← That UFO Podcast
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- [00:01]
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Peter Scafish
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Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
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- [01:02]
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- [01:36]
Peter Scafish
I thought it was safe.
- [01:37]
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- [02:02]
Peter Scafish
Who the so called non human intelligences are is that's the most important question we have. That is the question. This isn't a marginal aspect of the so so called UAP phenomenon. We have thousands or tens of thousands of instances of reports of that. The view I favor, but of course this is only a hypothesis or an interpretation is that many of them are for for reasons we can't explain. Living beings like ourselves products of evolution, autonomous to the extent that any human being is autonomous, you can't subtract that out of it. You can't pretend it away and then still deal with the rich body of data that has been collected over the over the last eight decades over this. Once you get to a level of interaction that is at least de facto between government and non Human intelligence. Okay, that's the cataclysmic stuff.
- [02:57]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
For years, we have been fascinated by the craft. How they fly, how they manoeuvre, what they're made of. But perhaps we've been asking the wrong questions. Imagine tomorrow, we discovered a crashed vehicle on a remote island. An engineer would study the engine. A chemist would analyze the metal. A physicist would try to understand how it worked, and a biologist might examine the bodies. But an anthropologist would ask something entirely differently. Who built this? Who were they? How did they live? What did they believe? Why did they come here? How did they communicate? What kind of civilization created all of this? Those are the questions my guest today has devoted his career to exploring. Anthropologist Peter Scafish returns to the podcast to discuss the recent developments in disclosure, his role in the new Scientific Advisory Council, and why. The greatest mystery may not be the craft themselves, but the intelligence behind them. This is Peter Scafish. Peter, welcome back to the podcast. How are we?
- [04:00]
Peter Scafish
Andy, thank you for having me back, and I'm good. And before we jump in, I want to just say that I think a lot of us should recognize you for the work you've done. You've created an outstanding podcast that sustains a level of credibility and seriousness that a lot of us want to see out there. And, you know, you've been consistent with that for a number of years, and you were really one of the first people to the scene with something like this. So just want to call you out for that and recognize you and also congratulate you on your book. I know it's been out for a while, but that was a big win for you. So, you know, kudos to that.
- [04:38]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Yes, no, I appreciate all of that, Peter. It's. It's been quite the ride, quite a six years. And looking back, it's actually over a year since we last spoke. It was May 2025. And I don't think in the last year I expected the UAP conversation to maybe move quite as quickly as it did in that time. And I want to get into so much with you while we've got you here, including government file releases in that time, I think there's been a growing scientific interest. You're now serving on the new Scientific Advisory council. I've hosted Dr. Avi Loeb already, and I've got Michael Shermer on next week. So you're the sandwich filling in the middle of those at the moment, and.
- [05:17]
Peter Scafish
Quite a sandwich. Andy, as.
- [05:19]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
As in a. Steve, any different types of person and profession and role to have in that Council, and we're going to get to that. But before we get there, how does this moment feel to you? Because that's so much to happen and I've missed out so much there in the space of what, 12 months.
- [05:36]
Peter Scafish
Yeah, I, you know, I think it's good that we're starting here. And I appreciate that question in particular because look, we have to acknowledge that some of the main protagonists in, let's say the event, which is ongoing, of disclosure must push and push hard for this to happen and they must call and call hard for things to go quickly. But as they do that, sometimes we forget just how much has been accomplished in the space, short space of a decade and just how much has happened in the last year. Because as you said the last time I was here a year ago, things felt pretty slow to people and you had a lot of demoralized people and things have really accelerated, I think at a pace with, let's say, government acknowledgment of UAP for sure, but also disclosure, as I might want to define it. And you know, because we, they're moving so quickly that I don't think people appreciate the extent to which the executive branch and Congress have put the US Government in a position where they will have to acknowledge the reality of uap. And the reality to me is that most of what you and I would mean by UAP and what your audience would mean by UAP are non anthropogenic technologies and vehicles. And I would want to, you know, you know, stick to that point and not say that it's all consciousness or something. Okay. And you know, Congress in the executive branch again and put the US Government as a whole in the position where that will have to be acknowledged at some point. You know, but more than that, disclosure has accelerated on a number of fronts and you know, we have to appreciate what's happened with that.
- [07:28]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
When you say it's going to have to be acknowledged at some point, I think some really optimistic people might agree with that. But there is a growing frustration that just with the UAP file drops that we're getting now. So from the beginning of May until just the other day as we record this, we've had four drops spaced out every two to four weeks, depending on kind of when it's been. Those have been met with a really mixed reaction. I suppose that's always the way generally with this topic. Anyway, what's your take been on those files? And for me personally, I feel there's been a lack of what looks like progress and quality of what we're getting from those files. That's just my opinion and I'd love to know yours.
- [08:11]
Peter Scafish
Yeah, well, look, I don't want to comment on what the intent is behind that. I want to leave that to the side for several reasons. But look, I don't think anyone should expect with any declassification effort that, that intelligence agencies are going to participate in and that the White House is going to push towards rapid declassification of records that concern really sensitive equities. And as we know, the Legacy program is among the most sensitive programs the United States has. Unless we're all in fantasy land, which I know we're not, that is de facto one of the crown jewels of at least its R and D efforts. Okay. And so, you know, I think people should always temper their expectations there, no matter what the signals are coming from government. And you know, look, it's very obvious that the agency that is most wanting to push forward records that would be consequential is the FBI. I think the DOD and Arrow are participating in this in good faith or Arrow is to the extent that it can. But I think that the FBI clearly, and we know there, you know, is a component the FBI or a group of people in the FBI that are very serious about this and they have support from, from high end bureau. They want to see something happen with this and I think they're driving that. And, and that's, you know, we should consider that a victory. But I think, you know, we need to take a step back as we do with the whole event of disclosure right now, and ask ourselves what's really happening for the first time in the 80 years of secrecy about this. Do we have a president that has ordered declassification and has put the President's name and the title of the office on declassification. And that changes things immensely. That's why I say eventually this forces some kind of acknowledgment, whether in this administration or another, because you now have the President putting the seal of the White House on this and, and saying to federal agencies, we, we want compliance to some degree on this. You can't go back from that as a acknowledgment coming from a president of the White House. We've seen with the initial media reaction which has continued in legacy first tier media to those releases. I mean, what did people do? Jake Tapper on CNN interviewing Tim Gallaudet who was representing the Soul foundation for that. Tapper asked him, Come on, let's, let's cut to the chase here. Are we Talking about aliens. What is this? And that's what I'm talking about. Media is reacting to this as you would want them to, and they're no longer content to say, well, okay, this is a national security problem. We've got some unknowns here. They're saying, look, if the, if the White House and the intelligence agencies are participating in a declassification effort, there must be a. There, there.
- [11:28]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Yeah. I just, in the last 24 hours, appeared on a UK news channel, GB News, and they had me on with another expert who was going against. Essentially I was asked, would I represent the argument aliens are real? And I tried to clear up that that's a difficult question, just to come out and say yes or no. But they were like, but you're on the positive side of it. And I said, well, yes, obviously I think, you know, we're talking nhi, we're talking a phenomenon, we're talking something existing that we don't quite know what it is, but it may not be human. And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. And the expert they had me on with was a comedian who was formerly a scientist, however, but now he's a satirist and comedian. So, you know, it's not exactly a nuclear physicist that was debating the other side of that argument. What was interesting though was the host was very much for the topic and there was no pushback on me as being a tinfoil hat wedding, crazy, believing in aliens. And, you know, I was very careful about how I approach the subject, how I talk about this, to protect folks who listen to and watch this, people who are part of the SOL symposium, people who are part of any UFO group, to kind of make sure you're representing them. And I feel there's been a bit of a change where even in the UK media when it is talked about, there's a little bit less laughter, a little bit less stigma. Do you see a change from that perspective? And also, do you see much of a change in the public perception of this, particularly over in the us?
- [12:57]
Peter Scafish
Yeah, well, like I said, there's a radical change in media about this. Now, I do think there's a serious division here, which is that if you're dealing with center and left media, especially first tier legacy media, and it's actually frankly worse with successful political podcasts, center and left media have not caught up with this. It really is conservative and right media that understand that there's a there there at this point. And, you know, I think that's for several reasons which aren't Just don't just have to do with the Trump administration, but with where a topic like this has cultural salience, you know, whether that's good or bad or right or wrong in the United States. So I do think there's a division, but there has been a real acceleration in media and, and also public understanding before going back to government. I'll say briefly, you know, look for, for, you know, two or three years while doing the Soul foundation and working on this professionally as an academic in an open way, I had to be very careful in how I dealt with conversations, not just in academia, but with any professional. But at this point, if I'm on a flight and I fly more than I wish I did, I can tell the person, and usually do, who I'm sitting next to, what I do for a living and what involves. And they know what it is, and they find that exciting. I think I've gotten one cold response out of maybe eight recently to that conversation. And a few of those conversations elicited pretty lengthy responses from people that clearly knew a lot about the subject, including a United Airlines pilot who, you know, spoke to me for, you know, an hour and a half about this during a flight because he was so excited. But let's go back to the US Government on this. You know, I want to say more about, you know, the significance of the, the pursue releases and where we are with disclosure, because that was your question at the outset. You know, let's, let's look at different things that are going on here. And let's go back to Congress. Where was Congress in May of 2025? They weren't where they are right now in that. I think we can say now that Eric Burleson and Apollina Luna and Tim Burchette, with the support of their Democratic counterpart, Jared Moskovitz, have done what we never saw Congress do in 80 years on this, which they have attempted to establish not just, not just congressional oversight over the UAP issue in the executive branch, but they've, they've created a foothold for governance in an active public way where it's very clear day to day, week to week, that Congress is interested. That is, that is immense, if you take the long view on this historically. Now we know that took place in the Senate already. Marco Rubio, Kirsten Gillibrand, Chuck Schumer, Mike Rounds, in different ways, did the very same thing in the Senate to pretty big effect in Congress and the executive branch. But it wasn't with that passion for the subject, with that dogged advocacy, and with that clarity of purpose. I think that those three members of the House Oversight Committee have done that. And I think that's something you can't go back from either. Even if the Republicans lose the House this fall and the Democrats come in taking a much more institutionalist posture on this, let's say the damage is done to the old situation in which Congress didn't engage this and constituents to members of both the House and the Senate aren't going to accept anymore a lack of work on this. So that is a massive shift. If you go back to 1947 when you add, I think, one inquiry from the House of Representatives and nothing from the Senate about UFOs and that came from a junior congressman, Lyndon Johnson, who made some inquiries to the Air Force. And that was kind of it. We are in such a different zone now. And you know, if you went back five years ago, even five years ago, it was almost unthinkable that we would see this level of public discussion. I mean, many of us anticipated it coming, but we still really couldn't imagine that it would really be here. So that is a huge shift in the US Congress. I would also say, because you, you asked about it, this, this scientific advisory council that Avi Loeb leads and that I, Gary Nolan, Tim Gallaudet, some others participate in, this is also a big deal because I think this is the first time in the history of the United States there has been a good faith effort on the part of the intelligence community to bring scientists into conversation with them to, let's say, solve the problem. Now, I don't think this problem hasn't been solved or there's a big question about what this is within a small component of the US Intelligence community. But you know, in as much as they've reached out to scientists and said we and reached out to people like Gary Nolan, I mean, just think about that for a second, Gary, if you wanted to say there was nothing to this, you wouldn't ask Gary Nolan to be part of your scientific Advisory council. Right. The fact that this has been done and it's been done in good faith, that is a big deal. This is not the Robertson panel. This is not the Condon committee. Whether it produces the results we all intend for it has a lot to do with the kind of data we're given. But, you know, we all believe that the people in government that we're talking to as part of this are acting in good faith. And I would say I know they are. So that is a big deal. And then, you know, behind that Is this UAP Governance council in the executive branch, which you know who the members of which are not known publicly. Some of them though, if I understand who they are, are quite significant in the executive branch. And they certain the council and that council have the support of the White House. Okay, that's an enormous change too because you know, look, if you have a governance council on this and you have a lot of signals coming from individuals in the cabinet, but also the cabinet itself, that there is something to the legacy program and people aren't happy about its level of secrecy and the fact that it was never acknowledged to the public. That's enormous shift too. So look, you know, take all those pieces with Congress, with the intelligence community or certain part of it reaching out to scientists in good faith and then this governance council and then let's throw in, I won't try to discuss it, that you have a group in the FBI that is actively doing work on this. That Arrow, even if it has been very, let's say it has a, has had a bad past on this, seems to be acting in good faith as well. Well, you, that is a total sea change. And that means that whether it's two years from now or five years from now or 10 years from now, and I know a lot of people in the UAP community will, you know, would slump over if it's going to be 10 years. But you know, whatever the timeframe, you're going to have direct acknowledgement from the US government, you're going to have media, more importantly asking hard questions at some point. I would say where we are with this is we're in a place, let's say this, we're in a process that is moving too quickly for my comfort and it really should give people pause. Are we really ready for disclosure? Depends on what disclosure is. But if we're really ready for it then, then fine, let's barrel ahead. But I would say this is, this is about as fast as you'd want it to go. And frankly I wouldn't mind if it went a little, little, little more slow.
- [21:08]
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- [21:37]
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- [21:42]
Peter Scafish
I thought it was safe.
- [21:44]
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- [22:08]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
So on the council, then you could perhaps join some dots for me because what it appeared to me and a lot of folks listening to this and watching this, I'm sure was we had you mentioned the members of Congress who are pursuing this, whether people like them as individuals, personalities, politicians, what they are doing in terms of the UFO topic is really keeping this front and center. They're keeping it on mainstream news, mainstream podcasts are doing huge appearances on various different types of shows and they're getting a lot of big names talking about this in a really serious way, it seemed.
- [22:44]
Peter Scafish
Can I interrupt you briefly on that? And I want to get back to your point, but look, I want to put it to you this way, is that even if you're from the left, and I'll make one of the rare admissions that I am, you have to love Eric Burleson and Anna Paulina, Luna and Tim Burchette. You have to love these people if you're into uap, because again, they've done what Congress never did on that. You know, hats off to Harry Reid as the Senate Majority Leader, the most powerful person in the legislative branch in the US Congress when he held that position, starting the OSAP program and bringing in people like Hal Puthoff, Eric Davis, Jay Stratton, et cetera, Jacques Vallee to work on the UAP issue with a fantastic budget. But that was a classified program, you know, with these folks I just mentioned, Luna, Burchette and Burleson have done is they've pushed for transparency in a remarkable way. And you know, we really have to acknowledge them for that. Even if, you know, even if, you know, some people are going to really blanch at their politics and some of their positions. I mean, this is where they put the majority of their efforts, effort and it is to the benefit of not just Republicans, also Democrats. And as Berlissen said recently in a, in an interview, to the, the benefit of humanity. I mean that, that's really remarkable. And, and so I want to note that because, you know, this shows us that something really important about the UAP issue, which is if we take it seriously, we're going to find ourselves in alliances with people who we may not agree with on many other points, who we could otherwise feel alienated from culturally and politically, and yet we can find that commonality and even unity. And that's going to be a very important thing going forward. Because this is not an issue, if you take it seriously, where you want to be dealing with human division, right. You want to find human commonality and you want to be able to work, you know, across apparent divisions because you don't know what's on the other end with so called nhi. And you would do very well to know how to build alliances and to get over differences.
- [25:13]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Well, essentially what I'm looking to know then is what was the reason for these councils being established, was that are you aware of a moment or an event or something happening that the work of the congressmen and women and what they were doing required this? Was this a different tact, a different approach from a different entity? It seemed to come a little bit out the blue. And that's what I'm still a little unsure of. And I think a lot of folks are on these groups and why they're there.
- [25:42]
Peter Scafish
Yeah, I understand that. Well, look, I mean, I do think Burleson and Luna's advocacy had a lot to do with many developments in the Executive branch on the UAP issue. I know of things that Luna has done, I think that were pretty decisive in creating space for this in the Cabinet and with the President and so on. So I do think Congress has something to do with this. But no, this is more coming from the Executive branch. And I am aware of some events that I think precipitated this. And I don't think it would be wise for me to talk about those in public. But what I would say is that the. Again, you wouldn't, if you were at the highest levels of U.S. government, put together a council with Avi Loeb, Gary Nolan, Kevin Knuth, myself, Tim Gallaudet, if you were even skeptical of the idea that UAP are non anthropogenic vehicles. Right. And so I guess what I would convey on this is that there is an interest in working with scientists on scientific data to give them a chance to do proper scientific research and analysis in order to get at something like scientific verification of what I just said about uap. And let me add this. I mean, the fact that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is involved in this, and that is the part of government we primarily interface with on the Council. That should tell you a lot about, you know, what's in the mind of at least some people in that office.
- [27:29]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
So you're not a physicist or an engineer. You know, there are various different profiles involved on this council. As an anthropologist, what are you bringing specifically to the Council? What was the reason for bringing you on board?
- [27:42]
Peter Scafish
Well, you know, as a. One thing that we do in social and cultural anthropology is we tend not to assume that the answer to the question, any given intellectual or scientific question, immediately comes from a particular kind of expertise. And you see that with a lot of problems that cut across fields. With the UAP issue, look at how it gets divided up and answered. Astrophysicists will think that what you need to know about UAP comes solely from astrophysical analysis or the kind of science practiced by astrophysicists. You'll see the same thing with historians of religion who assume often a supernaturalist explanation. Anthropologists have been interested for a long time in something we call total social facts. Okay, and we'll just say that's a kind of fact that is social in nature. It concerns society, but it cuts across all human institutions and spheres of human endeavor. And I think the UAP issue is like that. So one of the things that I'm able to offer is a view that says you need as many methodologies as possible, you need as many pools of data as possible, and you need to ask as many questions as possible. And an anthropologist can help you coordinate between those. But, but look, I mean, I think my role there is, at least to me is clear, is that I can remind a group of natural scientists that science doesn't take place without a social and historical context. And our context here is 80 plus years of engagement with UAP issue from the US government and that history is public record. There are hundreds, if not thousands of events composing it. That's something scientists should know about. But the, you know, the Council is also really quite interested in obtaining historical records, including historical assessments of UAP that are within the government and particularly, particularly the intelligence community, the Department of Defense. So, you know, my role there is to help point the way to what those records might tell us and which ones we might want to look for and so on. So those are a few things that I think I bring to it.
- [30:08]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
I think the biggest pain point publicly, a bit of a tongue twister, the biggest pain point publicly for folks when this was announced was the very quick admission there was going to be no classified Material made available to the council, which I think annoyed a lot of folks that there was perhaps going to be again, a gatekeeping or a holding back of information. What's your take on that lack of access? And is that something you feel will hinder or will it help you get the work done that needs to be done?
- [30:39]
Peter Scafish
Well, you know, first I would say that, you know, if people found that frustrating, they may want to consider for a moment whether they really want to see a bunch of scientists have access to classified data and not be able to talk about it. Okay. You know, because that's, that's the problem with people getting security clearances and engaging government on, on data that you, you may not even be able to do research on. Right. So the fact that the, the bar for entry was not a security clearance and that the intent was not to do something like classified research, that's a good thing. Now the question, and this is a big question, is how do you get data which is declassified and somehow strip it of its classified elements to get it to a group of scientists so they can actually do work on it? That's a problem. That's a hurdle. And, you know, you know, I hope that it's one that can be, you know, we can leap over soon.
- [31:43]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Let me put this in a really layman's perspective because from my point of view, this is the way I think, right. And this could be totally wrong. What would be stopping the, the folks involved, like the Congress folk, for example, or senators, getting you all in a room if that was at all possible. And we're going to say, we're going to give you a briefing. This is classified. And we're going to show you a couple of videos, some stills, and we're going to give you some information that you're not allowed to disseminate. It will be completely classified. However, it's going to provide you with some context if you can show people like yourself, Avi Loeb, Michael Shermer, who everyone is honing in as the skeptic of the group, some unbelievable things and say you can't talk about those. However, there's some personal context of what you're working on in terms of the unclassified material. Now go and do your job. Would that not give a personal and collective fuel to go, oh my God, what have I just seen there? There is something to this and give you a real drive to then dig into the unclassified material, which you would then go with an even stronger hunger, desire, and people like a Michael Shermer Suddenly go, right, I'm looking at this stuff in a completely different way now.
- [33:05]
Peter Scafish
Okay? I mean, look, you hit the problem on the nose, right? Of course you would want to give briefings that Congress has had to this group of scientists, but as you said in your description of this scenario, those would be classified briefings. You would need to have a clearance to some level to get the briefing. Right. So people would, would have to obtain those clearances. You know, look, I mean, you might make the inference that were some scientists put in a position to participate in a council like that, maybe some of them already had that idea. Right. And they could have asked for that. But, you know, be that as it may, I think what we're facing right now is that people would have to have clearances to get those briefings. Is there an unclassified version of those briefings that could be given? Probably, but it wouldn't have the punch that I think you're saying it would need to have and that, yeah, I would want it to have if I received such a briefing.
- [34:09]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Is there any work been done in its infancy right now, as these councils are, that you can share or discuss? Has it been zoom calls that you've been on? Has there been anything given to look into as yet?
- [34:21]
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- [34:22]
Peter Scafish
All I'm going to say at this point is that the, the thing is indeed in its infancy. You know, fortunately we have a powerful, you know, a powerful advocate for speed in, in the council's leader, Avi Loeb. And, you know, hopefully it moves quickly as a result of that. And I think we're in good hands with Avi in that sense. And that, you know, Avi is somebody that is really going to get things done at a quick pace if he's going to involve himself in them. So I think, you know, there's a chance of it moving quickly, but it's, it's in its infancy. So we're in a wait and see moment. Yeah, of course we've had meetings, you know. You know, anything else I think is it's, it's best for, for Avi to be the first to talk about that.
- [35:07]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
So everyone's waiting on groups like this, whether it was Saul or whether it was Skywatcher, and they're all very different things, whether it's the Disclosure Foundation Vanguard who are now coming out to help whistleblowers. Everything's hoping one of these leads to disclosure, and we've mentioned that word, and it means different things to different people. And I'm wondering, to some folks it means better videos. Other Folks, it means, you know, we're showing us recovered technology, pieces of pilots, as it was once put, or organics or beings, you know, decades of files, really, the meaty unclassified file or classified files that perhaps are not getting yet. Where do you think disclosure is today? And for you, when you're looking at this and working on this, what do you think is potentially you're working on to disclose?
- [36:00]
Peter Scafish
Well, let's, let's first talk about that concept or idea of disclosure. I think, you know, we. I think there's so many meanings to that term that very few people are clear that we're not all talking about the same thing. Okay? I mean, each person advocating for it knows what they mean by it or roughly what they mean. But I think most of us are not conscious of the fact that the next person means something else, and so on and so on. If you go back to what disclosure, I think, meant for a good 25 years in the United States, it really was the idea, and we probably have to credit it to Stephen Greer, that the President would, you know, have a fireside conversation or press conference and, and say that aliens in the sense of extraterrestrials are real, that they are engaged in, that they're, they, they constitute some kind of presence here, that Roswell happened and that the intelligence community knows about it. And if that's what we mean by disclosure, I think people should temper their expectations about what it would actually look like, which is it probably would pretty minimal acknowledgement, followed by a statement that we're seeking more answers on this. And I think that would actually satisfy a lot of media. I think it would also involve what we're seeing play out right now, which is a declassification process. Now, on that point, I hate to say this, people should really temper their expectations. Look at what happened through multiple rounds over a period of decades where declassification of records concerning the JFK assassination were concerned. I mean, you know, Andy, neither you nor I can say, you know, not only who the assassins were, but, but whether they were supported by which elements of, of the executive branch and the intelligence services. So where I'm going with that is you're not going to see if this is just a declassification process. A lot of clarity about what the. Through lines of the history of the US Government with UAP and possibly NHI are. You're just not going to see that if you're looking at a bunch of records which are partially redacted, they're fragmentary, they're not going to form clear holes. And they're additionally going to require someone to engage in research that creates those holes and, and who can create a narrative arc that shows the continuity between them. Well, if, if you don't have that narrator from the government, you're relying on investigative journalists, you're at this point relying on podcasters, and you're also going to be relying on a few academic researchers to do that. I wouldn't be real confident that, you know, that narration is going to carry the kind of salience it needs to, to convince a lot of people in the legacy media that that's what the narrative is. They're going to be looking to the government for the narrative and that's not going to be particularly satisfying. So I want to, you know, give that picture of like, that's some of what you're going to get from the government with disclosure. And it absolutely is not going to satisfy somebody who is a student or experiencer of the so called phenomenon.
- [39:31]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Can you expand on your idea then that you would receive a minimal level of acknowledgment of confirmation? What would that look like when you say it would sat. I think you said that would satisfy some legacy media or the majority of the public potentially. What for you would that minimal look and sound like?
- [39:50]
Peter Scafish
Well, the reason I'm saying that I think that's about as much as you'd want to hope for is that the problem with disclosure is I think that full disclosure potentially contains information that's cataclysmic. Okay, let's look at what's out there already. If you bother to look at testimony in Congress, reports in media research and public talks that Sowell and others have put forward, what Jeremy Corbell has to say, George Knapp, Leslie Kane, Ross Guthard and and so on and so forth, it's very easy to see that, okay, yeah, there is a crash retrieval and reverse engineering program and that what is reverse engineered is, is technology not of human origin. I mean, I, you know, I might have academic colleagues or others new to the conversation that are looking at that and going, okay, scavish is crazy and he's lost his mind. But, but the evidentiary record really bears that out. And I would say I know personally that that's true, but that's what's out there. We, we don't have the same level of information about anything that has been recovered, you know, living or dead that might be biological. And yet we have great testimony that doesn't come from government about the fact that that's out there. And then we have a little bit of testimony from government that says that's happened. And then as you go to things like communication, direct contact events, and maybe something beyond that that involves interaction, regular interaction, agreement, perhaps exchanges that would be of an economic nature, you've got nothing. And whatever the truth is, whatever's behind the curtain on that, once you get to a level of interaction that is at least de facto between government and non human intelligence, okay, that's the cataclysmic stuff because who did it with what authorization? Was it legal in any sense? And, and more important, was it constitutional? And we're gonna have to say probably it wasn't constitutional or it's not constitutional right. I mean, you know, Congress didn't authorize something like a treaty, right? Now I'm not saying any of that has happened or that I know. My point is those things may lay behind the curtain and you couldn't disclose them initially publicly, even if you wanted to do the whole thing. But probably any of disclosure, disclosure of those kinds of things would be so disruptive politically and socially, not because people couldn't take it, but because of the consequences for government. If government knew it's bad. If government didn't know it's bad, it really affects them badly in either case. So I don't see those sorts of things being disclosed. And I would say that's probably one reason that disclosure never happened before. Whatever is past recovered technology may have, you know, certain kinds of events are going to have implications for the US government that, that if a president finds out they happened or a president is willing to acknowledge they happened, the, the blowback for the President is going to be too strong. Hey everybody.
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- [45:20]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Yeah, and I agree that disclosure, capital D, especially full disclosure, doesn't happen in any way, shape or form anyway. Richard Dolan often says what we're more likely to get is confirmation. And surely there are very many, numerous ways a government or parts of governments that may want to protect themselves from past wrongdoings, which I know a lot of people are dead against. And there has to be reparations and there has to be commissions investigating who done what 80 years ago and. But the general public, the 99.9% of people, when they find out we're not alone, however that is, I don't think we'll necessarily care.
- [46:03]
Peter Scafish
No, I agree with you. I don't. I don't think most people will care about that. And I think it would take. It would take a decade to have a real political movement, I think in which you would have enough people who have sufficient concern about that to create significant pressure on federal government about that. I mean, we're very far away from that. This is still a very fringe topic when it comes down to the real stuff.
- [46:28]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Yeah. Because I've always felt for me the easy thing to do that. I say easy flippantly, obviously, but the easier thing to do would be have the James Webb telescope find something. And once you find something really far away, you can then build back. We've found signs of pollution on another planet or bio signatures, technosignatures. We're going to send a probe it will take decades. That then just opens up the debate. If there's something there, maybe there's something closer and you just work your way back with the public and you almost can have a government or governments which it's going to involve. Let's remember this wouldn't just affect the US Then you would have folks be able to almost discover along with the public, oh, we've found life elsewhere now we've found life closer to home. Then the public themselves naturally, surely would begin to open up. So are UFOs real? Which we know the answer to that question. It's such a lazy old question, but it's still a very generic genetic public question. People want to know, are UFOs real? Are aliens real as their non human life? And you would start to have those conversations happen back home. So almost allowing governments and legacy programs and everything to kind of go under the radar for quite a long time. For me, it just seems a lot of different ways to do it, that we don't always have to have this catastrophic disclosure where the generals are going to stand on a stage and say, right, here's the programs, here's the beings. China, if you want to know where we keep all our top secret technology, here's the locations of it. Because I completely understand that aspect of it too.
- [48:02]
Peter Scafish
Yeah, they're not going to do that. They're probably not going to acknowledge the legacy program either, that the intelligence, I mean, look, the intelligence community has no reason to disclose existence of a classified program unless they must. And you know, they, they and, and no president would say, oh yeah, we should give the details of that to the public. Absolutely not. They're not, they're not going to do that. Congress would have to drag that out in hearings, bring out its name, bring out its history and you know, we'll see whether there's ever a desire to do that in the Senate in sufficient numbers to support that. But that would be as radical of an act on the part of Congress as the Church committee was in 1977. And we've never seen anything like the Church Committee in Congress since then.
- [48:56]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Yeah, and what I can't imagine happening either, and I think very often we look at this, and this is even with me from a UK perspective, is how would this play out in America? How would the US treat this? What would the years ahead of us look like with America taking charge of this? Whereas the conversations that then happen with China, Russia, the uk, Australia, France, Belgium, Korea, you don't know what they then come out and say. And that would shape and change narratives and it probably would force the hand that they all have to get around a table and go, look, we have said X. What are you saying to this? Okay, you're bringing Y into the conversation. Okay, you guys don't have this, but you guys do have this. It would surely quickly become a global conversation. Or do you think it would still for a time be US Centric?
- [49:48]
Peter Scafish
Well, yeah, I mean, look, if you have direct acknowledgment or what Richard Dolan means by confirmation from a US President, of course it becomes a global conversation quickly. I mean, that's one of the reasons I think you can't just willy nilly do it, right? Because, I mean, imagine the reaction from US Allies that say, wait how long? I don't mean, you know, US allies in their intelligence services who might be aware of this or participating in it. I mean, the vast majority of people in, in any other government allied with the U.S. if the U.S. does this, the first question is, wait a second, why did you never tell us this? You know, why, why do I, as a, you know, imagine if that had been done and Margaret Thatcher didn't know and it was well into her term and she's saying, why was I never told about this? Right? I mean, you know, you face that kind of question immediately now. You know, fortunately, I don't think the Trump administration, you know, fortunately in this case would be very, I, I don't know that they would care about those questions. And so that's one of the reasons, I think you see the level of activity that you do, because as one, one colleague from government has said to me often, you know, this is not an administration who you tell what to do, right? They, they tell you what they're doing. And with that kind of posture, they're not going to be afraid of doing the level of activity they've done about this. Look, I want to shift gears a little bit because I, you know, I've, you know, at least in the tone of the conversation here. I don't want to be, I don't want to project pessimism about disclosure. I don't want to be discouraging to people about disclosure, you know, to the extent that they care about what I have to say. What I want to say is that we should be utterly optimistic about our capacity to determine what the facts are, arrive at an idea of what the truth about them is, and be able to construct or reconstruct a history that's been lost to us due both to stigma and to secrecy. You know, we can do that. Every individual listening to this can do this to some extent. You know, different professions can do this, organizations can do this, and we should be optimistic about our capacity to do this. What I want to do, though, is qualify that statement by saying the US Government is not going to do a lot of that for you. It simply is not. It will take the kind of big political confrontation, you know, really enormous conflict between the legislative branch and the executive branch, or between the legislative and the intelligence community, or a president who wants to be decisive about this, and then just, you know, rattles the intelligence services. It would take all of that to get the kind of, you know, not only full disclosure, but the very clear narrative about this, you know, where, where you would actually have a president or a commission say, look, you know, the following stuff happened in the 40s. This is what took place in the 50s, this was our reaction in the 1950s. Here's what happened in the 1960s, and so on. You know, I just think you're not going to get that from government. And so it falls to us outside government, in what we call civil society, to do that work ourselves. That's something I want to see Soul foundation do. I want to see other organizations do that. I want to see journalists do it. I want to see academics do it. I want to do it in my own work. I think artists, filmmakers need to do it. But, you know, that is a. That is a decentralized cultural effort in which there will be a lot of debate, as there is now, about what's true and false, about what a responsible narrator is versus an irresponsible narrator, and about what the role of government is. But all that, that kind of debate and that kind of effervescence in society, that's really healthy. And that's going to get us a lot further than just waiting on government, even as government is acting with. With a lot of power right now and listening to people like ourselves.
- [54:00]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
So, Peter, taking a sharp 90 degree turn in the conversation, we spoke, like I say, around May 2025, and something you said then, I'd like to delve into a bit further. You pointed out back then that we're often prepared to believe witnesses when they describe extraordinary craft. But somehow those same witnesses become unreliable the moment they describe the beings associated with them. That's a fascinating contradiction. And I wonder, over the past year, has anything strengthened that view in your mind?
- [54:32]
Peter Scafish
Well, yeah, I mean, I think I was pretty decided on that view before. And I appreciate you remembering that I say something like that. I mean, One of the stronger points I make about that is, is that we absolutely should not say that the evidence for non anthropogenic UAP rests ultimately on witness testimony and then turn around and doubt the witnesses when they start talking about apparently or really biological beings. And that's a core tenet of my own view of this. I mean again, let me qualify this briefly, even if this seems a little strange, is, you know, as participating in the Scientific Advisory Council, I am completely happy to give up my views about this if evidence ultimately contradicts them. I don't foresee that happening. But I feel like I should qualify myself on that because this Council is responding to a good faith overture from the US government. Now back to your question about that. My view about that hasn't strengthened so been strengthened so much as it's been borne out by my research, which I'm finally able in the last couple months to devote as much time as I was probably around the time I spoke to you on researching what we could call humanoid cases or occupant cases. I'm presently writing about that in the large book I'm writing about not really UAP alone, but so called non human intelligence. And over the last months I've spoken more than I ever have and I've done that a lot in the past with people who've had utterly remarkable encounters or report that they've had them. So yeah, I, I remain where I am on that. I think that really what and who the so called non human intelligences are is that's, that's the most important question we have. That, that is the question. I mean, I think everyone knows that UAP vehicles are, you know, the question of how they work or their frequency of appearance or how many there are around at any one given time. That's a precursor question to what and who the, the NHI are.
- [57:02]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Especially in the last few months as we've had these drops appear, the focus for most folks is on the videos. And the videos are obviously of alleged craft or orbs or drones or prosaic that, you know, there are clearly birds in some of those videos, but it's around, you know, craft and we debate propulsion, flight characteristics, radar returns and some of those files. Do you feel, you know, the occupants are ultimately the far more important question, especially from an anthropological point of view?
- [57:38]
Peter Scafish
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's what I think. But let me, let me say, let me say what I think the first question about the occupants is, and I think some people listening who are familiar with occupant Cases, which is to say with cases in which people report encounters in which they, they witness not only hovering or landed UAP vehicles, but human like beings that are within the vehicles or that exit them or that are seen outside them going back in and sometimes more extensive encounters. And to people not familiar with that, which could even be some listeners to your podcast, those are absolutely a constituent feature of UAP reports in general. That's not like, you know, one or two or three cases. We have thousands or tens of thousands of instances of, of reports of that. And as I think a lot of your audience would know, you know, J. Allen Hynek, who was the chief scientific consultant to Project Blue Book, the Air Force's public investigation to uap, took that seriously enough to create a category of UFO report, which is the famous close encounters, the third kind. So this isn't a marginal aspect of the so called UAP phenomenon. It's, it's really a constituent feature. So, so with that, you know, background on this, let's go back to your question. Is, are, is that the most important thing? Yes, depending on what they are. And let's say there are two views of what they are. And one is that there are no kind of true biological beings among, among occupants or humanoids. That all of them are something like, and I'm using colloquial terms right now, avatars, like in the film avatar, a kind of hardware used by some other kind of being to interact with us, or that they are ultimately non autonomous beings that are something like, you know, an AI distributed into things that look like autonomous biological beings, but they're, they're something like we, you know, robots in the colloquial sense, or even that they are something like that and they're just used to somehow service a UAP vehicle or interact with us. And there is that view that, that, that it's so unlikely that we would be encountering beings that are kind of the spitting image of us minus a few physiological differences, that they must not really be what they seem to be. So that's one view. In that case, they're about as interesting as the UAP vehicles. And let's be clear, UAP vehicles should boggle the mind. You know, I mean, that can occupy a person's mind for the entirety of their, their lifetime as a, as a problem like, you know, how do they work? What's the physics of them, what's the energy system? But even, and how are they fabricated? What's the interior design? I mean, you know, if you're really talking about Alien technology, this, it blows the mind, these things. And, and I think that's why people are sometimes so affected by seeing them, is they, they really are being confronted with technology, not of human origin. And it's not just that they know that there are non human beings then behind them, they, they are, they're as struck as you, you and I would be right now if we were presented with, with, with some small piece of technology that we realized was not fashioned by human hands. And we could just see it. It would be evident, it would be shocking, it would invoke, it would induce wonder in us and you know, it would push us into a kind of, possibly a lifetime of investigation. So, so, you know, you know, that said, I, I still think that the UAP vehicle, I think the occupants would be not much more interesting than the vehicles if ultimately they're just appendages of them or, you know, there's something like half living and half autonomous androids. The other view of what they are, and this is the view I favor, but of course this is only a hypothesis or an interpretation, is that many of them are for, you know, for reasons we can't explain, living beings like ourselves, products of evolution, autonomous to the extent that any human being is autonomous. And of course, I think we only have relative autonomy, whether it's genetics, something I understand, social conditioning, ethical formation. There's, there's an extent to which we operate not just within, but under parameters of behavior that mean that we're not entirely free. I think, you know, complete free will is an illusion. Maybe there's some level of our consciousness or some level of our intentions which are free, but even our bodies limit our ability to be fully autonomous. So, So I think nonetheless, though, they could be as autonomous as us. Products of evolution, biological beings, social beings, historical beings, beings much like humans, but more socially, ethically, and also noetically developed, more developed at the level of consciousness. And I'd add also that they would, they would be more evolved than us biologically. I think think we, we have some evidence from that, from, from the encounter testimony, and there would be a gap between us and them on that point. So again, you know, to, to, you know, kind of summarize this a bit, we would have these, you know, I think these two views are out there that we're dealing either with beings that are. There are something like androids that are not autonomous, they're not really biological or living. And then on the other hand, beings much like ourselves that are biological, that are living, that are autonomous to some degree. I favor that view. I don't think they're mutually exclusive and I actually think there are some of some of these, the so called robots or androids in a sense. But you know the answer to your question of how important it is. Well, ultimately we need these beings, the, the biological ones for that to be the, the kind of crux. The problem. Problem with so called nhi.
- [64:30]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Yeah, I think you're seeing a little from column A and some from column B in terms of that answer of what these could be. How do you correlate then different types of beings, whether it be AI people use the term third generation AI, robotic clones, things like that, or biological bipedal. How do you correlate those different types of being reported with different types of craft? Does that to you say we're dealing with different species, entertaining us with different forms of craft with different, different agendas as a. Is it one phenomenon that's working in different ways? How do you begin to then think about all the differences that we seem to be experiencing?
- [65:14]
Peter Scafish
Well, it's a great question and that's not a question I think I, or probably anyone who's doing like unclassified research could, could answer. I suspect that there were people doing classified research in the intelligence community that might have a very definitive answer to some of that. But I can tell you how I began to do it and why I'm skeptical that anyone can answer this question right now.
- [65:40]
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- [66:41]
Peter Scafish
Is to me we need to forget a lot of our confidence or a lot of the confidence in the UAP community that There are four or five species that we're interacting with. The reason I say that is just because you're seeing, you know, clusters of reports that suggest a pattern in which we see definitive kinds in the reporting doesn't mean that the kind maps onto a species, you know. You know, for example, let's take reports of grays. Grays are so ubiquitous in the, the narratives of, of encounters that, you know, there. There's almost no one who doesn't recognize the iconic image of, of a gray. It's on your. Your cell phone is a emoji that you can use daily. And, and if, if you, if you were to give people, you know, a range of faces to choose from and say, what do you think an alien is? They, you know, I think a lot of people would pick that. So we all know what that is because it's there in the reporting. But we do see variations in encounter reports of things that look like grays, but that there are reports of different skin tones or skin colors, there are some physiological variations that. Or there are variations in appearance that sometimes are uniquely reported. Sometimes there are multiple reports. And additionally, you see reports of differences in height and so on. Now, let's just take those as examples of why I don't think we should be confident when we're hearing all these different kinds of reports that, okay, let's say that what people report in varginha, which is pretty distinct in terms of what people talk about with eye color and also what the tops of those heads. The tops of the heads of those beans look like, you know, we wouldn't. That's pretty distinct from what people usually report with grays. And so what I would want to ask is, are we really dealing with, with different species? Then? You see, I would have no way of saying what is what an alien species is to begin with. When we divide up species, when a biologist does that, they're talk, you know, the references to what established knowledge tells us. I mean, how would you even be able to determine what kind of the taxonomy of beans would be if you're talking about species? But even if you had the confidence to say, okay, I think that is whether you define it by population or whether you could do it by genetics or some other criterion. Even if you were confident to say, okay, I think grays are a species, you might then look at these variations and say, wait, are those, are those subspecies of a kind? Are those two different species between Virginia and, you know, the kind of ordinary reports of grays? I mean, you wouldn't necessarily. It's not even. You wouldn't necessarily, you would have no way of really being able to make answer that question definitively. And you know, I would say that for a lot of the other what appear to be stable kinds, you, you don't know whether you're looking at one kind or whether you're looking at something that looks like a kind, but it's composed of many kinds. And at either level, you wouldn't know whether you're dealing with a species or something that, you know, looks from the outside like a species. But it could be three species, you see, and this isn't even to get at the problem of whether you're dealing with, let's say, different social groups or cultural groups. Right. So that's a long winded way, sorry to say, of answering the question. The way I start with this is to look in a very fine way at the data and just see what's out there. And, and where I'm actually at in my research right now is I am trying to make some determination about how to establish what the patterns are, where we could know that the patterns we see actually correspond to something that's there. And we at least see what some big clusters are in the reporting data of what the nhir. And that might allow us to finally get to the question of species. I understand someone listening to this who's into the UAP thing might say, well, okay, what is the intelligence community say about it? What are the leaks we hear about this? Oh, they say there are four or five kinds of aliens. Well, that suffices. And let's go. I'm, I'm not confident that the way that's narrated should give us any confidence that it's really, it may be as simple as like, okay, we're familiar with something that looks like four or five kinds, but, you know, it may be that they don't know how many kinds there are, even if they're just talking about a range of, you know, four or five kinds of anatomy or, you know, physiology, etc. So, so, you know, the short answer to the question is I, I really think you have to start from a broad survey of the data and be willing to kind of forget assumptions about this and just look at what's out there.
- [72:37]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
I'm always careful to try and not project my own assumptions onto other cultures or, you know, various different things. I do. And here we're talking about other intelligences. How difficult for you then in your research, and you mentioned, obviously you're trying to put this book together. Is it to avoid assuming what they might. It's one thing to talk about what they look like, but then how they think, how they would communicate, how they organize themselves. You know, how, how far do you let yourself go in thinking about what an NHI or multiple NHI may do? All the way down to levels of society, family language, you know, how they view mortality, for example.
- [73:15]
Peter Scafish
I don't go very far with that at all if I'm thinking empirically. What I mean by empirically is if I'm, is if I'm working from experience, okay. And I mean the experience of others and then you know, my own, let's say, reflection on that experience through research. I don't go very far at all because I don't know how you would be confident about most of that communication. I'm a little bit confident because of course we have a lot of so called telepathic communication. And I say so called because let's just say that it doesn't use language and it seems to go mind to mind. Now that could all be accomplished through technology. So we should be careful to say that it's telepathy and in the sense that side research people would mean that. But you know, that's such a consistent element of encounter narratives that I'm confident that that's there now that's led some people to say, and I've heard it said by, you know, people who, who really know their, their when it comes to encounter reports that there's, you know, absolutely no use of language reported when it comes to the occupants and so called nhi, that's not true at all. You can even find in Jacques Fillet's work, you know, dozens of instances in the 50s, 60s, early 70s of people reporting encounters with occupants in which they heard the occupants speak. Now, you know, something I didn't say before is you always have to be careful with witness testimony in assuming that the witness is accurately reporting everything that happened to them and what's often a 2, 5 minute, 10 minute interaction, right. I mean if this, if you and I were suddenly, you know, found ourselves, you know, you know, cornered in, in a forest somewhere by things that look to us like aliens, we would have some very lucid memories of this, right? We, some, some elements of this would be unforgettable. But, but our initial impression of what would happen might be, of what had happened, might be wrong and we might forever remember something that is only our perception. So you have to be very careful with that kind of testimony. That said there are a lot of reports of language of these beings speaking, okay? And it's not intelligible to the person hearing it, but they hear speech. Whether they describe it as a unintelligible language or whether they describe it as like animal noises, they report that. So I'm confident about that being something that is likely to be something that whatever we mean by it, some of the NHI do. I'm also confident that there is some of them seem to resort to writing. Unless you want to adopt the hypothesis that when people see writing on the exterior and sometimes the interior of UAP vehicles, that that's simply some kind of display for us to trick us or to engage in some kind of strange pedagogy for some unknown purpose, which I really reject as a view. There are people that think that then we're going to assume that these beings are enough like us that they need to resort to writing. Now, those are some pretty big clues as to what they might be like, which is that they might be like us. They would have things. We wouldn't be able to predict what they are, but they would have social organization as we recognize it. They would have culture as we recognize it. They would have politics as we recognize it. That that is what, what we could say broadly is that they would be, and I'm going to use a. A word people are generally unfamiliar with, but they would be. They would have a high degree of. Of commensurability with us. They would be enough of the same kind of beings, or they would be enough like us that we could say that we and they are the same kind of being, that we aren't dealing with different categories or kinds of beings. And so we could make certain predictions about them on that basis. And frankly, UAP vehicles are themselves another indication that we're dealing with beings that are like us. You don't need a vehicle with transparencies that look like windows, with doors. And almost no one will deny that UAP vehicles have doors that have something like landing gear, even if the reports of the interior of the vehicles are accurate. They even have things like instruments and chairs. You wouldn't need any of that unless you were a biological being and you were, you know, you needed a vehicle to move in to begin with, but you also needed a way to get inside it, to exit it. You would need to land it safely and so on. You know, I don't know how to explain a lot of the features of UAP vehicles unless I'm presuming that you're dealing with beings that, again, are commensurate with us. To a great degree, unless the entire purpose of the vehicle is to put us in it. And of course, the reports don't suggest that. The reports suggest that most of the time the vehicle is for some other purpose. So that's another thing besides the writing, the kinds of communication we see that would, would allow us to make inferences about what they're like. But you know, I want to, you know, add the proviso here that I say this with, with extreme caution. You know, this is, you know, I'm working with the body of data very, very slowly here. Even as I'm writing a book, I'm working very slowly because this is, this is really unreliable data. Not just because it's, it's narrative data, not just because it was sometimes gathered poorly. It's just, it's very fragmentary and you want to be very sure that the fragments actually are enough like each other that you have a sen, that, that you're right to presume that they form a whole. You know, first and second, you have to rule out lies, hoaxes and delusions. And as we know with, with UFOs, there's a lot of that in the data. So we want to be very, very careful with that. And I say that because, you know, I don't want to betray academic principles on that. I don't want to betray people I'm working with in the hard sciences. And I also want to be to, able, able to say that I'm, I'm quite willing at some point to step back and say, okay, I was wrong about all of that.
- [80:02]
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- [80:36]
Peter Scafish
I thought it was safe.
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- [81:02]
Peter Scafish
The reason I'M bothering to say all this in public, and I'm confident about it nonetheless, is that, you know, again, reports with, with so called humanoids or occupants, they're really a constitutive feature of the so called UFO phenomenon. And you can't subtract that out of it. You can't pretend it away and then still deal with the rich body of data that has been collected over the last eight decades over this. You simply can't. So I think any kind of responsible intellectual, academic, journalistic, cinematic engagement is going to look at that stuff. And of course what we're hearing from, you know, multiple sources who are retired from the US Intelligence community is, is that this is absolutely known to a component of the intelligence community that is that, that there are apparently biological occupants. Let's remember David Grush's testimony to Congress from nearly three years ago. You know, he used something like a euphemism in talking about biologics, but what he meant was that there had been, you know, recoveries of deceased UAP pilots. And you know, I, you know, I'm among that handful of people that knows that, that Dave Grush was telling the truth as he knew it and his sources were not secondhand.
- [82:31]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
So looking at the broader picture of any potential contact we would have, or with the assumption we're having with another species or multiple species, how could we be confident we're even interpreting any form of contact or communication or experience in the right way Again, without that human bias of what might be going on?
- [82:54]
Peter Scafish
Well, I mean, you could only interpret it, it with what you're calling human bias. I would want to call it you, you, you. There's, I would want to say that there's a necessary component of anthropomorphism. Right? You're going to assume that everything you're interacting with, shares, shares enough traits of what you think human beings are that it's intelligible to you. So you're never going to get outside that. That to overcome that, you're going to have to assume that much of what you're assuming conforms to the human mind, the human body, human sociology, human history, human politics simply may not. Another way of putting that is you're going to have to assume a certain level of incommensurability that we're dealing with kinds that do not belong to the same genre. Okay? Radically different kinds of. If you, if you're able to accept that that might be part of it, then you can at least track back and forth between assuming, okay, I'm encountering Certain elements of, of the behavior or actions of these beings that, you know, that defies my assumptions that I don't understand and I'm going to have to leave that enigma. And then on the other hand, you're going to have to look at some of those aspects and say, well, no, actually, you know, a lot of this looks compatible enough with what a human being would do that I can understand it. There are advocates of a kind of full incommensurability thesis that would say you can't understand any of it. And then you've got people, I think, naively assuming that you can understand most or all of it. And, you know, and that that's to be expected that you would have both poles of this. Because I, I think that, that it's very hard for people to wrap their heads around the fact that even across human cultures and even across periods of human history, human beings do think in divergent enough ways that a lot of what other human beings think can at times be inscrutable to us. You know, we make a lot of presumptions about the continuity between our own way of thinking and the way of thinking of people from cultures that really diverge from those of the modern era and the United States and Europe, that we're simply missing a lot of what's taking place in their thinking. I happen to have some insight to this because I'm a cultural anthropologist, but even that's not enough. You really have to take distance from your own culture to get a sense that other cultures really aren't configured in the ways that yours are.
- [85:52]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Before we move on to speaking about the kind of SOL foundation and its work that's been going on to wrap up, is there anything else you'd want to say on beings occupants and that area of work you're looking into?
- [86:03]
Peter Scafish
Well, yeah, I'd want to say a lot more about this. I think that for the purposes of this conversation I might be getting a little too academic or intellectual. So I want to kind of step down to what we find in the data and the evidence for what I think are biological beings. You know, one thing that should excite us about this, and it really should be a source of wonder and it should be motivation for us to listen to more experiencers and people that I call encounters. Okay. People who may not call themselves experiencers but have had remarkable encounters or who claim to have had remarkable encounters with so called non human intelligence. One of the most exciting things about those reports is that you're looking at a far wider diversity of reported beings than you get from the kind of UFO community story of, of five types of aliens. Okay. You see some, you know, even in the classic Cold War stuff, people know you see some really weird things. You see things that are much larger than are normally reported. You see things that seem not to be entirely humanoid in form or shape, that sometimes lack legs or seem to be almost composites that were put together to interact with us, presuming that they're there. In the reporting, you see also really weird things that may not be what they appear to be. So, for example, in Karel Lorenzen's work, she discusses a case of someone who in the, in Peru in the late 1940s, had a beachside encounter with a landed UFO. And he reports meeting two figures that almost seem as if they were composed of like, you know, a gel or cartilage or something, but are stable. But there's something like, you know, they have a human form, but they have no face, they have no mouth. They have, you know, some kind of membrane on the front of their heads. And I think you report he reports meeting two or three of them, one of which, when he asks how they reproduce, lays on the ground and divides itself into two, and both of the figures stand up. Now, I don't know, let me be very clear. I don't know that that event happened. I, I trust Corell Lorenzen was not reporting it if she thought that the witness was a, was a liar or, or suffering from a psychotic delusion. So let's say that it happened. Let's entertain that it happened for a second. You know, that would suggest in that case that you're dealing with something that, that, you know, is, is taking on something like a human appearance in order to interact with us. I find that very, very interesting. I, and, and I'm not emphasizing it because I don't think there's something like biological beings out there. In fact, I think, I think they're out there, I think they're part of the interaction. But, you know, you know, we, we find some edge cases like this in which our expectations are so defied that we have to ask, okay, are there, are there beings that are. Sure, they're intelligent, but that characteristic isn't enough to say why they're important, that might be responsible for some UAP that are really beyond our imagination as we have it right now, or if we can imagine them, we would still have a difficult time believing that they're real, they're actual, that they exist. I'm totally fascinated by cases like that and what I'D want to encourage people, you know, who are listening to this or in the UAP community is to. Is to actually listen to some of that stuff. Listen, when witnesses are reporting totally, you know, things that we think are totally implausible, those might be keys to understanding this, you know. And actually, I should mention here, you know, before we move on, that if there are people listening who have had encounters of any kind, you know, please write me through the Soul foundation website. You can write at information the soul foundation.org and that email will reach me. I spent a lot of time interviewing and talking to people who have had encounters and, you know, beyond research, this is just important because people need to, you know, if we don't hear these things and we don't have a chance to start to publicize that they've happened, public understanding of this, you know, just remains really impoverished. So would love to hear from you. Would really appreciate hearing from you. And believe me, I will take the time to have long conversations with you with a very open mind and open ear, because I listen to a lot of this and I know how weird a lot of it gets.
- [91:21]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
I will put the. The SOL website address in the description. I won't put the email address in the description description because that's where the bots pick it up online.
- [91:28]
Peter Scafish
Yeah.
- [91:28]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
And you will get spammed with everything. So I stay away from putting emails in there before.
- [91:34]
Peter Scafish
Yeah, thank you.
- [91:35]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Check that one out. But you mentioned, obviously, Saul, I was really fortunate to attend the event back in October. People listening to this in Italy, and I'm going back there in a couple of months, I've said, with my wife for a couple of nights, stay at the same hotel. So I'm looking forward to that. Really great event. SOL does a lot of really interesting work. It's very multidisciplinary in its approach, and that was very evident at the last symposium and the ones before that preceded it. Where is SOL right now as an organization and what are the plans going forward?
- [92:08]
Peter Scafish
We're in really good shape right now. We're on the upswing right now. And we as an organization, and I mean the executive leadership team, the board, a lot of people on the advisory, advisory board, and people who aren't publicly visible yet, but who are bringing in as research and policy fellows, we're excited about the future direction because we're at the point now where I think we can move forward very strongly, in which you, thankfully, I appreciate it, you rightly identified as our approach, which is to be not multidisciplinary. Within academia, but, but to be very holistic and multidisciplinary in that sense. A number of us come out of academia. So one of our big focuses is scientific and other academic research. Not just advocacy for that, but undertaking it. We have a number of new initiatives that are already publicly visible. We have others coming. But additionally, beyond doing academic work, we remain really committed to policy work and advisory research to the benefit of the US and other governments. Gary and I and others on the advisory board, including Avi Loeb, including Jacob Hakmisra and Tim Gallaudet, we're all involved in the UAP Science Advisory Council. That's one way we can provide that service to government and we're happy to do that. So again, you know, a big part of what we do is not just academic work. It's also policy and advisory work directed to government. Another big component is the, the public education work. And, and I think everyone would agree that's where we've succeeded, you know, kind of in spades as an organization because, you know, when we began, it was still really tough to have a serious conversation, an elevated conversation and even a respectable conversation about UAP and so called nhi. And we helped shape the parameters of a new conversation and we helped, you know, engender a new narrative that I think is at salience across institutions. So a lot of that work continues, not just through the Soul forum, the show we do, but some other things we have in the works that will be some solo pieces by Gary Nolan, some solo video by myself, and then our symposium. And we are planning another public symposium. There might be a private one this fall, but another public symposium in, you know, probably the first, maybe late first or early second quarter of 2027. And the intention, I don't want to say a lot about it right now because we're right at the threshold of executing it is the intention is to have a much bigger event, an event that's going to have a lot more room for people to come in and do things that aren't on the main stage. So I'll just leave it at that. But that is an event that I suspect everyone's going to want to be at who's, you know, a protagonist or serious in the UAP community. That's going to be a event that we intend to have government engage to a great degree. And that's going to be an event that I, I think is going to result in a lot of people asking us to do this again. It's going to be an event that's designed to empower as many people as possible in the space of the event to do what they, they see fit. Because what we've wanted from the beginning is this very holistic approach that where the organization would be of benefit to as many of the different constituencies in the UAP community. And I think at this point we have in mind an approach that that's going to allow for it.
- [96:05]
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- [96:07]
Peter Scafish
You know, I also want to say that at this point we intend to move forward with inter, religious interfaith dialogue. That's something I've always been particularly interested in and that's something I think we're good at and I think the time has arrived where there's going to be a great need for that. So you'll see us doing some public events or having our public events reflect that. And I'm hoping in case there are potential partners out there to convene soon, some private events that would have Chatham House Rule where faith leaders could get together to not only get educated on this, but to discuss their views on it. You know, if you see something like disclosure in the broad sense or the big sense, you know, most human beings are going to receive and refract that through their religious practice and their faith. So I'm interested in, in meeting people where they are on that and really helping educate and empower religious leaders to then go out and play that role of education and facilitation in their communities.
- [97:19]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Peter, it's always great speaking with you and I've greatly appreciated your time. If anyone wants to get in touch off of anything you've said, including whether they've had their own experiences or like you say, if people want to potentially look at the Sol foundation partnering up, getting in touch from that interfaith perspective. If you're listening, the link will be in the description or you can check out Peter's email or you can drop me a message and say what was Peter's email again? I won't be offended and I'll pass that on to you. But yeah, always great to talk and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.
- [97:49]
Peter Scafish
Andy, thank you. It's always great to be on here and once again I and a lot of people want to recognize that you for your work. So thanks for all the years of service you provided to tens of thousands of people.
- [98:03]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Millions actually. But thank you, Peter. Yeah, that's, that's. Appreciate it. Thank you.
- [98:08]
Peter Scafish
All right, you want to do that one again?
- [98:11]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
No, no, that's.
- [98:12]
Peter Scafish
Well, millions of people and apologies for that. But, but look, I, having made that mistake. I I, I want to say though, sincerely, you know, a lot of people really appreciate what you do and, and I, and I know how tough and thankless it could be to do this kind of work. So really want to, you know, extend that that gratitude towards you.
- [98:32]
Andy (Interviewer/Podcast Host)
Thanks pr. Speak again soon.
- [98:35]
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Peter Scafish
Oh no.
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Peter Scafish
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Peter Scafish
Hey everybody.
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Peter Scafish
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