103: CIA Declassified: What Backwards Secrets are you hiding in your Reverse Speech?
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Hey, it's your buddy AJ from the Y-Files. And Hecklefish. Right, and Hecklefish. We just wanted to tell you that if you want to start a podcast, Spotify makes it easy. It'd have to be easy for humans to understand it. Will you stop that? I'm just saying. Spotify for Podcasters lets you record and edit podcasts from your computer. I don't have a computer. Do you have a phone? Of course I have a phone. I'm not a savage. Well, with Spotify, you can record podcasts from your phone, too.

Spotify makes it easy to distribute your podcast to every platform and you can even earn money. I do need money. What do you need money for? You kidding? I'm getting killed on guppy support payments. These 3X wives are expensive. You don't want to support your kids? What are you, my wife's lawyer now? Never mind. And I don't know if you noticed, but all Y-Files episodes are video too. And there's a ton of other features, but... But we can't be here all day. Will you settle down? I need...

you to hurry up with this stupid commercial. I got a packed calendar today. I'm sorry about him. Anyway, check out Spotify for Podcasters. It's free, no catch, and you can start today. Are we done? We're done, but you need to check your attitude. Excuse me, but I don't have all day to sit here and talk about Spotify. Look, this would go a lot faster if you would just let me get through it without...

In 1983, David Oates dropped his Walkman into the toilet. Now, if you're under 40 years old, a Walkman was a portable cassette player. If you're under 30, a cassette was how we listened to music in the Stone Age. Anyway, after being dropped, David's tape player would only play tapes in reverse. Now, at first, he thought this was entertaining. There were lots of songs that contained hidden messages that you could only hear if you played them backward. But

But those messages were placed there intentionally. Soon, David discovered messages hidden in human speech that were not intentional. Messages that were put there by the speaker's subconscious. Now, it turns out we all do this. In fact, when we lie, our subconscious actually encodes the truth backward inside the lies that we tell. Now, this is really interesting because that means the truth about every conspiracy is right in front of your nose. If you know how to find it.

When David Oates broke his cassette player, he didn't realize how far down this rabbit hole went. Reverse recordings have been around ever since recordings were invented. Thomas Edison liked playing music backward on the phonograph. Infamous occultist Aleister Crowley told his followers that they should learn to listen to recordings and watch films in reverse. In the 1950s, Raymond Bayliss and Attila von Saleh would play recordings in reverse to try to hear messages from the dead.

This was actually the beginning of EVP, or electronic voice phenomena. But occultists and ghost hunters were fringe cases. Reverse recordings would hit the mainstream when the Beatles started experimenting with backward messages in their music. At the end of the song Rain, the last few seconds of the track are backward. John Lennon said this was an accident, but he liked the way it sounded, so he kept it in. From then on... Oh, hold on. You're not gonna play it? Nope. Copyright. Ah.

So if any of this episode has audio muted, that's because someone put in a copyright claim. Now, if that happens, I'll put this episode on Patreon, but you won't have to join to hear it. It would be nice if you became a member, but you won't have to. Anyway, from then on, if you bought a Beatles album, you had to play it in reverse to see if there were any hidden messages. Now, this caused quite a stir in 1966 after Paul McCartney was in a bad car accident. Whoa, how the hell did he survive this? Well,

Well, that's the thing. According to the urban legend, he didn't. Wait, what? Well, there's a lot to the Paul is dead urban legend. I'll just hit the bullet points. But if you want a full episode on this one, email me or let me know in the comments. But the gist is this. In 1966, the Beatles were the biggest rock band in the world. But in the early morning hours of November 9th, Paul McCartney was killed in a terrible car crash. No Paul, no Beatles. Oh no, why Paul?

Why not Ringo? Now, come on, that's not nice. Without Ringo, we would have never had the classic film Caveman. Doo-doo! Caca. I stand corrected. Anyway, to keep the Beatles going, Paul was replaced by a man named Billy Campbell, winner of a Paul McCartney lookalike contest, a contest held for this very purpose. Billy was taught to speak with a Liverpool accent and how to play a few chords on the guitar. Now, John really didn't like the idea of replacing Paul, but he went along with it.

he did start dropping hints of Paul's death, and people began to notice the hints. On the album cover of Sgt. Pepper's, the flowers above the left-handed bass guitar spell lies, and if you hold a mirror up to the drum, you get 1-1 or 11 and 9 and he die. Paul died on November 9th.

Now, there's an open hand above Paul's head, which has been said to be either a symbol of death or the representation of a priest blessing Paul at the time of his death. On the Yellow Submarine album cover, there's a hand over Paul's head again. If we open up the album for Magical Mystery Tour, here's a hand above Paul's head. And again. Again. And again. Whoa! Whoa!

On the Abbey Road album cover, Paul is the only beetle walking out of step, symbolizing he's not one of them. And the way each of them is dressed is symbolic. John is dressed like a minister or some say like Jesus Christ. Ringo represents the pallbearer. Paul is the corpse and George is dressed as the gravedigger. And Paul is the only man barefoot. Now, many people are buried without shoes. And in the background is a white beetle with a license plate 28IF.

meaning at the time this photo was taken, Paul would have been 28 if he was still alive. Okay, these are getting spooky. But the really creepy clues come from the music. At the end of Strawberry Fields Forever, you can hear John saying very faintly, I buried Paul.

But that's played forward. There are a couple of songs that give us more clues if played in reverse. At the end of I'm So Tired, you can hear nonsense. But if you play it backward... And at the beginning of Revolution No. 9, if you play the beginning backward...

And this kicked off decades of musicians putting backward messages in their songs. "You're really freaking me out, man." Well, if you're scared now, you're really not going to like what's coming. "Oh, mommy!" It's common knowledge that musicians sometimes put backward messages in their songs. This is called backmasking. Some messages in songs are obvious. Some are not so obvious.

And some are really clever. And some messages are disturbing. I am the creator of the air theory.

I am the beast that is technology. Backwards it says, here's to my sweet Satan. Did you hear that? Listen carefully. It says, I want to live it backwards like the Zep whose power is Satan.

Did you hear that? Some messages sound disturbing, but they're actually quite positive. I love y'all.

Now, these phrases were all placed in music intentionally, but David Oates began listening to regular conversations in reverse. Then he thought he heard words, phrases, and sometimes entire sentences encoded backward in everyday speech. Now, these aren't placed there intentionally, but are placed there unintentionally by our subconscious. David first tested his theory on one of the most famous quotes of all time. That's one small step for a man, one giant leap.

Okay, that can't be possible. David Oates was stunned also. He started recording conversations whenever he could, and he found that everyone was inserting backward messages into their speech about every 30 seconds or so. David Oates says that human speech has two separate modes that serve different functions, but complement each other. One mode is spoken forward with the conscious mind.

The other mode is backward speech, which is encoded by our subconscious. This mode contains emotions, inner thoughts, and our true intent. But as he continued his research, he learned something else, specifically when it comes to politicians and public figures. When someone lies, they subconsciously encode the truth in their own speech. Now, this now becomes very interesting when you're listening to, say, senior members of the government discussing the moon landings or JFK. I've been telling you the moon landings are fantastic.

Well, if you believe David Oates' theory about backward speech, it's us. And...

I want to thank also all the people on this campaign. Signal Bipadong!

Now, when he first discovered Neil Armstrong's reverse speech saying man will spacewalk, David Oates was amazed, but he didn't think much more about it. He's not a moon landing conspiracy believer, but he got so many requests from people to dig deeper that he started analyzing as many people connected to the Apollo mission as he could find. The moon landing is fake, isn't it? It's definitely fake. Is it fake? It's fake, right? Well, I don't know if we can say without a doubt the moon landing was fake. Definitely fake. But there does appear to be some information that was covered up.

Here's Buzz Aldrin. And Neil Armstrong.

Another from Buzz.

This seemed to work, but without quite the same degree of control of your stability as you moved along. Buzz Aldrin again. We did find that mobility on the surface was, in general, a good bit better than perhaps we had anticipated it. Then now, did you?

That is the US Eagle carrying the olive branch to the lunar surface and we thought it was appropriate to deposit this replica of the olive branch before we left.

That lowers our altitude down to 50,000 feet. We had two guidance systems working for us, and they behaved perfectly. That lowers our altitude. But who's telling them to lie? Well, Michael Collins might have an answer. In general, just a series of slides, which in the interest of time, I'm not going to dwell on, but I'm out. It's a shame.

So we know who the masters are. I'm assuming President Nixon also knew? Credit to the control center in this case. They were the people that really came through and helped us and said, continue, which is what we wanted to hear. There is the X in there.

Neil Armstrong again. Turns out that we're quite busy throughout the time period with the same sorts of things that the crews of Pants Flights have done after their flight. They're there now.

So if we view the moon landing with a skeptical eye, let's listen to Neil Armstrong again. We know he says man will spacewalk, but some people believe he's saying this in the future tense, meaning man will spacewalk, but hasn't done so yet. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. And I ever spacewalked, and I ever spacewalked.

Well, I'll leave it up to you to decide. But before you make that decision, check out David Oates' website. And he has plenty of reversals that seem to confirm that the moon landing did happen. And look, I understand that to some people, reverse speech sounds like science fiction, or at least pseudoscience. And for some, it might be hard to take seriously. But there is one group that takes reverse speech very seriously. Who's that? The CIA.

If you follow this channel, you know that the CIA has been involved in a large number of projects that would be considered pseudoscience or paranormal. Project Iron Eagle, Operation Often, Project Jedi. These investigated the use of psychics in intelligence gathering. Was it really called Project Jedi? Yep. That program was launched in the 80s. Ah, when the Star Wars movies were good.

Project Bluebird, the precursor to MKUltra, included experiments in hypnosis and the use of drugs to enhance psychic abilities. And Project Grill Flame, Project Center Lane, and the famous Project Stargate all researched remote viewing. And there are lots more programs that we know about, and plenty that we don't.

So it's no surprise that the CIA was or is looking into reverse speech. The United States government first became interested in 1990. David Oates had been publicly analyzing speeches from President Bush leading up to the Gulf War. But we must recognize that Iraq may not stop using force to advance its ambitions. Iraq has massed an enormous war machine on the Saudi border. Shamo Simun and the Tamsin. Shamo Simun and the Tamsin.

Now, David didn't know who or what Simone was, but the word kept coming up over and over again in reverse speech analysis of President Bush and other security officials. Turns out a Simone is a weather phenomenon that occurs in the Middle East. It's a hot, heavy wind that can sometimes exceed 130 degrees Fahrenheit. It's a cyclone that carries clouds of dust and sand. Humans and animals caught in a Simone often suffocate. In other words,

A Simone is a Desert Storm. Wait, when was Operation Desert Storm? 1991, the following year. Reverse speech revealed clues about a United States military operation while it was still in the planning stages. This information was sent in a memo to Dick Cheney and the Defense Department, then CNN got a hold of it. This theory may sound hard to believe, but it's creating quite a stir in a lot of people. CNN's John Holliman reports.

And today, the brave American and allied forces are keeping watch along the sands and off the shores of Saudi Arabia. President Bush making a speech about the Persian Gulf. Could it contain a secret code word which can only be heard by listening to the truth backwards? Yes, sir.

A long-time aide to Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Bell apparently believes the president and other top officials are hiding the code word in speeches about the Gulf crisis.

Almost immediately, David Oates was invited to Washington to meet with representatives from several intelligence agencies. He was invited? Well, he was strongly encouraged. Well, during a five-day workshop, a senior FBI official said about reverse speech, if this is real, there are no more secrets. And David Oates left Washington, D.C. and returned to his home in Dallas. And that's when strange events started happening. And he was hit with a lot of bad luck. A few days after returning home, there was a drive-by shooting at his house.

The following night, he received a phone call. The caller said, leave JFK alone and hung up. David had published some reverse speech analysis of Lee Harvey Oswald that seemed to indicate he didn't act alone and was part of a bigger conspiracy. Everybody knows that. Well, that's not the official report. Oh, you believe an official government report, huh? Well... You know what I want to do? I want to shave you down and make a sweater out of your wool. Because I'm a sheep? Because you're a sheep, that's right.

A lot of reverse speech is interpretation, but David Oates interprets this clip of Lee Harvey Oswald as him hinting to a conspiracy. The fact that I did live for a time in the Soviet Union gives me excellent qualifications to repudiate charges that Cuba and the Fair Play for Cuba committee is communist controlled. Me and Mr. Lewis will be a person. Me and Mr. Lewis will be a person.

Oswald also claims the conspiracy is being orchestrated by powerful people. And when and where, because of the fact that we certainly don't have any trade with them. We are discouraging trade with that country. Exactly what people? Oswald gives us a clue. Well, I have studied Marxist philosophy, yes, sir, and also other philosophers.

Sometimes your reverse speech isn't specifically connected to your forward speech. But when it is connected, this is called a congruent reversal. These people have given me a hearing without legal representation or anything. I didn't shoot anybody, no sir. That's being Aaron Shearsman. That's being Aaron Shearsman.

Another congruent reversal. Oswald denies shooting the president, but in reverse tells us there were three shooters. I didn't shoot anybody, sir. I haven't been told what I'm here for. You have a lawyer? No, sir, I don't. No free matter of war. No free matter of war.

Now, many theories of the JFK assassination suggest a three man team. Now, the reason Oswald was killed in custody, he was going to talk. I like some legal representation. These police officers have not allowed me to have any. I will give him a go. I will give him a go.

Here's an interesting comment by President Johnson. President Johnson addresses Congress. We must be ready to defend the national interest and to negotiate the common interest.

This is the path that we shall continue to pursue. I shield the path of great sin. I shield the path of great sin. This is our challenge. Not to hesitate, not to pause, not to turn about and linger over this evil moment, but to continue on our course. The gift is a good time.

Want a flat out confession from President Johnson? You got it. On the 20th day of January in 1961, John F. Kennedy told his countrymen that our national work would not be finished in the first thousand days. You don't feel normal.

A conspiracy like this would need the help of the FBI. So here's FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover talking with LBJ. Usually, the presidential company has steps on the back next to the bumpers, and there's usually been one on either side standing on those steps at the back bumper. Talk, Mr. Senator. Talk, Mr. Senator.

Lots of people were part of this plan, including police. Can we trust them to stay quiet? Now, David Oates' research must have upset somebody because after publishing these and other clips, his house burned down.

Anyway, whether I'll be an asset or liability, the surveys show that it's help because I think we need

David Oates worked from home, so when his house burned down, a lot of his research was destroyed. He was able to recover one tape, though. He was recording when the house started burning. Oh, he was in the house when they lit it up? Oh, yeah, this wasn't just arson. This was attempted murder. Anyway, on the tape, you hear someone yell to David that the house is on fire.

David then runs out of the room. About 30 seconds later, you can hear one or possibly two people ransacking his office and David could hear whispering on the tape. David Oates moved his operation into an office building and strange events follow him there, too. His office was broken into multiple times and his staff discovered a program on one of his computers. Every day at 3 a.m., it was downloading all of his data and sending it to an IP address in Virginia.

As is common with whistleblowers and other people with information the government doesn't like, David Oates was ridiculed. When government officials were asked about reverse speech, they said it was nonsense. When asked about David Oates giving a workshop to intelligence agencies, they denied knowing anything about it. But in 2016, the CIA declassified David Oates' file. They were keeping tabs on him and his books. They did take reverse speech seriously.

They probably still do. But reverse speech doesn't have to just be about solving conspiracies. You could also use it to solve crimes. You could interview a suspect and then play the conversation back to find out the truth. And David Oates has helped law enforcement in exactly this way. On this episode of

On David's website, you can buy training materials to teach yourself how to identify reverse speech. And David's students have used reverse speech during employee interviews to identify the best candidates. It's been used to successfully warn a CEO not to sign a deal that had hidden traps. Reverse speech is also used in personal development.

For people struggling with anxiety or depression, reverse speech has been used by psychologists to better understand the subconscious. It's helped families reconnect. It's given students clarity when faced with major life decisions. Now, some would argue that people go to psychics to help them with major decisions, and that's usually a scam. But reverse speech is different.

There is no spirit talking through a medium. There are no tarot cards, no crystal ball. With reverse speech, you can hear the words with your own ears, and then it's up to you to make the interpretation. Now, chances are you are already leaning in one direction. You just needed someone to give you some advice and a little push. With reverse speech, the person giving you advice is someone that you know without question has your best interest in mind. That person is you. I had my path.

Then came age. Well, sooner or later, I don't know if it's all going to be coming out at once. I mean, the one thing for sure is the thing that's on a lot of people's minds is what about outdoors? We must now get bangin'. We must now get bangin'. We must now get bangin'.

So, reverse speech, is it a real thing? Well, officially, no. Reverse speech is considered pseudoscience. At least for now, it's being debated. And there's a reason for that. The clips I played today are the best ones I could find. I cherry-picked them. Most reversals are kind of like this. The business is doing well, and we're doing well. It's, uh... Um, uh...

What the hell are they talking about? Well, according to David Oates, most reversals are metaphors. So when we listen to this Neil Armstrong clip, the reverse is wife feel the vomit. Okay, your purse looks like it's clear and okay. The toes are about to come over the seal. Oh, you're feeling the vomit?

David Oates interprets this, that Neil Armstrong feels like his wife is probably very worried. How about this reversal where Armstrong says, we were wanting that knob. Stop it. You know, I really think that had we not done that, we'd still been all right. But it was just insurance. It's nice to get a little insurance.

This was interpreted as something on the lander had been broken and they needed to fix it. But that's really just an interpretation of a metaphor, which will mean different things to different people. This is often what happens with so-called prophets like Nostradamus. Let's look at century 3, quatrain 34. Then the eclipse of the sun will then be, and broad daylight the monster will be seen. Everyone will differ on the interpretation.

For a long time, this was interpreted as the assassination of JFK. The eclipse of the sun is the darkening of Kennedy's presidency. The monster was Lee Harvey Oswald. And the three other shooters. Right.

But then after the 9/11 attacks, people said the eclipse was the collapse of the Twin Towers and the monster represents the terrorists. And I can understand either of these, but I'm an American. These are two very American centric interpretations. I bet Asian cultures have different interpretations. Muslim cultures definitely do. What if you're Ukrainian? Couldn't the monster be Putin or the Russian army? And maybe the eclipse predicts the destruction of Kyiv or Ukraine losing the war.

This is reflection and projection. People naturally interpret metaphors through the lens of their own culture, their own age group, and their own language. And like Nostradamus, reverse speech interpretations will be radically different for different people. But as you can see, not only is the interpretation completely subjective,

But so are the words themselves. Different people might hear different things. Check out this clip of Bill Clinton. David Oates hears "I like the path on my girl bunny." With the COVID-19 outbreak on a path to killing 200,000 people and destroying millions of jobs and small businesses.

I don't hear that at all. I don't hear that either, but for some reason, it makes sense with this guy. Does it? Girl Bunny, Playboy Magazine, Naked Lady. Bill Clinton loves those.

Fair enough. So you can see why reverse speech is controversial. The human brain really doesn't like chaos and randomness. It likes order. This is why you see familiar shapes in clouds or...

That's oddly specific, but that's how it works. Your brain fills in as many details as it can. It's called pareidolia. And this can occur with sound too. It's called audio or auditory pareidolia. When you hear backward speech, it sounds really random. So your brain tries to make some sense of it. This could be why reverse speech is perceived as a string of metaphors. Because how else do we connect Bob Lazar with eloping?

So, I mean, that was the first time I knew that this is really something different. What was it? But there are reversals of Lazar that do make some sense. And you got that job. Before that, you were working... Before that, I had worked at Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico. You know, you can turn on an electromagnet and it makes a magnetic field. We can't make a gravitational field.

You know, when I worked there, I was on the front page of the paper. So they were still able to archive, you know, bring that back from the archives. And, you know, Bob Lazar, a physicist working here at Los Alamos. So there was at least something there.

But again, is there real meaning here, or is our brain trying to help us out because some of these reversals do make sense in certain contexts? Honestly, it's hard to say. Now, skeptics will say there is zero to reverse speech, but the human brain just can't process language this way. Well, if you're one of those skeptics, I've got bad news for you. The human brain is an amazing machine. It's fine. I wouldn't say amazing. It's amazing.

High-end processors on a desktop computer run about 5 gigahertz, so it processes about 5 billion operations per second. That's a lot. But the human brain can process between 10 quadrillion and 100 quadrillion calculations per second. That means a human brain is between 2 million and 20 million times faster than a high-end computer. And look, maybe you can't multiply two numbers as fast as a calculator, but think of all the things your brain does in one second. It's controlling the movements of all your muscles.

It's monitoring your breathing, your heartbeat. It's controlling your internal temperature, regulating blood pressure and hormone levels. It's growing hair and nails, digesting food, and doing thousands of other internal operations. In that same second, your brain is processing sensory information.

Sights, sounds, touch, smell, taste. It's connecting your senses with your emotions. Your brain is making new memories and deciding which ones to discard and which ones to file away. And it's retrieving memories to help you better adapt to your environment. And these are all calculations that your brain does automatically. But at the same time, all that is happening. Your brain can learn to play an instrument, acquire a skill, learn a language or learn to speak.

in reverse. So for skeptics to say the human brain can't process speech backward, I give you John Austin. It's the backwards dude. I'm taking my talent out on the street here in Charlotte, North Carolina. The weather is mild today. Yeah, the lands that we're dealt with, the weather is mild today. Slap y'all with this. What do I show you big? Dude, spoke out with nausea. This is John, the backwards dude, giving a shout out to the white pile.

Okay, that guy is amazing. I agree. Now check this out. Can you guess what he's singing? Let's play it in reverse. He had a very shiny nose. And if you ever saw him, he would even say it close.

So John can reverse speak in real time. And people are rightfully blown away by this. But all he's really doing is speaking another language. Rather than learn Spanish or French, John learned reverse speak. Maybe not as useful as Spanish, but still impressive. So encoding thoughts backward and forward speech, that is something that our brains can do. And according to David Oates, we learn this at an early age. Specifically, he claims we learn speaking backward before we learn speaking forward. ...

Now, is this auditory pareidolia? Are we assigning meaning where it doesn't belong? I honestly don't know, but I'm fascinated by it. And here's something you can try. Record your daughter telling you what she did on spring break or record your husband talking about his business trip. Then play those conversations in reverse.

On second thought, don't do that. Sometimes secrets are just better kept as secrets. But not when it comes to our elected officials or anyone that has power over our lives. If just one person was able to use reverse speech to figure out what politicians are really saying, that would be like a superpower. But if an entire population can do it, that would probably lead to anarchy. So you'll have to make a choice. Dishonesty from your leaders and the status quo or honesty and anarchy. I know what I choose.

Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. My name is AJ. You know, hecklefish. This has been the Y-Files. If you had fun or learned anything, do us a favor, like, comment, subscribe, share. I know it's annoying that I ask, but it really does help. And like most topics we cover on this channel, today's was recommended by you. So if there's a story you'd like to see or learn more about, go to the Y-Files dot com slash tips. And special thanks to our patrons who make the Y-Files possible. You guys are amazing.

And if you'd like to support the channel or just join an incredible community, consider becoming a member on Patreon or joining our Discord or grab something for the Wildfile store. Yeah.

How do you say buy a heckle fish mug backwards? I don't know. Gum, uh, gum, gum shekel, fish shekel. No, that's not right. Gum shekel, fish shekel. I gotta work on it. You do that. That's gonna do it. Until next time. What? You didn't see that coming?

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