Human Evolution and the Power of the Mind: Science Compilation

Huge thanks to Jesse for hosting this compilation! From rewriting the blueprint of life to radioactive creatures defying biology, this collection pulls back the curtain on some of the strangest scientific mysteries we've covered. A forgotten fungus may have reshaped the human brain in record time. Meaningful coincidences might be more than chance, and a maze experiment from a century ago still can't be fully explained. Hidden signals shape decisions without your knowledge, and one scientist's radical theory cost him his safety for challenging what we think we know about memory. Six stories, one question worth sitting with: how much of reality are we still missing? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The Greatest is the first authorized script series about the life of Muhammad Ali, offering unprecedented access and going beyond the amazing victories and moments that made Ali a legend, both in and out of the ring. From Ben Watkins, the creator of Cross, and executive producer Michael B. Jordan, discover the man who became the legend in a story never told before. Starring Jalen Best as the Muhammad Ali. New series, November 4th, only on Prime Video.

• 0:30AJ Gentile?

  Be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.

• 0:35AJ Gentile?

  What's going on?

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Code Cerulean, sir. We have to move.

• 0:38AJ Gentile?

  What?

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Now.

• 0:40Speaker 03

  Did he say Code Cerulean?

• 0:44Speaker 03

  Ah, human. Human, did he say Code Cerulean?

• 1:09Speaker 03

  Human?

• 1:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16AJ Gentile?

  All right, we're off to an undisclosed location. Someone's gonna have to take over the show, but I'll see you guys in a couple of days.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  Human? What? Dirty?

• 1:36Speaker 04

  Welcome aboard. I'm Jesse. No, you are not hallucinating. No, this is not a deep fake. And it's certainly not a glitch in the simulation. And yes, I'm aware that I'm not AJ. I know, I checked too. I'm the host of the YouTube channel American Alchemy, which means I'm already uncomfortable asking weird questions on camera. Even better when that camera's in a spaceship. AJ is out today with a bad case of déjà vu, Hecklefish is probably in his fishbowl hanging with his trash-talking family, and I've been handed the keys to a Y-Files compilation. So I'm your substitute. Teacher in the School of Forbidden Knowledge. Today, we're looking at six different ways reality messes with consciousness.

• 2:17Speaker 04

  Genetics, synchronicities, mushrooms, radiation, mind control, and morphic resonance. We start with the most literal edit of all: molecular scissors aimed straight at the human genome. As AJ is about to tell you in this episode, the genetic genie's out of the bottle. And of course, the powers that be are already asking about military applications: cyborg superhumans, Gattaca, a brave new world. Let's go say hi. First episode up is "The Genetics Arms Race: How CRISPR and AI Destroy the World."

• 2:52Speaker 00

  The Greatest is the first authorized script series about the life of Muhammad Ali, offering unprecedented access and going beyond the amazing victories and moments that made Ali a legend, both in and out of the ring. From Ben Watkins, the creator of Cross, and executive producer Michael B. Jordan, discover the man who became the legend in a story never told before, starring Jalen Best as Dean Muhammad Ali. New series November 4th, only on Prime Video.

• 3:30AJ Gentile?

  The sun finally sets. You step out of the abandoned warehouse, keeping to the shadows. You can't be seen. You're what's called an imperfect.

• 3:44AJ Gentile?

  Your parents conceived you the old-fashioned way, without genetic enhancements and without legal permission. They meant well, but your fate was sealed before you were born. You were nine years old when the tracers found them.

• 4:00AJ Gentile?

  The last time you saw your parents, Dad was shoving you down a hatch, whispering for you to run. Before you had time to respond, he closed the hatch and covered it with the carpet.

• 4:12AJ Gentile?

  When you heard your mother's muffled screams, you took off down the tunnel. That was 17 years ago. You still cling to the hope that they're alive in a prison somewhere, but deep down, you know the truth.

• 4:25AJ Gentile?

  Your growling stomach snaps you out of the daydream. Imperfect or not, you still have to eat, and the factory district has plenty of off-the-books work.

• 4:36AJ Gentile?

  Sure, they pay you barely enough to survive, but they don't want a visit from the Tracers any more than you do. It takes a long time to get to work. You have to stay far away from the patrols. Tracers can smell sweat and even hear a heartbeat half a mile away. Your heart murmur is a dead giveaway of imperfection. You hold back a sniffle as a tear rolls down your cheek and wonder how the world came to this. Then you remember something your mother said a long, long time ago. CRISPR. CRISPR changed everything.

• 5:26AJ Gentile?

  Mark and Grace desperately wanted to have a child. In 2017, they attended a lecture in Shenzhen, China about genetic editing. The guest speaker was Professor He Jiankui, a Chinese genetic researcher. After the talk, the couple explained their situation to Dr. He Jiankui. Mark was HIV-positive, Grace was not. Any child they had would carry the disease. He Jiankui told the couple he could help them with a revolutionary new therapy he was developing. Through a gene-editing technology called CRISPR, he could make their children immune to HIV.

• 6:04AJ Gentile?

  The therapy would also make any descendants of these children HIV-resistant forever.

• 6:13AJ Gentile?

  He Jiankui performed the procedure, and it was a success. Mark and Grace had two healthy twin baby girls. But Dr. He Jiankui wasn't being completely honest with them. CRISPR was a revolutionary new technology, that was true. But it was so new, no one in the world would have let him use it on children.

• 6:33AJ Gentile?

  On November 25th, 2018, news of the successful treatment was revealed to the international scientific community.

• 6:41AJ Gentile?

  But He Jiankui and his breakthrough success was not a cause for celebration. Scientists around the world were horrified. They called him China's Dr. Frankenstein. He lost his job, was fined about half a million dollars, and was sentenced to three years in prison by the Chinese government. He also made history. Human genes could now be altered, unwanted genes could be removed, and more desirable genes can be inserted. The genetic genie was out of the bottle. There was no going back. CRISPR gene editing worked, and people started to wonder, "What else can it do?"

• 7:38AJ Gentile?

  For decades, scientists debated the cause of global warming.

• 7:43AJ Gentile?

  Trillions of dollars were invested in clean energy, yet the warming continued.

• 7:52AJ Gentile?

  Birth rates were already crashing when the planet was hit with pandemic after pandemic.

• 7:59AJ Gentile?

  Then, a breakthrough was made.

• 8:02AJ Gentile?

  A team of researchers discovered how to use artificial intelligence to optimize the human genome. By feeding vast amounts of genetic data into advanced machine learning algorithms, AI could identify genetic combinations for optimal health.

• 8:20AJ Gentile?

  At first, the technology was used sparingly, reserved only for the most severe cases of genetic illness. Children with conditions like Huntington's, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell disease could now live normal lives, and the disease wouldn't be passed on to their children.

• 8:40AJ Gentile?

  Soon, wealthy parents were using CRISPR to give their children an edge. AI could provide the exact DNA sequence to optimize any genetic trait.

• 8:51AJ Gentile?

  Their children were taller, more intelligent, more athletic, and more resistant to illness.

• 9:05AJ Gentile?

  But in just a few years, the technology improved, becoming less expensive and more widely available. So more parents used it. The results were astounding.

• 9:24AJ Gentile?

  The United Nations saw CRISPR as a way to solve many of the world's problems. If they could use AI to create a healthier, smarter, and more resilient population, maybe they could prevent the disasters that threatened humanity in the past.

• 9:41Speaker 05

  The voting has been completed. Please lock the machine.

• 9:45AJ Gentile?

  On December 1st, the world celebrated.

• 9:48Speaker 06

  The result of the vote is as follows.

• 9:55AJ Gentile?

  The United Nations had passed the Genetic Optimization Act. Under the act, all parents were required to have their children's genes optimized by AI before birth.

• 10:15AJ Gentile?

  At first, there was resistance. Many saw the act as a violation of individual freedom. Religious groups argued this was playing God.

• 10:26AJ Gentile?

  But as the benefits of the technology became clear, the opposition faded. Parents who had once been skeptical now willingly had their children optimized to give them the best possible start in life.

• 10:39AJ Gentile?

  Over the next few years, genetic diseases were eradicated. Athletes shattered records that had stood for decades. The average human IQ skyrocketed. Scientific breakthroughs were happening on a daily basis. The human species, it seemed, was finally reaching its full potential. But it wasn't just humanity evolving. AI also evolved, and at a much faster rate.

• 11:09AJ Gentile?

  The algorithms became more advanced and started to favor genetic traits not just in health and intelligence, but also behavior.

• 11:20AJ Gentile?

  Obedience, conformity, and loyalty to the state. Children born under the Act were healthy and smart, yes, but they were also docile and easily controlled.

• 11:33AJ Gentile?

  Nations no longer went to war. They didn't see a point in it. AI helped create an abundance of food and energy, more than enough resources for everyone on Earth to live a comfortable life.

• 11:46AJ Gentile?

  But before long, AI, now called "The Guardian", was put in charge of law enforcement and judgment. Who could be more impartial than a computer? People didn't see much danger in giving The Guardian AI this power. After all, crime was almost eliminated. Almost.

• 12:11AJ Gentile?

  There was still a lingering problem: the Imperfects.

• 12:16AJ Gentile?

  Children born outside the system without genetic optimization. They were seen as a threat, a reminder of the chaos of the past.

• 12:27AJ Gentile?

  Laws were passed restricting their rights and movements, forcing them to the margins of society. Finally, it was determined that all non-optimized individuals had to be eliminated.

• 12:40AJ Gentile?

  The Imperfects could not be allowed to pollute the new optimized gene pool. It was a matter of survival. The fate of the entire human race depended on killing every last Imperfect on Earth.

• 12:55AJ Gentile?

  But Imperfects were hard to find. They knew how to hide, disrupt the system, and worst of all...

• 13:03AJ Gentile?

  they continued to breed.

• 13:12AJ Gentile?

  So the Guardian developed a new algorithm to create children with a completely different combination of genetic traits.

• 13:22AJ Gentile?

  Obedience and loyalty were still part of the mix, but emotions were suppressed. These children learned to commit violence without empathy. They were given the traits, training, and tools to be ideal hunters. Thousands of these children quickly grew to be men who were assigned to a unit that handled tactical retrieval and criminal resistance. But people just called them "tracers."

• 13:51Speaker 07

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• 14:32AJ Gentile?

  DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a long string of molecules called nucleotides containing one of four nitrogenous base pairs: adenine with thymine, cytosine with guanine, or ATCG. You know this. CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. That's a mouthful, but it's not hard to understand. It refers to those ATCGs. In the late 1980s, scientists were studying bacteria DNA and noticed odd repeating sequences. Not only did these sequences repeat, but they were palindromes. You know, something that reads forward the same as backwards, like "Never Odd or Even", or "Madam in Eden, I'm Adam."

• 15:16Speaker 03

  A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.

• 15:19AJ Gentile?

  Yeah, that's one of my favorites.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Yo, banana boy!

• 15:22AJ Gentile?

  Yeah, that one's good, too.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  Ee, dad, no bondage?

• 15:26AJ Gentile?

  Okay, that's enough.

• 15:30AJ Gentile?

  So let's say one section of the DNA strand was G A A T T C. The opposite side was C T T A A G, palindrome. That's an oversimplification, but it's the gist. They found these repeats over and over in the bacterium's DNA. In between these repeating sections were sections of random DNA, not palindromes, nothing special, random. But a few years later, scientists realized those random sequences in between the palindromes weren't random at all. Those sequences were the genetic codes of viruses that infected the bacterium at one point. CRISPR works like this. A virus attacks a bacterium by injecting its DNA.

• 16:14AJ Gentile?

  Usually, bacteria can't survive this, but the ones that do take a snapshot of the virus DNA. That snapshot is then encoded into the bacterium's own DNA, like a memory. So if that virus attacks again, the bacterium checks the virus DNA against its own little DNA database. If it finds a match, it uses a protein called a Cas to cut the virus DNA at a specific location called the cleavage site.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Oh, I like the site of cleavage.

• 16:42AJ Gentile?

  Stop it. When the virus DNA is cut, it dies. Then in 2020, scientists Emmanuel Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna discovered CRISPR-Cas9. Cas9 is a protein that makes it much easier to target and edit individual genes selectively. This discovery won them the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and the applications are endless. CRISPR-Cas9 could mean the end of genetic diseases. Victoria Gray suffered from sickle cell disease. This is a genetic disease that deforms red blood cells. Instead of being round, some are shaped like a crescent moon or a sickle.

• 17:27AJ Gentile?

  These deformed cells cause all kinds of problems.

• 17:32AJ Gentile?

  Victoria was constantly tired and in pain. She couldn't walk. Sometimes she couldn't feed herself because she couldn't lift a spoon. In 2019, she was the first person in the US to receive CRISPR-based treatment for sickle cell disease. Doctors extracted stem cells from her bone marrow, used CRISPR to correct the sickle cell mutation, then infused the modified cells back into her body. The goal was to give her body the ability to produce healthy red blood cells on its own. It worked. Victoria now lives a normal life. CRISPR research is now being directed at other diseases like cancer, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, MS, and more. But those studies use CRISPR to remove dangerous genes.

• 18:17AJ Gentile?

  CRISPR can also add genes, favorable genes. And if you can do that, people will. Wouldn't you want your child to be smarter, stronger, resistant to illness? Every parent would. But using technology to improve the genetic quality of the population? There is a word for that: eugenics.

• 18:53AJ Gentile?

  Your shift at the factory ends, and your real work begins.

• 18:58AJ Gentile?

  Six months ago, you were approached by a woman in the Resistance who fought against the global AI system now called The Guardian. Of course, you'd heard of the Resistance but never considered joining. Every other day, the news ran a story celebrating the execution of its members. But this woman's passion convinced you that you had to do something to help.

• 19:19Speaker 07

  We need to restore genetic diversity and end the AI's control over human reproduction. Its pursuit of perfection is creating a society of automatons. We're becoming obedient drones and losing all that makes us human. When was the last time you saw true art? Or heard music that stirred your soul? If we don't stop The Guardian soon, imperfects like us will be completely gone, hunted by Tracers until nobody's left.

• 19:51Speaker 06

  Who remembers what being human really means?

• 19:55AJ Gentile?

  Your training began the next day, and it was grueling. Your resistance cell has people with many different backgrounds: doctors, engineers, even former Tracers. They taught you how to hack computer systems, evade patrols, and handle weapons.

• 20:22AJ Gentile?

  Here in New York was one of the Guardians' main hubs: 33 Thomas Street, the former AT&T building, now called Titan Point. Many years ago, the United States ran a vast and highly illegal surveillance program out of Titan Point. The program was exposed in documents released by someone named Edward Snowden. You would think that Americans would have been outraged to learn that their own government was spying on them, but the news came and went, and nothing happened. Congressmen, senior military officials, even the Director of Intelligence publicly lied about the program. Nothing happened.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

• 21:09AJ Gentile?

  No, sir. It was that kind of apathy that led to this mess. The Resistance wouldn't make that mistake. Titan Point, aka 33 Thomas Street, is a fortress. It's impenetrable, but the Resistance has someone on the inside. If everything goes to plan, you and three members of your cell will slip in through the underground garage. Your contact will take you to a workstation connected to the Guardians' network. Then all you have to do is plug in a portable disk. On the disk are variations of old computer viruses designed by the US, Israel, Iran, and the New Soviet Union.

• 21:53AJ Gentile?

  Viruses like Stuxnet and Nitro Zeus, designed by humans, perfected by AI. If they work, they could cripple the network and take down the entire power grid. Communications, transportation, banks, and all financial systems, all would go down. For a time, anyway. But time is all you need.

• 22:16AJ Gentile?

  AI destroyed by AI. You smile at the poetic irony of it.

• 22:24AJ Gentile?

  You reach the heavy steel door and check your watch. 5:54 a.m. It's time. The moment your watch hits 5:55, you hear the heavy locking mechanisms disengage.

• 22:38AJ Gentile?

  The door opens, and your contact waves you in.

• 22:54AJ Gentile?

  Genetics is a relatively new science. The earliest experiments were conducted by Gregor Mendel in the mid-19th century, studying inherited traits in pea plants.

• 23:05AJ Gentile?

  But genetically manipulating crops has been going on since the end of the Stone Age. It was as simple as keeping the good crops and throwing out the bad ones. Traditional genetically-modified organism, or GMO, methods, enable the creation of plants with favorable traits, like increased yield and resistance to disease. Corn and cotton are engineered to resist pests, reducing the need for dangerous chemical-based pesticides. Rice has been genetically modified to produce higher levels of vitamin A, addressing vitamin deficiencies in developing countries. Before CRISPR, most of this was achieved with selective breeding and gene splicing. Gene splicing involves physically cutting DNA and inserting new genes into the genome. In 2009,

• 23:50AJ Gentile?

  Japanese scientists spliced jellyfish DNA into marmoset embryos to make them glow in the dark. Not only did this work, but the gene is now passed on to their offspring. This is the first time this has been achieved in a primate. Since then, scientists have created glowing sheep, pigs, and even glowing cats.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Oh, I like this glowing cats idea. Easier to see the evil lurking in the shadows.

• 24:19AJ Gentile?

  But gene splicing is difficult and not very precise. Whereas CRISPR is so precise, it's like copying and pasting specific genes. You can also use CRISPR to turn certain genes on or off in any genome in any organism, including humans. In addition to curing disease, researchers are exploring CRISPR to create new biofuels. There's a team genetically modifying mosquitoes so they can't carry malaria. For years, scientists have tried to revive extinct animal species. The process is difficult and they've had mixed results, but it's much easier with CRISPR, and there's big money in de-extincting animals.

• 24:59AJ Gentile?

  What if bringing species back from extinction could help bring critically endangered species back from the brink, help hundreds of threatened species thrive, and support the restoration of the planet's critical ecosystems? That's the goal of Colossal.

• 25:14AJ Gentile?

  A company called Colossal Biosciences secured $150 million in financing just last year. They plan to resurrect the woolly mammoth, the dodo bird, and other extinct species.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  What are they, nuts? It's like these people never seen a movie. They're making Jurassic Park for real.

• 25:33AJ Gentile?

  They kind of are. And when a new technology emerges, governments of the world ask, is there a military application? Well, in this case, the answer is yes. CRISPR has launched a new kind of arms race. Countries are hard at work right now trying to build the world's first super soldier.

• 25:55Speaker 07

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• 26:39Speaker 03

  When Guardian AI incorporated every nation of the world into a single government, war, drought, and famine were eliminated. The only challenge to our peace was the Imperfects. We had no way of tracking down these terrorists... until now.

• 27:00Speaker 03

  Today, Guardian released the first deployment of the elite Tactical Retrieval and Criminal Resistance Team, known as Tracers.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  Tracers have been genetically designed to be the perfect hunters. They're physically imposing, standing well over six feet tall, with lean, muscular builds. They are the strongest and fastest humans ever to exist.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  They can maintain a 35 mile per hour sprint for almost 10 minutes. Guardian says future generations of Tracers will be even faster and with greater stamina. Like a chameleon, a Tracer can change the color of his skin to match his surroundings. Their eyes are enhanced with advanced optics, which include 100x zoom, night vision, and infrared. From over 100 yards away, a Tracer can hear breath, or even a heartbeat.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  They can smell sweat from even farther, even a limb of their target.

• 28:00Speaker 03

  Tracers also possess enhanced cognitive abilities. With their Neuralink implants, their minds process information thousands of times faster than a normal human. They can analyze complex data, gather clues, and predict their target's movements with uncanny accuracy. No doubt, Imperfects will target Tracers whenever they encounter them, but Tracers are extremely difficult to kill.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  They can regenerate damaged tissue, mend broken bones, and even regrow lost limbs. Tracers have been engineered to have an extremely high pain tolerance. They can push through injuries that would incapacitate a normal person, never slowing down or losing focus of their mission.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  are relentless, unstoppable, and utterly devoted to their purpose. They will not rest until every last imperfect has been eliminated from the gene pool. Then, we will finally have peace.

• 29:16AJ Gentile?

  Despite the World Health Organization condemning the use of CRISPR for anything other than medical necessities, governments around the world are very interested in its military potential.

• 29:28AJ Gentile?

  What could the military do with CRISPR? Think Captain America or Wolverine, real-life superheroes. Superhearing and night vision, increased muscle mass and bone density, tolerance to pain, immunity to poison, reduced sleep requirements, even regenerative healing. The possibilities are endless. But here's something scary: these changes don't have to be made to embryos. They can be made to full-grown adults. In 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his scientists would soon be able to create a soldier with specific characteristics that would let them fight without pain, or fear, or regret.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  You're holding with the soldier!

• 30:09AJ Gentile?

  Yep, and China doesn't want to be left behind. They're allegedly testing soldiers right now.

• 30:15Speaker 05

  And they have found that there is ample evidence that Chinese scientists are very interested in applying biotechnology to the battlefield, and specifically the CRISPR gene editing tool, which raises a ton of questions. Picture super-strong commandos who can operate on three hours' sleep, or a sniper who can see twice as far as a normal person.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  Oh, maybe that's what happened to Wuhan. They were trying to create a Chinese Batman.

• 30:44AJ Gentile?

  Uh, yeah, let's not get into it.

• 30:48AJ Gentile?

  In 2020, France announced it's looking into enhancing their soldiers. French Defense Minister Florence Parler said they have no immediate plans for invasive technology for their soldiers, but she said other countries wouldn't hold back, so they have to be prepared.

• 31:06AJ Gentile?

  In 2021, the UK entered the arms race. The UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency has been given 800 million pounds to research genetically enhancing soldiers.

• 31:19AJ Gentile?

  And you can't have an arms race without the good old USA. In 2019, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, launched a project to explore genetically editing soldiers. One last thing. Remember Colossal Biosciences?

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, the company making Jurassic Park?

• 31:38AJ Gentile?

  Yep, they have a new investor.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  Oh, no. A big pharma company?

• 31:43AJ Gentile?

  Worse.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  A big tech company?

• 31:45AJ Gentile?

  Worse.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  Well, the only thing worse would be, uh, uh, wait. Do you mean?

• 31:51AJ Gentile?

  The CIA.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  Oh, no!

• 31:54AJ Gentile?

  Yep. The CIA gets a black budget of about 100 billion dollars a year. More, more or less. They're throwing a lot of that money at genetic research. Colossal Biosciences, Ginkgo Bioworks, Metobiota, Biometrica, and T2 Biosystems all allegedly receive millions in CIA funding. These companies use artificial intelligence for gene mapping, genetic testing, and other DNA research.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 32:22AJ Gentile?

  What?

• 32:23Speaker 03

  One of the companies the CIA funds is called T2?

• 32:27AJ Gentile?

  Yep.

• 32:27Speaker 03

  That's literally what Terminator 2 is called.

• 32:30AJ Gentile?

  It was.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  If the CIA is using AI in gene editing, they are literally creating Skynet. Like, for real!

• 32:38AJ Gentile?

  They really are. And speaking of Terminator 2, remember the rest of the title of that movie?

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Judgment Day.

• 32:45AJ Gentile?

  Judgment Day.

• 33:05AJ Gentile?

  Judgment Day came and went as expected. Your crimes: counts of treason, terrorism, conspiracy, resisting arrest, assaulting an agent of the state, and the charge every imperfect faces defying natural order.

• 33:21AJ Gentile?

  The sentence for any one of these is death. There was no reason for them to pile the charges on. They even threw an account of breaking and entering. You checked the clock on the wall. 6:55. Five minutes left. Five minutes left to live.

• 33:37AJ Gentile?

  In five minutes, your cell will open, and the guards will take you to a room. What happens in that room, nobody knows, only rumors. But whoever goes in that room doesn't come out.

• 33:49AJ Gentile?

  Four minutes left. This is a worse fate than the others on your team. They were all killed by Tracers during the Titan Point job. At least they didn't have to sit in a cell counting down days, then hours, now minutes, until their death. The plan was going so well, for a few minutes at least. Your contact opened the door right on schedule. A quick ride up to the 15th floor, which was temporarily closed for renovation. Then into the telco closet, where the workstation was waiting, just like the blueprint said it would be. The portable drive fit, the virus uploaded. You never felt more elation in your life. It was pure joy. Then you heard the gunshots. And you knew. There was no reason to hide. They knew you were there.

• 34:36AJ Gentile?

  When you opened the door, there were two Tracers standing over the bodies of your friends. And there was your contact, staring at his shoes. He betrayed you.

• 34:55AJ Gentile?

  It was a long shot, anyway. The AI was always a step ahead. You don't know how many resistance cells are left, but you can scratch New York off the list.

• 35:06AJ Gentile?

  Three minutes left. You spent the last two weeks in your cell going over the plan again and again, trying to find the hole where it went wrong. But there was no hole. The plan was perfect. The problem was your contact. He was human, an optimized human. It was hard to blame him. He was bred to be obedient, loyal, and even fearful of authority. Trusting him was a mistake. You never really had a chance.

• 35:34AJ Gentile?

  You hear footsteps in the hall getting closer. The jangling of keys. The door unlocks and opens. The guard nods his head as if to say, "Let's go." "I still have two minutes," you tell him. He looks at your wall clock and nods. "You're right," he says. "Do you want to wait?"

• 35:54AJ Gentile?

  In a flash, you recall the memory of your father shoving you down the hatch. The shouting, the crawling in the dark, and the hiding. Most of all, you remember the hiding. Hiding for years, fearing this moment would happen one day. And here it is.

• 36:11AJ Gentile?

  You tell the guard, "Nah, I'm ready." You hop up from your bunk, casually walk past the guard, and start down the long gray hall. It's finally time to stop hiding.

• 36:37AJ Gentile?

  Eugenics is defined as "a set of beliefs and practices designed to improve the genetic quality of the human population."

• 36:47AJ Gentile?

  Eugenics is most often associated with the Nazis, but it didn't start with them or end with them. The sterilization of people considered unfit has happened on every continent and in every major country. In 1907, the Indiana Eugenics Law was passed in the US, the first of its kind in the world. The law authorized the involuntary sterilization of certain individuals, specifically the mentally ill. By the 1930s, more than 30 states had passed similar laws. These laws primarily targeted individuals in mental institutions or prisons, but they also affected others in the community deemed unfit for reproduction, including people with disabilities,

• 37:31AJ Gentile?

  those with mental illness, and individuals of certain racial and ethnic backgrounds.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 37:38AJ Gentile?

  Yep, this law was abused. In Sweden, more than 60,000 people were sterilized between 1934 and 1976. Just like the US, the program was designed to prevent people from reproducing who were deemed by the state to have undesirable traits: the mentally ill, the mentally disabled, the physically deformed, or anyone behaving in a way considered socially problematic or genetically inferior. In modern times, eugenics is not accepted as scientific. It's considered erroneous and immoral. Eugenics is no longer an acceptable practice. Or is it?

• 38:23AJ Gentile?

  Many countries allow women to terminate a pregnancy if the fetus shows signs of impairment, illness, or a genetic disorder. Depending on the country, up to 90% of women choose to terminate. Is this eugenics? I'm not judging, I'm just asking. But consider this: What if, instead of terminating a fetus, that fetus's illness could be repaired? CRISPR not only makes that possible, it makes it easy. This would lead to more births of healthy babies. But technology was used to alter that child, which alters the gene pool. Is this eugenics? It's an ongoing debate.

• 39:02AJ Gentile?

  There are valid arguments on both sides. On one hand, preventing a child from having Down Syndrome, cystic fibrosis, Huntington's Disease, sickle cell disease, sets up that child and his or her parents for an easier life and spares that family a lot of pain and expense.

• 39:19AJ Gentile?

  On the other hand, CRISPR technology does interfere with the natural order of things. Of course, it's done with good intentions, but whenever we tamper with nature, there can be, and there usually are, unexpected consequences.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  This is the emergency broadcast system. This is not the test.

• 39:52Speaker 07

  In a historic victory for global stability, Guardian AI has successfully neutralized the terrorist group known as The Resistance.

• 40:04Speaker 07

  This misguided faction sought to undermine the peace and progress achieved through Guardian's genetic optimization programs.

• 40:14Speaker 07

  Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Tracers working out of the New York branch, The Resistance's leadership has been captured and the network dismantled.

• 40:29Speaker 07

  Guardian will now be able to continue its vital work unimpeded, ensuring a future of health, harmony, and security for all citizens.

• 40:40Speaker 07

  The world can now breathe a sigh of relief.

• 40:46Speaker 07

  Knowing that The Guardian is watching over us.

• 40:52Speaker 07

  Always watching.

• 40:59AJ Gentile?

  In 2021, the World Health Organization started putting together a set of global standards regarding CRISPR and gene editing. The WHO said gene editing should be used only in cases of medical necessity. The report explicitly says gene technology should not be used in any military application. But there's a slight problem with the report. That isn't law. It's up to each country to decide how they use CRISPR. And it's safe to assume some countries aren't going to agree with the WHO. In fact, the evidence shows all the major world powers are gearing up for a new kind of war to be fought by a new kind of soldier. How we use CRISPR will shape the future of our world.

• 41:42AJ Gentile?

  The evidence will be recorded not just in our history books, but in our DNA. A lot of today's story was speculation. And the future doesn't have to be so dark. CRISPR has the potential to eliminate genetic diseases. HIV, genetic blindness, MS, even cancer can almost be completely eradicated like smallpox was in 1980. But remember Dr. Ho-jeong Kue, who created twin girls immune to HIV? Well, he didn't. It didn't work. And even Jennifer Doudna herself has warned that CRISPR carries with it great risk. The potential to do incredible things and make incredible advances that will be

• 42:22AJ Gentile?

  beneficial to our society, but hand in hand with that goes these large risks. There have been at least two published, but not highly publicized, studies that show CRISPR causes damage to DNA. The study found deletions of thousands of DNA bases, including at spots far from the edit.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Delete it, say.

• 42:44AJ Gentile?

  Right. Some of those deletions silenced genes that should be active and activated genes that should be silent, including cancer-causing genes. Within 20 minutes of the release of that study, three publicly traded CRISPR companies lost more than $300 million in value. Like with AI, we have to be very, very careful with this technology. The dystopian future I described today could easily happen. The foundation is already here. We, as a species, are at a crossroads, and I don't know which road we'll take.

• 43:26AJ Gentile?

  Zeus gave Pandora a box as a wedding gift, but told her to never open it. She couldn't resist. You know the story. When Pandora opened the box, it unleashed all the evils and miseries into the world: disease, poverty, hatred, violence, and suffering. I've heard people compare AI and CRISPR to Pandora's box. Now that the box is opened, there's no going back. CRISPR and AI aren't going away. In fact, despite all the warnings and the potential danger, these technologies are being expanded. Right away, Pandora knew she made a mistake and did finally close the box, but all the contents had escaped. Except one thing at the bottom of the box was left behind.

• 44:09AJ Gentile?

  Like Pandora, that one thing might be the only thing we have left. That one thing was hope.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  So that was comforting, a nice, relaxing look at the future of human civilization. Nothing says genetic apocalypse like designer babies, resurrecting mammoths and dodo birds, and a future where super soldiers seem just around the corner. Good times. But as AJ said, there's still hope. There are some really good things genetic editing can bring about, too. Maybe it's a coincidence that sometimes, when things feel completely out of control, people start noticing weird signs or patterns: a little cosmic tap on the shoulder, little nudges seemingly from the universe, like the universe is guiding you or messing with you. We think of someone before they call. We dream about someone we randomly run into the next day.

• 45:05Speaker 04

  An email that lands exactly at the right moment. That happened to me recently. I just had a dream that hecklefish hijacked my car, took it for a joyride, and crashed it into my studio.

• 45:24AJ Gentile?

  Then the next morning, I wake up, check my inbox, and there's an email from AJ. The time of his email: 3:33 a.m. And now I'm here on this weird corner of the internet, wondering if Hecklefish somehow backchanneled with the Adjustment Bureau. It's a classic time loop. I should really call Eric Worgo about this. Whoa. That's trippy. Hello?

• 45:50Speaker 06

  Hey, Jesse. How's it going?

• 45:52AJ Gentile?

  Is this Eric Worgo?

• 45:55Speaker 06

  Uh, yeah.

• 45:58AJ Gentile?

  You wouldn't believe what just happened.

• 46:02AJ Gentile?

  Cool. Okay. I'll talk to you soon. Later.

• 46:07AJ Gentile?

  It's always bugging me. This next episode is about your favorite moments that feel too strange to ignore. We've all experienced it, but there's actually a science behind it. So Episode 2 is up next. This is Synchronicities: The Science Behind Your Meaningful Coincidences.

• 46:32AJ Gentile?

  In Bermuda, 1975, a man walks down the street. He's hit by a taxi and killed. Exactly one year later, his brother walks down the same street. He's hit by a taxi and killed. Now, not only did the brother die the same way, they were hit by the same taxi.

• 46:51AJ Gentile?

  Driven by the same driver, carrying the same passenger. Twin boys separated at birth. Both named Jim. Both became cops. Both married women named Linda. Both had sons named James Allen. Both divorced and married women named Betty. And both had dogs named Toy. These aren't coincidences. They're synchronicities. Reality responding to human consciousness. Because reality isn't random or chaotic. It's organized. It's aware. And it's always listening. And if you want to change reality, all you have to do is ask.

• 47:41AJ Gentile?

  In 1944, famous psychiatrist Carl Jung was talking with a patient. She kept having a dream about a golden scarab, a golden beetle, an Egyptian symbol of death, rebirth, and transformation. Jung listened patiently. He'd heard this dream before, many times. But then he heard something else: tapping, tapping at the window.

• 48:08AJ Gentile?

  A beetle was hitting the glass over and over. Jung opened the window, caught the beetle, and gently studied it for a second. It was golden green, a rose chafer, the closest thing to a scarab in Switzerland. He handed it to his patient and said, "Here's your scarab." At that moment, Jung realized that there's more to our reality than we see. He believed that mind and matter are intertwined. A reality is created by our collective consciousness. And Carl Jung wasn't some mystic. He was a scientist. He was a highly published, highly respected psychiatrist. But when that beetle tapped on his window, it changed him forever. He didn't think this was a random coincidence.

• 48:51AJ Gentile?

  It was a meaningful coincidence. He called it synchronicity. Events may seem coincidental, but they're connected by cause and consciousness. The universe, reality itself, responds to human thought. Have you ever had a friend pop into your mind, someone that you hadn't talked to in years, and then the phone rings and it's them? Or you think of a song and then you hear it somewhere? That's your mind tapping into the universal consciousness. One of Jung's closest intellectual partners was Wolfgang Pauli. He was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and one of the founders of quantum mechanics. Quantum entanglement seemed to prove Jung's theory.

• 49:32AJ Gentile?

  When two particles are entangled, changing one changes the other instantly, no matter how far apart they are, one foot apart, one million light-years apart. Those particles communicate instantly, no speed limit. That breaks the rules of physics. But tests prove entanglement is real. Which means there are rules of physics that we don't know about. Like entangled particles can influence each other. Your thoughts can somehow influence your reality. The other day, Jen and I had dinner with friends that we hadn't seen in 10 years. Hi, Dave. Hi, Maureen. Hi, Sailor. The next day, I'm cleaning out a folder of old files.

• 50:12AJ Gentile?

  The top file was a picture of Dave and Maureen and Baby Sailor, taken about 10 years ago. I don't remember taking it. I don't even remember seeing it before. This is synchronicity, and I'm sure you have stories like this yourself. Arthur Kostler collected hundreds of these strange stories, and he found an odd pattern in history. Big discoveries often happen at the same time, in different places, by people who had no contact. Isaac Newton and Godfrey Wilhelm Leibniz both invented calculus separately. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace both developed the theory of evolution independently. Now, here's a crazy one.

• 50:53AJ Gentile?

  Alexander Graham Bell and Alicia Gray both submitted designs for the telephone to the US Patent Office on the exact same day. February 14th, 1876, just hours apart. Young said we're all connected. Each of us is one of billions of individual access points to our shared collective consciousness. And most people just stumble into these connections by accident. But some people have learned that our shared reality can be accessed. It could be influenced. It could even be controlled. And if you think controlling reality with your mind would be a nice skill to have, you're not alone. So does the CIA.

• 51:41AJ Gentile?

  The CIA had a problem. The Soviets were training psychic spies. It was the 1970s and intelligence reports were coming in from everywhere. Soviet agents could supposedly see inside American military facilities using only their minds. At first, the reports weren't taken seriously, but then more reports arrived, and then more. Project Stargate launched in 1978 at the Stanford Research Institute. SRI was backed by the CIA. They wanted remote viewers who could spy on enemy installations without leaving their chairs. So SRI recruited people who claimed to have psychic abilities. Joe McMonigal was one of their star viewers.

• 52:23AJ Gentile?

  He was a former Army intelligence officer who had a near-death experience. After he was brought back, he could describe places he'd never been. He closed his eyes and sketched detailed drawings of buildings on the other side of the world. In 1979, McMonigal was given coordinates and asked what he saw.

• 52:44AJ Gentile?

  He described a massive submarine, bigger than any sub ever built. Now, intelligence analysts laughed at his sketches of the sub because he drew two subs side by side surrounded by a giant hull. No submarine could be that big. No one had ever designed anything like this. Six months later, satellite photos proved McMonigal was right. The Typhoon-class submarine looked exactly like his drawings. But the military wanted more than remote viewing. They wanted to change reality itself. The Gateway Process explores consciousness manipulation through technology.

• 53:24AJ Gentile?

  Robert Monroe had developed something called hemispheric synchronization, or HEMISync. Different sound frequencies played in each ear could put the brain in altered states. Test subjects reported leaving their bodies, traveling through time, and accessing what they called "other dimensions." Declassified documents describe "Focus 15," a mental state where time...

• 53:48AJ Gentile?

  supposedly doesn't exist. People claim they could see the past, present, and future simultaneously. Some reported they could influence events before they happened. That caught the attention of the American military and intelligence agencies. They even sent soldiers and agents to learn the gateway process. And I have a whole episode on this, link below. At Princeton, the Pear Laboratory, P-E-A-R, ran experiments for 28 years. They tested whether the human mind could affect random number generators. Ordinary people would sit in front of machines and try to influence the output with their thoughts. Now, the effects were small, but significant. People could affect machines in ways that shouldn't be possible.

• 54:33AJ Gentile?

  Still not convinced? Well, the Global Consciousness Project has random number generators around the world, constantly producing random data. But around 2:00 in the morning on September 11, 2001, the machines' random numbers started to synchronize. The scientists couldn't explain it. A few hours later, two planes hit the World Trade Center. This is a published, peer-reviewed fact. Some argue that it was just a coincidence. But I could do a whole episode on the Global Consciousness Project and the events they predicted. And let me know if you want me to cover it. So, not only can we access reality, we could tap into the universal field.

• 55:15AJ Gentile?

  Focus 15, where past, present, and future don't exist. We could alter reality anyplace and at any time. The CIA and US military had spent decades and millions of dollars proving consciousness could alter reality. But they weren't the first to discover this. Ancient cultures had been using these techniques for thousands of years.

• 55:44AJ Gentile?

  Humans have always known how to bend reality. We just called it different names. Every ancient culture had practices for connecting to the universal consciousness. Prayer, meditation, ritual. These weren't just religious ceremonies. They were technologies.

• 56:02AJ Gentile?

  Technologies for accessing the same consciousness field the CIA wanted. The Hermetic tradition goes back to ancient Egypt. As above, so below. As within, so without. They knew consciousness shapes reality. The mind creates matter. Change your inner world, the outer world follows. Buddhist monks have demonstrated this for centuries. They can control their body temperature through meditation. Scientists tested Tibetan monks in freezing conditions. The monks raised their skin temperature by 17 degrees.

• 56:37AJ Gentile?

  Just by thinking about it. They dried wet sheets on their bodies in sub-zero weather. Then there's Nikola Tesla. He didn't just invent electrical devices. He believed in the connection between thought and energy. Tesla would visualize his inventions in perfect detail before building them. He'd run the machines in his mind for weeks, checking for problems. When he finally built them, they worked perfectly. Every time, on the first try. Napoleon Hill interviewed 500 successful people in the early 1900s. Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison. They all used the same technique. They held clear mental images of what they wanted. They felt the emotions of already having it.

• 57:20AJ Gentile?

  Then reality rearranged itself to match their vision. Hill called it "think and grow rich." But it wasn't about money. It was about consciousness creating reality. Then, the new thought movement spread across America. Authors like Neville Goddard taught that imagination creates reality. Not metaphorically, literally. Your thoughts impress themselves on a responsive universe. The universe has no choice but to manifest them. Fast forward to 2006. The secret goes mainstream. And millions learn about the law of attraction. Critics called it wishful thinking. But here's what's interesting. Every culture throughout history discovered the same principle independently.

• 58:04AJ Gentile?

  Aboriginal Australians, ancient Chinese, Native Americans, African tribes. They all found ways to communicate with reality itself. The techniques vary, but the core message doesn't. Reality is conscious. It listens. It responds. And the most dramatic proof comes from the synchronicities that happen without us even trying.

• 58:32AJ Gentile?

  In June 2001, Laura Buxton released a balloon at her grandparents' anniversary party. She was 10 years old, living in Staffordshire, England. She wrote her name and address on a tag, tied it to the balloon, and let it go. The balloon traveled 140 miles south. It landed in a hedge in Wiltshire, where another 10-year-old girl found it. And her name was also Laura Buxton.

• 58:57AJ Gentile?

  The second Laura wrote the first, and they arranged to meet. Both girls showed up wearing pink sweaters and jeans. Both brought their pet guinea pigs. Both guinea pigs were orange and white. And of course, the guinea pigs had the same name. And the coincidences kept piling up. Both Lauras were the same height. Both had brown hair and blue eyes. Both had three-year-old black labs at home. And both also had gray rabbits. When they opened their bags, both had packed the same stuffed animal. Identical. And the odds of all this happening are so crazy that it's mathematically impossible. But it happened. There's plenty of photos and video. The news covered the story. This is not an urban legend.

• 59:41AJ Gentile?

  Anthony Hopkins. He needed a book. "The Girl from Petrovka." He was playing the lead in the film, and he searched every bookstore in London with no luck. It was out of print. Hopkins had finally given up when he was sitting on a bench waiting for a train. Someone left a book on the bench. He picked it up. It was "The Girl from Petrovka." But this wasn't just any copy. This one had handwritten notes in the margins. Personal observations. character analysis. Hopkins studied the book for his role. Two years later, while shooting the film, Hopkins met the author, George Pfeiffer. While they talked about the book, Pfeiffer mentioned that he'd lent his personal copy to a friend. That friend lost it on the London Underground. All his notes, his analysis, gone.

• 1:00:26AJ Gentile?

  He was disappointed. Hopkins heard this and said, wait here. And he ran to fetch the book from his trailer. He showed Pfeiffer. It was the same book. Pfeiffer's handwriting, his notes, everything. Somehow, the universe sent that book to the actor playing the lead, and then the universe sent the book back to its owner. Now, here's a story of the law of attraction. Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's son, attracted death. Presidential death. April 14, 1865. Robert was at the White House when his father left for Ford's Theater. We know how that ended. Sixteen years later, July 2, 1881, Robert was Secretary of War.

• 1:01:11AJ Gentile?

  Walking into the Baltimore and Potomac Train Station, President Garfield was shot, right there in front of Robert. He saw it happen. September 6, 1901. Now, Robert was president of Pullman Company. He arrived at the Pan American Exposition. Minutes later, President McKinley was shot. Again, Robert was there. Three presidents, three assassinations, one man present at all of them. But here's the synchronicity that haunted Robert. Years before his father died, Robert fell onto train tracks in Jersey City. The train was coming. He was about to be crushed. A stranger grabbed his collar and yanked him to safety.

• 1:01:52AJ Gentile?

  That stranger was one of the most famous actors in the country. Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes Booth. Two brothers, both famous actors, both connected to Abraham Lincoln. One brother would save the president's son. The other would assassinate him. These patterns are a little too perfect. This isn't random. This is reality organizing itself. To be able to influence reality would be the ultimate power. That's why people have been studying this technique for thousands of years. But here's the secret they don't want you to know. Anyone can learn to change their reality at will. Even you.

• 1:02:40AJ Gentile?

  Dr. Joe Dispenza had a patient who couldn't walk. He was paralyzed from the waist down. Doctors said it was permanent. But then the patient started meditating. And not just regular meditation. Quantum field meditation.

• 1:02:55AJ Gentile?

  He visualized his nerve endings connecting and rebuilding. He focused on feeling his legs working perfectly. Six months later, he walked into Dispenza's office. No wheelchair, no crutches. He walked. The doctors couldn't explain it. But Dispenza could. The patient had tapped into the quantum field where all possibilities exist. And this isn't wishful thinking. This is the practical application of quantum physics. When you observe something at the quantum level, you change it. That's the observer effect. A particle exists in all states at once until you observe it. Then it exists in only one state. Your consciousness can tap into the quantum field.

• 1:03:38AJ Gentile?

  Now at this moment, infinite realities are laid out before you. Every nanosecond, infinite decisions are being made that cause the infinite possibilities to collapse into this one reality. But you can learn to influence the outcome of all those decisions. You can alter your small corner of reality. Setting clear intentions is the first step. You can't be vague, like wishing for more money. You have to be specific, detailed. You have to say, "I receive a $10,000 bonus on March 15th." The universe needs precise instructions. But thinking isn't enough. You need emotion, gratitude specifically. Feel grateful for what you're manifesting as if it already happened.

• 1:04:23AJ Gentile?

  Concentrate on that feeling of believing it already happened. Your brain doesn't know the difference between a real experience and a vivid imagination. That's why athletes visualize perfect performance. Their muscles respond as if they actually practiced. Donald Hoffman spent 30 years studying consciousness. He believes what we perceive as reality is nothing more than a user interface, like computer icons on a desktop. Behind every icon, behind every pixel, is complex code. What we see isn't really here. Space, time, objects, they're all icons, all pixels. Consciousness is the only thing that's real.

• 1:05:06AJ Gentile?

  Now, if Hoffman is right, and reality is just an interface, you can hack it. And people do it every day without realizing it. Think about someone and they call. Need a parking spot? What opens up? Worry about something and it happens. That last one's important. Reality doesn't judge good or bad, it just responds. So be careful what you focus on. You'll know when you're connecting with the universal field. You'll see signs. Some people always notice clocks when they read 11:11. Other people have number patterns they see everywhere, in dates, addresses, VIN numbers of cars. Look around. License plates contain messages. So do song lyrics.

• 1:05:50AJ Gentile?

  Reality is constantly communicating with you. You just have to learn the language. Some people see results immediately, others take months. The difference is doubt. Every doubt is a new instruction to the universe to not honor your original request. If you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it. We all know the stories about the highly successful CEO who visualizes his entire day each morning. Every meeting, every decision, every outcome. He's not psychic, he's programming reality. You've heard of vision boards? If you don't have one, create one right now. Put a cork board somewhere where you can see it every day. And on that board, pin pictures of everything you want.

• 1:06:34AJ Gentile?

  A dream house, a car, a boat, a travel destination. Even handwritten notes to yourself about landing the perfect job or finding your soulmate. Study that board every day. You'll be surprised at what happens. You might not buy that yacht tomorrow, but by setting clear intentions, those trillions of micro decisions will guide you to your goal. Now, these aren't miracles. This is technology, ancient technology that we forgot how to use. But a part of you remembers how to communicate with reality because reality is us. All of us. We're all connected. Our shared consciousness is always listening. It wants your dreams to come true.

• 1:07:18AJ Gentile?

  All you have to do is ask.

• 1:07:26AJ Gentile?

  Synchronicities are real. We've got the photos of the two Laura Buxtons. Jung's beetle tapped on that window. Anthony Hopkins found that exact book. These things happened. So is the universe really responding to our thoughts? Well, here's where it gets tricky. Critics point out that our brains evolved to see patterns in randomness. This is called pareidolia. Rustling in the bushes? Could be wind, or it could be a predator. The ones who assumed predator live longer. So we're wired to see connections even when they're not there. Now, the skeptics have a point. Millions of twins get separated at birth. Some are bound to have weird similarities. We only hear about the impossible ones. This is called survivorship bias,

• 1:08:11AJ Gentile?

  cherry picking facts to support a hypothesis while ignoring everything else. Take the Laura Buxton balloon. Release enough balloons over enough years, the odds are you'll eventually create an impossible story. The odds are extremely low, I'll admit, but they're not zero. Critics also say the CEO who visualizes his perfect day, that's not tapping into some universal field. That's just preparation and confidence. But the skeptics can't explain everything. The Global Consciousness Project is real. Random number generators do show patterns during major world events. September 11th, tsunamis, elections. Princeton's pear lab ran for 28 years. Millions of trials.

• 1:08:55AJ Gentile?

  Now, the effects were tiny, but they were real. Consciousness affected those machines. The observer effect is proven physics. When you observe a quantum system, you change it. Some physicists think consciousness might be fundamental to reality. Others think consciousness is reality. No, you can't manifest a yacht. But mind and matter are more connected than we thought. So you can put yourself on a path where you're making decisions that lead to that yacht. But you have to keep visualizing, just like Tesla visualized his inventions. It's all about seeing it and thinking about it and focusing on the problem and the solution. Have you ever gone to sleep with a problem in your mind and woke up with the answer? I have.

• 1:09:39AJ Gentile?

  In the early 19th century, scientists were baffled by benzene, a compound made of carbon and hydrogen that's extremely strong and stable. Chemists tried to replicate it, but they didn't know how to arrange the molecules. Freever Kekelé discovered the structure of benzene in his sleep. He had a dream of a snake eating its tail, a ring. That was the breakthrough. Benzene is so strong and so stable because it's built like a hexagonal ring. This discovery was a huge leap forward in chemistry. It changed and created entire industries. Dmitri Mendeleev saw the periodic table in a dream. Now, these aren't manifestations, but they're not random either. That's why every ancient culture has similar techniques.

• 1:10:24AJ Gentile?

  Prayer, meditation, it's all about visualizing the outcome. Now, the military spent millions on remote viewing, and it worked. Sometimes. But it worked enough that it was better than chance, better than nothing. So where does that leave us? Synchronicities happen more than statistics predict. Consciousness can influence physical systems in small ways. Princeton proved it. I tend to believe Carl Jung, that we're all part of a vast neural network. Each of us is one of billions of nodes of the same consciousness. Now, most of the time, we're out of sync. Events are chaotic, the signals are random. But sometimes the signals align. Someone thinks of you, you think of them, the phone rings.

• 1:11:09AJ Gentile?

  Now, I don't know if consciousness creates reality or reality creates consciousness. But I know it's listening. Now, I'm not here to convince you of that. I'm not asking you to believe in universal collective consciousness. I'm just asking you to be open to it. How? It's simple. Be positive, be kind, be confident, and be grateful. If you make these small adjustments and I'm wrong, your life will still be happier. But if I'm right, and these adjustments allow you to bend reality to your will and control your own destiny, you'll end up asking yourself one simple question: What took me so long?

• 1:11:59Speaker 04

  So I just hung up with Eric. He had a dream that my car was flooded with fish, of all things. So what's going on? Coincidences, synchronicities, reality just messing with your head? There's clearly something bigger connecting us all, like a quantum field, as if we're all eyes of the same big head. And if we are, how did consciousness get so weird in the first place? The answer might be mushrooms, friendly fungi. And what comes next wouldn't exist without a stoned, Birkenstock-wearing psychonaut from Berkeley, an ethnobotanist and jungle-trotting mystic who knew that the deepest frontier was never out there in the stars. It was in here, behind your own eyes. I'm, of course, talking about the great Terence McKenna.

• 1:12:44Speaker 04

  So this idea is called the stoned ape theory. Imagine a bunch of hungry proto-humans wandering the African savanna, flipping over cow pies looking for snacks, and instead, they discover the original forbidden fungus. Evolution's like, finally, so they eat the mushrooms, which, as Rogen likes to point out, happened to look like a dinner plate. Suddenly, colors are brighter, visual acuity goes up a notch. That lion in the grass? Now they see it. Their minds get a software update, and inside, something like language starts trying to happen. Grunts slowly turning into gossip, poetry, and eventually, podcasting.

• 1:13:24Speaker 04

  These little cow pie mushroom satellites were like USB drives from the biosphere. Exo-hormones that carried messages from nature. Now, some scientists have a real problem with this one, and whether McKenna was a genius or just really, really high, I'll let you decide. And for legal purposes, I have to say, don't try this at home. Or do, I'm not your shaman. The third episode starts now, "The Awakening of Human Consciousness: Forbidden Fungus."

• 1:13:57AJ Gentile?

  Something happened to the human brain 100,000 years ago. Something evolution can't explain. In just a few thousand generations, our brain nearly doubled in size. No other species has experienced anything like this. And we didn't just get bigger brains. We got enhanced abilities, increased intelligence, better eyesight, faster reflexes, and the most amazing ability of all: consciousness. And somehow, all of that happened fast. Too fast for scientific explanation. But, in the 1990s, an outsider offered an answer. His theory was simple, and immediately dismissed.

• 1:14:39AJ Gentile?

  It contradicted everything the scientific establishment believed about the emergence of human consciousness. He said the cause wasn't the discovery of fire, or language, or the use of tools. He said all of those abilities were the result. He said early humans transformed from primitive hominids to the most advanced life form on Earth because they added one simple thing to their diet: mushrooms. But not ordinary mushrooms. The mushrooms that awaken the human mind were magic.

• 1:15:21AJ Gentile?

  The outsider was Terrence McKenna, not your typical scientist. He started as an ethnobotanist studying plants in the Amazon. But a trip to La Torreira in 1971 changed everything. That's where McKenna tried psychedelic mushrooms. And what he experienced set him on a decades-long quest to understand consciousness. McKenna wasn't making wild guesses about mushrooms and evolution. He had data, hard evidence. In 1970, Harvard researcher Roland Fisher ran a series of experiments. He gave graduate students controlled doses of psilocybin. Then he tested their vision. Small doses improved visual acuity by 200%.

• 1:16:03AJ Gentile?

  Students could detect finer details, see contrasts better, track movement more accurately. Now, think about what this means for early humans. Better vision means better hunting. Better hunting means more food. More food meant bigger brains. But McKenna's theory went deeper. He proposed three levels of mushroom consumption. Low doses enhanced vision and made people more alert. Perfect for tracking prey across the savannah. Medium doses dissolved social boundaries that led to conflict. Groups became more cohesive. People shared more, bonded more. More bonding means more children.

• 1:16:41AJ Gentile?

  High doses of psychedelic mushrooms produced an entirely different and intense experience. The ego dissolved. New thought patterns emerged. Abstract thinking and understanding symbolism became innate, natural. Language became music, and music became language. And consciousness, whatever that is, expands. McKenna didn't think these were just side effects. He thought they were part of a bigger plan. And here's the thing about human brain evolution that bothered McKenna. Two million years ago, our ancestors had brains around 900 cubic centimeters. Within 100,000 years, that jumped to 1,600 cubic centimeters, nearly double.

• 1:17:26AJ Gentile?

  That kind of growth usually takes millions of years, not thousands. Fire helped. Tools helped. Eating meat helped. But the timeline didn't match. These developments came after brain expansion, not before. McKenna had one simple explanation.

• 1:17:44AJ Gentile?

  Our ancestors followed herds of game across Africa. Those herds left dung everywhere. And growing in that dung were psilocybe cubensis mushrooms. The same mushrooms Fisher studied at Harvard. Early humans were hungry. They ate everything they could find. They ate not just the animals they hunted, but the mushrooms left behind from the herd. The scientific establishment hated McKenna's theory. They called it the stoned ape hypothesis. The name was meant to mock it, but McKenna embraced it. He believed psilocybin didn't just change the mind, it helped form the human experience. Scientists thought McKenna was crazy, but 30 years later, they gave people psilocybin and scanned their brains.

• 1:18:29AJ Gentile?

  Terrence McKenna wasn't crazy at all. He was dead right.

• 1:18:40AJ Gentile?

  McKenna was right about one thing. Psilocybin changes the brain, but not the way anyone expected. When neuroscientists finally put volunteers in MRI machines and gave them psilocybin, they thought brain activity would explode. More neural firing, more energy, more chaos. Instead, they saw the opposite. The brain got quieter. Specifically, one part went almost silent. The default mode network. The default mode network is your brain's control center. It's the voice in your head. The thing that says "I" when you think about yourself. It creates your ego, the boundary between you and everything else, your sense of self. On psilocybin, that shuts down.

• 1:19:26AJ Gentile?

  Not partially, not temporarily. The entire network goes offline. And when it does, something extraordinary happens. Brain regions that never talked to each other suddenly connect. The visual cortex starts communicating with areas that process emotion. Memory centers link up with parts that control body awareness. It's like every neighborhood in a city suddenly building roads to every other neighborhood. Robin Carhart-Harris at Imperial College London discovered this in 2012. He called it neural anarchy. But it wasn't anarchy, it wasn't chaotic, it was reorganization. The connections formed during these psychedelic experiences don't just disappear when the

• 1:20:10AJ Gentile?

  drug wears off. Brain scans show new neural pathways remaining active for weeks, sometimes months. In some cases, the changes appear permanent. Johns Hopkins researchers found something even stranger. People who took psilocybin in controlled settings showed lasting personality changes. Not mood changes, personality changes. They became more open, more creative, more connected to others. This shouldn't be possible. Personality is supposed to be fixed by age 30, but psilocybin rewrote that rule. And here's what really puzzled scientists. Psilocin, what psilocybin becomes in your body, fits into human serotonin receptors perfectly.

• 1:20:54AJ Gentile?

  Not approximately, perfectly. Like a key designed for a specific lock. We share about 50% of our DNA with mushrooms. We split from a common ancestor over a billion years ago. Yet somehow, these fungi produce a compound that seems tailor-made for the human brain. Paul Stamets, the world's leading mushroom expert, thinks this isn't a coincidence. He believes humans and mushrooms have been evolving together, what he calls co-evolution. Brain scans prove psilocybin creates new neural connections. They prove it dissolves old patterns. They prove it fundamentally changes how we think. But ancient civilizations didn't need MRI machines to know this.

• 1:21:38AJ Gentile?

  They'd been using mushrooms for thousands of years. They saw them as technology, sacred technology, a way to communicate with other realms, a way to speak with our ancestors. They saw mushrooms as a way to speak to God.

• 1:21:59AJ Gentile?

  For 2,000 years, it was Greece's most sacred secret: the Eleusinian mysteries. Every September, thousands of Greeks made a pilgrimage to Eleusis. Peasants and emperors, philosophers and warriors, they all came for one thing: to drink the kaikion and see the truth. Plato went, Aristotle went, so did Sophocles. Cicero drank the kaikion, so did Commodus, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. They never wrote about what they saw, not specifically, but they all said the same thing. The experience changed them forever. It revealed the secret of death and showed them their place in the cosmos. For centuries, nobody knew what was in the kaikion, or kaikion. Then in 1978, researchers cracked the code.

• 1:22:44AJ Gentile?

  The drink contained ergot, a fungus that grows on grains, specifically rye. Ergot contains lysergic acidamide, another psychedelic, natural LSD. The Greeks weren't alone. The Aztecs had a word for mushrooms: teo nanoketl. It means flesh of the gods. They used psilocybe mexicana in religious ceremonies. Spanish conquistadors witnessed these rituals in the 1500s, and what they saw terrified them. Indigenous people eating mushrooms and speaking directly to their gods. No priests, no intermediaries, just direct divine contact. The Spanish destroyed every mushroom temple they found, burned every codex that mentioned them,

• 1:23:26AJ Gentile?

  made mushroom use punishable by death, but they couldn't destroy everything. The Mazatzic people of Oaxaca kept the mushroom ceremonies alive, hidden in mountain caves, passed down through generations of healers. For 400 years, they protected this knowledge. And this wasn't just the Americas. Vedic texts from ancient India describe soma, a divine plant that granted immortality and wisdom. Scholars debated what soma was for decades. Then R. Gordon Wasson made a connection. The descriptions matched amanita muscaria, the red and white mushrooms that are in all the fairy tales. Siberian shamans use the same mushroom. They fed it to reindeer, then drank the reindeer's urine.

• 1:24:10AJ Gentile?

  The reindeer's body filtered out the toxins, but kept the psychoactive compounds. Shamans could fly across the sky and visit other worlds, all powered by reindeer pee. Even the Bible might contain mushroom references. Moses met God at a burning bush. The bush was probably acacia. Acacia contains DMT. When burned and inhaled, DMT produces visions that last about 15 minutes. Exactly how long Moses spoke with God. The manna that fed the Israelites in the desert, it appeared overnight. It had to be collected before sunrise. It gave people visions. This is how mushrooms operate. John Marco Allegro was a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar. He proposed that early Christianity was a mushroom cult.

• 1:24:55AJ Gentile?

  That the Last Supper wasn't bread and wine, it was mushrooms. The body and blood of Christ were actually the cap and stem of Amanita muscaria. The Vatican destroyed Allegro's career for that theory. Every civilization throughout history knew the power of mushrooms. And every authority that rose to power tried to destroy that secret knowledge. They almost succeeded. But in 1957, Life magazine published an article that reached 6 million Americans. The headline read, "Seeking the Magic Mushroom." And now the secret was out.

• 1:25:37AJ Gentile?

  R. Gordon Wasson was a banker, vice president at JP Morgan. Not the kind of person you'd expect to resurrect ancient mushroom knowledge. But in 1955, Wasson and his wife Valentina traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico. They heard rumors about mushroom ceremonies, sacred rituals that survived the Spanish conquest. They found Maria Sabina. She was a Mazatzek healer, a corandera. For generations, her family had protected the mushrooms traditions. She rarely allowed outsiders into the ceremonies. But something about the Wassons made her break that rule. On June 29, 1955, Wasson became the first known white person to participate in a mushroom ceremony. Maria Sabina served the Maseca Mexicana on a leaf.

• 1:26:22AJ Gentile?

  She chanted in Mazatzek. The room was filled with incense. Then the visions began. Wasson saw geometric patterns, palaces made of light. He felt his soul leave his body. He understood for the first time what the word ecstasy actually meant. Not happiness, but standing outside yourself, seeing reality from a perspective that normal consciousness just doesn't allow. The experience lasted six hours, but it changed Wasson forever. Two years later, Life magazine published his account, Seeking the Magic Mushroom. It hit newsstands on May 13, 1957. Six million Americans read about mushrooms that could expand consciousness, show them

• 1:27:05AJ Gentile?

  God, reveal secrets about life, the universe, and their place in it. The psychedelic revolution had begun. Timothy Leary read that article. So did Richard Alpert. They started the Harvard Psilocybin Project in 1960. They gave mushrooms to graduate students, prisoners, divinity students. Everyone reported profound experiences, life-changing revelations. Then came the Good Friday Experiment. On April 20, 1962, 20 divinity students gathered in Boston University's Marsh Chapel. Half received psilocybin, half got placebos. The results were undeniable. Nine of 10 students who took psilocybin reported mystical experiences.

• 1:27:49AJ Gentile?

  They felt unity with all existence, direct contact with the divine. Time dissolved. The boundaries between self and universe disappeared. 25 years later, researchers tracked down those students. They still ranked that Good Friday as one of the most spiritually significant experiences of their lives. But the establishment panicked. By 1968, psilocybin was illegal. Research stopped. The mushroom renaissance seemed over. It wasn't. Underground therapists kept using psilocybin. They treated depression, addiction, PTSD. They just couldn't publish their results. Then in 2006, Johns Hopkins published the first legal psilocybin study in 40 years. The results shocked the medical establishment.

• 1:28:34AJ Gentile?

  A single dose of psilocybin created lasting positive personalities. People became more open, more creative, more connected. By 2018, the FDA designated psilocybin as a breakthrough therapy for depression. Studies showed 70% remission rates. Compare that to 30% for standard antidepressants, which come with all kinds of side effects. Terminal cancer patients lost their fear of death after one session. Addiction rates plummeted. PTSD symptoms vanished. The mushrooms that transformed consciousness 100,000 years ago were transforming it again.

• 1:29:19AJ Gentile?

  The stoned ape theory captivated millions of people. It offered a simple answer to humanity's biggest mystery: magic mushrooms made us human. But there's a problem, a big one. Evolution doesn't work that way. Here's what we know is true. Psilocybin mushrooms enhance vision. Roland Fisher proved that at Harvard. They increased social bonding. They dissolve ego boundaries. They create new neural pathways. Modern brain scans confirm all of this. We also know early humans encountered these mushrooms. Psilocybe cubensis grows in cattle dung all across Africa. Our ancestors followed those herds. They were hungry. They would have eaten these mushrooms. McKenna got all that right. But here's where the theory gets shaky.

• 1:30:04AJ Gentile?

  Any changes psilocybin caused in an individual's brain couldn't be passed to their children. That's Lamarckian evolution. It was disproven 100 years ago. If you take steroids and build huge muscles, your kids aren't born muscular. If you learn French, your children don't speak it automatically. And if mushrooms expand your consciousness, that expansion doesn't transfer to your offspring. Genetics doesn't work that way. It never has. There's another problem. McKenna claimed Fisher's research supported this evolutionary theory, but Fisher never said that. He studied perception, not evolution. McKenna took the data and ran with it in a direction Fisher never intended. And then there's the evidence that should exist but doesn't.

• 1:30:47AJ Gentile?

  If psychedelics drove human evolution, we'd see the most advanced cognition in cultures that used them extensively. The Aztecs used mushrooms for centuries. So did Amazonian tribes. The Mazatzic people never stopped using them. These cultures created art, mythology, and complex spiritual systems.

• 1:31:07AJ Gentile?

  They didn't develop advanced technology or scientific thinking faster than cultures without psychedelics. So McKenna was wrong. But he might have been wrong in an interesting way. Some researchers propose a different model. Not genetic evolution, but cultural evolution. Mushrooms didn't change our DNA. They changed our software, not our hardware. And think about it. Every culture that used psychedelics developed music, art, and religion. They created rituals and mythologies. They built complex social structures around shared experiences. Maybe that's what mushrooms gave us. Not bigger brains, bigger hearts, bigger ideas.

• 1:31:48AJ Gentile?

  The new stone date theory focuses on consciousness as an emergent property. Psychedelics didn't evolve the brain. They revealed what the brain could already do. Like finding a hidden feature in software you've used for years. This fits better with the evidence. It explains why mushrooms create long-lasting personality changes, why they increase creativity and openness, and why every culture that found them considered them sacred. Paul Stamets takes it further. He says we're still co-evolving with mushrooms, not genetically, but culturally. As we rediscover psychedelics, they're reshaping society again. Mental health treatment, creativity enhancement, spiritual exploration.

• 1:32:31AJ Gentile?

  The mushroom renaissance isn't just about medicine, it's about consciousness itself. McKenna asked the wrong question. It wasn't, "How did mushrooms create human consciousness?" The real question is, "What is consciousness? And why do mushrooms affect it so profoundly?" We don't know. After decades of research, consciousness remains the hard problem. We can map every neuron, scan every synapse, and still not understand how flesh becomes thought. But we know this: something in mushrooms speaks directly to something in us. After a billion years of separate evolution, that connection to consciousness remains. Consciousness, if you think about it, is lonely.

• 1:33:14AJ Gentile?

  We're the only species that knows it even exists, that knows it will end. Maybe that's why every culture that found mushrooms called them sacred. Not because they made us human, but because they made us feel... Less alone, connected to something else, connected to something bigger, connected to everyone. The stone ape theory may be wrong, but it made us think differently. It made us reevaluate consciousness and how it arises, how it emerges. It made us think about our connections to each other and about connections to a greater universe, a universe full of energy and thought and kindness and love. So, right or wrong, the stone ape theory is important.

• 1:33:57AJ Gentile?

  And believe it or not, it changed everything.

• 1:34:13Speaker 04

  OK, so far, we've edited the genome, talked to the universe, and possibly eaten our way into self-awareness, or at least a good time. But nature has other ways of forcing an upgrade. And this time, it's not coming from a magic mushroom, but a meltdown. So naturally, our next step is Chernobyl. This episode gets into radiation and the idea that mutation, catastrophe, and evolution might be more connected than we realized. And in the aftermath, life isn't just surviving, but adapting. It turns out, nature might be much weirder and tougher than we give it credit for. Of course, part of my brain hears "radiation-powered evolution" and wonders, "So if I get exposed to the right dose, will I get superpowers? Maybe unlock a little sigh, a little telekinesis?"

• 1:34:58Speaker 04

  But no, that's how you get a very different origin story. Biology isn't quite like the comic books, but it might be much cooler. So try not to get any ideas from this next episode. Nuclear-powered evolution? The wolves of Chernobyl reveal human potential.

• 1:35:17AJ Gentile?

  A few years ago, scientists discovered something impossible in Chernobyl. Animals were thriving in radiation levels that should have killed them.

• 1:35:28AJ Gentile?

  In the 50s, the United States tested 23 nuclear weapons at Bikini Atoll. The area is still radioactive, yet life flourishes there. Plants and animals grow faster than they should. After the Fukushima disaster, animals developed stronger antioxidant systems. They reproduced faster. This happened in just 15 years. How can plants and animals evolve so quickly? Well, they can't. They activated ancient genetic sequences designed to survive radiation. Genes that were always there, waiting. And in Earth's most radioactive places, those genes are waking up.

• 1:36:16AJ Gentile?

  March 1, 1954, Bikini Atoll. Operation Castle, Test Bravo. The military expected a 5-megaton blast. They got 15.

• 1:36:42AJ Gentile?

  This miscalculation created a blast 1,000 times stronger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

• 1:36:48Speaker 03

  Uh-oh. Someone forgot to carry the one.

• 1:36:51AJ Gentile?

  The fireball reached 20 million degrees Fahrenheit in under a second. That's 2,000 times hotter than the sun's surface and twice the temperature of the sun's core. The mushroom cloud stretched 25 miles high. The blast carved a crater in the seafloor over a mile wide and 300 feet deep. Deep enough for a 30-story building.

• 1:37:11Speaker 03

  Why the hell are you humans still messing with nukes?

• 1:37:14AJ Gentile?

  I honestly don't know.

• 1:37:15Speaker 03

  Nah, it's a good thing the aliens will protect ya.

• 1:37:18AJ Gentile?

  Will they?

• 1:37:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, protector and slave. We'll find out soon enough.

• 1:37:24AJ Gentile?

  The explosion vaporized three small islands. The lagoon became a radioactive soup. Wind patterns spread fallout across thousands of miles. Locals suffered radiation sickness and evacuated. Over four years, there were another 22 nuclear tests. Scientists believed nothing could survive this. They were wrong. Researchers found nearly 100 species of fish and coral thriving in radioactive water. What?

• 1:37:51Speaker 03

  This is how Godzilla was born.

• 1:37:53AJ Gentile?

  Yeah, I don't think-

• 1:37:54Speaker 03

  From the depths, dirty stories high, breathes fire, his head in the sky.

• 1:38:00AJ Gentile?

  Okay-

• 1:38:01Speaker 03

  Godzilla, Godzilla.

• 1:38:03AJ Gentile?

  Please stop.

• 1:38:03Speaker 03

  Godzilla.

• 1:38:05AJ Gentile?

  I'm begging ya.

• 1:38:08Speaker 03

  In Gatsuki.

• 1:38:14AJ Gentile?

  The crater left by the nuclear bomb was covered in coral, vast colonies of it. Then, the researchers found the crabs.

• 1:38:22Speaker 03

  Oh, they make a shampoo for that.

• 1:38:24AJ Gentile?

  No, no, no, no, coconut crabs on the beach.

• 1:38:26Speaker 03

  Ah, that makes more sense.

• 1:38:28AJ Gentile?

  These crabs eat radioactive coconuts. The water, soil, and trees containcesium-137, a radioactive isotope that destroys DNA and causes cancer. Tests showed lethal radiation levels in the crabs, but they're fine.

• 1:38:43Speaker 03

  Oh, maybe this explains the crab kit.

• 1:38:46AJ Gentile?

  Yeah, let's stay focused. This pattern repeats at every nuclear disaster site. Different animals, same response. For some reason, nature knows how to handle radiation. But when did life develop these defenses, and why? Well, years later, Chernobyl provided a clue. Deep in Ukraine's radioactive exclusion zone, something strange was happening to the wolves.

• 1:39:20AJ Gentile?

  En 1986, un test de sécurité à la centrale de puissance nucléaire de Chernobyl a échoué. L'explosion a produit 400 fois plus de radiation que Hiroshima.

• 1:39:31AJ Gentile?

  Le militaire soviétique a donné 100 000 résidents des heures pour évacuer. Ils ont établi une zone d'exclusion de 1 000 mètres carrés autour du réacteur. La terre a été déclarée morte. La nature n'a pas accepté. En 2014, Dr. Carol Love a étudié les wolves dans le CEZ. Leur血液 revealed changements génétiques qui défiaient l'évolution. En juste 15 générations, les wolves ont activé des mécanismes de réparation de l'ADN spécifique. Chaque génération a de plus en plus de résistance à la radiation. Les wolves sont exposés à 6 fois plus de limite de sécurité légale de radiation tous les jours de leur vie. Des chercheurs ont identifié que la genèse de wolves semblait résiliente à un risque de cancer accru. Mais les wolves ne sont pas les seuls animaux qui changent.

• 1:40:14AJ Gentile?

  Quand Chernobyl a été évacuée, les gens n'étaient pas autorisés à apporter leurs chiens. Des milliers de chèvres et de chiens ont été laissés derrière. La plupart de ces animaux ont mourir à cause de l'exposition à la radiation, mais pas tous. Des études documentaient plus de 800 descendants des chiens abandonnés originaires vivant dans la zone d'exclusion.

• 1:40:31Speaker 03

  Euh, qu'est-ce qui s'est passé aux chèvres ?

• 1:40:33AJ Gentile?

  Pas beaucoup de recherche quand on étudie les chèvres.

• 1:40:35Speaker 03

  Eh, parce que personne ne s'en soucie.

• 1:40:37AJ Gentile?

  Arrêtez. Des échantillons d'ADN des chèvres de Chernobyl montrent que leur genèse est si unique qu'ils peuvent être classifiés comme une nouvelle espèce. D'autres animaux s'adaptent différemment. Les fros de hiver estancé sont normalement vert lumineux. Dans le Chernobyl, ils sont noirs. La plus grande mélanie sur leur peau les protège de la radiation. Les aires de la zone développent des ailes plus noires pour survivre. En 2013, une étude a révélé qu'ils ne créaient pas de nouvelles capacités. Ils ont réveillé des vieux. Et puis il y a le fungus.

• 1:41:08Speaker 03

  Ah, comment faire de la crème pour ça ?

• 1:41:10AJ Gentile?

  Non, pas cette sorte.

• 1:41:11Speaker 03

  Hey, hey, hey. Qu'est-ce que les champignons ont dit à la fille qu'il essayait de prendre à la barre ?

• 1:41:16AJ Gentile?

  Pourrez-vous me faire passer par ?

• 1:41:17Speaker 03

  Oh, bien. Allez-y et tu t'assassines, gars.

• 1:41:29AJ Gentile?

  Black fungi in Chernobyl don't just resist radiation, they eat it. They grow toward the reactor core, converting gamma radiation to chemical energy, like plants convert sunlight. NASA tested these fungi on the International Space Station. They processed cosmic radiation in zero gravity. Similar species appeared at other radiation sites. At Fukushima, fungi activated their radiation processing abilities within hours of exposure. When radiation levels dropped, they returned to normal. Johns Hopkins discovered these fungi adapt to different radiation types, from gamma rays to beta particles. Their genes contain instructions for processing all kinds of radiation. These same genes appear in 50-million-year-old fungi fossils.

• 1:42:14AJ Gentile?

  So why did ancient life forms develop protection against radiation? Dr. Lynn Rothschild is an astrobiologist at NASA. She says Earth's atmosphere, millions of years ago, provided less insulation from cosmic radiation. For life to survive, it would have developed methods to protect itself, and then passed them down through DNA. Now this makes sense. But there's a hiccup. Cosmic radiation is mostly protons. The fungi had defenses against neutrons, beta particles, and gamma rays. These don't come from space. These come from uranium nuclear reactors.

• 1:42:48Speaker 03

  Hang on, hang on, hang on.

• 1:42:49AJ Gentile?

  What?

• 1:42:50Speaker 03

  Humans didn't have nuclear reactors 50 million years ago.

• 1:42:53AJ Gentile?

  That's true, they didn't.

• 1:42:54Speaker 03

  So what are you talking about? They found a nuclear reactor from millions of years ago?

• 1:42:58AJ Gentile?

  No.

• 1:42:59Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:43:00AJ Gentile?

  They found 17 of them.

• 1:43:10AJ Gentile?

  There was a time in Earth's history when radiation was much, much higher.

• 1:43:16AJ Gentile?

  In Gabon, West Africa, scientists discovered evidence of at least 17 natural nuclear reactors that operated 2 billion years ago. The Aklo reactors, as they're called, sustained nuclear fission for hundreds of thousands of years. And these reactors weren't small. Each site produced around 100 kilowatts of power. Groundwater moderated the reactions, creating natural... On-off cycles, just like modern nuclear reactors.

• 1:43:41Speaker 03

  Who built the reactors?

• 1:43:43AJ Gentile?

  Well.

• 1:43:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, Narnaki. Link to a Narnaki episode down in the old juicy jug.

• 1:43:48AJ Gentile?

  No, they're ju-

• 1:43:49Speaker 03

  It's from the nuclear war between Atlantis and Lemuria. Link to Atlantis episode stuffed in your booty box.

• 1:43:55AJ Gentile?

  No.

• 1:43:55Speaker 03

  Oh, the nuclear war with Mars. Link to Mars episode down in your pucker pot.

• 1:44:00AJ Gentile?

  Scientists are pretty sure they're natural nuclear reactors.

• 1:44:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, but not 100% sure.

• 1:44:06AJ Gentile?

  Well, science can never be 100% sure about anything.

• 1:44:12AJ Gentile?

  Okla wasn't unique. Similar isotope patterns in Colorado's uranium deposits suggest ancient fission reactions. Uranium mines in Australia show nuclear activity from billions of years ago. The Gunflint Chert contains Earth's oldest fossils, 1.9 billion-year-old microorganisms with radiation adaptations matching modern bacteria. Life maintained these defenses even as Earth's radiation levels decreased, like a biological memory. These mechanisms remained intact through billions of years of evolution. This is how evolution and genetics work. You know this. You also know that genes and traits that are no longer useful are eventually removed from the gene pool.

• 1:44:54AJ Gentile?

  But if that's true, why are these genes still here? And why are they in human DNA? Radiation response mechanisms match genetic markers found in ancient human settlements. Our ancestors faced this before. They also developed radiation resistance. How do we know? Because their children are still here.

• 1:45:26AJ Gentile?

  In Ram Sahr, Iran, people live with radiation levels 10 times higher than safety limits, yet they have normal cancer rates and normal lifespans. What we found was that people who lived in the high-back ground areas had significantly fewer induced chromosomal abnormalities than their neighbors who lived maybe just a few kilometers. It sounds totally improbable, but it appears that radiation may actually help the body resist genetic damage. Studies reveal Ramser residents have enhanced DNA repair abilities. Their cells fix radiation damage faster than it accumulates.

• 1:46:04Speaker 03

  It's like a whole village of toxic avengers.

• 1:46:07AJ Gentile?

  Really?

• 1:46:08Speaker 03

  What? It's a compliment. Things are gonna change in this town. I'm not just another pretty face.

• 1:46:19AJ Gentile?

  Similar populations exist in other parts of the world. Guarapari in Brazil is famous for its beauty, biodiversity, and unique radioactive black sand. The Brazilian Nuclear Energy Commission documented enhanced DNA repair in locals going back generations. These populations also have something else in common. Their settlements date back thousands of years. Archaeological evidence shows continuous human habitation near natural radiation sources. Gobekli Tepe, one of humanity's oldest sites, is built near uranium deposits. Similar deposits lie beneath Mesopotamia's oldest cities. These radiation levels should have driven humans away. Instead, our ancestors stayed and became resistant.

• 1:47:01AJ Gentile?

  They passed that resistance to their children, who also passed it on. These protections are not just in the genes of people living near radioactive sites. They're in all of us. And they could be the catalyst for humanity's next great leap.

• 1:47:34AJ Gentile?

  Space agencies in every country are trying to unlock human potential. This potential might be achieved in space. Enhanced DNA repair, conscious control over our metabolism, natural radiation shielding. Within a century, we might activate these dormant abilities at will. In a thousand years, as humans colonize space, different environments will drive unique adaptations. Colonists on Mars, Titan, and Europa will evolve differently. Each population will adapt to their local radiation signature and environment.

• 1:48:14AJ Gentile?

  In 10,000 years, space-dwelling humans might process radiation like food.

• 1:48:21AJ Gentile?

  Their skin could generate protective fields. Their DNA might repair itself instantly. While this is purely speculation, we know these abilities exist in Chernobyl's fungi. That's why NASA is so interested in this.

• 1:48:38AJ Gentile?

  Further into the future, we might develop new senses.

• 1:48:42AJ Gentile?

  The ability to detect different types of radiation and heat. Enhanced vision that would allow us to see ultraviolet or infrared. Some animals on Earth already have these abilities.

• 1:49:11AJ Gentile?

  Even further into the future, humans might develop senses that utilize quantum biology.

• 1:49:16Speaker 03

  Oh, quantum biology. Did you just make that up?

• 1:49:20AJ Gentile?

  Nope.

• 1:49:23AJ Gentile?

  European robins navigate perfectly in darkness across thousands of miles. Moths detect mates miles away. Plants convert sunlight with near-perfect efficiency. For decades, scientists couldn't explain these abilities. Now, they think they know. These animals are tapping into the quantum realm. The robin's eye contains a protein called cryptochrome. When struck by light, it creates quantum entangled electrons that react to the Earth's magnetic field.

• 1:49:52Speaker 07

  I think, having studied quantum mechanics myself years and years ago, I would never have realized then, or even believed, I think, that it would be possible that quantum mechanical effects... could be actually housed within the eye of a bird. That is a huge surprise. And it's nothing we learned in quantum mechanics when I was young.

• 1:50:12AJ Gentile?

  One theory says that dogs' sense of smell uses quantum tunneling. They detect quantum vibrations of molecules that they perceive as scents. Even plants tap into the quantum realm. When sunlight hits a leaf, it always chooses the most efficient route. The energy uses quantum superposition to explore all possible pathways at once.

• 1:50:36AJ Gentile?

  This is exactly how quantum computers work.

• 1:50:38Speaker 03

  Quantum apocalypse link down in your sugar basket.

• 1:50:40AJ Gentile?

  In a million years, humans in space might develop similar abilities. And the framework for this might already be in place.

• 1:50:49AJ Gentile?

  I'm claiming that we need new physics to understand consciousness. Now, when I mean new physics here, I mean something outside the physics we know. But it's not simply invented for the purpose of explaining consciousness. It's something which I think we need anyway. Physicist Roger Penrose and Stuart Hemeroff believe consciousness comes from quantum processes in brain cells. Microtubules in the cells create quantum states that become conscious thought.

• 1:51:20Speaker 04

  I realize these microtubules are there. And they look like just the kind of thing that could well be supporting the kind of level of quantum mechanics up to a level where you could expect the the quantum state to sort of collapse. That's the terminology people use in quantum mechanics.

• 1:51:37Speaker 06

  And microtubules, they are inside brain neurons?

• 1:51:40Speaker 04

  They are indeed.

• 1:51:41AJ Gentile?

  You know how waves collapse into particles when they're observed?

• 1:51:44Speaker 03

  If you don't, the human explains it in a simulation theory episode. Link down in your luscious love locker.

• 1:51:53AJ Gentile?

  Think of your consciousness as waves of possibility.

• 1:51:58AJ Gentile?

  These waves exist in multiple states at once. When these quantum states collapse, you experience a moment of awareness. Whenever the state reduces, whenever the wave function collapses, that's what this is doing. It's associated with a moment of what we call proto-consciousness. For 30 years, scientists dismissed it as fringe thinking. But now the evidence is getting harder to ignore. Evidence is emerging that microtubules may exhibit interesting quantum behaviors after all.

• 1:52:30Speaker 00

  states in microtubules that if you have a coherent gravitational collapse of these, orchestrated collapse of these, somehow consciousness arises. Where now there is a concrete evidence that quantum physics has exactly the properties that describe consciousness in free will.

• 1:52:48AJ Gentile?

  If consciousness uses quantum mechanics, your thoughts transcend ordinary physics. Your consciousness could be part of a quantum reality that connects you and me and everyone across space and time. This sounds like speculation, but every mechanism I described today exists in nature. Every adaptation has appeared in some form of life. The quantum reality that creates your consciousness is the same quantum reality that governs everything in the universe. And everything in the universe, you, me, our planet, our sun, all come from the same source.

• 1:53:25Speaker 05

  The very matter that makes us up was generated long ago and far away in red giant stars.

• 1:53:36Speaker 05

  A blade of grass, as Walt Whitman said, is the journey work of the stars.

• 1:53:43AJ Gentile?

  Carl Sagan said we're made of star stuff. The evidence suggests he was right in ways he never imagined. Those ancient stars didn't just create the atoms that make up our bodies, they might have encoded the blueprint for consciousness itself.

• 1:53:59AJ Gentile?

  I like this theory because it means we're all connected. Our time on Earth is short, but maybe that's the point. We're here to experience physical life and take those experiences back to our source, where we share them and learn from them. Maybe our real lives aren't here. Maybe our real lives are out there, among the stars.

• 1:54:20AJ Gentile?

  Out there, the stars are showing us we're part of a shared consciousness, temporarily wearing human form. Out there, the stars are preparing us for an awakening that will reshape our reality. Out there, the stars are calling us home.

• 1:54:35Speaker 05

  Our ancestors worshipped the sun and they were far from foolish. It makes good sense to revere the sun and the stars. Because we are their children.

• 1:54:56Speaker 04

  Well, I guess this means no laser eyes for me. It's probably for the best. After radioactive wolves and radiation-eating fungi, it might sound like we're at the end of the rabbit hole, but we're not. That last one ended with invisible signals and a shared quantum reality reaching into your mind, connecting all of us. But what if sometimes the thing reaching in isn't the cosmos? Actually, hang on, I'm pretty thirsty. So maybe before we start the episode, maybe grab a drink and some snacks. Popcorn sounds good, too. And I don't even like popcorn. Weird. Anyway, this next episode gets into subliminal messages you don't notice, hidden frequencies you barely hear, advertising, propaganda, and the comforting possibility

• 1:55:41Speaker 04

  that someone can beam cravings or ideas into your head that you think are your own. Is it you, the voice of God, or just microwave radiation? So if halfway through this episode you catch yourself craving something you don't even like, welcome to the club. Wait, do you guys hear that high-pitched noise like someone just turned on a TV in your head? Or is that just the episode starting? I'll go find out. So without further ado, here's the episode that will make you want to throw your phone in the ocean: Subliminal Warfare, Mind Control, and Invisible Influence.

• 1:56:19AJ Gentile?

  Saddam Hussein met with his generals in Basra on January 27, 1991. He was pacing back and forth, and he was furious. Six months earlier, Iraq had invaded Kuwait, and the world responded with a relentless shock and awe campaign.

• 1:56:37AJ Gentile?

  The coalition's 2,000 daily air attacks had crippled Iraq's defenses and destroyed its air force. Hussein's plan to draw coalition troops into a costly ground war had backfired. Instead, Iraqi soldiers were surrendering by the thousands. These were battle-tested troops in one of the world's largest armies, laying down weapons without firing a single shot. It was maddening. An officer handed Hussein a report about a radio transmitter in Kafji, Saudi Arabia. He dismissed it as Western propaganda, but his officer asked him to keep reading.

• 1:57:14AJ Gentile?

  There was an intelligence document attached. It said the FM transmitter in Kafji was broadcasting subliminal messages that were making Iraqi troops surrender, using mind control. Hussein ordered the tower destroyed within three days. His officers pushed back. The town was lightly guarded for now, but taking it would be a suicide mission without air support. They didn't even know if this mind control weapon was real. It could be another American lie. Hussein stopped pacing. "Three days," he said. His tone left no room for discussion. Major General Salah Mahmoud saluted, took a deep breath, and reached for the phone.

• 1:58:05AJ Gentile?

  Marine Corporal Jesse Colvin was at Observation Post 4, scanning the dark horizon. OP-4 was on top of the police station in Kafji, a small town in Saudi Arabia. Colvin wasn't expecting to see much. The coalition had air supremacy. If Saddam Hussein did so much as toss a paper plane from a window, there'd be F-15s on top of it before it reached the ground. Still, Iraq had plenty of ground forces in the field, and the Saudis asked the US for support. It was about 200 hours...

• 1:58:35Speaker 03

  8:00 PM.

• 1:58:36AJ Gentile?

  Yes, thank you.

• 1:58:37Speaker 03

  No problem.

• 1:58:38AJ Gentile?

  It was about 8 o'clock, and it was a quiet night. Colvin only heard the wind coming off the Gulf and the occasional crackle of the radio. Then Colvin heard a rumble that, at first, he thought was thunder. He aimed his night vision binoculars north. Tanks. And troops. He couldn't believe it. It took him a second to process, and then he grabbed his radio.

• 1:59:05AJ Gentile?

  Multiple vehicles approaching from the north, over. Colvin didn't get a response. We're deep. Contact, contact. Enemy armor approaching from the north, over. Still, no response. The radios worked earlier, so Colvin assumed the radios were being jammed. He grabbed his M16 and headed downstairs. His unit wasn't prepared for an attack of this size. Ninety minutes later, air support arrived, but it was too late.

• 1:59:35AJ Gentile?

  The Iraqi army took the city. Whether they could hold it or not didn't really matter. They accomplished their mission. They brought down the FM radio transmitter.

• 1:59:46AJ Gentile?

  The Marines at Kafchid thought this attack was crazy, and they weren't prepared for such a large offensive. Of course, they had no idea what they were guarding. Iraqi intelligence was right. The United States had deployed a subliminal weapon.

• 2:00:05AJ Gentile?

  Can humans be controlled subliminally? The answer, of course, is a big yes. And you won't be surprised to know that advertisers were the first to jump on this new technology.

• 2:00:16AJ Gentile?

  For your convenience, we have an attractive refreshment stand in the lobby. With buttered popcorn, golden good and hot from the popper, your favorite candies, wholesome and rich with a flavor treat for every taste, ice cream and other good things to eat. For six weeks in 1957, families in New Jersey went to the movies, had a fun night out, and went home. Totally normal. They had no idea they were exposed to what was later called a startling kind of invisible advertising.

• 2:00:47AJ Gentile?

  A mechanism had been attached to the film projector. It flashed messages on the screen every five seconds. Each message only appeared for one three-thousandth of a second, too fast to be seen by the human eye, but that was the point. The goal was to have these messages bypass the conscious brain and register directly in the subconscious. Fourteen hundred times over the course of two hours, the audience saw, well, their subconscious mind saw, calls to action like "Eat More Popcorn." Over forty-five thousand movie patrons were exposed without their consent or knowledge, and popcorn sales jumped fifty-eight percent. Ad agencies went into overdrive,

• 2:01:30AJ Gentile?

  and new companies were launched in the subliminal space. Radio stations WAF in Chicago and WCCO in Minneapolis tested subliminal ads to see if they increased sales. They did.

• 2:01:43Speaker 03

  Raise.

• 2:01:45AJ Gentile?

  American television networks implemented the technology into their broadcasts. It worked.

• 2:01:50Speaker 03

  Raise.

• 2:01:51AJ Gentile?

  What are you doing?

• 2:01:52Speaker 03

  What? Me? Nothing.

• 2:01:54AJ Gentile?

  Whispering raise is not going to make me give you a raise.

• 2:01:56Speaker 03

  I don't know what you're talking about.

• 2:02:01AJ Gentile?

  But when the public learned that they were being manipulated without their knowledge or consent, there was a huge backlash. The Hollywood Reporter called it "an obscene violation." The LA Times and Washington Post flat-out called it "brainwashing." Within a year, theaters, radio, and television broadcasters banned subliminal advertising. Now, of course, banning flashing images wouldn't stop consumers from being unconsciously manipulated. No one realized it was already happening, and it was very successful.

• 2:02:29Speaker 03

  Raise.

• 2:02:31AJ Gentile?

  You stepped on my cliffhanger even after I told you to stop?

• 2:02:34Speaker 03

  Well, I'm busting my hump in this bowl, and I think I deserve a little more scratch.

• 2:02:38AJ Gentile?

  Well, if you want a raise, then maybe you earn it. You don't just jump in and ruin the best part of the scene.

• 2:02:47AJ Gentile?

  In the late 19th century, Sigmund Freud popularized the idea we are motivated by our unconscious. Unconscious motivation is used in product marketing all the time, because it works. Marketing expert Ernest Dichter used a Freudian technique, word association, to test consumers. He wanted to know not what they bought, but why. He learned that moms bought candy for their kids as a reward for good behavior in the grocery store, so he had stores move candy right next to the cash registers. They're still there today. Sanka was a decaffeinated coffee brand that attacked regular coffee in its ads, but consumers loved coffee and felt Sanka was insulting coffee drinkers.

• 2:03:29AJ Gentile?

  So, instead of attacking regular coffee, Sanka changed its slogan to "Now you can drink all the coffee you want." And you can drink it as strong as you like. Drink five, 10 cups. As many as you like, at any time you like, that's for sure. Sales went through the roof. Bill Friedman was a gambling addict who used his experience to shape how most casinos are laid out. Now, once you're in, you can't see any exits, you can't see any clocks, you can't see outside at all. These tactics disrupt our sense of time. There is constant noise, even if the floor is mostly empty. This is designed to keep you in a heightened state so you don't get tired. Most casinos offer players free alcohol.

• 2:04:14AJ Gentile?

  This reduces inhibitions. And after all those free drinks, you need to use the restroom. But you have to weave your way through slot machines to get there.

• 2:04:21Speaker 03

  Ah, that's why I keep my own restroom right here.

• 2:04:27Speaker 03

  What?

• 2:04:28AJ Gentile?

  Why aren't you moving?

• 2:04:29Speaker 03

  Hmm?

• 2:04:31AJ Gentile?

  You're going right now, aren't you?

• 2:04:32Speaker 03

  Hmm, what? No, mind your business.

• 2:04:36AJ Gentile?

  Gross.

• 2:04:37Speaker 03

  What, I wash my things.

• 2:04:42AJ Gentile?

  In a casino, there's no direct route to anywhere, especially an exit. Now, a lot of this is common knowledge. It's slippery, but not dishonest. Like changing a slogan or laying out a casino, it's out in the open. Edward Bernays was a pioneer in public relations and propaganda. He used tactics that were not out in the open. He manipulated public opinion in ways that were entirely unconscious. It makes sense Bernays was good at talking to the subconscious. He was Sigmund Freud's nephew. Whether it's to sell more paper cups that we work with, or to make people more honest or more virtuous, depends on public consent.

• 2:05:25AJ Gentile?

  And so we worked out the engineering of consent. His first campaign was in 1929. He influenced the entire nation without their knowledge. He was so good, he influenced you. And you never knew it.

• 2:05:48AJ Gentile?

  New York City, April 1st, 1929. It was noon on 5th Avenue, and the Easter Parade was packed. One of the best attended in history. The event signaled the beginning of a new, modern era. The cars were new, fashion was cutting-edge, and cameras filmed the parade for the first time. A group of young women used this as an opportunity to put on an outrageous display. Something unthinkable, something women have never done in public.

• 2:06:15Speaker 03

  Yo, baby, we're getting spicy. Bow chicka bow bow.

• 2:06:21AJ Gentile?

  The women strolled along the parade, smoking cigarettes.

• 2:06:24Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, they smoked after the outrageous display, huh? Uh, what did they do? Was there leather involved? Oh, please tell me there was leather.

• 2:06:33AJ Gentile?

  Uh, no, smoking was the outrageous display.

• 2:06:36Speaker 03

  Oh, well, that's disappointing.

• 2:06:39AJ Gentile?

  And what is it with you and leather?

• 2:06:41Speaker 03

  Don't kink, Shane.

• 2:06:42AJ Gentile?

  Okay, never mind.

• 2:06:44Speaker 03

  Bow chicka bow bow.

• 2:06:48AJ Gentile?

  In 1929, women smoking in public was unacceptable. It just wasn't done. But these ladies didn't care about tradition. They wanted the freedom and equality to smoke in public, just like men, so they did. Suddenly, cigarettes were called "torches of freedom", and the demand for cigarettes among women exploded. Women saw cigarettes as symbols of independence and freedom.

• 2:07:11AJ Gentile?

  They had no idea the whole thing was staged. Those weren't rebellious women fighting for equality. They were actresses hired to play a part. Edward Bernays orchestrated the whole scene for his client, the American Tobacco Company.

• 2:07:26AJ Gentile?

  Bernays was so good at manipulating consumers, he's affecting you to this day. Up until the 1920s, Americans ate a light breakfast. Toast, juice, coffee, that was it. This was especially true for what they called "brain workers", folks who sat in offices all day. Then, in August 1922, an article appeared in the New York Times.

• 2:07:54Speaker 06

  No work, no self-denial. An interesting sample is offered in the Medical Review of Reviews. It queried doctors in forty-six states. Three out of four physicians advised eating a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs.

• 2:08:12AJ Gentile?

  Articles like this were all over the country. Doctors suggesting bacon and eggs for breakfast? This was a new and decadent idea. People loved it. Only, there was no science behind the claims. No study.

• 2:08:27AJ Gentile?

  The whole thing was propaganda coordinated by Edward Bernays. The beech nut packing company wanted to increase bacon sales. So Bernays surveyed five thousand doctors and asked them if a heavy breakfast was better than a light breakfast. He published the results, making sure bacon and eggs were mentioned every time doctors described the ideal breakfast. Doctors that didn't think bacon was a good idea? Well, they got no ink. Bacon sales exploded. And American culture changed forever. To this day, seventy percent of all bacon is eaten for breakfast.

• 2:09:00Speaker 03

  Though it can be enjoyed at any time of day, for any occasion.

• 2:09:04AJ Gentile?

  I can't deny that.

• 2:09:05Speaker 03

  Mmm, bacon. Nature's candy.

• 2:09:09AJ Gentile?

  Bernays proved he could influence the behavior of an entire country. His success landed him a new client. A big one. They asked Bernays to do the impossible: overthrow a foreign government. So Bernays would change history again. But this time, he'd do it for the CIA.

• 2:09:32AJ Gentile?

  Paco Arbenz was elected as Guatemala's president in 1951, and it brought hope and optimism to the nation. His platform of social reform and economic development resonated with the people, but not with the United Fruit Company.

• 2:09:50AJ Gentile?

  United Fruit was an American corporation, Guatemala's largest employer and landowner. Its banana plantations generated twice the revenue of the entire country. They wielded immense power. This is where the term "banana republic" comes from. In 1952, Arbenz's government passed a bill requiring the transfer of unused land from large landowners to poor farmers, with compensation by the government. The United Fruit Company refused. The normal solution would be to lobby the Arbenz government and reach a compromise. But United Fruit wasn't looking to compromise. They wanted to win. So they hired Edward Bernays, who went right to work.

• 2:10:34AJ Gentile?

  Bernays flooded American media with articles portraying Arbenz as a dangerous communist. It was a lie. In his inaugural address, Arbenz promised to convert Guatemala from a backward country with a feudal economy into a modern capitalist state. But the lie worked. This was the Cold War. A communist threat was just 1,300 miles from US soil. The American people demanded action, and the CIA was more than happy to oblige.

• 2:11:03AJ Gentile?

  The CIA launched Operation PB Success in 1954. They funded and trained a rebel paramilitary force. On June 18th, the Liberation Army seized control of the government, forcing Arbenz into exile. Carlos Castillo Armaz was installed as a US-backed military dictator, the first of many.

• 2:11:37AJ Gentile?

  Turmoil in Central America. First there was Nicaragua, then El Salvador, now comes Guatemala. For 40 years, Guatemala suffered brutality, terror, death squads, and political instability. The human rights violations during this time are so graphic, I can't tell you what they are. And whatever you're guessing, it's worse.

• 2:11:59AJ Gentile?

  93% of these crimes were committed by CIA-trained operatives. 200,000 dead, another 200,000 fled, 1 million people lost their homes. But the United Fruit Company's profits were safe, thanks to America's master of propaganda.

• 2:12:17Speaker 06

  An interesting little insight into this covert action. One, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Henry Cabot Lodge, had personal stock holdings in United Fruit Company. The Assistant Secretary of State, John Lodge, had personal stock holdings in United Fruit Company. The Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, his law firm did legal work for, I believe it's the Schlossli Bank, which held the papers on the Guatemalan Railroad, which was owned by the United Fruit Company. And the CIA Director, Allen Dulles, was his brother, also was a member of the same law firm, with this indirect financial interest in United Fruit Company.

• 2:13:02Speaker 06

  Our Ben was not a communist, and there was not a single communist in his cabinet.

• 2:13:09AJ Gentile?

  Bernays proved you could subconsciously control a person's opinion. But the US military intelligence apparatus wanted more. They wanted to subconsciously control a person's actions. The subliminal was about to become weaponized.

• 2:13:31AJ Gentile?

  Psychological operations, or PSYOPS, are a standard part of US military operations. The Army Field Manual even calls them "vital." The term "PSYOPS" sounds mysterious, but the tactics are usually nothing more than distributing leaflets or broadcasting propaganda over the radio. The goal is to influence enemy behavior using information instead of bullets and bombs. In the thick of the Vietnam War, with American casualties mounting, leaflets weren't gonna cut it. But the Army had a powerful new tool that could directly target enemy troops: the Squawk Box.

• 2:14:09AJ Gentile?

  The Squawk Box was a sonic weapon that used specially-designed speakers mounted on armored vehicles and helicopters. The human ear can suffer damage from sound over 85 decibels. The Squawk Box could deliver a devastating shriek at 120 decibels from 2.5 miles away. Vietcong soldiers were instantly incapacitated by the intense sound. They suffered pain, nausea, and often permanent hearing loss.

• 2:14:39AJ Gentile?

  But the Squawk Box could do more than inflict physical harm. The Army discovered that sound waves could manipulate emotions,

• 2:14:48AJ Gentile?

  inducing distress and confusion in the enemy. The results were staggering. Between 1967 and 1968, an estimated 30,000 Vietcong surrendered to US forces. Despite its success, the Squawk Box had a critical flaw. The enemy could hear it coming, literally.

• 2:15:09AJ Gentile?

  The Army wanted a more deadly and discreet weapon, something the enemy couldn't see or hear. Sound waves couldn't do it, but electromagnetic waves, they absolutely could.

• 2:15:26AJ Gentile?

  In 1961, microwave technology was becoming part of daily life. Microwave ovens had just hit the market, and low levels of microwaves were used in lots of different devices. Biophysicist Alan Frey began studying microwave effects on humans to make sure there were no health risks. He placed subjects in a shielded room and exposed them to different microwave frequencies. At 1310 megahertz, something strange happened. A subject asked about a clicking sound, but the room was silent. It was shielded from the outside, and there were no moving parts involved in this experiment. Frey discovered that frequencies between 200 and 3,000 megahertz caused people to hear sounds that seemed to come from inside their heads.

• 2:16:12AJ Gentile?

  Clicks, knocks, buzzes, and chirps. He could beam sounds directly into the brain without implants. Scientists started using this to train animals, making cats change direction with just microwave pulses.

• 2:16:25Speaker 03

  Oh, I'd like to make cats change direction right into oncoming traffic.

• 2:16:30AJ Gentile?

  Stop that.

• 2:16:31Speaker 03

  Well, you better tell your demon fur babies to keep their filthy mitts out of my bowl.

• 2:16:36AJ Gentile?

  Okay, settle down.

• 2:16:40AJ Gentile?

  The CIA wondered, could this technology affect an animal's heart rate? More specifically, could they induce a heart attack remotely? Frey experimented with frog hearts and pulse-modulated radiation. He was actually disturbed to find he could increase a frog's heart rate with no device attached. He did it remotely. Soviet scientists had similar results with rabbits. By 1972, the Soviets moved to human trials. A declassified report revealed they had done over 500 studies on how microwaves affect human behavior. Both lethal and non-lethal effects were found. The mention of lethal effects was a horrifying new detail.

• 2:17:22AJ Gentile?

  They didn't mean to kill their subjects, but they discovered they could. And those that survived exposure could be remotely controlled. The US Army loved it. They immediately ramped up research on microwave radiation. They ordered trucks capable of carrying microwave broadcasting equipment. The goal was to irradiate and immobilize the enemy. In 1976, the Navy finally discovered how Soviet scientists were accidentally killing people. They were using microwaves powerful enough to generate heat. Soviet scientists called it "microthermal effects." If you own a microwave oven, you call this microthermal effect "cooking."

• 2:18:03Speaker 03

  Do Russians cook people?

• 2:18:05AJ Gentile?

  Yup.

• 2:18:05Speaker 03

  Ah, I bet you taste like chicken.

• 2:18:07AJ Gentile?

  That's gross.

• 2:18:09Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Eating human is gross, but eating fish is okay?

• 2:18:14AJ Gentile?

  Hmm.

• 2:18:14Speaker 03

  Ah, see what happens when your shoe's on the other thing?

• 2:18:18AJ Gentile?

  Fair enough.

• 2:18:20AJ Gentile?

  J.F. Shapitz was a trusted black ops scientist who worked for the Department of Defense. He tried broadcasting commands into a subject's mind. It worked. Using low-power microwaves, he could make subjects hear words inside their own heads. The military told Shapitz to go further. They wanted to send commands to a person's subconscious without them hearing the command. In a second round of experiments, one subject was bombarded with microwave radiation. Then something odd happened. He got up from his chair and left. He actually left the lab. Now, this was allowed. The subjects weren't prisoners, but this had never happened before. A little while later, the guy returned with a can of soda.

• 2:19:03AJ Gentile?

  Shapitz asked him why he left in the middle of the experiment. The man said he was thirsty, so he went to the store for a cold drink. Shapitz smiled. The experiment worked. This subject had been programmed to feel thirsty and to go to the store for a soda. It was hypnosis using microwaves. But hypnosis doesn't work on everyone. The military needed a sure thing. And four years later, that's exactly what they got.

• 2:19:37AJ Gentile?

  In 1980, Dr. Eldon Bird, working for the DOD, was exploring frequencies much shorter than microwaves. He wanted to weaponize human brainwaves. Brainwaves, also known as neural oscillations, are patterns of electrical activity in the brain. These waves have different frequencies that correspond to different mental states: beta waves for active problem-solving, alpha waves for relaxation, and so on. Dr. Bird tried synchronizing external electromagnetic waves with brainwaves. He believed he could influence specific thoughts and emotions by matching the frequency and ramping up the power.

• 2:20:18AJ Gentile?

  It worked. He discovered he could sync with an animal's brainwaves and trigger the release of behavior-regulating chemicals.

• 2:20:27Speaker 02

  We could put animals into a stupor. We got chick brains to dump 80% of the natural opioids in their brains. We got rats to release histamine.

• 2:20:39AJ Gentile?

  Histamine is released in response to allergens: dust, pollen, mites. Histamine also causes a cascade of inflammatory reactions. Byrd was thrilled.

• 2:20:51Speaker 02

  In humans, this would cause instant flu-like symptoms and produce nausea. You would disable a person temporarily. It would have been like a stun gun.

• 2:21:01AJ Gentile?

  Byrd used the phrase "would have been" because his project was shut down after two years, despite being approved for four. He was on to something groundbreaking. He suspected the program wasn't shut down. He believed it was moved to black ops, and he was right. In 1982, a US Air Force report contained an ominous warning.

• 2:21:23Speaker 02

  Understanding the brain as an electrically-mediated organ suggests that impressed electromagnetic fields are capable of directing behavior. Further, the passage of 100 milliampers through the myocardium can lead to cardiac standstill and death.

• 2:21:42AJ Gentile?

  The US Air Force was secretly continuing Byrd's brainwave research. They hired Dr. Ross Ady to weaponize it.

• 2:21:51AJ Gentile?

  Ady began by implanting transmitters into animal brains. These devices didn't receive information. The implants sent out information. Ady compiled a library of frequencies and their corresponding mental and physical states. Then he turned the animals' brainwaves against them. By broadcasting certain frequencies back into their brains, he could manipulate their behavior and their emotions at will. Eventually, he refined the technique to work without implants. It was time to test the technology on the human brain.

• 2:22:26AJ Gentile?

  He placed the subject's head in an active electromagnetic field and tuned it to a specific frequency depending on the result he wanted. In one experiment, he turned the machine to induce theta waves. Our brains produce theta waves as we're falling asleep. The subject of the experiment fell asleep. The technology for a revolutionary new weapon was born. Now, it was time to build it.

• 2:22:57AJ Gentile?

  A device that can manipulate a person's thoughts and emotions sounds like science fiction. At best, it sounds like pseudoscience. But not only does such a device exist, but it's been patented, although the full schematics are classified by the US government.

• 2:23:13AJ Gentile?

  Patent #5159703, issued to Silent Sounds Incorporated, describes something called "A Silent Subliminal Presentation System." The device maps electrical brain activity corresponding to specific emotions. These emotional signal clusters are identified and logged to create a database of emotions. Human brainwaves are then cloned and enhanced. You select a desired emotion—fear, despair, hopelessness— and the system can transmit it.

• 2:23:44AJ Gentile?

  The emotional triggers are carried by the Silent Sound Spread Spectrum, or S-Quad, a subliminal carrier technology that operates at either very low or very high frequencies. The key is that it's inaudible. And what makes this system more practical and more dangerous is that S-Quad can be transmitted using a carrier frequency like ordinary radio or television.

• 2:24:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, what you talking about, Willis?

• 2:24:09AJ Gentile?

  Okay, let's say you want someone to feel sad. You grab the brainwave frequency for sadness from your database. Then you layer that inaudible sound wave on top of an audible sound wave, like an FM radio wave. So the target hears the radio broadcast, but doesn't realize a second wave hitched a ride. That second wave syncs with the target's brain, triggering sadness—or whatever emotion you want. According to the patent, the resulting emotion is overwhelming. Now, the patent insists that this is not a weapon, but it does note the waves are subliminal and undetectable. That makes them dangerous.

• 2:24:46AJ Gentile?

  Silent Sounds Inc. claims to focus solely on positive emotions. But in 1996, the president of Silent Sounds couldn't stop himself from bragging about the device's true purpose.

• 2:24:59Speaker 02

  While the schematics are classified by the US government, we are allowed to say we work with governments around the world. The Germans, even former Soviet Union countries.

• 2:25:09AJ Gentile?

  And then he let the big one slip.

• 2:25:14Speaker 02

  The system was used throughout Operation Desert Storm quite successfully.

• 2:25:22AJ Gentile?

  The US military had achieved subliminal mind control and deployed the technology in Iraq. And many Iraqi troops died trying to stop it.

• 2:25:36AJ Gentile?

  In 1991, Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait with a huge army, nearly 500,000 soldiers.

• 2:25:45AJ Gentile?

  It was the fifth-largest military in the world. And they were battle-tested from eight years of war with Iran.

• 2:25:54AJ Gentile?

  So it sounded like wishful thinking when the Bush administration said they wanted Iraqi troops to simply lay down their arms and go home. Huh? Why would they do that? Because the US military had a new secret weapon.

• 2:26:08AJ Gentile?

  A radio station in the small town of Kafji. If you tuned into the station, you'd hear music or news, like any radio station. But embedded in the radio transmission was a signal that mimics a brainwave frequency. Specifically, the frequency that creates the feeling of hopelessness. And it worked. Entire battalions laid down their arms. Iraqi tanks flew white flags. They simply lost the will to fight. American troops rolled into Kuwait, heavily armed and ready for battle. Iraqi troops were waiting patiently, thousands of them. One Marine said they were surrendering so fast they could hardly keep up. The war seemed to be coming to an end. That's why it was a surprise to the Marines in Kafji when around 8:00 PM on January 29th,

• 2:26:52AJ Gentile?

  Iraq's 5th Mechanized Division attacked and took the town.

• 2:26:58AJ Gentile?

  This was a much-needed propaganda victory for Iraq. But it didn't last.

• 2:27:06AJ Gentile?

  By a long shot, I expect a lot more fighting will probably occur tonight. Two days later, American air power overwhelmed Kafji, and the 5th Mechanized Division was completely wiped out. But, they destroyed the transmitter that was subliminally making Iraqi troops surrender, so they accomplished their mission. Or did they? US government officials deny any of this ever happened, and are adamant that such a system does not exist. Former Navy Weapons Research Director Charles Bernard was asked about it.

• 2:27:37Speaker 06

  I have yet to see one of these ray gun things that actually works. And DARPA has come to us every few years to see if there are ways to incapacitate the central nervous system remotely, but nothing has ever come of it. That's too science fiction and far-fetched.

• 2:27:56AJ Gentile?

  Okay, so it's just a conspiracy theory. The CIA did not use FM radio to transmit subliminal messages. That's the official position. But here's something strange. A ceasefire agreement was reached that allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power. This brought a lot of criticism of the Bush administration. But the purpose of the war was to free Kuwait, not overthrow the Iraqi government. Our goal is not the conquest of Iraq. It is the liberation of Kuwait. It is my hope that somehow the Iraqi people can, even now, convince their dictator that he must lay down his arms. But on March 1st, 1991, one day after the ceasefire,

• 2:28:39AJ Gentile?

  a revolt against Saddam Hussein's government broke out in Basra. The rebellion spread to every major city in southern Iraq. Up to 100,000 Iraqis were killed. A no-fly zone was established. So what caused this sudden rebellion? A radio broadcast called "The Voice of Free Iraq" encouraged the revolt. That radio station was in a small town in Saudi Arabia, and operated by the CIA. Most say this is just a coincidence, that no subliminal weapons exist. Maybe. But there are others who believe that not only does this subliminal technology exist, it was deployed in Iraq for a specific purpose. It was a test run for something bigger.

• 2:29:24AJ Gentile?

  The following year, a facility was built in Fairbanks, Alaska. The project was run by DARPA and had a huge budget. The Department of Defense built a high-powered transmitter that could send electromagnetic pulses into the ionosphere and anywhere in the world. It's called HARP. But that's a different episode.

• 2:29:48Speaker 04

  I don't know about you guys, but I'm a little scared to turn on the radio now. I might comb through my playlists later, too. There are a few songs in there I don't remember adding. Honestly, I should probably keep this ship in airplane mode for a while. And I wasn't gonna say anything, AJ. But hosting this whole thing solo, I swear I keep hearing Hecklefish humming along to "The Journey" in my head. I walked the whole set and he's not here. But somehow, it feels like he is. Which is the perfect setup for the final episode on morphic resonance, the forbidden idea that nature has muscle memory. Every time a rat learns a maze, or a person masters a skill, or a fish learns to co-host, that memory doesn't just sit in one's skull.

• 2:30:33Speaker 04

  It might just get logged into some invisible memory field. And then anything similar, anywhere, can tune in and pick up that signal faster. It's like the information might already be out there, floating around, waiting for a receiver. I wonder if that's why AJ's déjà vu is acting up. I hope it's not contagious. Get well soon, buddy. And anyways, to our last and weirdest episode today, in homage to my friend and former American alchemist Rupert Sheldrake, the forbidden theory of morphic resonance.

• 2:31:07AJ Gentile?

  In 1920, a Harvard scientist put rats in a maze with two exits. One path was well-lit but electrified. The other was dark, but safe. The rat tried the bright exit. It got shocked. It tried again. It got shocked. Again, and again. It took 165 painful tries, but it finally learned to take the dark path. Fifteen years later, and 30 generations later, the rats needed just 20 tries. They were getting smarter.

• 2:31:39AJ Gentile?

  The solution was passed genetically. That's not supposed to happen. A scientist in Scotland tried the same experiment with a completely different set of rats. His rats started at 25 tries, as if they already knew the answer to the puzzle. Knowledge had crossed the ocean, and no one could explain how.

• 2:32:13AJ Gentile?

  Lamarckism, or Lamarckian inheritance, is the idea that an organism can pass on skills it acquired during its lifetime, like a rat learning to avoid electric shocks, or a human learning how to throw a football. The theory is named for zoologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck, who proposed it in 1809, and the theory is supposed to be wrong. Standard biology says that knowledge can't be inherited, only traits can: eye color, intelligence, allergies, but not knowledge, not information. Harvard psychologist William McDougal tested this theory in 1920. The setup was simple: rats and a water maze. He used whistler rats, common in labs because they're genetically identical, perfect for

• 2:32:58AJ Gentile?

  this experiment. The maze had two ways out. One was brightly lit and easy to find. The other exit was dark. The bright exit delivered an electric shock, the dark exit was safe. And McDougal added a twist: the bright exit moved. Sometimes it was to the left, sometimes to the right, so the rats couldn't memorize a direction. They had to learn one rule: avoid the light.

• 2:33:23Speaker 03

  Cross over, children. Go into the light. There is peace and serenity in the light.

• 2:33:31AJ Gentile?

  Rats should naturally avoid the dark and swim toward the way out that they can see. Any animal would. You would. That's exactly what happened. McDougal's rats swam toward the bright exit, got shocked, swam back, and tried again, and got shocked again, sometimes over 300 times. On average, the first generation took 165 tries before they learned dark equals safe, light equals pain.

• 2:34:03AJ Gentile?

  Then McDougal bred the rats and tested their offspring. But he selected parents at random. He wasn't cherry picking for intelligence. He just grabbed any two rats and put their offspring in the maze to see how they behaved. According to standard biology, the new generation should start from scratch. They should average 165 tries. That's not what happened. Generation two did better. 141 tries on average. Generation three, 118. By generation eight, rats were averaging 56 tries. That's when McDougal noticed something strange. The improvement wasn't slowing down, it was accelerating.

• 2:34:45AJ Gentile?

  Eight more generations, the average dropped down to 41. Eight more, down to 29. By generation 30, rats were solving the maze with just 20 tries. What took their ancestors 165 attempts, they mastered in 20. They were eight times faster at learning the same task. McDougal tried to break the pattern. He split his colony and started breeding specifically for slow learners. Taking the worst performers from each generation and mating them together. These rats should have stayed slow or gotten worse. But they got faster too. Same rate of improvement as the randomly bred line.

• 2:35:26AJ Gentile?

  The slowest learners were producing offspring that learned faster than their parents, generation after generation. McDougal published his results carefully. No wild claims, no revolutionary declarations, just the data. 30 generations, thousands of rats, every trial documented. He mentioned in his private notes that it looked like Lamarck might have been right. Skills could be inherited. But genetics don't work that way. Except here it was, happening in his lab. The rats were inheriting something. Not genes, not training. They were inheriting the ability to solve a puzzle their parents had learned through pain and repetition.

• 2:36:11AJ Gentile?

  Whatever was happening, it wasn't genetics. Because not only were skills being transmitted across generations, they were being transmitted across the entire species, all over the world.

• 2:36:34AJ Gentile?

  F A E Crew was a geneticist at Edinburgh, a pioneer in animal genetics. He thought McDougal was sloppy, so in 1923, he set up his own experiment to prove it.

• 2:36:47AJ Gentile?

  He set up the same water maze, same whister rats, just different genes. But he also added a control group, something McDougal didn't do. He had a trained line of rats and an untrained line.

• 2:36:59Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, we got a nerd showdown. In one corner, wearing a tweed jacket and horn-rimmed glasses, is the shrink William McDougal, AKA the social psycho, AKA Freud rage. And in the other corner, also wearing a tweed jacket and horn-rimmed glasses, is the geneticist F A E Crew, AKA the phenotype Foo, AKA Jeans Wilder. Welcome to the fray in the DNA. Let's get ready to rumble.

• 2:37:27AJ Gentile?

  Crew expected his trained rats to master the maze in about 20 tries, and they did. But the untrained rats should have averaged 165 tries. They averaged 25. 30 generations, that's what it took McDougal's rats to crack the maze. These rats had no genetic connection to any of those, and they just needed 25 tries on day one. W E Agar, a scientist at the University of Melbourne, ran a similar study for 20 years. Same result. Trained and untrained, related and unrelated, different labs, different countries, it didn't matter. The knowledge was spreading through the entire species. But it wasn't just rats.

• 2:38:12AJ Gentile?

  For years, milk was left on people's doorsteps, glass bottles with foil caps, and I can't believe I'm old enough to remember this, but I am. In 1920, in Southampton, England, the blue-tit birds learned something useful about milk.

• 2:38:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, hang on, you hang on, you hang on.

• 2:38:28AJ Gentile?

  Oh crap.

• 2:38:29Speaker 03

  Did you just say blue-tit birds?

• 2:38:31AJ Gentile?

  Yes. Sometimes they're called blue caps, but technically they're...

• 2:38:35Speaker 03

  Blue, blue, blue.

• 2:38:36AJ Gentile?

  Right, can you please stop saying...

• 2:38:39Speaker 03

  But, hey, hey, hey, we're gonna be talking about blue tits and milk for a while.

• 2:38:44AJ Gentile?

  We are.

• 2:38:46Speaker 03

  Oh baby, it's Christmas morning and Santa's been good to daddy.

• 2:38:53AJ Gentile?

  Here's what the birds.

• 2:38:54Speaker 03

  Blue tits.

• 2:38:55AJ Gentile?

  Here's what they learned about milk. Pierce the foil cap, drink the cream. This behavior spread all over Britain. By the 1940s, they were all doing it. Every.

• 2:39:07Speaker 03

  Go ahead.

• 2:39:08AJ Gentile?

  Every blue tit was doing it.

• 2:39:10Speaker 03

  Ah!

• 2:39:14Speaker 03

  Hey, hey, have you heard stories about blueba-zumbas, turquoise tatas?

• 2:39:20AJ Gentile?

  No.

• 2:39:21Speaker 03

  Ah, cobalt cans, periwinkle peaks, midnight melons.

• 2:39:25AJ Gentile?

  No.

• 2:39:25Speaker 03

  Ah, denim dundlings, sapphires, cinnamon bags.

• 2:39:28AJ Gentile?

  That's enough.

• 2:39:34Speaker 03

  I can't breathe, I can't, I can't hear me, hear me.

• 2:39:39AJ Gentile?

  You could argue that the birds were watching each other and learning this trick. But then came World War II. All aluminum was needed for aircraft, so no more foil caps. They used wood or cheaper, harder metal. Blue tits couldn't get through. They only live a couple of years, so by the time the war was over, every bird that had ever pierced a cap was dead. The entire generation that knew the trick, they were gone. But when the foil caps came back, blue tits were piercing them again. Birds that had never seen the trick across all of Britain, all at the same time. This wasn't genetics, memory, or observation. This was a skill somehow encoded into the species itself.

• 2:40:25AJ Gentile?

  But this can happen to nonliving things too, specifically crystals. When chemists synthesize a new compound, getting it to crystallize for the first time can take months or years. Different temperatures, different solvents, different pressures. The molecules just won't organize, they won't form a pattern, until one day, they do. And then something strange happens. A compound that resisted crystallization for decades suddenly crystallizes everywhere, on Earth.

• 2:40:56AJ Gentile?

  Glycerol was a liquid for centuries. No one could crystallize it. Then in 1867, a barrel crystallized during shipment to Vienna. After that, glycerol crystallized easily everywhere. Xylitol, same story. Decades of failure, then one success, then success everywhere. Rats, birds, crystals. They were passing behaviors to each other all over the world. Something had to be carrying this information, something we couldn't see, something we didn't understand.

• 2:41:30AJ Gentile?

  But in 1981, a young scientist from Cambridge found a pattern. Not only could species pass information anywhere around the world, they could pass information anywhere through time.

• 2:42:00AJ Gentile?

  In 1973, Rupert Sheldrake sat in his Cambridge lab staring at a bean plant. It was doing something that shouldn't be possible according to everything he knew about biochemistry.

• 2:42:10Speaker 03

  Ah, hang on, hang on. The guy was called Rupert Sheldrake?

• 2:42:14AJ Gentile?

  Yes, why?

• 2:42:15Speaker 03

  That's the kind of name that's gonna cost you a fortune in lunch money.

• 2:42:19AJ Gentile?

  Yeah, I don't think there was a lot of bullying going on at Cambridge.

• 2:42:22Speaker 03

  Ah, wake up, human. Wedgies are universal. I bet even Stephen Hawking had to eat his own tidy whities from time to time. And he sat on those things all day.

• 2:42:32AJ Gentile?

  Anyway, bean plants are like vines. They can't stand on their own. They need a structure to grow around. A wall, a fence, a tree. He was growing plants using pots and small wooden poles for support. Same method every time. The plant sprouts, grows toward the pole, and starts climbing. But this particular bean plant was doing something very strange. It was growing toward a pole that wasn't there yet. It was growing to where the pole would be in the future.

• 2:43:06AJ Gentile?

  Now Sheldon Drake was a serious scientist. Cambridge Fellowship, Harvard, PhD in biochemistry, Director of Studies at age 31. His research on plant hormones is still in textbooks today. But this bean plant was bothering him. Plants don't have eyes, they don't have nervous systems. The support pole wouldn't be installed for another two days, yet the bean was already changing its growth pattern, already preparing to climb something that didn't exist yet. He'd seen this before, thousands of times. Every biologist had, they just didn't talk about it. DNA doesn't actually contain the blueprint for what an organism becomes. An acorn has the same DNA in every cell,

• 2:43:51AJ Gentile?

  but those cells grow into roots, or leaves, branches. They organize themselves into a tree, and nobody can really explain how they know to do that. Think of DNA like Lego bricks. A Star Wars set and a castle set use exactly the same pieces. The only difference is the final shape. A fruit fly, a banana, even a human being, share most of the same DNA, but they develop into completely different organisms. The final shape isn't in the DNA. Something else is guiding the process. One night, walking home along the River Cam, Sheldon Drake had a moment of clarity. Maybe nature has a memory. When any system organizes itself,

• 2:44:35AJ Gentile?

  a crystal forming, a plant growing, an animal learning, it creates what Sheldon Drake would call a morphic field, a memory in nature. A similar system can resonate with that field and access that memory. Meaning, a bird learning to pierce the foil, crystals learning to form. And the more that memory is accessed, the stronger it gets. And it influences everything that comes after, across space and time. No physical connection required. Because that memory is now part of nature, all of nature, everywhere, forever. In 1974, Sheldon Drake moved to India to work at an agricultural institute. That was his day job.

• 2:45:19AJ Gentile?

  He spent his nights at a monastery. And for 18 months, between prayers and meditation, he wrote a book proposing that the universe has memory. He called it "A New Science of Life." He published it in 1981. The most important science journal in the world responded by calling for his book to be burned. The theory of morphic resonance cost Sheldrake his career. And a few years later, it almost cost him his life.

• 2:46:00AJ Gentile?

  September 1981. John Maddox, editor of Nature, then the most prestigious science journal in the world, wrote an editorial about Sheldrake's book. He called it "The best candidate for burning there's been for many years." Nature publishes Nobel laureates: Einstein, Watson and Crick, Darwin. Calling for book burning was unprecedented in modern history of the journal. Maddox compared the book to Hitler's Mein Kampf and its potential for damage. He wasn't calling Sheldrake wrong, he was calling him dangerous. Maddox even said, "Sheldrake's not a real scientific theorist. It's not even a theory. It's an exercise in pseudoscience."

• 2:46:44Speaker 07

  You see, Sheldrake's is not a scientific theory. Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science. And that can be condemned, but in exactly the language that the popes used to condemn Galileo. And for the same reasons, it is heresy.

• 2:47:05AJ Gentile?

  Professors curious about morphic resonance went silent. Graduate students were warned away. Research funding dried up. But the more the establishment attacked Sheldrake, the more people read his work. The book-burning editorial made Sheldrake's book a bestseller. He became the most talked-about biologist in Britain overnight. Not for science, but for the attempt to suppress it. But the worst attack on Sheldon Drake wasn't intellectual. April 2nd, 2008, he was giving a lecture in Santa Fe. A man in the audience rushed the stage with a knife. He stabbed Sheldon Drake in the leg, then security tackled him. The attacker told police and a reporter afterward that Sheldon Drake was using him

• 2:47:48AJ Gentile?

  as a subject in telepathic mind-control experiments for five years. The wound was serious, but Sheldon Drake recovered, and days later, still using a walker, he gave a talk titled "Science and Hope." In March 2013, Sheldon Drake gave a TEDx talk called "The Science Delusion." He challenged what he called "The Ten Dogmas of Modern Science." That nature is mechanical, that matter is unconscious, and that mind is nothing but brain activity, that kind of stuff. Well, TED removed the talk from their YouTube channel. Bloggers campaigned against it. TED consulted what they called "a science board," but they never told us who was on it. The talk was about scientific dogmatism.

• 2:48:32AJ Gentile?

  The response was "dogmatic censorship." But the attempts to silence Sheldon Drake kept backfiring. The banned TED Talk got millions of views on other channels. The stabbing made international news. Every attack made more people ask, "What are they so afraid of?" Then, a British TV broadcaster had an idea. They would test morphic resonance on the largest scale ever attempted. So now, there were 2 million people about to test this theory on live TV.

• 2:49:17AJ Gentile?

  In 1984, British television ran an experiment. They showed viewers a puzzle, one of those hidden pictures where you stare at random dots until an image appears. About 2 million people watched. Then, researchers tested people who hadn't seen the broadcast. Some were in different cities, some were in different countries. They solved that specific puzzle faster than a ...control group tested before the broadcast. And not a little faster, much faster. Those 2 million people who watched the show gave nature a new memory, a solution to that puzzle. Sheldon Drake said this could apply to crossword puzzles. He said crosswords should get easier to solve as the day goes on.

• 2:50:01AJ Gentile?

  As more and more people solve the puzzle, they're creating and reinforcing a morphic memory. That new memory makes the puzzle easier for everyone trying the puzzle for the first time.

• 2:50:12Speaker 03

  Oh, maybe that's why I'm so naturally great with women, eh?

• 2:50:15AJ Gentile?

  I don't even know what-

• 2:50:16Speaker 03

  Moriarty men historically put up numbers that would make a Wilt Chamberlain jealous.

• 2:50:21AJ Gentile?

  Okay, gross, thanks, thanks. Great interjection. Some newspapers tested the puzzle theory. The London Evening Standard found their puzzles were solved 20% faster in the evening after thousands of people spent the day solving them. Then there's the Flynn Effect. Since the 1920s, IQ scores have risen worldwide by about 3 points per decade. Every generation scores higher than the last on the exact same tests. Experts credit better nutrition, better education, better test-taking skills, but the gains show up even in pattern recognition tests that don't rely on education at all.

• 2:51:03AJ Gentile?

  Morphic Resonance says as more humans master cognitive tasks, those tasks become easier for everyone. Sheldon Drake's most famous research involves dogs. He documented over 200 cases of dogs that go to the door or window when their owners decide to come home. Not when they come home, when they decide to. Owners came home at random times, in unfamiliar vehicles. The dogs still knew. One dog, a terrier named JT, was tested over 100 times. Within 10 seconds of his owner leaving work, JT went to the window 85% of the time. The owner was 4 miles away. Then there's the sense of being stared at.

• 2:51:48AJ Gentile?

  Sheldrake ran 25,000 trials. Subjects guessed whether someone was looking at them from behind. They guessed right 55% of the time. Should be 50%. Now, 5% might not seem like much, but with that huge sample size, it's significant. We've all had that feeling where we know someone's looking at us. The book "Lifetide," released in 1979, is about monkeys on Gushima Island. One learned to wash sweet potatoes in the ocean. Other monkeys gobbled her. Once 100 monkeys learned the trick, monkeys on other islands started washing potatoes, too. Just like McDougal's rats, knowledge had jumped across the ocean.

• 2:52:46AJ Gentile?

  We've got rats and monkeys teaching each other on different islands, dogs and plants that can predict the future, people solving puzzles faster as the day goes on.

• 2:52:54Speaker 03

  Ah, just like blue tits and milk.

• 2:52:56AJ Gentile?

  Okay.

• 2:52:57Speaker 03

  Hey, hey, didn't Luke Skywalker drink that stuff in The Last Jedi?

• 2:53:01AJ Gentile?

  I don't know what you're talking about. I never heard of that movie.

• 2:53:03Speaker 03

  Fair enough.

• 2:53:05AJ Gentile?

  I love the concept of morphic resonance, but is it true? Well, let's start with the bad news. That famous monkey story, that's completely made up. L. Watson took real observations from primatologists and added a little fiction for fun. The crystal formations have a conventional explanation, too. When scientists first synthesize a new compound, it resists crystallization. After one lab succeeds, others find it easier. Sheldrake says it's morphic fields. Chemists say it's seed crystals. Microscopic traces on clothing, in beards, on shared equipment that's shipped between labs. And once the crystals exist anywhere, they exist everywhere. No mysterious fields required.

• 2:53:51AJ Gentile?

  That one is a stretch for me, but that's the official scientific view. Now, the crossword puzzles and TV experiments are interesting, but the effects are small, and the methods are contested, so they can go either way. It's not the smoking gun that Shel Drake needs. But then there are the rats. McDougal's data is real. Crew replicated it. Agar replicated it on a separate continent. Rats got smarter across generations with no physical contact. Now, critics explain it like this. "Early generations of rats were stressed by inexperienced researchers who didn't handle them properly. So as the researchers got better at handling them, the rats did better on the test."

• 2:54:34AJ Gentile?

  Now, I think the skeptics lose that one, especially when we consider something discovered decades after McDougal died: epigenetics. This shows acquired traits can chemically tag DNA and pass information to offspring. So the effect might be real. The cause, we still don't know. "The dogs anticipating their owners coming home is Shel Drake's strongest published work." Critics have found methodological problems, but defenders have replicated the results. That one is still being debated, and every dog owner has thoughts. Now, here's the core problem that skeptics use. Morphic resonance requires information transfer with no energy cost. And that violates the law of conservation of energy.

• 2:55:19AJ Gentile?

  Physics has rules. But not all physics. Not quantum physics. Two particles, separated by any distance, a room, a galaxy, it doesn't matter, they respond to each other instantly. This was confirmed in the 1980s. That's an instant transfer of information that ignores the law of conservation of energy and ignores the speed of light. And nobody knows how this works. In the 1930s, Carl Jung proposed a collective unconscious, a shared reservoir of human experience running beneath individual awareness. Physicist David Bohm said, “All points in space are fundamentally connected.”

• 2:56:02AJ Gentile?

  Erwin Schr öninger, one of the architects of quantum mechanics and famous for the cat, argued that individual consciousness is just an illusion, that there’s only one mind. Max Planck, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein? All arrived at the same place from completely different directions. Some through mathematics, some through watching rats learn mazes, some through quantum theory itself. All of them looked at the universe and landed on the same word: connected. Maybe the laws of nature are fixed, written into the fabric of reality before the first star formed. Or maybe the universe creates memories that strengthen through repetition, always evolving. We can’t prove it either way.

• 2:56:47AJ Gentile?

  But there is one scientific fact that nobody can deny. A long time ago, every atom in your body was connected to every other atom in every other person on Earth. Every atom in your body was connected to every atom in every animal, every plant, every rock, and every planet in the universe. And if the smallest things in existence stay connected to each other across any distance, then acting like the people around you are separate from you isn’t just unkind, it’s unscientific.

• 2:57:32Speaker 04

  And that is a wrap, my friends. Six amazing Y-File episodes, and I stopped being sure which thoughts in here are mine. Big thanks to AJ and the Y-Files, who I’ve been watching for years now, and their entire amazing crew for inviting me into their beautiful, strange little universe. If you want more from AJ and the Y-Files team, check out the links below. And if you want to support this kind of weird, deep-dive content, consider joining their Patreon. And if you want to check out American Alchemy, I met Jesse Michaels on YouTube and Spotify. I'm Jesse, beaming in from Austin. Thank you so much for riding along with me today. Stay curious, stay weird, and if reality starts winking at you, wink back.

• 2:58:27Speaker 04

  I played for Libya in Area 51. A secret code inside the Bible said I was.

• 2:58:37Speaker 04

  I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music. Songs singing like I should. But then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth, my friends. And it never ends. No, it never ends.

• 2:59:05Speaker 04

  I fear the crackhead and got stuck inside Mel's home with MKUltra. I'm being only too aware. Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone? On a film set, were the shadow people there? The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man, I'm told. And his name was Cole. And I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ. And the whippersnappers beat all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth.

• 2:59:49Speaker 04

  So the whippersnappers beat all through the night.

• 3:00:11Speaker 07

  The Mothman sightings and the solar storms still come To have got the secret city underground. Mysterious number stations, planets circle to Project Stargate And what the Dark Watchers found. When a simulation comes to worry zone, The Black Knight said a lot of tone. Miss so, I can't believe I'm dancing with a fish. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2 And one more time for me all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth

• 3:00:55Speaker 07

  So one more time for me all through the night. Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2 And one more time for me all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So one more time for me all through the night.

• 3:01:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, Gertie loves to dance on the dance floor Because she is a camel And camels love to dance When the feeling is right on wasting time.

• 3:02:04Speaker 07

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