GATE Program Reports, Accounts & Recollections

Episode Intro

If you went to elementary school in the 70s, 80s or 90s, do you remember being tested by a stranger, or group of strangers? Ever get pulled out for a special class with others from different grades? Made to drink something pink? 

For whatever reason, right now many are remembering details of GATE programs. But who was behind these school programs? And what was their purpose? 

Intro to GATE Memories

Let your mind drift back, back, back to those innocent days of youth. 

Picture the elementary school you attended. The teacher. Your friends. Recess. Did you play kickball? Or hopscotch? Or jump rope? Imagine your desk. Did it have that front load opening with a special well to hold your pencils? How about the pencil sharpener? Was it mounted to your teacher's desk at the front of the room? How did the classroom smell? Remember other details? Like Pirate paste that smelled like wintergreen. That ripe scent of bodies when the weather turned warm and all of your class was reassembled on the rug sitting criss-cross applesauce?

I mention all this as precursor, because only you know what it felt like to live during those years. If you need to, pause this episode and write down your strongest recollections. I'm sure I missed lots. Like school lunches, did you bring your own in a sack or fancy lunchbox? Or did you turn in a paper ticket and receive a hot lunch in the cafeteria? What about the school library? Or gym? Any art projects you remember doing? And art supplies? What about those special classroom jobs? My teachers had a rotation that changed week to week. 

Write down what you like. Make sure your thorough because we are going deeper in a second.

Did you ever have a stranger in a suit or more than one come into your classroom to observe? Did the teacher explain that they were from a college in the area? Did they bring with them an oversized case with latches and a handle, and inside was equipment that included knobs and dials? Were you sent one by one to the back of the room and told to put on large headphones that plugged into the case? Asked to identify tones? I said, inside the classroom, but I remember a trailer, one of those mobile trailers, or portables, that they needed when schools outgrew the number of neighborhood kids. 

Some people recall tanagrams, colorful shapes you'd manipulate to form larger shapes, like boats and such. Others remember cards, some say they were black and white, others remember colors with scenes on them. Slipped into envelopes, the tester encouraged children to visualize what was inside the envelope. Visualize. Visualize. Visualize. 

There were other tests, too. 

Weeks afterwards parents of a few kids might be notified that their child was going into the GATE program. GATE stands for Gifted and Talented Education, by the way. These programs were spun differently across the United States, but the letter home often used the word, "gifted" or "talented." Even the program itself had a different name depending on the school district. TAG, LEAP, Extended Learning Program, or in Richland, Washington - across from the Hanford Nuclear Reactor, they called their program ALPHA. 

These were pull-out programs that met weekly, sometimes with more than one grade combined together. And in our school, Mark Twain Elementary (because by that time I'd moved to Pasco) and those kids were bussed in from schools across the district and convened in a portable beside the basketball courts. 

What did they do in those GATE classes?

Well, that's complicated. For many participants, the details remain hazy, at best. Some suffer memory loss about the entire program, while others in recent months, saw one of those black and white cards, or a photo of those clunky testing headphones, which rattled loose a few recollections. They remembered maps and strange activ

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Fucking clankers. Fucking clankers.

SPEAKER_04 0:10

I feel like I shrunk. I feel very short today. I feel like my chair. Somebody has invaded my space.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

I think your chair is I think your chair is crank cranked all the way down.

SPEAKER_04 0:24

It is. And I'm short. There we go. Oh, I feel so tall. Look, go crack in. I mean, they're not in the playoffs. You don't even watch sports. So wasted on you. I mean, I know it's a hockey team in Seattle, but they I know what a kraken is. Not that kind of kraken. Wow, I feel like so. Yeah, I was just very slouchy because my chair was so little. And then you know, I felt like I was in. Have you ever gone into an elementary school and had to sit in the little chair? And then you're you feel like your knees are up to your face. That's how I felt.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Oh no, when I when I was when I was there, like I was I fit the chair.

SPEAKER_04 1:06

Well, I more than fit the chair then.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah, I ain't going back there.

SPEAKER_04 1:11

You never had to do like book talks in uh like a middle school or high school or anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

No, no, I mean, oh well, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_04 1:20

I feel like I just flexed on you, and that feels wrong.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

I'm gonna scrub that out of the I mean, I feel like uh no, I feel like uh your your books would have been more like up their alley, probably middle high school, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:33

Yeah, exactly. Wow, oh hello, we're here to talk about the gate program.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

I've done zero research other than um my weird stories.

SPEAKER_04 1:44

Okay, that's what I'm hoping. So this feels like a reverse of the doomhole, only it's just one subject and deep dive. And I did a ton of research, like I could have done a solo, but how fun would that be? Not fun without you. So now I can just hit you with information and you can just chill. And I want your stories and I want your impressions too. So, and then oh my god, and then right before we got on, I got the weirdest. Uh, I have the weirdest story that is connected to this whole gate thing, I swear to you. No kidding. I can't wait to hit you with it. Okay, so for the listener and for Jesse, if you went to elementary school in the 70s, 80s, or 90s, do you remember being tested by a stranger or a group of strangers? Did you ever get pulled out for a special class with others from maybe even different grades, made to drink something pink or fluoride? For whatever reason, right now, many are remembering the details of gate programs. But who was behind those school programs and what was their purpose? Well, we're gonna get into it today and we're gonna talk about, like Jesse was saying, our own memories about it. But first, I wanted to just do an exercise. Now, if you're driving a car or in a bike or something where you have to be in control of your body, maybe you should hold off on this part and just skip ahead like a minute. But for the rest of you, let your mind drift back to those innocent days of youth. Okay, so picture your elementary school, the one that even if you attended more than one, the one that sticks out, the teacher, your friends, recess. Did you play kickball or hopscotch or jump rope? Now imagine your desk. Did it have that front load opening with that special well to hold your pencils? How about the pencil sharpener? Was it mounted at your teacher's desk at the front of the room? How did that classroom smell? Do you remember any other details like pirate paste that smelled like wintergreen? That ripe scent of bodies when the weather turned hot and all of your class was reassembled after recess on the rug, sitting crisscross applesauce. So everybody smelled a little sweaty. I mention all this as a precursor because only you know what it felt like to live during those years. And if you need to pause right now and write down some of your stronger recollections. I'm sure I missed a ton, like school lunches. Did you bring your own in a sack or have a fancy lunchbox? Or did you turn in a little paper ticket and receive a hot lunch in the cafeteria? What about the school library or the gym? Any art projects you remember doing and art supplies? What about those special classroom jobs? My teachers had this rotation that changed week to week. Write down everything you want and make sure you're thorough because we're going to deep dive in a second. And I don't want to influence your memories. So back to gate though. Did you have a stranger in a suit or more than one that felt kind of formal coming into your classroom to observe the class? Did the teacher explain that they were from maybe a local college to do a study? Did they bring with them maybe an oversized case with latches and a handle? And inside was equipment that included knobs and dials. And you were sent one by one to the back of the room and told to put on these large headphones that plugged into the case. And you were asked to identify tones. I said inside the classroom, but I specifically remember a trailer, one of those mobile trailers or portables that they needed when the schools outgrew the number of neighborhood kids. Now, do you remember being tested like that, Jesse?

SPEAKER_01 5:57

And what was your experience if you do? I remember the headphones. And I remember, you know, this is a hearing test. And I also remember that we didn't do it in the classroom. We went, we we we we were taken to another place. And if I remember correctly, it was the gym.

SPEAKER_04 6:22

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Yeah. And then uh they would take you back, like you said, you know, they take you back and they put the headphones on you, you know, and and do your your hearing test or whatever they said it was.

SPEAKER_04 6:37

Just as you said that, I remembered something. Do you remember this? And I wonder if our listeners will. You went one at a time to get tested, but then they told you the name and they said, Go touch that student and call them back. It's their turn. They would tell you. Do you remember being told, now go get this student and bring them back and tell them to come back?

SPEAKER_01 7:01

No, I remember it being more a situation where we were in a line, you know, and then they would um then they would somebody would come prompt us and take us back.

SPEAKER_04 7:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

I don't remember if we were arranged in any sort of order.

SPEAKER_04 7:16

Mm-hmm. Like nothing alphabetical, you don't remember.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

It was no, I think it was just like they they took us in a class or whatever, or two classes at a time, and like had us all line up. Okay, and you remember the headphones. And what do you remember about the headphones? It was designed uh and could have been okay, as far as I know. That they just they said, Hey, uh, this is a hearing test, and you were supposed to raise, you know, either your uh if it if like do you hear it in your in your right ear, raise your right hand, if you hear your left ear, your left hand. I remember that it was always I always had an I always had a problem with it.

SPEAKER_04 7:59

You did like what kind of problem? What do you mean?

SPEAKER_01 8:02

You say you had a problem or well, yeah. I I I felt like at the time that my hearing wasn't good, which my hearing is w is fine, because I always struggled to hear the tones, but you you you were talking about that the about the uh you downloaded one of the of the sound tests. Yeah, and um I think what I perceived as not being able to hear well was me picking up on tones that uh maybe I wasn't supposed to hear. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 8:45

Yeah, I totally know what you mean.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

So I was um I was extra pulled into it in trying to to keep up with I guess the tones that are under that were underlying the tones.

SPEAKER_04 9:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Or or whatever it was that I feel like is, you know, this is and this is probably the wrong word, but whatever subliminal thing they had going on underneath the tones. And I think I picked up on that somehow and was trying to keep up with that and struggling to pay attention to the the obvious tones.

SPEAKER_04 9:25

Yeah, and then and then also because there's an adult there, you're trying to discern, well, do is this the tone they mean?

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Because I I was a people pleaser as a kid, and I I yeah, I remember it always either stood to the side or kind of sort of three-quarter and then more like towards your back where you back inside, yep, their reaction.

SPEAKER_04 9:48

Yeah, and I I remember I did hear things underneath. I specifically heard different languages, I don't know what languages they were. I didn't recognize Spanish because my classroom was bilingual, and so I would have, but um, there were other languages that I wasn't familiar with that I heard underneath as I was listening for the tones. And I when I started leaning in, like that's what I do when I'm listening closely. I guess as a kid, I did. They I looked at them, and all I can say is they look like hungry wolves. Like you could just picture them wanting to moida me, like wanting to chomp me because I look delicious, like I was about to do something that they really wanted. And so I my fight or flight was like back off and pretend like I don't hear anything. And so I went back to like that and and just just locked it down. So, do you remember? Did you test into whatever? Like, this is the weirdest thing. They never gave us results of those tests. Our parents never got a letter, except if you were going to be in this gate program or this special pull-out program.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

I don't know. This this all was a thing that um it was for me, it was um like what I remember of it. Okay, not saying that some sort of uh other testing didn't go on earlier than that, but but when I pull this up in my memory, we had a um we had an elementary school that um was just the fourth and the fifth grade. Those were the only two grades in that on that particular campus. Oh wow. And so this was uh this was uh in the fourth grade. They um I remember that I really liked my teacher. Shout out to Miss Boatner, she was awesome. I loved my fourth grade, fourth grade teacher too. She was awesome, and so uh, but um I I really liked my teacher, and um, they did a thing where they split us, they basically came to us and they said, Hey, uh, we're we have a we've we've hired a new teacher, and I do not remember her name, but I can see her face. They've like, we have hired a new teacher, and we are going to fill her class by splitting this class. And they had specific people picked out. You are going to go to the other ladies, you're gonna finish out the year over there, yeah, in this other class. And I was part of the group that was supposed to go to the other class. I didn't want to go to the point that I went and told my parents to like, hey, can you will you talk to the, you know, because they knew, yeah, you know, the they knew principles and and I was like, Well, I was like, I I really like being in her class, I don't want to go to the other class. Will you go talk to somebody and make me not have to to change classes? And they did, and it kind of dropped it. So I don't know, was was was that just like, hey, we hired a new teacher and there, you know, we're we gotta pull people into her new class. Uh, which seems odd to me now when I think about it. Like, why would you just hire this random new teacher in the middle of the part way through? Yeah, partway through the school year, you know, and like just take a class and like speaking.

SPEAKER_04 13:15

I could see a student teacher, but a student teacher would be shadowing your teacher, right? Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, because my teacher had been there and was a pro, you know what I mean? She um uh, you know, had been there for for decades. So it really seems odd to me now. So was it was so was it just that thing, or was I actually invited into the this program you're talking about?

SPEAKER_04 13:40

And I told your parents got myself out of it.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

And now I'm thinking, like, okay, was it just that I really liked my teacher, or was it just really that I got bad vibes about going into or both? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could have been both. It's interesting. I don't know, I don't know, Jen.

SPEAKER_04 13:58

Yeah, well, it's interesting because my fourth grade teacher was a first-year teacher. Her name was Miss Ferris, like a Ferris wheel. And I we loved her, and um, but I had changed school districts um for because we had moved into a house from our apartment. So I had gone, I had been tested for the alpha program. It wasn't called GAD, it was called Alpha. And the school district I was in was Richland Um school district, which, if you know your history about uh atomic, you know, the atomic bomb being built, it was right across the river from and in the it was the little town, the factory town that they made when they um opened up the Hanford nuclear reactor, uh, area one, so they could refine to create the plutonium that went into the bombs. And so Richland was the town that they the factory town that they created. Well, that's where my apartment had been with my family, and um I was tested there for what they called the alpha program. And then um the next year was fourth grade for me, and I got to move into PASCO school district, which was cool because my mom was an administrator in PASCO school district for the bilingual programs, and so and then I remember that it was the first time I'd ever had a woman principal. And so I went in, I asked for a meeting with her secretary, and I went in and I said, it's about time I had a woman principal. And she said, I really like you. And she I didn't know, but she'd been a family friend to my mom and my dad for a long time. And she's the reason my mom got hired right after their divorce to be a uh kindergarten teacher in the district. But here's the thing is that was back in the day. This is the 1970s, early. And so they didn't really share records, like they had everybody do an assessment right off the bat, so they knew where your math uh skills were, your reading skills were, writing skills, but they didn't share records like that back then. And so whether I tested into the alpha program or not, I'll never know because I changed school district, so I was a clean slate and I loved being in the main classroom. And maybe they thought that was enough for me. They didn't want to like stretch me and have me be with a bunch of strangers once a week. But I did have my oldest best friend. I met her because she was in the gifted program. She was a year ahead in her classes anyway. They'd already accelerated her a year, but then she was in that pullout program. And um, I remember her, and and we because she was in band, we played the flute, we would always like sit together when she was there once a week, and we became best friends over the course of that year and the next year into the rest of our life. But I remember that they had their classroom, it was multiple um age groups in the portables out by the basketball courts, actually. And I remember that they had this brown butcher paper over the windows, and that always seems so weird to me because, like, it's always sunny in the tri-cities, and we would go into one of those portables for band, and all the windows are always unblocked. It was just odd that they had these. And I remember, if I'm remembering correctly, um, that Deb would talk about decoding um worksheets to decode things, right? And I remember doing that in the main classroom in fourth grade too, and I always thought it was kind of fun. But there were other kids in the program and they remember disparate things. Some remember tannagrams, like those colorful shapes, and they'd say, Can you take these shapes and build something bigger, like a boat shape or whatever? Others remember these cards. Okay, some people say they were black and white, and others remember just like your basic colors: red, yellow, green, blue. And they had to like predict, they'd be put in an envelope and they'd be asked to predict what was in there. And they remember being prompted, visualize, visualize, visualize is what these like teachers are would say to them over and over. And there were other tests that they had to do also. It was just a very odd thing, and it's been weird how people are all of a sudden remembering it now. The other thing I find interesting is you were mentioning, Jesse, that it was linked to they told us, and they told us in PASCO in eastern Washington, it was a hearing test. Well, you know what? I wonder if that's for all the kids that went home and said we had hearing tests. Like they're that kind of kid that told their parents what was going on in school. And what parent is gonna have a problem with having their kid tested for hearing loss or whatever? It's innocuous. Yeah. So this is what I found out some some more of what I found out. So weeks after we were tested, parents of a few kids could be notified that their children were going into these gate programs. And I just want to go back to the basics. Gate, it stands for gifted and talented education.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

That's what they called it with mine. They called it talent, they just called it gifted and talented.

SPEAKER_04 19:30

Okay, because because I and again, I think what parent wouldn't love to hear their kid in a program with the words gifted and talented.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

They loved it.

SPEAKER_04 19:39

Oh, yeah. These programs were spun differently across the US. Like I mentioned, mine was right across from the Hanford nuclear reactor, and it was right at a time when those um high-minded scientists were basically underemployed or unemployed. And I don't I think that that was not a coincidence. It was on purpose. But in so in our instance, it was called Alpha, Alpha as in number one, as an A. And even the programs, the other um names in other districts included the words tag, T A G, LEAP, Extended Learning Program. And um, again, mine was called Alpha. These were pull-out programs, they usually met weekly, and like I mentioned in PASCO, it was no different. Sometimes they were multiple grades uh that were lumped together. And I was asking, you know, out in the realms of people, what did they do in the gate classes? And the answers were really complicated. And I did research too. For many participants, the details are hazy at best. Some suffered memory loss about the entire program, like literally forgetting they were even in it unless they asked their parents. While others in recent months were talking about those black and white cards or a photo of those clunky testing headphones that you were talking about, Jesse, which rattled loose a couple of recollections with me. They also remembered maybe maps and strange activities, like guessing the number of candies in a jar. Others remembered those brown paper coverings that I did too in that classroom. And they remembered unfamiliar adults were the teachers. Many report their most potent memory being of a pink drink or fluoride, which they were told to ingest. And others recall red tablets that stained their teeth. And some have speculated online that those might have been implemented to wipe kids' memories. And those red, those red tablets, Jesse, you and I had a text thread about that this last summer.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Oh, I and I didn't remember the red tablets until we were texting. Yeah. And then I had the most vivid memories of. Of it ever. Like to the point where, like, I you know it was visceral. I yeah, I can I could see how bright the color was of the red, you know what I mean? Yeah. Because you'd have to you'd spit it in the sink after you were done. When I asked people, because um so it was in the fifth grade that they really they had the their gifted and talented group. Yeah. And then which I don't know if they had like you know planned it the year before by like splitting a you know the the splitting thing. Yeah, I would like to go. They had an official, like you would you if if you were in that program, you would go to um a special classroom for you know a certain, you know, uh I I I I think it was a couple of times a week, three times a week. Maybe it was a Monday, Wednesday, Friday thing for an hour or so, maybe two hours. And I, you know, and these were all you know, these were all my friends, and you know, the school wasn't that big. It went and this was like you said, this was all in a section of the school, the oldest section of the school, which was basically imagine two long stretches of like uh just like like okay, you know, like a like an old school motel where it's just like that's what I pictured. Yeah, you pull up and like there's the door to your room, and like it you it's just a room, you know what I mean? No second floor, no nothing. You go and and then when you leave the door to the classroom, you're outside on the sidewalk. And so uh there were two rows of those things, okay. And so they um I I was in a class where they had just the the year before, they had taken and turned one of those classrooms into two. And what they did was was they, you know, they basically just like cut a you know, cut the wall out between the two classrooms, okay? So you go back and forth.

SPEAKER_04 23:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Okay. So there was there was a row of desks, uh, and this was and they had a split into pods, and there was English and social studies and history and that sort of stuff was all one pod. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 24:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Anything having to do with that, and then we went to another classroom, all of us together, okay, and that was math, science, uh, you know, that stuff. Okay. Yeah. And so um, so there was a group of us and and everybody that I was sitting with were people who are in the gifted and talented section. And there were two or three of us that didn't go to the special, special class. Yeah. Okay. But we were in that in this class with them, okay. And we faced off against uh a group of other students, their desks were facing us, and the teacher was in the middle, you know. Yeah, and they had no connection to the gifted and talented program whatsoever. And so we were over here doing um different work than the other section of the class was. We were in more advanced workbooks, we had more advanced reading books, so everybody would like, you know, it's yeah, hey, we're gonna lift the boat together, which you know, right? That's awesome. But now it feels like interesting collaboration. If that's exactly everything that was going on, it exactly, and you know because two or three of us would be left in this, would be left in our section while the rest of them went to gifted and talented a couple of times a week, and then you would ask, you know, they you'd ask your friends, like, well, what do you guys even do in there? You know, yeah, and it was always like, Oh, we play this, we play Dark Tower, which was like this game, but this Milton Bradley game from like the 80s. This would have been about 1983, yeah. It was just weird, and it was like, I was like, Well, what else do you do? They're like, Well, nothing, you know, that like you know, like they never really had clear, and it was like you said, oh my gosh, the the the the door going into that room, like you couldn't look in the window from the sidewalk and see what was happening in there, you know. I'm not saying it's anything like that either, but uh I'm not saying it's like anything super weird, I'm just saying there was some kind of testing or something like you're talking about.

SPEAKER_04 26:28

But they were create they were creating some sort of environment, everything was on purpose, I think. Even the butcher paper. So I have had this feeling ever since I thought had this connection of mine cult being called alpha and nobody else's, and Richland Washington. So I I dug down deep with that, and it connects with what you're saying about creating an environment, and it isn't our imaginations, because I think that it all relates to war and creating a different kind of soldier. So if anybody listening has ever seen the movie Oppenheimer starring Cillian Murphy, then you know the Hanford Project. So I lived downriver from it, the site known as Site W, which was established in 1943 as part of that Manhattan project. I swear it all relates. Hanford Engineer Works from Hanford.gov and its B reactor was the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. And I found this from their website. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first atomic bomb, which was tested in the Trinity nuclear test and in the Fat Man bomb used in the bombing of Nagasaki. Why am I mentioning this? Because of this next bit. The town of Richland, established by the Manhattan Project, became self-governing in 1958, and the residents were allowed to purchase their properties. After sufficient plutonium had been produced, the production reactors were shut down between 1964 and 1971. 71.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

That's a year I was born, by the way.

SPEAKER_04 28:05

Wow, and I'm 69. But that's a significant year, not just because you were born, Jesse, but because within a few months, the Marland report was issued nationwide that for the first time defined the best students as being gifted. The report stated that if gifted children weren't challenged, they would act up. Within months, states developed programs to identify and challenge gifted students. Those included pullout classes and accelerated learning classes, too. All of this happened to coincide with the cold war that was heating up between the United States and Russia. And I found this from Hannah Bright's article titled Unveiling the Mysteries of Soviet Parapsychology Research and Psychic Warfare. Because I'm asking this, were they training psychics? Here's what the article said.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

I 100% believe that they were.

SPEAKER_04 29:03

Me too, spoiler alert.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Before you even go into what you're about to read.

SPEAKER_04 29:08

Exactly. Doesn't this resonate? And also about the combined classes. And and Jesse, talking about the combined classroom where your teacher's in the middle and there's kids that are like mainstream classroom, and then there's kids that are like higher learning kids or whatever, being together. It's like you do you understand that that Marlin report was basically saying we got to keep the gifted children engaged? That was his whole mindset. So this is what the article said. The Cold War, the Cold War era saw the Soviet Union explore parapsychology research deeply. They looked into psychic abilities, extrasensory perception, and how the mind affects matter. Their efforts in paranormal studies were unmatched, even compared to Western nations. Soviet scientists studied telepathy, psychokinesis, which is moving stuff with your brain and your mind, and remote viewing. Their work was often secret with military uses in mind. This made the study of science and the supernatural a unique battlefield during that time. While the US had its own projects, like Project Stargate, which some people know about now that they've disclosed so much, the Soviet Union was more committed. They set up special institutions and invested heavily in psychic research. This mix of science and the unknown is a fascinating part of both psychology and military history. By the 1970s, they were deeply studying ESP with lots of government support. End quote. Yeah, and uh that was 1970s. I've got more from that article if you want to hear it, but do you have comments about that part?

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Okay, I I am 100% on board, like I just said, with uh that's exactly what was going on. Yeah, um, and I mean we were when you're when you're talking about staying engaged, okay. Keeping people keeping kids interested. I'm almost not sure if I wasn't part of a control group in the control group, me and like three or four other kids, because I didn't go to the gate class, but I was with them on that side of the room, whatever the fuck that meant. You know what I mean? We we were able to, we were all advanced readers and and all that jazz, you know what I mean? And so we were able to knock our whatever work we were assigned out pretty quick, okay. Yeah, and then they didn't really challenge us on what we did. Like we could we had we we had stacks of manila paper, we would draw, we would, we would, you know, we would write, we uh I uh we put on a play for the whole class at one point, then like I I think I wrote it as far as I remember. And then um it was this weird mashup of like somewhere in time and like uh some a Star Wars or some shit. And then um so cute. I love this so much. Like, like we could we could read, you know, we could do kind of and like nobody, you know, and and nobody, you know, it was like free time, but like structured free, I mean unstructured free time.

SPEAKER_04 32:23

You had all the access to all the different things, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

And then and then and then we would also like um you you know, with with our classmates who um who were still trying to catch up as far as like reading and stuff like that, uh-huh. We would engage with them and be put in groups and like you know, little book clubs and like, you know, read and like we'd we'd stand up and you know, we'd we we would we'd all have to write a story and we'd stand up and read it in front of the class, you know. But we were almost kind of like tutors in a way. You were, yeah, it would it, but it was just really strange like that. And like, um, I don't under I still don't understand.

SPEAKER_04 33:02

Do you have any recollection of people that weren't your principal of the school sitting in the classroom and observing what was going on?

SPEAKER_01 33:11

It's I mean, it seems like I do, but that it's hazy. It's really hazy, yeah. I don't really remember it.

SPEAKER_04 33:16

Yeah. Well, the Soviet Union basically the key takeaways were that they led in parapsychology research during the cold war. Studies focused on telepathy, psychokinesis, and remote viewing that I mentioned. And the research had potential military applications, they had dedicated institutions that were established for paranormal studies. Soviet efforts surpassed ours in the Western countries, and the research blended scientific methods with supernatural exploration. Those are the key takeaways. I just so that we understand that. But my caveat to her article is that do you think that they stopped doing this? Do you think that we stopped doing this? The CIA got involved in this as well, and I'll tell you more about that in a bit. But when they start doing something and they have some success and it costs them next to nothing, they're gonna keep doing it.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

That's what I think. I I mean, I know this all folded into like remote viewing and and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_04 34:19

It totally does.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

You know, another strangeness that um that I found odd, and I I don't know if this was a thing with you guys too. Yeah, but um they were uh I'm weird about my about the spine and the shocker points. I feel like it's an energy thing, and you know, the whole you know, and so um they were constantly checking us to see if it if we had scoliosis that it's in air quotes. Like, do you remember that? But it seems like they would test us more than once a year to make sure our brain was straight. You know, and I always found that I found that as I as I look back on it now, I'm like, why were they fucking checking our spine so often?

SPEAKER_04 35:06

All the time, all the time. I remember that, and it went into junior high because I remember that for a girl is when you're taking your shirt off, and some people have stuff, some people don't, and it's embarrassing because you're you're naked, they didn't let you just lift up your shirt as a girl. You had to take it.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

No, I was a shirt kid, it was fucking embarrassing. It was awful, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_04 35:27

No, so yeah, but I remember when my daughters um got to that age, and I'm like, I remember asking one of them, I don't know if it was Nora or Bryn, like, did they uh did they do this? Dude, are they checking your spine for scoliosis? And they were like, What? Yeah, it's a thing that just stopped. It just stopped. Okay, let's zoom back out again for the bigger picture because we're back in uh there was this wicked mysteries podcast, which of course I have links to in the show notes. And this is what they had to say about that testing that happened across the classrooms in the US. Those headphones connected to that case with the dials inside, they played what some testers, and Jesse, you talked about this because we were test we were texting about it. They played what some testers called tones as a part of, again, what they called hearing tests. They'd instruct, listen to the tones, listen. Often what they played were hemiscored or meditation tapes created by Robert Monroe of the Monroe Institute. The tapes were thought to enhance remote viewing, a part of CIA-run project Stargate. And they were also said to help initiate out-of-body experiences. And I think that's maybe what I had because I was hearing other languages. We don't know why they were used in the gate program. All I've got are my own memories and the experiences others have shared. So I talked about the hearing voices in languages besides English beneath those tones and ocean waves. But because the adults looked at me with that like very needy, salivating expression, I just shut up and played dumb. Others said they felt, saw, or heard things that led them to be put into those special pullout programs. One thing that's emerged from the collective memory is those pink liquids or swish and spit fluoride in the name of tooth health. Again, like hearing hearing health and dental health, your parents are never going to have a problem with, right? And we talked about the red tablets that dyed teeth for a time. Many have connected the dots to that moment in men in black when a person's told to look at the light and zap, boom, like that. Their memories are wiped clean. And specific to the fluoride, if you're not woo, I'm just gonna let you know. Fluoride is known to calcify the pineal gland or what older cultures call your third eye, the center for psychic powers. Even scientists have proven that the pineal gland regulates melatonin, which impacts our sleep. Some experiencers recall the use of metronomes. Jesse, do you remember metronomes?

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Yeah, I remember that being a thing.

SPEAKER_04 38:18

Yeah, and then others have this freckle in their inner arm from that age group. Do you have a freckle in your inner arm, like right about here up your forearm? Which arm?

SPEAKER_02 38:27

Which arm?

SPEAKER_04 38:28

Um, it could be left or right, and it's like midway up your forearm, the bottom part of your arm. Do you have a freckle there, like a prominent freckle? My brother, my big brother, does, but I don't. I think so. And then others say that there's a forehead scar.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

You're not gonna be able to see this, but yeah, and it's an audio, but let me see.

SPEAKER_04 38:48

Oh, you do? There's something there, and then what about a um I'll take a picture of it?

SPEAKER_01 38:53

Okay, we can do whatever that'd be great.

SPEAKER_04 38:55

And then also there's a head scar, forehead scar that some people say they don't remember. Their parents don't remember anything happening to their head, but they had a little scar. And one thing that set off my own Spidey Sense alarm system is the common thread of kids and gate being INFJ or INTJ. You know, if you know the the what is it, the Myers-Briggs, Briggs, Myers personality tests.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

I don't remember what I'm supposed to be.

SPEAKER_04 39:26

Okay, so INFJ and INT TJ are relatively rare in the world, but they are common in gate. And like I said, I myself am an INFJ, so that really strikes a chord with me. I had never read that before, but it makes so much sense.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

I'll take the tests again, you know. We'll we'll we'll close it.

SPEAKER_04 39:49

Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, do and uh send me a link because I can take it again too.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

I'm looking on eBay while Jen's talking, trying to find uh one of those one of those hearing tests rigs.

SPEAKER_04 40:00

And and no luck yet?

SPEAKER_01 40:02

Nope. There's articles about them, but wow, yeah. Okay, so I was like, surely one of those damn things is still floating around in the world. Why wouldn't you like to look at that on one of those things? Isn't that interesting? That touch.

SPEAKER_04 40:23

They are. So I found this amazing, um, not uh, you know, just amazing, I would call it journalism. It's independent journalism done by the White Rabbit report on Substack. And they asked this question Did the CIA influence the gate program for intelligence recruitment and mind control? And they make a solid case for a connection between gifted education and covert operations. They asked this what if the gate program wasn't just designed to teach gifted children, but to study them, to track them, maybe even to groom them. And that made me feel uncomfortable, us being groomed.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

I mean, that's that's actually a part of the mythology plot points in the X Files.

SPEAKER_04 41:09

Uh, and I was in the that's a whistleblower.

SPEAKER_01 41:12

It's in the it's in the it's zeitgeist. It's in the zeitgeist, right?

SPEAKER_04 41:15

Yeah, because this is where it gets really strange. And I said that when I was typing up my notes a couple days ago, but I'm gonna go even stranger than them. But here's what the white rabbit said: Stranger things, maybe. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Dozens of former students across decades and districts recall the same bizarre experiences, which are including, and I'm just gonna summarize what they said, tests they can't explain, memories that don't quite feel like they're theirs, a sense later in life that someone had been watching them. And the deeper you dig, White Rabbit writes, the more questions emerge. The article explains that the impact of the launching of Sputnik, what was that impact on the United States in 1956, 1957? It was that Russia had been first to space. And as a response, Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act on September 2nd, 1958. And White Rabbit describes that law as a sweeping Cold War era law designed not to improve education, but to weaponize it. Officially, it was aimed to strengthen science, math, and language instruction. Unofficially, though, it was called a call to arms. It was to identify and cultivate the next generation of scientists, engineers, and operatives. That urgency and mission culminated in the creation of gate programs meant to search for the best young mind systematically and pretty much secretly. Like it's like an open secret, right? The parents are like, my kid is gifted. So they weren't hiding this. They include an article that backs up my own personal theory that all those un and underemployed scientists at the Hanford area, yeah, I think they were employed to head up this effort. The article written by the New York Times in 1956 is titled Special Training for Gifted Urged. And it was written by Gene Curavan, and it quotes Rear Admiral Flynnman G. Rickover, one of the chiefs of the Naval Reactors branch of the Atomic Energy Commission. I feel there's my smoking gut, who said the schools need radical change because the system is neglecting its talented youth. So before GATE, there was something called Project Talented, and it was headed by military psychologist John C. Flanagan, which launched in 1960 and tested almost half a million teens. They were tested, they were profiled and categorized. It basically inventoried teenagers. It also identified possible capabilities and threats and it tracked participants for decades. So that's like my dad's age. They identified people that could be programmed or utilized. That's their verbiage. Now, for you and me, Jesse, and others listening, enter the gate programs. Project talents tests were modified so they could be used on kids. And this relates to something you said at the top, Jesse. They made tests feel like games. So you talk about that Black Tower game. That's what they would remember coming back on. Most participants were being measured for how well they could think outside of the box.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

Which almost makes me wonder if they weren't kind of in league with uh with the toy with the game makers. Uh I'm I'm not trying to shout out the uh we all know who you are, but like remember they also made Simon. Remember that thing? Uh-huh. We didn't have to like hit the colors in the same order and see how far you could go.

SPEAKER_04 45:04

And I could do that forever.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

They made a lot, they they got into a lot of like like suddenly, oh, electronic games are a thing, and like they were all like a sort of like, are we training people for something and making it look like a game?

SPEAKER_04 45:21

The way that the white rabbit talks about it, it's the the government was looking for and trying to enhance the abilities of divergent thinkers. Now, when you're talking about the games, I think you're exactly right. Because, okay, the thing that I found that was so unsettling to me that was new this week, a lot of this was new. But this one, do you remember going into the doctor's office for like whatever your checkup? And they had that magazine, the highlights magazine. And it okay, that was created by one of the creators of the project Stargate.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

Say what? One of the Highlights Kids magazine was created by that. Yep. And so it's our smoking gun again. That's kind of all I really need to know. That's that's all I need to hear. I I had no idea, but now it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_04 46:14

I I remember here's the other thing that okay.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Did they give you a thing called weekly reader in Squares? Yeah, so there you go. They were giving those things out for free.

SPEAKER_04 46:25

All of these things, I think, are proof that uh these are a stack of those fucking things from when I was a kid, too.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

I wish I still had them.

SPEAKER_04 46:32

No, you don't, because I feel like those would be so interesting to look back on.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

No, I mean, I wish I wish I still had them. I can still see them where they used to be stacked up in the top of my closet when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_04 46:44

Nuts. Well, I think that it's all proof that our government, maybe even the alphabet agencies, were recruiting, using these things to recruit and change, modify divergent thinkers. So as I was typing up that last bit about the highlights magazine last night, I remember. Do you remember this, Jesse? I remember being asked to stare at two images and like let my eyes blur and stare at two images. And they asked me what appeared in the middle. And you know what appeared for me is a glowing dot. It was like a throbbing dot, um, almost like a smoke alarm that needs its battery fixed, but I didn't tell them. I said, I don't know what you're talking about. I just see two things blurred because again, it felt like they were just like leaning in, like, I know you see something.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

Do you remember anything like that? I remember all kinds of, I guess you would call them IQ tests now. Uh-huh. And and and could have. I don't remember that in particular.

SPEAKER_04 47:50

Yeah, that's very interesting that you don't, but let me know if it emerges after our conversation because some of these things are buried so deep in us for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_01 48:00

I remember there was a lot of tactile things they would like to like put put the shapes together, yeah. And like, uh, you know, and they would they would have that stuff printed out too, like like what shape fits here, you know, just just the kind of the stuff that you think about like when with with with an IQ test or something like that. I think that it was all connected to the Cold War.

SPEAKER_04 48:21

I think you're in agreement with that. And I 100%. I found the creepiest thing, I think, that it explains everything to me. I was doing the research, and all of a sudden I saw a comment that said, research first earth battalion, um, Esselon materials, and it's E-S-A-L-O-N materials, first earth battalion. So this is real. Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channan's first earth battalion, um, inspired by the 1970s human potential movement at the Esalon Institute. Oh, an E-S A-L-E-N, sorry guys, proposed creating warrior monks using techniques like yoga, meditation, psychic training, and environmentalism. It aimed to improve soldiers' mental and physical abilities through non-traditional holistic approaches influencing military training. So, this is was thought to be the new age of military. The manual that actually exists, and you can, I'm gonna have links to it in the show notes. It's on CIA.gov. This was thought to be the new age military. The manual incorporated ideas like that warrior monks, rainbow power, and gentle tactics to create a new type of military force that prioritized planetary well-being, but also psychic abilities. The first battalion man manual has been reprinted by Amazon and it outlined the use of techniques such as Aikido for energy awareness, hypnotherapy, meditation, and biofeedback. They're making it sound so good, but it doesn't take much of a leap to see that there's a dark side of it, you know, controlling other people's thoughts, uh, influencing other people to act a certain way. This Jim Chanan was a U.S. soldier who had served in Vietnam, and he is best known for his ideas about this new military of super soldiers to be organized along new age lines. There's a book of the same name that was published in 1982. If all this sounds familiar, it inspired the book The Men Who Stare at Goats by journalist John Ronson. So Channel spent time in the 70s with many people in California, credited and starting the human potential movement, and subsequently wrote an operations manual for a first earth battalion. And that manual is widely available. I uh I kind of want to I want to check it out. I want to download it. I don't think I want to buy it from uh evil Jeff Bezos, but I but I definitely want to read it.

SPEAKER_01 51:12

Well, get with me, we'll find it. There's other ways to find things.

SPEAKER_04 51:16

Yeah, okay, let's make sure that happens. But this channel, so when he was doing his design of this new battlefield uniform, he wanted to include pouches for gensing regulators, divining tools, foodstuffs to enhance people's night vision, and a loudspeaker that would automatically emit indigenous music and words of peace. And it's been fictionalized this first earth battalion as the new earth army, if you've heard of it before. Tell me, this doesn't relate. They're trying to put a happy state.

SPEAKER_01 51:55

And you know, you know what it makes me think of? You watch Lost. Yes, it's the Dharma Initiative. It's exactly what it is. Think about it. It's the Dharma initiative.

SPEAKER_04 52:05

Oh my god. That just decalcified my third eye this week. I feel like you decalcified it last week.

SPEAKER_01 52:13

If you want to take some shit back to pop culture, I'm your man.

SPEAKER_04 52:17

Oh my god, Jesse. What I find interesting is okay, the things that were done to us, I feel like they I've I learned, you know, it maybe that's what helped me become aware of my own energy. Um, and I had experiences when I was little before I had ever been tested by the gate program. So I knew that there was something weird going on in that area that enhanced energies. Um, but I did I ever tell you about that gnome thing that happened to me, Jesse, in the woods.

SPEAKER_01 52:52

The gnome thing? No, please elaborate, please elaborate.

SPEAKER_04 52:56

Okay, so my big brother was it's one of those things because I'm sure your sister has stories about this too. Being a little sister, my big brother was invited to go with the Gurwells, the family, to go do something. I don't remember if it was bowling or what it was, something fun. And I was left behind. We were living in this apartment building in Richland, Washington, and there was a playground, but really I say playground, it was basically gravel and a couple swings that got way too hot because we live in the fucking desert. Um I was just so mad. And the only thing that I could find to do was walk around and pick up those plastic um otter pops. People would just leave their empty wrappers there and I would pick them up and I'd go, oh, Alexander the Grape, oh this, oh that. And I'd pick them up and stack them and throw them away. And finally I got so bored that I went out um into the dirt area where there's this little street called Jadwin Avenue, and there was this big mound of dirt, and people in the neighborhood were always kicking it over because they wanted to drive their car directly on Jadwin Road and it was supposed to block them. And I was digging through the dirt with my hands, and I was just so mad, and I was sweaty and I was hot, and I went under the trees, which were these like sickly sycamore trees, or you know, they had the big pom-poms. And all of a sudden I looked down and there's this little old man, and he was shorter than me, and I was really short. He was shorter than me, and he had this little white beard. He looked like a garden gnome looking back, but we didn't have garden gnomes. And he hands me, he says, I want you to remember this. I want you to remember yourself and your abilities. And he hands me this piece of amber. I didn't know it was amber. It was just like this little teardrop of like uh petrified sap, but I didn't know. I just was like, Oh, thank you. And then he just disappeared. And I ran back to the apartment and I waited for my brother, and I waited for my brother, and I said, Look what I found, look what I found. And he goes, Oh my God, let me look it up in my my my book, my fossil book. And he goes, That's amber, that's worth a lot of money. And this is before Jurassic Park when people knew about amber and the yeah, yeah, right. It's before that, it's like decades before that. And he goes, I I want that. Do you want to trade? Um, and I said, Yeah. And he threw in all of his Richie Rich um comic books and uh how rich can you get?

SPEAKER_01 55:27

Banana. Exactly, and then he threw in a nickname. You know what? I've got a fucking stack of Richie Rich comic books. Yeah, I got a whole box full of books.

SPEAKER_04 55:36

My favorite, that was in Spider-Man, and so he gave me all his Richie Rich um comic books for the piece of amber. And I I was under him, I had totally forgotten about all this. I remembered that I traded my my biggest treasure I would ever have, that piece of amber to my brother for some comic books and a nickel and a dime. But I didn't remember the no until I was deep under hypnosis. And I um and the person asked me, Do you have a question? I said, I want to know about the guy, the old man that handed me something in the woods. And she said immediately, she goes, I'm not gonna tell you the whole story because that's yours to recollect. But he gave you a piece of amber, and amber is nature's zip drive. It's a memory stick. It it was, and that's why he gave you the amber because you're who you are, you're basically akashic record was on that piece of amber, and you were able to just download it right when he gave it to you. And so it doesn't matter that you don't have it anymore.

SPEAKER_01 56:40

That's pretty interesting because that's like that that's sort of like what's that that's big in fringe too. I don't know if you ever watch Fringe. What's Fringe? Is that a TV show? Yeah, yeah. You and you would be all over that shit. You should find it, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:54

Wait, about the number?

SPEAKER_01 56:56

Yeah, but there's a that basically not not to give anything away, but there's a there, there's there's a um a situation where where two universes are bleeding into one another, yeah, and where they have these um um these these break points where the veil between universes gets weak, it stops. They they they spray this stuff that turns into amber that seals the breaches. And if you happen to be near one of those at the time, and you get trapped in there, you're just trapped in suspended animation for you know.

SPEAKER_03 57:36

Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:38

So yeah, it's it's kind of so when you say that, like, yeah, that's kind of holding all of your expression records on. That's the first thing that popped into my head.

SPEAKER_04 57:45

I was like, Yeah, and her and her specifically calling it like nature's memory stick or um nature's, you know, drive, whatever you call it, subdrive.

SPEAKER_01 57:55

Yeah, because it's like that, because it's it's like you're you know it's um it is you're freezing it, you're stopping it in place. Yeah, and but and you're but you're but but people also f end up getting frozen in there too, and they're just almost like preserved with it, yeah. Like like like like you were talking about, like in Jurassic Park with the you know, where they get the dinosaur DNA from the mosquitoes or the other thing.

SPEAKER_04 58:19

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I I always felt belt bad about that, but then I thought about the old guy, and then she gave me a pass. She's like, no, um, you know, he's kin and you'll come to understand that, but that's your journey. She didn't want to give away too much. She said it's and so it's been kind of an interesting journey as I've gathered that. But yeah, I think about that.

SPEAKER_01 58:40

Isn't there like a like a um uh uh isn't there a UFO species supposedly that manifests like that? Ooh, as like little gnomes, yeah, like little looking looks like a gnome looking thing. Because you know, there's different ones. There's like the reptilians, well, I think they're all shaped, and like the Space Brothers, and like all you know, like or maybe I'm maybe I'm maybe I could be thinking about fairy stuff, or I could be thinking about Terrence Bears, I have no idea.

SPEAKER_04 59:12

But well, it's Faye. I'm like, I think about the gnome as Faye, and that's why I so relate. I call myself a mountain troll for a reason.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

Probably more like that. But yeah, I I see now where you're where you're coming with that because that's but what if when they were like, well, he's family, you know what I mean? So it's kind of like, oh, okay, okay, you're you're at least spiritual, metaphysically somehow connected, connected, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 59:37

So I think that like what's interesting to me is everybody kind of collectively finding that for whatever reason in the last couple of years, people's memories of these gate programs and what was done to them by adults under the it's like they're coming back, they are.

SPEAKER_01 59:53

Yeah, it's like I don't, I don't know if that's it's like it's amber, yeah. Okay, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:00

Well, I was just gonna say it's like that amber fog that they put over everything is has eroded enough to that we can go, we can see it and we can remember it in ourselves in our stories.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:12

Yeah, it's it's either that or like there are people who that didn't work on and they've remembered it. And now that and as they as they bring it to our attention, yeah, it sort of like reactivates our brains, like, oh yeah, yeah. Because that's what happened to me, you know. You and I just started texting about this, and I was like, Exactly, oh shit, I remember this now. And and I hadn't thought about it in years, and probably would have never thought about it again if we hadn't started that text conversation with another.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:48

Yeah, uh, what I do know about the whole thing is I really do feel like there is, I don't know if it's sinister. I don't know if they were trying to get a list of people with gifts and I don't know talents and yeah, I don't know either.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:04

I don't know if it was I I feel like it was more like uh um hey, we needed uh we needed smart people to go up against the Russians, we need astronauts, we need you know, we need those kind of people. So we gotta like kick up, you know, and they're they're they're they're over here studying uh, you know, if people are psychic. So we should be studying if people are psychic. You know what I mean? It has to be a thing like that because if they threw out any amount of money, and you know this was not cheap, okay? Yeah, if they threw out any amount of money, it it it it it had to be part of the military-industrial complex, or they it did because that's more of the way they justify it.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:46

Yeah, that's where the steady income was. And on top of it, that you know, our time frame, I think that there are going to be listeners out there that it's the norm that schools have your records, you hear about your your file, you're never given your file. Like when you graduate from high school, they don't hand you your diploma and then your school files from kindergarten on, but they have them. We never get those back. We were of the age group where nationally they had a monetary incentive to keep records and report to the federal government for the first time. That's in our lifetimes. That was totally new. It was just within states, it was within counties, it wasn't anything else. And so, you know, just pointing out that these things that people don't see, they're invisible to them, they're not normal. They weren't always that way. There wasn't this sharing of information about you. And then on top of it, remember, did you went as a senior in high school, did you have to take a test to see where your um you would land vocationally?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:54

Yeah, I I I I and this was always my issue, and why I was like, I never thought I got into any of that shit, was because I'm horrible at math. Like I I have that I have that other brain. Yes. Like uh, where uh math is just like uh what the fuck is this? You know what I mean? So uh I remember I got I got a perfect score on the essay, I got uh almost perfect scores on the I I think they tested us, and there were there were four parts. There was uh you had to write an essay, uh you had to uh you had to do English, you had to do history and social studies, and you had to do math. And I remember I graduated high school, I I I got the math by eight points, and everything else was almost like straight up perfect, perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If if if a class called um math for teachers didn't exist, I would probably still be trying to get out of college right now.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:52

Yeah, oh my gosh, I I don't do it, you know what I mean? But like I but like you I'll talk, you can talk to me and I'll talk to you back about like um quantum physics and weird shit like that all day. Right. But you hand me a you hand me a fucking dry erase marker and you go, hey, go write the equation on the board. I'm fucked, you know. I'm like, I don't know, I don't understand the math part.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:16

You know, it's interesting because I went off, I went to the other side of the mountains, and during college, I was really good at math. Like I was always in honors geometry and this and that. And I would have been like, Jen, I don't know how to do this, please. And I would have told you, I would have taught you. You could have given me your Richie Rich costume. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:36

I don't I honestly I appreciate it. I don't think I was teachable.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:39

I I just don't I think everybody's teachable.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:44

Okay, I don't get that.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:47

Wow. Well, if there's anybody out there that has recollections of their gate programs and things that we totally missed in our write-up, because I tried to do a deep dive, but I want to hear from you.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:00

And so be sure to and we yeah, we are really into this, please.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:05

We are so we would love to do a follow-up. If you have stories or you taught that class, if you're a teacher and taught one of those classes, you gave those hearing tests.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:16

If you, you know what I mean? If you if if uh if you want to tell us anything about this or anything we missed, or anything we got wrong, or if you want to tell me I'm a crazy person and they were just giving hearing tests, don't say that to Jen, but you can say that to me. You can tell me I'm a crazy person.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:35

You can tell me too. It's fine. I it I am not hurt by anything, believe me.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:40

But seriously, let us know. Let us know. I don't, I feel like this is not anywhere close to the first time we're ever gonna broach.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:47

I don't think so either. We're both kind of obsessed with it. Yeah, all right. Well, until next week, be well, you guys out there. We love you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:56

Bye, everybody. We love you. Thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:58

Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:02

Fucking clankers. Fucking clankers.

unknown 1:06:13

Fucking clankers.