June 14, 1998: Toxic Chemical Waste - Linda Moulton Howe | Mind Control - Steven Jacobson
The second half features Steven Jacobson, creator of the audio series Mind Control in America, who argues that television inherently induces a hypnotic trance state through its flickering visual pattern at 30 frames per second. He contends that repeating graphics, newscaster speech patterns, and subliminal messaging techniques deepen viewer suggestibility. Jacobson claims there are no enforceable laws against subliminal advertising despite widespread public belief otherwise, citing the Library of Congress magazine Civilization as acknowledging the practice is commonplace.
Jacobson connects media manipulation to economic pressures and educational shifts dating back to John Dewey's progressive reforms, which he says replaced intellectual development with socialization. He argues these combined forces amount to a coordinated psychological warfare campaign designed to produce a controllable population, contributing to the rise of youth violence and societal breakdown.
Key Moments
Pseudo-hermaphroditic polar bear cubs at Svalbard: Canadian zoologist Dr. Andrew DeRocher describes catching sibling yearling cubs near Svalbard in 1996 and finding both had a normal female vagina with a small penis in front of it. He'd worked polar bears for 15 years and had never seen anything like it - within three years the team had documented seven such females in the Barents Sea population.
PCB biomagnification - seal blubber to polar bear to immune collapse: DeRocher walks through the food-chain mechanism: PCBs are lipophilic and concentrate in fat; ringed and bearded seals carry 30-50% body fat; polar bears eat the blubber preferentially, taking the highest contaminant load on the planet. The team's current focus is the immune-system consequence - bears that can no longer fight off normally manageable diseases - and Svalbard bears already test highest in the Arctic.
There is no law against subliminal messaging - Art Bell's surprise on air: Jacobson tells Art Bell that the 1957 popcorn-and-Coca-Cola theater experiment caused public uproar but Congress and state legislatures never actually passed protective legislation, and the FCC has no rule against broadcast subliminals. He cites the January 1998 issue of Civilization (the Library of Congress's official magazine) admitting the technique is in everyday use. Art Bell audibly recoils - he was certain the law existed.
Television's 30 Hz pulse induces a hypnotic trance regardless of content: Jacobson argues the medium itself, not the programming, is the problem: the picture only appears stationary because it flickers at 30 frames per second, and that subconscious pulsing pattern produces the glassy-eyed trance state seen in children watching TV. Flashing prices, repeating graphics, repeating musical phrases on newscasts deepen the induction. The viewer enters the same suggestible twilight state a stage hypnotist works to create.