Skip to content
TrackPodcasts
historyMar 25, 202648:10failed

Tulpas

About this episode

This week, Tom and Laura are getting into tulpas — the ancient Tibetan practice of conjuring a living being purely through the power of concentrated thought. They explore how the concept traveled from Buddhist monasteries to 4chan forums (via a very unexpected My Little Pony detour), and discuss the modern "tulpamancer" community that's been trying to will fictional characters into existence ever since. They also dig into the Philip Experiment, a 1972 Toronto study in which a group of regular people invented a fictional 17th-century ghost and then tried to hold a séance with him — with some genuinely strange results. Plus, the Global Consciousness Project's claim that random number generators went haywire before the first plane hit on 9/11, Philip K. Dick's season pass to Disneyland and his very unexpected lunch companion, Alan Moore spotting John Constantine in a sandwich shop, and a comics writer who may have accidentally manifested an armed robbery straight out of a scene he'd just finished writing.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Get every episode summarized

Each time Wanna Hear Something Weird? publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.

Email me new episodes

Free for 3 shows. No card needed.

Hosts & guests

No transcript yet

This episode has not been transcribed. Request it and it moves to the front of the queue.

Tulpas

Wanna Hear Something Weird?

0:00
48:10

More episodes

More from Wanna Hear Something Weird?

View all episodes →