This Paranormal Life - #217 The Lost Cosmonaut Conspiracy

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

On the 12th April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human to leave Earth's gravity and complete an orbit of earth. But are the history books right? Was Yuri really the first person to try? Two Italian brothers may have discovered disturbing evidence pointing to dangerous and secretive missions later covered up by Russia. Who should we believe? Time for Kit and Rory to investigate.BUY OFFICIAL TPL MERCHwww.thisparanormallife.com/storePatreonpatreon.com/ThisParanormalLifeYouTubeyoutube.com/thisparanormallifeTwittertwitter.com/ThisParaLifeInstagraminstagram.com/thisparanormallifeSecret Society Facebook Pagewww.facebook.com/groups/thisparanormallife/Edited by Kami Tomanwww.tomanedits.comResearch by Amy GrisdaleIntro music: www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can ghosts survive a black hole? If monkeys in water become sea monkeys, would I become a seaman? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Welcome back to This Paranormal Life. This is the weekly comedy podcast. Every Tuesday we investigate a different paranormal tail case or claim and get to the bottom of whether it's truly paranormal or not. As always, you're joined by myself, Mr. Kit Grumel-Vena, this guy across from me as well, Mr. Rory Powers. How are you doing today, Rory? I'm doing great.

Just based, you know, one of the first questions you asked when we started the podcast was, you were under the impression if you put monkeys in the sea, they become sea monkeys. That is not what a sea monkey is. I think what you're talking about what else would it be einstein what you're talking about there is just drowning a chimp they won't transform they will just sink lifelessly to the bottom of the ocean so i would not recommend if you were trying to grow your own sea monkeys do not tell me take all right see i'm guessing you've already done this then you've already tried freddy, buddy. They told me he took to water like a borderline seahorse,

which I assume is when they take a horse and put it in water as well. The hay fever that Rory discussed in recent episodes seems to have somehow transferred its way over to me, and I sound like I've drank 16 pints last night, but I think it's just because it's nice weather outside. I didn't even notice anything. I think you sound great. Well, no, I don't apologize

because now you're getting some beautiful dulcet tones. We're going to dive right into today's investigation, I think, Roy. Like the monkeys. April 12th, 1961 is a legendary date in history. Piat. Sittri. April 12th, 1961 is a legendary date in history. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, start! That was the day Yuri Gagarin became the first person to combat the final frontier and travel into space. He managed to orbit the planet in 89 minutes and made it back to Earth safely. The mission was a roaring success and Yuri's face was splashed across every newspaper in the world.

It was official, the USSR had beaten America in the space race. But what if I told you that Yuri Gagarin was not the first person in space, but in fact, the first person to go to space and survive? Quite often in our stories, we fast forward in time, but today we're going to rewind back to February 2nd, 1960, more than a year before Yuri's fateful journey. Akhil and Giovanni Battista, confusingly also known as the Yudica Cordia brothers, were radio enthusiasts living in Turin, Italy. They built their own listening station in a disused German bunker using parts and spares that they scavenged. How old are they?

Also, scavenged just means stolen, really, doesn't it? Yeah. You're already probably not allowed in that German disused bunker. Like, imagine someone was in my house and I had, I don't know, I was wearing a nice Rolex, and they were like, that's a nice watch. Where'd you get that? Oh, I scavenged it did you

did you really seems like a kind of important and expensive piece of equipment to find lying around somewhere uh i don't know rory i think they were i'm gonna say they were like teenagers or young men okay okay all i know is they definitely didn't have girlfriends if they're hanging out two brothers in a disused german bunker although i will say dangerously close to what we're doing right now yeah radio enthusiasts maybe someone will describe us someday as podcast enthusiasts so they were hiding out in this disused bunker using equipment they'd scavenged to listen in on cosmic communications one february evening they were scanning Russian frequencies and tapped in to what they thought must be an orbiting capsule.

So, Rory, I'm just going to give you, for the sake of illustrating the scene here, I'm just going to give you a couple of lines. So, yeah, if you could just go ahead with one of the Cordia brothers. All right. You wrote this, presumably? Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to, I just thought I wanted to, you know, because we could just, as usual, we could just like go through the story beat by beat.

But I thought it'd be cool to just like put the listener in the time and place of Churin in the 60s. Right. The Italian brother? Yeah, the Italian brothers. Yeah, in Italy. Yeah, sure. in the 60s right the italian brother yeah the italian brothers yeah in italy yeah sure so you want me to read the line that you wrote for the italian brother yeah man don't be so weird about it it's like the you know these are pretty complex characters we're trying to depict here so you know okay okay no as long as you just put your mindset as long as everyone understands what's happening like a radio enthusiast you're young young. You live in Turin.

This is an industrial town. So, you know, it's a pretty interesting character, I think. Mama Mia. What's that? Sure. I mean, the delivery of the line itself was pretty good, but I feel like you could just give it a bit more heart or something. All right.

Let me try that one again. Luigi. I love that energy. A bit more heart or something. All right, let me try that one again. A Luigi! I love that energy. Well, you went off script, but I love the energy. The Mushroom Kingdom is in trouble. It sounded like a person in serious trouble. Turning the dials all the way up, they could just about hear what sounded like a heartbeat. Tío mío, it sounds like there's a person up there. All right, well, you've said just quite enough here.

What? What did I do? This is coming for someone who's been ridiculed in the past on this podcast for doing poor performances and voice acting i don't want to bring up my yorkshire accent from the last episode because that's a hot topic of conversation it did get us cancelled it did it did you tread lightly my italian friend or i'm going to throw a green shell at you or something the spookiest part is that the signal seemed to be getting weaker, as if the craft it was coming from was flying away from Earth at some speed. The brothers were seriously creeped out, but also really confused. The signal had come from space, but nobody had

been to space yet. There should only be satellites, radio communications. They might have chalked it up to being just one of those things if it hadn't happened again. On the 28th of November, 1960, still four months before Yuri Gagarin's mission, the brothers honed in on a Morse code message from space. the transmission read sos to the whole world jeez that's casting a wide net isn't it i always love those kind of morse code things because you know they've got a the person on the receiving end has got to be doing a double take right yeah that yeah. That can't be what it means. Yeah, it's like, have I gone wrong here somewhere? Yeah. Heard a thing the other day, right?

SOS doesn't stand for basically anything. Wasn't it save our something? Yeah. What it was like the generic kind of answer was? Yeah, people think it's like save our souls. But yeah, people think it's that. But yeah, it's like. It's just a code.

It's just a code. It's just like there was other. There was like, I think after a while, all yeah, it's like... It's just a code. It's just a code. It's just like, there was other, there was like, I think after a while, all the countries got together and started trying to agree because they were like, actually, it'd be helpful if we all knew what we were saying. And that one, I think the SOS is like, it's basically like really hard to get wrong when you're doing the Morse code.

Right. Whereas other things might be easier to get wrong. The Titanic was kind of a big moment when people changed their minds because I think the titanic they ended up because there was no international agreement they had to do like a couple of different messages because they were help us like oh help what's help us in german god i don't know and here i thought the international cry for help was was having a paranormal podcast. Ha ha ha! Renging!

Mamma mia! You're right there, Amore. This is me in therapy. The person's like, you know you're not recording the podcast right now, right? I don't like to talk about my feelings. The only way to deal with the gravity of the situation is to talk like a mario like let's go back to your childhood and talk talk about your father bowser bowser's not you don't even know a lot about mario to be doing this learn more about mario if you want to do

mario voices i love my uncle luigi no the therapist is trying to speak your language. It's like, I guess it's like you're looking for that final star. And you're like, that's actually really unprofessional of you, Doc. And I don't appreciate it. I think our time is up today. No, no. Maybe the princess you are looking for is inside you all along. What the f*** are you talking about? Mario jumps on boxes.

What the f*** is this princess shit sos to the whole world what did it mean they were clearly discovering something huge here this was before you know this was before spotify before cds so you know if you were hanging out with your boys and you wanted to be like hey let's let's get this party going a little bit you would just have to twist the dials on those old ancient radios till you find something that slaps and uh half the time it would be a cosmonaut lost in space i think it was i think it was radio to be fair i think they could just turn on the radio listen to music you know yeah but it would could just turn on the radio, listen to music, you know?

Yeah, but it would be like half of the radio channels around that time would be, you know, like old-timey bangers. Old-timey, like clickety-old music. And then just a signal would just freak out for a second. Help me, I'm lost in a black hole. Whoa, whoa, whoa, twist that dial a little bit. Going down to the market, help my girl out for a night on the... Oh, my God! The aliens are real!

Whoa, turn that dial a little bit, back in the things. Wow, what a great track. That's the new single from Oh, My God, I'm Lost in a Black Hole. KGB agent in the corner of the radio station, shut it down, shut it down. On several occasions, they say their radio station picked up various orbiting Soviet spaceships and even detected a secret rocket launch. There were three days in May that year they claimed to have heard a spacecraft in distress calling for help.

This was the most alarming thing. Strange enough to hear seemingly impossible transmissions of spacecrafts and the astronauts aboard them, but these people were in distress. The most chilling transmission they received was a Russian female voice describing her ship being engulfed in flames. I actually have the audio the Utica-Cordia brothers recorded right here. I don't want to hear that. About a woman whose ship was exploding I see flames. I see flames. I feel hot. I feel hot. 32, 32, 41, 41. Am I going to crash? If that recording is genuine, we just heard the final moments of the real first woman in space.

So as you've gathered, the brothers recorded these signals and released nine recordings over a period of four years. They claim documenting the deaths of multiple Russian cosmonauts that nobody else seemed to know about. It's not quite as romantic as one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. If if in the history books one of the first people to escape the earth's gravitational pull their quote in the book is i see flames i see flames dear god help me sos i see the face of god it's got devil horns eternal damnation faces us all yeah turn back god has forgotten us. You don't want that to be like, you know, your history lesson for the day. Teaching about mankind's first exploration into the beautiful stars.

And it goes for anything. It doesn't have to be as great as, you know, man setting foot on the moon or something. It could be if you're the first guy to try the stuffed crust pizza at the Domino's and the local press ask you for a quote and you say, I see flames, I see flames, I saw the face of God and he is unkind and unhappy. You know, that's not going to sell pizzas. No, it really isn't. And it's going to take the government investment in stuffed crust pizza. It's going to be gone forever. Yeah, they want the phrase,

one giant leap for pan kind. Deep pan. Nice. Now, maybe you, Rory, or maybe the people listening at home are not convinced. After all, we have only the word of two people on this. And being brothers, there's always a chance they cooked up a story for shits and giggles.

Talking alligator type of deal. But these brothers weren't the only people to witness secret space malarkey before the first official mission. It was March 26th, 1961, near the city of Perm, USSR. Everyone's got curly hair there. Yeah. People were going about their business when the piece was broken by an earth-shattering noise. It sounded like an anti-aircraft rocket.

Looking up into the sky, the people of Perm, they saw the source of the deafening boom. A small capsule had re-entered the atmosphere. An ejector seat burst from the pod and parachuted to the ground before the town's eyes. Officials appeared suspiciously quickly, as if from nowhere, to shoo people away. Go back to your homes. This doesn't concern you. It's a routine test, nothing more. Nothing says routine test like rocket exploding in the atmosphere, townspeople gathering around, military with machine guns turning people away. It's just a normal Wednesday, guys.

But there had been so many witnesses, people couldn't be kept back. Rescue crews and volunteers came from miles around to lend a hand to whoever had just dropped out of the sky. But when the ejector seat was found in the ground, people realized the official story about the dummy flight was true. There was a literal dummy in the seat. Oh. It was a bit of a letdown. The people were pissed. Apparently someone was so angry they punched the doll in the face. Welcome to Earth. There were at least have to be a handful of people that thought that's what alien life looked like yeah yeah a mannequin it's still wearing a hollister jacket yeah you you know like in the movie everyone's going oh it's just a dummy and then someone gets close to it and the dummy just grabs the nearest

man by the throat lifts him in the air who's the dummy now the official story was that the dummy now? The official story was that the dummy, who was named Ivan Ivanovich, the Russian version of John Doe, was just part of a communication testing for Yuri Gagarin's upcoming flight. But we're not buying that, Rory. I don't have to tell you that Soviet Russia were actually pretty good at concealing the truth from the public.

For example, Stalin was having stroke after heart attack after stroke in his 60s, but was constantly reported to have perfect health up until the day he died at 75 years old. I think he was literally unconscious before dying, before they ever even reported in the news that he was unwell. It was like they waited until the last possible second to be like, oh, there's no way of talking our way out of this one. Yeah, I just assumed. Should we get the dummy out again?

I assumed it was probably two or three years of weekend at Bernie style shenanigans where he was showing up to business meetings in cool Russian shades with his arms around two men. Stalin's a lot more chill than i remember what i'm getting at is communist russia had a lot of secrets and i bet there are some still buried if they're trying to cover up things that happen on earth who knows what they've been up to in the sky on earth there's evidence and shit imagine things that you're sending out into space and you don't have to ever explain away, like a weather balloon or something.

Yeah, yeah. Anything could happen. So what's your conspiracy with this test launch that you don't think it was a test launch, even though there was a mannequin in the nub? Hard to know. I mean, it could have been, it could have been, imagine this was just a cover-up for a rocket.

Let's say if they sent a rocket into space with 16 cosmonauts aboard. Oh, yeah, I see. Wouldn't it be perfect explanation to the international community and press to send a decoy dummy back down to Earth and be like, huh, dummy survived. We're doing great, guys. Meanwhile, the cosmonauts are like, I see flames, I see flames. Right, right, right. Well, they send a crew there to pick up the dummy and they're like,

everything's all right. There are human bones also raining down behind them. They're like, oh, that's just the dummy's bones. We were also testing the flight of a KFC bucket, so I think that's probably just the chicken wings coming down. You know,

those astronauts get hungry up there. Everyone go back to work, by the way. A human leg just lands six feet away from the dummy.

Oh, boy. Weirdly, the evidence for all of this may have been hiding in plain sight this whole time. I scarred the internet for news articles from around this time, and in 1960, Robert Heinlein, author of Starship Troopers, funnily enough, interviewed Russian soldiers who couldn't stop boasting about a new achievement of theirs. I tell you, comrade, we launched a man into orbit this very day.

But when Robert asked officials to confirm or deny the story, they denied any knowledge of such an incident. Then later said it did happen, but there were no astronauts aboard. It was just unmanned. Oh. So getting some weird conflicting stories. That is really weird. Also, there was a report in the Daily Worker, a British communist newspaper, in April 1961, saying that Russian Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Ilyushin had successfully orbited the Earth three times before landing. It was reported that there was a secret launch very early in the morning, but on return to Earth, something went wrong. The Lieutenant Colonel's ship had a technical failure, resulting in injuries that

scrambled his brains. First, they said he was suffering from quote, mental anguish, which was then downgraded to coma. Good lord. Scrambled his brains. That's not good. That's not a technical term or a medical term

yeah whatever doctor gave that diagnosis get me a new doctor yeah 100 his brain looks like scrambled eggs can i see your medical license can i see it please sir he passes you uh an idea just says he's a line cook from a local hotel my specialty is scrambled eggs uh i also like the idea that in order for a launch to be secret you just have to do it really early in the morning as if no one's gonna notice a fucking rocket blasting into space yeah before rockets are even a thing at least today when a space a SpaceX launch goes up, it's like, I don't know, we were doing rockets for a while. Yeah. Back then, it was a lot more alarming. I still think it's weird, though, that rocket launches aren't a more publicly acknowledged thing.

Because even with SpaceX, you see that all the time. An entire downtown city will just be like, what the f*** happened last night? The sky is purple. And I just saw birds migrating out of an entire forest. And it's like, oh yeah, SpaceX just launched a rocket. And it's like, I don't know. Maybe they do have to jump through a lot of hoops, but it seems like they just can do whatever they want.

I feel like if so much as the local council here puts out a traffic cone uh to divert traffic one day yeah everyone in the neighborhood gets letters about it being like heads up guys there's gonna be a cone out there one day and there's cone protests there's someone starting a facebook group saying the cones don't exist it's mad but yeah but suddenly you can launch a like 50 ton uh robot dick into the space that blocks out the sun for two days and sometimes it's like well what was the point of that it's like just f***ing about just want to see if this rocket was a car into space one time just for shits and giggles it's why it must be a money thing you can just cash a check and do whatever you want that's the world isn't

it that's the kind of money i want to have yeah you've heard of uh you money what kind of money that's block out the sun money yeah i want to be able to have enough money that i can ride a blimp through downtown manhattan but not high up i want it like building level and i could flip off all the businessmen working in their little offices. How much money do you need for that? There was a guy on TV recently. I saw him on like breakfast news show or something one day there. He was on there because I think he's, he's some British guy, but he like flies hot jet packs or something. Right. He's like a real Tony Stark type guy. And, uh and uh on the news they were like

how'd you get into all this huh like who gets into flying jet packs and sure experimental planes and weird shit and then he was like well you know my granddad did fly helicopters and stuff uh maybe his dad was in the army or something so he's like so you know i was kind of interested in aviation but really after 16 years of working uh in like oil trading in the city of london yeah i i really felt a calling to just do something more with my life it's like you we need to tax these people how can you make so much money that your job now is flying jetpacks? By the way, everyone has a call to do something more with their life. Just no one can execute on that call. Particularly when the call is jetpacks.

The audacity to think that someone who doesn't just pack bags at a checkout doesn't want to do more with their lives is so horribly insulting a homeless man sleeping on the street would love a jet pack let me tell you right now also i'm starting to see where you got the oil for to run the jet packs all that oil trading starting to think you were skimming off this oil weren't even buying and selling at all that's why yeah dude too much money too much money don't think that guy needs to send around letters when he puts out a cone or goes on a jetpack mission that's one of his comical moments where uh they're so close to the situation and what they're doing they haven't realized that they are the Green Goblin. You're a villain.

You are a cartoon villain, sir. Like taking a goblin glider to your downtown penthouse suite, that flight alone costing $50,000 is, yeah, you are a villain. I know. People need to keep an eye on him. If during this Breakfast News interview

he starts talking about cleaning up the city and how the bloodline of humanity has gotten muddied. Yeah, yeah. We need to keep a close eye. And his son Harry, keep an eye on him as well. Because if anything happens to the dad, suddenly Harry's going to be pretty opinionated about bloodlines. I don't really remember what the Green Goblin wanted, to be honest.

Was it just stop Spider-Man? I think it was. Well, there was a... No, no, no. Well, to be fair, the Green Goblin, at least from my very limited knowledge from the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, it was the gas that made him go a little bonkers. The Osborne gas. Okay.

So I think he wasn't quite right in the head. His, to use a term we've used before, his brain was scrambled. Sure. A little bit, I think by the gas. Because it was kind of just power and money. And he was a little wild. That was really, that's really the most realistic thing that comic books have got right. The biggest threat to

our society is is millionaires yeah with scrambled brains oh yeah that's why uh kingpin is a great uh spider-man villain and i think he's isn't he the villain in daredevil as well um he's just a rich asshole who like wants to own everything and buy everything uh he's like a mob boss and it's like yeah that's that's very realistic yeah he doesn't need a pumpkin bomb to be evil he's a pretty bad man no villain's origin story ever starts at burning man or right yeah i don't know gardening or taking shrooms it's usually amassing huge amounts of wealth je Jeff Bezos is one infinity gauntlet away from being a supervillain. You don't think Jeff Bezos,

if he went to that cliff that Thanos went to, he wouldn't push over his wife and children over that edge to get the stone? So the Lieutenant Colonel with the scrambled brain, this whole incident was swept under the carpet. And needless to say, everything was forgotten just days later in the media frenzy that would surround Yuri Gagarin. Annoyingly for us paranormal investigators,

it sounds bad, but Ilyushin didn't die. He lived to the age of 82, didn't pass away till 2010. And his brain didn't seem to be that scrambled that he wasn't able to recover um because he maintained that he never went to space and none of that ever happened oh that's disappointing but he would say that wouldn't he and maybe his brain is so scrambled that even he believes he didn't get his brain scrambled by space right right you it's like scrambling eggs so hard that they go back to egg form. Which statistically must be a possibility in some universe.

And in terms of these other articles, even the Washington Post got involved. One journalist wrote several pieces about classified Russian space accidents in the 60s and 70s, claiming he had heard a transmission recording of a crew of astronauts screaming, remember us to the motherland. We are lost. We are lost. Wow. A crew, a whole crew of them. Why did they think that was the answer? Sending out more people. This is like a firework show. And that's the big finale where you send up like six in one. Yeah, it's a very different story, isn't it, to the official story, which is that they sent up Laika, the dog. Yeah.

People forget that. I feel like kids, there's probably people listening to this who are so young that they might not even know that the first astronaut was a dog. Yeah, and then they sent up a monkey, I believe. There was a chimp that went to space. Although maybe he came back, I don don't remember he was too smart he turned around as soon as he got control of the thing wow this is crazy well look you know as we said this was a weird time in history the space race two countries competing for this trophy uh so desperately that um they were willing to do whatever it takes. And it's pretty, that's a pretty

terrifying place to be in. So true. And that's exactly what makes this story so hard to understand. You know, we've got this cold war essentially between USA and USSR or Russia. So the problem is it actually suits the USA to make up lies about russia and if we want to give russia the benefit of the doubt we say maybe all these articles about failed space experiments was just propaganda yeah but then the ussr does go and do stuff like this in the 70s a bunch of photos were released of russian space missions and stuff, except they've photoshopped out astronauts from some photos. Uh-oh.

Okay, so Kitsius handed me a picture where, I guess, I mean, they're not dressed up like astronauts. These are just guys hanging out together. Yeah, but they're space cadets, like, in training or whatever. Right, and yeah, just picture a bunch of space cadets and they have just completely taken one of them out. There's a second image where they have... See, it's a carbon copy of the first image except one of the guys is just missing.

It's a pretty good Photoshop job, to be fair. It's pretty great. I think it might have been one other one. That took me a second. This is like a... Where's Wally type thing? Or one of those spots of difference pictures. Yeah, there's just a man in the background who...

I mean, this is more of an action shot. There's astronauts on the field. There's a colonel. There's a man who looks like Poirot or Winston Churchill. And in the background was another astronaut who they've just taken out of the picture. Literally. So Russia claims that they did.

So to be clear, they acknowledge that they very obviously photoshopped these people out. They claim that these people or astronauts were expelled from the program or had medical conditions that meant they couldn't take part in the space program. At one point, too many people have scrambled scrambled brains you need to stop using that excuse because then it just looks like you're hiring everyone that has a scrambled brain take a new photo why go to the baller of photoshopping

these images just take a new photo without those guys i love the idea of uh this really seems like you know how you see those jokes on social media of people who take a picture of them by the sunset and they're trying to make it look like they're holding the sun in their fingers, but they're off a little bit. It posts to be like, hey, someone, can you Photoshop this? So it looks like I'm holding the sun. I like the idea of the USSR posting on Twitter and being like, hey, can someone remove this scrambled brain boy from the background of the photograph? We're like, isn't the guy who disappeared mysteriously the day we all heard an earth shattering rocket sound?

No, no, no. No, he's enjoying his retirement in a retirement home. It's just a dummy in a wheelchair. Like, no, he is enjoying his retirement in a retirement home. It's just a dummy in a wheelchair. Like, no, he is alive and well. Here he is in his convertible car. It was just like a dummy in a convertible that they pushed off a cliff. Oh, no.

You all saw he was alive and well only moments ago. So, Rory, we have got such a mixed picture whilst our story started with these italian brothers no relation to luigi or mario we started with these guys getting these supposedly real recordings of cosmonauts before yuri gagarin all the way through to american journalists writing about these same reports. We have legit Photoshop documents from the Russian Space Agency. And yet at the same time, it's all muddied by the waters of politics

and the Cold War. What are you thinking? You know, I was looking for a good time to bring this up and then it didn't happen. And now we're at the end of the episode. But one of the short films that I worked on when I was at film school

was all about this. Really? Yeah, the film was called... You kept that quiet? The film was called The Lone Cosmonaut. Because, boy, we only have about 60 seconds,

so that sounds really interesting, but I do think we have to jump to conclusions. So... It was just, you know, it was a movie covering the topic. We actually all went to Russia and retrieved some of the actual artifacts from the space.

Yes or no though. Yeah. Cause it just, I mean, it sounds really interesting. It's hard to wrap up in a couple sentences. Cause I actually met some of the cosmonauts who survived, um, and came back down to earth. Yeah. That would have been really interesting earlier. But I mean, if you just take all the information that, you know, I don't need to know that

you just use it to sum it all up as quick as you can well it's just uh there were even flights that you didn't even mention in your research disaster right um double yes then uh just by default so uh sorry rory was trying to derail it pretty hard there they actually all said no they made it very clear we were not welcome at the old folks' home. It was gotcha journalism. I kicked down the door dressed as Neil Armstrong. They didn't take kindly to you. They tased me.

I said, remember me? Which doesn't make any sense at all. I was not welcome, and I am now banned from Russia. Mother Russia. No, it was a really cool film and i was more involved in the post-production side of it uh not the the research of the writing and directing um but it was a very very cool film and i i did learn a little bit about um yeah this very strange time where um these cosmonauts were being sent up into space and it was a pretty pretty bum deal you got which was

hey do you want to possibly be the most famous man in our country's history or possibly be erased from existence that was kind of the dice roll that you had to that you had to put up with and i guess a lot of people at that time maybe weren't being told either the odds or weren't being warned about option b yeah it was kind of like do you want to do this maybe you'll die but you'll be a martyr in russian history it's like okay yeah sure i'll give that a shot that wasn't the case it's like it's like olympic hopefuls they don't tell the olympic hopeful children that they're most likely wasting their life that they'll most likely end up with no career options no money or anything and that

they most likely won't even get into the damn olympics no they tell them they're going to be the biggest star that's ever been yeah and the second thing so much is twist their ankle they're they're scrambled brains they They're useless. They are dressed up as a dummy and crashed down to earth for a test. Yeah, you're so right. I mean, I guess I should have addressed at the beginning of this episode, but I think you guys are kind of used to it, to the format by this stage, that we don't always, always cover things that are explicitly paranormal. Sometimes you just have to cover a story that's creepy and mysterious and unexplained. And I think that's what this

falls into. But what you're saying, it does kind of raise a question in my mind. I heard in this story in the research that whenever Russians did find out about supposedly failed missions, people that didn't survive and such in early tests, when those rumors went circulating, people were angry because they felt that lives had been sacrificed just to compete in some sort of geopolitics dick swinging contest with America. not apologizing for whatever tragic things happened to various astronauts throughout the years. But doesn't it just feel like any amount of human exploration of Earth or otherwise has involved dangerous stunts? I mean, Jesus, how many people died trying to row in a canoe from Africa to Australia or something? Right, right right right i guess um that's maybe a slightly different situation because most of those people have been warned about the dangers of what they're about to attempt okay or maybe the the whole pretense of what they're doing

has been explained properly whereas it seems like maybe some of those cosmonauts weren't being given the full picture. Yeah. They were probably saying, this is great. You're going to be the hero. The ship's working perfectly. Just scoot past, scoot past some of this, some of these shard remains on the launch pad

and we'll just get you up to this brand spanking new ship. And the thing explodes immediately. Sure. It says one comedian said the dirty secret of space travel is that the rocket scientists never get in the rocket they let some other asshole do that bit yeah i don't know i think that's uh i mean saying that every part of human development requires a sacrifice is also a very green goblin thing to say.

It really is. Don't you see? The advancement of the species requires half the population to be okay. That's way too much. That is way too much, by the way.

Yeah, but sure. Yeah, I can... Yeah. I don't know what I'm arguing for anymore let's just wrap it up before i get taken to a war crime tribunal uh i think your russian accent starts to slip anyway brother let's wrap this up oh would you not say that push comes to shove you would do the same things as mother country look we love to throw stones on this podcast in this country but uh what government hasn't done a bunch of shady shit i just the other day as part of my weekly routine look at the wikipedia page for mk ultra and uh look at all the incredibly horrible shady stuff that uh the

u.s government has done including just experimenting on americans without telling any of them it was going to happen at least the cosmonauts were under the impression they were going to the moon james who just ate a loaf of bread at the steel factory was given 200 grams of lsd and had a heart attack in his family home you know i don't i don't mean to red pill people here but the u.s government but open wide mother u.s government nuked a lot of countries. People think they just nuked during the war. No, they nuked a bunch of other places too. And then set up scientific labs on those islands to study the effects of nuking people. Like, really?

As Westerners, as Westerners that believe we live in an advanced democracy, we've done some pretty shady things. Oh, yeah. Well, it's what they say, you know. History is told by the victors. That's right. leave we live in uh an advanced democracy where you've done some pretty shady things oh yeah well it's what they say you know history is told by the victors that's right and uh you know i couldn't uh i couldn't think of a better phrase to uh to kind of uh round off this podcast this podcast is brought to you by sputnik 5 the best vaccine for coronavirus made in Russia from the finest ingredients. Line up and get your dose today. Would you go to space? You know, it's becoming more of like a commercial thing now. It's going to be available to very wealthy members of the

public eventually. But is that something you're interested in? Yes. I have feelings about this. I feel very conflicted because as far as I'm concerned, there is tiers of air travel that I'm willing to do. You know, lots of people are scared of flying full stop. Some people are scared of small planes. Personally, planes are all good. Little plane, big plane, even hot air balloon,

hell, I'm fine with it. Helicopters, on the other hand, they don't seem to have a good success rate. I'm pretty against helicopters. Yeah, weirdly, I wouldn't ride in a helicopter either. So I can't really justify the logic of why it feels okay to go into space when it hasn't even really happened yet. But I am intrigued. And I think if they, you know, it's a cliche, but if they let a few other people go first and try it out and if it goes well, I think I'd be up for a low Earth orbit type situation. What about you? you're like as long as a couple of other people go first and uh you know virgin galactic launches their first flight up everyone's waiting for the news and then they post a picture of the aircraft and like weren't there like seven civilians in that picture originally beforehand like no

no there never was only three people come out yeah oh 100 100 you would yeah see the helicopter thing for me is a little different because it's all about risk reward you know the experience of being in a helicopter isn't that different from the experience that i've had in planes before and i've flown uh prop planes in my life i went up in a prop plane wow with an instructor and we got to do barrel rolls and loop-de-loops and stuff it was scary as shit but i've kind of done that so the next step for me is the stars i want to i'd like to experience zero was to be fair i actually experienced zero gravity in the prop plane because you can you've never mentioned this by the way have i not knowing you for like 25 years so it's uh it was it was for a promotion of a video game. The Crew 2.

That's not worth it. They're getting a free plug right now, let me tell you. So they invited a bunch of journalists there to fly these planes obviously with an instructor. But you can experience G-force in all of its fury

which almost made me black out. It is very strange. when it's really intense you can feel your insides shifting in your body i've heard like you can feel your blood see essentially the doors of your consciousness just shutting yeah in front of your very eyes if they don't recorrect at some point it goes to like a pinpoint yeah to black that's not it's wild it's a very strange experience uh so that was cool but the other cool thing they do is however they're flying you know the ups and then the dips they uh they give you a red ball to bring with you and the uh the person you the pilot you're flying with will tell you at certain points to like let go of the red ball sure and it's flying you're in zero gravity because zero gravity is just you know that's what g-force is is the gravitational force

when you're doing a maneuver the g-force is two it's three right the gravitational force is increased so zero gravity just means the lack of gravity not that you've escaped the earth's atmosphere that's right yeah so i was experiencing zero gravity which was pretty cool uh you what you're like you lift up out of your seat and you just have this harness like holding you in the only con is obviously that lasts a lot shorter it's in just like seconds bursts like 10 second bursts otherwise you just at some point you need to recorrect or you are a kamikaze pilot. But yeah, it was a pretty surreal experience.

I definitely would recommend it with an experienced pilot. But that wasn't enough for me. I've got the bug now. I'm like an adrenaline junkie or a crackhead. I'm a crackhead for gravity, like Isaac Newton. He couldn't get enough and it killed him. That's not what happened. He couldn't get enough. And one day that's not what happened he couldn't get enough and one

day the apple dropped with so many g's he blacked out and died i uh i think i'd be up for um going on virgin galactic but i do want to wait and see if any virgin galactic hijackings take place because the last thing i want is to get up and be looking down upon the blue marble itself and getting that observer effect they say that astronauts get where they feel the overwhelming lsd level peace love and happiness and yeah the unity of all men and and beings on earth only to hear the guy beside you gary decide that the only reason he wanted to get up was to hijack the plane and take it to saturn you're stuck in space forever yeah you don't want to be looking down at the bountiful beauties of this pale blue dot floating effortlessly in space and here in the background all right stick him up

oh no no no how did he how did he pass the vetting process to be here although would you not want to be the first thug in space a first space How gangster is that? To be a first space thief. The first and last space thief because they will never let people in space again after that. I was about to say a security guard would blast you with a ray gun, but it would probably be a regular gun. The gun doesn't have to be futuristic. No, no, no, no.

No, he doesn't put you in a space chokehold. No. Just a regular space chokehold. No. Just a regular Earth chokehold is fine. Let's try and rein this puppy in. I think today what we're trying to decide, Rory, is whether it's not paranormal or not, or whether you think it's true or not that there were early space missions

recorded by these Italian brothers. Things went horribly wrong. Whether or not, that's the conclusion, whether or not we think it's true, whether these things happened. Whether there were lost cosmonauts. Absolutely. Based on the knowledge that you have presented

and my limited knowledge from the research that was done in the film that I worked on. Yeah, I don't see any plausible reason why this wouldn't be a real thing. Unless, as you said, you know, it probably is muddied to a certain degree by American propaganda. So it is a bit of a difficult one to come down on. But yeah, absolutely. I could see that this would be a real thing.

I'm going to go no. Whoa! What really sold me out there? You f***ing launched me to space space detonated the rocket in midair and then said this episode never happened you're looking out the window as earth just just just fades out of view you're like wow kit this was really such a great idea thanks for booking us these kit kit so long sucker there's a monkey in a space suit sitting beside me what uh to be fair it's so hard to say but um a lot of people believe that those recordings were hoaxes okay well you didn't tell

me that and it is you kept that pretty quiet it is brother it's uh comrade unfortunately the political the geopolitical times that we're in it means the whole thing is so damn muddy it's uh comrade unfortunately the geopolitical times that we're in it means the whole thing is so damn muddy it's hard to know who to believe um so you know i gotta say i don't think it's the most important episode whether we come down to yes or no it's not paranormal anyway um but really interesting to talk about really interesting to research thank you to amy grisdale for researching this one. How do you want to wrap up today? Do you want to like sing the national anthem of America and like salute the flag or something? Do you want to do that?

Huh? Are you insinuating that? I think everyone knows I'm insinuating here. They got to you, brother. Everybody, mark your calendars. We made it this far in before the big man got to kit. We'll see you next week where it's just me talking into one mic. Apparently, I'm the only one that can dispel the truth anymore these days.

I'll be broadcasting from 500,000 feet orbiting the Earth in my galactic craft. The truth of the next podcast is going to hit you like about seven Gs. You're going to black out from the intro questions alone. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's edition of This Paranormal Life. Looking into all things Lost Cosmonauts. If you loved this episode and you just can't get enough of that good, good paranormal investigation, head on over to patreon.com forward slash thisparanormallife where from a mere $5,

you get access to over 40 full-length bonus episodes into the most salacious and unbelievable paranormal tales on Earth. Or off of it. But if swag is really more your thing, head on over to thisparanormallife.com where we have a web store. That's right, a web store where you can get

This Paranormal Life exclusive merchandise. We've got a couple different designs on there at the moment with more coming in the pipeline. But you can get short sleeves, long sleeve shirts, Chompies North Korean cereal merchandise, and regular This Paranormal Life logos.

And the new tier coming to Patreon at the $20,000 level. You will be able to join the Galactic 12 with a journey around the Earth, one full orbit. This is the privilege to join myself and Rory on a orbit of the Earth. Once Virgin Galactic is available, you will need to fork out for the three tickets that the twenty thousand dollars is really just to get us on board to hang out with you and you'll also have to obviously pay the rest of the members of the galactic 12 to be there as well uh i don't i don't remember who was necessarily involved ryan gosling i remember was involved at one point um dr j alan hynek is obviously in the galactic 12 it's a pretty

exclusive club we haven't talked about it in a while but uh it's basically the 12 bravest men that have ever lived i think we need to also get james corden involved because i think ryan gosling only said yes because we told him it was a space version of carpool karaoke so uh if we can keep that gig up for a while um we should be able to get them in. And of course, if you just love the show and want to spread the word, definitely tell your friends and family if you think they'd be interested in the show. We have never been affiliated with anyone.

This has always been just us, baby. We never had a podcast network, advertisers, big sponsors, anything at all. The podcast has only survived on word of mouth alone for over four years, which is pretty nuts if you ask me. Yeah, we've had a lot of big meetings with companies before, but I insisted on starting every meeting with me saying, well, well, well. A lot of them left before I could even get anything after that. So a lot of our meetings have been cancelled three seconds in, four seconds in.

Oh, we would love a sponsor. We would love a big, big brand to come on board. We're on our knees here. Specifically, we would really like Virgin Galactic. I think that would be great. Sure. But, you know, we're not picky guys. Delta Galactic.

Do they have a... The point of this was... EasyJet Galactic, I will fly. point of this was easy jet galactic I will fly no one is sponsoring us anytime soon so thanks to you guys

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we'll see you then, bye bye