Camp Gagnon - Evidence of Aliens in Ancient Texts | Dr. Dal Prete

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Ivano Dal Prete is a History professor at Yale University and an active astronomer with a specialty in Saturn and Mars. Today, he is in the tent to talk about how older civilizations viewed life on other planets. Ivano is the co-discoverer of several asteroids and currently working on a book about other Earths in the sky, and the fascinating cultural history of extra-terrestrial life. WELCOME TO CAMP. 🏕️ JOIN S'MORE CAMP INNER SANCTUM HERE: https://camp.beehiiv.com/ Shoutout to our sponsors : SculptNation: https://sculptnation.com/Camp Huel: https://huel.com/camp Prizepicks : https://prizepicks.onelink.me/ivHR/CAMP TIMECODES 0:00 Intro 1:16 Philosopher’s View Of The Cosmos + Pythagoras 10:40 Philosophical Schools + Atomists 13:17 Aristotle 17:25 Plutarch 21:10 Lucian’s Writings Of People On The Moon 22:19 Christian Influence On Philosophy + Aristotle’s teachings 28:02 Church’s View Of Other Worlds 30:11 Vorilong Theory + C.S. Lewis + Nicholas of Cusa 35:41 Leonardo Da Vinci Moon Theory 39:10 Galileo’s Anonymous Book + Moon Civilization Theory 44:08 Galileo’s Space Civilization Theory 51:36 Dialogue On Plurality Of Worlds 55:03 UFO’s In Texts 56:59 Plato’s Atlantis + World's Inside The Earth 59:47 Who Was Killed For Their Ideas? + Christopher Columbus Theory 1:03:52 Theory On Origin Of Life + Pope's Statement On Alien Life 1:06:22 Did Scholars Write Of Visitors From Other Worlds? 1:07:47 Thomas Payne + The Book Of Mormon 1:10:31 Kepler + The Martian Chronicles 1:13:20 Isacc Newton + Robert Boyle 1:17:30 Observing Mars Canals 1:34:05 Science Fiction Influence On Space + Wernher Von Braun 1:45:42 Speculations About Life On Mars 1:54:44 Dragon’s and Basilisk’s + Sailor’s Seeing Merman 2:00:51 Importance Of Context

If there are other intelligent beings on other worlds, they must be able to sing. God gave us another chance. He sent us Christ. So what does it mean? The rest of the universe lives in harmony, and we are the only foreign and world. This is Ivano Delprete. He's an astronomer and lecturer at Yale with a specialty and uncovering ancient texts. And today, he's going to take us through every medieval document that has any reference to other worlds. That's right. Back in the day, everybody talked about other worlds. and they even speculated about human-type creatures that might live on these distant planets, even maybe visiting Earth.

He even explains what the most famous scientist and thinkers of that time thought about aliens and why they actually kind of believed in other worlds. Aristotle, Isaac Newton, Da Vinci, Galileo, the founding fathers, even the Pope, all wrote personal thoughts about aliens, Atlantis, and other worlds. What did they see? What did they know? And why did they write so much about it? Well, today, wonder no more. That's right, because we're going to be going through everything.

And on top of that, Ivano is a beautiful, handsome Italian man. I trust him. So, without further ado, sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Ivano del Prerte. Thank you, sir. I pronounced it in my perfect Italian accent. You are a professor at Yale. You're a PhD in the history of science.

Is that a fair? Yeah, that's fair. Okay. You study ancient text. for a living. I think that's reasonable to say. Maybe not ancient, but definitely old. Old texts. That's right. Going through old texts and pouring through them. And while we were talking on the phone, you mentioned something to me that I did not expect that I'm very curious to ask you about. What are the instances of extraterrestrials, aliens, UFOs, or other worlds that are

mentioned in the ancient or old text that you've researched? Okay, so when it comes to existence of other worlds, and I'm not saying extraterrestrial walking among us, or roaming through our skies. But when it comes to the idea that other worlds like the earth with inhabitants like us, smart, intelligent people could exist, this goes back to the Greek antiquity. As far as I know, the idea was first formulated around 450 BC. The first time that you see it put down on paper, so as to speak. So it may have existed even beyond that. That is unlikely. You know why?

Because before you can conceive of other worlds like the Earth, you need to conceive of the Earth as a body in space where there are other similar bodies. You need to conceive the universe in a way kind of similar. to how you conceive it. That is a geometrical space where you have the earth that is kind of suspended in a vacuum

or in the void or in space and the other celestial bodies like the Sam or the Moon are somewhat similar to the earth itself. And this idea, this way of conceiving the universe was conceived

in the ancient Greek world in the 5th century before the quarantine era, around between 450 and 400 BCE. And... Did the Egyptians not have an idea, the ancient Egyptians have an idea of these celestial bodies as being other places,

or do they just see them as sort of dots on the fabric of Earth? Yeah, much more like that. I see. Much more like that. So you really have to develop a certain conception of the cosmos that is based on geometry. on geometical bodies, on geometical shapes. And this was the characteristics of the Greeks or certain areas of the Greek world.

And when I said the Greece could be their colonies in southern Italy or in what is today Western Turkey that were inhabited by Greeks in antiquity. And this was really conceived at a time. And the first, as far as I know, the first philosopher who apparently talked about the possibility of the existence of a different earth like ours, possibly with inhabitants, was a philosopher of the School of Pythagoras,

around 450 BCE. And it is not surprising because Pythagoras, historically, or according to the legend, has been the guy who thought that geometry and numbers are the key to understanding the universe. So our idea that you had to use mathematics and geometry in order to

understand the universe, which is what really Galileo said that you need to mathematics physics. At this time

there was Aristotle's physics that was not mathematical. It was qualitative. It was qualitative, not quantitative. I see.

But he said, you need to quantify. You need to use numbers. The idea that you have to use mathematics went back

to the school of these semi-mythical Pythagoras, the guy of the Pythagoras. And one of his, one of philosophers of this school,

this philolaus, was the first one to imagine the earth as orbiting the center of the universe instead of being at the center. Apparently, he had not realized yet that the earth is a sphere. He probably conceived of the earth

as a flat disk, like, and we leave on one of the faces. The thickness, probably one third diameter. And he thought that it orbited around the center of the universe and that there must be another body for reasons of symmetry probably or of balance opposite to it orbiting also the center of the universe but since we live on this face we can never

see this anti-earth as he called it and as far as it possible to understand because we don't have complete works we have fragments and citations from other authors this anti-earth was conceived as just another Earth. So they still hadn't figured out that the Earth's sphere that happened about 50 years later, but they were still putting it into orbit around another center of the universe. And they were already conceiving

of the possibility of a similar bodies with inhabitants. Interesting. But he just thought it was another Earth just like Earth. Yes. That's what is possible to infer from the sources. And more or less probably in the same years, there was another philosophers in Greece proper an oxagoras

who was teaching that the moon was Earth and that the sun was just a fiery stone. Was justified stone? A fiery stone. Yes, a very bright and burning stone. And this idea that the Earth is Earth

that is like the Earth is made of the same elements and again we don't you don't have his his own work on this but we have later quotations and accounts

that suggests that he also imagined that there could be other beings like us on the moon and what year is that that's we are talking about 450, 420 BCE Now, yeah, by the time, we don't have to think that there were ideas that were commonly accepted. They were kind of weird, certainly.

Actually, he was tried, apparently, for his ideas. Because traditionally the moon was venerated as a divinity and the sun as well, and traditional religion was considered important for the cohesion of the city and of the population. And so to say that the moon is just another mass that is material, like, earth is heretical. I would not use this term, really. It has to do with Christianity. We don't say it is heretical, but we know that he was tried because of this.

Now he probably was tried because he was closest to the most important political man in Athens at the time, Pericles. And they decided to attack Pericles by attacking this guy who was close to him that was vulnerable. And they couldn't attack Pericles because he was... it was too powerful. So Anaxagoras was sentenced to death but Pericles had

his sentence commuted into exile. You got sentenced to death for saying that there's people on the moon? Yeah. Or

that the moon was another Earth. And it was material in some way. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And we also know

that because of a book that philosopher Plato wrote about a few decades later, the famous apology of Socrates,

where he wants to show how ignorant those who wanted to have Socrates sent us to death, his beloved master, where? And so one of the accusers said, Socrates, and you support, and you said that the moon is earth and that the sun is a fiery stone. And socrates say, what are you talking about? This is not me. You dambu. This is an oxagoras. Everyone knows that. You can go behind the theater where they are the booksellers and for a few drachmas. You can buy his books. That was not me.

He's already dead. Yeah. And if you really want to have something against this, go to the booksellers that are selling the books of an exagoras, that are full of these kinds of things. So that was about the year 400 BCE. But the fact that the ancient sources wanted us to know about this trial, it was that it was extraordinary. It was not normal at all.

And in the following centuries, there were different philosophies. there were different philosophical schools discussing the possible existence of other inhabited worlds and they had all kind of different opinions. For example, the important school of the

atomists, they thought that the universe is infinite and eternal and that everything is made by the cohesion and the formation of atoms

of different size and different shape. The atomists. Atoms. And who were these atomists and where were they? The first went on atomis was a certain Democritus. He lived more or less

in the same time of Anaxagoras. The most famous one is probably a certain Epicurus, hence the Pecureans. Because their ideas was that everything is made by atoms and void and their combination. The universe is eternal and infinite.

There is no we are God or God-given law. And so what you had to do in your life? Well, try to live happily because there is no God-given law. There is not God-given ethics. Just try to live the best way you can. Interesting.

This is how we get Epicurean ideas. That's right. I see. And they also thought that since the universe is infinite and everything is made by aggregation of atoms, there are infinite worlds that continuously form. into space

and then forms of life sprung up on these worlds and then they run their course and then they dissolve and the earth is just one of them and these were the atomists they were also important because and fam was because of a Roman poet

certain Lucretius who wrote a wonderful scientific poem more or less in the time of Julius Caesar called On the Nature of Things and he was an atomist and he wrote this poem in Latin and some

Somehow, this absolutely atheistic poem survived through the Middle Ages until in the early 1400s, a Florentine scholar discovered a copy in an abbey. Oh, wow. In the library of an abbey. And the poem is... It explains how the universe works according to autumistic principles and that there is no Creator God and that the Earth is just one of countless worlds that continuously form throughout time and space.

Interesting. And that was one of the most important philosophical schools of the antiquity. The opposite was the big guy called Aristotle, who lived about 350 BCE. And he was of the opposite opinion. He thought that you can nearly have one word like the earth. And he supported this year with a series of reasoning, but the easiest to understand for us is that he said, well, you sit down and you see the heavens revolve around you.

The universe revolve around you. Clearly, the universe is not infinite. Otherwise, it could not revolve around you. It would take an infinite time. Right. So it has to have a limited size. Right. What can be the shape of the universe?

Spherical? Yeah. Looks like it's a sphere. Now, a sphere has only one center. Where is the center of the universe? seems like us. Heavy things tend to fall down. He knew that the Earth was a sphere.

It was a trivial notion by his time already. He gives three proofs that the Earth is a sphere that were repeated in every medieval book that you studied as a university student. But he says, sorry if I had to bother you with this evidence of such a trivial notion that the Earth is a sphere, but for reason for completeness,

okay, I will give these demonstrations that the Earth's just fear. And so if you go to the other side of the Earth, it's not like things kept going down. I mean, they could go down, but actually they go towards a center. So there must be the center of the universe. So the Earth is motionless at the center of the universe

just because these are heavy bodies tend to fall. So if you had by hypothesis, another earth in the sky, it will just fall down to the center of the universe and we'll have a bigger earth. Hmm. Sounds right. Makes sense. I mean, each accept his assumptions that are reasonable. He will start his chain of logical deductions and he basically invented logics as a discipline. He wrote a book about logics. Right. And he will lead you to these conclusions. And he thought he could, he had to, he had to had demonstrated that logically that you cannot have other words, only one. But that was Aristotle and there were a lot of different schools of thoughts. Hey guys, we're going to take a break really

quick because we got camp updates. That's right. We have amazing stuff going on here at the campsite and all sorts of crazy things going on in history. 1941, Hitler took command of the German army. Whoa, 1997. Titanic premiered in the theaters. 1777, George Washington led troops into the winter quarters of Valley Forge. All of this stuff is fascinating. There's all these explanations for everything that's going on in our newsletter. That's right. That's where I learned all this. And I just dropped this information anytime I'm hanging out.

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I appreciate you brought that up on our first date. I know I was talking about my family and how many siblings I have and that my sister is doing pills, but thanks for bringing up of that interesting fact about Hitler. You could be the most interesting person on every date, get laid easier, and make more friends if you subscribe to the newsletter. Not only that, I'm sure you've seen, I've been wearing merch, I've been wearing sick, brand new merch on episodes of Flagrant. I'm sitting right next to 50 cent in this picture right here, wearing brand new merch. And you're going to get first dibs if you subscribe to the newsletter. That's right. You're going to be finding out about all the merch and on top of that

2025. I'm going on the road. I'm going to be torn all over the United States of America continentally. Sorry, Alaska. But if you want to get first access to those tickets, go to the newsletter. Everything that's going on in the camp world, in my world and in our world is going on in the newsletter. Smoor Camp, click on the link in the description below, and I'll see you there. Let's get back to the show. A few centuries later, a Greek writer, certain Plutarch, who lived during the Roman Empire, wrote a fantastic book, a dialogue called On the Face in the Sphere of the...

moon, in the orb of the moon. And so there are a few friends that meet for dinner, and as it happened the time, women cooked and do all the work and they were free or enslaved people and they were free to converse and discuss about philosophical questions.

And so they start discussing about the nature of the moon. And we have different philosophical schools that debate. There is the Aristotelian, there is the Picurian, but the thesis that the author himself supports is that there is not only one center of gravity in the universe. There must be more, and that the moon must have his center of gravity,

and then the moon is probably made of the same elements as the Earth just in different proportions, and that could be inhabitants on the moon. And so these ideas circulated a lot. Now, for Plutarch in Rome, this was not sacrilegious, because they didn't at this time except the Greek. Greek philosophy that this was some type of divine being? No, they had no problems. I mean, religion was important, keeping the traditional piety and devotion towards the traditional

gods was important. But these philosophers could easily accommodate the traditional gods because the Greek and Roman gods are just very powerful beings that happen to be immortal. They are not even eternal because they are born. The Roman and Greek gods do not create the universe, do not make. the universe, do not rule the universe. They exist as a... Yeah, they're just super far as a being. In the Iliad at a certain point, there are the gods that are fighting against each other because some support the Trojans and some support the Greeks.

And it's a mess. At a certain point, Jupiter really, Zeus actually, really got upset about this. So he summons then on the top on the Olympus and tell them to stop doing that because the sword of Troy has decided already. They are the fate, which is above them. and there's nothing they can do about it. Troy will fall, whatever you do, because there is this fate that is more powerful than us,

even more powerful than me. And so they just had to accommodate these super powerful beings, not a big deal, but Plato, for example, is already monotheist. He thinks that the universe was created out of initial chaos by a benevolent

creator, because it's so geometer. in the universe. He also followed the... He studied with the Pythagorean philosophers. So he also thought that geometry and mathematics are the key to understanding the universe. And he saw a mind behind the universe that understood mathematics and geometry.

And so this must be the creator. I see. And that was Plato? Yeah, that was Plato. And the creator made the universe according to mathematical principles. He made spheres. He made geometrical shapes. And so we have this discussion about the possibility of the existence of other worlds.

There are mostly academic discussion. Interplanetary travel was not in the cards. And to my knowledge, no one ever thought that we could be visited by extraterrestrial life. But there are words that we could call science fiction that describe travels to other worlds. Yeah, there is another Greek author. more or less in the same time as Plutarch, Lucian, and he writes satirical writings, really. And he uses what looks like science fiction to criticize his own society, which science fiction has always done. And so he imagines that someone travels to the moon, and he found other people on the moon and empires,

and on the other celestial bodies and the other planets, he finds other people around, and so on. It doesn't mean that they thought that you could be visited by them. This was a completely flight of fantasy. Does he say in the text or in the dialogue like, oh, this is purely

an exercise and philosophy? No, it doesn't say, as far as I remember, it doesn't say that exclusively, I don't remember, you know? But the thing, it was always understood that it was a flight of fantasy. There is no source to me

knowledge at this point that talks about the possibility of us being visited by extraterrestrial beings. Now, an interesting thing is that all of these philosophers were studied even by Christians when Christianity starts spreading. And so the possibility of other worlds is also discussed by the fathers of the church and by other Christian authors. Why? Because pagan philosophers that they read talked about it.

And they expressed their opinion. and the existence of other worlds or like they are of could be imagined in very different ways so some authors imagined other worlds not as existing at the same time in space but as a successions of worlds in time

so you have this universe at a certain point it grows it stabilizes but a certain point it will dissolve again to chaos and then it will reform again into a more ordained world where you can have again an earth with life. And so there will be other people. There will be other life forms in time,

distinct in time, rather than coexisting at the same time in different place. And these are the pagan philosophers. Even a Christian philosopher, like origin, one of the first Christian philosophers, he told us that there was this cyclical universe. Does that in any way counteract the belief or the, you know, Christian dogma at the time?

That's a very interesting question. And if you don't mind, I can't do that a little later. Sure. So a very interesting thing is that at a certain point, clergyman in the church started thinking seriously about the possibility of other words. And this happened when Aristotle became important in European universities, starting from the 1200s.

And they read Aristotle, mostly from translations from the Arabic, by Islamic philosophers like Ibn Sina, a person that lived around here 1000, or Ibn Rusht, who lived in Muslim Spain about 150 years later. And since Aristotle discusses the problem of other worlds, they also do. And so this problem was discussed. in European universities. Now, Islamic theologians had big problems

with Aristotle's demonstration that you can have only one word. Because Aristotle thought the nature is what it is. And you cannot have other worlds, otherwise you incur into logical contradictions. And even God must be self-consistent. So there is a supreme being in Aristotle,

but it cannot change the layers of nature. This is a big no-no for Christians, for Jews and for Muslims. God is outside nature. He makes nature. He can do whatever he wants. If he decides that the speed of light is 40 miles per hour, he can't do so.

It will be a different universe. Of course, he wants to make a universe where we can live. And so he made different rules. But it is a choice. He decides that the universe is like this. And so Islamians theologians and then later Christian theologians argued

that no, God, if you want, can make other worlds, and maybe he did. Maybe he did only one, but you must allow for the possibility that there must be other world, because this is within the capabilities of God. Right. It would restrain God's omnipotence to say, oh, he can only make one world. God will not be omnipotent again. Now, there is an important date in a very important date in the history of medieval science,

which is 1277. and at the time there was a lot of turmoil about these teachings by Aristotle that were taught in universities in Christian Europe. Many of them looked really radical. And so the Pope orders an investigation and the Archibishop of Paris produces a list of Aristotelian thesis that must not be taught, that must be condemned. One of the thesis was that the universe is eternal does not create. Well, it is understandable. Right. The Christian God made the universe.

Another thesis is that there was never a first man. For Aristotle, the earth is eternal, and all the forms of life and the species are roots eternal. But we need Adam. We need Adam. I mean, or someone that you can call Adam, right? And maybe there was, which is now what many Catholic theologians think, there was maybe evolution, but at a certain point there was this being

that received an immortal soul and consciousness and consciousness and intelligence and it was no longer an animal he received a spark of God there must be

someone that you can call Adam and another of these days that were condemned is that there cannot be other worlds on what grounds because God

can make other worlds so he cannot say that it is impossible for other worlds to exist Oh, I see. Oh, wow. So they say you need creation, you need Adam. And you need to allow the possibility, at least, that other worlds can exist.

That's interesting. So it was the early church hierarchy that was almost aiding this idea that we have to be open to this, that we have to be open to other worlds. It is very counterintuitive to us. It is one of the other things that I want to debunk. It was not me. I mean, it has been known for a long time. Okay. But I feel like there's a streak within Christianity, at least amongst people I would talk to that would say,

God created humanity specifically and specially, and we are his divine creation, and there is no other creation because we are his chosen people. And this is like a modern idea. I've heard people say that it seems like to be in contradiction to what the early church was saying, which was be open to the idea. I mean, this idea that you talked about actually is contradicted by the revelation, because God made other beings that are not humans and that they are intelligent beings. What are angels? But I guess they exist in some type of, you know, ephemeral or I guess some type of other liminal space. They exist in the heavens or they exist with God outside of time, outside of reality.

This was not what was, what was said at the time. When they said other worlds, they meant other places like the earth, somewhere else. And the idea of other worlds implied the existence of intelligent life on these words. Because the idea was that God

would not make another world just to leave it empty. Right? So there must be these other worlds. And the idea of the possibility of the existence of other worlds, worlds in a time when every philosopher was an Aristotelian, basically, was kept alive by the church for theological reasons.

So most natural philosopher would write, okay, let's see how other worlds could in theory exist. And they will give you a list and they will have long discussions of how other worlds exist, but some of them will conclude the but, of course, this is just an account. academic exercise, God can make other world, but he made only one for a range of reasons. But not everyone said the same. And actually, theologians, more than natural philosophers, took the idea seriously. So, for example, in the 1400s, there was one of the preeminent theologians of the time,

a French called Vorilong, who wrote a theological treatise. And in this theological treatise, he also addresses the problem of the existence. of other worlds. He considered that as probable, it is likely that God could have created as many other worlds as he wanted. And he starts speculating on the inhabitants

of these other worlds. What he says is that, of course, this is speculation because there is no way you can know about them. Space travel was not in the cars. Radio astronomy was not in the cars. There was no way we can communicate with them. He said that explicitly, unless some angels come down and

tell us about them because the revelation does not say anything about them and natural philosophy can only allow for their existence we don't have any strong evidence but their existence seems likely but then there is a problem a big problem for the Christian theology if there are other intelligent people what does it mean to be intelligent for Christian theology it means that you can choose between good and evil

God makes Adam and Eve and plants the tree of the gooder and evil in the Garden of Eden because Adam and Eve must be able to make a choice. He tells them, don't touch these tree, don't eat because it is not good. They must and he leave them free to make this choice. They did their own choice a certain point and humankind fell. but if there are other intelligent beings on other worlds, they must be able to sing. What if they sing?

God gave us another chance. He sent us Christ who incarnated on the earth as a human being to save us from our sins and gave a possibility of redemption. And being God good, it must have given a possibility of redemption even to them. So what does it mean?

That Christ must continually reincarnate and be crucified another world to save them? Or is it possible that they never sinned in the first place? Yeah. And this is the possibility that he takes refuge into. Maybe the rest of the universe lives in harmony with the creation and with the plan of God, and we are the only fallen world.

Wow, that's a fun theory. Yeah, now, if you are into classic science fiction, in 1938, C.S. Lewis, who was a colleague of Tolkien at Oxford published a science fiction book called Out of the Silent Planet. It is about human beings traveling to Mars

and they found there a world that has never fallen. Intelligent beings on Mars, intelligent races, that still live in harmony with the creation. But they say, there is a word that does not take place in the harmony of the universe.

There is this silent world. The silent world is the earth, the only world who fell. Now, CS Lewis knew all of this story. And so this idea, he was a Christian, a devoted Christian,

and he basically both into the solution, the possible solution given by very long. That is, maybe we are the only world that has fallen.

Wow. But the important point is, but by that time, Christianity had no problem with the existence of other words. And there is someone who had even more fan theories, a certain, from QS. He was a cardinal, actually. He was a high clergyman. And he wrote a book. And in this book, we are still in the 1400s, about 1440. And these books, he talks about a very bold conception of the universe.

And he thought that the universe doesn't have a center, really. And that the earth and the stars just move around in the universe. And then the stars are places like the earth, and they are all inhabited. Now, what terrible things happen to him for saying things like that, that the earth moves around in the universe and the other places, the other stars and planets had their inhabitants he became a cardinal

he worked with four poops no one had a problem with that interesting and where did he get these ideas from was he reading these other classics he was reading Aristotle I don't know he knew Plutarch he was also discovered in Europe during the 1400s

it was especially when known in Florence I think I'm not sure exactly of his own sources But you know even if there were the mainstream ideas that was at the time Aristotle's Okay, that there is just one world that you cannot have other worlds This is what was normally taught in the universities It doesn't mean that there weren't other strengths That were not that mainstream perhaps but it still existed

And they were talked about And so a great guy who probably read Plutarch or heard about him and also wrote about the moon as an earthly place was Leonardo da Vinci around 1500 so you see that is a continuity this theologians wrote in the

1400s around 1500s Leonardo clearly he knows notes he never published anything but he scribbled a lot and in his notes he clearly think that the moon is is a body like the earth or similar, somewhat similar.

And he bases his idea certainly on the fact that his idea circulated. Plutarch was pretty popular in Florence. But also on his knowledge of how bodies reflect light. He didn't know much Latin. He didn't know much of the quidditas of light, of the essence of what light is.

But he said, you can take from me. I'm a good painter and I spent my time studying how bodies reflect light and what I can tell you is the moon does not reflect the light

as a perfectly spherical and smooth body which is what I restored thought of it would do imagine or maybe you have it imagine

a pool ball okay a table pool ball okay you shine light on it okay you see a bright spot in the center

in the center and then the rest is much darker, progressively darker. The moon is not like this. The moon is like a surface that is uniformly shiny with some dark spots, but not with this kind of symmetry. And so what Leonardo thought is that on the moon, probably there are oceans. And these oceans have waves, emotions. And so these waves can reflect.

light in different directions. And so some of these light will always reach the earth. And he has drawings and sketches where he shows how it happens. Hmm. And even someone who didn't know Latin and who was not considered a natural philosopher, didn't never attend the university, but he could know this kind of things. That's a clever idea. I mean, was it well known at the time that the...

the sun was reflecting, or that the moon was reflecting the sun's light? Oh yeah, of course. And when was that, that was accepted by? Since Greek antiquity. Oh, really? Yeah, that's how we explained the phases of the moon. But, so that was always known that it was a reflection. Yeah, that the moon reflects the light of the sun.

Interesting. Of course, that's how you explain the phases of the moon. Mm-hmm. It's the only way to make sense. Interesting. And you ask whether these ideas were well known. Now, you don't know much about it. what we know is that when it comes to someone like Leonardo, we are probably seeing the tip of the iceberg.

We had to think of him not like a genius centuries ahead of his time. He was a genius, of course, he was considered genius in his time. But as someone who elaborated in original ways notions and sources that were available to him. Now, a fun thing is that one century later, in 1604, someone, published anonymous book saying more or less the same things. That there are arguments of optics that tell us that the moon must be a body similar to the earth or not a perfectly smooth bodies. There must be irregularities. It could be an earthly body.

Mountains, valleys. Yeah. That book was published anonymously. It was always suspected that the author of this book was Galileo. At the time, it was not famous and he had not published absolutely anything. A few years ago, a couple of years ago, a PhD student in Venice found probably the smoking gun. A document showing that this must have been a lia, the author, the anonymous author. And what was the document?

It is a book that he published in Florence. He was still a professor of mathematics at Powder University. He had not discovered a telescope yet. He was not famous. His paycheck was half as much that of the professor of Aristotelian philosophy. who was much more prestigious as a chair. And he published his book.

Now, what we know is that Galileo had a lot of contacts with the artists in Florence and the environment of Florentine artists. He never read Leonardo. He could not have read Leonardo. His notebooks were not accessible

at the time. And so one possibility is that these were ideas that we were discussed in the context of Florentine artists and that he learned them from these artists that he frequented.

He was a very good draftsman. As a professor of mathematics, he also taught technical drawing. Drawing was an important part of what professor of mathematics taught at the time, especially in Italy. And his watercolors of the moon are beautiful. He was a very good artist.

And one of the of his closest friends was actually an artist, an important artist who was also from Florence and worked in Rome and he got from, he was one of the first persons probably that got a telescope directly from Galileo. Oh wow. Yeah.

And in 1611, a few years, just one year after Galileo published his observations of the moon, he had a commission to paint, to do a painting in Rome, in

the largest temple dedicated to the Virgin, to Mary. And he frescoed one of the domes of the temple. And in this dome, he painted a traditional subject, the Virgin of the Apocalypse. In the apocalypse of St. John, he describes

the arrival of a woman that will arrive shrouded in light and her with a crown of 12 stars and her feet on the moon. That's similar. There's not this theme.

There is no moon. There is no crown of the class. This is Guadalupe, but it said that she's standing on it. But it has an air of familiarity, shrouded in light. It said that she's standing on a crescent moon is how it's known. Oh, yes, that's the version of apocry. That's the subject. The moon was usually painted as a sphere or as a crescent.

And Cigoli painted the moon with craters and my craters. mountains. Like you can see them in Galileo's telescope. Oh, wow. That was in 1611 in Rome, in the most important temple dedicated to Mary in the full of Christianity. Was that a problem? No. Wow.

It was not a problem. Okay. It was not a problem. And actually the Jesuits of the Roman College that was the central university of the Jesuits in Rome were asked by a very important cardinal who had a big role in the prohibition of Copernicanism a few years later I would have thought of the

discoveries of Galileo and they answered that he was right that there are mountains and valleys on the moon, that it is an earth like body. Now if you want to say that then the earth as well revolves around the sun instead of being still

the center of the universe, this is more problematic because this is not by itself evidence that the earth moves. It just makes it more plausible. It just makes it clear that there are places in the universe that are like the Earth. And so it makes of the Earth a planet, if you want. But there is no strong evidence, really, for the motion of the Earth. But they confirmed that the Moon has craters and mountains,

and the Church had no problems with that. Did Galileo speculate if anyone lived on the Moon? Yes. Of course. What did he say? So there are always this kind of speculation of other worlds. Now in most

cases, when they imagine other worlds, they wouldn't think of other worlds as bodies in a solar system like we think of them. In most cases, not always, but in most cases, think of the traditional geocentric universe. Here, the earth, the celestial spheres

around them, kind of a self-enclosed universe, right? Okay, they would think of other worlds as many self-enclosed universes. Ah, I see. Okay. So not a part of our universe. There will still be part of the universe,

but the universe is made by planets, by wars like the Earth with their own, each one of their own orbit and their own solar system. Yeah. Not everyone, for example, Cardinal of Confuess didn't think, didn't think this. They thought that all of these planets like the Earth

moved around in freely in space. Okay. Leonardo certainly didn't think so. He looked at the moon. Plutart did not think so. He looked at the moon. it was another place like the Earth, we would say in the same solar system,

so as I speak. So as soon as Galileo Partish his observations of the moon, they were a bombshell. I mean, he became overnight the most famous man in Europe. Because everyone had evidence that indeed the Earth is a place, the moon is a place like the Earth.

And so, of course, everyone started speculating that there must be inhabitants on the moon. And that was really, natural. I mean, it happened every time. And this time, maybe it was not just speculation because you have evidence that you have an earth-like environment. And so in 1615,

a friend writes to Galileo. I didn't talk of life on the moon in the steady messenger. Okay? And he told me, look, Galileo, be careful when you talk about the moon because when you just discuss

a resemblance between the moon and the earth. Some other people, we start thinking and saying that then there must be other people on the moon and men like us, maybe descendants of Adams. How did the send us of Adam's men like us end up on the moon? Maybe Genesis had it all wrong. So be careful because other people could use these observations to speculate against the revelation. So when he wrote his dialogue on the systems of the world, there he discussed the possible in-habitation of the moon. And he describes the moon in a very reasonable way.

Says, I don't see much evidence or a thick atmosphere on the moon. If there is an atmosphere, it must be thin, large bodies of water. I don't see much evidence for them. This does not mean that there cannot be other intelligent beings on the moon. That they'll just be different from us. their bodies must be different, probably lighter, probably adapted to the environment of the moon. He just said they are not men like us. And that was enough.

Like animals? Other creatures. Other aliens. But not sons of Adam. Exeterrestriots, not sons of Adam's, not men like us. And the definition of human at the time really was more theological than biological. It means descendant from Adam. from the first created couple.

Right. Maybe there was another creation, and God put on these places other beings that are adapted to the conditions of that world. And that became, throughout the 1600s, kind of a standard statement

among astronomers, because it was theoretically safe. That there's people up there, they're not humans. They're not human beings. They're not the sand of Adam. There are other people. and the idea was extremely popular and everyone talked about that

including clergymen a very popular book in 1600s Great Britain was the discovery of another word in the moon it was published in the 1630s I think 35 or 37 by a bishop

Wilkins and it also became a play later and in the late 1600s, one of the greatest scientists of the time, the Dutch physicist Christianoikans, wrote a book on the habitability of other worlds. And he started from the idea

that other worlds must have inhabitants because they saw that God doesn't make other worlds to keep them empty. It didn't make much sense to them. It was illogical. And what he said when discussing Saturn, for example, he was the guy who discovered who figured out that there is a ring around Southern. Oh, wow.

In the primitive telescope, it was not clear. There was something weird about Southern, kind of couple of handles at times. And then they disappeared because sometimes the ring is visible edge on from the earth. And so it's very thin and can see it anymore. I see it. Okay, next year it will disappear, for example. he knew that he was very far from the sun and much bigger than the earth. And so he said, certainly the inhabitants of Sauter must be especially adapted to survive the longer

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and also sponsoring this show and making it possible. Let's get back to the episode. The most important book, the most famous book of scientific popularization of every time it was not written by Carl Saigon, forget about Tyson. It was published in 1686 in France

by a certain Fontenelle and the title was Dialogues on the Plurality of the Inhabited Worlds. It was written in French, of course, not in Latin. It was translated in every possible language in the following 150 years

had probably 150 editions more and it was a basic reading for every educated girl because the setting is this there is a a charming marquis

that on summer nights is entertained by her knight by her lover let's say, close companion on discussions about astronomy and the cosmos. Since she's a woman, the author assumed that she doesn't know anything about modern astronomy.

But she's smart and witty. It is because of the education, not because women are intellectually inferior. She's very smart. And so his knight explains to her modern universe and that the Earth revolves around the sun, that the moon is a place like ours, and then there are inhabitants on any of this world. And this book was also considered a perfect handbook of polite conversation. Wow.

Yes. So it was a very recommended reading for educated girls. Interesting. Yes. And it had a lot of sequels and a lot of authors. A number of authors at least wrote similar books. and that was super popular. It was still printed in the early 1800s

when that astronomy was surpassed. They just printed the book with annotations at a certain point explaining that, no, this theory is surpassed, now we know this and this and this and so on. Was the dialogue written as a legitimate astronomical literature or was it just like a fiction?

No, no. No, it was written as a book that you can read to learn about astronomy. It doesn't talk of interplanetary travels. There is this fashionable setting where you have in the high society and you're spending

your summer in your summer state. This is an aristocratic woman and you have this dialogue that is a way to make the book more vibrant, more easy to read instead of writing a treatise,

write a dialogue. It's much more lively. Much more interesting. interesting, right? You have two characters. You can have conversations. It's like a play in a way. It's like a play in a way. But he conveyed, it conveyed legitimate scientific knowledge.

And in 1700s, it was common sense. They believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life, more or less the way we do. And with the same evidence. It is zero. Did anyone beg the question? Like, oh, have they visited Earth? I'm sure there's, you know, people in this time had been, oh, I saw something in the sky or I saw something, you know, a light that flashed by.

No, not like that. In satirical literature, yes. Not as realistic space travel. But in the same way as Lucian, as had written of a human visiting other worlds in in Roman times so he had to think of these books

not as modern science fiction think of that as the equivalent of Gulliver's trebles Gulliver goes in other places and visits his places and

in these other worlds really there are these strange creatures and he uses this book to criticize his own country and his own

times and his own culture Interesting. And these books did the same. Voltaire, the famous Voltaire, the French philosopher, wrote a book like this. He imagined that an inhabitant of Saturn visits the earth and gets totally mad at the stupidity of human beings. When he arrived, there is a war between Russia and the Turks for the control of Crimea. This visitor from space is a gigantic being.

and these tiny creatures are killing each other furiously to decide who will be the owner of this piece of mud interesting are you kidding me so not as realistic space travel not as visitors coming from space simply because space travel is not in the cars

it was not considered technically plausible or scientifically or technologically or technologically plausible. Now, and this is sort of related, but I'm curious also, like Plato's account of Atlantis kind of falls under maybe the same classification where he's using Atlantis as a way to describe the hubris of Athens. And I don't know if you've read his account on this.

Oh, yeah, of course. And it could be a way to see it. And I never thought of it. But it's a possible way to see it. Atlantis has another word. An interesting thing is that when they say, they use the term, world that is not necessarily meant a place distinct from the earth in space. A world in one of the meanings of this term in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance

is a place that has never had contact with the places that we know and are familiar with. So, for example, another place on the earth that never had contacts with Europe or Africa or Asia, that would be another world. Because if there are inhabitants there, then you have to assume probably another creation. So Australia, for example. Well, why do you think America is the new world and not the new continent? Right. This is the reason. Right.

And so, this is the reason why, for example, the title of Bishop Wilkins' book. that he published in 1636, I think, was the discovery of another world in the moon, not on the moon. Because they can discover other worlds in the earth. And one of the ways in which other worlds could be imagined

was that there are other worlds within the earth. Because the earth can be hollow. The idea was pretty common until 1700s and there can be great subterranean cavities with running waters, maybe oceans think of travel to the center

of the earth by Jules Verne. He's recovering this ancient theory that interior of the earth is hollow and actually at a certain point the travelers, it is briefly mentioned the protagonist

seems to see beings like human months. And he kind of refrains in horror from the idea that there can be a whole humankind that spent all the existence

within the earth. That would be another world. That would be another way to imagine another world. It must not necessarily be another place in the space outside the earth. Who discussed these ideas

of extraterrestrial, so to speak, or other worlds inside the world? Like who are some of the... Started very early already with I think an exigoras. Oh, really? Yeah.

So the guy who was sentenced in Athens for saying that the moon is Earth. And we have later sources actually. Maybe accurate or not. I was saying that he also

speculated that you couldn't have other words within the earth, not just outside the Earth. I see. And this is cast in Middle Ages. So there is a guy who in the around 1380 wrote for the King of France

a commentary in French a discussion of an Aristotle book called On the Heavens where he describes how the cosmos works and in this book he has a lot of discussions of all the possible ways in which other worlds can exist

and one of these ways against Aristotle and one of these ways is that you can have other worlds within the earth and was there ever a discussion of can we go to that earth can we... Not there no so at the time

there was there was discussion on the possible existence of the antipodes with the antipodes they did not mean just a place that is on the other side of the earth compared to where you are they meant if there can be a continent

for example okay on the other side of the earth that you have never visited that has never been touched and before the 1400s, the common idea was that you cannot sail the ocean. You cannot travel across the Atlantic. Okay, this is technically impossible. You cannot do it.

No one can do that. And so theologians tended to reject this idea because if there is a place at the antipodes with another world, with other beings like us, they could not receive the Christian revelation because you cannot travel to there. And so the most of theologians didn't like this idea too much. Not necessarily. Some didn't have problems with that. But this is an idea when other words can be conceived.

Indeed, when it was found that America is actually an isolated continent and not part of Eastern Asia, as Columbus thought. One super big problem is how is it possible that we have found humans there? we have no evidence of anyone crossing the Atlantic before recent times but did you have a theory oh a lot one of the theory was that the craziest one it is another humanity that doesn't have any relation to us the aliens they are biological similar to us we can even interbreed with them but they're not descendants of Adam and Eve. They were the result of another creation, independent creation, or they were generated, there was the theory of spontaneous generation.

Have you heard of it? Like bugs or small animals for Aristotle could generate from organic decomposite matter. I mean, a lot of horse manure and immediately plenty of animals around it. Right, you can cover it up. Yeah, they thought that these small creatures could be born from especially fertile decomposing matter. And this was definitely disproved around 1700. But before it was common knowledge. And some speculated that after some great geological cataclysm, after the earth is renovated, the soil can be so fertile that they can even produce superior animals.

Interesting. Yeah. This is how the followers of Epicurus, the atomists, conceived the origin of life on the earth and of other planets. After the Earth formed, it was so fertile in the beginning that it produced every sort of living creatures. A spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation. Interesting. Spontaneous generation.

Not only bugs as small creatures, but superior creatures and even human beings. and then as the earth became less and less fertile, many of them would not adapt to the environment. Many of them were just wrong. Like they had ice that could maybe see the light of infrared stars, but not the light of our sun. They could not find food by themselves. They would starve,

but some could survive. And even human beings in order to adapt to the king world had to invent agriculture because the earth no longer produced spontaneously or the fruits that in the beginning

they could just take from the earth and so on. And maybe this is how American were born or maybe there was some way

they they could cross the Atlantic one possibility was there was once Atlantis and so you can see maps speculating on the

aspect of the continents before the Great Flood. And some of this map put at the center of the Atlantic Ocean Atlantis. And the idea of some authors was that there was Atlantis

that actually there's a bridge so you don't have to cross the whole Atlantic it was much easier and by using Atlantis you can go from Europe to America. And then there was a great flood

and Atlantis disappeared. I see. Or maybe after the flood there were still some continental bridges, so I to speak, that later disappeared. But for a while, it was possible to migrate, for example, from Europe to America.

And these people were the descendants of the Atlanteans, so as well. Or people who after the catastrophes, who after the flood, while the earth was still young, and there were still these continental bridges could go from Europe to America, even though we have no evidence

of this, or maybe there was another idea that started to be floated later, they passed through the straight of bearing. Which was, according to one of my colleagues, this was a better received idea because this way you don't have

to think that the Americans were actually Europeans that went there. They belonged to another stalker. They belong to, they were East Asians. So in their categorization,

because it is a time when you start to form rational thinking. They were inferior to Europeans who were closer to the original Adamic stock. Ah, interesting. They degenerated after Adam transmigrating to other places, and the Chinese or the Mongols, at a certain point, were able to cross the state of Berlin and populate America. So regardless of whichever interpretation you take, the natives that were seen were subhuman in some capacity,

or inferior. Either they are not the son of Adam or they're a sub or an inferior race that walked over. You had to figure out some justification to slave them. Yeah.

And actually, the Pope had to to emanate a series of decrees in the 1500s clearly clarified that the Americans are human beings.

Oh, really? They are descendants of Adams. Stop with the sense that they are just animals, that they are unrelated to us. I don't know how. I don't know how America was populated, not my business, but these beings must be humans like us. Wow, the Pope. Yeah, yeah, to do that because there was a conflict of interest between the settlers and the Spanish crown. The settlers wanted to enslave them, okay, and consider them subhumans. The Spanish crown

wanted to justify the occupation of America with the conversion of the infidels. Well, if they are not people who can receive the Christian revelation, if they're not descendant from Adam and Eve, well, the original sin doesn't touch them.

And so, the church and Catholicism and the king of Spain can have no claim on them. Interesting. Yeah, that creates It's a tricky political conflict. So the Pope had to come out and be like, all right, no enslaving them. Yes, and to be fair, that was, it was in the tradition of the church,

already St. Augustine, said if there are people at the antipodes or we find in distant places, people who are very similar, who are like us, we should consider them human beings, 100% and descendants of Adam and Eve. And so, to be fair, no fairness, that was also part. of the tradition of the church. It also happened to favor the interests of the Spanish crown, which was good. Yeah, in a way, it justified the occupation,

but it didn't stop necessarily the enslavement in that time. Yeah, and there were also pushback at a time. We start to have some pushback. There were times in the Christianity when there was pushback against the idea of extraterrestrial life. One of the big problems with extraterrestials was the problem that already very long mentioned. That is, okay, if there are other extraterrestials, intelligent life and they can sin, I mean, what do we make of the incarnation of Christ?

It may not be a unique event. Maybe it happened even in other worlds. That's a big problem. So Melang Tong, who was a theological mind behind Luther, for example, was opposed to the idea of the existence of other worlds. worlds. And this idea sometimes resurfaced. One of the

times where it happened was in the early to mid-1800s when, especially in Protestant countries, especially in the United States or even in Great Britain, there was some pushback against the existence of extraterrestrial life

on basically the same ground. Interesting. And this could have contributed to the perception that traditionally Christian humanity was opposed to extraterrestrial life because the idea that we are the pinnacle of creation and the universe is made for us. Historically, this is not what happened most of the times. Interesting.

Was there ever any, I guess, like, religious conflation based off of ancient biblical text that led to any of these theories or any of these writers? Like, it's, you know, people mention, like, the book of Enoch. I don't know if you're familiar with that text. that you have this idea of like the watchers that come down to earth and they interbreed with the humans and they create the nephilim. And people sometimes point to this as like, you know, an ancient literature, some type of, you know, extraterrestrial event. Did any of like the scholars of the time discuss this literature in any serious fashion to, you know, contribute or sort of dissuade this idea of extraterrestrials? Not as people coming from other other worlds.

or other places of the earth. I am not aware of any of these literature. Interesting. I mean, I may just be too ignorant to know it, but no, I'm not aware of that. And I know that a lot of these literature and accounts are now interpreted in these terms. Why? Because we are so advanced. Now we know that interplanetary travel can exist. now we know that extraterrestrial life can exist

and so we can conceive of extraterrestrial coming to Earth. But at a time they couldn't and so they interpreted these visitors from the sky in a different way. Interesting. Did any of the early American philosophers or American political framers like Thomas Jefferson or any of these people, did they speak to this idea?

Thomas Payne. Thomas Payne. Yeah. What did he say? Thomas Payne. He wrote that He wrote against Christianity One of his argument is that

we all know that there can be extraterrestrial life, but it is incompatible with Christianity. And he used the idea to attack Christianity. Historically, it's not really true, but this idea was gaining momentum. And it was especially widespread in the early 1800s, Net Christiani should not admit until 1850 more or less.

It was called the We Will debate. There is a big historian who wrote a book about it. And yeah, this is one of the examples that come to my mind. That's interesting. Yeah, because if you had mentioned that it was so, it was fairly widespread around the 1700s, that people were, you know, aware of this. I'm curious as America is getting founded and that there's settlers in America, if there was a common sensibility amongst colonial America about this idea.

Did they kind of have the same European mindset? They're like, yeah, there's probably extraterrestrial rules or did the puritanical element change that? You know who talks about extraterrestrial life as a thing that of course happens? The Book of Mormon. Oh, yeah. Yes. Joseph Smith Yeah

Mm hmm And does he write about it in the book of Mormon or does he write about it in I don't remember because American history is not really my strong suit I deal with the older stuff usually yeah I knew that I forgot about it I forgot I forgot the details yeah I'm not sure if it is the book of Mormon but

I know that Among Mormons in that literature, extraterrestrial life is considered a given. Yeah, I believe that there's an interplanetary component to the afterlife, that in Mormonism upon death, if you've lived a good life, you can go and inhabit some other type of celestial body, I believe. Yeah, and there is this idea. This is another very good idea comes even from antiquity, that souls after death go and inhabit. other words. One of those who seemed to have supported this idea was the astronomer Kepler. Oh, wow. Yeah, there is a fun letter that a guy wrote from Prague, where Kepler was the court astronomer,

basically, of the emperor, Rudolf II, was a guy very much interested in esoterism, astrology, alchemy. And the Kepler had just got a telescope. And so he was showing to this other guy. who is writing a letter from there, the moon, and he said, and this astronomer kept telling me, you can see there are mountains and valleys,

and I said, I couldn't say much, honestly. And I said, yes, yes, sure. And he wanted to convince me that souls will go and live there after the death. But I pushed back here, and I cited revelation against him, because the sky and the heavens are not eternal, they will collapse, and there will be the end of the world.

So the moon is not a good place to inhabit after death because for eternity because the moon is not eternal. Oh, interesting. But you know where you can find eagles of this idea? You know Bradbury? The Martian Chronicles? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, in the Martian Chronicles are a collection of short stories about this hypothetical human colonization of Mars. and one of the first missions

finds that their ancestors that their loved ones that have died are now on Mars. It was the Martians that had telepathic minds and they wanted to get rid of them and so they were using telepathy to convince them to show them that they actually were back in their

the town of the childhood that they could meet their mothers, their brothers, their grandfathers that were dead. And they asked them, how do you end up here?

You know, God wanted to give us another chance and to put us here after that. Why should you inquire? But it comes from this ancient idea that

souls after that can go to live on the moon or on other celestial worlds. Oh, interesting. It's so fascinating how so much modern science fiction is predicated on these much older texts. Yeah. And they kind of borrow ideas and expound upon them.

Maybe it does mischief is not direct. You know, maybe Bradbury didn't read those ancient texts. I don't know exactly where his idea comes, but you can clearly see that there is a lineage. Yeah. There is a continuity. Did Isaac Newton ever speak about this? Or did he speculate on other worlds? Not in person.

But a certain point there was the famous physicist Robert Boyle, who died in 1691, and the guy of Boyle laws of pressure, he experimented a lot with air pump and gases. And he left a sum that was to be used to give what they became known as the Boyle lectures. that is sermons that some clergyman should give in order to show that the Newtonian universe is compatible with Christianity. The first boy lecturers was a very smart guy and he wrote to Newton himself. And he said that he wanted to show that his universe was compatible with Christianity and explained that in his sermons. and Newton was enthusiastic at the idea

he can totally use my physics and my astronomy to support Christianity I think it is a great idea and so in his sermon he talked about the fact that other stars

are just other sons by the time it had become accepted and these other sons can have other planets and can have the other forms of life and it's a

had whatever kind of laws, whatever plans God have for them, it is not our business, but they can absolutely exist and it's not a problem for Christianity. And almost certainly Newton agreed with that. He kind of approved that

because this scholar wanted to make sure that Newton was fine with the way he was using, he would be using his physics and astronomy. That's interesting. Did any popes ever, in any direct way endorse this idea

that you know of? I don't know. Direct from a pope. Maybe, but I don't know. So interesting. It's just, it's fascinating that it seems like through all, basically from Plato,

even beyond, even before Plato, Pythagoras. Plato doesn't talk much about extraterrestrial life. But from a Pythagoras to, I mean, 1700s, 1800s,

it's fairly broadly accepted specifically within, you know, Western Europe and amongst you know the Christendom that they say

with back and forth you know ups and downs so at certain point when Aristotle is really mainstream probably most people

thought that there can only be one word fair and even before and even yes God can make other worlds

but there are reason to think that he probably created only one even though his powers allow him

to create other worlds which is a reasonable assessment Like if you're going to build a house, would you just build a room and then put nothing in it? Yeah. That wouldn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense. And he considered God to be a perfect architect and someone who does nothing in vain, right? Everything must have a purpose in the universe. Right. Yeah, it's an interesting idea. And then I guess people just kind of lose faith in these ideas. It seems like through the 1900s, and I know this is maybe a little bit outside of your area of expertise, but I guess out of the 80s. but I guess out of the 1800s into the 1900s,

it seems like most people don't really have any clear, like, I guess they don't have any type of clear fascination with extraterrestrials, and it kind of is like a taboo topic. And it seems like it comes back in in the 60s. No. That's not the case. No, that's not the case. Not at all.

Actually, that period in the 1800s, when there was some pushback among protestant, especially in the United States and the Great Britain against the idea of extraterrestrial life, it didn't last much. It didn't last much. And it came back in a very big way in the 1870s.

Because in the 1870s, in the late 1870s, there was an Italian astronomer, actually, who was probably the best astronomers of his time, who started observing the planet Mars, seriously. and he really founded planetology in a modern way, in the sense that he started studying Mars as it were an Earth. So he produced cartographic maps of Mars. He determined with great accuracy its poles, its rotations, and he produced the first maps of Mars in a cartographic projection as if it were the Earth.

and you also saw lines that crisscrossed the surface of Mars and other astronomers could see them straight lines now if you look the earth from outside

okay if you look at the river it is always kind of meandering the straight lines are canals artificial canals if you look at Mars it must look at like a desert. The color of Mars, it's kind of an ochre, reddish, orangish, like a terrestrial

desert. But it has two bright polar caps. And when it's spring, you can see the spring cap that shrinks. And they are very bright, and we know now that they are made mostly of frozen CO2, even water, but mostly frozen CO2. But at a time, it seemed totally reasonable that were made of frozen water. So this is a desert where the only reservoirs or water really seems to be the polar caps. And we have these crisscrossing lines.

And some started speculating that there was a civilization on Mars that were fighting against the climate change. The planet was becoming drier and drier. Mars is more than the Earth. and so it evolves geologically quicker than the earth and so maybe there was this

advanced civilization that built a planetary network of canals to distribute water from the melting polar caps to regions that are more favorable to habitation because Mars is also farther from the Earth so it's colder, it was known and so perhaps the Martians

like to live closer to the equator and there is where their fields are. Now that sounds like a crazy idea, but if those lines are real, then it is hard not to think that they must be artificial. And there was an immense debate on the canals of Mars at the end of the 1800 and in the early 1900s. And this is why the extraterrestrial,

by definition, almost is the Martian. Right? It comes from there. And this is why in 1896, H.E.S. writes the war of the worlds. So again, it is science fiction, but based on a lot of ideas of security at the time. And he imagines that the Martians, to a certain point, are sicker tired of fighting against drought and against a dying planet. They take not a spaceship. They are basically, because rocket science was not in the case. cars, but artillery was.

So they use big cannons to catapult their spaceships to the earth and invade the earth and take a world that is full of life and full of water. And it is predicated on the astronomy

of the time. Now the most fervent disciple of proponent, sorry, of an advanced civilization on Mars was an American. Percival Lua. You know, rural Massachusetts? Yeah, yeah. It used to be a center of the American textile industry.

It was founded by his grandfather. Oh, interesting. He was a prominent Bostonian, had tons of money, one of the very rich families. In that time, there were the new riches, the barons of steel and oil that were overtaking the old families of the Bostonian aristocracy from New York. but still he was one of those highly educated Bostonian who could travel,

who was fluent in French at the age of 10. And at a certain point, he got news of these observations of Mars and he decided to build an astronomical observatory to study the planet Mars. And he built it in Arizona, close to Flagstaff. And this is 1900s? Yes, in the late 1800s, in the 1890s. In the 1890s. on a place that is called Mars Hill

and now it belongs to the University of Arizona Oh wow Yeah, it's still there You can still go there and look through his telescope Oh, that's so interesting Yes, and he went there because he wanted a place That was better than the cities Where the old astronomical observatories were placed

And by the time they were polluted There was a lot of industrialization going on So he moved this observatory to Arizona And he dedicated the last 20 years of his life he died in 1916 to the study of Mars to prove that these canals were real and that it can only be explained with an advanced civilization on Mars. This was a big thing. This was big. And he wrote books that sold a lot.

He gave conferences everywhere. And, I mean, it was in the newspapers. Wow. You can take the heart for current. And they will have articles on Percival levels and his ideas on Mars. and Skiaparelli who was the prototype of the positivist scientist

that really wanted to stick to facts the Italian astronomer that first saw these canals of Mars was a bit more prudent but he said I don't want to fight this idea which is not necessarily

unfounded And so what are those canals? Do we know today? Optical illusions. Really? Yes. I've seen them. You can still see them. With a backyard telescope, you pointed Mars, it must be good enough, like 10 inches, for underpowers.

You can still see these canals of Mars and in many cases in the same places where Sceaparelli placed them. So what happens is that, Mars is a very difficult subject for the eye. And you try, it's very small, very bright, and on this very bright surface, you try to figure out details that are very low contrast. And so sometimes there are details at the edge of perception and the brain try to interpret them. It cannot see clearly what is there. And what the brain does is to connect whatever seems to be there into a straight line. It has to do with the physiology of vision.

Interesting. It still happens. You can still see them. So if you look at them now, do they look perfectly? Don't see them always, don't see them always, but you can still see. the canals of Mars in the place where they were placed in the maps by Scaparelli. Do they look perfectly

straight? It isn't interesting they tend to follow the curvature of the planet. So they tend to be straight at the center of the planet and they become more curved towards the edges which is what should happen based on geometry if they are real.

Because of course many of them are based on actual details. If you magnify hard enough Okay, these canals will dissolve into smaller details. And astronomers began to figure this out in the early 1900s. But when he died in 1916, Skiaparelli was still certain that, oh, sorry, Lle was still certain that he had discovered or contributed to the discovery of an advanced civilization on Mars. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because if you're anything like me, you're probably running late all the time.

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Okay, so Tarzan of the Apes? Okay, the author Tarzan of the Apes in 1930s, no, started from the 1930s. intense, became famous first by writing about John Carter of Mars, a Virginia adventurer that some way find himself catapulted on Mars. And there he has all kinds of adventures. Of course, he married a hot princess. All this kind of stuff kills a lot of Martians. And the basic idea is that this is a dying planet with all the competition for resources and the only good Martian is a dead one because it's one less competitor for scarce resources

and his geography of Mars is based on the maps of Mars and the geography of Mars that was elaborated by 18th century astronomers. Wow, that's interesting. It was super popular. It was super super popular in the 1920s and 1930s. If you asked

the people in the 1960s that the astronomers, the scientists that prepare the first interplanet missions that send the first probes to Mars. And would ask him, say, Carl Sagan,

okay, how did you first got in touch with the idea of extraterrestrial life? Oh, when I was a kid, I read John Carter of Mars. Interesting.

Or I read amazing stories. That was a science fiction magazine that was very popular with kids and published science fiction stories. Oh, wow.

So in a way, those stories did contribute to great scientific achievement because those people those people were inspired. You know what? As crazy as they may have been,

they contributed to make the idea plausible. Impossible. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, that's, I'm curious, are there any texts that you've read throughout history at any time that talk about this specific topic,

whether it's extraterrestrials, other worlds, or, you know, extraterrestrials visiting Earth, that you find bizarre or, you know, unexplainable? I mean,

current literature or sources. So are things that you've read, sources specifically from antiquity or... Bizarre in what sense? Like, they could be interpreted as they thought they might have been visited by aliens? Yeah, or that you've read, you're like, huh,

this is... No. But a lot of these texts, a lot of this thing, have been interpreted recently as visits by aliens on the Earth. What do you mean? For example, one of the ways of which this literature has been reinterpreted is what you mentioned already, the book

of Enoch and the biblical stories and all of the ancient gods. So there is a whole strand of literature, starting especially from the late 1950s or early 1960s that reinterprets the history of humankind in terms of our civilization being a kickstarted by aliens from outer space. photos like Colosimo or especially Fondennikin who wrote a super famous book called Cherios of the Gods

Now if I'm lucky I can sell 2,000 copies Cherios of the gods probably sold the like or the other iteration other editions of Cherios of the gods that are more or less the same thing

the first was published in 1968 probably sold like 100 million copies 100 million 60 million 100 million multiple millions wow yeah

now what is the idea behind it this idea that our civilization was kickstarted by visitors from other space have you seen that movie Prometheus I'm familiar with it I never I never saw it yeah okay the first scene is that of

some some alien some exosterrestrial a humanoid that is standing on a planet that looks like the earth with the water and waterfalls but still bare rocks without life apparently and then he drinks something

and his body starts decomposing and his DNA got spread in this environment that is favorable to life but life has not appeared yet or at least humans have not appeared yet so this is one of many versions of this idea

and this idea became popular when space travel became a technical possibility and the first literature talking of space travel or aliens that could

come to Earth appeared as far as I know in the 1860s yeah there was a French novel talking about a mammified being found on Earth

that turns out to be a Martian and then you have the World of the Worlds like 30 years later I think that maybe advanced Martians could use very advanced artillery in this case

to shoot spaceships towards the Earth and invaded and when rocket science start to becoming a thing especially in 1920s in 1930s you can

you start having movies talking about extraterrestrial or travels to the moon so Fritz-Dang for example, a German movie maker is famous for Metropolis. Yeah, great artist of the image.

He's also filmed later a movie entitled The First Man on the Moon and it is about space travel and a rocket being built on the earth that is thrown on the moon. And he used as a technical consultant, he hired some German scientists that in the early 1930s

were actually working at Rocket Propulsion. At the time Germany was the most advanced country but they were really nerds amateurs that had this vision of improving rocket

profession, small engines really, some of them lost eyes or the fingers or even their life because these things tend to explode more often than not. but they contributed to make together with these movies and this literature

to making the idea of interplanetary travel possible in both ways of course now one of the kids that worked at these rockets was a certain Werner von Braun Oh wow Yes and when there was the Great Depression and German economy collapsed These people had to

trying to find out how to make a living. So this small amateurish society is really, it was just groups of nerds, that did these kind of things. High-level nerds, but still nerds. Dissolved, but then Hitler came. And the German army started seeing a lot of money. And so Fum Brown was able to convince

the German army to finance the development of rockets as kind of long-range artillery. He was the not only, him, but he and others were the mines behind the famous V2s, the rockets that Hitler used to bomb London and other places in the last year, more or less of World War II. And at the end of World War II, there was a famous Operation Paperclip. Of course. That is, you bring them and take them to America.

And so, von Braun was behind the development of the moon rockets. Wow. I mean, that's wild. So he was at that original facility. von Braun was and he was just as a young a young student he was born in 1912

so in 1932 he was 20 and when he started working for the German army at rocket developments he was like 24 and when World War II ended he was 32 wow

and so when he came to America with Operation Paperclip he was in his 30s wow still a young man Yeah, and there he started working at not only working of rocket engines, mostly for the army, but also he tried to build plausibility around rocket science. These are not just toys. We can go to space with it.

We can make interplanetary travel possible. And so he became even a familiar. person on TV was Disney produced a series of documentaries, starring him with his German accent, explaining how rockets work and how we can use rockets to go into interplanetary space. That was before Sputnik and before the Soviets did it. And at this point, NASA was founded and they got a blank check. Yeah, to figure it out.

Wow. I wonder if von Braun ever talked about extraterrestrials. I wonder if he had any thoughts or the early, It must have. I don't know, honestly. Yeah. He must have. That's just a fascinating trajectory. Yeah.

I mean, it is a fascinating trajectory. But, I mean, the American kids in 1930s, 1920s, even during depression, something they could read was these science fiction magazines. That were inspired by... They were inspired by John Carter of Mars, but all of the great controversy on the canals of Mars. By the 1930s, most astronomers thought that... there were optical illusions probably

but optical illusion probably based on actual details that exist on the surface of Mars. So when the first probes were sent to photograph Mars, they were still using as a reference a map of Mars

that shown show the canals. And there is a nice picture that saw once of a big globe, like maybe 10 feet across of Mars. and with people gluing photos of certain details of the surface on this globe. Oh, wow.

Yeah, and the globe was a traditional map of Mars with the canals and so on. And in the right coordinates, they were gluing the first pictures they were taken of Mars by the first space probes. And so who was the first person to identify these canals again? This Italian astronomer whose name was Ciapparelli. So Capparelli. Scaparalli. Scaparelli. Yeah.

Identifies these canals. Yeah. He saw these straight lines and he called them canals. Right. These straight lines. That then becomes a topic of scientific literature, which then becomes, which then becomes science fiction. That's right.

Which then inspires Warner von Braun. Or tons of other people. And tons of other people who then contribute to the deaths in World War II, who then contribute to landing men on the moon. Yeah. Wow. It's a pretty wild chain of events. So it's really Sceperoli's fault.

It always is the Italians. I knew. Actually, the Italian word for canals means either canal or channel. So when he used the Italian word, it does not convey necessarily a meaning of an artificial construction. He never said explicitly this must be artificial construction. he maintained that they must be real. He always thought that it must be real. He never thought they must be,

they can be optical illusions. But as to what they are, that's a different matter. However, once he was asked by a popular magazine to write a couple of articles about life on Mars. He said, okay,

now I will run wild. Okay? And I tried to explain how Mars, life could be on Mars. Mars. Okay, this is just speculation. The only thing I know is that there is this crisscrossing network of lines on Mars that might be of artificial origins, but that's what we know. Okay. But now I will speculate of what they can be. And so starting from that, it's starting measuring and discussing how much water actually can recover from the

polar caps when they melt. how this water can be conveyed to equatorial regions. And it said, you know, even the thinness lines we can see on Mars must be like 30 or 40 miles across, as seen for the Earth. We cannot see anything that is smaller than 30 miles across. So probably what we see are not actual canals. They might be a strip of cultivated land that borders those kinds. canal. That can be much larger than a canal itself. Think of Egypt. He had Nile and strips of a cultivated land on the sides of the Nile. Wow. And he could figure out, okay, based on the size

of the polar caps, they could measure them and how fast they melt and that you could make some speculation on the thickness so you could get estimates for how much water you can use and how much water the Martians could be using and then he went further

he said well from this we may infer that this is a global network this can only work if there is a central organization there must be if my speculation

if the basis of my speculation are correct, which is hypothetical, but let's assume that those canals are of artificial origin. If so, there must be a central government on Mars. There cannot be nations waging war onto each other because this global network can only

work if you have a global authority. Someone must decide when to open the gates of the canal, how to distribute the water, and so on. So this could be a great example for us of a civilization that is fighting against, instead of fighting against themselves, as nations on earth did at the time, they're fighting, they're united and they're fighting against hostile nature.

Wow. And he also used words like, this must be the paradise of socialists. Because socialism, the theory was that wars would exist because of capitalistic nations that wage war to each other to maximize each one profits against the other

and that when socialism will be finally realized all across the globe then there will be a world government and not

the capitalistic nations waging war on to each other was he a socialist? No, I don't think so. But he lived in the city where he had

his observatory is the economic center was the economic center of Italy. And at the time, it was experiencing very fast industrialization. And there was a lot of struggles. In 1898, there were big riots and even more than riots against the government because of the increase of the prices of bread.

People couldn't live. The government was taxing bread. And the army does open fire on the crowd with cannons, with guns. And he was there. I mean, he could see that from his windows, more or less. So once again, the science writer used this metaphor and this sort of speculation as a way to heed warning on the people of Earth. Just as many other philosophers have done before him. It gets even better because in Soviet Union, there was a certain Bogdanov, who was close to Lenin and to the elite of the Communist Party in the 1920s, who wrote novels.

about Mars entitled, Guess what, the red planet? He was red because it looks reddish at the telescope. But also he built on this literature, on this astronomy, to indeed take a further step and imagine a socialist society as you could have developed on Mars. Oh, that's hilarious. Wow.

Yeah. So it seems like everyone, not everyone, a lot of people throughout history have had some type of tacit belief in extraterrest rules, with the exception of Aristotle and the time that his school, but screw Aristotle, you know what I mean? I think he's a, he's a hater. But it is an interesting idea that the church, the early church didn't really see any issue with it. And so many philosophers and scientists of the time were open to the idea, much like we are today. Yeah.

And I don't know, it's just fascinating. It's an interesting thing to speculate on and to look at these older texts and to say, oh wow, this is what they thought at the time. And once again, it doesn't seem like we've changed too, too much. Yeah. I mean, it's a, There is always this problem when you look at ancient civilization and ancient sources, and you assume that they were not as smart as us or not as advanced at us, and so there were more credulous or they mistook what might have been actually extraterrestrial beings or spaceships for gods because they could not imagine extraterrestrial life, which is not really true. and we tend also to assume that we are the pinnacle of history

and we have the right science and the right technology and we now can understand what was going on but we are we are part of history we are in the flux of history and it is a historical certainty that future centuries will look back at us and laugh of many things that you take for granted scientific theories that to us are common sense because it has always happened and we are not different.

It will happen to us. It is basic certainty, speaking as a historian. That's why we should laugh at ourselves now. Yeah, and it is important when we talk of all the ephological literature

and all of these documents and all these evidence that seems to exist about extraterrestrial being visiting us or the sources that seem to make a case for this, it must be always self-critical, very self-critical, and really look at what these sources say and what the data are. Because one thing is to say that I see a light coming down and then going up

and then going up and I don't know what it is. But to say it must be an extraterrestrial spaceship, that's different. now we are speculating what we have is this light in this camera that goes up and down what created it is a different matter so we always had to be very

careful of distinguishing what we see from what is behind it otherwise you do like the astronomers that saw the canals of Mars and were unable to tell what was on Mars from what was in their head So there was an astronomer that once kept

that the canals of Mars are certainly a sign of intelligence. The problem is, what side of the stereoscope intelligence is? That's great. Ivano, this is amazing. Thank you so much for your time, brother. Okay. This is excellent. That was a pleasure.

Yeah, thank you so much. And eventually when we discover extraterrestrials, I'll have you back on. That would be great. I'll be very happy. I don't think there is any real evidence. for that honestly. And it is one thing that it would be interesting to talk about

if you had time, maybe next time. But a parallel that I like is that with the weird creatures that you can find in Renaissance books on natural history. Like mermaids, merman, dragons. And apparently there is

plenty of evidence for the existence of these creatures. And we'll have author, authors, citing all of these people who cited dragons, all these people who saw Basilisk. There would be that naturalist that once found a Basilisk that is a small dragon

and dissected it and then embalmed it and now it is in his museum. Wait what? There's a Baselisk in a museum? Yes. I mean, I saw one. Yeah, one of these museums that were a pharmacist actually at the Basilisk

was in my hometown. And now it is in the Museum of Natural History of my hometown. And what do they say that it is? Oh, it's a fake. Okay. Of course it's a fake. And it was not that it was a fake. But Basilis had dragons were hard to come by and to find.

And so sometimes they would make these small dragons out of rayfish, basically, with other parts from other animals just to give an idea what they could look like. Oh, wow. Yeah, I've seen this with the mermaes, that they take like a, a capuchin monkey and a fish, and they kind of sew it together and they go, look at this. And you can even have abductions. We have relations of, for example, a guy in Switzerland in the 1600s was abducted by two dragons, a couple of dragons. And he spent six months in their cave. They didn't harm him until he was able to escape. And the naturalist that reports all of these,

all of these witnesses saying, you see, there is so much evidence about the existence of these creatures, we cannot really doubt it, because we have too many people who saw them. Another funny story. Around 1730,

French sailors that were sailing from America to France, so a mermaid, a big one, much larger than a human being, but otherwise from the torso up very much like a human being.

They couldn't see the rest because it was underwater. So they tried to catch him. Yes, one sailor halpund the creature and they tried to pull it on board. But the creature was very strong and they started shrieking and crying in a terrifying

way and they let it go. So they come home and they tell the admiral what they had seen. And the admiral got mad at them. What a heck? You found And you saw a mermaid and didn't capture him. Why didn't someone just shoot him? And then put it on board like you do with a whale.

So I can have it in my museum. That would be terrific. And then there are naturalists that aren't credulous at all that are very ground to her people saying, oh, I have parts of a merman in my museum. There were speculation as to are these creatures kinds of humans or a completely different species. Are they humans

that are adapted to life in water the way we are adapted to life on Earth? Or are they a completely different species? Do they have rational reasoning? What do you make of that story? Like, why would they say that story? That's an interesting point. What were they saying?

What were they seeing, sorry. What they make of it is that they saw a lot of things. Some could be just fakes, but it would be a simplistic. explanation. The fact is there are a lot of strange things that we see and we tend to

interpret them in terms of what is plausible to us. What we know is possible. So at the time, mermaids and monsters and these kind of weird creatures were considered possible. And so what they saw was interpreted

in these terms. So one of these basilisks or some strange animals that were found dissected, that could have genetic anomalies. Some creatures, unfortunate creatures. A lot of these monsters, yes, were, for example, conjoined twins or

or deformed human beings. Our fetus is, you know, developed properly. But many others were considered to be species of animals that were plausible. And yet centuries later, we have never found the skeleton of a dragon. We never found the skeleton of a

We have some basics, but all the basics that came down to us, they're all fakes. They're all made up. And when you read this author, maybe you think they are on the edge of finally having the creature on the slab. Yeah. Okay. The final evidence that the one can doubt. And it looks so similar to what we are thinking and seeing us when it comes to extraterrestrials.

And sometimes I think that our aliens, visiting the Earth, our UFOs, are our monsters, actually. Because we are not anthropologically different. We just interpret them and what we see and we cannot understand in terms that to us are plausible. And as once Carl Jung said, the famous psychiatrist, everything technological goes well with the modern man. So a colleague of mine, Professor Carlos Eire at Yale.

recently published a book on levitating saints and he has plenty of evidence of mass witnesses of holy men levitating or doing all kinds of miracles what we do of these mass witnessings

we have mass witnessings of UFOs we have abductions it is not too different from what you see in ancient sources and if I had to judge from the documents we have and the kind of evidence we have. And the documents

they used to have about monsters or tritons or marmades. They probably had more evidence for their monsters than we have for our aliens. And so I'm not saying that all of these

strange appearances, the radar tracks, those mass witnesses are not extraterrestrial spaceships. Maybe they are. But the evidence I see is not nearly good enough. And I know that because we have examples in history where very similar things happened

and we know that there were nothing behind it, that somehow they were wrong. Who knows what they were seeing? They also had their liminal creatures that lived at the margins of the known universe whose existence

was debated, but some considered them plausible. And by some, I don't mean people on the margins of scholarship or science or Academy. I'm talking the greatest naturalist of the time in many cases. One of them wrote

a history of monsters. A big book. It's fantastic. It's probably the favorite book of my students when I show it to them. You see every kind of monster. And then he also wrote a history of dragons. And where he collected all the possible

evidence and discussions and what was said and told through history about his creatures, it was not necessarily all true. It did not necessarily support all of it, but he wanted to collect all of these evidence. And wow, you can make big books with that. And sometimes

we open these books and we see certain images and we think they must be faithful reproductions of what they saw. And this is not true because this is another problem. We need context. Images are always coded.

And so what happened is that in many cases, these images of these monsters are just a traditional representation in literature of this kind of creature. It's not necessarily something that they saw, but for two or three centuries, for example, this particular monster or this particular animal has been represented this way.

And so this is the way they are normally shown, not because they necessarily reflected those beings. And there is in nephological literature you can find authors taking these books and saying, oh, look at this guy. This must be an alien. There were aliens on the earth at the time. And this is a problem where we're not an historian

because you need to know the context and how this image were produced and why and how images were used at the time. Or, for example, you can see, oh, you see, there is this black thing in the sky and there is a laser ray coming down. They saw a UFO. It was in a Ransans painting.

Actually, this was how Holy Grace, the center of Holy Grace was represented. That was actually a cloud shrouded by light, kind of a hole in the sky. And from then, that thing that we look at it and you see, oh, it's a laser beam.

To art it is a laser beam, but to artists of the 1400s or 1500s, this is how they represented divine grace that is sense upon Mary, for example. Interesting. Huh.

And so you need to know all of this context, which is often completely ignored. We just open these texts, open these sources. We make our own stories. And we make our own stories. Oh, it looks like an alien to me. So it must be an alien.

It doesn't work like that. It is very important that you have some knowledge of the context of how these images were made. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And again, I know that there are a lot of people that in complete good faith think that there is just too much evidence of extraterrestrial visitors to ignore it. And there must be something to it. And maybe they are right.

Maybe they are on the verge of finally having the alien on the slab. But what I see as a historian of science, I've seen that other times. another mermaid. And the same kind of evidence, witnesses, mass witnesses, what, mass witnessing, crazy stories, people abducted by dragons or mermaids. Another crazy story, someone fishes out are mermaid. And this mermaid lives in the northern sea. And this mermaid lives for six months in a barrel of salty water in Bremen and northern Germany.

what do you make of these accounts? Many of those accounts were given by people considered reliable. Or think of the French sailors. That's what is mermaid. This mermaid. Okay. And sometimes you can think of pilots seeing weird things in the sky. They are qualified to say that this thing is weird.

This is an anomaly. I have flying, I've been flying all my time, all my life. Okay? So I am a very qualified witness when it comes to things that were around the sky. Well, these French sailors were qualified witnesses as to what is going on in the sea. And about sea creatures. What do we have to think of that? So sometimes one can argue, what do you want?

You're too much of a skeptic. Do you want the alien on the slab? You know, a naturalist said that he had a dragon on the slab and then dissected the dragon and then embalmed it. And you can see it in his museum. This specific dragon has not come down to us. has not come down to us. So apparently they had the creature on the slab,

and still, they were wrong. It was not a dragon. What did they see? That's the question. That's a big problem. Some of my colleagues think that this was probably a fake and not even a very good one. But this naturalist did this, yeah,

this dragon that was dissected. But this naturalist in all of his writings, including manuscripts, I think, that were never published, never raised doubts that this was a real animal. I guess I'm more curious, what did they see? What are these sailors when they tried to harpoon this mermaid? Maybe they didn't see.

Maybe they felt it would get some kind of reward, and instead it turned out that the admiral got mad of them because they didn't get it. And maybe there was some, some big animal. Yeah. And some weird kind of sea creatures. And what can it be? And at a certain point, they start scanning about all of the possibilities. Possibility alien is not there.

They don't have it visiting alien. Possibility, merman, it's there. This is plausible. This can happen. And so let's say that it is a merman. We decide that what we see is a mermerman. We all the time decide what we are seeing. Interesting.

That makes a lot of sense. Actually, I appreciate the framework. and I think it's a helpful perspective to go into looking at these types of, specifically like ancient literature with an eye of, okay, what did they mean? What was their interpretation? And if their interpretation is extraterrestrial or paranormal in some way, is that just because they witnessed something in reality that they ascribed whatever their story of the day was? I think that's an interesting assessment.

Ivano, I really appreciate the time. Thank you so much for sharing this with me. I had a lot of fun, a lot of fun discussing this is awesome. Thank you so much. I'm glad. I'm an nerd-a-be-staff, so we just asked me to nerd it out so I couldn't be happier. It's perfect. Thank you so much, bro. Let's do it again soon.