The Chris Cuomo Project - Neil deGrasse Tyson Finally Takes UFOs Seriously

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Neil deGrasse Tyson (astrophysicist, “StarTalk” podcast host, and author, “Take Me to Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter”) joins Chris Cuomo for a wide-ranging conversation on why the longtime UFO skeptic is finally taking the UAP conversation seriously — and what changed. Tyson explains why the recent wave of military whistleblowers and congressional hearings pushed him to engage with the UAP debate, even as he maintains that eyewitness testimony is not evidence. He breaks down the difference between believing that life likely exists elsewhere in the universe and claiming that extraterrestrials are visiting Earth, and argues that the burden of proof remains the same as in any other scientific question. Cuomo and Tyson also explore the intersection of science, religion, and human belief, from ancient aliens and crop circles to why people are drawn to ideas they want to be true. The conversation offers a skeptical but open-minded look at UFO disclosure, government secrecy, and what first contact with alien life might actually mean. Join The Chris Cuomo Project on YouTube for ad-free episodes, early releases, exclusive access to Chris, and more: https://www.youtube.com/@chriscuomo/join Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at https://shopify.com/chrisc #ufo #uap #aliens #news #cuomo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That was easy. Take me to your leader. Perspectives on your first alien encounter. Who would you expect to write a book like that? Maybe a journalist in quotes, maybe somebody who had crop circles pop up allegedly in their backyard or someone who saw something but is from a very limited set of English-speaking countries? Nope. One of the most famous, and in my opinion, foremost, scientists in America. Mr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, professor, physicist, astrophysicist, science guy.

What does it mean that he is writing about UAPs? Well, he just decided to turn the whole thing on its head, and he says the time has come. For what? I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. I had to sit down with the esteemed professor because how is an astrophysicist talking to UAP talk? And why is he producing a work that takes this really, really seriously?

Here's the answer. Because it is. Don't take it from me. Take it from the science guy. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Dude, thanks for having me back. I got to tell you. I just, especially these days, you are just everything.

You are something I've been watching, you know, to get ready for this. I was looking at so much social media about where you've been. And of course, it's a new book out. That's why I hooked them. But the idea of, and here's what's so interesting to me about the new book is that it's going to shock people. And I'll tell you why. You are so valuable right now because of, how you apply physics and how you use science.

And critical thinking. And critical thinking, right? I wear the shirt, you live it. Right? So you don't need the shirt. It'd be weird. If you had it, be like, duh, you know, might as well, your shirt, may as well say Neil on it.

But, you know, so there's such value in that. And then this book comes out. And I would have never, now I know you personally, but I would have never imagined if I didn't know Neil deGrozz Tyson, well, he's not talking extraterrestrials. He's the debunker. He's, don't bring that my way. I'm an astrophysicist and I'm married to one.

And I think all my kids do that also. So I'm like two, three generations deep of sciencey. Don't bring that noise my way. You say quite the opposite, my friend. Why would you write about extraterrestrial life? Yeah. So what began to happen, if you go back long enough, about that long ago, a few decades ago, most of the, many of the accounts of UFOs and alien abductions and things were people who didn't

otherwise have title or integrity that their station in life would grant them. There was the farmer in his back 40. There was junk and revelers at 2 a.m. staggering out of the bar. And it would be their accounts of UFOs that would get reported on. and beginning a few years ago, and all of you in the media just ate it up when various whistleblowers and insiders. News Nation has covered this more than anybody

and had more of the whistleblowers than anyone else. There you go. And they ain't farmers. There you go. They're not farmers. They're not drunken revelers. And there's a parade of them. Many of them former ex-military,

X, X, X, intelligence agency officers. And under oath, in front of Congress, by the way, this is the last and only time I remember in the past decade, where both houses of Congress were just together with one investigative purpose. That was a, I was quite impressed by that. Aliens brought us together, is what that was.

So when these people of high rank started reporting, I said, all right, I have to jump in here. I can't stay silent. I have to, I have to be a participant in what's going on. Because of what happened to you when you got beamed up? And you went up there immediate wrestler and you came down as this. Just because I wanted to be beamed up didn't mean I got beamed up. They would explain some things.

because from the wrestling captain in high school to be, you know, Captain Science, was a little bit of a link. Okay, well, you think they put a chip in me when I was up there. That's a theory. No, I actually had a theory. You have an hypothesis, okay? Oh, listen to this. Let's keep that straight.

I'll take an axiom. So you decided to jump. A lemma? You want to be a lemma? So. That was a good routine. We should take that on the road. Yeah, it's about all.

got, though. I really can't stay up with you for very long. So I just thought we need, we have to anchor some of this conversation. And, and little did I realize I had been, I mean, I knew this, but I didn't feel it until I decided to put the book, put words to page. For decades, I've been contemplating Hollywood's attempts to portray aliens, what they look like, how creative were they? How creative were they not? What was the intelligence they were given? How about what powers they had?

And all of this is floating in my head. And I said, now that we have high-ranking whistleblowers, let me jump in and participate in this conversation. And I thought to myself, let's take aliens as a given and then talk about what that would be like. If they landed, what should you say to them? If they ask to take you to your leader, who would you choose?

Let's have these conversations rather than continue to push it off to the side or kick the can down the street. I said, let's do it. So the first opening chapter is Alien to Us. And I highlight all the things that creative storytellers have imagined would be different about aliens relative to us. Okay, that's easy to do. It's just a, it's a compendium. The second chapter, alien to them, are things in our lives that we take for granted that we don't think of as alien. But we'd be completely alien to an alien, for example.

Suppose an alien comes down and you become friends, okay? And then they're down for like half a day. And you say, excuse me, friendly alien, have to lay down horizontally and become semi-comatose for one-third of Earth's rotation. You think they wouldn't be in to sleep. I'm just saying that's a weird thing. Maybe the aliens go to sleep, but that's a big assumption if they come from another planet. Okay? So that's a weird request of them you'd have to make.

And be aware that that looks alien to them. Here's another one. Suppose they land in L.A. Okay? In the 405. 12 lanes. across. They don't see any humans, no pedestrian, because nobody walks anywhere in L.A.

They're just cars. The alien might think, that is the life form on Earth, this thing, this metal machine. That's the life form. And then they'll see one of the car haulers go by. That's a pregnant one. That is multiple, the whole litter ready to come out of that one. And then they look at like fast food stores. This gets me just as a new.

Yorker. LA people will wait in line in their car, a slow line to order fast food, handed to them through their window, and then they eat it in the car. Okay? So as far as the alien is concerned, the car is the thing. And if one of them gets injured, another thing comes back to bring it away to fix it. All, everything is automobile driven. And so you have to, we need to be sensitive to what we might look like to aliens.

So it's a whole section in there, getting rid of your ego or tamping down your ego. Another one, alien comes up to you and there's some appendage there. You don't grab it and shake it like you're greeting it. You don't know what part of the alien that is that you just grabbed. And I don't think you want to know, at least not up front. Okay? So little things like that. So in a way, it's a primer.

for what to look out for what to be cautious of, what to leave at home. And in your first meeting with an alien, you're not only representing yourself, you're representing your country, you're representing humans, you're representing Earth. So I recommend at that time you leave your flat-earther friends behind. You want to leave a good impression on the alien,

and the flat-earther will not leave a good impression on the alien. Not knowing the shape of your planet is not a good start. It's not a good start. You want to at least have some hope in our intelligence. And also, it would be a wrong time to bring your religious friend in who would declare that the creator of the universe is someone in whose image we are shaped, therefore not the alien. It'd be a hard sell because the alien got here in a spaceship.

And, you know, we only just recently left low Earth orbit for the first time in 30. 56 years, 54 years. So be judicious about who you bring to meet the alien versus who you don't. Joe Rogan doesn't believe that we landed on the moon. So even though he's like got a big cultural presence right now, you keep him off the short list of who comes in. Yeah, yeah. So if he doesn't think we landed on the moon, we live in a free country.

I don't have any problems with people not believing we landed on the moon. I just don't, just make sure they don't become head of NASA, okay? leave them out of positions of high space responsibility. Do you remember Kyrie Irving was a basketball player? I only remembered this when he was with the Knit, with the Celtics. He was a big flat earther. He had all kinds of social media posts. And I said to, they said, what do you think?

He thinks this. I said, he's a basketball player. You know, where he works professionally has to be flat. It's his lived experience. It's his lived experience. So I got no problem with that. So, so I just don't want aliens to think we're just raving idiots. So how do you square?

So here's the problem with somebody like you. And what you mean, by the way, which by the way, Neil does not like this topic of discussion. But it matters to me because. How do you know what? I'm like, I'm talking about anything. Every time I've brought this up, you're like what? Bring it on.

You matter. Bring it. You matter. You are a proxy for our pride of intelligence. and intellect. I don't like carrying that responsibility. I totally get it. I'm just Neil.

Lucky, it's not a thing for me. Never been accused of this, which is a fairly short list of things I haven't been accused of. So here's the thing, though. How do you square the integrity of your intellectual pursuits with this topic? When a lot of people, major players dismiss it. out of hand. Okay.

So, I've, it's an important question. And my reply is, you know, the battle cry, I need a witness. That it's a courtroom drama. I need a witness, said no scientist ever. In science, eyewitness testimony does not count as evidence. evidence is evidence. Testimony that is filtered through your brain, ear. You know, we've known since kindergarten

when you play telephone. Information starts out over here. Six children later is completely different. Every person is influencing the objective truth of what began this conversation of telephone. So we've known from early on and it doesn't get better in adulthood. In fact, it gets a little worse

because we become, we take on belief systems and commitments of our philosophy, be it religious, cultural, political philosophies that completely shape, or lenses through which different people look, see the same event differently. Okay. Just look at how different, coming from your world, looking at how different news agencies report the same story. Okay, you'd wonder, is this the same planet? All right.

So, so the scientist requires evidence. And when we say hard evidence, we mean not your testimony. All right. I decided in a book such as this, let everyone be telling the truth. Back up. Probably three quarters or more of all UFO sightings have natural explanation. Even UFO enthusiasts know this and will confess to this. All right.

There's always some little bit that has no explanation. If you're alien adjacent, the moment you can't explain it is aliens. So this resembles from antiquity what's called God of the Gaps. Philosophers call God of the Gaps. There's a storm raging on the coastline of Greece. Poseidon is angry. You don't know what caused the storm, but you know Poseidon. God of the Gaps.

Okay, so any place where science has yet to tread, you are comfortable thinking that there's God or gods that have something to do with it. In modern times, that's taken on the patina of Alien of the Gaps, except that doesn't have the same ring as God of the Gaps. So for the book I invented the phrase, aliens of our ignorance. And then you have the assonance of the vowels, aliens of our ignorance. So there be some small percent, call it 5 percent, of sightings that have no obvious, easy explanation. The alien enthusiastas, aliens. And I'm saying we just don't know what it is.

Yeah, I asked you about this once before, and you said, why would anyone whose studies have the arrogance to believe that there's no possibility that there's any other form of life anywhere when every time we measure the universe, it is bigger than the last time we check. Now, that's a different question. Is there life in the universe?

versus is their life visiting restricted military airspace of the U.S. government? These are two different questions. Okay? So, with this small percent that an alien enthusiast says is alien, I'm saying, okay, but the time has come where we already know you're stockpiling aliens in Area 51 and in the back shed and alien body parts and alien saucer parts. and alien reversed engineering, and it's all in the backshed. Fine.

Until you fork up an actual alien, this entire operation is all about belief. The question anyone asks you is not our aliens real. Is that, do you believe in aliens? Do you believe in them? Do you believe in elephants? Well, I do because I've touched them. Thank you.

Well, there it is. Okay, if only a few dozen people had ever seen an elephant in the world and you paraded them in front of Congress under sworn testimony, I swear these things exist. This animal is huge and it's the size of a truck and it's got a nose, no, and it's got a big rubbery thing hanging off its front and it could drink water out of it and it could, and it eats and it can grab things. There's two big teeth that stick upwards and they're big and shiny and smooth and it's got ears the size of bed sheets and the legs are the size of tree stumps. And we're just listening to

these testimonies like, that's kind of weird, dude. Can you draw one? And they all try to draw it, but they're not good illustrators. And it just looks like some hybrid animal that no one has ever seen before. That's a two-hour documentary right there investigating these illustrations. You know how to turn that into a 10-minute documentary? Bring out an elephant. Okay. Elephant comes out in the first five minutes and rolling credits are the second five minutes. And no one after that would ever have to say do you believe in elephants?

So I am saying because we have high-ranking people and because they're saying it's in the government, then it's no longer a cover-up. By the way, let's distinguish cover-up from secret. Of course the military has secret things. It's not a cover-up if it's an official secret. a cover-up would be something that you...

Hiding something that they screwed up. That you would otherwise know, but they're hiding. No. Of course the government has top secret things. No one is arguing that. And in the Pentagon files, these are classified documents. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from Shopify. Listen, small business is the heart of America.

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and that is Shopify, and they can have that line if they want it. It's time to turn those what ifs into a kaching Shopify. Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash ChrisC. Go to Shopify.com slash ChrisC. Use my name to get this special deal. Shopify.com slash ChrisC. So for me, it's a transparency story, not from the physical, metaphysical perspective that we're discussing within the book, which I think is a very clever way to approach this from a different angle.

And I'm not surprised by that, given who wrote it. But for me, it's... Right, because there's a whole section of the book that analyzes alien powers and can they make themselves invisible or transparent. But go like that, the whole section of the book. Well, I'll tell you what, watching Lucy the other night again, the movie with Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman, where they use this clever, speaking of clever, so dolphins, you know this.

Dolphins use as mammals use more of their brain than we do. They're the mammal that uses their brain the most. It's like 27%. Well, the brain is bigger than our brain. But plus, that whole movie premise was based on a false understanding, a false read of what was the original. The original part. Because I've been working on my eco-location.

How is it working for you? So, so just to be clear, if memory serves, the original quote was because you can't, you can't do experiments on people's brains. It's not ethical. But what you can do, if someone has a brain injury, you can test what remains that still works, and you can say, ah, that part of the brain must control language or vision or whatever. Okay. I think the quote was, the brain is so complex, we only know what 10% is.

of it is used for. Right. That became, we only used 10% of our brain. It's true. And that's not going away because teachers use that all the time. You can use much more of your brain

and it's just embedded in what we want to be true. It is a false premise. It's a false premise and it's become legend. Right. Or mythology, okay? So to the point where it's foundational to the movie Lucy. Yes.

And I comment in Lucy, in Lucy, she's altering the molecular strength. of matter. Yes. And I take issue with that in the book. It's not only her, it's in the movie Phenomenon with John Travolta. Yeah.

He gets hit by lightning or something and he comes really smart. Yeah. I don't mind you becoming smart. But since when does becoming smart mean you can move objects with your brain? Right. No, if you're smart, you can solve problems faster and better. Okay? Put them to solve the cancer problem or the, you know, nuclear fusion or whatever.

But to start moving matter? No. No. That's not, you don't get that just by having more neurosynaptic firings. That's not a next thing for being smarter. And you might say, if there was any inkling of that existing at all, then Albert Einstein would at least be able to, like, move a penny a little bit. Right? Just a little bit.

You know, if Scarlett Johansen and... Morgan Freeman? He was the professor. Scott Johanson and John Travolta in Phenomenon, if they could like spin cups and do things, at least Einstein could have just shifted it over. But no, no. And do you know, Ligo, the laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory,

which detects the collision of black holes billions of miles away. This is a ripple through the fabric of space time that watches over this space. designed telescope that could detect the ripple. And you know, the level at which it detects the ripple? One one hundredth the diameter of a proton. That's what gets measured. Once they removed all the other things that could influence those atoms.

My point is, if you have brain power that could influence objects, we would detect that in that device. We would know you were messing with. with matter because we can detect it. You can't just move something without influencing the structure of the matter that's over where you're talking, where you're influencing it. So, so I want to anchor people's imaginations with this book. Say, here are the laws of physics that we measured on Earth and they apply across time

and across the universe. Those are going to hold the aliens accountable. They'll have great technologies for sure. It took us 66 years only to go from the Wright brothers to walking on the moon. That's technology. There wasn't some new law of physics that enabled that. That's technology. So I'm giving the aliens technology.

But I'm saying... Well, if they figure out how to get here from that far away... Then clearly they got some technology, if not wormholes or something really cool. But I want this conversation to transition from, I believe, in aliens... to, of course, because we've seen the alien. Either there's a high-resolution photo of one, or, and nowadays it's even harder because AI can just make a high-resolution video.

That's what pisses me off the others. It made it harder. Is that they have the answers. And I'm not saying the big, shiny answers. I'm saying they have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars for a long time. Wait, who's they? The government.

No, wait, wait, pause. The military. I want them to investigate stuff in the sky that could harm me. Yeah, I'm going to use this part of the budget, investigate everything, and classify whatever you think you have to. Go ahead. Now, what's your problem with $100 million? Not $100.

I don't care how many hundreds of millions, whatever it is. They have the ability to say, yes, we have found things. And whistleblowers have already said that. And they are from here, or we don't think they are from here. They've already said that. So they have, but they won't confirm it. So these poor guys... No, the whistleblowers are confirming it.

I know, but they are getting hung out to dry. Grush, Louelizondo, these other guys. They've all been here. Okay? I talk to these guys on a regular basis because I believe in their commitment to the transparency. And they have left these guys out

and tarnish their reputation. What I'm saying is that the Pentagon releases are all consistent with everything they're saying. So for me... The Pentagon files are affirm what we've already been told. And so as far as I'm concerned, it absolves them of, oh, is that the right word, absolves it, it verifies, at least in spirit, where they were coming from.

Fine. So I'm saying, bring out the alien. I will sit back on my chair, watch TV, catch up on some shows, waiting for you to bring out the alien. And then no one will ever have to ask again, do you believe an alien? And the idea that here's what doesn't work for me, again, just from a transparency model.

Yeah, no, you can't handle it. No, I don't buy that. I don't, first of all, I don't buy that in the States secret. You're already telling me you got aliens. That's right. In fact, bring out the alien to be anticlimactic. At that point, you already told me. Plus, Hollywood has prepped us.

What? We haven't thought about aliens before. Excuse me? Okay? We got another movie coming out in a few days. A Disclosure Day from Stephen Spielberg. That'll be his fourth alien movie, I think. It's the sequel to Close Encounters or the...

Is it a sequel? Yeah, that's what they say, is that it's the follow-up. I didn't know that. Okay, close. So he's got four alien movies. I think E.T., close encounters. There's a third one in there, and then this one. So we're already prepped.

So the notion that I'm not showing it to you because you can't handle it. Well, clearly, you can handle it because you know about it. And your whistleblowers told us about it. And Hollywood has already been there. So bring out the alien. So physics led to metaphysics. And the greatest minds have transited these spaces, from what is observable to what is arguable.

And one is a branch of philosophy and another is a branch of straight science. The difference between the metaphysics and the physicist is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory. Right. So it's sitting in their chair contemplating how things might be or should be. But at the end of the day, what we have come to learn is the objective truths of the universe do not follow naturally from our common sense.

And I've said many times the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. A philosopher would have never come up with quantum physics. It doesn't make any sense. particles popping in and out of existence, quantum tunneling. You can't sit in the armchair and deduce that. So we parted ways with traditional philosophers about 130 years ago when modern physics, what we call modern physics in the classroom, which is relativity in quantum physics,

these things just are mind-stretching, right? But they're anchored to actual observations. And that is what establishes what's objectively true, not what makes sense to you. I read it something recently, and you'll help me understand slash debunk this, which is we've come back full circle to, you know, some of the early existential philosophers like René Descartes of if everything back here doesn't exist because I can't, I can't perceive it.

If I can't perceive it, I can't conceive of it. And it's all this, whatever's behind me right now is not there. Now it's here. No, it's not there. gone, and that quantum physics is bringing it back around in terms of the nature of existence. Well, except it has nothing to do with your consciousness or you as a human observer. Just to be clear, the system changes its state. The way it's described, which leads to so much confusion, is the experiment is different if you look at it.

Right. And people are thinking, oh, that means you are influencing it because you're thinking about, no, no, no. Here's an electron right there, right? On the table. And I ask you, well, how do you know? Well, I can see it. No, you can't. You have to turn on the lights.

Turn on the lights. A photon hits the electron. It kicks it somewhere else. Now you cannot see the photon where it was. I mean, you can't see the electron where it was. So the act of observing requires you have to, I can shine light on you. And you're still sitting there. but the tinier you get, the greater is the influence of that light on what you're doing,

to the point where if you're a particle and I turn on the light, you pop somewhere else. So I can't know that the particle is there because the act of knowing changes the state of the system. That's the quantum conundrum. And I shouldn't call it a conundrum, but it's a quantum reality. So that's why there's a trade-off between knowing where something is and measuring where something is. It's a trade-off. And you can measure where it is precisely, but that's not where it used to be. And quantum physics uses a lot of probabilistic things.

The electron is somewhere here within a probability, a certain probability. And Einstein said, God does not play dice with the universe. Yes, he does. The difference is, God doesn't play poker. God is not malicious with the statistics. It doesn't bluff. It's pure statistics. So, yeah, quantum physics is a whole other realm and a fascinating frontier.

We've got top people working on it and in it. I would presume that aliens would be all in it, too. It's the foundation of our IT revolution. There's no creation storage and retrieval of information. without exploiting the quantum. So we can exploit something even if we don't fully understand how and why it works.

Because we can measure how it works. I said, sorry, let me be precise. We can exploit quantum physics even though we don't know why it works, but we know how it works. Right. How do you reconcile? You said, you know, when you're getting ready

to meet the aliens, be careful about who you introduce them to first because of those firsts. And what part of the appendage is, grab and shake. That's right. That's 100%. Plus handshakes are not even earthwide.

In China, they don't shake each other's hands. And I get it, by the way. So you can't possibly think of that as universal. You know who we used to be ahead of the curve on this? Because it's very germy with everything we do with our hands is the president. The president did not shake hands until he got into running for president. You're talking about Trump? Yeah.

He did not shake hands. Because he'd be like, no, everybody's hands are filthy. They don't wash your hands. They've ever been in a bathroom? He wasn't wrong. So he used to like, you know, he was an early one of these. He was an early just a, you know? Now he has to because it's weird.

So here's an interesting experiment. They now can do in elementary school. Do you know the glitter? Oh, yeah. Glitter is fun. So you sink your hands in glitter. The kids will do this. You sink your hands in glitter.

Someone does it in gold glitter. Someone does it in silver glitter. And then they just shake the hand of another kid. And 10 kids down, there's some of that glitter from their, So think of the glitter as germs. Oh, yeah. And there they are propagating their way through. And you can shake hands with the other color glitter,

and you can just watch it move throughout. Yeah, as every parent knows from the cycle of illness that we go through. So. So what I want to be clear about is I used to spend energy when people came up to me and said, how do you explain this observation? What do you think this is? And a lot of them can be explained. Here's a good one.

We're old enough to remember, a little older than you, but we're both old enough to remember. There were these roadside flying saucers. Now, think about it. Back then, you were photographed once a year for your school picture. Only two people carried cameras, journalists and tourists.

If you were neither, you didn't have a camera. So to photograph UFOs was a rare ability to do. Okay? So photos were precious. There'd be a flying saucer there. And I said, wow, that's interesting. Okay. And then when the automotive industry started making wheels without hubcaps,

those photos went away. Now, young timers instead of old timers, won't know that a hubcap was something that was hammered onto the wheel of your car. And if you went into a significant pothole, the jolt would knock the the the hubcap off your car and if you're going fast and you got the music on you don't even know that that happened so cars dropped hubcaps all the time you go along the you didn't have to go more than a mile without finding a hubcap take it and toss it take a picture of it bada bing UFO okay it no flying saucer because you can see that it's a saucer it's not UFO if you can know what it is it's an IFO so the fact that those went away is suspicious that those are faked. Okay?

I'm allowed to say this, to ask this, and to require of people who are, even who are enthusiasts, that they carry this level of skepticism. It's honest skepticism. And another one was, there were all these stories of people under hypnosis

recalling having been abducted. The famous psychiatrist up in Boston, John Mack, made a career of interviewing people having them tell them about they being abducted. And he said, if this many people are actually abducted, because he had a certain number of patients and a certain fraction of them under hypnosis reported abductions.

He said, if this ratio is true in the public, then millions of people have been abducted. Well, that's a bold move right there. Okay, fine. You've been abducted and anally probed. Fine. Today, you have a smartphone. And you know, if you're going to get abducted,

you should be live streaming it. There are no live streams of anybody getting abducted or getting anally probed. That would be hard to film that one, actually, now that I think about it. But so those have gone away. So were these abductions under hypnosis real? Were they dredged out of the fantasies

of a person's brain at the hands of an expert psychologist? So you're allowed to sort of see those trend lines as the ability to obtain data get better and better. So now I'm saying, all right, whatever's left, let's just say you're telling the truth, but I can't do anything more with it until you bring me the alien. And that's the posture of the book. I have so many people question this with the crucifix around their neck. Interesting. Well, I have a colleague who thinks that because it's, do you believe in aliens is the mantra that it's becoming its own religion.

It's like, do you believe in Jesus? Do you believe in Muhammad? Do you believe in Krishna? You only say that if they're not sitting there in front of you with, like, objective evidence that isn't the product of eyewitness testimony. Here's something. Got a lot more proof of this than we do of the big man, by the way. So here's just a slight aside.

I was in Vegas, and there was a driver who picks me up, a car service, and he recognized, me and he started asking questions. Did that tie on? No, you recognize you without the, without the, without the geeky tie. Oh, okay. So what do you say? Okay. So he said, do you, do you value eyewitness testimony? And I said, you know, it can hint that something interesting, but no, it's generally not accepted as evidence in science, what I've already told you. And he said, well, what about the resurrection of Jesus? He said, that had two eyewitnesses, because there were two guards at the tomb. And then he said, by the way, he's only moonlighting as a driver. He's a preacher during the day. Okay, now, long ago,

I decided, if I'm ever going to engage a religious person, I should at least read the Bible. and read the Quran and read Joseph Smith's account. I should, so otherwise I'm just dangling nowhere in that conversation. So I said to him, both of those guards were asleep when this happened. Did you not know this? They do not count as eyewitnesses. And he, he was like shocked. He was like, because plus I just out-bibled him.

Okay. I'm the skeptical scientist. He's trying to find eyewitness evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, and I knew something that he didn't, or he had perhaps ignored that fact because it was important to him that this was witnessed. Oh, yeah. So I'm overcovering the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and we decide to do for Easter a resurrection special,

just on what do we know, what do we not know? I mean, why not? It's a... Holy cow. Does this get deep... So these people are taking me through... Wait, what are you mean? So different keepers of different sacred places

are explaining to me the relevance of their places. We went all over Israel, all over the Holy Bible. Oh, you are on location. Oh, yeah. Oh, and these people have, like, reliquaries. Oh, the pieces of the cross? Oh, yeah. Pieces of...

So it's deep. Oh, man. This one guy, I put my hand in there, and he was like, this is where the step of the cross was put in this hole and, you know, you reach your hand down. And that brings in parishioners. Oh, yeah. And they are explaining this to me. So there's two different sites that they believe are where the tomb was.

Okay. And the people in each of those places, the tears, the passion that would come out of them when they were explaining how they know that this is the place. this is how and we know this and we know that and this guy's got 90 different pedigrees and they're they're like real you know like professors and I hit the 90 to and I'm listening to it and I'm trying to you know we got to put this together as a story and I'm doing it with a producer who actually just wrote his own book about unexplained phenomena and we're like look we got to do this right because you can't just go through sarcastically parading these people out there because they're billion. of people who believe what they're telling you right now. Two billion. So, you know, two billion. You got to, you got to respect it for what it is and how and get their versions and what their bases are of them in the points of skepticism.

So we did what you did. We reversed the mechanism. Instead of saying, prove to me that this happened, we started with, they believe it happened. And here are the points of skepticism that they've had to defeat over time about why they existed. But it may- And that's a healthy posture. I mean, that's any good scientific investigation.

So. And that's, and you capture the soul of this book. Yes. Okay. But go on, finish. Well, I realized at some point in the editing process when we were getting ready to put it on TV, well, this is going to be a nightmare because no matter what side of it you're on, you're going to be upset when you watch this special.

Because if you're a believer, you're going to say, man, you're skeptical for a guy who's supposedly Catholic. Right, right. And Italian Catholic at that. And then I have to explain the idea of being raised in a tradition versus your own choices. But then on the other side, if you are atheistic or you are an agnostic at best, how could you have spent an hour going through this bullshit? So either way, you were going to have problems. And I remember there's a woman who was a, she was great, she was a great Virgil for me all through Jerusalem.

him. And she takes me on the walkway of Jesus, which isn't the original walkway because it was on the other side of town and they moved it. And there is a stone that so many pilgrims slash tourists have put their hand on that it has been worn six, seven inches deep. That's how many hands have been rubbing on their stone. This is everyone taking rock material on their skin. That's exactly right. Right, right. So I'm putting my hand in the hall. And as a I'm putting my hand in there, and I was like, wow, this is a deep hole, man. A lot of people put their hand in here. She's like, yeah.

Now, that's not the original stone. The original stone would have been. And I'm like, look at her. I was like, this isn't even the right stone where Jesus put his hand against the wall. Right. So the power of wanting things to be true. Mm-hmm. How do you handle that when the idea of, well, if I can't prove it, then I can't believe it,

um, with, with faith. How do you deal with that? because it plays into the idea of what your book is about, and you're right that it is becoming a point of religion. That's a very important point. Let me get back to it after I give one example about how to come at it with questions when you turn the table. So going on its third decade,

the history channels ancient aliens or ancient astronauts, whatever we call, ancient aliens, very popular series. They go back and they find etchings on walls and caves and there's like a bubblehead character with rays of light, beams coming, levitated, all manner of things. And there's, oh, this must be aliens that visited them. Okay.

So, sure, if you don't think these other things, you would think they're aliens. If you didn't otherwise imagine, maybe these are drawings by cavemen kindergarten classes. Okay. Have you considered that? Or maybe they had gods and ascribed powers to their gods, just the way we do in our frescoes. There's Jesus levitating there with beams of light coming out of his head. Are you saying that was an alien? No, you're saying that was Jesus.

Although some do say Jesus. Some do. There's an alien religion, an official alien religion where the creators of us are aliens. and I think they're in the Pleiades or something. I can talk about it in the book. But so that's a subset of the whole thing. My only point is that you are denying these ancient peoples their own imagination for how they portray their gods.

When we do this all the time. All the time. We have centaurs and minotors. All kinds of iconography. All kinds of iconography. And especially, of course, back in the pagan era, with multiple gods. And then there's the snakes for hair,

Gorgon. Medusa. Medusa. Come on now. Yeah. All right. And if Medusa showed up back then, you'd say, oh, this is an alien.

No, they're just imagining it. Give them some imagining. They're still human the way we are. So my issue there was, the show was not honest enough about what could be the imagination of ancient peoples. Because look at our modern-day imagination.

Do you know five out of the top ten grossing films of all time involve mythical, magical creatures that are not human, and eight out of the top ten if you include superheroes. So our fanciful imagination pays many bills in Hollywood. Now, getting back to your point about the religion. Reconciling. Yeah.

So in a free country, as we think we still live in, you have the right to believe whatever you want, provided does not subtract from the rights of your fellow citizens, whatever you want. So I'm not here to have you lose your religion, but if by believing that you're going to make a statement about the physical world that I can test, I'm going to test it. And if it differs from what you are saying, I'm not going to follow your line of reasoning just because it fulfills your divine text. And Galileo knew this. He's a religious guy, but he said, the Bible tells you how to go to heaven, not how to heavens go.

That's good. That is good. That's good. And Leonardo, 1542, was it, somewhere around there, said the greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions. So we've known this for 500 years. How many scientists do you know who, you know, who, seriously have faith? Yeah. I would say

might be one in ten. And I'm not including the Jews in that number because there are many Jewish atheists in the sense that they actively practice all the high holidays. As do many Christians, of course. We have Christmas and you're not literally thinking

anything Christian perhaps. But there are many Jews, especially among my colleagues, that they'll leave an empty seat for Elijah at the sater table and not literally thinking, plus you have to unlock the front door too. Oh, yeah. I don't want hood you live in. Yeah.

But Jews are nothing, if not polite. They're not going to just break through the door. So they'll do that without thinking that it has any literal meaning. But what we do know is that in modern society, rituals form some of the strongest binding forces we have as a people. So the value of that transcends whether you have a literal belief in it being true. So I don't concern myself, I don't distract myself by people who believe things that don't otherwise adversely affect their health, their wealth, or their security, or their well-being.

If Jesus is your savior, no one is going to take that from you. But if Jesus is your savior, and somewhere in there, your read of the same thing, scripture says that modern medicine is bad for you and that Jesus will cure you, you're going to die young, okay? That's just the fact. And the people who don't die young and write books, they left behind everyone else who died and didn't write books. Dead people are not interviewed by the press, okay?

People forget that fact. So it's not a matter of reconciling. You can reconcile it if the Bible to you is not a science textbook. If it's simply a source of wisdom and insight, then spiritual fulfillment. But for the longest while, biblical genesis was the literal account of the creation. You know, that's one of the reasons that my father's, one of my father's heroes, my father's line, by the way, was, oh, Christopher, go ahead, say what you have. You have an absolute right to be wrong. Ah, that's what you said.

I love that. One of his personal heroes was Teilhard de Chardin, who was a scientist but also a priest. And he wrote the divine milieu, which is like a real bedrock of Catholicism and the reckoning of science and faith. And what got him in trouble with the church was when he started to play at the nature of proof. And they were like, hold on a second, with the proving. we told you what it is. That's how it works. Yeah, and you shouldn't have to prove what we tell you was true.

And he said the Bible, the Bible's a set of stories, great virtues in there. I'm not here to argue that it is divine speak. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that these work in here. And if you look at science and the mystery of everything that we don't know plays into the idea of faith and the reason. And they were like, no, what did you say about the Bible? Well, I'm just saying the Bible is not, we can't say as a science. I can't tell you that this is the divine word.

You've got to go somewhere else for about seven, eight years. Let's see how you feel when you come back. That's what got him in trouble with the church, was him questioning something that he had to question. Well, if you're going to go all the way, go all the way. You can't go halfway if you're going to start questioning. But, yeah, if you're going to be in the proof business, you're probably not going to find yourself in the faith business.

Correct. Because if you have faith and you need proof, then you don't really have faith. Because the moment you have proof for it all, then we can just call it a science, and it's no longer a faith. Right. So another line, I... Belief without faith is superstition.

Aquinas, Augustine said. Aquinas or Augustus, I forget. But it was belief without faith. I would bet it's saying Augustine. It's something you can't prove is mere superstition. Well, to a scientist, it's all. That's right. So I'm uncomfortable believing in things that I have to believe in to be true.

Right. if that sentence made sense. Like you don't know. I don't mind not knowing, but I'm saying I was subjected to a sequence of experiments that I devise or others to see if that idea is true. If a faithful person requires that, then they're not really faithful. They're just testing it. That's right.

Because faith is to believe not only in the face of evidence, but in the face, not only in the face of evidence, in the absence of evidence, and in the presence of conflicting evidence. That's the true test of your faith. That our real hard spot, and we have many. But our real sticky bit right now is conflicting evidence. We do not know as a culture, not the scientists, but we don't know as a culture. And this got us in trouble in the pandemic.

It gets us in trouble with our politics. We can't handle conflicting. Well, because so yes, but what's behind that is the public. is not equipped to think statistically about their decisions. And I did this research for a separate book that I wrote. Does it bother you, by the way, that this may be your most successful book ever with all of the things that you've taught us and introduced us to. If you're how to deal with aliens when they come,

winds up being your number one seller. How will you feel? That's just a Trojan horse. I slipped science every other few pages. There's some authentic science in there. I hope this one sells the most. Just an interview about it. How do you feel now?

How do you feel about this, Neil? This is your big contribution to us. There's an old saying. I think I heard it from Harry Belafonte. He said, if there's a song that you hate, don't record it. Because if it's your biggest selling song,

everyone will want you to sing it for the rest of your life. He said that before he sang, Damn. Damn! Yep, that's exactly one of the funniest jokes I heard. Do you remember when Nightline began? It had Ted Koppel.

Ted Koppel. Do you know what, birth, Nightline, do you remember? Yeah, the Iran. They're hostages. Day one, day five, day, and then there's like day 300 and whatever. Okay, Johnny Carson. I remember he was Karnak, and he would give the answer, but then give the question. Okay.

So the answer was, day, oh, okay. Okay, where is this going? So he opens the letter, it says, what was the day before the hostages were taken? So that was good. I've never forgotten that one. So, yeah, if it's my biggest selling book, it'll be a little awkward, but I think I can handle it.

No, I'm just, the difference is I'm no longer going to try to explain what you saw. I'll just take it as face value. Yeah, I also think there's a practical application to it. So when we, again, I was over in Israel and specifically just north and east of there across into Lebanon. That's the border there. And drones, they're telling a joke in Ukraine and in Israel and in Lebanon. And for very different reasons, and it's the same joke. And they don't even know they're both telling it yet. which is, you know, there'll be a day, Neil, when people will say, wow, you guys used bullets? Why would you use bullets? Because drones are all over the place.

And I believe that for whatever reason, because we're pretty good with technology as a military-industrial complex, we're behind on these. We have these big-ass drones that do really amazing things. The size of airplanes. And they're using things. Off the shelf. I mean, the stuff that they're firing, like the Iranians use and that have become a big thing with Hezbollah because, you know, they get it exported from the regime. They look like just shitty model planes with a couple of like weed whacker engines on it. And they're delivering a two, three pound payload, which is plenty when it's plastic explosive.

And that's what they're zipping all over. and I believe we've been caught behind on this. The Chinese are way ahead on it, and a lot of the UAP stuff is a technological story. I don't see why not. Are you right? Because there's the natural explanations for some of them. You know, weather, weather balloons, the night sky.

Many people don't know the night sky, what the moon can do, the sun moon and planets. Then there is actual aerial craft. Fighter pilots and astronauts. Why not? Right, right. are not known for being dopes. And if they're seeing things zipping around that freak them out,

why would we give it no credence? Right. So that's why I'm not giving it no credence. That's my only point. Now that it's taken out of the level of the backyard farmer. No offense to farmers, by the way. I'm sure there's some fine, accurate data taking. They still have the crop circles.

They still got the crop circles. Yeah, no one mounts a camera to watch it happen overnight. Why are the aliens are shy? That's weird. That's weird. Well, you know, we're not exactly the nicest people. I'm just saying, mount a camera. So that we can see the alien do it.

Well, you're not saying that you don't believe in the crop circles. I'm saying crop circles are real. What are you saying? Crop circles are real. We've seen crop circles. How do you think they got there? I'm not convinced that aliens did it because they'd have to come in the dark of night and they have to be shy. And do you know who has the most crop circles in the world?

countries that don't have food shortages. Okay. It's in the book. I have it in the book. Okay. I looked it up. Okay. Grain producing countries to countries where people are starving.

They're not trampling their crops to make you think aliens landed. So plus there's another thing. 98? No, higher. The numbers in the book. Very close to 99% of, percent of all, so it's not that low, 95 percent of all reported UFO sightings are from English-speaking countries. Yes. You go to another country, you want to talk about aliens, they say, well, I saw a movie,

but why do you care? And meanwhile, you come to an English-speaking country, so Canada, the United States, UK, Australia, New Zealand, the Five-Eyes, what do they call it? The Five, yeah. Oh, yeah, right, right. The Five-Eyes, they call that. United States, Canada, New Zealand, New Zealand, and, the Five-Eleand, Australia, UK. It's called the Five Eyes. And they dominate the world in UFO sightings. Now, it could be because we know where to call, and other countries don't. That's possible. But still, it's hard to sweep under the rug the cultural forces operating on our imagination. So you're going to be watching and listening to this for a long time, but the book came out today. Today. I hope that we...

I'm in, just let the record show. I'm in your studio today. Yes, also known as my dining room. And I just want to know that whatever happens with this book, and I hope that it blows people away, okay? If it's my biggest selling book, I will come back and kick your ass. I know. I know you will. And you know what?

People would love to see that too. You, I love, and I appreciate so much. I wish you every success. Oh, thank you. We never needed what you're about more than we do right now. Ooh, that's a, that's a loving sentence. Thank you. I'm telling you, I'm a big fan and I'm a believer.

All right. Tie aside. I mean, you are really making it hard, you know. Neil deGrasse Tyson, I appreciate you. Thanks, dude. You are a good man. All right. Neil deGrasse Tyson, take me to your leader is the book.

I hope it blows up and here's why. It can't be that there's nothing. And I don't mean little green men. I mean all of these programs over all of these years and all of this money. And if it's all classified, didn't they just tell us there's something worth classifying? To me, it's always been about transparency. And I love that a serious thinker like Neil deGrasse Tyson is getting involved in this very important conversation. And as you saw, a conversation with Neil is always going to take you to a lot of places.

And the only thing they all share is they're all deep. Thank you for subscribing and following, checking me out in the morning on Sirius Radio, here on the podcast and at night at News Nation. It's good to be with you everywhere. Check out the swag if you want to brand yourself as a critical thinker. The challenges are real, so let's get after it.