The Why Files: Operation Podcast - What Science Found at the Edge of Death | The Third Man

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/THEWHYFILES to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. Hundreds of survivors across a century — climbers, sailors, divers, soldiers ��� report the same thing. At the moment they were about to die, a calm presence appeared beside them. It gave directions. It knew the way out. It disappeared the moment the danger passed. A neuroscientist built a machine that can summon something like it. But what his subjects experienced and what survivors describe are not the same thing. The cases are real. The pattern is undeniable. What the presence actually is — that part is still open. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frank Smythe had to stop. He was 28,000 feet up Everest and fading. He knew if he closed his eyes, he wouldn't open them again. Lots of climbers took their last breath right here. Some were still frozen in the ice. But his partner wasn't worried. They just needed a break and a bit of food. Frank broke a mint cake in half and held a piece out.

But nobody was there. But Frank knew he wasn't alone. He experienced something thousands of people in danger experience, an unseen presence, calm and familiar, always there when you're about to die. Scientists call him the third man. They even built a machine that can summon him. But what the machine creates and what survivors describe, they are two very different things. You ever eat something and immediately start doing mental gymnastics to justify it?

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Hems.com slash the Y files. Weight loss by Hems is not available in all 50 states. Wagovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wagovi clinical study information and restrictions, visit Hymns.com. Ernest Shackleton's ship got crushed by Antarctic Pack Ice in November 1915. 27 men, three lifeboats, no ship. They camped on the ice for five months, dragging the lifeboats behind them.

When the ice broke apart, they launched the boats and sailed 200 miles to the nearest land. But it was nothing more than a barren rock in the middle of nowhere. There was no hope of rescue. Nobody knew where they were. So Shackleton piled into a lifeboat with five men. They endured hurricane winds and 20-foot waves for 800 miles. But finally, they reached South Georgia Island. That was the good news.

The bad news, they landed on the wrong side. The whaling station that could save them was on the north coast. They were on the south. And between them was a mountain range, nobody crossed. Nobody even dared to try. But Shackleton was out of options. He picked two men for the final push, Tom Crean and Frank Worsley. They carried 50 feet of rope, a small axe, and three days of food.

No tent, no sleeping bags, no good options. If they stay, they die. I saw McGaweigot off an island once. All he had was a casu, a dental dam, and an extra rigid churro. A rigid churro? Well, it wouldn't work with a flaccid churro. Okay. But it's done to be ashamed of.

It happens to everybody's chiro once in a while. For 36 straight hours, they climbed. They navigated by the stars when they were lucky enough to have clear sky. Mostly, they just climbed in the dark. At one point, they got pinned. Going back meant freezing to death. Waiting meant freezing to death. So Shackleton coiled the rope beneath the three men like a sled,

closed his eyes, and they pushed off. They slid 2,000 feet screaming the whole way. Then they hit a snowback. And somehow, nobody died. They finally stumbled in. to the whaling station, filthy and frostbidden, but alive. Three men just pulled off one of the greatest survival feats in history, and each of them was hiding a secret from the others. Only later did they learn, they all had the same secret. Weeks later, Shackleton admitted it first. It seemed to me often

that we were four, not three. I said nothing of it to Crean or Worsley. I could not bring myself to look behind me. I feared what I might see, or worse, what I might not. Worsley said the same thing, a presence just outside his field of vision keeping pace. They never saw the figure, never heard it speak, but all three were sure someone walked with them across that mountain range. T.S. Eliot wrote about it in his famous poem, The Wasteland. Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and together. I do not know whether a man or a woman, but who is that on the other side of you? That line gave the phenomenon its name, the third man. And 11 years later, Charles Lindberg

tried to cross the Atlantic alone. But he wasn't alone for long. On May 20th, 1927, Charles Lindberg climbed into a single engine plane at Roosevelt Field on Long Island. He was going to fly nonstop to Paris, 33 hours over the open ocean alone. Plenty of pilots. Plenty of pilots. it tried, none made it. Oh, you're talking about Sister Betrell. What? You said a nun made it. Sister Betrell is the only flying none I know. No, none as in

no one. How dare you? Sally Field is not no one? I like her. I really like her. The problem started before he left the ground. By the time he hit the Atlantic, he was on his second straight day without sleep. 22 hours into the flight,

he felt himself slipping. As a last resort, he pointed the plane straight down and dove. And just before hitting the water, he pulled up and flew so low that waves splashed into the cockpit. Even the icy water wasn't enough. Lindbergh was going to crash, and he knew it. Then just before he surrendered, the cockpit filled with people. Not one presence, many.

Lindberg called them phantoms. They sounded calm, friendly, even familiar. They pointed out a navigation problem. They helped him change course. And even though there was a... nothing behind his seat but fuel tanks and not enough room to stretch his legs, he could fuel them, all of them all around him, keeping him company, keeping him awake, keeping him alive. These phantoms speak with human voices, friendly, vapor-like shapes, without substance, able to

appear and disappear at will. I am flying in a region beyond the range of human experience, where time and space seem to have altered. The phantoms stayed for hours. They were comforting. They said he was going to be all right. Then just over the horizon, he saw white waves crashing against the green coast of Ireland. Land. Lindberg felt a rush of adrenaline, or relief.

It didn't matter. Fuel levels were good, instruments were working, and the landing strip was in sight. He was going to make it. That's when Lindberg realized something. The voices were gone. One minute the cockpit was full of people, then nothing. Lindbergh was alone. And after 33 hours in the air

and almost 60 hours without sleep, Charles Lindberg landed safely. He crossed the Atlantic. He made history. He became one of the most famous, admired men in the world. He published books, he gave hundreds of interviews, and through it all, he never mentioned the voices, not once. But 26 years later, Charles Lindberg took another risk.

This time he risked his reputation. In 1953, he wrote The Spirit of the Spirit of the United States. of St. Louis. And this wasn't a story of bravery and triumph. Lindberg wrote about his early struggles and regrets, and he wrote about that flight in 1927 when invisible voices saved his life. He was worried he'd be mocked for mentioning the third man.

Instead, he won the Pulitzer Prize. 43 years later, on the tallest mountain wall in the world, the third man appeared again. But this time, he couldn't save everyone. At Desjardin Insurance, we know that when you own a nail salon, everything needs to be perfect from tip to toe. That's why our agents go the extra mile to understand your business and provide tailored solutions for all its unique needs. You put

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1,500 feet of vertical rock and ice. Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. Here he goes. They shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. You done?

I was going to the world punishment. Take no wife, father no children. I do that right now if I could. Oh, you didn't get your alimony check? I don't blame me. Blame the Raven. Climbing to the top was easy, but now Gunther was in trouble. He felt dizzy.

His vision blurred. Fluid was leaking into his lungs, and he knew what this was. Altitude sickness. He didn't know how bad, but he knew he couldn't make the climb back down. So Reinhold made a call. They descend a different side of the mountain. It was a shorter climb, but that's about all they knew about the terrain. They weren't prepared.

to take a different way down, but this was Gunther's best chance to live. They started down slowly, but still, Gunther couldn't keep up. Every time Reinhold turned to check on him, he was farther and farther behind. They were a thousand feet in the air. Reinhold started to panic. That's when he noticed the third climber, not ahead or behind, just to his right, a few steps back, just outside his line of sight. Reinhold never saw the figure directly, but it kept pace, steady and cold.

calm for hours. Suddenly, there was a third climber with us, descending on my right side. I could sense his presence. But the third man couldn't save everyone. Near the bottom of the mountain, an avalanche hit. Reinhold barely survived, and Gunther didn't. His remains weren't found for almost 50 years. In 1985, two British climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates were coming down the west face of Ciula Grande when Joe slipped and shattered his leg. This was a bad one. Bone was poking through the skin, and they were 20,000 feet up,

so there'd be no rescue. So they worked out a system. They had a 300-foot rope, one end tied around each man. Simon would lower Joe down slowly, let him get in place with his good leg, and then follow down. And they did this for hours.

3,000 agonizing feet. Then a storm hit, and they lost sight of each other. Simon called out, but the wind was too loud. Suddenly, Simon felt the rope snap against his ribs as it went taught. August knocked Joe off the mountain, so his full weight was pulling on Simon. Simon dug in as best he could, but his hands were frostbitten, and he was down to one anchor. If Joe didn't grab hold soon, they'd both fall.

Simon held that rope for a full hour while the storm got worse. Then he heard a dull scrape. His last anchor was starting to give. He still couldn't see Joe. He screamed. He begged. Nothing. Another gust of wind wore through, and the anchor slipped again.

If Simon waited any longer, they'd both die. He had only one terrible option. He cut the rope. Joe fell 100 feet into the dark. Simon assumed he was dead. He should have been, but he wasn't. Joe landed on a snowbank inside the crevasse, alive, alone in the dark with a shattered left.

with a shattered leg. Above him, a hundred-foot drop he couldn't climb. Below him, a bottomless pit. No food, no radio, no way out. Then he heard a voice. Not his own thoughts, another voice, clear and calm. It told him to stop looking for a way up, the way out was down.

Joe couldn't see what was down there, but he went anyway. And for three days, the voice kept talking, which direction to crawl, when to rest, when to keep moving. There was this voice talking to me, and it was quite clear. You've got to do this. You've got to do that.

And I do it. Joe dragged a shattered leg over Boulder fields and three glaciers. He dragged himself all the way back to camp, just as Simon was packing up. Simon looked like he saw a ghost. Joe said he might have been saved by one. He wrote about it in touching the void. He didn't believe in ghosts or God or guardian angels or any of it.

But he believed that voice was real, and he knew it saved his life. Two cases, two mountains. One presence watched a man die and couldn't stop it. Another pulled a man out of a hole in the ice. Whatever the third man is, he doesn't work the same way twice. Because 12 years later, a cave diver lost her lifeline in 100 feet underwater. She had 20 minutes of air left, and the stranger who came for her wasn't invisible. She knew it.

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Same territory her husband worked. She'd been in those caves dozens of times. She suited up alone and descended into a cave called Mermaid's Lair. Yeah, Mermaid's Lair. That's the club on Flaminga, right? With a 24-hour buffet? No, it's a cave. You're telling me, it's the kind of place where every night is open pole night. An underwater cave. Well, on Tuesdays.

Okay, that's enough. Cave diving works like this. You clip yourself to a guideline when you enter. The line is how you find your way out. The cave is pitch black. Visibility is measured in inches. If you lose the guideline, the cave kills you. Stephanie lost the guideline.

She had a limited amount of air in her tanks. She reached into the dark and felt nothing. Her breathing picked up, and breathing hard at depth burns through air fast. Then she heard a voice. Stephanie, stop. Wait. Calm down. You're going to be okay.

She knew the voice. It was Rob. She stopped and felt him right next to her, helping her. Breathe, honey. Just breathe. Trust me, okay? Stephanie slowed her breathing. She felt her panic dissipating.

Good. Okay, I need you to reach about three feet above your head. Slightly to your left. Don't rush. Just feel around. She reached up and felt the guideline. It had been directly above her the whole time. Good.

I knew you could do it. Stay calm. You have plenty of air. You've done this a hundred times. Follow the line. Don't rush. You're going to be okay. Stephanie followed the line back through the cave and up to open water.

The moment she broke the surface, the presence was gone. She never saw her husband, but she heard him, and he saved her, and then he was gone. But the most dramatic account didn't come from a mountain or an ocean or a cave. It came from inside a burning skyscraper on a Tuesday morning in September. September 11th, 2001, 903 a.m. The second plane hit the south tower between the 77th and 85th floors. Ron DeFranisco worked for Eurobrokers on the 84th floor. When the plane hit, he was below the impact zone by just a few floors.

The people above him were dead, or were going to be. He started down stairway A. He made it a few floors down and ran into two people coming up. They told him the stairway below was gone. was gone, consumed by fire. The smoke made the air unbreathable. The group turned around and headed for the roof, hoping for a helicopter.

Ron followed them up a few floors, but then he stopped. The roof was the wrong choice. He didn't know why. He turned around and went back down into the smoke alone. The smoke was thick enough to blind him. A collapsed section of wall blocked the stairs. He tried to climb over it.

He couldn't breathe, his lungs were burning, So he stopped. He sat down and decided this was where he was going to die. He thought about his wife, thought about his kids. And then he heard a voice. Get up, Ron. Get up. You can do this.

Ron felt a physical presence next to him, but nobody was there. I was led to the stairs. I don't think something grabbed my hand, but I was definitely lead. The presence guided him down through smoke and fire. At one point, it led him directly into the flames. Nobody's sane runs toward fire, but Ron did. His hands burned, his face burned, but he made it past the impact zone.

Then the voice disappeared. Ron kept going. He made it to the lobby. He ran out of the building. He was barely two blocks away when the South Tower collapsed. Ron DeFrancisco was the last. person to escape the South Tower alive. More than 600 other people in that building died that day.

Everyone above the 78th floor, everyone who headed for the roof. Ron says he wouldn't have made it without the presence he never saw, but felt. Journalist John Geiger spent five years collecting accounts like these. Climers, sailors, soldiers. He found hundreds of cases and published them in a book called The Third Man Factor. Shackleton in the ice, Lindbergh over the ocean, Stephanie Underwater. and Ron in a burning stairwell. A hundred years of stories that nobody could explain.

Then in 2006, a neuroscientist in Switzerland found a way to summon the third man. All you have to do is let him open your skull and stay awake while he does it. You're 22 years old with epilepsy. You're lying on an operating table. Your skull is open. You're awake because the doctors need you to tell them what you feel when they touch your brain. This is so they know where to cut. Off by an inch here or a centimeter there,

you could lose your ability to speak. You could go into a coma, you could die. They send a small electrical current into a region behind your ear, and then a shadow appears behind you. You can't see it, but you know it's there. You can feel it. When you sit up, it sits up. When you lie down, it lies down behind you

and wraps its arms around you. Then the doctors turn off the electricity, and the shadow goes away. You don't feel the presence anymore. Current on, presence, current off, nothing. Every single time. They summoned the third man. The neuroscientists running that surgery was Olaf Blanc,

and until that moment in 2006, nobody knew where the third man came from. Blanc's team stimulated the part of the brain that tracks where your body is in space, the left temporal parietal junction. Your tuna-fried potato funyon? Temporal parietal junction. What I say.

It takes signals from your muscles, your inner ear, your eyes, your skin, and it builds one picture of where you are and what you're doing. When that system breaks from exhaustion, oxygen deprivation, extreme cold, or an electrode, the brain builds that picture of you twice. And you're aware of both,

but it feels like the second presence belongs to someone else. In 2014, Blanc took it further. His team built a robot to mimic human movement. Blindfolded volunteers stood in front of one robot and behind another, like waiting in line. The subject then taps the robot in front of them on the shoulder. The robot behind copies this in real time and taps the subject on the shoulder. Fine.

But when the robot's reactions were delayed, just by half a second, volunteers felt something. A presence behind them, not the robot, a presence, sentient and aware. Some got so disturbed, they asked to stop. Two subjects felt even more than one presence in the room. all from half a second delay. Blanc's team built a machine that could create the third man on demand. The third man experiment proved that when the brain's prediction of sensation is interrupted, it attributes those sensations to an external agent, in other words, the third man.

But there's a big problem with this theory. That's not how the third man works at all. In 2014, researchers designed a robotic presence experiment to mimic the sensed presence in controlled conditions and it worked, a presence appeared. But it was nothing like the third man. Subjects described a shadow entity that made them uncomfortable, even frightened. That's not how the third man works. He doesn't create fear.

He takes it away. Every survivor describes a calming presence, supportive and encouraging. The mechanism matched. The experience didn't. So is the third man real? Well, let's break it down. The skeptical explanation is clean. Under extreme stress, the brain misfires.

It hallucinates a second person built from its own signals. Blanc proved it by stimulating the temporal parietal junction. Capulmetry pirate luncheon. Temporal pro. Never mind. Electrod on, ghost appears. Electrod off. Gone.

His team reproduced the effect in healthy people in minutes. The third man is the brain talking to itself and not recognizing its own voice. And that explanation fits every survivor. Shackleton had been awake 36 hours in sub-zero cold. Lindbury hadn't slept in over two days. Joe Simpson was hypothermic with a shattered leg, and Ron DeFranisco was breathing smoke and carbon monoxide. But the glitch theory can't explain the most important part.

The third man is helpful. Hallucinations from oxygen deprivation are chaotic, melting walls, hostile figures, panic. The third man is the opposite. He's calm. He gives him. directions, he knows the way out. And he's consistent. In 1943, the British neurologist McDonald-Critchley interviewed almost 300 shipwreck survivors. This was 60 years before Blanc picked

up an electrode. Critchley found the same pattern. Calm presence, specific guidance, disappears when the danger ends. Christians and atheists, 1916 and 2001, mountain climbers and office workers. All of them describe the same thing. And there's one more theory worth mentioning. In 1976, psychologist Julian Jaynes argued that ancient humans didn't have the kind of internal experience that we have today. They heard voices, commands from the right hemisphere of the brain, and interpreted them as gods.

Jane's called it the bicameral mind. The theory says that under extreme stress, the brain reverts to that older operating system. The command voice comes back. It sounds like science fiction, but it fits these theories back. better than a misfiring brain does. But here's the question nobody can answer. If the brain makes the third man, why does it make him a savior?

Evolution doesn't usually build backup systems that switch on at the moment of death, unless they work. Systems that are calm, specific, directional. Systems that know which way to crawl, which way to walk, which way to swim in the pitch black. If the third man is a malfunction, he's the most useful malfunction.

in the history of biology. If the brain is doing this on purpose, then we're looking at something in human consciousness that science hasn't mapped yet, something that knows you need help, and something that shows up on time, something that leaves when you're safe. The survivors know what they felt.

The scientists know what they can prove. And somewhere in the gap between those two things, on a mountain, in a cockpit, inside a cave, in a burning stairwell, the third man was there. And I don't need science to explain and the third man. I don't care who he is. I'm just glad he's there, waiting and watching, ready to step in when you need him most. One day, you're negotiating with suppliers. The next, you're installing a shelf in the back room. Running a business means moving in many directions

all the time. TD's new small business banking accounts are built for how your business moves. It's how we're making banking more human. Thank you so much for hanging out today. I'm AJ. That's cycle fish. You like me. You really like me. This has been the Y Files. If you had fun or learned to something, I'd appreciate it if you hit some of those buttons down there, like, subscribe, comment, share. That stuff really helps us out. And like most topics we cover on the channel, today's was recommended by you. So if there's a story you'd like to see or learn more about, go to the YFiles.com slash tips. Catch us on Discord, send an email, live chat. You can reach us a bunch of ways. Hey, remember, the Wi-Files is also a podcast.

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Give a heck of my c-shirt! Oh, what are these beautiful coffee bugs? You can stick your fist in? Or if you have a third, that around he can stick his fist in there. I don't care how many men's fist the guy going there. I'm not going to report you to HR or nothing. Oh,

Graboaty, set my face on it. Oh, look at these one of these adorable, adorable squeezy. I can't even take it. Adorable, squeezy animal. Hagen, tug and fish toys. But if you're going to buy merch, make sure you become a member on YouTube. Hear me out. YouTube members get 10% off everything in the wild-fow store, and it's three bucks a month. So, if you're going to spend $40 on

T-shirts or fistible coffee mugs, it pays for itself. And look, if you want to grab the coupon code and cancel, that's fine. That code is there to save you money, not make me money. In fact, all that revenue goes to the team. I don't touch it. Let's keep that secret under your kills, that? Those are the plugs, and that's going to do it.

Until next time, be safe. Be kind. And know that you are appreciated. Yes, an area 51, a secret code inside the Bible said I was. I love my U.S. and paranormal fun as well as music So I'm singing the like I should But then another few spiritsens

And it never ends No, it never end Fucking side males hole with MK Ultra A being only two of well And LeCuberik fake the moonland Would the shadow be pulled The eons just fought the smiling man And I'm told

And his name was cold home the secret city underground serious number stations planets are floating and where the dark watchers