Short Stuff: Third Man Syndrome

Stuff You Should Know

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.6 • 79.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

People who’ve found themselves in life-or-death situations with their endurance at its limit have reported sensing another presence with them, urging them to continue on and survive. No one knows what the heck is going on here but it sure is interesting.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:08.3	Hey, and welcome to The Short Step.
0:10.1	I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and it's just us right now.
0:12.9	But that's okay, because we have a third and fourth man with us today in the form of Jerry and Dave.
0:19.6	That's right.
0:20.7	I feel I sense their presence. I do too.
0:23.7	And they're guiding us on. They're saying, come on, you guys, you can finish the short stuff.
0:27.5	It's going to be a good one. I can feel it, Chuck. I think we're going to be okay.
0:32.8	We just demonstrated a really weird phenomenon. Pretty well, if you you ask me i think we did a great job
0:38.2	just now everyone saying so um but we we just demonstrated this weird phenomenon called the third man
0:44.8	syndrome uh there's an author named john geiger who for some reason changed syndrome to factor
0:50.8	but that's typically what it's called us third man syndrome and And like I said, it's weird, Chuck. Take it away. Yeah, it has nothing to do with the movie, The Third Man. Which was good. Great movie. And immediately when you sent this along, and I saw the title, I thought it might have something to do with that. And it doesn't have to be a man. It's really should be the third person syndrome.
1:12.6	Sure. But it is this phenomenon that has been, you know, talked about by many people over
1:19.3	hundreds of years where someone is in dire straits. Oftentimes it's like somebody sort of
1:26.6	like a mountaineer or somebody in the wilderness
1:29.0	that's lost and struggling to survive, but not always, as we'll see. And when they're at their
1:34.2	sort of worst moment, maybe, worse low point, they get a third, a sense that someone else is there.
1:42.7	And again, it's not always the third person. If they're alone,
1:45.2	it's just technically the second person. Sure. But it's just somebody there kind of urging them on,
1:51.8	but it's not just like, oh, I got this weird feeling. Like it's a real serious, tangible thing.
1:57.8	Yeah. Like whatever sense you have when there's somebody sitting next to you and they
2:02.6	actually are, there is a person sitting next to you, it seems to be the exact same type of feeling
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 16 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.