The Why Files: Operation Podcast

Your world is an illusion. Your choices are irrelevant. Your friends, your family, and everyone around you are just manifestations of your mind. You’re a trapped animal in a cage: a virtual reality created more than 250,000 years ago for a single purpose: to use you as food. Your emotions are food for those who created the cage. Feelings of happiness and joy are digestible. But those emotions are...

For thousands of years, the world has been captivated by the mystery of Atlantis. The concept of an ancient city hidden beneath the ocean is fascinating. But what if there was not just a city, but an entire continent buried beneath the waves? The continent of Lemuria is a massive landmass believed to have sunk in the Indian Ocean after some ancient, catastrophic event. Atlantis and Lemuria are sim...

Early in the morning of January 4th 2012, a strange message appeared on the internet. Just a few lines of text on an image, posted anonymously. Hello. We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There is a message hidden in this image. Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the w...

In 1901, Nikola Tesla had the most terrifying experience of his life. As he worked alone in his laboratory at night, he felt a presence. He created a device to see if he could hear, or pick up any signals from whatever it was that he felt. He called it the “spirit radio”, and it worked. Tesla wasn’t alone. Throughout history, famous scientists, who helped shape the technology we used today, have s...

Cultures around the world have myths that speak of a mysterious underground kingdom that exists deep within the earth, hidden away from the primitive and violent surface-dwellers: which is us. Picture a society untouched by time, unscathed by war, and unaffected by natural disasters. A culture thriving in the vast open spaces inside the Earth. Throughout history, many have looked for physical evid...

September 14th, 1994 was a quiet night in Zimbabwe. Then suddenly, boom! An explosion startled people all over the country. Windows rattled. Doors shook. Shocked and confused, people sheepishly stepped outside to see what happened. Everything looked fine. They went back inside. But one woman wasn't satisfied. Cynthia Hind drove around the capital city of Harare, searching for the source of the sou...

Stanley Kubrick is considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Of his 13 movies a few are considered classics in their respective genres. Including the black comedy Dr. Strangelove, the highly-quotable anti-war commentary of Full Metal Jacket, and one of the most disturbing and enduring horror films of all time, The Shinning. But in 1968, Kubrick released "2001 – A Space Odyssey". This...

On November 2nd, 1966, Woody Derenberger was driving home from a business trip when he encountered an extraterrestrial being named Indrid Cold. Cold communicated with Woody telepathically, and the two went on to be lifelong friends. Other people close to Woody, including family, friends, and even his therapist claimed that they, too, had experiences with Indrid Cold. Woody wrote and published a de...

The story of humans began a long time ago. Three and a half billion years ago protein molecules floated around the ooze called the primordial soup. Then something happened and a molecule made a copy of itself. And then another copy and another. Soon these molecules arranged themselves into something called a cell. Then cells clumped together and multiplied. Organisms were created. Over the next th...

In 1886, mining engineer John T. Reid was told the Paiute legend of a giant people defeated by the natives near Lovelock, Nevada. The last of the giants met their fiery end deep within the bowels of a cave. Reid’s belief in this legend stirred great interest in the secrets held within Lovelock Cave. Official excavations were undertaken in both 1912 and 1924 by the University of California, with re...

It was a sunny afternoon on June 24th, 1947, and Kenneth Arnold was flying his small aircraft over Mineral, Washington. He was heading to Yakima but took a slight detour to look for a lost US Marine Corps plane. If he could find it, he’d collect a nice reward. Flying near Mount Rainier, he spotted a shiny object in his plane's mirror. Then, he saw multiple flashes of light. It looked like a group...

On April 30, 1943, in the middle of World War II, a body washed up on the shore of Huelva, Spain. The deceased man was wearing a British military uniform. There was a briefcase strapped to his body containing British and American military secrets. The man was Major William Martin, a British Royal Marine who was the single victim of a fatal plane crash at sea. He had just returned from temporary le...

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

In 1974 a group of scientists beamed a message into space. The message, meant to be received by an intelligent alien species, described life on Earth. Written in simple binary code, and using the most powerful radio telescope on the planet, the message was broadcast to a dense cluster of stars in the constellation of Hercules. This exercise was just ceremonial; a way to demonstrate new technology...

Of all the species that have ever existed on Earth, 99% of them are gone. Most of those were wiped out during what are known as "Mass Extinction Events". Since life emerged on our planet, there have been five mass extinctions. Sometimes these events last many years. But sometimes a mass extinction can happen very, very suddenly. Some scientists think we're on the verge of a sixth mass extinction....

The North American Air Defense Command, known as NORAD, was established in 1958. It was to provide early warning and defense against Soviet bombers and missile launches. But it wasn't long before NORAD would be monitoring skies around the entire planet. Early in the morning, on January 13th, 1996, NORAD contacted Brazilian Air Defense to report an object entering the Earth's atmosphere about 200 m...

Even though UFOs are seen everywhere: over the desert, over the ocean, over cities; there's no way to predict when and where they'll show up. Well, no way except for one: build or detonate a nuclear weapon. Since the dawn of the atomic age, UFOs have been seen -- and photographed -- during nuclear weapons tests and near nuclear weapons facilities. The Ark of the Covenant is one of the most mysteri...

On July 25th, a NASA scientist was studying images of a region of Mars called "Cydonia" when something caught his eye. He had to take a second to process what he was seeing. He grabbed a magnifying glass. There was no doubt. On the surface of Mars, 140 million miles from Earth, was a structure in the shape of a human face. It was huge; about a mile wide; and showed two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. A...

This legend beings as so many do. Three gravediggers, working in a cemetery hear something overhead. They look up and see a creature: almost ten feet tall with massive wings perched on a high tree branch; staring at them with glowing red eyes. Then in an instant, it's gone. Three days later, just a few miles away, two young couples burst into the local police station. Terrified, they report being...

Here's how it starts. Maybe it's your mother or maybe your sister. She starts complaining of headaches and strange tingling sensations in different parts of her body. Her discomfort escalates. She complains of hallucinations; she starts hearing voices. Then the seizures begin. She has trouble walking and eating. And maintaining control of her bladder. The seizures become violent. She thrashes arou...

Gary McKinnon was obsessed with UFOs; and believed governments were covering up evidence that UFOs exist. In the year 2000, he decided to do a little digging. Gary was a computer expert so what better place to dig than on US government computers? What he found was so shocking that it sent the entire United States government into a full-blown panic. In fact, the US spent 10 years trying to prosecut...

It's just a matter of time before it happens. Some catastrophic event that wipes out a large percentage of the Earth's population; and forces the human race to "reset". Maybe one of the 30,000 "Near Earth Objects" being tracked by NASA finally hit the Earth. Causing an extinction event on par with what wiped out the dinosaurs. Or Earth's poles finally shift. And, without its magnetic field, the pl...

The United States military is always looking for new ways to create super soldiers. They use performance-enhancing and mind-altering drugs. They're currently experimenting with brain implant technology. They've even explored genetic engineering to try and *breed* the perfect soldier. But those are nothing compared to what happened in 1983; when Lieutenant Colonel Wayne McDonnell submitted a very u...

In 1983, David Oates dropped his walkman into the toilet. If you're under 40 years old, a walkman was a portable cassette player. If you're under 30, a cassette was how we listened to music in the stone age. Anyway, after being dropped, David's tape player would only play tapes in reverse. At first, he found this entertaining. There were lots of songs that contained hidden messages that you could...

Which would you prefer? Eternal life or unlimited wealth? How about both? For that, you need The Philosopher's Stone: a substance that can turn base metals into gold, and grant you eternal life. The Book of Aquarius contains the instructions for The Philosopher's Stone. Although the process can take years, the ingredients are simple. You have them in your home right now. The Book of Aquarius is de...