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SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: What was the Philadelphia Experiment? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hi there, friends. It's Josh. Finally, I'm here and I'm
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: presenting first our episode on the Philadelphia Experiment. It's a
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: bizarre conspiracy theory that in 1943, the USS Eldridge, which
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: is a real destroyer from the real U.S. Navy, suddenly
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: disappeared from port and instantaneously reappeared miles away. And that
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: when it did reappear, things weren't quite right with it.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I'll leave it to past me and Chuck to give
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the details in this fascinating episode.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is a special edition
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: of Stuff You Should Know because Jerry has transmogrified into
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: guest producer Noel.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Which is... requires quite a bit of alchemy.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: And a little bit of alcohol. Yeah.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: And some, like a magnificent brown bearded chia pet.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Nice. There's a woodchuck waving from there. Looking good, Noel.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Jerry's gone on a top secret mission. Can't talk
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: about it, so it makes it top secret.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: You're talking about it right now.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: But she's coming back at some point, don't worry.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: She's not left us forever.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: No, this is a stint. by guest producer no we'll
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: have to make a suite out.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Of it yeah uh noel produced shows you should.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Know summer of sam death suite noel.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Stint noel stint that sounds.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Gross uh how you doing man i'm great i'm so
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: used to reading ads these days that like i just
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: panicked like i lost my place and then i was
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: like oh yeah it's the actual podcast i can just
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: ramble and stall as long as i need to yeah
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: You remember this from being a kid? Was this in
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: your wheelhouse, the Philadelphia Experiment?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: The movie was.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Watched it last night. Sure.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, did you really?
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: It is basically, I mean, the plot makes sense, but
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: it's like a 15-minute plot. Yeah. They manage a lot
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: of chasing in.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: To really draw it out. Yeah, they really gussied. Yeah,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: they drew it out.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: But the idea behind it, especially when, let's see, 1984,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I was eight.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: And this was about the time where I'm like, I'm
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: going to Duke University to study parapsychology when I get older.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: When you were eight? Yeah. I didn't know what college
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: was when I was eight.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Definitely, that was in my wheelhouse. Really? Yeah. Wow. So
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: this was like right up my alley. Yeah. Now that
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I watch it as a child, I'm like, man, I
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: was an idiot when I was eight. Yeah. But it
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: was pretty cool. The special effects are like 80s-rific.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes. They do not hold up.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: No. But I mean, if you're a fan of Tron... Sure.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Or Videodrome.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: You're going to love this movie.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Starring the great Michael Perret.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Yes. And RoboCop's partner.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Nancy Allen.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Was she, who, what else was she in famously?
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: She was in a bunch of 80s movies.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: She was big back then.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: What was her big one though? Or was she always
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: like co-starring the female lead?
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I don't think she was ever like
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: the lead in a movie. They didn't make movies with
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: female leads in the 80s.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I can't remember in this context, are we allowed to
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: say female or should it be the girl lead? It's
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: a female lead, right?
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: They didn't make leads with women as the lead in
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: the 80s. They were all just there to prop up
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: the dudes.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Right. Which is still how it is. Although, Working Girl,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: that was in the 80s.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Good point.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Nine to five.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Three ladies.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: All right, I take it back. Okay.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Few and far between. I'm trying to lobby for gender
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: equality in Hollywood.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you should.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: And you're like, no, look at 9 to 5.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: No, I'm just saying. I mean, there were some.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're right.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I agree with you. I don't mean to argue. You're right.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: They were few and far between.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: That's what you call a trap.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: What about Barbarella?
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was 70s or was it 60s?
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: I think the 60s. Yeah. Yeah.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Jane Fonda.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Well, just like the makers of the Philadelphia Experiment, you
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: and I know how to draw out a 15-minute plot.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Hey, also I wanted to point out Michael Perrette. disappeared
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: in Eddie and the Cruisers.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, was he in that?
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: He was Eddie.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Was that based on Bruce Springsteen or something like that? No.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Was it based on any real life band? No.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, it echoed. He was Springsteen-esque.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: But it wasn't like, you know, I think they were just,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: I think the writer was like, who do I like? Eh,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: I like Springsteen.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: So let's get John Caffrey to sing like Springsteen and
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: put Michael Perret to lip sync.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's a.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: That's Eddie.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: That's 80s-rific, too.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: And I saw John Cafferty in concert in the 80s.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: That's how.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: What else is he in?
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: No, he was the band. He was the real band.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: They sang those songs for real, and I saw them
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: in concert at Six Flags.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: How about that?
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: And they've now become the Zac Brown Band.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Who looks like Noel.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Full circle.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Full circle, we just did it.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Can we be done now?
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Yep. So the Philadelphia experiment, I guess, was right up
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Michael Perry's alley because it echoed real life, too. In
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: a way. In a way. Sure. The makers went back
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: and read a couple of books that purported to be
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: nonfiction accounts of this incredible... experiment carried out by the Navy.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: So incredible.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: And we should probably, let's describe the experiment to begin with, right?
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Experiments, we should say.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. This article gets it wrong on how
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: stuff works.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there were two separate things, both involving a destroyer
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: ship called the USS Eldridge, recently commissioned. Summer of 1943
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: is when it began.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: July, I think.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: And what supposedly happened was That there was this ship
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: and there was a big secret Navy experiment that whose
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: what's aim was to make the ship disappear. Yeah.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Not just to like radar or something like that. But
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: if there was a guy with a periscope, he would
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: look right past the ship because it had been made invisible.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Essentially invisible.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then the story goes that that was successful.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: It was a successful experiment that was carried out.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it disappeared in full view in broad daylight from the,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: was it the Philadelphia shipyard?
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: And then reappeared. There was a big glow.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: And then it reappeared and all the sailors aboard were
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: in bad shape.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: So did that take place in July or was that?
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: That took place in July.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, okay. Then it happened again in October? Yeah.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Within the second experiment?
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, then they retried the experiment. Supposedly, the ship disappeared
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: and popped up in Virginia.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Norfolk, Virginia.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: And then reappeared 10 minutes prior. So it time-traveled back
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: 10 minutes to Philadelphia again.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: And again, the sailors were in bad shape.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Even by teleportation standards, that's impossible. You know what I mean?
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and supposedly the shipmen were... seamen were... Some were caught, like,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: in the middle of the ship.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: And crazed and crazy.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Right. So, basically, the implication is that they had been
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: some sort of, or in some fashion, molecularly disintegrated.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Along with the ship. And then when it was brought
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: back together, the coordinates were maybe off slightly. Right. Maybe
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: the ship and the people were where they were 10
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: minutes earlier. Right. And... Things just went a little haywire.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Like, oh, my upper half's on the Lido deck, and
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: my lower half's on the... What were the other decks
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: on the level?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: The... Man, that's the only deck I know. The party deck.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: The tango deck? Sure.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: The tango deck. Uh-huh.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: And the... And I'm still alive, and I've also gone mad.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Because my brain didn't configure back correctly either.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, and this was all possible thanks to... Albert Einstein
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: working with the Navy and teaching them all his little
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: tricks on how you can make ships disappear in time travel.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Specifically, the theory is that, or the rumor, the conjecture,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: the conspiracy theory, is that Albert Einstein figured out the
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: unified field theory.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Which is not true. He did not.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Basically, the theory of everything. No, it frustrated him for
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: his whole life. There's this idea in physics that there's possibly...
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: one explanation for the behavior of everything in the universe.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Right now, we've got a pretty good theory. I think
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the theory of special relativity ties in three of the
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: fundamental forces in the universe. But gravity is this outlier
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: that can't be tied in through physics formulas. And they
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: think that there's some way of understanding things to where
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: everything ties together. And as I think Michio Kaku famously
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: put it, he said that What they're searching for with
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: a unified field theory is with a formula an inch long,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: you'll be able to read God's mind. So the idea
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: is that Einstein came up with this unified field theory. Again,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: not true. And that it was used to understand how
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: to teleport things. So they used this understanding to carry
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: out an experiment with a bunch of Navy seamen on
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: a destroyer in broad daylight.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Because you can imagine the advantage of that. To be
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: able to make your ship invisible.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Not only that, if you could figure out how to
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: teleport it.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Like, you're done, dude. No more war because you would
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: win them all, and the rest of the world would
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: just cower at your invisible feet.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd just suddenly pop up behind your enemy, put
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: him in a full Nelson, and be like, you give,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: you give? You'd be like, I give! And that's it.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: You just let him go and be like, that's right,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: and you teleport out of there.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: You see how easily that could happen?
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Nazi? Unified field theory.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Alright, so... The Philadelphia experiment never happened like that, at least. What?
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: We'll go ahead and not give any credence to the
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theorists out there, although we'll probably get a couple
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: of people to email in.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, man, this is... This is like a nucleus of
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theory. It ties in UFOs. Sure. Ties in theoretical physics.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the U.S. government, of course.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Yep. Ginormous cover-up. It ties in all these different things,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: and it's really, really interesting if you go read this stuff.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: To me, it's more interesting than just UFO conspiracy theory
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: or just government cover-up conspiracy theory. It's like a clearinghouse
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: of conspiracy theories all tied up into one package on
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: this secret experiment that if you listen to the Navy's
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: official line, never took place. There never was a Philadelphia experiment.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: There never was. It was also known as Project Rainbow.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: There was never a Project Rainbow. It just didn't happen.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: The whole thing was made up out of whole cloth, apparently,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: by a guy named Carlos M. Allende.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there was a couple of hinky details. We'll
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: go over why this thing has survived a little bit later,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: but there are a few hinky details, not to make
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: it believable, But that just have fueled the fire over
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: the years.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: And let's take a break right here, Chuck, because I'm
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: getting a little overexcited. Okay.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Just put this under your tongue. You'll be fine.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Okay. No stuff you should know.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: All right. Wake up, buddy.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: What?
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: We're back.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: How much time has passed in your mind?
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Millions of years.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: No, it's only been about three hours. Oh, okay. Do
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: you feel rested?
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: I do feel very refreshed. Good.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Well, we can continue. So you teased a man named, well,
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: he had some different names. Carl M. Allen. Carl M.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Allen.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Or under his pseudonym, Carlos Miguel Allende.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: He's like, hey, let me throw a D-E on the end.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: I'll sound mysterious.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, an O-S and a D-E.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: So in 1956, I was going to get in the
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Wayback Machine, but I don't think we should even bother
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: for this.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: No, this actually proves there is no Wayback Machine.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: That's right. So in 1956, in real time, Allende sent...
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: A letter, and he would go on to send about
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: 50 more letters to an author named Morris Jessup, who
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: wrote a book a year earlier called The Case for
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: the UFO.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, which you can find on the podcast page for
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: this episode.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was an author. He's like a legit
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: dude that wrote a bunch of books. I don't know
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: if he's legit. I don't mean legit as in... Like
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: he proved any science behind UFOs.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: But he authored books for real. Yes, right. He wasn't
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: just publishing manifestos online.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: And he was a conspiratorially-minded investigator.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: But if you read his writing, it was just nothing
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: but conjecture. Sure. Nothing. There was nothing in it but
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: conjecture presented as fact.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: And he even says there are three basic facts. proven
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: facts about this. And then here's some more facts. And
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: it's like, no, these aren't facts at all. But it's
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: really fascinating stuff.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Maybe he doesn't know what facts are.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Maybe so.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: So he got these letters and in these letters, at
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: first there were some attacks on him from Alan saying,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: you don't know what you're talking about, man. You're getting
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: this unified field theory all wrong. And I know because
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Einstein spent several weeks with me teaching me this stuff himself.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and not only that.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: So it's like, Cuckoo pot writes crackpot.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Right. And he was saying, like, I can prove that
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: that unified field theory has been mastered by describing this
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: experiment that took place in Philadelphia in 1943 concerning one U.S.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: destroyer called the USS Eldridge.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Yes. And he said, I know this because I was there, buddy.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: I was on a ship in that harbor and there
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: were other ships in the harbor. That seems to be
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: the only part that's true.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this is a place where ships were
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: being outfitted throughout the summer and fall. It was the war.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: That's right. So he claimed that he was on one
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: of these ships. He said, I witnessed this in person.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: I saw this green glow. I saw this thing disappear.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Not only that, he could see the field that was
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: created by this experiment.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the green glow.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: And he stuck his arm into it. He was that close.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Stuff of movies. right?
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Stuff of 1980s B movies.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So he sends these letters and- He sends like
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: 50 of them. Yeah. And Jessup said, you know what?
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Let me investigate this a little bit because I'm a
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: crackpot too. I get where you're coming from.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: So let me just check into this a little bit.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: This is right up my alley.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Thank you for these. Let me look into this
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: a little bit. And He basically gave up because the
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: dude could produce, he asked him for some evidence.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Or names.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Anything, and he had nothing.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: He didn't. He just said, here's the story and it's fact.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: And he goes, Carlos Allende, who by then I think
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: had dropped the pseudonym, right, to Carl Allen.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Who knows, he might have called himself Big Bird at
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: that point.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: So he was, and he was a very disturbed man.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm joking, but yeah, he had mental problems.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: He did. But if you research him, And you research
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: even skeptics of the Philadelphia experiment. Like the stuff he
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: was coming up with was really interesting stuff.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a good writer.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: But he was a huge confabulator as well.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: So he's saying all this is fact. And he's saying,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the dates were. I don't know
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: the people's names or anything like that. But perhaps if
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I were put under narco-hypnosis, I would remember all this stuff.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: So you got any drugs? Yes. And about this time,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Jessup said, I'm done with this, right? He had actually
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: moved on because apparently the government had directly addressed UFO rumors.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: And no, Jessup didn't do that. I'm sorry. Another guy
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: did who was interested in researching Allende.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: But I'm sure Jessup was like, I got to get
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: back to my serious work investigating UFOs.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: He did. Yeah. But then something truly bizarre happened. And
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: this did happen. He got a knock on his door,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: and two researchers from the Office of Naval Research, who
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: would have been carrying out experiments like this, said, hey,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: have you ever heard of a guy named Carlos Allende?
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: And you probably could have picked M.K. Jessup off the floor.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: I would imagine so. Because, I mean, yeah, he was like.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: It's all true, man. Yeah, exactly. And he said, come in,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: come in, please, have some tea, have some opiates.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: It was 1957 at this point. And they said, you
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: know what, we got a package a year ago. And
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: it had a copy of your book, my friend, The UFOs.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: The Case for UFOs. Yeah, it was annotated very heavily.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: By three people.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Well, by three sets of ink and three types of handwriting,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: which were all clearly from Carl Allen.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Well, they were to M.K. Jessup, who corresponded with Carl
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Allen for... Well, over 50 letters, right?
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he said, I'm not fooled. This guy, Jemi, J-E-M-I.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Who may have been an alien.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: It's Carl Allen and Mr. A and Mr. B are
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: both Carl Allen. They're all Carl Allen.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: But regardless of whether they were all one dude, the
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: annotations had fascinated these two Navy researchers enough that they supposedly,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: as far as the Office of Naval Research officially says,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: They took it upon themselves and paid out of their
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: own pockets and I guess took vacation time to go
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: find MK Jessup.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't found, I saw a bunch of conflicting
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: reports on that, whether or not, and this is what
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theorists will point to, that either it was official
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: business or they did it on their own. Right. Either way,
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: they say that that means something. And I've heard it
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: explained away as it was just something on their list
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: that they eventually had to get to.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That seems like a terrible explanation. I think this
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: adds like a real wrinkle to the story, whether purposefully
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: or it's just something that can't be very easily explained away.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Maybe it is. It was just these guys were really
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: interested in this. Maybe they were into UFO stuff or whatever.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Maybe.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. The fact that those two guys showed
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: up gives this thing legs for miles. Sure. You know?
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: And it's just awesome that that happened because that has
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: kept this thing alive in part.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the box came to them marked Happy Easter,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: which I thought was kind of funny. And it had
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: weird punctuation and capitalizations, all the marks of a madman. Right.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: But again, like the stuff he was saying was, it
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: was curiosity arousing in these guys. And they actually took,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: and again, supposedly paid for out of their own pocket,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the annotated version of the case for UFOs and published
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: it with annotations. They had a contractor, a military contractor
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: called Vero Technologies, I think, and had them publish it,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: which is weird, especially if they were doing it out
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: of their own pocket, but.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: There was only 127 copies. I imagine it didn't cost
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: that much.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: I saw 25 even, and they were like spiral bound.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't even fancy.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: I read a lot of this, and it's, you know,
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: it's really out there.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: But I imagine if you're a UFO enthusiast, it might
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: interest you.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you read Morris Jessup's stuff, it's out there, too.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Well, imagine reading that with the annotation from this other dude.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, I get the impression
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: that Carlos Allende stuff is even more out there.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can get it online. There's PDFs of it
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: if you want to.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, of the Vero one? Oh, yeah. But supposedly there's
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of forged copies as well. Oh, really? In circulation, yeah.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. This seemed real. Why would someone
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: take the time to forge a copy of the Crackpot Manifesto?
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: That's a question we should all be asking ourselves.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: So Jessup's story ends just a couple of years later.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: He was down on his luck, and he got injured
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: really badly in a car accident, had a bad breakup
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: with his wife, and he killed himself. He put a
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: hose from his car exhaust into his window. And this
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: is one of the other reasons that conspiracy theory, anytime
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: there's a suicide and there's the government involved, it's pretty
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: easy to say, He didn't kill himself. The government killed him.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Right. It's made all the more suspicious, though, because supposedly
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: that was the day that he was to meet a
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: friend who he had told, I've made a breakthrough in
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the Philadelphia experiment case. Yeah. And then all of a
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: sudden he turns up dead of a suicide. Yeah. So,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, that and the ONR guy showing up at
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: his door definitely has kept this thing alive.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: It has. Supposedly his friends came out and said no.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: He was deeply depressed, and he had talked of suicide
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: in the months before he committed suicide. But then, I'm
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: sure conspiracy theorists will say, they paid them off, man.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Those people said, you can let my family go now, Navy.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: They did what you said.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: And the Eldridge had a pretty, well, it didn't go
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: on to, like, great things. It was sold to Greece,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: or transferred to Greece, renamed the HS Leon, and Used
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: in exercises and then sold for scrap metal in the 1990s. Yeah. So,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: no big deal with the boat, right?
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: No bigs.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: So, we'll take another little break here, and we'll come
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: back and we'll talk about what really happened in the
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Philadelphia shipyard that day.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Stuck in ship, no. All right.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: What really happened, Josh?
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Nothing. That's supposedly what really happened. Apparently on that day
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: in the naval shipyard, I guess either July or October.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: But July, I think, is the one that people typically,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: if they just think it was a one-day thing rather
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: than two separate experiments, it's usually July that they point to,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: which they did in this article, too. On that particular day,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: the USS Eldridge wasn't even in Philadelphia.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the part I don't understand.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: It was in Brooklyn.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: So here's the thing. That revelation came out in 1999.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: We'll get to that in a minute. Prior to this,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: there is a researcher. He's an astrophysicist and ufologist named
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Jacques F.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Vallée.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: And he was actually the inspiration for the ufologist Frenchman
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: And he was also like a venture capitalist. He's a
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: pretty sharp dude. He just had some unusual interests, right?
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: But one of the things that he dedicated himself to
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: was disproving the Philadelphia Experiment, proving that it was a hoax.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: He was a skeptic, right?
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: In some manner, he was a skeptic.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: So he wrote a paper, and in the paper, he
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: invited people to reach out to him if they had
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: further information about the Philadelphia Experiment. And as a result, allegedly...
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: He was contacted in 1994 by a guy named Edward
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Dugin or Dugin. Let's say Dugin. It's a little more
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: pleasant than Dugin.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: I bet his friend called him the dungeon.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll bet.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: That's what I would have called him.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, he responded. The paper was called Anatomy of
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: a Hoax, colon, the Philadelphia Experiment 50 years later in
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: the Journal of Scientific Exploration. And Dugin got in touch
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: and said, you know what? I was in the Navy
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: from 42 to 45. I was on that boat, and
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: I can explain what happened.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: Which is pretty exciting.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Well, he was on the Engstrom, which was there at
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the same time.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, I thought he was on the actual boat.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: No, he was an electrician on the Engstrom, but he
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: said he was fully aware of all of the electrical
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: components on the Engstrom and on the Eldridge.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because they all party together.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Sure, exactly. That actually comes up later. So he was saying...
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: He basically had a pat and completely sensible and reasonable
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: answer for every single part of the Philadelphia Experiment. For example,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: part of the Philadelphia Experiment legend is that a brawl
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: broke out in a bar following the experiment, and two
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: of the sailors on board the Eldridge suddenly disappeared. They vanished.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Well, doogen, dudgeon. says, I was one of those guys.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: I actually faked my age on my enlistment paper. So
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I was underage and shouldn't have been in the bar.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: And the bartender took pity on me and another underage
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: dude and shoot us out the back door and then
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: pretended that she'd never seen us.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: So they disappeared.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: They disappeared, exactly.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Out the back door.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Another one, he says, well, he explains the whole thing, basically, right?
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: He says, There was no experiment like that, but they
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: were doing something that might have seemed freaky to the uninitiated,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: and that was degaussing the ships.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, at the time, Germany, and I guess everyone else
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: really in the navies around the world, they had magnetic mines,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: sea mines, which would find your boat and go, ooh,
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: that's metal, let me go stick on that thing and
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: blow up.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and torpedoes that were magnetic-seeking too.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they thought, you know what, let's come up
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: with a way to make our ship hulls and our
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: metal parts non-magnetic to these obstacles.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Right, which is an established project, I guess, or an established,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: what's the word I'm looking for? Process.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: So I was close with projects.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a real thing.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's called degaussing, and it basically either changes or
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: gets rid of, the magnetism of something that was formerly magnetic,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: like the ship's hull.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: It does not make it invisible to radar or otherwise.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: But it probably looks pretty weird, right? So they wrapped
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: the ships in hundreds and hundreds of meters of cable
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: and then ran a really high voltage electrical charge through it.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: And supposedly this would demagnetize the ships, which really came
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: in handy because at the time, just outside of America's
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: coastal waters was called the Graveyard of the Atlantic. Yeah.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Because German U-boats were running the show out there at
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: this time.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and as we learned in our Did Nazis Invade Florida,
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: they sometimes were parked right off the coast.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So they were taking out our destroyers and our
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: cruisers and our battleships. So this was a big deal
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: to be able to do that kind of thing. Although,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: and it was classified stuff, It wasn't experimentation in anything
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: that hadn't been proven before. It was like, we're just
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: demagnetizing our battleships.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they could have had a big sign up that said,
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: degaussing at work, stand back.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: It was no big super secret thing.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Right. But if you're a Nazi, don't read this sign.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: The other thing that Dudgeon addressed was the concept that
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: the Eldridge disappeared from the Philadelphia shipyard. reappeared in Norfolk,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: and then reappeared back in Philadelphia.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Well, that happened, but it just went there and then
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: came back.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Right, but it didn't happen in like 5 minutes or
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: 10 minutes or 30 seconds. No. But, again, he points
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: out like if you weren't really, if you were just
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: casually paying attention, you might have seen the Eldridge in
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia that night and then noticed it was missing late
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: at night and then noticed it was back In the morning.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which would seem impossible because that was supposedly a
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: two-day trip.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, two days including there and back. Yeah. The round
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: trip was two days up the coast. But apparently the
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Navy had a canal that they used, I think the
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Delaware Chesapeake Canal, that only the military could use. And
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: they could make that round trip in six hours.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so in other words, it's easily explainable that it
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: just simply, I keep wanting to say sailed, but it's
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: not sailing.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I think they still call it that.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: Do they?
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Set sail, yeah. Ship out.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it shipped out.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Took off.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Shipped back. Right. In a regular amount of time.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: And it just became part of the lore.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I mean, you can even tack on a
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: few hours there. Apparently Norfolk was where they outfitted it
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: with their explosives. And apparently they could load a battleship
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: in four hours.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: So even taking that into account, it's still 10 hours.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: If it shipped out at 11 p.m., which is what
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Dujun says, right? Dujun?
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: I think he went with Dujun.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He says that it shipped out at 11. It'd
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: still be back by 9 a.m., Yeah. So, again, if
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: you're just casually paying attention, what seems pretty mysterious really
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: took on legs over time. It's basically like a game
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: of telephone, like any conspiracy theory. Sure. Maybe there's a
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: kernel of truth that got exaggerated by some drunken sailors,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: and then, bam, it gets shrunk down to 10 seconds
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: through a teleportation experiment.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: Well, and these sailors, the drunken sailors, supposedly could have
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: been overheard saying things like, you know, they're going to
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: make our ship disappear, they're going to make us invisible, when,
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: in fact, what they were saying is, they're going to
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: make it more or less invisible to these mines.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: Got all twisted around. It wasn't literally invisible.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And so there were apparently tons of merchant seamen
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: around the area as well. Yes. So again, this would
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: have been classified stuff if there had been loose lips,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: which sink ships.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: They do.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: And somebody had said, like, we're going to make it invisible.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Like you said, they would have picked up on that.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Maybe they were the ones who were just casually paying
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: attention to the Eldridge here or there, and it just
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: seemed to disappear and reappear. And there's this guy named
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Robert Gorman, and he, in a 1980 Fate magazine article,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: wrote about tracking down Carlos Allende. He was from the
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: same hometown as him. And it turned out that he
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: already knew the guy's father. He just didn't realize that
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: he was Carlos Allende's father or Carl Allen's father.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: Your old man Allen's son?
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much. And he managed to interview the family
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: and get a pretty good picture of the guy. But
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: one of the things that he found was Carl Allen's
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: merchant semen papers. So it's entirely possible he was there
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: around the time. Or if he wasn't there at the time,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: he may have known somebody who was there at the time.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: I could totally see him have been there, and that's
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: probably how he got the idea to cook it up.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Right, okay.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: I believe all that.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and again, all of this lands squarely on the
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: desk of Carl Allen because no one, no one talked
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: about the Philadelphia experiment. It was never... Those words were
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: never put together until his first letter to Morris Jessup, right?
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: So it appears to have been totally fabricated by him.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and... After the movie came out, people started coming
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: out of the woodwork.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: This guy.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: Including a dude named Alfred Bialik.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Have you been to his website?
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. He's something else. He made a video called
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: The Philadelphia Experiment Part 1 Crossroads of History. And he
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: claims that he was a physicist on board the Eldridge.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: And he was a part of the team. And not
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: only that, he says he time-traveled. in 1943 all the
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: way to 1983 during the experiment to tell his story.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: That sounds extremely close to the plot of the Philadelphia
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Experiment movie.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and sure.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Except it was a little different. In the movie, he
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: travels from 1943 to 1984. Ooh. We shouldn't mock this guy.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: It's a fascinating website. Yeah. But he puts himself squarely
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: at the... Center of the Philadelphia Experiment. And he also
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: says that he was part of the Montauk Project.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which they're sort of tied together somehow.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: We should do one on that at some point.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Somehow.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Since we're debunking things.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: This guy wrote a book where he just basically made
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: this stuff up out of whole cloth.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: He says that the book, whether you take it as
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: science fact or science fiction, you're in for a really
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: great story, even though it's basically loaded with soft facts.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: This is the author in the preface, right?
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: But basically, it's this extension that like the Philadelphia experiment
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: was wildly successful. And from that, we learned all sorts
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: of things like getting in touch with extraterrestrials, being able
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: to teleport everywhere, just doing all sorts of really interesting things. Basically,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: anything you can possibly think of that a conspiracy theorist
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: would enjoy is crammed into this book. And it's given
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: a bit of gravitas by associating it with the Philadelphia experiment.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: You know? In some quarters, man.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: In some quarters.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: That definitely gives some gravitas.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: This green glow has been explained away by most people
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: as maybe an electrical storm or St. Elmo's fire. And
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: it was just, you know, maybe just another part of
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: this story that people took and ran with it. Or
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: maybe it was nothing at all.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Yes. It also could have been the Office of Naval
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Research put out a fact sheet on what they understand
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: about the Philadelphia experiment. And they said it's possible another
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: origin or the origin of that specifically was experiments with
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: the USS Timmerman later on after the war in the 50s. Yeah.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Where they tried to use a small generator that was
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: higher power than the generator that was currently on board.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: And it actually caused coronal discharge, a glow. Yeah. and
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: they said that no one was injured, no one was
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: enmeshed into the ship. No. It was just a glow
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: was created, which is what you'd expect from a very
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: strong electrical field, right?
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: So they think possibly that combined with the degaussing stuff
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: they were doing during World War II came together and
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: helped this legend take off. But what they say also, though,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: And what was supported by this reunion of USS Eldridge
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: sailors in 1999 is that even the guy who debunked
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: and discredited everything that Carlos Allende said, Dudgeon, he was
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: full of it too, apparently. Because the USS Eldridge wasn't in...
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia then. It was in Brooklyn.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they got together in Atlantic City, and I read
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: an article on this meeting, and they had a good
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: laugh and said that one of them even has something
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: about it on his license plate, just so people will
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: ask him about it. And a few of them said
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: they would pull people's legs and say, like, oh, no,
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: I disappeared, and my hand was caught in the ship.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: And then they would say, no, none of that happened.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: But they said that it was in Brooklyn, and the
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: ship's log confirms that. So apparently it wasn't even in
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: that shipyard that day at all.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: So that's the only part where I'm like, oh, wait
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: a minute. How could they completely invent that it was
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: even in the shipyard? Why wouldn't they just use a
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: ship that was there?
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Because this guy.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: It would give it a little more credence if there
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: was at least a ship there.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: But that's what I'm saying. Like, Carl Allen, he said
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: all this. He was the one who just came up
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: with it from the beginning.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I don't know. It just seems a little
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: weird that he... didn't care at all about making it
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: believable by picking a boat that was actually there.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what I'm saying. He may have been there
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: at the time. He may have known that the Eldridge
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: was there and just fudged the date because he couldn't
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: remember because this is like 12 years later, 12 or
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: 13 years after the fact. You know what I mean?
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: Bad memory.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Right. So maybe he just got the date wrong and
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: the thing really did happen and then the ONR would
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: be like, oh, that experience. Yeah, oh yeah, we teleported
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: a battleship. You just got the date wrong.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: So, we've mentioned quite a few things here that why
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: this thing has lived on through the years. Um, there, uh, that, uh,
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: Jacques Vallee theorizes that, you know, anytime you have like
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: a movie made about it or any kind of imagery,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: whether it's a photo of the Loch Ness monster to, uh,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: the photo of the Montauk monster, people are going to
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: have something physical to point to and say, look, they
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: made this movie. And that's when people started coming out
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: of the woodwork was after the movie saying, Oh yeah,
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: I was there. I remember that now. Michael Paré just
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: reminded me of this thing that happened.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: He also, my favorite thing on his website is that
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: he met the person that he later realized was the
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: actor Mark Hamill in Hawaii in 1956. But Mark Hamill
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: would have been five at the time.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: Well, did he say he was a nice little kid?
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: I don't think he was a kid.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: He said he's a full-grown adult. Interesting. What else? The
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: fact that it's the federal government, of course, and the
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: And the military, you know, people are going to run
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: with that stuff.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Which, I mean, that's the military's fault.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, sure, they did secret experiments, still do.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Tons of them. Back in 1993, some stuff got declassified,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: and it really opened people's eyes to the fact that
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the government and the military experimented on uninformed and unwitting subjects,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: not just in its ranks, but also in the general public. So, yeah,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: it's totally... The idea that the military would do this
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: with its own people on board.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's believable.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Probably the most believable part of the whole thing.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: Agreed. And also just throw Albert Einstein in there, throw
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: in secret scientific theories that haven't been proven. And it's
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: just ripe for the picking when it comes to conspiracies.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: And the suicide, of course. Like we mentioned earlier.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: That definitely doesn't help.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: It did not help the case any. But this is
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: one that I had a hard time finding people that
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: still believe this.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think a lot of people aren't aware of
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: it even.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Except for the movie.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: You know what else helped it get legs? There was
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: a book in 1979. And it was called. The Philadelphia Experiment, colon,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Project Invisibility, and it was reprinted in excerpts in papers
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: around the country as fact or nonfiction in 1979.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Does not help.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Doesn't help things, you know?
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: I personally... With all conspiracy theories, I enjoy reading this stuff.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: I think it's fun and funny and interesting. There aren't
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: any that I really believe in. But I do think
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: it's funny when people get all up on their hackles
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: and write in that, you know, you guys are making
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: fun of this stuff and it's, you know, you don't know.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: It could be real. Well, that's the other thing, man.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought this up because just being like, no,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: this is not possible. That's stupid. Stop thinking stuff like that.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: It's like, no, this is... At the very least, people
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: using their imaginations and exercising it in ways that I
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: don't typically do. Sure. And so it is nice to
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: come kind of visit it and check it out and
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: read it, you know?
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, although I claim to have seen a ghost, so
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: what do I know?
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Although I have to say probably the best excuse
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: against this, there are two things that just say just
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: on its face this isn't right. One, this happened 70
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: years ago, and if the military successfully transported a battleship,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: We would know about teleportation by now.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they'd be doing it all over the place.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The second thing was a quote from Robert Gorman,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: the guy who tracked down Carl Allen, in that 1980
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Fate magazine article. He wrote, If we are to believe
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Carl Allen, our naval hierarchy abandoned sanity and historical precedent
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: by conducting an experiment of enormous importance in broad daylight
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: using a badly needed destroyer escort vessel. Yeah. I think
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: that kind of sums it up nicely. Agreed. But go
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: forth and read about the Philadelphia Experiment because it is
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: interesting stuff.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: Watch the movie.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Meh.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Why not? Is it on Netflix?
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: No, it's on YouTube.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: I thought you watched it on YouTube.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: I can't believe you made it through it. I did.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you. I mean, I was working, too. I
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: had two windows open. Okay.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: But it was fine.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: It was fine.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: It's as believable as Tron. That's Josh's review.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Let's see. If you want to know more about the
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia Experiment, you don't have anything else, right?
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: No, sir.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: You can type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: And since Chuck said Tron, it's time for Listener Mail.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: I'm going to call this email from an up-and-coming podcaster
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: in Georgia Bulldog.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Nice. Hey, guys.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: My name is Bailey. I'm a junior mass media arts
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: and theater student. at good old UGA. Go Dawgs. Woof woof.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: My professional identity aside, I'm also a long-time listener and
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: lover of you guys. I listened to my first episode
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: on the bus home from 7th grade.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: That's so.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it was the episode on brainwashing. So
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: she's in college now. I mainly listen to y'all as
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: I'm working on my on-campus job, bus driving. Did you
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: ever take the buses in Athens? The student buses?
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: I was so crippled with social anxiety that if I
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: couldn't find a parking space, I would just skip class
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: because I didn't want to get on the bus. You
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: had social anxiety? Really?
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Like, didn't want to get to know anyone?
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: I just couldn't bear being around peers at that age.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: Interesting. The buses were always a little scary because it
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: was like, here's a 40-foot long bus. Full of students,
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: and it's driven by a 19-year-old.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Driven by a student. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's scary for
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: me for different reasons, but I can imagine it was
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: scary for that reason, too.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I took him a few times. I mainly walked. Okay,
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: where was I? Bus driving. So my passengers have the
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: honor of listening to you as well. Oh, I guess
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: she plays it out loud.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: That's nice. That is nice. That's the party bus right there.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: I guess so. The other day I was driving, I
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: realized it's my destiny to produce and host a podcast
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: on campus. We don't really have anything like that, so
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: I'm excited about it. My idea is to have me
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: and another host be constants on the show and every
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: week bring in a different UGA professor or Athens professional
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: or general awesome person to talk about the one thing
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: in their field that fascinates them the most for about
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: 30 minutes. It would include informal conversation between the three
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: of us about a topic highly inspired by y'all's witty banter. Nice. Anyway,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: because you guys are my muses, I would want to...
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Wanted to ask if you had any advice for a
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: baby bulldog podcaster. As an MMA major, I feel like
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: I have the basic knowledge and resources for the technical side,
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: but as far as what makes a good episode, I'm
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: feeling pretty shaky. What is your environment like? How much
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: do you prepare for the actual script? Do you have
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: a specific formula for every episode? I'm fascinated. And that
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: is Bailey Johnson. You got any advice?
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: I will give you the same advice I would give
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: anybody starting out in podcasting, Bailey. Get good mics. It's
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: worth the expenditure.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Make it sound good. They probably have them on campus,
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: I'm imagining.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, yeah, if you can finagle your way
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: into a studio with good mics.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, do it.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do whatever you need to do to get that done.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: And then release on a reliable schedule. Those are the
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: two keys to begin with. I mean, like, as long
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: as you're releasing on a reliable schedule... People will come
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: to appreciate.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: What you're doing. Yeah, and my advice as far as
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: scripting goes is, you know, we've said this a billion
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: times on different interviews, but we don't script stuff out
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: and we don't go over stuff with each other. We
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: just do our own research and try and have as
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: natural a conversation as possible, which I think has helped
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: our show out. That's not to say that you need
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: to do that, but I think being relatable and conversational
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: helps rather than feeling like you're being read a script.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know a lot of people that would be
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: as into that. So my advice would be try to
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: make it conversational. You know, maybe go over it with
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: whoever your co-host is, some at first.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: She's a theater major, right?
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you should be pretty good at this stuff already.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm sure she's good at ad-libbing. She probably
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: finds comfort in the idea of a script. I don't
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: think there's anything wrong with starting out trying that, but
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: if it doesn't feel right or you're not getting good
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: feedback about it, then Try something else.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I would say maybe try, like, instead
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: of a script, try, like, an outline that you share
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: with each other.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: The poor man's script.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you've got a little roadmap ahead of you,
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: and we kind of just, we've been doing this for
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: so long, we don't need that.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: We don't need an outline.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: But we have our own roadmap that we share via
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: our brainwaves.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Yes. Roadmap to the White House.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: It's just not written down.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: 2016. So those are....
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Our points of advice. We don't have a specific formula.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: We just try to talk about things that we find interesting.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: I think that's a key too, man.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, be into what your own topic is because that'll
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: show for sure.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Although we've also found that just about everything is
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: interesting if you dig hard enough. Everything has a story.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: So if something's really boring you, maybe abandon it, but
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: you can also try digging harder.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Agreed. So good luck, Bailey. Send us a link when
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: that's up and we'll plug it for you And.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Since you're doing an interview show, your goal should be
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: with each interview to make that person cry.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: You know what, Bailey? I'll even be on your show
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: if you want.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: Whoa. Ooh.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: Nice joke. Yeah, I'll do that. If you get it
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: up and running and you need somebody, I'd be happy
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: to sit in.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: That is so nice.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: Why not?
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: Why not? I will, too, if you want.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I'll go to Athens. Uh, yeah.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Not that I don't like to, but it might just
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: be easier to do it on the phone.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Okay. We'll see. Bailey, he's laid it out there for you.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Get in touch.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: All right, Bailey. Good luck. Class of 17. That's crazy.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Yep. Who started listening in seventh grade.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: Goodness me.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with Chuck or I,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Chuck or me. Yeah, Chuck or me.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: join us on Facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: as always, join us at our home on the web.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: stuff you should know.com. For more on this and thousands
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.