Thank you to Perplexity for sponsoring this video! Check out Perplexity for all of your holiday shopping at

Warning: This video contains flashing lights which may not be suitable for photosensitive epilepsy. Flashing Lights Begin (6:46) Skip Flashing Lights (6:59)

Can a pair of flashing retro tech glasses and some CDs sync your brainwaves, train your psychic abilities, teach you Spanish, unlock your subconscious, and help the CIA win the Cold War?

A project with a nearly 40-year history suggests that they might.

Dane Spotts and Zygon have spent decades blending their scientific visions of unleashing brain potential with a winding journey through technology. Zygon called it “entrainment,” but critics call it pseudoscience.

The SuperMind system claims to help you communicate with whales, meditate, and mirror a near death experience – and some people love it. But from the back pages of 1990s Popular Science issues to more than a dozen lawsuits, the reality of expanding consciousness, rewiring your brain, and boosting psychic powers is even more complex than it sounds.

#science #mindgames #popularscience #brainwaves

Thanks to DuckDuckGo for sponsoring this video! Try Privacy Pro free for 7 days at

Further Reading/Viewing: “The Man with a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Wound,” by A. R. Luria.

THE MAN WITH A SHATTERED WORLD: THE HISTORY OF A BRAIN WOUND by A. R. Luria; Translated from the Russian by Lynn Solotaroff; with a Foreword by Oliver Sacks, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1972 by Michael Cole. Foreword copyright © 1987 by Oliver Sacks.

“Zjoek/Zhuk,” written and directed by Erik van Zuyen (1987):

Lev Zasetsky could have been an anonymous human data point in history’s largest conflict — just another one of tens of millions of casualties in World War II, the treatment of which stretched deep into the Cold War. But his particular brain injury was so peculiar that he drew the interest of Alexander Luria, the Soviet Union’s most accomplished neuropsychologist, as Lev became a complex mix of scientific oddity and miracle.

Zasetsky’s form of aphasia resulted in him being able to write, but not read his own writing or even understand all of what he had written. It’s a case that delves into the earliest history of Popular Science and reframes our modern understanding of psychology, history, language, communication, and the human spirit.

#science #coldwar #future

Decades before software like Premiere and iMovie made video editing cheap, easy, and accessible for everyone, the only option was chaining a conglomerate of vintage 80s technology – multiple camcorders or VCRs and a TV – to craft custom analog video. Then the Videonics system changed tech history forever.

With professional-grade setups costing up to six figures at the time, the Videonics brought simple editing to the masses at a tiny fraction of the price… in theory. The reality of the Videonics video editing system was a jumbled mess of retro tech that took a near-miracle to make your kid’s 8th grade jazz band concert video look a little more polished.

And getting it all to work over 35 years later? It took 8 VCRs, 2 camcorders, 3 Videonics units and 4 remotes to create a 1987-era YouTube masterpiece. But in the end, it revealed the beauty and drive of the first-generation analog filmmakers and videographers who made YouTube possible for all of us.

GummyRoach:
Weird Paul:
TechnologyConnections:

#retrotech #analog #vhs #filmmaking