0:00

Attention, DC, Boston, Toronto

0:03

and any place that can fly to those cities.

0:06

We're gonna be live on stage doing

0:08

our thing again. I'm May fourth,

0:10

fifth, and sixth this year. That's

0:12

right. And I gotta say, we've done this topic a few

0:14

times already and it's a real banger

0:17

and we can't wait to come to your city and have you

0:19

see it with us. We're so excited

0:22

and we just can't hide it. So go to link

0:24

tree slash sysk and

0:26

get your tickets today. Welcome

0:29

to Stuff you Should Know, a production of

0:32

iHeartRadio. Hey,

0:39

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's

0:41

Chuck and Jerry's here too, in low

0:43

data mode and this is stuff you should know.

0:46

What does that mean? I just got a message

0:48

flashed on my screen that Jerry's in low data

0:50

mode. Oh really, it

0:52

means she's low key. Olivia

0:56

helped us with this one. And you know what Olivia has

0:58

gotten great at lately is titling

1:00

these episodes in fun ways. Yeah, for

1:02

sure, you want to. You want to say this one too, Yeah,

1:04

And it's generally just for us, which I appreciate. But

1:07

this is about dousing aka

1:09

water witching, the practice

1:12

of using sticks

1:14

or metal rods or something to walk

1:16

around and have

1:19

and tell you whether or not there is water underground

1:21

or iron ore or

1:24

body being buried or

1:26

whatever. So we'll get into all that. But Olivia

1:31

titled it the surprisingly long lasting

1:33

art of dousing, and

1:36

I think it's appropriate she called it an art

1:38

because it's definitely not a science, although

1:40

people have tried to apply science to it

1:42

in interesting ways. Yeah, and

1:45

a lot of people say it's pure bunk. I

1:49

just think it's very interesting and I've never known

1:51

much about it. And that's how I'm kind of

1:53

choosing topics these days, is what

1:55

do I want to learn about? You

1:58

know? Sure me

2:00

first, that's right, and through me we

2:02

can be the conduit to others too,

2:05

amazing new ideas

2:08

like dowsing. And actually we shouldn't say this

2:10

is a new idea for us, because this um

2:12

we actually did a chapter in our book, remember I dowsing,

2:15

that's right, And in that chapter

2:17

I went back and reread it and I

2:20

was very satisfied that we

2:22

basically took the stance that

2:24

we're taking today, that you just took that basically.

2:27

You know, some people call it bunk. I don't

2:29

know enough about it to say either way,

2:31

and just to keep our minds open.

2:33

And even though it is

2:36

bunk in a lot of ways, we're not like

2:38

gonna poop poo or tear it down like we did

2:40

crop circles, you

2:43

know. Yeah, I agree.

2:45

Um, it's something that people have been doing for over

2:48

five hundred years and

2:50

and like we said, it's got a bunch of different names,

2:53

but dowsing, basically as

2:55

we think of it today is

2:58

something that started in sixteen century what

3:01

would now be Germany and the

3:03

mining industry there, which was a new thing

3:05

that was really growing fast, and

3:08

they were looking for or underground

3:10

veins of ore. And it looks

3:12

like as early as fifteen thirty there was somebody,

3:15

a mining expert name Yorg Ericola

3:19

who talked about dowsing and divining

3:21

rods in a way that he wasn't like, hey,

3:23

this is what this is like, as if people understood

3:25

what it was right in his book De ray

3:28

Metallica, is that

3:30

really what it was called? Yeah, that's a

3:32

great name. So yeah,

3:35

the Germans are pretty much unambiguously

3:38

the people who created dowsing at

3:40

least in the roughly modern era, and

3:42

it got imported to England pretty quickly

3:45

and France also, So in England

3:48

they were using it for mining, just like they were in

3:50

Germany to discover or but

3:52

France also adopted it and they said, hey, we're

3:54

going to use this for water instead. I

3:57

didn't see where they got that idea from

3:59

or why, but they I

4:01

don't know. There's like supposed references in the Bible

4:04

which may or may not reflect housing. Who

4:06

knows. It's possible that they thought that's

4:08

what it was used for in France.

4:10

I'm not sure. But by the sixteenth

4:13

and early seventeenth century you

4:15

had people a lot of people in Western Europe

4:18

walking around with forked sticks looking

4:20

for ore and water and

4:22

basically being like this, this really works. This is

4:24

how we're going to find water. And back then

4:26

it made a lot of sense because

4:29

there wasn't any other way to find water, so

4:31

why not walk around with a forked stick? Yeah,

4:34

and the idea we'll get into sort

4:36

of how people do it later on, but

4:39

is that you hold a forked stick. Back

4:41

then, at least that was sort of what they were using exclusively,

4:45

and it would dip down when there was something

4:47

underneath you of note, there

4:49

was a man named Robert Boyle, known

4:51

as a father of chemistry in the seventeenth century,

4:54

who described it as a forked hazel

4:56

twig. I believe there were other woods

4:58

used hazel as one. It's kind of mentioned

5:00

a lot. Yeah, what was one of the other ones

5:03

I've seen peach rowan,

5:06

which I am not familiar with

5:08

the rowan tree, but apparently there's plenty

5:10

of them here and they bear fruit, but

5:13

it's a it's like a fruit wood that's supposedly

5:15

really good for it. Um, which hazel is another

5:17

one. And then willow um,

5:20

which makes a lot of sense because willow trees

5:22

tend to grow where there's water near the surface,

5:25

so it would kind of make sense that you would use

5:27

the willow branch. And then you'd turn around

5:30

and point to the willow tree and say down

5:32

there, that's right. And then if

5:34

it's the nineteen fifties through seventies,

5:36

you could switch your child with it.

5:39

It's right. My grandmother, oh, my dear

5:42

sweet, my

5:44

dad's mom opal, she

5:47

would make us go pick out our switch,

5:49

no, which is I think was a tradition. This ouf

5:51

like, go pick out the switch that I'm gonna use, And

5:54

that was the punishment that was the fear, and

5:56

you would you go out there and you pick

5:58

the flimsy twig that you

6:01

could find and come back.

6:03

And then she she never touched us. She didn't.

6:05

Oh that's good, she didn't do that. Similarly,

6:08

when you were really bad, Grandma Opal

6:10

would make you dig your own grave in the backyard,

6:14

really get to you. But she never. Oh

6:19

man, I miss her. She was great, lived

6:21

to one hundred and one. I know, that's

6:24

amazing, not bad. So

6:26

we mentioned other things that you could find underground,

6:28

like dead bodies. This

6:31

happened for a while in the late seventeenth

6:33

centuries. They started getting

6:35

into things like, hey, we could find treasure

6:37

using these y rods. We could find we

6:41

could find the bodies that we were talking about. We could

6:43

find a property boundary

6:45

that no one can agree on. Yeah,

6:47

that one's really out there. Well, and

6:49

that's very like, I mean,

6:52

you better agree on who's doing doing that

6:55

job between two neighborhoods who

6:57

are at dispute with one another. You know, yeah, for sure,

6:59

it's called the best dowser in your area. Let's

7:01

use my guy. He'll show you show us where the property

7:03

line is exactly. But there was

7:05

a French peasant named Jacques Amar,

7:09

who in the latest seventeenth

7:11

century, as the story goes,

7:13

was water dowsing, and

7:16

the rod pointed down very sharply,

7:18

and he said, hey, let's get some guys

7:20

out here, dig down and get this water. And

7:23

before you knew it, they struck body and

7:26

it was a murdered woman. And he

7:28

not only found the body, but then

7:30

went to the widower

7:33

and the family basically and

7:35

said, I'm going to point this thing at you guys, and

7:38

the thing dipped at her former

7:40

husband. He fled the scene

7:43

and was found out to be the murderer. And so

7:45

now all of a sudden, dowsing rods

7:47

are, for a while at least, and

7:50

for this guy, for sure, a way

7:53

to root out

7:55

murderers and dead bodies. So

7:57

much so that in leone Um there

7:59

was a group of like I think,

8:01

a husband and wife who owned a wine shop there who

8:03

were murdered four years later

8:06

after he discovered that first body, and

8:08

they actually contacted jack Amar

8:11

and said, can you come help us find who

8:13

did this? And so he set about

8:15

with his dowsing stick looking. I

8:17

think he actually got into a boat at one point and sailed

8:20

around looking for a murderer,

8:22

rooted one out, he found one in another

8:25

town, and that guy actually

8:27

confessed and then fingered two other

8:29

accomplices who had fled France by

8:31

that time. So you're

8:34

like, well, that guy was very special.

8:36

As far as dowsing goes, there's

8:38

a lot of ways to interpret it to if you're

8:41

going to be a skeptic, where you

8:43

could say, like, this is the sixteenth

8:45

century or seventeenth century in France, and if

8:47

people thought that you were a murderer, it didn't

8:50

matter whether you were a murder or not. You

8:52

were in big trouble, and so

8:54

you might flee France if you got

8:56

worried that people were coming to look for you. Who

8:58

knows, Or you could also believe

9:00

that Jacques amar had some special talent

9:03

or gift that allowed him to douse

9:06

murder suspects, among other things.

9:08

And that's that's actually a point that

9:10

kind of underpins the

9:12

entire dowsing tradition. Most

9:15

dowsers believe that it's

9:17

innate in them,

9:19

maybe innate in everybody, and they're

9:21

just a little more their sense is a little

9:23

more refined, but that it's not like you're picking

9:26

up some magic stick. It's the

9:28

stick is somehow an instrument that

9:30

you're you're special innate

9:32

ability is using to kind of guide

9:34

you. Yeah, and you also forgot the

9:36

last possibility there, which is through

9:39

a rock in the seventeenth century France, and

9:41

you're probably gonna hit two people who murdered

9:43

wine shoff owners. Right, Yeah,

9:45

that's a good point too. Eighteenth

9:48

century dousing was not

9:51

so much a thing for mining anymore in Europe

9:54

because science had improved

9:56

such that they were like, now we've got better,

9:59

better ways to discover or this or under our

10:01

feet. And into the twentieth

10:03

century, we'll get to kind of where it stands

10:05

today later. But of course the Nazis got

10:07

involved because they were into all sorts of weird

10:10

esoteric methods of doing anything, and

10:14

the stupid Nazis and Himmler

10:16

of course said hey, let's look for explosives,

10:18

let's look for water, let's look for

10:20

gold, or just get some

10:23

Nazis out there with dowsing rods and tell me what

10:25

happens. Yeah, apparently they trained whole

10:27

units, because again

10:29

the Nazis were very stupid. And

10:31

then in the twentieth century, chuck, if

10:34

you were educated by

10:36

or employed at Harvard in the nineteen fifties,

10:39

there was a good chance you were going to study dowsing.

10:42

Well, a lot of Harvard people did, weirdly

10:46

sure, but

10:48

I mean, how many really were there out there at the

10:50

time. This is probably a significant people, probably

10:52

like a dozen. So

10:55

yeah, a full third of Harvard

10:57

educated people were studying dowsing

11:00

in the fifties. One guy Raid

11:02

Hyman and another Elizabeth G. Cohen,

11:05

they worked together. They were sociologists from Harvard,

11:07

and they studied dowsing by by

11:09

surveying agricultural extension agents,

11:12

the people who were the conduit

11:17

between education and you

11:19

know, the rural areas, right, So

11:22

these people had a foot in each camp,

11:24

so they were they were a really good group to

11:26

study dowsing or dowsing beliefs.

11:29

They found that every single state

11:31

head dowsers, mostly in the rural areas,

11:34

and that in those rural areas where the dowsers

11:36

were most densely concentrated.

11:39

There was about an average in the United States

11:41

in the nineteen fifties about thirty five dowsers

11:43

per one hundred thousand people. That's

11:46

a huge number of dowsers

11:48

in the twentieth century. Middle twentieth

11:50

century, still working in these rural

11:52

areas. Yeah, I would agree, that's a lot.

11:54

Uh. Yeah. They also did a bunch of, like

11:57

you said, interviews with these agricultural

11:59

agents, and it was basically

12:01

like a little more than half thought it was bunk.

12:05

About twenty percent said they believed in it,

12:07

about twenty four percent said they were open minded

12:09

to it, kind of on the fence. And

12:12

one thing that they discovered that Hymen and

12:15

Elizabeth Cummen discovered was basically

12:18

people it's

12:22

not that they so much believed in dowsing

12:25

as being like this foolproof thing, but

12:28

more like, hey, we can't get

12:30

a lot of guidance on where to find water, and

12:32

like it doesn't cost a lot to hire a dowser,

12:35

so it's better than nothing. If I can pay someone

12:37

in the nineteen fifties like five bucks

12:40

to walk around my field for a good place to drill,

12:42

it's better than zero, right. And it's

12:44

not like they just tapped like todd

12:48

to go out there and like use a stick

12:50

to be like drill here. These

12:52

dowsers that they were employing had some

12:55

sort of success in their track

12:57

record, so yeah, there it

12:59

made it a little easier to be like I'll

13:01

just give this a try, because what else,

13:04

what opportunity? What other alternatives

13:06

do I have? Yeah, there was another

13:08

Harvard or named Ivan zee

13:11

Vacht who did some

13:13

studying of this, and like

13:15

he said, he found that there were certain people who

13:18

just seemingly were more gifted than others at

13:20

it. It was a part time thing. Usually

13:23

people did make some pretty good money doing it, and

13:26

it was almost always something that men did

13:28

and not women. And

13:30

like you mentioned, they they generally

13:33

believed it wasn't like a snake oil thing

13:35

where they were like, let me see how many people I can rip off

13:37

with this stick. Um, they believed

13:39

in what they were doing. It seems like about

13:41

across the board. Yeah, he said, universally

13:44

basically. Um. He so he studied

13:46

specifically Homestead, New Mexico, U

13:49

and he found that Um that

13:52

he well, he basically lumped it in with folk

13:55

magic, which I think is that's

13:57

fair. Um. And he said that that DAL

14:00

is the most commonly used type

14:02

of folk magic and agriculture in these rural

14:05

areas. Like another type would

14:07

be using the zodiac to predict

14:09

when to do certain farming like

14:11

harvesting or planting or something like that.

14:14

But you're more much more likely to find

14:17

find people who were willing to believe in dowsing

14:19

than than that. Yeah, and

14:21

that even educated people believed

14:24

in it in the area. And one

14:27

reason you can kind of give for that is that

14:29

these areas were hard up for water,

14:32

so it kind of I would

14:34

guess that like the lack

14:37

of availability of water

14:40

or at least easy access to it

14:42

would kind of help suspend your disbelief

14:44

more than somebody who you know has

14:47

a municipal water supply running into their

14:49

house, you know. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Speaking

14:53

of VAT, he continued his work into

14:57

the late sixties along with his colleague Linda

14:59

K. Barrett, and they started

15:02

researching Urban Dowsers, which

15:04

is a pretty good band name. Yeah

15:08

it is. What are they? What

15:11

kind of music? I

15:14

know this is your specialty. I'm

15:17

going to just go fall back on the standby

15:19

of math rock. I

15:21

would say Pavement, like maybe a Pavement

15:23

tribute band. Even that's

15:25

kind of what it sounds like to me. But yeah,

15:29

I'm gonna just go with math rock, Okay.

15:32

They study the American Society

15:34

of Dowsers the ASD. They

15:38

were founded in Vermont in the early nineteen

15:40

sixties. I think they're about a thousand strong.

15:43

And these are people that lived, you

15:45

know, these are urban dowsers. They live where they have city water

15:47

systems and plenty of water, and

15:50

they used dowsing for other things,

15:52

sometimes to detect if you had a medical

15:55

problem, sometimes to look

15:57

for something that someone lost. They

16:01

basically argued like, hey, you should be using us

16:03

all over the world where people don't have water,

16:05

Like why is everyone against dousing

16:08

when you should be enlisting us?

16:11

Right, And the ASD still

16:13

survives today. They have multiple chapters all

16:15

over the world. As a matter of fact, even

16:19

though it's the American Society of Dowsers,

16:21

they do have other chapters in

16:23

other countries and they still

16:26

dowse. They still meet, they share

16:28

tips and tricks with one another. I believe

16:30

they have newsletters. So they're

16:33

still around for sure. So

16:36

should should we take a break and then talk about how to

16:38

do it? Definitely? Okay,

16:40

we're gonna take a break, We're gonna get our coat

16:42

hangers out, and we're gonna get going right after this. I've

16:56

still stumped. There's a about

16:58

ten percent of my brain is still working out what

17:00

music urban dowsers play. I'll

17:03

come up with it. I can't that's a that's a

17:05

tough one. So

17:07

I mean, if it were like, if they were clever and

17:09

they wanted to kind of engage in a bit

17:11

of word play, then I would say they're like neo

17:15

country pop, you know what I mean, like

17:17

Billboard chart pop Urban Dowsers,

17:19

like they can their music can be enjoyed in

17:21

the city or the country. You mean, like

17:24

the guys that sing about tailgating and stuff

17:26

like that. Precisely, I

17:29

mean, what you got, Luke Bran

17:32

or Urban Dowsers? Which one you're gonna do?

17:34

I predict Luke Bryan's gonna change his name

17:36

to Urban Dowsers in the next five years. Hey,

17:38

I'm not gonna not Luke Bryan. I

17:41

don't know it's music, but he seems like a good guy from

17:44

what I understand he is. All right,

17:46

So, how did dows you take the Well,

17:49

there's a couple of ways. You can have that y

17:52

shaped rod and

17:54

you hold it by the why

17:56

and have the the single stem pointing

17:59

out with your palms upward, the

18:02

why pointed upward. In fact, that about a

18:04

forty five degree angle. Then you

18:06

walk around and you wait for that thing

18:08

to I guess to move

18:10

in your hands. You will you wait

18:12

for it to make a barrier on your own

18:14

son, and it difts down. Like

18:17

we said, we mentioned the different kind of sticks that were

18:19

used. The kind of dowsing I see a lot

18:22

on YouTube because I did a lot of watching of this

18:24

stuff is the coat hanger.

18:26

One where they take and it's not always coat hangers, but just

18:28

two metal L shaped

18:30

rods and you hold it by the

18:33

small side of the L in each hand

18:35

and walk around and then these rods, you

18:38

know, come together and cross one another at

18:40

a place where you're standing. Right.

18:44

Apparently, the American Society of Dowsers

18:46

says, far and away the most frequent

18:48

tool these days to use for dowsing is the

18:51

pendulum. Yeah, which can be anything

18:53

from a crystal on a piece of hemp string

18:55

to a paper clip on some leftover

18:57

thread or down flossy even who

18:59

knows it doesn't matter because again, remember this

19:02

this is a tool that the human is

19:04

a conduit for. It's not

19:06

like the tool itself is super

19:08

important. Yeah, it's

19:10

just it just kind of points out what the human

19:13

can sense innately. And

19:15

with the pendulum, they basically

19:18

say, if it's swinging forward to backward,

19:20

that's yes meaning okay, there's some water

19:23

here, or it swings from side to side

19:25

for no. And because you

19:27

can get a yes or a no out of

19:29

this pendulum, you can use it for plenty of other

19:31

stuff. In fact, there's something

19:33

called information dowsing, which is essentially

19:36

like fortune telling. You ask

19:38

the dows the dowsing

19:40

rod or dowsing pendulum certain

19:43

questions in the way it responds will give you the

19:45

answer you're looking for. Yeah, it's

19:47

interesting to think. It just kind of hit me today

19:49

that they said that this is usually man, and

19:52

this is sort of the one area there where

19:54

that's true. Like, have you ever

19:56

heard of a of a man that's

19:58

a fortune teller or palm reader? It

20:01

seems like that's usually women, right,

20:04

Yeah, there are plenty of women dowsers these

20:06

days. I think it was just in that fifties

20:08

survey though. Yeah,

20:11

yeah, because I've seen interviews

20:13

with multiple women who are dowsers.

20:16

All right, all right, so that that clears that up.

20:19

We talked about walking across the field

20:21

and stuff. That's sort of what everyone

20:23

usually thinks of when they think of dowsing or

20:25

water witching is something they call it here in

20:27

the States, but there's also map dowsing,

20:30

which that pendulum comes in handy, or

20:33

you might just use like a pencil or something where

20:36

you go to like a map and

20:39

do the same thing to narrow down what field

20:41

you should walk in to find whatever you're

20:43

looking for. The pencil

20:45

one. I think there's a

20:47

writer named Robert Ader who

20:50

wrote a pamphlet that's on the American Society

20:52

of Dowser website where he talks about

20:55

using that pencil to find whatever,

20:57

and you'll hold that pencil over a map, try

21:00

and tune in whatever that means

21:02

to what you're trying to find and

21:05

feel for the location. And he's

21:07

like, listen, I've looked for water on the

21:09

moon with my Moon maps. I've

21:11

looked for the grave side of Bigfoot, and

21:14

I didn't big dig a Bigfoot up,

21:16

but I found a spot on the map where

21:18

there are definitely some large humps

21:21

of earth right

21:23

full stop, so exactly so

21:26

um. Also in that pamphlet,

21:28

Robert he basically

21:30

says like how you ask the question

21:32

and how you word it is really important.

21:35

And he gave an anecdote about when

21:37

he was looking for water on the moon with the map

21:39

of the Moon. He asked the he

21:42

asked the pencil, like, show me where

21:44

water on the moon is, and he said

21:46

the pencil started to float over in

21:48

his hand over, don't be ridiculous

21:50

here over his shoulder and point

21:53

toward the moon behind him out the window, and

21:55

he realized, oh no, I had

21:57

to ask it where on the map?

21:59

Show me on the map where there's water on the moon.

22:01

And then the pencil pointed it out. So I

22:04

feel like here we kind of reached like the point

22:06

between finding water on the moon and finding

22:09

bigfoot graves where most people

22:11

are going to take their leave of dowsing and

22:13

be like this, this doesn't work. But if

22:15

you step back and kind of strip away all the add

22:17

ons and stuff that's been you know,

22:19

put onto it over the years, and just go back to searching

22:23

for oars or water using

22:25

this stuff, um, you

22:27

can kind of not regain

22:30

credibility. That's not the word I'm looking

22:32

for. The phrase. It's more it

22:34

comes it's yes, sure, it's

22:36

at least less loony. How about that? Yeah?

22:39

Did that guy also in the pamphlet say I found

22:41

the Tykondo Rogan number two to be quite

22:44

cheeky. Man,

22:47

that's an arcane pencil reference right

22:49

there. Shout out to David Reese. Yeah,

22:51

he got that all, but he's slapping

22:53

his knee right now. So how

22:56

does this um supposedly work?

22:58

You know, it's not like they're just like, hey,

23:00

this is magic or whatever. There have been

23:02

people that have tried to explain like how

23:05

this might work, and

23:07

some of the explanations, you know, early on were obviously

23:09

some kind of magnetism

23:11

or magnetic field or something that

23:13

people can pick up on on planet

23:16

Earth. There was a

23:19

a German alchemist name Johann Tolde

23:23

who wrote under the pen name Basilius

23:26

Valentius, great name,

23:29

and put out this theory that the metals

23:31

in the earth basically breathe a

23:33

breath that rises out from the earth that attracts

23:36

the rod, and that you

23:39

know, the trembling rod would would shake when

23:41

it hits that breath. Yeah,

23:43

and this is back in the day, right, And the

23:45

German miners of his day were like, we

23:48

think it's just magnetism, right, that's

23:50

a kind of a convoluted theory

23:53

you got there, Valentis. But um, yeah,

23:56

So I feel like there

23:58

have been people over the years who've kind added

24:01

unnecessarily to the mystique. Because

24:03

if you think about it, you're like, Okay, this is

24:05

just magnetism. Somehow we're picking up magnetism.

24:08

That makes sense, that that's logical.

24:10

It doesn't. We don't have any way to explain it.

24:13

But it's a lot better than breath coming up. But

24:15

if you stop and think about it, you know,

24:17

maybe this guy was just basically using a different

24:19

word or a different term, or embellishing on

24:21

the idea of magnetism or something

24:24

like that. And if you kind of read into

24:26

the explanations over

24:28

the years buy dowsers for

24:30

what dowsing is or how it works, you

24:33

kind of get the same premise

24:35

that somehow the person

24:37

is picking up on something that's

24:40

invisible to us, but that person

24:42

can still sense. Yeah. I watched

24:44

this school YouTube. There was this guy. It

24:48

had one hundred and eighty five thousand music. I don't know

24:50

if he even said his name, but he's a YouTube

24:52

dowser guy who came on to kind

24:55

of talk about it, and he just he had a very nice demeanor.

24:57

He had this big beard and he was just sort of like, listen,

25:00

this coat hanger isn't magic. I'm

25:02

not magic, he said. I just believe

25:04

that there are certain people who can sense

25:08

voids in the earth

25:10

under their feet, and some people are

25:12

better at this than others. Other

25:15

people have pointed to like certain animals that could

25:17

do this. I know that, of course he's are all anecdotal,

25:19

but like mister ed, like, hey,

25:24

put peanut butter in that guy's teeth and he'll say anything you

25:26

want. Or but

25:28

like you know, animals like mules plowing

25:30

fields would there are anecdotal

25:33

stories of them like stopping at places and

25:35

like refusing to sort of walk over an area

25:37

that later turns out there was something

25:39

buried underground that would have like harmed the plow or

25:41

something like that. To say, but

25:44

this YouTuber was he was a good guy and he

25:46

was just like, listen, you believe it or not. I'm

25:48

not saying you should go do this stuff or you should

25:50

believe it, but this is just

25:52

what I feel like people, there are certain

25:54

people who can sense avoid in the earth.

25:57

I was waiting for you initially to say

25:59

where he was saying, like the

26:01

rod's not magic. I'm not magic, my

26:04

beard, that's magic. No.

26:08

He turned out to be fairly sensible, And

26:11

this is something I remember from childhood though from

26:14

church, is that Christians have

26:16

long sort of had this. You know, it's kind

26:18

of the dark arts in a way, and

26:20

so anytime it's something in that realm, Christians

26:22

are going to be very much like, no, no, no, I

26:25

don't remember specifically what it was, but I

26:27

have some vague recollection

26:29

from my childhood of hearing

26:32

about water witching

26:34

and someone saying I

26:37

don't know who it was, but someone in my life could have been someone

26:39

at church and in my family even saying like no,

26:41

no, no, that's like, that's like, you

26:43

know, black magic basically, right,

26:45

exactly, call it folk magic, call

26:47

it whatever it's. It's still not

26:50

it's still not God performing a miracle.

26:52

It's you exactly yet, and therefore it's

26:54

blasphemous and demonic and the devils somehow

26:57

involved. We just know it. I'm

26:59

sure it's you, just priest's fault to

27:01

some degree. That's that same

27:04

impulse, So we don't understand it, so

27:06

it must be demonic. The irony here

27:08

is that what they're afraid of and don't understand

27:10

probably doesn't even exist. It's not even necessarily

27:13

real. So they're afraid of chance

27:15

happenings, of people

27:17

just randomly getting something right once

27:19

in a while. Yeah, Martin

27:22

Luther apparently was not a big fan of dowsing.

27:24

That doesn't surprise me. And there was a guy

27:27

named Johann Gottfried Ziedler. He

27:29

wrote a book that was basically like, Hey, these

27:32

people are tapping into something called the world spirit,

27:35

and if you tap into that, man, you can

27:37

find out anything you want, like whether

27:39

somebody who died went to heaven or hell. You're

27:41

not supposed to know that, you're not God. He's

27:45

keep away from dowsing. Essentially, what Zidler's

27:48

message was, Yeah, I'm sure there was a lot of Christian

27:50

pushback on that guy. So

27:55

as as science kind of progressed people,

27:57

there's a really long tradition of people trying

28:00

to apply science to explaining

28:03

dowsing UM. And I

28:05

say we take our second break and come

28:07

back and get into some of those because there,

28:10

this is where it gets super fascinating to me. Let's

28:12

do it all

28:24

right. So we were going to talk a little bit about

28:26

the beginnings of UM, sort

28:29

of the modern take on things, and

28:31

uh, well, I guess this is less modern because this

28:33

is the seven late seventeen hundreds. But in

28:36

sixteen ninety three there was a French priest and a

28:38

doctor of divinity named

28:41

Ley Lorraine de Valmont. Great

28:43

book, great name, but not a

28:46

good hotel name at all. He really attract

28:48

attention to you. I think it's a great book, great

28:50

name. I wrote a book about um

28:52

Amar. Remember Amar who found the I

28:55

think the murderer Jacques Amar

28:57

the probably the most famous dowser of all time.

29:00

I think, Well, did he have a one hundred and eighty five

29:02

thousand views on YouTube? Would?

29:06

He would? He was quite a showman. So

29:09

he wrote a book when he basically wrote

29:11

about Amar success where he claimed that certain

29:13

particles um arose

29:16

from water underground, from treasure,

29:19

from a dead body, let's say, and

29:21

they would enter the body through the pores and

29:24

that some people, like this YouTube dowser

29:26

said, were just particularly sensitive

29:29

and that seems to be the sort of the refrain that,

29:31

like he said earlier, some people just

29:34

claimed to be more sensitive to this either

29:37

magnetic field or these this

29:40

energy coming out from the ground or these voids

29:42

in the earth, right um. And

29:45

this is about where science starts

29:48

to kind of try to be applied to explaining

29:51

dowsing. And that Dave Almont

29:55

termed these particles lays at tombs

29:57

because Robert Boyle, the father of chemistry,

29:59

had already identified

30:02

that they're probably something called

30:04

adams in the world and that

30:07

they are just out and about.

30:09

And so what low Lorraine de Almont

30:12

was saying was that we're some people are sensitive

30:14

to those last homes, and that

30:16

kind of kicked off that tradition of like, oh, there's

30:18

this new science. Let's figure out how it applies

30:20

to dowsing, right, or

30:22

hey, let's I believe In

30:25

the nineteen hundreds there were French priests that

30:27

practice what they called radiaesthesia, which

30:30

was let's use dousing to detect a

30:32

radiation a various kind. Let's find

30:34

it to diagnosed disease.

30:38

And this, you know this again is when

30:40

it veers away from like water and iron

30:42

ore or something right to a little

30:44

more of the hokey

30:47

pokey. But again, radiation had

30:49

just been discovered, and in no time, three French

30:51

priests are applying it, saying like, that's really

30:53

detecting. That explains it.

30:56

Some other people have said, oh, it's electricity.

30:58

Some people say yeah, it actually is radiation, or it

31:00

is magnetism or something like that, and then

31:03

you've got the other camp that's like, no, it's esp or

31:05

these people are conduits for God

31:08

or something like that. Um, what was

31:10

the thing you found that I in reply sent

31:12

you a picture of Professor Frank. I

31:15

don't remember where I saw that, but it was a

31:17

really neat explanation of it. Um.

31:20

So it was basically saying that we

31:22

have, like our cells

31:24

are capable of accepting electricity

31:27

or some sort of charge or whatever, and that

31:30

that ores in water

31:33

emanate things that can charge

31:35

those cells, and that that's kind of how

31:37

we pick it up. Okay, it's

31:40

I mean, it's just another way of putting it. It's just again,

31:43

we know about cells. We know that cells currency

31:46

is electricity or that they can

31:48

transmit electricity. So therefore

31:51

maybe those that were on a cellular

31:53

level, some people are picking it up. And that's what dowsing

31:55

is. It's it's that same tradition. Now

31:57

we understand something a little more about the universe's

32:00

figure out how it applies to dowsing. Right, perhaps

32:02

it is the when in terms of human bodies, it

32:04

is the soul. Perhaps

32:08

you know, maybe that's dowsing is the is

32:10

the window to the soul. I

32:12

thought the eyes were Nope, that's wrong.

32:14

It's dowsing as

32:17

far as modern science goes. And

32:19

this is something that you reminded

32:21

me that we talked about in our Wigia Boards

32:23

episode, is that people

32:26

were doing this with

32:28

their hands with something that's

32:30

called idiomotor movements, which

32:33

is your muscles are twitching

32:35

because of some kind of subconscious

32:37

mental activity that's going on. Yes,

32:41

and that ties into that last explanation

32:43

I was mentioning about the cells and the electricity.

32:45

They were basically saying like, yeah,

32:48

that's totally correct. The ideomotor

32:50

movements are triggered by the emanations

32:52

from the ground that enter your cells

32:55

and trigger your muscle movement unconscious

32:57

to you. Yeah,

33:00

someone may be good at finding water because

33:02

they've spent a lot of time in a particular

33:05

area finding water, and there they

33:07

have this subconscious thing to

33:09

where they're picking up on the vegetation or the

33:11

way the ground is and they don't

33:13

realize it. So then they'll stop at

33:15

a place that their body is saying, here is water, and

33:18

it's translating to that idiomotor

33:20

movement making the rod dip. Right.

33:23

That's one explanation, right, that

33:26

they have some sort of what's called non conscious

33:29

intelligence. Okay,

33:32

Um. The other explanation I was saying. Is

33:34

like they were saying, No, the

33:36

water or the ore itself is putting

33:38

something up from the ground that's triggering

33:40

your muscles to engage

33:43

in the idiomotor movement. So they're

33:45

both saying, yes, there's idiomotor movement. The

33:47

dows or the people the person holding the

33:49

dowsing rod is causing

33:52

these movements without being aware of it.

33:54

But the different explanations of why is

33:57

that either the person is noticing some vegetation

33:59

that they're out of where they have linked to water

34:02

unconsciously, right, or the other

34:04

one is that the water itself

34:06

is emanating something that's triggering

34:08

that idea motor movement in the person.

34:11

It's a little more than potato potato that there's

34:13

a pretty big difference between those two, even

34:15

though they share the majority of the explanation

34:18

in common. No, I agree, they're quite

34:20

different. I mean, if you're out there

34:22

screaming at your phone, guys,

34:26

there's water under the ground all over

34:28

the place, So anyone can take a couple

34:30

of coat hangers and dig down twelve

34:33

feet and find water. Probably the

34:35

YouTuber acknowledges this and says,

34:38

yeah, there's water all over the place. He

34:40

said, but some places are better to get

34:42

water than others because you don't just go dig

34:44

a well anywhere on your property.

34:47

You try and home in on a place that has got

34:50

you know, better water, more readily

34:52

available to pool and where

34:54

you can get it easier. That's why

34:56

people bring in geologists. That's why people bring in

34:58

dowsers. They have done experiments

35:02

where I think BBC

35:04

Science Focus reported on them, where

35:06

they did like randomized experiments

35:09

with water pipes underground, they

35:11

found that dowsers had no success at finding the

35:13

water. There have been other

35:15

experiments under control conditions where

35:18

they find that dowsers don't do any better

35:20

at finding water than chance would.

35:23

Our old buddy James Randy offered

35:26

a million dollars to anyone that could prove it. That

35:29

has not gone claimed to my knowledge,

35:32

No, and not

35:34

just proved that, but proved like any real paranormal

35:37

ability. Proving dowsing would have probably

35:39

won that prize for sure. Yeah.

35:41

The thing is is um if

35:44

you're a if you're a dowser, if you're a geologist,

35:46

you poop poo dowsing. If you're

35:48

a dowser, you probably poopoo

35:50

geology. And if you're involved

35:53

in excavating um wells,

35:56

you probably poop poo both um. There

35:59

was a there was a guy interviewed

36:01

in an Aon article that Olivia

36:04

turned up written by Lois Parshley,

36:06

to where the guy this guy whose job it

36:08

was was to excavate wells in California.

36:12

As part of his job

36:15

it was to hire either a geologist or

36:17

a dowser or both, and

36:19

he was saying, neither one's particularly

36:22

good at at reliably

36:24

finding a good water source.

36:27

They're both used different techniques, but neither

36:29

one's you know, dead on. So it's not

36:32

like in this guy's mind, geology is

36:34

just supplanted dowsing in rural water

36:36

thirsty areas because

36:40

the geologists you pay a

36:42

lot more for a geologist and

36:44

then they may or may not turn up water,

36:46

whereas the dowser you pay I think

36:49

I saw about a tenth of what you pay a geologist

36:51

for a day, and they may

36:53

or may not turn up water. So it

36:56

just kind of makes sense in that rural

36:58

area, like, hey, if neither one's

37:00

going to reliably turn up water, but there's a

37:03

chance either one will, I'm

37:05

gonna go with the person who charges away.

37:09

There was also the case of this science blogger

37:11

from the UK, Sally Lapage, who

37:14

was having a water pipe installed, and

37:18

I believe the UK

37:20

company, the water company sent

37:22

out at dowser and Sally

37:25

was like, wait a minute, what

37:27

is going on here? Like what century

37:30

are we living in? And the UK

37:32

water company kind of shrugged and Lapage

37:35

did a little investigating and found that ten out

37:37

of twelve water companies in the UK

37:41

use water dowsing, and

37:43

one of them, I believe, the one that did her parents' house

37:45

said in a tweet a we found

37:47

that some of the older methods are just as

37:50

effective as the new ones. We also use

37:52

drones and satellites. But

37:54

you know, a little

37:56

bit of money spent toward dowsing is no

37:58

big deal, whereas a lot of other people were

38:00

like, you shouldn't be spending any of our money

38:03

on this. Yeah, because again

38:05

it's pseudoscience, right, So

38:09

yeah, you can understand how people would be upset about

38:12

that, and then at the same time it really

38:14

kind of undermines a lot of geologists

38:17

work. If water companies are using dowsers

38:19

still too, I have a question.

38:22

I'm naive. I don't know a lot about machinery.

38:26

Isn't there some kind of machine that can

38:29

look into the earth and find good water

38:31

pretty easily. I

38:33

would guess that there is as well, but I

38:35

don't necessarily think so, because

38:38

if I wouldn't geologists just be employing

38:40

that, And if so, why would they have a reputation

38:43

for not being able to find water

38:45

very reliably? I mean, the answer is

38:47

there can't be otherwise of course they'd

38:49

be using that, But like, I don't

38:51

know, it seems like some kind of seis mcgrab

38:54

and someone a lot smarter than me is going

38:56

to explain why, which I that's what I

38:58

love doing about the show. Someone's going to explain to me and

39:00

we'll read it on the air. I would guess,

39:02

though, Chuck at this point, So that really

39:04

cool tool where you put a shotgun shell in

39:06

and it stamps the earth and then it

39:09

gets an image back on radar or something. Yeah,

39:11

that's what I'm talking about, right. Those things are awesome,

39:14

but I think they only go so deep, and you're

39:16

probably looking for water much deeper

39:18

than that. That would be my guess. Like

39:20

if I was watching a movie and it was about

39:23

one part of it had a family trying to

39:25

dig a well and they called up

39:27

some guy, well, wells are us

39:29

came out and like just planted

39:32

some funky machine down on the earth

39:34

and and he said,

39:36

this thing's gonna it's on wheels, and it's gonna drive

39:38

around this acre of property and tell you exactly

39:40

where the water is. I would totally believe that's a thing. Sure

39:43

I would too. And in the

39:45

exact same way people

39:48

who hire dowsers and watch somebody walk

39:50

around their property with the stick believe what

39:52

they see too. Probably wouldn't be a very good movie,

39:54

but that is a huge, huge area

39:56

for improvement from what I can tell researching

39:59

this. Unless somehow dousing community has

40:01

managed to completely science silence

40:03

the geological community as

40:07

far as like water finding goes, I

40:09

don't. It just seems like the geologists

40:12

aren't like, of course we can find

40:14

water, and here's how. I just haven't

40:16

really seen it that where

40:18

there's like this reliable way to find

40:21

water. Yeah, I just don't understand

40:24

it. So if you're a geologist who

40:26

finds water, we would love to hear how

40:29

you do what you do and how reliable it

40:31

is. Yeah,

40:34

one more thing, chuck, before we go. In

40:36

that AEON article, there

40:39

was mention of a study that was

40:42

done at the University of British Columbia

40:44

by a psychologist named Helene Gaucho

40:48

and she is the one who

40:50

seems to have turned up that idea of non

40:52

conscious intelligence where people

40:55

using a Wuiji board we're

40:58

actually better at ants in

41:00

questions. They got more questions right when

41:02

they were using a Wuigi board than when they weren't

41:04

using a Wuiji board, which is really

41:06

really weird. And so Gaucheou explained

41:09

it by saying, like, we might

41:11

have some type of intelligence

41:14

or intellect or memory that

41:16

we can't access consciously, but

41:18

if we kind of put

41:21

the power of answering

41:24

off onto something else, like a Wuiji board,

41:26

were able to access it because I guess

41:28

we get our conscious mind out of the way

41:31

a little bit. And that kind

41:33

of was applied to this idea of dowsers

41:35

that these people, like you said, could

41:37

recognize vegetation in

41:40

the wild. There's certain kinds of rocks

41:42

that suggested there's water somewhere, and

41:44

they didn't realize that they've done

41:46

this, that they've made that connection, but it's still there.

41:49

It's non conscious intelligence, and when

41:51

they're holding those dowsing rods, they're

41:54

able to kind of put the power of explaining

41:56

into the dowsing rod and access that

41:58

nonconscious intel diligence, and that that's

42:01

how they'd turn up water when

42:03

they managed to turn up water. Interesting.

42:05

I thought that was pretty interesting too. Well,

42:08

I certainly don't have everything figured out, so who knows?

42:10

Who knows? Well,

42:13

if you're a member of the geological community,

42:16

let us know how you find water and how reliable

42:18

it is. We'd love to hear that. And since I

42:20

spoke to the geological community directly,

42:22

that means, of course it's time for listener mail. I'm

42:27

going to call this overdue read. This came in at the

42:29

end of last year, and this

42:31

is from Emily Kenyon and

42:34

the UK okay specifically

42:37

in England specifically,

42:39

and I know I'll always get these shires

42:41

mispronounced, but Leicestershire.

42:45

This is apparently we have gotten Emily

42:47

going on a lot of fun things because of our show.

42:49

I want to say thanks for all the excellent work. Let you know that

42:52

your podcast has I'm sure we'll continue

42:54

to make subtle and positive impacts on my life.

42:57

And Emily listened to some highlights and

42:59

now have an active post up here composting episode.

43:03

Very nice we now regularly

43:05

have breakfast for tea as I

43:07

wanted every breakfast you discussed in that episode,

43:10

but as we don't breakfast together as a family to

43:12

solve the problem. Okay,

43:14

okay. I asked for the book

43:17

Radium Girls by Kate Moore for Christmas from

43:19

the Dial Painters episode and

43:22

I've just finished it. It was stunning, rage

43:25

inducing, and inspiring all at once, and I just ordered

43:27

a copy for a friend. Very nice. I'm

43:30

planning on making the water Shed fried Chicken

43:32

recipe this week off the back of the

43:34

Fried Chicken episode. Nice. That's

43:36

gonna knock your socks off. And my

43:39

house has never been cleaner and my garden more

43:41

well kept since I found you guys

43:43

during Lockdown. You made pottering around

43:46

a joy, learning and chuckling at the same time,

43:49

although I'm with Chuck on the economic stuff, which

43:51

is to say, I guess no. Thank you, thanks

43:55

again for all these positive impacts on my life, and Happy

43:57

New Year to you guys and the team from Emily

44:00

Emily Kenyon. Thanks a lot, Emily.

44:02

That's fantastic. I'm glad we could have some positive

44:04

effects on your life. That

44:07

was very nice. Chuck, good good selection. It's

44:09

good. If you want to be like Emily and let

44:11

us know how we've impacted your life, hopefully for

44:14

the better, you can send us an email. It's stuff

44:16

podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff

44:21

you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

44:23

For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit

44:26

the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

44:28

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.