Can an app make you hallucinate? – Let’s talk about that. (cheerful music) “Good Mythical Morning”. – Hey Rhett? – Hey, what? – You hear that? That way off in the distance? (Link vocalizing) – Uh, yeah, I think I do. – That’s right, I hear it too. (Link vocalizes) – Oh, yeah, I think it’s getting closer. It’s getting closer! (Link vocalizes) It’s getting closer! (Link vocalizes) – It’s the sound of science! – Hey! – But how real is this science? – Today, I’m glad we did that, by the way, the whole thing where it got closer, and it was the research, I’m glad we did that. – Hey I just noticed it was happening. – Today, we’re experimenting with different technologies that use varied combinations of sound and light to make you supposedly hallucinate. – Hallucinate. – What a freaking morning! (Link laughs) It’s time for are these hallucination techniques legit or just shoddy? And is that my nose floating away from my body? – Is that gonna happen to us today? What are we gonna hallucinate? And will we even know if it’s happening, or are we just gonna wig out? Now, you may remember the last time we tried to hallucinate, we did so through breathing, holotropic breathing, if I remember correctly, and we had a human guide, and many people, many mythical beasts, worried about us, and we do appreciate that. But so we just want to say up front, that we’ve looked into this whole sound and light method of hallucination and we promise we’re gonna be safe about it, but we don’t promise to be mature about it. – Nope, we’re gonna be experimenting with something called AVE, audio visual entrainment. Named that because it involves training the mind’s brainwaves to switch into different states of consciousness. It’s also referred to as brainwave synchronization, but the official definition for AVE is the hypothesized capacity of the brain to naturally synchronize its brainwave frequencies with the rhythm of periodic external stimuli, most commonly auditory, visual or tactile. – Okay, so what does all that have to do with hallucinations? Well, one major theory is that hallucinations occur when something funky happens in the brain’s frontal lobe and the sensory cortices. – I’ve never seen you or heard you say cortices. – Yeah, it’s the plural- – I’m glad I’m here for it. – I didn’t even know I had more than one cortex. – Yeah, well, you might not. – The AVE purposefully messes with the auditory and visual sensory cortices, which is where we process light and sound, to then in turn alter our brain waves. – So the Cliff Notes goal of AVE is to trick your brain into a sort of dream state while still being awake to ignite the theta brainwaves responsible for the vivid imagery we experience while dreaming. – And apparently everyone’s experience with AVE is completely unique. So there’s no specific expected outcome or a certain type of hallucination- – We don’t need to want anything. – That we expect. – We just let it happen. – We’re just gonna go along for the ride and see what happens, and we are gonna be testing three different products to get us there, are you ready? – Mmhmm. (psychedelic music) First up, we’re gonna be trying the Dreammachine created in the 60s by Cambridge scientist, Ian Sommerville, and the beat surrealist artist, Brian Gysin, I think is how you say that, which uses a strobe light-esque effect to induce hallucinations. And before we start, if you have epilepsy, photosensitivity or nervous disorders, these experiments involve flashing lights so they can be dangerous to you. So please proceed with caution if you’re planning to watch, – Mmhmm, okay, this is a pretty simple device. It’s a cylinder with specialized shapes cut into it. And it’s on top of a record player so that it will spin at 78 RPMs. – Ah, my favorite RPM. – I’m gonna fire this baby up. Oh, it’s spinning. Now let’s bring the lights down, which literally includes bringing a light down into it. Look at this. Am I seeing this for real? – [Producer] All right, guys, I need you to close your eyes. And we’re gonna set the timer for five minutes. – Five minutes? – [Producer] And then we’re gonna unpack what happens. – So just stare at it through my eyelids, huh? – Yeah, I mean, this definitely, I am seeing, so let’s just settle in. (curious music) – [Producer] Okay, time is up. – Turn this thing off, then. Gracious! Oh, I can do that. Wow. Are you still with me? (Rhett chuckles) And, did you hallucinate? – The thing that kept happening to me, was I would be seeing like, first of all, just colors like crazy, right? It’s like colors, colors, colors, colors, colors, all kinds of different colors. – What colors? – Every color on the spectrum. I would see like a white hot light. And then I saw some streaks of red, but I didn’t see every color of the rainbow. – Well no, like, I’m seeing lots of colors and flashing and then all these colors would be flashing, but then something would happen repeatedly where the flashing would get slower and slower and slower. And then for a few seconds, the flashing would go away and it would be completely light blue, just all light blue. And I would get a sick feeling in my stomach. Like I was flying. – Things went very light blue for me. – The light blue was the weird part. – There was a point in the middle when I just, I felt giddy, like I just started smiling. – Did you feel sick at all? – No, I didn’t feel sick. – When I would fly- – I didn’t feel like I was flying. – I didn’t feel sick, but every time I would fly, I felt like I would enter into a watermelon. Like I was boring down through a watermelon, in terms of it would be like green, and then it would be like pink, pink, pink, pink, pink, pink, pink, and then it would start flashing again, and I would like, come back to like, oh, you’re just in front of a machine on set- – [Link] You flew through a watermelon? – And then I would go into the sky and then I would dive bomb a watermelon. – I’m a bit jealous. – I was flying and then diving into watermelons. That’s what happened to me, – I mean, I didn’t go that far, but I was happy for a nice little sesh- – It didn’t make me giddy, it made me sick. I guess I don’t like watermelons. – And there’s more. (psychedelic music) All right, now we’re gonna test an app called Lumenate. This is available in the App Store. You pay a subscription fee of seven bucks a month for it. Ah, let’s see. It was created by Bristol based, Tom Galea and Jay Conlon who say that they want to make subconscious exploration more accessible than ever. – I like the sound of that. Here’s how it works, the app claims to alter the brain’s rhythms with a smartphone’s flashlight, putting users into a state somewhere between a psychedelic high and deep meditation. – All right, let me explore my subconscious. – There’s audio that goes along with it. He’ll be listening to that. I won’t be able to hear it. When you’re ready, give me the thumbs up, we’ll lower the lights and I’ll start it on the phone. – And then you can go second, unless my head pops off and then you might not wanna do it. – Yeah, and we’ll wait until we’re both done, and then we will compare our adventures. – All right, which one are you doing? Intense exploration? – I want it to be as intense as possible. – [Link] Yes. – Here we go, let’s lower the lights. And beginning. – [Narrator] Get yourself comfortable. – Okay, get myself comfortable. – [Narrator] Close your eyes, and then take a couple of big deep breaths, in through your nose, and out- – This is going to be very boring for me. (calm music) He seems to be enjoying himself. – I’m back. – Welcome back, Link. – Yeah, I want you to do that. I don’t wanna tell you too much about it. You gotta get in a comfortable place where it’s like, point-blank, blasted with that stuff. You have this urge to like open your eyes, and then once you get past that and you just relax into it, I mean, you really go into a meditative place. It’s very similar to the first one, but better because it seems to be synchronized with the music, so, all right. Are you ready for some intense exploration? All right, your journey begins now. (calm music) Hey, welcome back fellow traveler. Remove the headphones and let’s debrief on our journeys. First of all, I will say if I walked in on you doing that, I would exit quickly. – Back away? – That was freaky. I couldn’t look at you ’cause I don’t know if I got a headache from doing it or from just watching you afterward, but I’ll let you go first, since it’s fresh, – It is so much more intense than the first one. I feel like I have seen the fabric of the universe. (others laugh) I feel like the universe pulled up its skirt. I mean, that’s probably a bad, like pulled the curtain back. – Don’t go Dave Matthews on me. – (laughs) I feel like the universe was like, “This is who I am. These are my layers.” And it would be this like intense, unbelievable image, like the images were so fast. they were faster than my brain could process. – What do you mean images? – I can’t paint, but if I was a painter, I could be like, I could paint a million different paintings for you right now based on what I just saw. Like crazy detail, all this different stuff and bubbles, and fractals. – Fraggles? – Fraggles, no- – So we got some Muppets? – “Fraggle Rock”, fractals. And then beyond that, I would see a deeper layer that would sometimes reveal itself and it would be moving a little bit slower. And then at least seven times, I almost started crying. – I didn’t see any tears, but I was noticing that your eyes weren’t completely closed. I was afraid you were gon’ blind yourself. – And then I could manipulate what the images were. ‘Cause I was like, “This is like a dream.” Because there was these things that, all these little images, and I was like, “Can I make the images numbers?” And then they would become numbers and I’d be like- – Seriously? – “Can I make the images letters?” And then they would become letters. – For me, I saw a lot of colors, and I had this sensation of traveling. – Oh yeah. – I guess the flashing, I don’t wanna explain it, but I just felt like I was in motion and then it was more of the lights, different colors, dots and stuff. I didn’t try to control anything. – I only did that at one point. – I got very relaxed and then of course it changes at different points, and when it got really intense, it would bring up my energy. And then I would find myself going into more of a calm state, but I didn’t feel like I was connecting with anything because I think I knew in the back of my mind, it was basically somebody shining a flashlight and going like this. (others laugh) You know? – There were a couple of times I just felt I was in a pool. – At one point I felt like I was floating face down in like a river, so I was like, traveling. I guess you try to make sense of it. – I think some of the sounds, had a, this is like coming through water maybe. And I would be like, “I’m in a pool and I’m coming to the top.” And then it would just kinda fade into something else. On a scale of one to 10, the first one was a three and that was a nine, because I’m leaving room for other possibilities. – We have one more possibility. Let’s get to it. (psychedelic music) – Before we do this last exercise, I wanna remind you about the last quarterly collectible item of the year, the Rhett and Link plushies. – Yeah, you need, what, what? – [Plushie Link] We’re too good! – If you need an emotional support plushie, let it be us. And they talk. – [Plushie Link] Some of that. – You gotta sign up for 3rd Degree Quarterly or Annual by December 31st, by the end of the year. Visit mythicalsociety.com for details. – [Plushie Rhett] Be your mythical best. – [Plushie Link] As you can see, we can. – All right, I’m gonna to keep mine right here, just to keep me company. All right, so we dropped $360 on this thing and that’s not including this second set of really cool-looking glasses. – I mean, basically it’s just an old iPod and NASCAR glasses. – It’s called Kasina Mind Machine, created by a company called Mindplace. And we’re gonna do a 15 minute session called Starlit Night. – I gotta tell ya, after what I just experienced- – It’s supposed to take you to a real tranquil place. – This is longer and more intense, and it’s supposed to use other colors, is this okay for the brain? I mean, I feel like I’ve already traveled the breadth and width of the universe. Am I going to break through? I mean, I almost cried in the last one. – Cry, man. – Something may happen to me, I don’t know. I may not even be here, I may enter into this iPod. – You’re gonna be fine or better. – Okay. – All right, who’s gonna get it started? ‘Cause now, I can’t see anything. – I got it, I got it, here we go. – I gotta remember to keep my eyes closed under here. – [Rhett] There we go. (calm music) – Did we make it? I think everybody in here is asleep. (others laugh) I’ll say, not nearly as intensive an experience as the last one, what would you say? – It was not a visual experience. About three to four minutes in, I thought, “Is this broken?” – Well, there’s music and there’s the lights change colors, and it was subtle and there wasn’t flashing. – It was almost like I fell asleep in a cop car. – Yeah, yeah, and I saw some greens at that point. – There was greens and blues. – Some blues. – But then something very significant happened. Okay, so this is going to freak you out a little bit. – Hey, I’m ready for it. – Listen, last time I felt like I was going through, like traveling and, this is like- – It was a trial. – I was receiving something else, and I received secret knowledge. (laughs) I know all y’all thinking you guys make everything up, but okay- – Okay, yeah, I believe you. Tell us your secret knowledge. – No, so I felt like I reached the liminal space between asleep and awake, right? Where these things start materializing. Conceptually, not visually. And the first thing that happened was, I had these very strong images of NASA equipment somewhere, like on a planet, and then I was like, “Oh crap, NASA has gone someplace other than the moon.” And then I was just like, “Oh, that’s just Mars.” (laughs) But hold on, here’s the thing. I felt like I received that knowledge directly from Mars versus just knowing it. I know that doesn’t make any sense. Then the second thing that happened, is I visualized a bathroom at a school. The kinda like tile covered bathroom that you would have at Buies Creek Elementary School. And I felt like I was receiving knowledge that, at this school that I was seeing, there is a body buried underneath the bathroom. – I cannot join you on this investigation. – I felt so strongly about this. I was like, “Oh, I have tapped into, oh, it’s a knowledge stream. And then what is it? What, underneath the light blue tile in this bathroom, there is a body buried underneath?” – Is it a child’s body? – I don’t know, but it’s a body in the place where the urinals are. – Sir, if you can’t give us a description, we’re not gonna be able to excavate. – I’m just saying, if you know of a bathroom that was constructed in a school, it’s got light blue tile, if you go to the spot where the urinals are and you take a jackhammer, there will possibly be a body. – You’re asking them to look for it? (others laugh) – And then after that, it just went back to lights. – I mean, talk about the liminal space, yeah, I wanted to go to sleep. That’s pretty much it. I’m committed to being honest. – Oh, you think- – And not- – Okay, okay, between the two of us, who’s the one that stretches things out? – Hey, don’t- – Okay, okay- – I wasn’t directing that at you. – Yeah you were! – I was speaking for myself. – You just did this, I’m not BSing. I’m not saying, I think any of it’s real. I’m just saying that those were the things that came to me very, very strongly and significantly. I’m not saying it for entertainment purposes. I’m saying that that is what happened. – I respect that, but I didn’t get any messages from anybody. – Well, I mean, maybe you need to go in for another session. – No, I’m good. Maybe you wanna take this thing with you. – I may take it home. I actually liked that app better. – Go into more children’s bathrooms with it. – Yeah, but if you need help, if you need me to help you solve any crimes, I’ll just be at home with my iPod and my glasses. (chuckles) – I think I’m just gonna rip off the cord and walk around and be this guy forever. – Thanks for subscribing and clicking that bell. – You know what time it is. – This is Agent Finch, originally from Oregon, stationed in Naples Italy, and it’s time to spin the Wheel of Mythicality. – There’s some beans in that. – Yeah, the agent had beans. – I thought that she might open them up with her elbow, but that’s what I was hoping for. – Maybe later. – It was still pretty awesome. Click the top link to watch this match the crew members to their weird sound in “Good Mythical More”. – And to find out where The Wheel of Mythicality’s gonna land. To get the Rhett and Link plushies, join 3rd Degree Quarterly or Annual by December 31st. Visit mythicalsociety.com for details.