June 1, 2018 • 50 mins
What if everything you encounter in your day-to-day interactions is somehow prescient? Are the games you play and the films you watch meant to normalize genres of experience -- and, if so, to what end? Ben and Matt explore the idea of weaponized mass media from the early days of deification to a startling story by Edgar Allan Poe and beyond.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. They
called me Ben. We are joined with our super producer,
Paul the Paul the Predictor decond. Okay, we got a shrug.
We're joining with Paul the Predictor deck end. Most importantly,
you are you, and you are here, and that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. We predict
(00:45):
you will find this episode fascinating. Oh yeah, we can
already tell this is going to be your favorite episode
that's come out in a long time. We've already read
some of your emails. Thank you for those. It's really
kind what you said about this episode. We and um,
you know, we look forward to your next ones, right,
both represented in fiction and in real life. I don't
(01:08):
know if we can continue this this trope for the
whole show man, What do you think we're just being silly,
We're just we're just having a goof Do people still
say that having a goof? Of? Course? Great? Because if not,
we're bringing it back. This episode is about somewhat of
(01:29):
a meta conspiracy, a conspiracy about conspiracies, for lack of
a better term, or a technique that has attributed to
a lot of specific theories. And oddly enough, there's a
very strong basis in truth in this, which I think
surprised both of us. There is a little bit of
(01:50):
truth in a way, but it's um, yeah, it's one
of those things where it's so prevalent. This what we're
speaking about today. Just say what it is a predictive
programming and it's so prevalent on the Internet when anything occurs.
There is so much media that exists and so many
(02:12):
things happening that when you find the little connective tissues,
there's always that Eureka moment and it just happens all
the time. Now maybe, yeah, maybe we get into this
too with an anecdote. Several years ago, you and I
made a video about the Illuminati card game. Yes, yes,
(02:36):
and in the Illuminati Card Game, uh, there are there
are certain cards that people who believe in predictive programming
have pointed to as evidence of this practice. I think
specifically the Twin Towers. The Twin Towers was one about
a terrorist attack. There were so many though Deep Water
Horizon from was one and again in that video. Oh,
(03:00):
I guess do we want to spoil any of that
right now? About kind of what we found out about
the card game? Oh yeah, go ahead, laid up. Okay.
So there have been so many versions of that card
game over the years. The cards have shifted and changed
a little bit, the artwork has been altered. Exactly what
stated on the cards has been altered. And then when
you're online and you have people posting images about you know, here,
(03:24):
look at this card from this game that came out
in nineties something. Uh, you know, it predicted the World
Trade Center because of this card when an actuality that
card was referring to the original World Trade Center bombing
which occurred in the nineties, and then and or it
was changed now because of other you know, circumstances, things
(03:49):
that actually occurred in the real world after it was
put out. It's just interesting how things shift over time,
and when it's posted on the internet, it could be
from any time throughout the span of cards history. Oh,
we should also point out that it's a fun game game.
I I was so happy because you introduced me to it,
(04:09):
and I'm going to owe you for that one. Also,
I was thinking, should we play that game with with
with you friends and neighbors if we ever run into
each other in real life? Or Matt, should you and
Paul and Nolan I make a game of our own?
We could. We can make a game of our own.
We could live stream it. Stuff they don't want you
(04:30):
to play. I don't know, I don't know. We'll we'll
put a pen in that. But but yeah, So that's
a that's a great example of an allegation of predictive programming.
Here's what we mean specifically when we say there's a
basis in truth. In decades past, the US government would
assemble groups of people to help them predict the direction
(04:51):
of future technological breakthroughs. And they consulted scientists and technocrats,
but they also asked science fiction wighters to join in
this think tankery. And several of these writers, it turns out,
had already successfully predicted the broad strokes of a certain
aspect of technological progress or social changes, and they had
(05:14):
depicted these events in works of fiction. Yeah, and for
a lot of people, this is just it speaks to
the human imagination. What can what images and ideas can
we conjure in our heads before it becomes reality, and um,
it's really honestly, it's it's inspiring and our species ability
to dream beyond the limits of this moment of what's
(05:36):
occurring right now and things that I can possibly do
today to what I could do in the future because
of X. I mean, that's incredible. That's what separates us. Well,
there are a lot of things that separate us, but
that's one of the major things that separates us from
other mammals. You're giving me chills. That is inspiring, especially
the way you put it there. It is. It is
(05:57):
one of the primary separations. But it's not all like
angel farts and trumpets in the sky. You know. There
there's a dark side that people see here because for others,
this story of sci fi collaboration is only scratching the surface.
It's a relatively benign example of a much more widespread
(06:17):
and according to them, sinister practice. Fringe researchers across the
US and the globe believe that nefarious, hidden groups are
guiding the public through the use of this predictive programming.
So let's look at the facts. When we look at
the idea of fiction, whether an Illuminati game or a
film depicting actual events in the future. We see two
(06:42):
fundamental factors of play immediately. Yeah. The first is what
the creators are trying to do. It's it's not a
secret that people who write screenplays and write books, of
directors of television and movie, they often are attempting to
depict what they think the future is going to look like,
what might happen in the future. If you think about
(07:07):
the novel or Brave New World, these are two cautionary
tales very different from each other and also quite similar.
Um they're they're meant to educate as much as they're
meant to warn and entertain. There they function on a
whole lot of levels. Yeah. Yeah, Four is one of
(07:29):
those books that, even after having read it multiple times,
I still don't know if I would say I'm entertained
by it, you know what I mean? Sure, it definitely
airs more on the cautionary tale side, but you're you're
absolutely right. I think that's such a great point. These
authors and these creators are not working in a vacuum.
(07:49):
They are attempting to enact some sort of change in
the world, whether it's just making the world one story better,
or one story richer or whatever we want to say
about or as in the case of a brave, brave
New World, it's the question of dufftow entertained too much? Yes, yes,
(08:09):
and these authors could also depict something more aspirational, like
what the future of humanity could be if we ever,
you know, get our collective business together. I'm talking about
Star Trek. I'm talking about Star Trek, Matt Man. Star
Trek tng was the thing they like made me go, okay,
(08:30):
we're gonna be okay. The future is going to be
an amazing place. I can't wait to get there. Right,
it's a it's a post scarcity economy, right, there's there's
not income inequality, and the species spends its time exploring
strange new worlds and attempting to enrich their knowledge of
(08:51):
the galaxy and the beautiful universe in which we live.
Also having more or less constant war or uneasy truces
with various alien and hires. Probably a story for a
different episode, but yeah, Star Trek aspirational. Imagine what we
could be exactly, and then you could even have a holidack.
I mean, come on, that's what it was for, you know.
(09:14):
It was it was the big picture stuff. I hated
the holiday episodes. Yeah, you know, I always felt like
I was getting tricked. I felt, you know, this is
just my opinion, one person's opinion, and I would love
to hear everybody else's opinion on this. I felt it
felt as if the actors were pushing this on the
(09:36):
writers and the producers and saying, well, you know, I've
I've done some Shakespeare before. You're talking specifically about El Capitan, right,
I don't know, I don't you know, I don't know
who it was. I feel like I have suspicions, but
I can't pin it on any single actor. And maybe
(09:56):
it was just maybe it just felt like a bait
and switch. Yeah, it's a I think it's a writing
device that the people in the writer's room can go, Wow,
we've been stuck on this enterprise for a long time
in all these episodes. Let's let's do a Western. Yeah.
It could be that. It could also be something, as
you know, these are big machines. Every television show is
(10:18):
a huge machine of its own, So it could have
been something behind the scenes where they said, okay, look
we have this leftover set for show that didn't get used.
We have to use it. And sorry, Star trek TNG,
you drew the short straw this time. So writer's room,
(10:38):
chop chop uh something something with the Holida deck or
maybe this sets about to get torn down. Hey, writer's
let's find a way to use it quick. We we
have spent a lot of time thinking about thinking about this.
You know, I bet someone out there has a has
the real scoop the street poop, as we might say
(11:00):
on on the the origin of those Hollow Deck episodes.
But there is another thing that comes into play when
we consider this idea of fiction purposefully predicting actual events
in the future, usually bad ones, and that is the
dangerous deceptive traits of the human mind. Yeah, it's not
(11:22):
just the people creating the fiction and the entertainment. It's
the people who are consuming it, actively watching and hearing it. Right.
And there's this assumption that is so prevalent in the
past and today that goes like this, Someone watching a
film or reading a book, even to a lesser degree,
(11:44):
is passively experiencing the vision or the creation that the
author made or the director made, or whoever. But in actuality,
all audience members are collaborators. Whether it's a piece of
art like a sculpture, whether it's a television show, whether
(12:06):
it's a book. We are helping to create the story
by the mere act of observing and interpreting it. What
what this all means is that people are really self
obsessed pathologically, And don't beat yourself up. And if you
feel like this is an unfair characterization, or if you
(12:27):
feel bad and you think, oh, I'm a little bit narcissistic,
because everybody is. Everybody is, and where all the main
characters of our own stories, the center of our individual
universe is the protagonist around which this great world swings.
In addition to this, we're also fantastically talented analyzers and
(12:48):
pattern recognizers. It's one of the reasons our species runs
so much of the planet rather than say an octopus
race or a super intelligent empire of corvids. You know,
I want to see those. I would be super in
the crows that run the world. I don't know why
(13:08):
that's supposed to be a coca in the distance? It worked,
I heard it. Are we predictively programming? Yes? So this
is this is dangerous because with this perspective right as
a starting point, we can make two assumptions. We will
say a pattern exists because we perceive it to exist,
(13:30):
and because we are the most important thing in our experience.
Every pattern we perceive inherently in some way applies to us.
One thing that people don't like to hear in general
is that there's something big going on and it has
nothing to do with you. Yeah, you know what I mean.
I mean that's why so much scientific literature became so controversial.
(13:51):
Charles Darwin when he releases The Origin on the Origin
of Species in eighteen fifty nine, he's saying, Oh, no, humans,
you're not special, You're just you're You're part of a thing.
We're part of a pattern, part of a pattern that
has existed long before you and will continue long after
you are dust. Yeah, And you're like, yeah, whatever, Darwin,
(14:14):
Get out of here, right, go back to looking at islands. Yeah,
get back on the beagle. But that's the that's the problem.
And without delving too far into the weeds on this,
it essentially means that you and i' and Paul and
everyone we're we are neither neutral creators nor are we
(14:38):
a neutral audience. And we're at an impasse because if
no one's objective, then where's the truth? Ultimately? Oh man,
this sounds like an even bigger episode. So all right, yeah,
I'll buy what's going on. Just talking about the nature
(15:00):
of truth. We touch on it every once in a
while when we get into discussing sources of news, but
when you really think about it this way, from from
that deep of a psychological perspective, who makes the mind
wander a bit? Yes, And we know that this pattern
(15:20):
recognition can also be used to make the mind wander
because we're, in addition to being um endearingly self obsessed,
we are also big fans of following rituals and cues
and social worries. The more patterns to recognize, and we're
easily swayed by subtle changes in routine or form. There's
(15:45):
a great there's a great book called The Illuminatous Trilogy,
which I think we've talked about before, and I just
want to put this in because it's one reference to
this kind of social hacking. That's where the Illuminati game
finds its origins. By the way, Oh yeah, no way, really,
that's cool. So this novel, which is incredibly incredibly long,
presented as as a trilogy of smaller works. It depicts
(16:09):
a number of things and rather convoluted plot, and we
don't want to spoil it for you, but there is
one scene in there where someone changes or adds to
the signs at this department store, a relatively high end
department store that has something like, you know, the kind
(16:29):
of thing you would read outside of a fitting room,
like wait for an intendant to help you or something.
The addition they make is they just put no spitting. Okay,
so well, I mean, nobody wants to do that anyway
we want to spit, No one should be. But the
hack about it, the subtle change in that form, makes
people think this is a place of a much lower
(16:51):
socio economic class. This is a place where people are
just spitting on the floor, you know, like a roadhouse
in a movie. This was a work of fiction, but
this kind of stuff can work, and can work really well.
This also goes into the nature of propaganda. But the
(17:11):
question is how how far does this sort of stuff go?
Could some groups or groups really be normalizing future events
through the lens of mass media and fiction, And if so, why, yeah, why,
We're going to talk about that right after a quick
word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Alan
(17:38):
Watt described predictive programming as a subtle form of psychological
conditioning provided by the media to acquaint the public with
planned societal changes to be implemented by our leaders. If
and when these changes are put through, the public will
already be familiarized with them and will accept them as
natural progressions, thus lessening possible public resistance and commotion. When
(18:05):
I when I hear the words of Alan Wad, I
always feel that there is truth there. It just sounds
like there is Again, it's about how he writes h
and how he how he how he spoke. But what
I'm hearing here is something that I've heard for a
long time about the concept of aliens and the concept
(18:29):
that movies and television and novels for decades and decades
have been prepping humans to to accept that aliens have
invaded or to accept alien races from other planets, extraterrestrials
to being a part of our world. And um, and again,
(18:52):
when you put it in that way, our leaders subtly
psychologically conditioning us. UM. I don't know. It almost sounds
like it could be real. Yeah you think so. I
I love that it sounds like I think you're bringing
up a really crucial point here. One of the primary
(19:17):
examples of predictive programming that the advocates of this belief
point out is almost always going to be extraterrestrial stuff, right,
like a slow, decade long preparation for disclosure. Hey guys,
Spielberg was right, aliens are around. We thought the best
way to tell you instead of just ripping the mand
aid off, we we thought we would tell you over
(19:38):
over like sixty years. Get used to it, get you know,
settle in, settle into this tub of weirdness slowly. Well yeah,
that way the reaction is um, you know less, oh
my god, and it's more like, oh wow, cool. I
(19:59):
think I think that's the whole point. If you believe this.
To be sure, millions of people waiting to go I
knew it. Yes, we knew it the whole time. So
what are some other examples of this? Oh? There are
so stink and many of these. Okay, let's start with
the top one of this one. Ben, you put in
the outline first. But this is the one that I
(20:21):
thought about when we even said the phrase predicted programming,
And it's the pilot episode of The Lone Gunman, which
you know, if you were an X Files fan, you
know who the Lone Gunmen are. You watched The Lone
Gunman when it came out as a spinoff and it
was awesome. Uh. But in the pilot episode it features
as part of the plot and an attempted bombing or
(20:46):
destruction at least of the World Trade Center, the Twin Towers,
and specifically it was hijacked commercial airliner that would be
flown into the World Trade Center, and it was a
false flag attack by you know, this rogue group of
government officials. And you know, since that came out before
(21:09):
the September eleven, two thousand one attacks, this is looked
at as whoa, these guys knew something, right, they put
it out there. They're trying to warn us that this
was going to happen. And a lot of the speaking
about it early early on when it occurred was it
was a warning rather than a um a predictive program
(21:31):
and getting you used to it, it was like somebody
is trying to tell us that this is going to happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And this is, as you said, incredibly prevalent example. It
gets brought up continually, but it's not the only example right.
Oh no, there was one that we found referencing the
(21:53):
film The Dark Knight Rises by Christopher Nolan. There's a
map in The Dark Knight Rises that has a location
mark Sandy Hook. Yes, Commissioner Gordon's going over the attack
plan for you know, going in. It's it's the scene
right before they actually go into the stadium for one
(22:13):
of the big climactic scenes. There spoiler alert for The
Dark Knight Rises. But yeah, there's a map and it
does say Sandy Hook on it, so that one is
not nearest persuasive though, because Sandy Hook is a place. Yes. Yes,
the reason why it's weird because it says strike Zone
one and it came you know. Usually what this has
(22:35):
to do with our release dates. We have proximity of
release dates being before you know, and let's say some
given time frame a year or two or even months.
Sometimes again that's the nature of the perception. Yes, we
found the pattern. And another example would be Family Guy.
(22:59):
A Family Guy is replete with cutaway jokes and tangents
that don't really go anywhere. It's just a it's a
quick bit. But there's an episode or a gag in
a Family Guy episode rather that concerns the Boston Marathon. Yeah,
it's an episode called Turban Cowboy that that came out,
(23:22):
and there's a scene in it, or let's let's say
it a scene or breakaway, a cutaway to a quick
thing where Peter Griffin wins the Boston Marathon by driving
his car through all of the other competitors and kills
a whole bunch of people. And then later on in
the episode you might know this just from the or
you might glean it from the title Turban Cowboy, Peter
(23:43):
accidentally joins up with a terrorist cell and he uses
a cell phone to call his buddy moch Mood and
ends up setting off two bombs because he's using the
cell phone or whatever. You can also tell that family
guy has an ongoing tendency to be pretty racist racist,
and you know, yeah, they at least push the boundaries.
(24:07):
Let's say they push the boundaries creatively there right right,
And this, this example, of course, makes people believe in
predictive programming, think they were somehow depicting the later disasters
that would happen at the Boston Marathon. Yes, there's another
(24:28):
example with the movie knowing right that that you have
mentioned the Deep Water Horizon catastrophe at the top of
the episode. Knowing has something to do with this. Yeah,
So if you have not seen Knowing, it's a two
thousand nine Nick Cage movie, and it's all based on
predictive programming essentially, or a different version of predictive programming
(24:52):
UM numbers and codes hidden amongst things that mean other
things and predict the future h in in that movie.
Right in the opening scene, Nicholas Cage is watching television
and on the news comes this image and a news
story about an oil rig that's on fire in the
(25:12):
Gulf of Mexico. And again, this is a two thousand
nine movie. A year later, the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurs,
where an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico explodes,
and I think eleven people were missing immediately when it occurred.
And if you were watching television at the time, immediately
(25:32):
when the news footage came out, it looks crazy similar
to the footage that's shown in the movie Knowing that
you might have seen. Okay, so this footage is just
is it a crucial part of the film or is
it something that just happens in the film. It's something
that happens within the first few moments, and it's literally
(25:54):
a television that's being shown. You know, the camera is
shooting a television showing the news. So it's not a
massive thing. It's just giving you kind of current events
setting up the story. Because all it is you could understand.
I could totally understand though, how somebody would be I
would see that in theaters and then see the evening
news later if they caught a matinee or something like that.
(26:17):
That's disturbing. Yeah, your your perspective is now Nicholas Cages
sitting on the couch or whatever watching the television that
you watched Nick Cage watch. I mean, I could you know,
I could see where that would be at least creepy
to people. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh but the you know, we
talked about Family Guy, but the granddaddy of Family Guy,
(26:41):
the Simpsons. They have an incredible track record of predicting
various future events and trends and things like this, And honestly,
it could be a whole episode of just hey, what
did the how did the Simpsons know that? Oh boy? Yeah,
and there's one that you had brought up off air
before too. Oh yeah, this is this is a great one.
(27:01):
And you'll find this all over the internet, mostly on
Facebook is where I've seen it, and a couple other
blog sites have reposted it. But it's the Donald Trump presidency.
There's so okay. On June, Donald Trump announced that he
was going to run for president, and you remember the
whole deal, coming down the escalator, waving to people, Um,
(27:22):
there are people on the balcony with signs. Well, according
to numerous posts in the year two thousand, the Simpsons
made this episode, which is true. They made an episode
called bart Bart to the Future, and according to these posts,
not only did they predict the Trump presidency, they also
predicted the exact way in which his campaign would be announced. Again,
(27:44):
everything from the people standing on the balconies with signs
to Donald Trump going down the escalator. It's uncanny, it's insane.
It's the exact same sequence. Here's the problem. And you'll
notice this if you if you actually watch a clip
from the supposed Simpsons video, the animation quality is very high,
(28:09):
and you imagine the animation quality, you know, let's say
fifteen years later at least so like compared to two thousand,
it changed a lot. And and then you do a
little digging, and then you realize all of these posts
are actually being taken from a July promotion of the
(28:33):
next Simpsons season, which specifically, um it's a video that
was posted to the YouTube channel and animation on Fox.
I was July seven when it was posted, and it's
called trump Atastic Voyage Season twenty five The Simpsons, and
what it is is a perfect recreation of the event
(28:54):
rather than a prediction of the announcement of what was
going to happen. But the really interesting thing is if
you go back to the two thousand episode The Bart
to the Future, there they do speak directly to Trump
being president, but it's just an aside. I think it's
Maggie who says this, Oh god, there's so much to
explain here. But it's in the future. It's like a
(29:16):
vision of the future within the world of The Simpsons.
And in this vision of the future, I want to say,
it's Maggie the you know baby but now grown up
who mentioned something about that, just some something about how
horrible the Trump legacy was. So they're trying to fix
like all the budget or something that's it's like a
throwaway line essentially, but as a joke of Trump was president.
(29:39):
So this actual this actually happens before the Trump presidency,
but people have been conflating this with the later recreation
of the campaign announcement. Oh yeah, because it would be
much more compelling if this was actually what happened. And
this is just naming a few of these. Oh my god,
there's so many. There's so so many. And our first
(30:01):
immediate questions are pretty easy, Right, how is this different
from a single creative team proposing you're depicting a social
change they think should happen. You know, if like the
Star Trek example, or let's say that the creators of
The Simpsons really thought, you know, the world will be
(30:24):
a better place, and the best way to get it
there is for us to push the greatness of a
Donald Trump presidency, Right that, Like, how is it different
in this case? In the Simpsons case, they're implying that
it was a bad thing for it to happen, Right, Yeah,
it was a joke, it was, And it was a joke.
(30:47):
You know, it sounds like it's kind of a throw
a joke. That's when it felt like, uh. And then
the other question is, how are these events different from
you know, and accident. Yeah, I know, I know. As
pattern seekers and master analyst all we're not big fans
(31:09):
of the idea of something being an accident or a
coincidence or just happening without a real purpose behind it.
First things first, from a psychological angle, there's a problem
with this idea of predictive programming because we tend to
(31:30):
model our behavior based less on an object or an
event and more on a character's reaction to that object
or event. There's a great experiment called Bobo Doll. The
Bobo Doll experiments in this is Bobo is a clown,
is inflatable clown like punching bad clown. All right, I
(31:53):
can't hear? Do you want me to wave? When? When?
Where it past this part? You come back? And no
stay stag this Psychologist Albert ben Dura conducted an experiment
a series of studies using an inflatable punching bag clown
called the Bobo Doll, and they got two groups of children.
(32:18):
In one group, each kid was shown a short film
of an adult hitting the doll, just smack in the
grease paint off it. In the other group, the adult
in the film ignored the doll, and after watching whichever
film they were assigned to. Each kid was put in
a room with a variety of toys, including a Bobo doll.
(32:40):
The children who have been shown the aggressive video overwhelmingly
mimic the adult and beat the snot out of the doll,
while the other kids just ignored it because that's what
you're supposed to do. So this means that if we see,
if we see something depicting a future event, allegedly, what
(33:01):
we're really paying attention to psychologically is going to be
how the characters with whom we identify react to it.
It's not it's not going to be world traits in
an attack. It's not going to be the Boston Marathon.
It's going to be how did the lone gunmen react
to this? How did how did Peter Griffin react to this?
(33:22):
You know what I mean? And it sounds like a
small difference, but it becomes increasingly clear this is strange
because the primary plank of predictive programming as a theory
is the idea that if we see something in real
life that we saw depicted in fiction, we're going to
(33:45):
have less of a reaction, right, We're going to have
resigned in difference or one quote, half hearted protest if
we see something in real life that was predicted. So
if we say, oh, the the CDC in Atlanta blew up,
(34:06):
but we saw several movies about that earlier, so you
know what evs that's the idea. But what we see
from the science behind this is that the idea that
just portrays something will elicit the same reaction regardless of
context is incorrect. There has to be a context to
(34:28):
the pattern, to the action that we are observing. So
the doll itself, the object or the event is not
inherently gonna be one thing or the other. It's going
to be how people react to it. Someone hitting the doll,
someone ignoring the doll. That's what people are modeling. Okay,
now I'm going back and applying this to all this stuff,
(34:50):
including the the Trump presidency. Oh man, okay, I'm going
to reevaluate all that now. Thank you, Ben. That's awesome.
So there's another thing we haven't even we haven't even
discussed yet, which is that this type of prediction in
some form of mass media does really occur. It can
(35:11):
occur in it's an accident, completely in accident. Consider the
early prescient story that you had mentioned before we've talked
about on the show before that Edgar Allan Poe had
this vision of survival cannibalism on a boat. Yes, the
only novel he published, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pim
(35:32):
of Nantucket in eight oh. Yeah, this is This is
a a baffling coincidence, and even if you consider yourself
a very, very skeptical person, you have to admit it
boggles the mind. I think this might be the best
example that I've ever heard. So part way through the
book The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pim of Nantucket, the
(35:55):
crew of a ship called Grampus like Crampus, but with
a g finds themselves on a damaged boat, and they
have no food and they have no water. They managed
to catch a tortoise and eat that, but eventually to
survive they resort to cannibalism. They draw straws to figure
out which one of them will be sacrificed to feed
(36:17):
everyone else. The death straw goes to a guy named
Richard Parker, who's promptly stabbed his head, his hands, and
his feet are thrown overboard, and this keeps the rest
of the crew alive. A little bit longer, but the
last two members are still on the brink of death
when they're finally rescued. Poe himself thought it was a
(36:41):
really silly story. Quote very silly, if we're being accurate,
very silly, those are his words. Until that is in
four in real life, when a yacht named the Mignonette
left England headed toward Australia. The four man crew barely
escaped in a lifeboat, but they didn't have enough food eat,
(37:02):
they didn't have enough water to drink. They did catch
a turtle and they ate it, but just like the
people in the story by Poe, which is forty five
years old at that point, they resorted to cannibalism, specifically
of a seventeen year old named Richard Parker. Isn't that insane?
(37:24):
That is that is the honestly the craziest version of
something like this that I think has ever occurred. Yeah,
I'm at a loss for words still thinking about it,
you know, I mean, it's it's so crazy and it
really does make you reevaluate the life of pie movie. Yeah,
(37:45):
the name of the Tiger. So this this is a
really weird thing too, because it's not spot on and
are we also just seeing what we want to see?
You know, that is a question. And there's an elephant
in the room, right, Oh, there's a big elephant in
the room, and we'll talk about it right after a
(38:07):
quick word from our sponsor. All right, here we go finally,
and kudos, does Matt we got so far without acknowledging
this we did. Yeah, we played the reindeer games. We
said if this is, if this is so, this is
(38:28):
what would happen. These are things we consider from a
couple of different angles. But the big, the big concern here,
the as you said, the elephants, is that this seems
in every single case like a very very very very
complicated plan. Yes, and the the motivations for the machinations
(38:54):
aren't there for me, And and the how much work
you'd have to put in to get the Simpsons to
predict something so that you would be as the public,
that we would be okay with something in the future
baffles my mind that some screenwriter who wrote the pilot
for for this TV show, the spinoff of The X Files,
(39:17):
knew that there was this plan that was going to
be enacted several years or a year from then, two
years whatever, it's why why how much planning would have
to go into that, right, how much plan would have
to go into it publicly, much less how much plan
(39:37):
would have to go into it for it to occur
in secret somehow. Yeah, I mean that's that's easily hundreds
of people. Because you're talking about getting people to approve
a script. I mean, just just that alone, that process
is not an easy one. And uh, I don't know, man, well,
it just it takes almost double think on on the
(40:00):
part of us to believe in this, because if we
walk through it, it requires us to believe that not
only is a work of fiction being made with knowledge
of future events, certain knowledge that they have certitude about this,
but also that the creators of the work are either
in cooperation with some shadowy cabal or their members of
(40:21):
some shadowy cabal that has vast, near omniscient control over
events in the real world. But as still saying, you
know what, guys, we shall also make movies and all
these people are also okay with these terrible tragedies that occur. Right,
this would mean that if it were true, someone new
catastrophes like nine eleven we're going to happen. And additionally,
(40:43):
rather than preventing the disaster, they had enough time to
make a high production level story about something completely different.
Ultimately for the sole purpose of including a passing reference
to a real life event in the story that seems
like a massive amount of work for relatively small return. Yeah,
I I don't get it, man, I don't. I think
(41:06):
in order to believe this fully, you have to really
have gone down the rabbit hole of believing that every
person that's an elite of any sort is working together
for some bigger mass conspiracy. And you know, we have found,
over the course of our time digging into all sorts
of strange stuff on this show, we have found that
(41:29):
it's a lot less likely that one group actually rules
the world. It's a lot more likely that there are
several groups who are all vastly entitled and above the law,
who feel like they should run the world, and they
don't get along well. And I wonder if if you
do subscribe to this theory, you, maybe, even as a
conspiracy realist as we all are in this who can
(41:52):
hear this voice right now? Um? Maybe you imagine that
these are groups working, you know, against each other with
their predictive programming efforts. Ah, I like that spin there.
I like that angle because it would also help at
least to float the the inevitable problem of different predictions occurring. Right,
(42:16):
that's really smart. There's also there's another wrinkle in here,
which is kind of a con Propaganda works best when
it's simplified. I mean, there's no denying that fiction is
incredibly powerful. And even today, books and films are banned
by governments around the world. And also propaganda is produced
(42:40):
by governments around the world or by think tanks or agencies.
People with some sort of agenda, whether they are fervent nationalists,
whether they are racial supremacists of some sort, they're they're
out there and they want to have a story where
their agenda or their goal is entered as the right thing,
(43:02):
the best thing. And I know I'm mentioning, I know,
I'm I'm mentioned groups like nationalists and supremacists, but that's
barely the surface. It's like everybody's people whom you know.
It's cause agnostic. It's a technique that does not fall
(43:22):
under the purview of any one particular group of people
that you might think of as evil or they might
think of as good. The people who want to save
coral reefs are absolutely capable of doing the same kind
of things that you would see from another propaganda entity. Yeah,
I happen to believe that they have truth on their side.
(43:43):
That that's just me. You believe in the coral reefs. Yeah,
I think they're real. I think it cuts out well,
some of them are not real. I was just learning
about some of I think it's the Georgia Coast. NPR
was talking about this where they're fake coral reefs, artificial reefs. Yeah,
really saying stuff made out of rubble. But there's still
real like this. They're not coral. Bough, they're reefs, they're
(44:06):
not coral. That's all. That's a very good point, Matt.
Thank you, thank you for bringing that, bringing that to light. Finally,
it's what big coral doesn't want you to know. Seriously,
Oh man, rebar and concrete will do just wonders for
fish and needed to be said. Thank you, no problem, dude,
(44:27):
just while we're still in oceanic realms. Been. My father
called me panicked the other day about the Great Pacific
garbage Patch, and I think he honestly hadn't ever heard
of it before. And you know, this is something that
maybe you listening to this have heard about it before.
It is a massively troubling thing that is happening a
(44:52):
a huge amount of plastic and other garbage that's just there.
I feel like we need to do some kind of
episode on it because my dad was genuinely terrified and
felt like the world was ending because of this. Well,
it's certainly not a good thing. Well yeah, absolutely, but
I think imagining it and um seeing some of the
(45:13):
imagery that the New News was putting out about it
was was fear inducing, and I think it's worth us
discussing maybe in the future about what could happen. Sure. Yeah,
we can also talk about whether recycling actually helps. That's
great because a lot of people in the West, at
(45:33):
least are I don't know, are doing a ritual where
you put some trash in a blue box and you
tell yourself that you're making a difference, And you know,
I think that's a sincere thing. We recycled here at
the office, but in a lot of places when people
come around to collect the garbage, the things from those
(45:56):
two boxes go in the same dumpster. YEP. So no,
sometimes I don't want to make a huge sweeping statement
about it. But but it's true that does happen. So yeah,
let us know what we should examine when it comes
to recycling, when it comes to the Great Garbage Patch.
We did do an episode on ocean acidification and we did. Yeah,
(46:18):
and you know that's scary. Yeah, that's really scary. But
and why aren't we using the whole the plasma methods
of breaking down trash, turning it into slag and usable gases. Yeah,
you told me about that years ago. They had the
technology in Japan, right, dude. They've been doing this for
decades in Japan and a couple other places, just turning
(46:40):
their their trash into energy and usable building materials. Why
aren't we doing this? Guy's Wow, that's a massive tangent. Okay,
let's let's get back to this really fast. So are
we predictively programming the audience? Oh? Is that what this is?
Is that what this whole thing was? Oh my god, Paul,
(47:01):
were you in on this? Oh my god, Matt, I
figured the best way for you to learn this be
on the air with with no prep. You made me
a part of this. Oh my god, it's too late now.
Pretty soon we're gonna have George Soros Warren Buffett, Bill Gates,
(47:23):
and uh, I don't know who else, Oprah, Alice Cooper.
They're all gonna walk in and do a slow clap
the bazos. Maybe maybe he's a fearsome beast, though no,
I don't. We don't have any celebrity illuminati that that
are coming by. Although today as we recorded this, uh,
(47:44):
David Diggs did drop by to appear on a show
our pal Chuck does called movie Crush, So do check
that out. Did you like that organic segue and perfection
with you? Thanks? You know, they sometimes call me the
the Matt Frederick of smooth Plugs. It's a it's a
(48:05):
tremendous compliment one I don't deserve. But if you know,
if you're if you're thinking to yourself, what did I miss?
And you wanna, you know, send us something. Uh, if
you have any questions or comments about anything we've talked
about today, have you noticed a different version of predictive
programming or do you have a really good example, or
you know what, do you think it's hogwash? You should
(48:26):
write to us. You can find us on social media
where we are conspiracy stuff on most of them, sometimes
conspiracy stuff show. You'll find us. You can do it.
You can go to stuff they don't want you to
know dot com. You can check out every podcast we've
ever recorded, some videos, all kinds of good stuff there.
You can. Oh, there's another thing you can do. That's right, folks,
(48:48):
friends and neighbors, skeptics, conspiracy realist alike. If you would
rather call us directly, we have a phone number and
you can have it. You can update us on what
you think about predictive programming. You can tell us your
favorite think tanks. I think personally, we're both fascinated by
(49:10):
Rand Corporation and their subsidiaries. And all you have to
do is give us a ring. We're one eight three
three st d w y t K. That's it. And
if you want that number in numerals, it's one eight
three three seven eight three nine nine eight five and
(49:33):
you can call it. Just leave a message. We're gonna
listen to it. It might end up in the show somehow.
Spoiler alert, you may be participating in predictive programming, but
you didn't hear it from us. We didn't say anything
about it. And if you're thinking, well, i'm a little
mora old fashioned, I like a I'm somehow anachronistic, lee
(49:54):
old fashioned because I would rather send an email than
leave a message. Then we have good news for you.
You can reach us directly. We are conspiracy at how
stuff works dot com, m
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. They
called me Ben. We are joined with our super producer,
Paul the Paul the Predictor decond. Okay, we got a shrug.
We're joining with Paul the Predictor deck end. Most importantly,
you are you, and you are here, and that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. We predict
(00:45):
you will find this episode fascinating. Oh yeah, we can
already tell this is going to be your favorite episode
that's come out in a long time. We've already read
some of your emails. Thank you for those. It's really
kind what you said about this episode. We and um,
you know, we look forward to your next ones, right,
both represented in fiction and in real life. I don't
(01:08):
know if we can continue this this trope for the
whole show man, What do you think we're just being silly,
We're just we're just having a goof Do people still
say that having a goof? Of? Course? Great? Because if not,
we're bringing it back. This episode is about somewhat of
(01:29):
a meta conspiracy, a conspiracy about conspiracies, for lack of
a better term, or a technique that has attributed to
a lot of specific theories. And oddly enough, there's a
very strong basis in truth in this, which I think
surprised both of us. There is a little bit of
(01:50):
truth in a way, but it's um, yeah, it's one
of those things where it's so prevalent. This what we're
speaking about today. Just say what it is a predictive
programming and it's so prevalent on the Internet when anything occurs.
There is so much media that exists and so many
(02:12):
things happening that when you find the little connective tissues,
there's always that Eureka moment and it just happens all
the time. Now maybe, yeah, maybe we get into this
too with an anecdote. Several years ago, you and I
made a video about the Illuminati card game. Yes, yes,
(02:36):
and in the Illuminati Card Game, uh, there are there
are certain cards that people who believe in predictive programming
have pointed to as evidence of this practice. I think
specifically the Twin Towers. The Twin Towers was one about
a terrorist attack. There were so many though Deep Water
Horizon from was one and again in that video. Oh,
(03:00):
I guess do we want to spoil any of that
right now? About kind of what we found out about
the card game? Oh yeah, go ahead, laid up. Okay.
So there have been so many versions of that card
game over the years. The cards have shifted and changed
a little bit, the artwork has been altered. Exactly what
stated on the cards has been altered. And then when
you're online and you have people posting images about you know, here,
(03:24):
look at this card from this game that came out
in nineties something. Uh, you know, it predicted the World
Trade Center because of this card when an actuality that
card was referring to the original World Trade Center bombing
which occurred in the nineties, and then and or it
was changed now because of other you know, circumstances, things
(03:49):
that actually occurred in the real world after it was
put out. It's just interesting how things shift over time,
and when it's posted on the internet, it could be
from any time throughout the span of cards history. Oh,
we should also point out that it's a fun game game.
I I was so happy because you introduced me to it,
(04:09):
and I'm going to owe you for that one. Also,
I was thinking, should we play that game with with
with you friends and neighbors if we ever run into
each other in real life? Or Matt, should you and
Paul and Nolan I make a game of our own?
We could. We can make a game of our own.
We could live stream it. Stuff they don't want you
(04:30):
to play. I don't know, I don't know. We'll we'll
put a pen in that. But but yeah, So that's
a that's a great example of an allegation of predictive programming.
Here's what we mean specifically when we say there's a
basis in truth. In decades past, the US government would
assemble groups of people to help them predict the direction
(04:51):
of future technological breakthroughs. And they consulted scientists and technocrats,
but they also asked science fiction wighters to join in
this think tankery. And several of these writers, it turns out,
had already successfully predicted the broad strokes of a certain
aspect of technological progress or social changes, and they had
(05:14):
depicted these events in works of fiction. Yeah, and for
a lot of people, this is just it speaks to
the human imagination. What can what images and ideas can
we conjure in our heads before it becomes reality, and um,
it's really honestly, it's it's inspiring and our species ability
to dream beyond the limits of this moment of what's
(05:36):
occurring right now and things that I can possibly do
today to what I could do in the future because
of X. I mean, that's incredible. That's what separates us. Well,
there are a lot of things that separate us, but
that's one of the major things that separates us from
other mammals. You're giving me chills. That is inspiring, especially
the way you put it there. It is. It is
(05:57):
one of the primary separations. But it's not all like
angel farts and trumpets in the sky. You know. There
there's a dark side that people see here because for others,
this story of sci fi collaboration is only scratching the surface.
It's a relatively benign example of a much more widespread
(06:17):
and according to them, sinister practice. Fringe researchers across the
US and the globe believe that nefarious, hidden groups are
guiding the public through the use of this predictive programming.
So let's look at the facts. When we look at
the idea of fiction, whether an Illuminati game or a
film depicting actual events in the future. We see two
(06:42):
fundamental factors of play immediately. Yeah. The first is what
the creators are trying to do. It's it's not a
secret that people who write screenplays and write books, of
directors of television and movie, they often are attempting to
depict what they think the future is going to look like,
what might happen in the future. If you think about
(07:07):
the novel or Brave New World, these are two cautionary
tales very different from each other and also quite similar.
Um they're they're meant to educate as much as they're
meant to warn and entertain. There they function on a
whole lot of levels. Yeah. Yeah, Four is one of
(07:29):
those books that, even after having read it multiple times,
I still don't know if I would say I'm entertained
by it, you know what I mean? Sure, it definitely
airs more on the cautionary tale side, but you're you're
absolutely right. I think that's such a great point. These
authors and these creators are not working in a vacuum.
(07:49):
They are attempting to enact some sort of change in
the world, whether it's just making the world one story better,
or one story richer or whatever we want to say
about or as in the case of a brave, brave
New World, it's the question of dufftow entertained too much? Yes, yes,
(08:09):
and these authors could also depict something more aspirational, like
what the future of humanity could be if we ever,
you know, get our collective business together. I'm talking about
Star Trek. I'm talking about Star Trek, Matt Man. Star
Trek tng was the thing they like made me go, okay,
(08:30):
we're gonna be okay. The future is going to be
an amazing place. I can't wait to get there. Right,
it's a it's a post scarcity economy, right, there's there's
not income inequality, and the species spends its time exploring
strange new worlds and attempting to enrich their knowledge of
(08:51):
the galaxy and the beautiful universe in which we live.
Also having more or less constant war or uneasy truces
with various alien and hires. Probably a story for a
different episode, but yeah, Star Trek aspirational. Imagine what we
could be exactly, and then you could even have a holidack.
I mean, come on, that's what it was for, you know.
(09:14):
It was it was the big picture stuff. I hated
the holiday episodes. Yeah, you know, I always felt like
I was getting tricked. I felt, you know, this is
just my opinion, one person's opinion, and I would love
to hear everybody else's opinion on this. I felt it
felt as if the actors were pushing this on the
(09:36):
writers and the producers and saying, well, you know, I've
I've done some Shakespeare before. You're talking specifically about El Capitan, right,
I don't know, I don't you know, I don't know
who it was. I feel like I have suspicions, but
I can't pin it on any single actor. And maybe
(09:56):
it was just maybe it just felt like a bait
and switch. Yeah, it's a I think it's a writing
device that the people in the writer's room can go, Wow,
we've been stuck on this enterprise for a long time
in all these episodes. Let's let's do a Western. Yeah.
It could be that. It could also be something, as
you know, these are big machines. Every television show is
(10:18):
a huge machine of its own, So it could have
been something behind the scenes where they said, okay, look
we have this leftover set for show that didn't get used.
We have to use it. And sorry, Star trek TNG,
you drew the short straw this time. So writer's room,
(10:38):
chop chop uh something something with the Holida deck or
maybe this sets about to get torn down. Hey, writer's
let's find a way to use it quick. We we
have spent a lot of time thinking about thinking about this.
You know, I bet someone out there has a has
the real scoop the street poop, as we might say
(11:00):
on on the the origin of those Hollow Deck episodes.
But there is another thing that comes into play when
we consider this idea of fiction purposefully predicting actual events
in the future, usually bad ones, and that is the
dangerous deceptive traits of the human mind. Yeah, it's not
(11:22):
just the people creating the fiction and the entertainment. It's
the people who are consuming it, actively watching and hearing it. Right.
And there's this assumption that is so prevalent in the
past and today that goes like this, Someone watching a
film or reading a book, even to a lesser degree,
(11:44):
is passively experiencing the vision or the creation that the
author made or the director made, or whoever. But in actuality,
all audience members are collaborators. Whether it's a piece of
art like a sculpture, whether it's a television show, whether
(12:06):
it's a book. We are helping to create the story
by the mere act of observing and interpreting it. What
what this all means is that people are really self
obsessed pathologically, And don't beat yourself up. And if you
feel like this is an unfair characterization, or if you
(12:27):
feel bad and you think, oh, I'm a little bit narcissistic,
because everybody is. Everybody is, and where all the main
characters of our own stories, the center of our individual
universe is the protagonist around which this great world swings.
In addition to this, we're also fantastically talented analyzers and
(12:48):
pattern recognizers. It's one of the reasons our species runs
so much of the planet rather than say an octopus
race or a super intelligent empire of corvids. You know,
I want to see those. I would be super in
the crows that run the world. I don't know why
(13:08):
that's supposed to be a coca in the distance? It worked,
I heard it. Are we predictively programming? Yes? So this
is this is dangerous because with this perspective right as
a starting point, we can make two assumptions. We will
say a pattern exists because we perceive it to exist,
(13:30):
and because we are the most important thing in our experience.
Every pattern we perceive inherently in some way applies to us.
One thing that people don't like to hear in general
is that there's something big going on and it has
nothing to do with you. Yeah, you know what I mean.
I mean that's why so much scientific literature became so controversial.
(13:51):
Charles Darwin when he releases The Origin on the Origin
of Species in eighteen fifty nine, he's saying, Oh, no, humans,
you're not special, You're just you're You're part of a thing.
We're part of a pattern, part of a pattern that
has existed long before you and will continue long after
you are dust. Yeah, And you're like, yeah, whatever, Darwin,
(14:14):
Get out of here, right, go back to looking at islands. Yeah,
get back on the beagle. But that's the that's the problem.
And without delving too far into the weeds on this,
it essentially means that you and i' and Paul and
everyone we're we are neither neutral creators nor are we
(14:38):
a neutral audience. And we're at an impasse because if
no one's objective, then where's the truth? Ultimately? Oh man,
this sounds like an even bigger episode. So all right, yeah,
I'll buy what's going on. Just talking about the nature
(15:00):
of truth. We touch on it every once in a
while when we get into discussing sources of news, but
when you really think about it this way, from from
that deep of a psychological perspective, who makes the mind
wander a bit? Yes, And we know that this pattern
(15:20):
recognition can also be used to make the mind wander
because we're, in addition to being um endearingly self obsessed,
we are also big fans of following rituals and cues
and social worries. The more patterns to recognize, and we're
easily swayed by subtle changes in routine or form. There's
(15:45):
a great there's a great book called The Illuminatous Trilogy,
which I think we've talked about before, and I just
want to put this in because it's one reference to
this kind of social hacking. That's where the Illuminati game
finds its origins. By the way, Oh yeah, no way, really,
that's cool. So this novel, which is incredibly incredibly long,
presented as as a trilogy of smaller works. It depicts
(16:09):
a number of things and rather convoluted plot, and we
don't want to spoil it for you, but there is
one scene in there where someone changes or adds to
the signs at this department store, a relatively high end
department store that has something like, you know, the kind
(16:29):
of thing you would read outside of a fitting room,
like wait for an intendant to help you or something.
The addition they make is they just put no spitting. Okay,
so well, I mean, nobody wants to do that anyway
we want to spit, No one should be. But the
hack about it, the subtle change in that form, makes
people think this is a place of a much lower
(16:51):
socio economic class. This is a place where people are
just spitting on the floor, you know, like a roadhouse
in a movie. This was a work of fiction, but
this kind of stuff can work, and can work really well.
This also goes into the nature of propaganda. But the
(17:11):
question is how how far does this sort of stuff go?
Could some groups or groups really be normalizing future events
through the lens of mass media and fiction, And if so, why, yeah, why,
We're going to talk about that right after a quick
word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Alan
(17:38):
Watt described predictive programming as a subtle form of psychological
conditioning provided by the media to acquaint the public with
planned societal changes to be implemented by our leaders. If
and when these changes are put through, the public will
already be familiarized with them and will accept them as
natural progressions, thus lessening possible public resistance and commotion. When
(18:05):
I when I hear the words of Alan Wad, I
always feel that there is truth there. It just sounds
like there is Again, it's about how he writes h
and how he how he how he spoke. But what
I'm hearing here is something that I've heard for a
long time about the concept of aliens and the concept
(18:29):
that movies and television and novels for decades and decades
have been prepping humans to to accept that aliens have
invaded or to accept alien races from other planets, extraterrestrials
to being a part of our world. And um, and again,
(18:52):
when you put it in that way, our leaders subtly
psychologically conditioning us. UM. I don't know. It almost sounds
like it could be real. Yeah you think so. I
I love that it sounds like I think you're bringing
up a really crucial point here. One of the primary
(19:17):
examples of predictive programming that the advocates of this belief
point out is almost always going to be extraterrestrial stuff, right,
like a slow, decade long preparation for disclosure. Hey guys,
Spielberg was right, aliens are around. We thought the best
way to tell you instead of just ripping the mand
aid off, we we thought we would tell you over
(19:38):
over like sixty years. Get used to it, get you know,
settle in, settle into this tub of weirdness slowly. Well yeah,
that way the reaction is um, you know less, oh
my god, and it's more like, oh wow, cool. I
(19:59):
think I think that's the whole point. If you believe this.
To be sure, millions of people waiting to go I
knew it. Yes, we knew it the whole time. So
what are some other examples of this? Oh? There are
so stink and many of these. Okay, let's start with
the top one of this one. Ben, you put in
the outline first. But this is the one that I
(20:21):
thought about when we even said the phrase predicted programming,
And it's the pilot episode of The Lone Gunman, which
you know, if you were an X Files fan, you
know who the Lone Gunmen are. You watched The Lone
Gunman when it came out as a spinoff and it
was awesome. Uh. But in the pilot episode it features
as part of the plot and an attempted bombing or
(20:46):
destruction at least of the World Trade Center, the Twin Towers,
and specifically it was hijacked commercial airliner that would be
flown into the World Trade Center, and it was a
false flag attack by you know, this rogue group of
government officials. And you know, since that came out before
(21:09):
the September eleven, two thousand one attacks, this is looked
at as whoa, these guys knew something, right, they put
it out there. They're trying to warn us that this
was going to happen. And a lot of the speaking
about it early early on when it occurred was it
was a warning rather than a um a predictive program
(21:31):
and getting you used to it, it was like somebody
is trying to tell us that this is going to happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And this is, as you said, incredibly prevalent example. It
gets brought up continually, but it's not the only example right.
Oh no, there was one that we found referencing the
(21:53):
film The Dark Knight Rises by Christopher Nolan. There's a
map in The Dark Knight Rises that has a location
mark Sandy Hook. Yes, Commissioner Gordon's going over the attack
plan for you know, going in. It's it's the scene
right before they actually go into the stadium for one
(22:13):
of the big climactic scenes. There spoiler alert for The
Dark Knight Rises. But yeah, there's a map and it
does say Sandy Hook on it, so that one is
not nearest persuasive though, because Sandy Hook is a place. Yes. Yes,
the reason why it's weird because it says strike Zone
one and it came you know. Usually what this has
(22:35):
to do with our release dates. We have proximity of
release dates being before you know, and let's say some
given time frame a year or two or even months.
Sometimes again that's the nature of the perception. Yes, we
found the pattern. And another example would be Family Guy.
(22:59):
A Family Guy is replete with cutaway jokes and tangents
that don't really go anywhere. It's just a it's a
quick bit. But there's an episode or a gag in
a Family Guy episode rather that concerns the Boston Marathon. Yeah,
it's an episode called Turban Cowboy that that came out,
(23:22):
and there's a scene in it, or let's let's say
it a scene or breakaway, a cutaway to a quick
thing where Peter Griffin wins the Boston Marathon by driving
his car through all of the other competitors and kills
a whole bunch of people. And then later on in
the episode you might know this just from the or
you might glean it from the title Turban Cowboy, Peter
(23:43):
accidentally joins up with a terrorist cell and he uses
a cell phone to call his buddy moch Mood and
ends up setting off two bombs because he's using the
cell phone or whatever. You can also tell that family
guy has an ongoing tendency to be pretty racist racist,
and you know, yeah, they at least push the boundaries.
(24:07):
Let's say they push the boundaries creatively there right right,
And this, this example, of course, makes people believe in
predictive programming, think they were somehow depicting the later disasters
that would happen at the Boston Marathon. Yes, there's another
(24:28):
example with the movie knowing right that that you have
mentioned the Deep Water Horizon catastrophe at the top of
the episode. Knowing has something to do with this. Yeah,
So if you have not seen Knowing, it's a two
thousand nine Nick Cage movie, and it's all based on
predictive programming essentially, or a different version of predictive programming
(24:52):
UM numbers and codes hidden amongst things that mean other
things and predict the future h in in that movie.
Right in the opening scene, Nicholas Cage is watching television
and on the news comes this image and a news
story about an oil rig that's on fire in the
(25:12):
Gulf of Mexico. And again, this is a two thousand
nine movie. A year later, the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurs,
where an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico explodes,
and I think eleven people were missing immediately when it occurred.
And if you were watching television at the time, immediately
(25:32):
when the news footage came out, it looks crazy similar
to the footage that's shown in the movie Knowing that
you might have seen. Okay, so this footage is just
is it a crucial part of the film or is
it something that just happens in the film. It's something
that happens within the first few moments, and it's literally
(25:54):
a television that's being shown. You know, the camera is
shooting a television showing the news. So it's not a
massive thing. It's just giving you kind of current events
setting up the story. Because all it is you could understand.
I could totally understand though, how somebody would be I
would see that in theaters and then see the evening
news later if they caught a matinee or something like that.
(26:17):
That's disturbing. Yeah, your your perspective is now Nicholas Cages
sitting on the couch or whatever watching the television that
you watched Nick Cage watch. I mean, I could you know,
I could see where that would be at least creepy
to people. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh but the you know, we
talked about Family Guy, but the granddaddy of Family Guy,
(26:41):
the Simpsons. They have an incredible track record of predicting
various future events and trends and things like this, And honestly,
it could be a whole episode of just hey, what
did the how did the Simpsons know that? Oh boy? Yeah,
and there's one that you had brought up off air
before too. Oh yeah, this is this is a great one.
(27:01):
And you'll find this all over the internet, mostly on
Facebook is where I've seen it, and a couple other
blog sites have reposted it. But it's the Donald Trump presidency.
There's so okay. On June, Donald Trump announced that he
was going to run for president, and you remember the
whole deal, coming down the escalator, waving to people, Um,
(27:22):
there are people on the balcony with signs. Well, according
to numerous posts in the year two thousand, the Simpsons
made this episode, which is true. They made an episode
called bart Bart to the Future, and according to these posts,
not only did they predict the Trump presidency, they also
predicted the exact way in which his campaign would be announced. Again,
(27:44):
everything from the people standing on the balconies with signs
to Donald Trump going down the escalator. It's uncanny, it's insane.
It's the exact same sequence. Here's the problem. And you'll
notice this if you if you actually watch a clip
from the supposed Simpsons video, the animation quality is very high,
(28:09):
and you imagine the animation quality, you know, let's say
fifteen years later at least so like compared to two thousand,
it changed a lot. And and then you do a
little digging, and then you realize all of these posts
are actually being taken from a July promotion of the
(28:33):
next Simpsons season, which specifically, um it's a video that
was posted to the YouTube channel and animation on Fox.
I was July seven when it was posted, and it's
called trump Atastic Voyage Season twenty five The Simpsons, and
what it is is a perfect recreation of the event
(28:54):
rather than a prediction of the announcement of what was
going to happen. But the really interesting thing is if
you go back to the two thousand episode The Bart
to the Future, there they do speak directly to Trump
being president, but it's just an aside. I think it's
Maggie who says this, Oh god, there's so much to
explain here. But it's in the future. It's like a
(29:16):
vision of the future within the world of The Simpsons.
And in this vision of the future, I want to say,
it's Maggie the you know baby but now grown up
who mentioned something about that, just some something about how
horrible the Trump legacy was. So they're trying to fix
like all the budget or something that's it's like a
throwaway line essentially, but as a joke of Trump was president.
(29:39):
So this actual this actually happens before the Trump presidency,
but people have been conflating this with the later recreation
of the campaign announcement. Oh yeah, because it would be
much more compelling if this was actually what happened. And
this is just naming a few of these. Oh my god,
there's so many. There's so so many. And our first
(30:01):
immediate questions are pretty easy, Right, how is this different
from a single creative team proposing you're depicting a social
change they think should happen. You know, if like the
Star Trek example, or let's say that the creators of
The Simpsons really thought, you know, the world will be
(30:24):
a better place, and the best way to get it
there is for us to push the greatness of a
Donald Trump presidency, Right that, Like, how is it different
in this case? In the Simpsons case, they're implying that
it was a bad thing for it to happen, Right, Yeah,
it was a joke, it was, And it was a joke.
(30:47):
You know, it sounds like it's kind of a throw
a joke. That's when it felt like, uh. And then
the other question is, how are these events different from
you know, and accident. Yeah, I know, I know. As
pattern seekers and master analyst all we're not big fans
(31:09):
of the idea of something being an accident or a
coincidence or just happening without a real purpose behind it.
First things first, from a psychological angle, there's a problem
with this idea of predictive programming because we tend to
(31:30):
model our behavior based less on an object or an
event and more on a character's reaction to that object
or event. There's a great experiment called Bobo Doll. The
Bobo Doll experiments in this is Bobo is a clown,
is inflatable clown like punching bad clown. All right, I
(31:53):
can't hear? Do you want me to wave? When? When?
Where it past this part? You come back? And no
stay stag this Psychologist Albert ben Dura conducted an experiment
a series of studies using an inflatable punching bag clown
called the Bobo Doll, and they got two groups of children.
(32:18):
In one group, each kid was shown a short film
of an adult hitting the doll, just smack in the
grease paint off it. In the other group, the adult
in the film ignored the doll, and after watching whichever
film they were assigned to. Each kid was put in
a room with a variety of toys, including a Bobo doll.
(32:40):
The children who have been shown the aggressive video overwhelmingly
mimic the adult and beat the snot out of the doll,
while the other kids just ignored it because that's what
you're supposed to do. So this means that if we see,
if we see something depicting a future event, allegedly, what
(33:01):
we're really paying attention to psychologically is going to be
how the characters with whom we identify react to it.
It's not it's not going to be world traits in
an attack. It's not going to be the Boston Marathon.
It's going to be how did the lone gunmen react
to this? How did how did Peter Griffin react to this?
(33:22):
You know what I mean? And it sounds like a
small difference, but it becomes increasingly clear this is strange
because the primary plank of predictive programming as a theory
is the idea that if we see something in real
life that we saw depicted in fiction, we're going to
(33:45):
have less of a reaction, right, We're going to have
resigned in difference or one quote, half hearted protest if
we see something in real life that was predicted. So
if we say, oh, the the CDC in Atlanta blew up,
(34:06):
but we saw several movies about that earlier, so you
know what evs that's the idea. But what we see
from the science behind this is that the idea that
just portrays something will elicit the same reaction regardless of
context is incorrect. There has to be a context to
(34:28):
the pattern, to the action that we are observing. So
the doll itself, the object or the event is not
inherently gonna be one thing or the other. It's going
to be how people react to it. Someone hitting the doll,
someone ignoring the doll. That's what people are modeling. Okay,
now I'm going back and applying this to all this stuff,
(34:50):
including the the Trump presidency. Oh man, okay, I'm going
to reevaluate all that now. Thank you, Ben. That's awesome.
So there's another thing we haven't even we haven't even
discussed yet, which is that this type of prediction in
some form of mass media does really occur. It can
(35:11):
occur in it's an accident, completely in accident. Consider the
early prescient story that you had mentioned before we've talked
about on the show before that Edgar Allan Poe had
this vision of survival cannibalism on a boat. Yes, the
only novel he published, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pim
(35:32):
of Nantucket in eight oh. Yeah, this is This is
a a baffling coincidence, and even if you consider yourself
a very, very skeptical person, you have to admit it
boggles the mind. I think this might be the best
example that I've ever heard. So part way through the
book The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pim of Nantucket, the
(35:55):
crew of a ship called Grampus like Crampus, but with
a g finds themselves on a damaged boat, and they
have no food and they have no water. They managed
to catch a tortoise and eat that, but eventually to
survive they resort to cannibalism. They draw straws to figure
out which one of them will be sacrificed to feed
(36:17):
everyone else. The death straw goes to a guy named
Richard Parker, who's promptly stabbed his head, his hands, and
his feet are thrown overboard, and this keeps the rest
of the crew alive. A little bit longer, but the
last two members are still on the brink of death
when they're finally rescued. Poe himself thought it was a
(36:41):
really silly story. Quote very silly, if we're being accurate,
very silly, those are his words. Until that is in
four in real life, when a yacht named the Mignonette
left England headed toward Australia. The four man crew barely
escaped in a lifeboat, but they didn't have enough food eat,
(37:02):
they didn't have enough water to drink. They did catch
a turtle and they ate it, but just like the
people in the story by Poe, which is forty five
years old at that point, they resorted to cannibalism, specifically
of a seventeen year old named Richard Parker. Isn't that insane?
(37:24):
That is that is the honestly the craziest version of
something like this that I think has ever occurred. Yeah,
I'm at a loss for words still thinking about it,
you know, I mean, it's it's so crazy and it
really does make you reevaluate the life of pie movie. Yeah,
(37:45):
the name of the Tiger. So this this is a
really weird thing too, because it's not spot on and
are we also just seeing what we want to see?
You know, that is a question. And there's an elephant
in the room, right, Oh, there's a big elephant in
the room, and we'll talk about it right after a
(38:07):
quick word from our sponsor. All right, here we go finally,
and kudos, does Matt we got so far without acknowledging
this we did. Yeah, we played the reindeer games. We
said if this is, if this is so, this is
(38:28):
what would happen. These are things we consider from a
couple of different angles. But the big, the big concern here,
the as you said, the elephants, is that this seems
in every single case like a very very very very
complicated plan. Yes, and the the motivations for the machinations
(38:54):
aren't there for me, And and the how much work
you'd have to put in to get the Simpsons to
predict something so that you would be as the public,
that we would be okay with something in the future
baffles my mind that some screenwriter who wrote the pilot
for for this TV show, the spinoff of The X Files,
(39:17):
knew that there was this plan that was going to
be enacted several years or a year from then, two
years whatever, it's why why how much planning would have
to go into that, right, how much plan would have
to go into it publicly, much less how much plan
(39:37):
would have to go into it for it to occur
in secret somehow. Yeah, I mean that's that's easily hundreds
of people. Because you're talking about getting people to approve
a script. I mean, just just that alone, that process
is not an easy one. And uh, I don't know, man, well,
it just it takes almost double think on on the
(40:00):
part of us to believe in this, because if we
walk through it, it requires us to believe that not
only is a work of fiction being made with knowledge
of future events, certain knowledge that they have certitude about this,
but also that the creators of the work are either
in cooperation with some shadowy cabal or their members of
(40:21):
some shadowy cabal that has vast, near omniscient control over
events in the real world. But as still saying, you
know what, guys, we shall also make movies and all
these people are also okay with these terrible tragedies that occur. Right,
this would mean that if it were true, someone new
catastrophes like nine eleven we're going to happen. And additionally,
(40:43):
rather than preventing the disaster, they had enough time to
make a high production level story about something completely different.
Ultimately for the sole purpose of including a passing reference
to a real life event in the story that seems
like a massive amount of work for relatively small return. Yeah,
I I don't get it, man, I don't. I think
(41:06):
in order to believe this fully, you have to really
have gone down the rabbit hole of believing that every
person that's an elite of any sort is working together
for some bigger mass conspiracy. And you know, we have found,
over the course of our time digging into all sorts
of strange stuff on this show, we have found that
(41:29):
it's a lot less likely that one group actually rules
the world. It's a lot more likely that there are
several groups who are all vastly entitled and above the law,
who feel like they should run the world, and they
don't get along well. And I wonder if if you
do subscribe to this theory, you, maybe, even as a
conspiracy realist as we all are in this who can
(41:52):
hear this voice right now? Um? Maybe you imagine that
these are groups working, you know, against each other with
their predictive programming efforts. Ah, I like that spin there.
I like that angle because it would also help at
least to float the the inevitable problem of different predictions occurring. Right,
(42:16):
that's really smart. There's also there's another wrinkle in here,
which is kind of a con Propaganda works best when
it's simplified. I mean, there's no denying that fiction is
incredibly powerful. And even today, books and films are banned
by governments around the world. And also propaganda is produced
(42:40):
by governments around the world or by think tanks or agencies.
People with some sort of agenda, whether they are fervent nationalists,
whether they are racial supremacists of some sort, they're they're
out there and they want to have a story where
their agenda or their goal is entered as the right thing,
(43:02):
the best thing. And I know I'm mentioning, I know,
I'm I'm mentioned groups like nationalists and supremacists, but that's
barely the surface. It's like everybody's people whom you know.
It's cause agnostic. It's a technique that does not fall
(43:22):
under the purview of any one particular group of people
that you might think of as evil or they might
think of as good. The people who want to save
coral reefs are absolutely capable of doing the same kind
of things that you would see from another propaganda entity. Yeah,
I happen to believe that they have truth on their side.
(43:43):
That that's just me. You believe in the coral reefs. Yeah,
I think they're real. I think it cuts out well,
some of them are not real. I was just learning
about some of I think it's the Georgia Coast. NPR
was talking about this where they're fake coral reefs, artificial reefs. Yeah,
really saying stuff made out of rubble. But there's still
real like this. They're not coral. Bough, they're reefs, they're
(44:06):
not coral. That's all. That's a very good point, Matt.
Thank you, thank you for bringing that, bringing that to light. Finally,
it's what big coral doesn't want you to know. Seriously,
Oh man, rebar and concrete will do just wonders for
fish and needed to be said. Thank you, no problem, dude,
(44:27):
just while we're still in oceanic realms. Been. My father
called me panicked the other day about the Great Pacific
garbage Patch, and I think he honestly hadn't ever heard
of it before. And you know, this is something that
maybe you listening to this have heard about it before.
It is a massively troubling thing that is happening a
(44:52):
a huge amount of plastic and other garbage that's just there.
I feel like we need to do some kind of
episode on it because my dad was genuinely terrified and
felt like the world was ending because of this. Well,
it's certainly not a good thing. Well yeah, absolutely, but
I think imagining it and um seeing some of the
(45:13):
imagery that the New News was putting out about it
was was fear inducing, and I think it's worth us
discussing maybe in the future about what could happen. Sure. Yeah,
we can also talk about whether recycling actually helps. That's
great because a lot of people in the West, at
(45:33):
least are I don't know, are doing a ritual where
you put some trash in a blue box and you
tell yourself that you're making a difference, And you know,
I think that's a sincere thing. We recycled here at
the office, but in a lot of places when people
come around to collect the garbage, the things from those
(45:56):
two boxes go in the same dumpster. YEP. So no,
sometimes I don't want to make a huge sweeping statement
about it. But but it's true that does happen. So yeah,
let us know what we should examine when it comes
to recycling, when it comes to the Great Garbage Patch.
We did do an episode on ocean acidification and we did. Yeah,
(46:18):
and you know that's scary. Yeah, that's really scary. But
and why aren't we using the whole the plasma methods
of breaking down trash, turning it into slag and usable gases. Yeah,
you told me about that years ago. They had the
technology in Japan, right, dude. They've been doing this for
decades in Japan and a couple other places, just turning
(46:40):
their their trash into energy and usable building materials. Why
aren't we doing this? Guy's Wow, that's a massive tangent. Okay,
let's let's get back to this really fast. So are
we predictively programming the audience? Oh? Is that what this is?
Is that what this whole thing was? Oh my god, Paul,
(47:01):
were you in on this? Oh my god, Matt, I
figured the best way for you to learn this be
on the air with with no prep. You made me
a part of this. Oh my god, it's too late now.
Pretty soon we're gonna have George Soros Warren Buffett, Bill Gates,
(47:23):
and uh, I don't know who else, Oprah, Alice Cooper.
They're all gonna walk in and do a slow clap
the bazos. Maybe maybe he's a fearsome beast, though no,
I don't. We don't have any celebrity illuminati that that
are coming by. Although today as we recorded this, uh,
(47:44):
David Diggs did drop by to appear on a show
our pal Chuck does called movie Crush, So do check
that out. Did you like that organic segue and perfection
with you? Thanks? You know, they sometimes call me the
the Matt Frederick of smooth Plugs. It's a it's a
(48:05):
tremendous compliment one I don't deserve. But if you know,
if you're if you're thinking to yourself, what did I miss?
And you wanna, you know, send us something. Uh, if
you have any questions or comments about anything we've talked
about today, have you noticed a different version of predictive
programming or do you have a really good example, or
you know what, do you think it's hogwash? You should
(48:26):
write to us. You can find us on social media
where we are conspiracy stuff on most of them, sometimes
conspiracy stuff show. You'll find us. You can do it.
You can go to stuff they don't want you to
know dot com. You can check out every podcast we've
ever recorded, some videos, all kinds of good stuff there.
You can. Oh, there's another thing you can do. That's right, folks,
(48:48):
friends and neighbors, skeptics, conspiracy realist alike. If you would
rather call us directly, we have a phone number and
you can have it. You can update us on what
you think about predictive programming. You can tell us your
favorite think tanks. I think personally, we're both fascinated by
(49:10):
Rand Corporation and their subsidiaries. And all you have to
do is give us a ring. We're one eight three
three st d w y t K. That's it. And
if you want that number in numerals, it's one eight
three three seven eight three nine nine eight five and
(49:33):
you can call it. Just leave a message. We're gonna
listen to it. It might end up in the show somehow.
Spoiler alert, you may be participating in predictive programming, but
you didn't hear it from us. We didn't say anything
about it. And if you're thinking, well, i'm a little
mora old fashioned, I like a I'm somehow anachronistic, lee
(49:54):
old fashioned because I would rather send an email than
leave a message. Then we have good news for you.
You can reach us directly. We are conspiracy at how
stuff works dot com, m
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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