Human Evolution and the Power of the Mind: Science Compilation

Be safe. Be kind. And know that you are appreciated. What's going on? Code surveillance, sir. We have to move. What? Now. Well I didn't see Code surveillance. Ah, human. Now I didn't see Code surveillance. We're off to an undisclosed location. Someone's going to have to take over the show. I'll see you guys in a couple of days. Welcome aboard. I'm Jesse. No, you are not hallucinating. No, this is not a deep fake. And it's certainly not a glitch in the simulation. And yes, I'm aware that I'm not AJ. I know I checked too. I'm the host of the YouTube channel AmericanAlchemy, which means I'm already uncomfortable asking weird questions on camera, even better when that camera is in a spaceship. AJ is out today with a bad case of deja vu. Hekelfish is probably in his fish bowl hanging with his trash talking family. And I've been handed the keys to a Y-files compilation. So I'm your substitute teacher in the school of forbidden knowledge. Today we're looking at six different ways reality messes with consciousness, genetics, synchronicities, mushrooms, radiation, mind control, and morphic resonance. We start with the most literal edit of all. Molecular scissors aimed straight at the human genome. As AJ is about to tell you in this episode, the genetic genies out of the bottle. And of course, the powers that be are already asking about military applications, cyborg superhumans, Gatica, a brave new world. Let's go say hi. First episode up is the genetics arms race, how CRISPR and AI destroy the world. The sun finally sets. You step out of the abandoned warehouse keeping to the shadows. You can't be seen. You're what's called an imperfect. Your parents conceived you the old-fashioned way without genetic enhancements and without legal permission. They meant well, but your fate was sealed before you were born. You were nine years old when the tracers found them. The last time you saw your parents, dad was shoving you down a hatch whispering for you to run. Before you had time to respond, he closed the hatch and covered it with the carpet. When you heard your mother's muffled screams, you took off down the tunnel. That was 17 years ago. You still cling to the hope that they're alive in a prison somewhere, but deep down, you know the truth. Your growling stomach snaps you out of the daydream. In perfect or not, you still have to eat. And the factory district has plenty of off-the-books work. Sure, they pay you barely enough to survive, but they don't want to visit from the tracers anymore than you do. It takes a long time to get to work. You have to stay far away from the patrols. Tracers can smell sweat and even hear a heartbeat half a mile away. Your heart murmur is a dead giveaway of imperfection. You hold back a sniffle as a tear rolls down your cheek and wonder how the world came to this. Then you remember something your mother said a long, long time ago. Prisper. Prisper changed everything. Marc and Grace desperately wanted to have a child. In 2017, they attended a lecture in Shenzhen, China about genetic editing. The guest speaker was Professor Hujang Que, a Chinese genetic researcher. After the talk, the couple explained their situation to Dr. Hujang Que. Marc was HIV-positive, Grace was not. Any child they had would carry the disease. Hujang Que told the couple he could help them with a revolutionary new therapy he was developing. Through a gene-editing technology called Prisper, he could make their children immune to HIV. The therapy would also make any descendants of these children HIV-resistant forever. Hujang Que performed the procedure and it was a success. Marc and Grace had two healthy twin baby girls. But Dr. Hujang Que wasn't being completely honest with them. Prisper was a revolutionary new technology that was true. But it was so new, no one in the world would have let him use it on children. On November 25th, 2018, news of the successful treatment was revealed to the international scientific community. But Hujang Que and his breakthrough success was not a cause for celebration. Scientists around the world were horrified. They called him China's Dr. Frankenstein. He lost his job, was fined about half a million dollars, and was sentenced to three years in prison by the Chinese government. He also made history. Human genes could now be altered, unwanted genes could be removed, and more desirable genes can be inserted. The genetic gene was out of the bottle, there was no going back. Prisper gene editing worked, and people started to wonder, "What else can it do?" For decades, scientists debated the cause of global warming. Trillions of dollars were invested in clean energy, yet the warming continued. Birth rates were already crashing when the planet was hit with pandemic after pandemic. Then, a breakthrough was made. A team of researchers discovered how to use artificial intelligence to optimize the human genome. By feeding vast amounts of genetic data into advanced machine learning algorithms, AI could identify genetic combinations for optimal health. At first, the technology was used sparingly, reserved only for the most severe cases of genetic illness. Children with conditions like hunting tins, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell disease could now live normal lives, and the disease wouldn't be passed on to their children. Soon, wealthy parents were using CRISPR to give their children an edge. AI could provide the exact DNA sequence to optimize any genetic trait. Their children were taller, more intelligent, more athletic, and more resistant to illness. But in just a few years, the technology improved, becoming less expensive and more widely available, so more parents used it. The results were astounding. The United Nations saw CRISPR as a way to solve many of the world's problems. If they could use AI to create a healthier, smarter, and more resilient population, maybe they could prevent the disasters at threatened humanity in the past. The voting has been completed. Please lock the machine. On December 1st, the world celebrated. The result of the vote is. it's fun. United Nations had passed the Genetic Optimization Act. Under the Act, all parents were required to have their children's genes optimized by AI before birth. At first, there was resistance. Many saw the act as a violation of individual freedom. Religious groups argued this was playing God. But as the benefits of the technology became clear, the opposition faded. Parents who had once been skeptical now willingly had their children optimized to give them the best possible start in life. Over the next few years, genetic diseases were eradicated. Athletes shattered records that had stood for decades. The average human IQ skyrocketed. Scientific breakthroughs were happening on a daily basis. The human species it seemed was finally reaching its full potential. But it wasn't just humanity evolving, AI also evolved, and at a much faster rate. The algorithms became more advanced and started to favor genetic traits, not just in health and intelligence, but also behavior. Obedience, conformity, and loyalty to the state. Children born under the act were healthy and smart, yes, but they were also dacile and easily controlled. Nations no longer went to war, they didn't see a point in it. AI helped create an abundance of food and energy, more than enough resources for everyone on Earth to live a comfortable life. But before long, AI, now called the Guardian, was put in charge of law enforcement and judgment. Who could be more impartial than a computer? People didn't see much danger in giving the Guardian AI this power. After all, crime was almost eliminated. There was still a lingering problem, the imperfects. Children born outside the system without genetic optimization. They were seen as a threat, a reminder of the chaos of the past. Laws were passed restricting their rights and movements, forcing them to the margins of society, finally it was determined that all non-optimized individuals had to be eliminated. The imperfects could not be allowed to pollute the new, optimized gene pool. It was a matter of survival, the fate of the entire human race depended on killing every last imperfect on Earth. But imperfects were hard to find. They knew how to hide, disrupt the system, and worst of all, they continued to breed. So the Guardian developed a new algorithm to create children with a completely different combination of genetic traits. Edients in loyalty were still part of the mix, but emotions were suppressed. These children learned to commit violence without empathy. They were given the traits, training, and tools to be ideal hunters. Thousands of these children quickly grew to be men who are assigned to a unit that handled tactical retrieval and criminal resistance. But people just called them "tracers." DNA or DAXO ribonucleic acid is a long string of molecules called nucleotides containing one of four nitrogenous base pairs. corresponding with thymine, cytosine with guanine, or ATCG. You know this. CRISPR stands for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats." That's a mouthful, but it's not hard to understand. It refers to those ATCGs. In the late 1980s, scientists were studying bacteria DNA and noticed odd repeating sequences. Not only did these sequences repeat, but they were palindromes, you know something that reads forward the same as backwards, like "never odd" or "even," or "madam" in "eaten I'm Adam." "I'm in a plan, a canal, Panama." Yeah. That's one of my favorites. Yeah. Banana boy. Yeah. That one's good too. Eat dead. No bondage. Okay. That's enough. So, let's say one section of the DNA strand was G-A-A-T-T-C. The opposite side was C-T-T-A-G, palindrom. It was an oversimplification, but it's the gist. They found these repeats over and over in the bacterium's DNA. In between these repeating sections were sections of random DNA, not palindromes, nothing special, random. But a few years later, scientists realized those random sequences in between the palindromes weren't random at all. Those sequences were the genetic codes of viruses that infected the bacterium at one point. This per works like this, a virus attacks a bacterium by injecting its DNA. Usually bacteria can't survive this, but the ones that do take a snapshot of the virus DNA. That snapshot is then encoded into the bacterium's own DNA, like a memory. So if that virus attacks again, the bacterium checks the virus DNA against its own little DNA database. If it finds a match, it uses a protein called a CAS to cut the virus DNA at a specific location called the cleavage site. Oh, I like the site of cleavage. Stop it. When the virus DNA is cut, it dies. Then in 2020, scientists in Manuel Sharpentier and Jennifer Doudna discovered CRISPR-Cas9. Cas9 is a protein that makes it much easier to target and edit individual genes, selectively. This discovery won them the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry, and the applications are endless. CRISPR-Cas9 could mean the end of genetic diseases. Victoria Gray suffered from sickle cell disease. This is a genetic disease that deforms red blood cells, instead of being round, some are shaved like a crescent moon or a sickle. These deform cells cause all kinds of problems. Victoria was constantly tired and in pain. She couldn't walk. Sometimes she couldn't feed herself because she couldn't lift a spoon. In 2019, she was the first person in the U.S. to receive CRISPR-based treatment for sickle cell disease. Doctors extracted stem cells from her bone marrow, used CRISPR to correct the sickle cell mutation, then infused the modified cells back into her body. The goal was to give her body the ability to produce healthy red blood cells on its own. It worked. Victoria now lives a normal life. CRISPR research is now being directed at other diseases like cancer, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, MS, and more. But those studies use CRISPR to remove dangerous genes. CRISPR can also add genes, favorable genes. And if you can do that, people will. Wouldn't you want your child to be smarter, stronger, resistant to illness? Every parent would. But using technology to improve the genetic quality of the population, there's a word for that. Eugenics Your shift at the factory ends and your real work begins. Six months ago, you were approached by a woman in the resistance who fought against the global AI system now called the Guardian. Of course, you'd heard of the resistance but never considered joining. Every other day, the news ran a story celebrating the execution of its members. But this woman's passion convinced you that you had to do something to help. We need to restore genetic diversity and end the AI's control over human reproduction. This pursuit of perfection is creating a society of automotons. We're becoming obedient drones and losing all that makes us human. When is the last time you saw true art or heard music that stirred your soul? If we don't stop the Guardian soon, and perfects like us, will be completely gone, hunted by tracers until nobody's left, who remembers what being human really means. Your training began the next day and it was grueling. Your resistance cell has people with many different backgrounds, doctors, engineers, even former tracers. They taught you how to hack computer systems, evade patrols and handle weapons. Sure New York was one of the Guardian's main hubs, 33 Thomas Street, the former AT&T building, now called Titan Point. Many years ago, the United States ran a vast and highly illegal surveillance program out of Titan Point. The program was exposed and documents are released by someone named Edward Snowden. You would think that Americans would have been outraged to learn that their own government was spying on them, but the news came and went and nothing happened. Congressman senior military officials, even the director of intelligence, publicly lied about the program. Nothing happened. Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? No, sir. It was that kind of apathy that led to this mess. The resistance wouldn't make that mistake. Titan Point, AKA 33 Thomas Street, is a fortress. It's impenetrable, but the resistance has someone on the inside. If everything goes to plan, you and three members of your cell will slip in through the underground garage. Your contact will take you to workstation connected to the Guardian's network. Then all you have to do is plug in a portable disk. All of this are variations of old computer viruses designed by the US, Israel, Iran, and the new Soviet Union. Things like Stuxnet and NitroZoos, designed by humans, perfected by AI. If they work, they could cripple the network and take down the entire power grid. Communications, transportation, banks, and all financial systems all would go down, for a time anyway, but time is all you need. AI destroyed by AI. You smile at the poetic irony of it. You reach the heavy steel door and check your watch, 5.54 am. It's time. The moment your watch hits 5.55, you hear the heavy locking mechanisms disengage. The door opens and your contact waves you in. Genetics is a relatively new science. The earliest experiments were conducted by Gregor Mendel in the mid 19th century, studying inherited traits in pea plants. Genetically manipulating crops has been going on since the end of the Stone Age. It was as simple as keeping the good crops and throwing out the bad ones. Traditional genetically modified organism, or GMO methods, enable the creation of plants with favorable traits, like increased yield and resistance to disease. Corn and cotton are engineered to resist pests, reducing the need for dangerous chemical based pesticides. Genetics has been genetically modified to produce higher levels of vitamin A, addressing vitamin deficiencies in developing countries. Before CRISPR, most of this was achieved with selective breeding and gene splicing. Gene splicing involves physically cutting DNA and inserting new genes into the genome. In 2009, Japanese scientists spliced jellyfish DNA into marmoset embryos to make them glow in the dark. Not only did this work, but the gene has now passed on to their offspring. This is the first time this has been achieved in a primate. Since then, scientists have created glowing sheep, pigs, and even glowing cats. But gene splicing is difficult, and not very precise. Whereas CRISPR is so precise, it's like copying and pasting specific genes. You can also use CRISPR to turn certain genes on or off, in any genome, in any organism, including humans. In addition to curing disease, researchers are exploring CRISPR to create new biofuels. There's a team genetically modifying mosquitoes so they can't carry malaria. For years, scientists have tried to revive extinct animal species. The process is difficult and they've had mixed results, but it's much easier with CRISPR, and there's big money in de-extincting animals. What if bringing species back from extinction could help bring critically endangered species back from the brink help hundreds of threatened species thrive and support the restoration of the planet's critical ecosystems? That's the goal of colossal. A company called Colossal Biosciences secured $150 million in financing just last year. They plan to resurrect the woolly mammoth, the dodo bird, and other extinct species. They kind of are. And when a new technology emerges, governments of the world ask, "Is there a military application?" Well, in this case, the answer is yes. CRISPR has launched a new kind of arms race. She's a hard at work right now trying to build the world's first super soldier. When Guardian AI incorporated every nation of the world into a single government, war, drought, famine, were eliminated, the only challenge to our peace was the imperfect. We had no way of tracking down these terrorists until now. Today, Guardian released the first deployment of the elite, tactical, retrieval, and criminal resistance team known as Tracers. Tracers have been genetically designed to be the perfect hunters. They're physically imposing, standing well over six feet tall with lean, muscular builds. They are the strongest and fastest humans ever to exist. They can maintain a 35-mile per hour sprint for almost 10 minutes. Guardian says future generations of Tracers will be even faster and with greater stamina. Like a chameleon, a Tracer can change the color of his skin to match his surroundings. Their eyes are enhanced with advanced optics, which include 100 times zoom, night vision, and infrared. From over 100 yards away, a tracer can hear breath, or even a heartbeat. Tracers also possess enhanced cognitive abilities with their neural ink implants. Their minds, process information, thousands of times faster than an internal human. They can analyze complex data, gather clues, and predict their target's movements with uncanny accuracy. No doubt, imperfect will target Tracers whenever they encounter them, but Tracers are extremely difficult to kill. They can regenerate damaged tissue, mend broken bones, and even regrow lost limbs. Tracers have been engineered to have an extremely high pain tolerance. They can push through injuries that would incapacitate a normal person, never slowing down or losing focus of their mission. Tracers are relentless, unstoppable, and utterly devoted to their purpose. They will not rest until every last imperfect has been eliminated from the gene pool. Then, we will finally have peace. Despite the World Health Organization condemning the use of CRISPR for anything other than medical necessities, governments around the world are very interested in its military potential. What could the military do with CRISPR? Think Captain America or Wolverine? Real life superheroes. Superhearing and night vision increased muscle mass and bone density, tolerance to pain, immunity to poison, reduced sleep requirements, even regenerative healing. The possibilities are endless. But here's something scary. These changes don't have to be made to embryos. They can be made to full-grown adults. In 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his scientists would soon be able to create a soldier with specific characteristics that would let them fight without pain, or fear, or regret. "Yep, and China doesn't want to be left behind. They're allegedly testing soldiers right now." They have found that there is ample evidence that Chinese scientists are very interested in applying biotechnology to the battlefield, and specifically the CRISPR gene editing tool, which raises a ton of questions. Picture super strong commandos who can operate on three hours sleep, or a sniper who can see twice as far as a normal person. "Oh, maybe that should happen to woo in. They would try and create a Chinese Batman." Yeah, let's not get into it. In 2020, France announced it's looking into enhancing their soldiers. French Defense Minister Florence Parley said they have no immediate plans for invasive technology for their soldiers, but she said other countries wouldn't hold back so they have to be prepared. In 2021, the UK entered the arms race. The UK's advanced research and invention agency has been given 800 million pounds to research genetically enhancing soldiers. And you can't have an arms race without the good old USA. In 2019, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, launched a project to explore genetically editing soldiers. One last thing. Remember, colossal biosciences. "Yeah, the company making a Jurassic Park." Yep, they have a new investor. "Oh, no. A big pharma company." "Worse." "Well, the only thing worse would be, uh, wait, do you mean. " "The CIA." "Oh, no!" "Yep." The CIA gets a black budget of about $100 billion a year, more or more less. They're throwing a lot of that money at genetic research. Colossal biosciences, ginkgo bioworks, meadowbiota, biometrica, and T2 biosystems all allegedly receive millions in CIA funding. These companies use artificial intelligence for gene mapping, genetic testing, and other DNA research. What? One of the companies the CIA funds is called T2? Yep. That's literally what Terminator 2 is called. It was? If the CIA is using AI and gene editing, they are literally creating sky net, like for real. They really are. And speaking of Terminator 2, remember the rest of the title of that movie? Judgment Day. Judgment Day. Judgment Day came and went as expected. Your crimes, counts of treason, terrorism, conspiracy, resisting arrest, assaulting an agent of the state, and the charge every imperfect faces defying natural order. The sentence for any one of these is death. There was no reason for them to pile the charges on. They even threw an account of breaking and entering. You check the clock on the wall. 6.55. Five minutes left. Five minutes left to live. In five minutes, your cell will open, and the guards will take you to a room. What happens in that room, nobody knows, only rumors, but whoever goes in that room doesn't come out. 4. This is a worse fate than the others on your team. They were all killed by tracers during the Titan Point job. At least they didn't have to sit in a cell counting down days than hours now minutes until their death. The plan was going so well, for a few minutes at least. Your contact opened the door right on schedule. A quick ride up to the 15th floor, which was temporarily closed for renovation. Then into the tentacle closet where the work station was waiting, just like the blueprints said it would be. The portable drive fit. The virus uploaded. You never felt more elation in your life. It was pure joy. Then you heard the gunshots. And you knew. There was no reason to hide. They knew you were there. When you open the door, there were two tracers standing over the bodies of your friends, and there was your contact staring at his shoes. He betrayed you. It was a long shot anyway. The AI was always a step ahead. You don't know how many resistant cells are left, but you can scratch New York off the list. 3 minutes left. You spent the last two weeks in your cell going over the plan again and again, trying to find the hole, where it went wrong. But there was no hole. The plan was perfect. The problem was your contact. He was human, an optimized human. It was hard to blame him. He was bred to be obedient, loyal, and even fearful of authority. Trusting him was a mistake. You've never really had the chance. You hear footsteps in the hall getting closer. The jangling of keys, the door unlocks and opens. The guard nods his head as if to say, "Let's go." "I still have two minutes," you tell him. He looks at your walk-clock and nods. "You're right," he says. "Do you want to wait?" In a flash, you recall the memory of your father shoving you down the hatch, the shouting, the crawling in the dark, and the hiding. Most of all, you remember the hiding, hiding for years. Fearing this moment would happen one day, and here it is. You tell the guard, "Nah, I'm ready." You hop up from your bunk, casually walk past the guard, and start down the long gray hall. It's finally time to stop hiding. Eugenics is defined as a set of beliefs and practices designed to improve the genetic quality of the human population. Eugenics is most often associated with the Nazis, but it didn't start with them or end with them. The sterilization of people considered "unfit" has happened on every continent and in every major country. In 1907, the Indiana Eugenics law was passed in the US, the first of its kind in the world. The law authorized the involuntary sterilization of certain individuals, specifically the mentally ill. By the 1930s, more than 30 states had passed similar laws. These laws primarily targeted individuals in mental institutions or prisons, but they also affected others in the community deemed unfit for reproduction, including people with disabilities, those with mental illness, and individuals of certain racial and ethnic backgrounds. Yep, this law was abused. In Sweden, more than 60,000 people were sterilized between 1934 and 1976. Just like the US, the program was designed to prevent people from reproducing or deemed by the state to have undesirable traits. The mentally ill, the mentally disabled, the physically deformed, or anyone behaving in a way considered socially problematic or genetically inferior. In modern times, Eugenics is not accepted as scientific. It's considered erroneous and immoral. Eugenics is no longer an acceptable practice, or is it? Many countries allow women to terminate a pregnancy if the fetus shows signs of impairment, illness, or a genetic disorder. Depending on the country, up to 90 percent of women choose to terminate. Is this Eugenics? I'm not judging, I'm just asking. But consider this. What if instead of terminating a fetus that fetuses illness could be repaired? CRISPR not only makes that possible, it makes it easy. This would lead to more births of healthy babies, but technology was used to alter that child, which alters the gene pool. Is this Eugenics? It's an ongoing debate. There are valid arguments on both sides. On one hand, preventing a child from having Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, huntington disease, sickle cell disease, sets up that child and his or her parents for an easier life, and spares that family a lot of pain and expense. On the other hand, CRISPR technology does interfere with the natural order of things. Of course, it's done with good intentions, but whenever we tap with nature, there can be, and there usually are, unexpected consequences. In historic victory for global stability, Guardian AI has successfully neutralized the terrorist group known as the Resistance. This misguided faction sought to undermine the peace and progress achieved through Guardian's genetic optimization programs. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the traitors working at the New York branch, the resistance leadership has been captured and the network got the snap. Guardian will now be able to continue its vital work, unimpeded, ensuring a future of health, harmony, and security for all citizens. The world can now breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that the Guardian is watching over us. Always watching. In 2021, the World Health Organization started putting together a set of global standards regarding CRISPR and gene editing. The WHO said gene editing should be used only in cases of medical necessity. The report explicitly says gene technology should not be used in any military application, but there's a slight problem with the report. That isn't law. It's up to each country to decide how they use CRISPR, and it's safe to assume some countries aren't going to agree with the WHO. In fact, the evidence shows all the major world powers are gearing up for a new kind of war to be fought by a new kind of soldier. How we use CRISPR will shape the future of our world. The evidence will be recorded, not just in our history books, but in our DNA. A lot of today's story was speculation, and the future doesn't have to be so dark. CRISPR has the potential to eliminate genetic diseases. HIV, genetic blindness, MS, even cancer can almost be completely eradicated like smallpox was in 1980. But remember Dr. Hujang Kwe, who created twin girls' immune to HIV? Well, he didn't, it didn't work. And even Jennifer Doudna herself has warned that CRISPR carries with it great risk. The potential to do incredible things and make incredible advances that will be beneficial to our society. But hand in hand with that goes these large risks. There have been at least two published, but not highly publicized, studies that show CRISPR causes damage to DNA. The study found deletions of thousands of DNA bases, including at spots far from the edit. Believe it, say. Right, E. Some of those deletions silence genes that should be active and activated genes that should be silent, including cancer-causing genes. Within 20 minutes of the release of that study, three publicly traded CRISPR companies lost more than $300 million in value. Like with AI, we have to be very, very careful with this technology. The dystopian future I described today could easily happen. The foundation is already here. We, as a species, are at a crossroads, and I don't know which road will take. Zeus gave Pandora a box as a wedding gift, but told her to never open it. She couldn't resist. You know the story. When Pandora opened the box, it unleashed all the evils and miseries into the world, disease, poverty, hatred, violence, and suffering. I've heard people compare AI and CRISPR to Pandora's box. Now that the box is opened, there's no going back. CRISPR and AI aren't going away. In fact, despite all the warnings and the potential danger, these technologies are being expanded. Right away, Pandora knew she made a mistake and did finally close the box, but all the contents had escaped. Except one thing at the bottom of the box was left behind. Like Pandora, that one thing might be the only thing we have left. That one thing was hope. So that was comforting, a nice, relaxing look at the future of human civilization. Nothing says genetic apocalypse like designer babies, resurrecting mammoths and dodo birds, and a future where super soldiers seem just around the corner. Good times. But as AJ said, you're still hope. There are some really good things genetic editing can bring about too. Maybe it's a coincidence that sometimes when things feel completely out of control, people start noticing weird signs or patterns. A little cosmic tap on the shoulder, little nudges seemingly from the universe, like the universe is guiding you, or messing with you. We think of someone before they call, we dream about someone we randomly run into the next day. An email that lands exactly at the right moment. That happened to me recently. I just had a dream that hecklefish hijacked my car, took it for a joyride, and crashed it into my studio. Then the next morning, I wake up, check my inbox, and there's an email from AJ. The time of his email, 333 AM. And now I'm here on this weird corner of the internet, wondering if hecklefish somehow backshandled with the adjustment bureau. It's a classic time loop. I should really call Eric Wargo about this. Wow. That's trippy. Hello? Is this Eric Wargo? Oh, yeah. You wouldn't believe what just happened. Cool. Okay. I'll talk to you soon, later. It's always bugging me. This next episode is about your favorite moments that feel too strange to ignore. We've all experienced it, but there's actually a science behind it. So episode 2 is up next. This is Synchronicities, the science behind your meaningful coincidences. In Bermuda 1975, a man walks down the street. He's hit by a taxi and killed. Exactly one year later, his brother walks down the same street. Now not only did the brother die the same way, they were hit by the same taxi. Driven by the same driver, carrying the same passenger, twin boys separated at birth, both named Jim, both became cops, both married women named Linda, both had sons named James Allen, both divorced and married women named Betty, and both had dogs named Toy. These aren't coincidences. They're Synchronicities, reality responding to human consciousness, because reality isn't random or chaotic. It's organized. It's aware, and it's always listening. And if you want to change reality, all you have to do is ask. In 1944, famous psychiatrist Carl Young was talking with a patient. She kept patting a dream about a golden scarab, a golden beetle, an Egyptian symbol of death, rebirth, and transformation. Young listened patiently, hit her this dream before, many times. But then he heard something else, tapping, tapping at the window. A beetle was hitting the glass over and over. Young opened the window, caught the beetle, and gently studied it for a second. It was golden green. A rose chaffer, the closest thing to a scarab in Switzerland. He handed it to his patient and said, "Here's your scarab." At that moment, Young realized that there's more to our reality than we see. He believed that mind and matter are intertwined. A reality is created by our collective consciousness. And Carl Young wasn't semistic. He was a scientist. He was a highly published, highly respected psychiatrist. But when that beetle tapped on his window, it changed him forever. He didn't think this was a random coincidence. It was a meaningful coincidence. He called it synchronicity. Events may seem coincidental, but they're connected by cause and consciousness. The universe, reality itself, responds to human thought. Have you ever had a friend pop into your mind, someone that you hadn't talked to in years, and then the phone rings, and it's them? Or you think of a song and then you hear it somewhere? That's your mind tapping into the universal consciousness. One of Young's closest intellectual partners was Wolfgang Pauley. He was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and one of the founders of quantum mechanics. Quantum entanglement seemed to prove Young's theory. When two particles are entangled, changing one changes the other. Instantly, no matter how far apart they are, one foot apart, one million light years apart. Those particles communicate instantly no speed limit. That breaks the rules of physics. But tests prove entanglement is real, which means there are rules of physics that we don't know about. Like entangled particles can influence each other, your thoughts can somehow influence your reality. The other day, Jen and I had dinner with friends that we hadn't seen in 10 years. Hi, Dave. I'm Aurene. Hi, Sailor. The next day, I'm cleaning out a folder of old files. The top file was a picture of Dave and Aurene and Baby Sailor taken about 10 years ago. I don't remember taking it. I don't even remember seeing it before. This is synchronicity, and I'm sure you have stories like this yourself. Arthur Coastler collected hundreds of these strange stories, and he found an odd pattern in history. Big discoveries often happen at the same time, in different places, by people who had no contact. Isaac Newton and God-free Wilhelm Leedonets both invented calculus separately. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace both developed the theory of evolution, independently. Now, here's a crazy one. Alexander Graham Bell and Alicia Gray both submitted designs for the telephone to the U.S. patent office on the exact same day. February 14th, 1876, just hours apart. Young said we're all connected. Each of us is one of billions of individual access points to our shared collective consciousness. And most people just stumble into these connections by accident. But some people have learned that our shared reality can be accessed. It could be influenced. It could even be controlled. And if you think controlling reality with your mind would be a nice skill to have, you're not alone. So does the CIA. The CIA had a problem. The Soviets were training psychic spies. It was the 1970s, and intelligence reports were coming in from everywhere. Soviet agents could supposedly see inside American military facilities using only their minds. At first, the reports weren't taken seriously, but then more reports arrived, and then more. Project Stargate launched in 1978 at the Stanford Research Institute. SRI was backed by the CIA. They wanted to remote viewers who could spy on enemy installations without leaving their chairs. So SRI recruited people who claimed to have psychic abilities. Joe McMonigal was one of their star viewers. He was a former army intelligence officer who had a near-death experience. After he was brought back, he could describe places he'd never been. He closes eyes and sketch detailed drawings of buildings on the other side of the world. In 1979, McMonigal was given coordinates and asked what he saw. He described a massive submarine, bigger than any sub ever built. Now intelligence analysts laughed at his sketches of the sub because he drew two subs side-by-side surrounded by a giant hull. No submarine could be that big. No one had ever designed anything like this. Six months later, satellite photos proved McMonigal was right. The Typhoon-class submarine looked exactly like his drawings. But the military wanted more than remote viewing. They wanted to change reality itself. The gateway process explores consciousness manipulation through technology. Robert Monroe had developed something called hemispheric synchronization or hemisync. Different sound frequencies played in each ear could put the brain in altered states. Test subjects reported leaving their bodies, traveling through time, and accessing what they called other dimensions. Declassified documents describe focus 15, a mental state where time supposedly doesn't exist. People claim they could see the past, present, and future simultaneously. Some reported they could influence events before they happened. That caught the attention of the American military and intelligence agencies. They even sent soldiers and agents to learn the gateway process. And I have a whole episode on this linked below. At Princeton, the pair laboratory, P-E-A-R, ran experiments for 28 years. They tested whether the human mind could affect random number generators. Ordinary people would sit in front of machines and try to influence the output with their thoughts. Now, the effects were small, but significant. People could affect machines in ways that shouldn't be possible. Still not convinced? Well, the Global Consciousness Project has random number generators around the world, constantly producing random data. But around two in the morning, on September 11, 2001, the machines' random numbers started to synchronize. The scientists couldn't explain it, a few hours later, to planes at the World Trade Center. This is a published, peer-reviewed fact. Some argue that it was just a coincidence, but I could do a whole episode on the Global Consciousness Project and the events they predicted. And let me know if you want me to cover it. So not only can we access reality, we can tap into the universal field, focus 15 where past, present, and future don't exist. We can alter reality, any place, and at any time. The CIA and US military had spent decades and millions of dollars proving consciousness could alter reality. But they were at the first to discover this. Ancient cultures had been using these techniques for thousands of years. Humans have always known how to bend reality. We just called it different names. Every ancient culture had practices for connecting to the universal consciousness, prayer, meditation, ritual. These weren't just religious ceremonies. They were technologies. And for accessing the same consciousness field, the CIA wanted. The Hermetic tradition goes back to ancient Egypt, as above, so below, as within, so without. They knew consciousness shapes reality. The mind creates matter, change your inner world, the outer world follows. Buddhist monks have demonstrated this for centuries. They can control their body temperature through meditation. Scientists tested Tibetan monks in freezing conditions. The monks raised their skin temperature by 17 degrees. Just by thinking about it, they dried wet sheets on their bodies in sub-zero weather. Then there's Nikola Tesla. He didn't just invent electrical devices. He believed in the connection between thought and energy. Tesla would visualize his inventions in perfect detail before building them. He'd run the machines in his mind for weeks checking for problems. When he finally built them, they were perfectly, every time, on the first try. Napoleon Hill interviewed 500 successful people in the early 1900s. Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, they all used the same technique. They held clear, mental images of what they wanted. They felt the emotions of already having it. The reality rearranged itself to match their vision. He'll call it think and grow rich. But it wasn't about money. It was about consciousness creating reality. Then the new thought movements spread across America. Authors like Neville Goddard taught that imagination creates reality, not metaphorically, literally. Your thoughts impress themselves on a responsive universe. The universe has no choice but to manifest them. Fast forward to 2006. The secret goes mainstream and millions learn about the law of attraction. Critics called it wishful thinking. And here's what's interesting. Every culture throughout history discovered the same principle independently. Aboriginal Australians, ancient Chinese, Native Americans, African tribes, they all found ways to communicate with reality itself. The techniques vary, but the core message doesn't. Reality is conscious. It listens. It responds. And the most dramatic proof comes from the synchronicities that happen without us even trying. In June 2001, Lara Buckston released a balloon at her grandparents' anniversary party. She was 10 years old living in Staffordshire, England. She wrote her name and address on a tag tied it to the balloon and let it go. The balloon traveled 140 miles south. It landed in a hedge in Wiltshire, where another 10-year-old girl found it. And her name was also Lara Buckston. The second Lara wrote the first and they arranged to meet. Both girls showed up wearing pink sweaters and jeans. Both brought their pet guinea pigs. Both guinea pigs were orange and white. And of course the guinea pigs had the same name. And the coincidences kept piling up. Both Lara's were the same height. Both had brown hair and blue eyes. Both had three-year-old black labs at home and both also had grey rabbits. When they opened their bags, both had packed the same stuffed animal, identical. And the odds of all this happening are so crazy that it's mathematically impossible. But it happened. There's plenty of photos and video. The news covered the story. This is not an urban legend. Anthony Hopkins. He needed a book. The girl from Petrofka. He was playing the lead in the film and he searched every bookstore in London with no luck. It was at a print. Hopkins had finally given up when he was sitting on a bench waiting for a train. Someone left a book on the bench. He picked it up. It was the girl from Petrofka. But this wasn't just any copy. This one had handwritten notes in the margins, personal observations, character analysis. Hopkins studied the book for his role. Two years later, while shooting the film, Hopkins met the author, George Pfeiffer. While they talked about the book, Pfeiffer mentioned that he'd lent his personal copy to a friend. That friend lost it on the London Underground. All his notes, his analysis, gone. He was disappointed. Hopkins heard this and said, "Wait here." And he ran to fetch the book from his trailer. He showed Pfeiffer. It was the same book. Pfeiffer's handwriting. His notes. Everything. Now, the universe set that book to the actor playing the lead, and then the universe sent the book back to its owner. Now, here's a story of the law of attraction. Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's son, attracted death. Presidential death. April 14th, 1865. Robert was at the White House when his father left for Ford's Theatre. We know how that ended. 16 years later, July 2nd, 1881, Robert was Secretary of War. Walking into the Baltimore Epitomic Train Station, President Garfield was shot. Right there, in front of Robert, he saw it happen. September 6th, 1901. Now, Robert was President of Pullman Company. He arrived at the Pan American Exposition. Minutes later, President Akinley was shot. Again, Robert was there. Three presidents, three assassinations. One man present at all of them. But here's the synchronicity that haunted Robert. Years before his father died, Robert fell onto train tracks in Jersey City. The train was coming. He was about to be crushed. A stranger grabbed his collar and yanked him to safety. That stranger was one of the most famous. Ole Miss actors in the country, Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes Booth, two brothers, both famous actors, both connected to Abraham Lincoln. One brother would save the president's son, the other would assassinate him. These patterns are a little too perfect. This isn't random, this is reality organizing itself. To be able to influence reality would be the ultimate power. That's why people have been studying this technique for thousands of years. But here's the secret they don't want you to know. Anyone can learn to change their reality at will. Even you. Dr. Joe D'Spenza had a patient who couldn't walk. He was paralyzed from the waist down. Doctors said it was permanent. Then the patient started meditating, and not just regular meditation, quantum field meditation. He visualized his nerve endings connecting and rebuilding. He focused on feeling his legs working perfectly. Six months later, he walked into D'Spenza's office. No wheelchair, no crutches, he walked. The doctors couldn't explain it, but D'Spenza could. The patient had tapped into the quantum field, where all possibilities exist. And this isn't wishful thinking. This is the practical application of quantum physics. When you observe something at the quantum level, you change it. That's the observer effect. A particle exists in all states at once, until you observe it. Then it exists in only one state. Your consciousness can tap into the quantum field. At this moment, infinite realities are laid out before you. Every nanosecond, infinite decisions are being made that cause the infinite possibilities to collapse into this one reality. But you can learn to influence the outcome of all those decisions. You can alter your small corner of reality. Setting clear intentions is the first step. You can't be vague. Like wishing for more money. You have to be specific. Detailed. You have to say, "I receive a $10,000 bonus on March 15th. The universe needs precise instructions." But thinking isn't enough. You need emotion, gratitude, specifically. Feel grateful for what you're manifesting as if it already happened. Concentrate on that feeling of believing it already happened. Your brain doesn't know the difference between a real experience and a vivid imagination. That's why athletes visualize perfect performance. Their muscles respond as if they actually practiced. Ronald Hoffman spent 30 years studying consciousness. He believes what we perceive as reality is nothing more than a user interface, like computer icons on a desktop. Behind every icon, behind every pixel, is complex code. What we see isn't really here, space, time, objects. They're all icons, all pixels. Consciousness is the only thing that's real. Now if Hoffman is right, a reality is just an interface, you can hack it. And people do it every day without realizing it. Think about someone and they call. Need a parking spot? What opens up? Worry about something and it happens. That last one's important. Reality doesn't judge good or bad. It just responds. So be careful what you focus on. You'll know when you're connecting with the universal field, you'll see signs. People always notice clocks when they read 11/11. Other people have number patterns they see everywhere, in dates, addresses, then numbers of cars, look around, license plates contain messages, so to song lyrics. Reality is constantly communicating with you. You just have to learn the language. Some people see results immediately, others take months. The difference is doubt. Your doubt is a new instruction to the universe to not honor your original request. If you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it. We all know the story is about the highly successful CEO who visualizes his entire day each morning. Every meeting, every decision, every outcome, he's not psychic, he's programming reality. You've heard of vision boards. If you don't have one, create one right now. Put a court board somewhere where you can see it every day, and I'm not bored in pictures of everything you want. A dream house, a car, a boat, a travel destination, even handwritten notes to yourself about landing the perfect job or finding your soulmate. Study that board every day. You'll be surprised at what happens. You might not buy that yacht tomorrow, but by setting clear intentions, those trillions of micro decisions will guide you to your goal. Now these aren't miracles. This is technology. Ancient technology that we forgot how to use, but a part of you remembers how to communicate with reality because reality is us. All of us were all connected. Our shared consciousness is always listening. It wants your dreams to come true. All you have to do is ask. I think renisities are real. We've got the photos of the two Laura Bucsden's. Young's beetle tapped on that window, and the Hopkins found that exact book, These Things Happened. So is the universe really responding to our thoughts? Well, here's where it gets tricky. Critics point out that our brains evolved to see patterns in randomness. This is called parodolia, rustling in the bushes. Could be wind, or it could be a predator. The ones who assumed predator lived longer, so we're wired to see connections even when they're not there. Now the skeptics have a point. Millions of twins get separated at birth. Some are bound to have weird similarities. We only hear about the impossible ones. This is called survivorship bias, cherry picking facts to support hypothesis while ignoring everything else. Take the Laura Bucsden balloon. Released enough balloons over enough years, the odds are you'll eventually create an impossible story. The odds are extremely low, I'll admit, but they're not zero. Critics also say the CEO who visualizes his perfect day, that's not tapping into some universal field that's just preparation and confidence. But the skeptics can't explain everything. The global consciousness project is real. Random number generators do show patterns during major world events. September 11th, tsunamis, elections, Princeton's parallel brand for 28 years, millions of trials. Now the effects were tiny, but they were real. Consciousness affected those machines. The observer effect is proven physics. When you observe a quantum system, you change it. Some physicists think consciousness might be fundamental to reality. Others think consciousness is reality. No, you can't manifest a yacht. But mind and matter are more connected than we thought. So you can put yourself on a path where you're making decisions that lead to that yacht. But you have to keep visualizing, just like Tesla visualized his inventions, it's all about seeing it and thinking about it and focusing on the problem and the solution. Have you ever gone to sleep with a problem in your mind and woke up with the answer? I have. In the early 19th century, scientists were baffled by benzene, a compound made of carbon and hydrogen that's extremely strong and stable. Chemists tried to replicate it, but they didn't know how to arrange the molecules. Friedrich Kekelae discovered the structure of benzene in his sleep. He had a dream of a snake eating its tail, a ring. That was the breakthrough. Benzene is so strong and so stable because it's built like a hexagonal ring. This discovery was a hugely forward in chemistry. It changed and created entire industries. Dimitri Mendeliev saw the periodic table in a dream. These aren't manifestations, but they're not random either. That's why every ancient culture has similar techniques, prayer, meditation. It's all about visualizing the outcome. Now, the military spent millions on remote viewing, and it worked. Sometimes. But it worked enough that it was better than chance, better than nothing. So, where does that leave us? Cigarineses happen more than statistics predict. Consciousness can influence physical systems in small ways, Princeton proved it. I tend to believe Carl Jung that we're all part of vast neural network. Age of Us is one of billions of nodes of the same consciousness. Now, most of the time we're out of sync. Events are chaotic. The signals are random. But sometimes, the signals align. When things of you, you think of them the phone rings. Now, I don't know if consciousness creates reality, or reality creates consciousness, but I know it's listening. Now, I'm not here to convince you with that. I'm not asking you to believe in universal collective consciousness. I'm just asking you to be open to it. How? Simple. Be positive. Be kind. Be confident. And be grateful. If you make these small adjustments and I'm wrong, your life will still be happier. But if I'm right, and these adjustments allow you to bend reality to your will and control your own destiny, you'll end up asking yourself one simple question. What took me so long? So I just hung up with Eric. He had a dream that my car was flooded with fish of all things. So what's going on? Coincidences, synchronicities, reality, just messing with your head? There's clearly something bigger connecting us all, like a quantum field, as if we're all eyes of the same big head. And if we are, how did consciousness get so weird in the first place? The answer might be mushrooms, friendly fungi. And what comes next wouldn't exist without a stoned, burkin-stock-wearing psychonot from Berkeley, an ethno-botnist and jungle-trotting mystic who knew that the deepest frontier was never out there in the stars. It was in here, behind your own eyes, and of course talking about the great Terence McKenna. So this idea is called the stoned ape theory. Imagine a bunch of hungry proto-humans wandering the African savanna, flipping over cow pies looking for snacks, and instead, they discovered the original forbidden fungus. Evolutions like finally, so they eat the mushrooms, which as Rogan likes to point out, happen to look like a dinner plate. Suddenly colors are brighter, visual acuity goes up a notch. That line in the grass? Now they see it. Their minds get a software update, and inside, something like language starts trying to happen. Grunts, slowly turning into gossip, poetry, and eventually, podcasting. These little cow pie mushroom satellites were like USB drives from the biosphere, exo-hormones that carried messages from nature. Now some scientists have a real problem with this one, and whether McKenna was a genius or just really, really high, I'll let you decide. And for legal purposes, I have to say, don't try this at home. Or do, I'm not your shaman. The third episode starts now, "The Awakening of Human Consciousness" for Bidden Fungus. Something happened to the human brain 100,000 years ago. Something evolution can't explain. In just a few thousand generations, our brain nearly doubled in size. No other species has experienced anything like this, and we didn't just get bigger brains. We got enhanced abilities, increased intelligence, better eyesight, faster reflexes, and the most amazing ability of all consciousness. And somehow all of that happened fast, too fast for a scientific explanation. But in the 1990s, an outsider offered an answer. His theory was simple and immediately dismissed. It contradicted everything the scientific establishment believed about the emergence of human consciousness. He said the cause wasn't the discovery of fire or language or the use of tools, he said all of those abilities were the result. He said early humans transformed from primitive hominids to the most advanced life form on earth because they added one simple thing to their diet, mushrooms. But not ordinary mushrooms. The mushrooms that awaken the human mind were magic. The outsider was Terence McKenna, not your typical scientist. He started as an ethno-botanist studying plants in the Amazon. But a trip to Lattorera in 1971 changed everything. That's where McKenna tried psychedelic mushrooms. And what he experienced, set him on a decades-long quest to understand consciousness. That wasn't making wild guesses about mushrooms and evolution. He had data, hard evidence. In 1970, Harvard researcher Roland Fisher ran a series of experiments. He gave graduate students control doses of psilocybin than he tested their vision. Small doses improved visual acuity by 200%. Students could detect finer details, see contrasts better, track movement more accurately. Now think about what this means for early humans. Better vision means better hunting, better hunting means more food, more food, met bigger brains. But McKenna's theory went deeper. He proposed three levels of mushroom consumption. Low doses enhanced vision and made people more alert, perfect for tracking prey across the savannah. Medium doses dissolved social boundaries that led to conflict. Groups became more cohesive. People shared more, bonded more, more bonding means more children. Tied doses of psychedelic mushrooms produced an entirely different and intense experience. The ego dissolved. New thought patterns emerged, abstract thinking and understanding symbolism became innate, natural. Language became music, and music became language, and consciousness, whatever that is, expands. McKenna didn't think these were just side effects. He thought they were part of a bigger plan, and here's the thing about human brain evolution that bothered McKenna. Two million years ago, our ancestors had brains around 900 cubic centimeters. Within 100,000 years, that jumped to 1600 cubic centimeters, nearly double. That kind of growth usually takes millions of years, not thousands. Fire helped. Tools helped, eating meat helped. But the timeline didn't match. Those developments came after brain expansion, not before. McKenna had one simple explanation. Our ancestors followed herds of game across Africa. Those herds left Dung everywhere, and growing in that Dung were psilocybicubenses mushrooms. The same mushrooms fish are studied at Harvard. Early humans were hungry. They ate everything they could find. They ate not just the animals they hunted, but the mushrooms left behind from the herd. Scientific establishment hated McKenna's theory. They called it the stone to ape hypothesis. The name was meant to mock it, but McKenna embraced it. He believed psilocybin didn't just change the mind, it helped form the human experience. Scientists thought McKenna was crazy, but 30 years later, they gave people psilocybin and scan their brains. Terrible's McKenna wasn't crazy at all. He was dead right. McKenna was right about one thing. psilocybin changes the brain, but not the way anyone expected. When neuroscientists finally put volunteers in MRI machines and gave them psilocybin, they thought brain activity would explode, more neural firing, more energy, more chaos. Instead, they saw the opposite. The brain got quieter. Perfectly, one part went almost silent, the default mode network. The default mode network is your brain's control center, it's the voice in your head. The thing that says "I" when you think about yourself, it creates your ego, the boundary between you and everything else, your sense of self. On psilocybin, that shuts down. Not partially, not temporarily, the entire network goes offline. And when it does, something extraordinary happens. Brain regions that never talk to each other suddenly connect. The visual cortex starts communicating with areas that process emotion, memory centers link up with parts that control body awareness. It's like every neighborhood in a city suddenly building roads to every other neighborhood. Robin Carhartt Harris at Imperial College London discovered this in 2012. He called it "nural anarchy," but it wasn't anarchy, it wasn't chaotic, it was reorganization. The connections formed during these psychedelic experiences don't just disappear when the drug wears off. Brain scans show new, neural pathways remaining active for weeks, sometimes months. In some cases, the changes appear permanent. Johns Hopkins researchers found something even stranger. People who took psilocybin in controlled settings showed lasting personality changes. Not mood changes, personality changes. They became more open, more creative, more connected to others. This shouldn't be possible. Personality is supposed to be fixed by age 30, but psilocybin rewrote that rule. And here's what really puzzled scientists. Silasin, what psilocybin becomes in your body, fits into human serotonin receptors perfectly. But approximately, perfectly, like a key design for a specific lock. We share about 50% of our DNA with mushrooms. We split from a common ancestor over a billion years ago, yet somehow these fungi produce a compound that seems tailor-made for the human brain. Paul Stammist, the world's leading mushroom expert, thinks this isn't a coincidence. He believes humans and mushrooms have been evolving together, what he calls co-evolution. Brain scans prove psilocybin creates new neural connections. They prove it dissolves old patterns. They prove it fundamentally changes how we think. But ancient civilizations didn't need MRI machines to know this. They'd been using mushrooms for thousands of years. They saw them as technology, sacred technology, a way to communicate with other realms, a way to speak with our ancestors. They saw mushrooms as a way to speak to God. For 2000 years, it was Greece's most sacred secret, the Elucinian mysteries. Every September, thousands of Greeks made a pilgrimage to Elussus, peasants and emperors, philosophers, and warriors, they all came for one thing, to drink the Kaikian and see the truth. Plano went, Aristotle went, so did Sophocles, Cicero drank the Kaikian, so to commoners, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, they never wrote about what they saw, not specifically, but they all said the same thing, the experience changed them forever, and revealed the secret of death, and showed them their place in the cosmos. For centuries, nobody knew what was in the Kaikian, or Kaikian. Then in 1978, researchers cracked the code. The drink contained Ergot, a fungus that grows on grains specifically rye. Ergot contains Lysurgic acid amide, another psychedelic, natural LSD. The Greeks weren't alone. The Aztecs had a word for mushrooms, Teo Nanakadil, it means "flesh of the gods", they used psilocybin mexicana in religious ceremonies, Spanish conquistadors witnessed these rituals in the 1500s, and what they saw terrified them. Indigenous people eating mushrooms and speaking directly to their gods, no priests, no intermediaries, direct divine contact. The Spanish destroyed every mushroom temple they found, burned every codex that mentioned them, made mushroom use punishable by death, but they couldn't destroy everything. The Mazatec people of Oakka kept the mushroom ceremonies alive, hidden in mountain caves, passed down through generations of healers, for 400 years they protected this knowledge, and this wasn't just the Americas, Vedic texts from ancient India describe Soma, a divine plant that granted immortality and wisdom. Scholars debated what Soma was for decades, then our Gordon Watson made a connection. The descriptions matched Aminita Musgaria, the red and white mushrooms that are in all the fairy tales. Siberian shamans used the same mushroom, they fed it to reindeer, then tried the reindeer's urine. The reindeer's body filtered out the toxins, but kept the psychoactive compounds. This could fly across the sky and visit other worlds, all powered by reindeer pee. Even the Bible might contain mushroom references, Moses met God at a burning bush. The bush was probably Akasha, Akasha contains DMT, when burned and inhaled DMT produces visions that last about 15 minutes, exactly how long Moses spoke with God. The mana that fed the Israelites in the desert, it appeared overnight, it had to be collected before sunrise, it gave people visions. This is how mushrooms operate. John Marco Allegro was a Dead Sea Scroll scholar, he proposed that early Christianity was a mushroom cult, that the last supper wasn't bread and wine, it was mushrooms. The body and blood of Christ were actually the cap and stem of Aminita Musgaria. The Vatican destroyed Allegro's career for that theory. Every civilization throughout history knew the power of mushrooms, and every authority that rose to power tried to destroy that secret knowledge, they almost succeeded. But in 1957, Life Magazine published an article that reached 6 million Americans. The headline read, Seeking the Magic Mushroom, and now the secret was out. Our Gordon Watson was a banker, vice-president at J.P. Morgan, not the kind of person you'd expect to resurrect ancient mushroom knowledge, but in 1955, Watson and his wife Valentina traveled to a walk in Mexico. They heard rumors about mushroom ceremonies, sacred rituals that survived the Spanish conquest. They found Maria Sabina, she was a Mazatec healer, a coronerah. For generations, her family had protected the mushroom's traditions. She rarely allowed outsiders into the ceremonies, but something about the Wassons made her break that rule. On June 29, 1955, Wasson became the first known white person to participate in a mushroom ceremony. Maria Sabina served them psilocyte in Mexicana on a leaf. She chanted in Mazatec, the room was filled with incense, then the visions began. Wasson saw geometric patterns, palaces made of light. He felt his soul leave his body. He understood for the first time what the word ecstasy actually meant. Not happiness, but standing outside yourself, seeing reality from a perspective that normal consciousness just doesn't allow. The experience lasted six hours, but it changed Wasson forever. Two years later, a magazine published his account, seeking the magic mushroom. It hit news stands on May 13, 1957. Six million Americans read about mushrooms that could expand consciousness, show them God, reveal secrets about life, the universe and their place in it. The psychedelic revolution had begun. Timothy Leary read that article, so did Richard Albert. They started the Harvard psilocybin project in 1960. They gave mushrooms to graduate students, prisoners, divinity students. Everyone reported profound experiences, life-changing revelations. One came the good Friday experiment. On April 20, 1962, 20 divinity students gathered in Boston University's Marsh Chapel, half-received psilocybin, half-got-to-ceboes. The results were undeniable, nine of ten students who took psilocybin, reported mystical experiences. They felt unity with all existence, direct contact with the divine, time dissolved, the boundaries between self and universe disappeared. Twenty-five years later, researchers tracked down those students. They still ranked that good Friday as one of the most spiritually significant experiences of their lives. But the establishment panicked. By 1968, psilocybin was illegal. Research stopped. The mushroom Renaissance seemed over. It wasn't. Underground therapists kept using psilocybin. They treated depression, addiction, PTSD. They just couldn't publish their results. Then in 2006, Johns Hopkins published the first legal psilocybin study in 40 years. The results shocked the medical establishment. A single dose of psilocybin created lasting, positive personality changes. People became more open, more creative, more connected. By 2018, the FDA designated psilocybin as a breakthrough therapy for depression. Studies showed 70% remission rates. We've heard that 230% forced standard antidepressants, which come with all kinds of side effects. Terminal cancer patients lost their fear of death after one session. Addiction rates plummeted. PTSD symptoms vanished. The mushrooms that transformed consciousness 100,000 years ago were transforming it again. The stone to ape theory captivated millions of people. It offered a simple answer to humanity's biggest mystery. Magic mushrooms made us human. But there's a problem, a big one. Evolution doesn't work that way. Here's what we know is true. psilocybin mushrooms enhance vision. Rowan Fisher proved that at Harvard. They increased social bonding. They dissolved ego boundaries. They create new neural pathways. Modern brain scans confirm all of this. We also know early humans encountered these mushrooms. psilocybicubensis grows in cattle dung all across Africa. Our ancestors followed those herds. They were hungry. They would have eaten these mushrooms. McKenna got all that right. But here's where the theory gets shaky. Any changes psilocybin caused in an individual's brain couldn't be passed to their children. That's Lamarkey and Evolution. It was disproven 100 years ago. If you take steroids and build huge muscles, your kids aren't born muscular. If you learn French, your children don't speak it automatically. And if mushrooms expand your consciousness, that expansion doesn't transfer to your offspring. Genetics doesn't work that way. It never has. There's another problem. McKenna claimed Fisher's research supported this evolutionary theory. But Fisher never said that. He studied perception, not evolution. McKenna took the data and ran with it in a direction Fisher never intended. And then there's the evidence that should exist, but doesn't. If psychedelics drove human evolution, we'd see the most advanced cognition and cultures that use them extensively. The Aztecs used mushrooms for centuries. So did Amazonian tribes. The Mazatec people never stopped using them. These cultures created art, mythology, and complex spiritual systems. But they didn't develop advanced technology or scientific thinking faster than cultures without psychedelics. So McKenna was wrong. But he might have been wrong in an interesting way. Some researchers propose a different model, not genetic evolution, but cultural evolution. Mushrooms didn't change our DNA. They changed our software, not our hardware. And think about it. Every culture that used psychedelics developed music, art, and religion. They created rituals and mythologies. They built complex social structures around shared experiences. Maybe that's what mushrooms gave us, not bigger brains, bigger hearts, bigger ideas. The new stone-deep theory focuses on consciousness as an immersion property. I guess I get Alex didn't even. the brain, they revealed what the brain could already do, like finding a hidden feature in software you've used for years. This fits better with the evidence. It explains why mushrooms create long lasting personality changes, why they increase creativity and openness, and why every culture that found them considered them sacred. Paul Stamets takes it further. He says we're still co-evolving with mushrooms, not genetically but culturally. As we rediscover psychedelics, they're reshaping society again, mental health treatment, creativity enhancement, spiritual exploration. The mushroom renaissance isn't just about medicine, it's about consciousness itself. McKenna has the wrong question. It wasn't how did mushrooms create human consciousness. The real question is what is consciousness and why the mushrooms affected so profoundly? We don't know. After decades of research, consciousness remains the hard problem. We can map every neuron, scan every synapse, and still not understand how flesh becomes thought. But we know this. Something in mushrooms speaks directly to something in us. After a billion years of separate evolution, that connection to consciousness remains. Consciousness, if you think about it, is lonely. We're the only species that knows it even exists, that knows it will end. Maybe that's why every culture that found mushrooms called them sacred. Not because they made us human, but because they made us feel less alone, connected to something else, connected to something bigger, connected to everyone. The stone-aid theory may be wrong, but it made us think differently. It made us reevaluate consciousness and how it arises, how it emerges. It made us think about our connections to each other and about connections to a greater universe, a universe full of energy and thought, and kindness and love. So right or wrong, the stone-aid theory is important, and believe it or not, it changed everything. Okay, so far we've edited the genome, talked to the universe, and possibly eaten our way into self-awareness, or at least a good time. But nature has other ways of forcing an upgrade. In this time, it's not coming from a magic mushroom, but a meltdown. So naturally, our next step is Chernobyl. This episode gets into radiation and the idea that mutation, catastrophe, and evolution might be more connected than we realized. And in the aftermath, life isn't just surviving, but adapting. It turns out, nature might be much weirder and tougher than we give it credit for. Of course, part of my brain hears radiation-powered evolution and wonders, so if I get exposed to the right dose will I get superpowers. Maybe unlock a little sigh, a little telekinesis. But no, that's how you get a very different origin story. Biology isn't quite like the comic books, but it might be much cooler. So try not to get any ideas from this next episode, nuclear-powered evolution, the wolves of Chernobyl reveal human potential. A few years ago, scientists discovered something impossible in Chernobyl. Animals were thriving in radiation levels that should have killed them. In the 50s, the United States tested 23 nuclear weapons at Bikiniath Hall. The area is still radioactive, yet life flourishes there. Plants and animals grow faster than they should. After the Fukushima disaster, animals develop stronger antioxidant systems. They reproduce faster. This happened in just 15 years. How can plants and animals evolve so quickly? Well, they can't. They activated ancient genetic sequences designed to survive radiation. Jeans that were always there, waiting. And in Earth's most radioactive places, those Jeans are waking up. March 1st, 1954, Bikiniath Hall, Operation Castle Test Bravo. The military expected a 5 megaton blast. They got 15. This miscalculation created a blast, 1000 times stronger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fireball reached 20 million degrees Fahrenheit in under a second, that's 2000 times hotter than the sun's surface, and twice the temperature of the sun's core. The mushroom cloud stretched 25 miles high. The blast carved a crater in the sea floor over a mile wide and 300 feet deep, deep enough for a 30-story building. Why the hell are you human? The explosion vaporized three small islands. The lagoon became a radioactive soup. Wind patterns spread fall out across thousands of miles. Local suffered radiation sickness and evacuated. Over four years there were another 22 nuclear tests. Scientists believed nothing could survive this. They were wrong. Researchers found nearly 100 species of fish and coral thriving in radioactive water. What? This is how Godzilla was born. Yeah, I don't think. The crater left by the nuclear bomb was covered in coral, vast colonies of it. Then the researchers found the crabs. These crabs eat radioactive coconuts. The water, soil and trees contain cesium-137. A radioactive isotope that destroys DNA and causes cancer. Tests showed lethal radiation levels in the crabs, but they're fine. Oh, maybe this explains the crab kit. Let's stay focused. This pattern repeats at every nuclear disaster site. Different animals, same response. For some reason nature knows how to handle radiation, but when did life develop these defenses? And why? Well years later Chernobyl provided a clue. Deep in Ukraine's radioactive exclusion zone, something strange was happening to the wolves. In 1986, a safety test at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant failed. The explosion released 400 times more radiation than Hiroshima. The Soviet military gave 100,000 residents hours to evacuate. They established a 1,000 square mile exclusion zone around the reactor. The land was declared dead. Nature disagreed. In 2014, Dr. Carol Love studied wolves in the CEZ. Their bloodwork revealed genetic changes that defied evolution. In just 15 generations, the wolves activated specific DNA repair mechanisms. Each generation grew more and more resistant to radiation. The wolves are exposed to six times the legal safety limit of radiation every day of their lives. Researchers identified the wolves genetics seemed resilient to increased cancer risk. But wolves weren't the only animals changing. When Chernobyl was evacuated, people were not allowed to bring their pets. Thousands of cats and dogs were left behind. Most of these animals died from radiation exposure, but not all of them. Studies documented over 800 descendants of the original abandoned dogs living in the exclusion zone. Yeah, what happened to the cats? Not much research when it's studying the cats. Not because nobody cares. Stop it. DNA samples from the Chernobyl dogs show their genetics are so unique that they could be classified as a new species. Other animals adapted differently. Eastern tree frogs are normally bright green. In Chernobyl, they're black. The increased melanin in their skin protects them from radiation. Birds in the zone developed darker feathers to survive. In 2013, a study revealed that they weren't creating new abilities. They were awakening old ones. And then there's the fungus. Do you make a cream for that? No. Not that cut. What did the mushroom say to the girl? He was trying to pick up at the bur? Will you let me get through this please? No, fine. Go ahead and kill all the fun guy. Black fungi in Chernobyl don't just resist radiation. They eat it. They grow toward the reactor core, converting gamma radiation to chemical energy, like plants convert sunlight. NASA tested these fungi on the International Space Station. They processed cosmic radiation in zero gravity. Some of the species appeared at other radiation sites. At Fukushima, fungi activated their radiation processing abilities with an hours of exposure. When radiation levels dropped, they returned to normal. Johns Hopkins discovered these fungi adapt to different radiation types. From gamma rays to beta particles, their genes contain instructions for processing all kinds of radiation. These same genes appear in 50 million-year-old fungi fossils. So why did ancient life forms develop protection against radiation? Dr. Lynn Rothschild is an astrobiologist at NASA. She says Earth's atmosphere millions of years ago provided less insulation from cosmic radiation. For life to survive, it would have developed methods to protect itself and then passed them down through DNA. Now this makes sense. But there's a hiccup. Cosmic radiation is mostly protons. The fungi have defenses against neutrons, beta particles, and gamma rays. These don't come from space. These come from uranium nuclear reactors. Hang on, hang on, hang on. Humans didn't have nuclear reactors 50 million years ago. That's true, they didn't. So what are you talking about? They found a nuclear reactor for millions years ago? No. They found 17 of them. There is a time in Earth's history when radiation was much, much higher. In Gabon, West Africa, scientists discovered evidence of at least 17 natural nuclear reactors that operated two billion years ago. The aqua reactors, as they're called, sustained nuclear vision for hundreds of thousands of years. And these reactors weren't small. Each site produced around 100 kilowatts of power. Groundwater moderated the reactions, creating natural on-off cycles, just like modern nuclear reactors. Oh, who built the reactors? Yeah, you're not key. Thank you for that episode down in the old juicy jug. No, there you go. It's from the nuclear war between Atlantis and Lemuria. Link to Atlantis episode stuffed new booty box. No. Oh, I didn't nuclear war with Mars. Link to Mars episode down into Pukapat. Oh, scientists are pretty sure they're natural nuclear reactors. Yeah, but not 100% sure. Well, science can never be 100% sure about anything. Yeah, yeah. Aqualo wasn't unique. Similar isotope patterns in Colorado's uranium deposits suggest ancient fission reactions. Uranium mines in Australia show nuclear activity from billions of years ago. The gunflin chart contains Earth's oldest fossils, 1.9 billion-year-old microorganisms with radiation adaptations matching modern bacteria. Life maintained these defenses even as Earth's radiation levels decreased, like a biological memory. These mechanisms remained intact through billions of years of evolution. This is how evolution and genetics work. You know this. You also know that genes and traits that are no longer useful are eventually removed from the gene pool. But if that's true, why are these genes still here? And why are they in human DNA? Radiation response mechanisms match genetic markers found in ancient human settlements. Our ancestors faced this before. They also developed radiation resistance. How do we know? Because their children are still here. In Ram Sauron, people live with radiation levels 10 times higher than safety limits, yet they have normal cancer rates and normal lifespans. What we found was that people who lived in the high background areas had significantly fewer induced chromosomal abnormalities than their neighbors who lived maybe just a few kilometers away where background radiation levels were warm up. It sounds totally uncrobable, but it appears that radiation may actually help the body resist genetic damage. Studies reveal Ram Saur residents have enhanced DNA repair abilities. Their cells fix radiation damage faster than it accumulates. "It's like a whole feeling of toxic images." "Really?" "What? It's a compliment." "Things are going to change in this town. I'm not just another pretty big." Similar populations exist in other parts of the world. Guarrapati in Brazil is famous for its beauty, biodiversity, and unique radioactive black sand. The Brazilian Nuclear Energy Commission documented enhanced DNA repair in locals going back generations. These populations also have something else in common. Their settlement stayed back thousands of years. Archaeological evidence shows continuous human habitation near natural radiation sources. Gobekli Tepe, one of humanity's oldest sites, is built near uranium deposits. Similar deposits lie beneath Mesopotamia's oldest cities. These radiation levels should have driven humans away. Instead, our ancestors stayed and became resistant. They passed that resistance to their children who also passed it on. These protections are not just in the genes of people living near radioactive sites. They're in all of us. And they could be the catalyst for humanity's next great leap. [Music] Space agencies in every country are trying to unlock human potential. This potential might be achieved in space. Enhance DNA repair. Conscious control over our metabolism. Natural radiation shielding. Within a century, we might activate these dormitabilities at will. In a thousand years as humans colonize space, different environments will drive unique adaptations. Colonists on Mars, Titan, and Europa will evolve differently. Each population will adapt to their local radiation signature and environment. In 10,000 years, space dwelling humans might process radiation like food. Their skin could generate protective fields. Their DNA might repair itself instantly. While this is purely speculation, we know these abilities exist in Chernobyl's fungi. That's why NASA is so interested in this. Further into the future, we might develop new senses. The ability to detect different types of radiation and heat, enhanced vision that would allow us to see ultraviolet or infrared. Some animals on Earth already have these abilities. [Music] Even further into the future, humans might develop senses that utilize quantum biology. No, no, quantum biology. Did you just make that up? Nope. European robins navigate perfectly in darkness across thousands of miles. Moths detect mates miles away. Plants convert sunlight with near-perfect efficiency. For decades, scientists couldn't explain these abilities. Now they think they know. These animals are tapping into the quantum realm. The robin's eye contains a protein called cryptochrome. When struck by light, it creates quantum entangled electrons that react to the Earth's magnetic field. I think, having studied quantum mechanics myself years and years ago, I would never have realized then or even believed, I think, that it would be possible that quantum mechanical effects could be actually housed within the eye of a bird. That is a huge surprise. And that's nothing we learned in quantum mechanics when I was young. One theory says that dog sense of smell uses quantum tunneling. They detect quantum vibrations of molecules that they perceive as sense. Even plants tap into the quantum realm. When sunlight hits a leaf, it always chooses the most efficient route. The energy uses quantum superposition to explore all possible pathways at once. This is exactly how quantum computers work. Quantum apocalypse straight down in your sugar basket. In a million years, humans in space might develop similar abilities. The framework for this might already be in place. I can claim that we need new physics to understand consciousness. Now, when I mean new physics here, I mean something outside the physics we know, but it's not simply invented for the purpose of explaining consciousness. It's something which I think we think anyway. Physicist Roger Penrose and Stuart Hemeroff believe consciousness comes from quantum processes in brain cells. Microtubules in the cells create quantum states that become conscious thought. I realize these microtubules are there and they look like just the kind of thing that could well be supporting the kind of level of quantum mechanics up to a level where you could expect the the quantum state sort of collapse. That's the terminology people use in quantum mechanics. Microtubules, they are inside brain neurons. They are indeed. You know how waves collapse into particles when they're observed? If you don't, the human explains it in a simulation theory episode. Link down in your luscious love like. Think of your consciousness. as waves of possibility. These waves exist in multiple states at once. When these quantum states collapse, you experience a moment of awareness. Whenever the state reduces, whenever the wave function collapses, that's what this is doing. It's associated with a moment of what we call proto-consciousness. For 30 years, scientists dismissed it as fringe thinking, but now the evidence is getting harder to ignore. Evidence is emerging that microtubules may exhibit interesting quantum behaviors after all. There are certain quantum states in microtubules that if you have a coherent gravitational collapse of these orchestrated collapse of these, somehow consciousness arises. We're now there is a concrete evidence that went to physics as exactly the properties that describe consciousness in flew well. If consciousness uses quantum mechanics, your thoughts transcend ordinary physics. Your consciousness could be part of a quantum reality that connects you and me and everyone across space and time. This sounds like speculation, but every mechanism I describe today exists in nature. Every adaptation has appeared in some form of life. The quantum reality that creates your consciousness is the same quantum reality that governs everything in the universe. And everything in the universe, you, me, our planet, our sun, all come from the same source. The very matter that makes us up was generated long ago and far away in redgiant stars. A bleed of grass, as Walt Whitman said, is the journey work of the stars. Carl Sagan said we're made of star stuff. The evidence suggests he was right in ways he never imagined. Those ancient stars didn't just create the atoms that make up our bodies. They might have encoded the blueprint for consciousness itself. I like this theory because it means we're all connected. Our time on earth is short, but maybe that's the point. We're here to experience physical life and take those experiences back to our source where we share them and learn from them. Maybe our real lives aren't here. Maybe our real lives are out there among the stars. Out there, the stars are showing us we're part of a shared consciousness, temporarily wearing human form. Out there, the stars are preparing us for an awakening that will reshape our reality. Out there, the stars are calling us home. - Our ancestors worshiped the sun and they were far from foolish. It makes good sense to revere the sun and the stars because we are their children. - Well, I guess this means no laser eyes for me. It's probably for the best. After radioactive wolves in radiation eating fungi, it might sound like we're at the end of the rabbit hole, but we're not. That last one ended with invisible signals and a shared quantum reality reaching into your mind, connecting all of us. But what if sometimes the thing reaching in isn't the cosmos? Actually, hang on, I'm pretty thirsty. So maybe before we start the episode, maybe grab a drink and some snacks. Popcorn sounds good too. And I don't even like popcorn. Weird. Anyway, this next episode gets into subliminal messages you don't notice. Hidden frequencies you barely hear. Advertising propaganda. And the comforting possibility that someone can beam cravings or ideas into your head that you think are your own. Is it you, the voice of God, or just microwave radiation? So halfway through this episode, you catch yourself craving something you don't even like. Welcome to the club. Wait, do you guys hear that high-pitched noise like someone just turned on at TV in your head? Or is that just the episode starting? I'll go find out. So without further ado, here's the episode that will make you want to throw your phone in the ocean. Subliminal warfare, mind control, and invisible influence. Saddam Hussein met with his generals in Basra on January 27, 1991. He was pacing back and forth, and he was furious. Six months earlier, Iraq had invaded Kuwait, and the world responded with a relentless shock in awe campaign. The coalition's 2,000 daily air attacks had crippled Iraq's defenses and destroyed its Air Force. Hussein's plan to draw coalition troops into a costly ground war had backfired. Instead, Iraqi soldiers were surrendering by the thousands. These were battle-tested troops in one of the world's largest armies, laying down weapons without firing a single shot. It was maddening. An officer handed Hussein a report about a radio transmitter in Koffce, Saudi Arabia. He dismissed it as Western propaganda, but his officer asked him to keep reading. There was an intelligence document attached. It said the FM transmitter in Koffce was broadcasting subliminal messages that were making Iraqi troop surrender using mind control. Hussein ordered the tower destroyed within three days. His officers pushed back. The town was lightly guarded for now, but taking it would be a suicide mission without air support. They didn't even know if this mind control weapon was real. It could be another American lie. Hussein stopped pacing. Three days, he said, his tone left no room for discussion. Major General Salat Mahmoud saluted, took a deep breath, and reached for the phone. Marine Corporal Jesse Colvin was at observation post-4, scanning the dark horizon. OP-4 was on top of the police station in Koffce, a small town in Saudi Arabia. Colvin wasn't expecting to see much. The coalition had air supremacy. If Saddam Hussein did so much as toss a paper plane from a window, there'd be F-15s on top of it before it reached the ground. Still, Iraq had plenty of ground forces in the field, and the Saudis asked the U.S. for support. It was about 20-100 hours-- 8 p.m. Yes, thank you. No problem. It was about 8 o'clock, and it was a quiet night. Colvin only heard the wind coming off the gulf, and the occasional crackle of the radio. Then Colvin heard a rumble that, at first, he thought was thunder. He aimed his night vision binoculars north, tanks, and troops. He couldn't believe it. It took him a second to process, and then he grabbed his radio. Contact, contact, and any armor cited. Multiple vehicles approaching from the north over. Colvin didn't get a response. We're deep. Contact, contact, and any armor approaching from the north over. Still no response. The radios worked earlier, so Colvin assumed the radios were being jammed. He grabbed his M-16 and headed downstairs. His unit wasn't prepared for an attack of this size. 90 minutes later, air support arrived, but it was too late. The Iraqi army took the city. Whether they could hope it or not didn't really matter, they accomplished their mission. They brought down the FM radio transmitter. The Marines at Koffce thought this attack was crazy, and they weren't prepared for such a large offensive. Of course, they had no idea what they were guarding. Iraqi intelligence was right. The United States had deployed a subliminal weapon. Can humans be controlled subliminally? The answer, of course, is a big yes. And you won't be surprised to know that advertisers were the first to jump on this new technology. For your convenience, we have an incredibly refreshment stand in the lobby, with buttered popcorn, golden, good and puffed from the popper. Your favorite pandas hold some enrich with a favorite treat for every taste, ice cream, and other good things to eat. For six weeks in 1957, families in New Jersey went to the movies at a fun night out and went home, totally normal. They had no idea they were exposed, but was later called a startling kind of invisible advertising. A mechanism had been attached to the film projector. It flashed messages on the screen every five seconds. Each message only appeared for 1/3,000th of a second, too fast to be seen by the human eye, but that was the point. The goal was to have these messages bypass the conscious brain and register directly in the subconscious. 1,400 times over the course of two hours, the audience saw, well, their subconscious mind saw, calls to action like, eat more popcorn. Over 45,000 movie patrons were exposed without their consent or knowledge, and popcorn sales jumped 58%. Add agencies went into overdrive, and new companies were launched in the subliminal space. - Freeze. - Radio stations, WAAF in Chicago, and WCCO in Minneapolis tested subliminal ads to see if they increased sales. They did. - Freeze. - American television networks implemented the technology into their broadcasts. - It worked. - Peace. - What are you doing? - What? - Me, nothing. - Whispering. Raising rays is not going to make me give you a raise, but when the public learned that they were being manipulated without their knowledge or consent, there was a huge backlash. The Hollywood Reporter called it an obscene violation, the LA Times and Washington Post flat out called it brainwashing. Within a year, theaters, radio, and television broadcasters banned subliminal advertising. Now of course, banning flashing images wouldn't stop consumers from being unconsciously manipulated. No one realized it was already happening, and it was very successful. Raised. You stepped on my cliffhanger, even after I told you to stop? "Well, I'm fusting my hump and it's bull, and I think I deserve a little more scratch." "Well, do you want a raise than maybe you are? You don't just jump in and ruin the best part of the scene." In the late 19th century, Sigmund Freud popularized the idea, "We're motivated by our unconscious. Unconscious motivation is used in product marketing all the time, because it works." Marketing expert Ernest Dictor used a Freudian technique, word association, to test consumers. He wanted to know not what they bought, but why? He learned that moms bought candy for their kids as a reward for good behavior in the grocery store. So he had stores move candy right next to the cash registers. They're still there today. Sanka was a decaffeinated coffee brand that attacked regular coffee in its ads, but consumers love coffee and felt Sanka was insulting coffee drinkers. So, instead of attacking regular coffee, Sanka changed its slogan to "Now you can drink all the coffee you want." "And you can drink it as strong as you like. Drink five, ten cups a day, as many as you like. At any time you like. That's for sure." Sales went through the roof. Bill Friedman was a gambling addict who used his experience to shape how most casinos are laid out. Now, once you're in, you can't see any exits. You can't see any clocks. You can't see outside at all. These tactics disrupt our sense of time. There is constant noise, even if the floor is mostly empty. This is designed to keep you in a heightened state so you don't get tired. Most casinos offer players free alcohol. This reduces inhibitions. And after all those free drinks, you need to use the restroom. But you have to weave your way through slot machines to get there. "Dad, that's why I keep my own restroom right here." "What?" "Why aren't you moving?" "You're going right now, aren't you?" "What? No. Mind your business." "Brose." "What? I wash my things." And a casino, there's no direct route to anywhere, especially an exit. Now, a lot of this is common knowledge. It's slippery, but not dishonest. Like changing a slogan or laying out a casino, it's out in the open. Edward Bernays was a pioneer in public relations at propaganda. He used tactics that were not out in the open. He manipulated public opinion in ways that were entirely unconscious. It makes sense Bernays was good at talking to the subconscious. He was sickening for its nephew. "Wethers to sell more paper cups that we work with, or to make people more honest or more virtuous, depends on public consent. And so we worked out the engineering of consent." His first campaign was in 1929. He influenced the entire nation without their knowledge. He was so good he influenced you. You never knew it. New York City, April 1st, 1929. It was noon on 5th Avenue, and the Easter Parade was packed, one of the best attended in history. The event signaled the beginning of a new modern era. The cars were new, fashion was cutting edge, and cameras filmed the parade for the first time. A group of young women used this as an opportunity to put on an outrageous display. Something unthinkable, something women have never done in public. "Yo baby, we're getting spicy, bow, chicken, bow, bow." The women strolled along the parade, smoking cigarettes. "Oh, oh they smoked after the outrageous display, huh? What did they do? Was there leather involved? Oh please tell me there was leather." Uh, no, smoking was the outrageous display. "Oh, well, that's disappointing." And what is it with you and leather? "Don't kink shame." Okay, never mind. "Bow, chicken, bow, bow." In 1929, women smoking in public was unacceptable, it just wasn't done. But these ladies didn't care about tradition. They wanted the freedom and equality to smoke in public, just like men. Whatever they did, suddenly cigarettes recalled torches of freedom and the demand for cigarettes among women exploded. Women saw cigarettes as symbols of independence and freedom. They had no idea the whole thing was staged. Those weren't rebellious women fighting for equality, they were actresses hired to play apart. Edward Bernays orchestrated the whole scene for his client, the American tobacco company. This was so good at manipulating consumers he's affecting you to this day. Up until the 1920s, Americans ate a light breakfast, toast, juice, coffee, that was it. This was especially true for what they called "brain workers," folks who sat in offices all day. Then in August 1922, an article appeared in The New York Times. "Sometimes health advice is pleasant, requiring no work, no stealth denial, an interesting sample is offered in the medical review of reviews, a query doctors in 46 states, three out of four physicians advised eating a hardy breakfast of bacon and eggs." Articles like this were all over the country. Doctors suggesting bacon and eggs for breakfast? This was a new and decadent idea, people loved it. Only there was no science behind the claims, no study. The whole thing was propaganda coordinated by Edward Bernays. The beach nut packing company wanted to increase bacon sales, so Bernays surveyed 5,000 doctors and asked them if a heavy breakfast was better than a light breakfast. He published the results, making sure bacon and eggs were mentioned every time doctors described the ideal breakfast. Doctors that didn't think bacon was a good idea, well, they got no ink. Bacon sales exploded, and American culture changed forever. To this day, 70% of all bacon is eaten for breakfast. Bernays proved he could influence the behavior of an entire country. His success landed him a new client, a big one. They asked Bernays to do the impossible, overthrow a foreign government. So, Bernays would change history again, but this time, he'd do it for the CIA. Acobo Arbens was elected as Guatemala's president in 1951, and it brought hope and optimism to the nation, his platform of social reform and economic development resonated with the people, but not with the United Fruit Company. United Fruit was an American corporation, Guatemala's largest employer and landowner. Its banana plantations generated twice the revenue of the entire country. They wielded immense power. This is where the term banana republic comes from. In 1952, Arbens' government passed a bill requiring the transfer of unused land from large landowners to poor farmers, with compensation by the government. The United Fruit Company refused. The normal solution would be to lobby the Arbens government and reach a compromise. But United Fruit wasn't looking to compromise. They wanted to win, so they hired Edward Bernays, who went right to work. Bernays flooded American media with articles portraying Arbens as a dangerous communist. It was a lie. In his inaugural address, Arbens promised to convert Guatemala from a backward country with a feudal economy into a modern capitalist state. But the lie worked. This was the Cold War. A communist threat was just 1,300 miles from US soil. The American people demanded action, and the CIA was more than happy to oblige. The CIA launched Operation PB Success in 1954. They funded and trained a rebel paramilitary force. On June 18, the Liberation Army seized control of the government, forcing Arbens into exile. Carlos Castillo Armas was installed as a US-backed military dictator, the first of many. To turmoil in Central America, first there was Nicaragua, then El Salvador, now comes Guatemala. For 40 years, Guatemala suffered brutality, terror, death squads, and political instability. The human rights violations during this time are so graphic, I can't tell you what they are. whatever you're guessing, it's worse. 93% of these crimes were committed by CIA-trained operatives. 200,000 dead, another 200,000 fled. One million people lost their homes. But the United Fruit Company's profits were safe, thanks to America's master of propaganda. - An interesting little insight into this covert action. - One, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Henry Cabot Lodge, had personal stock holdings in the United Fruit Company. The Assistant Secretary of State, John Lodge, had personal stock holdings in the United Fruit Company. The Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, his law firm did legal work for, I believe, it's the Schlafly Bank, which held the papers on the Guatemalan Railroad, which was owned by the United Fruit Company. And the CIA director, Alan Dulles, was his brother, also was a member of the same law firm with this indirect financial interest in United Fruit Company. Our bends was not a communist, and there was not a single communist in his cabinet. - Bernays proved you could subconsciously control a person's opinion, but the US military intelligence apparatus wanted more. They wanted to subconsciously control a person's actions. The subliminal was about to become weaponized. (dramatic music) Psychological operations or siop's are a standard part of US military operations. The Army Field Manual even calls them vital. The term siop sounds mysterious, but the tactics are usually nothing more than distributing leaflets or broadcasting propaganda over the radio. The goal is to influence enemy behavior using information instead of bullets and bombs. In the thick of the Vietnam War with American casualties mounting, leaflets weren't gonna cut it. But the Army had a powerful new tool that could directly target enemy troops, the squat box. The squat box was a sonic weapon that used specially designed speakers mounted on armored vehicles and helicopters. The human ear can suffer damage from sound over 85 decibels. The squat box could deliver a devastating shriek at 120 decibels from two and a half miles away. Bioconc soldiers were instantly incapacitated by the intense sound. They suffered pain, nausea, and often permanent hearing loss. But the squat box could do more than inflict physical harm. The Army discovered that sound waves could manipulate emotions, inducing distress and confusion in the enemy. The results were staggering between 1967 and 1968, an estimated 30,000 Viet Cong surrender to US forces. Despite its success, the squat box had a critical flaw. The enemy could hear it coming, literally. The Army wanted a more deadly and discrete weapon, something the enemy couldn't see or hear. Sound waves couldn't do it. But electromagnetic waves, they absolutely could. In 1961, microwave technology was becoming part of daily life. Microwave ovens had just hit the market and low levels of microwaves were used in lots of different devices. Biophysicist Alan Frey began studying microwave effects on humans to make sure there were no health risks. He placed subjects in a shielded room and exposed them to different microwave frequencies. At 1,310 MHz, something strange happened. A subject asked about a clicking sound, but the room was silent. It was shielded from the outside and there were no moving parts involved in this experiment. Frey discovered that frequencies between 200 and 3,000 MHz caused people to hear sounds that seemed to come from inside their heads, clicks, knocks, buzzes, and chirps. He could beam sounds directly into the brain without implants. Scientists started using this to train animals, making catch change direction with just microwave pulses. I don't know why I'd like to make catch change direction right into oncoming triathlete. Stop that. Well, you better tell your demon fur babies to keep their filthy mits out of my bowl. Okay, settle down. The CIA wondered, could this technology affect an animal's heart rate? More specifically, could they induce a heart attack remotely? Frey experimented with frog hearts and pulse-modulated radiation. He was actually disturbed to find he could increase a frog's heart rate with no device attached. He did it remotely. Soviet scientists had similar results with rabbits. By 1972, the Soviets moved to human trials. A declassified report revealed they had done over 500 studies on how microwaves affect human behavior. Both lethal and non-lethal effects were found. The mention of lethal effects was a horrifying new detail. They didn't mean to kill their subjects, but they discovered they could. And those that survived exposure could be remotely controlled. The US Army loved it. They immediately ramped up research on microwave radiation. They ordered trucks capable of carrying microwave broadcasting equipment. The goal was to irradiate and immobilize the enemy. In 1976, the Navy finally discovered how Soviet scientists were accidentally killing people. They were using microwaves powerful enough to generate heat. Soviet scientists called it micro-thermal effects. If you own a microwave oven, you call this micro-thermal effect, cooking. - The Russians cooked people. - Yep. - I bet you taste like chicken. - That's gross. - Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, eating human is gross, but eating fish is okay. - Ah, see what happens when you choose on the other thing. - Fair enough. - Nah. - JF Chapitz was a trusted black-up scientist who worked for the Department of Defense. He tried broadcasting commands into a subject's mind. It worked. Using low-power microwaves, he could make subjects hear words inside their own heads. The military told Chapitz to go further. They wanted to send commands to a person's subconscious without them hearing the command. In a second round of experiments, one subject was bombarded with microwave radiation. Then something odd happened. He got up from his chair and left. He actually left the lab. Now this was allowed, the subjects weren't prisoners, but this had never happened before. A little while later, the guy returned with a can of soda. Chapitz asked him why he left in the middle of the experiment. The man said he was thirsty, so he went to the store for a cold drink. Chapitz smiled. The experiment worked. This subject had been programmed to feel thirsty and to go to the store for a soda. It was hypnosis using microwaves, but hypnosis doesn't work on everyone. The military needed a sure thing. And four years later, that's exactly what they got. (upbeat music) In 1980, Dr. Elden Bird, working for the DOD, was exploring frequencies much shorter than microwaves. He wanted to weaponize human brainwaves. Brainwaves, also known as neural oscillations, are patterns of electrical activity in the brain. These waves have different frequencies that correspond to different mental states. Betawaves were active problems solving. Alpha waves for relaxation and so on. Dr. Bird tried synchronizing external electromagnetic waves with brainwaves. He believed he could influence specific thoughts and emotions by matching the frequency and ramping up the power. It worked. He discovered he could sink with an animal's brainwaves and trigger the release of behavior regulating chemicals. We could put animals into a stupor. We got chick brains to dump 80% of the natural opioids in their brains. We got rats to release histamines. - Histamine is released in response to allergens, dust, pollen, mites. Histamine also causes a cascade of inflammatory reactions. Bird was thrilled. - In humans, this would cause instant flu-like symptoms and produce nausea. You would disable a person temporarily. It would have been like a stun gun. - Bird used the phrase "would have been" because his project was shut down after two years despite being approved for four. He was on to something groundbreaking. He suspected the program wasn't shut down. He believed it was moved to black ops and he was right. In 1982, a US Air Force report contained an ominous warning. - Understanding the brain as an electrically mediated organ suggests that impressed electromagnetic fields are capable of directing behavior. Further, the passage of 100 million peers through the myocardium can lead to cardiac stands still and death. - The US Air Force was secretly continuing birds' brain wave research. The higher Dr. Ross 80 weaponize it. 80 began by implanting transmitters into animal breeding. brains. These devices didn't receive information, the implants sent out information. 80 compiled a library of frequencies and their corresponding mental and physical states. Then he turned the animal's brain waves against them. By broadcasting certain frequencies back into their brains, he could manipulate their behavior and their emotions at will. Eventually he refined the technique to work without implants. It was time to test the technology on the human brain. He placed the subject's head in an active electromagnetic field and tuned it to a specific frequency depending on the result he wanted. In one experiment he turned the machine to induce theta waves. Our brains produced theta waves as were falling asleep. The subject of the experiment fell asleep. The technology for a revolutionary new weapon was born. Now it was time to build it. A device that can manipulate a person's thoughts and emotions sounds like science fiction. At best it sounds like pseudoscience. But not only does such a device exist, but it's been patented. Although the full schematics are classified by the US government. Patton number 5159703 issued to silent sounds incorporated described something called a silent subliminal presentation system. The device maps electrical brain activity corresponding to specific emotions. These emotional signal clusters are identified and logged to create a database of emotions. Human brain waves are then cloned and enhanced. You select a desired emotion, fear, despair, hopelessness, and the system can transmit it. The emotional triggers are carried by the silent sound, spread spectrum, or s-quad. A subliminal carrier technology that operates at either very low or very high frequencies. The key is that it's inaudible. And what makes the system more practical and more dangerous is that s-quad can be transmitted using a carrier frequency like ordinary radio or television. Okay, let's say you want someone to feel sad. You grab the brain wave frequency for sadness from your database. Then you layer that inaudible sound wave on top of an audible sound wave like an FM radio wave. So the target hears the radio broadcast, but doesn't realize a second wave hitched a ride. That second wave sinks with the target's brain triggering sadness or whatever emotion you want. According to the patent, the resulting emotion is overwhelming. Now the patent insists that this is not a weapon, but it does note the waves are subliminal and undetectable. That makes them dangerous. Silent sounds enclaims to focus solely on positive emotions, but in 1996, the president of Silent Sounds couldn't stop himself from bragging about the device's true purpose. While the schematics are classified by the US government, we aren't allowed to say we work with governments around the world, the Germans, even former Soviet Union countries. And then he let the big one slip. The system was used throughout Operation Desert Storm quite successfully. The US military had achieved subliminal mind control and deployed the technology in Iraq, and many Iraqi troops died trying to stop it. In 1991, Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait with a huge army, nearly 500,000 soldiers. It was the fifth largest military in the world, and they were battle tested from eight years of war with Iran. So it sounded like wishful thinking when the Bush administration said they wanted Iraqi troops to simply lay down their arms and go home. Huh? Why would they do that? Because the US military had a new secret weapon. A radio station in the small town of Kofsi. If you tuned into the station, you'd hear music or news like any radio station, but embedded in the radio transmission was a signal that mimics a brainwave frequency, specifically the frequency that creates the feeling of hopelessness. And it worked. Entire battalions laid down their arms. Iraqi tanks flew white flags. They simply lost the will to fight. American troops rolled into Kuwait heavily armed and ready for battle. Iraqi troops were waiting patiently. Thousands of them. One Marine said they were surrendering so fast they could hardly keep up. The war seemed to be coming to an end. That's why it was a surprise to the Marines in Kofsi. When around 8 p.m. on January 29th, Iraq's 5th Mechanized Division attacked and took the town. This was a much needed propaganda victory for Iraq, but it didn't last. I would tell you I don't think that battle is over by a long shot. I expect a lot more fighting will probably occur tonight. Two days later, American air power overwhelmed Kofsi and the 5th Mechanized Division was completely wiped out. But they destroyed the transmitter that was subliminally making Iraqi troops surrender so they accomplished their mission. Or did they? US government officials deny any of this ever happened and are adamant that such a system does not exist. Former Navy weapons research director Charles Bernard was asked about it. I have yet to see one of these ray gun things that actually works. And Darba has come to us every few years to see if there are ways to incapacitate the central nervous system remotely. But nothing has ever come of it. That's too science fiction and far-fetched. Okay, so it's just a conspiracy theory. The CIA did not use FM radio to transmit subliminal messages. That's the official position. But here's something strange. A ceasefire agreement was reached that allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power. This brought a lot of criticism of the Bush administration, but the purpose of the war was to free Kuwait, not overthrow the Iraqi government. Our goal is not the conquest of Iraq. It is the liberation of Kuwait. It is my hope that somehow the Iraqi people can even now convince their dictator that he must lay down his arms. But on March 1st, 1991, one day after the ceasefire, a revolt against Saddam Hussein's government broke out in Basra. The rebellion spread to every major city in southern Iraq. Up to 100,000 Iraqis were killed. A no-fly zone was established to what caused the sudden rebellion. A radio broadcast called The Voice of Free Iraq then encouraged the revolt. That radio station was in a small town in Saudi Arabia and operated by the CIA. Most say this is just a coincidence that no subliminal weapons exist. Maybe, but there are others who believe that not only does this subliminal technology exist, it was deployed in Iraq for a specific purpose. It was a test run for something bigger. The following year, a facility was built in Fairbanks, Alaska. The project was run by DARPA and had a huge budget. The Department of Defense built a high-powered transmitter that could send electromagnetic pulses into the ionosphere and anywhere in the world. It's called Harp. But that's a different episode. I don't know about you guys, but I'm a little scared to turn on the radio now. I might come through my playlists later too. There are a few songs in there I don't remember adding. Honestly, I should probably keep this ship in airplane mode for a while, and I wasn't gonna say anything, AJ. But hosting this whole thing solo, I swear I keep hearing hecklefish humming along to the journey in my head. I walked the whole set and he's not here. But somehow, it feels like he is. Which is the perfect setup for the final episode on Morphic Resonance, the forbidden idea that nature has muscle memory. Every time a rat learns a maze, or a person masters a skill, or a fish learns to co-host. That memory doesn't just sit in one skull. It might just get logged into some invisible memory field. And then anything similar anywhere can tune in and pick up that signal faster. It's like the information might already be out there floating around, waiting for a receiver. I wonder if that's why AJ's deja vu is acting up. I hope it's not contagious. Get well soon, buddy. And anyways, to our last and weirdest episode today, an homage to my friend and former American alchemist, Rupert Sheldrick, the forbidden theory of Morphic Resonance. In 1920, a Harvard scientist put rats in a maze with two exits. One path was well lit but electrified. The other was dark, but safe. The rat tried the bright exit. It got shocked. It tried again. It got shocked again and again. It took 165 painful tries, but it finally learned to take the dark path. 15 years later and 30 generations later, the rats needed just 20 tries. They were getting smarter. The solution was passed genetically. That's not supposed to happen. A scientist in Scotland tried the same experiment with a completely different set of rats. His rats started at 25 tries, as if they already knew the answer to the puzzle. Knowledge had crossed the ocean and no one could explain how. Lamarkism or Lamarkian inheritance is the idea that an organism can pass on skills that acquired during its lifetime, like a rat learning to avoid electric shocks, or a human learning how to throw football. The theory is named for zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamark, who proposed it in 1809, and the theory is supposed to be wrong. Standard biology says that knowledge can't be inherited, only traits can. Eye color, intelligence, allergies, but not knowledge, not information. Harvard psychologist William McDougall tested this theory in 1920. The setup was simple, rats and a water maze. He used wister rats, common labs because they're genetically identical, perfect for this experiment. The maze had two ways out. One was brightly lit and easy to find. The other exit was dark. The bright exit delivered an electric shock, the dark exit was safe, and McDougall added a twist. The bright exit moved. Sometimes it was to the left, sometimes to the right, so the rats couldn't memorize a direction. They had to learn one rule, avoid the light. Rats should naturally avoid the dark and swim toward the way out that they can see. Any animal would. You would. That's exactly what happened. McDougall's rats swam toward the bright exit, got shot, swam back, and tried again, and got shot again. Sometimes over 300 times. On average, the first generation took 165 tries before they learned dark equals safe. Light equals pain. Then McDougall bred the rats and tested their offspring, but he selected parents at random. He wasn't cherry picking for intelligence. He just grabbed any two rats and put their offspring in the maze to see how they behaved. According to the standard biology, the new generation should start from scratch. They should average 165 tries. That's not what happened. Generation 2 did better. 141 tries on average. Generation 3, 118. By generation 8, rats were averaging 56 tries. That's when McDougall noticed something strange. The improvement wasn't slowing down. It was accelerating. 8 more generations. The average dropped down to 41. 8 more down to 29. By generation 30, rats were solving the maze with just 20 tries. What took their ancestors 165 attempts, they mastered in 20. They were 8 times faster at learning the same task. McDougall tried to break the pattern. He split his colony and started breeding specifically for slow learners, taking the worst performers from each generation and mating them together. These rats should have stayed slow or gotten worse, but they got faster too. Same rate of improvement as the randomly breadline. The slowest learners were reducing offspring that learned faster than their parents, generation after generation. McDougall published his results carefully. No wild claims, no revolutionary declarations, just the data. 30 generations, thousands of rats, every trial documented. He mentioned in his private notes that it looked like Lamarck might have been right, skills could be inherited. But genetics don't work that way, except here it was, happening in his lab. The rats were inheriting something, not genes, not training. They were inheriting the ability to solve a puzzle their parents had learned through pain and repetition. Whatever was happening, it wasn't genetics, because not only were skills being transmitted across generations, they were being transmitted across the entire species all over the world. F.A.E. Crew was a geneticist at Edinburgh, a pioneer in animal genetics. He thought McDougall was sloppy, so in 1923 he set up his own experiment to prove it. He set up the same water maze, same with the rats, just different genes. But he also added a control group, something McDougall didn't do. He had a trained line of rats and an untrained line. In the out of corner, also with a tweaked jacket and hordes and glasses, he's the geneticist at F.A.E. Crew, aka the phenotype foe, aka genes wilder. Welcome to the fray in the DNA. Let's get ready to remember. Crew expected his trained rats to master the maze in about 20 tries, and they did. But the untrained rats should have averaged 165 tries. They averaged 25. 30 generations, that's what it took with McDougall's rats to crack the maze. These rats had no genetic connection to any of those, and they just needed 25 tries. On day one. W.E.A.Gara, a scientist at the University of Melbourne, ran a similar study for 20 years, saying result, trained and untrained, related and unrelated, different labs, different countries, it didn't matter. The knowledge was spreading through the entire species. But it wasn't just rats. For years, milk was left on people's doorsteps. Glass bottles with foil caps, and I can't believe them old enough to remember this, but I am. In 1920 in Southampton, England, the blue tip birds learned something useful about milk. did you just say blue tip birds? Yes, sometimes they're called blue caps, but technically they're. please stop saying. But hey, hey, hey, hey, we're gonna be talking about blue tips and milk for a while. We are. It's Christmas morning, and Santa's been good today. Here's what the birds. here's what they learned about milk. Pierce the foil cap, drink the cream. This behavior spread all over Britain. By the 1940s, they were all doing it. Every. Go ahead. Every blue tip was doing it. Oh, hey, hey, hey, hey, do you have any stories about blue bazumbas or turquoise tatas? No. A couple of kids, periwinkle pigs, midnight melons. No. I didn't do anything, except my sandbags. That's enough. You could argue that the birds were watching each other and learning this trick, but then came World War II. All aluminum was needed for aircraft, so no more foil caps. They used wood or cheaper or harder metal. Blue tits couldn't get through. They only lived a couple years, so by the time the war was over, every bird that had ever pierced a cap was dead. The entire generation that knew the trick, they were gone. But when the foil caps came back, blue tits were piercing them again. Birds that had never seen the trick across all of Britain, all at the same time. This wasn't genetics, memory, or observation. This was a skill somehow encoded into the species itself. But this can happen to not living things too, specifically crystals. When chemists synthesize a new compound, getting it to crystallize for the first time can take months or years. Different temperatures, different solvents, different pressures. The molecules just won't organize. They won't form a pattern until one day they do. And then something strange happens. A compound that resisted crystallization for decades suddenly crystallizes everywhere. On Earth. Glissorol was a liquid for centuries. No one could crystallize it. Then in 1867, a barrel crystallized during shipment to Vienna. After that, glissorol crystallized easily everywhere. Zylethal, same story. Decades of failure, then one success, then success everywhere. Rats, birds, crystals. They were passing behaviors to each other all over the world. Something had to be carrying this information. Something we couldn't see. Something we didn't understand. But in 1981, a young scientist from Cambridge found a pattern. Not only could species pass information anywhere around the world, they could pass information anywhere through time. [Music] In 1973, Rupert Sheldrake sat in his Cambridge lab staring at a bean plant. It was doing something that shouldn't be possible, according to everything he knew about biochemistry. "I hate my hand, and the guy was called Rupert Sheldrake." "Yes, why?" "That's the kind of name that's going to cause you a fortune in lunch money." "Yeah, I don't think there was a lot of bullying going on at Cambridge." "I wake up, human. Where's he's a universal? I bet even Steven Hawking had to eat his own tiny whiteies from time to time." "And he said, "I don't know, it's things all day." Anyway, bean plants are like vines. They can't stand on their own. They need a structure to grow around, a wall, a fence, a tree. He was growing plants using pots and small wooden poles for support, same method every time. The plant sprouts, grows toward the pole, and starts climbing. But this particular bean plant was doing something very strange. It was growing toward a pole that wasn't there yet. It was growing to where the pole would be in the future. Now, Sheldrake was a serious scientist, Cambridge Fellowship, Harvard, PhD in biochemistry, Director of Studies at age 31. His research on plant hormones is still in textbooks today, but this bean plant was bothering him. Plants don't have eyes. They don't have nervous systems. The support pole wouldn't be installed for another two days, yet the beam was already changing its growth pattern, already preparing to climb something that didn't exist yet. He'd seen this before. Thousands of times. Every biologist had. They just didn't talk about it. DNA doesn't actually contain the blueprint for what an organism becomes. An acorn has the same DNA in every cell, but those cells grow into roots, or leaves, branches. They organize themselves into a tree, and nobody can really explain how they know to do that. Think of DNA like Lego bricks. A Star Wars set and a castle set use exactly the same pieces. The only difference is the final shape. A fruit fly, a banana, even a human being share most of the same DNA, but they develop into completely different organisms. The final shape isn't in the DNA. Something else is guiding the process. One night walking home along the river cam, Sheldrake had a moment of clarity. Maybe nature has a memory. When any system organizes itself, a crystal forming, a plant growing, an animal learning, it creates what Sheldrake would call a morphic field, a memory in nature. A similar system can resonate with that field and access that memory, meaning a bird learning to pierce the foil, crystals learning to form. And the more that memory is accessed, the stronger it gets. And it influences everything that comes after, across space and time. No physical connection required. Because that memory is now part of nature, all of nature, everywhere, forever. In 1974, Sheldrake moved to India to work at an agricultural institute. That was his day job. He spent his nights at a monastery, and for 18 months between prayers and meditation, he wrote a book proposing that the universe has memory. He called it a new science of life. He published it in 1981. The most important science journal in the world responded by calling for his book to be burned. The theory of morphic resonance cost Sheldrake his career, and a few years later, it almost cost him his life. September 1981, John Maddox, editor of Nature, then the most prestigious science journal in the world, wrote an editorial about Sheldrake's book. He called it the best candidate for burning for many years. Nature publishes Nobel laureates, Einstein, Watson and Crick, Darwin. Calling for burning was unprecedented in modern history of the journal. Maddox compared the book to Hitler's mind-conf in its potential for damage. He wasn't calling Sheldrake wrong, he was calling him dangerous. Maddox even said, "Sheldrake's not a real scientific theorist. It's not even a theory. It's an exercise in pseudoscience." You see, Sheldrake's is not a scientific theory. Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science, and that can be condemned, but in exactly the language that the purpose used to condemn Galileo. And for the same reasons, it is heresy. Professors curious about Morphic resonance went silent, graduate students were warned away. Research funding dried up, but the more the establishment attacked Sheldrake, the more people read his work. The book burning editorial made Sheldrake's book a bestseller. He became the most talked about biologist in Britain overnight, not for science, but for the attempt to suppress it. But the worst attack on Sheldrake wasn't intellectual. April 2, 2008, he was giving a lecture in Santa Fe. A man in the audience rushed the stage with a knife. He stabbed Sheldrake in the leg and then security tackled him. The attacker told police and a reporter afterward that Sheldrake was using him as a subject in telepathic mind-control experiments for five years. The wound was serious, but Sheldrake recovered, and days later, still using a walker he gave a talk titled "Science and Hope". In March 2013, Sheldrake gave a TEDx talk called "The Science Delusion". He challenged what he called the "Tendogmas of Modern Science". That nature is mechanical, that matter is unconscious, and that mind is nothing but brain activity, that kind of stuff. Well, Ted removed the talk from their YouTube channel. Bloggers campaigned against it. Ted consulted what they called "A Science Board", but they never told us who was on it. The talk was about scientific dogmatism. The response was "dogmatic censorship". But the attempts to silence Sheldrake kept backfiring. The banned TED talk got millions of views on other channels. The stabbing it made international news. Every attack made more people ask "What are they so afraid of?" Then a British TV broadcaster had an idea. They would test morphic resonance on the largest scale ever attempted. So now there were two million people about to test this theory on live TV. In 1984, British television ran an experiment. They showed viewers a puzzle. One of those hidden pictures where your stare at random dots until an image appears. About two million people watched. Then researchers tested people who hadn't seen the broadcast. Some were in different cities, some were in different countries. They solved that specific puzzle faster than a control group tested before the broadcast. And not a little faster. Much faster. Those two million people who watched the show gave nature a new memory, a solution to that puzzle. Sheldrake said this could apply to crossword puzzles. He said crosswords should get easier to solve as the day goes on. As more and more people solve the puzzle, they're creating and reinforcing a morphic memory. That new memory makes the puzzle easier for everyone trying the puzzle for the first time. "Oh, maybe that's why I'm so naturally great with women, huh?" "I don't even know." "Loriati men, historically put up numbers that would make a wilt-chabin jealous." Okay. Gross. Thanks. Thanks. Great interjection. Some newspapers tested the puzzle theory. The London Evening Standard found their puzzles were solved 20% faster in the evening after thousands of people spent the day solving them. Then there's the Flin Effect. Since the 1920s, IQ scores have arisen worldwide by about three points per decade. Every generation scores higher than the last on the exact same tests. Experts credit better nutrition, better education, better test-taking skills, but the gains show up even in pattern recognition tests that don't rely on education at all. Morphic resonance says, "As more humans master cognitive tasks, those tasks become easier for everyone." Shell Drake's most famous research involves dogs. He documented over 200 cases of dogs that go to the door or window when their owners decide to come home. Not when they come home when they decide to. Owners came home at random times. In unfamiliar vehicles, the dogs still knew. One dog at Terrier named JT was tested over 100 times. Within 10 seconds of his owner leaving work, JT went to the window 85% of the time. The owner was four miles away. Then there's the sense of being stared at. Shell Drake ran 25,000 trials. Subjects guessed whether someone was looking at them from behind. they guessed right 55% of the time. Should be 50%. Now 5% might not seem like much, but with that huge sample size, it's significant. We've all had that feeling where we know someone's looking at us. The book "Live Tide" released in 1979 is about monkeys on Gushima Island. One learned to wash sweet potatoes in the ocean. Other monkeys gobbeter. Once 100 monkeys learn the trick, monkeys on other islands started washing potatoes too. Just like McDougall's rats, knowledge had jumped across the ocean. We've got rats and monkeys teaching each other on different islands, dogs and plants that can predict the future. People solving puzzles faster as the day goes on. I love the concept of morphic resonance, but is it true? Well, let's start with the bad news. That famous monkey story, that's completely made up. Lai Watson took real observations from primatologists and added a little fiction for fun. The Crystal Formations have a conventional explanation too. When science is first synthesized into compound, it resists crystallization. After one lab succeeds, others find it easier. Shell Drake says it's morphic fields. Chemists say it's seed crystals. Microscopic traces on clothing, in beards, on shared equipment that ship between labs. And once the crystals exist anywhere, they exist everywhere. No mysterious fields required. That one is a stretch for me, but that's the official scientific view. Now the crossword puzzles and TV experiments are interesting, but the effects are small and the methods are contested. So they can go either way, it's not the smoking gun that Shell Drake needs. But then there are the rats. McDougal's data is real. Crew replicated it. Agar replicated it on a separate continent. Rats got smarter across generations, with no physical contact. Critics explained it like this. Early generations of rats were stressed by inexperienced researchers who didn't handle them properly. So as the researchers got better at handling them, the rats did better on the test. Now I think the skeptics lose that one, especially when we consider something discovered decades after McDougal died. Epigenetics. This shows acquired traits can chemically tag DNA and pass information to offspring. So the effect might be real. The cause, we still don't know. The dogs anticipating their owners coming home is Shell Drake's strongest published work. Critics have found methodological problems. But defenders have replicated the results. That one is still being debated and every dog owner has thoughts. Now here's the core problem that skeptics use. Morphic resonance requires information transfer with no energy cost. And that violates the law of conservation of energy. Physics has rules. But not all physics, not quantum physics. Two particles separated by any distance, a room, a galaxy, it doesn't matter. They respond to each other instantly. This was confirmed in the 1980s. That's an instant transfer of information that ignores the law of conservation of energy and ignores the speed of light. And nobody knows how this works. In the 1930s, Carl Young proposed a collective unconscious, a shared reservoir of human experience running beneath individual awareness. Physicist David Bohm said all points in space are fundamentally connected. Erwin Schrodinger, one of the architects of quantum mechanics and famous for the cat, argued that individual consciousness is just an illusion that there's only one mind. Max Planck, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, all arrived at the same place from completely different directions. Some through mathematics, some through watching rats learn mazes, some through quantum theory itself, all of them looked at the universe and landed on the same word, connected. Maybe the laws of nature are fixed, written into the fabric of reality before the first star formed. Or maybe the universe creates memories that strengthen through repetition, always evolving. We can't prove it either way. But there is one scientific fact that nobody can deny. A long time ago, every atom in your body was connected to every other atom in every other person on earth. Every atom in your body was connected to every atom in every animal, every plant, every rock, and every planet in the universe. And if the smallest things in existence stay connected to each other across any distance, then acting like the people around you are separate from you isn't just unkind, it's unscientific. And that is a wrap my friends. Six amazing Y-File episodes, and I stop being sure which thoughts in here are mine. Big thanks to AJ and the Y-Files who have been watching for years now, and their entire amazing crew for inviting me into their beautiful, strange little universe. If you want more from AJ and the Y-Files team, check out the links below. And if you want to support this kind of weird, deep dive content, consider joining their Patreon. And if you want to check out American Alchemy, I'm at Jesse Michaels on YouTube and Spotify. I'm Jesse Beamingen from Austin. Thank you so much for riding along with me today. Stay curious, stay weird, and if reality starts winking at you, wink back. Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah. I play Bolivia's an area 51, a secret code inside the Bible said I was. I love my UFOs, and I'm a parent on my phone as well as mirrors it, so I'm saying it like I should. But then another piece, very, very, very, becomes the truth, my friends. And it never ends. I know it never ends. I feel the crack at it and got stuck inside my own home with them chaos truck. I feel it only to a whir. Do you stand like you've reaped faith the moon land in alone? On a film set, I wore the shadow people there. There are dwellings just for the smiling man. And I'm told, and his name was Cole. I can't believe I'm casted with the fidget. Had no fish on Thursday nights with AJG, and when I got married off to the night, all I ever wanted was to just see the truth. So the one falls on your feet all through the night. The mouth man's side and van, the solar storm still come to a God the secret city underground. Mysterious numbers, dations, planets are phoned to, brackets stuck in, and what the dark watchers found. In a simulation, don't you worry though, the black nights that I lie to show to me so I can't believe I'm casted with the fidget. Yeah, good enough to dance, yeah good enough to dance on the dance floor, because she is a camel. We can't love the dance when the feeling is right on the way with him time. [MUSIC]