The Why Files: Operation Podcast

-Head to https://Superpower.com and use code BASEMENT at checkout for $20 off your membership. Get 100+ biomarkers tested every year, plus a personalized health plan and on-demand care team. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod #ad -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. -For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at https://Mengotomars.com. #ad Mitch Horowitz spent 27 years inside America's biggest publishing houses — and the whole time, he was the occult guy. PEN Award–winning historian, practicing occultist, censored in China, endorsed by David Lynch. We get into hidden history: presidents, gurus, dime-store horoscopes, and experiments that shouldn't work but do. Some of what he told me, I can't even put in the title. Come down to the Basement and find out why. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% off your @MUDWTR with code BASEMENT at https://mudwtr.com/BASEMENT! #mudwtrpod -For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at https://Mengotomars.com. A physicist with a background in missile defense and NASA spent decades learning to leave his body at will. What he found changed how he understood reality itself. Thomas Campbell built the first lab with Robert Monroe to study out-of-body states, and helped invent a sound technology that's still used today to alter consciousness. Then he spent 33 years turning those experiences into a working theory of physics. This conversation covers entanglement, the double-slit experiment, artificial intelligence, and what actually happens when we die, all explained through a lens that makes the strangest parts of quantum mechanics finally make sense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Start therapy with BetterHelp and get 10% off at https://betterhelp.com/whyfiles. #ad -Make your summer wardrobe easier—go to https://quince.com/thewhyfiles for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada. -Let Rocket Money help you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitor your spending, and lower your bills—join at https://RocketMoney.com/thewhyfiles. -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. 📲 Download Raid https://pl.go-ga.me/f1zgvmcl Use my link to get 3 Limited-Edition Legendary Champions and 3 Epic Champions! A man sits alone in a blank room, sobbing into a bowl of soup while two grinning figures rub his back. A masked woman eats king crab in silence while a man's voice gives orders from off camera. A commuter boards her last train home, and the train never stops where it should. Ninety minutes later, she steps onto a platform that isn't on any map. Three strangers. Three recordings. Three stories that spread across the internet and refused to make sense. For years, people slowed down the footage, decoded hidden messages, and traced accounts back to their source. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Download Cash App Today: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/re0kp2pw #CashAppPod As a Cash App partner, I may earn a commission when you sign up for a Cash App account. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Bitcoin services provided by Block, Inc. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures. -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. Danny Goler built a career on physical risk: parkour, stunts, national television. Then he pointed a cheap laser through DMT-altered vision and found something he wasn't looking for. Symbols. Structure. A language he now calls the code of reality. Thousands of strangers around the world have since aimed the same beam and reported identical shapes, without ever comparing notes. AJ pushes past the viral story into the parts most conversations skip: what Goler actually felt, what changed inside him, and where the science ends and the mystery begins. Goler walks through a vision that reshaped his understanding of divinity and free will, along with the encounter that convinced him something real is on the other side. This conversation goes further than most guests are willing to go. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Sleep cooler this summer with 20% off sitewide at https://bollandbranch.com/whyfiles using code WHYFILES. Exclusions apply. -Go to https://zenni.com/podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15 percent off your first order. -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. By spring of 1945, Hitler was surrounded on every front, but one project inside a secret mine kept running until the end. It was called Die Glocke, The Bell, built on mercury, fire, and a design borrowed from a thousand-year-old Indian text. The scientists who built it vanished, along with the man who ran the entire project. Decades later, the same technology resurfaced in a US Navy patent, and nobody could explain how it got there. This is the story of a warning written a thousand years before World War II, the men who ignored it, and the strange thread connecting an ancient king to modern spaceflight. Some of it is real, and none of it is finished. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Head to https://Superpower.com and use code BASEMENT at checkout for $20 off your membership. Unlock your new health intelligence. 100+ biomarkers. Every year. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod -Go to https://nicnac.com/whyfiles and use code WHYFILES for 20% off, or use the store locator to find Nic Nacs near you. -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. David Paulides spent his career as a detective. Then two park rangers knocked on his door and told him something that didn't add up: people are vanishing in our national parks, and nobody's talking about it. Search dogs that won't track. Hunters who walk back with stories that shouldn't be possible. A bullet that hit nothing. AJ sits down with the man behind Missing 411 to ask the question the Park Service won't answer — where did they go? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get 25% off Cowboy Colostrum with code WHYFILES at https://cowboycolostrum.com/WHYFILES. Josh Cutchin is a researcher, author, and musician whose work occupies a rare space between rigorous scholarship and genuine open-mindedness. Josh Cutchin is a researcher, author, and musician whose work occupies a rare space between rigorous scholarship and genuine open-mindedness. Over eight books he has built a unified argument that Bigfoot, fairies, UFOs, near death experiences, and ghosts are not separate phenomena but facets of the same ancient, shape-shifting presence. His 2022 masterwork Ecology of Souls is considered by peers to be among the most important books in ufology in decades, and was included in Rice University's curriculum for first year PhD students in religion. His footnotes are legendary. His thinking is genuinely original. A trained tuba player who studied under Canadian Brass legend Fred Mills, Josh brings the same obsessive attention to detail to paranormal research that he once applied to music. And his central argument — that everything weird points back to the same door — is impossible to dismiss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Why Files releases video episodes on Spotify every Monday and Friday. And when you become a Spotify Premium subscriber, you get fewer ads – that means more story, less interruption. Luigi Vendittelli was 9 years old when his grandfather came inside shaking, saying he'd just seen a flying saucer over Montreal. Nobody believed him. That moment turned Luigi into Canada's foremost UFO investigator — and eventually led him to cold-call Bob Lazar, spend five years rebuilding S4 from scratch in 3D, and uncover a 1941 government map that shows exactly where the hangar doors are. And then his bank tried to shut him down. This is one you're going to want to watch twice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/THEWHYFILES to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. Hundreds of survivors across a century — climbers, sailors, divers, soldiers — report the same thing. At the moment they were about to die, a calm presence appeared beside them. It gave directions. It knew the way out. It disappeared the moment the danger passed. A neuroscientist built a machine that can summon something like it. But what his subjects experienced and what survivors describe are not the same thing. The cases are real. The pattern is undeniable. What the presence actually is — that part is still open. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before YouTube. Before millions of subscribers. Before Friday Night Tights — Gary Buechler had a story almost nobody knew. It starts at Folsom Prison, a neighbor's jar of pennies, and a double-murderer cellmate who wouldn't leave him alone. His memoir is called Waiting For. That title alone should tell you something. He sat down with AJ in The Basement and held nothing back. Watch to the end. NERDROTIC LINKS https://www.youtube.com/@nerdrotic https://x.com/nerdrotics https://www.instagram.com/nerdrotic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gather round, this happened. A nurse draws blood and collapses before she can speak. A Bavarian farmer finds footprints in the snow that only go one way. A hotel guest complains the water tastes sweet. Three stories. Three cases that were investigated, closed, and never fully explained. Gloria Ramirez turned a hospital trauma room into a chemical event that sent five people to intensive care. The Gruber family was killed one by one in their own barn — and the killer stayed for days. Elisa Lam checked into a Los Angeles hotel and vanished. Nineteen days later, the guests found out why the water tasted wrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Military aircraft circled a Welsh village for three days, waiting for something to arrive. At 2:30 AM, they got their answer when a massive black pyramid materialized above Pentyrch.What followed was a four-minute battle between military forces and unknown objects that left witnesses paralyzed and the government scrambling to cover their tracks. Caz Clarke watched the entire encounter unfold from her backyard.For eight years, she fought the Ministry of Defence to uncover the truth. Her investigation revealed illegal operations, falsified documents, and a coordinated cover-up that reached the highest levels of government.The evidence suggests our military has protocols for hunting UFOs and procedures for retrieval operations. This wasn't an anomaly—it was business as usual.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJBdjGG4T3o&t=1470s Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In December 1999, Sweden's most notorious UFO skeptic sat down for an interview that would challenge everything he believed. Ole K. had spent his career exposing hoaxes and debunking paranormal claims.The being who called herself Lacerta revealed an underground civilization that had existed alongside humanity for millions of years. She explained humanity's true origins as a series of genetic experiments and warned of the imminent return of our creators.From the mysteries of Derinkuyu to the truth about the dinosaurs' extinction, this story connects ancient mysteries to modern questions about human consciousness and evolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On a quiet October night in 1973, two friends were fishing in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Their lives changed forever when a strange craft appeared.Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker's terrifying experience became one of the most compelling UFO cases in history. What happened during those missing 20 minutes? Why did these men insist they were telling the truth for decades?But there's more to this story than just one night. There are many similar encounters and many possible explanations, both natural and supernatural. Whether the story is true or not, one thing is for sure: It was a nightmare. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices