Otherworld - Episode 62: Frequency Illusion

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Jack Corbett of NPR's Planet Money joins to talk about an event that caused him to reconsider his skeptical views, and attempt to make amends with the spiritual section of tiktok. Published at 3:33am PST. Subscribe to Otherworld on Patreon for exclusive content and bonus interviews Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. Today's episode is a little different than the others, and it was a bit unexpected for me as well. Last week, somebody reached out saying that they recently started listening and have something that they wanted to talk to me about. And at this point, I'm pretty used to people reaching out in this way. People I know listening to the show, suddenly their views are changing, and they have some questions. I think that's really, really cool, but I was pretty surprised to be hearing from this guy specifically. His name is Jack Corbett. Some of you may know him.

He hosts the TikTok page for NPR's Planet Money, and he basically makes videos about finance and the economy, which, by the way, is an incredible page, and he does an excellent job, but, you know, it's essentially all about numbers and economics. This is not a person I thought even listened to Otherworld, let alone believed in anything paranormal or would have a story for me. So when he hit me up, I was definitely interested in what he had to say. It turns out he was, in fact, very skeptical, but his views changed pretty recently

after something really weird happened while he was working on a Planet Money video. I love hearing about people opening their minds, a bit, especially if Otherworld has something to do with it. This story in particular is interesting to me because it also involves TikTok, hexes, astrology, and several economic theories. So, let's get this episode started and hear the story from another person named Jack. This is episode 62. The title is Frequency Allusion, and you're listening to Otherworld.

Is this Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core of the science. you can't argue with us. I'm worried about all of a sudden. Open the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die.

If limbs were just like wrong. Everybody moves back into the night, even if it takes them a minute. How's it going? Good. Welcome to the show. You know, it's funny. We've only talked one other time,

and it was a night that is actually kind of infamous for me at this point. You were present for an important moment that was actually discussed on the show. It was a dinner where I met Kareem from an episode called Kareem in the gin. I'm not even sure if you're aware of this or no... Yeah, I remember it entirely. And the way that you've described it is exactly, yeah, it's exactly how I remember. Um, it was like a bizarre, like, wait, like, it was too surreal. I thought like, one of you was doing a bit where you're like, that was my email. And I'm like, what? Like, were you hearing us? Were you hearing us? I was on the, I was

on what I think you were on Karim's right and I think I was like I think I was across the table I was like right I could see both of you That's really funny that you're a witness to that I'm glad that my memory serves me correctly too Yeah

So I was pretty surprised to hear from you You host NPR's Planet Money TikTok Where you cover economics and finance And you do an excellent job It's a very popular channel But I mean the subject matter is It's very different than what we talk about on the show. And I really would not have pegged you for a person that would have something to talk about

on here. I didn't even think you listened to this show. So I was very surprised when you said that something had happened to you. What were your beliefs on the paranormal before the story that you're about to tell me? Am I wrong to assume that you were a pretty skeptical by the book type person? I'm just, I'm making assumptions here, but, you know. Yeah, I think just like, before this, I was definitely a skeptic. I did. I thought, like, everything could be explained with a, oh, you know, there was like some kind of weird fungus in the grain during, like, the witch trials.

Or I thought, I don't know, sometimes people do crazy things. Sometimes, like, someone will, like, snap. There was always something. Like my brother saw someone when he was sleeping And I was like okay You were you were clearly dreaming Like that's what that is And astrology you know

I just thought you know All the descriptors of every single Star signs seem like they're like interchangeable And somewhat universally applicable So of course people are going to respond to This one or that one Yeah that's how I felt That's how I felt for sure

Well, it's my understanding that those beliefs have changed a bit because of something that happened to you. I don't want to spoil anything. In fact, I'm actually really excited to hear this myself. So why don't you just take it from here? Okay, yeah, my name is Jack Corbett. I live in Los Angeles. I'm from Ohio. I work for NPR.

I'm a producer for Planet Money. I make videos for their TikTok. and I have been for now a few years. I had never really been out to L.A. I went once and the only thing I remembered was that the produce was really good. And I think in Ohio the produce is so bad. Probably because it's California produce like 10 days later. I just, I was at my dad's house in Ohio,

just constantly like scrolling Zillow, scrolling Craigslist, trying to find like a good place. And I didn't want to be there forever. I just needed a sublet and there were so few sublets. But then this like perfect one popped up. And it was, yeah, it was in Silver Lake. There was this fellow named Frank who was going to London for a few months, some indeterminate amount of time.

And the place looked like beautiful. And it was very, it was affordable. And it seemed like a really good, a good fit for this to move there. I wasn't totally sure about L.A. That's why I wanted the sublet in case I didn't like it. I could move back. But I moved there. I think I just had a carry-on and a personal item.

That was it. I really didn't have much. But the place was already pretty furnished. It was like very, you know, gray floors, white walls. Very minimal. It's early 2021, setting the scene the insurrection on the White House. I'm making these TikToks for Planet Money. I had just sort of started maybe like eight months earlier.

or I was just sort of getting in the groove of things and good luckily for us, there was this crazy thing that happened around GameStop, which you've probably heard of about GameStop and Robin Hood. Now there's a movie called Dumb Money. And actually, in the movie Dumb Money, there is a person who replicated what I did, but it's on the screen for like one second.

So that's like a little claim to fame. I made a TikTok explainer about what was happening. Like that's what Planet Money TikTok is just kind of explaining economics to normal people like, oh, Jay Crew went bankrupt, but you still see Jay Cruz places. Or like, what's this? The first TikTok was about the stock market circuit breaker, which was if the stock market's going down too quickly, you know, they pull something called a circuit breaker and they halt trading for 15 minutes. I was like, that's interesting. I wonder why they do that. And it's just, it's so that like the traders on the stock floor, on the floor just have adult.

time out. And then if it goes down a little bit more, they pull it again. And these trading halts don't actually help the economy or help the stock market from tanking. It's just like to just to chill out. It's just trying to tell them to chill out. And I just, I thought that was like the funniest concept. And just like absurd. And it doesn't even work. And it's just a weird like remnant of some kind of sort of fix to an issue. But that's kind of like, yeah, that's all of economics. Yeah, I don't know, stuff like GameStop. Like, what's happening with GameStop? Why is the price going up? Like, why? What's, okay, people are using Robin Hood. Now there's Reddit, there's Wall Street bets and they're also buying AMC. Like, what, what is going on? And so, yeah, I explained that. And, like,

you know, if you can get on one of those, like, hot button topics, you know, you can kind of have, like, the video of the day. That happened, like, a couple times that happened, yeah, in February with GameStop. And then the next month, NFTs became huge. And so, yeah we just explained that and you know like oh why would you want one yeah so like i said you know there are like days when like your video will like own ticot and usually like luckily ours was like an educational explainer video that like taught people and like that's cool but most of the time it's like people like will be attacking someone like most of the time it's like you know every single like everyone just comes out of the woodwork for like some reason and like they'll like just take down this one

person, usually not like justified, but like sometimes justified. Sometimes someone will like, someone will slip up, someone will say something odd and then the entire comment section is just destroying, destroying them. And, you know, like they'll like maybe delete their account or they'll like mute the video. And that, I feel like that was definitely happening a lot back then. People were, you know, what, almost a year, about a year into the pandemic. So we were going, you know, we had pandemic brain. We were kind of like locked up like what would. was like real life. I think like their entire social interaction was like in TikTok comment threads.

And you know what? I respect them. I respect them. Anyway, so yeah, February, we had the GameStop. March, we had this NFT, which like both of these were great for the channel. And so in April, I came across this concept, this dual concept called confirmation bias or frequency illusion, also known as the Bader-Mindhoff, phenomenon. This is like when you're running around and you see, oh, it's 222 right now. I feel like every single time I look at the clock, it's 22. Or, you know, earlier today, I was talking about

Jaws 2. And then you mentioned Jaws 2. It's like, what are the chances? Like, that's like bizarre. So confirmation bias is like the idea that we look around the world and we see things that that confirm our pre-existing beliefs. Like, you're going to look around and you're going to see evidence that affirms your worldview. And, like, when there are things that pop up that, like, might be, you know, be counter to that, you kind of ignore them because you're always focused on the thing that, like, really affirms it. If you believe that you have, like, an angel number, like, you always look at the clock and it's, you know, 1251, you'll probably hear people being like, oh, that's just confirmation bias.

That's just frequency illusion. Like, you know, you just, like, because you already have this belief that you see it, you're, when you see it, it's going to like, you know, your brain's going to light up and it's going to be like, oh my God, wow. Like, that's my number. But it doesn't light up every single time that it's not 1251. Every time it's like some random number, you kind of just ignore it. And so this TikTok, it was me in like a skit. It's about a guy going around and seeing the number 232 everywhere, like seeing, you know,

know on his toothpaste 232 uh the time 232 looks around and there's like a a few items on the table and like one's in like two and then there are three items and then two and it's like oh my gosh I'm seeing this everywhere and in one of the sketches you know in one of like the little bits when he's looking at the toothpaste I thought to kind of uh to illustrate this idea that when you are kind of like confirmation biasing, when you're frequency illusioning towards this one thing, like your angel number, you can tend to ignore evidence that's right in front of your face

because you're so focused on the thing that's going to confirm your pre-existing belief. And, you know, I thought, see, this might have been where I slipped up. I thought a good way of showing that, that he's not concerned with something else. He's only focused on 232, as if I write, if I write 666 on the bathroom mirror, and it's right in front of his face, and he's not looking at it, but he's looking at the 232. And yeah, now, okay, this is, I wouldn't recommend doing that. I just don't, it didn't turn out great for me.

Your own bathroom mirror. Yeah, this was in my, in the house of this sublet. I just wrote 6666 and yeah and and and I in this TikTok as well if that's not bad enough the next thing I went to I was I was like I was basing it off this NPR piece from a while back and I think in the NPR piece they are like you know a good example of this would be like the farmer's almanac which basically you buy like at one point in the year like early on in the year and it says like oh it's going to rain like this month is going to be really rainy but this month isn't and there's no way scientifically of them knowing what september's weather is going to be

like in january um you know i see i'm so i'm so afraid of slipping up now the farmers are going to be after me now um it's okay we'll protect you so so the farmer's almanac scientifically there's no way that they're really going to like a no, what's like the weather in September is going to be like. But the people who buy this Farmer's Omnack, it's like the most, I forget, it's been published like every year for the past like 800 years. Not really, but like a lot. Like, and people swear by it because, you know, they're reading it and they're remembering all the times that it's dead on. And they're kind of like, yeah, if, you know, if the march wasn't totally right or if, you know, June was kind of off. It's like they're not really

going to remember that. But like, oh my, what August was so rainy. Like, why would that... It's like, you know, this is a confirmation, like a confirmation of the pre-existing belief. So much so that you'll kind of ignore the outside evidence. And I just sort of thought that... Yeah, that's interesting, and that's a good illustration of confirmation bias,

but it's not... It's not exactly resonating with my TikTok audience, I don't think. I think maybe, you know... Something that I had seen on TikTok, however, was lots of astrology. It seems like there were always like astrologists on TikTok, usually up to something. Like I had seen like even like mass like hexes if someone like slips up or like I think, yeah, times in which entire like sections of comments have been like mobilized essentially like troops to hex or to kind of like to take down someone who they believe has. wronged them. And anyway, in this piece that I was adapting, there was a line about

horoscopes and astrology. And basically, what it says is that if you believe in astrology, you're going to check your horoscope and you remember all the times that your horoscope is dead on to your star sign. Like, oh, yeah, you know, this is so me. And you're not going to remember the times that it kind of like isn't, you know, if it's not totally applicable you're not going to remember it. But the time that it like totally like read you like a book, yeah, that's like that's staying in your head. And so I added that to the video.

And that was that was another place in which I think I, maybe I slipped up. Because when that video went out, I was lucky at the time. I really hadn't ever posted a video that God like hate. but that one oh my gosh I wasn't expecting it immediately they're like okay

yeah I'm gonna believe what this guy tells me about astrology it's like astrology isn't even horoscopes it's what does this guy know of course he's a Scorpio you know um like wait are you really a cancer moon stuff like that and like astrologists were mad they were very mad they were very

I felt bad I felt bad immediately but I walked into it um And then, you know, the video got reposted like it usually does to NPR's main Instagram. And that's like connected to my Instagram. And then, you know, then it just, it only got worse. I mean, there were more and more comments from very angry TikTok witches. Yeah, they were mad.

They were mad. I was concerned a bit. But I thought, you know, my intentions were in the right place. So I, you know, I wasn't losing sleep over it. All right. We have to take a quick ad break. But we'll be right back. At this time, this was early April.

I was living alone in this new place. I had just gone through a breakup, a little tumultuous. Yeah, you know, it wasn't like an awesome time. Although like the videos were doing well, it wasn't like a great time in my life, definitely. And then this is when thing started to happen. I wake up and I have a big cut on my life. leg. Like a cut, like, on top of a bruise. Like, I had been smacked. And I, you know, I, I know this is an

audio medium, so it doesn't matter. But I have this scar from it still. Like, this was a deep cut. And, like, my white sheets were covered in blood. It's like, legs bleed a lot. This thing was bleeding. Yeah, I wake up and there's a giant cut on my leg. And I'm like, that's crazy. And I go around my entire apartment. And I'm like, I must have sleepwalked. I must have like smacked into something, like, and I go around, like, moving my leg, trying to, like, see what it could have been cut on. And there's, like, one, there's, like, nothing really sharp. And two, there's nothing that is at, like, chin height. Like, there's nothing there, unless I was, like, really flailing around. And I don't know how hard you must kick something to get that kind of cut. But it was, like,

you know, the thing was, like, bruised for, like, a week or two. And the cut was there. And the cut was for a long time. I mean, it was nuts. How severe of an injury? Like, what did it look like happened? Like, it looked like someone, like, hit me, I, you know, I don't even. Like hit you with a golf club? Like, like a dulled, like, axe, like, almost. Like, it's, it was, I don't know what would have, because it was a gash. It wasn't just like, oh, I smacked, I smacked into something so hard. It was an open wound. And then underneath, it was this giant, and it hurt to walk

on. I mean, like, this is like, a really serious, a serious wound that, like, you know, if, like, someone had broken into my house and done this to me while I was sleeping, I would have woken up. But no one could have done this because my window was closed. All the windows were closed. The only key to this apartment was in my hand, and then it was also in this guy, Frank, who was in London. I'm like, I'm racking my brain and I'm like, what happened? And like, this is when, this is a very odd thing because, like, it's not usually how, like, memories work. It's usually, like, how, like, my dreams work rather than my memories. It, like, it almost feels like this was a dream.

I just remember it's, like, a snapshot in my head of me, like, sitting on my bathroom floor with this cut on my leg. and I'm like reaching for toilet paper to try and like clot the cut. And I just remember like something is so wrong. And it's not like a memory where I have like movement where things are happening. It's like just a snapshot in my head. And it's just this overwhelming feeling that I screwed up or something is like really, really not right. And it wasn't like, ouch. Like I'm not like, ouch, this hurts.

It was like something. is wrong. Something is so, yeah, anyway. I think like that was, that day I was pretty much just like in shock of this. And like I very quickly like buried my head in my work and I was like, okay, that's, that's messed up. And like I think I like I'm like forcing myself to repress it because I have no clear, there's no clear scientific. There's no clear like way of describing this. Like this isn't, this isn't anything that's happened to me before. Was this the bathroom where you wrote the 666? Yeah.

It was the bathroom where I wrote the 666. It was like, I was just sitting in the floor, just right in the middle. And I was reaching for toilet paper to try and clot this. And it was just something is totally, totally wrong. Like I almost like I was in like danger. Like I had done something horrible. And the next morning when you went in there, Was there bloody toilet paper or was there blood splatter?

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. There was only blood on my sheets. And have you ever slept walked before in your life? No, I've never. I've never. I've never. That's really weird. And, you know, I haven't... It's really weird. Yeah. I can see you're still scared by this right now, aren't you?

I'm like, I'm afraid it's going to happen again. Yeah. I mean... Because I It's Like I There was nothing It's like I had I was Sober then

I'm sober now It's like there's no like Mood altering substance There's no like I wasn't like You know going crazy the night before I didn't drink like 10 cups of coffee Or like do something that would like cause me to have like horrifying dreams

It was just like a plain A plain day I had like gone on my walk to Like it must have been my farmer's market And got my fruit and I walked back. Anyway, really, really, really repressed that. Really, I think I told, see, I didn't tell anyone until the next day because I was afraid people were going to think I was crazy.

Because at that point, I was like, well, I guess I just, I get, I don't, I wasn't trying to come up with solutions at that point. I was just trying to forget about it. It's very, very, very, very, very, very, very, um, very unpleasant. And so the next morning This is see I know like the first night It's like it seems like that would be the one that's like really scary But this one is like the most scary to me I don't I don't know why

It's just it was like this is like the for sure moment for me I get up out of my bed I turn the corner And right on that corner is where the bathroom is And I look down and my laundry detergent is just sitting in the center of the bathroom. Same place that I was sitting in that vision. It was just sitting right there.

And I was standing right there when I wrote the 666 on the mirror. It's exactly the perfect, like the dead center of the bathroom. Just my laundry detergent, which I had in like a pantry like around the corner like 15 feet away. And around, yeah. And I like, I... You're really scared right now. You're really scared right.

I could see it in your eyes. Yeah, I'm... I just... What do you do to that? What do you do if that happens? I mean, I had... I've never sleepwalked. There's no...

There's no possible... There's no logical solution to this. And so, like, I... I take a photo of it. I, like, tweet about it. I'm like, what's going on? People, like, respond to it. They're like,

possibly be, this could possibly be bedbugs or this could be like this thing or that thing. And I'm like, they're like, you're just sleepwalking. And I'm like, I've never done that before. Like there's never. And I would do it twice, twice immediately day after two days, two days in a row. There was nothing in like my apartment that like realistically could have done this. I don't think. I like went around. I went around walking through my apartment like a crazy person trying to figure out what corner, what edge could have cut this. my leg while simultaneously giving me like a huge ass bruise and I couldn't find anything. Oddly enough, like the week prior I had replaced, you know, the carbon monoxide detector in my house.

So it's not that. There was no debris. There was no, there was no clear answer. I mean, it just like came out of nowhere. Was there any signs of you walking around? Like, no, there was nothing. There was nothing. The door was closed.

The door was closed. I slack message my boss saying that I'm being haunted. And she says, it's okay, Jack, take the day off. I text my dad. I'm like, what do you think this is? And he's like, I don't know. See, it's like you kind of get the same response from people when you say this is that I think I can tell that they kind of think I've lost it. like I like and I thought I was losing it too um I text my mom and I'm like what the hell and she was the first one who was like oh my god Jack okay immediately you have to sage the place right now and I was like okay and so I do that um and then I think she was the one who told me to reach out to the the landlord and see if anything like this had happened before which I hadn't even hadn't even considered and so I reach out to him first asking if anyone else has like a

a key to the place and he could he confirmed that no um and then i mentioned that there was this this i told him what happened i thought he was going to be like okay you're crazy um like i knew this guy out of my house like this is a crazy man staying at my house what's he going to do but he responded very very very very very nicely and very like he like very he was confirming my belief and he tells me this story about the previous tenant i guess being a victim or like, like, I think it's kind of, this tenant was like a bad tenant. And I don't think he elaborated. Yeah, he said, the landlord didn't tell me much except to say the previous tenant left the place in a bit of a state

and alluded to her being a problem. And that, I guess, the kitchen looked like a crack den, his words. And so they had, like, the place, like, remodeled. And that's when it became, like, very, like, you know, gray floors, white walls. When he first went in, I guess with the landlord, he felt it had like bad energy, and he saged the place then. And so I resaged the place. In fact, it was his sage that was on top of the refrigerator that I was like, okay, don't

just use this. I guess I'm trying to think, I don't, I don't, yeah, I didn't know what to do then. I just like kind of ran around. I tried to get out of my apartment all day. I went to the DMV, which took like forever. The next night, I was, I wanted to like, make. sure I was like sleepwalking or like something I just wanted to like have like some kind of answer to this so I I found you could just like throw salt on the ground which would show where

your footsteps are if you are sleepwalking I did salt on the ground in my bedroom and on in the hallway and then I also taped the door so that like if it were to have been opened the tape would be unstuck like I didn't like tape it shut I taped it so like I would know if it was opened and that didn't I wake up the next morning and like that didn't that didn't lead to anything and that's when I start to like piece together like this happened in my bathroom

I had put out this TikTok in which I wrote 666 on that mirror in which like astrologists were what somewhat mobilized against me I had illustrated their beliefs in a way that they did not like I, I, yeah. And so I'm thinking either there is this ghost or there is this, this hex on me from some kind of

TikTok comment section or some very angry TikTok witch. I immediately started looking for new apartments. And I moved out in like, I think three or four months later. And like really, I have like a bad feeling about this for, a while after, like, even to the next apartment, because I didn't move too far away. It was still, like, an unexplained thing. I felt, I feel like it was, like, the book wasn't closed until, I think maybe, like, right before we met, I still felt like I had to get, like, I had to do astrologists a justice after

doing them such an injustice. Um, and so I made a TikTok that demonstrated, I guess, Okay, so there's like a meme that's like, oh, economics is just astrology but for men. And I'm like, okay, like, that's like a, like, okay, that's like a meme. But like, then I started like looking more into it. And I'm like, wait, this is like kind of real. The TikTok was, it was illustrating this thing called Keynesian economics and the Chicago School of Economics, which are these like two kind of the primary ideologies of the 20th century.

And it starts with these two economists watching astrologists talk about their star sign and being like, those guys are, those guys are idiots. I wish they looked at real data like us. And then they're like, oh, wait, by the way, which school of economic thinking do you subscribe to? And the one begins to describe Keynesian, which Keynesian comes from this guy, John Maydard Keynes. And he was this economist in like the early 20th century. He was saying that like people in an economist. They are not rational robots operating on logic.

They're operating on vibe. They are what he called animal spirits. Like, direct quote, animal spirits. Like, we are controlled by animal spirits. And we're gonna just kind of like, like animals, we'll like go in a stampede and we'll like go in crazy directions and do things that are not rational at all and are bad for the economy. And we'll end up hurting us more.

This is what he thought. And that because we are animal spirits, because we're irrational, the government is going to have to step in with social programs and other kind of tools to steer us and our thinking into like a greater social good. And so when I like read about that, it's like that's like wait. Like what? I just thought that's like a bizarre way of saying we're irrational. Like he chose to use this term called animal spirits, which like predates him. It's from like 300 BC and it was used by like ancient physiology to describe like why humans do things. Like what leads to exuberance, like what kind of almost like pseudoscience.

And he used that like expression to describe that we're just kind of like operating a little weird. Like he chose to go full like spiritual animal spirit. So then the other economist in this TikTok is. his field of economics that he believes, and he subscribes to the Chicago School of Economics, which if you hear like free market, free market stuff, like that's the Chicago School. He believes that if all these actors in an economy,

every single person, if they just like, you know, they're going to operate in their own self-interest, and they're just going to be pretty logical, and they're just going to focus on themselves. And if everyone is free to do that, like the government does not interfere with this. The economy like turns into like a Voltron and it Voltrons into this thing called the invisible hand.

And so all of these people acting independently become this invisible hand that supposedly guides us towards utopia, essentially. And this is like... These are the real words they used. Invisible hand and animal spirits? Yeah. Invisible.

Like that sounds like a Dungeons and Dragon spell. It's just when I came across this, I was like, okay, this, like, this writes itself. You know, this is, like, this is the response to, um, the astrology, the astrology TikTok. And so, like, at the end of the TikTok, the two, um, economists were like, man, like, fish spirits and magic hands, like, are we really so different from the astrologists? And they're like, well, yeah, we have graphs.

Um, then I found out later that, like, astrologists also have graphs. So like that joke didn't really, you know, maybe fly for them. But, um, yeah, that TikTok went out. And that, to me, it felt like that was like the door closing. This loop was closed. You know, it felt like unopened. I felt like there was like a cloud above me. I felt these people, these astrologists on TikTok hate me.

And so that felt like, yeah, the door had been closed. I still don't know what happened. I guess I have no idea. I have no idea. It could have, I don't, I don't. I have no explanation. Okay, even though I love how poetic that is and everything, I still really want to know, like, what do you think was happening in your apartment?

Like, do you think this was some kind of ghost? Do you think you were hexed? Do you think it had something to do with, like, what you wrote on the mirror? Like, what do you even think this was? When I tell this story to people, and I mention the 666 detail, every time people are like, oh, my God. It's like, so you asked for it. it. I mean, like, kind of, but it's also really cartoonish, right? Like, that's... I know. I know. I don't know what

caused it. And it's, you know, I would, I would love to know. I would love to, like, find out, like, tomorrow that, like, I sleepwalk. I would love that. To have an excuse, to have an example, to have any kind of explanation. I would love, I would love to know that. I would love to, like, you know, if the landlord texted me and be like, actually there was a carbon monoxide leak the whole time. I'm like, I would, you know, that would suck for that and that I was getting a poisoning. But like, I'm, at least I have an answer. Yeah, but even so, like, that wouldn't go away when you sage a place. I know, I know.

There's no, there's no answer. I mean, the sage, you know, the sage felt good. I really went to town on the bathroom, too. Like, more than any place. I don't know, in a way it's like a good experience because like the way people act towards you when they think you're crazy like if you have something crazy happen to you

you can like know pretty quickly like who like your real friends are it's it's it must have been I don't know the astrologists it's like I had the TikTok took place in both my bedroom and in the bathroom I have no idea

I would love to know would you say that your view have changed because of all of this? Yeah. I mean, it's like, I feel like I just keep on, like, the more I scratch the surface, the more, you know, you realize that, like, the field is just like people thinking, like,

oh, yes, animal spirits and, like, invisible hands. And it's just guys guessing. It's just, like, probably this works. I mean, like, even recently, it's like the whole, like, we thought we knew how inflation worked. We thought we knew. We thought this thing called the Phillips Curve established it all. Because, like, that's how you become successful in economic.

If you're a success, they name a curve after you. So, Phillips Curve is like, you know, if you raise unemployment, inflation will fall. And then the pandemic happened, and we tried raising interest rates to make people essentially unemployed. And then that didn't, it didn't really work. Like the Phillips Curve, some people, you ask any economists, they're going to have a different take. Because I thought it was this hard science, but it's a soft science. This is a very soft science. Like, the graphs don't really mean anything.

There are outliers everywhere. I mean, it's just, it's just unexplained. Like, all of, like, human, like, everyone, like, acting together. It's us trying to come up with an explanation for it. Us trying to come up with, like, a logical, oh, this is why this is happening. That's because this. And if we control it, we can make it do this. And it doesn't work.

Like, it just continuously doesn't work. I mean, like, you know, you think that there's, like, someone out there who is, like, the things that exist exist for a reason. And they've been, like, carefully planned over. They've been, like, they've been established. There are norms because they make the most sense. But they don't. Like, and, yeah, and you mentioned on the podcast, it's like, there's probably someone out there's someone out there who's smarter than us who's thinking about this. But there's not.

I mean, like, not really. Some stuff, yeah. But, like, there's so much we don't have an answer for. And so much of it is kind of like hubristic kind of like trying to control like the natural world, trying to control how like we all act. And it's just like it's a very, it's a very hard thing to do. Yeah. So it's just, you know, it's, it's full of phenomenon, which I don't think will ever be explained.

Well, Jack, I'll tell you what. I will do my best to put in a good word for you with the TikTok witches. Maybe telling the story will help you as well. I'm not sure. Much appreciated. I respect them. All right. Thank you to Jack Corbett for coming on and telling us his story.

And if there are any TikTok witches or astrologers listening, give him a break. Please send good vibes his way. He truly means no harm. This is a very, very, very nice guy who I think has learned his lesson. I'm still not sure what to make of this. By the way, I should point out that astrology and horoscopes are different, and neither of them directly involve hexing or curses. I also personally don't think that writing the number 666

with no ill intentions or anything would magically summon something to cause anything similar to what happened to Jack. So I don't know about that, but also I don't think. think he was sleepwalking. If he was sleepwalking, that would be considered a very serious case, the type that doctors would probably treat with medication. So even if that was what happened, he was able to cure his sleepwalking with Sage. Like I said, I kind of grilled him about this before and after the show. But, of course, he did a lot of things to rule that out, and he really does not think he was sleepwalking. I don't think so either. I don't know what exactly happened here,

but I do think it's a very, very interesting story, and I'm glad that this chapter seems to be finally closed. If you want to see some of the videos that we were referring to in this episode, you can find those on the Planet Money TikTok that's at Planet Money. And by the way, we're on there as well. If you want to follow Otherworld on TikTok, we're at Otherworld Pod. Thank you so much to Jack Corbett for telling us this story, and also teaching us a bit about economics. This has been episode 62. The title is Frequency Illusion, and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself Jack Wagner.

Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by Juice Jackal and North Americans. This episode was edited by myself and engineered by Theo Schaefer. Our artwork is by Coltisack Studios. Production help by Nikki Kate Delgado and Haley Pearson. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five-star review and telling your friends about the show. If you want to hear bonus episodes for Otherworld and join our Discord,

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