So, if Satan was going to reach out to you, wouldn't he be more of a country music fan?
[laughing] That's not fair. That's not fair at all.
>> [modulated rogue]: [Undeciphered backwards talk]
Alright, when we were kids, what were like the biggest things you were afraid of?
Well, nuclear war. Right?
Everybody, born after 1990, can't even imagine what it was like.
And, Satan because he was involved in everything. Rock music, dungeons and dragons, daycare centers.
Everything was blamed on Satan, and one of the ways that he got into your life, as I had always heard,
>>Brian: Sure.
>>Jason: were messages that were hidden backwards in rock music.
I remember my Mom scaring the crap out of me of saying like you know, "Little Susie came home,
and she got a piece of paper someone gave her with instructions to summon the Devil!
You don't mess around with that!"
That's awesome! Awesome!
What is so Satanic about backwards messages in music? Because, it sounds like nonsense!
>>Jason: Yeah well, it was started by some Christian fundamentalists in the late 1970s.
They said that messages hidden backwards in rock music, if you listened to them played forwards,
these messages would bypass your conscious mind and work their way into your subconscious.
Okay, so I'm gonna assume, they based this idea on some double-blind peer-reviewed science. Right?
Aleister Crowley.
[laughing] It's the dude that got high?
>>Jason: Yeah, early 20th century. >>Brian: Wrote a bunch of nonsense?
The beast.
He wrote that in a book, some Christian fundamentalists ran with it in the late '70s,
and suddenly it was everywhere!
If you play anything backwards, it does legitimately sound creepy as hell!
And if you told me beforehand, like, "Hey man, you're about to hear Satan's voice."
I'd be freaking out! And I'm sure I would hear Satan's voice!
Well as Bill Hicks put it, "If you're playing a record backwards making it go burrrrrr,
you are Satan!"
[laughing]
Now The Beatles popularized it during "Rain." They were doing it intentionally.
Sure.
But then people started listening to all of their other tracks and hearing messages.
That's where the whole Paul is dead thing happened.
Preciously!
So that was a case of urban legend meeting pareidolia and apophenia.
Pareidolia is finding signal where there is no signal. >>Jason: Exactly!
So let's say you got a bunch of clouds, you can see the face of Satan in there.
Apophenia is interpreting the face of Satan in the clouds to mean you should go out and murder people.
>>Brian: Is that right? >>Jason: Right.
With The Beatles, everyone started listening and hearing all of these other things, and it spread everywhere.
There was a DJ, in 1981, who started playing, "Stairway to Heaven" saying,
No! There's a very clear backwards message!
Ehhhh, we'll be the judge of this!
♪ I kill a bunch of high bits every day, before breakfast. ♪
♪ And then more before second breakfast! ♪ [laughing]
♪ ♪
Alright, alright, alright! Tell me, tell me this is all just coincidence,
because that defintely sounded exactly like, The one little path, my sweet Satan
So, here's to my sweet Satan! [undeciphered shock] Here's to my sweet Satan!
♪ ♪
That clearly was Satan talk right there!
And it matched word-for-word from what I saw! How is that just pareidolia?
>>Brian: Are you telling me we just found signal in noise?
If we were listening to that song backwards, without having these words on the screen,
we probably wouldn't hear anything but a bunch of noise.
But it's priming, we're being told what we're supposed to hear, and of course we're hearing it
because it all adds up! It's capitalizing on two different parts of the brain.
It's utilizing those to make you hear something that otherwise you would just hear noise.
Classic example is the old woman-young woman cognitive illusion, right?
Whenever they have one group of people shown just the old lady, while the other group is shown
a version of the picture that clearly depicts a young woman, the two of them will argue insanely
because they've been primed for different things.
And this video is perfect because it primes you as you watch.
So it seems like one way to prove this would be to take something that definitely definitely has no meaning
and ascribe something to it. You gotta an example?
There's a band out of Austin called "The Draculas." >>Brian: Yeah!
Pull up "Gain Ground."
Jump to the middle.
♪ ♪
Alright.
So let's go ahead and pull it up reversed.
So this is the same thing reversed, what section am I listening to?
Jump to 1:09
Here we go.
[playing the song backwards]
Alright, so I heard [imitates backwards sound]
Exactly.
Alright, let me try again. Let me try again.
[playing the song backwards]
Yeah, I got nothing, I can make nothing out of that.
>>Jason: Okay. >>Brian: Let's do it again, but this time I want you to
prime me. What should I expect to hear?
Oh Satan, to the end, you shall last until the end.
[playing the song backwards]
It's clearly there! Right?
Oh, hold on! Hold on! Let me hear that again!
[playing the song backwards]
Ok, what dark part of your brain, found Satanic lyrics in this?
Oh, I find it everywhere.
You sat down, and you were like, ok I'm just going to listen for the word Satan?
Yeah, that was actually the cue that I was looking for.
I found that this morning, before I came over here to record!
>>Brian: Alright, that's terrifying. >>Jason: Yeah.
Uh, I'm gonna backmask, uh, positive messages like, "Hey man, you're great!"
In fact, we'll do that on this episode, go back and listen again!
Yes, exactly! We've hidden messages all throughout this episode!
>>Jason: As we give more work to Brandt. >>Brian: Alright yes, exactly!
Do we want to give Brandt this power?
It's fine! It's fine! It's fine!