April 6, 2021 • 41 mins
In 2016, diplomats at the American embassy in Cuba began suffering weird neurological symptoms after hearing strange noises. Some say it was a sonic attack using a secret weapon, but the Havana Syndrome remains a baffling scientific mystery to this day.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Um. I think
Dave's around somewhere sitting in for Jerry. Who's Can we
say where Jerry is, Chuck, I don't think we can yet,
(00:24):
but it's pretty cool. Okay, Yeah, Jerry's on He's on
a cool field trip. That's for Uh. That's none you Okay,
you ever say that when you were a little No,
I had it said to me a lot, but I
never I never had occasion to say it. None your business. Um.
By the way, this is stuff you should know for
those of you like say it. Yes, the anticipate patient.
(00:50):
So Chuck um, speaking of anticipation, we're talking today about
one of the greatest medical mystery reas that has hit
the world, at the very least the United States in
a really long time. It's a little something that's been
flying under the radar and really flew under the radar
(01:11):
for a while. But there's probably a lot of people
out there haven't heard of this. Something called havana syndrome,
and havana syndrome is we should say at the outset,
there's not going to be any resolution to this episode.
It's deeply Yeah, it's really dissatisfying. The whole thing is
we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is,
(01:33):
and really, honestly, the theories are not not great. There's
no one theory. You're like, of course that's it. Everybody
else has been ridiculous. Yeah, So in one way it's
kind of interesting and that we get to cover a
lot of stuff, but in another way, it's again deeply unsatisfying.
But the the whole thing of Havana syndrome is it
all begins in that that, I believe the end of
(01:55):
two thousand sixteen. Around December of two thousand and sixteen,
just like a year after you, the United States had
opened its embassy again in Cuba after decades of this
kind of chilly cold war um like pretending one another
isn't there um relationship. Just a year after that, there
(02:16):
was a station agent, a CIA station agent in Havana
who started complaining of some really weird symptoms after hearing
a really weird noise, and that kicked this whole mess off. Yeah,
there's uh, this is worth reading. I think from the
Guardian in and I don't think this is the first one,
(02:37):
but they were all very similar to people who were
affected by this mystery. It says this the blaring, grinding
noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in the
Havannah hotel. He moved just a few feet and there
was silence. He climbed back into bed, and explicably, the
agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he
(02:58):
had walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room.
And uh, you know, that doesn't really describe much. But
when you talked to some of the people who uh,
and we did personally talk to all of these people
were given Uh. There were weird symptoms um earpain, tentatives, headaches,
(03:22):
hearing loss, vertigo, dizziness, nausea, disorientation, blurred vision, nosebleed, fatigue. Uh.
Sometimes the symptoms were sort of temporary and not too
bad with some of the people. Sometimes it was um
really bad, and some people ended up retiring and saying
this is it. I'm out of here. Yeah. Some people
went on to be diagnosed with swelling of the brain
(03:45):
with a concussion um. Some people suffered what seems to
be permanent hearing loss, and all of this was localized
just in the Havanna Bureau of the American or the
American Embassy took Cuba in Havana, like that's it. So
there was suddenly this weird on symptoms. I think as
(04:06):
many as ninety people came down with this what came
to be called Havana syndrome. Some of them said I
heard a weird noise and then all of a sudden,
I had vertigo. Other people didn't hear anything. They just
all of a sudden couldn't concentrate any longer. And it
was this. The symptoms all seemed to Nobody said I
had a fever or my legs started swelling. It all
(04:27):
seemed to be kind of clustered around your um. You're
hearing your ears, your nose, your throat kind of thing,
but without the throat, without the nose, mainly just your
ears and your brain. They seemed to be a cluster
of neurological symptoms that no one had any idea what
was going on. Yeah, so you know, of course the
US is going to investigate something like this, and we'll
(04:49):
get into There were a couple of pretty deep, well
as deep as you can get in this case investigations.
But the very first thing that happened was the FBI.
It was like, hey, this is some sort of acoustic attack. Uh,
some sort of sound waves are being used. Let's get
in there and at least check out the locations, check
(05:10):
out everything around where these people are living, where they're staying.
And they found nothing. They came up really pretty much empty.
And we should also point out this was I think
a few Canadian diplomats too. It wasn't entirely us, right,
but for the most part it was US, and it
seemed to be it seemed to be concentrated. Uh in
the homes of the diplomats, um and by. Diplomats were
(05:33):
including CIA agents who weren't known who. They weren't like,
hey I'm the CI agent here they were they were
posing as diplomats. So the diplomats like Keaton, well who
was he posing as Michael Keaton in uh what was
it out of sight with He's an FBI guy And
(05:53):
he showed up with a big T shirt that said FBI.
And Dennis Farina had that great joke he says, he
you got another one that says undercover. Yeah, I love
that guy. He was the best. Who else could buy
Dennis Farina could follow up after Jerry Orbach, nobody, and
he did it. He did it with class. He did
he brought his own, his own character. Just amazing stuff.
(06:17):
Then I was about to say I didn't see any
of that show. But I was about to say, except
he was no singer like Jerry Orbach. But we might
be wrong again, he could be. I really walked past
that one. I guess so. Um So, the diplomats were
being seemed to be affected at their houses and then
there were two hotels in Havana that um that these
(06:38):
these symptoms started their onset on. So again that was
that was basically like the first um investigation the FBI.
The FBI conducted it was just like I don't I
don't know, but clearly it was an attack. You know,
it's it's localized to diplomats and their families. It's in Havannah.
It's not happening anywhere else for now. Um So, some
(07:02):
sort of attack, we just don't know what it was.
That was the first investigation, and so the State Department
said let's take a little deeper. Yeah, I mean, they
kind of kept it quiet for a little while I
think the media eventually got wind of what they were
calling a sonic attack, and then uh, the former president
administration presidential administration, UM, as things were starting to I
(07:27):
guess thaw a little bit, said you know what, you
guys are out of here and kicked out to Cuban
diplomats UM, kind of as payback basically when Cuba the
whole time was going, we didn't do this, we don't
know what you're talking about. Uh, And as we'll see later,
they um supposedly even investigated and tried to help investigate. Yeah. Yeah,
that was the one of the longstanding things that Cubans
(07:49):
have said basically from the outset is twofold one. They
had nothing to do with it, knew nothing about it,
and that they would take something like that very seriously.
And then too they seemed to suspect that, um, this
eventually snowballed into an easy way to cut ties again
with Cuba, that that was kind of something that was
(08:10):
driving this narrative as well. Part of the problem also
is you know, like you said, the State's Department was
keeping this secret, not just from the American public. Congress
hadn't even heard about this, and everyone found out about
the same time. UM that when the media started reporting
on it, Congress found out about it, and apparently Marco
Rubio latched onto this because he's of Cuban ancestry. I'm
(08:33):
not sure he is or his parents are from Cuba,
but he hates the Castro regime, and so this was
a big thing for him to kind of clamp onto
and really kind of enrage his base, um, the Cuban
expatriate community in in Miami, in South Florida. UM. And he,
out of the gate, I think, even released a press
release referring to this as a sonic attack, like really
(08:55):
kind of taking whatever the FBI had surmise and just
basically saying this is this is what happened. We just
haven't figured out how, but it was an attack. And
that really set the paradigm moving forward for basically everybody
except for thankfully large swaths of the scientific community. Yeah.
So they commissioned the National Academy of Science to to
(09:18):
go undergo an investigation in twenty nineteen, and even by
that time, people that understood things like acoustic or possible
acoustic attacks or just acoustics basically said this wasn't some
kind of a sonic attack. It's you know, it is
possible that you can focus a sound beam to an area,
but you would have to truck in some equipment that's
(09:41):
so big the FBI would have found it. Uh. And
even if they managed to do that and get away
with it, um, there were so many different symptoms going
on with these people. It can't all be explained away
by an acoustic attack. And let's say that even happened,
it definitely wouldn't cause brain damage, Like the worst acoustic
attack wouldn't cause somebody brain damage. No, So really there's
(10:04):
two ways. Because here's the other thing, like people said
they heard a weird sound or whatever, but it wasn't
necessarily some like they were clearly being attacked by the sound.
That wasn't what they reported. They just some of them
said I heard a weird sound first, and then all
of a sudden, I have these weird symptoms. That's, you know,
what gave rise to the sonic attack theory. But there's
basically two ways to attack people with sound, especially sound
(10:27):
they can't hear. It's either below our threshold of hearing,
which is infrasound. What what I was trying to make
a yoko on no joke, but right, that's the third
route that she combines the two. It's a sound um
infrasound is below our threshold, below twenty hurts, right, and
you actually can cause things like vertigo in somebody or
(10:49):
vomiting um loss of bowel control if you hit somebody
with a loud enough infrasound blast. But like you said, yeah,
you can make someone poop their pants with infrasound, but
you would have to basically, like you said, truck in
just this huge rack of sub waffers and shoot it
right at somebody to make them lose control of their bowels.
(11:11):
Like it would be very obvious that that this is
being done. You can't use as as an excuse moving
forward anyway, Oh I still will, Okay, ultrasound above our
threshold of hearing or twenty killer hurts and above you um,
you there is stuff on the market that you can
you can actually you know, direct at somebody a beam
(11:33):
of ultrasound and and you know, hurt their hearing, but
you're not going to cause vertigo or anything like that.
And to really like cause major symptoms or something approaching
a concussion or traumatic brain injury, which some of these
people were diagnosed with UM. There was a scientist who said,
I think his name is Joseph Pompey's a psychoacoustics expert,
(11:53):
which is awesome. He said that you would basically have
to dip your head in a pool line with UM
ultrasound ultrasonic transducers UM to to get like actual brain
damage from that. So that didn't happen in anybody. UM.
So again they said sonic attack, but it must have
(12:14):
been some sort of exotic weapon that even the CIA
isn't aware of. All right, I think good time for
a break. Yes, I agree, go stick our head in
a in a pool of ultrasonic transducers. I can't wait
to see what happens and boot my pants. All right, great, okay, Chuck.
(12:55):
So you said that the State Department sicked the National
Academy of Sciences on the Savannason thing, right, Yeah, Like
everyone at this point is saying it's not a sonic attack.
So they started focusing on potential viral attack, UM, pesticide
poisoning because this is when Zeka was a thing, and
Zeca fumigation was going on. UM either microwaves, which is interesting,
(13:18):
and then our favorite frankly one of our favorite topics
was mass hysteria. Yeah, we did. Um, we've talked about
it twice. At least. We did a short stuff on
Gloria Ramirez, remember her, and then we also did a
full length episode some really interesting Cases of mass hysteria
from two thousand sixteen. Yeah, so put a pin in
that um n AS is doing their study. They were,
(13:40):
you know, they were sort of behind the eight ball
a little bit because, um, by this point things had
already progressed. You know, they were at disadvantage in a
lot of ways. This was after the fact. Um they
didn't know like these doctors who were who were treating
these people, they didn't know they were investigating a mystery.
They were treating people for a medical issue. So your
(14:04):
approach to a situation like that is a lot different
if you're not investigating. Like, no one is back there saying, hey,
find out what weird thing happened to these people. They
were just like treating tentatives and nausea and stuff like. Yeah,
that seems to be a really big ball drop on
the part of the State Department and a particular here. Yeah,
in particular the Cuban Bureau or Havannah Bureau. There wasn't
(14:25):
anybody at the top saying, hey, there's something clearly going
on here. All of these people when you go to
this one particular doctor and have the doctor this one
medical center, somebody looking at you know, looking for all
these symptoms and documenting this. They were just being treated individually. Finally,
at one point they did kind of bring everybody together
(14:46):
and have a meeting um. But but before that, there
was just a lot of treatment going on. It wasn't
being documented properly. So the n AS just right out
of the gate, was like, this is what we're working
with for real. Yeah, I mean they didn't even have
stuff like original blood samples for when these people got sick.
There was a lot of time that passed, so they
(15:07):
just they really had no way to tell anything. They
had incomplete data to begin with. Uh. And then of
course you're dealing with Cuba, so you're not getting I mean,
you know, they're investigating some stuff, but it's not like
if this happened to Canada and we were really sharing
information like that. Well, from what I read, the Cubans
are saying like we were totally willing to collaborate. The
(15:29):
State Department refused to let the the n AS talk
to us. They couldn't. They couldn't accept our data. They couldn't. Um, yeah,
I guess the Cubans had conducted neighborhood surveys, had done
its own investigation, and the n AS was barred from
using any of that data. And then one other thing
that hamstrung them right out of the gate was, um,
(15:52):
the medical files. These are medical files of diplomats and
in some cases CIA agents. So not only is there
like hippa stuff going on, um, like hippo protection, so
that there are things have to be redacted, there's like
national security stuff too, and you know, like the State
Department is very you know, redaction happy, um when it
(16:13):
comes to stuff like that. So they were basically handed
medical files that had huge black bars everywhere over possibly
important information. So you put all this stuff together and
the National Academy of Sciences cannot possibly arrive at a
clear picture of the problem, the symptoms, when, what happened, when,
(16:33):
who was near whom, at what point, um, And so
they can't they can't possibly map produce an epidemiological map.
So whatever they come up with is going to be flawed.
And they realized this from you know, from the get go. Yeah,
So what they ended up coming up with, Um, the
n A S said, you know what, it was a
directed pulse radio frequency energy and we think that's the
(16:58):
most likely cause. A couple of keywords, they're directed and pulsed,
means someone did this. It was a very specific, intentional attack.
It wasn't just some random thing that happened because of
micro waves or cell phone towers or anything like that. Like,
it was a purposeful thing. And uh, they said, you know,
one of the reasons that we think it might be
(17:20):
this is this thing called the Fry Effect f R
E Y nothing to do with the deceased former Eagle
Glenn Fry. Oh the heat is on, haven't I've told
you about this before. There's a sarad Live sketch featuring
Ben Stiller I don't remember. He sees Glenn Fry, who's
(17:42):
actually Will Ferrell, our colleague and co worker um as
Glenn Fry at a club and he's like, I'm gonna
go I'm gonna seduce Glenn Fry to like his friends,
And he goes over and he actually is successful, but
to his own detriment because Glenn Fry makes him eat
out of a dog hole and keeps them on the chain.
And this is wild, like just crazy sex that's going on,
(18:06):
and the guy like really regrets having seduced Glen fry
But it's they refer to the heat as on as
the h is. Oh, it's really I have It is
impossible that I have not mentioned it before. So when
the words Glenn Fryer uttered, that's the first thing. You yes,
(18:27):
pretty much every time. Oh, I have another Glen fry story,
if you know, if you want to hear it, I
got all the time in the world. So you and
I were traveling and um in our car and they're
they're like, this Eagle song was on, and the one
about the wheels driving you crazy, Keep take it easy.
(18:49):
And I hate the Eagles to begin with, from start
to finish. I hate their entire catalog, every every moment
of it. That song in particular is one of the
ones I really hate. And um, we have a pause
button on our radio and so I paused it because
this is live radio, and um, I I'm paus it,
(19:10):
and you know there's the song still. I'm like, man,
it's so this is a really long song. We do
this like five times before I like realized that our
radio can actually pause live radio and that we're not
like in some new concentric circle. Right. There was a
moment there were like did we die or is this
is this? Are we in purgatory? Because this is awful?
(19:33):
That's really funny. Uh. Well, I am back loving the
Eagles after many years of not and so I wanted
to thank listener Clayton Jaynes, who was invited me and
Emily to the Eagles concert last time they came to
Atlanta and I got to go backstage there and stand
on the stage of Philips Arena and like touched on
(19:53):
Henley's drum kid and look at Joe Ash's and Glenn
Fries guitars that his son now plays in his absence. Yeah,
I think I think he told us about that one.
It was awesome and I know now why you weren't there. Yeah. Yeah,
But Clayton is a good guy. He does he does
other bands, like I think he works with Kiss a lot,
so you probably enjoyed that. I would definitely go see
(20:14):
Kiss for sure. Yeah, for sure. So if Clayton's listening,
we want to go to the I want to meet
those guys. Okay, they scare me. Still. There was another
guy named Josh who's a cool guy I've lost touch with,
but he used to invite us to the New Kids
shows because he was like, he was like a production designer.
He's like, it's it's like you're talking about with Clayton.
(20:35):
He doesn't just work with the New Kids, but he's
like this in demand production designer. But one of the
shows that he's done for multiple years in a row
is New Kids. And he kept inviting as to the
New Kids show. And not not because I didn't want
to go through the New Kids, but there was no
I couldn't go to the New Kids every time. So
but I turned out we turned out to be friends.
So he's cool. Dude I haven't heard from in a while.
(20:56):
So I guess if huch because we want to go.
That's the first show I want to see when this
whole thing? Oh yeah, then kiss? Uh So the fry effect, boy,
that was a good long segway or not segwe a tangent?
What do we call those tangents? Irritations? It's the life
(21:18):
flood of the show. The fry effect basically is when
pulse microwaves directed at a target can make a clicking
sound in the target's ears, and only the person can
hear that sound. So they kind of go back to
those UM. I don't know how many people, but some
of the people said they did hear a clicking sound
before all this stuff happened, so they kind of were like,
(21:39):
all right, it's the fry effect. So here's the problem
with that. At this point, the the National Academy of
Sciences there, the people the group they am paneled UM
are just now just ticking off the scientific community because
they're like, oh, there's this one there's this one quality
that can happen from this one weird random thing. That's
(22:01):
probably what it is. We'll just completely ignore everything else
in favor of that one little piece of information. And
so there was It's really kind of interesting if you
read articles on on the Havana syndrome, there's a lot
of cattiness going on, like you can get a scientist
to call somebody else basically a clown um with this stuff.
It's really interesting to read a lot of like flame
(22:23):
war stuff. But the problem with the fry effect, well,
there's multiple problems. One, uh, they recorded this sound. There's
a recording of it out that the AP leaked um
that you can hear, which would discount the fry effect
because only the person being targeted by microwaves. Here's the clicking.
That's a big problem. The other thing is that other
(22:45):
acoustic or microwave experts say, to produce that clicking in
the person's ears, you would cook them to death. Like that,
The the amount of energy it would take to make
that fry effect happen would kill the person. It wouldn't
just you know, create the clicking in their ears. But
that's kind of one of the things that they settled
(23:05):
on UM as a potential explanation. Well, the State Department
was like, sounds good to me. Yeah, and I mean
the the the n A yes said like, we're considering
all these other things, this is what we think is
the most plausible, which is actually really the least plausible. Yeah,
And you know, some of the people in the flame
(23:26):
War were like why did they like they have these
medical experts basically and neurology experts. What you need if
you're going to investigate something like this is a lot
of different kinds of experts. You need, some acoustic experts
you need. They like apparently didn't even engage acoustic experts
talking about this acoustic stuff, and they were like, you
(23:47):
need a multidisciplinary team in here, in a lot of
different fields if you're going to investigate something like this,
and they just never did. Yeah. And one of the
interpretations I saw was that again they were working backward
from the Rubio FBI State Department um idea theory that
it was a sonic attack, that that that that was
(24:09):
what the premise they were really going on, and then
they were trying to work backward to figure out, you know,
what the attack was was made of rather than Okay,
maybe maybe it was in tech, maybe it was also
natural that kind of stuff for accidental who knows. Yeah,
I mean there have been other smaller studies, not from
the US government, Like there was one from Ben Gurion
(24:31):
University that said, you know what, we studied some of
these Canadian diplomats and based on their data, we think
it was pesticide poisoning. But then a lot of people,
and it seems like the most popular, including the Cuban
Academy of Sciences, take that for what it's worth. But
a lot of them came back and said, I hate
(24:52):
to say it, but this was maybe mass hysteria and
some sort of psychological uh, either illness or mass hysteria episode. Yeah,
a lot of people agree with him on that. And Cuba,
by the way, very um like a really good health
care system and a really solid scientific community. So the
community Cuban Academy of Science is not like the Banana
(25:14):
Republic Academy Sciences or anything like that. From what I understand,
I've never been to Cuba, UM. But the the that
seems to be the most widely subscribe to theory that
it was it was what's called conversion disorder, where you
basically have a psychogenic illness. Somebody um is told what
(25:35):
the suite of symptoms is, they start developing it themselves
and then this this tight knit community, it starts to
seem to spread. And the thing about is called conversion disorder.
You are you are actually experiencing your body is experiencing
those symptoms, just like in the placebo effect where you
take a pill and it actually does make you healthy
(25:55):
even though it's not an active ingredient, but your body,
your mind can make your body do things if it
thinks something is going on. This is the kind of
like the the mirror image of that where you start
to suffer because your mind tricks you into thinking that
you have these symptoms, and it seems to spread because
people are It's like fear is the contagion in in
(26:19):
in instance like this. Yeah, and this stuff has happened before.
I think we talked about at least one of the
Portugal Yeah, in two thousand six in Portugal. Gosh, we're
doing this in two thousand six. No, we talked about
it after, for sure, you know we definitely when I
was two years before we were born, we were just
embryonic at that twinkle in um Adam Curry's eye. Uh, yeah,
(26:45):
two thousand six in Portugal, those UM students in high
school I think it was high school, right, or was
it college? I think it was high school. Yeah. There
were hundreds of students in fourteen different schools, all developed
these weird symptoms rashes and dizziness and breathing difficulties. Uh.
And then it happened again in New York in two
thousand eleven, twelve high school students developed um what they
(27:09):
thought was Tourette syndrome, or at least symptoms of tourette.
It sounds like that that that sounds made up. If
I were a principal, I'd be like, you're you're all
suspended for even trying this, because all they did was yell. Yeah.
There was another one in Oklahoma in two thousand and
seventeen that actually was happening about the same time as
(27:29):
a savannah Um syndrome outbreak, where there was actually the
kids were paralyzed. They were getting they thought that there
was some sort of crazy like mold or autoimmune disorder
something like that, and they were suffering paralysis. And that's
the thing about conversion disorder is these kids were paralyzed,
but it was their mind that had paralyzed them because
(27:50):
they thought they'd been exposed to something that that was
making them paralyzed, and it turns out it was just
in their minds. And that's what a lot of people
think of and a syndrome is that it was just
a psychogenic illness. Yeah, so I think we should take
a break, but we'll leave you with this little cliffhanger.
In this n a S report, they referenced data, uh
(28:14):
from an earlier report by the CDC that was commissioned
and completed, and Congress and everyone else looked around and said,
what's CDC report? What are you talking about. So let's
take a break and we'll come back and talk about
this mystery right after this cliffhanger. Okay, Chuck. So everybody's saying, wait, wait,
(28:56):
this is December when that journal of the American Medical
Association published the n A S S findings finally mere
months ago, and in that they like they made mention
of a CDC report that no one else had heard of,
and like you said, including Congress. And it turns out
that the State Department had initially commissioned the CDC um
(29:17):
shortly after this this outbreak began, um and said, can
you guys figure out what's going on? And so it
turns out that there was actually the n A S
study was the second scientific study done on this and
the CDC. It didn't really come up with much more
than the n A Y S did. Yeah. They issued
an eighteen page report titled and they spent half the
(29:42):
time trying to figure out how to spell yeah. There
was a vigorous debate over that. Uh no, it was
really called Cuba Unexplained Events Investigation, And like you said,
they kind of came up empty. Two. They were hamstrung
in a lot of the same ways that the n
A S was and had a state department that had
dragged its feet and didn't have the protocols in place
(30:05):
for the investigation. UM. I think one of the one
of the only things that kind of came out of
the CDC report that was helpful, which I guess is
why the n AS used it in the first place,
was it did fill in a few of the details
about what happened to whom. Yeah, so they managed to
nail down patient zero UM who first reported UM some
(30:28):
neurological symptoms in mid December of two thousand and sixteen,
and that was a CIA officer in Havana. UM. That
CIA officer mentioned their symptoms to a second CIA officer
who who like a couple of months later, developed the
same symptoms. See where this is going. And so after
(30:50):
that time, so apparently Patient zero, the first CIA officer
who has happened to UM, was really instrumental in like
spreading the word about this. Was it seems to have
been very convinced that they had been attacked, that there
was a sonic attack going on, and that the word
needed to be spread about this. And so as a result, UM,
(31:12):
the the I think the Havana UM embassy held a
meeting and basically said, listen out for weird sounds and
if you start to get this huge weird collection of symptoms,
let us know because we're probably under sonic attack. That
solves that and went back to bed. That's right, and uh,
(31:34):
maybe not. Coincidentally, a lot of incidents has happened after
that happened, and UM and at the end they said,
you know, if you want to go home, right, here's
here's one way to fast track. Now. Although Cuba think
it's supposed to be very nice, so maybe they weren't
trying to get out of there. But in the end,
ninety five people were seeing for these symptoms. In the
(31:57):
CDC report, it said that fifteen of those had a
two stage illness. Uh, first was the noise that we
talked about and those acute symptoms, and then second a
few weeks later, a couple of weeks later, they had
that neurological damage. I think thirty one of the cases,
where maybe's forty nine were unlikely. And then of those
(32:17):
fifteen who had that two stage syndrome, while the report
was issued, there were six of them still getting treated,
so it wasn't even like their treatment was compared, right, Yeah,
I mean that's that's the thing, Like whether it's psychogenic
illness or a sonic attack or you know, fumigation, um
poisoning from you know, zekea pesticides like there there were
(32:38):
still people that were still being treated for symptoms for
over a year. These are nasty symptoms like vertigo is
nothing to nothing, nothing fun. Were vomiting or dizziness or
inability to concentrate. Um, there's a lot of terrible stuff
that that people we're having to deal with. Whatever the um,
(32:59):
the the reason for the symptoms were, which you know,
makes a lot of people think like, no, this is
this is a real thing, and these people were attacked
and we need to find out what it is. The
CDC at least said we have no idea, like we
cannot figure it out. That they said, like and their
conclusion that they couldn't possibly put forth any kind of explanation.
(33:24):
They just mainly documented everything, which is certainly a mark
in the CDC's favor and a mark against the The
n A s that the CDC resisted, you know, saying
yes it was microwaves and it was probably the Ruskies. Yeah,
and that all came about you know, after everyone, um,
a lot of scientists that has rejected the findings. Cuba
(33:47):
rejected the findings. We told you earlier that they got
all up in arms and said, hey, listen, we tried
to help, we take this stuff seriously. Um, we weren't
a part of this. But uh, in that n AS panel, UM,
somebody said something about Russia, and you know, obviously Russia
is in bed with Cuba, and they said, you know what,
(34:10):
it's maybe it was Russia. We do know that in
the seventies they were trying to weaponize microwaves. Um. They
in fact, um, for like three years straight, three and
a half years, pounded the American embassy in Moscow with microwaves.
I don't even know if they had an endgame there.
I think they were just like a let let's see
what this does. Turn it on. And I don't think
(34:31):
it really did anything if it went on for three
and a half years. And apparently, um, of course we'll
never know because this Russia. But supposedly they kind of
gave up all that stuff decades ago. Yeah, this is
the seventies when they were shooting microwaves at the American
embassy in Moscow. UM, and yeah, as far as anybody
knows that that technology wasn't pursued any further. So if
there is any kind of sonic weapon that is concealable,
(34:56):
that is, that is capable of producing the suite of
symptom um, it is news to the world. UM. And
there are people who say, like you know, security experts,
that kind of group, who say, yeah, it's entirely possible
that somebody has developed this without the US being aware
of it. UM. I saw a quote that America tends
(35:17):
to be very surprised that not that certain things exist,
but that other people have caught up to America's technology.
So yeah, um. But at the same time, it's kind
of like it's suggesting that America or certain quarters of
America UM, are fully aware that this is possible, which
is why they're pursuing that sonic attack thing. But they
(35:39):
can't just be like, it's this, see everybody, We've had
this for twenty years now. We just didn't know that
the Cubans had it kind of thing. So the US
still um seems to be you know, with the expulsion
of the Cuban to Cuban diplomats, UM is basically saying
if Cuba doesn't know if they didn't do it, they
(35:59):
know who did it, and they maybe even let it
happen because apparently diplomatic residences in Cuba are owned and
maintained by the Cuban government, so it's not like they
just had no opportunity to do this kind of thing.
But Cuba, like you said, it's extremely adamant that they
had nothing to do with this and that they would
never let this happen to any accredited UM diplomat in
(36:23):
their country. And if you step outside of the United States,
it's really kind of funny because the rest of the
world is totally fine with Cuba. It's really just the
United States that's you know, at odds with Cuba, and
Cuba is cool with everybody else. Like apparently a million
Canadians go to Cuba every year on on vacation, so
it's kind of like something that they're not really happy
(36:46):
about the idea that that if you go to Cuba
you might suffer this sonic attack. UM that could at
the very least hurt their tourism industry, if not just
you know, impinging their you know, how they treat diplomats
from other country or allow them to be treated it's
it's a real insult in that respect. Yeah, And I
think it's also one of the end results was the
(37:08):
US government and it was kind of exposed a little
bit of dragging their feet and not being coordinated and
not maybe having their ducks in a row. And I
think if anything like this were to happen again, I
think they had enough egg on their face to sort
of get it together to at least sort of be
coordinated from the get go and have a multidisciplinary investigation
(37:29):
going on. And this whole thing, like the the big
argument and push and pull among the scientific communities, still
very much ongoing. UM. There was a paper published that
examined some brain scans of some of these diplomats that
were taken at Penn State, I believe, UM, and these
the authors of the study concluded that, you know, a
(37:50):
lot of them showed evidence of trauma. And then other
scientists responded and said, like, this doesn't show trauma at all.
That's exactly what you would find from a random sample
of the population. UM. Other people. Remember, I said that
they recorded the sound that they heard. UM. Apparently a
couple of biologists ran that sound through spectral analysis and
(38:10):
showed that it exactly matches um, a specific kind of
cricket that's um native to Cuba and the Caribbean. So
there's just like it's still being hammered out. Like we
said it the at the beginning, that this is not
it's not settled. No one has any idea yet exactly
what it is, and it seems like the most satisfying
(38:31):
answer would be psychogenic illness. But even still, I mean,
that doesn't seem to really explain everything necessarily. Yeah, well,
a pretty good mystery. Still a good mystery. And who
doesn't love that? Right? I know Glenn Fry I hated.
I don't care what Clint Fry liked or didn't like. Um.
(38:52):
If you want to know more about the Havana syndrome,
go check out the copious amounts of articles about it.
There's a lot of stuff out there. It's really interesting
and engrossing stuff. See what you think? Uh? And since
I said see what you think, it's time for a
listener mail. When you think about that hs O story,
do you go the h is boom boom boom boom.
(39:15):
Oh nope, you know, isn't that from Beverly Hills cop
I think the heat is on one. Yeah, that was
the one where he's like hanging off of the back
of the semi Yeah. Yeah. He did a few of
those soundtrack e type things, and he was an actor
on Miami Bodies, which is one of your favorite shows.
What do you hate Miami Vice? It's fine. I refused
(39:36):
to watch the episodes with Clem Fry. All right, I'm
gonna call this just a nice email from a listener
who was kind of growing up with. Hey, guys, I'm
writing to say that I first discovered your podcast way
back in when I was in the seventh grade. It
just moved away from many of my neighborhood friends in
your podcast was a source of a source of information
(39:58):
and comfort during that transition. Having always been a nerd,
I was immediately hooked on your podcast and have listened
to it many of my travels for sports teams, college trips,
and international adventures. In fact, your podcast had a major
impact in keeping my curiosity alive and well throughout my life.
I just accepted an offer for grad school in Georgia
(40:18):
and wanted to write to say that although we have
never met, you two have positively impacted my life for
more than the past decade. So thank you for everything.
I hope you're well. And that is from Abigail. Is
a fine listener mail. Thanks a lot, Abigail, It's very sweet.
I love and best of luck in grad school. That's great. Yeah,
kill it, but not literally, no no no, that's a
(40:41):
figure speech meaning go do a great job, the best
you can do, a great job. Okay, Well, if you
want to get in touch with this, like Abigail, Abidale's
Abigail's new nickname, not Frank Abignail. No, Abbidale Master fortunerally
known as Abigail. Yeah, we talked about Frank Abgnail in
(41:03):
the five Successful Counterfeiters episode. He's number one, wasn't uh
he was up there for sure. It was good. Well, anyway,
if you want to get in touch with us, like anybody,
including Abigdale, Abgdail or Abigail, you can send us an
email to stuff podcast diheart radio dot com. Stuff you
(41:28):
Should Know is a production of i Heeart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Um. I think
Dave's around somewhere sitting in for Jerry. Who's Can we
say where Jerry is, Chuck, I don't think we can yet,
(00:24):
but it's pretty cool. Okay, Yeah, Jerry's on He's on
a cool field trip. That's for Uh. That's none you Okay,
you ever say that when you were a little No,
I had it said to me a lot, but I
never I never had occasion to say it. None your business. Um.
By the way, this is stuff you should know for
those of you like say it. Yes, the anticipate patient.
(00:50):
So Chuck um, speaking of anticipation, we're talking today about
one of the greatest medical mystery reas that has hit
the world, at the very least the United States in
a really long time. It's a little something that's been
flying under the radar and really flew under the radar
(01:11):
for a while. But there's probably a lot of people
out there haven't heard of this. Something called havana syndrome,
and havana syndrome is we should say at the outset,
there's not going to be any resolution to this episode.
It's deeply Yeah, it's really dissatisfying. The whole thing is
we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is,
(01:33):
and really, honestly, the theories are not not great. There's
no one theory. You're like, of course that's it. Everybody
else has been ridiculous. Yeah, So in one way it's
kind of interesting and that we get to cover a
lot of stuff, but in another way, it's again deeply unsatisfying.
But the the whole thing of Havana syndrome is it
all begins in that that, I believe the end of
(01:55):
two thousand sixteen. Around December of two thousand and sixteen,
just like a year after you, the United States had
opened its embassy again in Cuba after decades of this
kind of chilly cold war um like pretending one another
isn't there um relationship. Just a year after that, there
(02:16):
was a station agent, a CIA station agent in Havana
who started complaining of some really weird symptoms after hearing
a really weird noise, and that kicked this whole mess off. Yeah,
there's uh, this is worth reading. I think from the
Guardian in and I don't think this is the first one,
(02:37):
but they were all very similar to people who were
affected by this mystery. It says this the blaring, grinding
noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in the
Havannah hotel. He moved just a few feet and there
was silence. He climbed back into bed, and explicably, the
agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he
(02:58):
had walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room.
And uh, you know, that doesn't really describe much. But
when you talked to some of the people who uh,
and we did personally talk to all of these people
were given Uh. There were weird symptoms um earpain, tentatives, headaches,
(03:22):
hearing loss, vertigo, dizziness, nausea, disorientation, blurred vision, nosebleed, fatigue. Uh.
Sometimes the symptoms were sort of temporary and not too
bad with some of the people. Sometimes it was um
really bad, and some people ended up retiring and saying
this is it. I'm out of here. Yeah. Some people
went on to be diagnosed with swelling of the brain
(03:45):
with a concussion um. Some people suffered what seems to
be permanent hearing loss, and all of this was localized
just in the Havanna Bureau of the American or the
American Embassy took Cuba in Havana, like that's it. So
there was suddenly this weird on symptoms. I think as
(04:06):
many as ninety people came down with this what came
to be called Havana syndrome. Some of them said I
heard a weird noise and then all of a sudden,
I had vertigo. Other people didn't hear anything. They just
all of a sudden couldn't concentrate any longer. And it
was this. The symptoms all seemed to Nobody said I
had a fever or my legs started swelling. It all
(04:27):
seemed to be kind of clustered around your um. You're
hearing your ears, your nose, your throat kind of thing,
but without the throat, without the nose, mainly just your
ears and your brain. They seemed to be a cluster
of neurological symptoms that no one had any idea what
was going on. Yeah, so you know, of course the
US is going to investigate something like this, and we'll
(04:49):
get into There were a couple of pretty deep, well
as deep as you can get in this case investigations.
But the very first thing that happened was the FBI.
It was like, hey, this is some sort of acoustic attack. Uh,
some sort of sound waves are being used. Let's get
in there and at least check out the locations, check
(05:10):
out everything around where these people are living, where they're staying.
And they found nothing. They came up really pretty much empty.
And we should also point out this was I think
a few Canadian diplomats too. It wasn't entirely us, right,
but for the most part it was US, and it
seemed to be it seemed to be concentrated. Uh in
the homes of the diplomats, um and by. Diplomats were
(05:33):
including CIA agents who weren't known who. They weren't like,
hey I'm the CI agent here they were they were
posing as diplomats. So the diplomats like Keaton, well who
was he posing as Michael Keaton in uh what was
it out of sight with He's an FBI guy And
(05:53):
he showed up with a big T shirt that said FBI.
And Dennis Farina had that great joke he says, he
you got another one that says undercover. Yeah, I love
that guy. He was the best. Who else could buy
Dennis Farina could follow up after Jerry Orbach, nobody, and
he did it. He did it with class. He did
he brought his own, his own character. Just amazing stuff.
(06:17):
Then I was about to say I didn't see any
of that show. But I was about to say, except
he was no singer like Jerry Orbach. But we might
be wrong again, he could be. I really walked past
that one. I guess so. Um So, the diplomats were
being seemed to be affected at their houses and then
there were two hotels in Havana that um that these
(06:38):
these symptoms started their onset on. So again that was
that was basically like the first um investigation the FBI.
The FBI conducted it was just like I don't I
don't know, but clearly it was an attack. You know,
it's it's localized to diplomats and their families. It's in Havannah.
It's not happening anywhere else for now. Um So, some
(07:02):
sort of attack, we just don't know what it was.
That was the first investigation, and so the State Department
said let's take a little deeper. Yeah, I mean, they
kind of kept it quiet for a little while I
think the media eventually got wind of what they were
calling a sonic attack, and then uh, the former president
administration presidential administration, UM, as things were starting to I
(07:27):
guess thaw a little bit, said you know what, you
guys are out of here and kicked out to Cuban
diplomats UM, kind of as payback basically when Cuba the
whole time was going, we didn't do this, we don't
know what you're talking about. Uh, And as we'll see later,
they um supposedly even investigated and tried to help investigate. Yeah. Yeah,
that was the one of the longstanding things that Cubans
(07:49):
have said basically from the outset is twofold one. They
had nothing to do with it, knew nothing about it,
and that they would take something like that very seriously.
And then too they seemed to suspect that, um, this
eventually snowballed into an easy way to cut ties again
with Cuba, that that was kind of something that was
(08:10):
driving this narrative as well. Part of the problem also
is you know, like you said, the State's Department was
keeping this secret, not just from the American public. Congress
hadn't even heard about this, and everyone found out about
the same time. UM that when the media started reporting
on it, Congress found out about it, and apparently Marco
Rubio latched onto this because he's of Cuban ancestry. I'm
(08:33):
not sure he is or his parents are from Cuba,
but he hates the Castro regime, and so this was
a big thing for him to kind of clamp onto
and really kind of enrage his base, um, the Cuban
expatriate community in in Miami, in South Florida. UM. And he,
out of the gate, I think, even released a press
release referring to this as a sonic attack, like really
(08:55):
kind of taking whatever the FBI had surmise and just
basically saying this is this is what happened. We just
haven't figured out how, but it was an attack. And
that really set the paradigm moving forward for basically everybody
except for thankfully large swaths of the scientific community. Yeah.
So they commissioned the National Academy of Science to to
(09:18):
go undergo an investigation in twenty nineteen, and even by
that time, people that understood things like acoustic or possible
acoustic attacks or just acoustics basically said this wasn't some
kind of a sonic attack. It's you know, it is
possible that you can focus a sound beam to an area,
but you would have to truck in some equipment that's
(09:41):
so big the FBI would have found it. Uh. And
even if they managed to do that and get away
with it, um, there were so many different symptoms going
on with these people. It can't all be explained away
by an acoustic attack. And let's say that even happened,
it definitely wouldn't cause brain damage, Like the worst acoustic
attack wouldn't cause somebody brain damage. No, So really there's
(10:04):
two ways. Because here's the other thing, like people said
they heard a weird sound or whatever, but it wasn't
necessarily some like they were clearly being attacked by the sound.
That wasn't what they reported. They just some of them
said I heard a weird sound first, and then all
of a sudden, I have these weird symptoms. That's, you know,
what gave rise to the sonic attack theory. But there's
basically two ways to attack people with sound, especially sound
(10:27):
they can't hear. It's either below our threshold of hearing,
which is infrasound. What what I was trying to make
a yoko on no joke, but right, that's the third
route that she combines the two. It's a sound um
infrasound is below our threshold, below twenty hurts, right, and
you actually can cause things like vertigo in somebody or
(10:49):
vomiting um loss of bowel control if you hit somebody
with a loud enough infrasound blast. But like you said, yeah,
you can make someone poop their pants with infrasound, but
you would have to basically, like you said, truck in
just this huge rack of sub waffers and shoot it
right at somebody to make them lose control of their bowels.
(11:11):
Like it would be very obvious that that this is
being done. You can't use as as an excuse moving
forward anyway, Oh I still will, Okay, ultrasound above our
threshold of hearing or twenty killer hurts and above you um,
you there is stuff on the market that you can
you can actually you know, direct at somebody a beam
(11:33):
of ultrasound and and you know, hurt their hearing, but
you're not going to cause vertigo or anything like that.
And to really like cause major symptoms or something approaching
a concussion or traumatic brain injury, which some of these
people were diagnosed with UM. There was a scientist who said,
I think his name is Joseph Pompey's a psychoacoustics expert,
(11:53):
which is awesome. He said that you would basically have
to dip your head in a pool line with UM
ultrasound ultrasonic transducers UM to to get like actual brain
damage from that. So that didn't happen in anybody. UM.
So again they said sonic attack, but it must have
(12:14):
been some sort of exotic weapon that even the CIA
isn't aware of. All right, I think good time for
a break. Yes, I agree, go stick our head in
a in a pool of ultrasonic transducers. I can't wait
to see what happens and boot my pants. All right, great, okay, Chuck.
(12:55):
So you said that the State Department sicked the National
Academy of Sciences on the Savannason thing, right, Yeah, Like
everyone at this point is saying it's not a sonic attack.
So they started focusing on potential viral attack, UM, pesticide
poisoning because this is when Zeka was a thing, and
Zeca fumigation was going on. UM either microwaves, which is interesting,
(13:18):
and then our favorite frankly one of our favorite topics
was mass hysteria. Yeah, we did. Um, we've talked about
it twice. At least. We did a short stuff on
Gloria Ramirez, remember her, and then we also did a
full length episode some really interesting Cases of mass hysteria
from two thousand sixteen. Yeah, so put a pin in
that um n AS is doing their study. They were,
(13:40):
you know, they were sort of behind the eight ball
a little bit because, um, by this point things had
already progressed. You know, they were at disadvantage in a
lot of ways. This was after the fact. Um they
didn't know like these doctors who were who were treating
these people, they didn't know they were investigating a mystery.
They were treating people for a medical issue. So your
(14:04):
approach to a situation like that is a lot different
if you're not investigating. Like, no one is back there saying, hey,
find out what weird thing happened to these people. They
were just like treating tentatives and nausea and stuff like. Yeah,
that seems to be a really big ball drop on
the part of the State Department and a particular here. Yeah,
in particular the Cuban Bureau or Havannah Bureau. There wasn't
(14:25):
anybody at the top saying, hey, there's something clearly going
on here. All of these people when you go to
this one particular doctor and have the doctor this one
medical center, somebody looking at you know, looking for all
these symptoms and documenting this. They were just being treated individually. Finally,
at one point they did kind of bring everybody together
(14:46):
and have a meeting um. But but before that, there
was just a lot of treatment going on. It wasn't
being documented properly. So the n AS just right out
of the gate, was like, this is what we're working
with for real. Yeah, I mean they didn't even have
stuff like original blood samples for when these people got sick.
There was a lot of time that passed, so they
(15:07):
just they really had no way to tell anything. They
had incomplete data to begin with. Uh. And then of
course you're dealing with Cuba, so you're not getting I mean,
you know, they're investigating some stuff, but it's not like
if this happened to Canada and we were really sharing
information like that. Well, from what I read, the Cubans
are saying like we were totally willing to collaborate. The
(15:29):
State Department refused to let the the n AS talk
to us. They couldn't. They couldn't accept our data. They couldn't. Um, yeah,
I guess the Cubans had conducted neighborhood surveys, had done
its own investigation, and the n AS was barred from
using any of that data. And then one other thing
that hamstrung them right out of the gate was, um,
(15:52):
the medical files. These are medical files of diplomats and
in some cases CIA agents. So not only is there
like hippa stuff going on, um, like hippo protection, so
that there are things have to be redacted, there's like
national security stuff too, and you know, like the State
Department is very you know, redaction happy, um when it
(16:13):
comes to stuff like that. So they were basically handed
medical files that had huge black bars everywhere over possibly
important information. So you put all this stuff together and
the National Academy of Sciences cannot possibly arrive at a
clear picture of the problem, the symptoms, when, what happened, when,
(16:33):
who was near whom, at what point, um, And so
they can't they can't possibly map produce an epidemiological map.
So whatever they come up with is going to be flawed.
And they realized this from you know, from the get go. Yeah,
So what they ended up coming up with, Um, the
n A S said, you know what, it was a
directed pulse radio frequency energy and we think that's the
(16:58):
most likely cause. A couple of keywords, they're directed and pulsed,
means someone did this. It was a very specific, intentional attack.
It wasn't just some random thing that happened because of
micro waves or cell phone towers or anything like that. Like,
it was a purposeful thing. And uh, they said, you know,
one of the reasons that we think it might be
(17:20):
this is this thing called the Fry Effect f R
E Y nothing to do with the deceased former Eagle
Glenn Fry. Oh the heat is on, haven't I've told
you about this before. There's a sarad Live sketch featuring
Ben Stiller I don't remember. He sees Glenn Fry, who's
(17:42):
actually Will Ferrell, our colleague and co worker um as
Glenn Fry at a club and he's like, I'm gonna
go I'm gonna seduce Glenn Fry to like his friends,
And he goes over and he actually is successful, but
to his own detriment because Glenn Fry makes him eat
out of a dog hole and keeps them on the chain.
And this is wild, like just crazy sex that's going on,
(18:06):
and the guy like really regrets having seduced Glen fry
But it's they refer to the heat as on as
the h is. Oh, it's really I have It is
impossible that I have not mentioned it before. So when
the words Glenn Fryer uttered, that's the first thing. You yes,
(18:27):
pretty much every time. Oh, I have another Glen fry story,
if you know, if you want to hear it, I
got all the time in the world. So you and
I were traveling and um in our car and they're
they're like, this Eagle song was on, and the one
about the wheels driving you crazy, Keep take it easy.
(18:49):
And I hate the Eagles to begin with, from start
to finish. I hate their entire catalog, every every moment
of it. That song in particular is one of the
ones I really hate. And um, we have a pause
button on our radio and so I paused it because
this is live radio, and um, I I'm paus it,
(19:10):
and you know there's the song still. I'm like, man,
it's so this is a really long song. We do
this like five times before I like realized that our
radio can actually pause live radio and that we're not
like in some new concentric circle. Right. There was a
moment there were like did we die or is this
is this? Are we in purgatory? Because this is awful?
(19:33):
That's really funny. Uh. Well, I am back loving the
Eagles after many years of not and so I wanted
to thank listener Clayton Jaynes, who was invited me and
Emily to the Eagles concert last time they came to
Atlanta and I got to go backstage there and stand
on the stage of Philips Arena and like touched on
(19:53):
Henley's drum kid and look at Joe Ash's and Glenn
Fries guitars that his son now plays in his absence. Yeah,
I think I think he told us about that one.
It was awesome and I know now why you weren't there. Yeah. Yeah,
But Clayton is a good guy. He does he does
other bands, like I think he works with Kiss a lot,
so you probably enjoyed that. I would definitely go see
(20:14):
Kiss for sure. Yeah, for sure. So if Clayton's listening,
we want to go to the I want to meet
those guys. Okay, they scare me. Still. There was another
guy named Josh who's a cool guy I've lost touch with,
but he used to invite us to the New Kids
shows because he was like, he was like a production designer.
He's like, it's it's like you're talking about with Clayton.
(20:35):
He doesn't just work with the New Kids, but he's
like this in demand production designer. But one of the
shows that he's done for multiple years in a row
is New Kids. And he kept inviting as to the
New Kids show. And not not because I didn't want
to go through the New Kids, but there was no
I couldn't go to the New Kids every time. So
but I turned out we turned out to be friends.
So he's cool. Dude I haven't heard from in a while.
(20:56):
So I guess if huch because we want to go.
That's the first show I want to see when this
whole thing? Oh yeah, then kiss? Uh So the fry effect, boy,
that was a good long segway or not segwe a tangent?
What do we call those tangents? Irritations? It's the life
(21:18):
flood of the show. The fry effect basically is when
pulse microwaves directed at a target can make a clicking
sound in the target's ears, and only the person can
hear that sound. So they kind of go back to
those UM. I don't know how many people, but some
of the people said they did hear a clicking sound
before all this stuff happened, so they kind of were like,
(21:39):
all right, it's the fry effect. So here's the problem
with that. At this point, the the National Academy of
Sciences there, the people the group they am paneled UM
are just now just ticking off the scientific community because
they're like, oh, there's this one there's this one quality
that can happen from this one weird random thing. That's
(22:01):
probably what it is. We'll just completely ignore everything else
in favor of that one little piece of information. And
so there was It's really kind of interesting if you
read articles on on the Havana syndrome, there's a lot
of cattiness going on, like you can get a scientist
to call somebody else basically a clown um with this stuff.
It's really interesting to read a lot of like flame
(22:23):
war stuff. But the problem with the fry effect, well,
there's multiple problems. One, uh, they recorded this sound. There's
a recording of it out that the AP leaked um
that you can hear, which would discount the fry effect
because only the person being targeted by microwaves. Here's the clicking.
That's a big problem. The other thing is that other
(22:45):
acoustic or microwave experts say, to produce that clicking in
the person's ears, you would cook them to death. Like that,
The the amount of energy it would take to make
that fry effect happen would kill the person. It wouldn't
just you know, create the clicking in their ears. But
that's kind of one of the things that they settled
(23:05):
on UM as a potential explanation. Well, the State Department
was like, sounds good to me. Yeah, and I mean
the the the n A yes said like, we're considering
all these other things, this is what we think is
the most plausible, which is actually really the least plausible. Yeah,
And you know, some of the people in the flame
(23:26):
War were like why did they like they have these
medical experts basically and neurology experts. What you need if
you're going to investigate something like this is a lot
of different kinds of experts. You need, some acoustic experts
you need. They like apparently didn't even engage acoustic experts
talking about this acoustic stuff, and they were like, you
(23:47):
need a multidisciplinary team in here, in a lot of
different fields if you're going to investigate something like this,
and they just never did. Yeah. And one of the
interpretations I saw was that again they were working backward
from the Rubio FBI State Department um idea theory that
it was a sonic attack, that that that that was
(24:09):
what the premise they were really going on, and then
they were trying to work backward to figure out, you know,
what the attack was was made of rather than Okay,
maybe maybe it was in tech, maybe it was also
natural that kind of stuff for accidental who knows. Yeah,
I mean there have been other smaller studies, not from
the US government, Like there was one from Ben Gurion
(24:31):
University that said, you know what, we studied some of
these Canadian diplomats and based on their data, we think
it was pesticide poisoning. But then a lot of people,
and it seems like the most popular, including the Cuban
Academy of Sciences, take that for what it's worth. But
a lot of them came back and said, I hate
(24:52):
to say it, but this was maybe mass hysteria and
some sort of psychological uh, either illness or mass hysteria episode. Yeah,
a lot of people agree with him on that. And Cuba,
by the way, very um like a really good health
care system and a really solid scientific community. So the
community Cuban Academy of Science is not like the Banana
(25:14):
Republic Academy Sciences or anything like that. From what I understand,
I've never been to Cuba, UM. But the the that
seems to be the most widely subscribe to theory that
it was it was what's called conversion disorder, where you
basically have a psychogenic illness. Somebody um is told what
(25:35):
the suite of symptoms is, they start developing it themselves
and then this this tight knit community, it starts to
seem to spread. And the thing about is called conversion disorder.
You are you are actually experiencing your body is experiencing
those symptoms, just like in the placebo effect where you
take a pill and it actually does make you healthy
(25:55):
even though it's not an active ingredient, but your body,
your mind can make your body do things if it
thinks something is going on. This is the kind of
like the the mirror image of that where you start
to suffer because your mind tricks you into thinking that
you have these symptoms, and it seems to spread because
people are It's like fear is the contagion in in
(26:19):
in instance like this. Yeah, and this stuff has happened before.
I think we talked about at least one of the
Portugal Yeah, in two thousand six in Portugal. Gosh, we're
doing this in two thousand six. No, we talked about
it after, for sure, you know we definitely when I
was two years before we were born, we were just
embryonic at that twinkle in um Adam Curry's eye. Uh, yeah,
(26:45):
two thousand six in Portugal, those UM students in high
school I think it was high school, right, or was
it college? I think it was high school. Yeah. There
were hundreds of students in fourteen different schools, all developed
these weird symptoms rashes and dizziness and breathing difficulties. Uh.
And then it happened again in New York in two
thousand eleven, twelve high school students developed um what they
(27:09):
thought was Tourette syndrome, or at least symptoms of tourette.
It sounds like that that that sounds made up. If
I were a principal, I'd be like, you're you're all
suspended for even trying this, because all they did was yell. Yeah.
There was another one in Oklahoma in two thousand and
seventeen that actually was happening about the same time as
(27:29):
a savannah Um syndrome outbreak, where there was actually the
kids were paralyzed. They were getting they thought that there
was some sort of crazy like mold or autoimmune disorder
something like that, and they were suffering paralysis. And that's
the thing about conversion disorder is these kids were paralyzed,
but it was their mind that had paralyzed them because
(27:50):
they thought they'd been exposed to something that that was
making them paralyzed, and it turns out it was just
in their minds. And that's what a lot of people
think of and a syndrome is that it was just
a psychogenic illness. Yeah, so I think we should take
a break, but we'll leave you with this little cliffhanger.
In this n a S report, they referenced data, uh
(28:14):
from an earlier report by the CDC that was commissioned
and completed, and Congress and everyone else looked around and said,
what's CDC report? What are you talking about. So let's
take a break and we'll come back and talk about
this mystery right after this cliffhanger. Okay, Chuck. So everybody's saying, wait, wait,
(28:56):
this is December when that journal of the American Medical
Association published the n A S S findings finally mere
months ago, and in that they like they made mention
of a CDC report that no one else had heard of,
and like you said, including Congress. And it turns out
that the State Department had initially commissioned the CDC um
(29:17):
shortly after this this outbreak began, um and said, can
you guys figure out what's going on? And so it
turns out that there was actually the n A S
study was the second scientific study done on this and
the CDC. It didn't really come up with much more
than the n A Y S did. Yeah. They issued
an eighteen page report titled and they spent half the
(29:42):
time trying to figure out how to spell yeah. There
was a vigorous debate over that. Uh no, it was
really called Cuba Unexplained Events Investigation, And like you said,
they kind of came up empty. Two. They were hamstrung
in a lot of the same ways that the n
A S was and had a state department that had
dragged its feet and didn't have the protocols in place
(30:05):
for the investigation. UM. I think one of the one
of the only things that kind of came out of
the CDC report that was helpful, which I guess is
why the n AS used it in the first place,
was it did fill in a few of the details
about what happened to whom. Yeah, so they managed to
nail down patient zero UM who first reported UM some
(30:28):
neurological symptoms in mid December of two thousand and sixteen,
and that was a CIA officer in Havana. UM. That
CIA officer mentioned their symptoms to a second CIA officer
who who like a couple of months later, developed the
same symptoms. See where this is going. And so after
(30:50):
that time, so apparently Patient zero, the first CIA officer
who has happened to UM, was really instrumental in like
spreading the word about this. Was it seems to have
been very convinced that they had been attacked, that there
was a sonic attack going on, and that the word
needed to be spread about this. And so as a result, UM,
(31:12):
the the I think the Havana UM embassy held a
meeting and basically said, listen out for weird sounds and
if you start to get this huge weird collection of symptoms,
let us know because we're probably under sonic attack. That
solves that and went back to bed. That's right, and uh,
(31:34):
maybe not. Coincidentally, a lot of incidents has happened after
that happened, and UM and at the end they said,
you know, if you want to go home, right, here's
here's one way to fast track. Now. Although Cuba think
it's supposed to be very nice, so maybe they weren't
trying to get out of there. But in the end,
ninety five people were seeing for these symptoms. In the
(31:57):
CDC report, it said that fifteen of those had a
two stage illness. Uh, first was the noise that we
talked about and those acute symptoms, and then second a
few weeks later, a couple of weeks later, they had
that neurological damage. I think thirty one of the cases,
where maybe's forty nine were unlikely. And then of those
(32:17):
fifteen who had that two stage syndrome, while the report
was issued, there were six of them still getting treated,
so it wasn't even like their treatment was compared, right, Yeah,
I mean that's that's the thing, Like whether it's psychogenic
illness or a sonic attack or you know, fumigation, um
poisoning from you know, zekea pesticides like there there were
(32:38):
still people that were still being treated for symptoms for
over a year. These are nasty symptoms like vertigo is
nothing to nothing, nothing fun. Were vomiting or dizziness or
inability to concentrate. Um, there's a lot of terrible stuff
that that people we're having to deal with. Whatever the um,
(32:59):
the the reason for the symptoms were, which you know,
makes a lot of people think like, no, this is
this is a real thing, and these people were attacked
and we need to find out what it is. The
CDC at least said we have no idea, like we
cannot figure it out. That they said, like and their
conclusion that they couldn't possibly put forth any kind of explanation.
(33:24):
They just mainly documented everything, which is certainly a mark
in the CDC's favor and a mark against the The
n A s that the CDC resisted, you know, saying
yes it was microwaves and it was probably the Ruskies. Yeah,
and that all came about you know, after everyone, um,
a lot of scientists that has rejected the findings. Cuba
(33:47):
rejected the findings. We told you earlier that they got
all up in arms and said, hey, listen, we tried
to help, we take this stuff seriously. Um, we weren't
a part of this. But uh, in that n AS panel, UM,
somebody said something about Russia, and you know, obviously Russia
is in bed with Cuba, and they said, you know what,
(34:10):
it's maybe it was Russia. We do know that in
the seventies they were trying to weaponize microwaves. Um. They
in fact, um, for like three years straight, three and
a half years, pounded the American embassy in Moscow with microwaves.
I don't even know if they had an endgame there.
I think they were just like a let let's see
what this does. Turn it on. And I don't think
(34:31):
it really did anything if it went on for three
and a half years. And apparently, um, of course we'll
never know because this Russia. But supposedly they kind of
gave up all that stuff decades ago. Yeah, this is
the seventies when they were shooting microwaves at the American
embassy in Moscow. UM, and yeah, as far as anybody
knows that that technology wasn't pursued any further. So if
there is any kind of sonic weapon that is concealable,
(34:56):
that is, that is capable of producing the suite of
symptom um, it is news to the world. UM. And
there are people who say, like you know, security experts,
that kind of group, who say, yeah, it's entirely possible
that somebody has developed this without the US being aware
of it. UM. I saw a quote that America tends
(35:17):
to be very surprised that not that certain things exist,
but that other people have caught up to America's technology.
So yeah, um. But at the same time, it's kind
of like it's suggesting that America or certain quarters of
America UM, are fully aware that this is possible, which
is why they're pursuing that sonic attack thing. But they
(35:39):
can't just be like, it's this, see everybody, We've had
this for twenty years now. We just didn't know that
the Cubans had it kind of thing. So the US
still um seems to be you know, with the expulsion
of the Cuban to Cuban diplomats, UM is basically saying
if Cuba doesn't know if they didn't do it, they
(35:59):
know who did it, and they maybe even let it
happen because apparently diplomatic residences in Cuba are owned and
maintained by the Cuban government, so it's not like they
just had no opportunity to do this kind of thing.
But Cuba, like you said, it's extremely adamant that they
had nothing to do with this and that they would
never let this happen to any accredited UM diplomat in
(36:23):
their country. And if you step outside of the United States,
it's really kind of funny because the rest of the
world is totally fine with Cuba. It's really just the
United States that's you know, at odds with Cuba, and
Cuba is cool with everybody else. Like apparently a million
Canadians go to Cuba every year on on vacation, so
it's kind of like something that they're not really happy
(36:46):
about the idea that that if you go to Cuba
you might suffer this sonic attack. UM that could at
the very least hurt their tourism industry, if not just
you know, impinging their you know, how they treat diplomats
from other country or allow them to be treated it's
it's a real insult in that respect. Yeah, And I
think it's also one of the end results was the
(37:08):
US government and it was kind of exposed a little
bit of dragging their feet and not being coordinated and
not maybe having their ducks in a row. And I
think if anything like this were to happen again, I
think they had enough egg on their face to sort
of get it together to at least sort of be
coordinated from the get go and have a multidisciplinary investigation
(37:29):
going on. And this whole thing, like the the big
argument and push and pull among the scientific communities, still
very much ongoing. UM. There was a paper published that
examined some brain scans of some of these diplomats that
were taken at Penn State, I believe, UM, and these
the authors of the study concluded that, you know, a
(37:50):
lot of them showed evidence of trauma. And then other
scientists responded and said, like, this doesn't show trauma at all.
That's exactly what you would find from a random sample
of the population. UM. Other people. Remember, I said that
they recorded the sound that they heard. UM. Apparently a
couple of biologists ran that sound through spectral analysis and
(38:10):
showed that it exactly matches um, a specific kind of
cricket that's um native to Cuba and the Caribbean. So
there's just like it's still being hammered out. Like we
said it the at the beginning, that this is not
it's not settled. No one has any idea yet exactly
what it is, and it seems like the most satisfying
(38:31):
answer would be psychogenic illness. But even still, I mean,
that doesn't seem to really explain everything necessarily. Yeah, well,
a pretty good mystery. Still a good mystery. And who
doesn't love that? Right? I know Glenn Fry I hated.
I don't care what Clint Fry liked or didn't like. Um.
(38:52):
If you want to know more about the Havana syndrome,
go check out the copious amounts of articles about it.
There's a lot of stuff out there. It's really interesting
and engrossing stuff. See what you think? Uh? And since
I said see what you think, it's time for a
listener mail. When you think about that hs O story,
do you go the h is boom boom boom boom.
(39:15):
Oh nope, you know, isn't that from Beverly Hills cop
I think the heat is on one. Yeah, that was
the one where he's like hanging off of the back
of the semi Yeah. Yeah. He did a few of
those soundtrack e type things, and he was an actor
on Miami Bodies, which is one of your favorite shows.
What do you hate Miami Vice? It's fine. I refused
(39:36):
to watch the episodes with Clem Fry. All right, I'm
gonna call this just a nice email from a listener
who was kind of growing up with. Hey, guys, I'm
writing to say that I first discovered your podcast way
back in when I was in the seventh grade. It
just moved away from many of my neighborhood friends in
your podcast was a source of a source of information
(39:58):
and comfort during that transition. Having always been a nerd,
I was immediately hooked on your podcast and have listened
to it many of my travels for sports teams, college trips,
and international adventures. In fact, your podcast had a major
impact in keeping my curiosity alive and well throughout my life.
I just accepted an offer for grad school in Georgia
(40:18):
and wanted to write to say that although we have
never met, you two have positively impacted my life for
more than the past decade. So thank you for everything.
I hope you're well. And that is from Abigail. Is
a fine listener mail. Thanks a lot, Abigail, It's very sweet.
I love and best of luck in grad school. That's great. Yeah,
kill it, but not literally, no no no, that's a
(40:41):
figure speech meaning go do a great job, the best
you can do, a great job. Okay, Well, if you
want to get in touch with this, like Abigail, Abidale's
Abigail's new nickname, not Frank Abignail. No, Abbidale Master fortunerally
known as Abigail. Yeah, we talked about Frank Abgnail in
(41:03):
the five Successful Counterfeiters episode. He's number one, wasn't uh
he was up there for sure. It was good. Well, anyway,
if you want to get in touch with us, like anybody,
including Abigdale, Abgdail or Abigail, you can send us an
email to stuff podcast diheart radio dot com. Stuff you
(41:28):
Should Know is a production of i Heeart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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