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The Dolphin House

Atrocity Guide · 1.7M views · 2021-02-19 · 45:32

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Overview

Atrocity Guide covers the 1965 dolphin experiments of Dr. John C. Lilly and Margaret Howe, who tried to teach dolphins English. It traces the bizarre methods and Lilly's later drug-fueled beliefs.

On Hacker News

HN recommends it as a decent, entertaining summary of Lilly's life and work whenever dolphin communication research comes up.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2021–2025

Topics

Animals & natureDocumentaries & storytellingScientific method & science communication
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john c. lillydolphinsmargaret howeanimal communicationscience history

What people said

meindnoch · 2025-04 · Recommendation

>A woman named Margaret Howe Lovatt lived full-time with the Dolphins attempting to learn a shared language between them. She also had sex with a male dolphin called Peter. >He would take LSD and place himself in the tank and believed he was psychically communicating with the Dolphins. He eventually came to believe he was communicating with a cosmic entity called ECCO (Earth Coincidence Control Office). The story of the Sega game "Ecco the Dolphin" [1] is a tongue-in-cheek reference to this. I recommend watching the Atrocity Guide episode on John C. Lily and his dolphin "science" [2]. It's on par with The Men Who Stare at Goats (the non-fiction book [3], not the movie). He has a website that looks like it's been untouched since his death, 2001: [LINK] [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO] [3] [LINK]

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bonnie76 · 2021-12 · Recommendation

This video does a decent job of summarizing his life and work: [VIDEO] . It emphasizes his later decent into drug abuse and new age pedagogy. The man was clearly something of a monster. I have a macabre interest in the no holds barred era of 50’s and 60’s military and government research. I find it fascinating that such a lack of restraint resulted in both the horrors of ice pick lobotomies on traumatized veterans and the unmatched achievements of the moon landing. I also find contrast between a government that is happy to engage in LSD research in pursuit of brain washing) and one that routinely locks people in tiny cages for the use of the same substance highly revealing.

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bonnie76 · 2021-12 · Recommendation

This video does a decent job of summarizing his life and work: [VIDEO] . It emphasizes his later decent into drug abuse and new age pedagogy. The man was clearly something of a monster. I have a macabre interest in the no holds barred era of 50’s and 60’s military and government research. I find it fascinating that such a lack of restraint resulted in both the horrors of ice pick lobotomies on traumatized veterans and the unmatched achievements of the moon landing. I also find contrast between a government that is happy to engage in LSD research in pursuit of brain washing) and one that routinely locks people in tiny cages for the use of the same substance highly revealing.

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by Atrocity Guide, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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