In the mid ’90s reports of a strange creature killing livestock and sucking their blood travelled across Puerto Rico. Animals would be found dead in the morning, with three puncture wounds in their chest, and no blood in their bodies. Then came the sightings of beast unlike no other. Reports of how it look vary, but the death it leaves behind does not.

What is happening here? Are aliens testing farm animals? Are there secret US government experiments run amok in Puerto Rico? Are there mangy rabid dogs just killing things for fun? Does Spencer think it’s all a bunch of BS? Find out this week, on The What If? Podcast.

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We travel deep into Siberia this week, for our final installment in our three-part series on isolation. Under religious persecution, from the Communist Party in Russia, the Lykov family, from a sect of what was called the Old Believers, decided to renounce traditional society. They fled threats of death and destruction, deep, deep into the remote Siberian wilderness – the taiga – where they lived as a family of six, unseen or interrupted by the outside world, for 42 years.

In 1978 they were discovered by geologists, prospecting the Siberian wilderness, and were told of all the things they’d missed since they’d been gone. The Lykov family later came to be known as “the hermits who missed World War II” having been so removed from the world, they had no idea it had happened. Not the space race. Not television. Nothing.

Hot Topics: Eating Your Shoes, P*ssed Off Pizza From Wisconsin, No Thanks, Forcibly Shaved, and a whole lot more.

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Boy oh boy, when we said we had a part two coming, we didn’t know it’d be all this. But here we are, back again to talk about the strangeness of isolation. When it comes to living in isolation, the concept takes takes a few different forms. This week on The What If? Podcast, we do a follow up on last week’s eerily timed episode, and put out an update on John Chau, the American missionary who was killed on North Sentinel Island, just days before we put our episode on The Sentinelese people.

From there, we shift gears to talking about isolation in space. NASA has spent millions of dollars over the years, studying the effects of isolation on both individuals and groups. One of their most prominent studies has been on Hawaii, in the execution of the HI-SEAS program. Six missions over the past five years have gone, to varying degrees of success, in creating an analog world that recreates the isolation of a mission crew on (or on their way to) Mars.

How did it go? Why did the sixth mission fail after just four days? How much can we make fun of NASA’s bad YouTube videos? Find out this week, on The What If? Podcast.

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Even with the globalized world we live in, there are an estimated over 100 uncontacted tribes of people, living with minimal interruption from the outside world. Some, with histories going back as far as the Stone Age. Today, on The What If? Podcast, we explore two of the most famously isolated groups of people in the world, and discuss how the came to both be – and how they attempt to stay – in isolation.

This week, we’ll explore North Sentinel Island and the Sentinelese, along with the Jarawa tribes of the Andaman Islands, an Indian territory in the center of the Indian Ocean. We’ll learn about what we know about their customs, their hostility towards others, the threats they face, and a whole lot more.

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Look, we’d stop doin’ episodes about this if y’all stopped goin’ missin’. But here we are. On part six, and people of this ding-dang universe keep bein’ hard to find. This week we dive deep into the disappearance phenomenon, as it relates specifically to the folks who go bye-bye in National Parks of the United States.

We talk through David Paulides’s take on why people go missing in the US parks system, why we disagree with him, and the curious case of Stacey Ann Arras, a 14 year old girl who went missing in Yosemite in the 80’s. We’ll get to the bottom of it, on this week’s episode of The What If? Podcast.

Hot Topics: The Internet In Your Ears, Cop Face, Just For Men, Animal Attacks, Ryan’s Never Going Camping Again, and much, much more.

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We’re talking time travel. Spencer runs through a brief history of time travel, Ryan thinks aliens are us from the future, and we try and solve some paradoxes.

The Time Machine – H.G. Wells

The concept of a time machine first appeared in H.G. Wells’ 1895 book, The Time Machine. This book also popularized the idea of time as a fourth dimension. The book’s publication coincided with the publication of Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which included the concepts of time dilation and relativity of simultaneity.  Time dilation states that time moves more slowly the faster you go. Relativity of simultaneity states that two events may appear simultaneous to one observer, but not another, if the two observers are moving relative to each other. 

Paradoxes

Predestination Paradox

The predestination paradox happens when a person traveling back in time becomes part of past events, and ultimately causes the event they are trying to prevent. Say your friend dies in an accident, and you travel back in time to prevent the accident. However, by preventing the accident and your friend’s death, you have removed your reason for traveling back to begin with. The predestination paradox states that the accident will still occur, and you may ultimately cause it. 

Grandfather Paradox

The grandfather paradox is the most famous time travel paradox. It states that if you were to go back in time to kill your own grandfather, you then would never have been born. Therefore, you  couldn’t have gone back in time to kill him.

Hot Topics: Time Travel, Time’s Arrow, A Poem About My Favorite Taco, An Existential Crisis In Every Box, I WANNA DIE, Time Storms, UFOs are Time Travelers, time slips, and much more.

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What’s scarier than three men disappearing without a trace, at the same time from a lighthouse on an island in the middle of the North Atlantic Sea? As we discover, this week on The What If? Podcast: not much. In today’s episode we delve deep into the mystery of the Flannan Isles lighthouse. Listen along, and find out how and just maybe why, they never came back.

The Flannan Isles are located in the Outer Hebrides, about 80 miles northwest of mainland Scotland. Eilean Mor is the largest of the seven islands at about 40 acres. Eilean Mor is home to the Flannan Isles lighthouse, erected in 1899. Three men, James Ducat, Thomas Marshall, and Donald MacArthur operated and maintained the lighthouse.

On December 26th, 1900, Joseph Moore arrived on the island to relieve the men and begin his own shift at the lighthouse. However, upon his arrival, he was unable to locate any of the men. All three men were missing, the kitchen had been cleaned, beds were made. Everything in the sleeping quarters was as it should be. The logbook showed no unusual activity. Two of the three sets of waterproof gear were missing, one was hanging in their quarters. Moore quickly reported his findings to Robert Muirhead, superintendent of the Northern Lighthouse Board.

The Lighthouse Board decided the men were swept out to sea by a giant rogue wave, but we’re not so sure.

Hot Topics: Roasted By Scottish Dudes. The Keepers Of The Light. A Giant Candle Wick. Choo Choo Rides Are Terrible. “There’s Supposed To Be Dudes Here!”  Young-Baby-Salmon-Man. The Sky folk. Blue Man Group Myth. Laspurdan Pygmies of Scotland.

The Flannan Islands Lighthouse on Eilean Mor

An aerial view of the island.

Courtesy of Pinterest. Click this link to see a wide variety of pictures from The Flannery Islands and Eilean Mor.

The Eilean Mor Lighthouse Chapel

The lighthouse in view of the tiny chapel on the island.

From Wikimedia.

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Our memories don’t always work the way we wish they did. But most often, it’s because we can’t remember things. But what if your memory worked very differently than that? What if instead of being unable to remember – you were unable to forget? On this week’s episode of The What If? Podcast, we explore people with memories that work in strange and mysterious ways. Spencer tells the story of Derek Paravicini, a piano prodigy and autistic savant from the United Kingdom. Ryan tells the stories of Aurelian Hayman and Jill Price, just two of many people who remember nearly every detail of every day of their entire lives, and some details from other people’s lives too…

Hot Topics: It Gets Fuzzy Pretty Quick, Out To Beers, Muppet Treasure Island, Spencer Got Stabbed, Of Course Ryan Hasn’t Seen The Sixth Sense, Hoarding Memories, Total Recall, What Happens When We Forget?

Jill Price

Doctors coined a new condition for Jill Price. She has an incredible memory. Given a date, she can recall what day of the week it was. She can also recall what she did that day, what she was wearing, or what was on TV. However, this ability does not extend to historical events, or memorizing new information. In every other way, her memory is average or worse. Doctors named her condition Hyperthymesia, derived from Ancient Greek hyper- (“excessive”) and thymesis (“remembering”).

Derek Paravicini

Derek is a musical savant. Born 3.5 months early, Derek weighed just 1 pound, five ounces. He also has autism and is blind. After hearing a piece of music once, Derek can instantly replay the piece with amazing accuracy. He also has perfect pitch, meaning he can name or replay a musical note without any musical context.

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Hot Topics: Oceans, James Cameron, Titanic, Jacques Piccard, Bathyscaphe Trieste, Do Fish Explode? Baltic Sea Anomaly, What in tarnation is happening in Antarctica?

1. James Cameron’s DEEPSEA CHALLENGE

2. Mapping the ocean floor

The entire ocean floor has now been mapped to a maximum resolution of around 5km, as a result we can see most features larger than 5km across in those maps.

NASA’s Magellan spacecraft mapped 98% of the surface of Venus to a resolution of around 100 meters. The entire Martian surface has also been mapped at that resolution and just over 60% of the Red Planet has now been mapped at around 20m resolution. Meanwhile, selenographers have mapped all of the lunar surface at around 100 meter resolution and now even at seven meter resolution.

3. Do fish explode? 

Will deep sea animals explode at lower pressures? Nope, we’re just dumb. Dr. M at Deep Sea News describes it better than we ever could.

4. Baltic Sea Anomaly

We can’t do a whole episode without talking about weird, possibly-alien stuff. The Baltic Sea Anomaly is (probably) a rock formation that happens to look a lot like the Millennium Falcon. Some people have said it interferes with the operation of electrical equipment in the vicinity, due to a radio signal which it emits. This has not been verified.

5. Lake Vostok, Antarctica

A huge lake located under the East Antarctic ice sheet. By volume, it is the 6th largest lake in the world, slightly larger than lake Michigan. The assumption is that the lake has been sealed from the surface since the ice sheet formed, 15 million years ago.

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This is the conclusion of our two-part series on near-death experiences. Listen to part one here.

Spencer and Ryan continue their conversation about near-death experiences, delving into some possible scientific explanations. They discuss Dr. Michael Wirth-Davis’ story from last episode, Ryan tells us about the god helmet, and Spencer gets off on a weird Terence McKenna/DMT tangent.

Hot Topics: God Helmet, DMT, Terence McKenna, Oops All Braindead, I Felt A Presence, Michael Persinger, Somebody Pulled My Leg Up The Wall, and much more.

Dr. Michael Wirth-Davis

Last episode, we heard from Dr. Micheal Wirth-Davis. Due to an extremely high fever, his heart stopped when he was 7 years old. He was then floated out of his hospital room by an entity that took him on a tour of the planet. He was eventually returned to his body and survived. Later in life, he was able to recall and identify specific locations he was shown during his NDE. Today, we’re discussing and reacting to his story.

The God Helmet

Invented by Stanley Koren, the God Helmet is capable of reproducing “religious experiences”. The modified snowmobile helmet uses solenoids to stimulate the brain’s temporal lobes. For the wearer, this can lead to feelings of a presence in the room, as well as mystical experiences and altered states.

Terence McKenna, Death, and DMT

Terence McKenna, lifelong DMT advocate, had some interesting ideas about what happens at the moment of death. He hypothesized that the brain may release DMT when it is close to death, and that this may be partially responsible for near-death experiences. While it may not explain all aspects of NDEs, it would certainly help with the hallucination bit.

Terence McKenna on death and DMT

The God Helmet

Michael Persinger – This is Your Brain On God

Music by Big Cats

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