UAP Unidentified Alien Podcast - UAP EP 138 New Warnings from Nick Pope

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

The legendary Nick Pope returns to UAP to discuss his recent interview in the UK Daily Mail publication about his unique perspective on the Wall Street Journal anti UFO article. Has the overall negative reaction to this been justified, or did we miss something? And hear why he gets serious about leaving the religious portion of the alien topic out of congressional conversations. This one might leave you rethinking some things...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Grab the Dave and Mahoney podcast now on Apple Podcasts on Spotify and at daven Mahoney.com. Welcome back in to UAP. Stephen Deiner back with you here, as always, on the Unidentified Alien Podcast. Episode 138. I know we've been busy here lately, but no time for slowing down. Never slowed down here on UAP because there is just too much going on. And I'm happy today to bring you my new interview with Nick Pope. He's back on the show.

He's been on here a bunch of times. appreciate that because that man is always in high demand, whether it's a conference, an interview, a TV show, a live performance for ancient aliens, whatever it might be. Nick Pope is always in demand, and I'm always honored that he makes time to stop by here on UAP to discuss a lot of the latest things going on. And today was no different as he came on to discuss the latest Wall Street Journal article and his response to it when the Daily Mail interviewed him about it. And now, obviously, you know, look, we've had a few days, maybe even a week or so to kind of let this Wall Street article, Wall Street Journal article fester a little bit.

And it became really kind of like the topic of conversation. So really kind of picking up where I left off on episode 133, where even I kind of went into it just for a few minutes after my interview with Chris Ramsey and to the show talking about this. And I reached out to Nick and he's like, hey, you know, I'd love to talk to you about this because the Daily Mail just spoke to me about it. I said, great. cool let's do it good timing and there's another piece in there too that he mentions that I thought was was really thought provoking and I got to tell you on both of these subjects initially I didn't really agree with him and see and that's what I'm saying right I don't always have to agree with the guest that's completely fine and that makes for interesting conversation but by the end of it

and you actually will hear me say to him he really gave me a lot to think about because what you're going to hear is a different take on this article from the Wall Street Journal. Nick actually was okay with it. He's kind of a proponent of this article. So I'll let you hear why. That may be surprising, but I'll let you hear him explain why maybe we're overreacting to it. I don't know, his opinion. And he explains it. And then we also get into his opinion on how religion, the religious discussion about like angels and demons and things like that and how it relates to. to the extraterrestrial conversation, how it could be hurting or hindering progress within Congress.

And he got, of all the times I've spoken to Nick on the show or off the show, like, you know, behind the scenes type thing when we've spoken like at different conferences or, you know, on the phone or something, I've never seen him or heard him more serious. He was like dead serious when laser focus is probably the best way I could put it. when trying to get across his point about how some people need to stop bringing up the angels and demons and the religious discussion when it comes to the alien topic with Congress. He's saying that it's doing a lot of harm behind the scenes. Really interesting, again, didn't even think about some of the stuff that he brought up. So this really turned into a new opportunity for Nick to come on and kind of really voice his opinion.

and let off some steam on a couple of these hot button topics. That kind of left me surprised at how he thought about some of these issues. But again, I'll let you decide. So here's myself with Nick Pope. Really interesting discussion right here on UAP. Enjoy. Nick Pope, thanks so much for coming back on here. I know you're busy, everything with ancient aliens and all the interviews and discussions that you have with, you know,

magazines or newspapers or online publications, different publications, different podcasts. So it always means a lot when you come on here and make some time here for UAP. And I guess we'll just jump right into it when it comes to this Wall Street Journal article because I know that you were just interviewed recently by the Daily Mail, speaking of some of these interviews that you've done, about this much lauded article and very controversial, I would say, where the journalist who wrote this article kind of proposed the idea that the whole UFO top. and the reports and the pictures and all these different sightings have all been a big sci-up by the U.S. governments, by the contractors, by the Pentagon to distract away from the secret programs that go on that the U.S. is working on when it comes to secret tech and technology.

And for them to say, it's kind of their way of saying, hey, look over here. It's aliens. It's definitely not us. It's aliens, so don't pay attention to what we're doing. That was kind of the just of the article, but are we missing something? I know you have a different take on this. Simply put, the central allegation is that some UFO narratives, and I guess the implication here is the narrative of crashed UFOs, dead aliens, reverse engineering programs, etc.

some of those narratives are false narratives that were deliberately created by elements in the government, the military or the intelligence community to distract from secret black project technology. And as a follow on, other false narratives might even have been created as a loyalty test. In other words, let's put this into induction briefings. And it's so big that if somebody was going to leak anything, they would probably leak this. And let's see if it leaks. And let's say even do what I think in the US you call a canary trap, do different versions of the same thing and see which one leaks. And then you know who the leaker is. And so you can weed these people out.

Or some of these false narratives may even have been created as some sort of practice. joke. And there is, of course, quite a culture of practical joke in the military, for example. But this, you know, and obviously the UFO community is up in arms. Yeah. Because again, the central thesis is, hey, you know all this weird UFO stuff? We're trying to figure out who's responsible. Well, guess what? The Pentagon is responsible. I think the first thing I would say is that there is nothing new about this. And for many years, for example, the CIA, the seminal CIA essay about their involvement with the subject over the years has been in the public domain and openly stated that as far back as the 50s and the 60s, they were talking up the idea of flying sources

and aliens to distract from the fact that some of what pilots were seeing were U2 and SR-71 spike planes. So, and that CIA essay, like I mentioned, has been out in the public domain for at least 10 years, if not longer. So, so the Wall Street Journal article is not new. I think obviously it goes further in saying, that these very detailed narratives may be about crash retrievals and reverse engineering are themselves false narratives. And it's interesting, I think one of the interesting parts of the story is where it says that the SECDF's office sent out a memo saying that this practice should cease. Well, you know, first of all, let's see that memo because I think that's going to be quite illustrative of that. I'm sure all sorts of Freedom of Information Act requests are

already in the system about that. But yeah, I mean, the UFO community, of course, see this as a hit piece and disinformation. I don't see it that way at all. I mean, look, this may explain some UFO sightings, but of course it doesn't explain all of them, nor all the narratives. Yeah, and I think it's really interesting what you just said there, because it's actually, it's kind of a contrarian take, which I like, because a lot of us and a lot of different people in the UFO community have said, what you just said, this is a hip piece, this is smut, it's garbage, you know, use it to wipe up your floor like that, that type of stuff. And because as they try to seemingly discount experiences and experiencers and years of, you know,

unexplained sightings and encounters, and that really rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Now, when it comes to, you know, possibly some of it being true, I don't see why not personally, right? When you talk about trying to keep the U2 spy plane, the SR 71 Blackbird and say, well, that's, that might have been something unexplained because you want to, you know, kind of distract away from your secret program. Some of that makes sense. But when you say it's not a hit piece, that part might be controversial. So what's you, I guess, how is it not? For anybody who hears that and says, Nick, Pope, what do you mean? It's not a hit piece?

How would you explain that to them? Well, I don't think the article says, and, you know, as we're having this conversation, part two has not yet dropped. But I don't think from what I've read of part one that it's saying case closed. I think it's simply saying, look, look, some of these narratives, that Congress has been exposed to recently were false narratives created by the government itself. And let's get to the bottom of this. But I don't think that should be conflated with the entire phenomenon is nonsense and there's nothing worth looking at.

And in a sense, don't we want to eliminate cases that do have prosaic explanations so that we can focus in on those that don't. And isn't this, isn't this just another of multiple explanations that do explain clearly 99% of what we're looking at here? I mean, whether, whether something is a misidentification of, for example, Starlink satellites, or whether it is a misinterpretation of a false narrative that's been injected deliberately by the government itself, let's then eliminate that from our consideration of the phenomenon as a whole and say, sure, this might explain case A, B, and C. This might explain narrative D, E, and F. But now let's look, you know, with fresh eyes at cases. G. So

I don't think we should regard as disinformation or a hit piece, something that simply said some of this was caused by the government itself. So what?

Yeah, and that's really interesting because you know, I would love to get their opinion and so, but I'll ask you on what they might think about things before Roswell, right? As we both know, there have been many sightings going back into, such as, I think, in Stephenville, Texas, back in the late 1800s. They talk about a crash UFO and burying the bodies.

I think that was Stephenville. I forget off the top of my head. And then, well, look, going back to ancient alien theories, right? Of course, you're on ancient aliens. One of the stars of ancient aliens. And I'm not sure how Georgi Osucalus might think about this article and how it probably can't explain. too much when it comes to ancient astronaut theory. So how would they try to explain all that, do you think, when it comes to things that predate 1900? Well, I mean, self-evidently, I don't

think they could. I mean, you know, they may say there are other conventional explanations for that. But, I mean, again, that's really a question, firstly for the journalists and secondly for the ancient astronaut theorists and they can have that conversation. But my point is that the UFO community can be very overly defensive at times and can see things as a personal attack on their beliefs, whereas in fact, somebody who's genuinely interested and engaged in this should welcome the Wall Street Journal piece and say thank you for helping us, take this off the table so that we can now concentrate on what's what's left. And so rather than, you know, and I've seen some ridiculous things out on social media here. This is the deep state

fighting back. This is undermining the will of Congress. I mean, this is a sci-op. I mean, no, I don't think those things are true, but this is clearly an important. important article. I mean, it's a huge amount of work has gone into this. I know that they've been working on this diligently with a lot of contributors and researchers for a lot of time. And we can't ignore it. We shouldn't attack it, but we should digest it and then use it as a resource to then say with other cases and with other narratives, look, is it possible that this is one of these so-called false narratives? But this is where Congress needs to step up. And this was the point that I made in a recent article in the British newspaper, the Daily Mail. This is where Congress

needs to ask, well, you've had classified briefings, but perhaps more importantly here, you've had open public hearings where intelligence community personnel with verifiable backgrounds on UAP have testified to the reality of a non-human intelligence and specifically craft and bodies. So the question arises, are those testimonies literally true? or are they examples of these false narratives that the Wall Street Journal talks about? And if the latter are these people who stood up and testified, and I'm not criticizing them, but I'm saying, were they either, A, taken in by these false narratives, or B, you know, loyally doing their job, But were they people who were involved either in creating these false narratives or in putting these false narratives out?

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Well, we're hoping to see a little bit more from Congress as time goes on. I know they were trying to work behind the scenes, maybe get some hearings, things like that going. So hopefully we hear something out of that ends soon because like you said, we know they're working on it, but some other things going on as well, I guess. So they're trying to juggle. I mean, not only is Congress still trying to evaluate, for example, the testimony of David Grush and still trying to get him back in a skiff, all of that. though, I don't think the skiff is quite the sort of magic bullet that people think it is here. I mean, because a related question is, well, even if you can get him into a skiff, would the people that he's briefing to have the sufficient security clearance and need to know

to actually take that briefing from him, even if you could get him in? So that's not necessarily the answer. But the other thing, of course, that's coming up fairly soon is that the next. newly created task force on the declassification of federal secrets is going to be looking at UAP and USOs. So again, one of the first things I think that they will now need to grapple with is the question, how much of the central allegation here that we've had crashes, we have craft and bodies, and we're trying to reverse engineering them, how much of that narrative is maybe a false narrative. So that should almost be one of the first things that they should ask. And obviously,

they need to get the witnesses back in, but also using subpoena if necessary. And the task force doesn't have power of subpoena. But James Comer, as head of the House Oversight Committee does and has said that he'll get it for them if they need it. And bring in. Bring in. some of the people from the Pentagon who are responsible for this. It should be easy because somebody, when the Office of SecDef sent out that memo, somebody, the subject matter expert will have drafted that letter for them. And it's very easy or should be very easy to follow that chain. Yeah, and it's really interesting because, and I'm glad we get to get your take on it,

because it is one that I guess strays away from the main takeaway from that article from the Wall Street Journal talking about a lot of this is just basically cover for secret tech and secret operations and that your take on it really is more of we should welcome the article because it puts the UAP subject out in the open more for consideration while other people are looking at it and I think probably the majority of the UFO community is looking at it as they're just trying to say that none of this is true when it's all by them the entire time. So it's interesting to hear that other side. Well, yeah. And this is where people's misunderstanding, I think, of often what journalism is comes into play. So believer elements in the UFO community sees on this as evidence of a

disinformation campaign, a sci-op, a hit piece, whatever, however they frame it. Conversely, debunkers, you know, they don't come out of this smelling of roses either because they, again, sort of twist it their way and are framing it as a sort of snarky see, told you there was nothing to see here and it was all made up, whereas that's a misrepresentation of what the article actually says. So, So they are doubling down on their beliefs. And everyone at both ends, both extreme ends of the belief spectrum, the true believers and the diehard debunkers, everyone is kind of seizing on this, using it, shoehorning it into their preconceived beliefs about UAP and sort of using it as a cudgel to hit the other side over the head with. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's really interesting to see the different responses and reactions to it on both sides, right? And, you know, I can't help but to wonder, Nick, did you see practices like this, the ones that are being alleged in the article?

Did you see practices like this in your own time at, that's part of the British Ministry of Defense? I'm not going to go into specifics here, but I'm fairly sure you and I have discussed previously, for example, the Calvin incident and those mysterious photos. And I'm not going to go down this road too far, but suffice to say that I have been accused myself of having talked up the extraterrestrial possibilities in relation to the Calvin photograph in order to hide the fact that this may well have been Black Project Tech. And again, I'm not going to go into too many specifics here except to just report that the allegation has been made.

But again, there's no getting away from the fact that the Calvin incident took place on August 4th, 1990, literally two days after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. So, you know, people can draw their own conclusions from that. But no, with a wry smile, I will say this is not a new allegation for me. And indeed, I've been at the center of such allegations myself. So I completely understand, completely understand where this article is coming from. And I mean, on that note, and I'll just throw this out here because I know you take it with good graces

and pretty much every time that I've had you as a guest on the show, which I'm always happy when you can make it because I always love discussing these things with you. I usually get comments, it's always on Twitter, as we know, where people are saying, why do you keep talking to this guy?

He's a disinformation agent. What do you say to the people who continuously bombard me with? Why do you keep talking this guy? He's a disinformation agent. Well, it's a lose-lose situation. You know, if I ignore those accusations, I'm just accused of trying to dodge the question. If I address them and obviously deny them, the response is the classic, well, he would say that, wouldn't he? And so, you know, I can't win with that.

If I say to you, you know, Stephen, I'm not still working secretly for the government. I don't have any role in putting out false narratives, disinformation, sciops. You know, nobody who really believes that is going to say, ah, thanks for clearing that up, Nick. Right, we'll move along. No, they'll say, oh, yeah, he's very slick. He's got those lines polished.

Absolutely. So I can't win. So, you know, look, when you have a background as somebody who's looked at the UAP, from inside of government. You are always going to be the bad guy to elements in the conspiracy theory, elements in the UFO community. You're always the villain. Every story needs a villain. And for the UAP story, I am the villain. Or certainly I'm one of the villains. Clearly there are now other voices inside of voices here. So this is always going to come up. And the other thing is, I think what plays to that is that, in a sense, I don't tell either side what

they want to hear, which makes me unpopular with everyone. I could pick a side and at least be popular with 50% of people. I could either say, yeah, they're here, it's all true. Or, no, it's all nonsense. And at least I would be embraced by the believer community or the skeptic community, but I take a more complex and nuanced view, which ironically is the view that anyone who's looked at this from the inside sort of almost has to take, because that's where the data bring you. And I say, look, you know, clearly a lot of this is misidentification and hoax and false narrative, as we're discussing here, but some of it is not. I don't know for sure that this is a non-human intelligence, but I don't rule out that possibility. And by taking that

middle ground, that more nuanced view, I give neither side what they're looking for. And so both sides turn against me. But look, I'm not doing this to be popular. If I was, I wouldn't be doing it at all. I'm doing it because I'm interested in this and because I think it's important. After all, few questions could be bigger than are we alone or not in the universe and are we being interacted with in some way by a non-human intelligence. And if so, what's the agenda? There's hardly any question that's bigger than that and more impactful on a societal level. And absolutely, that engages me. Yeah, I'm with you as far as that question, right? It keeps us coming back. It keeps us investigating. And I think we can say with breaking news here on UAP that Nick Pope has denied being a

disinformation agent. I was kidding. But look, here's another thing that makes me unpopular. And this was, again, this was actually the central or certainly the opening point in this recent Daily Mail article. I put out a tweet a few days ago, and I don't have it in front of me, but I said something to the effect of, UAP have gone from fringe to mainstream. Congress is engaged. Yeah. Let's not go down, let's not go too far down the paranormal rabbit hole or inject too

much religiosity or spirituality into the narrative. Otherwise, we risk losing this. Let's keep the focus on defense, national security, and safety of flight. And for that statement, which, as I say, the Daily Mail kind of opened on, arguably led on that plea, I've been, I think, attacked by a lot of people in the community who, for example, major on alien abductions. It's like, well, what about the experiences here? Why are you throwing them under the bus? And my response is, look, you always play your strongest hand, right? And the strongest hand we can play with Congress is, as I said in the tweet, defense, national security and safety of flight. We are going to lose the room.

We have the ear of Congress in Senate, the House, the Armed Services Committees, the Intelligence Committees, the Oversight Committees. We have their ear. We're going to lose that. if suddenly everything is like demons and angels and gods and devils, you know, whatever your religious belief. I'm not disparaging people's religious beliefs. Those religious beliefs arguably should not be inserted into a discussion about, you know, UAP data detected on multiple sensor platforms, signature management, measurement and signature intelligence, conversations on those topics taking place in the Senate or the House.

That's not the place for those religious beliefs, those spiritual beliefs, those kind of fascinations with the occult and the paranormal. There are other forums where that would be more appropriate. If you're religious, you know, take that to church and do that in private, but don't bring it to a Senate intelligence briefing on UAP detected on military satellites. Hey, guys, so before we get back into the conversation, I just want to talk about something that affects all of us. and it's scary. Starting something new, right? It's hard and it is kind of terrifying

because you think about all the work that goes into it. Are you going to be able to succeed? What new challenges am I going to face? It's that uncertainty. But I know how that is, because I can think back when I started UAP, I was just hoping for the best. And it's just like that when you're starting your own business.

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Well, Shopify helps you find your customers with easy-to-run email and social media campaigns. But what if you hit that wall and you get stuck somewhere? Well, no problem because Shopify is always around. to share advice with their award-winning 24-7 customer support. Tackle all those important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments, to analytics, and more. No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. Everything is all in one place with Shopify,

making your life easier and your business operations so much smoother. So it's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash UAP. Go to Shopify.com slash UAP. That's shopify.com slash UAP. Yeah, it's really interesting because that is a way that's, this conversation tends to take a turn as far as, well, look, you know, podcast discussions are different than, you know,

people talking in front of congressmen and congresswoman. Like those are two, and in my view, those are two different things, right? We can do an episode about the, the connections, a possible connection between spirituality

and the questions of religion and the UAP discussion. But I think what's interesting to your point is when you talk about how much should that be brought up, will it scare Congress away? Do you see some of that happening, Nick? Do you, is, was that a cautionary tale from you

because you actually see it? Or you have seen it happen in the past and you don't want to scare them away again? Or is it just is the point to say, listen, let's focus on the basics here first, on what's going to get them to the table? And then maybe once we get something out of it, we can actually go into the deeper existential things after that. I've seen it happen before and I'm seeing it happen right now. And that's why I'm speaking out. I've seen it before in the United Kingdom when we had a former chief of the defense start. So that's the British equivalent of the chairman of the joint chiefs here in the US.

I've seen it. We had this chief of the defense staff engaged on this, speaking out about it in the British Parliament. And then this maverick priest called Paul Ingallsby inserted himself into the narrative, got the ear of this particular individual, Lord Hill Norton, and suddenly started. injecting his sort of apocalyptic end times Christianity into the narrative. And, you know, we lost some ground there. And I see it happening now. I don't want to name names because I like some of these people. And I count them, I count them as colleagues and in some cases friends.

But when I see it happening, and I do see it happening right now, I say we are going to lose this. people, you know, I respect your beliefs. I'm not, I'm not disparaging even the reality of some of this. I don't know, but there is a time and a place for everything. And like I say, the time for talks about the Blessed Virgin Mary appearing before people, that sort of talk does not sort of logically lend itself to a Senate Intelligence Committee briefing on UAP. Right. I mean, particularly when they're discussing the scientific and technical aspects of of this being detected across multiple sensor platforms,

of signature management, which shows there's active, you know, intelligence behind these objects that we have electromagnetic fields. I mean, to quote someone or the other, why would God need a spaceship? So let's separate out, you know, people's religious beliefs, which I totally respect, and people's spiritual experiences. And let's say, look, let's put that in its place. But let's separate it out from the very scientific and technical briefings and investigations that we should be having on UAP. Let's not conflate them. Otherwise, we are going to lose Congress on this. And I see it

happening. And this ties in with something else which will lose us, the congressional engagement. I think before the last election, the congressional engagement on UAP was bipartisan. And for every Marco Rubio, there was a Kirsten Gillibrand. For every Tim Burchett, there there was a Chuck Schumer. Now I see the Democrats slightly falling away on this, and there's no denying the fact that a lot of the people driving this forward are, I think you could say probably Maga Republicans, that Tim Burchett, Anna Paulina Luna, Nancy Mace.

I mean, great people. I mean, and I really respect a lot of. of what they're doing. The problem is that if this does, rightly or wrongly, if this does become seen and perception is everything here, if it becomes seen, this is some sort of MAGA conspiracy believe. All the Democrats who've previously associated with themselves with this subject and involved themselves in some of the amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act, in some of the committee hearings, whether it's Chuck Schumer, AOC, Kirsten Gillibrand, all those people will quietly disengage for political reasons and because they don't like this

injection of religiosity into the narrative, whatever reason they will fall away, we will lose the bipartisan nature of congressional engagement, and then we risk the whole thing unraveling. Wow. Have you seen some indications of that? Because, you know, just from the outside looking in, and it's really intriguing that you see these parallels and you're seeing even some things behind the scenes that might show that there's some shy in because of the religious issue that pops in. And I mean, it's hard not to see the Transparency Task Force is made up of all Republicans. Now, was that circumstance? Was that happenstance, Nick? Or was it because of what you're saying? Are we seeing a fall away? from the Democratic side because of politics, because maybe they don't want to be the lone Democrat in a group full of Republicans, which is a shame if that's the case.

But do you think is that what we're seeing? That's exactly what we're seeing. And I don't want to go too far in specifics. I mean, I think if you look at it with my remarks in mind, if people take those comments, hold them up and compare it to what's happening, I think people will say, oh, yes, I get what he's saying. But I've heard a few things behind the scenes as well.

And I mean, all of this is telling me we are at a crossroads here. We're at a critical juncture where we're either going to continue with the bipartisan congressional engagement. Or we are going to see the Democrats quietly drop out of the conversation. And we get to see this whole thing kind of become. more associated with Maga Republicanism. And, you know, look, I support a lot of that agenda. I don't think anyone, anyone who follows my ex-feed has any doubts about that. Sure.

But, but this is an area where we need to be scrupulously bipartisan, because UFOs, UAP, is not a party political issue. Right. And we need to protect the integrity of that by, bipartisanship here. And I see that it's, it's being chipped away. And I think a combination of things could could very quickly see all this unravel. Well, I'll ask you this before we're done, Nick. If that's the case, right, if some of this is losing momentum within the halls of Congress because of bipartisanship, because of, you know, religious aspects being inserted into the

conversation on the congressional side, again, having that conversation on a podcast, on social media is probably a lot different than having in front of Senate and committee members. But with that said, how do they get back on track in your eyes as far as on both of those issues, on the bipartisan issue and on trying to focus more on the defense and science side of things to keep Congress engaged on the terrestrial issues? Well, I think your mention of science is very timely there. That's one way to do it because, again, science should not be party political, even though, of course, we've seen science misused and made extremely political during the pandemic, for example, follow the science, became a literally a sort of Soviet era propaganda slogan. But obviously, when it comes to UAP, there are some very powerful voices involved here, people like Professor Avi Ler.

Loeb, Gary Nolan, and some others. So kind of keeping science apolitical and just data-led and completely following the scientific method, that's one thing. The other thing is, look, it's easy for people, there are a number of, of, you know, for example, top-tier podcasters, news broadcasters, who have people like Tim Burchett. on their speed dials and it's very easy to get people like that on the show and they're important voices and and have a lot to bring but i would say my plea would be have the more difficult conversations make sure in line with my plea that we don't lose the democrats kind of reach out to the people like kirsten jillibrand and chuck shoo,

and AOC, who have previously been involved and get them on and get them continuing to engage on this and maintain the bipartisan nature of this conversation on UAP. Yeah, very really, really interesting discussion, Nick. I got to tell you, I mean, to consider some of this, it's, it's some of the portions that really I haven't even considered, to be honest with you, as far as trying to keep some of these things separate to keep the conversation moving forward because it does kind of feel like it's grown a little stagnant on the congressional side. And I don't know if that's just because they're hitting roadblocks or because they're so consumed with some of the other things going

on in Congress when it comes to passing bills and things of that nature. But I mean, it sounds like really that I don't know, maybe they're just hitting roadblocks that they weren't hitting before. I think it's all of the above. I think clearly there's a lot going on domestically right now that's taking people's attention. But I think, you know, playing devil's advocate, you can say that's always the case. Things are always going to be going on. If it isn't one thing, it's going to be another. But yes, you are right. We have stagnated to some extent. We've had Lou Elizondo testify. We've had David Grush testify. We are getting more whistleblowers coming out, but they're getting less and less mainstream news media traction and the new

round of whistleblowers, if I can call it that, but people like Matthew Brown and Jake Barber, they're not getting into the New York Times or Politico or the Post. They're getting, as we would say back in the day, it's a straight to DVD, a movie. They're getting straight to the podcasters and not necessarily the top tier ones either. So, I mean, there are some exceptions to that. But it's like the shock value is getting less and less. And people in the mainstream news media, even if they're being reached out to about these stories, they're passing on them.

I mean, David Grush, for example, you know, yes, he got some mainstream news media coverage when he came out. But the people pitching that story, to the times and the times passed so so it's it's what we're seeing now is is diminishing returns it's not necessarily that the whistleblowers have less important things to say in many ways the claims are becoming more extreme and there's a danger there of course in and of itself but it's because the kind of shock value the surprise value is is gone down when the times ran there the their groundbreaking story in December 2017.

They ran it because it was the official policy of the US government to say that was no interest in UAP and no one was working on it. They had an absolute admission that that was then not the case. So it was big news. But another whistleblower on the same thing and another and another, the mainstream news media

is kind of saying to itself, yeah, we've kind of done this, this whole kind of intelligence, community insider says UFO is a real thing. We've done that story. So it gets harder and harder. We have stagnated. And the risk is, and I alluded to this a moment ago, the risk is that to sort of get past that roadblock, we need something more and more spectacular. And the risk is that we then bring in a false narrative, you know, inadvertently, I'm sure, but but we bring in a false narrative that's been created and then we just end up in a situation where we'll throw out the baby with the bathwater and everyone's just going to say, oh, you know what? This is all just stems from a handful

of Pentagon folks putting out a false narrative. Move along. There's nothing to see. That's the danger. Yeah. Do you think, you mentioned Matthew Brown and Jake Barber. Those are two names that came to mind when you were talking about trying to keep the religious aspects separate when it comes to the main conversation. And those are two guys who have been pretty open as far as the spirituality side anyway and how it connects to all this. So, I mean, do you think whistleblowers such as them should be cautious in how they approach that? Or is it just that's their story?

That's their experience. And they're just going to, they're going to say it. Yeah, look, I'm, I'm kind of, I suppose a libertarian at heart. I mean, I don't, I don't police what anyone says or thinks or believes. And if this is genuinely their belief, which I'm sure it's. is and if this is their truth, then let them speak to that. All I'm saying, I'm just commentating on the situation as somebody who's done this myself from inside government. And I'm saying, I can see the risks here. So, you know, again, like I say, I'm not going to police what they say,

but I'm sure they choose their words carefully. And I would just inject it into the conversation and say, you know, hear me out. You know, can't you at least appreciate that we do risk losing this congressional engagement if, A, we go too far down the paranormal rabbit hole and inject all this religiosity and spirituality into the narrative. And B, as we were discussing a moment ago, if we lose the bipartisan nature of the congressional engagement we have, those two factors. are going to undo the progress that we've seen in the last nine years

since the New York Times article on ATIP and the U.S. Navy videos dropped. Wow. Well, some really big stuff to consider here today, Nick. I mean, really, really kind of shook my world as far as things that maybe I was missing as, you know, what to consider, what to look at, and maybe some things are going on behind the scenes that I wasn't even thinking about. So thanks for dropping the knowledge here today. for dropping all these possibilities.

Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. So before we go, though, how do people find you? If they're not following you already, as far as everything with ancient aliens and social media and any new projects that you're working on? My website is nickpop.net. And my ex, formerly known as Twitter, handle,

is at Nick Pope, MOD. The MOD, of course, stands for Ministry of Defense, and I'm sure it's just going to cause people to double down on those beliefs that I'm still secretly working for the government. But I'm not, but I would say that, wouldn't I? At Nick Pope, MOD. We tried to bury some of those rumors here today, so I don't know if we were successful at all, but figured we'd give it a shot. Any ancient alien tour dates coming up? Yes, ancient aliens live tour.com.

We're taking a summer break at the moment, but we'll be back in the moment, but we'll be back in the the fall and the winter with, I think, somewhere between 15 and 17 live shows all around the United States. And yeah, hopefully coming to a city near you. Well, maybe we can try to link up if you guys come back down to South Florida. That would be cool. Hopefully. I'm not sure that we've got any Florida shows. I know that we've got two coming up in Texas. I think only one is on the website at the moment. We've got a lot. We got one in D.C. Which is very interesting because last time we played D.C. or whichever part it was where we got a lot of IC folks. And we even had some interesting people back in the green room afterwards there.

Yeah, anyway, that's another story. It's probably going to refuel those conspiracy theory. But yeah, anyway, suffice to say, we have shows all around the country. So I'm in California to, yeah, all over. Very cool. Maybe that's another story for another time. We'll see. Nick, thanks so much for doing this, spending some extra time here today to talk about it all.

Really enjoyed the conversation and the different perspectives and all this. I think it gave us a lot to think about. So thank you. Thanks, Stephen. Thank you again to Nick Pope for that. Fascinating discussion there. And look, that's what it's all about, right? Maybe you agreed with it.

Maybe you didn't. Maybe it was like half and half. And that's the beauty of UAP. It's up to you. And I love having those discussions where there's a lot of gray area there for things to kind of chew on and think about and discuss after the fact. So really good stuff from Nick Pope. And I appreciate his insight on that and his perspective. It was different, which I thought made for a good conversation.

So I really enjoyed that one. And I hope you did too. Oh, by the way, I wanted to correct myself because I knew I got it wrong in the moment when I mentioned the case in 1897 in Texas where the, They had the supposed UFO crash and the alien bodies that were actually buried after the crash, the way that story goes. That was in Aurora, Texas, not in Stephenville. That's a separate sighting that took place. That was a more recent siding to Stephenville, Texas. It was like a mothership that came over.

Aurora, Texas is the one I was talking about in 1897, where the reports say that a UFO crashed with alien bodies, where they actually had a proper Christian burial for the alien bodies as the story goes. That's what I was referring to there. But that is a question that I would love to ask for someone at the Wall Street Journal or someone who is, I guess, promoting this theory that it's all one giant sciop. I think we forget about all the other cases pre-Roswell, pre-1947. Case in point, the Aurora, Texas crash. I mean, it was a UFO crash.

It was Roswell, you know, like 50 years before Roswell. And I think people sometimes only think about the UFO phenomenon like 1947 on. And it was going on way before that. So I would love to hear the Pentagon's theory or the Wall Street Journal's theory and how they would love to explain anything pre-Roswell as a sci-op. I would love to get that explanation. So just throwing that out there. I thought that was an interesting caveat to the whole discussion. But also, I mean, again, just going over some of those other things with Nick Pope about, you know, what about the congressional witnesses?

And this is where Congress needs to step in. And I thought that was a good point as well, you know, saying, hey, look, we've spoken to the Tim Galadette's, to the Lou Elizondos to all these different people who have come out and sworn David Grush, right, who have come up and sworn to us that said, yeah, these things are going on. Yes, we have crash retrievals. Yes, UAPs are real. These things are out there. And, you know, are they being tricked? Are they part of the sciop? I mean, now, I'm not saying that they are.

That's not my thing. I'm commenting on what Nick Pope is saying there. And I think it's a good point that this is a big accusation that the Wall Street Journal made. And it deserves some answers from all those involved. So really interesting. Again, you heard me say there at the end, a lot to chew on, a lot to consider from Nick Pope. That's why I really enjoyed that conversation because it kind of, have put forth some new ideas, some new perspectives, some new points of view after this article

that is still making waves about a week later. It's pretty wild. And then again, to bring in the religious aspect. And I think you heard it. You know, I mentioned that how serious he was. I've never really seen him that serious before when he said, we need to stop interjecting the religious discussion with Congress. We need to keep it nuts and bolts national security in order for this to advance. Again, his opinion, you know, I don't know if I agree or disagree. That's not really up to me. But I think my point was when I wasn't really a rebuttal was more along the lines of, you know, in the flow of the discussion, which was, that makes sense, I guess, right? When it comes to the congressional part of things, maybe, you know, kiss, keep it simple,

stupid, right? The old acronym there. But it's different, in my view, anyway, on the podcast, and this is where it's kind of more free roam, free reign to have these open discussions, to put the ideas out there, to have these conversations. So it's different when you're a podcast where you know, and I know I love having, I love that part of the discussion. How does it all mix in with the spiritual side of things? And I've asked that many times, many different guests to have that part of the discussion. But, you know, maybe it isn't ready for the congressional stage, if you will. Maybe, maybe he's right.

Maybe it is best to keep it simple, stupid, right? To have that nuts and bolts discussion of national security, keep it to that. again, you know, it's something to consider, but that's why I love this one so much, because there was a lot to think about, you know, all these afterthoughts. So thanks again to Nick Pope for that. Really enjoyed it. And I think we're going to enjoy what's coming up. I keep mentioning Scott Roder.

To be fair, in the interest of full disclosure, today was supposed to be my conversation with Scott Roder. But this popped up with Nick Pope. It was timely. It was time sensitive. You know, what Scott and I talked. about is something that I can present to you next week. So I kind of made the last second decision to move some things around to kind of shuffle the

deck here, bring out Nick Pope today since that was more time sensitive. And then we'll bring back in Scott Roder next week to pick up on some new topics, some new evidence that he's come across. Really fascinating stuff, actually, with the Vegas case and with MH370. He actually started to finally dig in. into those videos very seriously. And I got his real true take on that for the first time. So that'll be next week, along with Matt Laslow, who does a great job.

Speaking of Congress, I'll be able to ask him about these things on the next episode of UAP because he and I are going to be speaking. And we talk about what he knows from Congress. This is a guy that has his ear to the floors of the congressional halls. He talks all these people, gets a lot of exclusive reports from D.C., from the congressional members. A lot of the news that breaks from like Nancy Mace or Eric Burleson or Annapalina Luna or Tim Burchett, it usually ends up coming from Matt Laslo because he's there.

He's entrenched. So looking forward to presenting that conversation. A couple of really good ones next week. Try to keep the flow going here on UAP. I hope you've enjoyed all this. I know I have and I love bringing it to you. So it's trust me, it's all my pleasure. I'm just happy that you enjoy it as well.

But that's going to do it for now here on UAP. make sure to continue to follow along wherever you get your podcasts on all the major platforms on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, all the big ones, just search UAP, you'll find it. And on social media at UA podcast on YouTube and at UA podcast 850 on Twitter and TikTok. You can also send me messages on those platforms or a direct email at S-Dieneruap at gmail.com. That's S-D-I-E-N-R-U-A-P at gmail.com. but that will do it for now. Thank you again to Nick Pope for giving us that perspective and giving us a lot to think about.

Really good stuff. So on that note, thank you all again for everything. Thank you for all the support, the kind words and the messages. It means everything. So thank you so much. And glad you're sticking around.

Hopefully you come back next time. So until then, it's Stephen Deiner here saying, be well. Thanks again. We'll talk again soon right here on UAP, the Unidentified Alien Podcast.