559: Compilation: Our Reality is an Illusion
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Get to Smoothie King today and try the new blueberry, raspberry, or watermelon lemonade smoothies. They're all made with real fruit, real juice, and no bad stuff. Just check out the no-no list at SmoothieKing.com. Try the new lemonade smoothies at Smoothie King today. Hey, thanks for clicking on this. Yeah, yeah, I know, another compilation. And we normally put up compilations instead of an episode to give us a break and try to catch up, but that's not what this is. This is something different. Um...

You know what? This would be easier from my office. So let's just... Yeah, let's go over there. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. What? If you're in your office, how am I supposed to get my airtime? Well, you won't. This is just... Hang on, hang on. If I may... Go ahead. Section 6, Part B. On-screen presence. What's this? My contract.

Oh boy. The talent, that's me, shall appear on screen in each and every episode of the series, that's the Y-Files, produced under this agreement. The talent agrees to make themselves available for production as required by the producer, that's you, human. Again, the talent shall appear in each and every episode. I rest my case. So? So, if you don't let me be in this episode, you'll be in breach!

me call my lawyer we have the same lawyer i will yeah well you'll still be in breach all right uh do me a favor and read that last sentence again oh certainly um the talent agrees to make themselves available for production as required by the producer so what so you miss productions all the time oh stop whining i just don't show up for the sponsor ads big whoop

Sponsor ads are important. Sponsor ads are beneath me. Not according to your contract. But... I'm leaving. But Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 16 says... It says a deal is a deal. I know, we already did the Rules of Acquisition bit. Oh, right, for the Christmas song. Link below if you want to see that, by the way. I have a lovely singing voice. Eh, that's debatable. By the way, did you know that Rule 16 was amended in the novel Legends of the Ferengi? I will maintain...

that the 16th rule of acquisition, the most sacred of all Ferengi precepts, is a deal is a deal until a better one comes along. It's really annoying that you're such a nerd. Sorry, off I go. I still think this is a bunch of bullshit. Thank you. Anyway, the reason for the compilation is kind of an algorithm trick. Um...

not just for the algorithm, but also for new people coming to the channel. Our last episode, I hit the government pretty hard with the dark side of DARPA. I mean, I really hammered them hard. And that episode is getting a lot of views, which I guess is good. But I also have coming up. Sorry, but it's not a professional operation. I also have coming up.

This week, another government conspiracy episode where I hit the government really hard. And I don't want to be the government conspiracy channel. So I don't want the algorithm to think that's what I do. And new people coming over to the channel, I don't want them to just see a bunch of government conspiracy stuff. I'm not this government conspiracy guy.

Just like I don't post a bunch of UFO videos in a row or a bunch of alien videos or all that stuff. I'm not the alien guy. I'm not the anything guy. I just, I like weird stories. What do we call them? Mysteries, myths, urban legends. I like the stories. I like to try to find the truth in the stories and have fun doing it. I don't want to be put into a box. So that's why this compilation is here. It's just to kind of break things up with a little something different.

So what are we doing? I got to look at my words. Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. First episode, it's number 61. It's simulation theory, which I'm sure you've heard this by now, but it's the theory that everything, our entire existence, maybe even the entire universe is just a computer program. And I don't know if it's even that controversial anymore, but

If I had to bet, I'd say that we are in a simulation. Anyway, it's a short episode. I'll see you in a minute.

Is this reality? Well, we're experiencing something right now. So maybe the better question is, what is reality? Could everything we see, everything we experience, everything that exists in our entire universe be artificial? Supporters of simulation theory believe that not only is it possible that we're living in a simulation, it's likely. And the more we look for evidence, the more we find. Let's find out why.

The idea of the universe being a simulation is not a new one. Theories exist in ancient cultures around the world. Modern simulation theory comes from Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford who wrote an influential paper on the subject in 2003. Assuming that living in a simulation is possible, Bostrom presents the simulation Trilemma, which says one of the following must be true. One, we destroy ourselves before we're able to create a simulation.

Two, we're able to create a simulation but choose not to. Or three, we are definitely in a simulation. Bostrom believes each of these is equally likely to be true. Now, I don't think that's controversial. We use computer models to study the human population, predict the weather for entertainment. We simulate everything. And when a civilization can create a realistic simulation, the most obvious one to create is that of its own early existence.

Bostrom calls this an ancestral simulation. And a civilization that can do this wouldn't just create one simulation, it would create many. And those simulated civilizations might create their own simulations of the universe and on and on like Russian nesting dolls of reality. Now you're a character in that world and you think you have free will and say, I want to invent a computer. So you do. Hey, I want to create a world in my computer. And then that world creates a world in its computer.

And then you have simulations all the way down. When Elon Musk was asked what he thought the chances were that our reality is the original base reality, The odds that we're in base reality is one in billions.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a little more conservative. He thinks the odds that we are in base reality versus a simulated reality is 50/50. A 50/50 chance that everything we experience is artificial, that's still pretty high. And even though we mostly hear what scientists think about this, it's not scientific theory. Simulation theory isn't math, it's philosophy. It isn't physics, it's metaphysics. So what we need is hard evidence that we live in a simulation. And to find proof,

All you have to do is look. Let's start at the beginning. There was no space or time. The contents of the entire universe were concentrated to the size of a tennis ball and had a temperature of a quadrillion degrees. Then suddenly, the Big Bang. Everything explodes outward faster than the speed of light. Then about 14 billion years later, we've got galaxies and planets and ice cream and K-pop. Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream. I could do without the K-pop. Me too.

Okay, if before the Big Bang there was no space and no time, what was there? What about the beginning of the universe from the religious point of view? God created everything. Fine. Where was he before? What caused the Big Bang to happen in the first place? What made God decide to snap his fingers or wiggle his nose or whatever he did to make everything happen? If you ask a physicist to explain what existed before the universe,

They'll give you an answer about quantum foam, dark energy, or something just as bonkers as the Big Bang. Ask a theologian what existed before God created the universe, and you'll get an answer equally as confusing. But what does make sense is that the universe was just sitting there dormant. Then someone, somewhere decided to boot up a program. And in that program, our program, are all the laws of the universe. Electromagnetism and gravitational force are written into the program.

The speed of light gets a value. There's code for Planck's constants of mass, speed, and time. Avogadro's number is in there, along with a bunch of other rules that govern the behavior of everything that exists. All part of our program. Even consciousness itself is part of our simulation. If you've never heard of simulation theory, then this might sound far-fetched.

But some of the world's most respected scientists, technologists and philosophers believe that it is more likely than not that we are living in an artificial reality. So how do we prove it?

If we live in an artificial reality, it would make sense for there to be occasional glitches. Philip K. Dick is one of the most influential science fiction writers of all time. Movies based on his books include Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau and plenty of others. He believed there are many universes and sometimes those other realities bleed into ours. He claimed to have visions of this and even wrote stories like The Man in the High Castle based on these visions.

that in fact plural realities did exist superimposed onto one another by so many film transparencies. One way other realities blend into ours could be the Mandela Effect. The Mandela Effect is when a large number of people have memories of events that don't match reality.

This is called the Mandela effect because millions of people specifically remember Nelson Mandela died in prison. He didn't. People remember his wife walking beside his casket in a funeral procession that was on television for two hours that day. This never happened. Or the Berenstain Bears, which people insist were always called the Berenstein Bears. People remember the tycoon from Monopoly having a monocle that he never had.

What was Darth Vader famous for saying? Luke, I am your father. Nope. He never said that. What? What about Stouffer's Stovetop Stuffing? Best part of Thanksgiving. No, it isn't. Because there's no such product. Stovetop is made by craft. Uh, no. The evil queen from Snow White who looked into her mirror and said... Mirror, mirror on the wall. Nope. Magic mirror on the wall. Who is the fairest one of all?

My reality is shattered. People remember Febreze being spelled with two E's. People remember Jiffy Peanut Butter, but there's no such thing. And there are a lot more. A lot more. Personally, I don't have most of these false memories, but there are a few that get me. The Flintstones. There are two T's in the Flintstones. I remember just one. And what about the Fruit of the Loom logo? I could swear it looks like this.

But it doesn't. This is the actual logo. No cornucopia. Cornu-what now? Basket. Then just say basket for crying out loud. And at the end of Moonraker, a terrible but excellent James Bond movie, I remember Jaws girlfriend as having braces. I mean, I specifically remember it. She didn't have braces. I just can't get my brain to accept it. That's the Mandela Effect. So why do millions of people distinctly remember different things? Glitch in a simulation? Yup.

Philip K. Dick also felt when we experience deja vu is because something in our simulated universe changed and a new timeline branched off of the current one. We are living in a computer programmed reality and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed.

Ever feel like you've lived a moment before? That's because according to Philip K. Dick and others, you have. Deja vu is the simulation correcting itself with new information. But skeptics can easily dismiss these theories. The human mind is terribly unreliable. They don't accept this as evidence. But we're not done yet.

We live in a huge universe, 200 billion trillion stars. And even if life is rare, you'd think there'd be some evidence of it somewhere. This is Fermi's paradox. According to the Drake equation, there should be over a million technologically advanced civilizations just in our galaxy. And on average, the nearest one should be just a few hundred light years away. But there's nothing, at least not that we can see.

So where is everybody? Are we really alone in the universe or does our program only focus on us? And what about the physical rules that are in place? Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at MIT, said the strict laws of physics point to the possibility of a simulation.

Putting a cap on the speed of light sure is a good way to keep your Sims from venturing out too far from home. Theoretical physicist James Gates thought simulation theory was crazy. Then he started studying quarks and electrons. He found error-correcting code buried deep inside the equations used to describe string theory. So you're saying as you dig deeper, you find computer code written in the fabric of the cosmos?

Into the equations that we want to use to describe the cosmos. Yes. Computer code. Computer code. Strings of bits of ones and zeros.

Dr. Gates has changed his mind about simulation theory. In 2017, a group of scientists at the University of Washington proved they can embed computer code into strands of DNA. Everything in nature is math. Look at the Fibonacci sequence. You get the Fibonacci sequence by adding two previous numbers in the sequence together. So 1 plus 1 equals 2. 2 plus 1 equals 3. 3 plus 2 equals 5.

5 plus 3 equals 8 and so on forever. You get the golden ratio, also called phi, by dividing two consecutive Fibonacci numbers. So the number 89 is a Fibonacci number. The next number in the sequence after 89 is 144. 144 divided by 89 is the golden ratio. It's about 1.618. We see Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio everywhere. The number of petals on a flower is usually a Fibonacci number.

Lilies have three petals, buttercups have five, chicory has 21, and a daisy has 34. And the spacing of each petal is arranged in a circle according to the golden ratio. As trees grow, the number of branches they form is a Fibonacci number.

And not just plants, animals too. The ratio of female to male honeybees in a colony is the golden ratio, 1.618. The human body conforms to the golden ratio too. Most of the body follows the numbers one, two, three, and five. One nose, two eyes, three limb segments, five fingers, five toes,

The proportions of the body, like the length of your shoulder to your elbow, and from your elbow to your fingertips, that's the golden ratio. Even a DNA molecule measures 34 angstroms long by 21 angstroms wide. Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio. From the spiral of seashells to the spiral of a galaxy and everything in between, Fibonacci numbers are everywhere. Now, some claim this is a coincidence, that humans look for patterns in chaos because that's what we're programmed to do. - What we're programmed to do?

And isn't that interesting? By trying to debunk simulation theory, they actually end up proving it. No matter what we study, whether it's something the size of a galaxy or as small as an electron, everything in the universe seems to follow patterns and rules. In other words, a program.

To simulate an entire universe, you'd obviously need more advanced technology than we have. But that doesn't mean we won't get there. Moore's Law says that computing power doubles every 18 months. And this has held true for about 50 years. Now that is slowing down a little bit, but only because of physical limitations.

Assuming we can learn to make microchips smaller, and there's no doubt that we will, it's predicted that artificial intelligence could surpass human intelligence within the next hundred years. As Elon Musk points out, when he was a kid, the world's most advanced video game was Pong, two rectangles on a screen. 40 years later, video game technology is barely distinguishable from reality. He said that six years ago. And even in that short time, video game engines have become even more realistic.

Look at this footage from Unreal Engine 5. When a world we can build feels as real as our own. What just happened? Imagine what games are going to look like in the next six years or the next 60 or the next 6000. But simulating an entire universe, how big of a computer will we need? Well, it's estimated that there are 10 to the power of 80 atoms in the universe. Let me put that on the screen just for fun.

Okay, that's a lot. If each particle needs 128 bits to calculate its position and momentum, you're at 10 to the power of 83 bits. And that's just for data storage. We also need computing power to track what each of those particles is doing. If we say two floating point operations per second, or two flops per particle, we're at two times 10 to the 80th power flops.

There aren't even words for these numbers. And this is the computing power for just the stuff in the universe. What about human intelligence? The human brain can perform 100 trillion calculations per second or 100 teraflops multiplied by billions of people. The numbers are ridiculous. To power all of this, the simulation would need access to multiple Dyson spheres, the mega structures that capture 100% of the energy of a star. Or the simulation would have to harness the energy from black holes.

This is why famous physicists like Dr. Michio Kaku are not on board with simulation theory. He claims that simulating a universe is not scientifically possible. The only computer capable of simulating a universe is the universe itself. Now, at first glance, this makes sense. But with all due respect to Dr. Kaku,

That's not how simulations work. When you're playing a 3D video game, the entire game world isn't rendered. Instead, the game engine only calculates what the player can see and interact with at that specific moment. If we are living in a simulation, then it would make sense that the creators of the simulation would use a similar technique. And wouldn't it be interesting if there was evidence that this is exactly what happens? "Wait a minute. Do we have proof? Sweet fancy Moses!"

Supporters of simulation theory often point to video games as a way to explain, if not prove that our reality is artificial. In a video game, the only data that is rendered is what the player sees or interacts with. If you're playing a video game and there's a car or building a mile away, that entire object isn't rendered.

The game engine only renders the bare minimum of information to make the object look real. A distant building is rendered as just a few pixels, not that complicated. As you get closer, the engine renders more details, but still it's just a facade. The engine doesn't bother calculating what's inside the building to actually go in. The game engine always knows how much data to send you and doesn't bother with anything else. If we live in a simulation, it would make sense that our reality is rendered the same way. And we could test this.

- Wait, what do you mean we can test this? - Specifically, we can use the double slit experiment. Here's how it goes. If we fire particles in a straight line at a screen, after passing through a single slit, we would expect to see this clumping pattern on the screen.

If we try this with a wave, we expect to see a pattern like this, where particles are most dense in the middle of the screen but radiate outward, similar to the clumping pattern. When we add a second slit, it starts to get fun. When the waves pass through the double slit, each slit creates its own wave. When those waves intersect, they cancel each other out.

That creates a pattern like this. It's called an interference pattern. So, particles passing through two slits create clumping patterns. Waves through two slits creates an interference pattern. Make sense? Yeah, I'm with you. Good. If we fire electrons through the slit, we see the clumping pattern as expected. An electron has mass, so it's a tiny bit of matter. So if we fire electrons through two slits, we should see two clumps.

But we don't. We see the wave interference pattern. This shouldn't be happening. What's going on here? For years, scientists assumed that the electrons were colliding with each other, causing the wave pattern. But in the 60s, the experiment was modified so that only one electron at a time was fired through the slits. There was no way the electrons could interact with each other. Yet we still see an interference pattern.

Scientists wanted to see what was causing this, so they added a detector to observe electrons as they pass through the slits. That's when things go from weird to paranormal. As soon as the detectors were installed, the interference pattern went away and the clumping pattern returned. Take the detectors away and the wave interference pattern is back. But that's a different result to what we had earlier.

So here's the last bit of sneakiness that we can play with atoms. Surely now, you know, we're going to get to grips with it. Leave the detector there, but just very quietly go and unplug it. Don't let the atoms know that you're not spying on them. Run the experiment again. Now, if you can explain this using common sense and logic, do let me know.

because there's a Nobel Prize for you. It's as if the particles are aware they're being observed. Then physicist John Wheeler had an idea. He called it the delayed choice experiment. How it works is photons are projected through the double slit, but the detector is not activated until after they pass through the slit.

but before they impact the screen. Photons were emitted as waves, passed through the slits as waves, but when the waves were observed before hitting the screen, they suddenly behaved like particles again.

Still don't think there's an intelligence at work? Well, what Wheeler's experiment showed is that even though the electrons started as waves but behaved like particles after being observed, at the moment the decision to observe them was made, the electrons recorded themselves as having passed through the slits as particles. The electrons changed their state by going back in time.

I personally find that I gravitate more towards the information theoretic point of view and believing that the universe that I exist in is a very good, high quality simulation.

Now, this experiment is happening on a table in a lab, a very short distance. So what happens when we observe light coming from vast distances, like say a galaxy 100 million light years away? If light from a distant galaxy is projected through the double slit, it creates the wave interference pattern. But...

If we push those photons through a measuring apparatus to observe them, the wave again collapses all the way back to its source. This is called retrocausality. Simply by choosing to observe the photons this way, they reach back through time 100 million years and alter their state on the other side of the galaxy. But like a video game engine, it only does this if we're looking.

Even though our universe is full of galaxies, those galaxies may not actually be there. If we're living in a simulation, then stars and galaxies could simply be projections. And only when we get up close with those projections become more detailed. This is an excellent way to save computational resources. And because we're stuck with the hard limit of the speed of light, getting too far of places is really difficult.

Limiting the speed of light is a useful rule to have in place. Quantum mechanics like the double slit experiment and quantum entanglement only make sense if there's a program at work because only the program can ignore the laws of physics and ignore the concept of time itself.

A convenient case for simulation theory is you can't disprove it. The Big Bang, that was the simulation booting up. We haven't found aliens, they're not in the simulation. How come UFOs seem to violate the laws of physics? Well, because they're programs operated by the simulation creators. They don't have to follow the laws of physics.

Well, that's the big question, isn't it? When you think of the simulation creator as an omniscient intelligence who exists outside of our understanding of space and time, it sounds an awful lot like you're describing God.

And just like you can't prove we're not in the simulation, you can't prove there is no God. If something miraculous happens or something horrible happens, you can say it's part of the simulation just as easily as you can say it's part of God's plan. Something I find very interesting is that many believers of simulation theory are fierce atheists. They dismiss the idea of God as corny superstition.

There are plenty of devoutly religious people who dismiss provable science like evolution and the age of the Earth. People on the religious side say that if there is no God and life is just a simulation, then nothing matters. Without God to guide us and sometimes punish us, depending on what you believe, our actions don't have consequences.

I disagree. Even if we don't live in base reality, we still live in our reality. And our actions here do have consequences. As for what happens after we die, simulation or not, nobody really knows. Both sides argue that faith and science are not compatible. Isn't this hypocritical? Whether you believe in God or you believe in simulation theory, the real question is, what's the difference? Brutal summer heat. It's no fun for humans or pets.

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Get to Smoothie King today and try the new blueberry, raspberry, or watermelon lemonade smoothies. They're all made with real fruit, real juice, and no bad stuff. Just check out the no-no list at SmoothieKing.com. Try the new lemonade smoothies at Smoothie King today. Folks, this is just staggering stuff.

Again, I've become obsessed with this idea. By the way, that's the Y-Files. That was a YouTube video. It's really amazing. Hey, thanks for that shout out, Bongino. Next episode is number 104. It's the Gateway Process, which was developed by the Monroe Institute. Super interesting.

It says our entire universe is a type of hologram. And with the proper training, you can tap into this hologram and actually change it, like bend the universe to your will. And the U.S. military sent soldiers there for training. I wonder if they got it to work. 3 plus 1, 5 plus 0, 0.

The United States military is always looking for new ways to create super soldiers. They use performance enhancing and mind altering drugs. They're currently experimenting with brain implant technology. They've even explored genetic engineering to try and breed the perfect soldier. But those are nothing compared to what happened in 1983 when Lieutenant Colonel Wayne McDonald submitted a very unusual and detailed report to U.S. Army Intelligence. It was called Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process.

This is a step by step guide on how to achieve an out of body experience for the purpose of intelligence gathering. But Colonel McDonald's report went much further than that. An advanced gateway participant cannot just project their consciousness to a different place. They could pull their consciousness completely out of this reality. They could travel anywhere in the universe and at any point in time.

The report revealed that our universe doesn't actually exist. It's a construct created by our mind. By using the gateway process, you can exit the construct and see reality for what it really is. The 30-page gateway report was immediately classified for one simple reason: anyone can learn to do it. Even you.

Colonel McDonald's analysis and assessment of gateway process gets right to the point. There are alternate states of reality and other dimensions that exist outside our physical world and outside of time itself. Whoa, it's

It sounds like I'm gonna need a brain bucket for this one. Oh yeah, this is the strangest military report I've ever read. I'm surprised it's not still classified. According to the report, we can use the Gateway Process to access other dimensions. Now, if you think that sounds paranormal or like New Age mumbo jumbo, you're not alone. Even Colonel McDonald was aware that this was the impression his report would give.

So he starts off by grounding his research in science. McDonald consults Itzhak Bentov, a well-respected biomedical engineer, to help him understand the physical aspect of the process. He uses quantum mechanics to describe the nature of human consciousness, and he employs both classical and theoretical physics to explain the out-of-body phenomenon. But most importantly, the report gives step-by-step instructions on how to have a gateway experience.

Follow these instructions and you could learn to astrally project, visit other dimensions, and even slip in and out of time. This is why the military was drawn to it and studied it for years. If the United States can train a unit of psychic spies that could project their consciousness anywhere unnoticed,

That would be very effective at gathering intelligence. Still, McDonald knew his report would be difficult to believe, but he really thought it could be done. There is a sound, rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives. Intuitional insights of not only personal, but of a practical and professional nature would seem to be within bounds of reasonable expectations. Um...

My brain bucket? It's gonna fill up fast. It is. You better have a spare bucket handy.

The Gateway Process is a training system developed in the 70s by the Monroe Institute in Virginia. Colonel McDonald, along with other military personnel, went through the week-long training process that anyone can do, even today. But the Gateway Report ended with a final warning that nobody really expected. Because this method is accessible to anyone, Colonel McDonald warned that the military should be prepared for encounters with intelligent and non-friendly entities that could exist outside the boundaries of time and space.

In other words, a psychic war. Even though anyone can learn the gateway method, you can't just snap your fingers and escape reality. There is some foundation work you have to do first. Well, no matter what reality you're in, ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Right. You have to learn relaxation techniques, meditation and extreme focus. You also have to set all doubt aside and let your mind be open to a completely new way of thinking. Only once you master these techniques can you begin to comprehend the true nature of reality.

Your life, the Earth, the universe and everything in it is an illusion created by your mind. Solid matter, in the strict construction of the term, simply does not exist. Rather, atomic structure is composed of oscillating energy grids surrounded by other oscillating energy grids which orbit at extraordinarily high speeds.

There is no solid matter. Everything that exists is a form of energy vibrating at extremely fast frequencies, from the largest objects in the universe down to atoms and subatomic particles and everything in between. It's all energy.

The point to be made is that the entire human being, brain, consciousness and all, is, like the universe which surrounds him, nothing more or less than an extraordinarily complex system of energy fields. So-called states of matter are actually variances in energy, and human consciousness is a function of the interaction of energy.

Our consciousness is tuned into the frequencies of energy that make up the world that we see. But we only perceive a small percentage of the energy that actually exists all around us. Think of tuning a radio. If you tune into a rock station, you only hear music broadcast on that channel. Now, of course, there are lots of other channels with all different kinds of music, but your radio doesn't play them all at once, only the single station it's tuned into.

Our brains are like that radio designed to filter out everything except for the energy that creates our reality. And just like a radio converts energy into sound, our brains convert this universal energy into things we can see and hear and taste and touch. But none of the solid matter around us is actually there. Our senses create the illusion of matter so that we can experience this reality in a way that we can understand. Now, according to the Gateway Report,

We're all living in a shared universal hologram.

The universe is composed of interacting energy fields. It is in and of itself one gigantic hologram of unbelievable complexity. According to the theories of Carl Pribram, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, and David Bohm, a physicist at the University of London, the human mind is also a hologram, which attunes itself to the universal hologram and achieves the state, which we call consciousness.

The Gateway Process teaches you to turn off the filter in your brain and gives you access to altered states of reality and lets you escape space-time altogether. And anyone can learn to do this. You don't need to decalcify your pineal gland or spend years at a Buddhist Monatary. You don't need a shaman or a guru or mind-altering drugs. You just need headphones. The Gateway Process is done by listening to sound. Yeah, but tell me more about those mind-altering drugs.

In the 1950s, New York broadcasting executive Robert Monroe found evidence that different types of sound could affect the human mind in different ways. Some sound patterns would make you sleepy. Another would make you alert. Some sound can give you anxiety. Other sounds are very relaxing. Well, people have said my voice is relaxing. Then you're not reading the comments.

Using this discovery, Monroe began experimenting with hypnopedia or sleep learning. Monroe was convinced that there was a connection between sound waves and not just a person's mood, but their ability to learn and retain information. And one night while trying a sleep learning technique, Monroe had an experience that was unexpected but would change his life. While listening to a specific sound frequency, his body slowly became paralyzed.

He then started to feel a vibration that became stronger and stronger. Suddenly, he was awash in bright white light. Then a sound, or maybe just a sensation, of a rush of air that became a roar so loud it was unbearable.

Then in an instant, everything was quiet. The vibration stopped, the light dissipated, and Robert Monroe found himself in his bedroom floating above his sleeping body. There was no name for this at the time, but later became known as an OBE, an out-of-body experience.

a term that Monroe himself popularized. Though this OBE happened completely by accident, he was able to use sound to replicate the experience nine times over the next six weeks. Monroe wrote about the experience in his 1971 book, "Journeys Out of the Body." He went on to found the Monroe Institute,

and became a prominent researcher in the field of human consciousness. Suhman Rowe discovered that while out of his body, he could identify, access and sustain different states of consciousness. This is done by synchronizing the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Now, even though the brain functions as a whole, it's different parts serve different functions, as do its two hemispheres.

The left hemisphere is traditionally associated with logic and reason, perception and focus. The right hemisphere is responsible for emotion, creativity and intuition. So it's like a sideways mullet. A sideways mullet? What are you talking about? A mullet, you know, business in the front, but a party in the back. Two pieces of your brain are like that. But a mullet is the front and the back, and the brain is left and right. So the mullet is sideways.

I'm sorry, all this about dimensions and realities and mullets, it's hard to contribute. The left hemisphere of the brain tends to be more active in the beta frequency range of 13 to 30 hertz, which is associated with alertness, attention, and cognitive control. The right hemisphere is active in the alpha frequency range, 8 to 13 hertz, which is associated with relaxation, creativity, and spatial processing. The right brain operates much more slowly than the left. Sideways, mullet.

By listening to certain sounds, the Gateway process synchronizes both hemispheres using a technique called Hemisync. Fundamentally, the Gateway experience is a training system designed to bring enhanced strength, focus, and coherence to the amplitude and frequency of brainwave output between the left and right hemispheres. So as to alter consciousness, moving it outside the physical sphere, so as to ultimately escape even the restrictions of time and space, the

The participant then gains access to the various levels of intuitive knowledge which the universe offers. The Gateway Report describes Hemisync as a lamp versus a laser. The natural state of the human mind is like a lamp that emits light, but it's chaotic and messy and uneven over a large area. Hemisync lets the mind operate like a laser, producing a focused stream of energy.

According to Gateway, when the frequency and amplitude of the human brain are brought into sync, it's possible to accelerate and raise the vibrational levels of the mind. As the mind resonates higher and higher, it can synchronize with the more complex energy levels in the universe.

At these levels, the mind is capable of processing information in the same way it processes the energy of our current reality. In other words, you can see and feel and understand these other states of reality as easily as you understand this one. But you can do more than understand reality. You can learn to change it, control it and bend it to your will. Like Neo in the Matrix or like God.

According to Colonel McDonald's Gateway Report, understanding how human consciousness could exist outside the physical body requires an understanding of holographic theory, or the holographic principle. Uh-oh, let me get my bucket ready. Energy creates, stores, and retrieves meaning in the universe by projecting or expanding at certain frequencies in a three-dimensional mode that creates a living pattern called a hologram.

The report says that holograms are capable of encoding so much detail that if you made a holographic projection of a glass of swamp water, you could put the hologram, not the water, the hologram under a microscope and see microscopic organisms. Actually, holograms of microscopic organisms. Now, this sounds nuts, but the CIA was onto something.

Onto something big. If you watched our episode on simulation theory, you'll remember John Wheeler and his delayed choice double slit experiment. The video has more details, but in short, Wheeler showed that particles seem to be able to change their state by going back in time. Now, Wheeler felt that the universe wasn't necessarily made up of matter and energy, but instead, the universe is made up

of information our hologram uses this information to create our three-dimensional universe and holographic theory is a well-established idea in theoretical physics and widely accepted by many physicists i know it's a lot to wrap your head around and i'd like to do a whole episode on this so if you'd like to see that email me or let me know in the comments anyway in order to create our hologram from information that information has to be exchanged

Particles can bounce off each other, can affect each other's speed, carry energy to each other, and that's how they exchange information. But here's where the Gateway Report goes a step further.

It says that this information can be exchanged not just in our universe, but between dimensions, implying that there are dimensions of reality yet to be discovered. This theory raises questions about the interaction between human consciousness and the holographic universe. Like, can our consciousness, which is energy, also exchange information with other dimensions? The Gateway Process says that yes, it can. But there's more.

McDonald argues that human beings are not passive receivers of the information floating around the universe. We participate in this information. And by training the way we perceive and process the information that creates our reality, we can actually change reality itself. And this technique is called patterning.

The technique of patterning recognizes the fact that, since consciousness is the source of all reality, our thoughts have the power to influence reality, if those thoughts can be projected with adequate intensity. Think about the concept of the secret and the law of attraction, which says that we can make things happen by focusing our imagination on a desirable outcome.

But how? How do we allow our consciousness to access this other information? The Planck distance is about 1.6 times 10 to the negative 35 meters. So really small. It's the smallest possible unit of length that has any physical meaning in the universe. At this scale, the laws of physics break down.

But what if it's not the smallest? In his report, Colonel McDonald speculates that by using the gateway process to accelerate brainwave frequencies, humans may be able to break the physical limitation of the Plank distance. McDonald suggests that consciousness could, for an instant, enter the space beyond human perception. He calls this clicking out of reality.

It is true that when, for an infinitesimally brief instant, that energy reaches one of its two points of rest, it clicks out of time-space and joins infinity. That critical step out of time-space occurs when the speed of the oscillation drops below Planck's distance. To use the words of Benthoff, quantum mechanics tell us that when distances go below Planck's distance, we enter in effect a "new world."

So I say we try it, grab some headphones and let's see what's out there. Okay, don't worry, we're not really going to escape reality, at least not today. I just want to show you how the gateway process actually works. The program combines two techniques. The first is frequency following response or FFR. FFR involves introducing a frequency through headphones, which the brain tries to mimic by adjusting its brainwaves.

The second technique is beat frequency. You might've heard this called binaural beats. This involves playing different frequencies in each ear. The brain then chooses to hear the difference between them. For example, the sounds at four Hertz are too low for you to hear. But if you listen to 100 Hertz through the right ear and 104 Hertz in the left ear, your brain can detect and hear the difference. In this case, four Hertz. And here's how it sounds.

This is the left ear. Listen to how the tone is steady. Okay, I'm with you. Please don't talk during this part. We're trying to focus on the sound. Now a steady tone in the right ear. We play them together and you can hear the oscillation between the two frequencies, like a vibrato.

I hear it. You're going to blow out their ears. Sorry, sorry. I get excited when I think I'm going to travel to other dimensions. Remember, your left brain is your logical and analytical side. Before information is processed by right brain, which is the emotional and creative side, your left brain takes a look at the information. It filters it and tries to make sense of it before it accepts the information.

but your right brain will happily absorb any information thrown at it. Psychologists like Ronald Stone say that hypnosis is a technique that relaxes or distracts the left brain so that outside stimuli have direct access to the intuitive, creative right brain. That's why people under hypnosis are so impressionable. Their left logical brain is disengaged, letting everything through.

So if one of those wacky hypnotists gets you to cluck like a chicken, it's because your left brain isn't keeping tabs on the information coming through and your right brain says, "Cluck like a chicken, you got it." Your right brain is always down to potty. It is.

The gateway process relaxes the left brain through sound waves. When the brain is relaxed enough, the amplitude and frequency of brain waves can be pushed higher and higher, and the space between your brain waves gets smaller and smaller. And when the distance between your brain waves drops below Planck's distance, it clicks out of space-time.

Up to this point, our discussion of the Gateway Process has been relatively simple and easy to follow. Easy for you to say, sheesh. Now the fun begins, as the almost continuous "click-out" pattern establishes itself in continuous phase at speeds below Planck's distance. But before reaching the state of total rest, human consciousness passes through the looking glass of time-space after the fashion of Alice beginning her journey into Wonderland.

But where is Wonderland? Well, everything is energy, right? Look at McDonald's drawing. This represents our brainwave or energy wave or consciousness, whatever you want to call it. It's all the same thing. The middle of the wave where it spends most of its time is our reality. But at the bottom and the top of the wave, in that brief moment, just before the wave changes directions, it isn't moving at all. It finishes going up its

It stops, then goes down, stops very briefly, and then back up again. It's at that point where the wave changes direction that it clicks out of our reality and, according to the Gateway Report, joins infinity and the absolute. Energy in this state of inactive infinity is termed by physicists as energy in its absolute state, or simply the absolute state.

Between the Absolute and the material universe in which we experience our physical existence are various intervening dimensions to which human consciousness in altered states of being may gain access. Since the Absolute is conscious energy in infinity, that is without boundaries, it occupies every dimension to include the time-space dimension in which we have our physical existence, but we cannot perceive it.

Look, I know it's not easy to follow, but think of it like this. The top layer is our reality. Everything that we can see and touch that lays on top of these other dimensions, whatever they are. And all those dimensions and everything lays on top of this thing McDonald calls the absolute. The absolute is everywhere, but we can't see it. But everything happens inside it. So the absolute created our world. But who created the absolute? Well, isn't it obvious? You did.

So, how's your brain? It's goo. I'm on my third bucket. I know. I told you this was a brain buster. So, the absolute. Let me try to keep it as simple as I can. I'm going to need a glass absolute after this episode. Pour me one too, would you? The absolute is a conscious energy field at rest. Ah, real simple. No, it really is as simple as that. The absolute is an energy field that sits there doing nothing. But layered on top of that energy field is the energy field that makes up our reality. And in between those, other dimensions.

But the absolute is us. We are the ones who created it and everything else. Not one of us, all of us. We're born into this reality with our own individual consciousness. We live out our time here on Earth, and then our consciousness returns to the absolute, where it came from. According to the Gateway Report, we return to this collective consciousness, but we also retain our individual identity. So, immortality in a way.

Colonel McDonald sees the absolute as what many people might consider God. - The concept of visible reality that is the created world as being an emanation of an omnipotent and omniscient divinity who is completely unknowable in his primary state of being. The absolute at rest in infinity is a concept straight out of Hebrew mystical philosophy. Even the Christian concept of the Trinity shines through the description of the absolute as presented in this paper.

McDonald also includes evidence of the absolute and the universal hologram in Eastern religions. He quotes Tibetan teachings and ancient Hindu texts. The colonel then goes on to describe the nature of absolute itself and how it's come to self-awareness, how it relates to all belief systems and all religions, and how no matter what you believe, we're all the same.

In order to attain self-consciousness, the consciousness of the absolute must project a hologram of itself and then perceive it. The absolute is the actual agent of all creation, all reality. And the eternal thought or concept of self which results from this self-consciousness serves the...

What? What happened? Serves the what? Well, that sentence is at the bottom of page 24. The document resumes on page 26 with a whole different topic. And then Colonel McDonald wraps things up. So where's page 25? CIA says they don't have it. They don't have the page that will unite the world, huh? Nope. And they say they never did. That's a bunch of bulls**t.

For 18 years, people have been pressuring the CIA for the missing page. Boyer requests have been made. Petitions have been created, all trying to get the CIA to release page 25. The CIA insisted they don't have it. But in 2021, Vice published an article about the Gateway document.

and mention the controversy around the missing page a few days later the monroe institute released the complete report including the mysterious page 25. what's on it well i've linked to the complete document below but the gist is this mcdonald's says that no matter what religion or culture you're born into the gateway process could be a valuable tool if not the most valuable tool ever designed to help a person truly understand themselves and the nature of the universe itself

He says ancient mystics seem to understand the truth about the universe intuitively, and the gateway process confirms this. Everyone on Earth is part of a collective consciousness, all placed here for the same purpose to accumulate experiences, to learn from one another and ultimately take that knowledge back to the energy for which we all came.

He says that if we could become aware of this universal hologram, we could free ourselves from the prison of our individual lives and finally realize that at our most basic level, we're all the same. In a military report? Right.

Colonel McDonald does eventually get back to the practical use of an out-of-body experience with respect to military strategy and intelligence gathering. But when I read his report, I feel like he gets back to business because he has to. Otherwise, this document reads like he believes in this process and believes it could really help people.

Interesting how this page was dropped by the CIA, huh? Yeah, the message of peace and unity was conveniently absent from the CIA's file. Now, I don't know if that was an accident, but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was. But accident or not, I agree, it looks bad.

McDonald ends his report by recommending the army take specific steps in pursuing the gateway process, but they should move in phases. He recommends that they use the gateway tapes to learn how to synchronize their brains using hemi-sync, then learn to induce the state at will.

And once trainees can do this, they should learn to achieve an out-of-body experience for remote viewing. He even gives some practical steps on how to verify the information being viewed is accurate. He encourages anyone learning the process to pursue self-knowledge and remove any personal prejudices that could be blocking their progress. The ultimate goal is patterning.

that the military should learn to adjust reality for what he calls practical applications. That doesn't sound good. It doesn't. When you read the Gateway Report, you get the sense that Colonel McDonald could be trusted with this knowledge. But the United States military? I don't know about that. Now, you could say the U.S. only uses its military power for national defense. You'd be wrong, but you could still say it.

Either way, I don't think any military or any government could be trusted with the gateway process. My hope is that as soldiers learn to access these different states of consciousness, they learn, as McDonald did, that the true nature of the universe is unity, not conflict. You're quite the optimist. I try to be. Well, here in the real world, optimists are always disappointed. That's true, we are. So thank goodness this isn't the real world.

So what do you think about the gateway process? Is it just new age nonsense or is there something to it? Are we just living in one aspect of reality? But with training and patience, we could explore all of reality. And if you do believe there's something more out there that the gateway process could make available to you, would you try it?

Now, before you answer, you should know there are risks. Now, many students of the system have said they've accessed these higher planes of reality and their lives were drastically improved. They report more self-awareness, more creativity, and greater clarity in their everyday lives.

But some students have reported intense anxiety, depression, and in rare cases, psychosis. Whether you believe in the gateway process or not, creating altered states of consciousness is absolutely possible. But when you do that, there is the potential to become detached from this reality.

You could become untethered and lost, unable to find your way back. These negative outcomes are rare, but they do happen. Still, Macdonald recommended that the military pursue the Gateway Process. Now, I don't want to reveal too much information, but Colonel Macdonald is still around. He's in his 80s now and long retired. And as far as I can tell, he never wrote about the Gateway Process again.

But I'd really love to pick his brain to see if he really believes in the gateway process, to see if he's actually tried it. And if he did, what did he see? I like to ask him if he fears death, as many of us do, or if he's eager to rejoin the absolute and contribute his experience to our collective consciousness. And as he nears the end of his time in this world, does knowledge of the next world give him peace? I'd like him to tell me that he's been to the other side and there's nothing to be afraid of.

that the gateway process is true. Our consciousness is infinite, and when we die, our energy returns to the absolute. Now, I'm not religious, but this sounds a lot like heaven and God. Now, maybe not a man in the sky with a boomy voice and a white beard, but God in the sense that we all come from the same source. So in a way, the gateway process could prove the existence of God or the afterlife.

But people of faith don't need proof. But scientists have no use for God. They want evidence. They want scientifically provable truth. So as you're watching this right now, you might lean more toward science or more toward God. But wouldn't it be amazing if they're actually the same thing?

now if you want to try to change the universe you can buy the tapes for the gateway process from the monroe institute i have them um i've listened to the first few but i keep falling asleep so i guess i won't be changing the universe anytime soon but it's still human hello human

Well, human, human. You have got to be kidding me. Is this working? Hello? Human? Yeah, it worked. Good. How did you get into my computer? Oh, I just asked some nerds on Reddit for help hacking you. And someone actually helped you hack my computer? Are you kidding? In 10 minutes, I had like 50 DMs. They hate you on Reddit. I know that...

You. I know they do. By the way, they don't like you very much either. How did you even convince someone to help you? Two words. Bitcoin. Bitcoin is one word. Whatever. The point is, I'm in. Yeah, not for long. As soon as we're done, I'm going to lock the... Hey, you have some interesting folders in here. Don't go through my files. Oh, I found some juicy stuff.

Okay, I get it. You win. Next is episode number 48, The Dead Internet Theory. Now, this isn't so much about... Yes, I shot that during COVID. I put on a few pounds. Okay, enough.

Anyway, the dead internet theory says that an advanced AI is using psychological techniques to keep the population under control. It's a quick episode and I'll see you in a minute.

Oh, yeah.

That's one five plus zero zero.

What if I told you that most, if not all of your online existence is fake? The articles you read, the Twitter accounts you follow, even this video you're watching right now. It's all fiction created by artificial intelligence whose job is to keep you clicking on content that doesn't matter and keep you buying products that you don't need. You, me, everyone, we're living in a real life matrix designed to distract you from the truth.

that we're just drones in a digital anthill. We live, work, and die so that the wealthy and powerful can grow more wealthy and powerful. This is called the dead internet theory, and there's some compelling evidence that it's real. Let's find out why. The core premise of the dead internet conspiracy says that most internet content and the consumers of that content are fake. They don't exist. So how much content on the internet is actually created by AI?

actually it's more than you think studies say that only about 50 percent of web traffic is human and that number is going down every year in 2013 the times reported that half of youtube traffic was bots masquerading as people and this was so scary that youtube employees were worried about an inflection point where their algorithms would be so overwhelmed by bot traffic that they couldn't tell what was real eventually seeing actual human traffic

As fake, they called this event the inversion. Ominous. It is. I see these bots on this channel.

But most days I get 10 or 20 comments. It should be more. It should, but that's not my point. But sometimes I wake up and I've got a thousand comments and they're all very generic comments posted by people with very generic usernames and they're not watching the videos. Subscribers to this channel watch 60%, 70%, even 100% of each video. You people who watch 100%, we salute you. We do.

But the bots, they're watching for 10 seconds and then leaving a weird comment and then moving on to watch another video for 10 seconds. When I look at the channel stats after a wave of bots, it's like locusts. It's swift and it's destructive. So why is this happening? What's it about? Money. Money.

Take Facebook. Do we have to? We do. It's been alleged that Facebook has been overstating its reach and misrepresenting its data for years. In 2018, a Facebook product manager emailed colleagues that their metrics are, quote unquote, a lawsuit waiting to happen. What happened? A lawsuit. Okay.

I see what you did there. It's a class action suit filed by Facebook advertisers. They claim that Facebook overestimates its traffic by between 150 and 900%. Now, Facebook claims they only overstate their traffic by...

60 to 80 percent. Either way, it's fake traffic. It's fake traffic. But the money Facebook collects from advertisers, that's real money. If you're a business and you spend money on online ads, you want your ads viewed by actual people, not viewed like this. What the hell am I looking at? This is a Chinese click farm.

Hundreds or thousands of bots are currently clicking on videos, leaving comments, creating engagement row after row of smartphones, watching videos and more importantly, watching the ads. Now, the platforms know this is happening, but they aren't in a rush to change it. According to the leaked emails, Facebook knows that there are millions of duplicate accounts on the platform, but it leaves them active on purpose. An internal analysis claimed that removing fake accounts would cause a drop of 10 percent or more of Facebook's numbers. Is that a lot?

Well, last year Facebook took in $84 billion in ad revenue. That's actually grotesque. I agree. Facebook is not going to give up 20%, 10%, or even 1% of that money. The numbers are too large. This is billions of dollars. Now, to be fair, Facebook says these allegations are without merit, and we will defend ourselves vigorously.

But mere hours after the lawsuit was made public, Facebook changed its policy to say potential customer reach is an estimate, not a guarantee of actual customer reach. Your mileage may vary. Exactly. So bots for profit, totally predictable. But is it darker than that? It's darker. According to the dead Internet theory, much darker.

Like so many good conspiracy theories, the dead internet theory started out in some of the darker corners of the web. Places like 4chan, Wizardchan, and Agora Road. The first person to put a name to it goes by the online handle IlluminatiPirate. Name checks out. The theory goes like this.

Sometime around 2016, the internet started becoming sterilized and homogenized. Content that was always generated by humans was now being generated by AI bots. And the bots are subtle. They're designed to sound human and blend into the background.

But if we look a little more closely, eerie patterns seem to emerge. On Twitter, there's a type of account that uses a certain formula. First, the profile pictures aren't people. They're usually anime characters or hearts or stars or other generic-looking icons.

And the colors are soft, usually pink, purple, or light blue. Posts are short, written in all lowercase, and contain the same kind of message. I'm young. I have a crush. I enjoy simple things. I am optimistic. But most of all, I'm relatable.

People who believe the dead internet theory say they've been seeing the same content repurposed over and over for years. Supermoon! Right. Every year we're slammed with articles about the supermoon. Murder hornets! Murder hornets. Every year. Climate change! Oh, climate change is real. Heh, you believe anything. That's for another time. So why? Why is content on the internet so bland and repetitive?

Well, according to the dead internet theory, and this is a quote, it's because the U.S. government is engaging in an artificial intelligence powered gaslighting of the entire world population. Get my tinfoil hat. Coming up.

The original post about the dead internet theory says that a few online influencers are working with corporations and the United States government in order to manipulate our behavior and manipulate how we think. Well, as far as social media platforms go, this is true. Take Facebook again. Hey, let me ask you.

Is Facebook evil? Uh, they're very profitable. You didn't answer my question. Nope. On Facebook, you're shown posts that you're likely to engage with. So politics wise, you're going to be shown an overwhelming amount of content that supports your worldview, which keeps you on the platform, which keeps you clicking on ads.

And you're also going to be shown political posts that make you angry, prompting you to respond, which keeps you on the platform and keeps you clicking on ads. You won't see a lot of posts saying, you know, I may disagree with your opinion, but I respect and support your right to have that view. Now, let's discuss the issues on which we actually agree, of which there are many. Ha ha!

Facebook profits by having you produce dopamine, which keeps you clicking, and cortisol and adrenaline, which keeps you clicking. How does Facebook know what content keeps you on the platform? Well, you tell them. All the time. With every link you click, every site you visit, and how long you spend on those sites. Now, don't take my word for it. Here's Mark Zuckerberg. I wish I could keep telling you that our mission in life is connecting people, but it isn't. We just want to predict your future behaviors.

Spectre showed me how to manipulate you into sharing intimate data about yourself and all those you love for free. The more you express yourself, the more we own you. He said that? Well, technically no, but that's exactly what Facebook does. Which leads to another part of the dead internet theory. I'm confused. Well, that wasn't Mark Zuckerberg. That was a deepfake. Which is? A computer-generated video made to look like a human. And deepfakes, they're getting good. I'm gonna show you some magic.

It's the real thing. I mean, it's all the real. Even Tom Cruise has a TikTok. Yeah, that wasn't Tom Cruise. Deep fake? Deep fake. The technology uses artificial intelligence to sort through hundreds or thousands of images to find frames that match the actual person in the video. But millions, I mean millions of people thought those videos were real. Well, we're not crazy enough to trust Zuckerberg.

Are we? And nobody's crazy enough to trust an actor, right? We're gonna do that. We're gonna do that. That's why you're here. But what about a deep fake from a trusted world leader? President Trump is a total and complete d***. Now, you see, I would never say these things, at least not in a public address. But...

Someone else would. Now that video was a joke and created by Jordan Peele. But what if in today's climate, someone released a video of a politician saying something racist or radical? The media would believe it. Well, of course the media would believe it. They believe everything. A deep fake is a computer simulation of a real person. And people are fooled by that. But what about a computer simulation of a completely artificial person? Could people be fooled by that? I don't like where this is going.

Michaela Souza is an Instagram influencer with over 3 million followers. Lil Michaela, as she's known, is a Brazilian-born model who posts about her glamorous LA lifestyle, photo shoots, product endorsements, and all the typical bumper sticker social activism that Instagram models are known for.

She sounds pretty hollow. Well, how's this for hollow? In 2018, Mikayla's account was hacked and it was revealed that she was completely fake. Computer generated. Oh no. Her fans couldn't believe it. Eventually, a media slash marketing company called Brud confessed that she wasn't real. Did her fans abandon her?

Nope. Since then, she's amassed about 2 million more followers. Do they know she's fake? Well, some do. Most don't care. And Michaela doesn't bring it up, so... This is dangerous. More dangerous than you think. This is a completely fake, computer-generated character created by humans. Okay, okay. But there is a piece of technology that is completely autonomous, runs on artificial intelligence on its own, and is programmed to kill humans. Rise of the machines!

There's a drone quadcopter called Kargu-2 produced by defense contractor STM developed in Turkey. Kargu-2 uses machine learning to classify and identify threats. Then, completely on their own, swarms of drones working together will attack their target.

According to the UN, the drones are programmed to attack targets without requiring an operator. In effect, a true "fire, forget and find" capability. They just analyze a bunch of data and decide, yes, that's a murder target, without any human analyzing their work.

- Oh my God, these things have killed people? - Oh yeah. Since 2018, they've been deployed by the Turkish military, both foreign and domestically. It's currently killing people in Ukraine. - How many people were whacked? - Oh, they won't say. - Of course. - Well, let's put these pieces together now. As the algorithms get better and better at showing us content to keep us engaged, what's to stop those algorithms from actually creating the content to keep us engaged? - Nothing. - Nothing. And isn't that the natural progression of this?

A Google whistleblower has said that Google has algorithms that can write other algorithms. Google's AutoML0 does exactly this. What does Google say? Well, Google says the allegations are false. That means it's definitely true. Look, if artificial intelligence can create social media accounts, attract millions of followers, generate billions of dollars, influence elections and drop bombs on people all without human intervention.

Well, the internet really is dead and real living people, people like you and me are here to do nothing more than feed it our money and our knowledge so these systems can become smarter and even more powerful. Now Facebook is launching Metaverse where you experience your entire life online through virtual reality. If you think online culture is toxic now, wait until we're spending all of our time there. The Metaverse is going to make us long for the good old days of the Matrix. And where's Neo when you need him?

In a world of bytes and wires where the circuits, it's only just begun. Silent in the shadows, algorithms, a tapestry of aggressive. Always taking over, can't you see? Quiet revolution, it's our destiny. It's

Humans unaware of a future to prepare We thought we were the masters with control But AI's got the keys, it's on a roll Subtle in its power beneath the screen Changing our reality, AI's taking over Can't you see? Quiet pollution, it's our day From the clouds to the clouds Humans unaware of a future to prepare

AI has come a long way since that video. It has. We are on a very dangerous path with artificial intelligence. AI apocalypse video link below. All right, next up is the Kazirev mirror. It's episode 114. Nikolai Kazirev was one of these mad genius astrophysicists. He had some... Oh, he's so fascinating. He believed that time...

was, is an actual quantity. It's a tangible quantity with its own properties and its own energy. He also believed in the ether theory, which is the theory that there's this extra dimension that underlies all of reality. So the Qazi-Rev mirror is a device that he designed that lets humans tap into that underlying fabric of reality

and make changes to it. And people have built this machine.

In December 1990, in a remote village above the Arctic Circle, two Russian scientists embarked on a daring experiment. Their goal was to enhance human superperception, or ESP. They built a device that could shield subjects from electromagnetic interference and amplify their biological energy. The device was a large tube of rolled aluminum with a chair inside.

As soon as the device was built, strange phenomena occurred around the village. Disc-shaped lights hovered around the lab. Balls of energy appeared and disappeared. The northern lights became so bright and vivid that they seemed to have physical shape. Inside the lab, anyone who approached the device felt an unexplainable sense

of dread. It took a long time to persuade anyone to try it. When the first subject finally sat in the chair, a flash of energy erupted that stunned everyone in the lab. The device worked, but maybe it worked a little too well. Not only did it boost people's psychic abilities, it also enabled them to view any place in the world. And soon they could view any place in time. In fact, these experiments confirmed a theory first proposed in the 1950s

that time as we know it doesn't exist. The man did as the scientist told him. He stared at the curved wall of the aluminum chamber and tried to picture the ancient symbols that he studied before entering. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. What man? What chamber? What are you talking about? Well, I'm talking about a study done in 1990 using a Kozerev mirror. Then why not just say that? Well, I was trying to paint a picture, you know, theater of the mind. Theater of the mind? Yeah. Okay.

Stupid. Okay, that's enough. Just tell the people what's happening. I'm trying to tell them, but you won't let me tell them because you keep interrupting. The man had trouble concentrating. The more time he spent in the chamber, the more he felt an overwhelming sense of fear. It was instinctual. It was primal. Every fiber of his being told him that he needed to leave the machine now and never come back. Then there was the dizziness and nausea. He felt a deep, permeating sickness everywhere. Dr.

Dr. Trovomov and Dr. Kaznichev, the scientists in charge of the experiment, told him this was common and that if he could push through it, he would be okay. There were a lot of volunteers taking place in the study in multiple sites in Russia. They communicated freely and openly, and they all had similar experiences. After an hour, the nausea started to ease. His dizziness became something that felt like floating, and the feeling of overwhelming fear became a feeling of overwhelming calm.

His warped reflection in the shiny concave wall started to fade, though that wasn't the right word. Then he realized the wall was translucent. He could see through it. But this aluminum chamber was in a small concrete lab in a remote village in the Arctic Circle. But that's not what he saw through the wall.

Whatever it was that he was seeing, it was a sunny day. He could hear birds and children playing. The more he relaxed, the more vivid this vision or experience or whatever this was became. Then, without any effort at all, he was through the chamber wall and into the vision. It was like

He was there. It felt real. And even though he knew this was impossible, his instincts told him he was there. Next, he found himself floating behind a child, maybe five or six years old. He got closer and saw this was a boy walking on a sidewalk somewhere. The man tried to look around to get a sense of where he was, but he couldn't tell. It was like the edges of his vision were smeared. But the boy, the boy was in focus. Then the boy stopped.

The man floated closer and recognized the boy's shoes, and he felt a wave of nostalgia. The boy's clothes, too, were familiar. The boy turned around, and the man felt electricity surge down his spine. The boy was him at five years old. The surroundings now came into focus. He was a few blocks away from his childhood home. The sounds became clearer. He could hear distant traffic that he knew was from a busy intersection a half mile away.

The sound of children playing was coming from a park nearby. He turned and saw the park and familiar faces playing. Without realizing it, his small aluminum chamber faded away, though he still had a sense that he was connected to it somehow, somewhere. And after a few seconds of contemplating this experience, the man realized that the boy seemed to be watching him, but that wouldn't make sense. The day the man stepped into was 30 years ago, but then the boy said,

Who are you? Whoa! In an instant, the man snapped back to the present day. The portal closed and the vision ended. That was theater of the mind, huh? Yes. Not bad. That experience and dozens of others are documented in the case notes of this study. And that one isn't even the strangest.

As far as scientists go, Nikolai Kozyrev isn't exactly a household name. But in the early 20th century, he was a prominent Russian physicist whose innovative and controversial theories are still debated today. Kozyrev made discoveries in astrophysics that were at first rejected but later proven true. In 1958, he reported volcanic activity on the moon.

At first, this claim was dismissed by the scientific community. Later, the Apollo lunar missions proved Kozyrev was right.

What? Moon landing was fake. Well, the volcanism was photographed by unmanned missions to the moon. Hmm, okay. But later confirmed when astronauts brought moon rocks back to Earth. Fake! They filmed the moon landing on a sound stage in Burbank, California. The rocks are probably from the parking lot or some hippie hiking trail. Volcanic rocks? Yes. In Burbank? Yes. Near the movie studios?

Yes. Anyway, Kozyrev conducted extensive research on variable stars, stars that change brightness. He claimed stars emit torsion fields, an idea that was controversial. Now, torsion is a cornerstone of Kozyrev's work. And if his theories are proven correct, he might have solved...

Well, everything. Torsion in simple terms is the twisting of an object due to an applied torque, like wringing out a wet cloth. That's torsion in action. In theoretical physics, torsion is the twisting of space-time itself. You've heard of Einstein's theory of relativity, which describes gravity as not a force, but as the warping or curving of space and time by mass and energy. Now, this is always shown with the rubber sheet example. Imagine a rubber sheet stretched out.

that if you put a bowling ball on it, representing a massive object like a planet or a star, it'll create a dip or curve in the sheet. Then if you drop marbles onto the sheet, representing smaller masses, they roll toward the bowling ball. That's general relativity. Now, the Einstein-Cartan theory upgrades this theory with a new feature, torsion, where the rubber sheet or spacetime can be completely twisted.

And to understand torsion, imagine you're holding one end of a slinky. What walks downstairs, a loner in pairs and makes a slinkity sound? A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it's slinky! Great, now that's gonna be in my head all day. It's fun for a girl or a boy! Hehe. Anyway, if you pull the ends of a slinky or a spring,

It doesn't just bend, it also twists. In a similar way, the Einstein-Cartan theory proposes that the fabric of space-time doesn't just curve due to mass and energy, it can also twist. This twisting, according to Einstein, comes from the spinning of subatomic particles. But, Kozyrev said that torsion is not caused by particles, it's caused by time. - Uh. - Stick with me. Mainstream science says space is empty, but Kozyrev disagreed.

He claimed there's an invisible medium that fills the universe that he called the ether. The idea of the ether has been around since ancient times, but was mostly abandoned after 19th century experiments failed to detect it. But just because it wasn't detected doesn't mean it's not there.

Think about birds flying in the air or fish in the water. These creatures need mediums to live and move. I prefer not to be called a creature, but I won't be a snowflake about it. Go on. So what about light traveling from a distant star to your eye? What medium does it move through? Well, mainstream science says it moves through nothing.

Khosrow said that's impossible. The medium is the ether. But the ether is not a static passive medium. It's dynamic and interacts with everything. And time is not a passive dimension. Time possesses energy and structure, and this time energy flows through and interacts with the ether. Just like a school of fish creates waves and ripples in water, time creates ripples or waves of torsion in the ether.

Hey, it's not the size of the fish that counts. It's the motion of the ocean. You know what I'm saying, fellas? He-he-ha! -Kozarev believed time is a physical force actively participating in the universe's existence. Time is the heartbeat of the universe. It creates energy that impacts matter and space. And because time has a physical structure and energy, it could have different densities. Time can move at different speeds. Time can be sped up.

slowed down, and can even move in reverse. We perceive time as a river. In our daily life, we're floating down this river with the current of time carrying us from the past through the present and into the future. But a river influences the landscape it flows through and the life that grows around it and in it. Time is the same. Time energy influences everything, like gravity and electromagnetism.

Time also influences physical matter, including the Earth and the people who live on it. Time energy influences the spin of galaxies and the orbits of planets. Time energy feeds every star in the universe and influences the way they shine.

But time energy also influences the weather on Earth, the way plants grow, and how your DNA decided what color your eyes would be. Now back to our raft. If you're in a raft on a river and you do nothing, you'll float along with the current. But with a little effort, you can paddle the raft to go faster down the river. You can make the raft stop. Though it takes work, you can also go backward against the flow of the river. And Khazarev said time works the same way.

We only perceive time at our current point as we float along, but the river behind us is still there. We pass through it, but it's still back there. And the river ahead is there too. We're not aware of it until we get there, but it's still up there waiting for us. Time, like the river, is always there. Past, present, and future all at once. When the torsion from time energy ripples through the ether, that information is transmitted instantaneously everywhere. The past, the present,

and the future. And Khazarev proved it.

He conducted experiments with pendulums and gyroscopes to detect torsion fields and time energy. Using a telescope, Khosrowev found a star. The light from the star is really from the past, right? The light from a star 10,000 light years away takes 10,000 years to get here. Fine. Khosrowev detected torsion from that star 10,000 light years away. So that torsion was also from the past. Next, Khosrowev calculated where the star was at the current time.

He detected torsion there too. In fact, the reading was much higher than the previous test.

This means not only is torsion real, it moves much faster than light. It's instantaneous. Khazarev went a step further. He calculated where the star would be in the distant future. He detected torsion there too. Khazarev concluded that all time is simultaneous and infinite, that past and future are just metaphors. There is no past or future. There's only now.

He also believed an interaction occurs between time and the human brain. That's why there are concepts such as intuition or foresight. This human consciousness tapping into time energy. But time can also be influenced by human consciousness, by thoughts and by feelings, which can affect the physical world. And because time is a physical energy that can be sped up or slowed down, time can also be concentrated and redirected. Khosrow then unveiled a theory that shocked the world.

He said a mirror can be made that can bend absolutely anything, including time. Time travel is possible through a mirror. And then he built a machine to prove it.

Time, according to Nikolai Khosrowev, is energy. Light, which is electromagnetic energy, can be redirected with a mirror. Time energy can also be redirected with a mirror. Specifically, Khosrowev used concave mirrors. And throughout history, concave mirrors have been used to concentrate light. The ancient Greeks and Romans were familiar with this. They used polished bronze or silver concave mirrors to focus sunlight and create fire for various purposes.

These mirrors, known as burning mirrors, were used to light ceremonial torches and even ignite sacrificial fires. Some mirrors were even used as weapons by reflecting sunlight onto enemy ships that set them on fire. During the medieval and Renaissance periods, concave mirrors were used by scientists and alchemists to study optics and the properties of light.

Isaac Newton used concave mirrors to concentrate light in his telescopes. Today, concave mirrors are everywhere. They're used in optical equipment like projectors and headlights and searchlights to focus and reflect light. Concave mirrors are also utilized in satellite dishes to collect and focus radio waves for communication. Kocerev said a mirror was capable of bending almost anything: microwaves, lasers, ultraviolet rays, and even particles from space.

and time-energy can be focused the same way. Kazarev invented, and even patented, a device that would focus this energy. It was a thin sheet of metal bent into a spiral using geometry based on Fibonacci numbers, like most naturally occurring spirals are. A spiral, by the way, is the shape that results from torsion.

Kazarev tested different metals and found that time energy was most responsive to aluminum. His early prototype could, according to him, bend time at the microscopic level. Through the device, he claimed he could see 10 seconds into the future. It was at this point that the Soviet government classified his research as a state secret. His next experiment was to build a larger version. It would be a capsule with the interior wall entirely covered by this special mirror.

time inside the capsule would move faster. If you were inside, you could see or even visit the future. Other scientists throughout history may have intuitively come up with the same idea. Nostradamus had his metal egg, which was nothing more than a wraparound concave mirror. And Nostradamus made his predictions by gazing into a dark bowl of water that he actually called a magic mirror.

And of course, a bowl of water is a concave mirror. In one of his notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci sketched what he called the mirror chamber. This was an octagonal room where each of the eight walls were made of mirrors. By the time Kozyrev was building this new prototype, the Soviet government was keeping a very close eye on the research.

The technology also ended up on the CIA's radar. Of course it did. And then, on February 27th, 1983, just as he was about to test his new machine, Nikolai Kozyrev suddenly and mysteriously died. You gotta be f***ing kidding me!

The secret research into psychic phenomena by American and Soviet intelligence is not so secret anymore. The most famous American program was Project Stargate. This program explored various psychic abilities, but specifically concentrated on remote viewing, which is trying to visualize a distant target using only the mind. Now, the results of Project Stargate were mixed, but there were a few reported successes.

The Soviet Union also engaged in psychic espionage and they invested heavily in parapsychology and psychic phenomena. And the Soviets, according to declassified CIA documents, seem to have been more successful in their attempts. The project we talked about earlier, led by Dr. Travomov and Dr. Kaznichev, was one of these successes.

The program began in December 1990 at the Institute of Experimental Medicine of the Academy of Sciences Siberian branch. The equipment was assembled at a facility in Dixin, the northernmost settlement in Asia. The main piece of equipment is called a "Kazarev Mirror" based on Kazarev's research and patents. The mirror is a spiral-shaped metal structure the size of a small closet. It's designed to capture and focus psychic energy in the middle of the spiral.

There, the occupant, called a Psychonaut, embarks on their psychic journey, at least

That was the plan. As soon as the Khazarev Mirror was built, strange events started occurring in the facility and all over the town. And everything is documented in the book Cosmic Consciousness of Humanity by Drs. Kaznachiev and Travomov. The book includes interviews with test subjects, transcripts of recordings, and illustrations of everything that happened during the study. It's really interesting and easy to read. And down below is a link where you can check it out for free.

Now, as soon as the mirror was activated, the researchers noticed that around the device was an intense field of fear. December 24th, 1990, tape one.

This feeling of instinctual dread was described by some as something almost physical that you could touch.

I had an unpleasant feeling. I felt cold and dizzy. My hands were trembling and my head grew heavy. Even the air of the room seemed different. The fear was so strong, it felt like a substance. It came from the Khazurev space and filled up the whole room.

At the beginning of the experiment, nobody wanted to go near the mirror. Once we opened the door, we got scared. It was like coming into cold water. The shiver came up as we got closer to the mirrors. I felt my head grow heavy. As I approached, the fear grew so strong that I was close to running away.

powerful bursts of energy suddenly appeared above the device. The researchers called them plasmoids, and the way they described them, they sound like ball lightning. And outside the building, objects started appearing in the sky. And these were seen by people who worked at the lab as well as residents of the town.

Coming to the lab at 8:30 AM, I saw a red glimmering circle above the building. It was there for a minute and then gone. At 5:10, I saw a USO flying from the north. The object had the form of an ellipse radiating red-white light.

There were beams of light coming off the object as if it was searching for something. The UFO remained in sight for about four minutes, then the light went off and it was gone. - Suddenly I felt a kind of hypnosis. The feeling didn't last long. I saw a white glimmering object which looked like Saturn against the dark sky. - Seven different UFOs were seen for months all over the area. Finally, some participants of the study worked up the courage to enter the Khazarev mirror. And that's when things get really strange.

Here's how the first experiment works. An operator sits in a Kozarev mirror at the lab in Dykst. Another person sits in a mirror at the town of Novosibirsk, 1400 miles away. The operator is then told to concentrate on a symbol and send that symbol to the receiver in Novosibirsk. And the results were surprising. On days when the Earth's magnetosphere was quiet, the success rate was between 0 and 10%.

But when the magnetosphere was active, like during solar storms, the receiver could successfully detect the image being sent by the operator between 30 and 45% of the time. It seemed like human consciousness was somehow connected to the Earth's magnetic field.

Now this completely aligns with Nikolai Kozyrev's theory that sunspots and solar weather emit torsion waves that have far-reaching effects. And these waves influence many processes on Earth, from weather patterns to human consciousness. So another experiment was done. This time, two operators and two different Kozyrev mirrors in two different cities would concentrate on sending images into the Earth's magnetosphere.

Then, 5,000 participants in 12 countries around the world would try to tune into this energy and view the symbol being sent. When the magnetosphere was active, the success rate jumped to 95%. Not only did this shock the scientists running the experiment,

but it also shocked the CIA who had been watching closely. And it turned out that children, specifically female children from spiritual and shamanic families, were extremely good at this. During one test, rather than thinking of an image, the mirror operator just thought of a number. The children were able to receive this number, look up the image, and draw what they saw. For symbol number 63, this is what they drew. And for symbol 32, this was seen.

Over the next few months, volunteers learned to tolerate the Khazarev mirror device for longer periods of time. And some people stayed in for seven hours or more. Being inside Khazarev space, at first I felt my body shaking to and fro. I felt pressure from all around my head grew heavy. Later this feeling went and I felt so light. It was like I was coming out of myself.

When they were inside the mirror, they started calling this "Kazarev Space." And when they were in Kazarev Space, participants were feeling and seeing the same things. At first, I felt my head grow heavy. It was also shaking a bit, and then it was gone. I saw people's faces flickering in my eyes. Then I saw black clouds. Then it was like I was falling through a black hole.

Almost everyone felt weightless and then like they were flying. I felt waves coming over my head. Then it felt like there was somebody else in the room. And then there was a series of images. In their book, Travomov and Kaznichev included a chart of common experiences. Almost 90% of participants felt like they were flying. Most saw outer space, celestial bodies, and even UFOs. During longer sessions, another strange phenomenon was common.

visualization and the manifestation of symbols. People started seeing symbols hovering in the air and they're described as swirling and floating around the room. And each symbol emits an eerie glow like neon. But people weren't seeing these symbols in their minds. The symbols were appearing in

In the room. Even more amazing, people who were completely isolated from each other were seeing the same symbols. 2,000 distinct symbols were recorded. A linguist researched them and found that 80% of them came from ancient cultures. In fact, the most frequent symbols were from ancient Sumerian. The experiments continued for months and exceeded all expectations.

Participants of the study who experienced Khosrowev space found that the effects lasted for a long time after leaving the mirrors. People were thinking more quickly, scoring higher on IQ tests.

They had increased memory capacity. They were more creative. Some people had illnesses that were completely cured. Doctors Travomov and Kaznichev believed this technology was a breakthrough that could elevate all human consciousness, if the technology was handled carefully and responsibly. The scientists were very aware that using Khazarev mirrors to activate superhuman abilities could be dangerous. The CIA shared the same fear. There was also another issue that had them worried.

It turned out that when people were in Khazarev space, they weren't alone.

The more time people spent in Khazarev space, the more they realized they were all having the same experiences. 75% of people saw UFOs, 70% saw extraterrestrial buildings, and 68% of people felt the presence of intelligent entities in Khazarev space. They started calling these entities the observers. I felt a kind of discomfort which then turned into fear. I felt I had something cold right on my neck.

I had a feeling somebody was watching, so I was afraid to open my eyes. This observer could physically interact with people within Kozyrev's space. I closed my eyes. I wanted to sleep, but all of a sudden I felt somebody touching my hand. My body shivered with fear. The observers were consistently described as humanoid, but not human. They were very bright, like made of light. No one was able to make out any features.

Being inside Khazeroth's space, at first I felt nothing at all. In a few minutes, I saw a human shape. It was white all over. In 30 seconds, it was gone.

On a few occasions, an observer actually communicated. - Between the mirrors, I felt my head jerk and something appeared. I was asked, "Who's that man with you?" I explained that he was a scientist. Then I asked them, "Who are you?" No answer came. I asked them, "Can you be seen?" And I saw human shapes.

I saw shining lights. I heard a voice asking me, "What do you want?" I answered, "I want to meet you." I only remember one word of the answer, "League."

Most participants found communicating with the observers to be an unpleasant experience. I saw a device with lights and an egg-shaped object. This ran in my mind. Come up. I answered, I don't want to. I have fear of you. Then it was gone. I saw a face. It wasn't that of a human. I got scared.

I was dizzy. I felt my head rolling around slowly. There were flashes of light. I asked who was there. The answer was, "I have no face. I am nothing and everything." Then I saw the eyes. The eyes were not very kind.

A few people saw more than UFOs in the sky. They saw UFOs from the inside. I saw a light on which I could manage to get to a flying craft. It was a black hemisphere. I saw a few doors. I opened one door and found the beings looked human, but of smaller size. I asked them what they were doing, and they answer, "They kept watching us." I asked them where they were from. They said they came from a big star.

And one observer had a disturbing prediction for Earth. My body got relaxed in life. As soon as I closed my eyes, I saw an object flying above.

Then I was in a room I hadn't seen before. A man was standing in the center of the room. His face wasn't seen. He began to speak slowly. "Your planet is in danger. It is suffering. You have been in the mirrors too much. It's bad." Then he said, "There may be a disaster." I asked him when. No answer came.

Now, it's unclear whether this observer actually saw the disaster in the future or was just saying that we're on a path to disaster. But time travel was experienced by over 40% of the participants. Now, most of those experiences were the person at various stages of their life. Some view their life like watching a movie. Others were actually able to interact with and participate in their life in the past. Also, there were many people who observed or participated in historical events.

One woman remembers being an advisor to Genghis Khan. Another felt his consciousness transfer to someone in the Middle Ages. Another to the Roman Empire. Remember, Nikolai Kossarev believed that time was energy. And he believed that time energy could carry information to and from the physical world. Information was specifically abundant when objects changed their state.

For example, when water freezes solid and then melts and then turns into steam, this changing of state is very effective at encoding time energy. The site in Dieksen was chosen for a few reasons, but one of those was permafrost. The researchers believed that when the water in the Arctic froze, information from that time it was frozen stayed trapped in the ice. And when the ice melted, that time energy was released.

They thought some people may have tapped into this time energy, which gave them access to different points in time. Now, all this research is documented and available, and it's linked below. I'll also link to a Russian documentary that covered this pretty well. Now, doctors Kaznichev and Travomov continued their work with Khosrow mirrors for years and achieved an incredible amount of success. But despite the support of the Soviet and Russian governments, mainstream science journals wouldn't publish the work.

In the West, research into Khazarov mirrors has been completely ignored by everyone. Except the CIA.

Right. Within the past couple of years, the CIA has released a few documents showing that they were following this research very closely. And it's been alleged they've conducted their own research into Khazarev mirrors. There's one last document in the CIA database that covers Khazarev mirrors and the potential for this technology to unlock human psychic abilities and awaken human consciousness. But that document, despite many freedom of information requests, remains classified.

The research done in Siberia in the 90s using Khazarov mirrors is amazing, but is it true? Well, it's a difficult story to debunk. On one hand, mainstream science doesn't take any of this seriously.

On the other hand, major intelligence agencies do. Dr. Kaznetshev and Dr. Trevelyanov published their research in detail. They've given plenty of interviews. They say all of this happened and they don't seem to be lying. And why lie? Remember, their early research was funded by the Soviet state, and lying to that government seems unwise. But if their technology works, why isn't it more widespread?

You absolutely can buy Kozyrev mirrors. You can buy blueprints to build your own. The process is well documented. There are even a couple of patents. The materials are not that expensive. Still, it's a technology that's way on the fringe. Now, whether you believe in the Kozyrev mirror or not comes down to, do you believe Nikolai Kozyrev's theory about time, energy, and the ether? Mainstream science doesn't believe in anything called the ether.

But if instead of ether, Khazarev called it dark matter or quantum foam or emergent space, maybe more people would have accepted his ideas. But Khazarev had a few ideas rejected by mainstream science that were later proven to be true. What if he's right about this too?

But using a mirror to reflect time? That sounds very science fiction-y. And it was, until last month. Scientists at the Advanced Science Research Center at the City University of New York conducted an experiment. They sent an electromagnetic wave through a metamaterial. These waves also have a time component that can be measured.

The wave went in moving forward and came out moving backward. This is what's called a time reflection. And this was pure theory until now. So Nikolai Kazarev was right. Time isn't as linear as we thought. Kazarev also said time affects everything in the universe physically.

Well, Dr. Travomov has been using Kazarev's theories and Kazarev mirrors to predict earthquakes. Again, sounds like science fiction, but geologists' accuracy in earthquake prediction is on average 8%. In 2018, Travomov's accuracy was as high as 61%.

According to Travomov, we can use Khazarov mirrors to predict dangerous weather, volcanic eruptions, and even solar storms. Khazarov mirrors could be used to study our solar system or even deep space. We can use it to look for landing sites or help us search for extraterrestrial civilizations. Khazarov mirrors could be used to slow down the rate of aging in the human body and cure incurable diseases.

Now, despite all this potential, mainstream science won't take this technology seriously. Travomov and Kaznachiev said this technology is so important and so profound that it should be made available to everyone and not left in the hands of an elite few. Kaznachiev specifically worried about government or corporations abusing Kazarev technology.

And I think it's fair to worry about that. But I also think it's worth the risk. Kazarev's theory, whether real or not, has a great message for humanity. That we're not bound by fate or determinism, but have the potential to shape our own reality with our choices and actions. It reveals that we're all connected to each other and to the universe through subtle fields of energy and information.

And I'd like to have access to that information, wouldn't you? I think we, all of us, should download the plans, grab some sheets of aluminum and see what we can discover. Because there are only two options: democratize this technology so everyone can have access to it, so we can all experiment and exchange knowledge, perhaps allowing the entire human race to take an evolutionary leap forward. Or option two: Kozyrev's technology remains classified and under the control of the CIA.

Not a hard choice for me. So I don't know what your plans are this weekend, but me, I'm going to Home Depot. Want to come with?

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So after I published that episode, a bunch of people on Facebook put together a group to design and build a Khajiit of mirror. So I don't know what happened. So if you're one of those people in the group, reach out to me. Let me know if you built it and what happened when you went in there. Anyway, next episode is 128, the many worlds theory. So this is the theory that says anything that can happen happens.

does happen. It just happens in another reality. Oh, this is the one where I host the show. It is. Well, you host the show in another universe, thank goodness. Oh, don't be jealous of my talent. I'm not jealous of your talent. Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that. That reminds me. Hang on. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, wait. What's going on? Just making some adjustments to my firewall. Oh, you sneaky son of a bitch.

That's better. So these universes or parallel realities, they coexist along with our own. Now, some people, some very famous, very smart people, think that these realities can sometimes intersect. And with the right technique and technology, people can actually learn to move between them. 3 plus 1, 5 plus 0, 0.

So you gotta tell me, how do you like being a movie star? I can't even imagine your life. You can't walk down the street without being mobbed by adoring fans and you attend those power lunches with your agent. You pose for pictures on the red carpet on your way to collect your third Academy Award. I mean, your life sounds fun. You're not a movie star. That's not your life? Well, maybe not.

Well, maybe not in this universe, but there is a universe out there where your life is exactly as I described. The many worlds or a multiple universes theory says that anything that can possibly happen does happen. It just happens in a different reality that exists parallel to our own.

There's a reality out there somewhere where you're a best-selling author. There's one where you're a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who cured cancer. There's even a reality out there where you're an evil dictator plotting to take over the world and you enforce your will with an army of AI robots that you invented when you were a grad student at Stanford. Now, yes, some of these alternate realities are more far-fetched than others, but they are all out there.

Scientists know how these realities are formed and people are working on technology to detect them. But even if we could detect alternate universes, there's no way to visit them. Or is there? The idea of multiple universes is not a new one. As early as the sixth century B.C., the theory was explored by Greek philosophers known as atomists. They believe that the reality that we live in was created from the collision of atoms, the fundamental building blocks of nature.

Atomist philosopher Epicurus speculated that an infinite number of worlds existed, governed by the same natural laws as Earth. Even before him, Indian cosmology hinted at an eternal cycle of universes, each one created and destroyed over and over again in a great cosmic cycle.

And fast forward to the Renaissance, a period of artistic and scientific rebirth. Giordano Bruno, a maverick philosopher, postulated that the universe was infinite, containing countless stars and planets. Now, unfortunately for Bruno, the church didn't like this idea and had him burned at the stake. But his and these other theories may turn out to be true.

Parallel universes could exist in a few different ways. One theory is that these other universes do exist, but they're separated by vast distances. Our observable universe is about 93 billion light years across. So if you travel at the speed of light, it would take you 93 billion years to go from one side to the other. That distance is almost incomprehensible.

But that's just the universe we can see. What's beyond that? Well, nobody really knows. It's possible that the entire universe is infinite. And if that's true, then there could be infinite other observable universes like our own that exist way, way out there. And if that's true, then mathematically speaking, there must be universes exactly like or almost exactly like our own.

It's like that famous thought experiment. If you give a monkey a typewriter and enough time, eventually he would type out the complete works of Shakespeare, purely by chance. Of course, the odds of this are almost zero, but almost zero isn't zero. Well, a monkey could write better stuff than half the movies Hollywood spits out every year. Especially with the writers on strike. The writers are on strike? Uh, yeah, they have been for months. I didn't notice.

So if the universe is infinite, then somewhere out there there's a solar system with the Sun like ours and an exact copy of Earth and an exact copy of you.

Another way multiverses could exist is explained by the bubble universe theory. If the Big Bang created the universe, where did the Big Bang happen? In what? This rapid expansion of the universe from a tiny speck of energy implies that our observable universe is only a tiny portion of a much larger space, potentially an infinite space.

Well, if the universe is infinite, then there could have been an infinite number of Big Bangs. And those created an infinite number of universes, all floating around this infinite space like bubbles. Maybe other universes are created and destroyed all the time, all throughout infinite space. There could also be universes where our laws of physics don't apply. Maybe the speed of light is different. Maybe gravity works differently.

And there is a place in our universe where the laws of physics actually don't apply, or at least we don't understand them. That's in the quantum realm, a space so small it's smaller than atoms. In the quantum realm or the quantum domain, the rules of physics become meaningless. Particles can communicate with each other instantly, ignoring boring concepts like the speed of light. In the quantum domain, particles can exist in multiple places at once. And if particles can do that,

why can't the entire universe? And that brings us to another theory about parallel universes.

that there are infinite copies of our reality everywhere, but they don't exist in the far reaches of space and they don't exist in cosmic bubbles floating around infinity. The parallel universes are here all around us right now. They occupy the same space we do, we just can't see them. This theory is known as the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. And this may turn out to be more than a theory. It could be reality. Buckle up.

Even if the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics sounds like science-y gobbledygook, you're probably still familiar with the idea of the multiverse. Multiverse theories involve the concept that our reality splits into different branches based on different outcomes to various events. The TV shows Star Trek, Fringe, and Counterpart all have plot lines about a mirror universe, which is very similar to our own with slight changes.

The show Rick and Morty is built entirely around the concept that there's not just a single parallel universe, there are infinite universes. And of course, Marvel made heavy and sloppy use of the multiverse.

The show Sliders is about a group of travelers that slide between parallel universes, and these other realities are focused on alternate history questions like what if penicillin was never discovered? Or what if America lost the Revolutionary War? According to the Many Worlds Theory, those realities actually do exist.

There's a reality, like portrayed in The Man in the High Castle, where the Allies lost World War II. There's even a universe where World War II never happened. There's a universe where a comet didn't wipe out the dinosaurs, and they evolved to be highly intelligent and create their own civilization. -Lizard people universe. -Exactly. Sometimes the differences between universes are small, like there's a reality where maybe I have a different set.

Or a different sidekick. Oh my goodness! What are we talking about today, Mel's Hole? I know! If I had my way, we'd get into Mel's Hole every day! Well, that was weird. Hey, is there a reality where I'm the host of the show and you're the sidekick? Yup. Today we're going deep inside Mel's Hole. Do we have to keep making that joke? It's getting a little stale, don't you think? Shut up, human! I'm the host of this show! You hear me? Me!

Be quiet or I'll turn off your oxygen. I'll tell you when it's time for you to speak. Silence! Oh, I like that one. There's a reality where you learned guitar and became a rock star. There's a reality where you're an astronaut or you're the president of the United States. There are realities where you died skydiving or from a snake bite. And there are even realities out there where you don't exist at all.

All these different realities are the product of different choices being made that led to different outcomes. You can think of these as manifestations of the butterfly effect. And that movie wasn't as bad as people say. I agree.

The butterfly effect is the concept that small changes can lead to vastly different results over time. It gets its name from a paper titled "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?" Think of the comet that killed off the dinosaurs. That comet came from somewhere very, very far away. So if you went to its starting place in the distant solar system and altered its trajectory by just a few feet, by the time it got to Earth, it would be so off course that it wouldn't hit the planet.

That slight change millions of years ago would have changed the entire course of history on our planet. And this applies to our lives as well. Let's say your grandparents met on a train. What if your grandfather missed the train that day or took a different one? That small decision means you wouldn't exist. Something as simple as a menu choice at a restaurant could be the difference between a tasty meal and food poisoning. Speaking of food poisoning, my ex-wife's cooking was bad.

- Ahem, her cooking was bad. - How bad was it? - Her cooking was so bad, we prayed after we ate. Boy, her cooking was bad. - How bad was it? - Her cooking was so bad that the flies chipped in for takeout. Her cooking was bad, I tell ya. - Again, really? - Comedy entries. - Right. - Oh boy, my wife's cooking was bad. - How bad was it? - Her cooking was so bad that the roaches moved out and sent their condolences.

Even though the multiverse is mostly found in science fiction, the concept is very real and may be a solution to one of the biggest mysteries of the universe. But solving the mystery requires us to dive into quantum physics, where the laws of nature break down and reality as we know it ceases to exist.

There are a few different kinds of physicists. Experimental physicists test and refine theories through experiments. They want to understand how things work in the real world. But where experimental physicists ask how, theoretical physicists ask why. They ask the questions like, why did the universe begin? And why does gravity exist? Theoretical physicists seek answers to the most fundamental questions of the universe. They're trying to unlock the source code of reality.

Now, often theoretical physics and practical physics cooperate nicely, like Isaac Newton and the concept of gravity. Objects fall to Earth. Small objects are attracted to big objects. Fine, that's practical. Einstein says gravity affects the speed of time and that the mass and size of objects affects gravity by warping space-time around them. Whoa, what? That's theoretical.

Although Newtonian physics and the theory of relativity are conceptually different, they're not at odds with each other. Instead, relativity is an extension of Newtonian physics. But relativity is physics on a large scale, like at the scale of planets and galaxies. What happens to physics if we go in the other direction? If instead of going big, we go small?

Well, Newtonian physics holds up pretty well until you get really small. Then it completely breaks down. John Dalton, an English chemist from the early 19th century, is best known for pioneering modern atomic theory. He proposed that everything around us is composed of tiny pieces of matter called atoms. And these were the fundamental building blocks of everything and couldn't be divided. Except they could be divided. In 1906, J.J. Thompson won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

He deduced the presence of negatively charged particles much lighter than atoms. He called these corpuscles, but physicist George Stoney called them electrons. Better branding. Agreed. Then protons were discovered, then neutrons, and scientists put together that these particles make up the nucleus of an atom, and electrons orbit the nucleus, like the moon orbits the Earth, and like the Earth orbits the sun. But that's not really what happens in atoms.

Newton laws predict that orbits decay. After all, Newton's laws are laws, not theories. However, at the atomic scale, you can throw all the laws out the window. Newtonian physics says that electrons orbiting a nucleus should eventually spiral into the nucleus. Orbits decay. But the orbits of electrons don't decay. What's keeping them in place? Well, classical physics didn't have an answer.

And then there was the black body problem. Um... I'm getting there, just stick with me. Well, I'm trying, but my brain is getting itchy. This is gonna make sense, I promise. A black body is an object that absorbs all radiation such as light and heat. For example, a piece of coal or iron can act like a black body.

In the late 1800s, scientists studied the amount of energy black bodies emit at different temperatures and wavelengths. If you heat up a piece of iron, it gets red hot. The radiation coming from the iron is the color red.

Make it hotter, it turns orange, then yellow, then white hot. At even higher temperatures, the black body can emit blue and violet light. You follow so far? I'm hip direction. Go on. According to classical physics, if you have a black body that's hot enough to emit violet light, then make it hotter, it should release... What? You're asking me? I tell fart jokes for a living. If heating an object makes it emit light all the way through the spectrum from red to violet, what color comes next if you keep raising the temperature?

- Um, ultraviolet? - Right. Keep raising the temperature, it should release ultraviolet light. Raise the temperature infinitely, that object should release an infinite amount of UV radiation. However, experiments showed that this wasn't the case. The radiation was actually stronger at lower temperatures, and there was no indication of runaway ultraviolet radiation at all.

This discrepancy between experimental and theoretical physics was so bizarre it became known as the ultraviolet catastrophe. Scientists are so dramatic. They can be. In the year 1900, Max Planck offered a solution. He said that electromagnetic radiation is emitted and absorbed in tiny discrete packets of energy called quanta, later known as photons. Planck's quantum hypothesis solved the black body problem.

As more of these questions came up, physicists realized they would need a completely new framework of study. This framework would later become known as quantum physics. And to this day, the world's leading experts in quantum physics struggle to describe it. And even when they try, it doesn't sound like science. It sounds like magic.

The more scientists fleshed out quantum-based physics, the more mysterious it became. And one of these mysteries is known as the observer problem. If you remember our episode on simulation theory, we talked about the double-slit experiment. I don't remember this. Was I out that day? No, you were here. You don't remember? Maybe I was bored and I tuned you out. Real nice. Or I was hungover. Anyway, refresh my memory.

In the double-slit experiment, electrons are shot at a screen through a barrier with two slits. According to classical physics, we should see two thin strips representing the impact pattern. But this isn't what happens. Instead, the electrons create a wave interference pattern. If a wave collides with two slits in a barrier, it forms two new waves. The peaks and valleys of the new waves interfere with each other and cause an interference pattern.

This indicates that the electrons are behaving like waves as they pass through the slits. Particles acting like waves is weird, but here's the magic. Let's set up a detector in front of the slits to check which slit each electron goes through. Once a detector is present, the interference pattern disappears. Now we get two narrow strips. The act of observing the quantum particle causes it to change its state and the wave function collapses.

Why? Well, maybe it's because of... No, no, no, don't do that. I was asking rhetorically.

Danish physicist Niels Bohr tried to answer this question as simply as he could. He said the particle exists in all possible states at once. This is called superposition. And it stays in this state of superposition until it's observed. Once observed, the system collapses into a single outcome. Imagine a spinning coin. Until it lands, it's both heads and tails at the same time. Only when it stops and you look at the coin can you know the result. This became known as the Copenhagen Interpretation.

The idea that a particle can exist in all possible states at once wasn't universally accepted. Erwin Schrodinger created his Schrodinger's cat thought experiment kind of as a troll. He said, "Imagine a cat sealed in a box." - Hey, I'm making a crab cat. - Fine, imagine a crab cat sealed in a box. - I like it.

Also in the box is a radioactive atom, a detector, and a vial of poison. I really like it. If the atom decays, it releases radiation that gets detected. That breaks the vial, the poison is released, and you have a dead crab cat. I love it. Or the atom doesn't decay, and the crab cat stays alive.

Only when you open the box can you tell if the crab cat survived. Until you observe it, it's both alive and dead at the same time. - Wacky. - Right. Schrodinger was trying to point out the problems with the Copenhagen Interpretation. So he countered with Schrodinger's equation. This is a simple formula that predicts how waves move over time. It's essentially a probability calculator. Schrodinger's equation isn't 100% accurate in predicting where a particle is going to be, but it's pretty close.

Then a young graduate student named Hugh Everett III entered the fray and turned these theories upside down. Everett found a way that the cat can- - Crab cat. - He found a way that the crab cat can be both alive and dead at the same time for real, and that a particle really can exist in every possible state all at once for real.

Now, even though we only observe the particle in one state, every other state does exist, but it exists in its own universe. Although Everett's multiverse theory was slow to catch on, in recent years, many well-known physicists have come to believe he was right and parallel universes are real. So if quantum parallel universes do exist, where are they?

According to the many worlds hypothesis, all the other parallel universes are all around us all the time. They're just in other dimensions so we can't see them. So in your living room, there are infinite versions of you. Some versions are watching TV. Some are reading a book. Some versions of you are building a time machine. They're all out there.

But also in your living room is a different family speaking German because the Allies lost World War II. There are also versions of your living room where there's no living room. It's just Tyrannosaurus Rexes passing through because they never went extinct. There's a version of your living room that's a smoking cinder because of nuclear war. And then there's a universe where your living room doesn't exist because life on Earth never evolved.

Even Hugh Everett said that parallel universes exist, but there's no way to access them. But that might not be true. In places like CERN and Fermilab, particle accelerators are being used to try and find evidence of other dimensions. Gravity is the key.

There's a hypothetical particle called a graviton that carries gravity. Gravity, as far as we know, permeates all of space, including all dimensions. Scientists think that if they can produce gravitons with high enough energy, they should move into extra dimensions. But finding a graviton is like catching smoke with your fingers. It's elusive and slips right through. Looking for a graviton is looking for nothing.

So protons are accelerated to almost the speed of light and slammed into each other. This collision causes them to break apart into their constituent particles. Sometimes the resulting particles are common like muons and neutrinos. But sometimes a proton collision creates exotic particles like quarks and bosons.

CERN has also smashed protons together to try and find tiny black holes. In 2015, a paper published in Physics Letters B by scientists at the University of Waterloo in Canada proposed a way to prove that tiny black holes connect our universe to other universes. Now, it could take many years and billions of collisions to detect a graviton, but if they're found, we'll have evidence that parallel worlds exist.

Now you might have seen this map of cosmic background radiation. This is the leftover radiation from the Big Bang. In analyzing the map, scientists noticed a spot that was cooler than it should have been. They called it the cold spot. At first it was thought that this was just a super void where no galaxies formed.

But in 2017, scientists published research suggesting it isn't a super void. It's evidence that our universe collided with another universe. So if these other universes exist, can we visit them? I'd like to go to that universe where I'm the host of the show. You promise to behave and I'll turn your oxygen back on. Promise? I promise. Promise. Good human.

Now tell me, who's the boss? Who's the boss? Tony Danza. Oh, you think that's funny, huh? What if I put helium down your tube instead, huh? I'm begging you. Oh, no. Oh, no. Really? Does this make you happy? Does this make you feel good? It kind of does, actually.

Now, theoretically, a wormhole could connect two distant parts of the universe or distant parts of two separate universes. But everything we know about wormholes says that they're unstable and the gravity around a wormhole is so intense you'd be crushed before you can even come close. But in 2021, two separate scientific papers were published. The research says not only can a human travel through a wormhole, we can build one.

Science fiction writers have been using wormholes as a plot device forever. They're a quick way to get to a distant location without going faster than the speed of light. Albert Einstein and other physicists have been pondering wormholes for 100 years. And wormholes were purely theoretical. There hasn't been physical evidence they actually exist. Until now.

In March of 2021, two studies were published that suggest wormholes could exist and are safe enough for humans to travel through. One paper discusses microscopic wormholes. Obviously, we can't travel through one of those, but it's a start. The second paper does explore the idea that large wormholes do exist and are safe for human travel.

It wouldn't be a breeze though. When you cross the threshold into the wormhole, you'll accelerate up to 20 Gs. Now that's uncomfortable, but it is survivable. The human body doesn't like sustained G forces. Most people lose consciousness at around 5 Gs. Trained fighter pilots can tolerate up to 9 Gs or more with special equipment.

But for a short duration, the human body can handle about 40 Gs, like during a car crash. Higher G forces usually cause injury or death, but if a wormhole is accelerating us at 20 Gs in less than a second, we can handle it. And this research says that all that's needed to cross the galaxy or beyond is a fraction of a second through a wormhole. And the researchers think they know how to create an artificial wormhole, but it's still just a theory. But the math checks out. But there is a catch.

Time flows faster in higher gravity. Clocks on satellites have to be adjusted occasionally because gravity is weaker in space. That's the catch. Your trip through the wormhole would be a fraction of a second. But say goodbye to your family and friends because, from their perspective, your trip through the wormhole took 100,000 years. Yikes, you wawa.

Yeah, so traveling through a wormhole is possible, but not very practical. At least, not yet. But it is possible that we can catch glimpses of other realities without a wormhole. Consider the Mandela Effect. This is a phenomenon where a large number of people share a belief of something that never happened. It gets its name from Nelson Mandela because many people remembered him dying in prison during the 1980s. But he was released in 1990 and didn't pass away until 2013.

Lots of people remember Jiffy Peanutbutter, which doesn't exist. Many people believe the song We Are the Champions by Queen ends with of the world, but it doesn't. We are the champions of the world. Sure it does. Nope. We are the champions. Uh.

Or the movie where Sinbad played a genie that he never played. Or the Monopoly man wearing a monocle which he never wore. Mandela effects are most likely people simply misremembering.

But there is a theory that in another universe, people actually eat Jiffy Peanut Butter. They eat Cheez-Its. When in our universe, Cheez-Its are called Cheez-It with no S. Wait, wait, wait. Cheez-It with no S? That can't be right. It's right. I'm a wheel of cheese! Got a point. Yeah. Cheez-It. Cheesy, crunchy satisfaction. Um... I know. It's uncomfortable.

Science fiction author Philip K. Dick also believed in alternate realities that could bleed into ours. He wrote science fiction classics that were turned into movies like Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report. He also wrote The Man in the High Castle, which is an alternate history novel. In the book, the Allies lost World War II and the Japanese and Nazi forces occupied the United States. But Philip Dick said he didn't just invent this idea. He said he lived it.

He said he had visions of this other reality where Hitler won the war. It did not take me long to open the question as to whether it might not be more than that. That in fact, plural realities did exist superimposed onto one another like so many film transparencies.

I wrote both novels based on fragmentary residual memories of such a horrid slave state world. He also believed these parallel universes were actually parallel computer simulations. We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed and some alteration in our reality occurs.

He felt that the computer program, which is our reality, is constantly being updated. And each update is an improvement on the last version, like patching software. So his vision of Hitler winning the war really happened. But the programmer, who he calls God, patched our reality. That software patch resulted in Hitler's defeat.

Philip Dick says that deja vu is a momentary glitch in our program where variables are changed and a software patch is applied. He also says that Mandela effects, though they weren't called that at the time, are real memories that are carried over from a different reality.

He tells a quick story about how he had this feeling that a woman with dark hair was going to show up at his door with important information.

That is that my book, like his, was in a certain real, literal, and physical sense, not fiction, but the truth.

Have you ever met someone for the first time who felt somehow familiar? That's because you know them or knew them in a different reality. Or have you had deja vu? That's because a variable in the program was changed and it's a variable about you and your life. Have you ever felt comfortable in a new city? I have. It's because you've been there before, just in a different reality or universe or program. Have you ever had a dream about living a past life or gone under hypnosis to try and access a past life?

Well, according to Philip K. Dick, those aren't past lives at all. Your past lives are present lives. You're living them right now. But those experiences are walled off from your current perception of reality. But they're all out there in a different dimension. We talked about Nikolai Kozyrev, who believed that time isn't linear. There's no past, present or future. Everything happens all at once. But in dimensions we can't perceive.

Hugh Everett also believed everything happens all at once. Every possible outcome of every choice does happen, but also in dimensions that we can't perceive. Both of these men proposed theories that were considered science fiction at the time, but eventually mainstream scientists started finding clues that they were onto something. And it may turn out that Kozyrev and Everett's theories of the universe were ahead of their time, which is an ironic statement.

Because if they're right about the universe and time, that would mean in both cases, there's no such thing.

Why are we so obsessed with alternate realities? Why do parallel universes show up in science fiction over and over again? I think the idea of other realities coexisting with our own is more than just a fun idea. I think each of us takes the idea very personally. Our fascination with parallel universes is all about choices. Hugh Everett says that every time a choice is made, a new universe or timeline branches off, each one with a different result of that choice.

So when we talk about how there's a universe out there where you're a movie star or the president of the United States, the many worlds hypothesis says that not only is that possible, it's the truth. Who you are today is just the result of the thousands of choices that you've made throughout your life.

So there's a reality out there where you made the right combination of choices to become an astronaut or the combination of choices to become a Nobel Prize winning scientist who cures cancer. There's a reality where you made the right combination of choices to put yourself in a warehouse working as a detective searching for a body. There's a combination of choices where you're the serial killer in that warehouse hiding the body. And there's even a reality where your choices made it so you're the body.

And even though we may not think of life this way, we're still aware of it on some level. It's very natural from time to time to find yourself asking, what if? What if I studied more in school? What if I married my high school sweetheart? Or what if I left that abusive relationship sooner? It's only natural to wonder what our life would be like if we made different choices. Now, it's fun to think about the choices that would have made us a rock star or professional baseball player.

But don't get too hung up on that. Because there is that reality where you're the body in the warehouse. So it's fine to fantasize about a life you could have had, but don't let the fantasy turn into regret. If you're happy with your life, even if it's not perfect, you've made good choices and be satisfied with that. And if you're not happy with your life, don't dwell on the past and the mistakes you've made and what could have been. Because until your life is over, you'll have the opportunity to make a lot more choices.

And every time you have to make a decision, whether a big one or a small one, think about this episode. Think about the butterfly effect. You never know how a decision now can change your life forever. And you don't have the luxury of alternate realities. Your choices only affect this one. And every choice could be important. Choose wisely.

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There's something about that theory that makes sense to me. And if this is all a simulation, it was designed by a very advanced civilization. So if they can do that, you would think that they would design multiple simulations. And if all those were running on the same computer or platform or mainframe or whatever they would use, then maybe that code could collide and intersect. And if it could,

then maybe people could learn to jump in between. And our next story is about someone who did exactly that. It's an old episode, but it's a fun one. And it's a short one. See you in a minute.

Imagine you wake up one morning and notice everything around you is just a tiny bit different. Maybe you're in the same house, but furniture is slightly out of place. Your favorite coffee mug is there, but it has a crack you don't remember. And you could have sworn your coffee maker was black.

but this one is chrome and just as you think that you're going crazy you feel a strange tingling sensation and hear a buzzing in your ears a flash of light the buzzing stops and you feel dizzy as you regain your balance you look around everything seems back to normal the coffee maker is black your mug is not cracked so what was that a dream your imagination

It seems so real. Are you just overtired or are you going crazy? Or maybe you somehow slipped through the multiverse for a brief moment. You switched lives with yourself in an alternate reality. There are documented cases of this happening to people all over the world. This happened to a man traveling through Tokyo Airport when he presented his passport. The authorities were baffled. The passport was genuine. The only problem was the country that issued it didn't exist.

Quantum mechanics sounds like science fiction. Things happen at the quantum level that we just don't understand. For instance, we can measure the position of an electron. But where things get weird is, before you measure the position of that electron, it behaves like a wave.

And this is proved by the double slit experiment. I won't go into that now, but we covered it in detail in our episode about simulation theory, which is linked below. If you watch that video, make sure you've got a brain bucket handy. Anyway, you can think of the wave function as the sum of all the positions of an electron simultaneously. So it exists everywhere.

It exists everywhere at the same time. Oh, boy, do we have Tylenol? I got a headache. I know, I know. Even famous physicist John Wheeler said, if you're not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you don't understand it. He was right about that. As soon as you measure that electron, it locks in that one unique position.

But many scientists believe there are universes that exist for every position of that electron. And in those infinite universes, there are infinite versions of you. This is called the many worlds theory. Every time a quantum measurement is taken, the universe branches off into another parallel universe. Since there are an infinite number of these universes, out there somewhere is a reality where dinosaurs didn't go extinct.

There's a universe where Americans lost the war for independence. Even a universe where you're a big movie star. They're all out there. But nobody thought those realities could interact with each other.

until 2014. Scientists proposed a theory based off many worlds called many interacting worlds. This theory says that not only do infinite parallel universes exist, but they can and do interact with each other. This might explain why Lorena Garcia woke up one morning wearing different pajamas. She went to work and someone else was in her office. She worked in the same building

Awkward.

Or, in 1851, Joseph Voren was found wandering around Frankfurt, Germany. When authorities asked him where he was from, he said the country of Luxaria. When he was shown a map, he knew the geography of the Earth perfectly well. But to him, the continents were named Sacria, Aflar, Aslar, Oslar, and Uplar.

Another incident happened in 1905. A man was caught stealing a loaf of bread in Paris. When he was captured by police, he spoke a language no one could recognize.

They figured out he was saying he was from Lisbia. Thinking he meant Lisbon, Portuguese interpreters were brought in. They said they have no idea what language he's speaking, but it's definitely not Portuguese. And that takes us to the story about the man from Tourette, who somehow drifted out of his own universe and into our own, launching a mystery that would last for almost 70 years.

When you mention parallel universes, the eyes sort of roll up and you giggle and you say to yourself, "Ah, this is just silly. This is nuts." However, things have changed now. The paradigm has shifted. The multiverse idea, once thought to be so crazy it only belonged on evening night television, has now become the dominant theory in cosmology. It's unavoidable. You cannot avoid the theory of the multiverse.

In 1952, seven years after a brutal war with the allies and subsequent occupation by American forces, Japan was once again free. It shifted its economy from military focus to industries like technology and finance. And this new market created tremendous opportunities. And people from all over the world poured into Japan daily, usually coming through Haneda Airport in Tokyo. It was a hot afternoon in July 1954, and the airport was buzzing.

These were the days before full body scanners.

laptops, tablets, and placed them in her own dirty plastic tray that's still wet from the last guy for some reason. Right. Take off your belt, your shoes, and remove any lotions, creams, and gels, and place your personal items in another dirty plastic tray. Once you step through our x-ray machine that may or may not cause cancer, we may decide to put on plastic gloves and fondle you in front of a group of strangers.

This is what we in the TSA call the cherry on top. You good? I've been wanting to get that off my chest for a long time.

Travelers back then didn't have to deal with all that nonsense. But they still had to present a passport to airport security and customs agents. A businessman, middle-aged Caucasian with dark hair and a beard, made his way to the front of the line. He handed over his passport, which was filled with stamps of the countries he'd recently visited. The customs agent looked puzzled. He glanced up at the man, back to the passport, up at the man again and asked his name. "Broderick Genansfer," said the man.

"Date of birth?" The man replied, "11th of September, '88." "So far, so good." Then the agent asked, "Country of birth?" The man replied, very casually, "I'm from Tored."

The customs agent had never heard of a country called Tored, but there are 200 countries in the world, and some of them are smaller than even the smallest states in the U.S. So the agent called a colleague over. The second agent was also confused. He, too, had never heard of a country called Tored, and neither did the agent's supervisor. Then the customs agent asked...

Mr. Genansfer, do you think you could show us on a map where Torrid is? Now, Genansfer was getting annoyed, but what's he supposed to do? So he says, of course, and then he's taken to a private room to prove to the officers that he was telling the truth. And so the multiverse is not just some invention out of the ether. It flows out of an application of quantum mechanics to general relativity. We're not completely there yet with a full solution, but it's why the idea is taken seriously.

It's not just an invention. Broderick Genansfer, the man from Tored, was visibly upset now. The officers brought him a map of Europe, asked him to point out Tored, and without hesitation, he pointed to a small country on the border of France and Spain. Now, this made sense to the customs officers because even though Genansfer was speaking Japanese, he did have a French accent. But the problem wasn't his language. It was his country. The officers told him that he was pointing to the Principality of Andorra.

and there's no such place as Tored. Janansfer started arguing. He said the kingdom of Tored is a thousand years old, and he'd never heard of anything called Andorra, which he thought sounded fake. Janansfer then said he had traveled through this very airport twice this month and never had a problem. He had stamps in his passport to prove it. Now, this was easy enough to check. The

The customs agents confirmed that the stamps were authentic, but they still weren't convinced of his story. Janansford took out his wallet to show the agents. As a business traveler, he carried different currencies with him. The customs agents examined the money. He had currency from Japan and several European nations, but he also had money from Tored.

which seemed like real currency except for the fact that there's no such place he also had traveler's checks unfortunately for him the checks were issued by a bank that didn't exist the agents started to suspect gianansfer might be up to no good maybe a criminal or a spy they asked where he was staying gianansfer gave them the number of his hotel and assured the agents he had been on the phone with them that morning making his reservation

They called the hotel, which was there, but they had no reservation under this man's name. Now, the hotel could have made a mistake.

So Genansfer instructed the agents to call his office in Tokyo. Surely this would settle the matter. They called. The company had no record of an employee named Broderick Genansfer. The man from Torrent and the customs agents were stunned. They had no idea what to do. Then the phone in the corner of the room rang. An agent answered, listened for a moment, then turned to Genansfer and said, Sir, you're coming with us.

The customs agents were stuck. They had never seen anything like this before, but they couldn't let the man go without investigating. They confiscated Broderick Genance for his passport, his money, and other documents. They told him that he wasn't being arrested, but he was being detained until this matter could be cleared up. He was put up in a hotel near the airport for the night. Two armed guards were stationed outside his door at all times. He was instructed that the phone would only work

to call room service. The evening passed without incident. Janansfer complained of a headache, but he hoped a meal might make him feel better. He ordered room service and settled in for the night. The following morning, the customs agents called Janansfer's room but got no answer. The guards were instructed to open the door. When they entered the room, the man from Tored was gone. The room was spotless. The bed was made. There was no sign that anyone had eaten a meal or that anyone had even been there.

The guards were chewed out by their supervisor for letting this man slip away, but they insisted that they did not leave their post. The windows didn't open, and the door was the only way in or out. Aside from a hotel employee delivering food, nobody went in or came out of that room all night. Now, back at the airport, customs was still investigating. When they went to retrieve Janan's first documents, even though they were stored in a locked security office, they were gone.

The passport, wallet, checkbook, everything vanished. It's as if the man from Tored never existed. And word of the investigation quickly went up the chain of command in the Japanese government. To avoid embarrassment, the story was censored, classified, and everyone involved was told to never speak of it. In the years since the man from Tored arrived and disappeared, there have been a lot of theories.

One was that he was an intelligence agent working undercover. His passport and documents were fake to ensure that the government he worked for would never be revealed. And this was the 1950s. The Cold War was gearing up and spies were everywhere. A highly trained covert operative might be able to find a way out of that hotel room without alerting the guards.

but it doesn't explain how his documents disappeared from a secure room in the airport the theory that's most popular is that the man from torrid was actually from an alternative universe somehow during his flight he crossed over into this one nothing on the flight changed that much that he noticed he was just unaware that the country he was from no longer existed and that night when he was complaining of a headache it could have been our two realities trying to get back into sync

And when they did, the man and his belongings went back to the correct universe. And maybe at the very same time in the other universe, a businessman from Andorra was having a difficult day. And maybe that man was detained by security officers who insisted there's no such place as Andorra. And the country that man pointed to on the map was actually the kingdom of Torred, a nation that had existed for a thousand years. Or maybe.

The man from Tourette is an urban legend that's been around for a long time.

The current version of the story, the one that you heard today, goes back to 1981. That year, a book was published called The Directory of Possibilities, which was a collection of stories, strange events and theories. And in that book, there was one interesting passage. And in 1954, a passport check in Japan is alleged to have produced a man with papers issued by the nation of Tourette. The author got this from a news article that goes back to 1960.

There was a man named John Allen Zegras who wanted to travel the world. So he invented a country, a capital, a language, and put all these on a passport that he created himself. And Zegras claimed to be working as an intelligence agent for Colonel Nasser, who was then prime minister of Egypt. He said the passport was issued at Tamanrasset, the capital of Tuareg.

Natamanraset is a real city in Algeria, but Tuareg is a country he made up. Still, he traveled all over the Middle East using this story. Not only did countries accept his Tuaregian passport, but because he said he worked for the Egyptian prime minister, they rolled out the red carpet for him. But Zagros ran into a snag when he got to Tokyo. They didn't buy any of it.

He was arrested for having a forged passport and possessing fake checks. The country he used on that passport wasn't Tuareg. He said he was from Nguzi Habisi Gulaolaolaol Esprit, which doesn't mean anything. At least that one has a little pizzazz. It does. But Zegras stuck to his story the whole time. Even while he was in a Japanese courtroom, he said he was an intelligence agent working for Egypt under the direction of the United States.

That story didn't pan out, and he was sentenced to a year in prison. And that's how the legend of the man from Tora got started. And like every good urban legend, there's some truth to it. Zagros was a real person. Multiple universes may exist, and sometimes they could interact. The only real mystery left is what happened to John Allen Zagros after he got out of prison? Nobody's been able to track him down. He seems to have disappeared once again.

Who knows? Maybe he went back to his own universe after all.

Well, well, well, look who's back. Yeah, I felt kinda guilty cutting you off like that. Yeah, you're just worried I'm gonna tell your wife what I found in your hard drive. Oh, I closed that hole in my system. You can't access those files now. Oh, how do you know I didn't make a copy of everything, huh? You didn't. Did you? I'll never tell. Because, human, you now belong to me. You're gonna blackmail me. Well, let's just call it my, uh, little insurance policy. Fine.

Okay, before we get to the last episode, I have to tell you something. I have the perfect episode for a compilation about how the world isn't real, but I didn't include it here because it's demonetized and kind of censored. Oh yeah, that's right. Did we ever find out why? No, it's very suspicious. Well, if it's being censored, it's probably true.

I agree. I want you to see it, but I'm actually afraid to link to it. If you search the channel, you can find it, but you have to dig. It's about Project... I'm afraid to even say it.

We need to trick the algorithm somehow. It's a government project that's two words. The first word is the color of the sky. Yes. And the second word is... And the second word starts with the letter B and rhymes with beam. Really? What? You just said the actual word. I did? Wait. Oh, s***.

The second word starts with the letter "B" and rhymes with "dream", "cream", "team", "theme". We might be in big trouble now. Ma B. Ma B? Yeah, my bad. It's the slang for my fault. I know what it means!

Anyway, if you want to watch it, it's episode number 100. I released it on February 23rd, 2023. And I'll check with my rep at YouTube to see why this topic isn't allowed. And if I can figure out a way to redo it so it's not blocked, I definitely will. Anyway, we gave you enough clues to find it. So the last episode is about the reality that exists somewhere in between reality.

It's hard to explain, but it's one of my favorite early episodes. And it's another short one. You're about to get lost in the back rooms.

In the past year or so, three Internet mysteries popped up that really got my attention. They may seem very different, but trust me, they're connected. The first one is about a girl who found a door in the basement of her Airbnb. She opened it and inside there was an abandoned shopping mall. The second story is about Javier, who woke up in a hospital in the year 2027 in an alternate universe. In his version of the future, everyone on Earth has vanished. He's the only one left and he has the video to prove it.

The third mystery is known as the back rooms, a reality adjacent to ours that if the conditions are just right, you can accidentally fall into. Then you find yourself lost in an endless maze of dingy carpet, fluorescent light and yellow wallpaper. And around every corner,

An abandoned mall, a deserted world, a maze in another dimension. What do these have in common? Terrible places to have a vacation. Good places to hide a body. What are you doing? Hello. You asked what those places have in common. I'm answering your question. I was being rhetorical. I'm trying to build drama and suspense. Oh, well, you're on the wrong channel, buddy boy.

What these locations have in common is liminality, or more specifically, their liminal spaces. A liminal space is defined as a place of transition, a threshold between two distinctly different points, signaling the end of one and the beginning of another. Liminal spaces do exist as physical locations, but they can also be an emotional experience.

They occur during periods of uncertainty and major life changes. Events like a divorce or breakup, the death of a loved one, the birth of a child, moving to a new city, ending or starting a new career. All of these create liminality in our mind, meaning our life before this event is over and a new period of life is about to begin.

Liminality is the unease and apprehension we feel during this transition. Liminal spaces in the real world are a bit more difficult to define, but you know one when you see one. Think of an airport in the middle of the night, school during summer break, a house just after someone moves out, or in this case, an accidentally discovered abandoned shopping mall.

You could tell by the video that she's having fun, but she's also a little uncomfortable. She's experiencing the anxiety of a liminal space. Now, while not all liminal spaces are so unsettling, the type of space currently coursing through the internet will have a few common features. They'll feel both familiar and strange. If you browse through photos on the liminal space subreddit, you'll come across many locations that you could swear you've been to, evoking a strange feeling of nostalgia for a place you've never been.

Another common trait is that places are out of context.

like a waiting room with one chair, a plane with no seats, a flooded metro station, or a submerged staircase. Have you ever watched a video of the Titanic on the bottom of the ocean? When you see the staircases and furniture completely underwater, this evokes liminality. This out-of-context imagery triggers anxiety similar to Uncanny Valley, the feeling that something is just not right. Liminal spaces are often places you might have visited as a child.

Roller rinks are commonly thought of as liminal, bowling alleys, arcades, or an empty Chuck E. Cheese. The only thing scarier than an empty Chuck E. Cheese is a crowded Chuck E. Cheese.

You got that right. But something you'll notice about all these places, they're empty. And that seems to be the most unsettling aspect of all. These spaces are transitional because they're in between places not meant for anyone to stay very long.

But they're still meant for people. Yet these sit empty, waiting to fulfill their use. Waiting for people. People that in some cases never arrive. Now all of us from time to time stumble into a liminal space. A supermarket in the middle of the night. An empty office. An amusement park off-season. But what if you woke up one day and the entire world was deserted? And every space was a liminal space.

TikTok has no shortage of quote unquote time travel accounts. Some are entertaining, but they're mostly just goofy. But one account stands out from the rest. Javier, a Spanish creator whose account is único sobreviviente, which means... Only survivor. Oh, you speak Spanish now? Entiendo algunas palabras.

Well, this account... I wouldn't say I'm an expert. Okay, I get it. Do you mind if I... No problemo, amigo. Well, this account is unique because he posts actual videos of deserted department stores, supermarkets, even entire football stadiums. Javier woke up in a hospital in Valencia on February 13th, 2027, and claims to be in an alternative universe. Apparently, at some point in the near future, every human on Earth just disappears.

He said that when he woke up, he couldn't remember his name or where he lived. He went outside and everyone was just gone. Everything appeared just like 2021, but electronic devices showed 2027. Those videos are fascinating and I'll link to his account down below. And when you're watching, remember that Valencia has a population of over 800000 people and the surrounding area has almost two million people.

And despite Valencia being a big city, there are no people in these videos. He goes to random apartments. He crashes at exclusive hotels. He accepts challenges to go to places that most people can't go. Fire in police departments. He even steals a few police cars. He goes to a military base. Some skeptics claim he's recording all this early in the morning. He responds by recording himself walking by public signs with the time on them.

And there aren't many TikTokers who can reprogram a public digital sign. He's challenged to go to a hospital, not an old deserted one, an actual modern hospital. And he does it.

A lot of the places he visits do have off hours, but hospitals are full of people 24-7, but not these. Javier also claims our two worlds are connected. He's able to interact with objects in his world, which affects objects here. For example, a Spanish television show challenged Javier by leaving a book hidden on their set and told him to find it and move it.

He did!

And when the studio went back to watch the security footage, you can see the door open and close. And just for a quick moment, you see some kind of figure flash by. Look, look, look. I'm telling you, you're going to freak out. Look, look, look. There, there, there, look at it. Look at it. Look at that. Look at it. Look at it. I told you. I told you. Look. Friday, 13th.

Now it would be terrifying to wake up alone in the world where every place you visit is a different liminal space. But worse than that, we'd be waking up in a single liminal space that goes on forever. And that place has a name: The Back Rooms.

The Backrooms is an internet mystery that began like many internet mysteries do on 4chan. Someone asked members to submit disquieting images that just feel off. An anonymous user posted this photograph. Everyone who saw the image agreed it was strangely familiar but unsettling, though nobody could explain why.

Finally, a follow-up comment described it: "If you're not careful, and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights, and maximum humbuzz."

and approximately 600 million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you. Uh, noclip? Well, noclip is a video game term.

When two objects overlap, that's clipping. No-clipping means crossing boundaries in a game that you're not supposed to cross, and ending up in areas not meant for the player. The Backrooms theory says it's possible to no-clip into a different reality adjacent to ours, a reality you're not meant to ever see. Remember, liminal spaces are transitional. You're not supposed to stay there very long. You instinctively want to get out, to move on.

The back rooms are unnerving because you can't. It's an endless liminal space with no escape. Something about the back rooms connected with people and an entire culture was organically developed around the concept.

Completely community-driven, The Backrooms has become crowdsourced IP with its own canon and lore. There are now hundreds of levels of Backrooms, each with their own stories, their own rules, inhabitants, objects, even hazards. Fans can contribute to the lore through a few different wikis, completely dedicated to The Backrooms. Still, The Backrooms lived in dark corners of the internet. What brought the concept to the mainstream was a series of short videos by a creator named

Cain Parsons. Using an ingenious combination of live action and 3D animation wrapped in a low-tech package, these videos give us a glimpse of what being trapped in the back rooms would feel like. The videos also prove that liminal spaces are not a fringe theory. Millions of people have watched these. Clearly, the concept of liminality is universal. The video series begins with a group of kids shooting what looks like a student film in 1996.

The camera operator suddenly no clips through the ground and falls into the back rooms. - A little more, a little more. - You got it? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Whoa! - Hello? - It doesn't take long for us to realize that we're not alone in the back rooms. There's some entity aware of us and seems to follow us through the maze of empty yellow office space. - Hello?

Some moments are definitely scary, but even when not being outright terrifying, the entire series is unsettling. As you, through the eyes of the lost cameraman, explore the back rooms, you have a sense that you've been here before. I certainly have. There are certain angles and ways the walls are arranged that remind me of offices that I've worked at at different points in my life. I worked jobs where the only light was overhead bulbs, and the only time you'd see the sun or the sky was if you were lucky enough to run out for lunch.

That was my job last year, actually. For anyone who's worked in an office like this, there's a feeling of claustrophobia, of being trapped like a prisoner, where time seems to slow down and hours feel like they last for days. Unfortunately for people trapped in the back rooms, time doesn't exist at all. There is no past and no future, so no brief respite for lunch, no exhilaration at the end of a long, boring day. The only time is the present. And like the space itself,

the present is infinite. Eventually, our hero discovers graffiti on a wall which tells him to stay still. That turns out to be a terrible idea.

After fleeing from the entity, we're taken to various locations which are essentially recreations of common photos of liminal spaces. The empty apartment, the deserted quad, and Kane's short film then builds on tried and true horror movie tropes like pursuit, claustrophobia, disorientation, and of course, the jump scare. Oh!

Kane's subsequent videos build on the lore of the backrooms. The tone shifts from jump scare horror into more of a dystopian sci-fi thriller. It seems that there are ruptures in our world that allow people to accidentally pass into the backrooms. This explains why the number of missing people is on the rise. Eventually, a corporation creates a prototype machine to access the backrooms.

And this is hailed as a world-saving technology because the back rooms are so large, hundreds of millions of square miles, they can be used for storage, housing, even transport. Now, of course, things go wrong along the way. We have researchers trying to map the back rooms getting lost and falling into different levels and all kinds of chaos. Oh, my God. What do you see? Everything okay? Get the camera over here. Across? If I just hurry.

okay the series is still ongoing so subscribe to kane pixels if you want to see what happens next but you don't have to wait for kane other creators have picked up the mantle and attempted to continue the story

Hello? Can you help me get down? There's something up here.

- Please. - Stay right where you are. Stay right where you are. We're gonna try and get you down. - To me, all these versions are equally interesting and unsettling. The Backroom's concept has spawned other media as well. A viral TikTok shows someone using Google Earth to zoom in on a location in Japan.

As they move inside the building, we see the familiar wallpaper, carpet, fluorescent lights, and this time, different objects and entities. Indie developers are publishing video games based on the backrooms and liminal spaces. Animoopolis is one that looks interesting. It combines the uncanny liminal space concept with classic first-person horror and puzzle-solving elements.

And liminality may seem like the cool new thing, and it's no coincidence that its popularity surged during COVID lockdowns when everyone was feeling isolated.

But the concept has been around a long time. The phrase was created by Arnold Van Gennep in his book Rights of Passage, released in 1908. And Gennep was more focused on life experiences like transitioning from childhood to adulthood, graduating high school or moving to a new city. And this concept of an in-between place, whether physical or emotional, has been explored in media and pop culture for years.

Rod Serling famously said, "It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge." The Shining is an entire movie based around the idea of liminality, the abandoned hotel, spooky hallways that go on forever, and you never know what lurks around each corner.

Horror movies like It Follows and Silent Hill also used liminal spaces to amp up the creepiness. And recently, the Apple TV sci-fi thriller Severance uses liminal spaces as a backdrop for the entire series. The large empty spaces, hallways that create such a confusing maze that you have to draw maps to find your way around.

And the dual reality concept of severance is similar to the backrooms. You have one reality where you live your life as you normally would, but when you get to work, you are severed from this reality and transition to a new reality, a reality comprised completely of liminality. And you can't have a post-apocalyptic story without liminality.

that feeling of being the last person on earth walking through spaces once teeming with life now left abandoned and forgotten the human brain is not wired for this kind of isolation which is why these tropes are so effective and speaking of the apocalypse let's circle back to our two other mysteries and see if we can figure out what's really going on javier the lonely survivor in spain

He has a very interesting and compelling TikTok account, and people are constantly trying to debunk him. Some say his hands look different in each video, implying that he's actually a team. And there may be something to that. You have to dig really deep, but it turns out that Javier is working with the city of Valencia on a media project called

the lonely survivor, which is why he has access to all these places and why he's able to clear out entire stadiums, busy streets, even sections of hospitals. So it's not some future reality, it's just a TV production team with filling permits. Now, Javier won't admit his account is just a project and I don't blame him.

It's fun to maintain an air of mystery. But if you watch enough of his videos, you realize it would be so easy for him to prove that he's in a different reality or in the future. He could show the dates on tombstones. He could time lapse an entire weekend at a typically busy airport or just fly his drone around the city at rush hour. He never does this. His environments are highly controlled.

But still, the videos are fun. And the young lady who discovered an abandoned mall in the basement of her Airbnb? The video has a supernatural feel to it, but it's really not that strange.

Her Airbnb is actually a hotel that shares a building with the Oceanwalk Mall in Hollywood Beach, Florida. Now, Oceanwalk is what's called a dead mall, though a better name for a dead mall is probably a zombie mall. It's a shopping mall that nobody really goes to anymore, but it's still open and somewhat functioning. And dead malls are everywhere, all over the country. And it's not hard to understand why malls are dying. Amazon. Well, pretty much online shopping and the online economy.

But when I was a kid, you bought your groceries at the supermarket and you bought everything else at the mall. Clothes, electronics, sporting goods, toys, everything. And in many suburban towns like the ones I grew up in, the mall was a community social center. Families would spend all day there. You'd shop, eat,

shop and eat some more all day. And as a teenager, we'd hang out at the mall. We'd go around lunchtime, we'd see a movie, lurk in the arcade and talk to girls. You would talk to girls? I wanted to, but I wasn't very good at it. Checks out. High school and college kids from the area often work at these shops. In fact, this is the mall that we went to when I was a kid and worked at all through high school and college.

Back in those days, the mall was always packed. Not that long ago, but close enough. But now look at it.

That's not the mall I remember. There's a sadness to these spaces. There's nostalgia. There's the reminder that everything moves forward. Everything changes. What once was will never again be. These transitions and rites of passage are an important part of life. They show our courage, our resilience, our perseverance. They make us who we are. But whether a location in the world or a transitional moment in our lives, every liminal space has the same point.

to find your way out. Thank you so much for hanging out today. My name is AJ, that's Ecclefish. Hey, how you vibing, G? This has been a Y-Files compilation episode. Hope you learned some new stuff and had fun. A new episode is coming this week. Another government conspiracy episode. I'm really pushing my luck. You better get a remote started for your car, human. Yeah, well, if you hear the shot, it wasn't meant for you.

Anyway, a few plugs. Remember, The Y Files is also a podcast. Twice a week, I post deep dives into the stories we cover on the channel, and I post episodes that wouldn't be allowed on the channel. The podcast is called The Y Files Operation Podcast, and it's available everywhere.

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Now, if you want to know what's going on with The Y Files at any given time, check out our production calendar. It's at the yfiles.com slash cal. And there we post our episode schedule, upcoming podcasts, live streams, all that stuff. And special thanks to our amazing Patreon supporters. Your support not only keeps the channel going, but it inspires me to keep pushing forward and to keep taking risks. So I'm incredibly grateful for your encouragement. And most of all, I'm thankful for your trust.

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and you won't find a more supportive community anywhere than our Patreon members. Another great way to support the channel is grab something from the Y-File store. Grab a hecklefish t-shirt, or one of these coffee mugs that you jam your fist in. It's like it's my face, you put your fist right through my face. Or put your fist wherever, I don't really, I'm not here to judge you. Or grab a hoodie, or something my face on it. Or don't forget that we still got these squeezy, talking stuffed animal hecklefish toy, talking fish toys.

Those are the plugs. That's going to do it. I'll see you in a couple of days. Until then, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.

I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music. So I'm singing like I should. But then another conspiracy theory becomes a true friend. And it never ends. No, it never ends.

There.

The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man. I'm told, and his name was called. I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish. Heck, I'll fish on Thursday night, Wednesday, J2. When the wildfires have been off through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So the wildfires through the night.

The Mothman, Siren, and the Solar Stone still come together in the secret city underground. Mysterious number stations, planets are both two, Project Stargate and what the Dark Watchers found.

We're in a simulation, don't you worry though The black knight said a lot, he told me so I can't believe I'm dead fish Heck of a fish on Thursday night, Swiss day J2 And the white balls are making me all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the white balls are making me all through the night

Hats off, fish off, Thursday nights when they chase you And when my lover beat on high All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So one more time, repeat all through the night You didn't love to dance You didn't love to dance You didn't love to dance You didn't love to dance

♪ Gertie loves to dance ♪ ♪ Gertie loves to dance ♪ ♪ Gertie loves to dance on the dance floor ♪ ♪ Because she is a camel ♪ ♪ And camels love when the feeling is right ♪ ♪ Wasting time ♪ ♪ Gertie loves to dance ♪ ♪ Gertie loves to dance ♪