Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Man, welcome back to Coast to Coast. George Nori with you,
Speaker 2: Doctor Michael Schumer with us for the next couple hours.
Speaker 2: Founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, the host of the podcast
Speaker 2: The Michael Schumer Show, Presidential fellow at Chapman University, where
Speaker 2: he teaches skepticism one oh one. For eighteen plus years,
Speaker 2: he was a monthly columnist for The Scientific American and
Speaker 2: writes a weekly substack column as well. Michael regularly contributes
Speaker 2: opinion editorials, essays reviews to The Wall Street Journal, The
Speaker 2: Los Angeles Times, Science, Nature, and other publications. He's also
Speaker 2: a noted author. One of his recent books, Conspiracy, Why
Speaker 2: the Rational Believe the Irrational? Michael, welcome back. Have you been.
Speaker 3: Oh I'm doing well, George, Thank you. Yes, exciting times
Speaker 3: in UFO ology.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, we'll talk a lot about that. Boy,
Speaker 2: your name comes up a lot on this program. Did
Speaker 2: you know that.
Speaker 3: I do hear that periodically from that. Listen to your show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we defend you.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have very good things.
Speaker 2: Actually, well, you know there's I think it's healthy to
Speaker 2: be skeptical. You know you're looking for the answers.
Speaker 3: Well, that's right. Skepticism is not cynicism, it's not denial,
Speaker 3: it's not nihilism. It's just curiosity. We all want to
Speaker 3: know what's the truth, and the fact is we all
Speaker 3: get it wrong much at the time, and so we
Speaker 3: want to know, you know, what, what is actually true,
Speaker 3: and we don't want to get it wrong. And the
Speaker 3: basic problem is that none of us are omniscient. No
Speaker 3: one knows for sure. I don't know. You don't either,
Speaker 3: So we have to work together through the best tools
Speaker 3: we have of science and reason to figure out what's
Speaker 3: going on. So, you know, I never assign a zero
Speaker 3: or one probability to anything. You know, anything is possible,
Speaker 3: and nothing is impossible, so almost nothing, So you know,
Speaker 3: I try to keep an open mind. I do think,
Speaker 3: you know, it's very probable that they're are extraterrestrial intelligences
Speaker 3: somewhere out there in the cosmos. But I think that's
Speaker 3: a separate question from have they come here to Earth,
Speaker 3: And in each case, we don't know one way or
Speaker 3: the other for sure, and so we should keep looking,
Speaker 3: keep searching. I think it's one of the greatest questions
Speaker 3: that anyone can ask. Are we alone?
Speaker 2: It sure is? And people are seeing weird things though,
Speaker 2: aren't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they've always seen weird things.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: There's kind of a burst of media coverage about UAPs
Speaker 3: in the last few weeks, and the problem of having
Speaker 3: an institutional memory like I have, having studied this now
Speaker 3: for well over thirty years, really even more like forty
Speaker 3: or fifty years if you go back to my youth
Speaker 3: reading Carl Sagan. You know, we've been hearing stories about this.
Speaker 3: You know, disclosure is coming at any time. The government's
Speaker 3: kind of covering it all up Area fifty one. The
Speaker 3: secrets we're going to find out soon. There's these sightings
Speaker 3: and this, and that I've been hearing this for so long.
Speaker 3: I'm just you know, frustrated, Like, come on, let's get
Speaker 3: to the bottom of it. Quit telling me stories and
Speaker 3: show us the photographs, show us the actual spacecraft. And
Speaker 3: you know, I'm hoping that this latest revelation that Macro
Speaker 3: Rubio you know, is going to really look into this.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe he's got the actual power to do something
Speaker 3: about it, but maybe not. You know, I mean Bill Clinton,
Speaker 3: you know, famously said when he became President, I'm going
Speaker 3: to get to the bottom of roswell. And you know
Speaker 3: Obama said he would go on and nothing ever comes
Speaker 3: of it. So I just I don't know why. My
Speaker 3: suspicion is that there has nothing to do with aliens
Speaker 3: and everything to do with national security secrets over experimental
Speaker 3: aircraft and drones and spy equipment that we're using that
Speaker 3: we don't want the Chinese and Russians and other even
Speaker 3: our allies to know about. And so even my suspicion
Speaker 3: is that even if Marco Rubio somehow got a path
Speaker 3: to go into Area fifty one or wherever, and and
Speaker 3: they showed him what people have been talking about, my
Speaker 3: guess is it would be something like, you know, we
Speaker 3: are ten years ahead of the Soviets and the Chinese
Speaker 3: on this incredibly stealthy bomber. Here it is, and it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: I can't go to the public and tell her about this. No,
Speaker 3: of course you can't. This is stop secret. Oh darn
Speaker 3: you know. That's what I suspect it will happen. But
Speaker 3: you know, I could be wrong. I hope he comes
Speaker 3: out and says, hey, I found it. I found out.
Speaker 3: You know, we have we had the aliens or whatever,
Speaker 3: but I'm highly skeptical.
Speaker 2: Edgar Mitchell, the late Apollo fourteen astronaut walked on the Moon,
Speaker 2: once told me Michael that he has been told by
Speaker 2: people in government now we are being visited. And he
Speaker 2: was darn serious about that too.
Speaker 3: Yes, I've seen those interviews with Mitchell, and you know,
Speaker 3: like the latest round we had, you know, David Gresh said,
Speaker 3: you know, he talked to people who touched the spacecraft
Speaker 3: and who saw it and so on. And then we
Speaker 3: had I had Michael Schallenberger on my show, and you know,
Speaker 3: after the grudg story broke, Schallenberger talked to some people,
Speaker 3: but he wouldn't tell me who he talked to, you know,
Speaker 3: as Drush wouldn't either, says he. You know, you protect
Speaker 3: your sources, all right, you know. And then Mark Rubio said,
Speaker 3: he talked to people that you know, direct had direct context. Okay,
Speaker 3: so we have three sources. So that tells me that,
Speaker 3: you know, these people are not just making this up.
Speaker 3: They're actually talking to somebody. But who are the people
Speaker 3: they're talking to We don't know. And what is it
Speaker 3: that the people that they talked to actually saw, you know,
Speaker 3: we don't know. Somebody says, well, it was you know,
Speaker 3: incredibly unusual, and you know, it appeared to me to
Speaker 3: be off world technology. But what if the person they're
Speaker 3: talking to doesn't know that they're actually looking at some
Speaker 3: super advanced dark you know, secret weapon in a credled
Speaker 3: drone or a spipe lane, the equivalent of the YouTube
Speaker 3: spipeline or the SARS seventy word blackbird or the stealth bomber,
Speaker 3: something like, you know, twenty years advance from what we
Speaker 3: know about now that they've developed, because that's how it works.
Speaker 3: What if they're looking at that and they go, man,
Speaker 3: this is incredible. I have no idea what I'm looking at,
Speaker 3: and then they tell Schellenburger or Crush or Rubio, I
Speaker 3: saw and touch this thing. I just have no idea.
Speaker 3: It seems offworld, and it's what if that's what it is?
Speaker 2: If we find out that we are being visited. What
Speaker 2: does Michael Schumer say after that?
Speaker 3: I would print right on the cover of Skeptic magazine
Speaker 3: I was wrong, would you really? Oh yeah, of course, yeah,
Speaker 3: yeah sure, because I don't I don't have any invested,
Speaker 3: ideological or religious or whatever interest in denying this. I
Speaker 3: in fact, like Carl Sagan, I would be thrilled to
Speaker 3: know that we're not alone. That you know, this truly
Speaker 3: would be one of the greatest discoveries of all time,
Speaker 3: if not the greatest discovery and all of science, that
Speaker 3: you know, we are not alone in the cosmos. I
Speaker 3: think it would be incredibly exciting, and I would I
Speaker 3: would like to know that, and it wouldn't bother me.
Speaker 3: And by the way, I should know parenthetically that you know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of kind of memes going around that
Speaker 3: if we were just if we discovered aliens, you know,
Speaker 3: religions would be upset and governments would fall apart in
Speaker 3: economies would collect none. That's true. You know, the study
Speaker 3: surveys after surveys, ask Christians and Jews and Muslims and
Speaker 3: other religious people, you know, would just disrupt your religious
Speaker 3: faith if you found out that, you know, there were
Speaker 3: extraterstrial intelligences, And the answer is almost universally no, you know,
Speaker 3: because if you really believe that God is an omniscient being,
Speaker 3: omnipot eaten, why why would it matter how many life
Speaker 3: forms he could create in the universe or whatever? You know,
Speaker 3: So I don't think any of that's true. I think
Speaker 3: most people would be thrilled to discover this. I don't
Speaker 3: think it would disrupt anything. And there's no reason to
Speaker 3: keep a secret other than if there really is some
Speaker 3: kind of back engineering of technology that we could use
Speaker 3: to our advantage over the Russians or Chinese or something
Speaker 3: like that. Then that's the only argument I've ever heard
Speaker 3: that you would lead to why they would keep it secret,
Speaker 3: but not for any social or political reasons.
Speaker 2: Well, the Catholic Church, Michael has publicly made it known
Speaker 2: that the belief in extraterrestrial life is not negating your
Speaker 2: belief in God, so they stand by the fact that
Speaker 2: it's very possible that there could be life out there.
Speaker 3: Sure, I mean, if you're God, you can praise as
Speaker 3: many life forms as you want you can send. If
Speaker 3: you're Christians, you can send Jesus to all the different
Speaker 3: planets and forgive the sins of those alien industry whatever.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think it would bother people, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, much of the most of the
Speaker 3: discoveries of science over the last four hundred years have
Speaker 3: not killed religion like people thought it would. And you know,
Speaker 3: so people adjust, you know, the religious faiths to changing
Speaker 3: evidence and science and so so I don't think this
Speaker 3: would disrupt anything. In fact, I think, if anything, it
Speaker 3: would make people feel in the same sense that they
Speaker 3: feel religiously, like, so we really are not alone. There
Speaker 3: really are other beings out there, and in a way
Speaker 3: that does feel good. It's like, oh, okay, yeah, so
Speaker 3: you know we're not the only ones. And I do
Speaker 3: think the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, for everything from the
Speaker 3: SETI program to u apology has underneath it and this
Speaker 3: not unique to me. Carl Sagham made this argument back
Speaker 3: in the sixties. A religious impulse a kind of deeper sense,
Speaker 3: like we want to know, is there somebody else out
Speaker 3: there that's powerful, more powerful than us knows we're here,
Speaker 3: you know that sort of thing. And I think that
Speaker 3: does touch a deep human impulse and need to search
Speaker 3: for that, And that's why this is such a really
Speaker 3: interesting compelling subject.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming that your belief in God would be more
Speaker 2: agnostic instead of an atheist. Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm an atheist in the sense that I don't
Speaker 3: believe in God. I think it's very unlikely that there
Speaker 3: is a God. Technically, ontologically speaking, you know what's the
Speaker 3: nature of reality. I don't know there could be a
Speaker 3: god for sure, so I never say zero to anything.
Speaker 3: But I don't live my life as if you know
Speaker 3: it could happen any day. I'll change my mind tomorrow.
Speaker 3: It's very unlikely I think that there is a God.
Speaker 3: More likely that there would be, you know, an exceptionally
Speaker 3: advanced extraterrestrial intelligence that would appear indistinguishable from God. I mean,
Speaker 3: if we discovered an alien civilization that was, you know,
Speaker 3: a million years more advanced than us, they probably probably
Speaker 3: would seem omniscient and omnipotent. You know, compare like what
Speaker 3: we can do to what neanderthol has had for their toolkit,
Speaker 3: you know, to a neanderthoal, we would seem godlike. And
Speaker 3: if we discovered aliens, that's what they would be like.
Speaker 3: They wouldn't be just ten years ahead of us or
Speaker 3: hundred years ahead of us. It'd be you know, one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand years ahead of us or a million years
Speaker 3: ahead of us, just because evolution doesn't you know, run
Speaker 3: along parallel lines like that on different planets, and we're
Speaker 3: not going to find them if they're way behind us
Speaker 3: unless we actually land on some other planets. So if
Speaker 3: we discover them them coming here, we pick up their signal.
Speaker 3: It's they're going to be more advanced than us, and
Speaker 3: so my speculation is that they they would appear omniscient
Speaker 3: to us, like divine beings.
Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
Speaker 1: one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
Speaker 1: dot com for more