Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How The Hum Works
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff
- 0:04Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm
- 0:12Speaker 1: Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And I would
- 0:16Speaker 1: say it's stuff you should know, but it's not because
- 0:18Speaker 1: I haven't said Jerry, and now I did, So this
- 0:21Speaker 1: is stuffer. Yes, are people going crazy yet? I don't know.
- 0:31Speaker 1: There's probably some people who started going crazy in the
- 0:33Speaker 1: moment they hit play. Yeah, that's Chuck's version of the hum. Yeah,
- 0:38Speaker 1: capital T, capital H. Yeah. So the home you just
- 0:42Speaker 1: did it makes sense. It's a hum. But apparently, like
- 0:46Speaker 1: if you'd listened, I don't. I wonder if you can
- 0:49Speaker 1: hear the same thing I'm hearing because you're hearing it
- 0:51Speaker 1: in your head. But there's like a gravelly quality to it,
- 0:55Speaker 1: the vocal fry. Okay, if you want to call it that,
- 0:59Speaker 1: I say gravel, but it's not. It wasn't constant. The
- 1:03Speaker 1: gravelly thing gave it texture and it was kind of
- 1:05Speaker 1: broken up a little bit. That is more akin to
- 1:07Speaker 1: the hum than the unbroken part that was going throughout. Yeah.
- 1:12Speaker 1: So apparently, while this is called the hum, and we
- 1:16Speaker 1: should eventually explain what we're talking about, it's not the
- 1:19Speaker 1: classical definition of a hum that people here, right, It's
- 1:23Speaker 1: not it's it's it's like a diesel truck idling engine
- 1:27Speaker 1: idling is with a classic description of it. Yeah, the um.
- 1:30Speaker 1: That term vocal fry is one of those you ever
- 1:32Speaker 1: hear or learn of a new expression or a thing
- 1:34Speaker 1: and they've never heard of and then you see it
- 1:36Speaker 1: everywhere that is called the bottom mine huff phenomenon. And
- 1:39Speaker 1: that's happening to me with vocal fry. Where did you
- 1:42Speaker 1: hear that? I can't remember where I initially heard it,
- 1:45Speaker 1: But it's a thing now that they say um, like
- 1:49Speaker 1: Kim Kardashian is who they always blame. It's a vocal
- 1:52Speaker 1: affectation that's supposedly young women are using now where they
- 1:56Speaker 1: go into a that lower tone um, that grably tone
- 2:00Speaker 1: on certain like the ends of sentences. You I know you.
- 2:04Speaker 1: I heard that too, and it supposedly keeps them from
- 2:06Speaker 1: being promoted at work or something. Yeah. Yeah, And it's
- 2:09Speaker 1: the female equivalent of the guys who speak up yeah,
- 2:12Speaker 1: or all the valley girl thing, which is up speak,
- 2:15Speaker 1: like the valley girls talking like that. But now it's um.
- 2:20Speaker 1: You know, he was a nice guy. But I really
- 2:21Speaker 1: wasn't sure what his motivation was. Oh, okay, yeah, that's
- 2:26Speaker 1: a great interesting that's because it was dead on. Yeah,
- 2:29Speaker 1: I totally got that you had pigtails just now. Yeah.
- 2:33Speaker 1: I was talking Emily about it the other day. She
- 2:34Speaker 1: was like, do I do that? It's like, now, you
- 2:36Speaker 1: don't do that? No, you don't. I just did that,
- 2:38Speaker 1: didn't I a little bit? But you you were doing
- 2:41Speaker 1: a different voice, So it makes sense. Yeah, anyway, I
- 2:44Speaker 1: can't escape it now. It's like every other day since
- 2:46Speaker 1: i've heard it, I've seen something about vocal frying. And
- 2:49Speaker 1: if you notice people with vocal frymore all the time, Okay, yeah,
- 2:53Speaker 1: it's annoying. Like what you're describing now has really nothing
- 2:56Speaker 1: to do with the hump, but it actually does have
- 2:58Speaker 1: a lot in common with the hum in that kind
- 3:02Speaker 1: of People who hear the hum um tended to be
- 3:07Speaker 1: able to focus in on it more and more easily
- 3:10Speaker 1: the more that they're exposed to it, which is the
- 3:13Speaker 1: opposite of what should happen to a noise that really
- 3:17Speaker 1: is inconsequential in the environment. That's right. So what we're
- 3:20Speaker 1: talking about here, Chuck, is the hum with a capital H.
- 3:24Speaker 1: That's right, what what is it? Well, it is um.
- 3:28Speaker 1: It is a sound, a mysterious sound that is heard
- 3:32Speaker 1: in places around the world by about two per cent
- 3:36Speaker 1: of the local population. Um. It is a low frequent
- 3:41Speaker 1: and we're going to get into the frequencies and all that,
- 3:44Speaker 1: but let's just call it a low frequency rumbling right now.
- 3:46Speaker 1: It's a drone. It's a vibration described sometimes as it
- 3:50Speaker 1: sounds like it's coming from nowhere or inside my own head. Um.
- 3:56Speaker 1: And it is. There are places all around the world where,
- 4:01Speaker 1: like I said, a very small population of people experience
- 4:04Speaker 1: this hum. And depending on where you are, they will
- 4:07Speaker 1: name it that home like the Auckland hume, the wings
- 4:09Speaker 1: are hum, the Bristol hume. Yeah, the Talos hum and um.
- 4:14Speaker 1: It's been described, you know, going back to the eighteen hundreds.
- 4:18Speaker 1: People have talked about it in literature, but really in
- 4:20Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies in the modern world
- 4:25Speaker 1: is when people have started describing hearing this thing that
- 4:28Speaker 1: drives them batty basically, and one of the ways that
- 4:32Speaker 1: it drives them batties. They'll say do you hear that?
- 4:35Speaker 1: And everyone else in the room will say no. The
- 4:39Speaker 1: people's yeah, and they'll be like, how do you what
- 4:41Speaker 1: do you mean you don't hear that, and everybody else
- 4:44Speaker 1: in the room goes, okay, right, maybe you're a little wacky.
- 4:48Speaker 1: It is generally at night. It's worse at night, for sure,
- 4:51Speaker 1: and generally in more rural areas. Um, which makes sense
- 4:55Speaker 1: because it's not as much noise pollution, I think. Yeah. Um.
- 4:59Speaker 1: It also is tends to be worse indoors, so at night,
- 5:03Speaker 1: which is a little weird. Indoors means that you don't
- 5:07Speaker 1: get much sleep because this is something that you can't
- 5:10Speaker 1: not focus on. People who suffer from the hume tend
- 5:13Speaker 1: to say that it dominates the soundscape. It's not something
- 5:17Speaker 1: they can just tune out. It's not something that they're
- 5:20Speaker 1: getting used to. And again, the more the more they're
- 5:23Speaker 1: exposed to it, the easier they say it is to
- 5:26Speaker 1: tune into it, and I guess become cognizant of it
- 5:29Speaker 1: yet again, so imagine about it. Yeah, and imagine being
- 5:33Speaker 1: plagued by a sound that does this to you and
- 5:36Speaker 1: that everyone else says is not real because they don't
- 5:39Speaker 1: hear it. Yeah, and it it's been I mean, we'll
- 5:42Speaker 1: get into the reasons that it maybe or may not
- 5:45Speaker 1: be happening, but it's been uh pass off as mass
- 5:50Speaker 1: hysteria UM or mass dellusion UM from everything from that
- 5:55Speaker 1: to like government conspiracy to uh legitimate legitimate noise, whether
- 6:02Speaker 1: or not it's acoustic or electromagnetic. And that's part of
- 6:05Speaker 1: the problem is is there one hum? There are lots
- 6:09Speaker 1: of harms. Is there no harm? You know, your your
- 6:13Speaker 1: skeptics will say there is no harm. It's tenatus or
- 6:16Speaker 1: it's something like that UM or some other inner ear
- 6:20Speaker 1: noise like odo acoustic noise UM. So who knows, but
- 6:26Speaker 1: that's there. There are two ways that the hum. Okay,
- 6:29Speaker 1: so again, let's let's restate this and let's put ourselves
- 6:31Speaker 1: in the position of the outsider, because I don't experience them.
- 6:35Speaker 1: So I am anced. I don't either knock on wood
- 6:37Speaker 1: because the more I researched it some more I'm like,
- 6:39Speaker 1: oh God, I hope I never do well. We we
- 6:42Speaker 1: left out one um, one quality of it that that
- 6:45Speaker 1: is common around the world. And when we say around
- 6:48Speaker 1: the world, it tends to be curiously concentrated in the
- 6:53Speaker 1: West um and in the euro I didn't notice that
- 6:57Speaker 1: euro ancestry West. Yeah, I didn't really see anything about
- 7:01Speaker 1: any countries in the East. If you look at UM,
- 7:03Speaker 1: if you look at there is a guy who runs
- 7:07Speaker 1: a m Glenn McPherson. Yes, Glenn McPherson runs something called
- 7:11Speaker 1: the World HUM Map and Database. And we ran into
- 7:14Speaker 1: Glen mic Ferson. Before we get too far, we should
- 7:16Speaker 1: give a huge shout out to Jared Keller over at
- 7:19Speaker 1: Mike who wrote this amazing article called a mysterious sound
- 7:22Speaker 1: is driving people insane and nobody knows what's causing it.
- 7:26Speaker 1: Totally worth reading UM. And he talks about a guy
- 7:30Speaker 1: named Glenn McPherson who's a professor in UH British Columbia,
- 7:35Speaker 1: and he set up a website called the World HUM
- 7:37Speaker 1: Map and Database. And so anybody who hears the HUM
- 7:40Speaker 1: can go and fill out a questionnaire and then it
- 7:43Speaker 1: takes that data and puts a dot on the map,
- 7:45Speaker 1: and you can hover over the dot and get the data. Right.
- 7:48Speaker 1: If you look at it, it's just the United States,
- 7:52Speaker 1: Great Britain, your Western Europe, Canada, South Africa. It's pretty
- 7:57Speaker 1: it's it's unusual that there's nothing in Africa except South Africa. UM.
- 8:02Speaker 1: And it's just in these European ancestry Western countries. Right.
- 8:07Speaker 1: On the one hand, you could say, well, that's because
- 8:10Speaker 1: this is an English language database, thanks, and so of
- 8:16Speaker 1: course somebody whose native languages like Swahili isn't gonna go
- 8:19Speaker 1: onto this. I have no idea what I'm typing here,
- 8:22Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's one explanation. There are
- 8:25Speaker 1: other explanations too, and now we arrive at one of them.
- 8:28Speaker 1: We're going back on the outside because you don't hear
- 8:31Speaker 1: the hump. I don't hear the hump. And let's say
- 8:33Speaker 1: that we're your nose and throat guys, and somebody comes
- 8:35Speaker 1: to us and says, I'm going crazy, like I'm seriously
- 8:39Speaker 1: contemplating suicide because this hum is keeping me up at night.
- 8:42Speaker 1: I haven't slept at weeks. I'm irritable, I have headaches,
- 8:46Speaker 1: nose bleeds, I'm nauseated all the time. These are all
- 8:49Speaker 1: common symptoms of HUM sufferers. You're you're gonna think one
- 8:54Speaker 1: of two things as a doctor a physician. One is tonitus, yeah,
- 9:01Speaker 1: and then the other one is you're crazy that you're
- 9:04Speaker 1: you're driving yourself crazy. Um. Both of them can kind
- 9:08Speaker 1: of be explained away, and they are explained away by
- 9:11Speaker 1: this guy named David Demming, and he is a geoscientist
- 9:15Speaker 1: from University of Oklahoma, and he wrote what is probably
- 9:19Speaker 1: the definitive study on the harm so far back in
- 9:23Speaker 1: two thousand four. That's right, So Demming apparently if you
- 9:27Speaker 1: look at his research, there is another theory. Uh. And
- 9:31Speaker 1: this is where the US government comes into play, because
- 9:34Speaker 1: there's a couple of UM. There's a couple of theories
- 9:37Speaker 1: revolving around the US military and whether or not they
- 9:40Speaker 1: are causing this UM. One is with their High Frequency
- 9:46Speaker 1: Active Auroral Research Program h a a ARP in Alaska
- 9:51Speaker 1: and they transmit RF signals into the Hono sphere. And
- 9:56Speaker 1: very well, we should we go ahead and start talking
- 9:58Speaker 1: about the frequency ranges VLF and e l F. VLF
- 10:04Speaker 1: is very low frequency and those are waves at point
- 10:07Speaker 1: one hurts and the other one is e l F. Right,
- 10:14Speaker 1: is there extremely low frequencies and they're in the range
- 10:16Speaker 1: of UM the same amount of hurts, but their wavelength
- 10:19Speaker 1: is up to like a hundred thousand meters. Right, that's
- 10:22Speaker 1: an extremely long wavelength. That's right. And UM people who think,
- 10:27Speaker 1: you know, they call them HUM investigators, Uh, they believe
- 10:31Speaker 1: pretty much that it is VLF and e L f tones, UM,
- 10:37Speaker 1: that are driving these people crazy, and those tones can
- 10:40Speaker 1: drive you crazy. They do have adverse effects on the body. Um.
- 10:45Speaker 1: You know you you probably heard it about a lot
- 10:47Speaker 1: when it comes to like cell phone radiation that kind
- 10:49Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah. But UM, whether or not E l
- 10:53Speaker 1: F and VLF is or are the hum is what's
- 10:57Speaker 1: a matter of much debate. It is matter of debate
- 11:00Speaker 1: because and it's also kind of a matter of faith
- 11:03Speaker 1: because what you're talking about there with UM E l
- 11:06Speaker 1: F and vlf frequencies is uh tones. Those are radio
- 11:12Speaker 1: waves and radio is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, right,
- 11:16Speaker 1: So it has been shown at very very high frequencies,
- 11:21Speaker 1: humans can detect electro magnetics sound. We take it as sound,
- 11:27Speaker 1: which is weird because it's not supposed to happen like that,
- 11:30Speaker 1: but that's how we experience it. It's not like at
- 11:32Speaker 1: a high frequency we suddenly see it. We hear it.
- 11:36Speaker 1: And if you are familiar with the UM comment six
- 11:41Speaker 1: that the European Space Agency recently landed on, which is crazy,
- 11:45Speaker 1: that comment was found to emit a an electromagnetic clicking sound,
- 11:51Speaker 1: which is how we experience electromagnets or electromagnetic sound at
- 11:56Speaker 1: a certain frequency, and so because it's a clicking sound,
- 12:00Speaker 1: it's not a hum at all. Some people are saying, well,
- 12:02Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense. This is a hum. It
- 12:04Speaker 1: doesn't if we can hear it, it's it's it doesn't
- 12:08Speaker 1: sound like an idoling diesel engine. It sounds like a
- 12:11Speaker 1: clicking sound or something like that. And then what's more,
- 12:15Speaker 1: what this guy is saying is that if it's a
- 12:18Speaker 1: very low frequency or extremely low frequency, that's the opposite
- 12:21Speaker 1: of how we hear electromagnetic radiation. We heard a very
- 12:25Speaker 1: high frequency, not a very low frequency. So which one
- 12:28Speaker 1: is it. So, yes, it's still a huge matter of
- 12:31Speaker 1: debate even as to whether the hum. First of all,
- 12:34Speaker 1: if it does exist, if it's a single source, single source,
- 12:38Speaker 1: and then um, if it is a single source or
- 12:41Speaker 1: any kind of source, is it electromagnetic or is it acoustic?
- 12:45Speaker 1: And we'll unpack the difference between those things right after this.
- 12:58Speaker 1: So as whether or not the hum exist. The Canadian
- 13:02Speaker 1: government actually part of the problem is it's hard to
- 13:04Speaker 1: get research done on this because very small number of
- 13:08Speaker 1: people experience it, and a lot of them are called crackpots. Yeah,
- 13:12Speaker 1: so it's tough to get funding for research. But Luckily,
- 13:15Speaker 1: there's a country called Canada that will fund things like this,
- 13:19Speaker 1: and uh Dr Colin novak Um spent a year listening
- 13:22Speaker 1: to the Windsor Home in Ontario, and what they found
- 13:26Speaker 1: was the hum is real. And they traced the source
- 13:29Speaker 1: in that case too um on the Michigan side of
- 13:32Speaker 1: the Detroit River. UM and basically a steel plant on
- 13:36Speaker 1: Zug Island. Then that sounds like an industrial plant, ily does,
- 13:41Speaker 1: and it supposedly generates a lot of VLF waves UM
- 13:44Speaker 1: when they're operating. So in this instance, at least the
- 13:49Speaker 1: HUM was a real thing, and they found out it
- 13:52Speaker 1: was a tone created from basically an industrial plant, right,
- 13:55Speaker 1: So they apparently took steps to cut down on whatever
- 14:00Speaker 1: energy it was emitting. Yeah, they turned off the HUM
- 14:03Speaker 1: machine right exactly, and all of a sudden, um. Some
- 14:07Speaker 1: people said, hey, that worked, a lot of people said
- 14:09Speaker 1: that did absolutely nothing. The home's still out there. And
- 14:12Speaker 1: then the most people said, I still don't know what
- 14:14Speaker 1: you're talking about. So that that and that wasn't actually
- 14:16Speaker 1: the first time government has looked into the hum. In Taos,
- 14:21Speaker 1: New Mexico, there's something called the Taos Home and apparently,
- 14:26Speaker 1: uh somebody wrote in to complain about it to a
- 14:29Speaker 1: local newspaper, and all of a sudden, like hundreds more
- 14:31Speaker 1: people said, yes, I hear the same thing. I've been
- 14:34Speaker 1: hearing the same thing for years. What is going on?
- 14:37Speaker 1: And enough of enough people said something in New Mexico
- 14:40Speaker 1: that it prompted an investigation by the University of New
- 14:43Speaker 1: Mexico and Sandy A Labs, which I think is like
- 14:46Speaker 1: a government affiliated kind of Um, well, it's a neat
- 14:50Speaker 1: research lab. They deal sorts of cool clandestine stuff, right, Um,
- 14:56Speaker 1: very much so. And actually the X Files mentioned the
- 14:58Speaker 1: hum and episode called Drive. Yeah. Interesting, they talk about it.
- 15:02Speaker 1: There was a couple of characters had to constantly move
- 15:06Speaker 1: westward or else they would suffer from the pressure of
- 15:08Speaker 1: this hum that no one else could hear. Let me guess,
- 15:11Speaker 1: Mulder believe Scully did not exactly how did you saw
- 15:14Speaker 1: that one? No? I didn't, but you know, so, Um,
- 15:18Speaker 1: they looked into the Taos hum and they could never
- 15:21Speaker 1: figure out what it was, so I think they kind
- 15:23Speaker 1: of wrote it off as either mass delusion or a
- 15:26Speaker 1: bunch of people had tenitas or what have you, which
- 15:29Speaker 1: is again, that's the that's the easy that's the easy answer.
- 15:33Speaker 1: Like you have tonitas. The problem is if if a
- 15:37Speaker 1: person has tenitas, they the sound is internal, like they remember.
- 15:41Speaker 1: There's like the idea that the isn't it a high
- 15:44Speaker 1: pitch ringing. Yes, usually it can. It can vary in
- 15:47Speaker 1: in um and pitch, but for the most part it's
- 15:52Speaker 1: you can tell it's internal with the hum. Everyone who
- 15:56Speaker 1: experiences the hum says, no, this is external, and it's
- 15:59Speaker 1: it's they're so convinced it's external that they'll go out
- 16:03Speaker 1: at night when it's worse and try to find the
- 16:05Speaker 1: source of it. They'll drive around their city or their
- 16:07Speaker 1: neighborhood or walk around and look for what it is
- 16:11Speaker 1: that's driving them crazy and they'll never find it, or
- 16:13Speaker 1: they'll turn off the power of their house, or I mean,
- 16:15Speaker 1: there's all sorts of extreme um, and of course it's
- 16:19Speaker 1: all like anecdotal, but people that are driven to suicide
- 16:23Speaker 1: or this one guy who intentionally deafened himself with a chainsaw,
- 16:28Speaker 1: which I'm not sure how you do. I guess I
- 16:29Speaker 1: think um and possibly even murder, which we'll get to
- 16:35Speaker 1: in a bit, which is pretty interesting. But the point
- 16:39Speaker 1: is that it's not just something that's just bugging people
- 16:45Speaker 1: like it. It is having the hum. There are people
- 16:47Speaker 1: all over the world that don't know each other, that
- 16:50Speaker 1: have never met that, um, are suffering from something that
- 16:55Speaker 1: they hear that other people can't hear in concentrated areas. Yeah,
- 16:59Speaker 1: and then and that's the affecting their quality of life.
- 17:02Speaker 1: And UM, I don't know if I ever finished the sentence,
- 17:06Speaker 1: which is weird That means I'm really interested in something.
- 17:09Speaker 1: But um, did we say or did I say that
- 17:12Speaker 1: people who suffer from the hum tend to be in
- 17:15Speaker 1: their fifties and older. Yeah, that's one of the markers
- 17:18Speaker 1: between Okay, so there's a this is something in the
- 17:22Speaker 1: favor of acoustic sound. Um. So, acoustic sound is a
- 17:26Speaker 1: compression wave and it's something that's carried through and propagates
- 17:30Speaker 1: through media. So um, there it's a vibration in the air.
- 17:35Speaker 1: Whereas an electromagnetics wave comes from an electrical or a
- 17:40Speaker 1: magnetic or both source. This is like the vibe vibration.
- 17:45Speaker 1: It's a sound wave. That's that's an acoustic wave. Right. So, UM,
- 17:49Speaker 1: as we age, say you get to around fifty years
- 17:52Speaker 1: of age, your ability to hear high frequency and mid
- 17:56Speaker 1: frequency acoustic sound diminishes. Your low frequency capabilities go undiminished,
- 18:03Speaker 1: so it's not like they increase, but comparatively speaking, you
- 18:07Speaker 1: get better at hearing low frequencies around age fifty. Interesting.
- 18:11Speaker 1: So what some people think is that if it is electromagnetic,
- 18:16Speaker 1: then there are some people out there who are capable
- 18:20Speaker 1: of hearing electromagnetic waves while the rest of us can't
- 18:24Speaker 1: and they're being driven crazy by some source that we
- 18:28Speaker 1: have yet to identify. UM, or if it's acoustic, that
- 18:33Speaker 1: there are some people out there who are superheroes of
- 18:36Speaker 1: low frequency sound, which would also kind of um do
- 18:40Speaker 1: away with another diagnosis that a lot of doctors give people,
- 18:43Speaker 1: which is hyper accusus, which to me is worth a
- 18:47Speaker 1: whole other podcast. It's another people kill themselves over this
- 18:51Speaker 1: heightened hyper hearing, which where like this, the rustle of
- 18:55Speaker 1: clothes is unbearable. The thing is is, if you have
- 18:59Speaker 1: hyper accute, says, it's not just gonna be some home
- 19:02Speaker 1: that you hear and everything else is normal, which is
- 19:05Speaker 1: what hum sufferers experience. You would hear everything on this
- 19:09Speaker 1: grand scale. You'd be like Spider Man exactly. So what
- 19:12Speaker 1: they think is that there are people who UM are
- 19:14Speaker 1: predisposed to hearing low frequency sounds way better than other
- 19:18Speaker 1: people and that it comes as their higher and mid
- 19:22Speaker 1: frequency capabilities diminished with age. But again, what are they hearing? Well,
- 19:28Speaker 1: that's right, um. I mentioned earlier the h A A
- 19:32Speaker 1: r P program that the US government military is doing
- 19:36Speaker 1: in Alaska. The other one that I teased um is
- 19:39Speaker 1: the TACAMO, the Take Charge and Move Out system. On
- 19:43Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, the U. S. Navy basically adopted this
- 19:46Speaker 1: program to be able to U communicate with submarines, long
- 19:51Speaker 1: range bombers UM ballistic missiles during nuclear war. And they
- 19:55Speaker 1: use very low frequency radio waves to do so. And
- 20:00Speaker 1: you know, it's a real thing, but is it the
- 20:03Speaker 1: hum um? Other conspiracy theorists will say that the US
- 20:07Speaker 1: government is also using these things to target individuals UM
- 20:12Speaker 1: and of course that's you know, you want to say
- 20:14Speaker 1: that's probably bunk, but you never know. Well, you know,
- 20:16Speaker 1: what the cool irony is that Jared Keller points out
- 20:19Speaker 1: is that if the HUM is electromagnetic in nature, tinfoil
- 20:23Speaker 1: hat and aluminum foil hat would actually work because it
- 20:27Speaker 1: blocks out about I write, but like just a thin
- 20:31Speaker 1: layer of aluminum can block out like of electromagnetic waves.
- 20:37Speaker 1: So that's pretty ironic that it might actually work. Although
- 20:43Speaker 1: I don't I haven't heard whether that helps people with
- 20:45Speaker 1: the hum, if they put on a tinfoil hat, if
- 20:49Speaker 1: that would help or not, or if it has UM.
- 20:52Speaker 1: But speaking of Tacomo, uh, if you read David Demming's
- 20:56Speaker 1: UM journal article, it's called the hum and an homeless
- 21:00Speaker 1: sound heard around the world. And there is a journal
- 21:03Speaker 1: called the Journal of Scientific Exploration, which is a pure
- 21:06Speaker 1: viewed scientific journal that accepts articles on things on the
- 21:10Speaker 1: fringe of science, which the home most decidedly is UM.
- 21:15Speaker 1: David demon gets into Tacomo and he basically says, this
- 21:18Speaker 1: is a secret government program. So obviously we can't get
- 21:21Speaker 1: any real answers. We don't know how often it works
- 21:24Speaker 1: or how often they're transmitting or anything, but we do
- 21:26Speaker 1: know it is a real thing. And he correlates some
- 21:29Speaker 1: dates when there's like upgrades to the system and then
- 21:32Speaker 1: all of a sudden in this one area around the
- 21:34Speaker 1: same time there's the Kokomo Indiana home starts UM. So
- 21:39Speaker 1: he he does a good job of correlating, and I
- 21:41Speaker 1: think that's kind of what he settles on. He believes
- 21:43Speaker 1: that it's probably the TACAMO program that this very low
- 21:48Speaker 1: frequency transmission. Two submarines underwater from airplanes above is being
- 21:55Speaker 1: propagated around the world, and that would suggest that it's
- 21:59Speaker 1: a global so right, that it's just some people can
- 22:02Speaker 1: hear these radio waves that you're not supposed to be
- 22:06Speaker 1: able to hear. Yeah, or it's multiple sources combined, like
- 22:11Speaker 1: a combined effect, like if you live near an industrial
- 22:14Speaker 1: plant that has a machine that's making the sound that
- 22:17Speaker 1: maybe certain people are retuned to or not. I don't know. Well,
- 22:20Speaker 1: it's another characteristic is that it's mostly experienced in the country.
- 22:26Speaker 1: Do see. I just chalk that up to noise pollution
- 22:28Speaker 1: being red. Yeah. Like when I worked at a convenient
- 22:31Speaker 1: store in the midnight shift the um. When I worked
- 22:35Speaker 1: during the day, I would not notice anything, But when
- 22:37Speaker 1: I worked up there at night at three am, I
- 22:40Speaker 1: would hear the buzzing of the fluorescent lights and it
- 22:42Speaker 1: would drive me crazy. Uh you know, I would turn
- 22:45Speaker 1: them off and people would think we were closed. So
- 22:48Speaker 1: you the thing is you eventually stopped hearing that, right, Well,
- 22:52Speaker 1: when I left work. That's called habituation. So habituation means
- 22:56Speaker 1: that you are capable of so like you'd focus on
- 23:01Speaker 1: these things the whole time you were there. Well, yeah,
- 23:04Speaker 1: in the middle, I wouldn't focus on it, but I
- 23:07Speaker 1: would notice. I'd be reading a book and I would
- 23:09Speaker 1: just hear that sound, you know, But I never noticed
- 23:12Speaker 1: it during the day when the lights were on. But
- 23:14Speaker 1: so like when you didn't hear it, that's habituation where
- 23:17Speaker 1: like you're you're exposed to something, your brain says, uh,
- 23:21Speaker 1: this is totally it's not a threat. I don't have
- 23:23Speaker 1: to pay attention to it anymore. So anytime in this
- 23:26Speaker 1: context that I hear that sound, I don't have to
- 23:29Speaker 1: become cognizant of it. Now apparently you did. You kind
- 23:32Speaker 1: of like fell into cognizance like here or there, and
- 23:35Speaker 1: like you'd notice it again. But for a normal human being,
- 23:39Speaker 1: when you're exposed to something like that over and over again,
- 23:42Speaker 1: the less you notice it. But like we said with
- 23:44Speaker 1: the hum the more you're exposed to it, the easier
- 23:47Speaker 1: it is to tune in. And what that's called no,
- 23:51Speaker 1: And not only can you not escape it, you can
- 23:54Speaker 1: catch it easier and easier, Like you can become cognizant
- 23:57Speaker 1: of it easier and easier the more you're exposed to it.
- 24:00Speaker 1: It's called sensitization, where I guess another explanation for the
- 24:05Speaker 1: Thus the suffers of the HUM if they are hearing something.
- 24:08Speaker 1: One of the reasons that it drives them so baddy
- 24:11Speaker 1: is because their habituation levels are low, but they're sensitive.
- 24:16Speaker 1: Sensitization levels are high, so they're not able to ignore it,
- 24:21Speaker 1: and some part of their brain is focusing in on
- 24:25Speaker 1: and this creates this, I guess, a perfect storm of holaciousness.
- 24:32Speaker 1: All right, Well, right after this break, Um, I did
- 24:35Speaker 1: mention murder, So we're gonna talk about one of them
- 24:38Speaker 1: more interesting parts of the effects of the HUM right
- 24:42Speaker 1: after this. Alright, So I mentioned murder, like I said,
- 24:50Speaker 1: and one of the things that UM. What is the
- 24:54Speaker 1: guy's name, Steve Callaz. He's a mechanical He's a mechanical
- 24:59Speaker 1: and near and HUM investigator in Connecticut, and I believe
- 25:04Speaker 1: he was the one that traced UM the Windsor home
- 25:06Speaker 1: to Zug Island and he has done UM some research
- 25:11Speaker 1: that he believes the HAM and others believed the HAM
- 25:14Speaker 1: could be responsible for UM well for killing other people.
- 25:20Speaker 1: UH specifically in his case, he actually approached Connecticut State
- 25:24Speaker 1: police investigators after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut,
- 25:29Speaker 1: and he said the HUM from a nearby gas pipeline
- 25:33Speaker 1: might have driven Adam Lanza two well have contributed to
- 25:38Speaker 1: driving him to do something like this. And I don't
- 25:41Speaker 1: think he's saying this made him crazy so he did this.
- 25:44Speaker 1: I think he's saying, fragile minded people could be pushed
- 25:48Speaker 1: over the edge. It could be the last straw for somebody. Um.
- 25:52Speaker 1: And I don't know how much credence it has, but
- 25:55Speaker 1: investigators did at least include that in the documents. They
- 25:59Speaker 1: really to the public, so they thought it was worthy
- 26:02Speaker 1: enough to put in, you know, among the seven thousand
- 26:05Speaker 1: other documents to release to the public. And he's not
- 26:08Speaker 1: the only one. Um. Remember the Navy Yard shooting in
- 26:13Speaker 1: Aaron Alexis, he fully came out and said, um, quote,
- 26:19Speaker 1: ultra low frequency attack is what I've been a subject
- 26:22Speaker 1: to for the last three years, I'm sorry three months,
- 26:25Speaker 1: and to be perfectly honest, that is what has driven
- 26:27Speaker 1: me to this end. Quote. And he scrawled and scratched
- 26:31Speaker 1: e LF on the shotgun barrel that he used to
- 26:34Speaker 1: kill twelve people at the Washington Navy Yard and he yeah,
- 26:39Speaker 1: and he scratched my e l F weapon on the stock.
- 26:42Speaker 1: I think yeah, And um, basically conspiracy theorists would say, well,
- 26:49Speaker 1: this is clearly driving people to do things like this.
- 26:52Speaker 1: Skeptics are gonna say, no, these people are delusional and
- 26:55Speaker 1: they're the ones who believe the government is shooting them
- 26:58Speaker 1: with these U. E. F tones and driving them crazy.
- 27:04Speaker 1: But either way, it's a little startling that someone would
- 27:07Speaker 1: scratch that in their shotgun before they did something like
- 27:10Speaker 1: that and and blame it on that outright. But that
- 27:12Speaker 1: that raises another point, like you know, how exposed was
- 27:15Speaker 1: he to those conspiracy theories. Like a lot of people
- 27:19Speaker 1: would say, well, there, you know, there's a Yahoo group
- 27:21Speaker 1: dedicated to the HUM. There's that one world HUM map
- 27:24Speaker 1: and database, and like people who go see these things,
- 27:28Speaker 1: I mean, are they are they just suggestible and they're like,
- 27:30Speaker 1: oh yeah, I can hear it. Yeah. Um. David Deming
- 27:33Speaker 1: points out, like that's crazy. The idea that people are
- 27:38Speaker 1: tuning into this thing that's having a really um diminishing
- 27:41Speaker 1: effect on their well being as part of just a
- 27:45Speaker 1: a mass delusion or something like that kind of goes
- 27:48Speaker 1: against this. The typical psychology of mass delusion where people
- 27:51Speaker 1: join crowds to be to get some sort of positive
- 27:56Speaker 1: benefit or effect from it, and you can argue there
- 27:59Speaker 1: get they're feeling a sense of inclusion or whatever by
- 28:02Speaker 1: saying I hear the hum too, even in a very
- 28:04Speaker 1: small minority. But apparently if you are a hum sufferer,
- 28:09Speaker 1: like your life is screwed up and you're not a
- 28:12Speaker 1: happy person. Yeah, I will say this. One thing I've
- 28:14Speaker 1: noticed about conspiracy theorists is none of them ever believe one. Yeah.
- 28:20Speaker 1: It seems like they believe a lot of them, you know. Uh,
- 28:24Speaker 1: So that's all I have to say about that. Well,
- 28:25Speaker 1: there's one other thing. So not only is this driving
- 28:29Speaker 1: people crazy, there is evidence that if this does exist,
- 28:32Speaker 1: if there is something that um if there's some sort
- 28:36Speaker 1: of what's called low frequency noise that's in the environment,
- 28:40Speaker 1: it is, it's everywhere, but if people are are being
- 28:43Speaker 1: exposed to it, there's evidence that biologically speaking, it can
- 28:47Speaker 1: have an impact. And they're just happened to be this
- 28:51Speaker 1: incredible real world laboratory that's sprung up in Portugal in
- 28:56Speaker 1: the late seventies because a guy named Caste Obronco was
- 29:01Speaker 1: put in charge of the Portuguese Air Forces maintenance, repair
- 29:06Speaker 1: and manufacturing plant. It's called ogma um or I don't
- 29:10Speaker 1: I don't know Portuguese accent or else I do it.
- 29:13Speaker 1: We'll just call it ogma UM. And he happened to
- 29:17Speaker 1: just be sitting there and he watched a aircraft technician
- 29:21Speaker 1: wander around aimlessly in what apparently looked a lot like
- 29:25Speaker 1: an epileptic seizure to this doctor. And it was during
- 29:29Speaker 1: in what's called an aircraft run up procedure where they're
- 29:32Speaker 1: like going through all the systems, and this guy was
- 29:35Speaker 1: just standing there and all of a sudden, he's wandering around.
- 29:37Speaker 1: So he looked into it and found that ten of
- 29:43Speaker 1: the workers at this aircraft repair shop were diagnosed with
- 29:49Speaker 1: late onset epilepsy. And if you look at this population
- 29:53Speaker 1: and compared to the population of Portugal at large, not
- 29:56Speaker 1: you wouldn't expect ten percent to have it. You'd expect
- 29:59Speaker 1: point to sent to have it. So the fact that
- 30:02Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who are being diagnosed
- 30:04Speaker 1: with this really um led them to believe that they
- 30:06Speaker 1: were exposed to this low frequency noise or that it
- 30:12Speaker 1: was having a dangerous effect on them. And this one
- 30:15Speaker 1: guy who was a worker there got really interested in
- 30:17Speaker 1: all this and he created a living will. His name
- 30:21Speaker 1: was Phelippe Pedro and Phelippe Pedro was like, you cut
- 30:24Speaker 1: me open the moment I die and doing autopsy, and
- 30:28Speaker 1: they found this guy was messed up, like his his ajorda.
- 30:33Speaker 1: His heart was thicken the walls were thickened inexplicably chi
- 30:38Speaker 1: yeah pretty much. Um, but no, that would be explicable.
- 30:42Speaker 1: So he was a very healthy person. Then apparently what
- 30:45Speaker 1: they found doesn't jibe with his lifestyle he was. He
- 30:48Speaker 1: was diagnosed with late onset epilepsy. He died at age
- 30:51Speaker 1: fifty eight. Um. He had a thickened he had thickened
- 30:55Speaker 1: heart tissue, he had a tumor and his kidney, he
- 30:57Speaker 1: had a tumor in his liver. Um. And apparently, now
- 31:01Speaker 1: thanks to this guy and his autopsy, he kind of
- 31:04Speaker 1: like laid the groundwork for this investigation into low frequency
- 31:07Speaker 1: noise being dangerous for humans. Even though we don't feel anything,
- 31:13Speaker 1: but on a cellular level, being exposed to this stuff
- 31:16Speaker 1: has these effects. UM. So apparently, if you have thickening
- 31:20Speaker 1: of your heart tissue without any kind of inflammation response, um,
- 31:26Speaker 1: that is a classic sign of low frequency noise damage.
- 31:31Speaker 1: It's what's called uh fibro acoustic disease, which certain people
- 31:38Speaker 1: may be susceptible to and others are not. In theory, supposedly,
- 31:44Speaker 1: anyone exposed to it would be susceptible to it. The
- 31:50Speaker 1: way that it ties into the HUM is some people
- 31:51Speaker 1: might actually be able to hear what they're being exposed to,
- 31:55Speaker 1: while while most people might not. So we're all exposed
- 31:58Speaker 1: to it. Then. Yeah, the in this article, I can't
- 32:01Speaker 1: remember the name of it, but it was it was
- 32:03Speaker 1: basically an overview of this this um aircraft place by
- 32:08Speaker 1: some Portuguese scientists. Um. They they said, it's almost impossible
- 32:13Speaker 1: to get a control group to compare because everybody's exposed
- 32:17Speaker 1: to low frequency noise, just most of us aren't aware
- 32:20Speaker 1: of it. It's just everywhere, but it's not considered a
- 32:24Speaker 1: nuisance except for that two to eleven of poor people
- 32:29Speaker 1: who suffer from hearing the home and their accounts differ
- 32:33Speaker 1: wildly as well. Uh So that's it's tough to study,
- 32:37Speaker 1: and you can't get funding to study because it's French
- 32:40Speaker 1: science unless you're in Canada. So they say, turn a
- 32:44Speaker 1: fan on at night. Really that's what one guy does,
- 32:48Speaker 1: makes sense, Yeah, turn on a fan or like some
- 32:50Speaker 1: sort of like they need white noise to john it
- 32:52Speaker 1: out and that helps. But get that up, get the
- 32:55Speaker 1: white noise out. That's what I sleep to. Uh again,
- 32:59Speaker 1: go read the awesome article by Jared Keller. Yeah, Life
- 33:03Speaker 1: Science had a couple of good articles yeah. Um, and
- 33:05Speaker 1: then David Demming has the Home and Anomalous Sound Heard
- 33:08Speaker 1: round the World. Uh. And then if this kind of
- 33:11Speaker 1: stuff floats your boat, you might want to check out
- 33:13Speaker 1: some of our friends sites to Um, there's a great
- 33:16Speaker 1: podcast by our friend Roman mars Ed Invisible, who would
- 33:20Speaker 1: be able to explain a lot of the science behind
- 33:23Speaker 1: this kind of thing. No, but it's kind of up
- 33:26Speaker 1: his alley, like the vibro acoustic idea. I can totally
- 33:30Speaker 1: see him getting into that. And I just think if
- 33:33Speaker 1: somebody dug that, they dig n in Visible and then
- 33:36Speaker 1: damn interesting. Another great site that would definitely have probably
- 33:40Speaker 1: has something about the home on it. Yeah, and watch
- 33:42Speaker 1: the X Files. Yeah right yeah, our pal molder. Uh.
- 33:46Speaker 1: And of course you can um hang out at how
- 33:49Speaker 1: stuff works. You can just type the home in. I
- 33:51Speaker 1: don't think it'll bring up an article, but see what happens. Yeah,
- 33:54Speaker 1: we don't have one yet, but yeah, type home into
- 33:57Speaker 1: the search bar and see what comes up. It's just
- 33:59Speaker 1: a fun game. And since I said the search bar.
- 34:02Speaker 1: It's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call it this
- 34:07Speaker 1: um limousine Ranch. Hey guys, I finally have a story
- 34:11Speaker 1: for you after listening for over five years. I live
- 34:14Speaker 1: in super rural South Dakota, not just the regular rural
- 34:18Speaker 1: South Dakota. My town is only about people and it
- 34:21Speaker 1: is the largest town within a hundred miles radius. The
- 34:25Speaker 1: main business here is agriculture and ranching a big surprise.
- 34:29Speaker 1: After I married my plumber husband from St. Louis, we
- 34:32Speaker 1: moved back to my little hometown six years ago, where
- 34:34Speaker 1: we started a plumbing business. He started plumbing business. Shortly
- 34:38Speaker 1: after moving here, we got a call to go to
- 34:39Speaker 1: Anderson's limousin ranch, limousine ranch with no E on the end.
- 34:44Speaker 1: After driving out to the country and lots of gravel roads, later,
- 34:47Speaker 1: he came up on the ranch and failed to see
- 34:48Speaker 1: any limos He said he couldn't figure out where all
- 34:51Speaker 1: the limousines were, uh, and why there would be a
- 34:53Speaker 1: limousine company dealership in the middle of nowhere on an
- 34:57Speaker 1: Indian reservation, I guess. He asked the owners and they
- 35:00Speaker 1: splain that they run limousine cattle on their ranch, which
- 35:04Speaker 1: I looked up. It's a type of cattle from the
- 35:06Speaker 1: Limousine region of France. They don't look like they're wearing
- 35:09Speaker 1: cloaks or anything. Now, my brother and I teased them
- 35:12Speaker 1: for quite some time on this to get a mental
- 35:13Speaker 1: image of the absurdity. Imagine the vast prairie of dances
- 35:17Speaker 1: with wolves or Fargo, and then expect to see a
- 35:19Speaker 1: limousine dealership out there. Um or just a bunch of
- 35:23Speaker 1: limousines is kind of meandering around the field. That sounds
- 35:26Speaker 1: like something that would happen in Fargo. That's very Cohen
- 35:29Speaker 1: Brothers esque but not. Kevin Costner asking that he's pretty
- 35:34Speaker 1: self serious. Yeah, he didn't look like he has much
- 35:37Speaker 1: of us since humor Diousie, I don't know he was
- 35:38Speaker 1: in Bull Durham. It's funny. Well, yeah, back in the
- 35:42Speaker 1: day when he was Bible. I watched the preview only
- 35:47Speaker 1: for that movie Draft Day that he did recently. Yeah,
- 35:50Speaker 1: I can barely make it through the preview. The preview
- 35:53Speaker 1: built it up. They were like, I can't believe he's
- 35:55Speaker 1: doing it. Is he really going to do this? And
- 35:56Speaker 1: it's about the NFL Draft and he's like a GM
- 36:00Speaker 1: and they built it up to this thing, and finally
- 36:02Speaker 1: I was. It was when it was in the movie
- 36:04Speaker 1: theater the preview. I leaned over to my buddy Scotty,
- 36:06Speaker 1: who you know, and I was like, like, what does
- 36:08Speaker 1: he do? Does he like open fire on the room
- 36:10Speaker 1: and like shoot people or is it just some sort
- 36:12Speaker 1: of trade. It's a team. Yeah, but they were building
- 36:16Speaker 1: up like I can't believe this is happening. Did you
- 36:19Speaker 1: ever see the movie? No, what was Scott's take on it?
- 36:22Speaker 1: He just laughed and said, yeah, exactly. That sounds like
- 36:26Speaker 1: our Scott. That's he's the guy that laughs at things
- 36:28Speaker 1: like that. Um, that is from Jennifer Coleman. Oh, I
- 36:34Speaker 1: forgot we were even doing. Listen to the mail, that's right, Jennifer,
- 36:37Speaker 1: And Um, you should tease your husband for that. That's
- 36:39Speaker 1: pretty funny stuff. And he should stick to the plumbing business.
- 36:42Speaker 1: Yeah for real, not the limousine company finding business. Uh.
- 36:48Speaker 1: If you want to mock someone you love on our show,
- 36:52Speaker 1: you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
- 36:55Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
- 36:58Speaker 1: you should know. You can send us an email to
- 37:00Speaker 1: stuff podcasts at how stuff works dot com. You also
- 37:04Speaker 1: can do the most important thing you will do today
- 37:06Speaker 1: or any day. Go to Stuff you Should Know dot
- 37:10Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
- 37:18Speaker 1: Is it How Stuff Works dot com