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California Institute of Integral Studies interviews Curt Jaimungal on Consciousness, Spacetime, UFOs, and the Limits of Science
December 4, 2022
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Kurt, thank you so much for being here. Kurt has a fascinating podcast, videos on YouTube, where he has interviewed some extremely interesting people. It's one of the most thoughtful, interesting, and I think, in many respects, fascinating
podcast that I know of. There's no attempt to try to sort of insert unnecessary humor, which some shows try to do and I actually find kind of frustrating sometimes because it just ain't that funny.
Um, and, um, yeah, and you've touched on some topics that I think would be of, of real interest to us here. Uh, and now the show is called theories of everything. And of course, you know, theory, there are, there are any number of theories of everything. Um, but you also have a really strong focus on consciousness. And, and recently, uh, uh, you have,
brought in a lot of people who are kind of big players in a field that's exploded in the last five or 10 years, which used to be known as UFOs, UAPs. And there has been a real significant shift sort of in the degree of acceptance and openness. There are still people who want to dismiss it.
whatever it is because that's of course another one of the interesting things is what is the it that we're referring to. You've had any number of people on your show and they can range from people who are interested in technology in extraterrestrials to people who have like Jacques Vallee who have very different very
different views that drawn on mythology, and very much on consciousness as well to attempt to explain what's going on. So we thought this would be an interesting topic. And maybe Kurt, you could start just by telling us a little bit of what got you into doing this in the first place, and how did you get to sort of frame it this way and decide who you were going to invite on your show?
Firstly, thank you so much for the compliments. I appreciate that. I hope I live up to them. So how did I get into this? I almost have always been interested in math and physics, particularly the largest mysteries in math and physics, like can you prove the Riemann hypothesis and how do you solve the problem of quantum gravity and so on. And then in school, so I went to university for physics and math.
And then I did stand up on the side. So you mentioned humor and the lack of it in theories of everything. There's a reason for that. Even though I studied stand up in the sense that I used to perform it, I studied comedy. The reason is that I feel like many people inject a joke every once in a while.
for no other reason but it's not necessarily to entertain but it's out of insecurities for one's own inadequacies on the subject and so they detract or they distract and also unless you put in decades into comedy it's not second nature it takes an extreme amount of effort to come up with even one joke because you're constantly generating alternatives when the person is speaking and you're relating it to what they've said before and saying can I make a joke here is there a pun is there wordplay and so on there are many potential humorous paths and then you have to evaluate in real time and then say one I'd rather put my attention on the topic and the guest
So when they're speaking, I'm relating it to what I know. And then I'm thinking, OK, what are my objections? What questions do I have? Regardless, getting back. So I did stand up. Then I went into filmmaking in university and just pursued filmmaking afterward. As I was doing that, I had a documentary, started putting out the interviews for the documentary on YouTube. And that was akin to a podcast. It was just the extra footage from the documentary. But people seem to like it.
So I thought, okay, now that COVID is here, and I'm not doing much, I'm just at home, and I'm always interested in math and physics, always been, why don't I go back to toast to theories of everything, and speak to someone like Donald Hoffman, who everyone says, well, I've listened to much of what he said, and I don't understand what he's saying. Yeah, it's conscious observers, the core, and I find podcasts or general interviews of him to be extremely vague. And I'm thinking, okay, well, he's a scientist,
And he's put out papers, I can read those papers. Luckily, I understand the math. So why don't I just go in, read the papers and then asking questions about it. So I did that. And people seem to like that this technical podcast, this podcast where you go into the math, and you're not afraid to show equations on the screen and ask someone about partially ordered sets and other
Abstruse terminology that ordinarily wouldn't make it into a podcast. So I started doing that people liked it and I love it so much This is like it's banging on all cylinders for me as for how I choose the guests. Well, it's much like I Imagine many people here are in university or taking courses So I have the theories of everything podcast has a point in the sense that it's not just me interviewing people I find interesting
Or having a conversation, let's just have a conversation. That's what most people will say. I'm trying to understand the landscape of theories of everything. I'm trying to potentially build my own toe or at least have my own worldview. Let's say I would like to eventually get to string theory. Well, then I may see something called loop quantum gravity as a precursor. And then I may see something else, certain interpretations of quantum mechanics as a precursor to that. So that I think in terms of prerequisites, like a course. And then I think, OK, well, this guest, while I'm studying for this one, this would help me with studying for this one and so on and so on.
So that's how I choose the guests. That's great. Thank you. Leslie, we have here our my my friend and esteemed colleague, Leslie Combs, who has written some fascinating and important books on consciousness. So I know that that you have some thoughts and you've just seen many of Kurt's shows. And, you know, there are any number of guests that have explored that topic. So I wonder if you have
Any comments or questions, Leslie? Well, I think it's interesting how the topic of consciousness has changed in the last 10 or 20 years. When I first started to be interested in consciousness, it generally was said that to be conscious, you had to be a highly intelligent creature of some kind, probably with language, which meant, of course, human beings.
And now, we're looking at practically anything alive that's conscious, certainly anything with the brain. And the theories, I used to go to the big Tucson meetings once a year, still do sometimes. This was like the biggest conference in the world on consciousness. And I've always been something of a panpsychist. And, you know, they would put us in the back room.
We got a little talk set up for you in the back room at six in the evening before dinner. And that wasn't that many years ago, I think five, six years ago. And now panpsychism is all over the place. David Chalmers is waffling about it.
And then we've talked to these other people, Bernardo Castro. I'm bad with pronunciation. I was very impressed with your interview with him. I was very impressed with him as well. And it seems like he and Goff is the other one that I, Philip Goff, that I really enjoyed and listened to some interviews on. He is a panpsychist.
The field has changed pretty dramatically. And one of the things I've noticed is it used to be that people that talk about consciousness, at least in the brain, mind community, we're very reductionistic, sort of like Daniel Dennett, you know, I heard Daniel Dennett talk a few years at Tucson. And I told my wife, he's a really good talk. And he
He basically did everything but make it go away. He's such a, you know, he's such a materialist. He had three or four kinds of materialism he wanted to talk about. But it's all changed so much. And another interesting trend I see is these philosopher neurology types that are really looking into consciousness.
As they get to midlife and beyond, they sort of get spiritual in a way. You know, Bernardo Castro, when he's all done, he's talking about some kind of almost what they used to call cosmic consciousness, and somehow divvies itself up to individuals. William James talked about that kind of thing too, but he was, you know, he was a great writer about spiritual experiences.
religious experiences and so on. And I heard some of that from Goff, not too much, but there's this tendency, especially among the relatively new panpsychists, to get sort of a cosmic, to get sort of spiritual. And the idea, you know, James metaphor that you could see
islands on the surface, but they're all connected underneath. So I don't know what was your impression? I think you're more up to date on these things than I am right now, because I've been off teaching courses and other topics, but curious to see because you clearly have read and thought about these things.
I noticed that there's a trend between those who are atheistic become more spiritual as they age. I don't know if that's true for those who are more religious. Well, maybe it's been there their whole life. It seems like there's this God shaped hole. So people like Bernardo and even Sam Harris.
Even Larry David, so this interesting, when I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, the show, when you think about it, for someone who's a staunch atheist, the show is about people transgressing on objective morality, subtle social objective morality. It's someone who's pointing out and constantly observing it. There's this moral or spiritual push, and the more that you try to deny it, well, it seems to rear its head somewhere.
As for us all being connected, so firstly, I was an inexorable atheist, an uncompromising and resolute one up until just a few years ago. I'm not a theist now, but I'm certainly not an atheist. I'm extremely open to God, or at least I hope I am. I would say that no, it's obvious we're not connected. If we're connected, it's the quantum fields, and then sure, we're connected to a cup, because you share the same electromagnetic field and so on.
Then I became more open to it, and now I see it as the easiest case to make is that consciousness is fundamental. And I'm a rebel. I'm someone who is a contrarian. So because it's easy to say, it's a good word, right? And because it seems like the almost every single person who studies spirituality believes we're all connected with all one, I just see it as the easiest path now. And so I want to say no, it's not pluralism all the way.
Forget about non-dualism. And I also tend to think that the easiest path is usually the incorrect one. Morally, it's the incorrect one. The primrose path is the one that is the path of least resistance, but it's the path of peril as well. So I'm uncertain if it's all one or what that means. I'm open to it though. Hear that sound?
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I was going to ask you something related to that. There was a book came out a few years ago by Robert
Lanza? Biocentrism? Are you familiar with this? I'm supposed to be familiar with it. He was listed as one of the most influential writers in the United States at the time, because this book has such an impact and he's written a sequel to it. But his argument is pretty simple. That is, as I understand it, for anything to be real, the wave function has to collapse and for the wave function to collapse,
There has to be an observation. In other words, consciousness has to be involved. So his approach is, and he makes a good argument for it, that not only do we not know what's on the dark side of the moon, there is no dark side of the moon. Or it's like the tree that falls in the forest. Does it make a sound? Well, if nobody hears it, it doesn't make a sound. In fact, there's no tree. In fact, there's no forest.
uh everything that is that we talk about and experience sort of like you know bernardo was saying in your interview with him uh mapped onto the inside of her head or something all has to come from the collapse of the wave function which has to come from consciousness so there has to be an observer or there's nothing there it's a strange and simple-minded idea but
His book Biocentrism has been really influential. And he makes a very strong argument. You have to read it or listen to him talk. I found some interviews with him, but I was surprised at what a poor speaker he was. I recommended the book, not his interviews.
There are quantum theories without observers, so it's false to say that we require an observer in quantum mechanics, just so you know. Well, there's some agreement about that now.
Yeah, there's certainly disagreement. But what I'm saying is that you can still formulate quantum mechanics and reproduce all the results that we have without defining an observer as a privileged place for an observer. So for example, someone I'm speaking to tomorrow, his name is Tim modeling, and he has a formulation of quantum mechanics without the observer, he I'm studying him right now. So I'm not able to recapitulate his arguments. But let me see if I could. There's something called the PBR
And Bell's theorem seems to indicate that you have to either do away with statistical independence or locality. And it seems like, hey, maybe we can throw away locality and then you can save that quantum particles indeed have some reality to them prior to them being observed.
all i'm saying is that there exists other interpretations of quantum mechanics where there isn't a privileged place for the observers and i feel like what's happening is that the neil degrasse tyson would say something like oh yeah mystery consciousness mystery quantum mechanics so therefore they're the same haha and he's being snide about it and so i don't like that i do see the point i wouldn't say it with such derision
The point is that, or what I see is people reasoning backward. So for example, with Bernardo Castro, I remember he was telling me, yeah, Kurt, look, the whole universe is cosmic, because and I can even get the tendrils of the galaxies and the filaments, it looks brain like. And I'm thinking, that's such, I call it non disconformatory evidence. So it's evidence that if it wasn't there, it doesn't disconfirm your theory. So if we say, oh, actually, when you look at it from an even greater point of view, it looks nothing like a neural net.
then he would say okay well I still believe in my theory though okay so you're trying to attach your you already have a theory and you're just trying to attach it to the next mystery I understand well I think that's what's going on I imagine that if there's so many mysteries in science that it doesn't need to be tied to quantum mechanics imagine quantum mechanics eventually has some prosaic explanation like were mysteries in the early 1900s that eventually oh okay well there's a photon instead of a wave like there's an actual particle and then photoelectric effect is explained like this
But imagine if people around the early 1900s tied all of their spirituality to the photoelectric effect. Then you find, oh, well, it has some other prosaic explanation. Well, then do you throw out your spirituality? Perhaps not. So I find that what people are doing is they're tying their hopes a bit too much to quantum mechanics. But who knows? Like, well, you know, there's always been this for for for a long time, it's been this tenancy to try to start at the bottom.
So try to understand what's going on at the lowest possible level and build up from there. So if we can understand how quarks and so on are going, we can understand atoms. If we understand atoms, maybe we can understand molecules and so on and building that direction. Just in terms of more of a general philosophy of science,
It's interesting if you can start from the top down. And I wouldn't know how to do that in terms of quantum physics, because they're already at the bottom. But in biology, if you look at ecosystems, for example, I noticed Lovelock just passed away three or four days ago at over 100 years old. Absolutely brilliant man. You know, he's looking at ecosystems as
Self-organizing systems, and you start from the top down with it. In fact, the whole idea of Gaia is that the Earth itself is a system. And, you know, that's been bannered around a lot of New Age talks and stuff. But a lot of people said, genius, he was a very bright guy. And, you know, he did a lot of science besides Gaia. But the idea is that
at least biological systems are to some extent informed and pushed from higher levels. And that seems to be true in the brain, too. Who was the guy that got the Nobel Prize about 20 years ago for his work? He did work in a number of different areas. He was a Caltech. But he was the first person that really started talking about consciousness in the cortex. And he said it hauled around the neurons. That was the term he used.
So it was a top down kind of causality going on in the brain. So I don't know if that makes any sense. I mean, I'm not trying to upstage real quantum physics, which I don't even begin to understand. But I am saying it's interesting that we're trying to always understand the universe from the bottom up. And, you know, there's all this evidence or I don't know what to call it for the answer.
The idea that the universe is put together in some kind of a way that allows life, the anthropic principle, which I think most everybody agrees with. They don't have any idea what the reason for it is, whether it's just randomly happen to be in the only cosmos in the universe that supports life or whether God is sitting at a desk and
arranging things upstairs for us. It sort of screws up once in a while, but it's doing a pretty good job, or what it is. But you know, if you think in terms of the anthropic principle of all the many, many, many variables at all levels of physics and biology that, you know, from the temperature that ice melts right on out,
Yeah, it's a there's a lot of top down thinking involved there or questions involved there. So anyway, I don't mean to run on but yeah, I'm interested if you have thoughts on that. Or if you don't, I'll let you off the hook. But I don't have thoughts on why the constants are the way they are. So that's called the fine tuning problem. Why is it that there's a limited range and we happen to be in it?
And if it was slightly outside of this range, I think there's 26 constants, just minorly tweaked, then galaxies would either implode or explode and so on. And we wouldn't be here. That's strange. I don't know. I need to look into that as for, ah, yes. Strong emergence is what you're referring to. So emergence, we believe that there are emergent properties because water looks smooth, but then we imagine that it's jostling molecules underneath discrete. And then even underneath that there's fields again. But as for strong emergence, can something,
arise from the bottom that creates an upper layer that goes back to influence the lower layer in some non-trivial way that can't always be reduced to the lower layers. I'm extremely open to that. I'm so looking forward to talking to people who have coherent theories about that. It seems obvious, I'm sorry, it seems like the easiest case to make is that reductionism is correct. That's one of the ways that people say, well, the brain is what generates consciousness because, well, no, I've lost my train of thought there, but
It's basically that if you zoom into any part of the universe, you see that the laws of physics aren't broken. So if you zoom into a cell, say, okay, well, it's not breaking any laws of physics here. You look in quantum mechanics, it's not breaking any laws of physics. You look at the galaxies. Well, there are some discrepancies with whether or not gravity should be modified and so on because of dark matter. But as a whole, there are no laws of physics being broken. So if you say you have free will, if you're conscious, then it's
it's a strange form of consciousness without free will but if you have free will well where is that being injected into the laws of physics because they're not broken at any level I don't buy that logic and the reason why I don't buy that logic it's because there are structures in math that can look a certain way locally but then be non-trivially ordered globally so for example a circle if you look locally and all you see is a straight line you would think and every time you observed all you see is a straight line everyone you communicated with on the phone sees a straight line you'd think well the universe is a straight line
however the manifold so you can have a manifold of a circle which is locally like a straight line but it's non-trivially connected so globally it's curved or globally it's a circle in fact any one-dimensional manifold is flat is always going to be locally flat so that is to say that just because something looks a certain way locally that is i look here and i observe no violation of the laws of physics i look here i see no violation no violation doesn't mean there's not some non-trivial violation somehow when they all stitch together
Yeah, you know, you've probably read some of Rupert Sheldrake's work. And, you know, he's been looking at constants, like the constant, the temperature at which different chemicals will liquefy. And these are chemical constants. And he's discovered that over many years, they actually change. If you look at the chemical tables,
So I'm no expert on this, but he has questioned whether, you know, the idea, we've always had the idea that the laws of physics are the same through all time and everywhere in the universe. And he's not saying they're radically different somewhere else, but he is questioning whether that principle is really entirely valid.
The law is an interesting use of the word law in laws of physics. It actually comes from old Catholicism, which is what's right and what's wrong. You break a law, God's law, and then that eventually became solidified into talking about laws and physics. It's sort of a strange
Business. Well, it's just the fact that they follow the laws. So let's imagine right now we think of the theory of everything as well. What are the laws? I think a meta toll is well, why the heck do they even follow them? So just because you found the pattern, why is it not breaking the pattern? And how does it know? How does an electron know to do what it's doing? Maybe that's not the right way to think about it. But then what's the right way of thinking about it? Very interesting. Yeah, very interesting point.
Well, I don't want to take up too much time with my own interests here that we share. But I do want to say that I really enjoyed your discussions of time. I and many of our students here are interested in time, the nature of time, how time works, if time travel is possible, how do people have dreams of the future,
which evidently they do sometimes. And then there are different models, like I think one of your interviewees mentioned, Lee Smolin, who is a great hero of mine as well. He's all about quote, a universe saturated in time. So and I'm a big fan of as is Alfonso Priggin, the idea that time is based on
basically chaos, not entropy, but organization over time. So I don't know what you thought you have. I, you know, there's, we've got so much entertainment nowadays, movies and shows on TV, all time, but time travel, they're absolutely fascinating. But it seems to me that they all assume a block universe.
is what William James called the universe in which everything is fixed. So that 20 years from now, whatever is there is there and that's going to stay there. And that that just can't happen in the universe is process based, you know, like pregazine talks about dynamical systems and creativity in the cosmos. So time has to be I think more as
Sure. Again, the easiest route to go is to say that time doesn't exist, and that's why I like to explore realist time theories.
Because it's just, it's simple to say, hey, look, the laws of physics are the same forward and backward. There's no preference. And so if your experience of time is flowing, well, that's because of entropy. It's a statistical inevitability. It's not something in the laws of physics themselves. It's some illusion.
When I mentioned earlier, Tim modeling, who has quantum mechanics without observers, he says the only way, at least for him, that he does that is by positing real time, that time moves forward, that you can't posit an extra structure called the foliation. So you can split space time up into time slices of so that you can split space time up. And then there are people like Nicholas Gisson, who says, actually, the whole problem of thinking that time, well,
more than one problem of physics comes from assuming something called classical logic. So classical logic is what we all learn as logic. That is, you can't have a contradiction. So a and not a can't be true unless you have the principle. So unless everything is true, a and not a can't be true. And there are there are other formulations of logic. One is called intuitionist logic. That's something that computer scientists are familiar with. And apparently,
I've forgotten how it goes. But Nicholas Gisson believes that in intuitionist logic, firstly, that should ground physics. And secondly, when you have intuitionist logic, that that gives a process to physics, where each point in time is different than the last and the world is constantly unfolding. So there's a direction as well. It's not so foolish to think that time is real. Right now in physics, it's considered, I would say the consensus is time is some illusion, at least in my experience from
interviewing people and reading. I don't think that that's so foregone that time is real. By the way, interestingly, Tim Maudlin, I don't know what he means by this, because right after this, I have to go and study. But Tim Maudlin says that Einstein has taken to have
Interesting. Well, Alfonso, do you wanna
I just want to say how much I appreciate how you are engaging with these very complex and difficult questions that don't have a clear answer by any means and where in some cases we don't really even know what an answer would look like. My own interest, if I can put it in
You know, very casual terms, if you will, is is I've always been fascinated and well, how do you study weird shit? How do you so how do you study stuff like, you know, what UFOs you at UAPs, right? I mean, a lot of people wouldn't just say it's weird. They would say it's just nonsense. Right. And and my experience has been that in these cases, it's it's not always
possible to have exploratory conversations where people are thinking together, not getting too attached to a particular point of view, and remaining open to possibilities, to seeing alternatives, to seeing things in different ways. And that's what I really appreciate about your show, too, is that you bring in all these guests who have different perspectives and sometimes
perspectives that are quite different from each other, but you engage them in a way that is generative that lets me as the viewer sort of understand what the argument is and where it doesn't become sort of, well, he said this and I said that, and where it becomes sort of a
a way for us to get a view of this perspective and then sort of think through it together, which is something that I think generally in society today, we're not being very good at, particularly if we have kind of differing opinions. So I just want to say that I really appreciated that. And of course, this is also my my way of kind of initiating a little bit of a conversation about UAPs. But I also want to say what I what, you know, as somebody who
This is why we get into this stuff.
I mean, this is why we do it because there are things that compel us that we're excited about that we want to find out more about and ideally because we want to be in a community where we can explore these things together and and
I don't know if you've been following some of the discussions on Twitter in the sort of the UFO realm, but things there get ugly pretty easily. And it seems like everybody knows what's going on. This person is a shill. This person believes the space brothers are coming here. The other person has had the anal probe.
Everybody is so certain about everything, right? And yet, at the same time, I think in the discussions that you've had with people like Luis Elizondo, who was the head of the Pentagon's ATIP, sort of, you know, you call it the UFO desk, if you will, right?
You're actually encouraging people to even go beyond what they might say normally. And first of all, I wonder, how did you get into this? Because it's not immediately obvious sort of a transition from physics into UAPs, right?
As for do I follow people on UFO Twitter, I don't. I don't follow ufology, quote unquote ufology. I don't demean it in any way. It's just that it's so complicated. I remember the first time I was, well, one of the first times I was being interviewed about UFOs. First thing I'm wondering, why the heck are you interviewing me? And the whole time it was essentially the interviewer giving me a lesson.
It's to the basics, like certain basics, which I've already forgotten in UFO history and certain names. Like I didn't know who Jacques Vallee was. I'm like, Vallee, how do you spell that? Okay. Let me write that down. Okay. So who was Bob Lazar? Okay. No, I think I saw a video of Lazar. Yeah. That one's false because I got into this because of Bob Lazar, which I'll get into. Oh, interesting.
And then as for the talks on Twitter, it's generally more about who is credible and who's not. So it is more along the lines of who's a shill, who's a quote unquote grifter. These are words that I consider, I have a term that I don't think I've ever said, I call them high bounding repudiational words. So essentially, they're words that make you
not want to investigate someone else. And I have a list of them. So platforming is another as soon as you say so and so you're using this to give a platform to so and so, or it's a grifter, or I have a list of these words here. I just found that they're associated with having a certain point of view already and then
not wanting to listen to people because you consider them to be crackpots or pseudo is another one to call someone a pseudo intellectual because most of the most of the time or pseudo science because most of the time the people who are promulgating this quote-unquote pseudo science in order for it to be pseudo science you have to
claim that it's scientific. Much of the time, at least the people that I'm speaking to aren't claiming what they're doing is science. In fact, they're feeling like science is limited because it doesn't incorporate what their experience is or what they're working on. And then also the word pseudo in math is actually a positive in the sense that there's pseudo-Riemannian geometry. You can't have Einstein's equations without pseudo-Riemann. I don't hold pseudo to be such a... As a negative. Yeah, not necessarily. Okay, anyway.
That's mostly what the talk is on UFO Twitter would be about. And I'm talking about the negative parts. I mean, there's perhaps 95% positive would be about who to believe and who not to. And because so and so has a book, perhaps you shouldn't believe them. Right. But how did you get into this? Yeah, how did I get into this? I was wrapping a documentary that I was talking about earlier. So I was wrapping that and the editor for one of the editors for the documentary was saying,
Yeah, you know, you should look into UFOs and I'm like, look, the galaxies are extremely far apart or the next solar system is far apart, even if it's close, it would take a million years or whatever the length of time is. And by then, because there's an exponential curve with technology, they should have progressed, and so on and so on. And I just had many rebuttals that let's say the standard person has who's remotely well, who looks into this even at a
tiny amount. And then he's like, just watch these interviews, Kurt, just watch them. And I forgot what they are. I think one of them was Bob Lazar on Joe Rogan. I'm not certain though. Anyway, I thought, okay, this is interesting. This is interesting. So this is not just loons and so on. And I admit that I was one of these people who were extremely condescending to people who believed in UFOs. Like I'm embarrassed of that. I'm no longer that at all. Like, in fact, it's difficult for me to be condescending to anyone. So and that's just because I see that tendency in myself
Well, that's a beautiful thing. No, sorry, that's false. Let me say I'm extremely condescending to everyone and I fight with myself all the time. So I'm an extremely judgmental person. So if toe comes across as non judgmental, it's my Jungian shadow overcompensated by being extremely non judgmental. I get it. Yeah, I just don't like people that say,
Well, where's the evidence snarkily sitting back like they're so constant, like, look, I just checkmated you. Where's the evidence? Well, where's the evidence for many assaults? Like, are you going to go to someone who's just a sexual assault or another kind of assault and say, Yeah, well, where's the evidence? Clearly, it happens. There are many much of what we experienced that we have no evidence for. We go home, we tell our, our wife or spouse some story, and then about something innocuous. And then what if she says, Well, where's the evidence? You're gonna be extremely upset. Like, what the heck? I'm just trying to tell you what I feel what I saw.
And of course, feelings and experiences can be misleading. Okay, yes, or people can be lying. But these are people so for me to be extremely clear, some of these people who report extremely strange phenomenon like craft, like UFO craft are people that we would believe in any other situation where if there were two of them or three of them saying I saw this person murder this person, that person would go to jail.
Navy pilots.
So anyway, I interviewed Jeremy Corbell because he's a filmmaker. So that was my transition. It was because I'm a filmmaker. So I'm like, okay, Jeremy Corbell, I'm interested in this Bob Lazar story. I'm interested in UFOs just a bit. Let me ask him, let me talk to him about filmmaking. Right. Can we just say one minute Bob Lazar was first
became well known because I think he was the first person to talk about Area 51, which most people will have heard about, which is the secret area around Groom Lake in Nevada, where they do all sorts of experiments with new technology, but where some will claim there is also alien technology and so on.
So and Area 51 is a big deal and it's also become sort of a punchline and but it was Bob Lazar who brought that to people's attention and then it turns out that it really exists. Now Bob Lazar is an interesting character but that I think has to go on record as being correct. Is that right Kurt?
Mm-hmm. So I don't know the history so I don't know if anyone has said a single word about area 51 prior to him Apparently there hasn't been but I don't know. I just haven't there. I don't know how to verify that myself I've heard that many times from people and also some of the people that I consider to be well I don't like to say certain people are credible because that implies certain people are not credible and it's not like I believe everyone it's more like I don't dismiss everyone my immediate Instinct is to not dismiss. That's not the same as believing. I
Yeah, but it's certainly not the same as dismissing, like I do not dismiss, I listen, I try to understand their point of view. And on the Toe podcast, the theories of everything podcast, I listened to them. And if there are objections, it doesn't mean I'm just going to allow someone to speak no matter what and sell their quote unquote BS, if that's what they're indeed pushing. It's more like if I have an objection, I'll cite it in real time. But I'm not coming at it from a place of trying to prove someone wrong or someone correct. So as for
Right, which debunkers, there's a whole world of debunkers, right? All they try to do is say, no, this is bullshit. There's no such thing as UFOs or just balloons or whatever, right? And there seems like they're professional people. That's all they do.
I thank God for the debunkers. Firstly, because I think that they're a necessary position. Anytime you have some position, it's great to articulate the counter position just because otherwise you could be
going off the rails, whichever way it is, whether it's for or against some subject. And secondly, that studying UFOs, the more that you get into it, especially the more you're related to consciousness and trying to conceptualize what consciousness is and how it relates. And geez, like I went through months and months of such debilitating anxiety and destabilizing experiences that I can barely speak about them. I'm still recovering from them. I started to pivot toe to talk more about mental health after that. And speaking about the perils of investigating
Taking these theories seriously, I try to take every theory extremely seriously and have an open mind.
I have this intimation that I have too much of an open mind and I don't mean that in like some self-congratulatory way because people seem to prize that in our culture and I used to say oh when people say hey keep an open mind but not so open that your head falls out I'm like yeah you're justifying your uncle's my goodness that's why you're saying that of course if you say some things reductio ad absurdum how do you disprove without considering that possibility to be absurd already like what if that's true whatever it may be so I go in with an open mind but then what happened
was that I'm listening to so many people and I'm taking it.
I think you'd be terrified if you took the mathematical universe seriously, that we're all just math,
I think you'd be terrified if you truly took what it means to be one seriously, like we're all one. I think almost all of it's extremely well, geez, like these people when they say, oh, I'm studying so and so you're studying it as if it's clinical on a piece of paper distancing yourself from it. You don't know what it's like to truly believe it. And I know because I was interviewing many people saying like, no, I'm taking you serious, like feeling as if I am.
And I can't even speak about it. I have to speak around it because I'm so affected by it. But certain theories that I was like, yeah, no, I'm taking it. It's only until I had an experience of feeling what they meant that I'm like, geez Louise, oh my gosh, I don't want that unless you've had some truth, some quote unquote truth that you feel like recoiling from that you're like, no, no, the world can't be like that. I don't want. Oh my gosh. Then you're not taking it seriously.
So anyway, learning about UFOs and consciousness can be debilitating. I've had to close my mind and it's difficult for me to do because I'm trying to be understanding of everyone. So the way that I'm doing that is simply by going back to math and physics and just studying that and slowly dipping my toes into consciousness. There's this guest called Frank Yang.
Okay, so people have been asking me to speak to Frank Anker. So and I would have spoken to him one year ago when I had no issues with my destabilization. Let's say then I had some episodes. I'll just call it some episode. And since then,
I remember I even told Frank about this in an email, like I have to reschedule it. Then he sent me pages and pages of like, here's what it means. And it means enlightenment and this is awakening and so on you need to do. And I was like, I'm going back into my manic state just reading your emails. I can't even reply to you, Frank. I was speaking to someone they said, Yeah, you've been learning from too many masters. Not everyone is right.
So stop thinking like there's this liberal part of me I'm such a liberal person like I mentioned that I'm judgmental but I'm also liberal in the sense that I want to feel like no everyone's touching the same part of an elephant and it's yeah yeah they're incorrect and how they're saying but there's some interpretation they're not so I'm trying to see how's everyone right and they're incompatible and just shoving pieces of jigsaw puzzles together and it's not good so I have to back up
and start seeing also that so here's a lesson in case anyone else is going through this that my interpretation of what someone means when they say for example that we're all god or that we're all disunified from god or even the word god itself my interpretation or your interpretation may not be what they mean and so i'm ascribing a certain significance to it and then i'm getting carried away by that but i can just she's like just be non-attached just don't attach it then i was like someone was telling me about this and i was like but what if i take my non-attachment seriously
Then what if I'm non-attached to my wife or my wife? Like, I don't want to do something out of being non-attached. Should I be non-attached to? And then she's like, okay, how about this? Don't be so attached to the principle of non-attachment. Then I'm like, that is genius.
There's a famous conversation between Ram Dass and Alan Watts.
which they had had a reasonable amount of wine. And Alan Ross said to Ram Doss, you know, you're too attached to nothingness. And Ram Doss said yes, and you're too attached to women. So that was the attached to being unattached. Yeah,
Kurt, I had the good fortune or the misfortune that one of the first serious books I read about UFOs was Jacques Vallee's book called Messengers of Deception. Right? Remember that, Leslie? And if you start with Vallee, in case some of you don't know that
One of the things that he did in this wonderful book called Passport to Mongolia was to show that a lot of the things that we associate with UFOs today and with abductions and things like that can be found in popular folklore all over the world going back thousands of years. And if once upon a time we had
goblins and fairies and all sorts of creatures, some of which would take you away to a place that you might not come back from or you would come back from transformed. And, and he said, well, now we have, we have these space creatures, right? And his argument really is that it's very much tied into, to the phenomenon is very much tied into consciousness and consciousness plays a central role somehow.
right? And it's also the case that if you fool around with goblins and witches and things like that too much, I mean in the folklore that also can lead to madness, right? So it also suggests that we need to be careful when we start playing around with these phenomena because there's something that seems to be
I agree.
UAP UFO phenomenon is just how it branches out into a lot of different areas because of course there's all the speculation about how much does the government know and so on and so forth but you've had a lot of people on expressing these different kinds of views and I'm just wondering where are you with it all now in terms of your sort of
Where do you stand given what you've come across? Unsurprisingly, I'm on the fence. I don't know. I think that when people say consciousness, that it has to do with consciousness, I think what they mean is that when one takes psychedelics or goes through some extreme meditative state or goes into some extreme meditative state, which is rare, so it's usually psychedelics,
that it feels as if one's being transported to another realm and perhaps even that that realm has been here the whole time and it's extremely convincing it's utterly convincing then you wonder well if that's possible what else is possible what else just pops up throughout the rest of your life what else what else what else and i think this what else is what gets lumped in with consciousness so firstly there's no definition of consciousness at least well there's no definition of consciousness maybe by design because to define it means to limit it and maybe there's something unlimited about consciousness i'm being more mystical there when i speak
But regardless, I think that's what people mean when they say that UFOs have something to do with consciousness as part of this what else that's similar to a psychedelic realm, not equivalent to or you can communicate with beings, they come from some other realm. And I'm using realm instead of dimension just because I'm a persnickety mathematician or someone who studied math and I don't like when people misuse the word dimension.
But anyway, yeah, I think that's what people mean. And as for if it's something concrete, like just our own government, something physical, it's a craft, it's extreme technology. I'm open to that, too. I keep being swayed from side to side to the point where I'm just having to just assess it again, dispassionately, because to be taken away by it too seriously is a bit, it puts me on lubricious ground, and then I'm betwixt and between. Well, it's not a fun place to be. You know, Alan Finick, one of the early
researchers, the astronomer from Ohio State, which I know about because I was there as an undergraduate, you know, he's the one, he's actually in Close Encounters of a Third Kind. He steps out of the crowd with a pipe in his mouth and he has a Van Dyke. And the Frenchman in Close Encounters, as you know, was Jacques Vallee, not the real Jacques Vallee, but he was Jacques Vallee.
Both of these guys spent much of their professional career studying unknown aerial phenomenon. Of course, Jacques Fillet, we're just talking about. And both of them, even Alan Hynek, the astronomer at Ohio State, finally came to the conclusion that they weren't physical objects in the usual sense. That, you know, they weren't like Star Trek's Enterprise.
flew down here at warp five or whatever it is. They had a way of appearing and disappearing. And I'm with you, Kurt, I don't like the word dimension either, because it to me is a line that goes in the particular direction. But there is a lot of talk these days, an awful lot of talk about alternative universes, you know, two or three movies right out right now.
including Dr. Strange, my old comic book hero, coming in and out of other universes. And when I first saw this stuff, I thought, this is crazy shit. And it was even too, too much for me to science fiction fan. But I remember Isaac Asimov, when they first started to talk about alternative universes, wrote a story in which stuff is going between universes. I don't remember which story it was, but
Asimov is a pretty bright guy, you know, he got a new PhD every week, I think. And so where are we with that? I, you know, the thing that has been most convincing to me, not really knowing anything is that we must be dealing with a lot of different levels of technology or levels of whatever it is in the universe, because
There's such a divergence of experiences and reports. They don't seem to come from the same technology or the same creatures. So it's all very strange. Yeah, I agree. I watched a little bit of your interview with Avi Loeb today. Oh, great.
should have been working. I wanted to see that. Did that just come on? Yeah, so that's on. I tried to get that. I was a little too early. And Avi Loeb is the Harvard astrophysicist who is obviously very interested in this topic now. He believes Muamua may have been an extraterrestrial. Well, it was an extraterrestrial object, obviously.
but that it was not a natural quote object, right? And it turns out that he has had some paranormal experiences, right? And he is a major no, is this not correct? Is that not right? Maybe I missed that then. But certainly, Gary Nolan, who is very highly respected immunologist at Stanford is is
involved in this UAP phenomenon big time now and somebody who you know was a potential nominee for a Nobel Prize or and he did have some some experiences that were highly unusual when he was very young and I'm wondering to what extent does having those experiences put people in a position where they say you know I have to just go for it now no matter what
What it takes and the fact that there is more of a discourse that's less stigmatized now will make the general environment more open and allow people to speak more freely about this, right? Yeah, I think so. I think if you have an experience, especially if you're a tenured, you're going to want to use your
your your knowledge to try and find some scientific explanation for or try and find some data that's replicable about it, especially to convince others or to minimize the condescension that you receive. It's right. It's striking if that's the worst. Well, the part of the whole discourse that I dislike the most. I just wish there wasn't so much sneering and jeering and snide remarks. Right.
And there are internal snide remarks between people who hold different positions. And then there's the more general, all this UFO crap, the little green men, right, which which has been very strong. And, and I've often wondered, well, what is it about this, that
this phenomenon that attracts so much sort of scorn and dismissiveness and and you know you felt that UFO sort of represented in some respect a sort of a new planetary awareness in a way right that that as an archetype it sort of represented that and i'm wondering if it isn't sort of
pushing people's buttons where the thought of something not earthly is just something that they have to push away immediately because it just seems, besides any government attempts to dismiss people for their own nefarious reasons,
but because just the whole thought of something not of this earth is just something we can only see in you know a b-movie or something but it's just psychologically too too foreign you know what i mean yes i think that it's such an important topic it's like religion it's not clear to me if there's more surprising and contending in the ufo scene than there is in
politics or politics seems to be the main one. It's not like people bicker about religion like they used to, but still they do. So it's not clear to me if it's more or less than that. Also, when you're in a domain where there's such a paucity of evidence and the evidence is important, then I imagine that the same for religion, by the way. So I imagine that that's going to be the case. So it's understandable. I understand it. I wish it wasn't there, but I understand it. Well, as long as we're
In this general ballpark, I want to mention one of my favorite books. It's not well known. It's called Demonic Reality. D-A-I-M-O-N-I-C. Demonic Reality. Here as I read something. It's a sweeping look at strange otherworldly events in the world around us. UFOs, fairies, phantom animals, visions of the Virgin Mary, alien abduction and mysterious lights in the sky. It's by a guy called Patrick Harper. H-A-R-P-U-R.
But one of the things he points out in the book, and this has been quite a few years since he wrote it, he has a sequel already. But it was sort of interesting, because when I got interested in UFOs, I mean, I'm old, this was in the 50s. I had some of the original levels of one book was called Flying Saucers on the Attack. It was these were the first books that had black and white pictures from Mount whatever it is in California, these
saucer-shaped things. But the interesting thing is, the characters that would get out of these saucers were beautiful blonde-haired people from Venus, and they were very spiritual. So Harper in this book, he says, what's changed over the years in the human psyche? That we don't see beautiful people with long hair from Venus, but we see little green people that nab us in the night and look up our asses.
So there's something going on in the bigger picture that he's, you know, he's a little like fillet, he doesn't really come to a conclusion. But he does point out the sweep of the mythic dimension and how it changes in time. And having lived through this whole thing in the US, in the Midwest, it's true. I mean, we, we were very interested in flying saucers when I was a kid. And
All sorts of aerial phenomenon and nobody talked about them being negative or anything. And of course, what's his name and close encounter the third kind, he wanted to make them very positive. But we don't always get that picture from the stories that we get from abductees and stuff. They're very strange. Or who was it you interviewed that was talking about animal mutilation in Ireland, I won't even go into that.
Yeah, I'm curious what you all think about skinwalker or Alfonso. I hear a lot about it, but never have really looked into it enough to know anything. I listened to the interviews that you had briefly. So
Yeah, some people take it seriously. I really don't know what to make of it. And you know, this is sort of my limit, as it were, it's not something that's fascinated me deeply, apparently, weird things do happen there. But I don't know, it's never been anything that's particularly drawn my attention, to be honest with you. But what what do you make of it?
I just wish some of these skeptics like Mick West would go there and film it. Because apparently it's speaking about a subject that has a little replicable data. People say at Skinwalker, it happens repeatedly. So, okay, why don't you send your most staunch skeptics like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Mick West there pay for them? There's apparently some billionaire who's funding the place. It seems like it wouldn't take much to get them to go. It's just some money like to a billionaire. That's just money. Right.
Right, but I believe Bigelow set up a whole system there with videos and things like that. And in the end, they didn't come up with much that they could show the rest of the world. I mean, unless they're hiding it, for whatever reason, it didn't seem to and which is not to say that nothing happened. But there's also something about these
about the phenomenon, if you will, that doesn't necessarily like to be photographed beautifully, clearly. And there always seems to be some fuzziness about the whole thing, which may be a characteristic of the phenomenon itself, right? Well, there's this great quote from the interview, why don't we have more pictures? Right? You know, I had an experience, something like that at Fendhorn,
community in Scotland. I was in a sacred forest near Finnhorn, some you know about Finnhorn. And I was warned that pictures don't always turn out. And I shot a whole roll of pictures and came home and none of them came out. This was on a digital camera. You know, and it was nothing really weird about it. It was just Finnhorn is this spiritual community in which there are fairies, plant fairies and stuff. They'll make your pictures disappear.
What more can I say? Right, right. Yeah, and even if you try to photograph a seagull, it's going to come out blurry, even with... It's actually extremely difficult to photograph a moving object far away when you don't know when it's coming. Right, right. Mitch Hedberg said that, maybe, Mitch Hedberg was a comedian, and he said, I think Bigfoot is blurry. It's not the photographer's fault. Yeah, yeah.
Should we open it to some questions from the larger community? There's an I love Mitch Hedberg. Yeah, he was one of the greatest, greatest comedians. I've never heard of him. Any questions? If you want to put it in the chat. No.
Maybe they're blurry too. I think we can see some hands raised Alfonso. Oh okay sorry yeah I'm not seeing them here. Thank you. Okay of course I'm in the wrong section where there are no hands raised. I can see Kathy Barnes. Yeah I mean why don't you just start speaking? Yeah so I would love to hear from
You know, we've kind of I hear like, feel like you guys have kind of danced around like who's has an opinion about it in this kind of thing. But I'd like to hear personally, from each of you, if in fact you do believe there's life outside of Earth, or consciousness outside of Earth. Alfonso, you want to start? Oh,
Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think I have anything particularly interesting to say about that. I mean, it seems unlikely to me that there isn't. And yeah, at the same time, I think that there's enough to suggest that
whatever phenomenon we're dealing with may be something other than extraterrestrial. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it seems to be particularly weird and also I think because of the consciousness dimension it may be something else. But you know some people are saying that it's actually
Something or that has been on the planet all this time. It's been here forever. And I think that's a very provocative idea, which would also kind of send us down a particular rabbit hole. So, yeah, I mean, it seems likely to me. And for me, it's only one of the possible interpretations of what's going on. I certainly don't have any fixed view about this at this point.
Well, I'm sort of with Alfonso. I think given the size of the universe, there has to be life out there and plenty of it. But it's pretty widely scattered. And how realistic it is to think that spaceships like the Enterprise can fly from one place to another in any practical way is probably not very realistic.
I recently was looking at a new interpretation of the Fermi's paradox. How do you say it? Why don't we see more life? And it involved a recalculation of how likely it was that life would evolve on any given planet. But it also included the time lag effect of communicating even a light speed between different planets.
are different places. So I don't think our present phenomenon is accounted for by, you know, spaceships made out of metal that travel at super luminal speeds. It doesn't seem like the best bet. I think I'm going to have to go with Heineken and Valais that it's something
Transdimensional if I can use the word or something like that, but I don't know what that would mean. It's just there it is. I thought you said Heineken and I was thinking of the beer, but Alan Heineken. My answer would be that I don't know. I don't have a personal opinion. I would say that it's a non-zero probability. Yeah, that's a good one.
I see some questions here. Kurt, I'd love to hear what you might have to say about how there is no difference between inner space and outer space on the subatomic level.
so inner space versus outer space there's no physics term called inner space or outer space as far as i know something interesting though is when you look out at the star you say oh i wish i could be in space actually technically you're in space there's someone else looking at you so you're just as much a part of outer space as anyone else it's interesting to think about that if the earth wasn't here you'd just be floating like you're just in outer space well anyway that's all there's just space i don't know about inner versus outer hey i sound like a non-dualist
So forgive me if I read another one. Do you think that there is a connection between how people engage with their imaginations today as opposed to in years past when you consider the divisiveness that has come into the discourse on UFOs or aliens? Can you mind rereading the question? Yeah. Do you think there is a connection between how people engage with their imaginations today as opposed to in years past?
When you consider the divisiveness, I never know how to pronounce that. I usually say divisiveness that has come into the discourse on UFOs or aliens. Yeah, it seems to me like UFOs are a new way of labeling something that may be some phenomenon that's been here in the past. The reason I say that is that some people have suggested that in different accounts, like
There are accounts of flying Roman shields, which sound extremely similar to UFOs. And certain cave paintings, they're what look like UFOs, certain religious stories, there are what would be, we would probably now describe them as UFOs. So it's unclear if this is a new phenomenon. And we're now just calling them UFOs, unidentified flying objects. I think someone called them ships in the sky before. So you have to also view it through the interpretive lens of the culture at the time.
So it seems clear that there's a difference between how people imagine UFOs to be today versus 2000 years ago, because we have an entire new vocabularies like computers. So that's that. I don't know about the divisiveness. Well, I don't imagine people are arguing about it, though people argued about religion. So maybe if religion is predicated on UFOs to some degree, then perhaps that's it. Well, here's a question or, I don't know, observation or something. There's a book that came out a few years ago called UFOs.
by Leslie Kern, G-E-A-R-N, investigative reporter. I heard her on the radio and bought the book because she sounded very credible. And she had been in Europe and Russia and talked to fairly high, and it's a good book, by the way, fairly high ranking Air Force people in other countries around Europe and Russia and even South America. And there was no secrecy about it. They talked openly about
these objects that they see in the sky and they don't know what they are. And, you know, there's no stigma, you're not going to lose your pilot's license if you come back and, you know, have seen these things. I found her very credible to listen to and also the book and very credible and her point of view was it's only in the US that we tiptoe tiptoed around the phenomenon. In fact, I think it's Bolivia set up a whole thing
the government years ago to study it. So what's up with that? I don't expect you to know the answer, Kirk. It's just a question of what's up with it? Why are we so secretive about it? It's worse than sex. What's the deal? Yeah, it's strange that the government, all this supposes that there's some conspiracy, but it's strange that the government is not disclosing information about UFOs.
and they tend to position it as a threat. And they have at least NASA has come out and I think other governments have come out and said this is not of any worldly government. So this is not of Russia's making this not China's making out of our making, right? So it's not of the world. So this is our own government. So if you're going to believe our government when it comes to well, vaccine mandates and so on, whatever else it may be, well, you're not going to believe them here. Well, of course, the different parts of the government, I understand. However,
Okay, let's say it's not of this world. Well, to call it a threat and to not disclose it for reasons of national security means if we have some it's plausible that we can fight it or prevent it. But if it's from out of this world, I see that as being extremely unlikely. It's like we should just surrender or try to negotiate or try to meet it with love instead of arms. So it's a bit interesting to me the whole epilogue of it's a threat and we should combat it or strengthen ourselves. Hey, I don't know what you think.
Well, you know, my favorite movie and all the world is still the day the earth stood still in 1950. And it was a cautionary movie about, about the possible atomic war, but it was, yeah, one of the planets in his flying saucer down to talk to people on earth about stopping their, their hostilities. It was a good movie. It was one of the first Fairman.
The reason I bought it is I heard a long interview with her on the radio and was very convinced that she was a solid
intelligent woman reporting about this and making a big deal about it. Maybe one last question maybe given the time. We don't want to overwhelm Kurt here as much as we love having him here. Question, why do we need to know about extraterrestrials? How does it affect our reality?
More than being dismissive, I am really asking why people need to know this. Why do we need to vet others accounts of their own experience? How does this need impede our ability to have our own experience? Great question. So this is just the difference between the philosopher and the experimentalist. The experimentalist would be an instrumentalist and say, well, what difference does it make?
the philosopher would say i'm curious i want to know what is that's why i'm investigating i don't know if it'll make a difference there's plenty that we thought would it make a difference and did it sounds like by the way we are searching for extraterrestrial life in the form of microbial life it seems like almost every scientist is in agreement that finding microbial life on another planet would be one of the most groundbreaking discoveries of humanity finding life somewhere else let alone
Somewhat intelligent life let alone extremely intelligent life let alone extremely intelligent life that has or is visiting us. Those are well
Thank you so much. It's really great to have you here. I really appreciated it. Thank you.
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It shows YouTube that people are talking about this outside of YouTube, which in turn greatly aids the distribution on YouTube as well. If you'd like to support more conversations like this, then do consider visiting theoriesofeverything.org. Again, it's support from the sponsors and you that allow me to work on Toe full time. You get early access to ad-free audio episodes there as well. Every dollar helps far more than you may think. Either way, your viewership is generosity enough. Thank you.
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▶ View Full JSON Data (Word-Level Timestamps)
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"text": " The Economist covers math, physics, philosophy, and AI in a manner that shows how different countries perceive developments and how they impact markets. They recently published a piece on China's new neutrino detector. They cover extending life via mitochondrial transplants, creating an entirely new field of medicine. But it's also not just science they analyze."
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"text": " Where senior editors argue through the news with world leaders and policy makers in twice weekly long format shows. Basically an extremely high quality podcast. Whether it's scientific innovation or shifting global politics, The Economist provides comprehensive coverage beyond headlines. As a toe listener, you get a special discount. Head over to economist.com slash TOE to subscribe. That's economist.com slash TOE for your discount."
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"text": " Kurt, thank you so much for being here. Kurt has a fascinating podcast, videos on YouTube, where he has interviewed some extremely interesting people. It's one of the most thoughtful, interesting, and I think, in many respects, fascinating"
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"text": " podcast that I know of. There's no attempt to try to sort of insert unnecessary humor, which some shows try to do and I actually find kind of frustrating sometimes because it just ain't that funny."
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"text": " Um, and, um, yeah, and you've touched on some topics that I think would be of, of real interest to us here. Uh, and now the show is called theories of everything. And of course, you know, theory, there are, there are any number of theories of everything. Um, but you also have a really strong focus on consciousness. And, and recently, uh, uh, you have,"
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"text": " brought in a lot of people who are kind of big players in a field that's exploded in the last five or 10 years, which used to be known as UFOs, UAPs. And there has been a real significant shift sort of in the degree of acceptance and openness. There are still people who want to dismiss it."
},
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"text": " whatever it is because that's of course another one of the interesting things is what is the it that we're referring to. You've had any number of people on your show and they can range from people who are interested in technology in extraterrestrials to people who have like Jacques Vallee who have very different very"
},
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"text": " different views that drawn on mythology, and very much on consciousness as well to attempt to explain what's going on. So we thought this would be an interesting topic. And maybe Kurt, you could start just by telling us a little bit of what got you into doing this in the first place, and how did you get to sort of frame it this way and decide who you were going to invite on your show?"
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"text": " Firstly, thank you so much for the compliments. I appreciate that. I hope I live up to them. So how did I get into this? I almost have always been interested in math and physics, particularly the largest mysteries in math and physics, like can you prove the Riemann hypothesis and how do you solve the problem of quantum gravity and so on. And then in school, so I went to university for physics and math."
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"text": " And then I did stand up on the side. So you mentioned humor and the lack of it in theories of everything. There's a reason for that. Even though I studied stand up in the sense that I used to perform it, I studied comedy. The reason is that I feel like many people inject a joke every once in a while."
},
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"text": " for no other reason but it's not necessarily to entertain but it's out of insecurities for one's own inadequacies on the subject and so they detract or they distract and also unless you put in decades into comedy it's not second nature it takes an extreme amount of effort to come up with even one joke because you're constantly generating alternatives when the person is speaking and you're relating it to what they've said before and saying can I make a joke here is there a pun is there wordplay and so on there are many potential humorous paths and then you have to evaluate in real time and then say one I'd rather put my attention on the topic and the guest"
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"text": " So when they're speaking, I'm relating it to what I know. And then I'm thinking, OK, what are my objections? What questions do I have? Regardless, getting back. So I did stand up. Then I went into filmmaking in university and just pursued filmmaking afterward. As I was doing that, I had a documentary, started putting out the interviews for the documentary on YouTube. And that was akin to a podcast. It was just the extra footage from the documentary. But people seem to like it."
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"text": " So I thought, okay, now that COVID is here, and I'm not doing much, I'm just at home, and I'm always interested in math and physics, always been, why don't I go back to toast to theories of everything, and speak to someone like Donald Hoffman, who everyone says, well, I've listened to much of what he said, and I don't understand what he's saying. Yeah, it's conscious observers, the core, and I find podcasts or general interviews of him to be extremely vague. And I'm thinking, okay, well, he's a scientist,"
},
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"text": " And he's put out papers, I can read those papers. Luckily, I understand the math. So why don't I just go in, read the papers and then asking questions about it. So I did that. And people seem to like that this technical podcast, this podcast where you go into the math, and you're not afraid to show equations on the screen and ask someone about partially ordered sets and other"
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"text": " Abstruse terminology that ordinarily wouldn't make it into a podcast. So I started doing that people liked it and I love it so much This is like it's banging on all cylinders for me as for how I choose the guests. Well, it's much like I Imagine many people here are in university or taking courses So I have the theories of everything podcast has a point in the sense that it's not just me interviewing people I find interesting"
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"text": " Or having a conversation, let's just have a conversation. That's what most people will say. I'm trying to understand the landscape of theories of everything. I'm trying to potentially build my own toe or at least have my own worldview. Let's say I would like to eventually get to string theory. Well, then I may see something called loop quantum gravity as a precursor. And then I may see something else, certain interpretations of quantum mechanics as a precursor to that. So that I think in terms of prerequisites, like a course. And then I think, OK, well, this guest, while I'm studying for this one, this would help me with studying for this one and so on and so on."
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"text": " So that's how I choose the guests. That's great. Thank you. Leslie, we have here our my my friend and esteemed colleague, Leslie Combs, who has written some fascinating and important books on consciousness. So I know that that you have some thoughts and you've just seen many of Kurt's shows. And, you know, there are any number of guests that have explored that topic. So I wonder if you have"
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"text": " Any comments or questions, Leslie? Well, I think it's interesting how the topic of consciousness has changed in the last 10 or 20 years. When I first started to be interested in consciousness, it generally was said that to be conscious, you had to be a highly intelligent creature of some kind, probably with language, which meant, of course, human beings."
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"text": " And now, we're looking at practically anything alive that's conscious, certainly anything with the brain. And the theories, I used to go to the big Tucson meetings once a year, still do sometimes. This was like the biggest conference in the world on consciousness. And I've always been something of a panpsychist. And, you know, they would put us in the back room."
},
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"text": " We got a little talk set up for you in the back room at six in the evening before dinner. And that wasn't that many years ago, I think five, six years ago. And now panpsychism is all over the place. David Chalmers is waffling about it."
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"text": " And then we've talked to these other people, Bernardo Castro. I'm bad with pronunciation. I was very impressed with your interview with him. I was very impressed with him as well. And it seems like he and Goff is the other one that I, Philip Goff, that I really enjoyed and listened to some interviews on. He is a panpsychist."
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"text": " The field has changed pretty dramatically. And one of the things I've noticed is it used to be that people that talk about consciousness, at least in the brain, mind community, we're very reductionistic, sort of like Daniel Dennett, you know, I heard Daniel Dennett talk a few years at Tucson. And I told my wife, he's a really good talk. And he"
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"text": " He basically did everything but make it go away. He's such a, you know, he's such a materialist. He had three or four kinds of materialism he wanted to talk about. But it's all changed so much. And another interesting trend I see is these philosopher neurology types that are really looking into consciousness."
},
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"text": " As they get to midlife and beyond, they sort of get spiritual in a way. You know, Bernardo Castro, when he's all done, he's talking about some kind of almost what they used to call cosmic consciousness, and somehow divvies itself up to individuals. William James talked about that kind of thing too, but he was, you know, he was a great writer about spiritual experiences."
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"text": " religious experiences and so on. And I heard some of that from Goff, not too much, but there's this tendency, especially among the relatively new panpsychists, to get sort of a cosmic, to get sort of spiritual. And the idea, you know, James metaphor that you could see"
},
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"text": " islands on the surface, but they're all connected underneath. So I don't know what was your impression? I think you're more up to date on these things than I am right now, because I've been off teaching courses and other topics, but curious to see because you clearly have read and thought about these things."
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"text": " I noticed that there's a trend between those who are atheistic become more spiritual as they age. I don't know if that's true for those who are more religious. Well, maybe it's been there their whole life. It seems like there's this God shaped hole. So people like Bernardo and even Sam Harris."
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"text": " Even Larry David, so this interesting, when I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, the show, when you think about it, for someone who's a staunch atheist, the show is about people transgressing on objective morality, subtle social objective morality. It's someone who's pointing out and constantly observing it. There's this moral or spiritual push, and the more that you try to deny it, well, it seems to rear its head somewhere."
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"text": " As for us all being connected, so firstly, I was an inexorable atheist, an uncompromising and resolute one up until just a few years ago. I'm not a theist now, but I'm certainly not an atheist. I'm extremely open to God, or at least I hope I am. I would say that no, it's obvious we're not connected. If we're connected, it's the quantum fields, and then sure, we're connected to a cup, because you share the same electromagnetic field and so on."
},
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"text": " Then I became more open to it, and now I see it as the easiest case to make is that consciousness is fundamental. And I'm a rebel. I'm someone who is a contrarian. So because it's easy to say, it's a good word, right? And because it seems like the almost every single person who studies spirituality believes we're all connected with all one, I just see it as the easiest path now. And so I want to say no, it's not pluralism all the way."
},
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"text": " Forget about non-dualism. And I also tend to think that the easiest path is usually the incorrect one. Morally, it's the incorrect one. The primrose path is the one that is the path of least resistance, but it's the path of peril as well. So I'm uncertain if it's all one or what that means. I'm open to it though. Hear that sound?"
},
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"text": " That's the sweet sound of success with Shopify. Shopify is the all-encompassing commerce platform that's with you from the first flicker of an idea to the moment you realize you're running a global enterprise. Whether it's handcrafted jewelry or high-tech gadgets, Shopify supports you at every point of sale, both online and in person. They streamline the process with the internet's best converting checkout, making it 36% more effective than other leading platforms."
},
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"text": " There's also something called Shopify Magic, your AI-powered assistant that's like an all-star team member working tirelessly behind the scenes. What I find fascinating about Shopify is how it scales with your ambition. No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. Join the ranks of businesses in 175 countries that have made Shopify the backbone."
},
{
"end_time": 877.568,
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"start_time": 854.224,
"text": " of their commerce. Shopify, by the way, powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including huge names like Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklyn. If you ever need help, their award-winning support is like having a mentor that's just a click away. Now, are you ready to start your own success story? Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com"
},
{
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"text": " Go to shopify.com slash theories now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in shopify.com slash theories."
},
{
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"text": " Razor blades are like diving boards. The longer the board, the more the wobble, the more the wobble, the more nicks, cuts, scrapes. A bad shave isn't a blade problem, it's an extension problem. Henson is a family-owned aerospace parts manufacturer that's made parts for the International Space Station and the Mars Rover."
},
{
"end_time": 930.674,
"index": 37,
"start_time": 908.865,
"text": " Now they're bringing that precision engineering to your shaving experience. By using aerospace-grade CNC machines, Henson makes razors that extend less than the thickness of a human hair. The razor also has built-in channels that evacuates hair and cream, which make clogging virtually impossible. Henson Shaving wants to produce the best razors, not the best razor business,"
},
{
"end_time": 950.691,
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"start_time": 930.674,
"text": " So that means no plastics, no subscriptions, no proprietary blades and no planned obsolescence. It's also extremely affordable. The Henson razor works with the standard dual edge blades that give you that old school shave with the benefits of this new school tech. It's time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that'll last you a lifetime."
},
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"text": " I was going to ask you something related to that. There was a book came out a few years ago by Robert"
},
{
"end_time": 1009.241,
"index": 40,
"start_time": 980.196,
"text": " Lanza? Biocentrism? Are you familiar with this? I'm supposed to be familiar with it. He was listed as one of the most influential writers in the United States at the time, because this book has such an impact and he's written a sequel to it. But his argument is pretty simple. That is, as I understand it, for anything to be real, the wave function has to collapse and for the wave function to collapse,"
},
{
"end_time": 1039.462,
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"start_time": 1010.026,
"text": " There has to be an observation. In other words, consciousness has to be involved. So his approach is, and he makes a good argument for it, that not only do we not know what's on the dark side of the moon, there is no dark side of the moon. Or it's like the tree that falls in the forest. Does it make a sound? Well, if nobody hears it, it doesn't make a sound. In fact, there's no tree. In fact, there's no forest."
},
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"text": " uh everything that is that we talk about and experience sort of like you know bernardo was saying in your interview with him uh mapped onto the inside of her head or something all has to come from the collapse of the wave function which has to come from consciousness so there has to be an observer or there's nothing there it's a strange and simple-minded idea but"
},
{
"end_time": 1089.411,
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"start_time": 1069.991,
"text": " His book Biocentrism has been really influential. And he makes a very strong argument. You have to read it or listen to him talk. I found some interviews with him, but I was surprised at what a poor speaker he was. I recommended the book, not his interviews."
},
{
"end_time": 1102.381,
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"text": " There are quantum theories without observers, so it's false to say that we require an observer in quantum mechanics, just so you know. Well, there's some agreement about that now."
},
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"start_time": 1103.217,
"text": " Yeah, there's certainly disagreement. But what I'm saying is that you can still formulate quantum mechanics and reproduce all the results that we have without defining an observer as a privileged place for an observer. So for example, someone I'm speaking to tomorrow, his name is Tim modeling, and he has a formulation of quantum mechanics without the observer, he I'm studying him right now. So I'm not able to recapitulate his arguments. But let me see if I could. There's something called the PBR"
},
{
"end_time": 1152.602,
"index": 46,
"start_time": 1132.295,
"text": " And Bell's theorem seems to indicate that you have to either do away with statistical independence or locality. And it seems like, hey, maybe we can throw away locality and then you can save that quantum particles indeed have some reality to them prior to them being observed."
},
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"text": " all i'm saying is that there exists other interpretations of quantum mechanics where there isn't a privileged place for the observers and i feel like what's happening is that the neil degrasse tyson would say something like oh yeah mystery consciousness mystery quantum mechanics so therefore they're the same haha and he's being snide about it and so i don't like that i do see the point i wouldn't say it with such derision"
},
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"end_time": 1200.64,
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"text": " The point is that, or what I see is people reasoning backward. So for example, with Bernardo Castro, I remember he was telling me, yeah, Kurt, look, the whole universe is cosmic, because and I can even get the tendrils of the galaxies and the filaments, it looks brain like. And I'm thinking, that's such, I call it non disconformatory evidence. So it's evidence that if it wasn't there, it doesn't disconfirm your theory. So if we say, oh, actually, when you look at it from an even greater point of view, it looks nothing like a neural net."
},
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"text": " then he would say okay well I still believe in my theory though okay so you're trying to attach your you already have a theory and you're just trying to attach it to the next mystery I understand well I think that's what's going on I imagine that if there's so many mysteries in science that it doesn't need to be tied to quantum mechanics imagine quantum mechanics eventually has some prosaic explanation like were mysteries in the early 1900s that eventually oh okay well there's a photon instead of a wave like there's an actual particle and then photoelectric effect is explained like this"
},
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"end_time": 1257.739,
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"text": " But imagine if people around the early 1900s tied all of their spirituality to the photoelectric effect. Then you find, oh, well, it has some other prosaic explanation. Well, then do you throw out your spirituality? Perhaps not. So I find that what people are doing is they're tying their hopes a bit too much to quantum mechanics. But who knows? Like, well, you know, there's always been this for for for a long time, it's been this tenancy to try to start at the bottom."
},
{
"end_time": 1287.193,
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"start_time": 1259.735,
"text": " So try to understand what's going on at the lowest possible level and build up from there. So if we can understand how quarks and so on are going, we can understand atoms. If we understand atoms, maybe we can understand molecules and so on and building that direction. Just in terms of more of a general philosophy of science,"
},
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"end_time": 1316.783,
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"start_time": 1288.217,
"text": " It's interesting if you can start from the top down. And I wouldn't know how to do that in terms of quantum physics, because they're already at the bottom. But in biology, if you look at ecosystems, for example, I noticed Lovelock just passed away three or four days ago at over 100 years old. Absolutely brilliant man. You know, he's looking at ecosystems as"
},
{
"end_time": 1344.445,
"index": 53,
"start_time": 1317.91,
"text": " Self-organizing systems, and you start from the top down with it. In fact, the whole idea of Gaia is that the Earth itself is a system. And, you know, that's been bannered around a lot of New Age talks and stuff. But a lot of people said, genius, he was a very bright guy. And, you know, he did a lot of science besides Gaia. But the idea is that"
},
{
"end_time": 1375.111,
"index": 54,
"start_time": 1345.469,
"text": " at least biological systems are to some extent informed and pushed from higher levels. And that seems to be true in the brain, too. Who was the guy that got the Nobel Prize about 20 years ago for his work? He did work in a number of different areas. He was a Caltech. But he was the first person that really started talking about consciousness in the cortex. And he said it hauled around the neurons. That was the term he used."
},
{
"end_time": 1405.964,
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"start_time": 1375.981,
"text": " So it was a top down kind of causality going on in the brain. So I don't know if that makes any sense. I mean, I'm not trying to upstage real quantum physics, which I don't even begin to understand. But I am saying it's interesting that we're trying to always understand the universe from the bottom up. And, you know, there's all this evidence or I don't know what to call it for the answer."
},
{
"end_time": 1434.172,
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"start_time": 1406.681,
"text": " The idea that the universe is put together in some kind of a way that allows life, the anthropic principle, which I think most everybody agrees with. They don't have any idea what the reason for it is, whether it's just randomly happen to be in the only cosmos in the universe that supports life or whether God is sitting at a desk and"
},
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"end_time": 1463.148,
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"start_time": 1435.111,
"text": " arranging things upstairs for us. It sort of screws up once in a while, but it's doing a pretty good job, or what it is. But you know, if you think in terms of the anthropic principle of all the many, many, many variables at all levels of physics and biology that, you know, from the temperature that ice melts right on out,"
},
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"end_time": 1489.957,
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"start_time": 1464.343,
"text": " Yeah, it's a there's a lot of top down thinking involved there or questions involved there. So anyway, I don't mean to run on but yeah, I'm interested if you have thoughts on that. Or if you don't, I'll let you off the hook. But I don't have thoughts on why the constants are the way they are. So that's called the fine tuning problem. Why is it that there's a limited range and we happen to be in it?"
},
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"text": " And if it was slightly outside of this range, I think there's 26 constants, just minorly tweaked, then galaxies would either implode or explode and so on. And we wouldn't be here. That's strange. I don't know. I need to look into that as for, ah, yes. Strong emergence is what you're referring to. So emergence, we believe that there are emergent properties because water looks smooth, but then we imagine that it's jostling molecules underneath discrete. And then even underneath that there's fields again. But as for strong emergence, can something,"
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"text": " arise from the bottom that creates an upper layer that goes back to influence the lower layer in some non-trivial way that can't always be reduced to the lower layers. I'm extremely open to that. I'm so looking forward to talking to people who have coherent theories about that. It seems obvious, I'm sorry, it seems like the easiest case to make is that reductionism is correct. That's one of the ways that people say, well, the brain is what generates consciousness because, well, no, I've lost my train of thought there, but"
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"index": 61,
"start_time": 1546.288,
"text": " It's basically that if you zoom into any part of the universe, you see that the laws of physics aren't broken. So if you zoom into a cell, say, okay, well, it's not breaking any laws of physics here. You look in quantum mechanics, it's not breaking any laws of physics. You look at the galaxies. Well, there are some discrepancies with whether or not gravity should be modified and so on because of dark matter. But as a whole, there are no laws of physics being broken. So if you say you have free will, if you're conscious, then it's"
},
{
"end_time": 1600.742,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1571.032,
"text": " it's a strange form of consciousness without free will but if you have free will well where is that being injected into the laws of physics because they're not broken at any level I don't buy that logic and the reason why I don't buy that logic it's because there are structures in math that can look a certain way locally but then be non-trivially ordered globally so for example a circle if you look locally and all you see is a straight line you would think and every time you observed all you see is a straight line everyone you communicated with on the phone sees a straight line you'd think well the universe is a straight line"
},
{
"end_time": 1629.838,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1600.742,
"text": " however the manifold so you can have a manifold of a circle which is locally like a straight line but it's non-trivially connected so globally it's curved or globally it's a circle in fact any one-dimensional manifold is flat is always going to be locally flat so that is to say that just because something looks a certain way locally that is i look here and i observe no violation of the laws of physics i look here i see no violation no violation doesn't mean there's not some non-trivial violation somehow when they all stitch together"
},
{
"end_time": 1658.626,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1630.606,
"text": " Yeah, you know, you've probably read some of Rupert Sheldrake's work. And, you know, he's been looking at constants, like the constant, the temperature at which different chemicals will liquefy. And these are chemical constants. And he's discovered that over many years, they actually change. If you look at the chemical tables,"
},
{
"end_time": 1683.131,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1659.497,
"text": " So I'm no expert on this, but he has questioned whether, you know, the idea, we've always had the idea that the laws of physics are the same through all time and everywhere in the universe. And he's not saying they're radically different somewhere else, but he is questioning whether that principle is really entirely valid."
},
{
"end_time": 1706.544,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1684.548,
"text": " The law is an interesting use of the word law in laws of physics. It actually comes from old Catholicism, which is what's right and what's wrong. You break a law, God's law, and then that eventually became solidified into talking about laws and physics. It's sort of a strange"
},
{
"end_time": 1731.527,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1707.005,
"text": " Business. Well, it's just the fact that they follow the laws. So let's imagine right now we think of the theory of everything as well. What are the laws? I think a meta toll is well, why the heck do they even follow them? So just because you found the pattern, why is it not breaking the pattern? And how does it know? How does an electron know to do what it's doing? Maybe that's not the right way to think about it. But then what's the right way of thinking about it? Very interesting. Yeah, very interesting point."
},
{
"end_time": 1759.582,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1732.483,
"text": " Well, I don't want to take up too much time with my own interests here that we share. But I do want to say that I really enjoyed your discussions of time. I and many of our students here are interested in time, the nature of time, how time works, if time travel is possible, how do people have dreams of the future,"
},
{
"end_time": 1788.473,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1760.179,
"text": " which evidently they do sometimes. And then there are different models, like I think one of your interviewees mentioned, Lee Smolin, who is a great hero of mine as well. He's all about quote, a universe saturated in time. So and I'm a big fan of as is Alfonso Priggin, the idea that time is based on"
},
{
"end_time": 1816.084,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1789.241,
"text": " basically chaos, not entropy, but organization over time. So I don't know what you thought you have. I, you know, there's, we've got so much entertainment nowadays, movies and shows on TV, all time, but time travel, they're absolutely fascinating. But it seems to me that they all assume a block universe."
},
{
"end_time": 1846.169,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1816.647,
"text": " is what William James called the universe in which everything is fixed. So that 20 years from now, whatever is there is there and that's going to stay there. And that that just can't happen in the universe is process based, you know, like pregazine talks about dynamical systems and creativity in the cosmos. So time has to be I think more as"
},
{
"end_time": 1871.817,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1846.8,
"text": " Sure. Again, the easiest route to go is to say that time doesn't exist, and that's why I like to explore realist time theories."
},
{
"end_time": 1885.998,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1872.227,
"text": " Because it's just, it's simple to say, hey, look, the laws of physics are the same forward and backward. There's no preference. And so if your experience of time is flowing, well, that's because of entropy. It's a statistical inevitability. It's not something in the laws of physics themselves. It's some illusion."
},
{
"end_time": 1912.227,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 1886.544,
"text": " When I mentioned earlier, Tim modeling, who has quantum mechanics without observers, he says the only way, at least for him, that he does that is by positing real time, that time moves forward, that you can't posit an extra structure called the foliation. So you can split space time up into time slices of so that you can split space time up. And then there are people like Nicholas Gisson, who says, actually, the whole problem of thinking that time, well,"
},
{
"end_time": 1943.387,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 1913.814,
"text": " more than one problem of physics comes from assuming something called classical logic. So classical logic is what we all learn as logic. That is, you can't have a contradiction. So a and not a can't be true unless you have the principle. So unless everything is true, a and not a can't be true. And there are there are other formulations of logic. One is called intuitionist logic. That's something that computer scientists are familiar with. And apparently,"
},
{
"end_time": 1971.323,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 1944.326,
"text": " I've forgotten how it goes. But Nicholas Gisson believes that in intuitionist logic, firstly, that should ground physics. And secondly, when you have intuitionist logic, that that gives a process to physics, where each point in time is different than the last and the world is constantly unfolding. So there's a direction as well. It's not so foolish to think that time is real. Right now in physics, it's considered, I would say the consensus is time is some illusion, at least in my experience from"
},
{
"end_time": 1988.131,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 1972.108,
"text": " interviewing people and reading. I don't think that that's so foregone that time is real. By the way, interestingly, Tim Maudlin, I don't know what he means by this, because right after this, I have to go and study. But Tim Maudlin says that Einstein has taken to have"
},
{
"end_time": 2017.022,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 1988.746,
"text": " Interesting. Well, Alfonso, do you wanna"
},
{
"end_time": 2043.592,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 2017.534,
"text": " I just want to say how much I appreciate how you are engaging with these very complex and difficult questions that don't have a clear answer by any means and where in some cases we don't really even know what an answer would look like. My own interest, if I can put it in"
},
{
"end_time": 2074.923,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2045.52,
"text": " You know, very casual terms, if you will, is is I've always been fascinated and well, how do you study weird shit? How do you so how do you study stuff like, you know, what UFOs you at UAPs, right? I mean, a lot of people wouldn't just say it's weird. They would say it's just nonsense. Right. And and my experience has been that in these cases, it's it's not always"
},
{
"end_time": 2104.377,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2075.265,
"text": " possible to have exploratory conversations where people are thinking together, not getting too attached to a particular point of view, and remaining open to possibilities, to seeing alternatives, to seeing things in different ways. And that's what I really appreciate about your show, too, is that you bring in all these guests who have different perspectives and sometimes"
},
{
"end_time": 2127.978,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 2104.94,
"text": " perspectives that are quite different from each other, but you engage them in a way that is generative that lets me as the viewer sort of understand what the argument is and where it doesn't become sort of, well, he said this and I said that, and where it becomes sort of a"
},
{
"end_time": 2157.978,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2127.978,
"text": " a way for us to get a view of this perspective and then sort of think through it together, which is something that I think generally in society today, we're not being very good at, particularly if we have kind of differing opinions. So I just want to say that I really appreciated that. And of course, this is also my my way of kind of initiating a little bit of a conversation about UAPs. But I also want to say what I what, you know, as somebody who"
},
{
"end_time": 2176.34,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 2157.978,
"text": " This is why we get into this stuff."
},
{
"end_time": 2191.203,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 2177.125,
"text": " I mean, this is why we do it because there are things that compel us that we're excited about that we want to find out more about and ideally because we want to be in a community where we can explore these things together and and"
},
{
"end_time": 2219.974,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 2192.056,
"text": " I don't know if you've been following some of the discussions on Twitter in the sort of the UFO realm, but things there get ugly pretty easily. And it seems like everybody knows what's going on. This person is a shill. This person believes the space brothers are coming here. The other person has had the anal probe."
},
{
"end_time": 2244.241,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2220.196,
"text": " Everybody is so certain about everything, right? And yet, at the same time, I think in the discussions that you've had with people like Luis Elizondo, who was the head of the Pentagon's ATIP, sort of, you know, you call it the UFO desk, if you will, right?"
},
{
"end_time": 2262.5,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2244.241,
"text": " You're actually encouraging people to even go beyond what they might say normally. And first of all, I wonder, how did you get into this? Because it's not immediately obvious sort of a transition from physics into UAPs, right?"
},
{
"end_time": 2284.138,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2263.507,
"text": " As for do I follow people on UFO Twitter, I don't. I don't follow ufology, quote unquote ufology. I don't demean it in any way. It's just that it's so complicated. I remember the first time I was, well, one of the first times I was being interviewed about UFOs. First thing I'm wondering, why the heck are you interviewing me? And the whole time it was essentially the interviewer giving me a lesson."
},
{
"end_time": 2304.718,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2284.138,
"text": " It's to the basics, like certain basics, which I've already forgotten in UFO history and certain names. Like I didn't know who Jacques Vallee was. I'm like, Vallee, how do you spell that? Okay. Let me write that down. Okay. So who was Bob Lazar? Okay. No, I think I saw a video of Lazar. Yeah. That one's false because I got into this because of Bob Lazar, which I'll get into. Oh, interesting."
},
{
"end_time": 2323.746,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2305.077,
"text": " And then as for the talks on Twitter, it's generally more about who is credible and who's not. So it is more along the lines of who's a shill, who's a quote unquote grifter. These are words that I consider, I have a term that I don't think I've ever said, I call them high bounding repudiational words. So essentially, they're words that make you"
},
{
"end_time": 2340.776,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2324.48,
"text": " not want to investigate someone else. And I have a list of them. So platforming is another as soon as you say so and so you're using this to give a platform to so and so, or it's a grifter, or I have a list of these words here. I just found that they're associated with having a certain point of view already and then"
},
{
"end_time": 2355.725,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2341.323,
"text": " not wanting to listen to people because you consider them to be crackpots or pseudo is another one to call someone a pseudo intellectual because most of the most of the time or pseudo science because most of the time the people who are promulgating this quote-unquote pseudo science in order for it to be pseudo science you have to"
},
{
"end_time": 2381.971,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2356.374,
"text": " claim that it's scientific. Much of the time, at least the people that I'm speaking to aren't claiming what they're doing is science. In fact, they're feeling like science is limited because it doesn't incorporate what their experience is or what they're working on. And then also the word pseudo in math is actually a positive in the sense that there's pseudo-Riemannian geometry. You can't have Einstein's equations without pseudo-Riemann. I don't hold pseudo to be such a... As a negative. Yeah, not necessarily. Okay, anyway."
},
{
"end_time": 2408.012,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2382.432,
"text": " That's mostly what the talk is on UFO Twitter would be about. And I'm talking about the negative parts. I mean, there's perhaps 95% positive would be about who to believe and who not to. And because so and so has a book, perhaps you shouldn't believe them. Right. But how did you get into this? Yeah, how did I get into this? I was wrapping a documentary that I was talking about earlier. So I was wrapping that and the editor for one of the editors for the documentary was saying,"
},
{
"end_time": 2434.77,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2408.507,
"text": " Yeah, you know, you should look into UFOs and I'm like, look, the galaxies are extremely far apart or the next solar system is far apart, even if it's close, it would take a million years or whatever the length of time is. And by then, because there's an exponential curve with technology, they should have progressed, and so on and so on. And I just had many rebuttals that let's say the standard person has who's remotely well, who looks into this even at a"
},
{
"end_time": 2464.343,
"index": 97,
"start_time": 2435.23,
"text": " tiny amount. And then he's like, just watch these interviews, Kurt, just watch them. And I forgot what they are. I think one of them was Bob Lazar on Joe Rogan. I'm not certain though. Anyway, I thought, okay, this is interesting. This is interesting. So this is not just loons and so on. And I admit that I was one of these people who were extremely condescending to people who believed in UFOs. Like I'm embarrassed of that. I'm no longer that at all. Like, in fact, it's difficult for me to be condescending to anyone. So and that's just because I see that tendency in myself"
},
{
"end_time": 2486.527,
"index": 98,
"start_time": 2464.838,
"text": " Well, that's a beautiful thing. No, sorry, that's false. Let me say I'm extremely condescending to everyone and I fight with myself all the time. So I'm an extremely judgmental person. So if toe comes across as non judgmental, it's my Jungian shadow overcompensated by being extremely non judgmental. I get it. Yeah, I just don't like people that say,"
},
{
"end_time": 2515.486,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2487.022,
"text": " Well, where's the evidence snarkily sitting back like they're so constant, like, look, I just checkmated you. Where's the evidence? Well, where's the evidence for many assaults? Like, are you going to go to someone who's just a sexual assault or another kind of assault and say, Yeah, well, where's the evidence? Clearly, it happens. There are many much of what we experienced that we have no evidence for. We go home, we tell our, our wife or spouse some story, and then about something innocuous. And then what if she says, Well, where's the evidence? You're gonna be extremely upset. Like, what the heck? I'm just trying to tell you what I feel what I saw."
},
{
"end_time": 2541.169,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2516.254,
"text": " And of course, feelings and experiences can be misleading. Okay, yes, or people can be lying. But these are people so for me to be extremely clear, some of these people who report extremely strange phenomenon like craft, like UFO craft are people that we would believe in any other situation where if there were two of them or three of them saying I saw this person murder this person, that person would go to jail."
},
{
"end_time": 2559.292,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2541.869,
"text": " Navy pilots."
},
{
"end_time": 2578.524,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2559.667,
"text": " So anyway, I interviewed Jeremy Corbell because he's a filmmaker. So that was my transition. It was because I'm a filmmaker. So I'm like, okay, Jeremy Corbell, I'm interested in this Bob Lazar story. I'm interested in UFOs just a bit. Let me ask him, let me talk to him about filmmaking. Right. Can we just say one minute Bob Lazar was first"
},
{
"end_time": 2601.135,
"index": 103,
"start_time": 2579.07,
"text": " became well known because I think he was the first person to talk about Area 51, which most people will have heard about, which is the secret area around Groom Lake in Nevada, where they do all sorts of experiments with new technology, but where some will claim there is also alien technology and so on."
},
{
"end_time": 2624.104,
"index": 104,
"start_time": 2601.135,
"text": " So and Area 51 is a big deal and it's also become sort of a punchline and but it was Bob Lazar who brought that to people's attention and then it turns out that it really exists. Now Bob Lazar is an interesting character but that I think has to go on record as being correct. Is that right Kurt?"
},
{
"end_time": 2650.043,
"index": 105,
"start_time": 2624.462,
"text": " Mm-hmm. So I don't know the history so I don't know if anyone has said a single word about area 51 prior to him Apparently there hasn't been but I don't know. I just haven't there. I don't know how to verify that myself I've heard that many times from people and also some of the people that I consider to be well I don't like to say certain people are credible because that implies certain people are not credible and it's not like I believe everyone it's more like I don't dismiss everyone my immediate Instinct is to not dismiss. That's not the same as believing. I"
},
{
"end_time": 2675.009,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2650.657,
"text": " Yeah, but it's certainly not the same as dismissing, like I do not dismiss, I listen, I try to understand their point of view. And on the Toe podcast, the theories of everything podcast, I listened to them. And if there are objections, it doesn't mean I'm just going to allow someone to speak no matter what and sell their quote unquote BS, if that's what they're indeed pushing. It's more like if I have an objection, I'll cite it in real time. But I'm not coming at it from a place of trying to prove someone wrong or someone correct. So as for"
},
{
"end_time": 2689.428,
"index": 107,
"start_time": 2675.009,
"text": " Right, which debunkers, there's a whole world of debunkers, right? All they try to do is say, no, this is bullshit. There's no such thing as UFOs or just balloons or whatever, right? And there seems like they're professional people. That's all they do."
},
{
"end_time": 2713.097,
"index": 108,
"start_time": 2689.872,
"text": " I thank God for the debunkers. Firstly, because I think that they're a necessary position. Anytime you have some position, it's great to articulate the counter position just because otherwise you could be"
},
{
"end_time": 2742.892,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2713.49,
"text": " going off the rails, whichever way it is, whether it's for or against some subject. And secondly, that studying UFOs, the more that you get into it, especially the more you're related to consciousness and trying to conceptualize what consciousness is and how it relates. And geez, like I went through months and months of such debilitating anxiety and destabilizing experiences that I can barely speak about them. I'm still recovering from them. I started to pivot toe to talk more about mental health after that. And speaking about the perils of investigating"
},
{
"end_time": 2748.951,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 2743.285,
"text": " Taking these theories seriously, I try to take every theory extremely seriously and have an open mind."
},
{
"end_time": 2776.561,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 2749.241,
"text": " I have this intimation that I have too much of an open mind and I don't mean that in like some self-congratulatory way because people seem to prize that in our culture and I used to say oh when people say hey keep an open mind but not so open that your head falls out I'm like yeah you're justifying your uncle's my goodness that's why you're saying that of course if you say some things reductio ad absurdum how do you disprove without considering that possibility to be absurd already like what if that's true whatever it may be so I go in with an open mind but then what happened"
},
{
"end_time": 2779.428,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 2776.561,
"text": " was that I'm listening to so many people and I'm taking it."
},
{
"end_time": 2808.626,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 2779.77,
"text": " I think you'd be terrified if you took the mathematical universe seriously, that we're all just math,"
},
{
"end_time": 2831.237,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 2809.155,
"text": " I think you'd be terrified if you truly took what it means to be one seriously, like we're all one. I think almost all of it's extremely well, geez, like these people when they say, oh, I'm studying so and so you're studying it as if it's clinical on a piece of paper distancing yourself from it. You don't know what it's like to truly believe it. And I know because I was interviewing many people saying like, no, I'm taking you serious, like feeling as if I am."
},
{
"end_time": 2852.995,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 2831.817,
"text": " And I can't even speak about it. I have to speak around it because I'm so affected by it. But certain theories that I was like, yeah, no, I'm taking it. It's only until I had an experience of feeling what they meant that I'm like, geez Louise, oh my gosh, I don't want that unless you've had some truth, some quote unquote truth that you feel like recoiling from that you're like, no, no, the world can't be like that. I don't want. Oh my gosh. Then you're not taking it seriously."
},
{
"end_time": 2871.903,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 2853.968,
"text": " So anyway, learning about UFOs and consciousness can be debilitating. I've had to close my mind and it's difficult for me to do because I'm trying to be understanding of everyone. So the way that I'm doing that is simply by going back to math and physics and just studying that and slowly dipping my toes into consciousness. There's this guest called Frank Yang."
},
{
"end_time": 2885.282,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 2872.602,
"text": " Okay, so people have been asking me to speak to Frank Anker. So and I would have spoken to him one year ago when I had no issues with my destabilization. Let's say then I had some episodes. I'll just call it some episode. And since then,"
},
{
"end_time": 2906.681,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 2886.425,
"text": " I remember I even told Frank about this in an email, like I have to reschedule it. Then he sent me pages and pages of like, here's what it means. And it means enlightenment and this is awakening and so on you need to do. And I was like, I'm going back into my manic state just reading your emails. I can't even reply to you, Frank. I was speaking to someone they said, Yeah, you've been learning from too many masters. Not everyone is right."
},
{
"end_time": 2931.22,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 2906.681,
"text": " So stop thinking like there's this liberal part of me I'm such a liberal person like I mentioned that I'm judgmental but I'm also liberal in the sense that I want to feel like no everyone's touching the same part of an elephant and it's yeah yeah they're incorrect and how they're saying but there's some interpretation they're not so I'm trying to see how's everyone right and they're incompatible and just shoving pieces of jigsaw puzzles together and it's not good so I have to back up"
},
{
"end_time": 2960.162,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 2931.664,
"text": " and start seeing also that so here's a lesson in case anyone else is going through this that my interpretation of what someone means when they say for example that we're all god or that we're all disunified from god or even the word god itself my interpretation or your interpretation may not be what they mean and so i'm ascribing a certain significance to it and then i'm getting carried away by that but i can just she's like just be non-attached just don't attach it then i was like someone was telling me about this and i was like but what if i take my non-attachment seriously"
},
{
"end_time": 2973.285,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 2960.589,
"text": " Then what if I'm non-attached to my wife or my wife? Like, I don't want to do something out of being non-attached. Should I be non-attached to? And then she's like, okay, how about this? Don't be so attached to the principle of non-attachment. Then I'm like, that is genius."
},
{
"end_time": 3002.449,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 2973.695,
"text": " There's a famous conversation between Ram Dass and Alan Watts."
},
{
"end_time": 3031.203,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 3002.978,
"text": " which they had had a reasonable amount of wine. And Alan Ross said to Ram Doss, you know, you're too attached to nothingness. And Ram Doss said yes, and you're too attached to women. So that was the attached to being unattached. Yeah,"
},
{
"end_time": 3053.968,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3032.756,
"text": " Kurt, I had the good fortune or the misfortune that one of the first serious books I read about UFOs was Jacques Vallee's book called Messengers of Deception. Right? Remember that, Leslie? And if you start with Vallee, in case some of you don't know that"
},
{
"end_time": 3080.93,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3054.428,
"text": " One of the things that he did in this wonderful book called Passport to Mongolia was to show that a lot of the things that we associate with UFOs today and with abductions and things like that can be found in popular folklore all over the world going back thousands of years. And if once upon a time we had"
},
{
"end_time": 3110.333,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3081.288,
"text": " goblins and fairies and all sorts of creatures, some of which would take you away to a place that you might not come back from or you would come back from transformed. And, and he said, well, now we have, we have these space creatures, right? And his argument really is that it's very much tied into, to the phenomenon is very much tied into consciousness and consciousness plays a central role somehow."
},
{
"end_time": 3132.654,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3110.674,
"text": " right? And it's also the case that if you fool around with goblins and witches and things like that too much, I mean in the folklore that also can lead to madness, right? So it also suggests that we need to be careful when we start playing around with these phenomena because there's something that seems to be"
},
{
"end_time": 3150.162,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3133.029,
"text": " I agree."
},
{
"end_time": 3179.48,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3150.896,
"text": " UAP UFO phenomenon is just how it branches out into a lot of different areas because of course there's all the speculation about how much does the government know and so on and so forth but you've had a lot of people on expressing these different kinds of views and I'm just wondering where are you with it all now in terms of your sort of"
},
{
"end_time": 3204.48,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3179.65,
"text": " Where do you stand given what you've come across? Unsurprisingly, I'm on the fence. I don't know. I think that when people say consciousness, that it has to do with consciousness, I think what they mean is that when one takes psychedelics or goes through some extreme meditative state or goes into some extreme meditative state, which is rare, so it's usually psychedelics,"
},
{
"end_time": 3234.923,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3205.213,
"text": " that it feels as if one's being transported to another realm and perhaps even that that realm has been here the whole time and it's extremely convincing it's utterly convincing then you wonder well if that's possible what else is possible what else just pops up throughout the rest of your life what else what else what else and i think this what else is what gets lumped in with consciousness so firstly there's no definition of consciousness at least well there's no definition of consciousness maybe by design because to define it means to limit it and maybe there's something unlimited about consciousness i'm being more mystical there when i speak"
},
{
"end_time": 3254.548,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3235.486,
"text": " But regardless, I think that's what people mean when they say that UFOs have something to do with consciousness as part of this what else that's similar to a psychedelic realm, not equivalent to or you can communicate with beings, they come from some other realm. And I'm using realm instead of dimension just because I'm a persnickety mathematician or someone who studied math and I don't like when people misuse the word dimension."
},
{
"end_time": 3282.346,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3255.009,
"text": " But anyway, yeah, I think that's what people mean. And as for if it's something concrete, like just our own government, something physical, it's a craft, it's extreme technology. I'm open to that, too. I keep being swayed from side to side to the point where I'm just having to just assess it again, dispassionately, because to be taken away by it too seriously is a bit, it puts me on lubricious ground, and then I'm betwixt and between. Well, it's not a fun place to be. You know, Alan Finick, one of the early"
},
{
"end_time": 3310.06,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3283.217,
"text": " researchers, the astronomer from Ohio State, which I know about because I was there as an undergraduate, you know, he's the one, he's actually in Close Encounters of a Third Kind. He steps out of the crowd with a pipe in his mouth and he has a Van Dyke. And the Frenchman in Close Encounters, as you know, was Jacques Vallee, not the real Jacques Vallee, but he was Jacques Vallee."
},
{
"end_time": 3341.186,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3311.698,
"text": " Both of these guys spent much of their professional career studying unknown aerial phenomenon. Of course, Jacques Fillet, we're just talking about. And both of them, even Alan Hynek, the astronomer at Ohio State, finally came to the conclusion that they weren't physical objects in the usual sense. That, you know, they weren't like Star Trek's Enterprise."
},
{
"end_time": 3368.183,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3341.544,
"text": " flew down here at warp five or whatever it is. They had a way of appearing and disappearing. And I'm with you, Kurt, I don't like the word dimension either, because it to me is a line that goes in the particular direction. But there is a lot of talk these days, an awful lot of talk about alternative universes, you know, two or three movies right out right now."
},
{
"end_time": 3395.503,
"index": 137,
"start_time": 3368.626,
"text": " including Dr. Strange, my old comic book hero, coming in and out of other universes. And when I first saw this stuff, I thought, this is crazy shit. And it was even too, too much for me to science fiction fan. But I remember Isaac Asimov, when they first started to talk about alternative universes, wrote a story in which stuff is going between universes. I don't remember which story it was, but"
},
{
"end_time": 3423.831,
"index": 138,
"start_time": 3396.067,
"text": " Asimov is a pretty bright guy, you know, he got a new PhD every week, I think. And so where are we with that? I, you know, the thing that has been most convincing to me, not really knowing anything is that we must be dealing with a lot of different levels of technology or levels of whatever it is in the universe, because"
},
{
"end_time": 3453.78,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3424.718,
"text": " There's such a divergence of experiences and reports. They don't seem to come from the same technology or the same creatures. So it's all very strange. Yeah, I agree. I watched a little bit of your interview with Avi Loeb today. Oh, great."
},
{
"end_time": 3482.773,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3454.053,
"text": " should have been working. I wanted to see that. Did that just come on? Yeah, so that's on. I tried to get that. I was a little too early. And Avi Loeb is the Harvard astrophysicist who is obviously very interested in this topic now. He believes Muamua may have been an extraterrestrial. Well, it was an extraterrestrial object, obviously."
},
{
"end_time": 3512.534,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3482.978,
"text": " but that it was not a natural quote object, right? And it turns out that he has had some paranormal experiences, right? And he is a major no, is this not correct? Is that not right? Maybe I missed that then. But certainly, Gary Nolan, who is very highly respected immunologist at Stanford is is"
},
{
"end_time": 3541.971,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3512.892,
"text": " involved in this UAP phenomenon big time now and somebody who you know was a potential nominee for a Nobel Prize or and he did have some some experiences that were highly unusual when he was very young and I'm wondering to what extent does having those experiences put people in a position where they say you know I have to just go for it now no matter what"
},
{
"end_time": 3565.145,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3542.432,
"text": " What it takes and the fact that there is more of a discourse that's less stigmatized now will make the general environment more open and allow people to speak more freely about this, right? Yeah, I think so. I think if you have an experience, especially if you're a tenured, you're going to want to use your"
},
{
"end_time": 3588.933,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3565.879,
"text": " your your knowledge to try and find some scientific explanation for or try and find some data that's replicable about it, especially to convince others or to minimize the condescension that you receive. It's right. It's striking if that's the worst. Well, the part of the whole discourse that I dislike the most. I just wish there wasn't so much sneering and jeering and snide remarks. Right."
},
{
"end_time": 3606.834,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3589.36,
"text": " And there are internal snide remarks between people who hold different positions. And then there's the more general, all this UFO crap, the little green men, right, which which has been very strong. And, and I've often wondered, well, what is it about this, that"
},
{
"end_time": 3630.64,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3607.363,
"text": " this phenomenon that attracts so much sort of scorn and dismissiveness and and you know you felt that UFO sort of represented in some respect a sort of a new planetary awareness in a way right that that as an archetype it sort of represented that and i'm wondering if it isn't sort of"
},
{
"end_time": 3647.466,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 3631.169,
"text": " pushing people's buttons where the thought of something not earthly is just something that they have to push away immediately because it just seems, besides any government attempts to dismiss people for their own nefarious reasons,"
},
{
"end_time": 3674.411,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 3647.773,
"text": " but because just the whole thought of something not of this earth is just something we can only see in you know a b-movie or something but it's just psychologically too too foreign you know what i mean yes i think that it's such an important topic it's like religion it's not clear to me if there's more surprising and contending in the ufo scene than there is in"
},
{
"end_time": 3702.688,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 3674.753,
"text": " politics or politics seems to be the main one. It's not like people bicker about religion like they used to, but still they do. So it's not clear to me if it's more or less than that. Also, when you're in a domain where there's such a paucity of evidence and the evidence is important, then I imagine that the same for religion, by the way. So I imagine that that's going to be the case. So it's understandable. I understand it. I wish it wasn't there, but I understand it. Well, as long as we're"
},
{
"end_time": 3732.619,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 3702.927,
"text": " In this general ballpark, I want to mention one of my favorite books. It's not well known. It's called Demonic Reality. D-A-I-M-O-N-I-C. Demonic Reality. Here as I read something. It's a sweeping look at strange otherworldly events in the world around us. UFOs, fairies, phantom animals, visions of the Virgin Mary, alien abduction and mysterious lights in the sky. It's by a guy called Patrick Harper. H-A-R-P-U-R."
},
{
"end_time": 3760.981,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 3733.148,
"text": " But one of the things he points out in the book, and this has been quite a few years since he wrote it, he has a sequel already. But it was sort of interesting, because when I got interested in UFOs, I mean, I'm old, this was in the 50s. I had some of the original levels of one book was called Flying Saucers on the Attack. It was these were the first books that had black and white pictures from Mount whatever it is in California, these"
},
{
"end_time": 3790.196,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 3761.544,
"text": " saucer-shaped things. But the interesting thing is, the characters that would get out of these saucers were beautiful blonde-haired people from Venus, and they were very spiritual. So Harper in this book, he says, what's changed over the years in the human psyche? That we don't see beautiful people with long hair from Venus, but we see little green people that nab us in the night and look up our asses."
},
{
"end_time": 3818.353,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 3790.794,
"text": " So there's something going on in the bigger picture that he's, you know, he's a little like fillet, he doesn't really come to a conclusion. But he does point out the sweep of the mythic dimension and how it changes in time. And having lived through this whole thing in the US, in the Midwest, it's true. I mean, we, we were very interested in flying saucers when I was a kid. And"
},
{
"end_time": 3847.551,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 3818.66,
"text": " All sorts of aerial phenomenon and nobody talked about them being negative or anything. And of course, what's his name and close encounter the third kind, he wanted to make them very positive. But we don't always get that picture from the stories that we get from abductees and stuff. They're very strange. Or who was it you interviewed that was talking about animal mutilation in Ireland, I won't even go into that."
},
{
"end_time": 3865.93,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 3848.148,
"text": " Yeah, I'm curious what you all think about skinwalker or Alfonso. I hear a lot about it, but never have really looked into it enough to know anything. I listened to the interviews that you had briefly. So"
},
{
"end_time": 3894.155,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 3866.647,
"text": " Yeah, some people take it seriously. I really don't know what to make of it. And you know, this is sort of my limit, as it were, it's not something that's fascinated me deeply, apparently, weird things do happen there. But I don't know, it's never been anything that's particularly drawn my attention, to be honest with you. But what what do you make of it?"
},
{
"end_time": 3923.046,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 3895.35,
"text": " I just wish some of these skeptics like Mick West would go there and film it. Because apparently it's speaking about a subject that has a little replicable data. People say at Skinwalker, it happens repeatedly. So, okay, why don't you send your most staunch skeptics like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Mick West there pay for them? There's apparently some billionaire who's funding the place. It seems like it wouldn't take much to get them to go. It's just some money like to a billionaire. That's just money. Right."
},
{
"end_time": 3943.131,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 3923.746,
"text": " Right, but I believe Bigelow set up a whole system there with videos and things like that. And in the end, they didn't come up with much that they could show the rest of the world. I mean, unless they're hiding it, for whatever reason, it didn't seem to and which is not to say that nothing happened. But there's also something about these"
},
{
"end_time": 3971.425,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 3943.575,
"text": " about the phenomenon, if you will, that doesn't necessarily like to be photographed beautifully, clearly. And there always seems to be some fuzziness about the whole thing, which may be a characteristic of the phenomenon itself, right? Well, there's this great quote from the interview, why don't we have more pictures? Right? You know, I had an experience, something like that at Fendhorn,"
},
{
"end_time": 4001.834,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 3972.039,
"text": " community in Scotland. I was in a sacred forest near Finnhorn, some you know about Finnhorn. And I was warned that pictures don't always turn out. And I shot a whole roll of pictures and came home and none of them came out. This was on a digital camera. You know, and it was nothing really weird about it. It was just Finnhorn is this spiritual community in which there are fairies, plant fairies and stuff. They'll make your pictures disappear."
},
{
"end_time": 4030.52,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 4002.585,
"text": " What more can I say? Right, right. Yeah, and even if you try to photograph a seagull, it's going to come out blurry, even with... It's actually extremely difficult to photograph a moving object far away when you don't know when it's coming. Right, right. Mitch Hedberg said that, maybe, Mitch Hedberg was a comedian, and he said, I think Bigfoot is blurry. It's not the photographer's fault. Yeah, yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 4055.538,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 4030.981,
"text": " Should we open it to some questions from the larger community? There's an I love Mitch Hedberg. Yeah, he was one of the greatest, greatest comedians. I've never heard of him. Any questions? If you want to put it in the chat. No."
},
{
"end_time": 4083.985,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 4057.585,
"text": " Maybe they're blurry too. I think we can see some hands raised Alfonso. Oh okay sorry yeah I'm not seeing them here. Thank you. Okay of course I'm in the wrong section where there are no hands raised. I can see Kathy Barnes. Yeah I mean why don't you just start speaking? Yeah so I would love to hear from"
},
{
"end_time": 4109.036,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 4084.411,
"text": " You know, we've kind of I hear like, feel like you guys have kind of danced around like who's has an opinion about it in this kind of thing. But I'd like to hear personally, from each of you, if in fact you do believe there's life outside of Earth, or consciousness outside of Earth. Alfonso, you want to start? Oh,"
},
{
"end_time": 4127.551,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 4110.128,
"text": " Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think I have anything particularly interesting to say about that. I mean, it seems unlikely to me that there isn't. And yeah, at the same time, I think that there's enough to suggest that"
},
{
"end_time": 4148.865,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 4127.927,
"text": " whatever phenomenon we're dealing with may be something other than extraterrestrial. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it seems to be particularly weird and also I think because of the consciousness dimension it may be something else. But you know some people are saying that it's actually"
},
{
"end_time": 4177.278,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4151.186,
"text": " Something or that has been on the planet all this time. It's been here forever. And I think that's a very provocative idea, which would also kind of send us down a particular rabbit hole. So, yeah, I mean, it seems likely to me. And for me, it's only one of the possible interpretations of what's going on. I certainly don't have any fixed view about this at this point."
},
{
"end_time": 4205.538,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4180.043,
"text": " Well, I'm sort of with Alfonso. I think given the size of the universe, there has to be life out there and plenty of it. But it's pretty widely scattered. And how realistic it is to think that spaceships like the Enterprise can fly from one place to another in any practical way is probably not very realistic."
},
{
"end_time": 4234.462,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4206.254,
"text": " I recently was looking at a new interpretation of the Fermi's paradox. How do you say it? Why don't we see more life? And it involved a recalculation of how likely it was that life would evolve on any given planet. But it also included the time lag effect of communicating even a light speed between different planets."
},
{
"end_time": 4260.452,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4234.872,
"text": " are different places. So I don't think our present phenomenon is accounted for by, you know, spaceships made out of metal that travel at super luminal speeds. It doesn't seem like the best bet. I think I'm going to have to go with Heineken and Valais that it's something"
},
{
"end_time": 4286.374,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4260.896,
"text": " Transdimensional if I can use the word or something like that, but I don't know what that would mean. It's just there it is. I thought you said Heineken and I was thinking of the beer, but Alan Heineken. My answer would be that I don't know. I don't have a personal opinion. I would say that it's a non-zero probability. Yeah, that's a good one."
},
{
"end_time": 4297.824,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4287.278,
"text": " I see some questions here. Kurt, I'd love to hear what you might have to say about how there is no difference between inner space and outer space on the subatomic level."
},
{
"end_time": 4327.483,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4298.814,
"text": " so inner space versus outer space there's no physics term called inner space or outer space as far as i know something interesting though is when you look out at the star you say oh i wish i could be in space actually technically you're in space there's someone else looking at you so you're just as much a part of outer space as anyone else it's interesting to think about that if the earth wasn't here you'd just be floating like you're just in outer space well anyway that's all there's just space i don't know about inner versus outer hey i sound like a non-dualist"
},
{
"end_time": 4358.814,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4329.206,
"text": " So forgive me if I read another one. Do you think that there is a connection between how people engage with their imaginations today as opposed to in years past when you consider the divisiveness that has come into the discourse on UFOs or aliens? Can you mind rereading the question? Yeah. Do you think there is a connection between how people engage with their imaginations today as opposed to in years past?"
},
{
"end_time": 4382.551,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4359.292,
"text": " When you consider the divisiveness, I never know how to pronounce that. I usually say divisiveness that has come into the discourse on UFOs or aliens. Yeah, it seems to me like UFOs are a new way of labeling something that may be some phenomenon that's been here in the past. The reason I say that is that some people have suggested that in different accounts, like"
},
{
"end_time": 4409.138,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4383.029,
"text": " There are accounts of flying Roman shields, which sound extremely similar to UFOs. And certain cave paintings, they're what look like UFOs, certain religious stories, there are what would be, we would probably now describe them as UFOs. So it's unclear if this is a new phenomenon. And we're now just calling them UFOs, unidentified flying objects. I think someone called them ships in the sky before. So you have to also view it through the interpretive lens of the culture at the time."
},
{
"end_time": 4438.712,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4409.667,
"text": " So it seems clear that there's a difference between how people imagine UFOs to be today versus 2000 years ago, because we have an entire new vocabularies like computers. So that's that. I don't know about the divisiveness. Well, I don't imagine people are arguing about it, though people argued about religion. So maybe if religion is predicated on UFOs to some degree, then perhaps that's it. Well, here's a question or, I don't know, observation or something. There's a book that came out a few years ago called UFOs."
},
{
"end_time": 4468.695,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4439.087,
"text": " by Leslie Kern, G-E-A-R-N, investigative reporter. I heard her on the radio and bought the book because she sounded very credible. And she had been in Europe and Russia and talked to fairly high, and it's a good book, by the way, fairly high ranking Air Force people in other countries around Europe and Russia and even South America. And there was no secrecy about it. They talked openly about"
},
{
"end_time": 4498.046,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4469.206,
"text": " these objects that they see in the sky and they don't know what they are. And, you know, there's no stigma, you're not going to lose your pilot's license if you come back and, you know, have seen these things. I found her very credible to listen to and also the book and very credible and her point of view was it's only in the US that we tiptoe tiptoed around the phenomenon. In fact, I think it's Bolivia set up a whole thing"
},
{
"end_time": 4524.138,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4498.49,
"text": " the government years ago to study it. So what's up with that? I don't expect you to know the answer, Kirk. It's just a question of what's up with it? Why are we so secretive about it? It's worse than sex. What's the deal? Yeah, it's strange that the government, all this supposes that there's some conspiracy, but it's strange that the government is not disclosing information about UFOs."
},
{
"end_time": 4550.776,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4524.48,
"text": " and they tend to position it as a threat. And they have at least NASA has come out and I think other governments have come out and said this is not of any worldly government. So this is not of Russia's making this not China's making out of our making, right? So it's not of the world. So this is our own government. So if you're going to believe our government when it comes to well, vaccine mandates and so on, whatever else it may be, well, you're not going to believe them here. Well, of course, the different parts of the government, I understand. However,"
},
{
"end_time": 4580.879,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4551.101,
"text": " Okay, let's say it's not of this world. Well, to call it a threat and to not disclose it for reasons of national security means if we have some it's plausible that we can fight it or prevent it. But if it's from out of this world, I see that as being extremely unlikely. It's like we should just surrender or try to negotiate or try to meet it with love instead of arms. So it's a bit interesting to me the whole epilogue of it's a threat and we should combat it or strengthen ourselves. Hey, I don't know what you think."
},
{
"end_time": 4610.145,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 4581.169,
"text": " Well, you know, my favorite movie and all the world is still the day the earth stood still in 1950. And it was a cautionary movie about, about the possible atomic war, but it was, yeah, one of the planets in his flying saucer down to talk to people on earth about stopping their, their hostilities. It was a good movie. It was one of the first Fairman."
},
{
"end_time": 4638.575,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 4610.879,
"text": " The reason I bought it is I heard a long interview with her on the radio and was very convinced that she was a solid"
},
{
"end_time": 4665.64,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 4639.684,
"text": " intelligent woman reporting about this and making a big deal about it. Maybe one last question maybe given the time. We don't want to overwhelm Kurt here as much as we love having him here. Question, why do we need to know about extraterrestrials? How does it affect our reality?"
},
{
"end_time": 4690.93,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 4666.169,
"text": " More than being dismissive, I am really asking why people need to know this. Why do we need to vet others accounts of their own experience? How does this need impede our ability to have our own experience? Great question. So this is just the difference between the philosopher and the experimentalist. The experimentalist would be an instrumentalist and say, well, what difference does it make?"
},
{
"end_time": 4716.34,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 4691.391,
"text": " the philosopher would say i'm curious i want to know what is that's why i'm investigating i don't know if it'll make a difference there's plenty that we thought would it make a difference and did it sounds like by the way we are searching for extraterrestrial life in the form of microbial life it seems like almost every scientist is in agreement that finding microbial life on another planet would be one of the most groundbreaking discoveries of humanity finding life somewhere else let alone"
},
{
"end_time": 4724.667,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 4716.34,
"text": " Somewhat intelligent life let alone extremely intelligent life let alone extremely intelligent life that has or is visiting us. Those are well"
},
{
"end_time": 4752.261,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 4724.855,
"text": " Thank you so much. It's really great to have you here. I really appreciated it. Thank you."
},
{
"end_time": 4780.316,
"index": 190,
"start_time": 4752.944,
"text": " The podcast is now concluded. Thank you for watching. If you haven't subscribed or clicked on that like button, now would be a great time to do so as each subscribe and like helps YouTube push this content to more people. Also, I recently found out that external links count plenty toward the algorithm, which means that when you share on Twitter, on Facebook, on Reddit, etc."
},
{
"end_time": 4807.381,
"index": 191,
"start_time": 4780.316,
"text": " It shows YouTube that people are talking about this outside of YouTube, which in turn greatly aids the distribution on YouTube as well. If you'd like to support more conversations like this, then do consider visiting theoriesofeverything.org. Again, it's support from the sponsors and you that allow me to work on Toe full time. You get early access to ad-free audio episodes there as well. Every dollar helps far more than you may think. Either way, your viewership is generosity enough. Thank you."
},
{
"end_time": 4819.548,
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"start_time": 4807.619,
"text": " Think Verizon, the best 5G network, is expensive? Think again. Bring in your AT&T or T-Mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal. Now what to do with your unwanted bills? Ever seen an origami version of the Miami Bull?"
},
{
"end_time": 4837.688,
"index": 193,
"start_time": 4820.06,
"text": " Jokes aside, Verizon has the most ways to save on phones and plans where you can get a single line with everything you need. So bring in your bill to your local Miami Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal."
}
]
}No transcript available.