WEBVTT - Bonus Episode: Diana Pasulka 0:00:01.360 --> 0:00:04.840 Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeart Radio and Grim 0:00:04.960 --> 0:00:06.560 and Mild from Aaron Manky. 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:17.680 For the best experience, listen with headphones. This is a 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:22.480 bonus episode of season three of Strange Arrivals. Bonus episodes 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:26.000 feature interviews that I conducted during my research but that 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:29.480 I either didn't use or used sparingly in the main episodes. 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:33.080 There were great conversations that, for one reason or another, 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:36.040 didn't make the cut, but I think they add valuable 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:41.519 perspective to the ideas we explored this season. Doctor Diana 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:46.000 Pisolka is professor of philosophy and religion at University of 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:49.800 North Carolina, Wilmington and the author of the very interesting 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:54.320 book American Cosmic. I interviewed her in May of twenty 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:57.800 twenty two, just a few days before the first congressional 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:01.360 hearing in more than fifty years, to focus on military 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:05.880 reports of UFOs. As you'll see, we have quite different 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:08.840 takes on the UFO phenomenon, but I think she has 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:11.919 a unique approach and I really enjoyed our conversation. 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:17.480 So I am Diana Pasolka, and I'm a professor at 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:21.200 the University of North Carolina in Wilmington and I have 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:24.840 been a professor there for twenty years. I have a 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:29.520 PhD in religious studies, and my field has been in 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:33.880 Catholic history and Catholic traditions. That's what I was trained in. 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:38.600 Before that, I lived in California. I grew up in 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:44.399 the California environment of eclectic spirituality. My mother is kind 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:48.080 of like a reformed Jew, and my father was Catholic. 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.920 I went to Catholic schools. I was Catholic, really, I mean, 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:57.120 you know, and I went to Catholic high school. And 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:01.840 then after that I decided to attend the Jesuit School Theology, 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:06.920 which is a tribute. It's affiliated with Berkeley's UC Berkeley's 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:11.160 they have a partnership. It's like a divinity school. It's 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:14.160 called the Graduate Theological Union. And I did my master's 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:18.880 degree with taking classes at UC Berkeley and taking classes 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:23.720 at the Jesuit School Theology and the Jewish School Theology there, 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.520 and then I went to Syracuse University to get a PhD. 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:31.959 And so, yeah, And one other thing about the way 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:35.320 I've been trained is I did this in the late 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:40.239 nineties and nineties and well actually throughout the nineties. And 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:44.440 this was in California, where I grew up during the 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.160 dot com boom, so I was fascinated with technology and 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:55.680 how technology informs belief and especially like beliefs about God 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:58.720 and things like that. So I've spent a lot of time, 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:08.240 actually since I was eleven, reading everything I could about religion, religion, technology, technology, philosophy, 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:11.280 you know, everything I could find about these these things. 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:14.320 So I didn't intend ever to study UFOs. I thought 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:16.520 that they were very odd. I didn't want anything to 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:19.200 do with them. But I ended up doing that in 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:23.800 twenty eleven, and now I've been doing that ever since. 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:27.959 So twenty eleven, what was kind of your entree into 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:29.000 the UFO world. 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:32.120 Yeah, it's kind of strange, but this is it. There 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:34.640 were a few things. I was finishing a book on 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:38.400 the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, in which it was it 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:42.120 was a huge project. I went to archives all over 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:50.040 and I looked at anecdotes from European Catholics, North American Catholics, 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.400 Canadian Catholics, from you know, for the Europeans back to 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:56.840 Frankly from the eleven hundreds up to the eighteen hundreds. 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:00.840 And what I was looking at is Catholics used to 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:05.280 do devotions to souls in purgatory, and that all kind 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:07.360 of stopped, and they don't do those anymore, and I 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:10.720 wanted to know why. And so what I found was 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:12.840 I found the reasons for that, and I wrote a 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:15.800 book about it. But I also found that Catholics had 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:19.720 a lot of experiences of aerial phenomena from basically a 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:24.400 thousand years ago till now. And because they're Catholics, and 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:28.920 you know, and their the Catholic Church takes pretty good notes, 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:32.400 you know, they're they're known for their record keeping. And 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:35.479 I've been to the Vatican Library and Secret Archive and 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:39.720 looked at a lot of the documents there. I found 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:43.520 that there were all of these aerial phenomena incidences, and 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:47.800 the frameworks for understanding those were basically religious, you know, 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:50.200 like they've you know, they thought these were their souls 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:52.479 from purgatory. They'd see something like a disc in the 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:55.560 sky and they'd call it an angel, or they call 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:57.440 it a demon, or they call it a lost soul 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.200 from purgatory. But they were, you know, the patterns were 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:02.800 really the same. And at this point it never occurred 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.000 to me that these were like kind of like UFOs, 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:10.279 but they were. They were you know, unidentified objects that 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:14.360 then were identified through Catholic frameworks. So I finished this 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:17.880 book and I had a big log of these accounts, 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:21.760 and I didn't quite understand. I knew that i'd do 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:24.760 something with them, but I wasn't quite sure what. And 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:28.880 the Japanese tsunami happened, and that was just something that 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:35.720 was so incredibly devastating and tragic and like just apocalyptic, right, 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:37.440 like kind of like the end of the world for 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:42.200 this country kind of thing that I started to think 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:46.520 about the apocalyptic nature of things. There was also something 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:50.200 that happened in twenty eleven in Berkeley. This man predicted 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:51.960 the end of the world and all of these people 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:56.720 believed him and kind of like sold everything they had, 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:03.800 their retirement and everything for this man. And sadly, a 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:06.760 young person committed suicide because she believed that the end 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:08.359 of the world was going to happen. So I was 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:11.960 really not happy about this. My students were wanting to know, 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:13.760 is it going to be the end of the world, 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:15.800 And I was like, no, no, no, you know, this 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:17.599 has been happening for a long time, Like the end 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:20.440 of the world has been predicted so many times. It 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:24.520 hasn't happened, right, But I was still fascinated with apocalyptic narratives, 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:28.160 which are end of the world type narratives, that I 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:31.680 started to study those. And what happened was that I 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:34.440 found that a lot of people who had these apocalyptic 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:39.880 narratives were also what people call experiencers, people who experience 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:45.120 UFO events, And I thought that was confounding. So I 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:49.320 started to get into studying communities of people who were experiencers. 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:52.919 And at the same time, I showed a friend of 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:57.159 mine my log of Catholic history anecdotes, you know, of 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:01.359 aero phenomena, and he said, this looks like UFOs, you know, 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:04.160 And I said, you're crazy, But you know, it all 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:06.680 came together for me one weekend when I attended a 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:11.560 conference on UFOs and I saw, I heard experiencers talk 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:15.520 about their experiences, and I realized, the patterns here are 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.880 so similar to the patterns from eight hundred years ago, 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.840 six hundred years ago, four hundred years ago, that this 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.920 is what I have to study now. And it started there. 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:29.280 That's interesting when you take a look at something like 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:34.960 that as a religious studies training religious studies, so are 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:39.040 you looking at it as there is you know, a 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:42.920 thing that's been happening through all these years, and it's 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:45.400 just people kind of interpret it differently based on sort 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:49.440 of their cultural you know, their cultural moment or their beliefs, 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:52.680 or is it that there's something in the human condition 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:57.120 that sort of manifests like this, And so you get 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:00.680 these different stories coming down through the year. Because I'm 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:04.360 sure you could go back further to Greek times or whatever, 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:06.640 where you know, they talk about God's being in the 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:10.360 skies and stuff like that. Like I understand that for 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:14.000 religious studies, you're kind of setting aside whether you know 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:18.680 the doctrine is real, you're but you're studying the doctrine itself. 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:20.320 Is that right? Am I? Right in that? 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:26.320 Yeah? So the framework that I was trained in is 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:30.960 a framework that's actually changing and has changed. And I'm 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:33.440 one of the people that, well, I have to say 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:38.360 I have to change it because it doesn't that method 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:42.520 doesn't work here in this case. So the method is 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:46.560 this is that we're told to bracket our beliefs about 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:50.680 whatever we're studying. Say it's like apparitions of the Virgin 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:53.920 Mary or you know, things like that, and we're told 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:58.040 to study communities and social effects. But the truth of 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:01.280 the matter is kind of some we don't actually get into. 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:06.200 We don't say, well, these people are obviously constructed in 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:09.760 their own you know, they're embedded in their own religious frameworks, 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:12.520 so they're not going to see this for what it 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:17.040 actually is, which is like some kind of socio economic phenomena. 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:21.560 And that was how not necessarily. I feel like my 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.880 department at Syracuse University was better than that, Like they 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:29.760 understood that that there's something more than that, and I 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:32.320 think I stumbled upon the something more, and so I 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:35.640 had to kind of hammer out a methodology for studying 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:40.199 this stuff because frankly, when I studied Catholic history and 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:44.120 extraordinary types of things that happened in Catholic history, I 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:46.240 never had the kinds of things happened to me that 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:50.600 happened to me when I first studied UFOs. I had 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:55.240 people that were government affiliated come to me and want 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:57.640 to talk to me about what I was studying. Literally, 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:00.560 I had FBI agents wanting to talk with me, and 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:04.360 that never happened to me when I was doing this 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:08.760 other research. So obviously things are different in this field, right, 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:12.200 So you've got something that people are perceiving as transcendent 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:17.040 and they're having experiences of religion with it, right, spiritual experiences, 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:21.440 and you're also having government agencies fascinated with it. There 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:25.800 there will be a hearing next Tuesday about this. This 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:29.800 is May what May eleventh today? Yeah, so in a 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:32.960 couple of days, and it's a hearing on the reality 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:38.600 and security issues of aerial phenomena. Right, And that would 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:42.960 never happen in anybody else's except for you know, if 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:47.200 you study like other religions that are involved in there's 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:49.680 a lot of war that goes on with you know, 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:52.520 different religious interpretations. So it was a different kind of 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:56.040 way for me to study. And I'm still working that out. Actually, 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:59.560 I'm doing a lot of publication right now where I 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:04.280 am helping people in my field, people in anthropology, people 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:07.480 in the social sciences, try to understand what's going on. 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:11.200 And this is what I have so far. Okay, how 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:15.520 do we study something that appears to be transhistorical, Right, 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:20.520 So we're looking at something that most people would identify 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:24.480 with a certain time period, and most scholars identify the 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:28.160 rise of the UFO belief and practice and things like 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:32.880 that with the Cold War between Russia and the United 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:35.920 States starting in the nineteen thirties and forties, mostly started 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:38.840 in the nineteen forties, and they say, this is obviously 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:42.520 a Cold War kind of anxiety narrative. And at first, 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:45.440 you know, Carl Jung, he's you know, he's kind of 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:52.079 the famous intellectual who you know, founded different types of 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:56.400 psychology like union and psychology. And he basically said the 0:11:56.480 --> 0:11:59.480 same thing when he first started studying flying saucers and 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:03.120 the UFOs. Well, then what happened was similar to what 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:05.480 happened to me, was that a few people from the 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:09.800 government said to him military specifically, you need to come 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:12.520 look at some evidence, and so he did. He looked 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:15.040 at some evidence. After that he changed his perspective and 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:18.400 he said, I don't understand. He said, I think this 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:22.719 is an archetype, but it actually has physical components to it. 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:26.280 So he was also getting into this kind of you know, 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:29.559 what are we dealing with right now? So what I'm 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:32.320 working on now is this idea that it's this thing 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:35.840 called a myth theme. So it's a myth theme. So 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:38.520 it's kind of like a meme myth. And what this 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:43.520 is is it is an idea that is way more 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:46.840 than a myth. Okay, So a myth is something that 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:50.160 a myth theme is thought to be kind of the 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:54.480 progenitor of the myth. So it's there's something that occurs, 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:58.079 like a story that keeps occurring, but the characters are 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:02.920 changing for different periods of time, but the story remains 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:06.640 the same. Right that there are these non human intelligences. 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:11.000 They interact with humans. Sometimes they give us things, like 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.240 Prometheus gave us technology, you know. So this looks like 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:18.000 that kind of a mythme. However, in this day and age, 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:20.520 we even have to change this idea of the mythme 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:24.640 because mythings except for the case of Prometheus, where we 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:26.760 actually do have fire, right, you know, and we did 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:29.640 have fire, but we didn't have any evidence that this 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:35.239 Greek god or Titan gave us this fire. But here 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:38.320 in this day and age, we have some very strange 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:41.160 things that are happening. And so I start out with 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:43.800 that in the book American Cosmic, I read it a 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:46.680 couple of years ago, and this so this is what 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:49.320 happened to me, And it's very much like a mythme. 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:53.320 I'm just a kind of normal idiot human going about 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:56.960 my day, right, and then I start to study something 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:01.719 that I assume is just to myth and a lot 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:04.960 of people tell me it's not. Well, one person in particular, 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:08.120 who I call Tyler in my book, he works for 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:11.360 a space agency. He's a you know, Space Shuttle launch 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:14.280 mission controller, and so he tries to get in touch 0:14:14.320 --> 0:14:18.000 with me through friends, and I'm thinking, you know, I'm 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:19.800 not sure I want to complicate my life like this, 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:23.160 but it's what I study, so it's kind of part 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:26.640 of my job. So finally, after about a year, I say, yo, okay, yeah, 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:29.840 let's talk. And he says this to me. He says, 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:34.160 you think that this is completely subjective, and he goes, 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:36.640 fair enough, but what if I told you that it's not? 0:14:37.160 --> 0:14:39.200 And what if I give you evidence that it's not? 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:42.160 And I said, I'm open to that. And so he 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:45.600 suggested that we go to New Mexico to this place 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:49.720 where there's an alleged UFO crash. It's not Roswell, and 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:54.480 I said, I'll go, not thinking that, not understanding the 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:57.760 circumstances of going. So apparently it's this kind of secret 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:00.960 place under a no fly zone to wear a blindfold 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:03.880 going to it, and so I'm like, wait a minute, 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:06.640 I'm going to take a friend. I'm not going by myself. 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:09.400 And so he said, hey, I had to get permission 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:11.720 for you to come, so it's either just you or 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:14.880 no one else. And you know, no one else can come. 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:17.240 And I said, no, I'm not going to go then, 0:15:17.800 --> 0:15:22.920 And so I suggested who it now is known. It's 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:26.920 Gary Nolan. Gary Nolan is a professor at Stanford University 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:31.400 and he's a molecular biologist and he's really a well 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:34.520 known professor, just kind of like a superstar. And he's 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:37.480 also interested in UFOs, but from a different perspective than me. 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:40.960 And so we'd become, you know, pals. And I said, 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.920 I like to take Gary Nolan, and so Tyler. I 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:47.360 knew that Tyler would say yes because I think that 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:51.720 ultimately Tyler wanted to show us that there was actually 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:56.840 physical evidence of anomalist debris. And so Gary went and 0:15:56.920 --> 0:15:59.840 I went, we did you know? We blindfolded, We got blindfolded. 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:02.360 We went to this place and we had these metal 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:06.640 detectors and you know, so this was how American Cosmic 0:16:06.720 --> 0:16:09.640 opens up, and this was what I did, you know, 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:14.880 and then everything happens after that, these debris get analyzed. 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:18.160 You know a lot of things happen. I write American 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:21.640 Cosmic I traveled to Rome to look at, you know, 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:27.360 things that are in the Vatican Secret Archive, even having 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:29.840 to do with New Mexico, strangely enough, things from like 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:33.520 the sixteen hundreds. You can say that it was a 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:40.320 constant having my mind completely you know, regenerated, like every 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:42.960 month or so kind of like so Tyler was right, 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:47.640 Like I definitely shifted my perspective to realize that there 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:50.960 had to be a new way because something really interesting 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:51.960 is happening right now. 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:58.600 My conversation with Diana Pisolka will continue after the break. 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:11.439 I asked Diana Pisolka about the upcoming congressional hearing on 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:14.560 UFOs that was going to be held in May twenty 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:17.720 twenty two, shortly after this interview took place. 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:21.240 I think that what they're going to be talking about 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:24.639 is well, first off, do I think they're going to 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:28.639 be talking about the right things? That's a good question. 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:33.679 I think that there's something that's going on. If I 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:37.800 didn't have a historical perspective on this and actually see 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:42.240 these things in documents from two hundred years ago, three 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:45.199 hundred years ago, like I said, I would think that 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:49.000 this is some kind of weapon that's developed, like a 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:54.560 stealth weapon. Okay, but I do have that historical perspective, 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:58.360 so that complicates it for me, Like it'd be awesome 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:02.440 just to say put it in a and say, ah, 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:05.680 this is just another stealth weapon campaign kind of thing. 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:08.760 You know, we shouldn't know about it because we're civilians 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:12.040 and you know, they're just doing what they do the military. 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:16.760 But it's not that. Now, let's take this into context 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:20.119 since the nineteen forties, and it's you know, it's a 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:23.560 phenomena that's been around prior to the nineteen forties, but 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:27.639 it gets exacerbated in the nineteen forties. Why probably because 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:32.960 we're going all over into airspaces right where like we 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:35.680 developed the Air Force. I mean, the Air Force comes along, 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:38.760 and I believe it's nineteen forty seven too. I think 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:41.480 it's also as the CIA that comes along in nineteen 0:18:41.520 --> 0:18:43.199 forty seven. So a lot of things happened at this 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:49.160 time is at a coincidence. So maybe before we weren't 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:51.440 flying around like two hundred years ago, we just saw 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:54.120 these things from the ground and had to develop an 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:57.520 interpretive framework for that. Well, now we're seeing them from 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:02.399 in the sky and sometimes in space. So the question 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:06.679 then becomes, well, this narrative has to change, right, because 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:11.040 we have more information, we have better tools to understand 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:15.200 this information. So we're in the very midst of reassessing 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:19.000 what this information is. And we don't have religions to 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:22.560 fall back on. Well, we actually do, but a lot 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:24.720 of people are not going to fall back on those 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:27.960 religions because we've been secular. You know, we have a 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:31.720 very secular society that more people well I would say 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:34.480 more people, but a lot of people who are not 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:39.320 religious are actually believers in UFOs. Okay, so you know, 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:42.320 there's a lot of this stuff going on. 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:47.520 I then asked Diana if she thought, from her perspective, 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:50.679 the right questions would be asked during the hearing. 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:54.200 Yeah, okay. And I was putting this in context of, 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:57.800 you know, we've had a perception management campaign from the 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:03.520 nineteen well, let's see, when did it start. It started 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:06.400 right after the nineteen forties, right, and it went off. 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:07.560 It was Project Blue. 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:12.160 Book, right, right, so like forty seven, yeah, through sixty 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:13.600 a long time whatever. 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:16.760 Yeah. Yeah, And you know, and the people that were 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:19.280 involved in it, we have to forgive them now, but 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:22.080 we shouldn't forgive them if they still do this. So 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:26.120 the people that were involved in it, like Heineck. Alan Heineck, 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:29.560 he was he was a debunker, so his job was 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:35.680 to go debunk claims of UFOs and no one really 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:40.960 bought that, right, like the American public said, Ah, no way, 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:46.080 especially after the big Michigan UFO flat in the nineteen sixties. Okay, 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:49.240 So Heineck comes out and he even jokes, and he says, Okay, 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:52.000 I actually do believe that there's something here. I don't 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:54.160 know what it is, but we definitely need to study it. 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:57.000 Is what he basically comes out to say. All right, 0:20:57.040 --> 0:20:59.760 So that's why we can forgive him is because he's 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:02.920 he's you know, gone back on what he did, which 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:08.560 is intentionally creating disinformation and discrediting witnesses uncle stuff. Now, 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:13.160 but maybe in context back then we can understand it. Okay, 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:16.440 So I give them a pass, but I don't give 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:20.320 people like Dodia pass. You know, at this point, we're 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:23.919 mature enough to deal with it, right, and so I 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:28.200 say that. You know, so these congressional hearings, let's put 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:32.440 these in the context of that. The attempted dupe campaign 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:35.719 has been going on for so many years. You know, 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:40.199 we have lots of witness reports from civilians, respectable credible 0:21:40.240 --> 0:21:43.720 civilians and even air force personnel and people like that. 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:47.080 We have people like me who are you know, have 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:50.879 studied religion and know those languages of back in the 0:21:50.960 --> 0:21:53.800 day and can translate those documents. So we do have 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:56.880 that as well, which we didn't actually think to have 0:21:57.040 --> 0:22:00.639 back in the forties. Right, even though the Ellis were 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:02.560 doing out at the time, they were saying, wow, you know, 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:08.399 look at this kind of historical consistency. So I guess 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:11.639 my point is that let's not be afraid to open 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:15.800 it up to better study and also to you know, 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:19.320 these campaigns that have been going on, this misinformation campaign. 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:22.960 So I just questioned whether it's still happening, because it 0:22:23.040 --> 0:22:25.840 happened back then, it's been happening for years and years. 0:22:26.400 --> 0:22:29.560 And in fact, my book American Cosmic kind of like 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:31.719 broke it open too, even though I didn't need to. 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:35.480 I was I was hanging out with people who were 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:39.240 part of these programs, which at the time weren't acknowledged 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:44.120 to be programs. And then in twenty seventeen and eighteen, 0:22:44.160 --> 0:22:45.919 and by the way, my book was already written at 0:22:45.920 --> 0:22:49.760 this point, they came out and said these things are real, right, 0:22:49.800 --> 0:22:52.400 and these programs are real. And I was like, wow, 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:55.080 I did that, but I was I didn't have any 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:57.320 help doing it, like you know, I kind of was 0:22:57.359 --> 0:22:59.359 doing it on my own. So I had a comment 0:22:59.560 --> 0:23:03.800 so can cous me. It's a parallel tradition of whatever 0:23:03.920 --> 0:23:06.639 kind of disclosure they're doing right now. It was like 0:23:06.840 --> 0:23:09.760 kind of a frankly, like a disclosure that was not 0:23:09.840 --> 0:23:11.879 meant to be that's American cosmic. 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:15.760 Yeah, it feels to me when I was reading it, 0:23:15.840 --> 0:23:19.680 like it's almost like, I guess you used the word 0:23:19.680 --> 0:23:24.760 parallel that it seems like it's a little bit and 0:23:25.320 --> 0:23:27.080 this is not this is only in a good way 0:23:27.800 --> 0:23:30.800 removed from like a lot of the stuff that you 0:23:30.880 --> 0:23:36.480 see is sort of more prominent. I think, yes, And 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:38.399 that's one of the reasons why I thought it was 0:23:39.960 --> 0:23:44.720 really interesting is because it it doesn't engage in any 0:23:44.720 --> 0:23:48.920 of that stuff at all. It seems to be really 0:23:48.960 --> 0:23:53.400 focused on on you know, a few individuals who are 0:23:54.359 --> 0:23:58.120 you know, thinking about this in sort of interesting ways, 0:23:59.040 --> 0:24:01.840 and then you're own thoughts And I guess you talk 0:24:01.880 --> 0:24:04.959 a lot about jock La too. And I was just 0:24:04.960 --> 0:24:06.840 trying to you know, when I was asking that question. 0:24:06.880 --> 0:24:10.679 I was trying to think of some congressman from Nebraska 0:24:10.760 --> 0:24:16.720 or something asking a question about material reality versus spiritual reality, 0:24:17.200 --> 0:24:21.359 and like, how does that apply to the phenomenon that 0:24:21.480 --> 0:24:25.159 to me seems seems like a really interesting question and 0:24:25.200 --> 0:24:28.800 probably is getting more to it, more towards some kind 0:24:28.800 --> 0:24:31.720 of understanding than what I assume they're going to talk about, 0:24:31.880 --> 0:24:34.719 which is, you know, sort of more concrete things that 0:24:34.720 --> 0:24:39.640 they think they have around, like the Nimts or whatever. 0:24:40.119 --> 0:24:43.760 The tic TAC video. Congressional hearings aren't really set up 0:24:43.800 --> 0:24:46.440 to deal with like the kind of really interesting stuff 0:24:46.440 --> 0:24:49.119 that you have in your book, because you know, I 0:24:49.119 --> 0:24:51.399 think a lot of their constituents would be just like, 0:24:52.680 --> 0:24:53.840 what are you talking about? 0:24:54.520 --> 0:24:57.880