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Havana Syndrome: ¿Qué Diablos? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Um. I think
0:17
Speaker 1: Dave's around somewhere sitting in for Jerry. Who's Can we
0:21
Speaker 1: say where Jerry is, Chuck, I don't think we can yet,
0:24
Speaker 1: but it's pretty cool. Okay, Yeah, Jerry's on He's on
0:27
Speaker 1: a cool field trip. That's for Uh. That's none you Okay,
0:31
Speaker 1: you ever say that when you were a little No,
0:33
Speaker 1: I had it said to me a lot, but I
0:35
Speaker 1: never I never had occasion to say it. None your business. Um.
0:40
Speaker 1: By the way, this is stuff you should know for
0:42
Speaker 1: those of you like say it. Yes, the anticipate patient.
0:50
Speaker 1: So Chuck um, speaking of anticipation, we're talking today about
0:57
Speaker 1: one of the greatest medical mystery reas that has hit
1:02
Speaker 1: the world, at the very least the United States in
1:05
Speaker 1: a really long time. It's a little something that's been
1:09
Speaker 1: flying under the radar and really flew under the radar
1:11
Speaker 1: for a while. But there's probably a lot of people
1:13
Speaker 1: out there haven't heard of this. Something called havana syndrome,
1:18
Speaker 1: and havana syndrome is we should say at the outset,
1:21
Speaker 1: there's not going to be any resolution to this episode.
1:24
Speaker 1: It's deeply Yeah, it's really dissatisfying. The whole thing is
1:30
Speaker 1: we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is,
1:33
Speaker 1: and really, honestly, the theories are not not great. There's
1:37
Speaker 1: no one theory. You're like, of course that's it. Everybody
1:39
Speaker 1: else has been ridiculous. Yeah, So in one way it's
1:43
Speaker 1: kind of interesting and that we get to cover a
1:45
Speaker 1: lot of stuff, but in another way, it's again deeply unsatisfying.
1:50
Speaker 1: But the the whole thing of Havana syndrome is it
1:53
Speaker 1: all begins in that that, I believe the end of
1:55
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen. Around December of two thousand and sixteen,
1:58
Speaker 1: just like a year after you, the United States had
2:01
Speaker 1: opened its embassy again in Cuba after decades of this
2:05
Speaker 1: kind of chilly cold war um like pretending one another
2:11
Speaker 1: isn't there um relationship. Just a year after that, there
2:16
Speaker 1: was a station agent, a CIA station agent in Havana
2:21
Speaker 1: who started complaining of some really weird symptoms after hearing
2:25
Speaker 1: a really weird noise, and that kicked this whole mess off. Yeah,
2:30
Speaker 1: there's uh, this is worth reading. I think from the
2:33
Speaker 1: Guardian in and I don't think this is the first one,
2:37
Speaker 1: but they were all very similar to people who were
2:41
Speaker 1: affected by this mystery. It says this the blaring, grinding
2:45
Speaker 1: noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in the
2:48
Speaker 1: Havannah hotel. He moved just a few feet and there
2:51
Speaker 1: was silence. He climbed back into bed, and explicably, the
2:55
Speaker 1: agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he
2:58
Speaker 1: had walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room.
3:03
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, that doesn't really describe much. But
3:08
Speaker 1: when you talked to some of the people who uh,
3:11
Speaker 1: and we did personally talk to all of these people
3:14
Speaker 1: were given Uh. There were weird symptoms um earpain, tentatives, headaches,
3:22
Speaker 1: hearing loss, vertigo, dizziness, nausea, disorientation, blurred vision, nosebleed, fatigue. Uh.
3:30
Speaker 1: Sometimes the symptoms were sort of temporary and not too
3:33
Speaker 1: bad with some of the people. Sometimes it was um
3:37
Speaker 1: really bad, and some people ended up retiring and saying
3:40
Speaker 1: this is it. I'm out of here. Yeah. Some people
3:42
Speaker 1: went on to be diagnosed with swelling of the brain
3:45
Speaker 1: with a concussion um. Some people suffered what seems to
3:49
Speaker 1: be permanent hearing loss, and all of this was localized
3:53
Speaker 1: just in the Havanna Bureau of the American or the
3:58
Speaker 1: American Embassy took Cuba in Havana, like that's it. So
4:02
Speaker 1: there was suddenly this weird on symptoms. I think as
4:06
Speaker 1: many as ninety people came down with this what came
4:09
Speaker 1: to be called Havana syndrome. Some of them said I
4:12
Speaker 1: heard a weird noise and then all of a sudden,
4:14
Speaker 1: I had vertigo. Other people didn't hear anything. They just
4:17
Speaker 1: all of a sudden couldn't concentrate any longer. And it
4:20
Speaker 1: was this. The symptoms all seemed to Nobody said I
4:24
Speaker 1: had a fever or my legs started swelling. It all
4:27
Speaker 1: seemed to be kind of clustered around your um. You're
4:30
Speaker 1: hearing your ears, your nose, your throat kind of thing,
4:34
Speaker 1: but without the throat, without the nose, mainly just your
4:36
Speaker 1: ears and your brain. They seemed to be a cluster
4:39
Speaker 1: of neurological symptoms that no one had any idea what
4:42
Speaker 1: was going on. Yeah, so you know, of course the
4:46
Speaker 1: US is going to investigate something like this, and we'll
4:49
Speaker 1: get into There were a couple of pretty deep, well
4:52
Speaker 1: as deep as you can get in this case investigations.
4:55
Speaker 1: But the very first thing that happened was the FBI.
4:59
Speaker 1: It was like, hey, this is some sort of acoustic attack. Uh,
5:04
Speaker 1: some sort of sound waves are being used. Let's get
5:06
Speaker 1: in there and at least check out the locations, check
5:10
Speaker 1: out everything around where these people are living, where they're staying.
5:13
Speaker 1: And they found nothing. They came up really pretty much empty.
5:17
Speaker 1: And we should also point out this was I think
5:19
Speaker 1: a few Canadian diplomats too. It wasn't entirely us, right,
5:23
Speaker 1: but for the most part it was US, and it
5:24
Speaker 1: seemed to be it seemed to be concentrated. Uh in
5:28
Speaker 1: the homes of the diplomats, um and by. Diplomats were
5:33
Speaker 1: including CIA agents who weren't known who. They weren't like,
5:37
Speaker 1: hey I'm the CI agent here they were they were
5:39
Speaker 1: posing as diplomats. So the diplomats like Keaton, well who
5:44
Speaker 1: was he posing as Michael Keaton in uh what was
5:49
Speaker 1: it out of sight with He's an FBI guy And
5:53
Speaker 1: he showed up with a big T shirt that said FBI.
5:57
Speaker 1: And Dennis Farina had that great joke he says, he
6:00
Speaker 1: you got another one that says undercover. Yeah, I love
6:02
Speaker 1: that guy. He was the best. Who else could buy
6:07
Speaker 1: Dennis Farina could follow up after Jerry Orbach, nobody, and
6:11
Speaker 1: he did it. He did it with class. He did
6:13
Speaker 1: he brought his own, his own character. Just amazing stuff.
6:17
Speaker 1: Then I was about to say I didn't see any
6:19
Speaker 1: of that show. But I was about to say, except
6:21
Speaker 1: he was no singer like Jerry Orbach. But we might
6:24
Speaker 1: be wrong again, he could be. I really walked past
6:27
Speaker 1: that one. I guess so. Um So, the diplomats were
6:32
Speaker 1: being seemed to be affected at their houses and then
6:34
Speaker 1: there were two hotels in Havana that um that these
6:38
Speaker 1: these symptoms started their onset on. So again that was
6:43
Speaker 1: that was basically like the first um investigation the FBI.
6:49
Speaker 1: The FBI conducted it was just like I don't I
6:51
Speaker 1: don't know, but clearly it was an attack. You know,
6:54
Speaker 1: it's it's localized to diplomats and their families. It's in Havannah.
6:58
Speaker 1: It's not happening anywhere else for now. Um So, some
7:02
Speaker 1: sort of attack, we just don't know what it was.
7:04
Speaker 1: That was the first investigation, and so the State Department
7:07
Speaker 1: said let's take a little deeper. Yeah, I mean, they
7:11
Speaker 1: kind of kept it quiet for a little while I
7:14
Speaker 1: think the media eventually got wind of what they were
7:17
Speaker 1: calling a sonic attack, and then uh, the former president
7:22
Speaker 1: administration presidential administration, UM, as things were starting to I
7:27
Speaker 1: guess thaw a little bit, said you know what, you
7:30
Speaker 1: guys are out of here and kicked out to Cuban
7:32
Speaker 1: diplomats UM, kind of as payback basically when Cuba the
7:36
Speaker 1: whole time was going, we didn't do this, we don't
7:38
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. Uh, And as we'll see later,
7:41
Speaker 1: they um supposedly even investigated and tried to help investigate. Yeah. Yeah,
7:47
Speaker 1: that was the one of the longstanding things that Cubans
7:49
Speaker 1: have said basically from the outset is twofold one. They
7:52
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it, knew nothing about it,
7:55
Speaker 1: and that they would take something like that very seriously.
7:58
Speaker 1: And then too they seemed to suspect that, um, this
8:02
Speaker 1: eventually snowballed into an easy way to cut ties again
8:07
Speaker 1: with Cuba, that that was kind of something that was
8:10
Speaker 1: driving this narrative as well. Part of the problem also
8:13
Speaker 1: is you know, like you said, the State's Department was
8:16
Speaker 1: keeping this secret, not just from the American public. Congress
8:19
Speaker 1: hadn't even heard about this, and everyone found out about
8:22
Speaker 1: the same time. UM that when the media started reporting
8:25
Speaker 1: on it, Congress found out about it, and apparently Marco
8:28
Speaker 1: Rubio latched onto this because he's of Cuban ancestry. I'm
8:33
Speaker 1: not sure he is or his parents are from Cuba,
8:36
Speaker 1: but he hates the Castro regime, and so this was
8:39
Speaker 1: a big thing for him to kind of clamp onto
8:41
Speaker 1: and really kind of enrage his base, um, the Cuban
8:45
Speaker 1: expatriate community in in Miami, in South Florida. UM. And he,
8:50
Speaker 1: out of the gate, I think, even released a press
8:52
Speaker 1: release referring to this as a sonic attack, like really
8:55
Speaker 1: kind of taking whatever the FBI had surmise and just
8:58
Speaker 1: basically saying this is this is what happened. We just
9:00
Speaker 1: haven't figured out how, but it was an attack. And
9:03
Speaker 1: that really set the paradigm moving forward for basically everybody
9:08
Speaker 1: except for thankfully large swaths of the scientific community. Yeah.
9:13
Speaker 1: So they commissioned the National Academy of Science to to
9:18
Speaker 1: go undergo an investigation in twenty nineteen, and even by
9:22
Speaker 1: that time, people that understood things like acoustic or possible
9:27
Speaker 1: acoustic attacks or just acoustics basically said this wasn't some
9:31
Speaker 1: kind of a sonic attack. It's you know, it is
9:34
Speaker 1: possible that you can focus a sound beam to an area,
9:38
Speaker 1: but you would have to truck in some equipment that's
9:41
Speaker 1: so big the FBI would have found it. Uh. And
9:44
Speaker 1: even if they managed to do that and get away
9:46
Speaker 1: with it, um, there were so many different symptoms going
9:50
Speaker 1: on with these people. It can't all be explained away
9:53
Speaker 1: by an acoustic attack. And let's say that even happened,
9:57
Speaker 1: it definitely wouldn't cause brain damage, Like the worst acoustic
10:01
Speaker 1: attack wouldn't cause somebody brain damage. No, So really there's
10:04
Speaker 1: two ways. Because here's the other thing, like people said
10:07
Speaker 1: they heard a weird sound or whatever, but it wasn't
10:09
Speaker 1: necessarily some like they were clearly being attacked by the sound.
10:13
Speaker 1: That wasn't what they reported. They just some of them
10:16
Speaker 1: said I heard a weird sound first, and then all
10:18
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I have these weird symptoms. That's, you know,
10:20
Speaker 1: what gave rise to the sonic attack theory. But there's
10:23
Speaker 1: basically two ways to attack people with sound, especially sound
10:27
Speaker 1: they can't hear. It's either below our threshold of hearing,
10:30
Speaker 1: which is infrasound. What what I was trying to make
10:34
Speaker 1: a yoko on no joke, but right, that's the third
10:37
Speaker 1: route that she combines the two. It's a sound um
10:42
Speaker 1: infrasound is below our threshold, below twenty hurts, right, and
10:46
Speaker 1: you actually can cause things like vertigo in somebody or
10:49
Speaker 1: vomiting um loss of bowel control if you hit somebody
10:53
Speaker 1: with a loud enough infrasound blast. But like you said, yeah,
10:58
Speaker 1: you can make someone poop their pants with infrasound, but
11:01
Speaker 1: you would have to basically, like you said, truck in
11:04
Speaker 1: just this huge rack of sub waffers and shoot it
11:08
Speaker 1: right at somebody to make them lose control of their bowels.
11:11
Speaker 1: Like it would be very obvious that that this is
11:14
Speaker 1: being done. You can't use as as an excuse moving
11:17
Speaker 1: forward anyway, Oh I still will, Okay, ultrasound above our
11:22
Speaker 1: threshold of hearing or twenty killer hurts and above you um,
11:26
Speaker 1: you there is stuff on the market that you can
11:30
Speaker 1: you can actually you know, direct at somebody a beam
11:33
Speaker 1: of ultrasound and and you know, hurt their hearing, but
11:37
Speaker 1: you're not going to cause vertigo or anything like that.
11:40
Speaker 1: And to really like cause major symptoms or something approaching
11:43
Speaker 1: a concussion or traumatic brain injury, which some of these
11:46
Speaker 1: people were diagnosed with UM. There was a scientist who said,
11:50
Speaker 1: I think his name is Joseph Pompey's a psychoacoustics expert,
11:53
Speaker 1: which is awesome. He said that you would basically have
11:56
Speaker 1: to dip your head in a pool line with UM
12:01
Speaker 1: ultrasound ultrasonic transducers UM to to get like actual brain
12:07
Speaker 1: damage from that. So that didn't happen in anybody. UM.
12:11
Speaker 1: So again they said sonic attack, but it must have
12:14
Speaker 1: been some sort of exotic weapon that even the CIA
12:18
Speaker 1: isn't aware of. All right, I think good time for
12:21
Speaker 1: a break. Yes, I agree, go stick our head in
12:25
Speaker 1: a in a pool of ultrasonic transducers. I can't wait
12:28
Speaker 1: to see what happens and boot my pants. All right, great, okay, Chuck.
12:55
Speaker 1: So you said that the State Department sicked the National
12:57
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences on the Savannason thing, right, Yeah, Like
13:02
Speaker 1: everyone at this point is saying it's not a sonic attack.
13:04
Speaker 1: So they started focusing on potential viral attack, UM, pesticide
13:10
Speaker 1: poisoning because this is when Zeka was a thing, and
13:13
Speaker 1: Zeca fumigation was going on. UM either microwaves, which is interesting,
13:18
Speaker 1: and then our favorite frankly one of our favorite topics
13:21
Speaker 1: was mass hysteria. Yeah, we did. Um, we've talked about
13:24
Speaker 1: it twice. At least. We did a short stuff on
13:26
Speaker 1: Gloria Ramirez, remember her, and then we also did a
13:30
Speaker 1: full length episode some really interesting Cases of mass hysteria
13:33
Speaker 1: from two thousand sixteen. Yeah, so put a pin in
13:36
Speaker 1: that um n AS is doing their study. They were,
13:40
Speaker 1: you know, they were sort of behind the eight ball
13:42
Speaker 1: a little bit because, um, by this point things had
13:46
Speaker 1: already progressed. You know, they were at disadvantage in a
13:49
Speaker 1: lot of ways. This was after the fact. Um they
13:53
Speaker 1: didn't know like these doctors who were who were treating
13:56
Speaker 1: these people, they didn't know they were investigating a mystery.
13:59
Speaker 1: They were treating people for a medical issue. So your
14:04
Speaker 1: approach to a situation like that is a lot different
14:07
Speaker 1: if you're not investigating. Like, no one is back there saying, hey,
14:10
Speaker 1: find out what weird thing happened to these people. They
14:13
Speaker 1: were just like treating tentatives and nausea and stuff like. Yeah,
14:15
Speaker 1: that seems to be a really big ball drop on
14:17
Speaker 1: the part of the State Department and a particular here. Yeah,
14:21
Speaker 1: in particular the Cuban Bureau or Havannah Bureau. There wasn't
14:25
Speaker 1: anybody at the top saying, hey, there's something clearly going
14:28
Speaker 1: on here. All of these people when you go to
14:31
Speaker 1: this one particular doctor and have the doctor this one
14:34
Speaker 1: medical center, somebody looking at you know, looking for all
14:38
Speaker 1: these symptoms and documenting this. They were just being treated individually. Finally,
14:42
Speaker 1: at one point they did kind of bring everybody together
14:46
Speaker 1: and have a meeting um. But but before that, there
14:50
Speaker 1: was just a lot of treatment going on. It wasn't
14:52
Speaker 1: being documented properly. So the n AS just right out
14:55
Speaker 1: of the gate, was like, this is what we're working
14:57
Speaker 1: with for real. Yeah, I mean they didn't even have
15:00
Speaker 1: stuff like original blood samples for when these people got sick.
15:04
Speaker 1: There was a lot of time that passed, so they
15:07
Speaker 1: just they really had no way to tell anything. They
15:09
Speaker 1: had incomplete data to begin with. Uh. And then of
15:12
Speaker 1: course you're dealing with Cuba, so you're not getting I mean,
15:18
Speaker 1: you know, they're investigating some stuff, but it's not like
15:21
Speaker 1: if this happened to Canada and we were really sharing
15:23
Speaker 1: information like that. Well, from what I read, the Cubans
15:26
Speaker 1: are saying like we were totally willing to collaborate. The
15:29
Speaker 1: State Department refused to let the the n AS talk
15:33
Speaker 1: to us. They couldn't. They couldn't accept our data. They couldn't. Um, yeah,
15:38
Speaker 1: I guess the Cubans had conducted neighborhood surveys, had done
15:42
Speaker 1: its own investigation, and the n AS was barred from
15:45
Speaker 1: using any of that data. And then one other thing
15:48
Speaker 1: that hamstrung them right out of the gate was, um,
15:52
Speaker 1: the medical files. These are medical files of diplomats and
15:56
Speaker 1: in some cases CIA agents. So not only is there
16:00
Speaker 1: like hippa stuff going on, um, like hippo protection, so
16:03
Speaker 1: that there are things have to be redacted, there's like
16:05
Speaker 1: national security stuff too, and you know, like the State
16:08
Speaker 1: Department is very you know, redaction happy, um when it
16:13
Speaker 1: comes to stuff like that. So they were basically handed
16:15
Speaker 1: medical files that had huge black bars everywhere over possibly
16:19
Speaker 1: important information. So you put all this stuff together and
16:23
Speaker 1: the National Academy of Sciences cannot possibly arrive at a
16:28
Speaker 1: clear picture of the problem, the symptoms, when, what happened, when,
16:33
Speaker 1: who was near whom, at what point, um, And so
16:36
Speaker 1: they can't they can't possibly map produce an epidemiological map.
16:41
Speaker 1: So whatever they come up with is going to be flawed.
16:44
Speaker 1: And they realized this from you know, from the get go. Yeah,
16:48
Speaker 1: So what they ended up coming up with, Um, the
16:51
Speaker 1: n A S said, you know what, it was a
16:53
Speaker 1: directed pulse radio frequency energy and we think that's the
16:58
Speaker 1: most likely cause. A couple of keywords, they're directed and pulsed,
17:03
Speaker 1: means someone did this. It was a very specific, intentional attack.
17:08
Speaker 1: It wasn't just some random thing that happened because of
17:11
Speaker 1: micro waves or cell phone towers or anything like that. Like,
17:14
Speaker 1: it was a purposeful thing. And uh, they said, you know,
17:18
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that we think it might be
17:20
Speaker 1: this is this thing called the Fry Effect f R
17:23
Speaker 1: E Y nothing to do with the deceased former Eagle
17:28
Speaker 1: Glenn Fry. Oh the heat is on, haven't I've told
17:36
Speaker 1: you about this before. There's a sarad Live sketch featuring
17:38
Speaker 1: Ben Stiller I don't remember. He sees Glenn Fry, who's
17:42
Speaker 1: actually Will Ferrell, our colleague and co worker um as
17:47
Speaker 1: Glenn Fry at a club and he's like, I'm gonna
17:50
Speaker 1: go I'm gonna seduce Glenn Fry to like his friends,
17:53
Speaker 1: And he goes over and he actually is successful, but
17:56
Speaker 1: to his own detriment because Glenn Fry makes him eat
17:59
Speaker 1: out of a dog hole and keeps them on the chain.
18:01
Speaker 1: And this is wild, like just crazy sex that's going on,
18:06
Speaker 1: and the guy like really regrets having seduced Glen fry
18:09
Speaker 1: But it's they refer to the heat as on as
18:12
Speaker 1: the h is. Oh, it's really I have It is
18:18
Speaker 1: impossible that I have not mentioned it before. So when
18:24
Speaker 1: the words Glenn Fryer uttered, that's the first thing. You yes,
18:27
Speaker 1: pretty much every time. Oh, I have another Glen fry story,
18:30
Speaker 1: if you know, if you want to hear it, I
18:32
Speaker 1: got all the time in the world. So you and
18:35
Speaker 1: I were traveling and um in our car and they're
18:40
Speaker 1: they're like, this Eagle song was on, and the one
18:44
Speaker 1: about the wheels driving you crazy, Keep take it easy.
18:49
Speaker 1: And I hate the Eagles to begin with, from start
18:52
Speaker 1: to finish. I hate their entire catalog, every every moment
18:55
Speaker 1: of it. That song in particular is one of the
18:58
Speaker 1: ones I really hate. And um, we have a pause
19:02
Speaker 1: button on our radio and so I paused it because
19:06
Speaker 1: this is live radio, and um, I I'm paus it,
19:10
Speaker 1: and you know there's the song still. I'm like, man,
19:12
Speaker 1: it's so this is a really long song. We do
19:15
Speaker 1: this like five times before I like realized that our
19:18
Speaker 1: radio can actually pause live radio and that we're not
19:22
Speaker 1: like in some new concentric circle. Right. There was a
19:26
Speaker 1: moment there were like did we die or is this
19:29
Speaker 1: is this? Are we in purgatory? Because this is awful?
19:33
Speaker 1: That's really funny. Uh. Well, I am back loving the
19:37
Speaker 1: Eagles after many years of not and so I wanted
19:39
Speaker 1: to thank listener Clayton Jaynes, who was invited me and
19:45
Speaker 1: Emily to the Eagles concert last time they came to
19:47
Speaker 1: Atlanta and I got to go backstage there and stand
19:51
Speaker 1: on the stage of Philips Arena and like touched on
19:53
Speaker 1: Henley's drum kid and look at Joe Ash's and Glenn
19:56
Speaker 1: Fries guitars that his son now plays in his absence. Yeah,
20:00
Speaker 1: I think I think he told us about that one.
20:03
Speaker 1: It was awesome and I know now why you weren't there. Yeah. Yeah,
20:08
Speaker 1: But Clayton is a good guy. He does he does
20:09
Speaker 1: other bands, like I think he works with Kiss a lot,
20:11
Speaker 1: so you probably enjoyed that. I would definitely go see
20:14
Speaker 1: Kiss for sure. Yeah, for sure. So if Clayton's listening,
20:17
Speaker 1: we want to go to the I want to meet
20:20
Speaker 1: those guys. Okay, they scare me. Still. There was another
20:23
Speaker 1: guy named Josh who's a cool guy I've lost touch with,
20:26
Speaker 1: but he used to invite us to the New Kids
20:28
Speaker 1: shows because he was like, he was like a production designer.
20:32
Speaker 1: He's like, it's it's like you're talking about with Clayton.
20:35
Speaker 1: He doesn't just work with the New Kids, but he's
20:37
Speaker 1: like this in demand production designer. But one of the
20:40
Speaker 1: shows that he's done for multiple years in a row
20:42
Speaker 1: is New Kids. And he kept inviting as to the
20:45
Speaker 1: New Kids show. And not not because I didn't want
20:48
Speaker 1: to go through the New Kids, but there was no
20:50
Speaker 1: I couldn't go to the New Kids every time. So
20:52
Speaker 1: but I turned out we turned out to be friends.
20:54
Speaker 1: So he's cool. Dude I haven't heard from in a while.
20:56
Speaker 1: So I guess if huch because we want to go.
21:01
Speaker 1: That's the first show I want to see when this
21:02
Speaker 1: whole thing? Oh yeah, then kiss? Uh So the fry effect, boy,
21:09
Speaker 1: that was a good long segway or not segwe a tangent?
21:13
Speaker 1: What do we call those tangents? Irritations? It's the life
21:18
Speaker 1: flood of the show. The fry effect basically is when
21:22
Speaker 1: pulse microwaves directed at a target can make a clicking
21:25
Speaker 1: sound in the target's ears, and only the person can
21:29
Speaker 1: hear that sound. So they kind of go back to
21:32
Speaker 1: those UM. I don't know how many people, but some
21:34
Speaker 1: of the people said they did hear a clicking sound
21:37
Speaker 1: before all this stuff happened, so they kind of were like,
21:39
Speaker 1: all right, it's the fry effect. So here's the problem
21:42
Speaker 1: with that. At this point, the the National Academy of
21:46
Speaker 1: Sciences there, the people the group they am paneled UM
21:51
Speaker 1: are just now just ticking off the scientific community because
21:54
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, there's this one there's this one quality
21:58
Speaker 1: that can happen from this one weird random thing. That's
22:01
Speaker 1: probably what it is. We'll just completely ignore everything else
22:04
Speaker 1: in favor of that one little piece of information. And
22:07
Speaker 1: so there was It's really kind of interesting if you
22:10
Speaker 1: read articles on on the Havana syndrome, there's a lot
22:14
Speaker 1: of cattiness going on, like you can get a scientist
22:17
Speaker 1: to call somebody else basically a clown um with this stuff.
22:20
Speaker 1: It's really interesting to read a lot of like flame
22:23
Speaker 1: war stuff. But the problem with the fry effect, well,
22:27
Speaker 1: there's multiple problems. One, uh, they recorded this sound. There's
22:31
Speaker 1: a recording of it out that the AP leaked um
22:35
Speaker 1: that you can hear, which would discount the fry effect
22:38
Speaker 1: because only the person being targeted by microwaves. Here's the clicking.
22:42
Speaker 1: That's a big problem. The other thing is that other
22:45
Speaker 1: acoustic or microwave experts say, to produce that clicking in
22:50
Speaker 1: the person's ears, you would cook them to death. Like that,
22:54
Speaker 1: The the amount of energy it would take to make
22:56
Speaker 1: that fry effect happen would kill the person. It wouldn't
23:00
Speaker 1: just you know, create the clicking in their ears. But
23:03
Speaker 1: that's kind of one of the things that they settled
23:05
Speaker 1: on UM as a potential explanation. Well, the State Department
23:09
Speaker 1: was like, sounds good to me. Yeah, and I mean
23:12
Speaker 1: the the the n A yes said like, we're considering
23:15
Speaker 1: all these other things, this is what we think is
23:18
Speaker 1: the most plausible, which is actually really the least plausible. Yeah,
23:23
Speaker 1: And you know, some of the people in the flame
23:26
Speaker 1: War were like why did they like they have these
23:29
Speaker 1: medical experts basically and neurology experts. What you need if
23:34
Speaker 1: you're going to investigate something like this is a lot
23:36
Speaker 1: of different kinds of experts. You need, some acoustic experts
23:40
Speaker 1: you need. They like apparently didn't even engage acoustic experts
23:44
Speaker 1: talking about this acoustic stuff, and they were like, you
23:47
Speaker 1: need a multidisciplinary team in here, in a lot of
23:50
Speaker 1: different fields if you're going to investigate something like this,
23:53
Speaker 1: and they just never did. Yeah. And one of the
23:55
Speaker 1: interpretations I saw was that again they were working backward
24:00
Speaker 1: from the Rubio FBI State Department um idea theory that
24:06
Speaker 1: it was a sonic attack, that that that that was
24:09
Speaker 1: what the premise they were really going on, and then
24:11
Speaker 1: they were trying to work backward to figure out, you know,
24:13
Speaker 1: what the attack was was made of rather than Okay,
24:17
Speaker 1: maybe maybe it was in tech, maybe it was also
24:19
Speaker 1: natural that kind of stuff for accidental who knows. Yeah,
24:23
Speaker 1: I mean there have been other smaller studies, not from
24:27
Speaker 1: the US government, Like there was one from Ben Gurion
24:31
Speaker 1: University that said, you know what, we studied some of
24:34
Speaker 1: these Canadian diplomats and based on their data, we think
24:37
Speaker 1: it was pesticide poisoning. But then a lot of people,
24:42
Speaker 1: and it seems like the most popular, including the Cuban
24:46
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences, take that for what it's worth. But
24:49
Speaker 1: a lot of them came back and said, I hate
24:52
Speaker 1: to say it, but this was maybe mass hysteria and
24:55
Speaker 1: some sort of psychological uh, either illness or mass hysteria episode. Yeah,
25:00
Speaker 1: a lot of people agree with him on that. And Cuba,
25:03
Speaker 1: by the way, very um like a really good health
25:06
Speaker 1: care system and a really solid scientific community. So the
25:10
Speaker 1: community Cuban Academy of Science is not like the Banana
25:14
Speaker 1: Republic Academy Sciences or anything like that. From what I understand,
25:17
Speaker 1: I've never been to Cuba, UM. But the the that
25:20
Speaker 1: seems to be the most widely subscribe to theory that
25:26
Speaker 1: it was it was what's called conversion disorder, where you
25:30
Speaker 1: basically have a psychogenic illness. Somebody um is told what
25:35
Speaker 1: the suite of symptoms is, they start developing it themselves
25:39
Speaker 1: and then this this tight knit community, it starts to
25:41
Speaker 1: seem to spread. And the thing about is called conversion disorder.
25:45
Speaker 1: You are you are actually experiencing your body is experiencing
25:50
Speaker 1: those symptoms, just like in the placebo effect where you
25:52
Speaker 1: take a pill and it actually does make you healthy
25:55
Speaker 1: even though it's not an active ingredient, but your body,
25:59
Speaker 1: your mind can make your body do things if it
26:02
Speaker 1: thinks something is going on. This is the kind of
26:05
Speaker 1: like the the mirror image of that where you start
26:08
Speaker 1: to suffer because your mind tricks you into thinking that
26:11
Speaker 1: you have these symptoms, and it seems to spread because
26:15
Speaker 1: people are It's like fear is the contagion in in
26:19
Speaker 1: in instance like this. Yeah, and this stuff has happened before.
26:23
Speaker 1: I think we talked about at least one of the
26:26
Speaker 1: Portugal Yeah, in two thousand six in Portugal. Gosh, we're
26:31
Speaker 1: doing this in two thousand six. No, we talked about
26:33
Speaker 1: it after, for sure, you know we definitely when I
26:35
Speaker 1: was two years before we were born, we were just
26:38
Speaker 1: embryonic at that twinkle in um Adam Curry's eye. Uh, yeah,
26:45
Speaker 1: two thousand six in Portugal, those UM students in high
26:49
Speaker 1: school I think it was high school, right, or was
26:51
Speaker 1: it college? I think it was high school. Yeah. There
26:53
Speaker 1: were hundreds of students in fourteen different schools, all developed
26:57
Speaker 1: these weird symptoms rashes and dizziness and breathing difficulties. Uh.
27:02
Speaker 1: And then it happened again in New York in two
27:04
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, twelve high school students developed um what they
27:09
Speaker 1: thought was Tourette syndrome, or at least symptoms of tourette.
27:12
Speaker 1: It sounds like that that that sounds made up. If
27:15
Speaker 1: I were a principal, I'd be like, you're you're all
27:17
Speaker 1: suspended for even trying this, because all they did was yell. Yeah.
27:25
Speaker 1: There was another one in Oklahoma in two thousand and
27:27
Speaker 1: seventeen that actually was happening about the same time as
27:29
Speaker 1: a savannah Um syndrome outbreak, where there was actually the
27:33
Speaker 1: kids were paralyzed. They were getting they thought that there
27:35
Speaker 1: was some sort of crazy like mold or autoimmune disorder
27:39
Speaker 1: something like that, and they were suffering paralysis. And that's
27:42
Speaker 1: the thing about conversion disorder is these kids were paralyzed,
27:47
Speaker 1: but it was their mind that had paralyzed them because
27:50
Speaker 1: they thought they'd been exposed to something that that was
27:53
Speaker 1: making them paralyzed, and it turns out it was just
27:56
Speaker 1: in their minds. And that's what a lot of people
27:58
Speaker 1: think of and a syndrome is that it was just
28:01
Speaker 1: a psychogenic illness. Yeah, so I think we should take
28:06
Speaker 1: a break, but we'll leave you with this little cliffhanger.
28:09
Speaker 1: In this n a S report, they referenced data, uh
28:14
Speaker 1: from an earlier report by the CDC that was commissioned
28:17
Speaker 1: and completed, and Congress and everyone else looked around and said,
28:22
Speaker 1: what's CDC report? What are you talking about. So let's
28:25
Speaker 1: take a break and we'll come back and talk about
28:28
Speaker 1: this mystery right after this cliffhanger. Okay, Chuck. So everybody's saying, wait, wait,
28:56
Speaker 1: this is December when that journal of the American Medical
29:00
Speaker 1: Association published the n A S S findings finally mere
29:04
Speaker 1: months ago, and in that they like they made mention
29:08
Speaker 1: of a CDC report that no one else had heard of,
29:10
Speaker 1: and like you said, including Congress. And it turns out
29:13
Speaker 1: that the State Department had initially commissioned the CDC um
29:17
Speaker 1: shortly after this this outbreak began, um and said, can
29:21
Speaker 1: you guys figure out what's going on? And so it
29:24
Speaker 1: turns out that there was actually the n A S
29:27
Speaker 1: study was the second scientific study done on this and
29:31
Speaker 1: the CDC. It didn't really come up with much more
29:34
Speaker 1: than the n A Y S did. Yeah. They issued
29:37
Speaker 1: an eighteen page report titled and they spent half the
29:42
Speaker 1: time trying to figure out how to spell yeah. There
29:45
Speaker 1: was a vigorous debate over that. Uh no, it was
29:48
Speaker 1: really called Cuba Unexplained Events Investigation, And like you said,
29:52
Speaker 1: they kind of came up empty. Two. They were hamstrung
29:55
Speaker 1: in a lot of the same ways that the n
29:58
Speaker 1: A S was and had a state department that had
30:02
Speaker 1: dragged its feet and didn't have the protocols in place
30:05
Speaker 1: for the investigation. UM. I think one of the one
30:09
Speaker 1: of the only things that kind of came out of
30:10
Speaker 1: the CDC report that was helpful, which I guess is
30:13
Speaker 1: why the n AS used it in the first place,
30:16
Speaker 1: was it did fill in a few of the details
30:19
Speaker 1: about what happened to whom. Yeah, so they managed to
30:23
Speaker 1: nail down patient zero UM who first reported UM some
30:28
Speaker 1: neurological symptoms in mid December of two thousand and sixteen,
30:33
Speaker 1: and that was a CIA officer in Havana. UM. That
30:38
Speaker 1: CIA officer mentioned their symptoms to a second CIA officer
30:42
Speaker 1: who who like a couple of months later, developed the
30:45
Speaker 1: same symptoms. See where this is going. And so after
30:50
Speaker 1: that time, so apparently Patient zero, the first CIA officer
30:54
Speaker 1: who has happened to UM, was really instrumental in like
30:58
Speaker 1: spreading the word about this. Was it seems to have
31:01
Speaker 1: been very convinced that they had been attacked, that there
31:05
Speaker 1: was a sonic attack going on, and that the word
31:08
Speaker 1: needed to be spread about this. And so as a result, UM,
31:12
Speaker 1: the the I think the Havana UM embassy held a
31:16
Speaker 1: meeting and basically said, listen out for weird sounds and
31:20
Speaker 1: if you start to get this huge weird collection of symptoms,
31:24
Speaker 1: let us know because we're probably under sonic attack. That
31:28
Speaker 1: solves that and went back to bed. That's right, and uh,
31:34
Speaker 1: maybe not. Coincidentally, a lot of incidents has happened after
31:39
Speaker 1: that happened, and UM and at the end they said,
31:44
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to go home, right, here's
31:47
Speaker 1: here's one way to fast track. Now. Although Cuba think
31:50
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be very nice, so maybe they weren't
31:52
Speaker 1: trying to get out of there. But in the end,
31:54
Speaker 1: ninety five people were seeing for these symptoms. In the
31:57
Speaker 1: CDC report, it said that fifteen of those had a
32:00
Speaker 1: two stage illness. Uh, first was the noise that we
32:04
Speaker 1: talked about and those acute symptoms, and then second a
32:08
Speaker 1: few weeks later, a couple of weeks later, they had
32:10
Speaker 1: that neurological damage. I think thirty one of the cases,
32:13
Speaker 1: where maybe's forty nine were unlikely. And then of those
32:17
Speaker 1: fifteen who had that two stage syndrome, while the report
32:21
Speaker 1: was issued, there were six of them still getting treated,
32:23
Speaker 1: so it wasn't even like their treatment was compared, right, Yeah,
32:26
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's the thing, Like whether it's psychogenic
32:29
Speaker 1: illness or a sonic attack or you know, fumigation, um
32:33
Speaker 1: poisoning from you know, zekea pesticides like there there were
32:38
Speaker 1: still people that were still being treated for symptoms for
32:42
Speaker 1: over a year. These are nasty symptoms like vertigo is
32:45
Speaker 1: nothing to nothing, nothing fun. Were vomiting or dizziness or
32:50
Speaker 1: inability to concentrate. Um, there's a lot of terrible stuff
32:54
Speaker 1: that that people we're having to deal with. Whatever the um,
32:59
Speaker 1: the the reason for the symptoms were, which you know,
33:03
Speaker 1: makes a lot of people think like, no, this is
33:05
Speaker 1: this is a real thing, and these people were attacked
33:08
Speaker 1: and we need to find out what it is. The
33:11
Speaker 1: CDC at least said we have no idea, like we
33:15
Speaker 1: cannot figure it out. That they said, like and their
33:18
Speaker 1: conclusion that they couldn't possibly put forth any kind of explanation.
33:24
Speaker 1: They just mainly documented everything, which is certainly a mark
33:28
Speaker 1: in the CDC's favor and a mark against the The
33:32
Speaker 1: n A s that the CDC resisted, you know, saying
33:35
Speaker 1: yes it was microwaves and it was probably the Ruskies. Yeah,
33:40
Speaker 1: and that all came about you know, after everyone, um,
33:44
Speaker 1: a lot of scientists that has rejected the findings. Cuba
33:47
Speaker 1: rejected the findings. We told you earlier that they got
33:50
Speaker 1: all up in arms and said, hey, listen, we tried
33:53
Speaker 1: to help, we take this stuff seriously. Um, we weren't
33:56
Speaker 1: a part of this. But uh, in that n AS panel, UM,
34:01
Speaker 1: somebody said something about Russia, and you know, obviously Russia
34:06
Speaker 1: is in bed with Cuba, and they said, you know what,
34:10
Speaker 1: it's maybe it was Russia. We do know that in
34:12
Speaker 1: the seventies they were trying to weaponize microwaves. Um. They
34:16
Speaker 1: in fact, um, for like three years straight, three and
34:19
Speaker 1: a half years, pounded the American embassy in Moscow with microwaves.
34:24
Speaker 1: I don't even know if they had an endgame there.
34:26
Speaker 1: I think they were just like a let let's see
34:28
Speaker 1: what this does. Turn it on. And I don't think
34:31
Speaker 1: it really did anything if it went on for three
34:33
Speaker 1: and a half years. And apparently, um, of course we'll
34:36
Speaker 1: never know because this Russia. But supposedly they kind of
34:38
Speaker 1: gave up all that stuff decades ago. Yeah, this is
34:40
Speaker 1: the seventies when they were shooting microwaves at the American
34:43
Speaker 1: embassy in Moscow. UM, and yeah, as far as anybody
34:46
Speaker 1: knows that that technology wasn't pursued any further. So if
34:51
Speaker 1: there is any kind of sonic weapon that is concealable,
34:56
Speaker 1: that is, that is capable of producing the suite of
34:59
Speaker 1: symptom um, it is news to the world. UM. And
35:05
Speaker 1: there are people who say, like you know, security experts,
35:08
Speaker 1: that kind of group, who say, yeah, it's entirely possible
35:11
Speaker 1: that somebody has developed this without the US being aware
35:14
Speaker 1: of it. UM. I saw a quote that America tends
35:17
Speaker 1: to be very surprised that not that certain things exist,
35:20
Speaker 1: but that other people have caught up to America's technology.
35:24
Speaker 1: So yeah, um. But at the same time, it's kind
35:27
Speaker 1: of like it's suggesting that America or certain quarters of
35:32
Speaker 1: America UM, are fully aware that this is possible, which
35:36
Speaker 1: is why they're pursuing that sonic attack thing. But they
35:39
Speaker 1: can't just be like, it's this, see everybody, We've had
35:41
Speaker 1: this for twenty years now. We just didn't know that
35:44
Speaker 1: the Cubans had it kind of thing. So the US
35:47
Speaker 1: still um seems to be you know, with the expulsion
35:51
Speaker 1: of the Cuban to Cuban diplomats, UM is basically saying
35:56
Speaker 1: if Cuba doesn't know if they didn't do it, they
35:59
Speaker 1: know who did it, and they maybe even let it
36:01
Speaker 1: happen because apparently diplomatic residences in Cuba are owned and
36:07
Speaker 1: maintained by the Cuban government, so it's not like they
36:10
Speaker 1: just had no opportunity to do this kind of thing.
36:14
Speaker 1: But Cuba, like you said, it's extremely adamant that they
36:16
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with this and that they would
36:19
Speaker 1: never let this happen to any accredited UM diplomat in
36:23
Speaker 1: their country. And if you step outside of the United States,
36:28
Speaker 1: it's really kind of funny because the rest of the
36:30
Speaker 1: world is totally fine with Cuba. It's really just the
36:32
Speaker 1: United States that's you know, at odds with Cuba, and
36:36
Speaker 1: Cuba is cool with everybody else. Like apparently a million
36:39
Speaker 1: Canadians go to Cuba every year on on vacation, so
36:43
Speaker 1: it's kind of like something that they're not really happy
36:46
Speaker 1: about the idea that that if you go to Cuba
36:48
Speaker 1: you might suffer this sonic attack. UM that could at
36:52
Speaker 1: the very least hurt their tourism industry, if not just
36:55
Speaker 1: you know, impinging their you know, how they treat diplomats
36:59
Speaker 1: from other country or allow them to be treated it's
37:01
Speaker 1: it's a real insult in that respect. Yeah, And I
37:05
Speaker 1: think it's also one of the end results was the
37:08
Speaker 1: US government and it was kind of exposed a little
37:11
Speaker 1: bit of dragging their feet and not being coordinated and
37:14
Speaker 1: not maybe having their ducks in a row. And I
37:17
Speaker 1: think if anything like this were to happen again, I
37:20
Speaker 1: think they had enough egg on their face to sort
37:23
Speaker 1: of get it together to at least sort of be
37:25
Speaker 1: coordinated from the get go and have a multidisciplinary investigation
37:29
Speaker 1: going on. And this whole thing, like the the big
37:33
Speaker 1: argument and push and pull among the scientific communities, still
37:36
Speaker 1: very much ongoing. UM. There was a paper published that
37:39
Speaker 1: examined some brain scans of some of these diplomats that
37:43
Speaker 1: were taken at Penn State, I believe, UM, and these
37:48
Speaker 1: the authors of the study concluded that, you know, a
37:50
Speaker 1: lot of them showed evidence of trauma. And then other
37:53
Speaker 1: scientists responded and said, like, this doesn't show trauma at all.
37:56
Speaker 1: That's exactly what you would find from a random sample
37:59
Speaker 1: of the population. UM. Other people. Remember, I said that
38:02
Speaker 1: they recorded the sound that they heard. UM. Apparently a
38:06
Speaker 1: couple of biologists ran that sound through spectral analysis and
38:10
Speaker 1: showed that it exactly matches um, a specific kind of
38:14
Speaker 1: cricket that's um native to Cuba and the Caribbean. So
38:19
Speaker 1: there's just like it's still being hammered out. Like we
38:22
Speaker 1: said it the at the beginning, that this is not
38:24
Speaker 1: it's not settled. No one has any idea yet exactly
38:27
Speaker 1: what it is, and it seems like the most satisfying
38:31
Speaker 1: answer would be psychogenic illness. But even still, I mean,
38:34
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem to really explain everything necessarily. Yeah, well,
38:39
Speaker 1: a pretty good mystery. Still a good mystery. And who
38:43
Speaker 1: doesn't love that? Right? I know Glenn Fry I hated.
38:47
Speaker 1: I don't care what Clint Fry liked or didn't like. Um.
38:52
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about the Havana syndrome,
38:55
Speaker 1: go check out the copious amounts of articles about it.
38:59
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff out there. It's really interesting
39:01
Speaker 1: and engrossing stuff. See what you think? Uh? And since
39:04
Speaker 1: I said see what you think, it's time for a
39:05
Speaker 1: listener mail. When you think about that hs O story,
39:10
Speaker 1: do you go the h is boom boom boom boom.
39:15
Speaker 1: Oh nope, you know, isn't that from Beverly Hills cop
39:22
Speaker 1: I think the heat is on one. Yeah, that was
39:24
Speaker 1: the one where he's like hanging off of the back
39:25
Speaker 1: of the semi Yeah. Yeah. He did a few of
39:28
Speaker 1: those soundtrack e type things, and he was an actor
39:30
Speaker 1: on Miami Bodies, which is one of your favorite shows.
39:33
Speaker 1: What do you hate Miami Vice? It's fine. I refused
39:36
Speaker 1: to watch the episodes with Clem Fry. All right, I'm
39:40
Speaker 1: gonna call this just a nice email from a listener
39:43
Speaker 1: who was kind of growing up with. Hey, guys, I'm
39:45
Speaker 1: writing to say that I first discovered your podcast way
39:47
Speaker 1: back in when I was in the seventh grade. It
39:52
Speaker 1: just moved away from many of my neighborhood friends in
39:55
Speaker 1: your podcast was a source of a source of information
39:58
Speaker 1: and comfort during that transition. Having always been a nerd,
40:01
Speaker 1: I was immediately hooked on your podcast and have listened
40:03
Speaker 1: to it many of my travels for sports teams, college trips,
40:06
Speaker 1: and international adventures. In fact, your podcast had a major
40:10
Speaker 1: impact in keeping my curiosity alive and well throughout my life.
40:15
Speaker 1: I just accepted an offer for grad school in Georgia
40:18
Speaker 1: and wanted to write to say that although we have
40:20
Speaker 1: never met, you two have positively impacted my life for
40:23
Speaker 1: more than the past decade. So thank you for everything.
40:26
Speaker 1: I hope you're well. And that is from Abigail. Is
40:29
Speaker 1: a fine listener mail. Thanks a lot, Abigail, It's very sweet.
40:32
Speaker 1: I love and best of luck in grad school. That's great. Yeah,
40:37
Speaker 1: kill it, but not literally, no no no, that's a
40:41
Speaker 1: figure speech meaning go do a great job, the best
40:44
Speaker 1: you can do, a great job. Okay, Well, if you
40:47
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with this, like Abigail, Abidale's
40:52
Speaker 1: Abigail's new nickname, not Frank Abignail. No, Abbidale Master fortunerally
40:58
Speaker 1: known as Abigail. Yeah, we talked about Frank Abgnail in
41:03
Speaker 1: the five Successful Counterfeiters episode. He's number one, wasn't uh
41:09
Speaker 1: he was up there for sure. It was good. Well, anyway,
41:12
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us, like anybody,
41:15
Speaker 1: including Abigdale, Abgdail or Abigail, you can send us an
41:21
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41:28
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