Somewhere in the Skies - Cosmosis: UFOs and a New Reality (w/ Kelly Chase)

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

On episode 388, we welcome Kelly Chase, co-creator of the new series, Cosmosis: UFOs and a New Reality. As people and governments around the world come to terms with the reality of the UFO phenomenon, top experts in science, philosophy, religious studies, and more are grappling with its implications for humanity. Cosmosis: UFOs & A New Reality explores how these revelations challenge our understanding of history, non-human intelligence, and the future. Kelly discusses the thoughts and theories brought forward in the show and how this all relates to the current landscape of UFO discourse the endless possibilities of where it could go all be leading. For more info on Cosmosis: UFOs and a New Reality: https://ontocalypse.com/ Follow Kelly Chase on Twitter: https://x.com/UFO_Rabbit_Hole Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Discord: https://discord.gg/NTkmuwyB4F Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ryansprague.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomewhereSkies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somewhereskiespod/ Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/Sprague51/ Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Produced by LIONSGATE Copyright © 2024 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Shannon Legrow, host and producer of the podcast Into the Fray, and you are now Somewhere in the Skies. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Welcome, everyone, back to Somewhere in the Skies, and a huge welcome back to our guest today. If you're watching this on YouTube, you see her face right now. It's the one and only Kelly Chase from the UFO Rabbit Hole. Welcome back. It's been forever. Oh, Ryan, thank you so much for having me. I've missed you. And it feels great to be back here on somewhere in the sky. It's good to see you.

You too, you too. And you have been busy. I mean, the fruits of your labors are here. We're going to talk all about your new series, Cosmosis, tonight. But before we do that, let's catch people up. What have you been up to over at your show? And for any of our new viewers and listeners, tell us a little about UFO Rabbit Hole. And, um, maybe a little bit about why you started it. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for asking. So, well, anyone who listens to the UFO rabbit hole is probably a little frustrated with me because I've been on a bit of a hiatus over the last year. As I was kind of working through, working on this dokey series, you just have no idea what you're getting into when you start a project like that. And it ended up being much more immersive and demanding and all of those things than I expected. but I am actually back into writing. I have a new episode, a couple new episodes that should be released before the end of this month.

And so I will be back in the flow of things soon and that feels really good. For anyone who hasn't listened to the UFO rabbit hole before, I started it about three years ago when I was sort of starting my own UFO journey. I had never really, I didn't believe in UFOs. I had never thought much about UFOs despite having a sighting when I was younger. And as I started kind of down the rabbit hole of UFOs, I found that there was just so much information there. I was so surprised at how much evidence there was. But I also was kind of just struggling, as I think so many of us do, to put it all together and make some sense of it. And so, you know, I sort of chronicled that journey, kind of going from subject to subject and trying to figure it all out and put it all together.

And granted, like anyone else who studies this, I haven't figured it all out. I'm still, I think I have more questions than I've ever had before. But it's been a really cool journey. And I think that it's taken me to a lot of really interesting places, thinking about consciousness, the nature of our reality, as well as just non-human intelligence and what our interaction with non-human intelligence might look like. Because it's, you know, I know because you do all of your encounter shows, which I think are so cool. But these things don't usually look like we think they're going to look, at least not the way that it's portrayed in the media.

And so that's been a really incredible. journey. I never expected the podcast to ever take off the way that it has. But it's been really rewarding. And I've met so many very cool people. And it led to this new, this new project I'm working on. Right. And not only is it a podcast, but you kind of like even nurtured it into a book, too. Is that right? Yes. The UFO rabbit hole part one is out and has been out for a while. Part two is as soon as I find a moment. It's in process. And I'll probably maybe combine that into just one volume to make it easier. So that's for people, you know, not everybody. Some people like remember things better.

They like to highlight and that sort of thing. So I've tried to compile it into a book as well. So it's not just the podcast format. Yeah. Yeah. It's so cool. I kind of did the same thing with my last book. I adapted the stories from my witness account series into a book of which you were featured in,

which was so, so cool. So if you guys want to hear Kelly's UFO citing, You can definitely listen to her podcast. I think you were on a witness accounts episode of our show at one point, and you're in my book stories from In The Sky. So, yeah, it's been a journey for sure. And we always all find a way to somehow work together on all of this, which I think is so cool that we can, as a community, come together,

find like-minded people and birth these creative projects from this highly ambiguous phenomenon. on and mystery that we're all wrapped up in. And that kind of is what Cosmosis came to be. So, yeah, I guess tell us a little about fast forward to now. Where did this idea spark from for Cosmosis? And tell us a little about the team that you worked with to create it, if you don't mind. What's the origin story of Cosmosis? Sure. Well, it actually, I guess it was about 18 months ago. It was in the summer. It was right after the Grush article came out, there were just a few people who were kind of loosely associated with each other in the community who are really thinking through like we wanted to do something. We wanted to contribute. We wanted to try to push the ball

forward. And so Jordan Flowers, who's now one of my business partners, kind of put together this weekend at his place in Connecticut where I think like maybe seven or eight of us came together and just spent the weekend brainstorming. And out of that, Jordan and I and also Jay Christopher King, who is the director of the experiencer group, kind of felt like there was a synergy between us in terms of what we wanted to accomplish. And we decided like, hey, let's try, let's just try something. So we came up with this idea for the docu series. We really wanted to create something that was a little different than what's out there. We know from, you know, other friends of ours and, you know, other amazing people that we really admire in the field who are, you know, who have made projects like

this, that when you go the more traditional route, that it can be kind of tough to tell these stories in a way that is really authentic to the experiences that people are actually having, there's some like spicier stuff that, you know, you can be fighting with people to try to get in there. And it ends up being kind of a, you know, making things by committee, which wasn't really how we wanted to do things. So we thought, you know, how can we make something that's like a high quality documentary project and do so, but with, you know, kind of a reasonable budget. So we we ended up raising $125,000, which sounds like about a million to me, but is actually only about like a fraction of maybe an episode of ancient aliens.

Yep. And we set about making this thing. We are very fortunate in that Jay Christopher King is, he has a lot of experience in television production. That was kind of his professional life before he started doing all of this full time. And so he came on as the director. I wrote it and we kind of worked on it together. And then Jordan has been in the background kind of making all of this possible for us because, you know, Jay and I are creatives.

We're not really money people. So, yeah, we wanted to just create something that really centered experiences that pushed the conversation into places that maybe it hasn't gone to before, at least not in a television format. Because, you know, not everybody listens to podcasts. And in terms of reaching a greater audience, it just felt like taking it to the screen was the next progression. And so that's what we decided to do. Yeah, yeah, I thought that was so cool. Like you found very unique experiences to highlight in the series. And I do want to maybe dive into that a little bit.

But first, how did you find them? You know, for me, I spent years, like, seeking these people out. And it was very hard. And it was like pulling teeth for people to come forward and actually talk about their experiences. But, I mean, I don't know about you. but ever since like UFOs went mainstream, it, like the tables turned. And I have people reaching out to me now all the time that want to tell their stories, that feel, you know, emboldened, empowered to actually do it.

But how did you find these individuals who you guys would eventually use in the documentary series? Well, one big advantage we have is Jay, you know, being the director of the experiencer group. I think he's probably like more plugged in with experiencers than just about anybody that you'll meet. And so one of the main experiencers that we talked to was Mario Woods, who has a very kind of classic military story. It's been told before. But I'm really proud to say that, you know, and Mario has said this about the show that we told it fully for the first time. Like there are things that often get cut when it's on like a history channel show or something like that because he didn't just see a giant orange orb at a nuclear facility, which suddenly is very timely. But he also. saw beings. There were beings that were involved. And there's much more to the story, including like other experiences that he had after that, experiences that he had had previously. And so we're able to dive into all of that. And Mario came to us through Jay. The other experiencer that we worked with is a guy named Courtney LaFal, who actually was one of the

very first people who ever reached out to me when I started the UFO rabbit hole. And I don't know what it was, but I just had this feeling about him. I didn't know anything about his background or his backstory. But I just had this weird feeling about him. And he was very kind of guarded for a long time about the things that were going on in his life. He's in a family of, that's kind of like multi-generational family of profound experiencers who have had, you know, everything from pre-cognitive events to UFO sightings to communications from dead relatives, you know, these kind of like cluster of various experiences altogether. But Courtney is somebody who is outside, really, of the UFO community.

And I thought that that was really important because, you know, with Mario, we got the kind of more traditional story that people, at least in the UFO community are used to hearing. It has all the components and parts. It's got, you know, government coverups and, you know, the disclosure and all of these things wrapped up in it. But with Courtney, it's like completely outside of that framework. And so it was really interesting to get his perspective. I don't want to give too much of his story away, but I,

As soon, the first time he ever told it to me, I was like, I have to tell this story. I have to tell this story. And luckily, he also felt like, you know, we were the right people to tell it. So, but I will say that it's, it's really cool to listen to him because he's, he is so articulate and like, and just down to earth and just somebody that I feel like people can really relate to. And I also really like that so much of his experience, he relates through the lens of his faith. he's a Christian and he's a member of the church and his mom is a minister and all of this. And so he sees these things kind of through a different lens than, you know, maybe we do in the UFO community. And I found through doing this docu series over the last year, how valuable it is to kind of, because, you know, there's so much of like a cultural overlay that all each of us places over these kind of unknown experiences that we can't totally describe.

And I think that like when we only stick to the people who, it exactly the way that we do, that we like do ourselves a disservice. And so seeing it through the eyes of someone else and how they relate to it, I think can give us kind of a more 360 degree view of what we might be dealing with here. So I was really grateful to Courtney and his family for being willing to be a part of this project. And their story is one that's really beautiful. And I think, I hope people will really resonate with it. Yeah. It's so important to view these phenomena through the lens of the observer, of the experience there, because they do bring so much into it. That goes for the paranormal world as well. It's like what you bring into these things

can ultimately affect how you interpret it or how you integrate it into your life, whether spiritually or scientifically, psychologically, whatever. That's why I love this topic, because you can view it from so many different ways. And that's kind of what you guys do throughout the series is this isn't a series about aliens coming to our planet and visiting us. You guys go there. You actually put the ETH aside and ask bigger questions of what these UFOs could represent, which I thought was pretty cool. You actually break it down into three episodes, and I'm going to, if it's okay,

I'd love to give the titles here. You have the UFO rabbit hole, which is very appropriate for the first episode, which kind of delves into modern day uphology globally. What's going on now? You introduce Mario and a few others. Episode two is the secret potential, which is kind of the history of the cover-up in everything that's happened. And then Hidden Realms is the third episode,

which like you mentioned is like what these things are in our relationship to it, which is so cool. But maybe tell us a little about the other people involved. Do you have the witnesses? You and Jay Christopher King are featured throughout as well, which was so cool to see you guys kind of bounce off of one another. But tell us a little about the other people who you sort of interviewed, if you don't mind. Sure. Gosh, we had so many incredible people agree to work with us.

First and foremost, I should mention Dr. Jeffrey Kriple, who was a consulting producer on this project. He has been such a hero of mine. And he actually reached out to us when he found out that we were kind of shopping this around and trying to raise money for it and ask if he could be involved. And so to have him approach us and want to be involved is really, really cool. And it's been an absolute pleasure to work with him. And we were able to go down to the archives of The Impossible and do some filming down there, which was really, really cool. We also had people like Diana Pesolka, E.O. Whiteley, Whitley, Whitley Striever. I could go on and on, Paul H. Smith.

It was really important to us to have a lot of PhDs involved because we really wanted to communicate to people who might be coming to this from the outside that like very serious, very credentialed people take this seriously and that there is that there are serious conversations going on. And then the other thing that was really important to us is that, you know, we wanted to also bring in new voices because sometimes it feels like when we watch shows that we're getting kind of this same cast of like 15 to 20 characters. And they're all amazing. And these are people that we all, you know, we all owe a debt of gratitude to. But, you know, it does feel like the, like it's time for kind of a younger generation to step up and to sort of take on some of the work that's been so fearlessly trailblazed by others. And so we brought in people like Dr. James Madden, who's become a dear friend of mine and is a collaborator with me frequently. He wrote the book Unidentified Flying Hyper Object, which we published through our, our production company, on a And so we published that under Antacalyps Press. We brought James Ian Doley, who I'm sure a lot of listeners will be familiar with from engaging the phenomenon. And Daniel Elizondo, who is a really, really incredible researcher. People have been referring to him as sort of the Richard Dolan of our generation. And I don't think that's overselling him at all. And I think he's one of the kind of fresh and exciting new voices that we have there. And there's also Greg Bishop, Joshua Cutchin. Gosh, I could just go on and on. Mike Masters joined. us. He's absolutely amazing. So we felt really good. Like we had kind of a great cast of characters of people who were like really established in the field, some newer voices and people with, you know, different perspectives coming from all different backgrounds. Yes, which was so refreshing because like I said, this isn't about extraterrestrial. I mean, it's always going to be there. It's always in the

back of all our minds, obviously. And a lot of evidence does lend itself to that. But you guys ask bigger questions of each of these academics, of each of these historians, researchers. And it was so cool to kind of see these new theories pop up. You mentioned like a new generation. And I think that is what we do. We build off of the research and the theories that came before it and see like, okay, well, we're no closer to an answer now than they were 50 years ago. Like, what new questions can we ask of these phenomena? And will that bring to light anything new?

Yeah, yeah, I think it's really cool. Well, let me see here. I'm trying to think of, oh, okay, this was one that I really wanted to ask you. So your documentary is coming out. James Fox has a documentary that is releasing within days. I'm actually writing an article about the five best UFO docu-series to check out in the new year for a new website that I'm working. with and of which Cosmosis is one of them. But I cannot believe, Kelly, the amount of like

UFO-related material out there, whether documentaries, movies, music, like, it's everywhere. UFOs are everywhere. What do you think that says about this topic and where it is today as opposed to, gosh, even 10 years ago? Like, what is happening? What is happening with this topic? It's like people have gone UFO crazy. Yeah, they really have. I mean, gosh, I've been in this field for three years and I've seen a complete change. Like, there was nothing like this going on when, even when I just started and it hasn't been that long. I'm thrilled to see all the new material coming out.

I really think this is a situation where the need for these kinds of projects is so huge that, like, we can't have enough. You know what I mean? And I think that in this situation, it really is a case where a resident. Tide raises all boats because, you know, as I'm sure, you know, you've seen and so many of your listeners have experienced, once you realize that there's some kind of a reality to the UFO phenomenon, even if you can't quite figure out what that is, for a lot of people, it unlocks a lot of questions and a line of inquiry that can become, you know, more than just a hobby, except for some of us that can become an obsession. But I'm so excited to see all of this happening because I know that with like

each one of these projects that's showing up like, I know George Knapp, had one that dropped on Netflix and there was the new JJ Abrams one that just dropped on MGM Plus and a million other things. I'm sure I'm missing a ton. I know a ton has just come out. But, you know, all the people who are just, I'm excited for people in the community to kind to see the fruits of these labors. But even more than that, I'm excited about the person who's like scrolling through these streamers and just like doesn't have a huge familiarity with any of this and just decides to give it a try because I really think that that's where we're going to start to make progress. Because I think when we look at things like, you know, the congressional hearings and all of

that, that in some ways, the only thing that's really going to help move this forward is pressure from the public. Like the members of Congress are getting upset about this. They're realizing that there's something real going on, that there's information that they should have to do the oversight that they're tasked with doing, that they don't have. But for us to make meaningful change, there's going to have to be like a meaningful push from the public. And so I think, you know, at this point, all of us creators in the space, everybody who's contributing, even just the people, you know, who are contributing online and talking to their friends and family, like all of us are playing a role in kind of expanding this out to the public. And the fact that we're seeing

so many of these projects being, you know, funded and being on major streamers and networks and all of that says that we are making progress. I know that it can feel like slow and frustrating for those of us who are like in it, day in and day out. But I think that we can be really proud as a community of what we've accomplished over these last few years because, I mean, it's meaningful. And I think it really will change things. And so, yeah, I'm just, I'm thrilled to see it all happening and to play a small part in it. Yeah. Change takes time. And no one ever said UFO disclosure is going to be a express route. That's for sure. Biggest question of all time. Well, you mentioned pressure. Now, we're seeing right now, literally in real time, you know, the lack of, I guess, oversight of our national borders, if you want to put it that way.

I mean, I live in Scotland right now, and we just had a crazy amount of drone incursions over military bases over here in the UK. You guys are getting it in the states now over in New Jersey. And for the FBI to come out in publicly state and the Pentagon, nonetheless, to say, we don't know what's going on, is troubling. Is anything going on? Like, that's another big question. We're sort of seeing this, like, mass hysteria happening right now when it comes to drones. So I think it's important to, like, remember, nobody knows what's going on. Like nobody, whether it's literally UAP or man-made drone technology, like nobody truly knows what is in our skies on any given day, month, year.

So what do you make of all of this craziness that's going on right now? Gosh, it really is hard to make heads or tails of it. I think that it does seem like there have been some things that could be truly anomalous that have been reported. I think especially like some orbs and stuff over military bases. It could be beyond that. I think that this also could be manmade tech. It could be our adversaries. It could be us.

It could be some unknown other that we haven't considered. And it's hard because, you know, the government is telling us that they don't know what it is. And if that's the case, that's concerning, more than a little concerning. You know, but I think that the truth is, I suspect that they don't have no idea. I think that, you know, something that we've seen a lot through this kind of rollout of the hearings is that with these kind of like deep black budget programs, that they are classified so highly that sometimes the president, it hasn't always been read into these things, that Congress isn't read into these things. And it's very much on a need to know. And they won't just not tell you about it, but if pressed, like the rule is that they're supposed to lie about it. So I think that there's a very good chance that they do know what's going on. And, you know, if nothing else comes of this, I hope that what does come of it, because the answers are so ludicrous, right? And it's actually been great to see the media pushing back against people like John Kirby and being like, dude, can you make this make sense for us? Because you're saying that like you don't know what they are, but like it's not a threat. How do you know it's not a threat if you don't know what they are? And so I think that like the ridiculousness of that is this continues to creep into the public awareness. I'm hoping that that that's going to help us build momentum towards actual transparency because it actually is ludicrous that not just the American people, but even our elected representatives, aren't being given any

kind of information about what's going on. And like, we deserve to know. We deserve to have some kind of information about what's happening. And so, you know, it's a very strange time. I don't know what we're looking at, but it's hard to believe that the world is going to go back completely to normal after this. This seems like an emerging new normal. which I think we've had enough of those these last few years. But surprise. Again, another one. So, yeah, we'll see.

But yeah, it's been, the response from the government has been insane, to be honest. It makes no sense. I know. I feel like I'm living in like a bad comedy or something right now, like a sci-fi comedy. It's weird. It's so weird. The Summer in the Sky's podcast is free to listen to every week. But if you would like to help support the show, we have a very big.

very active Patreon page, where you give what you think the show is worth. In return, you'll get early access to the main show, bonus episodes, and priority to ask our guests your listener questions. Your support truly makes the show continue and grow. So, to learn more and to join, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. To sort of rewind back to a new reality, I, I, I, I, I love some of the theories that you guys pose in the series, Cosmosis. Now, we won't give them all the way. But what are some of those other theories? Let's push drones aside.

Like, that's whatever. That's boring. There's alien, obviously, extraterrestrial. But is there like one or two other theories that you find absolutely, like, compelling when it comes to what these UFOs or UAP could represent that you guys bring forward? Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I'll say that like in my secret heart, my favorite will always kind of be the ultra terrestrial or crypto terrestrial hypothesis. I think that that one's a little harder to nail down sometimes, but it's just for it's fun, right? But the ones that we really focus the most on in the first episode, we go through a bunch of them, you know, interdimensional and all of that. But we brought in, I really wanted to bring in people who were kind of putting forward newer ideas about what this was. So obviously we had to go and talk to, um, Dr. Micromasters, who came to talk to us about the extra tempestrial hypothesis. And what I find so

compelling about that is that there seems to be, regardless of whether this turns out to be future humans or time travelers or whatever people want to call them, I think that it's really hard to deny at this point that time plays some kind of a really critical part of what we're dealing with here. It seems like, you know, the time differences or lost time. and all of that has always been like a really big part of what's going on. And so I think that's really important. I also like it because it gives some kind of an explanation for the connection between us and them, because there does seem to be some kind of a profound connection. Not only do they look like us, they're, you know, they're humanoid in shape and in their morphology, but they seem to be

really invested in us and what goes on with us. You know, experiencers forever have been reporting things like, you know, that they're telling us to take care of our planet and to take care of each other and that sort of thing. And they seem to not be too pleased about nuclear proliferation and that sort of thing. And so I think that like it's a really interesting theory that gives us some inroads to explain some of the more mysterious parts of the phenomenon. And then the other one that we really dove into is one of my favorites. I will always be biased because I helped publish James Madden's book. But as I said, he wrote the book on Identification. flying hyper object. And so James Madden is a philosopher. And so he was taking like really more of a

philosophical approach to what the UFO is. Because, you know, in a lot of ways, UFO challenges all of our kind of categories and assumptions about reality and, you know, what's even going on here. And so kind of a philosophical approach, he has a really elegant way of kind of thinking down to the bottom of these questions and asking, and asking better questions, which I think is something we desperately need in this field. And the concept of the hyper object is basically that hyper objects are things that are operating on such grand scales that we never really see the whole thing or that we can't even conceive of the whole thing. So an example would be the economy. Like you can go to the store and you can, you know, buy something.

You can get your paycheck. You can invest in stocks. You know, there's all these different ways that you can encounter. the economy. But there's really no one person on earth, even the top economists in the world, there's no way that they can kind of contain and understand all of that information. And the economy even sort of has a life of its own, right? Like it kind of runs us more than we run it in many ways. And so he brings this idea of hyper objects and kind of applies it to the phenomenon and says, you know, maybe all of these incidents that we are seeing with UFOs and potentially,

with other related paranormal phenomena are just like pieces of this larger thing that we're coming into contact with. And I think that that could really make a lot of sense because there are things that have changed a lot over the last 100 years that, you know, suddenly we're flying around in the skies, suddenly we're, you know, in space and that like maybe we're bumping up against something that operates on the scale of the economy or beyond that that like we don't quite understand. And that we might not be set up to understand. And I think that's a really challenging idea and one that maybe people don't always want to consider. But I find it, it feels really liberating in some ways to kind of have a, I think that it's probably one of the most innovative and truly new ideas that's been presented

over the last several decades about UFO. So I'm really excited for people to get introduced to James Madden in his work. Yeah. I've been digging a little bit into his work lately after having heard him on your show. And again, it's these new concepts and theories that just open the doors wide open with what we, and that's what's so cool is like, you're not only learning about what these UFOs might be. You're learning about the mystery of life, you know, like the bigger picture. Like I've always said this, Kelly, like the UFO topic or aliens or non-human intelligence, It says so much more about us than it ever does the phenomenon itself. And I've always loved that sort of like mirror aspect to all of this.

Like, yeah, we could study the phenomenon. We can come up with concepts and theories. But at the end of the day, like it always comes back to us, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Sorry about that. I hope you didn't hear my phone ring. No, not at all. No, no.

So I think that's pretty cool. So I love those theories. I love those theories. I highly suggest people check out Madden's work as well. On a technical side, I'd love to know, like, this is kind of your first major film project that you and J. Christopher have kind of helmed. What have been the biggest challenges in filming a docu-series for you guys? Because I'm going through those trials and tribulations myself right now. And do you have any fun stories of, like, what happened during filming?

Did anyone get abducted by aliens? No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But yeah, tell us a little about the behind the scenes, if you don't mind. I love those kinds of stories. Oh, my gosh. It has been so challenging. And I remember we went into this and we're like, we'll film it in like a couple of months. It'll take us like a couple of months for, you know, us to edit it and then it'll be out.

Like, no, it took so much longer than we ever could have imagined. You know, interestingly, the very first shoot that we did was at the inaugural Soul Foundation conference. And so we didn't even, we weren't even like fully funded yet. Like we didn't even like we were kind of like putting up our own money and like figuring it out later. But we were like we're going to Seoul. And so like these people are going to be there. Like these people that we want to be on our show. And so like if we can make it work, we're going to make it work.

And so we did end up having some great interviews there with people like Jeff Kreppel and E. Whiteley and Greg Bishop and Whitley Striever. And it was literally, you know, pulling people into hotel rooms and like, you know, they're trying to get out the door because their plane's about to leave. And we're like, we got 15 minutes. Like, make it happen. So so that was a pretty crazy first shoot. But I'm so glad we did it because so much amazing, so much amazing stuff came out of that. We were also able to take advantage of since Jay organizes the inquire anomalous conferences in New York City, there was one just a few weeks after Seoul. And so we had the opportunity to go and film with some people in New York as well,

which is really fun. And we had this day downtown. And like we were in midtown Manhattan and there was a storm, like a rainstorm going on. And at rush hour. And even though we were on the 22nd floor, like we were having to pause literally every second. Basically, Cooper, you know, someone who could barely get a sentence out because the, of all the honking and all of that. So that was a trying day, but we, we made it through it. And you wouldn't, you can't tell now once you see it in the final, in its final form. So, yeah, I mean,

it's been, it's been a crazy experience. And we had some, gosh, we had some really wild experiences where, you know, we had just wrapped filming and we had agreed to do a kind of like sneak peak premiere of the first episode, a contact in the desert out in Palm Springs. And, you know, just, that was very ambitious of us. I'll say that. And I just the just the sleepless nights there was like for about 10 days before contact in the desert. I was out in New Jersey at Jay's house and we were just working like 18 hours days just like grinding trying to get this thing done in time for contact in the desert. Like my birthday happened while I was out there and like we didn't even I didn't even blink. Like I was just like I will I'll celebrate next year like just work right through my birthday to get a. on. You know, those moments are hard, but they're like, those are, I think, always the best memories and when you look back. And I'm really glad to have had this whole experience. It's all been really magical. Yeah, you know, you take the good, the bad. And, you know, it all becomes this stew of like experience and like learning from it. And trust me, I know it. It's like I tried to

record a podcast for about eight years in New York City. And I would be not only that kind of. I lived right next to the above ground subway. So it wasn't even like once every 40 minutes. It was once every 15 minutes right at the pause, wait for the train to go by, keep her, oh my God, it was a nightmare. Oh, I can really imagine. Yeah, I can sympathize with you guys. But that's cool.

That's really cool to hear that you guys had good experiences in the process of making this as well. Well, I guess to kind of wrap things up with Cosmosis, what do you hope people will take away from this project? You know, like we mentioned, there's so much out there nowadays. Like this space has become very saturated, whether it's podcasts, books, movies, everything. But I do truly feel like your project sets itself apart from a lot of that. So what do you hope people will take away from Cosmosis? Oh, thank you for saying that. You know, I think that, you know, obviously, like, we're deeply embedded in these communities, the experiencer community, the UFO community. And so much of what shaped where we went with this was the conversations that we have in those spaces and in our private communities. And, you know, so in a lot of ways, this is kind of a love letter to the UFO community and to experiencers. And I really hope that they're proud of what we did with it. I think all.

Also, you know, we wanted to thread the needle of both kind of like pushing things further and having something that, you know, the community wouldn't say, yeah, we've seen this before. It's the same old thing again. But also to be able to have something so that like people can watch it and say like, you know, if you've got that friend or that uncle or that somebody, you know, over the holidays or something like that who's showing that little bit of interest and you think you have an inn and you want to show them something that can kind of, you know, give them, get them up to speed and kind of give them an idea of what's going on here. because people's, you know, as you know, people's typical idea of UFOs is so guided by the media that a lot of people don't realize how complex and sort of rich this topic is. And so we wanted it to be, we wanted that to be something that people felt like, you know, that this was a good representation, that they felt good about showing their family and friends who might be interested. You know, and one of our main, I think the other two things are just, one was that we really wanted to do this by centering the experience. Even in episode two when we're talking about the cover up and all of that. We really are looking at all of it through a human lens, you know, not just saying,

like, hey, this is being covered up, but like, here's what happens to people because it's been covered up. Like, here is the human cost of the secrecy. It's not just like, hey, we want to know. It's that, like, some real injustices and hurt and harm are being done to people because this information is being kept from us. And we really wanted to, as much as possible, center experiences because it feels like so often those are the conversations that are getting left out of the conversation. And finally, I think kind of our just rallying cry throughout the whole thing is that, you know, we know the government's lying to us about this. And we know that there's been an insane amount of disinformation in the field. And we know that like disclosure is a very worthy cause, but that it's going to take us a while to like really get where we're trying to go with transparency.

But in the meantime, you know, we don't need the government's permission to invest in. these things. Like, we don't need them to tell us the truth. The UFO phenomenon is something that is going on every single day in every single part of the world. They can't hide it from us. They can't keep it from us. And, you know, we need people from all walks of life and all different backgrounds looking at this thing and trying to figure out what's going on. And like, we don't need the government's permission to, like, investigate the nature of our reality. And so that was something that we really wanted to drive home because we're, you know, really inspired. by the collaboration and the, you know, hard work that's being done by people in this field.

We wanted to highlight that. And we really wanted to say, like, hey, like, there is, we need so much more help. We need so much, there's so much more work to be done. And like, if there are people out there who want to get involved, you know, I hope that they find a way to bring their own kind of expertise and skill sets to the table because we need, we need everybody. This is an all hands-on-deck situation for sure. All hands-on-deck for euphology. I love that. I love that. I love love that. You know, I, I spoke to a witness a couple days ago. He was featured in a witness accounts episode, and he had a experience where a cylindrical disc went right by his plane. He was on a commercial flight. And the pilots literally came over the intercom and said, everyone, please

shut your, what do you call it? The blinds or whatnot. We're going to be going through turbulence. And he was like, really? Like, I've never heard that before. So everyone starts shutting their blinds except him. And he peaked out and he saw this object go right past like just nearly miss the plane. And I'm not kidding you. After the object disappeared, the pilot came back on and said, all right, everyone can open your blinds back up. And what wasn't there during all this? Cully? Turbulence.

No turbulence whatsoever. So he truly believed that they knew that there was some sort of object that was going to be going by their plane. and they did not want the passengers to see it. Again, I can't prove that. No one can prove that. But I'm working with him to try to find other people who were possibly on that flight. We were able to track down the flight, the date, all that good stuff. So I'm working with him on that.

But the thing that struck me the most, the reason I bring this up is he came to me today, like literally an hour before you and I started recording. And he said, look, I'm 89 years old. And I just want to know the truth. like why won't the government tell us the truth about this? I want to know before I die. I don't feel like I have much time. And it just like broke my heart.

And I just like, I don't know what to say to someone like that. So all I said was did like your disclosure happened when you saw that? Don't rely on the government. Look at how they're handling this drone situation right now. And all these, you know, clandestine crash retrieval project. that they're denying. Stop relying on the government to give us the truth about this. It's going to come person by person like you said. That was my long-winded way of saying, I agree with what you said. That's such a cool story. And I, yeah, and I completely agree. You know, this stuff is happening to people

all the time, all the time. And, and, you know, when people feel like they can't talk about it and that they are alone in it or that, like, or that there'll be, people think they're crazy if they talk about it. Like, we have enough of a mental health crisis going on in this world. You know, we don't need to add to people feeling isolated or people feeling alienated. And, you know, I think that giving people spaces to talk about these things that happen to them that are like weird, but they're not uncommon. And, you know, I think it's really important. And so I hope that, you know, like you were talking about before, all these new projects, all this progress that's being made, even these create this crazy drone situation. I hope that it's pushing that conversation forward.

And I think it is. I think so too. Yeah. And shout out to Peter, the witness, if you're watching this. Shoutouts, Kelly. Music, art. I mean, you guys integrated so much interesting things into Cosmosis. If possible, could we give a little shout out to your composer or the artists that you worked with? Anyone you want to shout out on the project before we wrap things up. Yes, I mean, I'm so glad you asked that. Thank you for asking that because the people who collaborated with us on this are like the heroes. You know, it's, you know, you know, like trying to edit something together. You can, there's only so far it can go.

And I think to really bring sort of not just the reality of the situation to people, but the humanity of it, the emotion of it, that, you know, things like animations and, you know, music are so important. We were extraordinarily blessed to have a guy by the name of Mike Rubino do our score for us. And Mike is a guy who kind of his bread and butter is doing, trailers and for like major Hollywood movies. I mean, we're talking like, we needed our first trailer. He was also working on the trailer for Dune 2. Like, I mean, like, very lucky. And he has created an absolutely incredible score that has elevated the show to a place that like I couldn't even

imagine it being. Our editor who's also done a bunch of animations and kind of custom stuff for us, Zev Deans, has done some incredible work. I have to give a shout. out to Finn Handley, who is a really incredible guy who does these meticulous recreations of experiencer stories. He doesn't just, you know, try to animate what happened to somebody. I mean, like, if it happened on a road, he'll find that road on Google Maps and he will recreate it down to the, you know, the signposts and that sort of thing, to the trees to get it exactly. And he goes back and forth and back and forth with the experiencer. until they look at what he's created and say, like, this is as close as you're going to get to what I saw and what I experienced.

And I think that that's so incredibly valuable because, you know, one of the challenges that we gave ourselves coming into this project was we didn't want to use a ton of, like, stock video and stuff of UFOs. Because, like, it's hard. It's really, really hard when you're working in a visual media like this because you have to show, some, you have to show people something, right? But so much of that stuff is created by, you know, artists who are, you know, just trying to make a living. They may or may not have ever seen a UFO. And I think that it, in a lot of ways, without intending to, it kind of gives people a false idea of what UFOs actually look like. And so especially when we were talking about experience or stories, we wanted to be as, like, faithful to that as possible to give people an idea of what these experiences are actually like.

So Finn, like, we absolutely could not have done it without him. He was amazing. There were other illustrators. Sherry Miller who did some incredible stuff for us. We had experiencers contribute their own art, representing their own experiences. We had a guy named Elfie Dwyer who worked on, you know, some of the cooler animations in the opening sequence. I know I'm forgetting people. But there's, we had all kinds of people. You'll really see. see that it's a really a collaborative effort. And I think that we're just so lucky. We're so lucky that so many people, because a lot of these people were just like working for free and just helping us because they cared about the project and they wanted it to be as good as it could be. And like that, I couldn't be more inspired by that. It means so much to me and we're just forever in their debt. That's so cool. And yeah, you guys can check the credits to see everyone that was involved. So obvious last question, Kelly, before we go, when and where can we find Cosmosis and everything that you guys are up to?

So it's going to premiere on Apple TV on December 30th. It will also, I just got confirmation that it will also be available through Google Play on that day as well. We're waiting on dates for further distribution on Amazon Prime. And we're going to do our best also to get it up on, you know, like alternatives like, you know, YouTube or Vimeo or something like that. On the bigger streamers, like on Apple and Amazon, we're going to be releasing in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. But we, you know, obviously this is an international conversation and we want to make it

available to as many people as possible. And I know international people often are like, I can't watch this. And they get very frustrated. So we're doing our absolute best to make it as widely available as possible. And so, you know, if you stay tuned on, you know, follow us on Twitter or wherever, we will be continually announcing where new places that it's become available as we are able to confirm that. Awesome. That's so, yes, it is a global phenomenon as should be the media that covers it. I agree with that.

And we'll have links down in the show notes, guys, where you can pre-order and all that good stuff. But I'm so excited. I'm so excited for people to see this. I was very honored to see the advanced screeners of a couple of the episodes. So thank you for that, Kelly. And thank you for what you and Jay and everyone are doing to contribute to this conversation. And I have no doubt that this is going to really open the dialogue for a lot of new eyes and ears, but also veterans in the field who may be looking for new challenges and in thoughts and theories.

So yeah, yeah, I commend you guys that congratulate you. And of course, I want to thank you again for coming on Summer in the skies today. Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much for having me, Ryan. And thank you for everything that you do. And, you know, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Like, you were one of the very first bigger names that paid any kind of attention to what I was doing and gave me a shout out. And like that went such a long way in, you know, getting the podcast off the ground.

So like I'm always always have a big soft spot in my heart for you and for somewhere in the skies. And I love your book. It's fantastic. So thank you so much for having me on. Oh, thank you so much. The pleasure is all mine. And yeah, keep looking up. We're all in this together.

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