SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: What was the Philadelphia Experiment?

0:00This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. A big part of parenting today is figuring out which technology will help your kid and which might hurt them, especially when it comes to learning. Brilliant is the online math tutor that's visual and interactive. Unlike other tools, it never hands your kid the answer. It helps them think for themselves with personalized support when they need it. It's helped millions of students excel in math from fractions to calculus. Sign up today at brilliant.org slash tutor and get 20% off for back to school. That's brilliant.org slash tutor. Hey everybody, you already like YouTube so how can YouTube get any better? Well, we're talking premium because premium is the supercharge way to experience YouTube. Add free which means uninterrupted videos of course, background play which lets you keep listening with your screen locked or offline downloads. You can download your videos to watch anywhere even without Wi-Fi connection. I mean, as researchers ourselves like I'm researching all day long for the show and I really love not having ads on YouTube premium because it really speeds up the learning process.

1:03Whether you're relaxing at home or on the go, it's built for you because your YouTube experience just got even better with premium. So if you like YouTube, you'll love premium. Sign up now for your free trial, terms and conditions apply. Empower is all about helping you invest well so you can go out and live a little. And their free empower personal dashboard shows you your full financial life in one place. You'll be able to see your net worth, monitor budgets, analyze your portfolio, set retirement goals and more. Whether you're saving for something big, want to treat yourself, friends or family or meet long term goals, empower helps you see where you stand. You've worked hard for your money and empower can help you make the most of it. Download the empower personal dashboard or visit empower.com. Not an empower client paid or sponsored. Hi there friends, it's Josh finally I'm here and I'm presenting first our episode on the Philadelphia experiment. It's a bizarre conspiracy theory that in 1943 the USS Eldridge, which is a real destroyer from the real US Navy,

2:07suddenly disappeared from port and instantaneously reappeared miles away. And that when it did reappear, things weren't quite right with it. I'll leave it to past me and Chuck to give the details in this fascinating episode. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuffworks.com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Brigham. This is a special edition of Stuff You Should Know because Jerry is trans-mortified into guest producer Noel, which is requires quite a bit of alchemy. It does. And a little bit of alcohol. And some like a magnificent brown bearded cheese. It is. Cheap at. Nice. There's a wood chuck waving from that. Looking good Noel. Yeah Jerry's gone on a top secret mission.

3:09Can't talk about it so it makes a top secret. You're talking about it right now. But she's coming back at some point don't worry. Yep. She's not left this forever. No this is a stint by guest producer Noel. We'll have to make a sweet out of it. Yeah. Uh Noel produced shows you should know. Summer of Sam. Deathsweet. Nolstent. Nolstent. That sounds gross. How you doing man? I'm great. I'm so used to reading ads these days that like I just panicked. Like I lost my place. And then I was like oh yeah it's the actual podcast. I used ramble and stall. As long as I need to. Yeah. You remember this from your being a kid? Was this in your wheelhouse? I feel like the experiment. The movie was. Watch the last night. Sure. Oh did you really? Yes. Wow. It is basically, I mean the plot makes sense. But it's like a 15 minute plot. Yeah. They manage a lot of chasing in. Yeah they really draw it out. They're really gusty. Yeah they drew it out.

4:09But the idea behind it especially when let's see 1984 I was eight. Yeah. And I was, this is about the time where I'm like I'm going to Duke University. A study parapsychology when I get older. When you were eight? Yeah. I didn't know what college was when I was eight. Definitely that was in my wheelhouse. Really? Yeah. So this was like right up my alley. Yeah. Now that I watch it as a child I'm like man I was an idiot when I was eight. Yeah. But it was pretty cool. The special effects are like 80s rific. Oh yes. They do not hold up. No. But I mean if you're a fan of Tron. You're going to. Or video drone. Yeah. You're going to love this movie. Starring the great Michael Paray. Yes. And Robo Cop's partner. Yeah Nancy Allen. Which she, what else is she in famously? She was in a bunch of 80s movies. Yeah. What was her big one though? Or was she always like co-starring the female lead? I think. Yeah. I don't think she was ever like the lead in a movie.

5:09They didn't make movies with female leads in the 80s. I can't remember in this context are we allowed to say female or should it be the girl lead? It's a female lead. They didn't make leads with women as the lead in the 80s. They're all just there to prop up the dudes. Right. Which is still what is. Although a low working girl that was in the 80s. Good point. Nine to five. Three ladies. I had to take it back. Okay. Few and far between. What I'm trying to lobby for gender equality in Hollywood. Yeah. And well you should. And you're like no look at nine to five. I'm just saying it's I mean there were some. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I agree with you. I don't mean to argue. You're right. It's few. There were few and far between. That's what you call a trap. What about Barbara Ella? Yeah. That was 70s or was it 60s? I think the 60s. Yeah. Yeah. Jane Fund. Well, just like the makers of the Philadelphia experiment, you and I know how to draw out a 15-minute plot. Hey, also I wanted to point out Michael Paray disappeared in Eddie and the Cruisers.

6:12Oh, was that was he in that? He was Eddie. Was that based on Bruce Springsteen or something like that? No. Was it based on any real life band? No. I mean it echoed. He was Springsteen-esque. Right. But it wasn't like, you know, I think they were just I think the writers like who do I like? Yeah, I like Springsteen. Yeah. So let's get John Caffrey to sing like Springsteen and put Michael Paray to lip sync. Wow. That's a. That's a. That's a. He's a. And I saw John Caffrey in concert in the 80s. That's how. What else is he in? No, he was the band. He was the real band. John Caffrey in the Beaver Brown band. Okay. They sang those songs for real and I saw them in concert at six flags. Wow. How about that? And they've now become the Zach Brown band. That's right. Right. Who looks like no. Full circle. Full circle. We just did it. Can we be done now? Yeah. So the Philadelphia experiment, I guess was right up Michael Paray's alley because echoed

7:15real life too. In a way. In a way. Sure. The makers went back and read a couple of books that purported to be nonfiction accounts of this incredible experiment carried out by the Navy. So incredible. And we should probably let's describe the experiment to begin with, right? Experiments, we should say. Yeah, that's true. This article gets it wrong on how stuff works. Yeah, there were two separate things, both involving a destroyer ship called the USS Eldridge recently commissioned. Summer of 1943 is when it began. July, I think. And what supposedly happened was that there was this ship and there was a big secret Navy experiment that whose what's aim was to make this ship disappear. Yeah, not just to like radar something like that, but if there was a guy with a periscope, he would look right past the ship because it had been made invisible. Essentially invisible.

8:17And then the story goes that that was successful. It was a successful experiment that was carried out. Yeah, it disappeared in full view and broad daylight. And then from the was it the Philadelphia shipyard? Yep. And then reappeared. It was a big glow. And then it reappeared and all the sailors aboard were in bad shape. So did that take place in July or was that? That's a place in July. Okay, well, okay, then it happened again in October within the second experience. Yeah, then they retried the experiment supposedly. The ship disappeared and popped up in Virginia. Norfolk, Virginia. And then then reappeared 10 minutes prior. So at time travel back 10 minutes to Philadelphia again. Which is the sailors were in bad shape. Even by teleportation standards, that's impossible. You know what I mean? Yeah, and supposedly these the shipmen were semen were some were caught like in the

9:17middle of the ship. Right, like crazed and crazy. Right. So basically the implication is that they had been some sort of in some fashion molecularly disintegrated. Yeah. And then when it was brought back together, the coordinates were maybe off slightly. Right. Maybe the ship and the people were where they were 10 minutes earlier. Right. And things just went a little haywire. Like up or half on the lead Odech and my lower half on the over the other decks on the level. And the only deck I know the party deck, the tango deck. Sure. The tango deck. Yeah. And the and I'm still alive. And I've also gone mad because my brain didn't configure back correctly either. Yes. And this was all possible thanks to Albert Einstein working with the Navy. Yep. And teaching them all his little tricks on how you can make ships disappear in time travel. Specifically, the theory is that or the rumor, the conjecture, the conspiracy theory is

10:22that Albert Einstein figured out the unified field theory, which is not true. We did not. Basically the theory of everything. No, it frustrated him for his whole life. There's this idea in physics that there's possibly one explanation for the behavior of everything in the universe. Right now, we've got a pretty good theory. I think the theory of special relativity ties in three of the fundamental forces in the universe, but gravity is this outlier that can't be tied in through physics formulas. And they think that there's some way of understanding things to where everything ties together. And as I think Michio Kaku famously put it, he said that what they're searching for with the unified field theory is with a formula in inch long, you'll be able to read God's mind. And so the idea is that Einstein came up with this unified field theory, again, not true.

11:25And that it was used to understand how to teleport things. So they used this understanding to carry out an experiment with a bunch of Navy semen on a destroyer in broad daylight. Because you can imagine the advantage to be able to make your ship invisible. Not only that, if you could figure out how to teleport it, like you're done, dude, no more war because you would win them all. And the rest of the world would just cover it your invisible feet. Yeah, you just suddenly pop up behind your enemy, put them in a full Nelson and be like, you give, you give, you be like, I give. And that's it. You just let them go and be like, this is right. And you teleport out of there. You see how easily that could happen? Nazi? Unified field theory. All right. So the Philadelphia experiment never happened like that at least. What? We'll go ahead and not give any credence to the conspiracy theorist out there, although we'll probably get a couple of people that emailed in. Oh, man, this is, this is like a nucleus of conspiracy theory. It ties in UFOs.

12:26Sure. Ties in theoretical physics. Yep. US government, of course. Yep. It's ginormous cover up. It ties in all these different things. And it's really, really interesting. If you go read this stuff, it's, to me, it's more interesting than just, just UFO conspiracy theory. You're just government cover up conspiracy theory. Yeah. It's like a clearinghouse of conspiracy theories all tied up into one package on the secret experiment. That, if you listen to the Navy's official line, never took place. There never was a Philadelphia experiment. Right. There never was. It was also known as Project Rainbow. There was never a Project Rainbow. It just didn't happen. The whole thing was made up out of whole cloth, apparently, by a guy named Carlos M.I.N. Day. Yeah. And there were a couple of hinky details. We'll go over why this thing is survived a little bit later. But there are a few hinky details. Not to make it believable, but that just have fueled the fire over the years. Yeah. Let's take a break right here, Chuck, as I'm getting a little overexcited.

13:29Okay. Just put this under your tongue. You'll be fine. I'm hosting a barbecue tomorrow, and nothing's party ready. The grill's in the box. The patio's a mess, and I haven't even bought snacks. That's when I post on AirTasker. Local Taskers handle the errands, set up, cooking, and more. Go to airtasker.com or download the app. AirTasker. Get anything done. We know eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us. It brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next, unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated. That's right. From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction. Signals moving between the gut, the brain, and the immune system, the constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. So we want to introduce to you, eating interrupted, a new podcast from I Heart Ruby Studio.

14:30It's hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient, Cynthia McFadden. Eating interrupted explores everything from food, allergies, and intolerance and why they seem to be on the rise to how digestion changes as we age and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition. Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to eating interrupted on the I Heart app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, if you've ever wanted to feel what it's like inside an episode of a show you love, hang with podcast hosts beyond the mic or swap screens for sunsets with curious like-minded people, then stuff at sea is your kind of voyage. That's right. Stuff at sea is a five-night culture-soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds. Starting round trip on October 2nd to 7th, 2026 from New York City to Bermuda, this voyage drops you straight into the I Heart podcast stuff universe.

15:34On top of the adults only experience you already love, you'll get live podcast episode recordings behind the scenes sessions, themed activations, and more unmissible onboard moments. Yeah, and there's overnight stays in Bermuda, so there's no rush. Just long, sun-drenched days to explore or do absolutely nothing at all. And back on board, Curiosity sparks connection through conversations, experiences, and a lineup designed to keep things as thought-provoking as they are unforgettable. Stuff at sea is part of the new specialty sailing collection that transforms beloved podcasts into immersive at sea experiences exclusively with Virgin Voyages. Expect more stories, more hosts, and more ways to experience the voices that you love. Book now at virginvoices.com slash stuff. No, some fish have no, some fish have no. All right, wake up, buddy. What? We're back. Okay.

16:35How much time has passed in your mind? Millions of years. It's only been about three hours. Okay. Do you feel rested? I do feel very refreshed. Good. Well, we can continue. So UT is the man named, well, he had some different names. Carl M. Allen or under his pseudonym, Carlos Miguel Alende. Yeah. He's like, hey, let me throw a DE on the end. I'll sound mysterious. Yeah, and OS and a DE. So in 1956, I was going to get in the way back machine, but I don't think we should even bother for this. No, this actually proves there is no way back machine. That's right. So in 1956, in real time, Alende sent a letter and he would go on to send about 50 more letters to an author named Morris Jessup, who wrote a book a year earlier called The Case for the UFO. Yes, which you can find on the podcast page for this episode.

17:36Yeah, and he was an author. He's like a legit dude that wrote a bunch of books. I mean, well, I mean. He's legit. I don't mean legit is in like he proved any science behind UFOs. Right, right. But he was a, he authored books for real. Yeah, he wasn't printing man, he wasn't just publishing manifestos online. And he was a conspiratorially minded investigator. Yeah. But if you read like his writing, it was just nothing but conjecture. Sure. Nothing. There was nothing in it but conjecture, but then it is fact. Yeah. And he was like, these are, there are three basic proven facts about this. And then here's some more facts. And it's like, no, these are facts at all. But it's really fascinating stuff. Maybe he doesn't know what facts are. Maybe so. So he got these letters and in these letters, at first there were some attacks on him and from Alan saying, you don't know what you're talking about, man. You're getting this unified field theory all wrong.

18:36And I know because Einstein spent several weeks with me teaching me this stuff himself. Yeah. And not only that. So it's like Kukupot writes Krakpot. Right. And he was saying like, I can prove that unified field theory has been mastered by describing this experiment that took place in Philadelphia in 1943 concerning one US destroyer called the USS Eldridge. Yes. And he said, I know this because I was there, buddy. I was on a ship in that harbor and there were other ships in the harbor. That seems to be the only part that's true. Yeah. I mean, this is a place where ships were being outfitted throughout the summer and fall. Yeah. It was the war. That's right. So he claimed that he was on one of these ships. He said, I witnessed this in person. I saw this green glow. I saw this thing disappear. Not only that, he can see. He could see the field that was created by this experiment. Yeah, the green glow. And he stuck his arm into it.

19:37He was that close. Stuff of movies, right? Stuff of 1980s B movies. Yeah. So he sends these letters and he sends like 50 of them. Yeah. And Jessup said, you know what? Let me investigate this a little bit because I'm a Krakpot too. I get where you're coming from. Yeah. I'm going to check into this little... This is right on my alley. Yeah. Thank you for these. Let me look into this a little bit and he basically gave up because the dude could produce, he asked him for some evidence. Or names. Anything. He had nothing. He didn't. He just said, here's the story and it's fact. And he goes, Carlos Ayan de, who by then I think had dropped the pseudonym, right, to Carl Allen. Who knows? He might have called himself Big Bird at that point. So he was, and he was a very disturbed man. Yeah. I'm joking, but yeah, he had mental problems. He did. But if you research him and you research even skeptics of the Philadelphia experiment, like the stuff he was coming up with was really interesting stuff.

20:39Yeah. He was a good writer. But he was a huge confabulator as well. Sure. So he's saying all this is fact and he's saying, I don't know what the dates were. I don't know the people's names or anything like that. But perhaps if I were put under Narco hypnosis, I would remember all this stuff. So you got any drugs? And about this time, Jessup said, I'm done with this, right? He had actually moved on because apparently the government had directly addressed UFO rumors. And no, Jessup didn't do that. I'm sorry, another guy did. Who was interested in researching Ayan de. But I'm sure Jessup was like, I got to get back to my serious work as to getting UFOs. He did. But then something truly bizarre happened. And this did happen. He got a knock on his door and two researchers from the office of Naval Research who would have been carrying out experiments like this, said, Erie. Sure. Hey, have you ever heard of a guy named Carlos Ayan de?

21:42And you probably could have picked MK Jessup off the floor. I would imagine so. Because I mean, yeah, he was like, it's a little true. Yeah, exactly. And he said, come in, come in, please have some tea, have some opiates. It was 1957 at this point. And they said, you know what? We got a package a year ago. And it had a copy of your book, my friend, the UFOs. And it was, it was for UFOs. Yeah, it was annotated very heavily by three people. Well, by three sets of ink and three types of handwriting, which were all clearly from Carl Allen. Well, they were to MK Jessup who corresponded with Carl Allen for, well, over 50 letters, right? Yeah, he said, I'm not fooled. This is Guy Gemmy, J-E-M-I. Who may have been an alien. It's Carl Allen and Mr. A and Mr. B or both Carl Allen. They're all Carl Allen. But regardless of whether they were all one dude, the annotations had fascinated these

22:45two Navy researchers enough that they, supposedly as far as the office of Naval Research Officially says, they took it upon themselves and paid out of their own pockets. And I guess took vacation time to go find MK Jessup. Yeah, I haven't found, I saw a bunch of conflicting reports on that, whether or not. And this is what conspiracy theorists will point to that either it was official business or they did it on their own. Either way, they say that that means something. And I've heard it explained away as it was just something on their list that they eventually had to get to. That seems like a terrible explanation. I think this adds like a real wrinkle to the story. Whether purposefully or it's just something that can't be very easily explained away. Maybe it is, it was just these guys were really interested in this. Maybe they were into UFO stuff or whatever. Maybe. It doesn't matter. The fact that those two guys showed up gives this thing legs for miles. Sure. You know? Yeah.

23:45And it's just awesome that that happened because that has kept this thing alive in part. Yeah. And the box came to them marked Happy Easter, which I was all kind of funny. And it had weird punctuation and capitalizations, all the marks of a madman. Right. But again, like the stuff he was saying was, it was curiosity arousing in these guys. And they actually took, and again, supposedly paid for their own pocket, the annotated version of the case for UFOs and published it with annotations. They had a contractor, a military contractor called Verro Technologies, I think, and had them publish it. Which is weird, especially if they were doing it on their own pocket. There was only 127 copies I imagine it didn't cost that much. I saw 25 even, and they were like spiral bound. So it wasn't any fancy. I read a lot of this and it's, you know, it's like, it's really out there. Sure. Yeah. Sure.

24:46But I imagine if you were a UFO enthusiast, it might interest you. I mean, if you read Morris Jessup's stuff, it's out there too. Well, I imagine reading that with the annotation for this other dude. Yeah, I was going to say, get the impression that Carlos Aanday's stuff was even more out there. Yeah, you can get online. It's on the PDFs of it if you want to. Of the Verro? Yeah. But supposedly there's a lot of forged copies as well. Oh, really? In circulation. Yeah. And then I think it's a little bit more like a real, real, real. I would someone take the time to forge a copy of the Crackpot Manifesto. That's the question we should all be asking ourselves. So Jessup's story ends just a couple of years later. He was down on his luck and he got injured really badly in a car accident, had a bad breakup with his wife. And he killed himself. He put a hose from his car exhaust into his window. And this is one of the other reasons that conspiracy theory, anytime there's a suicide, and

25:48there's the government involved. It's pretty easy to say he didn't kill himself, the government killed him. Right. It's made all the more suspicious though, because supposedly it was the day that he was to meet a friend who he had told, I've made a breakthrough in the Philadelphia experiment case. And all of a sudden he turns up dead of a suicide. So I mean that and the O&R guy showing up at his door definitely has kept this thing alive. It has. Supposedly his friends came out and said no, he was deeply depressed and he had talked of suicide in the months before he committed suicide. But then I'm sure conspiracy theorists will say they paid them off, man. Right. Because people said you can let my family go now maybe. Exactly. And the eldrige had a pretty, well it didn't go on to like great things. It was sold degrees or transfer degrees, renamed the HS Leon, used in exercises and then

26:49sold for scrap metal in the 1990s. Yeah. So no big deal with the boat, right? No bigs. So we'll take another little break here and we'll come back and we'll talk about what really happened in the Philadelphia shipyard that day. I decided to do some cleaning this weekend. Step one, open the closet. Step two, immediately regret opening the closet. Behind the coats? Wedding gifts we still haven't sorted. Our wedding was three years ago. So I posted a task on air tasker. A tasker organized the closet, tackled the garage and even hand wrote the thank you notes. Watch your task, set your budget and choose the tasker who's right for you. Go to airtasker.com or download the app. Airtasker, get anything done. You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together and it's one of life's great pleasures.

27:50But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated. That's right, from the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction. Signals moving between the gut, the brain and the immune system, the constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. So we want to introduce to you, eating interrupted. A new podcast from I Heart Ruby Studio. It's hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient, Cynthia McFadden. Eating interrupted explores everything from food, allergies and intolerance and why they seem to be on the rise to how digestion changes as we age and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition. To personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to eating interrupted on the I Heart app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, if you've ever wanted to feel what it's like inside an episode of a show

28:53you love, hang with podcast hosts beyond the mic or swap screens for sunsets with curious like-minded people, then stuff it see is your kind of voyage. That's right, stuff it sees a five-night culture-soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds. Sailing round trip on October 2nd to 7th, 2026 from New York City to Bermuda, this voyage drops you straight into the I Heart podcast stuffed universe. On top of the adults only experience you already love, you'll get live podcast episode recordings behind the scenes sessions, themed activations, and more un-missable on-board moments. Yeah, and there's overnight stays in Bermuda, so there's no rush. Just long, sundrench days to explore or do absolutely nothing at all. And back on board, curiosity sparks connection through conversations, experiences, and a line-up designed to keep things as thought-provoking as they are unforgettable. Stuff it see as part of the new specialty sailing collection that transforms beloved podcasts into immersive at-sea experiences exclusively with Virgin Voyages. Expect more stories, more hosts, and more ways to experience the voices that you love.

29:58Book now at virginvoices.com slash stuff. Alright, what really happened Josh? Nothing. That's supposedly what really happened, apparently on that day in the naval shipyard, I guess either July or October, but July I think is the one that people typically, if they just think it was a one-day thing rather than two separate experiments, it's usually July that they point to, which they did in this article too. On that particular day, the USS Eldridge wasn't even in fill with Alphia. Yeah, this is the part I don't understand. It was in Brooklyn. So here's the thing. That revelation came out in 1999. We'll get to that in a minute. Prior to this, there is a researcher. He's an astrophysicist and newologist named Jacques Velle.

31:03And he was actually the inspiration for the euphologist Frenchman character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And he was also like a venture capitalist. That's a pretty sharp dude. He just had some unusual interests, right? Yes. But one of the things that he dedicated himself to was disproving the Philadelphia experiment, proving that it was a hoax. He was a skeptic, right? Yes. In some manner, he was a skeptic. Yeah. So he wrote a paper and in the paper, he invited people to reach out to him if they had further information about the Philadelphia experiment. And as a result, allegedly, he was contacted in 1994 by a guy named Edward Dugin or Dugin. Let's say Dugin. It's a little, a little more pleasant than Dugin. I bet his friend called him the Dugin. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. That's what I would have called him. So yeah, he responded. The paper was called Anatomy of a Hoax colon, the Philadelphia experiment 50 years later in the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

32:05And Dugin got in touch and said, you know what? I was in the Navy from 42 to 45. I was on that boat and I can explain what happened. Yeah. Which is pretty exciting. Well, he was on the angstrom, which was there at the same time. Oh, I thought he was on the actual boat. No, he was an electrician on the angstrom, but he said he was fully aware of all of the electrical components on the angstrom and on the eldrige. Yeah. Because they all party together. Sure. Exactly. So he was saying he basically had a pat and completely sensible and reasonable answer for every single part of the Philadelphia experiment. For example, part of the Philadelphia experiment legend is that a brawl broke out in a bar following the experiment. And two of the sailors on board the eldrige suddenly disappeared. They vanished. Yes. Well, Dugin, Dugin. And he says, I was one of those guys. I actually faked my age on my Alicimate paper.

33:08So I was under age and shouldn't have been in the bar. And the bartender took pity on me and another under age, dude, and shoot us out the back door and then pretended that she'd never seen us. So they disappeared. They disappeared, exactly. Out of the back door. Another one, he says, well, he explains the whole thing, basically, right? He says there was no experiment like that, but they were doing something that might have seemed freaky to the uninitiated. And that was degossing the ships. Yeah. The time Germany and I guess everyone else really in the navies around the world, they had magnetic mines, sea mines, which would find your boat and go, that's metal. Let me go stick on that thing and blow up. Yeah. And torpedoes that were magnetic seeking too. Yeah. And they thought, let's come up with a way to make our ship holes and our metal parts. Non-magnetic to these obstacles. Right, which is an established project, I guess, or an established, what's the word I'm

34:12looking for? Process. Sure. So it was close with projects. Yeah, it was a real thing. Yeah. It's called degossing. And it basically either changes or gets rid of the magnetism of something that was formerly magnetic, like the ship's hole. It does not make it invisible. No, it does. It's a radar or otherwise. It probably looks pretty weird, right? So they wrapped the ships in hundreds and hundreds of meters of cable and then ran a really high voltage electrical charge through it. And supposedly this would demagnetize the ships, which really came in handy because at the time, just outside of America's coastal waters was called the graveyard of the Atlantic because German new boats were running the show out there at this time. Yeah. And as we learned in our did Nazis invade Florida, they sometimes were parked right off the coast. Exactly. So they were taken out our destroyers and our cruisers and our battleships. So this was a big deal to be able to do that kind of thing.

35:13Although it, and it was classified stuff, it wasn't experimentation in anything that hadn't been proven before. It was like, yeah, we're just demagnetizing our battleships. Yeah, they could have had a big sign up said degossing at work. Like stand back. Yeah, it was no big super secret thing. But if you're in Nazi, don't read the sign. The other thing that Dogen addressed was the concept that the eldrige disappeared from the Philadelphia shipyard, reappeared in Norfolk and then reappeared back in Philadelphia. Well, that happened, but it just went there and then came back. But it didn't happen in like five minutes or 10 minutes or 30 seconds. No. But again, he points out like if you weren't really, if you were just casually paying attention, you might have seen the eldrige in Philadelphia that night and then noticed it was missing late at night and then noticed it was back in the morning.

36:14Yeah, which would seem impossible because that was supposedly a two day trip. Yeah, two days, including there and back. One trip was two days up the coast, but apparently the Navy had a canal that they used. I think the Delaware Chesapeake Canal, that only the military could use and they could make that round trip in six hours. Yeah. So in other words, it's easily explainable that it just simply, I keep wanting to say sailed, but it's not sailing. I think they still call it that. Do they? They set sail. Yeah, ship out. Yeah, it shipped out and took off, shipped back. Right. And it just became part of the lore. Yeah, and I mean, you can even tack on a few hours there. Apparently, Norfolk was where they outfitted it with their explosives. And apparently they could load a battleship in four hours. Yeah. So even taking that into account, it's still ten hours if it shipped out at 11 p.m., which is what Dujan says, right? Dujan? I think he went with Dujan.

37:15Yeah. He says that it shipped out at 11. It's still be backed by 9 a.m. Yeah. So again, if you're just casually paying attention, what seems pretty mysterious really took on legs over time, it's basically like a game of telephone, like any conspiracy theory. Sure. Maybe there's a kernel of truth that got exaggerated by some drunken sailors and then bam, it gets shrunk down to 10 seconds through a teleportation experiment. Well, in these sailors, the drunken sailors supposedly could have been overheard saying things like, you know, they're going to make a ship disappear, they're going to make it's invisible. And in fact, what they were saying is they're going to make it more or less invisible to these mines, got all twisted around. It wasn't literally invisible. Yeah. And so there were apparently tons of merchant semen around the area as well. Yes. So again, this would have been classified stuff if there had been loose lips, which sink ships. And somebody had said like, we're going to make it invisible.

38:18Like you said, they were to picked up on that. Maybe they were the ones who were just casually paying attention to the to the eldritch here there and it just seemed to disappear and reappear. And there's this guy named Robert Gorman. And he in a 1980 Fate magazine article wrote about tracking down Carlos Aanday. He was from the same hometown as him and turned out that he already knew the guy's father. He just didn't realize that he was Carlos Aanday's father or Carl Allen's father. You're Old Man Allen's son? Yeah, pretty much. And he managed to interview the family and get a pretty good picture of the guy. But one of the things that he found was Carl Allen's merchant semen papers. So it's entirely possible he was there around the time or if he wasn't there at the time, he may have known somebody who was there at the time. I could totally see him have been there and that's probably how he got the idea to cook it up.

39:18Right. I believe all that. Yeah. And again, all of this land squarely on the desk of Carl Allen because no one, no one talked about the Philadelphia experiment. Well, it was never, those words were never put together until he, his first letter to Morris Jessup, right? So it appears to have been totally fabricated by him. Yeah. And after the movie came out, people started coming out of the Woodenburg. This guy. Including a dude named Alfred Bialik. Have you been to his website? Oh, yeah. He's something else. He made a video called The Affiliate Healthy Experiment Part One Crossroads of History. And he claims that he was a physicist on board the eldrige and he was a part of the team. And not only that. He says he time traveled in 1943 all the way to 1983 during the experiment to tell his story. That sounds extremely close to the plot of the Philadelphia Experiment movie.

40:20Yeah. And sure. Except there was a little different in the movie. He travels from 1943 to 1984. Ooh. We shouldn't mock this guy. It's a fascinating website. Yeah. He gets himself squarely at the center of the Philadelphia experiment. And he also says that he was part of the Montauk project. Yeah, which they're sort of tied together somehow. Yeah. Well, we should do one on that at some point. Somehow debunking things. This guy wrote a book where he just basically made this stuff up out of whole cloth. Yeah. He says that the book, whether you take it as science fact or science fiction, you're in for a really great story. Even though it's basically loaded with soft facts, this is the author and the preface, right? But basically, it's this extension that like the Philadelphia experiment was wildly successful. And from that, we learned all sorts of things like getting in touch with extraterrestrials, being able to teleport everywhere, just doing all sorts of really interesting things. Basically, anything you can possibly think of that a conspiracy theorist would enjoy is

41:25crammed into this book and it's given a bit of gravitas by associating it with the Philadelphia experiment. You know? Yeah. In some quarters, man, some quarters, that definitely gives some gravitas. This green glow has been explained away by most people as maybe an electrical storm or a St. Elmo's fire. And it was just, you know, maybe just another part of this story that people took and ran with it or maybe it was nothing at all. Yes. It also could have been the Office of Naval Research put out a fact sheet on what they understand about the Philadelphia experiment. And they said it's possible another origin or the origin of that specifically was experiments with the USS Timmerman later on after the war in the 50s, where they tried to use a small generator that was higher power than the generator that was currently on board and it actually caused coronal discharge, a glow.

42:27And they said that no, it was injured, no one was in meshed into the ship. It was just a glow was created, which is what you'd expect from a very strong electrical field, right? Yeah. So they think possibly that combined with the degossing stuff they were doing during World War II came together and helped this legend take off. But what they say also though and what was supported by this reunion of USS Eldridge sailors in 1999 is that even the guy who debunked and discredited everything that Carlos Aanday said, Dugin, he was full of it too, apparently, because the USS Eldridge wasn't in Philadelphia then. It was in Brooklyn. Yeah, they got together in Atlantic City and I read an article on this meeting and they had a good laugh and said that one of them even has something about it on his license plate just so people like ask him about it. And if you have them said they would pull people's legs and say like, oh no, I disappeared

43:27and my hand was caught in the ship and then they would say no, none of that happened. But they said that it was in Brooklyn and the ship's log confirms that. So apparently it wasn't even in that shipyard that day at all. So that's the only part where I'm like, wait a minute. How could they completely invent that it was even in the shipyard? Why wouldn't they just use a ship that was there? Because the guy, it would give it a little more credence if there was at least a ship there. But that's what I'm saying. Like Carl Allen, he said all this. He was the one who just came up with it from the beginning. Yeah, but I don't know. It just seems a little weird that he didn't care at all about making it believable by picking a boat that was actually there. Well, that's what I'm saying. He may have been there at the time. He may have known that the eldritch was there and just fudge the date because he couldn't remember because this is like 12 years later, over 13 years after the fact. So just bad memory. So maybe he just got the date wrong and the thing really did happen and then the O and

44:30R would be like, oh, that experiment. Yeah, we teleported about it. You just got the date wrong. So we've mentioned quite a few things here that why this thing has lived on through the years. And here that Jacques Vallet theorizes that, you know, anytime you have like a movie made about it or any kind of imagery, whether it's a photo of the Loch Ness monster to a photo of the Montauk monster, people are going to have something physical to point to and say, look, they made this movie and that's when people started coming out of the woodwork was after the movie. So you know, yeah, I was there. I remember that now. Michael Parade just reminded me of this thing that happened. He also, my favorite thing on his website is that he met the person that he later realized was the actor Mark Hamill in Hawaii in 1956. But Mark Hamill would have been five at the time. Well, did he say he was a little nice little kid? I don't think he was a kid. He said he's a full grown adult.

45:30Interesting. What else? The fact that it's the federal government, of course, in the military, you know, people are going to run with that stuff. I mean, that's the military's fault. I remember, well, yeah, sure, they did secret experiments still do. Tons of them. Back in 1993, some stuff got declassified and it really opened people's eyes to the fact that the government and the military experimented on uninformed and unwitting subjects, not just in its ranks, but also in the general public. So yeah, it's totally the idea that the military would do this with a lot of work. But its own people on board? Yeah, that's believable. Probably the most believable part of the whole thing. Agreed. And also just, though, Albert Einstein in there throw in secret scientific theories that haven't been proven, and it's just ripe for the pick-in when it comes to conspiracies. Yeah. And the suicide, of course.

46:30Like we mentioned earlier, that definitely doesn't help. It did not help the case any. This is one that I had a hard time finding people that still believe this. Yeah, I think a lot of people like it aren't aware of it even, except for the movie. You know what else helped it get legs? There was a book in 1979, and it was called The Philadelphia Experiment, Colin, Project Invisibility. And it was reprinted in excerpts and papers around the country as fact or nonfiction. In 1979, it does not help. It doesn't help things, you know? I personally, with all conspiracy theories, I enjoy reading this stuff. I think it's fun and funny and interesting. I don't, there aren't any that I really believe in. But I do think it's funny when people get all up on their hackles and write in. That's when it takes it. That's when it takes it. And it's, you know, you don't know. It could be real. Well, that's the other thing, man.

47:32I'm glad you brought this up because they're like that just being like, no, this is not possible. That's stupid. Stop thinking stuff like that. It's like, no, this is, at the very least, people using their imaginations and exercising it in ways that I don't typically do. Sure. And so it is nice to come kind of visit it and check it out and read it, you know? Yeah, although I claim to have seen a ghost. So what do I know? Exactly. Although, I have to say, probably the best excuse against this, there are two things that just say just on its face, this isn't right. One, this happened 70 years ago. And if the military successfully transported a battleship, we would know about teleportation by now. Yeah, they'd be doing it all over the place. Exactly. The second thing was a quote from Robert Gorman, the guy who tracked down Carl Allen in that 1980 Fate magazine article. He wrote, if we were to believe Carl Allen, our naval hierarchy, abandoned sanity and historical president by conducting an experiment of enormous importance in broad daylight using a badly needed destroyer escort vessel.

48:33Yeah. I think that kind of sums it up nicely. Agreed. But go forth and read about the Philadelphia experiment because it is interesting stuff. Watch the movie. Why not? Is it on Netflix? No, it's on YouTube. I thought you watched it on YouTube. Yeah. I can't believe you made it through it. I did. I'm telling you, like, I mean, I was working too. I had two, like, windows open. Okay. There you go. It was fine. Yeah. It was fine. It's as believable as Tron. That's Josh's review. Let's see. If you want to know more about the Philadelphia experiment, you don't have anything else, right? No, sir. You can type those words in a search bar, how stuff works. And since Chuck said Tron, it's time for Listen or Mail. I'm going to call this email from an up and coming podcaster in Georgia. It's called Bulldog. Nice. Hey guys, my name is Bailey. I'm a junior mass media arts and theater student at Good ol' UGA.

49:37Go dogs. Wolf Wolf. My professional identity aside, I'm also a longtime listener and lover. If you guys have listened to my first episode on the bus home from seventh grade. This home. Wow. I'm pretty sure it was episode on brainwashing. So she's in college now. I mainly listen to y'all as I'm working on my on campus job bus driving. Did you ever take the buses in Athens, the student bus? I was so crippled with social anxiety that if I couldn't find a parking space, I would just skip class because I didn't want to get on the bus. Yeah, social anxiety. Really? Like, didn't want to get the know-any-one or you just... I just couldn't bear being around peers at that age. Really? Interesting. The buses were always old scary because it was like, here's a 40-foot-long bus. Full of students and it's driven by 19-year-old students. A student, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's scary for me for different reasons, but I can imagine it was scary for that reason too. Yeah, it took them a few times.

50:38I mainly walked. Um... Okay, where was I bus driving? So my passengers had the honor of listening to you as well. Oh, I guess she plays it out loud. That's nice. That is nice. That's the party bus right there. I guess so. The other day I was driving, I realized it's my destiny to produce and host a podcast on campus. We don't really have anything like that, so I'm excited about it. My idea is to have me and another host be constants on the show and every week bring in a different UGA professor or Athens professional or general awesome person to talk about the one thing in their field that fascinates them the most for about 30 minutes. It would include informal conversation between the three of us about a topic highly inspired by Yalls Whitty Banner. Nice. Anyway, because you guys are my muses, I would want to ask if you had any advice for a baby bulldog podcaster as an MMA major. I feel like I have the basic knowledge and resources for the technical side, but as far as what makes a good episode, I'm feeling pretty shaky.

51:39What is your environment like? How much do you prepare for the actual script? Do you have a specific formula for every episode I'm fascinated? And that is Bailey Johnson. You got any advice? I will give you the same advice I give anybody starting out in podcasting Bailey. Get good mics. It's worth the expenditure. Make it sound good. And they probably have them on campus, I'm imagining. Yeah, I mean, yeah, if you can finagle your way into a studio with good mics. Yeah, do it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Do whatever you need to do to get that done. And then release on a reliable schedule. That are those are the two keys to begin with. I mean, like as long as you're releasing on a reliable schedule, people will come to appreciate what you're doing. Yeah, and my advice as far as scripting goes is, you know, we've said this a billion times on different interviews, but we don't script stuff out and we don't go over stuff with each other. We just do our own research and try and have as natural a conversation as possible, which

52:40I think has helped our show out. That's not to say that you need to do that. But I think being relatable and conversational helps rather than feeling like you're being read a script. I don't know a lot of people that would be as into that. So my advice would be try to make a conversational, you know, maybe go over it with whoever your co-host is some at first. She's a theater major, right? Yeah, you should be pretty good at this stuff already. So yeah, I'm sure she's good at Ed Libby. She's probably finds comfort in the idea of a script. I don't think there's anything wrong with starting out trying that, but if it doesn't feel right or you're not getting good feedback about it, then try something else. Yeah, I guess I would say maybe try it like instead of a script, try like an outline that you share with each other. The poor man script. Yeah, so you've got a little road map ahead of you and we kind of just, we've been doing this for so long, we don't need that. We don't need it at all. But we have our own road map that we share via our brain waves.

53:42Yes, road map to the White House. It's just not written down. 2016. So those are our points of advice. We don't have a specific formula. We just try to talk about things that we find interesting. That's, I think that's a key tool, man. Yeah, be into what your own topic is because that'll show for sure. Yeah. Although we've also found that like just about everything is interesting if you dig hard enough. Everything has a story. Yeah. So if something's like really boring you, maybe abandon it, but you can also try digging harder. Agreed. So good luck, Bailey. Send us a link when that's up and we'll plug it for you. And since you're doing an interview show, your goal should be with each interview to make that person cry. You know what, Bailey, I'll even be on your show if you want. Whoa. Nice show. Yeah, I'll do that. If you get it up and running and you need somebody, I'd be happy to sit in. That is so nice. Why not? I'll do it if you want. I don't know if I'll put an Athens.

54:42Yeah. Not that I don't like to, but it might just be easier to do it on the phone. Okay. We'll see. Bailey, he's laid it out there for you. Get in touch. All right, Bailey, good luck. Class of 17. That's crazy. Yeah. Who started listening in seventh grade? Goodness me. If you want to get in touch with Chuck or I, Chuck or me, yeah, Chuck or me, yeah. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. We can send us an email to your stuff podcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuff you should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. The cleaning starts with one small task and suddenly it's the whole house. Luckily, there's airtasker.

55:44Post your task, set your budget, and choose a tasker to help, from carpet cleaning to finally tackling the junk door. Go to airtasker.com or download the app. Airtasker, get anything done. What if your soda actually did something for you? Introducing Skypop Protein Soda. Skypop Protein Soda has 10 grams of complete protein, zero sugar, and real delicious soda taste. Skypop Protein Soda. Reach for the sky. Get your Skypop Protein Soda now at Target. You know how sometimes the end of the day calls for a little something? Not a whole event, just something that actually tastes great. Girodelli Premium Dark Chocolate is a great choice. It's one of those chocolates that's all about incredible taste. Because the first thing you notice is the flavor. It's rich, smooth, and has that satisfying dark chocolate taste that makes every bite we're slowing down for. Made with high quality cocoa beans and premium ingredients, it's the kind of chocolate that simply tastes really good. Pick up a bar of Girodelli Premium Dark Chocolate today. This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.