Today’s podcast will feature 3 stories that reveal we may not be alone in this universe. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- "The Wow Signal" -- Best evidence of alien communication ever obtained (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQF7QeyB0qM)#2 -- "Better Than Earth" -- The 2020 discovery of 24 super habitable planets (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQF7QeyB0qM)#1 -- "Don’t Sleep" -- This story is about one of the most famous potentially paranormal events of all time (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L4slE5bDUM)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What stories reveal we may not be alone in the universe?
Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast will feature three stories that reveal we may not be alone in this universe. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.
The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called The Wow Signal, and it's about the very best evidence of potential alien communication we've ever obtained. The second story you'll hear is called Better Than Earth, and it's about the 2020 discovery of 24 super habitable planets.
And the third and final story you'll hear is called Don't Sleep, and it's about one of the most famous potentially paranormal events of all time. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please put the Amazon Music Follow button stapler in Jell-O. Okay, let's get into our first story called The Wow Signal.
Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Late one night in the summer of 1977, a large radio telescope in Ohio intercepted a very unique signal. The telescope was searching the sky on behalf of an organization called SETI, which is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. And the signal, although it only lasted 72 seconds, fit the profile of a message beamed to us from another world.
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Chapter 2: What is the Wow Signal and why is it significant?
Jerry Amon, who was a project scientist for SETI, was flipping through some of the computer printouts generated by the telescope when he noticed a series of letters. Now, the way this particular radio telescope worked is it pretty much constantly picked up a signal, but that signal was a very low background hum of static, and that was represented in 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
All those low numbers are representative of that basic background sound that they just write off. It doesn't matter. Occasionally, the telescope would pick up a higher number on the readout, like a 7, an 8, a 9, and even above that, it transitions to letters to represent louder radio signals. But all of those higher signals had a rational explanation.
Either they were anomalous, or they were tied to something very natural and ordinary.
But that particular night in 1977, as the telescope swept across the sky, it picked up a signal that was so strong, it surged past zero through nine and made its way into the letters all the way up to letter U, and it held it for 72 seconds, representing a signal that was 30 times stronger than what this telescope normally picks up as its baseline.
And after those 72 seconds, the telescope eventually passed it, and that signal dropped all the way back down. So when Amon saw this amazing string of letters representing this radio signal, he circled it in red ink and wrote next to it, WOW! And from that point forward, this transmission became the WOW signal.
One of the main reasons the WOW signal was not immediately cast out as some anomaly or chalked up to some other natural occurrence is because of what we understand about radio wave transmission. The goal of this radio telescope was to try to pick up radio signals coming in from other worlds.
And so the way they did that is they opened up a whole bunch of different channels, receivers, they had 50 of them. And anytime they were aiming their dish in a direction of the sky, if there was any radio waves coming towards them, they tried to capture them on different radio frequencies.
If you were aiming your antenna in a direction where natural radio waves were coming towards you, it would hit one channel and then diffuse over adjacent channels because it's not a targeted radio wave. It's natural. It's more like a shotgun blast. Non-natural radio waves, like the ones we're familiar with when we listen to the radio, listen to music, those are targeted radio waves.
Meaning, when they were sent out, they were sent out in a very narrow band. They were sent out on a single frequency. And only people that have turned to that particular frequency or that particular receiver are going to hear your message. That is a non-natural radio wave. The night that the wow signal was picked up, it was only picked up on one channel.
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Chapter 3: What criteria define a habitable planet and which are better than Earth?
which really forces you to come to terms with the reality that almost certainly we are not alone. Hey guys, Mr. Ballin here. You know how I tell strange, dark, and mysterious stories? Well, I've stumbled on some strange, dark, and mysterious medical stories that really are just as wild. Like there was a story about this woman who accidentally swallowed something that got lodged in her heart.
There was a story about a guy where a tree grew in his lung, or there was a story about this person who their skin turned bright blue, or this town everybody started laughing uncontrollably that lasted for months. I mean, the list goes on. And these are not urban legends. These are real mysteries that we dive into that have left doctors and scientists baffled sometimes for years.
And so that's why I created Mr. Baughlin's Medical Mysteries, a totally separate show all about these wild mysteries of the human body. Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to listen to episodes early and ad-free? Well, join Wondery Plus or listen on Amazon Music with Prime.
Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.
Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
The next and final story of today's episode is called Don't Sleep. Late on the evening of July 27th, 1977, a 21-year-old farmer named Huang Yanchou walked down a wide dusty road in the little farming village of Beigao located in Northern China. It had been a very hard day on the rice farm where Huang worked because they were all preparing for the autumn harvest.
But even though Huang was totally exhausted and worn down, as he walked down this road, he was whistling an upbeat tune. because for the first time in a long time, Huang was actually excited about the future. Huang had grown up in a poor family, and he hadn't even finished elementary school. He still lived with his parents in a tiny house, and basically every day of his life was the same.
He got up at sunrise, he walked to work, he worked all day until he barely could even stand, and then he would walk home and he would go to bed. But the reason Huang was now feeling kind of excited about his future was because he had just gotten engaged to a beautiful girl in a neighboring village, and their plan was to get married after the autumn harvest.
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Chapter 4: What mysterious medical stories does MrBallen share?
I mean, even if he walked the 30 miles to the nearest train station, nine hours, because that's how much time it took from falling asleep to being discovered in the city, is not enough time to go the remaining 570 miles to Nanjing. So Huang's father and the deputy director, they talked about this and they both decided that, you know, this just can't be true.
Clearly, somebody has mistaken some other person for Huang because he cannot possibly be all the way in Nanjing.
Now, this telegram said that Huang was being held in a deportation center in Shanghai, and so Huang's father and the deputy director decided they would send the telegram back to the sender at this deportation center and tell them, hey, if this really is Huang, he should have a very specific birthmark on his wrist.
And so when they sent this telegram off, they fully expected to get one back that said, oh, our mistake. You know, it wasn't him. But they got a reply relatively quickly. And it said, oh, yeah, he's got that exact birthmark. It's definitely Huang. But he's very confused. He doesn't really know what's going on. And so somebody from your village has to go get him.
Chapter 5: What is the story behind Death County PA and institutional corruption?
Huang arrived back home in the middle of August, so about two weeks after he had gone missing. And as soon as he got there, his fiance and his parents were so happy to see him. And pretty soon, a steady stream of friends and neighbors and other family members began coming to Huang's house to talk to him, to hear his story, to hear about what happened.
I mean, this is a tiny, isolated place in the middle of rural China. Not a lot of exciting things happen out here. And so people were really excited to hear what Huang had to say. But Huang really didn't understand what had happened to him. And so mostly he just didn't answer any questions he got asked.
He just kind of kept his head down and just kept saying, you know, I don't know, I don't know what happened. And then really, when his family pressed him and said, you know, like, you got to tell us, you know, this is so crazy. What happened? He would say, look, like, I'm going to tell you what happened, but I don't even know if I can believe the things I'm going to tell you.
And so Huang would say, you know, all he could remember was he went to bed in his own bed in Beigao. And then the next morning he woke up and he was laying on the sidewalk. And when he opened his eyes, he saw there was this big swimming pool, and then near it was a sign that said Nanjing, and so that was how he put together that he was in Nanjing.
And then almost immediately, these two police officers wearing all white just kind of appeared out of nowhere, and they walked up to Huang, they scooped him up, and without really saying anything to him, they brought him to that deportation center in Shanghai, which is a place where people who seem confused or mentally ill would be sent in order to help them get home. And that was it.
That was Huang's entire story, that he just basically woke up in Nanjing with no idea how he got there. And so after he told his family, they all just kind of looked at him like, really? Like, that's what happened? That makes no sense. But Huang, I mean, he was completely lucid. He was explaining it really specifically and really simply. I mean, he looked and sounded exactly like he normally did.
And he seemed very honest as he was telling the story. Over the next few weeks, Hwang kind of reintegrated back into his life, but things just were not the same. People were now scared of him. I mean, kids literally ran away from him when they saw him because rumors were going around town that he himself, his body was haunted or something.
And so kids were scared of him and other villagers would openly gossip about him right in front of him. I mean, even his beloved fiance admitted to feeling really uncomfortable around him now. And while all of this was obviously very upsetting for Huang, he did also understand why people were acting this way.
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Chapter 6: What happened to Huang Yanchou in the 'Don't Sleep' story?
I mean, this is a very anomalous thing that's happened to him, and he did not have a good explanation for this totally insane event that he was a part of. And so he just kind of got it. And in fact, Huang himself was kind of terrified of himself.
I mean, at night when he would go to bed, he would be terrified that the second he closed his eyes, he was going to be transported hundreds or thousands of miles away to some totally unknown place. And maybe this time he wouldn't even be able to get back again.
But as the days wore on, Huang continued to wake up in his own bed in Beigao, which over time kind of made him feel more secure that whatever happened to him was a one-time thing and it's not going to happen again. However, Huang would be wrong.
Last year, law and crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation. She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her car. Karen Reid is arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The six-week trial resulted in anything but resolution.
We continue to find ourselves at an impasse. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case.
But now the case is back in the spotlight. And one question still lingers. Did Karen Reid kill John O'Keefe? The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reid is innocent. How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen? I'm Kristen Thorne, investigative reporter with Law & Crime and host of the podcast, Karen the Retrial. This isn't just a retrial. It's a second chance at the truth.
I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be.
I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.
Listen to episodes of Karen the Retrial exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus.
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