Inquiry with Kelly Chase - Truth Crisis: The Deliberate Collapse of Shared Reality with Philosopher James Madden

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

Something has shifted dramatically in the last few years. The institutions and information structures we were trained to trust have failed in ways that are now difficult to ignore, producing a kind of generalized mistrust that makes it hard to think, hard to act, and hard to know what a good life even looks like anymore. In this episode, Kelly sits down with philosopher and author James Madden to examine what it means to navigate belief and meaning when the ground beneath shared reality has already given way. Jim is the author of Unidentified Flying Hyper-Object: UFOs, Philosophy, and the End of the World and Thinking About Thinking: Mind and Meaning in the Era of Techno-Nihilism, the cohost of The Great Dangerous Books Podcast, and a longtime thinking partner whose refusal to offer easy answers has made him a favorite among listeners of Kelly's previous work. They talk about the complacent indifference that has settled over people in the wake of seemingly endless waves of institutional scandal and revelation. They talk about conspiracy thinking as a cognitive response to the collapse of trusted authority—and why the fact that some conspiracies turn out to be real makes the situation harder to navigate, not easier. They talk about why generalized epistemic mistrust is such an effective mechanism for preventing meaningful action. And they talk about what it means to keep trying to live well when you can no longer trust the information you would need to do it. Topics explored: epistemological collapse | conspiracy thinking as cognitive response | institutional trust failure | the "big other" | generalized skepticism as paralysis | information warfare | the psychology of indifference | epistemic mistrust and political action | radical self-reliance | faith and probability | living well under uncertainty | Žižek | Lacan | Plato's Republic Inquiry with Kelly Chase is brought to you by SpectreVision Radio.Produced in partnership with Voltage.fm.  Referenced In This Episode Unidentified Flying Hyperobject: UFOs, Philosophy, and the End of the World, James Madden Thinking about Thinking: Mind and Meaning in the Era of Techno-Nihilism, James Madden Republic, Plato The Agnostic Inquirer: Revelation from a Philosophical Standpoint, Sandra Menssen & Thomas D. Sullivan Check Out James Madden's Podcast The Great Dangerous Books Podcast YouTube Spotify Apple Podcasts Support The Show Patreon: inquirywithkellychase.com Substack: inquirywithkellychase.substack.com Connect with Kelly Website: kellychase.media X: @kellychasemedia Instagram: @kellychasemedia Watch Season 1 of Comosis: UFOs & A New Reality Prime Video Tubi TIMESTAMPS04:50 Indifference and Partisan Filters 06:03 Frozen by Mistrust 07:41 Ontological vs Epistemic 09:33 Medical Trust Breakdown 13:13 Sheep Bandits Skepticism 18:23 Conspiracy Comfort Trap 22:07 Secrecy and Leaks 26:00 How Conspiracies Operate 28:32 Black Budgets Disinfo 30:57 UFO Skepticism In Principle 34:34 Portal Claims and Psyops 35:56 Trading Obscurity for Obscurity 38:43 Counting Humans Knowledge Limits 41:32 Good Life in Uncertainty 44:09 Moron Idiot Imbecile Framework 46:14 Radical Self Reliance and Trust 50:16 Skepticism Without Denial 55:29 Faith, Doubt, and Jesus 01:01:09 Keep Seeking Do Good 01:02:17 Credits and Where to Listen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm Brooke. My friends and I perform spooky stories on our podcast 13. 13 is a movie for your ears with immersive sound design and music from our composer. And we're not reading you the same old ghost stories from Reddit. With original stories from our in-house writers and submissions from up-and-coming authors, 13 will make you smile, break your heart, and have you wishing for a nightlight. Atmospheric, slow burn, always spooky, and some. sometimes sexy, our friends are some of the best voice actors and writers in our little corner of the podcast industry. So if you want to find out why those figures in black keep meeting by the water just before dawn, why you should never sleep in a room with an empty chair, or why you hear faint music echoing from the abandoned mall. Join us by following 13 wherever you're listening right now. That's 13. The word, not the number, all spelled out. Bridget Howard keeps asking for my teeth. Wherever you get your podcast. Peak pollination season and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speeds. That's why I chose

GoogleFi wireless. My connections stay strong even when the hive is buzzing. Plus, unlimited plans started $35 a month. Now that's a deal that doesn't stay. Explore GoogleFi Wireless plans today. Plus taxes and government fees. GoogleFi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. No one goes to Hank's for spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately though, the shop's been quiet.

So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks co-pilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs to help him see if he can afford it. Co-pilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras. make the dollar slice work. Now, Hank says, all you line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Co-Pilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at M365 copilot.com slash work. Specter Vision Radio. Welcome back to Inquiry. I'm your host, Kelly Chase. When I decided to launch this new podcast, I knew exactly where I wanted to begin. I wanted to sit down with one of my favorite thinking partners, James Madden. There are a lot of people I could have interviewed first,

but Jim felt like the right place to start. Because of this show is about learning how to think clearly and confusing times, he is one of the sharpest and most honest minds that I know. People who have followed my work on the UFO rabbit hole and cosmosus are already familiar with Jim. He became something of a fan favorite, not because he offers easy answers, but because he refuses to. Jim is a philosopher and the author of Unidentified Flying Hyperobject, UFOs, Philosophy, and the end of the world, and thinking about thinking, mind and meaning in the era of techno-nihialism.

In this episode, we talk about the strange historical moment we find ourselves in. We talk about how to responsibly navigate belief and meaning in a world where conspiracy theories seem to be getting confirmed every day. We talk about epistemological collapse, what it feels like, what it does to the psyche, and whether there's a way through it that doesn't involve either denial or dissent into madness. And ultimately, we talk about what it means to live a good life when the ground beneath our shared reality feels unstable. This conversation sets the tone for what inquiry is really about. It's not about chasing every rabbit hole or litigating every claim, but rather stepping back and asking a more foundational question.

How do we think well under conditions of uncertainty? With that in mind, here is my conversation with James Madden. Well, hey, Jim, welcome to the show. It's great to see you. It's great to see you, Kelly. Thanks for having me. Yes, I can't start a new project without getting James Madden on. So I thought that should be a great place for us to start. And it feels like this is so central to so many of the conversations that you and I have kind of been having from the beginning privately and publicly about, you know, what all of this means and how we know what we know what's real. So how have things been for you? Like, what has 2026 been like for you so far? far as a thinker, as a father, as a professor. Like what has this been like? Yeah, yeah. I think the most uncanny part of 2026 for me has been how uneventful it's been despite its eventfulness.

Okay. So for instance, and I think this says a lot about the situation is, so I teach at a college. And it's very odd that you'll have things like, you know, the revelations of the Epstein files, the initiation of seemingly a war of choice, you know, talk of nationalizing elections, all the ice stuff, all this, like, wherever your, whatever your view on this is, all that going on, and then seeing young people relatively unflapped by this. we've been in this sort of just endless wave of scandal shock reports of of the most outrageous things things that we would have at one time defined to be insane now seem to be like officially

endorsed narratives things like that since like this just repeatedly waves this since 2020 right and it seems the effect of it has really been indifference i find myself really uh struggling to make sense of the fact that, you know, if the things that, like, even the mainstream is reporting now are true, then much of what we thought could be taken seriously, can't be taken seriously. And yet it seems that for most people, oh, what are you going to do? Life goes on, right? Or not even that. There's not even that inference being made, right?

It's just, you know, it's, I think what the sort of post-truth era has done has moved us into a kind of complacent indifference, right? And that's to me the most troubling thing. I completely agree. I feel like every conversation that I have with people, well, not every conversation. It's striking to me how some people, despite all these things that have happened, it's impacted their narrative, almost not at all. They're still getting all of their news sources from just like one one place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So everybody's kind of getting like they're just seeing like one view. into this thing. Kelly, it's like just taking Epstein as an example. Like one side will say, oh, this is terrible, but our guy is seems to be the singular virtuous one in the mix, right?

And then the other side will say, oh, this is terrible. But our guy or our gal is the seemingly only virtuous one in the mix rather than saying that, no, this shows there's this thing that goes on, right? Right. It should undermine our confidence in just about everything, right? And that's the message to be taken, not my guy or someone else's guy can be vindicated in it, right? Absolutely. And I think that that belief that like my guy or my side is the righteous one, you know, me and my friends, we see it clearly and it's these other people that have descended into madness. That's like the one thing that's like holding it all together still. That and the apathy. But what do you do? That's the question that keeps coming up in all these conversations.

Not that I'm advocating for overthrowing the government or revolution or anything like that, but even if I were, the revolutionary playbook requires that you have some kind of a coherent alternative, right? That you have something else that you would put in its place. And we don't have that. And I don't feel like I even have the sense that I have the ability to make good judgment calls about that sort of thing right now. And so you kind of just end up frozen.

And this is where I think the epistemological problem of the moment comes up, right? Because let's say, you know, Kelly Chase is going to start the revolution, right? And Kelly, you know, okay. God for me. Yeah, Kelly's the hope we've been waiting for. And she makes some claims and she makes some claims about herself and some facts and things like that. But yet this is just one more thing now we're all seen on the Internet. and why would we trust that now?

Right. It seems, you know, like when, you know, whether we would consciously say this or not, you know, people are clinging to their particular, you know, echo chambers. But still, I think there's an implicit sense that almost anyone reflective has to say is, yeah, but ultimately I can't take action because I can't trust any information that I would act on now. And so I think if you have this sort of generalized epistemic mistrust, That is a great way of undermining any meaningful political action at, like, aggressiveness level. Are you surprised at all at how just absurd and just at how bad it's gotten?

Because I feel like, you know, we named our production company ontocalypse, right? An ontological apocalypse because, you know, I really did believe and saw coming that, like, this wasn't just about, like, the ontological shock of people. coming to terms with the reality of non-human intelligence or something like that, that like that things were falling apart in such a way that we were going to come to like a full apocalypse, like a catastrophic moment where our categories collapse and we don't know what we're looking at anymore. And even having seen that coming, not that many, many people, you, many, many thinkers have seen this coming people decades before we were born and saw this coming.

But now that we're in it, I didn't expect to get quite so quickly to like, is that really Jim Carrey or not? You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I think, I think maybe this is a point that you've been laboring to make for a while, Kelly. And I think I think it's correct is that the problem isn't ontological. It's epistemological. Right? And is that what's happened is it's not that this sort of open field of a new view of the world that has been open to us that we don't know what to make sense over. It's not that we've like, like this new reality, right, even like the subtitle of your thing, right? This new reality has been open to us and we have to deal with the anxiety of the world being very different than we thought it was. What seems more to have happened is we've entered into a kind of epistemological skepticism that would make it unable for us to even have an ontology, to even have confidence in an understanding of things. Let's just take one issue.

Like the vaccine stuff. I know this is right. Okay, so there are many people now who are unable to trust whether or not like the basic scientific method has been used to arrive at like recommendations for drugs or vaccines, et cetera, et cetera. Do you know what I mean? And we can debate about the degree to which those arguments are actually very good or very bad, right? But the point is, is there is now like a baked in mistrust for a lot of people of anything that they're shown. And even if like, like, if you give me a paper and it shows that here's the data of the study

and here's what was done. And so it all comes out very valid and all that. There's now, though, this like baked in suspicion that, yeah, but maybe the data was rigged in the first place, right? It's like, it's not just that we're worried about our method. We're worried about the original source of data or original contact with the real, et cetera, et cetera, that this becomes so eager. And I'm not taking aside on these debates. What I'm just saying is, is like, is, so right now, even on something as basic as medicine, there is an increasing suspicion from people that they just cannot trust what they've been told.

But then at the same time, you know, the dude selling you the organic vitamins is just as likely to be biased. Exactly. It's showing you, you know, the thing from big pharma. What happens is you have a generalized skepticism, and then out of that, you can trust something. You know, like skepticism is just this acid that dissolves things. So you're going to say, yeah, I don't trust the old medical establishment. But hey, I'm really, I think like RFK is going to deliver us here. Well, why would you trust him then?

Do you what I mean? And so it seems like what you end up with then is just indifference, what are you going to do, right? Which means you're just going to fall back into the status quo. I mean, absolutely. I think this is such a great example. And it's one, because I come from a medical family. I'm practically the only person in my family who's not in the healthcare field. And we have these conversations about vaccines. Once again, I actually don't take a position one way or another. I talk to them about this stuff because I'm interested in like how they answer the question for their patients. And what I find so interesting is when I have conversations with these people that I'm close to them. to who are in health care, you know, just even asking them that question coming for me, someone they've known their whole life and that they know is not a looney tune. They get angry, right? Like they get, it immediately gets into like this kind of hostile stance. And I can understand because like they have patients coming to them all day and they're like, I'm just trying to help you,

man. Like just, you know, I don't have time for my slate of, you know, sometimes over a thousand patients to like explain science to all of you. Blood work is terrible. You're going to have do something, right? Right. Right. But they, but at the same time, I've tried to explain to them, like, you have to understand that these people's skepticism comes from a not insane place. And that when you greet that skepticism with hostility or like you're stupid, then they automatically are going to distrust you, which only just like continues. We've been so siloed in this country that we can't even have an effective kind of like dialectic about anything. Like, I can't like ask. you a question and then you just answer it because you recognize that my question, I'm not questioning

your integrity. I'm not questioning your intelligence. I'm saying like, hey, can you explain to me why I should believe this and make your case, you know? Here's an example. It's not my example. It's a fairly famous example in like academic philosophy. Okay. So let's say, you know, I'm sitting here and I look out my back window and I look in the field behind and I see, she's, sheep, right? And I say to my friend Kelly, I don't know, what if those are bandits masquerading as sheep? Okay. And just, you know, all things being equal, you know, Kelly should say, Jim, maybe you should maybe find a nice person to talk to about that because that's a little crazy, right? I have no reason to think that there are sheep bandits there. Okay, you see what I mean? Or let's say, I look out there and I

just wonder, are the sheep really there? And Kelly might say, really, Jim, maybe. you're not doing well because you seem a little paranoid about being tricked about they're being sheep. But then let's say like I just got off of like the AP website and it says, hey, there are bandits masquerading as sheep abroad in Kansas today. Okay. Well, then it's not, I mean, it may still be low probability that the sheep outside my window are are sheep bandits, right? but it's not negligible at that point, and it pays to ask, right? Or let's say I know I just drank a bottle of cough syrup, right?

So like, and then I see sheep out my window. Well, maybe I should wonder, are they really there or is that a hallucination? Do you sort of mean? The point of the example is to say, like, all things being equal, you know, we should trust our senses. We should trust, like, what's common sense before us. Unless I have some reason to think my environment is deceptive. Like I've been told there's people masquerading a sheep with ill intent, or I have some reason to believe that I'm somehow defective, right?

I've just drank a bottle of cough syrup. And so if you have those indications of like either deceptive environment or internal failures, then it makes sense to start becoming skeptical. Do you see that? Okay. And so I think there's a certain level if, you know, your doctor tells you to do X, Y, or Z, you know, it would take a kind of paranoia to doubt that, okay? unless, right, you're aware of like clear cases of where things have like really gone wrong

and receptive and things like that, not that your doctor's trying to trick you, but your doctor's like falling into a structure or deception or something like that, right? And I don't mean just to go on a medical thing. But what I'm saying is, is I think at this point, the waters have been so sullied for us epistemologically that it's, you're not crazy to wonder whether you're really seeing sheep. And some things that like just literally six, seven years ago, we would all say you're being paranoid about that. We would not necessarily say that because we have had so many things happen in the last six years that make us mistrust the institutions that are required to give us information so that we can think for ourselves. And so I think, like the way I think of it is, is, you know, we have that

just a well-grounded suspicion that maybe something is trying to trick us because we've got some pretty good cases of where we retract recently, right? Right, right. And I think that it brings us to this really uncomfortable place where you start to spiral. For instance, when I started the UFO rabbit hole, I very specifically was like, you know, we're going to look into this stuff, but we're not going to fall into conspiracy theories. And like specifically I was talking about Q and on and that sort of thing. And when I started that podcast, I had a very real concern that I was going to spiral off into conspiracy thinking, that I would cause other people to spiral off into conspiracy. thinking and at the time QAnon was kind of the like epitome of that right it was it was ruining lives it was

tearing families apart and I really didn't want to be responsible for that specifically until right until it seems as though I mean clearly there was a lot going on there a lot you know you know JFC is still alive and he's coming back and he's going to be in Houston and you know all of these things like there's there's there's a lot of weird stuff going on there but but it seems as though the the kind of central proposition of QAnon is that there is some real fundamental truth to at least parts of that. And I had already pre-decided that that wasn't true, right? And this is what happens every time you kind of encounter this ontological shock where this thing that you think is so obviously not true that you can just dismiss it, whether it's UFOs or whether it's the idea that the elites are doing

some crazy stuff that we never would have imagined. Then once you're confronted with the idea that they are. Now you're asking yourself, well, how do I even know what I know? And I think what's interesting is that is coming to terms of the fact that like it's, it's not that something has changed now that makes it harder for me to know what I know. It's that something has changed that has made me aware that I don't always know what I know. Yeah, that's it, right? Like, you now know there have been cases of people masquerading a sheep. Right. Right. You know. Yeah, so I'm glad you mentioned the conspiracy thing because there's something in the human, right, that we would like to believe that somebody out there knows what's going on and they're running things. Okay.

This is like LeCahn calls the big other, right? We are hoping someone can tell us what we want, right? Right. Because like the anxiety of trying to figure out what we should do and what we should want on our own is almost unbearable. So like try as you like, you're going to want to defer some of your responsibility for yourself onto some external authority. Okay. And so then I think there's this tendency that we're going to have is like when we're in situations

where, you know, we've been really disappointed by some authority, something that we really thought we could depend on to run our lives, then to sort of like just look, start looking for a big other in all the wrong places, right? on the benevolent conspiracy is still rational. You can still make sense of a world that's run by Descartes' evil demon, as well as you can, you know, one that's run by like a good deity. You know what I mean? You're looking for a deity that you can see is running the world, okay?

And so I think then there's this tendency then in humans, as we so badly want to think that it's not just chaos and somebody smart is running this thing, is then to start, like, putting things together into like highly implausible conspiracies, right? I mean, it's clear that we do this, right? And there's a relief in that, right? Because if there is a cabal of reptilian overlord,

who are, you know, running the world so they can, like, drain our children or their adrenachrome or whatever, right? That's terrible, but at least I can, like, act on that, right? Like, I can, you know, like, I can, don't send the kids to the park alone or something like that. Do you, you know what I mean? Like, I've got an action I can do. Okay, so I think we have to be careful because it would be easy to sucker us for

conspiracy theories. I think I think there's a there's something in the human headware that's going to go for this. Okay. And so and so then what happens then is like you and I, you know, both would have used the word, the phrase conspiracy, the phrase conspiracy as a pejorative, right? Like you just said you started the show. Okay. Why? Because it, there, you have every reason to kind of mistrust conspiracy because there's something in the human cognitive hardware that's going to fall into like illusionary conspiracies just so we can make sense for our world. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I think that's all that is true. Okay. However, we've got a couple cases now, like just using the Epstein thing of where it looks like, yeah, but there was something right about it. Like, people can go into something for bad reasons. And that thing could still turn out to have a truth to it. You know what I mean? This is like, you know, this is like Freud's notion of illusion. It's a belief that you hold not because it's true, but because it's doing something for you emotionally, right?

well, but that illusion could still turn out to be true. So I think like the whole talk about conspiracy theories, I think we have to realize that two things could be true. It's like people could be suckered into them because of a human weakness, true. But also there could be a truth to them too, right? And I think I think like say Epstein and compared to QAnon is a great example of that where I think both things are true. I think people were suckered into something really crazy, right?

Because it gave them a meaning structure for their lives. Okay. and it turns out some core of it was true. Yeah. Right. And I think that's the problem now is like you can't rule something out just because it's a, you know, a bat shit conspiracy. Right. Because it seems like there may be a kernel to that.

Yeah. Yeah. I just, I'm recognizing all of the things that I just like really reflexively assumed without ever really looking into it. And like one of the ideas and I think this is like a really common. in kind of response to any kind of conspiracy thinking or conspiracy theory. You know, people will say that's not possible because too many people would know and then too many people would have to be in on it. And I used to think that that was like a really valid argument because it sounds right.

You know what I mean? Like it sounds good. But having been in uphology for a few years, I'm like, oh no, people are very good at not talking about things actually. And on the one hand, they do always talk about it. It does always leak out. But when the leaks are uncertain because people aren't willing to sign their name on it, they're not willing to make a specific claim, it's happening in back channels, then it leaks out. And so then you have this rumor of unknown provenance. So everybody knows, but we don't know. And it becomes this thing that's like impossible to verify or falsify one way or the other.

But the other thing is that, like, humans are very complicated social creatures. And these environments, especially those that are created by the ecosystem of institutional secrecy, are very messed up. Like, there's a lot going on there. And, like, I know things. I know plenty of things. And people get mad at me for not saying them, things about people in the community, things about lies that have been told, things about people that I don't think people should be trusting. And everyone, you know, it's very. easy, I think, for people to pound their fist and say, like, why won't you just tell us? Like, why won't you just tell us? And it's like, well, for about a million reasons, I don't, I don't tell, partly because some of these secrets are very high octane and you're afraid for your own safety. There's also the issue more than that of like, I from day one, and you know this about me, because you've been around kind of from the beginning, I have never been seeking out classified information. I'm not particularly starstruck by anyone ever. And so I have been a part much less. And so I have been a part much less.

of a lot of this ecosystem than many other people in the field. And I look to my left and I look to my right. And I am certain that all of these other people know at least what I know, if not more. And they're not speaking, right? And so, like, and there's no indication that they're going to speak up. You also have, like, people that come to you and confidence and tell you things that, like, and so then is it, is it my place then to out someone to break somebody's trust? Like, there's a million.

I could go on and on. There's a million reasons. why you might know something, but you don't say it. And in fact, the little that I have said is more than most people have. And so suddenly I recognize that conspiracies, they do kind of take care of themselves in a way. And it's absolutely possible for a lot of people, if not most of people, to know something. And yet for it's still to be in this like murky conspiracy land that we can't quite parse. And so, you know, I think that argument really falls apart. You said this place was Steps from the water.

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Yeah, I think it falls part in many ways. Right now, Kelly, you could tell me, like, here's the real deal about the UFO or, you know, whatever, right? And I'd be like, okay, I don't think my friend Kelly is lying to me, but I have no reason to think that's true because, like, she got that information. somewhere and I know they're there are sheep bandits and roving so right one of those things like you know they could fly me to area 51 and show me the craft and in the alien or they could like show me the document that you know from from dullest to hoover you know we're going to kill that s o b kennedy and you're going to help us cover it up and why would i how could i possibly trust that right right so so one like just the whole like that's another issue but let me just let me just

I just want to note that, right? But also, in terms of, like, conspiracy's being able to keep themselves, I'll use the JFK one, because that's the, like, the actual one I think I've spent the most time thinking about, right? Is, you know, people say, well, where are all the leaks? I'm like, there's all sorts of leaks, right?

There's, like, like, there's all sorts of leaks. There's all sorts of people who said things that probably shouldn't, they shouldn't have said if they were in on this and they, like, like, there's, you know what I mean? Like, like, the fact that we're here talking about it tells us there's some leaked information about it, right? It's all based on that. So it's not that it's kept that secret.

And two, the way I think, like, probably conspiracy works is it's like, let's say you are, you know, some deep state actor of some sort. And it's, you know, November of 63. And you're in New Orleans, right? And you see in the news, JFK shot today in Dallas. I don't think you then get a phone call that tells you what to do, right? Right. You got a phone call telling you what was coming.

There's just an understanding you know what to do. You know what it is we do, and you know what to do when you see this do it. Right. And it's run on a kind of prior understanding of the ability of humans to make a move when they see what is obviously going on. So I think what would hold the conspiracy together would be like this decision. screen transfer of information, right? Yeah. Kelly, well, okay, once we hit the president, you're going to like take the car here and dump it there and we're going to, no, it's like, Kelly's trained. Kelly knows what to do. Kelly know Kelly can read the play off of what's going

on. She's going to make a move. It's less like math and more like jujitsu. You're going to make a move in the environment because you know what you're doing, right? I think that's probably how stuff like this works more. I think that's why they train people. I just think it's how human institutions work, right? I mean, so like if suddenly, um, I saw on the news, you know, one of my kids had been in an accident. I would not call my wife and ask for instructions. I would know the play. So I think a lot of what we're saying, like we think of conspiracies is that the way they

would work is you would plan it out to every detail up front. I don't think that's how it would work. It's like you have people in place who know what to do in very, variable situations. You set something in process and you're very confident of your ability to sort of cover it up after the fact. I think that's how it works. Well, that'd be my guess. And I think that's probably truly JFK thing, the UFO thing, all that stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing is that, like, I think people, I certainly did, underestimate how elaborate it is. Because something that I learned from our mutual friend, Daniel Elizondo, a fantastic, phenomenal researcher, is that when it comes to these black budget programs, whatever the budget is for that. And like, I'm just imagined, let's say they are reversing.

engineering a UFO or whatever it is that they're trying to cover up with all of this like circus of uphology, whatever the core secret of that is. Clearly it has something to do with technology and there's a lot of money involved. Otherwise, why bother? Right. So let's say they're reverse engineering a UFO and imagine how much that budget would be. Like are we talking hundreds of millions, billions, probably, right? And then each one of those programs, whatever they're spending on the program itself, they spend six to seven times. that budget on security. And security means all kinds of things, not just the physical security of the location, but also counterintelligence, misinformation, you know. And so I think people don't

recognize how many people can be involved and how many resources can be deployed. And so, like, I agree. It seems completely people are like, well, why would anybody care what, like to even lie to Kelly Chase, right? Like I, you know what I mean? Like, I'm known in the UFO community, almost nowhere else. And so, like, why would they take time to lie to me? And yet I can tell you that when I do things, like I went to the Age of Disclosure premiere back in November, ended up at a bar afterwards, and this guy sits down across from me tells me that he's former intelligence, that he got kicked out for, you know, discovering some stuff and then proceeds to tell me all kinds of things about, you know, ops that they're planning, big blue

beam type stuff. I don't even want to repeat it because like because I I don't know is this just a guy who's just Sharon or is this somebody who was paid to sit down across from me and like tell me some stuff that's going to make me sound crazy. Right. And you don't and and it seems absurd that they would waste time on me. But when you're talking about billions and billions being spent on one project just for security, suddenly that becomes entirely feasible. And so that's another reason I don't say everything I know. It's because I feel like probably half of what I've been told is a lie, and I'm not interested in being used as a vector for disinformation. I read a very interesting book this winter, Aboration in the Heartland of the Reel by Wendy Painting.

I have it on my shelf. I haven't read it yet. It's a good read. It's a great piece of work. She's an American Studies, social theorist, sociologist, okay. and it's an incredible psycho history of the Tim McVeigh case, the Oklahoma City bomber. And she has a chapter on, specifically on the UFO tie-in, because of course, you know, there's all sorts conspiracy theories about McVeigh and UFOs and stuff like that. And she goes really deep in the history of disinformation and deception about the UFO, on the UFO issue specifically.

And she points out like the extent, I think she may be talking about the Richard Doty case or one of those famous ones where like apparently even like little makeshift bases were built just to deceive this one dude. Yeah. Right? I mean, like, you know what I mean? And the thing, and to me, as soon as I hear that, that tells me I can't make a judgment one way or another about any. of this. Because, you know, I've argued with a lot of people about, you know, are, is the UFO, phenomenon, is it, is it extraterrestrial or is it, you know, ultra-terrestrial or something like that, right? And for me, that always comes down to, okay, so what's more likely, like, the, the arrival

of extraterrestrial beings or that, like, I'm, like, there's a kind of human-made technology that far out strips what I would imagine we would be able to do, like, even say, 1947 or whatever, right? Okay, well, here's the problem. I can't set a prima facie probability for both of those things because the only word I have about what we were actually capable of doing technologically in, say, 1947 would be given to me by the people who are supposedly covering this thing up. I think at this point you have to have a conspiracy through one way or another, but because of that, because our only accessed the information of one side of that calculation, is coming from the very source that we'd be covering things up,

I can't set a prima facie probability to that and thereby say, oh, no, it's more likely that it's aliens than it is that it's our tech, or it's more likely it's our tech than it's aliens because the epistemic waters have been like permanently wrecked for me to make this assessment about what we may or may have, not have technologically. And so that's why for me, the UFO issue, specifically,

I've descended into a kind of like in-principle skepticism, right? meaning like I can only suspend judgment. It's like, yeah, it's clear something goes on. But what? I don't think there's any way for me to find my way out of the skeptical concern. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think especially in the UFO world, you know, referring back to the Benowitz case,

they did insane things to Benowitz. They gave him a computer and then basically beamed alien messages into this like satellite in his house. that were like coming out through the computer that like we're saying like we're coming to your planet and we need resources and I forget all the details. But but more than that, they put that man in a helicopter and they like flew him over like faked crash like fake crash sites. And like and so then, you know, even just this week we see, you know, Ross Colthart and Ross Coldheart is someone that I like very much. But you know, he's saying very publicly that like he's been taken to a location in the woods where there is a portal and it's. It's being guarded by the National Forestry Service and that he knows. I don't get the impression that he's saying that he saw the portal, but he saw the building where the portal is. And I'm just like, how could anyone know? Like, I don't know what he's being told in the background. But it's not that I think that Ross is particularly gullible or that he's lying.

It's that I think that maybe he underestimates how elaborate these things can actually be. And we also have to keep in mind that Ross Colhart is not an American citizen. So they can say literally whatever they want to him. Not that they don't also run operations on American citizens. They say they don't. They absolutely do. But like with a with somebody who's not a citizen, they don't even have to apologize. And they're running these kinds of elaborate operations on people with platforms all the time.

And a platform as big as Ross, they can invest a lot of money in that. And it's just it gets to this place where it's like sometimes I wonder, especially with how hopelessly infiltrated the field is. It's like, what am I even researching? Like, what am I, what, what am I doing? Am I just regurgitating and repurposing a bunch of like fed slop to cover up something that probably has very little to do with the thing I'm actually interested in? And I think the answer to that is probably yes. And here's a point I want to make with like talk of portals and things like that. Yeah.

Like, I think one of the things you have, like, I think this is something that we all fall into. So you'll see this where, you know, you're just same with the UFO phenomenon, right? you know oh i think it's demons or i think it's angels or i think it's fairies or something like that right and it seems like what you're doing there is you're taking something that is already obscure and you're going to explain it in something that may actually be more obscure yeah you see i mean it's it's it's not as if like calling it a demon is somehow explanatory Do you know because it's not like we somehow have some good non-question begging account of what a demon is or what an angel is or what a fairy is or something like that. Now look, within certain religious traditions, there's a long tradition of talking about these sorts of things, but in terms of our like being able to come to some like common understanding of this independently of some revelatory tradition, right?

Like that's not an explanation. So you say it's a portal. Okay. I don't know, man. I'm unclear what one means by a portal, right? And even if there's like some, you know, albeit controversial physical possibility in some, you know, someday to be undermined theory that there could be portals, right? To me, right here, that is more obscure than what you're trying to explain with it. Do you see what I'm saying?

And it seems like, oh, so many of these things we call explanations of the UFO are trading the obscure for the more obscure. or this obscure of the equally obscure or the obscure for my preferred obscurity, right? And I think this is one of the case just frustrated me in attempting to bring some clarity to these issues, right? He's like constantly people like always pushing these things. But do you really know what you're talking about when you say it's, you know, it's a leprechaun, right? Or when you say it's important, you don't know what you're talking about there. Or it's all about consciousness, like as if we know what the hell consciousness is, right?

I mean, like it seems like we're constantly falling into these things. And that's why, like, when I tried to deal with the issue ontologically, I try to stick the concepts that we're already well tested, you know, that we're already in our inventory of ideas that are out there that we could try to make sense of it. Right. But that's not what goes on with this, right? And so like, like, if I were to talk to Ross, I'd be like, well, what the hell do you mean by a portal and what makes you think that that makes,

that in any way sheds light on what's going on? You see what I'm saying? And again, like I think, I mean, this is the view of them as one example, but we can do this with all sorts of issues, right, where I think what we're doing is just taking the obscure and explain it in the even more obscure. Yeah, because there's a way in which the origins of knowledge is always kind of like retreating from us as we approach it. Because like an example that I used in the first episode of this podcast is that recently they were doing this study on areas where they had to relocate. a bunch of people in a place where they were going to create a dam and, like, flood the area, basically. And as they were doing that study, what they found was that they, in all of these rural areas

where they had to relocate people for these dams, that they had significantly undercounted the population for that area. And so the problem then becomes extrapolating that out. They're like, well, we have this indication now that we have been significantly, like by a large percentage. I forget the exact percent, but it's like something like 20 or 30 percent, which is not insignificant at all. We have been underreporting the amount of people who are living in these rural areas. So now when you zoom out, now the question is, are there really eight billion people on this planet? Or is it more like nine billion or 10 billion? Because what we can't do

is count everyone. And this is very simple. This isn't UFOs or portals. This is like how many human beings are there. And the problem is, is that, like, how do you even go back and start solving that problem? Like, how do you figure out if we have been all of that, they take all of this census data from all over and then put it all together. All the models are based on that, those, what we now know to be previous undercounts. Yes. Or we can't route out those massive undercount. And that's where the model came from, right? Of how we. Right. Right. And so it's not just UFOs or these more esoteric concepts that we have this issue with. It's, something as simple as like how many people are there. We find that like we're not actually able to

say and that it's a garbage in, garbage out situation where like if the model isn't right, which is very easy for the model to not be right. And then you think of all the things that are calculated off of that like per capita, all sorts of like economic stuff, how resources are allocated, how schools are funded, like all sorts of things. It's crazy. You know, and this is part, you may have noticed like I spend a lot less time talking about UFOs that I once did, right? For many of these reasons, it just seems to me that the conversations just quickly digress into this sort of like trading one obscurity for another.

And we end up just pigeonholing ourselves into somebody's pet obscurity, right? And I don't want to do that. And moreover, I do think like there is this issue, like there isn't any sense to be made of it unless we can like trust information about it. And I don't know what it would be like to trust information about it at this point, right? Right. Right. It brings me the thing that's been hardest for me and the place that I keep getting stuck and where a lot of my anxiety is,

I think I've gotten pretty good at recognizing that I actually know very little, that things that I don't have direct experience of, that I have almost no ability to say things for certain. But the thing that's really hard for me, which brings us back to, you know, where you and I kind of began our own conversation with Plato's Republic, which is the question of like, what does it mean to live a good life? Because I feel like I don't know the answer to that question. I feel like it's really difficult for me to know. It's very important to me that I live a good life and that I do the right thing. And when I feel like I have so little access to the most basic information that I would need about the nature of my reality, it becomes hard to know,

like, what does it mean to live a good life? And how do I even begin to answer that question? Yeah. I mean, there you go. Welcome aboard, right? Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's, this is an example I've used a lot of times, you know, is, okay, so cognitive scientists like termites, because it's very easy to simulate them with computer models because they like basically have like two instructions like grab mud roll mud when you get to something smells like you leave it there right and they keep doing it and you just get these little instructions the next thing you know they get these like beautiful intricate cathedral like mounds that they build but none of the the worker termites have a clue as to what's going on because they're they're built to like do something at a very low level

right and i've always been kind of troubled that maybe we're not all we're not really unlike that, right? There's a certain set of instructions that were set up to operate on, and that works really well to live a good life under certain conditions, but the problem is, is increasingly, like, we're forced to look at ourselves on this, like, global scale that we weren't really designed to look at ourselves from. And in the basic set of instructions about living a good life, it doesn't address, like, yeah, but how do you do that when your comparison class isn't just the people in your clan, but it's the people on a global scale and all these things. What if somebody has intentionally been messing with the instructions and stuff like this?

All these things we probably weren't really set up to deal with in the first place, right? And how do we live a good life that way? And I think really what it comes down to is, so there's a philosopher, you know, a very important philosopher today, a guy named Slavoy-Zijsijak, right? And in Slavoy's view is that there's only three species of stupidity that are available to us. Like, we're all stupid now. Okay. And one is a moron.

And a moron is someone who just doesn't question the big other at all. It just kind of going along doing what they do. And in this case, just stay in your social media rabbit hole. That's working for you. Don't worry about that. And then an idiot is someone who, realizes the big other is a sham and just says, I can go on my own, right? I'll just do it by the seat of my pants.

I'm going to go like full individualist on this. I don't need an environment to like make sense of my life. And that of course ends up disastrously, right? Okay. And then you have an imbecile. An imbecile is someone who realizes big other doesn't exist, but admits that he still needs one. Okay.

And so like what the imbecile is, is like prepared for constant disappointment. but yet has the courage to keep trying again. Okay. And that's how I think of it now, is that I think, yeah, our institutions are constantly disappointing us, and we're in this paradoxical situation where we realize, as social animals, we need institutions. Okay.

So what can we do? All we can do is have the guts to start over, right? Knowing that we're going to be disappointed. But then we're not going to fall into the illusion of trust, and we're not going to fall into the illusion of utter independence. So all we can do is try to work it out again, right? And no, that's not, you're going to be disappointed, but all you can do is try to work out again, right?

And so I see myself as sort of like a recovering moron, right? We're just aspiring for imbecility, right? Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. And that's pretty close to the best answer that I can come up with. You know, we do regular calls with our patrons. and that came up on a call over this weekend, you know, people asking essentially that question. When people ask me, like, who do you trust? I'm like, almost no one. I mean, because the thing is,

is that, like, trust requires a trust fall at some point. Someone has to be in a position where they could screw you, right? And they don't. And, and, like, that's, you know, I don't know. like it's hard. And so like the best thing that you can do and what I try to recommend, and like the best I can come up with. And it's not a great answer. And it's not an answer that I like, by the way, is that you have to kind of develop this radical self-reliance and that you have to ultimately always come back to yourself and your own discernment while also recognizing that your ability to discern is almost certainly compromised in ways that you were entirely blind to and that you may never be able to see. But that that's the best, unfortunately,

that that's the best answer. And it's very lonely. And we're communal animals. Like, we need each other. And we, you know, our society can't totally function under that premise. You know what I mean? You know, somebody knows how to fix a carburetor and somebody knows how to, you know, set a broken bone and we all don't have to know all the same things and we and we trust each other like we are very much like insects in that way we specialize like insects in that way i have to disdain something to someone else always there's always always and there's no way and there's no way out of that but i think intellectually we still have to cultivate this kind of radical self-reliance and that the best that we can hope for is to kind of be alone together in that and that maybe that's the best that we can that we can

hope for sounds like an imbecile to me kelly i've always thought so because i think what you're saying kelly is you're saying look um i one i have to think for myself in a way i can't be a moron i can't just take what i'm given okay but i have to admit the very conditions of my thinking for myself put me dependent on other people beyond me yeah so the very conditions of my thinking are also the very conditions that can set my thinking to go wrong, too, if the environment isn't right. And so you've got that kind of like Hegelian paradox going on in there. Like the conditions am I being right or also the conditions of my being wrong. So I'm going to have to live with this ambiguity that's always going to come up as like, I'm doing the best I can to understand

now, but I'm fully prepared to make a move when that disappoints me. And I know it's going to disappoint me. And so I think that's really right. In many ways, philosophically, that's I've landed, right? Yeah, I think I'm in the same place and I think I just hope that like, I do tend to believe that there's a purpose to this life that we're here for a reason and that it matters. Can't prove that. Couldn't begin to prove that. But it's, you know, it is the basis on which I make decisions.

And I guess, you know, I've just come to a place where I just hope that like if there is some sort of rubric at the end of this whole thing that we're being graded on that like, that like trying counts for something. Yeah. I have to that I like to agree with like I think a minimal like absolute like zero point belief of mind like I just couldn't give up would be that like in on the final exam of life you are going to get points for effort. Yeah. Right. Right.

Right. Because we're all imbeciles. They're going to have to curve it. We have to curve this thing. and how hard you tried not to be fooled, right? It's going to matter. It's going to matter. Gosh, you know, so.

That's my last hope. Yeah. I like that. I like that a lot. And look, what do you do with something like the UFO topic or, you know, whatever kind of conspiracy-ish topic you want or name? Like, what do I do with that, right? And I mean, I just think that you, first, you can't be a moron.

You have to understand, right? there's something wrong with your access to information to this and then thereby like really mistrust any attempt that you're being given to say what some what this is and that might render the topic uninteresting because basically you're saying I really can't trust what anybody tells me about this I'm like yeah I'm saying that right you know what I mean and so unless you're fascinated by the questions I would I'd be very careful because I think you're just you're in a position to get tricked, right? And not just by the government or whatever, just by people selling books and podcasts and all this stuff. You know what I mean? And so I think, I think,

you know, right now I'm like very uninterested and follow very little of like the news on the UFO topic and stuff like that because I just don't, I don't know what to do with 90% of it because I'm pretty convinced that there's something is amiss in our information. access to it so that I you know you can give me a new whistleblower you can give me a new revelation you can give me a video of something I don't know what to do that now and I think there's something constructive to that and I think it by looking at the way the ufology stuff has worked it's opened me to see similar like deceptive epistemic structures elsewhere which has been a useful thing for me and and also before I looked into it I would not have taken any of it seriously

at all. And I do think there is, I do, I still do think that there's something being covered up, right? There's something, okay. Yeah. Otherwise, why all of this? Why all of it? Yeah, right. I just don't think it's something that I am in any position to rule on. And I'm not convinced, but I'm, I think it's likely I could not be in a position to rule on it. And that's what, when I see I'm a skeptic, we have to distinguish between being a skeptic and a denier. I'm not anything. I'm saying I know I don't know. Right. And I think that's an in principle known unknown. Like it's one that's not going to be corrected. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's where we have to, where we have to land. And I, you know, I think I frustrate people on

on both sides. I frustrate believers because I'm like not able to kind of like leap to explanations. Like there's a, there's a level of certainty that a lot of people are, are able to. to develop around these things, you know, it's the mantids or it's this or it's that or the galactic federation or the, you know, it's AI, it's, you know, something, right? Whatever, whatever it is that people land on. And I, you know, even people who tell me that I should, that I should like turn to Jesus. To be honest with you, I would absolutely love to turn to Jesus. I would, if I felt that I, if I found that capacity in myself at any point, I would, I would do it. Yeah, but I, but I, but I'm not built like that. I'm not able to put my belief in something. I'll say this. I'm not,

I'm not able to consciously put my belief in something when I know that I don't actually have. I'm very capable of unconsciously believing something for which I don't have proof. That happens all the time. But once I see it, I'm not able to kind of like to do that. And I'm not even saying that's necessarily a good thing. Like it kind of leaves me spiraling. But, you know, and then the skeptics, because I am quite skeptical, but then skeptics don't like me either because of the things that I'm willing to entertain, right? So I think a lot of skeptics are confusing skepticism for denying. Right. Right.

Yeah, just like reflexive denial is not skepticism. It's its own kind of. Yeah. And I agree with you. Like, I know what it's like to have low probability beliefs that I'm deeply committed to. Okay. I think I have many of them. Or beliefs that like it doesn't matter.

the probability are of it is I'm committed to it and there's probably no way you can move me off of it. But I don't know what it would be like to know something with a little probability and then move myself to believe it. Yeah. Do you know what I know what it would be like to like realize, oh yeah, I guess my evidence for that is not terribly good. And yet here I am believing it. I think that that is very thinkable to me, right? And I think I do it. I think we all do it. Right. Everybody does it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But I think I think this move for from, yeah, it's not very likely true, but I'm going to go ahead as an active world and believe it. That I don't, that I don't buy, right?

Yeah. Right. I know this controversial, but that's my view on, right? And so I would say if you really do think, like, say a religious view or anything is low probability and you don't currently hold it. I don't know how you could do that then, like make yourself turn to it and do it. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely.

It absolutely makes sense. And, you know, I think even intellectually I've gotten to a place where my interest in Jesus and in Christianity is, which has grown a lot over the last couple of years. You know, like you and I talked after, I think you saw my first episode where I talked about, like, the experience that I had and you were kind of joking with me and you were like, oh, you're, you're er from Plato's Republic. You know, he goes to the afterlife and then comes back and like doesn't fully drink the from the river forgetting. And he remembers the good. And I do believe in the good because I did glimpse that.

And I think I have a concept of what that is. And so I want, I'm looking for something that anchors my belief system in that, in that way. And like the concept of Christ fulfills this like need that I desperately have to have this kind of like commitment to some sort of eternal active. good that I do believe in, but I still have a hard time like just fully, fully going there. Even when I'm intellectually able, and I'm not articulating it very well right now, but intellectually I'm able to get to the point where I can be like, I could actually really entertain, really truly entertain that intellectually at this point, but I still don't know how to how to get to a level of certainty that I would call faith.

You know what I mean? But like I have an interest in Jesus, but I don't know how I get to the point where I call myself a Christian and I don't know that I'll ever that I would ever get there honestly. Yeah and faith is a strange thing because like like by its very definition it's basically saying your level of commitment to something outstrips your evidence for it. And you're saying like basically there's this belief I hold and even if my evidence for it failed, right? I would I would still hold it right.

Yeah. Now one gets to that. That's an interesting question. And like for I think most Christian theology, the claim is it's not actually a fully human act like you have to be moved by by god to have that there is an interesting book that i think is like one of the most underappreciated philosophy religion books in last 20 years called the agnostic inquirer by thomas solerren and sandra menson and they make a case that like let's say you have like plausible grounds to think that god exists right and like say it's one in three or or one

in five probability so you can't rule it out can't rule it at it but you can't rule it at but can't rule it out. Okay. And then you encounter a religious text and that religious text confirms a bunch of things that you would would believe, you would like to believe, if only you had a way of making sense of how the world could turn out that way. Their view then is, well, so you can't rule out that God might be talking to you through a book, right? This book sounds like what God would tell you if God were to speak to you as far as you can tell, right? They then think that's a significant confirmation of what that book is saying. Right. Okay. Now, but okay, I think that's an interesting argument, though I think what you're

talking about is deeper, though. You're like, yeah, I can have all that in place. So now the probability goes to like maybe better than 0.5 that this religion is true, right? And I think you're saying, yeah, that's great, but that doesn't seem to be what's required of me. Something deeper is required of me, right? Yeah. Belief requires this deeper thing, right? And I agree. I agree 100%.

Is I think, I think weighing of probabilities, even if a case could be made, even on some of the things you're saying, it's very similar to Minson and Sullivan's case, right? Mm-hmm. Even if that case could be made, all it could show is, yeah, if I did have

faith, I wouldn't be irrational for having it, but it doesn't give you faith, right? Right. And how that faith thing happens is, well, there's the problem. No one really, I think, fully understands that. Yeah. No, absolutely.

Like, I feel like I'm, I really identify with, you know, doubting Thomas. Like this, I want to stick my finger in the wounds. You know what I feel? Like, I've got, I've got more questions. And I don't, I don't know how to, number one, I don't know how to overcome that in myself. And number two, I'm not convinced that it's something in myself that I should overcome. Right. Yeah.

I mean, like, I don't think any, even like, serious believing Christian can say Thomas was wrong, right? I mean, like, you know, so they all your friends said, you know, you're our buddy that we saw, like, get brutally murdered the other day. He's back, right? I think you would say, yeah, I would need to see him, right? I mean, right? Yeah. You know? Right?

There's a whole, it's a great painting by Caravaggio, the conversion of St. Thomas. A advisor wanted to look it up. It's a beautiful painting. he shows the resurrected Christ with the wounded inside and Thomas is blind in the painting. Okay. And you can see, I think it's Peter, is taking Thomas's finger and sticking it in the side of Christ. But the point is, is Thomas couldn't do it himself. Because he couldn't see, it was going to require the act of some other agency to do it.

And I think the point there being, you're going to go from like just, oh, Christianity, is probably true to Christianity is like the belief on which my life is predicated as a matter of faith. That is probably not going to be any individuals doing. Right. No, that I resonate with that. Yeah. So where do we where do we leave people? What do we what do we say? Because I feel like the best answer that I can come up with for myself and I try not to be too prescriptive for others, but I do feel like the best answer that I've come up with for myself is that it's important to try and that and that it's important to try to do good even when you don't necessarily know what that is and that what's important is that you don't give up the seeking of that.

And to me, that's the kind of the thesis of this podcast. And because I believe that to be true and so it's become the focus of my work, I don't know if there's a better answer than that, at least not that I've, found. Oh, I'm with 100%. Cultivate invasility. Yes. Done. Done. We did it. Yeah, that's my take on. Amazing. All right. Well, we shall go forth and be imbeciles then. I appreciate that. Yeah. Let's do that. Cool. It was great to talk to you, Kelly. It was great to chat with you, too. Thanks so much, Jim. You've been listening to Inquiry with Kelly Chase. If you haven't already, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast. And if this episode resonated, consider leaving a comment or a review.

It genuinely helps more than you know. Inquiry is brought to you by Spector Vision Radio. Production support is provided by J.E. Peterson and Tyler Morrisett at Voltage. If you'd like to support the show, join the Patreon for ad-free episodes, monthly Zoom calls, access to our private Discord server and more. To read all of my field notes and support my written work, subscribe to my substack. You can also follow me on X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and just about anywhere else. And also, Cosmosis, UFOs, and a New Reality, the series I wrote and executive produced alongside director Jay Christopher King, is now streaming for free on Amazon Prime. You'll find the links for all of that and more in the episode description. Thanks for being here. I'll see you.

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