Chasing Aliens, with Jon Ronson and Daniel Lavelle (Part Two)

Summary

Intelligence Squared: Chasing Aliens, with Jon Ronson and Daniel Lavelle (Part Two)

Date: May 21, 2026
Location: Live at Conway Hall, London
Host: Intelligence Squared
Guests: Jon Ronson (journalist, author, filmmaker) & Daniel Lavelle (journalist, author, All World Prize winner)
Producer: Mia Sorrenti

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Episode Overview

This lively and irreverent discussion continues Jon Ronson and Daniel Lavelle's exploration of America’s obsession with UFOs, conspiracy culture, and the search for extraterrestrial meaning. Picking up from part one, Ronson and Lavelle blend personal anecdotes, deep dives into military psychic programs, and thoughtful reflection on belief, skepticism, and what the UFO phenomena says about us as humans. Recorded live, the episode features audience questions that prompt sharp insights, hilarious stories, and candid moments.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Remote Viewing, Psychic Spies, and Military Oddities

[02:00 – 07:09]

• Remote Viewing at Fort Meade: Daniel introduces the once-classified US military psychic spy unit, where for years, participants like Ingo Swann tried to “divine” secret information. Despite Hollywood-esque mystique, reality was more mundane—no budget or repairs, leading to frustration and humor.
  • Daniel Lavelle: “…after 25 years, they couldn’t get any repairs done because they were black op. And also…they were just sitting in a room pretending, you know, trying to be psychic for year after year. And it was just driving them insane.” (02:37)
• Project Jedi & Goat Lab: The military’s forays into “paranormal” tactics included “levels” of psychic training from intuition to literal attempts at invisibility.
  • Jon Ronson recounts: “So I said, actual invisibility? ...after a while, we adapted it to trying to find ways of not being seen. So I said, like camouflage? ...No, hide and seek.” (04:29)
• The Men Who Stare at Goats: A darkly comedic retelling of soldiers attempting to psychically stop goats’ hearts—sometimes harming themselves (“sympathetic injury”) more than the goats, who were already traumatized and wounded from previous trainings.

2. Skeptics, Chameleons, and the Pathology of Belief

[07:11 – 09:45]

• Nick Pope: Veteran UK MoD UFO investigator, remembered as both sincere and adaptable—a “chameleon” per skeptic Michael Shermer, constantly tailoring his answers to his audience.
  • John Ronson: “I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing. It’s just how you can fit in with people... If anything, he’s willing to change his mind in real time and he can talk to anyone.” (09:16)
• On Skeptics: Ronson pushes back on skeptic “pathology,” likening their social media presence to contrarian reflexes rather than true inquiry.
  • Jon Ronson: “Their raison d'etre is to like pick low hanging fruit all day on Twitter. Just like, ‘Not an alien. They're contrails. That's not chemtrail, you know, all day.’ …pick something better.” (09:34)

3. Physics, Probability, and Limits of Space Travel

[11:08 – 13:48]

• The Universe is Big, Distances are a Problem: Ronson summarizes the vast statistical odds of alien life but highlights the huge challenge of physical contact.
  • John Ronson: “Our fastest spaceship would do that trip in about 100,000 years... Would you embark on a journey that you won't finish and that your ancestors might... turn back, you know?”
• Wormholes Explained (Poorly): Attempts to describe cosmic shortcuts and why they collapse in practice, leaving alien visitation unlikely.
  • John Ronson: “You would need something called dark energy to keep them open... might be that we're alone.”
• Existential Responsibility: “If we are alone then we've got a cosmic sized responsibility to do better than we are doing, you know.” (13:44)

4. Government Disinformation & The “Believers” in Power

[15:35 – 19:53]

• General Stubblebine & “Walking Through Walls”: Ronson lampoons military leadership’s gullibility, e.g. generals earnestly trying to phase through solid matter.
  • Jon Ronson: “He spent a lot of his time…trying to walk through his wall…he kept on bumping his nose.”
• Richard Doughty & Disinformation: U.S. intelligence officials feeding the UFO rumor mill to provide cover for secret aircraft projects, deliberately manipulating and destabilizing “believers.”
  • Daniel Lavelle: “He would feed fake UFO narratives...they would leave, like, forever changed. And it was all a lie.” (18:59)
  • Jon Ronson: “It’s convenient for the CIA and whoever to kind of bolster these UFO narratives…just look at this.” (18:28)

5. American Exceptionalism and Why UFO Culture is So American

[21:34 – 23:38]

• America’s Postwar Paranoia: Ronson links UFO mythology’s American roots to superpower anxieties, exceptionalism, and Hollywood.
  • Jon Ronson: “There’s a sort of paradox that occurs when you’re very powerful that you’re also very vulnerable. So this idea of threats kind of took root in the American mind... And then you combine that with Roswell and the Hollywoodification of UFO folklore...it’s just this perfect recipe.” (21:34)
• Frontierism and Isolation: Lavelle adds that America’s vastness and isolation breeds paranoia and sensational belief.

6. Race, Class, and “Who Sees Aliens?”

[24:11 – 26:26]

• Is UFOlogy a “White Thing”? A Greyhound bus conversation prompts a reflection on race, representation, and communal bonds in belief.
  • Unnamed Black fighter pilot: “If one of us saw the Mothership, we’d be like, take me, take me.” (24:44)
• Community as Protection: Lavelle connects belief and alienation, referencing Durkheim’s theory that stronger communities correlate with lower suicide rates and, perhaps, less UFO enthusiasm among nonwhite Americans due to stronger communal ties.

7. New Age UFO Beliefs & Underlying Eugenics

[27:07 – 28:58]

• Starseeds and Spiritual Elitism: Lavelle delves into the QAnon Shaman, “starseed” beliefs and how some UFO communities dovetail with eugenicist fantasies and new-age spirituality.
  • Jon Ronson (on interviewing a believer): “…she used to be a lion person, right. And she’s quite petite, Eisha. So I just imagined her, like, bounding across the Serengeti...I just started laughing in her face. Most unprofessional moment of my career...” (28:23)
  • Eisha’s retort: “Not a lion, a Lyran.” (28:51)

8. Audience Questions: Evidence, Harm, and Skeptical Limits

[28:58 – 35:33]

• On the Tic-Tac UFO: Debate the credibility of the infamous Navy sighting. Radar data’s unavailability is cited as a limiting factor for robust evidence.
  • Jon Ronson: “Well, there are anecdotes, so I don’t know if you can say they’re true or not.” (30:29)
• Rendlesham Incident: American airmen’s 1980 experience in Suffolk—“I don’t accept the skeptical explanations. I think they genuinely saw an object or a craft. What that is, I don’t know.” (32:42)
• Is Ufology Harmless or Harmful?
  • Jon Ronson: “It’s completely harmless until you annoy them on social media...with that specific branch...that’s when it becomes a bit harmful.” (34:23)
  • Belief can lead to extremism (e.g., QAnon) when mixed with claims of special access or elitism.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

1. On Military Programs:

   • Jon Ronson (re: psychic spies): “It’s just really fucking disappointing. I should not be running anything.” (07:07)

2. On Belief Inside Government:

   • Daniel Lavelle: “There is a real preponderance of believers inside government.” (17:48)

3. Existential Reflection:

   • Jon Ronson: “…we are the universe in a way, like we’re its eyes and ears. We’re the only chance it has to sort of... understand itself. So if we are alone then we’ve got a cosmic sized responsibility...” (13:44)

4. On Skeptics:

   • Jon Ronson: “Their raison d’etre is to like pick low hanging fruit all day on Twitter. Just like, not an alien. They’re contrails. That’s not chemtrail, you know, all day.” (09:34)

5. On Lyrans and Starseeds:

   • Jon Ronson: “…she went, ‘Not a lion, a lyran.’ I said, oh, sorry. What’s a Lyran?” (28:51)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:00] – Remote viewing & Project Jedi origins
• [04:29] – Hiding “invisibility” as military hide-and-seek
• [07:45] – Remembering Nick Pope, the UFO “chameleon”
• [09:33] – Skeptic “pathology” & social media
• [11:08] – Probability, wormholes, and our cosmic loneliness
• [15:35] – General Stubblebine, trying to walk through walls
• [18:28] – Disinformation, Richard Doughty, and Roswell as cover
• [21:34] – Why Americans are UFO-obsessed
• [24:11] – Race, representation, and UFO culture
• [27:07] – Starseeds, QAnon Shaman, and New Age eugenics
• [29:51] – Tic-Tac UFO debate
• [32:08] – The Rendlesham Incident
• [34:23] – Is UFO belief harmless or harmful?

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Tone and Final Thoughts

Ronson and Lavelle balance skepticism and curiosity with dry wit and bracing honesty, unpacking not just America’s UFO mania, but what it says about power, loneliness, belief, and the human longing for meaning. Their open-mindedness doesn’t shade into credulity, nor does their skepticism slip into cynicism, creating a space for laughter, reflection, and even a bit of awe.

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Summary produced for listeners who missed the episode but want to dive deep into the most important topics, revelations, and philosophical tangents of this illuminating conversation.

Transcript

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[Mia Sorrenti]

Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. In this episode we return for part two of our recent live event with All World Prize winning journalist Daniel Lovell. Lovell joined us recently at Conway hall to discuss America's obsession with UFOs, aliens and the search for meaning beyond Earth. To discuss his wild road trip through UFO heartlands, Lovell was in conversation with journalist, author and filmmaker John Ronson. If you haven't heard part one, do jump back an episode to catch up. But now let's return to the conversation live at Conway hall in London.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Well, remote viewing it's so I'm sure a lot of people here know about it but there was a unit at Fort Meade in Maryland of psychic spies and for decades these psychic spies Ingo Swann and Joe McMonagh and various other people would go there like every morning and sit in this shed and and be psychic like try and psychically divine things which sound and they were black op which meant they didn't exist. And all of that sounds really exciting but actually the fact that they were black up Meant they had no budget, which meant they had no coffee machine, so let's get their own coffee every morning. Which, like, really rankled. After 25 years, they couldn't get any repairs done because they were black op. And also, like, they were just sitting in a room pretending, you know, trying to be psychic for year after year after year. And it was just driving them insane.

[John Ronson]

It's a similar story with Elizondo, because what Elizondo actually did was that he was getting money for what he should have been doing, which was counterintelligence, and then using those funds to pursue UFO spotting. So it's the same thing. He would just use the money and I guess in his office, he would spend time looking at UFOs and stuff.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Yeah. And that went on for years. And also in my book, the Ministeric Goats, I discovered that out of that room, remote viewing program, came these other programs. There was one called Project Jedi, which was. It was a series of levels. This was at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and it was a series of levels. And I met one of them. I said, what were the levels? He said, well, level one was observation. You walk into a room, how many chairs are in the room?

[John Ronson]

How many?

[Daniel Lavelle]

The super soldier would just know. So I said, what was level two? He said, level two is intuition. You're at a fork in the road. Do you go left? Do you go right? You go right. So I said, what was level three? He said, level three was invisibility. So I said, what? Actual invisibility? I said, that's kind of a leap from level two, spotting what's in the room. I said, actual invisibility. And he said, at first, but after a while, we adapted it to trying to find ways of not being seen. So I said, like camouflage?

[John Ronson]

He went, no, hide and seek.

[Daniel Lavelle]

It's to do with, like, if the wall is vertical, you stand like that, you blend in and actually. Yeah, and actually I've got a very small clip from my conversation with this guy when he talks about level four. So. See this clip? What were the other kind of extreme theories that were sort of mooted? We had a master sergeant that could stop the heart of a goat. What, just by looking at it? I want the goats. Hard to see, stop. And could he actually do it? Did the goat's heart stop? He did it at least once.

[John Ronson]

So. But not really an area that you

[Daniel Lavelle]

want to go to.

[John Ronson]

Unless you get, you know, not really

[Daniel Lavelle]

an area that you really want to go to. Because as it. I think as it turned out in

[John Ronson]

the evaluation, he actually did some damage

[Daniel Lavelle]

to himself as well. Sympathetic injury really. Yeah. So it wasn't as if the goat was psychically fighting back. The goat didn't have a chance. This happened down at Fort Braggett where it was called Goat Lab at the time. Yeah.

[John Ronson]

Can I just say, I've just read the magisteric Goats to prepare for this and weren't they shooting them before?

[Daniel Lavelle]

Yes.

[John Ronson]

So they were on edge. Right. When they were taken into a dark room.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Yeah, basically these. Exactly. There was a place at Fort Bragg called Goat Lab which was used for conventional training. Like they'd shoot the goats and then nurse them back to health. But then some of them thought, well, we've got all of these goats, we might as well see whether we can make them fall over just by staring at them. So at one point they were all staring at goat. They had 30 goats in a room and they were all staring at goat number 17 and goat number 18 fell over, which I guess is collateral damage. I can't help thinking that, yeah, given that they all had pre existing gunshot wounds, like if any of them fell over, it might have been for that reason. But it is so interesting. Like I met a skeptic once who was asked to evaluate these programs and I said to him, why are there so many believers inside the military? And he said, because people are nuts. Which means statistically you have as many nutty people inside the military as outside of it.

[John Ronson]

Yeah. But it's so shocking though, because when you're young you expect the. With suits on controlling all the major decisions are sensible. And then when you get older and it's. They're not, are they? It's just like you and me.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Right.

[John Ronson]

And it's just really fucking disappointing.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Yeah.

[John Ronson]

I should not be running anything.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Yeah. Tell you who else that's true about movie stars. Which brings me on to my next question.

[John Ronson]

You.

[Daniel Lavelle]

One of the characters in your book is Nick Pope, who was a giant in the UFO world. And I think you must have done the last interview with him because he died shortly afterwards. So given that Nick Pope was such a giant in this world, do you want to just talk a little bit about him and what you made of him when you interviewed him and so on.

[John Ronson]

Yeah. So for those who don't know, Nick Pope used to work for the Ministry of Defense. Part of his Duties was investigating UFOs. He wrote several best selling books. I think Open Skies, Closed Minds was one of them. And yeah, he was just a lovely, lovely man. I was in contact with him for about six years. Never wanted anything from me, he was always available. Yeah. Yeah, he is. Great.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Yeah, he was. Michael Shermer, who's one of the kind of big skeptics from the Skeptic Society, he said that he called Nick Pope a chameleon who would change his stripes to suit his interlocutor. Like, if Nick Pope was being interviewed by a skeptic, he'd be more skeptical. And if he was being interviewed by a believer, he would lean into the believing side. But I don't know if that. I don't know how bad that is. I think it means that somebody's just like open minded and are willing to see things from every perspective.

[John Ronson]

Yeah. I say that in the book that I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. It's just how you can fit in with people. I mean, there was an appearance he did on Newsnight where he scaled back his original claim about extraterrestrials visiting us in real time when Jon Snow challenged him and he sort of diluted his. And his skeptical colors became more pronounced.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Right.

[John Ronson]

But again, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that. If anything, he's willing to change his mind in real time and he can talk to anyone. Yeah. So I don't see. I think skeptics like Michael Shermer and Mick west, they're just as pathological as some of these true believer people.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Oh, yeah.

[John Ronson]

Their raison d' etre is to like pick low hanging fruit all day on Twitter. Just like, not an alien. They're contrails. That's not chemtrail, you know, all day. Yeah, like, you know, pick something better.

[Daniel Lavelle]

I don't think it said. I don't. Yeah, I'm sure this isn't true about Michael Shermer, but I don't know. But what is true about a lot of those leaders of the skeptics and the rationalist movements that they're all. In the Epstein files, there was a preponderance of these kind of rationalist skeptical thinkers who were all in these, you know, odd elite little cults themselves.

[John Ronson]

Yeah, no comment.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Before I open it up, we're going to have like half an hour of questions. One thing you really helpfully do in your book is talk about the physics of it. Like, what I realized when I was doing my Robbie Williams story was that the two most interesting things about this world is firstly, the physics, like the actual possibilities that we do have, ETs living among us, and then the other interesting things, the kind of psychologies of the people who believe whether it's narcissism, whether it's. They really believe it, like the PTSD studies and so on. So to talk a little bit about the physical possibilities, you, very helpfully, in the book, talk a little bit about wormholes and the possibility that the kind of statistical possibilities of us being visited. So do you want to talk that through?

[John Ronson]

Yeah. So the universe is vast, potentially infinite. Depends what statistical model you look at. But there could be trillions of alien civilizations out there in the universe. The problem is the distance between solar systems. So, like, the nearest potentially habitable planet to ours is called Proxima Centauri B. That's four light years away.

[Daniel Lavelle]

So what does that mean?

[John Ronson]

That means it takes light four years to get here. Our fastest spaceship would do that trip in about 100,000 years. And you'd think the same problem will face ET as well. Like, would you embark on a journey that you won't finish and that your ancestors might, you know, get a quarter of a way through and think, fuck that, I'm turning back, you know? So that's a problem. Unless, of course, there are exotic theories about wormholes and wildlife.

[Daniel Lavelle]

What are wormholes? How do they work?

[John Ronson]

So I'm not a physicist, but a wormhole. Has anyone seen the film Interstellar?

[Daniel Lavelle]

Yeah.

[John Ronson]

Okay. Oh.

[Daniel Lavelle]

So wormholes basically been a very confusing thing at the end of a film that you were, until then, following?

[John Ronson]

No, they're actually gonna explain. I'll explain it. Like they did. So if you were to draw two crosses on a piece of paper, one at each end, and then you folded that paper, the two points would meet. So that's the theory that a massive object can warp space, and then these two points meet and you can travel through them. The problem is that they only work on paper. And even on paper, as soon as you introduce matter into it, they collapse. So you would need something called dark energy to keep them open. And we don't know if dark energy, I think we know it exists, but we don't know if we can harness it or use it or manipulate it or whatever. So, yeah, so it might be that we're alone. And I say in the book that I think we can take solace from that because, you know, we're not like people see ourselves as outside of nature. I think David Attenborough has been making that point this week that everyone's interested in nature, really, because we are part of it. But sometimes we see ourselves separate from the universe, when actually we are the universe in a way, like we're its eyes and ears. We're the only chance it has to sort of it understand itself. So if we are alone then we've got a cosmic sized responsibility to do better than we are doing, you know. So,

[Daniel Lavelle]

So good, so good, so good.

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[Daniel Lavelle]

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[John Ronson]

Yeah, I touched on him briefly in the book Richard Doughty, I think he was another intelligence officer and he would feed fake UFO narratives to people also in the military to disguise the actual things they were doing, which was developing secret spy planes and things like that. But it's convenient for the CIA and whoever to kind of bolster these UFO narratives because it's just like dangling a golden carrot. Oh, no, it's not. If we're not doing anything. Just look at this.

[Daniel Lavelle]

So, yeah, yeah, the stories of that he would actually turn people in, saying he'd bring in like UFO Believers, like big believers in. And he'd bring them into, like a secret office inside the government and show them evidence of UFOs and they would leave, like, forever changed. And it was all a lie. He was doing it to deliberately, with government approval, spread disinformation.

[John Ronson]

Yes, that's a big part of this whole thing. I mean, the same thing happened with Roswell. When the Roswell crash, they originally said it was a weather balloon, but then years later, when the Cold war ended, the iron curtain went up. They said, oh, it's actually a nuclear testing balloon that we were using. So they used the alien narrative as cover all the time. So this is one of the reasons why these. Why this ufology just stays alive. Because it's convenient. Yeah, yeah.

[Daniel Lavelle]

The government deliberately turning people insane to get them off the center because they just want to test their new weapons. It's really extraordinary. Okay, there's a lot of things we didn't talk about, like about, you know, eugenics within the ufo, believing and the

[John Ronson]

starseeds, the people who believe they're aliens, all that stuff.

[Daniel Lavelle]

But let me open it up now. Can we have the. Are we going to have the lights up for the next half an hour? Yes. Okay. So I'm really glad that there's hands up already behind the gentleman there with the red T shirt.

[John Ronson]

A question to Daniel. I was wondering what you think is more likely and what you think is better, that we are alone in the universe or that there are aliens and that we aren't alone. It would be amazing, wouldn't it, if there were aliens or not? If they were sort of like colonialist, it would be a bit shit. Why wouldn't they be? Because, like, we are

[Daniel Lavelle]

so.

[John Ronson]

And I think I'd rather just, yeah, I don't know, maybe be alone. I think that's okay. I don't think it's that bad. Yeah, sorry. It's a lot easier. When I couldn't see you all, I almost pretended you weren't here.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Oh, I see somebody there with their hand up. And whether they said hope, the way that the Americans talk about aliens and let's just assume for a second, although I'm quite skeptical, that they do exist. Why is there a particular relationship between the Americans and the aliens that doesn't seem to be reflected with other countries? Yes. Well, with Danny, you come to the right man about this. So why is it such an American phenomenon?

[John Ronson]

That's the central point of this book, that I'm. The central question I'm trying to answer, really. And I think if it goes back to 1947. If you think about the war just finished. We were no longer the British Empire, Europe was a mess. America emerged as the world's superpower. And there's a sort of a paradox that occurs when you're very powerful that you're also very vulnerable. So this idea of threats kind of took root in the American mind. If you think about McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and then throughout the subsequent decades, you had the JFK assassination, Watergate. So this idea that there's a dark hand in the shadows pulling the strings is very prominent in the American mind. And then you combine that with Roswell and the Hollywoodification of UFO folklore, the sci fi boom. It's just this perfect recipe. So I think that's got a lot to do with it. Also American exceptionalism. If you're the world superb, then where else would the aliens go? They're gonna go to, you know, unless they just love McDonald's and that's why they want to come in.

[Daniel Lavelle]

I'm friends with Adam Curtis, who lives right around here, and he would say if he was sitting here that it's something to do with just how vast America is and how. How remote so many people are. And, you know, we know that paranoia and, you know, irrational beliefs. If these are irrational beliefs, they come about in isolation.

[John Ronson]

Yeah, there's that. And just like the frontierism as well of the American psyche, you know, that's still in there. That's probably why they got to the moon first, because there are no more frontiers left. So I think that's within their culture. I think they're a great culture. By the way, I love America and Americans. I just think that they're really nice people, the ones I met, anyway.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Yeah, yeah, you were. We didn't touch on this, but you went on for this book. You went on a big road trip around America. You went down to Arizona.

[John Ronson]

Yeah, I traveled pretty much the length of America.

[Daniel Lavelle]

You met the Qanon shaman?

[John Ronson]

Yeah, yeah, I met the Qanon shaman. He believes he's an actual alien, which might surprise you, might not. Yeah, I met ghost hunters in New Orleans who trying to find ghosts with water divining rods. That was weird.

[Daniel Lavelle]

There's an interesting moment about race on that road trip.

[John Ronson]

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I was on the Greyhound bus and yeah, there was a guy who was a fighter pilot, he was a black guy. And I was talking to him when we were having a smoke break because it was like a 15 hour coach journey. And I got speaking to him and I asked him, did you see any UFOs in the military? And he was like, no. When do you ever hear black people talk about that shit? I was like. And he said, if one of us saw the Mothership, we'd be like, take me, take me.

[Daniel Lavelle]

And you questioned whether that was, like, true. Like, is it a white phenomenon?

[John Ronson]

Yeah, I did think. Because, like, all the major players in this world are very white. So is this just a white thing? What is. No, apparently not. They're seen all over the world. Every kind of gender, race, ethnicity.

[Daniel Lavelle]

So it's not a white thing, but it's a white thing in America.

[John Ronson]

I think it is in America, and I think that's just to do with power dynamics. So, I mean, most white. Most people on telly in America are white. And I just think. And they have more. White people in America have more free time, I guess, on average than people who are living in poverty. A significant portion of African Americans in poverty.

[Daniel Lavelle]

There's something else, though, which is that I've just written a book which is coming out later this year called the Castle. And in the Castle, I just touch tangentially on. Emil Durkheim, in 1897, brought out a book about suicide. And one of his conclusions was that black people don't commit suicide to anywhere near the degree that white people do. And it's been a mystery for years. And the conclusion that these economists in Princeton, Anne Case and Angus Dayton, came up with was that there's a better sense of community, that the reason why people commit suicide is because of an erosion of a way of life, an erosion of community, isolation, and so on. So maybe that lack of community with white people is why some of them are seeing aliens more than black people do.

[John Ronson]

Yeah, maybe it is. Loneliness inspires people to look for meaning in the unknown, because that's the thing with empty spaces. You can fill them with whatever you want. So I suppose that's. Can be quite comforting for people. And as I say, I think for materialists, aliens are sort of akin to God in a way. When I spoke to Abby Loeb, the astrophysicist at Harvard, he described aliens in very interesting ways. He sort of saw them as being like these sages who would come here with their advanced technology and kind of shepherd us towards a utopia or something, which struck me as like science. I mean, religion dressed in a lab coat. Right. So I think a lot of it's that it's looking for a patriarch, a

[Daniel Lavelle]

guide, you know, and a eugenicist utopia, too. There's a real. You discovered a real connection between eugenics and believing in aliens.

[John Ronson]

Yeah. So that's with the starseed people like Jake Chancellor, the Qanon shaman. Yeah, the Qanon shaman. This sort of new age branch of ufology. Starseedom. It's underpinned with eugenics. So people like H.G. wells wrote about it. I forget the other authors off the top of my head, but, yeah, there's this idea that they receive. They've had the DNA upgraded and that enables them to receive DNA codes from the sun and they can access their former lives on different planets where there used to be dolphins and lions. Right. There was a story in the book. I spoke to a woman called Eisha, and I've never done this before in my entire career, but I just started laughing in her face. I don't know if you've ever interviewed someone and just started laughing hysterically in their face. Most unprofessional moment of my career. Because she told me, like, she used to be a lion person, right. And she's quite petite, Eisha. So I just imagined her, like, bounding across the Serengeti just chasing zebras, and I just lost it. So she said, you're struggling with.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Was she offended when you laughed?

[John Ronson]

Yes. She said, you're struggling with. With this, aren't you? And I said, yeah, a bit, yeah. And I just said, I'm really sorry. I've never done this before. I just. It's just when I had this image of you in my head of being a lion, I just couldn't cope. She went, not a lion, a lyran. I said, oh, sorry, what's a Lyran? And then she said, silly, silly. And then she showed me this picture of a human with a lion's head. I was like, oh, yeah, silly me. Yeah, my mistake.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Who else has? Okay, yeah, there's a gentleman there with glasses in the blue. Or somebody else can ask a question. I can have a word. You know, I'm not a kind of a believer, but I think the evidence thing is very important. And right at the beginning, you slightly undercut your argument by saying with the tick, tock, tock, that it was just two pilots, and that's not evidence. But there was also radar evidence. That's how they got the speed of it. So in a way, it rather kind of took the wind out of your sails for me, because the actual evidence was that they couldn't understand why it was going so quickly. And it wasn't those pilots. It was based on radar evidence. That's it. Yeah, that's. No, that's absolutely true.

[John Ronson]

Yeah, yeah, there was, there was radar, but. But that data is not available. That, that's, that's just part of the story that it was on radar. There's no actual data with the radar

[Daniel Lavelle]

on it, with the Tic Tac.

[John Ronson]

That's the problem. But I don't doubt it. I do, but I mean, I don't if, you know, I mean, I think

[Daniel Lavelle]

it's worth talking about Tic Tac for a second again, because you're right, like, of the three that, as you said yourself, the one that's like most hard,

[John Ronson]

it's the hardest one to just debunk and dismiss outright.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Yeah, it was. In less than a minute, it went 60 miles. And this is all definitely true, right?

[John Ronson]

Well, there are anecdotes, so I don't know if you can say they're true or not. I don't know.

[Daniel Lavelle]

No breakneck speed with no obvious propellant. And this weird stuff was happening with the surface of the ocean. It was like bubbling like boiling water. And these are pilots who are trained, like, you know, to look for these things. And they were certain.

[John Ronson]

Yeah, well, they were certain. But again, the discrepancies in their stories, the timelines aren't quite right. And they're just like you and I like that they're susceptible to optical illusions just as much as we are.

[Daniel Lavelle]

They're less like you and I, though, because they're trained military pilots who are all about looking in the skies and, you know, I mean, I don't know what's happening in the fucking skies, you know, but these people are, like, trained to do that.

[John Ronson]

Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. But it's just like with the Go Fast example. As soon as you dig into it, you see the data on the actual video they were looking at. It tells you. It tells you the distances. So if they just read their screen right, they could have come to that conclusion immediately. So that tells me that they're really good at flying planes and spotting other jet fighter jets and stuff, and they've got great reactions, but maybe not spotting things they haven't seen before. You know, if you've never seen something before, how do you know how big it is? How do you know fast. How fast it's moving? How do you know what it is? You know?

[Daniel Lavelle]

Right, okay. Well, let me sort of channel your question by asking you another question, which is that there is another sighting, which again, seems to kind of defy a lot of exploration explanations. And that's Rendlesham. Yeah. So do you want to Talk a little bit about Rendlesham.

[John Ronson]

Oh, Rendlesham's really complicated. But we just. Kira, my editor there, the Guardian, we just published the Rendlesham Forest mystery. It's really complicated to distill on stage, but basically American airmen saw lights in Rendlesham Forest. One of them saw a triangular craft and again it lifted off the ground with no obvious propellant and zoomed away.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Where and when?

[John Ronson]

Vendlesham Forest in 1980. In.

[Daniel Lavelle]

And where is that?

[John Ronson]

Suffolk. Is it? Suffolk.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Suffolk.

[John Ronson]

Suffolk, yeah. Thanks. And yeah, some skeptics think these people were just fooled by a lighthouse beacon. And that's why there was a videotape. Not videotape, a tape recording of Colonel Charles Holt, who went out the next night and recorded what he'd seen. And he described seeing a flashing light in 5 second increments, which is why skeptics think it's a lighthouse. I don't think it's a lighthouse. I don't accept the skeptical explanations. I think they genuinely saw an object or a craft. What that is, I don't know. But yeah, that one's really interesting.

[Daniel Lavelle]

And you mentioned the ptsd, one of the airmen, Penniston.

[John Ronson]

Jim Penniston, yeah. He's the one who actually encountered the triangular craft. His partner, John Burroughs, was apparently paralyzed whilst Penniston was viewing this craft. So that's why their stories don't match. Also their original reports don't match the later stories. So it's all sort of up in the air. But yeah, I think something was going on. But whether it's. That's the thing, something might be going on, or if you see an object, I don't know what it is. But then that's a big leap to aliens, you know, I don't know. Full stop is where you should be. Let's see. Not, oh, it's aliens because I can't explain it.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Okay. Oh, yes. Hi there. I just wondered, to what extent do you think the UFO movement or belief in UFOs is. Is basically harmless or are there significant bits of it that maybe to speak to your previous answer, Daniel, are somewhat harmful.

[John Ronson]

It's completely harmless until you annoy them on social media.

[Daniel Lavelle]

But it also plays in that you said about the. About the Qanon shaman that it does kind of play into.

[John Ronson]

Yeah. With the.

[Daniel Lavelle]

More nefarious.

[John Ronson]

With that specific branch. Because it's this idea. They've got special access, special knowledge. They're receiving these light codes. Or the people in the Pentagon, we've got this classified information. We can't quite Release it. But trust me, the real videos are high definition and they would leave no doubt at all. Well, release them then. Oh, I can't because they're classified. But you release the ones that were blurry. Oh, yeah, but these ones I can't. So yet those people get quite abusive when you challenge them. That's when it becomes a bit harmful and the way it intersects with sort of political extremism, you can see someone who loves crystals and meditating kind of getting sucked into this world and then becoming an accidental eugenicist or something. So. Yeah, but on the whole, yeah, just UFO spotting, it's a bit like train spotting, isn't it? It's just that you don't know where they've come from or where they're going. But I think it's fine, innit? If you like hanging around with trench coats and that and just whatever.

[Daniel Lavelle]

Thank you all so much for coming, but thank you most of all to the great Danny Lavelle. And thank you to Intelligence Squared. Danny will be signing books outside and we'll continue to have a conversation with anybody who wants to have one.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by me, Mia Sorrenti and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a [e-mail] membership. If you'd like to join us at future events, you can find our full events program and buy tickets [e-mail] attend. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.

[Daniel Lavelle]

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