.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
Of whoa you ever heard the new numbers? Listen to
music on my mini the trolla?

Speaker 6 (48:59):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
So this is where this is where, this is where
we we have to ask ourselves. Knowing that there is
at least some grain enough truth to all of these
conspiracies we just explored together, we have to ask ourselves
when it comes to hidden messages, right, how far does
this conspiracy ankle play? That's why. To learn more, we're

(49:22):
going to join some folks at their house right now.

Speaker 5 (49:24):
Okay, Now, can I just say that's really cool as Scott,
he's like our Paul Schaeffer. He just really gave such
a boisterous laugh like Paul Wood for David Letterman. Oh,
they feel like a million bucks. So big ups, the
big ups this guy. Oh, it's really sweet.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
I think some other folks could do better. I'm just
I'm telling you.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
Okay, all right, obviously it's falling apart, so.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
We're leaving the stage.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
We're doing different place.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
It's time for a word from our sponsor.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
Two guys at their house.

Speaker 4 (49:56):
We opened on a common place. See an evening familiar
to red household. You've just returned from a hard day
at work, and now it's time to kick back to
unwide soaking in the comforting background of your favorite television programs. Yet,
as we'll see, you're always just one step away from

(50:18):
the stuff they don't want you to do.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
Man, what a day?

Speaker 2 (50:29):
All right here you time to take a break. What's
on the two?

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Let's see?

Speaker 2 (50:34):
Let's see.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
Oh I love conversions, me too. Imagine with this light,
crisp serial, you can get all the nourishment.

Speaker 12 (50:45):
Of you can tile easy, clean, solid vinyl tiles ends.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
You'll never have to ask where does it all start?
Sometimes here with an acid stunning or.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Here which is careless, matchres cigarette and fire till the
next time you're.

Speaker 6 (51:02):
In the.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
Attention.

Speaker 12 (51:09):
This is a test of the emergency conspiracy system. This
is a test of the emergency conspiracy system.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
Oh I was waiting for this, waiting for what?

Speaker 1 (51:20):
Man, this noise is driving me crazy? What the missu
phoonio mean?

Speaker 2 (51:24):
I'm sorry, dude, it's the national headphone Alert. Don't you
read the news.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
It's illegal for you to ask me that.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
The Transparency and Audio Act, remember the new secrecy laws.
They say that some people finally get to hear what's
really being broadcast.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
It's thanks to these dose issued headphones.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
Oh right these Wait, I thought it was a scam
and not everybody gets these headphones.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
Yeah yeah, And it turns out there's an entire hidden
world of sound and only a few people get to
learn about it every year.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Okay, so why us though?

Speaker 2 (52:00):
I think it's because we went to that on air
fest a little while back. Like right now, this just
sounds like a beep. Yeah yeah, Check this out again.

Speaker 12 (52:11):
If you are hearing this message, congratulations, you have successfully
passed the emergency conspiracy broadcast test. With these headphotes, you
will be able to hear the true messages embedded in
your programming. We the secret government, invite you to use
these devices and explore the signals sent through public airwaves.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
Have the best part about the chroom?

Speaker 1 (52:34):
Why the efficiency with the newest surgitry embedded Holy.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
Smokes, put them back on. Here we go.

Speaker 12 (52:43):
A hidden war rages throughout the world. The race for
rare earth metals. The ikroom can, through the following steps,
be reassembled into a powerful transmission device. First, find it
appropriate crossroads, gather a fire of willow, and you had
the stroke of a favorable doubt.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
Wherever you find your favorite Conglomco products. What in the
holy Kellogg's diners going on here?

Speaker 2 (53:09):
Pretty cool?

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Right? No?

Speaker 1 (53:11):
Dude, no, it's not pretty cool at all. You're saying
there's an entire conspiracy to hide secret What are these messages?
Instructions in plain in sight?

Speaker 4 (53:22):
Technically plane earshot?

Speaker 3 (53:24):
Wait you can hear us?

Speaker 4 (53:26):
Oh yeah, I can hear you. We can always hear you.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
What the That guy sounds like me? And we're supposed
to act on this like we're being conscripted into some
sort of secret army.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Don't think of it that way. Think of it more
like it's good to know things.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
It's good to know things.

Speaker 4 (53:47):
Are you in on this?

Speaker 2 (53:49):
It's twenty twenty five, man, everything's crazy. I guess you
just watch regular commercials or you know, oh I love
this one.

Speaker 4 (53:57):
Has this ever happened to you? In traffic?

Speaker 1 (54:01):
And gosh darn it, someone else has a better car.
Don't be a knucklehead. Check out the brand New twenty
twenty five Honda odist.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Now you got to hear the real message here.

Speaker 13 (54:11):
Put them on bye obey, consume bye Okay, consume bye obey,
consume bye obay, consume bye obay, consume bye.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
So we're doing a they live thing.

Speaker 4 (54:33):
Yeah, this is a they live thing, but with sound.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
We're sort of booking fun and how easily audio can
be manipulated to push human behavior, sometimes without the conscious
mind registering what's happening. We're having a lot of fun
with it, but it's a very real, potentially dangerous thing.

Speaker 4 (54:51):
Also, we're doing the matrix. What you'll see, you'll see.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
Man, I'm so glad we're in on this.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
I don't know if I I want to be Matt.
Is it fair for us to keep such a massive
revelation secret.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
It's a choice you got to make for yourself. You
can choose to keep going the way you were, or
you can oscillate just a little further down the rabbit hole.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
But what about everybody else?

Speaker 4 (55:17):
Don't people deserve to know what's happening?

Speaker 2 (55:20):
I mean, you can try and tell them, but they
literally can't hear you.

Speaker 4 (55:24):
That's correct.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
If there was any way to genuinely help people learn
about the conspiracy surrounding the power of sound without incurring
the wrath of the powers that be. You'd probably have to,
you know, make it part of a show, maybe in Brooklyn.

(55:46):
This is a test of a conspiracy broadcast. This is
only a test. If you are left one suspect your
audio is being manipulated, please report immediately to your local
shadowy cabal and apply for a patented conspiracules brought to
you by Illumination, Globle Unlimited and Remembered.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
Whoa guys, hold on, I think we need to take
a break before we move on.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
Isn't that back masking?

Speaker 3 (56:25):
Oh shit, we have a show to do. Yeah, let's
keep going.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
That's right, folks.

Speaker 14 (56:29):
We would like to welcome our very special guests for
this evening, the host of Broken Records, the man who
knows everything about music and has decided to join us
live tonight.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Please join us.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
And welcoming the one and only justin Richmond. Who you are, sir?

Speaker 6 (56:53):
Wow, I don't know how I got you. I just
heard a sound I was compelled to come. Yeah, I
think I agreed to this.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
Well, we can't thank you enough for coming. We were
we were talking back and forth earlier when we were
working on the idea of the conspiracy of sound. We
wanted to touch on some of the weirdest sounds that
people like our friends and family and the audience tonight
have heard and tie that into of course, music conspiracies,

(57:24):
maybe a little Havana syndrome, but justin let's start here.
We were talking earlier and we were asking you what
are the weirdest sounds that you have heard?

Speaker 3 (57:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (57:35):
So, uh, you know, I live in Long Beach, California,
which you know is that cool?

Speaker 3 (57:42):
Oh, it's great, It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
A short beach. I've always wanted to ask, is it
a short beach?

Speaker 3 (57:47):
Is there a short is a short beach? Seal beach?

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Oh? But they don't they don't, Yeah, they don't advertise them.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Maybe someone of the beach is nice.

Speaker 5 (57:56):
Also, apparently Long Island, like is just New York? Here
is Manhattan rather right, like the Long Island. If you
heard this what somebody told me about this? Like maybe
I'm totally wrong, but like Long Island was originally like
referring to the island of Manhattan. But I digress tell
us about what happens sonically in Long Beach.

Speaker 6 (58:14):
Well, Long Beach, for those who don't know, is it's
a port town. So we you know, it has the
Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach,
and so it's like, you know, beside it's like one
of the biggest ports in the world.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
And so in addition to the the you know, there's
all cons of things going on Long Beach.

Speaker 6 (58:32):
There's the port, there's the airport. There's all kinds of
going on with the port. You know, most of us
day to day we probably about five miles from the ports.
We're not we're not always over there. We don't really
see it. But at night a lot of times I'll
wake up three am and just hear like a weird

(58:53):
like foghorn, like the most unsettling you know, like when
you're in a horror movie and it's like, uh, it's
it's it's misty or foggy and it's a full moon
and the leaves are bare on the tree.

Speaker 5 (59:06):
Have you seen the lighthouse that Rabbert Egger's yes, okay, right,
Like that soundtrack.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
Is fog horn, Like it is indeed unsettling, and you'll
just wake up, you know, when we're like three blocks
in the beach.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
WHOA.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
I wonder if you hear the hum the rumble of
some of the ships and stuff that roll through there too,
and the mechanisms that are like on the dock itself.

Speaker 6 (59:28):
Well, you know that's that's the thing, like the foghorn,
as unsettling as it is, Like you know, you wake
up three am to go to go to go use
the restroom, go back to your.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Bed, and you're hearing a foghorn.

Speaker 6 (59:38):
At least I know what it is and why, Yes,
and I can identify that sound.

Speaker 3 (59:42):
There's also an abnormal for the longest simon.

Speaker 6 (59:46):
I haven't heard it in a while, but for a
while I would wake up around four or five am,
between four or five am and six am, six thirty am,
there'd just be a high pitched what's oh, And everyone
in Long Beach who's up at that time can hear it,
but no one can.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
No one can tell me what it is.

Speaker 6 (01:00:07):
There's just a rogue, no one there was also, by
the way, I know we're not talking about smells, but
there's a smell that floats in from off the coast
okay that no one can tell you what it is.
I mean, it smells like there's a gas Like sometimes
I've come home like there's a gas like what I
left the and I'll go look and there's nothing, and
I'll call the you know, uh, you.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
Know, I'll call it.

Speaker 6 (01:00:30):
Just wants to call in the ghast, lik, right, So
I'll call you know, what do you want to sense
now to check this out?

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
Oh?

Speaker 6 (01:00:35):
No, we're getting calls left and right, like it's everywhere.
We don't but they don't know what it is. No
one knows what it is. The government, the local government
can't tell us. Like California, ask people go down to investigate.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
They can't tell us.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Doesn't smell bad, smells like gyas.

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
It's like like like likes like sulfur. Oh I got
bad news. Your whole town is haunted. Yeah, this is
actually not surprised me.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
What we brought you on the show to talk.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
This is terrible news. I'll be leading, I will not
be returning home themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
Tell us what connects you directly to music and to
Broken Record into just what you do?

Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
What I do well?

Speaker 6 (01:01:14):
I am the host of Broken Record, a music podcast
that I started with Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell, WHOA, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
That's cool. And Rick Assentce.

Speaker 6 (01:01:25):
You know, he's still involved at high level, but he's
he's hosting a new show now and so I'm left
to host.

Speaker 5 (01:01:30):
He's just meditating, levitating somewhere in Malibu right now we speak.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
We don't even know where he is. We're yeah, and
I mean, yeah, there were But like, you know, music is.
We talked about what sound is, sound waves and all
of that.

Speaker 5 (01:01:47):
I'm a huge music fan, and the idea that music
is just this scientifically quantifiable bunch of vibrating air, you know,
molecules still just.

Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
Kind of blows my mind.

Speaker 5 (01:01:57):
And when I put a needle on a record, the
process by which grews scratched into a piece of plastic
are then transmuted through a needle into a thing that
goes into speakers and becomes music that then hits our
ears absolutely blows my mind constantly, and I more or
less understand the science of it, but it doesn't make
you feel any less magical, right, It.

Speaker 3 (01:02:18):
Blows you know. What's funny?

Speaker 6 (01:02:19):
We always talk about this in a negative sense, but
I'm always astounded by it, and I wish we could
go back to it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
But We always think.

Speaker 6 (01:02:27):
A lot of books or documentaries just about music, or
if you talk to people who are at a certain age,
you made music at a certain time, they'll tell you.
By the time when recording studios were run by people
in lab coats.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
Beatles were always pissing them off.

Speaker 5 (01:02:41):
We're using the equipment wrong, right, and the the the
narrative in music is like at some point the Beatles
and other people we were we were freed by the
tyrannical lab coat engineers like democratize it.

Speaker 6 (01:02:53):
Democratize it, right, and you get like, you know, the
kind of you know, then you get more the engineer
just looks more like a like a you know, like
a run of the mill like hippie or something, right
like yeah, yah, yeah, Well the thing that's need about that,
I should go back to that, I should go back
to lap Yeah. Well sure, But the thing is a
lot of music technology, things like compressors, for example, a
word built for broadcast for very functional purposes, like to

(01:03:16):
make it so when a song come came on, it
wasn't going to knock your head off because it.

Speaker 5 (01:03:20):
Was so much louder than the last one. But then
somebody went around behind the lab co guy's back and
figured out how to crank that thing up and make
it sound cool. And that's like the sound of led
Zeppelin slappy drums, or like the Beatles plugging a guitar
right into the console and cranking the game up so
they get a fuzz on revolution.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:03:37):
That is that is what we did liberate from the lab.
You know some of there's certain sounds that aren't proper
sounds or correct sounds that that that are make music
invigorating to us. Right, it's sort of this weird we
we people who don't even you know, it's funny, like
you talked to someone.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
And my people in this audience. There's no there's no
shame in this.

Speaker 6 (01:03:57):
I can't even remember a time in my life where
I love music, but we hear things and I couldn't
differentiate between the instruments. Like if you say, oh, like
that's an interesting bass on, I don't know what what
is the bass? You have to really sit and explain
it to me, like, oh, that's what that is. And
I sometimes I still talk to people, I'm like, the
song is great. It's great because listen to arrange, listen
to the bass.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
And the guitar on the way that the horns the piccolo.

Speaker 6 (01:04:21):
Let's talking about the magic flute by the way. No,
but you know, it's like in the same way, like
there are sounds that aren't that weren't proper sounds, and
we can't necessarily readily identify what's proper or not proper
as a listener. But sometimes that that those weird the
distortions or the weird things that were mistakes in the
studios make the songs that we love better.

Speaker 5 (01:04:44):
Keith Richard's got his guitar tone by slashing a speaker
with a switchblade, like literally ripping the cone, the paper
cone of the speaker and making it vibrate against themself
to get a cool tone.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:04:55):
Yeah, a lot of times that would happen, right, And
I think, like something I can't remember the Zach specifics,
but if you go and listen to the Kinks song
really Got, Really Gotten, really got me, Like there's a
really great distorted guitar on that. That's one of one
of the early distorted guitars. And that's because like the

(01:05:16):
amp was malfunctioning you or they broke it and be
based on that, you know, then they go in they
figure out, well, how do we get that sounding someone
manufactured like a distortion pedal?

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
You know, that's that's a good question too, because we
often more and more now we we kind of hear
and accept these allegations of cabal running a music industry. Right,
So in your experience, we'll get to that the truth
or falsity of that in a second, But in your
experience personally, do you think those imperfections are more or

(01:05:51):
less frequent to emerge in a finish song now? Like
is there someone shutting down a thing? Or is there
someone do people still have the agency to say, no,
that's perfect, I don't care if the accordion's out of tune,
I'm tom Waits or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
You know, you know, that's a that's a that's that's
a tricky question.

Speaker 6 (01:06:09):
I mean, in some ways, there's in some ways there's
more freedom to make mistakes because everyone's just like, we've
now gone from making a record in a studio you
paid a lot of money for with guys and lab
coats running the studio, to you're making a record in
a studio for a lot of money with dudes who
look just like they're in the band running the recording
studio to the recording studios just at your house, and

(01:06:29):
you may or may not even know exactly what you're
doing or all the ins and outs of like the
equipment that you're using, and so in some ways it's
easier to make mistakes. But in terms of the music
that gets to the general, you know, population, Like, I'm
of the mind that pop music is it is marginally

(01:06:50):
less interesting today than say in like nineteen eighty something.

Speaker 5 (01:06:54):
Or yes, and I'm obsessed with Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson.
Just a crazy sounding record, and it's because they were
using all of these sixteen bit samplers that were kind
of by our standards today low fi, right. But Jimmy Jams,
a producer, like it sounds like an industrial record. There
are sounds on this sound like drills or you know,

(01:07:17):
beating on trash cans.

Speaker 3 (01:07:18):
And it was a massive pop record. When you listen
to it now, it sounds fucking weird.

Speaker 6 (01:07:24):
Yeah, Janet Jackson, you can't get I mean, when when
Rhythm Nation came out, could you get any bigger than
Janet Jackson, like one of the most popular artists on
Earth at the time. Experimental yes, yes, And I mean
even you know, if you go back and you listen
to you know, it's funny. I heard single Ladies recently
and you're like, I like.

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
How did this? How did how did this get released?
Like this?

Speaker 6 (01:07:46):
Like this is not in a bad way, like a
fascinating way, Like there are some weird sounds on that record, yes,
that make like you're.

Speaker 3 (01:07:52):
Like, what is it?

Speaker 6 (01:07:53):
Like? Why?

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
Who did who did this? I don't even know if
I like it?

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
I guess, but I'm I'm glad it has the studio
just that impro training and they just kept saying like
yes and at this other.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Thing, yes, and he's Samberg in a leotard go in
the video.

Speaker 3 (01:08:09):
I don't know about that.

Speaker 5 (01:08:10):
You know, it's funny that it depends on who you
are and how much kind of clout you have, because
you've got like Billie Eilish and like Phineas or brother.
They make records, they make weird records, but they got
big organically through like TikTok or whatever, and some people
say they were that's fair.

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
I don't have no knowledge.

Speaker 5 (01:08:29):
I'm because they found it organically just but my point is, though,
it's like because of that cloud, they can kind of
make records that sound the way they want to make them.
And he's all about samplings, snack, you know, matches, striking
and things like that, which is not the norm.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
I would it makes weird sounds.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
You said, one of my favorite phrases in these kinds
of conversations. Some people say, you.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
Know what I mean. That's what people say.

Speaker 4 (01:08:57):
I heard.

Speaker 3 (01:08:58):
Who am I to say?

Speaker 12 (01:09:00):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
We're talking a lot about this, the beat boops. What
about the messages and the lyrics?

Speaker 11 (01:09:04):
Guys nine, number nine, nine.

Speaker 3 (01:09:11):
Number nine, nine, familiar nines, number nine. I'm familiar with
the number nine. I feel like number nine. We were
talking about the Beatles. They're talking about misusing equipment. A
song like this.

Speaker 5 (01:09:25):
Number Revolution, number nine or whatever on the White album
is what you would call music concrete or it uses
these concepts of misusing tape machines, playing things backwards, you know,
manipulating sounds more like an experimental way, and that is
sort of the genesis of this idea of hidden messages,
whether intentional or not. You know, people like Alistair Crowley,

(01:09:45):
who is a big proponent of you know, the Black Arts,
believe that if you played recordings backwards, you could learn
to speak backwards, and you could use that to cast
spells and incantations and things like that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
Yeah, this is the This is the concept that there's
two guys in the couch and encountered earlier back masking.

Speaker 9 (01:10:03):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
It's something that it's almost like someone is speaking a
language that is very close to a language you speak,
and you're kind of you're hearing parts of it. And
what we wanted to do tonight with you and with
all of us here is to explore some back masking examples.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
I don't know if I can hang around with this guy.
Come on, I don't know. There's a pentagram underneath the coach.
I don't understand.

Speaker 5 (01:10:33):
But there is a precedent for this, and the Beatles
really kind of set the groundwork for it. We just
heard is a very experimental track from the White album,
and it started these rumors that Paul McCartney was dead
because when you play number nine back, where as you
get this.

Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
Turn me on dead man?

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Right?

Speaker 6 (01:10:59):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
Or?

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
Or are we are we practicing pattern recognition?

Speaker 3 (01:11:03):
Well we're going to get to that too, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
What do you think a conspiracy that kind of created itself?
But you're familiar with.

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
This, I know about the Paul's that conspiracy.

Speaker 6 (01:11:11):
I gotta say, I either have never actually heard that
the where it comes from, or it's just been a
long enough time that I just forgotten.

Speaker 3 (01:11:20):
It's free stretch. Someone's a little too high and ran
away with it.

Speaker 5 (01:11:31):
Started people talking. It started these rumblings of this idea
of hidden messages. Most of them are a stretch, I
would argue, and we're going to get through some and
then we're going to see if we can kind of
identify what they're supposedly saying. A lot of these messages
were identified by Mothers Against Metal and these similar groups
who believe there were hidden messages trying to convince kids

(01:11:53):
to do horrible things or worships sat.

Speaker 6 (01:11:55):
They had a little bit of an agenda like underestimate
parents with time on them.

Speaker 3 (01:12:00):
It's exactly.

Speaker 6 (01:12:02):
Hands Jesus, well my child, let's hear let's hear another one.

Speaker 5 (01:12:07):
Okay, let's do this is just another Beatles one really quickly.
This is just also FeAs into the Paula is dead and.

Speaker 12 (01:12:12):
I'm with you.

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
That that's a real miss miss Okay, I don't whoa
what do you think? Well?

Speaker 6 (01:12:32):
I put in my rational cap on, all right, If
I'm John Lennon. Yeah, and I hear that people heard
that heard what they heard in that other message, and
Paul is dead then yeah, I'm gonna I'm just gonna
criterally say Paul is dead man, like in a kind
of a weird way, but like Paul, Paul's dead man.

Speaker 5 (01:12:48):
Well, that's funny you say that, because a lot of
the stuff that we're gonna hear too is people responding
to the bullshit and making a little joke out of
it to him Paul, and I mean, I'm sorry, John
was the kind of guy that would do exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:12:58):
Yeah, you have to take him, take the piss, taking
the fists.

Speaker 5 (01:13:01):
Indeed, I'll turn other one. This is actually this is
one of my favorites. Let's see if you can guess
who make it a game? See if you can guess
who the artist is or the song is and what
they're supposed to be saying, we'll work together on it.

(01:13:23):
The best part the next line, it sounds like he's
saying there was a little tool shed where he made
us suffer. Oh my sad, sad satan, Yeah, tool shed.

Speaker 6 (01:13:33):
There is a bustle in your Yeah, I think that
works for multiple Why are these words for.

Speaker 5 (01:13:46):
Things topiary, perhaps make a shape.

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
Like something a well groomed bush, like you know, keep
it up.

Speaker 5 (01:13:58):
But Jimmy Page and Robert playing like it's hard enough
to make music forwards.

Speaker 3 (01:14:02):
How are you gonna like hide stuff backwards? But that
sounds like you say years to my sweet Satan. You guys,
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:14:08):
I think it's a coincidence, and it is that pattern
recognition Ben's talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:14:12):
But I think that one's pretty neat. I don't know.
I just want to play it forward when I hear that.
I love that. Who's sitting playing Zeppelin backwards? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
It is funny though, Just this this concept of learning
that if something is taboo and you put it in
your music, you can probably generate enough controversy that you might.

Speaker 3 (01:14:33):
Have a hit. Right. I think that might be the
real conspiracy at play.

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
I mean you can feel in because these are big
bands we're talking about, right, some of man for sure.
But they didn't need this to become hits. No, but
it is a way to keep them.

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):
In the news.

Speaker 6 (01:14:48):
Maybeelin Zeppelin was a guess Jimmy Page was into the culture.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
That's true, right.

Speaker 6 (01:14:54):
And so therefore either I mean, you know, maybe it's
just taking the piss again and.

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):
Maybe uh or maybe yeah, maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):
Do you think it's something? Do you think it's something?
Where he was seriously trying to sell the rest of
the band on it, and they were like, come on, man,
it's four thirty, it's a Friday. Can we just sure, fine,
fine do it. I'm sure. I'm sure they capitulated to
Jimmy a lot.

Speaker 5 (01:15:19):
The tricky thing though, is like Stereoid Heaven's a really
great song. It's beautiful, the melody is great, everything about
so to make it sound super cool and beautiful and
perfect forward just to have this secret hidden backwards message and.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
That's a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:15:32):
That's a tall order, tall order. It's also kind of
cool if they did do it. If they did do.

Speaker 5 (01:15:36):
It, it's kind of cool Floyd Dark Side of the
Moon sinking up with the Wizard of Oz, Like I
really truly don't believe they could have pulled that off, but.

Speaker 3 (01:15:42):
It really does work. Great happy accident, I think so.
But it's really neat.

Speaker 5 (01:15:46):
That's a really neat one's experience here. Let's let's do another. So, oh, actually,
before we get to this, what I wanted to point out,
so Matt said the idea of, you know, trying to
do this to get some attention, whether it's wanted attention
or on wanted attention.

Speaker 3 (01:15:58):
Judas Priest actually sued at.

Speaker 5 (01:16:01):
The Best of Mothers against Metal because they had a
song that, supposedly, when played backwards, says do it, do it,
and some unfortunately very disturbed young people took their own lives,
and the Mothers blamed this hidden message that Judas pre
supposedly had used to target youths to do horrible things
to themselves.

Speaker 3 (01:16:21):
That's not how I would have interpreted that message, as you.

Speaker 6 (01:16:24):
First, Yeah, that's not what I would have gone with
that you never got I would have done before I
got through that.

Speaker 5 (01:16:29):
But okay, Nike never got in trouble and the judge
threw it out because there was no sufficient evidence. And
Rob Halford and their attorney said, look, if we were
gonna hide hidden messages in our music, it would be like.

Speaker 3 (01:16:40):
Buy more records, not you know, he did.

Speaker 5 (01:16:44):
Take your own life to our listeners. It didn't really
help us out very much.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
So have you guys seen those videos that supposedly are
like older musicians talking about how there were some weird
rituals going.

Speaker 3 (01:16:57):
On with Matt.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
Yeah, I'm so on board.

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
There's some weird stuff out there that you can find,
and there are actual musicians, and I cannot discern if
they are joking.

Speaker 3 (01:17:10):
About what are we talking We're talking.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
To seventies, Yeah, in the seventies, eighties, sixties, eighties.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
Where you know they're it's like a single artist saying well, yeah,
there there was a ritual room, did some stuff and
we were putting on a new record.

Speaker 3 (01:17:23):
But anyway, it was just I never do it too
seriously and you're just like a type stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
What I can't discern if they're joking or not.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
Well, also, did they just go to a really weird
house party? Like I think it's been at weird parties right.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
So very very odd.

Speaker 5 (01:17:42):
Yeah, let's do another one, Shelly, Yes, let's go back
to they love.

Speaker 9 (01:17:46):
It sounds smoke marijuana.

Speaker 6 (01:18:03):
Okay, behind that that's great for you.

Speaker 3 (01:18:08):
Do you know the song and the artist Queen? That's Queen.

Speaker 6 (01:18:11):
Another one that groove ship Backwards forward silent No one,
another one.

Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
So good?

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
Wait, so where is that backwards part in the song?

Speaker 3 (01:18:25):
It's that the break.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
Wait, so it's just that backwards that's the reason.

Speaker 3 (01:18:38):
That's another one who writes the guests.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
Okay, but remember hearing it in the song when I
listened to it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:47):
But hold on. So even though I support that message,
so I want to believe that was really We're on.
I want to believe that was real. But okay, so
what's the process though? So like.

Speaker 6 (01:18:58):
That Freddie Mercury was in the studio and goes into
mic and says, smoke marijuana, goy guys, guys played backwards
and then it goes and he's like, and then.

Speaker 3 (01:19:08):
He yeah, that sounds kind of like that. Get back
in that vocal booth. Yeah, I mean maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:19:17):
But then then the question becomes, why does the cadence
sound so correct in the in the forward version? Right
if the backward version was the original one.

Speaker 3 (01:19:27):
And it is an odd phrase?

Speaker 6 (01:19:28):
I got that, I mean another one by I mean,
it's not that weird, but it's kind of like it's
a little.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
They've done so they had some weird choices and lyricism,
like seven seas Awry. So that what is that song about?
I guess I'm reading into it too much.

Speaker 2 (01:19:42):
It's probably just I just want to ride my bicycle
all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:19:49):
It's a great song.

Speaker 6 (01:19:50):
But despite that, it's like it's like that's could be
a bat song very easily. I mean the line between
like like greatness and like ship is like the Beatles
is a ship name, like if you were like everyone,
like everyone worries about naming things like the most incredible thing.

Speaker 3 (01:20:04):
Everybody's like gotta come up with the name for these things.
It's gotta be like revolutionary, and it's gotta be short.

Speaker 6 (01:20:09):
It's gotta have a hit, a message, and it's like
the Beatles, I wouldn't be the fucking Beatles and it's
gonna be like it sucks, but it's honestly the greatest
name ever. So it's like it's just what they did
with the name, you know, like they became the greatest
man ever, were like the Beatles.

Speaker 3 (01:20:23):
That's fucking awesome. It's kind of easier.

Speaker 1 (01:20:25):
It's kind of easier to back back then because there
were fewer bands that had already called names even.

Speaker 6 (01:20:33):
Which makes it even more of like egregious, like pick
a better fucking name. I just had Smoking Robinson in
the podcast. He was like unbroken Record and he was like,
you know, I started like listening back to motown stuff again.
I'm like the Supremes the Miracles, the four these are
fucking names.

Speaker 3 (01:20:48):
These are this is incredible.

Speaker 5 (01:20:50):
But then we had the Indy Sleeves era where the
thus came back and we got the Strokes, the yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:57):
There's more. I just wanted a snake why why different?

Speaker 5 (01:21:03):
If you guys don't mind, though, I would love to
end the game on a couple of intentional ones that
I think are really fun. Because we talked about Yeah,
I think you're right, it's a tall order to get
this in there in the way that you would be
intended to be heard and communicate a subliminal message. But
this legacy of this is legendary in the music world,
and so there's folks kind of picked up on that

(01:21:24):
sort of made that a little fun with it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:26):
So let's try. Let's hear a couple of those.

Speaker 7 (01:21:29):
Carry car.

Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
Can you guess who the artist is?

Speaker 7 (01:21:41):
At least?

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
Can you play it again? Yeah? What you said you
two is a two in it? Who the B fifty
two is? Okay? Okay, that's right, Let's play it here.

(01:22:03):
That's that's the forward versions got the backwards message in it.
Here is what it sounds like. We used to play
the record backwards.

Speaker 4 (01:22:19):
Record watch out.

Speaker 1 (01:22:27):
So that one clearly done on purpose. Leaning into this.
You play your record backwards, watch.

Speaker 3 (01:22:34):
Out, you might ruin your needle.

Speaker 2 (01:22:36):
But I buried my parents.

Speaker 3 (01:22:38):
I buried my parakeet in the backyard.

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
You get in situations.

Speaker 3 (01:22:41):
It's true, it's true. Okay, And this is the last.

Speaker 7 (01:22:44):
One guy, and arguably the horniest song of all.

Speaker 3 (01:23:09):
Time, darling nicky.

Speaker 5 (01:23:11):
And this is at the end of the song as
a f u to the record industry and to these
puritanical folks. And he's obviously a devout religious man. Jeh
whit is when I'm mistaken.

Speaker 3 (01:23:23):
But not he was lapsed. I think this fair enough,
but this is what But well do you tell me?
And when you hear this, I.

Speaker 6 (01:23:49):
Like that song.

Speaker 5 (01:23:52):
It's the end of that Doctor basically hit a Bible
verse in horning a song of all time.

Speaker 3 (01:23:59):
I just love that's so Prince, Well, the Lord is coming.
We could talk about the phrase. Maybe it's not talking.
That's good.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
Yeah, yeah, again open to interpretation, but we see we
see something here through this exploration that shows us there's
like music is technically math, but there's something inexplicable about it.
There's something that I think naturally lends itself to the
conspiratorial and when we were talking about it didn't take

(01:24:30):
us long, folks. We were hanging out and talking about
just the idea of sound and conspiracy. We got to
the music industry, We got to some of your your
takes on the biggest conspiracy theories in the world of music,
one of which would be just simply put Paola's Paola real.

Speaker 6 (01:24:52):
I mean, yeah, yeah, it was in in in I mean,
it was a huge scandal and we worked for iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (01:24:59):
We had to take classes about pale We did we.

Speaker 1 (01:25:02):
Know they were They were very specifically for people more famous.

Speaker 5 (01:25:07):
Old school though Paola is a product of old school radio, right,
old school broadcast.

Speaker 6 (01:25:12):
I mean it apparently continued in forms and such. I mean,
you know, but yeah, it was like it was like
I wasn't there were like congressional hearing. It was like
a big deal, like this was happening because it was
distorting in the marketplace.

Speaker 3 (01:25:24):
D mean that you pay to play, right, you pay
to play yeah, right.

Speaker 6 (01:25:27):
You go to a disc jockey and it's like here's
this new record and here's uh, here's a hundred bucks
you know, or whatever would have been equivalent a hundred bucks.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):
Oh, Wow, day right, we got to adjust for inflation.

Speaker 3 (01:25:39):
Yeah, he's he's yeah, here's a nickel.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
I have to admit I'm guilty of this. When I
was in a band in college, I tried to pay
the disc jockey at eighty eight point five in Atlanta.

Speaker 1 (01:25:51):
That's that's our college radio station.

Speaker 3 (01:25:53):
I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):
I just was like, will you take money and take
my record?

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
Did it work?

Speaker 6 (01:25:58):
Like?

Speaker 12 (01:25:58):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:25:59):
Cc no? But justin what do you say as we
wrap up the show?

Speaker 5 (01:26:04):
Do you have any conspiracy theories in the music industry
that are like you gotta just get off your chet?

Speaker 3 (01:26:11):
Ah? Do I have any?

Speaker 1 (01:26:12):
Well?

Speaker 3 (01:26:12):
You know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:26:13):
Man, you're comfortable talking.

Speaker 3 (01:26:16):
I can't talk about anything that I know about. I
don't know anything well, you know, I mean, I mean.

Speaker 6 (01:26:28):
You know, I mean think about what we think about
like Kendrick Lamar Okay, Drake manufacturer? Is there some manufacturing
going on or is that a real I don't know
what record. Everyone's mad at Drake, I mean from I'm
from l A. My family's from Compton, So you know,
come on, what am I gonna say? I'm gonna say
anything against Kendrick, But everyone's mad about the Drake lawsuits.

Speaker 3 (01:26:54):
I'm kind of interested. I'm kind of like, I'm interested
what will come out of that. I don't know if
much will because I think will.

Speaker 6 (01:27:03):
Drake is suing Universal Music Group, which is like they
have their their and let me let me please, guys,
I love Universal Music Group, by the way, so I
don't want to love music Universal Music Group. I mean
they have a wonderful catalog. I think they have wonderful leadership,
wonderful teams. Yeah, there wonderful facilities, incredible, let me job.

(01:27:30):
I love Universal Music Group. But their market share is like,
you know, over like roughly a third and sometimes more.
Sometimes rightly call them.

Speaker 3 (01:27:40):
Yeah, they're huge.

Speaker 6 (01:27:41):
You know, there's only three major record labels, and they're
far and away the largest and most important, and both
Drake and Kendrick are signed to them, and Drake is
now suing them, saying that they basically engaged in modern
forms of payola, which is like using bot farms to
create and and and influencers to you know, sort of

(01:28:04):
increase the places of Kendrick Lamar's not like us in order.

Speaker 3 (01:28:07):
To defame Drake, and so that's his thing.

Speaker 6 (01:28:12):
The additional conspiracy on top of that that the Internet
is running away with is that Universal did it because
Drake's due to renegotiate his contract with UMG, and obviously
Drake is worth a lot of money. And if I'm
Drake and I got to renegotiate with Universal Music Group,
who I know is like the biggest, you know, most.

Speaker 3 (01:28:33):
Money making, most wonderful and beautiful and excellent.

Speaker 6 (01:28:36):
Music company out there, along with Warner and so like
that like as like there's a lot of money here,
Like let me like what like and I've made a
lot of money for you, Like this contract is going
to be a contract, and so like they're saying that
they purposely you know, boosted that and maybe maybe even
manufactured to remove his leverage, to move his leverage and contract.

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):
And the British would call that.

Speaker 5 (01:28:59):
Dirty pool, Yeah they would. Well, I've got one follow
up there. There's this dude, Jason Pargan and if you
wrote yeah daily so he's he makes these fun little
YouTube videos just kind of commenting on pop culture type stuff.
And he pointed out that he thought it was really
strange that the song not Like Us Like accuses a

(01:29:20):
dude of being a sex predator, a pedophile basically and
that it's getting like TikTok and he's looking straight into
the camera on the Super Bowl and saying this stuff
and people are shouting and like it's a fun thing,
and it's like incredibly defamatory.

Speaker 3 (01:29:36):
I don't want I don't want to go again again again.

Speaker 6 (01:29:38):
I got my my rooster on content, man, So I
don't really want to really disparage Kendrick in any sort
of way. But I feel like this is a safe
place to say this. Sure, And I'm not really saying anything.
I'm just sort of like wondering in questioning, I'm wondering.
I'm just curious in general about our society's obsessional with
pedophil Like obviously, like it's a terrible thing, like obviously, right,

(01:30:00):
got it?

Speaker 3 (01:30:00):
Like, but it's like why are universally bad?

Speaker 6 (01:30:02):
Yeah, but why why do we all walk around like we,
I mean people walk around like talking about it, like
as if like to say, like, I am not a
pedoph It's like, well, I.

Speaker 3 (01:30:12):
Don't assume most people that I meet are, Yeah, but
we are obsessed with it. And it makes me wonder
like maybe there are more. I don't know, Like it
just freaks me out.

Speaker 6 (01:30:18):
But there's a lot of conspiracies around pedophilia, absolutely, especially
in the political world, the music world, I'm sure in
all the other worlds. But what is our society's obsession
with pedophilia? I wonder if in twenty Houston I will
look back at it. I think it's kind of weird
and if that like a minor you know line is
not just like the peak pinnacle strangeness of it all,

(01:30:38):
Like why are we obsessed with this?

Speaker 1 (01:30:40):
It's say, it's an iteration of I mean, part of it,
we could argue is it's the following phase one. It's
a It's something that despite any demographic difference, everyone can
agree is just horrific and bad. Right, unite, right, So.

Speaker 3 (01:30:55):
Why do we need to watch? So why do we
need to be dead? We know he doesn't know what
this is. I mean, you we'll do it, but we then.

Speaker 1 (01:31:01):
We Here's what Because it is so bad, it can
be weaponized to like associate, being right to associate?

Speaker 6 (01:31:10):
So what was like the nineteenes because okay, so like
what was like in the nineteen seventies, what was a scoundrel?

Speaker 3 (01:31:16):
That's that's like a philanderer? Like what was like what
was the great like the thing that they just yeah,
like leverage, Yeah, gotcha, gotch.

Speaker 2 (01:31:24):
So we we made a show about the Atlanta missing
murdered case back several years ago called Atlanta Monster. And
in the coverage from the late seventies in Atlanta, like
nineteen seventy eight, when they're talking about those who abused children,
they didn't have the word pedophile and it wasn't used,
and a lot of these the terminology wasn't even used

(01:31:45):
for this kind of thing because it wasn't in the
zeitgeist to think about that type, that specific type of heinous.

Speaker 6 (01:31:52):
Abuse of children. And it was that wasn't like investigated.
It wasn't like a unit of the police department.

Speaker 3 (01:31:58):
No, no, it is not.

Speaker 4 (01:32:00):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:32:02):
But again, like sex crimes in general, that kind of
stuff like that that comes later where there's specialization in
that kind of stuff. So I think what I'm just
my only argument is that the Internet revealed a lot
of horrifying things to humanity.

Speaker 1 (01:32:14):
Sure, there aren't more skeletons in the closet, there are
just more flashlights, yes, And then.

Speaker 2 (01:32:21):
We find out things about very prominent individuals you know
that people grew up watching for decades or you love
that well, I'm just saying, you learn those things right,
and then all of a sudden a bit of the
illusion is shattered what reality is.

Speaker 1 (01:32:36):
So maybe you start to assume there's a higher likelihood
than you once assumed, or something like that.

Speaker 6 (01:32:42):
Because like the way, we don't like hitchhike anymore, because
we kind of understand that's actually.

Speaker 3 (01:32:50):
We don't walk around like we don't like I mean,
I guess maybe do we. I don't know, we don't.

Speaker 6 (01:32:53):
We don't talk about it all that much anymore, right,
Like would be great to get to that place where
we're not constantly It's.

Speaker 3 (01:32:58):
Kind of like my own second. It's more like I
don't know, like we're.

Speaker 1 (01:33:01):
Not constantly warning each other about hitch hiking. Yeah, no, no,
and we all understand, hey, what are you doing after
the show? Better not be hitchhiking.

Speaker 6 (01:33:11):
Another way, in another way, though, haven't we lost a
lot when we lost like the hitch hiking as a
good thing, Like this is a very romantic thing.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
Like maybe I wish I could, I wish I could hitchhike.
But you're right, that's why it's such a great comparison.
The zeitgeist got in my head. I am convinced that
if I if I tried to hitchhike in this country,
then the only people who would pick me up would
be people I don't want to hang out.

Speaker 3 (01:33:35):
We take ubers all the time, and somehow that's safe and.

Speaker 1 (01:33:38):
That's more transactional, Like it's true.

Speaker 3 (01:33:40):
I'm just saying it's it's by the way, Like just
like if anyone who picked.

Speaker 6 (01:33:43):
Up a hitch hiker was like a serial killer, Like
I'm pretty sure like the police would get that pretty squid,
that pretty easy, open and shut, like send the undercover
out the hitch the undercover hitchhiker.

Speaker 3 (01:33:56):
Yeah maybe maybe maybe maybe that exists.

Speaker 1 (01:34:00):
That exists, but we do know something that exists for sure.
We've had Thank you so much for being with us, folks.

Speaker 3 (01:34:07):
The audience exists.

Speaker 1 (01:34:10):
Exist also a conspiracy at foot big thanks to National
saw Dust. Big thanks to you, and big thanks to you.
Justin here's one of my favorite conspiracies. I hear it's
true that you are making another appearance at this very venue.

Speaker 3 (01:34:26):
Oh wow, that was masterful.

Speaker 6 (01:34:28):
Oh goodness, I know with this, Yes, yeah, yeah, I'll
be here Friday night at seven thirty seven thirty seven
thirty start time.

Speaker 15 (01:34:37):
With Daniel Lanoi who so coo great, great, great producer, incredible,
you know, one of the originals of ambient music along
with Brian Eno and you know together they produced You Too.

Speaker 3 (01:34:49):
And he did the Dylan comeback will.

Speaker 6 (01:34:51):
He did Old Mercy and Time out of Mind, which
is like the big nineties come back Dylan record, and
like you.

Speaker 3 (01:34:57):
Know, Peter Gabriel so and so many other things. I
just really interesting guy.

Speaker 6 (01:35:00):
He's gonna have his pedal steel, all lot of stuff
and we'll talk about some stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:35:05):
We can't be here, I got we gotta go to
another thing. Don't tell people that don't actually they will
be here, to be here. That'll be here.

Speaker 5 (01:35:14):
Every huge Brian and a fan, huge Daniel and one
fun Really that's awesome that you're gonna get to to
talk to him and so again, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:35:24):
Justin we're gonna hang out. Uh, the bar is open
for a little while if you like, if you like
to hop Okay, cool, I was yeah, I was just
trying to push that one. Yeah, that's great if I
say it loud enough, big big thanks of course to
Scott and Eric. Let's have a hand Yay.

Speaker 3 (01:35:43):
We got Garth up in the booth here. We got Mary.

Speaker 1 (01:35:46):
We got Mary l who else we got up there whilst.

Speaker 3 (01:35:49):
We got up there, Cody, we got Tandy. Oh, we
got so many cute amazing that helped out. They just
work here in her cool.

Speaker 12 (01:35:56):
We got you.

Speaker 3 (01:35:57):
You're Matt, my name's Matt. We got you to me,
no hright, we got Scott.

Speaker 1 (01:36:01):
We got Eric Eric sounds.

Speaker 5 (01:36:02):
I got a great band on Sports Code And if
you're into a weird ambient.

Speaker 3 (01:36:06):
Music, you should talk to him and buy one of
his records.

Speaker 1 (01:36:08):
And thank you guys so much for being.

Speaker 11 (01:36:10):
Called me Ben.

Speaker 3 (01:36:11):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 6 (01:36:11):
Folks.

Speaker 3 (01:36:11):
We'll see you soon.

Speaker 2 (01:36:45):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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