The Blindboy Podcast - How a Spanish fisherman lead the CIA to conclude that reality is a Hologram

Episode Date: July 6, 2022

In 1966 the US military lost an unexploded nuclear bomb in a Spanish fishing village, this incident set off a chain of incredibly bizarre decades long covert research into the nature of reality itself, which has now been declassified Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hang the Mancunian by his ankles, you jangly Matthews. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If you're a brand new listener, I suggest going back to some earlier episodes to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. That's what most people do. There's almost 300 episodes now. Several hundred hours to listen to, of interconnected monologue essays,

which takes a narrative form. Not too unlike the 18th century writer Laurence Starn. This is a Starnian podcast. I've never heard that before. I'm not comparing myself to Laurence Starn, I'm just saying he's there in spirit when I'm writing my hot takes. He wrote a book called The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, which is something I always find myself going back to when I need to remind myself why I do this podcast. Because what I love about that book is the way that he would mix

fictional storytelling with essays and they would just blend into one another. And I always found that intriguing. I also get inspired by this, there's this French writer from the 1500s. I can't pronounce his fucking name. I've only ever seen it written down. And I don't speak French.

Michel de Montagne. Michel de Montagne. M-O-N-T-A-I-G-N-E. But he had this beautiful way of writing essays. That blends storytelling. And you can't tell if you're reading an essay or reading a short story. So I often think of Michelle de Montagne when I do this podcast.

I sound like a pretentious cunt now saying that my podcast is inspired by writers from 500 years ago. I'm inspired by lots of things including contemporary podcasts and television. I'm just saying if my podcast stopped tomorrow I'd like to look at it not as

separate episodes but one giant piece that's interwoven. That's why I always tell people to go back to the start and from your feedback the ones that do listen from the start and listen to the podcast in its entirety tend to get the most enjoyment. So that book, The Life and Opinions of Trish Tram Shandy, is like a touchstone that I use when I ask myself, what would I like the entire creative effort to be? And if you don't think like that, you end up going, what the fuck am I doing? And you give up.

But I started reading Laurence Starn years ago, after I'd finished everything that Flann O'Brien had written. Flann O'Brien is my favourite writer, and I'd read that Flann O'Brien was a fan of Laurence Starn, and in particular a fan of The Life and Opinions of Trish Tremshendy, so I gave it a go, and it stayed with me. Laurence Starn is one of those writers where you don't know whether to claim him as Irish or not.

He was born in Clonmel, which is in Tipperary. But however, his da was like a British officer. And it was like the 1750s when he was writing. And I can't find any evidence of him self-identifying as Irish. I don't think any of his writing was sympathetic to the cause of Irish freedom. His da was a British soldier, like I said, and even in the book Tristram Shandy, I don't know, any portrayal of British soldiers in that book, they're quite flattering. So we never know whether to place Lawrence Stern within the canon of Irish literature.

But another writer from the same time, or a little bit beforehand, Jonathan Swift, he was also Anglo-Irish, as in his parents were from England, but he was born in Ireland. And even though Jonathan Swift would have been an Anglican minister, I think he was, his writing was radically sympathetic

towards the people of Ireland and massively critical of British policy. He wrote A Modest Proposal, which I did a podcast on before, but it was written during one of Ireland's famines, which were caused by uncaring British policy. And A Modest Proposal was a piece of writing, a piece of satire, which proposed that poor Irish people who are starving should sell their babies for money to rich people who could then eat the babies as a delicacy. And for that reason, we definitely consider Jonathan Swift to be an Irish writer. But Laurence Stern, I don't know, he's just kind of considered a British writer, even though he was born in Clonmel. But we have good news in the city of Limerick this week.

The weather hasn't been fantastic. It's been rainy. But it's that July rain. That big fat July rain, which is quite forgivable. Because it's warm. But I have a podcast from nearly this day last year. It's from the 5th of July 2021. And the name of this podcast is Pineapple Folly,

where I speak about the history of pineapples. But in that podcast, I started off speaking about being in Thomas Street in Limerick. And we just, I think lockdown had just ended, so we were allowed to eat outdoors. being in Thomas Street in Limerick and we'd just I think lockdown had just ended so we were allowed to eat outdoors and that podcast started off with me describing watching Irish people

sitting outdoors eating pizzas with pineapples on them and it was sunny but because it was July because it was this time of the year this exact time of the year with the unpredictable fat rain I watched a person with a pineapple pizza as the heavens opened above and big fat rain came down and wet everybody and it was quite traumatic I watched a beautiful pizza get destroyed by rain in under 10 seconds. And the pineapple pieces floated to the top.

And it broke my heart for Limerick. For Ireland. Because it's so difficult for us to have an outdoor dining culture. When you have all this rain. But now one year later. In Thomas Street. Our prayers have been answered. Because for half a kilometre.

Up this street. All the restaurants have these wonderful permanent awnings outside them that can protect from the rain so you can eat your pineapple pizza outdoors in Limerick and it can be raining big fat cunty rain and it doesn't matter because you have a fucking roof over you but you're still outdoors. But you remember a couple of weeks back Limerick City Council managed to fuck up all our outdoor dining areas by surrounding them with this opaque frosted glass. The grey shade of a geriatric testicle. The type of glass you'd have in a bank, in a bureau de change. So for a couple of weeks there in Limerick,

our hearts were broken. It's like we have our outdoor seating, but now it feels like I'm indoors with this horrible frosted glass. The whole point of outdoor dining is that it's a communal experience. You want the people watch, and people want to watch you eating, and all of that together is that wonderful,

empathic feeling of a functional, happy city. Well, I'm pleased to announce that Limerick City Council have removed the frosted glass, and today they replaced it with clear glass, and it's wonderful to experience, because people are eating outdoors, it's raining, but you still have that feeling of the street is bustling with people eating, and it doesn't even matter. It's raining. But you still have that feeling of.

The street is bustling with people eating. And it doesn't even matter that it's raining. So fair play to Limerick City Council. And fair play to all the people of Limerick. Who just got fucking outraged. And didn't accept it. And complained online. So much so that Limerick City Council.

Had to take out the frosted glass. And put in clear glass. And I'm really looking forward to enjoying that. Especially as the weather gets a bit warmer in July and August. Like that's why I like going to Spain. It's so that I can sit outside and eat and drink. But what makes it nice in Spain is the predictability of it. If I sit down outside a restaurant in Spain

and I order a plate of food and a pint, I know that it's not suddenly going to start raining without warning in five minutes. I can confidently predict how my meal is going to go and I can relax. But in Ireland you can never do that. It doesn't matter how hot it is, doesn't matter how beautiful the day is, doesn't matter how clear the sky is. In Ireland if you're outdoors and there's no covering you cannot comfortably enjoy your meal without a looming sense of anxiety. It'd be a beautiful country if we could only put a roof over it. We've been saying that for a long time. Well finally Limerick has put a fucking roof over it. So fair play to Limerick because I'm not going to go away this summer. I'm staying in Limerick for the entire summer. I just don't want the the bullshit of traveling. Traveling right now

is hell. You don't know whether your flight is going to get cancelled. Airports are horrible. There's too many people in there. So I'm just going to stay in Limerick. And the reason I get out of Limerick is so that I can write. Because I like writing outdoors, outside a restaurant or a cafe with my laptop. So I'm going to be doing that over the summer in Limerick. But it got me thinking about when I was writing my first book over in Spain in 2017, I always returned to the same place in Andalusia, this city called Cordoba. It's like limerick but hot, it's about the same size. So when I'd sit down outside a cafe and whip out my laptop and just like sit there for eight hours writing, the waiters used to come up to me in Spain. And they'd have English

but you know their English wasn't fantastic and my Spanish isn't fantastic. So the waiters would always come over to me and say what are you writing? You know we've noticed you here all the time with your laptop in our restaurant outside. What are you writing if you don't mind me asking? So I said to one of the waiters over in Spain, I'm writing fiction. But he didn't hear fiction, he heard fishing. And then he told all the other waiters that I'm like a food writer or that I'm writing about the local fish. And then what started to happen in this city was. Every time I sat down at a fucking cafe. The waiter would come over with this free plate of prawns.

Because they're really proud of their prawns. In Cordoba. They call them gambas. So he'd come over to me with a plate of gambas. Now the thing is. I don't fucking eat prawns. I don't eat much seafood at all. I especially don't eat shellfish.

Because my mother is violently allergic to shellfish. So growing up, shellfish was banned from my house. And any time shellfish was brought up in conversation, my ma would just tell me stories about her throat closing up in restaurants. So I had this situation for like two years before the pandemic. When I would go to Cordoba. I couldn't sit down at any fucking restaurant. Without all the waiters going.

Oh there's the Irish fishing writer with his laptop. Let's give him free fucking prawns. But I didn't want to be rude. Because they're being nice giving me prawns. I didn't want to explain because I'd let it go on for too long. I didn't want to say, actually, I'm writing fiction, not fishing.

So I'd end up at every restaurant with a free plate of prawns and not knowing how the fuck to get rid of them. And I tried one once when I was drunk. I said, fuck it. Everyone seems to love these things. I'll give it a go. And I tried one once when I was drunk I said fuck it everyone seems to love these things I'll give it a go and I tried it and I really didn't like it because I think you have to be raised

on the taste of shellfish to enjoy it so I spat it out so eventually what started happening was because I'm eating outdoors with all these prawns in Spain there's all these small little stray cats around the place so I'd end up calling the cats over to the table and then feeding them the prawns under the table

without the waiter seeing and it worked it really worked for a while because then the waiter would come down the prawns are gone and I'm there rubbing my belly like I just had a lovely plate of free prawns so I didn't look like an ungrateful prick and the cats were happy but then what

started happening is now the cats started recognizing me as the fella who has all the prawns so anytime I tried to sit down outdoors in a restaurant in Cardaba, I'd get followed by groups of cats. There was like six of them. They were a family. There was kittens and maybe like a man, a dad, a brother and a sister. Mostly kittens and like three or four adults. But they'd be following me around now wherever I went. And whenever I sat down at a restaurant, I used to call the cats the Gambas gang so all of that started to get quite stressful to the point that it was

it was making me not enjoy writing because I can't just flip open my laptop and right now I have the stress of free prawns and being followed by cats and this was like 2017 and I was in Spain for like nearly seven weeks to write. So I said, fuck it, I'm going to get out of this city for a while and I'll spend a few days going to different towns

up and down the coast of Andalusia and just picking a bar or a restaurant in a new town, spend the day writing there, stay in a hotel and then move in a new town. Spend the day writing there. Stay in a hotel and then move to the next town. So I did that. I went south east to a place called Las Marinas. That's in Almeria. On the coast of Spain, on the east coast.

And I worked my way north. One day I found myself in this really small little Spanish village called Palomares. It'd be like the Spanish equivalent of Barra Sanassari. Incredibly hot with a mixture of like tourist villas and then also small local rural homes. And I sat myself down at a little bar type restaurant, ordered myself my tapas and my cerveza grandes and sat myself down outside for the entire day with my laptop open with the intention of writing for about five or six hours solid. So I did and it was magnificent. Now when I needed to go for a piss I'd leave my table and I'd go back into the little bar to go to their toilet. One of those lovely little small Spanish taverns that are dark inside so even when it's warm outside it's kind of cool inside the bar with the lovely tiles everywhere.

And they all drink that weird Scottish whiskey JB with coke. whiskey JB with coke. But as I was going to the Jacks, just above the bar, there was a newspaper article framed. So I went over and looked at it. And it was from like the 60s or 70s, but it was a photograph of this fella. Just like standing beside what looked like this big missile, like a bomb. And the headline said, Paco de la Bama. So I was going, what the fuck is this? Why in this tiny bar, in this tiny little Spanish village by the coast, is there a framed newspaper article of a fella beside a bomb? So I could see underneath the photograph, the name said Francisco Simo Arts.

O-R-T-S. So I went for my piss, went back out to my table with my laptop and said, right, I'm taking a break from writing because I need to start googling who this Francisco Simo Arts fella is. And it led me down the most beautiful rabbit hole. In 1966, in this little village of palomares right the u.s air force were flying a b-52 bomber right which is a huge airplane

that has loads and loads of bombs on it it It was the height of the Cold War and the intention of this aircraft was to continually fly around Europe so that if they needed to drop a lot of bombs on Russia at short notice they could. You see the Cold War was a nuclear war that could happen at any moment and And before intercontinental nuclear missiles, which is basically a missile in America that launches into space and can land in Russia in a matter of minutes, and Russia has the same, it led to a policy known as mutually assured destruction, or MAD as it's known, like a nuclear Mexican standoff. Russia and the US had gotten to the point where they're like,

we have a lot of nuclear missiles pointed at you and you have a lot of nuclear missiles pointed at us. So if you pull the trigger, we pull the trigger too. And we can mutually assure destruction. There's no point launching any nuclear missiles because one nuclear missile means the whole world ends. And that's became the nuclear deterrent system in the world. Mad, because it is fucking mad. But before that, before intercontinental nuclear missiles, the US used to just have planes in the sky at all times that contained nuclear bombs flying all around Europe at all times. That contained nuclear bombs. Flying all around Europe. At all times.

And one day in 1966. High up in the sky. An American B-2 bomber. That had four nuclear bombs on board. Was refueling in the sky. Because like I said that's the whole point. This plane is in the air. Like all the time. And it's getting refueled in the sky. Because like I said, that's the whole point. This plane is in the air like all the time and it's getting refueled

in the air. Well while this plane was refueling over Spain the plane that was refueling it crashed against the bomber and the two planes exploded mid-air over Palomares in Spain.

Remember, one of these planes had four fucking nuclear bombs. This is a doomsday scenario. This is the worst thing that can happen. Now, the bombs were designed so that if they did accidentally fall out of the sky, they wouldn't explode when they landed. But still, you don't want four loaded nuclear bombs falling from the sky and hitting the ground. You just don't want to take that risk.

These bombs were several times more powerful than the ones that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And now they're falling from the fucking sky towards the ground in Spain. And if they explode, they would take out the southern part of fucking Spain. It would cause a nuclear winter around the world. So this huge explosion happens over the sky of Palomares and all of the bombs that the aircraft is holding fall to the fucking ground. Thankfully the nuclear bombs don't explode but several of the conventional bombs do actually explode on Spanish territory. The area gets spread with nuclear radiation, which to this day the US and Spain are still fighting over because it's not fully cleaned up. This becomes a massive international incident.

The world's media is alerted. What the fuck do you mean America? world's media is alerted. What the fuck do you mean America? You're flying planes around Europe with nuclear bombs and now one of them's after crashing and now there's four nuclear bombs after falling out of the sky so it's an international incident. The Yanks recovered three of the nuclear bombs. Thankfully they didn't fucking explode because if they did I don't know if you and me would be talking about this today. They find three but one of them is missing they locate the parachute that was belonging to the nuclear bomb but they reckon it went somewhere into the sea so now america has to go to the world we're uh we're missing a nuclear bomb in the spanish sea and it's somewhere in the Spanish Sea and it's a nuclear bomb

like it might explode we don't know so the Yanks get every fucking ship that they own straight into the Mediterranean and carding off the whole area to try and find their missing nuclear bomb that's active

and somewhere in the middle of the Spanish Ocean so while this explosion happens in the sky, miles in the air, over Palomares in Spain, out in the sea, in his little fishing boat, is a fisherman from Palomares. And this man's name was Francisco Simo Arts. This is the man whose photograph was in the bar. So he's out in the middle of the ocean

trying to fish for his gambas, for his prawns. He sees this explosion in the sky and as he's looking up he watches as one very heavy object drops from the sky and splashes right into the ocean. This is the man whose photograph I saw in the bar in Palomares. This is Paco La Bama, a local fisherman from the village. Suddenly he's plunged into an international fucking incident and he finds himself being hired by the US military. This is a big deal. This is a huge deal. Europe is terrified. There's a nuclear bomb somewhere at the bottom of the Spanish fucking ocean. And the Yanks don't know where it is. So the Yanks, with all their technology, have to turn to the small little fishermen.

And say to Francisco Arts, where did you see the bomb go Francisco? Where did you see it go? And he goes, just over there. I was on my fishing boat. I saw it. So the Yanks mobilize and they send down submarines and everything they can possibly imagine because the thing is with an unexploded nuclear bomb at the bottom of the ocean

okay number one it might explode and be very very bad for Europe number two they can't leave it there because then the Russians will find it so everything depends on the information that Francisco Arts can give them. Gives them the right information, they send down the submarines. It takes the Americans eight weeks to finally find the nuclear bomb. It had gone right down to the bed of the ocean, stuck into the middle of a trench. They get it back and then Francisco is like a local hero.

He's the one who helped the Americans find the nuclear bomb. He saved Europe. And then the months pass. I'm sure Francisco got a lot of free pints. And he starts to think. Because Francisco's a fisherman. This is his trade. And he remembers a law.

There's an old maritime law. that goes back hundreds of years. If a ship sinks in the middle of the ocean, and whenever a ship sinks or any vessel sinks in the ocean, someone wants to salvage it. You know, that's a lot of iron, that's a lot of resources. Someone wants to go down and get the ship and either build a new one or use it for scrap or whatever. But when a ship sinks and someone wants to salvage it,

under maritime law, the person who identifies where the vessel sank is entitled to 2% of the value of that ship if it gets salvaged. So Francisco, the fisherman from Palomares, starts to think, fuck that lads, I'm after finding your nuclear bomb. Ye salvaged it. Under maritime law, I'm entitled to compensation of 2%. How much is that nuclear bomb worth?

It was worth $2 billion in 1966, which is probably $10 billion now. So Francisco the fisherman from Palomares is rubbing his hands together going, I'm entitled to 2% of $2 billion, you Yankee bastards. So Simo heads to New York and he takes the US military to court

demanding 2% of 2 billion dollars because maritime law says he's entitled to it the Yanks are like fuck what do we do he's right so the US military settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and this is where he got the nickname

Paco La Bama and that's what that article was in the bar it was about him finding the nuclear bomb, taking the US military to court and getting money. Now the sad thing is, is that this was Spain under the fascist dictator Francisco Franco. So even though Paco La Bama was probably paid millions by the US military, it's likely that Franco would have seized that money. Because Franco wasn't happy with the US military flying nuclear bombs over the country. He banned all US military planes from flying over Spanish airspace.

So it's unlikely that Franco would have allowed this little fisherman to become a multi-millionaire as a result of it. But it only dawned on me today when I was thinking of that story. The only reason I ended up in the village of Palomares. Was because in Cordoba they thought I was a fishing writer. And I was banished by the waiters and the prawns and the cats. And if I hadn't visited that bar in Palomares and seen the photograph of Paco La Bama I wouldn't have ended up

with this really interesting story which is literally about a fisherman from Spain and I adore the synchronicity of that. I love the happy accident of that situation but the Palomares incident that was huge, that was a big deal. It had massive political impacts for the United States. It eventually led them to stop having B-52 bombers in the air at all times that had nuclear weapons. They were like, this is going to happen again.

We need to do something differently. Also, areas around Palomares were left with radioactive soil from the bombs that did explode. I don't know why that was because they weren't nuclear bombs they were conventional bombs but they might have had that depleted uranium shit. So like I said up until today Spain and the US are still trying to clean up radioactive soil in the area. But within the US military that incident is known as a broken arrow. So within US military speak anytime something bad accidentally happens with a nuclear weapon they refer to it as a broken arrow.

And it's the worst thing that can possibly happen and the US try to put all their resources into a broken arrow never happening. It's also this weird post-colonial shit that the US try to put all their resources into a broken arrow never happening. It's also this weird post-colonial shit that the US do. The US name all of their fucking military vehicles and military terminology after the conflicts and genocide that they committed on the Native American people. Like they have their Apache helicopter and their Comanche helicopter and now they have the

broken arrow incident but the broken arrow that happened in palomares was so freaky for the yanks that they pumped their resources into developing a situation by any means that if a nuclear weapon ever goes missing again how the fuck do we find it as soon as humanly possible? Because in this situation, radar didn't work, metal detectors didn't work, technology could not find this nuclear bomb. Information from a Spanish fisherman found this fucking nuclear bomb. So the Yanks said, we need to think outside the box here. we need to think outside the box here. So in stepped the CIA,

the absolute fucking lunatics, who each time I read about the CIA, I find a new piece of information that I simply can't believe. The CIA started to pump billions of dollars into researching psychics. They start to say, okay, if radar fails, if metal detector fails, and we lose a nuclear bomb again,

we want someone who is a psychic, a human being who can use the power of their mind to supernaturally see a nuclear bomb in their mind if it goes missing. We want to fund that to see if we can make it happen. fund that to see if we can make it happen. We want to research if psychics are real and if we can train psychics to find the nuclear bomb if it ever goes missing again. I'm not joking. They declassified the documents.

And that's what I'm going to speak about in the second part of this podcast after the ocarina pause. I don't have my ocarina because I'm in my office. What I do have is my Puerto Rican guero that was sent to me from somebody in the Bronx. So let's have the Puerto Rican guero pause and you're going to hear a little advert for something. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none.

Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play.

Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. To be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real.

Who said that? The First Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. That was the Puerto Rican Guero pause. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. This podcast is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living.

I wouldn't be able to produce this podcast every week if it wasn't my full-time job because as I mentioned at the start these are monologue essays that require several days of writing and researching to do and I do it all myself. I adore doing this work, I absolutely love it. However, if you're enjoying this work, if you're enjoying listening to this podcast as it gives you a sense of entertainment, escapism, if it brings any bit of listening to this podcast, if it gives you a sense of entertainment, escapism, if it brings any bit of happiness to your week, please consider paying me for that work. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month and for that you'll get four podcasts. The price of everything is going up so my Patreon has taken a hit as a result of that. That's understandable but But I would ask you, if you can, if you met me in real life and you're like, fuck it, I like Blind Boy's podcast,

I'd buy him a pint or I'd buy him a coffee. Please do that if you can afford it, because I'm an independent podcaster and that's what keeps this podcast going and keeps it independent. If you can't afford it, look, don't worry about it because the person who can afford it is paying for you to listen for free. It's a lovely model that's based on kindness and soundness and it means that everybody does get a podcast. But I really do need patrons and I need to keep this thing independent so that I'm not beholden to advertisers and so that advertisers don't get to dictate or change the content or the way that I make this podcast. Large podcast services, streaming services, they're really crushing small independent creators and pushing us to the bottom. So support small independent podcast creators because we're the ones that are making content that's authentic and that we care about and you can support not just monetarily but by sharing the podcast on social media leaving reviews speaking about it

to a friend if we don't do this we're going to be left with a lot of shit podcasts also i have one gig this month down in ballybunion i'm at the ballybunion arts festival so if you're around ballybunion near the end of july look it up on Google and come along to that place. So as I mentioned before, the Ocarina Paws, the Palomares incident in Spain, where the US lost a nuclear bomb, caused them to drastically change their policy and to completely freak out, which led to the CIA taking an interest in funding human psychics who could find nuclear bombs that were lost with their minds. That sounds unbelievable, it sounds like conspiracy theory. Well it's not conspiracy theory anymore it's conspiracy because the documents that

prove it were declassified in 1995 and it's there for everybody to read. I'm always fascinated with the bizarre shit that the CIA have done but I always tried to keep my fascination within the realms of what's evidence-based, what I can actually see and what can be proven. I'm less interested in contemporary conspiracy theories because it can lead you down dangerous rabbit holes. Unfortunately a lot of contemporary conspiracy theory thinking is very aligned with the far right and ultimately a lot of conspiracy theory is speculative fiction. It's a lot of people guessing about what might be happening and collectively

writing a fiction and I don't find that stuff interesting even though I have no doubt that the CIA right now or the FBI or the NSA are probably doing crazy mad shit right now. But what I find myself much more interested in is what they've done in the past that can be concretely proven with evidence and documents. And from 1978 up until 1991, the US military and the CIA secretly funded a project known as Project Stargate, which was trying to weaponise what's called remote viewing psychic powers trying to see if human beings through very intense meditation

if their minds could leave their bodies and find themselves in another part of the world could somebody in Washington in a room go into a trance state and witness something that's happening in Russia using only the power of their mind? If a nuclear bomb went missing somewhere in the jungle or in the ocean and they couldn't use radar to find it, could a psychic in Washington transport their mind to the bottom of that ocean to see the nuclear bomb?

Well, the CIA took that seriously. Now there's a number of reasons why they did take that seriously. The first one and the most obvious one was in 1977 the CIA received intelligence that Russia was investigating psychics. And the CIA who were in a cold war with Russia, instead of saying fuck me the Russians are investigating psychics, war with Russia, instead of saying, fuck me, the Russians are investigating psychics, the mad bastards, that's so silly. Instead of saying that, they said, well, if the Russians are pumping billions into investigating psychics, what if they're onto

something? We don't have the luxury of saying they're mad. We also now have to start researching psychics. That's the most plausible explanation here. And some people think the Russians weren't researching psychics at all. They deliberately released information so that the CIA would see it and then waste a lot of money researching psychics. And the other reason, like I mentioned, was incidents like the Palomares incident was so terrible was so risky

that the US military said we have to try everything so that never happens again no matter how irrational no matter how bizarre we have to try it because we can't let that happen again so we need to research if a person can find a nuclear

bomb with their mind and if they can't, great, we know that we can't. It's just lost money, who cares. So long story short, after 20 years of research into using psychics in the military, did it work? No it didn't and the US military said the entire project was a giant waste of money. Psychics aren't real, no matter how much you research into it. But that's not what I find fascinating. What I find fascinating is the research that went into it, and in particular, is the scientific theories that the US military came up with to explain the nature of what reality is,

in order to explain how a psychic could work if they were real so the CIA declassified a document there I think it was around 2015 and the name of this document is analysis and assessment of the gateway process and this whole document is available declassified it's from 1983 I think. You can find it online. It's on the fucking CIA's website. But this document by the US military concludes that reality itself is actually a simulation.

That in order to explore how someone could psychically place their mind in a different place, in order to explore how someone could psychically place their mind in a different place, in order to explore that possibility, they came to the conclusion that reality is a type of computer simulation. So what this report, The Gateway Process, which was years and years of research, What it tries to get at is, can subjects use transcendental meditation to bypass our human experience of reality? To bypass space and time itself? And they go into quantum physics to try and explain this. Now this is deeply difficult shit to try and understand and I'm going to do my best to try and explain it with my limited vocabulary around the area. So the report says that under quantum physics the universe is basically vibrating energy. There's no such thing as solid matter. Even if you try and grab a cup in front

of you right now, like on a subatomic level, that's not actually solid. Everything around us is vibrational energy, but so imperceivably tiny that our brains don't experience this vibrational energy. We just experience the illusion of things being solid and real. The universe is just loads of vibrating energy. The room around you right now is vibrating energy. Our brains, specifically our consciousness, translate this universe into what we understand as physical reality. But it's an illusion. Reality is like a 3D hologram. What we experience is limited to the mechanics of our brains, our consciousness and our senses. The easiest way to understand this is, take it back to Rene Descartes and the analogy of the bat. You and I are humans.

We smell things. We see things. we touch things, we hear things, we think about things. Our reality is communicated to us within the limits of our senses. What if you're a bat? Bats exist in a world where they effectively see using sound. Some bats are almost completely blind, yet they can fly around a room and not hit off things using echolocation, which is a type of sonar. So what's the inside of a bat's brain like? How does a bat see a room in its perception, in its consciousness? What is reality to a bat who sees a room using its ears? What about certain birds who can navigate the world because they have

like a quantum split experiment in their mind that allows them to see and predict magnetic fields? What is the world like to a bird of prey that can see ultraviolet light? This light that's all around us, but our human senses can't see it, but a bird of prey can. So basically, this CIA report says, reality is a construct that is constructed by the limitations of the human brain,

and we're the only ones who are really able to talk about it. We live in a 3D hologram that's a bit like a video game. So the CIA theory goes that because we as humans are capable of thinking about this, we're not only capable of experiencing reality, but also holding it as a concept within our brains, such as a dream or a memory. Because reality, time, matter, because these things don't actually exist, they're constructs of our brains, technically, we should be able to transcend these things

to travel through time or exist outside of time by separating our consciousness from our bodies. So because like past, present, future and everything are constructs of the hologram, the human mind, when properly attuned, should be able to access information from the past, present or future. And this is done using transcendental meditation. So the CIA broke this process down into several different stages. The first one is known as the gateway affirmation.

So the person who wants to escape the limitations of consciousness and reality would begin by meditating and repeating a phrase to themselves. The phrase that the CIA recommended was, I am merely a physical body and deeply desire to expand my consciousness. Then the subject is played these frequencies, these sounds that are known as the hemi-sync. I'll try and explain this. So do you remember I mentioned earlier that the universe is vibrational energy? Well the hemi-sync is when a human is meditating to these hemi-sync noises. Well the goal is for a human who's

transcendentally meditating for the two hemispheres of the brain to resonate at the same frequency as the vibrations that make up the universe. The subject is then exposed to pink and white noise which are type of noises that lull

the body into a type of waking sleep. The next stage is called the energy balloon where the person who's meditating envisages an energy in their body like a balloon that goes from their feet to the top of their head. If you meditate regularly, you'll understand what the energy balloon is. Then, apparently, the subject's consciousness starts to leave their body and they have an out-of-body experience, which is something people who practice Transcendental Meditation can claim they experience. And then finally, the subject has hacked the nature of reality and their consciousness is now experiencing dimensions

outside of our physical consciousness that we're aware of in everyday life. I know this shit sounds absolutely fucking mad, but this is a CIA report based on 20 years of research that they did and then the final goal at the end of this process is remote viewing that the subject who's meditating that their consciousness has fully left their body they can now engage with the quantum hologram of what reality is and technically travel with their mind through any point in time and receive information. So all that is mad. But the CIA decided to research it for 20 fucking years. Anyone who's interested in Buddhism, Hinduism, ancient religions were kind of thinking this way

going back 4,000 fucking years. What does the cynic in me say? Well, if the US government gives you billions of dollars and 20 years to research into something as mad as psychic energy, you're going to have to come back to your bosses with something. You're implying all these theoretical physicists, all these quantum physicists. You can't come back with a blank page. You need to come back with evidence that you've actually spent time thinking and researching. But for me, the most fascinating part of that entire document is the very solid theory of what reality is.

We live in a type of computer simulation and matter, vision, sound, everything, time, these things don't really exist. All that exists is vibrational energy and reality is the complete and utter construct of the human brain. Think of it this way, if you're playing a computer game, the character in your computer game, that world is their reality. The colours, they don't have smells in video games. They just have sound, vision, vibrations and they have the passage of time. They don't have emotions. Your video game character has a very, very, very limited set of tools that operate within the reality of that video game. But to them, that's reality, as limited as it is. But us, on the outside looking in, with emotions, smells, memories, our reality is far, far more sophisticated than the reality of our character

in our video game. But if you tried to explain our reality to the character in the video game, they haven't a hope, they can't see it. So we're like the vibrational energy of the universe to the character in the video game. But the imperceivable vibrations of the universe, we're just the character in the video game, limited by our senses. Reality is a hologram created by our consciousness, and so is time and so is space. And those are the conclusions of the US military

that you can read, if you like, looking up the report from 9th of June, 1983, and it is known as The Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process. And that is available on the CIA's website. And regarding the type of meditation that the CIA are recommending. I actually tried it today. You can try it yourself.

Just go into YouTube and type in Hemi Sync Meditation. Because people who do Transcendental Meditation have been using this for ages. In particular, a group known as the Monroe Institute. So you can, it's like a half an hour meditation. There's loads of them. You put on your headphones. And it's a guided meditation that uses these Hemi-sync vibrational noises and I tried it today like I meditate regularly I do simple mindfulness meditations and this hemi-sync meditation I did

today it was very very different I won't say I enjoyed it It sent me into quite a deep trance. That I didn't enjoy. It felt more like I was being hypnotized. So when I meditate regularly. Like a mindfulness meditation. I'm very aware. And I'm very in my body. When I meditate mindfully. All I'm doing is focusing on my breathing. Checking in with my body when I meditate mindfully all I'm doing is focusing on my breathing

checking in with my body and what it does is it completely relaxes my central nervous system so that I experience a level of quiet calm that kind of washes out my brain when I meditate regularly it just removes all the stress hormones from my body and I feel this wonderful, calm clarity. But at all times, I'm incredibly aware. I'm incredibly present. It's very rooted in the here and now. This Hemi Sync meditation, which was a half hour long that I did earlier, after about 20 minutes I started to see things, colours and shapes. I wasn't present because the goal of this meditation is to literally leave your body. It's to leave, it's for your consciousness to leave your body.

I didn't really like it. It felt, I didn't feel like I was in control. When I meditate regularly, I'm in control and I'm present. With this Hemi Sync meditation, someone was telling me what to do. And what it felt like a bit was, the period just before you fall asleep, when you're half awake and half dreaming. That's what this meditation felt like. And it's not something I do every day.

And it was a little bit freaky. I wasn't mad about it. I much prefer my standard breathing meditation. Where all I'm trying to do is achieve a level of calmness. I don't think I need to leave my body. I don't want you coming away from this episode thinking that Blind Boy's gone stone mad. I haven't.

All I've done, like the first half of this podcast made perfect sense. All I've done with this podcast is I read out the findings of a particularly bizarre CIA report into the nature of reality. The US government pumped loads of money at the CIA and the US military and said, here's 20 years, get your best scientists and tell us what reality is. And this is what the report says. It's not conspiracy theory, it's declassified information.

That's so mad, I feel like I have to apologise for it. But if you do meditate regularly, and if your head is in a good place, that's one thing I should mention. If your head isn't in a very good place, if you're not feeling the best recently, if you're a bit anxious, I wouldn't recommend doing one of those HemiSync meditations. It's very, very intense, even for me as someone who meditates a lot. But if you're curious, give it a go. It's only meditation and they're all over YouTube. You want HemiSync, H-E-M-I-S-Y-N-C meditation and try and get the ones that are from the Monroe Institute.

Right, I'll talk to you next week. I hope the second part of that podcast made sense because that was incredibly difficult for me to try and explain. How the fuck do you explain that stuff because it's it's outside the realms of language almost. I touched on some of it with an expert before on simulation theory and I have a podcast called Quantum Tarantino and I spoke to an expert a quantum physicist called Dan Brooks I think his name was and he's an expert he's a quantum physicist and he explained some of this simulation theory and reality and quantum theory. So maybe go back and listen to that if you want a better handle on what I'm talking about

because I'm way out of my depth. All right. Dog bless. Catch you next week. Don't know what I'm going to be talking about. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to

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