 on this episode of Skeptico, a guest appearance that started out great. Welcome back, Alex. Good to see you, Alex. Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Trish, thanks to both of you. And then went totally off the rails. I mean, you don't always look at science, Alex. I mean, you believe in Pizza Gate for Christ's sake. I mean, that's crazy. That's totally crazy. That's a great one. In the time that we have left, what do you understand Pizza Gate to be? I don't want to get into it. I just don't know. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You brought it up, pal. But what do you understand Pizza Gate? Well, is it something against Hillary Clinton? Right. Right. And that very much. OK, Hillary Clinton had had this basement under a pizza shop and she was screwing boys or something. I'm pedophiles. Some sexing is totally ridiculous. And as a result of the right wing conspiracy theory about this saying it over and over again, when you say something over and over again like Trump says, things over your life, people start to believe it. And so some guy came with a shotgun or a rifle into that pizza shop looking for the basement. And you don't really believe this, do you, Alex? See, Rob, you're you're so incredibly misinformed. I don't believe you spew this stuff out like that. Here's what here's what Pizza Gate was. The emails reference spirit cooking, which was very offensive to a lot of people of a kind of Christian persuasion, and then you'd have to understand what spirit cooking is. And you'd have to understand what Crowley, you know, is the guy who kind of directed that. So you'd have to dive deep into the occult and understand that. And you'd have to understand the conversation. But I want you to I just want you to own. I just want you to own what you said, Rob, because what you said was just not you started out by saying, Alex, you believe in Pizza Gate, and I've just demonstrated to you that you have no idea what Pizza Gate was. You had it all wrong. That's what Pizza Gate was. Now, the fact that a guy did take a gun and go shoot up that that that restaurant, and he really just shot the safe, is what has become the meme that people like you pick up on and say, that's Pizza Gate, some right wing nut conspiracy theorist shot up this thing. It's much more accurate to say what Pizza Gate was was these these emails that were released in an attempt to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign by painting her to be connected to practices. And well, particularly what they what really stuck was that she was connected to occult practices and satanic practices. And that had a dense, a very substantial, we don't know how substantial, but it definitely had an impact on her campaign. So you just got that wrong. Stick around, I have a rebroadcast of my interview with Rob and Trish McGregor from the Mystical Underground. Welcome to the Mystical Underground. Thank you for joining us. This is Trish McGregor and Rob McGregor and our producer and tech magician, John Posey. You can go to the Mystical Underground.com or we make regular blog posts where you can find out about our books. Among them are Phenomenon, Harnessing, Your Psychic Abilities, the Secrets of Spear Communication, Sensing the Future and Aliens in the Backyard. Our upcoming book is called The Shift, Reports from the Mystical Underground. Trish's new novel, White Crows, is now available on Amazon. Rob has been slowly releasing the audio edition of Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings. Our guest, our guest today is Alex Zacares, who is the author of Why Science is Wrong about Almost Everything and also Why Evil Matters. Alex formerly was a research associate at the University of Arizona while pursuing a PhD in artificial intelligence. He left academia in order to found Mind Path Technologies, a successful ITM firm which was acquired in 1996. Alex began his popular podcast Skeptical in 2007 and has interviewed hundreds of people exploring the nature of the universe and beyond. Welcome back, Alex. Good to see you, Alex. Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Trish. Thanks to both of you. You know, I was just remarking to Rob. He kind of sent me this thing, said, hey, send a bio. And I was like caught my track cycle. Wait a minute. I'm interviewing you guys because every time every time we start this email chain, Rob starts sending me these stories and they're like true stories. They're not like fake stories. Like, oh, yeah, I remember the time when, you know, Whitley Strever and us were, you know, kicking around these ideas longer and Mitchapichu or whatever. And I'm like, I want to hear that story, you know. Yeah. So I noticed the titles of both of your books, Alex, begin with the word. Why? Why? Why is that? Well, I think I think questions are at the heart of everything. You know, the ethos of skeptic is inquiry to perpetuate doubt. So I'm I'm always in that inquiry mode because I think that's the core essence of spirituality is to always be always be in the moment, always be seeking, always be trying to understand more. So yeah, I didn't think of it that way. But I think that's probably the deep psychological answer. Right. Yeah. I have a question for you, Alex. When you travel and meet new people, are you always asking why? Well, see, I get around that by not traveling and not me. I found my spot. I found my spot here in Southern California, Gelmar, outside of San Diego, and I stay here. I go to the beach with the dog and I do my yoga and I come back with the fam and that's it. But no, seriously, I mean, I ask why on the show all the time. I ask why and I love, you know, I really do in love love the podcasting thing. And I think it's so cool that you guys and I want to hear about how one of the things I want to know is how the podcasting journey has been for you guys, because you guys are writers, you know, deep, deep in your bones. You guys are writers and now you're doing this podcast thing. And I see that a book is coming out of the podcast. So right, and you did you did the same with evil. But see, no, I did that. I did it with both of them, but kind of the opposite way around. See, I'm not a writer at all. The only way I was able to put out these books is because I had a podcast and I had all these interviews. You guys wrote a hundred books and then you did this podcast thing. So what's that? What has that experience been like for y'all? It's a different grade. Yeah, it's a different mode for us, though, you know, being coming on and talking with people. I mean, we were doing being interviewed a lot when our books came out, but we hadn't I always thought that would be the worst thing to do is have a podcast and have to get people and find people and do this every week. But we've been doing it. So three years. And also, Johnson, our facilitator, a synchronicity enabled this podcast. We were on both of us on Instagram one night. This is back in January, 2020, and we were talking. I think John wasn't about Star Wars or Indiana Jones, but anyway, one or the other. And then all of a sudden, John says, hey, have you not thought about having a podcast and a week before Rob and I had been talking about it, but we didn't we didn't know what to do. So the long came, John, and facilitated the whole thing. But thank you, you're welcome. And I've enjoyed it, too. But it all started just because I could not find my old copies of the expanded you expanded University of Indiana Jones novels. So I ordered them and they weren't available in they weren't available in EPUB. So I ordered another set off Amazon and posted a picture of them on because I wanted to reread them and posted a picture on Instagram and tagged Rob McGregor and Chris showed up on their account on that post. And then it all kind of came from there. Yeah, well, that's really cool. You know, and I would like it and we'll see how this flows today. But now, whenever whenever anyone says something like this, it makes it sound like you guys are old. But what I what I really want to say is you guys are a treasure trove of kind of this lived history with some really important people that I almost feel like we need to do a couple of shows on Skeptico where you guys just kind of do tell these stories because they're amazing, you know, like the Joe McMonichael story. I mean, I do, I do. And because it's it's almost like a jumping off point for all these things that we might talk about in terms of truth and it also intersects with some of the stuff I've done. So maybe start off with who is Joe McMonichael and how did you guys get to know him? And then, you know what, what if I'm going to ask that question? Here's how I would frame it up because I'd frame it up with this thing that kind of Rob led us into, because I think this is also at the core of this kind of truth thing that we want to that I really want to explore. I really want to know where you guys are coming from is that. Like I came at this thing from a totally different perspective. You guys came at it as writers and as storytellers and as I mean, shoot, you know, I mean, you guys write both fiction and nonfiction and you're collecting real stories and you're making up stories. And then you're also incorporating all these different experiences from all these people. I didn't come at it from that way at all. I mean, I came at it as one my training as a computer programmer. There are no stories in computer programming. Your program either works or it doesn't work. There is no everyone's opinion matters. If it if everyone's opinion matter, you have programs that just don't work. And then I came from a business background. We're the same way. You either, you know, make the sale, make the money or you or you go broke. You know, there is it kind of in between. And you guys are in in a different world. And it's a necessary and you're on the fringes of that world. But you're doing it in kind of a very, I don't know, in a very kind of interesting way. And then along the way, you've collected these amazing accounts with all these people who are also kind of on the edge of trying to figure out what this reality thing is. So with that, I mean, that kind of really sets the the stage in a way for who is Joe McMonicle and why did you think our hurricane was coming? That that story begins with Nancy McMonicle, his his wife. And for a decade, Rob and I wrote the Sydney are Omar astrology books, the series of 13 books a year. And I had asked Scooter, that's her unique thing, to submit an article. So that's how I got we got to know her. And then eventually we got to know Joe. And I think it was in 2005, Rob, wasn't it that we went to a Lucera? Well, we went like a two, three other places with them before that. So they became the traveling partners down to the keys and right. A Lutheran. Oh, I know. It was when they were interviewed. It was when Joe was reading for Bruce Gernon. Right. Yeah. About what happened on Bruce Gernon's Bermuda Triangle flight. Now, but before you go to remind people, remind people who Joe is because he is like a super in my mind. He is a super important figure in in this whole thing. Yeah, he's number zero zero one zero. Yeah, he doesn't really call him a psychic, a remote viewer, but it's a clairvoyant, a clairvoyant. And he's learned this through oddly enough while he was in the army. And he became a part of this group that we're doing. Remote viewing of the Russians and all kinds of different spy type things in the mid 80s for about 17 years. And then they all of them wanted to remote view UFOs. They started getting into that as well. And then explain he was married to Scooter, who's stepfather was Robert Monroe. Right. So that's another grow Institute that that was. Yeah, right. And he's he's been at the Monroe Institute many times as a speaker and a leader, workshop, workshops, right. And so and one of the couple of the things to add before you get to the hurricane story is it sets it up in a way. So I talked to I talked to Joe on this show. And because I've always been very interested in the M.K. Ultra stuff, you know, and a lot of people forget that the remote viewing project Russell Tark, Hal Putoff, Stanford Research Institute was under the very, very nefarious M.K. Ultra where they were doing these horrible things to people and probably killing people, but certainly destroying people's lives, erasing their brains and doing all these other just ridiculously insane experiments on people in order to manipulate their consciousness. Well, there were 150 M.K. Ultra programs, so not all of them can be painted with the same brush. And certainly the Stargate program, which was the remote viewing program seems by all accounts, that's one they always want to leave with because it seems kind of a white night thing. You know, let's just do remote psychic spying on the Russians. But what I always thought was interesting about Joe's story is he told me that he told me the story about like he is in looks like out of a spy movie. He's on the East German, West German border at this restaurant. He said where all the spies would go, you know, and he was there having lunch and he starts feeling sick and he realizes he's been poisoned and he starts staggering to the door, thinking he's going to die. And he does die. He dies right there as he's exiting the restaurant. A couple of his buddies grab him, throw him in a jeep. All of a sudden he's outside of his body looking down. They go to the Jeep, to an ambulance, to a hospital. He is having an out of body experience. He's having a near death experience. This is his first encounter with anything like this. He awakes from his near death experience. He awakes from being dead. Clearly he is clinically dead during this time. And in his face are two of his associates, right? His boss, two of his superiors who are like, OK, what's going on? And he doesn't know whether to tell them that he's just been to the other side and he doesn't know how that's going to sit with these intelligence guys or what he should do. But the part of that story that I thought was has a couple of links to it that I think are interesting. He says when he went to Stanford, to a Stanford Research Institute for inner to interview as part of joining the. Another viewing club. Stargate. Stargate. It was either Russell Targer, how put off his interviewing them. They open up his secret file employee file and they pull out Raymond Moody's book, you know, the near death experience book. And he said at that point, he realized that they understood the connection. They not only stood, they only they not only understood what happened to him, but they understood the connection. They understood that this was somehow in some way, they weren't able to fully understand at that point. There was some connection in this extended consciousness realm between the near death experiences and between what they were doing. Then one other postscript I'd add to that is I interviewed Ed May. Who is really pretty obnoxious person. He was he ran a good friend of Joe's, too. Great, because like when Ed May ran the Stargate program for 10 years. Yeah. Ed May. When I asked him about this, he said, no, that didn't happen. Really? Well, what do you what do you mean that didn't happen? I interviewed Joe. It's in his book. He said it on there. He said, no, there is absolutely no connection to all between near death experience or between his experience and remote viewing. And then I also asked him about Dean Raiden and he said he said these, you know, Dean Raiden, he said basically, you know, he's a nice guy, but he doesn't know what he's doing. And then later, he said, after the interview, he immediately said, hey, don't publish that interview. And I know people and you better not publish that interview. Wow. Of course, I published the interview. Yeah, I mean, of course, I published the interview anyway. I mean, he's just Ed May, but but I think it's interesting. I mean, in terms of fitting in my larger project, in terms of how there is this definite goal to make you think you are not in a mystical world that you are. That's called gas. Well, it's it's also called you're a biological robot in a meaningless universe. Just do what we say. You don't have any. There's nothing more to you. So why are you even worried about all this stuff? You are just there. Get the jab. Shut up. Do what we say. Put the mask on. Do all the rest of this stuff. But the truth of the matter is that Joe's out of body experience, near death experience is probably what triggered some of his abilities. Oh, absolutely. And he also fell out of a helicopter in Vietnam, too, and survived that. I didn't mean to have something to do with it also. It was in that movie, The Goats. What is it? Oh, The Goat Men Who Stare at Goats. Yeah, Men Who Stare at Goats. He hated that movie. He never watched it. I remember him excuter saying, don't mention that movie to him. He does not want to watch it. So so that's that that to me, that's who Joe McMonichael is. Yeah. You know, and now you guys are on vacation with them because you guys like hanging out as two couples. And you're down in the keys. No, we were in the Bahamas. Oh, no, the first time the first time was the keys. Yeah, the first time was the keys. It was related. I co-authored a book on Bermuda, a couple of books on the Bermuda Triangle with Bruce Gernon. And so I had Joe take a look psychically and remote viewing on some four different experiences from the book and including one involving a UFO experience where first of all, just briefly explaining who Bruce Gernon is. He what happened to him? If if you've ever seen any learning channel, his history channel, any of those documentaries on the Bermuda Triangle, you'll almost always see Bruce Gernon usually towards the end because he's got one of the best stories. And because he survived the Bermuda Triangle and he had a like a time travel experience involving it. And so that happened, I think, in December of 1971. And it changed his life. And he talks, he thinks about it every day. He still thinks about it every day. He's defined his life. Yeah, I mean, I just got an email from him about the Bermuda Triangle today. So and anyhow, a month after that experience, he was with a girlfriend. They went out on a private plane flight out of Miami and because the girlfriend had never been in a small plane at night. So he wanted to, you know, it's a romantic thing. He wanted to show the stars and so they fly off the coast about 20 miles or so. And one of them says, oh, look at that star in the distance. They're that orange star. And they look at it and it is getting bigger and orange. It's orange and it's coming right at them. It's not a star at all. And it's getting closer and closer. And Bruce tries to maneuver the plane to avoid it. But he knows he can't can't do it and suddenly boom. It's gone and, you know, what happened to it? So Joe said what happened is that they were captured. They're abducted. Now, Bruce does not like being an abductee. He must not. He has no memory of that. But that that also happened on his flight, Joe said. That was on the initial. Yeah, on the right, right. On the initial part of the flight where he left. What is the name of the island? Andros Island. And they were they're heading towards the Florida coast. And there was this very strange cloud that looked like an elliptical cloud that you'd see like 10,000 feet above up above a mountain that was just above the ocean. And it's like a huge UFO looking shape about a mile across. And so he goes around it and continues on and then he notices that this seemingly very calm cloud starts expanding and it shoots out arms on either side. And it seems to be following them and growing and growing. And so he goes up and tries to get above this cloud and he goes down and tries to get below it. He can't do either. And then he sees another one in front of them doing the same thing, spreading out arms the arms all length. So he's inside a huge donut, like 25 mile diameter donut. And he tries to get above again. It looks like it goes up 40,000, 50,000 feet. He can't go over it. He goes down, it's coming right out of the ocean. But then he sees this tunnel where the arms are coming together. And he tries to he says, this is our only way out of here. And his father, who is also a pilot, is freaking out. So they they head for that tunnel and as they get to the tunnel, it starts collapsing. The clouds are spinning counterclockwise in the tunnel, shrinking all the instruments, electronic instruments go out. There's no radio. And before that, before they entered the cloud, they had contacted the Miami Tower and the Miami Tower said there's no there's no airplane out there by Bimini, which is where they thought they were. And they go through this tunnel. And because they see blue sky on the other side, they get through it and there's no more blue sky. It's just kind of a yellow fog and they're flying. And then the the instruments are still working. But the the radio comes back on and say, oh, we picked you up. We see a plane coming right over Miami Beach and Bruce says, no, we're out by Bimini's and he looks down. There are all the fog disappears and there's Miami Beach. So that was the timing on this way off. Yeah. Well, you know, like so we've all heard kind of those. There's so many interesting parts of that we jump off in so many ways. I have a friend who I kind of have no through skeptical fantastic researcher recently got his PhD is probably one of the leading authorities on a precognitive dreams and is chronicled all these dreams. So anyways, we've been talking about, yeah, well, we will we will. I was going to leave the name out of it because I love his stories. Trish, I'm sorry. OK, Andy. OK, Andy, you've been totally outed here. OK. And he's telling me I can I can edit that out if we want. You guys decide. OK. I'm sorry, real quick, since I jumped in, Rob, can you I was worried about audio when we started. Can you tilt? Can you tilt your desktop camera back just a little bit? So you're so you're cutting off. Yeah. Oh, OK, sorry. Better, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. There you go. You're good. OK, I was just disappearing. OK, all right. Sorry, I'll get muting that. OK, so this relates to your story because this guy, whose name we won't mention, is driving across the desert with his mom and I think his sister's in the backseat. They see this strange light, they pull off the side of the road. They wind up back in the car and it's like four hours later. The morning news is coming on and I go and he's telling me this and he's telling me all these other paranormal things that happened to him. And I'm like, you know, I mean, like I'm trying to be sensitive, which I'm not always so great at, but I go, this is a classic missing time abduction story, right? You see the light, missing time, something like that. And he couldn't really go there. I mean, it's not like he's like locking up, but I just think that's interesting with the guy you're mentioning here. It's that there's so many there's so many ways to process that, both from a human level. What do we what do we screen out in our ordinary consciousness? You know, suppressed memories, repressed memories, all that kind of stuff. And then is that process being aided and facilitated by these entities who are interfering with or creating that process? So I just think there's a lot to that. And I always also, yeah, I'll just leave it at that. We can all just talk about all these stories. But the other thing that's related to that, I think, or I think maybe related, but I don't hear us always talking about the connection is the implanted memories. And I always think of Ray Hernandez from The Free Project, where his wife is having having this incredible experience downstairs with this with E.T. And he walks, gets halfway down the stairs and then he turns around and remembers a very dominant voice like his own voice saying, oh, this is ridiculous. I'm going to go back upstairs and go to bed. So you pull back from that. You go, well, that doesn't make any logical sense. It sounds like a screened memory. And you got to wonder if the same thing is going on here when people approach that and you lay it out to him, you know, like you guys do is kind of part of your thing of collecting store and say, really, that's interesting. And then you don't there's a missing time, but no, you weren't abducted or anything like, no, no, no, you know what I mean? I mean, right. So so I have an interesting story about Joe, though, we get back to Joe here and Trish wants to tell her story about Joe. But the one that we were in the keys in Bruce Gernon's hit a house down there and we were staying there. And we had this. We had our daughter and a friend and they were out with on a kayak and they had some diving gear or just snorkeling gear. Yeah. And it flipped, flipped, tipped over and sank. And they were just 50, 75 feet off shore. They came in and there were like two sets of it. And I went out to to grab the stuff and I found just one set of goggles, nothing else, you know, I'm right in that area. And so Joe decides to remote view this thing from the house, you know, I mean, it's it's very close. Wait a minute. This was not this. Where was this Trish? This was the only thing it was not at Bruce's house. We stayed at a another friend of ours house. Yeah, yeah, right. So this is right on the water. It doesn't matter for the story. It's it's still in the keys. It's just a different key and anyhow. So Joe, Joe decides to remote view it. And he's working way in scooter saying, don't do it. You're on vacation. Don't do it. And he can't find it. You know, he's he's searching, searching for it. You know, you expect this guy, you know, super remote, you're number one to nail that sucker, you know, you can't find. And and finally, you know, I must have drifted off or something. I don't know, because I was out there looking for it. It's just kind of a funny story. I mean, the you know, that things don't always work as you expect them to work. So that's a perfect that's a perfect lead into Trish's story. Right. Yeah. So we decided to meet Scooter and Joe in Aluthor. And it's a really it's the largest. I think it's one of the largest keys or longest skinny. Yeah, that's good. It is. And our address is the largest. That's right. And we were in a house and I had been sort. Now, this is the days before the iPhone. OK, I had like a blackberry. That was my only connection to the outside world. So I was kept trying to keep tabs on this system that had formed off the coast of of Florida. And it eventually became a cat one. So I said to Joe and Scooter, I said, well, better. I feel like this thing is going to hit here. So we need to go get some groceries. And so first, though, we went to the library and I used their computer and showed, you know, National Hurricane Center where they had this this hurricane center and where it was going and its path and all that. Now, the backstory of this is I had been studying hurricanes for a novel called Cat Five that hits my island Tango Key that I created fictionally. So I knew quite a bit about hurricanes. So at the at the library, Joe was kind of leaning over my shoulder and he says, this isn't going to hit us. I said, Joe, it is going to hit us and we need to go get groceries. You know, we need camphor, we need water, we need blah, blah, blah. I went through my hurricane list. And so finally, we did we did go to the grocery store and got some supplies and we get back to the house and he's still insisting it's not going to hit. I said, yes, it is. And sure enough, it did hit as a cat one. We lost power, not just for a day. We lost power for the rest of the time we were there. And the rain was so bad that we had to be taken out. Yeah, we we removed from the house. Yeah, the water was up to six feet in one area and there was only one road out and water was covering the road. And now we're basically traffic stranded. Yeah, and and the even the toilets wouldn't flush. We had to take a bucket and go down to shore. And I would I would wait out like up to my ankles and put down the bucket. And then a wave would wash over my head, knock me down as I'm trying to get water for the toilet. You know, it was a disaster, basically. And we'd sit at night with flashlights and play Scrabble. It was about the only thing we could do. Yeah, and then there were people. We saw people that were also trapped carrying luggage on their head and walking up to water in their ways past the house where we were staying. And but no, no, wait a minute. Did Joe claim that he had remote viewed it? And that's how we knew it? Or he was just looking over. I don't know. I don't know. That's the thing is when you're a secure have these abilities, you know, you say things sometimes that, you know, you expect to be taken as an authority, even though you're not tuned in psychically. And I think that was kind of that case. But it was also a case that he did not want that hurricane to hit us because we just got there, you know, and he was kind of wishing in a way, I guess, and Trish wasn't trying to bring it in. But she was being more realistic about what she was seeing, you know, and I mean, the National Hurricane Center knows that they know their business, you know, yeah. So, you know, it's so so he wasn't remote doing it at all. But he, you know, but anyhow, that I agree, I don't think you can really like psychics and remote viewers and they're different, but they're maybe similar. They're not supposed to be on all the time. So there's two different ones. They're not on all the time. But number two, when they're on, they're not accurate all the time. And I think that's a that's a really important part of it. You know, that's the reason like the reason I originally contacted you guys was or one of the reasons was because the interview series you did with Preston Dennett, who's been on your show a couple of times. Yeah. And I said, you know, this is kind of a process I'm really interested in. And that's that. How do we find out who's who's credible? And, you know, back to this thing, are we about collecting stories? Or are we about nudging towards some kind of truth? What is our responsibility for making sure that people are being truthful, both intentionally being truthful or intentionally deceiving or inadvertently being untruthful, inadvertently deceiving or being self delusional delusional kind of thing. It's an issue that I think pops up over and over again. And I think it's especially relevant to the UFO community because the whole story of UFOs, I think, is a story of a very, very sophisticated misinformation and disinformation. And I think in a lot of ways they should be studied as revealing the kind of tools and methods for the larger kind of social engineering that seems to be going on all around us, whether it's, you know, whatever the issue is, everything is a Psy hop now. Everything is controlled information and we're like used to it now. But I think the origins of that within this UFO topic are quite revealing, you know, because we have people like Richard Doty, you know, and Paul Benowitz, who, you know, where it's it's open, it's out in the open. We can study what they did and how they did the misinformation, particularly in a post-disclosure versus pre-disclosure kind of world. You know, we can look back when they denied all this stuff and now we can look at where it's now an official part of the story. And then we can compare that to the misinformation, disinformation during that period. And I think we get a really, really interesting kind of perspective. So as story collectors, yeah. So as story collectors, which you guys are, what's what how responsible is Preston for telling for his stories, him being responsible for his stories being truthful, whether he's intentionally lying or not. I don't think he's intentionally lying. Why I like Preston is he's done so much research and he's poured this research into his books. I mean, who'd ever think about writing a book about UFOs over drive-ins, you know, but he's collected the stories. Or what was his other one robbed about? Oh, he's done collected about UFOs over various states. Yeah, lots. Just an odd place, 27 or 28. But the thing is, he just lays those stories out there. He has very little analysis related to to the stories. And he doesn't it doesn't dissect them. Yeah, he doesn't dissect them. He doesn't question them. He just says, OK, this is what they're saying. So here's the story is. And more or less, it's up to you to whether you believe it or not. And no, it's like, no, that's not no, that's not it at all. I just re listened to the interview that you guys gave with him. And he gives he has plenty of analysis about why they're doing it, why they allowed Dolly to pilot the ship, why they why they don't reveal what they could reveal, how these videos were collected, what he saw. And Dolly's another Dolly's latest book is another case that he does go into more analysis about her story. And well, I've heard plenty of other interviews with him where he makes all sorts of claims that to me just need to be challenged. I'm a believer, you know, but the way I process this data in the reliable sources is a lot different than Preston Dennett does. And I think when whenever people claim that, you know, oh, they don't they don't don't worry about anyone who doesn't believe me because they're skeptics and stuff like that, I'm very reluctant to that. You know, the people that I most respect in this field. Are very open to the fact that they have to establish what they know and how they know it, you know, the best they can. One of the guys I really like is Robert Hastings. And I've never interviewed him, but I had a very nice email exchange with him. And he's of course the guy who did the UFO and Nukes thing for 40 years he investigated it. And you guys are familiar with that, no doubt. But out of that comes some very important like data like they shut down the freaking nukes one at a time. And they shut down 10 of them and then they turned them on. And then they go with the wall comes down in Russia and they go over and they find that, hey, the same thing happened to the Ukraine and USSR. And they activated the nukes. And he has all the officials from the Air Force and other who confirm that that did happen. So, you know, there's a guy very carefully goes through the data. And then at the very end adds that, well, I am an experiencer and my mom is an experiencer, but that doesn't have anything to do with the way I've constructed this story. I've constructed this story with 140 of the most reliable witnesses you could find. And what's the name of his book? Does he have a book? Oh, Robert Hastings, he has several books, UFOs and nukes. Yeah, UFOs and nukes, UFOs and nukes. This was a nuclear base in Montana that they shut down. And is that the one you're talking about? He, you know, you really investigate it like he has. There are multiple ones of these. Oh, OK. Sixties, in the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties. There are reports of this, but the and it's super important information, I think, in data sets because it says so many things. And I mean, since you got I can't I'm surprised, I should say, that you guys are not aware of that kind of stuff. Because I thought I was going to wear that one. But you know, the most interesting part of my email exchange with with Hastings is like Preston Dennett gives this kind of environmental speech, which is really kind of silly, you know, that, hey, the ETs here to save us. And, you know, he's green just like us and wants to save the planet and all this other nonsense. He just has no support for and is not supported by the larger data that we see. And I'm an environmentalist, but I don't I disagree with that. I think there's a lot of experiencers who say the very same thing about the environment, that that's their message. And that goes all the way back to Betty Hill, Betty Hill. So there's a lot of people say that, you know, you know, a direct point on that is, do you know, Kenneth Ring is out of body research? Well, there's a near death, near death experience researcher and then got interested in the out of body and ETs. You know, back in the back in the day, like in the late 80s, there were a lot of near death experiencers who were coming forward. There's a pattern of people saying, I see these catastrophic, cataclysmic, environmental things happening. And they were even specifically pointing to a date. 1988 was the date. And then there was a researcher in the UK that actually replicated the work with other NDE and they were all pointing towards the same date, 1988. Of course, that day came and went and nothing like that happened. So they're really. So, yeah, there's a lot of those stories. But when we look to independently verify that and I'm an environmentalist, I just don't I just don't think the data for the cataclysmic, global warming science hijack, which has been done, is supported by the scientific evidence. It just clearly isn't. It is clearly a scam. It is clearly an abomination of science. So the truth about the environment is going to have to be found someplace else because it isn't going to be found in the lies that are being. Let me ask you a question, Alex. If you have a personal experience about any of this, say UFO or climate change or whatever, do you believe your own experience? I think that's an I think that's a great question. And it's really at the core of a lot of this. Yeah, it is because because like one of the things I'd say is that if we're really objective about it, like, look, on one level, none of this is real. I mean, consciousness is fundamental. There is some spiritual dimension of this that makes all of this kind of silly. Right. I mean, we're not really doing anything. We're just on this little space for a short period of time. And then it appears that our consciousness survives and there is this existence before and after. And in that timeframe, all this stuff is kind of not. Well, let me tell you a story. Well, let me let me just finish answer your question because I think it's an important question. And my answer to it is I'm very I'm skeptical of my own individual experience because the evidence suggests that I should be skeptical in the same way that I said when Ray Hernandez is walking down the stairs and the voice inside his head says there's nothing going on here. Go back upstairs and go to bed. Well, should he just he has to question that experience, even though it's his own experience, if you're a near death experiencer and your your experience falls outside of the range. Let's say, and I've interviewed a couple of people. Jesus, it's all about Jesus. Anyone who doesn't see Jesus and doesn't have Jesus as the central focus of their near death experience, it's satanic. Do they need to question their experience? They do. They need to look at the broader data, thousands of cases that have been collected throughout all these different religious traditions. And they need to say, hmm, I need to reexamine my experience. I don't need to deny it, but I need to maybe reexamine it because it doesn't seem to fit in this broader experience. That's what I think. OK, here's something in 1987, Rob and I were living in Fort Lauderdale and we knew two psychics, Renee Wiley and Tony Grosso. Both are very good psychics, but Renee had this voice that was hypnotic. And so one night we're sitting there and she goes, hey, let me progress you guys to the future. We'll make it unspecified and tell me what you see. So I said, OK, this sounds good. Rob said, OK, Tony said, fine. And she started talking and I felt myself you know, going to wherever that place is when you're under hypnosis. And I saw myself as a very tall, bald woman living in a dome because the world outside was so toxic. It was just that image. So two years later, I run across a book called Mastering to the Future. It was by Helen Wamba, who is a psychologist who was known as a past life regressionist. Well, apparently at one point she went to Europe and progressed twenty like over two thousand people to the future. She said twenty one hundred, she would take. And one of the three scenarios that came out of this was with people living in a dome just like what I saw. You know, and she said it was because the outside world was so toxic. Well, for me, that was kind of a confirmation of what I had seen. But she she saw like three from three or four different options. Yeah, options of that was one of the future. One was a more primitive existence where there is no internet. And right. And the another was a space station. Yeah, right. And there was some other. Yeah, I think there were just three and then the dome. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, in 1989, my daughter was born the day after she was born about one thirty in the morning. They'd just taken her back to the nursery. So I laid back down and I hear somebody calling my name. Now, I was not drugged. I was just, you know, sleepy. So I thought, well, that's weird. So I sat up, nobody else in the ward is awake. The door shut. There's nobody standing there. So I laid back down and I realized that the voice was internal. So I said, I said, I said, OK, what is this? And I had an incredibly vivid image of my daughter or a granddaughter at some point in the future. And Megan or whoever this was said, I need to know what you all were doing when I was born. Where did you live? I need all the facts. What time was I born? You know, all this kind of stuff. So I said, why? So because all the records have been destroyed, I thought, oh, OK. So I gave her the information she asked for. And then I that was it. But that was like another piece of that same progression that Renee had done in 1987. But that's what it felt like. But no, no. Right. So are there any reasons are there any reasons to be to consider alternatives to that reality that you saw? Are the precognitive experience? Are there anyone who's had a precognitive experience that's different from yours that then we would have to kind of say, well, gee, one has to be right, one has to be wrong. Or there has to be these multiple timelines, which is kind of impossible to go on. And, you know, I can be in McCormack is the guy who had the near death experience. And he's it's all about Jesus. And if it's not about Jesus, it's about Satan. So and he's sure of that. He's he was dead. As a matter of fact, he was really dead. He got bit by or stung by. No, he really was by box jellyfish. You know, highly toxic seven times. He was in the morgue. He was in the morgue for like. A couple of hours in this little island. So he was really there. He went and saw Jesus and Jesus told him all these things. So who do I trust? Who do I trust? Do I trust Ian? He saw Jesus or do I trust Trish? I mean, you didn't see Jesus on this, did you? Jesus didn't tell you that. Oh, OK, well, then we've got to go with Ian, right? Oh, but we've got to go with Ian. We've got to go with his story. He's a Christian, right? That's what I'm saying. I mean, yeah, we have to sort this out. And then I'm telling you, Ken Ring. Ken Ring had all these near death experiences come back and said 1988 is the end of the world. Yeah, I don't know, you know, it's but this is something that has perplexed me my whole life, you know, it's it's like, OK, do you if you have an experience, do you disbelieve your own experience? Yes, that's a very very suspicious, be very skeptical of your own experience. It's just an experience. It's just the chattering of your little mind up there that we all have. OK, let me let me tell you another story. When Trish and this is when Trish and I first met. I we we found out we both had this very similar interest in the paranormal and we were both involved in lives where nobody around us had any interest in that. We were both reading these Jane Roberts Seth books, but nobody else was and nobody had any interest in these books. And then we found when I met her that we had that in common. And so shortly after I met her, I said, have you ever tried a Ouija board? Let's let's pick one up and just see what happens. So we did and we got we got this message to that it was coming from a UFO and that we should go to the airport and there would be a ship would be visible. This week, Trish was living in Fort Lauderdale. I was in Hollywood. So it was like one o'clock in the morning. We went out there and we sat out there for 12 30. We sat out there for over an hour. You know, I'm looking up. There's there's no UFOs here. There's this this message must, you know, this must be a trickster of some sort. So the next morning, I have to get up really early and I'm working at a newspaper and I have this deadline. There's some kind of school board event was going on. And I had to call it in at like 9 30 or so. And then I had to rush back to the office and follow up on it and fill out the story. And as I finished, the person on the next desk just was finishing her story. And I look over at her and ask, so what are you writing about? And she said, oh, there was a UFO sighted last night over Perry Airport. Well, Perry Airport is the small airport 10 miles from Fort Lauderdale where we were. Yeah. And so that that story, her story was on the front page of the Hollywood Sun Tatler the next the next that afternoon. And so so that night we go. Let's go to Perry Airport and look for that UFO. We do. We did. And there's no lights at Perry Airport at night. You know, it's really dark. There's no UFOs either. But as we're driving away, Trish and I are in the separate cars. And I turn on the radio and there's an old fashion type radio drama on, which is strange. I'm I just kind of gone through the channel. So I started listening and it's about an alien, an alien is talking in this story. And, you know, it's just like a weird synchronicity. You know, we we took years ago, we told this to a ufologist very into it. And he said, well, you didn't see any UFOs. You didn't meet any aliens. So that's really not a story. But it's very much of a paranormal psychic event. You know, that's very much a synchronicity. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. We have no idea. I mean, what what the relationship is with synchronicities, with out of body experiences, with shamanic experiences, with their death experiences. We all have all have this sense that it's connected. But I think this issue of truth is going to keep going to keep coming up. And I think it is central to how we move forward. And I just don't think we can. Like again, and I really mean this sincerely, what I was saying at the beginning, I'd like to explore this more because. You guys are coming at this from a different perspective, which is a very, very valid perspective. It is your and it's also your lived experience. You guys are storytellers. So I can come on pretty strong because I'm trying to jar you out of that mindset because that is not my mindset. I am not interested in people's stories. I don't give a shit about your story. I want I'm under this fantasy that I can move towards something closer to what we would call truth. So how do you see that playing out? How do you see that drama playing out? Because you guys are also, you know, news reporters. I mean, do you understand that you have to get the story right? It has to be truthful. Right. I was what's that dynamic? What's that push and pull? You know, I push pretty hard. I'm Preston Dennett trying to get a reaction out of you guys. Well, the thing is what you're talking about is what's why the world was so screwed up now because there's so much disinformation about everything. And so the United States, the people are just totally divided. Was ever thus is there a time when it wasn't? Well, now I was I was really, you know, I was point out. I think so much more. I don't know. You know, the 50 years ago, during the time when people are really divided again, this was was the same thing as kind of the hippie era and the leftist. And the the people on the right were at each other's throats basically. And I always like to remind people about Gloria Steinem, right? Gloria Steinem, who like we needed a woman's movement. Women were in a you know, I think about I was reference my mom, you know, my mom didn't have any options. She's very artistic, intelligent, you know, she didn't have any options. So that she could do and it led to some really bad things in her life because she couldn't, you know, express herself. I think that's part of the reason why she. So we needed a woman's movement, but we didn't need the frickin CIA to run the women's movement. Gloria Steinem was CIA. And what a lot of people don't realize, how can you not know that? Oh, no, I don't know that. She wasn't. Well, you can go look in her own words. See, so in the here's the double thing that you'll get. So somebody outs Gloria Steinem and then Gloria Steinem has to respond. And you can watch the old black and white thing where she responds. She goes, yes, I did cooperate with the CIA, but I had to do it because this was too important of a movement. And I found them to be really not what you think. You know, they're really progressive and all the rest is. Well, sounds good, but it's bullshit because the truth is if you go look at her past, she was CIA before she started the movements, the women's movement. She was CIA from the beginning. She was CIA when she was working with the. Student movement. And then she was interjected into this, just like they co-opted the UFO. Movement, right? So there's all these people. So we got to finish this story. We got it. Well, we're going to talk about we're going to talk about your story. Peter Lavenda, but the point you can't slip off of Gloria Steinem, because he goes Gloria Steinem. If you didn't know that, then you live through that. You live through that whole era thinking, wow, aren't things aren't things really kind of great? And once you know, I can pay attention to her. But the point, the point's the same. It's like you're saying, wow, the disinformation, misinformation is so bad. Now, in a lot of ways, I could say it's worse back then because you didn't even know it. Now, what did she what did she do that affected us in a negative way regarding the fucking Rob? That's the wrong fucking question, isn't it? She was run by the fucking CIA. What why would we why would we why would that would be the question? The CIA was interested in the women's movement. What business does the CIA have in socially engineering the women's movement? What business do they have? What was their purpose? What was their purpose? Yeah, well, let's go find out. Go ask them. But the point no, you guys are missing the point. The point is that's like saying, you know, what was what was Goebbels purpose? Why did Goebbels, you know, generate all that propaganda? What was his purpose? No, the point is that if he was controlling the information flow, then you have to be suspicious. So if Gloria Steinem and then if Gloria Steinem was was CIA and if she was CIA before she ever entered the women's movement, that tells the story. You can't then work backwards. What is the story? And what was the story? She was CIA. The story is she was CIA. I mean, so is so is so is Erie Geller. You know, I mean, Erie Geller works with a lot of intelligence. He's Mossad. He was he's Mossad, right? He was doing, you know, his whatever he does, you know, I don't know if it's just bending spoons for the CIA. And Mossad or whatever. But he was he was working with them. And, you know, I mean that he was he was hired by them. And that's one of the ways he became and also a lot of private people as well in business. Erdram, he became a multimillionaire and lives in a castle. And so he made use of his abilities and the ways that he could. But I don't think he thinks that he did anything really terrible. He was trying to, you know, help help people out. I think maybe I don't know. Well, I mean, we ever had him on. Have Yuri Geller on. No, I well, you know, like I don't quite understand where you're going with that. I mean, the important thing to me in that story is that, yes. Erd Geller was Mossad. He was CIA and our intelligence agencies were deeply. I mean, try this on for size. Here's where I take that. Our intelligence agencies were deeply, deeply interested in operationalizing weaponizing, weaponizing extended consciousness at the same time. They were perpetuating this false narrative among academia that still persists to this day, that there is no such thing as extended consciousness. There's nothing to see here, folks. Don't worry about it. None of that is happening. It's all I think that's changing. I think that's changing. I do. Can I play a clip? Yes, I play a clip. But do I have the ability to you? Yeah, just share your screen when you OK. OK. OK. Here, let's see how I do this. It's from my. And by the way, when when you guys get done before we before we sign off, I've got I've got a question that might be like it's not related to any of this, but I would be interested in getting a response from Alex. Maybe it might be a post-show clip, but OK, after show after credits thing, you know. Ask way. Hey, you got to. John, you're going to have to allow me to share my screen. OK, I think you go over to participants. CIA, be careful. No, the Defense Department. Yeah, DOD. Oh, man, is that true, John, really? It is. It is true. And I'm a software engineer just like you. So just like me. OK. Oh, then you're good. Thank you. Let's see. Yeah, I have. I don't guess this has ever come up before. I don't think it has. That's no big. I can just talk you through it. No. I just I just published this interview with this terrific guy, Dr. Gregory Shushan, who is, you know, Oxford College, London. I mean, just very recognized scholar. See if it'll let you know. I just I just changed the set. Aha. OK, here it comes. OK. OK. OK, here's here's Dr. Gregory Shushan. I'll just play this a show about finding truth in science. There actually were a lot of accounts overtly saying this particular person died, went to the other world and came back. And that's how we know what the afterlife was like. I found, you know, 40, 50, 60 of them from different parts of the world. So that's not in dispute. The idea that for all these thousands of years and pretty much every cultural region of the planet, people have just been making things up and let's instead look at the world through our own sort of mechanistic, materialistic, scientific viewpoints and say that, no, it's all culture and it's all in the brain. To me, that's a pretty limited way of looking at the world. And that, to me, seems completely illogical and unreasonable. And it's faith rather than science. It's people sticking to their predetermined, philosophical paradigms rather than looking at the actual evidence and extrapolating from it. And a show about spotting scientists who are full of baloney. I don't have any answer in the Bible what to do when humans are no longer useful to the economy. You need completely new ideologies, completely new religions. And they are likely to emerge from Silicon Valley. Everything that the old religions promised, happiness and justice and even eternal life. But here on earth with the help of technology and not after death with the help of some supernatural being. What are humans for? As far as we know for nothing, I mean, there is there is no great cosmic drama. Some great cosmic plan that we have a role to play in it. This has been the story of all religions and ideologies and so forth. But as a scientist, the best I can say this is not true. First clip you heard was from today's guest, Dr. Gregory Shushan, who seemed to be a little bit embarrassed when I said he's doing some of the most important work in science. Period. Full stop. So in this introduction, I had to pair his quote with one from a science darling right now, Dr. Yuval Harari, who is named by Barack Obama and Bill Gates and Zuckerberg and has sold 30 million books and is on 60 minutes and is all over the place. And of course, as one of the key members in the world, economic form, great reset. That's just the way it is. But as that quote reveals, he's really not too well informed on science. Is he at least on the science we've explored here on skeptica? He's certainly not up to date on why we're not biological robots in a meaningless universe, but we shall leave. OK, so I'll leave that alone. But that directly contradicts what you just said, Trish. No, it's not changing. This guy is the lead guy right now in terms of science. And he's saying exactly the opposite of what you're saying. No, there is no remote viewing that never really happened. Yuri never bent those spoons. None of that stuff happened. I don't believe that. Oh, that is that is mainstream science is what you're saying. You know, and it's not changing. It's not changing. It's not. There isn't this big momentum or any. It's not true. I'm said. I'm not saying that science is changing. I'm saying that people are shifting. No, everybody took the jab. They took the jab. They took the jab and they believe in global warming. They're they're not changing. They don't understand science. The problem with global warming isn't that we shouldn't care about the environment. The problem with global warming is that it isn't supported by the science. Sea level right. Sea levels haven't risen in 40 year in forever. Come to Miami Beach and it's just not true. Go look at the data in the Miami Beach. They've been collecting that data forever. Go look at the data they've collected. No, it hasn't risen. It just hasn't. That's the data. The people who didn't take the jab are the ones who are dying, too. It's bullshit. Go. I challenge you. I mean, I've been challenged. I challenge you to climb up down there, drive down there after a rainstorm and see how it's flooded. That's not normal. Trish Trish. When you say it's bullshit, what I interpret that to mean, based on what I just said is there are people scientists, I should say, who have, for the longest time, been collecting the sea level, recording the sea level of Miami Beach. They do it in a precise way as possible. I would challenge you to go look at their data and see if their data confirms your observation, your individual observation of how it looks after a storm. I think you'll find that's not true. That's not true. It isn't. Listen, OK, one day, what's not true? What what's not true is that what you're saying is not true, because there is flooding in areas like Alton Road that have never flooded before. And it's not a bloody now. Yeah. And it's scientifically verified. We hear it all the time. It's there's evidence. You're not looking at the right evidence. Everybody's not everybody's stupid about some things, you know, and they're smart. Here's the. Well, then then what we can what we could probably agree on is that. There is an official record of the sea level that they've recorded probably for the last at least 50 years in Miami Beach. They record it every day. The scientists do. If that data shows that the sea level hasn't risen significantly, then you are wrong. And I am right because that's the only measure we have is for the last 50 years, they've been measuring sea level and they have the data and they publish the data. And that's the data we would look at, right? To answer that question. Isn't that what we'd look at? Let me. I think if. OK, let's say. Let's say AccuWeather. So don't you have to? Don't you have to answer that question? Is that whether or whether or not the official sea level that they've recorded in Miami Beach for the last 50 years? That's a different question. You're slipping off the question, Trish. It's part of the same question. I don't know why it's flooding. I don't. I don't have an answer to that. All I can tell you is your assumption that because some road flooded is not the best way to look at it or is. Yes, not a regular occurrence, right? You know, you guys. But they're they're in Fort Lauderdale and Fort Lauderdale. They're building a they're planning on building a huge wall. To keep from, you know, the rising tides from coming into the city. You know, I mean, are they just joking? Is it all bullshit? Is it all bullshit? Just because, you know, there's certain people that are. Have a different outlook about it that doesn't conform to, you know, what the majority of scientists are saying. I mean, there's there's some things that the mainstream science say that I agree with, and that's in health, for instance. They don't I don't think agree with them about UFOs and about the nature of reality in terms of life after death. They're wrong there, but some things. Are they're right about and, you know, and health is one thing. And I think the global warring is another that they're right about. 99 percent of people of scientists agree with that. That's actually not a true figure at all. And I can show you where that's. And here is kind of one of my go to people. She is a climatologist at Georgia Tech University, like legitimate climate scientist. And her name is Judith Curry. And, you know, here's her special report on sea level rise from a couple of years ago, spent 18 months looking so you can't. Like you guys are not really approaching this scientifically in terms of saying, OK, we could measure things scientifically. And then when you're confronted with that, you kind of want to slide off of that and say, well, no, that doesn't matter. It's like maybe it doesn't matter in this grander kind of thing that we don't have to kind of care. We can all have our own story and our own narrative. But if we're going to play this consensus reality game, if we're going to play the game of science, then we would look at what we would kind of agree that this is the way that we do it. So if you're looking at the issue of global warming, you could reduce it down to one question. Have sea levels risen? Because it's like that. Ask the polar bears. Rob, do you understand that that's not that's not scientific? You can go ask. Why is that not scientific? Why don't you don't do you? If if you were, it's like, have you studied what's going on with the polar bears? Yeah, I have. But do you realize how you think that's a joke? You know, you're wrong on the polar bears and you can't go research. No, I'm not. But here's my point. Here's no, you're not. But here's the point is that you would if you were going to approach things scientifically, you would kind of agree on certain criteria that you would measure to come up with your scientific hypothesis. That's how science. That's how science is done. It's a controlled experiment. You don't talk about an experiment and then have somebody lob in from the sideline. What about the fricking polar bears? No, you go on one experiment at a time. So it's like the you're making it sound like our our what we're saying is, you know, something on the fringe, you're on the fringe. We're not on the fringe at all about climate change. You are very out on the fringe. You know it, too. Well, no, you would you would have you would have to back that assertion up by scientifically, right? So like one of the things like you you repeated this thing that is completely about journalistically. Well, again, I mean, you don't trust the mainstream media, do you? You think it's all fake news? Am I right? But are you? Why are you? Why are you loving? Loving these things at me? Like when you said the 97 we're outing you, we're outing you, Alex. We want this on skeptical. You got it. You'll get it. So like if you take Dr. Judith Curry and she also did a great thing on the manufactured consensus thing, the 97 percent consensus that came primarily from a paper published by a guy named Cook. Cook for member of that because he cooked the book. What Cook did to come up with that 97 percent figure is he hired a bunch of grad students to read the abstracts from all these papers. And he asked them to evaluate based on the abstract, whether or not that person was for or against the proposition of man made global warming. That's he like you're going to throw polar bears in here at some point. But what I'm telling you is the methodology that Cook used in coming up with his conclusions. The reason that's a bad methodology is pretty obvious. One, you can't have grad students that isn't really asking the scientist what he thinks. That's how about all the other. Let me just finish the thought. So what so what Dr. Judith Curry Curry did, who is a real climatologist, she relied on the survey of climatologist and she found that the real number is 52 percent found agreed with the idea that human factors. Probably our cause are contributing to global warming. So the question then becomes why was the if anyone can figure it out. And I've had people like you who are kind of catastrophic global warming people on the show and when you show them the Cook numbers and you show them the methodology, go, well, that's clearly a shitty methodology. No one should come to that conclusion based on that methodology. It's just poor. It's not doing what you say you're doing. So then the question is, why is Obama repeating that? Why is Bush repeating that? Why is that on NASA? Is like, are they just like, oh, my gosh, they didn't know it, you know? No, they're perpetuating it because that is the goal of what they're trying to manufacture. So we don't have any Alex. So the bottom line is we don't have anything to worry about. Right. There's no global warming. Everything's cool. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I said, I think that if you want to understand these questions, you have to go about it in a scientific, methodical way. You can't just let your emotions carry you. You can't just say, oh, I had a dream and I saw the world collapsing. Therefore, I'm going to live my life as if the world is going to collapse. Maybe the world is going to collapse. But the other data that I pointed out to you is true. Kenneth Ringhead, near death, experiences say that the world was going to end in 1988 and it didn't. The other thing I told you about the Christian, you can go listen to him. Those are his words on the show, right? People can believe a lot of weird things. And but what really worries me is when I tried to just apply like common sense, like down to earth logic that haven't they been recording the level of the sea level in Miami for 50 years? Why would we not want to rely on that data? You guys just totally blew a gasket. No, we can't rely on what we've been doing for the last 50 years. This is no, we've got to work with the polar bears on the roads. Oh, no, Alex, you're that that's total bullshit. But we're not that dramatic. What we're saying is that you I've lived here since 1963. Things have changed since 1963, weather wise, just, you know, I don't need to look at science to know that. I mean, you don't always look at science, Alex. I mean, you believe in Pizza Gate for Christ's sake. I mean, that's crazy. That's totally crazy. That's a great one in the time in the time that we have left. What do you understand Pizza Gate to be? I don't want to get into it. I just don't know. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You brought it up, pal. But what do you understand Pizza Gate? Well, is it something against Hillary Clinton? Right. Right. Then very much. OK, Hillary Clinton had had this basement under a pizza shop and she was screwing boys or something pedophiles. Some sex thing is totally ridiculous. And as a result of the right wing conspiracy theory about this, saying it over and over again, when you say something over and over again, like Trump says, things over and people start to believe it. And so some guy came with a shotgun or a rifle into that pizza shop looking for the basement and you don't really believe this. Do you, Alex? See, Rob, you're you're so incredibly misinformed. I don't believe you spew this stuff out like that. Here's what here's what Pizza Gate was four days before the election. This is Hillary versus Trump. Wiki Leaks Wiki Leaks released a batch of emails from John Podesta. And the emails were all about this kind of they were salacious, particularly about the spirit cooking thing. And they were designed as an artist. It was an art. Let me let me finish, because you just there's so many things that you said they're just completely not true. You can verify. But here's what you will relate to. You're right. You're right. It's not true. You don't know what you're talking about, pal. But the emails were designed to undermine Hillary's campaign. They were an intentional operation in order for for Trump to get elected. That's why they released him four days before they were an operation to undermine Hillary, to paint her as a Satanist, to paint her as friendly. Well, don't say obviously Rob just said it was a bunch of different shit. This is what Pizza Gate was. And if you look at the history of elections, they always do these things like four days, three days ahead of time. They don't do them two weeks ahead of time because then they get debunked and all the rest that that's what Pizza Gate was. Well, when they released those emails, John Podesta's emails, there was this public kind of. You know, it was the group sourcing kind of thing back in the day where we're all used to it, but then everyone on social media, particularly people who were energized in this in a right wing way, started searching through these emails, started looking for connections, and they found a connection with a guy who was across the street, this guy named James Alafontes, who ran this pizza place. He ran a pizza place. Well, it turns out he was also one of the 50 most influential people in Washington, DC, and he was rated as such by this magazine. And he had all these connections to Hillary Clinton and all these other people. And there were some very, very shady things in his background. And he had he had they trolled through his Instagram and they found all this kind of soft kitty porn stuff that he was commenting on and doing all the rest of this stuff. The point is it was Hillary Clinton have to do with all that. Nothing. You're missing the point, Rob. I'm giving you facts and you're missing the point, Rob. The point is it was effective at undermining Hillary's campaign. It was effective at being one of the contributing factors. But it was a lie. It was a lie. Don't you agree again, Rob? Rob, get a grip. Dude, the emails were real that no one ever denied. John Podesta never came out and said, those aren't my emails. I never sent those emails. I never received those emails. Those emails were, in fact, true and accurate. The interpretation that people made about those emails, particularly people in the Christian, I'm not Christian, people in the Christian right. The their outrage over their emails are a separate thing. But again, you're just wrong, Rob. They weren't a lie. They were real emails and they really did inspire a lot of people to vote against Hillary Clinton. That whole operation was called Pizza Gate, Rob. That's what Pizza Gate was. Hang on a second, because because we're way off track and we're not going to go. We're not going to we're not going to resolve any of this. We can only resolve it. That's just factual. Anyone can go look that up. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just saying that between the three of you, we're not going to resolve this. I don't think you can pull. Well, I think quickly, I think we can both agree, all of us agree, that there was no basement below the pizza shop. So you're wrong on all the other stuff you said. And now you're going to lay something else on because you're so well informed. You're going to tell us this next part. So tell us the next part that you know that there. Below. There is no basement, first of all, below the pizza. I think the pizza shop, I think we can agree with that. So there were no pedophiles and Hillary Clinton had nothing to do with. I think we can all agree with that. I'm just going off of the facts that we have that you disagree. You want to know what you disagree or anything that I said, do you disagree with anything that I've said? You disagree? Yeah, there was there was. Yeah, Podesta had emails. So what? And there was this art show that related to this thing you're talking about. Yeah, I agree. But your people, it's been exploited basically for the election. You're right. I agree. OK, John. So the emails, the emails reference spirit cooking, which was very offensive to a lot of people of a kind of Christian persuasion. And then you'd have to understand what spirit cooking is and you'd have to understand what Crowley, you know, is the guy who kind of directed that. So you'd have to dive deep into the occult and understand that. And you'd have to understand the conversation. But I just want you to own. I just want you to own what you said, Rob, because what you said was just not. You started out by saying, Alex, you believe in Pizzagate. And I've just demonstrated to you that you have no idea what Pizzagate was. You had it all wrong. That's what Pizzagate was. Now, the fact that a guy did take a gun and go shoot up that that restaurant and he really just shot the safe is what has become the meme that people like you pick up on and say, that's Pizzagate. Some right wing, nut conspiracy theorist shot up this thing. It's much more accurate to say what Pizzagate was was these these emails that were released in an attempt to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign by painting her to be connected to a cult practices. And well, particularly what they what really stuck was that she was connected to occult practices and satanic practices. And that had a dense, a very substantial. We don't know how substantial, but it definitely had an impact on her campaign. So you just got that wrong. And so when you say you believe in Pizzagate, then that would mean that you believe all of this stuff about Hillary Clinton. Right. No, Rob, I just told you what Pizzagate is. Go back and look it up. That's what Pizzagate originally was. You had it wrong. So you had it wrong. I had it right. That's OK. We can move on. OK, OK, you're not right about Miami Beach. I'll tell you that. Well, only know if you send me the tide records, which we've had for the 50 years, and then you show me that it's risen, right? That would be the way to see whether you're right or wrong about that. You go down there, drive through the flood and we'll watch your car drown. And then you come back from the afterworld and tell me that was wrong. OK. What if I see Jesus in the afterworld, though? Well, then that's your problem. You get getting mad at him because he's really screwed things up on this planet. John. I'm here. Save us, John. Oh, yeah, yeah, I don't. You tried, right? You tried and it didn't work. So you're done. I was I was hoping that that it would tail off, but it just never did. So, but my dog is here. Well, yeah, so yeah, I just I just been up here for 10 minutes. Let me let me. Well, let me let me do give let me let me do give one last question. Maybe maybe this will give us a couple minutes that we can solve some of the political talk. So so, Alex, in particular, with your background in AI, I was curious to see what's your take on the Google developer that got released last week for that was in the a claiming that the that that the conversation framework had gone sent in it. Is this is it is it possible this is just Google has finally passed the Turing test or does Google have a yeah. OK, so John, what is your take on it? It just well, I think I think the guys probably not. I think the guys probably stressed a little too stressed. Probably saw some things that that probably probably it passed the Turing test. Probably it did come across as if it was a sent in it. But I find it hard to believe that Google is hanging on to sent in it's programmatic sentence. So tell tell folks what the Turing test is. The Turing test is simply a piece of software that convinces the user or yeah, the user that that they're speaking with a human, but they're speaking with a piece of software. Right, serves this very famous computer scientist, the guy who kind of made the first computer, the guy who broke the enigma code and you can go watch the movie is a British computer scientist. His name is Alan Turing. One of the things that's really cool about Alan Turing, I think, is that he basically won World War Two for us in a way by breaking, cracking the code on enigma by inventing a computer. And then later he was completely his life was destroyed because he was gay. And they it was illegal at that time. And they forced kind of him to take these drugs and he eventually committed suicide. It's a horrible story. But to think that someone who served his country that nobly, it would then be basically killed by his countries are interested. So he said, he said, look, if people so way back, this is World War Two. He said, if you want to know where this stuff is going, you're going to eventually ask the question is, could this computer ever be smarter than you are? And that's when he said, well, really, that's kind of the wrong question. The right question is, as John said, could it ever trick you into thinking that it's smarter than you are? Because if it can trick you into thinking it's smarter than you are, then it kind of wins the game. And that raises a bunch of other questions about consciousness, extended consciousness, UFOs, all the rest of this stuff, which is beyond what the computer can do. So when we narrow the question down to the Turing test, like, can you be fooled? Well, anyone who's ever played chess knows that the computer can whip your butt just without even trying. But the other thing I always point out to folks about AI is that you're already living AI. I mean, if you trade stocks even a little bit, you're competing with AI. If you play online poker, you're competing with AI. If you're those little search engine bots that follow you around are AI. So even the points at which you're already are interfacing with AI are kind of unsettling. So where is it going? It's it's very it's very hard to imagine that it's not it's not much, much further along than we think. But I think the question really is a spiritual question of whether or not what sentence means, what, you know, being human really means becomes becomes a spiritual question. Because if you're thinking about it from a materialistic science perspective, it's game over. Yes, of course, the computer is going to be smarter than you are. Well, I know it's a question of sentence. And that's what that's what that's what our question is. I mean, really, I mean, I don't and I could, yeah, obviously could be totally off base on this. But I don't think we have the neural networks and stuff that we need to have, you know, to even approach sentence in a machine. We've just got some really, really good heuristics engines that can make that. Because a couple of years ago, some Russian programmers actually won, you know, won a UK touring test, but they but they dumbed down their bots so that it spoke as like a three year old Russian and well in English in English. So translated from a three year old Russian to English and actually managed to fool some people, but that's that's kind of that's kind of a thing. Perk, it's something like that. And Star Trek to, you know, you know, the Corbucci, Maru or whatever. Yeah. Well, and I changed the rules of the game, basically. Yeah. I mean, I think it gets back to the quote that I played you by Harari, the New World Order guy who is the science darling, right? So he doesn't believe that you are a conscious being, John. He believes that you are a biological robot, that consciousness is emerging, is an epiphenomena of your brain. There is nothing more to you than this biology that's cranking that out. That's how they want to frame things from an AI perspective, because then from an AI perspective, you can never you will lose that battle. But if you are more and the best science suggests that you are more, that you are a spiritual being, then AI can never really touch that. Unless we start hypothesizing that at some point, the soul enters the silicon and that kind of thing. But that's a kind of different discussion. Yeah, it is a different discussion. Yeah, yeah, I just I just don't I don't think I don't think I don't think we need to worry about anything escaping a Google lab and and taking over the world. I just that that's and could be wrong. But I just I don't know that we're that advanced. And actually, I think back to the fact that we're just kind of some biological computers, you know, we we don't we don't do we don't we don't do a very good job. So so we're flawed in of in and of ourselves. And then we're going to we're going to I mean, so we're really that close to being God that we can create a Senate sentient machine. Again, I think that plays into what they're the meme that they're trying to the paradigm that they're trying really, really hard to advance, which is that. Yeah, that's that's what Harari says that directly. He says that's going to be God. God is going to come from Silicon Valley. And that's why I jumped on Rob about the Uri Geller thing. That's the important point about Uri Geller is this the scientists that were working with Uri Geller, they didn't have any of these transhumanist notions that there's nothing more. They were saying this guy is obviously connecting with something more. There's something more out there. But the message for the climate catastrophes like Rob and Trish is no, give us control of everything. Give us the technical control and we'll figure everything out. And that's just that the science doesn't support that. Well, and to be clear, that's what bothers me when it kind of bothers me, that this that this whole story may have been a may have been a plant. You know, totally, totally to terrify people that Google or Google's on the verge of a sentient machines that are going to take over the world. Oh, yes, one of the one of the things that you said, Alex, about Uri Geller, about the scientists. Actually blends right in with a lot of what parapsychologists believe that they they may believe in telepathy, precognition. But many of them, including Dean Raiden, I believe, do not believe in an afterlife. Do not believe that we are spirit beings. Well, I don't know. Maybe maybe I don't know where you're getting that from Dean. But I mean, he published his book on magic and spirits and all the rest of that stuff. Yeah, I know I've read books, but I just remember maybe his change changed his thinking. But I remember maybe 20 years ago, you say, from a scientific point of view, there is there is no evidence that that there is any spirit world that that life continues to survive. Well, that's no, I mean, Ed is in his book in the magic, real magic book. He kind of says, hey, I didn't know any of this stuff before. And now I understand this and call it spirit. But I still think he's, you know, he's transhumanist. I had him on the show and I was just stunned that he's kind of fallen into this transhumanist trap. So that's where I thought you were going. He's kind of of this, hey, maybe we could all just be a hive mind and maybe that's better for everybody and it'll save the planet if you don't have your individual consciousness, if you just merge it all and the one big hive mind, the man who felt the man who fell to earth. Yeah. And maybe this would be a good place to end it. We'll just all swear that in the afterlife, we'll find each other and record a follow up podcast. So that sounds good. All right. As above so below, as below so above. All right. Thank you guys. Thank you, Alex. This is the kind of this is the kind of discussions that need to be had. So this is the discussion I want to have. I don't know what you want to know. But it's good. That's good. It's true. It's about finding truth. So I'm going to I'm going to send you to Miami. I'm going to send you to the Miami beach sea levels. And then I'm going to send you a ticket to Miami to go drive. Those are those are not those are not equivalent. Is there not to say, hey, but don't but don't turn down a free trip to Miami, you know. True. See you guys. Take care. Appreciate it. Appreciate you guys. Fine. I know. Thanks to these guys, Rob and Trish McGuire for having me on. I'm sure this will be the end. The end of it. It's see that it's unfortunate. It's a topic I'm going to continue to cover is like the truth is too important and the stakes are raised now. We have to be able to get through this stuff and just really poor logic just isn't going to cut it. And I don't think it should be, you know, kind of a suffer fools gladly kind of thing. I don't know. What do you think? Let me know till next time. Take care. Bye for now.