Terrence Howard (TH) is an American actor who spoke at the Oxford Union on 11/23/17.
He has recently made quite an internet splash by appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast, twice now, and claiming he has made all sorts of breakthrough’s that only he knows of across a dozen disciplines of science…and the existing science, scientists, math, and mathematicians are all wrong. It is truly breath-taking, the level of TH’s grandiose and utterly wrong assertions.
His Oxford address is 52 minutes of bombastic, delusional claims, and pure hubris.
I can’t be kind about this.
I first saw TH on the Joe Rogan Experience episode #2152 from late May of this year (2024) and then his short interview on The View from a few weeks prior – and like WOW. Are any of this guy’s wild claims of any substance, or even partially correct?
So I went back to his talk at the Oxford Union 7 years ago in 2017 to see why they didn’t take him seriously – and its pretty obvious why. The Oxford Union is a debating society founded in 1823 that invites speakers of all sorts, both inspiring and controversial, to present ideas on politics, academia, and pop culture.
From the Oxford Union FB page announcing TH’S talk;
“We hope you are looking forward to this evening’s event! Terrence is incredibly excited, and knows many of you will be attending to hear about his acting, which he is certainly happy to talk about. That said, he has asked for as many physicists and mathematicians as possible to attend, in order to be challenged on a theory of his.”
The guy is evidently an accomplished actor, who has done well for himself in TV and movies, and is certainly not a practicing physicist or mathematician. (I don’t watch much TV, just hockey games, science documentaries, and an old movie on occasion so I’ve never seen him in anything).
Notice that the Oxford FB page announcement doesn’t say for the physicists and mathematicians to discuss, or critique, or challenge his theory, but for THEM to be challenged. Physics and math from an actor? That’s a bit odd. And not “theories to be proposed” but theories that will challenge…Right off the bat – a bit of arrogance shows – and its just the tip of the iceberg.
So the following is a brief transcription of the highlights (low lights) of his talk with his content quoted directly or paraphrased under TH: and my commentary under WAZ:
TH: He explains that he grew up poor in Cleveland and in order to break into acting in 1986 he lied on his resume (not having an agent, nor acting jobs). He further explains why it really wasn’t lies because he fully intended to make all that he faked on his resume actually happen someday. And, he explains – he eventually did do most of what he fabricated, so that makes it OK.
WAZ: So, right from the start of his talk: no remorse, no regret that he had to be dishonest. And denial that it was REALLY lying. I think most poeple in admitting something like this would be more like “Im not proud of what I had to do to get where I am today.” Most of us would express some regret, maybe some embarrassment. Not this guy. This is just an inkling of the unbridled smugness to come. His demeanor struck me as him conveying a little bit of sleaze as well.
TH: Regarding acting: “If you commit to the characters you portray, …the character wants to own you…90% of the day I’m carrying a characters turmoil… and my own turmoil… on my own family…”
WAZ: Does that sound like an excuse?
TH: “You will look at yourself one day and you wont know who you are.”
WAZ: I’d found in reading various biographies of him that he had been arrested for a number of violations “related to violent attack” with his first wife, and his second wife had obtained a restraining order on two occasions, both for physical abuse. (from the Wiki).
TH:(about 5 minutes in) He explains we remember past lives due to energy never dying: “You know you were a trilobite”, or a pterodactyl and we can remember those things… and we have that power…”
WAZ: (uh oh).
TH: But acting has never been my passion, I was an actor because it was “like Jesus walking on water for tips.” (He uses that phrase in subsequent interviews over the years.)
WAZ: Wow, you think what you do is that miraculous, AND under – appreciated? It had me wondering what exactly he thinks he does that is at the level of walking on water. I didn’t have to wait long.
TH: My real passion is physics and how the Universe came to be… the Flower of Life (FoL)…do u guys know DaVinci? Who knows the FoL?
WAZ: Most in the audience didn’t appear to know what the FoL was. (Me neither, first time he mentioned it in another talk).
This is where his math/physics ideas start – and the pile of incorrect claims, low-level understanding, blatant misunderstandings, and mis-statements – many gleaned from various pseudoscience sources on the net, which dominate the talk from here on.
One rendering of the FoL. A geometric design of overlapping, concentric circles.
WAZ: Folks into Sacred Geometry find this full of mystical meaning. TH goes WAY beyond even the flakiest claims one can easily find all over the NET (and show up regularly in my Facebook feed…).
TH: 6,000 year-old secret. “one of the oldest symbols found in human history”
WAZ: Uh, no. It dates to maybe around 900 BC (in Phonecian art), or in the Greek graffiti inscription found on the Osirion at the Temple of Abydos in Egypt that he refers to. The FoL design and Greek letters with it, date anywhere between the 5th century BC to 1st century AD.
Definitely NOT 6,000 years old, nor among the oldest symbols.
The Egyptian ankh, for example, dates around 3,000 years earlier than the FoL, along with many other Egyptian and early Sumerian symbols.
FoL designs painted on the upper corner of a column which was most likely buried in sand up to that level, by the time the Greeks arrived – around 2,000 years after the Osirion was built.
TH: It was “molecularly burned into the wall.”
WAZ: Whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean. TH is blindly repeating internet pseudo-archaeology claims here-that the design was somehow “laser-etched” thousands of years ago onto an existing and much older Egyptian temple. Instead of buying that far-fetched claim, TH could have done what I did in preparing this analysis – I googled the FoL at the Osirion and read 3-4 articles that discussed the ages of the Abydos Temple and the much earlier Osirion section, and how the FoL was most likely inscribed much later by visiting Greek travelers. It took me all of 5 minutes to read and learn what we DO KNOW about the FoL inscriptions at Abydos.
It doesnt take much research to get information on things, but you will see an inherent laziness or just plain willful ignorance on TH’s part regarding almost every ridiculous claim he makes here at Oxford. He either didn’t bother to learn the math or the physics (or archaeology) or couldn’t understand what he learned and stuck to his or someone else’s completely wrong explanation. Whether its due to misunderstanding or willful dismissal of knowledge that contradicts his own “discovery” is hard to tell. But it is a theme you will notice whenever he is confronted with what everyone in a given field knows that contradicts his claims- nope, HE knows better- everyone else is wrong.
TH: “Whoever controlled that FoL, controlled the Universe, there were secrets in that FOL.”
WAZ: Really? How would one control the Universe at all, much less with a simple geometric pattern? He never explains exactly how – another recurring theme in all his talks/interviews -he just continues on avoiding any explanation with more mystical blathering.
TH: “Others have tried to get the secrets out but they were stuck in 2 dimensions and misled by the straight line…”
WAZ: I shit you not.
TH: “All energy is expressed in motion” (wrong) “All motion is expressed in vortices” (no), “All vortices are expressed in waves” (nonsense) “All waves are curves” (wrong).
Platonic solids – no straight lines in nature, – Euclidian mistake. Just more Terry-babble.
WAZ: TH makes a number of false claims per sentence in this and later talks, especially when he gets on a roll – throwing scientific jargon around, which he gets wrong, and combining terms which often do not go together at all. It is his spiel, his schtick.
Here’s a spot-on comment by James De LaPena from A Math Teachers Commentary on TH’s Oxford Address.
“I am not the least bit surprised that he is an actor. He is a master of bullshitting his way through a monologue. The confidence that he speaks with almost makes it look like he actually knows what he’s talking about…This is an ACTOR in his element. His job isn’t to be right, it’s to be compelling.”
WAZ: Yup, and he is good at it. Here’s another great example.
TH: “The FoL is an info system. Earth moon in there- void. Well I found something in the void, the elementary particle they have been searching for at CERN…their energy signature matches some of the pieces Ive been able to pull out of here.”
WAZ: Utter bullshit and bombast. While feeding your family with an acting career you found time to discover elementary particles as well?
TH: “The FoL has been opened and when I get an opportunity Id like to show u some of these things..there are secondary generational particles that seem to occur when these things build up more and more…they begin to create their own systems.”
WAZ: OK, what are the elementary particles whose energy signatures you have matched?
What are these second generation particles and what are their systems?
As in all later talks/interview he makes these incredible claims but never shows what they are.
What particles? What systems? He never says, never explains. That’s his schtick. Wild claims fast and furious that are never explained, never demonstrated.
TH: And these systems are what Ive brought to Oxford because I would like for you guys to examine, put them to the test, because I bet you will find all the fundamental particles that they have been looking for in the Unified Theory of the Universe. Its a big statement, but I got a lot of stuff to back it up.
WAZ: Unified Theory of the Universe? He not only does particle physics in his spare time, he does Theoretical Physics too!!!
TH: “All of these wave conjugations…its time now, we have changed all of these things”
WAZ: Wave conjugations, one of his FAV go-to meaningless terms that he never says what they are – because they don’t exist. Its his typical scientific jargon gibberish and nothing more that sounds REAL impressive to all his cult-followers on the net.
TH: But our math is still based on a 2 dimensional way, in order to reach the future we have to examine that- do u guys know about loops in math? About the square root of two?
“I would like to audit the world of math and audit how we view the Platonic solids because I think the new wave conjugations will tell a better story of how our world works.”
WAZ: He’s obsessed with the fact that the square root of two can be cubed and added to itself-and get the same number. His other go-to jargon is Platonic Solids – which like the FoL are just geometric shapes that have nothing to do with how the Universe works. And now he’s somehow had time to outwit all mathematicians as well and they need to be supervised and corrected- by him!
His talk ends and the Q&A begins.
TH: After 45 years searching these things out and how the universe really works and we’ve come to find …they are abandoning the standard model (nobody is) and the ideas of black holes and dark matter (no-one says the don’t exist, just Terrence and a few other pseudoscientists), for an electric model of the Universe- its a better version how I see it and it should be explored.
WAZ: He copped the “electric model” from another pseudoscience yahoo on the net (YouTube, mostly), from which he parrots that it also replaces gravity…
Question from the Moderator on stage with him:
“I am skeptical. Over lunch,…tried to wrap my head around it, the theory that the sun is powered by external forces instead of fusion, (electricity?) Terrence is trying to prove neutrinos don’t exist-to suggest that they don’t exist goes against so much of physics.”
WAZ: Now he’s doing astrophysics too- super-duper genius!!! Particle physics, Astrophysics, Theoretical Physics- WOW- Nothing is too much for this guy- He can do anything and everything and outwit everyone else doing it!!!
TH: The things that make our math work, but Newton would say, No, action = reaction. Balanced equation in math…Like the Jim crow laws of the 60’s…Laws of physics must break down for 1×1=1.
WAZ: He dodges the moderator’s fusion/neutrino question and goes off on his 1×1=2 spiel that he repeats regularly in later talks/interviews. Another TH con tactic: He doesn’t answer questions but goes off on nonsensical tangents, avoiding the question with an attempt to snow you with hard to follow techno-babble.
TH: “The banks are paying out capriciously due to 1×1=1 and our economy, our future is sitting in the balance (very dramatically) because our science has been stunted as a result of the mathematics, because math asks for the basic laws of physics to break down.
1×0 to equal 0 causes the laws of conservation of energy to disappear…so we need an audit on the Platonic Solids, we need an audit on square root of of 2 and…then there’s no action and reaction.”
WAZ: Now he knows all about global economics! And he explains that with more incorrect claims and technobabble about math, geometry, mechanics…He doesn’t understand any of this- it is just more spiel. And how exactly would anyone “audit” the Platonic Solids. Again, just gibberish.
WAZ: At one point he suddenly reaches over to moderator and is obviously irritated and says -“Oh, your sock” (the moderators leg was showing?). “I HATE that!”– and made him fix it – the moderator quickly pulled his sock up. REALLY ODD to watch. Impulsive, angry, intrusive behavior? Very weird.
Question from the audience: “Sitting on this wealth of knowledge for 40 years, how do you get by with knowing the rest of world is doing it wrong?”
His answer?
TH: “Truth is, I woke up inside my mothers womb at 6 months of age” (you cant make this up).
And I told myself “I’m here – Don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget”. (very dramatically).
WAZ: He seriously makes the claim he was awake and thinking, at 6 months in the womb!
So now he claims things that modern neuroscience, embryonic development, and cognitive psychology must be completely wrong about: that 6 month old fetuses are not awake, not thinking, nor talking to themselves in the womb. He knows better, cause he did it himself!
Fuck me.
This guy is SO whacked and on SO many levels its really astounding, and sick to watch. I honestly cant say sad to watch, because he is so confidently delusional and convinced of the absurd stuff he’s made up. I have a hard time feeling sorry for him. He is really obnoxiously bombastic in his claims. And shows no re-consideration, no pause to reflect, no hint that he might consider he could be wrong, that he might just be bull-shitting you. And he already admitted right out of the gate that bullshitting people doesn’t bother him in the least.
TH: (continuing) “My son Kieran, when he was 6 months in (my wife’s) stomach. This kid would crawl all the way across the womb to push on a light we shined on her belly or over to the music we played.”
WAZ: This is evidently further proof that TH was conscious in the womb too, just like his kid. See?
However, fetuses don’t crawl anywhere in the womb. They may kick or jab with an elbow, but they don’t crawl. He makes things up to explain with confidence what he has no clue about. Kinda like: “Hey, I was awake and thinking in the womb, I remember having great thoughts already, and my son crawled across to music and light – so, right?”
It gets worse:
TH: “What Da Vinci tried to do at 80 (evidently he tried to decode the FoL), I did at 6 yrs old because I’d been working on it perhaps from a past life.”
WAZ: I shit you not, he said this, go watch the video yourself!!
TH: Now, I’m not saying Im crazy or reincarnation or anything (WAZ: yes you are) but we know energy does not die – it just reboots itself so we are eternal–you’ve done this trillions of times- you will get good at it and be perfect one time. (a little Eastern mysticism thrown in for good measure).
WAZ: Comparing himself to JC wasn’t enough, he has to be smarter, not only than all modern physicists and mathematicians, but even past geniuses. And he goes off into the reincarnation spiel again. Does he really expect anyone to believe he figured out ANY scientific or mathematical theory, much less how the Universe works- at age 6? Unbelievable! And merely continuing his work from a past life as well!!
TH: I could say I’m smartest: Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras,- I know I’m not smarter than these men so I know there’s something to the consciousness–this info educated me along the way–and maybe Oxford will help vet some of these things or Ill keep doing it myself in this lifetime or the next…
WAZ: He rambles on into how all this reincarnation has to do with positive and negative and male and female…all with a very weird look in his eye…
Another question from the floor:
Q: “You spoke 5 yrs ago on Harmonic wave re-sequencing and how it could cure cancer in 5 years – genetic elements, and I think that was five years ago, so hows it going and how does wave re-sequencing change genetic material?”
TH: Simple, our DNA is made of 5 elements. (TH stands up)… and phosphorus sits right here, and the steps on the ladder are…(and he mispronounces the nucleotide names, its almost hilarious)…they used to think the body was energy thru electricity – their finding out its thru frequency.
Guess what hydrogen sounds like – its the Key of E and its the color yellow, oxygen is chartreuse and the key of F over F#. (He’s REALLY bullshitting now!) When that song comes on our DNA tightens – when your prime frequency plays your DNA tightens – everything else gets pushed out. Carbon is also Key of E and yellow, oxygen is only hitting at an F because there’s another frequency coming in from a generator over there, that’s changing and causing it to change and the F hits the oxygen (he’s just rolling on now, gesticulating for effect), No, the F hits the carbon, since it’s an F and not an E it don’t hit it quite right so the domino don’t fall, the next domino hits wrong, so now we have malformation within our DNA, because (pause) the frequencies are being pushed off, when we hear our tone we tighten back up…
WAZ: The absurdity of everything he just said is off the scale. And its just a sample of the kind of on-the-fly confabulating nonsense this guy can whip up, and look you in the eye so convincingly. And he’s not done!
TH: So yeah, I’m in the process of building the harmonic wave re-sequencer – with another doctor (so you’re a doctor now?) who has been successful in curing AIDS and cancer. It’s well underway but I wanted you guys to understand how that works, its SO simple you do not need to tear the human body apart when all you do is use frequency to bring it back to its normal space.
WAZ: That entire off-the-rails DNA rant lasted nearly 4 minutes.Completely made-up hogwash. One wonders just where is he building this re-sequencer? Does he have a prototype, a working model, a patent? Again, no details, no real explanation, just more outlandish claims and hand-waving.
Q: If you claim that 1×1=2 then does 1×0=1?
TH: “Where is that in nature?”
WAZ: Once again, he doesn’t answer the question. He cant. So he misdirects by posing his own question.
And he was pissed later on JRE and The View that the folks at Oxford didn’t take him seriously?
Q: “You are proposing not an audit but a whole revamping of mathematics.”
TH: In 1856, Richard Dover Statter challenged the Dewey Decimal System and said it was wrong…and created a whole new system…(he didnt).
WAZ: This might be the best example (out of so many) of his absolute bullshit, and it is almost beyond stupid.
A guy named Statter wrote on the ADVANTAGES of the base 10 decimal systems (NOT the Dewey Decimal library catalog book numbering system) and how it would be better than English measure, and better than the ancient Babylonian base 60 scale, that we use for time and spherical coordinates-the 360 degree scale, for example. Statter did not diss how math works, like Terrence does, at all. Complete fabrication.
TH: “So Im not the 1st person to state this: Richard Dover Statter- you wont find him – he’s been erased from History.”
Erased from History, huh? Statter’s 1856 paper.
WAZ: I immediately googled Richard Dover, and Statter came up before I could type it in. He was 1st in the search list, and I clicked on the 1st article entry, and it had the whole paper from 1856 right there. Sure ain’t erased from anything, AND it had absolutely NOTHING to do with the Dewey Decimal System. Statter’s suggestions were spot on- using base 10 (think of the metrics system vs. the English base 12 – feet and inches system) is more efficient than many other approaches.
This is how careless, and lazy, and loose with the truth and willfully ignorant TH is. He conflates the Statter paper with the Dewey Decimal System and he incorrectly claims it went against conventional mathematics, when the opposite is true. All to bolster his claims how math is wrong and his absurd 1×1=2 claim is correct.
Im sorry to be so blunt, but this isn’t just stupidity. He obviously at least read the title of Statter’s paper and then he ignored anything it really said and used it for his own purposes: as an example of another visionary like him shot down, his bold claims covered up, his genius ignored…(another common spiel he uses regularly) And he’s too stupid/lazy to remember or do the slightest research about what the Dewey Decimal System really is and how idiotic he sounds.
I’m not sure if he cares. He even warns us to ignore his genius at our peril!
TH:(Looking at the crowd very dramatically) “If we don’t change the number system soon we are gonna crash as a species…”
(then the absurd paranoia) “I might get shot talking about how banks/the economic system is screwing us.”
Really? The species is gonna crash if we dont heed his lack of 5th grade math understanding?
Towards the end of the Oxford Q&A:
Terrence says he will have a new book on 1×1 =2, and explain the depth of the Platonic solids, and the new Terryan wave conjugations that replace this Euclidian way of life and give us a 3 dimensional way of seeing the world…
If you search for his book now, almost 7 years later, – like his cure for cancer- there evidently was nothing forthcoming. No cure for cancer even now, and no book. There all sorts of books about his “theories” by other authors, but the only thing authored by TH is a 162 page PDF with his ideas and claims – published in 2020. It begins with the words “Let Me Enlighten You” and this letter:
Dear World,
“I have been told by many that the releasing of this truth may pose certain challenges in my life. For there are many institutions that this truth will be viewed as disruptive to their system of profit and gains. I want to live a happy and peaceful life and I pray for longevity. Not just for me, but for our entire species. Know that I would never harm myself, nor anyone else for that matter. Nevertheless, if my life has to face certain challenges so that this planet can be saved, please do not let these trials that I may have to face be in vain and pray for me as I am praying for you.”
Sincerely,
Terrence DaShon Howard
May 25th, 2019
He is enlightening us, and thinks he can save the planet if only his “truths” become adopted – if he is not one day harmed in some way first, evidently by the sinister institutions who use conventional mathematics and not Terryology. Like Wow. Paranoid delusions too. (It gets much worse on Joe Rogan).
I’ll give his PDF a read and comment on it in a later post. A couple of dozen physicists and mathematicians have already done so either directly on his claims in the PDF or statements of them in his talks/interview-mostly on the JRE.
To sum up at Oxford, at very least he claims that:
1. We remember past lives
2. The Flower of Life design has information in it to control the Universe;
3. The FoL is 6,000 years old
4. The FoL design was “molecularly burned” into the column of an Egyptian temple
5. All energy is motion
6. All motion is vortices
7. All vortices are waves
8. All waves are curves
9. There are no straight lines in nature
10. He found elementary particles in the FoL
11. He found “secondary generational” particles in the FoL
12. He discovered “wave conjugations”
13. The square root of 2 is wrong
14. 1×1=2
15. The sun is not powered by fusion
16. Neutrinos don’t exist
17. Banks pay out capriciously because they don’t use his mathematics
18. Mathematics contradicts conservation of energy and Newton’s 3rd law of action-reaction
19. He has memories from within his mothers womb.
20. Fetuses can crawl across the womb
21. He unlocked the FoL and discovered the Theory of Everything at age 6
22. He started his work in a past life
23. Elements have tones in different keys
24. DNA “tightens up” with certain frequencies
25. He has a cure for cancer
26. Richard Dover Statter wrote on the Dewey Decimal System
27. Statter was “erased from history”
28. He (TH) will write a book on his ideas
Every one of the above claims made by Terrence Howard, expressed in this Oxford talk are wrong. Every one. Completely wrong – full stop. There are even more statements he made in his talk I could have listed, but these represent the bulk of it, and even these – for a 52 minute talk – comprise more than one bullshit and utterly wrong claim every other minute.
He makes a lot more utterly nonsensical pseudo-scientific claims in the two JRE episodes he appears in (2024), which aren’t made in this talk.
The man is utterly delusional and arrogant about his assertions – which are so important in his mind, he would save the world with them if everybody would just listen and admit that he is right. He has been at it, trying to save the world with his ideas publicly at least since this attempt at Oxford, nearly 7 years ago. His “challenges” to physics and math haven’t done so well in convincing anyone – except uneducated followers on social media. The take-downs by real scientists and mathematicians on YouTube alone number close to 2 dozen, with more in print on the net. More on those critiques by people actually trained and working in all the fields he claims are wrong, and what’s transpired since Oxford will be the subject of another post (or two?) soon enough.
The bombast of these 28 claims is just astounding. Most crackpot-fringe theorists confine themselves to one scientific discipline, say one branch of physics, or astronomy (Moon landing and space travel denial) or geography (flat earth promoters) or just Neolithic archaeology (ancient civilization/aliens)–but not this guy. TH’s assertions are across multiple fields: Cognitive Psychology, Theoretical Physics, Archaeology, Mechanics, Particle Physics, Mathematics, Astrophysics, Economics, Developmental Biology and Psychology, Chemistry, Genetics, Medicine, History of Science.
Over a dozen fields he says the experts and systems we use daily are all wrong and he has knowledge and discoveries that no-one else has that proves him right, and everyone else wrong. He actually says so directly on Joe Rogan! (more on that later, as I said).
This guy is delusional or dishonest or both, and in epic proportions.
Unbelievable.
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