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Short Stuff: Third Man Syndrome · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and it's just us right now. But that's
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: okay because we have a third and fourth man with
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: us today in the form of Jerry and Dave.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: That's right. I feel I sense their presence.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: I do too, and they're guiding us on. They're saying,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: come on, you guys, you can finish the short stuff.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: It's gonna be a good one.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: I can feel it, Chuck, I think we're gonna be okay.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: We just demonstrated a really weird phenomenon pretty well, if
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: you ask me, I think we did a great job.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Just now everyone's saying so, but we just demonstrated this
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: weird phenomenon called the third Man syndrome. There's an author
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: named John Geiger who for some reason changed syndrome to factor.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: But that's typically what it's called, this third man syndrome.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: And like I said, it's weird. Chuck, take it away.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: It has nothing to do with the movie The Third Man,
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: which was good, great movie. And immediately when you sent
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: this along and I saw the title, I thought it
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: might have something to do with that. And it doesn't
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: have to be a man. It really should be the
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: third person syndrome. Sure, but it is this phenomenon that
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: has been talked about by many people over hundreds of years.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Where someone is in dire straits, oftentimes it's like somebody
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  Speaker 3: sort of like a mountaineer or somebody in the wilderness
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  Speaker 3: that's lost and struggling to survive.
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  Speaker 2: But not always as we'll see.
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  Speaker 3: And when they're at their sort of worse moment, maybe
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: worse low point, they get a third a sense that
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  Speaker 3: someone else is there.
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  Speaker 2: And again it's not always the third person.
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  Speaker 3: If they're alone, it's just technically the second person, sure,
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: but it's just somebody there kind of urging them on.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: But it's not just like, oh, I got this weird feeling,
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  Speaker 3: Like it's a real serious, tangible thing.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like whatever sense you have when there's somebody sitting
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: next to you and they actually are there is a
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: person sitting there, it seems to be the exact same
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: type of feeling and level of feeling and all that. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's not like this weird kind of like thought a
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: little bit here there. It's like sensing another presence. And
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  Speaker 1: the first person to ever really kind of document this
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  Speaker 1: was Ernest Shackleton, surely he was not the first person
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: to experience this, but he he was the first person
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  Speaker 1: to write about it, and his experience is just nuts
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: in and of itself.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we talked about this guy before. It was a
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: British expedition to Antarctica in nineteen fourteen slash fifteen, trying
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: to get.
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  Speaker 2: To the South Pole.
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  Speaker 3: It was his third try and he's trying to establish
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: a base there and his ship got trapped in sea ice.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: They tried to kind of ride it out, but eventually
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: the ice kind of came together, and I mean, this
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: just shows how forceful like creeping ice can be. It
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: kind of crushed the boat and they abandoned ship, set
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: up camp on other ice and stayed there initially for
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: four months on.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: This ice, Yeah, waiting for the ice to break up
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  Speaker 1: enough to try to make an attempt by whaling boat
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  Speaker 1: over to Elephant Island, which is the closest island, and
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: they made it. They rowed for six days before they
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: reached Elephant Island, which was great. They weren't on the
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: ice anymore, but they were on a deserted island. And again, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I'm thinking it's pretty cold too. And again this is
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  Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, they're not like, you know, picking up the
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: sat phone and saying like, hey, can somebody come get us?
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  Speaker 1: Like they've got a real problem here. So they're stranded
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  Speaker 1: on this deserted island, and the closest place where there's
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: other people where they actually can get in touch and
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  Speaker 1: say hey, somebody come get us is a whaling station
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  Speaker 1: on South Georgia Island, and that's eight hundred miles away.
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  Speaker 1: So Ernest Shackleton says, got to keep going and whittles
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  Speaker 1: down to a few men I think six, five or
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  Speaker 1: six other people, and they actually rode eight hundred miles
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  Speaker 1: from an arc to South Georgia Island.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they get there sixteen days later.
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  Speaker 3: It turns out they landed on the wrong side of
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: the island because the winds blew them off course, and
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  Speaker 3: so this guy was undaunted.
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  Speaker 2: Still he took two guys. I think you see where this.
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  Speaker 3: Is headed, even though the math is still wrong, and
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  Speaker 3: they made the rest of the way on foot. It's
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  Speaker 3: about eighteen miles or thirty kilometers and through some pretty
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  Speaker 3: treacherous conditions, took about thirty six hours. They finally get
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  Speaker 3: there and everyone ends up being rescued like that's the
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  Speaker 3: good news. But this is that last push, is when
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  Speaker 3: Shackleton feels the presence of this additional person urging them on.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, because this is like they've reached the limit of
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  Speaker 1: their endurance and they're still going on. And so Shackleton
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  Speaker 1: sensed it, but he never said anything about it until
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  Speaker 1: he wrote his book South It was published in nineteen nineteen.
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  Speaker 1: But he did say something to the other two people
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  Speaker 1: who were with them. One was Captain Worsley, and Worsley said, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I had the same feeling, actually, and so did Crean,
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  Speaker 1: the other guy on this expedition. They all sensed another person,
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  Speaker 1: in this case a fourth person with them, kind of
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  Speaker 1: basically comforting them to some degree. So that seemed, in
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  Speaker 1: and of itself pretty cool. And I guess the word
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  Speaker 1: of this got out because ts Eliot, he's frequently cited
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  Speaker 1: as the person who who coined the term third man syndrome.
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  Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, no one knows who
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  Speaker 1: actually took this ts Eliot poem and turned it into
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  Speaker 1: third man syndrome, but it actually it did come indisputably
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  Speaker 1: from this ts Eliot poem from nineteen twenty two.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, So, well, the Wasteland was the poem, and he
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  Speaker 3: again he was wrong in the math. He should have
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  Speaker 3: called it the Fourth Man. But this is kind of
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  Speaker 3: the funniest part. T. S. Eliot said that he couldn't
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  Speaker 3: remember who who inspired this, like which expedition it was
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  Speaker 3: when asked, you know why the number of people was
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: or not three?
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  Speaker 2: Or three and night four rather exactly.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm feeling a little poetic today, Chuck, do you
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  Speaker 1: mind if I read this little This is from T. S.
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  Speaker 1: Eliot's The Wasteland? Three words? Who is the third who
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  Speaker 1: walks always beside you? When I count, there are only
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  Speaker 1: you and I together, But when I look ahead up
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  Speaker 1: the white road, there's always another one walking beside you,
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  Speaker 1: gliding wrapped in a brown mantle, hooded. I do not
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  Speaker 1: know whether a man or a woman. But who is
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  Speaker 1: that on the other side of you? Answer me? Thank you?
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  Speaker 1: Thank you? I say, we take a break and let
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: everybody in stunned silence absorb all that.
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  Speaker 3: All right, We'll be right back, all right. So that's
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: the third man syndrome, Shackleton's version. But it's happened a bunch,
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  Speaker 3: like we said. There was a collection by John Geiger
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  Speaker 3: called The Third man factor that you mentioned earlier from
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: two thousand and eight where he dug up a bunch
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  Speaker 3: of these stories and we're going to go through some
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: of them right now.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's quite quite a feat that
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: he got all these together because they were definitely few
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: and far between. One of the first ones that he
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: mentions is a guy named Frank Smyth who made a
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: solo attempt at his Summat everest. He would have been
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: the first back in nineteen thirty three, and he got close,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: but he didn't make it, and he realized he had
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: to turn back. And his second man during this attempt
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: was so real to him that at one point he
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: actually turned to offer them food before he realized that
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  Speaker 1: there was no one there. So, like, this can be
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: a pretty tangible presence, a tangible intangible presence essentially.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I've seen this in movies, you know,
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  Speaker 3: and they don't call it out as you know, third
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  Speaker 3: man syndrome, but I've definitely seen these scenes, you know,
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  Speaker 3: where there's an unseen person and they look and then
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  Speaker 3: they're not there. You know. Yeah, it's but in a
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  Speaker 3: comforting way, not like well I was gonna spoil that.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Nicole Kidman movie.
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  Speaker 3: But I guess I won't do that right, not in
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  Speaker 3: a horror movie kind of way, No, for sure. But
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  Speaker 3: there was another guy, a climber again named Joe Simpson.
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  Speaker 3: This is nineteen eighty five. He was climbing in the
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  Speaker 3: Peruvian andyes, and he broke his leg, so he was
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: in really bad shape. And he wrote a book called
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  Speaker 3: Touching the Void where he talked about obeying this voice
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  Speaker 3: like guiding him, and a lot of times that's what happens.
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  Speaker 3: It's not just like you can do it. You can
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  Speaker 3: do it, but like go this way kind of thing.
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  Speaker 3: And if you're in this situation after reading all this stuff,
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  Speaker 3: I would be wise to go in whatever direction your
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  Speaker 3: invisible person is telling you to go.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, obey the voice, I think is the upshot of
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: all this. Yeah, he was guided to safety by his voice.
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  Speaker 1: And enough of these are mountaineers that I started to
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  Speaker 1: think maybe the cold has something to do with this.
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  Speaker 1: But this has also happened to other people who were
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  Speaker 1: not in the colt, who were in totally different situations.
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  Speaker 1: Very famously, out of the nine to eleven attacks, two
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  Speaker 1: people who survived reported experiencing third man syndrome. One was
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Ron Di Francesco, who was the last person out of
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  Speaker 1: the South Tower before it collapsed. He was led down
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  Speaker 1: while everybody else was going up and actually went through
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  Speaker 1: flames fired like three stories of fire to get to safety,
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  Speaker 1: and it was because he was being urged on. And
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  Speaker 1: then there was another woman, Janelle Guzman McMillan, who was
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: actually trapped in the rubble of the North Tower and
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  Speaker 1: she had a similar experience too.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know again it's it feels like it
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  Speaker 3: might be like in the movie, like a family member
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  Speaker 3: or something. And sometimes it seems like that can happen, Like,
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  Speaker 3: I know, wasn't there one of these where Yeah, it
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: was a geologist who was on a cave dive and
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: lost her guideline with twenty minutes left in her air tank,
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  Speaker 3: and she felt her husband, Rob, who had died, So
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  Speaker 3: her dead husband had died in a diving accident a
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  Speaker 3: few weeks prior, so he appears. So sometimes it's like
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  Speaker 3: a known individual.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, And Janelle Guzman McMillan I read she named. She
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  Speaker 1: didn't think hers was a family member, but she considered
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: it a guardian angel and its name was Paul. So
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: they do get named sometimes even if you don't know him.
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  Speaker 2: I would name.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Mine, what would you name yours?
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It depends.
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  Speaker 3: I think it would hit me in the moment, but
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  Speaker 3: it seems like the respectful thing to do and not
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: just say hey you, thanks.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: For all that.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And just a little word of advice, if
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: you can't come up with the name, just go with Tim.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Tim.
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  Speaker 3: That's pretty good scientifically, I mean you might be wondering, like, well,
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  Speaker 3: what's happening here, and no, no one really knows. It's
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: kind of one of those things where they think it
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: may be some like hardwired innate instinct that just kind
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: of kicks in.
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  Speaker 2: You know.
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  Speaker 3: Obviously you can't study something like this, and if it
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: is hardwired, we may all have it, but you're just
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: luckily most of us aren't ever in that situation, you.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Know, right, Like you not only have to be in
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: this limit of your endurance life or death situation, you
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: also have to survive it to come back and tell
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: everybody about it too. So you would imagine like this
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: is a pretty small population of people, right, I mean, clearly,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: just from the few stories that John Geiger was able
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: to collect, did you see the thing about the bi
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: cameral mind now hy theory. So remember our episode on
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: the bi cameral mind from Julian James, and basically, just
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: for people who aren't familiar, this is a hypothesis that
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: all the way up until like the Bronze Age, people
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: hadn't fully become conscious like we think of consciousness today,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: and so the voices in their head that we call
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: an inner dialogue where we know we're talking to ourselves
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: to them, this was the gods speaking to them, guiding them,
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  Speaker 1: instructing them. So this idea is the third man syndrome
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  Speaker 1: is kind of this vestigial by cameral experience that people
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: used to have where what seems like something outside of
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: your mind is helping you, urging you on, guiding you,
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  Speaker 1: but really it's just another part of your mind that
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: gets kicked in.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it, which kind of drives with the
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: first theory anyway. You know, it's not like that doesn't
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: cancel it out.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Right, No, there's no canceling going on here.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Good? Uh?
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Are you got anything else?
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: Nothing else? Hopefully this instinct is within all of us,
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: because I wouldn't mind a pal urging me on in
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: the end.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: For sure, yes, but hopefully no one listening ever, has
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: to experience it because it sounds like it's pretty rough
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: to get there. Agreed, Short Stuff is out.
• 12:43
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• 12:46
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