Episode 263: War of the Worlds! & Did Houdini Come Back from the Other Side?

The Wizard discusses Halloween, H.G. Wells, and an amazing Magician!!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM paranormal
podcast network. Now get ready for us Strange Things with
Joshua P. Warre.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions
only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast
to Coast AM, employees of premier networks, or their sponsors
and associates. We would like to encourage you to do

(00:34):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Ready you will be amazed by the wizard of this
Strange Thing with Warren. I am Joshua P. Warren, and
each week on this show, I'll be bringing you brand
new my blowing content, news exercises, and weird experiments you

(01:19):
can do at home, and a lot more. On this
edition of the show, War of the World's and Did
Houdini Come Back from the Other Side? I also have
more stuff I plan to talk about. It's going to
be one of those shows kind of all over the place,

(01:41):
I think, but that's okay. It's a potpourri. It keeps
things interesting moving quickly, you know. I come from a
background in live radio. I started hosting long before the

(02:02):
word podcasting was around. I was a host at well.
I was born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, and
so my first real hosting gig was at news Radio
five seventy WNC, the Talk of the Mountains. And you know,

(02:22):
at that time, when you were doing live radio, if
it was October thirty first, then you would come on
the radio and say, Happy Halloween, everybody, What are you
doing tonight? What kind of costume are you wearing? Where
you're going to be trick or treating? Call in, tell
me about your party plans, et cetera. And of course
with this sort of a podcast, you can't really do

(02:45):
that because you know, people can be listening at any time.
These kinds of shows are meant to be sort of evergreen,
as they say, so it's not restricted to a particular time.
But having said that, look, I'm living in the real
world and this is I'm recording this in October of
twenty twenty five, and this is my last recording for

(03:07):
the month of October. It actually comes out, it all
goes according to schedule. It will be put out by
iHeart on Friday, October the thirty first, of twenty twenty five,
and you know, it's not very often that Halloween falls
on a Friday, so I thought, you know, by the
time you hear this, unless you happen to hear the

(03:28):
day comes out, well, it's probably going to be after
October thirty first. But that doesn't matter, because there are
some very interesting things about October thirty first that I
want to share with you that resonate and reach all
kinds of other strange phenomena that we're going to get into.

(03:49):
In fact, one thing that I thought was really cool
about working as a host and doing a lot of
Halloween shows and everything at News Radio five seventy w
WNC is that they were one of the stations in
nineteen thirty eight that broadcast Orson wells famous and perhaps

(04:14):
infamous War of the World's Halloween Show. And if you
don't know what I'm talking about, you know, Orson Wells
is considered, you know, one of the greatest filmmakers of
all time. He was definitely a genius. He's most famous
for his movie Citizen Kane, and Citizen Kane was just

(04:36):
absolutely phenomenal for its time. Many consider it the greatest
film ever made. I mean, if you consider it in
the context of the time in which it was made,
it's astounding. But he really got his first break into
national fame because when he was twenty three years old,

(04:57):
he was with this group of performers that did live radio.
And I'm looking right now to get all the dates
down pat here, it looks like, okay, yeah, the Mercury Theater.
At that time, they were on the CBS radio network,
and so they adapted the novel The War of the

(05:20):
Worlds by HG. Wells into this nineteen thirty eight radio drama.
And the funny thing is that and this this drama,
it freaked people out. It was this A lot of
people think of this as being something that came out
on Halloween night. It actually came out the night before

(05:42):
it started airing, I believe out of New York. I'm
not one hundred percent sure about that, but it started
airing on eight p let's see at eight pm Eastern time,
that's New York City time on October thirtieth, nineteen thirty eight.
So you know, basically how good good Halloween timing there.
The episode was directed and narrated by Orson Wells, and

(06:07):
it's infamous for inciting a panic. So this was okay HG.
Wells novel, And of course HG. Wells he's one of
the greatest science fiction writers of all time. He was
an Englishman born in eighteen eighty six died nineteen forty six.

(06:27):
Some of his books include not only War of the Worlds,
but The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of
Doctor Moreau. He was one of those guys who was
such a good science fiction writer. He almost seemed like
he was a futurist, like he was able to see
the technology of the future. A people compare him often

(06:48):
to someone like Jules Verne, who was, of course the
French writer who lived from eighteen twenty eight to nineteen
oh five, and he wrote Journey to the Center of
the Earth twenty thousand leagues under the sea, around the
world in eighty days. But again, kind of a visionary
who almost seemed to be looking into the future. Well anyway,

(07:11):
Orson Wells took HG. Wells book about this alien invasion,
and if you're relatively young, you may at least remember
the Steven Spielberg movie that was based upon this that
starred Tom Cruise. Great film, but Orson Wells presented this

(07:31):
thing as well, you know what it's it reminds me
of sort of the inspiration for mockumentaries. He got on
and pretended this was a broadcast saying that Martians are
invading the country right now. And so the first half

(07:52):
of the program was delivered in this kind of realistic
breaking news format. And since this show had few commerce interruptions,
the first break came after fictional reporters had described this
devastating alien invasion in the fall of New York City. Now,
this caused some great confusion and fear among listeners. Popular

(08:16):
legends say that some of the radio audience may have
been listening to a more highly rated show with Edgar
Bergen and then switched to War of the Worlds during
a musical interlude, and so they missed Wells's introduction of
his show as a work of science fiction, so they
didn't get the disclaimer. And so apparently all these people

(08:41):
all over the country began flipping out and believing that
there was actually some type of an alien invasion happening.
And you know, people, they were in the streets, they
were saying prayers, they were you can read about all
the things that people were doing but they flipped down.

(09:02):
And this has actually been used as an excuse for
a long time by entities related to the US government,
the excuse for why that maybe disclosure of alien visitation
should should should not exist, That this would be too powerful,

(09:23):
it would throw things into too much chaos that the
people can't handle it. Maybe they're right. Orson Well said
that after the show was over, I mean he didn't
know what had happened exactly, and then the next day,
I mean, he was just being bombarded by reporters and
it seemed like the whole world was talking about this,

(09:43):
and he was, you know, considered in some cases sort
of he was sort of demonized as being a trickster
and being irresponsible for doing that. He said that he
thought that the panic was exaggerated because at that time
there was kind of a battle between the TV business

(10:04):
and the radio business, and that TV was trying to,
of course gain the edge, and so they would take
any opportunity they could to say something bad about the radio. Well, look, regardless,
I bring this up to you because it's funny to
think about the fact that The War of the Worlds,

(10:28):
the book written by HG. Wells, was written by a
man whose last name was spelled W. E Lls, and
then it became super famous because of this broadcast done
in nineteen thirty eight, which was produced by Orson Wells,
and his name is spelled W. E Lles, so different spelling,

(10:54):
but the same sound when you hear it. And this
started reminding me of this phenomenon, which is often called
the name game, that there are certain names that seemed
to pop up over and over again, even though they're
spelled differently, when it comes to certain types of paralormal phenomena.

(11:18):
I've talked before about the Superman curse, how that George
Reeve was the first actor who became famous for playing
Superman on TV. I see George Reeves. Okay, it's easy
to get. So George Reeves became famous for being the
first guy to play Superman, and he ended up with

(11:39):
a tragic and he ended up dying tragically. Nobody is
sure if he killed himself or if he was murdered.
And then Christopher Reeve, no relation, went on to play
Superman in the movie, and of course he had a
tragic end. But again it's you know, HG. Wells and

(12:01):
Orson Wells no relationship there, but the names are spelled
the same. No relationship between George Reeves and Christopher Reeve.
But what are the chances they would end up finding
themselves in this position? And then well, look, I got
to take a break. When we come back, there's another

(12:21):
Reeve in here, and then you just have to wait
and see where this is all going. It's gonna be again.
It's one of those shows. Hey, if you like this show,
you want to support it, do me a favor. Go
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(12:42):
automated gift an email for me with some free online gifts.
I'm Joshua pe Warren, and you're listening to Strange Things
on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network,
and I will be right back. Welcome back to Strange

(13:34):
Things of the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast a M
Paranormal Podcast Network. I have your host, the Wizard of Weird,
Joshua P. Warren, beaming into your world whole brain from
my studio in Sensity, Las Vegas, Nevada, where every day
is golden and every night is silver. Gatakto zoom, yes

(13:58):
the name. So again, you know, we have HG. Wells
and Orson Wells. We have George Reeves and Christopher Reeve.
And then I kind of meant to bring this up.
I recently read an article to you that was in

(14:20):
Fate Magazine based upon something that was originally from North
Carolina ghost dot com about the Chimney Rock apparitions. And
if you haven't heard that, I think it's probably the
last show I did. Go back and listen to it.
It's a crazy story, but I bring it up because

(14:41):
this is about a group of people in eighteen oh
six who started seeing these phenomenal apparitions over top of
Chimney Rock, North Carolina. And it began when an eight
year old had the first sighting. Her name Elizabeth Reeves
spelled r e a v E s and uh so

(15:07):
then you know she she went and told her her
brother and uh Morgan Reeves. But anyway, look, it's just
another example of this. So we have Reeve Reeves, and
we have Reeves spelled r e e v e, and
we have Reeves spelled r e e v e s

(15:28):
I think, and then R E A V E s am.
I starting to sound a little bit insane at this point. Well, Uh,
one of my friends, Lauren Coleman, who is just a
fantastic author, he writes a lot about this thing called
the name game, and it's almost like that just a
name represents a vibration that attracts a certain kind of energy,

(15:54):
and you see these patterns if you study these stories
about weird stuff long enough. In fact, I just found
this he wrote. Well, I think he talked about this
one of his most famous books called Mysterious America. It's
a classic. But one of his websites here is copycat
effect dot blogspot dot com, and he wrote this back

(16:16):
in twenty fourteen. I'm going to read some of what
Lauren Coleman said. He says cryptologic or coincidence. Jim Brandon,
whoever that is, I really don't know, should be credited
with calling attention to the name Watts, Watkins, or Watson

(16:37):
and its entanglement with inexplicable things. Some other names involved
in mysterious events pinpointed by Brandon are Bell, Mason, Parsons, Pike, Vernon,
and Warren. The influence of such names as Mason, Pike, Warren,

(16:57):
and Lafayette, for example, issues in some crypto political and
occult way from their ties to the Masonic tradition. He
goes on to talk about how Charles Fort was especially
interested in this. Charles Fort wrote, quote, my liveliest interest

(17:19):
is not so much in things as in relations of things.
I've spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo relations
that are called coincidences. One if some of them should
not be coincidences, noting that that was the end of
that quote, But he says he noted that the vanishing
act of Ambrose Biers the author, was followed by the

(17:41):
vanishing of Ambrose Small some six years later. And then
Fort continued, quote, but what could the disappearance of one
Ambrose in Texas have to do with the disappearance of
another Ambrose in Canada. There was, in these questions an
appearance of childishness that attracted my respectful attention end quote.
So okay, let's go over some of these names. Bell

(18:07):
Well Art Bell created Coast to Coast Am Parsons. If
you don't know anything about Jack Parsons, I don't have
time to get into that right now. But he was
an American chemist and occultist, one of the primary founders
of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he was into

(18:29):
some pretty wild metaphysical stuff, and he talks about Mason.
I think I think the point pleasant West Virginia is
in Mason County? Is that right? I think I saw
that or read about that at some point, and yeah,

(18:55):
it's the county seat of Mason County. But did you
notice the name Warren was in there? And so I
perhaps am a part of this thing called the name game.
And what I never heard of Ed and Lorraine Warren
until I think I was in high school and I

(19:18):
went to the school library and I found some obscure
book with a brief reference to this husband and wife
named Ed and Lorraine Warren who would go around investigating
ghosts and ghosts and demons and such. And I mean
it was it made almost no impact on me. I mean,

(19:39):
I thought it was curious, but that, you know, that
was it. And then all these years later, the Warrens
became super famous after the Conjuring movie came out and
that whole series began because it was based upon their work.
And I actually ended up meeting Lorraine Warren at a
conference in Cargo one time. She was wonderful lady. And

(20:02):
I bring this up because people ask me from time
to time are you related to Ed and Lorraine. I've
even had some people since they became Ed Lorraine's name
became very famous, they say, hey, I think that Joshua
Warren just makes up the name Warren because he wants
to ride on their coattails. And I'm like, no, there's
no relation between me and Ed Lorraine Warren. But people

(20:26):
ask me about that. And when I met Lorraine Warren,
she told me that people would ask her if she
was related to me. So there's something odd about this thing,
the name game. And I think it ties right into
what we talk about with cymatics and parasigmatics, and how

(20:48):
that vibrations sounds are physical things that create physical behaviors
and physical outcomes and the real physical world, and that
people who share similar names to some degree have some
similar experiences. I could keep going on and on about this,

(21:09):
but I just wanted to bring this up because you know,
I'm connecting dots. It starts with the Halloween thing and
the hgu weld stuff and the orson Well stuff, and
now you know it ties into the story I read
about the reeves. Again, this is the kind of stuff
that probably insane people sit around babbling about in their
straight jacket in the corner of the padded room at

(21:30):
the asylum. But on the other hand, maybe if you
have enough data you can you actually can connect some
dots and find some patterns there that reveal something about
cause it effect in the universe. Another thing that I
thought was interesting as I started thinking about October thirty first,

(21:50):
is that October thirty first is the day that Harry Houdini,
the Great Magician, died. He was born in eighteen seventy five.
He died Halloween of nineteen twenty six, at the age
of fifty two. And if you didn't know, I mean,

(22:10):
his death was particularly weird. He died from what they
call paraitinitis, which is a swelling of the abdomen, and
say it possibly could be related to appendicitis. But he
had been in well, he was in his dressing room

(22:31):
in Canada, and apparently he was in a little bit
of a bad shape. He was a workaholic, but he
had recently broken his ankle and he was sort of
reclining on a couch and there were some young men
who got access to the backstage best I recall they

(22:54):
were college students, and one of them was, you know,
a very fit young man who was a boxer. And
that guy was named Jacques Price. And let's see and okay,
there were two guys, Jacques Price and Sam Smellovitz. So Price, look, uh, okay, Well,

(23:21):
basically what happened is one of these guys asked Houdini
quote if he believed in the miracles of the Bible
and whether it was true that punches in the stomach
did not hurt him. And Houdini offered a casual reply
that his stomach could endure a lot. And then this
guy just hauled off and delivered some quote, very hammer
like blows below the belt end quote. And since Houdini

(23:45):
was reclining on this couch because this broken ankle, he
was not prepared, he was wincing at each blow. Stopped
this guy suddenly in the midst of a punch, saying
like he had enough and he was not able to
brace him stuff. And everybody says that they think this
is what you know, ultimately hurt him and led to

(24:07):
his death. But you know, Houdini, they say he really
did want to believe in an afterlife and in spirituality,
but he was very highly offended by all of the
phony spiritualists in the day who were going around taking
advantage of people, defrauding them using cheap magic tricks to

(24:31):
pretend they were able to make contact with a loved one.
And so Houdini he wrote a message to his wife
at some point, and he told her to keep it
in a safe place, and he said, if I die
before you, I'm going to try to communicate this message

(24:51):
to you so that you'll know whether or not it's
true that people can contact you from the other side.
And since then seances have been held, or at least
they were for many years on October thirty first, and
some people say the message was never delivered, and some
people say it was. What's the truth. I'm going to
tell you when we come back. I'm Joshua P. Warren.

(25:13):
You're listening to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast
to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network, and I'll be back
after these important messages. Welcome back to Strange Things on

(26:02):
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Parahinormal Podcast Network.
I'm your host, Joshua P. Warren, And this is the
show where the unusual becomes usual. So what's the truth?
You know, I've heard people say that sure enough, Houdini

(26:24):
was able at some point to transmit this message back
to his wife, and then others say, no, no, no,
that never happened. That was actually a hoax, that was
a false news story, fake news back of the day.
So look, I don't know, how are you supposed to

(26:45):
know the truth about something like that. That's between him
and his wife. So what did I do? Here's what
I do in cases like this. I went to Grok
and I said, Groc, what is the real deal here
with whether or not who who died on Halloween? Who
has been targeted in seances for many years at Halloween.

(27:08):
What's the real deal with whether or not he was
able to communicate? Here is what Groc says. Groc says, Okay. Now,
Houdini's wife was named Bess, and Roc says, no, Bess
Houdini never received a genuine message from her husband, Harry
Houdini from the afterlife. The couple had agreed on a

(27:31):
secret code term and that was quote Roseabel believe end
quote Rooseabel believe, and this was derived from a Vaudeville
mind reading routine and inscribed on her wedding ring to
verify any posthumous communication, with the understanding that whoever died

(27:56):
first would attempt contact using it. After Houdini's death on
October thirty first, nineteen twenty six, Best held annual seances
for a decade, offering a ten thousand dollars reward for
anyone who could produce the authentic code from his spirit,
but no verified contact occurred. Now In January nineteen twenty nine,

(28:21):
a spiritualist medium named Arthur Ford held a seance at
Bess's home where he claimed to channel Houdini, reciting the
code quote roose beel answer Tell, pray answer look, tell, answer,
answer Tell. Bess, who was ill and recovering from injuries

(28:44):
at the time, initially declared it authentic, stating she was
quote absolutely convinced that it proved life after death, and
Ford had repeated the words that only she and Houdini knew. However,
the incident was later exposed as a hoax. Bess had
inadvertently disclosed elements of the code to reporters in nineteen

(29:06):
twenty eight, which Ford access through published accounts. Ford's methods
involved extensive research on obituaries and prior knowledge to fabricate messages,
a pattern confirmed and analysis of his work. By nineteen
thirty six, after the final public seance on the roof
of the Knickerbocker Hotel in La attended by Hollywood figures

(29:30):
in broadcast live, Bess admitted she had never received any
message from Houdini over the years, effectively retracting her endorsement
of Ford's claim and declaring the afterlife communication impossible. Seance
has continued without her involvement, led by magicians, but yielded
no results, and Houdini's skepticism of spiritualism was ultimately vindicated

(29:54):
as no credible evidence of contact emerged. Okay, so that's
a kind of a a muddy scenario, isn't it, Because
it's sort of like, well, she said, yeah, I got
the message, but then later, oh, whoops, I accidentally had
told reporters what the message was. So this guy who

(30:16):
got the message must have known that I slipped up
and said something to reporters. So look, that's why it
was confusing. And I never knew exactly what to believe
about that. But if you've been curious. I guess that's
sort of the answer to that. And you know, it's

(30:37):
funny though, how we focus on life, but you know,
it's a limited thing. You know, you have a limited
number of heartbeats. And then there's always this interest and
fascination with the idea of the afterlife and what comes
next and how it places all this into context. I
was watching a rare interview recently with J. R. R. Tolkien. He,

(31:05):
of course, was the Englishman who wrote The Hobbit and
Lord of the Rings. And as I was watching this video,
he was talking about sort of what inspired him to
write these epic stories, and he said he was always
just thinking about death and how that death places life

(31:26):
into context. And at one point in this interview j R. R.
Tolkien he quoted another man that he admired, a writer.
And here's what Tolkien said. There is no such thing
as a natural death. Nothing that happens to man is

(31:49):
ever natural. Since his presence calls the whole world into question.
All men must die, but every man his death is
an accident, and even if he knows it and consents
to it, an unjust violation. So he said, that concept

(32:14):
is what underpins the Lord of the Rings in particular.
And that's kind of thought provoking, isn't it, Because I've
always thought it was weird to think of this concept
of like, oh, this substance is man made, you know,
like a human being just put his or her hands together,

(32:35):
manifested some glob of material out of thin air. Maybe
that happens some kind of ectoplasm like, but not generally.
But that's an interesting way of looking at it. Again.
He said, nothing that happens to man is ever natural,
since his presence calls the whole world into question. So

(32:56):
it's almost like the very fact that we are here
at all makes everything kind of seem unnatural because we
seem to be so out of place. I mean, you know,
scientists have said for the longest time that our closest
relative is a chimpanzee. But I mean, really, we went

(33:21):
from chimpanzee. I mean, like, it's okay, I you know,
I'm not gonna argue with you. I'm just saying that
seems weird to me that we we we're talking right
now through the Internet, and we can fly helicopters, we
can get on a rocket ship and go to the moon,
and but monkeys I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Apes like chimps

(33:45):
are our closest relatives. Let me repeat that, it's an
interesting thing. Nothing that happens to man is ever natural,
since his presence calls the whole world into question. Hm,
that's pretty deep, isn't it? That the very fact that
we are here kind of throws this whole idea of

(34:06):
the natural world as we know it off somewhat. That's
why we're always searching, We're always exploring. Are we going
to have the alien show up at some point and
explain everything and save the day. I bought a new
device the other day, and I'm going to tell you

(34:27):
about this, and some of you are going to find
this really interesting, and some of you are going to
think this is boring. I mentioned on a recent podcast
that Bob Lazar, the famous Area fifty one whistleblower who
first sort of came out in the nineteen nineties. He's

(34:50):
a mysterious guy, all right. He has a website that
sells nuclear related products. It's called United Nuclear dot Com
Scientific Equipment and Supplies. And let me just say something
about Bob Blazar. I don't know what I think of

(35:16):
Bob Blazar. I guess about ten years ago, I was
a speaker at a big UFO conference in Arizona, and
he was also a speaker, And at one point Lauren
and I sat down and we watched Bob Blazar on
stage being interviewed live by George Knapp, and Bob Blazar

(35:41):
told his whole story and he sounded so believable that
it was just sort of I mean, it was mind
boggling how genuine the guy sounded talking about his experiences
being hired at Area fifty one to back engineer essentially
extraterrestrial craft. In fact, that weekend was the Academy Awards,

(36:04):
and I said, like, if that guy is not telling
the truth, he deserves an oscar. But then, you know,
years after that, this documentary came out about Bob Bazar.
I think it's just called Bob Blazar, and it's a
good documentary by Jeremy Corbell. But it raised a lot

(36:26):
of questions in my mind, Like, for example, it is
my understanding that Bob Bazar supposedly has degrees from MIT
and cal Tech, which helped him get into the position
of being able to back engineer this stuff at Area
fifty one, but yet nobody has ever been able to
prove any of that that you know, it's like they

(36:49):
haven't found any pictures, and there's no peers, no classmates,
like they haven't found any Evidencesedly, this is my understanding.
This guy has these degrees. Now, how can you get
a degree from M I T and cal Tech without

(37:11):
being so proud that you're you're screaming it from the
rooftops and it's documented all over the place that you
have your diploma. It just doesn't make sense the stories
that well, the government, you know, they went in and
erased all this somehow. It's like the men in black
came in and changed the timelines. Well, anyway, I got
to take a break when we come back. I ordered
this new device from Bob Lazar's website just a few

(37:33):
days ago. It's really weird. I'm going to tell you
what happened. I'm Joshua P. Warren. You're listening to Strange
Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal
Podcast Network, and I will be right back. Welcome back

(38:23):
to the final segment of this edition of Strange Things
on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
I am your host, Joshua P. Warren, And if you
want to hear more of my thoughts about the Bob
Blazar documentary that came out years ago and sort of

(38:44):
my questions about his background, I did a whole podcast
about it. I reviewed the documentary. The podcast I used
to do is called Joshua P. Warren Daily, and I
still occasionally will post a special report there. So if
you just do a search for Joshua PE Warren Dally,

(39:05):
you can find that there's over five hundred of those podcasts.
And I did one that was published on December twenty
sixth of twenty eighteen, and it was called Bob Lazar
Rated by the FBI my thoughts on the Area fifty
one whistleblower, So go back and listen to that if
you want to hear me kind of really dig into details.

(39:27):
But years ago, I bought a Geiger counter from Bob
Lazar's website United Nuclear dot Com and I really liked
that Geiger count and I can't find it. I don't
know why i'd deal with it, So I went to
his website to see if I could find it again,

(39:47):
and it's no longer listed. But he had something that
I was immediately fascinated by. It's called an alpha radioscope
optical Geiger counter. It's like, what, so it looks like
one of these lenses that you would screw onto the
front of an old thirty five millimeter camera, you know,

(40:12):
like back in the day you had a pentag I
guess you still do that. It just it just looks
like a lens you'd screw onto a camera. And it
says this alpha radioscope contains no radioactive material. Instead, the
back end of the device is essentially open. Behind this
screen is an activated zinc sulfide window, especially prepared, and

(40:39):
basically what it says is that this is sensitive to
alpha radiation and that you can take this thing and
you can put it up against something that's producing alpha
radiation and you can you can sort of see it.
You can see a little sparkle. It'll be visible to

(41:01):
your naked eye as flashes of light scintillations. The more
radioactive the sample is, the more scintillations will be visible.
This is crazy. I'd never heard of such a thing.
And so now just to give you a quick rundown,
you know, there are obviously there's different types of radiation.

(41:22):
The main ones that people talk about are alpha, beta,
and gamma. And here here's like a quick rundown. Alpha
type radiation has poor penetration power. They can cause little
harm from the outside. They can be blocked by a

(41:43):
lot of thin things like a layer of dead skin
and humans, a thick sheet of paper, a layer of clothes.
So you don't really have to be too worried about alpha.
You just don't want to ingest it. You know, you
don't want to swallow it or breathe it in, and
so you know, the chances of you having problems with
that are pretty low. Next, we have beta particles. Now,

(42:06):
these are smaller particles of radiation, but they have more
penetrative power, and so if you get into contact with them,
they can burn your skin similar to a severe sunburn.
But the worst is gamma rays. They have the highest
penetration power. A living organism like a human being exposed

(42:29):
to gamma rays faces a high risk of having bone,
marrow and internal organs damage. They can pass through the
human body, damaging tissue DNA. I mean scientists consider that
to be the most dangerous form of radiation. And when
you take out a Geiger counter and it goes pop
pop pop pop pop, like popcorn popping. It's measuring these

(42:55):
little particles of energy that could be alpha, beta or
gamma or I guess X rays. Look, I don't want
to get to technical on you, but that's measured what's
called CPM or counts per minute, and that's a measure
of the times a radiation detector registers what they call
an ionization event in one minute, a little pop pop pop,

(43:18):
It's like those little particles. I'm looking. I'm not a
nuclear physicist, so I was like, that's cool because I have,
for example, I have a lot of radioactive things. But
one thing that I have is a piece of Fiestaware.
Do you know what Fiestaware is. It's a line of

(43:41):
this brightly colored Art Deco styled ceramic dinnerware, one hundred
percent American made production, first introduced in nineteen thirty six,
and the line was discontinued for a while but came
back in the eighties. And you see this a lot

(44:01):
in the American Southwest. It's famous for these vibrant colors
and some of this fiesta were and I have a
little fiesta. Weare ceramic dish with me right now? It's
orange reddish color. Some of this stuff is actually radioactive.
Believe it or not. It says your fiesta ware is
radioactive because it's glazes, particularly the iconic orange orangish red color,

(44:29):
contain uranium oxide to achieve its vibrant hue. This practice
common in the early twentieth century. Ceramics made some fiestaware
pieces radioactive, though it was discontinued during World War II
and again in the late twentieth century for safety and
regulatory reasons. Modern fiestaware is not radioactive. Okay. So I

(44:51):
got this little dish sitting next to me that you
could easily, you know, you could have your little cup
of tea or coffee on it and have no idea
this thing is radioactive. And I have a Geiger counter
in my hand, and I don't know if you're gonna
be able to hear this. I'm going to turn this
guy your counter on and then so like right now,
I'm holding it kind of close to the microphone, and

(45:14):
you might hear a little pop once in a while,
and if so, that's just background radiation that's coming in
from the cosmos. Just a little pop once in a while.
That happens all the time. But now listen to what
happens when I bring it close to this Fiesta wear plate.

(45:34):
Are you ready right now? It's about six inches away.
Now it's going nuts. Okay, so this is this is
very radioactive. Yeah, this is the fun stuff. I play

(45:59):
with it my house. So I was like, Okay, I
am going to buy this alpha radioscope from Bob Bazaar
and I'm gonna I want to see what this looks like.
I want to see these little particles of radioactivity, these
quanta of these, you know, popping, see these sparkles of light.

(46:22):
So I ordered it, and uh, but I was kind
of surprised. I opened it up. It looks cool, well made.
It was. It wasn't that much. It was thirty nine dollars.
It says your radioscope will allow you to view alpha
radiation from any radioactive sample. Although you may want to

(46:44):
use it right away, if you peek into it right now,
you'll see nothing at all. There's nothing wrong with it.
It's just it's just that your eyes must be adapted
to the dark. First. The retina and the human eye
is composed of rods and cones. The cones are sensitive
to color and are responsible for your daylight vision and

(47:05):
total darkness. However, the cones become ineffective and the rods
take over. And when the rods begin to activate, they
make your eyes over a thousand times more sensitive to
light than they were in daylight. And they say, unfortunately,
the changeover from cones to rods is fairly slow. Takes
at least ten to fifteen minutes in total darkness just

(47:29):
to begin to see the small flashes of light in
the radioscope. Okay, So I was like, all right, So
I got to sit in total darkness for you know,
fifteen twenty maybe up to thirty minutes. And I was thinking,
I don't know if I've ever done that in my
entire life. This is going to be incredibly boring, but

(47:52):
I did it. I sat in a closet, all sealed off,
in total blackness, total darkness, for twenty minutes, and I
held this up to my Fiestaware and I saw nothing.
It was. It was very, very boring, and so I
asked them, I said, well, what you know, what's what's
what happened here? What's the problem? And I got an

(48:14):
email back, and the email says that Fiestaware is not
a very good source for this, and I, uh, I
can't find the email right now, and I'm running out
of timele here he goes, Yeah, Fiestaware is not a
good source of alpha radiation. You need a smoke detector

(48:35):
source PO two ten urin night blah blah. So all right,
I guess I'm gonna try this again with another piece
of radioactive material. But I hope I didn't melt my
face off by staring at this Fiestaware plate too long. Uh,
the clock has gone is here? It is the good

(48:55):
Fortune tone. That's it for this edition of the show.

(49:21):
Follow me at Joshua P. Warren Plus, visit Joshuapwarren dot
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I have a fun one lined up for you next time,
I promise. So please tell all your friends to subscribe

(49:45):
to this show and to always remember the Golden rule.
Thank you for listening, Thank you for your interest and support,
Thank you for staying curious, and I will talk to
you again soon. You've been listening to strange things on
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Well, if you like this episode of Strange Things, wait
till you hear the next one. Thank you for listening
to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.