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welcome to the michael schumer show i'm

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and

carry on

my guest today is nick pope

you've all seen nick he's on all those

ancient aliens and

the

basement office and ufos declassified

shows and

pretty much any documentary you've ever

seen on on ufos and

and many on conspiracies you've seen

nick pope nick is an author journalist

and tv personality who ran the british

government's ufo program for the

ministry of defense for 21 years

leading the media to call him the real

fox mulder

although mulder was pretty much a

believer and as you'll see in this

conversation nick is pretty much in the

skeptical camp on most of these things

nick pope is recognized as one of the

world's leading experts on ufos the

unexplained and conspiracy theories he's

the media's go-to person for ufos and

he's made appearances on numerous tv

shows and documentaries including good

morning america nightline tucker carlson

tonight and ancient aliens he's also

written for the new york times for the

bbc news website

and for nbc's technology and science

site and has acted as consultant and

spokesperson on numerous alien themed

movies tv shows and video games he gives

talks and takes part in academic

conferences

ban conventions and debates all around

the world he's spoken at the national

press club the royal albert hall science

museum and the global competitiveness

forum and is debated at the oxford union

in the cambridge union society he lives

in the united states here in california

actually

so this is a wide-ranging conversation

obviously we deal with the recent flap

over uaps an identified aerial phenomena

formerly known as ufos

those navy video clips that we've all

seen so we deconstruct those we get into

the larger issue

of ufology and then the even still

larger issue of seti the search for

extraterrestrial intelligences are they

out there and have they come here as two

separate questions and how to think

about those

questions and so we we go through pretty

much everything uh you've heard about

that particular subject then we

transition into conspiracy theories

uh which is behind much of that and then

how to think about conspiracy theories

why so many conspiracy theories turn out

to be true which is one of the reasons

why

people naturally gravitate toward

believing many of them and how that

turns out to be a signal detection

problem which ones are real and which

ones are not

and and then from there we wrap it up

talking about

the kind of larger cultural issues and

in there we also talk about the

religious aspects of uh believing in

ufos what i call

deities for atheists and

sky gods for skeptics nick is an atheist

as you'll hear

and how that does seem to fulfill some

kind of deeper need in the human

condition for

uh believing there's something else out

there bigger than us smarter than us

more moral than us

and so forth and that knows we're here

and that's part of the impulse driving

it although it's not his personal motive

he he would actually like there to be

aliens having had come here which i

would do it would be super interesting

but the question is is it actually true

not just what we would like to believe

anyway enjoy this conversation and if

you appreciate the podcast do give us

some support at skeptic.com donate that

goes to the skeptic society which is a

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deductible and it supports not only the

podcast but also skeptic magazine and

all our other activities all right

thanks for listening here's my

conversation with nick pope

all right nick pope nice to see you man

it's uh so good to have you on the show

you're

a long a long time fan and uh and viewer

of your many many many media appearances

on this uh topic of ufos and uaps and

conspiracy theories and so on so thanks

for coming on

thank you it's good to be on the show

so nick um let's just kind of do a

general background for those of a few

people of my followers here who are not

familiar with your work

you're most famous for having worked for

the ministry of defense i guess that'd

be the equivalent of the department of

defense in the united states when you

were living in the uk and uh

and you were in charge of ufos so give

us a actually let's go back even further

a little bit than that then give us some

a little a potted biography of where you

were born and raised and how you got

interested in this particular topic and

how did you end up at the ministry of

defense

well i was born in the united kingdom

and uh my father was a senior

government scientist

he headed up the royal aeronautical

establishment at farnborough

and

then got promoted

rose to be deputy chief scientific

advisor at the ministry of defense so

the mod was sort of the family firm

and i i got a tap on the shoulder from

my own father suggesting that it would

be you know interesting and important

work uh to to do that and i gladly

complied what father wouldn't want to

follow his uh what son wouldn't want to

follow his father into into the glamour

of that kind of work now i was never a

scientist so i i joined really as a

a bureaucrat and most of my 21 years

in the ministry of defense i was a

civilian employee most of my postings

involved

briefing

analysis taking large amounts of data

and distilling it down to to fairly

simple briefs for

senior uh defense ministers service

chiefs whoever it might be

and i did about eight different postings

over the course of my career but the one

the one that i guess we're going to

focus on and that i'm i'm best known for

is one i had in the early 90s when i was

posted to a division

rather unglamorously titled secretariat

air staff

and

my duties there included

researching and investigating the ufo

phenomena or uap as we generally

called it and and the brief was

essentially to see if there was evidence

of any threat to the defense of the uk

or anything of more general defense

interest

right so they're not looking for

extraterrestrials this isn't like a

branch of the seti program this is

defense of the realm

we have some sightings we have reports

we have radar blips we have whatever and

we don't know what they are so go figure

it out because if it's you know russian

drones or whatever we need to know what

that is

exactly this this was a defense and

national security issue it had its roots

and somebody had been doing the job that

i did i mean way back um that the post

went back to at least

1953 on a formal basis but we had we had

reports before that on an ad hoc

basis and yeah we were not

conclusion-led

at all um it was simply if there's

something in our airspace

we need to know what it is and yes

absolutely the default position was and

i know this is a a kind of glib sound by

that i have given over the years but

it's true it's it's more likely russian

than martian

not that we not that we

entirely dismissed

those other possibilities but yeah we we

we just went in thinking we need to find

out who's in our airspace

yes i love that little line from you

it's more likely russian than martian

because it's in a bayesian way and we

can get into this a little later

it's like the line to medical students

if you hear footsteps or hoof steps

outside of your door

you live in north america say

you know think horse not zebra

because zebras are pretty much

non-existent in north america except for

zoo so you know it's a base rate

probability estimation and that makes

sense it's far more likely to be russian

or in this case now chinese with the

uaps

than say extraterrestrial so i'm glad to

hear you say that

and much of the time when i listen to

you or read you i think this guy's a

skeptic like me

and then other times on some of these

other shows i think i don't know the way

he says it is in a way it suggests it

could be extraterrestrial and and i

think there's a reason people have you

on all these shows is because

you haven't come out and said i'm pretty

certain it's not aliens

um

and you and you phrase your lines in

such a way that it kind of leaves it

open like it could be

and that opens the door for ufologists

who already believe that well this guy

worked for the department of defense

he's got uh good cred and he says it's

possible so let's you know let's let's

lean on him

um so just

what do you what do you think what do

you believe or or or not believe or how

do you think about that

well i try not to be too definitive in

my beliefs and uh yeah you you've

probably seen me on shows where i come

across as as quite skeptical and others

where i am more open and sometimes

to be fair that is just the edit

um

but other times it is it is because my

own views sometimes evolve and and

change and i'm not i'm not going to i

i'm not going to sort of butter you up

here by by sort of saying look i'm i'm

absolutely in your camp on this i'm i'm

a skeptic too i do

approach things from the point of view

that as i say statistically it is more

likely to be russian than martian but

neither do i rule out the more exotic

possibilities because to take your your

horse zebra um

analogy every now and then some some

exotic animal will break out of a

private collection or or a

state or or national zoo and there

really will be a zebra in somebody's

backyard so so

it's yes i mean you can i mean i know

you know far more about statistics than

i but but i'm just saying i never say

never and i want to i want to actually

circle back to one other aspect of

government mindset

that i think speaks to this question

and it's the concept of low probability

high impact and we often thought in

those terms not just on ufos

but but on a range of things

and

and the idea that even if something it

has a a vanishingly small

probability as long as it's not

zero probability

we sometimes looked at those things

because the the consequences

if just one of those things turned out

to be

something low probability would be so

immense that it's worth taking a look so

i know that's a very long-winded way of

saying but i guess my default position

on this is i do not rule out

some of the more exotic possibilities

like extraterrestrials

you know i'm not

neither am i going to make the case that

there is definitive proof for this

because clearly there isn't

of course right good perfectly stated

yeah

i think uh

as scientists we always have to keep an

open mind

because we don't know everything there's

a lot we don't know

you know when i made that

you and i are both on that galileo

project team

uh led by avi loeb at harvard and you

know i gave that little presentation on

bayesian reasoning about uaps and one of

the responses was interesting that you

know had we kind of taken that approach

that i i just presented

pretty far then we never would have

recognized i think it was a type 2a

supernovas because that that wasn't even

in the you know the bin of possibilities

when we're looking at stellar objects

so you can't ever say

never

because then you're going to miss

something

right so you want to be open-minded

enough uh to recognize something new

just in case um

but not so open-minded that you know you

believe everything that comes along or

that your brains fall out as they say so

i i think that's right i think that's a

good way to look at it

um just just out of curiosity when you

were growing up were you interested in

science fiction did you have a

fascination with the possibility of

extraterrestrials i mean

i did and you know a lot of people

interested in this subject did

i i

guess i read quite widely as a kid and

um certainly i did come across some

sci-fi i mean um war of the worlds and

the time machine

uh yes i i read maybe

i i don't know somewhere

between eight and ten um but i probably

read all sorts of other things too i

mean from from

classics

uh through through the whole range but

then i i suppose when i was a teenager i

found the works of asimov and and uh

very much

enjoyed

enjoyed that and then the frank herbert

dune

books so i i

enjoyed and read sci-fi

but i could probably say there were

other genres that i enjoyed too like

thrillers

well i guess what i'm after is is there

a personal interest in this i mean i i'm

fascinated by the whole ufo uap

issue because even though i'm skeptical

that they've come here

i separate two questions are they out

there and have they come here i i think

it would be shocking if there was no

other intelligent life anywhere in the

cosmos given that just the raw numbers

you know 100 billion stars in every

galaxy 100 billion galaxies maybe more

than that maybe a trillion galaxies

whatever it is the number is so huge

that it would be stunning if you know

even no matter how many steps you have

to go through in the drake equation to

get

to a communicating intelligent life form

it's got to be close to one if because

of the raw numbers are so high

and uh and so that that's one aspect of

the of the question and then the other

one is you know have they come here

which is a different question entirely i

think how do you separate those or think

about those

yes i do think they are

two distinct

questions that people often blur into

one

um i guess you get down to a debate and

this goes back to sci-fi about whether

light speed is a hard barrier

or whether there are workarounds like

warp drive and

wormholes and such like

or but i i take i've recently taken a

different view on that and i've said

even if

lightspeed turns out to be an

insurmountable hard barrier

it still doesn't actually

preclude

interstellar travel it just puts a very

different time

scale on it but if i mean one of my

favorite

quotes i think from

former nasa historian stephen dick if we

are living in a largely post-biological

universe populated

by immortal thinking machines

then

pointing i suppose

even if you suppose we could go no

faster than we've already gone

and we had pointed a voyager probe at

proxima centuri

and it would take about 75 000 years to

get there to immortal thinking machines

to ai um you know

doesn't matter

and and in those sorts of

you know

with with the kind of cosmological

timescales uh even even with light as a

hard barrier i i don't think we should

necessarily preclude the idea of them

getting here from there if they

are machine intelligence

um

right so if if we did encounter aliens

here they're probably going to be ai

some sort of

information system whatever

we would consider to be something like a

computer uh not

biological yes i think that

so far from from everything we

know about our own

sort of infant

baby step space program is that

space travel for biologicals is going to

be very very difficult

but but maybe you know for the for the

the probes

maybe

a whole bunch of the problems

physiological psychological can be taken

out of the equation yeah but uh let's

leave the light speed as the upper limit

but i i recall there are calculations

where if you accelerate

like one g

per whatever time unit of time very

slowly so that you could sit there in

the spacecraft and feel like you were

just being pressed against the floor

like we are right now with one g

but you accelerate it one g

at each unit of time you get up to like

99 of the speed of light within some

relatively short period of time like a

year or two or something and then

therefore you could get to alpha

centauri within uh up you know whatever

maybe 10 years or something not 70 000

years

and i think it was like an ion

propulsion engine proposed that could do

this

something like that so

it and given that you know the galaxy is

well the earth is four and a half

billion years old and the galaxies you

know roughly double that i guess

um that's plenty of time for for for

machine intelligence or even biological

intelligence to get around the galaxy uh

they could have come here in in some

distant past more likely in the distant

past than now just because of the

copernican principle that we're not

special and our time is not special

there's no reason why

uh that they should come you know in the

1950s say uh

rather than say 5 000 years ago or 10

000 years ago or something like that

yeah um as ever i mean i think we you

know you almost get into philosophy when

you you start discussing these things

but i was um

there was a paper i think published um

earlier well i

late last year maybe um

i can't remember the exact title of it

but the kind of colloquial concept is

grabby aliens

and uh

anyway i i it's quite an intriguing

paper they attempt to maybe blend a

little bit of fermi paradox with with

some other things and it suggests that

we might be

a very early civilization

and it says one and now you know you can

argue yourself around in circles with

this but it says one of the reasons for

that is that if we weren't

uh there would already be very visible

technological structures out there i

guess the counter argument is that we're

only just getting to the point where

we're maybe able to detect them with

with things like james webb perhaps if

it uh all goes to plan and square

kilometer array when they get around to

building it and and all these fabulous

things

right and the galileo project cameras

are going to be put all over the planet

we'll see what gets photographed in in

in all those uh airspace

um

yeah so

again but the probability that

alien's going to be anything like us

it's got to be extremely low which is

why i'm skeptical of like alien

abduction stories because it's always

these kind of bipedal primates with a

big brain and and eyes and ears and you

know how many species on earth of the

roughly 10 billion species there's ever

been

you know look anything like that well

there's just you know one lineage the

primates and there's only a handful of

those

uh and and so the chances of that entire

sequence evolving on some other planet

is next to nothing which is why sagan

never wanted to show what the aliens

look like in contact because it whatever

we show in in a hollywood movie is going

to be too parochial it's going to be

based on

on the you know the wardrobe

availability in the in the costuming

that they have to to dress up people in

it as aliens or whatever they're not

going to be anything like us i mean it

could be something like an octopus or

whatever

um and and so

again you know just using a probability

type argument you know even if they got

here they can't look anything like us

well unless you say that there might be

some sort of what is it converging

evolution kind of concept on a galactic

scale that yes that certain designs

are maybe quite good in terms of

of

the sorts of life that would be capable

of going on to develop a technological

civilization and and

if if a principle like that applies then

maybe

maybe the

we would get something like us but i i

don't know it's

i suppose it's unknowable but

but fascinating to think about

but again actually that's the argument

with the numbers though richard dawkins

made that very argument against me yeah

go ahead yeah with with the numbers

though that um

you mentioned and i mean i think i saw a

paper

uh a year or two ago suggesting a very

low ball figure for the drake equation

much lower than than

other more recent estimates and i think

it was something like 36

um

communicable civilizations

in in our galaxy but going back to the

number of galaxies in the universe

that's still

calculated out to something like

72 trillion

species

out there so

i don't know maybe maybe humaniform

you know life

will crop up

here and there

in amongst other weird yeah that's the

argument dawkins made right

uh that this convergent evolution

argument that uh you know there's only

so so many ways to build a body if

you're in the water you have to have

something like a fuse a form body

whether you're a mammal or or a fish

that that is you have to have this kind

of streamlined body that pushes through

a dense medium if you're on the on the

air live in the air you got to have

something like wings

whether you're a batter or a bird

uh or an insect and so this convergent

evolution maybe if you're a

living on the ground you need to have

some kind of arms and legs to propel

yourself and you need to have like most

of the sensory apparatus up front in the

head

and and the waist disposal part

at the back and you know and so on and

but pretty soon you end up with

something like a bipedal well dinosaur

there's actually proposals that that you

know had the dinosaurs not gone extinct

they may have evolved into these kind of

bipedal uh reptiles with big brains

and so something like that is is not

inconceivable

no i i i like to think so and uh given

the size of the universe um i

i suspect we'll find a

vast diversity and i mean i mentioned

largely post biological but but i

suspect we'll find biological post

biological and and a huge range of size

and shapes and colors and and just

diversity i suspect it will be a diverse

cosmos is a diverse cosmos

yes yes yes i like the fermi paradox

just as a way of thinking about

um you know how these things could be

discovered um on the one hand if the

copernican principle is true we're in

the middle of the bell curve uh

therefore there's many behind us and

many ahead of us

so fermi's paradox you know they should

have been here by now because if you

give just they just take a billion years

of time that's plenty of time to

populate the galaxy even if there's only

36

in the entire galaxy that's you know if

you give them a billion years

um to develop technology and

you know build self-replicating robots

that can go and land on planets and

build more self-replicating robots and

launch them into the

into the cosmos and then pretty soon you

know they should be everywhere but

they're not

so where are they

so one answer for me

i'd like to get your answer to the fermi

paradox is this there's just a lot of

empty space and it would be hard to find

finders no matter how many there are

they're gonna mostly miss most of the

planets

but who knows

yeah i think so i i mean i'm going to

have to reread this recent paper on the

so-called

loud or grabby aliens which which

suggested um

you know that we might not be in the

middle that we we might really be one of

the first

first up but um yeah

i mean

i suspect there is a point though where

where even given the empty space a

civilization

certainly a space-faring civilization

would leave fingerprints that would be

detectable i mean people talk about

the james webb

having the the

in infrared but having this great

analogy that they always roll out that

it would be able to detect a bumblebee

on the moon um

and then the square kilometer array

radio telescope they have a similar

analogy for that and it's something

along the lines of it would be able to

detect an average airport radar system

out to

50 light years

so

so i

think given those sorts of tools that

we're just now getting into our hands

it is conceivable that that a

civilization

you know a few hundred or thousand

years ahead of us which isn't much in in

cosmic time scales would would be

detectable so

so i don't know you know we we hear a

lot now nasa getting into

the search for

techno signatures and

avilob and galileo project too

of of course some of some of the

the things that that they're looking for

you know

a second amua muah or a third or fourth

um

satellites maybe in orbit

around

you know the idea that we things would

be detectable and there would be

there would be fingerprints to be found

and i'm i'm rather attracted

to that i i mean we we heard a

year or

so ago about the the tabby's star

controversy and i i know there are there

are much more prosaic explanations which

are now favored

about that but i think the principle

remains the same if there are things

like alien megastructures dyson spheres

and things we have not far off

particularly if they're in our

local part of of the milky way galaxy

we're probably not far off being able to

detect them and i guess it it

is the same the other way around that we

have probably been detectable to a

civilization not

much more

advanced than our own level for some

while

if they're out there

i remember i remember i think in the 60s

sagan proposed that maybe fiba phobos

one of the moons of of mars might have

been an artificial structure he got

hammered pretty hard for that and you

know of course it's not but but but in

principle that could be dyson sphere

abbey star

for those not familiar with that this

was a

a star in which the light

curve was much greater than it should

have been based on

the number of planets around it or what

could possibly be blocking it whether it

was a cluster of comets or meteorites or

moons or planets or whatever it seemed

like there was something more so maybe

these are like gigantic solar structures

blocking the light between that star and

us

something like that i remember when that

story first broke this is this this will

get to the psychology of people who

believe

um that i was on this radio show john uh

was a uh

i forget the name of one of these la

radio afternoon talk shows john and

jillian and uh so they had me on they

had they had on um

art not art bell the other guy george

neuri

uh who was talking about tabby star and

that you know he he's pretty confident

this is you know the aliens are there

and uh you know it's 1500 light years

away and so

and then they bring me on and and

immediately jillian asked well what are

they like

and i said what is who like the aliens

it's like there's no aliens it's just a

dip in the light cone just the dip in

the light curve that's all we have is a

dip in the light curve there's no

there's no detection of aliens or

anything like that and it's 1500 light

years away so it would you know that

light took us 1500 years to get here and

if we sent a signal saying yeah who's

out there it would take

3000 years for the signal to get there

and back if they responded right away

but see people immediately go to the

you know if mystery than than magic or

if you know if mystery then aliens

and uh yeah so talk a little bit about

that you know the human psychology seems

to be that

even if i if you can explain 95 of all

the sightings which seems to be the

number most most even believers agree

that we're talking about that five

percent

people readily just spin that five

percent into fantastic stories and whole

new world views new physics you know the

aliens are here and they know we're here

and they're this and that based on this

just this tiny little fraction of the

unexplained

well i think

on the psychology um

few people said it better than than the

x-files with the i want to believe

and i think people do want to believe i

want to believe i i make no bones about

it i often say

you know the world would be a much more

interesting place with aliens in it than

without and

and as i said earlier i'm

i have no definitive proof that they are

here but i certainly hope

that we're being visited and and i

certainly certainly hope and believe

there's life out there in the cosmos and

that we'll we'll find it sooner

rather than later probably with science

but but going back to the question yeah

i think there is people love mysteries

people love the idea that there might be

something more

something bigger than themselves

something that i don't know gives

meaning and i know i know where this is

kind of going obviously because because

you will doubtless say and others will

be thinking well isn't this just a

another religion in a sense another

another sort of quest for for

something

over and above ourselves and our

everyday existence and i i get that i

come at this actually you know maybe we

can get into this it's just like it i

don't normally talk about this and it

surprises some people i'm actually an

atheist

and and um which always creates some

interesting dynamics at ufo conferences

particularly the more sort of spiritual

new age

ones um

so so i don't know i i but i i can

separate out

those parts of my life i think um

i'm an atheist because i i just

i

i'm not sure i can even put it into

to words really but it's it's just um

you know not not something that i have

ever believed

whereas

you know i think what you said earlier

about the size of the universe and i you

didn't quite

put it this way but i often do

but with the laws of physics and

chemistry

seeming to be constant in the observable

universe there's there's no reason to

suppose that there's anything magical

about life so in one way

maybe it sounds like uh

you know that i

why why is he an atheist if he believes

in aliens actually

maybe it is

understandable this this idea that that

i'm not arguing for any special

treatment i'm not arguing for a new

physics i'm arguing for maybe with the

extraterrestrial thing and

particularly visitation maybe there

being aspects to the laws of physics

that we don't currently understand but

that's always been the way

yeah i'm actually not surprised to hear

you say you're an atheist i didn't know

that but that doesn't that doesn't

surprise me at all in a way

it makes sense because i i think of ufos

or just the search for extraterrestrial

intelligence in general as a kind of uh

deities for atheists sky gods for

skeptics um

you know and i don't mean this in a

derogatory way like oh that belief is

you know it's like a religion it's like

a cult it's like a myth it's just a

bunch of

i don't mean it that way i think there's

kind of a longing in the human

heart or mind or condition about aw and

wonder

and that there must be something out

there bigger than us that knows we're

here or that you know created things or

it's just something else out there and i

think that longing is in everyone i

think it is the basis of religion and if

you don't have religion then what well

you know the the scientific view of this

would would be there are aliens out

there and if there are if we detected

them the chances of them being at our

level is pretty nil and if we detect

them they're likely to be ahead of us

not behind us unless we go to some

planet

and so if you take something like

moore's law development and apply not

just to technology the doubling of

technology every 12 to 18 months or

whatever and you apply it to moral

values and the development of of

human societies and so on they are

likely to be just vastly more superior

to us advanced than us not just

technologically but morally culturally

politically economically maybe like a a

post-scarcity star trek where they don't

have money they just have replicators

that give you everything you want and

everybody has equal rights and

and at some point

you end up with this idea of this thing

out there that is

relatively omniscient to us it just

knows vastly more than we know and it

would seem like a godlike figure

and i don't mean that in a derogatory

way again to repeat myself it just seems

like that's a natural way to think about

those things a very human

way to think about that

yes i mean i think picking up on a

number of points there i mean i think

people have speculated about literally

almost like a god gene

that that

causes

us humans to believe in things like that

but yes then i mean if essentially your

last point was was really i guess

um

something that arthur c clarke

spoke to in that marvelous

quote which i'm probably going to mangle

but any sufficiently advanced technology

is indistinguishable from magic and

extrapolating from that

any sufficiently advanced civilization

would probably be indistinguishable from

what we would call a god

i i mean

i don't know if there is an upper limit

on

technology for example and

if if there

is or isn't there's certainly a level

which which must be

something so above and beyond us that

that it would appear

omnipotent

to us and and that would uh

yeah that would certainly be interesting

to encounter

yeah like the the analogies if you if

you gave a iphone to uh neanderthal you

know he would think you're a god or that

the iphone's the god

and uh yeah i i took arthur c clarke's

third law which you stated perfectly and

applied it one of my scientific american

columns i called it shermer's last law

because you can't name laws after

yourself which is any sufficiently

advanced extraterrestrial intelligence

or i added later far future human would

be indistinguishable from god just

because of the you know kind of moore's

law geometric growth or uh

exponential growth of technologies and

societies and so on

that idea is not original to me but i i

think it's worth pursuing in that sense

um and let me just read to you this so

i've done some research on this this was

one of my uh columns in scientific

american that i then expanded into this

article for skeptic um in a 2017 article

in the journal motivation and emotion

titled we are not alone the psychologist

clay routledge and his colleagues found

an inverse relationship between

religiosity and eti beliefs that is

those who report low levels of religious

belief but a high desire for meaning

show greater belief in extraterrestrial

intelligences

in study one subjects who read an essay

arguing that human life is ultimately

meaningless and cosmically insignificant

were statistically significantly more

likely to believe in etis than those who

read an essay on the limitations of

computers that was a neutral one in

study two subjects who self-identified

as either atheist or agnostic were

statistically significantly more likely

to report believing in etis than those

who reported being religious primarily

christian

in studies three and four subjects

completed a religiosity scale

a meaning in life scale a well-being

scale and an eti belief scale

in a religious supernatural belief scale

but lower presence of meaning and higher

search for meaning were associated with

greater belief in etis the researchers

reported but eti beliefs showed no

correlation with supernatural beliefs or

well-being beliefs

from these studies the authors conclude

quote eti beliefs serve an existential

function

the promotion of perceived meaning in

life

in this way we view belief in eti as

serving a function similar to religion

without relying on traditional religious

doctrines that some people have

deliberately rejected

and by this they mean the supernatural

continuing the quote that is accepting

eti beliefs does not require one to

believe in supernatural forces or agents

that are incompatible with the

scientific understanding of the world

that i conclude if you don't believe in

god but seek deeper meaning outside of

our world the thought that we're not

alone in the universe could make humans

feel like they are part of a larger and

more meaningful cosmic drama

i think that gets to your point

yes and i i think it reinforces the

point i was making earlier that that

unlike

a god

extraterrestrial intelligence in some

way really doesn't violate

any any sort of fundamental laws and and

the idea that i i mean

people sometimes joke about the ufos the

ufo books being in the paranormal

section in a a library and and people

say well

what's paranormal about another

civilization doing what we're doing uh

just on a slightly more advanced okay

but not

you know going back to our discussion

about light speed not not necessarily

offending against any of the laws of

physics as we currently understand them

and i once had a great

conversation about this with a british

ufo researcher called john spencer and i

remember he had a very great

line on this i said well if if the ufo

books weren't

in the paranormal section where would

you put them and he said transport

that's really funny right

vehicles

yeah you're right no it's not it's not

supernatural nothing supernatural about

it at all

although then what do you do with the

idea of

good well i was going to say neither

neither do i necessarily take the view

that somehow atheists are

you know searching for a

a meaning that that religious people

don't have i think i i mean in my

experience

atheists find joy and pleasure in every

aspect of life and and don't

you know just don't

sort of think about it in terms of an

afterlife but but

whether it's whether it's a a great

record on the radio or a desert hike or

or whatever it is it's

enjoy the moment i as an atheist i don't

feel and i just wanted to clarify this i

don't

want people to think

because i don't have god in my life i'm

looking for aliens

because although i can make the analogy

that some people might look for

something i don't define atheism as a

sort of

empty space that i'm looking to fill

with something else because

i enjoy my life and

i live every

day and and enjoy every day and and

don't feel

you know this this

search for meaning because i don't have

god

hmm

although

uh i gather you

since you referenced going for hikes or

whatever you else you do to for

spiritual fulfillment or on wonder about

the world that is kind of filling in a

gap i don't mean a god gap i mean just

humans have a need for transcendence for

something

bigger than ourselves we can you know

love the sunset or beautiful music or

whatever there's something

about human psychology

that engages us in these kinds of

activities

and i don't think it's a replacement for

religion or god i think it's just part

of the human condition of which religion

and god is just one you know expression

of that

well i guess that

a lot of animals and i don't i don't

have the percentages but spend so much

of their time

locating and consuming and digesting

food and looking for shelter and

looking for a mate and avoiding

predators or seeking prey that they

don't have time

much time for for anything else but i

suppose we we have gotten to

a state because of

of our society isn't our our

civilization where we do

have you know we we can accomplish those

things and then fill our days with other

things and i think the question is then

what do you fill your

your days with and i i guess for the

most people the answer should be things

we enjoy doing

so i'm not sure there's anything i

forget who said that line

uh that that line grub first then

philosophy

you have to have to

have your needs back before you can

bother with things like literary

criticism or or music appreciation yeah

you know in one of those so let's talk

about the uaps the these videos

you know in a lot of the discussion

there's like okay if it's not aliens

then our real concern is that you know

could be russian or chinese assets and

they've got some new physics or

technology

now i'll then bifurcate that into two

things you know how could they do this

without us knowing about it let's set

that aside for a moment in it but one of

those galileo project meetings you know

avi made the point well we just spent

400 billion dollars on this on this cern

particle accelerator and no new physics

was discovered so let's not go the no

new physics

route let's think about it some other

way and i agree with that but

you know had he said that a century ago

you know we wouldn't have known about

well make it more than a century ago

einstein's

new physics over newtonian mechanics or

you know just take any of those quotes

from the 1890s you know that physics is

pretty much done you know everything is

just being rounded out to the sixth

place after the decimal point and so on

and and of course that was you know

complete nonsense so i can't help but

thinking yeah you're probably right

there's no new physics to be discovered

and i'll you know the people that i

friends at caltech that tell me man we

pretty much had the standard model is

pretty much it you know we know about

all the quarks and this and that and

there's nothing more down there to drill

into to find

um yeah okay you know i'm not a

physicist what do i know but on the

other hand historically you know every

time humans say that then it's like oh

well but you know a century later we

discovered x and oh my god we were so

wrong when we said there's no new

physics to be discovered

uh how do you think about that issue

yeah i mean i'm as i said earlier not a

scientist but i do occasionally

dip into and i think it's it's i can't

remember what the website is but i

occasionally google uh major unsolved

problems in

and and it comes up like major unsolved

problems in physics major unsolved

problems in mathematics and and it does

seem to me there's still a lot

out there and i mean whether it's dark

matter dark energy string theory

multiverse

um

you know

i i just get the sense there is still a

lot that that we don't

really get and and even some of the

basic math problems which are quite

fun

some of them uh make you think well if

we haven't figured out

you know some of those

mathematical proofs yet what what other

things

are there that that i don't know we

haven't even thought of yet so

so i suspect it's going to be like the

more the deeper you the closer you look

the more granularity you see and and

that there is always going to be

something so i think yeah i i

occasionally hear people say it it's a

repeat of this there's nothing new left

to be discovered and if history teaches

us anything it's that the very next week

there'll be an oops we've just found

this

do you think it's possible that the

chinese or russians could have developed

technologies say decades or centuries

ahead of our own science and technology

development programs

given the history of science and

technology shows it's pretty cumulative

and we all steal from one another and

copy one another and

and there's really new nothing uh

new that one country has that another

one doesn't quickly have after that

yeah i i mean um

i can't recall what the

the technical term for it is but

but as you said i mean the essence of it

is what you just said that that most

technologies are just a logical

progression of something that's come

before and that you can't build c

without first having built b and before

that you need to have the principles of

a

um that said

and i'm just off the top of my head i'm

i'm struggling for it but i mean i

suppose something like the jet engine

as opposed to

the standard propeller driven

aircraft

could be

seen as a sort of quantum leap

breakthrough in aviation

technology aeronautical engineering and

and it is i think conceivable that

every now and then

some maverick genius or or just

because it's the way it turns out

produces something

and and it looks like it comes from left

field and it probably doesn't it

probably still

still builds on existing principles but

it does look very different and very new

so so like uh you know a coal-fired

steamer

as opposed to a sailing

vessel with with the rigging and

and all of that and and like i say the

the jet engine as opposed to the

propeller and and then particularly say

the the v2

rocket

as opposed to

conventional freeform fault bombs so yes

i think to answer your question it is

absolutely possible that russia china

anyone

could

have made some

breakthrough

that

that produces what looks like

new technologies new physics isn't of

course because they're you know not

saying that this would violate any laws

of physics

but

it it would give the united states

a shock

indeed yes well one reason i'm skeptical

that whatever it is we're looking at

with these uap videos that they're

russian or chinese and then the kind of

breathless

uh descriptions of them by believers

that you know they're going faster than

the speed of sound on a sharp left turn

that would kill the pilot so they must

have some

gravity dampening system or something

and on and on they go

well how would the russians or chinese

do this without us finding out about it

i mean it'd be like you mentioned jet

engines well measure smit had jet

engines in 1945

and what we had chuck yeager breaking

the sound barrier and night in a jet in

1947 i mean within two years you know

the manhattan project the most secret

scientific project ever

uh you know we

detonated atomic bombs in 1945 the

russians had it and detonated their own

bomb in 1949 they they stole it

uh you know it would be like saying you

know we have biplanes or right wright

brother biplanes or something and and

the russians have you know the

equivalent of a b-2 bomber or a stealth

bomber or that we're using the fax

machine and the russians have the

internet

you know how would they do this without

us knowing about it i mean we we would

rip them off we would copy them we would

figure it out within you know days

months weeks months maybe years at most

so that that that that's one reason why

i'm skeptical that they've they've made

some kind of anti-gravity system or you

know what's been described by these

videos

yeah i mean actually of course i think i

would turn that back and say

maybe the answer is before we even get

into

um

russia and china

we really don't know what the

the speeds and the maneuvers and the

accelerations of these objects are we've

we've heard as as you put it breathless

descriptions

from the believers

and we've heard some less than

breathless descriptions from from some

skeptics

two

i don't know

what an and the us government

if they know

clearly are not releasing those data um

for whatever reason so

so

before we get into

it well russia or china

wouldn't have this technology we don't

really know what this technology is

um and certainly looking at the three

best known

us navy

uap

videos

i mean despite people saying oh the

sudden acceleration and i've heard

estimates of speeds of of

tens of

thousands of miles an hour or whatever

it is

but i think i think the the mick west's

of this world would say well those those

are not

the speeds that we're seeing and if you

just go to the soundtrack at sound

soundtrack of of

the pilots talking to each other on one

of those videos

it's not

sort of wow it just disappeared it's

whoa look at that thing i mean yeah it's

it's

impressive but it's not magic

impressive

so

so the first qualifier is we don't

really know

what speeds

um these these things are capable of so

we don't know

whether it's a truly quantum leap

development or whether it's just a next

step

but my other answer to your

your point about russia and china is

that

yes sometimes history shows us that

something is developed and then very

soon gets

copied

but only usually in circumstances where

it's fairly obvious

what that technology is so for example

one can hypothesize the manhattan

project a great example i think

when

the first atomic bomb was dropped in

anger at that point

stalin said to

berea you know get okay we need that

this is the number one strategic

priority for the soviet union

you know you have unlimited resources

but we must get the bomb

but had they not dropped the bomb

i don't know what whispers

stalin had heard that

that the us was developing

a

an atomic weapon but maybe they wouldn't

have gotten the bomb because maybe it's

only when you show your hand in a

definitive way

another example is the breaking of the

german codes

during the second world war

and people think

that

that secret came out in 1945 and of

course it didn't

because

i think it was late 60s early 70s before

it was revealed that

that the enigma machines had had been

compromised because some some

embassies in south american countries i

think were still using them and and of

course we were reading

that mail

so so secrets can be kept

so

i'm not you know if these things are

russian

or chinese

until unless one crashes or is shut shot

down or or something maybe they can

operate

this new technology and get away with it

that's a good point yeah i read um

who's the guy that developed the the um

the youtube spy plane ben rich i think

his name was

at

boeing in burbank

burbank california right here in l.a

right and this went on for decades and

no one knew that they were doing this

right there with hundreds of people

sworn to secrecy so it does kind of

counter that

my conspiracy skepticism that you know

people can't really keep secrets

sometimes they can

uh i mean apparently you working for the

ministry of defense you have

uh you had certain amount of security

clearance and you saw things that you

probably can't tell us on the show today

or ever

so maybe it is possible for people to

keep secrets like that sure i mean it's

one of those things i

was in the ministry of defense for 21

years and and

know a lot of things that are

secret that haven't come out on a whole

range of subjects whether it's iraq or

counter-terrorism or whatever it is and

and of course people have this

thing like oh see you you can't keep a

secret and then of course they cite

because they can only cite secrets which

have been revealed either because they

have been

declared or leaked or whatever but they

can't and don't

cite secrets that have been kept and

secrets are being kept every day

in in most

government agencies and and a lot of

this is obviously fairly low level

stuff but there are i i guarantee there

are some pretty

big secrets out there that have been

kept for decades

right well

sure there's going to be more probably

about jfk assassination and

and who knows what else and we won't

know until we know

um

yeah but so you since you mentioned

mick west

uh you know he's kind of done the heavy

lifting on the video analysis

and you know you follow just criticize

him what does he know you know he's just

a video game developer

and and but that makes me think well

if a video game developer can

deconstruct these videos in such a a way

to make them relatively explainable

surely someone in the pentagon must have

somebody at that level

that already knows all this stuff like

the simplest one my favorite example of

his debunking is this um

uh this particular one here of of the

the little uap that shoots off it was in

the middle of the of the two dashed

lines and all of a sudden it shoots off

to the left and by the way it doubles in

size and it was mitch

mcquest that pointed out this little

thing right here says zoom

and it goes from 1.0 to 2.0 so in this

case the the uap is not doing anything

it's just the camera's zooming in on it

and that makes it you know look like

it's moving it's not moving at all

okay if the video game developer can

look at that and go no there's nothing

that needs explaining it's the zoom

surely someone in the pentagon must go

these guys out there making these entire

television shows about these you know

incredible new physics that must have

been developed we know it's just a zoom

effect on the camp they have to know

this right and they're just

why are they not telling us this

disclosure project last june you know

it really didn't have that much new to

say i was

so i suspect there's a lot more in there

that they're just not telling us

i'm sure that's right now i i know what

i don't know so i i i really when i was

at the ministry of defense

there were scientific and

technical intelligence people who did

did all the sort of video and

photographic analysis and and i was just

a lay person trying to kind of make

sense of of their technical stuff so

mick mick may be right on

that aspect of it and and he may well

have picked up something that that the

ufo community missed i don't think that

necessarily means he's right across the

board

um

certainly what he says should be

listened to and evaluated but i've i've

seen some other people like

you know retired

military pilots for example

criticize some of mick's analysis and

say no that doesn't stand up because so

i i don't know i think i it it all needs

to be evaluated but yeah one thing

going to your your point is absolutely

100

there will be people in the dod

and in in the us intelligence community

who do have a a much better handle

on this um

excuse me um

and excuse me a moment

yeah please yeah while you're doing that

just just to put a fine point on that

you know like with the roswell story

you know that you know the ufologists

say well you know the government lied

they said it was a you know weather

balloon and then they said it was this

that and then you know 1996 they

released that port that report about the

what really happened at roswell this was

a

high altitude balloon train that was uh

carrying acoustic equipment to try to

detect uh upper atmosphere nuclear

explosions by the soviet union so of

course it was a cold war we couldn't

tell you what we were doing

so a apparently the government does lie

to its citizens no kidding

and b it's not aliens it's you know it's

just cold war technology something like

that

but i noticed that ufologist didn't say

oh okay now we don't have to worry about

roswell roswell's explained no they just

said they're still lying

you know so it's the question is what

would satisfy a ufologist

you know they're hiding bodies at area

51 or the spacecraft at area 51 okay

let's say they opened the gates and said

all right you guys get to come in we're

having an open house this weekend you

can see everything we have here

so of course we go there and there's

nothing there but conventional

technology well then the ufologist is

just going to say well they hit it

you know they've moved it that's how we

know they have it

and so this gets to the question of

negative evidence and and testability or

falsifiability what would it take and by

the way i noticed when when

george bush george w bush you know

invaded iraq on the pretense of that uh

sodom hussein had weapons of mass

destruction and then the u.n inspectors

went in there and couldn't find any and

bush's initial response was well they

moved them that's how we know they have

them because we can't find them it's

like no no

you know that's what the ufologists say

that's not an argument it's not a sound

argument and then he later admitted that

that was a big mistake

yeah i mean that's a

a tricky one and i i mean the whole

wmd

debate

um

actually i mean i think in one sense it

is relevant because there was a very

interesting line on that in

in

the

uk's

um or one of the uk's

inquiries about the the gulf war and it

said

you know obviously we knew as a matter

of fact that at one point saddam

had had chemical weapons because he had

used them so

so there was that reasonable start point

with the whole wmd thing that that

they had been there and and then the

question is

did did they still have them and

and one of the senior mi6

officers who was interviewed in the

inquiry said

something

which was quite i thought

one of these

truisms but

but what do you do with it in in terms

of

does saddam or not have this capability

and he said he said

a bio weapons capability for example

may exist in

in the cranium of a handful of iraqi

scientists

and and so in other words you can you

can maybe destroy

a stockpile but if you possess the

knowledge to very quickly then remake

that

do you have

a capability

even if you don't act actually currently

have the stockpile and and which is more

dangerous and

you know so

i mean these are difficult philosophical

issues but they are important because we

went to war on them and and

some people say you know went to

an illegal war on them so it's it's not

just philosophy it's important and

and

lives were and are in involved so and

but yeah it it gets to the heart of

this question of

evidence and proof

and

and and yeah i mean you have arms

inspections un under the treaties and

and

you know there are

stories of of obviously if if

you can call a snap inspection and go to

the other side and say right we're

you know we want to go into this base

um but yeah how do you know that they

haven't moved it

to the next base or or just hidden it

very well in the base that you you're

inspecting so yeah the whole concept of

proving negatives and

and where does evidence become proof i

mean this it's difficult but it's

important and it's it's central to to

the ufo debate but it's central to the

iraq wmd debate and so many other things

by the way i want to i want to come back

on one other

point i i was a little bit more enthused

about the

preliminary assessment of uap last june

than than many people in the ufo

community were i i actually thought

there was some good stuff in that nine

pages

i i thought

i thought it was interesting that they

had mentioned

that uap would detect it across multiple

platforms

and and they specifically mentioned

you know

visual radar flare electro optical

weapon seeker

and

so on i think it was

interesting that they mentioned the

collection bias

problem and clustering because that's

something we need to get to the bottom

of are there really more sightings

around some of these

nuclear facilities for example or is it

just that those

areas are more heavily surveilled i mean

those those are all important questions

and whether we're dealing with china or

russia

or something else they are questions

that

that obviously congress and the dod and

the intelligence community now

now accept that we do need answers to

yeah

one of those quotes in the 60 minutes

peace on the uap's correspondent bill

whitaker was talking to navy pilot ryan

graves

uh who said he had seen uaps quote every

day for at least a couple of years

and i remember being struck by that like

oh so this isn't just a one-off thing

and here's our

video grainy video

you've seen these every day but then on

the other hand if that's true

given how many uh you know high

definition

smartphones there are

100 million in the united states alone

or more

uh and you know these are clustered

along the coast so surely there's people

out walking their dogs or at the beach

or

or at their homes sitting on the back

porch and there goes another one and

another one and another one where are

all the cell phone videos and

photographs clear sharp not grainy

videos and blurry photographs that make

it so difficult to see what's going on

this is what always bothers me about

about this whole subject and related

subjects too the evidence is always kind

of murky can't quite make out what's

going on and we know from cognitive

psychology that's where the mind fills

in the gaps patternicity and and you

know thinking something's there and like

like bigfoot not you know another one of

my areas is you know here's a video of a

bigfoot or a you know photograph of a

bigfoot and and if you squint and kind

of use your imagination you can see

right there in the shadows that kind of

a head and an arm it's like

can't we have like a definitive

photograph not a guy in an ape suit but

i mean a definitive photograph

and that's what bothers me about that

about these claims about the uaps if

they're that common we should have tons

of video and photographs don't you think

yeah maybe they're not that common or

maybe they're not that common in areas

where the public might

capture them on on cell phones and

things and that's one of the reasons why

i thought one of the most important

like revelations in the last couple of

years was when former director of

national intelligence john ratcliffe

threw into that fox news interview

uh he the the statement about satellite

imagery of uap

and he said something like he was being

dismissive

uh about

you know betting too much on just

a handful of videos and he said well

it's not just

a site a pilot sighting here or a

satellite

image over there and i thought

that's interesting because

nobody asked him about satellite imagery

and he popped it into the conversation

and then if you if you look at that

interview he

repeated

it

he followed up with a second

reference to satellite imagery so

i think satellite imagery might be key

to a lot of this and i hope it's

something that

the senate intelligence

committee the the senate armed services

committee is it and house too is looking

into because i think i think satellite

imagery could very well be key to a lot

of this

right if you can pinpoint the date when

that video video x was shot at this

location 50 miles off the coast of san

diego on this date at two in the

afternoon

and presumably you could call up the

data from satellites or google earth or

whatever and go there's what you were

looking at right there we can see what

it is now high resolution it's a jet or

it's a drone or whatever

that would be one way to get at the

bottom of this

yes and it's interesting i don't think

from memory that when kirsten gillibrand

wrote her

amendment for the new defense bill

i i think there were there was a lot

about the need for a science plan on uap

there was a lot on the need for a

multi-agency approach i'm not sure even

after john ratcliffe had dropped that

bombshell whether there was reference to

satellite

imagery but i do hope it's something

that

that irrespective of the wording

in the new uh

national defense authorization act for

fiscal year 2022. i i hope that it's

something that that congress will push

on because it's it it yeah absolutely it

it should be one of the easiest ways to

get if you'll excuse the pun resolution

on the

the su

nice

yes

um so let's talk about these shows that

you've done a lot of these shows and and

since we're talking about mick west and

and so forth um they don't they seem to

be a little thin on the skeptical

perspective i'd say you're the closest

thing they have to a skeptic that

appears regularly on these shows like

ancient aliens or ufos declassified

you know they they have they're mostly

true believers and you you can see from

the outset what the premise of the show

is why don't they have mick west or

myself or

robert schaefer over at center for

inquiry or you know there's there's a

dozen

you know

qualified people that study ufos for a

living that are skeptical

and it you know it seems obvious well

because they don't want a skeptical

perspective but why not why wouldn't why

do they think that the american public

just has no interest in what the

skeptical perspective is why not give a

balanced show or say well

these are what some people say this is

what other people say kind of a

conversation like you and i haven't are

having do you think they just feel like

that's not going to be entertaining

enough and we got to sell a show or fill

the air airways with enough

rich content that too much skeptical

analysis is going to make it sound

boring

or you know what's your sense of how

these shows are produced

i think it varies and i've got a maybe a

different perspective on this because i

of course i've lived in the us for

10 years actually literally 10 years to

this day by the way um

so oh my god well congratulations

yes thank you but um when i was in the

uk

and i still do some uk

tv but

but it was much more the case with with

certainly the bbc

where you did generally speaking have to

have balance so on those shows

there often is

skeptical input and i think it works i'm

i'm all for it because to me i mean

and i've been involved in developing

some tv shows i think if everyone just

agrees with everyone else and all the

viewers are just nodding and going yes

yes absolutely

i'm i'm not sure that's as good as i say

bring on the skeptics even if then the

the believers are shaking their fists at

the tv and saying you evil debunker

you're still working for the government

or or whatever so i'm i would be for it

i think it works on multiple levels i

think it's

it's

the right thing to do to bring balance

but i also think it's it's actually

entertaining because because

you will alternately upset the skeptics

and the believers

who are more likely to watch i mean a

range of people are more likely to watch

a show with balance than than without

and and so you'll be on and people will

be shaking their fist at you and and

then a true believer will be on and the

skeptics in the audience will be rolling

their eyes and saying oh for goodness

sake and i think that works so i i think

it

it should happen i i don't know

really

why it doesn't um

but one one thing i would say

is that one of the other shows i'm

involved with is is uh the basement

office

with stephen greenstreet from from the

new york post and if if anyone has

followed his twitter feed

recently

they will have seen that he has taken a

very sharp turn

towards more skeptical

explanations much more favoring

china and russia for example with with

the the us navy videos

so so season three of the basement

office is coming up and i think people

people can expect a few surprises there

oh good yeah one of my favorite video

clips that i show to my students in my

lecture on the bibuna triangle is a bbc

production

of the bermuda triangle and they open

with the disappearance of flight 19

uh of these uh avenger planes off of

florida and and they present presented

in a way that's like oh my god this is

an incredible mystery how can they

possibly explain this and then they

explain it it's like oh

it's like you know magic tricks revealed

oh that's how it's done to me i want to

know to me that's super interesting

rather than here's the mystery and we're

just going to leave it at that

yes i i want to know too of course

very often

we're not able to do that with this

subject

because there isn't

a definitive answer

maybe there are definitive or

widely accepted as definitive solutions

to some cases but i think the phenomenon

itself the mystery itself is still

unresolved and i mean i guess on one

level if it wasn't you and i wouldn't be

having this conversation right now

if if it was genuinely case closed

either way

in the debate so i think there is still

sufficient gray area and things still to

be discovered on this but i think i go

back to congress and i think it's it's

one of these

you know examples of the greatest trick

the devil ever played was convincing the

world he never existed i think the point

is

for too long

we you know

trust yeah the atheist brings out that

quote of course um

but

but i think for too long

the authorities

it's not that they haven't looked at uap

but they haven't looked at it

seriously enough and with the modern

technologies that we now have in our

hands that we can bring to bear on this

mystery and i mentioned

satellites but i could equally have

mentioned the whole

discipline of um

uh

measurement um and and signature

intelligence so the whole messant

discipline of of looking for example at

infrared

signals through through the the various

cameras and

and then being able to discern things

about

what you're looking at you know whether

it's a

an engine or a

missile or whatever through

through the use of that discipline and

and

now

congress and the dod and the

intelligence community is looking

through that particular lens i think we

might be closer than ever to to

resolution of some of this or a large

chunk of it

yeah i suspect the government knows a

lot more than they're telling us but we

won't know until we know

uh one of the reasons i do what i do for

a living is because i uh

no i i think absolutely

a hundred percent agree on that i i mean

just on the three best known

navy videos again i mean

self-evidently the the us government has

other parts of the that footage i mean

every story has a beginning a middle and

an end when we look at those three

videos we're just looking at a snapshot

well how did we get to that point and

what happened next we don't have that we

don't have we being the public don't

have

the

the data that people whether they're

they're

you know believers or skeptics the data

that people would like to have on on the

speeds on on all of that

we we have a few things that the us

government has decided

in an unclassified

video can be left up on on the display

but but some pieces of the puzzle are

clearly missing yeah

in my more cynical moods i often think

there's some government officials

somewhere watching all these shows like

on ancient aliens

dissecting these video footage when they

know exactly what's going on they're

going oh look what they're saying now

they think it's russian

maybe but we won't know i guess

you know anyway i was going to say one

of the things the reasons i do what i do

for a living is i'm i've always been

interested in all these topics see all

the back to college when i was in

college i read uh van doneken's chariots

of the gods and i thought wow this is

really incredible

uh what if any of this is true and then

there was a book like maybe two or three

years later called crash go the chariots

and an anthropologist i think it was an

anthropologist you know kind of

deconstructed every one of the claims

like here's his claim here's why it's

not true here's the claim here's what we

know boom boom boom because it's mostly

archaeological stuff like you know the

pyramids or or um uh you know the nazca

lines or the uh

easter island statues and so on

and i thought that this is way more

interesting to have you know here's the

claim here's the rebuttal and line them

all up like you said that's super

entertaining you know i think that's

what people want to know

and this is what bothers me about if i

can just rant for a moment about some of

these shows particularly ancient alien

shows i want to love that show

but they have no skeptics on there at

all and they'll say something like well

here's the easter island statues and

scientists just have no idea how they

carved these things and moved them to

the coast it's like yeah scientists do

why don't you have on john van tilburg

from ucla who spent 40 years studying

easter island statues she goes there

every year she knows every statue by

heart why don't you have her on the show

to explain here's what we think happened

here and just at least present that but

it's the same people recycled over and

over it makes me wonder about this show

somebody was telling me it's it's it's

they just buy the air time and they just

produce whatever they want there's no

back checkers there's no editors going

hey we need to have balance it's not

like a bbc production

so maybe give us some insight in in that

regard

well not not really i mean i'm i'm a

serious regular on ancient aliens i i

always regard it as a sort of fun

what-if show but as as you probably know

um

when i do take part i i tend to be in

the episodes that that look at the more

modern

aspects of of this so i've i've never

gone to the pyramids or to stonehenge or

or to easter island and uh

any of that one time they sent me up

a hill in wales in in winter when it was

cold and

wet and and things but that was to talk

about a ufo

case so i can't i can't really speak to

that i mean i

i don't i don't i honestly i don't even

tend to watch my own tv shows so i don't

know but people i i think people enjoy

it people people like to think what if

um

and and speculate and and things but i'm

not obviously i'm not an ancient

astronaut theorist

myself

uh as i say and that's not to say that

they occasionally don't have me on as as

almost like uh an on-screen narrator

with some of those episodes where i i

sort of say well some people believe

this and

some believe that and i tell

tell the story but um yeah i

if if i was making my own show

i think i i would put in

i would put in the balance because i

i do think the

dissent is important

absolutely well so if you have any

influence you know tell them to have

some more skeptics on it's like we did

we did a whole issue of skeptic on on

ancient aliens you know because they

have like much is made about these two

figures that appear in crucifixion art

in the in the

middle ages and early modern period and

they look like spaceships inhabited by

inhabited by little creatures well but

any art historian will tell you well

that's just a common motif that's put in

um these crucifixion scenes between you

know paintings done between 1100 and

1400 that's just and their angels that's

the sun

these are literally the sun and the moon

that are uh you know bracketing the

crucifixion scene and of course the sun

and the moon for the ancients were

inhabited things they were you know like

like kind of sub gods that kind of thing

and so why not have an art historian

that says well that's interesting but

here's what's actually we think is going

on in these in these art forms you know

that little ufo in the background those

are clouds that the angels sat on or

that that that ufo in the back that

looks like a hat it is a hat that's what

th this hat image appears over and over

and so on and so forth it's like what

why not make it more interesting where

having somebody that actually knows what

they're talking about when you're

looking at a medieval painting anyway

i'm kind of ranting about this but it

bothers me

no i i i get it and uh like i say if i

if i was making a show i i would tell

both sides and

and let the viewers make up their minds

yeah

all right let's let's shift to um

conspiracy theories another one of your

areas you've spent a lot of time on as

have i i think it's super interesting

and

and one reason i think people believe in

conspiracy theories is because there are

enough true conspiracies that is

conspiracies do happen governments do

lie to their people governments do

cover things up corporations do cheat

the system to make profits they do lie

and so forth so you know one of my

theories is that it's kind of a

constructive conspiracism it pays to be

a little paranoid because we have enough

personal experience and historical

experience of of governments line and so

forth so how do you think about

conspiracy theories along those lines

why people believe them

yeah and and isn't there even a an

evolutionary argument that i've heard a

couple of people put forward that that

it's

evolutionary advantageous to believe

in conspiracy theories because if if you

if you're walking through the

the bush and you think um

you think uh

that you see uh a you know a leopard

and and

and then you think that looks a little

bit like a leopard maybe i'll back off

um

then

you you will survive and and uh your

genes will be

passed on so so that kind of looks a bit

like it could be a leopard in there as

opposed to no it's not a leopard and

then you get lepton so i don't know i

don't know whether that

actually

is is true that's actually right that's

actually my my my own idea of

what i call patternicity and we make you

can make two types of errors type one

errors and type two errors so you hear

the russell in the grass is it a

dangerous predator or just the wind well

if you assume it's a dangerous predator

and it turns out it's just the wind

that's a type one era false positive but

no harm it you know it's it but a type

two error where you think it's just the

win and it's a dangerous predator you

know your lunch

so it's so a type 2 error is a higher

cost error to make so it's better

you're better off just thinking most

things are true most most patterns are

real

and we should assume an element of

danger there and then to expand that to

conspiracies that you know the

evolutionary argument from from our

social aspects is that we're a social

primate species and we have bands and

tribes and

that that coalesce and work together in

a cooperative way against other bands

and tribes that are potentially

dangerous so the idea that there's

coalitions of people doing things

against me personally or against our

family our group

is perfectly rational that's a totally

rational response because there are

dangerous people there are bad groups

there are

even if it even if the other group

doesn't want to be a threat

they kind of have to um develop a

a reputation of being potentially

dangerous so that you don't attack them

so you get this kind of security dilemma

you know i don't i don't want to you

know like russia you know you know we're

putting troops here we don't want to use

our troops but we don't want you to do

anything over here in ukraine uh so it's

kind of a threat

and and so this is the idea of kind of

the evolutionary origins of conspiracism

is that social

coalitions of people against other

people happens enough that it's rational

to assume the worst about other people

that they are really doing something

behind the scenes

that we should be

careful about

yes and i mean i think any student of

history i mean one of one of my favorite

sort of periods of of

history i guess is is um

i don't know medieval

english history i i don't know from from

sort of the norman conquest onwards and

if you if you read a book on on like you

know the plantagenets for example it's

just one constant

you know mix of of plotting and

conspiracies and alliances and and

betrayals and

and you know i i think in one in one

sense that's that's who we are and and

factions uh are plotting secretly to to

replace other factions and as you say i

mean you mentioned tribes i mean it goes

back i'm sure to the dawn of of time

that within within a tribe you know

people would be vying for power and

thinking well you know if i i'm not

strong enough to displace the current

chief but if i form an alliance with

with this other

you know

band of warriors maybe we could you know

particularly if we stab him in the back

one

one day and and

you know on almost every level

that

goes on so i mean

yeah conspiracies

collusion um

it's who we are

i think as a species and then but what

then happens is

in in the context of this conversation i

get gas this get gets it distills down

to a few

a few sort of flagship cases

that

that are almost binary so so now when

you think of conspiracy theories you you

think like oh jfk

the moon landings uh

the death of princess diana

those those sorts of things and those

are the sorts of things where i i tend

to be

you know fairly skeptical i think we

went to the moon i tend to focus on the

lone gunman theory for jfk though i

don't dispute that a whole lot a lot of

people probably did want him dead um

but then i i then i look at the real the

the indisputable

ones i i mean

pedophile priests

for for example that that this

organization

the the catholic church that says

endured for nearly 2 000 years

there was cyst it wasn't probably still

a systemic

abuse

which was known about

often and just reading literally again

about it today at the highest level

within the organization and what

happened this was swept under the carpet

people were moved um

you know people were probably paid off

and and lent on and it's a real

conspiracy and no one i think who's

looked at that one

would dispute that that isn't exactly

what happened so conspiracy theories

absolutely can and do happen

i i mean some of them are are true but

some are not

right so it's a signal detection problem

how do you know which ones are true and

which ones are not so then you have to

do kind of a bayesian analysis of you

know what your priors are and then how

those change when new evidence comes in

like the jeffrey epstein uh you know

suicide slash murder one you know i

thought come on he just killed himself

because you know the he reached the end

and there was no hope uh but then you

know then then that the story came out

about the video cameras in the prison

that didn't work well that's chance you

know and then then the next story was

two of the video cameras were broken i

thought okay come on what are the

chances of that you know that's leaning

more and more towards some kind of

conspiracy and then you know the

probability of that you know

of a motive you know he probably has a

little black book of all the powerful

rich politicians and corporate leaders

who were on that jet that went to that

island okay and then you then you start

spinning out probable stories and so i

posted something on twitter like yeah

there might be something to the jeffrey

epstein conspiracy theory that he was

murdered and then someone uh emailed me

that worked at that prison that said oh

those cameras never work that per that

prison is a dump

they never maintain it it's a terrible

place and of course the cameras went out

because they never worked i'm like oh

okay

so you know in each case you have to

kind of look at them one by one

and uh yeah like

i think jfk you know loan assassin good

sure the epstein one's interesting

because then you you say well

you know a lot of people

wanted him dead um could that have been

done and then you you think well no that

wouldn't happen and then you think but

wait we've just read about another

death in prison where it was absolutely

um

i i think pretty much case closed that

that and that was the whitey bulger um

situation

that

he of course

had had been an informer for many years

and and then he went on the run maybe

with

some degree of complicity from the

authorities which is a conspiracy in

itself which may well be true

and then obviously he was deeply

involved in and a part of organized

crime a lot of people then realized wait

a minute

this guy had been informing and

obviously

you know what what then happened was

that he was savagely beaten

to death so i i mean

that i don't think anyone would dispute

was a conspiracy some senior figures in

all organized crime

obviously as as a combination of revenge

and maybe deterrence

in in terms of not

not wanting to

to encourage future betrayals

somebody put out the order

and and said uh take this guy out

brutally and and

you know painfully

and it absolutely happened so that so

so it's interesting sometimes to take

something like that and if somebody's

skeptical about the epstein thing say

well wait a minute what about the bulger

thing

right

or even something like the rigged

election conspiracy theory there are

rigged elections in in the history of

democracies and

you have to look no further than say

1960s and 70s united states cia

influence of elections in south american

uh elections where you know the

communist guy is running against the

fascist guy and we want the fascist guy

to win because he's the they're

friendlier toward american business

interest than the communists are who

might nationalize our company so you

know we got to help the the rebels on

the one side and you know that iran

contra business you know i'm sure that's

not the only one

and uh you know christopher hitchens

wrote a book about kissinger as a war

criminal you know that he was you know

up to the cia was up to all kinds of

things that you know we only found out

about later and now we have wikileaks

and it's like wait we were doing what we

were monitoring

angela merkel's cell phone what the mr

transparency president obama what

i thought he was going to clear it up

and close gitmo and stop all this you

know uh why

what was it warrantless uh

surveillance i thought you know

and we were still doing it and i'm sure

still doing it now those are all kinds

of conspiracies

yeah better conspiracy theories that are

true

yeah so i i mean i've

i've written

a primer

on conspiracy theories on my website

which which kind of articulates my views

on on

some some of them and i mean i think it

it just puts a little bit of flesh on

the bones of of some of the things we've

discussed i mean i think i think some of

them are true some of them are not true

i think there is a good side to some

conspiracy theories that that i think it

encourages critical thinking it

encourages us to challenge the official

narrative uh but there is a dark side to

some conspiracy theories

too um the anti-semitism that runs

through some of them is is clearly one

aspect of that um and and there are

other kind of more dark side

aspects too so i think i think as with a

lot of things it's conspiracy theories

are a mixed bag

yeah the uh

uh you know all the different elements

that go into it it's fairly complex so

again you have to kind of take it one at

a time

and

and to see what the evidence is and in

many cases we just can't know we just

somebody knows but we don't know or we

won't know yet one of the best arguments

that i make for being chronically frozen

and being brought back 500 years from

now it's like oh that's what that's the

explanation for that oh i always

wondered about that or that's what dark

matter turned out to be here where

consciousness was finally explained in

you know

20

something like that

um yeah so but of course we we can't

know that uh so well

nick we've been going for over an hour

and a half

uh give us your final thoughts on on uh

what you think the uap videos might turn

out to be and also what you're working

on

next

well i don't know

those three videos could be anything um

but i think that

given they are operating where they are

operating around these multi-billion

dollar

assets the the carriers and and of

course given that we've got similar

situation

supposedly happening on on well not

supposedly actually happening over the

continental united states and and

elsewhere of course just in the last few

days we've heard about

sweden

and is it drones

is it is it russia

is it something else so what i what i do

think is important i i have often said

to the ufo community i think it's

it's very foolish to bet the farm

on a

on just those three videos for example

because if congress turns around

you know later this year and says you

know what we've looked into this and it

turns out

that

this was a chinese drone

that that

some people deep in one of the agencies

kind of suspected and

and here it is

so then the whole house of cards

comes down so i

i don't

think the uap

mystery stands or falls on on those

those three videos i mean i

i go back to the point

i'm sure there's life out there in the

universe i don't know whether or not

we're being visited but i hope we are

because i think that would be the most

interesting

and impactful solution

to to the uap mystery i think we're

getting close i know that the whole

history of this subject is a sort of

tomorrow never comes

statement that we're we're building up

to something and we're closer than we've

ever been but i think that we have now

the combination

of the will to do it from

congress and elsewhere and

the technology

to bring to bear on the problem so i'm

i'm optimistic i still hope it's i hope

it's aliens i really do

um

you know

i don't want i don't want people

watching this to think that we're too

we're too

like seamless on this i really hope it's

aliens um but no i

i don't know whether it will turn out to

be or not we will we will see but um

uap interesting and important whatever's

going on conspiracies some true

some not

uh what am i doing now more episodes

you'll be pleased to hear of ancient

aliens

uh

season three

of the basement office with stephen

green street i think there'll be

something in there to upset everyone but

um

and a few other new series

too

and

i just attended uh actually i should say

this i just attended um a week ago

uh hereticon

which was

organized by

um

peter thiel and and the um

um

you know his his organization and that

was uh that was a a sort of group of of

people talking about everything from

from

the vaccines

through to uap

through to the apocalypse

immortality human machine interface

um

so

so

a lot of people are

i think now looking at this issue that

weren't looking at this issue

or at least weren't looking at it

seriously a few

few years ago and i mentioned i

mentioned that so there was hereticon

there's avilo but galileo project which

we're

we're both

involved with so i i think one of the

i'll finish on this i mean i think this

subject of uap

has

for far too long been just regarded as a

sort of niche fringe conspiracy sci-fi

thing

i think that's changing now and it's

transitioning

and we're seeing people regard it

as a defense and national security issue

but we're also seeing

the scientific and academic community

beginning to take a look and we're

seeing the kind of business community

the tech billionaires the

the venture capitalists uh taking a look

too and i think it's going to be that

multi-disciplinary

holistic approach that cracks this if

anything does so exciting times

indeed

well that's a perfect place to end

nick pope thanks for coming on you're

one of the more interesting people

working in this space i love talking to

you and i love watching you we'll look

forward to seeing your shows and

and uh thanks a lot

thank you