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A former CIA officer on Tuesday said that he does not believe that the agency’s research on individuals through Project MKUltra ever stopped. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets received testimony during a hearing earlier in the day focused on MKUltra. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) has led the push to reveal more about the program, which started under former CIA Director Allen Dulles’s orders in 1953. Asked how the human experimentation program was kept quiet for so long, [Tracy Walder, former CIA staff operations officer], pointed to the destruction of much of MKUltra’s documentation as the reason. Responding to Watergate, former CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of all records related to MKUltra, according to a research paper. “You are absolutely not supposed to do that,” she continued. “But I think some of this started coming to light because individuals want justice for what happened to them.” Luna resumed the congressional hearings on the experimentation program after a ... new report stating that the CIA added a new document to its reading room about the agency studying mind control. “Administering drugs to people without their knowledge or consent, subjecting humans to psychological torture, and using prisoners and hospital patients as nonconsenting research subjects,” Luna said as she opened the hearing. “These are crimes against humanity.”
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.
Humanity has officially passed a grim milestone: the first confirmed death at the hands of a fully-autonomous robot weapon. A senior figure involved in the Ukrainian defence industry admitted that a fully autonomous drone deployed to the front lines of the Russo-Ukranian war has claimed human lives. The event has been kept under wraps for two years, Ukrainian drone maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy said. The device itself was a quadcopter drone designed to zip to the front line, loiter around a perimeter for roughly 10 minutes, then launch into “terminator mode.” This mode, the Ukranian drone expert explained, involves the use of an unidentified AI model to automatically seek out and attack human targets. During the operation in question ... it identified and ultimately attacked “a couple of [Russian] soldiers” and “one truck.” “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead,” Kokhanovskyy [said]. “There is no connection to the drone at all ... everything it sees will be killed.” While this marks the first known strike of its kind, it’s fair to say the world’s militaries have been inching toward this for a while. The Israeli Defence Forces, for example, have long deployed loitering suicide drones to hover over various demarcation zones across Palestine. More recently, US military operatives used Anthropic’s Claude to select bombing targets across Iran. If Kokhanovskyy is to be believed, humanity has crossed a threshold that can never be uncrossed.
Note: This is being called AI's "Oppenheimer moment". For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war and artificial intelligence.
Neurable, a consumer neurotechnology startup, has partnered with the Air Force to study whether electrode-studded headphones can track service members’ cognitive fitness. The $1.2 million project adds to the Pentagon’s growing investment in the $3 billion market for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) — helmets, earbuds, other wearable devices and medical implants that use artificial intelligence to make sense of brain signals. Now, advances in AI enable BCIs to interpret or change brain activity with unprecedented accuracy and speed. So much so that some scientists and neuroethicists say the capacity to monitor signals that reveal a warfighter’s or a veteran’s mental states, visual perceptions or inner dialogue may outpace the ability to shield that data from misuse. “One could certainly imagine how enforced use of such devices could create a very dystopian basis for behavioral control,” warned James Giordano, director of the National Defense University’s Center for Disruptive Technology. Some neuroethicists, however, cautioned that the use of brain wearables may also invade troops’ privacy and foster prejudice. “We need to be much more reflective on, much more concerned about and much more focused on the implications of altering a person’s brainwaves,” through neurofeedback training, “as compared to having them work out more or do more pull-ups,” said Jared Genser, a lawyer and co-founder of the Neurorights Foundation.
Note: Read about the Pentagon's plans to use our brains as warfare, describing how the human body is war's next domain. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI, biotech dangers, and mind control.
Jonathan Haidt did not expect to become the face of a global movement against social media. As Haidt’s influence has grown, so, too, have objections from critics. At issue is his central claim that smartphones and social media are causing a mental health epidemic in young people. In research released this week, Haidt and his co-author, Zachary Rausch, claim to demonstrate causal links between social media platforms and the harms they say they are doing to children. Not just harms like anxiety and depression, but also frequent sexual harassment and cyberbullying. "The biggest, clearest one, I think, is sextortion," [said Haidt]. "That’s the one that just stands out like a sore thumb. Kids, if they’re on social media, they can get sextorted. If they’re not, they can’t, really. And the kids who get sextorted are deeply shamed. They shared a picture of themselves — teenage boys usually — and then their lives are ruined, and some of them commit suicide. So I’m just saying that there are so many different mechanisms by which kids are getting harmed. Depression and anxiety are just two of the pathways. What parents want to know and what legislators want to know is: Is this consumer product, which all kids are consuming massive quantities of, is this consumer product hurting kids? And guess what? We have seven different lines of evidence saying, “Yes, it’s hurting kids.” And Meta — I mean, my God, the data they have on harm is astonishing."
Note: Read more about the dark side of social media and the sextortion rings where kids target kids. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.
Hundreds of contractors working on a project for Meta were instructed to pose as minors online and probe how competitor chatbots responded to prompts involving suicide, sex, eating disorders, and other high-risk subjects, according to internal documents and five people familiar with the project. The prompts were often designed to push the chatbots toward responses their safety systems were supposed to refuse. A single round of testing completed in August 2025 saw more than 45,000 prompts run through the rival chatbots. The companies behind the chatbots weren’t aware of the testing. Testing competitors’ products is not, by itself, unusual in the artificial intelligence industry. Former contractors who worked on the project described several aspects as alarming. According to one former worker, employees feared the possibility they could be generating or preserving child sexual abuse material if a chatbot responded to certain sexual prompts involving minors. Another says they worried the project amounted to secretly taking material from competitors’ systems to potentially feed back into Meta’s system. While a dataset of thousands of youth-safety prompts could be useful for comparing how often chatbots refuse harmful requests, the scale and opacity of [this project, known internally as] Cannes, along with the lack of disclosure to the companies being tested, made it very different from other public safety benchmarks.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.
Avi Loeb, the leader of Trump’s UAP Science Advisory Council, shockingly revealed on Congressman Eric Burlison’s podcast “Fresh Freedom” that an executive of the $137 billion military contractor Lockheed Martin claimed the company operated a crashed-UFO retrieval program. “I had a [former] high level executive from Lockheed Martin visit my home and I asked him, ‘Is there any truth to these claims?’ And he said ‘It’s not wrong,'” Loeb revealed. Loeb claims retrieved tech would be enough to prove humans are not the only intelligent beings on Earth — and believes private corporations are ready to participate in the Trump administration’s disclosure effort. “If such materials exist, we would love to analyze them. With just a gram of material, we will be able to determine if it originated outside the solar system,” Loeb [said]. Former Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program member Hal Puthoff suggested on the same podcast that Lockheed was ready to transfer materials to AATIP between 2008 and 2012 — but that plan was killed by the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. Luis Elizondo, who had a leadership role in AATIP, similarly claimed in congressional testimony that a craft of unknown origin was being held in Lockheed labs and was set to be transferred to the Navy’s Pax River Facility in Maryland. Burlison, on his tour of government facilities rumored to be housing UFOs, visited Pax River earlier this year.
Note: Don't miss our new video UFO Disclosure Explained: New Solutions for Humanity w/ Daniel Sheehan and Amber Yang. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on UFOs. Then explore the comprehensive resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
Earlier this week, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth observed what he called a successful test of “directed energy weapons” against drone and cruise missile attacks as part of the Trump administration’s “Golden Dome for America” project. These new weapons, also known as “DEWs,” promise defensive measures that can counter drone and missile attacks. They also offer applications against human targets, both on the battlefield and, more controversially, off it. The weapons ... damage their targets not with physical projectiles but with highly concentrated electromagnetic energy fired at the speed of light in the form of sound and particle beams, microwaves and, most famously, lasers. Shooting down such drones with conventional missiles is a drain on resources that favors the attacker. DEWs offer a means to counter this strategy without straining the defender’s financial resources. With cheap drone attacks, “your enemy can bankrupt you, so we have to deploy these lasers,” former U.S. Navy pilot Matthew “Whiz” Buckley [said]. “The economics are starting to level the battlefield here.” Their long-term health impacts on human targets are also not yet clear, which has been a source of controversy following the use of DEWs to disperse crowds, including protesters, and the belief that such weapons may have been used covertly on U.S. officials both at home and abroad, resulting in those attacked suffering from what’s been called “Havana syndrome.”
Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on war and non-lethal weapons.
One of the wealthiest corporations in the world is seeking government permission to release 32 million mosquitoes throughout Florida and California. Called “Debug,” the Google-owned company is attempting to flood disease-carrying mosquito populations with ... male mosquitoes that have been infected with a bacteria called Wolbachia that causes cytoplasmic incompatibility — meaning their sperm can’t fertilize the eggs of uninfected females. Over time, the theory goes, this will disrupt the reproduction cycle, thereby increasing competition and decreasing the overall population. The American people aren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of a tech company releasing millions of skeeters into the wild. “Ask yourself who is to benefit most from this, and why is it being done?” one anonymous citizen commented. “Corporations should not play a part in regulating or artificially altering ecosystems, that is the job of the EPA. This project should NOT be approved.” Another unnamed commentator concurred, writing that “we are not experimental rats. A separate 2019 project in Brazil using genetically modified ... mosquitoes was found to have inadvertently introduced lab DNA into wild populations, because the mosquitoes began reproducing anyway. Debug’s approach is substantially different, but the incident illustrates the highly experimental and uncontrollable nature of large-scale releases: the specter that a bug drop might not just fail, but backfire entirely.
Note: Oxitec, a biotech firm bankrolled by the Gates Foundation, has been authorized to release up to 2.4 billion genetically modified mosquitoes in California’s Central Valley by 2024. A plan to release over 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes into the Florida Keys in 2021 and 2022 received final approval from local authorities, against the objection of many local residents and a coalition of environmental advocacy groups. These Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are engineered so that only non-biting males survive, supposedly to curb Zika, dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya. Yet California has had no significant outbreaks of these diseases, which means billions of engineered insects are being released into the environment without a genuine health crisis to justify it. Read more about the "Pandora's Box" of bioengineered insects.
The so-called “hard problem of consciousness,” famously articulated by philosopher David , asks why and how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience. Why does neural activity in the visual cortex generate the qualia of red, or neurochemical shifts involving oxytocin result in the felt sense of love? Despite significant advances in cognitive neuroscience, this explanatory gap remains unresolved. Transpersonal psychology, rooted in an expanded ontology that embraces the spiritual dimension of human life, offers a compelling framework for reimagining consciousness beyond mechanistic assumptions. This paper proposes that consciousness is not a byproduct of brain activity but rather ontologically fundamental. The filter theory of consciousness ... posits that the brain does not generate consciousness but functions as a filter, receiver, or reducing valve. In this analogy, just as a radio tunes into and selects specific frequencies from the broad spectrum of electromagnetic waves, the brain filters and constrains a vast, undifferentiated field of consciousness into a form adapted for practical survival and everyday functioning within the material world. Empirical research supports this filter model in several ways. Importantly, this model explains why non-ordinary states of consciousness, whether induced by trauma, meditation, psychedelics, or mystical absorption, often feel subjectively “more real” or authentic than ordinary waking consciousness.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the mysterious nature of reality.
Scientists have mapped the Earth’s entire underground fungal network, showing that it’s so extensive that if it were stretched into a straight line, it would reach other star systems — and span a sizable chunk of the Milky Way galaxy, for that matter. The groundbreaking work, published in a study in the journal Science, focused on microorganisms known as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Forming the hidden backbone of our planet’s soil, they circulate water and nutrients and regulate the climate by locking away vast stores of carbon. Altogether, the global fungal network weighs around 300 megatons, the study found, which is four to six times more than the biomass of all human beings. Around 40 percent of that fungal mass resides in high-altitude or flooded grasslands, like the Everglades in Florida. The authors hope that their work will highlight the indispensable but overlooked role that these fungal networks play in the Earth’s ecosystems, with around 70 percent of all ground-based plant life depending on the fungi. In all, the model found that the planet is lined with more than 110 quadrillion kilometers of hyphae, or 68 quadrillion miles, which is almost a billion times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. On a cosmic ruler, that equals nearly 12,000 light years, or about a tenth the diameter of our galaxy. It’s the clearest picture yet of just how much fungal networks underpin our terrestrial ecosystems.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good and the mysterious nature of reality.
After reading George Ritchie's 1979 book Return From Tomorrow, a psychiatrist's account of his own Near-Death Experience (NDE)... I started to ask patients who had survived a cardiac arrest if they had memories from their period of unconsciousness. Within two years, 12 patients out of 50 survivors of cardiac arrest told me about their NDE. That piqued my scientific curiosity. According to our current medical concepts, it is not possible to experience consciousness during a cardiac arrest. Those patients should have no memories at all! Certain elements of the NDE ... might be of particular interest to psychologists. First, the Out-of-Body Experience, or OBE. People have the feeling that during their NDE they have apparently taken off their body like an old coat, and to their surprise they appear to have retained their own identity with the possibility of perception, emotions, and a very clear consciousness. This out-of-body experience is scientifically important because physicians, nurses and relatives can verify the details of the reported perceptions, and they can also corroborate the precise moment the NDE with OBE occurred. Another common experience [is] the Life Review. During such a life review, one feels connected to the memories, emotions and consciousness of those with whom they have interacted in the past, thereby experiencing the consequences of their own thoughts, words, and actions and more generally, their interconnectedness with others. NDEs are always transformational, often causing profound changes in life-insight, the loss of fear of death, and enhanced intuitive sensitivity (Van Lommel, 2010).
Note: For more inspiring and credible material on this topic, read our Substack investigations: How Consciousness Research Can Help Heal a Divided World and Insights from Near-Death Experiences Remind Us of Who We Are and What Unites Us.
Millions of Americans are borrowing money or draining their savings to buy groceries, highlighting the financial strain many households face as the cost of living rises, new research has found. More than a quarter of working-age adults who relied on credit cards to buy groceries were either unable to pay their balance in full or missed their minimum payment, according to the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. About one in 10 adults relied on so-called "buy now, pay later" loans to cover their groceries — of those, about a third missed a payment last year, the analysis found. About 20% of working-age adults said they had tapped long-term savings that weren't intended for everyday expenses, such as an emergency fund, at least once in the last 12 months to pay for groceries, the researchers said. Over the past five years, grocery prices have jumped 32%, making food affordability a top concern. In a May CBS News poll, more than three-quarters of Americans said their incomes aren't keeping up with inflation. About 12% of low- and middle-income adults who used credit cards to pay for groceries missed a minimum payment last year, triple the rate for higher-income consumers, the study found. Lower-earning households were also about four times as likely to miss a buy now, pay later payment as higher-income households.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality.
Merck & Co. says it will settle a spate of lawsuits that blame the drugmaker’s blockbuster Gardasil cancer vaccine for causing autoimmune ailments that affect young women’s hearts and reproductive systems. Under the accord, Merck would pay more than $50 million to settle more than 200 cases. Merck, based in Rahway, New Jersey, said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg News that it decided to “end the litigation in its entirety” by settling all the Gardasil litigation — except for one case. In mass-injury litigation like the Gardasil cases, companies can agree to pay a group of people claiming a product hurt them to resolve cases without saying that the product was harmful. Merck isn’t admitting liability as part of settlement. An attorney in the Los Angeles case involving Jennifer Robi, a California woman who contended Gardasilshe got as a teenager caused a heart ailment that’s left her in a wheelchair, declined to comment. Her case could have been the first against Merck over the vaccine to be decided by a jury. Merck said in its statement on the settlement that the amount it would pay is “considerably less than Merck’s anticipated costs” in defending the cases. Merck avoided a showdown over Gardasil in North Carolina last year when a judge dismissed a group of more than 200 cases he concluded were preempted by the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the vaccine’s labeling.
Note: In a CBS News article, Dr. Diane Harper, a lead researcher involved in Gardasil's clinical trials, raised concernts that reports of serious side effects could pose greater risks than the disease it was designed to prevent, especially because cervical cancer is often caught early through routine Pap tests and treated successfully. For more, read about the FOIA government records showing that by 2013, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program had paid nearly $6 million to Gardasil vaccine injury victims, including the families of two deaths. The report highlights that the original clinical trials were too short to determine whether the vaccines provided long-term protection against cervical cancer.
Have you ever paid more for a product because a brand told you it was good for you and the planet? Many activewear shoppers do exactly this, trusting that the “healthy” image on the label matches what is actually in the fabric. The Texas Attorney General’s office has launched a formal investigation into the activewear brand Lululemon. The question: does its activewear contain PFAS, a group of toxic “forever chemicals”? This sits uncomfortably with a brand built on wellness. Lululemon has denied the claims. It says it phased out PFAS in 2023. The case highlights a wider problem: a gap between what fashion brands promise and what is actually in their products. PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are synthetic chemicals used to make fabrics resistant to water, stains and sweat. They earned the name “forever chemicals” because they do not break down easily in the environment or our bodies. Instead, they accumulate over time. The issue first came to wide attention in 2011, when Greenpeace’s “Dirty Laundry” investigation named several global giants for links to dumping perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), now broadly classified as PFAS, into Chinese waterways. While most major brands promised to phase out PFAS by 2020, follow-up testing shows they still appear in leggings and sports bras across the sector. Exposure has been linked to serious health risks, including kidney and testicular cancers, hormonal disruption, and immune system damage.
Note: France has banned the use of forever chemicals in cosmetics and apparel. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.
Medical care has overinvested in screening, to the detriment of human health. It doesn’t reduce the overall number of deaths among those who are screened, and there are real human costs to getting ahead of symptoms. Patients are diagnosed with diseases not destined to bother them, and are subsequently harmed by unnecessary treatment, the side-effects of medication and complications of pointless procedures. Many more face abnormal test results, triggering cascades of more testing, procedures, complications and anxiety. Some are told that, while they don’t have the disease, they are at “high risk” for it. More generally, screening relies on fear. To persuade asymptomatic people to be screened, they must first be made to worry about diseases they might get in the future. This undermines our sense of well-being, which lies at the very core of health. All of this costs time and money—and a lot of it. Cancer screening alone in the US has been estimated to cost $43 billion annually. For a variety of reasons, I think this is a low-ball estimate: the real number is closer to $100 billion. That kind of money could go a long way toward improving treatment for symptomatic patients or, more broadly, tackling the social determinants of health. And then there is a lot of magical thinking: not only do we assume that more screening will save more lives, but that testing large swaths of the population will somehow ... reduce disparities in healthcare outcomes.
Note: Read more about how harmless cancers are being overdiagnosed in the us. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and Big Pharma profiteering.
Tech writer Eoin Higgins [recently] published Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. The main subjects of the book—fellow reporter Glenn Greenwald and myself—are [portrayed as] puppets controlled by Big Tech overlords such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks. Higgins’s case against me concerns my involvement with the Twitter Files—a trove of the social media website’s internal communications that Musk sent to reporters, including me, after he acquired the company in 2022. I took significant heat for my coverage, which included Twitter employees’ deliberations about whether to suppress the report about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 election. IRS agents made an unannounced visit to my home the day I testified in Congress about my findings, and delegate Stacey Plaskett falsely accused me of perjury and threatened to jail me. Despite this, Higgins says I sold out—literally—by working on the Twitter Files. He claims that I “fully dispensed with any pretense of challenging power” after having “cash[ed] in” with my “benefactor,” Musk. I’ve never taken money from Musk or any other “tech billionaire on the right,” as Higgins implies. The trend of casual defamation that prevails on social media—where pseudonymous accounts blithely accuse people of rape or pedophilia all day, every day—has seeped into the regular press, where “reckless disregard” has become the norm.
Note: Read the complete article to learn how Matt Taibbi fell out of favor with mainstream media when he started questioning the lies underpinning the Russiagate narrative. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and media manipulation.
Last week, I published a book called The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control. It describes how, as technology has advanced, American politics and government have been transformed by the shift in societal power from visible laws and institutions to opaque forms of digital and informational control. One of the consequences of this shift has been the ability of the government-tech alliance—what I call “the information state”—to carry out mass censorship online. This point was noted in a generally positive review of the book that ran on March 24 in a left-wing magazine called The Baffler. So I could only savor the irony when, less than a day later, the magazine purged the review from its website. In place of the purged piece is an editor’s note informing visitors that the magazine removed the review “after determining that it does not meet The Baffler’s fact-checking standards.” If a magazine publishes something that generates significant controversy ... the liberal thing to do is to publish a counterargument. To cite a “factchecking” error without elaborating what it is leaves the public even less informed than before. The book [describes how] smart and often decent people wound up being puppeteered by a vast technocratic apparatus for managing public opinion that had disastrous consequences. To them, the real censors are not the paragovernmental information regulators, but the authors whose books they disagree with.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship.
When politicians insist that they’re “following the science”—as if it reveals impersonal, unquestionable truths—they promote a dangerous illusion. Evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer warns that, like traditional diviners reading horoscopes or entrails, leaders invoke “the science” to offload responsibility, avoid conflict, and cloak decisions in inevitability. But science is no oracle: it is a human process of debate, judgement and dissent. This came to a head during the years of the virus, a period during which governments in many nations tried to enforce all manner of rules and regulations, presenting them as directly derived from “the science.” It is now clear that some of these measures were pointless, damaging or counter-productive—see, for example, scientific reviews on masks or lockdowns. That, of course, did little to bolster the public’s trust in experts and “the science.” The science used by politicians and administrations in this case only provided information about one aspect of the required decision-making. It did not quantify the social and economic costs of closing down places where people huddle together, like schools, small stores, theaters and restaurants, or of suspending all manner of “non-essential” economic activity.
Note: “Trust the science” sounds noble—until you realize that even top editors of world-renowned journals have warned that much of published medical research is unreliable, distorted by fraud, corporate influence, and conflicts of interest. In our latest Substack, COVID Revisited: A Complete Guide to Pandemic Propaganda and the Search for Truth in a Divided World, we explore how many COVID-era policies and mandates didn’t actually have a scientific basis, and failed to hold up in the face of real world evidence. We also emphasize the devastating public health costs of fear, division, and social isolation.
Jolly West, a doctor and MKUltra contractor, reported in 1956 that, through the use of LSD and other drugs, he could “speed the induction of the hypnotic state and deepen the trance,” after which he could replace “true memories” with “false ones” in people’s minds without them knowing it. Two years earlier, a 34-year-old Air Force sergeant with no history of violent or criminal behavior murdered a three-year-old girl in an apparent trance state. West was assigned to be the man’s psychiatric expert. It turned out that the sergeant had been, ostensibly, undergoing an experimental treatment for his migraine headaches at the base. The son of Andrija Puharich — an American physician, scientist, and inventor who used teenagers in his psychic experiments — gave documentary filmmaker Greg Mallozzi access to his father’s archive, which includes numerous recordings. “I worked as a consultant to the CIA,” Puharich says in one of them. “My boss was the chief medical director who’s in charge of all the dirty tricks stuff when it came to drugs and hypnosis and all the mind manipulation stuff.” Toward the end of his life, Puharich became a whistleblower and publicly lectured about the dangers of the experiments and the US government’s role. Annie Jacobson, author of Phenomenon, confirmed that Puharich “was there in the very first moments when this all took off in the late 1940s and early 50s.” A 1957 FBI memo reported that Puharich “uses various electronic equipment and drugs in his experiments and appears to be dedicated to the study of the science of transmitting messages from one person to another through mental telepathy.” The memo notes that Puharich served in the Army Medical Corps at the Army Chemical Center at Edgewood, Maryland, the installation at the center of the military’s early LSD work. Puharich’s work, which covered both drugs and psychic phenomena, may have bridged two separate government programs, MKUltra and the Stargate Project, which investigated the use of extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis from 1972 to 1995. Former President Jimmy Carter revealed that the CIA had, on at least one occasion in the late 1970s, effectively used a psychic. “We had a plane go down in the Central African Republic — a twin-engine plane, a small plane. And we couldn’t find it,” Carter told GQ in 2005. “The director of the CIA came and told me that he had contacted a woman in California who claimed to have supernatural capabilities. And she went into a trance, and she wrote down latitudes and longitudes, and we sent our satellite over that latitude and longitude, and there was the plane.”
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control.
I signed up for “Groove Therapy” with a local dance teacher, Leah Lynn. The youngest in our group is 16, the oldest over 70. Every Saturday, we play out a verb each of us brings to class — release, gather, resist, invite — translating abstract intentions into motion. It sounds faintly ridiculous. It is also, disarmingly, effective. Within minutes, something shifts. Stress loosens. Then for the next hour, we learn hip hop shuffles and swing our hips to Kool & the Gang or Beyoncé. I always return home exhausted and exhilarated. The dance classes provoked such a profound shift in my mood as well as my body that I decided to find out if there was more to it. Modern research is now catching up to the fact that dance is medicine, a deeply effective intervention for physical, cognitive and emotional health. Behind the feel-good performance lies hard science. Dance improves cardiovascular fitness, strength and coordination. Dancing activates a wide network: auditory pathways, visual and motor cortex, the amygdala and, above all, the somatosensory cortex and networks that keep track of where your body is in space. A German study that followed older adults in a dance program for more than a year reported increases in gray matter volume and synaptic density in regions important for memory and executive function. [Another study showed] that people who danced more than once a week had a 76 percent lower risk of developing dementia than those who danced less often.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies and the power of art.
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