The Why Files: Operation Podcast

NUMBERS STATIONS.  Not a relic of the past. Intelligence agencies use shortwave to communicate with spies, agents and assets in the field. Right now. Today. Let's listen to a few and learn how to tune in from home -- for free.   Since World War One, numbers stations have been transmitting coded messages to spies around the world using shortwave radio. And they're still transmitting right now. We're going to listen to a few in this episode.   These transmissions sound strange to casual listeners. But to the right set of ears, they contain information that could change the course of history. In fact, numbers stations *have* changed the course of history.   Countless numbers stations are on the air right now -- for what purpose, few really know. And the people that *do* know? They aren't talking. They're essentially pirate stations -- operating illegally. But, nobody shuts them down. And no government acknowledges they even exist.   Let's find out why. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

26 Jun 202216min

Is time travel possible? According to physicists, yes. Time travel *to the future* is not only possible, it's been scientifically proven.   But what about traveling to the past? Well, that's a little trickier.   BUT, there does seem to be evidence that travelers from the future have visited us in the past; and may be among us right now.  The human race has been fascinated with traveling through time ever since, well, ever since the human race understood what time was.   But has time travel been achieved by future humans? And if so, did they leave us clues that they were here?   We've scoured the internet for the best time travel stories we could find. You may know some of them. Some are hoaxes. A few have been debunked. But there are a couple of stories that defy explanation.  Why are we so obsessed with time travel? Probably because we're obsessed with time. Time rules our lives.    Who doesn't wish they could go back and talk to our younger selves, or meet our ancestors, or witness historical events.   Time creates possibilities; but time also *ends* possibilities. It's finite. When a moment is over. It's over. There are no second chances.   The expression "time is money" isn't exactly true. Time is much more valuable than money. Wealth can be made; lost and made again. But time? Once we lose it, we can never get it back.  Time is the most valuable thing you have.   Spend it wisely. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

26 Jun 202216min

The Aztec Death Whistle. If hell has a sound, I bet it sounds alot like the Aztec Death Whistle. The Aztec Death Whistle sounds like a shriek of death mixed with howling wind. It's so unnerving, that the significance of the horrifying sound of the Aztec Death Whistle has fascinated and perplexed scholars for years.  I'm going to play the sound of the Aztec Death Whistle for you today.   When Spanish conquistador Cortés and his men arrived in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in 1521, they described witnessing a gruesome ceremony. Aztec priests, using razor-sharp obsidian blades, sliced open the chests of sacrificial victims and offered their still-beating hearts to the gods. They then tossed the victims' lifeless bodies down the steps of the Great Temple known as Templo Mayor; in Mexico City.   Andrés de Tapia, also a conquistador, described two rounded towers flanking the Templo Mayor made entirely of human skulls. And between them, a *huge* wooden rack displaying thousands more skulls with holes bored through either side to allow them to slide onto the wooden poles.   Reading these accounts hundreds of years later, many historians dismissed the 16th-century reports as wildly exaggerated.   *But* over just the past few years, archeologists working at the Templo Mayor excavation site discovered *proof* of widespread human sacrifice among the Aztecs. And the proof was *none other* than the very skull towers and skull racks that the conquistadors had described centuries ago.   The Aztec Death Whistle has been described as sounding like humans howling in pain, or as one researcher said, the 'scream of a thousand corpses'.   Let's find out why. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

26 Jun 202210min

The Philadelphia Experiment. It was October 1943. The day the US Navy mastered time travel, teleportation, and invisibility. Actually, they didn't master anything. The experiment had disastrous consequences for the crew of the USS Eldridge.   In the summer of 1943, two years after the US entered World War II, American destroyers were being decimated by the infamous German U-boat submarines and German mines were making combat... and commerce dangerous enterprises.   The United States Navy knew something had to be done.   A few months later, on October 28th, 1943, the USS Eldridge, a Cannon-class destroyer, was docked in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. And the Eldridge held some secrets.  It was a newly commissioned vessel that was equipped with several large generators as part of a top-secret mission to win the Battle of the Atlantic once and for all.  Rumor aboard the ship was that the generators were designed to power a new kind of magnetic field that would make the warship invisible to enemy radar and undetectable to enemy mines.   With the full crew on board, it was time to test the system. In broad daylight, and in plain sight of nearby ships, the switches were thrown on the powerful generators, which hummed to life.  What happened next was unexpected. And it would baffle scientists and fuel decades of speculation. Witnesses described a murky green fog that surrounded the entire hull of the ship; and then swallowed it whole.    When the fog faded away seconds later, the USS Eldridge... was gone. It wasn't just invisible to military radar. It was invisible to everyone. It was gone...  That is, until it mysteriously turned up in Norfolk, Virginia. That's a distance of about 250 miles.    And the strangest part? When it arrived in Norfolk – it was ten minutes earlier in the day than when it disappeared from Philadelphia.  The Eldridge then reappeared in Philadelphia twenty minutes later. Or, uh, ten minutes later? Because of the whole, uh, time travel thing? Hard to tell. Either way, it came back.    But something had gone terribly wrong.  According to reports, when the ship rematerialized, members of the Eldridge crew suffered from terrible burns and disorientation. And some of its crew had been fused into the metal walls at the molecular level. They were unable to move. Unable to free their skin from the metal that it clung to; and died in agony.    Other crew members went insane. And some of the crew? They disappeared altogether.   Let's find out why. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

26 Jun 202212min

Most of us have heard of the Bermuda Triangle, where planes and ships have mysteriously gone missing in the Atlantic Ocean for decades. Did you know there is a similar place in Nevada? The Nevada Triangle. In a region of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Nevada and California, 2,000 planes have been lost in the last 60 years. In this remotely populated area of more than 25,000 miles of mountain desert, many of the crash sites have never been found.   The Nevada Triangle is typically defined as spanning from Las Vegas, Nevada in the southeast to Fresno, California in the west, and to Reno, Nevada at the top. Within this wilderness is the mysterious, top-secret Area 51. Along with the dozens of conspiracy theories which include UFOs and paranormal activity that surrounds the air force base, similar theories have long been considered regarding the Nevada Triangle.   One plane to go missing was that of a record-setting aviator, sailor, and adventurer named Steve Fossett on September 3, 2007. Fossett, flying a single-engine plane over Nevada's Great Basin Desert, took off and never returned. After hunting for a month for the plane, the search was called off and on February 15, 2008, Fossett was declared dead. Later that year on September 29th, Fossett's identification cards were discovered in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California by a hiker.   Throughout the years, many of the missing planes were flown by experienced pilots and have disappeared under mysterious circumstances: and their wreckage never found.  The biggest mystery is: nobody really talks about it.   Let's find out why. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

26 Jun 20229min

What does the moon smell like? Do planets, comets, asteroids and space have their own odors?  The smells of the universe are not universal. Different objects in space — comets, planets, moons and gas clouds — all have their own distinctive aroma.   Twelve people have walked on the Moon and all of them agree: the Moon smells like gunpowder.   According to Space.com, astronaut Jack Schmitt said: “All I can say is that everyone's instant impression of the smell was that of spent gunpowder, not that it was 'metallic' or 'acrid'. Spent gunpowder smell probably was much more implanted in our memories than other comparable odors.”   The Earth has a variety of smells, depending on what environment you're in. But what about the other planets in our solar system? Venus has a crushing carbon dioxide atmosphere, while Jupiter's atmosphere is stormy and turbulent. While we can see what color and understand the conditions on these planets, what do they actually smell like? Scientists hadn’t found clear evidence of the planet’s chemical composition until now.   Yes, it has been confirmed that Uranus smells like... farts. Astronomers recently found that the atmosphere of Uranus has high levels of hydrogen sulphide, a compound that smells like rotten eggs. Mercury has a very sparse atmosphere and so would not have much of a smell at all. Venus and Mars, much like Uranus, have substantial quantities of eggy hydrogen sulphide.   For Jupiter, the smell would depend on where you were in the atmosphere. Some regions have high concentrations of ammonia, hydrogen sulphide and others hydrogen cyanide (bitter almonds). Saturn and Neptune probably don’t have much of a smell because they’re composed chiefly of the odorless gases hydrogen and helium.   Let's find out why. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

26 Jun 20229min

For 600 years the Voynich Manuscript has stumped scholars, cryptographers, physicists, and computer scientists. Now, a researcher in Germany has claimed to have finally decoded the most mysterious book in the world.   The Voynich Manuscript is a 240-page medieval codex written in an indecipherable language, full of bizarre drawings of strange plants, astrological symbols and... lots of... naked women.   The Voynich Manuscript defies classification and has also defied comprehension. Cryptologists, FBI operatives, respected medievalists, mathematic and scientific scholars, skilled linguists... they've all been left stumped. Even Alan Turing took a crack at it and came up short.   It's written from left to right and although it's never been "officially" deciphered, there's definitely a structure to it. Researchers have concluded that the language has 20 to 25 distinct letters but nobody has been able to figure out how the letters fit together.    According to cryptanalyst Elizabeth Friedman in 1962, anyone who attempts to translate it is "doomed to utter frustration."   Let's find out why. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

26 Jun 202210min

The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact - The Day the Dinosaurs Died  One of the deepest scars on our planet is hidden beneath the Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico. The buried crater, over 90 miles in diameter, was created when a massive asteroid struck the planet 66 million years ago and brought a calamitous end to the reign of dinosaurs.   Though dinosaur extinction probably took weeks or months, in just one day, 425 feet of material accumulated where the asteroid hit with the power of 10 billion atomic bombs. The blast ignited trees and plants for thousands of miles -- which were quickly extinguished by mega tsunamis with waves that may have reached as far inland as Illinois.   And at the low-end estimate of 10.1 on the Richter scale, the subsequent earthquake would have been more powerful than anything ever measured or experienced by humans.  And then things got worse.    Let's find out why. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

26 Jun 202211min