← Behind the Bastards
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- [00:02]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
Call Zone Media.
- [00:05]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Welcome back to behind the Bastards, the very podcast about. Wait, shit. Bad people podcast. The worst in all of history. I'm the host of the show and also bad at introducing it. Let's distract everyone from me being yet again incompetent at the one thing I have to do other than read a script. And bring on our guest, Ed Zitron. Ed, how you doing today?
- [00:28]
Ed Zitron
What's up? I'm Gray.
- [00:30]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
You're great. That's good. That's better than bad. Ed, you have a podcast called Better Offline, don't you? I do, and you talk about a number of things on that show, but you've kind of. You've gained a great deal of fame and notoriety lately by repeatedly calling out a lot of the grifty and Connie. Aspects of what some people call the AI revolution. I think that would be. That would be fair to say. And you're working on it.
- [00:53]
Ed Zitron
That's fair.
- [00:54]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
A book right now, aren't you, Ed? You want to give the audience the title of that book.
- [00:58]
Ed Zitron
It's called why Everything Stopped Working, and it's about how everything stopped working due to technology and how we got to where we are today, which kind of fucking sucks.
- [01:07]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
That is a great premise, and I can't wait for the book. And I wanted to help you out with some research, Ed, on something that's kind of off the beaten path and not directly involved with the tech industry that you've reported on, but in terms of, like, how people fall for cons and specifically con technology products. It's a really important story, and so I think you might get some value in hearing it, even though it's technically set in an industry that's not your immediate industry. This is a defense industry technology story. Have you ever heard the story about the bomb detectors that didn't work that everyone, particularly Iraq, bought? Okay, great, Ed, we're gonna have a really good time today.
- [01:53]
Ed Zitron
Oh, boy.
- [01:54]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
Speaking of things that explode, remember when Bezos's rocket exploded yesterday?
- [02:00]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
It sure just did. It sure just did. And anytime something explodes, I'm happy. Unless it's like a bad explosion that kills.
- [02:08]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
Nobody died.
- [02:09]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Nobody died.
- [02:09]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
And the videos were really fun. Yeah, that was a big boom.
- [02:14]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Yeah. It is amazing how just knowing, like, no one was hurt can make the two different, equally nightmarish explosions. One of them just be really funny. Like you watch the video. That explosion when that the town of west in Texas blew up a few years back. And it's not fun at all. It's just terrifying. But the blue origin rocket blowing up. Pretty funny.
- [02:36]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
We looked at every angle.
- [02:38]
Ed Zitron
It made the sound that Rats Tyrell did in Phantom Menace when he crashed across. And it just goes.
- [02:43]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
That's right.
- [02:44]
Ed Zitron
It's the same explosion, the same sound. But I was much sadder about Rats Terrell.
- [02:49]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
I love that you know his name, man.
- [02:50]
Ed Zitron
Of course.
- [02:51]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Yeah.
- [02:54]
Just Food for Dogs Advertiser
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- [02:58]
Jennie Garth
This is Jenny Garth from I Choose Me with Jennie Garth. History is full of mysteries, like how people ever survived before modern laundry detergent. Luckily, Tide's here with boosted stain fighting for cleaner, whiter, brighter and fresher laundry versus Tide. Simply. No. No wonder it was America's number one detergent in sales last year. If it's gotta be clean, it's got to be Tide. Tide is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast, available on June 1st on the iHeartRadio app. And everywhere podcasts are heard.
- [03:41]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
Hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My favorite Murder.
- [03:43]
Georgia from My Favorite Murder
We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and Hedy Lamarr.
- [03:49]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
Want the full story? Take a listen.
- [03:51]
Georgia from My Favorite Murder
She starts dating Howard Hughes and in fact, she helps him design a faster plane. So she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode spotlighting groundbreaking innovators like Hedy and Lamar and Billie Jean King.
- [04:13]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
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- [05:04]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
podcast, so you're doing something else too. Like maybe scrolling home listings on Redfin, say, saving places you like without thinking you'll get them, because that's what house hunting has become. But Redfin isn't built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents, which means when you find a place you love, you've got a real shot at getting it. Redfin helps turn saved listings into real addresses. Get started@redfin.com, own the dream.
- [05:43]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
So, as you know, Ed, and as everyone who listens to your show knows, the US tech industry is currently dealing with a teensy issue of its entire economic foundation increasingly resting on a bed of fraudulent claims about what AI can do. And every week you break down some new lie or set of lies about how this new AI update or whatever works, or which giant fantasy data centers are actually being constructed and which aren't. And for those of us who care about objective reality and want companies to sell products that actually do something, this is a distressing state of affairs. And I wanted to give you a story about kind of how dumb that process can get and how really easy it is to trick even very serious people into buying absolute nonsense. As long as they feel like they're dummies who are missing out if they don't buy it. That's the story. And ultimately it's gonna take us to Iraq and a fake bomb detecting device that got so many people killed. A startling number of people killed. Yeah, but first, first, Dan, we gotta start in prehistory, in the far reaches of time with a psychological phenomenon that we now call the ideomotor effect. You've heard of this, right? Have you heard of the ideomotor effect?
- [06:57]
Ed Zitron
No.
- [06:58]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Okay. This is. You may just not remember the name. Cause this is like a. Like, this is basically when your thoughts or your, like, mental images of something cause a reflexive and generally unconscious automatic muscle movement. Right? So you and your friends are on a Ouija board, and none of you think that you're moving the little, like, glass that picks the letters. But all of you are a little bit, right? Like, you're just not kind of aware of the micro movements and that moves the thing around the board and creates the illusion that some spirit is moving your hands. Right? I think people are generally aware of that concept. And the ideomotor effect, it explains actually a lot specifically of things in early human religious history. But not just that. And one interesting thing to me. Have you ever heard of dowsing?
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Ed Zitron
No.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
This is still a thing today. It's not a thing I think most regular people know about in the 21st century, but it's still something that's done all over the world. And it's a thing that has kind of been repeatedly invented in cultures around the world. And the idea behind dowsing is you've got this, usually a forked wooden stick, and you, like, walk around with it because you're looking for water or you're looking for, like, an underground mine, Right. You think there's gold underground. And as you're walking, if, like, the. The fork kind of dips in a direction, that's the. The dowsing rod, finding water or whatever thing you're looking for underground or underwater. Right. And again, it's. The idea is that, like, there's some magnetic force that's pulling it down and tells you where you should dig. Like, the people who claim this is real tend to now say that there's a basis. Science there's not. And people have just been doing this for forever because it seems like it should work.
- [08:37]
Ed Zitron
The people still don't think this works.
- [08:40]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Yes. My dad did this professionally when he was a young man. Like, we're talking, like the early 80s, you know. So, yes, people still do dowsers. Very cool.
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Ed Zitron
Very cool.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
And what's when. Because one thing dowsers will point out, because there are dowsers who, like, have a great record of, like, well, this guy is using a dowsing rod and he's found water all these times. Generally, what people tend to think is actually happening is that these folks also have just been traveling around and looking for water long enough and have enough of an understanding of geology that kind of unconsciously, when they suspect that somewhere is right, their hand is moving, they're
- [09:16]
Ed Zitron
ignoring their real stuff in favor of just pseudoscience. Very cool.
- [09:22]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Of crediting the stick. Yes, Very cool. We'll talk more about that later. But dowsing goes back surprisingly far. We have ancient Chinese texts from about 2000 BCE or so that depict Emperor Yu of Hessea of using a dowsing rod in something approaching the modern fashion. And there are even some archaeologists who will argue that a set of cave paintings in algeria from about 6,000 BCE also depict dowsing. That's highly debated. These guys might have just had bows and arrows. It's a cave painting, so there's some room for debate. But Herodotus described a similar tool in use by the scythians. In the 5th century BCE. And there are a number of other suspected or confirmed cases of dowsing and dowsing adjacent behavior in civil civilizations around the world. And sometimes, you know, with the Scythians, I wouldn't be surprised if it traveled out of China. But there's evidence that different peoples have kind of figured out this basic idea independently. Sort of like the bow and arrow, right? For whatever reason, this is just something that seems natural to people. The practice was well known enough in the days of the Roman Empire that the New Testament even has a passage denouncing dowsing. From an article on the Archaeology Review blog by Carl Fegans, quote, my people consult their wooden idol and their diviner's rod informs them, for a spirit of harlotry has led them astray. And they have played the harlot, departing from their God. And that's Hosea 4:12. So you're, you're using technology, is scrutinizing.
- [10:50]
Ed Zitron
The Bible is saying, hey, whoa, don't believe me.
- [10:55]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
If we're comparing dowsing to AI, this is the first. Like, this is an early Pope encyclical against dowsing. It's harlot's behavior. Sticks will make people think about ladies. I don't think that's actually what it was saying, but it's funny wording. I just like the word harlot. So this is probably part of why dowsing rods became increasingly known as witching rods in the Western world. Have you ever heard of a witching rod? It's the same idea, and they call it that because people thought it was the devil sometimes. And while the practice was banned at times in the Christian world during this period, as a result, and even persecuted, this did not overly inhibit its spread. By the 15th century CE, Germans were using forked branches they called wishing rods to find ore veins in mountains. Or again, they're not actually finding stuff with the sticks. The sticks don't work. That's just what they think is going on. In 1556, a humanist scholar and a mineralogist named Georgius Agricola wrote the earliest surviving illustrated account of dowsing as a professor practice. Now, by this point, by the time old Georgie puts that down, we've had a documented history of about 3,500 years of humans using dowsing, maybe more. And enough people believe dowsing works, that it's a common practice. But even in the 1500s, which is not an advanced era for scientific understanding, this guy Agricola is like, there's no way this is real, right? And he writes, there Are many great contentious between miners concerning the forked twig. For some say that it is of the greatest use at discovering veins and others deny it. So we're already starting to like do some evidence based, you know, shedding of doubt on this practice.
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Ed Zitron
Were there like guides like how to douse and step two, when it wiggles. I don't really know like what is the.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
He's the first one to write it down. We have to assume just given the nature of the way things were spread back then, most dowsers would have been taught how to dowse. You're not getting like a guidebook with your first rod. You're an apprentice and you're being taught, you know.
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Ed Zitron
Yeah.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
So Georgius was kind of the first person to document what was probably already standard wisdom within the field, if that makes sense.
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Ed Zitron
Wisdom of the rod.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
The rod holding a stick and saying water.
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Ed Zitron
The wisdom of the stick.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
The wisdom of the stick. Beautiful.
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Ed Zitron
I love it.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Now I found all the information, most of the information about dowsing that I've read for you on a website called Plus Value India, which had an article on the history of dowsing that seemed a lot less shady. Look at the rest of the website.
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Ed Zitron
Pulitzer last year.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
It sure did. It sure did. Sophie's going to show you the website if you want to look at how reputable this source is. Oh yeah. The top of the page is three steps energized, three to five day delivery. Transform your home's energy without breaking a single wall. Perfect. And it's. It's about healing crystals. It's about healing crystals. So as that should make clear the fact that this history of dowsing is on the website selling you magic crystals. Dowsing is woo, right? This isn't real science. Dowsing rods don't identify gold or iron or water and pull in their direction. People unconsciously decide a particular area seems likely and their hand moves unconsciously.
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Ed Zitron
Yeah.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
If someone's intuition is good or they're lucky, they find what they're looking for. And this process works out often enough throughout history that it's kept alive. Not just alive, but shockingly influential. In his article, Feegans notes that quote archaeologist and skeptic Jeb Card writes in his Spooky Archaeology, which is a book that one in eight archaeology instructors in the 1980s were favorable to dowsing. This is initially hard to accept. Dowsing is the kind of nonsense that was popular before people understood the ideomotor effect. But surely by the 1980s we knew the practice was bupkis and we did in the same way we know vaccines work, but the world at large has not always accepted that knowledge. Right. So the fact that, like that many archeology instructors in the 80s, one in eighths, not most, but it's more than you'd guess. Right. Believing in dowsing should show you how hard it is to convince people. Even when there's never been, and there's never been any good evidence, dowsing works.
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Ed Zitron
Right.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Even though despite that fact, despite how long we've known it's nonsense, people were still buying it then and still back today. People, by the way, like, the idea
- [15:08]
Ed Zitron
of a gut, like the years in, you're like, okay, step one, hold the stick. Two, we're going like. I'm just like, step two is where it keeps stuck. It moves. Wait until it moves. Is it like using the clock around?
- [15:21]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
I think you're supposed to just kind of walk past the area and if it dips down, that's like the sign that something's there, Right? Some variance to this to your hand dipping. You couldn't do it with a hand. That's just silly, Ed.
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Ed Zitron
Yeah. Okay, cool, Right? Very good.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Mentioned earlier that the Ouija board works by way of the ideomotor effect, too. And it does. But the Ouija board is a new product. Any claims of ancient providence or just marketing. It is, however, based on an older idea, in fact, a very old idea, which is the magic or exploring pendulum. And if you were to get transported back in time to the days of ancient Rome and meet, like, someone claiming to be a fortune teller, they would probably do. There's a good chance they'd do this where basically you've got, like a plate or a bowl that's engraved with pictures or letters or words or symbols that stand for something. And you hold this pendulum. Sometimes it's just like a metal ring on a string, and you hold it above that. And as the ideomotor effect makes it swing in a certain direction, you're saying, oh, the spirit is picking out different symbols or letters and it's spelling out, you know, your fortune or whatever. It's answering whatever question it's been asked you. We have documentation of this practice dating back at least to 371 BC in Europe or BCE in Europe, according to an article on Quack Watch, a question would be put to the priest. The movements of the ring would then be observed. When the ring was set in motion, it would swing towards one of the letters. This letter would be recorded. Then the same process would be used to select another letter. Right. And that's, you know, basically how these things work. So how did dowsing stay relevant and seemingly credible up until the modern era? Whereas like the Magic Pendulum became a board game for children. Right. Even though it's the same amount of legitimacy. That is interesting, isn't it, right? That like one of these is a Parker Brothers game and the other's people pay for it.
- [17:15]
Ed Zitron
You know, is it because. Is it the client base? Because for the dowsing it's the ore and the water and I guess that there are those people and the others are seeking to communicate with the dead.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Right, right.
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Ed Zitron
Different markets.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Right. But it is interesting that a bunch of like hard nosed oil and gas investors over the years have been fooled by something that like most kids know isn't really real just because it's in a different. It's presented to them in a different stand like situation. Right. I do think that's kind of telling. Yeah, yeah.
- [17:51]
Ed Zitron
I can kind of see where you're going with this too. If it just has the appearance. Yeah. Interesting, interesting. I sure hope they don't use this logic for bombs.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
No, no, no, you don't want to see this logic used for bombs. But if you want to know how this logic went from, you know, stuff that like fortune tellers and wizards would use and wound up in a bomb detector. The answer that starts with the spiritism movement of the mid 19th century we talked about. Jamie Loft has talked about this a lot on the show. One of the shows that she did for us, this is like around the late 1800s, early 1900s, you suddenly have seances become a big thing. Right. There's this bird explosion and all these different weird occult movements. Some of this does feed into the Nazis, some of it feeds into what's gonna become the New age movement over here. But it's starting in like the 1840s and 50s with people trying to communicate with the dead and in that period of time, often believing that there might have been actual science to allowing people to communicate with spirits or the dead. Cause it's like 1848. Right. It's not a crazy thing to believe in 1848 based on the science of the times.
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Karen from My Favorite Murder
Yeah.
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Cool Zone Media Announcer
We got into that at length on Ghost Church.
- [19:02]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Ghost Church, yes, yes, that was Jamie's show. So the first scientist to actually bust the magic pendulum and thus explain the ideomotor effect and bust all ideomotor related magical phenomena was a French dude named Chevreuel. Right. He's a scientist in 1808. He'd trained as a chemist and had thus read a standard textbook for the field written by a Strasbourg professor who advocated using a magic pendulum to do chemical analysis. That's where science is at this point in the early 1800s. If you're trying to analyze, like, what different chemicals or anything before you do, like a chemical experiment, like where you're mixing shit together, you use like a fucking ring on a. On a chain. And the way it swings tells you what the minerals are, right?
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Ed Zitron
So.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Right. And Chevrolet, to his credit, he's one of these guys who just seems to have kind of a naturally scientific mind. So once he's. His instructors tell him, and this is how you analyze what chemicals are in things. He's like, really? I don't.
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Karen from My Favorite Murder
That.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
That's. You sure about that? I can't really believe this. Right? Like, this isn't what we're doing, is it? This can't be. Right? So he. He uses. But that said, when he uses the pendulum for the first time, it works like he gets a chemical compound, he knows what it is, and somehow the pendulum swings the way it's supposed to when it's over that in order to identify it as like, mercury, right? So he's given a plate of mercury. He knows it's mercury. Unconsciously, his hand makes the motion that is supposed to indicate that it's mercury, right? So at first he's like, oh, fuck, maybe it does work, maybe I'm wrong. But again, having a good scientific mind, he decides, I'm gonna do some actual testing and I'm gonna actually try to do kind of an early version of double blind testing. So he, like, puts a plate beneath the pendulum and the mercury, and that stops the thing from swinging. And he also tests putting his arm on a support which reduces the movements and kind of provides evidence that, like, no, no, these are unconscious muscle movements.
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Ed Zitron
I was thinking about that. With the divining rod, you could test if it was real by having, like, a cast or something.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Exactly, exactly. And that's what he does, right? Because he's a smart guy. Now, this prompts him to conduct the first double blind test on the ideomotor effect. And I'm gonna quote again from that Quackwatch article. He blindfolded himself, and then he had an assistant interpose or remove the glass plate between the pendulum and the mercury without his knowledge. Under these conditions, nothing happened. Chevrewell concluded, so long as I believed the movement possible, it took place. But after discovering the cause, I could not reproduce it. His experiments with the pendulum show how easy it is to mistake Illusions for realities. Whenever we are confronted by phenomena in which the human sense organs are involved under conditions imperfectly analyzed. Interesting quote to think about when you read about, like, AI chatbots passing, like, Turing Tests and stuff.
- [21:47]
Ed Zitron
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:48]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Kind of an interesting thing to think on. So again, I do like stories about this guy because it gives you. It's just one of these, like, you can really see a brilliant mind shining through history. This man who was just too smart to believe what literally everyone else in his field said was true and was like, well, I'm just going to literally do a basic test. Nope, everyone's wrong.
- [22:10]
Ed Zitron
Yeah, this does make me think of my work, which, like, 50% of the things I do are like, okay, you keep saying this. Did you look? Did you look? Did you look even once? And then you check and there's no proof. And they like AI job loss. Really no proof of that. It's the. Do the businesses make sense? Don't make. Don't make sense at all if you add up the numbers. History's so beautiful.
- [22:34]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
It's beautiful. That's why I was calling him in my head. Chevroud Zitron. That didn't really work.
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Ed Zitron
Chev Zitron, Chev Chelio.
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Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
There were. I could have tried so many different things that were better than what I went with anyway. So Chevrewell has correctly generalized that this same explanation illuminates what's really behind dowsing. He doesn't just call out, you know, the pendulum chemical analysis. He's like, by the way, people are using the same. Dowsing's the same thing, obviously. But his findings did not initially spread widely, neither among the general populace, nor even among a lot of educated people. By the 1850s, grifters and gurus were hosting regular seances and talking to the dead, parties where magic pendulums were used to communicate with ghosts. The whole spiritist movement relied heavily on the ideomotor effect. Table turning was another common practice. And this was a Victorian era parlor game that took off after the famous Fox sisters of Hydesville started claiming to communicate with spirits through knocks and taps on tables. In just a few years, the practice had evolved to table flipping, which is described in the website Moon Mausoleum. This way. Participants would sit around a small table, fingertips lightly resting on the surface. And after a bit of concentration and maybe a dramatic chant or two, the table would begin to rock tilt in some, sometimes even levitate. And again, this is the ideomotor effect. And there's nothing wrong with this. This is basically everyone giving each other permission. Unconsciously to believe something silly and to have like a fun kind of heightened experience. And there's nothing wrong with this if you're not taking this as serious evidence of like, how the universe works, which people do, because we're dumb. So the fact that folks are believing all of this drives a lot of scientists crazy, in part because science had just been invented and early practitioners of the field still believed it could compete long term with nonsense, which is a rookie mistake anyway. One of these guys was the physiologist William Carter. And Carter argued that none of these idiomotor charades are evidence of ghosts writing. All the phenomena of the biologized state, when attentively examined, will be found to consist in the occupation of the mind by the ideas which have been suggested to it, and in the influence which these ideas exert upon the actions of the body. Carpenter, having described what's going on, coined a name for this phenomena in 1852. The ideomotor effect. That's where we get the name. Crucial to this whole process was his observation that the people participating in these table flipping games and rituals weren't lying generally or secretly manipulating the results. That happens sometimes, like with the Hyde sisters. Some of the people doing these are deliberately manipulating what's happening. But when people are doing, like a group of friends get together to do like a table flipping seance, usually nobody's secretly manipulating the results. They're just all kind of tricking each other. And most of them are unaware of their own contributions to moving the table. Ideomotor action then provided a non magical explanation for something that only seemed magic because participants were too close to the action to see what was really going on right now. The original definition of the ideomotor effect was the influence of suggestion in modifying and directing muscular movement independently of volition. As before, the mere fact that table turning had been explained and the underlying mechanism behind it named didn't immediately change anything. So the next year, 1853, a group of English scientists convened to find an explanation for what had already been explained. The Internet maybe could have helped with this somewhat. There's a lot of people busting the same myths repeatedly at the same time because like, how do you know if some guy in London has already, like, named, you know, this effect or like,
- [26:08]
Ed Zitron
yeah, I guess they weren't sending each other letters. There wasn't like a place to check.
- [26:13]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
I mean, they are sometimes, but you don't have a guarantee. It's not like there's a someone can't just like find the results and then suddenly it's instantaneously in journals around the world. Like you would have had to be exchanging letters with someone who knows that this is going on. Right. You know who I exchange letters with? The sponsors of this podcast. You know, erotic letters. Honestly, we both wish I had stopped sending them, but there's no way around it.
- [26:40]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
Stop CCing me.
- [26:41]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
I don't want to be our sponsors. I love our sponsors, you know?
- [26:45]
Ed Zitron
Yeah. And I mean, that's how I pretty much interact with every better offline sponsor they all get. I send some tasteful nudes as well. That's how we keep them coming.
- [26:53]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
That's right. And they keep telling me this isn't an onlyfans, Robert. You don't have to do that to the advertisers. But by God, you know, I found their home addresses. I'm mailing them pictures of me.
- [27:03]
Ed Zitron
But you want to do it, that's why you do it.
- [27:05]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Uh huh. Thank you, Ed. You want to thank you. Anyway, here's some ads.
- [27:13]
Jennie Garth
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- [28:29]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
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- [30:05]
Dovato Medication Advertiser
It is unknown if Dovato is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B. If you have Hep B. Don't stop Dovato without talking to your doctor as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Dovato if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking dofetilide due to serious or life threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Dovato and get medical help right away. Other serious or life threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding or planned pregnancy.
- [30:40]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devato.com or call 1-877-8448-872.
- [30:47]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
Hi, it's Karen and Georgia from My Favorite Murder.
- [30:49]
Georgia from My Favorite Murder
We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamar.
- [30:55]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
Want the full story? Take a Listen.
- [30:57]
Georgia from My Favorite Murder
She starts dating Howard Hughes, and in fact, she helps him design a faster plane. So she finds the f fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode spotlighting groundbreaking innovators like Hedy and Lamar and Billie Jean King.
- [31:20]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
Presented by the Hyundai Ioniq 5.
- [31:22]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Goodbye. Ah, and we're back. So there were several leading theories as to, like, what was going on with the ideomotot effect and these pendulums and these tables. Right. But among the people who wanted to have, like a scientific answer, but, like, hadn't read any of the explanations that were going around in 1853. And the leading one was electricity. Because in 1853 people knew electricity existed, but it was basically magic in most of their minds. Right? So when you're asking like, well, why is this thing moving? When I hold it above this, it must be electricity. Gotta be electricity, right? Like, it's the invisible power.
- [32:05]
Ed Zitron
Yeah, they're just like, ah, probably electricity.
- [32:07]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Some real electricity vibes to me, man.
- [32:09]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
I don't know.
- [32:10]
Ed Zitron
Guy who only knows one scientific theory.
- [32:15]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Baron Karl von Reichenbach credited odic force, which he named after Odin and which he thought, this is one of my favorite things. So his. Baron Reichenbach. Von Reichenbach's explanation for the ideomotor effect is. No, no, no. There's this odic force and the way he describes it is just the force from Star Wars. Right. He believes all living things radiate energy and some people are sensitive to it and can even manipulate it. And there's even positive and negative energies or even a light and dark side of the odic force that you can learn to control.
- [32:45]
Ed Zitron
Did he actually say light and dark?
- [32:47]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Yes, he did.
- [32:47]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
Yes, he did.
- [32:48]
Ed Zitron
Oh, my God.
- [32:48]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
I mean, in German, but yes.
- [32:51]
Ed Zitron
And what year was this?
- [32:53]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
This is the 1850s.
- [32:55]
Ed Zitron
Hell yeah.
- [32:57]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
He independently invented George Lucas.
- [33:01]
Ed Zitron
George looks like this is great. It just needs some more racist aliens.
- [33:05]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
And then it'll be, yeah, I need some aliens that look like they came out of Der Sturmer.
- [33:10]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
There's something about his middle name being Carl that's really funny.
- [33:14]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
It's really funny. It's really funny. It's good stuff. That's his first name. It's just that he's the Baron Karl.
- [33:20]
Ed Zitron
That's Von Ben Bach.
- [33:21]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
So anyway, four doctors were tasked with investigating the science behind table turning in the United States. And despite all the theory around it, they came to the same Conclusion, as Carpenter. Although they did not give it a cool name, the conclusion was formed that the motion was due to muscular action, mostly exercised unconsciously. That same year in the United States, Michael Faraday conducted another prominent debunking of table turning. And by this point, the sheer weight of scientific consensus against this being real began to tell. Some regular people kept doing it, but scientists increasingly agreed it was nonsense. Some scientists. A major exception was Russel Wallace. And this guy's such a crank, I want his background to, like, be shitty, but it's not. Russel Wallace independently invented the theory of natural selection at the same time as Charles Darwin. Like, they published identically, and they both. Darwin. Most people give more credit, but they both get credit because they both figured it out on their own. Pretty much. Right. I mean, that's more complicated than that. But Wallace is a person who came up independently with the theory of natural. He's a smart man, right? But in 1865, he fell headfirst into spiritism. Per Quackwatch, he was seated with other sitters around a table. The table behaved in ways he was sure could not be entirely explained by Faraday's findings. And Carpenter's theory of video motor action. Right. Basically, he initially, he is like, yeah, obviously, of course, you know, I believe that what these. These other scientists have debunked, it is clearly nonsense. And some folks are like, hey, you should actually go attend one of these seances for yourself and maybe you'll feel differently. And he does. And he's like, I was wrong. This is absolutely, like, amazing right now. It is true. The reading he went to didn't seem to work the way Faraday and Carpenter had described ideomotor action, because that wasn't what was going on. He was just being tricked by fake mediums who had a whole team of people hiding in different nooks and crannies in the house to, like, make noises and create fake psychic phenomena. That happened a lot, too. But he makes the mistake of assuming that because this is different, that, like, the difference between what Faraday and Carpenter had seen, what he had seen is because he'd seen real ghosts, as opposed to maybe some guys tricked me, right?
- [35:36]
Ed Zitron
So there was a concerted effort to trick him, though.
- [35:38]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
There was a concerted effort to trick him, and he didn't catch it. Right. Nice. And because Faraday and the other scientists hadn't described the exact kind of behavior he'd observed, he concluded skeptical scientists couldn't be trusted to analyze the paranormal because they just. They wouldn't pay attention to the real stuff. Dr. Ray Hyman, writing for Quack Watch, calls this attitude loopholeism. Quote, the tendency to seek out each and every loophole in a skeptical account as a way to protect one's belief in a cherished supernatural or scientific claim.
- [36:08]
Ed Zitron
I'm filing that shit away for the AI boosters that was going in.
- [36:11]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
I thought you'd find this useful.
- [36:13]
Ed Zitron
Let's go.
- [36:13]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Loopholeism. That's money.
- [36:15]
Ed Zitron
Yeah.
- [36:17]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
Oh, yeah.
- [36:18]
Ed Zitron
That's getting a lot of use.
- [36:21]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
That's a handy term. Now, loopholism is the kind of behavior you can mock as idiotic. But again, this is a legitimately brilliant man. What's really happening here is that loopholism is the mechanism by which otherwise bright and even brilliant minds can trap themselves in nonsense. It provides a safety valve so that that sense, sense of, like, internal, like, discrepancy between, like, what you know and what you're observing gets kind of turned off, right? That's what it allows you to do. It's how smart people get trapped believing stupid things. That's what loopholism is, Russell. Not only smart people. Russell Wallace was one such mind. But another was Robert Hare, a professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1853, when he was 72 years old and Faraday published his debunking of Table Turning. Hare was again a brilliant chemist, one of the great minds in his field. So when Faraday published this report, the Philadelphia Inquirer asked Hare for a comment. And Hare initially says, like, yeah, Faraday's right. This is bogus. And that convinces one Dr. Comstock and Mr. Amasa Holcomb, two men running a fake medium scam, to send this guy a letter and say, hey, if you're really a fair minded scientist, why not attend a seance? And the same thing happens again. Another and another scam artist and another scam artist. Two known conmen, right?
- [37:40]
Ed Zitron
Oh, man.
- [37:42]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
One of Hare sprints. Cause Hare's like, obviously this is real. Totally different than what the other guys saw. And one of his friends is like, was it possible that they were, like, conning you? And Hare's like, of course not. They're men of good character. I know they're men of good character because when I met them, they seemed like men of good character.
- [38:00]
Ed Zitron
You know, they seem like good fellas. What?
- [38:02]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
They wouldn't lie to me about ghosts. And his logic was literally. Well, they told me they spent hours every week asking spirits for information. And men of good character wouldn't waste all that time if it was a trick.
- [38:15]
Ed Zitron
But that's like a classic scam. But they scammed him in scientific ways.
- [38:22]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
So good.
- [38:23]
Ed Zitron
But, like, they were like. Yeah, you know, whether or not, like, belief in. Goes separately to this doesn't matter. This is just a very classic scam
- [38:31]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
of ingratiate them all. It's just a scam.
- [38:33]
Ed Zitron
Just ingratiate the mark. But, yeah, don't worry. I did the seance. Real scientific, like. And I spent hours talking to the ghosts.
- [38:42]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Yeah, exactly.
- [38:43]
Ed Zitron
Knowing that he'd never get asked for details about what the discussions might be.
- [38:46]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Right? Right.
- [38:47]
Ed Zitron
Hell, yes. This rocks.
- [38:49]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
So Hare goes off the fucking deep end after this. He writes a book in 1855 with a very long title. We did not know how to title books back then. Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations. Demonstrating the Existence of Spirits and Their Communion with Mortals. Doctrine of the Spirit World. Respecting heaven, hell, morality and God. Also, the influence of scripture on the morals of Christians. Rolls off the tongue again, man, like the first couple of words. Experimental Investigations of the Spirit Manifestations. Boom. There you go. That's all we needed. That's all we need, you know? Or Experimental Investigation of Spirits. Boom. There's a title, you know, I'm just. I'm just trying to help you out here, man. Anyway, from that Quack Watch piece describing this fucking book. Before undertaking his research into spiritualism, Hare tells us he was a materialist and an atheist. He describes in detail the various experiments he conducted that to him proved the existence of the spirit world. He himself developed mediumistic powers. During these experiments, Hare claimed he had communicated not only with the spirits of his departed relatives, but also those of George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Benjamin Franklin, Lord Byron and Isaac Newton.
- [39:59]
Ed Zitron
Lord Byron, huh?
- [40:00]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Lord Byron.
- [40:03]
Ed Zitron
Okay, Lord Byron. What does Lord Byron have to say about.
- [40:08]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
He asked if he could. His wife.
- [40:10]
Ed Zitron
Oh, okay.
- [40:10]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
That's what Lord Byron did.
- [40:14]
Ed Zitron
Your wife? No, I want to know about spirits and stuff now. Yeah, the wife. The wife situation.
- [40:19]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
The wife. The white man.
- [40:20]
Ed Zitron
Let's discuss the wife situation before we get into spirits.
- [40:25]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
So he also created a device that sounds like a direct precursor to the Ouija board quote. The spirit scope, as he called it, consisted of a pasteboard disk slightly larger than a foot in diameter. Around its circumference, he attached the letters of the Alphabet in a haphazard order. An arrow that swiveled at the center of the disk was used to select letters one at a time by pointing toward them. For his initial test, he had a medium sit opposite him at a table. The disk was placed between Hare and the Medium such that Hare could see the letters and the movements of the arrow, but the medium could not. The medium sat with her hands on a surface above the table, which, through a system of pulleys, cords and weights, was attached to the arrow such that slight pressures of her hand would cause it to move in various directions and point to letters. Hare asked if any spirits were present. The arrow pointed to the letter Y, indicating yes. Hare next asked the spirit to provide the initials of his name. The index pointed to R. And then to hide. Hare asked my honored father. The index pointed to Y. Now, Hare hadn't really figured out the secret to contacting the dead. He thought he had, because he's like, well, she can't see the letters, so it's gotta be a spirit. But while this medium couldn't see the letters he was looking at, she could see his face. And thus she could move her hand to modify where the thing landed based on his response.
- [41:45]
Ed Zitron
And she was kinda like mentalists do, huh?
- [41:47]
Dovato Medication Advertiser
Right?
- [41:47]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Yes. It's just. It's the same set of principles. Right. And Hare even realizes she's not necessary. Cause he starts operating the spirit scope alone, and it still works. And he's like, that must really mean it's real and. No, man, it's just the same. It's the ideomotor effect.
- [42:06]
Ed Zitron
And also just. I assume that also wouldn't. So the medium could control the thingy.
- [42:13]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Yes, yes. When he was doing it with them. Yeah.
- [42:16]
Ed Zitron
And thus the medium would know what letters corresponded to what hand.
- [42:20]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Well, if he. As he's saying, like, he's. Because he's reading the letters, and if she gets to why. And he's like, oh, does that mean why? And she's like, yeah, yeah, that's where I wanted.
- [42:28]
Ed Zitron
Oh. So he was prompting her.
- [42:30]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Yes, yes. There's a degree of that going on. Yeah. Always the case with shit like this.
- [42:35]
Ed Zitron
Why? Yeah, it's asking why you want to know.
- [42:39]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Right, Exactly. So the decades go by and science gains a robust understanding of how all this stuff works. Regular people continue to fall for it, but it's at least less commonly accepted in educated halls. That said, this still fools a lot of people periodically. One famous example from the 20th century is the case of Klever Hans, a German horse in the early 1900s, who, it was claimed, had been taught to do math, tell time, read and write, and a bunch of other things that horses cannot do. And so I'm just gonna show you. Here's Clever Hans, and what you've got is basically his. His owner would point to, you know, if he wanted to have Clever Hans give people the answer to 5 times 4. Right? He would point to 5 times 4 and then Hans would start stomping until he reached 20. Right? Thus showing that Hans knew how to do 5 times 4. And Hans could indeed do stuff like this. And so people were like, what else could that be but a horse knowing all of these things? Right? However, as with table reading, once Clever Hans became really famous, there's a commission that gets formed to study him. So the first thing they do, being scientists, is separate him from his owner and they do a bunch of tests and they're able to show that. Wow. Other people can get Hans to successfully give correct answers too. Which at first seems. Well, maybe that really does mean Hans knows what he's doing. But further study showed Hans only gets answers correct if the person asking him the question knows the right answer and Hans can see them. Right. Those two things have to be in place, right? In other words, Hans doesn't know what 5 times 4 is or what 3 times 3 is or what 2 plus 2 is. Hans knows when he starts tapping at a certain point, the person asking him a question gets really excited if they know what the answer is, because that's the answer. And then he stops and he gets rewarded. Right? That's what Hans is reacting to. So one thing this shows which is legitimately of scientific interest, is that horses are very empathetic. Right? Hans doesn't know math or anything or science or anything else, but he knows when people are excited and happy with his performance. And that's what he's reading for. Right? Does that make sense?
- [44:58]
Ed Zitron
Yeah, Honestly, Hans does sound clever.
- [45:01]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
He's clever. He is. He's a smart horse, just not in the way people thought. Right.
- [45:05]
Ed Zitron
I also like the. The reason I laughed so hard was the idea of a. Like a panel or a committee, like a bunch of guys got together.
- [45:16]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
We gotta work out smart this horse is.
- [45:19]
Ed Zitron
Or like, was there an alarm of,
- [45:21]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
like, are horses is becoming intelligent, really smart? Yes, there was. People were like, wait a second, what's going on here?
- [45:29]
Ed Zitron
They're thinking of, like an early version of sorry to bother you.
- [45:33]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
Yeah.
- [45:33]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Yes, exactly. Now, this is not the ideomotor effect, but it's relevant for a reason. I'm going to bring up in a second. I should let you know. Clever Hans gets found out, right? Like, people realize what's going on. Not long before World War I, and for his many crimes, he was eventually drafted into World War I and was killed in action in 1960, 16 and immediately eaten by starving German infantry. This might not seem like it's the same. I know that's kind of bleak. It's not World War I catch the fever. This may not seem like the same deal as dowsing, and it's not the ideomotor effect, but the human psychology behind it is very similar. Whether it's a horse or a forked stick, we're the ones with the answers and we just convince ourselves something else is at play right today in the 21st century. Clever Hans is a fun old timey story, but people are still just as easily tricked by animal behavior. And I'm gonna have a brief digression to talk about police dogs here. But first, you know who never gets police dogs called on them?
- [46:37]
Ed Zitron
Who?
- [46:38]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
The sponsors of this podcast. Because they bribed the police.
- [46:41]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
We don't know that. You don't know this.
- [46:45]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
I can't.
- [46:48]
Jennie Garth
This is Jenny Garth from I Choose Me with Jennie Garth. You know, history is full of surprising little details. And laundry Turns out it's got its own fascinating story too. Because not all detergents are created equal. Tide liquid laundry detergent isn't just clean, it's boosted clean for cleaner, whiter, brighter and fresher results compared to Tide Simply and those stubborn stains that always seem to show up at the worst times. Tide tackles 100% of common stains for every load every time. Now, if grease is your nemesis, think food spills, cooking splatters. Tide's got 10 times grease fighting ingredients compared to bargain brands. And it works in a machine in any water condition on all your machine washable fabrics. It's no wonder Tide was America's number one detergent in sales last year. So if it's gotta be clean and it's gotta be fresh, gotta be tied. Shop now at your local retailer. Tide is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast, available on June 1st on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere podcasts are heard.
- [48:04]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
This ad is brought to you by Veiv Healthcare, the makers of Devato Dolutegravir lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Dovato. Dovato is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Davato is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Dovato is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Dovato.
- [48:28]
Dovato Medication Advertiser
It is unknown if Dovato is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B if you have Hep B. Don't stop Divato without talking to your doctor as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Dovato if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking Dofetilide due to serious or life threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Dovato and get medical help right away. Other serious or life threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding or planned pregnancy.
- [49:03]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit Dovato.com or call 1-877-844-8872.
- [49:11]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
Hi, it's Karen and Georgia from My Favorite Murder.
- [49:12]
Georgia from My Favorite Murder
We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr.
- [49:18]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
Want the full story? Take a listen.
- [49:21]
Georgia from My Favorite Murder
She starts dating Howard Hughes and in fact, she helps him design a faster plane. So she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane and that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode spotlighting groundbreaking innovators like Hedy and Lamarr and Billie Jean King.
- [49:43]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
Presented by the Hyundai Ioniq 5.
- [49:45]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Goodbye.
- [49:47]
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- [50:51]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
And we're back. So we're talking about cop dogs. This is a digression, but it's very relevant to the story of Clever Hans, because if you had an education like I did and like Ed, you, you grew up in the uk, so I don't think you guys had dare cops, but did you have cops come into your class to talk about how dangerous drugs were?
- [51:09]
Ed Zitron
No, they one time came in and showed us that guns were scary.
- [51:13]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Okay, that's good. Kids should know that.
- [51:15]
Ed Zitron
They also let us rack a pump action shotgun, which is not a good idea because, like, everyone was like, wow, these things seem real scary. And you go. You're like, fuck, yeah, cool.
- [51:25]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Yeah, horrible idea.
- [51:27]
Ed Zitron
All boys, private school, where I was the dumbest kid as well. So it's like, maybe don't show any of these children this.
- [51:35]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Yeah, it is a bad idea.
- [51:37]
Ed Zitron
But thankfully we don't have a second amendment, which is a great thing considering.
- [51:42]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Considering. But it is the same thing with, like, drugs and with guns, where if you bring them into a school, some number of kids will be like, these things are kind of cool. Right? So my education, I had a dare cop come into our class and tell us about drugs. And he also talked to us about canine units. Units, Right. And how they would find. If you had even a sprinkle of weed in a full car or a locker, a dog can sniff it out. That's how good their noses are. Right? You can't hide anything from dogs. They're almost supernatural how good they are at smelling out drugs. And that sounded plausible. Most people just believe that, you know, without thinking further about it, because dog noses really are that good. A bloodhound is capable of picking out a tiny amount of weed in a locker or a backpack or whatever. But that doesn't mean that's what's happening when a K9 unit alerts and says there's drugs or a bomb somewhere. In 2011, the Chicago Tribune went through three years worth of cases where cops had used drug dogs to find drugs in cars in the area, per npr. According to the analysis, officers found drugs or paraphernalia in only 44% of cases in which the dogs had alerted them. When the driver was Latino, the dogs were right. Chicken just 27% of the time. That seems worse than guessing.
- [52:57]
Ed Zitron
Did they just train the dogs to be racist as well?
- [53:00]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Like, no, that's the best part. Maybe. But that's not the thing that is to blame for this specific thing, Ed. So when the Tribune reached out to the cops and was like, this seems kind of fucked up. If these dogs are so good, why is this happening? And why are they less accurate on, like, people that the cops might be racist towards? And the dog handling officers responded first by saying, well, you can't measure our accuracy based on the number of alerts that find drugs. Right. Dog noses are too good. So if they alert on a car and say there's drugs, and then we don't find drugs in the car, it's just because there used to be drugs in there, in the car.
- [53:37]
Ed Zitron
So you're saying you can't measure our effectiveness by how effective we are?
- [53:41]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Right, right. These things are probable cause. If a dog alerts on your car. And this is how much they suck at their fucking job. And I'm not blaming the dogs again. The dogs are doing a Clever Hans.
- [53:52]
Ed Zitron
This is the thing people talk about dogs, that all dogs are good boys. I think we've statistically proven that that's not true today.
- [53:59]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
I disagree, Ed. It's not the dog's fault. Because what's happening, it's the same as with Clever Hans. Because what's happening here is the dogs, when they get up to a car, they see their owner gets excited where the owner thinks there are drugs. And if the owner think or if their handler thinks there's drugs. So if a cop pulls over a car that's being driven by a Mexican dude and he assumes this guy's gotta have drugs on him, the dog's going to alert because he sees the owner wants him to alert. Dogs are really good at knowing what we want. And dogs have no idea what alerting on a car means for the people in the car.
- [54:37]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
Of course not.
- [54:38]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
They don't understand that they're dogs. What they know is that they make their owner happy if they alert on the car. Cause their owners are racist piece of shit. And that's what they're doing. That's how cop dogs work.
- [54:48]
Ed Zitron
God, that's so horrible. I retract my statements about dogs being. I cannot unilaterally say all dogs are good, but these are not necessarily bad dogs.
- [54:58]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
These are not necessarily their fault. All dogs are good. Yeah, your dogs are good.
- [55:04]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
They're great.
- [55:05]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
What I do find funny is that when the Tribune talked to cop dog, like, cop trainers, the cop trainers were like. The people who trained cop dogs were like, oh, and it's. The dogs just smell drugs that had been there. But when the Tribune talked to people who are like, experts on dogs, like, specifically, like, people who are like, actual actually study dogs professionally, like Lawrence Myers, a professor from Auburn University who studies canine units. He told them, quote, dog handlers can accidentally cue alerts from their dogs by leading them too slowly or too many times around a vehicle. And a lot of times, owner, by the way, the handlers know that. So sometimes this isn't even the dog innocently alerting to please the handler. Sometimes the handler knows if I walk around this area three times, the dog will automatically alert. Oh.
- [55:50]
Ed Zitron
So the dog starts freaking out. I see, Damn, that's fucked up. That's so horrible. That's so.
- [55:57]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
It's fucked up. And in that same interview, Myers, the drug dog expert, brings up Clever Hans. He's like, that's what's happening a lot of time with canine units. Now, that same year, a researcher named Lisa Litt had published an actual scientific study on the efficacy of canine units. She tested the abilities of 14 sniffer dogs and secretly, their handlers, right? She told the handlers, hey, in this specific test, there's a cocaine target scent in the car. So the handlers went in knowing there was supposed to be cocaine, but she hadn't actually put the target scent there. So the. The owners were told it was there, the handlers were told it was there. So they thought it was there. And even though it wasn't, their dogs tended to alert that it was there because the handlers expected it and had been told a scent was nearby. Which kind of proves that they're full of shit, right? The study damaged Litt's career, even though it was brilliant because it pissed off dog trainers, cops, and put at risk the entire way that a lot of law enforcement works in the US because a K9 alert counts as probable cause. Now, ultimately, after years, it did inspire some trainers in some departments to adopt more rigorous standards to control for this kind of bias, but there's been absolutely no systemic reform. Anyway, that's a digression, but I want you to remember it, because this is not going to be the last or the only time in this story that something like this goes down. But back to Clever Hans after he gets eaten by those Germans and World War I ends, spiritism fades from relevance, and the ideomotor effect starts being taught in school and to science students, right? Medical science and materials science advances rapidly over the next decades, and the ideomotor effect's influence shrinks mostly to the field of parlor tricks and children's board games and, of course, to dowsing. People continue to use dowsing rods all around the world, as they still do today. Right. Now, at some point in the late 1980s or early 1990s, an enterprising inventor who we'll talk about in the next episode was playing a round of golf, probably while thinking about the ideomotor effect. That's how I assume that this all came to pass. What we're going to talk about next. Because one constant annoyance when you're golfing is that you lose balls, right? And if you lose your ball, you lose strokes. Right. They add strokes to your score. And it also costs money and time because you have to pay for them. Right? So there's always been money in finding golf balls or convincing people you've developed a way that they can do that. Enter the gopher. Now, Sophie's gonna show you what this thing looked like. This is a gag gift primarily.
- [58:33]
Jennie Garth
It's ridiculous.
- [58:33]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
It's an empty plastic box with a collapsible antenna that you can unfold from it and you spin it out and you like walk around where you think you lost your ball. And if you use it right, the antenna will drop to point at your missing ball. Right. It's the same as all of this shit works. And Sophie's got an example of the package of this product that starts being sold in the late 80s, early 90s. Amazing wall finder. Yep. Video. You need that. That hasn't. The guys at Red Letter Media periodically will do like watch a bunch of old VHS tapes like this sort of shit and make fun of them. I haven't seen them get the Gopher yet, but I'm looking forward to it like every day. Yeah. The perfect gift for the golfer who has everything quick and easy to operate. Just like a magnetic compass needle which swings of its own accord to the North Pole. The direction finding antenna of your gopher will swing of its own accord in the direction of a golf ball as soon as your shoulders line up with the ball. The gopher does not generate or transmit any harmful signals and is environmentally safe. That part is true. It does not generate or transmit any signals.
- [59:38]
Ed Zitron
What does it does?
- [59:39]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
It just goes nothing. It just moves with your hand. There's nothing in there. There's no electronics. There's no battery. It does nothing. It's just a box with an antenna on it.
- [59:53]
Ed Zitron
What the fuck?
- [59:55]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
It's just a lie.
- [59:59]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
But hey, according to the packaging, it can be used by right or left handed people.
- [60:03]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
And even underwater.
- [60:05]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Even underwater, you know. Yeah. In deep rough or the bush. Yeah. Looks like a great product. So we're going to talk about the Gopher more in part two. Because as a spoiler, the gopher directly leads to the deaths of hundreds and hundreds of Iraqi civilians.
- [60:22]
Ed Zitron
Nice.
- [60:22]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
And not just civilians in Iraq in a lot of places, you know, to be fair, but mostly Iraq. So we'll tell the story about how this gag gift that doesn't help people find golf balls becomes like a multi tens of millions of dollars defense product that leads to huge numbers of deaths during the war in Iraq. But that's next episode. Ed, how are you feeling in this episode into part one?
- [60:46]
Ed Zitron
I'm feeling confused, but also validated that history is full of people just getting fucking swindled by complete dog shit. Just complete nonsense.
- [60:56]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Just nonsense. Yeah.
- [60:57]
Ed Zitron
Absolute crap.
- [60:58]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
We're so bad at learning when things are like complete bullshit. I love it, I love it, I love it.
- [61:06]
Ed Zitron
We've learned nothing.
- [61:07]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
We've learned nothing. Except, Ed, you've learned how to make a damn good podcast. You want to tell our listeners where they can listen to it?
- [61:14]
Ed Zitron
Betteroffline.com listen to my goddamn podcast. We do the monologue. We do interviews. We do more monologues. We do a lot of monologues. Join the subreddit. Read my newsletter. Where's your red dot? Where's your ed dot AT is the newsletter. Just join me. Join me on the various platforms.
- [61:30]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
Yeah.
- [61:31]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Excellent. All right, everybody, let's all go to the not here until it's time for part two. Goodbye. Bye Bye.
- [61:44]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Full video episodes of behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.
- [62:18]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Let's talk about Peyronie's disease, or pd. It's not widely talked about and some men may feel reluctant to bring it up, but it's more common than you'd think. PD can happen when scar tissue builds up under the skin of the penis, causing a curve with a bump during an erection that for some men may lead to pain during intimacy and impact mental health. A trusted urology specialist can help diagnose PD and walk you through your options, including non surgical treatment. Visit talkaboutpd.com hi, it's Karen and Georgia
- [62:48]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
from my favorite Murder.
- [62:49]
Georgia from My Favorite Murder
We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr.
- [62:55]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
Want the full story? Take a listen.
- [62:58]
Georgia from My Favorite Murder
She starts dating Howard Hughes and in fact, she helps him design a faster plane. So she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode spotlighting groundbreaking innovators like Hedy Lamar and Billie Jean King.
- [63:20]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
Presented by the Hyundai Ioniq 5. Goodbye.
- [63:23]
Ed Zitron
This is George Severis and Sam Taggart from Stratiolab.
- [63:27]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Let's be real Home comes with a lot of odors.
- [63:29]
Ed Zitron
Cooking, pets, everyday life.
- [63:32]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
That's where Febreze comes in.
- [63:33]
Ed Zitron
Febreze helps fight household odors and leaves behind freshness that lasts. And with over 30 cents to choose from, you'll always find one that feels like you.
- [63:41]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
Febreze. Freshness that fits your life, your space, your style.
- [63:45]
Ed Zitron
Febreze is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy and unwavering commitment to equality.
- [63:55]
Behind the Bastards Host (Robert Evans)
You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast available on June 1st on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere podcasts are heard.
- [64:03]
Karen from My Favorite Murder
This is Bethenny Frankel from Just Be with Bethany Frankel. Most dog food is marketing, not nutrition. That is why Biggie and Smalls eat just food for dogs. Real 100% human grade food with ingredients I actually recognize. And yes, I do see the difference. Better digestion, healthier skin, more energy, dogs that feel better. My babies. If you've been on the fence about switching, stop overthinking it. What's more important than your furry babies and their health? Go to justfoodfordogs.com right now and get 50% off your first box. No code needed. Just try it.
- [64:39]
Just Food for Dogs Advertiser
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