Otherworld - Interview with Diana Walsh Pasulka [Unlocked]

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

This week, we're unlocking a Patreon exclusive episode onto the main feed while the Otherworld team finishes up some new episodes that are coming very soon! The topic of UFOs is very complicated and, at times, overwhelming due to its rapid changes. For that reason, I began interviewing people who dedicate their lives to these topics and hold a wide range of beliefs. My goal is to talk to lots of different people on Patreon and hopefully cover this topic from all angles. In this interview, I speak with Diana Walsh Pasulka. She holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies and is a professor at the University of North Carolina. Diana got sucked into the world of UFOs during a wild series of events that is documented in her book, 'American Cosmic.' This book tells the story and the six-year-long ethnographic study she did on UFO believers through the lens of Religion. She also has a new book out now, titled 'Encounters: Experiences with Non-Human Intelligences.' If you want to hear more bonus episodes, you can sign up for the Otherworld Patreon. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. Right now, myself and the team are finishing up a short holiday break and we're working on new episodes for this upcoming year. But in the meantime, I thought we would unlock this Patreon episode. 2003 was a very big year for mainstream UFO-related news. I'm sure, no matter who you are, you've probably heard at least a little bit about the stuff going on. It's quite a lot. It's really hard to keep up with and it's hard to know what to trust. For that reason, I thought it would be interesting if I started interviewing people who know a lot more about this stuff than myself and carry a wide range of beliefs on the topic.

And I would do this as kind of a series on our Patreon. I started with Chris Wiley from The New Yorker, who's more on the skeptical side. And then the next person I talked to is the one you're about to hear. This is Diana Walsh Pesolka. She is a writer and professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina. and she unexpectedly got pulled into the world of UFO research when she met a man that she calls Tyler, who brought her to a supposed UFO crash site.

She ended up spending, I believe, six years studying the UFO research community and the believers, and she writes about this in her book, American Cosmic. It's kind of an ethnographic study of the UFO research community and the people who believe it. She also has a new book that came out this year called Encounters, Experiences with Non-Human Intelligence. I had a really great time talking to her.

She's a really fascinating woman. I think you all are going to enjoy this. If you want to hear more episodes, including other UFO interviews I've done, you could sign up for the Other World Patreon. We'll be back next week with new episodes. In the meantime, this is my interview with Diana Walsh Basulka. I hope you enjoy. Thank you so much for joining me.

Absolutely. So happy to be here. I just finished rereading American Cosmic. I finished the reread yesterday. a really interesting book. And I have not read the new one, but I'm very excited to read it. You kind of got into this on accident. Am I right? Like the whole UFO world? Yes. Yeah. That's exactly right. Can you talk about that a little bit and like maybe a little bit about your background before we kind of get going? Sure. Okay. So I grew up in California. I now live in North Carolina. I'm a professor here at the University of North Carolina right on the ocean. And so when I grew up, I was, you know, it's like Northern California.

It's really eclectic kind of new age type culture. My dad was Irish Catholic. My mother's Jewish. And so I kind of grew up secular. But strangely, I went to a Catholic school. So this is how I was brought up. And I was really interested in religion and just philosophy, questions, you know, about that. I took some time after college and it was during the, it was in the 90s during the dot-com boom.

And so it was really easy to get a job doing that in technology. So I was also really interested in technology and how technology was changing everything. But I kept reading philosophy books. So I decided to go to graduate school. And then I went to graduate school and learned a lot, basically. I focused on Catholic history. And I became a professor. and in my job as a professor, I studied the history of Christianity, and I taught students, you know, ages 18 to 25, basically about different religions, every kind of religion. So, so that's what I was doing. And I was here. I got this job at this university. It's a really beautiful place. And I enjoyed, you know, the students and, you know, did pretty well. I was, you know, promoted up to chair my department and full professor. And, you know,

was going along and writing my books about Catholic history and that type of thing. And so I just finished this book about what's called purgatory, which is in Catholic dogma, people believe that if you are, if you die and your soul is good enough to not go to hell, it's going to go to this place called purgatory. And so I wanted to know that, you know, this is a huge doctrine of the Catholic Church for years and years. And it flew off the map. and now young Catholics and young Christians don't even know what it is. So I wrote this whole book on it, and it took me a while, and I went through these libraries called Archives,

where there are ancient manuscripts and old books from like 1,200 to 1800. And I spent a lot of time looking at Catholic history and the records of European Catholics from about 1,200 on up to about 1800. And as I did that, I kept coming across really weird things, like aerial phenocals, and reports of orbs, you know, and things like that, right? And so I kept a, you know, I kept a log of this stuff as I was doing my book. And I didn't really know what to think about those, but they were in every time period. And lots of Catholics interpreted them to be either angels or demons or souls from purgatory that were lost and things like that. So I just kept this log.

Now, I'm going to say this and I feel really bad about it. But I did not believe in UFOs. and I thought people who believed in UFOs were pretty crazy. Okay, so I was one of those people who completely discounted UFOs and was a non-believer. Okay. So here I'm doing this, this never thought I would study it at all. So here I finished this book, I turn it in, and now I'm on to the next project. So I'm hanging out with a friend of mine and we're having coffee, and I said, and he says,

what are you going to do next? And I said, I'm going to write this book about this bishop in North Carolina. John England. And I said, but I have all this weird stuff. And I showed in the log. And he took a look at the log and it took him a while. He finally said, you know what this reminds me of? Stephen Spielberg. It reminds me of UFOs. And I was so shocked. I thought, you know, my friend has gone crazy. I said, get out of here. And about a week later, there was a conference in my town. It was a UFO conference, you know, for people called Experieners, people who study UFOs. or have had experiences of UFOs. And my friend said, you really should go to that. And I did, I did. I went. And when I went, I heard reports from contemporary people

that were exactly like the reports in my log that I had been taking all these years. And so I decided that, hey, maybe I will look at this. I will look into the rising belief in UFOs because obviously people are believing in something for which they have no evidence. I quickly learned that there was evidence and I quickly learned that I wasn't the only one studying this

that actually the government, our government, was studying this too. And I met the people who were studying it. I met people involved like FBI agents, CIA agents, scientists within our space force, academics affiliated with like Stanford University. And so all of this happened within two years of beginning to study this. And it kind of took off on its own. And that's how American Cosmic, the research from American Cosmic, came out of that. That was a lot.

And now it's very difficult for me to figure out what I want to ask you next because there's so many things that got my attention there. I mean, it's interesting. Like, I think we have a similar backstory in a way, only that we're outsiders. You're much more educated than me. That's for sure. And I came from comedy, I guess. But I was also just sort of like not particularly. interested. And still to this day, I'm not sure what to make of it because I think it's such a

crowded space. And I also find the modern UFO world to be quite dogmatic. You know, I'm not sure if that's something that you've observed, but you would be certainly well qualified to speak on dogma in general, given your background. You know, I think it's really interesting. But yeah, how did your, did your beliefs completely change? Are you a full unbeliever now? Oh, okay. Complicated questions, I'm sure. Complicated question, I'm sure, but like, where do you sit now? Like, if this, you've gone on this crazy journey.

Well, I'll get asked a question all the time. Yeah, so I have an answer. All right. And I have maintained this position. So in my field, religious studies, we study things for which there isn't a lot of evidence for, right? Like angels or things like that. You know, people see angels in religious traditions. They call them different things in Islam.

these entities, they're gin and things like that. All right. So we don't actually weigh in on truth in my field unless we do philosophy of religion. So we're not, so there's lots of different subfields and it's also interdisciplinary. So we have archaeologists and historians and sociologists studying religion, basically. And most of the world's population are religious, by the way. So, you know, we're talking billions of people are religious. And they'll sometimes die for their religion.

So religion is actually something worth studying. So that said, my, so what happened when I went, I was a disbeliever in UFOs. As soon as I saw that, you know, literally this never happened to me before when I was engaged in the study of Catholic history. I'd never been approached by people from agencies or, you know, government people affiliated with these space programs. Never happened. It was, you know, so I recognized. that there was something going on. And the question was, what is it that's going on?

Right. And so that, that, so what I did was I did a deep dive interview with the people who were actually working with what they called UFOs, all right? So, so this is what I did. And it was fascinating to me. And definitely my beliefs changed. Absolutely they changed. And I would say that I don't disbelieve anymore.

No, I don't. but I still don't know what's going on. But if I can venture an answer, and this is what makes people really upset, I think, on all sides of the UFO question, is that I see the correlation to religion. And what it is is that, you know, there's some kind of thing happening to people that's absolutely real. And these people are interpreting it in different ways, but the thing is actually real. And what it looks like is very similar to what these people have experienced, you know, throughout time. And I think that we should spend time with communities of people, even indigenous communities of people who have their own lore about star people and things like that. I think that this is what we're going to find data there.

So if people are interested in what the heck is going on, you know, it's there that we're going to find the answers. And so after American Cosmic, I took some time to look into that, the lore of data. different indigenous cultures and things like that. And of course, I'm not writing for them. They will write their own and talk about their own, you know, experiences. But yeah, I think that's where a person should turn. You know, because it's been here for a long time. As long as humans have been around, they've been talking about things they've seen in the sky.

I agree. I think we're actually in a very similar position. I don't talk a lot about my beliefs on the show, also because I try to remain semi-objective. but I'd say my position on this and everything is like something is going on, right? I think the most ridiculous and the only ignorant position you could take is that this is not, nothing is like none of it is real. It's completely fake. It's like something is happening to people.

What it is, I'm not sure, but you can't ignore it. Like something is happening to people, even if these are all people who are completely out of their mind insane. Why are they all insane in the exact same way? Like, that should be studied as well. Whether it's UFOs or spirits. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Something's happening. And so I think my position is people who completely write it off. It's ignorant. And then also in the past, I've seen a lot of very ridiculous explanations in ways people write off things in the past, especially with religious experiences and miracles and things like that. I'm sure you've seen that a lot, but I've, you know, the stuff that now frustrates me as somebody who's dabbling in this is I'll see like, you know, the Barney Hill, the famous, you know, Barney and Betty Hill story. I've seen people be like, oh, well, that was just a manifestation of Betty Hill's stress about women's rights at the time. And it was manifested in the form of being

pro-like, she's imagining being probed by aliens the same way that they're being probed by the laws in America. It's like, that's poetic and all, but that's fucking stupid. Like, that's not how it works. That's not how it works. It's an interesting poetic concept that makes sense in academia or maybe in a script. If you're writing it, like having it be some kind of interesting symbolism in a script, but real life isn't a script, you know, and, you know, people don't dedicate their entire lives to a single experience if it didn't happen to them in some very real way. Right. Right. And I'm sure that's something that you've come across. Yeah. So in my field, we call that reductionism. So we don't do this. We tend not to. Sometimes we do. But in religious studies, at least, like other disciplines, like history or something, will. They'll say, well, the UFO, this is something popular in academia for UFOs. They say the UFO craze happened in the 1940s because of the Cold War and this type of thing. And I was always suspicious of that, you know, because, but, you know, as a historian of religion, you look back in your

like, well, how does that explain the UFOs over New York, the Hudson Valley UFOs? Or, you know, how does that explain what people were seeing in Europe, in the 1800s? You know, it doesn't actually explain that. So when you take a broader, more meta perspective, you've got to start collating this data. And then you're beginning to then start, you know, let's put it this way. Okay, she's talking about being probed by this alien. All right. So you see this in John Max's book, Abduction.

But you also see this in the story. story of Teresa of Avala, who is a doctor of the church, and she had her own angel experience in the 1500s in Spain. And she describes something absolutely similar to that. It's really fascinating. And, you know, it's something where it's like, I want to, I would love to have answers. I don't know if people are, you know, for the most part, actually looking, right? And if they are, sometimes they want the answer that they prefer. you know, according to their own story. But what you said about the UFOs is interesting to me.

I've always had the same reaction, too, when people are like, oh, it's, you know, UFO started, UFO stories started when media started circulating of the UFO. Well, where did that media come from, right? Like, it's a chicken and the egg situation. And I think another thing, my instinct is that before a certain time, if people saw something like that in the sky, they would not jump to science fiction. They would immediately go, this is a religious experience. Like, I'm seeing a miracle from God, right? Yeah, they were, they did. They had different interpretations. Like, there's a story, an anecdote from many,

many different people in Rome in, around the first century, around then, just before the first century. And it looked to be some type of fight in the sky. And they called these things shield. because that's what they had back then, you know, so they looked like flying shields. I think people had a more magical sense of reality until quite recently. So I think a lot of this stuff would be shocking, but not in the same way that it is now, right? Because we think we know everything now.

And I think the concept of mysteries existing in the world was like more of an open, accepted part of reality not too long ago. Yeah. I think that's right. Well, we call it the enlightenment, right? Yeah. Enlightenment thinking. So we get rid of the disenchantment of the world. We get rid of like all the enchanted stuff and say that it doesn't exist, but it sure still exists. It most certainly does. And I think if there's one thing I've learned in making in this show, it's like a lot of the things, you know, that seem paranormal, there will be an explanation for it.

A scientific explanation, they say. But if you go and look at the scientific explanation, it's like, They don't know what it is either. They just named it. Like... Yeah, exactly. And they're still trying to figure it out. And I'll see that bit in my comment section, you know. It'll be an amazing, horrifying story.

And it'll be like, oh, that's just like... They were experiencing sleep paralysis or whatever. It's like, we still don't know what that is. We're still trying to figure out what that is. We don't know what causes it, really, or what's going on. Hopefully we will one day. But just because something has a name doesn't mean we know how it works or why it happens, right? Have you read David Hufford's book about sleep paralysis?

I have not. Yeah, I forgot exactly what it's called. I think it's called Terror in the Night, but it's David Hufford, and he's not only a doctor, but he's also an anthropologist, and he traveled all over the world for many years, and he collected stories from different cultures of sleep paralysis. So he did, like, this really long cross-cultural, trans-historical study of sleep paralysis. And it's really, really interesting. So if your listeners are interesting, that's a really good book. Yeah, we did do, I did an episode before where we read a lot of academic papers on sleep paralysis. And it is striking to me that it's, well, more specifically, there is a sleep paralysis entity in almost every single culture in the world.

Yeah, that's right. It would be easier to find one without one. And they all are almost exactly the same. So not to go on a tangent, but somewhat related to the people who want to. I'd be like, oh, these are usually manifestations of stress from the world and present times, right? You'd think that if that was the case, the stress of different cultures is extremely different. Therefore, you would assume that the manifestations of that would be different as well, but they're not. They're all exactly the same, and they've been like that forever.

I don't know why. It's like, yeah, it's fascinating. I would like to know. With all of these, I would like to know whether it's a boring answer or it's a boring answer or, a really interesting one, I would just like to know. Why is this happening? So yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. Especially the people who are plagued with it. Like I've met people who have it a lot and who have seen neurologists about it and, you know, things like that. And they say, well, you're not getting enough REM sleep. And they're like, well, yes, because this thing is bothering me in the middle of

the night. And I can't. And, you know, what do I do about that? In older cultures, they would have rituals to deal with that. But we now have, like, medicine. Yeah. Yeah. I will get back on UFOs so that my listeners don't kill me. But this is going to open up a rabbit hole. But in your book, American Cosmic, you beat this guy that you call Tyler.

And he's like... Yes. He sounds like, you know, a very interesting guy. He's like this rich tech dude who's a genius and he has this crazy health. routine and basically, you know, he believes that he has these, like, extrasensory abilities that he uses to receive information and invent things, right? And yes. He sounds almost like a new age Tony Stark type guy.

Yeah. You meet this guy in real life and, like, he takes you places. Is this, this happen? Like, it sounds. Yes. It was so, yeah, I mean, it was like unbelievable to me. Even now it's unbelievable. But yes, this is absolutely the case.

And I was really suspicious of this guy. So he was, you know, he's with the Space Force and he was with space shuttle program during the whole time the program was going. And he would help launch rockets and satellite. He would help launch satellites. He's a mission controller. and he had various jobs and he was really important and still is to these programs. And so he had got in touch with me. I didn't seek him out.

And when, you know, somebody approaches you who's like that, you're like, okay, what's, you know, what is this? You know, there's got to be some kind of catch, right? Like, I just don't trust it. I'm suspicious. So it took me about a year and a half to actually meet him in person. So we had correspondence for a while. And then he was going to be in Atlanta, and there was a big conference for a religious studies professors in Atlanta. And my friend Jeff Kriple, he's at Rice University.

By the way, he's really interesting. You should have him on your show. He really focuses on the paranormal. Yeah, he's really, oh, he did a whole history of Tony Stark, of that kind of stuff of, you know, the comics and everything like that. And Stan Lee and everything. And it's totally paranormal, by the way. The whole history of that is totally, you need to read it. It's called Mutants and Mystics.

It's a history of that, okay? So anyway, that was off topic. But so I asked Jeff to meet this guy with me, his name is Jeff Krippel, and I say, can you meet this guy with me? I don't trust, trust him, really, you know, but I'm intrigued by what he does. And so we did, we met, and he took us out to lunch at the Ritz. It was really spectacular. I had warned Jeff be on guard, you know, but the guy was so incredibly charismatic that Jeff ends up inviting him to his house in Houston to meet his wife and kids and stuff.

And so I start to work with this guy because he's legit. He's legit doing this stuff. And this is what I'm working on. So it makes sense. And then he says that he'd like to take me out to New Mexico to a crash retrieval site, right? And this is a long time ago. This is, you know, 2016, right? And 2016, 2017.

And I thought it was crazy. But again, you know, my job was to study this. So I thought, well, you know, he's offering to take me to this place. I don't believe in it. But I'll go. But I'll take a friend of mine who is a professor. Now that man is out as who he is. So in the book, they use pseudonyms.

but the professor is Gary Nolan at Stanford University, and he went with me to the New Mexico site. And Tyler, I call him Tyler after Tyler Durdin from Fight Club because he literally reminded me of him. You know, just kind of someone who can't possibly exist, right? But there he is. And so we go out there and Tyler said to me, I know that you don't believe and I want to take you to a place. where there's physical evidence so you can actually believe. And so I went and we had to be blindfolded actually to go out to this place. So we got blindfolded.

We went out there. We did find these parts, alleged crash, you know, flying saucers from the 1940s. The place was really interesting. So I observed that there was a lot of rubble everywhere. It looked like, I actually didn't know what it looked like. It was rust-colored rubble. and Tyler noticed I was looking at it and he said, do you know what that is?

And I said, no. And he said, this is after the crash sites after the government got all that they needed to get, they wanted to put a lot of tin cans out there so that people couldn't come out with their metal detectors and find stuff. So over the years, the cans disintegrated into this rubble. And yeah, so that's what he had told me.

So I placed that in the book. and my editor at the time, she said, it doesn't make any sense, Diana, we need to take this out. And I said, but this is literally what I saw out there. And she said, no, no, but why would the U.S. government do that? She was a disbeliever as well. So I said, listen. Yeah.

I don't want to interrupt you, but I thought the same thing when I was reading the book. Like, I'm just going to be honest. And granted, there is always like cognitive dissonance at play, right? Like, where it's. Yes. I'm supposed to believe in this stuff. But then when I read somebody else, else's, I'm like, really? But with the cans, I was like, even me, I'm like, well, if they went to the

trouble to find the cans, why didn't they clean up their mess, you know? But I guess if there was parts like, no, no, that's what they wanted. They wanted to dissuade people from finding anything out there that they may have left behind, I guess. I mean, that's the, you know, because I wanted to know why it was out there. And so she thought we should leave it out. But honestly, I'm so glad I kept it in. because now that the, you know, I told her, I said, I can't leave out data. Like, we don't have to believe him, but we need to put it in there. And she said, okay, so that's how we did it. And at the time, you know, obviously I was like, you know, just taking notes.

But now look what's happening. You know, there's all this focus on crash retrieval and whether or not the U.S. government has these programs and is doing this. They're saying that they do. Well, I would be that person that went out there. saw firsthand this stuff, Gary Nolan brought it back and studied it and he found it to be anomalous. And so, you know, and here you have like David Gresh talking about it today. And of course, people saying, oh, you know, he's, he's only talking about secondhand information where I was actually

there. Yeah. Mine would be then firsthand information. What did, um, what did the pieces look like that you found? Yeah, so they were, there were two types. One was, it literally looked like frog skin that was metallic. So, and it was, you could crunch it up and it would go back to its former shape. And so we found a lot of that. And then, and it took us a long time to find that, by the way. And it was like buried underneath these rocks and things like that.

And then we found another thing that looked like it was a piece that had something like hair in it. It looked like hair, but it was thinner than hair. And when Gary did his analysis, he found out that it was one piece of this thread that was wrapped throughout this whole thing. Like it was very odd. So these kinds of things. What were you thinking looking at them? Did you get to examine them yourself? Oh, yeah.

I got to examine them. Okay, so this is what I was thinking at that time. I was thinking really weird, right? I'm just going to write it down, taking notes, like I said. And Tyler looked at me and he said, most people would be amazed because here they are and they actually get to see this. Do you know how rare it is for you to be able to touch and see it? And he goes, and you still don't believe. That's what he said to me. So I was just in my position as a professor. I neither believed nor disbelieved. Yeah, I mean, that's the right way to take it, too, because it's like, even if you did find a crash site, like, you don't know that it's extraterrestrial, right? It could be just like the Air Force testing stuff. I mean, still, that's like the main big question, probably the biggest thing that divides people, right? But I don't think it's exclusive necessarily, right? Well, I thought that I also knew that by this time I'd done a bit of study of course in the study of UFOs, and I knew that it had been managed by Project Blue Book and that people like Rip Doty would plant information on, you know,

people who were media. And I was interpreted most likely by these people as media, you know, that I was writing this book. And so they wanted to maybe plant this material on me so that I would go out and say, look, I found UFO crash retrieval parts. But no, I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say, this is what they. said, this is what they believed. This is what they told me. So I constantly kept this perspective

of distance. And that's the only way you can study this. Because if you believe what they're saying, in 10 years, it could be proven completely false. That's a very good way to approach it, I think. And yeah, I mean, that's another interesting angle is that, like, this guy does work for the government and he's taking you out and showing you things blindfolded. Like, it could be a setup, you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For who knows? There were multiple, yeah, exactly for disinformation. So for me, it was data. It was all data. If it was disinformation, that was as important as if it were actually real, right? Because what I'm doing is I'm studying the way in which this belief gets promoted in the United States and globally now. So I had lots and lots of cases that I was looking at, you know, and some of them were complete hoaxes and blew up into people thinking that they were real. And there were. was nothing that you could do to stop it. You could be the most, you could have the best evidence and say, this guy's lying, but you're believing it. And, you know, here's the evidence.

But nobody will believe you because they literally want to believe it. They have a desire to believe it. So this is where, you know, this is where as a professor, this is the level at which I was studying it. I wasn't studying it at a low level like, hey, this is really interesting. No, I was trying to figure out what created belief, what created mass belief. Yeah, that's really, really interesting. And that's kind of the challenge with all of the modern UFO stuff now, too, because, like, there is, there are so many hoaxes out there that people fall for. And, like, unfortunately, the more of that that exists, like, the harder it is to sift through things and find the legitimate stuff. stuff, right?

It's a weird thing where it's like people are very quick to believe certain things. And the other half is, you know, they won't budge. They won't even like open their mind a little bit, right? I think... Right. Yeah. I think that's interesting. And me as an outsider doing this, I guess I try to approach my show where it's like, I don't care if people believe in it.

Like, I'm just focusing on a story of a person and like you don't need to believe that ghosts are real. It's like you don't need to believe that UFOs are real. Because I don't know. It's like, and by the way, that's why I'm even doing this interview right now. All of this modern UFO stuff that's been taking place with grush and everything, I find it overwhelming. And I don't have the answers. I think it would be foolish for me to come on here and try to tell people what to think. So it was my hope to bring on people like you to talk about all this because it's completely overwhelming, almost like, where it starts to almost get boring at a point.

where there's just so much out there, you're inundated with it. As soon as you dive in, it's like, it's overwhelming. So, yeah. Yeah. So I think that it's, yeah, I agree with you, absolutely. And what's, it's almost more than overwhelming. It's really disturbing. Yeah.

Because there's, there's so much that's wrong, you know, and there's so much that's not true. And yet, as a normal person, as a citizen, you have no idea how to sips through any of that and understand it. And then the people that can help you like me, frankly, you know, this is not going to happen because like I try, you know, I even said it in the first paragraph of my book, the introduction to American Cosmic. I say all that you see in media is not correct. It's all wrong.

And what you, what actually is right, you'll never see it. And that is so true. I almost wanted to rewrite that or to quote myself, you know, in the new book. So, so I would just be careful. There's definitely a thing, okay, but there's, and literally it is a very, very fascinating time in our history as human beings, where we're at a point where we can say, okay, yeah, what is this? And why is it being, you know, why is it so affiliated with the military, okay? Yeah. And, you know, so that's, so yeah, and that the average citizen can't get a hold on it and is beholden to what we see in the news, legacy news, but also Twitter or excuse me, X, and, you know, all and Instagram and, you know, social media.

So like I said, it's, it's almost impossible to get a decent read on it. what is your take and I mean I'm sure it's complicated to talk about this but what is your take on the recent happenings with the David Grush disclosures and the congressional hearing and and just like kind of that framework that's sort of developed recently of like this government program and the crash retrieval what do you what is your take on all of this on a personal level so I'm I have my own personal views on it and I also have a public, you know, as a professor, what I can state about it. And my personal views change a lot. But I know that the people behind what's happening. I know some of the whistleblowers. I was at a quote unquote crash retrieval site. So, but I take the position of neither belief nor disbelief.

and I think that that's how we have to, you know, right now he made some claims that people in my book had made too, that there are real crashes and there are real parts to these things. I even described some of, you know, the qualities of these parts in that book. But right now it's up to Congress to investigate these claims. And if there are other whistleblowers to investigate their claims as well. So we're still at that point. We haven't like, you know, but media has gone crazy with it. They've gone way beyond that point so that you can't, you know, you see so much video footage of, you know, things that you don't know, are these real UFOs or are they not really UFOs or, you know, things like that. And is this person's, you know, citing real and, you know, are they just kind of like getting clicks for their, you know, whatever account? So, so my position is that As a person who's followed this now for a while, I have to say that a lot of the pushback that David Gresh talks about is real.

There are people that are angry about this, and they will harass people like David Grush. So when you're working in this field, you just know it because it happens almost right away. It seems you publish something. It's like pushback. So I kind of, you know, keep my professor line. I don't believe or disbelieve. Yeah, that's, and it's interesting.

I'm sure it's something difficult to talk about too because it's like the main thing right now. And, you know, whether you wanted to or not, you definitely exist in the UFO, the greater cinematic universe of the UFO community, right? And it's becoming like increasingly growing. growing thing. Yeah, yeah.

And believe me, no, I never wanted to be that person in the community. But I am because I did write that book. And yes. But, you know, now the part of the study of this topic is the study of misinformation. Yeah. And so you can't study it without understanding that the whole thing has been wrapped up in misinformin campaign. since the 1940s

onwards basically, you know, with Roswell and even, you know, all this stuff was happening immediately like the government saying, wow, you know, we have this crash UFO flying saucer and then, oh, it was a weather balloon, or no, it was part of this other project. I mean, they changed their

story so many times that we all lost, you know, we of course weren't born back then, but, you know, the public lost faith that we were going to get any kind of a accurate description of what was happening. And it's just, you know, and I think that, you know, lots of my students are so sick of it. They're literally just so sick of it. They're like, what is it going to end? Is it just going to keep going? And I said, yeah, I think we're just going

to get hammered for a while now. So. Yeah, exactly. I think, okay, well, there are so many ways to look at this phenomena. Because, like, we say UFO, we say UAP. What that means? is infinite, right? Like, all we know is that there's something appearing in the sky. People chalk it up to aliens, mainly. But there's also people that think from religious frameworks,

like demons and angels, there's a lot of ways to look at it and what could be causing this, right? Okay, we have to take a quick break, but we will be right back. What do you think? And I know this is like a big question, but maybe we could talk about, like,

Based on your experiences and research, what do you think are the common themes that you've noticed? And what do they point towards maybe being the cause of these experiences people have? Yeah, great question. So, in my opinion, the best way to understand the contemporary UFO is to look at religious experiences that people have with, whatever they called them back in the day or whatnot. It doesn't matter what they called them. The patterns are the same. And what do you see? You see people being contacted by things that they think are not human, like non-human intelligences. And sometimes they identify these things as say like the Virgin Mary or angels or even they say they're demons or something like that. But what happens

during these episodes, a lot of times you have levitation. You have people like, you know, there's the common meme where you see the cow levitated up into, okay, so that meme is based on some truth. Okay, so you do, you know, people do have these experiences of being levitated during these kinds of interactions. I call these contact events where they're having contact with these beings. And so you see this in a lot of the best way to look at it is through examining these, what I focus right now on are apparitions of the Virgin Mary because you have so many documented cases of this. And there's a lot of aerial phenomena and beams and levitation and, you know, the kinds of similar types of things happening. But you don't have the government

going in and saying, you know, and getting upset about it. So that it's a much more, it's a better place to look at this and to document what's happening and to talk to people to understand what's going on. A lot of people experience the beings as being telepathic and communicating with them telepathically, well, this is exactly what happens in the Virgin Mary apparitions as well. Like, you know, there's like an angel or her, or sometimes you see this eye. You know, people are seeing this eye looking down at them, strangely, in a triangle. I mean, these are weird things that have correlations to symbols that people talk about in UFO experiences, right?

And so I think that's the best way to engage with these because the UFO, you know, situation right now is so filled with just information, it's a clean way to access this information without the problems associated with UFO contact events.

The telepathic part is something that I've noticed a lot too. So you gave a very big answer that was really interesting. on a personal level, what do you think you find fascinating? Is it telepathy? Is that something that you've noticed

as like, odd, this is something I hear pop up a lot? Or is there anything that people aren't talking about that you've noticed kind of pop up a lot as like a theme between disconnected stories? Well, since I've published American Cosmic, I've been working with people who are very much like Tyler, but in the AI, you know, culture. And they've been helping me out because they could identify things that they could explain.

And so they reached out to me. And once I vetted them, we started a group to study this. And so what they bring to the table is something really interesting. There's a NASA historian. I think he's retired now. His name is Stephen Jay Dick. And he's done so much work on the history of the extraterrestrial debate. He's also worked in astrobiology, which is actually the field of looking for planets

where there might be either ETs or life and perhaps habitable life, you know, for us. So he's really, he's at the cutting edge of looking at this. And so he brought up the AI thing about 20 years ago in a paper that he wrote. and it influenced a lot of people who are thinking about what this is, like what is it when people are having these contact events, like what's happening? And what the people who are doing the AI have brought to the table is that they're able to really not explain,

but offer a framework for understanding the telepathy that we see. So there's just been a study done, and this has been going on for like 10 years. I wrote about this about 10 years ago, a study where, people are using these programs to basically, if a person's, you know, that they wrap up people to an EKG and they look at their brainwaves and they're able to identify, like if a person is thinking about music or if they're thinking about a painting, they're able to like, the AI is able to project that on a screen and you can actually see it. So what it's doing is it's reading brainwaves. Okay. So if we have created instruments that can read brainwaves, perhaps this life form. is doing the same thing. Okay?

So the AI sector is the most intriguing area for me to study all of this, to study not just the Virgin Mary apparitions where this is happening, but also to study, you know, all of this data that we're getting from contact events, UFO contact events. That is really interesting. It's also kind of creating a bridge into some other topics that I've like brought up on the show. But I find that fascinating myself, especially. I pause because it's like I don't want to go to Galaxy Brain but like that's something I've noticed too

and like possibly like a connective tissue between so many of these things that we call paranormal, right? Yes. Yeah. And I don't know a lot about it, but I've met a lot of people who work in AI, who train AI. And I am aware that there's like basically in the process of advantage of. financing AI and studying it, the questions of human consciousness comes up and like, what is the nature of it? And like, apparently there's a lot of people that in the process of creating AI, they're like, oh, I think consciousness might come from the outside, like broadcast in.

Is that something you've come across? Yeah. Yeah. So some of the, so obviously I'm going to, you know, be in a, this is my, you know, I'm obviously studying this right now as a professor. So that means I spend a lot of time reading every single thing I can get my hands on, written by somebody who most likely knows and has credentials about this UFO contact events and what their theories are and everything.

And so what I've done is I've taken what I believe to be the best of that literature. And I've given it to this group of AI people. And I said, please read this and tell me what you think. And so basically the way they're reframing it for me is they're basically say, first the whole idea that it's biological, that there's biology and then first and then consciousness is a wrong, it's a linear direction. And that doesn't make sense because we don't live in space time actually. We think we do. But as it's famously been said by Kant and other people today, that is a headset that we wear in order to see reality and experience reality.

but they say that if you take out the assumption of this progression, you see that consciousness probably comes first and then, you know, or there's consciousness, and then what we would determine to be some kind of substrate for it, biological or whatnot. And just to clarify, I know that you're kind of hinting at like living in a simulation essentially with a headset. Like are you implying like a literal physical headset or that the brain is a metaphorical

headset processing reality. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So if you look at people like Emmanuel Kant, who's one of the 20th century, you know, he's thought to be, he lived in the 1700s. But by the 20th century, people calling him the best philosopher of consciousness that we've ever seen because he actually calls what, how we understand reality. First of all, he understood that we couldn't get at reality in and of itself. It's just way beyond us.

that it's incommensurable to what our minds can grok, basically. So he proposed these things called faculties. We understand reality through these faculties of knowledge that bring us, you know, interpret information. So, yeah, something like that. I'm not going to go with a simulation idea, but, I mean, it very well could be. Yeah, I mean, I definitely know lots of people like Rizwan, work wrote the simulation hypothesis, and I, you know, he and I, you know, he and I, talked about stuff like that. But yeah, so I think that this idea that they're bringing in,

like if you get rid of this idea of 3D, you know, reality, it makes more sense. You know, these things, you know, these contact events and the things that happen, the data makes a lot more sense when you look at it from that framework instead of the framework that we tend to have. And by the way, I've been thinking this for a very long time. like Tyler talks about it in the book, but nobody really picked up on that because they're so focused on biological, you know, kind of carbon-based entities and things like that, which could also be true. But I mean, you know, so yeah, so that's how I would answer that issue. And I mean, I will go off the deep end briefly, but like to me, the fascinating thing, because I did

an episode about the Monroe Institute, like the gateway process that was something that I kind of stumbled into as a result of doing something about this clairvoyant. There's a long series I did that's like kind of ping pongs around and it ends there. But I end up getting some help to kind of go through those declassified CIA documents about the Monroe Institute, what Robert Monroe is doing, and what they thought he might be on to essentially with brain waves, right? The AI stuff reminds me of that. And, you know, basically it's like if we could study brainwaves, replicate them, interpret them, like, could the brain receive information externally? You know, I mean, it does all the time, right, from words, sounds.

Yeah. There's all sorts of input, but like, what if there's a different type of input? And maybe it just works for brief moments. Maybe it's terrible at it, right? But that really starts to open things up. And that's what I'm fascinated in. And it sounds kind of crazy, but it's like, it's actually not that far off. right? It's not a huge stretch of the imagination to think that. No, no. And it's, yeah, you can see. So that's why I spent

time on what I call the protocols of Tyler. You know, Tyler had these protocols. He called them these really intense physical, you know, regime or whatnot. But he did this so that he could receive information in order to create the patents. He had it by when I knew him, he had over 44 patents and, you know, made a lot of money on these technologies that he was basically, receiving. He wasn't even creating them. He was just receiving them. And he basically focused on his mind and body and aligned with that. And so I did a lot of work in, you know, because this is, these are religious traditions. These protocols, you can find them in a lot of the monastic traditions, like the nun and, you know, monk traditions of almost all religions. They're practicing being alone in nature.

They're practicing special diets, not, you know, not eating a lot, fasting sometimes, hydration. And, you know, when you think about the water as a conductive material, you know, so people are purifying the water in their body and keeping it hydrated so that they can receive information almost like their antennas. I mean, he was literally, that's what he was doing. And he didn't know that, by the way. I pointed it out to him. I was like, you know, this is a whole thing that's been around for like thousands of years and you happen to be doing this. He was shocked. Yeah.

for those who aren't familiar, he, yeah, that's a main part of that guy, Tyler. He has like all these protocols, like you were saying, to receive things. It's like a routine, right? It's like not drinking coffee is one of them. Wait, would you just give me the Tyler protocol? I'm probably not going to do it, but I'm curious. I'm sure everybody's curious. Like, what are the basics of this? Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay, so the one of the most important things is sleep. And so in order, so, and we found out that like, as I was doing this study, I started, He studied sleep. And, you know, there's a lot of really interesting sleep researchers who identify what kind of brain waves you need to be in in order to receive these kinds of creative information.

And so sleep was super important. So he got, he said this. He would practice the plus one rule, which is like you sleep for eight hours and then you wake up. He said, make yourself go back to sleep for an hour. Make yourself do it. And it puts the brain this certain way. He did not know this. He just said this is what.

And a lot of this he was getting, by the way. from NASA space research, like they were doing research on the human body in extreme environments. So they were trying to optimize the human body. And so he knew, you know, this is, he was getting all of this information from that and utilizing it. And it worked for him. So he slept like that. He slept this extra hour. He allowed himself to wake up on his own. The first thing he did in the morning was he put himself into a mental framework of, he would call it the, you know, the receptive. He needs to be receptive. So he would either medicate, or pray, he'd go out and get sun. He got at least 20 minutes of sun a day because that sets,

that does something to you too. So he said that, but he also hydrated himself. He made sure that he was hydrated. And part of that was that he didn't, he would drink tea occasionally, but he would not abuse drinking coffee every day or tea every day, mostly because it dehydrated. And so he needed to be in a hydrated state. So these are some of the protocols that he did. That is interesting. And so this would like, this guy in your book in real life would then receive telepathically, like, information that he would... Okay, so, I mean, it sounds... He identified it.

Go ahead. I mean, go ahead. It sounds crazy, but it's like, honestly, a lot of stuff has been invented in very weird ways, especially, you know, even right down the street with Jack Parsons and, like, NASA. they were doing weird stuff. The guy who invented DNA, wasn't he like doing psychedelics the entire time? Just thought of it?

Yeah, so there's, yeah, yeah. So that's, it, it prompted me to study creativity. Yeah. And like, you know, extreme creativity, like the people who make genius kinds of moves in their lives, like, you know, how do they get that information? And I saw that this is exactly how a lot of them are doing it. And it's not necessarily the kinds of protocols he was using,

although a lot of them do do that. It was different kinds of protocols, but they were all doing it. They were all kind of making themselves receptive and almost like passive receivers to some idea. And so he would wait. And he said that he could identify when an idea was legit and it wasn't from him by the way that it entered his brain. So he felt it. He felt it kind of like, boom, this is not his thought. It just comes out of nowhere.

And then he would act on that. He'd draw stuff. And then he would create a team of academics. and engineers who would operationalize his idea. He would never tell them where it came from. Because if he did, he said that they would not be able to do it because they would think it would be too ridiculous. And he needed them to be all in.

That's really interesting. Also, I mean, this sounds very spooky and paranormal, but having an idea for an invention, like, pop into your head is not that crazy. the way we're describing it sounds very wacky and woo-woo, right? But, I mean, ultimately, that's like an idea is not that different from that. Like, things pop into my head all of the time. They're usually stupid. But that's interesting.

And I know that he does differentiate that it really feels external. But that's only slightly different than a thought. And it also reminds me, like, you know, if you read books about, a lot of inventors from the past, they kind of describe similar things, especially Nikola Tesla. I remember reading his autobiography a long time ago, but

he's, I mean, and you know, who knows. Like, who knows the reality of it, but he would say that full schematics would appear in his head. In fact, there's like, and I'm probably butchering this, but there's some story of him getting trapped in, like, a dam when he was a kid, and like, the

schematics of the dam appeared in his head, and he was able to swim out something like that, but he would describe it as coming externally, which was interesting. But I guess, like, how different is that than just having an idea? It's like, it's not that different. I think that, I mean, there's the famous mathematician Ramajan, right? Who would, he believed, and his stuff is so fascinating, his mathematical equations are still being figured out today. Like, you know, he's, okay, so he.

believe that he's Hindu and he believed that the goddess Lakshmi whispered the equations into his ear. That's fascinating. And they're still trying to figure them out? Yeah, he was one of the most brilliant mathematicians to have ever lived. So that's really interesting and like this is also kind of like a very grounded way of examining like, telepathy, I guess, or like, extrasensory perception, right? You know, you could look at what your friend Tyler does, and you could be really magical about it saying, like, oh, yeah, he's doing these things to receive these magical ideas from an outside source.

Or if you're a non-believer, you could look at it and just be like, this is a really smart guy that's healthy and has really great sleep, wakes up in the morning and like approaches every day like you're supposed to for an SAT or whatever. Like eat a good breakfast and like be healthy. That's how I, yeah, that's how I approach it. I think so too. It's interesting. Yeah, we can take the weird step out of it and the woo out of it, you know.

It doesn't have to be weird. Once you start to see the pattern in it, you just take it out and say, oh, yeah, that's what's going on, you know? Yeah. So that's interesting. So you think you seem to. lean towards the UFO stuff being telepathic or connected to religious experiences of the past in some way? Is that sort of... Yeah, whatever's happening now, we can say it happened back in the day when the interpretive framework was a religious framework.

Yeah. And, you know, the patterns are still the same. People still talk about telepathy and, you know, that kind of thing. telepathy will probably be found out I mean, what's the difference between this AI reading your mind? I mean, if it's doing it, are we going to call it telepathy or are we just going to call it?

It's reading my brain waves. You know? Yeah. Like, that's a funny thing I've noticed in making the show is that like I said before, science names a lot of stuff that they haven't figured out.

They'll just give it a scientific name. Not learn anything about it ever, but kind of approach it as if we understand. So something I've joked about wanting to do for a long time. Maybe I finally need to do it. I want to give like very boring-sounding scientific names to like the craziest paranormal theories and like conspiracies so that they could be taken seriously. Jack, I think you should. Okay.

And I'll give you one right now. Okay. So here it is. It's brainwave recognition. Okay. Brainwave recognition. What would that be for? Telepathy?

Yes. Okay. Let's actually, now that I have you here, this is really funny. Let's do this for a second. It'll be fun. Okay. I'm not trying to do a product plug, but this is just like the closest resource I have for a bunch of phenomenon. But I sell these bumper stickers.

I love that. I saw that. And it's just like increasingly ridiculous things. Okay, so angels. What's the scientific word we could come up with for angels? Okay, so angels are going to be... Or academic. Yeah, let me think about that.

Okay, so UFO events and angel events, I call them contact events. Okay. So I've already said contact events. So angels would be, let's brainstorm this. So angels would be a benevolent form of contact. So this would be, you know, because it's not, people aren't calling them demons. Okay. Right?

benevolent So Benevolent, external What's a really Agent Agent? Yeah, I call them external agents. External agent.

That sounds kind of spooky though. That sounds kind of spooky. Benevolent, external What's a scientific word for communication? Okay, let me think. Messenger? I mean, literally that's

what Angel means. Okay. This is pretty good. This is pretty good. What about, what about, um, what about, um, what about, um, what can we call orbs? Let's see. Um, okay, so, uh, the physicist Eric Davis, have you heard of him? He's like one of the invisible college guys. He, uh, he's been doing this for a long time, and he actually does have a word for orbs. And I'm trying to think of what it is. It's totally scientific. Okay. Um, there might be one then. I think he calls him like something brain plasmas. I like that. But he says that based on his research of them.

He basically says they're plasma things and they seem to have some kind of like intelligence. So he coined the words like brain something plasma. Okay, this is pretty funny. What about poltergeists? Okay, so poltergeisters usually associated with adolescents, right? Uh-huh. Did you know that? I've heard that.

And so we got to connect to them somehow with that stage of life, you know, 14, 15 years old. Teenage angst effects. Okay. Teenage angst effect? Yeah, because that's what they are. Or they seem to be. Okay. Yeah.

All right. This is good. This is good. I feel like we could keep going. We could go on with this for a long time. but I feel like that's the way we need to get people to study these things or, you know. I think so. The language is already happening. So what we're doing, you know, I've been doing it, you know, with the contact event situation. And I think that you should do this. You should create

something like this. I'll post it everywhere. Okay. If you write it up. I need to, yeah, I honestly need to like hop to it and just come up with like the most boring medical names for everything. And then once we have a name for it, we won't change the meaning or explanation at all. It'll just have the name. name. So like a mermaid, we'll just have like an, you know, like oceanic hybrid theory or something. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, this is exactly what they try to do with the name UFO and then the name UAP. Yeah. So in each case, it was a military guy who was part of a program and basically said, we need to get this from the weird category and move it into something less weird. So then they called

the UFO. But the stigma went along with UFO. And then finally, J. St.3. Bratton came up with UAP, an identified anomalous phenomena. That's really funny. That's interesting. It's not that much better. No, I know. Yeah, it's always going to be weird, I think. Okay, so this is fascinating.

I kind of distracted myself with, like, the scientific term thing. But this is really interesting. I mean, like, and reading your book and the Tyler stuff, like, it's, it's, it's, it's, It's hard to wrap your head around it, you know, and I'm sure it is for you as well. But what is your new book cover? What is different? Yeah. Okay.

So, all right. So when American Cosmic came out, then there was the New York Times articles that came out with Leslie Kane, you know, and Ralph Blumenthal and Helene Cooper writing those. And then the Pentagon report in 2021, I mean, things just got really militarized. And so I was focused on just. the contact events of people who are just very legit, credible people and who really thought, you know, either lifelong experiencers, you know, basically lifelong experiencers, people were really interesting too, like Dr. Ea Whiteley at University College London. She's actually a space

psychologist and she helps astronauts deal with extreme environments. And so, you know, she, so I start my book with her and talk about what her research is, you know, that kind of thing. talking to people like that. And so the book features that. But it also features what is it that the current debate or the current talk is avoiding. And so I go into that stuff. What do you think it's avoiding? I think it's avoiding the fact that they're, you know, what it's trying to make it into is like a, like almost like a flying Tesla, right?

Yeah. It's making it into this kind of like technology. But if you look at it, it's this event that's happening to these people on a very intense level of consciousness. So I go into what's happening to these people, what's happening in their dreams. Because a lot of them have really intense dreams about, you know, these things. And what's going on in their daily lives. How do they approach it? Some of them can't even stand the topic of UFOs.

But they see them, right? They just know that what their experience is completely different than how it's, being represented in the media. So that's what I do, is I focus on these people. That is really interesting. I'm sorry, whenever I start talking about this, I started zoning out because I like catch myself like really like thinking about, deeply thinking, like going down the rabbit hole of various little things.

But have you noticed any like odd patterns that have popped up that like people don't seem to be talking about? Yeah, so when I first went into this and this is something that like friends of mine who are academics and who study it too, not as much as me, but it was disturbing, was that a lot of people that get hurt through contact events. And, you know, Gary Nolan doesn't know if this is just collateral damage that happens. You know, the beans don't actually mean to hurt people. It's just that when you get in contact with them. My sister-in-law is a forensic detective and she works in the, the top. Tahoe region in California and non-believer. But she would be like a first responder on the scene when some really weird stuff would happen, right? And so she worked with my brother, was a police like he was headed at a sheriff's office in Tahoe.

And so she would be out there collecting this data. And what's really interesting was when my book came out, she read it in four hours and then she couldn't wait to talk to me. So I flew out to California. and she just basically unloaded the whole history of these kinds of interactions that she saw that she did not know what she was seeing until my book showed her that it most likely was an event was that these kinds of events that were happening and these people were getting burns and stuff and she was as a forensic detective she would be the first one identifying these as radiation burns or something like that and then it would be bumped up out of her league really yeah

Uh-huh. It was really strange. What kind of experiences would she... So she was just a forensic detective. She'd be called to the scene. Yeah, because there would be... You know, when there's a homicide or when there's some kind of, you know, terrible accidents or something, who shows up. But, you know, the forensic detective is going to be called to the scene because they need to identify how the person died and what kind of, you know, event happened to lead up to it.

So that's why she was called out there. And was... Was there any... themes in the crime scenes where she would see this? Or is it like just a thing that she couldn't explain? Was it this like a... There were common things. There were common things that she could not explain

that I actually can't say. I can't say. Okay. This is interesting. This is interesting too because I mean, I'm obviously working with a lot less data, but I have this inbox full of stories from people who have experienced things.

And I noticed my own patterns too, but it's interesting. Like, I've never heard of like the burns. But that's, I think you're hearing a lot more intense stuff than me, you know. Telepathy seems to be like a big pattern that I notice. Yeah. Yeah, that's the pattern that people are okay to talk about. People don't want it. And I agree. There's a point in American Cosmic, I think it's the second chapter when we go to the New Mexico. And it's the night before and we're all talking. And Gary shows us a lot of his research. And it was so disturbing to me. It literally changed my

life. Like, I was so disturbed after that. I could barely sleep. It was pretty, pretty intense. Oh, yeah. What was so disturbing about it? Well, exactly what my sister-in-law was telling me about. Stuff like that. Not just that, but like, there's something that I saw in, believe it or not, I think it's called, is it American Nightmare, the TV Netflix series from like seven years ago or something? like that. Oh, American Horror Story. Yeah, I was going to say American Nightmare is a hardcore band, but also a movie, I think, in a book. But yeah, American Horror Story.

That's it. Okay. So there's that a couple of episodes that focus on Truman and ETs, right? And one of the things that I noticed in that episode was that they did have some realistic pictures of people that had these shapes on them, like almost like they had been branded or something like that. And that's, so I saw something like that.

That is really weird. So that was the pattern he was researching? Yeah, multiple types of patterns like that in different populations of people. Totally bizarre. So yeah, so that definitely changed my, my look, my framework for reality after that. It's funny interviewing you because, like, I keep. popping, like, things keep popping into my head that I want to ask you about, but I stop because I'm like, that is going to be a rabbit hole that's like going to derail this entire thing.

Have you ever noticed patterns of people having issues with, like, phones or technology when being contacted? Yes, yes. So even some of the people who do the AI, one in particular, she's very much like Tyler in that she gets her information. By the way, this is a person who's retired when she was 30 because she was able to, you know, she kind of knew what was going to happen with Bitcoin and things like that and did very well for herself. And so she then has this process of living that's very much like his process, you know, where he does protocols. Electronic things just get really strange around her.

And so this is something that is one of the. data points. You know, it doesn't happen in all cases, but it certainly happens in enough of them to make it to be of note. So, yeah. So, like, issues with electronics happening around them? Yes. Have you ever heard of, like, electronics being used to contact somebody? Um, I mean, there's been, I've written about that, but, but more as a cultural idea than as a reality. So I have written about this in a book that's totally an academic book. Your audience would not probably enjoy it unless they're super academic. And it's called Believing in Bits.

And it's basically about the paranormal and how it's been associated with technology for a long time. And this is really, you know, there's a book also called Haunted Technology. So we're interested in that. There's a lot of people who actually do study that. And people having, people having encounters and then feeling like they have new abilities of their own after. Like sometimes go away. That's happened. Yeah, that definitely happens.

So if a person has a contact event, even in your death experience after that, generally a lot of really, they have a lot more abilities. Like, what do we call telepathy again, brave wave recognition? They have a lot more brainwave recognition. more brainwave recognition events. Yeah, that's really, really interesting. Yeah, and I mean, that's what makes me kind of think that, like, maybe some of the stuff is connected, you know, whether or not, like, we don't know what the UFO thing is. People always jump to aliens, but, like, maybe it's not.

Do you believe in extraterrestrials? Yes, so it's interesting. I mean, if there are some, if there are extraterrestrials, well, first off, probably I do, as a probability, yes. But most likely, they're going to be different than how we think of them. But, I mean, I have to say that discounts everybody who I've talked to who's actually had experiences that they believe are of these beings, right? Like, grays or something like that.

So, I mean, I wouldn't discount that either. I mean, frankly, like I said before, I'd either believe in or disbelieve, but I'm not going to reduce it to just, you know, somebody's like, you know, having a hard time with life and then makes up this story out of the blue. I mean, I don't believe that's the case. I believe most people. Some people are clearly hoaxing, you know, and you have to use a lot of discernment to figure out which is which. But, you know, there's people that don't want to be named and tell me things that have happened to them. So, yeah, I believe that these things are happening. Do you think it's related to like a species of extraterrestrials, or do you think it's

maybe, and I know, I know this is, you don't take personal positions, but like, people also think that maybe it's us from the future. Yeah, yeah. I know a lot of people who think that. What do you think is the more compelling argument? Either that it's, well, you know, think about it this way. It could be a branch of the homo, you know, the homo sapien. You know, we could be branching off. Like a future branch? Or it could be like. Or are you saying the people experiencing it are branching off? I don't know.

I'm just saying that, you know, when you look at evolution, you know, we merged with Neanderthals at some point, right? Neanderthal stopped existing. What if, you know, what if we're doing something like that? There's another type of species of us that's, you know, and at some point, Homo sapiens is going to either parallel them or cease existing. You know, it sounds really terrible. But it's not that terrible, actually. So, you know, there's a great short story by Ted Chong called Crumbs from the Table. And it was written about 20 years ago.

And it was in nature as kind of like it's meant to be taken. It's fiction, but it's kind of written like it's fact. It's very short. But your listener should read that because that's the best example of this that I've seen. Like, it talks about these scientists who begin to use AI and hack into, hack it into their bodies and become a different species and live side-by-side humans. That's really interesting. Okay.

I'm going to give you a hopefully easy question. It might be a big one to end it with. What do you think, given all of the information that's out there, there's, like, an infinite amount. And there's definitely, like, a mainstream. view of UFOs. What do you think people need to be thinking about or considering that they aren't already? Like what should my listeners go look into, read, or what do you think is a good framework for them to consider when they're approaching the UFO topic? Yeah. So again, I'm always,

I always tell people be wary of what you see on, you know, social media, Reddit or whatever, you know, and also even the, you know, you could follow the congressional hearings, but that's just going to be a lot of stuff that won't actually talk about what is real, you know, what these experiences really are. I would go to the experiencers. I would read books by people who have these experiences and have been vetted, right? And so I would look at that. And I would also consider that the experiences that people have had,

what I call contact events from the traditional religion, those are going to probably tell us most about what we're dealing with. That is really interesting. Well, Diana, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I hope everybody checks out your new book and as well as American Cosmic. Do you have anything that you want to mention at the end right now, like social media, website, things like that, where they could find you? Oh, sure, yeah.

So I'm on X, formerly Twitter as D.E. W. Posoka, yeah. And I also have an Instagram account, DW. Posoka, and a website, DW.psoca.com. Thank you so much. This was really, really interesting. And I have a few things I want to ask you after we stop recording. So we're going to wrap this up for now. And yeah, thank you for listening, everybody. Yeah. Thank you, Jack, for having me on.