 Um, this episode of Skeptico, a show about discernment and conspiracy theory. A core tenor spirituality is the kind of discernment, okay, discernment about, on a fundamental level of thought. Like, for a lot of people, that is a massive change in their lives to realize that their thoughts aren't true. We really should then be able to carry that sense of discernment out of our own minds and into the world and say, well, it is what the government is telling me true. And in some ways, I've been indoctrinated into this system from birth, so it's very compelling for that reason, but I shall be able to apply more discernment to that. And a show about discernment and conspiracy theory. I have a really good chat coming up with Richard Cox from Deep State Consciousness podcast and the author of the new book, Contemplating Conspiracy. It's a good one. Stick around, I think you'll enjoy it. Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm House Alex Scarce, and today we welcome back Richard Cox. Great, great, great to have him back of this guy. You know, if you've been around Skeptico, we've done a bunch of shows over the years and I really, a ton of respect for him, a ton of respect for his very excellent podcast, Deep State Consciousness podcast, and also I got a lot of love for this book of his new book, Contemplating Conspiracy's Excursions into Undeluded Madness. Richard, welcome back. Thanks for joining me. Thank you. So this book is interesting, kind of a compilation of a lot of interviews you've done. I kind of in the back of my mind as I'm reading it, I'm having a chicken and the egg question like, did you start having the concept for the book and then do the shows off of that or vice versa? So that's one of the things we'll have to get into. But we're going to do a deep dive into this because there's some really interesting topics, very interesting Skeptico topics related to this book. But start just by telling us about the book, Contemplating Conspiracy. It comes from years ago, even being in spiritual groups, going on a retreat and seeing everyone get along very well on the Friday evening and talk with a lot of harmony because they've been, everyone had come having similar perspectives on spirituality, on meditation, on consciousness, and it's very exciting in live talk about that. And then around about Saturday lunchtime, politics would come up. And there'd be some shocked faces because there would be this apparent division in the room between the more conspiracy-minded people and the more conventionally-minded. And this was not shocking for the conspiracy-minded, but for the conventionally-minded. Suddenly they're hearing for the first time, they've gone to this spiritual retreat and they're hearing the 9-11 was an inside job. And they certainly didn't expect to meet anyone there who wasn't fully convicted as to the perils of global warming. And now there are people who seem to be incredibly right-wing, because that's all the scam apparently, and seeing this division in spirituality and that being aware of that for a long time. And then when COVID kicked off, it felt like that division had a wedge put in it and was just hammered where the people who were essentially not on the conspiratorial, the people on the conspiratorial side, in many cases, came more conspiratorial. They would say, with good reason, I would be inclined to agree. And then the people who are very adverse to that thing suddenly took on the perspective, OK, this has gone too far now. It was one thing when it was silly theories about this or that, but this is a pandemic. It's that these people are threatening the health and well-being of society and we need to speak out against it. So I saw the division become wider and the book was inspired like a lot by the philosophy of Paul Fyroband on the idea that we need to shift into each other's perspectives and different perspectives to be able to communicate and to be able to gain a better perspective or over perspective on truth. So that was the kind of core thing of the book. Yeah, oh, geez. OK, we're going to jump right into the Skeptico section, the skeptical part of this show, because I kind of challenged that right from the beginning, that that has any chance of working or that that really gets at the issue. And that's not to say because like you and I have known each other and, you know, I'm kind of a pushy kind of person. So when I say that, that I'm going to jump right into the skeptical part, you get that. But I have to pause for a second and say this is really, really a good book. And it's really, really important. So many of the points that you make and there's some kind of fantastic things that you've done here. I love like exaggerated hangout. Let's say something you coined, I think, and it's such a interesting addition to the mix or your take on conspiratiality is completely unique and new and wonderful. Even though you are careful to reference. Where that came from, you kind of take it another direction. This is all to say, I think you've done a fantastic job. And that is kind of a gotcha to. OK, now I'm going to be skeptical on you. But in this true sense, and this is reflective of your book, both are true, both are true. The reason I'm excited to talk to you is because we can have a level three conversation. And what you're describing in the spiritual meetup to me, the problem I have with it is you're making excuses for people who can't do a level three conversation. And to me, I'm not that interested in why people can't do level three. I'm just interested in having level three because I think that the solutions will come out of that. I say all that. Let me give an example. What better example than this? This is episode 391 of Skeptico where you and I were joined by Tim Freik. And I'm the one who kind of initiated this. You've known Tim Freik for a long time. Tim is, you know, fantastic guy, written many, many important books known for kind of the Jesus myth kind of thing. But where you and I were pushing him on this interview is about conspiracy theory. Let me play the clip and then we'll chat about it. On an issue like global warming, where I do think it's relevant to paradigm is you need a certain depth of conspiracy to believe that global warming as a conspiracy could emerge out of that. You need a certain depth. The leap state that rabbit all needs to go a certain way. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense. So whether it's right or wrong, whether you stay there or not, you need to be able to shift into seeing, OK, this is why people would think this. Tim, final words. Well, when you said when you invited me to take part in this discussion and you listed all the things you wanted to talk about, I said to Richard, wow, that's never going to happen. But it has. You've taken us on that journey. It's been a while. I wonder what people will make of being part of it and listening to it. It's been wonderful. It's been fascinating. You know, I I certainly don't want to give the impression that I think these views are ill-informed or just unintelligent. I don't. But I but I do what I think. I think the truth is probably what Richard said earlier, which is on every side of an argument like this or discussion like this, there are people who are well informed and full things through and have reached the conclusion for a reason. And then there's people who haven't. And inevitably, if you are in one side, it's very easy to see the other people on the other side, who are the people that haven't. So there is a lot of people, I think, in the conspiracy world who seem uninformed to the point of being unhinged. But that's not. But I'm sure that's true on the other side and every side, because there's just a lot of people in humanity who are ill-informed to the point of being unhinged and we shouldn't have that blind to us so that they can be serious points to be made. And I think Richard has functioned very well in bringing that through. And as somebody who thinks parologically, I think it's absolutely imperative to be able to see it from these different points of view. And the place I tend to end up is usually it's a bit of all of it. What are your thoughts re experiencing that? I just like seeing myself with hair, but apart from that, it's that clip was on my mind, that exact part of the interview. I thought that would be the part you would play when you put it up. And it was probably on my mind when I wrote the book, because that is exactly it. That's exactly what I'm suggesting that we need to become conscious that we have these worldviews, so often we're unconscious of them and that they influence the way we're seeing things and they influence the way we see other people. So the the undiluted map is Tim right? Specifically on what on this position on global warming or his he's wrong on all of them. So you can just kind of pick your take your pick. But to me, it's the classic classic. It's it goes back, in my opinion, Richard, to what I was poking you at at the beginning, like, oh, if we can understand the other person, then maybe we can find this common ground and our paradigms will merge. No, Tim Freak isn't going to change his position on global warming because he's not willing to engage with the data. To him, it's an illogical ill-informed, right? Ill-informed in that he kind of throws out these platitudes that I guess everyone could be ill-informed. Fuck that, Tim. Let's get down and dirty with the data. Look at Judith Curry and global sea level rise. Dig into the data at that level. And let's have that discussion. But otherwise, fuck your opinion. It doesn't it doesn't it isn't relevant. No, I don't. That's not that's exactly why the way I don't see it. OK, because I think you're coming in on the level of discussing data with an on awareness of the paradigm. So you can discuss data. But if you're trying to change one's mind, have them see your point of view, a different point of view, I don't think the data is going to be as effective as pointing out the underpinning of data, the thing data is arising in. So this kind of is almost jumping us like four. We're kind of all over the place, which I love. It's awesome. One of the things we'd have to talk about is what is the goal and what does it mean to be effective? Is that the goal? I don't know that that's the goal is to kind of one by one, win over people like Tim Freak. Or, you know, I always have Rick Archer from boot at the cast bump on this. And he's just I've done so many shows with him. He just fails miserably, you know, time after time. I'm like global warming. You know, he started with the 97 percent consensus and he had to totally concede on that. OK, yes, you've shown me the data. I realize it's classic moment. Yes. Yeah. And then and then I said, so does that change your opinion? And he goes, no, no. So it's like this is like when you say classic skeptical, this is back skeptical long time ago when, you know, I was talking to you and you were right there, we're talking to skeptics, you know, and it's like, OK, what evidence would convince you? OK, here's that evidence as it convinced you. No. Yeah. So because they're talking in a materialist paradigm, they're either disingenuous or they're still in a materialist paradigm. And then when you get into that, you're so engrossed in the material function of the brain and how you can point to neurons firing the give rise to memory. Then you hear about this near death experience stuff. Well, someone must have made a mistake somewhere because we've almost exactly nailed down what consciousness is on a physical level. And I can see how people were steric. Like when I wrote a like a paper on how we look at consciousness and that forced me to look much more through a materialist lens and look at how are these guys seeing it? And by the end of it, I have more sympathy for the I understand why they're dismissive for this size stuff. Now, I don't think that's ultimately good enough. But the way I would think to approach that with them is to look. You're standing in a particular paradigm. And if you're going to understand at all why people find these these ideas of near death experience compelling, you're going to need to shift. It's not you can't get it from where you are now. And is that going to be effective or is that the goal? I don't think it's not the goal, right? I don't think anyone wants to communicate worse and have worse interactions of people of different opinions. It might not succeed. It might be like another thing that that ultimately fails. But I think it's a much better approach at pointing out where these divisions are arising. I think we want to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. So the strength of your book is where it describes the phenomenon. And like when you talked when you were speaking right there with Tim, the point that I thought you made that was so really salient and he just couldn't get it at all. And as a matter of fact, if you read his body language, he not only couldn't get it, but he was pushing so strongly against it without saying a word. And that was depth. You have to have a certain depth of knowledge of conspiracy. That's what your point was. So do you want to speak to that a little bit and maybe also the prescriptive versus descriptive, if you know what I mean? Yeah, well, this is the thing that hit me when it was about 2005 and I was taking a philosophy class and we were talking about with my teacher about like mystics, like Douglas Harding and how when you really think that the guy that points and notices his thing was he doesn't have a face. When you point in, you just you're aware of a field of awareness arising in which all the people manifest by encounter you as having a face. But then I look at myself on the screen and this person talking. But that's not how I experienced myself. So that was really interesting to me. Hey, we don't nobody ever experiences me the way I experience myself and I don't experience them the way they experience themselves. And then I became very interested in a philosophical poor fire oven who to me, it was just a drop the mic moment where he pointed out how people are occupying these different intellectual paradigms and therefore seeing the world in different ways. And for me, that has changed everything about the way I thought about things. And he advocated a kind of pluralism of open to that point. I thought the way you approach learning something is you get the one right idea and you run with it as far as you can, and that will take you to truth. And then with a lot of the things we look at, whether it's the materialism, idealism debate, whether it's what's going on in the world beyond the really highly documented narrative, who's pulling the strings or what's pulling the strings to deeper level, these things are so complex that we can't just get there through further study necessarily. We maybe need to occupy different perspectives on it. So we're looking at it from different angles and not necessarily condense that down to one, but maintain a plurality of approaches. So that's what I'm kind of the prescriptive, if you like. Let me just make sure I'm not kind of trying to be obtuse here for no reason. To me, the descriptive is you laying out the playing field as you do in this book. And you say, OK, you've been conditioned to think that conspiracy theory. And again, we've got to hit on that in a minute, but that conspiracy theories are wacky. What I hear you telling people is what you don't realize is you already fully embrace the idea. So if I was to tell you that the United States Central Intelligence Department and other intelligence agencies were instrumental in the overthrowing of Iran, and you wouldn't object to that. I would show you the data and you would just be, oh, OK. That to me is descriptive. You would describe to someone how they are not fully accounting for what they already know, and that is that that is conspiratorial. That is, even though it's understood, it is not part of the official narrative of who we are as Americans, what we do, how our role in the world is. Do you want to comment on it? Well, yeah, I mean, the fascinating thing about the conspiracy to me is how open it is, right? So on one level, I'm saying that we can respect each other's views, see each other's positions, meet common ground with all these different people. And on another level in the book, I'm saying, and in addition to that, we actually absolutely know that the world is like this and not like that. There are things we can say definitively. We can't necessarily say definitively about the really deep levels of who's really pulling the strings. Is anyone pulling the strings? Does it go off to the lower fourth dimension? OK, that's great for a conversation. But we can say what happened in Iran in 1953. We can say what happened in Guatemala in 1955. And this notion that when you talk to people who are kind of anti-inspiracy, they'll often throw the bone of saying some conspiracies are true. OK, and that's, I think, an incorrect statement. OK, it's like saying sometimes the mafia engages in crime. It implies that the mafia is a legitimate business organization that occasionally sometimes the security services might get mixed up in a bit of a detection racket. That's not it. Misunderstands the nature of the mob. And what we live in with the state and just I'm referring to the US state, because it is the current global empire, it is a criminal conspiracy. It's not that it's sometimes those criminal things, but it's mostly about running health and social protests and sending foreign aid across the world. It's a criminal conspiracy to project power, to project an ideology of dominance and to support corporations spreading across the globe. So and I demonstrate that by just machine gun really examples of, I think there's about 70 foreign interventions that are documented to be taking place in government overflows since World War Two. So I go through a chunk of them and the reference I make to Wikipedia is I don't actually reference Wikipedia. I reference people at William Bloom and John Poole, but I say, look, you can get all this on Wikipedia. It's like in your face, it's in the open. It's not it's not a secret that the mafia is a criminal organization and it's not a secret that the US government is also. So that part of the argument, that's dawn, right? That's established on that. David Ike, one hundred percent correct. Alex Jones, one hundred percent correct. You can you can say they're wrong about this, that the other thing. All this deeper level of stuff. You can say it doesn't go back hundreds of years and there's no consistency over that time period. There are the queerness and the shapeshifting reptilian that whatever kind of crazy things Alex Jones come out with. But on the basic point, they are far more correct than CNN, Fox News, the BBC, any of them. So then that's the lead. That's the descriptive. Let's not bury the lead. Let's not have a conversation with Tim Freik where we say, gee, Tim, we really want you in this conversation because maybe you have something important to say. I think what we're really saying, what I'm really saying, I'm not going to put words in your mouth is, Tim, until you can cross this little chasm here, it's not hard, but you have to jump it. You have to get into that, as you described it, the depth of that and fully understand that paradigm. We're not going to have a meaningful discussion. We're going to have the kind of discussion that Tim engaged with at the end of that, you know, which I just I find so just tiresome, you know, well, I just can't thank you enough for the wonderful conversation. And I get that everyone has an opinion and everyone's opinion matters. No, your opinion doesn't matter until you embrace this thing that Richard just said is categorically true, provable in a way that we just can't step past, step over. Yeah, there's a directionality to truth. So, yeah, I'm questioning myself now when I'm saying that to the two of you, am I criticizing Tim more than you? Am I suggesting that Tim needs to do more moving than you do, because I am more agreement with your position? I think I'm suggesting to you when I'm saying that stuff, that more facts, more papers by Judith Curry are not going to be an effective strategy for communication because there's a paradigm. And so I'm sort of criticizing your level of communication, not so content. And I suppose I'm more saying to Tim and there is a different way of seeing the world. So I think you people in the conspiratorial paradigm get that, yeah, of course, you can take a more conventional view in the world. We're all kind of born into that. And if you're a conspiracy theorist on any level or a conspiracy realist on a level, you step out of the norm. You've made a paradigm shift at some point in your life. So that could be, yeah, a fair thing. I'm suggesting to Tim and I, I like that there's a paradigm shift to be made. OK, another clip here goes, then we'll talk about it. Here's a guy interviewed just a little while back, Skeptico 525, his name is Scott Shea. And I always make the point of saying that Scott is probably a billionaire or at least close to being a billionaire. And he started this bank and a super successful guy. And I always say that because I think it's super great that here's a guy who's engaging, doesn't have any financial need to do it, but he does it. But here's the point that relates more to our discussion. Oh, and I should add. So Scott Shea came to Skeptico because he had written a book about conspiracy theories and the dangers of conspiracy theories as they relate to anti-Semitic anti-Zionism and stuff like that. And he gives some very solid examples. I really pushed him and he pushed back wonderfully in that, you know, there's some wacky conspiracy theories at his alma mater, Northwestern University, by this tenured professor, you know, like the Jews are up there in space, shooting down lasers and all that crazy stuff, along with the Holocaust deniers stuff, which is also just, I think fall can fall into the category of a wacky conspiracy theory. Are you aware of the modern origin of the term conspiracy theory? No, I read Jordan, Joven Breyford and Quasem Kassim, who wrote about conspiracy theories. Yeah, they don't they don't talk about it. It's directly from a document that was released through a FOIA request. I think the New York Times initiated the FOIA request in 76 or something like that. The title of the document, this is CIA concerning criticism of the Warren report and was drafted in 67. It was about JFK and it was to all the media outlets back then. You remember the day media outlets, you could kind of count the ones that really mattered. All of them were told, do not veer from the story of Lee Harvey Oswald, known low nut assassin. And then they introduced this term conspiracy theorists as a pejorative term and use that to kind of characterize all these people. Now, the upside of that, a lot of people don't realize that in 1978, the House Select Committee on assassinations concluded that JFK was probably a conspiracy and they're using that softly. They proved pretty conclusively from the evidence that it was a conspiracy. So the official position of the United States government is that JFK was a conspiracy. The real question is, why does Dan rather go on? Why does Dan rather go on TV and say, hey, I can't show you the Zabruder film because it's too gory, but you can clearly see that his head falls forward when we all know now that we've seen it, that that's a lie. If the president said he said to be seen to move, I don't recall. Here's my point. Not all conspiracy theories are bad. And I'm a little bit concerned the way you kind of are you falling for part of the game that is in conspiracy theories by only focusing on the silly ones, whether they're silly ones directed at the group that you care about or the silly ones, you know, in general. Any thoughts on that, Richard? Yeah, so I wanted to address both sides of the coin in the book and not just say, OK, well, what we all need to do is make this paradigm shift into a more conspiratorial vision of the world. And this is something where I have to say, in the perspective I occupy, I'm always meeting people who will less conspiratorial than I am. OK, so I'm always encouraging them to have a more conspiratorial vision, if you like, by conspiratorial, I mean the kind of thing we talk about with the US government being an organized crime, not like the Flat Earth. And this would be something that's true just going back to Tim, that he would encounter people, I think, who sometimes were into the more kind of fantasical conspiracy. I would maybe see a parallel of that with the kind of fantastical spirituality. So I think it is a concern that when people realize everything they thought they knew about the world is wrong, that they can start sliding down and down that rubble, and they fall and fall and fall onto their feet land on the Flat Earth, because it's not necessarily obvious where to stop. And this is where I see the parallels to spiritual awakening when you find out everything you knew about your essential nature and consciousness is wrong. People then often become ripe to be victimized by cults because he is somebody with an explanation of what it is. And I think that that's a parallel there within conspiracy culture that something happens. You find out that your belief in what word is wrong and that the explanations come up from kind of conspiracy cults that can really pull people far, far, far down the rabbit hole. I don't agree. Right. And I think it's it's again the matter of a descriptive versus prescriptive. Alls we can really do is just describe, as you do in the book, the instances of conspiracy and then and redefine. I think we have to first we have to. Regain, recapture that term conspiracy, because in all of these examples that we're talking about, we're not really talking about a conspiracy, or I should say, we're rarely talking about a conspiracy. What we're talking about is just good old understanding of history or understanding of science or understanding of archaeology. So in the case that we're just playing with Scotchie, and I was talking about JFK, there's there's kind of multiple layers. But the first layer is is conspiracy theory a conspiracy? Like this is a conspiracy, actually. And I provided the documentation for it. I said, here's a FOIA request. Here's the previously classified document that was sent to all the media outlets that told them to characterize this information in a certain way in order to change people's opinion. So this is a case where the facts, the truth through the FOIA request published in the New York Times, reveals a conspiracy. But in other cases, in most of the cases that we care about, whether it's 9-11 or whether it's JFK or whether it's the pandemic, the COVID thing, what we're doing is we're pointing at certain data. So in JFK, the fact that the magic bullet can't change course in midair and veer this way and that way and come out unscathed is like something that we could apply science to, you know, forensic science and physics and all these other things. And we could come to that. There's nothing, quote, unquote, conspiratorial about that science. It just upsets a certain it's really all these are what we're talking about in every case, almost, is a PSYOP. And that's what we should call them. We shouldn't call them conspiracy theories. We should call them like a countermeasure against PSYOPs, because that's what I think we're really talking about. What do you think? Yeah, I can't ignore that role they play that this was striking to me that conspiracy theory on the one hand is something that shatters people's realities and opens up to a new way of seeing the world. And on the other, it's employed as a weapon to shut down that re-seeing of the world. So I gave the example of whenever Fox or CNN and MCC have someone on to talk about or feel the need to have someone talk about address 9-11 conspiracy, they'll always get someone who's really far down the spectrum, like the planes or holograms person. OK, and they'll never have a guest on to talk about the CIA protecting the hijackers when they were in the country from arrest by the FBI. So yeah, I agree. It's a weaponized term. I think what I wanted to point to in the book was the complexity. If you can't really point to it as being one thing, because I know again, another parallel with spirituality is that when I would meet people who are into Advaita Vedanta or Zen Buddhism and being like doing kind of arduous introspection on their own consciousness for a decade or more, sometimes you're asking the question about how do you get into all this stuff? And they'll go a bit red in the face and look a bit shy. And there'll be some story about Angel Crystal Reiki chakra healing that went on in the youth and something that they perhaps wouldn't feel comfortable associating with now. And there's a parallel and conspiracy that a lot of very erudite research, I know when you ask how they get into it, they look a bit embarrassed. And it's something about energy weapons taking the twin towers down where the virtual vice of that something they firmly reject now. So I looked at something like the Flat Earth movement and thought, I wonder what the trajectory of people who get caught up in Flat Earth will be. And I imagine most people will just move on from it and go building very conventional lives. Some people remain it, but there will be some people in it who transition into becoming quite interesting geopolitical researchers after having this crazy start. So it's as if both spirituality and conspiracy theory, they both have crazy initiation myths to pull someone out of their set in stone dues. Yes. You know, I'm not buying it. And and I almost think that. It there's somewhat of a contradiction with your book in what you're saying, because I think what you're the ground that your book lays out, especially if we look at like the chapter on Conspiratuality, you know, this kind of crossover that you're talking about between conspiracy and spirituality. I think it forces our hand on the stuff that we have talked about so many times in the past, as it has to do with consciousness, because the full implications for consciousness, which you again, I have to digress here for just a second. Again, Richard is another one who is nice enough to complete the Skeptico survey that I sent him. And with his permission, I'm going to publish it in the Skeptico forum because it's just about my favorite one ever that anyone has ever done. It's fantastic. And all the answers are great. And he gives added, you know, other answers where he added stuff. So we'll get him on the we'll publish it on the forum and then we'll get him on the forum to talk more about that. But my point is, I feel like you're you're showing this deeper understanding that consciousness kind of in a way throws all this out out the window. Spirituality is what I really want to say. I say consciousness for people who are atheistically leaning and can't really deal with it. God, God throws all of this stuff out the window, right? God doesn't really care about 9-11 in any way that we can discern. Just like God doesn't seem to care about tsunamis or any of the rest of that stuff. It just, I mean, I kind of say that as as like a that's how the evidence falls. We don't see any evidence that there is that. And that's been the source of a lot of people's frustration with their belief in God. But the deeper part of it is it must be something more than that. So I think what you're trying to do in this book and you do it very successfully is kind of describe to us what it's like to live in two worlds, to have one foot in a world where 9-11 was an inside job. That's just for all the evidence points, sorry. And another foot in a world that says that consciousness, the divinity, God is always in play. And we're leading these rich spiritual lives and we're trying to figure out our path through that. And we're not sure how these two worlds join or if they join at all. But in an attempt to describe as best we can, what the what the field is, what the playing ground is, we have to describe both. And I miss in the point. I think that's true. Do I do that in the book? Do I bring spirituality that much into it? Well, not in a bad way. I think in a great way. Yes. I mean, Richard, I mean, who else is talking about non-duality in the conspiracy world? Do you realize what a what an outlier you are right from the beginning because you have that awareness and you bring that? Do you don't think that? Oh, yeah, no, I do. I do talk about I mean, I'm always I think that the question you started our last interview was what what the heck is the connection between 9-11 deep spirituality? And I think my answer, well, I don't know, it's a good question, isn't it? Is there a good could be nothing could be like everything? So I make the connections between how I think stepping into the non-duality, stepping into self inquiry has has parallel, a step into the geopolitical and that there are strong connections there. There's connections. One has mirrored the other for me and I think for other people who look at both spirituality and the world in a very different way. I also propose that that spirituality is mirrored in the way that the world too. So I don't know that we have anything to disagree with there, except that I guess what I'm saying is I think you are so much coming from that, that maybe it comes through in ways that you don't even realize in that you are coming at it from a spiritual first perspective and then you're reflecting that back into the conspiratorial stuff. And I just think the largest part of our audience out there and by that, I just mean, you know, there's the whole audience and it's mostly normies. And then there's this sub audience that is open to this conspiratorial paradigm. They are not coming at it from their perspective, from that perspective. They're coming at it fundamentally from a materialist perspective, you know, from how did the buildings fall perspective? And that's why you and I had a wonderful discussion about the spirituality link between nine eleven. But I don't think most people got that. I mean, it was for most people, it was like, well, what are you even talking about? So I think that's just in your bones because of who you are in your experience, not for most people. No, I don't think they're coming at that. Right. Well, I think there's a couple of levels to it. On one level, I'm thinking that spirituality should affect the way you see the world, like a core tenant of spirituality is the kind of discernment, OK, discernment about on a fundamental level of thought, like for a lot of people, that is a massive change in their lives to realize that their thoughts aren't through and they can step back and have a sense of separation from thought and say, oh, that they're arising and they're arising in something deeper that is me. And I can question, like, that's a thought. But is it is it true? I have that sense of separation from it and that we really should then be able to carry that sense of discernment out of our own minds and into the world and say, well, it's what the government is telling me true. It's it's a thought and in some ways I've been indoctrinated into this system from birth, so it's very compelling for that reason. But I should be able to apply more discernment to that. So in that way, spirituality, I think, speaks to my approach to all these things. And also on the sense of I should be able to I think spirituality, you know, really should involve some ability to see all the people's points of view. If you're just locked in your own world, I don't think that's great. And then it's more challenging when we step into kind of like a spiritual meaning to these kind of events, I think. I think that is absolutely a brilliant point. And it's one that I hadn't really thought through. And as soon as you said it, I was like, whoa, that is a total shift in everything. What I heard you say is that the real core of your spirituality and my spirituality immediately confronts what we understand as the conspiratorial aspect, but would probably be better characterized as the paradigm shift thing. And like you say, kind of the non-dual, your thoughts are not who you are. You are more than the chatter in your brain. And the parallels that you immediately draw that, hey, for the average person who encounters that and fully embraces it, it is the same kind of process of saying the pandemic wasn't real as a bio weapon. You know, it wasn't what they said. Parallels all over the place. And I think that's that's great. Again, I don't think most people are coming at it from that way, which makes what you're doing like enormously valuable because you're doing it. The other point of that, that I would then ask you to kind of jump into, because again, you jump into this in the book and maybe you don't see it. Maybe I'll be maybe I'm wrong, but I'm kind of poking at it. The second aspect of that is that I think people in that process then also encounter or re-experience. There's their wisdom, tradition, history, right? I was brought up Catholic. I know what it is. I'm Muslim, I know what all this stuff is. And again, there's that same transition, right? Was that same paradigm crashing where it's like, whoa, it's not. Oh, isn't that again? And it's very different from the first one you said, because the first one is totally internal, right? The total internal, my thoughts kind of thing. And the other one is kind of internal, external kind of mixed. What do you think? Well, just to finish up on the last point, I think a big underpinning for me of a kind of psychospiritual approach to one's own mind is to see things as arising for a reason. OK, so and even things to be quite negative in the psyche that we can't just cut away and throw out our shadows, the bad bits, things you don't like inside ourselves. And our psyche is an interconnected, interdependent whole. And we have to give if there's something we're really not happy with, it might be self-depreciating thought in some form or other. We have to go into the underpinning of why they're there and unravel and integrate rather than cut and shed. And that approach just carries the external world. So when I see something like either extreme resistance to conspiracy theory or the flat earth movement arising, I have to let's just take in the flat earth. As an example, I had a question for me, why is that arising? Why would people gravitate towards that and not this? And you could say, OK, it's a sigh of maybe it is, but there's a pulled towards that. And it's clearly that that is something people are that is the thing people are hungering for, not saving more erudite research on 9-11 or something. So if we're going to move through that, we have to look at it as a process of integration as we would if we were integrating something within our own psyches. And so that that was an important kind of underpinning to carry the kind of wisdom of the psycho spiritual approach into looking at into a more like external interpersonal environment. Let me interject, because I'm not totally with you on that. I kind of have a different perspective. Tell me what you think about what I was saying that you're doing in the book in terms of that's another paradigm shift, paradigm destruction moment for a lot of people who are on the spiritual journey is to realize that their wisdom tradition is is an op. Well, as in what I'm not quite sure. OK, so Richard, here's what I was kind of referring to. And again, folks, this is from the book contemplating conspiracy excursions into undiluted madness. Quick read, it's more of a singlet kind of book, less than 100 pages, but it's excellent. You can pick it up very, very affordably on Amazon. We've already shown that page and we'll maybe show it again. Here's a quote from the book that relates to, I think, to the religion part we're talking about. You write, all major longstanding world religions made this sacrifice to some degree. They exchanged essence for manifestation, the spiritual for the temporal. Yeah. So what I'm doing is I'm going against, I suppose, a lot of my long held perspectives that the I'm looking at the role of literalism. OK, so for me, looking at. Religion, there's a movement to get away from literal interpretations, which are very stagnant to me, very unfulfilling towards a more symbolic and enriching interpretation. So I was brought up in the Christian church, as what people were, and was given an historical narrative and a very exoteric view of the life of Jesus. And then there's movement to finding out this story about crucifixion, which always resonates, has some kind of deep thing there, feels like it's deep. And then you find out, oh, it is. There's all this agnostic interpretation. It reveals your true identity that the false self dies on the cross. And what I'm examining in that chapter is the role for the power of the opposite side of that coin, the power of like. That's a Joseph Campbell quote, where he says that spirituality dies when it is interpreted literally. And I've always believed that. And that's what, you know, actually, sometimes that's not true at all, is it? Because Christianity ditched the kind of Gnostic mystical aspect and became a very literal religion about an historical figure. And it basically took over the world. It's got like two billion adherents. It has lasted for two thousand years, so it didn't die. Joseph Campbell is clearly wrong. And he's not wrong. I understand how he's right. But it it's not just a linear journey that that's a bad thing. There is a need within the human psyche for the literal for to take our myths literally to think that this event occurred on the material plane where it's real, it makes it real towards it, has a different effect. And I explore the writings of. Philip K. Dick in that regard and Philip K. Dick's interesting relationship with reality that when he's writing a book like The Man in the High Tower. About the takeover of this alternative history where the Nazis won Second World War and they split the country with the United States, the Japanese sent. He came to believe that really happened in an alternative reality where he'd been to and he talks about that. He talks about how chilling he finds it. It takes this work of fiction and takes it to another level in terms of what this actually this happened. And I suggest David Eich goes up a bit further of that then. So he introduces what is a very mystical sounding concept of shape shifting retillions. But can I can I rewind a little bit? Because I want to talk about that later. But I think we're going to lose the thread. So just with your permission, that's great, because we'll get to shape shifting aliens next because it's really super interesting. And I know exactly the place where we can kind of cut it and make a good transition. So here's the point where maybe you just don't agree with me. Maybe I'm that you wrote the books. Maybe I'm misinterpreting it. But where I was going with it was I really love the part that you just said earlier about this internal. Paradigm shift conspiracy theory that we have where we go. Oh, my gosh, my thoughts are I'm more than my thoughts. And that feels conspiratorial, just like JFK, you know, oh, my gosh, they really did, you know, pull it. So then I was drawing a parallel with what you were talking about in terms of religion and how they've made this sacrifice and how I'm kind of living out this tradition in a way that now starts to feel conspiratorial. It's real to me because it's brought me. I'm speaking as someone who is has a profound Christian experience. That person would feel like, wow, this has been my whole life. I've had this. I know my spirituality is real. I know my relationship with Jesus is real. What's going on here? And I thought that's what you were teasing out is that I think feels conspiratorial again. So do you agree with that? Or am I tend to take that in a wrong direction? In maybe in the sense of I'm not quite sure what you're getting out in the sense that people have a spiritual experience of Jesus. And then at some point they find the religion is wrong and they left in conflict then. You were putting it under the category of discernment, which I think is spot on. And what I also heard you're saying kind of reading between the lines is spiritual growth is about discernment. And then understanding the nature of how these ops are influencing our life is a matter of discernment. And, you know, balancing between Flat Earth and pandemic is discernment. So I see discernment all over the place in an awakening that comes when you realize that the Catholic Church isn't what you were taught. You know, I mean, to me, it's a direct parallel. Yeah, that would be in the sense of the concept of like the tower. I mean, one of the chapters I talked about the tower card in tarot, that it's struck by lightning, like something enters out of nowhere, flash of lightning and the crown of the tower falls. The building goes on fire. So I take the towers being symbolic of our thoughts, our paradigms that we build up and something interjects. And it can be seeing the collapse of building seven. It can be the recognition that the Catholic Church is something other than what you think it is and all the structures I will come tumbling down. And that can happen on a spiritual level in some way that gets us to reflect on our inner selves or on an outer level in terms of everything I thought about the world was wrong. And often I think these things are linked. And that's where you get the conspirituality term arising from that every idea we have about the world suddenly comes to the question. So let's talk for a minute because it's kind of come up a couple of times already, shape-shifting aliens. And I'll share then another quote from the book, contemplating conspiracy. And this is one that you took from Tom Woods. And I'll have you describe who Tom Woods is, because I think it's relevant to the quote. But this readiness for war, like it's some awesome video game, you've got to just say to people, that's just not right. It's not right to cheer for widows and orphans being created. I mean, be a human for a change. Don't be Dick Cheney. Don't be John Kerry. Don't be all these shape-shifting lizards. By the way, once in a while, I think maybe there's something to that because a normal person would not act like this. OK, break that down for us. OK, so Tom Woods is an historian and economist, and he's one of the leading figures, I would say, in the libertarian movement he runs a podcast. And Harvard MBA, a very popular podcast, kind of well respected. Also takes some flak libertarian and also kind of a southern southern pride kind of guy, which we'll talk about in a minute. So what intrigued me when I heard that was David Ike's concept of the reptilians, which he introduces on a literal level, is picked up and used on a on a mythical level. So you're using this symbol of something to convey the the inner nature of who these people are without necessarily taking it literally time out just for everybody. Because this is probably not necessary. David Ike, who is he and what is this shape-shifting reptilian thing? Because you've really studied David Ike and you have all series on your podcast of really reading David Ike. You you've read David Ike extensively. So let me start there. Let me let me say who he is to me. So I was became interested in spirituality at 18. I just had some experiences that open me up to that. So I started gravitating towards that section of the bookshop. OK. And then there's a book in there called The Biggest Secret. I noticed one day what's that? What's the biggest secret secret? I don't know about it. What is it? So then this is written by David Ike and he talks about this alternative vision of history, whether it's been a secret society controlling things all the way along. And I think part of me was interested on an intellectual level, like, could you do that? Can you construct an alternative vision of history that would hold up to scrutiny or would just go splat? Because I'd done a history A level just prior to that. And I remember having these kind of thoughts like, we're just told this story. We don't know if it's true and I'm sure it is. But so this really on an intellectual level, intuitive, intellectual level intrigued me. And then that's the book where David Ike introduces his concept that which had been building up to a few years that the prominent people in the power structures of the world, the Rothschild, Rockefeller family, the royal families, certain US presidents were shapeshifting reptilians. They would literally go by and close doors and shed their human skin and from some magical process become full blown reptilian entities. And that's just like that's incredible. It's sort of would even write such a thing as a credible. David Ike would also write things such as the CIA traffic strokes, such as that big bombing in Oklahoma that had recently taken place. That was a conspiracy that the US government had been involved in all these violent overfroze of governments across the world. And to me, all that stuff sounded really no less wild than shapeshifting reptilians. The idea that the CIA traffic drugs was completely crazy to me. Right. That was just I could almost easier believe the Queen shapeshifted into a reptile than that because that was no one had ever said anything like that. And I can't, but I researched, especially according to 2001 and found a lot of stuff. This guy says is blue and true. We're living in a very different world to what I thought we are. So what do you do about this reptilians thing? Where's that going? And I struggled away trying to understand the world from that kind of paradigm then from the review backed away from and then we engage with conspiracies at a later point. And what I was left to reflect on in more recent years was you could take the position on David Ike that, OK, he put some good stuff in by the reptilian stuff is crazy. Or you take the position reptilian stuff is true. I wondered what it affected had on me in terms of creating that paradigm shift that would a book by John Pilger or Stephen Kinzer or William Bloom, somebody writes, I think, very sensible books that document the nature of the empire. If I had picked one of those would have had the effect or did I need a kind of mythic initiation with a guy who's saying, no, no, no, reality is not a bit dissimilar to what you think is reality is totally one hundred percent turn on his head completely different. They're reptiles. So I think what David Ike is you could look at it this way. Now, David Ike doesn't look at this, but you could look at it. David Ike is employing mythology to create an effect on somebody and he's strengthening that mythology by saying, and it is literally true. OK, where's Philip Dick? Philip Dick goes halfway in that and says it's true, but it exists in alternative worlds. Usually we like our stories nice and safe. OK, we like them in a fictional world where they don't. Lead into and contaminate this one. And I found that David Ike was playing with literalism in that way. Fascinating. And you could sort of say Christianity did the same thing that I'm kind of mythicist. OK, so I don't think there was a historical figure called Jesus, at least not while the bears a close relationship to the people, the person people were worshiping in church on Sunday morning. But with the Christian church making him more than a symbol, a literal historical figure, he takes on a power to affect people that he otherwise wouldn't have. And that seems to be important to me. So I'm playing this idea of literalism is dangerous. Literalism is kind of crazy. But do we do we need it in some way? Because it has this power to it. And then Tom Woodsell is simply using the reptilian thing symbolically. So isn't that interesting? That whether we use it literally or symbolically, we need the mythic in some way when we're having these conversations about politics, because you need to break out of this sense that Dick Cheney is in some way like you or that he has the things that come out of his mouth or in any way true or a representation of his goals. And one way of doing that is to think of them as being a reptilian in human form. And in some ways that's more accurate. I actually go post a chapter around the question, is George Woodley was a shift shift in reptile and to give away the punchline that the conclusion is where is not that viewer thing is more accurate than the cultic followers who chant his name. Have a thing in that chapter you reference and it's brilliantly done. A rally led by former governor of the state I live in California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the famous movie star, where it is truly directly parallel to a cult rally where it's like, who is our greatest leader? George W. Bush, who's going to help us get jobs? George, I mean, it's you do a great job in the book and it's hard to walk away from that chapter or that section and not go, oh, my God, how could that have just happened right in front of our eyes and not know it? At the same time, I want to go back to what you're saying because I want to kind of offer a different perspective on it. So this whole literalism versus mythical metaphorical understanding of it links back to your point about discernment because what we really want is a foot in both worlds, as I've said before, we want a foot in the literal world and we want a foot in the mythical metaphorical. I would really say that's the spiritual world. So the point that kind of did irk me a little bit is you never really addressed shapeshifting reptilians from a literal perspective. And I think that always has to be in play. And even if it's like if you want to address, but I do this all the time with people like, if you want to talk about Flat Earth with me, I'll talk about Flat Earth. I'll say, gee, this only takes about 30 seconds of my time to show how scientifically ridiculous and stupid it is because it doesn't account for the fact that I can go online and see pictures of the Earth updated every 10 seconds. And I can cross correlate those with weather pattern photos that match and bingo. There it is. It's clearly not. And then I can listen to the absurdity that satellites are held in the air by helium balloons. And I can I can but I can engage with it on a literal level and I can show that it's not sustainable. It doesn't make any sense the same way that a Holocaust. I have no problem. Then I like revisiting holo hoaxers because I like to see where their game is at, what they're at. And it's always the same thing. He didn't kill six million years. Well, he did. And I just had to go recently on the forum and cite an article, a recent article and said, well, here's where we can really drive a stake in the ground and show that Hitler killed one point five million Jews in a hundred day period in the death camps. So it's like, oh, what are you going to do with that? And that and what the poster? This is get us back to the point as I digress. What the poster did with that is what I think we have to avoid doing in our little world here. And that's that he just ignored it and just went around and went back to his playbook standard kind of thing. And that's what I don't want to do with shapeshifting aliens as a punchline to a joke, unless you can really show me that it is a joke. But see, you and I know that there's some parts of that narrative that are a little bit hard to dismiss, like, take, for example, shapeshifting, right? You know, shapeshifting, there's a lot of traditions, wisdom traditions that directly say shapeshifting. And when we look at the DMT experiments, control experiments, shapeshifting right there, right out the back in its reptilians to write. And then if we're willing to open up to the alien abduction literature, which we should, because there's a lot of good work that's been there, that's pretty solid. Again, what pops up other species, some of these species look reptilian. We hear that over and over again, different accounts through different ages. These things start to look interestingly important to investigate on a level beyond punchline to a joke. Again, you understand this because you get the discernment thing. That doesn't mean that I believe literally what David Ike is saying is true. But by the way, David Ike claims to have experienced this in the extended consciousness realm, which I think we have to pay some attention to, too, because again, there's other parallels and stuff like that. And I think that's part of this discernment process is don't be so quick to be on the side of the sensible, you know, because they're lost. They're more. And you point this out in the book is that clearly that's wrong. Like Neil deGrasse Tyson, consciousness is an illusion is much more ridiculous and absurd than shape shifting aliens, shape shifting reptilians. It just I would say that as a fully discernment matter of fact, reading of the data. Yeah. So I want I'm doing a series on David Ike, where I am called reading David Ike, but it could really be called understanding David Ike. I've gone back to his first book and I'm trying to explain, understand myself, how he made this intellectual journey to a place that very few people occupy and how he did it in a specific way. And for me, I think that's kind of therapeutic on some level to understand my own history and relationship with his work. And yeah, I'm really enjoying it. And there's times where I can come to the fork in the road where David went one way and I could say, well, I've agreed with him so far, but I wouldn't go that way. I think he got, you know, it was the early 90s. He didn't have an internet. I think he put too much weight on a certain set of facts that led him to believe that the conspiracy stretches back in a very consistent manner through one of the years. And I don't see it that way. I'm when we get to this level, I have you back in two years, Alex, I might say I'm completely wrong about that. Because I'm not going to go that way. I'm completely wrong about that because this is a much harder level to see into them. But with the chapter in the book, it's the book is really written, I suppose, to people who are cynical about conspiracy. Now, it might be in probably more widely read by people who aren't, right? It might be more widely enjoyed by them and more beneficial to them, but it's written in that kind of way. So I'm phrasing the chapter as, OK, you think David likes kind of bonkers to think in the George W. Walsh or anyone else is shape-shifting up to Lee, right? OK, maybe he is, but he's not as bonkers as those people. Is he not by a long way? In fact, he's got a far more accurate picture, far more accurate. He's really if he's wrong, he's wrong on the physical level. Like there is no physical transformation into scaly, reptilian skin. But on an inner level, on the level of what is the consciousness of this man, it's gone on. It's completely right. So you're as wrong, OK? Now, as to the question of like, what do we draw from that? Well, there's a whole spectrum of how right or wrong David I could be, I find it very hard to think that this is something that go, no, David, I could come out and say, oh, by the way, they're shape-shifting up to liens. And there was like a flood of whistleblowers. I worked at the Royal Palace and I saw Prince Philip's tail poking out of his pants and it's so on that then. OK, fine. That didn't happen. And it's inconceivable to me that something like this could be covered up for so long. OK, but that's an extreme end of the spectrum. If you step one step down from there, it does some kind of shape-shifting. I've seen people's faces transfigure in a way that I'm not entirely convinced is explicable through the visual system getting corrupted. And of course, it's a humanitarian. And then it just invites in the other massive question. Well, what about if we accept as we do that the validity of researchers like Julie Byshell, that there is this world? We are in some way in communication. We can communicate with entities outside of what appears to be here. We are forced right into the question of how are they into history? Right? Or any entities doing reassuring their grandkids on the earthly plane that everything is nice and wonderful where they are, or are they trying to build empires through whispering in the ears of powerful political people? Right? And you have this thing of John D. Well, we're kind of living in the mind of John D. To a certain extent, the 16th century alchemist because that he was an intellectual architect of the British Empire, which flows into the American Empire. So where does that come from? It comes from his scrying sessions with Edwin Kelly and a spirit claiming to be the Archangel Michael, telling him that Britain should build all these ships and go and take over the world. So you can't you can't get out of that question. And I think that these are the really deep questions we should be asking. And David Ike is asking. He's coming with answers that maybe I can't can't really go with. But I think he's exactly right on. You can't ignore this part of the world. You know, see, the quibble I have with you on that is I'm not advocating a weighing of David Ike's soul or even his accuracy versus Neil deGrasse Tyson or Balkans or whoever you want to put him against Joe Rogan or whoever. I think that's that's a mistake. I think it gets us away from your excellent discernment point. I think we should hold David Ike accountable for each and every point that he says and weigh each one individually like either of you, David, I can I really got him on him because he's fallen into this. There is no virus. We haven't isolated the coronavirus. That's not a statement that holds up to scientific scrutiny. And I'll just leave it at that because I've covered it many times and it isn't relevant to our conversation. But I would say that with regard to shapeshifting aliens, on that point, I would suggest he has the potential of being more right than you're giving him credit for. I'm very much looking forward to getting to a full assessment of how David Ike and a full understanding of how David Ike came to the reptilian position. It's connected to the M.K. Auto program and to do it justice is quite a bit of work. So I'm hoping over the summer I'll get there. I find the specific vision he offers off all these people in very powerful positions consciously walking around knowing that they are secretly shapeshifting reptilians and just putting on an acting performance for human society. I find that incongruent with. What we know about the world about the association they've had. So. But I'm only speaking to the particular way David Ike has presented it. If you back off that a bit in intensity, I'm not saying that every concept of shapeshifting is incorrect. That's something that can't happen. I'm certainly not saying that there are on forces beyond this world that seek to influence it on a on a global scale. Great. So that's a great, great point. And that gets back. That's that's discernment to me. That's a and I agree with you one thousand percent on everything that you just said discernment, discernment, discernment. Guy takes it too far. You go, no, that doesn't hold up for the following reasons. The guy backs off it. You go, that does start fitting in with some other data sets that we have as uncomfortable as normies might be about that does fit in those data sets. The other data set that we would bring into the table is the UFO and the E.T. in particular, and the species there were this reptilian thing kind of reconnects. That doesn't mean that David Ike has done an adequate job of putting all that stuff together, and it's fair to call him on that. I'm saying, though, we have to then come back as you do in the book over and over again and say final analysis. So if we're going to weigh those two, David Ike steps forward a little bit with the shapeshifting alien thing being a little bit more right than Tom Wood's complete dismissal of it as, oh, that's just completely wacko. I'm pretty sure I've heard Tom do thing on the spiritual dimension of life and is and ponder these kind of questions of some as a super critic of the state has been super critical of covid policy and has at times gone into pondering these questions of deeper darker forces behind it. I think it's a question of focus that Tom being an Australian economist tends to play to his strengths that way and look at the world as being a product of the structures we set up. So if you have a central bank, you are going to have a boom bus cycle that does not require malevolent bankers to go pull the trigger now and we'll have the boss and we'll steal all the money. OK, that might be there as well, but someone like Tom can point out because of his knowledge of economics, you don't need that. We also have to think about these things of products of structures. So I think people play to their strengths in that way. If I want to be argumentative in a way that maybe highlights difference in the way we're seeing things with regard to the the no virus people with covid. OK, this is something I don't take a position on, right? Because like I'm not a science. Podcaster, so that's just not my area. OK, when I do address science, I try to address in ways where I'm reducing it back to pure reason. And also no one's going to care what I think about scientific issues. Right. So if I come to one side or the other, nobody cares about that. But what I will say is that I think one of the most enlightening voices throughout the pandemic has been Dr. Sam Bailey on her Odyssey channel. And I've drawn on a lot of the stuff to understand where the spike in the death rate comes from. So irrespective of whether there's a virus or not, it's not necessarily the thing that's causing those spikes. Now, when you occupy a perspective that says there is no virus, you are then forced to look for other things to account for the very real spikes. If you don't occupy that paradigm, then you can attribute it to a virus. So to me, it's not surprising that the best work on accounting for what gives rise to the death spikes outside of covid is someone who doesn't believe in in viruses. So even if she's wrong, I don't know if I'd want her to change because that could affect what would affect the way she sees it. It might affect the output of work in the same way of David Ike. Even on areas where I can see that I think David has gone too far with the prevalence of the Rothschild family, or I think he's gone too far with the shapeship between my pillions. Do I want them to change? I don't know because that changes the nature of his work and it changes the nature of his impact then. So I think you need these coexistence of positions that are at odds and not comfortable each other. Like on the one hand, we want to criticise people when we think they've gone wrong. On the other hand, them going wrong highlights the world in a different way. So I'm just saying I think it's a complex picture. Nice, nice. Another point of disagreement. You know, I just think struggle only for the truth. And don't prop up anyone who's going about it in a roundabout way. I think it always it always leads the wrong way. I want to wrap this up in the next few minutes. I want to talk about this last point that you brought up. But I want to leave open the opportunity to continue this dialogue because this is just such a such an important topic, in my opinion. And you've just you're so uniquely qualified and you've done such fantastic work in this area. I think there's many, many topics to discuss. And what I'd like to propose, if you're up for it, we'll see. I'm putting on the spotlight. But I think we can bring other people into this conversation in a really, really interesting way. I'd love to get Tom Woods on in a three way conversation. I would love just even if you just interviewed him and then we could talk about it afterwards and stuff like that. So and the same with who's I don't know, Sam Bailey, but same, absolutely same and talk about it. So let me have a shot at this last point that you made. And then I want you to kind of have a chance to respond. So with regard to play to our strengths. So if someone approaches me like Dr. Sam Bailey, I assume she's a doctor, right? Yeah, or Andrew Kaufman or Tom Cowan who had on this show and wants to advance this. There is no virus. The virus has never been isolated. The virus isn't causing COVID. Then I would give that my best shot in terms of saying, well, how does that fit with the fact of that we've genetically sequenced the virus? You know, it just it doesn't it fails, I think, on so many important ways that I'm not with you on. Gee, I'm glad you're out there being wrong. No, I wish you would be out there being right. So let me turn it around and say, well, what are the consequence? I'm saying they're wrong. Let's say they are. What are the consequences of not being wrong? OK, what are the if David, I didn't believe in the shapeshifting reptilians. What are the consequences of the consequences? The world loses this piece of literature that goes into a literal level. And I'm just saying I'm not even saying it's good. I can't sit you and say, oh, I'm really glad that people are wrong. OK, like it will be much better if everyone's right. That seems to be true. But what I am pointing out is that there will be consequences to that. And those consequences wouldn't necessarily all be good. Descriptive rather than prescriptive. Descriptive, we just have to do our best job of understanding what it is rather than prescriptive because prescriptive is in the domain that you and I care about. Who am I? Why am I here? What is my relationship to divinity? That is really the only question that matters. And I think the journey that you're taking us on is a skeptical inquiry to perpetuate doubt journey that leads us back fundamentally to spirituality, because that's all that really matters. So in that, I don't need wrongness. I don't need cute kind of could be. Doesn't that, you know, no, I just need truth. I don't know if you can avoid wrongness, because whatever position we take on an issue as complex as what the heck has just happened over the past two years with COVID, we're going to have wrongness in that. So you don't have to celebrate it and elevate it to some art form. It's not. It's just wrongness. It's worth what the data like Sam Bailey said doesn't think she's wrong. And let's give her those presentations that, yeah, all right, we'll shoot for that. You're awesome, man. You can hold your own. Well, I like the fundamental division. And this is why I've always liked listening to skeptical because you interview in a different way to me, where you ask these pointed questions and are very devoted to truth in that sense. And I'm much more kind of passive in the way. So I really like the contrast that arises in this dialogue. And there's not many of interviewers who will kind of go for you that way and say, no, I don't think that's true. What about that? You know, so I think it's great. OK, again, the book that you're going to want to check out and you're going to hear more about it on this show. So if you feel like we haven't done enough and we haven't because there's like half my notes we never even got to. It's Contemplating Conspiracy. It's by Richard Cox, again, his podcast, which is excellent and has a lot of this material, too, is Deep State Consciousness Podcast. Richard, what else do we want to tell people either about the book or other stuff that's going on in your world? Yeah, so deepstateconsciousness.com. Everything that's going on in my world is going on there. I've produced a book on anarchism that's alongside it looks at those kind of themes. I've written a paper on consciousness and how we understand consciousness, which is fairly downloadable there. That might be interesting to a skeptic. I'm pulling some of these themes, too. And yet the podcast is continuing to go out. I'm doing a series on the history of US imperialism at the moment. So just on the 1890s in America through Theodore Roosevelt, the eagle spreading its wings over out of the United States and beyond. And I'm continuing that now through the First World War. So that's kind of what I've got going on. And I'll be on the Skeptical Forum to discuss this in the coming days. Awesome. Excellent. OK, folks, I hope you enjoyed this one. Just a fraction as much as I did, because then you will have gotten a ton out of it. Richard, it's so great to reconnect with you. And congratulations on this terrific work. Thank you. Thanks again to Richard Cox for joining me today on Skeptico. The one question I tee up is there a link between your spiritual journey and the mindset paradigm that goes with an understanding of analyzing modern day conspiracy theory? Let me know your thoughts, and since Richard and I plan on doing a couple more in this series, I'd love to hear your thoughts about where we might take it. So let me hear from you. And until next time, take care and bye for now.