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How ESP Works(?) · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know from house stuff Works
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's over there. I
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: didn't even have to look why, I just knew, yes,
• 0:22
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• 0:27
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• 0:33
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• 0:36
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• 0:40
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• 0:44
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• 0:47
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• 0:51
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• 0:54
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• 0:56
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• 0:59
  Speaker 1: what's called d M R T M. I how are you, sir?
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty good. I feel like this is fancy. This
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: is our first real like studio. That's not true, not no,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember the last one was no. But
• 1:15
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• 1:18
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• 1:21
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• 1:25
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• 1:37
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• 1:40
  Speaker 1: it's such gonna hang some china balls for us. Yes,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: you keep pushing the china balls. Um so, anyway, enough
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: about that. We just wanted to say we're super excited
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  Speaker 1: to be in our new office, in our new studio.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: It does feel good. Kudos for that intro. I'm not
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: gonna say that. I knew you were going to say that. Yeah,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I was going to say that too. I knew that
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: you were thinking of saying that. Chuck. Yes, uh ESP.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Do you believe in ESP? No? No, not at all.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: What do you think it is? Because surely, I mean
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: just about anyone could agree that humans have some sort
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: of ability somehow to make good guesses or to the future,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. Do you agree or
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: do you think it's strictly just us selectively paying attention
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: to random instances over others. I think it's that. And yeah,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: and as we'll talk about, I think it's the just
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: the nature of coincidence is going to happen because so
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: many things happen every day, Uh, that something is bound
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: to seem like something you dreamed about the night before
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: at some point in your life. Yeah. But the other
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: millions of dreams you have that, don't I think those
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: are the ones that are the the tell you know,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: do you? I don't know, like I want to. I
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: spent so many years of my life believing and stuff
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: like that and wanting to go to to Duke University
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: to study at their paras psychology department believe. Yeah, and
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: but you know, believing in ghosts and all this and
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: just that's how I spent my childhood just reading about
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: stuff like that voraciously. So Ghostbusters really did a number
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: on you. Yeah. Yeah. When that came along, I was like,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: this was made for me. Um. But as an adult,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: it's not so much that I believe in the esp
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: it's more that I UM, I refused to just utterly
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: disbelieve in the possibility of it. Okay, you know what
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: I mean. Yeah, I got you there, because we don't
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: know everything about everything yet, right, but uh yeah, I'm
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: in the I'm the other camp. And I'm not even
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: say the skeptic camp because there's people just plug me
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: bad name some due to some bad apples. Not all skeptics,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: but there are some that are horses asses. Can we
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: say that? I don't know, we'll find out. Um, All right,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: well let's talk about And I thought this was interesting
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: because I never knew that uh ESP is just a
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: big collective term for all manner of uh paranormal paranormal phenomena,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: which you could also call SI. Yeah, and so dude
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: named jb Ryan, who will talk about later, he coined
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: ESP the granddaddy. And then in the forties another guy
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: coined the term sigh and sigh is the Greek letter
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: and it's equated with psyche or the soul. And the
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: reason that the guy chose SI is because he felt
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: ESP suggested it was something supernatural, and SI, he felt,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: suggested that this is a normal part of humanity we
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: just don't understand and it's it sounds like science, right, Um.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: But there are several categories of ESP UM and this
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: is the one. I never knew the actual definitions for these.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: I sort of just threw them all in a bag together.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: You have telepathy, and that's when you can you know,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: you're over there reading my thoughts. Yes, like Chuck is
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: really not happy to be in the new studio. That's
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: not true. He'd rather be at home on the couch.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: I'm reading your thoughts right now, and I know that
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: you like this place. Okay, Well, you're you're a telepath. Uh. Clairvoyance,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: which is the ability to see events or things objects
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: happening somewhere else at the same time. So are you
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: doing Are you a clairvoyant? I am. I'm seeing your
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: couch right now, and I'm saying it's not that comfy. Yeah,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: so you're not missing that much at the moment. I
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: know somewhere Jonathan Strickland is waxing his head, bald head.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: That's just the logical assumption. Uh. Then we have our
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: precogs precognition. That's when you see into the future. Retrocogs
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: retro cognition. You can see into the distant past. That's
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: there's another um that's a widely accepted definition of retrocognition,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: like seeing you know a cave like took took running
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: around with the dinosaurs like you do, which I guess
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: never would have happened. Um. But there's another term for retrocognition,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: whereas something in the future affects something in the past.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: So a decision you make in the future affects your past.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: And an example given is that, um, you have a
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: dream about a dinosaur. Now, let's a spotted dog, and
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: then the first thing the next morning, you go outside
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: to water your lawn and the same spotted dog or
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: a similar spotted dog walks by. The idea isn't that
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: that was very coincidental or that you had esp and
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: your dreams, but that you seeing that dog in the
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: morning affected your dream the night before. So that's another
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: definition that's emerging for retrocognition. That's getting a lot of
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: traction because of the stuff we're finding on the quantum scale,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: just weirdness like that. All right, Then you have your
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: mediumship and that's um ms Cleo who can channel dead
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: spirits forgot about her? And then you have how much
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: money that woman grossed in the nineties. She made a
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: lot of though I hope so yeah, I mean, she
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: was working hard, she had a finite window of opportunity,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: and she worked that whole time. She didn't like buy
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: a sailboat and sail around the world after like a
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: first million. You know, like she worked. So you're not
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: in the camp of like she's taking people's money and
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: taking advantage of people. I see that argument, sure, for sure.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I also see like if people want to spend their
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: money on that and they get something out of it,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: knock yourself out. Uh. And then you have a psychometry,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: which is the ability to read info about a person place,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: uh by touching the person object. And that's what I
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: like to call the dead zone. Christopher Walking, he would
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: place his hands on you and he would see something. Man.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I think we talked about it recently about how that
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: movie holds up. Still. Yeah, it's such a good movie. Yeah,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: it really is good. Chris Walking. There's another one, Chuck
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Um called telekinesis, which is like Uri Geller stroking a
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: spoon and it bending right, like being able to manipulate
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: matter just using a light touch or your mind, but
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: there is no spoon. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't that from
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: matrix Um. All right, So basically, uh, like you said,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: J b Ryan is the the granddaddy of all this,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: and he actually started studying. I mean, he was a
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: legitimate scientist, he wasn't some quack. And uh, this was
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties where he started at Duke University
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: studying para para psychology basically. And he wasn't the first.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: He was one of the first UM laboratory experimenters in
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: academia to really study SI. Right before him, probably about
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: forty or so years before him, William James and some
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: of his pals at the Society for Psychical Research UM
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: really laid the groundwork for applying the scientific method to
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the study of paranormal phenomenon. And they did two things.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: They outed frauds, like fraudulent mediums, like very famously Madame Blevartsky.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: But then they also investigated ones like they approached them
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: typically with like an open mind UM, and if they
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: found somebody that they just couldn't explain, they would they
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: studied them. So they were they were studying each one
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: with an open mind. And the ones they figured out
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: where frauds they outed as frauds. The ones they figured
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: out couldn't quite explain, they sought to investigate scientifically rather
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: than just saying, oh, they're frauds somehow. So that was
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the groundwork of the study of sigh. What was Madame
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Blevartsky Steel of the Cony Allen She was she actually
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: she was almost a cult leader. You could argue she
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: was she um. She created um. Oh man, it's called
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: like theodism, I think, which is um. It was. It
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: was almost a cult. It was a huge um movement
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century where like you go to like
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: a seance and there was a medium there and they
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: would channel like the spirits of the dead, relatives of
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: people who were they're holding hands in the circle and
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. And she gained a lot of power
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: and wealth and prestige until she was outed as as
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: a fraud. And I don't remember the the it's theosophy,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: that's what it is. Not to see theo is m.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Theo ism has to do with theo Huxtable. Uh did
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: you see The Source Family, by the way, that documentary. No,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I haven't about the l a cult in the seventies.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: I saw the the Icon on Netflix and never clicked
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: as a good it's really good and it's it's it's awesome. Actually,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I recommend everyone it's one of those where like they
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: interview a lot of them today and they weren't like,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: you know, they didn't commit suicide. Like everyone was like
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: it was pretty great. Oh yeah, yeah, they're all fine.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: They're all just a bunch of hippies. Still. They were
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: out in l A. Yeah, yeah, right in Hollywood. There
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: was one and um, there was a documentary I saw
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: about a cult in Miami and they were like super
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: fundamentalist Christian but they also were um the basis of
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: their religion was was formed on pot too. Well that's
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: what the Source family was. I wonder if they were related. Well,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: it was the seventies. Yeah, there were a lot of
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: pot cults, I bet. But did they turn into like
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: huge pot dealers. No, I don't think so. This cult
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: they had a band though, and the called the Source.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: You know, I can't remember the name of the band,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: but it's pretty interesting to transfer that. It's a really
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: good documentary. That was just funny to see all these people.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Now they're like it was awesome. Yeah. I had a
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: lot of sex and smoked a lot of weed. That's
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: kind of what they These guys didn't seem to have
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of sex though they were like real, like um,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: compartmentalized gender wise and like male dominance and all that.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: But they just smoked a ton of pot all the time,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: including their little kids. Well that's not like like four
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: year old smoke. That's terrible. Yeah. There it was in
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: the documentaries we're seeing. I don't remember what you had
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: me up? You lost me there. I lost everybody there
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: in that documentary. Yeah. Um, all right, So back to
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: this ESP thing, um, jb Ryan, Yeah, jb Ryan. Well,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: basically there's a there's a lot of different outlooks on
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: what ESP might be. Um, some people think that everyone's
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: got it, but some people, um, it just pops up
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: every now and then, um, like I might have a
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: dream that comes true or whatever. Other people think that
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: only certain people have it, have the the gift as
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: they say, uh, and that they have to be in
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: this special like you know, mental state to access at
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: the shinnon the shitting. And then other folks say that
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: everyone has that potential, but um, some people are just
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: like in tune with it and some people aren't. And
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: you follow in none of those three camps. Um, So
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: we'll talk a little more about some ideas of what
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: ESP is right after this so Chuck, Um, you said
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that basically how people see ESP is either everyone has it,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: some people have it, or no one has it. Basically, Uh,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: whether you're a skeptic or a believer. Um, if you
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: are a believer in ESP and somebody comes to you
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: and says, okay, explain ESP like it is it. There's
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: actually a couple of very common suggestions or proposals. One
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: made sense for a while before we knew a little
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: more about the brain. Um, and that was that EESP
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: was some form or fashion of the electromagnetic spectrum that
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: we were receiving information from outside of our usual senses. Yeah.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: And like you said, it fell out of favor because, um,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: basically it didn't explain anything about how it moves through
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: time or there. It didn't pick up on special some
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: special part of your brain that like receives this message.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: And there was a UM did you see that study
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: I sent you? That was I think from two ten
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: where they put people in an MRI I and then
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: showed them, um, different pictures or whatever. H And they
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: did they showed like they I put you in the
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: wonder machine and now I'm showing you a picture of
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: flower and that's it. It's lovely, except that it sounds
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: like a German rave. Okay, a little bit um, but
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: that would be uh. The non ESP stimuli the control
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: group to test ESP and to see if the brain
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: reacted differently, and then to see if there was a
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: part of the brain that's picking up on ESP. I
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: would show you the flower, and then in the other room,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I would also show Emily that flower. They think about
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: it and send you the thought of that flower, So
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: you're getting ESP stimuli and then non e SP stimuli.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: And from the m R I they showed that the
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: brain didn't react differently, So it suggests that there isn't
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: a sensory organ or region of the brain that's responsible
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: for picking up ESP, which doesn't debunk the possibility of ESP.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: It just undermines the idea that there's a region of
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: our brain that would be responsible for picking that up.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Plus of Emily's over there, I'm my first guess is
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: gonna be dog every time I'm in its flower And
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: this well, it wasn't about guessing. It was just to see,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: like showing you ES the e SP version and then
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the non e SP version of the same thing, so
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: you weren't guessing do you understand. Yeah, I get to know.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: I would have guessed dog or wine. There wasn't guessing.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: That's the way I guessed. Family thinks she has a
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: gift a little bit, so she would have been disappointed.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: She s, yeah, a little, she thinks. But I think
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: she's just super observant and intuitive. But that's definitely one
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: explanation for it, which we'll get too, of course. Um.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: So these days there are other theories, one of which
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: is that, uh, it's called spill over, that there's basically
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: another dimension that we that doesn't you know, have our
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: laws here and are dimension and that sometimes stuff just
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: sort of spills over from that and we see the
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: future of the past. And if you're a skeptic, you
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: probably just pulled the decent sized clump of your hair
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: out of the side of your head at that point. Yeah,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: because this is something you can't prove obviously, it's like
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: completely um And of course they'll say it exactly yeah,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And I think I got the impression
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: from this article that, um, they were making that point
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: like science is just chasing its tail and trying to
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: explain esp because it's not currently capable, and science goes
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: it doesn't work like that, you know, um, at least
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: with the electromagnetic spectrum explanation, it was pointing to something
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: that we already know exists, right, It's just that there
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: there's no way to show that we would be getting
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: how we would be getting information from it, because the
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: electromagnetic explanation, it basically says if you compare it to
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: other findings from ESP, it makes even less sense. Because
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: with the ESP, one of the hallmarks of it is
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: that no matter whether you're out there are outside of
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: the studio thinking about wine or a dog or something
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: and I'm picking up on it, or if you're in
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: China and I'm here and we're doing the same thing,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: that the signal doesn't weaken at all. Yeah, And that
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: just flies in the face of all we know about
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: electromagnetic rights, exactly right. So there's a lot of things
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: wrong with the proposals of what ESP is. Uh. Yeah.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: But you know, the reason why people still believe in
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: this stuff is because of either hearing a story about
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: their friend who said, you know, listen to this crazy
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: thing happened, or experiencing it themselves in some way or another,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: having a dream that something similar happened, and all of
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: a sudden, you're like, I might have the gift exactly,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: or it popped up in me, you know, briefly at least.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: And there's a I mean, there's a lot of um
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: evidence of strange and unusual occurrences that support the idea
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: of esp um. This article gives a really good one
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: about UM. A book called Futility that was written by
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: a guy named Morgan robertson right, and in it the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: guy details this book or this boat called the titan Ship.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah ship, the boat, a big old boat, um, which
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: is sailing across the Atlantic and hits an iceberg at
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: night and sinks and a bunch of people die because
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: they weren't enough lifeboats. Yeah, this is And if that
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: sounds familiar, the Titanic did the same exact thing, the Titanic,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: not the titan did the same exact thing fourteen years later. Yeah,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: if they're there are a bunch of similarities. Um. The
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: titans struck an iceberg in the book on the starboard
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: side on an April night in the North Atlantic off
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the coast of Newfoundland, and the real Titanic struck an
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: iceberg on the starboard side in April in the North
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Atlantic off the coast of Newfoundland on the starless Night.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know about that, Okay, Uh, they were both
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: said to be unsinkable. Um, more than half of the
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: passengers of the Titanic perished and more than half of
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: the passengers and crew on the titan perished. So there's
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: all these things in there. But you do a little
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: more digging and you find out that Robertson was he
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: was a seaman, and he knew a bunch of this stuff.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: And it's not unreasonable to think at the time they
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: wanted to build the biggest ships, and the word titan
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: it would be a great name back then for a
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: super big ship. And that sailing route uh was a
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: common one, and there were icebergs, and April might have
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: been a common month for that kind of voyage. So
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: all of it can be explained away kind of um,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: but it is definitely something you look at go oh interesting,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: It is interesting, and it's amazing coincidence, and it focuses
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the attention and captures the imagination. Um. But then yeah,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: once you hear about Robertson's background, it becomes slightly less impressive.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: So then kind of too over the years that little
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Colonel got erased and added to it was that this
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: idea for this book came to him in a trance,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: which bolsters the espy Is that true or is that
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: just been added? Uh, I'm sure it was added over
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the years. Which is a big problem with this kind
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: of anecdotal evidence is that you know, it gets embellished
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: in that. Yeah, exactly. And uh, it's just it's not
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: enough that this is a really interesting, unique circumstance or
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: coincidence or whatever. There has to be this extra layer
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: of proof, like it came to him in a trance.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Come on. Yeah. Um. So back to Rhyan, he did
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: some um. Like I said, in the nineteen thirties, he
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: started studying the stuff with one of my favorite inventions,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: um by his colleague Carl Zenter. Of course, if you
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: seen Ghostbusters he was using. He was using a version
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: of Zentner cards. Um. The shapes weren't all exactly. I
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: think there was one that was different Um and Ghostbusters,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: But the original Zentner cards were was a deck of
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: twenty five Plaine white cards, with each of them had
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: one of five symbols, a circle plus sign, a square,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: a star, five point star and the three wavy lines
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: like water a river. So what that is? Okay? And
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: the idea is that, just like in Ghostbusters, you hold
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: it up and UM asked the you know, not showing
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: them the card at obviously not the symbol, and say
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: what do you see? And they say what they see?
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: And then you record after the deck how many they got? Right? Right,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: But the person holding the card is supposed to be
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: thinking about what they're seeing so that the other person,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the target, the receiver, can pick it up tele telepathically. Yeah,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: and I did they have these online? I took the
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: test yesterday, UM, and I went through the deck and
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I only got six out of and at the end
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: it just said you are not a psychic. Really, Yeah,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: that was kind of funny. Statistically speaking for just one trial,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: that is more than chance. You did better than chance,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: So maybe you do have a touch six of what
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: what would chance to be a chance would be if
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: there's five different ones, and so this was six of
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: twenty four would be uh no, that's not no, that's less. Yeah, No,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: you did six of you did, so five of five
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: would be chance. Okay, so I got one more? Yeah? Well,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: and I think like three of the first eight or
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: so or six I got, and I was like, I've
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: got the gift, right, but I didn't know, like it's
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: randomly generated, and so it's not like someone was on
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: the other side thinking of that card. So I literally
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I was like, what do I do? I was like,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I'm just guessing. So that brings up some interesting stuff,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: like there's there's um evidence that when a machine is
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: involved that there is no telepathy. There would only be clairvoyance. Right,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: So I mean if if if telepathy is you picking
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: up what's in someone else's mind and the computer is mindless,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: then you shouldn't be able what you were saying, like
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: you should it shouldn't You should not be able to
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: know what zenter card it's going to pick next. Right,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: But there have been investigations using computers and using machines
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: that show above chance that there is some sort of
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: weird interaction like a random number generators. So Princeton University
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: has a department called the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Department.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Pair right and pair has been doing studies for a
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: couple of decades. The millions of trials and basically they'll
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: say this is a random number generator or this this
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: machine operates randomly or whatever. We want you to think
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: of a number, and we want to see if you
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: can influence the numbers that this computer spits out. Oh
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: so you're thinking of the number, then you're okay. The
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: human is trying to affect the computer, the output the
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: behavior of the computer. Of course, if you're sitting across
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the room or in another room thinking about a number
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: that a random generator should put out, it should have
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: zero effect whatsoever. It's a computer. The weird thing is
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: is what Princeton has found is that yes, over enough trials,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: you there is a slight, very slight, but measurable effect
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: that human thought has on a random number generator. It's
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: it's on Princeton's website. And this is stuff that like
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: is apparently accepted in the in the scientific community that
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: the the the trials that they are running are so
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: widespread and so repeatable and have been done so many
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: times that the data that they're coming up with is
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: is it's significant. Well, Ryan, with his inner card experiments
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: in the thirties did find that some people um got
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: what they thought were pretty impressive results. It's like, you know,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: a few I can't remember their names, but Hubert Pierce
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: was he one of them. He was the one how
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: many what was his percentage? He had one where he got, um,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: remember how you got three in a row and you're like,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: oh my god, he got twenty five in a row once.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Come on, no, I'm not kidding. He was also documented
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: iss selecting five hundred and fifty eight correct out of
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: eight hundred and fifty which is the odds of that
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: happening by chance, We're twenty two billion to one. Now,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: were these the early experiments? Because okay, because I did
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: read that UM and this seems like I can't believe
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: he didn't check this. Apparently the early cards were a
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: little translucent. Oh yeah, some of them were. And then
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: he corrected for that and the and the percentages went
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: down and then they U I know other scientists said
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: that you are somehow influencing with your body. Tell like
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: you basically you don't have a good enough poker face. Yeah,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: And the earliest um Ryan experiments with the center cards,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: he would hold the card up and he'd be making
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: eye contact right right the guy. Yeah, the guess it
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: would be like is it the way line? And yeah,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: he start shaking his head almost imperceptive. Um, but he
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: uh he, that's called sensory leakage, where you the person
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: who is um holding the card and knows where the
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: card is somehow, there's some detail about your face that
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: when you do a thousand trials with somebody, they start
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: to pick up on and it affects their guests. That
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: influences their guests. So to um correct for that, to
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: control for that a sensory leakage in that um, they
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: they came up with something called the gans Field experiment. Yes,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: that's a German gunsfeld Um that means whole field in German.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: And that is when they started putting people um, they
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: would start depriving their other sense is basically, uh, they
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: would be in a like a dimly lit room with
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: red lighting and they would have white noise, and they
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: would have their eyes covered with these uh special glasses
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: or ping pong balls cut in half like Kermit the fraud.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: I guess later on they said, we should just make
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: some classes exactly We've got the funding. So basically the
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: idea was, let's rule out any uh any of that
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: gross censury leakage, which smells um. So yeah, Apparently later
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: on in Rhyan's experiments. Um, after he started controlling for stuff,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: the percentages started to drop. Yeah. Correct, Um, he's he was.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Also he's generally a respected researcher for a couple of reasons. One,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: whenever he did whenever evidence of like um, some sort
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: of bias or fraud or something was brought to him,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: he corrected for it. He wore glasses in a white right.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: That was another one. Um. But also he was daring
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: enough to stake his entire career on a field of
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: study that will get anybody mocked publicly privately. Um, can
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: really shut down a lot of opportunities for you. This
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: guy and his wife, Louisa Ryan both dedicated their careers
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: to establishing the field of parapsychology and really studying it
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: and then just walking away from it. I don't think
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: he was like, I really want to prove this is true?
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Was he? Uh? Yes, he did? That was that was
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: a huge criticism of him. He was a definite believer. Um.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: He was quoted by I don't know what the guy's
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: steal was, but one day he was visited by one
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: person and the interviewer who went on to write a
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: paper I think in scientific American to expose him. He
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: said he kept a file of people of the results
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: of tests where um, people he suspected were purposefully getting
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: things wrong because they didn't like him to mess with
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: his data, he just took those and never published him.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: He didn't include him in the results, which would definitely
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: affect the number of correct hits. Right. Um, that was
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: a huge criticism. That's not good science at all. But
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: he was definitely a believer, which was another criticism. But
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: he was daring and he did um. There was another
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: story where it's called the Levy affair where a guy
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: named Levy, who was an electrical engineer working in the lab,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: unplugged uh, I guess the censor that would correct negative
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: hits for a little while during a trial, so that
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: all that were recorded for a little bit were positive hits,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: um and so, and then he plugged it back in. Well,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: this one guy saw what the guy was doing and
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: went to Ryan. And Ryan went to the guy Levy
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: and said, did you do this? And let me say,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: just it's like you're fired, and just like through the
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: results away and all that. So he wasn't like he
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: was a true believer, but he wasn't just some like
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: outright fraud, right right, But he was and still is
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: under the microscope as much as probably any researcher in
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: all of academia ever has been. All right, well, right
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: after this break, we'll talk a little bit about what
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: skeptics say about ESP All right, Josh. One thing you'll
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: hear skeptics say a lot is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: And I have to agree with him, and Uh, it
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: is an extraordinary claim here. And UM, so far there
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: hasn't been um extraordinary evidence. And one of the things
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I pointed to earlier that I think is what's going
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: on if you look at statistics, you look at six
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: billion people on planet Earth, uh, and them thinking a
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: good zillion things each day. And that is scientific, by
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: the way. Um, at some point somebody is going to
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: think something that it mirrors something that happens in the
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: near future. Uh, And it's just chance and coincidence. I
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: have a great example of that, man. It happened this
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: very morning. Yeah I did. Um. I was at the printer.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: You know, we just moved offices, and I was at
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: the printer and I had like an extra piece of
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: paper that I didn't need, and I realized, like, we
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: have no paper recycling here. So on my way back
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: yet that is everyone out there. It's like, what kind
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: of office would have, right, we just said we have
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: a we have a fifty gallon drum that we throw
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: stuff into that it catches on fire and then we
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: send it up a burning drum, that's what it's called.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Now we're getting those soon, um, right, and we are
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: getting hip soon. I know this because on my way
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: back to my desk, I popped into Izzy, the I
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: T guy who's also the head of all recycling and
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: stuff here. It's like, is he need a paper recycling
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: bins by the printer? And he goes, I'm writing an
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: email right now to everybody about that very thing. You
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: almost did your USY impression close, um, And so like
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: I thought about it. That's pretty amazing, you know. But
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: it was about nine in the morning, and this is
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: a company wide email, so it would be something that
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: is he would probably knock out about that time. The
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: reason I was thinking of is because I was just
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: at the printer. We just moved into this office and
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: we didn't have bins yet, so it was still a
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: potential thing for somebody to be thinking about. Or doing
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: or writing an email about UM. And so there's all
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: these different really overlooked variables or factors to this whole
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: thing that that you don't think of. Instead, it just
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: seems like an amazing coincidence or ESP. To me, the
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: really significant thing was that I happened to be researching
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: ESP while this happened. That's what it really kind of
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: stood out to me. But if you really kind of
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: look at it, like, there's a finite amount of things
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: that people could think about in any given day, in
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: any giving context, in an office or something like that.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Like had I been a goat at a petting zoo
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: and I went over and UM talked to the cow
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: and the cow was writing the email about recycling bins. Maybe,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: but we're in an office. I'm talking to the guy
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: about recycling bins. There's just a lot of stuff that
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: you kind of once you take that into account, it
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: becomes less amazing. Like like the the guy writing the
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Titan Titanic book. Yeah, you know, I used to happen
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: to me, now that I think of it, is UM.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: I used to And this it's weird. It was only
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: with phone land lines that hadn't happened with the cell phone.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: But I used to like, no, the phone was gonna
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: ring right before it rang, like almost go to reach
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: for it. Um. And I mean it's not like it
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: happened all the time, but it happened enough times where
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: I was like, that's weird. Sure, I know what you're
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: talking about, but and that was all it was to me.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: I was not like I the gift. But think about
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: it in in that respect to you know people, So
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: was it you knew who was calling or just that
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: the phone was about to just that it was about
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: to ring. Now, yeah, that is weird. You definitely do
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: have esp yeah, um. Or maybe I don't know, maybe
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: the phone made a little tick noise right before it
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: rang that I didn't pick up on, but only subconsciously.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: You know. Well that's another explanation for today that um right,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: that um there is uh subliminal stuff in the environment
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: that is just too weak in nature for us to
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: pick up on consciously, but our unconscious does or subconscious does,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: which frankly opens up a whole other can of worms.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: You know, as far as you know, how real is
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing there? But probably a little closer
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: to reality is the idea that um our attention isn't
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: focused on everything that we're picking up at all times,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: like like I see your beard and I see your
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: shirt and everything, but I'm still also picking up like
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: sensory information from like Jerry's computer that I can see
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: in my peripheral vision or whatever. My attention isn't focused
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: on it, but my brain is still receiving information. So
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: the idea that our brains can put it together all
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: this information that we're not aware consciously that we're receiving, um,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: but we're still getting impressions from it. That'sh that that
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: could be a great explanation for ESP as well. Yeah,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: and you know what, now that I think about it,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: the fact that it's never happened with my cell phone
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: sort of makes sense because maybe there it was a
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: mechanical function a landline, right, Yeah, like you said a
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: click or a tick, but I think you meant like
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: a click And it wasn't even the newer model. This
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: was back in the day when it was like yeah,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: ringing like bell, So maybe that does explain it. Yeah,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: I've got another good example that I came across and
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: researching this. UM. Let's say that you and I are
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: hanging out and you're humming baby, I'm five work right,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: just over and over again. I don't know that song,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: but I'm reading Yes you do, No, don't, Yeah you do? It?
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Was it Katy Perry? I don't know Katy Perry anyway, um,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: although I will have to say I did love that
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: halftime show. It was great, well it was. It was hysterical.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: What's up with the sharks being a meme? Now? I
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: would think they were really significant. She looked like she
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: was worked at corn Dog on a Stick. I don't
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: know what that is. That's not all corn dogs around sticks.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: It's that place in our hot Dog on a Stick
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: that was called that place in the mall where they
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: wore those big giant Yeah. No, I don't know anything
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: about Katy Perry. But it was the funniest most but
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: like the crazy just kept coming and coming, and I
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: was like, this is the best thing I've ever seen.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: So anyway, in this universe, you're well aware of Katy
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Perry and her song Firework, and you're humming it to yourself.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: But I'm sitting there reading The New Yorker and I'm
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: engrossed in it and not I don't notice that you
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: get up to go make some nachos, and you come
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: back in, and you catch my attention because you're you're
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: coming back in with some nachos and they smell awesome.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: And now my attention is directed to you, and you're
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: still humming Firework, right, And I'm like, I was just
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: thinking about that song Firework. I had that in my head.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: How crazy we must be connected. I didn't realize that
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: you had been humming it earlier, and beneath my awareness
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: I picked it up. Although once I became aware that
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: you were humming it, it seemed to me like I
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: had ESP. Well, yeah, and that ties into another explanation
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: is that people who do seem to have that gift
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: are just really really hyper observant on minute details, like
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: the same people that can pick up on micro expressions. Um,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: they might feel like they have the gift because they're
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: just really in tune to what's going on around them
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: or not just you know, like a big lunk head
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: walking around. So a lot of people who believe in
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: the ESP say, yes, we agree with that, especially parapsychology researchers,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: and there are still plenty of respected ones out there.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Is a guy named darry O Bem. Yeah, I saw
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: that thing. He said. He's been doing this for a
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: while now legitimately we should talk about him. But there
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: to button up that point, there is UM a lot
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: of parapsychologists or even just plain old psychologists who are
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: researching ESPUM who say, yes, that definitely most likely accounts
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: for almost all of it, and that's good for us
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: to be thinking about that, and that in and of
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: itself deserves like academic inquiry and research. Right, But there
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: are still some experience experiments that are being produced by
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: guys like Darry Obem that UM are showing some weird
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: results that go beyond this kind of explanation. Yeah. And
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: and one of the problems, well we'll talk about the
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: problems with even this research um about it being reproducible
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: in a second. But he did a couple of experiments.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: This is from NPR. Crow wrote this, Yeah, from from
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: from radio LAMB Nice. I didn't know that, um. These
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: are the two that he pointed out. He did nine
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: different experiments, but the two that he highlighted was at Cornell,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: which is where bim is a does his work. Right. Yeah,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: and he's again a very respected psychologist, and this study
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: that of these experiments was published in the Journal of
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Personality and Social Psychology, which is a respected journal. Yeah, um,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: so they The first one was a computer quiz. They
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: took a hundred students, fifty males and fifty women, and um. Basically,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: they showed a computer screen with two little curtains on it,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: side by side and said, behind one is nothing a
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: brick wall, and behind the other is something sexy. Yeah,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: some kind of you know, I was about to call
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: it pornographic, but who knows. Maybe it's art erodess. Yeah, gross, Um,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: that just makes you feel like you're dad saying it
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, well, this room too small for you
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: to say. Um. So basically he would say, you tell me, um,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: what what you think you're going to see? And they
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: were all hooked up to uh two machines to read
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: the you know, they're what's going on in their body
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: of course, and um, you would think it would be
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: a fifty results, but they actually got a fifty three
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: point one percent result for the what UH craw Witch
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: calls erotic stimuli. Um. And basically they they think, or
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: at least that's what BEM thinks, is that one possibility
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: is that if there's if they think they're going to
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: see something erotically stimulating, then um, it got passed back
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: through time. Yeah, that's kind of his position, is that
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: retrocognition thing. Yeah, that they somehow their future selves who
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: saw the erotic image was stimulated enough that that stimulation
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: traveled backwards three seconds and influenced their choice because they
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: were they would be slightly stimulated physiologically right before they guess.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: And he said, before the computer even chose which which
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: one to show? Right, they right, they were making their
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: choices often correct, Um, before the computer chose to show
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: an erotic or non erotic image. And it doesn't sound
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: like much, but crow which points out a couple of things.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: One that um, when there was a control group that
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: was shown just non erotic pictures, they did forty nine
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: eight percent correct, which is chance. They're all not happy, right,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: They're like, we don't want to be the control They're like,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: can we get a little steamier in here? Um? But
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: and he he also pointed out that fifty three point one,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: to be specific, doesn't sound like much, but um, apparently
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: that's a point two percent chance where on a scale
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: between zero and one, where zero is it's not going
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: to happen, and one is that it's definitely gonna happen.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: And apparently, as far as um correlation goes, or links
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: between two things something affecting another, a point too is
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: about the same as the link between aspirin and heart
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: attack prevention. Um, the link between calcium and taken bone mass,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: the link between second hand smoke and lung cancer. So
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: things that are touted is like, pay attention to this, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: So so stuff that we accepted is like, yeah, yeah,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: if you're around second hand smoke you can get cancer
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: from has the same exactly it is and um. Later on,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: a meta analysis of Bem's experiments, some other experiments that
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: were carried out afterward, and then some other experiments all
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: grouped together. A meta analysis showed that um, they they weren't.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: It wasn't statistically significant if you took all of the
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: existing body of literature of these experiment but it was
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: a New Scientist article, and um, it was pretty cool.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: In the comments section, somebody said, yeah, it's not reproducible,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: but a lot of science isn't reproducible. And it reminded
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: me of our scientific method episode where like apparently a
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: lot of um trials that that like pharmaceuticals are based
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: on aren't reproducible. Wasn't it like them? Which doesn't surprise
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: me of course. Yeah, all right. And then there was
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: this other experiment that I need you to explain to
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: me because I didn't understand it. Okay, you're ready, Like
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: I got the first part, but I didn't. I didn't.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: It didn't make sense to me because it's a little
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: mind blowing. So you know how like if you are
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: studying something and you write it down, it gets in
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: your brain a little more so that when you're tested
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: on it later, uh, you will recall it more easily. Yeah,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: that's a common study method, write something down. So Bem
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: carried out a very simple experiment that did the opposite
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: of that. First, he showed some people a bunch of
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: a bunch of words, forty eight random words. I think
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: now it's like tree or something like that, and he
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: told them to visualize it though, right, right, So they
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: saw all forty eight words and thought about them, not
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: visualized the letters, but visualized the thing, right, like see
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: the tree, and just just to kind of try to
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: memorize all forty eight words. Then the computer randomly selected
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: twenty four of those words, and then after they'd done that,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: BEM gave them a test of recall to see how
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: many they recalled right. So the people I had to
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: type out the the the words they recalled. Then after that,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: the computer randomly selected twenty four of the forty eight
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: words for the people to type after they had already
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: taken the test of recall. And those twenty four words
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: are the ones that people more consistently got right on
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: the earlier tests. So it's it's another example of that
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: retroco mission that these people getting the words in their
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: heads after the tests somehow went backward and influenced their
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: recall and memory for the test that they took before
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: they learned them. That makes more sense a little, Yeah,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: it is a little let's see, time travel melts my
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: brain too, right. So this guy published this stuff in
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: like two thousand and ten, and like it was, it
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: made a huge, huge splash, huge criticism. The academic journal
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: was criticized, and Ben was you know, pilloried and all that.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: But he's still you know, put out these these very reproducible, understandable,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: simple exercises that still showed statistically speaking, there were some
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: significant results that went beyond chance. So when it comes
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: to debunking UM esp one thing that you're not gonna
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: you know, you said fraud, You're not gonna see a
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: lot of people call researchers outright frauds because that's just
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: sort of a dangerous thing to say. Sure, it's not nice, um,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: but there are people out there who I guess or
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: criticized for, you know, basically trying to call out UM.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: And this is something completely different. But these these on
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: stage psychic shows like crossing Over with John Edwards, Yeah,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: like it's easy to pick those people out and say
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: you're a big fraud and this is not true of course,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: And all you're doing is cold reading. Uh cold reading
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: we talked about in the Animal Um Pet Psychics episode.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: That's basically when you get up on stage and you say, sir,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: I'm sensing um someone there you're having some trouble with
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: with another man in your life. Uh with the name
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: of j or or is it h or oh, or
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: maybe it's p Yes, p my my boss, Uh Peter, Yes,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: yes exactly. And that's all a cold reading is. It's
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: throwing out these really broad things that anyone can latch onto.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: So it's really easy to call uh, those people out.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: And there's a guy, um sort of a guy famous
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: for doing that. His name is um James Randy, and
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: he's famous for his offer of one million dollars to
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: anyone that can prove their psychic ability, which of course
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: no one stepped up to do that. But then he
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: gets pooh pooed a little bit, like you're just making
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: a mockery of trying to legitimately disprove something. And mockery
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: is absolutely the right word. And to me, the presence
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: of mockery indicates the absence of objectivity, right, So, like
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: what you're dealing with then with a guy like that,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: is uh, a set of beliefs, a belief system running
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: up against another belief system, just like a couple of
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: religions or something like that. It's not objectivity against fraud
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: or anything like that. It's belief against belief or something.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Um And and yeah, the idea of lumping together John
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Edwards with Darryl bem is just that's, you know, fraudulent
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: in and of itself. Yeah, that's just they call that theatrics,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: just like the on stage h theatrics of a stage psychic. Yeah,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: so I believe. I totally agree. Yeah, you know I
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: I do too. I think there's a definite room for
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: a healthy scientific inquiry into just about anything, whether skeptics
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: believe in it or not. If you can get some
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: funding for it, who cares. That's my motto. You got
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: anything else on ESP? Uh? Let me think? No, I've
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: got one more thing I found. I came across the
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: I think five Nightline with Ted Coppele, where, Um, the
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: news broke that the CIA had been studying ESP and
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: trying to do remote viewing what Ronson was talking about
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: in The Men Who Stare at Coats when it finally
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: became declassified. In take, coppled like a twenty minute Nightline
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: segment on it totally worth watching. It's some pretty softball questions.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: But Robert Gates, who would later become the the head
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: of Defense, he's on there just basically trying as politely
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: as possible to show that he does not believe in
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: any of this. Even so, here's the pharmacy. I a director,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: and um, it's just neat. Unlus you get to watch
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Copple again. I miss he was great news man. Yeah,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: I miss those dudes. I miss. Uh, I was just
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: thinking yesterday about broke call. Yeah, rather I was. I
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: was always a broke coll man. Did you I like
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: Peter Jennings He was great? Yeah. I don't even all
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: of them were great. I don't even have any idea
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: who does Night in the News now I don't watch it.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: It was Brian Williams until about a day ago. Did
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: he get fired? He like got I know, the whole kerfuffle,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: but he didn't get fired. I'm using my ESP to
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: predict that by the time this came, this comes out,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: he will not be there anymore. I think this is
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: getting big quick interesting. Yeah, Twitter is involved, man, the
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: Twitter takedown. Uh. If you want them more about ESP,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: the internet was virtually set up for you to go
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: find out more about it. Um, you can start by
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: typing ESP in the search far at how stuff works
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: dot com. Since I said that it's time for a
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: listener mail, yeah, before we do listener mail, I just
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: want to give a quick shout out to my buddy
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: Isaac McNairy. Uh. If you remember, I did a Judge
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: John Hodgman episode with Emily in which I did a
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: bad home renovation and um, this dude stuff you should know.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: Listener from Kansas carpenter. Master carpenter said, hey, man, I'll
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: come and stay with you and help you do your
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: your project. They're right, And I said this sounds crazy,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: and he actually came and did it and it looks
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: awesome and he's a super cool guy. And if you're
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: in Kansas near Elder Rado, Kansas, there's no better guy
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: to hire of El Dorado, it's Elder Rado. Actually, Okay,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: he has a point out, but um, not only is
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: he a great carpenter and a cool guy, but he
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: works with a nonprofit called Outreach Program. Uh and you
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: can find an outreach program dot org where they're basically
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: feeding the world. They package food and they get people
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: together in a room and package these mass quantities of
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: food to send to other countries and feed the hungry.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: And he's just a really good dude. So thanks to
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Isaac for that, and my kitchen was looking good. So
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: again for his nonprofit that is Outreach Program dot org.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: And if you need a great carpenter and you're in Kansas,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: check out Retrofit Remodeling. All right, listener, mail, I'm gonna
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: call this pronunciation help. Hey guys, I'm a botanist and
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: just want to throw throw your rope to help you
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: out with pronouncing plant family names. All plant family names
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: end in a C E A E. Oh yeah, I
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: thought we got that wrong. Uh, it is a mess
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: of vowels. Guys, when you read it, you should just
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: imagine you were spelling a C E as in a CE.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: So when you read a plant family name, just break
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: off the CE and read the first part and then
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: spell a C. So the plant family for poison oak
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: is uh Ana cardia Anna cardia ce. So it's just
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Anna cardi A C. I remember it by imagining the
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: aneurysm and cardiac arrest I would have if I fell
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: into it. A N, A C A R D. I
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: what well she spelled out Anna cardi. Oh got the
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: first two uh, first letters from each of those words. Anyway,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Guys who love your podcast find it endearing when you too,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: puzzle out on pronunciations. Um see see that's good to know. Yeah,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: so I love you, bunches, And that is from Jane
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: and she said ps. In Europe, they pronounced plant families
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: completely differently. Um other parts see other parts of the
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: US might have other conventions, but the above pronunciation is
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: standard in California. Well, okay, what a c C. I
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: You want to let us know something that we should
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: have known before we even recorded, But you're generous enough
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: with your time and effort to correct us. I guess
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: there's a way to put it. We that was very helpful.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Jane. If you want to be like
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Jane in other words, you can tweet to us at
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: works dot com, and as always, you can join us
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: is it how stuff Works dot com