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Exciting news. Conspiracy theories, Cults and crimes is leveling up. Starting the week of January 12th, you'll be getting two episodes every week. Wednesdays we unravel the conspiracy or the cult, and on Fridays, we look at a corresponding crime. Every week has a theme. Tech, bioterror, power, paranoia, you name it. Follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and crimes now on your podcast app because you're about to dive deeper, get weirder, and go darker than than ever before. This is crime house. In 2003, Swedish philosopher and Oxford professor Nick Bostrom published a paper titled Are you living in a computer simulation? Bostrom wasn't the first person to question the limits of our reality. Plenty of scientists, philosophers, and science fiction writers have asked whether our lives are measured in binary code. But Bostrom took the idea to the next level. According to his research, we're probably living in a simulated world, and the people who created us are actually our own descendants. Bostrom's ideas are complex, but the central thesis is very clear. There's a good chance that our life isn't what it seems, and none of us are real at all. From UFO cults and mass suicides to secret CIA experiments, presidential assassinations, and murderous doctors, these aren't just theories. They're real stories that blur the line between fake fact and fiction. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes, a crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Every Wednesday and Friday, I'll explore the real people at the center of the world's most shocking events and nefarious organizations. These cases are wild, and I want to hear what you think at the end of each episode. Leave a comment wherever you listen. Be sure to rate, review and follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to continue building this community together. And for, ad free early access to both of our weekly episodes, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Today, I'm looking into a conspiracy theory that's evolved across human history. The idea that our world isn't as it seems. For centuries, philosophers like Plato and Rene Descartes have questioned the limits of our reality. But the possibility of a simulated reality didn't gain steam until the late 20th century, when computers became an essential part of human life. Movies like the Matrix brought these concepts into the mainstream, and now millions of people, including some of the tech CEOs that shape our society, believe in it, too. It's an unsettling thought, and the more we learn about it, the more questions we have. Because if we're in a simulation, who's running it? Why and what are they trying to achieve? All that and more coming up. The idea that we're all living in a virtual world might seem like a relatively new concept. But human beings have been asking questions about the nature of our reality long before computers were even a theoretical concept. Plato, one of Western philosophy's most influential figures, first mentioned it in his book Republic, written around 375 BCE. In. In it, he presented an allegory of a prisoner who'd been chained up in a cave for their entire life. The only thing they'd ever seen was the shadows on the wall of the cave. And because they didn't know what was casting the shadows, the shadows themselves became the prisoner's entire reality. Plato said all human beings started their lives like this allegorical prisoner. The only way someone could get free of the chains was to question their reality and look outside the cave. Plato's allegory has played a huge role in the way we understand the world around us. But he wasn't the only person to ask these kinds of questions. Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, who lived around the same time as Plato, proposed a similar theory, but with a few tweaks. Zhuangzi suggested that our reality might actually be a dream. According to him, it was impossible to tell the difference between the two because our dreams almost always feel real. This concept inspired another well known philosopher named Rene Descartes. Descartes famously said that the only thing we can be certain of is that we exist as conscious beings, AKA I think, therefore I am. But Descartes also introduced a twist on Plato and Zhuangzi's ideas, one that was a lot darker. He presented the possibility that something or someone could trick us into believing something that isn't real. He wrote that a being of utmost power and cunning could have employed all his energies in order to deceive me. I shall think that all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgment. In other words, there could be an evil demon that was using our own senses to hurt us. It was a terrifying idea, but it was nothing compared to the next big theory that emerged. The concept that we're living in a computer simulation. Like a lot of modern technologies, computer simulations were first developed as a tool for war. During World War II, armies used information about weather and terrain to calculate the trajectory of their artillery. But when US forces landed in North Africa in November 1942, they found themselves fighting in completely unfamiliar territory. And whatever calculations they'd made were useless. The Moore School of electrical engineering at The University of Pennsylvania was tapped to come up with a solution. Over two years, they developed the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or eniac, the first general purpose computer. It wasn't like the kind of computers we have today. It was huge and only used by institutions like the US military. By the time the ENIAC was completed in 1945, World War II was nearly over. But the computer was more important than ever. Soon it would be used to simulate thermonuclear chain reactions for the world's first hydrogen bomb. Some people were thrilled about the possibilities the ENIAC created, but others were terrified. If a machine could simulate complex particle physics, who knew what it could do in the future? Maybe one day those computers would become so advanced they'd replace humans or even reality itself. In 1955, about a decade after ENIAC was introduced, the science fiction writer Frederick Pohl published a short story in Galaxy magazine titled the Tunnel under the World. Pohl's story is about a futuristic city where robots are implanted with human memories and placed in a simulated reality where every day is is the same. The only variables are the advertisements they see. His writing touched on a lot of societal changes that took place in the 1950s, especially the increased amount of advertising. But the fact that he used a computer simulation as the framework was revolutionary. It opened the floodgates for other science fiction writers to do the same. Philip K. Dick, the author whose works inspired movies like Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report, published Time out of joint in 1959. In it, a man discovers that his seemingly perfect reality is a simulation to distract the population from a devastating war. Daniel F. Galloui did something similar in his novel Simulacron 3, which was published in 1964. In that story, Galooi describes a virtual society that learns their entire reality was created to simulate how different political decisions would affect people. All of these stories were cautionary tales about what it could mean to live inside a simulated reality. Despite their warnings, scientists continued to push the boundaries of what a computer could do. And the more they learned, the blurrier the lines became. In 1968, scientists at Harvard developed the world's first virtual reality headset, which was so heavy, it needed to be suspended from the ceiling. Not long after that, scientists at NASA and MIT began to create worlds that could be explored through that technology. This development led to a new spin on Descartes evil demon. In 1973, Princeton philosopher Gilbert Harman proposed a scenario where an evil scientist was able to remove someone's brain, keep it alive in a vat and connect it to a computer. After that, the computer would trick the brain into believing it was a fully living, breathing person. Nearly a Decade later, in 1981, a philosopher and mathematician named Hilary Putnam took things a step further. Following the same line of reasoning as Descartes, Zhuangzi, and Plato, Putnam suggested that since we can't fully trust our senses, there's no way to prove we aren't brains in a Vat the brain in a vat theory became one of the most enduring concepts in philosophy, and science fiction. Writers around the world were eager to incorporate the idea into their work. But one stood out above the rest. In 1999, Lana and Lilly Wachowski's classic the Matrix was released in theaters. It incorporated the brain in a vat theory along with other philosophical concepts. In the world of the Matrix, humans are born into a computer simulation. They're kept happy enough that they don't notice they're being enslaved by evil robots and used as batteries to power the entire robotic network. The Matrix wasn't entirely groundbreaking. It wasn't the first time the simulation theory was used in science fiction. But the Wachowskis, who are both transgender, said part of the reason they made the film was as an allegory for the trans experience, especially the idea of waking up from the role society has forced you into. But overall, the film spoke to a universal audience and popularized the idea that our reality might not be what it seems. Within just a few months of the movie's release, scientists and viewers used the Matrix to discuss those philosophical concepts. This paved the way for people to grasp the ideas of one philosopher whose work revolutionized how we understand our reality. Nick Bostrom was born in 1973 in Helsingberg, Sweden. Bostrom never really liked school and dropped out when he was just 17. But that didn't slow down his academic career. Bostrom went on to earn three different Master's degrees. Then, at just 27 years old, in the year 2000, he got his PhD in Philosophy from the London School of Economics. That's where his entire life changed. At the London School of Economics, Bostrom became interested in using statistics to look into the future and push past the boundaries that other philosophers had faced. He said. It occurred to me that you could do something more than just ask the general law. How can you be sure that you're not dreaming or that you're not a brain in a vat, or that you're not in a computer computer simulation, and that there was a precise argument that you could formulate? Soon, Bostrom started to wonder what a technologically advanced society would do with all of its innovations thousands of years in the future. And the more he thought about it, the more one idea stuck out. They would run simulations of their ancestors, us. If that were the case, they'd probably done it millions of times already, which meant there was a good chance we were living in one of those simulations right now. But that paved the way for other questions, like why were they doing it? And what would happen if they realized weed caught on.