The Confessionals - 776: Navy Pilot Chases UFO

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

What if the real threat isn't coming from the skies, but from the depths below? In this gripping conversation, Navy pilot Ryan Pote recounts a harrowing 2013 encounter during a drug interdiction mission when his crew tracked a fast-moving object across the Pacific Ocean, only to watch it come to a dead stop and submerge effortlessly beneath the waves. Pote, backed by sensor footage and eyewitness accounts from his crew and ship, challenges the idea that such technology is even human. His haunting story spirals into a deeper, spiritual lens on UAPs, demonic deception, and the unsettling possibility that unseen wars are being waged just beneath our feet, and far above our heads.Please pray for Tony's wife, Lindsay, as she battles breast cancer. Your prayers make a difference!If you’re able, consider helping the Merkel family with medical expenses by donating to Lindsay’s GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/b8f76890Become a member for ad-free listening, extra shows, and exclusive access to our social media app: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinThe Confessionals Social Network App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZTony's Recommended Reads: slingshotlibrary.comGet your ticket for the NEW documentary premiering July 27, 2025 @ 8PM EST: "The Meadow Project"Ticket link HERE: moment.co/themeadowprojectMy New YouTube ChannelMerkel IRL: @merkelIRLMy First Sermon: Unseen BattlesSasquatch and The Missing Man: merkelfilms.comMerkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.comRyan Pote: Blood and Treasure BookSPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsGHOSTBED: GhostBed.com/tonyCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jack_theproducerOUTRO MUSICJoel Thomas - ImposterYouTube | Apple Music | Spotify

Hey, everyone, before we get to this week's show, this is just your weekly reminder to please continue to pray for my wife, Lindsay. She is battling breast cancer right now, and we're praying for complete healing in Jesus' name. Thank you. Merkel. Media. This was all circulating around the base that a giant had been killed, but no one was supposed to talk about it. Long, bony fingers, reach up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappear. When he came over to me,

Dude, he slithered over to me. And this giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen. And he starts running and firing at this giant. Well, the giant moves. He's got a spear in one hand and he's running really fast. And spears Dan holds him up like this. Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face. They basically decapitated.

I feel something pulling at my leg. And I look over and there are two. small gray and the teeth. And they're literally, I'm getting pulled off the bed. I reached my hand into this bush and I touch air.

Couldn't breathe and it couldn't move because I know I'm seeing a monster. Welcome to the show, everybody. You're listening to The Confessionals Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Merkel. Thanks for being here. If you have a crazy wild experience, you want to share with me on the show,

go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is Contact at theconfessionalspodcast.com. That's contact at the confessionalspodcast.com. or go to the website the confessionalspodcast.com, hit the contact section, and you can reach me that way as well. Either it works for me,

just get a hold of me. If you want more shows on a weekly basis housed in our own special social media network app, go to the confessionalspodcast.com slash join, sign up to become a member, $7 a month or $70 a year, gets you access to all the extra content, plus your own exclusive social media app experience

tailored for people like you. Also, go ahead and check out Merkmerch.com for your Merkel Media Apparel. We are working on a brand new brand for that website. So that's coming soon. I'm excited about it. Stay tuned. Merkmerch.com.

All right, friends, we have a new documentary coming out. It is premiering on the 27th of July, and it's called the Meadow Project. If you remember episode 617, that's like forever ago. We talked to Trey Hudson about the Meadow, the meadow that he's been researching. It's often described as the Skinwalker Ranch of the South. We went there for an entire week, did an entire documentary research in the area with Trey and his team, and we are premiering that documentary, The Meadow Project, on July 27th. That's this coming Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

If you want tickets to this live digital premiere, go to moment.co. slash the Meadow Project, and you can get your tickets to watch the Meadow Project live from the comfort of your own home. And then we're going to do a live Q&A afterwards. You can add that on to your ticket. So go ahead and check it out. Moment.co slash the Meadow Project link into the description below. All right. Today we have Ryan coming on and he is a former Navy pilot who was on a mission doing a drug bust over a large body of water. And then as they pursued one of the boats they were chasing, they realized what they were chasing wasn't a boat at all. Turns out, It was a UAP and what happened next.

Stunned everybody. So let's get to Ryan right now. All right, today we got Ryan on the show. Ryan, how you doing, sir? Good. How are you, Tony? I'm good, man. I'm good.

So you're here because your wife has prompted you to get out more and talk. Get out of the house more. Yeah. Yeah. No, I just... Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, I was going to say, I had an experience.

like most Navy pilots and most friends that I know over the course of my career. And, you know, we, we never really talk about it or there was no disclosure reporting, at least when mine happened in 2013. So, yeah, I mean, you know, they're all very similar. And I think, I think everybody should know about them. You know, some of them, there's great video of them, but we've all had almost the exact same experiences. So, yeah, I mean, I think that everybody should talk about them. I've always talked about this one since I've come back. And my wife is like, you know, within, you know, like my family and friends. And my wife, is like you should get out there and tell everybody else about it.

So I think the more data on this kind of stuff, the better, especially from people like me who, you know, actually saw him. Right. No, I agree. And, you know, it's interesting because the way you frame that, you say, like my other friends have seen and, you know, most people have seen and experienced. I have an uncle who spent 23, I think, 24 years in the Navy. I remember as a kid, you know, they lived in Virginia, I lived in Pennsylvania, so it's not like they're around a ton anyways, but I remember as a kid, he would go out on deployments and it seemed like forever, like, you know, going to the Mediterranean and he's gone doing whatever, you know.

I think he was a journalist in the Navy. I had him come up to my Pennsylvania studio before I moved away years ago, and I had interviewed him. And I asked him, I said, come on now. 20 some years out in the ocean, you had to see something. He swore. He never saw anything. Now, is he lying to me? Because I feel like he's lying to me. Maybe, I mean, who knows? I mean, ship life is weird.

It does weird things to you too. I mean, like, when you actually get a chance to go, like, out to the middle of the ocean, which not very many people actually have, you know, like, it's mostly you do coastal routes or transits or whatever. I mean, the middle of the, you're talking thousand miles from nearest point of land. It's a freaky kind of place out there, man. I mean, you see like weird flashes of light on the horizon with the sun. You see the stars are just like incredible. so dark at night that it just sucks light. Like, I mean, it's a wild place out there. So some people

like to actually stay inside the skin of the ship. They don't like to walk outside. I'm not saying that was your grandfather or not, or uncle, but, um, uncle, yeah. But I knew some people who went on deployment who might have never seen the water. Let's just say. Yeah, he, he came on and he talked about, um, is it the Eisenhower that's haunted? I can't remember which one he was stationed. Oh, I don't about that. I can't remember. It's been a while since I did that interview, but he talked about some of the ghost stories from the ship and stuff.

And I've had other people on the show talking about ghost stories from ships. And so, you know, it wasn't like the main point of bringing him in, but I couldn't believe, and I still don't believe. I think he's lying to me. But I just, I can't believe that you spend that many years out there on the most mysterious part of the planet, the oceans, and you don't have anything, nothing? To me, it says that he's the old school, keep your mouth shut kind of guy, don't talk about it. And the idea of disclosure was very new. I think it was only like three years old kind of thing.

I started the show in 2017. Late 2017 is when it all started really popping off. And so maybe he just didn't feel comfortable. I don't know. And I also think he has his eye on maybe some future careers. So, but, but it's interesting that you say that because I was under the assumption until you said it that most people in the military didn't see stuff. So you're saying that you have several friends who have seen things as long as, as well as yourself. Well, in aviation, you know, so I was a pilot in the Navy.

So we're kind of separate from the mainstream Navy. We call like the Brown Shoe Navy. like the aviation is kind of like, you know, you're trained for two years, you know, shoreside, then you join a squadron, then you're doing your own mission. You're attached to different ships, but the ship is kind of its own thing. So within aviation community, almost, almost, I would say, easily more than half the people that I know personally and flown with have seen a weird thing somewhere or have done something strange or chased something weird on deployment or had something. on their sensors show up that they could not describe. But the funny thing is, is like, you know, Ryan Graves talks about this too, and I can completely relate to that, is you're on deployment. It's super stressful. You've trained for five months sometimes at workups to go on

this deployment. It's high stress. It's dangerous. You're trying to do something. And then something weird happens. You're trying to figure out what's going on. And then, you know, it kind of passes. You get back on mission and, you know, you go about, you know, because it's, it's a dangerous thing. So you go right back to it. And then it's dog days. You know, you're on low sleep. You land. You got to get, you know, right back after it again. So a lot of times you just kind of like accept it and move on because you don't have the time or the emotional capacity to like process any of those things. And then there's no disclosure. You don't want to sound like a like a crazy person and like ruin your own credibility. So, you know, you don't, you don't, you don't really talk about it. You just kind of move on,

you know, but in passing in the in the ready rooms and stuff or or afterwards, like my particular incident, like, you know, when we start, you know, getting into it, but like, you know, we all sat in my captain's stateroom and rewatched the video a hundred times because we were all so blown away. Like, what the heck did we just, you know, chase? You know, so like he had made a, like a video of, like, like, he had copied it down onto a disc and because we watched it in a state room. And yeah, so I mean, so like somewhere out there, like a video exists. It would have been, It would have been awesome if I had a video for you, but I just have my word. Is that something that can be foiled?

It probably could, yeah. I mean, so like we were doing counter-narcotics operations. So those, all the video and everything that we did was a case package to prosecute cartels. So like the U.S. Coast Guard via Joint Interagency Task Force South would build these case packages and prosecute these guys in Miami. So like, I'm sure there are court records and court. files and like if you really went down the rabbit hole on it like yeah I mean it's it's it's highly likely that it exists because all the video like when you prosecute these guys you have to have

video of the entire interdiction or you know they can get off the hook you have to have like you know so they can see that you did it all by the book so yeah I mean it it probably exists somewhere it's like it's like how to how to how to find those things is the interesting part but we'll find him you know we'll find Once we get into the details, I can tell you everywhere and I can tell you everything else about it. I'll tell you what. I mean, I even pulled out my log book, my logbook just to remember where, like, the day that the flight was. Because, you know, like, the details are like hard. Those kinds of details are hard to remember. Is the account in that log book? It's just starred where we had, like, an actual bust of drug runners. Like, we'll star those, those flights or whatever. And I remember who I was flying with and like that kind of thing. But, You know, I remember the month, I had to remember the month, but when I was looking at it, I couldn't remember the exact day.

But then looking at my logbook, I'm like, oh, yeah, that was the flight. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, I'm very, I'm very surprised at some of the developments and disclosure along these lines. Like this conversation you and you and I are having, I don't believe what had happened eight years ago. I don't think that we were in a place where pilots could come forward and talk about these things and not be. shut down, ridiculed. So I'm glad that I'm able to talk to you. This happened, I want to say, what was it, 2013? Yes, it was November 4th, 2013. November 4th, okay. Nope, that wasn't an election year. I was going to say, I thought it was going to be having right around an election. Yeah, and when you're on the ship, you have no idea. November is the same as February is the same as September.

I believe it. So walk us into the situation, man. So was it a bright sunny day or what were you doing and how did this all unfold for you? Yeah. So for those of you, so those watching, like I was a Navy pilot. I was a Navy pilot. I was a Navy H-60 pilot for the H-60 Bravo, which is now retired as an old model. And I was part of Joint Interagency Task Force South doing counter-narcotics operations aboard the USS Rents, which is a frigate. Oliver Hazard Perry class. FFG 46, which is also now retired ship. But we were on deployment from July 2013 through the end of February 2014. I was a HSL 49 Scorpions was the squadron. So we were attached to the ship with Coast Guard law enforcement detachment. And what we did was we aerially interdicted drug smugglers. So they would leave with pure cocaine from, with, you know, 2000, 3,000 keys of pure cocaine on Go Fast boats from Columbia. and they would transit across the ocean

and they would give those narcotics to other boats and they would kind of just like hand off. It would be like a baton. They would hand them off or they would give them to fishing boats. Fishing boats would hold them and then until the next go fast would come and take them or they would refuel resupply. So it's just a whole network across that skip Central America.

So basically they try and get them from Columbia to Mexico skipping Central America. And they'll deliver like I said like pretty massive quantities and that's pure uncut cocaine. So, you know, it gets cut hundreds, thousands of times. So that's a lot of product. That's, you know, billions of dollars worth of narcotics. So, and they send hundreds of thousands of boats.

So the ones that we're getting only 4% of the ones that make it. So we are typically out. We have, you know, intelligence. There's, you know, undercover DEA agents. There's, you know, a network of informants. And we get intelligence from all different sources through Giata. and then we'll go out hunting, you know, bigger targets that we can get. So on this particular day, so like I was flying the night cruise.

So like for that month. So like the third into that whole week, actually, we were building our own intelligence. So like we'll pull, you know, we'll interdict and board a couple fishing vessels and kind of take their GPSes and get, you know, coordinates and radio frequencies and then we'll work that backwards and then you have an informant on the back end that says a shipment is going to be leaving a certain port, it's going to be meeting up. So what was supposed to happen that we devised was on the fourth in the middle of the night that was supposed to be a meetup of two go fast vessels about 150 to 200 miles off the coast of Columbia and they were going to transfer

about 2,000 to 3,000 keys of cocaine. That's actually pretty typical. But we had like a general area that they were going to be in a general time. So we were out patrolling like the whole day and into the night. So I took over like when sunset hits. So like you have the day crew and then the day into night crew

and then the night crew. So I was the day into night crew. So we took over. They had been they had found one vessel that kind of matched the pickup vessel that we were looking for on radar. So I'll preface this. Our

helicopter has radar, it has air radar, it has water radar, it's very good radar, it's called the APS-124, APS-124, amazing radar. We can pinpoint, you know, a 55-gallon drum in the middle of the ocean with all the choppy waves. We can pick up a, my sensor operator could tell you if it was a dolphin or a boat, you know, like he's that good. So, great radar. And it's a unique radar in that we have air, we're basically like an air controller and surface. So super robust system. We also have forward-looking infrared fleer, which is pretty effective out to like 10, 15 miles and nautical miles.

And that's, you know, a thermal camera for people who don't know. So, and then we're on MVGs at night, too. So we have night vision on as well. So my crew is me plus a co-pilot, sensor operator, and then two gunners. We have a sniper and a door gunner. So we pick up the aircraft and we go out to continue monitoring the aircraft that we're watching. So we're kind of standing off like kind of far, far enough that they can't see us, hear us in the middle of the ocean, and we're watching and waiting. So we pick up a radar contact coming off the coast of Columbia and it's going about 40 knots, which is typical of a go fast.

These boats are like cigarette boats with like two, three, 50 outboards. So they can hit like 70 knots if they want. but in the choppy ocean, especially at night, like 30, 40 knots is about what they cruise at. And they're fully laden down with like fuel and everything like that. So he's just belining it straight for this, this waiting pickup boat. And we're like, okay, this is most likely our guy. So we move in a little closer. It turns into night, like fully night now.

So we can get a little bit closer. All of our lights are off and we're flying. So we've got him on radar. We get to a distance where we can watch them on Fleer. And we're like, yes, that's. visually confirmed, like we got a cigarette boat that's matching the description of the boat that we're looking for, the personnel on board, it looks like a smuggling boat, it's acting like a smuggling boat, it's heading for our target location. At this point, it's common sense.

It's like these are the guys we're looking for. So we wait, we wait, they link up. So once they link up, they kind of kill their engines. They link up boats in the middle of the ocean. And this is in the South Pacific, like I said, like off the coast of Columbia. once they link up, we're like, okay, let's, we're going to drive. I won't get into like, you know, complete tactics and procedures that we use. I don't think I should share all those. But we waited until the ship, our actual ship came close enough where they could actually aid us and drop the rib in the water. It's like a rigid, hold inflatable, which has our boarding team, our special operations boarding team on it.

So we wanted to get to a place where we could use the ship and have the rib. And then we would just come in kind of like a sting, like, like somebody, Busting down the door of your house, right? We all come at once. That's kind of how we do do these things. So we initially, what we do is the Hilo is we initially come on scene, you know, shine spotlights down. We have a sniper doing sniper overwatch. If there's a, you know, return fire or anything like that, we're there for that. If they try and run, we disable their engines with a 50-cal sniper rifle. So that's like what we do. And then once their engine is disabled, we kind of hold sniper overwatch until the rib comes up and they take

positive control of the boat. So that's kind of. kind of how the whole operation works. So once they're linked up, we decide to move in on them. Everybody's in position, the ribs in the water. It's like around two in the morning at this point. Like two-ish, three in the morning, somewhere around there. So we fly in, lights come on, we hit overhead.

Nobody, you know, there was no gunfire or anything like that. So we don't, you know, we're law enforcement at this point. So we don't really like, you know, disable them unless they, start to run. So they did. So they both split up and one went right and one went left. So we followed the one to the right because that's where our ship was and the rib was. So we followed the one to the right and we pushed them. Now we're at like 50 to 100 feet over the water and we're on NVGs and we have them on Fleer and we push them basically into our rib into the boat. So the boarding team is there with the rib. They come in, take positive control of those guys like basically apprehend.

them. No shots fired, anything like that, they just take them. So that took about 15 minutes. So in that time, the other boat was just hauling ass the other direction. So my sensor operator had him on, we were focused on the one target, but he said he still had him on radar the whole time. So we turn, turn back around to go pick him up. He's about, at this point, he's like almost a mile and a half, two miles away. Maybe less than that. So we have a positive radar contact and then I go pick him up on fleer. So like the way the systems work in the helicopter is if you've got a radar contact, I can run the radar or he can run the fleer.

Like we can pass him back and forth. So I give the controls to the right seat pilot. I take over the fleer. He passes the radar contact to me and I lock it on my fleer. So now I'm looking at the contact that he's got on radar and I'm vectoring the pilot over. And it's moving. It's going about, I remember it's going six, actually wrote down, it's going about 60. It's going about 60 to 65 knots, which is not uncommon.

Like I said, these boats can go up to 70, but that's like flat. So the fact that he was hauling that fast on the ocean was the first thing that made us think it was weird. We were like, okay, he's moving really fast for it being a choppy night. It wasn't like a stormy night, but the weather, the ocean out there is always choppy in the South Pacific. So that was our first thing to be like, wow, he's really moving. So we pick him up on the radar. It shows like a little snail trail. Like you'll just see like the color like moving.

It did not have altitude. So if it's above about 40 feet, it'll register on our radar as having altitude. So it had no altitude. So it was a surface based contact. But once I lock it up on Fleer, I'm like, okay, I got it. It's moving. But as we started to get closer like inside two miles, yeah, you start to be able to pick out like the features of a boat. So like you see the first thing that I noticed when I looked at the Fleer picture and that my sensor,

the sensor operator noticed as well is that there was no rooster tail. So like when you have outboards that are churning like really fast in the water, you know, this is a thermal camera. So it picks up heat. So friction in the water. So the things that you're going to see when you see a boat moving are you're going to see the water breaking over the bow. You're going to see the engines churning. That's also if you're on white hot mode or you're on black hot mode, it's going to show the heat.

So we run white hot. We switched to black hot, but, you know, for the sake of the conversation. So white hot, you know, you'll see the white, you know, churn in the back of the boat. You'll see the spray being kicked up from the engines being white as well. You'll see the wake of the boat being white as well. And then you'll see the water hitting the bow. And then the metal is a different, you know, temperature than the water. So you're going to see the feet.

Everything's going to be very vividly destroyed. defined. You can see the people on board and all that stuff. So the problem was for us is it still was just this little mass of just white hot. It wasn't really turning into a boat the closer we got. And it never turned into a boat. Like I expected it to turn into a boat. So we started thinking of weird reasons why it could be like maybe we got some salt on the camera or something like that. But that's not a thing and that doesn't happen. We were so confused. It got to the point where we started asking the ship, because we have an encrypted link

where they can watch our sensors as well. And so we can pass our sensors to the ship. We can all kind of watch it. So we're all going back and forth between radar and Fleer, just all dumbfounded, like what is going on with this thing? So we switched our radar mode to fire control radar,

which is like a faster spinning radar, and it's even more detailed. So once we did that, same thing, like same contact. same speed, same everything. So at this point, it's coming left to right, like in front of us, at us. So it's what we call CBDR, constant bearing, decreasing range.

So it's just not changing course coming straight at us. We had headed it off. And so it gets at about 800 yards from us. Now, at this point, I should see it on my MVGs. I should be able to pick out what the guys are wearing on my fleer. I can't see any of that. It's just this mass of heat moving over the water. And so at 800 yards is when I really started to notice that when you're driving through the water and you're making a wake, like you leave a very defined thermal wake in the water when you're a boat.

I mean, this is what we did. This thing didn't do that when it was moving over the water, whatever, you know, I'm assuming now at this point in my life that it was a UAP, it was like parting the water. Like when we fly over the water as a helicopter. So it was like the water was being parted on the surface, not being driven in by an engine. That's just not what the heat signature was showing. So then at 800 yards, it just stops moving. It goes from 66, 65, 66 knots, just stops, dead stop. We're still closing in on it.

And then it just goes under the water. 100%. And we all saw it. My whole crew saw it. The whole ship saw it. We were all like, what the hell? Initially, we thought our sensor's broken. You know, we just lost him.

We thought our fleer. That's what you think when you're in these kinds of situations. We all thought we were chasing the boat that we just left. So we're all trying to, in the moment, figure out how that object could be the boat. And it keeps defying logic until the point where it disappears. And then we like, you know, something's wrong with our sensors. And then you realize that nothing was wrong with your sensors. And whatever this thing was, just literally descended into the water at a dead stop and disappeared.

And then so as we're turning around trying to find it again, can't see anything on MVGs. There was no light. There was no nothing. So then my radar operator picks up a contact about a mile away in the other direction. And we go and check that out. the boat that we were looking for. So we ended up finding the boat was not where this object was. And yeah, so we ended up interdicting them and rolling them up as well.

But like so many things are going through our mind because sometimes these boats like they'll run and then once they get far enough away from you at night, they'll just stop in the water and cover themselves with tarps and like just try and disappear. But the thing is when you're on Fleer, even if you got that target on Fleer, you can cover yourself up with a tarp all day, but the heat signature on your boat, once I find you, I've got you. You can turn off your engines all day and stop moving.

But this thing was moving, and it just stopped it. And it was going much faster than these cigarette boats, you know, can really handle at night. Because these guys don't have NVGs. They don't have flashlights. They're blacked out. They're just driving at night over the ocean. Like, you know, 60, 70 knots is really fast.

over the choppy South Pacific. So yeah, I mean, so that was what happened. We got back to the show. We finished the interdiction. We got back. We're doing everything that we have to do, like, you know, not really talking about or thinking about it because we got so much to do. We got to process the prisoners.

We got to process the drugs. We got to process all that stuff. By the time, it's all over. It's like morning time now. We're about to have breakfast. We go into combat and we're all, that's when we're all just like, I got to see that video. I got to see what we just did.

So my captain, at the time, he was a commander in the Navy, Lance Lantier. He was the captain of the rents. He's still active duty. He's in 06 now, a captain in the U.S. Navy, Lance Lantier. So he gets it on disk. He has them downloaded onto it. We still had old CD burners. He gets it on a disc.

We go into his stateroom. So the captain's state room. and we just start watching it. It's like me and a couple of the other pilots and the crew that I was with are just watching this thing over and over again and we just can't figure it out. And by the end of watching,

and when I say watching video, we're watching the Fleer video and the radar picture. We're watching kind of all those sensors. You know, we're not watching videos of us. We're watching like what we saw. And we just couldn't make sense of it.

And we all came out of the his stateroom that night being like we just chased, you know, at the time they didn't even call him UAPs. I think we just called it a UFO. I don't even remember what we called it. We were like, did we just chase a UFO? Like, what was that? And yeah, and then after that, it was like nobody ever talked about it again.

We went back to work and, you know, that's just how it is. Like, I was exhausted. I was ready to go to sleep. And yeah, I was happy to, because when you're flying, like I said, you're like 50 to 100 feet over the water. And, you know, I don't know if this guy has, you know, this boat that we were interested in is going to, you know, shoot at me. and I'm, you know, so you're, it's all high stress the whole time, you know, they have man pads, which are like, you know, man portable like surface to air rockets and stuff. So like, it's a high stress thing. So like, you know, when people are like, oh, how did you not have the wherewithal?

You know, so a lot of people will say like, oh, how did you not have the wearwithal to do this or that or write down. It's like, you got to put yourself in my shoes. Yeah. When, when we're actually there. So, yeah, that was the, it was just the incident. I mean, people who say that, I mean, they're not familiar with high-stress situations where your life's on the line, because that's exactly what you're describing. Yeah. And when you're not even considering the idea of running into what you ran into, it's like that's even in the moment,

that's secondary to what's actually happening in real time. Right. Yeah. So I totally get it. Hey, guys, this episode is brought to you by Merckmerch.com. Go ahead and get your Merkel Media apparel at Merckmurch.com. We got some new. new hoodies up there on the store. Go ahead and check it out. Cop years before it's too late.

Also, Merkelfilms.com is where you can get your on-demand streaming of documentaries we've put out. And we have new content from other creators coming to that site very soon. Merklefilms.com. Let me ask you, so have you ever heard, I don't know how familiar you are with this show, but have you ever heard of the show we did years ago is Episode 122, Secret Military, Inaki and Technology? No, but now I'm interested in it. Oh, yeah.

Brother, you will be very interested in this. Okay. So there is a guy who came on my show in 2019. Initially, he emailed us, and I was scheduled to record with him, and he canceled on me. He said he wasn't ready to talk about this. And I was like, all right, well, whatever. And I was really disappointed because I really wanted to hear this guy's experience because the email was just like wild. And then months later, he emailed again, and he said, I think I'm ready.

We sit down and he says he wants to change his name. I said, I understand that. So we just changes to Charlie, Alpha Bravo Charlie. So it's just Charlie. And, you know, as somebody who I've never been in the military, a lot of times when I'm talking to guys like you, you say things like, I have no idea what that acronym means. And I have nothing. It's just out of my wheelhouse. And so there was a lot of that.

Yeah, and it's fine. But there's a lot of that during the conversation, especially in the beginning. He's laying the groundwork from the beginning. Like, I got in the military. This is how, this is what I did. I guess they, he did something where he got to put down on a list of like his top three things he wanted to do. And none of them he got to do. He was the last one on base and everybody else got their orders or whatever. And he's just riding around, I guess, in a golf cart or something. Like, I don't, I don't remember exactly the story in detail. But he's like, what am I going to get something? he finally gets a job where basically they trained him with tech. And he became like this data analyst retrieval guy. I don't know how I was to describe it. But he would go out on missions with soldiers, scientists, and a lot of times it was the same crew. And this one time he went out on a deployment. And it was his normal crew. I mean, he was familiar with the scientists and things like that.

and he wouldn't tell me where they were going. He said that he wasn't comfortable with. I still did this day, don't know. But I know they traveled by boat to get there, and he spent at least a day, maybe two days traveling on foot to get to the location. And their job was to retrieve information off a downed aircraft. And that's all he knew going into it.

And when he gets to the location, he said that this was a craft he's never seen before. It's something completely off his radar, not anything normal. And he said that wherever they were, it was hot. Because when he said, he made a point to say that when he touched it, it was cold to the touch, which was surprising. they go inside and his job is to retrieve the data off this thing and they were supposed to destroy this thing with thermite. So wherever it landed, I'm assuming it was in enemy territory. And so they go inside and there's a language that he doesn't recognize all over whatever the devices are. And he has like these manuals and he's looking through his manuals trying to figure out what this language is to,

figure out how to do what he needs to do. And one of the scientists came over to him and said, you're not going to find that language in your books. And he's like, whatever. And he keeps going. And the scientist doubled down, slams his hand on the book and says, you're not going to find that in there. And he said, what do you mean? And the scientist said to him, that's, that's anokian language. And he asked what that was. And he said, that's a demon language. You need to get your things together. We're getting out of here. They get out. They destroy it with their and they go on a pretty trippy journey back to the ship. When they get back to the ship, he has a lot of weird experiences,

and one of them being that he was called into a meeting, I don't know by who, maybe the captain or something, whatever. It's been a long time since I've done this interview, and it's a long time since I've listened to it. Yeah. But essentially, he was being told that they are there, where they're at, to go out and look for a, team of men that went out and never came back. And it became apparent that he was getting

debriefed on going out to look for himself. And he had some really weird things happen to him coming back. It was a weird time loop trip thing. Now, I say this to you because one, this is like a novel. Oh, yeah, I know, I know. Taking notes. So I say to you because there's way more detail. I think it's like a three-hour episode. But being in the military, seeing what you saw and things like that, I'm in communication with some men who they run an organization. I'm not exactly sure.

I know I can't say the name of the organization yet. But one of them is coming in my studio soon to kind of take the, covers off of what they're doing essentially. But I let one of the guys listen to that episode and he was just by hearing the details able to identify, I guess, the unit that he was in, this guy was in and he was like, I can pretty much verify a lot of the things he's talking about.

So I say that all that because with what you're talking about, it seems between the story I just shared and what you shared, it seems like there is technology out there that you don't totally understand. Neither did Charlie. And I want to get your take based on, and forget Charlie in the sense of like whether you believe Charlie's story or not. But like, I want to get your sense on how far do you think this rabbit hole goes when it comes to the technology that's out there and who is actually behind the technology? Do you feel like this is a terrestrial technology completely, reverse engineered, or something completely different, like coming from a different realm or world? Well, I'll give you, like, the two-part answer, because the first part is, like, me telling my story about what I chased. I mean, that's pretty much where the, like, I don't know what I, what, I don't know what that was.

and I don't think I can speculate for the sake of what I remember what it is so it'll just separate the two out like I told you what I saw and what I chased and how strange it was

now like take let's like take that hat off of me remembering that and then like look at it now so like I'm a Christian I view the world through a biblical lens and so I

I don't know whether the aliens or what I happen to believe it's it's a demonic or an angelic or something is going on there from a spiritual sense. Now that's just what I personally believe. But in terms of like if it's technology, like I know a lot of people think like if it's us or another country. So I'll preface this by saying because I still work for the DoD now in like prototype UAV development contracts and stuff. So I'll start off by saying that I don't represent the government. I don't have, you know, I don't represent the government's opinions. My opinions are my own. And what I can say safely is that what the government, the military and the government doesn't make stuff.

The military does not create a product. Like we buy things. We pay other people to pay. build them and we buy them. We test them. We test them. We don't even really test them. They test them. We verify that they test them. We have test pilot school, right? In the Navy, like, they don't even really test aircraft. All the new aircraft that are coming out now, we're not, like, experimentally tested by a military test pilot. There are, like, contractor test pilots who are career aviators that are, like, older now, and they're the ones that do all the high-risk testing and stuff like that. So, like, we procure something. we put out a bid, someone gets a contract, and they make it. So independent contractors make the, whatever the, you know, whatever aircraft, you know, that the military is buying, weapons, all that kind of stuff. So I think that also, like, creates an avenue for a contractor to possibly, once again, it's my own opinion, but to possibly have a technology, or something that they've developed.

So all these companies are, everything's proprietary. They're competing with each other for hundreds of millions, billion dollar contracts. So like every time, you know, we have,

you know, a new contractor, everything is proprietary, it's stove pipe, their lawyers are all over it. They're not allowed to share it with another contractor or anything like that.

Or even someone within the government who's not privy to what they're doing because they don't want their proprietary information being given away. Even something as simple

as their safety plan, right? So like, it's very feasible to me to think, think that they could have developed a technology that they're harboring for themselves or testing themselves, that the government has literally either bought and purchased that they're doing all the testing for or that we don't even know about, that the government doesn't even know about. And they're just as confused as everybody else. So I think that that's, I think that's a feasible option.

But at the same time, like, you know, what I described to you and what we've seen other pilots describe, like the, it's so far above what we've seen technologically. You know, it's so far above what we've scene technologically. The helicopter that I was flying at that I was like me and I got 19 year old kids in the back risking their lives on a, you know, Barrett 50 Cal gun, 50 feet over the water, you know, against drug runners who could, you know, blow us out of the sky in an aircraft that has like MTMU tape computers. Like we're talking computers that are like, you know, moon mission computers. Like they're massive things that are still running on tape decks that we have to reset every eight hours. So like, you know, that's what, you know, when I was flying, that's like the level, you know,

it's not like everybody has the latest and greatest. Like I was joking with you before that we were always on our phone and we flew. I was on my phone all the time because the GPS was better on my phone than it was in the aircraft that was flying. Yeah. Wow. So the only things that are new, that were new on the aircraft was our radar. Our radar was really, really good radar. They still use it today. The apps 124 is like the best radar I've ever used. And, and, and, and, and, And, you know, our helicopter was unique. Like, we had a radar system. Most don't.

Like, we were trained as radar operators. And then the Fleer, the Fleer was a new tech that they added on to the helo. But aside from that, like, the nuts and bolts of the aircraft are, like, all old, old stuff. So, like, if you're telling me that we've got stuff that good and I'm risking my life with the old stuff, like, you know, people got to rise up and, like, you know, change the conversation with how the military is. funded, like, because that's kind of ridiculous. But, you know, that's my own, like, personal take on that. But getting back to, like, what I think these things are, I mean, I mean, it just, it, it going through the air and then going underwater, I mean, that was when it got, like,

creepy, right? Like, you know, it gets creepy, you know, to summarize it. I mean, it could it be another country, too? Like, I don't know. Like, when I was on that same deployment, like, we, we, we came across a a Russian submarine. And that Russian submarine was mapping the sea floor off the coast of Nicaragua because they're trying to build a canal just like you can look this up.

They're trying to cut a deal with Nicaraguan government to like cut a canal through just like the Panama Canal so Russia can have its own canal. So they had like assets out there mapping the seafloor. We bumped into them by accident because our aircraft's radars were designed to pick up Russian periscopes and Russian radars. So we came across this like Russian radar by accident, triangulated it. And then we got tasked to like fly in and go see what was going on.

So we flew in on it and next to it was a surface support vessel that had like all these like sensors on it and crazy stuff. It looked like a fishing boat, but it wasn't. It was like some kind of surface support boat. And they lit us up with fire control radar. We had to like legitimately like what we call break lock where like you have to like they could, you know, that's like that's like missile tracking radar. So like we like broke lock like our.

buckets dumped like automatically when the helicopter gets a threat like that, it automatically dumps chaff and flare. That's what buckets are. So like, you know, our buckets just dump and we're like, holy crap, all these lights are going off at us. And so like we had to like turn hard and like get out of there. That's the only time I ever encountered like another foreign country in that area. Like we pretty much own, you know, or I should say, there's lots of foreign countries down. There's Central American countries that help us out. But I mean like like an adversarial country that we're all used to like a Russia or China. Yeah.

Preface that. So like, I mean, but that, but those subs were so broken that it needed a surface support sub to like help it. Like the Russian sub. Like that's why there was a surface support vessel around with it because it needs surface support. It's so like old. And so the idea that that could have been like some kind of Russian tech, like I don't buy that either. You know, I just don't buy it. Yeah.

So, I mean, do you think that under the idea that we'll, that we'll keep. keep the spiritual, supernatural, which I love, by the way, angle to the side for a second, given what you're suggesting, we don't have that technology as far as you're concerned. It's hard for you to imagine, like, Russia having it. Do you think then underneath that strict line of thinking that we got, like, I don't know, like these private companies that we buy this, this tech from to begin with, do you think that it's possible that they're building stuff

and then not only building it, but testing it on our own military during operations? Is that a possibility in your mind? Not that you think that, but is it a possibility of mind that they would do that. No, I think that's an absolute possibility. I mean, if you're these companies and you're trying to stay ahead, like they have tech,

we know that they have technology. now that's a couple steps ahead of what they're selling us. Because we bought stuff. That's wild. 10 years ago. So like case and point, right? The Joint Strike Fighter, it's like I worked on that program for a long time. And like about a year and a half. So a long time for what I was doing, that was a long time.

But I was auditing them. That was my job as an investigator was to audit their contract basically. And, you know, these guys are like, everybody knows this. This isn't like new information. They're like decades late on this aircraft. This aircraft has been in production for a very long time. But these companies aren't stopping their R&D. They're way beyond this aircraft.

They're still getting paid for it. So they're not going to sink any more money into it that they need to. They're a business. They're going to move on to the next aircraft to make sure that that thing can outperform what they just sold. And they're constantly spying on each other because that's why they're so crazy about their proprietary information because there's so much. much corporate espionage to try and get the latest information and get into each other's systems, you know, because there's so much money involved. There's so much money in having a new invention or a new engine or a new efficient system. So, I mean, there's big money involved in

this. So I wouldn't, I mean, that would be the smartest thing that they could do is to, is to develop something and then test it against us. And that's, I mean, that's real data. and they already have all the clearances and access. So, I mean, who's going to say anything to them? I mean, who's going to... I mean... What you're painting here and what we're suggesting, it doesn't feel good.

Like, you know, like the idea that these private corporations that we buy technology from, our defense systems from, are... And I understand the private aspect, the business aspect, you know, but the idea that, one, they're selling this old technology compared to what they already are working on or have, because they have to make profit on what they created so they can continue the development of future technology. But the fact that they have the access and the ability to do such things, in reality, I mean, you can't blow that up on a bigger scale. I mean, underneath this idea, then, wouldn't it?

it suggests that they have the power and an ability to intervene on a global conflict affairs to to sway conflicts in a direction that would benefit them. Not not not you know, oh, we we don't want, you know, America to get hurt. Let's intervene. But like, what's the best outcome for us as a corporation and let's intervene on this accordingly? That's a terrifying thought to consider. It is, especially when you realize that these companies aren't just, you know, yeah, they have restrictions on like where they can sell their, you know, certain things that we pay them to develop. But at the same time, they're global companies. Like Boeing, you know, we have, we have highly top secret, very expensive contracts with Boeing to build military aircraft and UAVs. They still sell Boeing jetliners to other countries. Like they're doing business with other countries. It might not be, you know, I mean, so what I'm trying to get at is, is their global companies and they're connected. They're not, you know, their interest isn't just here in the United States. So you got and, you know, it just harkens back, you know, it makes what Eisenhower said about the military industrial complex, like very eerie.

It makes it, it makes it way more pressure today than it was when he said it, I think. And then when you take into account, like all the things that private companies are doing right now, like, look at this thing with, isn't Bill Gates like, funding some cloud seeding program right now. Isn't there like a huge... So, you know, like, and there's countries that are saying, no, don't do that, but what are going to do about it? Like, he's got the money and he wants to do it and other companies do. And like another country, they're going to go do it.

You know, so if they can... And there's another company that just, like, genetically engineered some mosquitoes. And I don't have all the data, but you probably know more about it, right? You're nodding. So, like, they release them into the wild and, like, who knows what they're going to do? They're supposed to, like, eradicate their ability to, like, spread, malaria and stuff, but who knows what the implications of that are? They're just going to drop in, who's going to stop them?

So if companies are willing to do stuff like that, it really isn't a big stretch to think that these massive companies that are trying to develop like next generation aircraft technology are doing that kind of stuff. And then, you know, also got like Raytheon, general dynamics, all these, they're not just building aircraft too. They're building submarine technology. They're building all kinds of things at these boatyards. So like, who's to say that.

that they're not combining these kinds of research and development projects, you know, air and sea. And, you know, I mean, that would make sense to me based on what I saw. Who knows? You know, and to use as an example, the most public,

absurd private company that we can all probably see this, this, what we're painting here, play out, would be Elon Musk. So, like, Elon Musk, richest man on the earth, shoots rockets into the sky to other planets, shoots satellites into the sky, and people will say it's UFOs half the time. Like, you just left the government but was working within the government. And on top of that, I don't think there's anybody in the world that would argue.

I've said this countless times. Elon Musk is your friend until he's not. Like Elon Musk is in it for Elon Musk. and whatever serves his personal agenda as a businessman. And so he gets involved in Doge and all that stuff. Great. Great. But what kind of things did he pick up while he was there that he's going to take back to his private industry now?

And I don't know if anybody ever floats this out there. Maybe I'm sure this isn't an original thought because it's so elementary. But who knows what kind of things in technology Elon himself is working on or has worked on and has deployed secretly? I mean, we literally could be describing what Elon Musk is doing right now. I mean, he has the money for it. He has the imagination for it. He has the will to shoot things off into the sky to the point that NASA is like, hey, we probably should partner with SpaceX and not be competing with them because they're returning rockets and reusing them.

Have you seen the map of like what the amount of satellites around the Earth and then post Starlink? Have you seen how many? It's dramatic. It's very dramatic. Like, people who haven't seen that, you've got to look it up. It's just like, it's like this dome of satellites now. Like, it used to be like a couple. And now he's put so many Starling satellites up there.

It makes you wonder, too, like, when you start doing volume like that, like, I mean, I'm speculating now. But it is easier to hide something once you start sending, you know, everyone's used to it now. And who's going to stop them? And right, who's going to stop them to go to that point? Like, and I don't even know. Like, I mean, I don't know if that many satellites. is a bad idea or not. I don't, I don't know. I'm just, I'm a former truck driver podcaster now. Like, I don't know. But like, who's going to stop him? He's got the money. He's got the,

the influence, the power, the authority, the public. The access. Yeah, the access, the public empowerment. I mean, the people that. And leverage because we can't get to the space station without him. Exactly. And who's going to shape narratives when, the biggest news website is x.com. So it's not like you can't you can't say oh well we would know. You wouldn't know anything because most of the time your news is coming from X. That's where the news gets passed around. If breaking news happens and you catch wind, somebody says something on the phone, you get a text message. The first thing that I do is go to X because I know it's going to be flooding the feed. So like the guy who owns X can control narratives too.

And so, like, I don't want to turn us into a bash Elon thing. I'm not trying to bash Elon. I'm just trying to use him as an example. He could be very well the type of person that I could look at me like, oh, yeah, I could see, I could see how that works, you know? This private industry technology being deployed on our government's own military, and there ain't nothing you can do about it because you can't even find out who it is. You can't keep up with it.

Yeah, and there's, you know, I'm in aviation, but there's plenty of like submariners that have come out and talked about, well, I shouldn't say plenty. There's probably been about a handful of submariners that have come out and talked about weird stuff that they've seen under the water publicly at this point. And, you know, so I think the two shouldn't really be separate issues anymore at all, really. And was there something recently? I didn't really look into this, but you might know more. Wasn't there like something that was removed off of like Google Earth, like underwater formation off the coast of where we have a couple bases. We have like Point Magoo, which is where they do the like the dolphin training program that we have and like stuff like that. It's like there was something that was removed from Google Earth.

I heard that. So I'm in a very bad habit of when I hear certain things that in my head all right away jumps to like 10 steps down the road of like how that could be explained. I just don't even look at it. And I'll explain that right now. When I heard about that, the very first thing I thought of was all of Google Maps seems to be some kind of depiction of what they say is actually there to begin with. So, I mean... Right. You look at your house and it's like when your house is being built or something like that. Right. And so I just, I don't know.

what they're hiding, but like the idea of U.S.Os, I mean, underwater submerged objects, uh, it's not new. And it makes sense because there's, there's just so much more unexplored underneath the surface of the water. Um, I'm curious as to, you know, you mentioned, I don't know if you mentioned it before we started recording or what, but you kind of brought up just now, hearing of other people's stories. Like, uh, you, you have, you know, maybe friends from the military that have had their experiences, were those like UAPs or were they UASO? Because technically with what you're describing, you had a UAP-turned-U-S-O experience. I mean, this bad boy went into the water and from there we don't know.

And recently, I don't remember the exact story, but I feel like I remember hearing, and I don't know what knots are as far as like comparatively speaking. but I feel like I heard a story recently of, and maybe it was Lou. No, I don't think it was Lou. I don't remember, but there was a U.S.O. that was documented traveling underwater at like 100. I want to say between 100 to 300 knots. Yes.

Yeah, I've heard of that. I'm thinking, that sounds awfully fast. That's insane. So like my helicopter, we did drug interdiction, but we were trained. as subhunters. Like the Bravo helicopter, if you want to see a picture of it, or it was in the movie, Tears of the Sun. That was the helicopter they used in that movie, but it's a sub-hunting helicopter. And so I was initially trained as, and forward air control. So we like have our radar so we can control aircraft. We can control forward, you know, stuff like that, extend the sensors of the ship,

but also hunt subs, carry torpedoes, sonoboies, you know, magnetic anomaly detector that we trail behind. So when I was in training, that's all we did was sub-hunting. Most the time. And then, you know, I went and did this mission that had nothing to do with subs. But we were always off the coast of California, Catalina Island, like that area where all the subs are out, like, transiting. And when we would, you know, train with them, like, those kinds of speeds are not possible, like, just so people will understand. Like, that is not possible from a nuclear submarine under the water. And also, if it was going that fast, like one of our subs, it would be so loud that, like, you wouldn't even need a helicopter out there to pick it up.

You could pick it up with a hydrophone like from the shore. So like, you know, but yeah, like my friends have seen a similar thing. So I have one friend who's seen something very similar to my experience, tracking an object that goes into the water. So that's happened to somebody else in a completely different part of the ocean like over towards like Korea. I have friends who are fighter pilots that have seen stuff similar like orb, you know, stuff like coming into their. training areas. So we'll go out over the water whenever we do like live fire training or anything called these areas called whiskeys

and like they're they're like controlled military training areas like out over the water and they're restricted for like normal aircraft and stuff and they'll typically do like live fire stuff there. And like whenever my friends will go out to these ranges in like jets not whenever but these instances

when they did they've reported seeing like orbs like flying by and stuff very consistent with what people who've come out publicly. So like, you know, this stuff is very consistent and, you know, people are seeing it who haven't even come out and talked about it. Like it's, it's a, it's a well-known thing, like within the community. And everybody has, uh, has seen something at some point, whether it's on their sensors and they just don't think of it as this because they don't believe in this stuff or whatever.

But, um, and like, sensors can be wrong. That's for sure. But we're so trained on our, on our sensors that we know what we're seeing. Like when we're doing that job, we have been, That's all we've been doing. There's no hobbies. There's nothing. You can read that. Like right now, I'm so out of the game that if I were to look at that,

I wouldn't really know what was going on anymore. But when you're there, I mean, you know what is happening in a four-dimensional picture. So, like, I don't really, you know,

a lot of the times if it's a sensor malfunction, like you're already two steps ahead of that in the aircraft and there's other sensors that are backing you up. So a lot of these sightings where they have, you know, the videos that everybody have seen, stuff like that. I mean,

there's so many sensors on these things. and so many people have seen them, it's irrefutable at this point. And that's one of the reasons why I'm sharing my story too, because it's just another layer. It's just another layer and another confirmation for other people out there who may have seen, you know, like one or two videos. You know, not everybody who's seen these things has it on video. Like the Fravor video, like that was a training operation.

So, you know, off the coast. So, you know, that's much different than being like out on deployment, being able to get a video or something like that. You can go back to the squadron. and get access to that kind of stuff. So, but yeah, back to your question. I mean, I think you initially were talking about like the stuff off the coast, like whether or not we could have stuff underwater like that.

I mean, if you look at like Mission 33, they have like an underwater research base. Like it's not very deep. But like they've been doing that for like 20 years, probably longer. I think it's very feasible that we have underwater bases. somewhere, you know, if we're talking about, you know, contractor companies doing this stuff. Hey, everyone, I want to take a break real quick and talk to you about the new social media network, the Confessionals, just launched.

That's right. The Confessionals has its own social media platform exclusively available to members to the Confessionalspodcast.com. This is a social media platform that houses all the extra content on it. Plus, you get access to your own personal profile that you can post things on. You can comment on episodes, repost episodes, like episodes, comment and reply to other people's comments. You can private chat. You can have access to groups.

You can tag people with their handles on the app so they can actually be notified when you comment back to them. This is literally a social media platform that has all the extra content housed on it. And it's just a great way to socialize with other people that have similar mindsets as you. So if you're a member and you haven't got the app yet, go ahead and download it from the app store. and if you're not a member and it sounds appealing to you, consider becoming a member today to the confessionalspodcast.com. But what you talked about before, that other story with your friend,

I mean, or the gentleman that you had on who talked about that. I mean, that's a wild story. I mean, it's very interesting. It's very interesting, though. I mean, go ahead. No, go ahead.

I'm just saying you have to hear it. Like you say it's a wild story. wait until you listen to it. It's even, it's even more wild. I hold back saying crazy because that comes with the wrong connotation. When I say crazy, I mean, it is a wild story. 100% believe it. But I mean, even even when you say that, though, like that's why so many people and like what like me before, like I didn't really share my experience outside of like close, you know, close friends or family or whatever, because it is. It sounds like to other people, it sounds who didn't, you know, today it's a different world. Like people have seen the videos.

There's been a lot of talking about. A lot of people have come out. There's open disclosures now. It's a different world now. So talking about it now, I don't seem crazy or like, you know, just because I'm interested in these kinds of things outside of my job, you know, that's what I think I was afraid of the most before because I remember like that deployment. I had a Graham Hancock book with me on deployment.

I had a, what did I have with me? I think it was magicians of the gods. is what I had on that deployment. And like, you know, so people think that you're just making an assumption because of what you're already interested in. When in reality, like, yeah, when in reality, like, and I just described like what I saw. Like, I wasn't, we weren't making any assumptions. And I don't think anybody's making assumptions when they see something because they're, they're trying to do a job when they see it. That's why I love the, the, the, the, when military personnel step forward and tell their,

because I think it has a little bit more validity to it. Does that mean that everybody's telling the truth? Who knows? But, you know, like you said, you can verify as much as you can. And there's nothing that we gain from telling the story. Like everything that I say, I'm hoping you don't get in trouble because I still work with the DoD. But I'm like, you know, it's like, too late. You already said it, sucker. Yeah. I'm fine. I haven't said anything. No, but I'll even like kind of confirm with what you describing about how when you guys are what you know what you're looking at you know and you keep saying that in the sense that like if if i looked at what you were looking at i would not know what i'm looking at i can't tell a difference between a boat and a dolphin uh and things like that but in my world

uh you know before i hired a full-time producer like i edited all the shows and i learned what sound waves looked like and i actually learned what the words were because every week it was the Same thing. Welcome to the show. Everybody, you're listening to the Confessionals podcast. I'm your host Tony Merkel. Thanks for being here. It's the same thing. And you learn how to read those sound waves. And I could go and chop right where I needed to chop on certain things. And now that it's been 200 episodes or more of me not producing episodes, when I go into look at, thanks. I remember texting my brother, who's my full-time producer. He was in Pennsylvania. I'm in Tennessee. I'm like, bro, I need you desperately. And it's like, two

clock in the morning and I'm editing at the studio and I'm just like, I hate this. But now when I look at sound waves, I can't read them like I used to. I'm familiar, but it's not what it used to be. Yeah. But he now is telling me, oh, I know exactly at the 22 second mark. That's where your intro ends because that's like it's the same rhythm every time. And so he just knows these things. And it's just by exposure. I really think it would be really interesting. if we could get our hands on, like, with a FOIA, what you're talking about. I think that would be a lot of fun to look, even though I probably wouldn't be able to see what you're seeing just to, but you know, would be interesting though, because

trained eyes like yourself would be able to then confirm what you're talking about. Or just like narrate, yeah. I can also reach out to my former captain, which I, uh, was that Lance? I didn't think of doing that. Yeah, yeah. I can try and reach out to him because he, he, might know more than me where, you know, you might have it for all that. Yeah, because I mean, I, I was actually looking at the process of doing a FOIA request for something completely different

recently. And I was talking to a congressman about it and my, my theory and thought process about how to go about finding out certain information using if FOIAs, he goes to me, he goes, this is what I knew I was on to something. He goes, that's a very interesting thought process. And I was just like, I forget how he said it, but he was like, I knew he hadn't thought of it that. And hopefully he implements it because he has a little bit more poll than I do. But anyways, it was about giant bones. Okay. It always comes back to the Nephilim for me.

It always comes back to giant bones. But speaking of giant bones, you mentioned about the, I made a note of the Catalina Islands. Did you know that back in like the early 1900s, there was a whole thing. of, yeah, pulling up the giant bones there. Yeah. Yeah. So, yep. Yeah, I did my master's in American history.

And I like deep dove on like the Native American pre-contact and like what the picture was here before. And that's when I first got exposed to that kind of stuff. Like seeing those newspaper articles and stuff. I mean, those exist. Like, people can say what they want. But those newspapers were written and we're there that describe those things. And, you know, the Sysmonian and all these other places can say, oh, we don't have them like all they want. But are you familiar with L.A.? L.A. Mursuli?

No. Brother. Brother. If you're familiar with Graham Hancock, think Graham Hancock only the Christian version of them. Okay. Way into it now. That's why when I found your podcast, I was like, this is, it was actually funny the night before, like, because I started this new career writing novels. and they're kind of like crossovers. There's like some, you know, paranormal, spiritual, all kind of kind of stuff.

And we were, my wife and I was sitting around. I was like, man, I wish we had a podcast, but it was like, Art Bell meets like your local pastor. And then I found you. Like, I think my phone was listening to me. I was like, I want this stuff from a different worldview. Like, I feel like everyone always does it from a not, like a secular worldview. And I was like, I want it from a biblical worldview. you. And then I found you. And my phone must have been listening to me. Oh, for sure. One hundred

percent. For sure. Like, like I have, especially back in the day, people call, called me like the new version of Arbell. Now I think, I don't know. Like, I don't know what people call me. They probably call me a show or something. That's a compliment, though, because everyone like our age probably listened at two in the morning to their, to their dad, like, listening to it at the radio or something. I'll tell you, like, so when I first started the show, I broke the news to my parents what I was going to be doing. Uh, because I just, didn't think, because listen, I really didn't think I'd be welcome, and I wasn't welcomed with this show back in the day. When I first started, I was socially rejected by a lot of Christians.

And, you know, I talked to my parents about knowing they wouldn't reject me, but I was like, I don't know how they'll take it, you know, like, but my dad, he's a, he's a, he's a, a truck driver, and he drives at night, and at nighttime, listens to Coast to Coast. I didn't know that. And he's like, oh, yeah, I've been listening to Coast to Coast for years. And he, and this was, I'm talking, we're probably within the first 10 episodes of this show. Okay.

And he goes to me, you know who you should have it in your show? L.A. Marzuli. And I was like, L.A. Marzuli, interesting. I didn't even know who he was. And so I went home that night

and like 11.30, 1230 at night, I shot L.A. Marzuli an email. Within like 15 minutes, he answers back. He's like, sure, sounds fun. I'm like, oh, okay. I think I saw one of your episodes that he was on.

Yeah, he's been on like three of them. He's coming in studio later this year. But like Elie Marzuli anyways I was trying to get to figure out how I got here. Happens a lot with me. But Ellie Marzuli is definitely

somebody. You said I needed to check him out. Yeah. Because he did a lot of research on Catalina Islands and he actually has pictures of giant bones from Catalina Islands that later were scrubbed. So like when he found I think the story, the way the story goes is he found

he went to the archives there. I was looking through all these pictures. And in one of these archives of pictures, like he was going through folders, there's this picture of a giant skeleton that they uncovered and they had a picture of. Or maybe it was hanging on the wall. I can't remember. But I just remember he found it, drew attention to it. And then next time he goes to look at it, it's been scrubbed.

And like Photoshop edited the picture or something like that. I can't remember the exact story. But L.A. Marzuli also was one of the researchers that uncovered. Have you ever heard about the Kandahar Giant? I've heard that story on, I think, Coast Coast. I saw a YouTube video. Yeah.

I'm trying to remember the guy who did it. It was like Mr. Mr. Ballin? Yeah, yeah. That's it. So Mr. Ballin, he, I'm sure he covered it. But Elie Marzuli and Steve Quail, I believe, were the two researchers that kind of uncovered this story.

From what I understand, maybe that maybe since then, new information's come out, but they weren't working together. So they each were getting a story from two different people that were on scene of the same incident. And that happened obviously in Kandahar. But it was supposedly

a real live giant that our military killed and then took out, like shipped it out by chopper. So maybe you were one of the guys. and he was not telling me. Oh, no, I'd be definitely telling you about that one at this point.

At this point in my life, I've cut all, like, I'm an open book now. I'm open kimono now. It's a new, new me. I got you. So you mentioned earlier when you brought up initially your faith-based perspective. And obviously, if you listen to the show, that's me. And he said, our bell meets pastor or something. I love that.

That made my day. But what is your point? perspective when it comes to this phenomenon. We just talked about all the private industry aspects and all the possibility, which are absolutely valid in my mind. There are things that people are experiencing and doing and interacting with that do not seem to be just technology, but something from another location, another realm maybe. What are your thoughts? I mean, I'm sure you have considerations on it. I mean, if everyone just realizes that, like, we can't see everything that exists around us. Like, let's just all start from right there. Like, everybody can agree that we only

see a certain spectrum of light. I mean, everybody knows there's infrared and ultraviolet, and we can't see those spectrums. Let's just start there. Like, not, we're not even getting into ears, right? And, like, we're just talking about eyes. So there's a whole world around us that we cannot see and cannot experience. Science is proving it every single day, quantum science, is doing things that is more in the spiritual realm than it is in our quote unquote scientific realm, right? So like I think as a starting point, we can all like kind of agree on that. But yeah, I mean, I think that time has told us, you know, I mean, first of all, if you believe that the Bible is a true written word of God, then you know that these things happen.

and you know every time an angel visited somebody in the Bible the first thing out of their mouths is don't be afraid okay so like that that tells everybody when you're reading that that these things your first inclination is to be afraid so these things are scary or you don't understand them so like you typically fear what you don't understand so whatever it is is coming out of the sky and it's terrifying people you know every every you know I sound like a broken record but you know, you talk about Ezekiel's description as well of like the wheels within wheels. Like that, that's very, that's very interesting, right?

When you also factor in that, you know, the whole biblical account, that we have fallen angels that have come down to influence mankind to, you know, that's what you see all across. the more and more you read the Bible, and you, and the more and more God starts to change you inside, your eyes are opened up and you start realizing that everything is explained. Everything is explained. So you look at all these different religions with all these different gods and all these different things, right? And they all have the same stories around the world, that they came down and they gave them technology. Now you can say that that's aliens. Like that's what a lot of people will believe. And I think that that's even a harder, that takes more. more faith, I think, to believe in that than it does to just believe that these are, you know, from spiritual beings that are from another realm that have come to mankind with a purpose, a malevolent purpose to make us like gods that we don't need God. And what do they do in every culture? They give them technologies.

They make them, you know, they give them the technologies of the gods, right? That's what they do. and and then they want worship. A lot of times it involves child sacrifices or different kinds of sacrifices. These are common threads across the world. And then if you look at like, you want to talk about technology, like you could even blend these two theories. Like you want to talk about having technology, but also it being the demonic. You know, if you look at like the ancient, and I'm probably going to catch a lot of heat from this,

but you look at like ancient Hindu scriptures, right? Like the Vedic text and stuff. These gods gave them technologies to build aircraft and things like that, right? Like so if you if you can buy that as well, like it's very, it's very possible that that kind of thing is happening again today. You know, if they did it in the past, I mean, you know, I have never, I can't read Sanskrit or whatever. I can just read what other people have have decoded and deciphered, right? But people in India, there's a group of people who not only A, believe that those texts are legitimate, real history, but have also translated them to show that kind of stuff. We're talking like genetics and engineering and, you know, material science that, that, you know, we don't understand.

So, you know, was that given to man by fallen angels, by, by, by, by, by. demonic beings with their own nefarious purposes to to you know make us kind of like the Tower of Babel like we don't need to we don't need God we have we can do it ourselves right yeah so I think that you know that's not what I'm saying isn't anything new but I think that that that view takes a lot less faith than thinking that some other aliens are just hanging around here and like popping in and just taking a peek and crashing all the time like I don't know

I don't I think it's easier to believe that these things come and go at will into our realm and and they're showing themselves just like they've always shown themselves throughout all of history I mean you can just look at like I'm sure your audience has probably seen like the paintings of old where it depicts like all these different kinds of aircraft I mean, something has been going on for a very long time. And I think if you just look back to the Bible,

it explains everything, like, you know, test it, right? And, you know, testing it against this. It's already explained it. So once again, in my mind, it's just proven true again. So I think it's a good starting point. I think where I get really interested and I tread like a really fine line as a Christian too is like, I believe that the Bible is a whole true word of God and that I shouldn't add it or changed it or anything like that. But at the same time, there's all these other other extra biblical texts. And it's really hard to navigate that. It's really hard to know, you know, am I, am I reading, you know, am I reading like the book of giants or First Enoch or the gospel of Thomas or something like that? Is, is it? I don't know. I got to pray about it.

I got to like, you know, spirit help me out here. Like is this, you know, sometimes, you know, you probably won't get an answer about that sometimes. You know, some people might. I tend to get an answer about a lot of things, but, but, you know, I don't hear the, the, the, I'm not one of those people that, like, hears the voice of God. I'm not that fortunate. But I get, I get, like, a little feeling. I get, I get, like, a little sensation of the spirit when I think, when I, when I think I'm on the right track, almost like a revelation or like a wink or like a little bit of insight or understanding. And I definitely haven't gotten an answer about all this extra-piblical, texts and I've been asking for sure. So I don't know about those, but they're wildly interesting because I think they paint a deeper picture of what's going on. Like when you look at Enoch and that kind of stuff as well.

What's your take on that? I mean, I kind of know your take on that from your show, but... Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so I look at and yeah, for anybody who doesn't know, I agree a lot. So, but I look at a lot of this

So I look at the Bible, the scriptures, as the way you do, but I do not believe that it is all-encompassing of all history and even all of history that is discussed within the text. I think it's Apostle Paul. I can't tell you the book, verse, chapter, because I am terrible with recalling scripture. I am actually in the middle of trying to work on that because I feel like it's important that I can, but I can tell you essences of things. And I believe it was Paul who talked about, or maybe one is the, it might have been one of the disciples that talked about how if we documented everything that Jesus did, there wouldn't be enough,

you know, paper in the universe, you know, something like that. And so right there it tells you this, what you're getting is not. not the whole story. It's a bridged. It's exactly. It's a divine bridge. And so you have that, and you're talking about different texts and stuff, but Enoch is the one that always comes up, first bookie Enoch especially. And we know that the bookie Enoch was regarded at least as a, a, in the book of James, right?

Jude. but it's, excuse me. It's like a, I don't want to say commentary. That's what I keep wanting to say, but it's an aid. It's, it, the people that wrote the scriptures knew of Enoch and they looked it as like a companion to, to their thought processes. Maybe, maybe a commentary, you know, to help you understand certain things. And it's directly quoted in Jude, who Jude is thought to be Jesus's brother, half. brother, but brother, which means they grew up in the same house. That's why I mentioned James

by accident because I got my brothers mixed up. But like, I mean, so if that's the case and he's aware of it, it's not like it was forbidden knowledge or text. It was encouraged. I believe that. Yeah. And when you're writing Genesis 6 and you're already aware of the narrative, why repeat it? Because it's not like they understood they were writing something that was going to be read for thousands of years and considered to be part of this Holy Scripture, there was practical things as to what they were writing and why they were writing and who they were writing too. So I don't believe that because Genesis 6 doesn't go into the greatest of detail compared to the first book of Enoch that Enoch should be disregarded, especially when we have proof

within the text that it was regarded by its authors. Right. So there's that. I think that's a pretty compelling case for a lot of people too. Yeah, I mean, it's, I tend to have a simplistic mind. And in my mind, it makes sense. There is a war against God and that has many faces. So you can go down the religious route that's traditional of, you know,

and, you know, whatever. But this, what we're talking about today, the UAP, the gifted technology to mankind that's discussed in Enoch, that is part of the war against God. And it's, I do not believe that, and I forget where I saw this, maybe it was on Instagram. I tend to scroll Instagram a lot. But like, the war against God. is not God versus Satan as much as it is God fighting for our attention and Satan fighting for our attention away from God. Satan's not really looking for us per se to turn to him and worship

him as much as as long as you're worshipping something other than God, I don't give a crap what you're worshipping. That's a win. That's a win. And so when it comes to this text stuff and this UAP stuff, what are we seeing? We're seeing a lot of cult-like activity. We're seeing seeing a lot of people looking to the stars, summoning things in the sky, praying to these things in the sky, and they're responding, and that must mean it's good,

and it's coming to me and speaking to me, and it's revealing things to me that make me feel good. To me, it has a lot of signs of deception because at the end of the day, attention away from God is a win. Yeah. And so I think that, in fact, I know to a certain extent. I don't want to say I know because I've seen it or anything like that.

But I referenced earlier in this conversation, a group of people that I'm talking with that will be here. They have told me that they have been debriefing people within our government and communications on what they're doing. and they are certain from their perspective that this UAP tech that is coming from another realm, they believe it, that it's coming from another realm, that this is fallen angel technology, and that it's not that we shot something down and were reverse engineering it. It's not that something traveled between realms and lost control of itself and crashed and reverse engineering it. it's that it's being allowed to be shot down and it's being crashed on purpose because they're being gifted to man for us to reverse engineer so that we can advance past this this current state of

existence of humanity and it goes right to the Tower of Babel type situation. And so that's what they're saying. I look forward to having a great conversation recorded and hopefully I do it. it justice. But I've, the circumstances that I've met these guys, especially the first guy, I believe them. I believe them. I mean, yeah, that also lends, you know, I mean, there's a, there's a spiritual war being fought, right? Like, we can't forget that, that we can't see and that we don't understand. And that's over us, but we, we can't, we can't see it. So yeah, like you said, they're sending stuff to us what those guys are saying or or maybe it's a casualty of that war that we

don't you know who knows but i think um i think it's the when you think when i used to think about it before i was a christian um because i didn't grow up christian i actually i got the calling of god one day and it just hit me like a ton of bricks the the spirit and it completely changed her trajectory my life um my wife grew up christian and she had actually strayed away and um she actually came back to the faith when I did, actually, because we were at like a very low point when that happened, which is typically when he decides to act. But I look back on how I viewed these things before, and I was always kind of interested in them to a degree. But it's stressful when you think of it the way that other people think of it. When you think of it in a biblical

worldview, I feel like it makes more sense. And it's like easier to accept. I don't know if you've experienced that or not. It's just easier to accept. It doesn't make it any less creepy because, you know, like I said prior, like you fear what you don't understand and we cannot understand the realm of God. So like, yeah, I mean, you know, when you brought up that story earlier and then you just mentioned that you're, those people that are going to be talking, it reminded me of Michael Crichton's sphere. Do you remember that? Did you ever watch that movie or read that book? Nope. where, so the book is incredible, but he goes, so this, all these scientists are being flown out in the middle of the ocean and they don't know why, and he's a psychologist. And then they get there and they bring him down under the water to this like underwater base. And they're deep, deep, deep in the ocean. It's kind of like what we were talking about a little bit. And they go to this craft that they've found. And it's buried in about 150,000 years with a coral. And when they break the coral out, it's a United States aircraft ship, but it's from the future.

Oh, wow. And when they go inside, there's nobody on board, but there's this giant golden sphere. And what it does is it kind of works like, it's kind of demonic in that it entices people. It gives them power to manifest their fears and desires. So the whole book is like a psychological sci-fi thriller of them trapped on. underwater like with this. But I don't know. I just thought of that randomly because it feels like when you talk about it,

it just feels... I agree. Yeah, it just... It's wild. This sounds like it should be a movie. Like, is it a movie? Yeah. Oh, yeah, Sphere.

Sphere's a movie. The book is much better. The book is more of a psychological thriller, but the movie is good. Dustin Hoffman. Very good. Yeah. Very good film. I mean...

I'm terrible with recalling movies because I don't watch a whole lot of stuff. But, no, that sounds wild. And that kind of goes into the psionic side of things as well. I mean, like, you talk about these people who are coming forward now talking about how they're using psychic abilities to theoretically take control of these craft that might be just being gifted and you're taking control. and I'm not saying that the people who are saying this are liars or they're in on it. I believe there's a lot of people who served in our military who were part of these operations, retrieval operations who were doing their job and have a very have a very clean, clear perspective according to what they experienced and how they view it based on what they were told,

plus what they lived through. Right. And I think that might be, and this is not to be boastful of whatsoever, but it might be where people like myself come in and were little on the different side because we hear all angles and we filter kind of like what you said, we kind of filter through a biblical worldview. And I'll even take a step further, a supernatural worldview. I look at almost everything through a supernatural lens now. This whole thing that we're going through when it comes to UAPs, disclosure,

it's all part of a war that's spilling over into the physical realm that's been happening since the dawn of time, really, in what I call the second heaven. I say that loosely in the sense that I'm still learning and still trying to understand, but I really believe that what we have here is we have Paul who said he was called up to the third heaven, establishing the fact that there's a first and second at least. And since then, theologians have discussed what's the first and second heaven, and there's a lot of different perspectives on it.

But I tend to feel in my gut that the first heaven being here, earth, the skies here, earth, maybe even outer space being the first heaven. Does the Gospel of Thomas say that? Whether it's valid text or not, doesn't Jesus say, or, you know, its validity is in question. But in it, supposedly, it says that here is the first heaven. And then there's another one. So that's interesting. Yeah, and maybe that's where some of the theologians get it from.

I'm not sure. I'm not very familiar with the gospel of Thomas. When you first said Thomas, I went right to Timothy. That's what I was thinking. I was like, I don't think so. Oh, yeah. But it's, I believe that the second heaven is the battleground where a lot of this stuff is happening. I believe that in Daniel 10, where Daniel receives a vision, starts seeking for answers to the vision, he goes right into prayer and fasting.

And you see this cosmic war that unfolds because of his prayer and fasting. It didn't exist before he went into prayer and fasting. But once he started praying a fasting for understanding for a vision that was going to, once he receives that answer, it was going to define parts of revelation for us as a human species. There was a cosmic supernatural war that started breaking out in the second heaven. And you see the prince of Persia preventing what we presume to be Gabriel coming to answer that prayer for three weeks, 21 days. It wasn't until the archangel Michael came and intervened on his behalf that he was able to break free to come and answer Daniel.

And then he says, I must return because the spirit prince of Greece is coming to aid the spirit prince of Persia and I got to go fight again. Like that's essentially what he's saying. And so like you're seeing this whole cosmic war unfold in Daniel 10, which I'm identifying as the second heaven. And that second heaven warfare, I believe, is. unfolding and spilling out into our realm more and more these days, and we're seeing it through these topics of UAPs. So that's my pitch for my book. Yeah.

I mean, also, like, the sensors that we have are better these days, like in our modern era, you know? I mean, there's reports in World War II of this kind of stuff, too. They just had their eyeballs, though. You know, like, I think it's just we have more now. Like, all these aircraft have all these sensors on them and these things can't hide anymore as much. I think that that is 100% believe. And I just think that the more we look into these topics from our perspective, let me just say my perspective, because I don't know if everything I said you agree with, which is fine. But from my perspective, I think it's all,

I think it's all extraordinarily interesting. And nobody, nobody's going to know. That's the thing. It's just you got to do some research. You have to be comfortable with openly theorizing, especially in my shoes, publicly. It's just like, I could be wrong. And if I'm wrong, my heart was in the right place. That's great, though. We need more of that, though. That's what everybody needs.

Just have a talk about it. Like we were around the campfire. Exactly. Exactly. And that's what I've tried cultivating over the years with the show. And it's taken different forms and different ways go about it. Like when the show started, it was a completely different show than what it is today. And I'm okay with that because,

I changed as a host, and I and the show would be extremely disingenuous if I kept everything the same as it was in the beginning because I didn't want to rock the boat. As the show progressed and as a host learning through people's experiences, I by default had to change my perspective on things. And in that case, the show has to change or else it's not an authentic show. And so, you know, here we are, 700 and I don't know how many of it. We have, to be honest with you, it's over 750. And, you know, every conversation is something that's giving me a piece of a puzzle. And I feel like today we accomplished that for me.

I really, I don't know, I was sitting here listening to tell what you went through and stuff. And I was like, my goodness, this is in the moment bigger than I can comprehend, if that makes any sense. I just felt like it's not every day. I get somebody like yourself coming on to detail what you saw and the different facets of what you saw where it's like we're on an operation. We thought we were chasing this. We realized that's not what we were chasing. Whatever we were chasing was above the water and here's why.

And then guess what? It went into the water. So now we're talking about one situation that involved a UAP going USO. And I don't know if I totally grasp the gravity of your experience that was shared with many other people. But I think that there's going to be a lot of people who are taken by your story for sure. And I don't. I hope people that were there too hear it and come out of the woodwork. I reached out to some of the crew that were on there was like, hey, guys, I'm going to talk about this.

So, you know, just so you know, if you have any, if you remember anything, you want to tell me, like, go ahead. But, tell them I call dibs. If they want to come, I call dibs, guys. I want the story first. In fact, if that happens, I will fly you and at least two other people here to Tennessee to sit at the table and go over the story. I have to have the video for that. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah, we'll start on a FOIA request. But anyways, I do want to hit on this. And it's not part of this story, but I do want to hit on this fact that, is it that you you just came out with a book or you're coming out with a book? Because the topic of the book is timely considering what we just lived through a couple months ago. Yeah. Well, which thing are you talking about? The Ethiopian arc of the covenant. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I am coming out with a book. You know, like I'll preface that I came on your show and everything like. I like your show.

I had a story to tell. I'm getting like out, I'm getting myself out there now that I'm getting on the podcast circuit with this new career. So I'm just trying to be open kimono and let people know who I am and open up a little bit more. So that's why I'm here. And thank you for

having me, by the way. I don't think I said that in the beginning. But yeah, so I, when I got out of the Navy, I had had an accident that injured me. And I, when I stopped flying because of that injury, I was dealing with some PTSD. as I stopped flying. And I ended up seeing a trauma therapist.

She ended up having me start journaling. I was never a writer before. I didn't write at all. And then she started having me journal my experiences, write about them, talk about them in a group setting. But I had just come off of like these, you know, drug, drug operations.

And I didn't really feel comfortable talking about it because we still lived in like San Diego by the border. And I just, I didn't, there was some weird things that had happened already. And so I just wanted to stay kind of separated from that. So she was just like, just fictionalize it. Just change names, people, like whatever. She's like, the whole goal is I want you to write about your experiences and work through your issues.

So I started doing that and it was like life changing. This was actually even before I became a Christian. And then I started writing novels because I thought I might as well like turn this hobby into something that might, you know, pay for something one day. And I just loved it. So I just kept writing. And I wrote five books before this one got published. And, you know, the story of how this book got published, though, is actually, like, tied into my testimony. So I don't know how deep we want to go, like, into that, but if you're interested in that.

But, um, wow. So, yeah, like, this, this book was a journey. And it finally got picked up by Penguin Random House, by the great God. And, uh, it's, it's been having, uh, quite the reception so far. Um, and it's, it's of no doing of my own. I am completely hands off the wheel and I'm just kind of in awe of what it's doing. But yeah, it deals with a hunt for the Ark of the Covenant, but it's a very twisty story. It's not like anything else that's out there.

So the penguin took a risk on me. It's a crossover thriller. So it's not like your typical military thriller or paranormal thriller or anything like that. It's a blend of all those different genres. You know what? you're starting a new genre then, we'll call it biblical archaeology thrillers. Yes. Yeah.

Exactly. Take Indiana Jones and biblical archaeology and there you go. Yeah. Well, actually, it's wild because there's actually a biblical treasure hunt in this book. So within the pages, there are buried scriptures. And on my website, I have a guide that you can download for free. It's PDF that will guide you through it. And there's a bunch of discussion questions afterwards.

because this book built into the book is a journey of faith for the character. But also, like, as they're on this journey, like, there's all Old Testament scriptures, like, throughout. So, and each one that you find in the book and, like, go look up, like, relates exactly to what's going on in the story in the moment for the character. So, you know, what's the crazy thing about all that, though, is that's why it's kind of baked into my testimonies. I wrote this book before I was Christian, before I'd ever read the Bible. And after I became a Christian, because I wrote this book years and years ago, and I've read the Bible several times over now, cover to cover and been living with Christian walk as best as I can since then. Looking back on this book and as I've reread it and gone through the editing process,

I'm fully convinced now that the spirit worked through me in this book because it is the things that I knew. about trust and faith and about God and about, you know, even the scriptures being built into the story, I did not do that on my own. There's zero way I did that on my own. So that's why I'm saying like this, the book is my testimony. And like the whole story of the character, you know, there's a scripture that starts the book. from Genesis 50-20 and it's let's see pull it off the shelf here

I'm bad at memorizing Yeah go for it Oh it's you intended to harm me but God intended it for good for the purpose of what is now being done It's at the end of Joshua's story in Genesis And Joshua's story is actually personified in the whole book And like I said, like I never read it before.

I didn't grow up in a Christian family. And when I actually started reading the Bible and learning, I realized what I'd done with this book. And I realized it couldn't have been me. And that was one of the incredible things that came out of writing this book. And that's why it's like I say, it's kind of intertwined in my testimony. So it's called blood and treasure, right? It is.

Yep. And people that want to get it, it's going to be released on July 22nd, 2025. Yep, in all formats. I just looked at the schedule and it just so happens that July 22nd, so happens to be a Tuesday, which is when we release our episode. So you were on the schedule for this episode to release that day. So if you're listening right now and you made this far to conversation, you're interested in Ryan's testimony, essentially.

in the book, you can go ahead and check it out. The links will be in the description of this episode. You can go ahead and purchase a copy, Blood and Treasure. Ryan, listen, man, this was a great conversation. This is a lot of fun. There's a lot of fun. When I was going over the emails, I remember my wife asking me about this, and I was like, well, yeah, heck yeah, I want to talk to this guy who's in the military, had this experience. but when you wrote out the experience, it was short. And when I sat down, I was thinking,

oh, this might be like a 20, 30 minute conversation, but I want to have it, right? This turned out to be way better than I could have expected. Oh, awesome. I really do. I'm very grateful for you reaching out and sharing. And I mean it. I really do mean it.

If the other guys want to come and talk and stuff, I'll bring you guys all down in the studio. We'll have a good conversation. Try and corral them. Yeah, man. That'd be a lot of fun. And I highly encourage you in this new path you're on with authorship and things like that. Life is short and it's not worth living if you're not going to take some kind of risk, right? So it's, you only get one shot at this thing. And so to just kind of do what you feel compelled to do, what the Lord's put on your heart, that's all it's about, man. And so I think it's awesome. And I hope. I wish you nothing but the best with the book. And hopefully I see you.

Next time I see you, it will be in the studio. I'm really hoping for that. Oh, that'd be great.