Is Disclosure Near? Nick Pope Breaks The Silence

Prepare for an 🚨 Unveiling UFO Secrets with Nick Pope! 🛸 A dive into the unknown with Nick Pope—former UK Ministry of Defense UFO investigator turned global UAP expert! From government cover-ups to alien bases under the ocean, we’re asking the big questions. Why’s SETI dodging UFO evidence? What’s the deal with Roswell and Lue Elizondo? Are we ready for first contact? Nick’s got the inside scoop—don’t miss it! 🌌👽 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:29Brian Keating?

  Many, many different conversations, mostly about science, technology, engineering, et cetera, but sometimes we venture out into the unknown. And I love to engage with all the most interesting folks in this space, the space, space. And especially excited today to welcome Nick Pope. So Nick, welcome. Welcome all the way from Tucson. We could almost be together. Yeah, well, thanks for having me on the show. It's good to be here. Well, it's great to have you here. I was enjoy, enjoyed seeing a lot of your recent appearances and we'll certainly get into, get into those out there. But we're, I want to give you a proper introduction while the rest of the crowd kind of comes on the line here.

• 1:14Brian Keating?

  And that is to, is to really mention you as the beating heart of the UFO mystery for decades. You spent 21 years with the UK Ministry of Defence, including a stint from 1991 to 1994, running their UFO desk. I mean, now we, we can't call them UFOs, right? We have to call them UAPs now, right? And this was in part for national security reasons, which I really want to get into. You're an expert on that, in that capacity as well. What I find fascinating is for all of our, you know, X-Files fans out there, you're often called the real Fox Mulder, and you don't deny that. Actually, you lean into it. Even in your X profile, you lean into it.

• 1:57Brian Keating?

  So you've become a global authority at all things UFOs or UAPs, as we now call it. You've been in the US for quite some time and you're a fixture on shows like Ancient Aliens, you've been on Tucker Carlson. The other things. You have a new film coming out about something that rhymes with blow vid. You know, YouTube's AI is very sophisticated, Nick, so we can't actually say what it is. But there's a, there's a wonderful film. I linked it in the show note description down below. Where you'll find some of the timestamps for what we're going to talk about today. And you've also written books, Open Skies, Closed Minds, Encounter in Rendlesham Forest, which is actually a very, very interesting story for those that aren't familiar.

• 2:38Brian Keating?

  My friend, I think Julian Dorey had you on at least once, and that was a fantastic episode. So anyway, you've done incredible work and today I really want to talk about these, the recent, you know, claims that, you know, disclosure is imminent. So is this just the, you know, the constant, I have a friend who's a farmer and he says, you know, my cows are always depressed because, you know, they're always getting milk, but they don't have any kids. I don't know what that means. It's something, it means something in Russian, but disclosure's been promised for many years. So what do you make of it? Are we really, truly going to experience disclosure, Nick?

• 3:14Speaker 06

  Well, I don't claim to have a crystal ball on that, but there is no getting away from the fact that there's been a ramping up of developments on this. We've seen over the last few years, undeniably, this subject transition from fringe to mainstream. And we've seen a recognition, I think, certainly on the part of Congress and elements of the government itself, along with the military and the intelligence community. A recognition that this, this is not some sort of silly season, fringe conspiracy sci-fi topic. It is a defense, national security and safety of flight issue.

• 3:57Speaker 06

  And it's, it's now being framed as such in Congress. And of course, we've got a lot of developments and the most recent of which, literally a few days ago, the creation of this new task force on the declassification of federal secrets, which along with declassifying records on things such as JFK is going-

• 4:20Speaker 06

  Going to look at the UAP issue. So we we've got a lot going on and clearly a lot more to come. But whether that's going to be what the UFO community expectantly refer to as disclosure with a big D. I don't I don't know about that. I mean, that's that's a sort of literal, my fellow Americans, people of the world, we're not alone. I'm not sure we're going to get that, but who knows? I hope so.

• 4:46Brian Keating?

  Yeah, I think with the new openness to transparency, thanks to Trump and maybe partially due to Elon's influence and obviously Congresswoman Luna. There is this, this, you know, truly, you know, kind of remarkable. And in my mind, it would be the greatest discovery of all time. And I'm speaking as a cosmologist who's trying to uncover the very first nano, nano, nanoseconds of the universe's existence. But do you feel like some of these things conflating them JFK, RFK, MLK with UFOs? Does that do good or positive service to the UFO phenomenon? Or is there danger of, you know, one too many conspiracies? I mean, the odds that all of them are cover-ups, you know, might be quite low or conspiracies.

• 5:29Brian Keating?

  But do you think there's any natural relationship or harm that's done by conflating all these things together as at least the Congresswoman's planning to do?

• 5:38Speaker 06

  I think it could help and hinder. I mean, the help is obviously the fact that we have an executive order on this. And that gives a sort of legislative executive impetus to that. And there is certainly a common thread of these being subjects of great public and media interest. And also subjects where there is a widely held view that the government hasn't told the people everything that it knows about that. On the other hand, yeah, I take the point that there might be all sorts of rabbit holes that we end up going down here.

• 6:21Speaker 06

  So I think that's that's still all to play for. I think the first, I think the the new task force, they've already written out. Of course, to SecDef, to the CIA Director, Secretary of State Rubio, a few others. So those letters have gone out. In fact, I think the date for the initial briefing has also passed. The first hearings are going to be in March and they're going to take the JFK issue first, but then I hope we're going to get to UAP.

• 6:56Brian Keating?

  And when I, you know, kind of think about these questions, it'd be one of the things I love to do on this podcast, as you may know, is is to give the audience opportunity to question experts like yourself. I mean, it's very hard for the average person out there to get to know, you know, the 21 Nobel Prize winners that I've interviewed on this podcast. And likely as well for you, you're quite busy. So one of the hallmarks that I love to enjoy on this channel is to have have the opportunity for you out there to ask questions. So do stick around and get involved. The first thing I want to kind of bring up is the recent, you know, kind of blockbuster publication by Lou Elizondo of his book, Imminent, which, you know, as far as I understand, can, you know, refers to this imminent possibility of disclosure, et cetera.

• 7:39Brian Keating?

  I was sent the book by Lou. He's supposed to come on. He did not come on yet. I'm hoping to get him on. But what do you make of some of the, you know, kind of calls into question of his, of his credentials, some of his testimony? Stephen Greenstreet, who you probably know from, from, from X Twitter, is very skeptical and has actually, you know, put out tweets that seem to suggest that he may have lied under oath about his involvement with what's called OSAP. What do you make of all this? Is there an inherent risk in coming forward? And if, if, if, if you could help us rank the credulity of the various witnesses, whistleblowers, David Grush, Lou Elizondo, Chris Mellon, I've had on many of them, including not David Fraber, but Ryan Graves.

• 8:24Brian Keating?

  And I've spoken to many of them. But tell me, how do we rank these and what's the risk of coming forward? And is that part of the reason it's taken so long?

• 8:32Speaker 06

  Well, I don't think there's any doubt that all of the people you've mentioned are who they say they are and have done what they that they did. And certainly, I know that Gaddy Schwartz at NBC, I think, fact-checked Lou's claims by going to Harry Reid, who of course, you know, on the political end, set up ATIB. And Harry Reid confirmed, yeah, Lou was the guy that I dealt with on this. And it's also, I think, a matter of public record that the Pentagon's Defense Office of Pre-publication and Security Review, DOPSA,

• 9:13Speaker 06

  have had to clear security vet Lou's book, the written testimony that Lou Elizondo and people like Degradore, I think, and others entered into the congressional record. And of course, if these people weren't who they said they were, DOPSA would have, you know, not got involved at all. I mean, they've got more than enough to do at the best of times, I'm sure. So they are who they say they are. But of course, the proviso with all this is what we're hearing is always going to be an unclassified version of a

• 9:55Speaker 06

  lot of this, which sometimes reduces us to lowest common denominator. Because simply put, people like Lou Elizondo don't want to end up in jail, which they would if they crossed the line. So they are meticulous about pre-clearing the material that they come out with in accordance with the proper security regs.

• 10:20Brian Keating?

  Why do you think, based on all of your expertise and experience in this room, why do you think the scientific community, my colleagues in particular, especially the SETI colleagues, I've been interviewing with one of the foremost leaders, happens to be my colleague here at UC San Diego, Professor Shelley Wright, recently featured on the PBS Nova episode about UAPs. I don't think you were in that, but many of your colleagues are in that. And she's, you know, she's actually incredibly invested and interested in SETI phenomena, it's half of or more of her career. But why is the, you know, kind of orthodox scientific community so hesitant to engage with UFO evidence? I always get this, you know, kind of condemnation from folks on Twitter, X, whatever, saying,

• 11:03Brian Keating?

  "Well, you just don't want to believe because it would upend everything you know about science." I always say, "No, it would actually be one of the best things that could possibly happen to me, at least outside of my family life." Because it would shortcut the 27 more centuries that humanity seems to be waiting to get to breakthroughs, like interdimensional travel and, and learning about how to extend biological organisms' lifetime. So why do you think my colleagues, friends, and experts are so reluctant? Why don't we have, you know, the smartest minds in the world, the Ed Witten's and, and the Nobel laureates that I've interviewed? Why are they so reluctant to get involved and engage with the UFO evidence?

• 11:40Speaker 06

  Well, not all of them, I would say, fall into that category. And I think recently, we have seen people like Michio Kaku dip a toe, well, arguably more than a toe, into the UAP water. We've seen Avi Loeb, of course, professor at Harvard, set off the Galileo Project. So, sure, yes. Yeah, there have been exceptions to that. My cynical answer to your question is that, that in one sense, these people are in competition with, with each other for, for funding. So, given that there are people out there, like, I guess, Yuri Milner and, and some

• 12:23Speaker 06

  of the other players, who are interested in extraterrestrial life and, and the search for it, I suppose, you know, the SETI community is saying, "We're searching this way." And the UAP community is saying, "We're searching that way." And arguably, yeah, they are competing for funds. And I suppose, but also, there's a, I suppose there's a doctrinal line here. One is searching for life out there, and one is saying, "Well, might not some of that life be down here." My compromise, some people would say, on the fence, solution is let's do both.

• 13:05Brian Keating?

  Well, that would be great. Of course, I do think that there is a sort of tainting of the narrative, in part because of my, one of my good friends, Adam Frank, who's a professor at Rochester, many-time guest on the podcast, is very interested in the existence of alien civilizations, technology, biosignatures, technosignatures. And he calls it the problem of prosthetic foreheads, and that the depiction of these entities, you know, is always a little bit too close to, you know, the uncanny valley, that they look just like us, maybe with giant heads and bigger eyes, or no protruding proboscis, proboscis. But the, the, some of the, you know, kind of standards, I think there's a

• 13:46Brian Keating?

  standards gap between the ufologists that you mentioned, and those that I've talked to. I've talked to Tom DeLonge, you know, for three hours on this podcast. And, you know, he went through a very, very interesting story about collecting alien artifacts that he claimed to have possession of, and he, he still claims he has possession of. But when I dig deeper into the, you know, forensics of it, it turns out he can't account for the provenance, you know, uniquely. It could be many origins, it could have had many owners, and he admits that. So I think there's a, you know, kind of standards of evidence and publication, you know, kind of demands in science versus the informal standards in ufology. Do you want to comment on that? Do you think that they could broach those,

• 14:31Brian Keating?

  that, that chasm that you just mentioned in the future? Or is that, you know, going to always be inseparable because one is more based on, as people are saying in the comments already, you know, belief, I want to believe, as, as your namesake characters would say on, on the X-Files? Do you think that's, has a place in this, ufology has a place in proper scientific discussions?

• 14:52Speaker 06

  I think it does. I think the challenge is how it gets there. I mean, clearly, most ufologists, and I'm talking here about civilian ufologists, don't use the scientific method. I don't think anyone's disputing that. Now, what I think we'd like to see is is more scientists coming into this field. And I think that's happening through organizations like Sol Foundation. And I know people like Gary Nolan getting into the field. But I think the challenge is when you say, I'd like to see more scientists looking at UAP. The follow up question is, well, which scientists? What what disciplines? You know, are you talking cosmologists, astronomers?

• 15:37Speaker 06

  Are you talking, you know, other disciplines? Physicists? I mean, I guess they're going back to doctrine. Some scientists will will be so, you know, focusing on light speed as an absolute barrier, defaulting to they can't get here from there and and saying, therefore, it's not even a conversation worth having. And I get that. Now, you know, maybe there are workarounds like Warp Speed and wormholes. And, you know, even even if you even if you don't have that, what about sublight travel? I mean, in in a few hundreds of thousands of years, I guess,

• 16:18Speaker 06

  our Voyager and Pioneer probes might drift close to a nearby star. And and if there's intelligent life there and they see them, those will doubtless be UAP to them and they'll be absolutely real. And they will, if they manage to get a hold of them, absolutely deliver 100% proof of extraterrestrial life and intelligence, i.e. us.

• 16:45Brian Keating?

  So this, I don't know if you saw the PBS Nova episode featuring my friend Shelley Wright and Avi Loeb is briefly mentioned in it, but Sean Kirkpatrick is mentioned in it. And he's a past guest on the podcast as well, as well as Ryan Graves, who's, you know, both of them have been on separate arguments. In that, in that PBS Nova special, which is quite great. It's it's available free on PBS Nova website. You should check it out before it gets paywalled or whatever. But the and I'll have an episode, as I said, with Shelley Wright coming up about the connection between what What is known as optical setting and also ketty, you know, communications with extraterrestrial technology and intelligence.

• 17:27Brian Keating?

  So in that episode, they talk about Roswell, which I believe you've called, you know, ground zero for for most of your career, my career, the people that work in this field. The official story they quote there is a weather balloon. What is, what is the backstory? What do you feel is really behind it? You say there's more to it. What do you mean?

• 17:45Speaker 06

  Well, I think I always look at the first thing that somebody says, rather than the story that builds up in subsequent years. And if you go right back to the very beginning, the literally the first thing that was said was that the US Army Air Force caused a press release to be put out in which they said that they had recovered one of these so-called flying discs. Now, Kenneth Arnold, a light aircraft pilot, had seen what what the world subsequently started calling flying saucers on June 24, 1947. And a lot of other reports came in. So the United States was buzzing with this mystery.

• 18:30Speaker 06

  And then this original press release, as I say, that that the US Army Air Force caused to be put out and essentially worded, said, you know, the many mysteries surrounding the flying discs have today been, and I'm paraphrasing, of course, have been put put to rest with the recovery of one of these discs through the good offices of the 509 Bomb Group and the local sheriff. 24 hours later, they said it was a weather balloon. And so, you know, the initial story put out by the military themselves was that we've recovered a flying disc. And again, you know, everyone can make mistakes.

• 19:14Speaker 06

  But at the time, the 509 Bomb Group was the only atomic bomb capable squadron anywhere in the world. So they tended to put the best of the best in there in any role, whether it's the pilots, the intelligence officers, whoever it is. And If ever there was a bunch of people least less likely to mistake a weather balloon, which you know, you saw on a fairly regular basis, it's probably these people. So that's what makes you think, you know, there's a little bit more to this. Now subsequently, of course, we've had the official story that this was actually Project Mogul, which was a high altitude

• 19:58Speaker 06

  intelligence gathering operation to look for evidence of Soviet nuclear tests. But it's still, despite all the fancy sounding words, it's still just a bit of kit that they sent up essentially on a weather balloon. So I'm not sure that helps us. But again, as with all of this, it's a binary question. Either elements in the US government have or they have not at some previous point, whether it's Roswell or whether it's anything else. Either they have or have not recovered extraterrestrial technology. And if they have, this new task force should now take a sort of Gordian knot

• 20:42Speaker 06

  approach to the entire UFO mystery and say, look, I'm not interested in this or that, but it's either true or it's not. Let's get to the bottom of it.

• 20:54Brian Keating?

  Indeed. And speaking of that, you've talked recently and it was it's quite exciting to me as a physical scientist, as a physicist, with some interest in chemistry and certainly interest in biology. The question of whether or not the evidence is there or if it actually exists currently. We've heard of things like landing craft artifacts, objects that have bizarre properties Luke talks about in his book. One of the things I want to talk to him about, you know, these objects that are bigger inside than they are outside, kind of like a tardigrade or not like a tardis. But you mentioned interesting possible relation to what I do, which is isotopic ratio analysis. What are your thoughts on that?

• 21:38Brian Keating?

  Where does this come into play? How would it be done in a way that would preserve the provenance that I believe even Tom DeLonge says is missing? How could we do it in a way that would be transparent, open, but also scientifically rigorous?

• 21:53Speaker 06

  The short answer is I don't know and you might be better placed to answer that question than I. And yeah, sure, if any of this has been around for decades, as is alleged, then there are questions about chain of custody. But my, I guess, point on this is that I wonder if there aren't techniques such as isotopic ratio analysis, such as, what is it, x-ray diffraction and things that couldn't be used. If Congress can basically subpoena individuals and recover these materials,

• 22:32Speaker 06

  which by all accounts, Tom DeLonge did through a collaborative research agreement, actually make available to Army Materiel Command.

• 22:46Speaker 06

  You know, I wonder that if Congress can't get access to presumably the US Army tested that, well, let's have the material, let's have the results and then, you know, scientific method, repeatability, let Congress find some experts and repeat those experiments and see what they get. Because again, it's binary. I mean, some people have made some extraordinary claims and and either there are these, these craft and it's been alleged bodies, people like David Grush have testified under oath to Congress. Well, let's, let's get effectively a sort of, you know, whether it's executive order,

• 23:30Speaker 06

  whether it's subpoena, whether it's a sort of habeas corpus. I don't know how that would apply to aliens, but you know, let's get it. Let's get it into a lab and let's get everyone working on it.

• 23:43Brian Keating?

  Yeah. So you've obviously been involved in a lot of, you know, intergovernmental and governmental agencies with, you know, true security interest and security clearances and so forth. I'm going to be interviewing an author by the name of Rebecca Charbonneau. It was written about the Soviet program. What do you know about the Soviet UFO investigation? I mean, they're obviously during the same time period were quite advanced technologically. They had influence and actually interest in the high frontier of outer space. So how did they balance it, if at all? And how were the similarities between the UK and the US and the USSR? You would expect if it's a true scientific phenomenon to see repeatable things.

• 24:26Brian Keating?

  You know, the, the speed of light is the same in, in London as it is in, in San Diego, as it is in Moscow. So how could we use that lack of, or that actual positive evidence to solidify, you know, these, these claims of disclosure? In other words, won't we expect that it should all come out at once from all governments? Because these phenomena, the aliens probably won't know initially to come to, you know, to Tucson or, or to come to, you know, northern, the, the forest where you encounter these crap. So what, what do you make of, of the, of the, you know, using that as sort of a rubric to assess the credulity, credibility of these, of these sightings and so forth and of this phenomenon in general? Shouldn't we expect to see the same phenomena all over the planet?

• 25:12Speaker 06

  We probably should. We know, or when I say we, the Ministry of Defence in the UK was aware that Russia had a program looking at UAP. But we, we didn't, we didn't know much more than that, frankly. Obviously, you know, they were and still are an adversary. Again, we know now, and I think there has been official confirmation that China has a program. But again, we don't know much about that, or rather, if we do, I'm not read on to any of those those US programs that might have penetrated, whether it's through espionage

• 25:57Speaker 06

  or whether there is some degree of back-channel communication on this. So I can't really say much about about that. I mean, what I can say on the allied side is that, and this is something that Sean Kirkpatrick spoke about, actually in public, I think, when he was testifying at the NASA, the independent UAP group that NASA set up. He said that he had, and this now is, of course, a couple of years ago, but he said that he just convened the first meeting of the Five Eyes UAP. I think he called it either a working group or a caucus or whatever he said.

• 26:42Speaker 06

  So we know at some level that the Five Eyes Intelligence Sharing Alliance has had at least one meeting on this. Various defense journalists, I think, have asked in all five respective nations, you know, the United States, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand, and haven't gotten much more than confirmation that they attended a meeting. I actually got confirmation that two officials from Defense Intelligence, which is part of the Ministry of Defense, attended that Pentagon meeting, but nobody's releasing any any minutes from that meeting.

• 27:25Speaker 06

  So all I can say is that Russia and China have a program. Other nations too have programs. I mean, France is an interesting example. France is one of the few countries, I think, that embeds its UAP program in in their space agency and not in the sort of Department of Defense or Air Force. So Russia and China have a program. Five Eyes are engaged, but we don't know much about any of that.

• 27:56Brian Keating?

  Well, we've got, you know, close to 1,000 people watching now, and I do wanna let you know out there that you'll be able to ask questions for Nick, and there's some for me as well. But also, before you do that, please go to my website, briankeating.com, just as it's spelled, and subscribe to my mailing list, and you may get some extraterrestrial technology. Nick, I'll give you this when you're next in San Diego. This is a chunk of maybe extraterrestrial technology. I don't think so, but it's an interstellar, or it's at least a meteorite. I don't know if it's interstellar or not, but it's pre-Earth's existence. This comes from 4.3 billion years ago, and I give them out to about 10 people every week on my join the mailing list, where I talk about the guests. I'll be writing about this conversation

• 28:41Brian Keating?

  as well. I've been writing recently a lot about this much bigger brother of this object, which is an asteroid with a nonmemorable name, 2024yr, or something like that. It's about 100 meters wide and scheduled to possibly impact the Earth, which would maybe be a bigger deal than even disclosure, and that could occur in 2032. The odds now of this big brother of this object, which you may win, is the highest in recorded history. So NASA's tracking it. I'm gonna be talking with JWST scientists later on today, in fact, and they need to track it because it's a 3% chance. Now, Nick, would you get on an airplane if you had a

• 29:25Brian Keating?

  3%? I mean, nowadays, I don't know, it seems like even higher than 3% chance of having an issue, at least. But what do you make? Have you heard about this asteroid object that has this 1 in 33% chance of reaching us on Earth in about eight years?

• 29:40Speaker 06

  Yes, and now I know I followed the story closely enough to know that NASA are saying the odds may come down again when they have more data, and let's hope that's... Turns out to be true, but I mean, you know, yeah, worst case scenario, if this hits. In fact, I was just reading um an article from Avi Loeb this morning, which said, and I presume that I haven't got it in front of me, but I think the figure is that it would hit with about 500 times the the power of the Hiroshima uh bomb or something like that. So this is absolutely why we need to have the the DART mission and and of course, you know,

• 30:21Speaker 06

  NASA and you know, others, maybe, maybe Elon Musk will lend a hand. Um, yeah, but we need to seriously start looking at deflection of this because of course, as as you know far better than I, I mean, you know, that's 2032. That's the one we've found, but what about the one that we haven't found that we might suddenly on shorter notice find inbound with an even higher percentage? So so this is a, you know, I mean, we're, we're having some fun with it. There are some great Hollywood movies, I guess, like Deep Impact and Armageddon. But yeah, there is a serious science that needs to be done about asteroid detection and then deflation for sure.

• 31:04Brian Keating?

  Yeah, that's absolutely right. So yeah, so please do join uh the mailing list. Here's a link to it. I'll put it up on the screen right now. And if you have a dot edu email address, if you're lucky enough to be in academia currently, I want to give back especially. So you're guaranteed to win one of these beauties, a fragment of the uh earth ending. No, no, hopefully it won't be the earth ending asteroid, but it's a real asteroid and and fragment, that's exactly what it is. And we hope that we're going to be able to uh, yes, either deflect it or perhaps uh or perhaps do something to it if it does rise above a certain limit. Obviously, you don't want to, you know, uh, blow it up if you're going to then create uh, you know, thirty, you know, thousand of these fragments that could each, you know,

• 31:45Brian Keating?

  take out a a small town rather than an earth ending um object like this one could be. But but likely, I don't think it it's even going to be that big. I mean, yes, 500 Hiroshimas is quite, well, you know, ruin your day, but uh but it's not enough to take out the earth as originally. But that brings up this question of, you know, possible motivations and why aliens would come here. Have you thought about this? The motivations for why a civilization, if they exist, first of all, we have to stipulate. There's no evidence that's publicly accepted, you know, scientifically, double-blind, you know, random. I don't want to say random control test because that'll make us think about COVID and stuff like that. But, but the point is, Nick, have you thought about motivations? Is that important? Should we, should we be careful in anthropomorphizing the motivations for why aliens would come here?

• 32:30Brian Keating?

  I mean, of course, Stephen Hawking, who I didn't have on the podcast, but, but I've had many people close to him on it. You know, said, don't even contact aliens because that's like ringing your own dinner bell. How do you, you know, kind of weigh the different motivations? Why would they come here? I mean, are we that interesting?

• 32:47Speaker 06

  Well, I hope we are. I, I think, yeah. Clearly, we can only take an anthropocentric view of this. So there is a danger there. But I think one of the few good assumptions that we could make. If, if it turns out that we do have extraterrestrial visitation. One of the few really good assumptions is, is that by virtue of the fact that we can't get there and they can come here. Their technology, their understanding of science and their engineering ability to, to harness that must be orders of magnitude ahead of anything that we've got. That being the case, I think it, it is also a logical deduction that they would not be coming here

• 33:33Speaker 06

  because we had anything to teach them about science and technology and things. So I'm more attracted to the idea that they would be coming here as explorers, as scientists, and perhaps above all, as anthropologists. Because one of the really interesting things to truly advance civilizations in the universe, it seems to me, might be newly emerging civilizations like us. Now, that would arguably, you know, throw up a whole new list of potential issues and dangers for us that Stephen Hawking alluded to. But that, in terms of have I thought about it?

• 34:15Speaker 06

  Yes, and that's kind of where I've landed, the idea of anthropology.

• 34:20Brian Keating?

  Hmm. Yes, I think there is kind of, you know, space tourism and so forth is not limited to just human beings, but, but the, yeah, question of resources. And of course, there's another, you know, school of thought that says, no, these civilizations will want to keep their presence quiet. And I've done a solo episode of my podcast explainer where I'm going to be releasing that shortly, which explains kind of this analogy between how these aliens might behave like more like, you know, the bacteria in this, you know, Petri dish in this test tube here that I'm holding up. And that's that they actually engage in very complex warfare. Evolutionarily speaking, the most important thing for many

• 35:01Brian Keating?

  of these things to do is to, you know, clear out their local neighborhood of any competitors. And then once that happens, sometimes these bacteria are too successful and they actually end up wiping themselves out. And those are, of course, many different answers to the so-called Fermi paradox. What do you make about the Fermi paradox? Is this a legitimate thing in the concomitant Drake equation? How much time should, you know, the politicians and, and, and security agencies and intelligence agencies, how much knowledge should they have to have about the physics? The, you know, I always hear these objects break the laws of physics, but if you don't have a physicist, how do you know what these things are actually doing? How do you know that they're defying laws if, if the politicians and the intelligence agencies, you know, rightfully so, they don't know much about the underlying science behind these things?

• 35:47Speaker 06

  Well, I think that's why it was good that the, the contract or SAP that preceded the, the related ATIP that the, the Pentagon did, did get into this. And, and they, I think, published 38 defense intelligence research documents. And I know, I know that one of them was about the statistical Drake equation. So, so they did write at the beginning of trying to take a proper look at this, try to integrate the scientific understanding into that.

• 36:28Brian Keating?

  Yeah, and I think that is a positive development that they're at least open to it. And I do hope that, like the NASA panel, they'll empanel, you know, a very prominent scientist. My friend David Spiegel, the president of the Simons Foundation, was the NASA panel lead. Shelby Wright, as I mentioned, was on the panel. How do you weigh the different, you know, political gain disclosure? I mean, we see, you know, God love them, Nancy Mace and Congresswoman Luna. They're very, you know, prominent people. They they're not shy. They love to kind of be out there on TikTok and on Instagram, you know, with their, with their, you know, kind of, quite frankly, sometimes, you know, self promotional, but I understand that.

• 37:11Brian Keating?

  How do you, as an advisor to politicians, how do you weigh these motives? I mean, is this something that they should be more cautious about? Again, conflating JFK, RFK, MLK, UFO, UAP, all that, you know, there's no natural, say, scientific link between these things, although they are linked via national security and perhaps via transparency. Do you think that this, you know, push towards, you know, just everything should be out there all at once is a good thing, that we should just, every citizen has a right to know everything? Or do you think that there are some things that should be kept secret perhaps and not, you know, broadcast on TikTok?

• 37:50Speaker 06

  Oh, absolutely. And I think, for the most part, these politicians, even the ones that you see a lot of on on social media and mainstream media, I think they all know where the line is. And I know that when I, when I see some of them come out of classified briefings and somebody sticks a microphone and a camera in their face and says, hey, what just happened in there? They are very good at saying, well, I can tell you in general terms, but I'm not going to go into the details. So, yes, absolutely, I think it is a given that sometimes there are very, very good reasons for secrecy.

• 38:29Speaker 06

  And if the answer to any of this is that there's a technology that can be weaponized, there is an excellent reason for secrecy. That being said, I don't think anyone, and the common link with all the things like JFK, RFK, MLK, UAP, etc., the common link is secrecy and the perception

• 38:52Speaker 06

  Widely held that the government tends to be overly cautious and tends to overclassify things. And so I think that, and that doesn't need the scientific method, that just needs a kind of reappraisal of the rules to say, are we classifying things for the right reason? The reason to classify things should be what it says in the security manual, i.e. information, the disclosure of which could cause, talking about top secret here, catastrophic damage to the national security of the United States. Well, if that's being abused and people

• 39:35Speaker 06

  are applying that classification to something which is just politically embarrassing or just intellectually difficult, then that is an abuse of the system. And that, I think, is what the new task force is going to be getting into. And I think it is good in all of this, that this is bipartisan still, even in these divided days, because as well as some of these high-profile Republican figures, we have had people like Chuck Schumer, of course, for the Democrats.

• 40:07Brian Keating?

  And Harry Reid.

• 40:08Speaker 06

  Joe Postlethwaite.

• 40:10Brian Keating?

  Yep. And Harry Reid, of course, was the one Speaker of the, yeah, the Senate Majority. So I want to pivot to some, you know, maybe more speculative claims that I've heard you discuss in the past, maybe on Ancient Aliens or other projects that you've worked on, that perhaps humans may have gained some of our technology from extraterrestrials in the past. Can you comment on that? Is there evidence for that? Is that just a plausible theory in your opinion? Where do you come down on that?

• 40:40Speaker 06

  I think I'm skeptical about that, actually. When I, when I sort of, you know, sometimes in TV, my role on quite a few shows is almost to act as an on-screen narrator. So I'm very often sort of putting out, saying, these are the claims that some people in the UFO community make. Now, I'm skeptical of that. And I mean, I think that the sort of chain of custody, as it were, the scientific discoveries, the engineering leaps that were made, I think you can document fairly well how things like the transistor was, was.

• 41:21Speaker 06

  Developed. I don't think you need Roswell to explain things like that. But that's the central allegation is that something crashed at Roswell, extraterrestrial, and that we back engineered it and developed the transistor, night vision goggles, lasers, Kevlar body armor, that sort of thing. You know what I mean?

• 41:44Brian Keating?

  I call that the AI of the gaps, you know, whatever we find hard to explain. But but often that does come up, you know, if these aliens are here as Michio Kaku and God love him, I've had him on the podcast. But, you know, if they're transporting themselves across the cosmos, you have to ask why? And why not use something else? You know, why send a, you know, a human when a robot or an AI can do it for you? I think that's quite interesting. Are you optimistic about Trump, you know, being the, you know, the last president under which, you know, we have to abide by non-disclosure?

• 42:15Speaker 06

  If, and I know this is a big if, but if there is a smoking gun anywhere in the system, I think that Trump, as as a maverick, as a populist, and as a second term president, that's almost the perfect storm for disclosure. Because here you have somebody who's not going to be listening to the civil service, not going to be listening to the bureaucracy. And obviously, he's written his name in history anyway. But my goodness, if he or his task force uncovers the fact that somewhere in a basement office in the Pentagon, this

• 42:59Speaker 06

  is all true, and there is a little team sitting on the wreckage and it's in a hangar somewhere, Trump would probably just say, right, I'm signing an executive order and I'm going to push that out. So if it's there, I think Trump in his second term is the best possibility ever to get it out. And that raises an interesting question. This is more for the skeptics, of course. If that doesn't happen.

• 43:25Brian Keating?

  Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 06

  It is much more likely that there is no smoking gun. Now, that doesn't mean...

• 43:33Speaker 06

  That we're not being visited. It just means that we don't have any of these spaceships in hangars or bodies on ice that some people believe we have.

• 43:43Brian Keating?

  Yeah, we do. Or underwater. You talked about the possibility of submersible or underwater craft or entities, beings. Not the first time I've heard about it, but can you explain it for the audience? Members that might not be familiar with, you know, these, these possibilities that are often discussed, including by Congresswoman Luna.

• 44:03Speaker 06

  Certainly, yeah. I mean, for much of the eighties, there was this kind of interesting narrative that the UFO community had. And, and it's interesting because a lot of them claimed to have had sources in the intelligence community. People were skeptical about that, but now looking back, it makes me think actually some of those claims were likely true. Because the narrative was, oh, this is very odd. UFOs are being looked at by the government, but it's, it's often the Navy. Now that sounds counterintuitive. And yet, when we found out, for example, who the head of the UAP task force was, it was Jay Stratten.

• 44:47Speaker 06

  And Jay Stratten was, was a career intelligence officer, of course, but his background, his center of gravity is naval intelligence. And again, when the New York Times broke the story of ATIP and the US Navy videos, again, it was Navy spokesperson before Sue Goff at the Pentagon took this over. Everything was Navy. And yeah, just a few days ago, as you say, Anna Paulina Luna, when she was at that press conference announcing the task force, said, we will be looking at UAP and USOs.

• 45:27Speaker 06

  So Lou Elizondo introduced the public, I think, to the phrase transmedium travel to discuss the apparent ability of some of these objects to move seamlessly from the air to under the ocean. And there have been reports that some of these objects have been detected on sonar.

• 45:48Speaker 06

  From some of our ballistic missile nuclear submarines, for example, so that immediately pushes it to almost the highest imaginable classification. And yeah, absolutely. So USOs, the idea that there are maybe things down there or things that can come in from space, operate in our airspace and then move under the water, that is going to be looked at as well.

• 46:17Brian Keating?

  And then the last couple of questions before I turn it over to my brilliant audience, the most multi, multi dimensionally magnificent minds and then multiverse is, is this question of, you know, that I've often heard about, which I confess I don't understand. I'm pretty good with relativity, time calculations and, you know, can solve my way around most equations. But this, this notion that I first heard about from Tom DeLonge in our, in our live stream, I'll put a link to that somewhere up there, you know, it's got close to a million views so far with my friend Kurt Jemungle and also Jim Semivan, who is maybe an analog to, you know, did some of the work at the CIA that you were involved with, with the MOD. But they

• 47:01Brian Keating?

  talked about, well, maybe these beings aren't actually, you know, entities from other solar systems, which is a proper astronomical target of study. Half of my, you know, astronomy colleagues are interested in exoplanets. I'm very interested in them as well. But, but he claims that, you know, possibly they're time traveling beings. I mean, would this even fit into the realm of UAPs, this notion that, you know, perhaps they're, they're future humans in some sense? I really have to confess, I thought it was lunacy, but, but, you know, maybe I'm being a little bit too dogmatic in my rigorous scientific demand. So what do you make of these claims before we turn to the audience questions?

• 47:41Speaker 06

  Sure, I mean, in the intelligence analysis community, there's an old kind of joke saying, interesting if true. And I think, I think this is a classic, interesting if true. I mean, I guess it would get around that point you made earlier. I can't remember who you said had, had brought it up, but I've heard it before. You know, why do they look so humanoid? I guess the answer would be because that's what we evolve into in a few hundred thousand or million years time.

• 48:12Speaker 06

  You know, it's not my area of expertise. I am not aware. I, I, I guess I've heard that people like Professor Ronald Mallett is, is looking at some aspects of time travel and whether it would be theoretically possible or not. But that's about all I can offer. I mean, I guess it is interesting that people have moved to more inclusive language about this. So now we don't talk about aliens or even extraterrestrials. We talk about non-human intelligent to leave open the idea of time travelers from the future or something from other dimensions, or maybe even something that we don't have

• 48:50Speaker 06

  the conceptual awareness, understanding or language to, to even not only describe, but even conceive of perhaps. And we even now talk about, you know, like I say, all these, all these open terms to, I, I guess everything is on the table, which is kind of an interesting place to be.

• 49:12Brian Keating?

  Okay, so let's turn to questions. You can ask questions in the chat or and then some on Twitter we're getting as well. So the first one comes from Archangel Reece, which I actually, you know, was thinking of that name for one of my children. He tells me you have to ask Nick about the Rendlesham Forest incident. Can you give us the, the 30 million light year view of that?

• 49:35Speaker 06

  Oh my goodness, the elevator pitch. Well, something landed. And all I would say is that there is a declassified Ministry of Defence file that at least documents some of the basic facts that that some of the military personnel reported something had landed. They did take a Geiger counter to the landing site after the thing had taken off again. They found levels of radiation which they thought, um, they being the Ministry of Defence, thought seemed significantly higher than the average background. Uh, the witnesses did on a subsequent night, because there were three nights of sightings, did include the deputy base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Holt,

• 50:19Speaker 06

  who initially was skeptical and thought this was all nonsense that was interfering with the base's primary mission. And then he was told it had come back and saw it himself and became convinced. So, so, um, yeah, I've written a hundred thousand word book on it, but that was the, the short version.

• 50:39Brian Keating?

  All right. Very good. Thank you, Archangel. Wonderful name, wonderful name. Hmm. Um, okay. Next question comes from Edward, uh, who asked what percentage of these famous whistleblowers, I guess he's talking about Lou Elizondo and others who, um, are in it just for the money. In your opinion, Nick, I'm not asking you that.

• 50:59Speaker 06

  I don't think any of them are. I mean, Lou Elizondo was a GS-15. And I, I haven't looked at it.

• 51:06Brian Keating?

  Explain that to me. It's, I'm sorry, that's a government.

• 51:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's a level of, of, um, it's a grade. And it's broadly equivalent, I think. If, if you look at the military equivalent, it's the equivalent, I think, of, uh, like a full Colonel. And yet he left the government to do this. Well, you know, I don't know what his book advance is, but even if it was fairly hefty, uh, you, you don't have to rack up many more services, years of service as a GS-15, um, to, to be earning some fairly big bucks. So I wouldn't be surprised.

• 51:45Speaker 06

  If some of these people had actually lost money out of this, but you know, I always, I always, I never liked this question because it's, it's like, well, come on, you know, would, would you have said, would you have asked Stephen Hawking the same question about, and I'm not having a go, but I'm, I'm just saying sometimes we, we treat the idea that someone might write a book about something as, as oh, some chanting it. Whereas in fact, you know, someone like Stephen Hawking with brief history of time probably introduced all sorts of people who would never normally look at topics like that to absolutely fascinating topics. And if he earned some money in the process, well, good for him.

• 52:27Brian Keating?

  Well, Nick, I'm here to tell you some good news about that. I actually heard Stephen Hawking speak when I was a wee lad in graduate school and in mid nineties. I went to a Royal Astronomical Society meeting and he was giving a lecture. And at the end of the lecture, he was able to answer questions very haltingly. He was still using his wheelchair and then speech synthesizer. But it was real time, at least compared to what he was able to do later in his life. And somebody at the end asked him, you know, Stephen, why did you write this book, A Brief History of Time? It's rumored that almost nobody's able to read it, you know, cover to cover and or understand it. And they just like to have it on their coffee tables to appear like they're a member of the intelligentsia.

• 53:07Brian Keating?

  And after 12 minutes of, you know, awkward silence, the response came back, I needed to pay for my daughter's college. And so you're absolutely right, but, but obviously it, it influenced people to such great stuff. Okay. Next question comes from, uh, comes from, uh, let's see here. Uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, okay. Uh, Mr. President, let's see here.

• 53:37Brian Keating?

  Okay, so Mr. Public Pain is going, is being a little bit salty. He's saying the biggest con game from con men on aliens is the past teaching us to stack stones. All a con game. So there's a lot of, you know, notion again of this, you know, being a big grift for political gain, for influence. Again, how do you react to that? Some saying, oh, well, Nick's credentials aren't as good as he say they are. How do you react to the, this criticism? Is it meant to discourage you from coming forward, from whistleblowing? There's price to pay for all this. With, with, with all these people that get, you know, really harsh emails, as you'll hear in my interview with Shelley Wright, Professor Shelley Wright,

• 54:17Brian Keating?

  you know, even serving on a NASA panel. Oh, it's just NASA. They're trying to protect. How do you handle the, the slings and arrows that come your way from this?

• 54:25Speaker 06

  Well, I'm okay because, you know, if, if somebody asks about my credentials, I'm in the really fortunate position of being able to, to direct them to UK government websites, which describe me as a former UAP investigator. There's, there's a reference to that on the National Archives website. There's a reference to that in the official record of UK Parliament and all that is, is open on, on the internet. So I'm very lucky that I can, I can back up my claims with, with government websites. I, I think some of the other people in the intelligence community are more unfortunate because those are not the sorts of documents

• 55:10Speaker 06

  that are going to be posted on government websites. And, you know, I think it's, it's a case by case basis. I do know that David Grush was the victim of a, a very unpleasant sort of dirty tricks campaign to deliberately put into the public domain, personal information about him to, that would, would cause some discomfort. I mean, that's a whole nother story, but, you know, I think it, I think it comes, it comes with the territory to a certain degree and people should absolutely push back against claims and ask hard questions.

• 55:50Speaker 06

  But I think everyone knows where the line is between asking hard questions and just crossing the line into insult. And I kind of think that that's common sense and just basic human decency. So I think people

• 56:06Speaker 06

  Go up to the line, but don't let's cross it.

• 56:09Brian Keating?

  Okay, Ashedlembo Majola, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that right, says, why does it seem like it's mostly the US government that's preparing for the big reveal? Do you think other superpowers like Russia and China are looking into that? Well, you mentioned this before, but in summary, yes, you do think that they're looking, and they're, you know, in France, you said they're actually devoting or, you know, connecting their space program with it. So other, other, you know, countries, I always like to, you know, kind of be provocative and say, you know, if you eliminate the UFO sightings in America, you would think that we're a pretty boring civilization. But, uh, but do you weight these by population, you know, the technology that these countries, you know, China has a lot of cell phones too. Or is there something more at work there?

• 56:52Speaker 06

  Well, I think with Russia and China, it's the fact that these are essentially closed societies with, with no, certainly with no, you know, basic sort of freedom of the press as we would understand it. And allied to that, there's no getting away from the fact that, that, you know, if we talk about the free world and what's open and, and things, language and culture and just a sort of very US centric mind view places the US rightly or wrongly, but places the US at the heart of, of a lot of things, not just UAP.

• 57:27Speaker 06

  That said, of course, Congress, a lot of people are being very vocal about this, but there was a time, people should, should kind of rewind seven or, or eight years or so. There was a time when this issue was an absolute third rail and when nobody, politics would touch it because of the fear of, of stigma and ridicule.

• 57:49Brian Keating?

  Absolutely. Yasser Abdul Amir asks, do you think disclosure will have any theological implications?

• 57:58Speaker 06

  I did an entire TV series called After Contact, which I created actually saying, let's get away from this is it or isn't it debate about UAP and extraterrestrials. Wouldn't it be a fun kind of thought exercise to say, how is society going to be affected if this does turn out to be true? And absolutely, this will touch deeply and profoundly every aspect of our lives, both individually and collectively, politics, science, technology, the economy. And yes, to answer the question, religion is going to be a huge part of that.

• 58:39Speaker 06

  All sorts of theological implications. Obviously, some of the major world religions are looking at this already. I know that Catholic Church have have been, you know, quietly funding some, well quietly, they have their own observatory, but but conferences and things to look theological and doctrinal implications of this. Islam and Judaism may be less so, or maybe they're being less forthcoming about it. But I don't think there's any denying that that's going to be one of the big issues. And and one of the the potential flashpoints of this.

• 59:20Brian Keating?

  Indeed. Okay, cam 35 millimeter says it's never going to happen. It's like the Wizard of Oz. His power comes from keeping his curtain shut. Nick, what are the odds of disclosure in the broadest possible sense coming true and swiftly and soon?

• 59:36Speaker 06

  Fifty fifty. I mean, again, it either is or it isn't. And then it then follows that it either will or won't be discovered or revealed. And when I say discovered or revealed, of course, there are parallel parts here. You could get what the UFO community called disclosure. My fellow Americans, people of the world, we're not alone. Or you could get just contact, you know, either some literal sci fi scenario, or more likely James Webb finding an undeniable techno signature that couldn't be attributed to to anything natural so far as the scientific consensus is concerned.

• 1:00:20Speaker 06

  So or you could have both. They're not mutually exclusive.