AI, Interaction and the Future of UAP - Part 2

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One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you are drowning in software instead of growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload. No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business. Whether you are just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. So you can focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. This is David Marler, UFO researcher, and you're listening to That UFO Podcast. If I could answer you that question, Andy, I'd be a rich man by now. Because, I mean, that's the question about the AI. Yes, I mean, it's absolutely the case already. People are interacting with bots to sometimes to an unhealthy degree. I mean, you know, there are known cases of personal drama related to getting, you know, dependent. I mean, probably. Relationships. Relationships or, you know, I mean, literally, I know that some of my students, they ask ChachiPT about everything in a clever way sometimes, but also sometimes in some sort of a, you know, it's not only about, you know, ChachiPT. This is what I have left in my student fridge. You know, it's like, it's a lemon, it's some Greek cheese and pepperoni. Now, what should I make with it? And it comes up with something nice. That's all right. You know, I admire that. That sometimes it's even beyond my capacity of working with that. And I work a lot with AI. But there is always these things about, you know, what does this mean? What is that? And sometimes these questions are questions that I would, you know, say are existential to a certain degree. And people are starting to depend on them, much like they depend on a strong, you know, I mean, there are different people. Some people are, have a higher affinity to somebody telling them what to do and others are more independent. So people with a higher affinity of finding orientation outside of themselves may be a little bit more vulnerable to, you know, to deficitary functionings of the AI bots. And then we have serious interaction. So that's already the case. Whether, you know, it makes a difference if the AI downloads your podcast or Christian Peters does. I would say it makes a difference because hopefully Christian Peters is going to do something with the podcast. And it's going to play a role to the way that people are, you know, having lives and are working with what they hear and critically use the information and the data. But while there's not come a point that AI can do the same thing where it's going to learn and form an opinion and the AI itself will change based on, I've listened to Andy on that UFO podcast and it's even, even got, I don't want to get into podcasting too much. It's my other passion, but even like in terms of listening to an advert on a podcast, could there be a benefit from an AI bot listening to an advert that it's not going to go buy the deodorant, but is there something that it can take from it that that's useful to an advertiser? And I wonder, is it going to get to that place quickly where actually there's a real benefit to AIs and bots? And that's what I say, maybe forget me plugging the podcast, but there actually comes a point it's, you're just having those interactions as if it's another person and you don't even differentiate. And I wonder then do you get to a point where that's where you get this assimilation of society, where instead of shunning it and going bots, bots, bots, which everyone does just now, you actually embrace it and bots, human, what's the difference? Well, it depends on, it depends on many things. It really, I mean, like if you're, I have made, certainly I have made to people the argument that it would be healthy to deal with AI in the way that you're dealing with people, because for one reason, not for, you know, increasing the value of the AI, excuse me. That's okay. But in order to have your social immunity system work properly, you know, to be as skeptical about the AI as you are about, you know, your fellow people around you. So use the knowledge that you have in, you know, dealing with the world and take those categories in dealing with something that obviously seems to collectively influence societies and people, you know, you know, on the micro level, because you already know how to deal with conflict. And so you could, you could ask yourself, you know, is it beneficial if the bot is interacting with, you know, with your, with your, with your podcast? I would say one of the first things that AI is going to do is it's probably going to maximize its efficiency in an economic sense, because that has happened pretty much with all the technologies that hit societies, you know, at large and, and efficiency, economic advantage is one of the main functioning principles of platform capitalism, AI capitalism, if you want. So, uh, I would think that this would be probably one of the first, one of the first things that you're seeing, they would probably use your chat to, uh, find out whether it's interesting also to post you into some context, you know, be, you know, such a bot would probably realize that's the profile of people looking your show. And so that's going to make Instagram more interesting. I, yesterday I told a friend, uh, because you were saying about, you know, what, what Instagram is showing you, I would say, I told a friend, you know, it would be so cool if there would be a reset button at Instagram where you can push and it'll, it'll flats down your, your algorithm. Yeah. Everything that it has learned about your, you know, the consumption patterns that you have, because everyone's in the wild, they take a weird turn and you're getting, you know, in your case, you're getting all those crashing airplanes that would amplify the fears. And, and I don't know, I'm, I'm getting at the moment, I'm getting nice boxer dogs because I'm a, I'm a dog nerd. Uh, I love dogs. So I get, you know, like boxer puppies and stuff like that. But I also get a lot of videos of homeless people, uh, uh, that are depending, that are shooting, you know, like fentanyl. And I don't know, because I followed that because at one point I've realized that, you know, this is one of the real, you know, grave concerns that people should have, that drugs have optimized themselves to a degree that they dehumanize people in just a very short time and you know, those fentanyl zombies, they, it's very tragic. So that's the two things I'm getting. And I feel like if I could press that release button now, uh, it would show me something else. My friend told me, why would they, why should they do that? Because if you get a random sample of whatever videos, you wouldn't spend time on Instagram, you know, because it would bore you. But now it's got you, you know, it's got your book and you're sitting there and you're watching also, and you're watching, you know, videos ads on, on stupid shit. Nobody really needs to buy, but that's what, how they capitalize on that. So let's not, maybe not get too far away from the UFO topic, but no, no, no, it's great. And I could go on because that's a topic that, that really bothers me. I'm, I'm literally, you know, working on AI in a political context at the moment at the university and research. Um, but, uh, I think they're all connected and I think they, these topics are connected. They are massively connected. If you look at the UAP environment now trying to get the bend, uh, I'm seeing very often discussions by very reasonable people telling me that they talk to chat GPT and the answers that they get, that they get, you know, uh, about the nature of the universe and somebody speaks to them. And I'm, I'm quite skeptical in the idea that there is a channeling of an extraterrestrial or interdimensional entity through chat GPT, because chat GPT is quite a clever tool. Well, listen, that's one extreme, but the other extreme is literally yesterday. I asked it how long I had to cook a 92 gram frozen chicken breast for, and it told me 10 to 12 minutes in my air fryer at 180, uh, would do, and it did not. I needed at least 18 minutes. So chat GPT may be having huge conversations about, you know, the meaning of life for some folks, but for me, it can't tell me, and that's chat GPT 5.1. I pay for chat GPT could not tell me the right amount of time to cook a frozen chicken breast folks. So do, uh, keep, be, be wary of, of using it far too much for that, but to zoom out a little bit, um, obviously you're, you, you study political culture, social attitudes, and we've talked about, touched on some of that here. How have you seen the public narrative around UFOs evolve? And I'm thinking even people who study this, who are far older or younger from the early Cold War, post-war decades to the X-Files era of the nineties. And now we mentioned, we've talked about the social media age. What's, what's standing out for you about the cultural shift around the UFO conversation? Uh, that's a really good question. Um, I, it, it's, it's a bit hard to say because the problem with, uh, with history is that I have a certain, you know, I have a certain feeling to on about what happens at the moment, but, but when it comes to the eighties, uh, the seventies and the fifties, I'm literally blind by experience because I didn't live. Uh, so I have to rely on what people are saying, but when you study the cases and when you look at the books that have been published and when, when you're following, I don't know, maybe the, the, the narratives of ufology, uh, and there has been a grand body of wonderful work that has been produced over time. Um, and you can differentiate between the ones that you feel like I would like to take them seriously more than others that might've been produced for, you know, being part of a, of a, a UFO community that has conventions and that generates capital. Uh, anyway, there, there are shifts in the discussion. And interestingly, I think that you can see, uh, a relationship between that, what people are seeing and are reporting, um, and something that fits into the time. Yeah. The, what I mean with that, I, uh, I think that the way that, you know, I mean, there's within ufology, people would say, you know, it's, there is an interrelationship between what people can see and that is codified by the cultural environment that they live in. Because, you know, it, when you are living in an environment that is, let's say before the first Zeppelin has ever flown, uh, everything that was around were just these hot balloons. But apart from that, there was no directed flying because there has, you know, before Lindbergh and, and, uh, the Wright brothers, there has been no airplane. So your imagination would be technically limited. And, and that's what they're saying about those cases of the so-called, uh, I forgot how the, you know, the, the flying ships, you know, late, late 19th century, the 14 flying airships. Exactly. Thank you. So there is, you know, it, it, it, it kind of plays with the, the cultural and, and the very precise imaginary of people. That's what they can see because we are, uh, arguably humans are trained to see patterns. We can't, we can't just see things, how they are, but we are conditioned to see patterns because if we wouldn't be conditioned to see patterns, we would permanently be overwhelmed by, by, you know, everything that happens around us because there is so much happening at each and every moment. And, and you're just trained to see the things that are stable that, you know, and, and if you're in a room, you know, surrounded by artifacts that have a personal history to you, that level of stability is even higher. But if you go outside and, you know, let's say at times square, you're, there is a lot of stuff going on, on times square at 12 noon, you know, and, and you could be absolutely overwhelmed by the data that comes in, but people are seeing patterns, stuff they've seen already. And, um, so that goes on. I think that this is some of the, um, keys of understanding how people have looked at the UAP topic, uh, and have seen things. It would be though on the, a different question to talk about, but what is the social and political impact of that? You know, not only what have they seen with respect to the things, uh, you know, it was flying saucers at one point and, and, you know, somewhat in the sixties seventies with the early cases of abductions, but, but definitely with, uh, with the appearance of communion and, and X-Files later on, you know, like the, the omnipresence of the stereotypical gray that has not been, you know, in, in many of the old UFO cases, you, the things that were described looked, looked quite different than that. I mean, fifties sixties, UFO descriptions, you know, they've seen very, very weird, uh, robot like entities and huge, you know, huge wolves and small green and large looking like jellyfish or whatever. So that was a big variance. And, and today we're talking a lot about grace. We're talking a lot about, uh, Nordics and, and, uh, there are also cultural histories of those emanations because I'm not ultimately convinced that this, what people are reporting when it comes to, you know, personalities or people or entities, um, would be in all cases, you know, the representation of a physical reality. I think the phenomenon is more complex than that. I think that, you know, maybe even the opposition between, you know, observing something and, and, you know, being the observer and, or the something that is seen might be very more complex when it comes to certain aspects of the phenomenon. So I'm, I'm being cautious and even agnostic when it comes to that, but the impact that what we really can talk about, uh, that has changed, that has changed and that has massively changed, uh, over the last eight years, you know, talking from, from, from 2017 on until today. Uh, I think that the UAP phenomenon and the way that it's impacting societies, cultures and, and people is right now at a historical point, it hasn't been before. And that has to do, in my opinion, with the nature of the media environment, the way that these things are reaching into people's lives. Um, the fact that you can, uh, literally, you know, build an epistemic environment around that through the algorithms of your favorite social software, uh, where you're not seeing much more else, you know, it's, it's, it's where there is a fragmented chance of being a very, very deep in the UAP, uh, rabbit hole, uh, you know, being fed by, by a huge machine. And I'm not saying somebody, you know, with, with clandestine interests is behind that. It's just something that appears. And I guess the way that people are processing this information, therefore will look different. Both the message, uh, and the media has changed over time. And in the sixties, in the seventies, I mean, I, I, I do not find it very surprising that the X-Files was presenting the case the way it presented it, because it's, you know, it's in, it's in a time where, uh, where trust into governments was reaching the low points that we've seen, you know, it's, it's the, politically speaking, uh, since the sixties, seventies and eighties in all Western liberal democracies, we've seen a certain erosion of trust in. Governments. There were amplitudes over time that had to do with wonderful presidents or, or, you know, like changes, uh, the, when the, you know, when the iron wall came down, uh, there was a huge boost of self-confidence on the Western sphere because they thought that there was a triumph of capitalism over communism, but that has changed over time at the moment where politically speaking in, in an environment where trust in governments is lowest. It has been in very, very long times. And, and, and that has of course an impact also on the way that people are dealing with the UAP topic, because it's much easier to think that, uh, a potentially hostile government is hiding stuff from you because it already five falls into that, you know, fertile ground of widely shed, uh, uh, uh, loss of trust in governments. But if you allow me to say that, because it connects to what I've said in, in, at the soul foundation and at the same time, I must say, because I have really looked closely at the, what I would call a realistic approach on looking at the political system at institutions. Also, there is reasons to be dubious about what governments know or don't know with respect to the UAP topic, because, uh, what the UAP represents is, you know, it's a serious sovereignty crisis to modern statehood. Take the U.S. as, you know, one of the, still being one of the leaders militarily, economically, probably, you know, at least in self images, culturally as well. Uh, but anyway, the United States is one of the world powers and, and what does being a world power mean? That means capability over all other nations, or at least in tight competition with the other world powers. You are power, you know, it's about power. It's about capability military, you know, like ruling airspace, knowing what happens in the oceans, uh, being top notch, technologically speaking, that is modern sovereignty. And it is represented by governments. That is a relationship between the two. What does the UAP do? It's the contradiction of that. If it's true, what we're seeing, you know, it's saying you're not the number one. You're not even number three on what we've seen. You are very, very far down a potential road and, and we are technologically more capable. You don't know what we are. So that's, is potentially some, some sort of an information disbalance. And that is something that political, you know, political sovereigns are having serious problems with. If you're in an authoritarian state, something that is such a deep threat to your raison d'etre, the reason that you're there can be totally blocked away. You know, it, it's part of the censorship. That's stuff we don't talk about because it's, it's problematic for ourselves. In Western societies, it's not that easy. So I don't know. It makes sense that they're not sharing the details with us. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you're drowning in software instead of growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload. No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you are just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. So you can focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Yeah, when you say the stuff we don't talk about, I have to bring back the conversation around experiencers, because I think they have to have their moment in the conversation. You mentioned how interested you are in the data around that. And how that experience, a conversation, Christian, for me, looks as I will always listen to someone sharing their story, their testimony. And whether I believe it or not, I try not to believe or disbelieve. I like to just take it at face value. And there's nothing I can really do in terms of experiencers, other than if people want to share with me, I'm more than happy to listen, because sometimes that's all people want or need. But I can't do anything with that. I'm not a psychologist. I wouldn't want to dive into that any further. I don't want to explore that with someone. It's not my job to do that. I wouldn't feel comfortable from multiple points of view. But in terms of experiencers, how do you view that particular phenomenon? Because it is difficult. And I've hosted many experiencers on the podcast, many. And I hope anyone listening to this, I've said this enough now that they understand my take on it. I think there is a large, there's an element of people who perhaps are suffering from a mental health issue, that it manifests as an experience. And that could be UFOs, ghosts, demons, werewolves, shadow people, paranoia, whatever it may be. That's not always to say that that mental health issue isn't brought on by a genuine abduction experience, whatever that may be. But how do you go about discerning that whole conversation? You don't just believe everyone, you don't just disbelieve everyone. And again, to frame it in a modern way, and sorry if I'm ranting a bit here. But you look back, it seemed to me that growing up, knowing the UFO topic, as I did, most of the cases, it was the same four, five, six, seven, eight, nine cases that were discussed from the 60s, all the way through to the 90s. The same magazines wrote the same, the same cases, Betty and Barney Hill, Calvin Parker, you know, Bob Lazar, all that kind of stuff came out. But then with the social media age, you mentioned earlier, if something crashed in Times Square within seconds, it's on Instagram. We all have access to probably too much information too quickly that you don't know what to do with it. You just, oh, that's interesting. Swipe away. Oh, look, a nuclear bomb's going off in a capital city somewhere. Wow, isn't that terrible? Swipe away. Oh, look, boxer dogs. You know, that's the algorithm, and it's what we're being fed. So how do you decide who's being truthful, who's not being truthful? Is that even the point of the conversation? And what would you want to do with the data itself? It's, I really like the way that you're approaching that, because it's sensitive. And I think you said that. I think the truth question, is that true? I mean, what does that mean? You know, did it happen in a universe that works like, you know, like a machine? Is everything that this person has seen or things to have seen? Did that manifest on a physical level of reality? Or didn't it? And, and that is probably the way that you're looking at that, if you're, you know, if you're a strong natural history person, and a natural scientist, because they have a very, very clear idea about what, what reality actually means. See, I'm a social scientist, and, and, and within the social sciences, we have something that is called the interpretive social science, that is looking at what people are making, you know, the meaning that brings people together, the idea of nationhood, what it means to be a Scotsman, and an independent, you know, stuff like that, that's connected to, to things that happen inside people. They are subjective to a certain degree. And, and to me, I'm very, very careful about asking, for example, the question, you know, you could say one of the first filter question, and I must say, I'm not an expert on experiences, that's not absolutely my cup of tea. And there are people like, you know, Michael Bolander, and other people you would want to talk to, who are whoever, you know, more, more definite, and probably a more outspoken approach to that. But something I can tell you, what has been irritating me about that is that I've heard that within the community, within our community, I've heard people say, that one of the first things that we should do is, you know, bring in some sort of a filter, test, somebody saying something, where we, you know, first test, is there a likelihood that this is, I don't know, some sort of a, like a sudden phase of paranoid schizophrenia, are they triggered by something, you know, is the hardware working properly, or isn't it? And, and then the next thing, check them socially, you know, is this somebody other people are going to tell, you can trust him, or you can't, and, and, you know, do what people do when they walk along and talk, you know, go into a pub and talk to somebody, and they're telling them quite an amazing story, the first thing that you're doing, you know, correlating the amazingness to, you know, who is who's talking to me, as a matter of fact, and when it's getting really crazy, is it, you know, worth the time spending here? And if that person seems to be serious, probably you're staying longer and listening to that. So you can do that. And you can do find all sorts of indicator telling that they have a, you know, good professional background that they've been, you know, in the military and doing this and that and this and that, but, but something that bothers me about that is that both of those tests are tried, they're trying to exclude that either the people are, are, you know, mentally ill, or they're not, they're, they're lying. So you're coming with some sort of a, of an approach to that, which is actually presented, which is, you know, the content of the witnessing, the data, if you want, and you're the first things that you're doing about that data is you're giving those data, a framing that has an enormous amount of doubt in that. And if we're permanently, you know, we're complaining about, you know, having to justify ourselves as UAP researchers permanently again and again, because we're approached by society with a generalized doubt that we have to fight against. And nobody takes that what we want to say serious, which is part of, you know, I think that there is a lot in the UAP topic you should take seriously, because it reflects some of the political issues that you're dealing with on other levels, you know, UAPs and climate change are quite structurally, you know, similar with the way that they're going to affect the global community. And, and yet you have to defend yourself in, you know, are you out of your mind or aren't you? Are you taking this seriously? Or aren't you not taking that seriously? And there is, you know, that that's some sort of a negativity impulse that I have. Secondly, if, if you want, you know, if just for a second, you think that some of those people really have to share something. And if they know that they first have to go through the mills of being trialed and tested, you know, mentally, as well as socially and culturally, it, you know, it will probably not increase the chance that you get to the core of it. It sometimes reminds me of, you know, what the the church is doing, what the protocol of the Roman, what the Roman protocol says about exorcism. The first thing you have to do before finding out whether they're possessed by a demon is finding out whether they're mentally ill or not. And, and, and also, I did, I did always find that quite, you know, in a, in a sense, I found it funny. I think that there are different reasons for the church to put that, you know, at the beginning of a test, probably it's something that you maybe should do because possession, you know, like massive possession, I don't know, it could be something that very closely resembles certain types of, of mental health issues, you know, structural analogies, but I wouldn't want to do that with an experiencer who tells me stuff. I don't know, you know, like stuff that I've heard lately, you know, about, you know, very, very irrational people sitting in the living room. Uh, suddenly, you know, like a ball of light enters the living room, rests for a while and disappears. And, and, you know, it happened to my grandfather. I learned that two days ago. Wow. That was a shock. And, and, and then I talked to people who are telling me, you know, of course, I mean, that's a typical case of orbs, you know, we've, we're seeing that very often. And, and if I, you know, if I, then the first question is, did, you know, did my grandfather drink too much or did he, and I'm not taking that serious. I think those witness reports would probably have a threshold that they would not necessarily have to step over. However, Andy, I agree that we cannot, you know, the consequence of what I just said cannot be that there is an absolute anything goes and everybody can say what they want. And there will be a large audience who takes that seriously. I'm, I react allergically to what you could probably call some sort of an intuitive filter. When I realized that people are telling me, you know, complex stories about otherness and, and what they want and what they are and, and, uh, you know, things that only they would know because they talk that in, in the, yes. And I, I don't want that. So we need to find middle grounds on, on working with the qualitative data and the stuff that people experiences would be telling, because I really think that it matters. I think it's part of the phenomenon. It, it probably sheds light at a certain, a certain area of it that we have not taken seriously yet. I don't know what it means. I don't know if what we're going to find out has nothing to do with the stuff that we're seeing in our skies. I don't know, but I think it's serious and important. I mean, I'll share a story with you. I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before. Um, I can't be sure. However, I'm going to leave some details out just to protect the, the identity of the person. Um, I wouldn't think they're massively well known necessarily. However, I just rather not go into certain details for multiple reasons. However, in the early days of the podcast, I was invited to attend a virtual meeting with, um, a group, I'll just say a group based somewhere in the world. Um, not super secret. I mean, literally just ordinary members of the public who are into UFOs. Um, and it was to, to watch some, uh, presentations and one person speaking, um, who was a potential guest. I was, I was recommended to have on, um, shared their presentation and they discussed their lifetime of abduction experiences. However, the abduction experience began and they shared this during a massive trauma. And I'm not going to say what it was happened to them, but it happened in childhood and it's horrific. And for me, that just sounds like the abduction trauma as maybe it did happen genuinely, but it sounds to me, it's masking the really horrific thing that happened to them through their childhood. Um, and they shared that on, on this presentation and I found it really uncomfortable, but then there's a lot of folks that were part of that who are, they almost encourage that, that that's a credible conversation to have. And for me, that's, that's someone who needs help. Um, but again, that that's for me where I'll always listen to someone's story and I've heard, I've spoken to so many other experiencers where I do genuinely believe that something has happened to them. At least they believe it's truly happened to them. Maybe it happened physically. I've often shared the idea that I could well believe that if I was in bed beside my wife all night and see, I didn't go to sleep and just watched her. And she woke up in the morning and said to me, I was abducted last night. And I could say, you weren't, I watched you all night. Maybe she's her consciousness was abducted. Maybe time is frozen and I had no idea. Maybe I've been manipulated. Perhaps that's an element of this, but I think there's so many difficult aspects of the experience of conversation. I, it does upset some people, but I do understand why, for example, the soul symposium doesn't have multiple experiencers stand on stage and have those conversations. I I've often used the example, if let's, let's pick someone, I don't know, Gary Nolan, Christopher Mellon, Lou Elizondo, any of these figures who have been sitting on, on Fox news, CNN, MSNBC, sky news, BBC, whatever news network you watch. If I'm just going to pick Louise Elizondo just because it's the first name. Okay. If he sits on Fox news and says what he said over the years, but then shares, actually I was abducted once as well. Every single conversation he has from then on in on a mainstream news network as the abduction experience. And I think it's laughed at. I think people use it to poke and prod and make fun. I think there's a lot of folks in very senior positions, military, academically, and government who probably have had experiences that do not share them because they do not want to go down that road in that conversation. And I, I very much think experiencers will have their time, but for the love of God, I don't know how we get to that conversation publicly without huge ridicule, turning folks off. And it's easy for some folks who are very, very experienced or pushy, pushy. Everyone's telling the truth. Everyone, it's too easy to say, yes, everyone has to hear this. Most of the public don't want to hear it or laugh at it or find it mental for lack of a better word. And I just don't know how we bridge that gap at the minute. That's wonderfully said. Two things come to my mind. Remember when we talked maybe an hour ago about the way that, you know, like the realization of the UAP phenomenon and, and its nature might be a question of distance and proximity. It took me a while until I realized that probably the shunning away from the experience of topic has to do with the fact that it's the ultimate proximity because somebody is telling a story that is a personal story. You know, they're, they're talking about what they have been going through. So it has a reality that already brings in an interpretation of, of what is going on. Sometimes, you know, some of those stories are about communication, which is fascinating because, you know, on the one side, you know, some say we're seeing UAPs in our airspace and we don't know what is behind that. And then there is this enormous, you know, body of data where there is, you know, where, where there has been exchanges and people, information has been exchanged. I'm again, I'm not saying that either one of them is true or isn't true, but I'm just observing that. And, and so you could say that while, you know, a close encounter of the second kind, where you see something and it's clearly there and it can't be explained away because it's zigzagging. And, and even somebody is taking a picture of that. It is not within our technological inventory. So it's the proof of something beyond human. And it's something that obviously is technologically capable, or it's a natural phenomenon that seems to be intelligible. And maybe the differentiation between nature and technology is also something that is generally, you know, anthropocentric and there are other, you know, I don't know if they've been around for 4 billion years as a civilization, probably the difference between that, which is natural and that which isn't has blurred over time. So I like that post biological hypothesis. We've heard Diana Pasalka talk about that at some, the, the, the, the experience is in that proximity and distance spectrum, the absolute closeness. And if then the ridicule correlates to the extent of how this information is putting, you know, is asking existential questions, of course, the experiencer is, you know, the ultimate, you know, it's the ultimate bomb because they, you know, they're telling you very weird stories about, you know, stuff that has been told to them or the aerial kits that, that, you know, many of them seem to have gotten information about that, that we should be more sustainable with the way that we're dealing with environments and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, stuff that, that bothers people anyway, because we know that we're fucking up the environment and you want to look away. So don't look up, don't look down, don't look into the forest. Where do you want to look? Don't look at the experience because the experience has a lot of bad news for you. You could say that, you know, that this is a dimension. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you're drowning in software instead of growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload. No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you are just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. So you can focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at Odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you are drowning in software instead of growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload. No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you are just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. So you can focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at Odoo.com. That's Odoo.com. And also, something that comes with the experiencing is that there seems to be, at least to the extent that I know that, there seems to be quite a heterogeneity of things that are told. There's a lot of difference, you know, many different stories. And they have to do with the fact that it goes through people's interpretations. You know, if you're going through something as traumatic as what Whitley Strieber has gone through on his cabin, and you have a lifetime to contemplate about that, you know, not everybody's probably ending at the same results. So there is a big variance in the way that people are interpreting something that doesn't fit into, into their, you know, into the way that they expected the world to function. Something that I also find interesting is whether the ridicule and the tendency to disbelieve is a very modern phenomenon, because, you know, we're living in an environment where, you know, Max Weber has said that the history of modernity is one of a permanent disenchantment. Once you had, you know, you had angels and demons and, you know, trusting God, and everybody knew what their position is, that has kind of a little bit broken down. Yeah, there are many people, you know, religious people in the audience here, I'm not threatening you by any means, but I'm just making some sort of a, you know, sociological observation here. If you would have said 250 years ago, that you've seen a shiny being talking to you. The discussion probably wouldn't have been whether that happened or it didn't happen. The question would have been, has this been the devil, or has it been an angel speaking to you? Interestingly, most of the people that would report those things, you know, back in the 16th and 1700s, especially if they were women, they would be under, certainly under the, now I'm lacking the English word, Verdacht, you say in German, the suspicion, the suspicion that they've been visited by, you know, by the Beelzebub, or by the devil, that they've been interacting with something which is not godly, because it was transported into, you know, the, the, the ideological environment of the time and the theological interpretation of the likelihood of somebody who is not a priest or who hasn't studied the Bible for many years, having a real angelic encounter. What I want to say is that trusting or distrusting something that sounds anomalous also is a function of the time that you're living in. So, you know, and my last point that I would want to make is that I, I realized that the, you know, the experiences story is so problematic, because it's not only problematic to the people who listen to you, but it's problematic to the people who go through it. And I agree with you that there is a fine line between trauma and screen memory that might not be screen memory put over, you know, an alien that then appears as an owl, but that might be an alien is the screen memory for, you know, for your uncle, or for somebody else, who is intrusive in your environment that that is certainly out there somewhere. So it's, it's troubling something you said before reminded me of the last point I want to make on your question here. And that is when you said, you know, I would be in my bedroom and I would look at my wife and, and, you know, nothing happens at night. You know, you might, you hear her, you know, turn around more often than she does, but, but nothing spectacular happened. Yeah. Given that you had the patience to watch her eight hours in a row sleeping, you know. Nothing spectacular happens in our bedroom at night. I can assure folks. Yeah. I'm not wanting to say that. It's just a sign of serious love to watch your loved ones for eight hours. Absolutely. Absolutely. Regarding their sleep. But anyway, and then she wakes up and tells you, I've been adopted. And she looks into your eyes in the same way that she's done for 25 years or for however long you have been married, because she is the person you trust. She is your, she's an, in a sense, unless you have a dysfunctional relationship, but let's, you know, idealize that for a second. She is the, the embodiment of your normative compass of the way you're, you're sharing a similar view on reality. You learn to trust her. And I find that fascinating when the phenomenon shows up in those constellations, what does it do to your significant others? And, and how are you processing that? And, uh, and I have not naming names, but I, you know, one of the people in Germany that, that is, you know, rather known in, in the UAP environment. And he's a, you know, he's, he's a serious, serious researcher. He's a, a natural scientist and, and he's very rational and, and he's very structured and, and, uh, and I met him on a conference and, um, you know, some sort of small talk, uh, you know, as the conversation goes, especially when it's about UAP, what brings you here and this incredibly rational structured, uh, uh, down to earth thinking, you know, scientist who was working, you know, in, in the light of, of public attention at a well-known German universities says, you know, my father, uh, has seen several UFOs and, and, you know, and then, then there was some sort of a, you know, close contact scenario that was really incredible. And you hear that from that person and you think, wow, that there, there's some sort of an anti thesis here, which I don't get. But the point is I, it took me a while to understand is that the truth and the believing into what people present as the truth is something that is infectious. That's also why, why these narratives are propagating, because if I would tell my best friend tomorrow, and I, I can tell you because that happens in my environment, my friends are seeing me taking that serious, uh, and taking the topic series and not starting the conversation with, I don't believe in UFOs, but I'm a social scientist that has understood that this is an interesting topic to be concerned with because right now they talk about, you know, about UAP at the, in the American Congress, you know, that's something that should concern a political scientist to a certain degree. No, I'm not, I'm not entering that discussion like that anymore. I have changed because I'm, I'm originally interested and I'm not excluding the possibility that this is all, there is so much smoke. So there will be a fire at somewhere. It might be something that is shockingly different to what most people that are listening right now think. And that I might even think, you know, it could be something absolutely different, shockingly different to that. But, uh, the, the thing is a person that you love and that you trust significantly comes to you and tells, I think, you know, I've seen it or I really think something is true to it. And, and here is why I find that so interesting because when I haven't seen anything, but I have talked to people. I've, I think I said that on a podcast recently, I'm not an experiencer, but I'm an experiencer of experiences. What I see is I talk to people that, you know, that tell me what they've seen and, and, and again, you know, it, it doesn't make sense. You know, they're, they're down to earth. Some of them are driven by a weird energy. And I understand that's, you know, that's trying their intellect to close the cognitive gap that they're going through with what they thought that reality is and what they, what they now seen shaken, you know, so-called ontological shock. But, uh, but I, and that is infectious. I mean, I don't know, Andy, you, you've talked to many of those people. It probably, the more you've talked to them and the more, you know, rational minded, convincing, down to earth, trusting people. I've talked, I remember that two or three years ago, I talked to a, to a farmer, a potato farmer from Idaho who made an enormous amount of money with, uh, with, with airplanes that are spraying detergent over the potato flowers, you know, a rich person, but, but, and, and I really liked him a lot, but I wouldn't say that there was an incredible sign, you know, sci-fi imagination working in the background. And the story that he told me was absolutely amazing about, you know, missing time. I could go on. I was talking about my favorite case in Argentina. Uh, I think I shared, uh, with you a few information about that, about that anthropologist that went through, through the desert and has seen these orbs and tells this story. It's not making sense. It, these are trust. I trust them. I believe them. I can't believe what they say that they've seen because it's so outrageous, but I trust the people. And, and in that sense also, I guess the experience, the dimension of meaning and what this could be, and the people talking about that has some sort of infectiousness and don't get me wrong. That's not the infectiousness of a collective psychosis. It's just something that people have been doing for 150,000 years. And that's oral culture, talking about stuff and convincing your next and neighbor about the story, because that is something that has convinced you. And that's something that in modernity kind of has lost its value. And I regret that. I think we're much too, much too visual. Yeah. Do you know, I think when it comes to the UFO topic, I'll go by the mantra that we can't all be right, but we can all be wrong. Um, so I think that covers a lot of the topic for me in regard to those conversations. I think that was my, my biggest takeaway from, from Saul was getting to speak to folks who have some incredibly lofty positions across so many different disciplines, people who generically create incredible medicines, perform incredible medical feats, would be at the higher end of businesses, academia, and that they would come and chat and say hi. They listened to this podcast, which was lovely to hear from folks and space agencies coming and speaking to me who were like, I don't want my name mentioned. Um, I, uh, want to introduce myself. Um, love this topic. They would either share an incredible experience. I could, you know, here, here's a different one for you. I, um, had a book signing just to get away from Saul for a minute. Uh, people are sick of that. I had a book signing, uh, in a small town in Scotland last month, month, September, September time. Um, and around 40 people, which was sold out. So, you know, go me, um, uh, turned up and I'd say, I'd say a third of the people in the room knew who I was, maybe half. The other half were just folks who attended these types of things and events cause it's a small town. And one of the gents came up to me who in the town is pretty well known because of his business. Um, and he was so well dressed and bit older sixties, you know, definitely sixties at least. And, um, he was like, I just love a few minutes of your time privately, if you don't mind. And, um, he told me his background. He told me kind of why he doesn't talk about that stuff with people. Um, he didn't know me or the podcast, but he, he had, there was a UFO book signing thing and he's like, can I show you a video that I took? And genuinely it might be one of the best UFO videos I've ever seen. And I'm only really thinking and saying that now, um, he didn't send me it, but it's a video that he took daylight, which I always love at daytime on his phone. And it, you know, when someone's of a certain age and they try and show you something on their phone and it takes them ages to find it because they're still not too sure on apps and the camera roll and he's the glasses and he's scrolling up and down. And if he is listening to this, then I hope I'm doing the story justice. And he says, you know, I saw this thing and I know everyone. It's one of those villages. You went, everyone knows everyone. And because of the job this guy does in his position, he was like, everyone knows me. And I saw this thing, imagine a kind of Calvin-esque background backdrop. And he said, this thing just goes across the sky. And quite often people send me videos and I'll say, it looks like it's balloons or it looks like it's birds. This wasn't any of these. This was very clearly something silver metallic, not too high up either going across a pretty clear sky with the green hills in the background. Um, there was house, there was a kind of farmhouse in the distance that gave me an idea how high off the ground it was. And it was very clearly spinning and you could see the three parts of this thing spinning and it just keeps going. And I was like, that's really clear. And I thought when the guy was telling me this, I went, it's going to be bullshit. It's not going to be clear. It's not going to be a, it's going to be balloons. And I'm happy to say to someone that looks like a party balloon. That looks like a bunch of balloons. It genuinely, I was like, I, in my head, I'm racking my brain going, what could that be? Because even though I do this, I want to go, it's got an explanation. Genuinely, fucking stumped. I was like, mate, that is a very good video. He said he even called the people who lived in the farmhouse at the time to say, did you know blah, blah, blah. Nope. He said there was also lights reported that night, et cetera, in the area. People around there know each other, they phoned each other. And genuinely one of the best UFO videos I've ever seen. Was there, was there a second witness to that? It didn't like, like for somebody else? Not, not that I spoke to, but other people had said they had saw the same thing. Other folks in the village reported over a day or so, they had seen silver object going across the sky, but the guy had a really good video. And like I say, if you saw it, you wouldn't be able to look at it and go, it's a flying saucer on a desk. Looking back, imagine if someone took three kind of not balls, but kind of maybe egg shaped objects and stuck them together. So they were like, you know, three and a sort of triangle, but they just rotated, but it moved and it didn't. It's like a sixties furniture piece. Yeah. Like a lampshade, like your aunties would have, or your granny would have a lampshade like this. Yeah. And it was, but it was there and I was like, Jesus, it was so good. But anyway, I can't remember the point of telling you that, but that, that for me was such an interesting video. No, I know the point. The point is really fascinating because what you've just done is now you've kind of confirmed, I think I all, all the audience I'm talking to you right now at the moment, look at yourself and look at how this, what Andy has been reported, how you are evaluating that. Because I really think, you know, we've been talking about the infectiousness of, of narratives and, and of course it could be true that both you and I are just talking bullshit. I mean, you're, you know, you're having a podcast and you don't have interest in people listening to you. And I'm a scientist who enjoys the audience and the publicity. But if we take that aside and that what you've just reported, which I'm, you know, doubtlessly has happened, then this is exactly that moment where, where this, this story translates into something, the way that you've introduced that, introduced that elderly gentleman, it, you know, it's not making, it's just not making much sense. Why would he do that? If that's the story that happened, why, you know, of course, you know, he could have fun in, in, I don't know, having, having gaslightings and, and try to get the conversation. I mean, you know, it might be that the CIA or whoever has 150,000 people cleverly placed all across this globe, permanently seeding those stories because they cover up a very deep tech project that they're working with. But I don't know. You know, I, I think we would have heard more about that, uh, apart from the story that we read in the Washington Journal that was suggesting that this was the case, but doing that in a very, very unprofessional way, in my opinion. Christian, what I want to do, because we have been going nearly two hours now, I, full disclosure, uh, is not the name of this episode, but, um, I had a whole format for this episode and it has gone completely out the window. Um, I've still got, well, half the interview at least that I wrote down. What I'd love to do is kind of wrap up and invite you back on in a couple of weeks time or before Christmas, after Christmas, if you can, because there's so many different ways I'd love to go with this. And I think people would perhaps want to send in some questions as well to, to close off on. Is there any final point you would like to make just to kind of wrap up? Perhaps you're thinking where you're at, you know, where do you think this is going to go based on someone like yourself's involvement, the articles you've written, being at Sol, the people you've spoken to, where are we at? Yeah. The, the, I think we haven't, we literally haven't talked about, you know, what I said at Sol and, and I've gotten some, some really good feedback. I, I think there was a substance to that. I mean, I don't know if you heard that and if you liked it, but, and you wouldn't say something else, but, uh, but the, the point that, that I would like to make is that people, I know it's, it's not, you know, I can't go with, and, and the, you know, the, the truth of the story is this and that. I'm not there yet. What I want to do is I want to tell people that I really think that the social and the political dimension of this topic is something that has been to a certain degree under, underestimated over time. I think there are ways that you can approach that. If you would want to talk to me about that at one point, I'm happy to do so. Uh, I think that the reality of the UAP topic, both off the topic and the way that it, you know, unfolds in society is much more complex than some of the discussions that we're having on that. And, and, and I think that we're all, we're all at the beginning here. And, and if I, you know, people that I talk to and, and they say, Chris, when it comes to politics, you have a rather bleak assessment of the situation. And I'm, I'm, I'm, it sounds so there is not so much we can do because it's deeply ingrained in the way that politics and political institutions are working. And, and, you know, there's this sovereignty dilemma and how to get out of that. And, um, that's not what I would like to transport. I appreciate the discussion that the both of us are having here. I appreciate the discussion that happens in a science that start to circle around the UAP topic. I'm not calling it UAP studies, because I don't think that that's where we're at. We're far away from that. You know, it's still such a founding phase and so many conflicting and differing and, and the interdisciplinarity is not regulated, blah, blah, blah. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be done, but there, there is a crystallization that takes place. And also what I appreciate is that I have witnessed instances of talking to people who are not in the UAP camp that start taking that seriously to a certain degree, maybe because they realize that all their life, they've been going to the movies and watch sci-fi that we're telling them stories about ETs all along, but there seems to be some sort of a magic line that they drew that, you know, this is where reality starts and that's where my imagination ends. And maybe that there are over blurring areas. So the discussion is opening up and, uh, and the last, you know, the last call that I would make is, uh, don't, I know that within the UAP society community and also within the, the, the disclosure community, science already comes in with some sort of a backpack. You know, you're always asking the complex questions and we need to progress from here and, you know, we have to ramp up and we have to prepare and talk about on the logical and catastrophic disclosure and blah, blah, blah. I think it's good to be careful. And I think it's good to make small steps at first because the dimension, the potential dimension of this is enormous. And, and I'm not saying that people will, you know, will disappear or civilization, you know, is going to implode or whatever. I don't think actually that there is so much of a catastrophic disclosure because one thing that we know about people and, and societies and political entities is that they're incredibly adaptive. We're permanently underestimating the power of the human mind, the imagination, the way that we're progressing intellectually. There is a lot of adaptive potential, but it needs to be framed. And, and, you know, it's, it's not coming from itself. So try to make small step to be ready for big steps that might come rather sooner than later. I still hope. That's all for this episode of That UFO Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and watching. If you enjoyed the show, please follow, subscribe, and leave a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps others find the show. If you're watching on YouTube, hit like, subscribe, and turn on notifications so you don't miss future episodes. You can also support the show directly and get early access, add free episodes and bonus content on Patreon, or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube memberships. All the links are over at thatufopodcast.com or in the show description below, along with merchandise and more. Don't forget, you can also pick up a copy of my book, Atlas of Unidentified Flying Objects, available now in all good bookstores and through online retailers, including Amazon. Big thank you again to all of you for listening and tuning in. Until next time, keep looking up. You never know what you might see. Odoo is where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload. No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you are just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process so you can focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.