CIA Used Psychics To See The Future: The Secret Remote Viewing Program That Sent Psychic Spies on 500 Classified Missions, Plus Signs That You Might Have These Abilities | Dr. Edwin C. May
October 2, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readIn 1975, a physicist named Edwin C. May walked into a talk about out-of-body experiences at a University of California campus. He was bored, skeptical, and had never heard of extrasensory perception. He left with a question that would define his career: what if the brain has more than five sensors? May went on to become one of the central scientific figures in the U.S. government’s classified remote viewing program, known as Stargate, which ran for two decades and completed over 500 intelligence-gathering missions for agencies including the CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, and State Department. In this conversation, May explains what the program actually did, why he believes the phenomenon is real but limited, and why most popular ideas about training psychic ability are wrong.
How Stargate Worked and What It Accomplished
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **The Brain Has More Than Five Senses** - Dr. Edwin May introduces the core idea that ESP functions like a sensory system, responding to change (entropy gradients).
- 2 (08:15) **What Was the Stargate Program?** - May explains the origins of the classified government program, which ran hundreds of intelligence missions for 19 federal agencies.
- 3 (10:22) **The Psychic Arms Race and Cultural Divide** - May contrasts the U.S. government's skepticism with Russia's more mystical acceptance of psychic phenomena.
- 4 (15:02) **The Only Form of ESP: Precognition** - May presents his core theory that all ESP is actually precognition, or "peeking into the future answer book."
- 5 (20:32) **Practical Government Missions and Success Rates** - May details real-world applications, from finding North Korean tunnels to locating a murder victim's body.
- 6 (24:36) **The Ingo Swan Cult and Why Training Fails** - May criticizes the standardized remote viewing protocol, arguing it created a rigid "cult" that stifles natural talent.
- 7 (27:37) **Who Can Actually Do This?** - May states that only about 1% of the population has verifiable psychic ability, and that it cannot be learned.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Dr. Edwin C. May (physicist, former director of the U.S. Government's infamous Star Gate remote viewing program, and one of the world's leading researchers into extrasensory perception) reveals what decades of classified research actually uncovered about psychic phenomena.
In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, he breaks down the science behind remote viewing and telepathy, explains why he believes these phenomena are real, and shares the remarkable evidence that convinced him as a scientist.
We discuss:
- The truth about the U.S. Government's Star Gate program, why it existed, and what really happened behind the scenes
- Why the government became interested in telepathy and whether there was a remote viewing arms race with Russia
- Astonishing statistics behind remote viewing experiments, and why many people underestimate just how accurate they were
- Incredible cases of remote viewers identifying ships smuggling illegal drugs
- Why Dr. May believes around 10% of the population can successfully remote view under double-blind laboratory conditions
- Why no personality test, intelligence test, psychological evaluation, or health assessment ever predicted who would become a successful remote viewer
- How new remote viewers were discovered and tested using rigorous scientific protocols
- Biggest divide within today's remote viewing community, and why he disagrees with many modern training methods
- Why remote viewers can't simply predict lottery numbers
- Which types of information are easiest and hardest to perceive through remote viewing
- Who tends to become the best remote viewers and whether meditation actually improves performance
- His take on Lisa Kudrow's surprising remote viewing experience
Dr. May also explains the physics he believes may underlie psi phenomena, including:
- His scientific model for how telepathy and remote viewing could work
- Why these models are scientifically testable, not just philosophical speculation
- How entropy may play a critical role in extrasensory perception
- What detecting entropy shifts could tell us about accessing psi information
- Why an unusually high number of elite remote viewers experience synesthesia, and what that might reveal about the brain
We also explore the bigger questions surrounding consciousness and reality:
- Why so many scientists remain opposed to studying remote viewing
- Why Dr. May actually prefers skeptics over believers
- Why he still considers himself a materialist despite spending his career researching paranormal phenomena
- How he reconciles precognition with a materialist worldview
- Why he does not believe consciousness survives bodily death
- What removing mysticism from Western religion may have cost our understanding of extraordinary human experiences
More from this podcast