Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Part Two: Insiders Swear Alien Bodies Are in the Lab. Astrophysicist Investigates UFOs, & DMT | Neil deGrasse Tyson

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

World-renowned astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (Author of Take Me To Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter) returns to the Mayim Bialik's Breakdown studio for one of his most mind-bending conversations yet, covering UFOs, aliens, consciousness, near death experiences, secret government speculation, DMT entities, Antarctica’s hidden lakes, and what humanity may discover beyond Earth.Neil reveals why he REFUSED an invitation to inspect an alleged alien body and explains what most people get wrong about extraterrestrials. He shares his biggest problems with how aliens are portrayed in Hollywood, why alien life may not need to be silicon-based, and whether stories about reverse-engineered UFO technology (including theories involving the Wright Brothers) hold any scientific weight.He also addresses the mysterious deaths and disappearances of U.S. scientists connected to nuclear research and aerospace programs, and whether any of it could realistically be tied to nonhuman intelligence, UAPs, or classified technology.The conversation goes even deeper into consciousness and altered states. We explore the controversial DMT laser protocol experiments and why so many experiencers report seeing the same “source code,” encountering entities, communicating with departed souls, or entering what feels like other dimensions. Neil explains the scientific evidence he would require before accepting out-of-body experiences or near death experiences as real phenomena existing outside the brain.He also reveals why he has never used drugs, why he does not believe consciousness survives bodily death, and breaks down his fascinating “3 varieties of truth” framework for understanding reality itself.Plus:- What Neil deGrasse Tyson hopes humanity’s first contact with aliens would actually look like- How aliens & UFOs became mainstream cultural topics- Why he wanted to become part of the alien conversation- Whether underground lakes beneath Antarctica could serve as models for icy alien oceans elsewhere in the solar system- Future of astrobiology, extraterrestrial discovery, & human understanding of consciousnessThis is one of the deepest and most controversial discussions Neil deGrasse Tyson has ever had on aliens, UFOs, DMT, consciousness, near death experiences, and the search for life beyond Earth!Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s latest book, Take Me To Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter: https://neildegrassetyson.com/books/2026-05-take-me-to-your-leader/Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, I'm Myambiolic. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to part two of our conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson. We covered so much in our first part. Part two discusses in detail the DMT laser protocol for the experiment to determine if there is an actual hidden code to reality that DMT allows you to access. Also, has Neil ever done drugs? And if not, why?

He's also going to talk about the hidden lakes of Antarctica. For content you can't get anywhere else, please visit Myambiolix's breakdown on Substack. Make sure you're subscribed everywhere. And here is part two of our conversation with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Mine Bealex Breakdown is supported by Helix Sleep. Summer's in the air, and so are all of the allergens that come with it. Summer allergens means you need more sleep, but there are a ton of factors that can prevent us from getting a good night's rest. Night sweats, back pain, feeling the person next to you when they roll over.

We are so excited that Helix wants to partner with us. I've had my helix for, I think, over five years now. And I sleep so great. Jonathan and my kids also love their helix mattresses. and all of those issues, night sweats, back pain, motion transfer, significantly better or gone. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the U.S. They have a 120-night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty, plus they're happy with Helix guarantee.

Rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. The happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk-free, customer-first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. Go to Helixleep.com slash breakdown for 20% off sitewide. That's helixleaksleep.com slash breakdown for 20% offsitewide, helixleep.com slash breakdown. Break it down. Before we move on to Antarctica like you do, you know, you mention the movie Contact, which for many of us was kind of our first contact, right, with this kind of conversation. And it's definitely worth revisiting, I think, for anyone who hasn't seen it.

It's very old school. It's very late 80s, early 90s. It was at 1996, I think. Right, but I'm saying it's got that vibe of like, you know, it's. It's very tropical. And may I remind you and alert those who have yet to see the film, you'd never see the alien. Okay, so this is what I was going to say. So the place of visiting the stars, right?

And again, we're going to ask you to take off your astrophysicist hat for a second. I can do that. The place that contact takes you is a place that Jonathan and I accidentally keep encountering by hosting this podcast. We keep talking to people who have experiences completely separate from aliens, right? we talk to a lot of people who have, you know, medically verifiable bizarre experiences. They're brought back from death. Let's say they have a cardiac event or they have an adverse reaction to a medication and they're brought back.

You're entering the non-materialist realm. No, no, that's why I took to take off your hat. You may have to take your hair off. I'm conversant, believe it or not. So what struck me when I saw contact was that it reminded me, not the alien part, but the notion that. there is a place that we can access, whether it's in our heart, whether it's in our imagination, whether it's in our fantasy, or whether it is a transcendental plane of consciousness. There's a place that you can touch that is out of this realm.

It is out of linear time. It's out of factual time, right? It is a place where you can do something even as amazing as feeling like you are witnessing the existence and presence of someone who died, right? That place is what I'm interested in because that's a thread that people keep connecting. Could you go back to the epilogue and read the shortest paragraph in that epilogue?

The aliens might be intrigued to learn that some of my fellow humans who ingest the hallucinogenic drug, DMT, see aliens. And there's an associated movement to establish two-way communication and see what we might learn. But I'm not talking about DMT or aliens. Regardless, what I'm saying is

that's a neurological experience that has a certain commonality among users. I don't know what percent of that total of DMT users, but it's enough for them to get together and try to think about it in a way that materialist investigations would fail. And so I would share that fact with the aliens.

They might be intrigued to learn this. That we have a drug that peels back whatever this virtual reality is that apparently we're experiencing. I mean, what people who take DMM, and who are part of this kind of community, which again is different than I think the near-death experience community, transcendental experiences, things like that. The notion being that there's a reality that we all can't see, and DMT allows you to literally peel that away, and what's behind it is kind of like a code that's like in some, looks like Japanese characters and little men.

I have a second cousin niece, or something, just thread that through and you get to her. She's a real estate broker and educated, college educated. Her father died, who would have been my second cousin ever, okay? Is that how that works? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He died and she had to go identify the body. So she goes into the morgue and the body's there and it sits up. up and starts talking to you. No. Hold on. Just, just hear me out. I'm with you. Okay.

And she describes the entire conversation and writes to me and says, because she knows I'm a rationalist. She said, what do I think happened? Okay. So I said, either you had an encounter with the Great Beyond, which would be amazing and we need to document this. and explore it, or it happened entirely in your head. Okay? So you'd had an acoustic as well as a visual hallucination. People commonly think of hallucinations are just something you see. You can have acoustic hallucinations as well.

All right. I said, next time this happens, here's what you do. You're of no use to her. Listen to me. Listen to me. Well, no, I put this in a book called Letters from an astrophysicist so that if someone else reads this, they might, you want to test this. You want, oh my gosh.

And so in the conversation, it was, how are you? I'm fine. You know, make sure you take care of yourself. Look after mom, this sort of thing. And I said, that's not the conversation you should be having. Instead, ask these questions, okay, swapped out with whatever else you say, where are you? Are you wearing clothes?

Do you eat? If you do, where does the food come from? Who else is there? Nielsukrasse, you're no fun. Listen to me. Listen to me. And how old are you there? Yes.

Is Grandma 89 or is Grandma 30? Everyone's 30. Everybody's saying they're 30. Okay. I'm mad at you now. I'm not done with you. Okay? So ask those questions. Then you're getting some information from the other side. Then get someone to write a simple phrase on a piece of paper and put it and seal it in an envelope. Okay, like roses are red or the thunder is loud. Okay? Okay. Then when he sits up and he's looking at you, open this message, face it to him and say, read this message. I don't know what's on it.

You read it. And then he reads it back. If he reads it back correctly, this is real communication with the other side. Okay, it's my turn now. Go. Has she ever spoken to you again? No, she asked me

because she wanted some insight into what was going on. And I said it's either one or the other. And if it's the other side, experiment with it. What is missing from this conversation is something that I know you have because you are a partner, you are a son, you're a father.

There is a feeling state that is real, right? What we experience is real. Emotionally, yeah. Emotionally, that is a real thing. And first of all, I think you really like harshed her buzz. She asked me, what, she came to me. I didn't go to her. I didn't chase her down.

But I think what's compelling and what Jonathan and I do think deserves weight, and I think you would agree, is that there's an emotional experience connected to, right? Yes. Being able to be in touch with something very deep in that moment. Correct. Yes. And in that moment, you don't necessarily think of facts. You don't think of evidence.

You don't think of what am I collecting. You are experiencing something out of this world. And what she experienced was a communion, right, with her dead father. So it's kind of like I apply this same logic. A good Catholic word you use there. Very good. When I apply this conversation to... You got extra points.

Thank you. The Jewish girl gets extra points. Yes, yes. When we applied this same kind of logic to, let's say, people who experience telepathy, people who say that they're communicating with nonverbal individuals on some plane of consciousness, right? The telepathy takes took the world by storm, right, in terms of, like, what is happening. For me, there is a piece here that is not... easily verifiable. It's not easily replicable. It's not something you can experiment on.

You're telling her to do an experiment when what she's having is a singular experience that may never happen again. That doesn't make it untrue for her. It makes it unverifiable, untestable, and unable to be replicated. I didn't say, first, I never said that I never denied her feelings or her experience in this at any time. Right. Nor did I make fun of it. I just gave the blunt fact that you either communicate with the Great Beyond, actually, and if that's actually happening, that's a testable thing. Yes. Or is it?

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What is testable about that? I'm going to tell you. After long thought about this, I've arrived at the fact that there are three truths, three varieties of truths in the world. One of them is a personal truth. That is what you feel in your bones is true. Is Jesus your Savior? Is Mohammed your last prophet on earth?

You were going for Moses. That's our purpose. Moses is our profit, yes. Okay. Moses is my homeboy t-shirt. Yeah, that's right. So, or is Taylor Swift, you're queen? Personal truths are things you hold dear,

and they're true to your, down to your bones, yet to convince someone else of that truth requires an act of persuasion. and in the limit acts of violence, which is the origin of the religious wars of the past, where you don't think Jesus is your Savior and you're not going to believe me, I'm going to kill you, okay? That's what happens with personal truth. Then you have political truths. These are truths that become true in your head because they were repeated so often. evolutionarily, this is a hijacking of an evolutionary thread, because if you just experience the world

and something repeats, it's probably true. And you can rely on it doing that same thing the next time if you've seen it happen multiple times. If you hijack that in a political environment, and I just repeat something to you, it was a crooked Hillary. Just take a phrase, pick anything that you've heard repeated, you eventually begin to think it's true. That's propaganda, right? It's propaganda. Yeah. It's precisely propaganda. The third kind of truth is an objective truth. This is a truth exquisitely established by the methods and tools of science, which require an experiment to test and somebody else's experiment to verify. And then

ideally a competitor, and you do this enough times, hey, we're all getting kind of the same answer, statistically the same answer. We have a new emergent truth. an objective truth. Earth is round. It goes around the sun. The sun is hot. The air is 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 1% other, mostly carbon dioxide. We have a metabolism. Food has an energy content. These are things, they're so, and by the way, they were all established by science. But they're in your life now, and you just take it for granted. Well, I think also there's such a proliferation of people challenging objective truth, whether

it's the government, whether it's social media. Like, I'm pretty sure the earth is round. What is their foundation? Right. For challenging the truth. Is it an objective truth? Is it a personal truth? Is it a religious truth? Is it a cultural truth? Is it a community truth? Right. Okay. Community meaning we're in this club together. Right. You're either with us or you're against us. And I worry that the alien thing was becoming that. Are you a believer? or are you not?

In there, in there, the chewed-up book, I comment on the, do you remember Fox released in the 90s, was it, the alien autopsy? Yes. Do you remember that? I forgot about that. Okay? It was a documentary from 1947 where they're performing an autopsy on aliens recovered

from the Roswell crash. Okay? And the first tip that is it, you know, I'm happy to start off thinking it's real. But the subtitle was Alien Autopsy, Fact or Fiction. They're already telling you maybe it's not real. And for you to decide. Well, I looked at it and I saw a telephone on the wall. It's in black and white, grainy footage.

It's a telephone on the wall with a coiled handset. And I worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories for, as a summer. and you tore the history of phones, the coil handset was not yet invented in 1947. It would come maybe 10 years later and not being widespread use until the late 50s. First. Second, it's cinema verite. There's like a camera over the shoulder of the alien following it around. That as a, and I took a film course in college, that did not come out come around until the late 60s. Okay. And Look at you, Colombo.

And they didn't have shoulder-mounted cameras you could do this with in 1947. They were tripod-mounted, and you were not following anybody around. It was probably an alien doing the photography. Oh, there you go. Okay, wait, wait. And third, they cut them open, and they fall back to flesh, and they're just pulling out organs. And there's no connective tissue to the organs. It's like they're playing the game.

Remember, the game operation? Operation. You just pull the organ out. They're just putting new organs out on the side. What is that? And so I had skepticism from the beginning. Later, the producer would say it was a hoax. It was a pseudo-documentary.

So, Mike, I'm saddened that the best video evidence ever put forth on the existence of aliens was hoaxed. Yeah. I'm saddened by that. I have no problems if it is a personal truth that you experienced. But if you're the only one who. experienced it in the detail that you have, you cannot require that other people believe you because it didn't happen to them. So that's really all it is. And I think that's also, it's very generous of you and I think it makes sense. It's not that you're saying if you have a personal truth,

it's not real. You're saying that in order for us to elevate it to the status of objective truth, there is a process. And if it does not live up to that process, it doesn't mean that it's not true. It means that we can't prove it. It means it's a personal truth. Right. It means and that you cannot elevate it to become an objective truth. Right. Because it's not true outside of the neurosynapses of your brain.

Right. Or your conscious experience. Well, there'll be neurosynaptics. Okay, yes. Okay. Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying your consciousness exists outside of the neurosynapsis? Are you saying that?

Because if you are, I would ask, a person who goes through mini strokes, they're kind of leaving the world while that happens. Right on down to the, last few strokes, they're not, no one would say you have a consciousness, all right, that you're not giving them that much credit, given whatever is left of their brain until the last stroke takes them out.

And now they're there on the slab with their body temperature dropping to room temperature. Because of the mini-stroke scenario, which happens in reality and in a thought experiment, I'm not given reason to think we survive, our own consciousness. Jill Boltey-Taylor? I think Jill Bolty-Taylor is one of them.

You can think that. I'm just not given reason to think so. Yeah, no, I was thinking we recently had on Vinny Todd Tolman who was zipped into a body bag and watched that happen and then was brought back in an ambulance. And then he was in a coma and when he kind of obviously came out of this coma and he had watched the whole thing. And of course, you're relying on his recall of things that happened outside of the room that he was in.

I mean, this is also what Bruce Grayson, what Jim Tucker have spent, you know, half a century studying, is people who have reports of their consciousness not being in the room that their body's in. And no one needs to be able to explain it, but like what the actual fuck. So what I would do, if I may, at this table. So last time I did this, you paddle slapped me. Okay, I'm still sore. And you like this. That's why he came back so fast.

That's why he's our guest who came back the quickest. You got a room in the back. Ready for his punish, render. Bam, bam. So here's the experiment you do. When the person's dying and comes back to life. Okay? You're experimenting.

Yes. You're always trying to put people to death. They're busy meeting God. They're busy meeting God. And you want them to be like, I want a part of a spray. No, no. Here we do. Here it is.

So you put a little bridge over the table where they're dying. Okay? And once again, you write something on top. And so if they have an out-of-body experience looking down on them. He didn't know he was going to die in a dairy queen? No, but you have a room just set up for this. So you're just bringing them down through anesthetic. So they come back.

They couldn't do this in advance, of course. But 30% of cardiac patients do report this. So you've got a great. So you put a saying up there that only the hospital knows. Correct. You can swap it out in case somebody cheats. And then have the person with the outer body experience. Yes.

Report on what that said. I'll get on it. Get on it. Then we can have that conversation. Until then, it's kind of inside the brain. Hold on, God. I got to read this message that's listed above my bed. I'm not going to focus on helping you save me.

Sorry, I'm busy meeting Jesus. But Neil DeGrasse Tyson wants me to read this. Science first. It's like, oh, sorry, Dad, who I've been missing for 60 years. Heaven can wait. Okay, so wait for the science. Heaven can wait for Neil deGrasse Tyson. Okay.

So I... Yes. I remember there's an example. Did I tell this story last time? I don't know. Because you... I was in high school. There was a thug in New York who was being chased by the cops.

He had just harmed someone and that he had a rap sheet, you know, miles long. They shoot him. Okay? And they, but they don't kill him. Back then they used less lethal weaponry than they do today. He was unconscious, brought back to, brought back to consciousness. He's sitting up there in the hotel room, and he describes his experience. He said, he was on his way up to heaven.

His brother had died in the streets, okay? And he followed this light, and he was on his way to heaven, and his brother was there. And he said, it's not your time yet. It's not your time. And he remembers his brother pushing him back to Earth. Apparently, his brother had big hands. So he remembers the big hands, pushing him back to Earth. And he never made it up into heaven.

And then he's back, and he can talk about it. This was banner headlines, especially in like the Daily News and the New York Post. Okay. I was thinking about it. And I said, if you're coming in and out of consciousness and trying to save you on an operating table, isn't there a bright light above you? if you end to go cardiac arrest,

aren't there hands coming down on your chest? Or paddles. So back then, maybe not so much. Someone was putting hands on him, for sure. Yes. So, again, I was a geeky kid. I'm in high school. I was thinking this through.

Either he was on his way to heaven, and why would he be on his way to heaven, given this life of crime that he had led? Oh, please. Now you're going to get religious on me? No, no, no. He said he's going to heaven, After he just harmed people, because he's going up to the light.

Yes. How often do people ever imagine themselves going to hell? Pretty much not. I bet Hitler wasn't thinking he was going to hell or imagined going to hell. He thought he was doing good. Okay? So either he was on his way to heaven, his brother, put it back, or he took this semi-conscious experience of operating table lights and cardiac resuscitation

and turned it into a story that had meaning for him. And so I'm, I think it all should continue to be explored. And that's your department. What the hell? Don't come to me, ask me which one on the brain? Okay. Brain lady. I think it is an interesting experiment for the sole reason that multiple people

have an experience that is the same, and it's an external observation. And we are all genetically human. I would expect some overlap between, especially when you're not really in control of anything anymore. Your body is autonomic. All right. Your body's trying to not die. Your brain is trying to save organs, you know, the organ functions.

So we're all human with the same species. There's going to be redundancy. Some redundancy. Yeah. And explain the DMT experiment. Okay. So this is Danny Goller has presented, it is a pilot study. and it's a protocol for trying to test this, like,

is there some code that all people on DMT see, which is revealing like the nature of reality and the truth? So what it is, and I'm just referring to the paper here, so there's a 650 nanometer refractive laser, and it is mounted and it's diffracted so that it creates stripes, like horizontal, vertical stripes on the wall, and it's a red laser.

and basically people on DMT are told to observe this laser and see what they report. And the things that people report, which is what Jonathan is referring to, is this is how it's described. Japanese katakana-like characters, they're these symbols running with these different laser diffraction lines, kind of like the matrix. It's like there's a code behind reality. Also, there's these stable geometric. structures. So, like, there's an image here. It's, you know, there's a triangle and there's other

things that you'd like see in a, you know, Doctor Who episode, like kind of cool geometric shapes. And then the third thing that people report is that it's persistently visible that once observed, you can tap into that at later times, even with limited or minimal DMT doses. So that once you've been, like, shown this code, like, it exists forever. And it's from this. laser that is projected and diffracted onto a surface. But the idea was, is there something that this drug is peeling back, allowing us to access some level of conscience? Which, look, people who have taken LSD have reported this. It was an entire movement when you were, you know, a young man. This is the notion. Well, I was a...

Well, I mean, I'm sure you remember. It's Timothy Leary, right? Like, you know, all the things, correct. I'm a 60s, maybe. Yeah. But the interesting part of this is multiple people seeing something that is the same, reportedly the same. And that's... that when you move this laser, it's now changing what is being revealed. What would be important here is if each person taken into a separate room wrote down what they saw and to see if they corroborate. Yeah, and I don't have that here. Because in this book, in the Take Me to Your Leader, I refer to an alien visitation

to a small village town. I forgot where in Africa, but it was in Africa, an elementary, school class on recess, outdoors, all say... Oh, this was in... Yes.

There's a documentary. They all say they saw a flying saucer land and an alien walkout. Yes. Okay? It was in South Africa, yes? I don't remember.

In Africa, I don't remember it was in South Africa specifically. Yeah. It's a great documentary. It's fully described in the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I fully describe it. Yes. And so they, And they all draw pictures and there's good agreement among the pictures.

And so I asked a couple of questions. I say, well, all the children drew these pictures together. They weren't taken to separate rooms. So there's very strong, suggestive correspondence, if one person says they saw a thing and hear that and then it just gets amplified within you. So it's not the way, the best way to take data. It's just not. But even had they done that, I asked the simple question, how many children's testimonies of a flying source or an alien are worth the testimony of a single teacher, adult teacher and teachers are educated and they're not well they're educated in a culture of you know

oppression and subjugation that too okay okay so how many child testimonies are equal to testimony of one teacher then i say how many adult teachers testifying is worth one alien that's all that's all I say in response to that phenomenon. So I would be delighted to learn if taken separately, they write down the same code. And then you bring it a cryptographer, not a linguist. Sure. And if they peek around the edge of the laser, that would be fun to see what else they see and have them draw that separately.

Yep. So interesting. Also, they're on an extremely heavy drug that makes it very hard. Yeah, and the fact, the collimation simply means that all the light is of exactly the same. wavelength. All lasers by construct are exactly the same wavelength. That gives them this special intensity in your eye. It's not just a broad green, it has a particular intensity. The green, the blue, or the yellow, and it has a particular intensity to it. And so you have to go back to your drawing board and say, are

there certain neurons that are triggered by that frequency transmitted through the retina that others are not? And then what does that stimulate in the brain? Yeah. I've never done drugs because, and you'll surely have something to say about this, and I'd welcome it. The human brain barely works as it is.

It's true. I mean, open up any book of optical illusions. Yeah. Oh, simple drawings? There's one line longer than the other? I can't tell. So simple drawings completely conundated. found your rational understanding of an objective world around you.

Yes, they're much more interesting when you're stone, though, I promise. So. No, but I think it's a different reality. So I care about what is objectively true beyond my senses. Correct. And to stir chemicals in my brain on the expectation, not for everyone, of course, but on the possibility that somehow it's better connected to objective reality, that, that, I'm highly skeptical of that.

Well, and some chemicals, some chemicals like caffeine can perk you up and maybe give your senses a little more acuity. Yeah. I mean, we have receptors, obviously, for all of these things. Yes, we do. Transcendental meditation can also do a very similar thing. It just takes a lot longer and is much harder to learn. But people who have transcendental experiences. And you have to travel to India for?

Have you meditated? I've tried, but I always fall asleep. Yeah. I just fall asleep. I can, right? I'm a very, I'm a sleepy guy. I'm not sleepy, but if I, need to sleep, I'll just sleep. And so I listen to

meditation tape. Sure. And I'm just asleep. It's the number of podcasts you do. It's exhausting. No. My M. Bialx Breakdown is supported by Tumble. You know, life can be messy. Cats or dogs. Knockover, coffee,

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That's T-U-M-B-L-E-Living.4.4-slash break. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. My Mian Bialy's breakdown is supported by Mudwater. Jonathan and I have taken the plunge. We are into mudwater, and we love it. I especially love their turmeric latte. Makes us feel energized without the jitters. That's why we want to tell you about the starter kit,

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the original chai chocolate blend, coffee, matcha, and turmeric. So if you're a coffee person, a matcha person, a chai person, or something in between, there is something for you. Ready to make the switch to cleaner energy, go to mudwater.com slash break. Grab the starter kit, use code. break, you'll get 43% off. The frother alone is worth it. That's right, up to 43% off with code break at M-U-D-W-T-R.com. It's a fantastic frother. After you purchase, they'll ask you how you found them. Please show your support and let them know we sent you. But just to speak to that point, drugs is not the only way to get to this place. Thomas Campbell, theoretical physicist, the very first time he went to like a TM lecture in college, he had no idea what it was.

And he said he was gone for 20 minutes. He was. He was. in another part of the atmosphere that he didn't even recognize himself. He came back, he fell off his chair, and he was like, what just happened? And they said, it's been 20 minutes, and he said, that's impossible. So obviously it takes a lot longer

to learn it's different. But yeah, the fact is the removal of that veil, which is holding us here, also protects us from a lot of other information. You're harkening back to that scene in contact, where Jody Foster's character says, I spent, you know, however many, 20 minutes, whatever,

with dear old dad, and no one believes her. Neil, it's the same thing. Because there's just static on her camera. And she just fell straight through the concoction. However, what they didn't pursue was there was 20 minutes of static. And they just said that and nobody pursued that.

But that's actually why arrival is so interesting because so many of these near-death experiences, so many of these transcendental meditation. monks, people who are meditating like this for a living, time no longer has the function that it serves. So there's a lot of beauty in that. But yeah. If you're a physicist fellow who I don't know. Thomas Campbell, yeah. Yeah. If he, if that experience gave him deeper insights into physics, then I'd say sign me up. Yeah. Oh, he wrote a trilogy about it. It's his theory of everything, T. O.E. Is it correct? I mean, he's a theoretical physicist and a professor.

Yeah, I would love for you to look up Thomas Campbell. Yeah, he's a fascinating guy. What did you find in Antarctica? Penguins. 100% of the world's free penguins are in the Southern Hemisphere. A few in the Galapagos wander. The equator goes right through the Galapagos. Wandering penguins, yes.

They might check to see what the Northern Hemisphere feels like, but penguins in the Southern Hemisphere, polar bears in the northern hemisphere. And the underground lakes? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, Lake Vostok is an important one. Lake Vostock, it's been a few years since I've checked up on it. But last I was all in on it, this is a lake that's been sealed off. So like 150 million years, right? It's been sealed. It's beneath ice. It hasn't seen the light of day or the air of day in some, on an evolutionary time scale. It's Atlantis. So it has become the darling of people of Astrobi.

biologists to see is there some path that evolution took with no correspondence with the rest of what's going on on Earth? And could this serve as a model for other icy places in the solar system, such as Europa? Europa is a moon of Jupiter. It's very icy, but the inside is kept liquid by stress placed upon that moon from Jupiter's tidal forces. And so we think there's a lot to learn there. Now, what could be there? It's evolutionary on the sort of millions of years' time scale, but not on the billions of years' time scale. So we'd know, it's just we would see life that would have something in common when that lake formed.

But what are we talking about? For people who have no idea, like it's tiny little things, it's humans. Like, it's Willie Mammon. Like, what are we talking about? Microbes and other. Yeah, right. Yeah. And if there's anything that's still alive there, it would have to be a self-sustained ecosystem. Right.

Because you can't only eat other living things. That does not work. Okay. So a colony of cannibals at some point has to bring in fresh meat. They cannot just reproduce and eat themselves. Right. They're not reproducing their food source. That is thermodynamically not possible. In the same way, what do fish eat? Other fish?

You keep that going. If there were only fish in the ocean, that would not be possible. Correct. Because that's the cannibal problem. Yeah. Okay? At some point. Someone's going to get some fiber.

Somebody's getting their energy from the sun. And plant life will do that. You know, the kelp and things. and the fish somewhere in the fish food chain, somebody's eating those, the green food sources. But primarily that the base of that food chain are phytoplankton. Because they convert sunlight into their own metabolism. So we're not going to find some like crazy fish we've never seen in the lake in Antarctica.

So if you did, there'd be some energy. source that we don't know about you. Okay. Got it. Okay. Maybe an octopus. An octopus figured it out. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the book is the book in its full form is take me to your leader. Perspectives on your first alien encounter. Thank you so much for being here. We have such a great time with you. It was really, really awesome. And just love what you do and your career. Thank you. We'll see you tomorrow.

I'm not your only fan out there. Thank you. Appreciate it. Just keep doing doing the good work. Thank you. Do I say, keep doing God's work? Oh, well, yeah, don't get crazy. They're totally crazy. Thank you so much. You know, it's interesting, Jonathan, because, you know, having Neil here in person, it's such a pleasure.

It's so much fun to talk to him, to listen to him. You know, I think it's really special that even though, you know, his book has a definite angle, right? A definite kind of perspective on, you know, show me the alien. It's those like kind of vulnerable moments that sort of allow me to see deeper into the way he constructs his worldview. But also like, you know, he's, his brain works a very specific way. What we didn't get to or all the moments where you and I are caught in some strange activity that we're in. I think it was like the other day, I was standing on a chair, balanced on a desk. hanging something while you were like propping underneath.

I have a thing that I'll say, and it's aliens. No, it's the aliens arrive now. The aliens arrive right now. And whenever we're like doing something crazy, we were using a level. We were trying to hang a picture, but of course we didn't have a steps tool because like two Jews. And so he's like balancing on a rolling chair and his leg on a desk. And I'm like using the desk to hold myself.

And I said if aliens arrived right now, they'd be like, what are these people even trying to accomplish? if this is how they hang a picture. Not all of us are able to just hang things with our mind. Just think something and it magically appears. No, but this is a thing that I do when I think like, gosh, whenever we're doing something like just like impossible, or like it takes three people to peel a banana,

it's like, oh, do it this way. Like, if aliens arrived, we would seem like absolutely no threat. Like, we're their pets. We would be their pets. I didn't like his explanation of why we can't have a silica-based world. When I'm dying, I would like you. to make sure that you write a note on top of my bed, but you're going to actually bring in a bed frame

into the hospital, and there'll be a canopy. I'd like you to get a ladder and climb on top of that canopy and write a note that says, if you're reading this, you might be dead. And I will come back to Earth and tell you that. I just think the whole nature of testing. that type of experiment, it's not reasonable. That's not a reasonable way to experiment. And while I understand the scientific method, at what point do we start to say that like all these people having these experiences, there's got to be something here. I don't know that a double blind experiment is the way to create the next understanding of what's happening. So I think that you would need that kind of experiment for the kind of truth and verification that we're talking about. That's just

true. And it makes me feel like maybe these worlds just kind of have to be separate. The other complication is, you know, my suggestion, and I'm being totally serious, like if 30% of people, right, who have a cardiac event or, you know, die and are brought back, 30% of them report a near-death experience, that's a great population to tap into. But think about the practicalities of that. Someone is being wheeled into your hospital and you're like, can you sign this form? It's an IRB form. We'd like you to, you know, read this thing. Like, it doesn't happen. What you'd have to do is every single cardiac department across the world. If you go visit a cardiologist, you sign an approval that if you are ever in a situation where you happen to, God forbid, be in this situation,

please read the thing that's on the ceiling. So the practicalities of testing these things. And the way that Neil talks about it, it makes me worried that we'll never be able to come together. But I really, I have to believe, and we know some of these scientists, some of them are secret, we know these scientists who are working on practical and physiologically reasonable ways to understand what is happening. I mean, he near lost his mind when he heard that I thought that consciousness might exist outside the body. I'm extremely intimidated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, but when he challenged me- That's why you paddle him.

Put him in his place. That's why when he challenged me on consciousness, I got to be. a little nervous. And then I was like, no, I can do this. Jonathan has trained me for this. I've spoken to Jim Tucker and Bruce Grayson and I'm Jeffrey Long and Raymond Moody. I got all the people that have studied this. And they're not saying that they know or can explain it. This is a phenomenon that is real. It is happening. And I don't care if Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't believe it. It's real. I mean, their work is very compelling, but you kind of need more than that, right? Like you need...

Neil does. Well, this will be a little thing that we can talk about on Substack, Miami-Alex breakdown on Substack, because what I wanted you to do is explain Jill Bolte-Taylor's experience and how she actually had parts of her brain go offline and she still had such an intense awareness of what was happening. And, you know, there are many scientists who actually are looking at the neuroanatomy and the actual conscious experience and trying to map them. but some of that language isn't necessarily on the tip of your tongue waiting to be defended against Neil. Well, and I think also, like, you know, I had this sort of like fantasy flash of like,

that's the kind of conversation I would like to see science pushing forward. People who have the largest platform, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, scientists, I don't care if he's an astrophysicist. I don't care. He has one of the largest science platforms in the world. He could have the ability to engage in ways that are respectful. that are, you know, have integrity. I would love to put him in a room with Bruce Grayson, with Jill Bolte-Tay-Taylor, and have them flesh it out.

Let's talk about what we're talking about, you know? Like that's sort of, I think, where this can head. And while the telepathy tapes and all that stuff is fantastic and it's so exciting and so many people tap into that, this is the bridge, is people with these large platforms who speak science, who are rigorous, right, who are not also closed to having conversations. and won't ridicule people. Because Neil, obviously, he's very playful about it, but that would do a great service,

I think also to communities of people who have experienced things that are unusual, that are hard to replicate. I think that would be tremendous. If he were to speak to the non-speaking community, right? If he were to tap into that and say, what is actually going on and what's not, that would be so, so helpful for both sides.

And he was very curious. It didn't seem like a final bit of information. bit of information. He, as he says, isn't the brain expert, but he's very curious about what's happening. So it sounds like he's trying to put the pieces together. For sure. Absolutely. If you want more pieces, check us out on Substack. Mindyallex breakdown on Substack. Join the growing breaker community and get content you cannot get anywhere else. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's Miami Alex Breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD

or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down. So break down, she's gonna break it down