Michael Shurmer, it is an honor to have
you here.
>> I'm Dr. Michael Sherman.
>> Michael Shurmer.
>> Michael Shurmer.
>> Good to see you with your pile of your
writing.
>> You are probably the most prominent
scientific skeptic in the United States.
>> I'm the publisher of Skeptic Magazine.
>> You are synonymous with pouring cold
water on people's [music] wanting to
believe.
>> Yeah, that's right.
>> I've been hearing about disclosure
coming any day now for 40 years. When's
it going to happen?
I think we have an abundance of evidence
in the open- source world. I I believe
that now. So like I've already hit that
threshold. What's your threshold?
>> Wow. Much higher. [laughter]
>> If we're talking about aliens, I would
say they're out there somewhere, but
they have not come here.
>> What about observable anomalies we are
seeing on Earth all the time?
>> Space junk, satellites, swamp gas,
spinning edi dogs, ball lightning, ice
crystals, reflected light up the clouds.
You're picking the winners.
>> We're picking the winners.
>> The vast majority of these things have a
prosaic explanation. We don't give a
[ __ ] about those ones.
>> Do you believe in dark matter?
>> I believe there's a a mystery to be
explained. Okay.
>> So, you believe in UFOs as much as you
believe in dark matter.
>> Uh, I don't like the word believe in.
>> What about General Neil McCasslin in
isolation? That story is completely
significant.
>> No, I don't. It's just totally random.
>> What do you mean? There was likely some
sort of anti-dolivian civilization.
>> If there was an advanced civilization,
where's their trash? Where's their
tools?
>> If you read the book, your base case has
to be that Charles Manson was probably
an MKL
>> cult leaders can use sex, drugs, and
rock and roll to get people to do crazy
[ __ ] for them.
>> If you were the CIA, would you really
want to hire somebody a low life like
Lee Harvey Oswald and nobody?
>> Yeah. And that's why he said, "I'm a
psy." That's exactly who you'd hire,
somebody disposable.
I will admit that I want to believe.
Will you admit that you want to
disbelieve?
>> Do you want to have a mystical
experience?
>> Okay. All right. Yes, such could be. No.
No.
>> I think you're running from your shadow.
You're a secret mystic.
>> Very strange things happened to me last
night.
>> You were once abducted by aliens.
>> Okay. You want to hear that story?
>> I do. I want to hear that story.
Ignition sequence five.
[music]
How is this possible?
>> Nothing too unusual about that.
Their existence [music] cannot longer be
denied.
>> Michael Shurmer, it is an honor to have
you here. Uh you are probably the most
prominent scientific skeptic in the
United States. You're the founder of
Skeptic magazine. You are synonymous
with pouring cold water on all sorts of
uh you know mythological belief systems
that people have. People's wanting to
believe. You know in in the UFO world we
have a phrase which is I want to
believe. I will admit I fall prey to
that all the time. I would say that's
probably my my a priori bias is I want
to believe. Um, so you uh I think are a
healthy check against that sort of
thinking. Um, and maybe I can I can
challenge you on a couple of things
here, but this will be a really fun
conversation and I'm and I'm honored
that you're here.
>> Well, thank you. Isn't that the Moulder
poster? I want to believe
>> it is. Exactly.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I guess I'm the Skully.
>> You're [laughter] the Skully. That's
exactly right. Yeah. Perfect X Files
reference.
>> Uh, and I actually have a photo. I think
it's the background of my phone of me
and Jacqu Valet and we're next to that
poster. So that is that is one of my
prized uh
>> well I love his work. He's uh you know
when you read him it's like oh my god
this guy's a he's a skeptic
>> you know he's like oh I don't believe
Lazar I don't think this is aliens I
don't think this is what they said it
was. I'm like whoa okay. And then he
goes but it could be these
interdimensional beings of the
mythology. I'm like okay wait hang on
[laughter]
where you going with this? Yeah, he's
very interesting because he pulled he's
first of all he has a real scientific
background. He worked on ARPANET uh
first version of the internet with Doug
Engelbert and um in the '60s he was also
an astronomer you know and so he's like
real kind of you know scientific
credentials and he talks about the
phenomena in this really interesting way
where you can't take it at face value
you know you have this phenomenological
experience but that is sort of the mask
uh and behind the mask is something else
sort of going on
>> and then yeah at other times he sort of
debunks you know he he doesn't believe
the Lazar case. I happen to disagree
with him,
>> you know, on that specifically, but he's
um he's a very interesting sort of deep
deep thinker.
>> Well, the collection of stories and
anecdotes that they're not enough for
belief, but or to tip over into
accepting it as viable, but it is a
direction of which to go like what are
these people experiencing? What are they
seeing? You know, it's like uh alien
abduction people. I've met a lot of
these people, and I don't think they're
making it up. I I don't think these are
fraudsters or anything like that. But I
think they're and they're not mentally
ill people. Also, there was, you know,
Susan Clansancy at Harvard for a
doctoral dissertation in psychology. She
wrote a book on abducted and she did a
study on people who had been abducted by
alien. They're not abnormal people.
These are normal people that have well,
it's probably sleep paralysis, mainly a
sleep disorder. Uh, but you know, you
get enough of those go, okay, what's
what are they experiencing? So, it leads
us in a direction
>> for research like Jeffrey Kriel's um
research also. He compiles these
hundreds and hundreds of of anomalies,
right? Weird things that happen to
people. And they are they've happened to
me and I then I people write me when I
write about this. I'm like, "Oh my god,
wow. These are wild."
>> Yeah. Well, I I want to establish and by
the way, congratulations for being
appointed to the UAP White House
Advisory Board. That's a big deal.
You're sort of the resident skeptic
there. Um
>> what do you believe overall? Why don't
we set the table with that for the
audience's sake? Uh,
obviously phenomenologically, as you're
saying here, there are things that are
happening, you know, from abductions to
people seeing things in the sky. So, I
don't think you're arguing with the fact
that they're saying they saw a thing and
that they're earnestly retelling their
experience.
>> Yes. What do you do you believe that all
of those things have some sort of
prosaic uh explanation within kind of
our current physics or how where where
do you stand exactly?
>> Yeah. Okay. Fair question. Um well I
would say on the if we're talking about
aliens I would say they're out there
somewhere but they have not come here.
Now I don't know this for sure. So I
always start with um method well with
universal realism. There is a reality.
We can know something about it. And then
fallibleism. We're not gods. We don't
know everything. So, uh, we have to
start with some element of doubt. So,
you know, given the Drake equation and,
you know, there's a trillion galaxies or
more and each of these galaxies has
hundreds of billions, maybe up to a
trillion stars in each one of them. And
now we know from the Kepler space
telescope and others that pretty much
all these stars have planets. So you
start crunching the numbers, you go,
"Okay, there just has to be Earth-sized
planets at an Earth-sized distance to
have water and air and so on and so on."
And you're eventually going to get the
development of life and then complex
life and then intelligent life and then
maybe communicating intelligent life. No
matter how many steps are in there, the
number is so big that we just can't be
the only ones, right? So said that that
said, it's a big vast empty universe.
There's just mostly empty space. So the
chances of them having come here I would
say is not very good. So I would say
they're probably out there somewhere.
They probably have not come here.
>> Yes. So you have deductive logic, you
have inductive logic. What you just
described is deductive logic. It's sort
of you know this uh uh large scale you
know kind of probabilistic reasoning
Allah kind of the firmy paradox or the
Drake equation like you just mentioned.
You know there has to be life out there.
What about observable anomalies we are
seeing on Earth all the time as far as
you know objects in our air often in our
very sensitive military kind of nuclear
airspace when it comes to the US. Um
that doesn't look like it comes from
here. It seems to be breaking physics
breaking conservation of momentum uh
materializing dematerializing
you know uh not involving sort of lift
mechanisms that seem like prosaic
propulsion. How do you explain this?
Okay. Well, let's Okay, let's let's back
up for a second. So, um there are
scientists searching for
extraterrestrial signals from space. The
aliens are out there somewhere. Let's
see if we can pick up their signals,
right? And Carl Sean famously used the
uh in contact u the prime number
sequence that Jodie Foster's character
hears in the earbuds. And so, that would
be something that's not naturally
produced. It's not a a rotating black
hole or ways or whatever [snorts] for
for are they have they come here? What
is our evidence? So, there's lots and
lots of these anecdotes and stories and
blurry photographs and grainy videos.
And one of the purposes of our committee
that OB's heading is to say, "Okay,
we've seen all this. We've had three
government dumps now and no one has
anything obvious. So, come on, give us
the good stuff, right?" That's what
everybody says. So, what would it take?
Um, well, so Obby and I have a bet, you
know, $1,000 bet.
>> Um, we each put in 500 bucks. It goes to
the Long Now Foundation. They have the
money. they invest it and by January uh
by December 31st, 2030, one of us is
going to get the money. And who
determines it is if two of three major
scientific institutions, NASA, uh the uh
what is it? National Academy of Sciences
and then the American Astronomy Society.
If two of the three of them go, "Yep,
aliens are here. That's it right there.
That [snorts] we've made contact. That's
the evidence." And everybody can see
that. Much like the Chinese spy balloon
that floated over US airspace in 2023.
Everybody sees it. It's covered in the
news. The president, the secretary of
defense, the secretary of state,
everybody goes, "Yeah, it's real." Now,
I didn't personally see it, you know,
but I accept that that's real. And no
one cares about the credentials of the
pilot that shot it down or anything like
that. We have the balloon. So, if we had
the aliens, okay, that would do it, you
know. Avi would go, "Yeah, that's it.
Shurmer, look, here it is." and and NASA
said it's real. Uh, you know, he gets
the money, right? I mean, the money all
goes to the Gallo project anyway because
I support it. But so it's just a way of
focusing our attention on what what
constitutes good evidence and not good
evidence. What would it take to go from
here, I doubt it, to here I think it's
probably true. Well, that so I would I
would ask that for you like what
constitutes the threshold of evidence,
you know, after which you are ready to
say this is a real phenomenon and that
humans or prosaic explanations aren't
responsible for it. Uh because I think
we have an abundance of evidence in the
open- source world um that that would
you know I believe that I I believe that
now. So like I've already hit that
threshold. What's your threshold?
>> Wow. Much higher.
>> Yeah. Yeah. No, I need to see the bodies
uh or the spaceships or you know, let's
not me personally, you know, if Marco
Rubio goes there with the camera crew
from 60 Minutes or whatever and they're
in the warehouse and he goes, "All
right, I can't I can't actually show
you, but we found it." And okay, all
right. If Obby accepts that and all
these scientists accept it, then yeah,
it'd be nice to see it. Like, okay,
let's see it. We all see it.
The problem with, you know, anecdotes
like that is is there's different fields
where other people have anecdotes of
other things, paranormal, supernatural,
miracles, things like this. And it's
like they can't all be true just on the
anecdotes. We need more than that. So my
analogy is if you're a biologist and you
[snorts] show up at a conference with
your colleagues and you go, "Look, I
found a new bipeedal primate species
living in the Himalayas or Washington or
Canada or whatever. Bigfoot, Yeti,
Sasquatch, right?" And you go, "Oh, wow.
Okay, let's all see it. Put the slide
up. Well, you see, it was 3:00 in the
morning and I I was asleep and I heard
this noise. I went out and I snapped
this kind of blurry photograph. You can
sort of see in the shadows. They're
like, "No, dude. You got to bring the
bring it. Show us the body, right? The
roadkill, the dead, the dead Bigfoot,
whatever, you know?" So, that's what it
would take. Like, just show us.
>> So, so my threshold for evidence for
believing in corporeal alien bodies is
the same as yours. I'd want to actually
see those to believe them.
>> Uh, but I think there's all sorts of
other stuff before going there that just
makes us me think that we're not alone
and that there are things that seem to
be intelligently moving around in our
sensitive airspace. I'll give you an
example. This is a book by a friend of
mine named Robert Hastings called UFOs
and nukes.
>> Yes.
>> And this is accounts basically for 167
uh uh people that work at nuclear bases
all over the United States. And these
guys are on often what's known as the
PRP program, the personal reliability
program. So they have to report if
they're taking Tylenol or ibuprofen, you
know, like they literally have to be
this picture of mental health. They
can't do any of that. Yeah. Yeah. No for
them. Um, and they consistently report
seeing tic tacs, saucers, orbs, things
flying around in our most sensitive
airspace and often tampering with the
nuclear weapons in a way that we'd never
do to our own nukes. It just doesn't
make sense. And then the okay, you could
say, oh, it's like that's some
sociological, you know, hysteria or
something. But if anything, you know,
again, these people are screened for
mental health. This is a database. It's
not a bunch of anecdotes. And if
anything, there's preference
falsification in the opposite direction
because it's this culture of shame,
secrecy, and humility. And so I would
assume if we have 167 on record, we
probably have a thousand plus off
record.
>> So this is more than just the the
Maelstrom nuclear site in Montana,
right? Because that's the most famous
one.
>> Yeah. So that's Bob Salis in 1967, but
there are tons of others. There are two
cases in September of 1964 at Vandenberg
Air Force Base that seem to dovetail
with each other.
>> Um we have
>> that was the one off the coast that was
like rectangular like football size
shape rectangle.
>> That was in 2003 at Vandenberg in ' 64
at Vandenberg. Um Bob Jacobs, he was a
photo instrumentation specialist and he
was uh up the coast 100 miles at Big Su
and he was uh uh had a telescope pointed
at an Atlas 5 missile with a dummy
nuclear warhead.
>> And uh afterwards when he was reviewing
the tape uh UFO seemed to wrap around it
and caused the warhead to tumble out of
the sky. a couple of guys in in uh tweed
suits behind him were basically swarmed
to secrecy said you can't speak about
this again. He was deleted from the
government despite having his DD214 and
you managed over 100 people. So
>> yeah, I had 134 guys working for me and
I had two two friends from college who
were my commanding people and I also
have something called a DD14. I have I
have records here. my officer efficiency
reports are in there
>> and his boss, Major Floren Mansman,
nobody could get a hold of him. So
there's this liinal question of is Bob
Jacobs completely full of it. He's
saying he's managed over 100 people and
it turns out we've found Floren Mansman
in the9s and he admitted that Bob Jacobs
worked underneath him.
>> Let's assume he's not making it up. Yes.
So 167 cases. How many photos do we have
of these objects?
>> Uh we have we Well, you don't have
photos cuz it's nuclear sites. So, so
obviously all of the sensors, any of the
collection is going to be classified a
priority.
>> So, presumably the sites have some
recordings or radar or other than just
the guard said he saw this.
>> They do. Well, in in uh in the case of
May not uh Air Force Base in 1968, we
actually have radar associated with it
and physicists have reviewed the radar.
Kevin Kuth um you know who's a prominent
physicist on the topic you know is uh
he's at University of Albany and he's
reviewed the the May not you know radar
for example and he thinks that you know
it indicates a bunch of anomalous
objects showing up well it indicates
something the question is what [snorts]
right is is it you know ball lightning
or or you know satellites or I don't
know drones these are too early for
drones but [snorts] you know something
like that I I have in my book the list
of Leslie Kees you possible ordinary
terrestrial explanations for UFOs and
UAPs.
>> But when you have multiple witnesses
like so Malmstrom, let's use the 1967
case. You have Bob Salis, he's at Oscar
uh launch control center. He basically,
you know, he gets called down. He says,
you know, topside guards are seeing this
like red orb making right angle turns
and flying around in weird ways.
>> And then nine of his missiles, nine of
the 10 missiles go into no go status.
>> Can't launch it. Had that ever happened
in your career thus far?
>> I was there for three years. That one of
them may have gone down for some power
problem,
but nothing like multiple shutdowns.
>> And then simultaneous to that, Bob
Hastings himself, who wrote this book,
he was actually uh taken under he wanted
to learn more about radar theory and he
was a janitor at Melmstrom in 1967. So
he independently was taken in by this
radar guy
>> and he pointed he said we're tracking
and he probably said unknowns that's the
formal term for unidentified objects. I
saw five blips in the sort of northeast
quadrant of his radar scope.
>> So you have in that case topside guard
eyewitnesses. You have Bob Hastings
independently seeing the thing on radar
himself and then you have a guy in the
launch facility saying that the you know
the missiles are all going down and then
you have a strategic air command report
saying that the missiles went down 8
days earlier for this other you know
echoflight incident. So you have this
like it's it's kind of a tapestry of
like good evidence. All right. So you're
picking you're picking the unusual
anomalies that happened. So what's so
this is what's called base rate neglect
in basian reasoning. What's the base
rate of weird anomalies that happen at
all nuclear sites everywhere in the
world for the last 50 years? Does
anybody keep track of this? Like most
nights, nothing happens. Nobody sees
anything. 365 nights a year, maybe one
night a year, some somebody sees
something weird. We write books about
the weird stuff. Why is it, if that was
true, what else would be true? Why are
the aliens or whoever uh not harassing
nuclear sites and and military sites
most of the time? Most of the time
nothing happens at these sites. How come
they're not harassing the Russians? Or
maybe they are. Maybe you have some
cases of, you know, Russian sites like
this. So in other words, 167 sounds
impressive, but compared to what? How
unusual is that really? I mean, if you
took any place anywhere where there's a
lot of people and cameras and people
paying attention because this is an
important site. There's more
observations. I I'll give you an
analogy. Okay. So last year, two years
ago when Trump was rerunning for
president fall of 24, there was the New
Jersey swarm, UFO swarm, UAP swarm.
>> All right. So are these drones or
whatever? And yes. So Trump gets in
there and goes, "All right, well, I'm
going to find out what's going on here."
So he sends his people in there and they
come back. Nothing. It's just normal
drones and planes and stuff like that.
And one of the effects is that's a
heavily traffked area. So the base rate,
like the Bermuda Triangle, how come
there's more ships and planes crashing
it? because that's where most ships and
planes go is in that little area, right?
New Jersey is a very crowded area for a
lot of airports, the Guardian and JFK
and so on, all those. And so there's a
lot of stuff going on there. Then
there's commercial drones which are now
popular. And then the other effect um is
that people are going outdoors and
looking up in the sky because they've
heard the news reports like, "Oh my god,
there's something going on in the skies
over New Jersey." They look up. Most
people don't ever look up at the skies
at night. They're busy. You they're
watching TV or whatever. And uh if you
do that, there's a lot of stuff up
there. I mean, Venus and Jupiter are
both very bright, very uh surprising to
people. Um and now Elon has launched
over 10,000 satellites uh for Starlink.
And and I know because I live in Santa
Barbara in the mountains above Santa
Barbara, so it's very dark. And
Vandenberg is just it's about 90 miles
up the coast. So, every week there's a
launch and the rocket goes up and about
six minutes later the sound gets to my
house. It's a pretty cool effect. And
then you see the string of satellites uh
the next like 90 minutes later they come
over the house and then the next time
around they're really stretched out. And
if you didn't know what was going on,
this would be freaky. Like whoa, what is
this? Well, the base rate right Elon is
right there. They're launching missile
launching satellites. And now because I
have a I have a nice 12-in me telescope
and I get it out and I look at Jupiter
and Saturn for example, which are pretty
cool because you can see the rings and
all that stuff. Pretty much every time I
look now, I'm looking through the
eyepiece and a satellite just streaks
right across. And so on X, this happened
like a year ago. On X, I see people
going, "Oh my god, there's a weird thing
going around Jupiter or Saturn." It's
like, no, it's going around the Earth.
You just, they just notice it because
whoa, what is that thing that's going by
Jupiter? Right? It's a satellite in our
atmosphere, right?
>> What what what would your um base rate
be for things going wrong with nuclear
weapons? Because mine would be pretty
low.
>> Well, things go Okay.
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What would your um base rate be for
things going wrong with nuclear weapons?
Because mine would be pretty low.
[laughter]
>> Well, things go okay. No, mine would not
be low. Look at all just just the
literature on accidents, nuclear
accidents since the, you know, the end
of the Second World War.
>> You know, there's dozens of them. You
know, these are the list of close calls.
>> You know, the like like the Russian guy
Petrov who, you know,
>> of course, close calls, but I'm I'm not
talking about, you know, the B-52
crashes and there's two nuclear weapons
at the bottom of the ocean. There's
another one in Greenland.
>> But these things are are
>> I mean, weird [ __ ] happens. Just just
entropy. you have you have the best
cryptography of the NSA. You have
Faraday chambers, you know, surrounding
these things and they are, you know,
guarded uh in extremely sort of
intensive ways. And so to me, when I
hear, you know, the the the two times I
know of where nukes getting, you know,
going down, being decommissioned and
getting tampered with, one is 1967
Malmstrom, the other is 2010 FE Warren.
And both, if you actually back channel
and do a little digging, the people on
site are saying they're associated with
things that are flying around in this
the local airspace that seem to break
physics. In the 2010 case at FY War, it
was this tic tac flying around. Then I'm
like, okay, maybe there's a correlation
here. Maybe there's something going on
that
>> maybe. Yeah. You know, you know,
>> might be future science. You know, I'm
not saying it's I'm not saying it's some
like woo woo thing.
>> Let's hang on. Let's let's let's not go
there yet cuz time travel has other
problems with the second law of
thermodynamics and entropy. You can't
they can't far future humans can't come
back here.
>> But our but if but our current physical
model of reality always gets overturned.
So saying a thing
>> not always. No no no not always.
>> Of course it does.
>> No. So Einstein did not overturn Newton.
Newton's works is couched within
Einstein.
>> Newton's uh uh Newton Newtonian
mechanics works very well for most
things. If you want to fine-tune it, you
want to land right there instead of
right there. Okay, you gotta you have
time dilation. You have, you know,
observer dependency for, you know, a lot
of things. Okay, hang on.
Mercury,
>> I know where you're going with this. So,
let me back up for a second. So,
>> we have a lot of anomalous unexplained
phenomena, UAPs or UFOs, whatever.
[snorts]
>> And we have 99% of them have been
explained even by the ufologists. So,
we're down to just not a handful.
There's still hundreds and hundreds of
unexplained things. All right. What are
they? Okay. So, Okay. So, I have three
categories. Ordinary terrestrial,
extraordinary terrestrial, and then
extraordinary extraterrestrial. Okay.
So, the first one is um Can you hand me
my book and I'm going to I'm going to
read to you just since we have plenty of
time.
>> Yeah. Let's plug it go. I don't want to
treat the book. I just want to talk talk
about the aliens here. I'm going to give
you um Leslie Keane's list of um uh
ordinary terrestrial explanations. This
is from her book UFOs, Generals, Pilots,
and Government Officials Go on the
Record. So she says, quote, "Roughly 90
to 95% of UFO sightings can be explained
as weather balloons, flares, sky
lanterns, planes flying in formation,
secret military aircraft, birds
reflecting the sun, planes reflecting
the sun, blimps, helicopters, the
planets Venus or Mars, meteors or
meteorites, space junk, satellites,
swamp gas, spinning edi dogs, ball
lightning, ice crystals reflected light
up the clouds, lights on the ground,
lights reflected on the cockpit window,
temperature inversions, whole punch
clouds, and the list goes
In other words, um, so medical students
get this reference. If you hear hoof
beatats, think horses, not zebras. Now,
Nick Pope famously on my show said,
"Unless you near live near a zoo and
there's a lot of zebras." Yeah. Okay,
fair enough. [laughter]
So, uh, 90 to 95% or some something in
that list. Now, I would add drones
because commercial drones are so
popular. Yeah. How does something that's
big and going really fast suddenly turn
and go like, "Well, drones do that all
the time." extraordinary
um terrestrial would be like the
Russians have this super advanced
technology, the Chinese have it or the
CIA DARPA
>> has this advanced technology or so on.
Okay, first if that were true, what else
would be true? Why wouldn't the Russians
use it in Ukraine? Why wouldn't we be
using this in Iraq, Afghanistan?
>> I'm not saying we can use it. I'm not
saying it's us. I'm saying it's not us.
>> Or or maybe it's not. But but a lot of
people do think that could be it. So, I
debunked that saying that can't be
because right we would if the Russians
had this, we would know because we steal
their stuff. They steal our stuff.
>> I I think you're arguing for this being
non-human.
>> Well, it could be. Okay. So, but if it's
nonhuman, what would it be? Okay. So,
then so my third category is
extraordinary extraterrestrial. So,
these are aliens. These are Okay. Now, I
know um non-human intelligence does not
mean aliens. So, the people on the UAP
panel are going, "Sure, don't say
aliens." because it could be something
else like okay what else could it be you
know interdimensional beings or far
future human time travelers looking all
right now I think we're really getting
into speculation there but [snorts] you
mentioned up top that it's important to
have epistemic humility which I agree
with and so we have a p a limited scope
of reality as as humans how many of the
millions of species on earth think that
they're apex predators when they're not
because the apex predator above them
just exists at a higher scope and you
know that the history of science and
cosmological models building is all the
history of enovelts and the ability to
you know scope out new territory whether
it's James web on the macro scale or you
know room at the bottom you know as
Fineman said you know we have you know
increasingly granular electron
microscopes and we're do we have the
large hydron collider and stuff like
that to detect subcork stuff so you know
to say that we won't bump into you know
some sort of species above us and then
you have all sorts of observable
anomalies that we're seeing. So like why
not?
>> I'm not saying that. I agree with you.
We could
>> okay if it's so this is the last chapter
of my book on my god gambit. If we
encountered extraterrestrial
intelligences they're not going to be
just like five years ahead of us where
you know we we back engineered and and
upgraded our computers from you know
vacuum tubes to uh to chip computer
chips. Like really that's five the
aliens are just five years ahead of us.
They would be hundreds of thousands of
years ahead of us, millions of years
ahead of us. They would be like gods to
us, right? Like the iPhone to the
Neanderl. Like it feels God. I think
that's
>> that's how people who are in the quote
unquote UFO legacy program talk about
UFO materials.
>> I know. I know. Because I talked to him.
That's fine. Um if we encountered
aliens, they would be far advanced. That
does not mean that that's the
explanation for the anomalies.
>> Yeah. It's just one of multiple possible
explanations
>> for sure. But let's let's I want to take
your you know drones, space trash,
temperature inversions. You have
thousands of documents between 1945, so
the advent of the nuclear age in 1953 54
which is when the first recon U2 spy
plane was created. This is well before
any drones were in the sky. You have
thousands of documents from the FBI, the
CIA, all sorts of, you know, Army, CIC,
and they're all talking about UFOs
showing up in our most sensitive
airspace, specifically around nuclear.
There was, in fact, a project called
Project Twinkle.
>> You're picking the winners. What about
what's the base rate?
>> Picking the winners. [clears throat]
>> Okay, let me back up one second. Um, on
the history of science, you're picking
the winners there. Okay. Everything you
said is true. This theory overturned
this one and so on and so forth. That
has happened. But that doesn't mean the
new theory is going to be overturned
because it is also wrong. The current
paradigm. I mean they they may be wrong.
The big bang theory might be wrong. The
theory of evolution might be wrong.
Maybe quantum mechanics isn't right.
>> It would be a bet.
>> But but that would be very surprising
given how well supported these are.
>> But Michael, we're never at the end of
history. It would be an ahistorical
thing to say flash freeze frame. Now
we're done with knowledge. At the end of
the 19th century, electromagnetism had
the last
>> laugh. I know. I know. and and it
obviously didn't.
>> Okay, so all this is possible, but that
doesn't mean that is the explanation for
these anomalies.
>> I I I don't I don't think that we have a
good explanation, but I do think they're
genuine anomalies that aren't explained
away through prosaic means. That's all
I'm trying to say. I don't think we
should snap to grid say these are aliens
from Zeta Reticuli because we don't have
a lot of evidence that they are. Yeah,
>> but I do think we have a ton of evidence
that intelligently propulsed things that
don't seem to be human moving around in
our sensitive nuclear airspace. And then
you could you could take it a step
further and you could come up with some
sort of like, okay, it's, you know, the
the the the people working at these
nuclear bases are MK Ultra patients and
they've been tested on with mind control
experiments.
>> No, I don't think that's it.
>> You don't think that's it? And then, you
know, you can't really come up with the
drone thing, but you you could come up
with some sort of maybe some spoofing
technology in the sky that's sensitive,
that's colllocated. It's really hard.
But then you get into the fact that in
Japan, next to their uh civilian nuclear
energy grid in Fukushima, they have a
mountain called Mount Senori, which is
dedicated to UFOs. Baraloce, Argentina,
next to their civilian, you know, energy
grid, you have UFOs showing up, and you
have a famous case in '95 with a
commercial plane. Um, you have similar
accounts at Chernobyl.
>> Here's another exampled
at UFOs that are streaking above them at
like three or four times their speed,
two or three times the height that
they're at at 35,000 ft. Okay, they were
seeing the U2 spy plane or the SR71
Blackbird, but they didn't know about
that because that was secret. Okay. So,
how do you know that some of these are
not some of them are not like the next
generation of DARPA CIA type spy planes
or whatever that we haven't heard about?
>> Again, between 1945 and 1953 before the
U2 spy plane, I just don't know. I
understand all of the like, oh yeah, we
used to mistake the U2, the SR71, things
like that, but we're talking about
before that. We have thousands of
documents that comport exactly with the
stuff in this book that occurs later on.
So I just, you know, as early with the
first case in this book is 1945 Hanford
plutonium.
>> When we got down there, they told us
that this bogey was out there right over
the Hanford Ordinance Works and directed
the Lieutenant Commander Brown to take
off and challenge him. He said, "All I
can see is a bright red or reddish
orange uh fireball right up in front of
me."
>> Okay. Go ahead and and give me your best
speculation about what you think
whatever it is is doing at our nuclear
sites. I don't know, but I don't think
our current science explains it. And I
think it's worthy of further inquiry.
And I feel like the skeptical mode is
shutting down the conversation
>> is the government would care. They would
care deeply if somebody was messing
around
>> and they do. And there and so I think
Blue Book was a front-facing basically
decoy that was meant to to to throw the
public off. And then underneath that,
and this is now publicly admitted
because Jacqu Valet was J. Allen
Heinneck, the chief astronomer of Blue
Book's assistant, and he found this
thing called the Pentacle memo where it
looked like Battel Memorial Institute,
which works handinhand with our nuclear
sites all over the country, even back
then
>> on basically a more granular mapping of
UFO instances across the country, even
in the ' 50s. Project Blue Book was the
best I could do at the time because I
felt they had a real project going on
that was secret. Okay.
>> Is that true?
>> And the Air Force did.
>> Oh, I didn't know that.
>> And so I I think they care intensely.
And I think the reason to not disclose
this is you don't want things that you
don't that flying with impunity. You
don't want things that you can't
attribute flying around around nukes and
tampering with them.
>> I agree. So this one of the goals of the
UAP science advisory committee is to get
is more information so that we can
figure out what it is. If somebody in
the inside knows then tell us. Now
>> what we're worried about okay so this is
a point of discussion in our first Zoom
meeting was what if they misdirect us
and go hey aby here's some stuff now go
spend a few weeks analyzing that.
Meanwhile we're going to invade Cuba or
whatever. Right. [laughter] Okay. So
we're we're aware that this could be a
pretty savvy guy. I I don't think that's
going to happen. Uh but but yes, they
would care. So why are they not doing
something about it? Why do these things
keep happening?
>> And so every president that gets in
there, you know, Clinton and Obama,
Trump, you know, we're going to find out
what's going on, right? And then you
see, you know, like Obama on these shows
or Clinton on these shows going, I got
in there, I sent my people in, we didn't
find anything.
>> Anything having to do with UFO or
related material, and we're going to be
releasing a lot of things. There's
footage and records of objects in the
skies that we don't know exactly what
they are.
>> Did you go through the UFO document?
[laughter]
I'm not telling you.
>> But that's the thing. I think that's why
disclosure is a misnomer. I don't think
they have an onlogical model of truth.
And let's just simulate this. You're
Obama and you're like, I really want to
understand what's going on. You send
your best people at it and they say
there are things flying around our nukes
and we have no idea what they're doing,
why they're here, and sometimes they
turn the nukes off and there we do have
multi-ensory data against this. We know
it's a real thing. We know it's not kind
of elucory. Of course, you're not going
to disclose that to the American public.
What? That's crazy.
>> Well, so now you're accusing Obama of
lying. No, not at all. Or he's silent.
>> No, I'm accusing of him of of doing the
the rational thing, which is not
touching off mass hysteria. if that's
all you know.
>> I see. I see. So, you're saying he's
siloed from the some other people in the
government who know what's actually
going on and they just don't tell him.
>> Yeah. I don't think this is your
dayto-day concern as president, you
know. But I think if you if you want to
do a deep inquiry and then you find out
that these intelligently propulsed
things are flying around our nuclear
assets, you know, to totally like, you
know, we have no no attribution on them.
We have no idea where they came from.
they're flying, you know, in ways that
break our modern physics and our
understanding of physics. You're not
going to willy-nilly disclose that. That
then creates a green field for
adversaries to try to, you know, do
recon against our sensitive sites
because it becomes this real, you know,
then it's we we we're admitting um that
we don't know about these these certain
things and they can sort of muddy the
waters by by throwing, you know, more
mud at us.
>> But who's they? No, I'm saying
adversaries can then they can then throw
throw a bunch of like their most, you
know, exotic drones in the mix and then
it's like, oh, we don't know whether
it's the NHI or the So, you never
disclose that.
>> We know the Russians do they muck with
stuff all the time. They're doing this
social media for sure. Absolutely. And
we do that with them. Our spies do bad
stuff, too.
>> But you get what I'm saying. The public
would freak out. You would never want to
admit that.
>> I don't think the public would. Okay.
No, I don't You don't mean like if we
discovered aliens, the stock market
would crash and religious
>> No. What? No, no, I don't mean that. I
mean if you're Obama and all you find
out that all we actually know about this
stuff is, yeah, maybe some material was
dropped. Maybe we have some remnants of
actual physical evidence, but like
ultimately one of the core truths about
it is that these things are flying, you
know, with complete impunity around our
most sensitive defense
>> assets. So what's the what's the
criteria cut off to tip over on that
particular issue of because power goes
out at stations all the time. This
happens. So maybe the power just went
out for some other reason at the mastrom
site and it wasn't these orbs or
whatever. So how many does it have to
happen and we go okay this is not just
some random electricity occasionally
goes out and shuts off the nukes. It was
something else. The reason I think that
it was actually UFO related is there was
a Boeing uh uh strategic air command
report where they actually looked and
they tried to recreate the effect and
this is on the Echolight incident. So
this was 8 days before the Salace
incident just to be clear um but it was
at Malmstrom and they couldn't recreate
the effect and they couldn't they had no
idea what it was and so they concluded
that it was anomalous. And cut back to
uh a year or two ago, the Wall Street
Journal reports this clearly disinfo hit
piece on UFOs and it's around this event
and they say that an EMP in 1967
like a hu like a 60oot EMP was wheeled
up to Malmstrom and we shut down our own
nukes in some sort of experimental
testing which has all sorts of issues.
the nukes wouldn't go back online if
they were they would be fried, you know,
from the EMP. You would never do that
with people present. We didn't even have
operational non-uclear EMPs in 1967. So
that's checkmate and one, you know. So
So whenever
>> know of maybe the CIA DARPA has some
advanc
>> I don't think I don't think
>> this reminds me a little bit of that.
>> Bluegill Triple Prime was four years
before where we incidentally created an
EMP in the Starfish Prime series. I
don't think we had and and I don't know.
>> Okay, maybe. So the question would be
how can we get to the bottom of this?
Okay. So part of my problem is that you
know I've been hearing about disclosure
coming any day now for 40 years. When's
it going to happen? Right? And so every
time Clinton or Obama or Trump go, okay,
we're going to get to the bottom of
this. I looked into it. I didn't find
anything. And then the UFO people go,
oh, okay, he's siloed or he's lying or
he's or they're lying to him or
>> no, they have different criteria. They
probably personally believe in this.
That's why Obama thought about producing
Betty and Barney Hills, you know,
documentary. That's why he's on set at
Spielberg's Disclosure Day. It's because
he's into this stuff, but he can't talk
about it publicly because it's
>> was on that podcast. This is what
triggered the the the UFO files dump
was, you know, he said the host asked
him, "Do you think aliens are real?" And
he goes, "Yeah, I think aliens are
real."
>> Are aliens real?
>> Uh, they're real, but I haven't seen
them. and and and uh they're not being
kept in uh what is it?
>> Area 51.
>> Area 51. There there's no underground uh
facility unless there's this enormous
conspiracy and they they hid it from the
president of the United States.
>> Then he clarified, I meant they're out
there somewhere like what I said, right?
Not that they're here.
>> Yeah. But the revealed private
preference is that if he's funding
documentaries about the first abduction
in the United States,
>> I mean Spielberg's a filmmaker. Um
>> if if his dire the director of his CIA
Brennan and director of national
intelligence that oversees all
intelligence agencies under him, James
Clapper is on record, you know, in the
age of disclosure saying that, you know,
we were at Area 51 and we had we were
systematically detecting UFOs in that
sensitive airspace. So obviously Obama
knew
>> detecting what? Detecting something, an
anomaly that's not aliens. But again, I
I I again, I think if you go back to the
pre-U2 spy plane and then it comports
with all of this data, you have
eyewitness accounts, you have radar, and
you know, you you have all sorts of
evidence that that this is happening.
Like clearly you have an abundance of
>> evidence of something, but what
>> I I I don't know. I don't know. No, no,
but I I think I think what I'm saying is
that that's obviously worthy of further
inquiry. That's obviously warrants sc
because the skeptic thing shuts down the
conversation, you know.
>> No, I don't want to.
>> So, so you admit that you admit that
this is phenomenologically real and hard
to explain by
>> I'm not sure that the nuclear thing is
beyond statistical chance. See, like in
the social sciences, you're familiar
with the null hypothesis. Your
hypothesis is not true until proven
otherwise. You got to have stat, you run
the experiment, the randomized control
trial and so on and so forth. You get to
the 0.05 or 0.01 level statistical
significance. you go okay I think we
have a real effect in not sometimes that
holds up and it's and it's replicated
sometimes it's not maybe manipulated the
stats or whatever in other words there's
a method of course to get there what
would be the method for that to say okay
something weird is happening in our
nuclear sites and and it's predictable
and here it's repeatable and you can see
it versus some weird stuff is happening
let's look further okay but then what
>> I think this is happening far more
frequently than if you were to like
stand in random locations, you know, all
over the world.
>> But not random because you got to be
where there's there's a lot of people
looking up. They're interested. There's
observers,
>> of course. Yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean,
>> while being hypervigilant about what's
going on, controlling for all of the
other variables.
>> Yeah. So, here's an example. Um like
like the um uh Navy pilot David Fraver
um talks about the UAP going from 80,000
ft to sea level like that, right? Like
one second. Okay. How could this
possibly be? It rapidly accelerated in
front of us and disappeared. Our wingmen
roughly 8,000 feet above us lost
contact. Also, we immediately turned
back to see where the white water was at
and it was gone. Also,
>> you know, Aby does a calculation saying
this is not possible for any physical
object to move through the air at that
speed because it would it would burn up.
It would release a
you know an explosion, you know, break
the sound barrier. The people on the
aircraft carrying Nimmits, they would
have heard it. They would have reported
it. None of this happened. So whatever
he thinks he saw or people think they
saw on the radar whatever that's not
what happened. It cannot have happened.
That is physically impossible. This is
Avi Lobo saying this he did the
calculation can't happen. We know what
happens when bolides and meteors come
through the atmosphere at that speed.
They burn up. They explode. It's a big
thing. This never happened with that
UAP. So whatever the story is 80,000
feet to sea level. Oh my god. Okay,
you're wrong. So yeah, but that's the
point that it's flying in ways that defy
our current physics. And so that means
we should study it and figure out if
some future physics might be able to
explain it
>> or that's not what happened. It a
sizable object did not drop from 80,000
ft. When you have somebody like it was a
camera effect or it was a lens effect or
the zoom effect or Okay, so these are
our choices. It was a normal camera lens
something weird effect or
>> all of our physics is off and we need a
new physics. Okay, let's go with this
one first. [snorts]
>> Well, you fair enough, but I would say I
don't know if you know who Miguel
Alubieri is. He's at the University of
Mexico and he figured out a way, you
know, for faster than light travel
within the scope of general relativity.
It requires negative energy. But you
have things like the Casemir effect
which
essentially show negative energy. And
then you have somebody like Sunny White
at NASA who's figuring out how to
harness the Casemir effect to light up a
small chip. So you can make the Casemir
effect useful.
>> Okay, but you're doing these
calculations to explain something that
may not need explaining. It's not it's
not what you think it is,
>> but it needs explaining because you have
you have Commander David Fraver who is
an extremely esteemed person. He was in
charge of
>> I know,
>> you know, he's flying an F-16. He's
extremely extremely experienced. You
have this whole squadron and you have
you have you have Chad Underwood
catching the thing with forward looking
infrared. You have Kevin Day who's
catching the thing with with radar on
the USS Princeton. You have a whole
chain of custody and you have all these
different kind of you know multiensory
corroborating things. You have the radar
which was confiscated and then again
there's a nuclear connection. Tactical
nukes were likely on board. Well, the
Nimbits was still um adjusting a new
radar system uh for that particular one.
Was it the Tic Tac one or something?
>> It was a spy radar system.
>> Yeah. So, maybe it was inaccurate. Maybe
it was still being adjusted.
>> They thought that and then they
repositioned it and it was totally it
was reading the same thing and it's been
fine ever since. And it's this it's been
the state-of-the-art ever since.
>> Okay. And how many of these do we have?
And by the way, how come we don't have
>> We have tons. We have tons in this book.
How come we don't have good photos?
What's your answer to the Where's all
the clear and unmistakable photos and
videos? We do have
>> Maybe the Navy needs better cameras.
>> Do you know Do you know about Do you
know about the Lake Coat photos?
>> And and and in Costa Rica, they were
doing aerial mapping around this this uh
uh arenal um area, Lake Coat. They were
trying to do this hydroelectric project.
And um this guy, Sergio Leotszi, I
always mispronounce his name. He was the
this guy, you know, flying this plane,
doing the aerial mapping, you know, was
with a professional grade cameras for
the their um geographical institute,
which is in their, you know, Ministry of
Public Works. They're developing the
photo and they see this UFO over, you
know, over the region that looks like
this perfect UFO that they didn't even
spot while they were taking the picture
and Jacques Valet and Gerald Haynes
looked at the negatives and the
negatives looked perfectly fine. The
Costa Rican government has never denied
it. So, this is an official photograph
that's been taken. There are other cases
like McMinnville where you it's really
hard to debunk.
>> The McMinnville one. I mean, really,
this looks like a hubcap tossed into the
air,
>> but there's no way to ultimately debunk
it. It's unfalsifiable in either
direction. And Paul and Evelyn Trent
were these hapless farmers.
>> I know. I know. I'm just
>> And they took two different angles.
>> I have faked UFO photos. It's super easy
to do. But there my point is there are a
bunch of these things that sit in liinal
space where you can't say that I'm
definitively wrong and I can't say that
you're definitively wrong. It's not even
wrong. Right? You you end up in this
impossible argument and then you have
eyewitness accounts and then you have
fleer and then you have radar and then
you have materials and it's like we have
a tapestry of really good evidence
beyond the threshold for me at least as
far as okay this is really worthy of
further investigation. Okay. You know
the tic tac video where you see the
little white thing in the middle, all of
a sudden it zooms off, right? Okay. This
would be that direction for you.
>> That could be the lock losing target. We
don't know what that is.
>> Well, but but Mick West pointed out that
if you look on the vertical axis, you'll
see zoom 1.0. And the moment it goes
like that, it goes from 1.0 to 2.0. In
other words, the lens is zooming in, not
the object moving. All right. So, he was
the first to point that out. Also, the
triangular, all the shows show these
triangular green-shaped UAPs near LAX.
They're not. They're blinking in the
exact same pattern as a commercial
airliner. These are commercial airliners
coming into LAX. It's the um the bokei
effect on the triangular lens that's
causing it to look triangular.
>> But but context matters. And so the
Nimits case is really important because
not only do you have Commander David
Fraver, you have Alex Dietrich, you
have, you know, uh, Underwood who's
doing the Fleer
who caught it on Fleer, you have you
have radar catching it for days before
and after. You have the fact that the
UFO showed up at the rende point at the
cat point 60 miles away uh on radar that
that um, you know, Fraver was headed to.
Uh, so I just think this is hard to
argue with like the overall tapestry of
evidence at least that it's worthy of a
further investigation.
>> Absolutely.
>> Could could this have been some secret
American technology red teaming our
systems? Possibly. I'm I'm open to that.
>> I am. But but I think I think the the
the the nuclear stuff again going back
to the 40s is just really really hard to
debunk. I think you're on very, you
know, not solid.
>> I don't know. Maybe, you know, it's just
Okay. So you brought up Dietrich. So
I'll give the la this is the end of my
chapter on aliens. I'll give the last
word to Dietrich who witnessed the 2004
UAP incident from the USS Nimttz fighter
jet as I think it well sums up 75 years
of ufologist search for aliens. Quote, I
think they enjoy the anticipation more
than actually finding answers. And
that's been my frustration because I've
been hearing about this for decades.
It's like, you know, like Steven Greer,
boy, we're going to get to the bottom.
Okay. All right. And it never happens.
Okay. Okay. So, what I'm hoping for the
UAP committee, advisory committee, is
that Avi knows people who know people on
the inside. Like he's friends with um uh
Anna Pina Luna. Okay. She seems to be an
insider. She just yesterday had a big u
congressional hearing on MK Ultra. All
right. Let's get to the bottom of this.
I happen to know a lot about this that
got destroyed most of those records. I
don't know if there's a bottom to get
to, but fine. Okay. Okay. So, I'm hoping
that Annapolina Luna or somebody that
Obby knows on the inside could go, "All
right, damn it. We're going to I'm going
to go in there and I'm going to get the
stuff from the nukes or the whatever and
we're going to bring it out and show
it." Will this happen? I don't know. I'm
I'm prepared to be frustrated and you
know, but I so I will I agree with you
and I think this is important for the
audience to be more discerning in cases.
I think you serve a very valuable role
there and there is a dynamic with this
whole field of kind of Lucy with the
football. Um so I think it's you know
it's constantly like you know
disclosures around the bend sort of
thing but I I I also think if you are
familiar with obviously you know Thomas
Coons the structure of scientific
revolutions I think consensus thought
and science moves as much due to
politics as it does due to truth. You
know, famously Aristotarkus was the
first person who thought that, you know,
we lived in a heliocentric universe. But
it took, you know, uh, Galileo and and
and Capernicus measuring it, you know,
Capernicus theorizing it many, many
years, centuries later, uh, in order for
the consensus to shift on this sort of
topic. And then if you look at the money
that's been historically spent on UFOs,
it's basically nothing. And then you you
you look at, you know, the Robertson
panel documentation, which is was meant
to be classified at the time, saying
Blue Book's literal explicit motive is
to throw the public off and
systematically downplay, suppress, and
rationalize UFO sightings. Of course,
you're not going to have made good
scientific progress on these things that
seem to be breaking our physics. Like,
you're not going to because you haven't
spent the proper resources or money. you
go just now certain academic
institutions are starting to take it
seriously you have you know Avi Loe and
Gary Nolan Stanford and Harvard you know
respectively but like this is we're
talking about the last four or five
years so I think yeah on the one hand
yes it's Lucy with the football and then
on the other hand it's like give us a
chance all right I'll give you some more
stories so uh [laughter]
when Darwin published on the origin of
species in 1859 you know he was right
that theory has stood the test of time
okay but he was not the first there were
many other people speculating about the
origins of species and they were wrong.
One reason Darwin waited so long because
he returned from the Galopagos in 1835
and he opened his first notebook uh in
the fall of that year and it was not
until 1859. Okay, what took him so long?
Well, because a guy named Robert
Chambers wrote a book called Vestigages
in which [snorts] he had his own theory
of evolution that was widely criticized
and completely wrong. So Darwin thought
uh I don't want to be like that guy and
you know everybody laughs at me. I want
a career in science. I gotta really take
my time and build up tons of evidence.
So, he does it, right? So, so that's
what it takes, right? The the famous
French astronomer who discovered um
Neptune. He discovered Neptune by seeing
perturbations in Uranus's orbit. And he
said, "There's got to be something right
around there pulling it that direction."
Point the telescopes there. Eventually,
oh, it's a planet, right? That guy also
saw perturbations in Mercury's orbit.
He's like, "Okay, here we go again.
There's another planet in there. It's
planet Vulcan. And he twice found it. He
never found it. Right? He was mistaken.
And it was Einstein that figured out,
oh, Mercury's very close to the sun.
It's not the perturbation of another
planet. It's the distortion of the
spaceime around the sun causing Mercury
to you general the relativity theory.
Okay? So, you're picking the winners.
Those are all true. But don't forget
most of the ideas in the history of
science are wrong. Right? I mean,
Capernicus was right. But Brahi had an
alternative theory to Tommy where the
the sun and the and the moon go around
but then that whole thing goes around
the sun right so it was kind of a
modified between tammy and capernicus
brahe was wrong most ideas in science
are wrong so the people that discovered
this or that about bacteria and virus
you know like cancer
>> but but I'm not presenting an idea I'm
presenting a tapestry of evidence that
warrants further investigation and a
theory to explain it okay Jesse we're I
agree with you this This is why there's
no daylight between.
>> I've always supported the SETI program.
I I've supported the Galo project. I'm
on the Galileo team since the first
week. I every Monday, the first Monday,
the first Friday of every month, we meet
on Zoom. I never miss a meeting.
>> Uh you know, I'm there.
>> I want to find out.
>> Okay. I love it. I don't have enough
pull. Obby, because of his Harvard
connections, I think, okay, maybe this
guy can actually make it happen.
>> In other words, the Steven Greers of the
world are like, we're going to get to
the bottom. And it never h even Clinton,
Obama, it never happens.
>> Show us Greer's theory is that they're
all love and light and good. And it's,
you know, almost like a play on the
great filter theory that they have to be
perfectly altruistic to have, you know,
to go interstellar or something,
>> but they I don't know.
>> So, so that would be an example of a
thing where I'm like that is not going
to probably stand the test of time like
like what you're talking about. But I
think just getting off first base
because some people and hopefully you'd
admit this in the skeptical position
have just tried to shut down the
conversation. No,
>> of course we don't. I would love the
conversation.
>> Okay, good. Here I am.
>> So that that's that's all I'm saying.
That's all I'm saying. I know you do and
I appreciate that and I I have immense
respect for you and I'm glad and I we've
we've always had great conversations. So
>> I mean personally I I don't think the
discovery of an extraterrestrial
intelligence would disrupt anything. I
think it would be great. I think the
stock market would go up.
>> Yeah. Every religious person I've ever
talked to and all the surveys that have
been done over the decades of religious
people, would this upset your religion?
Nobody goes, "Yeah." Everybody goes,
"Well, of course, God can make as many
species around the globe as he wants.
And maybe Jesus goes to different
planets to save people." I don't know,
[laughter] but it's not a problem. And
and you know, if if we discovered
aliens, I mean, NASA would go straight
to Congress and go, "Hey, we got to
double our budget. Look what we look
what we found."
>> Right? And the military would go, "Hey,
what if they're dangerous? We need a
bigger budget." Right? So contrary to
the myth that you know the world will
fall apart the or in the new film
Spielberg's film you know the
geopolitical stability will be disrupted
I don't think so. Yeah I think if
anything the Russians and the Chinese
and the Americans go okay we now have a
common enemy the Reagan thing and so we
ought to stay close together here
>> work together on this problem. I
occasionally think how quickly our
differences worldwide would vanish if we
were facing an alien threat from outside
this world.
>> I will admit that I want to believe.
Will you admit that you want to
disbelieve?
>> I don't want to disbelieve. No, I would
like Sean. I I would love to know
there's aliens. I would be surprised if
we were alone. As as Carl always said,
it would be a terrible waste of space if
we were the only living intelligent
organisms in the entire universe.
>> Would you would you be surprised if we
were being visited though?
>> I would be surprised because again the
the the vastness of interstellar space,
it's just you would need these this new
kind of physics that you're talking
about because
>> but we always get new physics. That's a
that's a safe bet.
>> No, not randomly.
>> To say we always get new physics.
>> Not saying randomly. I'm just saying we
always get new physics. I mean, here's
one of the things that Avio says in our
>> Do you think this is this is this is
>> no new physics. Quit bringing up new
phys. We just
>> You think we're at the end of history?
>> No, of course not. But we just spent a
billion dollars. We just spent a billion
dollars at CERN. They found no new
physics, right? There's nothing new in
>> Yeah, but that that's it's often the
wrong framework. You you you you're
we're going smashing particles together
to get to, you know, smaller and
smaller. You know, maybe you find the
Higs field and then and then what do you
have left? But then that as you know if
you read you know structural scientific
revolutions often it's going down the
tree trunk finding another branch and
then that's where the new new physics
come. So
>> it it could happen. It could happen.
>> Okay.
>> But I mean obvious point is you know no
new physics. What he means is we're not
we're not Star Trek here. We're not just
writing new crazy stuff to explain.
Let's get the bottom of it. Show us the
thing that we're give us the film. Give
us the like on the UFO files that Trump
has done three of them now. All the
photos and videos have these big blacked
out rectangles. Okay. What are those?
Those are the numbers from the cameras.
Where was the camera? Which camera was
it? What was the distance? Was it
triangulated? All the details we need.
Yeah.
>> Otherwise, I don't know what I'm looking
at. Totally. You see this blurry thing
going around like what what is this?
>> I'm right there with you. I think we
need more. Have you did you look at the
um Gemini 7 uh Frank Borman by any
chance? That audio?
>> Yes. And also and Buzz also.
report.
>> Roger.
>> Okay. So, yeah, I forget on the Borman
one, but but Avi had a good explanation
of this is cosmic rays.
>> Okay. So, cosmic rays ping your retina.
>> Um, they also land on film and they can
cause film to to to uh record something.
So, he thinks, and I think he's probably
right, that the um the lunar photos
where you see the little blue uh lights
in the the distant sky on the moon and
Buzz Aldrin's report that inside the
cabin, he sees lights. Even with his
eyes closed, he sees light. Well, that's
cosmic rays. It's like if you press the
side of your eyeball, you'll see a
little white light. M it's and then then
now the third one um that I'm not sure
about but the Palomar telescope the 200
in telescope there in the 1940s
develop film there of things in the sky
there there's nothing in the sky this is
before satellites as far as Sputnik so
1940s and 50s
>> this is Beatatric Val project
>> Aby says I'm pretty sure those are
cosmic rays and she says I'm pretty sure
they're not
>> so this is this is an amazing astronomer
from Stockholm University she's also a
physicist and she saw all sorts of light
reflecting transients, basically objects
in the sky, seemingly objects, flashes.
Um,
>> are you talking about the film now or
you talking about eye eyeballing?
>> I'm talking about no in the uh plates,
the astronomical plates at the Palomar
Observatory. Okay. And you have all
these people saying they're plate
defects, but then she showed that
there's actually a drop off in the sun's
in in in the earth's uh you know,
obviously you have a a side of the earth
where there's shadow from the the sun.
So, you know, where the sun doesn't
exist and there's a massive, you know,
drop off.
>> 30 to 35% of the objects we are working
with come from solar reflections. and
not any solar reflections because the
short flashes and not streaks, they're
associated with things that are
extremely flat and extremely reflective.
>> Wow.
>> Like mirrors and that makes it more fun.
>> Like mirrors.
>> So that seems like okay, we're looking
at physical objects at that point. And I
don't think solar or cosmic radiation is
a good explanation actually because
there's ambient solar radiation all
around the earth due to solar radiation
and you wouldn't have these sort of you
know
>> solar radiation cosmic rays from distant
space. So they coming in parallel
they're so far away. These are quazars
or distant galaxies is what Obby thinks
>> and and he thinks that the the um the
light reflecting specific transients are
based on that.
>> That's what he thinks. Yeah.
>> I don't think that's right. It's not a
great theory, but hers she she doesn't
really offer a theory. She goes, "This
is just some weird stuff." So,
>> well, well, I I think her theory
implicitly, and she's obviously, you
know, kind of reigning it in because
she's an academic, and this past peer
review, by the way. Um, but, you know, I
think implicitly we're talking about
UFOs, especially given that you look at
>> What do you mean by UFOs?
>> Well, that this is the thing. You look
at CIA documentation at the time and it
says flat mirror-l like objects that
reflect light. So, like that's how
they're describing these things. And
then that sounds a lot like these
transients being described as well.
>> All right. So here's the bigger issue.
You you mentioned the word liinal. You
know in any field there's always a
residue of anomalies that can't be
explained.
>> Every scientific field has these. So
back to [ __ ] Do enough of them build up
it's like you know what there's
something really wrong with this theory.
We need a new theory. Okay. So how does
this happen? Well you if you are an
outsider you just want to challenge the
mainstream which is good. This is what
young scientists should do. your new
theory has to explain all the stuff the
old theory explains pretty well and some
of the new anomalies
>> of course
>> and this has always been the problem
with um these kind of uh fringe
physicists or whatever the people that
say I have a theory of physics that
overturns Einstein or whatever all right
can you explain all this stuff over here
that current physics explains you know
the standard model that explains quirks
and this and that whatever and usually
no they just say well they have some
model of space and time and whatever
it's like you have to do that and then
also here's some the rest of the
anomalies. We don't know what they are.
Can you explain any of those also?
>> Of course.
>> That's the test.
>> Of course. And I don't think anything
has adequately passed that test to to my
knowledge.
>> This is so common. Mitchaku has a web
page in which he says if you're writing
me about your alternative theory of
physics, here's what your theory has to
do. Here's a bunch of stuff it needs to
explain.
>> Absolutely. So,
>> but there are ways of explaining what
seem to be anomalies like again the
existence of dark energy and quantum
vacuum fluctuations and quantum
electronamics. You have the casemir
force and you have somebody who's
harnessing the kazmir force seemingly on
small scales you know we're talking
about sunny white here. So then could
you end up with some larger scale
propulsion due to that? Like possibly
you know we have to keep an open mind
there and that fully comports with our
our physics. So
>> yes,
>> I don't think we necessarily need a
theory of everything to explain. Yeah.
So I mean let's take dark energy, dark
matter. Okay. These are linguistic
placeholders by cosmologists.
>> That's right.
>> Do you do you believe in dark matter?
>> Well, I believe it. I believe there's a
a mystery to be explained. Okay.
>> So it's the UFO same thing as UFOs.
You're indirectly measuring them.
>> Yes, that's right. Okay. Okay. Fine.
>> So you believe in UFOs as much as you
believe in dark matter?
>> Uh I don't like the word believe in. I
just it's like what is it we're talking
about?
>> So you don't want to believe.
>> So [laughter]
uh I don't like the word believe. I like
to say I don't that's what I'm saying. I
don't want to believe things that have
to be believed in to be true. They're
just true.
>> Yes.
>> Okay. So when astronomers tell me
galaxies should not be
>> but they're true according to you.
Ultimately we're all pre-leveraged by
our own epistmics.
>> True. What do you mean by true? So I
define it that my book is something
confirmed to such an extent it would be
rational to offer your provisional
ascent. But do you think human beings
are rational?
>> Yes, pretty pretty rational.
>> I would say they're pretty irrational.
>> Well, I my whole life is spent showing
how irrational humans are. But now I've
had a bit of a turn of heart here that
most people most of the time are fairly
rational. This is how they maintain jobs
and families and and they keep gas in
the tank and and food in the fridge and
they lead a normal life. Where it
happens like with conspiracy theories,
it's in areas where they can't know.
like how am I going to fact check if the
2020 election was rigged or not? What do
I I don't have time to go to Arizona and
go to the voting booth and see what
>> I'm just going to trust the Department
of Justice and Attorney General Bill
Barr who loved Trump voted for him
looked into it and said, "Nah, we didn't
find any fraud." But
>> so this is a but this is an epistemology
question. How do we how do we know about
anything in the world?
>> So dark matter is a conspiracy.
>> Okay. So on back back to [laughter] the
dark matter, my astronomer friends tell
me that there has to be more stuff in
the galaxy to hold it together. Okay,
what is it? And their answer is we don't
know. Could be nutrinos, could be dark
whatever these dark stars, brown stars
or whatever. Okay. Um, keep working on
it. We'll just So to me, I just set that
aside and go, okay, that's a mystery to
explain. Same thing with dark energy.
>> So, and same with UFOs.
>> Okay. With
>> So, so you're placing it in the same
category. And by the way, UFOs are even
more accurately and epistemically humbly
framed because they're called
unidentified flying objects. Yes.
Whereas with dark matter, we're calling
it, you know, this this thing like we're
acting like we know what it is. But if
we can't detect it,
>> astronomers all decide 99% of astronomer
goes, okay, now we know dark energy is
nutrinos. Just make that up. Okay. Then
I go, okay, then that one is pretty much
solved. Now, if the UFO people go, okay,
we figured it out. It's the ball
lightning or it's the orbs or, you know,
whatever it is, and now we know the CIA
had this thing or the Russians or it's
the aliens or whatever, then I go, okay,
then that one's solved. Okay, we're not
there yet. Right. Again, you got 90 95%
of them are are explained. You got the
five to 10 percent like I don't know
what that is. The nukes, the orbs, the
could be this, could be that. H okay.
Now what?
>> But say say you have a like a criminal
case. You have like a dead body, right?
And you need to have the detectives work
on finding what happened, you know, in
this criminal case. And then you have
one person being like, I don't know if
the body's dead, [laughter] you know,
and you're like sort of you're sort of
just like poo pooing the field overall.
And I feel like the skeptic's role in
ufology for the last 20 years and maybe
now it's starting to shift. And you
know, with Neil Degrasse Tyson is taking
it more seriously. You're taking it more
seriously. When these people of high
rank started reporting, I said, "All
right, I have to jump in here.
I I can't stay silent.
>> Historically, it's been like I don't
really think there's anything there. And
it's like don't trust the witnesses. And
so now I just want to acknowledge you're
would you say that you're now shifting
to like ah we kind of trust the
witnesses and we think this is worthy of
investigation.
>> No, I'm very ler of witnesses by
themselves. Okay.
>> But it's not witnesses by themselves.
>> Well, okay. If it's if it's more than
just the witnesses that you have
>> we have cases with witnesses and radar.
>> Yes. Okay. So 45 minutes that nudges it
from here to here.
>> Japan Airlines
>> and then we got to get we got to get up
here.
>> We have Japan Airlines pilot flying for
45 minutes with radar that was
confiscated by the White House and the
radar is publicly available and
physicists have looked at it and Jesse,
what's the whole point of these UAP
congressional hearings? The point is we
want to get to the bottom of it because
we're not there yet. We want to get to
there and figure out what the hell it
is. And we're not there yet. Everybody
knows we're not there yet.
>> Of course I agree.
>> All right. So that I'm in favor of that.
>> Okay. But you're admitting you're
admitting you know Allah the the the
criminal case example you're admitting a
crime has been committed. There is a
there's a hole here that we we have to
find
>> something. That's right. If you if you
say are UFOs real. Yes. I mean there's
an unexplained street. Yes.
>> So they are they are as real as dark
matter.
>> It's a little bit like when the
government said in 2017 that UAPs are
real and Lou Alexander goes the
government says they're real. The
government said the the videos are real.
We didn't fake these. These are not CGI.
These were actually filmed by our jets.
>> So we are indirectly measuring them like
we are indirectly measuring dark matter
and they those are
>> measuring something. Yes. There's
something to be explained. Yes, I agree.
>> So you would put dark matter UFOs same
category
>> I guess. So yeah. Okay. Sure. Okay. All
right. I like it. On the on the
eyewitness thing the problem. Okay. So
let's go to the court case. Yeah.
>> So how how do we determine truth in the
legal system?
>> All right. We have an advers ad
adversarial
um lawyers uh method, right? So the goal
of the lawyer is not to find out what
actually happened. Did this guy actually
kill this person or not? The goal of the
lawyer is to win the case. The goal of
the other lawyers to win the case for
their side, right? Prosecution, the
defense.
>> And so in this case, the peer review
system is the judge or the jury. They're
the ones that decide, okay, I've heard
your evidence. I've heard your evidence
and arguments and so on. I think this is
the right one. Now, did they get it
wrong? Yeah, they get it wrong. Right.
So, here's how I do it. Just picture a 2
by two grid, right? So, we got four
sales. One, two, three, four. All right.
So, I did this um this is sort of a fun
example of cursed horror films, right?
So, I'm doing a documentary, talking
head for a documentary on cursed horror
films like Exorcist [snorts] and and and
other horror films where bad things
happen on the set, the actor dies. um
like um what was the famous one with um
uh the omen you know and so on so
there's you know there's a good halfozen
really popular uh horror films in which
bad things happen so cursed horror films
all right that's cell one so my answer
to them is well what about the other
three cells cursed horror cursed films
where nothing horrible happened like it
you know the shining and so on these are
really scary and then what about the non
horror films that were cursed you know
like Apocalypse how you know um what's
his name? Um has a heart attack on set.
Charlie Sheen. No, the father Martin
Sheen. Yeah. And then the non-cursed
non-h horror films, right? So in other
words, you you have four cells like so
in the case of the missing dead
scientists. Oo, spooky,
>> right? [snorts] Well, okay, first of
all, we have to quantify what do you
mean by a scientist? What do you mean by
they worked for NASA, they worked for
propulsion systems, they worked for the
military, they worked on a nuclear site?
This is all over the board. And then
dead or missing. Well, okay. What's our
base rate? How many people go dead or
missing every year? In any case,
>> you're talking about the missing
scientists, right?
>> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, you have four
cells. You got the the the
non-scientists. Yes. Uh who go missing
or commit suicide or or or killed. And
then you have the scientists who just
live fine. How come how come no one's
murdered you? Uh Jesse, you're a big UFO
guy. You don't have personal security
here, do you?
>> Knock on uh and then the fourth category
that Yeah. So in other words, we have to
keep all of these the the other
possibilities in mind. So that's what I
do when I hear anomalies. Okay, what's
the base rate? Okay, the the nuclear
what about the other cells? The nuclear
sites where nothing weird has happened
or the non-uclear sites where weird orbs
or something happens. So you have to
keep track of all that
>> of of course. And so my nuanced take on
the missing scientist story is that is
there some statistical speed up of
scientific suppression? No, I I can't
say that for a fact at all. I I don't
know. Um
are each of those cases and and some of
them are, you know, are they all
nonstories? Absolutely not. And that is
what some people are implying. The idea
that Nuno Lorero, who is, you know,
probably the tip of the spear on
magnetic reconnection, which is the
number one thing around making nuclear
fusion work, um is is is is you know,
him getting gunned down at his doorstep
is a non-story or Carl Grill.
>> Okay. But that guy shot him was himself
deranged and he had already harassed him
before. Right. So each particular case
has an explanation.
>> He was he was an old class.
>> But the Yes. But the old the the deeper
question is how many people commit
suicide every year? About 45,000 in the
United States alone. Okay. How many
people go missing? It's thousands.
>> Yeah. But that that's neither here nor
there.
>> No. No, it is because
>> No, because I'm admitting that. I'm
saying that there might not be a
statistical speed up. What about General
Neil McCasten who's responsible for a
lot of a lot of modern UFO.
>> Why doesn't anybody kill Lou Alexander?
He's going to tell everybody everything.
>> He dealt with uh Tom Dong at the highest
level when it came to writing secret.
He's going to expose everything.
>> Why Why isn't he hiding?
>> Well, General Neil Mac General Neil
McCassen was uh you know on the special
access uh program oversight committee
and he ran Wright Patterson's Air Force
Research Laboratory. So he's as, you
know, top of the pyramid as it gets,
more so than any of the people you just
mentioned, including me, Tom, even Lou.
So, uh, you know, I think there there
are distinctions to be made. And this is
this is a few days after Trump said, "We
are going to be looking into UFOs."
>> Speaking of which, oh well, they did try
to kill Trump, but but for other
reasons, I think.
>> So, so there you go. Um, so, so, so, um,
yeah. Is that not significant? Of
course, it's significant. In isolation,
that story is completely significant.
>> No, I don't. It's just totally random.
>> What do you mean? He He I mean, a gun
was missing and and his wife his wife
said he was suffering from depression
for years.
>> His wife also said the only explanation
might be that an alien took took him on
a mother ship. Why would she joke about
a missing husband a week later? That's
weird.
>> Because of all the weird conspiracy
theories around it.
>> Oh, it's a strange joke.
>> And and the fa Well, I mean, come on.
It's not nice for these families who
have just suffered a loss. like
Elizabeth [snorts]
um Weiss her you know her husband Nick
Pope um died of cancer just a couple
yeah she's not vibing the oh Nick Pope
was an insider and and he was killed
there are people that think this
happened and she's not vibing this at
all like that's not funny
>> all I'm saying is the fact pattern in
the mass case is extremely
again do you not think it warrants
further investigation you don't think
you think it's case closed
>> I think his own family
>> he goes missing there's no footage of
him there their ring cameras all
throughout the neighborhood goes
missing.
>> Okay. Where's Nancy Guthrie
>> and everything that would be
>> Okay. Why Why are you Why not?
>> And a gun and a gun is missing.
>> Why not? Why not Nancy Guthrie? Where's
she?
>> What What if Nancy Guthrie?
>> Yeah.
>> Uh
>> well, she's not related to nuclear
power.
>> That's the mother of the reporter who I
mean that that's also like correlated
with Savannah Guthrie looking into
>> Epstein. But this happens all the time.
The reason this is getting attention is
>> No, I think that should get attention
too. I think that should get But their
daughter is investigating
>> Epstein. Again, we thousand how many
people die every year? 2.6 million in
the United States. All causes, all all
ages.
>> Yeah. But wasn't Wasn't I don't I'm not
super familiar with that story, but
wasn't she kidnapped? The mother.
>> Well, okay. There was Yeah, this it's a
big mess.
>> Okay.
>> She was probably kidnapped. We don't
know who. There's a ringman. There's a
ring camera footage of this guy. It
looks fake. Uh and then there was a note
sent to TMZ. Yeah, that's obviously that
that obviously warrants further
investigation as does the mass thing. As
does the mass thing.
>> That's fine. Yeah,
>> they are not non-stories,
>> but but okay. There's stories for the
family to figure it out or the local
police or the FBI if they think
something's up.
>> Yeah, but it's part of the public
conversation at this point because he's,
you know, put himself out there as a
collaborator with people who are
disseminating UFO
>> picking people that worked in some area
you're interested in that also died
mysteriously. Okay.
>> Oh, he's missing. We don't even know if
he's dead. You're now jumping to Okay.
Yeah, he's missing. Okay, fine. But
people go missing. Okay, so you just
look it up. How many people go missing
every year in national parks in the
United States? It's like a thousand
or,200 a year or something. It happens
all the time and and they can't find
them. They fall off the cliff. They fall
into the bushes. The animals get them.
That there's nothing unusual. You can
use that one because he's an interesting
character.
>> You can always use like heruristics like
laws of large numbers. You can always
use these sorts of things. I think that
is a poor excuse for thinking uh in a
you know about the idiosyncratic case
with all of its complexity. You can
always sort of overfit's you know some
sort of like ah yeah but it's
survivorship bias or it's file drawer or
it's pee hacking. You can always do that
or you can look into the specifics.
>> Yeah. But the better why are you
interested in that particular one?
>> Because of his who he was. Yes, I know
that's
>> he was he was privy to the most
sensitive science in the country but
lots of people
>> and he's talking about UFOs
people that work at NASA now or work at
the nuclear site.
>> I think anybody working in an extremely
sensitive capacity who goes missing
without a trace should be investigating
and it's counteract if this is true and
there's something spooky happening.
>> I'm not saying definitely there's no a
raise explanation. I'm just saying
>> why aren't all the heads of all the
nuclear sites or the generals why aren't
they all going missing? I because I
don't know. I don't know what happened.
I'm not impuging a motive or or coming
up with some fake story. I'm just saying
it warrants further investigation.
That's obvious.
>> Only because we're interested in
whenever there's a dead body or a
missing body.
>> No, because of this specific because of
this specific case. Because of his
specific access and credential,
obviously.
>> I don't think so. I think you're I think
you're fine.
>> I think that's you not wanting to
believe you wanting to disbelieve. No, I
think you're finding you're just is a
patternicity like I love this story
about power and propulsion and nuclear
and here's something weird that happened
to somebody in that field. Okay. What
I'm saying is if that was true, what
about all the other people that that are
>> in that field that are high up that are
classified and so on? How come they're
not being
>> I think everybody involved in sensitive
national security work that goes missing
in a way that Neil McCassen
should be investigated obviously.
>> But after the fact you're picking it.
Now, let's go forward. Who do you think
is next?
>> I have no way of predicting it because
you don't have a story underneath it.
You don't know what happened. You don't
know if somebody took him or what. You
need more information. My point is we
should try to get more information.
>> Okay. Okay.
>> I I think yeah, the local police, the
family,
>> sure, they should do that. Okay.
>> Because they want to do that anyway.
>> Okay.
>> I mean, Elizabeth Weiss knows why Nick
Pope died. He had cancer. Okay. Nobody
planted cancer in Nick Pope's body 20
years ago as part of a [snorts] plot
against him because he believes in UFOs.
>> Of course not.
>> This is random.
>> I I in that case I agree. Okay.
[laughter]
>> But um Okay, shifting gears a little
bit. What do you think is the strongest
UFO case based on the evidence?
>> Uh well, so like in the UFO files, um I
think a lot of the the sort of orbish
looking ones, it's not clear what they
are. I would like to get more to that.
Like there's something there. Some of
the stuff you brought up, I think. Um,
again, I just call them anomalies, but
it would be good to get explanations of
the Foo Fighters during World War II,
the pilots that saw these things.
>> Oh, it's ball lightning. Okay, maybe. I
don't know. Some of the stuff they
described doesn't sound like ball
lightning.
>> Yeah.
>> So, all right. And we know the Nazis,
they could not possibly have been that
far advanced uh [snorts] to have these
things what that are observed to move in
strange ways. So that one would be a big
one. Um I think historically um I enjoy
all the you know the kind of almost
mythological the stuff that um Jacqu
Valet talks about and um Jeffrey Karle
talks about of historically people
seeing weird things. Now most of this I
think it's just sociological or whatever
psychological effects but not
everything. So back to your liinal case
you know this is what what I do. I'm
kind of on the margins of science. Can't
quite explain it. What? It's probably
this, but it may not be, you know, let's
keep looking. So, I I do think all of
that now, uh, you know, can we get to
the bottom of some of these historical
events? You know, probably not. You
know, you look at these medieval
paintings with the thing in the sky that
looks sort of like a UFO, whatever. Now,
art historians go, "No, no, this is what
it is. This is what the painter was
doing." And so, these are religious
symbols. Okay. So, but the rebuttal is,
yeah, but the religions didn't have the
language to describe what's actually
going on. You know, this is like the
ancient alien stuff or the uh Van
Donkin, you know, the the ancient alien
gods that are actually, you know,
spaceships, right? So, okay, maybe I
love all that stuff. I've read all his
books. I watch all the shows, you know,
it's like that would be super
interesting. Um, but you know,
>> they're inserting placeholders. They
they're looking at anomalies and then
they're inserting explanations. They're
not just like scientists are inserting
They don't do that. Okay. So, one of my
criticism of the ancient aliens, for
example, they almost never have on like
an archaeologist that goes, "Oh, the
Easter Island statues. Here's what we
know."
>> And then and then they get the other guy
that goes, "No, I don't think it's that.
I think it's the space aliens or
whatever." They don't do that.
>> Do you think like people like Graham
Hancock or Randall Carlson, do you think
any they've contributed anything to the
field?
>> I do. I do. Yes. I like um I like people
on the margins and fringes because they
push us, the mainstream people, to
better define what it is you're talking
about. Do you agree with them? Better
evidence?
>> No, not really. Like in the case of
Graham, I know a lot about his theory.
>> I've been exploring the possibility of a
lost civilization in prehistory for more
than 30 years.
um he's what he's missing is positive
evidence in favor of his theory versus
negative evidence against the mainstream
theory. Right? So mainstream
archaeologists say this is how the
pyramids were built or this is what
happened with the Easter Island statues.
This is the Nazca lines explanation uh
because you can see them from the local
mountains. It's a water god or whatever.
[snorts] U okay that that's the accepted
dogma and Graham comes along and go okay
I'm going to challenge that. Okay, good.
You know, and his little line he uses on
on X, you know, stuff keeps getting
older. He has a t-shirt. Stuff keeps
getting And he's right. Stuff does keep
getting
>> He's right about that. You would admit
that.
>> Yes. But but
>> you would admit Gob Beckley rewrites the
map as far as how old human
civilization.
>> But but no, what's happening?
Archaeologists are responding to
Gobecley by going, "Huh, I guess these
hunter gatherers were more sophisticated
than we thought they were. I guess they
were more advanced. They could build
monumental architecture without
thousands of people." But that seems
like as unfalsifiable a conclusion as
you actually just have to go a little
further backter for civilization.
>> So the alternative to that is no
specialization a little earlier than we
thought.
>> A deeper advanced I mean Graham thinks
this is these were built by um ancient
peoples the Atlanteanss or whoever but
>> yeah he thinks it's a holdover from
before the ice age from like tens of
thousands transfer of technology. Yeah.
>> Okay. All right. Okay. it uh that if
that was true, what else would be true?
Well, first of all, we should find out
where do they live? Where's their trash?
Where's their tools?
>> Yeah.
>> Now, if they're advanced, do they have
any technology, any metal? Uh do they
even have pottery? And the answer is no.
There's nothing.
>> But you you'd have to admit that that's
a tall task to
put totally on Graham in a single
lifetime of investigation. He's pushed
us farther. We wouldn't be talking about
Gobeclet if it wasn't for him and the
fingerprints of the gods. Oh, yeah.
>> You know, the German archaeologists in
archaeology circles. There's no mystery
about Gobecé. They all know about it.
It's only to the public. You mean?
>> Yeah. But that was, you know, it was a
discovery. It was really popularized in
the '9s. And it was and and and Graham
Hancock is really
>> National Geographic did a whole cover
story on Gobecé. I remember when this
came out. They describe it as like the
the world's first religious ceremony
place.
>> Well, okay, we don't have to argue about
like who's responsible for making it
more famous, but
>> I do think Graham is a bit is very
responsible for it. Okay, I know Graham
pretty well. Okay, so he's a very
likable guy. He's a great guy.
>> He's one of Rogan's first guests.
>> Oh, I know. I know. I know. I know. I've
seen all spent four hours with him in
the studio, you know. Yeah. Okay. But
part of the problem he has, this is what
I tried to explain to him, is that you
have the mainstream archaeologist and
they're just working away going, "This
is what we think happened and this is
what we're working on." Then Graham
comes from the outside and goes, "I
think you're all wrong." They're like,
"Okay, where's your evidence and are you
going to publish a paper about this in
the in our here's our peer-reviewed
journals, here's our conferences, and so
on. This is how we do it." And he's
going, "I'm not going there. I'm not
publishing there. I'm going to do an end
run around you." Okay. Okay. So, what
irritates professional scientists is,
but this is how the game is played. You
don't get to cut to the front of the
line and become famous for your
alternative theory. You got to you got
to do the what the rest of us do. You
got to work at it.
>> But I so I will admit that podcasting
independent media engages in way more
type one errors than type two errors. We
are falsely accepting bad hypotheses
probably all all the time, right? And so
that's the problem. Mainstream media
blocked out too much. there's an
overcorrection and you know I'm still
pro- independent media because everybody
can just say what they feel like and I I
like that that's I'm more biased in that
direction but that is that is a a real
uh uh externality or issue you know uh
uh uh with that
>> um but but let me just finish the point
okay if there was a civilization uh that
lived 30 40 50,000 years ago now we do
have lots of finds of the homminids that
lived then the we got lots of stuff from
them uh the earliest homo sapiens we
have lots stuff from them all living in
small groups. Okay. So, first of all, if
there was an advanced civilization, what
do you mean by civilization? And what do
you mean by advanced? And where did they
live? Where's their trash?
>> I will I will be the first to say that
inserting at and he will say that too.
He'll say inserting Atlantis as a
placeholder is speculative. And so
that's fun to speculate about. And I
think all he would say is that there was
likely some sort of anti-dolivian, you
know, civilization with common
architecture from all over the world.
and that that there's mounting evidence
for that sort of thing. I think that is
[snorts] more speculative than just
rewriting you know how old civilization
is around Gbeclette and then but then
you also we have to be epistemically
humble right you know archaeology as a
field was invented 200 years ago with
the discovery of the Babylonian cities
and so it's almost like you could
probably create a law around like the
farther we go in archaeology the older
things get in fact low lower in the
sediment layer the the deeper you dig
the older things get so almost initially
that has to be true
>> and also Graham pushes this this mean
that you know scientists are
close-minded or whatever. I mean nobody
believes in the Clovis first hypothes
came to the North American continent and
South American continent long before 13
11 to 13,000 years ago. Okay, nobody's
arguing that they've all shifted.
Everybody admits go is 11,000 but
>> nobody's going that never happened.
>> That shift was slow. We were we thought
that they
crossed the bearing straight. I learned
that and so Well, I know that it was
probably multiple migration.
>> So, so people like Graham are serving a
vital role. And and then to just to
defend him further as far as his career
decision, you can travel the world,
write books, have fun, make money, and
contribute massively to the field or you
can be constrained by this publisher
parish. You know, Kissinger had a famous
quote about academia, the lower the
stakes, the harder they fight.
>> Whoever actually said that yet.
>> Whoever actually said that. But like you
could you could be stuck in this like
petty sharp elbowed thing or you could
be famous and have fun and and make
money and and contribute.
>> Many are called few are chosen.
Grandma's one of the few alternative
people that have made there's lots of
them. Lots of I mean you talk to like u
what's his name? Havas
>> Zahas. Right. So I mean you know how
come Gr how come he doesn't talk to
Graham? He's not nice to Graham and
other friends. I don't know whatever.
But there's hundreds of guys like Graham
who show up at the pyramids and go I
have my alternative. the pyramids where
it's a nuclear power plant.
>> But I think the pyramids the pyramids
are another example as with the JFK
assassination. A lot of these things
where it's like
>> I don't know the ultimate answer. I'm
not I'm not claiming to be the source of
ground truth, but the primaaccia story
is so obviously a lie. And so like so so
people are tired of being gaslit by if
you watch that Zahiwas interview with
Joe Rogan.
>> But is are there photographs online?
>> Yes, in my book. I don't I I don't I
don't go online. Why I have to go
online? I go to my book.
>> It's like, come on. This guy This guy is
gatekeeping all of our information. It's
in my book. I wrote about
>> It was a little painful to watch.
>> I know. Yeah, I know. Very painful. I
know. So, same with the JFK
assassination where it's like people are
tired of being lied to. There's
obviously something more than the raider
lones gunman sit in JFK. Do you know
about the JFK conspiracists who died and
went to heaven? And God says, you know,
sir, you were such a pious man. I will
grant you uh any wish you want. I'll
answer any question you want. He goes,
"All right, who really killed JFK?" And
God says, "Le Harvey Oswald acting
alone, you using his caro manlicker
rifle." He goes, "Oh my god, this goes
higher than I thought." [laughter]
>> That is that is a funny joke.
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Now, back to today's show.
>> But this is what happened.
>> But you don't
>> How did we get to the every
>> I saw I saw you made a tweet about my
friend Tom O'Neal today.
>> Yes. And he's because there's MK Ultra
MK Ultra hearings
>> and he has this theory that maybe
Charles Manson was an MK Ultra patient.
>> I read his book
>> at the end of the book he goes, "Damn
it, I didn't get a smoking gun. This
here's a bunch of little things."
>> Yes. But if you if you read the book as
a reasonable third party,
>> then you then you have to think your
base case has to be that Charles Manson
was probably an MKL
>> cult leaders can use sex, drugs, and
rock and roll to get people to do crazy
[ __ ] for them. And this does happen.
>> Yeah. He's going into the hate Ashberry
free medical clinic where Jolly West
who's definitely the head of MKL there's
enough of these weird connections I will
admit Manson's an interesting case and
and O'Neal did I think properly debunk
um the um Helter Skelter
what's his name Vincent
>> Bio Boo I like Vincent Boo I knew him uh
I think he sold us a bill of goods I
because I bought that I read the Helter
Skelter oh my god this is a great story
yeah and I think uh Tom O'Neal show that
was a bunch of bull [ __ ]
>> Well, you know what else he revealed?
Allah the JFK assassination in that book
is that Jolly West saw so for the people
that don't know Lee Harvey Oswald,
supposed lone gunman, probably not lone
gunman in my opinion of you know JFK on
November 22nd, 1963. Um he then gets
killed uh uh right outside the
courthouse by Jack Ruby. Um who's this
like nightclub guy, you know, and um and
he ends up in jail, Jack Ruby, but
doesn't actually remember having shot
Lee Harvey Oswel is this very strange
sort of circumstances.
>> That was a later story. He No, he shot
him.
>> Well, he that's what he said. And he was
confused at the scene of the crime. He's
in jail for 6 months. And you know who
sees him in jail? And this is according
to Tom O'Neal.
>> Jolly West.
>> Jolly West who's the head of MK Ultra.
And then he has a lot of guys. Yeah.
>> And then Jolly West comes out and he
does a press conference and he says,
"Uh, Jack Ruby has had a psychotic
break."
>> Yeah, he might have. I mean, he admitted
I was really upset because I loved
Kennedy and I felt bad for his wife and
that's why I shot him.
>> But line in the sand. You have a
psychotic break after you see the guy
who's the architect of MK Ultra. Come
on.
>> I know. It's weird. I know it's weird.
>> No cameras.
>> I recommend
I I recommend reading Gerald Pausner's
book, Case Closed. He goes through all
this stuff and shows why all
>> I don't think he went through the Jack
Ruby thing. That's a more recent well
that Yeah. Okay. So, but the R the Ruby
case he was a he was a shortfused angry
guy. Got bites all the time. He you know
acted just spont MK Ultra candidate but
[laughter]
>> maybe I mean I mean if you were the CIA
would you really want to hire somebody a
low life like Lee Harvey Oswald a nobody
pull off the greatest?
>> Yeah. And that's why he said I'm a
pathy. That's exactly who you'd hire.
somebody dis disposable.
>> I mean, but somebody who's incompetent.
I mean, he got lucky, you know. He got
the job at the school depository
building uh before they announced where
the uh motorcade was going. That was
just pure luck.
>> Do you know who the mayor Do you know
who the mayor of Dallas was?
>> Do you know he tried to assassinate
Edund Walker?
>> I do. Six months before.
>> Six months before. He was a nut job. He
wanted to be famous. He wanted to kill
somebody. He was He was going to kill
Nixon at some point and his wife locked
him in the bathroom and took his gun
away from him. Do you know who the mayor
of Dallas was?
>> I forget. I I forget that.
>> Earl Cabel.
>> I I forget who that is.
>> He was the brother of Allan Dulles's
number two at the CIA. The deputy
director of the CIA.
>> That's just random guess. That's
tavernicity. I don't think I don't think
[laughter] Come on.
>> Well, we'll check with Gerald Pner on
that.
>> Seems somewhat significant. No, it is
the Those are facts. Those are facts. I
know.
>> I know. You know, Oliver JFK has all
these things and they're half of which
are just made up. I mean, there's a
whole web page dedicated to the going
here's what
>> what did Oliver Stone make up.
>> Oh. Oh. Well, there's a bunch of stuff
like um Lee Harvey Oswald could not
shoot very accurately and he shot
Maggie's drawers when he was in the
Marines taking rifalry. Not true. He got
the second highest rating and Posner rep
shows in his book, his report from the
rifle training, he had scored the second
highest you could get. He was a
sharpshooter. Okay. So, Oliver Stone got
one thing, not just one, but then he
also there's pages of this and if you go
>> He said he was incompetent before you go
to Plaza and you look out the window,
there's two X's in the road. Uh, and you
can go you can stand on the X's and look
at the at the sixth floor the room or
you can look down. It's close. It's
really close. There's no way you could
miss. Right. And he was a sharpshooter.
So, and they've tried uh sharpshooters
have used the same rifle and they can
hit it no problem.
They can get the three shot. So, you
have one shot already um cocked and
loaded. Boom. And then you only have to
do two more. And then end of story,
eight seconds, no problem.
>> We get we get deep into the issues with
the autopsy that the coroner himself had
and the idea of the magic bullet, but
and there's missing frames that were
published in the video in the Zapruder
film. But, uh but I want to get back to
UFOs.
>> [laughter]
>> Uh so the Gemini 7 case I I found the um
you know Pentagon kind of UFO drop to be
lamer than I would have liked. I would
have liked to see much more higher
signal stuff. So I sort of agree with
you there. I think uh some of the
astronaut sightings were interesting.
Maybe some are explainable by cosmic
rays. You know I'm I'm very open to
that. But I think
>> or like uh John Glenn, you know, with
the the little ice crystals ice
crystals. Yeah.
>> To which come come off
>> and he sounds like whoa. Oh, what is
this? And then of course, so the Houston
goes pound on the wall. So he pounds on
the wall and they come off. It's like,
oh, okay.
>> So one of my favorites because it so
clearly separates any sort of false
positives with, you know, other
misidentifications.
Gemini 7, Frank Borman, um, they were
actually specifically trying to travel
the second stage alongside the booster.
Yes. Right. And so for the rest of his
life, he was like, I, you know, this was
not a UFO. like he downplayed it and he
was like we were trying to travel, you
know, right next to the booster. It was
just the booster that I saw.
>> In the audio he clearly delineates the
booster and and he says that that's at,
you know, 2:00. And then he says there
there's a real object and he calls it a
bogey, which is basically code for
unknown unknown object. And he says
that's at 10:00 high,
>> right? It was too far away and it was
off the right
>> and it it could not have been the
booster. I'm going to read you another
um
>> and so then you're like he was probably
lying for the rest of his life. That
doesn't make sense.
>> All right. I'm going to read you um
another
>> and it couldn't have been part of if if
it had been part of the booster, you
would have seen that part of the booster
which was originally traveling next to
the booster as you would in a zero
environment. You would see it slowly
move to 10:00 high and you would know
that it was the booster. And he goes,
"This is an actual sight in." Okay, we
have several looks like the three up
your actual Friday.
>> Yeah, I know. I understand. Okay.
>> So, what So, what is that?
>> What is it? I don't know. Uh I'm going
to read to you. This is a part of the
problem. This is eyewitness.
>> I don't think either UFO.
>> All right. So, here is Scott Kelly, um
NASA astronaut and pilot, right? His
brother Mark is senator. They're twins.
They've both been in the space shuttle.
So during the hearing like two years ago
at NASA about the UAP videos, okay, and
he gives a little speech, just takes 30
seconds. In my experience of flying over
15,000 hours and 30some years in
airplanes and in space, the environment
that we fly in is very conducive to
optical illusions. So I get why these
pilots would look at that go fast video
and think it was going really fast.
[screaming]
>> Roger. Uh shooting.
>> I remember one time I was flying off
Virginia Beach military operating area
and my Rio Rio radar intercept officer
who sits in the back of the Tomcat was
convinced we flew by a UFO. I didn't see
it, so we turned around and to go look
at it. Turns out it was a Bart Simpson
balloon.
My brother Mark Kelly, a former NASA
astronaut and also now a US senator,
shared a story with me about an
experience he had years ago that when he
was commander of the STS124, they were
getting ready to close the payload bay
doors of the space shuttle and they see
something in the payload bay and they
thought it was a tool, maybe a bolt.
They couldn't figure it out and they
were potentially have to go do a spacew
walk to retrieve it. But before they did
that, my brother grabbed the camera and
they took a picture of it. And when they
blew up the picture, they realized that
this is not a bolt or a tool in the
payload bay. It was actually the
International Space Station 80 miles
away.
These are cases where pilots have run
there are cases where pilots have
rendevued on a buoy because they thought
it was their wingman. It's just a very
very challenging environment to work
especially at night.
>> Of of course
>> this is a problem with these. Oh, he was
a pilot. He was a
>> I'm sure there are all sorts of false
positives. These people are under
duress, you know, but the
>> idea being I'm a trained observer. Yeah,
but you still get stuff wrong.
>> Yeah, but even Jared Isaacman, the
current NASA admin, is admitting that
some of these cases are unresolved in I
like him. I think if if if we're going
to expose anything, he would be on board
with releasing it.
>> Yeah. No, I I like I like him, too. But
NASA from 1958 till now has been it's
basically an intelligence agency. If
anything involves national security
matters, it's not going to let
>> I mean, he's one of Elon's men. Okay. He
says, "We're going to be transparent."
All right, good.
>> Yeah.
>> But what if But here's the problem,
Jesse. Yeah.
>> Let's say he goes, "All right, I went in
there and you know what? We didn't find
anything."
>> Now, you know, UAP people go, "Okay,
he's covering up or he's not telling us
everything."
>> Well, he's siloed. Well, at at this
point I have enough evidence in the open
source world and everybody listening
does to say for example with the Frank
Borman case. We need an explanation for
that because again he's he there are
sparks coming out and and and he
delineates that from the booster and he
delineates both of those things from
what he calls an actual sighting at
10:00 high and he calls that a bogey
which is the nomenclature for unknown
detected object. And so and he says it's
an actual sight and like the you you
actually hear the guy in mission control
he wants to say UFO and he goes is it uh
an actual sighting and he goes yes it's
an actual sighting. It's so clear that
it's something that he you know is
confused by and doesn't understand. So
so all I'm saying is we should have all
of the data in that specific instance.
If Jared Isaacman is going to say yeah
this is definitely prosaically
explained. Give us all the data in that
instance and then I'll be satisfied.
>> But here's the problem. There's probably
we're probably never going to get
explanations for a lot of these. This is
a one-off event. There may be nothing to
find. In other words, maybe NASA doesn't
have the explanation. They could explain
some of the stuff.
>> Do you know? Do you know who?
>> You know, like with the case of Buzz
Aldrin, I was on Larry King Live once
with Buzz Aldrin and a couple of the UFO
people.
>> Uh James Fox was on there, too. Y and
Buzz launches into this long story
about, you know, when they launch um the
Apollo 11, he's going out there and he
reports to Houston. Oh, I'm going to see
this thing out there. But he went in a
long thing about the panel of the second
stage of the Apollo and it was just also
just going alongside them and that's
what it turned out to be. But it took
him like 10 minutes to get the story out
and Larry King is like come on get the
story out. We got to go to a commercial
break. It was really a funny moment but
um but that's all it was. Okay, so that
one is explained. The barman one maybe
NASA doesn't have an explanation for
that. Maybe maybe they have one and
they're not telling us.
>> Buzz Aldrin got pretty uncomfortable on
air. Buzz Aldrin had a sister that said
that he was very into UFOs in his
private life. And James Fox actually
chased Buzz Aldrin all around the world,
finally cornering him in Monte Carlo.
And he was about to interview him on
UFOs because apparently he had he had
had a sighting as a fighter pilot in
World War II. And uh basically Buzz
Aldrin said to him, well, you know, I
can't do this. You know, it would mess
with my reputation. And you know, I
think it was actually around Paul Allen
getting getting he was the one of the
co-founders of Microsoft. He was getting
a lot of flack at the time for being
involved in SETI which shows you how far
the conversation has moved on this topic
and where the Overton was
>> he funded the the Allen array of
telescopes for SETI. Yeah.
>> Right. So so so this is Buzz Aldrin
being really fearful about what's going
to happen to him and he says
>> I can't jeopardize my initiative. I'm
working with Congress right now. I'm
trying to get money to develop a rocket
that's going to help put civilians into
space. And how's my story going to
change anything anyway? M
>> which to me is implying that there's
something real here and that you know
you're worried about your own reputation
as a result of going out on the record
on a limb in this case. Edgar Mitchell
did just that. He was an Apollo 14
astronaut and he ended up
>> All right, so there's a good example.
How come he is he marginalized? I mean,
he's a famous
>> Apollo astronaut.
>> He a lot of people said he went crazy
and lost his mind after that, you know,
and so and anybody didn't think
>> I don't know. You saw what Buzz did to
uh Sriel. They said,
>> never went to the moon. [laughter]
>> Gave him a knuckle sandwich. Okay. I I
have a hard time believing Buzz would be
afraid of anything.
>> He seems pretty fearless. One one more
interesting NASA data point is do you
know who Gary McKinnon is by any chance?
So this was a a guy who uh was working
in bank security. He had basic IT
skills. He was in the UK. This was 2003
I believe.
>> I read the disclosure project book
Steven Greer and his team.
>> Mhm. and they told you installations,
locations, and so I thought I could use
my basic networking skills just to do a
scan, you know, a light scan on American
military networks, which which is mad
now, [laughter]
but but back then it was just kind of
like a playful idea.
>> He was interested in building 8 because
a whistleblower named Donna Hair had
come out saying that she had met
somebody there who was responsible for
airbrushing out. She was a NASA
employee. This is on record. She was she
had met somebody, you know, in that
building who was responsible for
airbrushing out UFOs from real photos
and she had even seen one of these
photos.
>> I said, "Is this a UFO?" And he's
smiling at me and he says, "I can't tell
you that." And he said, "Well, we always
have to airbrush them out before we sell
them to the public."
>> And McKinnon hacks in and he starts to
see a a UFO pop up and populate on his
screen. It's a tic-tac UFO and it's
orbiting Earth
>> and the US goes after him hard and he is
still on the Interpol watch list and for
20 years they there's this crazy sort of
witch hunt. They're trying to extradite
him. Eventually Terresa May ends up sort
of protecting him. Why would you go
after somebody that hard when there are
actually other hacking cases where
people broke into even more sensitive
areas in the US?
>> What's our source for this story? if
this UFO thing wasn't true and it again
comports with the doer.
>> But what's the source?
>> The source the source is himself is is
McKinnon. Yeah.
>> Well, okay. So,
>> and why would he play up the thing if
they were they were they were they were
witch hunting.
>> Maybe he's mistaken. I don't know. You
know, you take
>> he almost committed suicide because they
were trying to extradite him. So, he's
not lying. Why would he try to play up
the thing that they're getting after
him?
>> People are lying. Maybe they're
genuinely mistaken. Maybe he thought
something was happening and it wasn't. I
don't know. I don't know this case at
all. Uh, I was thinking of the David
Gush case because people have been
bringing him up a lot lately.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. You said David Grush is one.
>> Is that Cod's Wallop? You said,
>> did I use I deleted? I I I a couple
tweets. I delete him. I mean, you know,
just X.
>> You said he's a top 10 alltime
bullshitter.
>> Oh, yes, that's right. The [ __ ]
>> Funkam Blather Coswell.
>> Yes, Coswell. Okay.
>> I I find David to be incredibly smart
and
>> Oh, I do too. But his stories. So, you
take those back. Enough of the stories.
>> But they're not stories. I'll give you
I'll give you an example with Grush,
>> but he Okay, but one thing he says he's
never seen anything himself.
>> He actually doesn't say that. He said in
his original testimony because he you
have to clear certain things that you
say, everything that you say for
somebody in his position through
Doppser, which is the pre-publication
review for the Defense Department. And
>> you mean in the congressional hearing?
>> Yeah. Yes. And he didn't clear one of
these things. And then I think he did
later that he actually does have
firsthand uh experience with this stuff.
He also gave hundreds of pages to the
intelligence community inspector general
who called his claims urgent and
credible. So why are you calling him an
all-time bullshitter when [laughter] the
intelligence community inspector general
>> says he's legit? But but they don't
think that they the intelligence
community inspector general doesn't
think that
>> and show us.
>> I would like to see that too but clearly
it's too classified to let out.
>> There's a reason that it's aren't you
frustrated hearing these people going we
I talked to somebody who saw the bodies
interact with them. I talked to somebody
who went inside the spaceship. Can I
give you an example of a thing?
>> Show it to us. No, we can't. Come on,
show us.
>> Yeah, but but but but think about he's
he's this guy who's obviously operated
in sensitive areas. He's handled the
presidential brief, but he he knows that
he's not doesn't have an understanding
of all of the equities when it comes to
the, you know, kind of American
situation. He doesn't want to go full Ed
Snowden. Ed Snowden did a lot of amazing
things as far as showing, you know,
overreach on the part of the NSA when it
came to Prism and Bull Run and all, you
know, harvesting consumer data, but he
also, you know, compromised a lot of
Americans lives abroad. So Grush is
making this explicit decision to not do
that and to go as far as he can and to
try to push the president to make, you
know, do all sorts of executive actions
around this stuff and to make speeches
around it and to make it clear, you
know, from the top down. So that was his
explicit strategy. What's wrong with
that strategy?
>> Nothing, Charles. Come on.
>> Okay. But
>> but but again, um Jesse, I I watch all
this stuff. It's like interview after
interview after interview. I can't show
you. I can't tell you. I can't classify.
I got to tell you this. Can I can I give
you an example of something?
>> I'm frustrated. Aren't you frustrated?
Aren't you like, damn it, show us.
>> Well, I'll give you an example of
something that he explicitly did say in
coming out. He talked about a 1933
Magenta Italy crash.
>> 1933 was the first recovery in Europe in
uh Magenta, Italy. They recovered a a
partially intact vehicle.
>> NewsNation itself went to the Vatican
and checked in the Vatican files. Said
we couldn't find anything.
>> Well, guess what? 1933 Magenta, Italy. I
spoke to uh a man at the end of his
life. His name was Harold Malmgrren who
said that he was briefed by the number
two in the CIA, Richard Bissell, who
founded Area 51. And Richard Bissell
told him about the Magenta crash in
1933. Yeah. What else did Richard
Bissell tell you?
>> He said this didn't start last week.
This has been going on.
He mentioned 1933
magenta.
>> He did.
>> Yes.
>> Richard Bissell mentioned the 1933
magenta. Yes. Yes.
>> That's amazing.
>> So all of a sudden you're spanning
generations. Now let's go continents. So
you mentioned the Vatican thing. I
tracked down Marone's grandson. Maronei
being the inventor of the radio.
>> Yes.
>> And I met his grandson because Maronei
was supposedly part of this RS33
cabinet, the special research group
under Mussolini
>> that was dedicated to studying UFOs. And
I wanted to see if this was actually a
real historical artifact. this group was
real or if this was all BS.
>> Okay.
>> Marone's grandson said that he knew
through the family, not through any sort
of circular reporting BS, you know, zero
collusion with David Grush, that he was
part of RS33, the special research group
under Mussolini studying UFOs. Uh in
1933 the Italian government set up uh
this uh group the secret research uh 33
cabinet where Maronei was the uh chair
was the president and fermy was the vice
president and they made some searches
and studies on this phenomenon. So then
you have to come up with this crazy
thing of like Harold Malmgrren is
colluding colluding with David Grush and
they're colluding with Marone's grandson
in Italy like like and David Gush went
out on a limb and you know a few years
ago and said this and it's it's proving
to be true in the open source context.
>> How come no one else has brought up this
Vatican UFO 1933 story except for
garage?
>> That's not true. You have Roberto Penote
wrote a book about it. He's an Italian
UFO researcher. He wrote a whole book
about it. He t he shows telegrams at the
time that clearly indicate there was
some sort of press blackout and there
were you know they were trying to cover
it up.
>> And the most important one is the third
one. This one and he says you see uh on
the personal order of Iluche absolutely
no mention is to be made of the alleged
landing of an unknown aircraft on
national soil. The same applies to
today's news due to for publication by
the Stephanie agency and individual
journalists.
>> There's as much evidence for like any
other, you know, thing that was there
was an attempt to hide it. That's that
old. It's 90 plus years old.
>> The crash retrieval programs.
>> Let's do it.
>> Okay. Those are not abnormal. All
governments have them because we want to
know what the other side is doing. So
famously like during World War II when a
B7 got shot down they had to try to
destroy the you know Norton bomb site
finder so that the Nazis don't see how
they were doing how we were doing this
right
>> of course
>> and we you know captured some zeros in
the illusions just before midway
>> uh so that we could find out how come
these zeros are such great planes and
ours are way slower you know so in other
words governments do this to find out
what technology the other side has
nothing to do with aliens or orbs or
whatever naturally. But then it gets
weird when the same people in charge of
those prosaic crash retrieval programs,
people at places like Wright Airfield,
which was responsible for recreating the
German pulse jet engine in 1943, are
talking about material they've never
seen before with weird hieroglyphics
that's malleable and
>> you're talking about the project mogul
balloon, high altitude balloon.
>> That's clearly not project you. That's
the other that's the funny thing about
the the cover story for Roswell. So,
we're talking about Roswell now. 1947
July, you know, a flying disc came down.
The the uh Roswell Army Airfield,
>> a balloon crash.
>> Well, they they published flying disc
and then they retracted it, which is
strange if it were a balloon, you know.
Um so,
>> but it was secret. So, they go like,
well, we got to make up some.
>> They've changed their story three times
now.
>> And the government admitted that
>> first they said it was a weather
balloon, then they said it was, you
know, uh uh Project Mogul the SP. Now
they're saying that it's, you know, pro-
geriatric crash dummy children. That was
that was Andy Jacobson.
>> Two different reports. So there was the
94 report and then the 96 report. The 94
report was about Project Mosul. The 96
report was about years later they were
throwing these anthropogenic dummies out
the balloon thing at high altitude to
test how pilots would do. And so their
explanation was that when people said
they saw these humanoid bodies, they
were probably seeing these crash
dummies.
>> Yeah. But but you can't have it both
ways. It's it's either project mogul or
it's a crash.
>> Well, no, it's both the crash dummies.
[laughter] So their explanation
>> all of a sudden the AAMS razor
explanation sounds a lot more ridiculous
than the than
>> I have my doubts about anyway. But but
their their explanation was there there
was a conflation of memory because this
is decades later. I mean, don't forget
Ros Roswell as an incident didn't become
a thing until 1980 [snorts] when the
litz wrote his book about it and then
Stanton Freeman and others got involved
and started writing books and then films
and so on became a
>> you know in the 19 uh 47 to 1980 Roswell
was nothing.
>> Exactly. because you you were living in
this cold war era of secrecy where
everything was shut down. But you have,
you know, somebody like uh Lieutenant
Walter hot coming to out, you know, with
an affidavit, you know, to be released
upon his death saying that he actually
witnessed a a craft. He saw bodies under
a tarp. And, you know, this was this
kind of memory metal thing, which
totally comports with what Army
intelligence officer Jesse Marcel said.
Jesse Marcel's son said that he took the
material home. If you go there, I was
just speaking to a physicist friend who
works at a venture capital firm and is
like totally like, you know,
hard-headed, you know, really smart guy,
materialist reductionist, and he was
like, "Yeah, I went I went to, you know,
the Roswell site and I saw that a
boulder had clearly been pushed into a
what was probably a sapling at the time.
So, the tree was growing abnormally
around this boulder." So, he was like,
"It seems like, you know, maybe the
craft crashed into the thing." and it
was split down the middle and he was
like, "What could have, you know, caused
this boulder to split down the middle?"
There is so much evidence when you
actually look into Roswell.
What do you think it is?
>> I think it's worthy of further
investigation and that this memory
metal. I believe Jesse Marcel. I believe
Walter Hot. I have no reason to
disbelieve them. I I disbelieve these BS
cover stories that keep changing over
decades. And so, I think it's it's
something crashed that was anomalous and
it's worthy of investigation. And that's
all I want to say. I don't want to say
it's definitely alien. Yeah. But it's
weird.
>> But what if the government, let's say
that the UAP committee uh and Avi comes
out and goes, "Okay, we got to the
bottom of Roswell. It was this project
mogul." Would you then go, "Avi's just
not?"
>> He would need to explain it. No. No. If
he explained to me how he got there in a
first principal's way, I'd be like,
"Avi, you got me." Okay. So, the boulder
split apart like this. Cool. Uh, so the
memory metal, it was actually this
material they were using for Project
Mobile Mogul at the time, which is
especially reflective and and helpful
for detecting radar. Boom. I'd be like,
>> have you seen case closed?
>> The story of the moving boulders in the
Mojave Desert.
>> No,
>> it was one of these mysteries or these
huge They're like the size of this table
and then, you know, like the next day
it's like way over there. This is like a
two-tonon boulders. And anyways, it was
finally figured out that that that it
rains or whatever the moisture from the
night freezes and then the thing slides
on the ice and then it unfreezes and
then people come out and go, "Oh my god,
look, there's this." So, there's these
It's called the um the Boulder Racetrack
or something in the Mojave Desert. Yeah.
>> So, it it looks kind of spooky. For a
while was like, "Oo, there's something
mysterious." I go, "Oh, never mind." I
don't know. It's a little bit like the
crop circles. You know, we've seen
people fake them. Why do why why do you
think uh people who are at the top of
the pyramid when it comes to American
intelligence, people like James Clapper,
you know, people like Brennan, why do
you think they would come out in a movie
talking about Roswell being real and
there being, you know, a surviving being
from Roswell? Like why would why would
they talk about and implicitly sort of
endorse those cases if they were going
to be looked at like sickopants years
later and they didn't have some
asymmetric intelligence that Roswell
actually happened. Okay. My explanation
for all these is that they're not making
it up. They're genuinely reporting as
best they can what people told them. So
just take the case of Grush saying I
talked to somebody who interacted with
this spaceship. He told me it was a
spaceship. Maybe Grush is is being
truthful. This is what he was told. And
the guy that told him that saw something
that he indeed couldn't explain. Maybe
it was a CIA DARPA test drone or
something. He's like, "Oh my god, I've
never seen this before. It looks alien
or something to me." So he reports that
to Gres, who then reports it to Congress
saying, "I know somebody that went,"
>> but the Roswell Army airfield published
flying disc and then retracted it in a
panic.
>> It's the Cold War. They're making [ __ ]
up because governments do that. So does
do governments
>> They were doing the But that's right.
They were making the cover story up
>> probably. Yes. In the 90s in the two
1990 reports they said yes we made this
up because it was the coal. We didn't
want the Russians to know we were
launching these high altitude spy
balloons.
>> Uh it just it doesn't work and it
doesn't work when the story keeps
shifting. Like then then you get into
the crash dummy thing which is the most
recent story and I'm sorry.
>> No. So the crash dummy thing
>> the skeptics have to get their story
straight. They're saying it's two
different things and that people are
conflating memories together and that
they're separate. That's all they're
saying. Human memory is not reliable.
And people are saying at the time of the
Roswell crash, I saw these bodies. And
the government is going, "No, you you're
conflating a later memory of the crash
dummies with the Roswell balloon crash."
>> The human memory not being reliable is
also, you know, just as true for the
skeptics's case, too.
>> Yes. Of course. Yes. Of course. Yeah.
Yeah.
>> Okay. And then you have like a whole
host of like I would now say on the UFO
issue you're a contrarian.
>> I would say I seriously
>> in terms of the scientific community, no
most most scientists don't don't think
so. In the UFO US community, yes,
>> the science is lagging. I would admit
that. But otherwise, you have, you know,
presidents, you have, you know, Navy
fighter pilots, you have astronauts.
So Trump says we're going to get to the
bottom. Part of that is because Obama's
gave that. He also told his son that
something very interesting that happened
at Roswell.
>> Would you ever open up Roswell and let
us know what's really going on there?
>> So many people ask me that question.
>> That sounds almost ridiculous, but it's
actually the real question.
>> Sounds like a cute question, but it's
actually there are millions and millions
of people that want to go there, that
want to see it. I won't talk to you
about what I know about it, but it's
very interesting. But Roswell's a very
interesting place.
>> I know. All right, let's see it. Yeah. I
mean, I do trust that Trump means it
when he says he wants transparency. He
did that sort of begrudgingly with
Epstein files, but he did that with the
JFK files. There was no smoking gun and
now he's doing it three times. We're
promised a fourth dump here maybe this
week.
>> There's no smoking gun with the JFK
files because we're already
oversaturated in data.
>> We have everything on we know about. So
you have you have people like
>> but would there be a paper trail like
somewhere in the CIA goes we got to pay
Lee Harvey Oswald send him send him some
money or send this guy with cash
>> especially no especially not if you know
JFK said I want to see scatter the CIA
to the winds had a lot of power but he
was outside of the CIA.
>> People say [ __ ] all the time the CIA
lied to him and they said if you invade
Cuba it's going to go great. Yes.
>> And it didn't. So he's like that's when
he said I wanted to He's just pissed off
at the CIA.
>> But he fired Nullis. He actually fired
Nullis, the director.
>> Trump has fired, you know, most of his
cabinet members in his two terms.
>> Yeah, but that's not unusual.
>> Yeah. But but but usually president
versus, you know, intel world, intel
world wins historically, whether it's
Nixon, JFK, maybe, you know, Yeah. I I
don't want to get into, you know, what
might be happening.
>> You know, my concession to conspiracy
theories is like when you get pre
elected president, they take you in the
back room and they go, "Okay, here's
what's actually going on. you know, you
can't close Gitmo because of this. You
can't stop the war in Iraq because of
that. And they're like, "Oh, no, but I
said I would." And then they don't. I
mean, this is the explanation. How come
Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize for his
work on nuclear weapons? He didn't do
anything. And my answer is is like,
"Well, they must have taken him in the
back room and go, look, all our allies
are saying, you can't end, you know,
launch on warning. This is they're
depending on this. No first use. We
can't get rid of that. We have to
threaten the Russians." And they're
like, "Oh, yeah, okay, never mind."
>> Yeah. There is there is this thing where
you run on this Mr. Smith goes to
Washington campaign, right?
>> And it's like, you know, no, you know,
you need FISA warrants, no wiretapping,
and you know, we're going to close
Gitmo, no more drone attacks, you know,
this kumbaya, and then all of a sudden,
you you go in, you're like, you turn
into a neocon overnight. Something
happens. I So I Yeah, I hear you.
>> I know.
>> Um
>> I know. But if anything, it's a it's a a
tat a tip of the hat to you and the
conspiratorial
uh movement because I think there is a
lot of stuff like that that happens.
>> You're a you're a tough uh nut to crack.
[laughter]
>> Okay, I'm going to read you something
else.
>> I feel I feel like I can't uh
>> Well, I mean,
>> I can't get in there. We're just
talking.
>> But [laughter] what is it you want to
>> I I want I want Well, I want to
>> I almost think an interesting inroad is
like your relationship to the topic
because you were once abducted by
aliens.
>> Yeah. So, I mean, have I had
experiences? Yes, I've had a lot of
anomalous experiences. Um I have seen
UFOs. You know, most of them I think I
can explain like um one of them looked
like a V-shaped uh shiny object out in
the desert. Turned out it was a flock of
geese. I we drove further during
Racecross America. We flew drove further
down went oh it's geese. Okay. Yeah. But
it was like whoa.
>> Uh and other examples I use like um
seeing the stealth bomber fly over my
house when I lived in Aladena. Uh every
January 1st at 8:05 a.m. because the
stealth bomber flew from Edwards Air
Force Base over the Rose Parade. Right.
So, but if I didn't know what it was,
it'd be like cuz it was really spooky
looking. It's this, you know,
delta-shaped thing. It's super black. It
looks like a hole in the sky. when it
comes at you, it makes no sound. Now,
now I already know what it is. So, I was
like, "Okay." But I can imagine being in
the desert like in 1950s going, "Whoa,
what is this?" Okay. Uh, I did have an
alien induction experience in 1983. I
was traveling along a lonely rural
highway near Hegler, Nebraska, and um, a
big vehicle with bright lights pulled me
over and the aliens got out and they
abducted me into the ship where I lost
90 minutes of time, missing time. Okay.
Anyway, so this is during Race Across
America. The big uh spaceship is my
support crew, big motor home with
lights, and the aliens are my uh support
crew, my girlfriend, my best friend, my
mechanic, and so on. And I had
transported in my mind and I'd ridden,
1280 miles from Santa Monica Pier all
the way into Nebraska, non-stop on a
bicycle, right? Except for a few
bathroom breaks, but just no sleep,
right? So I'm sleep deprived. I'm going
like 5 miles an hour, just sort of
wobbling down the road. [snorts] And uh
and they go, "We got to pull Shmer over.
He's he's going too slow." So they get
out and you know to put me in the
vehicle and and in the 1960s when I was
a child, there was a CBS show starring
Roy Thinnis called The Invaders and it
was the aliens were had invaded this
small town and snatched the bodies. It
was a body snatcher story. [snorts] Uh
and the humans that lived in the town
looked just like Roy Thinnis is the hero
of the story, just like his neighbors
and his friends. But you could tell that
they were actually aliens because they
had bent little fingers, right? Somehow
they could clone humans, but they
couldn't bend their fingers. Anyway, uh
so I thought that and then the next day
after my sleep break, I'm like, "Well,
that was wild." So you can go on
YouTube, you can look under Shurmer,
abducted by aliens, and you'll see an
interview with me with Eric Hayen. Uh
Eric Hayden is the Olympic speed skater.
He's also a bike racer and he worked for
ABC Wilder Sports who was filming our
race. And so he pulls up to me when I'm
crossing the Mississippi River the next
night and he's like, "How's it going?" I
go, "Not so good. I got abducted by
aliens last night." He's like, "What?"
That's a very very strange things
happened to me last night. Uh thinking
my crew
was aliens from another planet trying to
capture me.
>> So I told them all about it, you know.
So I've always used this example of
people that have experiences really have
them. schizophrenics really hear voices
that are out there, not in here. You
know, the people [snorts] that have have
abduction experiences.
Uh it's sleep paralysis almost. Uh but
>> do you think you think it's always
explainable by
>> Well, I try to explain. Yeah, because
most of the cases
>> What about John John Mack, head of the
Harvard psychiat?
>> I think he I think he was a little too
open-minded. I don't want to use the
word gullible, but I I think he took
people's stories at their word instead
of this pe person that's telling me the
story had sleep depra paralysis and
they're reporting it as if this happened
to him because they don't know I was
asleep. So Edgar Edgar Mitchell, six man
to walk on the moon who we mentioned,
you know, Apollo 14 astronaut, he has a
database of 5,000 plus, you know,
abductees. You were saying that all of
those abduction
>> either sleep deprivation or another
popular uh theme with like Bud Hopkins
was u using hypnotic regression. Okay.
We know from cognitive psychology
hypnotic regression is not reliable.
People use their imagination and just
make stuff up. Right? So I'm fond of
saying do you think you know JR
Tolkian's Lord of the Rings is true?
He's like no. What are you talking
about? He just made it up. I know people
have fantastic imaginations to just make
stuff up. Do you not think that it's a
viable and real method for recovering
memories
that are shattered due to a traumatic
and we we know this from the recovered
memory movement in the 1990s. Do you
know about the recovered memory
movement? Tell me about it. Okay, these
this is a dark chapter in psychology
history, but it's sort of a Freudian
idea that if something bad happens to
you, you bury it. You repress it. Yeah.
and that in therapy you can recover this
repressed memory of this horrible thing
that happened to you. Okay, this was
long debunked but it came back online in
the late 80s and early 90s. These are
adult people going to therapy for
various issues, depression, anxiety,
sleep problems and so on. The therapist
is saying okay it could be this, could
be that but you know a lot of people who
were molested as children repress that
memory and they have these symptoms
similar to yours and person's like I
don't think I was ever molested. Well,
you think about it, dream about it. We
could talk about it. Six months later,
they're accusing their father,
grandfather, uncle, whatever of
molesting them as children. These are
like mostly women in their 30s now.
>> There were hundreds of cases.
>> So, so I do I think memory is
>> not reliable.
>> Those guys were all the people that were
convicted based on these recovered
memories alone were let out of jail.
Some of the women sued their therapists
for planting false memories. Do do you
would you admit that due to your own
experience you are looking at John Max's
whole data set and you're you're biased
because of your own experience?
>> Could I be biased? Of course, anybody
can be biased. But what's more likely,
right? We know tons of examples where
people falsely remember things. They
conflate memories.
>> Yeah. But but when the when those
memories uh involve real missing time,
sometimes physical marks on the person,
>> they think it's missing time. People
have marks on their bodies from various
things.
>> No, I mean I literally there's a in this
book there's a you know a friend of mine
at Ellsworth Air Force Base 1977. He
woke up 9 miles away.
>> Well, it was the back side of the New
Lake Reservoir Dam and that is about on
the map about 8 miles 8 and 1/2 miles
away from November 5.
>> He says from the base. No, he and a
partner both dead and both of them
weren't in the Travis Walton case. I
think he just made it But I think he was
just late uh getting the job done. And
he didn't pass a lie detector test, by
the way. I was on a show with him. Uh in
which it was called um I forget what the
name of the show was, but you had to
>> Do you think those are not Do you think
those are are fully perfect? The lie
detector test.
>> No, you can beat him.
>> Yeah.
>> But he said, "I want to have take a lie
detector test." And he failed it. Does
it mean anything? Probably not. I mean,
you can't use
>> They measure stress specifically. You
can't and and thinking about Yeah, we
did being on live television.
>> We did whole issues of skeptic online.
It's not reliable. This is why they're
not allowed in court. Okay. So, you're
using it as a rhetorical argument, but
you're now retracting.
>> Not retract. He said, "I'm telling the
truth. I'll take a lie detector test."
He didn't pass the lie detector test.
That's not why I think he's lying. I
think he's made it up because he was
late finishing the job.
>> So, you think like the the the grays,
for example, that seem to be just a
common consistent archetype of what
people see this. Don't forget the
Norwegians and the lizard people.
>> No, no, that's right. So there are
others as well, but they're they're
they're often fairly consistent. You
know, it's those two.
>> Well, but some of that is due to
cultural cultural influence, right? The
moment that
>> uh Bud Hopkins publishes his book with
the alien with the bulbous head and the
almond shaped eyes and tiny nose.
>> Communion streamer. Yes. Sorry.
Streamer. Yeah. I met him in the green
room at Bill Maher's show. Politically
incorrect. So, um I we're in the I'm
just chatting like what do you do when
you're not writing about being abducted
by aliens? He goes, "I write science
fiction and fantasy." I went, "Oh,
okay." He's got a vivid imagination. He
thinks this happened to him. Okay. I'm
not saying he made it up.
>> Yeah. But that you
>> people have experiences.
>> You can't rule it out entirely just
because of that.
>> I would say the vast majority we have
explanations and it's okay to say maybe
there's some that this doesn't fully
explain.
>> Maybe they weren't using hypnotic
reduction repression. Maybe they weren't
asleep when it happened. Okay. So then
in your belief that is biased from your
own experience which was clearly an
alien overlay on a real thing.
>> Yeah, maybe.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, at least you can
admit that.
>> But but but I mean okay, none of this is
reliable. This is why eyewitnesses are
so in the when I was writing my book on
the Holocaust deniers, you know, they
would use uh survivor stories to show
how wrong the survivors are. And they
were right about that. I mean, the
survivors of Avitz have all seen
Schindler's List and all the movies and
so on. And they have this, oh, I saw
Mangala on the platform when I got off
the train. I fact check one of these
stories I heard. It's like, but he
wasn't there when you were there. Who
that? This woman's remembering seeing
the movie about Mangala, right? And you
know, I saw the flames coming out of the
chimney at Ashford. No, that's not
possible. The the crematoria is over
here with the ovens and the chimneys are
over here. It has to go through. You
could not have seen the Okay, this
[snorts] kind of stuff. So people,
they're not reliable. And this is why in
the
>> but that's a good example because the
holoca you're saying the holocaust
happened right? Oh yes but but but then
but the memory the specific memory is
not reliable. So so you can say that an
alien abduction happened but the
specific incidental you know details are
often wrong
>> that could be but if that's the only
thing you have but we have way more than
that for the Holocaust. The Holocaust
just is only tiny supported by
eyewitness testimony.
>> Yeah it I'd love to move away from this
analogy.
>> I know I know but just one one more
point. Yeah.
>> I mean, if the other side says, "Yeah,
we did that." And that's true. The not
no one in in the in the German,
>> you know, community today denies it,
they all go, "Yeah, we did that."
>> Yeah, of course. So, okay. Anyway,
>> so I mean, okay, this is my point about
there.
>> This is my point about epistem. How do I
know the 2020 election wasn't rigged? I
didn't check myself.
>> I trust a Attorney General Bill Barr,
who was a lifetime Republican, twice
voter for Trump, said, "I'm going to
look into this. If anybody would find
it, he would find it. He didn't. Okay.
So, this is reminds me of Christopher
Hitchens's line about uh which he got
from somebody else that when you hear
Mother Teresa saying uh um that she
believes in God today, you think, well,
yeah, that she's doing her job. Or the
Pope the Pope says, "I believe in God,"
you think, "Well, the Pope's doing his
job today." If you hear the Pope saying,
you know, I'm having some doubts about
God's existence, you think, oh, Pope
might be on to something because if
anything, he would believe one thing if
he says the other, right? So if somebody
like again a Marco Rubio, you know, goes
in there and goes, "Okay, I we have
something that would get my attention,
you know, not another one of these third
level, I know somebody who knows
somebody,
you know, just somebody more direct,
Secretary of State Marco Rubio,
President Trump,
>> you know, the the the head of the CIA,
somebody that would
>> have reason to to to know
>> then says, "Yes, I found it."
>> Okay. Now maybe if Marco says I can't
show you because it's actually what what
we have is CIA DARPA top secret. I don't
want the Russians to know but we do have
something.
>> Can I give you an example?
>> Can I give you an example of why I think
that's not always the best scientific
methodology? You're familiar obviously
with with Thomas B.
>> Reverend Thomas B.
>> Reverend Thomas Ba you know um who was
you know famous statistician as well
came up with basian logic. I have a
whole chapter on it right here.
>> There you go. And I think it's a very
important way to think. If you start to
build up, you know, mounting evidence
for something possibly being real, I
think that should warrant further
investigation. So a good example is if
you have some circumstantial evidence
say around Epstein circa 10 years ago or
around directed energy weapons and you
know Havana syndrome skeptics magazine
in 2022 said you know this is all
psychosmatic and this is not serious and
we shouldn't you know these diplomats
are experiencing kind of mass hysteria
>> or vertigo or whatever
>> or vertigo and in fact we realized that
it's you know daraggel 60 minutes do
this piece
>> in 2016 and 17, 25 Americans, including
CIA agents, suffered serious brain
injuries. We have been collecting
evidence of what appears to be a hostile
foreign government's plan to target
American, and we realize that it's a
real directed energy weapon.
>> We still don't have a directed energy
weapon. Where is this weapon that that
could do this? Do we have this?
>> I mean, Mike, I I think it's pretty
clear that microwave, you know, weaponry
can can do this. And this is being
admitted at the highest levels of
intelligence again on both sides. But
it's similar to the UFO thing because
you don't have a smoking gun. But it's,
you know, if I were a betting man, I
would bet that it's that and that it's
not psychossematic. Would would you now
bet that it's psychosmatic?
>> Again, I'm I'm withholding judgment
until I see like, I don't know, somebody
in the FBI or whatever goes, we found
the sonic weapon, the acoustic weapon or
whatever that the
>> I'm sure they have it. They're not going
to release that publicly that because
that's a literal tactical, you know,
trade secret that literally confers an
advantage.
>> This is the problem with UFOs. What if
the what if UAPs are actually just
weapons that our government has?
>> I think in certain cases they're
conflations, but I think a lot of the
stuff that we've outlined today are
cannot be explained by, you know, human,
you know, Russian tech spying on our new
>> in 1945.
>> Well, they had nuclear weapons by 4.
They already knew that we were working
46. It was it was
>> in in 1943. Claus Fuches was a Russian
spy
>> from 42 to 50. Yeah.
>> Working at Los Alamos.
>> That's right. But they ended up building
the weapon later than 46, I believe.
>> Uh the Russians. Yes. It was 47.
>> 47. Okay.
>> So, but but I mean the point is yes,
they do spy on us and we spy on them. So
maybe some of the weird [ __ ] people talk
about with anomalies, maybe that's just
Russian assets or but again the Russians
are not going to have
>> that's breaking our physics forward.
>> They would not have that. They would
never have that. Okay, that can't be.
This is why I reject that in my chapter
on that is that
>> no country gets far ahead of any other
country.
>> So would you admit you got the Havana
syndrome thing wrong?
>> No, I still think
>> really.
>> Yeah. No, I still think it's mass
hysteria vertigo. Oh yeah.
>> Oh, you okay? Okay. So, you're in the
real minority there.
>> Well, you know, I think the 60 Minutes I
I really think they got it wrong.
>> Yep. I usually trust I usually trust
them. I just think Anyway, I don't know.
>> I think I could be wrong. Show me. I
think they got a very
>> Show us Show us the Again, they're
anecdotes. People saying, "I had these
weird things happen to me and I'm a
diplomat in for in Cuba." Okay, that
gets our attention. Okay, fine. Yeah,
now we investigate. Yeah.
>> All right. Where's the weapon?
>> Where's the people that did it? We don't
have any of that. I want to speak about
a mystical experience that you cannot
explain and this was with uh your wife.
>> Oh my the radio story.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> Can you tell that?
>> That's fine. Yeah, sure. Yeah. No, no,
no, no problem. Uh I mean this this is a
popular because I I wrote about this in
Scientific American because I do want to
keep an open mind and I want people to
also keep an open mind just in case,
right? So um yeah. So I got um uh
remarried in 2014. So when uh my wife
Jennifer moved to the United States from
uh Cologne to be with me, which you I
still think it was a big mistake, but
you know, don't tell her that.
[laughter] Just kidding. Uh so she, you
know, we so she'd come here and I went
there and back and forth, back and forth
and I and I tried to navigate the
immigration system and it's a mess
online. So I just hired an attorney and
we went to see the immigration attorney.
They're like, "If you keep this back and
forth stuff, they're not going to let
her back in." So I'm like, "Oh, okay."
And you know, what should we do? Well,
you should get married. you know, if
you're going to do that anyway, we're
not telling you to do that, but if
you're going to do that anyway, sooner
is better. So, we said, "All right,
let's just go down to the courthouse,
Beverly Hills Courthouse, and just fill
out the form, get married right there."
So, we did that, and it's like, but this
is not very romantic. So, then go back
to my house where we she'd moved in, and
we're going to have a little ceremony.
So, this is all my friends and family,
and she doesn't have anybody there from
Germany. So, she's feeling kind of blue.
Now, you know, months before she had
shipped out all her stuff, including a
little 1977 Phillips Transistor radio
from her grandfather. Now, she didn't
have a dad. So, single mom raised her.
So, her grandfather was sort of her
surrogate dad and they used to listen to
the radio together. So, she always kept
that and sent that to me and I tried to
get it working. I couldn't get it
working. Put new batteries in and I did
the, you know, the slap it on the table
test and all that stuff. Nothing
happened. Anyway, so before she even got
there, I just threw it in the back of
the drawer in the bedroom in the big u
you know desk and nothing ever happened
for months and months and months. Then
the day we get married, uh we're just
kind of standing around. We hear heard
music. And so we go back to the back
bedroom and it's like there's music and
it's like, is it the house music system?
I don't really have one. Is it my laptop
with the iTunes? No, it's not. Is it the
neighbors? No. And it's like I get
closer to the desk, it's like it's
coming from the desk. So I open the
drawer and there's the radio on
perfectly tuned to a station playing
beautiful romantic music and it's like
whoa this is [ __ ] weird.
>> What song?
>> I don't remember the song. I think it
was a classical song. We Jennifer and I
like classical music and anyway so it
was something like that. It was
perfectly tuned and it was just kind of
a moment of like oh so sort of a
connection with the grandfather, you
know. Did we think grandfather was in
the bedroom with us? No. That would be
kind of creepy, right? But it was just
like an emotional anomalous event.
Anyways, I wrote about this uh in
Scientific American and to my utter
surprise, I got just like hundreds of
letters from people saying, you know
what, I had something similar happen to
me and they would tell me these stories.
I mean, one went on and on about, you
know, I had this necklace and I was
going to marry this guy and I I didn't.
So, I got rid of the necklace and then
like 25 years later, I'm in Jakarta or
somewhere and there's the necklace. It's
the actual necklace.
>> Wow.
>> Yeah. I mean, there's like hundreds of
stories like that. Do you think it's
possible that her grandfather was in the
room with you
>> and a connection? Maybe. Maybe. You
know, I I just keep us a little door
open just in case. Yeah.
>> Would that be a nice reality if if if
>> I think so. As long as it's not creepy
like grandfather's in the bedroom when
we're, you know, fooling around.
[laughter]
>> That would not be cool.
>> No, that wouldn't be cool.
>> You know, there's some rules about that
yet. Um I don't know about the
afterlife, Jesse. I, you know, I wrote a
book about this, Heavens on Earth. I
concluded that nobody knows what happens
after you die. We don't know.
>> Uh I'd be happy to wake up and I go
like, "Oh, so this is what it is." Okay,
because we don't know what consciousness
is. You we don't I have the the solution
to the hard problem of consciousness. I
write about that in here. It's like
nobody knows. And you look on Wikipedia,
there's like two dozen theories for the
hard problem consciousness. Like, well,
okay, we don't know what's going on
here. So, I guess in that sense, we're
seeing everything through a headset,
through this like very limited scope.
And so, totally. Then you get into this
area of kind of radical cartisian doubt
and you know there's a whole host of
possibilities as far as non-human
intelligence but also are we even seeing
>> Didn't you have Hoffman on your show?
>> I did have Donald Hoffman.
>> I know him. Yes.
>> And he says the likelihood that we see
base reality is zero.
>> I I think he's I think he goes too far.
His stuff about you know species
dependent perception. That's correct.
Particularly colors and smells. Yeah.
like the the the the what's the beetle
in Australia that sees the brown beer
bottle?
>> Yeah, the beer cap and then thinks it's
the
>> the model beer bottle looks like a
female. So that's right.
>> Okay, that's that's true. Um you know,
but so my my response to that is let's
say a bat sees this. It whatever it's
seeing with its sonar echolocation, it's
not what you and I see. It's a different
icon on its brain.
>> But there really is a mic there. And the
if the bat flies, it's really going to
do this. It's going to go around it.
>> But the characterization of the mic is
fully dependent on your conception of a
mic, which is based on your observation
of the mic. Philosophers,
>> and that's not the bat's mic.
>> Yes. But there's something there. So
philosophers make a distinction between
like colors and sounds versus
>> But it could be something there that's
entirely different.
>> Physical objects like touching a
physical object. You know, this isn't
species dependent. the bat, the dog,
whatever is going to feel it that's
really there. Even though it's a
different, it looks different like a
shark icon. Whatever it's like to be a
dolphin, I don't really know. Uh, but
whatever a shark looks like, it surely
doesn't look like what it looks like to
me.
>> Do you think that
>> but there really is a shark in the water
and it really should avoid it,
>> right?
>> That's right. Well, and and for in a
species context, you know, there's
there's obviously resource allocation
when it comes to evolution to detect
certain predator and prey, and they're
definitely species, you know, higher up
and lower down that aren't adaptive for
you to perceive. And so, they're likely
species that exist outside of our scope.
>> Okay.
>> Like, would you admit that?
>> Oh, yes, absolutely. But I do I do have
a thing on um on Donald Hoffman in the
book and I have a picture
>> here of MC Usher's the waterfall that
flows uphill, right?
>> Oh yeah.
>> Okay. So illusions only work because
there actually is a reality and water
never runs uphill
>> by itself. There's something off here
and we all recognize that. Okay. So
predators or I should say like prey
animals that look like predators. You
know, they have the eye spots or they
have the the fake rattles or the fake
wings or whatever. They evolve those
because there really are predators that
look like that. And there are prey that
are afraid of those predators. And so if
you can be an organism that looks like
the predator, that can be adaptive. But
that only works if there really is a
reality that there really is a predator.
There is
>> it's it's a reality. But it's a reality
that it's hard to say a lot about.
Science is only true in so far as it's
useful and so you know it can be
predictive and you can create technology
from it. Um but there are things in
physics for example like you know the
plank's constant or you know gravity
that seem so finely tuned you know this
is the enthropic principle where if they
were slightly different you know we
wouldn't have a habitable earth and you
could say that's a bunch of rolls of the
dice and we got lucky or you could say
that this is all an interface and that
physics actually comports with what is
you know um adaptive for our survival
and so physics is actually downstream of
our biological needs.
I don't I disagree with them there.
>> Why? It's really hard. It's really hard
to argue.
>> Let me use another argument. Okay, so
when you see um Pen and Teller or David
Copperfield, I know Penel Teller walks
through a wall
>> or Teller makes the Statue of Liberty
disappear. Okay, this is fun. It's is
people like, whoa, where did it go? Does
anybody actually think Teller can walk
through a brick wall? No. Does anybody
think Copperfield is actually moving the
atoms of the Statue of Liberty?
extremely like unlikely instance of, you
know, electron coherence where you don't
get electron repulsion.
>> These are magicians. They're they're not
doing this.
>> No, but this is my point because you
what would you say quantum mechanics is
fake?
>> No. What?
>> No, it's real, right? But it's but it it
it implies that all subatomic particles
are probabilistic in nature.
>> Yes, but but like this table is solid
even though the atoms that it's made out
of are mostly empty space.
>> But what the jiggling of the atoms makes
it it solid be
>> but these are all just placeholder names
that You know, you know the men that the
the movie and book the men who stare at
goats, right? So, General,
>> I interviewed the the guy who was the
basis of that character.
>> Stubble, that that guy or the other one?
>> No. So, so not General Stubble, who's
head of army incom, but um uh Carrie
Cassidy is based on a guy named Lynn
Buchanan who's a famous kind of army
psychic spy remote viewer, and I I just
interviewed him.
>> Well, in the movie, they show him I'm
going to run through this wall now
because it's mostly empty space. and he
runs into the wall, splats back because
of course there really is a reality.
Well, you cannot walk through walls. It
doesn't matter what the quantum physics
says, you can't do it.
>> I'm not going to die on that hill. But
I'm just trying I'm trying to, you know,
imbue this conversation with a little
epistemic humility on what we can say
about, you know, reality itself.
Ultimately, I do I do want to just going
back to your story, the Philips
Transistor Radio.
>> Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Right.
>> I want to quote you to you because you
were this is so eloquent and beautiful.
You wrote in the scientific American,
"If we are to take seriously the
scientific credo to keep an open mind
and remain agnostic when the evidence is
indecisive, we should not shut the doors
of perception." Quoting Aldis Huxley or
William Blake actually originally when
they may be open to us to marvel and the
mysterious. That is so beautiful.
>> I wrote that.
>> Yeah, you did. I think you're a I think
you're running from your shadow. You're
a secret mystic. Do you Do you want to
have a mystical experience?
>> Okay. All right.
Yeah, sex could be. No, [laughter] no, I
I I meant that. I do I do I do believe
that. I do I do try to keep an open
mind. I'm not as dogmatic. I'm not like
one of the angry atheists, the new
atheists. I'm not like these hardcore
materialists that say never ever ever
ever just in case. Right.
>> Yeah.
>> I think a lot of things can be
explained, but not everything.
>> Okay.
>> All right. So, there's always these
anomalies. I'll read you I'll read you
two examples I use in the book.
>> Okay.
>> And that's why I enjoy talking to you
about these are coincidences, right?
Yeah. So here I'm discussing
statistitians Percy Diaonis and
Frederick Muller about coincidences. So
here's an example from the skeptic and
science writer Martin Gardner. One day
Martin was perusing a used bookstore
when he came across a familiar title.
His father had given him a copy of that
book when he was a child, but he had
lost it during a move many years later
uh many years prior. As he considered
purchasing this replacement copy,
Gardner flipped through the pages and
found his own handwritten notes in the
margins. It was the very book Gardner
had lost. Okay, this is even spookier.
Coincidence that happened to the actor
Anthony Hopkins, who in 1972 was signed
to star in the film adaptation of George
Feifer's novel, The Girl from Petrovka.
Hopkins went to several London book
sellers to purchase a copy, but none had
it in stock. Heading for home, he
chanced upon a book on a bench at the
Lester Square tube station.
Unbelievably, it was the girl from
Petrovka. Two years later, when Hopkins
met Feifer and mentioned the coincidence
to him, the author noted that he had
lent his last copy to a friend with
handwritten edits in it for the American
edition, changing labor l to labor, the
American spelling. For example, when
Hopkins flipped open his copy, he saw
Feifer's annotations. It was the very
same book.
>> Wow.
>> Okay, that's pretty spooky. All right.
So then I discuss, well, it could be
this, could be that. I mean, how come
you didn't find a copy of um Silence of
the Lambs, you know, or something like
that. We remember the hits, forget the
misses, and so but there's enough weird
stuff like that. And again, I've I've
received hundreds of stories. And I
mentioned Jeffrey Kriel and Chuck Ble
collects these as well. There's
thousands of these. So just in case, you
know, there's a lot we don't know. Um,
you know, the consciousness problem, uh,
is is one. uh the God issue, you know,
that you mentioned fine-tuning. We have
explanations for that, but they're not
great. The multiverse is not
>> it's not great. It's as unfalsifiable as
>> it's kind of science fictiony sort of
metaphysics, you know, string theory.
Even Avi goes, "Ah, string theory is a
bunch of nonsense." Oh, okay. It's not
my fields. It's like, "Oh, okay. No one
seems to vibe this anymore. So, what
happened?" This was the big explanation.
Okay. You know, Martin Reese wrote that
book six just six numbers about
finetuning, but he doesn't believe in
God. So, but he doesn't he doesn't have
a final answer either. Why is the
universe this way? So, I think these are
these are what I call known um maybe
unknowables. Okay, we're we're coming at
it the wrong way. We're asking the wrong
questions. Like the consciousness
problem, you know, what's it like to be
something is what the hard problem
people talk about. What's it like to be?
>> I think that's the wrong question. I I
can't know what it's like to be a bat or
a dolphin or my dog or you, right? I can
just And the implication in this
question is that the little homunculus
in my mind can jump out and go over to
your head and look inside and see if the
red looks like to you what it looks like
to me and go, "Oh, Jesse's red looks
like my red." This is not possible. You
know, I have to make assumptions. So,
all the stuff you're talking about like,
you know, consciousness or these things
happen. Okay. Could be. There's a lot we
don't know.
>> But there's and there's so much we don't
know about consciousness. I mean the
government for decades has spent money
on remote viewing and taken it very
seriously.
>> Remote viewing. Yes, I know. This is one
of those areas a real modality. you
know, they gave uh another uh past
interviewee of mine is uh Joseph
McMongle, who was given the Legion of
Merit for helping, you know, aid an
intelligence collection and all sorts
of, you know, you have Jimmy Carter on
record in 1976 saying the craziest thing
I ever experienced in my presidency is a
woman named Rosemary Clooney who was a
psychics by a remote viewer. They were
looking for a downed TU22 uh Russian
cargo plane and Africa was the entire
target that they gave these psychic
spies and and Rosemary Clooney uh
circled a three square mile radius in
Zire and they found this this this plane
under the treetops
>> there. Okay, so here's here's the
counterfactual to that. Okay, so during
the um u that the CIA program Stargate
uh where they were using the remote
viewers. So, yes, they got some hits,
but what else would be true if they
could really do this? Like, you know,
where were the Russian missile sites?
You know, where was um I don't know,
Osama bin Laden? That's probably too
late for for for that program,
>> but a how do we know that remote viewing
wasn't used in certain instances. You
know, we we might not know.
>> That's possible.
>> And then, uh B, there was actually a
meta study done by Jessica Us, who was
president of the American Statistical
Association, and a fellow skeptic, Ray
Hyman. Yes. And Rayman did not agree
with her on that though. If I remember
>> he did. Well, he agreed that it was
statistically significant that that and
then and then and then he was like but I
think we'll have to this will get
explained down the line which Carl
Pauper a great philosopher of scientists
he would call that materialist promisory
notes. He would say that that is that is
you know taking out debt on materialism
and assuming it'll it'll stand up.
>> Pretty Ray's pretty good at these
things. So
>> but he admitted it was statistically
significant. Jessica Uts and him and
also Richard Weisman, the psychologist
from England. He he's also disputed her
and um what's his name? The uh people
that stare at the back of your neck. Uh
Rupert Sheldrake.
>> Yes.
>> Um so like Rupert Sheldrake has this
whole theory about you know perception
is your eyes sending stuff out and it
tickles the back of your neck if I'm
staring at you and you pick that
upthesia
>> or the dog your dog knows when you're
coming home and you're miles away at
work or whatever. Okay. So he has all
these stories and books about it and
experiments he's run. So Richard Wisman
tried to conduct the exact same
experiments with the dog and he's
published these and he gets no results.
Okay. And then Jessica comes in and it's
like well this or that problem with the
methodology. It gets complicated. And so
you know Rupert's going it's a skeptic
effect. You know the skeptical uh energy
interferes with the very weak power of
the of the psychic whatever. Okay. Okay,
so here's my problem with all this is
that so many of these things are not
replicated. So we know that in
psychology probably half of all studies
ever published should never have been
published. This is the replication
crisis.
>> Yes,
>> this is very disturbing and worse than
psychology in in medical research. These
studies are so complicated and so
expensive to run that they a lot of
things pass peer review that probably
should have never passed or they were p
hacking or whatever. So, ever since um
the replication crisis started in 2010
with Daryl Beam's research on the
backward causality, that's how it began.
>> And uh so if for your viewers that don't
know this story,
>> because I would always be asked, what
would it take for you to believe in
psychic ESP, psychic power, whatever,
it's like, well, how about a real
scientist at a real university that
conducts a real experiment and publishes
in a real peer journal. And that
happened. Yeah.
>> Okay. Ben did this. Okay. Not very many.
This hasn't happened very often,
>> but this in the psychic context that's
happened.
>> Well, there but they're psychic
journals, but this is a mainstream
journal. He published this is in social
and personality psychology, which is
like the top journal in in psychology.
He's at uh Cornell University. He's the
great Daryl Bam that has a stellar
record. So, he sets subjects in front of
a screen and on the screen you have to
take take a pick. You press one key or
the other key. Will the will the image
come up on the left screen or the right
screen? So one image is a emotionally
neutral image. The other one is is an
emotionally arousing image like a like a
pornographic type image. And so the
subject's guess which one it's going to
be. Okay. It should be 50/50 is your
prediction. All right. So it comes out
statistically not
statistically significant that they did
it above chance. Okay. That was his
finding before the computer decided with
this random number generator which side
of the screen the image would appear on.
Okay. That's the key. So this was what
he called backward causality. They knew
before the computer even decided which
side left or right that the image was
going to come on. All right. So that was
a big story. It got a lot of media
attention. Daryl Beam went on uh Colbear
rapport uh and told the story and they
famous he famously joked it's you know
extra sensory porn inception right and I
remember thinking okay backward
causality the second law of
thermodynamics entropy there's an arrow
of time. What are the chances that a
social psychologist has overturned 400
years of physics by showing pornography
to college students in a lab? Come on.
And so Ray Heyman famously went through
the whole paper and then the journal
also published a critique by somebody
else. Not him, somebody else. This is
the methological problems with the
study. No one was able to replicate it.
Richard Wisman and Stuart Richie
replicated the exact experiment and got
null results. sent it those results that
their paper to the same journal who
rejected it that said we're not
interested in null results. Another
problem with psychology results are
important right of
>> they are of course and I I think we're
in the stone age on whatever is going on
with extra sensory perception. So I
think there are very weak effects beyond
the standard deviation as shown by this
you know statistical analysis of the
Stargate program and you know these the
Gansfield method that Ray Heyman and
Jessica Uts actually looked at. But you
look at uh the Princeton you know
engineering and anomalous research lab
which was started by Bob John who was
the dean of the engineering school. You
look at what Stanford Research Institute
was looking at and you just the very
fact that the the US government is
willing to pay for this year-over-year
even despite the optical scrutiny of
remote viewing seen as sort of this
super quacky thing. I think
>> well the government's done a lot of
programs like that. MK Ultra came out of
the fear that we're losing the race to
the Russians on mind control. Russians,
Chinese and North.
>> Yeah. And it was and it was a vital
program that's now being investigated by
Congress.
>> It turns out we you can't control
people's minds. can't create a killer
like that. It doesn't. There's no drug
that
>> Oh, there's tons of research cognitive
psychology now that can you actually
control people like this? And the answer
is no, you can't. There's no magic drug.
There's no hypnotic formula you can use
to make people like kill the president
or whatever.
>> How do you know that?
>> Well, the research shows you can't do
it.
>> I don't know if that's right.
>> Yeah. No, you could do it by say more
globally like like relig 911. How can we
get Okay, how can we, you know, send
design these missiles to take down the
World Trade Center building? You know,
it's really expensive. It's hard to do
and so on. I know. Let's just get some
guys to fly some take over some planes
and fly them in there. How do we do
that? We promise them an afterlife. So,
religion can do this, right? That's a
kind of programming uh that probably
doesn't work for most people, but it
works for some,
>> right? But I'm just I'm trying to make a
larger point, which is that science
needs to be perfectly repeatable and it
needs to be able to be turned into math.
And that's really our criteria for
calling something science. Something
could be phenomenologically very real,
show weak effects, and we can't
perfectly manipulate it in a lab setting
over, you know, over and over again.
>> That could be a problem. Yes.
>> And so, and so science has this very
limited criteria. And I would I would
put ESP in that bucket.
>> It could be.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah, it could be. I mean there are
limitations to science for sure. Um I
mean there's a lot of progress, a lot of
good stuff we've done, a lot of things
we don't know. Again, these known
unknowables I think.
>> Yeah.
>> Free will and determinism,
consciousness, God's existence, why
there's something rather than nothing,
the finetuning of the universe. These
are all really hard problems. I talk
about
>> in the book that you know that we may
not solve them the way we're going.
>> This is why I wouldn't mind being
chronically frozen and brought back 500
years from now. Go, oh, so that's what
dark matter is. I see.
that was obvious. You know, something
like that. Much like if you and I could
imagine traveling back to the Middle
Ages before Newton and Galo and all that
and going, wow, these people think
completely differently than us.
>> Totally different worldview. Yeah.
>> I can't help but thinking,
>> what if I live 500 years from now? It's
like, oh, Einstein was interesting, but
he completely missed whatever. Well, it
would be quantum physics, I guess, but
whatever comes after that. Yeah. Right.
That we we're not thinking of.
>> Totally. No, I well I I think that's
important to to say. And another place I
would I would I don't want to say
challenge you, but I'm curious what you
would say here. Historically,
present- day heretics get vindicated as,
you know, future pioneers.
>> Most don't. Okay. Most the fringe
challenge heretic people. They're wrong.
>> Most that correct? We have survivorship
bias. Yeah. Yeah. But many people who
have contributed to scientist to science
were considered heretics in their time
establishment.
>> I mean like Einstein, yeah, he worked at
a patent office and general relativity
all stuff. But he went and got a PhD at
a normal university, published in
peer-review journals. He knew all the
top physicists. He was an insider. He
wasn't just some
>> relativity was seen as a total novel
curiosity. It was completely
marginalized until the 50s in the golden
age of relativity. No, I'll tell you
when it happened. It happened in 20 uh
sorry in 1919 with Sir Arthur Stan
Stanley Edington led the expedition for
the solar eclipse test of the bending of
the starlight around the sun from the
distant stars which you can't see during
the day but during eclipse you can see
the stars take a photograph of them
compared to the photographs taken at
night and you can see they bent just the
exact amount that Einstein said they
would be bent because it's not gravity
pulling the light it's the bending of
this
>> that's experimental proof of the theory
I I think it was when Einstein well no
there's a there's a New York Times
headline the uh the the universe's light
is all a skew Einstein discovers
whatever it's so he became famous after
1919
>> but it was not canonical physics like
quantum mechanics was which he was also
contributing to
>> well but he didn't so he became a bit of
a a a grumpy old man and and had a hard
time accepting spooky action at a
distance
>> can I can I give you another example
Maronei flunked out of all of his
classes is and he tried to send a radio
signal across the Atlantic and uh he
thought that that maybe uh radio signals
bent and curved with the earth and he
was totally wrong but he tried anyways
and and in fact uh the radio signal
bounced off the ionosphere and it
worked. So he was he was uh right
because he was wrong. And like I can't
tell you how much of you know like uh
Eric Weinstein, my former colleague, you
know, he would call it like cowboy
science where like you're you're going
out on a limb and you're trying a thing
and maybe even for the wrong reasons and
and then you get it right. And so
>> okay, but at some point you know he's
right because it works but is you have
experimental proof or market proof? Is
there one non- consensus thinker now
that you would get behind?
>> I don't know because if I knew I would
get behind him, [laughter]
>> but is it's important to do that work,
right? To take bets. Absolutely. Okay.
So, I'm in favor of, [sighs]
>> you know, the Graham Hancocks of the
world going on Rogan and telling their
story. I think this is great.
>> Okay, good.
>> Um, totally fine. I mean, Joe talks to
all these people. I've been on there
seven times and um, you know, going
here's my opinion. He doesn't agree with
me. Whatever. Fine. That's fine. Let
everybody have their say. I mean, I
watched uh Robert Malone on his show.
It's like,
>> all right, I'm not really vibing this,
but you know, okay, I'll listen to it.
I'll go look it up myself.
>> I don't like these people to go, he
Rogan shouldn't platform these people.
Why? I mean, it's kind of condescending
like you're too dumb to go look it up
yourself. Really? I mean, come on.
Right. Nothing wrong with that. So, and
and and Graham has gotten the attention
of archaeologists who have now
responded. Okay, good. Right. That's
good that they're doing that. This is
how we make progress. So, I I'm in favor
of that.
>> Yes. So, you're pro-Scratic. Part of the
problem in science is that is is just a
practical one. Most scientists don't
have time to deal with, you know, the
challenges like the archaeologists are
busy working and and reviewing papers
and teaching classes and getting grants
and like, well, here's this Graham
Hancock guy. He's like, I don't have
time. I get that, right? It's like, but
that's what we're for. It's we deal with
that. Skeptic magazine deals with that,
right? Uh or you mentioned Eric
Weinstein. I I love Eric. um you know
but but a number of physicists have said
all right show us publish it in a
journal come to our conference and so on
and he doesn't do it. So to me that says
okay there's something off here. You
can't you don't get to do an end run and
go to the front of the line and skip all
the steps that every everybody else has
to go through. You've got to present it.
Here's the here's my theory. Here's my
evidence now. What do you think?
>> Yeah. But like the politics of academia,
like if I tried to write, I was some
garden variety professor and I tried to
write a paper about a UFO crash, I would
be laughed out of the room. That's
starting to change, but there's still
real stigma.
>> Okay. Okay. I will admit it's so Obvious
talked about this like he wrote a paper
about 38 Atlas
>> and you know it's probably a comment
comment comment comment comment comment
but but it has these weird anomalies. So
last paragraph, let's not rule out the
possibility it could be an
extraterrestrial light sail or space
spaceship, whatever he called it. And so
he said, he was telling this on a Zoom
meeting. The journal editor goes, "Okay,
this is a great paper, but you have to
take out the final paragraph." He goes,
"Well, that's that's not science."
>> I mean, the whole point is like, "Here's
what we know. Here's the method." So on
here's our final speculation. That's
okay because what if that's the right
one, right? So I don't like that. Uh I I
admit that that does happen.
>> The other problem with peer review again
is time. You know a lot of papers get
pushed through because they're not
really read
>> and I know this I get sent papers for
review for most of them I don't do
because I don't have the time. A few
review it's like damn this is taking me
hours to read this and here's all these
statistics and like geez if I really run
through this I'm going to spend like two
days on this. I don't have time for
this.
>> And and so you're tempted just go oh it
looks good to me. And then so stuff gets
through and I'm sure this happens. I'm
absolutely sure. And the and here's
another complaint. So u these
peer-reviewed articles are are blinded.
You don't know who the author is. You
just flip to the references and you can
see exactly who the author is. There's
like 27 citations on one name. It's like
that's the guy. [laughter]
It's like this is not right either.
Right. You'd have to leave off the
references. there's, you know, and the P
hacking and all that stuff and the file
drawer problem,
you know, some of that's So now you're
supposed to post what you're going to do
ahead of time on these sites. Avi does
this uh which is good. You know, these
are all the things I'm going to do and
I'm going to report all of them and you
can see what happens.
>> I think uh prediction markets would be a
really interesting use for you know some
of these like nature of reality truths
like oh you believe in it okay bet on
it. And this is based on actually the
work of there's this guy Philip Tetlock.
He wrote a book called super forecasting
and it was all about how you know if you
predict a thing and you put skin in the
game you're this is Nim TB 101 as well
you're more likely to make you know to
be right rather than one of these sort
of armchair pundits that's like wrong
all the time you know
>> I have a discussion of this in my book
because the prediction market people the
super forecasters Phil calls them
>> they're more basian they're like instead
of a pundit on Fox News going I think
Putin's going to invade or I don't think
he's going invade or whatever and no one
like a week later goes well he invaded
and you said he wouldn't. No one fact
checks them and go you lost you lost
your money right but if you go okay now
you have to place a bet all right now
how often does Putin actually do these
things or what is the base rate of
terrorist like when's the next terrorist
attack going to happen in Gaza or
whatever Israel you know well there's
prediction market so the the guys that
make money are basian they're like okay
how often does Hamas actually attack
what's the base rate and then are there
any tensions now and then they put
probabilities on it and then they place
their bets that's the value of
prediction markets Yeah.
>> What I don't like about him is now is
the insider stuff is a little like,
okay, you know, you knew this was going
to happen cuz you're part of it.
>> Totally. You get, you know, government
actors betting on, you know, wars and
that sort of thing. And that's totally,
you know, that's what Nancy Pelosi seems
like she's been doing for the last
couple of decades. But, uh,
>> I want her investment program. That's
joke is
>> track her portfolio. Um, you looked into
the Virginia UFO crash of 19
>> a little bit. I mean, I only mostly know
through James Fox's uh work. Again,
eyewitnesses and so on. Maybe
>> 15 to 20 witnesses who were alive.
>> I know. Yeah, I know. Same thing with um
[snorts] um the um what you call it? Uh
the miracle of Fatima. You know, there
was 50,000 people or 70,000 or whatever
it was.
>> Yeah. But in this case,
>> saw this. Okay. So, what is it they're
seeing? That's the question. They're not
hallucinating. Okay, fine.
>> Okay. Yeah,
>> but they saw in 15 to 20 people they've
triangulated the flight path of this
tic-tac UFO which had seemingly like
steam coming out of the back cuz it
maybe it had been punctured in some way.
It crashes on the Myolini farm. This uh
ultralight pilot and geography teacher
Carlos Doza finds it. Uh he picks up
part of the material. This whole
military crew comes from the Issa base
which is right nearby. They confiscate
the material from him. And uh and then
you have a being coming out of this
craft. It's seen all over the the city.
These three uh little girls at the time,
now they're women, all testify to having
seen this being. It's it's kind of
curled up in a ball and it's it seems
scared and it has red big eyes. And then
you go to this specific hospital, the
Regional Hospital, and then you you can
literally walk in there today and you
go, "Is this the hospital that where
they treated the ET?" They go, "Yeah,
this is the hospital." And their chief
neurosurgeon, a guy named Ittoalo
Ventterelli, says that he was face tof
face with the being for four minutes and
he oversaw the work of this other guy,
Marcos Benis, who like helped the being
with a puncture wound. And then you have
all sorts of evidence that the being was
carted off and taken to the US. And I
just interviewed a former defense
minister and a current presidential
candidate, a guy named Aldo Rebello, and
he was like, "Yeah, this happened." You
said that fundamentally you do think
something happened in Virginia in 1996.
>> Believing that a phenomenon like this
exists, of course, because these were
phenomena that had the testimony of
totally credible witnesses.
>> So I'm like, what else do do you need?
Again, if this were a criminal case
which takes eyewitness, you know,
testimony into account,
>> what is what is the it? Okay, so
something happened clearly.
>> Yeah. question is what is it does and if
it was true what else would be true what
does the government say that they think
it was
>> he thinks he thinks it's akin to what
happened at Roswell and this is all the
rebello and Carlos doza in feeling the
material said that it was very light and
when he would move it around with his
hands it would and and perturb it it
would go back into its original shape
very similar to the testimony of uh army
intelligence officer Jesse Marcel at
Roswell
>> you mean like cellophane does
>> like cellophane
Yeah. Yeah. You crunch it up and it
unravels back to solid P. Maybe it's not
cellophane. It's the other. Maybe that's
nitanol or nitnol.
>> Yeah. Whatever that that stuff. Anyway,
well, I don't know, Jesse. I mean,
again, these are these are good things.
It would be good to know what actually
happened. How can we get more
information? Again, we don't have the
body. We don't have the spaceship. We
don't have photos, videos. And then the
question is, why would the CIA want to
hide that body? Why not just show
everybody? Go, aliens are here. we need
to double our budget because we're going
to protect you all
>> for for for the reasons outlined in the
Robertson memo. You know, they would it
would touch off mass hysteria. Hal
Putoff who might
>> I don't think it would touch on why why
do people think that
>> I agree with you. I'm just saying if you
have this old school mentality, do you
know who Hal Putoff is by any chance?
Famous scientist
>> UFO space but also in sensitive kind of
military world and he says that he along
with Steven Hadley who is a national
security adviser of George W. Bush, they
did this whole kind of, you know, review
panel of like what does disclosure look
like? And they were all they all came in
proisclosure and they waited, you know,
everything from economic destabilization
to sociological, religious
destabilization and they came out of it
being like disclosure is not worth it.
Again,
>> I wouldn't make that call. I think it
should all be out.
>> No, they let it all out. Yeah.
>> But do do you think that maybe that's
been the case? I mean, I do think
governments uh overcorrect on the uh
security and secrecy and classification.
We they do do that.
>> Uh there's a lot of stuff they don't
need to block out.
>> You know, especially old stuff. I mean,
come on. The Soviet Union's been dead
since 1991. You know, it's time. What
happened in 1947?
>> I mean, who cares? They just show us,
right? That's well I'm hoping again you
part of the UF UAP science advisory
committee that someone like an avi with
connections to people in the government
which he does they really admire him
like okay we're going to show a what
happened I'm hoping
>> I hope so too and I hope you get access
to the goods how do you think you'd
react if you were taken into a hang
>> I would be I would be totally I would
love it'd be amazing yeah I would love
that
>> okay
>> but but again I mean you know my I'm of
an age when when Sean is, you know,
ahead of me by, you know, 15, 20 years
or so on this whole thing. And it's
like, I love this. The aliens are out
there empty, terrible waste of space if
we were the only ones. I mean, let's go
looking and so on. Absolutely. I mean, I
think they're out there. If they came
here, even even more amazing.
>> Sean's interesting because he wrote The
Demon Haunted World and obviously was
>> good skeptic book. Yep.
>> Yeah. As a fan of weeding out bad ideas.
I remember Richard Dawkins blurbed that
book. Uh but I in other ways he seems
kind of privately interested in UFOs and
aliens.
>> Oh yes. Yes. Although he hasn't covered
anything. That was a myth. There was a
story about him uh saying I think aliens
are real and that that this was redacted
or something. So I checked with his his
his widow Annie who's a friend. Uh she
goes that never happened. That's one of
those [ __ ] like death deathbed
confessions. I I believe in God now.
Yeah. It never happened. Yeah. Hitch
Hitch always said if if anybody tells
you I said at the last moment I believe
in God. Don't believe them.
>> [laughter]
>> I'm never going to say that.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he held high
clearances. You know, he, you know, he
was involved in this 1958 project called
A119 where we were going to nuke the
moon as a show of force against the
Soviets.
>> Um, I don't remember that.
>> It's fascinating.
>> Is that in the bios? I don't remember
that.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I must have
forgot that. Okay. Yeah. Yes, I know.
Well, I mean, he was a major insider.
He, you know, got the Voyager um, you
know, the record thing he worked on.
Turned the Voyager around, take a
picture of Earth. I mean, he made all
that happen.
>> Yeah. I mean, it's a fascinating story.
The audio version of their 1977 book
about the Voyager Record,
>> 79, I guess it was published about him
and Annie and um a few of the others
that worked on it. It's really quite a
slice of history because like this is
what they thought in 1979. This is what
we were thinking about the universe and
aliens and music and like which music do
you pick to put on the record? My
favorite story of that was somebody
said, "Well, we got to put uh Bach on
the record." And somebody said that
would just be bragging. [laughter]
>> It's too good. I thought that was funny.
But
>> uh but yeah, I mean the chances of the
Voyager encounter anything pretty much
nil. But you never know. So it's but but
just in case. But also it's a slice of
>> what we cared about, what we think is
important about us. Yeah. For other
people to know,
>> even if no one ever finds out, it's a
it's kind of a a look into what we think
is important. Art, music, language, what
people look like, that kind of thing.
Well, I'm excited you're on this panel.
I think you're going to serve a very
important purpose. And if anything, I
want you to debunk harder. And what I
mean by that is I feel like often our
conversations are like, "Michael, here's
this data set." And you're like, "Yeah,
but the data set is probably happen
stance for all these, you know, kind of
high level heruristic reasons." I want
you to debunk the isolated specific
cases and be like actually here's a
conventional prosaic explanation because
otherwise we just have so much
>> evidence sitting there in this liinal
space and I'm with you. I don't want to
kind of preemptively
uh pre-crystallize or snap to grid some
conclusion. I don't know. Space aliens,
I'm not sure. But like is reality much
weirder than we think? I'm pretty high
conviction in that.
>> I think I would agree with that. I think
there's a lot we don't know about the
physical world. Even these quantum
effects, all the spooky action of
distance stuff, you know, the the pro
the hard problem of consciousness, you
know, Stuart Hamoff and Roger Penrose
theory about the collapsing wave
function inside the microtubules of the
neurons. Okay, I don't really buy this,
but it's an interesting story because if
it turned out to be true, then that
would not be paranormal ESP psychic.
That would just be like quantum
neuroscience or something. It would be
part of science
>> and there are physicalist models around
remote viewing where maybe you know in
certain quantum interpretations you have
obviously have temporal non-locality
with double slit experiment you can
reverse cubit positions and quantum
computations. So in a working quantum
computer you'd be able to send
information back in time on the
application layer. So if there was some
sort of you know room temperature
quantum system in the brain allah
penrose and hammerov then you could
maybe access your future knowledge
state. So if you were given confirmatory
feedback on a remote viewing session,
that would be a physicalist materialist
reductionist explanation of remote
viewing, you know, that would fully
comport with possible interpretations of
physics.
>> Happen it would become so this is my
point. If if it became part of science,
so the words paranormal and
supernatural, they're just linguistic
placeholders that there's no such thing.
There's just reality. And if it turns
out people can read each other's minds
or the backs of playing cards or remote
view due to these quantum effects, okay,
then that's just part of the world.
>> It's supernormal, not paranormal.
>> Yeah, supernormal or Yeah. like really
cool or something like that.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love it and I hope
we can uh I hope we can make a lot of
progress on this and I I'm really
excited to see what you do on the White
House advisory panel.
>> Oh, thank you.
>> And uh
>> I'll do my best.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think uh I'm I'm
excited. you know, just the fact that
this exists, I think is a really cool
stamp of approval for the for the space.
Um, and uh, yeah, hopefully we can do
this again because I always enjoy my
conversations.
>> If nothing else, it could expose how
much governments keep secrets, which is
also interesting for conspiracy uh,
studies like like do they really lie?
Yeah, they really do, right? I used to
make a joke about this, like, you know,
crazy conspiracy theories like we never
landed on the moon, the earth is flat,
911's an inside job, and this rich guy
has this island where he's bringing rich
and powerful people to have sex with.
Oh, wait, that one's real. [laughter]
>> Exactly.
>> Because, you know, Rogan was talking
about that way before any of this stuff
came out.
>> For sure. And it's like, oh, that one's
real.
>> Yeah. And a good example there is you
have Pizzagate which on the face of it
looked totally ridiculous but it was one
step adjacent to the the stuff.
>> Yes. Yes. Some of the rich guys taking
the blood of adrenal was
>> I think that was like Q and Yeah. So so
all of these things while maybe
primaacasia shouldn't be taken at face
value and they were wrong they were
almost meant to pre-stigmatize against a
real truth a really dark truth. So
that's the that's the problem with
conspiracism is that conspiracy
theorizing is that some conspiracies are
true. They they happen
>> and I think a being a there's a there's
a healthy efficient frontier of looking
skeptically into conspiracies which
should every be everybody's kind of a
priori you know uh orientation because I
think if you if you write it off and you
say oh nothing to see here because it's
called the conspiracy. There's a CIA
memo from the 70s saying we're going to
popularize the term conspiracy to to
have people look away.
>> I don't doubt that they do this. Let's
feed the UFO people this and this will
distract the American public for a
while.
>> And then there's the flood then there's
the opposite of the flood the zone like
you have these people, you know, coming
out who are disinfo agents saying, "Oh
yes, there we have six different alien
races and they're from these temp
planets or whatever." And then it's
every podcaster's dream to have those
people on, you know. So, it's important,
I think, to to to go into the
conspiracies, but with your wits about
you.
>> Yeah. Our latest issue of Skeptic, we
look into the the whole social media
model and podcasting and and the kind of
attention economy in which you get
people like Tucker Carlson and Candace
Owens saying just crazy stuff. And I
can't tell they believe this. Uh, are
they just saying this because it draws
attention? And here I am watching it and
writing about it. So, I'm getting
attention. It's like, did I just fall
for something? I think look I think I'm
sure they get a lot wrong and then I
think there's a general sense of being
burned on by the establishment
institutions and have we overcorrected
and you know is there you know blanket
anger against like you know every
institution everybody with a thirdderee
connection to like anybody who's done
bad yeah for sure podcasting is sloppy
right now and then and then at the same
time I I understand they're tapping into
something very real like an emotion uh
on the part of the American people that
they they feel ripped off and burned.
And clearly, just, you know, ignore all
the details, there was an extreme amount
of undue leverage on the United States
government by uh, you know, basically a
pedophile who was running a ring, right?
>> And so, you know, that that's all you
need to know, right? Like to be like
angry and want investigation. And then
and then clearly, you know, people have
been distracting systematically from
that. And so, like, if you agree with
those two things, like, you know, I get
it. as far as you know that sort of
sphere of podcasting world where they're
it's like what else what what else are
they lying to us about I don't you know
I don't know
>> I know I know
>> yes well so that's why I like
independent journalism you know when
something gets reported that I know a
lot about I know they're getting it
wrong it's like what else am I watching
that I don't know anything about this
happened in Iran like maybe that didn't
happen in Iran because I know they got
this one wrong right that happens like
in the New York Times the CBS whatever
like huh so I do like having you know
the independent journalists going let's
get lots of voices out there and it gets
timeconuming sometimes you know it's
like okay I have like 20 windows open
like I'd really like to read all these
articles I really should read all these
it's like okay you can't do everything
right so that's all but I think it'll
winnow winnow down I think it'll become
obvious these are the good places to go
you know and try you know leftwing
rightwing libertarian green whatever add
them all up divide by four whatever
I love it.
>> Exactly. Well, Michael, thank you for
coming to my UFO.
>> Oh, I love being here, by the way. This
is I feel like the Star Trek uh bridge
here.
>> Yeah. [laughter] No, it's it's so fun.
And uh No, this is a blast. I really
appreciate it. And uh uh you know, I I
now know that you were you're you're on
record, right, that aliens are real.
>> Yes, that's it. Yeah, they're here.
Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] I've been zapped
by the uh the alien beam. Yeah. No. Uh I
would love it. I mean, again, if I woke
up and there's an afterlife, great.
Okay. I'm not against that. I'm okay
with that. You know, if there's aliens,
I don't want to be alone in the
universe.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. So, let's do it.
>> I think that the only guarantee about
the future is that we're going to be
surprised. And so, I would say
>> Oh, that's a good way to put it.
>> I would say I would say all the memes we
have in our head, all the expectations
of quote unquote alien life,
>> it's probably going to be so much
weirder than we than we ever expect,
whatever is coming around the ben. Well,
this is a to Sean's credit, he didn't
show the aliens in contact for a reason
because we actually don't know what
they're going to look like, right? I
mean I mean how many bipeedal primates
are there on Earth? You know, there's uh
four four grade eight five great apes.
That's it out of millions of species.
So, if we go to another planet, what are
the chances they look anything like us?
Probably not. They're going to be very
different.
>> Well, I think the gray alien thing is a
real archetype. I think it's
consistently seen. And yes, bipedal.
>> [snorts]
>> Well, well, that's the thing that I
think points more towards something
that's derivative of humans. If you're
in North Sentinel Island, which is, you
know, off the coast of India, it's
completely uncontacted, you know, for
centuries.
>> Oh, those guys.
>> If if say they've had, you know, a
couple of missionaries have shown up
with Bibles and stuff, and I think a
couple been shot down.
>> But, you know, maybe these North
Sentinel go back to the, you know, the
inland tribes and they say, um, you
know, we've seen aliens. They've they've
they've attempted contact. don't worry,
we've we've nullified the, you know, the
threat or whatever.
>> And so if you're seeing something that
looks like you, you know, it's bipeedal,
there's this sort of morphological
consistency and there's evolutionary
convergence, you know, the likelihood is
that it's it's it's actually sort of
like, you know, derivative of you and
it's in your neighborhood and it's
proximate to you. And so then you have
to get into time travel. Obviously, you
have paradoxes there, but you have to
get into other weirder explanations. Or
another one, do you know Simon Conway
Morris, the paleontologist who countered
Steve Gould's contingency argument for
the bird of shale on a larger scale
convergent evolution that there's only
so many ways for organisms to be
designed in a world. If you have air,
you have to have something like wings.
If you're in the water, you need
something like fins and a fuse for body.
And then like so you should have like
most of your um sensory equipment and
your brain on one end, your waste
disposal system on the other end. and
you got to have some limbs to move
around on the land. You might end up
with like a bipeedal dinosaur or
whatever, right? It wouldn't look
completely like So I read his book and I
had him on the show. I was like, "Yeah,
that guy actually makes sense." So this
is this because instead of joking about
aliens are not going to look like us,
he's like, "You don't know that.
>> That's fascinating." Yeah.
>> What's his name?
>> Simon Conway Morris.
>> Okay.
>> So he's a paleontologist. I think he's
at Oxford. And uh so when when Steve
Gold wrote his famous book uh wonderful
life and he made his case for how
contingent history is which was a good
correction but he went too far and Simon
Conway Morris is like you know it's not
all chance you know wings are going to
look like wings because this is the
environment they're in right and so most
things converge to look certain ways for
good reason like oh yeah that's a good
point.
>> Interesting. Well I I would love to talk
to him. He sounds fascinating.
>> Oh he's great. Yeah he's he's good. I I
do just think that radically different
environments, right? Like we have like a
nitrogenrich atmosphere. If you know you
end up with, you know, some other
element that sort of dominates the
atmosphere of, you know, gravity is a
little bit different. I would imagine
morphologically you end up with
different you know patterns of life. I'm
sure he has good counterarguments to
that. So
>> I'll put you in touch with him. Also
Charles Cochell at Oxford, he uh he
works on extraterrestrial liberty. So
that's kind of his big thing. Like if we
set up a civilization on Mars, what
should be the the political system or
the economic system? What if somebody
takes control of the oxygen production?
And then they monopolize it, you know?
So then he starts thinking, what kind of
laws do we need on Mars? And then you
take that out to, you know, an
extraterrestrial civilization. Well, you
know what? What kind of system are they
going to have? And and then and then
different planets are going to have
different kinds of bodies, right?
Depending on the gravity. If you have
gravity 10 times that of Earth, you
can't have a giraffe. It's just or the
bones would be, you know, this thick,
right? So, anyway, I'll I'll put you in
touch with him, too. He's uh these are
super interesting questions.
>> That would be awesome. But on the Conway
example, you're kind of saying that, you
know, maybe they are extraterrestrial.
Maybe the grays are in fact.
>> Yes. Yes. That's that's kind of the
argument that at least it's not
completely crazy to think they could be
something like bipeedal. They're going
to be primates, but something like you
got to have arms and legs to move around
and manipulate tools and eye two eyes
and you know the the brain is up here
and you know so on. You end up kind of
like this.
>> Yeah. It's also interesting to think of
like lower species as far as you know
they're less conscious than us. What
they think of us and whether they think
certain things human humans do are
actually scientific laws versus you know
agency versus humans. So I know you have
agenticity, this idea that we impugn too
much sort of agency when it comes to
things,
>> but are you familiar with like the
farmer and shooter analogy from the
threebody problem? Do you know about
this?
>> Which one is that? The
>> It's fascinating. So you have these like
um 2D people who are living on this like
flat surface.
>> Oh.
>> And you have shooters in 3D world
shooting at it. And every 10 cm you get
a little hole. And they think each hole
is like a crater. It's this but it's
it's this sort of just consistent
phenomena. It's like the weather or it's
you know natural geological formation
that just shows up every 10 centimeters
and in fact it's discretionary and it's
and it's because of these shots being
taken.
>> That's really that's a great example.
>> It's a great example. Another great
example thought experiment is you have
turkeys that you know every day they're
fed at 11:00 a.m. Every day they're fed
at 11:00 a.m. This is sort of this David
Hume style thing. So, you know, they're
fed, they're fed, they're fed, and then
one day
>> their heads get chopped off. And this is
an analogy for the tricolarian aliens in
the threebody problem, which are, you
know, coming to invade or whatever. But
the point is,
>> you know, you think of these things as
patterns sometimes that are, you know,
out of your control, but it's the
opposite of agenticity. There is
actually agency and discretion behind
some of these things that you're
observing.
>> Yeah. Well, that's Edwin Abbott's uh
book, Flatland, from the 1890s. Yeah.
>> Great book.
>> So good. Yeah. You never know. I mean
that I think that was also Sean's point.
You know, we're carbon chauvinist. He'd
like to say, you know, don't think
carbon is the only way to structure a
living organism.
>> And he would talk all the time about
tesseracts and plonic.
>> You showed it. You showed it on your
show.
>> I show it all the time. Yeah. He shows
it to He goes, "You can't see a
tesseract, but you just see the shadow."
And so
they actually seem to show holographic
principle like features where you know
about the holographic principle of
course you just see the 2D boundary of a
black hole but it's obviously this
larger 3D structure. So in this case if
you walk into the UFO in many of these
reported instances it's bigger on the
inside than it is on the outside.
>> Yes, I've heard this
>> and so it could be this holographic
principle like that.
>> Yeah. Yeah, it could be. Well, Fred Hoy
wrote that novel about u a a gaseous
cloud in space thinking,
>> you know, I mean, it's just particles
that are interacting, right? Like these
drones now, the the jellyfish UAP looks
to be a group of drones. The drones are
interconnected, you know, Bluetooth or
whatever, and they're coordinated. Well,
why not coordinate molecules of gas or
whatever, right? That was his idea. And
then Ray Kerszswwell, there's a scene in
in that film about Ray Kerszswe where
he's staring out at the ocean and he's
like, "What are you doing? What are you
thinking?" He goes, "I'm thinking
computation." These all these little
molecuated
computing and thinking. Don't don't
think it's just neurons firing is the
only way you can get consciousness.
>> Right. I think that's right. I think we
Yeah, we assume it gets cut off and we
just we don't know how consciousness
works. There are all these things that
in [snorts] nature that could actually,
you know, be not random. And I would
just say also like yes, there are all
sorts of mythologies that have led
humans astray historically, but it's the
epitome of human hubris to say that the
enlightenment is not another example of
a mythology,
>> right?
>> Well, it's a story, but hopefully a
story based in reality.
>> It's a story. It's a story that involves
an origin story. How things come into
creation. It involves rituals and labs,
you know? It's like all these things and
it's all it's not immune to any of the
you know consensus dynamics and herdlike
thinking of any of the other
mythologies.
>> You know Dan Dennis analogy with
termites and thinking so he in his book
bacteria to brains he has pictures of
these gigantic termite mounds in
Australia and they're like 20 30 feet
tall big lots complicated thing do any
of the termites that spit the little
dirt out and build this thing they have
any idea that they're building this
tower this looks like a skyscraper? No,
they have they're just doing their
little thing, right? But together, the
whole collective builds this magnificent
structure. He goes, "That's what we're
doing."
>> That and you know, Joe Rogan talks about
this all the time. He says like our need
to consume things drives our need to
make better and better, incrementally
better things. And it's like the Tower
of Babel or something where we're we're
just trying to we're creating this like
cybernetic sort of thing around us where
our own consciousness is going to look
fundamentally different in in 100 years
and this is not uh pro you know this is
not normative statement for me because I
I think it's actually you know bad in
many ways like I I'm sort of more of
like a primalist in this context but
there are people like Noah Noah Uval
Harrari who like you know he's just he's
pro I don't love him on a lot of other
things. But he's just right about this
homodus thing where we're, you know,
we're probably going to end up merging
with technology. We are the history of
computation is the history of a lower
latency, higher bandwidth relationship
with this stuff. And then all of a
sudden that's a new aperture through
which we see everything. And then and
then what what do you detect on the
other side? Is there an intelligence,
you know, a non-human intelligence that
you that's maybe higher than us on the
consciousness chain that you can then
speak to? And have they been, you know,
all Allah cellular automata? Have they
been poking at us and messing with us uh
in in ways to get us to just meet them
and and be able to to communicate with
them? Who knows?
>> There was this line asked, I think it
was to Ray Kerszswwell, you know, do you
think there's a God? And he said, we're
working on it.
[laughter]
>> That's fascinating. Wow. Well,
>> and that's the singularity, right? I
mean everything changes and they become
essentially omnisient,
>> right? But then that that also feels
really heretical like it should be there
should there should be a god that
created
>> he's been right by on so many things you
have to take him seriously. He's also
been wrong on a bunch of things, too.
>> And and and then he might be right on
this again,
>> but like I don't know. I find that like,
you know, the whole AI craze,
>> it's like I I think this is a simulation
from some higher chance. And so why
would you port yourself into a lower
bitcompressed,
you know, simulation, Allah, artificial
intelligence, if you can maybe ascend
out of this one and maybe, you know,
commune with a real god, you know, why
would you why would you go into the tech
thing? You know what I Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, there's a good Star Trek Next
Generation episode about this where they
you know the holiday deck, they go in
there and have these pretend worlds,
>> right? So, one of the common themes in
the in that series is um Sherlock Holmes
and Mori Arti and the whole thing and
they go in there and they play act and
do the whole thing with him. So, one of
the in in this particular episode,
Sherlock Holmes and his sweetheart,
they're in there and they're all
interacting with the Star Star Trek crew
people, Captain Peicard and so on. All
of a sudden, um, the holiday doors open
and, um, and he walks out that, the
holiday guy, the, um, what's the, yeah,
Borardi walks out and he's like, how's
he walking out of the Holc? He's, he
doesn't exist. So, the rest of the
episode, they're trying to figure out
how did he do this? I mean, how does he
go from this digital figure that doesn't
exist to actually living in 3D space,
right? And then you get all the way to
the end where they realize we're still
in the holiday. This entire Enterprise
is in the in a little box in the holiday
deck.
>> I love it. I love it. And it well
because it also
>> and then but and then it ends where
Barkley the the kind of character
officer uh he he's wondering like huh I
wonder if this whole now they're in the
real Enterprise and it's wrapping up and
he's like I wonder and he goes he kind
of looks to the sky and goes you know
computer and program
>> and it doesn't end. He's like
like we're we're not living in a matrix
because really we could all be in a
little box on some you know computer
programmer's desk.
>> We could and in almost every religious
myth we are and so you have to ask is
there any semblance of truth in some of
those myths? Do we throw that out
entirely or can myth motivate real
truth?
>> I think it's I love myth. Myth is
important.
>> I think so too.
>> Yeah. I love I, you know, Joseph
Campbell's stuff. I love some of
Jordan's stuff about this, what they
really mean.
>> I discussed this in a book of my chapter
on religion that what maybe we're
misreading some of these religious
stories as being real. Maybe that's not
the point. Maybe the point is what's the
story about?
>> But but if myth, you know, if it sets
this up as like a construct and we're a
lower construct, maybe they're right
about that. There there are cases where
myth gets vindicated in reality. Hinrich
von Schlimman went looking for Troy when
it when it was relegated just to Homer's
the Iliot.
>> I have gazed upon the face of Agamen.
>> That's right. And he and he found it.
>> Oh my god. This one's real.
>> And he found it. Yeah. So I wonder I
wonder if they're right about that. And
the you know the the the Hindu you know
Maya the the great illusion is like a
real is a real thing.
>> I'll tell you a funny story. So in my in
that book in my book chapter on religion
I talk about Jonah and the and the great
fish you know. So the story is he's
living on this one land and God gives
him this instructions. You got to go
over and tell these people the Nineve
people whatever they are uh about you
know whatever the religious messages. He
goes I don't want to do it. I'm not
going to do it. So he gets on a ship and
he sails away the opposite direction.
But the ship um flounders and he and
he's about to drown and he gets
swallowed by a great fish and he lives
for three days and three nights. Very
symbolic in the belly of the fish and
takes him all the way over the land.
spits him out on the dry land and he
gets out there and goes, "All right,
God. I'll do it." And he delivers the
message to these people. All right? So,
like hardcore atheists are like, "That
never happened. How could you live in
the belly of a fish?" It's like, "Of
course it didn't happen." It's the story
that, you know, he's delivering this
message of redemption, starting over,
building a new society, forgiveness,
this kind of thing, right? And then most
Christians, when I tell what I just told
you, they go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of
course, that makes sense." And I go,
"Maybe the resurrection didn't literally
happen to Jesus. Maybe it's a story
about redemption and forgiveness and
starting over, creating a heavens on
earth. And like, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no. That one has to be true because
we're Christians. It's like maybe it's
not literally true. It's okay to
mythology has deeper truths
>> that are valuable.
>> Yes. But it could also be
>> Yeah. Yeah. That's right. The face of
Agnum non Troy actually existed. Maybe
>> it's it's you know, I don't know. That's
so fascinating and and we could go on
forever, but I I think your the way you
think is a very healthy check against
probably uh the way a lot of my audience
thinks, probably the way I think. And uh
the great Bertrren Russell once stared
up at the stars and he
>> thought he was aruck by how random the
whole thing was. And uh you can be aruck
by the randomness and that can give you
the proper kind of you know positioning
and um you know humility in life and and
and sense of wonder and then you can
also be aruck by you know an entity a
great creator god and so I think uh uh
there are failure modes on both sides
and it's really it's really good to
always check your thinking. So I I
really appreciate you uh you being here.
>> Well thank you Michael.
>> Thank you for having me and you're
welcome. This was a blast.
>> Big fun.
>> Let me know when you when you find uh
the aliens and you know, maybe I can
>> You'll be the first person I call.
>> Please. Yeah. I'll be the I'll be the
the the water boy.
>> Jesse Jav says we got it.
>> I'll [laughter] be on the next plane.
>> Okay.
>> All right.
>> All right.
>> Thank you.
>> All right. Cool.
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