Exploring Psionic Phenomena & UFOs: An In-Depth Conversation with James Hodgkins

Instagram teen accounts have built-in protections for who can contact teens and what they see. Learn more about teen accounts at Instagram.com slash teenaccounts. Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload. Udo is the all-in-one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR. Fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business. Thousands have already made the switch. Why not you? Try Udo for free at O-D-O-O dot com. That's Udo dot com. This is Jim Simovan, and you are listening to That UFO Podcast. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to That UFO Podcast. My name is Andy, and today my guest is one of Skywatcher's psionic assets. Joining me to discuss consciousness, psi phenomena, UFOs, and more is James Hodgkins. James, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, Andy. Really good to have you on. Very excited to have you on. There's a lot we can discuss. A lot of folks may have seen your interviews you've done with James Eindoli on Engaging the Phenomenon, on with Ryan Robbins or UFO Jesus, some folks know, post-disclosure. Really great interviews. Folks should go and check those out. There's been a little bit of a gap between those. I think Ryan's about five months ago that came out. James's about three months ago. Those are the two I've seen recently, and it's great to have you on. Skywatcher, just in the last hour, not even hour as we record this, have released a little bit of a statement and some information, which we'll get to. But James, let's talk about you, first of all, before we get into all of that. I'd love to know your earliest interest in not only the UFO topic, but given your own abilities. Is that the word to use? What was your first experience of psi phenomena? Yeah, so psi has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Actually, my earliest memory as a child, I fell off a kitchen counter when I was four years old. I hit my head, broke my arm, and I still to this day can clearly see I separated from my body. So I could see my physical form on the ground in the kitchen, and then my consciousness or my vision basically floating above, watching myself crying in pain. And that's one of those experiences that stuck with me still to this day, 30-plus years later. And growing up, you know, there wasn't a lot of acceptance of these topics. I grew up, you know, in Texas. These ideas were not all that comfortable to be talked about with friends and family. So my childhood was kind of a series of these experiences. And I really kind of had to stumble through that. I'm also old enough where the Internet wasn't really a big thing. So, you know, you had, I joke, you had Barnes & Noble's New Age section. That was about it to explore these topics. But conversely, to psi, UFOs and, you know, today UAPs were a very accepted topic in my house. My grandfather was an Air Force intelligence officer. He actually was deployed on TDY to Roswell in 47. My mother was actually born there in 1950. And, you know, grandfather was a very closed-lit person. But my mom and I used to joke about this all the time. You know, she actually would say she's an alien-human hybrid, you know, all sorts of fun about that. But as a typical kid does, because it was so accepted, I was actually a little bit less interested in the UFO topic. I always found psi and consciousness and esotericism, mythology, et cetera, more interesting. And fast forward to 2003. I had just turned 19 years old and had my first major contact experience, complete with missing time, about three hours, and I was physically moved about a mile away from my last conscious memory. And similarly, I knew this is a topic that's too far out there. So I just internalized this. I was in college, went about my life. You know, the psi experiences, frankly, just continued apace throughout my 20s and 30s. Had a very normal, mundane career in technology. And then a couple of years ago, I just realized I wanted to do something, like, big and important when it came to the overlap of psi and also UAPs. You know, UAP's topic had really taken off around 2017, you know, with the tic-tac. It was a lot more in the news. And then, you know, there were a few books that really spoke to me back in those days about the overlap between these two topics. And that became my primary focus is the role of consciousness in understanding whatever this, you know, bucket term phenomenon actually means. And so two years ago, I got very serious about this. Started looking for whom else was in the space or looking to do something big in the space. It had similar backgrounds to me that were used to building things. Wanted to think like really big, you know, pie in the sky ideas. And, you know, there were a lot of early efforts and a lot of brainstorming as to where this was going to go. And that was where, you know, Skywatcher actually almost a year to right about now, like right around this time is when we were madly preparing for that first Skywatcher event. And putting together the psionic team for that was kind of my responsibility. And, yeah, it's been off to the races ever since. Was there any history of psi abilities or anything like that in your family? The Roswell connection is incredible because, you know, that just sounds too good to be true almost, doesn't it? And I take that you don't think there's any connection there between Grandfather being based at Roswell. It was just happenstance or was there something to that? I don't know. You know, the longer I explore these topics, the more I've noticed there are familial connections, whether it's on the UAP side or definitely on the psi side. You know, there's I mean, the idea of like psi running in the female side of a family over across multiple generations or multiple generations of witches. You know, you hear myths about that. I have found that to actually be very true. You know, I've spent a lot of time over the past two years just meeting and getting to know psychics and what's your background? How does this manifest for you? And what I've found is the overlap between UAP experiences and psi, I wouldn't say it's 100% universal, but it's very, very close. And the interesting question is, which came first? You know, for me, my psi experiences were, like I said, part of my earliest childhood. But there are other people I've met that had no interest, no experience in this in psychic phenomenon before, but maybe in their late 20s or 30s, they, you know, had a UFO experience could even be, you know, as simple as just a light in the sky that triggers something in them. And, you know, Valet has been reporting on this since the early 70s. And I feel like it's completely, I mean, obviously now it's all over the news or, you know, in our little circle of the internet. But before that, you know, it was treated as very nuts and bolts phenomenon. And there were people talking about this, just no one was listening. Yeah. Can I just bring you back before we go into Skywatcher and things like that as well? You've talked about a contact experience. There was a missing time episode you had when you were younger. Was that in your late teens? Yeah, I had just turned 19. Can you talk us through what happened there and just any details you can remember? Yeah. So I was up in Vermont, which is in the northeastern U.S. It's a very mountainous and forested rural state. And I was doing a summer study program there. There's nothing to do in the area on the weekends. And so my friends and I were just out exploring in the woods one night. It wasn't that late. It was maybe 9 or 10 o'clock. And then all of a sudden, as we're wandering around, I realize I've completely lost track of them. I start shouting for their names and I hear people saying, like, James, over here. James, over here. And I get this eerie feeling that this isn't actually my friends. I get really uncomfortable with it. And I also realize I've lost my bearings. You know, I didn't know how to get back to my dorm. I wasn't sure where I was exactly. And then my last conscious memory was I saw two beings on the edge of, like, a heavily wooded area that were backlit. And then that's where I black out. And I come to back in my dorm. I'm walking down the hall in my dorm. And I go to one of my friends' doors. I'm mad and I'm confused. And I bang on his door. And I'm like, what the heck, man? You know, you left me out there. He said, James, that was three hours ago. Like, we thought you went home. We lost track of you. And, yeah, that's just something I kind of had to sit with. But what's really interesting, and it wasn't until, you know, Jacques Vallée's Passport to Magonia is, like, very formulaic for me and was, like, my eureka moment of this didn't present as, like, a UFO experience to me. I didn't immediately think I didn't see a flying saucer. I didn't think I was being, you know, taken aboard a craft or anything like that. What it reminded me of was kind of a classic fairy experience. And my opinion, my understanding is the phenomenon chose to manifest itself in this way to me because that's more of my background. I like mythology. I like folklore. That's, you know, I was the kid that liked reading Greek classics, you know, in my teens and stuff in high school. And so the phenomenon said, okay, James will probably resonate with this a little bit better than he will, you know, little green men. And so that's what I saw. That's really interesting because I think when the few times I've touched on this kind of stuff on the podcast before, especially the lore, and when you go back hundreds of years, you mentioned fairies. That can be one that makes people kind of shrink back and go, oh, I don't talk about fairies. But the other reason I've never shared it. It's so Disney-fied because I think Tinkerbell straight away, like the whole cartoon Tinkerbell, maybe Julia Robertson, Hook, you know, but that's a fairy. But that's not a fairy in folklore, is it? That's not what they look like. And can you go into that at all as to what a fairy would be? Yeah, I mean, so the way that I, so let's talk about kind of these, let's call them other beings in general. So you have every culture on earth pretty much has a story of beings like this, whether it's the fairies, you know, which were even divided into multiple, they call them courts. And I'm going to butcher my Gaelic here, the Tuatha de Danon, which had a good court and a bad court in terms of aliens, or not aliens, in terms of fae. You also have, you know, the jinn in Arab cultures that predates Islam by a long time, wherein, you know, some of those, you know, as the mythology goes, some of those jinn have accepted Islam, and they're a good jinn, but they're also bad jinn out there. And it really has helped me understand, you know, people ask, like, is the phenomenon good or evil? I said, well, humans exist along the spectrum. There's no reason that other, you know, entities out there, and I'm not saying all of this is those classic folkloric beings, because it's certainly not. But I do think that plays an element there. And like you said, they're not, it's not Tinkerbell. But these are, the jinn lore is actually particularly well-developed in terms of talking about their entire societies of jinn, where they have political structures and economies, etc., that just lives a little bit outside of sync from the consensus reality that we understand today and we're able to experience. I know Jim Semivan, who's very well-known, worked with Two of the Stars and former CIA, he's been on this podcast and others, and he talks often about the jinn that always seems to come up when he's discussing these other beings and what they may or may not be. So that's really interesting, and they are just labels as to what we put on these things, and that's something I'll come back to when we discuss Skywatcher. So it's safe to say you've grown up with these, this phenomena or a phenomena all around you. It's been a part of your life growing up. And then you get to, in recent times, what happened that you got involved with Skywatcher? It sounds like it was a couple of years before we as the public got to know about the organization. Yeah, so it was about a year before. Like I said, I'd worked in technology for a long time, you know, had a successful career, still work in technology to this day. But I just, I reached a point in my life where I was really only sharing these experiences with my wife. You know, my family didn't know, a couple of my friends did, but largely this was an entirely interior experience of having these psychic experiences and exploring and studying these, you know, developing, you know, my own spiritual and meditation practice. And I got to a point where I just, and there's a great line, there's a podcaster named Gordon White talks about finding the others. And I just wanted to meet more people that were interested in trying to do something big and also have a chance and a reason to explore these topics in a lot greater detail. And so we started all this up about a year before Skywatcher really even came together. And at the time, I would say like Psy and UAP were treated as very separate topics. You know, I obviously, I wanted to go full tilt into Psy. You know, others wanted to go completely into the UFO topic. And so we started networking and meeting individuals. And I remember being at a dinner with some people that were in the know that are not necessarily in the public today. And the key takeaway that I got from that dinner was consciousness is fundamental to understanding this. And, you know, when people talk about reverse engineering and understanding the technology, my takeaway over the past two years of being pretty serious in this topic is that the lack of fundamental understanding of the role of consciousness and the effect it can have on physical reality is what has held back a lot of the exploration of these topics, a lot of the reverse engineering, if I'm being honest. And so we were going full tilt into, like I said, I spent a great deal of time simply meeting psychics and trying to understand more of what people were capable of. And, you know, the whole idea of HICE, human initiated contact was, I mean, it was around, you know, for a long time. Dr. Stephen Greer has been talking about CE5 for a long time, but meeting a great deal of people that not only could do, some of them first got into HICE and then found like they're, you know, capable of all sorts of other psychic abilities. But I guess it was, would have been like June or July last year was when we met, you know, Jake in particular. And when I first met Jake, he was still under a pseudonym. But when I first interacted with Jake, I previously had been a little bit like hands off on the side topic with whistleblowers. I just wasn't sure how comfortable they would be with it. And that was the first thing that Jake wanted to talk about. And so I realized like, okay, I have a kindred spirit here that understands, you know, the role that this plays in it. And true to form, you know, the whole idea for doing the first Skywatcher event that became that first documentary came together from like mid-July last year till right around this time. I actually think we were, you know, out in the desert around August 13th, something like that of last year. And, yeah, it's been, you know, I'm happy to talk about kind of the evolution of messaging and things like that, because I know it's definitely been in the news recently. Yeah, it certainly has. And as we record this, Skywatcher has been around publicly for the best part of eight months now. It was early in the year that News Nation broke the story. Ross Coulter with Jake Barber coming out that initial 44-minute, 45-minute show, which was then a longer two-and-a-half-hour interview, which I think helped give a lot of context to some of the things that Jake was talking about as well. So what was the work that was going on for you personally with Skywatcher before things went public? Yeah, so a lot of what we were doing was simply understanding the repeatability of this. You know, we put together, you know, setting aside the dog whistle, which came later. At first, it was purely psionics. And so we put together a team of individuals that all had demonstrable ability to do this and trying to understand under what conditions is this possible? And also, how can we push the envelope? You know, I know the public is very focused on Skywatcher delivering data and proof of the phenomenon, advancing disclosure, extremely important, of course. But on the psionic side, there's also the communication aspect, which is obviously much more challenging to document. So that's one of the areas that before things were coming out is how much can we understand about the phenomenon using more classic means of communication that are associated with psychics? Now, this gets into all sorts of issues around discernment, which I've talked about a great deal. And those types of messages, it's hard to know what to do with a lot of those. And if there's not an element of there that you can validate in the real world, it's interesting, but it's not that viable. And so we were spending a great deal of time trying to understand that. And like I said, this is a little bit before, you know, the dog whistle tech and all that jazz. But when the News Nation piece came out, you know, I met Ross, talked to Ross, and I was excited for it. But I, the focus on psionics, I think, how to frame this, I think the story, you know, the idea of crash retrieval in general, you know, that was the focus, obviously, of Ross's piece more than more than Skywatcher. And muddying the two, like this is one of the realizations that I've come to over the past year of doing this in the public, is that you kind of need to spoon feed some of this. You know, the idea of crash retrieval, I think the time has come for people to really grasp that. And I don't mean you and I and your audience. I mean, the general public. And so you need to get these messages out slowly and let them build over time. The idea that there are people out there that can literally initiate contact and, you know, ask a object in the sky to appear and it appears to be under intelligent control. So that's a big leap for most people out there. And I think the importance isn't speaking to an audience of you and I. It's trying to speak to the larger audience, because I do think that influencing a cultural understanding of that this is a reality and these, you know, these programs existed, these the phenomenon itself is diverse and complicated, but it is real and it's interacting with humanity. That's kind of that first step. And I think that's why, you know, Skywatcher has really taken not just the data driven approach, but the realization that there needs to be third party analysis of all this. Like you can put together, you know, a documentary of a lot of great footage and people can still tear that apart. You know, it's the age of AI. You know, people can say it's AI or I saw, you know, with the second Skywatcher documentary there was people comparing it to, you know, a flock of birds, ducks or something, I think. And like, those are all, I guess, fair criticism. So the gap, you know, and, you know, which you said Skywatcher had issued a statement about today. It's a lot of work to line up that level of analysis where it's actually third party peer reviewed. I had, I participated in completely outside of Skywatcher, some consciousness scientific research. And I had no idea how complex it was to get, you know, from the collection methodology, the research methodology, the independent review board. There is a ton of work that goes into those. And it has to be done, frankly, beforehand because you have to engage in that research and that data collection under really strict control mechanisms for it to be admissible. And so that explains kind of the evolution, in my mind, that the release schedule has gone through is that, you know, the first documentary for Skywatcher was largely a human interest story. You know, it was a lot about Jake and the rest of the team. The second one was a lot more, you know, of the video footage that everyone was asking for. And then there was a realization that like, okay, now people are, you know, calling this into question and the time to line up the actual, you know, analysis to prove that this is truly anonymous. Yeah. I'm going to try in my own head, keep the, the questions I've got. And there's so many I want to ask you and I could go off in tangents all day here and I'll miss stuff and people will shout at me for doing so. The crash retrieval stuff. It's interesting. You say that from back in the initial piece, really, I think people, when they saw the, there was going to be like the video with the egg being retrieved. Yeah. It was a very small part of the interview and it's, it's strange that you would have thought, I think before the interview, James, if someone said to me, whistleblowers coming forward, we're going to see a video of a crash retrieval. We're going to see the object. We're going to see it being lifted up. We're also going to hear about his experience, et cetera, et cetera. You would have thought that would have been the big takeaway and what would have had the lasting impact in the legacy. And it didn't, it almost happened. I don't know if that was a presentation issue. And I wonder how you feel at the time, because there seemed to be, we've got this piece of footage, which isn't necessarily from Jake. It's not a part of the story. We're just showing this alongside the story. Now that could be for all kinds of reasons. They want to keep that separation there. Perhaps it was Jake's video. Maybe it wasn't. They're not going to come out and say that, but it seemed to confuse things a little bit. Do you think then that whole presentation could or should have been done differently? Well, I think this is the challenge with presenting any of this information is in line with what I just called out. The fact that it doesn't matter. I feel, and I actually, there are people at Skywasher that completely disagree with me. I am not sure that any raw footage in and of itself is going to convince anyone in 2025. I think there are just far too many ways to fake footage. You need to, you know, footage like that, that is so shocking. You know, there needs to be like a clear chain of custody. Like where did this originate? Where was it filmed? Enough information that people can actually go validate and vet something like that. You know, it's almost like treating it as evidence, if you will, you know, in like an investigation. And so that's, I think is probably one of the key lessons learned. And the reason that so much time has been spent on independent analysis for, you know, the data that has been collected since then is trying to show like, look, we've had this analyzed by independent experts that aren't, you know, like the, there are a lot of highly technical people on the Skywatcher team, but at the end of the day, they're not academics. They're not researchers and getting someone that has no vested interest in Skywatcher's success to say, yes, this is truly an anomalous. And we, we can't find a prosaic explanation. I think that's the next step. And I think the egg video was so shocking and I don't know the entire provenance of it to be clear that it makes you, it makes you question all of it, you know? Do you know what? In terms of footage, I've said, I think the same as a lot of folks, and I think you're kind of alluding to it there as well, James, that especially in the advent of, of really good quality AI videos coming out. I saw an argument yesterday online that kind of went viral in the UK of bunny rabbits jumping on a trampoline. And loads of people, loads of folks thought this was real. Did you see it? Yeah. And loads of folks are arguing, oh my God, it looks so real. I'm really disappointed. And it was like, well, yeah. And it literally is folks like 20 bunny rabbits on a trampoline jumping up and down as if someone's caught it on their ring doorbell at night. So there is the argument that do photographs and video evidence mean as much anymore? However, and I'm going to, I'm going to put Skywatchers, what they've released so far publicly into the same basket as everything else we've got, including the egg video, including any of the stuff that's come out from Jeremy Corbell, George Knapp, anything Ross has presented, anything Stephen Greer has shown, all that kind of stuff. The Navy videos, the Nimitz stuff, the tic-tac-to-gimble, there's still quite a large element of yes, but it could be. So if we saw something truly spectacular, I think that could change public perception or at least allow more questions to be asked on a bigger scale. Because it always seems like, for example, the egg video perspective, it's like night vision, isn't it? And you're looking down and then loads of folks straight away. It's a big balloon. It's a tank or something. And the unfortunate thing is I'm willing to look at these things and I'll take these things, you know, and hold them at face value. It could be a genuine UAP, UFO craft. But I can also see why folks come out and say it's a balloon, it's a tank. And until we get something other, same with the videos that come out of, we hear so much that it then moved off at incredible speed. This video then shot off an incredible angle. Same with the tic-tac of the go fast video. It changed 90 degrees. We don't get to see that. So there's always a yes, but it could be. And same with some of the stuff that Skywatcher's put out so far. It seems to be very much, like you said, an educational piece at the moment. And I'll get into maybe has the messaging changed from what Skywatcher initially said and Jake Barber himself. I personally feel, I've just got a note down here that initially it seemed that we can do this. We can bring these things down. And I don't think it's unfair to say it was made to sound like they could land them right in front of yourself, like it was parking a car. However, it then seemed within weeks to months, that messaging changed to actually where we're going to. And it was like, that wasn't how it sounded initially. So around the footage then, Skywatcher have released a few videos by now. And it does come across up to me recording this the 1st of August. It's more educational. We've got videos of objects in the sky. Is there still right now a limitation on the technology that Skywatcher has access to, to allow it to film or record these things with a higher fidelity or accuracy? That would leave a lot less room for debate among skeptics. So there's no limitation on the technology. Limitation is really on trying to document a phenomenon that isn't always particularly cooperative. And I remember, you know, the first, the first documentary that we filmed, we were out there for four or five days, I forget. And the first three days, frankly, was the camera crew trying to figure out how to document this in the first place. And, you know, like saying like which part of the sky is it going to come out around and also, you know, understanding that low light footage. And we actually used a award winning film crew for this. And since then, the technology has only gotten more advanced in terms of optics to actually document this. But as you've seen in some of those videos, some of this phenomenon, and I think, you know, James Fowler has talked about this publicly. Not all of that that is being shared is negative to human eye. And so some of that is more, and I'm not technical enough to know the terminology, but outside of the visible spectrum, and some of that is what is being shared. Getting, there is plenty of footage, you know, that Skywatcher has captured of, you know, things that are close enough that is visible and that, you know, people are able to make sense of out there. But once again, I think to your earlier point and what I've been saying is I don't know like how without there being analysis and saying this third party actually validated this, people are just going to say it was made up. And to your point about, you know, the Tic Tac video and all that, like I remember when that came out in, you know, I guess eight years ago now, that was covered in major mainstream news outlets because of the Air Force footage or no, I'm sorry, Navy footage, correct? Yeah. Um, and so there is a, once again, there's kind of that like veracity that comes with the fact that this is recorded Air Force footage. And as you said, we didn't get to see the whole thing. And so Skywatcher being a private entity that, you know, I think has a lot of brand recognition in our corner of the internet doesn't have that in the general public today. And so getting that third party documentation, once again, keeping the eye on the prize, isn't convincing you and I, it's convincing the general public. There needs to be more work done on the analysis front. Yeah. And just to bring my point back, so it's not me having a go at Skywatcher for this, this is a UFO community problem. Is we hear that, um, Dave Fravor through himself or the equipment on his, on his, um, aircraft at the time, the F whatever he was flying, managed to catch very high fidelity, 100, 1080, 4k footage of that tic-tac very close to him. We don't get to see that. I think if we managed to see that and forget the UFO community who would argue to the cows came home, James, you know, they would, that it was AI, it was fake, it was government. It was a, whatever, a projection. If the public saw that tonight, 6 p.m., 8 p.m., whatever the big news slots are in the United States, 9, 9 p.m. is a big one here in the UK. And you put that on there and showed, here's this thing that we heard about from 2004 within 10 to 20 feet of the aircraft and you saw that object as described floating, sitting there in midair, not even shooting away. See, it was a still. I think that could potentially advance the conversation, at least to the point of this is clearly some very strange technology, but it always seems we don't get that. And I think that's perhaps the hope here. And I know you can't speak on it around and Jake saying what Jake said, maybe the messaging changed. But larger picture here, I think Skywatcher have promised a lot, not necessarily through their own fault. I think people have latched on to, okay, maybe Jake Barber and this organization have something here. And I think Jake put the 12-month timestamp on it where, you know, we can really show some big results within that time. And I think it's almost like a real hope that Skywatcher can come through for the UFO community here and you've got the military guys, you've got some tech guys, you've got psionic assets we're going to get to in a second. You know, it just seems like there's so many good aspects and elements of what Skywatcher are potentially going to be. And it's just like, please do something here that others have promised and failed to deliver on. And don't let us down. Do you feel that? Do you feel that responsibility? I mean, this was why we all signed up to do this in the first place, was to show people. It wasn't to simply collect data. And to be clear, you know, I'm 98% convinced there are other groups that have been doing this completely in secret for a number of years with no intention of sharing that data externally. You actually hit on, you know, Fravor's footage was captured at random. Like that wasn't planned. They weren't, you know, tasked to go intercept the tic-tac. And so with Skywatcher, you're talking about, you know, there is a specific location where this is being done. You know, they're calling it in, whether it's psionically or via the dog whistle. And it's almost like, you know, this is probably very derogatory almost. It's almost like saying, I'm going to be in a specific area and I hope this one rare animal comes up and lets me get just incredible footage of it. And that's what is being worked towards. Um, I also think that's where, um, you know, the technology has gotten a lot better, but I keep going back to the analysis because even that ooh and ah footage that in there have been some, you know, things from other groups that I think is pretty incredible. I still think we need to, um, as much as the UFO community matters to us, you do need to keep your eye on how the general public is going to perceive this. Yeah. One of the things I've talked about a few times now in the podcast, James, is how Skywatcher are funded. Um, and it's privately funded. And I think something that does have going for it is that it's not reaching out to folks asking for money. It's not asking for funding. Not that there's anything wrong with groups doing that, but there's an optic, there's a look to that and there's probably added pressure and responsibility. Skywatcher having that private funding seems to really benefit it that as there are almost perhaps it doesn't owe people the amount of transparency it's had so far. And that's something I see leveraged against Skywatcher online is they aren't transparent. They're not giving us enough updates. They're not publicly funded. This is still a privately funded organization that's giving us updates because they want to rather than they have to. So you're right that Skywatcher is privately funded and, you know, that does give a lot of extra flexibility, um, that other groups, um, might not necessarily have. And it also allows for more advanced technology and more frequent, um, frequent attempts at this. And to be clear though, when, you know, the criticism is that, oh, you know, Skywatcher is going to use this data for nefarious purposes, Skywatcher would have never gone public if that were the case. Um, you wouldn't, you know, see Jake, Fred, everyone else, you know, kind of come out in the public, dox themselves, if you will. So, um, if there wasn't an intention to, to handle this information in a responsible way to the public, similarly, you know, for myself, like I was really, really mixed feelings on whether or not I want, you know, my face was in the news nation documentary. I, I, at first I was like, oh gosh, I hope no one recognizes me. And I was worried this was going to jeopardize, you know, my more mundane career. It hasn't thankfully, but a lot of us put a lot on the line to go do this. And I, I get the fear of, you know, that there is private funding involved, but how else someone has to pay for this? Um, and if you want it to happen quickly, um, you know, there, there are people that have been working at this for 20, 30 years. Um, but the time feels right for it and it takes a big private sector effort in order to advance that. You have to work within the means that you have available today. I joke that it'd be, you know, great if the, there was someone like the Medici's around that were funding Leonardo da Vinci, you know, to paint his masterpiece, but we don't have patrons anymore. We have this system that we have to work with them. Do you enjoy working in that system? And I wonder, again, this will be a personal, personal point of view. Do you feel there's a pressure to perform and produce results based on the funding you received or receive, or do you feel quite relaxed that you're allowed to go about your work and the, the overall work of the organization without that pressure from, from the backers? So Skywatcher was very careful in the, uh, investors that it actually aligned with. And so the, and I, this was a really pleasant surprise and this long predates Skywatcher. This is just one, we were trying to figure out what to do. There were a lot of very wealthy people that are afraid of the ridicule of being involved in these spaces, but that want to leave some lasting legacy. And so what is their ability to participate? It's to provide money for instances like this. Thankfully, Skywatcher had the business network, um, because not all of us come from within government or public sector to be able to find those individuals and to, you know, bring them into this. So while I said, you know, there isn't a great patronage system out there today, these are people that have a philanthropic interest in seeing disclosure advanced in society. Great. Let's, let's talk about the work you're doing and the actual, you know, the work you're doing on a day-to-day basis. Start off with, for anyone who's maybe not followed it too closely or is new to the topic or is unsure, what exactly is a psionic asset? Because I feel I'm talking about you as if you're a product, but you know, what, what is a psionic asset? Yeah, I, to be honest, I don't love that term. Um, it's, it is a very old term. Um, it actually dates back, um, you know, Soviets had what was called a psychotronic program. Um, and so that's kind of where its psionic asset came from in the U S intelligence community. And in essence, I guess to put a label on a psionic asset is someone that is able to access information and influence outcomes non-locally. And what I mean by non-locally is without a, uh, physical medium in the sense of we don't have to go out and touch something or use a bit of technology to get an effect. And so that could be, you know, on the communication side, but in, you know, obviously what we're talking about here is what is affectionately known as human initiated contact experience, you know, kind of reaching out to the universe as it were, and asking for, um, one of these UAPs to make itself visible. Um, they then respond in a number of ways. Some of them aren't very cooperative, but are willing to show themselves others. You can telepathically, uh, ask them things like, Hey, go closer to the big dipper, go closer to Orion, flash your lights, et cetera. Um, and so sometimes, like I said, it's hit or miss as to what level of responsiveness you're going to get. And what does the setup for that look like? If, if Jake Barber's, uh, in charge on the day or whoever's working things out and it's, it's sidey on the calendar and you're, you're called along cause you don't live there 24 seven. Like I think, I think some folks think you guys are all out there in trailers just waiting on stuff happening or making stuff happening. But if it's your day, James, and you're called along and Jake says, you're up, what does that whole process then look like? Yeah. So typically there's a variety and I'll use the term experiment here, but I'm using it very, very liberally, uh, in the sense of recognizing, I'll just say, that is one thing. I wasn't sure what to call the actual process of what you were going to do, but yeah, fair enough. Test test is probably a better word. Um, wherein, I mean, sometimes it's as basic as like the team of psychics, psionic assets that are used, like are very, are quite reliable. And so, you know, if you have five individuals out there, sometimes, uh, some people just have bad days. Um, to be clear, like this isn't a laboratory setting. You know, this is, um, often in a hundred, a hundred Fahrenheit plus, um, temperature. It's the, uh, the setting is very austere. And so there's a understanding, there's a belief, I should say that psychics need to be in like a perfect mental state in order to do this. And I went into this, assuming that myself and found that not being the case. So I'm, you know, for the most part, we can often do this on very little sleep and uncomfortable conditions, et cetera. And then we'll set up a number of tests, let's call them. That could be as simple as like, you know, we're going to be, uh, pointing the cameras at this quadrant. Let's go out there and do this. Um, additionally, we can do, um, some of the more interesting tests we did was, um, and my, uh, this is how I actually got doxed on the News Nation piece, um, was I was blindfolded and we had another psionic asset and the cameras were looking at the sky while I said, I think I've established contact. And then, um, being able to coordinate like, okay, James said this, he's sensory deprived, can't hear, can't see. Um, are we able to see something moving intelligently in the sky? So it really kind of runs the gamut. Um, with the dog, with the dog whistle, it's gotten much more, I mean, dog whistle is a piece of technology. It's going to be more reliable than, than humans are. Um, I want to be very clear on that in terms of repeatability, you know, the dog whistle doesn't get tired. Um, you know, it doesn't, doesn't care that it's, uh, you know, a hundred degrees outside and it's uncomfortable. And so that has made it much more repetitious, um, and has also led to, because of that frequency, you know, you've seen the classification system that Skywatcher has put out that has gotten much more varied because of the frequency with which they can do that. You're right. No one is out there full time. Um, you know, everyone has lives and families, et cetera. Um, how dare you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, but when they're out there, you know, it, um, the dog whistle is, uh, very effective and it allows, uh, you know, the psychics, the psionic team to focus on, you know, a little bit more of like trying to learn about communication. Um, you know, what messages can we receive? Can we validate them? Et cetera. How, how do you feel once that, you know, you say you, you think you've got, you've established con contact or communication. Do you have a different feeling about you? Do you have a sensation as it as simple as myself and yourself are talking now and you just, Oh, okay. I think that's it. What's that like? So for me, and this, this varies widely depending on who does it. I have two different responses. Um, one, one is common that other people get where like, it feels like there's cobwebs or like shrink wrap around the top of your head. Um, and if you want to get Eastern about that, that's your crown chakra. Um, that seems to be activating and connecting to something that's usually like if I'm blindfolded doing it and I get that feeling, I know I've gotten a response. One other one that's interesting for spontaneous encounters is I get a vibration behind my right ear. Um, and I jokingly call it my early warning radar, wherein if I'm not actively like trying to, um, engage in contact, but I feel that I can say like, get the cameras out, something's here. Um, and it's fairly reliable. What's the, the communication or link like when you're connected to one of these objects? Is there, is it like a steady stream? You know, when you've got, when you're on a good phone call and you know, you've got a good connection, you can hear it. We have a good connection here. We can see and hear each other clearly. Do you get times where it's less strong? There's interference. It breaks up. There's lag. What's the actual connection like between these objects? Sure. So this gets into, you know, are you familiar with the idea of like the clairs as it's called like clairaudience, clairsentience, clairvoyance. I know the phrase clairvoyance. Yeah. Yeah. So there, these abilities manifest in each person differently and each of us kind of have, you know, it's like going to the gym. You have one thing you're naturally good at. Um, and then the other things are a little bit of a struggle. So for me, clairaudience is my strength. So I am able to communicate better than I can, you know, like clairvoyance, which most people are familiar with. I'm not the strongest at that, but I can hear very clearly. And for me, what that sounds like, and it sounds like what you hear about from, um, people with mental health issues is it's like having a separate inner monologue in your head, um, to where, you know, it will sometimes have a feminine voice, sometimes a masculine voice, but it's not what you, when you hear your own inner monologue, it's like something else is, uh, is communicating in there. And it is usually a very reliable question and answer ability to your point about the telephone. It's usually quite clear. Um, there seem to be some variables that interfere with it. Um, you know, Schumann resonance in terms of solar activity, there's a lot of theories floating around out there. And how do you discern? And I suppose I'm going to ask this from a general public skeptics point of view that James isn't just getting these voices in his head. I only found out recently that not everyone has an inner monologue. Apparently my wife doesn't, and my wife can't see pictures in her head either. I, and I had a whole conversation with her about how like, well right now, and I'm doing it with you, James, I am walking down the street I lived in, in Glasgow and yet there's trees on my right hand side. I can see over there it's nighttime, but I can change it to daytime. That's just normal for me. And my wife was like, no, I can't do that, which I find really strange. So delineate. Yeah. Yeah. Let me distinguish between the two. It's hard. Um, and this is why I've talked about this publicly a lot. And I always bring this up that discernment is very critical when people engage in these practices. And it's very easy to, you know, quote unquote, get lost in the wilderness and think that every little thing that you're hearing in your head has some degree of truth on it, you know, uh, truth to it. Um, and that might be, you know, they're from Zeta Reticuli or, you know, representatives of the Galactic Federation, et cetera. Those things are interesting and I'm not going to say like, I don't get messages like that, but unless they can actually in that question and answer dialogue, provide information that I could never have had access to or visibly demonstrate that when I telepathically ask move closer to the big dipper and on camera, it zips over to the big dipper or flash your lights three times and it does it near instantaneously. That's what matters to me. All of that, like I get, I get asked all the time for like, what channeled messages do you receive? And I get them. I don't want to share them though, because I don't have any way of validating that type of information. And that's why I think, you know, a lot of psychics and I've had friends that, you know, I have to be kind of like come back to reality that struggle with that. And the line can quickly turn into delusions if you spend all of your time focused in that world. That's why I think, you know, having a mundane life outside of doing this is super important. You know, I, I joke at the end of the day, I still have to go be a parent. I still have a full-time job I have to do. And all this keeps me really grounded that when I'm ready to, to engage in the psychic practices, you know, I turn it on and we do it. And then I shut it back off. It's not something I leave open all the time. I can, I can appreciate that perhaps not from having any kind of abilities of my own, but doing the UFO podcast stuff, people ask me how I balance that with a full-time job and a family and the life outside of it. And I'm like, well, I'm not always researching 24 seven. I don't call it. I do research because I think that's an insult to researchers out there personally. Um, but I have to switch off from it and I don't check my XR Twitter account all day because when I did three or four years ago, you get too sucked into it and it drives you mad and you need to disconnect it. Do you know what? I've not looked up any UFO news for two days and I've had people give me shit. I did the, the trolling stuff and the shit online. I don't get a lot of it. It doesn't bother me though. I genuinely don't care. It's not an invite folks, but you know, you get like a shitty email or DM and it's like, I'm pushing a trolley in Tesco with my kid in it. Who's kicking me in the nuts as I, as I walk around and you're trying to stop everything falling out the top of the trolley. One of them needs a toilet and you're like, oh, and that's, it grounds you, doesn't it? And that's good to hear. And it makes a lot of sense from your point of view, how you need that separation from it. Um, I'm going to pull you back into it now though. The, the objects themselves, I, I've spoken to and heard people like Diana Pasulka mention that perhaps calling them craft isn't even an appropriate way to refer to them. And I wonder what's your take on, on what these objects may actually be. And is that a fair point to raise that craft might not even be the right term? I a hundred percent agree with that. And I mentioned books that were very important to me. American cosmic was one of those that like a lot of things clicked when I read Pasulka's book, her first book. I completely agree with that statement in the sense of, I am not sure, particularly with human initiated contact, how physical all of these, these UAPs, these orbs, whatever you want to call them are. I actually don't think many of them necessarily are craft. Now, that being said, there have been times that I've encountered things that have a much more materialist feel to them. During that, that drone flap that we had in the US here in the state of New Jersey, I live farther up the coast in New England, we were having a similar flap and, you know, went out, did, did my thing, you know, on the coast. And that was a almost like startlingly different experience as to what showed up. And I know people have talked about, are those, you know, whatever other countries, I definitely think, you know, it was not just NHI that we're talking about here. There was a plethora of things going on, but whatever it was, was responsive to human initiated contact. And it had a much more physical appearance. When I do these types of, you know, let's instead of craft, let's call them orbs. When you get the typical orb response, there's almost like a very ethereal introspective feeling to it. It makes you, you know, like the, the first time the whole team was out doing the first documentary, we would just sit at like, sit there at night after we were done filming, like contemplating the mysteries of the universe. Like it's very ethereal. But that's not to discount the fact that there's been technology that's been recovered by, you know, governments, other different private sector groups, and there's biologics out there. And so I think one of the undercurrents or one of the ideas that I always try to encourage people to consider is this isn't one thing that we're encountering. It's a plethora of things. And you hear, you know, Dr. Nolan talks about, you know, they're, they're from here, you know, that kind of like crypto terrestrial hypothesis. Jake even talked about, you know, this, I think it was on the News Nation piece, seeing one of these just like come up straight out of the ground. We're not even talking about like USOs coming out of the ocean, but no, this is so trans medium that it's able to literally come out of the ground, which would imply some type of extra dimensional component. And I think when these things kind of phase out, I don't think they're cloaking necessarily. Maybe that plays a role in it. I think they're just kind of blinking out of our reality. And some of the messages, and I've talked about this publicly, so I can, I can state it again here, um, one of the messages that I've received about them is that when we engage in human initiated contact, much of what is being manifested are essentially thought forms. Um, and these beings, whatever they are, are then able to kind of pilot and inhabit that. And it's, you know, I, I got in a lot of trouble, uh, a lot of flack for this online. When I talked about this one contact telling me that you can best understand us as coming from the afterlife. Um, and you know, I got, I got ripped up for that for various agendas, but what the really like understanding that I took away from that, cause there's often a lot of feeling that comes from these messages is this isn't heaven, hell, any religious connotation of the afterlife. This is simply where when humans, you know, shuffle off their mortal coil, this is kind of the, the plane or the dimension that people are going to, and it still is able to interact with, uh, the physical plane to some degree. Yeah. I think trying to understand it in my own head, um, and I'm not the most eloquent at times as you'll be hearing in this interview, you know, as they're almost like admins popping in and out of a computer game and fixing something, you know, they've got the password to go. Go behind the coding and that's why they can manipulate reality. And that's something I'll touch on soon with yourself about, you know, the idea of thought being able to change reality. You know, if someone's got access to the code behind this, you know, you can mod a computer game. Now it was really popular. People play things like Skyrim, but have Peter Griffin on top of a dragon, you know, for example, that's not part of the game, but someone can access that and change it. So they have access to that. Whereas the broader audience don't. And I wonder, is it something perhaps like that? Um, on the, the whole psionic to, to dog whistle technology, is there any clear differences as to when these objects are summoned psionically, this is what shows up. And when the dog whistles used, this is what shows up. I know you said the technology is more reliable or repeatable in a lot of ways, but is there anything that's a real clear discernment between the two? There's a lot more variety with the dog whistle than there is with psionics. And I think a big piece of that, like I said, is this psychic connection is probably, well, I think, I mean, we'll get into this question. It sounds like, but I do think, you know, in the case of biologics, biologics are probably communicating telepathically. But I think when we reach out as psychics, we are inherently kind of connecting with something that's a little bit more etheric than physical. And so we typically do get more of that orb response. That's not to say that other things like I had an experience, uh, three months ago where, um, pulled over with the wife and kids. They, they were, we're talking about it and they wanted to see it. So brought an orb in, uh, off the coast, go down the route, go down the road, a mile, a mile or so, and see a giant triangle, uh, floating over my, my town. Um, you know, that's definitely manifesting multiple things. And I'm sorry, I'm off base here with, but, um, the dog whistle definitely gets a greater diversity, which for the sake of documenting the phenomenon, you know, scientifically is more helpful, um, than psionics simply bringing in, you know, a similar thing each time. It's funny you mentioned like the black triangle coming after the orb being summoned. It seems with these summonings, whether it's the technology, the psionics, things like saucers don't seem to appear or even be in the initial slides that the educational pieces skywatcher are going out for. And that's something a lot of folks have picked up. Is there almost an idea that anything we consider the traditional physical craft that perhaps may be piloted or not by third generation AI greys or whatever you want to, mantis beings, whatever you want to put in these things, those are a very different phenomena to what can be reached by yourselves. So how to frame this. I, I have seen a, a, a classic saucer in the past year. Only once though, um, only once, I think there's a idea floating around out there that the phenomenon that we experience is only slightly outside of our ability to grasp it. And this dates back like, you know, to the late 1800s. My, my family is from a place in Texas called Wise County that had what was called the Aurora crash in the 1890s and what people interpreted, the newspaper said at the time was this was a giant airship. Yeah. Yeah. If you're familiar with that story. And then it became, you know, the flying saucers, the Foo fighters, um, triangles, I think, you know, we're kind of the seventies and it's evolved now to this more, you know, kind of etheric orb phenomenon that people are interacting with. And it, I don't know what that says about society, um, that this is now, we've all taken this to a really, um, consciousness based spiritual component. And, um, despite I'm here talking about psionics, I do think this can become a little bit dangerous as well in terms of, you know, you have people, um, since the seventies that have built little UFO religions around, um, channel material, et cetera. So I think those things are this shift where everyone thinks that, you know, not everyone, obviously there's a lot of skeptics that listen to this, but a lot of people are now ascribing purely a spiritual meaning to this, whether it's good or bad angels, demons, or, you know, our 5d space brothers here to save us. I think all of that's a little bit, um, dangerous. Um, we don't frankly have any idea what we're dealing with. And I don't mean skywatcher. I mean, in general, I don't think, um, you know, there's some special access program out there that has figured out exactly what we're dealing with. Um, I do think there are specific biological races that are out there, but when you, when it comes to getting those messages and that this is all spiritual, um, someone once told me a really great, uh, point about channeled messages. If humanity is perceived as bad in these messages that you're getting, or not bad, but that like, we're never going to save ourselves. Um, and that we need our space brothers to, you know, secure earth, make sure we don't, you know, nuke ourselves, um, you know, or drive ourselves to extinction through the climate. That actually is a little bit more concerning. Um, it really robs humans of agency to actually improve and make ourselves better. And what it says is, you know, there's some exterior force that we need to rely on to save us. And I, I don't like that. Yeah. And that whole summoning various aspects of this phenomenon, I know you've discussed before you believe there are multiple things happening. And I think most people now land on that agreeable hypothesis. If you can have that in the UFO conversation that most folks agree on that one thing that there are multiple things going on. I don't know. Is there some form of intergalactic Amazon warehouse where someone's going along going, okay, we need two orbs over Texas because they've been summoned. Okay. We need two saucers over here. All right. We need four, four beings to land in this desert here. You know, it's, that's all being sent out. But above that, there's a hierarchy where there are greys, mantis beings and whatnot, who are just aren't involved in that. They don't get involved in the summoning. Um, but then that, that whole idea of thought and reality, I suppose I'll get into, uh, you've mentioned, and I think the first time I heard it in recent times was Tom DeLong. I think it might've been on Joe Rogan. I can't remember his, as ill fated Joe Rogan, uh, appearance where he discussed the idea that thought you can physically change reality, not just good vibes. And, you know, I'm really hope for, for that promotion to come up in my job. No, you can physically manifest it into being, um, how, how does that work in your own words and how, how far can that go? So, and I'll just add to that, James, that some of my own thinking is how does that work on a scale where all of humanity, blue sky thinking are awakened and we realize we have these gifts and powers, you know, is that a good thing? Because there are, and I've heard you say that there are, there are, everyone's inherently good and bad, and there are extremes on either side of that scale. And I completely agree with that, where you've got some very evil people and some incredibly good people. And most of us fall somewhere in the middle and lean back and forward, probably nicer than most. But what's to stop a psionic 9-11 happening when jihadist terrorists realize they've got these capabilities and can manifest really bad things into being. And I get that's an extreme example of this, but it doesn't seem unrealistic in the conversation. Yeah. Oh, this is a, this is another hour on its own right there. This is a, one of my favorite topics. Um, so let's, let's start foundationally and then we'll get to a psychic jihad. Um, great name for a book or a band. Um, I, that, that quote from Tom, um, it feels like even recently, the past couple of weeks, there has been a lot of criticism of quantum mechanics. Um, and to be clear, and I'm not going to talk about it in depth because I'll get ripped up because I'm not a scientist. Um, that there seems to be some missing underlying force to explain how reality works for me. Obviously you would expect me to say this. I think of consciousness as the fundamental force of the universe and that space and time might even be emergent out of consciousness. And it is really kind of consensus reality that holds this. I don't like the word simulation because it's a modern idea for a very old, uh, theory. Um, it holds the simulation together. And, um, I mean, there's a bunch to say on this. I'll tell you an interesting, uh, experience when we were out there in the desert the first time, someone had a really, we were talking about why are these orbs so much easier to get to manifest during the night? And also why are, you know, why do paranormal spooky things happen at night? Why do we associate the night with that? And someone had a really profound statement that what if it's because, you know, where we were, you know, on the West coast of the U S time, you know, everyone else is asleep. It's one in the morning and reality is just a little bit less coherent right now. Um, cause there's not that many people holding it together. And that has always been a really profound statement to me that, you know, it might be a little bit less coherent. Now, the idea of what you're talking about is, um, power of manifestation. And this sounds like a very new agey idea. It actually is not at all. I would, I would argue it's one of the fundamental bedrocks of American society. Um, this is the, what, you know, in Christianity was called the prosperity gospel gospel. The fact that God wants you to be happy, rich, um, you know, well taken care of, et cetera, or, you know, power of positive thinking, et cetera. And this can be done in a very targeted way. Um, you know, it's, you can do it for little things out there. Now, when you get into, you know, psychic nine 11, um, I, I don't have a good answer for that. I mean, you're, you're getting into like Harry Potter level of magic at that point of, you know, actually taking down a building or forcing, um, you know, something to happen. But I can tell you, um, you know, I've done some, uh, communications for various people that, uh, are, you know, predicting events in the future. And one of the interesting ideas I'd heard from these people is you have to be careful when you ask a psychic to say like, what is going to happen around this event that's occurring in the future? Because the mere act of, if I go out looking for this negative outcome saying, you know, if there's an assassination or a tsunami somewhere, there seems to be an argument around people that know more than I do that, that can inadvertently, and I've heard them use the term quantum wave collapse, that it can turn that from one potential outcome to it's now real because there's a psychic person went out there and looked for that one outcome. And that was enough to kind of cause that variable wave collapse. Um, I don't, what you're also talking about is kind of an argument about free will versus determinism, which is something I've done like a shocking amount of soul searching about over the past couple of years, because I've seen enough precognition to make me really doubt it, um, as to how much free will we have. But there's a scientist I really like who said it's kind of a 60, 40 thing where 60% is predetermined, like the macro things in your life are determined, but that 40% is really where you're responsible for and you can influence the outcomes. And so I think, you know, the idea of, um, I was reading some article, uh, I'll find it and I'll, I'll send it to you if you want to put it in the show notes about, there was some experience done around, um, a ports, which is a ports is like a physically manifesting something in a specific location. And I had never heard of this program until a couple of weeks ago of like, could an intelligence agency steal a document from the Soviet union? Psychically, could they cause, you know, a technical schematic for, you know, the kilo class submarine to manifest on someone's desk. Um, so I think I haven't done that. Maybe it's possible. I don't know, um, manifesting physical, I have seen people manifest a ports before, but they're, you know, a little bit more of like the seance mediumship variety. Um, not something as substantial than that, but psychic jihad, you know, psychic 9-11 or whatever. Um, you're talking about really messing with consensus reality. That's not like little things. Like I need a parking spot or I need this promotion at work. You're talking about the impacting the lives of thousands of sentient individuals that all expect, you know, the world trade center to be there tomorrow. Um, so I think it would take a shocking amount of psychic force. Um, and I've never seen anything to that extent, but it's a really fun thought exercise. Yeah. And is there an argument then the power of intent comes into some of this that, and it sounds like a, a wishy washy cop out, doesn't it that, well, yeah, the, the, you don't allow the bad stuff to happen because it won't. And it's the same where, well, why don't psychics go predict the lottery numbers? Well, because there's no good intent to winning all that money, but then what if they're going to give all that money away to charity, you know, which would be nice then does that come into some kind of base level that your intent has an impact as well on capability? 100% this actually is one of the topics, you know, before Skywatcher and even in the early days of Skywatcher that we spent an inordinate amount of time on was ensuring that intentions were aligned. We actually like on the first event, we started the whole thing with a big intention setting exercise of like, we're here, we're here to attract good. We're here to document the phenomenon. We're here to do it honestly. Um, which the reason I bring that up is, um, you know, oftentimes you have to ask if you can film and sometimes the answer is no, and you know, you need to hold up your end of the bargain. And so I do think intentions matter as you explore these topics. Um, now I say that, but you know, there's lots of conspiracy theories out there about, you know, some rather dark intentions that have been exploring these topics for a hundred plus years. And I don't know what to make of that. Um, it hasn't, it hasn't ever been necessary or, you know, something one, one should engage in on my end. Um, and so I don't know what to think of the idea that, you know, uh, this has been used for nefarious purposes successfully in the past, you know, it may, it puts the spin on it. Do you know where I can, I can accept that. And it's, I agree with you around the phrasing, uh, a simulation. I don't believe we are plugged in a computer matrix style, great movies. I will argue the trilogy is fantastic all day. Forget the fourth one folks. Again, I will, I will die on that hill. Um, but the idea that I've put it before, imagine you were, you're playing the Sims with your friends when you were kind of in your teens and one of your mates has got a new PC, you know, that I'm aging myself here. I'm 39 James. Right. And you all put on the Sims. Yeah. I was quite geeky when I was younger. So my nights were like blockbuster video. I wasn't out drinking in my teens. I was like matrix marathons, Quentin Tarantino marathons and smack down on the PlayStation. Right. Okay. So imagine you all had a geeky night and four of you put the Sims on and started a game and you're all quite invested. But one of your mates is like, I want to play the game. I want to play it properly. I want to build the family. I want even some city. I want to build a town. I want it to be successful. One of your mates has all these crazy ideas, build a theme park here. You know, let's build a rocket port. Let's do this. One of them's less interested in a little bit. Another one just wants to cause some chaos. Put all the nuclear power plants around the outside and we'll let them all blow up and kill everyone. And perhaps there's an element of that that goes on with this whole structure that you have different entities on the outside looking in on this simulation where some of them are really nice. Some of them have the best intent. Others don't really care. You know, good or bad, live or die, not plussed. Some of them come in and out for various reasons. And then there are others that just like to cause a little bit of mischief or to more of an extent, enjoy suffering. And we hear about entities feeding on negative emotions, things like that. And I wonder then, does that come into it? That you have these different beings with different ways of thinking about us. Some care, some don't, some are indifferent. And that's what kind of drives us in the background. Yeah, I love that. It reminds me of the trickster phenomenon in particular, I find fascinating. And there is a older book written by George Hansen named Trickster and the Paranormal that goes into great detail about this. And, you know, you don't, you can ascribe a purely UAP lens to this, or you can take it to the paranormal or cryptid. You can apply this really to any supernormal experience that is had out there. There is an element that just kind of enjoys messing with people. And, you know, as, as I've gone, you know, much deeper over the past two years, I have really encountered more of that trickster element where it's not like, it's not evil. It's not scary or anything like that. It's just like, what the hell is that? You know, like seeing that black triangle, where, you know, just do the normal HICE with the family, see and orb, tra la la, head home and like, oh, okay, there over our little tiny town, seemingly a few hundred feet, there's a, there's a triangle. And of course, for that, slammed on the brakes, wife and I are jumping out of the car to film it. And just as it does that, it changes shape and turns into a, and this is right at dusk and suddenly it's the lights on an airplane and it was hovering. And then it slowly starts moving as an airplane with a light and shape pattern of an airplane. Like that's just kind of messing with you. I do like that element. And I find that element fascinating and kind of entertaining, um, as to why it's almost like, you know, like fun and play is, can be an element of this. Um, that's not to discount like those darker experiences out there. You know, lots of people have nothing but wonderful experiences. Um, and I, you know, the first time I came out in public, I think people thought I was one of those, like I've had negative experiences. It's my, you know, I didn't like using the word abduction for a very long time, but whatever happened to me in 2003, there's a reason I have missing time from it. Um, and it's something I'm still exploring. Um, but there are darker experiences out there for sure. Interesting. It's like you did read my mind for my next question. So, um, I, I interviewed, it was last year or the year before I had George Knapp on both years and one of my favorite questions I asked, and it came up to me on the spot. I asked George around the abduction phenomenon. Was he ever aware of government entities or the like being able to trigger an abduction phenomenon? Had he researched it enough that they could bring about an abduction experience? And he said he didn't want to go into it because it's not a particularly nice aspect of the topic. Um, so alluding to knowing a little bit more on that, but I wonder if someone who can communicate with these objects and speaks to other psychics, do you believe that as an element of either the U S government, private contractors, private entities that can establish communication with entities that would be involved in abduction experiences? I don't have enough information to say. I, I have some opinions, um, based off of kind of hearsay and gossip I've heard that's non-public that, um, I'm coming around to the idea that there probably have been some agreements struck, um, with various races out there, whether it's as specific. And I, I think what you're referring to is, I forget which presidents, I think it might have been Eisenhower that people talk about agreed to a certain volume of abductions in exchange for technology transfer, maybe. Um, but I have really come around to the idea that there is a U S government and, you know, obviously other governments out there as well. There is a, uh, let's call it, you know, not an alliance, but some type of treaty. Um, might have been struck to facilitate things like that. Um, you know, I, but once again, you know, a lot of these abductions, like for, for me and like, I've met other people that have, have, that are abductees, a lot of times there is that family connection, um, where, you know, it might not, you know, maybe their grandfather wasn't abducted, but their grandfather had a major, you know, contact event at some point in their lives. And it's almost, um, seems to be mapping that. I don't know if there's, you know, if it's a monitoring evolution, genetic component component, there's obviously the sexual and reproductive stories around abductions. There's a lot to it. It's, they seem to be documenting something. Yeah. And I like the idea that if, if these beings that can carry out these abductions have any kind of mastery of, of time or can view time differently to us, you could abduct generations of a family and for them, it would be half an hour, but for you and your family, it could be 250 years, you know, it could be a whole bloodline, but for them, they're just dipping in and out. Like they're fast forwarding through a movie to different scenes. Yeah. And I'll, um, I'll get, I'll give you, um, one, one little bit from, you know, as I've explored the memories of my own experiences as they've come back to me over time, you know, obviously one of the first questions you want to know is like, why did this happen to me? Um, and you know, I don't really have all the details as to what happened, but I got a very, um, point blank response of you agreed to this. And it was just very matter of fact. I'm like, when did I agree to this? They said, Oh, in a different lifetime. And so I don't know what the hell to make of that. Um, I actually think that's the first time I've talked about that in public. No, I appreciate that. It's a really interesting concept. And that idea that, do you think that goes along with the idea that we, whether it's your soul or consciousness, whatever that may be, agrees to be here because you're, you're having this human experience. And then after you've had this, you forget, you come down, you're born, you live your life, you go back. And then you remember, perhaps you, once you're back in the primordial super, whatever it is, you've had this experience for a reason. You can choose to come back. That brings in things like reincarnation and people remembering past lives. Do you think that's along the lines of what's potentially happening to? I definitely do. I, I don't, I refuse to believe the idea that the whole prison planet idea that we're trapped here, that there's some reincarnation trap that after you die, if you, if you go into the light, you're automatically reincarnated and you're loose. You know, if you want to use the Monroe term is being harvested. Um, what I think is, like you said, we chose to be here. Um, I think we're here to learn and evolve. Like, I, I think a lot about like, what would it like to, what would it be like to be dead and not have to deal with time really consequences? Um, and the best, you know, I, I'm sure it's, it's wonderful for a while, but it's stasis. Like you're, you're never going to change, you know, from your purest, highest self, you're never really going to get to experience new things. Um, you know, maybe astral journey and whatever. Um, but incarnating on earth or elsewhere, um, is how you as in, you know, spark of consciousness develops over time. Um, and I'm still kind of judging, you know, the idea of what I call big G God. Um, is there a God out there? And I tend to ascribe to, um, the idea of source or, you know, like the pleroma in the Gnostic terminology, wherein there is a source, but it is so absolutely unknowable to us, uh, as incarnated humans that we aren't really capable of understanding that. And that we are perhaps individual sparks of that source experiencing itself over time. And do we return to source at some point? I don't really have an answer for that. Yeah. Really interesting. Um, but before we get, we've still got so much I want to get through and I know you've been on with me a long time. So let's get, let's get back to finishing off some of the Skywatcher chat. Um, do you believe these objects are, are hiding from us at large because they could, if they wanted come down at any point, they could hover over the white house during a, a live press conference, you know, inauguration. And they don't are not that often anyway. I know there's been some videos. There was a famous Superbowl video. Was it the Superbowl? That was a football game anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Objects appeared over the top. Um, you know, do you feel they're hiding to an extent that they're not present every single day to, to a larger population? I do. And I don't know why. Um, I, I posted about this recently on X that, um, you know, been doing HICE for a while, but going out to that first Skywatcher event and, you know, Jake and Fred obviously have some fun toys that I, I didn't have as a civilian. And so they have really sophisticated advanced night vision equipment. And, um, I was expecting like maybe seeing one or two and, you know, put that helmet on. And it was like the, the term that I used to describe it as it was like a super highway. Um, and I know that the area that we were in is like kind of considered one of those window areas. So it would obviously be a little bit more active, but it was shocking. And as more people, you know, like the camera crew we used at the time were really skeptical. Like they didn't believe in any of this and, um, they had a similar reaction as pure skeptics that like, Oh my God, like this isn't space debris. It's not satellites. You see things moving in different directions, zigging and zagging, baiting in and out, et cetera. And perhaps, you know, sky, uh, the dog whistle or HICE is simply getting one of those, uh, attention and being like, okay, well, I'm happy to show myself, you know, more in the, uh, to the naked eye. Now, I mean, that's the million dollar question or billion dollar question. Is, you know, why don't they land on the white house lawn or the ellipse or times square, et cetera. And I don't know, you know, like the, my opinion is that let's call them like the good in HI have no real reason to do that. They'd rather, you know, I think the ontological shock, and I know that term has played out now of like that happening and what that would do to humanity. Um, maybe, you know, people could respond very negatively to that. Um, so they choose not to engage in that, you know, if there are, there are darker entities out there, there's no reason for them to kind of play their hand. I wouldn't think if they're getting what they want from, from humans and from earth as it were. Um, but you know, back to the trickster point, I don't know why there isn't some type of trickster entity. That's just like, okay, I'm going to go wreck everything. Yeah. Um, I want to get to the sky watcher statement from today then, and before we can get to some listener questions, James, if you don't mind. Um, so that, that's literally dropped 15, 25 minutes, something like that before we hit record. So I'm kind of reading it fresh for the second time. Now sky watcher said online, the sky watcher team is continuing to aggressively collect data and move through the process outlined in the discovery framework. We've now engaged multiple high quality independent third party groups to provide a thorough scientific analysis. We're attempting to, attempting to condense a scientific process that usually takes well over a year into a few short months. Please understand that the corpus of data that we've collected is extremely large. We appreciate your patience as this works proceed, as this work proceeds. Our objective remains the same. And moving forward, we will create a clear delineation between media releases and formal scientific analysis. Please ignore unsubstantiated claims or gossip, which historically has done this entire space an immense disservice. Part three on psionics is completed and going through the appropriate editing and review process. We're confident you will all enjoy, you all really enjoy it more very soon. What's your take on the statement then? Yeah. So I think it was definitely some clarification needed. Um, radio silence is never good, particularly when you come out and, um, you know, make, make some large claims. And there has been a, you know, multi-month gap between episode two and episode three. And people have been asking questions. You know, there was that, uh, I think this is probably just predicated on that, um, completely unsubstantiated rumor that there were NDA signed and that, um, skywatcher was going to go black and essentially not do anything in the public anymore. Nothing could be farther from, uh, the case, but it just gets back to my earlier point about, you know, some people loved the second skywatcher documentary that had a lot more data, but it still got ripped apart by a bunch of people for, you know, flock of geese or whatever. And so, you know, skywatcher is learning as we do this, like there's no playbook for how you do a public private partnership on the topic of disclosure. And so recognizing that, okay, people didn't get enough out of that footage. What is the next step? It's to actually bring in third parties that aren't connected to skywatcher to have them do a more rigorous analysis and come to an independent conclusion. Um, and I think those results, you know, will be shared with the public, but a lot of that is very scientific stuff that I don't entirely understand. Um, you know, uh, like the signals collected and all that is way beyond me. Um, I'm just on the side team. And so condensing, like that's actually been one of the things we've talked about for two years long before skywatcher is, um, having a more coherent, like media strategy beyond just the UAP community. And so while the UAP community is important to all these efforts, once again, and I, I'm sorry, I sound like a broken record, um, keeping the general public as like the, the primary audience for this, I think is how skywatcher actually moves the needle. That is all for part one. Part two will be out in the next couple of days. You can listen to this episode already in full, ad free, and with no sponsors for less than the price of a coffee. If you head on over to Patreon or Apple, you can subscribe to the podcast for less than the price of a coffee or take up the two weeks free trial that are available on those platforms. You can head on over to Spotify and search that UFO podcast premium and get access to this episode in full, no adverts, no sponsorships, and also with some extra bonus content as well. Thanks for listening, folks.