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This episode of American Alchemy explores parapsychology — the study of mind-over-matter effects — through two main subjects: Paul Smith, a longtime remote viewer in the CIA’s Stargate program, and Herb Metts, a parapsychologist who worked over a decade at Princeton’s PEAR lab on random event generator (REG) experiments. The central argument is that despite being marginalized, parapsychology has produced repeatable anomalies and government-backed results serious enough to warrant far more research and funding than the field has received.
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Remote viewing and the Stargate program (1972–1995):
- Remote viewing is described as a trainable way of organizing perceptual experience to access distant locations, persons, or things without using the five senses. Paul Smith frames it as evidence that consciousness is not confined to the brain, using the analogy of a TV set: the brain may receive consciousness rather than generate it, much as a TV receives a broadcast signal.
- The program began when laser physicist Hal Puthoff tested New York psychic Ingo Swann, who accurately described the readouts of a highly shielded magnetometer. The result alarmed the postdoc in charge and drew Defense Department interest, leading to the CIA-funded Stargate project.
- Joe McMoneagle (“remote viewer number one”) described a massive novel nuclear submarine with forward-mounted ballistic missile tubes in 1979, eight months before the Russians publicly revealed the Typhoon-class submarine — matching his description.
- Rosemary Smith, another Stargate viewer, narrowed down the location of a downed TU-22 spy plane in Zaire to a 3-square-mile area on a map of the entire African continent. President Jimmy Carter reportedly reacted with shock when he learned a psychic medium had accurately channeled the plane’s location.
- In 1987, Paul Smith described a destroyer-like vessel being hit by winged, roaring cylinders that set it on fire and crumpled it — details that matched the USS Stark Exocet missile attack days before it happened. He notes the paradox: even if the intelligence had been acted on and that one attack prevented, the next failed prediction would discredit the program, making it a “no win” situation.
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How remote viewing is taught and practiced:
- The first skill is recognizing the subtle “signal” from the target. The harder skill is recognizing and suppressing “mental noise” — the left brain’s tendency to guess, associate, and jump to conclusions (e.g., seeing crisscrossing metal and concluding “bridge” when the target is the Eiffel Tower).
- Paul describes a Zen-like component: practitioners must focus on process, not outcome, and learn not to care whether they succeed or fail. Joe McMoneagle reportedly sent his ego “off to do something else” while performing a session.
- Paul suggests that many of the mental disciplines required — suspending judgment, quieting preconceptions — have practical value far beyond remote viewing.
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The PEAR lab and random event generators:
- The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab was founded in 1979 by Bob Jahn, a plasma physicist and dean of engineering who worked with NASA on space propulsion. A student brought him anomalous REG results, and Jahn — described as an unlikely candidate for parapsychology research — decided the effect was worth investigating.
- An REG is a simple device tied to a quantum-level random process (such as radioactive isotope decay) that produces binary output — ones and zeros — analogous to a coin toss. Over long runs, the output should average 50/50.
- In PEAR experiments, observers who intend more ones see the output trend upward; those intending more zeros see it trend downward; those intending balance see the middle. The aggregated data produced what Herb describes as a “beautiful graph” showing statistically significant skewing.
- Herb notes a possible experimenter effect: a skeptic like James Randi or Michael Shermer entering an REG experiment might unconsciously influence the results, creating a tautological loop where skepticism itself becomes a confounding variable. This echoes earlier work by parapsychologist Gertrude Schmeidler, who classified subjects as “sheep” (believers) and “goats” (non-believers) and consistently found sheep produced stronger effects.
- Herb speculates that the brain may have a strong self-regulation mechanism that inhibits larger mind-matter effects, and that tools like transcranial magnetic stimulation could eventually enhance results by suppressing those inhibitory functions.
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Consciousness, physicalism, and the broader implications:
- Both guests argue that remote viewing and REG results challenge physicalism — the view that consciousness is entirely produced by the brain. Paul frames the transmission model (consciousness received by the brain) as more consistent with the evidence.
- Herb believes it is inevitable that neuroscience will eventually identify functions of mind that cannot be described purely by brain process, and that new computational tools and brain-intervention technologies will help separate and recombine mind and brain functions.
- Herb also frames the shift toward consciousness research as part of a broader cultural transition: material science has been enormously successful but conceptually narrowing, and people are increasingly asking what a meaningful life looks like, turning attention inward.
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The case for more research:
- The host notes that anomalies often persist unexplained for decades before a paradigm shift accounts for them — citing blackbody radiation (discovered 1860s, explained by quantum physics in the early 20th century) as an example.
- Conventional physics has seen stagnation since the early 1970s, with large investments in string theory yielding no useful technology, while quantum physics is estimated to underpin roughly one-third of GDP.
- Global spending on parapsychology over the past century is estimated at less than $30 million — less than the cost of a single particle accelerator — despite decades of government programs and repeatable experimental anomalies.
- The host stops short of declaring mind-over-matter effects proven, acknowledging repeatability and instrumentalization problems, but argues the dramatic potential implications justify far more investigation.
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Resources mentioned:
- Paul Smith’s book: The Essential Guide to Remote Viewing
- Herb Metts’s book: The Selection Effect
- Books by Bob Jahn and Brenda Dunne: Margins of Reality and Consciousness, the Source of Reality
- A recent review paper by Etzel Cardeña covering parapsychology over the last 40–50 years
- The Stargate program files, declassified in 2017 and available online