Podcasts/Sacred Tension-UFO disclosure FINAL990y1

UFO_disclosure_FINAL990y1 SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, pentagon, ufos, robert bigelow, ufo, studying, evidence, bigelow aerospace, harry reid, bigelow, program, aliens, story, report, marco rubio, bit, faa, money, talking, pilots SPEAKERS Mick West, Stephen Bradford Long

00:00 Hey, I'm Andrew. And I'm John. Our show magnified pod is the only podcast that discusses culture, religion, politics, and deep dives into the discographies of the bands that shaped a generation of 90s youth group kids check out magnified pod on the rock candy Podcast Network and wherever you get your podcasts.

Stephen Bradford Long 00:47 This is sacred tension, the podcast about the discipline of asking questions. My name is Steven Bradford long and we are here on the rock candy Podcast Network. For more shows like this one, go to rock candy recordings.com. In this episode, I speak with the gentleman sceptic Mick West about the topic of UFO disclosure, we discussed the press coverage of UFOs the weird inner workings of the Pentagon UFO program and whether or not there is good evidence to support the claim that we are in the presence of mysterious on earthly technology. And by the way, the UAP report that we discuss in the episode is now available. And I recommend that everyone go read it, you can find the link to it in the show notes. Mick West is a video game programmer turned skeptic and debunker He is the author of escaping the rabbit hole. He is a YouTuber podcaster and the founder of meta bunk.org. But before we get to the conversation, I have to thank my patrons. My patrons are my personal lords and saviors. And I truly could not do this without them. This show takes an enormous amount of work from scheduling interviews all the way to the final product. And if you want to support my show, the best way to do that is to go to patreon.com forward slash Steven Bradford long and for just a few dollars every month you get content each week. Finally, eleventy seven who does the music for this show has a new single out it's called a wild, I'm going to close the show with the new single. And if you like the single, please go follow eleventy seven, wherever you listen to music be at Spotify or Apple music or whatever that really, really, really helps my friend who is the maestro for this show. All right. With all of that finally out of the way, I am delighted to bring you my conversation with Mick West. Mick West. Welcome back to the show.

Mick West 02:59 Thank you. Great to be back.

Stephen Bradford Long 03:00 Yeah, so we talked, I think back in 2019. I can't exactly remember when it's been a few years, a couple of years. And when we talked UFOs were in the news. They were you know, it was kind of coming back into the mainstream. The New York Times was doing articles about mysterious things in the sky. And then this guy named Lou Elizondo broke into the public arena and To The Stars Academy became a thing. So things were pretty wild. Things have only gotten Wilder.

Mick West 03:44 Yes, things have certainly have. It's very interesting. What's happened over the last few years. It's been quite the upward trajectory. Yeah, in a way, it kind of feels like, like a natural progression in some senses. Because we did have that initial. The story in The New York Times was the thing that I think allowed it to break through into the mainstream, you have the New York Times doing a story on something, it kind of gives it a bit of gravitas, and people built upon that. And the people who were kind of behind that New York Times story. We're continuing to do to do similar things lately, Keegan, the one of the writers, has continued to write more stories as as Ralph Blumenthal, one of the other writers, and the people leaking the information to them. The Chris melanin and the will is on there. I've continued to do similar things over the years. And here we are.

Stephen Bradford Long 04:42 Here we are for people who have no idea what we're talking about. Can you describe what that article was that kind of shared this into the mainstream? Yeah,

Mick West 04:54 the article was called glowing auras on black money. And it was kind of a about two things, really, it was about the existence of a pentagon program that studied UFOs. Essentially, at least this is the claim. And it was also about a couple of videos that were released around the same time essentially given to the New York Times by some people who were involved with that program. But now we then no longer were. So this this black money refers to a specific amount of money $22 million, which back in 2008, was kind of arranged by Senator Harry Reid, who I think then may have been the House Majority lead Democrat. I'm not entirely sure. Was it the Senate? His I can't remember now. But he big politician Harry Reid, everybody knows Harry Reid, now retired. And he he and a couple of other senators, I believe here, got the this this thing called a tip on the books. Basically, it's just like a small earmark in the Pentagon budget, $22 million out of a $600 billion budget was earmarked for this this one program, which was ostensibly, this is the interesting thing, it wasn't actually about studying UFOs, the the public facing description of this program was to study advanced aerospace concepts, which meant basically trying to figure out where we will, we would be in 1020 30 years regarding, like things like, like, like jet planes and forms of propulsion and things like that. So

Stephen Bradford Long 06:44 so just to pause you right there. So the premise of a tip, you know, like the big news, like the Pentagon has this top secret program, which is studying UFOs. That is a false premise.

Mick West 06:58 Well, it depends on who you ask, okay. The, the original tender for the program, the thing they put out there to get get bids on the contract. It doesn't say anything about studying UFOs or as they call them, UAPs. It just says it will be looking into these advanced aerospace concepts, but were told that there was a secret agenda behind this that people would would know when they actually got the project, but it's very strange how it came about, I guess isn't that strange? But you know, Harry Reid, got the earmark, and then he was put out to tender. And the only person who applied for the project was Harry Reid's friend, Robert Bigelow, who lives near him in in Nevada, and they got the project,

Stephen Bradford Long 07:49 a big lousiest billionaire. Like yeah, and

Mick West 07:53 yes, billionaire. Yes. Yep. It's very interesting, like, and this this, this is something that resonates throughout the entire story. We've got this guy, Robert Bigelow rich guy is worth like $600 million, or something like that. And he got he made his money. I think it was in a hotel chain or a motel chain. Yeah, motels. And then he kind of cashed in a bunch of that and started this Bigelow Aerospace. And he's basically said that he, he started to make money, with the aim of doing this, this space focus thing. And there's this study of UFOs and the paranormal, he's done a bunch of other stuff. He bought Skinwalker Ranch, which people may have seen on TV and in various, various, like documentary films about this thing, which is this, this ranch in Utah, which is nothing special about it, it's just this barren patch of land and rocks. But people think that it's haunted or that it has some kind of transdimensional gateway that attracts UFOs, or the UFO has come out of and sometimes like werewolves coming out of it and things like that. And so Bigelow bought this and kind of investigated it and and does interesting connections to government programs and things like that, where people who work as government contractors ended up you're working at a Skinwalker Ranch. There's this whole kind of murky past to this is where we are now if you go back far enough, you'll find this stuff out and it all kind of goes back to Robert Bigelow.

Stephen Bradford Long 09:36 So it's like the not quite invisible college who who is the one who coined the phrase the invisible college was that

Mick West 09:44 I believe it was Jack valet?

Stephen Bradford Long 09:46 Yes Jack valet. So this is in the whole premise of the invisible college is that there's like this, this invisible network of scientists and and government people studying this thing. A this alien phenomenon or this UFO phenomenon. And so this is like the not quite invisible college. It's like Bigelow, and a lot of you know, this, this strange kind of network of really powerful people. Fascinated by this subject. Yeah. And yeah, yeah, go on.

Mick West 10:23 Oh, I was gonna say there are, you said very powerful people. But lots of powerful people have an interest in the subject but they're not really super involved in it I think the highest ranking person you could get is probably Harry Reid. And Harry Reid is actually very careful to stay away from the more esoteric aspects of it. Like he, he's quite explicit in stating that he is on the side of science and not on the side of trying to prove it's aliens. But I think that perhaps is something of a politician in him, he knows it's not a very, very popular position for the mainstream to be an alien believer, so he stays away from that. But you get lots of other people like, say John Podesta, who was Hillary Clinton's Chief of Staff, and even Hillary Clinton herself, like saying things like, Wouldn't it be interesting to find out, and now even Barack Obama says things, but it doesn't mean Barack Obama is like interested in Aliens, it just means he has something of an inch as knowledge of the situation that people are saying that there are things that we can't identify. And it'd be great if we could identify that. So I think there's a lot of like you say, it's this semi invisible College, and you don't really know exactly what's going on, or the depths of it. And I think it kind of actually gives an illusion that there's actually a lot more to it. Yes, than there actually is.

Stephen Bradford Long 11:45 I 100% agree with that. And what I have found really frustrating as I have had a passing interest in this subject for years is just how little there is beneath the top of this iceberg. You know, like, there's this sense of with the UFO subject, that it's like, okay, you see the top of the iceberg and it's super intriguing, and you know, there, but then you try to drill down a bit deeper, or you try to see what's beneath it. It's like the the advertisement, the the, what you are led to believe is that there is this really deep underground truth and like this network of things to be revealed beneath it. And what I've consistently found is that there just isn't much there, beneath the tip of the iceberg. Does that make sense? Like like that I've that I've kind of struggled with actually because I really want there to be something like I really want there to be more to this thing. But then I go down a bit deeper and the iceberg just isn't there. It's just water. Yeah.

Mick West 12:57 There's a lot of promise and a lot of people making promises exactly and people saying that there is data and that there is evidence for essentially alien visitors. If you look at what say Lou Elizondo is talking about now Lou Elizondo for to put this in the context of what we were talking earlier, is the guy who is said to be the head of this program, the black money program that was was mentioned in the New York Times article, program called a tip, which was started by Harry Reid and given to his friend, Rob Bigelow, was kind of run or coordinated or managed by this guy, Lou Elizondo, who is a guy from the intelligence service, who works in the Pentagon. And he seems during the course of his tenure, that became strongly convinced that there was a case for for the existence of aliens, essentially, at the start, he was a little bit more cagey about saying this, but now he says quite explicitly, that he thinks there's only an infinitesimal chance that it is some kind of conventional human technology, like it's the Russian drones, or Chinese drones, or American technology or anything like he thinks that's basically there's hardly any chance of that being true. And he thinks it's likely something that's extra terrestrial, or he goes on to say, ultra terrestrial or extra dimensional, he actually goes and suggests that there are things like you quantum dimensions and things like that, that perhaps these are beings from another dimension, and we've got to study quantum physics, and it's all very, very woowoo. It's very, pseudo scientifical and not really based on on evidence at all. It's kind of surprising that he eventually came to this position, but this is where we are now. And I think a lot of people who follow the story in the mainstream media don't actually realize to the degree to which These people actually kind of go beyond science and positing things that are really quite extreme, like things from another dimension or even, in some cases, things like time travelers. They use the term Ultra terrestrial like it's it's not huge. It's Hugh O'Neill.

Stephen Bradford Long 15:16 That's John keells. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's

Mick West 15:18 not these humans, it's some other type of humans that either perhaps they are humans that left the planet and came back, or perhaps their time traveling humans, or perhaps they're humans who have been living deep underground for a long time. Or perhaps they're terrestrial, but not human, like some kind of known human race that's living under the oceans. You know, these are things that are very speculative and completely without evidence and really aren't necessary as explanations for for what we're seeing, which are just still essentially, basically just mysterious lights in the sky and strange returns on radar. We don't really have any really great evidence of these supposedly, amazing craft. So the leap that people are making to extra dimensional beings is really quite ridiculous.

Stephen Bradford Long 16:07 Yeah, I agree with that. And you know, what you were just saying about, like the mainline news, not, and I mean, really prestigious outlets, like the New York Times, not seeming to grasp the pseudo science in this situation. And I guess, I guess my question is why the credulousness? Like why the that is not something that I would expect from an outlet like the New York Times, like they have fact checkers, they have they presumably have a you know, I don't know how any of that shit works. But I assume that they have like filters that a story has to go through in order to be published. And so why the credulousness from presumably very professional and mainline and prestigious outlets that have that has just given wings to this entire story. Like if it weren't for the New York Times, and then several other outlets, like really shining a spotlight and lending credence, this story wouldn't. I don't know if it would be a story. And so like, why the credulousness?

Mick West 17:26 I think there's there's a number of reasons. The main one, I think, is the what they wrote about, in the first story glowing or isn't black money, even though it contained a number of factual inaccuracies. There were difficult factual, factual inaccuracies to check. But a lot of it was was actually factual. So they're talking about this this aid program, which is a real thing. And that's actually a real story, the fact that there was a $22 million spending on this, this program is actually something that can be verified, did actually happen, and the money was spent. The fact that these videos exist is also true. And they they show things that you aren't directly explained, and they were not explained at the time, and they're still not fully explained. Now, even though they're they turned out to be less interesting than they appeared at the time. And then you got to look at the three authors of of the paper. There's three people, Helen Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kane, two of those authors are people who write about things that are essentially supernatural or UFO type things. Ralph Blumenthal wrote a book about essentially alien abductions. As a Harvard researcher, I think it was some researcher from some university called John Mack, who did a lot of research into alien abductions, essentially people who had these experiences of alien abductions, and he was very, very credulous and really very friendly towards these people, and basically gave them a lot of credence is kind of saying, these alien abductions are real, when all of these alien abductions really are not based on any real evidence other than the recollections of the person who thought that this thing happened to them. Another person there is Leslie, Leslie Kane. Leslie Kane has written books about UFOs. Before she's written a book, I think it's called UFOs, and generals or something like that. And which was about how there are people who believe in UFOs, who were in very high positions of power, but again, it's kind of a book that essentially is strongly suggesting that UFOs are real. And since since then, she's written other books about life after death, and she said, she essentially believes that when mediums have seances things actually happened. She gives she gives an account of some disembodied hands touching her or some disembodied void or something like that when she attended a seance. So you've got people who, even though they won't come out directly and say it, are kind of very sympathetic to the alternative views of science and reality, essentially verging on the supernatural. And then we had Helen Cooper, who was a bit more of a straight laced reporter, but still, I think, to some degree is sympathetic to that position. So you got three, three reporters on this story. And that gives it a certain gravitas. If it was just one of them writing it, it, it would be, I think, a different thing. And perhaps the fact checkers and the editors will pay more attention to it. But you can write a story that's facts. checkable, passes the fact checkers that still has a lot of a slant

Stephen Bradford Long 20:49 that has assumptions or points in a direct or is suggestive of things that aren't verified? Yeah,

Mick West 20:56 yeah. And people take different things from the story. Leslie Kane has said that she was kind of disappointed that people focused on the videos because for her the point about the story was that there was this secret program. But for a lot of people, this secret program that has very little details of it in there, and it's kind of boring is kind of like the political horsetrading, Harry Reid and his friend and things like that, that wasn't that interesting. The interesting thing was evidence of Europos. So the videos became the story. And I think that's, that is in itself, you know, because the bulk of the story was about this, how this money got spent. But then the public reads the story in the like New York Times like shows video of UFO is the video of a flying saucer. UFOs are real government and bits UFOs are real, they take different things from it. And then the New York Times, lots of people read that story. And I think it's kind of like a, you know, bite of the poisoned apple or the forbidden fruit. And once you start getting the taste for that, that type of thing, is kinda in a way, a little bit of a slippery slope. It is like this story, you've done it in a certain way. So it's fact checks and everything. And yet, it's this exotic subject that gets loads of attention. You can do another story along the same lines. And fact check it just as much, but still have that slant. And that's what happened is they did a bunch of stories along the same lines.

Stephen Bradford Long 22:21 It's fascinating. And it's like, giving people a taste for this story. And, like, here's the thing, I feel like I'm open minded to a fault like I am. I feel like I'm actually willing to believe that there are ultra Terrestrials flying around the planet. Like that would be fucking insane. But like, the universe is an insane place. I just want evidence, I guess. Like, I feel like I'm willing to believe a lot of shit a lot of crazy shit. And maybe that's my temperament. Maybe that's like, my, my personality, I don't know, it would it would upend our entire everything, like it would it would upend our model of of everything. And so that would be an issue. But I just want evidence, that's it, and like, rigorous evidence and so it's like, the fact that we have, like, every single one of us have these incredible devices in our pocket called a smartphone where we can take HD footage, and, and like, why why do all of these videos still look like they came out of the fucking 50s? Like, with with the military that had in the in the Pentagon that has like access to some of the most incredible technology on the planet? Why the hell does it look like that? Does it? Is it the same quality of footage as like that Bigfoot video? From I forget when it was, like, a gazillion years ago that? Yeah, that's so like, grainy and terrible and it was eventually proven to be fake. Like, I would like this to be true. But like I said, there's nothing there's just nothing beneath that iceberg. There there is there is very little there are a lot of promises of evidence and then there just isn't the evidence.

Mick West 24:20 Yeah, the the number of disconnects, there's kind of two main disconnects I see in the UFO field. One is a very simple mechanical disconnect between eyewitness testimony and photographic evidence. Yeah. Now you talk about cellphone videos. We all have 4k cameras in our pockets now, which is pretty true. And self 4k video is is almost on a par with human vision. It's perhaps like maybe half the resolution of human vision just based on me like looking at planes and taking pictures of planes and then looking at what you can see there's pretty good people points out there. It's not that good at take seeing pictures of things that are far away. And which is also true. So if you take a picture of the moon with yourself, and it generally doesn't turn out very well, or a plane, you're just going to be fairly blurry. So so that is true. However, the disconnect is that a lot of the eyewitness accounts are things that are much closer, people describe seeing things in a lot of detail, they'll describe things like seeing a line of lights, or even Windows, or they'll see shapes that will see legs underneath the craft, or they describe the shape of the craft and various little details on it. Or they'll say it was hovering over trees just 300 feet away, or was right by overhead. And then when you look at the actual footage, if there is any, then it's it doesn't look anything like that it looks like it's something blurry and out of focus is much further away. We have these people's claiming that the things were close, and we have devices that are capable of taking pictures of things that are close, but all we get is photos of things that are too far away, to tell what they actually are. So this is a huge disconnect that people have been observing for for over many years. You know, there's jokes about how Bigfoot is naturally out of focus is so fairy that it's just maybe people don't even joke about it, they actually make similar claims about UFOs. They have like a reality distortion field around them, which creates blurriness around them. So you can't focus on that. Yeah, there are claims that people make that super clever people claim to have that with their eyes to see things that are pin sharp, and they see exactly every detail and even even at rivets in the surface of the object. But somehow you can't take a photograph of it. And then you get people arguing that it there's some field where you can see it with your eyes, but not with a camera, which is pretty much nonsense because eyes and cameras work in almost exactly the same way they have a lens, we have an array of sensors in the back of, of the your eye or in the back of the camera and it gets translated into an image, it's almost exactly the same. The eye is a biological analog of, of a digital camera, an analog version of that digital camera, then the other big disconnect is something you kind of touched on there as is the would be a big deal. If this was true, it would be a huge deal. It would be perhaps the biggest thing that's happened in all of human history, if we were to make contact with an alien race. And it was even if that wasn't the case, if we if it was simply antigravity craft flying around or warp drives playing around, that's a quantum leap in, in human technology that would revolutionize the entire world. So we're talking about a defining moment in human history, from one epoch to the next, like pre warp drives to post warp drives or pre alien contacts to post alien contact is this defining moment, and yet we've got these shitty little boutique programs like Harry Reid, 22 million dots. We've got all this nothing from the government or the military. We got we got Marco Rubio go. Yeah, maybe it's aliens. But maybe now we don't know. We'll find out. We'll have things to do. So I'll talk to you later. Yeah, exactly. disproportionate response. It really was that important? It? Yeah. Do you know how much the F 35 program is going to cost over its lifetime? $1.6 trillion. Wow. That's like, the Americans budgets, entire federal budget for a year, but it obviously spread over like, you know, whatever, the 30 year lifetime of the program, but we're gonna spend $1.6 trillion on the F 35. Fighter, which is this new supervisors are gonna use computers and things and it's really good, barely, even though it's got lots of problems. And if this, if this people's suspicions are true, we've got these amazing craft flying around, it's completely obsolete and pointless having this face because this thing's gonna just like whiz around and run rings around it. So why are we spending $1.6 trillion on something that's theirs obsolete, and yet we're spending $22 million on on checking to see if it is in fact obsolete. If there's good evidence that this technology is obsolete, then it would be the most important priority for the US military and probably the US government to do and they should be spending billions and billions and billions of dollars investigating it. But they don't because the evidence is crap.

Stephen Bradford Long 29:41 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, that makes complete sense. It's like oh, that's kind of weird. Let's just throw a few dollars at it and and in terms of the budget of the Pentagon, whatever, however many million it was that Harry Reid set aside for it. That really is like a few dollars. That's like loose change. That is nothing Go

Mick West 30:00 Back then when when that came out $22 million over five years. So what is that, like? I for $4.1 million a year for you, Sarah, around $4 million a year. And the Pentagon's budget at that time was $600 billion, which is 600,000 million dollars. And so when we're talking about 4 million versus 600,000 million is nothing. It's a tiny little, it's an accounting error. In fact, they have much bigger accounting errors in the Pentagon than $22 million. It's essentially meaningless. It's like what they spend protecting the horned toad in, in Edwards Air Force Base. It's a tiny little drop in the ocean just given to Harry Reid to keep him happy. But it's had this like effects. Because it gives it the stamp of officialdom, even though the stuff that came out of this program was largely nonsense. You know, they did basically a bunch of studies, where they asked speculative scientists to write speculative papers about what might happen in the future. And you people say, Well, maybe we'll have warp drives. And here's some equations. And we could go really fast if we had warp drives, but we probably won't, because it requires Exotic Matter. And then then they had like, people studying UFOs, apparently, under the under the hood, but what actually came out of that there's only got $22 million. Yeah, what, how much money? Can they spend doing their investigations, they really haven't done done anything that seems very impressive. They've perhaps collated a whole bunch of accounts. So we've got kind of nothing came out of it really.

Stephen Bradford Long 31:45 And like any blogger can do that. Like it. It's not very impressive, like anyone can can compile bunch of interesting eyewitness stories, like that's nothing.

Mick West 31:55 Yeah, well, they probably have some access to classified information, which is a little bit worrisome in itself, because a lot of the people who are involved in this are a bit a bit kooky like this. He's got these strong opinions that aliens are amongst us. And he said this himself, and he's, he's he had these strong opinions about Skinwalker Ranch and paranormal things. I don't know if you know, but like, the FAA has a little paragraph in the far aim regulation. What is the F F? F? What was that? Again, the FAA, what is the Federal Aviation Authority, okay, they are the people in charge of their traffic in the United States, and they have all the regulations for planes and pilots have to have to follow so it's the federal government's aviation authority. And they have a paragraph in their, their regulations, which are referred to as far aim is to essentially two sets of regulations. The I think it's like the Federal Aviation Regulations, and the, the airman Information Manual or something like that, but two different things combined together. They have a paragraph in there, which gives instructions for what to do if you see a UFO. I mean, I know a lot of people know this, there's actually federal government instructions for what pilots should do when they see a UFO. And what it says is, if you want to report a UFO, don't report it to the FAA report it to a UFO Reporting organization, like for example, and they give it the National UFO Reporting Center at new new fork, I think, which is just you know, one of these organizations like this one called MUFON, which is wild, like, less people send in a report of UFO and then that goes in a database and then nothing is ever done. Now, the interesting thing about this is that you know, you look at this now and that's all they say is it says Don't call us call one of these things. If you think there's a risk to life call local law enforcement for you don't call the FAA now, back in 2014. This this paragraph was a little bit different. Back in 2014. It says if you want to report a UFO call a UFO Reporting Center, like Bigelow Aerospace. And then he gave a phone number four Bigelow Aerospace advanced aerospace Science Center. And Bigelow Aerospace has somehow become the go to reporting center for UFOs. It somehow got into the FAA, that they should direct all the UFO reports to Bigelow Aerospace. So you've got this these weird connections of, of Robert Bigelow, there's this millionaire, kind of inserting himself into things. Now, of course, around the same time as that was happening, Bigelow Aerospace was running at it. So you might think, oh, it's kind of a reasonable thing to do that because they're doing a tip and he was looking at us secretly. They, the FAA should send their reports to them. But you go back before a trip, and you look at the version of that regulation before that, it doesn't say Bigelow Aerospace anymore. It says, If you want to report a UFO reported to knids, the National Institute for Discovery sciences and knids is the single point of contact for reporting UFO as it actually says this in the FAA regulations that needs is the single point of contact for reporting UFOs. And knids is an organization that was set up live in 1999. By Robert Bigelow, the study UFOs Yeah, cattle mutilations and ghosts. Oh, perfect. So there are three reporting forms on that there's one reporting form for UFOs, which is the official FAA reporting form. There's another one for reporting cattle mutilations. And then there's another one for reporting entities. And the entities reporting form is essentially a reporting form for reporting ghosts. So you've got this really weird connection where the federal government has within its federal regulations, the contact information for a paranormal organization, which is collating reports on cattle mutilations, ghostly encounters and UFOs. Yeah. And it's kind of resonated through what's been going on. And you were still seeing the tail effects of that Robert Bigelow is fingers have been all over this. And I still continue to be having an effects to this day with the UAP Taskforce. And now the UAP report.

Stephen Bradford Long 36:34 That's so fascinating. And what it reminds me of is Jon Ronson owns research and reporting in his book, The Men Who Stare at Goats, and basically what he does is he, he shows that kookiness, like goes all the way up, like it goes all the way up the lines of power, because people there's kind of this implicit appeal to authority fallacy in in all of this stuff, like, oh, well, this is a pentagon person, they don't have the same glitchy thinking the way normal people do, because they have the expertise. And I hear this all the time. When it comes to pilots, like Oh, pilot, you know, Air Force pilots, they know, they know what they're looking at, and they know what they aren't looking at. And they, you know, have years and years and years of experience. And there's kind of this implicit appeal to authority fallacy. And all of this stuff like Christopher Mellon, oh, the, you know, he's he's a Pentagon official or whatever. Surely, he can't be delusional like that, like the rest of us. Surely he can't have cognitive glitches, like the rest of us, he has to be able to think more clearly, because of his position of power. And the reality is, and I think Jon Ronson, and The Men Who Stare at Goats displays this really well, intelligence, and power, and prestige are no inoculations against delusion, like those are like, glitchy thinking. And cognitive biases is a human feature that can affect anyone, no matter how intelligent or educated or powerful they are. And that's really what this makes me think about is, is this assumption we have that people in rarefied positions like the Pentagon can think more clearly than us? And I, I think that that is just not true.

Mick West 38:41 Yeah, it is. It's interesting, because to some degree, it is true, because I think people who are in certain positions, think more clearly than the average person. But the average person doesn't think very clearly at all. If you if you look at opinion polls on a vast array of subjects, it doesn't take much to raise about the average human half, half of the people in America are above average intelligence. So it's, but a lot of the people that we're talking about who are in positions of power, or in some position of authority, the thing about that is that being good at one thing doesn't make you good, everything else. And this is kind of a fallacy that individual people themselves fall for. They think they're because they're very intelligent, and they've been able to figure out something very well. So they've got a PhD in something, which means they wrote a PhD thesis, which was a very great examination of some subjects that perhaps move the science forward a little bit. And they were able to defend that thesis and they got their PhD. You know, that means that they're a genius. And they can then take that that genius and they can apply it to any subject that they like. There's a very funny cartoon by On Saturday morning breakfast cereal SMBC, which is about a couple who have a pet physicist, and the pet physicist that they're keeping in the house with, you know, essentially, it's a dog, but it's a pet physicist and this cartoon starts talking about things outside of his knowledge domain, he stops talking about physics, and he starts talking about social sciences. And the talk starts talking about economics. And he starts talking about biology. And they get concerned because he doesn't normally do that. And so they take him to the the physicist vet, and the vet says, this is just something that happens with old physicists. And as they get older, they, they they branch out into other subjects, because they think that their knowledge applies to all subjects equally, and they don't realize that they should stick to the things that they know. And it's sad, but just let him enjoy life, it's gonna get a few years left. And they you essentially have to say goodbye to the pet physicist, because this represents the the end stage of his life because he started to become a bit of a bit of a crank. Delving into other subjects, I recommend looking up this this discussion, and it's pretty funny. That's hilarious. Yeah, this is something that that is a problem like you, you, you see it all the time, people have these huge opinions of their own intelligence, and they feel that they are correct. But they feel that they're correct. Not really, because their analysis is super good. That'd be because this they feel that their assessment of the evidence points at a certain thing based on their their experience. And like you said, you get it with, with with people like pilots, pilots, you know, they're very highly skilled at flying planes. And then they think that translates to being highly skilled at spotting UFOs. And figuring out exactly what they're seeing in the sky, because they're not prone to, to illusions, when where they are, and this has been actually shown, one of the famous old school UFO debunkers turned UFO advocates, J. Allen Hynek found out did a study, I think or looked at studies that said that pilots actually made worse observers of unusual things than ordinary people, because pilots are so primed to seeing things in a certain way. You know, when you're a pilot, and I've done some flying, you're trained to scan the skies and scan your instruments, you have the scan pattern that you do, and yes, you're trained to spot traffic, this is a very important part of flying is, ATC will tell you like you know, traffic, three o'clock 300 to 2000 feet above you. And you're supposed to look for that traffic and then spot it and then say traffic, traffic insights, no issue. And this is this, this thing you do over and over again, you're trained to spot other planes, then something comes along that you've never seen before. You don't know how far away it is or how big it is. You tend to just fit it into whatever your mental framework is. And you think you've figured it out. Do you think it's like the size of another plane moving like another plane? But maybe it isn't so good at one thing doesn't make you being good at everything? Yeah, absolutely. Something new and unusual.

Stephen Bradford Long 43:21 So in the time we have left, let's fast forward some to 2021 and the craziness in the news right now. So let me see if I can articulate what's going on. And you can correct me if this is right or not. So in the COVID Relief bill that Trump passed, he, there was this little thing smuggled in there that the Pentagon should release of thing a statement? I don't know what exactly it is about, you know, information on UFOs. And so that's what's happening this month. I am record we are recording this, by the way on June 22. For for anyone who's listening to this after the fact and so this thing is due this month, and the internet is losing its god damn mind like it, is it because there's a myth of disclosure, you know, and I don't mean myth in a derogatory sense. I mean, it's like there's this. There's this story in the zeitgeist about the government having information. And inevitably, it's like there's, you know, the return of Christ, there's going to be the disclosure. And when we enter this new world, this this new era in which we all have the secret information about what's actually going on what's really going on in the world, and it will usher in a new era. And so it's almost like this mythology that the internet is telling itself right or certain quarters of the internet is telling itself right now

Mick West 44:55 It wasn't just kind of inserted in the COVID Relief bill. It was essentially, Marco Rubio got this language put into, I think it's some kind of like a committee. Comments like the Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee puts these little documents together. And I kind of they're not exactly the same legal standing as a bill, but they essentially are because they're kind of like directives. And that got put into another bill. And then that bill was was kind of discussed, and then that was all folded into an omnibus bill. So and that is what got passed by, by Congress. So yeah, no one looked at this, this language, no one voted on it. No one even considered it or cared about it, because he had no budget and had no financial impact. And it was just, you know, just one of those 1000s of things, literally 1000s of things that were in this omnibus bill, the omnibus spending bill, which was part of the whole COVID released package, and it was signed back in December of last year 2020. by Donald Trump, Marco Rubio gots that, essentially from Chris Mellon, Chris Mellon, where gave him the initial language for that bill. And this is something that it's it's been verified like Tom DeLonge tweeted about it. This was back when Chris Mellon was working for Tom DeLonge. So Chris Mellon, UFO enthusiasts working for Fandango, another UFO enthusiast works with Marco Rubio, for some reason to get this this language inserted, which all it does is it's quite, it's quite a lot of requests, and it's quite detailed what they're actually requesting. So requesting a report on what the government is doing about UAPs, the official term for UFOs. So it's asking, what what are the processes that we use to investigate? And what investigations have been done? What evidence do we have, that people have been looking at? And what would be the procedures we use in the future? What will be a single point of contact for discussions about this? You asked a whole bunch of questions, which are all going to be interested to see how they, they answer them. But it doesn't assign any money. He gives no budget to it. And he does say within 180 days, and that 180 days runs out by the end of this week. Yeah. So

Stephen Bradford Long 47:39 what's going to come out towards? Yeah, that's crazy. And so I expect that it will be out by the time this episode airs, I'm going to try to like book it on editing this episode. And so it's timely. What do you expect?

Mick West 47:57 I expect to see a list of cases. Now Marco Rubio was recently asked about this, he was stopped at the airport by TMZ. Yesterday, I believe. And he was asked, What's going to be in the report, essentially. And he replied that people are going to be disappointed that it's, it's a list of here's things that we can explain, here's things that we can't explain. And a lot of things that we can't explain, are going to be in the classified section, because it involves technologies and techniques that are secret. That's basically all he said. That's all Marco Rubio said, yeah. But he also said that if there's something spicy in the classified section, there's no way it's not going to leak. Which is probably true, because lots of people have access to what's called the classified annex, which is essentially a database, an online database that you can either go and look at or access through a secure network. And that will contain like the more interesting cases or perhaps less interesting cases, we didn't actually know that could be like, really boring cases, but because they say that the spy one radar, the latest version of that, then they don't want to talk about the glitches on the radar or possible ways it was spoofed or or even just the way it was used to observe what they thought that they were observing. So there's gonna be this classified stuff, it might leak. It's really interesting. But I think it basically that's what's going to happen. We're gonna get lists of cases, and we're gonna get them saying, oh, there are cases that we can't identify. And we should do more work to figure out what these things are. They're definitely not going to say options. They've already said. There's no evidence of aliens who said they can't release out but that's just completely nonsense, meaningless, pointless statement that's just prompted by people saying can you rule out aliens and that will happen you realize aliens now of course we don't realize it. Yes. evidence of alien. It's like

Stephen Bradford Long 49:58 saying, well, we can't rule out, you know, chaos dragons, we can't rule out, you know, angelic intervention or the Holy Spirit or what have you. I mean, it's Yeah, exactly.

Mick West 50:11 So it's gonna be interesting because I'm personally interested, because there's a number of cases I spent some time looking at. And I'm hoping they will actually talk about that and get more information about it. And hopefully, in some cases, explain what they actually are. And that would be great. But because it's a program that has no budget, and essentially, it's going all the way back to Bigelow in the 90s. This is his legacy right now, as gone over through time. And now we have this we have a UAP report, the European report has no budget, so they're going to base their report on the UAP Task Force, which is essentially like a couple of guys in an office in the Pentagon somewhere who have been tasked with collecting and analysing UAP reports and UFO reports. And they in turn, will be using the work of ATEP, which essentially was the up Task Force back in the in the 2000s. And, and they essentially are there they were influenced by Bigelow, and they've had people in that program, who were working for Bigelow back in the knids day, like people like how put off as scientists who was studying what you were talking about The Men Who Stare at Goats project stargates, the the American response to what they thought of as being the Russians, developing psychic powers, which, in hindsight, we know to be complete nonsense. But back then they were they thought it might be a real thing. So they thought they'd better have a program studying these things. And so they had people like how put off and then they brought in people like Uri Geller, and they studied Uri Geller. Uri gala is just a stage magician who pretends to read people's minds spurious tricks I was gonna do

Stephen Bradford Long 51:56 Yeah, for people. By the way. P I think it was James Randi, who did a whole expos a on him for people who who want to see how this stuff works like psychic phenomena go go onto YouTube and just look up arry Geller, and James Randi, and it's pretty awesome watching James Randi work. It's really really cool watching him debunk these, you know, complete charlatans and to think that arry Geller was able to fool the US military. Were they you know, they were study fucking studying him.

Mick West 52:29 But yeah, that's that's the thing, though. You say he fooled the US military. And that's what's what people get upset about. They say, how could the Pentagon be fooled by Iriga hat? And now they say, how could the Pentagon not know what these UFOs are? How could the Pentagon like be fooled by this, this blushing green triangle if it's actually a plane? It's like, MC versus the Pentagon? That's not what it is. You know, there's these little programs like the project Stargate was, I'm sure something that was widely derided within the Pentagon by by by many people, because it's obvious, ridiculous nonsense, studying cycles. And right now is the same type of thing. We've got these little programs, Harry reads a tip program and Bigelow's aid program, and the UAP Task Force, they're just little things like two guys in a room. It's not the Pentagon,

Stephen Bradford Long 53:16 that's just two guys in a room. That's really interesting. So too, if I'm, like, understanding you correctly, the Pentagon is such a huge, huge, huge thing, with so many people in it, that we can't say, oh, there's this, there's this one tiny little, you know, program with like, two dudes in a in a basement somewhere just doing their thing because they managed to get some money from a beleaguered upper person, or whatever. That is not we shouldn't say that is the Pentagon saying x that is the Pentagon condoning x it is it is like this. Okay, so that's actually really, really helpful.

Mick West 54:02 Anyway, it's kind of like the Pentagon begrudgingly allowing the civilian politicians to do the thing. The Pentagon works for us. They work for the politicians, essentially, who are our proxy. And so when politicians tell them to do something, they have to do it. If they they're told to start a program to study UAPs they have to do if it's if they're told to put it out to tender and pick whoever applies for it. That's what they have to do. So the Pentagon didn't decide, Oh, we'll get Robert Bigelow to study UFOs the Pentagon was directed by a bill created by Harry Reid and Daniel Inouye and Stevens to do this, and so they had to do it. So they said, they set it up and put it out to tender and Bigelow jumps in. Yeah. So it's okay, I'll do it. And so Bigelow does it Pentagon isn't doing it Yeah, Pentagon just provides the framework for it to happen, because they were directed to do it. And right now the Pentagon is directed to do a europei task force directed to do a up report, the same thing doesn't mean they're taking it seriously. The Pentagon is a serious organization. And they, they're very good at, like forward looking things. They do loads of papers all the time on forward looking things like what what warfare will be like in the future, the considered that a lot, I'm sure they do a lot of work on drones, maybe they didn't do enough, but they certainly they're doing a lot. And it's not like they don't have programs to do things. The Pentagon has a multi multi multi million dollar program on exploiting foreign technology, which is the type of thing that the H IP supposedly is doing with UFOs. Why wasn't it just, you know, given to the people who actually know how to do this thing, rather than a bunch of random guys that Robert Bigelow put together? You're already spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the foreign technology exploitation program? Why can't they just like had their foreign technology exploitation program exploit UFO technology, it's, you know, again, it's this, this disconnect, between the magnitude of what we're talking about is like contact with aliens and amazing technology, and the Pentagon's response, so it's not the Pentagon, it's its civilians, kind of manipulating the Pentagon and the Pentagon being Oh, my God, and having to go along with it.

Stephen Bradford Long 56:28 That's so fascinating. And I think that that's a really helpful thing to realize that I think in the public eye, these these massive institutions like the Pentagon are much more CO they see that they appear, or we have this, this vision of them being much more cohesive than they actually are, are much more like, Pentagon speaking with one voice it is it is the Pentagon if there is this tiny program in it, and that means it has the Pentagon stamp of approval. And you know, that when the reality is these institutions are much bigger and much more complex than they than we tend to think well, yeah, for people who want to find your work. Where can they do that?

Mick West 57:13 Well, probably the best starting point is my website. metabank metabank.org. You can also find me on YouTube and Twitter at Mick West.

Stephen Bradford Long 57:24 Perfect. Yeah, everyone, go check out his stuff. It is super cool. And we talked about this some last time. But what I so appreciate about you is that you aren't derisive like you You aren't mean, you are very respectful. And I think that goes a long way when it comes to discussing stuff like that. So I think that's important.

Mick West 57:46 Very important to communicate, I think with people and not just simply dismiss them out of hand. If they have completely ridiculous ideas, though, I think perhaps a little bit of derision justified if they if they persist? Absolutely. The opening thing should always be to talk about it and try to figure out what's actually going on.

Stephen Bradford Long 58:05 Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, Midwest, it is great talking to you again, and you know, who knows maybe someday the aliens were at will actually show up in front of an iPhone camera in which case you know, we'll have you back on to talk about that. All right. Well, that is it for this show. The music is by the jelly rocks and eleventy seven you can find them on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you listen to music. This show is edited and produced by Dante salmoni. It is written and performed by me Steven Bradford long it is a production of rock candy recordings as always Hail Satan, and thanks for listening.

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