What if the government built a gaydar machine. They claimed it could tell if you were gay just by looking into your eyes?

During the Cold War, Canada did exactly that. They built a device that measured your pupils, your sweat, your heartbeat to tell if you were gay.

So did it work? And does it even matter? Because what came with it was far worse.

A decades-long campaign to hunt down, interrogate, and erase LGBTQ Canadians from public life. People were strapped to electrodes. Lied to. Pressured into confessions. Some lost their careers. Some lost their homes. A campaign that drove people into silence, into poverty and in some cases, to their deaths.

This episode traces that story from beginning to end. From Cold War paranoia… to interrogation rooms… to the people who finally fought back and exposed it.

This is the true story of the Fruit Machine.

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This is a We All Say Media Production

Before Tarzan and Mowgli...there was Victor.

In the winter of 1800, a boy emerged from the forests of southern France. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t explain where he came from. But he would become the center of science’s most controversial “forbidden experiment.”

This week on Psych Unhinged, we dig into the story of Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron. Was he really raised in the wild? Or was something else going on, something darker? From Enlightenment ideals to modern autism theories, this is a case that forces us to confront science, ethics, and the unsettling price of progress.

Nature vs. nurture. Humanity vs. hypothesis.

Sometimes, the answers science seeks come at a heartbreaking cost.

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This episode dives into the shaky foundations of the bystander effect: A theory born from a misreported tragedy and built on flawed experiments. We uncover what really happened the night Kitty was killed, how the myth of 38 silent witnesses spread like wildfire, and how it all led to the creation of 911 emergency number.

*Trigger Warning: This episode discusses themes of violence and Sexual assault that may be distressing to some listeners. Please take care while listening.

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This is a Scooty Bug Media Production.

They were tied up, threatened, and trapped in a vault for six days.

So why did they defend their captors?

This episode unravels the true story behind Stockholm Syndrome—and the uncomfortable truth that’s been buried for decades.

What if the hostages weren’t confused… but calculated? And what if the real danger wasn’t inside the vault—but outside it?

You think you know this story. Think again.

*Trigger Warning:This episode discusses themes of violence and a brief mention of Sexual assault that may be distressing to some listeners. Please take care while listening.

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This is a Scooty Bug Media Production

Welcome to Psych Unhinged — the podcast that uncovers the controversial origins of psychology’s most iconic phenomena. From the unethical roots of Stockholm Syndrome, to the lie that created the Bystander Effect, and the unbelievable true story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron — We expose the twisted and the downright bizarre truths behind the stories that psychology tried to forget.

Subscribe to Psych Unhinged — where the untold stories finally get told.

Psych Unhinged is a production of Scooty Bug Media.