In Research Of

Watch this ISO episode on YouTube Jeb and Blake fail to find Amelia Earhart.  So they've got that in common with the folks profiled in this week's episode. Discussed in this Episode: Amelia Earhart, pioneering woman pilot Husband and publisher George Putnam Navigator Fred Noonan    AutoGyros/GyroCopters and how they are different from helicopters.  Propaganda film Flight for Freedom (DVD) which fictionalizes the story of Earhart as spy. The Lockheed Electra Model 10  The Searchers: Joseph Gervais, the obsessive guy who believed an innocent New Jersey housewife was secretly Amelia. I'm not linking to his stupid book or to the woman he stalked and harassed, though she did pass in 1982. Even when she died, he tried to get to see the body.  No.  No, no, no, no.    Elgen Long - aviator and author of Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved    Fred Goerner, author of The Search for Amelia Earhart  Nimoy Fashion!    

Watch this ISO episode on YouTube  Blake, Jeb, and guest Ken Hite talk about the search for Nazi Plunder - lost treasure and art following WWII. Thanks to Ken Hite for joining us on this episode. You can find a huge archive of Ken's excellent podcast (with Robin Laws) titled Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff. Highly recommended! Ken's also a prolific author and game designer and if you like this episode and weird war history, you might especially enjoy his Osprey (fiction) book on Nazi Occultism.  Also, if you enjoy vampires and Jason Bourne-style spy action, you should check out Night's Black Agents. Discussed in this Episode: About this rocket Jeb was asking about: It appears to say ПО РEЙXCTAГУ "Po Ree-stah-gu" Also, it appears to be a BM-XY launch system (not sure what values go in X or Y). Apparently, like the Brits called the V weapons "buzz bombs" because of their peculiar sounds, the Germans called this Russian rig "Stalin's Organ" because of its sounds.  Per Ken, it translates into either "On to the Re

Wherein Jeb and Blake discuss the 13th episode of In Search Of... and fail to learn any ESP. Watch this ISO episode on YouTube. Notes: Edgar Mitchell (Wikipedia) Mitchell's Institute of Noetic Science  Phenomena by Annie Jacobson (history of Gov't research into Psi) Zener Cards  Nimoy Fashion Alert: One possible explanation of JJ's "psychic" powers is that he may have seen the images from the lens reflection. Joseph (JB) Rhine mentioned as creator of the experimenter.  I know this is just a TV demo but a big problem w/ these tests is controlling for stuff like that might give away the card selection.  Duke article on Rhine, including how he got involved in the Exorcist case and missing persons. SPR article on Rhine. Discussion of Rhine's motivations as being religious in style, but scientific in content. David Ossman (Firesign Theater) on Spoonbending from Lawrence Kennedy, an excerpt from Dr. Firesign's Follies. Robert Monroe of the "Monroe Institute" - home of the waterbed farm lab. The American Societ

Watch this ISO episode on YouTube The In Search Of show profiles the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and Jeb is not impressed. Blake & Jeb both relate Roswell/Black-Helicopter experiences near the VLA. Unmarked Helicopters (song by Soul Coughing) Green Bank West Virginia (radio free zone) William Proxmire (senator who killed funding of SETI) The novel Contact was written by Carl Sagan, but the novel was based on a screenplay by Sagan and Ann Druyan.  Nimoy Fashion - what the heck color is his blazer? No, seriously! What color is this?  

Jeb and Blake join Leonard Nimoy and a group of St. Louis clairvoyants as we go in research of psychic detectives. Watch this episode of ISO on YouTube.  A quick thanks to Shane Gower for his helpful blog post from 2015 about this episode. 1970s Famous psychic Peter Hurkos is featured during the introduction. Hurkos was vouched for by Andrija Puharich, after being challenged by James Randi.  Puharich was a major figure in Ancient Aliens, Remote Viewing, and New Age culture in the US. "Psychic Detective" has changed meaning over the 20th century from detectives who investigated the paranormal into detectives who were themselves paranormal. IMDB and Wikipedia say that Sylvia Browne is in this episode. Jeb and I could find zero evidence to support that assertion. She appeared neither on-screen, nor in the credits. Furthermore, the episode took place in St. Louis and involved local psychic investigators but Browne had left Missouri for California in 1964 according to her obituary: "She eventually began giving r

Sharon Hill (Scientifical Americans) joins Jeb and Blake to talk about the Atlantis episode of In Search Of...   Watch original In Search Of episode on YouTube.       This is a kind of a disjointed mess of an ISO episode, so our notes are kind of all over the place as well.  But here's a bunch of highlights and additional reading from our own prep notes for the show: We'll be covering Easter Island in a terrific upcoming episode, but it has nothing to do with Atlantis. Olmec heads don't weigh anything like what is claimed. The Tiwankau text about "long before the Pyramids" stuff comes from nazi-sympathizer Arthur Posnansky whose "15,000 years ago" dating has been picked up by many alt-archaeology researchers. Thera/Santorini is a beautiful place that suffered a devastating disaster ( 1642–1540 BCE ). When not being called "Atlantis" it spends a lot of time as photographs in Greek restaurants.  Antikythera Mechanism is from within 200 - 50 BCE. Plato wrote the Atlantis story more

[Note: Sadly, one side of the recording was lost due to massive Skype issues and some portions of this episode had to be reconstructed. This is why there are places where the audio sounds quite different. This appears to be the only episode of the season where this happened, but my apologies for the audio sounding inconsistent.  -Blake] Jeb and Blake discuss "Martians" - wherein the In Search Of team examines the possibility that the planet Mars once had (or still contains) life on its harsh surface. The Viking missions as well as many Mars-related pop-culture topics are discussed. Watch the ISO episode on YouTube.  A lot of the material in this episode dealt with the Viking program.  The surprisingly lengthy introduction to our solar system embedded in the 1953 film War of the Worlds. A Trip to the Moon (1902) - colorized, restored, 720p Space 1889 - The early "Steam Punk" roleplaying game William Graves Hoyt's book Lowell and Mars Missing from this episode (but expected) Italian astronomer:  Giovanni Schiap

Jeb and Blake discuss the ISO episode The Mummy's Curse, and the strange and interesting facts behind the legend of "King Tut's Curse." Watch this ISO Episode on YouTube  Reference Books: The Mummy's Curse Spooky Archaeology TV Listing Feb 11, 1977:   Photo mentioned by Jeb of Evelyn Beauchamp with Carter. (Left to Right)   Arthur Mace (Metropolitan Museum) Richard Bethell (Carter's secretary) Arthur Callender Lady Evelyn Leonora Almina Beauchamp née Herbert Howard Carter George Herbert (5th Earl of Carnarvon) Alfred Lucas (chemist for Egyptian government) Harry Burton (photographer)  See several of his photos colorized here.   Dan Aykroyd used ASPR for Ghost Busters research Carter's "Saqqara Incident" described in The National:  "Such was Carter's ascendancy in Egypt, where he soon cut his teeth as an archaeologist under the guidance of Sir William Flinders Petrie, that he was appointed chief inspector of antiquities for Upper Egypt in 1899. Carter was a surprising choice for the role given his limite

Jeb Card and Blake Smith are joined by "spooky geologist" Sharon Hill to talk about this classic season one episode of In Search Of... that considers various methods to predict earthquakes, and what we might expect if a large quake hits the San Francisco area. Watch this episode of In Search Of... on YouTube. Nimoy Fashion - once again speaking to us from a Los Angeles rooftop. Around the 9 min mark, we mistakenly say the Bay of Fundy is in Newfoundland. Nope - it's between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. (Does everything in Canada have to have "new" in its name??) Thanks to Stephanie J. Lahey for this correction! 1964 Alaska Earthquake (Wikipedia) 2011 Earthquake/Tsunami (Disturbing Footage) 1936 Hollywood Movie about San Francisco Earthquake Tallest tsunami ever recorded.  VLBI - Very Long Baseline Interferometry   Quasars for VLBI type research (NY Times) 1989 Double-Decker Collapse (Wikipedia) Clips from 2015 San Andreas starring The Rock Listener Darren Bennett advises us that the 1982 "Syzygy" disaste

Jeb Card and Blake Smith discuss the In Search Of episode: KILLER BEES.  Will aggressive Africanized honey bees destroy the world? Is every problem a metaphor for colonialism? Tune in and find out! Watch episode on YouTube   I've attached some relevant articles from the time, one on bees and one on ISO. Also, I've set the episode to "Explicit" because of all the sexy, sexy bee talk. Radioactive Wasps (Correction: Location was at HANFORD not HANSON site - corrected here, but I'm not cutting out my joke about Hanson. -B) Jeb mentioned Japanese Giant Wasps - those are described here. (They're wasps, only giant - and from Japan. That's good marketing in the name.) Jeb was right to bring this beastie up in conjunction with bees.  From the Wikipedia article: In Japan, beekeepers often prefer European honey bees because they are more productive than the endemic Japanese honey bees.[citation needed] However, it can be difficult to maintain a captive hive of European honey bees, as the giant hornets are devastating to

Lots of discussion as Jeb and Blake tackle a favorite topic of theirs... Bigfoot. Does a mysterious creature, part-ape, and part-man, lurk in the Pacific Northwest? Watch the Episode on YouTube  The episode opens with the Ape Canyon re-enactment. If you'd like to read Beck's extended narrative, it is available online. His extended comments include a lot of descriptions of the spiritual aspect of these creatures and sound quite a lot like John Keel's ultraterrestrials. (IMHO -Blake)   Other topics for further reading: Ape Canyon Gigantopithecus  Bernard Heuvelmans (perhaps first to connect Yeti and Giganto) Carleton Coon (Connected Yeti and Giganto in English) legacy tarnished by terrible racist theories of white supremacy. Also firmly believed in Bigfoot. John Napier Grover Krantz    Peter Byrne (Irish birth / Tom Slick / Four Horsemen - Byrne, Green, Dahinden, Krantz)  Tom Slick Bossberg "Cripplefoot" Tracks Jacko hoax mentioned      Cranial hair and brow-ridges experiment mentioned in the show / Mankin

  Episode on YouTube Is there a mysterious force causing the disappearance of ships and airplanes in the area between Miami, Bermuda and the Bahamas?  Or just a mixture of innumeracy and a desire for the numinous? Show Notes: Larry Kusche's The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved Who was the voice on the creepy radio broadcast?  Bermuda Triangle movie based on Berlitz's book. Not covered in detail, but some additional info on collier ships in the triangle: Proteus (58 lives lost) the eponymous exemplar of the Proteus Class "collier" coal-carrier.  disappeared in the BT in 1941. sister of the Cyclops (306 lives lost) and the Nereus (61 lives lost) All three lost in the Bermuda triangle carrying large loads of ore in ships that could only travel 15 Knots and, at least in one case, were known to be overloaded.  Reminds me of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  If you are in a big ship, overloaded with ore, and hit a big storm the structural stresses are incredible and any kind of flooding would be catastrophic. However, t

In Ancient Aviators, ISO looks into the possibility that ancient cultures either had the power of flight or were aware of it from exposure to extraterrestrial cultures.  The specifics of how are a little vague, but we return to our litany of archaeological sites for evidence that this might be the case. Episode on YouTube Sample TV Listing for the episode: VCRs (VHS) really started to come into early adoption by the general public around 1977. Betamax appeared in 1975, VHS in 1977 - and the format wars took some time to play out.  (This is a common behavior for new, disruptive tech and has repeated for CDs, DVDs, BluRay and now the higher resolution successors. More on this if I ever finish my book. -WBS) JVC Ad from 1977: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjXh-tNLqHQ   Swept-wing (not true delta-style) airplane design from 1936 adaptation of H.G. Wells' Things to Come  French Mirage Delta-Winged aircraft.   An example of the Ica Stones.   Museum website mentioned in show (Spanish). Report on 2014 damage to

Explicit Tag - this episode contains strong language.  We are joined by Dr. Ken Feder to discuss Mystery Hill (aka America's Stonehenge) and the idea that this New Hampshire set of stone structures might have been built by ancient Phoenicians or medieval Europeans.  (It wasn't.) Episode on YouTube Weirdly topical, as we prepared this episode the Mystery Hill site was vandalized with #QAnon themed graffiti, carved into the stonework.  (Image source: Union Leader) Vandalism spells #WWG1WGA - "where we go one, we go all" a well known QAnon motto. Show Notes: Episode opens with visual revisit of Bimini (see Atlantis in previous episodes). Brief discussion of Nominative Determinism around the current owners of the site having the last name Stone. Re: Stonehenge Battle of the beanfield (Hippies vs Thatcher era police) Spinal Tap perform Stonehenge  Foamhenge (and related: The Dinosaur Kingdom featuring dinosaurs vs civil war soldiers) Hans Holzer wrote and produced (and starred in) this episode. A prolific wri

Can plants talk? Can Leonard Nimoy make this topic interesting? The answer to both questions will be discussed in this episode where we look at the first episode of In Search Of... which considers the question of plant communication.   Episode on YouTube Show Links: Marcel Vogel - thought plants have feelings. Research chemist, San Jose, CA. Uses machines and the mind's "inner eye."  Vogel was deeply interested in "crystal energy" and involved with the UFO work of Billy Meier.  Meier's "UFO" images were the basis of the "I Want To Believe" poster in the X-Files. Conjuring Science by Christopher Toumey Does music affect plant growth and health?http://www.dovesong.com/positive_music/plant_experiments.asp  https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/403/2015/03/bad-science.pdf Myth Busters did an ep on this too:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZGDbA9HER4 - they found it plausible.  (I'm still very skeptical - Blake) Plant Talk research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose  Radiolab episode on talking

This is the pilot episode of In Research Of, the show where we watch the original TV show IN SEARCH OF… and consider some of the explanations that the producers chose not to present. In our inaugural episode, we watch the TV Special In Search of Ancient Astronauts, a repackaged cut of a German documentary about Eric Von Daniken's book Chariots of the Gods.  We want to thank Rachel and Chris Lackey for the theme music. They host the excellent show Rachel Watches Star Trek.  Also, we want to credit Jason Colavito for his excellent research into this and many adjacent topics around the Ancient Astronauts and Ancient Aliens tropes of the past fifty years, including his book:  The Cult of Alien Gods: H. P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture (Seriously - check out this link to Jason's article. He gives some great contemporary detail on the impact of this TV special such as "... within 48 hours of the program's broadcast, Bantam Books had sold 250,000 new copies of Chariots of the Gods."  Amazing.) Oh - so