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Speaker 1: I want to try a little experiment to kick things

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off today. I want you to close your eyes. Okay, well,

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if you're driving, obviously please keep them open and on

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the road. But for everyone else, picture the heat. You

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are standing in the middle of the Nevada desert. It's

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high noon. The air is so dry it sucks the

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moisture right out of your throat. And the silence is

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so heavy it feels like pressure in your ears. It

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is a.

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Speaker 2: Silence you can actually hear. Yeah, that buzzing white noise,

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silence of total isolation.

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Speaker 1: Exactly. And right in front of you, cutting through the

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sage brush in the dust, is a chain link fence.

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It looks pedestrian. It looks like something you find around

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a high school baseball field or a construction site. Special,

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nothing special at all. But then you focus on the

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sign zip tied to the mesh. It's white, sun bleached

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with bold red letters. And it doesn't say keep out,

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it doesn't say private property.

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Speaker 2: It says use of lethal force authorized.

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Speaker 1: That is the image we need to burn into our

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brains for this discussion. Because we live in a world

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of rules, right, we have due process, we have Miranda rights.

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Speaker 2: We have cell phone cameras that live stream everything to

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the cloud.

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Speaker 1: Right, we like to think there are no dark corners

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left where the government can just delete you.

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Speaker 2: We operate under the assumption that the law of the

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land applies everywhere on the map. We assume that civilization

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extends to every inch of soil within our borders.

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Speaker 1: But does it? That's the question. I mean, if you

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cross that line in the sand, do you think they

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would actually pull the trigger?

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Speaker 2: If the billion dollar question, do you.

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Speaker 1: Think, in this day and age, with the world watching,

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they would shoot a civilian? Or is it just a

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scary prop a bluff.

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Speaker 2: Well, the source material we are unpacking today, and this

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is a dense stack of documents, suggests that sign is

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the only honest thing in that entire desert.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to thrilling threads today. We aren't just talking about UFOs.

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If you're here for laser beams and crop circles, you

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might be a little disappointed.

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Speaker 2: Or maybe intrigued by something deeper.

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Speaker 1: Yes, hopefully that today we are pulling on a thread

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that leads to something much darker. We're looking at the

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testimony of a former Pentagon insider, and I want to

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be crystal clear about who this guy, is this is important?

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This isn't freedom fighter ninety nine on Reddit posting blurry photos.

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Speaker 2: No, this is a man who ran a specific government program,

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a man who held the highest security clearances the United

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States offers, and crucially, a man who had to submit

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his book to the Department of Defense for a security

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review just to stay out of prison.

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Speaker 1: Which is a detail I want to stick a pin

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in right away. Yeah, because if this was all nonsense,

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I mean, if he was just writing fiction, why would

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the Department of Defense need to review it?

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Speaker 2: Why would they care?

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Speaker 1: Exactly? Why would they care?

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Speaker 2: That's the catch twenty two of classification, isn't it By

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reviewing it and by redacting parts of it, they are

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implicitly admitting that the unredacted parts are factual matters of

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national security. Right if it were fiction, they wouldn't waste

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the ink blacking it out. They just let him publish

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it and laugh.

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Speaker 1: So today our mission is to look at the human

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cost of being a secret for seventy years. We're going

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to talk about exotic materials, stuff not made by human hands.

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But more importantly, we're going to talk about the machinery

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that keeps that material hidden and fair warning this gets ugly.

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Speaker 2: It really does.

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Speaker 1: We are talking about ruined lives, shadow budgets, and yes,

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authorized lethal force.

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Speaker 2: It is a sobering reminder that national security isn't just

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a phrase politicians use on the Sunday talk shows. It

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is a mechanism, and as our source points out, it

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is a mechanism that has teeth, big teeth. We need

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to unpack the threats, the specific mechanisms of silence, and

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then we need to completely reshape how we define alien.

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Speaker 1: Because spoiler alert, if you're thinking of little green men

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from Mars, you're thinking way way too small. But let's

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start with the immediate danger section. One of our discussion

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today is what we're calling the cost.

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Speaker 2: Of silence, right, and this begins with a very specific,

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very careful admission from the source. He explicitly states that

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he has signed documentation from the government.

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Speaker 1: He has the receipts, so to speak, he has the receipts.

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Speaker 2: He is allowed to say, yes, we have material. He

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can say that because it was cleared in a review

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process for his book, but he cannot go one inch further.

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Speaker 1: He used this phrase. It really stuck with me. He said,

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I'll walk up to the line. I will not step

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over it. It just paints this picture of a man

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standing on a precipice. On one side is the truth,

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he wants to share, the specifics, the locations, the physics.

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And on the other side is well, what exactly ruin?

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Speaker 2: Total ruin? He mentions jail certainly, he says, if he

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violates that oath, if he speaks about the specific classified

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details not approved for release, he goes to prison period.

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Speaker 1: And that's bad enough.

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Speaker 2: But then he says something much darker. He says, the

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consequences range from jail to worse worse.

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Speaker 1: Now, hold on, I don't know about you, but when

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a former Pentagon official tells me the punishment is worse

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than prison, my mind goes to some pretty dark places.

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It has to in a democracy, what is worse than prison?

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We don't have a gulug. We don't have a torture chamber,

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do we.

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Speaker 2: This brings us back to that area fifty one sign

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we visualized earlier lethal force authorized Here it is again

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the source makes the point that the government can and

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will kill to protect national security. He argues that this

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isn't malicious murder in the way we typically think of it.

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It's not a crime of passion. No, it is a calculated,

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authorized removal of a threat, a line item in a

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budget somewhere.

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Speaker 1: This is where the threat gets really gritty, because he

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didn't just speak in hypotheticals. He drops some historical examples

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that honestly made my jaw hit the floor.

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Speaker 2: They're chill in.

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Speaker 1: He talked about a drone strike.

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Speaker 2: Yes, this is a very specific and deeply controversial claim.

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The source asserts that the US government used a drone

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to kill a US citizen and their child without due process.

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Got a trial, without a trial, without a jury, without

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an appeal. Now, the context here is that this individual

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was a suspected terrorist, but the source emphasizes that as

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American citizens, we are supposed to be afforded due process.

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You get your day in.

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Speaker 1: Court, right, that's the whole point. You don't just get

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vaporized from the sky because someone in a windowless room

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decided you were a threat. He called it the law of.

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Speaker 2: Peace, the law of peace which is supposed to govern

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civil society. But he's saying that in the realm of

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national security, those rules get suspended.

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Speaker 1: They just don't apply.

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Speaker 2: He used the term liquidate. Someone made the decision to

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liquidate them. It's such a terrifyingly bureaucratic way to describe

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the assassination of a citizen.

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Speaker 1: It's sanitizing it completely.

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Speaker 2: And he connects this directly to the secrecy around UAPs.

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The implication is, if they will do that for a

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suspected terrorist to protect the state, what would they do

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to someone threatening to expose the most advanced technology in

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human history.

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Speaker 1: Wait, let's pause there, because I want to make sure

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I'm understand the gravity of this. He's saying that if

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you know too much about these exotic materials, you aren't

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treated like a whistleblower or a journalist. Yeah, you are

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treated like an n combatant.

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Speaker 2: That is the implication. You are removed from the lawft

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piece bucket to the law of war bucket. And in war,

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you don't read someone in their rights.

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Speaker 1: You neutralize the threat.

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Speaker 2: You neutralized the threat.

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Speaker 1: He also brought up the Rosenbergs to back this up. Now,

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for listeners who might need a quick history refresher, Julius

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and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in nineteen fifty three for spying.

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Speaker 2: For the Soviet Union. Yes, they were accused of giving

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away atomic secrets, the biggest secrets of the time correct,

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and it has been a point of contention for decades.

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The source claims that, based on his understanding and the

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information available in the intelligence community, the wife Ethel was

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likely innocent, innocent or at least her involvement was minimal.

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It didn't warrant execution. But they hanged her anyway.

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Speaker 1: They hanged an innocent woman. Why that seems I mean,

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that's just monstrous. It seems counterproductive if you're trying to

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look like the good guys.

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Speaker 2: To protect the capability. That's the chilling part.

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Speaker 1: What does that mean?

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Speaker 2: The source argues that the intelligence they had at the time,

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the proof pof of the espionage, was so sensitive, so

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advanced for its era, that revealing it in a way

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that would nuancedly separate Julius's guilt from Ethel's innocence would

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have tipped.

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Speaker 1: Off the Soviets, get them off to what to.

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Speaker 2: How we were listening to our methods. So to protect

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the method, to protect the intelligence gathering capability, they decided

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a clean narrative was better. They're both guilty, end of story.

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Speaker 1: So they let her die to protect the how of

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the intelligence gathering exactly.

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Speaker 2: It raises a massive ethical dilemma, Is it worth killing

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an innocent person to save the state or to protect

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a secret that keeps the states safe?

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Speaker 1: I mean, my gut says no, absolutely.

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Speaker 2: Not, of course, But the source seems to suggest that

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the government answers yes to that question more often than

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we'd like to admit.

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Speaker 1: That is heavy. It really reframes the whole whistleblower conversation.

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It's not just about losing your pension or getting sued

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by your former employer. It's about being erased. It suggests

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that the secret is always the most important person in

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the more important than the citizens it's supposedly protecting.

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Speaker 2: And that paranoia, that reality dictates how you live your life,

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which brings us to our second section, the lifestyle of

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a whistleblower, Because this guy isn't just sitting in a

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condo in DC sipping lattes and doing podcast interviews.

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Speaker 1: Far from it, I mean so far from it. He

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describes a life that sounds more like a scene from

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a spy thriller or a western a siege mentality. Almost right.

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He lives in Wyoming, in a remote location.

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Speaker 2: He's off the grid, essentially as far off the grid

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as you can.

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Speaker 1: Get, and He's not just there for the views, you know,

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the big sky, he said, he is heavily armed. And

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get this, he has six German shepherds. Six six. I mean,

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I love dogs, But you don't get six German shepherds

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because you love playing fect you.

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Speaker 2: No, that's not a pack, that's a security force.

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Speaker 1: You get six German shepherds because you want a perimeter,

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you want an early warning system.

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Speaker 2: It speaks to a profound state of vigilance. He admits

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his life has been threatened many times. The ice, the weaponry,

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the dogs, these are countermeasures.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely.

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Speaker 2: It paints a picture of someone who is living with

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a constant, low level hum of paranoia or perhaps more accurately,

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necessary caution.

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Speaker 1: I think that's the right word. It's not paranoia if

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they're really out to get you, it's just caution. It

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makes you wonder what kind of toll that takes on

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a person sleeping with one eye open, wondering if the

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mailman is actually the mailman. But here's the twist. He's

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still alive. He is, he's still doing interviews, he's still talking.

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So clearly he's found a way to navigate this minefield.

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Speaker 2: And that is the strategy of disclosure he talks about.

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He emphasizes the difference between doing things right and doing

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things right now.

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Speaker 1: I like that distinction is a very clever way of

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putting it. Doing it right versus doing it right now.

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Unpack that for us.

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Speaker 2: Doing it right now is the Edward Snowden approach. You

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dump the data, you run, and you live in exile

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or prison.

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Speaker 1: You like the match.

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Speaker 2: You burn the house down to show everyone what inside.

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It's explosive, it's immediate, but the consequences are severe.

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Speaker 1: And usually you end up in Russia or in federal self.

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Speaker 2: Exactly doing it right, according to our source, means using

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the system against itself. It's a slower, more deliberate game.

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Speaker 1: How does that work?

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Speaker 2: You submit your book for review, You let them redact

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what they need to redact. You go through the official channels,

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You get the government stamp that says cleared for release.

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Once you have that, you have a shield. They come

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after you. Then it looks suspicious because you followed their rules.

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You played their game.

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Speaker 1: Such a legal suit of armor. He's saying, look, I

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didn't break the law. Yeah, you guys approve this. It's brilliant,

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really is, but it requires incredible patience, and it must

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frustrate the public because we want the data dump, we

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want the four K video of the saucer landing on

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the White House lawn.

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Speaker 2: Precisely, he acknowledges that frustration. He knows people want disclosure

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with a capital D, like right now. But he argues

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that if you rush it, you compromise national security, you

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break your oath, and you probably get liquidated.

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Speaker 1: Right you become a martyr. But the secret stays.

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Speaker 2: A secret exactly by doing it slowly, by walking up

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to the line but not crossing it, he keeps the

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conversation moving without becoming another casualty.

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Speaker 1: It's a survival game, a high stakes chess match. But

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if he has to go through all these hoops, it

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begs the question who is he actually afraid of? Who

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is actually in charge here? Which leads us to section three.

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Who runs the show? Because I think most of us assume,

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you know, the president is the commander in chief, that

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their aliens A president knows.

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Speaker 2: Right, you would think. So that's the Civics class version

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of reality, the version we all grew up with.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Schoolhouse Rock.

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Speaker 2: But the source paints a terrifying bureaucratic picture where the

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president is viewed by the intelligence community as a temporary.

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Speaker 1: Hire, a temporary higher I mean, just let that sink in.

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Imagine telling the leader of the free world, sorry, you're

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just a tempt We can't trust you with the good stuff.

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Speaker 2: Well, look at it from the perspective of a seventy

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year secret program. Presidents are there for four years, maybe

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eight if they're lucky. They have political agendas, they leak

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things to the press, they have rallies.

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Speaker 1: They're transient.

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Speaker 2: They are if you are the gatekeeper of a secret

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that has been kept since the nineteen forties, do you

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really want to brief a guy who might tweet about

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it at three zero am?

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Speaker 1: That is yeah. I mean it makes a ruthless sort

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of sense when you put it that way. If the

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secret is bigger than the nation, you can't trust the

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politician running the nation.

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Speaker 2: It's a completely different framework.

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Speaker 1: So he actually breaks down which president's knew and which

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ones didn't. This is fascinating to me, He claims. Jimmy

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Carter was briefed.

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Speaker 2: Yes, he says, there are records of it. And Carter

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is interesting because he famously reported a UFO citing himself

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before he was president.

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Speaker 1: That's right, I forgot about that.

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Speaker 2: He saw something in the sky in nineteen sixty nine.

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So he had a personal interest, and he had a

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background as a nuclear engineer from the Navy. He wasn't

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just some random person. The source claims he knows the

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person who briefed Carter.

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Speaker 1: So Carter is in the But then you have Bill Clinton,

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and the source says Clinton wanted to know. He asked

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to be briefed, and he was denied. Denied. The president

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of the United States asked for information and was told no,

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just no.

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Speaker 2: That implies a level of power above the oval office

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that is deeply unsettling for a democracy. It suggests there

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are silos of information that the commander in chief cannot access.

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Speaker 1: That feels like a slow motion coup. I mean, that's

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not how the system is supposed to work. If the

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president isn't in charge, who is.

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Speaker 2: I'll get to that. But first look at George H. W.

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Speaker 1: Bush.

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Speaker 2: The source says he knew, but not because he was president, right,

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He knew.

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Speaker 1: Because he was the director of the CIA before he

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was president.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. He was already inside the circle. He had the

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need to know from his previous life. He was one

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of them before he was the leader of the free world.

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He was part of the permanent structure.

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Speaker 1: And then more recently we had Donald Trump. Now, Trump

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actually went on record, and the source quotes this saying

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he would release the files, but he faced fierce resistance.

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Speaker 2: That phrase fierce resistance is key. Trump is not a

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man who likes to be told what to do. He

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sees himself as a disruptor.

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Speaker 1: He prides himself on it.

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Speaker 2: So if he faced resistance that actually stopped him, it

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must have been significant and implies threats or leverage, or

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simply a bureaucratic stone wall that even he couldn't break down.

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Speaker 1: So the question is who is resisting? Who has the

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power to tell Donald Trump at Bill Clinton to back off?

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Speaker 2: This source doesn't mince words here, He doesn't hint. He

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points the finger directly at the military industrial complex.

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Speaker 1: He calls it the world's largest business. And this is

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where the motivation shifts from protecting the public from panic

341
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to something much more mundane.

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Speaker 2: And much more cynical. Rem It's always money, isn't it

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at the end of the day.

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Speaker 1: Talk to me about that. How do you make money

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off a secret UFO? It seems almost absurd.

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Speaker 2: Think about it. If a defense contractor let's say a

347
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Lockheed or a raytheon hypothetically is in possession of exotic technology,

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covered materials, recovered materials that defy our known physics. That

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is the ultimate competitive advantage. It's like having the answer

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key to the universe's final exam Right.

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Speaker 1: If you have an anti gravity drive, you don't need

352
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jet fuel, you don't need run wise Exactly.

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Speaker 2: If they can reverse engineer even a fraction of that technology,

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they win every defense contract for the next century. They

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don't want to admit they have it, because then they

356
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might have to share it or admit they haven't figured

357
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it out yet.

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Speaker 1: Oh that's a good point too. Maybe they don't know

359
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how it works, or worse.

360
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Speaker 2: The government might claim eminent domain and take it back.

361
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It's a corporate.

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Speaker 1: Asset, it's proprietary technology. If I have a piece of

363
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a UFO that runs on zero point energy, I'm not

364
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telling my competitors. I'm certainly not telling the public. I'm

365
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keeping it in a vault, and I'm having my smartest

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people try to build a better missile with it.

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Speaker 2: Precisely, the source argues that the resistance to disclosure isn't

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just about little green men. It's about corporate dominance and

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quarterly earnings. It's about the fact that this legacy program

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has been privatized in pockets, making it even harder for

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a president to oversee.

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Speaker 1: You can't just order a private company to open its

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doors the way you can in an.

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Speaker 2: Army base, not without a huge fight, and they have

375
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armies of lawyers to make sure that fight lasts for decades.

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Speaker 1: That is a terrifying thought. The biggest discovery in human

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history is sitting in a corporate warehouse somewhere collecting dust

378
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because they can't figure out how to monetize it.

379
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Speaker 2: Yet, or maybe they already have monetized it in ways

380
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we don't even see.

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Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, And speaking of that legacy program, that brings

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us to section four because the source makes a really

383
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important distinction. He was the head of a TIP.

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Speaker 2: Right, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification.

385
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Speaker 1: Program, that's the one that made the news in twenty

386
00:17:45,319 --> 00:17:47,359
seventeen with the tic TAC video, the one we all

387
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know about. But he says a TIP was just a

388
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tiny piece of the puzzle.

389
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Speaker 2: A slipper.

390
00:17:51,480 --> 00:17:54,079
Speaker 1: He calls a TIP a small effort compared to the

391
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legacy program. He describes the Legacy Program as a collaborative,

392
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multi decade effort that is much more robust and well funded.

393
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Speaker 2: This is the real program, the one that connects back

394
00:18:03,920 --> 00:18:06,279
to Project Blue Book and Roswell and beyond.

395
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Speaker 1: So a tip was like the tip of the iceberg,

396
00:18:08,519 --> 00:18:10,920
or maybe just a little research ding floating next to

397
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the iceberg.

398
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Speaker 2: I think that's a perfect analogy. The Legacy Program is

399
00:18:14,599 --> 00:18:17,720
the giant mass of ice underneath that sinks the Titanic.

400
00:18:18,279 --> 00:18:21,680
It's the deep state institutional memory of this phenomenon.

401
00:18:21,799 --> 00:18:24,599
Speaker 1: But he also mentions a lost era period in the

402
00:18:24,680 --> 00:18:28,480
early two thousands where resources were lifted and shifted away

403
00:18:28,519 --> 00:18:29,799
from UAP research.

404
00:18:30,160 --> 00:18:33,359
Speaker 2: He was very specific about that timing the early two thousands,

405
00:18:33,839 --> 00:18:36,839
and while he didn't say it explicitly, the timeline matches

406
00:18:36,920 --> 00:18:38,799
up perfectly with nine to eleven and the start of

407
00:18:38,799 --> 00:18:39,279
the War on.

408
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Speaker 1: Terror, right, I mean, think about the mindset in two

409
00:18:41,920 --> 00:18:42,920
thousand and two, two thousand and.

410
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Speaker 2: Three, Precisely after the attacks on September eleventh, the entire

411
00:18:46,880 --> 00:18:52,640
US intelligence apparatus pivoted. Everything changed overnight. The priority became counter.

412
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Speaker 1: Terrorism, hunting Al Qaeda.

413
00:18:54,440 --> 00:18:58,319
Speaker 2: Finding IEDs, tracking cells in the desert, The budget for

414
00:18:58,359 --> 00:19:00,599
looking at strange lights in the sky. I was likely

415
00:19:00,640 --> 00:19:04,480
gutted and reallocated to drone warfare and signals intelligence.

416
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Speaker 1: It makes sense. It's triash. If you're afraid of a

417
00:19:07,359 --> 00:19:10,039
dirty bomb in a suitcase, you stop worrying about the

418
00:19:10,119 --> 00:19:12,599
tic tac ufo off the coast of California. You have

419
00:19:12,640 --> 00:19:15,960
an immediate existential threat right in front of you, of course.

420
00:19:16,039 --> 00:19:19,079
Speaker 2: But the source implies that this distraction allowed the mystery

421
00:19:19,079 --> 00:19:22,039
to deepen, or perhaps allowed the private contractors to operate

422
00:19:22,039 --> 00:19:23,200
with even less oversight.

423
00:19:23,559 --> 00:19:25,839
Speaker 1: Uh. While the cat's away, while.

424
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Speaker 2: The government was looking at the Middle East, the gatekeepers

425
00:19:28,359 --> 00:19:30,680
of the Legacy program were left alone in the dark

426
00:19:30,720 --> 00:19:31,759
to do whatever they wanted.

427
00:19:32,160 --> 00:19:34,319
Speaker 1: And that leads us to the biggest pivot of the

428
00:19:34,480 --> 00:19:38,240
entire conversation. We've talked about the government, the threats, the money,

429
00:19:38,839 --> 00:19:41,680
but then the source shifts skiers completely.

430
00:19:41,799 --> 00:19:44,319
Speaker 2: He goes from the geopolitical to the philosophical.

431
00:19:44,400 --> 00:19:47,200
Speaker 1: He wants to deconstruct what we actually mean when we

432
00:19:47,240 --> 00:19:47,839
say alien.

433
00:19:47,960 --> 00:19:52,119
Speaker 2: This was my favorite part of the discussion, because again,

434
00:19:52,279 --> 00:19:55,160
we all have that Hollywood image ingrained in us.

435
00:19:55,319 --> 00:19:58,640
Speaker 1: Big head, black almond eyes, skinny gray body.

436
00:19:58,680 --> 00:20:00,880
Speaker 2: Maybe they come down a ramp and say take me

437
00:20:00,960 --> 00:20:02,920
to your leader, or maybe they're like the ones in

438
00:20:03,000 --> 00:20:05,279
Independence Day, here to steal our resources.

439
00:20:05,359 --> 00:20:05,640
Speaker 1: Right.

440
00:20:06,240 --> 00:20:08,880
Speaker 2: The Source calls this ampropomorphic arrogance.

441
00:20:09,200 --> 00:20:12,240
Speaker 1: Ooh, fancy words. Break that down for us, What does

442
00:20:12,279 --> 00:20:12,640
that mean?

443
00:20:12,880 --> 00:20:15,920
Speaker 2: It means we assume the universe looks like us. We

444
00:20:15,960 --> 00:20:18,440
are arrogant enough to think that intelligent life will have

445
00:20:18,480 --> 00:20:21,319
a head, two arms, two legs, and vocal cords. We

446
00:20:21,359 --> 00:20:25,799
assume they will have human like motivations, conquest, curiosity, diplomacy.

447
00:20:25,960 --> 00:20:28,519
Speaker 1: We project ourselves onto the cosmos exactly.

448
00:20:28,799 --> 00:20:31,000
Speaker 2: And the Source argues that this is a fatal flaw

449
00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:33,200
in our thinking. It's a failure of imagination.

450
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Speaker 1: He used this incredible analogy involving microbiology. He's a biologist

451
00:20:38,240 --> 00:20:39,200
by training.

452
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Speaker 2: Right, Yes, his background is in microbiology and immunology, which

453
00:20:42,519 --> 00:20:45,640
is key to understanding his perspective. He asks us to

454
00:20:45,720 --> 00:20:48,480
imagine Earth's history as a twenty.

455
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Speaker 1: Four hour clock, okay, twenty four hour clock, midnight to midnight,

456
00:20:52,720 --> 00:20:54,039
the whole history of the planet.

457
00:20:54,119 --> 00:20:56,519
Speaker 2: Humans Homo sapiens have only been here for the last

458
00:20:56,599 --> 00:20:59,240
few minutes of that day. We are the new kids

459
00:20:59,279 --> 00:20:59,680
on the block.

460
00:20:59,759 --> 00:21:02,799
Speaker 1: Werely just arrived, right, We haven't even unpacked our bags.

461
00:21:02,839 --> 00:21:04,000
Yet in the grand scheme.

462
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Speaker 2: Of things, not even close now. For most of human history,

463
00:21:07,279 --> 00:21:10,680
we divided life into two categories, plants and animals.

464
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Speaker 1: That was it.

465
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Speaker 2: If it wasn't a plant, it was an animal.

466
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Speaker 1: Simple times easy to remember.

467
00:21:14,799 --> 00:21:17,160
Speaker 2: But then about three hundred years ago, which is like

468
00:21:17,319 --> 00:21:20,400
ten minutes ago on this clock, we discovered fungi, a

469
00:21:20,480 --> 00:21:23,480
whole new kingdom of life. We realized, oh, there's a

470
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third thing.

471
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Speaker 1: Mushrooms and yeasts and all that.

472
00:21:27,079 --> 00:21:29,240
Speaker 2: But then, only about one hundred and twenty years ago,

473
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literally seconds ago, on the evolutionary clock, we invented curved glass.

474
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We made microscopes, and suddenly we looked through the tube

475
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and shouted, little beasties.

476
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Speaker 1: You found a hidden world.

477
00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:45,160
Speaker 2: We discovered microbes, bacteria, viruses, a world teeming with life

478
00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:47,359
that was always there. We just couldn't see it.

479
00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:50,279
Speaker 1: And here's the kicker he dropped. If you take all

480
00:21:50,279 --> 00:21:53,119
the plants, all the animals, and all the fungi and

481
00:21:53,160 --> 00:21:56,000
weigh them, put them on a giant scale.

482
00:21:55,640 --> 00:21:58,839
Speaker 2: The microbes still outweigh us by a lot. They are

483
00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:01,400
the dominant life form on Earth. Wow, they have been

484
00:22:01,440 --> 00:22:04,799
here the whole time. They're inside us, on us, around us,

485
00:22:05,119 --> 00:22:09,039
they run the planet's ecosystem. But for ninety nine point

486
00:22:09,119 --> 00:22:11,839
nine percent of human history, we didn't know they existed

487
00:22:11,880 --> 00:22:13,799
because we didn't have the technology to see them.

488
00:22:13,920 --> 00:22:17,599
Speaker 1: That is the Aha moment that right there, he's saying

489
00:22:17,599 --> 00:22:20,279
that aliens might be like microbes, not that they're small

490
00:22:20,400 --> 00:22:23,279
necessarily no non size, but that they're here right now,

491
00:22:23,319 --> 00:22:25,400
all around us. Yeah, and we just lack the curve

492
00:22:25,480 --> 00:22:27,039
glass to see them exactly.

493
00:22:27,079 --> 00:22:30,039
Speaker 2: He challenges the mankind as blind argument. We perceive reality

494
00:22:30,079 --> 00:22:33,799
through five very limited senses. We see a tiny sliver

495
00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:36,799
of the electromagnetic spectrum, what we call visible light.

496
00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:39,200
Speaker 1: He called a Wi Fi vision right, which I loved. Like,

497
00:22:39,359 --> 00:22:40,519
imagine if you could see Wi.

498
00:22:40,519 --> 00:22:42,599
Speaker 2: Fi signals, well, the room would look completely different.

499
00:22:42,839 --> 00:22:45,960
Speaker 1: It would be filled with beams and pulses and data

500
00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:48,480
streaming everywhere. It would be a light show.

501
00:22:48,680 --> 00:22:51,359
Speaker 2: If you could see radio waves or X rays or

502
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:55,720
dark matter, reality would look unrecognizable. His theory is that

503
00:22:55,759 --> 00:22:59,279
these other these UAPs might not be traveling from Mars

504
00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:00,559
or ELpH for centaury.

505
00:23:00,759 --> 00:23:02,039
Speaker 1: They might not be traveling at all.

506
00:23:02,079 --> 00:23:03,960
Speaker 2: They might be from right here, inner.

507
00:23:03,680 --> 00:23:07,079
Speaker 1: Space, he called it, or the space in between. That

508
00:23:07,160 --> 00:23:08,319
one gave me chills.

509
00:23:08,279 --> 00:23:10,839
Speaker 2: Or the oceans. He points out that we have mapped

510
00:23:10,920 --> 00:23:14,079
less than ten percent of our own ocean floor. We

511
00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:16,119
know more about the surface of the Moon than we

512
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:17,680
do about the bottom of the Pacific.

513
00:23:17,839 --> 00:23:18,559
Speaker 1: That's insane.

514
00:23:18,960 --> 00:23:21,640
Speaker 2: Is it possible that a superior intelligence has been sharing

515
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:23,880
the planet with us for millennia, hiding in the deep

516
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:26,720
oceans or in a spectrum of light we can't perceive.

517
00:23:27,119 --> 00:23:30,720
Speaker 1: It's terrifying and humbling at the same time. It suggests

518
00:23:30,799 --> 00:23:33,440
we aren't the landlords of Earth. We're just the tenants

519
00:23:33,519 --> 00:23:34,839
living in the attic who think we.

520
00:23:34,799 --> 00:23:37,079
Speaker 2: Own the whole house, and we don't even know there's

521
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:39,880
a whole family living in the basement. And that leads

522
00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:42,880
into the sheer scale of reality he discusses in section six.

523
00:23:43,400 --> 00:23:46,559
Because even if they are from out there, out there

524
00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:47,920
is unimaginable.

525
00:23:48,119 --> 00:23:50,359
Speaker 1: He started throwing numbers around that just made my brain

526
00:23:50,400 --> 00:23:53,960
hurt in a good way. The visible universe is thirteen

527
00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:57,000
point nine billion light years across.

528
00:23:56,640 --> 00:23:59,599
Speaker 2: In every direction, so it's a sphere with us at

529
00:23:59,599 --> 00:24:00,799
the center.

530
00:24:00,319 --> 00:24:02,799
Speaker 1: And light travels at one hundred and eighty six thousand

531
00:24:02,839 --> 00:24:06,160
miles per second. That's seven point five times around the

532
00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:08,519
Earth in a single snap of your fingers.

533
00:24:08,599 --> 00:24:10,920
Speaker 2: It's basically instantaneous on a human.

534
00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:14,000
Speaker 1: Scale, and it takes thirteen point nine billion years for

535
00:24:14,119 --> 00:24:16,480
light from the edge to reach us. The scale is

536
00:24:16,559 --> 00:24:17,920
just it breaks your mind.

537
00:24:18,079 --> 00:24:21,039
Speaker 2: And that's just the visible horizon. The actual universe is

538
00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:24,359
likely infinitely larger. He used the grains of sand analogy,

539
00:24:24,400 --> 00:24:24,720
which is.

540
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:26,599
Speaker 1: Always powerful to classic, but it works.

541
00:24:26,759 --> 00:24:29,119
Speaker 2: There are more stars in the visible universe than there

542
00:24:29,160 --> 00:24:31,319
are grains of sand on every bitch on Earth.

543
00:24:31,119 --> 00:24:34,200
Speaker 1: Combined, every beach. Think about grabbing a handful of sand

544
00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:36,960
at the beach. That's thousands of grains right there. Now.

545
00:24:37,039 --> 00:24:39,839
Think of every beach, every desert in the world, and

546
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:40,920
every grain is the sun.

547
00:24:41,039 --> 00:24:43,039
Speaker 2: And most of those suns have planets.

548
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:46,319
Speaker 1: And we think we're the only ones. It seems well

549
00:24:46,599 --> 00:24:49,279
arrogant is the right word mathematically improbable.

550
00:24:49,559 --> 00:24:51,960
Speaker 2: But he also zoomed in, which I thought was fascinating.

551
00:24:52,279 --> 00:24:55,119
He talked about the atom. He compared the size of

552
00:24:55,119 --> 00:24:57,000
a human to the size of the universe, and then

553
00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:58,440
the size of a human to the size of a

554
00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:02,000
single atom. In mathemat we are roughly in the middle.

555
00:25:02,119 --> 00:25:04,400
Speaker 1: We are the halfway point between the infinitely big and

556
00:25:04,400 --> 00:25:05,319
the infinitely small.

557
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:07,680
Speaker 2: And his point is that our brains are designed to

558
00:25:07,759 --> 00:25:11,640
understand the middle our world. We understand things that are

559
00:25:12,039 --> 00:25:15,440
a few magnitudes bigger than us, like a mountain, or

560
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:17,440
a few magnitudes smaller, like an ant.

561
00:25:17,559 --> 00:25:18,279
Speaker 1: We can handle that.

562
00:25:18,599 --> 00:25:20,599
Speaker 2: But once you get to the scale of the universe

563
00:25:20,680 --> 00:25:24,359
or the scale of quantum mechanics, our intuition fails. Our

564
00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:27,640
brains just weren't built for it. We simply cannot comprehend it.

565
00:25:27,839 --> 00:25:31,200
Speaker 1: So when we try to understand youaps, we are trying

566
00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:34,599
to use a brain evolved for hunting and gathering on

567
00:25:34,599 --> 00:25:36,400
the African savannah.

568
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:38,880
Speaker 2: A brain evolved to spot lions in the tall grass

569
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:40,400
and find ripe fruit.

570
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:43,759
Speaker 1: To understand technologies that might be manipulating the fabric of

571
00:25:43,799 --> 00:25:44,799
space time itself.

572
00:25:44,839 --> 00:25:47,880
Speaker 2: Precisely, we are trying to download the Internet onto a toaster.

573
00:25:48,039 --> 00:25:50,119
The hardware just isn't built for it, Which.

574
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,160
Speaker 1: Brings us to the final section of our breakdown today,

575
00:25:52,519 --> 00:25:57,960
human laziness. Because the source didn't just critique our biology,

576
00:25:58,000 --> 00:25:59,119
he critiqued our culture.

577
00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:02,160
Speaker 2: He was quite scared about this. He was not pulling

578
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:05,680
any punches. He pointed out that we have become intellectually lazy.

579
00:26:05,720 --> 00:26:07,279
We retreat into echo chamber.

580
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:10,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, he used that sports metaphor that was just perfect.

581
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:13,240
He said, parents can rattle off the stats of their

582
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:16,839
favorite football quarterback, passing yards, completion rates, everything, They know

583
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:18,960
it by heart, but they have no idea who their

584
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:20,880
own kid sits next to in math class.

585
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:24,680
Speaker 2: It highlights where we place our attention, our priorities. We

586
00:26:24,799 --> 00:26:29,200
crave entertainment, we crave validation. He mentions that liberals watch

587
00:26:29,279 --> 00:26:32,519
liberal news, conservatives watch conservative news. We don't want to

588
00:26:32,519 --> 00:26:33,160
be challenged.

589
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:35,160
Speaker 1: We want to be force fed opinions that we already

590
00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:37,599
agree with, rather than doing the hard work of critical thinking.

591
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:40,880
Speaker 2: Yes, we want the comfort of confirmation.

592
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:45,160
Speaker 1: Bias and this UAP topic. It requires hard work. It

593
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:47,599
requires you to sit with discomfort. It requires you to

594
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:50,000
say I don't know, and we hate that.

595
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:52,160
Speaker 2: That is his core message. I think he says, we

596
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:54,480
need to keep all options on the table until they

597
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:57,640
are no longer on the table. That requires a level

598
00:26:57,680 --> 00:27:01,559
of open mindedness that is rare in today's polarized society.

599
00:27:01,799 --> 00:27:05,079
It really is we want immediate answers. Is it China?

600
00:27:05,599 --> 00:27:08,720
Is it Aliens? Is it a weather balloon? We don't

601
00:27:08,799 --> 00:27:12,000
have the patience for the ambiguity of it. Might be

602
00:27:12,039 --> 00:27:15,079
something interdimensional that we don't have the vocabulary for yet.

603
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:17,640
Speaker 1: So let's bring this all the way back to the beginning.

604
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:20,400
We've covered a lot of ground here, a huge amount.

605
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:24,200
We've covered the threats, the jail time, the lethal force

606
00:27:24,240 --> 00:27:27,440
at Area fifty one, the tragic history of the Rosenbergs.

607
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:32,599
We've covered the bureaucracy, the temporary presidents, the military industrial

608
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:34,759
complex hoarding secrets for profit.

609
00:27:35,039 --> 00:27:37,319
Speaker 2: We've looked at the Legacy program and the distraction of

610
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:41,119
the War on Terror, and we've completely reframed the definition

611
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:44,640
of alien from a space traveler to a potential neighbor

612
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:47,240
we just can't see using that incredible MicroB analogy.

613
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:49,759
Speaker 1: This has been a heavy episode of thrilling threads. The

614
00:27:49,839 --> 00:27:52,720
universe feels a lot bigger, a lot stranger, and honestly

615
00:27:52,759 --> 00:27:54,680
a lot more dangerous than it did an hour ago.

616
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:57,920
Speaker 2: It is a reminder that reality is not obligated to

617
00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:00,839
make sense to us. It is not obligated to fit

618
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:03,880
into our twenty four hour news cycle or our political beliefs.

619
00:28:04,319 --> 00:28:06,839
Speaker 1: It simply is, and we just have to deal with it.

620
00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:10,240
Speaker 2: And right now there are credible people telling us that

621
00:28:10,319 --> 00:28:14,279
what is includes things we cannot explain with our current models.

622
00:28:14,559 --> 00:28:16,799
Speaker 1: So I want to leave you with a question. The

623
00:28:16,839 --> 00:28:18,960
source asked us to consider if we are ready for

624
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:22,640
the truth. So listener, I'm asking you directly, if the

625
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:27,720
government released the files tomorrow, I mean a full data dump, everything,

626
00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:30,480
more secrets. And the truth wasn't we found a micro

627
00:28:30,640 --> 00:28:33,640
on Mars. The truth was we are not the top

628
00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:36,319
of the food chain. There is something here on earth.

629
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:38,319
It has been here longer than us, It is smarter

630
00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:40,559
than us, and it is watching us right now, and.

631
00:28:40,519 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 2: There's nothing we can do about it.

632
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:44,759
Speaker 1: We are ants in their farm exactly. If that was

633
00:28:44,799 --> 00:28:48,440
the truth, would you actually want to know? Or is

634
00:28:48,559 --> 00:28:52,519
ignorance truly bliss? Would you rather go back to worrying

635
00:28:52,559 --> 00:28:55,039
about football stats and who your kid sits next to

636
00:28:55,119 --> 00:28:55,880
in math class?

637
00:28:56,079 --> 00:28:58,160
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate choice between the blue pill and

638
00:28:58,200 --> 00:28:59,400
the red pill, isn't it?

639
00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:01,839
Speaker 1: It really is. Let us know what you think, Drop

640
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:04,480
a comment, send us a message. We really want to

641
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:07,039
know where you stand on the precipice of that rabbit hole.

642
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:09,920
I'm your host, and I'm the expert. And this has

643
00:29:09,960 --> 00:29:13,279
been thrilling threads. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in

644
00:29:13,279 --> 00:29:15,759
the next one. Keep pulling the threads,