First half guest Dr. Glen MacPherson has spent many years documenting the strange phenomenon known as "the Hum." MacPherson said that the sound was first reported in England in 1970, and spread to the U.S. in about 1990. He reports that the sound plagues about two to four percent of the population, who can hear it almost all of the time, although it sometimes gets worse at night. To most people, the sound is like hearing a truck idling outside, but MacPherson added that it "may not be a sound in the traditional sense of the word." The Hum can cause headaches, nausea, and loss of sleep, and "at least one or two people may have taken their own lives due to the torment," MacPherson believes. He has personally experienced the noise as well.

MacPherson reported on research that the human body may be able to perceive radio and other frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum, so that the Hum may be a something produced by an effect that makes us perceive it as sound. A strange quality of the mystery is that it gets worse when people try to plug their ears or use noise-cancelling headphones. As far as he has been able to determine, the Hum is not due to tinnitus, underground construction, or "smart" electric power meters, as some have theorized. There seems to be no way to stop the Hum, and he is "not aware of anyone who has escaped it." It has been reported all over the world and he has documented over 9000 reports (see images.)

As for sources for this disturbing occurrence, MacPherson's best guess is that it is consistent with the advent of powerful Very Low Frequency (VLF) devices used by the world's major military powers. These transmitters are used for communication with submarines, since the low frequency radio waves can travel all around the Earth and through the oceans with very little signal loss. Although there is no concrete explanation as yet, MacPherson hopes that people will continue to report their experiences on his website and that "those in positions of responsibility need to come forward" to help solve the riddle.

In the second half, listeners called in with their stories of the Hum. Lee Anne from San Diego said she first noticed it in 1987 and it got so bad that she was committed to a mental institution on multiple occasions. A caller from Missouri said that the sounds are correlated with areas of mass shootings and that the more he researched the sound, the less it seemed to bother him. George told a story about his granddaughter and a set of dolls that mysteriously appeared in a box years after they were thrown out. Callers responded with similar tales of reappearing keepsakes.

News Segment guests: John Curtis, Steve Kates