July 20, 2021 • 49 mins
Are psychic powers actually possible? Join Ben and Matt as they investigate the truth about clairvoyance in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, I love this game. Right before Matt, right before
someone tuned in to today's classic episode, they might have
had a premonition, a moment of epiphany. They might have thought,
am I clairvoyant? And then how odd that this episode,
all our classic episodes, would be the one to pop
(00:22):
up in your feet today? I know, isn't it weird?
Isn't it weird that I know that just before listening
to this you took a shower and colored your hair.
Isn't that weird? I don't know. You probably didn't expect that,
but uh, it's for that's where one person. Isn't that
weird that I can tell at least three of you?
(00:45):
The keys are in the other jacket you hung it up. Yep,
Check where you hung up the jacket. Check, that's where
your keys are. And that SD card you're missing is
in the small pocket of it's a pair of jeans
that you put back in your drawer and stuffed crust
pizza was an inside job. Literally this couple of levels. Yeah,
Today's Today's classic episode is about clairvoyance, about the possibility
(01:10):
of what are collectively known as psychic powers. If you
have enjoyed some of our more recent work on things
like the nature of the mind and cognition, or our
episodes on the strange science of the quantum realm and dreams.
Then this is going to be an awesome episode for you. Uh.
(01:33):
If you are precog listening to this and you have
proof of psychic powers, then go ahead and email us
while we're recording the intro for this episode on Friday,
June right around one in the afternoon, and I've got
my phone. All right, let's do this from UFOs two
(01:53):
Ghosts and Government cover Ups. History is writtled with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn stuff they don't
want you to now. Oh hi, I can't say that
I didn't know you were going to be here. After all,
we are experimenting in the studio right now with psychic powers,
(02:16):
not psychedelics. No, no, no, no, that's an entirely different
actual study that you can partake in with psychedelics and
the mind. But this one we just wanted to see
who's going to show up and listen to this episode.
So thanks for being here. We knew you'd be here,
whoever you are. Um, my name is Ben and I'm
(02:38):
Mat and we're here with our super producer, Noel, our mascot,
who is a skeleton named after Agents Scully and the
X Files, which makes this ladies and gentlemen stuff they
don't want you to know. But hey, even if you
were psychic, you might have already known that. Yeah, that's true,
you already know all the things we're about to say.
(02:58):
Who which has got to be a real hassle when
you're doing small talk at dinner parties and stuff, you
know you can see the night stretching before you. If
that is indeed the way that psychic powers work. So
let's open up today's podcast with a story about a
scientist named Emmanuel Swedenborg or would that be Sweidenborg. You know,
(03:21):
I'm not sure. Well Swedish listeners can correct us if
and let us know if it is Sweedenborg or Swedenborg.
But point being, this guy tremendously influential scientists, philosopher um
and also a theologian and mystic. He believed that he
had clairvoia abilities, and so did many of his friends.
(03:44):
Who was born in six so at the age of
sixty three, he began to experience these dreams and these visions,
culminating in what became for him a religious experience and epiphany.
But you can hear various different stories about speed and
Borg's predilections. Here. One of my favorites as something I
(04:07):
read as child in a series of time life books
that maybe only three or four of you guys listening
will remember. That is Mysteries of the Unknown. Nice you
remember these. It sounds so familiar, though I don't know
that I can pinpoint a single story or issue. Well,
you and I were working together a while back. Gosh,
(04:30):
this must be maybe three or four years ago now,
and I caught a wild hair. I went back on
eBay after watching a commercial from you know, the late
eighties early nineties about these books on YouTube. I ordered
all of them. I hunted every single issue book down
and I had the complete set. It was a childhood
(04:52):
dream come true. And in one of those books. All
of these books have titles that will drive the more
skeptical members of our audience wild with rage, things like
mystic Places, psychic power, psychic phenomena, and many of these
seemed related and they overlap, but whatever, I love these things, Matt.
(05:13):
And one of the stories I read in a book
called Psychic Powers, had this party it was like a
dinner party in town in Sweden, and one of the
guests there all of a sudden got up, walked out,
was increasingly distressed, walked back in the room and said
(05:35):
that a fire was consuming his neighbor's house and that
it was going to consume his own house as well,
and he knew it with certitude. The people in the
you know, in the room with him, of course, reacted
a bit skeptically because at this time there was no
way this man, Emmanuel Swedenborg, could know that a fire
(05:57):
was consuming his house and they were away for his
place of residents. Allegedly it was true. So what sweet
Speed and Board claimed to have experienced here and in
other instances was clairvoyance, which is a I don't know,
um kind of inner side I guess, yeah, sure, we
could just say clairvoyance is anytime you're aware of something
(06:19):
that happens far away, either in the timeframe or in
spatial difference. Um. Allegedly, you know, it's one of those
things that are called psychic powers, which, like you said,
makes the lights go off in a skeptically minded person,
because well, there haven't really been any psychic power has
(06:40):
proven as of yet. Right now you already know what
a psychic power is if you're listening to this show.
It's an umbrella term for several different kinds of alleged abilities.
So he said, one would be clairvoyance. What's another one then, well,
telekinesis moving, being able to move something physical with your
(07:01):
brain somehow. Then there would be telepathy, being able to
hear people's thoughts. I think, I forget what they call it,
but it's a form of pyrotechnics where you can use
you can create fire. Pronesis thank you. Um. Then there
would be what's the one where you're able to, oh,
(07:23):
psychometry where you would be able to touch something right
and learn things about orbit Yeah, absorbits, you absorbed the
memory surrounding it and stuff. I like to think a
lot of these as being able to if it were
one day to be proven scientifically somehow that there is
some kind of uh quick leap into a fourth or
(07:45):
fifth dimensional understanding that like if a third dimensional being
could just understand it momentarily or something some kind of
slip in that reality, I guess, or in that constraint
on perception. So may be something like climbing a little
bit higher into the fourth dimension just for a second
to see the flat circle that is time or something like. Sure, Yeah,
(08:09):
that's the only way in my head that I could
imagine it ever becoming an actual thing that was proven. Yeah,
and there's some there's some interesting things will get into
here as well about the nature of perception itself. But
maybe it's better to call this stuff non linear perception
(08:29):
because it's still experienced through the framework of other human senses, right,
Like what happens when you have a vision? Yeah, you
it's almost a dreamlike experience from what I've read, right, Yeah,
And everybody has had a dream before. So you encounter
these senses or these experiences through the same sensory inputs
(08:51):
that you inarguably possessed today. You if you are Speedenborg,
you hear the fire, you see it burning, you feel
the temperature, you hear the dreams, and so on. It's
just not in a way that most scientists would argue
is based in your perception of the facts, right, Yeah,
And that's why mainstream science considers these kinds of psychic
(09:14):
powers or purported powers, and even research into these powers
as just kind of bunk, and they're dismissed unfortunately or
fortunately depending on how you think about it. But there
are a lot of things that are, let's say attributed
that these things are attributed to one would be a
(09:35):
misattributed cause, So having some kind of seizure or something
with your brain, a neurological issue that causes you to
experience something differently than how you imagine it, or you
imagine it differently than how it actually is. Sure, there's
also the idea of misattributing psychic power to a mundane cause,
(09:56):
such as you know, maybe you had earlier heards some information,
but you got you heard it, but you retained the information,
So it sounds like you're reading someone's mind, but where
you're the only mind you're reading really is your own.
And you know, that's similar to the idea about UFOs
being weather balloons. Right, and for some reason you get
(10:18):
a small concussion and become unconscious for a few moments,
and in that that time frame where you're unconscious, which
would only be a few seconds, you you know, your
brain inspiring so rapidly. It's happened to me before, where
I was unconscious just for a moment, but I felt
like I had dreamed for a night or days even
um and the things that I saw and heard felt
(10:40):
real to me, but in reality it was just a
moment where my brain kind of rebooted. And then there's
also sloppy science. Right. Sure, you can look at inexperimentations,
if there were poor controls over certain things, or maybe
there was a confirmation bias in one of the researchers
that wanted to proove that it's true. You could even
(11:01):
look at flawed methodology. There are all kinds of things
that could go wrong inside an experimental setting, right with
the best of intentions. And this brings us to the
idea of the third the third pillar that mainstream science
typically uses to dismiss psychic powers, which might be one
of the more fun ones for a lot of people,
the idea of active deception. Oh yeah, you've got to
(11:23):
love the swindlers and the Charlatan's I always think of
in particular, and nothing against the guy, but you're re
Geller and some of the parlor trick mental gymnastics that
he would do on stage for people, and like what
the whole bending of the spoon thing. There were a
(11:43):
couple instances where he could, you know, tell you about
your you're dead loved one or something, and you know,
the using cold reading and other techniques like this. We've
seen that it's just something that anyone can do if
you learn the techniques. Yeah, so cold reading would be
noticing the minute reactions, typically unconscious, that people have when
(12:08):
you're speaking to them, which is why sometimes when you
will see self professed mediums like the Long Island Medium
or what was that guy's named? John Edwards should be dead? Yeah, yeah,
to show for a little while, you'll see them guess
with some pretty open ended things and intently studying the
other person. But despite the dismissal of the mainstream scientific
(12:33):
world visa VI psychic powers, mainstream America take psychic powers
as a four granted fact of life from great statistic
for you here. Yes, them at least believe that it's true.
They believe at least one type of psychic power is real.
And this sort of stuff drives the really zealous, self
righteous types of skeptics crazy and matt They can't seem
(12:55):
to understand that no matter how rude or loud or
bullish they are to people, those people still don't seem
inclined to agree with them. Yeah, I mean, it's a
tough stance to be hard lined. I mean, yeah, I'm
you know, I'm playing a little bit because there's a
touchy subject for people. But the truth of the matter
is that if you are if you are rude or
(13:18):
smug or you know, condescending to people, uh, then you
have to ask yourself if you're really trying to persuade them,
um to change their opinion or evolve it. Because often
and listeners, skeptics, true believers like you guys know that
Matt and I spent a lot of time on the
internet reading forums from people who say things that I
(13:41):
will just go out and say, you're bonkers. And then
and then people who um say things that are you know,
that are that are clearly clearly plausible. Uh. And and
on both sides of that spectrum that we're talking about,
one thing that crops up is that people often have
a um a bizarrely contentious emotional stake in it. And
(14:06):
regardless of whether you consider yourself a skeptic or someone
who has unlocked the hidden mysteries of the psychic mind,
we can tell you that the way to persuade people
is to have a conversation with them. No one, you know, no, okay, well, first,
no one wins an argument on the internet. We know that,
(14:29):
and uh, and we also know that, Um. The implication
is is only that something happened to them in their
childhood and they're mad about it and they want it
to be your fault. And with that in mind, Ben,
we have to say this, UM, and we're not gonna
sugarcoat it. Seriously, there has been no comprehensively accepted scientific
(14:51):
validation of any kind of these psychic powers, or let's
call them, like you said, nonlinear perceptions. Yes, there have
been approximately well by which we mean exactly zero. And
what do we mean though, you see, you hear all
those qualifying terms, comprehensively accepted or universally accepted validation of
(15:14):
this scientific validation? Scientific validation, so something that we could
quantify that could be empirical. For such a test to
be accepted, it would have to conform to some very
rigorous methodology. And you know, a point that becomes sticky
sometimes is this idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,
(15:36):
which I'm on board with. Um. It Also, it's also
something that you hear often when UM, someone is making
a controversial claim, because this is such a third rail
in in scientific fields that often just asking the question
(15:56):
would be dangerous for your career, that could invalidate anything
if you wanted to study. Yeah, which is to me
really sad and um. You know, it says a lot
of things about the state of current society, and not
many of them are good. Yeah, it means the boundaries
of a lot of these things won't get pushed, but
(16:17):
it is I do however, with that being said, I
do agree with the idea that if there is something
that is extraordinary or or up to this point unproven,
then yeah, get the paperwork right, get the evidence, compile
the data. And and another thing. Speaking of this paperwork
(16:37):
and compiling data, this I think is maybe the most
important point for any test of psychic powers to be
universally accepted, to be something that people at M I.
T and Harvard and um people well, well, most people
aren't reading MIGHT and Harvard press releases for something that
John Stewart would talk about on the Daily Show. For
(16:58):
for it to gain some kind of credibility, it would
need to be reproducible. And what what do we mean
when we say that, Well, you'd have to be able
to have an independent group of people take your methodology,
your study and reproduce it to the t in a
completely separate setting with different people. Um. Maybe they'd use
(17:20):
the same variables and everything, um, but you'd have to
be able to get the exact same result. Like That's
that's a very very reasonable thing to ask, and I
think it's crucial and unfortunately, uh, it has not to
our knowledge from everything we could find, it has not
happened yet. And we have talked about psychic powers of
(17:40):
various types right now. We looked at psychotronics and the
USSRS attempts to figure out what the heck is going on,
if there's anything going on, and then projects Stargate in
the US trying to make psychic soldiers with all various
different types of psychic abilities. Right, and this has all
been uh, this is all Ben Skull duggery so far.
(18:02):
So to be fair, there's a lot of stuff there
that's still classified. But today we're gonna be talking about
a very specific type of alleged psychic power. It is
called clairvoyance. So, Matt, what what is that really? Well,
it's several things. Uh. One of them is precognition. That's
the ability to see into the future, to tell when
(18:25):
something's going to happen and to whom um. Then you've
got retro cognition, which is the ability to look into
the past and see something that maybe nobody else would
have been able to see something a private moment, let's
say so an example of that would be, Uh, somebody
is walking through a field in I don't pick a country, Yugoslavia.
(18:50):
Somebody's walking through field in Yugoslavia, and all of the
sudden they are struck with this vision of a peasant
running out of the woods into a into the field,
and let's say it's the same field, and then digging
a hole and putting a sack of coins in there,
and they walk a little further, they see the field
(19:12):
and they walk right to where the coins are and
they dig them up. That would be retrocognition, absolutely. I've
heard it used a lot of times when someone experiences
the death of someone who perhaps died of violent death,
and they were able to relive that moment to find
out who the killer was. I mean, that sounds like
a horrible power, but it does crop up in fiction fiction.
(19:35):
It happens all the time. Then the third one is
remote viewing, and this is the one that US and
the Soviet Union both looked into pretty heavily. And that's
the ability to, uh, to imagine a place that that someone,
let's say you're higher up, wants you to imagine where
some hostages are being held. And you don't know where
(19:57):
that place is. Nobody knows where that place is your team,
but you can write just by writing a little sketches
down on a piece of paper, you visualize the thing,
and somehow or another you were able to almost astraally
project yourself to where that place is, draw a picture
of it, and then you can help your team find
(20:18):
the guys. And you know, there's, uh, there's a lot
to be said about that, which will we'll say a
little bit later because I want to interrupt the flow here,
But just think of Menu Stereo Goats that film, Yeah,
and watch it if you haven't. It's pretty fun. There's
one more, Yes, the final one is the ability to
communicate with the dead whatever that means. Right, yeah? What
(20:43):
what does what does that mean exactly? I mean, come on,
we just talked about it earlier. Um, who who's the
Long Island Medium, the Long Island Medium, all these people
who can just tell you what your grandfather is thinking
right now. Yeah, and that offends quite a few people
when they see a medium as some sort of snake
(21:06):
oil salesman, right uh, and believe that they're exploiting the
folks that they're claiming to help. Yeah, anytime there's money
exchanged for that kind of service. Um, frowny face is
what I would say to me. This is this is
the one that I am the absolute most skeptical about
(21:26):
ever happening. And and I'll say why a little bit later,
but we should go ahead and differentiate between one other thing.
Many people confuse clairvoyance, the alleged experience of clairvoyance, with
the very real experience of deja vu. Oh yeah, deja
vu is a real thing. Uh. The let's say, the
(21:47):
things that happen in our lives tend to repeat themselves,
at least in small variations. Right walking by a storefront
and seeing a thing cat maybe, sure, Or walking by
and seeing someone in a certain place because that person
frequents that place very often. And there's always the woman
(22:09):
in the blue dress with the yellow uh summer hat. Sure,
whatever you know, and you it's one of those things
that's tough too to throw away, as hey, This is
just completely bunk because a lot of people experienced deja vu.
I'm pretty certain that you have experienced de ja vu. Listener, yes,
(22:31):
and perhaps maybe experiencing it at this very moment. But
what is time? Time? Time? There's another thing that many
many people have had experiences with, and it's the following. So, Matt,
let's say you have a dream, tell me, tell me
about the stream. Well, in this dream, I am jogging
(22:56):
on a treadmill, and I am standing on the treadmill
is on top of a building in a city that
I don't know exactly where it is, but I'm very
familiar with it. Uh. And down on the street, I
see all of these cars going extremely fast on this
highway and there are no other cars. They're just it's
this one group of cars and they're all going the
(23:17):
same direction down this highway, traveling in like a pod
or And all of a sudden, they just stop. They
just stop, and there's a light at the very front
of all the cars flash like a traffic light, or
it's not, it's not traffic. It's almost this glowing blue
light that happens, and my treadmill, my treadmill like stops working.
(23:42):
So Let's see, you have that dream and you remember
specifically the moment where you look down you see the
pod of cars moving, the bright light, the blue glow
rather uh, and then your treadmill stops working and you
don't think about it, but this image stays with you,
right and later I guess later in the sense of
(24:05):
line or time, this stuff is true. Then a week,
two weeks, a year, twenty years, you're on a treadmill,
you're in a tall building and you look down and
you see how that's weird, just a couple of cars,
and then party goes way as you feel you can
almost you feel happening. It's the very tip of your
(24:27):
tongue sensation where you're about to just name the future
before it occurs for you. And even if it doesn't
come all the way to fruition, like the blue light
doesn't happen, the treadmill stops or anything, still, that feeling
of familiarity is what you would consider deja vu. Yeah,
And I don't want to invalidate anybody's experiences here, even
(24:48):
if I will say that, if you believe that you
have the power to communicate on a routine, consistent basis
with the dead then you should come contact uh, you
should contact people among the living who could help you
learn more about this ability, because you would you could
be the first person proven to do this. Yeah, it
(25:11):
would mean probably a lot of lab time, but it
would be for the greater good of everyone. So we
talked about these studies, right, these studies of clairvoyance. Let's
let's talk a little bit more in depth. So he
talked about this idea of clairvoyance and these studies of
psychic powers, and you and I have actually done quite
(25:32):
a few videos on these. So just to recap, there's
a guy named Dean radd and I believe was uh.
He thinks that parapsychology, which is also a name for
PSI researchers, which is also a name for people who
are researching psychic powers, which is also a name to
their opponents for pseudoscience. Raydon believes that parapsychology is just
(25:58):
as repreat repeat doable as any science. But it's also
subtle and complex. And it's subtle and complex because we
have an incomplete understanding of it, which can make a
lot of sense logically, because to me, it's possible that
there could be some things that we have so little
information on that we don't really have a way to
(26:21):
um observe, observer or effectively tested. You know, yeah, exactly.
I mean it's possible. We have to leave it open
that it's possible, right, I mean you have to. I
think that's one of the rules of this planet is
that you have to leave room that anything is possible.
(26:43):
Something about Georgia Guidestones episodes in Thole's documentary. Whenever somebody
says leave room or I always think they're going to say,
leave room for nature, leave room for nature. Well then,
and nature, as we've seen with nature, sometimes it's fairly randomized,
right odd, yeah, or at least appears so right, Yes,
(27:04):
it appears. And this is all because of our so
far limited understanding of a lot of the minute processes
that that speed nature and time along. We're getting there,
we're getting closer to a lot of these answers, but
we've still got a long way to go. Like in
our video that came out earlier this week, I think
(27:25):
it was the three things about your brain that no
one understands. Uh. We found that despite living in the
twenty one centuries we record this, some of the smartest
neurobiologists in the world are still trying to figure out
some of the basic cognitive things that happened to you
every single day, unless you're a robot listening to this now, Yeah,
(27:48):
every memory that you create, how does it physically become
a memory? Every every decision you make? What makes it
for you? Yeah? And does it happen like second before
you choose to do something, is you're like, how does where?
Where does your consciousness come into free will? That was
(28:10):
one of the most fascinating things that you talked about. Ready,
what is it readiness? Uh, potential, readiness, potential, that's fascinating. Yeah,
you know, if we could have a little bit of
tripping music here. So regardless of where you're sitting now
(28:31):
or walking, you might be working out, you might be
making something to eat, you might be in your car
on the train. They take a second and and try
to feel where you and where the world begins. So
you can feel your clothes, right, if you're wearing clothes,
you can feel your clothes because those are one of
(28:54):
the closest things to your body. But then where does
your body end and where do you begin? Is there
a division all those neurochemicals and synapsis firing in your brain?
What part of them is you? How much of that
stops before you stop? Because we know a person can
(29:17):
live without legs, we know a person can live without arms.
We know that people can live without large parts of
their brains. So what are you that's actually listening to
this podcast and without understanding what the nature of consciousness
actually is. It's it's damnably difficult to try to understand
(29:42):
what consciousness also does. Right. That's yeah, man, this is
the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.
Uh well a lot of these things that we talked
about keeping up at night, but this one in particular
because just trying to nail down what what I the
thing I big I is? Yeah? Is it? Is? It
(30:04):
sort of a just an extension of a young Gian
arc type with the super consciousness really being one what
was the Bill Hicks quote? Was just one super entity
continually experiencing itself kind of deal the universe experiencing itself
just over and over and over again, right, And you know,
how would we even begin to measure or prove that? Right? Sure?
(30:27):
So with uh, with the Radon guy, with Dean raiding,
one thing that he was associated with I believe was
pair right. These are the guys that United did a
video on earlier who found or argue they found um.
What was it? It was a connection between probability and
a conscious observer and whether or not if let's say,
(30:50):
I think the experiment was they had ball bearings dropping
down into where they did little buckets and if you
they had people it there and consciously want the ball
bearings to fall in certain buckets or a certain order.
And they said that they got a measured a measured
difference and when someone was consciously trying to make it happen. Yeah,
(31:13):
a measurable effect, not a large one, mind, And they're
not again, they're not touching or manipulating the thing at all,
the ball bearings or the box. They're behind glass so
they can be blown on or something like that. But
this this stuff, although raiding and the team sort of
went to went to quantum mechanics as some sort of explanation.
(31:36):
They looked at non locality, backwards causality and stuff like that.
They've been heavily criticized by physicists and psychologists, and especially
physicists who study quantum mechanics because you know, you know
that those physicists have to be so tired of quantum
mechanics being whipped out as just the quote unquote scientific
(31:58):
explanation behind everything. It's a fun word, and it's a
ridiculously complex subjects And yeah, I can imagine it would
be quite annoying if someone is just applying your field
that is so complex to this thing that seems probably
pretty mundane and has nothing to do with it. And
we know one of the other big studies that you
(32:19):
briefly mentioned was Project Stargate. Could you tell me a
little bit about that. Yeah, it was the idea that
we I think the conclusion that we came to, and
we discussed this earlier, was that during the Cold War,
both sides thought that the other one was, you know,
making some kind of gains in whatever this psychic soldier
(32:41):
thing was, and in order to stay ahead of the game,
you know, ahead of your enemy at least, both sides
had to put money into this, and they were studying
all kinds of things, like we said, telekinesis, remote viewing,
just astro projection, all that kind of stuff, being a
will to spy, make a superspy essentially um and it
(33:04):
didn't go so well. At least at least if you
read some of the reports. But we can't get all
the information, as you said earlier, and some of it's
still classified. We we ran into something interesting here because
for a time people in charge of the program believed
it was working. And then, you know, you have to
ask yourself, do they believe it's working because it's a
(33:26):
solid paycheck, you know what I mean? Or are they
getting measurable data? This this idea of traveling via the
mind and using a sketch to depict what you have found,
is tricky because there's a little bit of subjectivity or
interpretation there where someone could look at a triangle and say,
(33:49):
you know, oh, he went to the pyramids or uh,
oh he went to the top the very tip top
of the Washington Monument. Right. Um, it's it's difficult, but
we do know that there was a lot of money
poured into it, and for time at least people seemed
happy with the results facets of the United States government.
(34:10):
The most successful of those people was a guy named
Ingo Swan. We also know that Sony researched this as well.
Which when do we we talked about that with pair
or was a different video there they kind of jumbled together.
But the Sony one, I think, was a completely different
video where they're looking at ESP. Yes, but that that's
(34:33):
still is weird to me because these children and the testing,
but it all seems to be. It seemed to me,
like I think the big question that we asked was
why the heck would Sony get into that? Right at
the time they were making electronics. I mean, they still
largely make electronics and movies. That enraged the dprk um,
(34:56):
But you know, why, why the hell would Sony get
into that? And it made me, it made me just
think about their CDs. Remember the E s P technology
on CDs, the idea that the machine would read far
enough into the CD that if it's skipped, if it
physically skipped, it wouldn't miss and beat because it already
(35:16):
knows what's going to happen to ten seconds ahead of time. Yeah.
So I thought, when I've initially heard about that subject
that maybe they were it was just some kind of miscommunication,
that they were actually just studying the ESP for that
some uh mistranslation because those acronyms stand for very different things. Yeah,
And it turns out no, they really did. Yes, they
(35:37):
really did, and when they stopped this program, which I
went on for a while, when they finally stopped this program,
and I want you to picture something like, I don't know,
it's the beginning one the Ghostbusters movies where Dr Bankman
is holding up those cards and uh, and the person
has to guess what's on the card. It was kind
(35:58):
of similar to that. And ultimately Sony's reason for folding
the program was just bizarre and fascinating to me. They
shamalan to me, you guys, because they didn't stop the
program because it was unsuccessful or had middling results. Indeed,
in the memos where they talk about the cancelation of
(36:20):
the program, they say they found something that works and
that is at least worth researching more if they were academics,
but they're not. Their business so weird, and they said,
we can't figure out how to make money off this,
therefore we're not going to do it anymore. I feel
(36:40):
like they just got a big budget surplus for a
year and they just went, you know what, let's prove
psychic powers. I don't know, but you're like a little
more skeptical with this stuff than I am, for sure.
Oh yeah, sure, I don't know I lived too long,
ben he lived too long, Matt as a younger person.
There's another study that was pretty interesting that came out
(37:03):
from a Cornell professor named Daryl Bem which we mentioned
in one of this week's episodes, and Professor ben I
almost said instigating he created a very uh fascinating study
where he would do the following check this out. So
he would give these student volunteers a list of words
(37:26):
and these could just be like random words to be fancy,
so they could be like brim exit, gazebo or whatever.
And then he would give them this list of words
and they would just he would give him a few
minutes to read it. And then what he didn't tell
them is that he was giving them a surprise quiz
at the end after they've read these words, where they
(37:46):
would be given um the surprise quiz to test their
memory the words, what words are, et cetera. But here's
where it gets crazy, because at the heart of the
third you remember this, I think we talked about this.
The third step of the test was that after they
had taken the quiz UH, the computer program randomly selected
(38:08):
uh a few of the words, not all, but a
few of the words for additional study, and it had
the students retyped this word, so you would maybe out
of um brim exit and gazebo, you would need to
type exit like three times or several times. Right, this
would be a much longer. It's a much longer less
than just three. Yeah, and uh, this weird thing happened
(38:32):
in the data. When he looked at it and the
way he compiled it, he said, Wow, these students are
doing better on the test based on the words that
they you know, studied or rehearsed after the test, selected
words the randomly selected ones. Yes, So the students didn't
(38:52):
know there was going to be a test, they didn't
know they would have to study after the test, and
somehow their performance, perhaps possibly by coincidence, went up, possibly
by you know again sloppy science, which is the running
accusation that happened. Um. The paper was first set in
(39:13):
the news in two thousand and ten, published in a
fairly prestigious journal in two thousand eleven, and since that
point people have been arguing about if this is true,
and multiple multiple studies come out again saying that there
there is no such thing as psychic powers. But we
think that for those of you who believe in these
(39:36):
sorts of cognitive abilities, that keeping up with folks like
Darryl Bem is going to be gonna be interesting, perhaps
even instrumental to your argument in the future. Awesome, Ben,
I think this is the time where I'm going to
do the thing that you usually do to me. I've
(39:57):
been talking the whole time, but too bad. This is
the part where I say, Ben, is there a psychic power,
maybe all of them, or just one that you really
believe in, one that you think we just don't have
the grasp on yet. You know, I've I've quarreled with
that question because this is a little bit of biography.
(40:21):
But in my family, I'm not going to say which side,
or which relatives or whom in my In my family,
there's been this long tradition, going back a weirdly long
amount of time, of people my family being accused not
(40:43):
by people in our family but outside the family, of
being some sort of you know which person or things
like that. Sure, and I think a lot of that
goes back to them a luncheon thing. Honestly, it's just
some sort of mothering. But I I have a I
have a hard time saying that there is a silver
(41:08):
bullet everybody has very one can do it kind of power.
Because what we know about the human body every other
thing the human body can do, is that most people
can do the same things, but only to varying degrees.
Right in the detail, we find the heroes and the
villains right the degree of their ability, which is why
(41:32):
some people are Olympic runners and other people heave when
they get upstairs. So if there were some sort of
psychic power, then logically it follows that this ability would
have to be present in some way in the majority
of the human population. Right that that makes sense. I'm
building up to the answer. Um, So the next I
(41:56):
gave you my my bias, which is pretty anti this
stuff growing up just because of of um, my personal life.
But I will also say that given how little we
know about both the nature of reality and the nature
of perception in the human brain, it is completely possible
(42:18):
that we understand the skin of perception, or the surface
of it, but we don't know the machinery behind it. Now.
Of course, I know that some people could say, well,
you're just dwelling on a few uncertainties and making them
bigger than they are. But we're not because there are
just these massive, massive gaps and knowledge about cognition, and
(42:45):
that's not even verging on the metaphysical stuff, right. So
is it possible then that there is something about our
perception which we do not understand, or is there there's
some alleged potential or so or so possible thing. Then,
while I'm carefully hedging that, what I am saying is
is that, yes, it is possible that given the lack
(43:11):
of understanding we have about consciousness, that our our cognitive abilities,
that our ability to think, you know, who am I?
What am I? That self aware part of us may
be able to do or see or encounter more stuff
than than we know. And I know that sounds kind
of hippie dippy, but I'm not saying that there are
(43:32):
any psychic powers I believe in. What I'm saying is
that it's just as credulous and naive to say that
the possibility categorically does not exist. Saying something hasn't been
proven and saying it will never be proven or does
not exist. Those are two very very different things that people,
(43:53):
sometimes with the best of intentions and sometimes conveniently confuse.
Very nice Ben, what about you. I'm gonna submit to
that answer. I just need to write down a few things. Um.
I I have just a very simple observation. And I think,
just like you said, with our holes and understanding and perception,
(44:15):
and I think time, the way we understand time is
a bit wonky still, Um, is it an actual thing?
Does it really exist? Or is it just something and
apple and a name that we have applied to a dimension?
And I think that perhaps the way that our brain
functions in our neurons, because we've got so many questions there,
(44:39):
I think there may be some kind of link between
a fourth dimensional understanding or excuse me, a fourth dimensional
plane and perhaps the way that our brain functions. That
you know, this really interesting point. But try and scientifically
prove that, ideare you, because you probably won't be able
(44:59):
to do it he's not for a while yet. To
prove something, we would need to have again, an observable, reproducible,
measurable effect, cause and effect and a thing that we
know always produces thing B. But here's the thing. What
if it just doesn't work that way? Then that would
(45:20):
mean that it's not real, right, But it's I guess,
I guess my head goes to things like holographic universe theory,
some of the more abstract ideas about the universe as
a whole and in general reality. Um, that would be
my only the only reason that I can would allow
(45:44):
for this type of thing to be real unless it
was proven to me. It would be more like if
if it seemed that these things were not reproducible at all,
but if just for argument's sake, we knew that something
was real, it it doesn't matter. We can take uh,
I don't know, and just make one up telepathy, and
(46:05):
you take telepathy for the sake of arguments, say that somehow,
you know, I everybody listening knew that telepathy was real,
but we couldn't We couldn't reproduce it because it didn't
work that way. Then what that would make me go
back to would be the methodology of the science, because
it seems like if something does not appear to be
(46:27):
reproducible then and you know it is a real thing,
then you find a way to reproduce that stuff. I
was gonna see you find out what other variable is
in there that's dirty in the test too, because that's
probably what's happening. And I think, UM, Dean Raiden's argument
about this sort of stuffing real but subtle and complex
(46:50):
is an argument toward that perspective that there are multiple
variations or excuse me, multiple variables that we have yet
to find. UM. With With that being said, um, I
have I have, like most people, been in some really
(47:11):
weird situations. Sounds like the beginning of a totally different story. UM,
but I always have gone to the idea of what
I would call the boring stuff first. You know, maybe I,
maybe I somehow unconsciously knew that there was always a
(47:31):
lady in a blue dress with a yellow hat somewhere right.
Maybe you saw a similar pack of cars stop on
the interstate on TV four years ago, stuff like that.
And you know, we have to be honest that there
there are a lot of Charlottetan's out there who want
to um prey on people who are emotionally vulnerable, so
(47:53):
you have to be careful. But also also you and
I have talked about this long time, and I think listeners,
if you're if you're still on board with us at
this point in the game, you agree with us when
we say that, um, there are very few questions that
are not worth asking so let's put it to you.
(48:14):
What do you think Is there any truth to any
of this stuff? Have you had an experience where at
least that you can't explain scientifically of why you saw something?
One more thing, though, I'm sorry, I have to jump
in and say this one more thing the absolute craziest,
craziest stuff that I read about. Okay, Matt, What if
(48:37):
this ability to see through time and space and influence
events and nonlinear perspectives? What if it's real? And what
if someone doesn't want you to know? And what if
these people dare we call them time lords? Uh? What
if these seriously, what if these people are are these
entities are retroactively discrediting the ability of psychics around the world?
(49:02):
Which is this week's craziest thing been read on the internet?
For the record, I don't believe it, okay, but maybe
I've been influenced by the future. How would you know?
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
(49:25):
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three std w y
t K. If you don't want to do that, you
can send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
want you to know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(49:47):
your favorite shows.
Okay, I love this game. Right before Matt, right before
someone tuned in to today's classic episode, they might have
had a premonition, a moment of epiphany. They might have thought,
am I clairvoyant? And then how odd that this episode,
all our classic episodes, would be the one to pop
(00:22):
up in your feet today? I know, isn't it weird?
Isn't it weird that I know that just before listening
to this you took a shower and colored your hair.
Isn't that weird? I don't know. You probably didn't expect that,
but uh, it's for that's where one person. Isn't that
weird that I can tell at least three of you?
(00:45):
The keys are in the other jacket you hung it up. Yep,
Check where you hung up the jacket. Check, that's where
your keys are. And that SD card you're missing is
in the small pocket of it's a pair of jeans
that you put back in your drawer and stuffed crust
pizza was an inside job. Literally this couple of levels. Yeah,
Today's Today's classic episode is about clairvoyance, about the possibility
(01:10):
of what are collectively known as psychic powers. If you
have enjoyed some of our more recent work on things
like the nature of the mind and cognition, or our
episodes on the strange science of the quantum realm and dreams.
Then this is going to be an awesome episode for you. Uh.
(01:33):
If you are precog listening to this and you have
proof of psychic powers, then go ahead and email us
while we're recording the intro for this episode on Friday,
June right around one in the afternoon, and I've got
my phone. All right, let's do this from UFOs two
(01:53):
Ghosts and Government cover Ups. History is writtled with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn stuff they don't
want you to now. Oh hi, I can't say that
I didn't know you were going to be here. After all,
we are experimenting in the studio right now with psychic powers,
(02:16):
not psychedelics. No, no, no, no, that's an entirely different
actual study that you can partake in with psychedelics and
the mind. But this one we just wanted to see
who's going to show up and listen to this episode.
So thanks for being here. We knew you'd be here,
whoever you are. Um, my name is Ben and I'm
(02:38):
Mat and we're here with our super producer, Noel, our mascot,
who is a skeleton named after Agents Scully and the
X Files, which makes this ladies and gentlemen stuff they
don't want you to know. But hey, even if you
were psychic, you might have already known that. Yeah, that's true,
you already know all the things we're about to say.
(02:58):
Who which has got to be a real hassle when
you're doing small talk at dinner parties and stuff, you
know you can see the night stretching before you. If
that is indeed the way that psychic powers work. So
let's open up today's podcast with a story about a
scientist named Emmanuel Swedenborg or would that be Sweidenborg. You know,
(03:21):
I'm not sure. Well Swedish listeners can correct us if
and let us know if it is Sweedenborg or Swedenborg.
But point being, this guy tremendously influential scientists, philosopher um
and also a theologian and mystic. He believed that he
had clairvoia abilities, and so did many of his friends.
(03:44):
Who was born in six so at the age of
sixty three, he began to experience these dreams and these visions,
culminating in what became for him a religious experience and epiphany.
But you can hear various different stories about speed and
Borg's predilections. Here. One of my favorites as something I
(04:07):
read as child in a series of time life books
that maybe only three or four of you guys listening
will remember. That is Mysteries of the Unknown. Nice you
remember these. It sounds so familiar, though I don't know
that I can pinpoint a single story or issue. Well,
you and I were working together a while back. Gosh,
(04:30):
this must be maybe three or four years ago now,
and I caught a wild hair. I went back on
eBay after watching a commercial from you know, the late
eighties early nineties about these books on YouTube. I ordered
all of them. I hunted every single issue book down
and I had the complete set. It was a childhood
(04:52):
dream come true. And in one of those books. All
of these books have titles that will drive the more
skeptical members of our audience wild with rage, things like
mystic Places, psychic power, psychic phenomena, and many of these
seemed related and they overlap, but whatever, I love these things, Matt.
(05:13):
And one of the stories I read in a book
called Psychic Powers, had this party it was like a
dinner party in town in Sweden, and one of the
guests there all of a sudden got up, walked out,
was increasingly distressed, walked back in the room and said
(05:35):
that a fire was consuming his neighbor's house and that
it was going to consume his own house as well,
and he knew it with certitude. The people in the
you know, in the room with him, of course, reacted
a bit skeptically because at this time there was no
way this man, Emmanuel Swedenborg, could know that a fire
(05:57):
was consuming his house and they were away for his
place of residents. Allegedly it was true. So what sweet
Speed and Board claimed to have experienced here and in
other instances was clairvoyance, which is a I don't know,
um kind of inner side I guess, yeah, sure, we
could just say clairvoyance is anytime you're aware of something
(06:19):
that happens far away, either in the timeframe or in
spatial difference. Um. Allegedly, you know, it's one of those
things that are called psychic powers, which, like you said,
makes the lights go off in a skeptically minded person,
because well, there haven't really been any psychic power has
(06:40):
proven as of yet. Right now you already know what
a psychic power is if you're listening to this show.
It's an umbrella term for several different kinds of alleged abilities.
So he said, one would be clairvoyance. What's another one then, well,
telekinesis moving, being able to move something physical with your
(07:01):
brain somehow. Then there would be telepathy, being able to
hear people's thoughts. I think, I forget what they call it,
but it's a form of pyrotechnics where you can use
you can create fire. Pronesis thank you. Um. Then there
would be what's the one where you're able to, oh,
(07:23):
psychometry where you would be able to touch something right
and learn things about orbit Yeah, absorbits, you absorbed the
memory surrounding it and stuff. I like to think a
lot of these as being able to if it were
one day to be proven scientifically somehow that there is
some kind of uh quick leap into a fourth or
(07:45):
fifth dimensional understanding that like if a third dimensional being
could just understand it momentarily or something some kind of
slip in that reality, I guess, or in that constraint
on perception. So may be something like climbing a little
bit higher into the fourth dimension just for a second
to see the flat circle that is time or something like. Sure, Yeah,
(08:09):
that's the only way in my head that I could
imagine it ever becoming an actual thing that was proven. Yeah,
and there's some there's some interesting things will get into
here as well about the nature of perception itself. But
maybe it's better to call this stuff non linear perception
(08:29):
because it's still experienced through the framework of other human senses, right,
Like what happens when you have a vision? Yeah, you
it's almost a dreamlike experience from what I've read, right, Yeah,
And everybody has had a dream before. So you encounter
these senses or these experiences through the same sensory inputs
(08:51):
that you inarguably possessed today. You if you are Speedenborg,
you hear the fire, you see it burning, you feel
the temperature, you hear the dreams, and so on. It's
just not in a way that most scientists would argue
is based in your perception of the facts, right, Yeah,
And that's why mainstream science considers these kinds of psychic
(09:14):
powers or purported powers, and even research into these powers
as just kind of bunk, and they're dismissed unfortunately or
fortunately depending on how you think about it. But there
are a lot of things that are, let's say attributed
that these things are attributed to one would be a
(09:35):
misattributed cause, So having some kind of seizure or something
with your brain, a neurological issue that causes you to
experience something differently than how you imagine it, or you
imagine it differently than how it actually is. Sure, there's
also the idea of misattributing psychic power to a mundane cause,
(09:56):
such as you know, maybe you had earlier heards some information,
but you got you heard it, but you retained the information,
So it sounds like you're reading someone's mind, but where
you're the only mind you're reading really is your own.
And you know, that's similar to the idea about UFOs
being weather balloons. Right, and for some reason you get
(10:18):
a small concussion and become unconscious for a few moments,
and in that that time frame where you're unconscious, which
would only be a few seconds, you you know, your
brain inspiring so rapidly. It's happened to me before, where
I was unconscious just for a moment, but I felt
like I had dreamed for a night or days even
um and the things that I saw and heard felt
(10:40):
real to me, but in reality it was just a
moment where my brain kind of rebooted. And then there's
also sloppy science. Right. Sure, you can look at inexperimentations,
if there were poor controls over certain things, or maybe
there was a confirmation bias in one of the researchers
that wanted to proove that it's true. You could even
(11:01):
look at flawed methodology. There are all kinds of things
that could go wrong inside an experimental setting, right with
the best of intentions. And this brings us to the
idea of the third the third pillar that mainstream science
typically uses to dismiss psychic powers, which might be one
of the more fun ones for a lot of people,
the idea of active deception. Oh yeah, you've got to
(11:23):
love the swindlers and the Charlatan's I always think of
in particular, and nothing against the guy, but you're re
Geller and some of the parlor trick mental gymnastics that
he would do on stage for people, and like what
the whole bending of the spoon thing. There were a
(11:43):
couple instances where he could, you know, tell you about
your you're dead loved one or something, and you know,
the using cold reading and other techniques like this. We've
seen that it's just something that anyone can do if
you learn the techniques. Yeah, so cold reading would be
noticing the minute reactions, typically unconscious, that people have when
(12:08):
you're speaking to them, which is why sometimes when you
will see self professed mediums like the Long Island Medium
or what was that guy's named? John Edwards should be dead? Yeah, yeah,
to show for a little while, you'll see them guess
with some pretty open ended things and intently studying the
other person. But despite the dismissal of the mainstream scientific
(12:33):
world visa VI psychic powers, mainstream America take psychic powers
as a four granted fact of life from great statistic
for you here. Yes, them at least believe that it's true.
They believe at least one type of psychic power is real.
And this sort of stuff drives the really zealous, self
righteous types of skeptics crazy and matt They can't seem
(12:55):
to understand that no matter how rude or loud or
bullish they are to people, those people still don't seem
inclined to agree with them. Yeah, I mean, it's a
tough stance to be hard lined. I mean, yeah, I'm
you know, I'm playing a little bit because there's a
touchy subject for people. But the truth of the matter
is that if you are if you are rude or
(13:18):
smug or you know, condescending to people, uh, then you
have to ask yourself if you're really trying to persuade them,
um to change their opinion or evolve it. Because often
and listeners, skeptics, true believers like you guys know that
Matt and I spent a lot of time on the
internet reading forums from people who say things that I
(13:41):
will just go out and say, you're bonkers. And then
and then people who um say things that are you know,
that are that are clearly clearly plausible. Uh. And and
on both sides of that spectrum that we're talking about,
one thing that crops up is that people often have
a um a bizarrely contentious emotional stake in it. And
(14:06):
regardless of whether you consider yourself a skeptic or someone
who has unlocked the hidden mysteries of the psychic mind,
we can tell you that the way to persuade people
is to have a conversation with them. No one, you know, no, okay, well, first,
no one wins an argument on the internet. We know that,
(14:29):
and uh, and we also know that, Um. The implication
is is only that something happened to them in their
childhood and they're mad about it and they want it
to be your fault. And with that in mind, Ben,
we have to say this, UM, and we're not gonna
sugarcoat it. Seriously, there has been no comprehensively accepted scientific
(14:51):
validation of any kind of these psychic powers, or let's
call them, like you said, nonlinear perceptions. Yes, there have
been approximately well by which we mean exactly zero. And
what do we mean though, you see, you hear all
those qualifying terms, comprehensively accepted or universally accepted validation of
(15:14):
this scientific validation? Scientific validation, so something that we could
quantify that could be empirical. For such a test to
be accepted, it would have to conform to some very
rigorous methodology. And you know, a point that becomes sticky
sometimes is this idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,
(15:36):
which I'm on board with. Um. It Also, it's also
something that you hear often when UM, someone is making
a controversial claim, because this is such a third rail
in in scientific fields that often just asking the question
(15:56):
would be dangerous for your career, that could invalidate anything
if you wanted to study. Yeah, which is to me
really sad and um. You know, it says a lot
of things about the state of current society, and not
many of them are good. Yeah, it means the boundaries
of a lot of these things won't get pushed, but
(16:17):
it is I do however, with that being said, I
do agree with the idea that if there is something
that is extraordinary or or up to this point unproven,
then yeah, get the paperwork right, get the evidence, compile
the data. And and another thing. Speaking of this paperwork
(16:37):
and compiling data, this I think is maybe the most
important point for any test of psychic powers to be
universally accepted, to be something that people at M I.
T and Harvard and um people well, well, most people
aren't reading MIGHT and Harvard press releases for something that
John Stewart would talk about on the Daily Show. For
(16:58):
for it to gain some kind of credibility, it would
need to be reproducible. And what what do we mean
when we say that, Well, you'd have to be able
to have an independent group of people take your methodology,
your study and reproduce it to the t in a
completely separate setting with different people. Um. Maybe they'd use
(17:20):
the same variables and everything, um, but you'd have to
be able to get the exact same result. Like That's
that's a very very reasonable thing to ask, and I
think it's crucial and unfortunately, uh, it has not to
our knowledge from everything we could find, it has not
happened yet. And we have talked about psychic powers of
(17:40):
various types right now. We looked at psychotronics and the
USSRS attempts to figure out what the heck is going on,
if there's anything going on, and then projects Stargate in
the US trying to make psychic soldiers with all various
different types of psychic abilities. Right, and this has all
been uh, this is all Ben Skull duggery so far.
(18:02):
So to be fair, there's a lot of stuff there
that's still classified. But today we're gonna be talking about
a very specific type of alleged psychic power. It is
called clairvoyance. So, Matt, what what is that really? Well,
it's several things. Uh. One of them is precognition. That's
the ability to see into the future, to tell when
(18:25):
something's going to happen and to whom um. Then you've
got retro cognition, which is the ability to look into
the past and see something that maybe nobody else would
have been able to see something a private moment, let's
say so an example of that would be, Uh, somebody
is walking through a field in I don't pick a country, Yugoslavia.
(18:50):
Somebody's walking through field in Yugoslavia, and all of the
sudden they are struck with this vision of a peasant
running out of the woods into a into the field,
and let's say it's the same field, and then digging
a hole and putting a sack of coins in there,
and they walk a little further, they see the field
(19:12):
and they walk right to where the coins are and
they dig them up. That would be retrocognition, absolutely. I've
heard it used a lot of times when someone experiences
the death of someone who perhaps died of violent death,
and they were able to relive that moment to find
out who the killer was. I mean, that sounds like
a horrible power, but it does crop up in fiction fiction.
(19:35):
It happens all the time. Then the third one is
remote viewing, and this is the one that US and
the Soviet Union both looked into pretty heavily. And that's
the ability to, uh, to imagine a place that that someone,
let's say you're higher up, wants you to imagine where
some hostages are being held. And you don't know where
(19:57):
that place is. Nobody knows where that place is your team,
but you can write just by writing a little sketches
down on a piece of paper, you visualize the thing,
and somehow or another you were able to almost astraally
project yourself to where that place is, draw a picture
of it, and then you can help your team find
(20:18):
the guys. And you know, there's, uh, there's a lot
to be said about that, which will we'll say a
little bit later because I want to interrupt the flow here,
But just think of Menu Stereo Goats that film, Yeah,
and watch it if you haven't. It's pretty fun. There's
one more, Yes, the final one is the ability to
communicate with the dead whatever that means. Right, yeah? What
(20:43):
what does what does that mean exactly? I mean, come on,
we just talked about it earlier. Um, who who's the
Long Island Medium, the Long Island Medium, all these people
who can just tell you what your grandfather is thinking
right now. Yeah, and that offends quite a few people
when they see a medium as some sort of snake
(21:06):
oil salesman, right uh, and believe that they're exploiting the
folks that they're claiming to help. Yeah, anytime there's money
exchanged for that kind of service. Um, frowny face is
what I would say to me. This is this is
the one that I am the absolute most skeptical about
(21:26):
ever happening. And and I'll say why a little bit later,
but we should go ahead and differentiate between one other thing.
Many people confuse clairvoyance, the alleged experience of clairvoyance, with
the very real experience of deja vu. Oh yeah, deja
vu is a real thing. Uh. The let's say, the
(21:47):
things that happen in our lives tend to repeat themselves,
at least in small variations. Right walking by a storefront
and seeing a thing cat maybe, sure, Or walking by
and seeing someone in a certain place because that person
frequents that place very often. And there's always the woman
(22:09):
in the blue dress with the yellow uh summer hat. Sure,
whatever you know, and you it's one of those things
that's tough too to throw away, as hey, This is
just completely bunk because a lot of people experienced deja vu.
I'm pretty certain that you have experienced de ja vu. Listener, yes,
(22:31):
and perhaps maybe experiencing it at this very moment. But
what is time? Time? Time? There's another thing that many
many people have had experiences with, and it's the following. So, Matt,
let's say you have a dream, tell me, tell me
about the stream. Well, in this dream, I am jogging
(22:56):
on a treadmill, and I am standing on the treadmill
is on top of a building in a city that
I don't know exactly where it is, but I'm very
familiar with it. Uh. And down on the street, I
see all of these cars going extremely fast on this
highway and there are no other cars. They're just it's
this one group of cars and they're all going the
(23:17):
same direction down this highway, traveling in like a pod
or And all of a sudden, they just stop. They
just stop, and there's a light at the very front
of all the cars flash like a traffic light, or
it's not, it's not traffic. It's almost this glowing blue
light that happens, and my treadmill, my treadmill like stops working.
(23:42):
So Let's see, you have that dream and you remember
specifically the moment where you look down you see the
pod of cars moving, the bright light, the blue glow
rather uh, and then your treadmill stops working and you
don't think about it, but this image stays with you,
right and later I guess later in the sense of
(24:05):
line or time, this stuff is true. Then a week,
two weeks, a year, twenty years, you're on a treadmill,
you're in a tall building and you look down and
you see how that's weird, just a couple of cars,
and then party goes way as you feel you can
almost you feel happening. It's the very tip of your
(24:27):
tongue sensation where you're about to just name the future
before it occurs for you. And even if it doesn't
come all the way to fruition, like the blue light
doesn't happen, the treadmill stops or anything, still, that feeling
of familiarity is what you would consider deja vu. Yeah,
And I don't want to invalidate anybody's experiences here, even
(24:48):
if I will say that, if you believe that you
have the power to communicate on a routine, consistent basis
with the dead then you should come contact uh, you
should contact people among the living who could help you
learn more about this ability, because you would you could
be the first person proven to do this. Yeah, it
(25:11):
would mean probably a lot of lab time, but it
would be for the greater good of everyone. So we
talked about these studies, right, these studies of clairvoyance. Let's
let's talk a little bit more in depth. So he
talked about this idea of clairvoyance and these studies of
psychic powers, and you and I have actually done quite
(25:32):
a few videos on these. So just to recap, there's
a guy named Dean radd and I believe was uh.
He thinks that parapsychology, which is also a name for
PSI researchers, which is also a name for people who
are researching psychic powers, which is also a name to
their opponents for pseudoscience. Raydon believes that parapsychology is just
(25:58):
as repreat repeat doable as any science. But it's also
subtle and complex. And it's subtle and complex because we
have an incomplete understanding of it, which can make a
lot of sense logically, because to me, it's possible that
there could be some things that we have so little
information on that we don't really have a way to
(26:21):
um observe, observer or effectively tested. You know, yeah, exactly.
I mean it's possible. We have to leave it open
that it's possible, right, I mean you have to. I
think that's one of the rules of this planet is
that you have to leave room that anything is possible.
(26:43):
Something about Georgia Guidestones episodes in Thole's documentary. Whenever somebody
says leave room or I always think they're going to say,
leave room for nature, leave room for nature. Well then,
and nature, as we've seen with nature, sometimes it's fairly randomized,
right odd, yeah, or at least appears so right, Yes,
(27:04):
it appears. And this is all because of our so
far limited understanding of a lot of the minute processes
that that speed nature and time along. We're getting there,
we're getting closer to a lot of these answers, but
we've still got a long way to go. Like in
our video that came out earlier this week, I think
(27:25):
it was the three things about your brain that no
one understands. Uh. We found that despite living in the
twenty one centuries we record this, some of the smartest
neurobiologists in the world are still trying to figure out
some of the basic cognitive things that happened to you
every single day, unless you're a robot listening to this now, Yeah,
(27:48):
every memory that you create, how does it physically become
a memory? Every every decision you make? What makes it
for you? Yeah? And does it happen like second before
you choose to do something, is you're like, how does where?
Where does your consciousness come into free will? That was
(28:10):
one of the most fascinating things that you talked about. Ready,
what is it readiness? Uh, potential, readiness, potential, that's fascinating. Yeah,
you know, if we could have a little bit of
tripping music here. So regardless of where you're sitting now
(28:31):
or walking, you might be working out, you might be
making something to eat, you might be in your car
on the train. They take a second and and try
to feel where you and where the world begins. So
you can feel your clothes, right, if you're wearing clothes,
you can feel your clothes because those are one of
(28:54):
the closest things to your body. But then where does
your body end and where do you begin? Is there
a division all those neurochemicals and synapsis firing in your brain?
What part of them is you? How much of that
stops before you stop? Because we know a person can
(29:17):
live without legs, we know a person can live without arms.
We know that people can live without large parts of
their brains. So what are you that's actually listening to
this podcast and without understanding what the nature of consciousness
actually is. It's it's damnably difficult to try to understand
(29:42):
what consciousness also does. Right. That's yeah, man, this is
the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.
Uh well a lot of these things that we talked
about keeping up at night, but this one in particular
because just trying to nail down what what I the
thing I big I is? Yeah? Is it? Is? It
(30:04):
sort of a just an extension of a young Gian
arc type with the super consciousness really being one what
was the Bill Hicks quote? Was just one super entity
continually experiencing itself kind of deal the universe experiencing itself
just over and over and over again, right, And you know,
how would we even begin to measure or prove that? Right? Sure?
(30:27):
So with uh, with the Radon guy, with Dean raiding,
one thing that he was associated with I believe was
pair right. These are the guys that United did a
video on earlier who found or argue they found um.
What was it? It was a connection between probability and
a conscious observer and whether or not if let's say,
(30:50):
I think the experiment was they had ball bearings dropping
down into where they did little buckets and if you
they had people it there and consciously want the ball
bearings to fall in certain buckets or a certain order.
And they said that they got a measured a measured
difference and when someone was consciously trying to make it happen. Yeah,
(31:13):
a measurable effect, not a large one, mind, And they're
not again, they're not touching or manipulating the thing at all,
the ball bearings or the box. They're behind glass so
they can be blown on or something like that. But
this this stuff, although raiding and the team sort of
went to went to quantum mechanics as some sort of explanation.
(31:36):
They looked at non locality, backwards causality and stuff like that.
They've been heavily criticized by physicists and psychologists, and especially
physicists who study quantum mechanics because you know, you know
that those physicists have to be so tired of quantum
mechanics being whipped out as just the quote unquote scientific
(31:58):
explanation behind everything. It's a fun word, and it's a
ridiculously complex subjects And yeah, I can imagine it would
be quite annoying if someone is just applying your field
that is so complex to this thing that seems probably
pretty mundane and has nothing to do with it. And
we know one of the other big studies that you
(32:19):
briefly mentioned was Project Stargate. Could you tell me a
little bit about that. Yeah, it was the idea that
we I think the conclusion that we came to, and
we discussed this earlier, was that during the Cold War,
both sides thought that the other one was, you know,
making some kind of gains in whatever this psychic soldier
(32:41):
thing was, and in order to stay ahead of the game,
you know, ahead of your enemy at least, both sides
had to put money into this, and they were studying
all kinds of things, like we said, telekinesis, remote viewing,
just astro projection, all that kind of stuff, being a
will to spy, make a superspy essentially um and it
(33:04):
didn't go so well. At least at least if you
read some of the reports. But we can't get all
the information, as you said earlier, and some of it's
still classified. We we ran into something interesting here because
for a time people in charge of the program believed
it was working. And then, you know, you have to
ask yourself, do they believe it's working because it's a
(33:26):
solid paycheck, you know what I mean? Or are they
getting measurable data? This this idea of traveling via the
mind and using a sketch to depict what you have found,
is tricky because there's a little bit of subjectivity or
interpretation there where someone could look at a triangle and say,
(33:49):
you know, oh, he went to the pyramids or uh,
oh he went to the top the very tip top
of the Washington Monument. Right. Um, it's it's difficult, but
we do know that there was a lot of money
poured into it, and for time at least people seemed
happy with the results facets of the United States government.
(34:10):
The most successful of those people was a guy named
Ingo Swan. We also know that Sony researched this as well.
Which when do we we talked about that with pair
or was a different video there they kind of jumbled together.
But the Sony one, I think, was a completely different
video where they're looking at ESP. Yes, but that that's
(34:33):
still is weird to me because these children and the testing,
but it all seems to be. It seemed to me,
like I think the big question that we asked was
why the heck would Sony get into that? Right at
the time they were making electronics. I mean, they still
largely make electronics and movies. That enraged the dprk um,
(34:56):
But you know, why, why the hell would Sony get
into that? And it made me, it made me just
think about their CDs. Remember the E s P technology
on CDs, the idea that the machine would read far
enough into the CD that if it's skipped, if it
physically skipped, it wouldn't miss and beat because it already
(35:16):
knows what's going to happen to ten seconds ahead of time. Yeah.
So I thought, when I've initially heard about that subject
that maybe they were it was just some kind of miscommunication,
that they were actually just studying the ESP for that
some uh mistranslation because those acronyms stand for very different things. Yeah,
And it turns out no, they really did. Yes, they
(35:37):
really did, and when they stopped this program, which I
went on for a while, when they finally stopped this program,
and I want you to picture something like, I don't know,
it's the beginning one the Ghostbusters movies where Dr Bankman
is holding up those cards and uh, and the person
has to guess what's on the card. It was kind
(35:58):
of similar to that. And ultimately Sony's reason for folding
the program was just bizarre and fascinating to me. They
shamalan to me, you guys, because they didn't stop the
program because it was unsuccessful or had middling results. Indeed,
in the memos where they talk about the cancelation of
(36:20):
the program, they say they found something that works and
that is at least worth researching more if they were academics,
but they're not. Their business so weird, and they said,
we can't figure out how to make money off this,
therefore we're not going to do it anymore. I feel
(36:40):
like they just got a big budget surplus for a
year and they just went, you know what, let's prove
psychic powers. I don't know, but you're like a little
more skeptical with this stuff than I am, for sure.
Oh yeah, sure, I don't know I lived too long,
ben he lived too long, Matt as a younger person.
There's another study that was pretty interesting that came out
(37:03):
from a Cornell professor named Daryl Bem which we mentioned
in one of this week's episodes, and Professor ben I
almost said instigating he created a very uh fascinating study
where he would do the following check this out. So
he would give these student volunteers a list of words
(37:26):
and these could just be like random words to be fancy,
so they could be like brim exit, gazebo or whatever.
And then he would give them this list of words
and they would just he would give him a few
minutes to read it. And then what he didn't tell
them is that he was giving them a surprise quiz
at the end after they've read these words, where they
(37:46):
would be given um the surprise quiz to test their
memory the words, what words are, et cetera. But here's
where it gets crazy, because at the heart of the
third you remember this, I think we talked about this.
The third step of the test was that after they
had taken the quiz UH, the computer program randomly selected
(38:08):
uh a few of the words, not all, but a
few of the words for additional study, and it had
the students retyped this word, so you would maybe out
of um brim exit and gazebo, you would need to
type exit like three times or several times. Right, this
would be a much longer. It's a much longer less
than just three. Yeah, and uh, this weird thing happened
(38:32):
in the data. When he looked at it and the
way he compiled it, he said, Wow, these students are
doing better on the test based on the words that
they you know, studied or rehearsed after the test, selected
words the randomly selected ones. Yes, So the students didn't
(38:52):
know there was going to be a test, they didn't
know they would have to study after the test, and
somehow their performance, perhaps possibly by coincidence, went up, possibly
by you know again sloppy science, which is the running
accusation that happened. Um. The paper was first set in
(39:13):
the news in two thousand and ten, published in a
fairly prestigious journal in two thousand eleven, and since that
point people have been arguing about if this is true,
and multiple multiple studies come out again saying that there
there is no such thing as psychic powers. But we
think that for those of you who believe in these
(39:36):
sorts of cognitive abilities, that keeping up with folks like
Darryl Bem is going to be gonna be interesting, perhaps
even instrumental to your argument in the future. Awesome, Ben,
I think this is the time where I'm going to
do the thing that you usually do to me. I've
(39:57):
been talking the whole time, but too bad. This is
the part where I say, Ben, is there a psychic power,
maybe all of them, or just one that you really
believe in, one that you think we just don't have
the grasp on yet. You know, I've I've quarreled with
that question because this is a little bit of biography.
(40:21):
But in my family, I'm not going to say which side,
or which relatives or whom in my In my family,
there's been this long tradition, going back a weirdly long
amount of time, of people my family being accused not
(40:43):
by people in our family but outside the family, of
being some sort of you know which person or things
like that. Sure, and I think a lot of that
goes back to them a luncheon thing. Honestly, it's just
some sort of mothering. But I I have a I
have a hard time saying that there is a silver
(41:08):
bullet everybody has very one can do it kind of power.
Because what we know about the human body every other
thing the human body can do, is that most people
can do the same things, but only to varying degrees.
Right in the detail, we find the heroes and the
villains right the degree of their ability, which is why
(41:32):
some people are Olympic runners and other people heave when
they get upstairs. So if there were some sort of
psychic power, then logically it follows that this ability would
have to be present in some way in the majority
of the human population. Right that that makes sense. I'm
building up to the answer. Um, So the next I
(41:56):
gave you my my bias, which is pretty anti this
stuff growing up just because of of um, my personal life.
But I will also say that given how little we
know about both the nature of reality and the nature
of perception in the human brain, it is completely possible
(42:18):
that we understand the skin of perception, or the surface
of it, but we don't know the machinery behind it. Now.
Of course, I know that some people could say, well,
you're just dwelling on a few uncertainties and making them
bigger than they are. But we're not because there are
just these massive, massive gaps and knowledge about cognition, and
(42:45):
that's not even verging on the metaphysical stuff, right. So
is it possible then that there is something about our
perception which we do not understand, or is there there's
some alleged potential or so or so possible thing. Then,
while I'm carefully hedging that, what I am saying is
is that, yes, it is possible that given the lack
(43:11):
of understanding we have about consciousness, that our our cognitive abilities,
that our ability to think, you know, who am I?
What am I? That self aware part of us may
be able to do or see or encounter more stuff
than than we know. And I know that sounds kind
of hippie dippy, but I'm not saying that there are
(43:32):
any psychic powers I believe in. What I'm saying is
that it's just as credulous and naive to say that
the possibility categorically does not exist. Saying something hasn't been
proven and saying it will never be proven or does
not exist. Those are two very very different things that people,
(43:53):
sometimes with the best of intentions and sometimes conveniently confuse.
Very nice Ben, what about you. I'm gonna submit to
that answer. I just need to write down a few things. Um.
I I have just a very simple observation. And I think,
just like you said, with our holes and understanding and perception,
(44:15):
and I think time, the way we understand time is
a bit wonky still, Um, is it an actual thing?
Does it really exist? Or is it just something and
apple and a name that we have applied to a dimension?
And I think that perhaps the way that our brain
functions in our neurons, because we've got so many questions there,
(44:39):
I think there may be some kind of link between
a fourth dimensional understanding or excuse me, a fourth dimensional
plane and perhaps the way that our brain functions. That
you know, this really interesting point. But try and scientifically
prove that, ideare you, because you probably won't be able
(44:59):
to do it he's not for a while yet. To
prove something, we would need to have again, an observable, reproducible,
measurable effect, cause and effect and a thing that we
know always produces thing B. But here's the thing. What
if it just doesn't work that way? Then that would
(45:20):
mean that it's not real, right, But it's I guess,
I guess my head goes to things like holographic universe theory,
some of the more abstract ideas about the universe as
a whole and in general reality. Um, that would be
my only the only reason that I can would allow
(45:44):
for this type of thing to be real unless it
was proven to me. It would be more like if
if it seemed that these things were not reproducible at all,
but if just for argument's sake, we knew that something
was real, it it doesn't matter. We can take uh,
I don't know, and just make one up telepathy, and
(46:05):
you take telepathy for the sake of arguments, say that somehow,
you know, I everybody listening knew that telepathy was real,
but we couldn't We couldn't reproduce it because it didn't
work that way. Then what that would make me go
back to would be the methodology of the science, because
it seems like if something does not appear to be
(46:27):
reproducible then and you know it is a real thing,
then you find a way to reproduce that stuff. I
was gonna see you find out what other variable is
in there that's dirty in the test too, because that's
probably what's happening. And I think, UM, Dean Raiden's argument
about this sort of stuffing real but subtle and complex
(46:50):
is an argument toward that perspective that there are multiple
variations or excuse me, multiple variables that we have yet
to find. UM. With With that being said, um, I
have I have, like most people, been in some really
(47:11):
weird situations. Sounds like the beginning of a totally different story. UM,
but I always have gone to the idea of what
I would call the boring stuff first. You know, maybe I,
maybe I somehow unconsciously knew that there was always a
(47:31):
lady in a blue dress with a yellow hat somewhere right.
Maybe you saw a similar pack of cars stop on
the interstate on TV four years ago, stuff like that.
And you know, we have to be honest that there
there are a lot of Charlottetan's out there who want
to um prey on people who are emotionally vulnerable, so
(47:53):
you have to be careful. But also also you and
I have talked about this long time, and I think listeners,
if you're if you're still on board with us at
this point in the game, you agree with us when
we say that, um, there are very few questions that
are not worth asking so let's put it to you.
(48:14):
What do you think Is there any truth to any
of this stuff? Have you had an experience where at
least that you can't explain scientifically of why you saw something?
One more thing, though, I'm sorry, I have to jump
in and say this one more thing the absolute craziest,
craziest stuff that I read about. Okay, Matt, What if
(48:37):
this ability to see through time and space and influence
events and nonlinear perspectives? What if it's real? And what
if someone doesn't want you to know? And what if
these people dare we call them time lords? Uh? What
if these seriously, what if these people are are these
entities are retroactively discrediting the ability of psychics around the world?
(49:02):
Which is this week's craziest thing been read on the internet?
For the record, I don't believe it, okay, but maybe
I've been influenced by the future. How would you know?
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
(49:25):
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three std w y
t K. If you don't want to do that, you
can send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
want you to know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(49:47):
your favorite shows.
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