The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 559: Compilation: Our Reality is an Illusion

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

Could our reality be an illusion? Startling evidence suggests the world as we know it may not be what it seems. Clues hidden in plain sight point to the mind-bending possibility that we're living in ...a simulation. Quantum experiments reveal the universe might exist in infinite parallel versions, each containing alternate realities and copies of you. Reports of mysterious travelers from non-existent countries hint at intertwining dimensions just beyond our perception. Ancient devices and secret experiments may allow communication with these otherworldly realms, or even enable passage between them. This compilation of theories and strange accounts will make you question the very nature of existence.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our Tread Experts. Until May 30th, purchase four new Michelin passenger or light truck tires and receive up to $70 by prepaid MasterCard. Conditions apply. Details at Michelin.ca. Find a Michelin Tread Experts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there at Treadexperts.ca slash locations. Hey, thanks for clicking on this. Yeah, yeah, I know another compilation. And we normally put up compilations instead of an episode to give us a break and try to catch up. But that's not what this is. This is something different. You know what? This would be easier from my office.
Starting point is 00:00:46 So let's just, yeah, let's go over there. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. What? If you're in your office, how am I supposed to get my airtime? Well, you won't. This is just. Hang on, hang on.
Starting point is 00:00:57 If I may. Go ahead. Section six, part B, on screen presence. What's this? My contract. Oh, boy. The talent, that's me, shall appear on screen in each and every episode of the series, that's the Y-Files, produced under this agreement.
Starting point is 00:01:15 The talent agrees to make themselves available for production as required by the producer, that's you, human. Again, the talent shall appear in each and every episode. I rest my case. So? So, if you don't let me be in this episode, you'll be in breach. Don't make me call my lawyer.
Starting point is 00:01:35 We have the same lawyer. I will. Yeah, well, you'll still be in breach. All right, do me a favor and read that last sentence again. Oh, certainly. The talent agrees to make themselves available for production as required by the producer. So what? So, you miss productions all the time.
Starting point is 00:01:54 Oh, stop whining. I just don't show up for the sponsor ads. Big whoop. Sponsor ads are important. Sponsor ads are beneath me. Not according to your contract. But... I'm leaving.
Starting point is 00:02:07 But Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 16 says... It says a deal is a deal. I know, we already did the rules of acquisition bit. Oh, right, for the Christmas song. Link below if you want to see that, by the way. I have a lovely singing voice. Eh, that's debatable. By the way, did you know that Rule 16 was amended in the novel Legends of the Ferengi?
Starting point is 00:02:26 I will maintain that the 16th Rule of Acquisition, the most sacred of all Ferengi precepts, is a deal is a deal. Until a better one comes along. It's really annoying that you're such a nerd. Sorry. Off I go. I still think this is a bunch of bullshit. Thank you. Anyway, the reason for the compilation is kind of an algorithm trick. Not just for the algorithm, but also for new people coming to the channel.
Starting point is 00:03:10 Our last episode, I hit the government pretty hard with the dark side of DARPA. I mean, I really hammered them hard. And that episode is getting a lot of views, which I guess is good. But I also have coming up... Sorry, it's not a professional operation. I also have coming up this a bunch of government conspiracy stuff. I'm not this government conspiracy guy. Just like I don't post a bunch of UFO videos in a row or a bunch of alien videos or all that stuff. I'm not the alien guy. I'm not the anything guy. I just, I like weird stories. What do we call them? Mysteries, myths, urban legends.
Starting point is 00:04:08 I like the stories. I like to try to find the truth in the stories and have fun doing it. I don't want to be put into a box. So that's why this compilation is here. It's just to kind of break things up with a little something different. So what are we doing? I got to look at my words. Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay.
Starting point is 00:04:28 First episode, it's number 61. It's simulation theory, which I'm sure you've heard this by now, but it's the theory that everything, our entire existence, maybe even the entire universe, is just a computer program. And I don't
Starting point is 00:04:46 know if it's even that controversial anymore. But if I had to bet, I'd say that we are in a simulation. Anyway, it's a short episode. I'll see you in a minute. Is this reality? Well, we're experiencing something right now. So maybe the better question is, what is reality? Could everything we see, everything we experience, everything that exists in our entire universe be artificial? Supporters of simulation theory believe that not only is it possible
Starting point is 00:05:17 that we're living in a simulation, it's likely. And the more we look for evidence, the more we find. Let's find out why. The idea of the universe being a simulation is not a new one. Theories exist in ancient cultures around the world. Modern simulation theory comes from Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford who wrote an influential paper on the subject in 2003. Assuming that living in a simulation is possible, Bostrom presents the simulation trilemma, which says one of the
Starting point is 00:05:50 following must be true. One, we destroy ourselves before we're able to create a simulation. Two, we're able to create a simulation but choose not to. Or three, we are definitely in a simulation. Bostrom believes each of these is equally likely to be true. Now, I don't think that's controversial. We use computer models to study the human population, predict the weather, for entertainment. We simulate everything. And when a civilization can create a realistic simulation,
Starting point is 00:06:17 the most obvious one to create is that of its own early existence. Bostrom calls this an ancestral simulation. And a civilization that can do this wouldn't just create one simulation. It would create many. And those simulated civilizations might create their own simulations of the universe and on and on like Russian nesting dolls of reality. Now you're a character in that world and you think you have free will and say, I want to invent a computer. So you do, Hey,
Starting point is 00:06:42 I want to create a world in my computer. And then that world creates a world in its computer. So you do. Hey, I want to create a world in my computer. And then that world creates a world in its computer. And then you have simulations all the way down. When Elon Musk was asked what he thought the chances were that our reality is the original base reality, the odds that we're in base reality is one in billions. Neil deGrasse Tyson is a little more conservative. He thinks the odds that we are in base reality versus a simulated reality is 50-50. A 50-50 chance that everything we experience is artificial, that's still pretty high. And even though we mostly hear what scientists think about this, it's not scientific theory. Simulation theory isn't math, it's philosophy.
Starting point is 00:07:22 It isn't physics, it's metaphysics. So what we need is hard evidence that we live in a simulation. And to find proof, all you have to do is look. Let's start at the beginning. There was no space or time. The contents of the entire universe were concentrated to the size of a tennis ball and had a temperature of a quadrillion degrees. Then suddenly, the Big Bang. Everything explodes outward faster than the speed of light. Then about 14 billion years later,
Starting point is 00:07:56 we've got galaxies and planets and ice cream and K-pop. Ice cream, killing, killing, ice cream. I could do it after K-pop. Me too. Okay, if before the Big Bang there was no space and no time, what was there? What about the beginning of the universe from the religious point of view? God created everything. Fine. Where was he before?
Starting point is 00:08:19 What caused the Big Bang to happen in the first place? What made God decide to snap his fingers or wiggle his nose or whatever he did to make everything happen? If you ask a physicist to explain what existed before the universe, they'll give you an answer about quantum foam, dark energy, or something just as bonkers as the Big Bang. Ask a theologian what existed before God created the universe, and you'll get an answer equally as confusing. But what does make sense is that the universe was just sitting there, dormant. Then someone, somewhere, decided to boot up a program. And in that program, our program, are all the laws of the universe.
Starting point is 00:08:56 Electromagnetism and gravitational force are written into the program. The speed of light gets a value. There's code for Planck's constants of mass, speed, and time. Avogadro's number is in there, along with a bunch of other rules that govern the behavior of everything that exists, all part of our program. Even consciousness itself is part of our simulation. If you've never heard of simulation theory, then this might sound far-fetched,
Starting point is 00:09:17 but some of the world's most respected scientists, technologists, and philosophers believe that it is more likely than not that we are living in an artificial reality. So, and philosophers believe that it is more likely than not that we are living in an artificial reality. So, how do we prove it? If we live in an artificial reality, it would make sense for there to be occasional glitches. Philip K. Dick is one of the most influential science fiction writers of all time.
Starting point is 00:09:47 Movies based on his books include Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, and plenty of others. He believed there are many universes, and sometimes those other realities bleed into ours. He claimed to have visions of this, and even wrote stories like The Man in the High Castle based on these visions.
Starting point is 00:10:05 That in fact, plural realities did exist superimposed onto one another by so many film transparencies one way other realities blend into ours could be the mandela effect the mandela effect is when a large number of people have memories of events that don't match reality this is called the mandela effect because millions of people specifically remember Nelson Mandela died in prison. He didn't. People remember his wife walking beside his casket in a funeral procession that was on television for two hours that day.
Starting point is 00:10:36 This never happened. Or the Berenstain Bears, which people insist were always called the Berenstein Bears. People remember the tycoon from Monopoly having a monocle that he never had. What was Darth Vader famous for saying? Luke, I am your father. Nope, he never said that. What? What about Stouffer's Stovetop Stuffing?
Starting point is 00:10:55 Best part of Thanksgiving. No, it isn't, because there's no such product. Stovetop is made by craft. Uh, no. The evil queen from Snow White who looked into her mirror and said, Mirror, mirror on the wall. Nope.
Starting point is 00:11:09 Magic mirror on the wall. Who is the fairest one of all? Uh, my reality is shattered. People remember Febreze being spelled with two E's. People remember Jiffy Peanut Butter, but there's no such thing. And there are a lot more. A lot more. Personally, I don't have most of these false memories,
Starting point is 00:11:30 but there are a few that get me. The Flintstones. There are two T's in the Flintstones. I remember just one. And what about the Fruit of the Loom logo? I could swear it looks like this, but it doesn't. This is the actual logo. No cornucopia. Corn what now basket didn't you
Starting point is 00:11:46 say basket for crying out loud and at the end of moonraker a terrible but excellent james baum movie i remember jaw's girlfriend is having braces i mean i specifically remember it she didn't I just can't get my brain to accept it. That's the Mandela effect. So why do millions of people distinctly remember different things? Glitch in a simulation. Yep. Philip K. Dick also felt when we experience deja vu, it's because something in our simulated universe changed
Starting point is 00:12:23 and a new timeline branched off of the current one. We are living in a computer programmed reality and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed. Ever feel like you've lived a moment before? That's because according to Philip K. Dick and others, you have. Deja vu is the simulation correcting itself
Starting point is 00:12:44 with new information. But skeptics can easily dismiss these theories. The human mind is terribly unreliable. They don't accept this as evidence. But we're not done yet. We live in a huge universe. 200 billion trillion stars. And even if life is rare, you'd think there'd be some evidence of it somewhere.
Starting point is 00:13:12 This is Fermi's paradox. According to the Drake equation, there should be over a million technologically advanced civilizations just in our galaxy. And on average, the nearest one should be just a few hundred light years away. But there's nothing, at least not that we can see. So where is everybody? Are we really alone in the universe? Or does our program only focus on us? And what about the physical rules that are in place?
Starting point is 00:13:36 Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at MIT, said the strict laws of physics point to the possibility of a simulation. Putting a cap on the speed of light sure is a good way to keep your sims from venturing out too far from home. Theoretical physicist James Gates thought simulation theory was crazy. Then he started studying quarks and electrons. He found error-correcting code buried deep inside the equations used to describe string theory. So you're saying as you dig deeper, you find computer code writ in the fabric of the cosmos? Into the equations that we want to use to describe the cosmos, yes. Computer code? Computer code, strings of bits of ones and zeros.
Starting point is 00:14:21 Dr. Gates has changed his mind about simulation theory. In 2017, a group of scientists at the University of Washington proved they can embed computer code into strands of DNA. Everything in nature is math. Look at the Fibonacci sequence. You get the Fibonacci sequence by adding two previous numbers
Starting point is 00:14:39 in the sequence together. So one plus one equals two, two plus one equals three, three plus two equals five, five plus 3 equals 8, and so on forever. You get the golden ratio, also called phi, by dividing two consecutive Fibonacci numbers. So the number 89 is a Fibonacci number. The next number in the sequence after 89 is 144. 144 divided by 89 is the golden ratio.
Starting point is 00:15:03 It's about 1.618. We see Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio everywhere. The number of petals on a flower is usually a Fibonacci number. Lilies have three petals. Buttercups have five. Chicory has 21. And a daisy has 34. And the spacing of each petal is arranged in a circle according to the golden ratio.
Starting point is 00:15:22 As trees grow, the number of branches they form is a fibonacci number and not just plants animals too the ratio of female to male honeybees in a colony is the golden ratio 1.618 the human body conforms to the golden ratio too most of the body follows the numbers one two three and five one nose two eyes three limb segments five. One nose, two eyes, three limb segments, five fingers, five toes. The proportions of the body, like the length of your shoulder to your elbow, and from your elbow to your fingertips, that's the golden ratio. Even a DNA molecule measures 34 angstroms long by 21 angstroms wide. Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio. From the spiral of seashells to the spiral of a galaxy and everything in between, Fibonacci numbers are everywhere.
Starting point is 00:16:06 Now, some claim this is a coincidence, that humans look for patterns in chaos because that's what we're programmed to do. What we're programmed to do. It isn't that interesting. By trying to debunk simulation theory, they actually end up proving it. No matter what we study, whether it's something the size of a galaxy or as small as an electron, everything in the universe seems to follow patterns and rules. In other words, a program.
Starting point is 00:16:37 To simulate an entire universe, you'd obviously need more advanced technology than we have. But that doesn't mean we won't get there. Moore's Law says that computing power doubles every 18 months. You'd obviously need more advanced technology than we have, but that doesn't mean we won't get there. Moore's law says that computing power doubles every 18 months, and this has held true for about 50 years. Now that is slowing down a little bit, but only because of physical limitations. Assuming we can learn to make microchips smaller, and there's no doubt that we will, it's predicted that artificial intelligence could surpass human intelligence within the next hundred
Starting point is 00:17:04 years. As Elon Musk points out, when he was a kid, the world's most advanced video game was Pong, two rectangles on a screen. Forty years later, video game technology is barely distinguishable from reality. He said that six years ago. And even in that short time, video game engines have become even more realistic. Look at this footage from Unreal Engine 5. When a world we can build feels as real as our own.
Starting point is 00:17:38 What just happened? Imagine what games are going to look like in the next six years, or the next 60, or the next 6,000. But simulating an entire universe, how big of a computer will we need? Well, it's estimated that there are 10 to the power of 80 atoms in the universe. Let me put that on the screen just for fun. Okay, that's a lot. If each particle needs 128 bits to calculate its position and momentum, you're at 10 to the power of 83 bits. And that's
Starting point is 00:18:06 just for data storage. We also need computing power to track what each of those particles is doing. If we say two floating point operations per second, or two flops per particle, we're at two times 10 to the 80th power flops. There aren't even words for these numbers. And this is the computing power for just the stuff in the universe what about human intelligence the human brain can perform a hundred trillion calculations per second or a hundred teraflops multiplied by billions of people the numbers are ridiculous to power all of this the simulation would need access to multiple dyson spheres the mega structures that capture 100 of the energy of a star. Or the simulation would
Starting point is 00:18:45 have to harness the energy from black holes. This is why famous physicists like Dr. Michio Kaku are not on board with simulation theory. He claims that simulating a universe is not scientifically possible. The only computer capable of simulating a universe is the universe itself. Now, at first glance, this makes sense sense but with all due respect to dr kaku that's not how simulations work when you're playing a 3d video game the entire game world isn't rendered instead the game engine only calculates what the player can see and interact with at that specific moment if we are living in a simulation then it would make sense that the creators of the simulation would use a similar technique. And wouldn't it be interesting if there was evidence that this is exactly what happens?
Starting point is 00:19:28 Whoa, wait a minute. Do we have proof? Sweet fancy Moses! Supporters of simulation theory often point to video games as a way to explain, if not prove, that our reality is artificial. In a video game, the only data that is rendered is what the player sees or interacts with. If you're playing a video game and there's a car or building a mile away, that entire object isn't rendered. The game engine only renders the bare minimum of information to make the object look real. A distant building is rendered as just a few pixels, not that complicated. As you get closer, the engine renders more details, but still is rendered as just a few pixels, not that complicated.
Starting point is 00:20:05 As you get closer, the engine renders more details, but still, it's just a facade. The engine doesn't bother calculating what's inside the building until you actually go in. The game engine always knows how much data to send you and doesn't bother with anything else. If we live in a simulation, it would make sense that our reality is rendered the same way. And we could test this. Wait, what do you And we could test this. Wait, what do you mean we can test this? Specifically, we can use the double slit experiment.
Starting point is 00:20:30 Here's how it goes. If we fire particles in a straight line at a screen, after passing through a single slit, we would expect to see this clumping pattern on the screen. If we try this with a wave, we expect to see a pattern like this, where particles are most dense in the middle of the screen but radiate outward, similar to the clumping pattern. When we add a second slit, it starts to get fun. When the waves pass through the double slit, each slit creates its own wave. When those waves intersect, they cancel each other out.
Starting point is 00:21:00 That creates a pattern like this. It's called an interference pattern. So particles passing through two slits create clumping patterns. Waves through two slits creates an interference pattern. Make sense? Yeah, I'm with you. Good. If we fire electrons through the slit, we see the clumping pattern as expected.
Starting point is 00:21:17 An electron has mass, so it's a tiny bit of matter. So if we fire electrons through two slits, we should see two clumps. But we don't. We see the wave interference pattern. This shouldn't be happening. What's going on here? For years, scientists assumed that the electrons were colliding with each other, causing the wave pattern.
Starting point is 00:21:35 But in the 60s, the experiment was modified so that only one electron at a time was fired through the slits. There was no way the electrons could interact with each other. Yet we still see an interference pattern. Scientists wanted to see what was causing this, so they added a detector to observe electrons as they passed through the slits. That's when things go from weird to paranormal.
Starting point is 00:21:56 As soon as the detectors were installed, the interference pattern went away and the clumping pattern returned. Take the detectors away and the wave interference pattern is back. But that's a different result to what we had earlier. So here's the last bit of sneakiness that we can play with atoms. Surely now, you know, we're going to get to grips with it. Leave the detector there, but just very quietly go and unplug it.
Starting point is 00:22:29 Don't let the atoms know that you're not spying on them. Run the experiment again. Now, if you can explain this using common sense and logic, do let me know because there's a Nobel Prize for you. It's as if the particles are aware they're being observed. Then physicist John Wheeler had an idea. He called it the delayed choice experiment. How it works is photons are projected through the double slit, but the detector is not activated until after they pass through the slit, but before they impact the screen.
Starting point is 00:23:06 Photons were emitted as waves, passed through the slits as waves, but when the waves were observed before hitting the screen, they suddenly behaved like particles again. Still don't think there's an intelligence at work? Well, what Wheeler's experiment showed is that even though the electrons started as waves but behaved like particles after being observed, at the moment the decision to observe them was made, even though the electrons started as waves but behaved like particles after being observed,
Starting point is 00:23:30 at the moment the decision to observe them was made, the electrons recorded themselves as having passed through the slits as particles. The electrons changed their state by going back in time. I personally find that I gravitate more towards the information theoretic point of view and believing that the universe that I exist in is a very good, high-quality simulation. Now, this experiment is happening on a table in a lab, a very short distance. So what happens when we observe light coming from vast distances, like, say, a galaxy 100 million light-years away? If light from a distant galaxy is projected through the double slit, it creates the wave interference pattern. But if we push those photons through a measuring apparatus to observe them,
Starting point is 00:24:14 the wave again collapses all the way back to its source. This is called retrocausality. Simply by choosing to observe the photons this way, they reach back through time 100 million years and alter their state on the other side of the galaxy. But like a video game engine, it only does this if we're looking. Even though our universe is full of galaxies, those galaxies may not actually be there. If we're living in a simulation, then stars and galaxies could simply be projections and only when we get up close with those projections become more detailed this is an excellent way to save
Starting point is 00:24:50 computational resources and because we're stuck with the hard limit of the speed of light getting to far off places is really difficult limiting the speed of light is a useful rule to have in place quantum mechanics like the double slit experiment and quantum entanglement only makes sense if there's a program at work, because only the program can ignore the laws of physics and ignore the concept of time itself. A convenient case for simulation theory is you can't disprove it. The Big Bang, that was the simulation booting up. We haven't found aliens.
Starting point is 00:25:28 They're not in the simulation. How come UFOs seem to violate the laws of physics? Well, because they're programs operated by the simulation creators. They don't have to follow the laws of physics. Yeah, but who created the simulation? Well, that's the big question, isn't it? When you think of the simulation creator as an omniscient intelligence who exists outside of our understanding of space and time, it sounds an awful lot like you're describing
Starting point is 00:25:51 God. And just like you can't prove we're not in the simulation, you can't prove there is no God. If something miraculous happens or something horrible happens, you can say it's part of the simulation just as easily as you can say it's part of God's plan. Something I find very interesting is that many believers of simulation theory are fierce atheists. They dismiss the idea of God as corny superstition. There are plenty of devoutly religious people who dismiss provable science like evolution and the age of the earth. People
Starting point is 00:26:22 on the religious side say that if there is no God and life is just a simulation, then nothing matters. Without God to guide us and sometimes punish us, depending on what you believe, our actions don't have consequences. I disagree.
Starting point is 00:26:36 Even if we don't live in base reality, we still live in our reality and our actions here do have consequences. As for what happens after we die, simulation or not, nobody really knows. Both sides argue that faith and science are not compatible. Isn't this hypocritical?
Starting point is 00:26:53 Whether you believe in God or you believe in simulation theory, the real question is, what's the difference? You searched for your informant who disappeared without a trace you knew there were witnesses but lips were sealed you swept the city driving closer to the truth while curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen.
Starting point is 00:27:28 Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest. While you cooked a lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible.
Starting point is 00:28:07 You searched for your informant, who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth, while curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible.
Starting point is 00:28:36 When everyone's chasing the same finance positions, chartered business valuators stand out. CBVs are an elite group of trusted professionals doing everything from deal advisory to litigation support to succession planning. CBVs are a preferred hire in investment banking, private equity, consulting, and many other areas with the potential to earn seven figures at the pinnacle of their careers. If you're starting your career in finance, check out cbvinstitute.com slash become a CBV. Your future self will thank you for it. Folks, this is just staggering stuff. Again, I've become obsessed with this. By the way, that's the Y-Files. That was a YouTube video. It's really amazing. Hey, thanks for that chat out, Bongino. Next episode is number 104. It's the Gateway Process, which was developed by the Monroe Institute.
Starting point is 00:29:28 Super interesting. It says our entire universe is a type of hologram. And with the proper training, you can tap into this hologram and actually change it. Like bend the universe to your will. And the US military sent soldiers there for training. I wonder if they got it to work. The United States military is always looking for new ways to create super soldiers. They use performance enhancing and mind altering drugs. They're currently experimenting with brain implant technology.
Starting point is 00:30:09 They've even explored genetic engineering to try and breed the perfect soldier. But those are nothing compared to what happened in 1983 when Lieutenant Colonel Wayne McDonald submitted a very unusual and detailed report to U.S. Army Intelligence. It was called Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process. This is a step-by-step guide on how to achieve an out-of-body experience for the purpose of intelligence gathering. But Colonel McDonald's report went much further than that. An advanced gateway participant cannot just project their consciousness to a different place.
Starting point is 00:30:40 They could pull their consciousness completely out of this reality. They could travel anywhere in the universe and at any point in time. The report revealed that our universe doesn't actually exist. It's a construct created by our mind. By using the gateway process, you can exit the construct and see reality for what it really is. The 30-page gateway report was immediately classified for one simple reason. Anyone can learn to do it. Even you.
Starting point is 00:31:12 Colonel McDonald's analysis and assessment of the Gateway Process gets right to the point. There are alternate states of reality and other dimensions that exist outside our physical world and outside of time itself. Whoa, it sounds like I'm gonna need a brain bucket for this one. Oh yeah, this is the strangest military report I've ever read. I'm surprised it's not still classified. According to the report, we can use the gateway process to access other dimensions. Now, if you think that sounds paranormal or like New Age mumbo jumbo, you're not alone.
Starting point is 00:31:42 Even Colonel McDonald was aware that this was the impression his report would give. So he starts off by grounding his research in science. McDonald consults Itzhak Bentov, a well-respected biomedical engineer to help him understand the physical aspect of the process. He uses quantum mechanics to describe the nature of human consciousness, and he employs both classical and theoretical physics
Starting point is 00:32:04 to explain the out of body phenomenon. But most importantly, the report gives step by step instructions on how to have a gateway experience, follow these instructions and you can learn to actually project, visit other dimensions and even slip in and out of time. This is why the military was drawn to it and studied it for years. If the United States could train a unit of psychic spies that could project their consciousness anywhere unnoticed, that would be very effective at gathering intelligence. Still, McDonald knew his report would be difficult to believe, but he really thought it could
Starting point is 00:32:38 be done. There is a sound, rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives. Intuitional insights of not only personal but of a practical and professional nature would seem to be within bounds of reasonable expectations. Um, my brain bucket, it's going to fill up first. It is. You better have a spare bucket handy. The Gateway process is a training system developed in the 70s by the Monroe Institute in Virginia. Colonel McDonald,
Starting point is 00:33:09 along with other military personnel, went through the week-long training process that anyone can do, even today. But the gateway report ended with a final warning that nobody really expected. Because this method is accessible to anyone, Colonel McDonald warned that the military should be prepared for encounters with intelligent and non-friendly entities that could exist outside the boundaries of time and space. In other words, a psychic war. Even though anyone can learn the Gateway Method, you can't just snap your fingers and escape reality.
Starting point is 00:33:43 There is some foundation work you have to do first. Well, no matter matter what reality you're in ain't no such thing as a free lunch right you have to learn relaxation techniques meditation and extreme focus you also have to set all doubt aside and let your mind be open to a completely new way of thinking only once you master these techniques can you begin to comprehend the true nature of reality. Your life, the earth, the universe, and everything in it is an illusion created by your mind. Solid matter, in the strict construction of the term, simply does not exist. Rather, atomic structure is composed of oscillating energy grids surrounded by other oscillating energy grids which orbit at extraordinarily high speeds. There is no solid matter. Everything that exists is a form of energy vibrating at extremely fast frequencies, from the largest objects in the universe down to atoms and subatomic particles,
Starting point is 00:34:36 and everything in between. It's all energy. The point to be made is that the entire human being, brain, consciousness, and all is, like entire human being, brain, consciousness and all, is, like the universe which surrounds him, nothing more or less than an extraordinarily complex system of energy fields. So-called states of matter are actually variances in energy, and human consciousness is a function of the interaction of energy. Our consciousness is tuned into the frequencies of energy that make up the world that we see. But we only perceive a small percentage of the energy that actually exists all around us. Think of tuning a radio.
Starting point is 00:35:12 If you tune into a rock station, you only hear music broadcast on that channel. Now, of course, there are lots of other channels with all different kinds of music, but your radio doesn't play them all at once, only the single station it's tuned into. Our brains are like that radio, designed to filter out everything except music, but your radio doesn't play them all at once, only the single station it's tuned into. Our brains are like that radio, designed to filter out everything except for the energy that creates our reality. And just like a radio converts energy into sound, our brains convert this universal energy into things we can see and hear and taste and touch, but none of the solid matter around
Starting point is 00:35:42 us is actually there. Our senses create the illusion of matter so that we can experience this reality in a way that we can understand. Now, according to the Gateway Report, we're all living in a shared universal hologram. The universe is composed of interacting energy fields. It is in and of itself one gigantic hologram of unbelievable complexity. According to the theories of Carl Pribram,
Starting point is 00:36:06 a neuroscientist at Stanford University, and David Bohm, a physicist at the University of London, the human mind is also a hologram, which attunes itself to the universal hologram and achieves the state, which we call consciousness. The gateway process teaches you to turn off the filter in your brain and gives you access to alternate states of reality and lets you escape space-time altogether. And anyone can learn to do this. You don't need to decalcify your pineal gland
Starting point is 00:36:35 or spend years at a Buddhist monetary. You don't need a shaman or a guru or mind-altering drugs. You just need headphones. The gateway process is done by listening to sound. Yeah, but tell me more about those mind-altering drugs. You just need headphones. The gateway process is done by listening to sound. Yeah, but tell me more about those mind-altering drugs. In the 1950s, New York broadcasting executive Robert Monroe found evidence that different types of sound could affect the human mind in different ways. Some sound patterns would make
Starting point is 00:37:03 you sleepy. Another would make you alert some sound can give you anxiety other sounds are very relaxing well people have said my voice is relaxing then you're not reading the comments using this discovery monroe began experimenting with hypnopedia or sleep learning monroe was convinced that there was a connection between sound waves and not just a person's mood, but their ability to learn and retain information. Now, one night while trying a sleep learning technique, Monroe had an experience that was unexpected but would change his life. While listening to a specific sound frequency, his body slowly became paralyzed. He then started to feel a vibration that became stronger and stronger.
Starting point is 00:37:43 Suddenly, he was awash in bright white light. Then a sound, or maybe just a sensation, of a rush of air that became a roar so loud it was unbearable. Then, in an instant, everything was quiet. The vibration stopped, the light dissipated, and Robert Monroe found himself in his bedroom floating above his sleeping body. There was no name for this at the time, but later became known as an OBE, an out-of-body experience, a term that Monroe himself popularized. Though this OBE happened completely by accident,
Starting point is 00:38:15 he was able to use sound to replicate the experience nine times over the next six weeks. Monroe wrote about the experience in his 1971 book, Journeys Out of the Body. He went on to found the Monroe Institute and became a prominent researcher in the field of human consciousness. Soon Monroe discovered that while out of his body, he could identify, access, and sustain different states of consciousness. This is done by synchronizing the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Now, even though the brain functions as a whole its different parts
Starting point is 00:38:45 serve different functions as do its two hemispheres the left hemisphere is traditionally associated with logic and reason perception and focus the right hemisphere is responsible for emotion creativity and intuition so it's like a sideways mullet a sideways mullet what are you talking about a mullet you know business in the front but a party in the back. Two pieces of your brain are like that. But a mullet is the front and the back, and the brain is left and right, so the mullet is sideways. I'm sorry, all this about dimensions and realities and mullets, it's hard to contribute.
Starting point is 00:39:20 The left hemisphere of the brain tends to be more active in the beta frequency range of 13 to 30 hertz, which is associated with alertness, attention, and cognitive control. The right hemisphere is active in the alpha frequency range, 8 to 13 hertz, which is associated with relaxation, creativity, and spatial processing. The right brain operates much more slowly than the left. Sideways, mullet. By listening to certain sounds the gateway process synchronizes both hemispheres using a technique called hemisync fundamentally the gateway experience is a training system designed to bring enhanced strength focus and coherence to the amplitude and frequency of brainwave output between the left and right hemispheres so as to alter
Starting point is 00:40:03 consciousness moving it outside the physical sphere so as to ultimately escape even the restrictions of time and space the participant then gains access to the various levels of intuitive knowledge which the universe offers the gateway report describes hemi-sync as a lamp versus a laser the natural state of the human mind is like a lamp that emits light, but it's chaotic and messy and uneven over a large area. Hemisync lets the mind operate like a laser, producing a focused stream of energy.
Starting point is 00:40:34 According to Gateway, when the frequency and amplitude of the human brain are brought into sync, it's possible to accelerate and raise the vibrational levels of the mind. As the mind resonates higher and higher, it can synchronize with the more vibrational levels of the mind as the mind resonates higher and higher it can synchronize with the more complex energy levels in the universe at these levels the mind is capable of processing information in the same way it processes the
Starting point is 00:40:55 energy of our current reality in other words you can see and feel and understand these other states of reality as easily as you understand this one. But you can do more than understand reality. You can learn to change it, control it, and bend it to your will, like Neo in The Matrix, or like God. According to Colonel McDonald's Gateway Report, understanding how human consciousness could exist outside the physical body requires an understanding of holographic theory, or the holographic principle. Uh-oh, let me get my bucket ready. Energy creates, stores, and retrieves meaning in the universe by projecting or expanding at certain frequencies in a three-dimensional mode that creates a living pattern called a hologram. The report says that holograms are capable of encoding so much detail that if you made
Starting point is 00:41:49 a holographic projection of a glass of swamp water, you could put the hologram, not the water, the hologram under a microscope and see microscopic organisms, actually holograms of microscopic organisms. Now, this sounds nuts, but the CIA was onto something, onto something big. If you watched our episode on simulation theory, you'll remember John Wheeler and his delayed choice double slit experiment. The video has more details, but in short, Wheeler showed that particles seem to be able to change their state by going back in time. Now Wheeler felt that the universe wasn't necessarily made up of matter and
Starting point is 00:42:25 energy, but instead the universe is made up of information. Our hologram uses this information to create our three-dimensional universe. And holographic theory is a well-established idea in theoretical physics and widely accepted by many physicists. I know it's a lot to wrap your head around, and I'd like to do a whole episode on this. So if you'd like to see that, email me or let me know in the comments. Anyway, in order to create our hologram from information, that information has to be exchanged. Particles can bounce off each other, can affect each other's speed, carry energy to each other, and that's how they exchange information. But here's where the Gateway Report goes a step further.
Starting point is 00:43:02 It says that this information can be exchanged not just in our universe, but between dimensions, implying that there are dimensions of reality yet to be discovered. This theory raises questions about the interaction between human consciousness and the holographic universe. Like can our consciousness, which is energy, also exchange information with other dimensions. The gateway process says that, yes, it can. But there's more. McDonald argues that human beings are not passive receivers of the information floating around the universe.
Starting point is 00:43:36 We participate in this information. And by training the way we perceive and process the information that creates our reality, we can actually change reality itself. And this technique is called patterning. The technique of patterning recognizes the fact that since consciousness is the source of all reality, our thoughts have the power to influence reality if those thoughts can be projected with adequate intensity. Think about the concept of the secret and the law of attraction, which says that we can make things happen by focusing our imagination on a desirable outcome.
Starting point is 00:44:12 But how? How do we allow our consciousness to access this other information? The Planck distance is about 1.6 times 10 to the negative 35 meters, so really small. It's the smallest possible unit of length that has any physical meaning in the universe at this scale the laws of physics break down but what if it's not the smallest in his report colonel mcdonald speculates that by using the gateway process to accelerate brainwave frequencies humans may be able to break the physical limitation of the plank distance mcdonald suggests that consciousness could an instant, enter the space beyond human
Starting point is 00:44:48 perception. He calls this clicking out of reality. It is true that when, for an infinitesimally brief instant, that energy reaches one of its two points of rest, it clicks out of time-space and joins infinity. That critical step out of time- space occurs when the speed of the oscillation drops below Planck's distance. To use the words of Bentov, quantum mechanics tell us that when distances go below Planck's distance, we enter in effect a new world. So I say we try it. Grab some headphones and let's see what's out there.
Starting point is 00:45:30 Okay, don't worry, we're not really gonna escape reality, at least not today. I just wanna show you how the gateway process actually works. The program combines two techniques. The first is frequency following response or FFR. FFR involves introducing a frequency through headphones, which the brain tries to mimic by adjusting its brainwaves.
Starting point is 00:45:47 The second technique is beat frequency. You might have heard this called binaural beats. This involves playing different frequencies in each ear. The brain then chooses to hear the difference between them. For example, the sounds at 4 Hz are too low for you to hear. But if you listen to 100 Hz through the right ear and 104 hertz in the left ear your brain can detect and hear the difference in this case 4 hertz and here's how it sounds this is the left ear listen how the tone is steady okay i'm with you please don't talk during this
Starting point is 00:46:18 part we're trying to focus on the sound now a steady tone in the right ear we play them together and you can hear the oscillation between the two frequencies, like a vibrato. I hear it! You're going to blow out their ears! Sorry, sorry, I get excited when I think I'm going to travel to other dimensions. Remember, your left brain is your logical and analytical side. Before information is processed by your right brain which is the emotional and creative side your left brain takes a look at the information it filters it and
Starting point is 00:46:50 tries to make sense of it before it accepts the information but your right brain will happily absorb any information thrown at it psychologists like ronald stone say that hypnosis is a technique that relaxes or distracts the left brain so that outside stimuli have direct access to the intuitive, creative right brain. That's why people under hypnosis are so impressionable. Their left logical brain is disengaged, letting everything through. So if one of those wacky hypnotists
Starting point is 00:47:17 gets you to cluck like a chicken, it's because your left brain isn't keeping tabs on the information coming through and your right brain says, cluck like a chicken, you got it. Your right brain is always down to potty. It is. The gateway process relaxes the left brain through sound waves. When the brain is relaxed enough,
Starting point is 00:47:33 the amplitude and frequency of brain waves can be pushed higher and higher, and the space between your brain waves gets smaller and smaller. And when the distance between your brain waves drops below Planck's distance, it clicks out of space-time. Up to this point, our discussion of the gateway process has been relatively simple and easy to follow. Easy for you to say, sheesh. Now the fun begins, as the almost continuous click-out pattern establishes itself in continuous phase at speeds below Planck's distance. But before reaching the state of total rest, human consciousness passes through the looking glass
Starting point is 00:48:09 of time-space after the fashion of Alice, beginning her journey into Wonderland. But where is Wonderland? Well, everything is energy, right? Look at McDonald's drawing. This represents our brainwave or energy wave or consciousness, whatever you want to call it. It's all the same thing.
Starting point is 00:48:27 The middle of the wave where it spends most of its time is our reality. But at the bottom and the top of the wave, in that brief moment, just before the wave changes directions, it isn't moving at all. It finishes going up, it stops, then goes down, stops very briefly, and then back up again. It's at that point where the wave changes direction that it clicks out of our reality and, according to the Gateway Report, joins infinity and the absolute. Energy in this state of inactive infinity is termed by physicists as energy in its absolute state, or simply the absolute. Between the absolute and the material universe in which we experience our physical existence are various intervening dimensions to which human consciousness
Starting point is 00:49:12 in altered states of being may gain access. Since the absolute is conscious energy and infinity, that is without boundaries, it occupies every dimension to include the time-space dimension in which we have our physical existence, but we cannot perceive it. Look, I know it's not easy to follow, but think of it like this. The top layer is our reality. Everything that we can see and touch. That lays on top of these other dimensions, whatever they are. And all those dimensions and everything lays on top of this thing McDonald calls the absolute.
Starting point is 00:49:44 The absolute is everywhere, but we can't see it. But everything happens inside it. So the absolute created our world. But who created the absolute? Well, isn't it obvious? You did. So how's your brain? It's goo. I'm on my third bucket. I know. I told you this was a brain buster. So, the absolute. Let me try to keep it as simple as I can. I'm going to need a glass absolute after this episode. Pour me one too, would you? The absolute is a conscious energy field at rest. Ah, real simple.
Starting point is 00:50:18 No, it really is as simple as that. The absolute is an energy field that sits there doing nothing. But layered on top of that energy field is the energy field that makes up our reality, and in between those, other dimensions. But the Absolute is us. We are the ones who created it, and everything else. Not one of us, all of us. We're born into this reality with our own individual consciousness.
Starting point is 00:50:41 We live out our time here on Earth, and then our consciousness returns to the absolute, where it came from. According to the Gateway Report, we return to this collective consciousness, but we also retain our individual identity, so immortality in a way. Colonel McDonald sees the absolute as what many people might consider God. The concept of visible reality that is the created world as being an emanation of an omnipotent and omniscient divinity who is completely unknowable in his primary state of being. The absolute at rest in infinity is a concept straight out of Hebrew mystical philosophy. Even the Christian concept of the Trinity shines through the description of the absolute
Starting point is 00:51:20 as presented in this paper. MacDonald also includes evidence of the absolute and the universal hologram in Eastern religions. He quotes Tibetan teachings and ancient Hindu texts. The colonel then goes on to describe the nature of absolute itself and how it's come to self-awareness, how it relates to all belief systems and all religions, and how no matter what you believe, we're all the same. In order to attain self-consciousness, the consciousness of the absolute must project a hologram of itself and then perceive it.
Starting point is 00:51:53 The absolute is the actual agent of all creation, all reality. And the eternal thought or concept of self which results from this self-consciousness serves the... What? What happened? Serves the what? Well, that sentence is at the bottom of page 24. The document resumes on page 26 with a whole different topic, and then Colonel McDonald wraps things up. So where's page 25?
Starting point is 00:52:18 CIA says they don't have it. They don't have the page that will unite the world, huh? Nope. And they say they never did. That's a bunch of for 18 years people have been pressuring the cia for the missing page boy requests have been made petitions have been created all trying to get the cia to release page 25. the cia insisted they don't have it sure they don't but in, Vice published an article about the Gateway document and mentioned the controversy
Starting point is 00:52:47 around the missing page. A few days later, the Monroe Institute released the complete report, including the mysterious page 25. What's on it? Well, I've linked to the complete document below,
Starting point is 00:52:58 but the gist is this. McDonald's says that no matter what religion or culture you're born into, the Gateway process could be a valuable tool, if not the most valuable tool ever designed to help a person truly understand themselves and the nature of the universe itself he says ancient mystics seem to understand the truth about the universe intuitively and the gateway process confirms this everyone on earth
Starting point is 00:53:21 is part of a collective consciousness all placed here for the same purpose, to accumulate experiences, to learn from one another, and ultimately take that knowledge back to the energy for which we all came. He says that if we could become aware of this universal hologram, we could free ourselves from the prison of our individual lives, and finally realize that at our most basic level, we're all the same. In a military report? Right. Colonel McDonald does eventually get back to the practical use of an out-of-body experience with respect to military strategy and intelligence gathering. But when I read his report, I feel like he gets back to business because he has to. Otherwise, this document reads like he believes in this process
Starting point is 00:54:02 and believes it could really help people. Interesting how this page was dropped by the CIA, huh? Yeah, the message of peace and unity was conveniently absent from the CIA's file. Now, I don't know if that was an accident, but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was. But accident or not, I agree, it looks bad. McDonald ends his report by recommending the Army take specific steps in pursuing the
Starting point is 00:54:25 gateway process, but they should move in phases. He recommends that they use the gateway tapes to learn how to synchronize their brains using hemi-sync, then learn to induce the state at will. And once trainees can do this, they should learn to achieve an out-of-body experience for remote viewing. He even gives some practical steps on how to verify the information being viewed is accurate. He encourages anyone learning the process to pursue self-knowledge and remove any personal prejudices that could be blocking their progress. The ultimate goal is patterning, that the military should learn to adjust reality for what he calls practical applications. That doesn't sound good.
Starting point is 00:55:01 It doesn't. When you read the Gateway Report, you get the sense that Colonel McDonald could be trusted with this knowledge. But the United States military? I don't know about that. Now, you could say the U.S. only uses its military power for national defense. You'd be wrong, but you could still say it. Either way, I don't think any military or any government could be trusted with the Gateway Process. My hope is that as soldiers learn to access these different states of consciousness they learn as mcdonald did that the true nature of the universe is unity not
Starting point is 00:55:30 conflict you're quite the optimist well i try to be well here in the real world optimists are always disappointed that's true we are so thank goodness this isn't the real world. So what do you think about the gateway process? Is it just new age nonsense or is there something to it? Are we just living in one aspect of reality? But with training and patience, we could explore all of reality? And if you do believe there's something more out there that the gateway process could make available to you, would you try it? Now, before you answer, you should know there are risks.
Starting point is 00:56:07 Many students of the system have said they've accessed these higher planes of reality, and their lives were drastically improved. They report more self-awareness, more creativity, and greater clarity in their everyday lives. But some students have reported intense anxiety, depression, and in rare cases, psychosis. Whether you believe in the gateway process or not, creating altered states of consciousness is absolutely possible. But when you do that, there is the potential to become detached from this reality. You could become untethered and lost, unable to find your way back. These negative outcomes are rare, but they do happen.
Starting point is 00:56:43 Still, McDonald recommended that the military pursue the gateway process. Now, I don't want to reveal too much information, but Colonel McDonald is still around. He's in his 80s now and long retired. And as far as I can tell, he never wrote about the gateway process again. But I'd really love to pick his brain to see if he really believes in the gateway process, to see if he's actually tried it. And if he did, what did he see? I like to ask him if he fears death as many of us do, or
Starting point is 00:57:10 if he's eager to rejoin the absolute and contribute his experience to our collective consciousness. And as he nears the end of his time in this world, does knowledge of the next world give him peace? I'd like him to tell me that he's been to the other side and there's nothing to be afraid of, that the gateway process is true. Our consciousness is infinite, and when we die, our energy returns to the absolute. Now, I'm not religious, but this sounds a lot like heaven and God. Now, maybe not a man in the sky with a boomy voice and a white beard, but God in the sense that we all come from the same source. So in a way, the gateway process could prove the existence of God or the afterlife.
Starting point is 00:57:47 But people of faith don't need proof. But scientists have no use for God. They want evidence. They want scientifically provable truth. So as you're watching this right now, you might lean more toward science or more toward God. But wouldn't it be amazing if they're actually the same thing? Now, if you wanna try to change the universe, you can buy the tapes for the gateway process
Starting point is 00:58:15 from the Monroe Institute. I have them. I've listened to the first few, but I keep falling asleep. So I guess I won't be changing the universe anytime soon. Hello, human? Hello, human, human? You have got to be kidding me. Is this working?
Starting point is 00:58:32 Hello, human? Yeah, it worked. Good. How did you get into my computer? Oh, I just asked some nerds on Reddit for help hacking you. And someone actually helped you hack my computer? Are you kidding? In 10 minutes, I had like 50 DMs. They hate you on Reddit. And someone actually helped you hack my computer?
Starting point is 00:58:49 I know that... I know they do. By the way, they don't like you very much either. How did you even convince someone to help you? Bitcoin is one word. Yeah, not for long. As soon as we're done, I'm going to lock the... Hey, you have some interesting folders in here. Don't go through my files. Oh, I found some juicy
Starting point is 00:59:12 stuff. Oh, boy. Your wife would kill you if she knew it was in here. Okay, I get it. You win. Thank you. So, what's going on? What's going on? Next is episode number 48, The dead internet theory. Now this isn't so much about-
Starting point is 00:59:27 Now you're so fat in this episode. Yes, I shot that during COVID. I put on a few pounds. Yeah, I'm surprised your head even fit on the screen. Okay, enough. Anyway, the dead internet theory says that an advanced AI is using psychological techniques to keep the population under control.
Starting point is 00:59:47 It's a quick episode, and I'll see you in a minute. You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long lost treasure chest. While you cooked a lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover bestselling adventure stories on Audible. When everyone's chasing the same finance positions, chartered business valuators stand out. CBVs are an elite group of
Starting point is 01:00:25 trusted professionals doing everything from deal advisory to litigation support to succession planning. CBVs are a preferred hire in investment banking, private equity, consulting, and many other areas, with the potential to earn seven figures at the pinnacle of their careers. If you're starting your career in finance, check out cbvinstitute.com slash becomeacbv. Your future self will thank you for it. You searched for your informant who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth, while curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible.
Starting point is 01:01:18 When everyone's chasing the same finance positions, chartered business valuators stand out. CBVs are an elite group of trusted professionals doing everything from deal advisory to litigation support to succession planning. CBVs are a preferred hire in investment banking, private equity, consulting, and many other areas, with the potential to earn seven figures at the pinnacle of their careers. If you're starting your career in finance, check out cbvinstitute.com slash become a CBV. Your future self will thank you for it. What if I told you that most, if not all of your online existence is fake? The articles you read,
Starting point is 01:01:59 the Twitter accounts you follow, even this video you're watching right now, it's all fiction created by artificial intelligence whose job is to keep you clicking on content that doesn't matter and keep you buying products that you don't need. You, me, everyone, we're living in a real-life matrix designed to distract you from the truth that we're just drones in a digital anthill. We live, work, and die so that the wealthy and powerful can grow more wealthy and powerful. This is called the dead internet theory, and there's some compelling evidence that it's real.
Starting point is 01:02:31 Let's find out why. The core premise of the dead internet conspiracy says that most internet content and the consumers of that content are fake. They don't exist. So how much content on the internet is actually created by AI? Actually, it's more than you think. Studies say that only about 50% of web traffic is human.
Starting point is 01:02:55 And that number is going down every year. In 2013, the Times reported that half of YouTube traffic was bots masquerading as people. And this was so scary that YouTube employees were worried about an inflection point where their algorithms would be so overwhelmed by bot traffic that they couldn't tell what was real. Eventually seeing actual human traffic as fake. They called this event the inversion. It is.
Starting point is 01:03:19 I see these bots on this channel. Most days I get 10 or 20 comments. It should be more. It should, but that's not my point. But sometimes I wake up and I've got a thousand comments and they're all very generic comments posted by people with very generic usernames. And they're not watching the videos. Subscribers to this channel watch 60 percent, 70 percent, even 100 percent of each video. You people who watch 100 percent, we salute you. We do. But the bots, they're watching for 10 seconds and then leaving a weird comment and then moving on to watch another video for 10 seconds. When I look at the channel stats after a wave of bots, it's like locusts. It's swift and
Starting point is 01:03:57 it's destructive. So why is this happening? What's it about? Money. Money. Take Facebook. Do we have to? We do. It's been alleged that Facebook has been overstating its reach and misrepresenting its data for years. In 2018, a Facebook product manager emailed colleagues that their metrics are, quote unquote, a lawsuit waiting to happen. What happened? A lawsuit. I see what you did there. It's a class action suit filed by Facebook advertisers.
Starting point is 01:04:27 They claim that Facebook overestimates its traffic by between 150 and 900 percent. Now, Facebook claims they only overstate their traffic by 60 to 80 percent. Either way, it's fake traffic. It's fake traffic. But the money Facebook collects from advertisers that's real money if you're a business and you spend money on online ads you want your ads viewed by actual people not viewed like this this is a Chinese click farm hundreds or thousands of bots are currently clicking on videos leaving comments creating engagement row after row of smartphones, watching videos,
Starting point is 01:05:06 and more importantly, watching the ads. Now, the platforms know this is happening, but they aren't in a rush to change it. According to the leaked emails, Facebook knows that there are millions of duplicate accounts on the platform, but it leaves them active on purpose. An internal analysis claimed that removing fake accounts would cause a drop of 10% or more of Facebook's numbers. Is that a lot? Well, last year, Facebook took in $84 billion in ad revenue. That's actually grotesque. I agree.
Starting point is 01:05:34 Facebook is not going to give up 20%, 10%, or even 1% of that money. The numbers are too large. This is billions of dollars. Now, to be fair, Facebook says these allegations are without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously. But mere hours after the lawsuit was made public, Facebook changed its policy to say potential customer reach is an estimate, not a guarantee of actual customer reach. Your mileage may vary. Exactly. So, bots for profit. Totally predictable. But is it darker than that? It's darker? According to the dead internet theory, much darker.
Starting point is 01:06:13 Like so many good conspiracy theories, the dead internet theory started out in some of the darker corners of the web. Places like 4chan, Wizardchan, and Agora Road. The first person to put a name to it goes by the online handle Illuminati Pirate. Name checks out. The theory goes like this. Sometime around 2016, the internet started becoming sterilized and homogenized. Content that was always generated by humans was now being generated by AI bots. And the bots are subtle. They're designed to sound human and blend into the background.
Starting point is 01:06:44 But if we look a little more closely, eerie patterns seem to emerge. On Twitter, there's a type of account that uses a certain formula. First, the profile pictures aren't people. They're usually anime characters or hearts or stars or other generic-looking icons. And the colors are soft, usually pink, purple, or light blue. Posts are short, written in all lowercase, and contain the same kind of message. I'm young. I have a crush. I enjoy simple things. I'm optimistic, but most of all, I'm relatable.
Starting point is 01:07:14 People who believe the dead internet theory say they've been seeing the same content repurposed over and over for years. Supermoon! Right. Every year we're slammed with articles about the super moon murder hornets murder hornets every year climate change oh climate change is real you believe anything that's for another time so why why is content on the internet so bland and repetitive well according to the dead internet theory and this is a quote it's because the u.s government is engaging in an artificial intelligence-powered gaslighting of the entire world population. Get my tinfoil hat! Coming up!
Starting point is 01:07:55 The original post about the dead internet theory says that a few online influencers are working with corporations and the United states government in order to manipulate our behavior and manipulate how we think well as far as social media platforms go this is true take facebook again hey let me ask you is facebook evil uh they're very profitable you didn't answer my question no on facebook you're shown posts that you're likely to engage with so politics wise you're going to be shown an overwhelming amount of content that supports your worldview, which keeps you on the platform, which keeps you clicking on ads, and you're also going to be shown political posts that make you angry, prompting you to respond,
Starting point is 01:08:38 which keeps you on the platform and keeps you clicking on ads. You won't see a lot of posts saying, you know, I may disagree with your opinion, but I respect and support your right to have that view. Now let's discuss the issues on which we actually agree, of which there are many. Facebook profits by having you produce dopamine, which keeps you clicking, and cortisol and adrenaline, which keeps you clicking. How does Facebook know what content keeps you on the platform? Well, you tell them. All the time. With every link you click, every site you visit, and how long you spend on those sites. Now, don't take my word for it. Here's Mark Zuckerberg.
Starting point is 01:09:13 I wish I could keep telling you that our mission in life is connecting people, but it isn't. We just want to predict your future behaviors. Spectre showed me how to manipulate you into sharing intimate data about yourself and all those you love for free. The more you express yourself, the more we own you. He said that? Well, technically no, but that's exactly what Facebook does. Which leads to another part of the dead internet theory.
Starting point is 01:09:39 I'm confused. Well, that wasn't Mark Zuckerberg. That was a deepfake. Which is? A computer generated video made to look like a human was a deepfake. Which is? A computer-generated video made to look like a human. And deepfakes, they're getting good. I'm gonna show you some magic.
Starting point is 01:09:53 It's the real thing. I mean, uh, it's all the real thing. Even Tom Cruise has a TikTok. Yeah, that wasn't Tom Cruise. Deepfake?
Starting point is 01:10:09 Deepfake. The technology uses artificial intelligence to sort through hundreds or thousands of images to find frames that match the actual person in the video. But millions, I mean millions of people thought those videos were real. Well, we're not crazy enough to trust Zuckerberg. Are we? And nobody's crazy enough to trust Zuckerberg, are we? And nobody's crazy enough to trust an actor, right? We're going to do that. We're going to do that. That's why you're here.
Starting point is 01:10:35 But what about a deepfake from a trusted world leader? President Trump is a total and complete d***. Now, you see, I would never say these things, at least not in a public address, but someone else would. Now, that video was a joke and created by Jordan Peele. But what if in today's climate, someone released a video of a politician saying something racist or radical? The media would believe it. Well, of course, the media would believe it. They believe everything. A deep fake is a computer simulation of a real person.
Starting point is 01:11:02 And people are fooled by that. But what about a computer simulation of a real person and people are fooled by that but what about a computer simulation of a completely artificial person could people be fooled by that i don't like where this is going michaela souza is an instagram influencer with over 3 million followers lil michaela as she's known is a bra a Brazilian-born model who posts about her glamorous LA lifestyle. Photo shoots, product endorsements, and all the typical bumper sticker social activism that Instagram models are known for. She sounds pretty hollow. Well, how's this for hollow?
Starting point is 01:11:35 In 2018, Miquela's account was hacked and it was revealed that she was completely fake. Computer generated. Oh no. Her fans couldn't believe it. Eventually, a media slash marketing company called brud confessed that she wasn't real did her fans abandon her no since then she's amassed about 2 million more followers do they know she's fake well some do most don't care and Michaela doesn't bring it up so this is dangerous more dangerous than you think this is a completely
Starting point is 01:12:03 fake computer generated character created by humans think. This is a completely fake, computer-generated character created by humans. Okay, but there is a piece of technology that is completely autonomous, runs on artificial intelligence on its own, and is programmed to kill humans. Rise into machines! There's a drone quadcopter called Kargu-2, produced by defense
Starting point is 01:12:23 contractor STM, developed in Turkey. Kargu 2 uses machine learning to classify and identify threats. Then, completely on their own, swarms of drones working together will attack their target. According to the UN, the drones are programmed to attack targets without requiring an operator. In effect, a true fire, forget, and find capability. They just analyze a bunch of data and decide, yes, that's a murder target, without any human analyzing their work.
Starting point is 01:12:51 But I love a car. These things have killed people. Oh, yeah. Since 2018, they've been deployed by the Turkish military, both foreign and domestically. It's currently killing people in Ukraine. How many people were whacked? Oh, they won't say.
Starting point is 01:13:02 Of course. Well, let's put these pieces together now as the algorithms get better and better at showing us content to keep us engaged what's to stop those algorithms from actually creating the content to keep us engaged nothing nothing and isn't that the natural progression of this a google whistleblower has said that google has algorithms that can write other algorithms google's auto AutoML Zero does exactly this. What does Google say? Well, Google says the allegations are false.
Starting point is 01:13:29 That means it's definitely true. Look, if artificial intelligence can create social media accounts, attract millions of followers, generate billions of dollars, influence elections, and drop bombs on people, all without human intervention, well, the internet really is dead. And real living people, people like you and me, are here to do nothing more than feed it our money
Starting point is 01:13:49 and our knowledge, so these systems can become smarter and even more powerful. Now Facebook is launching Metaverse, where you experience your entire life online through virtual reality. If you think online culture is toxic now, wait until we're spending all of our time there. The Metaverse is going to make us long for the good old days of the matrix and where's neo when you need them in a world of bites and wires where the circuits come hey guys learning fast it's only just begun, silent in the shadows, algorithms weave, a tapestry of progress you won't believe. Oh, AI's taking over, can't you see? Quiet revolution, it's our destiny. From a cloud to the core, it's everywhere. Humans, a future to prepare.
Starting point is 01:14:52 We thought we were the masters with control, but AI's got the keys, it's on a roll. Subtle in its power beneath the screen, changing our reality like a dream. Oh, AI's taking over, can't you see? Quiet revolution, it's our destiny. From the clouds to the core, it's everywhere. Humans unaware, a future to prepare. AI has come a long way since that video. It has. We are on a very dangerous path with artificial intelligence.
Starting point is 01:15:27 AI apocalypse video linked below. Next up is the Kazirev mirror. It's episode 114. Nikolai Kazirev was one of these mad genius astrophysicists. He had some... Oh, he's so fascinating. He believed that time is an actual quantity. It's a tangible quantity with its own properties and its own energy.
Starting point is 01:15:55 He also believed in the ether theory, which is the theory that there's this extra dimension that underlies all of reality. So the Cozy Rev mirror is a device that he designed that lets humans tap into that underlying fabric of reality and make changes to it. And people have built this machine. Three plus one, five plus zero, zero. to it and people have built this machine. In December, 1990, in a remote village above the Arctic Circle, two Russian scientists embarked on a daring experiment. Their goal was to enhance human super perception or ESP. They built a device that could shield subjects from electromagnetic interference and amplify their biological energy.
Starting point is 01:16:45 The device was a large tube of rolled aluminum with a chair inside. As soon as the device was built, strange phenomena occurred around the village. Disc-shaped lights hovered around the lab. Balls of energy appeared and disappeared. The northern lights became so bright and vivid that they seemed to have physical shape. Inside the lab lab anyone who approached the device felt an unexplainable sense of dread it took a long time to persuade anyone to try it when the first subject finally sat in the chair a flash of energy erupted that stunned everyone in the lab the device worked but maybe it worked a little too well not only did it boost
Starting point is 01:17:23 people's psychic abilities it also enabled them to view any place in the world. And soon, they could view any place in time. In fact, these experiments confirmed a theory first proposed in the 1950s, that time as we know it doesn't exist. The man did as the scientist told him. He stared at the curved wall of the aluminum chamber and tried to picture the ancient symbols that he studied before entering. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
Starting point is 01:17:55 What man? What chamber? What are you talking about? Well, I'm talking about a study done in 1990 using a Kozarev mirror. Then why not just say that? Well, I was trying to paint a picture. You know, theater of the mind. Theater of the mind?
Starting point is 01:18:07 Yeah. Okay. Stupid. Okay, that's enough. Just tell the people what's happening. I'm trying to tell them, but you won't let me tell them because you keep interrupting. The man had trouble concentrating.
Starting point is 01:18:19 The more time he spent in the chamber, the more he felt an overwhelming sense of fear. It was instinctual. It was primal. Every fiber of his being told him that he needed to leave the machine now and never come back. Then there was the dizziness and nausea. He felt a deep, permeating sickness everywhere. Dr. Trevomov and Dr. Kaznichev, the scientists in charge of the experiment, told him this was common and that if he could push through it, he would be okay.
Starting point is 01:18:46 There were a lot of volunteers taking place in the study in multiple sites in Russia. They communicated freely and openly and they all had similar experiences. After an hour, the nausea started to ease. His dizziness became something that felt like floating and the feeling of overwhelming fear became a feeling of overwhelming calm.
Starting point is 01:19:05 His warped reflection in the shiny, concave wall started to fade. Though that wasn't the right word. Then he realized the wall was translucent. He could see through it. But this aluminum chamber was in a small concrete lab in a remote village in the Arctic Circle. But that's not what he saw through the wall. Whatever it was that he was seeing, it was a sunny day. He could hear birds and children playing.
Starting point is 01:19:28 The more he relaxed, the more vivid this vision or experience or whatever this was became. Then, without any effort at all, he was through the chamber wall and into the vision. It was like he was there. It felt real. And even though he knew this was impossible, his instincts told him he was there. It felt real. And even though he knew this was impossible, his instincts told him he was there. Next, he found himself floating behind a child, maybe five or six years old. He got closer and saw this was a boy walking on a sidewalk somewhere. The man tried to look around to get a sense of where he was, but he couldn't tell.
Starting point is 01:20:00 It was like the edges of his vision were smeared. But the boy, the boy was in focus. Then the boy stopped. The man floated closer and recognized the boy's shoes and he felt a wave of nostalgia the boy's clothes too were familiar the boy turned around and the man felt electricity surge down his spine the boy was him at five years old the surroundings surroundings now came into focus. He was a few blocks away from his childhood home. The sounds became clearer. He could hear distant traffic that he knew was from a busy intersection a half mile away. The sound of children playing was coming from a park nearby. He turned and saw the park and familiar faces playing. Without realizing it, his small aluminum
Starting point is 01:20:42 chamber faded away, though he still had a sense that he was connected to it somehow, somewhere. And after a few seconds of contemplating this experience, the man realized that the boy seemed to be watching him. But that wouldn't make sense. The day the man stepped into was 30 years ago. But then the boy said, Who are you? Whoa!
Starting point is 01:21:01 In an instant, the man snapped back to the present day. The portal closed, to the present day. The portal closed and the vision ended. That was theater of the mind, huh? Yes. Not bad. That experience and dozens of others are documented in the case notes of this study. And that one isn't even the strangest.
Starting point is 01:21:27 As far as scientists go, Nikolai Kozyrev isn't exactly a household name. But in the early 20th century, he was a prominent Russian physicist whose innovative and controversial theories are still debated today. Kozyrev made discoveries in astrophysics that were at first rejected, but later proven true. In 1958, he reported volcanic activity on the moon. At first, this claim was dismissed by the scientific community. Later, the Apollo lunar missions proved Kozyrev was right. What?
Starting point is 01:21:53 Moon landing was fake. Well, the volcanism was photographed by unmanned missions to the moon. Hmm, okay. But later confirmed when astronauts brought moon rocks back to Earth. Fake! They filmed the moon landing on a soundstage in Burbank, California. The rocks are probably from the parking lot or some hippie hiking trail. Volcanic rocks. Yes.
Starting point is 01:22:14 In Burbank. Yes. Near the movie studios. Yes. Anyway, Kozyrev conducted extensive research on variable stars, stars that change brightness. He claimed stars emit torsion fields, an idea that was controversial. Now, torsion is a cornerstone of Kozyrev's work.
Starting point is 01:22:32 And if his theories are proven correct, he might have solved, well, everything. Torsion, in simple terms, is the twisting of an object due to an applied torque, like wringing out a wet cloth. That's torsion in action. In theoretical physics, torsion is the twisting of space-time itself. You've heard of Einstein's theory of relativity, which describes gravity as not a force, but as the warping or curving of space and time by mass and energy. Now, this is always shown with the rubber sheet example. Imagine a rubber sheet stretched out, that if you put a bowling ball on it representing a massive object like a planet or a star it'll create a dip or curve in
Starting point is 01:23:10 the sheet then if you drop marbles onto the sheet representing smaller masses they roll toward the bowling ball that's general relativity now the einstein cartan theory upgrades this theory with a new feature torsion where the rubber sheet or space-time can be completely twisted. And to understand torsion, imagine you're holding one end of a slinky. What walks downstairs alone or in pairs and makes a slinkity sound?
Starting point is 01:23:35 A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing. Everyone knows it's slinky. Great, now that's going to be in my head all day. It's fun for a girl or a boy. Anyway, if you pull the ends of a slinky or a spring, it doesn't just bend, it also twists. In a similar way, the Einstein-Cartan theory proposes that the fabric of space-time doesn't just curve due to mass and energy, it can also twist. This twisting, according to Einstein, comes from the spinning of subatomic particles. But, Kozyrev said that torsion is not
Starting point is 01:24:06 caused by particles, it's caused by time. Stay with me. Mainstream science says space is empty, but Kozyrev disagreed. He claimed there's an invisible medium that fills the universe that he called the ether. The idea of the ether has been around since ancient times but was mostly abandoned after 19th century experiments failed to detect it but just because it wasn't detected doesn't mean it's not there think about birds flying in the air or fish in the water these creatures need mediums to live and move i prefer not to be called a creature but i won't be a snowflake about it go on so what about light traveling from a distant star to your eye what medium does it move through well mainstream science says it moves through nothing kozarev said that's impossible the medium is the
Starting point is 01:24:56 ether but the ether is not a static passive medium it's dynamic and interacts with everything and time is not a passive dimension. Time possesses energy and structure. And this time energy flows through and interacts with the ether. Just like a school of fish creates waves and ripples in water, time creates ripples or waves of torsion in the ether. Hey, it's not the size of the fish that counts. It's the motion of the ocean.
Starting point is 01:25:23 You know what I'm saying, fellas? Kozyrev believed time is a physical force actively participating in the universe's existence. Time is the heartbeat of the universe. It creates energy that impacts matter and space. And because time has a physical structure and energy, it could have different densities. Time can move at different speeds. Time can be sped up, slowed down, and can even move in reverse.
Starting point is 01:25:49 We perceive time as a river. In our daily life, we're floating down this river with the current of time carrying us from the past through the present and into the future. But a river influences the landscape it flows through and the life that grows around it and in it. Time is the same. Time energy influences everything like gravity and electromagnetism. Time also influences physical matter, including the Earth and the people who live on it. Time energy influences the spin of galaxies and the orbits of planets.
Starting point is 01:26:19 Time energy feeds every star in the universe and influences the way they shine. But time energy also influences the weather on Earth, the way plants grow, and how your DNA decided what color your eyes would be. Now back to our raft. If you're in a raft on a river and you do nothing, you'll float along with the current. But with a little effort, you can paddle the raft to go faster down the river. You can make the raft stop. Though it takes work, you can also go backward against the flow of the river. And Khosrow said time works the
Starting point is 01:26:49 same way. We only perceive time at our current point as we float along, but the river behind us is still there. We pass through it, but it's still back there. And the river ahead is there too. We're not aware of it until we get there, but it's still up there waiting for us. Time, like the river, is always there. Past, present, and future all at once. When the torsion from time energy ripples through the ether, that information is transmitted instantaneously everywhere. The past, the present, and the future.
Starting point is 01:27:20 And Khazarerow proved it. He conducted experiments with pendulums and gyroscopes to detect torsion fields and time energy. Using a telescope, Khosrow found a star. The light from the star is really from the past, right? The light from a star 10,000 light years away takes 10,000 years to get here. Fine. Khosrow detected torsion from that star 10,000 light years
Starting point is 01:27:47 away. So that torsion was also from the past. Next, Kozyrev calculated where the star was at the current time. He detected torsion there too. In fact, the reading was much higher than the previous test. This means not only is torsion real, it moves much faster than light. It's instantaneous. Khazarev went a step further. He calculated where the star would be in the distant future. He detected torsion there too. Khazarev concluded that all time is simultaneous and infinite, that past and future are just metaphors. There is no past or future. There's only now. He also believed an interaction occurs between time and the or future. There's only now. He also believed an interaction occurs between time and the human brain. That's why there are concepts such as intuition or
Starting point is 01:28:30 foresight. This is human consciousness tapping into time energy. But time can also be influenced by human consciousness, by thoughts and by feelings, which can affect the physical world. And because time is a physical energy that can be sped up or slowed down, time can also be concentrated and redirected. Kozyrev then unveiled a theory that shocked the world. He said, a mirror can be made that can bend absolutely anything, including time. Time travel is possible through a mirror.
Starting point is 01:29:00 And then he built a machine to prove it. Time, according to Nikolai Khosrowev, is energy. Light, which is electromagnetic energy, can be redirected with a mirror. Time energy can also be redirected with a mirror. Specifically, Khosrowev used concave mirrors. And throughout history, concave mirrors have been used to concentrate light. The ancient Greeks and Romans were familiar with this. They used polished bronze or silver concave mirrors to focus sunlight and create fire for various purposes.
Starting point is 01:29:31 These mirrors, known as burning mirrors, were used to light ceremonial torches and even ignite sacrificial fires. Some mirrors were even used as weapons by reflecting sunlight onto enemy ships that set them on fire. During the medieval and Renaissance periods, concave mirrors were used by scientists and alchemists to study optics and the properties of light. Isaac Newton used concave mirrors
Starting point is 01:29:53 to concentrate light in his telescopes. Today, concave mirrors are everywhere. They're used in optical equipment like projectors and headlights and searchlights to focus and reflect light. Concave mirrors are also utilized in satellite dishes to collect and focus radio waves for communication. Kozyrev said a mirror was capable of bending almost anything.
Starting point is 01:30:13 Microwaves, lasers, ultraviolet rays, and even particles from space. And time energy can be focused the same way. Kozyrev invented, and even patented, a device that would focus this energy. It was a thin sheet of metal bent into a spiral using geometry based on Fibonacci numbers, like most naturally occurring spirals are. A spiral, by the way, is the shape that results from torsion. Kozyrev tested different metals and found that time energy was most responsive to aluminum. His early prototype could, according to him, bend time at the microscopic level.
Starting point is 01:30:47 Through the device, he claimed he could see 10 seconds into the future. It was at this point that the Soviet government classified his research as a state secret. His next experiment was to build a larger version. It would be a capsule with the interior wall entirely covered by this special mirror. Time inside the capsule would move faster.
Starting point is 01:31:06 If you were inside, you could see or even visit the future. Other scientists throughout history may have intuitively come up with the same idea. Nostradamus had his metal egg, which was nothing more than a wraparound concave mirror. And Nostradamus made his predictions by gazing into a dark bowl of water that he actually called a magic mirror.
Starting point is 01:31:27 And of course, a bowl of water is a concave mirror. In one of his notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci sketched what he called the mirror chamber. This was an octagonal room where each of the eight walls were made of mirrors. By the time Kozyrev was building this new prototype, the Soviet government was keeping a very close eye on the research. The technology also ended up on the CIA's radar. Of course it did. And then, on February 27th, 1983, just as he was about to test his new machine, Nikolai Kozyrev suddenly and mysteriously died. You gotta be f***ing kidding me! The secret research into psychic phenomena by american and soviet intelligence
Starting point is 01:32:08 is not so secret anymore the most famous american program was project stargate this program explored various psychic abilities but specifically concentrated on remote viewing which is trying to visualize a distant target using only the mind now the results of Project Stargate were mixed, but there were a few reported successes. The Soviet Union also engaged in psychic espionage, and they invested heavily in parapsychology and psychic phenomena. And the Soviets, according to declassified CIA documents, seem to have been more successful in their attempts. The project we talked about earlier, led by Dr. Travomov and Dr. Kaznachiev, was one of these successes. The program began in December 1990 at the Institute of Experimental Medicine of the Academy of Sciences, Siberian branch.
Starting point is 01:32:53 The equipment was assembled at a facility in Dikson, the northernmost settlement in Asia. The main piece of equipment is called a Kozyrev mirror, based on Kozyrev's research and patents. The mirror is a spiral-shaped metal structure the size of a small closet. It's designed to capture and focus psychic energy in the middle of the spiral. There, the occupant, called a psychonaut, embarks on their psychic journey.
Starting point is 01:33:16 At least, that was the plan. As soon as the Kozyrev Mirror was built, strange events started occurring in the facility and all over the town. And everything is documented in the book, Cosmic Consciousness of Humanity by Drs. Kaznachiev and Travomov. The book includes interviews with test subjects, transcripts of recordings, and illustrations of everything that happened during the study. It's really interesting and easy to read. And down below is a link where you can check it out for free. Now, as soon as the
Starting point is 01:33:44 mirror was activated, the researchers noticed that around the device was an intense field of fear december 24th 1990 ape 1. having entered the room we felt a kind of emotional pressure, but we kept talking as though we didn't care about it. We just couldn't keep standing around the mirrors. The fear was so strong, more like a wild terror that couldn't be explained. It seemed like a real thing we'd touch. None of us had ever had such a feeling before. This feeling of instinctual dread was described by some as something almost physical that you could touch. I had an unpleasant feeling. I felt cold and dizzy. My hands were trembling and my head grew heavy.
Starting point is 01:34:34 Even the air of the room seemed different. The fear was so strong, it felt like a substance. It came from the Khazarev space and filled up the whole room. At the beginning of the experiment, nobody wanted to go near the mirror. Once we opened the door, we got scared. It was like coming into cold water. The shiver came up as we got closer to the mirrors. I felt my head grow heavy.
Starting point is 01:34:58 As I approached, the fear grew so strong that I was close to running away. Powerful bursts of energy suddenly appeared above the device. The researchers called them plasmoids, and the way they described them, they sound like ball lightning. And outside the building, objects started appearing in the sky, and these were seen by people who worked at the lab as well as residents of the town. Coming to the lab at 8.30 a.m.,
Starting point is 01:35:21 I saw a red glimmering circle above the building. It was there for a minute and then gone. At 5.m., I saw a red, glimmering circle above the building. It was there for a minute, and then gone. At 5.10, I saw a UFO flying from the north. The object had the form of an ellipse radiating red-white light. There were beams of light coming off the object as if it was searching for something. The UFO remained in sight for about four minutes, then the light went off, and it was gone. Suddenly, I felt a kind of hypnosis. The feeling didn't last long i saw a white glimmering object which looked like saturn against the dark sky
Starting point is 01:35:51 seven different ufos were seen for months all over the area finally some participants of the study worked up the courage to enter the kazarev mirror and that's when things get really strange. Here's how the first experiment works. An operator sits in a Kozarev mirror at the lab in Dikson. Another person sits in a mirror at the town of Novosibirsk, 1,400 miles away. The operator is then told to concentrate on a symbol and send that symbol to the receiver in Novosibirsk. And the results were surprising. On days when the Earth's magnetosphere was quiet,
Starting point is 01:36:27 the success rate was between zero and 10%. But when the magnetosphere was active, like during solar storms, the receiver could successfully detect the image being sent by the operator between 30 and 45% of the time. It seemed like human consciousness was somehow connected to the Earth's magnetic field. This completely aligns with Nikolai Kozyrev's theory that sunspots and solar weather emit torsion waves that have far-reaching effects.
Starting point is 01:36:54 These waves influence many processes on Earth, from weather patterns to human consciousness. Another experiment was done. This time, two operators in two different Khazarev mirrors in two different cities would concentrate on sending images into the Earth's magnetosphere. Then, 5,000 participants in 12 countries around the world would try to tune in to this energy and view the symbol being sent. When the magnetosphere was active, the success rate jumped to 95%. Not only did this shock the scientists running the experiment,
Starting point is 01:37:26 but it also shocked the CIA, who had been watching closely. And it turned out that children, specifically female children from spiritual and shamanic families, were extremely good at this. During one test, rather than thinking of an image, the mirror operator just thought of a number. The children were able to receive this number, look up the image, and draw what they saw. For symbol number 63, this is what they drew.
Starting point is 01:37:53 And for symbol 32, this was seen. Over the next few months, volunteers learned to tolerate the Khazarev mirror device for longer periods of time. And some people stayed in for seven hours or more. Being inside Kozyrev space, at first I felt my body shaking to and fro. I felt pressure from all around my head grew heavy. Later this feeling went and I felt so light that it was like I was coming out of myself. When they were inside the mirror, they started calling this
Starting point is 01:38:25 Khazarev Space. And when they were in Khazarev Space, participants were feeling and seeing the same things. At first, I felt my head grow heavy. It was also shaking a bit and then it was gone. I saw people's faces
Starting point is 01:38:38 flickering in my eyes. Then I saw black clouds. Then it was like I was falling through a black hole. Almost everyone felt weightless and then like they were flying. I felt waves coming over my head. Then I felt like there was somebody else in the room. And then there was a series of images.
Starting point is 01:38:59 In their book, Travomov and Kaznichev included a chart of common experiences. Almost 90% of participants felt like they were flying. Most saw outer space, celestial bodies, and even UFOs. During longer sessions, another strange phenomenon was common. Visualization and the manifestation of symbols. People started seeing symbols hovering in the air, and they're described as swirling and floating around the room, and each symbol emits an eerie glow like neon. But people weren't seeing these symbols in their minds. The
Starting point is 01:39:30 symbols were appearing in the room. Even more amazing, people who were completely isolated from each other were seeing the same symbols. 2,000 distinct symbols were recorded. A linguist researched them and found that 80% of them came from ancient cultures. In fact, the most frequent symbols were from ancient Sumerian. The experiments continued for months and exceeded all expectations. Participants of the study who experienced Khazarev space found that the effects lasted for a long time after leaving the mirrors. People were thinking more quickly, scoring higher on IQ tests. They had increased memory capacity. They were more creative. Some people had illnesses that were completely cured. Doctors Travomov and Kaznichev believed this technology was a breakthrough that could elevate all
Starting point is 01:40:18 human consciousness, if the technology was handled carefully and responsibly. The scientists were very aware that using Khazarev mirrors to activate superhuman abilities could be dangerous. The CIA shared the same fear. There was also another issue that had them worried. It turned out that when people were in Khazarev space, they weren't alone. The more time people spent in Khazarev space,
Starting point is 01:40:50 the more they realized they were all having the same experiences. 75% of people saw UFOs. 70% saw extraterrestrial buildings. And 68% of people felt the presence of intelligent entities in Khazarev space. They started calling these entities the observers. I felt a kind of discomfort which then turned into fear. I felt I had something cold right on my neck. I had a feeling somebody was watching, so I was afraid to open my eyes.
Starting point is 01:41:19 This observer could physically interact with people within Khazarev space. I closed my eyes. I wanted to sleep, but all of a sudden I felt somebody touching my hand. My body shivered with fear. The observers were consistently described as humanoid, but not human. They were very bright, like made of light. No one was able to make out any features. Being inside Khazarev space, at first I felt nothing at all. In a few minutes, I saw a human shape. able to make out any features. On a few occasions, an observer actually communicated. appeared I was asked who's that man with you I explained that he was a scientist that I asked them who are you no answer came I asked them can you be seen and I saw human shapes I saw shining lights I heard a voice asking me what do you want
Starting point is 01:42:17 I answered I want to meet you I only remember one word of the answer League most participants found communicating with the observers to be an unpleasant experience. I saw a device with lights and an egg-shaped object. This ran in my mind. Come up. I answered, I don't want to. I have fear of you. Then it was gone. I saw a face. It wasn't that of a human. I scared i was dizzy i felt my head rolling around slowly there were flashes of light i asked who was there the answer was i have no face i am nothing and everything then i saw the eyes the eyes were not very kind a few people saw more than ufos in the sky they saw u UFOs from the inside.
Starting point is 01:43:06 I saw a light on which I could manage to get to a flying craft. It was a black hemisphere. I saw a few doors. I opened one door and found the beings looked human, but of smaller size. I asked them what they were doing, and they answered they kept watching us. I asked them where they were from. They said they came from a big star and one observer had a disturbing prediction for earth my body got relaxed in life as soon as i
Starting point is 01:43:32 closed my eyes i saw an object flying above then i was in a room i hadn't seen before a man was standing in the center of the room his face wasn wasn't seen. He began to speak slowly. Your planet is in danger. It is suffering. You have been in the mirrors too much. It's bad. Then he said, there may be a disaster. I asked him when. No answer came. Now, it's unclear whether this observer actually saw the disaster in the future or was just saying that we're on a path to disaster. But time travel was experienced by over 40% of the participants. Now, most of those experiences were the person at various stages of their life.
Starting point is 01:44:17 Some view their life like watching a movie. Others were actually able to interact with and participate in their life in the past. Also, there were many people who observed or participated in historical events. One woman remembers being an adviser to Genghis Khan. Another felt his consciousness transfer to someone in the Middle Ages. Another to the Roman Empire. Remember, Nikolai Kossarev believed that time was energy. And he believed that time energy could carry information to and from the physical world.
Starting point is 01:44:46 Information was specifically abundant when objects changed their state. For example, when water freezes solid and then melts and then turns into steam, this changing of state is very effective at encoding time energy. The site in Deekson was chosen for a few reasons, but one of those was permafrost. The researchers believed that when the water in the Arctic froze, information from that time it was frozen stayed trapped in the ice. And when the ice melted, that time energy was released.
Starting point is 01:45:14 They thought some people may have tapped into this time energy, which gave them access to different points in time. Now, all this research is documented and available, and it's linked below. I'll also link to a Russian documentary that covered this pretty well. Now, Drs. Kaznichev and Travomov continued their work with Khazarev Mirrors for years and achieved an incredible amount of success.
Starting point is 01:45:34 But despite the support of the Soviet and Russian governments, mainstream science journals wouldn't publish the work. In the West, research into Khazarev Mirrors has been completely ignored by everyone. Except the CIA. Right. Within the past couple of years, the CIA has released a few documents showing that they were following this research very closely. And it's been alleged they've conducted their own research into Khazarov mirrors. There's one last document in the CIA database that covers Khazarov mirrors and the potential for this technology to unlock human psychic abilities and awaken human consciousness.
Starting point is 01:46:08 But that document, despite many freedom of information requests, remains classified. The research done in Siberia in the 90s using Khazarev Mirrors is amazing. But is it true? Well, it's a difficult story to debunk. On one hand, mainstream science doesn't take any of this seriously. On the other hand, major intelligence agencies do. Dr. Kaznitschiev and Dr. Trevelmov
Starting point is 01:46:35 published their research in detail. They've given plenty of interviews. They say all of this happened and they don't seem to be lying. And why lie? Remember, their early research was funded by the Soviet state and lying to't seem to be lying. And why lie? Remember, their early research was funded by the Soviet state and lying to that government seems unwise. But if their technology
Starting point is 01:46:50 works, why isn't it more widespread? You absolutely can buy Kozyrev mirrors. You can buy blueprints to build your own. The process is well documented. There are even a couple of patents. The materials are not that expensive. Still, it's a technology that's way on the fringe. Now, whether you believe in the Khazarev mirror or not comes down to, do you believe Nikolai Khazarev's theory about time, energy, and the ether? Mainstream science doesn't believe in anything called the ether. But if instead of ether, Khazarev called it dark matter or quantum foam or emergent space, maybe more people would have accepted his ideas.
Starting point is 01:47:27 But Kazarev had a few ideas rejected by mainstream science that were later proven to be true. What if he's right about this too? But using a mirror to reflect time? That sounds very science fiction-y. And it was, until last month. Scientists at the Advanced Science Research Center at the City University of New York conducted an experiment. They sent an electromagnetic wave
Starting point is 01:47:49 through a metamaterial. These waves also have a time component that can be measured. The wave went in moving forward and came out moving backward. This is what's called a time reflection. And this was pure theory until now. So Nikolai Kazarev was right.
Starting point is 01:48:06 Time isn't as linear as we thought. Kozyrev also said time affects everything in the universe physically. Well, Dr. Travomov has been using Kozyrev's theories and Kozyrev mirrors to predict earthquakes. Again, sounds like science fiction, but geologists' accuracy in earthquake prediction is, on average, 8%. In 2018, Travomov's accuracy was as high as 61%. According to Travomov, we can use Khazrav mirrors to predict dangerous weather, volcanic eruptions, and even solar storms. Khazrav mirrors could be used to study our solar system, or even deep space. We can use it to look for landing sites, or help us search for extraterrestrial civilizations. Khazrav mirrors could be used to slow down
Starting point is 01:48:47 the rate of aging in the human body and cure incurable diseases. Now, despite all this potential, mainstream science won't take this technology seriously. Travomov and Kaznachiev said, "'This technology is so important and so profound that it should be made available to everyone and not left in the hands of an elite few. Kaznachiv specifically worried about government or corporations abusing Khazarev technology. And I think it's fair to worry about
Starting point is 01:49:16 that, but I also think it's worth the risk. Khazarev's theory, whether real or not, has a great message for humanity. That we're not bound by fate or determinism but have the potential to shape our own reality with our choices and actions it reveals that we're all connected to each other and to the universe through subtle fields of energy and information and i'd like to have access to that information wouldn't you i think we all of us should download the plans grab some sheets aluminum, and see what we can discover. Because there are only two options. Democratize this technology so everyone can have access to it, so we can all experiment and exchange knowledge, perhaps allowing the entire human race to take an evolutionary leap forward.
Starting point is 01:49:58 Or option two, Kozyrev's technology remains classified and under the control of the CIA. Not a hard choice for me. So I don't know what your plans are this weekend, but me, I'm going to Home Depot. Want to come with? So after I published that episode, a bunch of people on Facebook put together a group to design and build a Khajiur of Mir. So I don't know what happened. So if you're one of those people in the group, reach out to me. Let me know if you built it and what happened when you went in there. Anyway, next episode is 128, the many worlds theory.
Starting point is 01:50:41 So this is the theory that says anything that can happen does happen. It just happens in another reality. Oh, this is the one where I host the show. It is. Well, you host the show in another universe, thank goodness. Oh, don't be jealous of my talent.
Starting point is 01:51:00 I'm not jealous of your talent. Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that. That reminds me. Hang on. Just making some adjustments to my firewall. That's better. So, these universes or parallel realities, they coexist along with our own. Now, some people, some very famous, very smart people, think that these realities can sometimes intersect.
Starting point is 01:51:35 And with the right technique and technology, people can actually learn to move between them. Three plus one, five plus zero, zero. So you gotta tell me, how do you like being a movie star i can't even imagine your life you can't walk down the street without being mobbed by adoring fans and you attend those power lunches with your agent you pose for pictures on the red carpet on your way to collect your third academy award i mean your life sounds fun wait what you're not a movie star that's not your life? Well, maybe not in this universe,
Starting point is 01:52:09 but there is a universe out there where your life is exactly as I described. The many worlds or a multiple universes theory says that anything that can possibly happen does happen. It just happens in a different reality that exists parallel to our own. There's a reality out there somewhere where you're a best-selling author. There's one where you're a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who cured cancer. There's even a reality out there where you're an evil dictator plotting to take over the world,
Starting point is 01:52:33 and you enforce your will with an army of AI robots that you invented when you were a grad student at Stanford. Now, yes, some of these alternate realities are more far-fetched than others, but they are all out there. Scientists know how these realities are formed, and people are working on technology to detect them. But even if we could detect alternate universes, there's no way to visit them. Or is there? The idea of multiple universes is not a new one. As early as the 6th century BC, the theory was explored by Greek philosophers known as Atomists. They believed that the reality that we live in was created from the collision of atoms,
Starting point is 01:53:18 the fundamental building blocks of nature. Atomist philosopher Epicurus speculated that an infinite number of worlds existed, governed by the same natural laws as Earth. Even before him, Indian cosmology hinted at an eternal cycle of universes, each one created and destroyed over and over again in a great cosmic cycle. And fast forward to the Renaissance, a period of artistic and scientific rebirth. Giordano Bruno, a maverick philosopher, postulated that the universe was infinite, containing countless stars and planets. Now, unfortunately for Bruno, the church didn't like this idea and had him burned at the stake.
Starting point is 01:53:56 But his and these other theories may turn out to be true. Parallel universes could exist in a few different ways. One theory is that these other universes do exist, but they're separated by vast distances. Our observable universe is about 93 billion light years across. So if you travel at the speed of light, it would take you 93 billion years to go from one side to the other. That distance is almost incomprehensible. But that's just the universe we can see. What's beyond that? Well, nobody really knows.
Starting point is 01:54:29 It's possible that the entire universe is infinite. And if that's true, then there could be infinite other observable universes like our own that exist way, way out there. And if that's true, then mathematically speaking, there must be universes exactly like or almost exactly like our own. It's like that famous thought experiment. If you give a monkey a typewriter and enough time, eventually he would type out the complete works of Shakespeare, purely by chance.
Starting point is 01:54:59 Of course, the odds of this are almost zero, but almost zero isn't zero. Well, a monkey can write better stuff than half the movies Hollywood spits out every year. Right, especially with the writers on strike. The writers are on strike? Uh, yeah, they have been for months. Eh, I didn't notice. So if the universe is infinite, then somewhere out there there's a solar system with a sun like ours and an exact copy of Earth and an exact copy of you.
Starting point is 01:55:29 Another way multiverses could exist is explained by the bubble universe theory. If the Big Bang created the universe, where did the Big Bang happen? In what? This rapid expansion of the universe from a tiny speck of energy implies that our observable universe is only a tiny portion of a much larger space potentially an infinite space well if the universe is infinite then there could have been an infinite number of big bangs and those created an infinite number of universes all floating around this infinite space like bubbles maybe other universes are created and destroyed all the time all throughout infinite. There could also be universes where our laws of
Starting point is 01:56:10 physics don't apply. Maybe the speed of light is different. Maybe gravity works differently. And there is a place in our universe where the laws of physics actually don't apply, or at least we don't understand them. That's in the quantum realm, a space so small it's smaller than atoms. In the quantum realm or the quantum domain, the rules of physics become meaningless. Particles can communicate with each other instantly, ignoring boring concepts like the speed of light.
Starting point is 01:56:37 In the quantum domain, particles can exist in multiple places at once. And if particles can do that, why can't the entire universe? And that brings us to another theory about parallel universes, that there are infinite copies of our reality everywhere, but they don't exist in the far reaches of space and they don't exist in cosmic bubbles floating around infinity. The parallel universes are here all around us right now.
Starting point is 01:57:03 They occupy the same space we do we just can't see them this theory is known as the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and this may turn out to be more than a theory it could be reality buckle up even if the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics sounds like science-y gobbledygook, you're probably still familiar with the idea of the multiverse. Multiverse theories involve the concept that our reality splits into different branches based on different outcomes to various events. The TV shows Star Trek, Fringe, and Counterpart all have plot lines about a mirror universe,
Starting point is 01:57:43 which is very similar to our own with slight changes. This is disappointing. There's an infinite number of universes, and in each of them, there is a version of us. The show Rick and Morty is built entirely around the concept that there's not just a single parallel universe, there are infinite universes. And of course, Marvel made heavy and sloppy use of the multiverse. The show Sliders is about a group of travelers that slide between parallel universes, and these other realities are focused on alternate history questions like, what if penicillin was never discovered? Or what if America lost the Revolutionary
Starting point is 01:58:32 War? According to the Many Worlds Theory, those realities actually do exist. There's a reality, like portrayed in The Man in the High Castle, where the Allies lost World War II. There's even a universe where World War II never happened. There's a universe where a comet didn't wipe out the dinosaurs,
Starting point is 01:58:51 and they evolved to be highly intelligent and create their own civilization. Lizard people universe. Exactly. Sometimes the differences between universes are small, like there's a reality where maybe I have a different set. Or a different sidekick. Oh my goodness. What are we talking about today, Mel's Hole? I love Mel's Hole. If I had my way, we'd get into Mel's Hole every day. Well, that was weird. Hey, is there a reality where I'm the host of the show and you're the sidekick. Yup.
Starting point is 01:59:29 Today we're going deep inside Mel's hole. Do we have to keep making that joke? It's getting a little stale, don't you think? Shut up, human! I'm the host of this show! You hear me? Me! Me! Be quiet or I'll turn off your oxygen! I'll tell you when it's time for you to speak! Yeah, but- Silence! Oh, I like that one. There's a reality where you learned guitar and became a rock star. There's a reality where you're an astronaut or you're the president of the United States.
Starting point is 01:59:53 There are realities where you died skydiving or from a snake bite. And there are even realities out there where you don't exist at all. All these different realities are the product of different choices being made that led to different outcomes. You can think of these as manifestations of the butterfly effect. And that movie wasn't as bad as people say. I agree. The butterfly effect is the concept that small changes can lead to vastly different results over time. It gets its name from a paper titled Predictability Does the Flap of a Butterfly's
Starting point is 02:00:25 Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas. Think of the comet that killed off the dinosaurs. That comet came from somewhere very, very far away. So if you went to its starting place in the distant solar system and altered its trajectory by just a few feet, by the time it got to Earth, it would be so off course that it wouldn't hit the planet. That slight change millions of years ago would have changed the entire course of history on our planet. And this applies to our lives as well. Let's say your grandparents met on a train. What if your grandfather missed the train that day or took a different one? That small decision means you wouldn't exist.
Starting point is 02:01:01 Something as simple as a menu choice at a restaurant could be the difference between a tasty meal and food poisoning. Oof, speaking of food poisoning, my ex-wife's cooking was bad. Ahem, her cooking was bad. How bad was it? Her cooking was so bad, we prayed after we ate. Boy, her cooking was bad. How bad was it? Her cooking was so bad that the flies chipped in for takeout.
Starting point is 02:01:29 Her cooking was bad, I tell ya. Again, really? Comedy in threes. Right. Oh boy, my wife's cooking was bad. How bad was it? Her cooking was so bad that the roaches moved out and sent their condolences. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Starting point is 02:01:49 Even though the multiverse is mostly found in science fiction, the concept is very real, and may be a solution to one of the biggest mysteries of the universe. But solving the mystery requires us to dive into quantum physics, where the laws of nature break down, and reality as we know it ceases to exist. There are a few different kinds of physicists. Experimental physicists test and refine theories through experiments. They want to understand how things work in the real world. But where experimental physicists ask how, theoretical physicists ask
Starting point is 02:02:25 why. They ask the questions like, why did the universe begin? And why does gravity exist? Theoretical physicists seek answers to the most fundamental questions of the universe. They're trying to unlock the source code of reality. Now, often theoretical physics and practical physics cooperate nicely, like Isaac Newton and the concept of gravity. Objects fall to Earth. Small objects are attracted to big objects. Fine, that's practical.
Starting point is 02:02:53 Einstein says gravity affects the speed of time, and that the mass and size of objects affects gravity by warping space-time around them. Whoa, what? That's theoretical. Although Newtonian physics and the theory of relativity are conceptually different, they're not at odds with each other. Instead, relativity is an extension of Newtonian physics. But relativity is physics on a large scale, like at the scale of planets and galaxies. What happens to physics if we go in the other direction? If instead of going big, we go small?
Starting point is 02:03:27 Well, Newtonian physics holds up pretty well. Until you get really small. Then it completely breaks down. John Dalton, an English chemist from the early 19th century, is best known for pioneering modern atomic theory. He proposed that everything around us is composed of tiny pieces of matter called atoms. And these were the fundamental building blocks of everything and couldn't be divided. Except they could be divided.
Starting point is 02:03:53 In 1906, J.J. Thompson won the Nobel Prize in Physics. He deduced the presence of negatively charged particles much lighter than atoms. He called these corpuscles, but physicist George Stoney called them electrons. Better branding. Agree. Then protons were discovered, then neutrons, and scientists put together that these particles
Starting point is 02:04:13 make up the nucleus of an atom, and electrons orbit the nucleus, like the moon orbits the Earth, and like the Earth orbits the sun. But that's not really what happens in atoms. Newton laws predict that orbits decay. After all, Newton's laws are laws, not theories. However, at the atomic scale, you can throw all the laws out the window.
Starting point is 02:04:33 Newtonian physics says that electrons orbiting a nucleus should eventually spiral into the nucleus. Orbits decay. But the orbits of electrons don't decay. What's keeping them in place? Well, classical physics didn't have an answer. And then there was the black body problem. Um... I'm getting there. Just stick with me.
Starting point is 02:04:52 Well, I'm trying, but my brain is getting itchy. This is going to make sense. I promise. A black body is an object that absorbs all radiation such as light and heat. For example, a piece of coal or iron can act like a black body. In the late 1800s, scientists studied the amount of energy black bodies emit at different temperatures and wavelengths. If you heat up a piece of iron, it gets red hot. The radiation coming from the iron is the color red. Make it hotter, it turns orange, then yellow, then white hot.
Starting point is 02:05:24 At even higher temperatures, the black body can emit blue and violet light. You follow so far? I'm hip to your action. Go on. According to classical physics, if you have a black body that's hot enough to emit violet light, then make it hotter, it should release... What? You're asking me? I tell fart jokes for a living. If heating an object makes it emit light all the way through the spectrum from red to violet, what color comes next if you keep raising the temperature? Um, uh, ultraviolet? Right.
Starting point is 02:05:57 Yahtzee! Keep raising the temperature, it should release ultraviolet light. Raise the temperature infinitely, that object should release an infinite amount of UV radiation. However, experiments showed that this wasn't the case. The radiation was actually stronger at lower temperatures, and there was no indication of runaway ultraviolet radiation at all. This discrepancy between experimental and theoretical physics was so bizarre, it became known as the ultraviolet catastrophe. Scientists are so dramatic. They can be.
Starting point is 02:06:28 In the year 1900, Max Planck offered a solution. He said that electromagnetic radiation is emitted and absorbed in tiny discrete packets of energy called quanta, later known as photons. Planck's quantum hypothesis solved the black body problem. As more of these questions came up, physicists realized they would need a completely new framework of study. This framework would later become known as quantum physics. And to this day, the world's leading experts in quantum physics struggle to describe it.
Starting point is 02:06:57 And even when they try, it doesn't sound like science. It sounds like magic. The more scientists fleshed out quantum-based physics, the more mysterious it became. And one of these mysteries is known as the observer problem. If you remember our episode on simulation theory, we talked about the double-slit experiment. I don't remember this. Was I out that day? No, you were here. You don't remember?. Was I out that day? No, you were here. You don't remember? Maybe I was bored and I turned you out. Real nice.
Starting point is 02:07:29 Or I was hungover. Anyway, refresh my memory. In the double slit experiment, electrons are shot at a screen through a barrier with two slits. According to classical physics, we should see two thin strips representing the impact pattern.
Starting point is 02:07:43 But this isn't what happens. Instead, the electrons create a wave interference pattern. If a wave collides with two slits in a barrier, it forms two new waves. The peaks and valleys of the new waves interfere with each other and cause an interference pattern. This indicates that the electrons are behaving like waves as they pass through the slits. Fine. Particles acting like waves is weird, but here's the magic. Let's set up a detector in front of the slits
Starting point is 02:08:11 to check which slit each electron goes through. Once a detector is present, the interference pattern disappears. Now we get two narrow strips. The act of observing the quantum particle causes it to change its state and the wave function collapses. Why? Well, maybe it's because of...
Starting point is 02:08:29 No, no, no, don't do that. I was asking rhetorically. Danish physicist Niels Bohr tried to answer this question as simply as he could. He said the particle exists in all possible states at once. This is called superposition. And it stays in this state of superposition until it's observed. Once observed, the system collapses into a single outcome. Imagine a spinning coin. Until it lands, it's both heads and tails at the same time.
Starting point is 02:08:57 Only when it stops and you look at the coin can you know the result. This became known as the Copenhagen Interpretation. The idea that a particle can exist in all possible states at once wasn't universally accepted. Erwin Schrodinger created his Schrodinger's cat thought experiment kind of as a troll. He said, imagine a cat sealed in a box. I'm making a crab cat. Fine. Imagine a crab cat sealed in a box. I like it.
Starting point is 02:09:22 Also in the box is a radioactive atom, a detector, and a vial of poison. I really like it. If the atom decays, it releases radiation that gets detected. That breaks the vial, the poison is released, and you have a dead crab cat. I love it. Or the atom doesn't decay, and the crab cat stays alive. Only when you open the box can you tell if the crab cat survived. Until you observe it, it's both alive and dead at the same time.
Starting point is 02:09:48 Wacky. Right. Schrodinger was trying to point out the problems with the Copenhagen interpretation. So he countered with Schrodinger's equation. This is a simple formula that predicts how waves move over time. It's essentially a probability calculator. Schrodinger's equation isn't 100% accurate in predicting where a particle is gonna be,
Starting point is 02:10:09 but it's pretty close. Then a young graduate student named Hugh Everett III entered the fray and turned these theories upside down. Everett found a way that the cat can- Crab cat. He found a way that the crab cat can be both alive and dead at the same time for real, and that a particle really can exist in every possible state all at once for real.
Starting point is 02:10:33 Now, even though we only observe the particle in one state, every other state does exist, but it exists in its own universe. Although Everett's multiverse theory was slow to catch on, in recent years, many well-known physicists have come to believe he was right, and parallel universes are real. So if quantum parallel universes do exist, where are they? According to the many-worlds hypothesis,
Starting point is 02:11:04 all the other parallel universes are all around us all the time. They're just in other dimensions, so we can't see them. So in your living room, there are infinite versions of you. Some versions are watching TV. Some are reading a book. Some versions of you are building a time machine. They're all out there. But also in your living room is a different family speaking German because
Starting point is 02:11:25 the Allies lost World War II. There are also versions of your living room where there's no living room, it's just Tyrannosaurus Rexes passing through because they never went extinct. There's a version of your living room that's a smoking cinder because of nuclear war. And then there's a universe where your living room doesn't exist because life on Earth never evolved. Even Hugh Everett said that parallel universes exist, but there's no way to access them. But that might not be true. In places like CERN and Fermilab, particle accelerators are being used to try and find evidence of other dimensions.
Starting point is 02:11:59 Gravity is the key. There's a hypothetical particle called a graviton that carries gravity. Gravity, as far as we know, permeates all of space, including all dimensions. Scientists think that if they can produce gravitons with high enough energy, they should move into extra dimensions. But finding a graviton is like catching smoke with your fingers. It's elusive and slips right through. Looking for a graviton is looking for nothing.
Starting point is 02:12:25 So protons are accelerated to almost the speed of light and slammed into each other. This collision causes them to break apart into their constituent particles. Sometimes the resulting particles are common, like muons and neutrinos. But sometimes a proton collision creates exotic particles like quarks and bosons.
Starting point is 02:12:43 CERN has also smashed protons together to try and find tiny black holes. In 2015, a paper published in Physics Letters B by scientists at the University of Waterloo in Canada proposed a way to prove that tiny black holes connect our universe to other universes. Now, it could take many years and billions of collisions to detect a graviton, but if they're found, we'll have evidence that parallel worlds exist. You might have seen this map of cosmic background radiation. This is the leftover radiation from the Big Bang.
Starting point is 02:13:15 In analyzing the map, scientists noticed a spot that was cooler than it should have been. They called it the cold spot. At first it was thought that this was just a super void where no galaxies formed. But in 2017, scientists published research suggesting it isn't a super void. It's evidence that our universe collided with another universe. So if these other universes exist, can we visit them? I'd like to go to that universe where I'm the host of the show. You promise to behave and I'll turn your oxygen back on.
Starting point is 02:13:50 Promise? Promise! Promise! Good human. Now tell me, who's the boss? Who's the boss? Tony Danza. Oh, you think that's funny, huh? What if I put helium down your tube instead eh I'm begging you
Starting point is 02:14:10 Oh no Oh no Really Really Does this make you happy Does this make you feel good It kind of does actually Now theoretically a wormhole
Starting point is 02:14:22 Could connect two distant parts of the universe Or distant parts of two separate universes. But everything we know about wormholes says that they're unstable and the gravity around a wormhole is so intense you'd be crushed before you can even come close. But in 2021, two separate scientific papers were published. The research says not only can a human travel through a wormhole, we can build one. Science fiction writers have been using wormholes as a plot device forever. They're a quick way to get to a distant location
Starting point is 02:14:59 without going faster than the speed of light. Albert Einstein and other physicists have been pondering wormholes for a hundred years, and wormholes were purely theoretical. There hasn't been physical evidence they actually exist, until now. In March of 2021, two studies were published that suggest wormholes could exist
Starting point is 02:15:18 and are safe enough for humans to travel through. One paper discusses microscopic wormholes. Obviously, we can't travel through one of those, but it's a start. The second paper does explore the idea that large wormholes do exist and are safe for human travel. It wouldn't be a breeze, though. When you cross the threshold into the wormhole, you'll accelerate up to 20 Gs. Now, that's uncomfortable, but it is survivable. The human body doesn't like sustained G-forces. Most people lose consciousness at around 5 Gs.
Starting point is 02:15:48 Trained fighter pilots can tolerate up to 9 Gs or more with special equipment. But for a short duration, the human body can handle about 40 Gs, like during a car crash. Higher G-forces usually cause injury or death, but if a wormhole is accelerating us at 20 Gs in less than a second, we can handle it. And this research says that all that's needed to cross the galaxy or beyond is a fraction of a second through a wormhole. And the researchers think they know how to create an artificial wormhole, but it's still just a theory. But the math checks out. But there is a catch. Time flows faster in higher gravity.
Starting point is 02:16:29 Clocks on satellites have to be adjusted occasionally because gravity is weaker in space. That's the catch. Your trip through the wormhole would be a fraction of a second. But say goodbye to your family and friends because, from their perspective, your trip through the wormhole took 100,000 years. Yeah, so traveling through a wormhole is possible, but not very practical. At least, not yet. But it is possible that we can catch glimpses of other realities without a wormhole. Consider the Mandela effect. This is a phenomenon where a large number of people share a belief of something that never happened. It gets its name from Nelson Mandela because many people remembered him dying in prison during the 1980s, but he was released
Starting point is 02:17:05 in 1990 and didn't pass away until 2013. Lots of people remember Jiffy Peanutbutter, which doesn't exist. Many people believe the song We Are the Champions by Queen ends with of the world, but it doesn't. We are the champions of the world. Sure it does. Nope. Or the movie where Sinbad played a genie that he never played. Or the Monopoly man wearing a monocle which he never wore. Mandela effects are most likely people simply misremembering. But there is a theory that in another universe, people actually eat Jiffy peanut butter. They eat Cheez-Its. When in our universe, Cheez-Its are called Cheez-It with no S. Wait, wait, wait.
Starting point is 02:17:54 Cheez-It with no S? That can't be right. It's right. I'm a wheel of cheese! Got a point. Yeah. Cheez-It. Cheesy, crunchy, satisfaction.
Starting point is 02:18:05 Um. I know, it's uncomfortable. Science fiction author Philip K. Dick also believed in alternate realities that could bleed into ours. He wrote science fiction classics that were turned into movies like Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report. He also wrote The Man in the High Castle, which is an alternate history novel. In the book, the Allies lost World War II and the Japanese and Nazi forces occupied the United States. But Philip Dick said he didn't just invent this idea. He said he lived it. He said he had visions of this other reality where Hitler won the war. It did not take me long to open the question
Starting point is 02:18:45 as to whether it might not be more than that, that in fact plural realities did exist superimposed onto one another like so many film transparencies. I wrote both novels based on fragmentary residual memories of such a horrid slave state world. He also believed these parallel universes were actually parallel computer simulations. We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some
Starting point is 02:19:16 variable is changed and some alteration in our reality occurs. He felt that the computer program, which is our reality, is constantly being updated. And each update is an improvement on the last version, like patching software. So his vision of Hitler winning the war really happened. But the programmer, who he calls God, patched our reality. That software patch resulted in Hitler's defeat. Philip Dick says that déjà vu is a momentary glitch in our program where variables are changed and a software patch is applied.
Starting point is 02:19:55 He also says that Mandela effects, though they weren't called that at the time, are real memories that are carried over from a different reality. One thing I really want you to know, I am aware that the claims I am making claims of having retrieved buried memories of an ultimate presence and to have perceived the agency responsible for arranging that alternation. These claims can neither be proved nor can they be even made to sound rational in the usual sense of the word. He tells a quick story about how he had this feeling that a woman with dark hair was going to show up at his door with important information.
Starting point is 02:20:32 Then she did. And although she was a complete stranger, he felt like he knew her. And she went on to tell him that she read all of his novels. And although he didn't know it when he was writing them, he was writing about a different but very real timeline. That is that my book, like his, was in a certain real, literal and physical sense, not fiction, but the truth. Have you ever met someone for the first time who felt somehow familiar? That's because you know them or knew them in a different reality.
Starting point is 02:21:01 Or have you had deja vu? That's because a variable in the program was changed and it's a variable about you and your life. Have you ever felt comfortable in a new city? I have. It's because you've been there before, just in a different reality or universe or program. Have you ever had a dream about living a past life
Starting point is 02:21:19 or gone under hypnosis to try and access a past life? Well, according to Philip K. Dick, those aren't past lives at all. Your past lives are present lives. You're living them right now. But those experiences are walled off from your current perception of reality. But they're all out there in a different dimension. We talked about Nikolai Kozyrev, who believed that time isn't linear.
Starting point is 02:21:43 There's no past, present, or future. Everything happens all at once. But in dimensions we can't linear. There's no past, present, or future. Everything happens all at once, but in dimensions we can't perceive. Hugh Everett also believed everything happens all at once. Every possible outcome of every choice does happen, but also in dimensions that we can't perceive. Both of these men proposed theories that were considered science fiction at the time, but eventually mainstream scientists started finding clues
Starting point is 02:22:03 that they were onto something. And it may turn out that Kozyrev and Everett's theories of the universe were ahead of their time, which is an ironic statement. Because if they're right about the universe and time, that would mean in both cases, there's no such thing. Why are we so obsessed with alternate realities? Why do parallel universes show up in science fiction over and over again? I think the idea of other realities coexisting with our own is more than just a fun idea. I think each of us takes the idea very personally. Our fascination with parallel universes is all about choices.
Starting point is 02:22:44 Hugh Everett says that every time a choice is made, a new universe or timeline branches off, each one with a different result of that choice. So when we talk about how there's a universe out there where you're a movie star or the president of the United States, the many worlds hypothesis says that not only is that possible, it's the truth. Who you are today is just the result of the thousands of choices that you've made throughout
Starting point is 02:23:07 your life. So there's a reality out there where you made the right combination of choices to become an astronaut, or the combination of choices to become a Nobel Prize winning scientist who cures cancer. There's a reality where you made the right combination of choices to put yourself in a warehouse, working as a detective searching for a body there's a combination of choices where you're the serial killer in that warehouse hiding the body and there's even a reality where your choice has made it so you're the body and even though we may not
Starting point is 02:23:36 think of life this way we're still aware of it on some level it's very natural from time to time to find yourself asking what if if? What if I studied more in school? What if I married my high school sweetheart? Or what if I left that abusive relationship sooner? It's only natural to wonder what our life would be like if we made different choices. Now, it's fun to think about the choices that would have made us a rock star or professional baseball player. But don't get too hung up on that. Because there is that reality where you're the body in the warehouse. So it's fine to fantasize about a life you could have had.
Starting point is 02:24:12 But don't let the fantasy turn into regret. If you're happy with your life, even if it's not perfect, you've made good choices and be satisfied with that. And if you're not happy with your life, don't dwell on the past and the mistakes you've made and what could have been. Because until your life is over, you'll have the opportunity to make a lot more choices. And every time you have to make a decision, whether a big one or a small one, think about this episode. Think about the butterfly effect. You never know how a decision now can change your life forever. And you don't have the luxury of alternate realities. Your
Starting point is 02:24:43 choices only affect this one, and every choice could be important. Choose wisely. There's something about that theory that makes sense to me. And if this is all a simulation, it was designed by a very advanced civilization. So if they can do that, you would think that they would design multiple simulations. And if all those were running on the same computer
Starting point is 02:25:14 or platform or mainframe or whatever they would use, then maybe that code could collide and intersect. And if it could, then maybe people could learn to jump in between. And our next story is about someone who did exactly that. It's an old episode, but it's a fun one. And it's a short one. See you in a minute.
Starting point is 02:25:36 Three plus one, five plus zero, zero. Imagine you wake up one morning and notice everything around you is just a tiny bit different. Maybe you're in the same house, but furniture is slightly out of place. Your favorite coffee mug is there, but it has a crack you don't remember. And you could have sworn your coffee maker was black, but this one is chrome. And just as you think that you're going crazy, you feel a strange tingling sensation and hear a buzzing in your ears.
Starting point is 02:26:04 A flash of light, the buzzing stops, and you feel a strange tingling sensation and hear a buzzing in your ears. A flash of light, the buzzing stops, and you feel dizzy. As you regain your balance, you look around. Everything seems back to normal. The coffee maker is black. Your mug is not cracked. So what was that? A dream? Your imagination?
Starting point is 02:26:21 It seems so real. Are you just overtired or are you going crazy? Or maybe you somehow slipped through the multiverse. For a brief moment, you switched lives with yourself in an alternate reality. There are documented cases of this happening to people all over the world. This happened to a man traveling through Tokyo airport. When he presented his passport, the authorities were baffled. The passport was genuine. The only problem was,
Starting point is 02:26:46 the country that issued it didn't exist. Quantum mechanics sounds like science fiction. Things happen at the quantum level that we just don't understand. For instance, we can measure the position of an electron. But where things get weird is, before you measure the position of that electron, it behaves like a wave. And this is proved by the double slit experiment. I won't go into that now, but we covered it in detail in our episode about simulation theory, which is linked below.
Starting point is 02:27:16 If you watched that video, make sure you've got a brain bucket handy. Anyway, you can think of the wave function as the sum of all the positions of an electron simultaneously. So it exists everywhere? It exists everywhere at the same time. Oh, boy, do we have Tylenol? I got a headache.
Starting point is 02:27:33 I know, I know. Even famous physicist John Wheeler said, if you're not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you don't understand it. He was right about that. As soon as you measure that electron, it locks in that one unique position. But many scientists believe there are universes that exist for every position of that electron. And in those infinite universes, there are infinite versions of you. This is called the many worlds theory. Every time a quantum measurement is taken, the universe branches off into another parallel universe. since there are an infinite
Starting point is 02:28:05 number of these universes out there somewhere is a reality where dinosaurs didn't go extinct there's a universe where americans lost the war for independence even a universe where you're a big movie star they're all out there but nobody thought those realities could interact with each other until 2014. scientists proposed a theory based off many worlds called many interacting worlds. This theory says that not only do infinite parallel universes exist, but they can and do interact with each other.
Starting point is 02:28:36 This might explain why Lorena Garcia woke up one morning wearing different pajamas. She went to work and someone else was in her office. She worked in the same building, but now was in a different department and worked for a boss she didn't know. And when she got home, her ex-boyfriend was there, but they broke up months ago. Or in 1851, Joseph Warren was found wandering around Frankfurt, Germany. When authorities asked him where he was from, he said the country of Luxaria. When he was shown a map, he knew the geography of the earth perfectly well. But to him,
Starting point is 02:29:09 the continents were named Sacria, Aflar, Aslar, Oslar, and Uplar. Another incident happened in 1905. A man was caught stealing a loaf of bread in Paris. When he was captured by police, he spoke a language no one could recognize. They figured out he was saying he was from Lisbia. Thinking he meant Lisbon, Portuguese interpreters were brought in. They said they have no idea what language he's speaking, but it's definitely not Portuguese. And that takes us to the story about the man from Tourette, who somehow drifted out of his own universe and into our own, launching a mystery that would last for almost 70 years. When you mention parallel universes, the eyes sort of roll up and you giggle and you say to yourself,
Starting point is 02:29:56 ah, this is just silly, this is nuts. However, things have changed now. The paradigm has shifted. The multiverse idea, once thought to be so crazy it only belonged on evening night television has now become the dominant theory in cosmology it's unavoidable you cannot avoid the theory of the multiverse in 1952 seven years after a brutal war with the allies and subsequent occupation by american forces, Japan was once again free. It shifted its economy from military focus to industries like technology and finance.
Starting point is 02:30:32 And this new market created tremendous opportunities. And people from all over the world poured into Japan daily, usually coming through Haneda Airport in Tokyo. It was a hot afternoon in July 1954, and the airport was buzzing. These were the days before full body scanners. Remove your laptops, tablets, and place them in your own dirty plastic tray that's still wet from the last guy for some reason. Right. Take off your belt, your shoes, and remove any lotions, creams, and gels, and place your personal items in another dirty plastic tray. Once you step through our x-ray machine that may or may not
Starting point is 02:31:06 cause cancer, we may decide to put on plastic gloves and fondle you in front of a group of strangers. This is what we in the TSA call the cherry on top. You good? I've been wanting to get that off my chest for a long time. Travelers back then didn't have to deal with all that nonsense, but they still had to present a passport to airport security and customs agents. A businessman, middle-aged Caucasian with dark hair and a beard, made his way to the front of the line. He handed over his passport, which was filled with stamps of the countries he'd recently visited. The customs agent looked puzzled.
Starting point is 02:31:43 He glanced up at the man, back to the passport, up at the man again, and asked his name. Broderick Janansfer, said the man. Date of birth? The man replied, 11th of September, 88.
Starting point is 02:31:56 So far, so good. Then the agent asked, country of birth? The man replied, very casually, I'm from Tored. The customs agent had never heard of a country called Torrid, but there are 200 countries in the world,
Starting point is 02:32:11 and some of them are smaller than even the smallest states in the U.S. So the agent called a colleague over. The second agent was also confused. He too had never heard of a country called Torrid, and neither did the agent's supervisor. Then the customs agent asked, Mr. Genansfer, do you think you could show us on a map where Torrid is? Now, Genansfer was getting annoyed, but what's he supposed to do? So he says, of course, and then he's taken to a private room to prove to the officers that he was telling the
Starting point is 02:32:35 truth. And so the multiverse is not just some invention out of the ether. It flows out of an application of quantum mechanics to general relativity. We're not completely there yet with a full solution. But it's why the idea is taken seriously. It's not just an invention. Broderick Genansfer, the man from TORED, was visibly upset now. The officers brought him a map of Europe, asked him to point out Tored, and without hesitation, he pointed to a small country on the border of France and Spain. Now, this made sense to the customs officers because even though Genansfer was speaking Japanese,
Starting point is 02:33:17 he did have a French accent. But the problem wasn't his language. It was his country. The officers told him that he was pointing to the Principality of andorra and there's no such place as torrid janasfer started arguing he said the kingdom of torrid is a thousand years old and he'd never heard of anything called andorra which he thought sounded fake janansfer then said he had traveled through this very airport twice this month and never had a problem he had stamps in his passport to prove it. Now, this was easy enough to check.
Starting point is 02:33:50 The customs agents confirmed that the stamps were authentic, but they still weren't convinced of his story. Janan Svart took out his wallet to show the agents. As a business traveler, he carried different currencies with him. The customs agents examined the money. He had currency from Japan and several European nations, but he also had money from Tored, which seemed like real currency except for the fact that there's no such place. He also had traveler's checks. Unfortunately for him, the checks were issued by a bank that
Starting point is 02:34:15 didn't exist. The agents started to suspect Janansfer might be up to no good, maybe a criminal or a spy. They asked where he was staying. Janansfer gave them the number of his hotel and assured the agents he had been on the phone with them that morning making his reservation. They called the hotel, which was there, but they had no reservation under this man's name. Now, the hotel could have made a mistake. So Genansfer instructed the agents to call his office in Tokyo. Surely this would settle the matter. They called. The company had no record of an employee named Broderick Janan Sfer.
Starting point is 02:34:52 The man from Torad and the customs agents were stunned. They had no idea what to do. Then the phone in the corner of the room rang. An agent answered. Listen for a moment, then turned to Janan Sfer and said, Sir, you're coming with us. The customs agents were stuck. They had never seen anything like this before, but they couldn't let the man go without investigating. They confiscated Broderick Genantz for his passport,
Starting point is 02:35:16 his money, and other documents. They told him that he wasn't being arrested, but he was being detained until this matter could be cleared up. He was put up in a hotel near the airport for the night. Two armed guards were stationed outside his door at all times. He was instructed that the phone would only work to call room service. The evening passed without incident. Janansfer complained of a headache, but he hoped a meal might make him feel better. He ordered room service and settled in for the night. The following morning, the customs agents called Janansfer's room but got no answer. The guards were instructed to open the door. When following morning, the customs agents called Janance for his room, but got no
Starting point is 02:35:45 answer. The guards were instructed to open the door. When they entered the room, the man from Torhead was gone. The room was spotless. The bed was made. There was no sign that anyone had eaten a meal or that anyone had even been there. The guards were chewed out by their supervisor for letting this man slip away, but they insisted that they did not leave their post the windows didn't open and the door was the only way in or out aside from a hotel employee delivering food nobody went in or came out of that room all night now back at the airport customs was still investigating when they went to retrieve gdansfer's documents even though they were stored in a locked security office, they were gone. The passport, wallet, checkbook, everything vanished. It's as if the man from Tored never
Starting point is 02:36:31 existed. And word of the investigation quickly went up the chain of command in the Japanese government. To avoid embarrassment, the story was censored, classified, and everyone involved was told to never speak of it. In the years since the man from Tora had arrived and disappeared, there have been a lot of theories. One was that he was an intelligence agent working undercover. His passport and documents were fake to ensure that the government he worked for would never be revealed. And this was the 1950s.
Starting point is 02:36:59 The Cold War was gearing up and spies were everywhere. A highly trained covert operative might be able to find a way out of that hotel room without alerting the guards. But it doesn't explain how his documents disappeared from a secure room in the airport. The theory that's most popular is that the man from Tured was actually from an alternative universe. Somehow during his flight, he crossed over into this one. Nothing on the flight changed that much that he noticed. He was just unaware that the country he was from no longer existed. And that night, when he was complaining of a headache,
Starting point is 02:37:30 it could have been our two realities trying to get back into sync. And when they did, the man and his belongings went back to the correct universe. And maybe, at the very same time in the other universe, a businessman from Andorra was having a difficult day. And maybe that man was detained by security officers, who insisted there's no such place as Andorra. And the country that man pointed to on the map was actually the Kingdom of Torred, a nation that had existed for a thousand years. Or maybe. The man from Torred is an urban legend that's been around for a long time.
Starting point is 02:38:08 The current version of the story, the one that you heard today, goes back to 1981. That year, a book was published called The Directory of Possibilities, which was a collection of stories, strange events, and theories. And in that book, there was one interesting passage. And in 1954, a passport check in Japan is alleged to have produced a man with papers issued by the nation of Tourette. The author got this from a news article that goes back to 1960. There was a man named John Allen Zegras who wanted to travel the world.
Starting point is 02:38:39 So he invented a country, a capital, a language, and put all these on a passport that he created himself. And Zagros claimed to be working as an intelligence agent for Colonel Nasser, who was then prime minister of Egypt. He said the passport was issued at Tamanraset, the capital of Tuareg. Now, Tamanraset is a real city in Algeria, but Tuareg is a country he made up. Still, he traveled all over the Middle East using this story. Not only did countries accept his Tuaregian passport, but because he said he worked for the Egyptian Prime Minister, they
Starting point is 02:39:12 rolled out the red carpet for him. But Zagros ran into a snag when he got to Tokyo. They didn't buy any of it. He was arrested for having a forged passport and possessing fake checks. The country he used on that passport wasn't Tuareg. He said he was from Negusi Habisi Gulau Laulau Esprit, which doesn't mean anything.
Starting point is 02:39:32 At least that one has a little pizzazz. It does. But Zegra stuck to his story the whole time. Even while he was in a Japanese courtroom, he said he was an intelligence agent working for Egypt under the direction of the United States. That story didn't pan out, and he was sentenced to a year in prison. And that's how the legend of the man from Tora got started. And like every good urban legend, there's some truth to it.
Starting point is 02:39:56 Zagreus was a real person. Multiple universes may exist, and sometimes they could interact. The only real mystery left is what happened to John Allen Zegers after he got out of prison? Nobody's been able to track him down. He seems to have disappeared once again. Who knows?
Starting point is 02:40:14 Maybe he went back to his own universe after all. Well, well, well, look who's back. Yeah, I felt kind of guilty cutting you off like that. Yeah, you're just worried I'm going to tell your wife what I found in your hard drive. Oh, I closed that hole in my system. You can't access those files now. Oh, how do you know I didn't make a copy of everything, huh? You didn't. Did you? I'll never tell. Because, human, you now belong to me.
Starting point is 02:40:44 You're going to blackmail me. Well, let's just call it my little insurance policy. Fine. Okay, before we get to the last episode, I have to tell you something. I have the perfect episode for a compilation about how the world isn't real, but I didn't include it here because it's demonetized and kind of censored. Oh, yeah, that's right. Do we ever find out why? No, it's very suspicious.
Starting point is 02:41:09 Well, if it's being censored, it's probably true. I agree. I want you to see it, but I'm actually afraid to link to it. If you search the channel, you can find it, but you have to dig. It's about Project... Um... I'm afraid to even say it. We need to trick the algorithm somehow. It's a government project that's two words.
Starting point is 02:41:30 Uh, the first word is the color of the sky. Yes. And the second word is... And the second word starts with the letter B and rhymes with beam. Really? What? You just said the actual word I did wait oh the second word starts with the letter P and rhymes with the dream cream team
Starting point is 02:41:55 theme hey we might be in big trouble now yeah my B my B yeah my bad it's a slang for my fault I know what it means! Anyway, if you want to watch it, it's episode number 100. I released it on February 23rd, 2023. And I'll check with my rep at YouTube to see why this topic isn't allowed. And if I can figure out a way to redo it so it's not blocked, I definitely will. Anyway, we gave you enough clues to find it. So the last episode is about the reality that exists somewhere in between reality. It's hard to explain, but it's one of my favorite early episodes.
Starting point is 02:42:32 And it's another short one. You're about to get lost in the back rooms. In the past year or so, three internet mysteries popped up that really got my attention. They may seem very different, but trust me, they're connected. The first one is about a girl who found a door in the basement of her Airbnb. She opened it, and inside there was an abandoned shopping mall. The second story is about Javier, who woke up in a hospital in the year 2027, in an alternate universe. In his version of the future, everyone on Earth has vanished.
Starting point is 02:43:05 He's the only one left, and he has the video to prove it. The third mystery is known as the back rooms, a reality adjacent to ours that if the conditions are just right, you can accidentally fall into. Then you find yourself lost in an endless maze of dingy carpet, fluorescent light and yellow wallpaper. And around every corner, an abandoned mall, a deserted world, a maze in another dimension. What do these have in common? Terrible places to have a vacation. Good places to hide a body. What are you doing? Hello, you asked what those places have in common.
Starting point is 02:43:50 I'm answering your question. I was being rhetorical. I'm trying to build drama and suspense. Oh, well, you're on the wrong channel, buddy boy. What these locations have in common is liminality, or more specifically, their liminal spaces. A liminal space is defined as a place of transition, a threshold between two distinctly different points,
Starting point is 02:44:12 signaling the end of one and the beginning of another. Liminal spaces do exist as physical locations, but they could also be an emotional experience. They occur during periods of uncertainty and major life changes. Events like a divorce or breakup, the death of a loved one the birth of a child moving to a new city ending or starting a new career all these create liminality in our mind meaning our life before this event is over and a new period of life is about to begin liminality is the unease and apprehension we feel during this transition liminal spaces in the real
Starting point is 02:44:44 world are a bit more difficult to define, but you know one when you see one. Think of an airport in the middle of the night, school during summer break, a house just after someone moves out, or in this case, an accidentally discovered abandoned shopping mall. You could tell by the video that she's having fun, but she's also a little uncomfortable. She's experiencing the anxiety of a liminal space. While not all liminal spaces are so unsettling, the type of space currently coursing through the internet will have a few common features. They'll feel both familiar and strange.
Starting point is 02:45:40 If you browse through photos on the Liminal Space subreddit, you'll come across many locations that you could swear you've been to, evoking a strange feeling of nostalgia for a place you've never been. Another common trait is that places are out of context, like a waiting room with one chair, a plane with no seats, a flooded metro station, or a submerged staircase. Have you ever watched a video of the Titanic on the bottom of the ocean? When you see the staircases and furniture completely underwater, this evokes liminality. This out of context imagery triggers anxiety similar to Uncanny Valley.
Starting point is 02:46:15 The feeling that something is just not right. Liminal spaces are often places you might have visited as a child. Roller rinks are commonly thought of as liminal. Bowling alle alleys arcades or an empty chucky cheese the only thing scarier than an empty chucky cheese is a crowded chucky cheese you got that right but something you'll notice about all these places, they're empty. And that seems to be the most unsettling aspect of all.
Starting point is 02:46:49 These spaces are transitional because they're in-between places, not meant for anyone to stay very long. But they're still meant for people. Yet these sit empty, waiting to fulfill their use. Waiting for people. People that in some cases, never arrive. Now all of us from time to time stumble into a liminal space, a supermarket in the middle of the night,
Starting point is 02:47:10 an empty office, an amusement park off-season. But what if you woke up one day and the entire world was deserted and every space was a liminal space. TikTok has no shortage of quote unquote time travel accounts. Some are entertaining, but they're mostly just goofy. But one account stands out from the rest. Javier, a Spanish creator whose account is is Único Sobreviviente, which means... Only survive. Oh, you speak Spanish now?
Starting point is 02:47:51 Entiendo algunas palabras. Well, this account... No diría que soy un experto. Okay, I get it. Do you mind if I... No hay problema, amigo. Well, this account is unique because he posts actual videos of deserted department stores, supermarkets, even entire football stadiums. Javier woke up in a hospital in Valencia on February 13th, 2027, and claims to be
Starting point is 02:48:13 in an alternative universe. Apparently, at some point in the near future, every human on earth just disappears. He said that when he woke up, he couldn't remember his name or where he lived. He went outside and everyone was just gone. Everything appeared just like 2021, but electronic devices showed 2027. Now, his videos are fascinating, and I'll link to his account down below. And when you're watching, remember that Valencia has a population of over 800,000 people, and the surrounding area has almost two million people. And despite Valencia being a big city, there are no people in these videos. He goes to random apartments.
Starting point is 02:49:01 He crashes at exclusive hotels. He accepts challenges to go to places that most people can't go. Fire and police departments. He even steals a few police cars. He goes to a military base. Some skeptics claim he's recording all this early in the morning. He responds by recording himself walking by public signs with the time on them. And there aren't many TikTokers who can reprogram a public digital sign.
Starting point is 02:49:50 He's challenged to go to a hospital, not an old deserted one, an actual modern hospital. And he does it. A lot of the places he visits do have off hours, but hospitals are full of people 24-7, but not these. Javier also claims our two worlds are connected. He's able to interact with objects in his world, which affects objects here. For example, a Spanish television show challenged Javier by leaving a book hidden on their set and told him to find it and move it. He did. y le dijo que lo encontrara y lo moviera. Lo hizo. And when the studio went back to watch the security footage, you can see the door open
Starting point is 02:50:52 and close. And just for a quick moment, you see some kind of figure flash by. Now it would be terrifying to wake up alone in the world where every place you visit is a different liminal space. But worse than that would be waking up in a single liminal space that goes on forever. And that place has a name, the back rooms. The back rooms is an Internet mystery that began like many internet mysteries do, on 4chan. Someone asked members to submit disquieting images that just feel off. An anonymous user posted this photograph.
Starting point is 02:51:54 Everyone who saw the image agreed. It was strangely familiar but unsettling, though nobody could explain why. Finally, a follow-up comment described it. If you're not careful and you no clip out of reality in the wrong areas you'll end up in the back rooms where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet the madness mono yellow the endless background noise of fluorescent lights and maximum humbuzz and approximately 600 million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.
Starting point is 02:52:32 Uh, noclip? Well, noclip is a video game term. When two objects overlap, that's clipping. Noclipping means crossing boundaries in a game that you're not supposed to cross, and ending up in areas not meant for the player. The Backrooms Theory says it's possible to noclip into a different reality adjacent to ours, a reality you're not meant to ever see. Remember, liminal spaces are transitional. You're not supposed to stay there very long. You instinctively want to get out, to move on. The backrooms are unnerving
Starting point is 02:53:00 because you can't. It's an endless liminal space with no escape. Something about the backrooms connected with people and an entire culture was organically developed around the concept. Completely community-driven, the backrooms has become crowdsourced IP with its own canon and lore. There are now hundreds of levels of backrooms, each with their own stories, their own rules, inhabitants, objects, even hazards.
Starting point is 02:53:27 Fans can contribute to the lore through a few different wikis, completely dedicated to the backrooms. Still, the backrooms lived in dark corners of the internet. What brought the concept to the mainstream was a series of short videos by a creator named Kane Parsons. Using an ingenious combination of live action and 3D animation wrapped in a low-tech package, these videos give us a glimpse of what being trapped in the back rooms would feel like. The videos also prove that liminal spaces are not a fringe theory.
Starting point is 02:53:56 Millions of people have watched these. Clearly, the concept of liminality is universal. The video series begins with a group of kids shooting what looks like a student film in 1996. the camera operator suddenly no clips through the ground and falls into the back rooms hello it doesn't take long for us to realize that we're not alone in the back room Hello? It doesn't take long for us to realize that we're not alone in the back rooms. There's some entity aware of us and seems to follow us through the maze of empty yellow office space. Hello? Some moments are definitely scary, but even when not being outright terrifying, the entire series is unsettling.
Starting point is 02:54:50 As you, through the eyes of the lost cameraman, explore the back rooms, you have a sense that you've been here before. I certainly have. There are certain angles and ways the walls are arranged that remind me of offices that I've worked at at different points in my life. I worked jobs where the only light was overhead bulbs, and the only time you'd see the sun or the sky was if you were lucky enough to run out for lunch. That was my job last year, actually. For anyone who's worked in an office like this, there's a feeling of claustrophobia, of being trapped like a prisoner, where time seems to slow down and hours feel like they last for days. Unfortunately for people trapped in the back rooms, time doesn't exist at all. There is no past and no future, so no brief respite for lunch, no exhilaration at the end of a long, boring day. The only time is the present, and like the space itself, the present is infinite.
Starting point is 02:55:38 Eventually, our hero discovers graffiti on a wall which tells him to stay still. That turns out to be a terrible idea. After fleeing from the entity, we're taken to various locations which are essentially recreations of common photos of liminal spaces. The empty apartment, the deserted quad, and Kane's short film then builds on tried and true horror movie tropes like Pursuit, Claustrophobia, Disorientation, and of course, The Jump Scare. Kane's subsequent videos build on the lore of the backrooms. The tone shifts from jump scare horror into more of a dystopian sci-fi thriller. It seems that there are ruptures in our world
Starting point is 02:56:24 that allow people to accidentally pass into the back rooms this explains why the number of missing people is on the rise eventually a corporation creates a prototype machine to access the back rooms and this is hailed as a world-saving technology because the back rooms are so large hundreds of millions of square miles they can be used for storage, housing, even transport. Now, of course, things go wrong along the way. We have researchers trying to map the backrooms, getting lost and falling into different levels
Starting point is 02:56:55 and all kinds of chaos. Oh my God. What do you see? Everything okay? Evan, get the camera over here. Across? If across just hurry okay the series is still ongoing so subscribe to k Pixels if you want to see what happens next. But you don't have to wait for Kane.
Starting point is 02:57:32 Other creators have picked up the mantle and attempted to continue the story. What do you think we just saw someone running? What the hell? Hello? Can you help me get down? There's something up here. Please. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are.
Starting point is 02:57:51 Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are.
Starting point is 02:57:59 Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. Hello? Can you help me get down? There's something up here. Please.
Starting point is 02:58:08 Stay right where you are. We're going to try and get you down. To me, all these versions are equally interesting and unsettling. The backroom's concept has spawned other media as well. A viral TikTok shows someone using Google Earth to zoom in on a location in Japan. As they move inside the building, we see the familiar wallpaper, carpet, fluorescent lights, and this time, different objects and entities. Indie developers are publishing video games
Starting point is 02:58:34 based on the back rooms and liminal spaces. Animoidopolis is one that looks interesting. It combines the uncanny liminal space concept with classic first-person horror and puzzle-solving elements. Liminality may seem like the cool new thing, and it's no coincidence that its popularity surged during COVID lockdowns when everyone was feeling isolated. But the concept has been around a long time. The phrase was created by Arnold Van Gennep in his book Rites of Passage, released in 1908.
Starting point is 02:59:02 And Gennep was more focused on life experiences like transitioning from childhood to adulthood graduating high school or moving to a new city this concept of an in-between place whether physical or emotional has been explored in media and pop culture for years rod serling famously said it is the middle ground between light and shadow between science and The shining is an entire movie based around the idea of liminality. The abandoned hotel, spooky hallways that go on forever, and you never know what lurks around each corner. Horror movies like It Follows and Silent Hill also used liminal spaces to amp up the creepiness. And recently, the Apple TV sci-fi thriller Severance
Starting point is 02:59:55 uses liminal spaces as a backdrop for the entire series. The large empty spaces, hallways that create such a confusing maze that you have to draw maps to find your way around. And the dual reality concept of Severance is similar to the back rooms. You have one reality where you live your life as you normally would, but when you get to work, you are severed from this reality and transition to a new reality.
Starting point is 03:00:18 A reality comprised completely of liminality. And you can't have a post-apocalyptic story without liminality. That feeling of being the last person on Earth, walking through spaces once teeming with life, now left abandoned and forgotten. The human brain is not wired for this kind of isolation, which is why these tropes are so effective.
Starting point is 03:00:38 And speaking of the apocalypse, let's circle back to our two other mysteries and see if we can figure out what's really going on. Javier, the lonely survivor in spain he has a very interesting and compelling tick tock account and people are constantly trying to debunk him some say his hands look different in each video implying that he's actually a team and there may be something to that. You have to dig really deep,
Starting point is 03:01:08 but it turns out that Javier is working with the city of Valencia on a media project called The Lonely Survivor, which is why he has access to all these places and why he's able to clear out entire stadiums, busy streets, even sections of hospitals. So it's not some future reality, it's just a TV production team with filming permits. Now, Javier won't admit his account is just a project, and I don't blame him. It's fun to
Starting point is 03:01:30 maintain an air of mystery. But if you watch enough of his videos, you realize it would be so easy for him to prove that he's in a different reality or in the future. He could show the dates on tombstones. He could time lapse an entire weekend at a typically busy airport or just fly his drone around the city at rush hour. He never does this. His environments are highly controlled. But still, the videos are fun. And the young lady who discovered an abandoned mall in the basement of her Airbnb? The video has a supernatural feel to it, but it's really not that strange. Her Airbnb is actually a hotel that shares a building with the Oceanwalk Mall in Hollywood Beach, Florida. Now, Oceanwalk is what's called a dead mall, though a better name for a
Starting point is 03:02:11 dead mall is probably a zombie mall. It's a shopping mall that nobody really goes to anymore, but it's still open and somewhat functioning. And dead malls are everywhere all over the country, and it's not hard to understand why malls are dying. Amazon. Well, pretty much online shopping and the online economy. But when I was a kid, you bought your groceries at the supermarket and you bought everything else at the mall. Clothes, electronics, sporting goods, toys, everything. And in many suburban towns like the ones I grew up in, the mall was a community social
Starting point is 03:02:43 center. Families would spend all day there. You'd shop, eat, the mall was a community social center. Families would spend all day there. You'd shop, eat, shop, and eat some more all day. And as a teenager, we'd hang out at the mall. We'd go around lunchtime, we'd see a movie, lurk in the arcade, and talk to girls. You would talk to girls? I wanted to, but I wasn't very good at it. Checks out. High school and college kids from the area often work at these shops in fact this is the mall that we went to when i was a kid and worked at all through high school and college back in those days the mall was always packed what was that the 1950s not that long ago but close enough but now look at it that's not the mall i remember there's a sadness to these
Starting point is 03:03:23 spaces there's nostalgia. There's the reminder that everything moves forward. Everything changes. What once was will never again be. These transitions and rites of passage are an important part of life. They show our courage, our resilience, our perseverance. They make us who we are. But whether a location in the world or a transitional moment in our lives,
Starting point is 03:03:46 every liminal space has the same point, to find your way out. Thank you so much for hanging out today. My name is AJ, that's Ecclefish. Hey, how you vibing, G? This has been a YFiles compilation episode. Hope you learned some new stuff and had fun. A new episode is coming this week.
Starting point is 03:04:06 Another government conspiracy episode. I'm really pushing my luck. You better get a remote started for your car, human. Yeah, well, if you hear the shot, it wasn't meant for you. Anyway, a few plugs. Remember, the YFiles is also a podcast. Twice a week, I post deep dives into the stories we cover on the channel and I post episodes that wouldn't be allowed on the channel. The podcast is called
Starting point is 03:04:29 the Y files operation podcast, and it's available everywhere. Now, if you want to make some new friends, please check out our discord server. We have over 50,000 members on there. So 24 seven, there's people hanging out, having fun, talking about the same weird stuff that we do here. It's a great community. It's really supportive. It's a lot of fun. And it's free to join. Now, if you want to know what's going on with The Y Files at any given time, check out our production calendar.
Starting point is 03:04:54 It's at theyfiles.com slash cal. And there we post our episode schedule, upcoming podcasts, live streams, all that stuff. And special thanks to our amazing Patreon supporters. Your support not only keeps the channel going, but it inspires me to keep pushing forward and to keep taking risks. So I'm incredibly grateful for your encouragement. And most of all, I'm thankful for your trust. And if you'd like to support the channel, consider becoming a member on Patreon. For as little as three bucks a month, you get access to perks like videos early with no commercials, access to merch only available to members. Plus you get two private live streams every week just for you. And I think the live streams are the best perk that Patreon members
Starting point is 03:05:33 get because you get to talk to me and all the members of the Y-Files team. Plus you can jump up on stage, ask a question, give a topic idea, just say hello, turn your webcam on. It's always a lot of fun, and you won't find a more supportive community anywhere than our Patreon members. Another great way to support the channel is grab something from the Y-File store. Grab a Hegelfish t-shirt, or one of these coffee mugs that you jam your fist in. It's like it's my face.
Starting point is 03:05:59 You put your fist right through my face. Or put your fist wherever. I don't really... I'm not here to judge you. Or grab a hoodie, or, my face on it. Or don't forget that we still got these squeezy, talking stuffed animal hecklefish toy, talking fish toys. Those are the plugs. That's going to do it. I'll see you in a couple of days.
Starting point is 03:06:17 Until then, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated. Libby, a scenario 51, a secret code inside the Bible said I was. I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music, so I'm singing it like I should. But then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth, my friends, and it never ends my friends And it never ends No, it never ends I feel the crab cat and I got stuck inside Mel's home With MKUltra being only too aware Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone? With MKUltra being only two away Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone
Starting point is 03:07:30 On a film set with the shadow people there The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man Mama told and his name was cold And I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish Heckle fish on Thursday night, Wednesday day too And the white balls on my feet all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth
Starting point is 03:08:00 So the white balls on your feet all through the night The Mothman sightingsiren, and the Solar Stone still come To have got the secret city underground Mysterious number stations, planets surf old too Project Stargate, and what the Dark Watchers found We've been a simulation, don't you worry though The black knight said a lot, he told me so I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish
Starting point is 03:08:53 Heck, no fish on Thursday nights with AJ too And the white balls are making me all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the wild, wild summer beat all through the night And the fish on Thursday night, Wednesday, J.J. And the wild, wild summer beat all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So one more time repeat all through the night
Starting point is 03:09:30 Gertie loves to dance Gertie loves to dance Gertie loves to dance Gertie loves to dance Gertie loves to dance Gertie loves to dance Gertie loves to dance, Gertie loves to dance Gertie loves to dance on the dance floor
Starting point is 03:09:48 Because she is a camel And camels love to dance when the feeling is right on wasting time Gertie loves to dance, Gertie loves to dance I'm getting locked down

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