Stuff You Should Know - Five Crazy Government Experiments

Episode Date: February 18, 2010

Chuck and Josh discuss five of the most bizarre experiments ever undertaken by governments, from transplanted puppy heads to Cold War psychics, in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from housestuffworks.com. Sometimes science goes too far. Dark matters, twisted but true. Wednesdays at 10 on Science. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

Say hey, Chuck. Hey, Chuck. That makes this Stuff You Should Know. That's such an old joke. Yeah, terrible. It's still, it's got a lot of staying power. Sure, and little else. It has as much staying power as cat urine.

Chuck, you wanna hear the history of the microwave oven? I'd love to. In 40 seconds or less. All right. Back in 1947, a guy named Percy Spencer was touring the labs of the Raytheon Corporation when he passed by a magnetron. If he had unpopped popcorn in his pocket,

then I'm leaving right now. We'll get to that. Okay. That doesn't count against my 42nd time. I thought like popcorn popped in his pocket or something. No, he had a chocolate bar in his pocket and it melted. And he's like, what the hell's going on here? So he actually ran and got a bag of popping corn

and it started popping too. And then he finished the whole thing off spectacularly by getting a pot and a raw egg and holding it near the magnetron. And it exploded into his buddy's face. Wow. Anyway, he figured out that this thing was producing microwaves.

No, he lived to be an old man, but he figured out that this was producing microwaves and he put it in an invention. So everybody who has a microwave oven today has a tiny magnetron in their house. He put it in an invention? Yeah. That's a unique way of saying that.

Yeah. That's good for him. Yeah, anyway, the point of this is that that's the Raytheon Corporation, where this discovery was made. And the Raytheon Corporation was largely a government-funded outfit. So we would call that a government experiment of sorts. It's not the craziest, though, Chuck.

Not even close. No, you want to talk about some crazy government experiments? Maybe five of them today? Sounds like a great idea. All right, let's do it, man. This is written by Robert Lamb of Stuff from the Science Lab. We should point out. Yeah.

I hope we're not stealing this article. Is he going to do this at some point? I didn't even ask him. I'm sure he wanted to. It's too late now. What's the first one here, Josh, about transplanting heads onto other bodies? Let's talk about that.

Yeah, because think about it, Chuck. Think about the applications of this. I mean, technically, if you don't look at it as a head transplant, you can make the case that this is a full-body transplant. Yeah, depends on if you're the chicken or the egg, I guess. It definitely makes sense. A little.

We'll find out when the people write in. But this is something that we could definitely use. If we could attach the spinal cord. Yeah. But we cannot. Is that the thing that's holding it back? Well, that's the thing that keeps the result from being a quadriplegic.

But they said that applications, maybe if someone just wants to live, they'd rather live as a quadriplegic than die. Yeah, OK. Especially if you're already a quadriplegic and you're used to it, but you have organ failure. Hey, that's pretty random. But I want to think about it. We talked about Braille.

What if you are blind and handless? I guess you use the e-readers that read things to you. OK. Out loud. Chuck, this idea of full-body transplantation does have its roots in government experiments. Yes, indeed. Specifically, as far back as 1908,

when a US surgeon named Charles Guthrie decided that he wanted to find out if he could put one dog's head on another dog's body, and by God, Chuck Bryant has a picture of it, the two-headed dog. Yeah, he actually did this. And it was not replacing one head with another. Like you said, he attached a dog's head underneath the chin of the other dog.

So they were, in fact, chin to chin. And the other dog was like, are you doing? Right. So he actually did this. And I don't know if you want to say it worked, because the second head could only lull about. Yeah, they said that there were some just normal reflex reactions and sounds, but not dog-type sounds.

Yeah, it couldn't fetch a paper or anything, right? Yeah. So I guess you could make the case, though, that that was successful. At the very least, they got a pretty cool picture out of it. Well, blood flowed from one head to the other through the brain and then back out, so. That's pretty cool.

It worked in a way. You going to post that pic on the blog? No, it's gross. Please. That way. So that was the first one. That's 1908. That's pretty old-timey, right?

Indeed. And then we cut to 1951, when the Soviets are saying, oh, the Americans are doing it. Well, we got to do it, too. There was a lot of that going on back then. There really was. And actually, before that, there was an experiment in the 40s, right?

Right. This thing is on YouTube. If you type in Experiments in the Revival of Dead Organisms, you're going to find a 1940s instructional film-esque film that shows people killing dogs and reviving them. I'm not going to watch it then. And apparently, well, it's not very graphic. It's more like, here, have some cyanide dog,

and then they bring the dog back. Also, supposedly, you can just barely see it, that it's a dog's head that's moving and responding and everything, but it's being kept alive externally through an artificial heart and lungs pumping blood into the brain and back out for circulation. I don't need to see that.

They don't show a good shot of it. So it's possible it's a trick, but I was reading a post on it that showed that this stuff was real. They actually did kill this dog and revive it, as far as very scientific. It wasn't a joke or a hoax. So we have been able to. Was that Vladimir?

Was that someone else? I think it was Vladimir, because it was the Soviets. He was a sick puppy. He was. Yes, and speaking of puppy, he did the same dog thing, where he transplanted 20 puppy heads with head shoulders, lungs, forelimbs, and an esophagus that emptied outside of the dog, transplanted them onto other dogs.

Cool. And some of them have one lived as long as 29 days, and they actually, there's some log notes here, 9 AM, donor's head, eagerly drank water or milk, and tugged as if trying to separate itself from the recipient's body. Nice. And one of them bit one of the staff members,

which was my favorite part. Yeah. And one of them bit the other dog on the ear, and the dog tried to shake it off. Crazy. So there were actual dog things happening. Yeah, that's pretty puppy-esque. Yeah, and awful.

This sick, it sickens me. I didn't even want to talk about this. Really? It sickens me, yeah. Yeah. Really? Puppy heads on the other dogs? It's like the cutest, horrific experiment ever.

The only way it could be cute is if they transplanted unicorn heads. There were pictures of this, but I couldn't even go there. Well, Chuck, this horrible type of experimentation culminated in 1970, when an American neurosurgeon named Robert J. White transplanted the living head of one monkey onto the headless body of another, and it worked, and he was almost bitten by the monkey.

That's how they consider it as a success. Apparently, everybody in the lab cheered when the monkey tried to bite the guy, and then after a week, they put it down. Yeah. So good for these crazy, crazy people. And meanwhile, of course, the Soviets and the Americans were shooting chimps into space, never to return again,

and you know they're up there still. Yeah, little chimp bodies or bones probably at this point. And some in space capsules. Well, you have to wonder, I mean, what kind of process of physical degradation does a monkey undergo after death in space? I don't know. Answer me.

I don't know. All right, let's move on, Chuck, to acoustic kitty. Yeah, this is animal abuse. Well, it actually is. And this was courtesy, once again, of the Cold War, the US and Soviet superpowers battling each other for a position, and the CIA spent maybe as much as 20 million, at least 10 million.

Yeah. So let's just settle in 15. And five years. And five years to implant listening devices into a cat complete with battery and an antenna in the tail. Yeah. Little kitty, acoustic kitty is what they called it. And it was a single cat.

They alternately surgically outfitted it with eavesdropping devices and tried to train it. Because think about it, the presence of a cat is not the most, you know, cat's wander into places. They kind of go wherever they want. So it makes sense the logic is there, to an extent. But apparently, the cat was just a little too willful for this. They figured out that it went off and just kind of left

whenever it got hungry. So they tried to surgically manipulate its sense of hunger. So it wouldn't get hungry as often. Indeed. And then finally, Chuck, it threw itself under a cab. Well, you know why? Why? It was the acoustic kitty's first test mission.

They sent the little kitty on its first eavesdropping mission to eavesdrop on these two Russian men in a park. Really? In a public park. And so they dropped the cat off. And then that's when the cat ran from the cab and got killed. Yeah. Which is not funny at all.

No, it's bad enough to watch it. A cat get hit by a car. But imagine a $10 million cat that you spent five years training get hit by a car in its first mission. That's the part that I think was funny, was the egg on the face of the US government. Yeah, and there was egg aplenty. And they kept it under wraps until 2001

when that stuff was declassified. Yes, but still partially censored. I read part of it. It's, you know, all the fun words are blanked over. Right, right. Like, who was doing it? Actually, there was one part left in there. CIA officer Victor Marchetti.

He addressed the hunger thing. He said they put in a wire to thwart the hunger. I don't even know what that means. Yeah, I read that as well. And I don't know how you would do that. I mean, was there a cat up? Keeping Grelin out? I have no idea.

Probably. Yeah. So also awful because it involves animals. Chuck. Josh. Have you ever heard of zero point energy? I have. Had you before today?

No. I hadn't either. What is that, Josh? So from what I can gather, it's something that comes out of quantum mechanics. It's not supposed to happen under classical physics. But in quantum physics, it does. Apparently, innate energy that a particle has,

even after all other external energies are removed, say in a vacuum. So they figured out that this means that particles have innate energy. But one of the, I guess, more surprising aspects of reducing a particle to zero point energy is that they come in and out of existence randomly, which is not supposed to happen.

But apparently, it's especially susceptible to it when you completely remove gravity. Right. And the pursuit of figuring out how to use zero gravity machines to wink things in and out of existence was supposedly a Nazi experiment, huh? Right. And the Nazis were famous for many, many odd, unproven,

unsubstantiated experiments that they may or may not have conducted. But this one was real. The Nazi bell is what they called it. Yeah. That's what Dr. Cook called it. Yeah. And Dr. Cook is Nick Cook, right?

Yes, Josh. Jane's Defense Weekly Editor, who kind of went off the deep end. I wrote a book review on Salon of his book. And it's, you know, he's a very, very respected journalist. But he really got into a conspiratorial world with this one. Yeah, he wrote the book, The Hunt for Zero Point, where he broke it all down, basically,

and alleged that this all happened. And he's not some crackpot, or he wasn't at the time. Right. No. So he was, you know, a respected dude. Well, he believes it's that an SS officer in charge of the V2 rocket program, which eventually got the US to the moon, because don't forget,

we under operation or project paperclip, we drafted tons of Nazi scientists, including Werner von Braun, who got us to the moon. Yeah, thank you, Vern. Yeah. And apparently, the guy who was running the V2 rocket program traded this information about zero gravity, or zero point energy, to the US.

And Cook's whole point is that some guy comes up with this real method of using an anti-gravity machine for a military application. And he, I guess, came up with a file from someone in the Defense Department saying, there's no real scientific, or there's no military application here. So Cook's premise was, there totally was,

and they wouldn't have said that if they didn't already know how to do it. Of course. So he was saying that we knew how to do that, and that the whole Foo Fighter phenomenon, UFO sightings, all that is evidence of us having figured out zero point gravity. How about that?

It's crazy. And I did a little extra digging around, and I found out there's this guy named Tim Ventura, and he runs something called American Anti-Gravity. And he claims, this is five years ago, and as usual when you can't find follow up info, it's usually not a good sign. But he claims five years ago that a fellow named John Deering

of SARA, the Scientific Applications and Research Associates, who actually have a lot of government contracts are not crackpots either. They supposedly replicated key elements of the Nazi-Bell technology, anti-gravity propulsion. And they supposedly recreated this five years ago, and they were looking for funding, and were too secretive to get the funding that they needed,

and it was kind of up in the air last I checked. From what I understand, and I don't know if it's necessarily zero point gravity, but using quantum mechanics, people have figured out how to get disks to levitate. Right. So I mean, it's not outside of the realm of possibility. He's got stuff on the YouTube. Does he?

Yeah. But so does David Blaine. He's a big phony. What? No, Josh, he doesn't levitate. It's a trick. What? Let's talk about sex, baby, in space.

Yeah, sex, in space. They have researched this behind closed doors, obviously, although NASA says that they've never done such a thing. But clearly they have, because they want to colonize the moon in space one day, and you've got to know everything. Remember we talked about, well, the lunar doomsday arc saved humanity, that they were going

to have their sexy business up there if they had to wait a century. Stephen Hawking said it's essential for human survival. It depends on being able to procreate in space. OK, in space, as you can see, you don't have to be Stephen Hawking to realize that. You've got to reproduce or else the species dies out, right? No matter whether we're here in orbit, or on the moon,

or on Mars, or wherever, right? So yes, of course NASA would engage in this kind of stuff. Specifically, there was a guy named Pierre Kohler. He was a French astronomer, and he wrote a book in 2000 called The Last Mission. And he said that four years earlier, NASA checked out 10 different zero-gravity sexual positions on a 1996 mission.

NASA says, ah, and Pierre Kohler was like, ah, and. I feel stupid. I didn't even know there were 10 here on Earth. No. I'll draw you some pictures later. And obviously, like everything else, the Soviets have done the same with their cosmonauts. Supposedly.

What did they call them? Cosmonauts? No, the research into sex, the type of sexual positions. Oh, I don't know. Human docking procedures. Well, that's what Robert called it, I think. He put in quotes. I thought that meant he was just making a ride joke.

We'll have to ask him. Yeah. But I love that human docking procedure. Yeah. Sure. Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova got pregnant in 1974 by another cosmonaut. So there were some that said this was probably,

hey, maybe not done in space, but done just to see, like, set up to see what would happen. Like, has his sperm been affected? Has her uterus been affected? Whatever. But it all turned out fine. Their baby was completely normal. Right.

So that's a good sign. And some wonder if possibly that union wasn't a science experiment in and of itself just to find out. Well, maybe so. But yeah, we have such a little grasp on what the effects of zero gravity have on the human body. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a worthwhile look.

It could be a sperm killer. Who knows? It could do all sorts of crazy stuff. Like, remember the Sarcopania episode where the neurons, the type of neurons that die off and are replaced or taken over by other type of neurons, happens the opposite to astronauts who've been in zero gravity than it does here on Earth.

Who would expect that? Sure. So you got to test it out? Yeah. Have you heard of the two suit? No. It's the number two suit. I don't know why I was invented by an actress and poet.

But it was. Her name is Vanna Bonta. And she invented this suit that basically keeps two people attached. You can put two suits together, if you know what I'm saying, to make one suit. Wow. There's zippers, and there's Velcro, and there's openings,

and there's places to go. Cool. Within this suit. And each one has a cigarette tucked into the arm. And the idea is to stabilize human proximity so you can stay attached without much effort so you can save your effort for coitus. How much are they?

I don't know if you can buy them. And I don't know if the government said, hey, give me some of those two suits. But I mean, it sounds like. They gave us Tang? Yeah, exactly. So let's get the two suit out there. And let's get to the last one, shall we, buddy?

Sure. The psychic Cold War. Yeah, did you see Men Who Stare at Goats? I loved that movie. I didn't see it. I loved it. It got like a 47%, pretty much across the board, like half and half.

It was a good movie. Was it based on this, or was it just fanciful goings on of George Clooney? No, I'm writing a blog post on this today. There really was a program that this thing was kind of based on the characters were based on real life people. Yeah, I'll show it to you. So we're talking about a psychic spies, right?

Yeah, they're both the Soviets and the Americans were engaged in paranormal research. The Soviets since the 20s. And then the US in the 40s or 50s was like, oh, we better catch up with this. And never did. They're reading our minds, so we need to read their minds. Exactly.

And there's a ton of applications for this, for the military. Like, for example, if you're manning a submarine and you can't surface, why don't you just send whatever information you need using your mind into the mind of somebody else? Or why get out of bed? Yeah, that's what I would do.

That's a great one, too. I just beam my messages everywhere. A man machine interface where we could basically psychically link ourselves to a computer to interact with it. Me likey. Uploader download data. So does this stuff work though, Josh? I don't know.

Is it real? It's real that they did the research. They definitely did do the research. And in 1973, the Rain Corporation was asked to create a brief study on who was doing better at it. And the Rain Corporation said the Soviets, big time. The Soviets were much more investigatory with the biological, the physiological aspects

of this, the basis of it. Whereas with Americans, it was psychology, all psychological based. Theory and practice were kept separate with America. In the Soviet study, they came up with theories and then tested them like it was really scientific. So if anybody was going to get anywhere with it, the Rain Corporation concluded that it was definitely

going to be the Soviets. Well, good for the Ruskies. Yeah, they still are. Yeah, and we had Operation Stargate go until 1995. Explain. So that was it. Well, that's remote viewing, basically. And at one point, Operation Stargate

had 22 active military and or private remote viewers on staff. That's pretty cool. It is pretty cool. I wonder how much that pays. Remote viewing? That pays pretty good. Specialized. I bet you can pretty much demand whatever salary you want.

It's like, oh, yeah, well, go hire somebody else then, buddy. Go to another Home Depot, those guys hanging up front. See if they can remote view for you. Well, that's about it for crazy government experiments. I think there's probably a ton more on the site, though. You know, obviously, the CIA experimented with LSD, buddy. Yeah, well, that's number one on our list. That's why I got a whole podcast of that one.

All you have to do is type maybe government and experiments in the handy search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And that leads us to listener mail. Josh got a couple of quick ones today. OK, this one is from Sasha, AKA Sparky. And Sasha Sparky says, a recent podcast mentioned Pika. And that's when you eat things that aren't food. And it reminded me of my own five-year-old cravings.

As a young girl, I had an insatiable craving for match heads. Huh, yeah. Sulfur, huh? Uh-huh, I guess so. I would bite down on the matches and scrape off the heads and eat them. I kept a secret stash of pilfered matches under my pillow. I distinctly remember the salty, sulfurous flavor

and chalky texture. I'm not sure any one of my family caught on. And I apparently outgrew it eventually. I'm not sure if this is unique pika craving or not. I just thought I'd share it. Well. From Sasha Sparky, AKA the match-eater. Maybe that's why she's sparky.

Yeah, I'll bet. Either that or her love of sulfur just developed into a love of arson. And this one is from Tony. You're going to like this one. I don't know if you actually read this. 1AM Tony wrote us, he is a business director for Gamma Vacuum.

And he says, guys, just thought you might like to know that I am sending an email from a hotel in Geneva, Switzerland and have a couple of meetings tomorrow at CERN. Awesome. Trying to sell them our vacuum pumps, basically. The large Hadron Collider guy. He's a traveling vacuum salesman. And he just said he wanted to know that one of, he is a

traveling vacuum salesman. He said he just wanted to let us know that one of the stuff you should know, Army foot soldiers, is on the premises conducting business. Good for him. Thank you, Tony. And then he sent back a follow-up email after I emailed him and said that he wants Jerry to say hi.

And she refuses. But he requests it. Is it against a religion? I would respect that. But out of my own self-interest, and not to look like a jackass. I'm not sure what that means. And that's pretty much it.

Maybe a horse winnie, a sound effect, just to know that she's there is what he says. Jerry's going with the against her religion thing, it looks like. OK. She remains mute. That coupled with a good horse winnie will get you places. Nay.

Is that a good horse winnie? Yes, and it's actually Amish for no. Are there questions that should not be asked? Experiments that should not be performed. Doors that should remain forever closed. Sometimes science goes too far. Join me for this new series that explores real life stories of the dark side of science.

Dark Matters, twisted but true. Wednesdays at 10, on Science. Wow. If you have ever seen the movie The Thing with Two Heads and want to tell us what you thought about it, you just go ahead and send that in an email. Also, if you're going to CERN, we definitely want to hear about that as well.

You can email us at stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Want more howstuffworks? Check out our blogs on the howstuffworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? You're ready to travel in 2023, and since 1981, Gate One

Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European River Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit gateonetravel.com for more information or to book your tour.

That's GateTheNumberOneTravel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. The South Dakota Stories, Volume 3. It was my first time traveling alone, packed my car with hiking boots, a camera, and my dog, Randy. I don't know what I was searching for. Maybe it was something new with adventure.

Maybe it was the idea of vacation I would never expect, filled with wildlife, national parks, rivers, whatever it was I set out to find, it was all there and more. Because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.