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The Weird Origins and Questionable Debunking of The Philadelphia Experiment · Conspiracy! The Show

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Wait, what is this?
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: What is he doing with the pirachis?
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Are you crazy? What is he doing with the pirachis?
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: What is he doing with the pirachis? What is he
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: doing with the pirachis? Hey, everybody. Welcome to Conspiracy, the show.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, Adam Todd Brown. Joining me as co-host
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: this week, Connor's here. How's it going, man?
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: The Philadelphia experiment, when man combined grilled meats, grilled onions,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: and a long piece of bread. With some of that whiz, mm.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: What's your stance on a Philly cheese steak?
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: I'm pro. Yeah, I'm very pro. Although I like, less
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: than a whiz, I like a real cheese, not a
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: cheese-like product.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, I'm not in favor of
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: any food where I get social pressure to order it
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: a certain way. And I feel like you get that
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: with the Philly cheesesteak. They're like, you got to put
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: cheese whiz on it. It's like, no, I'm an adult.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I'll put some real cheese on that.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: I'm going to get some provolone. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I like a pizza steak. A little marinara, mozzarella, some peppers.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: That's a tasty treat.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: That's a good one.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Maybe sprinkle it with some pepperoni. That's what we're talking
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: about this week. Subs.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Well, close. We're battleships.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: We're talking about the Philadelphia Experiment. We've been tossing the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia Experiment around for a couple weeks, I feel like.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: It keeps coming up. And I'm asked whether we had
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: done an episode about the Philadelphia Experiment. And it turns
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: out we did. It was a long fucking time ago. 2019.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. When Hillary Clinton was all the rage.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: But when we did the episode in 2019, it was
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: a subscriber only bonus episode. And it was part of
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: a two episode thing where we covered the Phoenix project.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: We covered the Montauk project and we covered the Philadelphia
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: experiment all in one two episode cycle. So I'm going
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: to re-release that episode and the Montauk project episode and
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: you can Can all go listen to that shit if
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: you want also. But we're revisiting the Philadelphia experiment on
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: this episode, specifically talking about something we didn't get into
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: at all on that first episode, which is the origins
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: of the Philadelphia experiment conspiracy, which to me is as
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: weird as the conspiracy itself. Well, maybe not as weird.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Disappearing battleship is pretty weird. Yeah.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: People getting embedded in the hull of the ship. That's strange.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: This is one that created movie tropes.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a hell of a scene.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So like I said, we did cover the Philadelphia
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: experiment on an episode previously, but we're revisiting it now.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: That said, I do want to go through just the
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: basics of what happened. The actual Philadelphia experiment itself, you know,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: in case anyone doesn't want to go back and listen
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: to that old episode. I feel you. You're not made
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: of free time. Summer of 1943, two years into U.S.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: involvement in World War II.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Now, I want to point something out here. What's that?
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: I looked this up before we started recording. This falls
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: into what we now know that the CIA refers to
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: as WSFM, Weird Science and Fucking Magic, for their really
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: weird technology. And I was thinking, you know, did they
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: even have this shit? When was Roswell? When was this?
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: And I thought, when did Nikola Tesla die and the
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: government collapse? confiscated all his papers, January of 1943. So
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: they've got the Tesla files. I wouldn't put it past
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: them to do any of this shit. I think it's
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: well within the realm of plausibility.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Not just that, but there are rumors that Albert Einstein...
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: oversaw the Philadelphia experiment.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: That guy.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, if you had just gotten Tesla's papers
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: in your possession and you wanted to hand them off
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: to someone who might know what to do with them,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I bet Einstein would be the guy. Oh, yeah. So
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: American destroyers versus German U-boats. That was a big battle
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: in World War II. And that is what all of
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: the experiments around this ship the USS Eldridge, were about
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: was us winning this battle against German U-boats on the
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: seas during World War II. Philadelphia Naval Shipyard is where
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: this happened. The ship had been outfitted with a bunch
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: of generators and things of the like. No one was
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: quite sure why, but the rumor was that it was
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: new tech. That would make the ships invisible to enemy radar.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: And in the middle of the day, and that part's
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: important because I feel like several descriptions I've seen of
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: this use the phrase in broad daylight. They did this
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: experiment in broad daylight.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: It's a good time to witness things.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: And it makes the explanation for one of the details
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: about this that we get later really weird. But we'll
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: get there. Write that down, everybody. So in the middle
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: of the day, they flip these generators on, according to legend.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: all hell breaks loose. Witnesses claim that a greenish-blue blow
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: surrounded the hull of the ship, and then the ship
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: just vanished. But then, it showed up hours later at
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia before it reappeared suddenly
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: back in Philadelphia. Which, that would just be cool if
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: that's all that happened. But according to legend also, a
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: lot of the crew suffered damage horrible burns, horrible injuries,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: and a couple of them ended up embedded in the
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: hull of the ship, like you see in the movies.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: That's so cool.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sucks to be you, but you at least got
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: to take solace in the fact that as you were
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: completely vivisected in half, you were providing fodder for a
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: pretty cool scene in Looper.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Or if anyone has seen the terrible terrible netflix only
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: cloverfield sequel that takes place in space it seems like
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: it is loosely based on the philadelphia experiment also.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Well at least they remembered everything that was good about
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: the first cloverfield man.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I fucking loved cloverfield i had for a time i
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: would on twitter just Any movie that looked like it
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: might be, I would just tweet, this is a secret
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Cloverfield movie. I still think Overlord was supposed to be
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: a Cloverfield sequel. Because at one point, J.J. Abrams said
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the Cloverfield sequel was going to be a World War
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: II movie. And then Overlord comes out. It's about them
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: doing experiments and making a creepy-ass monster during World War II.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: I think it was supposed to be a Cloverfield movie.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: You see 10 Cloverfield Lane?
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: I fuck with 10 Cloverfield Lane. It's a good movie.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: If you watch that movie, see if you can try to...
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Figure out at what point J.J. Abrams did heavy reshoots.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, is that a thing?
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: That's what I heard.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, also, while all this was happening, while the ship disappeared,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the government was able to establish contact with aliens and
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: set up some sort of cooperation. So that's cool. Still
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: sucks for the sailors embedded in the hole, but still.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: What's really interesting about the Philadelphia experiment and something we
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: didn't cover on that first episode is how it came
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: to be such an enduring conspiracy theory. No one came
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: forward to say anything about it for a long time.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: 13 years it took. before any witnesses came forward. It
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: wasn't until 1956 that a man named Carl M. Allen,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: writing under the name Carlos Miguel Allende, sent a bunch
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: of handwritten letters to an author and amateur astronomer named
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Morris K.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Jessup. I like that he was in just to really
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: add a second layer of anonymity to his fake name.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: He was like, I'm also going to pretend to be Latin,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: you know, just because That'll throw them off the scent.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: They'll be looking for a brown guy.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And wasn't Allende a dictator or someone a dictator deposed?
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: That sounds right.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Dictator of Chile.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Salvador Allende.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: No relation, probably. So Allende was salty over a book
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Jessup had published a year or so earlier called The
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Case for the UFO. And he told Jessup in these
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: letters that his understanding of unified field theory was shit
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: and that he would know because Einstein himself taught him
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: unified field theory.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Which is like the holy grail of physics for decades,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: connecting electromagnetism and gravity and all that shit.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's never been proven, but it's been talked about, discussed,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: theorized for a long, long time. To prove unified field
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: theory is real, Allende provided his eyewitness account of the
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: disappearance of the USS Eldridge during the Philadelphia experiment, which
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: he claimed to have witnessed from a nearby ship, the
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: SS Andrew Burriseth.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: Man, you got to be bummed out if you're stationed
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: on the Furriseth. Yeah. There's people on the George Washington
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: and the Kilimatron and the fucking Eldridge. Yeah, the Eldridge
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: sounds like an old tough Civil War general. Yeah.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Again, first witness to come forward after 13 years for
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: whatever that's worth.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Well, I would suspect that there would be a knock
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: at my door if I came out and talked about
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: the blue and green glow around the battleship, you know?
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: So Jessup starts looking into this guy's claims. And in
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: the midst of that investigation, he's contacted by two officers
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: from the Navy's Office of Naval Research. This was in 1957.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: They were visiting on account of a package they'd received
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the year earlier, 1956, which was a copy of Jessup's book,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: but annotated with handwritten notes that claimed to add a
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: bunch of knowledge about UFOs, physics, and... everything that happened
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: that day during the Philadelphia experiment. Those annotations were supposed
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: to look like they were written by three different people,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: but it was apparently eventually proven that Carlos Allende wrote
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: all of these annotations.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: In a bunch of different color pens, which I don't
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: know why, but I thought Different color pens came out
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: in like the late 90s with G2 pens. I didn't
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: know we had the technology.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't either. Well, I think the different colored pens,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know if the government added that when they
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: published it. I don't know if the original handwritten annotations
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: were in different pen. They might have been, though.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: I'm just picturing Allende like stomach down on his bed
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: with his knees kicked up in the air, writing in
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: purple glitter pen about unified field theory.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the tech he got from the aliens. Fucking
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: purple glitter pen.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Combining glitter with ink.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: You won't believe what we can do with this. Can
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: you write letters with ink? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: That's it. Unified pen theory.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: So history has always painted these annotations as the ravings
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: of a crazy person. Every source you read about this
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: today will say that. They're like, this is just the
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: ramblings of a madman. The weird part is that, for
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: reasons still unknown, the Office of Naval Research published 127
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: copies of... the case for the UFO, with Allende's annotations included.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: They went to great lengths, like you said, to make
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: sure they're in different colored ink, so you can see
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: who is supposed to have written each one. I think
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the way the annotations are written, they imply that one
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: of the people writing them is an actual alien, which... Really?
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. I also saw a thing that suggested the
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: people who wrote them were gypsies. Fucking... 50s were a
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: different time. They published this through a small company in
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Texas called Vero. So the resulting printings have come to
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: be known as the Vero version. And if you can
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: get your hands on one of those original 127 copies,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: it must be worth a shit ton of money. I
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: found a facsimile of one for sale online for $ 500.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: You thinking what I'm thinking? We buy it and then
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: we undercut them.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not a bad idea. Print up a bunch
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: of facsimiles of our own.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Only available on patreon.com.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: You can buy this you can go on amazon and
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: buy the vero edition of the case for the ufo
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: and i think i'm going to i wanted to read
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: it for this episode because it's not that long but
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: it seems like none of the digital versions are the
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: annotated version and even if they are i don't trust
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: them to have the different colored ink and all that
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: so i want a paper copy of this i'm fascinated
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: to read these fucking annotations so i do have a
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: paperback copy on order i.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Have a few uh weird books I found at bookstores
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: about zero point energy and telekinesis and shit. It's got
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: to be out there somewhere.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The $ 500 version, it's a facsimile of what the
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: government actually put out. Shipping's only $ 4, by the way,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: if anyone wants to go out and buy it, I'll
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: link to it. That doesn't seem right to me. If
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I'm buying a $ 500 book through the mail, I want
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: it insured against USPS malfeasance and $ 4 ain't going to
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: cut that. That won't help at all. They will laugh
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: at you if you call and say your $ 4 book
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: that's worth $ 500 got lost in the mail.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: This is like keeping all your gold bullion in the
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: center console of your car.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So also the full text is on the Internet Archive,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: but same deal. It's just black and white text with
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: no annotations. But this is the reason the Philadelphia experiment
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: became the conspiracy theory that it did. It's because the
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: government printed up 127 copies of a book that swore
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: the Philadelphia experiment happened.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: It probably wasn't because they wanted to send it to
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: all their friends and show them how stupid it was,
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: You're exactly right. And that's one of the things that
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: bothers me about this conspiracy in general. And you see
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: this with so many conspiracy theories. The person providing the
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theory gets a lot of skepticism. There's investigations into
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: everything he's saying. But the people who come forward to
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: debunk it, there's not the same degree of skepticism for them.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: There's not the same degree of investigation into the government's claims.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: There's none of that. With this detail... The fact that
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: the government printed up 127 copies of this book. Why? Why?
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I think that is such a valid question. Did they
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: really do it because they thought it was silly and
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: wanted to give it out as novelty gifts at.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: The CIA Naval Office of Research Christmas party?
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Or is there a valid reason the government wanted
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: this shit printed?
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: People forget that you can Google anything. And then the
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: word debunked and then there will be someone debunking it
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: for some reason, nefarious or otherwise. People are trying to
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: debunk the fucking roundness of the earth, you.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Know, with this theory. In a minute, we're going to
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: talk about a pretty famous debunking of it that I
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: think has all the same questions that the conspiracy theory has.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Who is this guy? Where did he come from? Why
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: did it take him so long to come forward? But
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: with that guy, everyone's just like, see, a witness came
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: forward and said none of it's true. And it's like, well,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: a witness came forward and said it's true also. Can
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: we at least have him fight?
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one guy's word against another.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but the guy doing the debunking gets none of
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: the questions. And that bothers me.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: That's why we're here to bunk it. We're going to
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: give it a little bunking.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Goddamn right.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Little devil's bunking.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons this conspiracy theory has
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: lived on as long as it has, though, is there's
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: a movie about it, 1984, called The Philadelphia Experiment, starring
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Streets of Fire's Michael Paré, who also apparently stars in
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: the 2012 sci-fi network made for TV remake that I
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: feel like we should probably watch and review for an episode.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: It's on YouTube. It's free.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: It's such a it's kind of crazy. They made two
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: movies about this and I haven't heard of either one.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: And I'm a complete nut.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I had for some reason heard of the movie
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: The Philadelphia Experiment before I heard of the conspiracy theory.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: I thought that was the movie where they give Tom
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Hanks AIDS.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I think it's probably because Philadelphia Experiment came out in
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: 84 and I was eight. So I would have liked.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Probably just seen commercials for it or some shit. I
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: bet it didn't get treated as like a crazy fringe
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theory thing at that point. People were probably just like, oh, look,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: it's a cool historical based sci-fi thing. It's a different
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: world back then.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Pretty stranger things, you know.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Fictionalization of conspiracy theory.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Another witness came forward after the first movie was released,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: but not until he saw it in 1988, four years later.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: No rush. He claimed he witnessed the event also, but
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: had been brainwashed to forget it. We didn't see that
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: shit in movies until years later with Men in.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: Black, I think. Clockwork Orange, maybe.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Oh shit, you're right. He said he was able to
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: recall everything because the movie caused all those repressed memories
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: to come back. So he's probably lying. Anytime I hear
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: repressed memories, I'm like, shut the fuck up.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying it doesn't happen ever, but in conspiracy theories,
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: it usually comes up very conveniently. Yeah.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Even true crime. One of my passion projects that I
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: will pursue at some point, I want to go back
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and rewatch as many episodes of Forensic Files as I
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: can and pick out the ones where people went to
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: prison on bullshit junk. because I know there's a ton
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: of them. I've watched a ton where it was like
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: bite mark evidence that sent someone to prison. It's like
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: we have debunked that shit a long fucking time ago.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: We debunked that shit on the episode of Seinfeld with
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: John Voight's pencil. Yeah.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: And you see that also in movies True crime and
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: forensic files is, oh, repressed memories under hypnosis. She remembered
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: whether the police believe that shit or not is dependent
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: on whether the memory that person believed helps them or not.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: If that repressed memory identifies this third witness that they want.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: to pin a crime on, yes, repressed memories are real.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: If it exonerates someone, no, no, that's junk fucking science.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: I think because of the satanic panic, I tend to
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: lean toward junk science when it comes to repressed memories.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: That's what a lot of those parents went to prison
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: over is their kids got in a room and some
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: hypnotist was like, oh, you remember your parents slit that
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: giraffe's throat and then raped a bunch of kids in
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: front of you, don't you? We're like, yeah, I guess.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: I think if you got molested or something, you could
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: probably repress a few memories, but that's only a conspiracy
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: theory between you and your uncle, you know?
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've never covered the satanic panic on this podcast.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: We did on Pretty Scary, but it's wild. The same
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: people that push the satanic panic also push shaken baby syndrome,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: which has also sent a bunch of parents to prison wrongly.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Pretty good metal band, though.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: It's great. Yeah. Is there a band called Shaken Baby Syndrome?
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Because that would be great.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: There should be. Yeah.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Let's start it.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: S.B.S. You and me.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, this guy who came forward in 88, he's
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: probably lying. But also Morris Jessup committed suicide in 1959.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: That's probably normal and not important whatsoever. That was two
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: years after his book with the annotations was published.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Every fucking time, you know. And then he drove out
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: to the woods and shot himself twice in the head. Yeah.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: And every time you see it, you get so many
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: people who are like, coincidence. It's like one of the
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: JFK witnesses died of a karate chop to the neck.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: That's not a fucking coincidence. People are getting fucking murdered.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: But who knows? Morris Jessup, he was in a bad way.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: He committed suicide in 1959.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Well, this is what Dr. Stephen Greer, we did an
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: episode on him, what he calls crazy inventor syndrome, where
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: every time someone cracks unified field theory and zero point energy,
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: they just paint him as a lunatic. And then they
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: quietly kill themselves a few years later.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we did an episode a long time ago about
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the bass player from the band Iron Butterfly. That is
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: the band that sang in Agata DeVita.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: And opens for shaken baby syndrome.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: That guy went on to be a fucking scientist and
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: he was working on some sort of invention where he
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: was like fucking time travel, baby. it's all going to
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: be possible. And then one day is driving down a
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: fucking highway in California and calls, I think his wife,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: he called someone and was like, well, they're after me.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: It's the same people who got OJ. I'm going to die.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: You're probably never going to see me again. And was
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: not seen for a long fucking time. They finally found
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: his car at the bottom of a Canyon and he
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: was in it and dead. But that was like 10,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: 15 years later. But Same thing. He was a scientist
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: working on all this crazy shit, and then all of
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: a sudden, whoops, goes crazy and drives his car off
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: a cliff.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Suddenly forgets how to drive, just like you do.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: As one does.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Driving a car is so easy. 16-year-olds can do it.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: They let you start learning at 14. When do we
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: let 14-year-olds do anything?
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think you can get a fucking library book.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, fucking irresponsible idiots. Sorry to any 14-year-olds listening to this.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: You're one of the good ones. Yeah.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: It's your parents who suck for letting you listen to this.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the debunking of the Philadelphia experiment.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: The most famous debunking of this was written in 1994
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: by a French UFO researcher named Jacques Vallée. I did
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: actually read this. It's only 25 pages. I'll link to it.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: It opens with him talking about all the reasons why
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: this theory has carried on for as long as it has.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: And he does make good points about Carlos Allende is
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: a flamboyant character, but also very mysterious. He's been in
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: hiding most of the time he's been pushing this theory
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: because he did not commit suicide in 1959, presumably because
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: no one knows where the fuck he is.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Or because he's doing what the powers that be would
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: want you to do, which is cover it up.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: He contrasts this with another UFO report from France in 1981,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: where the sole witness was this old farmer who spoke
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: French with a heavy Italian accent. So he's very hard
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: to understand. Didn't really want to talk. To the media.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, come a while.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: And in this incident, and I looked it up, I'll
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: link to it. I forgot to put it in the notes.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: But in this incident, there's actual physical evidence that's left
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: behind of this craft that he says he saw.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: We we.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: But the story just died out because the only witness
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: is this guy who's like, no, I don't want to
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: talk to the media. I told you what the fuck
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: I saw. It's good enough.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Every time the fucking UFO leaves a burnt circle of grass,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: you somehow can't get anyone with a Geiger counter to
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: go over there and check shit out, you know? Drives
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: me nuts.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: So that story just kind of died out, even though
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: there was physical evidence left behind. This one, Carlos Allende,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: for years and years and years, just kept firing off
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: letters to anyone who would listen about the Philadelphia experiment. Again,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: he was in hiding for most of the time, showed
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: up at the Tucson office of an outfit called Aerial
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Phenomena Research Organization and said the whole thing was a hoax,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: but then later recanted that confession. So that part's fucking weird.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: Maybe he's worried about, you know, Men in black showing
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: up at his door. Yeah, could be.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Valley also points to there being a whole lot of
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: What happened next with this conspiracy that keeps the story alive? Like,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: if you listen to those two back episodes we reposted,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia Experiment leads to the Phoenix Project, which leads to
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: the Montauk Project. Morris Jessup dies in the midst of
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: all that. It's a juicy fucking story. But Jacques Vallée
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: also put out a call for anyone with information about
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: the Philadelphia Experiment to come forward. And that's when a
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: man named Edward Dudgeon reached out.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: That's like in the class of like Nigel Longbottom of
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: names that would just be just contemptible and like twerpy.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: This guy claimed he was in the Navy at the time,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: and he explains a bunch of sciencey stuff about how
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: all the fancy stuff on board These ships, all the
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: generators and things that were flipped on, they were meant
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: as degaussing measures that made the ships invisible to U-boat
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: magnetic torpedoes, as opposed to making them invisible to radar.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: This is where I kind of take issue with the
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: debunking of this. People... Again, are super skeptical of anyone
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: who pushes the theory, but people will take the debunking
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: from anywhere they can get it. Like you mentioned, you
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: just Google debunked. You'll find blog spot posts, fucking Tumblr posts,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: shit like that, that respected outlets will point to and
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: be like, see, this guy debunked it. It's like, well,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: what the fuck is that?
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: If you ever see a blog spot post about anything,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: don't believe it.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Question how it's still on the internet.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: If nothing else. I, by the way, a young Conor McSpadden,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: had several blog spots about paranormal activity, if you can
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: believe that, which I was reporting on very seriously when
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: I was 12.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I absolutely believe that. One thing I don't love about
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: this Jacques Vallée report is that he talks about how
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the Philadelphia Experiment conspiracy lived on for so long because
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: it has this air of highfalutin science to it where, oh, well,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: if that explanation for what happened that day is too
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: much for you, it's just because you don't understand science.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Don't worry. It's it's true, though. Like what we're saying
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: is true. You just don't get the science. And he
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: uses that as one of the examples of how a
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theory like this is fueled. But then this guy
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: debunking it does the same thing. He just explains in
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: a bunch of really science-y terms that what they were
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: doing that day made the ships invisible to magnetic torpedoes.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Is that not the same thing? Is no one going
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: to investigate his claims the way Carlos Allende's claims were investigated?
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Because when he made all of these scientific claims, Morris
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Jessup's first response was, all right, well, I'm going to
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: investigate this and see if what he's saying is accurate.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: But now here comes Mr. Dudgeon. To be like, nah,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: it was degaussing to make them invisible to magnetic torpedoes.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: And this Jacques Vallée guy is just like, see, that's
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: what it was. Well, how the fuck do we know
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: his science is right?
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: And the Eldridge, I just looked it up, was quietly
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: decommissioned June 17th, 1946. Oh. Can't imagine that, you know,
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: might have had something to do with not wanting people
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: to look into it, not wanting them to see the
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: generators or the nuclear radiation left behind from a teleportation session.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is highly sus.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: No one came forward until 13 years later, so there's
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: no one investigating it.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Right. And also, there's that weird green-blue glow that covered
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: the ship. Remember I said there's all these accounts that
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: say this experiment happened in broad daylight. Is that a
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: term you would use during an electrical storm? Which I
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: also feel like electrical storm is a phrase people in
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: this situation throw around frequently. when they want to make
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: storm sound more sciencey and spectacular than it is. An
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: electrical storm is just a storm with lightning.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: It was ball lightning.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, ball lightning is one you hear all the time.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: His other explanation, oh, it was St. Elmo's fire.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: That's like, it's like the aurora borealis, like localized to something.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: And he just sort of like casually brushes the blue
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: green glow off as like, yeah, it was probably something
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: like that. Again, is anyone going to go, OK, well,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: now this guy on this side is making these claims.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Can we find out? Was there a storm that day?
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like we've been tracking weather for
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: a long fucking time. I don't know how accurate the
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: records are, but.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: Can I pick up an almanac and just turn the
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: page to 1943?
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Is there any source that will tell us if
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: there was actually a storm that day? And the other thing,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: if it was St. Elmo's fire, like you said, that's
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: a thing that can be localized, like it can happen
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: on a fucking animal's horn. If that gets electrified in
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: some way, it can give off a glow.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Which if I saw that, I'd be like, holy fuck,
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Pokemon are real. This is awesome.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would definitely think some UFO shit was happening.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: But he just writes it off as, yeah, like St.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Elmo's fire, probably something like that. And so that would
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: imply that This degaussing they were doing on the ship
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: is what caused that. So did it cause that every
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: time this was done? Because this guy's explanation also is
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: that what happened that day was a thing they were
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: doing on four different ships. He names all the ships
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: and he's like, we were trying to make them invisible
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: to magnetic torpedoes fired by U-boats. And they all had
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: to go through this degaussing measure. And that happened in Virginia.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: We'll get to that part in a minute. And he
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: describes it as this, like, not really routine, but like
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: a normal thing that these ships all had to do
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: at this time. OK, so did they give off a
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: green glow every time? If it's St. Elmo's fire, it
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: seems like they would have to.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: And if it was every ship doing it, I mean,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: you would have had more witnesses than just one dude
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: to pretending to be latino.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah and compare that to his answer about claims that
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: you could smell ozone after the incident which must be
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: like the smell of a thunderstorm.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Oh is that ozone okay it just rained here not
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: too long ago and it smelled weird yeah i've.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Never i've never even heard that said that you could
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: smell ozone.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah well first of all wouldn't you have to be
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: like thousands of feet in the air yeah you would
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: think i mean i guess you could make someone could
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: make it in a lab but uh I've never been
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: to an ozone smelling party over at Caltech.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: And this Jacques Vallée guy interviews Mr. Dudgeon throughout this.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: And when he asks about the smell of the ozone,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: this is the answer. This is a quote. That's not unusual.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: When they were degaussing, you could smell the ozone that
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: was created. You could smell it very strongly. End quote. OK,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: so the glow isn't normal then? Because his answer about
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the glow was, I don't know, electrical storm, St. Elmo's fire.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: But with the smell of the ozone, he's like, yeah,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: that was normal. Every time we fucking did this with
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: the ships, you could smell ozone. So what the fuck
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: is going on with the glow? We're just assuming natural phenomenon, obviously.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: That conveniently happens during this experiment they tried.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Right, right. Perfect time. We just did an episode about
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: the death of a guy named Thomas Merton, who was
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: a catholic official who was a big opponent of the
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: vietnam war and to believe his death happened the way
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: the government wants you to he had to have a
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: heart attack and while falling also grabbed onto a fan
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: that happened to be wired faulty that also electrocuted him
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: while he was falling it's like that is slapstick comedy
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: get the fuck out of here that's not how that
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: man died.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah that's that's how curly dies.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Exactly And so the glow thing is weird to me.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: He's got this solid explanation for the ozone thing, but
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the glow, he's just like, yeah, you know how bitches are.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: They fucking see a glow outside. As for the idea
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Einstein was involved, this is his answer. No, I believe
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: that Einstein worked with the radar development group, but he
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: wasn't involved in running actual tests. At least I never
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: heard of it. End quote. Okay, well, first of all,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: radar is what everyone has said the Philadelphia experiment was
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: actually about in the first place. So you saying he
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: worked with the radar group does nothing to... Well, my
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: suspicions here, but also at least I never heard of it.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Well, who the fuck are you?
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Why would you hear of it? I worked at Subway
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: for years and I didn't know about new sandwiches until
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: they were on the fucking menu. I bet there was
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of development that went into it before that
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: that I was not privy to.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: It's above your head, Brown. Now get your plastic gloves
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: back on and sling sweet onion chicken teriyaki.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: I feel like that's another question you have to ask
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: when it comes to this debunking. This guy is so
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: confident that, no, Einstein wasn't involved. At least I didn't
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: know about it. Okay, would you have? Would you have
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: known about it? Because if not, then I don't give
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: a fuck that you didn't know about it. Tell me
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: what your position in the military was that you would
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: have known Einstein was involved. And then I would take
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: this more seriously. As for the disappearing, he says the
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: ship used, quote, a special inland channel that only the
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Navy knew about to make this trip from Philadelphia to Roanoke,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: Virginia and back in way shorter time than it would
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: usually take.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: That sounds like a fucking river. Special Inland Channel? Yeah.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Did no one see that? Did no one see four
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: fucking American destroyers going down a river to get to
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Virginia at this point? There's no eyewitness accounts of that?
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Because I feel like if I lived on that river,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, holy shit, there are destroyers on the
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: fucking river.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Well, this is what people do when they're bullshitting you.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: They just throw a few words together and make it
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: sound like something that you couldn't understand. Someone did steal
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: my identity yesterday. And they I got a call and
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: they started throwing out API keys and and web and
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: all this crazy shit that like I didn't understand at all.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: But I was I'd done enough episodes of this show.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: I was like, I think that this is all horseshit. Yeah.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Question the debunker. You used a special inland channel. How often? Because, again,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: he says this was a regular thing. These ships would
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: go through this degaussing process. And that's what explains all
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: the Philadelphia experiment shit. And the reason that the ship
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: disappeared and then. just showed back up is because they
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: were actually taking, you're right, what sounds like a fucking
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: river from Philadelphia to Virginia, loading up with bombs and
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: then coming back. Here's a quote. The Eldridge never disappeared.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: All four ships went to Bermuda in July 43 and
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: came back together in early August. During that time, we
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: were also caught in a storm that created a display
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: of green fire accompanied by a smell of ozone. The
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: glow abated when it started raining. OK, so this conspiracy
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: is a thing that is alleged to have happened instantaneously.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: This ship like disappeared hours later. It's in Virginia and
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: then it's just all of a sudden back. Now he's
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: talking about it left in July and came back in
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: August and it was with four other ships. It doesn't
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: sound like he's talking about the same thing. He might
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: be talking about the same ship, but it doesn't sound
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: like he's talking about the same thing.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: It's like two lines of bullshit that don't match up.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: And again, four fucking Navy destroyers routinely taking a river
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: route between Virginia and Philadelphia. And there's no documentation of that.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: No eyewitnesses to be like, oh, remember back in the
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: 40s when fucking destroyers were just up and down this?
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: Is there even a river?
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What is it? What river? What river was it?
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: And also reflect on that quote for a second. We
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: were also caught in a storm that created a display
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: of green fire accompanied by a smell of ozone. So
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: now do we have two explanations for the ozone? Because
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: earlier his explanation was, yeah, that's not unusual. That always
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: happened when the ships were degaussing. And now in this quote,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: there was a storm that created a display of green
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: fire and it created a smell of ozone. So what
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: the fuck is it? Is it The ozone was the
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: normal degaussing thing or the ozone was the storm or
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: it was both. So now the storm happened. I don't
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: get it. I don't get it.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: It looks like there seems to be some rivers that
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: would go from Philly to Virginia. But again, there would
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: have been some fucking hicks along the way that would
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: have seen four destroyers. And probably that being the most
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: interesting thing that ever happened to him, told that story
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: for the rest of their lives.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: And also one of the questions people had about Carlos
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Allende is, when he finally came forward 13 years later, was, well,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: what took you so long? Why are you just saying
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: this now? And one, we don't know that he didn't
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: reach out to anyone before Morris Jessup. He might have
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: reached out to a lot of people before that. Morris
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Jessup might be the first one who ever responded or
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: took it seriously. But if you're going to ask that
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: question of Carlos Allende, what about this fucking guy? There
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: were movies about the Philadelphia Experiment. There were books about
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: the Philadelphia Experiment. There were fucking news reports about the
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia Experiment. And this guy finally... When Jacques Vallée puts
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: out a call for people to debunk this, this guy
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: finally from the government steps forward and is like, yeah,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: I was there. What do you want to know? How
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: do we not call bullshit on that, too? That seems
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: as suspicious as anything else.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, when they finally had their hand forced and
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: they sent out a liar to just debunk the whole thing,
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: like you said.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of what it feels like. If nothing else,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't 100% buy Carlos Allende's side of
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: the story, but I also don't trust this dudgeon guy
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: that much. Like there's a ton of fucking holes in
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: his story and people treat this like it is the
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: definitive fucking case closed document that proves the Philadelphia experiment
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: did not happen.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: I'd like to see any other witness, you know, did
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: they all get cut in half being teleported through the decks? I'm,
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Did one guy not live? Have they been able to
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: intimidate every person on it? Like I said, a large
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: USS destroyer.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Why didn't this guy come forward sooner would be
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: my question.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: You're right.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Other witnesses. There's so many things about this that are weird,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: but just the fact that it's the government's fault. that
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: this is even a conspiracy theory. They're the ones who
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: turned this guy's letters into a book. One, published by
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: the government, but also classified by the government. Why was
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: it classified after... They published it. It was eventually declassified.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: It was so stupid that if you read it, it
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: would give you idiotitis. Yeah, see? And I feel like
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: that is an explanation several reputable news outlets would probably
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: try to give. They'd be like, oh, they printed it
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: up as a joke. It's like, shut up. They went
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: all the way to a publisher in Texas?
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: An obscure publisher, no less?
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Print up joke copies of a thing that looks like
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: they could have printed it at the office.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: If I was about to say they didn't have printers
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: at the CIA. Yeah.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Everything about this is weird as shit to me.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: The bunkers, the debunkers.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I need more info about this debunker. I don't
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: find his explanation any more believable. And I feel like
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: if you read Jacques Vallée' s report, you should come away
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: from it the same way I do, which is everything
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: he's saying about how the Philadelphia experiment was hoaxed. could
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: apply to the guy debunking it, too. Everything he's saying,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: all the highfalutin science stuff, don't worry, you just don't understand.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Everything this guy is saying, all of the points apply
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: to him, too.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: It's a government spook versus a nut. Whose word do
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: you take? I don't know. I lean towards the nut.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: I'm usually going nut. And also that 1959 suicide doesn't
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: sit well.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, God. Yeah, that's a big red flag.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Because also that's a death that is classified a suicide
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: by 1959 cop terms. which I don't trust those motherfuckers.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: How did they come to that conclusion? So I don't know.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: This is a weird one. What do you think? Do
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: you think the Philadelphia experiment happened the way the conspiracy says?
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: I'm a little bit more on the side of yes
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: than agnostic, but I'm pretty close to agnostic. They do
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: have the Nikola Tesla sauce. I mean, let's not forget
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: about that. So anything from like teleportation to invisibility to
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: death beams to earthquake machines that he claimed to have.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's all on the table as far as
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: I'm concerned. Yeah.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: One of the pushbacks I've heard is why would you
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: try it first with a ship full of humans? You
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: could do a sailboat full of chimps.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: That would have been funnier. I mean, not from the
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: animal abuse side of things, but.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Like the Russians were sending dogs into space before they
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: were sending people up there.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Like it.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: Why would you go people first? That I think doesn't
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: make much sense. Also, the teleportation aspect of it. Wouldn't
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: it be easier to just like teleport the people in
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: something smaller? How do you know where the ship's going
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: to land when you like, you know, it's going to
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: land in water when you teleport it to where it's
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: going next?
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe they conducted a bunch of small scale tests
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: before they did this. I mean, that's plausible to me.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: They teleported a coconut. across the room before they tried
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: to do a whole fucking battleship which how sick would
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: that be to be able to teleport your battleship just
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: to the your enemy territory and just pow you know
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: would be pretty sick yeah that would be ratted shit
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: the thing that's that kills me about this is that
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: this happened in 1943 anyone else who might have witnessed
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: it is either dead or senile at this point you
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: know it doesn't seem like there's any other record of
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: people claiming to witness it in the sense that it
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: happened or the sense that it didn't happen And.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: This is one of those also where, like you said,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: everyone is going to be dead. And also it just
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: happened such a long time ago that even if it
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: did happen, who cares? Did anything ever come of it?
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: Did we ever perfect this or did we just try
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: it once and we're like, holy shit, never again.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good point. It's we don't quite have
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: the same, um, trail of continuity that there is with
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: some other conspiracy theories.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: How about this? I believe something happened. You know, I
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: believe that St. Elmo's fire just didn't show up randomly.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And as far as witnesses taking as long as
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: they did, this is the 1950s. 40s. It's World War II.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: People were taking measures to help the country. I actually
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: do think in a situation like this, the government could
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: shut everyone up. The people who were there and who
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: knew about it. I think the 1943 American government could very,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: very easily shut up enough people to keep this quiet.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: You want to end up like the guy who committed suicide? Yeah.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: And I think the fact that the guy who sent
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: the letters that kicked this theory off was in hiding
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: the whole time. I think that part is interesting.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that checks out.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: So I don't know. I think you're right. I think
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: something happened. And maybe it's exactly like this guy says.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Who knows?
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if half the people got cut in half and
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: the other half got intimidated, how many people were on
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: a destroyer in World War II? Let me see real quick.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: Of 150 to 340 people. So 75 died and 75 got,
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: you know, some hush money. Not the craziest thing I've
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: ever heard.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: And it's the military. You're joining the military, at least
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: in part, because, you know, when you retire, you're going
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: to have fucking pension coming your way.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: You're going to get a house at a fucking 0.5%
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: interest rate.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine you could just hang that over most
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: people's heads and be like, you still want your fucking pension?
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: You still want all the benefits that the military is
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: going to provide you for the rest of your life?
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Then shut the fuck up about what happened here.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: You want a white picket fence? Then can it.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: And meanwhile, the witness was on a different ship, wasn't
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: on this ship. So he probably wasn't facing those same
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: kinds of pressures. I don't know. I feel like we
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: should watch the movie to really get a grasp of
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: what happened here.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd like to at least see the see the
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: special effects of it all. Yeah.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's there's an 84 version and a 2012 version.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: And I've seen neither of them.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the Nazis were working on a UFO.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: I think we could have very well been working on
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: a teleporting battleship. You know, it was all hands on deck. Yeah.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: This was after Roswell, right?
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was 43. When did Roswell happen? That was
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: in 47, actually, before Roswell, post Tesla, pre Roswell.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, so that's interesting.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: That's a time when you've got an idea of how
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: these things work, but you're still able to fuck it up.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because that part doesn't get talked about as much.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: There is the claim that when this ship disappeared, we
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: made contact with aliens and set up some sort of
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: cooperation agreement. So did the guy who was seeing everything
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: happen from a different ship provide that part too? Like,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: where does that fucking detail come from? Because I doubt
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: he would have seen that from a neighboring ship. So
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: that part's... But there's a lot of conspiracies about secret
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: government deals with aliens. And I fucking love every one
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: of them.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: They're all good, man. All of them.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: I love the idea that all the kids in the
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: 80s who started getting kidnapped were because the government made
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: a deal with aliens that you could just, you know,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: come here and take people.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: You can graze on humanity a little bit here and
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: there as long as you don't raise too much of
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: a fuss.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: And then they started taking kids and we were like, hey,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: we can't do anything about it.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: Hey, we made a bad deal, didn't we? That was.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you got us, fucking loophole. So yeah, I don't know.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: I'm still on Carlos Allende's side more than the debunker
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: in this. I don't know if it really happened, but
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: I feel like I trust the debunker less. I trust Mr.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Dudgeon less.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: If this is Mythbusters, I'm giving it a plausible.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's our episode. Connor, thank
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: you so much for doing the pod. I think we
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: will watch the movie and maybe do a bonus episode
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: about that. But later. We're not going to watch it
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: right now. This episode's fucking over. What do we have
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: to plug before.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: We get out of here?
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: What do you got?
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: Check out my comedy special, Connor McSpadden Live in Tucson
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: on YouTube.com. That's Connor McSpadden Live in Tucson on YouTube.com.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: And listen to my album, Hell Gig, wherever you listen
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: to music. Uh.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Also, follow the network on social media at You Don't Pod.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: I don't use social media much anymore, but I sometimes
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: post clips from the shows and things. And we're on
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: all the sites, even X. But kind of Nazis, do
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: you think we are? We're not using that shit anymore.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: And I think that's it. Let's get the fuck out
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: of here. Conor, say goodbye.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: Goodbye. Goodbye, everybody. We love you.