Transcription
[Music]
In 1983, David Oates dropped his Walkman into the toilet. Now, if you're under 40 years old, a Walkman was a portable cassette player. If you're under 30, a cassette was how we listened to music in the Stone Age. Anyway, after being dropped, David's tape player would only play tapes in reverse.
At first, he thought this was entertaining. There are lots of songs that contain hidden messages that you could only hear if you played them backward. But those messages were placed there intentionally. Soon, David discovered messages hidden in human speech that were not intentional. Messages that were put there by the speaker's subconscious.
Now, it turns out we all do this. In fact, when we lie, our subconscious actually encodes the truth backward inside the lies that we tell. Now, this is really interesting because that means the truth about every conspiracy is right in front of your nose if you know how to find it.
Oh, when David Oates broke his cassette player, he didn't realize how far down this rabbit hole went. Reverse recordings have been around ever since recordings were invented. Thomas Edison liked playing music backward on the phonograph. Infamous occultist Aleister Crowley told his followers that they should learn to listen to recordings and watch films in reverse. In the 1950s, Raymond Bayless and Attila Von Soleil would play recordings in reverse to try to hear messages from the dead. This was actually the beginning of EVP, or Electronic Voice Phenomena. But occultists and ghost hunters were fringe cases.
Reverse recordings would hit the mainstream when the Beatles started experimenting with backward messages in their music. At the end of the song "Rain," the last few seconds of the track are backward. John Lennon said this was an accident, but he liked the way it sounded, so he kept it in. From then on, hold on, you're not gonna play it. Nope. Copyright. Right. So if any of this episode has audio muted, that's because someone put in a copyright claim. Now, if that happens, I'll put this episode on Patreon, but you won't have to join to hear it. It would be nice if you became a member, but you won't have to. Anyway, from then on, if you bought a Beatles album, you had to play it in reverse to see if there were any hidden messages.
Now, this caused quite a stir. In 1966, after Paul McCartney was in a bad car accident. Whoa, how the hell did he survive this? Well, that's the thing. According to the urban legend, he didn't. Wait, what? Well, there's a lot to the "Paul is dead" urban legend. I'll just hit the bullet points, but if you want a full episode on this one, email me or let me know in the comments. But the gist is this: In 1966, The Beatles were the biggest rock band in the world. But in the early morning hours of November 9th, Paul McCartney was killed in a terrible car crash. No Paul, no Beatles. Oh no. White pool? Why not Ringo? Now, come on, that's not nice. But that Ringo, we would have never had the classic film "Caveman, dude." Kaka. I stand corrected. Anyway, to keep The Beatles going, Paul was replaced by a man named Billy Campbell, winner of a Paul McCartney look-alike contest, a contest held for this very purpose. Billy was taught to speak with a Liverpool accent and had to play a few chords on the guitar.
Now, John really didn't like the idea of replacing Paul, but he went along with it. But he did start dropping hints of Paul's death, and people began to notice the hints. On the album cover of "Sgt. Pepper's," the flowers above the left-handed bass guitar spell "lies." And if you hold a mirror up to the drum, you get "11" or "11/9," and he died. Paul died on November 9th. Now, there's an open hand above Paul's head, which has been said to be either a symbol of death or the representation of a priest, a blessing. Paul, at the time of his death. On the "Yellow Submarine" album cover, there's a hand over Paul's head. Again, if we open up the album for "Magical Mystery Tour," here's a hand above Paul's head. And again, again, and again. On the "Abbey Road" album cover, Paul is the only Beatle walking out of step, symbolizing he's not one of them. And the way each of them is dressed is symbolic. John is dressed like a minister, or some say like Jesus Christ. Ringo represents the pallbearer. Paul is the corpse, and George is dressed as the gravedigger. And Paul is the only man barefoot. Now, many people are buried without shoes. And in the background is a white Beetle with a license plate "28 IF," meaning at the time this photo was taken, Paul would have been 28 if he was still alive.
Okay, these are getting spooky. But the really creepy clues come from the music. At the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever," you can hear John saying, very faintly, "I buried Paul." But that's played forward. There are a couple of songs that give us more clues if played in reverse. At the end of "I'm So Tired," you can hear nonsense, but if you play it backwards... [Music] And at the beginning of "Revolution 9," if you play the beginning backwards...
And this kicked off decades of musicians putting backward messages in their songs. It really freaking me out, man. Well, if you're scared now, you're really not gonna like what's coming. It's common knowledge that musicians sometimes put backward messages in their songs. This is called backmasking. Some messages in songs are obvious. [Music] Ly. Some are not so obvious. [Music] And some are really clever. [Music] And some messages are disturbing. [Music] Backwards, it says, "Here's to my sweet Satan." Before my heart... Did you hear that? [Music] [Applause] [Music] Listen carefully. It says, "I want to live." It backwards, like the Zep, whose power is Satan. [Music] Some messages sound disturbing, but they're actually quite positive. See? [Music] [Music] Now, these phrases were all placed in music intentionally. But David Oates began listening to regular conversations in reverse. Then he thought he heard words, phrases, and sometimes entire sentences encoded backward in everyday speech. Now, these aren't placed there intentionally, but are placed there unintentionally by our subconscious.
David first tested his theory on one of the most famous quotes of all time. [Music] That can't be possible. David Oates was stunned. Also, he started recording conversations whenever he could, and he found that everyone was inserting backward messages into their speech. About every 30 seconds or so. David Oates says that human speech has two separate modes that serve different functions but complement each other. One mode is spoken forward with the conscious mind. The other mode is backward speech, which is encoded by our subconscious. This mode contains emotions, inner thoughts, and our true intent. But as he continued his research, he learned something else. Specifically, when it comes to politicians and public figures, when someone lies, they subconsciously encode the truth in their own speech. Now, this now becomes very interesting. When you're listening to, say, senior members of the government discussing the moon landings, or JFK telling you the moon landings are fake. The head does the backwards talking thing. Finally, prove it. Well, if you believe David Oates's theory about backward speech, it does. [Music] Speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholic, will be able to join hands. The Lord and... [Music] I want to thank also all the people on this campaign. Now, when he first discovered Neil Armstrong's reverse speech saying "man will space walk," David Oates was amazed. But he didn't think much more about it. He's not a moon landing conspiracy believer. But he got so many requests from people to dig deeper that he started analyzing as many people connected to the Apollo Mission as he could find.
"The moon landing is fake, isn't it?" "It's definitely fake." "Is it fake?" "It's fake, right?" "Well, I don't know if we can say without a doubt." "The moon landing was fake." "Definitely fake." "But there does appear to be some information that was covered up." Here's Buzz Aldrin: "Shut up." [Applause] And Neil Armstrong: "We took the opportunity to try to take some some photographs of it, but our film was just not sufficiently fast to uh to capture the event. Uh, however, this does show the brightest part of the solar corona. It extends the several moon diameters." Another from Buzz: "Uh, this seemed to work, uh, but without quite the same degree of control, uh, of your stability as you moved along." Buzz Aldrin again: "We did find that, uh, mobility on the surface was in general, uh, a good bit better than perhaps we had anticipated." It then, now please, that is the U.S. Eagle carrying the Olive Branch to the lunar surface, and we thought it was appropriate to deposit this replica of the Olive Branch before we left. Snare for life. That lowers our altitude down to 50,000 feet. We had two guidance systems working for us, and they, uh, behaved perfectly. The lowers are out. Virus, Illinois. But who's telling them to lie? Well, Michael Collins might have an answer. Right. In general, just a series of slides, which, in the interest of time, I'm not going to dwell on. But I, this is so we know who the masters are. I'm assuming President Nixon also knew. Credit to the control center. In this case, they were the people that really came through and helped us and said, "Continue," which is what we wanted to hear. Well, there is Neil Armstrong again. Turns out that we're quite busy throughout the time period with the, the same sorts of things that the crews of past flights have done after their flight. Powers. So, if we view the moon landing with a skeptical eye, definitely fake. Let's listen to Neil Armstrong again. We know he says, "Man will space walk." But some people believe he's saying this in the future tense, meaning man will space walk, but hasn't done so yet. "I have a platform." Well, I'll leave it up to you to decide. But before you make that decision, check out David Oates's website, and he has plenty of reversals that seem to confirm that the moon landing did happen. And look, I understand that to some people, reverse speech sounds like science fiction, or at least pseudoscience. And for some, it might be hard to take seriously. But there is one group that takes reverse speech very seriously. Who's it? The CIA.
If you follow this channel, you know that the CIA has been involved in a large number of projects that would be considered pseudoscience or paranormal. Project Iron Eagle, Operation Often, Project Jedi. These investigated the use of psychics in intelligence gathering. Oh, is it really called Project Jedi? Yep. That program was launched in the '80s. Yeah, we need Star Wars movies were good. Project Bluebird, the precursor to MK Ultra, included experiments in hypnosis and the use of drugs to enhance psychic abilities. And Project Grill Flame, Project Center Lane, and the famous Project Stargate, all researched remote viewing. And there are lots more programs that we know about, and plenty that we don't. So it's no surprise that the CIA was or is looking into reverse speech.
The United States government first became interested in 1990. David Oates had been publicly analyzing speeches from President Bush leading up to the Gulf War. "But we must recognize that Iraq may not stop using force to advance its ambitions. Iraq has massed an enormous war machine on the Saudi border." Simone and the times. [Music] Now, David didn't know who or what Simone was, but the word kept coming up over and over again in reverse speech analysis of President Bush and other security officials. Turns out, a Simone is a weather phenomenon that occurs in the Middle East. It's a hot, heavy wind that can sometimes exceed 130 degrees Fahrenheit. It's a cyclone that carries clouds of dust and sand. Humans and animals caught in a Simone often suffocate. In other words, a Simone is a Desert Storm. Wait, when was Operation Desert Storm? 1991. The following year, reverse speech revealed clues about a United States military operation while it was still in the planning stages. This information was sent in a memo to Dick Cheney and the Defense Department, and CNN got a hold of it. "May sound hard to believe that it's creating quite a stir. And today, the brave American and allied forces are keeping Iraq's along the sands and off the shores of Saudi Arabia." Taking a speech about the Persian Gulf, but it became the secret codeword, which can only be heard by listening to the truth backwards. [Music] Speeches about the Gulf crisis. Almost immediately, David Oates was invited to Washington to meet with representatives from several intelligence agencies. He was invited, uh, well, he was strongly encouraged. Well, during a five-day workshop, a senior FBI official said about reverse speech, "If this is real, there are no more secrets."
And David Oates left Washington D.C. and returned to his home in Dallas. And that's when strange events started happening. And he was hit with a lot of bad luck. A few days after returning home, there was a drive-by shooting at his house. The following night, he received a phone call. The caller said, "Leave JFK alone," and hung up. David had published some reverse speech analysis of Lee Harvey Oswald that seemed to indicate he didn't act alone and was part of a bigger conspiracy. Everybody knows that. Well, that's not the official report. Oh, you believe in the official government report, huh? Well, you know what? I want to shave you down and make a sweater out of your wool because I'm ashamed because you're a chief. That's right. A lot of reverse speech is interpretation. But David Oates interprets this clip of Lee Harvey Oswald as him hinting to a conspiracy. "The fact that I did, uh, live for a time in the Soviet Union gives me excellent qualifications through a repudiate charges in Cuba and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee is communist controlled here is everything." Oswald also claims the conspiracy is being orchestrated by powerful people. "And when and where? Because of the fact that we certainly don't have any trade with them, we are discouraging trade, uh, with that country." [Music] Exactly what people. Oswald gives us a clue. "Well, I have studied Marxist philosophy." "Yes, sir." "And also other philosophers." Sometimes your reverse speech isn't specifically connected to your forward speech. But when it is connected, this is called a congruent reversal. "These people have given me a hearing without legal representation or anything." "I didn't shoot anybody." Yes. Another congruent reversal. Oswald denies shooting the president, but in reverse tells us there were three shooters. "No." "So I don't..." Suggest a three-man team. Now, the reason Oswald was killed in custody, he was gonna talk. "Police officers have not allowed me to to have any." Here's an interesting comment by President Johnson: "America's got to be united this hour, and, uh, um, President Johnson addresses Congress. We must be ready to defend the national interest and to negotiate the common interest. This is the path that we shall continue to pursue. I assume that prayer for three cents our shoe, the Crafters makes sense. This is our challenge, not to hesitate, not to pause, not to turn about and linger over this evil moment, but to continue on our course." What a flat-out confession from President Johnson. You got it. On the 20th day of January in 1961, John F. Kennedy told his countrymen that our national work would not be finished in the first thousand days. [Music] A conspiracy like this would need the help of the FBI. So here's FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover talking with LBJ. "The presidential [Applause] election one on either side standing on those steps of the at the back bumper editor." [Applause] Lots of people were part of this plan, including police, and we trust them to stay quiet. "Neither of the police officers on either side made any movement to push them away or to grab." "It wasn't until after the gun was fired that they then moved." "That there are options."
David Oates's research must have upset somebody because after publishing these and other clips, his house burned down. Oh no. Oh no. We'll be home anyway. Whether I'll be an asset or liability, uh, the survey shows that it's helped because I think we need. [Music] David Oates worked from home. When his house burned down, a lot of his research was destroyed. He was able to recover one tape, though. He was recording when the house started burning. Oh, he was in the house when they lit it up. Oh, yeah. This wasn't just arson, this was attempted murder. Anyway, on the tape, you hear someone yell to David that the house is on fire. David then runs out of the room. About 30 seconds later, you can hear one or possibly two people ransacking his office, and David could hear whispering on the tape.
David Oates moved his operation into an office building, and strange events followed him there too. His office was broken into multiple times, and his staff discovered a program on one of his computers. Every day at 3 AM, it was downloading all of his data and sending it to an IP address in Virginia. As is common with whistleblowers and other people with information the government doesn't like, David Oates was ridiculed. When government officials were asked about reverse speech, they said it was nonsense. When asked about David Oates giving a workshop to intelligence agencies, they denied knowing anything about it. But in 2016, the CIA declassified David Oates's file. They were keeping tabs on him and his books. They did take reverse speech seriously. They probably still do.
But reverse speech doesn't have to just be about solving conspiracies. You could also use it to solve crimes. You could interview a suspect and then play the conversation back to find out the truth. And David Oates has helped law enforcement in exactly this way. On David's website, you can buy training materials to teach yourself how to identify reverse speech. And David's students have used reverse speech during employee interviews to identify the best candidates. It's been used to successfully warn a CEO not to sign a deal that had hidden traps. Reverse speech is also used in personal development for people struggling with anxiety or depression. Reverse speech has been used by psychologists to better understand the subconscious. It's helped families reconnect. It's given students clarity when faced with major life decisions. Now, some would argue that people go to psychics to help them with major decisions, and that's usually a scam. But reverse speech is different. There is no spirit talking through a medium. There are no tarot cards, no crystal ball. With reverse speech, you can hear the words with your own ears, and that it's up to you to make the interpretation. Now, chances are, you are already leaning in one direction. You just needed someone to give you some advice and a little push. With reverse speech, the person giving you advice is someone that you know, without question, has your best interest in mind. That person is you.
Yeah, well, sooner or later, I don't know if it's all going to be coming out at once. I mean, the one thing for sure is the thing that's on a lot of people's minds is what about Outdoors? We must know. We must know. So, reverse speech, is it a real thing? Well, officially, no. Reverse speech is considered pseudoscience, at least for now. It's being debated, and there's a reason for that. The clips I play today are the best ones I could find. I cherry-picked them. Most reversals are kind of like this: "The business is doing well, and we're doing well." "It's, uh, um, are you talking about?" Well, according to David Oates, most reversals are metaphors. So when we listen to this Neil Armstrong clip, the reverse is "wife feel the vomit." Okay. Oh, yeah. David Oates interprets this that Neil Armstrong feels like his wife is probably very worried. How about this reversal where Armstrong says, "We were wanting that knob stop it." Well, I'm, you know, I really think that had we not done that, we'd still been all right, but it was just insurance. It's nice to get a little insurance. Now, no reality. This was interpreted as something on the Lander had been broken, and they needed to fix it. But that's really just an interpretation of a metaphor, which will mean different things to different people. This is often what happens with so-called prophets like Nostradamus. Let's look at Century 3, Quatrain 34: "Everyone with differ on the interpretation." Aggress unguarded, none would have foreseen it. For a long time, this was interpreted as the assassination of JFK. The eclipse of the sun is the darkening of Kennedy's presidency. The monster was Lee Harvey Oswald and the three other shooters, right? But then, after the 9/11 attacks, people said the eclipse was the collapse of the twin towers, and the monster represents the terrorists. And I can understand either of these. But I'm an American. These are two very American-centric interpretations. I bet Asian cultures have different interpretations. Muslim cultures definitely do. What if you're Ukrainian? Couldn't the monster be Putin or the Russian army? And maybe the eclipse predicts the destruction of Kiev or Ukraine losing the war? This is reflection and projection. People naturally interpret metaphors through the lens of their own culture, their own age group, and their own language. And like Nostradamus, reverse speech interpretations will be radically different for different people. But as you can see, not only is the interpretation completely subjective, but so are the words themselves. Different people might hear different things. Check out this clip of Bill Clinton. David Oates hears, "I like the path on my girl, bunny, with the COVID-19 outbreak on a path to killing 200,000 people and destroying millions of jobs in small businesses." I don't hear that at all. I don't. For some reason, hey, it makes sense with this guy. Does it? Yeah. Nobody. Playboy magazine, naked lady. Bill Clinton loves those. Fair enough. So you can see why reverse speech is controversial. The human brain really doesn't like chaos and randomness. It likes order. This is why you see familiar shapes in clouds. Grilled cheese sandwich looked like SpongeBob riding a broomstick while wearing a cowboy hat. That's oddly specific. But that's how it works. Your brain fills in as many details as it can. It's called pareidolia. And this could occur with sound too. It's called audio or auditory pareidolia. When you hear backward speech, it sounds really random, so your brain tries to make some sense of it. This could be why reverse speech is perceived as a string of metaphors, because how else do we connect Bob Lazar with eloping?
So, I mean, that was the first time I knew that this is really something different. What was it with muscular or afraid? With muscular? But there are reversals of the Czar that do make some sense. And you got that job before that. You were working before that. I had worked at Los Alamos, right? National Labs in New Mexico. You know, you can turn on electromagnet, and it makes a magnetic field. We can't make a gravitational field. You know, when I worked there, I was on the front page of the, the paper. So they were still able to archive, you know, break, bring that back from the archives. And, you know, Bob Lazar, a physicist working here at Los Alamos. So there was at least something there. This is if I was. This is the first. This is a frog. But again, is there real meaning here, or is our brain trying to help us out? Because some of these reversals do make sense in certain contexts. Honestly, it's hard to say. Now, skeptics will say there is zero to reverse speech. That the human brain just can't process language this way. Well, if you're one of those skeptics, I've got bad news for you.
The computer is an amazing machine. Fine. I wouldn't say amazing. It's amazing. High-end processors on a desktop computer run about five gigahertz. So it processes about five billion operations per second. That's a lot. But the human brain can process between 10 quadrillion and 100 quadrillion calculations per second. That means a human brain is between 2 million and 20 million times faster than a high-end computer. And look, maybe you can't multiply two numbers as fast as a calculator, but think of all the things your brain does in one second. It's controlling the movements of all your muscles. It's monitoring your breathing, your heartbeat. It's controlling your internal temperature, regulating blood pressure and hormone levels. It's growing hair and nails, digesting food, and doing thousands of other internal operations in that same second. Your brain is processing sensory information: sights, sounds, touch, smell, taste. It's connecting your senses with your emotions. Your brain is making new memories and deciding which ones to scar and which ones to file away. And is retrieving memories to help you better adapt your environment. And these are all calculations that your brain does automatically. But at the same time, all that is happening, your brain can learn to play an instrument, acquire a skill, learn a language, or learn to speak in reverse. So for skeptics to say the human brain can't process speech backward, I give you John Austin. It's the backwards dude. I'm taking my talent out on the street here in Charlotte, North Carolina. The weather is mild today. Yeah, the lambs that were though. With the weather is mild today, dude. This is Sean from April 2nd, giving a shout out to the wife. House. Okay. That guy is amazing. I agree. Now check this out. We fit in that Riverdale. Can you guess what he's singing? Let's play it in reverse. "Ruin all the red nose drain." He had a very shiny nose. And if you ever saw him, he would even say it close. So John can reverse speak in real time, and people are rightfully blown away by this. But all he's really doing is speaking another language. Rather than learn Spanish or French, John learned reverse speak. Maybe not as useful as Spanish, but still impressive. So encoding thoughts backward and forward speech, that is something that our brains can do. And according to David Oates, we learned this at an early age. Specifically, he claims we learned speaking backward before we learn speaking forward. [Music] Um. [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh yeah.
Now, is this auditory pareidolia? Are we assigning meaning where it doesn't belong? I honestly don't know. But I'm fascinated by it. And here's something you can try. Record your daughter telling you what she did on spring break, or record your husband talking about his business trip. Then play those conversations in reverse. My second thought: Don't do that. Sometimes secrets are just better kept. The secrets. But not when it comes to our elected officials or anyone that has power over our lives. If just one person was able to use reverse speech to figure out what politicians are really saying, that would be like a superpower. But if an entire population can do it, that would probably lead to anarchy. So you'll have to make a choice: dishonesty from your leaders and the status quo, or honesty and anarchy. I know what I choose.
Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. My name is AJ. You know, Hecklefish, it's your service. This has been The Why Files. If you had fun or learned anything, do us a favor: like, comment, subscribe, share. I know it's annoying that I ask, but it really does help. And like most topics we cover on this channel, today's was recommended by you. So if there's a story you'd like to see or learn more about, go to thewhyfiles.com/tips. And special thanks to our patrons who make The Why Files possible. You guys are amazing. And if you'd like to support the channel or just join an incredible community, consider becoming a member on Patreon or joining our Discord. Or grab something from The Why Files store. Yeah, how do you say "buy a Hecklefish mug" backwards? I don't. I, I don't know. Fish. Echo. Yeah, that's it, right? Gum shackle fishing. I gotta work on it. You do that. That's gonna do it. Until next time. Did they see your pardon rock? What? You didn't see that coming? [Music] Thank you. [Music]