 You need to understand I have to hear One more time That you did this for the family. I did it for me. I Liked it. I was good at it. I Was alive That's Walt from Breaking Bad finally coming to grips with the fact that his descent into evil Maybe wasn't for the altruistic reasons He had told himself. It's a topic. We talked quite a bit about with today's guest the oh so excellent Chris Knowles To me that speaks so much to these Superpatriot Spooks and spies who want to tell us that they're doing it all for us or for their country or for some other reason It's interesting you brought this up because this is something I've been thinking quite a bit about and I think that The descent into evil into evil thinking it goes in steps, you know, it's it's sort of a like an initiatory process so to speak You're dealing with powers that are much greater than yourself And it's it's really delusional to think that you have anything to bargain for if you could Summon a creature that's that's powerful enough to change your life or to curse somebody or Whatever you think you want. What do you have to offer them? Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers thinkers and their critics today We're joined by Chris Knowles There's no one quite like Chris Through his super popular and influential blog the secret son in his book our God's where spandex a book which I think a lot of people would tell you has really forever changed the Conversation about our occulted pop culture well through all that Chris has really gained reputation as our Anchorman for the esoteric. I know when I first talked to Chris a few years ago as genuinely Both excited and a little intimidated to talk to him and that doesn't happen very often for me But fortunately, he's a super nice and approachable guy He just happens to be from Massachusetts, which doesn't really fit all that but So here he is Chris welcome back. Thanks for joining me. I'm so glad to be here. You really am well, you have a new book and A work of fiction He will live up in the sky and it certainly hits all the Skeptico buttons unacknowledged science Could never be a conspiracy conspiracies and the benevolent forces of the World beyond our world, so let's jump into it tell people about this book Well, it's a book that's been five years in the making It's a book that I started quite a while ago and there were a number of things that kind of prevented me from Getting it done But the lag was really helpful for me because it gave me a chance to really develop the ideas in it and change it Quite a bit it started off being a much different book than it is But I wanted to explore a lot of the ideas that I've been writing about on the blog with a little bit more free reign You know when you're writing on a blog and you're sort of trying to keep it towards things that you can document things that you can prove You've got to be a little bit more. I mean I get pretty pretty wild on the blog But a lot of it's done in humor But you know when you're sort of approaching these topics, there's a certain amount of circumspection that you need to Cleave to and what I wanted to do is I really wanted to explore these ideas without having to hold back without having to Sensor myself or edit myself. Yeah, like you censor yourself so much And really sort of get down to it, but I really wanted to explore I mean I grew up in a very strange place The corruption and the conspiracy was very close to the surface and it was something that We kind of almost took for granted I mean, I'll just give you you know just one bullet point my my hometown is now the location of the archdiocese of Boston Which you might have heard a thing or two about in the past 20 years and their activities and their cover-ups and so on And in fact the local parish church the priest was the brother of One of the principal players and that whole scandal And there were also all sorts of strange things that kind of gave me the feeling that there was some little deeper shenanigans afoot You know, I'll just something that the blog readers will be familiar with I'd gone to school With the woman who had carried out the massacre at the university of Alabama Huntsville in the biology department And a lot of the people that she had shot were microbiologists And of course Huntsville is next to redstone arsenal and next to the marshall space center where all the paper Yeah, and and strangely enough I mean one thing I alluded to in the book is that you know this area where I was in is where actually paperclip went down Where all the paperclip people were flown into And there was an island off the coast of borrow of quincy called wallaston You know when my family was living and then when my father later moved when my parents split up And right off the coast of that is a long island and it was fort strong And that's where all the pinamunda guys were flown into and That's something that I hadn't learned until fairly recently and I had actually done some digging into my You know my area and things like that and just was stunned by just how close the Deep state shenanigans and the corruption was what about the shudder island thing with that Yeah, well, that's where this this location that I'm referring to where Vandana kin and his people from pinamunda Were flown into was actually the location with I think maybe just the exterior is but maybe not for the film the Leonardo DiCaprio film shudder island, which of course is very Immersed in and k ultra lore and paperclip and all that kind of stuff So it was actually a very appropriate setting And actually another Leonardo DiCaprio movie that departed a lot of the scenes were filmed in the same town And it sort of gives you a sense of you know, what was going on In this area, uh, if you're not familiar with with uh, eastern massachusetts boss and in the 70s and 80s It was basically run by two brothers one of which was a uh, the president of the senate His name was William bulger And he was a very powerful figure and the his brother was uh, whitey bulger and the you know, there've been some movies made about him There's a johnny depp movie made about him But he was actually I mean this is really stunning to think about He was actually a hardcore mk ultra test subject Did not know that Yeah, I know that he was I mean he ran the irish mob But then he also had all these CIA connections and they later find out, you know, he was protected all along But I didn't know about the mk ultra thing I think I believe when he was imprisoned in san francisco, it was I don't know if it was alcatraz and he was basically locked in a cell for like a month and just given mega doses of lsd And then he was sent home sent back to boston south boston and became you know, a major mob figure And you know, if you ask a lot of people who were in the area at the time and were in the know They would tell you that basically boston was run by these two brothers that the aboveboard business was done by billy and the Underworld business was done by whitey So this is something that was very cognizant of and i'll tell you something where I Uh used to play basketball with my friends a park two blocks away from my house Was right across the street from where one of whitey's hits Were carried out and they had dumped the body in the in the dumpster And you know, we were playing basketball when that all that was going down And I didn't realize until many years later. What was really going on is that they were Fishing out a body from a dumpster that whitey belger had Basically placed there right across the treatment when we played basketball So I mean, this is the kind of thing where you know, it was really cognizant of I mean There was a an open pedophile operating in my junior high school. I mean everybody knew about it Everybody knew who his stable boys was he had been doing it since the late fifties He wasn't arrested until 1980 He was arrested off the coast of florida on a 52 foot yacht You know, this is a junior high school science teacher in the in the 1970s. I don't think You know a lot of those guys could afford 52 foot yachts if you get my meaning and of course, I mean there was just all sorts of I I couldn't believe But when I was looking into it, I was like, you know, this was my the air that I breathe. So I kind of wanted to Explore some of these ideas and some of these events in a fictional setting But I also wanted to write a book that was like super entertaining, you know a thrill ride a lot of people You know, I'm really gratified because a lot of people who Comments it on it. We reviewed it have said that, you know, it is a thrill ride in the page turn And that's really what I wanted to to create because you can go over this material and it kind of gets to be medicinal But I wanted to do so in a context in a setting that is very exciting and thrilling Tell us very briefly high level Fact versus fiction remote viewing and how that factors into He will live up in the sky Well, one of the things that influenced this book in a major way is that I had met russel targ who started the Uh remote viewing program at sri and I had also met Ed may who had taken it over when I guess sort of the the government of cia sort of stepped in and Targon and put off. I think we're kind of you know backburn it a bit But there was a real program it started in the early 70s at stanford research institute And it was involved with unconventional intelligence gathering through remote viewing and remote viewing I guess Traditionally would be considered astral projection. You know, there's a sort of a lot of people thinking that it's psychic or Clara voyant, but I I think well it is all those things because anyone who listens to show knows, you know All about the remote viewing thing and I've interviewed ed may and what a jerk. I mean really You know, there he is. He's doing this Totally extended consciousness stuff and he's trying to jam it back into this materialist perspective He's dissing on and hating on dean raiden who's probably done more real scientific Bring it into the lab kind of work on this stuff than anyone else He denies even his own participants joe mcmonichle who comes on my show again in interviews and says Yeah, it's all about near-death experience and they knew that I had a near-death experience They know all these extended consciousness realms are linked and here's ed may who ran the program for 10 years and comes on Says no, no none of that none of that. I mean I don't know if there's a level of deception there, which there is on all this stuff but there's also just this level of Cluelessness that just is hard to sort through and I think we could have a deep conversation about Russell targ also who is kind of the white knight to Hal put off who is this navy intelligence guy From the beginning and is also showing up in the Scientology stuff and is showing up You know now on stage with with the tic-tac guys and the to the stars academy and Tom DeLong and all that stuff. So I mean the the beat keeps going on and on but really to this is Where the angle that you are taking it seems to me in this book That's what I wanted to really pin down is Are these guys good guys bad guys and are you or and what are you hinting at in terms of how we should understand How this remote viewing program, which is really a child of the mk ultra program How it should fit in our overall world view Well, let me just get back to ed may because I had had some conversations with ed may's private conversations and I had sat in a Private discussion presentation where ed may basically went through the data and He told a much different story than I think he told you so maybe it's a public private thing I'm not exactly sure I can't speak for ed But I'm actually surprised to hear that because He just parses things in a very kind of way that I've heard a million times from these guys It's you know carefully crafted speech what what I when I talked to him He really got pissed off because I just called him on his bullshit. I mean about Joe mc monicle who I had on the show and joe says yeah, I had an nde. Here's joe mc monicle secret spy number 001 says I was a spy on the east german west german border. I'm poisoned in a restaurant In west germany on the border and I die on the way to the door from poisoning I immediately Leave my body have a near-death experience see them driving me to the hospital all this when I wake up The guys that are there to debrief me Say where are what what's going on? He says I just had an nde few years later He shows up at stanford research institute and his you know sealed super secret file opens up and they pull out Raymond booty's book about near-death experience and they say Essentially, this is why you're here because we understand there's a connection Ed may completely denies that he says I know joe mc monicle There's no connection in our program between near-death experience And remote viewing. I don't think he's shading that I don't think he's making it up. I think he's just I don't know. I mean, that's like one of the deeper dive questions that I have for you is how do we resolve these Differences the differences between ed may rustle targ Hell put off because it's one thing to say. Oh, it's all woven together into this grand conspiracy But I don't think it is. I think it's just a bunch of different people who are looking at the elephant from different angles No, I think that's exactly right, but you also have to consider that these are guys who are involved in Intelligence work for most of their careers and had to sign all sorts of oaths and and, you know, non-disclosure agreements They aren't necessarily free to discuss a lot of the details and the ins and outs of what they were involved with Like I said, I mean ed mace told you a much different story than than I had heard him say In private. So I can't really speak for ed and I don't know exactly what he's getting at but I mean, I was I gotta tell you I was a remote viewing skeptic I really was until I met, you know, people like rustle targ and dean raiden and ed may and had a chance to talk to them privately and Listen to these presentations that they gave privately. So I think that, you know, it's very hard to say People are very worried about this material. I mean, we're talking about Intelligence gathering for a number of years. I mean, you know, you alluded to the Scientology issue. I it was pretty well known that pretty much everybody involved in the remote viewing program was a Scientologist I don't know if there was somebody evangelizing Scientology to them But you know, that's pretty well known and later on when it sort of became under the auspices Of the more of the military than the intelligence community You had, you know, what were called the witches, which were these women Who, you know, were said to be very effective Remote viewers, but were seen as almost sinister figures by, you know, other people in the military and it was They were seen as almost like seductresses and and had very much an unsavory reputation But they were doing excellent intelligence gathering So again, it's very hard to say you have to take everything with a grain of salt that you hear And you just have to sort of take things and aggregate, you know, what is the Gestalt of this? What is this sort of the some impression that you get? And and proceed from there But like I said, I was very much a remote viewing skeptic because my experience with remote viewing was coast to coast and Ed Dames and you know, these people and the whole hellbop thing, you know You remember all that stuff back in the 90s I just thought well, this is just kind of like a Psyop or a hoax or just information thing We could launch off into another topic here And I think we will because it's a super interesting one to me And that's that you kind of touch on the role that the quote-unquote skeptics and I think for the most part the skeptical thing is over You know, it's the james randy thing is over and with it You know went the whole thing james randy such an interesting character. I don't know if you knew this but James randy who was famous for making all these just outrageous claims about himself, you know highest IQ ever recorded and you know had a special pass to the library all this just Ridiculous stuff, but the other thing Tying back to and I forget where he was, but it was somewhere in new england. He claims he was A gay man, which he reveals much later in his life, but early on he was involved with these prank sexual phone calls with these teenagers and this came out in a court document and he Claimed that the police department had asked him to try and ensnare these kids He's like 14 year old kids to get him to do sex talk on the phone This to me sounds like and and I know you from your experience. This is then a compromised individual So however, we're supposed to understand we understand that he is somehow An agent a compromise thing, but then you take the skeptical thing as it relates to remote viewing a lot different But I think the way that it I'm trying to tie this back to the stanford research institute If you go back and we did it on this show the sri put out a video With urie galler and the tests that they had done in their lab of the psychic abilities of urie galler And I also had joc valet on this show confirming that no joc. It's not a dummy You know super successful venture capitalist and just genius computer scientist Businesses kind of guy He said, yeah, he didn't there was no full ria He demonstrated a real ability and he says on the show how he did it But also in these videos that stanford research institute Published and there are no dummies. I mean russell targ and how put off our top notch scientists I mean like laser physics scientists at a degree that I don't understand But I understand enough to know they're really competent These tests are not hard to do in terms of testing that urie galler had These esp abilities as he claimed and was able to draw things that were hidden and these other things Those are out there. Those are published. You can still find them on the web So i'm surprised that you were quote-unquote skeptical Of the remote viewing thing. I thought since the 70s. They had pretty much proven it and the skeptical thing To me it was always As you explore in this book kind of the I don't know what kind of operation that is but it was a Some kind of sci-op to kind of smear something that You know I'll say one more thing and i'll shut up because I want to hear you but in the in the 70s or in the 80s You had ted koppel Who was our source for nightly, you know late-time news doing the full expose on Remote viewing right and saying their stargate worse buying against the russians. This is real and he had total credibility to it And then for some reason they did a switch on that and then it became james randy Oh, this is probably all just fake urie galler fakes his stuff on tv and all that So I don't know who changed the narrative on that, but that's the part. I can't really understand about it Well, if you look at who was involved and say sci-cop in the early days I mean they had all kinds of connections to the cia to military intelligence to mk ultra I mean up and down the line and if you really dig into the histories of these people you have a pretty unsavory kind of group Andi paharic who you know, I'm not exactly sure is an entirely credible source But he had said that randy was basically Working for the dod that he was basically a decision-making agent for the department of defense I'd actually heard those tapes that you talked about the ones that randy had taken part in And I you know, I'm familiar. I read the court case where he it's shockingly lied and you know This whole story that he concocted about the police department and so on Where was that? Where was that? What city was it in? I don't even remember but it was Wasn't it out it is in massachusetts? Was it under someplace? It might have been I I don't recall but it was absurd It was ridiculous and even the judge just the judge like admonished him and just said this story is not credible This is just, you know, you're just talking nonsense in my courtroom So I yeah, I think it's clear that randy was compromised and randy was sort of he was following the UFO he was in those kind of circles, you know the late Sort of the tail end of the long john neville show and and that whole period You know, he was hanging around with the people who were involved like mosley Saucer smear. I mean all these kind of things. So he was just a very strange guy And you know, but he was also somebody who had sort of worshiped at the feet of houdini And kind of wanted to to walk in his footsteps and so on Yeah, I mean it's clear that that randy was Somehow compromised but you draw you draw all these links with like bill night a science guy and richard dawkins and all these other strange things That you tie into I don't remember what was on the blog. Oh, I've done a lot of that on the blog. Sure. I mean bill night is it I I mean, I think the man's a fraud I mean he presents himself as a scientist and he has no degrees in science and he has a degree in engineering But he has all sorts of connections to you know, the military and and that whole world And like I said, if you start doing some digging with these people you find that they do but right It's over. It's not even worth even discussing at this point because it was clearly just a kind of Psyop or operation or something to our campaign to just kind of turn things around and and You know change the tone of the conversation Bring it back then to the 1995. Ted compel is out there saying Doing the expose on remote viewing. We don't know whether it's a real expo say like anything in the media But it seemed to be somewhat real that like they didn't necessarily want that to come out And it's very just kind of straight up what the program was Then why would they then pull it back because you know, lance monkey. I just did a movie I don't know if you've seen it or talked to him about third eye spies where they do this kind of World tour with russell targ and he goes around and With watch out on amazon. Yeah Yeah, so the first question, you know, I had for First question had for lances You mean to tell me the cia for the vanity of this nice old guy Released 60,000 previously classified documents I just don't think that's the way things go. I think it's more likely that They're trying to Once again change the story or change the narrative. So it went from Ted coppel releasing it to Erie geller and james randy, you know, just this rise of this skeptical Oh, don't listen to any of that stuff and ray hyman, you know the official cia And now it's like, oh, no, we can talk about this stuff again and oh, it's all released. It's all real. What do you make of that transition? I think it's just modus operandi. It's it's mudding the waters. It's sewing confusion in doubt claim counter claim Acknowledgement denial, but this is something that you see over and over again We're seeing with this whole, you know, you alluded to the tic-tac thing. I mean, we're seeing the same exact process take place with that So, I mean, this is just the way things operate, you know, you have to really Learn to sort of again see things in aggregate and read between the lines. You have to sort of see Where the lies are and where the truth is and it can be very difficult, you know, it can be very difficult to parse How do you handle that in in the book chris? He will live up in the sky it really revolves around a related kind of storyline of Extraordinary abilities and people involved in and around the program and that what was it that interested you in that? What interested me is that there was a big blow-up in the early 90s about the remote viewing campaign which I guess at that point was under the stargate ages and Congress shut it down congress had defunded it But there were a lot of the work was being privatized people, you know at dames who had been very deeply involved in the in the armies program and a number of his people started sort of Selling their services to the highest bidder and and I wanted to look at the the process where And this is a non-going process that Uh Folds in more more activities than remote viewing or whatever is it's just how Things that were under the ages of the government things that you could access through freedom of information And so on and so forth. We there was some sort of accountability with were increasingly privatized in the 1990s where they could be Locked away forever They could be made totally inaccessible as corporate secrets. They could be made totally inaccessible Just Because it's a private entity that has that has no responsibility the freedom of an information act And I wanted that was sort of my starting point. I wanted to Suppose or pause it a situation where somebody who had been very deeply involved in a government program Then retired and created basically a cut out Funded by the dod to continue the work without accountability and sort of do so You know in a more bare-knuckled fashion than I think you would see In the the official programs and again, I have no access to this information. It's it's it's conjecture on my part But we do have examples of when activities taking place within the military or intelligence are privatized And we just get little glimmers. We'll see, you know, how the abuses that come out of that And that's something that I really wanted to explore and I wanted to explore the mentality of the people Who would devote their lives to these kind of activities and again, it's something where I don't have access to the to the private information. I don't have access to Papers and things that are all locked away under, um, you know corporate privilege I'm gonna re-watching uh breaking bad. I want to play a clip for you, which I think is the quint essential clip from the whole series And I think it Speaks directly to me to this question about the underlying Psychologists, let me play this clip and then I want to get some thoughts from you on it This is Walt You're the very end of his run Talking to Skylar in their kitchen. So this is a way inside baseball. If you don't know breaking bad, you won't get it But if you do might be interesting Let me play it for you All the things that I did You need to understand. I have to hear One more time That you did this For the family. I did it for me I liked it. I was good at it. I was alive Wow To me that speaks so much to these Superpatriot Spooks and spies who want to tell us that they're doing it all for us or for their country or for some other reason What do you think about that? I think that a lot of these people can become so delusional that they identify their own personal Motivations with the the good of the country and that's another thing that I explore and and try and have dialogues within the story about Different characters explain their motivations and that's something I mean It's it's based on things that I've read and things that I've seen I wanted to explore that like what motivates these people what drives them to do these things, you know You're not going to get glory and Very often you're not going to get rich you you have a sort of fanatic mentality at work here that I think Can be very destabilizing particularly as technology progresses and with things like remote viewing I think one of the reasons why there might be so much confusion someone about it is because If it's operant, it's a pretty dangerous Technology that you have no defense against You can defend against, you know drones and you can defend against listening devices and you can defend against spies I mean how you're going to defend against somebody who leaves their body and Can travel to your underground base that's a mile under, you know bedrock and Look around As we've seen reports on you know How do you do that? There's no defense against it. So I think that's one of the reasons why this Top it became so sensitive, you know and one of the things I you know just Wining the clock back a bit to randy. When did he go after geller? He went after geller at a very specific point in time. He went after geller after andrew paharic Published his ory book, which is basically a very weird Religious text about the nine, you know the council of nine And how paharic had credited Gellar's Powers or you know beliefs or abilities. Well, how do you choose to To coach it? but he we would have to back up and maybe you can do a quick sketch of Uh, padreic who we've talked about a lot on this show and have interviewed the guy who's doing the biography on him and has the permission and help of his Son, but you know, he's at he's at a phd at northwestern university Which was an mk ultra hub and you can just imagine these super smart guys get these super important academic positions At least they think and then someone pulls the rug out for a moment and says hey, by the way you're working for You're working for city gotley been the Reboot of the nazi program of mind control and it's all under this and then he does the whole Entheogens thing the fake, you know, we're going to discover that but it's real I mean there's and then the nines thing is totally out there But are you suggesting that that was there was like this counter disinformation at the same time because padreic is clearly working for the Left hand path cia folks. Are you suggesting that different factions? I mean, what are what are we talking about here? I think I think andria perharic basically spilled the beans and exposed a strain of thinking Within his milieu That they did not want to get out. I think that he Well, first of all, he so clearly Become as they say high on his own supply. I mean, I think the man had be damaged his brain through excessive ingestion of mushrooms and so on but he had been on the mushroom thing since the late 50s and You know, he his involvement with the nine he claims that it dates back to 1952 at these experiments in a house in glen cove main Which is a very remote location up the coast So I think that they didn't want that information getting out and they didn't I don't think that they wanted sort of a religion a quasi religion to revolve around galler, which was kind of Happening. I mean, he was a very charismatic man Very intelligent very well spoken and I think there was a fear that his Charisma would lead to a cult and they did not want that and they also did not want perharic talking about the nine What about the fact and again, we're way past this is total inside baseball here folks I apologize, but if it's anything you pick out of this then you're deep in the rabbit hole with chris and I What about padreage? Connection to the massage right because he goes and gets galler from the massage So galler is in israel and we later find he's always been Connected to israeli intelligence and he brings it was an agent galler was a galler was a massage agent and the hodge was cia handler Correct, but he and so correct me if i'm wrong feeling any of the gaps, but at this point padar Padaric is also connected to sri He knows that this program is going on and they say hey, you know, we got this in go swan guy Find us other you know because oh, you know here's another guy over here Let's bring him into the mix. So at this point I kind of see it as this It's not like a super They don't know how the how all the cards are going to fall So they're just kind of trying to pull in all these resources and then it just gets stranger and stranger I mean, what can you add to that or correct on that? I I think I think you're right, but I think a lot they were just running With the ball and I don't think they had a tremendous amount of oversight And they were producing some actual intelligence which gave them You know the ability To sort of act on their own that if you've read the the work of John ronston or seen the the movie the men who stare at goats He sort of kind of goes into this with the what was it called the new earth army? Yes, that you know that program that was uh, or the first earth army Because the exact name Direct links direct links to the nazi program, right? This is exactly what the nazis documented that they were doing with their super soldier You throw nazi in and everyone kind of Freaks out, but no, I mean it's all documented. They were doing the super soldier thing. So it's a but go ahead Well, a lot of it was was you know, this whole idea of the jedi and and psychic powers of soldiers creating, you know, a more effective Peaceable warrior as they said So I think there were a lot of things going on And with geller's popularity and geller was a nightclub performer and his charisma. They did not want This bleeding out. They did not want the ball unraveling. I don't remember exactly when The remote viewing program became public But it hadn't really become widespread known until the the 90s with the whole controversy about stargate and the congress shutting the programs down And, you know, the religious right were involved in this and it's it's very interesting to see how often the religious right and the skeptical community Joint forces are worked in tandem So when you talk to the insiders on the remote viewing program Which is another angle, you know, we had a conversation that maybe it's a couple of years ago at this point which was just Extraordinary and you open minds of so many things But one of the things we talked about was this kind of bracketed reality where these things make sense They're internally coherent at different levels But when you step back that's just complete craziness the catholic church is like the example we talked about before I think this is kind of an example As well the political Forces at play in the remote viewing program from everyone you talked to inside that program was very real You had very real christian believing senators congressmen Oversight viewers as well as insiders who just had a christian Belief that this stuff was wrong and they didn't what they weren't interested in exploring it in any kind of esoteric Occulted kind of way It's just like it's against the bible at satan. It's all wrong and that they had a real force in Kind of submarining this program And then you had a whole other group of people that were like Jesus christ If we run our government based on these wacky christians and their crazy dogma We'll never get anything done So they have this kind of continuity of government thing and they're saying you know just don't tell them Don't tell them like we don't tell them the ufo program. We don't tell them all the rest of stuff This is just another thing. We'll just go underground and actually the ultimate insider kit green That's what he says has happened the remote viewing program, which you alluded to too. It's like yeah Just had to take it off the table kind of thing So there's a lot to unpack there, but I don't know that I agree that these groups are necessarily in cahoots I mean, I think a lot of the christians that were opposing the remote viewing program were just straight on Well, I they're working in tandem and there's no there's no question about that and there are Documents and news stories that you can look up where they were working hand in hand against which they thought which they saw As a mutual threat So, I mean there is a history on that that's that's fairly well known What is the history on that as you know it? So you would alluded to the the christian conservatives that were Railing against the program, you know, particularly in congress, but also in the pentagon But at the same time you had people from side cop Doing audits of the program doing hi man in those folks. Yeah, and and Basically saying, you know, this was this is a waste of money and this was nonsense and so on so forth Uh, but do you think they were knowingly working together or that someone was kind of managing that at a higher level and saying Oh, these are all working both these forces are working towards our interest of derailing this thing Well, there was kind of a detente between the two groups, you know, steven and jake wold Who was one of the major Movers and shakers and the skeptical movement in the 70s and 80s, you know It basically said that religion and science were non overlapping magisteria and they both sort of had a common interest In fighting what they saw as a rationality new new ageism, you know, which had been very popular in the in, you know Military and intelligence circles particularly in on the california the bay area, you know, it's fascinating to see how uh, you ufology and remote viewing and High technology the internet and all these kind of things grew out of the same kettle, you know, they all sort of Grew from the same exact soil the same plot. So I think there was a tremendous amount of concern about that that Who is driving this material? Who is going to be at the helm? Is it going to be, you know, these kind of wackos like put-off and and targ and jack filet and so on and so forth You know, who they would see as wackos you with these strange beliefs Scientologists and rose accrucians and so on or is it going to be people who are more sober-minded and Rational quote-unquote So I think that there was a tremendous interest Mutual interest in both these groups that you would think of being as as opposite in fighting the same enemy But if you if you dig below the surface you start to realize that both of them were You know, there were like two hands of the same puppet, you know, they they were both answering to the same Offices same officers In in the military and in intelligence communities. I mean, that's that's pretty well documented And this is not, you know, conjecture or supposition on my part that Uh, you know, again, we see all the people involved in psychop and similar groups and similar movements having all kinds of military and and Intelligence connections and we also see the same thing with you know, the christian conservative movement. There's a uh well-known ci agent whose name escapes me at the moment But he had said that he had basically created The modern evangelical movement with these christian groups on college campuses that he was using sort of to counteract the influence of like the anti-war movement and the hippies and so on And you know that again is pretty well documented. I mean even going back to the 40s It's very well documented that billy graham was very close with alan dollas had very close connections close friendship with him And that brought in, you know people In the Rockefeller orbit and so on so it all kind of grows out of the same pot So to speak And again when one of the things that I really wanted to explore in the book Is that if you take if you had taken The work out of the public sphere, you know off the public kitty so to speak and done so under ostensibly private group you would have a lot more leeway to do whatever you wanted And and you would have very little oversight and you would be unaccountable to the public about it And that's something again that is not I mean I was placing it in in this fictional context with with remote viewing and so on But we see this all the time. I mean, uh, this has become Pandemic, you know with the use of Private corporations running military operations, you know these military contractors Dine corp z All these kind of groups. So I wanted I wanted to explore like how would How would something as ostensibly esoteric and fringe as remote viewing operate in the same Context that private military contractors would operate in I can't get too worked up about that because whenever I look back in history I don't find a time when we were More free or information, you know, whether we had access to the freedom of information act Or not great, but there was a level of Awareness among the among the general population. We didn't have this Web of knowledge that we now have that really supports all of us that we can stand on and say things in a factual way So I think it's kind of a balancing act. Yeah, they were more open In the freedom of information act, but that's because people knew a hell of a lot less I'll tell you what we are pressed for time here, but there's a couple of things I really want to hit on which I think lie beneath a lot of these topics we're talking about and I want to talk about evil. I'm actually writing a book on why evil matters It's kind of like, you know, the first book I wrote the premise of it was if science gets consciousness wrong And it really can't get anything right and the premise of the second book is If you're not willing to look at evil, which you've looked at a lot and particularly the kind of Malevolent forces that transcend space and time if you will I use extended consciousness sometimes but A lot of people don't like that term, but if you're not willing to go there with evil Then you're really not talking about anything. So What do you think about the evil question particularly as it relates to The book and how you kind of get to what's really behind all this That you know, it's interesting you brought this up because this is something I've been thinking quite a bit about And and I think that you know the the descent into evil into evil thinking It goes in steps, you know, it's it's sort of a like an initiatory process so to speak Nobody sets out. I don't think people Except for like some weirdos who are into satanism or whatever Nobody sets out thinking I'm going to be evil I think that the seduction of evil is that I am going to be better Than you and I am going to solve the problems that you cannot solve I'm going to solve the problems of the world and you know, that old Stalin phrase if you know If you have to crack a few eggs to make this beautiful alamut. So be it You know, I think that the ends justify the means is is kind of the the gateway That's the doorway to to evil to evil acts to evil intentions But I think that the process of descending into that kind of thinking You know, there's a whole Another cliche the road to hell is paved with good intentions and that's something that again that I really wanted to explore I want to explore that's you know, how were people that would descend Into what we would see is like the ultimate evil. How would they justify themselves? And this is something I've thought a lot about for many years because I think about like calm cook super villains Lex Luthor and dr. Doom and so on they always see themselves You know, not only as as above the rest of us, but they always see themselves as the good guy You know, I think the worst Villains are the ones who see themselves As the good guy William B. Davis who played the smoking man In the x-files it always said that he was the hero of the story that Malta was, you know this troublemaker in this villain that that he was the one who was rational and and Considered and and thought out his plans and and and did so In a way that you know that he could justify and I think that again that the the worst evil is done by those who can Justify it is somehow It's that kind of mirror image mirror imaging that we see so often one of the things that I find so troubling is The way this is kind of being presented in the public where you know satanists now they're you know, not these weirdos You know, many of whom have like extremely unwholesome sexual appetites. They're They're heroes of free speech and and constitutional rights. I mean, that's how it's couched now And you know, there's all these I mean, you'll have girls magazines, you know aimed at tweens and young girls You know, how to summon a demon. It's like wait. I'm sorry You know, it's it's it's why are you laughing about that? I'm laughing at the absurdity of this when I'm laughing Well, what is the absurdity of it because I think you're open to the possibility? I know from your writing and I think you're you're you're also cautious you you tell a cautionary tale of people who Take the leap and dabble in occultism and you know Magic rituals and stuff like that and you're not doing it from like this heavy-duty christian bible way You're just saying hey, you know, my life experience tells me that a lot of people get into stuff that they Didn't anticipate. Well, all that presupposes that there's a certain reality to it and because as much as you're talking about the You know hip uh kind of cultural Twainer kind of pop culture thing the part that Gives me pause Is people who are connecting with these extended consciousness realms In order to seek power And to seek personal gain and we have that recorded throughout history and you've recorded it in your books and on your blog So don't we need to Address or at least throw that on the table to what extent can you use? Manevalence spirit forces to improve your life. That's the claim being made. Is there any truth to it? well, this is something that i've written about quite a bit particularly in the past couple years and my The basic advice is just stay away from it. You know stay away from If you think you can summon a demon and control it, you know, first of all There are two possibilities one is that it's just absolute fantasy on your part absolute delusion second of all There is this reality. There is a reality to to summoning these energies and forces whether it's psychological or Paraphysical I got a pin you down there. Is it all psychological or is it paraphysical? Well, I believe it's paraphysical. I do too But you know the point being is that if if you could Summon a creature that's that's powerful enough to change your life or to curse somebody Or whatever you think you want. What do you have to offer them? What could the what could you possibly give to them if it's some disembodied spirit that is Immortal or eternal Or what have you what what do you have to offer them? You have nothing to offer them. That that is what's being sold In the magic community. They're saying well if you just do this grimoire properly with a sharpened Sword at this angle drawn in this way. What a mind fuck to tell people that that then you will And they will say this. I forget this professor's name has been on like greg show and a bunch of you know You will then command you will the he the demon will then be compelled to how are you going to compel That kind of force. It's just such a It seems like such a shield deal that people fall for I don't get how people can be so naive People are so naive because they don't have an experience. They don't have real life experience You're talking a lot of people a cohort of people who are incredibly privileged who grew up In an era of wealth and privilege absolutely unparalleled in human history Sheltered sheltered existence And also they were programmed by the media. They were programmed by a lot of these shows on on television Kids television that taught them that they could do these things. They can't you know, they can't I I've really come to the point in my life where I'm just like don't Don't mess around with any of it. It's interesting to to study. It's interesting to sort of watch from a distance, but I I gotta tell you I'm really at a point right now. And I've said this on a number of interviews and podcasts over the past several years Don't Don't do it. Um, can we really say don't do it because when we say don't do it It also feels a little bit churchy Mind of god thing like I understand the nature the order of the extended consciousness realm I understand the mind of mind of god and therefore don't do it. You know, I mean I I don't even need to go that far. I mean, I would tell them to just do a little research I mean read cullen wilson's book the occult and he sort of Very interestingly details how many of these stories of great magicians in history And very very badly. There's another book that I read a number of years ago that had a tremendous influence me And I've talked about also in a number of different interviews is a book by a gentleman named kiro Who is one of these sort of pop psychologist pop Parapsychologist, I guess is a better word He's one of these figures that there are a lot of in the 20s and 30s who you know Were very theatrical almost like stage magicians but incorporate a lot of occultism, but he wrote a book about magicians Sorcerers and so on throughout history And it's one of the grimest damn things you've ever read because every single story every single chapter ends badly You name it. You name these great figures. I mean, of course, we've seen How cruelly ended up how jack parson's ended up Kenneth anger seems to be hanging in there, but I know from person. I mean, I've spoken to the man and I've dealt with his people he's he's had some unbelievably hard times that None of us would would aspire to duplicate. So I think you don't need to appeal to A biblical authority. You just need to look at how people who pursued these courses of action How their story ended and I I I cannot off the top of my head think of a single story that did not end badly outside of people who were involved in in the in the arts and there were basically, you know writers and musicians and so on and they sort of Incorporated these cult ideas into their work But otherwise it just ends badly. It really does. You don't need to look very far. I mean Anton LaVe was A miserable husk of a man for the last 15 20 years of his life I had I have a friend who lived in san francisco lived two doors down from him on california out And he said that you he's a guy who's actually, you know, skeptical rational atheist But he said every time you went by that house. You just kind of felt this void this Gnawing vacuum and they eventually tore the house down, you know, it had been painted black. It hadn't been kept up You know the yard and the Siding and so on was it was in disrepair I think that it's just don't do it. Don't mess around with it It's it's it's not something if you think you can control a force that has the power to curse somebody What again, what do you have to offer them? You don't have anything to offer them and And in case of you know, like say like the the curse trump people in the vine trump people I mean, do you really think that trump doesn't have people in his employ? I think it's more like we were saying before and I think really discerning this kind of Is important because we get the message, you know, what do you think about the the curse against trump? What do you think about no, that's not the point The point is why do you think you can marshal these forces for your gain and why are you seeking gain anyway? Why are you getting into this materialist backdoor spiritual materialism thing that you need to gain? You are going to die. There is a moral imperative. There is right and wrong You will judge yourself in terms of how well you did and standing up to that moral imperative How is any of that going to help you in the big picture? It isn't so I've written several posts saying exactly that not in as many words, but you know, basically that same message and it's something again It's something that I've seen it's something that I've read about it's something that You can all see and read about it just doesn't lead to a good place and I just It troubles me how it's being marketed. It's being marketed as cute and rebellious and and fun and So on and so forth and and tie in with all the other things That are going on, you know, particularly with kids that the influences that are just assaulting children on Daily basis is you know, it's very troubling to me But again evil does not start off as evil evil starts off. It sells itself as is good. No, they're evil You don't understand. They're you know, we're the good guys We've just gotten a bad rep because they write the history. They're they're the bad guys So on and so forth Well, you know, there's another part of this and I really wanted to get on talk about the et stuff before you go and see if you can help your cat which is Sad to think about but hey, we're talking about sad stuff. Anyway And that's are you familiar with the whole sabotee and frankest death cult? kind of Yeah, I you used to there's a guy by the name of Barry chambers Who was also your philologist who had done a lot of work on that topic because In a way that does help explain it in that, you know, if you take this desire that some people have to seek power by any means and In evil somehow pushes their Misconfigured spiritual and energy forces, which I think is kind of maybe closer to what's really happening And then they extend that to the extended realm and say, oh wow, there's an extended realm That'll also push the buttons in me that somehow make me feel less miserable and less lost And let's just go with that even though i'm destroying other people's lives Well Double down with that and get some crazy cult that reads the bible and says, you know, it says right there in the bible that This the only way that the messiah will come is when everyone's good Or when everyone's bad and we know we're never going to get to everyone being good So let's see if we can get everyone bad And this is a theme that doesn't just play out with the sabotee and frankis I mean, we can see it through history But it's all part of this deception part of this opposite day kind of mentality that I can lie I can deceive I can be I can infiltrate I can do whatever because I am serving as you alluded to before This higher purpose now and this higher purpose is to bring about Evil and destruction in order to bring about the good So it's just another way to tweak the craziness that gets into the cultish kind of mentality I don't know if you want to touch on that at all, but it does seem to pop up a lot well again, if people read my Wonderful new thriller he will live up in the sky that conversation Is directly addressed. I mean that way of thinking is directly addressed. I there was a conversation between Two of the characters two of the main characters where those exact ideas that you brought up Are being addressed and explored and again, like I said, I wanted to be able to take this into a fictional context And so I could explore them without holding back without limiting myself without censoring myself And that's really what the whole book is is based on that's what the idea of the premise of the book is Is that I wanted to take all the things that I've been writing on for the past gosh 13 years now 14 years and put them in a context where People who we speculate upon the existence who we speculate upon people who we See in certain positions and wonder what their motivations are that we could get inside their heads At least how I saw it, you know from my experience and my readings and so on and you know in that sense The book is was successful for me personally because I wanted to understand what motivates people Who would be driven to such extremes to be driven to such extremes of philosophy and action? That would impact us all in Very profound and terrible ways and I couldn't really do that If I was writing in a in a non-fiction Setting without sort of sounding like a crank or you know some sort of You know what they call tin foil hot kind of guy, you know Here's another statement from one of the characters in he will live up in the sky Regarding the UFO phenomenon And it is that the UFO phenomenon had nothing to do with science or technology And everything to do with the occult now they're kind of not saying that directly They're saying that this is someone else who's saying it, but this is This is something we have to talk about because I do hear this thread In the interviews and in reading the book And I'm not totally sure where you're going with this chris. What are you? UFO et kind of Not totally on board guy Well, one of the things that I've said, you know, I think I've been clear about is I don't know I'm I'm basically agnostic. I had during the writing of this book actually The process of the five-year process of writing this book My wife and I had had an extended sighting of a chevron UFO Basically over our neighborhood for at least 20 minutes Taking pictures of it with our, you know, camera phones and stuff and it was, you know, the pictures aren't great But you know, you can you can see the shape of this thing You can see that it's a chevron with these, you know You've seen this design before in other settings where it's a chevron shape with these big illuminated domes on the underside So I had seen this thing when I've been taking my dog out But I'd also seen let me tell you exactly when I saw this thing I just watched this movie called the curse of the man who sees ufo's on netflix and it's about this guy this experimental music Experiment musician. I think he lives down You know modesto and that kind of area And he's you know, he is photographed and filmed thousands of ufo's So I just watched this movie and I was just kind of thinking about like what is it about that area that would Inspire these or you know, is there some sort of military base around me? What would would be some sort of special Earth energies that these things would be drawn to I couldn't really tell but I go outside And you know, my dog's doing a business and I look up in the sky And there's this thing that looks like a plane coming out of the clouds and then stops in mid air and I'm like Planes don't stop in mid air And then I got a good look at the thing. I realized that it was a chevron ufo And you know, like I said, my wife had taken some pictures of it and so on But I'll I'll be frank with you. I mean I didn't get this I didn't know what it was. I mean I'm about an hour by air from a major air force base So maguire f4 space. So it could have been some sort of experimental aircraft. What's that what they have gotten? And I mean if you I know Right, if you talked to all the leading ufo researchers, you've talked to richard doblin like I have in grant Cameron that I have You know, the best most reliable information we have suggests that this story we've been hearing for so many years That we have all this reverse engineered alien tech is real and that our science and our technology a lot of it Has connections to that and then you know, you referenced diana walsh posulka in the blog I don't know if you ever read the book, but I had her on the show And you know, she tells an account in her book american cosmic about being invited out to the desert of Nevada finding space junk alien space junk with the tyler dirton kind of character who Stays at the four seasons hotel and flies private jets because he takes the stuff and reverse engineers it into Biotechnology that we don't have and this is just not independently We might not buy that story, but it's just confirmed over and over again So I don't know why there's the pullback and the hesitancy about the science and technology of et It just seems to be patently The obvious to me Well, again, I I am uh, I've read and I've read richard dolens were a grand camera and I'm uh All these books. I've read all the books, you know people's people like stan freedman who are clearly Proponents of the the et in the tech idea and you know the character that you allude to that that makes that statement is basically somebody who is an occultist so he would have that kind of Bias, I think you know, I wanted to which the character who who made that statement that you quoted Is is somebody who right? He was described from from the book from he will live up in the sky but but the whole book revolves around kind of Abduction fakery, you know somebody which was kind of the the one stretch for me in the book was that this woman got rich From writing a book on Abduction fakery. I don't see him and getting rich on that But anyways, I mean that's one of the themes of the I was back in the 80s There were a lot of best-sellers intruders communion back in the 80s and you remember those days. You're old like me Yeah, but communion. I mean, I don't know. Do you think that's fake? I'm not I don't know. I'm again. I'm agnostic about it But you know what I wanted to do is present a number of different points of you present a number of different Angles viewpoints. I mean, how do we perceive this phenomenon? I mean, there are people within the characters within the book who accept the whole like et and reverse engineering idea face value I another one of the things that had really inspired this book is that my my wife and my daughter and I were driving up To New Hampshire and this is one of the reasons why I set the book in New Hampshire Is that we had seen a plane taking off from Manchester airport and then Shortly after there were these two giant orange orbs that were kind of like harrying it. They're kind of bird doggie You know, I almost thought they were trying to make this thing crash And we were close enough I mean this thing was maybe a few hundred feet up in the air and we were close enough to get a good look at All this going on the plane and and these orbs and I was like first of all those orbs are under intelligent control Those things are not just, you know plasma balls Earth lights or something they're clearly Operating under some kind of intelligent control and secondly I can't imagine for the life in me that those things are metal machines and they were translucent They were auto luminous They looked kind of they looked a little sickly I guess I would say And you know that experience that my wife and I that I kind of written into the book of seeing the UFO from our porch I was looking at that object and I was like, okay, there it is. How is that thing in the air? It doesn't look in any way Aerodynamic for me those those big if those things are lamps if those things are some sort of electrical lamp There would be so heavy that the thing would just fall right out of the sky So I have no idea what I'm looking at and the thing was right I mean it was really bright and we got a good long look at it. This wasn't some sort of fleeting Thing that just swept through the corner of our vision. We were watching this thing I was sitting there texting with Gordon white like okay now it's doing this now it's doing this I mean it went on for quite some time and I just looked at a thing I go. How is that thing aerodynamic? I just could not for the life of me Any kind of propulsion system that we know about there's just no way that that that thing is flying under some sort of Combustion engine, you know, maybe it's some sort of plasma technology. Who knows? I mean, maybe those lights are actually the propulsion, you know those lights and not just You know lights. They're actually Those are the engines of the craft, but I couldn't see how anybody could fit in the craft. I mean was it a drone? I don't know. It was really I gotta tell you having that long a look at that strange anodic was was an extraordinarily unsettling for me. It really was Well, the book is really great. You need to check it out. I enjoyed it and I don't read fiction faction Yeah, non non fiction fiction He will live up in the sky and of course he is still totally Owning it rocking it whatever you want. That's those dated terms that I don't know what my kids say I'll have to ask them what they say But the secret sun blog spot is a great place to go Chris in the little bit of time we have left tell folks What's new and coming up for you in the near future? Well, I am working on a sequel to the book And I have I I have a title now, which was a huge So stumbling block of me. I couldn't really figure out a good title for it And I'm the kind of writer where I need a title, you know It always starts with a title and that drives the rest of the feeling of the book but I do have uh a book in the in the making and actually I'll just confess right now that this book was going to be a much larger book And it was going to start in the 70s take place in the 90s and then Shift to the present day and then I just realized that was way more Binding off way more than I could chew and I think it would exhaust the patience You know, I don't think people would accept a thousand page novel is your first novel So I had to trim it down So a lot of the the second the sequel has already been written and I'm really excited about it And I've been doing a lot of blogging and I'm actually have a number of non-fiction works That have been On the back burner for a number of years that I really want to get out there And maybe do some video presentations on so I do have a lot of irons in the fire. It's just my life has been Very challenging the past few years and it's been very difficult to get things completed. But uh now that I've sort of You know Broken that impasse. I think that I'm ready to get a lot more material out there Which I'm very excited about and you know people have been asking about for a number of years Well, we're super excited to hear that chris and it's always great to connect with you and your work is so fantastically influential to so many people so thanks for joining me and Pleasure take care great pleasure. Thank you so much. Alex Thank you to you and thank you to your audience as well Great man. You take care I I've been spending a lot of time outside exploring nature Yeah, um spent a lot of time with my dog outside. She's sort of like an antenna. She picks up all those dangerous carrots and And you know, I've gotten a lot of things out of my head that I think we're clouding my judgment and clouding my thinking And you know, that's one of the reasons why I'm just like telling people like Yeah, stay away from I mean I I'm going even so far to tell people to stay away from tarot and astrology and not from like some sort of Babel bible bashing kind of viewpoint but just like you know if you think these things have power if you're not willing to devote your life to them Don't play around with them Why would you devote your life to them? Why do you think why do you think that's the answer to add more of that shit? I think it just boils down to narcissism and ego You know I deserve more I deserve more than I'm getting When you get to the higher purpose and freely ascending all that other stuff just looks silly. I think you know the demon Why what are you doing? I've never really understood the the appeal of that stuff my entire life. I've always been I spent a lot of time in the ocean as a kid So my whole thinking was was very much Inspired by that like the ocean is a power that you cannot control And it's just absolutely insane to think that you can so what you need to do is kind of act in concert with it But always acknowledge that It holds all the cards, you know I'm saying and the ocean has always been kind of my metaphor for um For everything really you know, I mean everything that we you know In the spiritual world that that we deal with that you know You're dealing with powers that are much greater than yourself And it's it's really delusional to think that you have anything to bargain for unless you know all these Sickos who start getting into human sacrifice and so on but you know Unless you're sacrificing yourself It's not really a sacrifice right because sacrifice means giving up something that belongs to you It doesn't mean going out and kidnapping some poor Guatemalan kid off the street And cutting them up on some spirit cooking altar, right? You have nothing to bargain with except for yourself. Oh, that's interesting Okay, buddy of my permission. You have my permission to you know anything that you can use Please do okay to your camera friend. Thank you very much Thanks again to christinals for joining me today on skeptico the one question it up from this interview has to do With good people who do evil things How are we to understand our super patriot elites who are for our good and for the good of the Doing such evil things Love to hear your thoughts on that. I have many so I'd love to get in a good dialogue With you about that one Come join me at the skeptical forum. That's as I always tell people I try and stay up to date on Other comments that people make but that's where I always go So if you do want to talk to me about any of this stuff chat with me The skeptical forum is a place to do it. You can find it from the website S K E P T I K O We can also find all the previous shows that you can download for free I have a number of shows coming up as I mentioned in this episode. I am working on a book project as well So I got that I got a couple other projects. I'm working on Stay with me for all of that until next time. Take care and bye for now