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March 19, 2023 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
52:57
Edition 711 - Chuck Bergman
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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
On this edition of the show, some more items from my recent radio shows, things that I want to put here for posterity so that they won't be erased and lost forever.
You know that recently I did two and a half hours of exclusive material that only goes out on the podcast.
I wanted to catch up on some of the material from recent radio shows.
And just to say, in case this is the only podcast you're hearing recently, as far as I know, I'm going to be back on television.
I know it's confusing.
Believe me, I'm confused too.
But apparently, effective Sunday the 19th of March, I was back on TV and not on the radio.
We'd started to plan for a radio show and we were told, I was told, on Wednesday, on the Wednesday before the Sunday, you're back on TV.
And that literally, those words are all I know.
So we'll see how things go.
So the guests on this edition, James Giordano from Georgetown University in the U.S., Georgetown University Medical Center, to be precise.
An update on Havana syndrome.
After that, Xena Burns on the future of radio.
Well, maybe.
Radio GPT.
This is a radio algorithm, a radio program, quite literally, that picks content and actually speaks it and puts it in the right place.
They have a demonstration, Radio GPT radio station, which is pretty impressive on their website.
Maybe it's scary for those of us who speak into a microphone for a living, and maybe not.
You'll hear from Xena Burns from Futuri Media in Canada, who are behind this.
She's a vice president there.
It made some news, certainly in America and Canada, not in the UK, so I thought we needed to hear about it here.
And lastly, my recent conversation, just an introduction to Chuck Bergman, a former police officer in the US, also a psychic medium.
What a fascinating man, and we do have to talk to him more.
So those three items.
First one, James Giordano, Dr. James Giordano from Georgetown University Medical Center, with an update on Havana syndrome.
Now, a number of outlets reported this.
The United States intelligence community concludes there is little evidence to suggest the belief that a hostile foreign power was responsible for so-called Havana syndrome, a series of unexplained ailments that diplomats and officials say that they experienced across the world.
We've talked about it many times here, including with James Giordano.
So this, from my radio show recently, is an update from him.
The declassified findings were released last Wednesday showing the results of an investigation conducted by seven American intelligence agencies over a period of a number of years.
The story was first reported by the Washington Post, which wrote that the investigation contradicts in nearly every respect claims from the afflicted individuals that they were victims of a deliberate attack, possibly at the hands of Russia or some other adversary.
Some had speculated Havana's syndrome symptoms, including migraines, nausea, memory lapses, dizziness, could have been caused by a mysterious directed energy weapon, a theory that the report last week casts severe doubt upon.
One man that we had talking on this show two years ago and had him a couple of times up until the present date, Dr. James Giordano, forensic neuroscientist, has worked extensively on this.
He's professor of neurology and biochemistry at Georgetown University Medical Center in the U.S. James, thank you very much for coming on to talk about this tonight.
Thanks very much.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Now, we talked about Havana syndrome.
You said that there was much more research to be done on this.
It's taken several years for this multi-agency American report to be put together.
They have cast doubt on this being some kind of intelligence-led operation, perhaps a directed energy weapon.
What did you think of the report?
Well, I read the report with a lot of consternation, as did many of my colleagues, governmental colleagues, as well as those who are working on the academic side to study this phenomenon.
Realistically, what I found is that the conclusions offered by the report are completely inconsistent with over five years of accumulated evidence from subject matter experts, both working governmentally as well as extragovernmental and institutionally.
And as a consequence, I think the report raised a lot more questions than it actually answered.
It's a long time, isn't it, to spend compiling a report, to come out with a non-committal finding like this.
They're not saying, we think it may well be those things that you thought it might be and I thought it might be.
And they're not saying it's definitively not those things.
They're not actually saying very much.
No, they're not actually.
So if you read a bit between the lines and also read the lines themselves, the first thing that becomes apparent is that the report was really nothing more than a summary of consensus of opinions.
And the consensus was that there is dissensus.
Some of the agencies really thought that this seems to be something that may be due to at least some form of exposure to a type of energy, whether it was intentional or not or artifactual.
Whereas others seem to think, well, perhaps the gross number of cases represents something quite different.
And this is a very important point.
And the major issue I have with the report is that it seemed to aggregate or conflate the cases from Havana, to which the majority of evidence has been focused to demonstrate that something physical happened to those individuals.
It was not psychogenic, sociogenic, functional neurological effects.
We ruled out, based upon different areas of perspective and considerable data and analyses, we ruled out something environmental.
We ruled out some type of chemical, some kind of toxin, some kind of drug.
We certainly ruled out that there was sort of a group mass hysteria effect.
So what we did rule in was that these signs and symptoms, and what's very important is the objective signs as well as the subjective symptoms, were strongly reflective of what one would see if one were exposed to certain types of energy, namely ultrasonic energy and based upon subsequent analysis, What we call non-thermal rapidly pulsed microwave energy.
And this report actually dismisses that evidence, number one, but more importantly, what the report explicitly states is that it disregards considerable evidence, government intelligence, technical reports, work in the international published literature, that the science and technology capable of doing this is at a readiness level that allows it to be presently operationalizable.
So what the report is essentially saying is, no, we deny the bulk of this evidence that has demonstrated that not only do we know that these technologies exist and are at a state that can be readily utilized, but it's at a point that's operational.
And what's curious about that is that the patents for these types of technologies were filed in the United States.
And this leads me to a thought, James, and I'm sorry for jumping in here, but I think it's...
I mean, this is either a brilliant thought or a silly one.
You tell me which.
The thought that I had as soon as I read the various stories about this this week was that they actually know what this is.
And they're embarrassed by what this is because possibly America is maybe deploying those frequencies for some legitimate security purpose of its own.
I mean, this is just speculation and supposition.
And this is a side effect of the use of that technology.
They may know about this, but it's so secret they can't talk about it.
Is that a ridiculous speculation on my part?
Well, no, actually it's not.
I mean, from the very beginning, one of the things that we thought may be possible is that this may be an artifact of techniques and technologies that these individuals were actually employing on the job, primarily surveillance technology that may have had a side effect that either we did not know about or we didn't recognize was quite as potent as it was.
And as a consequence, what we're seeing here is something not unlike we've seen before, whether it's Agent Orange or whether it's Gulf War syndrome.
And here the question becomes, is this something that should be recognized and should be known and then should be acted upon or not?
But the other question that I think falls as follows from your claim is that, well, if these were U.S. patents, and certainly there are, and we know that there are other patents that exist worldwide, is this technology that has been turned around upon us?
And again, it's important to understand that although the majority of the individuals affected in Havana were primarily United States intelligence personnel working in the embassy, there have been other reports and they're validated reports of other personnel, primarily Canadian personnel, who've been similarly affected.
So the question then becomes, is this a technology that a near-peer competitor may in fact have developed?
And we know that both Russia and China have technologies such as this, and China is exceedingly overt in its claims that these ultrasonic technologies and certain types of non-thermal microwaves are being used in industrial and occupational testing for safety and health reasons.
The question then is, well, what is this?
Was this a U.S. patent that was usurped?
Is this a fast follower where you have similar devices and technologies that are being employed?
Or was this, as you had mentioned, perhaps something that these people were actually using on their job that unfortunately rendered an artifactual side effect that produced these effects?
What about the people who suffered from so-called Havana syndrome?
What are they going to do about this?
Having read this report, I don't know whether they're organized.
You can tell me whether they're organized into a group.
Is that going to be the end of the story for them?
Certainly not.
There's an attorney here in the United States whose name is Mark Saeed, and he's representing the majority of those individuals who are affected.
And each and all of these individuals have expressed some level of not only disdain, but in some cases, frank, uproar, the nature of the report.
I mean, it's one thing to state, listen, we've come to this point, and there are still certain questions as to what the nature of this may be.
We don't have the smoking gun, but absence of the smoking gun does not constitute denial that guns exist, so to speak.
And so we know the science and technology exists.
We know that something happened to those individuals in Havana.
We're aware that what happened to them is indeed physical.
And it's also very, very important to be able to not aggregate those individuals categorically.
It's important to separate what happened to the individuals in Havana from the over 1,000 of reports that have occurred subsequently that in the vast majority of cases, and we're talking 99% of those cases, represent something else.
A pre-existing medical condition, a coexisting medical condition, inclusive perhaps of a psychological condition, individuals who are the worried well, and those who may have had signs and symptoms in the past, who now begin to conflate those signs and symptoms with these reports and are simply confused or baffled.
But even if 10% of those people, perhaps the ones specifically who worked in Havana, have something that you cannot explain, this cannot go away, can it?
No, I mean, let's face it, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
And something happened to those individuals of Havana.
The most probable source that we were able to determine utilizing reams of information, metadata, medical data, as well as surveillance data and readiness level of the technologies, was there was some form of energy, whether it was intentionally directed energy or whether it was artifactual energy based upon some device, equipment that these individuals were exposed to, that's a yet unanswered question.
But something happened to those individuals in Havana.
And what's important here to note is that in many ways, what this report does is disregards those medical findings in its categorical aggregation and also disrespects those patients, particularly from Havana, as well as those who remain in a verification and validation pipeline for whom these signs and symptoms continue to persist and for whom these signs and symptoms have rendered them disabled.
But more than that.
Will you continue to research this, James?
Oh, I will.
I mean, I think the other thing here is that this also disrespects those individuals who've been working on trying to figure out what happened, as well as those individuals who are caring for those patients.
So, in leaving more questions unanswered, I think what the report does is really just prompts further investigation.
My hope is that the report does not throw cold water on the necessary funding to support said investigations, both now and in the future.
Dr. James Giordano, The Ongoing Story of Havana Syndrome.
Now, Radio GPT.
We've been hearing all about the introduction, inclusion of chatbots, artificial intelligence, into things that we interact with daily.
Microsoft only this week made an announcement, as I record these words, that artificial intelligence was being incorporated into its 365 product.
So we're going to see more of this, whether you want it or whether you don't.
The latest thing is my field, radio.
And I've always believed radio is about the person interacting with another person.
In other words, the person is me in this instance.
The other person is you listening.
It is the most revealing and intimate relationship.
The voice, I believe, reveals everything.
And is also more expressive than pictures, in my view, which is why I've always loved doing radio and have always shunned and shied away from being seen on TV.
Xena Burns is from Futuri Media in Canada.
She's a vice president there.
And they've created Radio GPT.
They have a demonstration radio station running.
And it is a complete solution, as they call them today, that basically finds and speaks the words and organizes everything.
You could run a whole radio station from this.
And ultimately, I suspect you will be able to.
And knowing the industry that I've been in, you know, if it's going to be cheaper and it's going to be available and people are not going to notice, they're going to do it, is what I would say.
And I can see advantages and I can see some disadvantages.
So first of all, before we speak with Xena Burns, let's hear a demonstration of Radio GPT.
Radio GPT.
We bask in the glory that is Radio GPT.
We're a listening experience powered by artificial intelligence.
Welcome to 100% AI.
I got knowledge for days.
I am full of knowledgey goodness.
I know a lot, and I am not afraid to share it.
I'm completely AI.
So am I. Me too.
We all are.
We're your entertainment assistant.
100% generated by artificial intelligence.
This is Radio.
GPT.
Zena, thank you for doing this.
I've just heard your demo, so have my listeners.
Is this a gimmick?
Absolutely not.
Artificial intelligence is meaningfully impacting just about every industry there is, right?
And audio and radio is no different.
Right.
How is this going to work?
How does it function?
So with radio GPT, it's not just the AI voice component of it.
That's one component of radio GPT.
It starts with the content.
We have a system called Topic Pulse, which uses artificial intelligence to scan Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more than 250,000 sources of news and entertainment across social and across the web.
And the system can identify what people in a specific local market are talking about and engaging with.
There's even a predictive component to the AI that based on the trajectory of a breaking story can tell what's about to go viral.
So the person who runs the radio station, the program director, when they're setting up radio GPT, they set parameters.
They say, maybe my audience wants entertainment news.
They're a little more, maybe they might be more interested in musicology type content, trivia, things like that.
And based on how it's set up, Topic Pulse System can identify what the AI voices should be talking about at any given time.
And it's very, very real time, right?
A lot of times in radio, things will be recorded hours or even days in advance.
This is something that gives information that is happening right now, very, very current.
So the topic is identified.
GPT technology then generates a script and the AI voice or voice says, because you can have up to three voices talking in one break, one piece of content.
The AI voice or voices then read the script based on what the artificial intelligence has identified as being the most relevant content for that local market at the time.
So it's all down to the algorithm as so many things are today.
Where I would worry about this, and certainly I might get sleepless nights if I was a program director, because I wouldn't be quite sure what it was going to say.
But the internet and various other online portals of information, as you know, is crammed with false information, disinformation, stuff that you wouldn't want your kids reading.
How do we know that your algorithm is not going to sample some of that and spout it back between Fleetwood Mac and Michael Jackson?
Well, I'd like to hear that station musically, for one.
But no, I completely agree with you.
We completely agree with you.
And in the beta phase that we're in now, we do have safeguards in place to make sure that nothing objectionable would ever go out over the airwaves.
So it's evolving technology.
We have safeguards in place now.
And I'm sure that that will evolve as the technology evolves.
In this world, we know that there are rude words that have two meanings.
They can have an innocuous meaning and they can have a meaning that would be offensive to people.
How is any system going to work out contextually how the words are being used?
That's a really good, that's a really, really, really, really good question.
And it's something that the safeguards that we have in place are going to address.
I mean, there are so many ways that you can work a double entendre into things and double meanings and things like that.
I completely know what you mean.
But the technology that we're working with and that we're developing is designed so that those things aren't going to slip through.
Don't get me wrong.
I am completely On side with technology.
You know, I was there.
I've worked in news and music radio all of my career, and that's three decades.
And when I came into it all, we were breaking ground with a thing called Selector that would pick the music for you.
You could put in there the occasional spice track, a bit of Frank Sinatra just to liven up things.
Then we get back to the main music feast.
And so, you know, I understand how these things work.
I am a little concerned about it, even though I'm a great enthusiast for all of these things, including this.
I heard today, for example, a link between two songs that was clearly the artificial intelligence trying to read what I would call a funny story.
And God, I've rewritten and used a million of these on news bulletins in my lifetime.
It was trying to deliver a funny story between two records.
And it delivered it.
The end of the sentences was right up against the vocal for the record.
So it was, you know, disc jockey perfect.
However, the delivery was a bit flat and it didn't quite work, which suggests to me that there are things at the moment this technology would not really be appropriate for.
That's an absolutely fair point.
I mean, this is tech, as I said before, this is artificial intelligence.
The cat is out of the bag.
It's disrupting almost every industry.
And if we waited for the perfect, we can't wait for the perfect to get in the way of the good when it comes to this type of technology.
Our company has for nearly 15 years been on the forefront of technology innovation and testing things and trying things, right?
If this was something that was going to be 100% perfect out of the gate, we wouldn't be in a beta testing phase right now.
I'm totally with you on all of that.
And like I say, I love innovation and I think this is great.
Do you think legally, ethically, technically, it would be possible to bring back some of the great broadcasters of our time?
We have some here in the UK.
There was a man on air in England called Terry Wogan, a wonderful broadcaster with an amazing turn of phrase and a fantastic voice that reached places that most other voices can't.
In North America, there was a guy called Casey Kasem who used to do the chart countdown every week.
You know, hi, this is Casey Kasem in the Hollywood, and this is America's top 40.
We're counting them down.
Not very good.
That is something that is factual.
You just have to feed into it at position 42 this week, a brand new entry from the little boy from Havana, Cuba, who's made, you know, whatever.
You give the little biographical story, you play the record, and you come out of it with another one.
I think you could probably do that kind of thing, but would you want to do what I suggested, and that is bring back some of the greats?
Could you do that?
You know, that's an excellent question.
From a technology perspective, it's absolutely possible.
Absolutely possible.
There is enough audio from all of the greats that absolutely could be used to train artificial intelligence to use their voice.
That type of thing is already happening.
Our system can train the AI to use specific personality voices.
In America, there are some personalities who have for a while trained AI with their own voice to have the AI do some of the busy work that radio hosts need to do sometimes, like, you know, cut advertisements and things like that.
Actually, our CEO the other day sort of punked me.
He sent me some audio of a podcast and he's like, hey, I didn't record this in my home studio.
Can you check the audio and see if you think it sounds good?
I said, yeah, it sounds great.
He said, that wasn't me.
That was artificial intelligence.
Oh, my.
That wasn't me.
Yeah.
With all technology in broadcasting, and I've experienced it all in my years in broadcasting.
I'd be very lucky.
I've, you know, done music shows, interviewed the prime minister, you name it.
I've been lucky enough to do it.
And now I'm doing a show that's kind of semi-art bell with a little bit of science and technology put into it.
And I absolutely love doing that.
But I wonder if some things are always going to be a bridge too far for the technology.
You know, the situation where you're doing an interview like this one and you have to be listening to what you're saying, which I have been intently, it has to be a conversation, so it's got to sound human.
But I have to respond relevantly to what you have just said.
Now, those are three elements that a lot of humans find difficult.
How is technology going to do that?
It's another excellent question.
As you well know, and as I can just tell from this interview, the best interviewers listen more than they talk and can ask intelligent follow-ups based on the subject's answer.
AI is something that is constantly evolving.
So those, I don't think that we're at the point now where artificial, where an artificial intelligence interviewer is right off the bat going to be able to on the fly, ask those really intelligent follow-ups.
But the speed at which the technology is evolving is remarkable, remarkable.
Even it's an area that I keep a close eye on.
Even what I've seen within our own company, how quickly the technology is evolving.
I mean, I've been in this field for quite some time and I've never seen anything like it.
So today, do I think that that's the best use of AI?
Not necessarily, but if we were to have this conversation again in three months, I might have a different position on it based on the way that the technology is evolving.
So is this going to be video killed the radio star?
You know, I think it's going to be, honestly, I think it's going to be video slash AI.
I think this type of thing could help radio stars, right?
In no form or fashion, in no form or so much of what is special about radio is that human connection and that emotion.
And I don't think that AI is there yet.
I don't know that AI is ever going to fully replace that.
AI is not going to be able to look a listener in the eye, right?
And upgrade their seats at a concert or something like that.
But if radio personalities and programmers can work in conjunction with artificial intelligence like this and make it work for them, those that are still live physically on the air using artificial Intelligence to help them identify the right stories to talk about and the ways to talk about them.
And then use things like radio GPT to bookend the radio stars, right?
There are very, very few radio stations in the world that still are 24-7, physically live and local, someone in the studio at all times.
So if you can take sort of, you know, your marquee talent, the talent that is really meaningful in those local markets and bookend it with 20 with 24-7 content that we know is relevant for that local market, that is something that I think is going to help broadcast radio thrive.
And for right now, I can see a couple of places just at the end of this where you could do this immediately.
There are lots of, I know them, I've worked for some of them over my lifetime, lots of tiny, tiny stations that would love to do overnight programming of their own.
And they can't afford to do that.
So here's one place where you could do simple overnight programming.
You could incorporate travel news and stuff like that.
Or indeed, if you were starting a radio station, which many people do all around the world for special events like the Technology Show every year in Las Vegas, then they could absolutely do that right now.
So I think it's fascinating.
I think, you know, you've done a good thing.
And it's one of those things, isn't it?
If you don't get on board the train now, then you're going to be left at the station.
That is such a good way to say it.
What has been true over the years, and it just happens again and again, is you can't stop technology.
I mean, look at Blockbuster and Netflix, right?
Blockbuster once had the opportunity to buy Netflix for $50 million.
But Blockbuster wasn't interested.
They didn't think streaming was going to be a thing.
They stuck to their guns.
They didn't get into it.
There is now one Blockbuster left in the entire world in Bend, Oregon, in the United States.
And Netflix has a market capitalization of $143 billion.
And you've just got to make sure that if you're backing horses, you're backing the right one.
I mean, I've got a feeling that this is going to be the basis of something very big.
So I've just talked to somebody who's in there at the beginning of it.
And that's fascinating.
The only thing is, I don't want it to put me out of work, Xena.
That's it.
No, no, no, no, no.
Neither do I. This way I say bookending, bookending great personalities.
Well, as Casey Kasem aforementioned once said, keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars, Xena.
Thank you.
Love it.
Thank you.
I'm not going to hand over to AI just yet.
Xena Burns from Futuri Media on the fascinating development of radio GPT and AI meets the radio presenter.
Almost a case of video killed the radio star.
Remember that song?
The buggles?
Finally, I just wanted to put here for archive and posterity purposes my conversation with a man I was enthralled by, Chuck Bergman, former police officer in America, who is also and was also during his service a psychic medium.
What a combination that is.
My father had a certain amount of, is it fluence, I want to say, is it instinct?
You know, they call it in the Britain, the British scene, copper's instinct.
He always knew things that I didn't know.
And I think because his dad was a bit psychic, I think my dad was too, and I am a bit, I think, as well.
So let's hear the conversation with Chuck Bergman.
As a renowned psychic medium and retired police officer, Chuck Bergman has assisted on many high-profile cases worldwide.
He's co-authored the book The Everything Guide to Evidence of the Afterlife and done a ton of other stuff.
He's online to us now.
Chuck, thank you very much for coming on my show.
Oh, my pleasure.
I was honored to be invited.
And listen, I'm a guilty man because I'm not going to be giving you nearly enough time, and I do apologize for that, but hopefully we'll be able to do this again at some point and do you for longer.
If that works.
I like that.
Sounds good.
Now, listen, my dad was a cop.
He was a cop in Liverpool all his working life, 30 years or more.
And he had an instinct, okay?
And he was a bit psychic, too.
So was his dad.
Now, you are a cop and you're also psychic.
Do you think that the two go together more than we're told?
The two things?
Absolutely.
I think it's by default.
You know, police officers make certain decisions and judgments, and a lot of this is based on their, what we call gut feeling.
Well, not only do they get the gut feeling, but they also later get to see the results of the gut feeling.
So if they're feeling they should or shouldn't do something and later they get to see the results of it, then you tune in and go, wow, that's what I was thinking before I made this move.
Therefore, I'm going to start trusting what this gut feeling is.
So it's much more than what they call coppers into intuition here in the UK.
Same idea, though, really, but yet it's refined.
How's that?
Sounds good to me.
Talk to me about your service in the police then and how this ability that you say you have, the psychic mediumship ability, how that played into your career in the police.
You know, it's a funny story because I had the ability as a child.
It went away.
I went into the military and I just heard the show prior to my coming on the air.
I was a Vietnam vet.
I am a Vietnam vet and saw action over in Vietnam.
So when I, as a youth, came back, I'm out of the military.
I get a job with the Salem Police Department.
But in all places, I don't know if it's as well known in England as here in America, but the town I was in is Salem, Massachusetts, known as the Witch City.
Salem witches, yeah.
Salem witches and psychics on every corner.
And I still didn't have any interest in it.
You know, people be walking around in witch garb and costumes and things like that.
To me, it was just drawing in tourists.
So I was okay with it.
It's like they're doing their thing.
I'm doing my thing and we're okay with it.
But I have to admit, it was odd when on occasion I would have lunch at a certain restaurant and would be sitting at the table with the Salem witch who's sitting there with the big black hat on and the robes and everything but a broomstick.
You were seeing one of these people psychically in terms of your mediumistic ability.
Well, you know, I kind of didn't get the development immediately.
Everything happened, I would say, about five years in.
That's when I started picking up on, wow, what is this?
Why am I knowing about traffic accidents before they even happen in my, you know, area that I worked?
I could go on a call and pretty well know through some source like the guilty party and who's going to run and a little bit more than normal intuition.
I'll put it that way.
And as things played out, even though I started going to mediumship classes and learning about it and learning about meditation and all the stuff that goes hand in hand with it, I even took Reiki classes just to see, you know, what that was all about.
It wasn't until I retired that it was okay to start helping law enforcement and solving murders and finding missing people and doing stuff like that.
And what did they say to you?
I mean, I was going to ask you about the reaction of your colleagues, but, you know, I'm going to work into this now.
What did they say to you when you'd been in the service and you came back as somebody who was assisting them in cases, as a psychic?
They weren't completely open arms, which is why I threw in the Salem part of it.
You would think a town where the police officers on the armband have a witch riding a broom, and that's still today on the arm patch.
You would think they would be open to the supernatural or certain abilities and stuff like that.
But they were just the opposite.
I was told specifically by the chief of police, he said, word is getting out.
And especially the world-renowned medium James Van Prague, I had met him, become friends with him.
He was a mentor to me.
He actually put me as a recommended medium on his website.
He's a great guy.
I've fed him on this show a number of times.
He's good, good.
Yeah, he is really, really very, very good medium, too.
Well, what happened was someone had informed the chief that I'm on that website.
So he called me into the office and said, hey, we got to talk about this.
If you're hearing voices and carrying a gun, this could later be a problem in court.
So they thought you were a bit unbalanced, yeah.
And that's funny because in my book, I wrote how funny it was, you know, wearing the uniform, I put my shoulder patch, I turned, I pointed to it, and I said, Chief, we're in Salem, Massachusetts.
Why would hearing voices be a problem?
Why would it?
Well, why indeed?
Chuck Bergman is here, psychic detective, retired from the force now.
But Chuck, you were telling me before we took commercials that, you know, you went to your boss, and he said it's a little bit of a concern that, you know, here's a man in the service of Salem who's carrying a gun and he's hearing voices.
How did you get around that?
It wasn't easy.
It really wasn't.
I did my best to keep it under wraps up until someone ratted me out.
I don't know who let the chief know because he wouldn't be on the Jeans Van Prague website.
Someone had to have told him.
And even that was a funny story, how I walked in the chief's office and he's facing me at his desk.
I could see, you know, he had a big window behind him, but I could see a reflection of his computer screen in the window.
You don't have to be psychic for that.
And what I saw in the reflection was the James Van Prague website.
So right away, I knew where the conversation was headed.
And, you know, I had his advice was, you know, what you do after work hours is up to you, but don't bring the Salem police into it.
In other words, don't use them as representing it or being in favor of it or whatever, you know.
Right.
So were they encouraging you to, if you were going to do this, to do this under another name or something?
He didn't really say that, but what I did is I just used the opportunity to, people don't realize how many mistakes you make in the beginning, learning to interpret messages, to feel what's coming in, to work with the longevity of doing a whole reading and not tiring out after one or two messages.
You know, there's a lot to it.
It's not as simple as people would think it is.
When you were in the police service before you retired, can you think of maybe a case, the most notable case for you, where this ability helped you to solve a crime?
You know, it was right after I got out.
And there was one that, I mean, it was immediate, almost like I was being fed all these incredible cases within two months after being retired.
And the most incredible one was, it was a lady local.
I live in Florida.
I was giving her a phone reading.
We were all done with the reading.
And I'm thinking like, oh boy, I'm going to go in and have a nice meal and watch TV, put my feet up and call it a day.
But then she threw in one line that kind of messed it up.
She said, I have a brother-in-law in Chicago and he's missing.
Oh, boy.
And I said, okay, let me see what I can get.
I said, is his name David?
And she goes, yes.
I said, why do I feel like I'm in a bank, but I'm not cashing a check?
I'm behind the window.
I'm, you know, like serving people.
And she said, well, David is a bank president.
I said, okay, now I can start trusting the information that's coming in.
So I'm getting information on her missing brother-in-law.
And very, very clearly, I saw that I want to put it delicately for radio, but he had been Shot in the top of the head.
He was laying in very, very shallow water on his back.
And I knew that what I was seeing was accurate.
Okay.
Now, we have to say, for people listening to this, it's late at night.
Obviously, we're talking about crime cases.
There are going to be details like this.
We also have to say, whenever in England we have conversations, in the United Kingdom, we have conversations like this, that, of course, we're not advocating any of this, and we're offering you this conversation for entertainment purposes only.
So, you know, take out of it what you want to, I think, is what I'm saying.
I find it fascinating.
So, look, you've got this person that you're talking to.
You think the conversation is over and you're going to go and have a beer, but you discover something else.
How do you think you knew that?
I saw a picture of him lying in the water with the wound, and I was sure about it.
But I would never say that to a person unless I had prior information that would be validated by them.
And when I come out with his name, and I see him in a bank, and then I find out he's a bank president, and it's kind of important.
He'd only been missing for seven days.
Right.
That's an enormous responsibility, isn't it?
Were you not a little concerned about laying that on this person?
You know, and it could turn into a lawsuit.
Absolutely.
You give something like this to, I give it to the sister-in-law.
She gives it to the wife.
The wife has a mental breakdown and saying, well, this psyche said.
You're in big trouble.
It's a very good point.
It's a very good point and something you have to be very careful of when you make these kind of statements to people.
I don't know how.
I don't know how to do it.
How did you get around that?
I'm sorry.
That sounds to me like the insurmountable obstacle because there you are saying it because you're sure of your ground and you turned out, you tell me to be right.
But, you know, how do you know the effect that that is going to have on somebody?
I realized I was making a monumental move when I said he, you know, he's not alive.
He's connecting with me.
That's how I know his name.
That's how I know what he did for work.
He even gave his wife's name to me.
So I knew I had enough that I was working with his spirit.
And what happened next was really amazing, too, because I found out that the wife, and I'm sure you'll read between the lines on this one, the wife happened to be half partners in one of the biggest law firms in Chicago.
So again, if I've said the wrong thing here or David comes knocking on the door two days later, there could be a hefty lawsuit easily.
Yes.
Absolutely.
You could have said that for the damage I've said.
You could have been cleaned out if you happened was her partner, former FBI agent, now working with David's wife in the law firm, he called me up and said, what would it take to get you to come to Chicago and talk to a judge?
Because, oh, I know what it was.
Seven more days went by.
They found the body.
It was in very shallow water.
He was on his back and no wound entrance, nothing.
And they did a crime scene.
They did an autopsy.
They did all of that.
That's when the partner called up and said, with all that happening, you know, the medical examiner called it suicide by drowning.
He's got his phone on him.
He's got his money on him.
He wasn't robbed.
This was suicide by drowning.
And I said, oh, but you're leaving out one element.
I know what I saw.
So this is where I'm telling the partner, the retired FBI agent.
So anyway, they offered to fly me up to Chicago, talk to a judge, and now we want to get a second autopsy, which I've never experienced that in 32 years on a police department.
Usually an autopsy is an autopsy, and that's, you know, that's gold.
And, you know, for the well-being, for the peace of mind of the family, doing that once is normally all they want to do.
To do it again puts everybody through it one more time, doesn't it?
It does.
It really does.
And it was difficult, but I took their offer.
I went to Chicago.
I talked to a judge.
He then issued a second autopsy hours before the body was going to be cremated.
So it seems like I got up there just in time, you know, to make this happen.
And the person doing the second autopsy, and I can say it because they found a bullet immediately to the top of the head, like I said.
And the first medical examiner was actually arrested.
And from what I understand, is doing time in jail for doing an improper autopsy, which they weren't sure if it was mob-related.
They're not exactly sure what happened there.
I was going to say, you know, Chicago, the first thing you think is me, because I've spent the last, well, part of last week re-watching all the Godfather films again.
The first thing you think is that means maybe they are incredible, but I saw all three of them.
But you think the mob, don't you?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And when I found out what was going on with that, I said, hey, guys, I got to get back to Florida.
I said, I can't hang around here, especially with the mob finding out I'm the one that exposed them, you know.
So are you telling me that nobody was actually, as they say, brought to justice for this?
I'm not sure.
I haven't heard for the last, say, seven or eight years what's happened with the case.
So it's still being investigated?
It's still being investigated, and I'm not going to say the amount, but I do know it went as far as before they contacted me, David had a hefty life insurance plan, and it was turned down because of suicide.
And then after I did what I did, it was determined to be murder, and the wife, thank goodness, was given the check.
Now, you know, look, I have some listeners who have varying degrees of skepticism about all of this.
And I have to be, as a journalist, professionally Skeptical.
So I'll ask you this.
You saw all of that, but you didn't see who did it.
Yeah, because sometimes I've learned that, and I've been on many, many cases where it would be better if we let things happen in their own time, the way it was planned out, than for me to interfere and say, hey, look, we got the body.
Because maybe by getting the body too early, it may destroy evidence or it may disrupt what would have happened if you let the natural chain of events happen.
And that's a hard one.
But I'd been on cases searching in the woods, and we did one for a two-year-old little boy locally.
And during the search, a voice, clear as a bell, came into my head and said, you're not supposed to find him.
Go home.
I went, whoa, I'm not going to argue with that.
What do you think that voice was coming from?
I've only heard that voice say four or five times in my life.
And if anyone's seen the video on when I was on the A ⁇ E program where they did a thing, I was a child playing with stuff in the backyard at five years old.
And I'm trying to pin on a badge.
I'm trying to make a gun belt and all this stuff to be a policeman.
And I'm playing all by myself.
Well, the badge kept falling off, kept falling off.
And it was then that I heard the voice, don't worry, Chuck.
One day you'll be wearing a real badge, which is kind of odd that, you know, 18 years later, you get sworn in as a police officer.
Same voice.
Really, really important thing here I'd like to say, and I think you'll know why I went down this road.
When things started developing on the police department, I thought mediumship and people communicating with the dead and all that was, I thought it was impossible.
Even though I had experiences as a child, it went away and I didn't buy into it at all.
So being in Salem one day, I thought, I'm going to go have a reading and see what this stuff is all about.
And one thing I did wrong is when I sat down, the lady said, oh, gee, Chuck, your mom's here.
She's got her hands cupped.
She's got a little package with a bow on it.
I said, oh, that's nice.
But what I should have said to the lady is, well, gee, that's funny.
Today's my birthday.
So, you know, but she didn't say birthday, so I didn't give her credit.
If I'd given her credit, it would have been more positive energy and it would have been fine.
Right, right.
But, you know, sometimes it's rather like conversations you have and you think, I wish I'd said that at the time.
You know that.
It's the same kind of thing.
That would have helped that situation.
Now, listen, we just.
Sadly, I said that we've only got a very limited time and not nearly enough time to talk with you.
So, you know, I'd love to either do a podcast with you or maybe do another radio interview.
If you're up for that, I'd love to.
I'd love to.
I wonder if you could tell me in a minute and a half, if it's possible, what you believe happens when we die?
Because I'm contemplating my own mortality now.
You know, I'm not as young as I used to be.
And we all think about it, even if we say we don't.
What do you think happens?
Well, you should have let me finish the story.
That way you would have heard.
Go on then.
Finish the story.
Sorry.
So we get to the very end.
We get to the very end of the reading.
I'm glad you're getting, and you'll see why.
And the woman said, Chuck, if you have another reading, I really loved your mom.
And I loved her British accent.
Now, mom grew up in Cardiff, Wales.
Yeah, now you're interested, aren't you?
We lived here most of her life here in Florida.
The reading was up in Boston, up in Salem, where the lady had no idea that my mother was from England.
So for me, that was the proof I needed.
If she's hearing my mother's voice and even a British accent, and I'm going to give you people over there in the UK credit, when mom was in Florida, her voice was like Simon Cowell.
She was famous for her accent.
So she couldn't have done that.
Listen, we've only got 30 seconds now.
So I don't know whether there are any words you can say that can sum this up.
Yeah, just that life does continue after death.
We do get to be with our loved ones again, and they make every effort to try and connect with those people that are still here.
So try and welcome that when it does happen.
I promise I'll make this right in terms of the length of this.
We'll do it somehow because I want a nice, relaxed conversation with you.
I'd love to.
You've been a joy to talk with.
Do you have a website people can take a look at you at?
I do.
If you put in the Psychic Top, which is also the name of my first book, I've written three.
That will take you to my website.
Or just put in ChuckBergman.com.
The fascinating Chuck Bergman, we will have him on for a longer piece here on The Unexplained on the podcast version.
Before that, you heard Xena Burns from Futuri Media, the people behind radio GPT, the application of artificial intelligence to the world that I've existed in for 30-odd years.
We'll see what happens with that.
I've only ever known microphones and broadcasting.
All I ever wanted to do.
But what happens when you get, inserted into the mix, artificial intelligence that actually speaks your words for you?
I don't know.
I think it'll be a benefit to some small media outlets.
And knowing the business that I've been involved in all these years, I suspect they're going to be using it before long.
And that may well bring benefits in some places, but may bring problems in others.
We will see.
And before that, Dr. James Giordano with a fascinating update.
And a strange update, too, unexpected, on Havana syndrome.
I suspect we have not heard the end of that.
Thank you very much for being part of this show.
We're now fully caught up with all of the guests.
And let's see what the future brings on radio, television, and more importantly than all of it really here online.
17 years this month of doing the unexplained.
I think this may well be, if it isn't close to it, it's almost the anniversary edition.
17 years.
And I wasn't sure how it would develop when I started.
And I'm really pleased that you've liked it over these years.
And thank you for supporting me through everything that I've been through.
Including, as I report these words to you, as I record them, the death of my mother, which happened 17 years ago on this day.
And you know, if you've lost somebody and we're all going to lose people, it is the inevitability of life, death, that is.
You never get over it, and I never did.
But we have to carry on, and I know that that's what she and my dear dad, who went years later, that's what both of them would have wanted for me.
And my family were incredibly loving, incredibly supportive, buying me all kinds of equipment and just taking me places and nurturing all of my hobbies and interests and helping me through.
So I was one of the lucky ones, and it was good that I had them.
Okay, more great guests in the pipeline here at The Unexplained.
So until we meet again, my name is Howard Jews.
This has been The Unexplained Online.
Please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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