'What They Didn't Want Me To Release' Trump Set To Publish Aliens and UFOs Files

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Piers Morgan Uncensored – 'What They Didn't Want Me To Release' Trump Set To Publish Aliens and UFOs Files
Release Date: Feb 24, 2026

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Overview of the Episode

This episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored dives into the explosive resurgence of interest in UFOs (now called UAPs—Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), with particular attention on claims from former U.S. Presidents Obama and Trump. Recent statements have stirred public speculation about government-held evidence of aliens, with Trump allegedly set to publish classified files. Piers Morgan convenes a panel of experts—Jeremy Corbell (UFO researcher and filmmaker), Jesse Michaels (UFO journalist), and Michael Shermer (founder of Skeptic magazine)—to debate the evidence, government secrecy, and the social and scientific implications of potential alien existence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Recent Presidential Comments and UFO Transparency

• Obama's Slip and Walk-Back: Obama hinted at the reality of aliens in an interview, saying "they're real," but later clarified that they're probably out there but he has no special knowledge (00:56, 16:08).

• Trump's Declassification Claims: Trump suggested that he would instruct U.S. agencies to identify and release files on UFOs, intensifying the push for public transparency (01:49).

• Corbell’s View: Jeremy Corbell stresses that the change is due to civic pressure, journalist investigation, and relentless public interest. He describes disclosure as a process "provoked" by hearings, testimony, and journalism, not official announcements (02:38).

  “The collective public interest and demand is what's really gotten us here. And it's astonishing. The fuse is lit. But it's time to press our government.”
  — Jeremy Corbell (03:12)

2. Are UFOs Real? And What About Aliens?

• Corbell's Position: UFOs are real and sometimes occupied by non-human entities. There is testimony under oath from people "in the position to know." This isn't about belief, but evidence and testimony (04:12, 04:47).

• Michaels' Take: Jesse Michaels argues there's "an abundance of evidence that should shift the consensus," particularly regarding intelligent, non-human activity around sensitive sites since the dawn of the nuclear age (26:30).

• Shermer’s Skepticism: Dr. Michael Shermer, while acknowledging the statistical possibility of alien life elsewhere, insists 95% of sightings are explained by mundane phenomena (balloons, drones, camera artifacts, etc.), and the rest lack adequate evidence (21:05).

  “The fact that I would like it to be true…doesn't make it true… Where is the evidence?”
  — Michael Shermer (21:09)

3. Why the Secrecy?

• Compartmentalization from the Atomic Era: Corbell traces UFO secrecy to national security needs during the atomic era, with mechanisms designed to protect technological advantage and sovereignty. Governments feared "strategic surprise" and thus closely guarded any related findings (06:43).
• Michaels' Analysis: Governments are reluctant to reveal aerial dominance by unknown actors, especially over sites like nuclear missile bases. Revealing ignorance or lack of control would have “very disruptive” implications for public trust and security (38:22).
• Secondary Motives: Both Corbell and Michaels suggest the presence of “derivative technologies” from supposed alien craft as another reason for secrecy.

4. Famous Sightings and Evidence

• Military Videos: Corbell references the release of 15 U.S. military videos, focusing on one showing “instantaneous acceleration” far beyond human capabilities. He urges people to watch the “Syria UAP 2021” footage for compelling evidence (09:26).

• Area 51 & Crash Retrievals: The panel discusses the legacy of Area 51, Bob Lazar’s claims about alien craft, and how media/journalism (not governments) have kept the flame alive. Corbell claims—supported by congressional testimony and interviews with former officials—that the U.S. has recovered at least one non-human craft (13:16).

  “He admitted to one UFO, non-human intelligence-built craft that our government has in possession. You’d think this is world news. No, just on a little podcast with me and George.”
  — Jeremy Corbell (15:39)

• Scientific Analysis of Materials: Michaels highlights Stanford professor Gary Nolan’s analysis of supposed UFO crash debris, which he argues demonstrates anomalies not explainable by mundane processes (35:26).

5. Debating the Hypotheses

• Competing Explanations: Piers Morgan outlines five leading theories for UFO sightings:

  1. Extraterrestrial (beings from other planets)
  2. Interdimensional (visitors from other dimensions)
  3. Crypto-terrestrial (secret non-human civilizations on Earth)
  4. Time travelers (future humans)
  5. Earth Zoo (Earth as a galactic nature preserve) (24:53)

• Shermer on Technological Hurdles: Shermer says that while advanced aliens could theoretically overcome physical limitations (like speed-of-light barriers), there’s no direct evidence they have (30:47).

6. Is Belief in Aliens a Religious Impulse?

• Shermer’s Thesis: The longing for aliens is often likened to religious yearning for superior beings: “It’s really a religious kind of impulse that there’s somebody out there vastly superior to us that knows we're here, and that’s religion.” (39:00)
• Jesse Michaels’ Reply: Michaels argues that skepticism itself can be a form of religious dogmatism, highlighting that true science should follow the anomaly, not explain it away (34:08).

7. Philosophical Musings—Are We Alone?

• Piers on Mystery: Piers shares his comfort with the unknown, questioning cosmological beginnings and noting, “No human can explain any of that to me… There must be something with a superior brain” (34:25).
• Big Bang and 'Nothing': Spirited debate about what preceded the Big Bang, with both Shermer and Piers agreeing that science can only go so far before it hits epistemological bedrock (42:17–43:25).

8. What’s Next? Will the Truth Come Out?

• Corbell’s Four-Step Plan: Corbell reveals there's active debate in government about how to be radically honest, including steps toward formal admission of the facts and unknowns about UAPs, acknowledgement that “we’re not alone,” and clarity about defense concerns driving secrecy (17:35).
• Panel Predictions: Michaels is cautiously optimistic that Trump’s promised declassification represents a turning point, but expects a “jagged process” of incremental revelations (43:58).
• Shermer’s Doubt: Shermer welcomes full disclosure (“just show it to us”) but remains skeptical, comparing the wait for UFO files to other prolonged government cover-ups like the Epstein files (45:56).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Disclosure:

  “It's not a political issue. People can handle the truth of that. And this has been a decades-long immaculate deception.”
  — Jeremy Corbell (04:47)

• On Scientific Skepticism:

  “I would love this to be true…But is it, in fact, true? …It's just so frustrating. I mean, aren't you guys all frustrated? You've been hearing this, too, for years.”
  — Michael Shermer (32:43)

• On Human Hubris:

  “It is the epitome of human hubris to say that we have this perfect understanding of, you know, cosmology.”
  — Jesse Michaels (35:26)

• On Religious & Mythical Overtones:

  “The research…shows people that score high on need of spirituality and awe and wonder, but are low in religiosity, are more likely to believe aliens are visiting Earth. I think what we're witnessing here is mythology.”
  — Michael Shermer (33:03)

• On Government Motives for Secrecy:

  “The reason…is because these crafts seem to fly over our most sensitive defense sites…So you are essentially admitting that, you know, aerial dominance exists…and it's on behalf of something that you don't, you don't even fully know.”
  — Jesse Michaels (38:22)

• On the Debate’s Broader Meaning:

  “If you subscribe to the Big Bang theory…what was there before the Big Bang? What is nothing? What's there before nothing? No human can explain any of that to me.”
  — Piers Morgan (34:25)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:56 – Obama’s remarks on aliens and the government’s reaction
• 02:38 – Jeremy Corbell: public demand and evolution of UFO discourse
• 04:12 – Corbell on the statistical certainty of alien life
• 09:26 – Corbell explains leaked military UFO videos and “instantaneous acceleration”
• 13:16 – Area 51 history and Congressional UFO programs
• 17:35 – Corbell’s “four things” the government must do in disclosure
• 21:05 – Shermer explains 95% of sightings are mundane, remaining 5% need proof
• 26:30 – Michaels on intelligence tampering with nuclear sites
• 35:26 – Michaels describes exotic material analysis by Gary Nolan
• 38:22 – Reasoning for government secrecy over UFOs
• 43:58 – Michaels on the timeline and likelihood of imminent disclosure
• 45:56 – Shermer’s skepticism about government ever truly coming clean

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Conclusion

This episode offers a deep dive into the ongoing debate over UFOs/UAPs and the potential for imminent government disclosure, sparked by high-profile comments from two U.S. Presidents. The discussion features strong, sometimes conflicting perspectives: Corbell pushes for government honesty and defends the mounting evidence; Shermer maintains skepticism grounded in scientific rigor; Michaels straddles the line by championing the anomalous data and calling for open-minded inquiry. The panel ultimately agrees that, while answers may remain elusive, transparency and public demand are at an all-time high—and the world may soon be closer than ever to knowing the truth.

Transcript

[Jesse Michaels]

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[Jesse Michaels]

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[Jeremy Corbell]

people have been seeing them for a long time. People have had contact, including our government. So yes, UFOs are real.

[Michael Shermer]

It's really a religious kind of impulse that there's somebody out there vastly superior to us that knows we're here and that's religion.

[Jesse Michaels]

There's a preponderance, there's an abundance of evidence that should shift the consensus. Now in the open source world,

[Michael Shermer]

former

[Piers Morgan]

President Obama's revelation that aliens are real caused an inevitable avalanche of speculation, especially among those who researched this stuff for a living. Amid the ensuing chaos, Obama walked it back. I meant they probably exist, he said, but I don't know any better than you. Case closed then. Until President Trump said this, he gave classified information.

[Unidentified Commentator]

He's not supposed to be doing that.

[Michael Shermer]

So aliens are real?

[Unidentified Commentator]

Well, I don't know if they're real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that. He made a it, big mistake. He took it out of classified information. No, I don't, I don't have an opinion on it. I never talk about it. A lot of people do. A lot of people believe it. Do you believe it, Peter?

[Michael Shermer]

Well, the president can declassify anything that he wants to.

[Unidentified Commentator]

So if you want to, I may get him out of trouble by declassifying.

[Piers Morgan]

Well, the obvious interpretation is if Obama gave classified information, then it must be true. And we may soon find out. The President has instructed US agencies, including the Department of War, to begin identifying and releasing government files on UFOs, UAPs and aliens. Well, Jeremy Corbell, a film Nokia and renowned UFO researcher, is meeting with government officials today and he joins me now. Jeremy Corbell, I mean, it's all fascinating stuff for the alien laymans like myself. It certainly looked to me that when President Obama said what he initially said to Brian Tyler Cohen, he meant it. And then when there was this huge furore afterwards, he slightly reined things back, but he certainly in the moment looked like he believed aliens do exist.

[Jeremy Corbell]

Yeah, well, I guess reality is not what it used to be to see that from a President A former president without caveat, just saying it and then saying a bunch of other things that were actually inaccurate. It was a powerful moment, but it was not an announcement. Even before President Trump on the plane, it was not an announcement. It was an opportunity. So any of us that have gone to Congress have testified under oath, we see it as an opportunity. Nothing has been planned with this whole thing that we've been seeing over the last since 2017. It's been provoked. We've provoked our government with hearings on uap, we've forced public statements and journalism like this Pierce has led to this change. So the collective public interest and demand is what's really gotten us here. And it's astonishing. The fuse is lit. But it's time to press our government, Our governments.

[Piers Morgan]

I mean, to me, given the size of the universe, it was always to me, 100% certainty. There must be other things out there. The question then becomes, have they visited our planet? And then you have the Whole Roswell area, 51, the 50s, the pictures that came out of apparently aliens being dissected and so on, and the whole conspiracy theory raging ever since about this. Let me just go through some basic Q and A with you. Do you believe aliens exist?

[Jeremy Corbell]

One, yeah, that's not a matter of belief. It's either true or it's not true. And so I've aimed to find out. You said yourself you didn't say it in these exact words, but it's statistically improbable to the highest degree that there's not intelligent life that has had more time to develop than us. But the big question that we couldn't ask 10 years ago that you just said is not just do aliens exist? When you look out at the stars and you see, you know, suns with orbiting planets, yeah, of course they do. But you ask the question, are they visiting here? Have they been here? And you know, look, for whatever it's worth to you, I've dedicated, with my mentor in journalism who's done it for 40 years, I've dedicated 20 years of my life to this. UFOs are real. Sometimes they are occupied. This is, and this is an informed opinion, oddly, it's not a political issue. People can handle the truth of that. And this has been a decades long immaculate deception. And I've been told not to kick the sleeping dog. They're afraid of something about telling the public, your government and mine, under the five eyes alliance. So who are these gatekeepers? What's going on? Why haven't they told us? There's a really clear and easy answer for that. And I've been told it many times, and I think we're at a place now. Sorry for the long answer, but you asked the big question. We're at a place now where people like you are talking about it and understanding it. And that's not because you just came up with it. It's because people have been seeing them for a long time. People have had contact, including our government. So, yes, UFOs are real. Sometimes they're occupied and under oath in Congress. People in position to know have done, told you so. And so now we have to confront that and see what it means to be a human.

[Piers Morgan]

So I asked you a big question and you gave a long, detailed answer and you've raised a big question, which is, you know, your big thing is government transparency. Why would governments be so keen to. To stop the public from knowing the truth about any visiting aliens? Why not just embrace it? Say, yeah, we've got this exciting thing, you know, this alien beam down from Planet Tharg, and we're keeping it at Area 51. In other words, why make such a determined, apparent effort to suppress it?

[Jeremy Corbell]

This is such a terrestrial thing that it's almost hilarious, but people will understand it right away. During the atomic era, we created an apparatus of compartmentalization because we needed competitive technological advantage. And I think your viewers understand exactly what I'm talking about. So in that architecture of the atomic programs, suddenly there was better sensor systems and appearing. There was appearing to be more uap, which is really just means UFO for people that want to know contact. And so what they did was very smart. They utilized the atomic programs, apparatus for compartmentalization, because it kind of failed us a little bit during the atomic era with Los Alamos. And they said, okay, until we figure out what's going on, two things. One, national security. It's not. They're trying to keep the nature of reality away from human beings. It's one national security. Is this from somewhere else or is this a competitive, adversarial nation? So they had to determine that once they realized that this wasn't Russia, that it wasn't China, that it dates back to the beginning of recorded human history. And there's an increased interest of what we call UFOs, UAP. The second reason was strategic surprise and national sovereignty and advantage. And in fact, there was a bond between your country and mine and three others. And we decided that we're going to study this and we're going to look for, check this out, derivative technologies from exploitation programs. So I totally get it? I understand. The problem is that the reason why we talk about UFOs is because people see them. It's not something that they get from movies. They're in movies because people have seen them, engaged them. Our government doesn't know the full answer either. And that's the issue too. What can you tell people if you don't know the full answer? I have actually proposed to people in our government officially a four step plan that I think is the best way to bring forward this actual truth.

[Piers Morgan]

So a couple of weeks ago, you released two videos that were purportedly captured by US Military drones in the Middle East. One of the videos appears to show three objects flying in a triangular pattern. Let's take a look at this. And as we're looking at it. Just talk me through what we're looking at here.

[Jeremy Corbell]

Yeah, so let me just explain to you real quick. I'll walk you through it. What you're seeing looks like Pong the video game. You see three lights. What I've actually done, Pierce, with my mentor in journalism, George Knapp, is we've released 15 assets over the last number of years that have come to us to educate the American public on what thermal footage is. So you see black and white, it's heat. And you're seeing three objects that are emitting some sort of signature. They call it. They're in formation. Now, I'm not saying this. This is part of an archive that was leaked to journalists that comes from them that says these are uap. And this is one example. This is one of the least interesting videos that I've released. But it shows a formation of unidentifieds, what they called, not me, our government intelligence agencies called uap. The last one I released, that's the one that they didn't want me to release. It showed one of what we call the five observables of UFOs that they have designated our government and yours. And that first observable is called instantaneous acceleration. It's not traditional propulsion. So when you see something like this, this is to acclimate the American and global public to what military film footage looks like. George Knapp and I have released 15 different pieces of evidence. The last one was a banger. The last one, undeniably through our government's own analysis, which is what I'm showing you, shows instantaneous acceleration, something that we know physics can do, but any human being would turn into jelly if you were able to. It's called inertia. Look it up. Great word. I had to learn it, right? Instantaneous acceleration means the G forces would just turn the human body into jelly. You have at your ability now to go online and watch the government's analysis of a ufo, A UAP that they said is UAP that instantaneously accelerates to the right. If you're looking at the footage, it's supposed to be impossible. Problem is, we now see that it's not. We've theorized about it. Witnesses have explained it. Commander David Fravor in 2004, chased a UFO for the United States military and testified under oath in front of Congress that he did so, that it wasn't ours, and that they had it on radar on lock, and it instantaneously accelerated beyond human capability. Wasn't China, wasn't Russia, wasn't any technologically known nation. So now you can see it. So that video you showed was cool. But look at the 15 assets that George and I released. Watch the last one. It's called Syria. UAP 2021. Apparent instantaneous acceleration, and that's what our government labeled it.

[Piers Morgan]

This whole thing about Area 51, I mean, what is Area 51? I know it's in the Nevada desert. What does the government say is there? And how much veracity has been genuinely established about the whole 1947 Roswell crash and so on, the supposed Transportation to Area 51 for reverse engineering of aliens and so on. How much of any of this has been verified at all?

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[Jeremy Corbell]

Yeah, 100% of it has been verified that there was a crash. And this is historic document. There was a crash or something, and it was actually taken to Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Now, the lore of Area 51, the only reason you know that word, other than Obama, was the first president to ever say it, was that George Knapp in 1989 brought forward a man named Bob Lazar. And Bob Lazar said we had nine flying saucers in a hangar at a site called Site 4 at Area 51. It's a sub base just south called Papoose Lake. George didn't know if he was telling the truth. He said that in 1989. That's why, you know the term Area 51 and associate it with UAP or UFOs, where they hold these craft, these material. We don't need to guess on Congressional Record. One of those locations was put in writing after by a man named Lou Elizondo. It's a controversial figure. A guy that says, is he telling us the truth? He is. And he told you the truth about that. It was called Pax River. So that is one location where some of these materials were there. Because, Pierce, for your audience, documented by our own government and testified to in Congress, there was supposed to be a transfer from Lockheed Martin to a program called OSAP, Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program. The $22 million reported by New York Times wasn't for the group called AATIP like they reported. They got that wrong. They'll admit that to you. It was to a group run by a guy named Dr. James Lekatsky who ran the Defense Intelligence Agency's UFO program. And he actually came on my show with George and he admitted to the world because he had authority to do so and told us he admitted to one ufo, Non human intelligence built craft that our government has in possession. You'd think this is world news. No, just on a little podcast with me and George. Only time he's ever talked publicly. So we have them. Hal Puthoff on the Joe Rogan podcast, the scientist that has worked on this for years, said, we have 10 or more in our United States possession. So now you have people talking out who have nothing to gain, who are under NDAs, who have signed their lives away, who are scientists and physicists who have worked on this. Told you we have them. And now you know, one location. So Area 51 is kind of like the catchphrase and there's a lot of great patriotic work being done for both of our nations at Area 51. Maybe they have a storage facility. Don't know. They did in 1989 and it was called S4. There was a man named Bob Lazar that told the world about it and they didn't believe him until now.

[Piers Morgan]

Well, let's play the clip from Obama in which he references this.

[Jesse Michaels]

Are aliens real?

[Piers Morgan]

They're real, but I haven't seen them.

[Jeremy Corbell]

And they're not being kept in.

[Piers Morgan]

What is it?

[Jesse Michaels]

Area 50?

[Jeremy Corbell]

Area 51.

[Piers Morgan]

There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they.

[Jeremy Corbell]

They hid it from the President of the United States.

[Piers Morgan]

There was something shifty about the whole way Obama dealt with that question. And then the reigning back afterwards. I have to say, he wants to. Yeah, of course. He does, and he knows a lot more than he's letting on. I think they're probably not allowed to talk about it for the reasons we discussed, but they should do. Before we bring in other panel members, there's a question that my team are very keen for me to ask you, which is why is it in popular culture, whenever aliens abduct people, they always get the information from them via the technique of an anal probe?

[Jeremy Corbell]

Okay. You know, I'm really glad that we can have this banter because we have now moved past this. We have moved past this. Those are things that people. Yeah, those are things that people say to try to dismiss what's right in front of their eyes. So I'm not going to answer your question. I'm going to give you something better because I'm not sticking around for your panel. This is not about debate. Have a great panel. I want to tell you four things.

[Piers Morgan]

Thank you.

[Jeremy Corbell]

Right now, right now, we're talking yesterday and today there's a discussion at the Pentagon and the White House from people that work with messaging. And they're debating if radical honesty has to be the foundation of the four things that they're supposed to figure out. How to say. One, is formal admission of the known facts about UFOs, UAP. Two, formal admission of the unknowns. Three, a formal acknowledgement of UFO presence and reality that we're not alone, that we never have been, it seems. And four, very important. They must articulate the primary definition, I'd say preliminary definitions to the public, their determinations to date, and the global defense concerns that have caused the secrecy in the first place. And if we achieve this over the next days, months, maybe during the State of the Union address, if they say it, it'd be amazing. If we achieve this, it's one small step, but it's a great leap for humankind. The implications are astounding. So I just want to thank you for talking about UAP like this. Some of us have fought really hard. There's a lot of us that have. Public demand is gonna get us the truth. And it's gonna take time. Cause I think there's a song. Change Takes Time.

[Piers Morgan]

It certainly does. And let's be honest, in the annals of universe history, it's actually not that long at all. So let's see what happens. I think it's fascinating that you've now got two presidents talking about aliens in the space of a week. That alone is game changing. Jeremy Corbell, fascinating to discuss all. Thank you very much.

[Jeremy Corbell]

Pleasure to meet you. Thanks for covering this,

[Piers Morgan]

we're here to debate whether aliens really are. Amongst us is Dr. Michael Sherman, the founder of Skeptic magazine and author of the new book what It Is, how to Find it, why It Still Matters, and the renowned UFO investigator, journalist Jesse Michaels. Welcome to both of you. So Dr. Michael Sherman, welcome to Uncensored. You've said that that the vast majority, 95% of supposed UFO sightings can be put down to ordinary terrestrial explanations, balloons, camera lens effects, visual illusions or extraordinary terrestrial explanations, Russian or Chinese spy planes or drones capable of feats of physics and aerodynamics unheard of in the US and you further said, I think it's highly likely that aliens are out there somewhere in the cosmos. In a galaxy of 100 billion stars, there will be 100 billion sun like stars, a billion earth like planets, 100 million planets with life, 10 million planets with intelligent life, and a million planets with intelligent life capable of radio technology, which is kind of mind boggling. But putting those two things together, I guess my first obvious question to you is, all right, you've covered 95% of the sightings. Is it possible that the remaining 5% are genuinely, you know, this million planets with intelligent life sending stuff down to us?

[Michael Shermer]

Oh yes, of course, it's entirely possible. But is it true? The fact that I would like it to be true because it would be the greatest discovery in the history of science, doesn't make it true. So it's unfortunate Jeremy Corbell doesn't want to hear what the skeptics have to say. I've challenged him many times on X, he doesn't even acknowledge me. I finally got a thousand dollar bet with Avi Loeb that we're not going to find aliens. But Jeremy's in my opinion, wrapped up in a religious fervor and faith based, I mean, he mentioned Bob Lazar. Bob Lazar claimed that he went to, that he graduated from MIT and Caltech. He didn't even attend either one. Stuart Stan Friedman, the ufologist, was the one who exposed that. So the moment you lie about something obviously checkable like your, your degrees, your credentials, then why believe anything else? So anyway, that's just kind of the short answer to that. What you're after there is what Obama clarified after his initial statement was that, I mean, out there somewhere there probably is intelligent life. And I would agree with that. Most scientists do agree with that. That doesn't mean there is. We haven't found it yet. But you know, the telescopes we're developing now, we probably will eventually within I don't know. 50 to 100 years we'll know for sure, but at the moment we don't know. So all we have is probabilities. But that's a separate question from have they actually come here? So the argument I make in the book is that it's possible, but very, very unlikely. I'd give it less than a 1% on a Bayesian scale. I think the distances between the stars are so vast. If the Voyager spacecraft, which is hauling ass at like 60,000 miles an hour, if it were going to the a star, which it isn't, it would take 70,000 years to get there, which is a long time to sit there with your tray back and your chair back and your tray table down. You know, it's just unlikely that they've come here. And I think it's really a religious kind of impulse that there's somebody out there vastly superior to us that knows we're here, and that's religion.

[Piers Morgan]

Of course, if there were entities that were vastly superior to us, then the time it might take them to get from where they are to us could be massively faster. Right, so you're basing your logic about it on how fast we could do something. But it must. You know, I've thought it's highly likely that there are more intelligent beings and people on planets out there. Why wouldn't there be? Why are we the special one? And if they are more intelligent, if they are more sophisticated, then the timescales you're putting on, why it seems so implausible actually would be irrelevant because they might be to get here like that.

[Michael Shermer]

Well, of course, Piers, I would change my mind in a heartbeat. If tomorrow Marco Rubio or Pete Egseth or Trump himself says we have the aliens, here they are. And it's covered by abc, cbs, NBC, U, cnn, fox. Everybody shows it just like the Chinese spy balloon. No one doubts that. No one talks about the credentials of the pilots that shot down the Chinese spy balloon. We don't need any of that because we have the Chinese spy balloon. So I would change my mind tomorrow, I would pay Avi Loeb his thousand bucks and that would be it. But instead, we have yet to get that. And I've been hearing this since we started skeptic magazine. Here's volume one, number one from 1992. I've been hearing that since we started the magazine disclosures coming any day now. And if you want to go back before that, Carl Sagan in the 1970s was talking about that, you know, where is the evidence and the the answer is always, it's classified. You know we can't show it to you. The men in black, the whistleblowers, the grainy videos, the blurry photographs, just show it to us. I mean, if we have the aliens, I'll change my mind tomorrow. Just show it to us.

[Piers Morgan]

Okay, Jesse Michaels, he makes a good point. Let's see it. There are, there are a lot of hypotheses about what believers speculate about alien scientists and what they may be. The top five, I'll just rattle through these and get your view afterwards. One is extraterrestrial hypothesis. It states that UFOs are physical spacecraft or probes piloted by intelligent beings from other planets. The second one is interdimensional hypothesis. This theory suggests that UFOs are not from other planets, but from other dimensions or parallel universes that coexist alongside our own. Then this crypto terrestrial hypothesis suggests that an advanced non human civilization might already be living right here on Earth in secret, perhaps deep underwater, underground, or even disguised amongst us. Time Traveler hypothesis. Some researchers purpose that aliens are, are actually humans from the distant future. Their humanoid appearance is cited as evidence of future evolutionary changes in our own species. And then there's the Earth Zoo hypothesis. In this scenario, Earth is treated like a nature preserve or a zoo where we are observed from a distance to allow our society to evolve naturally. So they're the top five hypothesis to try and explain alien sightings and so on. Before we come to what you think of those, you believe aliens exist. 1. And do you believe they have visited our planet?

[Jesse Michaels]

I believe non human intelligence exists. And so that's, I think, why that term is being used more than aliens, which is just one of the hypotheses that you mentioned. I think there's a preponderance, there's an abundance of evidence that should shift the consensus now in the open source world that there is some intelligence between man and, let's say, you know, some ineffable God, you know, above us. There's an intelligence above us doing all sorts of crazy things around our nuclear facilities, our energy grids, our weapons installations. And that's been happening for the longest time, since the dawn of the nuclear age in the 40s. So are you guys getting me, by the way? I just see myself here.

[Piers Morgan]

Yeah, we are, yes.

[Jesse Michaels]

Okay, great. So I believe that we can say without a shadow of a doubt that there is an intelligence beyond humans that are tampering with our nukes, that are showing up around facilities. And I think the skeptics always rest on there's no definitive evidence of extraterrestrials, which is a cop out, because that's a conclusion, which is a hypothesis as to what we're seeing. But there's so much evidence that we are seeing stuff. Michael Shermer just wrote, actually a piece in the Washington Post basically saying that all UFOs are chalked up to number one, space trash, number two, U2s or SR71 kind of modern equivalents, recon planes, deep black American programs, or number three, religiosity. And what I would say is explain, you know, the thousands of documents that are declassified from American intelligence from 1945 to 1955, before the U2 was ever even commissioned and before 1957 when Sputnik, the first satellite was in space, where you have UFOs discussed widely in intelligence circles. Explain the 100,000 plus global intelligence documents around UFOs. You have Guy Pan like, you know, the equivalent of, you know, Blue Book, the Air Force project from the 50s and 60s in France, basically acknowledging, you know, the reality of this stuff. Even if you look at Arrow, which is the American version of this, the modern version of this, a third of their cases, 34% to be exact, are completely unknown and unresolved. So this should be fertile grounds for science and where to look. And so, yeah, jumping to specific explanation like extraterrestrial might be kind of, you know, a little, you know, fast to, to do that, or presumptuous rather. But to answer your question about the different hypotheses, I think none of those are mutually exclusive. So to take to get from Earth to Proxima Centauri B, the closest, you know, habitable planet, that would take 80,000 years via chemical combustion. So you would need some sort of space time metric engineering and basically time travel in order to get there. Space and time travel are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they're. They're both needed in order to travel interstellar. And that is a definitive sort of debunk against the, you know, Elon argument that we're going to be able to go interstellar with the chemical combustion. It just literally doesn't work with physics. You need new physics. And anytime you have an empirical anomaly that's observed thousands of times and reported at the highest levels, from presidents to fighter pilots to civilians, whenever you have an anomaly that's observable repeatably, and then you have a theoretical model of physics, the anomaly always wins, whether it's black body radiation before the quantum revolution, the orbit of Mercury, which wasn't explained via Newton and is better explained via Einstein or UFOs. We're going to have a theoretical model that explains UFOs, but saying the anomaly isn't real because of science is just bad, mushy brain thinking.

[Piers Morgan]

Okay, Michael Shermer, I want to show you what Jeremy Corbell put out a couple of weeks ago. These are two videos purportedly captured by US Military drones in the Middle east showing three objects flying in a triangular pattern. We're looking at it again now. I mean, what is your explanation for what we might be seeing there?

[Michael Shermer]

Those are probably drones or just aircraft, you know, flying in formation. I do show in my book the Kinesi El, this is where you put three triangles together like that, and then the brain fills in what the rest of it looks like as if it's a solid object. It's a very common phenomenon. Many of the UAP sightings are in that triangular formation. I should note, you know, back to the, you know, the previous comments, all of that is possible. I mean, time travel, you know, warp speed, these kinds of things that we see in science fiction. That's entirely possible that, you know, if there are aliens, they're not going to be just five years ahead of us. You know, like, you hear, you know, they crashed in Roswell in New Mexico in 1940s, and that's where we got silicon chips instead of vacuum tubes, something like that. They're not going to be just barely ahead of us. They will be, you know, light years ahead, millions of years ahead of us. So, yes, they could have that physics and technology, but do they in fact, has that in fact happened that we do not know? So again, just, you know, show me. I hear the stories about Bigfoot. Okay, show me the body. And they. And it's always the kind of the videos like the videos you just showed, it's like you can't quite make out what's going on there. It's grainy, it's blurry. You know, the mind then fills in those gaps, and that's always a problem. So then as for, you know, Jesse's comment about the many, many anomalies. Yes, anomalies are important. You know, the perturbation of Mercury's orbit led to Einstein. Okay, if that's in fact the case, then I'm in favor of it. But will that in fact happen? Because what we don't hear are all the missed opportunities that, you know, failed experiments and scientific theories that never panned out. You know, so we have a survivorship bias. So you're highlighting the ones that turn out to be true. If the alien thing turns out to be true, you know, okay, this would be great. You know, I would love this to be true. Like Carl Sagan back in 1980. I would love it to be true. But is it, in fact, true? And, you know, it's just so frustrating. I mean, aren't you guys all frustrated? You've been hearing this, too, for years.

[Piers Morgan]

Well, the question I would have. The question I would have. I'll let Jesse respond to that. My quick question for you. I have no idea what the answer is, but do you believe in God? Are you a religious man?

[Michael Shermer]

Oh, no, I'm an atheist. Yeah, well, I'm an agnostic, technically. I don't know. And you. And you don't? I don't know. And you don't either, is my quick take on agnosticism. But, no, I don't believe in God. No. And the research on this, by the way I discuss this in the book, is that people that score high on need of spirituality and awe and wonder, but are low in religiosity are more likely to believe that aliens are visiting Earth. So that's kind of the part of the thesis of my idea here, that this is kind of a religious impulse. It's a way of telling us, just like the original 1951 film, the Day the Earth Stood Still. It's a Christ allegory. You know, Klaatu comes down from on high, delivers the message. He's killed by the authorities. He's put in the tomb. And then Gort the robot pulls him out of the tomb and brings it back to life. He resurrects him. He delivers the message to earthlings about the nuclear weapons, and he ascends to heaven in the spaceship. It's a Christ allegory. It's the oldest story in all of mythology. I think what we're witnessing here is mythology.

[Piers Morgan]

Okay, Jesse, what's your response to that?

[Jesse Michaels]

I think everybody does have a religious impulse, and I think skepticism is an embodiment of the religious impulse as well. Anybody who's had a debate with Richard Dawkins, for example, would know that he's sort of this, you know, hyper moralistic, hyper Christian thinker. And so there you go, Piers. You've experienced it yourself this year.

[Piers Morgan]

No. Well, I had a whole debate with him. Funny enough. I had a whole debate with Richard Dawkins because I said the reason I believe there must be something superior to us out there. I was raised a Catholic. I believe in God, I said. But notwithstanding that, I said the reason I believe is something superior as an entity out there. It's because nobody with a human brain can explain to me what was there before nothing. So if you subscribe to the Big Bang theory, okay, fine, you know, I can understand the scientific logic behind it, but what was there before the Big Bang? What is nothing? What's there before nothing? No human can explain any of that to me. Right. They start talking in kind of, you know, scientific gibberish, but they can't actually give me an answer. But so therefore, to me, it makes obvious sense. There must be something with a superior brain that can answer questions like that, which must be a more superior entity. That's my logical brain, as if I was Mr. Spock on the Starship Enterprise.

[Jesse Michaels]

Well said, Piers. I think, to put it differently, I think space and time in physics have scaling problems. And so our cosmological models of the universe, I think are going to be really dicey. We've never detected black matter or, sorry, dark matter. It's just this sort of, you know, mathematical placeholder. Dark energy is not one of the four fundamental forces. It's just this sort of expansionary force in the universe. You know, the Big Bang itself keeps getting the, you know, the dates keep changing. It's very confusing. And so it is the epitome of human hubris to say that we have this perfect understanding of, you know, cosmology. And the longer you go back in time and the bigger you go in space, it's like a rocket that's one degree off the course that ends up 99 degrees off course, you know, as it scales, or error propagation in computer science, where you have one error that continues to propagate. And so if you have anomalies at a small scale, it's. They're just going to sort of metastasize at larger scale. I want to address, you know, Michael's point on, you know, not having data. I think we have an abundance of data. We have materials in a lab right now held by a Stanford professor who is a microbiologist. He's tenured, you know, he's a Nobel nominee. His name is Gary Nolan. He spun out, you know, a nine figure company. He's as well respected, you know, as it gets. And he has, you know, materials in his lab that come from a 1957 crash in Ubatuba, Brazil, on the beach. And they contain silicon with a purity level that he's never seen before and just is, you know, doesn't occur on Earth. And magnesium with isotope ratios implying some sort of neutron bombardment that Also don't pattern match to anything on Earth or asteroids. And he's doing mass spectrometry on these. And so that is real data. You know, there's an astronomer. Jesse, go for it.

[Piers Morgan]

Yeah, Jesse, let me, let me ask you the same question I asked Jeremy earlier, which is why would the government today, with all that is being, you know, everyone's more transparent these days. One of the big problems with distrusting government from the people is because they just got fed up with lack of transparency. So more and more things are being laid out to us, right? Why would a government be so determined? Why would any government be so determined, but particularly the United States to suppress information about UFOs if they had it? Why would Obama look so shifty, slightly answering the question, then backtracking when there's a furore? Trump's now saying he's going to release it all, declassified all. I don't understand why there has to be this massive veil of secrecy. You know, we're all big grown up people. Why can't we just deal with the fact that there may be some aliens and show us, I mean to, to Dr. Sherman is a good one. Just show me, show me.

[Jesse Michaels]

Yeah, no, look, I couldn't agree with you more. I feel the exact same way and I'm extremely frustrated. Obama, to the point that you made earlier with Jeremy, that he is being sort of, you know, cheeky. He's literally producing a documentary right now on Betty and Barney Hill, the first alien abductees in 1961 in the US so clearly he's interested in the topic. And his Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper and his CIA Director Brennan are literally in the age of disclosure documentary where they tacitly endorse a multi generational, you know, multi decade long UFO crash retrieval and reverse engineering program being hidden, you know, in, behind basically closed doors in U.S. intelligence. And so he definitely knows a lot more than he's letting on there. The reason I think, you know, they are being cheeky and they aren't just, you know, coming out with this sort of thing is because these crafts seem to fly over our most sensitive defense sites. I'm talking, you know, Vandenberg, Malmstrom, nuclear missile based, you know, fe war in all these sites, Savannah's, Riverside, all across the US with impunity. So you are essentially admitting that, you know, aerial dominance exists and it's on behalf of something that you don't, you don't even fully know. You have these hypotheses as to what they are, but they have complete, you know, aerial dominance over you. And God forbid you get one of these things wrong and, you know, one of these incursions are actually China or Russia, you know, that's even more scary. And so the fact that you don't know that this is happening and it's happening over our most sensitive sites I think explains it all. I also think there might be some very disruptive technology hidden with some of these things that might be very bad for kind of establishment institutions. But I think the first thing really is all you need to know,

[Piers Morgan]

you know, Dr. Shermer. At a Davos panel earlier this year, Elon Musk was asked if he thought aliens were amongst us and said, I am one. And people took that to be a joke. But having met Elon a couple of times and to see the sheer scale of what he does with his supposedly human brain, I kind of think he

[Michael Shermer]

probably is an alien planet. He feels like it's from a different planet.

[Piers Morgan]

I think it's highly likely he's an alien.

[Michael Shermer]

He has said that, you know, when he was head of Doge, that he had an all pass, you know, look at everything that's secret and he never saw aliens. And he told Joe Rogan, I'll tell you if there's aliens, but I haven't seen anything. Obama says, I haven't seen anything. Clinton said, I hadn't seen anything. All the way back, you know, it's again, just show us now. You know, Sean Kirkpatrick, who was head of the government UAP program for two years, when he quit, he said, you know, I looked everywhere I could and found nothing. So here's what I predict will happen. I think Trump will come out and say, all right, put Pete Hegseth and Marco in charge of this. We all looked into it, we didn't find anything. So what you'll have is the other hypotheses that you put forth. I would say interdimensional being. They're invisible, they're non detectable. We don't know that they're there, or it's a deep, deep, deep state secret that even the President, Secretary of War, Secretary of State doesn't know about. All right, all these things are possible, but very, very unlikely. I just think it's a phenomenon that's not going to go away like a religion. And if you would allow me, Pierce, to address the why there's something rather than nothing question, because I have a chapter in the book. I think it's one of these known unknowables. I think it's Like Stephen Hawking said, asking, what's north of the North Pole? You can't get there. We hit epistemological foundation bedrock. There's nowhere to go. And your answer, well, God did it is not a very good explanation because it doesn't tell us how God did it.

[Piers Morgan]

What's your answer? What was there before? What was that?

[Michael Shermer]

So what do you mean by nothing? Because no thing means there's not a thing, but there's not even that. So Hawking's explanation. Some of the other cosmologists I talked to tell me that it all began, time began with the Big Bang. There was nothing before it, or.

[Piers Morgan]

So what was there before the Big Bang?

[Michael Shermer]

What was there before the Big Bang? Maybe another universe. And you have a multiverse. You have multiple experiences.

[Piers Morgan]

So just to be clear. Hang on, hang on. So time did not begin with the Big Bang. You just disproved their theory immediately.

[Michael Shermer]

Our time. But there could have been previous times. Yes. This is a cyclical.

[Piers Morgan]

So there are rival times.

[Michael Shermer]

We don't know this is true.

[Piers Morgan]

The point is.

[Michael Shermer]

I'm just saying it's a hypothesis.

[Piers Morgan]

The point is your brain and my brain and Jesse's brain cannot actually answer those questions. Nobody, no human brain can. That's for Elon Musk. Elon Musk can't answer it, and he has the biggest brain I've ever seen in my life.

[Michael Shermer]

But God, I just think it's not a good explanation. How did God do it?

[Piers Morgan]

Well, you know what? It's as good as any other. It's as good as any other I've heard.

[Michael Shermer]

So it could just be. I don't know, and you don't either, and full stop. And then you make the leap of faith and I don't. There's really no difference. It's a different kind of truth. I'm claiming it's not a scientific truth. It's a. Yeah, that's true.

[Piers Morgan]

I think that's right. Well, Polymarket, the money in the polymarket market is currently saying there's a 14% chance that aliens exist and that the US will confirm it before 2027. Would you take those odds, Jesse? Well.

[Michael Shermer]

Oh, Jesse. Yeah, sorry.

[Jesse Michaels]

I don't know if I would take those odds. I think this is going to be a jagged process from here. So I think it's like the Epstein stuff. There's going to be some smoke. The smoke is going to build. I think more is going to come out in this sort of staggered process. I think you're going to have this sort of push. I Do think the Trump thing is kind of the line in the sand where a president has never gone that far as to sort of implicitly acknowledge this stuff and say that Obama's revealing classified information, basically implying that, you know, aliens existing underground at Area 51 is possibly classified. So I do think that's going to galvanize sort of, you know, people searching for truth here so much that I do think things start to come out as to kind of the timeline, I think it's. It's tough. It does feel like things are accelerating with the advent of LLMs and AI, people can make connections here, I think, much faster. And so I'm. I'm very excited. I would go long, you know, that. That Polymark. In 2023, I made a bet with Mick west for $10,000 that the consensus, I think, in 10 years would shift to 80% plus academia and, you know, elite military and government basically accepting that we are not alone in the universe. And I stand by that. And I think, you know, I wish polymarket were more liquid then, because I think that would have gotten really good odds. And I think they've shifted a ton since then.

[Piers Morgan]

Yeah, I mean, Dr. Sherman, just finally, I mean, you did say that, you know, you look forward to the administration being really transparent and sending their people out, revealing all they've got. Of course, we have had that recently, a similar journey with the Epstein files, where they were going to be really transparent, then they suddenly shut them down, and then they got forced into being sort of transparent. It turned out there was a ton of stuff in there. So if we use the Epstein files as the parallel, maybe in a year's time, we'll have gone through a similar process, and there'll be 6 million documents of your evidence for you.

[Michael Shermer]

I would welcome it. You know, and I'm with you. Like, why would anyone want to keep this a secret? NASA itself would go straight to Congress and go, oh, my God, we discovered aliens. We need to double our budget.

[Piers Morgan]

Right?

[Michael Shermer]

I mean, every scientific institution would go, hey, we need more funding for this. You know, far from keeping it a secret, and there's a lot of polls on religious people. Would you be bothered if we discovered extraterrestrial intelligence out there somewhere or that they came here? And the answer overwhelmingly is no, not at all. God could do whatever he wants. You know, it's. It's a big universe. Nothing wrong with it that there's that elsewhere out there.

[Piers Morgan]

You know what? It's a fascinating debate. A bit like when I debated with Richard Hawkins in the end we may never get answers, but it would be great fun if Richard Hawkins suddenly got visited by God. And it would be great fun if you, Dr. Shermer, suddenly got suddenly got a knock on the door from an ET like alien. And I'd love to be there. I'm looking forward to it.

[Michael Shermer]

I'm waiting for it.

[Piers Morgan]

And if those two things could happen live and uncensored, I'd be a happy boy. Guys, thank you very much.

[Michael Shermer]

Welcome on your show.

[Jesse Michaels]

Thanks so much. Thanks, Piers.

[Michael Shermer]

You're welcome. Thank you, Michael.

[Piers Morgan]

All the best.

[Michael Shermer]

Thank you. Bye, Jesse.

[Piers Morgan]

Piers Morgan on Sense that is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. If you enjoy our show, we ask for only one simple thing. Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan uncensored on Spotify and Apple podcasts. And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate and entertain. And we'll do it all for free. Independent, uncensored media has never been more critical and we couldn't do it without you.

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