Matthew Hongols Hetling (10:02)

Mike, what a wonderful introduction. Please ply me with my own prose. I will sit here and listen to your melliful voice all day.

Mike Pesca (10:13)

But how do you plead to my charge that I think the subtitle comes in a little hot given that I read whole book and it seems to be more about understanding a phenomenon as opposed to decrying a trend.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (10:26)

Yeah, no, I, I am with you 1000% on that. This was the biggest, you know, a little inside baseball biggest internal discussion that I have ever participated in within the confines of my publishing house. And there were various schools of thought about what was appropriate and what wasn't. This is the one that won out. But I, I do think, you know, To. To address sort of the. The substance of what you're talking about. Yeah, you know, they are. They're not out there with a wrecking ball trying to knock science down. They're. What they see, what they're doing is reforming. Right. And sort of like opening the. Opening the lens a little bit so that science can sort of like accommodate these experiences that they are having. But of course, you know, I also talk quite a bit about, as you said, that the state of trust and mistrust and distrust in the United States and the way that they view the world has an awfully big impact on that in a way that I'm not sure that we've really thought about.

Mike Pesca (11:29)

Yeah, yeah. So let's talk. Let's talk about them. Let's talk about your main characters. Let's talk about Andy, and let's talk about the. The research institute, the Kit Research Institute that they're affiliated with. Who was Kit? What are they researching?

Matthew Hongols Hetling (11:45)

All right, so Andy, Kit is a really interesting character. You know, he's one of these, you know, I'm a straight shooter. I'm going to tell like it is. I don't care who I offend. And he became convinced that his recently departed father was communicating to him from beyond the grave. And he took up this sort of cause to try to look more into that and also to sort of like mold his life and form an organization with this stated goal of sort of bringing science into paranormal phenomena, including, but not limited to ghost hunting. And so he's a New Hampshire seacoast resident. He kind of bounced around for most of his life. He'd never really settled into any sort of a career. Yeah. But he. And at the time that the book opens, he is a student at the University of New Hampshire.

Mike Pesca (12:46)

He's curious. He has others, especially in New Hampshire. This seems to be very hot in New Hampshire. To ghost hunt, to paranormal hunt. Why is that, do you think?

Matthew Hongols Hetling (12:56)

Yeah, well, New Hampshire is sort of like in this odd place where one. It's in New England, which is, you know, sort of like the oldest part of the country.

Mike Pesca (13:05)

Its houses easily haunted. Most. Yeah. Biggest. Biggest availability, just in terms of a ghost demographic.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (13:11)

Correct, correct. They love those dusty addicts. And that's, of course, addict attics.

Mike Pesca (13:21)

They're addict addicts.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (13:23)

But. But also because New Hampshire has this just really sort of unique place in ghost hunting and paranormal history. You know, historically it's been home to sort of like the two most influential teams of ghost hunters in history, the first being Ed and Lorraine Warren, who gave Rise to all sorts of conventions in our popular understanding of ghosts today. The evil talking doll, that's a warrenism. The idea of sort of blood running down the walls, that's a warrenism. And Ed and Lorraine Warren, they were, you know, sort of fancy themselves as demonologists, where they saw themselves going out and fighting these sort of like evil entities on behalf of God and doing something, you know, adjacent to exorcisms. Their time came and went. And their time came because they cast things in a religious bend at a time when America was a more religious nation. Their time went because a, religion was on the decline in the 80s and 90s, and B, because cell phones were becoming more ubiquitous. Right. And as soon as cell phones came out, their sort of wilder tales, like, for example, of a demonically possessed person turning into a gorilla, was just sort of not bearing out. So it was time for a new standard bearer.

Mike Pesca (14:47)

You need the cell phone documentation of that to really rebut.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (14:51)

That's right. That's right. And. And then, you know, sort of like. Just as their star was fading, New New England produced another pair of ghost hunters. This were the. The. The folks behind the Ghost hunters TV show that I think probably most of your listeners are familiar with, where these are the guys who sort of like, invented that television. It's become a whole genre now of people clunking around in. In haunted properties overnight in black and white, infrared cameras, and trying to sort of investigate what they saw as a paranormal phenomena.

Mike Pesca (15:31)

And by phenomenon, not just paranormal, but TV shows about the paranormal. In 2015, 10 years since Ghost Hunters started, there were 109 paranormal reality shows produced and aired. The travel channel abandoned topics like food, beaches, hotel, and culture, that is travel to an almost all paranormal slate of programs that resulted in a 15% bump in viewership. So the culture, the culture at large. Ghost hunters, though based in New Hampshire, it's a national show, the culture was trending towards an embrace the paranormal. You talk a little bit about technology and cell phones, but there's also something in the air. And as we embrace the paranormal, we distance ourselves from the quantifiable. And that is you have so many statistics about our trust in institutions really degrading and New Hampshire being the epicenter of this. How do you. Yeah, can you. Can you. Can you tell me some of the reasons that you say this or some of the stats that you cite?

Matthew Hongols Hetling (16:39)

Yeah, actually, when I started researching the book, I didn't even. I wasn't even looking for information about ghosts. You know, I started researching distrust and New Hampshire as you say, is a national leader in distrust. The number of New Hampshireites who believe that government is doing a good job or, you know, that they trust their government is equal to the number who think that government is in the control of some Satan worshiping pedophiles, right?

Mike Pesca (17:11)

14%.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (17:12)

Yeah, yeah, it's 14%, and that's nuts. And in fact, more people work for the government than trust the government. Right. That's another, like, sort of shocking statistic. And so. And New Hampshire is also of particular interest, I think, to all of us, Mike, because the whole country is trending towards New Hampshire. Where the country is now, New Hampshire was 10 years ago. And where New Hampshire is now, the country seems to be racing towards full steam ahead.

Mike Pesca (17:46)

Yeah.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (17:47)

And so I thought this is really sort of like the. Maybe not the canary in the coal mine, but the ghost of the canary in the coal mine. So let's take a look at this and really try to sort of like understand and get behind just the idea that, like, these are, These are conspiracy theories, these are ridiculous supernatural views. You know, what's going on here? Because if we don't understand it, how are we going to change it?

Mike Pesca (18:08)

So you find Andy Kitt, and did you have a lot of paranormal enthusiasts to choose from, and he was the most colorful.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (18:15)

Yeah, I basically, I cast a pretty wide net. I talked to a witch who was an elected legislator in the state, which.

Mike Pesca (18:23)

Might seem impressive, but New Hampshire has more elected legislators than anywhere else.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (18:28)

That's right.

Mike Pesca (18:29)

Which, by the way, New Hampshire hates government, but they have a lot of it. And one of the arguments about government is that we are so distant from our representatives. But in New Hampshire, a legislator represents like two or three thousand people. And I could also throw in there that, you know, we have a primary there first because we, I don't know, respect how into the political process Granite State stators are. Chris Sununu is seen as, you know, he gets good marks for being a moderate. So it does seem weird that New Hampshire in some ways exemplifies some of the correctives about what's bad about our political process. And yet the trust is the lowest.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (19:09)

Yeah, it's an absolute conundrum, isn't it, Mike, that this. Yeah, this is sort of like the place where people say, oh, yeah, you know, my state legislature, he's. He's in my poker club, he's at my grocery store. Like they have a personal relationship. Many, many people do with their. Their state representative. And yet they still sort of reject the system, the collective, as corrupt.

Mike Pesca (19:33)

Yeah.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (19:34)

Trusting your family doctor, but not the system.

Mike Pesca (19:36)

Yeah. So, you know, so. So you thought about the witch, you thought about who else?

Matthew Hongols Hetling (19:42)

Yeah, like a woman who ran a haunted crepe restaurant. You know, all these, all these different places. But what was appealing to Andy was that Andy had assembled sort of like a team. He had assembled sort of like the Avengers of the. The supernatural landscape.

Mike Pesca (19:59)

So he gathered if they were all the Scarlet Witch.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (20:02)

Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. He had sort of brought together a psychic medium, an empath, a paralegal who also heard voices in her head and so.

Mike Pesca (20:18)

A paranormal paralegal.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (20:19)

A paranormal paralegal, exactly.

Mike Pesca (20:22)

Okay, great.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (20:23)

And a Bigfoot enthusiast. Yeah, Bigfoot hunter, who also happened to be an alien abductee. So like this little group right here, I sort of like summed up all of the major strains of thought and sort of like competing schools within the paranormal community. And so, yeah, that combined with this sort of noble mission that they had to inject science into these fields really appealed to me because I thought these guys are really going to be able to tell me a lot about what is going on out there.

Mike Pesca (20:55)

And the alien abductee, it wasn't just a one time thing with him, right?

Matthew Hongols Hetling (20:59)

Correct. This is Mike Stevens. He, he love this guy. He was a, A very, yeah, he's a character and he was abducted at the age of 3 or 4 years old. Had some, some gaps in time that were later filled in through regressive hypnosis. And he is sort of like, you know, like a classic rural New Hampshire, strong kind of a guy. You know, he's got the deep voice, the, the heavy New Hampshire accent, he's got the tattoos and he's got. You just sort of like, you know, breathes blue collar. So it's sort of a knockabout.

Mike Pesca (21:42)

Yeah.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (21:42)

And he was abducted yo. Many, many times throughout his life. But he was also sort of struggling with life. You know, he struggled with alcohol consumption. He had some health issues. And so, you know, some people would look at that and say the alcoholism, I don't want to call him an alcoholic, but his issues with alcohol may have sort of like given him the false impression that he was an alien abductee. But what he and people in the community would tell you is that the trauma of abduction, what, whatever sort of like form that trauma took is so great as to cause mental health problems in the afflicted. You know, it's a little bit of a chicken and egg situation.

Mike Pesca (22:31)

So do you think is your assessment that. Well, let's go back 20, 30 years. And as you chronicle, there have always been, especially in New Hampshire, a lot of paranormal enthusiasts. But there was a time when they, and this is also true of, you know, separatists, they were seen as kooky, but if not harmless, then certainly not potent. Right. And then it could be a technology issue that all these disparate, harmless, individual nodes were able to get together and become more potent. So that's one explanation, but another is that the institutions just weren't delivering as they once had. They weren't working for society. You talk a lot about colleges and a lot in the book about the University of New Hampshire and certain colleges that shut down just the percentage of people within a decade who said they wanted to send their children to college, going from in the 90s to in the 40s. So I'm thinking about the explanations that you get into in the book. Why did this once mostly harmless, but certainly fringe phenomenon that has parallels all throughout our cultural life. Why did it become so much more popular? Why did it become. Why did it begin to threaten institutions? Or do you think that institutions showed themselves to be not up to the task and then into that more rushed explanations like the paranormal?

Matthew Hongols Hetling (24:00)

Yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely an argument to be made that this is sort of like the reasonable response to flawed institutions. Right. Robert Putnam, who wrote the book Bowling Alone, great book on public loneliness he wrote, or he said rather, do we have a trust issue or do we have a trustworthiness issue? Are institutions earning our trust? And there's a lot of sociological research that shows that when people are in situations where they don't feel stable, they don't feel like they're in control, they don't feel like they have an opportunity to better their own lives, that they will turn. They are much more likely to turn to the supernatural. There's a great example from the early 1900s of a sociologist who went to a remote island and observed sort of like indigenous peoples fishing rituals. And the folks who fished in the coral reefs just sort of like stuck a stick with a poisoned root on the end of it into a hole in the reef. And the fish would flee out of the reef and then they would catch them in a net sure fire thing. You got it whenever you wanted it. And there was no superstitious ritual associated with that practice. But when those same fishermen wanted to go out and get a shark, which was like a very fraught and dangerous and unsure experience, then they had this whole raft of superstitious rituals that they had to follow to try to get that shark. So they would abstain from loud talking in the village for like a month and no singing. And the women had to stay indoors. Just all of these very like sort of restrictive taboos. And then when they would go out in their fishing boats, they would try to bash these sharks in the head with driftwood, essentially, which is nuts.

Mike Pesca (26:08)

Right.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (26:09)

So, yeah, I think in our lives today, you know. Yes, yes. You know, it's the same principle, same dynamic.

Mike Pesca (26:16)

Yeah. I mean, from my own perspective, I don't think our institutions have gotten worse. And remember, our institutions are just the collective of the human beings who make up the institutions. I think that there are definitely been some examples where they've been found wanting. And the, the, the pandemic, I would say, in many ways showed our institutions to be kind of miraculous. In other ways showed especially, you know, the public health officials to be poor communicators, let's say. So I think what's really going on is our institutions are generally getting marginally better, but our analysis of the institutions and our conception of the institutions have fallen off a cliff. I think this is mostly aided and embedded by technology, both the profusion of it and also algorithms select for, you know, disturbing stuff. So you add all that. I could see why there is a crisis upon us. That would be my assessment.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (27:19)

Yeah, I don't disagree with that whatsoever. Yeah, like, like the Internet, you know, so there's sort of like the reality of it, reality of flawed institutions. Right. And we all agree that there are things that they can and should be doing better to address. Things like, you know, income inequality and, and all these other things, accessibility of health care, et cetera, et cetera. But they're sort of like, yeah, it seems like this growing gap between the reality of an institution and our perception of those institutions. Right. And that is, I think what you're talking to and I think what you've said is correct. It's, it's. We're getting wrapped in digital bubbles. It's that in this hyper partisan time, there's sort of like a vested interest in portraying the other side in ways that are very exaggerated and, you know, far beyond their actual issues.

Mike Pesca (28:12)

So people are going to flock to more accessible stories, stories that work better for them. When the stories of the institution, and here is the IMF and it will improve your life, or here is the wpa and we could certainly say that improved your life. Once the institutions stop having that very clear delivery on the promise that you're of course going to get all manner of belief in the paranormal, but also the extreme, but, you know, also just the. That which rebuts the institutions.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (28:44)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And this actually sort of like ties back into what you were saying earlier. Like in New Hampshire, there's arguably sort of like more closeness to the public. There is more transparency and opportunity for access to their public institutions. And yet they're, they're among the least trustful in the nation. Right. And so why is that happening? What is that, what is that sort of like veil that's inserting itself in between the, the people and, and the institutions that serve them?

Mike Pesca (29:18)

Yeah, yeah. Also. Well, I don't know how much this factors in, but we are told that trust and low trust societies versus high trust society. One way to have a high trust society tends to be the homogeneity of the populace. When you recognize your fellow citizen as being in your same tribe, that leads to more trust. And, but New Hampshire is racially homogeneous. It doesn't have as much. Every state is affected by immigration, but doesn't have as much immigration, I don't think, as a lot of other states that are supposed to be deep destabilizing. There's a lot of confounding factors going on in New Hampshire, I think.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (30:04)

Yeah. New Hampshire is, it is sort of like a place that celebrates individualism. Right. And there's a whole school of thought out there that individualism is sort of like quickly becoming the new religion. Right. That, that it's just taking everything over. And so I think in New Hampshire maybe we're seeing a little bit of that. You know, rates of church attendance in New Hampshire are very, very low. And though I have not been kind to the church in, in many ways, I will say that they are a binder of society, that they, they are sort of like a collective school of thought that people can sort of like connect through and sort of like be a part of a more homogenous community. And New Hampshire doesn't have that. New Hampshire instead has sort of like a lot of celebrate. It's got a lot of libertarians, as I've spoken about in the past.

Mike Pesca (31:01)

Right. This topic of your book, A libertarian walks into a bear.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (31:05)

Right, right, right. And, and, and those guys are all about, you know, sort of like celebrating the individual at the expense of the collective. So I think that's really deeply sort of like bred into New Hampshire's past and history and culture in a way that it wouldn't be for neighboring states, like. Yeah, Vermont or Massachusetts.

Mike Pesca (31:28)

Matthew Hongols Hetling is the author before this of a libertarian walks into a bear and if it sounds like a quack, the new book is the Ghost Lab. How Bigfoot Hunters, Mediums, and Alien Enthusiasts Are Wrecking Science. And I would add, and how Matthew is explaining it. Thank you so much, Matt.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (31:49)

Mike, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for doing the good work that you do. We need your voice out there and I'm so happy that we get to tune in and hear your take on things.

Mike Pesca (32:12)

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Matthew Hongols Hetling (34:32)

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Mike Pesca (34:36)

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Matthew Hongols Hetling (34:38)

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Mike Pesca (34:42)

And now the spiel. As the unrest, riots, protests, Michigan in Los Angeles continues, with President Donald Trump fanning the flames, California Governor Gavin Newsom is also blowing pretty hard. The governor seems to have concocted a fiction that Donald Trump has threatened to arrest him. And CNN and others in the media are playing along as if Trump actually said such a thing. So here's the evidence in Newsom's pin tweet as of this recording right here. You see these words? The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting governor. This is a day I hoped I would never see in America. I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican. This is a line we cannot cross as a nation. This is an unmistakable step towards authoritarianism. Wow. Very troubling, if true. Let us now hear Trump's words. Only you can't really hear Trump's words. Become an arrester.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (35:42)

Should he do it?

Mike Pesca (35:49)

I'll have to help you out. While getting into a helicopter, a member of the press corps shouts a question. I played it back at high speed, and all I could hear is, Tom Holman should come and arrest him. Should he do it? Come and arrest him. Arrest him. Arrest them. Gavin Newsom, I guess, is the him. Trump says something like, I would do it if I were Tom. I think it's great, but it's so very hard for me to hear what was actually said. I found another video where you could hear the question or better, because the camera in that video were closer to the questioner, but it was actually further from the president. There was a whirling helicopter blade, and it's just a bit unclear that Donald Trump knew what he was being asked and knew what he was saying. And the second half of the answer is something like, yeah, Gavin's a nice guy, but he's grossly incompetent. And then he goes on to criticize Gavin Newsom. Even by Trump's standards, it is a weird mismatch of sentiments. It's not his typical syntax. When he's putting someone in the crosshairs, he puts them in the crosshairs, as it were. He doesn't say, lock her up. Although Hillary is a Very nice lady and certainly kind to her grandchildren. He says, lock her up. This was at best a non denial of the premise because Trump never denies the premise and Trump never wants to look weak. I really do not know that this is what Donald Trump was saying. It definitely seems that this is what Gavin Newsom wants Donald Trump to have said. In fact, here's more proof that Gavin Newsom wants this to be Donald Trump's sentiment. It's in an earlier tweet that Gavin Newsom put out in his own timeline. And in it, Gavin Newsom writes, Donald Trump admits he will arrest the sitting governor simply because he ran for office. Well, this is good. I was looking for better proof than that. Shouted in front of a helicopter moment. All right, here's this admission. Trump has asked, what crime did Gavin Newsom commit? And here's his answer. Have you gotten.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (38:01)

Committed a crime? Has he committed? I think his primarily primary crime is running for governor because he's done such a bad job. What he's done to that state is like what Biden did to this country, and that's pretty bad. It's a wrong philosophy.

Mike Pesca (38:20)

There's nothing about an arrest. He served a stupid softball and gives a pretty unfair criticism of Newsom. But the idea of an arrest can only be heard if you're listening for it and also doing a lot of inferring and maybe reveling in a victimhood which gets attention for yourself. You also have to accept the premise of a question calling Newsom a criminal and then say to yourself, oh, this answer must and can only be interpreted as advocating for Gavin Newsom's arrest. He did not say, I would arrest the governor of California. And here was Caitlin Collins of CNN talking to the aforementioned Tom Holman.

Matthew Hongols Hetling (39:03)

California, specifically. The president told reporters earlier that if he were you, he would have the governor of California arrested. Can you just clarify where that stands and if that is something that you personally are advocating for? No.

Mike Pesca (39:18)

Like, I didn't know he doesn't think he should be arrested. And as I'm saying, there's no evidence that because Tom Holman said he should be arrested, even though Tom Holman just said he doesn't think he should be arrested, that Gavin Newsom should be arrested. It's all a weird game of telephone, but instead of dented tin cans, we're using bits of tweets. CNN kept at it. At 9 in the morning, they interviewed a local official asking him now that Donald Trump is intimating that he wants Gavin Newsom arrested. Intimating, yes, that is definitely what Donald Trump does. He's the intimator in chief with his subtle eyebrow raises, an almost imperceptible finger wags, the master of nuance, a maestro of these subtle shadings of inference, Donald Trump. Come on. Like I said at the top, the word is concoction. It is all a concoction of Gavin Newsom. He wants the relevance of a Trump arrest threat. He loves it. He revels in it. He doesn't want to turn down the temperature on this. This is his oxygen too. He's in the attention economy. And in this economy, all wins emanate from Trump. And here is HMS Newsom trying to raise his sails to catch a breeze. Elevating a non remark into an extremely threatening remark is exactly the kind of alarmism we accuse Donald Trump of. Newsom is desperate for relevance and attention. He isn't doing this on behalf of his constituents. He's trying to burnish his own credentials. He's using the battle to advance his standing in an upcoming presidential race. And he's leveraging the currency of attention. It is selfish and that given the stakes are pretty high, it is irresponsible. It is not worthy of arrest. But it is far from benign. And that's it for today's show. Cory War produces the Gist. Kathleen Sykes is the editor in chief and also chief investigative journalist of the Gist List. Ashley Khan is our production coordinator. Michelle Peska is our cbso. Astra Green runs our social. We got a lot of people here. Plus the intern. Leo Baum, Peru. G Peru. DO Peru. And thanks for listening. Foreign the Gist is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.