Things that are utterly bloody fascinating

I would definitely buy this book and I'm sure many others would too.

Do it OP, DO IT!!!

Another, "I'm not a monster" fan here.

I watched a fascinating thing on YouTube about 'agent Garbo'.

A Spanish couple in WWII volunteered to spy for Britain, they were told 'no' so they set up a domestic spy ring to be double agents.

They moved to Portugal and contacted the Germans, saying they were in Britain and pro Nazi.

The husband (Juan Pujol García) used train time tables, British newspapers and radio to create fictitious 'intelligence', he told the Germans he had a contact who was flight crew flying between London and Lisbon to account for the Portuguese post mark / stamps.

The British took notice when the German's tried to find a fleet of ships Garbo had made up.

So he became a double agent and moved to Britain, he also 'ran' about 30 other agents, all fictitious.

He even had an agent become ill, die, have an obituary in the paper and then a pension paid to the non existent widow.

Listened to fab forensic dentist speak
there at a course once, fascinating.

Folks took the Official Secrets Act seriously in those days. Watched a TV show about people working at Bletchley Park, apparently there was a reunion in the 80s or 90s and a man who'd worked there told his wife he was going to a cricket match because he'd never told her what he did in the war. At the event, he met a familiar face - his wife had also worked there ... and never mentioned it to him.

In the 80s, we used to see an East European woman, who travelled widely. Found out what she did about ten years ago, when she was on TV explaining her work behind the Iron Curtain for the CIA.

No, although I am a member of the Royal College there... I've never made it up there to speak!

I think that my gran was also bound by some sort of paperwork, too. The priest had been a drinking buddy of hers for 40 years, as well as confessor.

Fascinating @SinnerBoy

My godmother did similar - and even in her mid 80s, she refused to talk about it and took her oath of secrecy very seriously.

SlightlyJaded · Today 14:38

Also WW2 - when ordinary people were suddenly in the position of being spies/code-breakers and the like.

At my gran's funeral, the priest made quite a bit of her work at Bletchley Park, which was news to us, but apparently true. I've no idea what she did there, but she was a linguist. After the war, she was a court translator in (as was) Malaya.

The best thing I found was programming myself to look for my hands in my dream or touch my head.
One reason for that is that if you specifically have decided to do something once you're dreaming, and you do, you're likely to remember. Decide to do one of these things every night before you go to sleep, then once your brain makes the link you can recognise that you are dreaming and take control of it.
Hope that makes sense, it’s hard to explain but it sounds like you are predisposed to be able to do it and hopefully you can build this up!

Mrs Morton did you ever talk at the royal college in Glasgow?

I identify people from their dental records, weekly at the moment, this reconstruction is always at our conferences. They used to do it with clay but now it's all digital. Amazing.

I’m late 50’s. I remember my parents holiday flat on the beach with my toys that were left behind & my grandmother’s home in the village. Never seen again. Heartbreaking really. Relatives stories of them fleeing & then coming to stay with us in the U.K. till safe to return.

@Biilie82 I can lucid dream sometimes, but there seems to be no pattern to when it happens. In the dream, it’s usually something like, 'Oh, I'm dreaming. I can eat all the desserts on this buffet!' Wish I could tell my dream self to do something more exciting, like flying around.

@Daftasabroom The nightmares sound awful! I hope you get some pleasant lucid dreams at least sometimes.

A while back, I read a book about lucid dreaming. It was mostly rubbish (apparently, I’m supposed to shout, 'I want to hear my feeling tone!'), but there was one part that was just fascinating. It was talking about how when you’re lucid dreaming you could have your dream self look back and forth quickly just with the eyes (moving them from side to side) and that if you did so, someone watching you sleep would see that movement under your eyelids and know you were lucid dreaming at that moment. So, in theory, the dream version of you could be communicating with an awake human. Blows my mind!

I've been listening to these, too and I agree with you. Very interesting re: the psychology of these women.

@KrasiTime I suspect we have family from a similar culture/country and generation. It is hugely upsetting and still such a sore point for the people of Cyprus who have pretty much been shut down every time they've tried to ask for justice/solutions. And it's so haunting to visit. I was expecting Famagusta to be a little village or something - it's bloody enormous.

Agree anything to do with Cold War/Russia is fascinating.

Also WW2 - when ordinary people were suddenly in the position of being spies/code-breakers and the like. William Boyd's 'Restless' got me started on that - but Kate Atkinson's 'Life after Life' and 'A God in Ruins' and 'Transcription' also focus on 'normal people' who find themselves doing extraordinary things in the war.

I am especially fascinated by the women who were recruited as Codebreakers in WW2 - as most men were off fighting. There is a book Code Girls - by Liza Mundy - which is all about American women engaged as Cryptographers. Absolutely brilliant.

I know this won’t be to everyone’s liking but as a BBC Sounds addict I have been v intrigued by the I’m Not A Monster series. The first series is how an American woman ended up in ISIS with her husband and the second is the Shamima Begum story. I know that’s a sensitive topic but I’ve found it ‘fascinating’ in terms of trying to understand what was going on in her life/head/motivations and I’ve found the journalistic reporting to be v interesting, in contrast to just reading media headlines with no context. Well worth a listen, definitely the first series too.

@sashh I knew that BSL had accents and different regional signs as a school I used to work in had a unit. I didn't know a lot on TV were originally Scottish, though.

Languages generally, I find really fascinating. We did the Great Vowel Shift for A Level as part of the history of English. How some latinate languages have a lot of vocabulary in common, but then diverge with others.

That deep sea link up thread was brilliant.

I have just received my used copy of the "Seven Daughters of Eve". That my weekend sorted!

I wasn't impressed with the first voice TBH, but I can remember reading (yonks ago) that his wasn't the best of voices to begin with and most castrati were much better.

As they grow, the changes in anatomy (even though they are unaffected by testosterone) still means that voice quality alters, and like other male singers, they don't always retain good voice.

I daresay that the quality of the recording doesn't help either, though.

Oh I read a book that featured the number stations and a missing child... cannot for the life of me remember what it was.

Effiebreast · Today 10:32

Number stations are really interesting and actually still exist.

Oh, they're a new one for me!

Number stations are really interesting and actually still exist.

Thank you :)
No, never been to Spitalfields. If you're looking at factory images with a lot of concrete pillars and symmetry, it's the old Terrys chocolate factory in York. Or if its a set with purple tinged lighting then its a rubber factory in Scotland.

@FlyingCapybara40

Just in case you missed my link at the beginning of this thread...
www.28dayslater.co.uk/
This site is amazing.

Urban explorers risk their lives in some cases, and certainly dodge those trying to stop them... but this forum linked above brings to us the most gobsmacking pictures of some of the empty buildings in this country... left derelict. Cinemas, theatres, power stations, asylums and hospitals.

I went on holiday with my parents in my early teens and we ended up in Friesland.

The speakers are proud of their language. Those in the southern bits of the Netherlands claim it is a dialect.

@lifeturnsonadime You are most welcome, I bought me dad the encyclopedia and then he enjoyed that so much I got him the book about the OP Shakespeare, my dad is mid 80s and has discovered an interest in linguistics.

On the subject of languages I'm a BSL user, and BSL users have 'accents' and use different signs depending on where they are from, but the BBC made a decision when it first put out programmes in BSL that once a sign was used then the same sign would be used by others.

The first Deaf presenters were Scottish so the signs used on TV are often Scottish signs.