The World Unexplained

The World Unexplained is a feed of mysteries and conspiracy theories hosted by Dr. Carlos. Its recent episodes cover a software scandal, a Patagonian legend, a brewing company's boardroom, the death of Marilyn Monroe and near-death experiences. Most of them tell a story in which an official account and a rival one still stand side by side. The PROMIS episode is the clearest example of the method. It starts with Inslaw, Inc., a company that built case management software to help prosecutors track people and cases across legal databases. From there it follows founder Bill Hamilton's accusation that the Justice Department pirated the program, and a bankruptcy judge who agreed with him. Then comes an informant's claim that the code was altered for the CIA with a hidden backdoor. The story turns next to investigative journalist Danny Casolaro, who called the wider scheme 'the octopus'. He was found dead in a hotel bathtub in 1991, and the death was ruled a suicide. Whether the backdoor ever existed is left open. Stories from popular culture get the same treatment. The Anheuser-Busch episode follows a theory, held by people angered by a Bud Light ad campaign, that chief executive Brendan Whitworth's earlier employment is steering the company. Dr. Carlos adds an aside of his own, questioning whether 'conservative' still fits as a label when so many people hold so many conspiracy beliefs. In the Marilyn Monroe episode he works alongside Andrew Bringle, setting a claim that she was killed by injection against Dr. Thomas Noguchi's report of no needle marks. A documentary's claim that test results were destroyed earns his line about a conspiracy within a conspiracy. Not everything here is a conspiracy file. Two episodes on near-death experiences are interviews with Dr. Bruce Grayson, a professor emeritus of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and author of a book titled After. He describes people who say they told doctors to stop resuscitating them. He also describes a couple of cases in which he spoke with the living people they claimed to have reached. Dr. Carlos keeps his questions plain, at one point asking whether anything resembles the film Ghost. The feed also carries episodes introduced under other names, Circle of Insight and Inside the Criminal Mind, and Dr. Carlos appears in both. So straight narration, a two-person case review and a guest interview can sit next to each other. A title like 'Argentina’s Secret Nazi City: Legends of Patagonia' shows how widely the net is cast. For a first listen, the PROMIS episode shows the whole approach in a single story.