Society & CultureDocumentaryFictionScience FictionScienceLife Sciences

The Why Files: Operation Podcast

The Why Files covers mysteries, myths and legends. We tell stories and seek the truth in a fun and lighthearted way. Our content is heavily researched; we don't release an episode unless we're sure we can bring something new to a topic.

Play

Open in

32 episodes
Avg 2 hr 9 min
English

Episodes 32

Newest Oldest Longest

All20 Unplayed20 In progress0 Played0

Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.

Monday · 2 hr 35 min
The Basement: Donald Hoffman | Consciousness, Math, and the Case for Letting Go
-One thing to pack, five ways to power! Get 10% Off @Ridge with code BASEMENT at https://www.Ridge.com/BASEMENT #Ridgepod -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. -For a limited time, get 50% off for life, free shipping, and 3 free gifts at https://mengotomars.com. #ad Donald Hoffman has spent forty years asking one question: are we just machines? He walked away from a defense-industry career to answer it, and the math he found says space and time aren't real — and that what you're looking at right now is one of the cheapest headsets available. We get into the beetles, the beer bottles, the nine proofs he's chasing, and the one story he's never told publicly. Buckle up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Saturday · 41 min
Bases in the Ocean, and a War for Earth | The Friendship Case
-Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://whyfileslovesgold.com or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Upgrade your glasses with Zenni—go to https://zenni.com/podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off your first order plus free shipping on US orders over $65. Styles sell out, so don't wait. For more than twenty years, a hundred people across Italy filled trucks with fruit, water, and industrial chemicals, then walked away and let the cargo disappear. They called the recipients the Friends: an alien civilization living in vast bases beneath the Adriatic Sea. The Friends could teleport supplies, read minds, and reshape the ground itself to build their hidden world. But keeping their bases running depended on something far simpler than advanced technology. It depended on the humans trusting each other. This is the story of a secret alliance between two worlds, the deliveries that sustained it, and the war fought to protect it. We also examine what the evidence for the Friendship Case actually shows, and where it falls apart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
September 7 · 2 hr 57 min
The Basement: Dan Flores | Ice Age Giants, Camels in America, and Coyote Resilience
-Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Head to https://superpower.com/basement for $50 off your membership. Get 150+ biomarkers tested every year plus a personalized health plan and on-demand care team. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod Dan Flores has spent his life chasing one animal: the one this country threw everything at and could not kill. Poison, bounties, half a billion dollars of taxpayer money, and today the coyote is in Central Park and closing in on South America. We get into wolves, mammoths, the footprints at White Sands, and the dire wolves Colossal brought back. Then Dan tells me about a chicken named Chickie. Stay for that one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
September 5 · 42 min
The Zone of Silence: America's Missile Secret
-https://quince.com/thwwhyfiles -Free trial at https://shopify.com/why -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. In 1970, a U.S. missile carrying radioactive cobalt lifted off from Utah, aimed at a test range six hundred miles away. It never got there. Instead it flew south, crossed into Mexico, and disappeared into a stretch of desert locals call the Zone of Silence. Radios die there, and compasses spin in place without ever settling on a direction. For decades this patch of land has pulled in meteorites, silenced pilots' instruments, and drawn thousands of visitors chasing lights that seem to answer back. We trace the real missile, the cleanup that followed, and the legend that grew around it, then separate what actually happened from what got added along the way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
August 31 · 3 hr 51 min
The Basement: Quantum Compilation | From Particle Colliders to Parallel Realities
-Explore my Hungryroot Digital Cookbook “Gertie's Hump Day Recipes” at https://hungryroot.com/THEBASEMENT -Download Cash App Today: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/re0kp2pw #CashAppPartner Terms apply. Bitcoin services by Block, Inc. See the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast. -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. Some of the sharpest minds in physics have sat down in The Basement, each pushing at the edges of what we understand about reality. We start with the fundamentals, the Higgs boson, the Planck scale, the search for gravitons. Theories tested, published, and confirmed. From there, things get stranger. Entanglement, the double-slit experiment, the idea that reality itself is a simulation, and the possibility that the future is shaping the past right now. Physicists, astrophysicists, and researchers wrestling with the same question. Where does the universe stop making sense, and what happens after that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
August 29 · 40 min
The Alien Murders: Three Bodies, Three UFOs
-Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/thewhyfiles to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. Three Deaths Filed as Alien Encounters A man walks out for potatoes and doesn't come home for five days. He turns up on a coal pile in a clean suit, freshly shaved, with chemical burns on his neck and no explanation for where he's been. Two television repairmen climb a hill outside São Paulo carrying handwritten instructions, cut lead into masks, and never come back down. The note in their pocket told them exactly when to lie down. A fisherman crosses a quiet reservoir alone and never crosses back, and what's left of him has no wounds, no struggle, and no organs. Three cases, three continents, and in every one, the file ends the same way: no suspect, no cause, no answer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
August 24 · 3 hr 41 min
The Basement: Diana Pasulka | Angels, Vatican Archives, and a Government Email
Don’t sleep on [@ultrapouches]. New customers get 15% Off with code BASEMENT at https://takeultra.com! #UltraPouches #ad Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/thewhyfiles to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. A religion scholar spent years studying near death experiences and old church doctrines. Then aerospace insiders started emailing her university account, asking for her research on angels. She treated them like any other academic contact and shared her sources. What she didn't expect was how far that relationship would go, or who was really behind it. Her own family carries a stranger history than she ever brought into a classroom. A Coast Guard cutter that stopped dead in freezing water. A mountain her grandfather swore hid something else. We get into apparitions, orbs, and a theory about what's actually reaching out to us. It's not the answer you'd expect, and it changes how you look at your phone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
August 21 · 41 min
The Basque Bloodline | Descendants of Atlantis
Go to https://brooklynbedding.com and use promo code THEWHYFILES at checkout for 30% off sitewide. Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. The Basque people live between Spain and France, but their blood matches no one else in Europe. One in three carries Rh-negative blood, a rare trait that turns pregnancy into a genetic gamble. Their language, Euskera, has no relatives anywhere on Earth. Linguists have searched every continent and found nothing that connects it to another tongue. The Basques say their ancestors came from a lost island called Atlaintika, destroyed thousands of years ago. Plato told almost the same story, about a civilization called Atlantis that vanished beneath the sea in a single night. A 2,000-year-old bronze hand found in Spain carries a word modern Basque speakers can still read on sight. What that word protected, and why it mattered enough to survive a dictatorship, ties an ancient legend to the blood in Basque veins today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
August 17 · 2 hr 56 min
The Basement: Mitch Horowitz | Gandhi, Reagan, and the Occultists History Erased
-Head to https://Superpower.com and use code BASEMENT at checkout for $20 off your membership. Get 100+ biomarkers tested every year, plus a personalized health plan and on-demand care team. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod #ad -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. -For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at https://Mengotomars.com. #ad Mitch Horowitz spent 27 years inside America's biggest publishing houses — and the whole time, he was the occult guy. PEN Award–winning historian, practicing occultist, censored in China, endorsed by David Lynch. We get into hidden history: presidents, gurus, dime-store horoscopes, and experiments that shouldn't work but do. Some of what he told me, I can't even put in the title. Come down to the Basement and find out why. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
August 15 · 43 min
They Left Everything Behind Except an Explanation
Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/thewhyfiles to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. Upgrade your sleep with Boll & Branch—get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at https://bollandbranch.com/whyfiles with code whyfiles. Exclusions apply. Upgrade your glasses with Zenni—go to https://zenni.com/podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off your first order plus free shipping on US orders over $65. Three people disappeared under circumstances no one has ever explained. A man runs out of a Bulgarian airport and vanishes into a field of sunflowers, leaving his passport and phone behind. A young woman survives a car crash on a dark New Hampshire road, then disappears in the nineteen minutes it takes police to arrive. A fourteen-year-old boy plans a trip to London down to the smallest detail, then walks out of a train station and is never seen again. These cases span three countries and three decades, but they share the same unsettling gap: a clear trail right up until the moment each person disappeared, and nothing after. We lay out exactly what happened, minute by minute, and the questions that still don't add up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
August 10 · 3 hr 33 min
The Basement: Travis Taylor | Black Holes, UFOs & Skinwalker Ranch
-Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Get your free 30-second assessment and see how much you could save at https://pdsdebt.com/basement; checking your options is fast, free, and won't impact your credit. -If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can start your claim in just a click without having to leave your couch: https://ForThePeople.com/WHY Dr. Travis Taylor spent 35 years inside classified defense programs. Then the government made him chief scientist of its UFO task force and sent him to Skinwalker Ranch. What he found there took him straight to the Pentagon. We get into black holes, Tesla's hidden lab, Art Bell's mystery metal, and the experiments nobody can explain. By the end, you'll understand why he says: "I'm not an experiencer. I'm a knower." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
August 8 · 54 min
JFK's Assassination and the CIA's Psychic Cold War
-Upgrade your everyday at https://quince.com/thewhyfiles for free shipping and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK. -Try QUO for free and get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/why -Visit https://betterhelp.com/whyfiles #ad -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. In 1952, nine of America's wealthiest families gathered in a Maine mansion for a séance. Nine ancient gods spoke through a medium and chose nine people to change the world. Eleven years later, the CIA officer who ran that séance's donor list sent a Russian aristocrat to befriend a troubled ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald. That aristocrat introduced Oswald's wife to a woman named Ruth Paine. Every piece of evidence against Oswald, the rifle, the photos, the testimony, ran through Ruth Paine's garage. A spy camera vanished from police custody. A Warren Commissioner's mistress was best friends with a woman at that séance. The connections are documented. The conclusions are yours to draw. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
August 3 · 3 hr 58 min
The Basement: MrBallen | YouTube's Best Storyteller Tells His Own
-Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/thewhyfiles to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. John Allen built an empire telling strange, dark, and mysterious stories. But the darkest story he's ever carried is his own. We talk Navy SEALs, the night his life went viral in a water park hotel room, the price of fame, and the confession he's kept buried for over a decade. This one goes places I didn't expect. Stick around. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
July 31 · 37 min
The Hunter Who Became the Hunted | Carl Higdon Abduction
-Get 15% off OneSkin with the code WHY at https://www.oneskin.co/why #oneskinpod -Download Cash App Today:https://click.cash.app/ui6m/4je4423a #CashAppPod As a Cash App partner, I may earn a commission when you sign up for a Cash App account. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Bitcoin services provided by Block, Inc. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures. -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Go to https://brooklynbedding.com and use promo code THEWHYFILES at checkout to get 30% off sitewide. Carl Higdon went hunting for elk in the Wyoming mountains and never fired a shot that landed. A stranger stopped him first, and nothing about the rest of that afternoon made sense. Hours later, a search party found him soaking wet and shaking, unable to remember his own name or recognize his wife. His truck sat three miles from where it should have been, stuck in terrain it had no business reaching. A bullet in his pocket had been fired, yet it never left the barrel the normal way. Doctors examined him and found changes in his body they couldn't explain. What happened to Carl Higdon on that mountain still doesn't have a clean answer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
July 27 · 3 hr 41 min
The Basement: John B. Alexander | Roswell, MJ-12, Skinwalker: The Colonel Who Was There
Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. Colonel John Alexander commanded Green Berets in Vietnam, briefed the White House, and evaluated the Pentagon's strangest programs. He was the first person to spend the night on Skinwalker Ranch. For 79 years, the strange kept showing up in the middle of his official duties — and he wrote it all down. He brought the files. And the bent forks. This conversation goes places I didn't expect. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
July 20 · 4 hr 6 min
The Basement: Jeremy Corbell | Betrayal, Surveillance, and the Secret Higher Than Nuclear Weapons
-Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. -If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can start your claim in just a click without having to leave your couch: https://ForThePeople.com/BASEMENT Jeremy Corbell has spent years chasing the biggest secret in modern history, and it's cost him more than most people realize. He built his reputation filming the footage governments tried to keep hidden, from Navy warships tracking objects no one can explain to whistleblowers risking everything to speak up. Corbell talks about the years it took to earn a source's trust, the moment a supposed ally tried to steal his work in front of Congress, and what it's like knowing your phone might be tapped. He also opens up about his friendship with journalist George Knapp and the partnership that helped change how the public sees this whole story. This is the story behind the story, from the person who has been closest to it the longest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
July 18 · 46 min
Prophecy of the Popes | Saint Malachy's Countdown
-Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Don't let stigma stand in the way of support. Start therapy with BetterHelp and get 10% off at https://betterhelp.com/whyfiles. #ad -Try QUO for free and get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/why -Start your risk-free Greenlight trial today at https://greenlight.com/why to teach your kids real-world money skills. In 1139, an Irish archbishop knelt in Rome and saw every pope who would ever sit on the throne of Peter. He wrote the visions down as 112 short phrases, then the manuscript vanished for 450 years. When it resurfaced, historians checked the list against history. Pope after pope matched. The list ends with a name no pope has ever dared to take, followed by the destruction of Rome and Judgment Day. Francis died in 2025. A new pope took his place, and the city kept standing. But hidden inside the original Latin is a second countdown, one that points to a specific year: 2027. We trace the prophecy from a candlelit chapel to a four-hundred-year-old forgery, and ask why it keeps landing on the truth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
July 15 · 3 hr 12 min
Human Evolution and the Power of the Mind: Science Compilation
Huge thanks to Jesse for hosting this compilation! From rewriting the blueprint of life to radioactive creatures defying biology, this collection pulls back the curtain on some of the strangest scientific mysteries we've covered. A forgotten fungus may have reshaped the human brain in record time. Meaningful coincidences might be more than chance, and a maze experiment from a century ago still can't be fully explained. Hidden signals shape decisions without your knowledge, and one scientist's radical theory cost him his safety for challenging what we think we know about memory. Six stories, one question worth sitting with: how much of reality are we still missing? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
July 14 · 2 hr 57 min
Human Hybrids and Interdimensional Creatures: Cryptids Compilation Vol. 5
PDS Debt is offering a free debt analysis. It only takes thirty seconds. Get yours at https://PDSDebt.com/files. Thanks PDS Debt for sponsoring this video! Human Hybrids or Interdimensional Creatures: Cryptids Compilation Vol. 5 Cryptids exist in the space between known and unknown—creatures reported for generations but never officially acknowledged. From Mothman's glowing red eyes to ancient predators beneath Antarctic ice, from Australia's deadly Yowie to interdimensional beings along New Jersey rivers, witnesses describe encounters that defy explanation. Underground electrical anomalies connect these sightings across continents. Cave networks form impossible geometric patterns. Physical evidence vanishes into government storage. Some reports trace back thousands of years through indigenous cultures. Modern technology captures footage mainstream science won't examine. These aren't isolated stories—they're pieces of something larger. Something watching. Something waiting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
July 13 · 4 hr 18 min
The Basement: Thomas Campbell | This Sound Frequency Unlocks Out-of-Body Travel
-Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% off your @MUDWTR with code BASEMENT at https://mudwtr.com/BASEMENT! #mudwtrpod -For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at https://Mengotomars.com. A physicist with a background in missile defense and NASA spent decades learning to leave his body at will. What he found changed how he understood reality itself. Thomas Campbell built the first lab with Robert Monroe to study out-of-body states, and helped invent a sound technology that's still used today to alter consciousness. Then he spent 33 years turning those experiences into a working theory of physics. This conversation covers entanglement, the double-slit experiment, artificial intelligence, and what actually happens when we die, all explained through a lens that makes the strangest parts of quantum mechanics finally make sense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Showing 1–20 of 32 episodes