This Week in Space 147: Not As They Seem

Summary

Podcast Summary: This Week in Space 147: Not As They Seem

Release Date: February 7, 2025
Host: Rod Pyle & Tarek Malik
Guest: Mick West, Science Writer and Professional Debunker
Podcast Network: TWiT.tv

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Introduction

In the 147th episode of This Week in Space, titled "Not As They Seem," hosts Rod Pyle and Tarek Malik delve into the intriguing world of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs), and the broader landscape of conspiracy theories. They are joined by Mick West, a renowned science writer and debunker known for his calm and reasoned approach to unraveling myths surrounding UFOs and other supernatural claims.

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Guests and Background

Mick West is celebrated for his work on Metabunk and Contrail Science, platforms dedicated to debunking conspiracy theories and promoting scientific understanding. With a background in video game programming, notably contributing to titles like Tony Hawk and Spider-Man on the PS1, West transitioned into scientific debunking after retirement, driven by his passion for science fiction and a desire to counteract misinformation.

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Key Discussions

1. The Evolution of UFO Reporting and Technology

Rod and Tarek discuss how advancements in video technology have transformed UFO sightings from mere eyewitness accounts to verifiable footage. Mick West explains:

"Now, of course, like it's literally tens of thousands of times more video cameras. ... we can just whip them out and be recording 4K video instantly."
(07:16)

This technological surge has led to an increase in both reports and the ability to analyze them critically. West emphasizes that most UFO sightings, even those captured on high-definition cameras by military personnel, often have prosaic explanations such as misidentified aircraft or optical illusions caused by camera glitches.

2. Psychological Factors Behind Conspiracy Theories

Mick delves into the psychological underpinnings that make conspiracy theories appealing:

"People naturally incline towards simple explanations. ... conspiracy theories like somebody did this, or the magical thinking aliens did this."
(38:12)

He highlights factors such as the need for uniqueness, where individuals seek to feel special by believing in exclusive or hidden truths, and how societal shifts towards anti-intellectualism and distrust in institutions fuel these beliefs.

3. The Role of Influential Figures in UFO Culture

The discussion turns to prominent figures like Luis Elizondo and their impact on public perception:

"Elizondo has reasonable credentials... but he doesn't seem to be very good at investigating."
(62:23)

West critiques Elizondo's approach, suggesting that while he came from a credible background, his methods often lack rigorous scientific investigation, relying instead on anecdotal evidence and supernatural explanations.

4. Government Involvement and Transparency

With the change in administration, the hosts speculate on potential UFO disclosures:

"I really do hope that Trump will declassify the UFO files. That would be great."
(65:40)

West hopes for transparency but remains skeptical, noting that historical government programs like Project Stargate and involvement from figures like Robert Bigelow show a pattern of interest without substantial evidence.

5. Debunking the Moon Landing Conspiracy

Rod raises the pervasive moon landing denial:

"A fair amount, depending on who you ask... how much ha. Haze. You may not be objectifying it, but how much haze is there..."
(68:06)

West acknowledges the frustration of debunking deeply entrenched beliefs but underscores that evidence—from Soviet tracking to independent lunar missions—overwhelmingly supports the authenticity of the Apollo missions.

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Notable Quotes

• Tarek Malik on Mick West's Approach:

  "He's [Mick] an excellent example of our show at its best and you'll keep me generating my horrid space dad jokes."
  (78:04)

• Mick West on Respectful Debunking:

  "You have to respect them as people and talk to them as people, and. And you can help them."
  (76:30)

• Rod Pyle on Human Perception:

  "Humans have not evolved to look at things that are high in the sky. ... it's very difficult to understand what's going on."
  (51:53)

---

Book Highlight: "Escaping the Rabbit Hole" by Mick West

Mick West introduces his book Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect, which serves as a guide for individuals seeking to understand or counteract conspiracy beliefs in themselves or others. The book covers topics like chemtrails, 9/11 false flags, UFOs, QAnon, and provides strategies for respectful and effective communication.

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with Rod and Tarek expressing their appreciation for Mick West's insightful contributions. They encourage listeners to engage with West's work on metabunk.org and his book for those interested in a rational examination of conspiracy theories. The hosts emphasize the importance of respectful dialogue and scientific inquiry in addressing and debunking unfounded claims.

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Final Thoughts and Takeaways

• Technological Advancements: Enhanced video technology has both increased UFO reports and provided tools for debunking.
• Psychological Drivers: Human psychology, including the need for uniqueness and anti-intellectualism, plays a significant role in the persistence of conspiracy theories.
• Influence of Figures: Credible backgrounds do not always translate to effective debunking; methodological rigor is essential.
• Government Transparency: While there's hope for greater disclosure, historical patterns suggest caution.
• Effective Debunking: Respectful and logical engagement is more productive than ridicule or confrontation.

---

For those interested in debunking myths and understanding the psychology behind conspiracy theories, This Week in Space episode 147 offers a comprehensive and thoughtful exploration led by expert Mick West.

Transcript

[Rod Pyle]

Coming up on this Week in Space, is the truth really out there? We're gonna get to the bottom of UFOs, UAPs, and conspiracy theorists in general with expert debunker Mick West. So stay tuned.

[Tarek Malik]

Podcasts you love from people you trust.

[Rod Pyle]

This is Twitter.

[Tarek Malik]

This is this Week in space, episode number 147, recorded on February 7, 2020 25. Not as they seem. Hello, and welcome to this Week in Space, the Not As They Seem edition. I am Rod Pyle, editor chief, Badasser magazine, and I'm joined by my closest ever pal, Tarek Malik, editor in chief of space.com. hello, sir.

[Mick West]

Hey.

[Rod Pyle]

Hey. Oh, how's it going, Rod? How are you doing?

[Tarek Malik]

I'm good. I forgot to put on. Hold on a second. I forgot to put on my.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, look at this. I didn't know we're supposed to wear props.

[Tarek Malik]

What was your idea? I think mine are at a very rakish angle now.

[Rod Pyle]

I was going to make a tinfoil hat, and then I got.

[Tarek Malik]

And the reason I have these on, you know, we did tinfoil hats about a year and a half ago. That was a fun one.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

The reason I have this on is because we'll soon be speaking with Mick west, the incomparable gentleman who has risen to fame as one of the calmest, most reasonable and actually empathetic voices in, among other things, the UFO UAP discussion, as a seeker of reason and an explainer. And I came across his work when it was specific to the Go Fast video, one of those UAP videos released. Well, not released, leaked from the Navy that they later said, okay, okay, we'll release the same thing officially. And he's not just a critical thinker and a voice of reason, but he's kind about it, which on this very. Yeah. And this discussion between believers, non believers, can get pretty loud and pretty angry and pretty hot. So it's nice to have somebody come in and calmly discuss it and listen to both sides, which I think is. Is very unique to a small group of people. That includes him. Before we start, however, please don't forget to do us a solid. Make sure to, like, subscribe and other pool cool podcast things because we need your love. Especially Tarek. He does not.

[Rod Pyle]

I'm very sad, everybody.

[Tarek Malik]

And now we're here to debunk our questionable humor segment with another quality joke from Nate Tanner. Hey, Tarek.

[Rod Pyle]

Hey, Rod.

[Tarek Malik]

How do we know that Martians use the metric system?

[Rod Pyle]

How do we know? How do we know that? I don't know.

[Tarek Malik]

Because they always say, take me to your literature. I think we actually used that before, didn't we?

[Rod Pyle]

I don't know. I don't know. But it's still funny. Thank you, Nate. Thank you, Nate.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, Nate, keep him coming. He said a batch of about five, so I probably should have sent him a check. But this is me we're talking about here. Now, I've heard that some people want to send us to Mars when it's joke time on this show, but you can help send your best, worst, or most indifferent space joke to us at TwistWit TV. That's Twys TV. And now hold it. Time for headlines, headline news.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, I always miss.

[Tarek Malik]

I got it right this time. Well, yeah, so it's funny. You picked at the last minute, I might add. You picked three completely different headlines than the ones that I was looking at. And I get them off ofSpace.com.

[Rod Pyle]

I know I picked for everyone listening. Rod lets me pick all the headlines. And then I wait until. Because I want to know what the big headlines are for the week. And Rod, I'm like, Tuesday. He wants them in there on Tuesday.

[Tarek Malik]

You're just disorganized.

[Rod Pyle]

And. Yeah, so I noticed that you also put extra headlines in today because of that. So maybe we'll get there. Maybe we can be fast, and then we can talk about all of them.

[Mick West]

So.

[Tarek Malik]

So I just learned something on discord from Tanya W42. Tanya who said, Nice dealy boppers, Rod. I didn't know these things had a name.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, your little. Your little antenna.

[Tarek Malik]

They're dealy boppers.

[Rod Pyle]

I've heard the term before, but it did not come to mind when you put your antenna on, because to me, they're just wiggly wobbles.

[Tarek Malik]

And here I just always thought they were signs of inferiority from the 80s. All right, let's talk about SpaceX's dragon swap for starliner crew. This the story that just keeps giving.

[Rod Pyle]

This is great, because actually. So this comes from Ars Technica and Eric Berger over there. And this is like, on the qt, right? Because it came out, like yesterday or a day ago as we're recording this.

[Tarek Malik]

And it's not official yet why we're talking to the world about it.

[Rod Pyle]

We're actually expecting NASA to make an announcement. Maybe they have while we've been recording this podcast. But. But Eric, you know, has his sources at NASA amongst the spaceflight leadership who says that that NASA could announce as very soon that the astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams on the international. You know, the stuck. The stuck starliner astronauts could return actually earlier.

[Tarek Malik]

Stranded.

[Rod Pyle]

Stranded.

[Tarek Malik]

Somebody recently said they were stranded. That's right, Harold.

[Rod Pyle]

Clinging to life on the space station right at death door. Abandoned. I think that Trump called them abandoned, if memory serves. But anyway, the TLDR is that according to Eric, the powers that be at NASA have, have decided to bring them home a little bit earlier. Not a lot, but a little bit earlier than planned. So instead of late March, which is when they, they were expected to come back on a SpaceX Dragon Crew 9 spacecraft, they, they, they could come home in March, you know, March 19th. You know, the, the initial plan was that these astronauts who flew up on Starliner, they didn't come home because Starliner had its issues. They were going to come back on a SpaceX Dragon. NASA said the next available one for them to come back on was on the Crew 9 dragon, which just recently launched. And so that was slated to return home in February. But in December, NASA pushed it back by at least a month because SpaceX's next Dragon spacecraft for Crew 10, the relief crew, was not ready. In fact, according to Eric, there's battery problems with that, with that crew Dragon vehicle because it's a new version of the Dragon spacecraft. And NASA says they can't wait because apparently those problems are still not solved and they may not be able to get that capsule ready to fly until sometime in April, which would be a really big delay. And then they start running on red lines for food, for air, for water, for all that stuff that you don't want to run on red lines for at the space station. So they're going to, they're going to swap the Dragon capsule out. And the one that they're going to use was one that was in line for The Axiom Space 4 mission, a private mission. And, you know, it's the Endurance Dragon. It's flown to the space station before they move that up. And, and then I've been sitting here like, concentrating on this story and you've been adding alien eyes. Do you.

[Tarek Malik]

I'm watching you.

[Rod Pyle]

Am I?

[Tarek Malik]

No, I just want to, I just want to get through three or four more stories. So I'm trying to compact your answer.

[Rod Pyle]

They're all media. It's a meaty story.

[Tarek Malik]

Okay, okay, okay. Asteroid impact odds going up. But don't worry, this is an important one because people are worried.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, yeah. We talked about this asteroid on the show before. This comes from my colleague, Rob Lee. It's a really great story. [e-mail] I really recommend people check it out. But there was, there is this newfound asteroid, 2024 yr4. NASA and some others announced that it had a 1 in 83 chance of impacting Earth. That was like a 1.2% chance according to the math. I'm not the math genius. That's what I was told. And Rob has found out. Rob has found out that those odds have increased slightly to 1 in 43. And so a lot of people you might have seen online are trumpeting this. The odds are going up. This asteroid is going to kill us in 2032. It's going to hit Earth. And according to Rob and the scientists he's spoken to, it's like not so fast because there's still a 97.7. I think he says chance. Yeah, 97.7 chance that it's going to miss us entirely. So before you start like building your bunker or selling off all your worldly possessions, take a step back, have a cup of coffee, have a cup of tea and relax. It's going to be fine. So it's, it's these, these odds will go down over more and more as they get more observations of it. And, and so it's a little early to get upset and worried.

[Tarek Malik]

Sky is falling. Shake up. At Roscosmos we had. Who was the guy that was there before, who was crazy Dimitri for years.

[Rod Pyle]

Trampoline. Everyone needs it. Everyone needs a trampoline to get witches brooms.

[Tarek Malik]

And then he gets replaced and the poor guy lasts two and a half years.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, he was replaced by Yuri Borisov. And. And now Putin has said das Vidana.

[Tarek Malik]

Right.

[Rod Pyle]

Is that, is it too soon to say that to Yuri. Yuri Borisov, in fact. And this, this came out of the Moscow Times this week. He has been. Putin has replaced him with a relatively young new space chief, Dmitry Bakanov, who.

[Tarek Malik]

37 years old.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, he's 39. We have. Is he 37? Is that.

[Tarek Malik]

Maybe you have that wrong.

[Rod Pyle]

So, but, but he was much. He was the Russia's deputy transport minister and he led their gonad satellite communication System program from 2011 to 2019. So he is, he is.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, look at this guy.

[Rod Pyle]

I know. Wow. He is like.

[Tarek Malik]

He looks like a GQ model.

[Rod Pyle]

I know. Look at that.

[Tarek Malik]

Why isn't he on the front lines in Ukraine? What's going on here?

[Rod Pyle]

So, so, so, you know, he's, he's taking the reins from Borisov and, and then I guess, you know, to, to continue Rogozin's legacy. But it'll be, it'll be interesting to see like what happens. Is this because the, of the relatively turbulent period that was going on with Borisov and the fact that they had like the failure of their Luna 25 moon sample return mission and you know, and just like a lot of other issues, there was the, the, the leak on the space station, which is in the Russian segment. You had the Soyuz, I think, during Borisov's term to the, the hole in the Soyuz, all of that stuff which they tried to pin on a NASA.

[Tarek Malik]

Astronaut, by the way, because of course, desperate astronauts go and drill holes in Russian spacecraft. Totally not behind instrument panels, we might add. Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

So to try to get home anyway. So, so, so new chief is the new boss. Same as the old boss. We're going to have to wait and see. And will this at least help them do anything to accelerate their other space programs instead of just keep on keeping on? We're going to have to wait and see too.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, and the last I checked, their budget was very small. I think it was the equivalent of 2 billion U.S. is that right?

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, it's barely enough to keep, to keep the current slate. It's very hard to do anything extra beyond what they're doing at the space.

[Tarek Malik]

Station right now, which, which ain't much. Okay. Viper replacement. So Viper is the NASA rover, very capable prospecting rover that was going to be delivered the southern pole region, the moon, and go prospecting for water ice and do other scientific analysis as listeners regular listen to. This show was canceled by NASA last year even though it was basically finished and had a riot on a private vendor who was behind schedule. And it's just been a mess inside. Word is there was not as much agency support for this as there could have been, which maybe could be part of the reason that got pulled even though it was complete. But they are now taking NASA soliciting bids from commercial players other than the one it was originally supposed to fly on to go ahead and finish the mission and get it to the moon. However, the people who were going to launch Viper now have a replacement from a fellow private company called Flip, which is not that much smaller. It's half the size and weight, I think, of Viper. But is Flip Viper's dimwitted cousin or is it actually another capable rover?

[Rod Pyle]

No, it's the Flip is actually a moon rover designed by those, the company that did the Flex rover. Remember when you and I went to that conference, conference a year or so ago and we saw that big, that big moon rover?

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, we took our pictures. Right?

[Rod Pyle]

It's an. Yeah, we took our pictures on it. It's this Company called Astrolabe and they have built this smaller rover prototype called Flip that they, that is basically snagging NASA's previous ride to the moon with Griffin. Now the, the reason that that Viper was pulled is because NASA wasn't sure if Griffin was going to be ready. Currently it still is not ready to go. But this, this, it's, they still have the capability to take a rover and so they have found this, this replacement rover and it's going to give Astrolabe both some wheels on the moon. Astrolabe, by the way, is based in California and they're going to be able to showcase what this commercial rover can do so they can take commercial payloads. And what Flip stands for, Flex. Flex is the name of the, the primary rover, Flex Lunar Innovation platform. It's a four wheeled Rover that weighs about 1,000 pounds. It is, and it, and it can carry up to 66 pounds of experiments, payload, etc. And it can do exploration work on its own, but can also test technologies that they want to use on their bigger rover, which is the one that astronauts could use. It's called Flexible Logistics and Exploration. And that's a car sized robot that could carry a couple of astronauts and will fly on a SpaceX lander. So the TLDR there is that SpaceX lander. Yeah, SpaceX's Starship is going to carry one of these. Okay. They've booked a, a trip on that with the Flex, the Flex rover. And so, so they're going to test a lot of what they need for that bigger rover on this smaller one.

[Tarek Malik]

Okay. And finally, sorry, but we gotta get, we gotta get through here.

[Rod Pyle]

You're the one that added extra stories to the news budget. You're the one.

[Tarek Malik]

They were good, Mr. Whiny Pants. What, what do Trump's first weeks back in office mean for NASA and spaceflight?

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, this is a long story. So I just, I'm going to put the link in our, in our show notes so that our readers and listeners can do it. But it's been only a couple weeks since the Trump administration began and already.

[Tarek Malik]

What, a couple of weeks, huh?

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, but, and my head has been spinning and it got me thinking that maybe if my head is spinning, maybe many of our listeners and readers heads are spinning as well. And Mike Gruss over at Space News has an excellent, excellent overview of all of the things that have happened that affect NASA as well as space exploration. From the executive orders that have gone out, from the fact that Elon Musk is running the Doge office to to attack or I guess budget and spending initiatives across. I shouldn't say attack, but to address. Right.

[Tarek Malik]

I don't know that attack is. It depends on which part we're talking about. And of course, you can't leave DEI out of that.

[Rod Pyle]

And the dismantling of the diversity and equity and inclus. So, so there's a really good rundown there that I really encourage everyone to, to take a look because it is a good score sheet for what has happened over the last two weeks and what may be coming down the pipeline. I would say that everyone should be keeping an eye out next Wednesday on the Commercial Space Conference because that is where Janet Petro, the acting head of NASA, the acting and NASA administrator, will be giving a fireside chat, which I think might be the first fully public set of comments from her about where she sees NASA going right now in this interim period before they get a permanent administrator. So we're going to be watching that too. That is on February 12th.

[Tarek Malik]

So I like nodding my head and watching my. What are they called? Dingle boppers.

[Rod Pyle]

Your. Your weeble wobbles.

[Tarek Malik]

My weeble wobbles. The weebles wobble, but they don't fall down.

[Rod Pyle]

Your, your dealy boppers.

[Tarek Malik]

Okay, before we, we run to a break, before Rick west comes on, I owe an apology to Dr. Sariah Farooqi of USRA who we, we had an interview with their new director last week set up by her, who is not the executive assistant or associate. Whatever I said, I was caught flat footed because I hadn't finished doing my homework that day. She is the Director of Communications and she's the Director of Communications. Unlike me, that has a PhD, I'm a director of Communications with the National Space Society with a Master's degree. She's got a PhD. So she outraged me. So for. So Sarai my apology, I misquoted myself and your version of the video is now corrected. All right, now that that stuff's behind us, let's get to Mick West. We'll be right back, everybody. So close your hatches and button up.

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[Tarek Malik]

We are back with Mick west, science writer, professional debunker, and premier critical thinker. Mick, thanks for joining us today.

[Mick West]

I'm glad to be here, Rod.

[Tarek Malik]

We're really glad to have you. And besides the copious writing you do, you've also created a couple of really cool websites. One's called Metabunk. My favorite is called Contrail Science, and I do want to get into a proper start for the episode. But just out of curiosity, how what made you go so specific as Contrail Science? Was it just seeing how wacky the conversations were?

[Mick West]

Well, it's a very specific conspiracy theory, the chemtrails conspiracy theory. And, you know, which is the belief that the government is spraying things and it's actually cropped up again quite recently. There's a bunch of people in local government who have been convinced by this theory and they've started to introduce legislation banning chemtrails, these white lines in the sky, which are actually just contrails. So back then I just was kind of interested in flying and things like that. And so I started writing a blog about the science behind contrails and how it explains chemtrails, which is kind of a fun little thing to write about. And that's kind of the root of all of this stuff that I've been doing.

[Rod Pyle]

Now I have seen those theories on my social media. It was a surprise to start seeing it there.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, and then because we're writers and we both have venues, we get those messages on LinkedIn and Facebook and so forth, people are saying you need to tell the truth. They're killing us all. And for some reason, it's always. How can I put. Seems like the. The perpetrators are always identified on a particular part of the political spectrum, and the victims are always identified as being another part broadly. And that always makes you suspect. All right, but. But we're not here just to talk about chemtrails. We're here to talk about other things in the sky. So Tarek's gonna have his trademark early life question for you soon. But what got you started in this particular area of science? Explanation?

[Mick West]

UFOs?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, just debunking in general, because you're kind of setting yourself up with a big red bullseye painted on your.

[Mick West]

Yeah, well, I've always been interested in science. I read a lot of science fiction as a kid. I learned to read by reading my dad's collection of Marvel and DC comics. So I've had this strong background in science fiction that translated into an interest in science. And then at school, I preferred doing mathematical stuff and physics rather than the other subjects. And so I kind of just developed a. A good skill set for what turned into video game programming. And I did video game programming for a few decades to make some money, and then I kind of retired. And when I retired, I just kind of followed my interests, which were things like science and math and stuff like that. And that naturally kind of led to a few topics that people were claiming were interesting. And one of those was chemtrails. There are other things, like other conspiracy theories, like the World Trade center being demolished by explosives. And now, of course, I'm really into UFOs. And that's almost like the perfect mix for my unique set of skills, I guess.

[Tarek Malik]

See, Tarek, somebody who ended up doing something different because he could not, because, like, you and I, that's all he was capable of doing. And by the way, Mick, when you say, oh, I did some video game programming, that means you're actually responsible for things like Tony Hawk, the skateboarding game, Spider man, and Guitar Hero, which I would assume means you never have to work again as long as you live.

[Mick West]

Well, I would say that because I really only did Tony Hawk, which is the skateboard I have right there. And I left the company Neversoft. I was one of the founders of the company Neversoft, which created the Tony Hawk franchise. But I left after that, so I missed out on the. The golden years of Guitar Hero and the other things.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, that Spider man game was really hard, I have to say.

[Mick West]

So, yeah, Spider Man. I did a little bit of work on Spider man On the PS1, the original one, but that was way back in the day and Neversoft was splitting into two teams. And then we came back together and we just did skateboarding games. Yeah, that was kind of a fun time in my life back in the 90s and the early 2000s when we were working on these games. But that stuff that I did back then is kind of like, in a way, stuff that I'm doing right now. I do a lot of programming. Just last night I was coding away, and the coding tasks that I'm doing now are very similar to what I was doing back in the early 2000s with Tony Hawk. He said, now I have a little AI assistants to help me instead of other programmers. But yeah, it's very interesting to me how, you know, that skill set translated into investigating UFOs.

[Rod Pyle]

You know, my kind of trademark question that Rod was alluding to is usually like, what, what is like the space bug? Like, how it, how, how did it bite you when, when you were a kid? But you kind of hinted, yeah, at that a bit, you know, about, you know, reading your dad's comic books and, and whatnot. But. But I am interested about that. That early decision to pursue, like, coding that, that led you kind of on. On that, that, that more kind of computer facing, you know, engineering type of journey. I mean, was there something that just grew naturally out of your interest in science that led you to computers like that, or. Or was it like a different type of a fulcrum moment where you decided that you were going to kind of pursue that professionally, at least at the outset?

[Mick West]

Now, my interest in computers was a very kind of organic thing, thing. Back when I was in my teens, my grandfather gave me a programmable calculator. This would have been in the late 70s, I think. And he encouraged me to learn how to program it. And so I did. I wrote like very simple games on this calculator that had about literally 50 bytes of memory that you could use so you could record keystrokes. And then again, my grandfather inspired me because he, he was very interested in math. And he also, he bought himself a computer. And I got a paper round and I saved up for a computer which back then was a ZX81 with one kilobyte of memory. And I taught myself to code. And it was just a fun thing to do. And being a kid, a teenager, the fun things to code back then were video games. So you would make simple games on these computers and as the computers get more and more powerful, you could make more and more it involved games. And that naturally just kind of led into me going to university to study computer science and then getting a job in the games industry. And now here I am.

[Rod Pyle]

That's awesome. That's awesome. So my daughter just, she's going into honors computer science. So it's like an inspiration story I can give her. Thank you so much, Meg.

[Mick West]

Well, it's very different nowadays. I think AI is changing the equation quite considerably.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, one would almost say cheating, but that would be unfair. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit. You know, you kind of touched on your childhood and at least according to a couple of websites, you had a, an interest as a young man in things like UFOs and psychic phenomenon. But initially, as I read it, not as a doubter, but more as somebody who was kind of embracing the possibility of it.

[Mick West]

Yeah, I mean, I guess as a child I was, you know, I grew up Catholic, I was raised Catholic and now I'm no longer Catholic. And back then you believe in essentially magical things. Like I believed if I prayed then God would give me things. And we also had little beliefs like that there were fairies in the woods and things like that when we were young kids. And then you grow up a little bit and then you learn more about science and things and you think Santa isn't real, fairies aren't real. And maybe you start to have doubts about religious figures as well. But at the same time, I'm getting more, more and more interested in science and, you know, reading all these science fictions. My dad didn't just have a collection of comics, he had a huge collection of, of science fiction books. He was a big fan of science fiction. He used to take us as kids to science fiction conventions, which was kind of a weird thing for a, you know, like a seven year old kid to be going to this convention with all these grownups dressing up in aliens and things. Yeah, yeah. So I had this very, I guess, interesting upbringing in that sense. And then I just kind of got interested in. I found this magazine called the Unexplained, which is a British kind of periodical. And it had all kinds of interesting stuff like ghosts and UFOs and strange psychic powers and things like that. And that just fascinated me. And also at the same time as reading, excuse me, reading books. I remember in particular one book by Roald Dahl which I believe has been made into a movie right now. It's about a guy who thinks he has psychic powers and he trained himself to have psychic powers. I'm like a kid, I Think I can do that? I can train myself to have psychic powers. So I tried that. Didn't work. But for a while, you're convinced these things are real, then you start to investigate them. And then there's this kind of transition between childhood and this belief in the magic and the supernatural and science. And if you get into a lot of science, it kind of makes all this stuff, you know, you kind of see this. But what it actually is, that a lot of it is just. Excuse me, a lot of this is just a belief and not actually evidence based belief. It's just essentially faith. And so as I grew, I moved more and more towards the science, but I'm still interested in this other stuff, but now from a different perspective. So now I'm looking at how do I explain these things? How do I explain what people saw when they think they saw a ghost? And now how do I explain what people saw when they think they saw a ufo?

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, and I'm interested in that as well. And I'm also interested in why people believe and why that is so seductive. Because it seems to be not a uniquely American thing, but there is a uniquely American flavor to some of the conspiracy theories and how they're embraced. By the way, I. I just want to mention Roald Dahl. I mean, incredible thinker, outside the box and beyond the box. The box is in. I'm not sure if I was a publisher, I would have ever allowed him anywhere near children's books because he has kind of a twisted mentality. But he wrote, if I recall correctly, he wrote the original screenplay for you Only Live Twice, the Bond movie, which actually makes a lot of sense if you remember the movie. Let's go to a quick break. We'll be right back and Tarek can jump in with his next impassioned question. Standby.

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[Mick West]

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[Tarek Malik]

By the way. I. I just want to say you're talking about going to odd conventions as a kid. You're lucky Alien Con didn't exist then, or your brain really would have been twisted in interesting directions. It's a lot of fun, actually. It's just not really my thing. Tart.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. I thought it was my turn to talk, Rod. Right. That's why it opened on me.

[Tarek Malik]

That's why I took it away from you.

[Rod Pyle]

No, actually, I had a question about the books that you were interested in reading growing up, too. Just really quickly, because my family had those Time, life, Unexplained Phenomena series of books that. That was like my first exposure to it. And I'm just curious if you had those kinds of books or if there was a science fiction book in particular that really gripped you at that kind of formative age that really stuck with you as well. And that was kind of my. My big question that was burning from that. That segment there.

[Mick West]

Yeah, there are a lot of books. I can't remember the name of the authors right now, but I read a lot about Arthur C. Clarke when I was young, like Rendezvous with Rama, Childhood's End, books like that, which are about essentially humanity's first encounter with aliens, which is always a fascinating thing to me, like what would happen when we encounter an alien species and how it would be different. And I really enjoy books where aliens are very different to us. There's a book called Dragon's Egg, which is about aliens that live on the surface of a neutron star, essentially, and they operate in a very different timescale to us. So they're actually moving a thousand times as fast as us, and they think a thousand times as fast as well. So that type of stuff was always fascinating to me. And I read a lot of the older science fiction stuff because my dad, he had this collection of books from when he was younger that he'd kept all these years. So I read a lot of books from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. So I guess I had a very broad range of sources. And then I went to the library a lot. I was lucky enough that I could just walk down to the local library, and then they had a. A large science fiction selection. So I. I read quite voraciously as a child.

[Rod Pyle]

Is that something that you were able to Apply because you of course have written your own book with Escaping the Rabbit Hole, which is all about how to debunk conspiracy theories and people should, should definitely check that out. Was, was that something that you gravitated to from the work that you had, you had been doing? Like, were there any kind of inspirations that came from that? I guess that reading childhood?

[Mick West]

Yeah, I definitely wanted to write all my life when I was younger and you know, it's one of those things you. Everybody wants to write a book and it's hard to get around to doing it. And it was kind of lucky for me in a way that I kind of got forced into writing Escaping the Rabbit Hole just because I was in the right place at the right time. I went on the Joe Rogan podcast back when he wasn't quite such a, you know, the type of person that he is now, although he's always been a bit strange.

[Rod Pyle]

Joe Rogan polarizing figure, we'll say.

[Mick West]

Indee indeed. Yes, lots of fans. But anyway, so I went on the Joe Rogan podcast, which is quite big, and the publisher approached me and said, you want to write a book about the stuff that you talked about on the show? And I was like, sure, let's do it. And then of course you get into a contract and a timeline and you're forced to write it. I have a problem with procrastination. I work a lot better when I'm working with other people. So it was good to have that kind of external force moving me to write this book. But I felt it was a book that was needed and is perhaps needed even more now. There's a lot of disinformation out there. I updated the book recently and I kind of made a distinction between these older conspiracies which are kind of static and don't really change very much, and these new conspiracies that we have which are very, very dynamic, kind of changing from day to day, like QAnon and things like that. And even now the UFO world is very, very dynamic. There's these constantly shifting whistleblowers coming out and of things just around the corner. It's not the kind of like, you know, the nuts and bolts, lights in the sky. It was perhaps 10 years ago.

[Tarek Malik]

So you're, you're, you're steering us towards the meat of the conversation, which I appreciate. I just want to ask one thing before we go to the kind of main, main line of the conversation, which is about UFO theories and observations and some of this emerging so called whistleblower evidence. And all that. What do you think it is, though, about modern society? You know, personally, I kind of blame it on social media, but that's what people may age do when they're not out yelling at the clouds in their front yard. But, you know, as a young person, I would never have looked at a former wrestler like Joe Rogan or a basketball guy like Steph Curry to cultivate my opinions about, you know, did we land on the moon? Or, you know, do people really get abducted and probed and all that kind of stuff. So there's been this shift towards it, just general, generally idolizing, you know, non academicians, non scientists. Whereas when I was a kid, science was in capital letters with quotes around it. Do you have any thoughts on that? Because I, I find it to this day very puzzling.

[Mick West]

It, it is interesting and I think it kind of boils down to Humans natural state is to believe in weird things, and their natural inclination is to believe in things that are wrong. Someone wrote recently, you know, asking why do people believe in weird things isn't really the right question to ask. The real question to ask is why do people believe in science? What is what historically has meant? People actually believe in science because science is a difficult thing to believe in because it's complicated. It's actually a lot easier from a human perspective to believe in these simple explanations. And simple explanations are often things like conspiracy theories like somebody did this, or the magical thinking aliens did this, or it's come from, I don't know, like a big plot or something like that. So humans are kind of naturally inclined to go for these simple, easy explanations. And historically we've had something of people thinking science is good and institutions are good. And this is because we've actually had these monolithic outlets of information in terms of the national media and our education system, which education system is still there. But the national media is really fragmented, far less people watching. Now, far more people are watching these other outlets like Joe Rogan, and they do that simply because they have choice now. It's not like, it's not like preferences have shifted. It's like all of a sudden we have all these things available. And organically people are moving to the, to the things that are more in tune with their natural human failings, which is to believe in weird things. So if you've got people believing in weird, if you've got people saying weird things, they're going to start going to that. Joe Rogan is way more entertaining and he resonates more with what might be the natural human State believing in conspiracy theories and weirdness.

[Tarek Malik]

And I think, Sorry, Tarek, but I think there's a key thing there, which is to subscribe, to believe in, be influenced by the kind of things we're going to be talking about here is fun. It's, for some people, sexier than real science. There's a mystery to it because it can't be proved that I think people find seductive. But, and this may be just snobbery on my chart, so please feel free to tell me if you disagree. Some of the people that approach both Tarek and I are so impassioned and defensive about their beliefs that it leads me to believe, you know, there's this kind of general pushback against higher education in the US has been for maybe 10 or 20 years. You know, scientists don't know what they're doing. Anthony Fauci. Oh, what a scam. This kind of stuff, you know, don't you dare have a PhD in something. And I get the sense from some believers, not all. I mean, some, some, some believers in this stuff are very well educated and really, we've had some on the show who, who really have worked through it in a logical, rational way. But in a lot of cases, my sense of it is here's something that makes me special, here's something that makes me different. I don't have to go spend six years to get some silly PhD. I can go on a couple of websites and dig up stuff that will convince you. Do you think I'm going down the wrong path here?

[Mick West]

Yeah, I think that's, that's kind of definitely an aspect of it. There's been lots of research into the kind of the psychological factors behind belief in conspiracy theory. And they've done tests, this kind of standard measures of personality, like narcissistic and things like that. And one of them is the, the need for uniqueness. And some people have a stronger need for uniqueness than other people. And those type of people tend to be more likely to believe in conspiracy theories because everybody likes to feel unique. Everyone likes to feel special. But for some people, it's, it's more of a factor. They don't, you know, they don't really care about fitting in. In fact, they don't want to fit in with what they see as the mainstream. They want to be different. They want to be outliers, they want to be trailblazers, and they want to be in some ways, like messiahs. They want to be people who are saving the, the, the nation from itself. So they have to feel like they're on, you know, the side of good and God when they're, they're doing these things. So yeah, there's definitely psychological factors behind it. But you know, that said, they're not huge factors. It's not like this is why people get into conspiracy theories. It makes it more likely that they'll get into conspiracy theories, but pretty much anyone can. It just kind of depends on what information you've been exposed to and to a certain extent your circumstances, whether you have a lot of spare time, whether you're surrounded by like minded people or you're isolated or you're surrounded by people who believe in conspiracy theories. And sometimes whether you're a bit more vulnerable because you've gone through some kind of life events, like you've lost your job or you've got a divorce or you've gone through an illness or during the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of people were forced to stay at home, which was quite, you know, mentally debilitating for some people. And you know, these things can lead to, to things. So it's not just, you know, these are just people who want to feel special. That's just something that kind of pushes them in that direction.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, and I think trailblazers is a good word because you know, to be fair, as, as I kind of alluded to, there are people that, that really do genuinely feel that this is a pursuit of something terribly important. And they're not, they're not looking to be important. They're just looking to help us, I guess, help us understand. We're going to go to another quick ad break, Tarek, so hold on to your pearls for a few minutes and we'll be right back.

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[Tarek Malik]

Go.

[Rod Pyle]

I was gonna say. Can I ask my question, Rudd, or are you gonna.

[Tarek Malik]

Yes. No.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, Mick, I'm, I, I live in New Jersey these days, like across the, across the river from, from New York, which is where Space.com is based. And obviously the big story here is that we have crazy, unexplained drones flying all around and people are catching them on video.

[Tarek Malik]

Not anymore.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, well, there were, there were. No one's explained them over, over the holidays. I had so many pointed out to me that were clearly just airplanes, but, but that's, that's beyond the point. And of course, you know, in your experience, there were a lot of other, what we used to call them, UFOs, but I guess now they're called UAPs these days where, you know, people have rock solid video evidence about them. And then I watched you very expertly just take down one after another, like on a live newscast in some of the videos we were doing during research. That was pretty expert there. And I guess the question there is, is, you know, how, how that, that video technology has really been, you know, either advancing or, or adding to this, this trend, you know, and this, where that, where that technology fits in, like the story of how these, these, these theories are being, you know, put out there. We had the Navy videos that were, that made a big splash a few years ago, and I think that's discussion still going on now. And I'm wondering how you've seen that evolve over time because we all have one, you know, in the, in the palm of our hand, you know, that we can, we can catch this. And I would have assumed that if the little green men were here or whatnot, we would have a lot more concrete evidence than perhaps that we would have currently.

[Mick West]

Yeah, I think it's really made a big change in ufology since like, you know, 70s, 80s, 90s and the 2000s. You know, back then people were asking the same question, why don't we have good video of UFOs. You know, several people have video cameras would have been the thing that they would say back then. Now, of course, like it's literally tens of thousands of times more video cameras. And the cameras are 100 times better. You can just whip them out and be recording 4K video instantly. And they often have multiple zooms and things like that. So it's really kind of changed things. And I think the, the New Jersey drone flap has been very illustrative of what's actually going on here because we got a lot of people. Yeah, thousands, probably thousands of people, at least hundreds of people taking video of what they thought were drones. And then they're posting it online and they're saying, look at this, look at this. What I, what I saw, you know, I saw this fly over my head. It was, it was definitely not a plane. It was, you know, this, this car size thing is about 200ft up. And then they'll show the video. So we've got something that we really didn't have before. We've got this, this collection of eyewitness accounts and then the videos that they took of the, of what they, they saw. So we've got the, you know, the whole package. Whereas, you know, back in the day we would just have mostly eyewitness accounts and very, very few videos. So now we're able to compare the eyewitness accounts to the videos. And not only do we have like the videos, we usually have in a lot of cases, the location and we have the date and the time and we can figure out what direction they're looking in. So we can go back and we can look at the actual flight data around that particular time. And pretty much every single case that we looked at, it turned out to be a plane. So we've got people actually convinced that they saw something that wasn't a plane and they were convinced it was 200ft up. And then they take video of it and they're still convinced even after they've seen the video that they themselves took. And then you show them that it was actually a plane. And some of them will reject that, but a lot of them were like, oh yeah. But you know, back in the day before we had all this, all we had were these eyewitness accounts. So we just had people who were convinced they saw a giant triangular craft car sized thing with lights flying over their heads 200ft up. We've got no way of knowing what that actually was. But based on what we've been seeing, it probably was something like a Plane misidentifications are huge now. They were huge back then. That's.

[Rod Pyle]

That's what they want you to think, right, Rod? That's right.

[Tarek Malik]

This brings up a point. So I worked at Griffith observatory for about 10 years back in my college days. So in the late 70s, early 80s, you know, the area you're talking about when the best you had was probably, you know, 400 ASA black and white Tri X film to shoot these things. And we would get calls pretty much every day from people. I, I seen a UFO kind of calls. And it became pretty clear, a couple of things became pretty clear to me anyway, and became kind of the party line, which is it's really hard for people to identify things in the sky because we're really used to identifying things on the ground. How far is that stop sign? How far is that building? Because I'm judging by the parallax with the building behind it as I'm driving by to tell how far away it is, how much ha. Haze. You may not be objectifying it, but how much haze is there between me and the thing I'm looking at. And with some things in the sky, you lose all those kind of points of comparison. And people really have no sense of size, speed, anything else. And I think this kind of was. I asked you before we came on about the Go Fast video, which is where I first saw your work. You know, these are military pilots. But. But if you're looking, for instance, at something between your high speed moving jet and the sea below you that may be moving in a different direction, even with FLIR radar, it's really hard to tell what's going on, isn't it? Isn't that part of the problem?

[Mick West]

Yeah, I mean, the problem is our human brains have not evolved to look at things that are high in the sky. You know, we look at things on the ground, we look at maybe birds, but things that are five miles up in the sky, we just have no idea. Things that are five miles below us? Yeah, the brain just does not compute. We don't have the kind of like the mental framework to actually look at that. And when it's zoomed in, which is the case of this Go Fast video, the one you're showing here is the gimbal video. But this is a similar type of thing. We're looking at an object that's many miles away. The motion you see isn't actually the motion of the object, it's actually the motion of the camera. We're actually being filmed from an FA18 jet. And it's zoomed in about the optical equivalent of a 2000 millimeter lens on a camera, which would be like a huge, huge lens. Most big zooms you see get top out at 600, so it's about half a degree field of view right there. So this isn't something the human brain can actually comprehend and figure out the relative motion and things like that. And even if you're a fighter pilot, you're not trained to visualize that particular thing in three dimensions. You visualize. You're trained to, like, intercept things. You're trying to identify threats. You're trained to hit targets. You're not trained to spot UFOs. You're not trained to, like, analyze UFOs. So it's. It's very easy to fall for these. These kind of illusions. You know, another big one is one that I saw a lot in the chemtrail days, which is if a plane is flying towards you, it looks like it's flying straight up. And this is something that just, you know, it's quite hard to actually convince people of this. This thing because you will see these contrails in the sky that are either going straight up or they're going straight down. And everybody just. Lots of people just assume that's, you know, it's something like a rocket launch or it's a plane that's descending, or it's a plane that's climbing. But these are all just planes in level flight. Plane flying at 40,000ft flying away from you just looks like it's just dropping straight down. If it's flying towards you, it looks like it's going straight up. Or if it's to the side of you, it looked like it's going at a bit of an angle. And until you actually take a step back and look at it from three dimensions, it's very difficult to understand what's going on. And then you get the same thing with UFOs. You'll see a plane in the distance. I had this case just today. Someone sent me a video. It was a light in the distance next to Venus, and it was slowly rising up in the sky. So it seems like something hovering over the distant hills, but it was actually a plane about 30 miles away coming straight towards them, and it just looked like it was rising because it was getting closer to them.

[Rod Pyle]

Huh. See, there's an explanation for everything, Rod. You know, that.

[Tarek Malik]

That's why he's here.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. Well, you know, I did want to ask those. Those Navy videos, you know, earlier kind of set off. I don't know if it's like in a, a renewal or. What do you call that, Rod?

[Mick West]

It was renaissance.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, that's the word. So much so that, you know, we cover NASA and NASA put their own committee together and, you know, had a lot of public meetings and everyone was really following it. And, And I'm. I'm just curious if that pattern that you observe there has just, you know, mirrors what, what we've seen from the UFO reports and investigations of the past, or is it because of the technology involved, like a new era or a new age of both a lot of these claims and the debunking. Because you said earlier that, you know, that there's that pattern of everyone reporting it still, but now they have all the, all the video and I would hope that a military video would have all the information that we need to know what's what. But, but I'm just curious about this, these cases in particular, if this is. If there is something truly different about the technology pace now from.

[Mick West]

Well, the videos that we see are actually, the technology is not that new. The FLIR1 video from the Nimitz incident, that's back from 2004 or so. So it's a long time ago, nearly 20 years ago. Well, it is 20 years ago now and that's. But the thing is, we as a public have not seen these types of videos before. So these are the things that might have existed, like in the military is like not, not shown them to you because they're in these military training is classified and stuff like that. And we just got these two ones. There's three ones that were leaked out. Now. The gimbal video, which looks like this flying saucer that's rotating. There's the go fast video where it looks like it's going very fast over the water. And then this FLIR1 video, which comes from the Nimitz incident, which just looks like a little fuzzy blob doing nothing in the background. And these are all things that are very difficult to understand from a human perspective, like I was saying. So you show these things, like the gimbal video, for example, it looks like an actual flying saucer. It looks like it's flying along and then it kind of like rotates on its ends. And that would be something that's aerodynamically impossible. But there are actually explanations for these things. You know, the rotation of this, this flying source of the gimbal actually comes from the gimbal system of the camera. You know, this is the simulation that I did where I took all the Parameters that we can get from the video because there's lots of numbers on screen and created a 3D recreation. And it turns out that the rotation of the object matches exactly what the rotation of the camera needs to be to move from one position to another. So it seems like what we're looking at isn't actually a real object as such. There's an object behind it, but it's something like the heat source. The heat source is the engine. And we're seeing these thermal videos, which is another aspect. We're looking at thermal videos. We're not looking at visible light. So we're looking at something that looks like a flying saucer. But that's just the shape of the heat signature. It's not actually the shape of the object. It's itself. It could be just the. That you were looking at the tailpipe of a jet. And because that's so hot, it just kind of flares up in the camera. You get this kind of optical bloom where things spread out a bit. We call it glare within the camera. It's the same thing as, like when you. This is a little demo I do all the time. I just point my flashlight at the camera and you can see. You can't see the flashlight.

[Tarek Malik]

Fuck aliens. Oh, glare.

[Mick West]

It's a lot bigger than the flashlights. And it only happens when you're pointing the flashlight at the camera. So there are potential explanations for these things. But we also have the testimony of the pilots, and they are convinced that they saw something amazing. But then you have to think, you know, we've got all these other things. Like I just said, the New Jersey thing. Thousands of people thought they saw something amazing every single time. We can actually analyze the video. Turns out not to be amazing. That also turns out to be the case with a lot of these military sightings as well.

[Tarek Malik]

See, Tarek, I'm not as smart as Mick, but I could do the same thing. Sorry, we're getting a little silly here. We have one more break and we'll be right back. So go Nowhere Darwin would approve.

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[Mick West]

With the best all.

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[Mick West]

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[Tarek Malik]

To talk a little bit about. I mean, as usual, we've gotten through less than half the questions I have, but we'll just have to have you back. They're willing, but I want to talk a little bit about the UFO industry and people, if you don't mind talking about specific specifics like Luis Elizondo. It's. So I do two space conferences a year that I help put on that are so called legitimate space conferences. You know, it's for scientists and NASA people and the motivated public and all that. We get, you know, 800-1100 people. I went to AlienCon a couple of years ago on invitation to speak and actually, you know, had a really good audience of smart, motivated people with smart questions. So it wasn't all, you know, rubber antenna and wackos or anything. It was actually a good crowd. But there were like 10 or 12,000 people there. And when they, when they wheeled what was left of Eric von Doniken up on the stage to speak, the auditorium, I think, had a maximum capacity of 2,800. It was estimated there were 3,300 people in there. I mean, hanging from the balcony and that kind of thing. So obviously there's a public appreciation for this, but there's also a very lucrative business in it. Then you see somebody like Elizondo who seems to come from these unimpeachable background credentials. Is there a story there that you can talk about? Because it left me scratching my head.

[Mick West]

Yeah, well, I went to Alien Con last year down in Pasadena. Very interesting.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mick West]

So might have crossed paths briefly. Yeah, yeah. And it's very interesting. You see the. They have encounter events where you can pay an extra 20 bucks to get your photo taken with Travis Taylor or someone like that. Someone from these shows. And what they really are, this convention is they're basically Extensions of the TV show, you know, Ancient Aliens. There's the Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. And, you know, there's a. There's a show that I'm actually on which is called the Proof is Out There where they. They do a little bit more investigation of things. And I'm like, the. One of the voices of reason on that show. So what, what, what that convention largely was, was the fans of those shows. And they also have, like, a traveling roadshow now, like Ancient Aliens and Skin Ranch. Like, yeah, you go around the country to different places and people, like, see. Pay lots of money to see them. So it is quite looked at. They are actually making money. Lou Elizondo, he came out in 2017 as part of Tom DeLong's to the Stars enterprise, which is kind of an interesting thing. Tom DeLonge, he was the front man of Blink 182, a rock band, and he started this business to basically leverage UFO disclosure to do entertainment and science. It kind of. The science dropped away very quickly and it became more about entertainment, and now that's kind of dropped away as well. And I think all the people who invested in it are basically throwing away their money. And most of the people who were part of it have left it, and it doesn't really exist anymore. But Elizondo has kept going. He's written a book recently called Imminent, which I thought was actually a joke when they said that was the title, because UFO disclosure has been imminent since the 1940s. It's a bit of a running joke that it's always just around the corner. And then he. He publishes a book saying, yeah, it's just about to happen, it's imminent. But he. And I think he's. He's angling for a position in government. He wants to be the UFO czar, or the UAPs are. And he was recently on Donald Trump Jr's podcast making the case, basically that he should do that. I know he's friends with Tulsi Gabbard and various other people who are now obviously in government. So it seems like, you know, he might actually be the person running UFO investigations in the future, which I don't think is a very good thing. If you read his book, he doesn't seem to be very interested in investigating. He actually had aliens in his house, he said, essentially, like, really, he had glowing orbs which he thought were perhaps some kind of alien scout ship or drone. Alien drone or something like that floating down his hallway and going through walls. And this happened for weeks and weeks and weeks, and he Never investigated it. He just like was, yeah, maybe it's just the weather or something like that. And he's. Apparently his neighbors saw them when they were at barbecues and they were just laughing about them. There are those orbs again. And he has other things. Like he said he can remote view. He says that he wants kind of remotely. Oh, God. Interrogated a terrorist who was on the other side of the world and appeared as an angel over his bed and shook the bed psychically with a bunch of his psychic friends. And he got trained as a psychic soldier, essentially. So he's not really the person I would pick to be running this thing. But, you know, he, he, he talks a good talk, but I don't think he's actually very good at investigating.

[Tarek Malik]

I grew up in, in a household very much like that with a lot of these beliefs and, you know, seances and stuff. And it was just. Yeah, I guess that's what turned me into a non believer, was the, the kind of impassioned belief, despite anything.

[Mick West]

Well, I think that's what's being revealed now is that a lot of ufology is based upon this belief in the supernatural. We've got all these people coming out and they've all had these basically weird supernatural experiences. Elizondo has all kinds of things going on. Like David Grush, one of this whistleblower.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, I wanted to ask about him too, because his testimony, so much of his testimony was. Well, sir, where did you hear that? Well, a friend of a friend of mine said, that's not particularly compelling.

[Mick West]

Yeah. And this is the other thing about the UFO culture. I think it seems like there's a lot going on right now. It seems like we've got whistleblowers, we've got congressional hearings, we've got all this stuff. But I think what's actually happening is the spotlight is coming on to these ants and it's almost like a magnifying glass and they're just scurrying around and all this stuff is being revealed. It's like you pull the rock back and you get to see all the ants doing their business. And what's being revealed is that it's just people talking to each other. There's no actual evidence. It's people saying, I believe in aliens. Because this person told me that he knows someone who worked on this program, or I know someone who worked on this program, but I can't tell you what it is. I know where the UFOs are. I can't tell you what it is. No one will actually give you any actual evidence, but they're all convinced that it's true because they've all been talking to people who are convinced it's true. And these people have good credentials. Like, you know, Elizondo has reasonable credentials. He worked in government. There's Tim Gallaudet, who was the head of noah, he was the admiral in the Navy, and another person who believes in the supernatural. But he's got good credentials. You've got Chris Mellon, the former Assistant Under Secretary for Defense or something, can't remember exactly, but he's got great credentials and he's very interested in UFOs, but none of them actually have any real evidence.

[Rod Pyle]

But do you see? Because as we're recording this discussion, which is fantastic, by the way, thank you so much again for coming on the show. We're just a couple of weeks into a new administration. In fact, Trump on the campaign trail said that if elected, he would, you know, declassify the UFO. The Area 51 stuff there, of course, we haven't heard about that yet, but in the Space.com newsroom, we had a whole big discussion about when are we going to run that story about what could he do, you know, on this whole thing. And I think we ended up running it like over, over the holidays. But, but do you see a imminent announcement that that would come because of, of, of at least the claims on that campaign trail now in the administration? And, and if so, like, what should people who are following. What are you following? What are you looking for to see if there's actually any merit or anything to even reveal?

[Mick West]

I hope so. I mean, I really do hope that Trump will declassify the UFO files. That would be great. I think that, you know, if there. I think what we're going to find is that there have historically been people in government who believed in UFOs, and that there probably are things like special access programs where those people have gone and looked for UFOs. And we know that certain things like this have happened in the past. There was, there's a government program called Project Stargate where the government tried to do remote viewing. And this is the movie and the book, Men who Stare at Ghosts. This is stuff that actually happened. This is real. People within government tried to do this. There was this Allsap program started back in the 90s, and this was basically Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas real estate developer, and his friend Harry Reid. He convinced Harry Reid to get some legislation passed so they could investigate this place called Skinwalker Ranch. And Skinwalker Ranch is just A supposedly supernatural ranch in Utah which is now the subject of a TV show. And it's part of this, you know, this alien con.

[Rod Pyle]

We should point out that Robert Bigelow also. So I don't mean to talk. I just want to point out that Robert Bigelow also built a room that is currently on the International Space Station right now with Bigelow Aerospace.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, and flew to inflatable space stations before that, which I always found. Talk about cognitive dissonance. Here's this UFO guy who's actually building space hardware based on old NASA designs that is still inspiring new space station design. So it was, again, that's one of those moments where you think, well, maybe there's more to this than I think as a doubter, because he's obviously a smart guy who's engaged in the business.

[Mick West]

But then there's Newton was an alchemist. So, like, just because someone's a great scientist doesn't mean they can't also believe in magic.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, so we, we kind of touched on this. But what do you think, this shift towards a distrust of science, a distrust of big science, a distrust of academia? Actually, I think a disdain for academics, academia. I, I don't have to go very far east from Los Angeles for people, you know, if I wear a Stanford T shirt or something, they'll say, oh, you one of them college boys? And it's like, I'm not even in Arizona yet. What's going on?

[Mick West]

Yeah, well, that's what's been saying. Anti intellectualism has been a thing, but I think recently the, the former head of arrow, Sean Kirkpatrick, said that what we're seeing is actually a return to a belief in magic. And I think that is somewhat true. I think that as people are becoming untethered from institutions and institutional knowledge and more going towards individual knowledge on the Internet, they tend towards the natural human inclination to believe in magic. And so we're getting people in positions of authority and positions, perhaps even within science itself, who are employing magical thinking. And it's a little concerning, perhaps even a lot concerning. And it's something we certainly need, certainly need to keep an eye on.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, so because this is a largely space flight and space technology show, I can't let you go without talking about the Apollo deniers. And there was a couple years ago, there's a study, I don't remember if it was the Inmarsat or the IPSOS survey, but a fair amount of between, depending on who you ask, how you ask the question. And when you ask 10 to roughly 30% of Americans think the moon landings were faked.

[Rod Pyle]

Don't tell Buzz Aldrin.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, he gets a little bit about that. 72% of Russians think we faked it, which kind of makes sense because they're still a little hurt about not being the Soviet Union anymore, Maybe. But oddly, 54% of people in the UK think that happened. At least that's more than half as surveyed. Yeah. So, you know, and, and we've all seen the, the videos of, look, that flag moved. Yeah. It's called static electricity, you know, but at this point. So I used to get this question a lot, especially on coast to coast. Well, what do you say about the this and that? It's like I used to go in this long song of dance about, look, go to the museums, look at the rockets, go to the National Archives and go through the millions of documents and feed of film and so forth. Talk to the moonwalkers like I have, you know, see if you think they're lying. I did this big song and dance now, since the fall of the Soviet union in the 21st century, I could say, look, we have the records of the Soviet Union tracking the Apollo flights around the moon with Doppler radar and all that. And people like Japan and China and India have orbited the moon and taken images of the surface. And if anybody's going to call us out on lying about that, it would be the Russians and the Chinese. So what part of that don't you get? What are your thoughts?

[Mick West]

It's a difficult one. And yet to some degree, I give up on people that are so entrenched in beliefs like that. I used to talk to flat Earthers, which is extreme.

[Tarek Malik]

Extreme until they killed themselves in rockets, right?

[Mick West]

Yeah. And, yeah, the space race put a dent in Flat Earthers because we actually got photos from space. But then, of course, people went to being space being fake, which probably had some influence on people thinking that the moon landings were fake, because that would spoil the whole flat Earth thing. But there's only so much you can do with some people. A lot of people are going to be amenable to reason. You can show them things. You can show them these photographs of the landing site from space, but other people are just going to say that's fake. You could show them, like these records from the Russians. You could do these explanations of why is the flag standing up and things like that, and why are shadows at a different angle. But they're not really that interested in it. They've got their belief and they're just going with it. So you've got to try to figure out is the person you're talking to amenable to reason or not. And if they're not, yeah, you might be better off debunking some other belief of theirs because these moon landing ones aren't going to be that consequential.

[Rod Pyle]

I would feel like such a chump if I found out that the last 20 years of my life have been dedicated to covering a space program where I have rearranged everything at great expense to go and watch these missions launch. And then I find out that it was also a dog and pony show. So that's a class action lawsuit against the government coming up.

[Mick West]

Yeah, and I got the same kind of reaction from geoengineering researchers. This is an actual topic, geoengineering. And these people, they're basically trying to figure out how could we manipulate the Earth's climate in the future if we need to. And so they've done all this research into it. It's mostly mathematical modeling, computer models. But then they got these people saying that chemtrails are a real thing and chemtrails are what's doing this. And you know, they, they say like, why would I do that? You can come, come talk to me. Then they go out and they talk to these chemtrail groups. There's a guy, David Keith, he went out and he's one of the most famous geoengineering researchers out there and he went out and talked to them and explained to them what he does and things like that. Getting a connection with the people themselves is often the most compelling thing for other people talking to the actual scientists. But yeah, you've really got to try to tune your communication priorities to the individual and what they're going to receive and what's going to, what's going to actually stick.

[Rod Pyle]

So, you know, I know we've been talking for a good, a good hour now. I did, I did. I do feel like I can't let you go if I if without asking. I guess one kind of fun one. I'm curious if there is one conspiracy theory out there, UFO or otherwise, that you would love to be true, even if you know it's not right, but you would just internally really love to be true and what that might be.

[Mick West]

I mean, I guess if I ever just pick one, I'd go with like, let's say the free energy conspiracy theory is true and the government's been covering up free energy, there's zero point energy, because that would be great if we could all just get zero point energy and we could just pluck energy out of the vacuum placuations or whatever it is, or out of magnets. That would be really good. And that's kind of like the UFO thing in a way, because a lot of the UFO believers think that the government is denying us a golden age of science with lots of free energy and faster than light travel and you know, easy transatlantic flights from on these flying sources. So yeah, hidden technology. If that would be true and we could actually demonstrate that it's true and get that hidden technology revealed, that would be great. Unfortunately, it doesn't really look like it's true.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

And Rod, do you have one?

[Rod Pyle]

Do you have one?

[Mick West]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

I had my goals set so low. I just wanted to be abducted and probed for all these years.

[Rod Pyle]

Always. We got through almost the whole episode.

[Tarek Malik]

Almost, but not quite. Okay. Before we go though, I want.

[Rod Pyle]

Can I. Can I say mine? I can't say mine.

[Tarek Malik]

No, I thought that was it. Okay.

[Rod Pyle]

No, my theory, I just. I would like follow Earth to be true. Right? That'd be great. That there'd be like a whole other world underneath the planet and you know, dinosaurs and Godzilla and maybe Michael Jackson, because, you know, my theory on that.

[Tarek Malik]

And Elvis. I thought earlier about you today in this context and this, this fits with my, my construct that this is my conspiracy theory. You're actually a hobbit and. And you have very large feet that you've been hiding from me. And you want to go down to Middle Earth. Mick, before we go, I'd like you to talk a little bit about your book. Why people will enjoy it. I've bought a copy. They should too.

[Mick West]

Sure. My book is Escaping the Rabbit. How to debunk conspiracy theories using facts, logic and respect. And it's basically how to talk to people who believe in various conspiracy theories. And I cover a lot of them specifically, like chemtrails, 911 false flags, where people think that school shootings and things like that are fake. And the newest edition of the book has chapters on coronavirus, election fraud and UFOs and QAnon. So, you know, if you have. If you have somebody in your life who believes in these conspiracy theories and it's causing a problem, or if you yourself believe in them and you want to kind of investigate them a little bit more from another perspective, it's kind of tries to teach you how to talk about those particular topics and how do you actually communicate with people and how do you understand people and how do you get them to understand you and how to. How do you actually have a conversation about conspiracy theories?

[Rod Pyle]

Well, great update. Great.

[Tarek Malik]

And I think it's great that you. You have the word respect in there because so rarely is compassion or empathy showed on either side of the argument, honestly. And it's nice to see somebody advocating for that.

[Mick West]

Yeah, I think it's very important to treat people with respect. I know. Like, you know, we kind of make fun of these strange beliefs, but these are real people, and they believe in them for reasons. Their reasons are wrong. But that doesn't mean that they're idiots. Some people are idiots, but some people are idiots who don't believe in these theories. It's like conspiracy theorists are just a cross section of society. They're not worse than us. They're not better than us. They're just people who happen to have fallen for a conspiracy theory. And you've got to respect them as people and talk to them as people, and. And you can help them.

[Tarek Malik]

Very well said. Well, I want to thank you and everybody for joining us Today for episode 147, I like to call not as they Seem, with the resonating voice of reason, Mick West. Mick, besides your YouTube and your website that we already mentioned, mickwest.com are there other places people should go to keep up with your work?

[Mick West]

Yeah, I do a lot of stuff on metabunk.org, which is my web forum. And unfortunately, I'm still on Twitter now X. And I'm there because other people are there. I'm not endorsing it, but I'm there if you want to see what I'm doing.

[Tarek Malik]

All right. And Tarik, where can we find you being abducted these days?

[Rod Pyle]

Well, you can find me at space.com as always, also on X @tarekj Malik and on YouTube @spacetronplays. I've been diving pretty deep and getting lost in space in the lore of Marvel rivals and space exploration. Exploration. So if anyone wants to help me get to Grandmaster there, let me know. Hit me up.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, I think Nick could probably tell you how to go through the backdoor code and just cheat. But of course, you'd never do that because you're an honorable man. Of course, you can find me at pilebooks.com or at astromagazine.com and or at nss.org which is the home of the National Space Society. Remember, also, you can always drop us a line at TwistWit TV. That's TwisWit TV. We love getting your comments, especially for this episode, because I think we're going to get a few, and I look forward to hearing from you and responding to each and every one of them. New episodes of the podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcaster, so make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, give us reviews, shout it to the stars because there's people up there listening. We'll take whatever you got and don't forget we're counting on you to join club twit in 2025. Besides supporting Twitter, you'll help keep us on the air and today. Thank you. Mick is an excellent example of our show at its best and you'll keep me generating my horrid space dad jokes. Also, you'll get the great programming video streams on the Twit Network ad free on Club Twit, as well as some extras only available there for just $7 a month. You can't even buy a ride on a flying saucer for $7 a month. We appreciate it. Helps keep the processes warm here. You can also follow the Twitt Tech Podcast Network at Twit on Twitter and on Facebook and Twitter TV on Instagram. Gentlemen, this has been an absolute pleasure. Mick, I really appreciate you coming on. It's as I think I mentioned to you, I've been angling to get you on for, I don't know, three years and finally managed to track you down. And I really appreciate you taking the time.

[Mick West]

Very glad to be here. So fascinating conversation.

[Tarek Malik]

Thanks everybody and we'll see you next time. Bye bye. No matter how much spare time you have, TWiT TV has the perfect tech news format for your schedule. Stay up to date with everything happening in tech and get tech news your.

[Rod Pyle]

Way with TWiT TV.

[Tarek Malik]

Start your week with this Week in Tech for an in depth, comprehensive dive into the top stories every week and for a midweek boost, Tech News Weekly brings you consistent, concise quick updates with the journalists breaking the news. Whether you need just the nuts and bolts or want the full analysis, stay informed with TWiT TV's perfect pairing of tech news programs.

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[Rod Pyle]

Beautiful Anonymous changes each week.

[Tarek Malik]

It defies genres and expectations.

[Rod Pyle]

For example, our most recent episode, I talked to a woman who survived a murder attempt by her own son. But just the week before that, we just talked the whole time about Star Trek. We've had other recent episodes about sexting in languages that are not your first language or what it's like to get weight loss surgery. It's unpredictable, it's real, it's honest, it's raw. Get Beautiful Anonymous Wherever you listen to podcasts.