WTUFO
What the UFO? We're learning about UFOs and processing in public.
We talk about what the phenomenon might be, explore historical sightings, track new developments, and generally feel our way through this wild, exciting subject.
If you're an experiencer or ufologist and you'd like to share your story or research, please find us on X @WTUFOshow.
If you're enjoying the show and you'd like to help us keep making it, please consider supporting us at patreon.com/WTUFO
WTUFO
S1E2: UFOs Are Real ~ John's Priors
John's turn to tell you what he thinks!
As we get more information, our views may change, but as of recording, this was our understanding of the phenomenon and situation around it.
Brand Note: We called this show Holding Space for the first 6 episodes. Now we call it WTUFO. It's better, right? We hope you enjoy.
If you're enjoying the show and you'd like to help us keep making it, please consider supporting us at patreon.com/WTUFO
Original Air Date: January 14, 2024
Join us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/WTUFO/posts |
Connect on X @WTUFOshow |
Watch on YouTube @WhatTheUFO
Hi, welcome to Holding Space. I'm Caleb Mayo. This is my brother, john Mayo. Hello, and UFOs are real. So we're going to talk about UFOs being real and process that crazy information together and with you to the extent you'd like to participate. So, hi, john, I'm going to ask you a few questions about this and I thought I'd start with how are you feeling today generally?
Speaker 2:with. How are you feeling today generally, generally, uh, okay, I'm a little agitated. I was just trying to do some cleanup and it didn't go well. And a big pile of crap outside I have to clean up, I don't know I'm okay, we'll call that a four out of ten.
Speaker 2:yeah, um, so I thought, as an on-ramp, uh, we could ask what your entry point to the phenomenon has been and what got you to where you are, even if it's just the highlight reel of that, because I'm sure you've done a lot of reading and watching in the last several months uh, growing up in the 90s was into conspiracy theory stuff and reading about ufos and paranormal stuff, but then like kind of got off the train when I started reading some of the crazier conspiracy theories and then moved away from that and then really it was, uh, it was um, the you know, leslie kane, ralph blumenthal piece from helene cooper piece in 2017. That was like very, very exciting. Then I also read Interstellar by Avi Loeb um and that was, you know, that ramped me up a little bit and then, and then it was really the, the, the grush story. And then I immediately like the grush story dropping and then I immediately bought Leslie Kane's excellent book. Uh, ufos, generals, pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record, and that was then.
Speaker 2:That book really was like the point of no return, of reading it, of picking it up and being like like this will be interesting, and then, within the first chapter, just being like, holy shit, the belt, which is about the Belgium wave. Yeah, so that's it, that's and that's. Then from point. I just haven't really it's been like 60 to 80% of my brain at all times like thinking about this.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, it kind of makes other things less interesting by comparison.
Speaker 2:How does this work? Do I now ask you the same question?
Speaker 1:I was thinking I would ask you the questions today, but feel free to ask anything you'd like when you want to. So the next sort of series of the big questions I'd like to cover are how are you thinking about the phenomenon in general, big picture, how are you thinking about the coverup and how are you thinking about the skeptical conventional wisdom? And then, if you'd like to cover anything else, like cool things you've seen or read recently, or end with a crazy story, maybe that would be a good coda. But I guess I'll start with just it feels like the double barrel question that we tend to tiptoe around uh, because it's just such a weird speculative area is what do you think is going on with the phenomenon and how are you thinking about that? Be more polite, slash oblique man.
Speaker 2:I mean I don't know and I feel like, uh, I'm in the I I had the experience that I think most people have when they get into it, of of it just becoming like very complicated and woolly and strange and buried so quickly when you start getting into it that, like you know, like six months ago ago I probably would have said like ets, and now I don't know. It's just so much weirder than like, like it's, I don't. I don't think it's one entity, I don't think it's one explanation like so I guess to how I'm thinking about the, how I'm thinking about the phenomenon right now, and I'm reading Dolan's book right now, the one from 73 to 91. Big, thick volume. It's very cool.
Speaker 2:But as I'm reading it and I'm reading stories of encounters, I'm kind of just like I mean a lot of them, some of them are very interesting, but I'm just sort of like I don't need them anymore to hear. It's not like. I'm kind of just like. I'm like I mean there are a lot of them, some are very interesting, but I'm just sort of like I don't need them anymore to hear. It's not like I'm like. It's not like I need to be convinced that the phenomenon is real. And it's also not like I am gonna go so deep that I'm gonna like pull out patterns and come up with theories that, like some of these you know, really serious long-term experts in the field are doing.
Speaker 2:Um, so yeah, I guess I'm in a place where I'm not really reaching for an explanation. I mean I could, I could make something up, though, like I mean I don't know, should I just keep talking? Should I make something up? I don't know, just keep talking. Should I make something up? I don't know. Feel free to speculate.
Speaker 2:I mean it seems unlikely to me that they are interstellar and took hundreds or thousands of years to get here and then got to our planet and are just like hanging out on hidden bases on the moon or hidden bases, you know, or like under the water or something. I kind of have a hard time squaring those. Just I mean, and baseline like who knows, and like it's all so, like it's obviously something we like really don't understand. So it's hard to speculate about something you don't understand at all, that, like you know, there's so many indicators that it's just so beyond our comprehension and the answer will will probably be something that revolutionizes our understanding of the universe.
Speaker 2:But from my current human perspective in 2024, it seems like a long drive to then stay in the parking lot. So that leads me to think that either faster than light travel is possible, that they're coming from, wherever their home planet, planets are, and they can just like, dip in and out whenever they want, which obviously is like you know not how we think the universe works now. And then I guess that or that they've been around for a really really long time and maybe like, and then you know the interdimensional whatever hypothesis I like really fundamentally don't understand, uh, but but yeah, seems plausible I don't know and then, lastly, I do love the idea.
Speaker 2:I just like the idea that they're maybe living, like, in the ocean and that's like. I don't remember where I encountered this idea it might have been dolan, but I think it's really interesting that, like, uh, if you're visiting other planets, atmospheres vary widely, but if there's a liquid ocean, that's actually pretty predictable environment. I don't know, that's true, but I heard somebody say this uh, and also protects you from solar flares and shit like that. So it would maybe make perfect sense to go to a planet and then just post up underwater.
Speaker 1:Totally. I think that's a really strong, interesting observation. There's a ton of different atmospheric quality out there in the universe, but liquid water is always liquid water, so whatever your equipment is can be designed to work mostly in that atmosphere. Uh, and maybe under other kinds of liquids as well. It sounds like the.
Speaker 1:If the interdimensional hypothesis is real, uh, or is accurate, then the faster than light travel door opens because, uh, you could be moving along the fifth dimension and it would look like you were traveling faster than the speed of light in the third or fourth dimension. Um, so it could be the case like there have been some speculations. People have made speculations about, uh, tourism and and that seems like the kind of thing that would maybe want to happen faster. Because, yeah, it's a little hard to imagine tourism happening at the glacial pace of like 100,000 years to go see one planet. But, as you say, that's like on our current human time scale. Say that's like on our current human time scale and it's hard to know what it might feel like if you're like a mind in a vat that's been living for millions of years or something, maybe a hundred thousand year safari isn't so strange one idea.
Speaker 2:One idea I'll share quickly with you that I just heard on uh, I guess it was on the weaponized podcast podcast, but one of Dolan's theories was, like Earth is the place to be right now, that if you're an intelligent species and you're studying other planets, earth is where the action is. It's like his opinion, as somebody who's studied thousands and thousands of cases and written voluminously about it which I just think is an interesting idea of cases and written voluminously about it, which I just think is an interesting idea.
Speaker 1:That is really interesting, I agree, and it kind of jives with some stuff that I've bumped into in researching futurism and AI, because we have this rational expectation that our time should be basically normal and we're living in a deeply not normal time. So, like in most times, most places, it is reasonable to assume that you're living through normal times. And this particular moment, even this 10 years of human life, is very, very unusual, specifically, I would say, because the computational ability of our machines is starting to exceed the computational ability of our brains and like exceed the computational ability of our brains and we're already probably crossing that threshold at the upper end of the machines and by the end of this decade it's going to be like getting toward a place where at least corporations can afford this kind of human surplus brainpower in machine form, probably going to coincide with the dawn of AGI, whatever. This is like a very interesting moment, like some people would maybe kind of call it the singularity, but whatever it is, it's very interesting and I've also heard this pitched as a reason to believe in simulation hypothesis, that because this is an unreasonably interesting time. That's some evidence, at least in the column, for this being a simulation, because you would tend to, if you were simulating reality, simulate especially interesting moments, and this is clearly a very interesting moment.
Speaker 1:But I think that also backs up this idea that it might be a hot tourist location because you're getting to watch a species leave sort of the dark ages, you know, where we couldn't fly and control nuclear energy.
Speaker 1:A hundred years ago we were. We didn't have planes, like it's crazy, and now we've got, you know, this video, air communication and a million other things that are bursting on the scene. This is just like a fascinating century. So I buy the idea that Earth right now is outsizedly interesting and that, you know, maybe aliens like to go to places like this, because there are probably some other planets in the galaxy and broader universe where moments like this are happening and broader universe where moments like this are happening. And this would also kind of jive with observations that visitation has intensified in the last hundred years, that as you go back into the preceding hundreds and thousands of years, there's some evidence that visitation has been ongoing. But it does seem like it's picked up since, like the nuclear age began. It does seem like it's picked up since, like the nuclear age began, and that sort of stands to reason if they're here to watch a technological explosion and or just monitor the emergence of a potentially galactic or intergalactic civilization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess I'm to just circle back to the question of how I'm thinking about this. Like that is all very plausible and also like not sufficiently weird and not complex enough to explain all the different stuff. Like, okay, they're here because humans are very interesting right now. So like let's steal a bunch of cow rectums, Like you know. Or like, yeah, I don't know, let's kidnap a bunch of people. And or like, yeah, I don't know, let's kidnap a bunch of people and like do kind of like, kind of like you know, course, medical examinations on them, and let's do it like thousands of times, maybe past the point that it could like really be giving you any sort of scientific value.
Speaker 1:It's just for giggles at this point. Yeah, I don't know. I that that, um, that kind of instinct feels possible to me, but I'm I don't. I don't feel super strongly about it. Just based on how we work scientifically when we're studying animals, it's like we don't seem to reach a point where we stop giving a like there are people right now doing research on like mealworms and roosters and blue whales and whatever like obviously blue whales are interesting, but like we study all sorts of animal life forms and we keep doing it.
Speaker 1:So sometimes people make this claim that like there's there's a limit to how much science you could do on humans and so it's unreasonable to believe that aliens might continue to do that. That doesn't square with me. For me, with the way that we conduct science on other life forms, it seems like we might continue to be interesting. And also there's this idea out there, at least based on the John Mack book, that maybe there are other things than just science going on with these abductions. Like maybe there's a genetic, not just research, but like genetic propagation component I've never used that phrase before, but it's actually like the least weird way of saying that.
Speaker 1:They're like collecting gametes from people, like sperm and eggs and making hybrid babies or just like more human babies. Maybe that stuff's all completely zany anyway, but it sort of opens the door to another realm of activity that isn't just research, yeah, yeah, um, also we left this out, but uh, it seems pretty clear based on some of the reporting about especially visitations of nuclear sites, that there's some sort of military analysis component to some of the visitations that they're like keeping an eye on us. They do tend to pop up disproportionately around our military installations. It's possible that's just because we record things more there and we've got people with high-tech sensors operating there.
Speaker 2:It's also possible doing intelligence. We could transition into the second question, I think.
Speaker 1:OK, great. Well, so let's talk about the cover up. How are you thinking about it and how does it make you feel?
Speaker 2:Do you?
Speaker 1:want to finish your train. You were on there first. No, just they may be conducting military intelligence research.
Speaker 2:I think that's a reasonable assumption, yeah yeah, I think that seems pretty clear that they're interested in military. I guess one of the so where these two questions tie in for me is that, like I don't, like I I feel like there's, I mean, I I'm pretty confident that there's a bunch more information that some people know and that is being withheld from broader civilization. And so you know, when I think about, when I'm thinking about the phenomenon, then that is sort of a like moment of frustration for me, that that then gets me sort of spinning off and thinking about the cover-up instead.
Speaker 2:Um, because, I don't know I guess the the like, how it makes me feel is like pretty, pretty angry and like pretty appalled and um, and also, I guess, like titillated and like excited on some level and it and like I, I, it does feel like it's like the wheels are coming off and like um, yeah, so that's why that's my baseline answer of how it makes me feel. It's like pretty pissed off and and like shocked and and appalled, um, like you, I'm not like good government guy, like I think government is cool and how we come together. Um, so it's really disturbing to think that some corners and some extra governmental entities are withholding basic reality from us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I've been thinking about that basic aspect a lot. Just why can't you tell us the simple, glossy thing on on top of it? I think the answer is because it just opens the rabbit hole and you have to go down it once you acknowledge that there's a real thing happening here. Um, it also seems like some people in these organizations are trying to acknowledge that basic reality, but that is a position I keep circling around.
Speaker 1:I understand the national security imperatives of keeping a bunch of the secret, but I full-heartedly reject the idea that the phenomenon itself at large has to be secret.
Speaker 1:I think that's deeply, deeply unfair and I get really upset about it too.
Speaker 1:Like I would like for presidents to just tell us we're working on this, but we gotta, we got to tell you that something's going on here and we would like the best scientists in the world to collaborate with us on figuring out what it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it seems like where we're going here is we're we're trying to get to a world where this is robustly scientifically investigated and like a big part of what the sort of curious apparatus of civilization is oriented toward and around and encountering and digging and explaining and exploding. There's so much interesting stuff here that it's really frustrating that they can't tell us anything and I guess I want to just ping this possibility which feels slim to me, but I think there's sort of some motivated reasoning behind that that this bunny hole goes way deeper than I want it to and I have sort of the vision of it where they're covering up craft and they're aliens that built this stuff and that's about it and that's like I think that might be kind of an optimistic vision of what they're covering up and certainly it seems like what was that Sorry?
Speaker 2:I agree. I think that is an optimistic view.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you alluded earlier to sort of a deeper complexity here that we don't have our hands around yet, and that seems right to me, based on the little that I know about Valet's work and other people who have spent a really long time with this, who walk away thinking this is way stranger than just aliens and spaceships, understanding of consciousness and certainly physics, and that stuff alone broadens and deepens the mystery in a way that just saying aliens are here might not do justice to. But then there's this, this like lower percentage, like every now and then you hear people say things like uh, you and I've been calling this like the breakaway civilization hypothesis, that there's like a very robust System going on somewhere where this like Corporated yeah yeah, it is the most disturbing and it feels like the lowest probability.
Speaker 1:But I, when I hear when I say that I hear myself and I do I just want it to be low probability or do I genuinely think that is to me falls, maybe not as evidence but as like a tick in the column of it being possible that there's like a really scary deep component to this situation that they really don't know how to explain to us, or they're worried that we can't even confront, or maybe that the deep component itself is obstructing information about. So I don't want that to be true, but I'm just like putting a little dot on the board as a fact that it's, as an indication that it's possible. Like the blanket secrecy seems to me as to be potentially an indication that the powers that be think we can't handle the deeper truth of the situation. It may be that they just don't think we can handle the regular level truth that, like the alien thing they think will blow our minds and destabilize the world.
Speaker 1:And I think there's some good work to suggest, like by those political scientists in late toward the end of the Kane book, have a pretty good theory about why governments might not want to reveal this stuff because, for one thing, it undermines their earthly authority and I kind of buy that idea.
Speaker 1:I also think, for what it's worth, that there's a strong element of just inertia here. Like it has been secret for a really long time and they don't have a really strong reason to make it public, so it's going to keep being secret until they have a really strong reason to make it public. So it's going to keep being secret until they have a really strong reason to make it public. And I think we're tiptoeing toward getting that strong reason just by the fact that people like you and I think this is real when five years ago we didn't think there was anything to see here. That's some indication, because we're relative newbies to this field Like we should say that there are people who have been deep in this for 30 years and there are a lot of people like us who are just waking up to its reality at all.
Speaker 2:Philistines right, that's the word I mean, I used to go back in like 2011. I would go on the mufon website like regularly either MUFON or NICAP, I can't remember which one and just like look at the latest abduction cases or UFO sightings that people submit.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:You could look at it, so I would drop in on that every now and then.
Speaker 2:I mean, I am still like the co-sign, I'm also a newcomer to this field, but I don't know. I like it a lot and I have for a long time. I have a question for you, so, um, thinking about, like a really, and especially like disturbing um or insid to you about the cover up, um, but feel free to pick a, make your own adventure, if you want, uh, one that, like they've the cover up in order to stay covered up, has like killed people, um, or yeah, like threatened people, like ruined lives, left a trail of you know um, just destroyed or murdered people, potentially, um, and that's something that, like david grush has, has intimated um, or the idea and actually I'm going to throw into that basket an even crazier idea which is Nah, never mind, I was going to talk about psionics and children and, like you know, kind of like I don't know, kidnap people into some field of blah, blah, blah, let's just say that like killing people to keep the cover up.
Speaker 1:Or the idea that maybe they have made scientific breakthroughs and maybe maybe like really big ones and have been keeping them secret for possibly decades, which is an idea that, like serious people, put put forth yeah, it's really hard to grapple with that second thing, because you just look around and wonder where those things are, like it's not that we haven't made amazing advances in the last 20 years, but physicists will tell you that the the advances at the edge of, like experimental science have been less amazing than some of our just like internet social tech, uh, which is weird, like it's. It's strange that we have borderline agGI and we're still like stuck with no unified theory of physics. Yeah, uh, so especially the gap between looking at these things and having expert pilots describe them as like nothing that we have anything close to technologically, uh, and then just like our regular prosaic physical science, like the outer edge of which is being able to land rockets, which we couldn't do five years ago, that's like that's weird. It feels like, to be honest, it's a little hard to buy the idea that we've like gotten a lot of tech and like secretly, we have anti-gravity, but we're just, for some reason, not using it. Like there are lots of places where we would want to use this stuff, and I think, not least like we have two active hot wars happening right now and I, you know, maybe we are using tech like this in ways that we can't see.
Speaker 1:Excuse me, but that seems sort of unlikely to me. It also feels like odd that we do sorry, have a lot of hoopla around what we consider to be our like edge tech, like whatever the new are we at like F-18s or F-35s or F-16s I don't know what the latest breed of jet is that we have but we spend billions of dollars building them. They're like a billion bucks each or something, and we're kind of ooh-rah about that. We make movies about them, and it just seems weird to me that then all would have to be a psy-op on some level if we did have this deeper way more powerful text, it's just completely separate.
Speaker 2:It just doesn't even know about this other progress that's happening, and I think the argument would be that, like if we did have something you know, uh, really, really powerful, that it would be a like a true trump card, like break glass in case of emergency kind of thing that you would not burn on a simple geopolitical opportunity or threat like Ukraine or even Iraq and Afghanistan. That it's like something like if we did have something it would be, so there would have been never anything like it in game theory or military theory. So you hold off until you really need it. I don't know.
Speaker 1:There's a solid analogy there in nuclear weapons. We have a lot of nuclear weapons. We do not use nuclear weapons.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Where were you going?
Speaker 2:to go. I can't remember now Something about the cover-up.
Speaker 1:I did want to say I think lives have been ruined. I think there's a pretty clear trail of breadcrumbs suggesting that that's been the case, which sucks, obviously sucks, and it's another reason that the reveal disclosure is so hard, because it's presumably going to be the beginning of a long truth and reconciliation project, but we feel like may may take multiple decades to complete because there's so much bullshit and bad behavior under all of this and I just don't trust nobody.
Speaker 2:It won't come out fully ever. I don't think I mean mean. So yeah, a few more thoughts. One one I don't buy. I don't think that I buy um slow disclosure. I'm like slow disclosure curious. But the idea that we're in some like kind of managed campaign and that, like some of the public figures that we see are are assets and I I don't.
Speaker 2:I it there's just so many indications that there's like a sweaty, freaked out scramble happening, and I don't think that they're that.
Speaker 2:I don't think that they're that organized in that direction yet.
Speaker 2:I think they have lots of plans of how to keep it secret, but not, I don't think plans about how to get it out. I don't think plans about how to get it out. Then the next thing is that what it seems to me is going on is that there's like two factions of people with this information and people close to it, or you know, two main factions. One of them wants to keep it covered up and one of them thinks it's time to to reveal it, and it seems like we're seeing a struggle play out between these two factions and it like I don't know, this is probably naive, but like I kind of like disclosures, chances right now, uh, for some some kind of of disclosure um, yeah, just the fact that schumer put non-human intelligence in his legislation last year, even though they didn't pass that legislation, just suggests that there are, yeah, people trying to make this happen and that disclosures got a shot and that somebody knows something, because humor doesn't put that in there if it's just a total fishing expedition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, suggests to me that the circle of people who know that something's happening has gotten wider in the last five years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Okay, last thing I'll say about the cover up is that that I my hope would be, my, my like fantasy would be that there is a um, that there's a room somewhere of um, like a multidisciplinary group of people, experts trying to figure out how we disclose and like, how we talk about it, what language we use.
Speaker 2:What, then, are the like diplomatic implications, how do we help society onboard this and how do we help individuals onboard this? And what I'm basically thinking about is, like you know, the movie arrival, where they go and find Amy Adams, the linguist at the beginning of the movie, and are like we need a language expert, like I want that, but I also want like, or also, and also like, when the government brings in like filmmakers to be like, imagine terrorist attacks for us, I want that, but I want it for, like psychologists, like I don't know, I don't know anthropologists, story tellers, folklore experts, like writers and artists, and it's got to be a small room and I don't know who you get to be there, but I want Tom DeLonge, george Lucas, ken Burns, I don't know. I don't know who you get, but I think that that room needs to exist and if anybody's pulling that room together, it's probably the White House.
Speaker 1:And you're speculating that this room might exist, or you're just yeah.
Speaker 1:I feel like there's a chance, maybe that there's, yeah, I I think probably no, but yeah, I think probably no also, but I think I think they're not going to be able to go ahead. I just think it's needed. I totally agree with that, uh, and I I sort of uh had the thought, while you were saying that, that this action that we're taking right now is part of, like, the invisible college attempt to replicate that or to create that out here, and I think delong has definitely been doing that himself, like trying to tell the story through multiple media formats and encourage other people to do that, and I think there are other people on this mission, which rocks, um, but I agree with you that it would be great if it were coming from inside the house. What would be ideal is if people close to this information could share it in some way. That would allow storytellers to spread the word. But also that vision would require a dual citizenship track. Right, like a second class citizens we're all second class citizens who don't know the secret and then, like a couple artists, get invited to be first class citizens who know the real thing and then, like, slowly tell us all about it.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I first of all that that kind of annoys me, even though I think you're right that it would be a good idea. But secondly, I don't think they're going to be capable of doing that until they've ripped the band-aid off, like until we have at least gotten to the level where we all know that this is real. But at that point, when they've said we have craft from non-human intelligence, maybe it would make sense to set up a presidential commission to start exploring this stuff with psychological and anthropological and narrative elements. At that point society is going to want to do that, I think, and so it would make sense for government to have a role in that. But the CIA hiring George Lucas in the meantime, although it sounds cool, seems both unlikely and a little bit unfair to me, although again, I agree with your basic assertion that it would probably help.
Speaker 2:Well, somebody's going to have to have this conversation with themselves, I guess, guess, and that's speech writer, like whoever's writing the speech where this gets. We're presumably, like you know, eventually a president is going to give a speech about this, and like, what the fuck do you say?
Speaker 1:you know, yeah, and that's a big reason that nobody's said it so far. We've heard a couple people make this point, I think like not least john lear, probably in the 80s, made this point that uh, it's really hard to think of the next sentence. Basically, like we uh, we know that they're here and dot dot, dot question mark, we don't know how to defend you from them. We don't know what they want or where they're from. We don't know how to defend you from them. We don't know what they want or where they're from, we don't know how their technology works. Anyway, over to you. Civilization Like that feels.
Speaker 1:That feels like the kind of thing that a government, almost definitionally, can't do because its role is to protect and inform and support us. And if it were to inform us that it couldn't protect and support us, then like that would be sort of self-defeating. I guess I did want to touch finally on is how you're feeling about the conventional skeptical wisdom, which I think is it's distinct from the coverup, but it follows from the coverupup because the cover-up has been effective, basically, and it may be the case that we're not running psyops now, but if you read into this a little bit, like you and I have you quickly find that the Air Force and probably the CIA and other bodies of the government have engaged in disinformation campaigns about this over the years to make it seem like there's no there there? Swamp gas is like the most famous meme in this space. But you know there are lots of examples of discrediting the general idea of this, this area of inquiry, and that has resulted in a world where scientists are, like, broadly disinterested in this and major mainstream media is disinterested and doesn't want to cover it.
Speaker 1:People say the word taboo a lot. The stigma is real and then you and I and everybody else who is interested in this bumps into this regularly, just talking to friends or random people online. How are you thinking about the gulf between the people who are in this subject and a little read into what's going on and the people who are still sort of benignly or snarkily oblivious?
Speaker 2:I don't know, man.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, I don't. I guess where I am right now today is like I don't have time for them. What frustrates me is people not finding it interesting. More than anything I've realized, and I think if one were to read just a little bit, just like, dip your toe in, not even very far, um, I think it quickly becomes like the most interesting thing in the whole world and um, so what frustrates me is is when people don't aren't aren't even interested in it. Um, and I have a few friends that that drive me batty there. Um, I think that they're, you know, gonna have to eat crow and like I think there's gonna be a bunch of stuff. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think this year is gonna have some new twists and turns and probably not full disclosure, but like I think those people will come around eventually, um, and I get so pissed off trying to convince them that I'm kind of divesting from that.
Speaker 2:And the one other thing that I'll say is that something that I've found is kind of a coping mechanism for me in this, but also just really fun and a kind of an entry point and a way to communicate with those people, is that I found that if I bring up ufos, people kind of will, will shut down or it's easy to laugh it off.
Speaker 2:But if you bring up like ghosts or psychics or um, pre, uh, precognition, people have a lot to say, like basically everybody has even if it's just my cats seem to know when I'm coming home, like pretty much everybody has something, and that you can then get in there and then expand from there and also you get to hear people's stories, which is fun. And also then you get people just talking about like crazy unexplained occurrences in their lives and kind of grappling with this idea that we don't know as much as we as we think we do yeah, that specific thing is something I feel, especially in this topic area, like we've always paid lip service to, but it's really hard to actually embrace and feel like our, our ignorance.
Speaker 1:It's like something your earliest science teachers tell you we don't know everything, uh, and they give you like the litany of times the scientists were wrong and we discovered some new reality. But as a like felt experience, the sensation that we do know just about everything is like really hard to shake and it takes like a high energy activation level to change us into that next space of thinking. Oh damn, we maybe really don't. But when you talk about another angle in, I think one that I've been using is uh, weird shit that we can't explain scientifically, at the edge of science, like the double slit experiment where we can't decide if light is a photon or a wave right, that's a great angle in.
Speaker 1:And uh, kelly chase on the rabbit hole has used like the big bang as or like dark energy.
Speaker 1:It's just like a great avenue in, like oh, you think we understand the universe.
Speaker 1:No, we don't know what 94% of it is. Like the big bang is just like oh, it just started in an explosion, we don't know why, and it doesn't really even make sense to ask what happened before that. So that's ridiculous, and when you start pulling at the threads of our scientific model of the world and realizing how incomplete it is, that kind of can help maybe open the door to this. I think people really don't want to grapple with the idea of the cover up because it's deeply uncomfortable and it like suggests a conspiracy model of government that we always wanted to think wasn't true and I spend most of my life thinking isn't true. Um, and then I think the the worst or the hardest thing for people is getting to actual experiencers, experiences and talking about like full-on abductions, like that's something like people have deeply coded as fake, and, uh, it's like really hard to convince them that that stuff is real, even as they're getting on board with these physical objects being made by non-human intelligence.
Speaker 2:I just had that this week I had that experience. I had dinner with a couple of friends and I was talking about this stuff and one of them said basically yeah, my problem with abductions is just like every time you know, there are people who say they've been abducted, but like every one of them seems like they were pretty cracked before the abduction happened and like that's just not the case when you dig into it.
Speaker 1:Broadly debunked. Yeah, that's another thing that John Mac book does really well is he selects the group of people he's even going to talk to, after subjecting them to a barrage of psychological tests, to just pick the normalist ones people who do not have any co-occurring psycho psychopathologies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting. It's a, it's a long haul and it's crazy and weird in some places, but then so is this whole subject. Um, thank you for taking so much of your time to to go down this crazy path with me today. Would you like to like Coda with a strange story or a thing you've been thinking about recently, or do you want to just put a pin in this for the next time we have this conversation?
Speaker 2:Man, I wish I had one. I don't. I haven't learned any. I haven't heard any new crazy. Uh, oh, actually no, I got one little um cattle mutilation story for you from the dolan book. Uh, great, it's like I'm gonna screw up some of the details here, but the gist of it is it's like it's like minnesota, wisconsin or somewhere like that. It's the dead of winter and they find a cow in a. It's a. Everything is covered in snow, except this perfect circle like 40 feet in diameter with a mutilated cow in the middle of this snowless circle and the cow has, you know, all the classic, all the classic mutilation stuff, like drained of blood and there's no blood anywhere. And it says, you know, just organs removed with incredible precision.
Speaker 1:Um, and then, uh, they like I think the cops get in a helicopter or something and they find like several miles away, just like a ton more of these circles of melted, of missing snow wow just a cool image yeah, and yet another thing that pings this file of imagery that we always assumed was silly, like the beam, sort of like cylindrical, conical beam of light coming down from one of these saucer things, because we grew up with that iconography. It's like easy to dismiss because you've seen it in cartoons since you were a kid. So the idea that that might actually be pointing toward a real physical phenomenon is unsettling and kind of exciting in some ways, although not for the cows. Well, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate this. I hope we can do it again because this is an endlessly fascinating topic and should be a really interesting couple years yeah, man really appreciate the work you're doing here at the show thank you, bro, talk to you later.
Speaker 1:Bye.