Inquiry with Kelly Chase - [The UFO Rabbit Hole] The Disclosure Field Guide [Pt 1]: Ontological Shock & Getting Reoriented

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

In this episode, we explore the complexities of confronting the reality of UFO disclosure. Information that significantly challenges your worldview can be hard to process. In light of UFO whistleblower David Grusch’s recent allegations—that the US government is in possession of non-human craft and bodies—even those within the community who thought that they were ready for these kinds of revelations have found themselves reeling. In this episode, we discuss ontological shock—what it is, how to cope with it, and how to avoid the major pitfalls. And we work on beginning to resolve our ontological shock but getting ourselves reoriented in a world where nothing is as we once thought it was. No matter where you are in your journey, I hope this episode offers you something that you can take for the road. And if you know people who are just starting out, or who are finding themselves feeling disoriented right now in ways they can’t identify, this is a great episode to share with them.NEW Class from Dr. James MaddenUnidentified Flying Hyperobject: UFOs, Philosophy, and the End of the WorldFour-week online class via ZoomWednesdays, March 27 – April 24 (skips April 10), 20247 – 9 pm ETLearn More About the ClassSign Up NowGET THE EPISODE BRIEFGET THE BOOKGet a SIGNED COPYGet it on AmazonFOLLOWWebsiteTwitterFacebookMUSICTheme: Cabinet of Curiosities by Shaun FrearsonTIMESTAMPS00:00:30 Introduction00:05:30 Ontological Shock00:07:29 The Signs of Ontological Shock00:08:42 The Pitfalls of Ontological Shock00:14:07 Resolving Ontological Shock00:16:47 What Exactly Are We Dealing With?00:19:00 How Has Perception of the UFO Phenomenon Changed Over Time?00:19:11 -UFOs: 1947 to Present00:23:48 -UFOs: Before 194700:29:13 What Forces Have Shaped & Influenced The Perception Of UFOs00:29:44 -Cultural Context00:36:47 -The Government00:50:38 -The Media00:57:47 -The Phenomenon01:00:25 Who Can You Trust?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ufo-rabbit-hole-podcast--5746035/support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Would you like to immerse yourself in the world of weird fiction? The grimy weird is speculative fiction at its finest, a realm of horror, science fiction, and dark fantasy. Coming to you from Spectrevision Radio is the Horror Babel podcast. We produce recordings of stories by the pioneers of the genre, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard, while breathing new life into forgotten classics penned by lesser-known authors. With new recordings published twice weekly, Tuesdays and Fridays,

you'll encounter Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, from the nameless city to the colour out of space. Clark Ashton Smith's Zothic, where cosmic entities linger in a dying world. Robert E. Howard's legendary tales of Bran MacMourne and Conan, and everything else weird fiction has to offer, baffling beasts and deadly bargains, haunted houses and polar terrors, caverns and crypts, dreams and nightmares, vampires and werewolves. The list goes on. If you have a taste for the macab, you're certain to find something to satisfy your ghoulish appetite. Welcome back to the UFO Rabbit Hole podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Chase. Today, we're kicking off a new series that I'm calling the Disclosure Field Guide.

Don't worry, we're still going to be continuing the waking up inside the cave series with part three in just a couple of weeks. But given last week's record-scratching allegations by high-ranking intelligence official turned UFO whistleblower, David Grush, that there is an element of the government that is in possession of recovered non-human technological craft and bodies, it feels important to make room for these more urgent discussions as they come up. I'll continue to do so as more revelations hopefully come to light. One thing that we won't be doing today is diving into the specifics of David Grush's frankly mind-blowing interview with Ross Colthardt on News Nation earlier this week. If you missed that interview and you want to learn more about what was said, I'll have all that linked up in the episode

brief so that you can check it out. The reason we won't be diving into that today is because I don't have much to add at this point. As I laid out in the previous episode, I find Grush to be highly credible. And it's my opinion, based on the evidence that we've seen so far, that he is coming forward as a part of a years-long, highly coordinated push for disclosure being led by intelligence insiders. But whatever my opinion, the reality is that there's no way for Grush, or anyone else for that matter, to directly show the public tangible evidence of classified material. And people who are criticizing Grush for his inability to do so are either acting in bad faith or have no idea how any of this works. As lay people, we have no way of objectively confirming the veracity of any of his

claims regarding these secret crash retrieval programs. He has turned that evidence over to Congress and to the Intelligence Community Inspector General, and it's time for them to do their jobs. Our job is to lean on them and keep making noise until they do it. And so instead of trying to push out a bunch of speculative content that would serve more to muddy the waters than anything else, I think it's best to wait and see what other revelations may be coming that can help us untangle his shocking allegations. And to be clear, there's going to be a lot to untangle here in the coming weeks and months. In his interview with Ross Colthardt, Gresh went much further than he did in the initial interview with the debrief. Among his many allegations, he stated that this secret rogue contingent within the DOD is using reverse-engineered tech to exercise putalistic control over the United States.

that the first known UFO retrieval took place in Magenta, Italy in the 1930s, that the Vatican has been involved in these efforts, and he even alluded to the possibility that the United States government may have entered into some kind of an agreement with malevolent non-human intelligences. It's a lot to take in, even for those of us who aren't hearing these theories for the first time. One thing I want to point out before we move on is that we need to be careful with how we interpret these allegations from Grush in the context of the assessment of the established UFO lore. On the one hand, we have people who hear Grush alluding to things that sound

a lot like particular cases or tropes within the lore, and they immediately assume that it means he must be lying or compromised in some way. On the other hand, we have people who hear those same things and assume that it means not only the Grush is telling the truth, but that whatever particular cases they think he's alluding to must also be true. It's important to recognize that each of these approaches is deeply biased and should be avoided at all costs. For reasons we'll discuss in a minute, it can be tempting, at times overwhelmingly so, to jump to conclusions, and to convince ourselves that all of this can be wrapped up in the neat little bow of our own personal pet theories. But there's still a lot to sort out, and there's still a lot that we don't

know. It's especially important at this time that we come together as a community and do our best not to incept ourselves with our own theories and lore, and wait for the evidence to be presented before deciding on what's true. So I don't want to waste our time with that until we have the ability to make some actual headway. Instead, I'd like to use our time together to talk about the process of metabolizing information like this, of recognizing that we don't live in the world that we thought we lived in, and perhaps more importantly, to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for the people who are coming behind us. If what we're seeing here is, in fact, as so many of us hope, the opening gambit on what is intended to be the finishing move on UFO secrecy,

then what the community is going through right now in processing this information is but a shadow of what we'll be seeing throughout our society in the coming months and years. It all comes back to something that I've been noticing in myself over the last few days as more of David Gresh's extraordinary claims come to light. And it's something that I really didn't expect to see. Ontological shock. If you're not familiar, ontological shock is a term used to describe a profound and disorienting psychological state that occurs when one's understanding of reality is dramatically altered, usually due to an encounter or a revelation that conflicts with previously held beliefs about the nature of existence. So it was incredibly surprising to me to recognize that that was what

I was experiencing. After all, I walked away from my career to do this work full time. On a typical day, I'm thinking about UFOs and non-human intelligence from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed. And as a result, the things that Gresh said were only surprising to me because it was surprising to hear a high-level intelligence officials say them in such a public and intentional way, but not because anything that he said was entirely new or unexpected. So where was this coming from? In talking with some wise friends, what I've come to recognize is that the process of dismantling the illusion of our consensus reality is a long one. And when we're exposed to a big enough shock to our ontological system, we inevitably end up processing these things in stages.

And the progress in this area is rarely linear. It's more like a spiral where moving forward somehow always involves doubling back on yourself. Over the last week, I've been surprised to find myself back in some new version of the ontological shock that I felt when I first recognized that there really was something to this whole UFO thing. To be honest, I've just been feeling really weird about the whole thing. And based on some private conversations that I've had with others in the community this week, I know I'm not the only one. So whether you're brand new to this topic or have been studying it for decades, and whether you're listening to this when the episode comes out or months down the road, I think

it's worth our time to take a minute to talk about ontological shock, not just what we're going to what it is, but how to cope, avoid some of the major pitfalls, and begin to get yourself reoriented in the strange new reality in which you find yourself. So what does ontological shock look like? How can you tell if you or someone else might be experiencing it? It's important to note that ontological shock isn't a recognized medical condition, so it's not like we have a set of symptoms we can use to diagnose it. And ultimately, everyone deals with ontological shock differently depending on their personal beliefs, culture, values, and temperament. However, there are a few common things that people may experience, like cognitive dissonance,

emotional turmoil, changes in behavior, a feeling of existential crisis, and even the reevaluation of one's beliefs. And these are just some of the things that someone going through a massive shift in their worldview might experience. And that will manifest differently for everyone. You might be angry for no reason, or you might withdraw. You might be anxious. or irritable or have insomnia. You might even feel sad or depressed as you go through the grieving process for your old worldview. All of that is very common. And if you're going through those things, be sure to be gentle with yourself. Try to get some extra rest. Spend time with family and friends. Practice self-care. And rest assured that it will get better and that this two shall pass.

And please know that you're not alone. Beyond just the emotional fallout of ontological shock, there are some other pitfalls that you need to look out for. There are very particular ways that our brains are wired to respond to information that surprises us and challenges the frameworks that we use to understand the world. And those hardwired responses are something that you need to be aware of so that you're better prepared to deal with them. There is a gentleman by the name of George Lowenstein, whose work can help us understand how information, like the claims made by David Grush, can impact us on a neurological level.

Loenstein is a professor of economics and psychology in the social and decision sciences department at Carnegie Mellon University and a director of the Center for Behavioral Decision Research. He is a leader in the fields of behavioral economics, which he is also credited with co-founding, neuroeconomics, as well as in judgment and decision making. In his paper, the psychology of curiosity, Lowenstein identifies four ways of involuntarily inducing curiosity in humans. 1. The posing of a question or presentation of a puzzle. 2. Exposure to a sequence of events with an anticipated but unknown resolution. 3. The violation of expectations that trigger search for an explanation. Or 4. Knowledge of possession of information by someone else. Now, I don't know about you, but the first time I came across that, it was like a lightning

bulk for my understanding of how the topic of UFOs has quite literally taken over my entire life. The UFO topic is a profound embodiment of all of the basic things that can induce curiosity in a person against their will. Once you know this, you'll start seeing it all the time, particularly in the social media networks and algorithms that are trying to keep your attention. You've probably come across TikTok videos that begin with a series of random events that never resolve in a way that makes sense or that has a caption like, Can't believe that just happened, and then you watch it and nothing happens. Those are the kind of videos that we can watch multiple times on repeat

because our brains are trying to figure out what's going on. It holds our attention. And so people use tricks like that all the time to hack the algorithms of the internet by using curiosity to hack into our brains. It's important for the purposes of this conversation that we understand what curiosity actually is on a neurochemical level. Brain scans reveal that curiosity begins as a kick to the brain's reward system. When curiosity is induced in the brain, we crave to know the answer or what happens next in the story

in the same way that you might crave something like sex or chocolate. And that craving can be surprisingly intense. In many studies on curiosity, where, for example, subjects might be shown a series of nonsensical events with an unclear ending, researchers have often reported that the participants in the study had such a strong compulsion to know what happened, that they would try to bribe the administrators, even in cases where they knew that they would be given the answer after the session was completed. So what does this mean for those of us dealing with ontological shock with regard to UFOs and non-human intelligence? First of all, it means you need to watch out for developing an unhealthy obsession with this topic.

I know that's rich coming from me, but in all seriousness, this UFO stuff can take over your life if you're not careful. Even with disclosure seemingly on our doorstep, the answers as to what this phenomenon is and what exactly all of this means for humanity are not going to come overnight. There are plenty of questions that we may never get the answer to. So that information gap that's sparking your curiosity likely isn't going anywhere. I want to be clear that it's okay to be interested and to want to learn more. It's okay if this becomes a particular interest and if you naturally end up reshuffling some of your interests and priorities based on these new revelations. But you have to be careful that it doesn't

become detrimental to your relationships and overall mental health. If you see that start to happen, it's really important to take a step back. Get some rest, touch grass, laugh with your friends, do something normal, watch a stupid show, whatever it takes for you to ground yourself and reestablish balance. It's also important to recognize that the kind of all-consuming curiosity that can be sparked by the UFO topic, by its very nature makes you particularly vulnerable to being influenced and manipulated by others. When you desperately want an answer to a question that is consuming you, it's uncomfortable. On the most basic, physiological level, your brain wants to find out that answer. What this means is that in this state, it's much easier than normal for someone

to come in and give you an answer and for you to accept it. You have to be aware that there are unscrupulous people in the world who know this and will exploit it. And perhaps to an even greater degree, there are well-meaning people in the community who have jumped to their own conclusions, and their certainty can unwittingly serve as a magnet to others who are looking for answers. So all of this is to say that if you recognize yourself becoming curious and engaged about this topic, that's great. Welcome. Just make sure that you're aware of what's going on with you on a neurochemical level and don't allow your own reasoning to be hijacked by that. What that requires is that you recognize the discomfort of not knowing the answer

and get very comfortable in sitting in that feeling. Okay, so if we're just supposed to sit with the discomfort of not knowing, then how do we resolve our ontological shock? I'd argue that the best way to proceed in this case is not to look for answers, because those answers may or may not ever come. Instead, we need to work on establishing new frameworks to help us categorize and frame the possible answers. This can be unfamiliar territory if you're coming from a place where you felt like you more or less

had the answers to a lot of the bigger questions in life. The basis of consensus reality is the agreements that we've made about who we are and where we are and what we are. And although, as we discussed at length in part one of the waking up inside the cave series, the official story of everything that the majority of people are. subscribe to actually makes very little sense when you think about it at all critically. Most people tend not to notice until they are forced. It takes a shocking realization or experience to wake someone up from that dream of certainty. And as soon as you lose that certainty, you're likely to start missing

it. For most people, the immediate instinct is to replace that certainty with a new certainty, to say, the answers I had before were wrong, but these answers over here are the real answers. But the truth is that we don't know what the UFO phenomenon is or what it represents. The top scientific minds in the field from Jacques Valle to Gary Nolan will tell you that we're nowhere near getting answers with regard to the ultimate truth of what we're dealing with. At this stage, the best we can hope to do is to formulate better and better questions. In many ways, the podcast up to this point has been my own exercise in doing exactly that. And from the beginning, I've made it clear that it's never been my attention to bring us to any particular conclusion

or to push any particular agenda. I don't have any conclusions, and my only agenda is to try to find better ways to frame and metabolize the greater realization sparked in me by the UFO topic that the nature of our reality is that what we've been told. And in walking that path together, a landscape has begun to emerge from the fog of ontological shock. We haven't found answers, but we have found better. questions, and we've found ways that allow us to talk about both the patterns and the complexities

that emerge when we study this phenomenon with a radically open mind. We've found that we can become more familiar with these nuanced aspects of our reality, even if we can't yet see their full shape. And that's how I'd like to spend the rest of our time together today, by synthesizing what we've learned on the road so far about how to approach these challenging and complex topics in hopes that they can serve as a roadmap for those who follow. Okay, so let's start with what exactly we're dealing with here in terms of the nature of the intelligence behind UFOs, because that question is infinitely more complex

than the aliens versus not aliens binary that most of the world exists in. Although you rarely see UFOs portrayed in the media in any other way, the idea that the pilots of UFOs are aliens from another planet or the extraterrestrial hypothesis is only one of a vast pantheon possible solutions to this enigma. There are several general categories that are used in uphology to break down the possibilities. We have the extraterrestrial hypothesis that they're coming from another planet, the interdimensional hypothesis that they're coming from another dimension,

the extraterrestrial hypothesis, which is they're coming from a different place in time, the ultraterrestrial hypothesis, which is basically there's some sort of an undiscovered presence here on the earth, or the breakaway civilization hypothesis, which is basically that there would be a highly advanced human offshoot that could be behind UFOs. And each of those main categories can get broken down into countless subcategories. Each one represents its own unique rabbit hole. If you want to dive more deeply into any of these ideas, I'll have episodes linked up in the episode brief for you to explore.

And while it's important to understand the basics of each of these categories, I'd argue that we need to be able to simultaneously look through and pass them to be able to identify deeper patterns that emerge. In short, the complexities of UFO encounters suggest that no single category that's been suggested could possibly account for all of the evidence. At this point, most researchers seem to agree that what we're dealing with is either multiple sources for what we call the UFO phenomenon, or something that collapses all of these categories that we discussed into a more coherent theory, or both. So while it's fun to explore all these different ideas about where UFOs might be coming from, and while at least some aspect of each of these theories probably has some element of truth to it, to remain objective, it's best to hold each of these theories loosely and remain open-minded.

To begin to really understand the complexity of what we're dealing with, we need to go back to the beginning of the modern-day UFO phenomenon and see how it evolved over time. The modern UFO era began in earnest with the Kenneth Arnold's citing on June 24, 1947. Arnold, an experienced pilot, was flying near Mount Rainier in Washington when he saw nine unusual objects flying in formation. He described their movements as saucers skipping over the water, which a reporter later coined as flying saucers, igniting the fascination of the public.

The mystery was deepened by another event that took place just a few short weeks later, namely the infamous Roswell incident. In July 1947, a rancher found wreckage on his property near Roswell, New Mexico, which sparked rumors of a crashed alien spacecraft. The military's quickly changing explanations only fueled these speculations. This event spawned a media frenzy, and soon after, stories of flying saucers began to surface from all around the globe. And the American public was largely open to this idea. The end of World War II had seen an explosion of new technologies and scientific advances, and the prospect of intelligent extraterrestrial life didn't seem entirely outlandish.

At the same time, it's important to recognize that in these early days, the extraterrestrial hypothesis wasn't the only one being offered to explain this phenomenon. Early theories also involved everything from secret Soviet technology to craft from an advanced species living inside of the earth. Earth. It wasn't until the 1950s and 1960s that the narrative of UFOs began to solidify around an extraterrestrial origin. This shift was largely influenced by an emerging subculture known as the contactees. These individuals claimed to have not just seen UFOs, but to have made direct peaceful contact with their extraterrestrial occupants, whom they often referred to as the Space Brothers. One of the most well-known figures in this movement was George Adamski, who

alleged to have met benevolent, very human-looking aliens from Venus and other planets in our solar system. At this point in history, we still hadn't seen past the clouds of Venus, and so these stories felt more possible than they sound to us now. These Space Brothers were typically depicted as wise and peaceful beings, keen on helping humanity navigate its way towards a more enlightened and peaceful existence. One standout story from this era involves an alleged alien envoy named Valiant Thor. In 1957, a man named Dr. Frank Stranges claimed to have met Thor, who was supposedly living at the Pentagon for three years under the U.S. government's protection. According to Strangess, Thor hailed from Venus and it come to Earth to offer advanced technology and wisdom, but only if humans would agree to abolish war and violence. Stories like these transformed the public's perception of aliens from potential threats to spiritual guides and even saviors.

Still, while some embraced these tales and the promise they held, many others were skeptical, and mainstream science largely dismissed these claims as fantasies or hoaxes. And interestingly, the Space Brothers seemed to more or less disappear by the late 60s. In the 70s and 80s, the pendulum swung back the other way towards fear. Accounts like the infamous abduction case of Barney and Betty Hill and subsequent reports of similar experiences painted a much darker picture of alien interaction. The idea of extraterrestrials abducting and performing invasive procedures on unsuspecting humans was terrifying, stoking a growing paranoia about UFOs and their inhabitants.

It was also around this time that the modern concept of the gray alien came into prominence. Unlike earlier contactees, who often described their extraterrestrial visitors as looking very human, some to the point that they would be indistinguishable from a human, suddenly there were reports of aliens that looked much more alien. Although still humanoid in shape, the elongated skulls, large wraparound eyes, and frail bodies of the gray alien were distinctly other. And it was this image of ETs that became ubiquitous in the media. What we recognize when we look back at the cultural record is that our modern concept of the big-eyed alien that comes here from another planet, a flying saucer, was something that came together slowly over decades, largely influenced by the media.

And this portrayal bears very little resemblance to how the UFO phenomenon as a whole actually manifests itself in the real world. When you dive into the literature of experiencer accounts, what you find is a vast tapestry of craft and beings that is almost impossible to resolve into one coherent narrative. And things only get more complicated when we recognize that, although the modern UFO phenomenon is generally thought to have its origins in 1947, there is a lot of evidence that this has actually been going on for quite a bit longer than that.

During the heat of World War II, several years before Kenneth Arnold's infamous sighting, pilots began to report strange orbs of light and other mysterious phenomena, which they nicknamed foo fighters. These orbs would follow or flank military aircraft, perform erratic maneuvers, and sometimes vanish into thin air, leaving no trace or explanation. Allied pilots initially feared these were secret axis weapons, but German and Japanese pilots reported encountering them too. And these were not your garden variety UFO sightings.

They were observed by trained military personnel during a time of heightened surveillance and extreme technological advancements. Yet, despite investigations, no definitive explanation for the foo fighters has ever been found. And if you want to learn more about the foo fighters, my friend and phenomenal UFO researcher, Graham Rendell, wrote a fantastic book based on his deep research on the topic called UFOs Before Roswell, European foo fighters 1940 to 1945. It's by far the most comprehensive resource I found on foo fighters and I highly recommend it. You can find the link in the episode brief.

But sightings of strange things in the sky didn't start in World War II, or even in the 20th century. We have evidence that similar things have been reported. by people for thousands of years. In his groundbreaking book, Passport to Magonia, from folklore to flying saucers, famed euphologist Jacques Follet collected over 900 sightings from around the globe, spanning the 1860s to the 1960s, many occurring well before the first human flight. Some of these accounts are mind-boggling. You have stories of phantom airships, glowing orbs, and strange beings. For instance, there's an account from the late 19th century where a flying cigar-shaped object reportedly hovered over a Texas town, dropped a rope-like device, and startled a local

lawm... And speaking of phantom airships, let's talk about what is one of the strangest chapters in UFO lore, the great airship flap of 1896 and 1897. This flap refers to a series of unexplained sightings of what were described as airships in various parts of the United States. Witnesses described these crafts as elongated, often equipped with powerful searchlights, incapable of maneuvers that were technologically unfeasible from that time. Considering that people were reporting this years before we had achieved human flight, these sightings are particularly perplexing. The sightings peaked in April 1897 with an infamous report of an airship crashing into a windmill in Aurora, Texas,

spawning tales of a deceased alien pilot and buried wreckage. While some airship sightings were likely hoaxes or misidentified celestial bodies, the sheer number and consistency of accounts have presented a mystery that persist to this day. In April, 1561, people in the town of Nuremberg, Germany, reported seeing the sky filled with all sorts of strange objects, spheres, cylinders, and crosses, all apparently engaged in some kind of a celestial battle. This strange event was memorialized in a woodcut painting by Hans Glazer, complete with an accompanying description detailing a cacophony of strange sights and sounds. Although this event was largely interpreted as a sign from God at the time that it happened,

today many have pointed out that this sounds like some kind of a battle between advanced technological beings. And we have indications that experiences very much like what is reported with the UFO phenomenon happened at even more remote points in humanity's past. Take, for example, the story of Dr. Diana Walsh-Basalca, author of American Cosmic. Pesalka, a scholar of Catholic history, first found her way to the topic of UFOs through work that she was doing exploring stories about encounters with souls in purgatory in the depths of the Vatican archives. She became interested in the topic of UFOs after recognizing that the accounts described

in these texts that were hundreds of years old looked a lot like modern UFO encounters. And if we go even further back, in interviews Lou Elizondo has mentioned scrolls from ancient Rome that described soldiers being accompanied into battle by flying shields in the sky above them. Interestingly, Roman shields at the time looked a heck of a lot like modern day flying saucers. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. So what does all of this mean? Well,

For one, it means that any attempt that we make to draw a definitive line in the sand as to when the UFO phenomenon began is ultimately arbitrary. Based on the evidence, it seems altogether likely that whatever the nature of the UFO phenomenon, this is a reality that humanity has been bumping up against for thousands of years, if not since the very dawn of our species. And it also means that whatever the UFO phenomenon is, the answers are likely far more complicated and far more sure. strange than we can anticipate. Because the reality is that, although we can point to accounts throughout history of people seeing strange things in the sky, there is no way that we found this far of connecting those dots in a way that forms any kind of a coherent narrative. So it's clear that the UFO narrative has changed over time. But why? Is the phenomenon itself changing? Is it the result of

interactions with different groups? Or could there be factors that are skewing our perception, causing us to view this one phenomenon differently over time. It turns out that there are, and as we attempt to remain objective about this topic, it's extremely important that we have an awareness of the many factors and forces that have influenced and continued to influence our perception of UFOs and their occupants. One of the most obvious forces that shapes our perception of what we would now call UFO encounters is the cultural context and expectations of the times. But just because it's obvious doesn't mean that it's easy,

to unravel. What makes this topic so complex is that we're dealing with something that we fundamentally don't understand. The experience of a UFO encounter forces a person to have to explain something for which they have no real context and no frame of reference. Imagine if you had to explain to a friend a totally new color that they had never seen before. Where would you begin? You might be able to compare it to certain things. You could say it's more red or more blue, more like the first streaks of sunrise or more like ocean foam. But you wouldn't be able to describe the color directly. You would never be able to put the right words together in the right order to allow your friend to have a direct experience of something that they'd never seen before.

Whenever we're trying to describe something for which we don't have a shared understanding, we're put into the role of the storyteller. No matter how honest and objective we're attempting to be in our description of a truly anomalous experience, we're ultimately stuck with the only tools of interpretation that are available to us, the myths, memes, and shared beliefs of our particular culture. The ancient Romans saw shields in the sky. The witnesses of the bizarre airship flap of the 1890s saw airborne craft that resembled the types of aircraft that were already being proposed. Like a concept car at a car show, they offered a somewhat zany and over-the-top view of what the future might hold. But it was a future that they could at least conceive of.

And at the moment that humanity began to take to the skies in earnest, we began to describe these strange objects as technological. But as we recognize this, there are a couple of intellectual stumbling blocks that we need to avoid. The first is that we need to avoid the tendency to privilege our current worldview. When we look at the case of the ancient Romans, we immediately recognize that what they were seeing in the sky almost certainly weren't literal flying shields. That was just the most easily available metaphor for soldiers who were marching into battle. But we shouldn't allow ourselves to recognize that without immediately holding our current worldview in suspicion as well. It's all too easy to fall into the trap of assuming that UFOs are no more and no less than the technological objects that we deem them to be in our current paradigm.

But as you dive into a further exploration of what people who encounter UFOs actually describe, which you find is a vast tapestry of phenomena, only some of which sound like they fit into our cultural view of the UFO as a highly advanced technological craft, which carries some kind of intelligent being. Yes, some UFO sightings include what appear to be solid craft with lights and rivets and even portholes, but this is hardly the norm. For example, much like the World War II foo fighters, many people report seeing or glowing balls of light in a wide variety of colors and ranging in size from a bumblebee to a jetliner.

There's nothing about these sorts of UFOs that would lead us to believe that they are necessarily technological. And even in the case of the famous Nimitz incident involving the Tic-Tac, that UFO is described as seamless, with no discernible flight services or rivets and no visible means of propulsion. Strictly speaking, nothing about this description is technological either. We assume that what we're talking about is advanced technology because in our current paradigm, advanced technology is the only thing that we know of, that has the ability to do things that otherwise wouldn't be possible. But to assume that technology is the only explanation, overly privileges our worldview and fails to recognize the one simple truth that we can never abandon in our quest to better

understand UFOs. That we don't know what we don't know. And the other major intellectual stumbling block that we need to avoid here is our tendency to reduce one idea to another. And here's what I mean by that. Take, for example, some notable descriptions of angels in the Bible, where they are described not as beatific blue-eyed humanoids with wings, but as monstrous beings constructed of elaborate, concentric spinning rings that are covered in eyes. Regardless of your religious affiliations or lack thereof, I'd argue that there's value in noticing how a description like this could be referring to a UFO encounter. This comparison suggests that ancient people may have been aware of the same kinds of anomalous areas.

objects that people report today. And the descriptions of angels could be their attempt to express the unknown aspects of those encounters in words that would have been most culturally relevant to the time. It's important to recognize that we can't know for sure whether these two things are correlated or not, but it is an interesting data point. What we need to avoid, however, is our tendency to reduce one idea to the other. Even if we could somehow prove that what are described as angels in the Bible are the same thing as the UFO phenomenon, we know that in all likelihood, neither our current view of the UFO as a strictly technological craft, nor the ancient view of the UFO as a metaphysical being or messenger of God are accurate. They are interpretations that are deeply influenced by the

cultural context in which they arose. So we need to avoid the instinct that often arises when we begin to notice connections like these, to assume that all UFOs are actually angels, or or that what ancient people described as angels are all actually UFOs. One idea isn't reducible to the other. At best, they represent two very different perspectives on something that is ultimately unfathomable. So to get closer to the truth about what the UFO phenomenon might actually represent, we have to detach ourselves from these labels and do our best to see not just past them, but through them. This approach to understanding the UFO phenomenon reminds me of the magic eyebooks that I used to

when I was a kid. If you looked at any page of the book, it just looked like noise. Colors and shapes jumbled together in no discernible pattern. But when you stop focusing on any particular part of the page, when you're able to relax and taken the whole picture without trying to get it to resolve into anything in particular, when you let your gaze soften and the colors begin to run together, suddenly something new and unexpected begins to emerge. You see a fully realized 3D shape popping out at you from what a moment ago was only noise. And it works the same way with the UFO phenomenon. If we try to look too closely at one particular piece of it,

or if we try to make it fit into some idea in our heads of what we think it should be, the result is only noise and confusion. But when we allow ourselves to take in the whole picture, without becoming too attached to any particular part of it, when we look past what is most obvious and allow ourselves to relax into the unexpected patterns and shapes that emerge, we can begin to make some kind of sense out of what we're seeing. Another major force that has shaped our perception of the UFO phenomenon is the government.

It's very important to make clear that there is very little that we know for sure when it comes to the UFO phenomenon. But one thing that we do have evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt is that whatever the UFO phenomenon is, the government has been lying to us about it from day one, and this pattern continues to this day. This isn't speculation or a conspiracy theory. This is the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence available in official government documents that the government themselves have released to the public. Let's take the example of the Roswell crash.

In the year since 1947, the U.S. government has changed their story no fewer than four times. While the initial press release from Roswell Army Airfield claimed that they had recovered a flying disc, By the next day, the official explanation was that the crash debris was actually from a downed weather balloon. Years later, it was blamed on a high-altitude device engaged in monitoring Soviet weapons programs. And then much later, it changed again to dubiously include crash dummies that were allegedly dropped nearby in some kind of an unrelated training exercise in order to account for the reports of bodies. But we know for a fact that even as they were explaining the events of Roswell away, the increasing reports of flying disks in the summer of 1947 were being taken very seriously at the highest levels of our government. In September of 1947, two months after Roswell,

General Nathan F. Twining, the commander of the Air Material Command, wrote in a now famous letter that flying saucers are, quote, something real and not visionary or fictitious, and that they posed a risk to national security that needed to be taken seriously. By the end of 19, The CIA had been formed, the Air Force was broken off into its own branch of the army, and Project Sign, which later became Project Grudge and then Project Blue Book, had been created to study the UFO phenomenon. So we have every indication that this was something that the government was taking very seriously, even as they waved it away with stories of weather balloons and freak weather phenomena in the media.

And speaking of Project Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book, it's pretty clear to anyone taking the time to really look that these programs were put in place not for the purpose of actually studying the UFO phenomenon, but in order to manage the reception of UFOs with the goal of ultimately debunking their existence to the public. We could spend hours digging into all of the evidence to support that claim, but the most compelling and the most damning evidence comes directly from the people who were leading these programs. For example, Edward J. Rupelt, an officer in the United States Air Force and the director of Project Blue Book from 1951 to 1952, had several criticisms of the government's handling of the project. Rupelt felt that the Air Force was not taking the investigation of UFOs seriously enough.

He criticized the lack of resources and personnel dedicated to the project and felt that the effort was underfunded and understaffed for the enormity of its mission. Rupel believed that the Air Force was more interested in public relations and debunking UFO reports than in conducting a thorough and impartial investigation. In his 1956 book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Rupel criticized the government for its dismissive attitude toward many UFO sightings. He argued that the Air Force often rushed to explain away sightings with insufficient evidence and failed to thoroughly investigate many cases. He also criticized the official policy of debunking sightings as a matter of course, regardless of the evidence, and felt that this policy was undermining the credibility of the Air Force and the U.S.

government. Rupelt also criticized the lack of scientific rigor in the investigations. He felt that the Air Force was not using the best available scientific methods and expertise to analyze the data and evidence from UFO sightings. He argued for a more open and scientific approach to the investigation of UFOs. including the use of external experts and the publication of data and findings. Another notable Project Blue Book participant, who later became a detrafter, was Dr. J. Allen Heineck. Heineck was an astronomer and scientific advisor to Project Blue Book from 1952 until its end in 1969,

and he had several criticisms of the project and the government's approach to investigating UFO sightings. Heineck began as a skeptic, helping the U.S. Air Force debunk numerous UFO sightings, In fact, he is the originator of the infamous swamp gas explanation and laid the groundwork for many of the debunking techniques still used today. But over time, his views evolved, both due to the strength of the evidence and his growing concern about several aspects of Project Blue Book. His main concern was the lack of scientific rigor in the investigations. Like Rupelp, he also believed that the Air Force often dismissed UFO sightings prematurely without conducting thorough scientific. investigations. Moreover, he criticized the absence of specialized scientific personnel on the project. Heinek also voiced criticism over what he perceived as the project's primary goal, debunking UFO

sightings to quell public anxiety rather than thoroughly investigating each incident. This approach, in his view, was fundamentally unscientific and led to the dismissal of sightings that couldn't be easily explained. Another point of contention for Heinek was the disregard for credible witnesses and physical evidence associated with the UFO sightings. He believed this approach undermined the integrity of the investigations and dismissed potentially valuable data. Finally, He criticized the limited scope of Project Blue Book. He argued that the project didn't adequately consider the larger implications of the UFO phenomenon and lacked ambition in its attempts to explain it. Though he had once been a skeptic, following the end of Project Blue Book,

Heineck's criticisms led him to establish the Center for UFO Studies in 1973. He was a friend and frequent collaborator of the godfather of modern euphology, Jacques Valet, and was a valued researcher and contributor within the UFO community until his death in 1986. In an interview a year before his death, when asked what caused his change of opinion on UFOs, Heinek responded, quote, two things really. One was the completely negative and unyielding attitude of the Air Force. They wouldn't give UFOs the chance of existing, even if they were flying up and down the street in broad daylight. Everything had to have an explanation. I began to resent that, even though I

basically felt the same way, because I still thought that they weren't going about it in the right way. You can't assume that everything is black no matter what. Secondly, the caliber of the witnesses began to trouble me. Quite a few instances were reported by military pilots for you. example, and I knew them to be fairly well trained. So this is when I first began to think that, well, maybe there was something to all this, end quote. So from both Rupelt and Heinek, we're getting more or less the same story, and we see the same pattern emerge again when Luis Elizondo, former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or ATIP, resigned from his position in protest in 2017. Here is what he said in his letter to former Secretary of Defense,

General James Mattis. Mr. Secretary, it has been my sincere honor and pleasure to have served with some of America's finest men and women in both peacetime and in war. For over 22 years, I have been blessed to learn from and work with world-class leadership, you certainly being among the very best. With that in mind, bureaucratic challenges and inflexible mindsets continue to plague the department at all levels. This is particularly true regarding the controversial topic of anomalous aerospace threats.

Despite overwhelming evidence at both the unclassified and classified levels, certain individuals in the department remain staunchly opposed to further research on what could be a tactical threat to our pilots, sailors, and soldiers, and perhaps even an existential threat to our national security. In many instances, there seems to be a direct correlation the phenomena exhibits with respect to our nuclear and military capabilities. Underestimating or ignoring these potential threats is not in the best interest at the department, no matter the level of political contention. There remains a vital need to ascertain capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces of the nation. For this reason, effective the 4th of October 2017,

I humbly submit my resignation and hopes that it will encourage you to ask the hard questions. Who else knows? What are their capabilities and why aren't we spending more time and effort on the issue? As I transition to a new chapter of my life, please know that it has been an honor and privilege of a lifetime to serve with you. Rest assured, no matter where the path of my life may lead me, I will always have the best interest of the department and the American people as my guiding principle. Something that's important to point out is that what is being both alleged and alluded to here in Elizondo's letter, as well as in Rupelt's and Heinex criticism of Project Blue Book, is very much aligned with what has been alleged by UFF. whistleblower David Grush in recent days. Established in 2020, the UAP task force is a program in the same lineage as ATIP in Project Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book, whose stated mission was the investigation of UFOs.

Grush served as a member and lead investigator on this task force in 2021 and 2022, and like Elizondo, Heinek, and Rupel before him, was a skeptic who became persuaded the UFO phenomenon was both real and posed a credible and urgent threat to national security. And like his predecessors, he alleges that he was not given the resources that were needed to effectively engage with a task at hand. But there's one particular line in Elizondo's resignation letter that should stand out to us in the context of Grush's recent claims, which is where he says, I humbly submit my resignation in hopes it will encourage you to ask the hard questions. Who else knows, what are their capabilities, and why aren't we spending more time and effort on the issue?

Given that this letter was addressed directly to former Secretary of Defense General James Mattis, the clear implications here are that Elizondo believes that, one, someone else in the Department of Defense knows about UFOs, and two, the Secretary of Defense doesn't. That in and of itself is stunning. But another thing that stands out to me here is the sentence structure. Elizondo says that he hopes his resignation spurs Mattis to ask these three questions. who else knows, what are their capabilities, and why aren't we spending more time and effort on the issue? Maybe I'm just being a stickler here, but it's not obvious who they is in their capabilities.

I think in the past I just skimmed right past that part, assuming that he met the capabilities of UAPs. But on a certain level, that doesn't even make sense. Elizondo has publicly shared things like the five observables of UAPs, which include anti-gravity, instantaneous acceleration, hypersonic speeds without signatures, low observability, and transmedium travel. And he's also publicly acknowledged that UFOs have done things like powered down nuclear reactors, which he also alludes to in this letter. So while we may not know every single thing that UAPs can do, I think we can assume that we actually do know quite a bit about what they can do, even if the details on how they do it may allude us. But it seems weird that the capabilities of UAPs

would be among the hard questions that Elizondo hoped that General Mattis would ask himself. And the sentence actually makes more sense of read another way, as in who else knows and what are their capabilities as in the people who know? Admittedly, I might be reading too much into that. There's no way to know for sure what Elizondo intended here unless he tells us. I just find it interesting. But what is clear from looking at the historical programs for studying UFOs is that, According to many of the very intelligence officials who ran them, these programs were never adequately funded or supported, and even more shocking, they likely weren't given all the information that had been collected about UAPs. Their main purpose seems to have been perception management,

both internally and externally. And we can see this even today with the latest incarnation of a government office for investigating UAPs, the All-Domain Anomily Resolution Office or Arrow. Internal documents have shown that while Arrow spent a mere $100,000 of its budget to fund a NASA investigation in TUAPs, another $1.9 million was spent on PR and perception management. Just as before, the government seems to be more invested in making a show of investigating UFOs than in actually investigating them. I could go on about the many various ways that the government has worked to manage the perception of UFOs on every level, internally and externally. We don't have time to go into that whole story in this episode,

but they've also orchestrated elaborate disinformation campaigns within the UFO community, which have destroyed lives and careers. If you'd like to learn more about that, you can go back to episode 13 and start around the 53-minute mark. Or I highly recommend the book Project Beta, the story of Paul Benowitz's National Security and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth by researcher and author Greg Bishop. Another factor that inevitably ends up shaping our perception of the UFO phenomenon is the media. The serious study of the topic of UFOs has been heavily stigmatized in our culture, and as a result, the sole source of information that most people have on the subject is how it's portrayed in media and entertainment.

And this isn't even necessarily a bad or a nefarious thing. In many ways, it's just how things are. But we still need to be aware of the ways in which these portrayals in the media can help form defaults, assumptions that we have about the phenomenon, which may be overly biased or entirely incorrect. For example, as we've discussed, most people have a very binary approach to the UFO phenomenon. Either it's something entirely prosaic and explainable, whether that be secret black budget human tech or a mass delusion, or it's aliens coming here in a spaceship from another galaxy. And the reason that most people think that way is because those are the only explanations that have

ever really been presented to them. In movies, UFOs equal spacecraft, equal aliens, period. It's rare to see a film deal with the phenomenon in a way that meaningfully challenges that paradigm. The reality is that when we look at the vast array of entertainment media that has been created about the UFO phenomenon, the majority bears very little resemblance to the experiences the people actually report having with UFOs. And the enormity of this disconnect is something that has led many to question whether or not the misrepresentation of the UFO phenomenon might actually be intentional. And there's a level to which we almost have to assume that it is. In short, we know that the government has not been honest with us about UFOs, and we also know

that the government has used the media to sway our opinions about UFOs. For example, in July 1952, in a series of incidents over multiple days, at least 10 glowing UFOs were seen by countless people in the skies above the White House and the U.S. Capitol building. At one point for six straight hours and were tracked on radar at Washington, D.C.'s national airport. Fighter jets were scrambled, but each time they got close to the UFOs, they disappeared or took off its beads that made them impossible to chase. The incident was front-page news around the globe, and even President Truman demanded answers. In order to spin this narrative, the government relied upon the media. In the biggest press conference since World War II, U.S. Air Force Director of Intelligence,

Major General John Samford, dismissed these incredible events as nothing more than freak weather phenomena. And yet, just three months later, the CIA's assistant director of scientific intelligence wrote the following in a now-declassified memo. Quote, flying saucers pose two elements of danger which have national security implications. The first involves mass psychological considerations and the second concerns the vulnerability of the United States to air attack. So whatever happened in Washington, D.C. in 1952, what's clear is that the narrative that the government was pushing to the public through the media was not at all a reflection of what was going on behind the scenes. And we see this again in 1997 when a large B-shaped craft was reported over Phoenix, Arizona.

This craft was visible over a large geographical area and was witnessed and even filmed by thousands of people from all walks of life, including pilots, police officers, and civilians from vantage points all around the city. In this instance, the then-governor of Phoenix, Fife Symington, held a press conference minimizing and making light of the incident in which an aide came on stage wearing an alien costume. Witnesses to these events immediately voiced their outrage at Symington, and although he, years later, expressed regret for the press conference stunt and even admitted to seeing the craft himself and believing it to be otherworldly, the damage that that press conference did to the credibility of witnesses had already been done.

And besides just using the media to help spin a particular narrative to the public, we have evidence that the government has often worked to disseminate information through the media in much more secretive and coordinated ways. In 1970, the Church Committee, which was investigating intelligence abuses within the government, uncovered evidence of a program called Operation Mockingbird. Operation Mockingbird was a covert operation conducted by the CIA during the Cold War era. The operation was said to involve the manipulation and control of various media outlets and journalists to disseminate propaganda and shape public opinion both domestically and internationally.

There's evidence that the CIA had potentially hundreds of journalists working for them as a part of this operation, and that they were funding everything from student organizations to magazines in order to help shape public opinion on various sensitive topics. And while nothing definitive ever emerged with regard to Operation Mockingbird and the public perception of UFOs, given the government's commitment to muddying the waters on the UFO phenomenon over decades, it seems likely that more aggressive tactics like these were used as well. Yet, while there is significant evidence to suggest that the misrepresentation of the UFO phenomenon

and the media has been intentional, I'd argue that that isn't the entire story. Many of the distortions and how the media represents the phenomenon are just a function of how the media fundamentally works. For instance, in his 1977 film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg actually did a fairly good job of showing some of the weirder aspects of encounters with UFOs, including electrical disturbances, the appearance of strange burns, and even the emergence of psychic phenomena, including precognitive dreams. All of these things are well documented in the work of Godfather of Modern Eophology,

Jacques Valet, on whom he based the character of scientist Claude Lacombe. It was clear that Spielberg had done his homework. However, a scene that was reportedly not approved of by valet, and which certainly ran counter to the patterns laid out in his decades-long investigation into the UFO phenomenon, is the final scene, where, spoiler alert, the craft lands and the beings show themselves publicly revealing a more or less coherent motivation for their contact with humans. That part bears virtually no resemblance to the experiences reported by those who claim to have contact with UFOs. These contact events tend to be much more bizarre

and much less linear than anything that could be summed up in a Hollywood film. And that's exactly the point. In Hollywood, you need to provide the audience with an ending. Secrets must be revealed. Rising action must have a resolution. Characters within the narrative need to have a clear motivation. That's what a story is. That's what people respond to. But those things are also clearly and demonstrably opposed to the ways that the UFO phenomenon reveals itself in the course of human experience. And so in our attempts to wrestle the phenomenon into some kind of a coherent story that we can share, we inevitably end up misrepresenting how encounters with UFOs fundamentally operate. And there's one other major force that is likely shaping our perception of the UFO phenomenon,

which is the phenomenon itself. This one is harder to explain, and frankly, it could be an episode all on its own. But it all comes back to the idea that if we're dealing with an advanced intelligence that has a presence on this planet, it's logical to conclude two things. One, they most likely want to control our perception of them, and two, they probably have ways of managing our perception that are far or beyond methods with which we are currently familiar. So let's start with the first one. Why would the intelligence behind UFOs want to control our perception of them? There are a lot of potential reasons.

It could be that there exists something like the Prime Directive from Star Trek that discourages other more highly advanced intelligent species from interacting with us in more obvious ways. Or it could be strategically motivated in the same way that we do our best to hide our capabilities and our motivations from our potential adversaries. Jacques Valet has posited that the UFO phenomenon might be some kind of a control mechanism on humanity. The idea is that the bizarre and often life-altering encounters that people have with the impossible and the unknown serves the purpose of introducing and extracting various myths from our culture over time

in order to drive certain changes and agendas. At the end of the day, though, we have no real way of knowing what the motivations of the intelligence behind the UFO phenomenon might be. We have no idea why they seem to be concealing their motivations and strategically managing our perception of them. We just know that they very likely are. The classic question of why don't UFOs just land on the White House lawn grossly oversimplifies what contact between humanity and an advanced intelligence would likely entail. But it does manage to get to the heart of one of the most profound questions about the UFO phenomenon, which is, why don't they just tell us what they want? And the most obvious answer is because they don't want to.

Which brings us to the question of how the intelligence behind the phenomenon might be controlling our perception of it. We already discussed Valet's control mechanism, but there are a multitude of other clues about their methods that we can find throughout records of witness accounts. People who encounter UFOs, particularly up close, tend to report strange things like telepathic communication from strange beings, missing time, and altered memories. All of these things point to some kind of methods or technology being used to literally control and influence our minds. So it seems likely that the phenomenon is doing exactly that, and probably in ways that we can't yet anticipate or identify. All right, so where does this leave us? If you're getting the sense that in trying to find our way through this topic that we've only gotten ourselves more lost, just know that you're not alone in that. That's generally how this goes.

But if this is your first time venturing into the dark forest of the UFO topic, I can promise you that it gets easier over time. As you get the lay of the land, all of this will get easier to navigate. And although you will likely find that over time, you have a harder and harder time saying for sure what you think the UFO phenomenon is, you'll also find that you're able to talk and think deeply about it in ways that are ultimately much more productive than a canned answer could ever be. But with all of the conflicting reports and all of our own cultural biases and the manipulation of the government and the media and perhaps even the phenomenon itself, where does that leave us? How do we even begin to get our bearings? And who can we trust? I'll give you the answer that I think is the right one, although I sense that there will be plenty of people who don't like this answer and beg to disagree. I don't think you should trust anyone. Not even me. In Diana Pesolka's American Cosmic, she related a conversation. that she had with Jacques Valais near the beginning of her research into UFOs, during which he said to her, believe nothing, believe no one. And I agree. When it comes to the phenomenon, there are no easy answers. In fact, as I hope I've convincingly argued throughout

this episode, in endeavoring to answer these questions, we have plenty of reasons to actively guard ourselves against easy answers. Now, admittedly, this may not be what someone in the rows of ontological shock wants to hear. But I think it's of monumental importance that we hold ourselves accountable and do our best to remain objective in the face of this radical mystery. The hard truth is that the answer to what the UFO phenomenon actually represents is not Googlerable. And none of the methods that you were taught in school about what constitutes a reliable source of information are going to work here. Take, for example, the New York Times. Once the standard bearer for journalistic integrity and the paper of record for the greatest democracy in the world, the gray lady doesn't seem to know what she thinks about UFOs.

Do you believe the article where they outed the secret government UFO program or the article where they assure us that it's all just a big misunderstanding? If you're going to go about this the right way, you shouldn't believe either. You need to think for yourself and come to your own conclusions. So what does that look like? Well, first, you need to be willing to take in information from a wide variety of sources and entertain a wide variety of ideas, even ones that you don't agree with and that make you uncomfortable, especially ones that you don't agree with and that make you uncomfortable. You don't need to accept these ideas.

You only need to consider them. They are important to getting the lay of the land. And if you talk to just about anyone who has studied this topic for any length of time, What you find is that as your worldview adjusts, you suddenly find yourself willing to consider ideas that you weren't willing to consider before. It's an inevitable part of the process. Second, you need to be willing to do the work to verify things before accepting them as true. This is hard. Actually, it's not even hard. It's more like impossible. There are too many leads to follow, too many facts to track down. For every answer that you manage to sufficiently verify, 100 new questions will pop up in its place.

This can be frustrating and it's obviously far from ideal, but it's also important to the process. Any serious and objective inquiry into the UFO phenomenon will inevitably lead you to questions about what you know and how you know it. I don't mean to spoil it for you, but if you haven't gotten there already, that is where this is all heading. And while it can be disorienting to recognize that you actually know a lot less than you thought, there is more strength and courage and fulfillment to be found standing under the vastness of the stars and realizing that you're small than in consuming a bunch of prepackaged pseudo-truths and convincing yourself that you are mighty. And finally, you need to develop your own discernment. To me, one of the most profound realizations with taking this pass has been recognizing the extent to

which we have been systematically programmed and conditioned to not trust ourselves. We don't even trust our own eyes and our own experience if it doesn't conform to what we've been told must be true. We will doubt our own sanity before we doubt consensus reality. And that's scary. And I want to be clear that developing your discernment does not mean believing everything that you think or not interrogating your beliefs. What it means is reestablishing trust with yourself. It means listening to the little voice in your head and the physiological response in your body that tells you when something doesn't sound right in pursuing that. It means being brave and grounded enough to honor your own truth, even if it doesn't align with consensus reality. It's not about convincing

yourself that you're always right. That is not discernment. It's about no longer allowing your sources of truth and meaning to be outsourced to the highest bitter. And that includes me. As we move forward on this journey, I hope that you enjoy the podcast. I hope that it challenges and inspires you. I hope it's fun. What I don't hope for is that you believe me. I'm on this journey too, and my answers aren't necessarily better than anyone else's. Please don't take my word for anything. Look into it yourself. Dig deeper. Challenge the parts that don't feel right for you. Figure out why they don't feel right to you and find something that does? Because whatever you end up believing about the UFO phenomenon, the most important thing is that it comes from and resonates

with you. Until next time.