Bittersweet Infamy - #67 - The Immaculate Concussion

Episode Date: April 2, 2023

Josie tells Taylor about the mysterious illness infamously known as Havana syndrome. Plus: a household tips column gives some messy advice, and video game vixen Carmen Sandiego takes an unlikely detour through North Dakota—but which one actually happened?

Welcome to Bitter Sweden. I'm Taylor Basso and I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on and indeed. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. So Josie, it's April. And you know what that means. Oh, I forgot. I totally forgot. You forgot. You forgot it was April. Okay. So for those who don't listen, every April, and by that I mean we did it last April and this is the second one. So yeah. It's a new tradition, but it's a tradition nonetheless. How do you think family members are made? This is true. Every tradition started somewhere. Every tradition was just like one person's neurotic bad idea at one point. Yeah. Yeah. What if we put glitter on the tree? Yeah. You know, what if we made the log ship presents? So our April tradition in Bitter Sweden for me is we do the April Fools Minfamous and that is more accurately. Two Minfamy, two Minfamous stories, which are the short stories that we tell at the beginning of every episode. But this April, there's a twist. One of these stories is true. One of these stories is not that lie. We encourage everyone at home to play along. Isn't that half the fun? I'm a little bit trepidatious coming into this one though. I'm the storyteller. I'm trying to trick Josie and you all at home.

I feel a lot of pressure. I am like 0 and 4, 0 and 5 in these guessing games, both in the delivery and in the guessing. And you know how I'm feeling? How's that? Pretty cash. Pretty comfortable, I think. Yeah. You have nothing left to prove. Yeah. If I lose, it'll be like, well, I was refreshing and then if I win, it's like, huh, it's a tradition. You're already a first ballot Hall of Famer. So I'm trying to put my name on the map. If I'm going to be like Games Persona guy, we're like, oh, I love to play a game. Well, maybe I should win one sometime. And so I've brought two stories. One of them is the complete truth. One of them I just made up and let's see if you're up for it. Oh, we have some sunnies on today. I don't want to give away. I lack faith in my tells. I don't want to give anything away. I want one of those green visor poker hats. Yes. No, you understand exactly where I'm coming from. I don't want the errant twitch of an eye to fuck me up. I've really overthought this.

Oh my God. I completely forgot about this. I want to remind you. Yeah, no. Well, you would, wouldn't you? You would, wouldn't you? Oh man. Now I'm very distracted by how cool you look in your sunglasses. Thank you. I do look cool. My arms look nice. My hair looks good. I got the sunnies on. This is a good one. This is the energy that I want to bring in. So I've themed the stories, by the way. My God. These stories both come to us from the most beloved American state.

We are, of course, talking about Nebraska, the roughrider state, North Dakota. Close. Okay. Close. You got the bid I was doing. You just picked the wrong state. There was just a lot of states to pick from, is the thing. Yeah, no problem. At least 50. At least 50. So yeah, we're coming to you live from North Dakota today. One of these happened. One of them didn't. Story number one. Here we go. Here we go. One of my personal favorite children's edutainment characters is the one and only Carmen Sandiego.

Oh yeah. Where? Local girl, 619. Carmen Sandiego. Carmen Sandiego. Go Pods. Go Pods, baby. You're wearing the shirt. She's wearing the shirt, but she is legitimately wearing the shirt. The concept is simple and brilliant. A femme fatale in a red trench coat and her cabal of criminals are pilfering famous treasures and you are the acne agent assigned to conquer her with your knowledge of geography, world history, outer space, or whatever the game du jour demands. You're a gumshoe.

There is nothing better than to be a gumshoe. No. Like in life. Like in life. We all move through life as gumshoes. Maybe we all like sneak through life in our long trench coats following other people sneaking around in long trench coats. Yeah. In 1985, software company Broderbund released the first installment where in the world is Carmen Sandiego.

1986 saw the release of where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego in 1988. Carmen's criminal gaze turned to Europe. But in 1989 in her fourth game, Carmen took the peace garden state with the release of her most epic adventure yet where in North Dakota is Carmen Sandiego. Josie almost did a spit take when she saw where that was going. It's true. What's so funny about that? Nothing. Carmen loves to explore. You're thinking she needs to go somewhere with landmarks?

There are landmarks? Isn't that? There are landmarks. Everywhere has landmarks. Is Rushmore South Dakota? Literally, I had a joke that I almost put in here was North Dakota, state slogan, is that the one with Mount Rushmore? But I forgot to put it in, so I'm glad you reminded me. I'm here to help.

No, it is not. Okay, well. The answer is no. A borders Canada. That's pretty exciting. Yeah. International. So maybe you could go to the Canadian border.

There's a location right there. Yeah. Yeah. So you may be thinking, feels like it wouldn't be that hard to find a strange woman in a red trench coat in North Dakota, right? Look over there. Well, that's where you'd be wrong. The North Dakota edition of Carmen Sandiego is by far the most obscure game in the long running franchise and was once thought lost. Little was known of it until a video game archivist named Frank Safaldi happened upon its Wikipedia entry and was confused by the existence of this bizarre and seemingly random title.

Quote, I couldn't help but be intrigued of all the states in the US. Why North Dakota? When he discovered that the game was impossible to find or play in the modern day, he posted about it on Twitter, which reached one of the original educators who helped create the game. It turns out that back in the 1980s, a keen teacher in Minot North Dakota named Bonnie Berryman saw her son Brett become addicted to the Carmen franchise. Oh, Brett. Brett and Bonnie Berryman of Minot North Dakota. Okay. God bless them if they exist.

So Bonnie and a group of her fellow teachers approached the state legislature who approached Broderbund and the project was a go. The teachers collated the educational materials and cooperated directly with Broderbund to make the game, says Broderbund's cricket bird. I think that was part of the attraction that it was North Dakota for all of us. It was like, oh, this is kind of random. Okay, okay. The North Dakota version was similar to the main series except instead of committing crimes like stealing the Eiffel Tower, Right. Carmen and her crew with names like Cheyenne Valley and Rich Our Dirt would commit pranks like making the historical society hysterical or forcing Standing Rock to sit.

Okay. This was done to clean up Carmen's act for the classroom. Clues referenced North Dakota specific culture and figures such as a brown eyed person posing as Lawrence Welk was caught selling fake beaver furs or the imposter's hair was the color of a ripe wheat field. Some clues were so arcane that if you lost the accompanying North Dakota Almanac, which was obsessively compiled by the team of teacher researchers, the game would become virtually impossible. Oh, a little night trap situation happening there. A little bit of a night trap situation. The game was released to coincide with the North Dakota Centennial of 1989. It was a massive hit among North Dakota educators and in the classrooms where they finally had a reason to turn on their Apple twos.

And many states wanted to do similar clubs with broader bund afterwards. But the whole thing ultimately cost broader bund a tremendous amount of time and manpower and sold in the single digits outside the state itself. Oh, no. So it goes. Turns out a lot of people weren't really rushed into buying North Dakota Carmen San Diego. Okay. They decided the experiment was not replicable. From there, technology moved on and the game fell into obscurity until its rediscovery by Frank Safaldi who traveled to North Dakota and met with the reunited committee of teachers.

He was able to collect and archive all the surviving materials at the Video Game History Foundation. Carmen San Diego has been found. Ho, ho, ho. Interesting story. If it's real. A community of teachers in an archivist joining forces to do good. A warm and fuzzy tale in a famously chilly landscape. But did it really happen?

I don't know. How are you feeling about that? That's my first offer to you. I, yeah. I, you know, the name isn't very catchy. Where in North Dakota is Carmen San Diego. There's a lot of syllables, but I'm willing. I'm able.

Yeah. Is it plausible to you or does it have the reek of an April Fool? What's your gut right now before you have even heard the second story to compare it to? I think I don't, I don't know if it's real, but I have to compare it. I have to compare it. I feel like it could be fake. Well, then let me take you to North Dakota for our next story. The Hillsborough Banner is the oldest newspaper in North Dakota.

The publication based out of the bedroom community of Hillsborough, North Dakota population, 1,624 has been circulating for 144 years. Round of applause for the Hillsborough Banner. Yeah. If it exists. Oh, I'm really trying to lay in the intimidation tactics this time. The glasses are helping. Yeah, it's really helpful.

I think you agree. I thought the glasses were stupid when I grabbed them, but now that I have them on, I'm like, this is making me feel more confident just for the job you want. Yeah, exactly. As you might imagine, small town paper reports small town news. No shame in that. Local journalism. Very important.

That's where it starts, baby. If you look at the website for the current version, you'll see a lot of material around the Hillsborough boroughs, the town's beloved high school basketball team. You'll see obituaries for community figures you've passed on and news about heated moments at City Hall, because someone responded to somebody's question with a bit of an attitude, and in a town this size, that's news, baby. And if you were reading the newspaper's most infamous edition back on July 1st, 1954, you may have read something that made you scratch your head a bit.

A local woman named Greta Gladstone wrote a regular column for the paper called Greta Can Help. Cute. To hear 2006 banner editor Mary Ellen Nelson describe it, it was, quote, an advice column featuring household hints and pearls of wisdom. Readers were invited to write in and pose their own conundrums to Greta, and they did. Not just from Hillsborough, but from nearby communities in Trail County. The main focus was housekeeping, as that was Greta's bread and butter.

Okay. But she had a lot of little aphorisms about guests over staying there welcome and how to remain ladylike when you've had too much to drink at your husband's company party and so on. The little niceties of etiquette of life that you're like, damn, I really made a fool of myself at that dinner. I wonder if Greta knows. Yeah, yeah.

Each week at the end of the column, Greta would answer a question from a reader. This week's question was from Allison in Hillsborough. They tell you Allison in Hillsborough. And it asked in brief, how do I remove stains and discoloration from the grout between my bathroom tiles? A very good question. Greta's pithy response, a solution of equal parts warm water, bleach and household ammonia should remove yellowing from even the toughest tiles.

Josie, you had a bit of a reaction there. You want to explain that to me? If I remember correctly, you should never mix ammonia and bleach. Why is that? The chemical reaction creates a noxious fume that can make you pass out. Mm-hmm. It's like mustard gas. A little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. A little bit of mustard gas. A little bit of domestic mustard gas. Yes. To clarify what my friend Josie just said there, you know, Greta is advising her community to do war crimes. For that bathroom grout.

For that bathroom grout. It's a war in there. So thankfully the good people of Hillsborough did not take this improved advice and in fact many either wrote to the paper or directly approached the editor himself since this is a small town and we all know each other. Yeah, they knew Tom or whatever. Yes. Cal, actually.

Oh. They expressed their alarm that Greta Gladstone was recommending that people clean their grout with a chemical weapon. Yeah. So even in such a close knit town, most concerned readers wouldn't know what happened until next week's edition of Greta Can Help, which lavishly apologized and explained. For the first time since the war Greta had fallen ill. She was blindsided by a summer cold and she was laid up delirious in bed.

Says Banner editor Nelson. As it turned out, Greta had completed all but the ending of her next column. Her husband, John, saw the materials laid out on her desk and thought that he would do his wife a favor. John. John perhaps spoiled by living with the queen of housekeeping and evidently know housekeeper himself. Yeah.

Plucked Allison's question from the top of the pile, read it himself, and just went for it. Whoa. You know, for better or worse, right? He had no knowledge of household chemicals, so he merely looked at the bottles that he saw under the sink and made an informed guess. He delivered the finished manuscript to the editor, our friend Cal Hartley, personally while Greta slept and the editor seemingly ignorant to the implications as well, published

it as another example of Greta's sterling advice. Greta's confessional column concluded, quote, John is very sheepish about his mistake and grateful that no harm has come of it. Thankfully, it is easier to make a husband come clean than a bathroom floor. Greta. Very good. Very good Greta. Greta continued writing Greta can help until her retirement in 1986.

When a Greta's greatest hits roundup highlighted the gaffe in that issue, Greta said that she still reminded her husband of his infamous advice every time the floor's got dirty. Greta Gladstone passed away June 9th, 2006. But Josie, no amount of bleach can scrub off the shame of being an April fool. So choose wisely. Oh, wow. You're really laying it on thick there. So there we go.

That's who you got. You got where North Dakota is Carmen San Diego and you got Greta can help. One of them is real. One of them is fake. Okay. This is hard because the Greta can help is a very small story. So it feels like it'd be hard to find that story, I suppose. Okay.

Like easier to make up that story than it is to find it. True enough. But my other thinking is where North Dakota is Carmen San Diego would also perhaps elicit like a cult following. I could see it gaining popularity because it's like, isn't this a weird little corner of the world and this little experiment and don't we love it and want to wear t-shirts that say it and stuff like that? Right.

You think it would have blown up. A little like hipster revival. A hipster revival of where in North Dakota is Carmen San Diego for the Apple II. Yeah. This is hard. You've done a very, very lot of work. Thank you. I was nervous that I hadn't.

There was a lot of little details. I put in the work this time. I really want to win and like legitimately so, like I really, really want to win. Yeah. It's a hard, hard choice. You know, you always got to pick the false story is probably the most plausible story. Okay. So the false story is Greta can help.

That's my final answer. Greta can help is a lie. You've done it again. The sunglasses didn't even work. Now my apartment looks too bright. Husha. Husha. Husha.

But I have to maintain the most plausible story has to be the lie. You know what I mean? Like. Okay. So let's get to the bottom of it. Okay. Greta can help totally made up based on a throwaway line from a King of the Hill episode, Peggy Hill recommends that her in her column that people use bleach and ammonia.

Taylor Basso. All those know I love the timing of it though. The like post war. She hadn't been six since the war. Like, wow. Oh dude, I was lining up so that the editor would like be the editor when she passed away in 2006 and then the and thus have done the obituary. Like I was really, really on my shit.

I'm proud of the details that I picked in the in the Carmen San Diego one. I deliberately highlighted the people with the fakest sounding names that I could like Bonnie Berryman and cricket bird. Like all the people with made up ass sounding names. I was like, I'm putting a quote in there. So glad I forgot. Fucking cricket bird. Yeah.

And the Hillsborough banner is a real paper. Go boroughs. They're real. The rest of it is fake. There is no Greta Gladstone. There was no Greta can help. There was no husband John. That was all a little bit of an April fool, but I didn't get it by you.

Hopefully I got it by at least one listener listening. So it wasn't a total shut out. Marriage is a shame. Their marriage is a sham. They're made up. They're made up. That was good though, dude. Not made up.

Where in North Dakota is Carmen San Diego? That really happened. Also not made up. My new future favorite t-shirt. Where in North Dakota is Carmen San Diego? No, you can wear that out. That's legit. It went down exactly.

As I said, Frank Safaldia, video game archivist who runs the video game history foundation really great organization. Give them a look. And also, by the way, consider donating some money to the internet archive. They just got big sued by a bunch of publishers. Oh no. Yeah. Yeah, like Harper Collins.

Give it a look. It's a whole thing. But I love personally me. I use the internet archive in my research on this show all the time. Oh, all the time? They could use a bit of money right now. Give them a look. Anyway, similarly, Frank Safaldia runs the video game history foundation.

And he's a video game archivist. So that's his kind of niche of the world. Yeah. And he was browsing along on Wikipedia, which is the same way that I discovered it. He was browsing along on Wikipedia and he found the little box at the bottom. And he's like, yeah, Carmen San Diego, North Dakota, what the fuck? And this is the story. It was a group of very keen educators, Bonnie Berryman, Chris Nance and a bunch of folks

who all were apparently like very exacting in dragging up the most arcane North Dakota lore from all of their teachings. And they made this game that was beloved in North Dakota classrooms and completely obscure outside of it. Educators, my dude. Educators. Look at that. Apparently at one point the Broader Bun had to like send them back like a nice thing.

Like we are very politely begging you to stop giving us new information, only revisions. We have too much. Yeah. We have too much, too much research in this game. But on the April Fool though, in the end. Are you? Cause you crafted very good lie, but then you crafted a very good truth as well. Where in the world is my credibility?

My North Dakota Minfamous flop. No, it didn't flop. It's beautiful. No, it did. This is another disaster. This is another failure. This is another L on my shitty record that is only L's. It's another L for my collection.

For lovely flushes. No, it's not. It's for loser. It's for loser. You know, this Scandinavia makes your stick them up down under a big pocket. She puts the missing mustamina when she stole the beef from Lima. Tell me where in the world is Carmen San Diego. Tell me where in the world, tell me where.

I have a story to tell you. Whatever you want, man. I'm just a passenger here now. I'm like nursing my wounds. I'm sulking so. Oh, oh you doin okay buddy. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine because I have another opportunity in our next episode with our guest host Lucia

Mitch. I know, Lucia Mitch, Canadian slash American poet extraordinaire. The problem with Solitaire is her book out. I'm so excited. Yeah, it's gonna be great. Have you told her that we're doing the April Fool's Minfamous? No dude, she has no idea. We're gonna ambush her for it because there's no way she's gonna listen to the last episode, right? Most likely not in time, yeah. Sweet, sweet. Okay, perfect. Yeah, okay, so we're gonna have another opportunity. So how it's gonna work with this, Lucia doesn't know, but me and Josie are gonna tag Team that Minfamous. We're gonna be like a two-headed riddle serpent. One of us talks only in the truth. One of us talks only in lies. That's the noise that we're gonna make. Yeah, just

really good content. Before that happens, Josie, you have a story for me. And by extension, I suppose the other people listening. I do, I do. We are going to head south and we're gonna go south of Miami, little island, Cuba, baby. Cuba. Cuba. Okay. Cuba. Thank you for laughing at my little. There's a little dance. Like I like the dance. I really like the dance. It is 2017 down there. Okay. We are meeting a career Foreign Service officer named Tina Onifer. She's in her late 40s, white lady, long blonde hair. Like, you know, you know, people have like thick hair. It's just like, gorgeously like long and straight and like thick. That's the kind of hair she has. Sure. Natural blonde. Okay. Pretty sure. Natural blonde. I'll

put money on that. And Tina and her husband, who is also a Foreign Service officer, they have lived in a few various locales around the world in their work, but they were given an option to move to Havana, Cuba. And they took it as quickly as they could. They were very excited to live in Cuba, because you know, what American gets to visit Cuba, much less work there. Are y'all still beefing with Cuba in 2017? Well, that's a very good question. Let me take about an hour to answer it. I can't wait. Tina and her husband, they bring their two twin sons at the time in 2017. They're 12 years old. And their life there is domestically routine. Tina gets to the U.S. Embassy office in the, in its imposing six-story building that's located

on the Malacón, which is Venice's seawall. It's like a seawall that surrounds the city. She arrives at work on the dot 730 every morning. The family drives a sizable SUV. The boys go to a diplomatic school. They live in a diplomatic neighborhood, in a comfortable Spanish-style home. You know, it's light and airy. Special license plates. Yeah, tropical. Diplomatic community. You can kill anybody you want. It's a fucking sick gig. Well, to be fair, I think Tina's job and and her husband's is a little bit more kind of a paper-pushing diplomatic. She hasn't had a license to kill. She has a license to like shred some documents maybe. She has a license to kill that Friday filing. Yeah. Got you. Pretty routine, pretty like a standard office situation.

But March 17th, 2017, Tina's husband is on a work trip. So she cooks dinner for her two boys. And after dinner, they go upstairs to play Minecraft, as you do when you're 12 and live in Havana. Yep. And she starts in on washing the dishes. The kitchen sink is located in front of a window and it's nighttime. Dark has fallen. So it's dark enough that she can't see out. She can only see her reflection in front of her. But she knows that there is a wooden booth on the sidewalk just outside in the neighborhood where the Cuban police keep surveillance. Everybody knows it. It's an accepted fact in the community. It's just the life of a US diplomat living in Havana. Nobody wants an international incident. Exactly. Yeah. No harm, no foul. But this evening,

as she's washing dishes, she nearly drops the soapy pan in her hands because she's been struck by what she feels as a wave of energy that hits her. In an interview with MSNBC in December of 2021, you'll notice the time difference just because she wasn't allowed to speak about this incident until much later, she says, the night of my event, I was standing in the kitchen window and I felt like I was being struck with something and it was an overwhelming sense of anxiety, pressure, completely unexplicable and then pain, pain that I have never felt before in my life. So just a regular old day and all of a sudden she's just like crumpled by this wave of pain that hits her. She's experiencing it. She thinks back to something that she heard in the office a few

days ago, an associate of hers had talked about somebody with a similar experience to this and they were discussing it and he said, if you are ever in this situation, you should get off the X, get off the X. And that's what's in her head as she starts moving down the hallway. So to get off the X, I think it just means to get out of the location where you're feeling that wave of energy, the wave of pain. So she moves into the living room. In kind of a days, she doesn't know what's going on but she's not feeling that pressure anymore. She's still kind of feeling after shock of the pain but the pressure is gone. She immediately goes and checks on the boys who are upstairs and they're just fine. So she decides to lay down and try and sleep off whatever this

weirdness is but she can't fall asleep. The pain is still too much. In the morning, her headache has not gone away and when her son asks her to read the ingredients on a cereal box at breakfast, she can't even focus her eyes enough to read the box. Okay. Have you ever had a headache like that? It's like focusing is hard. Yeah. Focusing is hard, sensitivity, delight, sound. Yeah. She's experiencing that and her symptoms continue. At work in the coming days and weeks, she has trouble concentrating. She forgets conversations she's had with coworkers. She has to write herself notes all around her office just to help her stay on task. She doesn't want to say anything to her bosses though because she doesn't want to be a burden to them but it becomes clear that she

cannot keep up with her work. Her focus, her concentration is just not there. Her headaches are so debilitating and her ability to focus her eyes like physically like get her eyes to work and read is getting harder and harder. There are other reports from foreign service officers including CIA officers who also have a floor in this office building on the Malacone and these other affected foreign service officers are struggling with somewhat similar symptoms. Many report not being able to stand or walk as they had before as if their center of gravity has been knocked off ballots. That kind of idea where you're just a bit woozing, you can't focus your steps in a way. Vertigo kind of. A vertigo, exactly. However, the others are reporting that

when they experienced a similar kind of shockwave, they heard a very loud and directional sound that accompanied the pressure that they felt. So our girl Tina just had this pressure and this feeling but most other people hear a very loud sound that's described as almost like a cicada hiss that seems to follow them from room to room and you know that kind of like blaring cicada sound where it's just like it's just a wall of sound that you don't notice until it stops. These people are noticing it because it's accompanied by that pressure and like Tina somewhere in their homes when they experience these episodes but others report being in hotel rooms in Havana or in different areas of the embassy building even. Tina, it gets to the point with her concentration that

she just cannot keep up with her work so she reports her symptoms to her higher ups and she's medivac'd to Florida and then on to Virginia to undergo testing but as with all these cases that now in 2023 total to about a thousand people there is no discernible cause to these symptoms. Tina specifically was told that she had suffered the equivalent of a concussion so you get hit on the outside and then your brain inside rattles in your skull. Yeah yeah right and then they're swelling and it's painful and typical concussion but a concussion always includes an outside force that causes the initial injury. Okay yeah. For Tina and for many of the people who were studied

there was no physical indication of impact so it's concussion like symptoms without the traces of a high impact injury. Oh okay I get it. Yeah I get it Josie. I get what we're about to kind of get into here. Is it psychosomatic? Is it a sound weapon spurred on by Cuban American Relations? Should I get it? I get what we're doing. Yeah. This syndrome. This syndrome. Have you heard about it in the news at all? It was kind of something that I stayed away from because it was like I thought the vibe was bad no pun intended. I just didn't I don't know I try not to like as a person afflicted by mental illness let's say. Yeah. To some degree I'm fascinated by stories somewhat like this one but like stories like this one where

exhibiting symptoms of a chronic illness. I don't know that. I don't know how to describe it. A little bit of a no-go zone. A little bit. A little bit. Well let's go there baby. Yeah sorry. Dude you don't know what's coming out of the chamber until you're there. It's fine. So while Tina was still working full-time at the embassy they had no name for this affliction so they started calling it the thing. Christ. Yeah. Don't do that. No bad. Medical professionals. No. The scary monster. Like what the fuck. I mean these were medical professionals saying it. It was people in the embassy office but even still. It was like their cosinostra like this thing we do. Yeah. Kind of shit. Yeah. Okay. But it is a little bit better than the media coverage because the media

starts referring to it as the Havana syndrome. I do want to make a note. Okay. This is for all of the people who are like why is it so bad when he called it the China flu. Like what's wrong with that. Yes. I have the same note too. Yes. Yes. Okay. You should always be careful when you're naming a deadly disease after a group of people. AIDS used to be gay related immune deficiency disorder. That's not true. When you associate a group of people with a disease people make the equivocation that like the people are as bad as the disease. The people are responsible for the disease. The people did the disease on purpose. The people want to spread the disease to you. It's just how humans are. If you hear the word Josie and the word

embezzler so many times together in a day you're lucky I gave you embezzler. I was wondering where that was going to go. All the ones I had were worse. Yeah. All the ones I had were worse. Thank you. Thank you. And I edited. I appreciate that. You had like Josie and embezzler every day, every day, every day. Then you start to think Josie's an embezzler. Yeah. When you call someone crooked Hillary every day. Yeah. People really start to think that she's crooked. Yeah. I got my issues with Netflix and Chillery too. Don't get it twisted. But I'm just saying I'm just saying. Yeah. Here's what I'm saying that's just echoing yours. Sure. When it's referred to as the Havana syndrome it's very similar to COVID-19 and what we learned from that which is that it's

really unhelpful to refer to an illness's point of origin when you're naming it because that allows for all types of biases to swarm in and it very well could not be the actual point of origin. It's just it's not a very good way to go about things and I think we'll see that as this story unfolds too. That by allowing a bias of Havana to seep in we're not doing anybody any favors. So we know it's been referred to as the thing which is creepy but. Scary. Very scary. In my research though I also found it being referred to as the immaculate concussion which I prefer. We love a Catholic iconographical moment. Yeah. Yeah. It really helps. Yeah. Mary is that bitch. Don't blame it on her. Don't blame what those priests did on Mary.

Yeah. Folks. No. Uh-uh. She was immaculate. So kind of already laid out some responses to this. The idea of explanation for the immaculate concussion could be a psychosomatic response, could be act of terror engaged by a foreign adversary. There's also the possibility that it's a method of surveillance used by a foreign adversary that is kind of going a little haywire. So maybe it's surveillance gone awry. You know kind of subset of what you posited to a very targeted attack by a foreign adversary. Like when the Americans were thinking about making that seizure gun because they saw a poorie gone. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's a seizure gun situation. Yeah. And that immediately comes out of early speculation

is that it's like a pulsed microwave energy that's like manufactured in essentially like a ray gun. A ray gun. Like a Marvin the Martian ray gun. Yeah. Like an old school pew. Yeah. Yeah. A pew. A pew. Yes. Exactly. You know, perpetuated by a state agency and if you're following that line of thinking, then you enter naturally, casually into the idea that it is an act of war to attack diplomats with this device. It's not nice. It's not nice to shoot your ray gun at diplomats. That's Mario's attack shit. Yeah. Really when it comes down to it. Yeah. I mean, there really is no wonder that the media has a complete hay day with this. They're spies. Oh, it's scary. It's scary. It relies on like age old prejudices and like Cold War era. Exactly. Havana.

Absolutely. Moscow. You know, there's probably like some fancy watches and champagne and like fast cars. And then you add in unexpected American bread blonde victims. Yeah. Spy thriller through and through. Oh, oh God. Fox News can die note on that for. Oh man. Quite a meal. Unlike a good spy thriller, though, this story has no neat and tidy diamond studded writing off into the sunset ending. I'll tell you right now, the question of what has caused these symptoms is still being debated. People are still suffering from their injuries and the international intelligence community is still unsure what the hell happened, what the hell is going on. So we're going to figure it out like we always do. Scoob, I think we found another mystery. Get ready for some hot takes

that'll make a difference in the international scene. Oh, send them my way. Let's get these people on Skype. Yeah. Let's Skype. Wow. When you're talking about international espionage, Skype is the better option. It's more secure. Good to know. Legitimately. Let's talk a little bit more about the symptoms and what's even still happening. So for Tina, there are multiple people who had similar experiences, but we'll focus on Tina because we know her story the best. Still to this day, her symptoms have not left. She now lives in the U.S. with her family. She is unable to work full time and she still has terrible headaches, sensitive to light. She has trouble concentrating. It's a legitimate TBI. TBI. Traumatic brain injury. Thank you. Wow, you're good. Yes, yes.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Those symptoms are very real for, I don't want to say all because that's just an absolute, but for the overwhelming majority of the people afflicted. Uh, jeez. Reports of these health incidents, and I put that in quotes because the State Department and various U.S. governmental agencies refer to these episodes as health incidents instead of attacks just because the rhetoric would, would change. We've got to be very careful when we are speaking. Yes. The international syndromes. Yes, yes, but I guess nobody cared when they decided to call it the Havana syndrome, but yeah. Well, it's just catchy. It's helps. It puts the butts in the seats, doesn't it? Havana, ooh, nah, nah. Like it's Havana nights, baby. It's a very good dirty dancing,

I got to say. It's pretty good. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Good, and you got some good shoulder dancing there. That's nice. No, those weren't good. They were sincere. The health incidents, quote unquote, reportedly start in Cuba in 2016, afflicting embassy staff and personnel. It is worth noting that it's not just CIA agents or what we would call spies. It is people like Tina who just have kind of regular, paper-pushing jobs in an embassy, which is unusual. The symptoms range relatively widely. They include vertigo, tinnitus, that ringing in the ear, kind of a general brain fog, headaches. One afflicted person was told by a doctor that the brain injuries that they've sustained have almost been like she's aged 20 years

all at once. Jesus. So very intense injuries that have been sustained. Yeah. Enough that a lot of people have had to end their careers early. They cannot work anymore. They need to seek medical attention. There's a doctor who was brought in to study some of these people, a doctor, Michael Hoffer from the University of Miami. And he studies specifically the inner ear. And when he was working with patients, he noted damage to the gravity organs that are located in the inner ear. So, you know, the sense of what is up and what is down. He documents that every single patient he saw had some abnormal thing happening with those organs in the inner ear. Okay. So it's like it's an it's an ear injury.

Potentially, but in part. In part. In part. Yeah. Yeah. I think. Without saying that what it is either the cause or symptom, there's an ear injury in the mix. Yes. There's report out of the University of Pennsylvania, a doctor named Douglas Smith publishes their preliminary findings in the Journal of American Medical Association. That gets published in 2018. And they argued that quote, these individuals meaning the ones afflicted that they've been able to see these individuals appear to have sustained injury to widespread brain networks without an associated history of head trauma. End quote. So that's what we were kind of saying before. There's no external injury. But you might see this type of head trauma if it's historical. So let's say I get in like a bad

accident, a bad car crash, and I get a concussion, or I play a lot of football, or you know, whatever it is, you can have old head injuries that will still come up and still affect you. But the majority of the people that Dr. Smith saw did not have a history of that type of brain impact. You know, when I say I like mysteries, I don't like medical mysteries. It's not very fun. It's very disconcerting how fragile the human meat sack is. Seriously. No, it's true. One medical expert who has looked over the findings has described it as a concussion without a concussion, which again, that medical mystery very scary. Yeah. Those findings lead people to this idea that the health incident that these people are

experiencing has been sound that is weaponized. There is a history of that happening in various different ways. Sound and music can be used in torture, which is terrifying. Another incident 2015, there were demonstrations in the Philippines in Manila to protest the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. Students, labor groups, indigenous groups, they were protesting outside of the conference. And in response, the police pulled out their secret weapon, quote unquote, which was blasting Katy Perry's roar on giant loudspeakers. Not roar. Bull volume. That's loud. It was meant to distract protesters, but also to drown out their chants. And I think part of it is like they picked music that was very poppy and hectic and

upbeat, and you can't like really focus when you're listening to it as opposed to some slow dirge. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And just playing it extremely loud made it so that people were pretty disoriented. Reports from even protesters themselves were like, it was kind of funny. So it was hard to concentrate because I just thought it was weird and funny. So fair enough. Dude, we're also susceptible to that moment no matter where we are. Yeah. This is weird. The world's weird place. The article that comes out in the Journal of American Medical Association it leads to people concluding that the sound has been weaponized, right? But the article itself never succinctly states that. In fact, during an interview in July 2018,

Dr. Smith from UPenn, who's one of the publishing authors, shared his own doubts that a microwave device, so a weaponized sound device, could even be that exacting to cause this type of brain injury. I'm sure you'll get into it, but if it's not the sonic weapon, then what is it? What could it be? Could there be some sort of like naturally occurring frequency at various points in Havana due to some sort of, I'm really gonna riff folks, but like due to some sort of like tectonic or geophysical, or there's an animal, or there's something, and it causes the inner ear injury that then rattles the brain. Like I don't fucking know. Yeah. That they're like, we have to have an alternative solution to ray guns, right? Right. But maybe no, maybe it's ray guns.

Are so fascinating, especially when you place them in Havana, and everyone's like, well it's the Cubans. They have one of the most robust espionage program outside of the US. So all these Americans are thinking it's gotta be them. They have to know. Espionage, when in Havana. If it's happening on Cuban soil, then they must know about it. Is it exclusively Americans? There are reports of Canadians suffering from similar symptoms. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don't go to all the trouble to build the ray gun and then pay random Canadians. I don't buy it. Especially because Cuba and Canada have very good relations. We've been buddies forever. Yeah. Part of the Canadian response to the Americans were like, hey, get down here. We'll do an investigation together because we're

buds, right? And these Cubans, they're totally attacking us, right? And Canadians were like, no, we're okay. We're going to take care of our afflicted personnel and make sure that they get the health care that they need. But we don't need to be part of this little skirmish that you want to have with the Cubans. Sometimes we get it right, is what I'm saying. Sometimes we get it right. It's true. I think it might be helpful to unpack a little bit of Cuban American relations. They're not great, these relations. There was a missile crisis. Frot, frot, exactly. Yes. Communism and American capitalism are not simpatico in any way, shape, or form. Missile crisis and imposed embargo on the island by the US government.

Mm-hmm. Illegal cigars. Yes. So that strained political relationship has long fractured that communication. Awkward neighbors. Very awkward. There did seem to be some light at the end of the tunnel when Obama entered his second term as president. He was on his bullshit. He was like, they elected me twice. I can do whatever I want. I'm not running again. Yeah, they can't let me do it again. Sometimes I'll do whatever I want. March of 2016, Obama as president visits the island of Cuba with Raul Castro, the brother of Fidel Castro, and Raul at the time is the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, which you can kind of imagine as like president or prime minister of Cuba. Raul

Castro, Obama's there giving a speech. Raul is sitting in the audience smiling. This is a reconciliation of these two great nations. We are making history right now. In fact, they will look back and they will say our names are on this. On the stage of the grand teatro in Havana, Obama says, quote, I have come here to bury the last remnant of the cold war in the Americas. That didn't end up being true. Let's continue. You know, let's be hopeful. So, the embargo was being lifted. The contact between US and Cuba was beginning a process of restoration, which included a reopening of the long defunct embassy and bringing more US diplomatic personnel into Cuba. In fact, the embassy had already been open. On July 20th, 2015, John Kerry, who was then

the secretary of state. Woo, swift boats. Yeah. Well, 2004, look up, look up, swift boats 2004, look up flip-flops, 2008. Some old school flip-flop in John. Oh, God. He's down there presiding over a flag-raising ceremony over the embassy where three retired American marines who were in attendance when they lowered the flag, when the embassy closed, half as in true before. So, they're there in 2015. Oh, they brought back, they re-got the band back together. They got the band back together, lifted that old squeaky-boo. Very good diplomacy, that. I know, right? That's a move with a lot of thought put into it. I like the hospitality instinct there. Yeah, the embassy has been opened for less than a year, but Obama's trip is the symbolic opening of this

relationship. It's the pomp and circumstance, which of course is a very big part of politics, because that's what the people see, right? Yes. Both countries, Cuba and the US, are pretty excited by this opening and the prospect of this new cooperation. There's a huge wave of American tourism to the island of Cuba, really an even more definite indication of public relations softening between the two countries, the Fast and Furious franchise, film of race secrets on the Seawall, on the Malacan, in Havana. Beautiful, beautiful. That's the pulse of the nation. Okay, this is fucked. It's about family, Taylor. It's about family. It is about family, right? First of all, thank you. Well said. Second of all, Facebook keeps recommending me this one,

Paul Walker meme page. How do I put this? I'm trying to not sound like an asshole. All the memes are like Paul Walker is still dead, huh? They're all like, look at this picture. 2008, here's the crew, all of them. 2023, same crew, but Paul Walker is not there because he's dead. They're all like that. It's risk. It's shock to nation, Taylor. It's shock to nation. It's shock to nation. But because I keep clicking them to send to my friend's Facebook, he's giving me more of them. And every day they're like, damn, this guy really didn't get over Paul Walker going out. That's on you. I don't know if you're over Paul Walker. I think maybe that's what Facebook is trying to tell you. But yes, very, dude, that's the pulse of the nation. Whatever they're doing in

fast, that's what's on the national consciousness. If Charlize Theron is whipping people with her braids in fast, that means six more weeks of winter. Exactly. It's true. It just changes things. Yeah, it really does. It really does. I do want to know, as a Canadian, have you been to Cuba? Because you have full access to going to Cuba. No, I haven't been. I know people who haven't, who have said good things, that there's a very separate economy for tourists than there is for locals. And that's a bit strange to navigate. I would go to Cuba. Sounds fun. I don't have any Cuba angst. I don't mind communism, I suppose. What do you want? When Obama opened up relations, I do remember thinking, well, shit, I missed my espionage entry into Cuba.

Oh, you have to do a nerd entry now? Yeah, no, I have to. A stupid gay legal entry now. Yeah, I can't go off the grid and not have my passport stamped kind of thing. But you know what? In the end, it's worked out in my favor because those good and hopeful relations between the US and Cuba did not last long. Oh, I thought y'all were still good. I'm so ignorant. I thought y'all were still good. What a shame. I even had to check. I was like, wait, wait, wait, how does this even look like now? Because interstage rights, extreme right, we have Trump. When the Trump administration took over from the Obama administration, Trump ran on a platform that was very anti reconciliation. He was not interested in trying to bridge that divide between

Cuba. But he's such a friendly guy. Isn't he though? I just imagined Trump in Florida and he knew a lot of people who had felt that they needed to escape Cuba during the communism era. Oh yeah, there's a lot of like right wing Cuban folks who are very pro capitalism because they did not fucking like it under communism in Cuba and fair fucks to him. Yeah, no, totally. It's an interesting relationship, you know what I mean? Because I think for sure. No, I guess it's complicated. It's very complicated. Yeah, but that's all to say that in Donald Trump's White House, Cuba was not a priority. It didn't seem like much was a priority for him besides rhetoric and getting his base excited. But the foreign policy that he did have on Cuba was pretty much this. Make Marco Rubio happy.

That was his only goal when it came to Cuba. And if you don't know, Marco Rubio is a Cuban American senior US senator from Florida. Fancy Boots Marco. That's what Trump called him. That's right. I forgot about that. Fancy Boots. They did like a whole fucking ad at look at this man's like little homo boots. Right. Isn't he such a like a mincing creep? We hate him. That's true. And then of course, because it's all fucking fake, fucking you can say whatever you want about Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz or whoever. And then it just turns into a big knob job behind the scenes. Exactly. This is my we nailed it. We're turning into our Pod Save America moment here. Yeah, this is good. He unsuccessfully ran against Trump in the 2016 primaries. And then on the turn of a dime

became pretty much one of his cronies. The Rubio family is very anti Castro, both sides of his family had to flee Cuba and the communist government in the 50s and the 60s. He comes from a background of not enjoying the communist takeover of Cuba. And even the rhetoric of that, the communist takeover, right? It's not sure it becomes a takeover rather than a communist administration that has good health care and great espionage. That's my review. Five stars. Surprisingly, Marco Rubio wasn't totally adverse to opening up relations with Cuba. Because he thought that if there was more US personnel down there, there would be more successful espionage efforts. You know, who really knows what he thinks because it might just be

playing to his base? I don't think so. So exhausting. Yeah. Oh, American politics, you put on a good show, but it's bad for the soul. Is it a good show? Is it really? I stopped finding it a good show a long time ago. Yeah, I think once I would have said yes. I think that the Trump years were really educational to me in terms of like at whose expense is the great show happening, you know what I mean? And now I don't think it's fucking funny when the wacky political shit happens so much anymore, you know? Even Fancy Boots, Marco. Yeah. I mean, call me Fancy Boots any time. Fancy Boots, Mitchell, I'll take it. I love it. That's great. That's, that's cute. I don't even know if it was, I think I might be cleaning that one up. I don't know if it was Fancy Boots. I might be,

I might be gilding that one just because I produce gold. It's true. It's not untrue. The real issue with the Trump administration and their Cuban foreign policy though, was that they essentially zapped the embassy of personnel and financial support. You've got to build the space force with some money somewhere, right? You got, yeah, that's true. So anything that needed to go through Washington in terms of decision making in Havana just completely stalled out. There were so many vacancies in the Trump administration that it was just a bureaucratic deadlock. Papers were piling up because people were never hired, much less given the time or resources to do the work. There was just nobody at the desk. And sure, small government and all,

great, great, great. But when officials in Cuba needed to know how to proceed with a very delicate matter of international relations, i.e., are the Cubans initiating an act of war with a Sonic ray gun? Yes, President Trump, sir, we think the Cubans may have developed ray guns. That's important information. And what does the Trump administration do? They just like ping back with an out of office email. Just like, we'll be back at a future date. This podcast, I don't know if y'all remember, but like I think in our very first or one of our very first episodes, we're talking about Biden won, like Biden had just won. We're just by the skin of our teeth a Trump baby, this podcast. We're a Trump appointee in the Supreme Court of Podcasts, of which we are part. It's a

pretty big court, gotta say. And I think because of that and because like, oh man, I found 2016 to 2020 really exhausting and I really dread the return of Donald Trump to like the, oh my god, the pop cultural landscape won and God forbid he wins again too and you know all this shit. He hasn't really turned up in the podcast much because I don't really get that much joy about talking about Trump. You know what I mean? Yeah, I agree with that estimation of Trump and his administration, but I think in researching this, I kind of realized like this extra layer of damage that it was just like being ineffectual. In addition to being a vile racist, he was also like incompetent from like a bureaucratic perspective and like doing the goddamn job on the resume. Yeah, yeah, I got

that. Yeah, that's that's what I mean to imply. Yeah, yeah. With the crisis in Havana, picking up steam, with more people coming forward with symptoms, our girl Tina, she's getting treatment only to learn that her eyesight has been irrevocably affected. She actually can't focus both of her eyes, which makes reading and driving all those things difficult. She hadn't even been able to sleep a proper night's sleep. Her husband describes her as looking like a zombie. She physically couldn't function. So all of this is happening. There are attempts to investigate by the US Intelligence Services, but they could not find anything. There were no traces of what this potential weapon or this espionage situation, no traces except for the victims' symptoms,

except for the injuries that were showing up. And even those were not necessarily physical injuries. It wasn't a gunshot wound. It wasn't something that we could see. It was an interior brain injury, which a lot of them reported as being difficult to deal with as well, because there was this sense that like, is anything really wrong with you? Maybe not, because we can't see a brain injury. And when you don't know what's causing it, that creates a situation where they either weren't being heard or what they were saying was being denied. That was another very destructive element of the administration's work with the victims, was that those victims were also being put off. The idea of like, hey, what is going on? What

could have caused this? This will help me with the diagnosis and my treatment. And they were repeatedly just getting out of office replies. They're failing institutionally at every capacity. They certainly aren't going to be able to diagnose this mystery illness. Yeah, exactly. And in their investigations, the US considered reaching out to Cuba and collaborating with them. In fact, that is what Raul Castro, who was very interested in opening up this relationship with the US, that's what he proposed. But the US was very wary. The CIA was pushing back with the idea that if they shared any information with Cuban officials, if it's the Cuban officials who are enacting these quote unquote attacks, then giving them that information could just improve

their operations, boiling it down. There's just a lot of things swirling in the water. America is in one of the messiest presidential transitions to date. The relations between America and Cuba are on the up and up, but they're still very tenuous. Raul Castro, who is interested in opening the relationship, he's not completely backed by the communist government. Not everybody in Cuba agrees with what he's doing. This has been a long rivalry. There's going to be some people who are not comfortable letting it go. Yes. Yeah. So that tenuous relationship, the Americans think it's the Cubans. The Cubans think Americans are essentially just making it up so that they can make Cuba look bad. Make Cuba look bad. And then the Americans are thinking, well,

maybe it's the Russians and they're working in Cuba. With that logic, the Cubans would know with their intense espionage. Espionage is complicated, it turns out. It's a back and forth. It's killing Eve. It's a killing Eve episode all over the place. Yeah. What eventually ends up happening and all of this confusion is that the embassy closes down during the Trump administration. First, the State Department. Rip. F's in the chat, boys. They're worried about the safety of the personnel in Havana and across Cuba. And so they start limiting numbers. And following suit, the CIA does the same thing. Mike Pompeo, who is first the director of the CIA under Trump, and then he's the secretary of state, he orders the CIA to pull out completely. The only foreign

service employees who are in Cuba now are on very short-term contracts. So it's back to limited numbers. Even under Biden. Even under Biden. Yeah. Really? Okay. A lot of the pro reconciliation advocates in both countries are no longer in power. Yeah. In April 2018, Roguel Castro steps down as the president and he's replaced by Miguel Diaz Canel, who's a longtime communist loyalist. So he's not interested in that reconciliation. The US doesn't have it as a major factor anymore either. So there's just, it lost its momentum. The moment passed. In all of this confusion, there's just nobody who's willing. Because I think from an American perspective, if you want to take up this cause, then you need to figure out what is causing these injuries to Americans in Cuba. I got that.

No, I got that too. I get that we have a mysterious syndrome now that we didn't before. Right. It's all a very, very messy thing. There is a recording of the sound that's released. Fuck no. Fuck no. Fuck no. Do you want to hear it? No. No, I don't want to hear it. No, that's not appropriate. What? This is like a sonic weapon, isn't it? Well, that's what everybody thinks until this recording comes out. Oh my God, it's a recording of Cicadas, isn't it? Kate Husband and her husband, Doug Ferguson, they're both Foreign Service specialists who have suffered these effects caused by the immaculate concussion. And they're in Cuba when they were exposed to the sound. And one day they decide, you know what, let's go ahead and record

it. So Doug gets his cell phone out, opens up the recording app, boom, gets it. And then they're given the go ahead by the Foreign Service agencies to release it. The CIA said put it on YouTube? Well, no, it was like the CIA said you could give it to MSNBC, that kind of thing. That's as bad as YouTube. Or sorry, not MSNBC, to the Associated Press. Okay, well, okay, I'll take the Associated Press. So it hits the media and it reenergizes the story. It gives the American public something to hold on to with this because otherwise it's just kind of like a big mystery. And now there's something tangible, tangible evidence to help conceptualize these health incidents or these sonic attacks. And the idea that it's a weaponized sound, a sonic weapon, that begins to take

traction because now there's sound to float around the airwaves. And there's something to scare people with too? Exactly. However, the recording gets out, people hear it, and it's a low quality recording. It's made on a cell phone, right? I can't believe I got taken in by whatever this is about to be. Yeah. And you would think that people would be like, well, I don't like your reaction, I don't fucking want to hear it. It could be a sonic weapon. Do you not want to lay that for me? Fuck no, go away. Death noise out of here. But maybe it's because it's recorded on not very good technology, maybe the frequencies that would affect somebody are not being able to be recorded on the equipment, blah, blah, blah. Scientists hear the recording. And a lot of people start

contacting news organizations, they start, the word gets around. And they're like, that is just the sound of crickets. The Indies short tailed cricket, one of the loudest crickets in the world. And that what you're hearing on the recording is their mating call, which is especially loud. Are these crickets so loud that they're bursting people's eardrums? No. They don't reach that high of a decibel. Well, I'm trying to come up with the solution. Has anyone considered has anyone considered weaponized crickets? Has anyone considered that the crickets are fucking really loud? Uh, not that loud. No, what about what if they're like show off so like they're like exhibitionist crickets, they want you to know that they're fucking but wouldn't that affect

everybody in the vicinity, not just the US diplomats? No, because we have perhaps these people have like, I don't know, genetically membranous eardrum that is only present, you know? Yeah, it's true. The American public, it's out in the media. And then everyone's like, it's a fucking cricket calm down. And so this idea of like undermining the sonic weapon, right? And being like, you guys are just using scare tactics. It's the 24 hour media cycle. So that begins to birth a response to what could this be? And a theory is posited that this could be a mass psychogenic illness. Yes, that is one of the explanations that I had considered obviously. Exactly. Mass psychogenic illness previously could be referred to as mass hysteria, which is the idea that like it's not

very nice. It's not very nice. No. Um, if you don't know hysteria is connected to the uterus. Hysteria was linked very specifically to women, only women could be crazy. And so therefore, the word hysteria comes from that. I think it translates to like wandering uterus. That's what hysteria means. Oh, that's like a nice little journey. I would also add that hysteria has like the connotation of being irrational or in some way the fault of the person who is afflicted by it, or like there and it throws etc. Whereas I think that like, identifying something as like a mass psychogenic illness, the term illness kind of maybe stresses that one, the symptoms as the people are experiencing them are real. And then two, I think that maybe that we're all more susceptible

to things like this than we might imagine. Exactly. There's definitely an association with mass psychogenic illness that those who are affected are of like a lesser mental capacity. They're crazy. Yeah, they're fucking crazy. Or they're weak or they're dumb or whatever. But anybody can be affected by this. And a good example is after the development and mass production of the telephone, there were widespread concerns about an acoustic shock. Telephone sickness. Attributed to the telephone. Yes. Yeah. So some physicians of the day thought that the exposure to the telephone having sound so close to your ear would create a concussion like symptom. Notice how the language is even very similar. Interesting. But once as a society we got more accustomed to

using telephones, that worry and concern for even from a medical standpoint began to dissipate. That fear was no longer there. By this theory, what we have is we have people working at this embassy just random paper pushers and they're feeling the stress of the day. Yeah, because diplomatic relations are starting to go quite left. Right. And they're nervous, as we said. Yeah, Tina was afflicted in 2017, right? So Trump has been voted in. Yeah, she's got her own private stresses as well, whatever they are. The twins. She hears someone mention this thing what the day before. It's been kind of around the water cooler for a few weeks. So she's thinking about so I hope that doesn't happen to me. Da da da da. Yeah. I think that the human mind is capable of a lot.

Oh yeah. But there are these other symptoms too. There are these like quite physical symptoms that mimic like there's ear injuries and stuff, right? Right. Yeah. That are coming up in CT scans and all the stuff. Isn't it fucked up what our brains do? My god. That shit. It is. Go away. Calm down. Chill out. It is so wild. And you asked this question in fact like can a psychogenetic illness like this really create these types of injuries? And according to this book Havana syndrome mass psychogenic illness and the real story behind the embassy mystery and hysteria by Robert E. Bartholomew and Robert W. Boloa. They say a couple of bobs. This can totally happen. Yes. And it's not to say that these symptoms are fake symptoms. Yep. They are very real symptoms. They come up

in tests. They come up in scans. There is a pain that is associated with them. They are real symptoms. But they're manifestations of anxiety rather than a sound weapon. Exactly. Exactly. And I think sometimes that really does get conflated with like a psychosomatic response to things is that like well you're just making it up. It's not real. But it's we've been talking about it. The brain is a crazy and strong instrument of deception my friend. A cruel task master the human brain and defective in so many ways that you will never even begin to contemplate. So many beautiful ways but very destructive ways as well. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Some of us got brains that are trying to kill us from the inside just for no good reason. It is what it is. Yeah. And

this book that the bobs as you noted put together one is a medical sociologist who has written extensively on the inappropriate placement of disease or disorder labels onto unpopular unfamiliar behaviors. Interesting. That's Robert Bartholomew. That's a good fight. A quote from his bio and Robert Boloa he's well known in the field of neurology distinguished professor of neurology and head and neck surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He's been the head the director since 1974. Not a podray fan probably. I don't know maybe he's probably like a Dodgers or like go pods. He might hate baseball. You know what you're right. Go pods. I love the loyalty steadfast. Respect. Respect. It's true. It's true. Their book that they published is essentially

an entire argument in favor of whatever is happening in Cuba to be psychogenetic. It's an interesting argument and I think they pose it very well. It doesn't seem to be helping though. I think that would be my one critique is that it's just like now what my dudes people are suffering. So people are suffering and we seem to have made up our mind on the diplomacy thing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That door has closed and the lock and yeah. Christ. So where does that put us now? Where does that put us now? In 2021 there was a sharp increase of these symptoms and afflicted personnel. U.S. State Department personnel. A sharp increase in Vienna Austria. So about 20 cases in the year 2021 kind of popped up in Vienna. Okay. Vienna syndrome question mark.

Right. Vienna apparently a haven for spying. So it's spy anxiety again. It possibly potentially. Yes. Yeah. You know it's Eastern ish Europe so it kind of becomes this tie of Russia and the U.S. and Western Europe. The Austrians apparently don't really care about espionage there as long as you don't step on any Austrian toes. It's fine. Fair enough. Just take your shoes off when you come in the house and we're all good kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Enjoy the soccer tour. Yeah. Exactly. And apparently a lot of diplomats and spies included in that really enjoy Vienna. It's a lovely city. Great healthcare. Great transportation. Wonderful history. A fun time had by all. So everyone's kind of like I'll take that. Yeah. Five stars. Beauty. So it's kind of a haven an espionage

haven if you will. We should go. You know my sister lives there. We could go and visit her. Oh because I've been legitimately thinking of like we should go somewhere and do something for this. You know what I mean. Yeah. Like a trip. Vienna would be dope. So all of these cases are arising in Vienna which is complicating the situation. One because it's called the Havana syndrome and now it's in Vienna. What are we doing again. Another reason why you do not name illnesses or afflictions or whatever on a location. Just say it. It complicates things. Yeah. There's some theories from US intelligence that maybe it's the Russians. I had mentioned that the Russians working through Cuba and so okay now they're in Vienna. This is always good to put the

Russians on the board. You know you got to have them there. You know this Trump guy we've been talking about. They did that. Yeah. Oh hot take. Interesting. Spicy take but they did that anyway. With that idea then there develops a theory that maybe the Russians wanted the US and Cuban relationships to dissipate. Yeah. That would be in their capacity. Right. And if that was their goal then they succeeded. Right. Because things have fallen apart. The US embassy closed their doors. Cuban officials in the US were sent back home. If that is their goal in Vienna though that has not been achieved because nothing has really changed in terms of US diplomats and spies leaving the city of Vienna. Everything is still kind of hunky dory. Sure. The affected US foreign

service employees are growing in number. I mentioned at the beginning it's about a thousand at this point. Different levels of affliction. Different levels of injuries. Many are seeking help and health care in the US. They've been kind of sent home. They've had to go into early retirement but they're running into issues when it comes to health care seeking health care in the US which no surprise I suppose. Very sad. Hot take. So it's all a mess and very sticky which pretty much means that the federal government needs to come in and help with the health care but if we know anything about Walter Reed Hospital and the health care that American service people get it's not super great. Not very consistent. There are a lot of these foreign service officers who are concerned

and they're speaking out and they're sharing what it's like to live with this pain. What it's like to endure kind of this mystery as well. Yeah. It's very confusing and very hard. Traumatic brain shit is very very very difficult. It's very scary. I remember I had an old roommate she got hit by a truck and suffered a very intense. She was on her bike and she suffered a very intense concussion. Poor thing. Her settlement was very hard to go through one because she had a really bad brain fog. She really couldn't remember a lot of things. It was so revealing how damaging brain injuries like that could be. Awful. But you don't see it. That's the other thing. It's really serious shit. My heart goes out to people afflicted by that. Yeah. In 2021 Biden did sign

in a new law that was supposedly meant to help affected employees seek the help they need. It seems based on reports from afflicted people that that hasn't been as helpful as maybe it was initially designed to be. So things are still trying to move along and part of why it is so difficult to seek the health care though is because they don't know the cause yet. We still have no idea. Is it a sonic ray gun? Is it mass psychogenic illness? The most up to date assessment has come last month, March 2023, with an assessment published by the intelligence community in the U.S. So that includes the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, all of them working together. They dropped a collab. Exactly. They are strongly conclusive that this is not caused by a foreign adversary.

Okay. I'll quote the CIA director Bill Burns when he says the intelligence community assessment reflects more than two years of rigorous painstaking collection, investigative work, and analysis by IC agencies, including the CIA, and IC is intelligence community. We applied the agency's very best operational, analytic, and technical trade craft to what is one of the largest and most intensive investigations in the agency's history. So he's trying to impress on all of us that they're taking it very seriously. Like, no, listen, no, listen. We were out recording individual crickets. You have no idea. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. Do you know how hard? Yeah, exactly. And their conclusion is that

it's not caused by a foreign adversary. What did cause it? Still a question mark. Okay. But they are decidedly crossing sonic ray gun off the list. But now you have to deal with some justifiably butthurt Cubans who you've been calling it the Havana syndrome for years and talking about the sonic ray gun. Well, they're literally sitting there like, what the fuck are these men they're talking about? We do not have a sonic ray gun. Exactly. That's awkward now. It's very awkward. And this will certainly be a major stepping stone in US Cuban relations as we continue down the line. We'll look back on this and be like, oh, remember when we fucked that one way bad? Yeah, that was cool. Those embassy workers got

too stressed out. I guess so, man. You know what? Maybe. Self care is very important. Take care of yourself. Stress is a killer, dude. Oh, baby. So it seems so it seems. I will also point out that Bill Burns, the director of the CIA is on the record saying, quote, I want to be absolutely clear. These findings do not call into question the experiences and real health issues that US government personnel and their family members, including CIA's own officers, have reported while serving our country. End quote. I think he's alluding to the fact that even if we can't find a cause, it doesn't mean that the causation isn't a real thing. You don't want to call something psychosomatic because there's a stigma on psychosomatic illness. Totally. And you know,

he might also not want to say it because the assessment and the findings didn't point to that either. Yeah, yeah, true. It just crossed something off the list. That's true. It wasn't a process of elimination yet. Yeah. Oh, God, God, damn. Taylor, what do you think it is? The thing that satisfies the most of the boxes that I could check off in my brain with, again, the caveat that I am no kind of medical professional and I'm hearing a very curated version of this whole thing told to me by my friend who's also not a medical professional, you know, so grain of salt. Way to call me out. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, were you posing as a psychologist? Yeah, I'm calling you. If that's the case. I would say that the idea of like a really intense anxiety caused psychosomatic

illness scans to me the most. It doesn't, to me, I don't know how that causes like ear injury, though. Like, I don't, that doesn't quite make sense to me. Right. The sincere answer is, I really don't know. It sounds the closest to like sort of this mass psychogenic illness that like the very first story that I did for this show, the electric soldier, poor you got an episode of Pokemon where people had heard that this episode of Pokemon where was giving people seizures, yeah, then watched the episode out of curiosity and experienced seizures because they had heard in advance that they were primed to do so, right? Right, especially with symptoms that seem to be a little bit across the board too. It's like headaches, not very good balance, like those

things can be caused by a lot potentially too. So it might be like, oh, I have a headache because I've experienced those symptoms due to other things. Exactly. I will say as long as you promise me that it's not actually a sonic weapon, I will listen to that clip if you still got it. Oh, all right. Now that you you promise me it's just like a shitty recording of some crickets and I'm not gonna go insane, right? We're not because this is people are gonna get mad if we give them the amount of syndrome. That's true. This is from the AP. Well, if it's from the AP, then I can fucking listen to it. Okay, listeners, just a warning, this will be a loud sound. It won't cause any damage to your ears, but it will be loud.

Yeah, it's a cricket. Yeah. It's not a very nice noise. I understand why people would take issue with that noise and be like, well, if my brain is having an issue, obviously, this is the thing that caused it. Totally. I have a headache. Oh, it must be that loud, obnoxious grating sound. It must be that fucking screaming noise that I'm always hearing. I got that. I got that. Yeah. Oh, how rotten for these poor folks. I know. It must be so scary too. And to have people like kind of always haggling over like, oh, you know, what is this? Yeah, calling you into question. To be a poker chip in this stupid game. It's been going on for like decades, and we'll continue after you die. Yeah. Well, we're going to give an official bittersweet infamy pobrecito to all of those.

Send in your love. Sincere, you're laughing like it's insincere, but it's a sincere. It is great sincere. I hope y'all feel better soon. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com. Or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinfamy. But no pressure. Bittersweet infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. Or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. The sources that I used for the April Fool's Aminphemous

Season 1 Episode 6 of Screen Land, the episode was called 8-Bit Archaeologists. I watched a game review of Where in North Dakota is Carmen San Diego on YouTube by Tanry Nomad. I read an article by David Craddock for the Video Game History Foundation. Why in North Dakota is Carmen San Diego? That was published by our J2020. I really recommend that article in particular. It is based on the information that the archivist Frank Safaldi collected, and it's a really loving, jam-packed archivist's treatment of the subject with lots of fun little details. And I also read the Wikipedia page for Where in North Dakota is Carmen San Diego. I will defend that decision. It's a really good one. I double-checked the sources, and it is also critical to

both how Frank Safaldi found the story and how I found the story, so check out that Wikipedia page. It's a good read. The song we used for our interstitial music was Where in the World is Carmen San Diego by Rockefeller. The sources that I used for this episode include a podcast by the name of The Sound, Mystery of Havana Syndrome, created by Project Brazen, investigated and hosted by Nicky Wolfe. This is a great podcast. If you want to hear more on The Havana Syndrome, they go really into depth. I read an article from The New Yorker, The Mystery of the Havana Syndrome, unexplained brain injuries, afflicted dozens of American diplomats and spies. What happened? By Adam Entow and John Lee Anderson, published November 9th, 2018. Another article from The

New Yorker entitled Vienna is the New Havana Syndrome hotspot, written by Adam Entow, published July 16th, 2021. The sound clip that you heard, which hopefully did not cause any damage to you, was entitled What Americans Heard in Cuba Attacks the Sound, published on YouTube by the Associated Press October 12th, 2017. I read an article entitled Katy Perry pops on, deployed to disperse anti-APEC protesters in Philippines following clashes, published November 19th, 2015 by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Another article I read was from Politico, entitled Intel Community Bats Down Main Theory Behind Havana Syndrome Incidents, written by Laura Seligman and Aaron Banco, published March 1st, 2023. And the song you

are listening to now is Tea Street by Brian Steele.