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Wag on.

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I have to retale an anecdote that I have. Okay, do it. I got to tell you because it was Really strange. I worked in Budapest once. I was shooting a movie in Budapest, and I was walking around Budapest at night because it's a great city to walk around it at night. It's a fantastic, interesting city. It was with a friend of mine. We were walking around and we were in the area that was And in cities and capital cities like this is the area where all the foreign embassies are. And so I was in this area with all these. And a lot of the time in Budapest, it's this amazingly beautiful neighborhood filled with these old 19th century mansions and stuff like that that now house all of these embassies. Oh, yeah. And so we're walking past the Russian embassy, and I'm like, I'm outside the Russian embassy in Budapest. This is too good. I got to like... And this is certainly before I was using a camera or anything like that. So I wasn't like, but I was like, so there's two wrot iron gates that are both the entry and exit of a curved driveway that goes up to the Portico of this house.

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It's huge, elaborate 19th century, all fucking, Hraldric fucking shields and shit on it and stuff like that. So I go walking up to the thing to take a look at the thing, and I feel this, what I can only describe as a burst of static electricity in the base of my skull and top of my spine. Are you kidding? That feels like a snap in the base of my head, and I back away from the thing. Oh, my God. And I'm like, and there's almost... I could hear what seemed like a sound, but my friend could hear a sound. So, of course, I do it again because I'm like, and this fucking thing, right as I'm getting up to the gate, this thing hits me and makes me fucking... She does it. Same fucking thing happened. Are you serious? Is there some standard security device that's some Sonic beep pulse like that? Because when I started hearing about Havana syndrome, I was like, wait a second. Now, I didn't get a weird headache that I remember or anything from it, but maybe I wasn't exposed long enough. But I remember looking around and yeah, there's like security cameras and shit.

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Although I don't know, maybe they were this little fucking thing that was just like this, that the Russians had like... But isn't that crazy?

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That is crazy. I'm very open to this because sound can be, if it's focused properly. It can be a weapon. It can damage internal organs and shit. I don't know. We don't have absolute confirmation of it, but this does make, at least it seems reasonable. There's a lot of speculation. I mean, in the music industry, there's this a joke. It's legitimate. People talk about the brown tone, which is a sound maybe you could make on your guitar. It's like an ideal sound. It's so troubling and amazing that it makes you fill your pants.

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You just basically like... I've heard of this. You heard of the proud talk. Yeah, I've heard of the proud talk.

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I'm just thinking, why couldn't these guys develop weapons like this, too, that work in this business?

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I don't think it sounds unlikely or reasonable at all, Actually, it doesn't sound weird to me at all. I'm like, think of the shit they can do. I mean, think of the stuff that we know that it can be done. I mean, it's like a Sonic weapon doesn't seem like a crazy idea to me at all.

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So she felt it, too, when she went up to the gate. She felt it, too.

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And she said, because when it would happen, it was like you heard a sound in your own head. But she said it was almost like you could hear a sound exterior, too. When she was standing away from me and it happened, she was like, you heard like a... Oh, shit. A little electric frying sounds. A little like that. Of your limbic system. Yeah, totally. But it was like, but clearly, if whatever it was, it wasn't like, not that I don't, I didn't suffer from any damage that I know of. You've been different ever since. Yeah. But it certainly was. It was certainly strange, man. And I've always thought I should look it up and see if this is a thing. And I thought, okay, it's some Sonic weapon to keep you away from the fucking fence.

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Well, this makes me... I mean, that's a good point. They're not too far away from here. A neighbor has a dog, and they've got basically a little... It's like an electronic fence where the dog will get trapped with a collar when it goes to it.

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Yeah, that's a microchip and stuff like that. They do that with dogs.

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So couldn't you Could you create it at a distance, the action at a distance, fire it through the air?

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It doesn't seem weird to me. Just aim this thing down there. So if anybody gets too close to the thing, some field opens up and you just get fucking zapped. Now, here's the thing. It was a little bit like touching an electric fence, but it was happening in my head. It was happening in the base of my spine. It was that same feeling, but it was in here.

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And it was like- Your example is actually more compelling than some of the Havana syndrome stories. Here's why. Thank you.

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I should step forward. Thank you for finally acknowledging. You need to go on 60 minutes on this shit right now. No, thank you for finally acknowledging my stature. You did it twice.

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And then your friend did it in the same space. Yes, that's true. What other people are reporting are often solitary experiences that then somebody has to correlate with another. I know that this is interesting question about psychosomatic illnesses, because I think the general mood has been, well, those aren't real illnesses. They're just produced by the mind. But I think what we're learning now about things like placebos and the mind in general.

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What you just said, though, to the mirror neuron thing is extraordinary. Yeah, the mirror neuron is right. Which you just said about that is amazing.

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That the mind really can be... Because words and thoughts are still activating the same neural pathways that chemicals are basically triggering. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's not evidence now that you can give... They'll give painkillers to a subject, and then they'll stop giving painkillers, but they'll have all the accoutrement. They'll show, here's the bag of morphine, but they won't actually give it to the patient. The patient will still report feeling much better that they're getting the drug. They're not getting the drug. Their mind is telling them to squel It's the pain, and it does. It works. And there's very high levels of this stuff now. So one thing is there's possibly a weapon. The other thing is that you might hear legends or stories And you might actually get yourself wound up into certain kinds of symptoms. Totally. I think in your case, that's not what happened.

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No, I believe I totally buy that thing that the mind can cause the physical. I completely buy it, 100 %. And I'm telling you, as an actor, it's something you do and you can induce. I mean, you can induce all kinds of things. You can cause yourself to do all kinds of things by putting yourself... I mean, it's fascinating.

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Yeah.

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How do people make themselves cry?

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But you don't even necessarily... Well, some of that is some people just have a physiological ability. There's a trick they can do to make themselves do it. So they're not sad. Some of it is... No, but I think it can then induce a feeling of that. It gives you that response, and then you start Then you start to feel sad because your body's doing what you do when you feel sad. You know what I mean? So it's like it's a little bit of a loop like that. That totally makes sense. But I think beforehand, you can already convince yourself of things, and then it will happen. And it's not a physiological trick that you know how to do. It's something else where you've put yourself, you've diluted yourself into thinking. That's really interesting. You're thinking you're sad. I remember a guy once asking me, I did a play and I had to cry in it night after night, and I would cry all the time. And the guy said to me, How do you do that? And I said, It's sad. I said, The guy dies and it's sad. I was like, That's why I cry every day.

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And it was like, I didn't know what to say. I was like, It's sad. But it was that thing of something. And again, doing it night after night in a play, I trained my brain at that point to be sad. So it was almost like I had built up to sometimes, yeah, I'd like, yeah, to some extent, but you built up something in yourself. It's really interesting, actually, in light of what we're talking about. That's interesting. And the practice of it. Because I can remember doing another play where I had to really burst in the tears and thing, and I had to build myself up to it. But then in the run of the play, I realized I didn't have to as much. And there were times when I thought, not going to happen tonight, and it would. Oh, really? And it was like, yeah, I'd just be like, coming up to it, coming up to the moment. And I'm thinking, not going to happen. And it would happen. Here comes the tears. Yeah. Yeah. And a boom. And it would just happen. And it was like I trained my brain. I got a theory on this.

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Okay.

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I got a theory, which is the way it's been described to me before is like that an actor will think about something sad, like maybe a death of a loved one. But there's another theory, which I think what you just described sounds more like, which is they did an experiment where they gave two groups of people a shot of adrenaline. They put one group into a room and the other group into another room. Inside the room was an undercover plant. He's part of the experiment. He's an actor. And the one guy in the one room is supposed to just get aggravated and agitated and angry. And the other guy is a jokester. He's telling jokes and having a good old time. Now, everybody's amped up on adrenaline. And what they found was that in the room with the asshole, everybody became assholes and angry. And in the room with the jokester, everybody was having a fucking ball.

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Amazing.

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You need the energy of the adrenaline. That's fascinating.

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Because in some sense, the adrenaline is going, you're in a room with a lot of people, with an audience, you're in a room. That's really interesting as to why it might be easier to cry on stage for me than it is on film, because I find it harder to do that on film than it is on stage. And that part of it is that shared experience. That's amazing, Steve. I've I've never thought of this, that that shared experience, there's a group of people in there who are all feeling the same thing, hopefully. Yeah. And it's like, and you are causing this, you're inducing this in them, but they're also then participating and continuing to induce it. And that energy actually helps you cry or get to where you have to go. That's fucking amazing, actually. Dude, I think that's maybe a good stopping point for this one. All right. We sorted it out, people. No, I just think that's amazing. There's other shit that I would love to talk to about, but that you just said to me blows my tiny, shriveled mind. It's like that, but that's real. No, but I think it's why I find acting on stage not just more rewarding.

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I feel more, I feel better at it. I actually feel like I'm better at it.

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Maybe because you're reading the room, the whole room.

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Because reading the room, there's a whole mass of people participating in this experience. You're the focal point of all of this. In this experience. In this delusion, in this mass delusion. Wow. That's beneficial to people, hopefully. That's cool. That's benevolent and not malevolent. Wow. Well, bless your heart. Well, good place to start. Yeah, that was amazing.

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Chinweg is a production of Trefort Media and Touchy Feeley Films, hosted and executive-produced by Paul Giamatti and Steven Asma. Executive producers for Trefort are Kelly Garner and Lisa Ammerman. Dan Kerry is executive producer for Touchy Feeley. Our series producer is Rachel Whitley Bernstein. Original theme music by Luke Top, with additional music by Via Mardot. Oscar Guido is our executive in charge of production. Tom Monahan is head of audio for Trefort. For Trefort. Audio production supervision by Matt Dyson. Editing and mixing by Jeff Neil. Animation created by Alex Sokel. Research assistance by Aiden Brooks. Lastly, for more information, go to chinwagpod. Fm, and find us on Instagram or TikTok @chinwagpod or on Twitter @chinwag_pod.