Part Two: Mysterious CIA Medical Cases: Stanford Professor Garry Nolan on UAP Contact, Energy Weapons, Havana Syndrome, and How Alien Life Might Really Look

Summary

Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown – Part Two: Mysterious CIA Medical Cases

Guest: Dr. Garry Nolan (Stanford Professor, Pathologist)
Hosts: Mayim Bialik & Jonathan Cohen
Date: January 28, 2026

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Overview

In this thought-provoking and candid episode, Mayim and Jonathan continue their deep-dive with Dr. Garry Nolan. The conversation moves from Dr. Nolan’s rigorous scientific analysis of alleged UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) artifacts, into personal experiences, high-profile “contact” cases, the mission of the SOL Foundation, as well as reflections on the limitations and frontiers of scientific inquiry into consciousness, psychic phenomena, and the nature of advanced intelligence. Nolan, straddling the line between skepticism, rigor, and curiosity, offers an insider’s glimpse into cutting-edge discussions at the intersection of science, UAPs, and human experience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Investigating UAP Artifacts: Methods and Findings

(02:17–12:20)

• Dr. Nolan’s Approach:

  • Describes his analysis of UAP-related metal fragments—including a notable sample from the Ubatuba event (Brazil), “Council Bluffs,” and a piece purportedly from the Roswell incident.
  • Uses mass spectrometry and atomic probe tomography to analyze isotope ratios at a molecular level.

• Isotope Anomalies:

  • Found “absolutely perfect magnesium ratios” in one Ubatuba sample, but another sample's ratios were "way off"—not matching terrestrial expectations.
  • Later, with more advanced instruments, discovers a sample is “99.99% pure silicon” with silicon isotope ratios that were “way off” (09:17).
  • A physicist collaborator hypothesizes the sample’s isotopic pattern could only result from exposure to intense neutron bombardment—far beyond Earth’s current or historical technological capabilities.

• Scientific Stance:

  • Dr. Nolan is careful to emphasize “it’s the data, not the conclusion.”
  • “So it comes back to my big P that it’s the data, not the conclusion.” (11:57, Dr. Nolan)

“If I could get a piece of something that was not made on this earth... I can look at things and see if they're put together in a way that humans don’t know how to do currently.”

(03:13, Dr. Nolan)

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2. The SOL Foundation – Rational Community Amidst the Noise

(16:06–20:34)

• Purpose:
  • Founded to provide a perimeter in which “reasonable scientists or reasonable lay people” can engage in rational, academic exploration of UAPs and consciousness—not “circus-like” conferences.
• Community & Critique:
  • Aims to “teach the community” to be taken seriously—sharing guidelines on how to discuss controversial topics with rigor.
  • Pushback comes from both inside and outside the field; Nolan notes he “shamed [skeptics] into submission” by sticking to data and scientific method.
  • Critiques the double-standard in mainstream science (e.g., SETI search being accepted, but only as long as life is “400 light years away”).

“You sound more like a priest than a PhD. I mean, I might as well have thrown a bucket of cold water in his face... You’re dogmatic.”

(18:39, Dr. Nolan on dealing with scientific dogmatism and gatekeeping)

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3. The “Avatar” Hypothesis & Advanced Intelligence

(20:34–24:57)

• Dr. Nolan addresses the idea that:
  • Advanced intelligence would likely use “intermediaries” (avatars, drones) to interact with a primitive, potentially dangerous species like ours, rather than direct contact.
  • Suggests “zoo hypothesis” analogies—Earth and its inhabitants are observed, but direct interference is rare, echoing Robin Hanson’s “pen” hypothesis.

“We’re a bunch of angry monkeys... Would you walk into the middle of an Amazonian tribe that’s still known to use cannibalism and just say ‘Hi, here I am’? ... You would use intermediaries of some kind.”

(21:05, Dr. Nolan)

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4. Personal Experiments & Collective Experience

(25:55–32:10)

• Dr. Nolan’s Childhood Sightings and “Little Guys” (26:05):

  • Shares a vivid memory circa 1967: “I woke up. I saw little guys in my bedroom. At first I thought it was my brother… I remember not being able to move. People would call that sleep paralysis.”
  • Did not realize the archetype until decades later, upon seeing art that matched his experience.

• Collective Archetypes:

  • Discusses the Jungian perspective—that such experiences might reflect the human “collective unconscious,” not literal visitation
  • Asserts importance of holding these stories without judgment: “Enough of a memory that, when I listen to other people tell even more detailed stories, I don’t immediately think that they’re crazy.” (30:23)

“Could all be explained by something called Jungian's collective unconscious... Archetypes show up.”

(27:13, Dr. Nolan)

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5. Data, Skepticism, and Scientific Rigor

(33:26–35:33)

• On Detecting Outlier Data:
  • Dr. Nolan credits his strength as a scientist to his capacity to “recognize data off the curve”—not just confirming expectations but investigating anomalies.
  • Criticizes “debunker” figures, calling out cherry-picking and rhetorical misdirection as antithetical to true scientific skepticism.

“I was born a skeptic or I was trained to be a skeptic. I'm skeptic of my own ideas.”

(34:52, Dr. Nolan)

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6. Are We In Danger? Physical or Existential Threats

(36:06–38:20)

• Jonathan asks: Is there a risk, existential or physical, from UAPs or their possible originators?
• Dr. Nolan’s Stance:
  • “For them to be a threat, they’d have to need something we have… there’s nothing here that they can’t get in a thousand other places.”
  • Dismisses the idea of “resource” competition or any reason for advanced life to wipe out humanity, aside from accidental planetary destruction.
  • Expresses optimism but grounds perspective in deep time.

“All it would take for any advanced society to do if they wanted to wipe us out is do what happened to the dinosaurs: find a big rock, point it our way and that’s the end of life on Earth and start again... they haven’t done it yet.”

(37:12, Dr. Nolan)

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7. Reflections & Philosophical Musings

(39:44–41:12; hosts reflecting post-interview)

• On Human Evolution:
  • Mayim muses about how whatever aliens may have lost in their own evolution, they could be watching us “to see if we can continue our journey and progress, and not have the pitfalls that they may have encountered.” (40:25)
• Humorous Take:
  • “Would the aliens want your boots?”—Jonathan, playfully reframing daily wants and needs through the lens of advanced extraterrestrial indifference.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It’s the data, not the conclusion.”
  (11:57, Dr. Nolan, summarizing his approach to anomalous findings)

• “If they land and open the door, I'm on board. You know, I was 65 two days ago, so happy birthday. I would go on that adventure.”
  (36:15, Dr. Nolan, on whether he’d meet any visitors)

• On scientific thinking vs. dogma:

  • “You sound more like a priest than a PhD.” (18:39, Dr. Nolan)

• On anecdote and science:

  • “The stories and the anecdotes, when they all start to match up, are like, okay, well, why are they matching? What is this telling us?” (30:23, Dr. Nolan)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:17 — Analysis of UAP artifact methodology and findings
• 09:17 — Isotopic anomalies, neutron bombardment hypothesis
• 16:06 — The SOL Foundation: mission and philosophy
• 20:34 — Advanced intelligence and intermediaries (“avatar” theory)
• 25:55 — Dr. Nolan’s childhood experience (“little guys in my bedroom”)
• 33:26 — Scientific skepticism, data off the curve
• 36:06 — Existential threat: are we really in danger?
• 39:44 — Human evolution and reflections on the “zoo hypothesis”

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Tone & Style

• The episode is frank, rigorous, and intellectually expansive, combining scientific skepticism with genuine curiosity about edge phenomena.
• Dr. Nolan is careful to highlight where evidence ends and speculation starts, often inviting listeners and critics to focus on “the data, not the conclusion.”
• Mayim and Jonathan balance the depth with moments of humor and accessibility, never shying away from profound philosophical questions, but always with a human touch.

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Closing Thought

At its core, this conversation is an open invitation to take unexplained phenomena seriously—not necessarily to “believe,” but to persistently question, experiment, and refuse both easy skepticism and wild speculation. Whether or not aliens are among us, the journey to rigorously investigate consciousness, intelligence, and the unexplained is shown here to be not just a “breakdown” but a possible breakthrough.

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For more on Dr. Nolan’s work:

Visit thesoulfoundation.org

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Mayim Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Mayim Bialik]

And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And welcome to part two of our conversation with pathologist and Stanford School of Medicine professor Gary Nolan. In the first part of our conversation, we talked about Dr. Nolan's umbrella mission, combining a variety of backgrounds in biotechnology, immunology, cancer therapy, research and and how he got involved with a knock on the door from the CIA at his office one day in order to start analyzing things that the government could not explain about unusual and unbelievable phenomenon. In part two of our conversation, we'll talk more about the Soul foundation and why he believes we can quantify the information we have about extrasensory beings. We're also going to talk about his personal experiences and something he saw as a child that changed him forever.

[Mayim Bialik]

We're also going to tackle if aliens are monitoring our nuclear weapons and unexplained experiences that military pilots have had with their weapons systems being turned off.

[Jonathan Cohen]

In addition, age of disclosure has been all the buzz and we can't wait to ask Dr. Nolan about his experience being involved in the documentary and what he learned from being part of the documentary. Here is part two of our conversation with Dr. Gary Nolan. Break it down. I wonder if you can talk about, you know, some of the metal, some of the fragments that you've looked at and you've been able to analyze, you know, I think 99.999% pure silicon and magnesium isotope ratios that, that don't match. Typically what we see terrestrially. Talk about some of that, talk about, you know, what kind of analysis you can do and what it means when someone says to you this is from Roswell and this is not an element that exists on this planet. It has to be from another planet. What's your method of approach? What's your method of analysis and what can we say with any certainty?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

Once we had taken the 90 people or so who had Havana syndrome out, it left these 10 people with, you know, some claimed, let's call them experiencers. And so that brought me in contact with other scientists, serious scientists who had already been involved in the study of at the time, UFOs. And a couple of them claimed to have worked on programs. Now claimed I have two ways of looking at it and why I keep coming back to either the medical or the metals. If I could get a piece of something that was not made on this earth. Not a there's, you know, we have access to all the elements as far as we know, except the, what's called, so called island of stability where there might be elements out beyond uranium, et cetera. Theoretical. But I can look at things and see if they're put together in a way that humans don't know how to do currently. Right. Or at or it would be difficult to do. And so a couple of the materials that I was given. The one that I find most interesting was a piece of metal from the so called Ubatuba event. Another one was from the Council Bluffs event. And then the third one was acclaimed Arts parts Roswell piece. The, the layered material.

[Jonathan Cohen]

How big are these pieces that you're analyzing?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

Well, the one from Council Bluffs, I mean I, you know, I recently was asked to reanalyze a piece and it was, you know, as big as your head. Wow. But the pieces that I analyzed were tiny. I mean the analysis techniques use something called mass spectrometry where you can, you can look at minuscule amounts of material. So the Ubatuba has a kind of an interesting story. So claimed fisherman sees an object glowing near the seashore which seems to drop something or explode. Picks up pieces of it. Somehow it makes its way to a reporter in Brazil. Some analysis is done on it is claimed to be nearly pure magnesium. Some other pieces of it make its way down to Mexico also through the same reporter, but everybody says it's magnesium. So I get a piece of the thing and we used a kind of mass spectrometer called. It's a Kameka nanosims, and it's a magnetic sector mass spectrometer. With that, you can extremely precisely determine the ratios of elements. And you can even elements that have the same weight because of neutron plus proton, you can distinguish them because the 0.000 something decimal point difference can actually be distinguished by this instrument. So because somebody had already told us that this was magnesium, we set the detectors to magnesium because it can only do like six or seven at a time. And then we had limited time on the instrument, and so we used the others for. For iron. And what came out of that was interesting was that some of the Ubatuba pieces had absolutely perfect magnesium ratios, and the other had ratios that were way off. And I was like, okay, that's really weird. And these were all done in the same instrument at the same time right next to each other. So it's not like somebody came in between experiments and twiddled them. And of course, we did duplicates within the experiment, and the same pieces showed the same difference. Okay, so I've talked about that openly, and Jacques Vallee has talked about it because he was the origin of the pieces that at least I got. Years later, I, you know, I got access to an instrument called atomic probe tomography, which, if you go look it up, it can basically take apart a very, very small piece of material, atom by atom, and determine its relative location within about five angstroms. Not enough to determine structure, but enough to give you the constituency of what's there. And so we did it. And it was like, this is really weird. It's all silicon. But I thought I just saw, you know, five, six years, 10 years ago, magnesium. And then I, I looked back at the, at, you know, at the sensitivity of the instrument. And the sensitivity of the instrument was such that even if it were a minor trace element in the silicon, we would have picked it up. I then started talking to people who had previously analyzed the magnesium component and said, this is magnesium. And they. One of them actually contacted me, said, gary, you made a mistake. I said, no, I didn't. I got this from, you know, a claimed chain of evidence. You got yours from a claim. So maybe there were two materials. Maybe neither of us is wrong. Maybe there were two materials and they just, you know, made their separate ways. And I got one of them and they got the other. I mean, there's no doubt as to the scientific credibility of, you know, of Powell, who did the first, and Swords, who did the first Analysis. So in the data that we collected from the. From the atomic probe tomography apt, I didn't see this. God knows why I didn't. The isotope ratios of the silicon were wrong. And I just, like, I've been sitting on that data for five years, and I'm just kicking myself because I didn't. I wasn't going looking for it. Right. It's sort of like you. You see the numbers, you don't think about it. And it was only because I was working with some people in applied physics here at Stanford that, you know, they said, hey, did you check the silicon ratios? And I said, I looked at it and I said, oh, this is the wrong. They're way off.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What does that mean?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

Well, first of all, 99.99% pure silicon is very difficult to make. I mean, we make it. At the time this piece was claimed to have come from, we were beginning to be able to make it. And it was being used for, you know, silicon nanofabrication. And actually, I don't know when solar cells were being developed, but it might have been around that time as well. But it was like, if we were. Why would you blow it up over a beach in Ubatuba? First of all, that kind of level. So it's not proof of anything. It's more. Here's the data. Do you believe that the data was collected correctly? Now, let's ask questions. Let's not jump to conclusions that it came from a ufo. Okay, so the ratios were so far off that, as it turned out, by chance, one of the guys who I was working with, a physicist of a level of understanding that he said, well, the ratios were shifted. They were shifted up. There was less of 28, more of the next one up and more of the next one up, as if they'd all been shifted up. How do you do that? You could actually do it by bombarding the sample with neutrons that would basically force their way into the nucleus, add to it, and change it from silicon 28 to silicon 29. He then calculated, using what's called cross section and all kinds of things, the amount of energy required to accomplish that, given the amount of material that we had access to. And it was like way beyond what any. What anybody was doing at the time or even doing today. And so that was interesting. He then went and looked at the magnesium ratios that we saw, and saw that the exact same pattern was there too, meaning that even if there had been trace elements of magnesium, those would also have been pushed up the scale with approximately the same neutron. Now that's just a postulate. It's just here's the math that says that these numbers correlate. But then you have to ask, okay, the data is real because it was collected with the mass spectrometer multiple times. You know, a human could have done nothing with neutrons or whatever, could have purified each of the individual elements, isotopes, which we do every day these days. I mean, but the scale of which is costly.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Yeah. And again, why is it blowing up over a beach?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

And why would you mix it at exactly the ratio that conforms to what a neutron density exposure would allow? So. So some crazy Stanford scientist 30, 40, 50 years from then would, you know, be confused into this. So it comes back to my big P that it's the data, not the conclusion.

[Mayim Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Dr. Gary Nolan]

We found some slight variations in the magnesium ratio that's, that were in there, but not enough that weren't within statistical variation and you know, maybe some other ways that it was made. But what was, what was interesting was the layering and the manner in which the layering occurred.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You found it layered in the magnesium, right? Was it oxide?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

It's between the magnesium layers. And what was really clear was that at least even given some of the larger pieces that the object had been exposed to either high heat or pressure. Sean Kirkpatrick claims it's from a missile casing. Well, I mean Sean, nobody makes missile casings like this.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Yeah, and as you say, like none of these are the smoking gun. Like if you're looking for, if you're looking for a smoking gun, this is not it. But I do want to give you sort of a little bit of an opportunity to talk about the, the Soul foundation because you have, you've co founded along with anthropologist Peter Is it Scayfish,

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

Scafish and actually David Grush as well. So we should never, we should never leave David out.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I will never leave David out. And also Avi Loeb works with you. He's a friend of the podcast. So we have other people in comm.

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

He's in the Galileo project. When we don't work, we don't work directly together. I love him, and I love his defense of asking questions.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Yes, well, tell us about the Soul Foundation. Why did you start it? What was that like? What's it been like for you in terms of the blowback that you might get or some of the skepticism that people have?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

The main reason, I think, for starting the. The SOL foundation was to create a perimeter within which reasonable scientists or reasonable lay people with interest in this matter could come together without, let's say, you know, you see some of these UFO conferences that are just. They just look like circuses. I went to one once and it was like, what's going on? It's. This is not science. And, you know, I mean, I don't discredit what they're trying to do, which is to promote knowledge. It's just not the kind of conference that I'm accustomed to. And so we wanted a place that. Where if we were to hold, let's say, symposium or create, let's say, online communities where scientists could talk to other scientists about the ideas and just ex. And just rationalize it. And for me, over the decade, it allowed me to realize the kinds of rhetoric that were being used against us and the twisted forms of logic that are traps that the likes of Mick west use. I'm sorry, Mick. Yeah, I do like Mick, but, you know, it's a. It's either intentional or just a lack of understanding of how science operates and how there's just many forms of rhetoric that you. That you can use to stun your opponent into silence that would take so long to dissect that just are not allowed in normal scientific discourse. So I wanted, at least at the beginning, when I showed up on Twitter, I guess, to teach the community to, like, look, if you guys want to be taken seriously, here are the rules, and here's how you do it. And then that led eventually to the formation of sol, which wasn't meant to be anything other really, than an academic resource or an academically inspired 501C3 to allow people to come together to have rational discussion. And I've, you know, at the beginning, even before sol, I did have people come to me and say, you know, gator, what are you doing? And I was able to shame them into submission by saying, well, here's the. It's just the data. I'm not coming to a conclusion. And my standard retort, which worked the first time that this guy cornered me at a bar and I said, you sound more like a priest than a PhD. I mean, I might as well have thrown a bucket of Cold water in his face. Because I said, you're dogmatic. And if you ever did anything like that in a science setting, you would be excommunicated, as priests might do to you. Don't put words in my mouth. First of all, don't believe everything you read in the newspapers that people claim that I have said. I didn't say that. But we allow SETI to talk about civilizations on distant stars. But the problem I have with SETI is they're happy as long as it's 400 light years away, you know, because it can never be proven or disproven, you know. And so that signal that was supposedly around one of the local stars on the planet where they thought they were seeing signatures of life, I think it was hydrogen sulfide or something, has been published and has been dissected by others and suggested to be not right.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You're walking us right into a little game. We're gonna read a quote and you're going to tell us if you actually said it or believe it or not. I think an advanced form of intelligence is using intermediaries that are put here as an intelligence test to see if you can see what's in front of you for what it really is, what's behind it.

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

So I said something like that, or even if that's a direct quote, but that was downstream of me saying, got it. That if they were here, this would be. So all of these things that are said miss the upstream context, where I say, let's play a thought game. And so if it's the case, why wouldn't you use an avatar? And I've said this directly. Why wouldn't you use an advanced form of a drone that you put down? Because who wants to walk into the middle? We're a bunch of angry monkeys. Our equivalent would be, would you walk into the middle of an Amazonian tribe that's still known to use cannibalism and just say, hi, here I am. Oh, yeah, here's dinner. It's like you would use intermediaries of some kind. I mean, I suspect that when humans get advanced enough, we're not going to send. Unless we somehow develop warp drive, you know, we're going to send some advanced kind of AI out there that might, you know, end up someplace. And if it needs. And it finds something that it thinks, oh, this is a civilization, it might not beam and say, hey, here I am. Because maybe they'll just say, oh, you're gone. You know, maybe it would if we were advanced enough with our own AI we would make something.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I mean, Robin Hansen says we're all just being held in a large pen in this. In this planet until we, you know, try and break out of this.

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

It's just a reasonable idea.

[Mayim Bialik]

In the thought experiment of we would send AI And Robin Hansen's zoo hypothesis. Then there is this experiment happening on Earth that they are monitoring in some capacity, either hoping that we survive whatever technological evolution is happening in order to gain the sophistication to send artificial intelligence or technology out into the universe to. To contact, or they're hoping that we destroy ourselves and don't become a problem. Do you have a bet on either of those?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

If there's something here, it clearly is. It would be much older civilizationally than we are. See, I always fall into this. Into this manner of speaking where it sounds like I'm talking about it is rather than it is just, you know, for the basis of argument, you know, let's just say that it is. Because you kind of have to start that way to. To test if everything is, you know, indeterministic. You can never walk down any path because you've basically set up so many prior insufficiencies that you, you know, so you kind of walk down paths mentally. If I were doing it and I had a view of time that was larger and I'd already been around for 20, 30 million years, I could be patient. I mean, people have a hard time dealing with this kind of time. Look at how far we've come in 100,000 years. Look at how far we've come in a thousand years. So someone who's been around for 20 million years, let's call them the elders or whatever, they've seen species like us come and go. I like the diversity of biology. I'd like to see what happens when we don't interfere. Right. Are there paths of evolution and kinds of intelligence that might arise that if we don't interfere, if something interfered too much, they're just making another version of themselves? But if they let us evolve a little more naturally, maybe we become an interesting partner 5 million years from now

[Jonathan Cohen]

also, and something we weren't planning on touching on. But I think it's. I mean, you mentioned it briefly in a different context. For people who look to expand their consciousness, for people who are getting in touch with things outside of this realm of consciousness, for people who are talking about, you know, kind of this quantum field of the experience and, you know, everything that has happened will happen, is happening. You know, time is not linear, all these things. There's also this. This beautiful kind of intersection of that, of what happens when we sort of let things be. What happens if we don't have to figure everything out, but get to sort of exist and interact and sort of see what comes of it. And it is something that a lot of people find in a meditative state that they, you know, choose to focus on and. And, you know, kind of double click on. You've mentioned something twice that I also was not planning on asking about, but since you mentioned it twice, I do want to give you the opportunity to talk about your childhood and what you have experienced to whatever level that you like to.

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

Circa 1967 or so. I saw little guys in my bedroom.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What do you. What do you mean? Dr. Nolan?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

I woke up.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You were awake?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

I think I was awake. I saw little guys in my bedroom. At first I thought it was my brother who was four years younger than me. And I remember not being able to move. And so people would call that sleep paralysis. Okay, why I imagined these people or something looking in the window at me, I don't know. But it wasn't until like 20 or so years later when I was a grad student here at Stanford, I was in a used bookstore that I pulled. I read science fiction almost exclusively. On the COVID of the book was what I had seen in my bedroom. And I just about had a meltdown. I remember dropping the book in the middle of the used bookstore on California Avenue. Somebody wants to go look up if such a bookstore existed to disprove. Prove me, you know, go for it. It was there. I can even tell you more or less where. I think it was on California ave.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So for 20 years, you just kept. You didn't say anything, you didn't tell

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

anyone, didn't tell anybody? I remember dropping it, but I. I didn't immediately turn and. And start studying it. But it did lead me to read the books by John Mack. And in there were the same pictures. And I was like, this is odd. Now this could be. This could all be explained by something called Jungian's collective unconscious, that we share a common mental framework that in dream states, et cetera, archetypes show up. So this could have just been an archetype of a Jungian collective unconscious. Not that we're some sort of hive mind, but that we have a genetic switch to it, you know, but it went on for a few weeks and my mother told me it's just bad dreams. And then it stopped. End of story. And never remembered again or, you know, no memories of abduction or Anything like that. Just. Just a unique moment in my life.

[Mayim Bialik]

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[Mayim Bialik]

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[Dr. Gary Nolan]

You know, Another was when I was a paper boy, I had a pretty large paper route that covered a very large area in Connecticut. And it was as I was walking through kind of the woods there that this object went right over my head with lights that was, you know, I mean, I didn't see anything but the lights and kind of the vague outline of it that just silently went over my head. It was at the level of the trees.

[Jonathan Cohen]

How big was this?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

I estimate it to be 30, 40ft across. It was those kinds of moments that say, what was that again? Not proof of anything, but, you know, enough of. Enough of a memory that when I listen to other people tell even more detailed stories, I don't immediately think that they're crazy. I just like collecting the stories because the stories and the anecdotes when they all start to match up are like, okay, well, why are they matching? What is this telling us?

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well, and you've Talked about in 1994, there was this case in Zimbabwe, and I've. I've seen. Seen the documentary about it. You know, can you get 60 children to all tell the same simultaneous lie? No. Can you get them all to have the same report again simultaneously? It's not like they were all in the yard and had an opportunity to like, let's come together with this story. And highly unusual for children of this age to be able to fabricate that. And when you think about. Yeah. Did they have some collective experience which, you know, historically, things have happened like this, but it. It's something very, very specific that, you know, I. I think as you're kind of giving voice to. We can't ignore it. We can't necessarily say what it is, but we know what it's not. But there's. There's something here. I mean, some people would say that you were seated with these experiences because they knew that your brain would go on to do incredible things that allowed you to have access to this level of data and analysis. Do you feel you were chosen?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

I don't. Yeah. I mean, that just feels so, again, narcissistic. I would rather that it say that if you have a brain state or. And again, a form of intelligence that recognizes data off the curve and whatever. That. Whatever that initiating event is, has the ability to recognize you, seeing might say, oh, great, here's somebody that can see me.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I don't know either. But I also, you know, Jonathan talks a lot about, you know, energy, work and being able to sense things. And certain people are intuitive. And I'm always from the. I'm always like, I don't know what that means. I really. It doesn't resonate with me, but I'm thinking like, the way that people who are healers or the way that people who feel that they can see into problems you're having and extract them out, you know, I mean, even a good psychotherapist, right. Those are people who are also tapping into something and seeing things in ways that you don't. It's kind of like it takes all types, you know, But I just. I can't help but wonder about that opening that you have.

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

I think one of the reasons why I'm a good scientist is being able to recognize data off the curve. Listening to students do a presentation of their work every, you know, couple of months, and they kind of flash by. They. They show the data. And then, you know, you see it and go back a few slides. What did that mean? Because if you're a scientist, you can't just use the data you like. And I'm sorry, I'm going to use Nick west as an example. He's very good at saying this element of it proves it's a seagull, you know, and I, I, I'm, you know, I'm. But excludes all of the other counter Siegel observations that were done at the time. And that kind of cherry picking just isn't allowed in real science. I mean, CBS News called me to try to get me to do an interview, to do a debate with him. This was just a few weeks ago. And I said, without a doubt, never. Because I'm never. Because he does this all the time. And I don't have the time to dissect every one of the arguments. And science is not a popularity contest. I'm not going to sit in front of an audience, which is basically some form of a Jerry Springer show, to argue with somebody who doesn't even understand the difference between data, evidence and proof. He dares to call himself a skeptic? No. His website is Metabunk. He's a debunker. He comes to the story ahead of time. And I don't want to pick on him, but he's a type of person that serious people just need to ignore. Because it's like, I'm a scientist. I was born a skeptic or I was trained to be a skeptic. I'm skeptic of my own ideas.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I want to ask you one more question before we let you go. And I really, I would love to have coffee with you because I have many other things I want to ask you. Um, do you think that they're given everything you know, everything you're gathering, everything you're seeing, everything you participated in in the Age of Disclosure documentary? Do you think we are at risk either physically or existentially? Is there some imminent threat potentially, either from adversarial forces within this solar system or from outside the solar system?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

For them to be a threat, they'd have to need something that we have.

[Jonathan Cohen]

We have you. I'm offering you up. Here's, here's Gary.

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

Thanks so much. But, well, if they, if they land and open the door, I'm, I'm on board. You know, I was 65 two days ago, so happy birthday. I'm like, I would go on that adventure, you know, but no, I really don't. And maybe this is just because I'm an optimist. But, but, but I'm also practical. It's like there's, there's really apart from

[Jonathan Cohen]

the ecosphere which we're doing our best to destroy.

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

Yeah. There's nothing here that they can't get in a thousand other places. Wow. You know, there's no resource, there's no whatever. We might want resources in the African savannah, but there are certain animals that live there that can live nowhere else. And so maybe we just let them live for as long as they can. So the climate might change so drastically. But species come and species go because climates do change over the course of geologic history. You know, I often say to people is like, look, in geologic terms, you, you neither mattered nor will you matter, you know, across the course of, of, of history. It's the collective force. So I, I just, I just don't know. I just don't see. I mean people are always like, oh, 20, 26, oh, 10 years from now, something or this or that's going to happen maybe, but if I can't control it, I'm not going to sit around worrying about it. I can prepare contingencies, let's say, but I'm not interested in living in a post apocalyptic world where I can't order something from Amazon and get it the next day. All it would take any advanced society to do if they wanted to wipe us out is do what happened to the dinosaurs, find a big rock, point it our way and that's the end of life on Earth and start again.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And that's the optimistic take from Dr.

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

Gary Nolan is that they haven't done it yet. And so I don't think that we're in any short term danger of anybody doing it again anytime soon.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I will rest easy and think of that. Dr. Nolan, thank you so much. Really appreciate your candor and yeah, really appreciate your contributions to the larger field and also the specificity with which you're comfortable talking about this. We really appreciate it.

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

Thanks so much. It was an enjoyable discussion.

[Jonathan Cohen]

The fact that he mentioned, he mentioned it twice, that he had a personal experience. I couldn't let it go. His experiences, first of all, like, fascinating and wow. But the thing that struck me most was when he said that when he hears other people tell about their experiences that like something in him knows something and it's true. It could be that there's a, you know, collective archetype that we create and this is the thing. And, and Jeffrey Kripal, who also works associated with Soul Foundation. Jeffrey Kripal talks about this as well. There are images that we see, and people used to think a demon was sitting on your chest, and that's why you couldn't move at night. You know, there's all sorts of kind of mythology historically, but goes back thousands and thousands of years. And a lot of these things have been clocked for thousands of years.

[Mayim Bialik]

He also said maybe in 5 million years we'd evolve to be very good partners for this advanced civilization. And I was like, we're so basic now. If I take the Robin Hanson idea, sort of that we have, we've posited here the idea that aliens are some form of advanced civilization, likely millions of years ahead of us, and they've replaced a lot of their biology with synthetic material. I think it goes back to the conversation with Greg Braden that right now life on Earth is at this transition point where we're gaining an enormous amount of intelligence, but we're starting to augment ourselves and losing this version of what it means to be human. And I think this version is very, very special. And as we evolve, there are trade offs in that evolution, and we will lose aspects of what it fundamentally is to be alive in human form in this. In this way. And so I think whatever they have lost along the way, they're wondering if we can continue our journey and progress and not have the pitfalls that they may have encountered.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You know what they want? Reality tv.

[Mayim Bialik]

No, they don't. Everyone is, like, very civilized. There's no outrage.

[Jonathan Cohen]

This is going to be the new way that I say no to my children when they want things like they want, like a new pair of Blundstones or whatever they want. It doesn't matter. None of it's going to matter with the aliens want your boots? No. So you don't need them either.

[Mayim Bialik]

Would the aliens want your boots? I wonder how that's going to go over. We'll report back.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What are the. What are the lullaboos? Lullaboos?

[Mayim Bialik]

What did you call.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Maybe they want.

[Mayim Bialik]

I love a lullaboo.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Maybe they want that. They want those surprise lullaboos. But what is it?

[Mayim Bialik]

I'm going to admit, I don't even know what that is.

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

I don't.

[Mayim Bialik]

I don't even know what a labubu is. I know the word. I don't know what it is.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It looks like a munchie chi wearing a rabbit suit with fangs. It's like a very big thing. I do recommend if you want to learn all the things that you should know about Dr. Nolan's work, please visit the Soul Foundation. Soul spelled like the Spanish sun? S o l thesoulfoundation.org really, really great episode, Jonathan. Very, very glad that we got to speak to Dr. Nolan.

[Mayim Bialik]

If you want more about our theories about the future of humanity, we're going to give you some over on substack to the breaker community, which is just a phenomenal place to come and interact and get more on all of our episodes and exclusive content that we don't release anywhere else. So come check it out. Maybe. Alex Breakdown on substack.

[Jonathan Cohen]

We'll see you over there. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time. Pew, pew, pew.

[Mayim Bialik]

It's Maya Bialik's breakdown.

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

She's gonna break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two? And now she's gonna break down?

[Jonathan Cohen]

So break down?

[Dr. Gary Nolan]

She's gonna break it down. VRBO makes it easy to claim your dream summer spot with early booking deals. From homes with pools to poolside loungers. When you when you book a vrbo, you don't have to reserve any loungers. They're all yours.

[Jonathan Cohen]

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