Should the government be hiding aliens?

Daniel and Kelly review the recent movie 'Disclosure Day' and discuss some tough questions about knowledge and secrecy. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Daniel Whiteson?

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• 2:24Daniel Whiteson?

  Is the truth really out there? Down here on Earth, we are slaving away, incrementally trying to unravel the secrets of the universe. What's it all made out of? How big is the universe? How does life start? But what if aliens already have these answers? And what if they are here on Earth and have already shared the deep secrets of the universe with members of our government? And what if the government is keeping those secrets from us? It makes me want to scream with frustration.

• 3:09Daniel Whiteson?

  How could they do that? Why would they? Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me. I desperately want to know. On today's episode, we'll explore this question. Is it ever reasonable for the government to keep such massive secrets from the public? Is it even plausible that they could do so? And in an attempt to stay culturally relevant, we're going to review the recent movie on the topic, Disclosure Day by Steven Spielberg. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Alien Universe.

• 3:38Kelly Weinersmith?

  Hello, I'm Kelly Weinersmith. I study parasites and space, and I am excited today because I'm excited for Daniel, that we're talking about Daniel's favorite topic.

• 4:00Daniel Whiteson?

  Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist who loves thinking about aliens. And though I've been working with and for the government my whole life, I know zero government secrets.

• 4:10Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, I mean, that's kind of disappointing. Are you just not high level enough?

• 4:14Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, number one is I have no clearance because I have three passports. And also, I have no interest in working on anything dangerous or anything that could be used to kill people or anything like that. So that makes me not a very good repository for government secrets. Also, I'm not a big fan of secrecy, and I'm not great at keeping secrets. So anybody out there.

• 4:33Kelly Weinersmith?

  I'll keep that in mind. Wait, wait. So I've just discovered a huge hypocrisy, though, at the bottom of Daniel.

• 4:40Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, no.

• 4:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  And here's the huge hypocrisy. I've heard you say on multiple occasions that you would never want to work on, like, anything that could be used for weapons or anything that could be used to hurt humanity. But I've also heard you say on multiple occasions that you would sell the entire human race for the opportunity to meet aliens. So is it just like, you don't want to help your government? Or you just want to make sure it helps you in particular? What is the, how do you?

• 5:05Daniel Whiteson?

  I think that's, no, that's totally consistent. I believe in openness and the flow of information, and that means inviting the aliens to come talk to us, even if we can't be sure that they're going to behave themselves when they get here. And they might nuke half of Earth from space, you know?

• 5:22Kelly Weinersmith?

  You are nuts. I can't get around that. But all right, here's my question for you for today. If aliens came to Earth, who do you think they would want to see first? And before you say physicist, because I'm sure, like, try to work through, is that a selfish answer? Or do you think that's the real answer, the right answer?

• 5:42Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, that's a great question, and I think it's basically an impossible question, because you're asking me to put myself in the minds of these beings and understand who they are, what they want, when they get here. I think it's basically impossible. So I'm going to reject the question, answer a different one.

• 5:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 5:58Daniel Whiteson?

  Which is, if we arrive at some alien planet, who would we want to speak to? Right? I think that's the only one I could really give an answer to. And that's a good question. And I think it's probably also an impossible one, because you're already, like, mapping human social structure onto the aliens. Like, even assuming that there are the same categories. Are there physicists? Are there mathematicians? Are there politicians? You know, even just assuming that there are structures you could access or even think about is already going further than I think we have the basis to go. But all right, I've done enough rejecting the question. What would I actually say? Who would I want to talk to? I mean, I think number one would have to be linguists, right? You got to establish communication first.

• 6:43Daniel Whiteson?

  You can't just say, like, bring me to your mathematicians or something, and you have no way to communicate, because obviously our symbols are going to be different from their symbols. So you got to establish the primitives. And so I think the people who have thought about how to talk to weirdos, those are the people you want to talk to first. Not the politicians, not the mathematicians, not the gymnasts, probably not even the alien parasitologists.

• 7:06Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, no. I thought we were going to be first in line. Who doesn't want to talk to the ecological parasitologist? All right, I think that's a good answer.

• 7:15Daniel Whiteson?

  I mean, I do. It's just, like, not top of the list.

• 7:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  I mean, probably top five. Maybe top three.

• 7:22Daniel Whiteson?

  All right, well, then, my question for you, Kelly, is have you ever been in the situation where you have an important secret to keep?

• 7:30Kelly Weinersmith?

  I guess it depends on how you define importance.

• 7:34Daniel Whiteson?

  Sounds like a dodge.

• 7:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  It has been important from the perspective of, like, my family or something. But not important from the perspective of, like, anybody outside my family would care. You know, like, I'm not supposed to tell you the topic of my next book. I'm not supposed to say that on air.

• 7:52Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, that's interesting. So you do have a secret that you're being paid to keep. Interesting.

• 7:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  I get, but is it important? Is anybody going to lose sleep for the next two years while I'm writing the book? Probably not. Probably not.

• 8:06Daniel Whiteson?

  So you've never been, like, in possession of important scientific information? Like, there's a parasite that's going to ravage lettuce in the United States, but I can't tell anybody?

• 8:16Kelly Weinersmith?

  No, no, I don't have, I'm not an important person like that. But what about you? It seems like you actively avoid being that kind of important person.

• 8:25Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, that's true. Although I have had some scientific information I was told to keep to myself. For example, before we publish big results, we embargo them. So they're released through the proper channels and all this kind of stuff. For example, when we discovered the Higgs boson, we knew that we had it before we announced it. And that's because we wanted to coordinate with the other group and have a common announcement and not have some silly race to the podium and stuff like that. Although, I will admit on air that I broke that. I called up my buddy on the other experiment, and we shared our information with each other. Because, you know, we'd seen several false positives. We'd seen signals for the Higgs before, which then went away with more data. And so I was like, is this one real?

• 9:09Daniel Whiteson?

  And the only way to really know if it's real is to see if the other independent experiment got the same result. That's why we have two independent experiments. And that's why it's important to keep them independent. The people should not talk to each other, should not bias each other.

• 9:23Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, so did you ruin that, then?

• 9:26Daniel Whiteson?

  You're asking me, did Daniel ruin a $10 billion science experiment because he was impatient? Hmm.

• 9:35Kelly Weinersmith?

  Even if the answer was yes, you would say no. Is that what I'm hearing?

• 9:38Daniel Whiteson?

  No, I'll totally admit to having done that. But you know, it was only like a week or two before the official announcement. So it was too late to like, really change any results or actually influence the science. And I should have waited, I admit, but I couldn't help myself. And I'm sure I was not the only one. I mean, there were situations where like a married couple were on opposite sides of this. I'm sure they talked about it, you know?

• 10:00Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 10:01Daniel Whiteson?

  How do you keep that secret from your spouse? Like, we're about to announce the discovery of the Higgs. I hope you guys have it too. Otherwise we're scooping you.

• 10:08Kelly Weinersmith?

  Right. Why do you have that grin on your face over coffee? Like, yeah, if you can read your partner, you know.

• 10:14Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. And in some sense, this is an important piece of information in that we want to understand the universe and we want to do it right and we want to be responsible about it. But you know, it's not going to like kill anybody or spread information that could be used to kill anybody or create any danger. And so the stakes are high scientifically, but not existentially.

• 10:35Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. All right. And so you can't be trusted. Got it.

• 10:41Daniel Whiteson?

  I can be trusted to tell you all the dirt. All right. If I have a secret, you know, I'm going to be telling it.

• 10:45Kelly Weinersmith?

  It's a way to turn a negative into a positive.

• 10:48Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 10:48Kelly Weinersmith?

  I'm just so honest that, uh, okay. All right. But today, the secret we're talking about is aliens.

• 10:56Daniel Whiteson?

  Yes.

• 10:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  So why are we talking about aliens today, other than the fact that that is what you literally think about 24/7?

• 11:03Daniel Whiteson?

  We're talking about aliens today because there was a movie that came out recently, which was kind of a big deal. Steven Spielberg's movie Disclosure Day, which is all about aliens and whether the government is hiding information about aliens and how that might play out. And it's a Spielberg movie and it's about aliens. And a bunch of listeners wrote to me and said, what'd you think of the movie? And so I thought, hey, I'm going to watch this movie and let's do a little review. But also let's talk about some of the really interesting issues that are raised by the movie about government secrecy. Should the government keep secrets? What kind of secrets can the government justifiably keep, et cetera, et cetera? Plus, any excuse to talk about aliens.

• 11:42Kelly Weinersmith?

  Absolutely. And you sent me an outline of this and I wrote back and I was like, are you sure we want an episode around a movie that maybe no one's heard of? And you pretty much wrote back and were like, are you kidding?

• 11:54Daniel Whiteson?

  What, do you live on a farm in Virginia or something? Like, how disconnected are you from pop culture?

• 11:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, so I know nothing about this movie. And so I will play, I don't think, actually, I'm representing a large swath of the population because it sounds like everyone's heard of this movie. But anyway, I'll let you know if there's a spoiler in there because I haven't seen it.

• 12:16Kelly Weinersmith?

  But let's throw to the extraordinaries and see what they have to say. So you asked them, if the government is aware of aliens, should they disclose to the public?

• 12:26Daniel Whiteson?

  Exactly. I was not interested in people's theories about whether the government has information about aliens, more about this question of whether they should disclose it if they did have it. So thank you very much to all the extraordinaries who answer these questions. And again, if you would like to join this, you are very, very welcome. Just write to us, to [email protected] and you can get these questions in your inbox. In the meantime, think about it for a moment. What do you think? If the government is aware of aliens, do they have a responsibility to tell us? Here's what the extraordinaries had to say.

• 13:00Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, hmm.

• 13:02Speaker 06

  Yes, 100%. Why should governments have all the fun?

• 13:05Speaker 07

  Immediate non-disclosure to the general public would be prudent to determine if they pose any danger to Earth and/or its inhabitants.

• 13:11Speaker 06

  People absolutely want to know. So yes, the government should disclose to the public if they are aware of alien visitors. I feel like it's less of a question of should they than could they stop themselves? Cover-ups never go well for anyone involved. But if this is a dark forest situation, maybe keeping everyone dumb and stumm is wiser. I've had top secret security clearances for many years.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  I believe the government does not know that aliens exist. And if it did, it would and should disclose them. Absolutely, they should disclose it to the public, assuming they have proof. I would say yes, mostly because I don't really see what's the case for not disclosing

• 13:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  it. I mean, I don't really see the negative consequences. Okay, that was quite a range of responses. And also, it's interesting to me to know that we have listeners who have had top security clearances.

• 14:10Daniel Whiteson?

  And are willing to disclose what they know on the air. Look at that.

• 14:15Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, I guess saying that you have top security clearances doesn't necessarily mean that you know about the alien question. Like, I have people write me all the time and be like, I'm a scientist, let me tell you about parasites. And I'm like, well, not all scientists know about parasites. But anyway, so yeah, what did you think of these answers?

• 14:31Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, I think a lot of them are saying, tell me, tell me, tell me, right? There's a lot of self-interest in these answers. People want the government to disclose because they want to know. And it's hard to imagine the government having this information and not sharing it with us. Oh, my gosh. Imagine that scenario. That's terrible. But also a lot of good arguments that there isn't a great argument for non-disclosure, which is a topic we're going to dig into in detail today. So I think these are great responses.

• 14:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, as always, and if you want to lend your voice, you should write us at questions at danielandkelly.org and just let us know you want your email address added to the list of questions that we send out approximately once a week. All right, so Daniel, I live under a rock with my fingers in my ears. I haven't heard of this movie. Give me the lowdown on this movie.

• 15:18Daniel Whiteson?

  So the movie is Disclosure Day. It's written and directed by Steven Spielberg. I hope you've heard of him, maybe?

• 15:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. I was born, I was a child in, you know, the 90s and the early 2000s.

• 15:30Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. And it's his response essentially to the disclosures in 2017. There were the series of articles in like the New York Times and other mainstream media about these videos and reports by Navy pilots that they were like seeing things in the air they couldn't explain. And there were some videos of like stuff moving in a weird way that didn't make any sense or didn't line up with any known craft or in some cases seemed to violate the laws of physics, et cetera, et cetera. And there was a big hoopla about these videos and then a lot of analysis of them. And mostly they were shown to have prosaic explanations, you know, like parallax effects or camera motion creating apparent motion of the stuff on screen.

• 16:13Daniel Whiteson?

  We're not going to dig into that today, but that was the source material that inspired Steven Spielberg, who of course has spent his life thinking about aliens, right?

• 16:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  ET.

• 16:21Daniel Whiteson?

  Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET, et cetera. To write a movie about whether the government has information about aliens. Because that was really the subject that was brought up by those videos. Like, look, the government has a bunch of these videos and they've released a few of them and there's a bunch more that they didn't release. Oh, my gosh, what's in those? Does the government know about aliens? Are aliens here and the lizard people are keeping it from us? And so he wrote-

• 16:46Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's many conspiracy theories all in one. You're layering.

• 16:50Daniel Whiteson?

  It's a universe of conspiracy theories, once you dig into it. And there are, a lot of them are really fun. But this movie is a fictional story. Okay, right? It's fiction, number one. So he created his own universe. And in that universe, the aliens have definitely come to Earth, right? There are aliens who walk among us. And in Spielberg's universe, the government has aliens like hanging out, you know, live aliens they talk to.

• 17:16Kelly Weinersmith?

  Like with Men in Black?

• 17:17Daniel Whiteson?

  Yes, and they are working with these aliens to like create advanced technology and copy their tech. And in some cases, they like maybe are torturing the aliens. And so like, the relationship between the government and the aliens is a little bit fuzzy, but basically the government knows there are aliens and has secret alien tech that they use.

• 17:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay. I feel like torture puts you in a not fuzzy area. It's a pretty clear black and white sort of relationship, but, but okay. All right, I see where you're going.

• 17:43Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. And there's a vast shadow government group tasked with keeping it a secret. And they keep it a secret even from like the highest levels of government. So like the president doesn't know. There's like, you know, deep state secrets being kept from highest level of government, Congress, et cetera. And so in this movie, the good guys say, hey, the government shouldn't keep all this information secret. Everybody deserves to know about the universe that we live in. That message resonates with me for sure, right?

• 18:15Kelly Weinersmith?

  So it was easy for you to identify the good guys. There was no ambiguity there.

• 18:18Daniel Whiteson?

  Exactly. Also, it's pretty clear who Spielberg thinks the good guys are. And the bad guys who think they're the good guys are the guys trying to keep it secret, right? And they think it's dangerous to share this information with the public and that it must be kept from them. And, you know, their motivations are not like, we want this for ourselves. We want to be the only ones who get to use the alien tech. It's ostensibly to protect the world from this dangerous information. But of course, you know, if they're the only ones who know, then they get to be the only ones who know and they get to be the only ones who play with the alien tech. So, you know, there's a conflict of interest there, of course. Now, the movie is not saying aliens are real. It's not saying the government is hiding aliens from us.

• 19:02Daniel Whiteson?

  It's putting us in a fictional universe where aliens are real. And there's a struggle between elements of society about whether or not that information should be widely known or not.

• 19:13Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right, well, let's take a break. And when we get back, we'll talk about whether or not we think humanity is prepared for the secret about aliens and whether or not it could be bad.

• 19:23Daniel Whiteson?

  I'm ready. I'm ready. Tell me, please.

• 19:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  Daniel's ready. Calm down, Daniel. Calm down.

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• 22:26Kelly Weinersmith?

  And we're back, and we are talking about what might happen if a government knew that there were aliens. Would it be safe for them to tell the rest of us?

• 22:35Daniel Whiteson?

  Right. So let's start off by talking about secrecy in general, because you might be tempted to take like a maximalist position or an absolute argument about this and say, the government shouldn't have secrets. Because, you know, look, the truth belongs to everybody, and the government is a public institution, and it's supposed to work in the favor of the public, and we pay for it, et cetera, et cetera. They represent us, you know? We're not in some sort of North Korean autocracy. And that sounds appealing, but it doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, because, for example, you know, people have a right to privacy, you know? There's information the government has about me that other people don't deserve to know, like the details of my tax returns, or my social security number, or whatever, things

• 23:19Daniel Whiteson?

  that the government might need to know about me, because I'm a member of society, that Kelly doesn't need to know, or a random listener doesn't need to know, right? So.

• 23:27Kelly Weinersmith?

  Why can't I know?

• 23:31Daniel Whiteson?

  What are you gonna do with it, Kelly? How do I know you're not using it for nefarious purposes?

• 23:35Kelly Weinersmith?

  I mean, maybe I want to be Daniel Whitehead, online at least.

• 23:39Daniel Whiteson?

  You know, and in general, like, you do not have a right to know everything that everybody knows. You know, there are secrets within marriages that deserve to stay a secret. What happens in other people's bedrooms, for example, is not something I even want to know, and certainly don't deserve to know. So it's not true, most generally, that like, the truth belongs to everyone. There are definitely some pieces of information that belong to certain people, and not everybody has a right to know them, right? So the maximalist, like, all information belongs to everybody, that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

• 24:11Kelly Weinersmith?

  Sure, but I also feel like there's broader geopolitical reasons why you'd want to keep secrets.

• 24:16Daniel Whiteson?

  Yes, exactly. It's even reasonable for the government to keep secrets from the public, right? For example, like, how do you purify uranium in an efficient way so that you can have bomb-making materials? That's a really dangerous piece of information, and I don't think that everybody should know that. And I think it's good, actually, for the government to keep some secrets, you know? Or, for example, if you could, using implements in your kitchen, develop a device capable of destroying the planet, and you knew that information, you probably should not share that information with the whole planet, right? That would be very dangerous information. And so, for national security reasons, it certainly makes sense for the government to keep some secrets.

• 25:00Daniel Whiteson?

  Also, like, where are our troops right now? What are they doing? What are their biggest vulnerabilities? Like, that's not information that I deserve to know, even though those troops are out there in my name and protecting me. They can't protect me, and they can't protect the public if their locations and their vulnerabilities are shared. So it makes perfect sense for the government to have some secrets, right? Not controversial.

• 25:27Kelly Weinersmith?

  Sure, but I guess I feel different about it if I'm thinking about, should the North Korean government have secrets? You know, that's less good than the US government having secrets, or, but anyway, of course, everybody's got their own side they're rooting for.

• 25:38Daniel Whiteson?

  Right, exactly. And here, we have an element of trust, right? We accept that the government has secrets from us, and as citizens in a democracy, we can consent to that, to this process, that the government will decide what is safe to share and what is not safe to share. And in this case, at least, we know about the existence of these secrets. Like, yeah, we all know that there are nuclear weapons, and we know that that information about how to build them is dangerous, and we consent to that not being shared broadly, right? So we're like, aware of the existence of the secret, and we can consent to the secret being kept. And more generally, like, yes, the government should know where the troops are, and we should not. Like, we know about all of these things, and we agree not only that they should be

• 26:23Daniel Whiteson?

  secret, but that the government should be in charge of which secrets are kept and who is told them, right? So that's a level of trust we're putting in the government.

• 26:31Kelly Weinersmith?

  But I feel like you're assuming that we know of all of the categories of things that we're not being told about, but there could be categories of things that we don't know that we're not being told about, and I guess that's, I guess that's the point, huh?

• 26:43Daniel Whiteson?

  Yes, exactly.

• 26:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  I'm catching up.

• 26:45Daniel Whiteson?

  No, so that's the next level, right? Are there secrets that are too dangerous for us to even know of their existence? Could there be knowledge that's so dangerous, we have to be protected from being told that it exists? And that's the question of this movie, right? Because in the movie, they know about aliens, and the baddies are always saying, this information is too dangerous. If you told everybody about this, it would cause societal disruption, and it would tear the world apart, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the argument is like, essentially, we're like being children that need to be lied to about the reality, you know?

• 27:24Kelly Weinersmith?

  Do they go into any more detail about, like, what they're worried about in particular? I feel like I'm not necessarily seeing the steps between letting people know that there are aliens and the, like, collapse of civilization.

• 27:36Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, you know, I had the same reaction, and we're gonna dig into that in a minute.

• 27:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay.

• 27:40Daniel Whiteson?

  But first, I think there's more to explore about this question, more generally, about whether the government can keep secrets about the secrets they're keeping. You know, like, even if you don't believe that the knowledge of aliens would tear society apart, can you, Kelly, imagine a secret that the government should keep from us? Something where the knowledge would be so dangerous that even admitting it exists is dangerous?

• 28:06Kelly Weinersmith?

  Uh, all right, so you're putting me on the spot.

• 28:10Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, I mean, you gave some examples earlier of, you know, like if it was possible to make, I don't know, a nuclear weapon in your kitchen, I would not want the government to share that.

• 28:18Daniel Whiteson?

  Right. And I agree that the government shouldn't share the knowledge of how to build it. But the fact that it's possible, I suppose, maybe you, are you saying that even the fact that it's possible to do that?

• 28:28Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 28:28Daniel Whiteson?

  Should be kept secret?

• 28:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, man, I don't think I'd want the government being like, oh, hey, we figured out a way to make nuclear weapons in the kitchen. We're not gonna tell you, but we're gonna leave that as an exercise for the, uh, for the student or whatever. So, I mean, I can imagine not wanting people to know that that is a possibility at all, for example.

• 28:45Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, that's interesting. Another category I was thinking about was panic. What information might legitimately cause panic? And you see this a lot in like the asteroid movies that I love to watch, you know? An asteroid is gonna hit the Earth in five days, discovers government scientist, should we tell everybody?

• 29:02Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 29:02Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, knowing that the Earth is gonna be obliterated in five days probably would cause a lot of societal disruption.

• 29:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 29:09Daniel Whiteson?

  And breakdown of law and order and stuff. I still think we should tell everybody. People deserve to know that kind of stuff. Like, yes, maybe lawless gangs are now gonna be roaming the streets with human heads on their motorcycles or whatever, but I would like to know if I'm gonna die in five days and everybody I love. I think maybe a fuzzier question is like, well, what if scientists discover there's a 50% chance that an asteroid is gonna destroy the planet? And then you might be causing panic for no reason, right? So

• 29:39Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Daniel Whiteson?

  These are interesting scenarios without easy answers. And I think it's a worthwhile philosophical discussion and one about democracy and representation and trust. And do you trust the government to decide which secrets to keep? But I think the scenario of aliens, which we can circle back to your comment, doesn't really fall in that category. I mean, in the movie, they suggest that, you know, the ontological shock of learning that we're not the only critters in the universe capable of developing technology and not even the only critters on Earth, because the aliens are here, that that would like disrupt society. But I don't buy that, you know? I think, yes, that would be an ontological shock. It

• 30:22Daniel Whiteson?

  would change our relationship with the universe, but I don't think everybody's gonna be like throwing bricks through Target's plate glass windows in response. Like, does that make sense to you at all?

• 30:32Kelly Weinersmith?

  So I agree with you. And I also feel like we should give humanity a chance to put their best foot forward and like impress us as opposed to just assuming that they're gonna throw bricks through plate glass windows. But, you know, maybe that's just, I like to think of myself as an optimist. And yeah, it does seem like a very different kind of question than is an asteroid coming to kill us all? Although I can imagine

• 30:56Daniel Whiteson?

  Right.

• 30:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  Like if an influencer, for example, you know, got word and started convincing people that like literally the only reason aliens would come here is if they like thought that we were a delicious snack and a nutrient that was missing on their home planet was found in human bodies. I mean, I can imagine people creating panic, but on the other hand, I, I still feel like everyone has a right to know that we are not the only life in the universe. That seems like an important thing for everyone to be able to like handle.

• 31:23Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. And that's a really good point. I mean, the scenario where like, look, we've just learned aliens have entered the solar system and they're gonna be here in five days. That's more akin to the asteroid, like, we don't know, are they gonna show up and shake our hands? Or are they gonna nuke us from space or send us to work in hydrogen mines?

• 31:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  Right.

• 31:41Daniel Whiteson?

  That's a little scary. But the scenario in this movie is much different from that. It's aliens have been here for 60 years and we've been happily collaborating with them on scientific projects in secret for 60 years, since Roswell.

• 31:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  Or we've been waterboarding them, one of the others.

• 31:56Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. And, and we've been torturing them, actually. So we're the baddies, right? And so I don't think that that scenario would set off like mass riots or upheaval or panic. It might, you know, undermine the government. The government might be voted out of power, you know, or you might need like reforms if we discover the government's been misbehaving in that way. But, you know, nobody's throwing bricks through plate glass windows in that scenario. In fact, I think it might be kind of shrugged off. Like, this would not be a massive ontological shock. Yes, it's a big update to our knowledge, but it's not like something we haven't considered. It's the subject of like a lot of movies. And there's a lot of people out there who already believe that it's true, right? Lots of folks

• 32:38Daniel Whiteson?

  out there believe that aliens walk among us. So learning that's true, it's fascinating and it's important, but I don't think it's like as big an ontological shock as like the Big Bang, you know, learning that the universe is expanding and was once really, really dense. Or when we learned that like the Earth is billions of years old. Or when we learned about evolution, like these are huge ontological shocks that require us to update our knowledge of the universe and our place in it, our relationship with it, the context of our lives, all of this stuff. But there weren't like riots in response to Darwin or like continental drift theory, you know? There were definitely like social

• 33:20Daniel Whiteson?

  responses, but not something that would make you think like, whoa, humanity is not ready to know this stuff.

• 33:26Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay, well, so let's think about what is the worst thing that happened after one of those theories became popular? So like, I can't say that I, because I'm also a wet blanket. So, so I can't say that I've, you know, like looked up all of these and know the history of all of these right now. But like, for example, after the idea of evolution came out, eugenics followed from that idea, you know, the, the idea that there are some races that are more fit than others, which has no scientific basis at all, but we convinced ourselves at the time that it did. And then we did some horrible things after that, you know, theory became public. And so on the one hand, you know, we've learned a lot. It's, you know, contributed to our understanding of the universe, but we didn't handle that information appropriately for a long time and vulnerable population suffered

• 34:10Kelly Weinersmith?

  the most. Does that change the way you think about all of this? Or is it just it's humanity's responsibility to handle the truth in a responsible way? Sometimes we fail, but we shouldn't hide the truth. What do you think?

• 34:21Daniel Whiteson?

  I think we have definitely behaved badly in lots of scenarios in response to the truth, but we've also behaved badly without knowing the truth.

• 34:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 34:29Daniel Whiteson?

  So I think we're, I hope we're more likely to behave well when we understand reality, when our knowledge is more aligned with the way the universe actually works. I mean, I guess it's not a big surprise to say like, I'm a big believer in transparency and people should know. I mean, up to like, you know, what's going on in random people's bedrooms. But in terms of like knowledge of the universe and the outputs of science, I think people deserve to know. And even if the consequences are like, look, society gets overhauled or changes, like that's in response to reality. It's better to live in reality than to live in illusion. So, um, yeah, there can be ontological shocks

• 35:11Daniel Whiteson?

  and some of those can be even kind of harsh and might lead to a reorganization of how we live. But then we're living in a way that responds to the universe and not fiction. And I think that's definitely gotta be better. And I don't trust the government to make these decisions about like, look, here's a piece of information which we imagine people might respond poorly to. Like, that's definitely overreach in my book. And if we want to think more about like, how might people respond to this? Like, think about the way people respond to current scientific results or, you know, space exploration achievements. Still, a lot of people out there like deny that the Earth is round or that we went to

• 35:52Daniel Whiteson?

  the moon. So even if the government like produced aliens, there are a lot of people will be like, nah, I don't believe it.

• 35:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 35:59Daniel Whiteson?

  And so I don't think that it makes sense to keep this information from people. And I don't buy the argument really at all that it would lead to chaos or riots that we're somehow protecting humanity by keeping this information from us, which leads to a really interesting question, which is like, where does this idea come from that disclosure might be dangerous? Because it's definitely out there. Like, it's a premise in this movie and it's just sort of like stated as if it was obviously true. But your initial reaction was like, huh, that doesn't make sense. And it doesn't make any sense to me. I can't make a strong argument for it. But there is an interesting history here. And I have a speculation. So here's my theory about where this idea comes from.

• 36:45Daniel Whiteson?

  I think it might be a load-bearing strut in the UFO conspiracy theories, right? So people who believe that aliens are here and that the government has like recovered craft and is like reverse engineering it. In reality, not in the movie, right? Like today that there are aliens somewhere in a bunker or in a hangar owned by the government, those people have a little bit of an issue, which is like, okay, if the government has this information, why haven't they shared it? Why are they keeping it a secret? Right? Because the government shares scientific information all the time, right? I publish papers, you publish papers, it's all government-funded research. And so they need an answer to the question, why it has not been disclosed?

• 37:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay.

• 37:30Daniel Whiteson?

  And so if it was too dangerous, then okay, there's your answer, right? And in this weird way, the conspiracy theories work like the lack of evidence for aliens becomes like a load-bearing part of the story rather than a gap. The fact that their government has not shared any evidence, but there are some of these suggestive hints implies that there's like a cover-up, right? And so I think it helps support this conspiracy theory to argue that disclosure would be dangerous and that's why they haven't told us. I personally don't think it makes a lot of sense. I'd be curious to hear from listeners who disagree with me about this. Write to me and let me know why you think it might be

• 38:13Daniel Whiteson?

  dangerous to disclose aliens. But I do think that it helps the conspiracy theory survive, right? Because it provides an answer to the question of why hasn't the government told us about this if they are here? And if you're thinking like, well, what if the government has like worked with the aliens and now they have super dangerous new technology? Cool. But the government could still tell us about the aliens without like sharing the technology. If the aliens know how to build a nuclear bomb from vinegar and baking soda, you don't have to tell us about that. Just you could still tell us the aliens are here, right? So it doesn't hold together for me. And I think it's a necessary part of this conspiracy theory survival. That's my theory for where this comes from.

• 38:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  I suppose I could see the argument that like, if you're getting secrets from the aliens, it would be easier to surprise your adversaries if they didn't know the aliens existed at all. Cause then they wouldn't have, you know, crazy out of this world technology on their mind as like something that for example, the United States could have. So I could plausibly see that argument maybe. But I feel like I have a lot of dear friends who work for the government. And it's hard for me to believe that anybody would like not slip up.

• 39:32Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Kelly Weinersmith?

  And like share that information that aliens exist.

• 39:37Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. So let's dig into that. Like, is it plausible for the government to keep such a secret? And I think here it's worth doing a little bit of history and understanding where some of these theories come from. Because, you know, the government has not always behaved very well.

• 39:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  True, true.

• 39:55Daniel Whiteson?

  And there have been times the government has lied to us. And so the history of the disclosure movement specifically, like in reality, not in the movie, is interesting. It comes from-

• 40:04Kelly Weinersmith?

  Actually, Daniel, I'm gonna cut you off. We're gonna take a break. And when we get back, that's when we'll hear about instances where the government has actually hidden stuff from us for at least some period of time.

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• 43:08Kelly Weinersmith?

  And we're back. And, uh, you know, in case you were sleeping well at night, let's go ahead and have Daniel tell us about some examples where the government at least tried to keep some secrets from us.

• 43:20Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. As a way to trace, like, where does the disclosure movement come from? The people who believe that the government has alien craft and are advocating for transparency about it has interesting threads in history. And it starts with the Roswell incident, you know, famous crash in 1947, which was not handled super well by the government. So this is July 8th, 1947. And initially, there was an announcement that they had recovered a flying disc. And this was reported in newspapers nationwide, though it may have been like a misquote of the farmer, you know, who used it as an analogy. But anyway, it was reported as a

• 44:05Daniel Whiteson?

  flying disc. But then very quickly, the official statement was reversed. And they said, no, no, no, it was just an ordinary weather balloon. Unfortunately, this was not what was actually happening, right? This is not an ordinary weather balloon. Years and decades later, actually, 1994, right? The US Air Force revealed that it was part of Project Mogul, a then-secret program that flew these long trains of balloons carrying microphones as a way to develop technology that could detect Soviet nuclear tests. So back in 1947, they didn't want to reveal, oh, hey, this is part of a secret project of Americans, not aliens,

• 44:47Daniel Whiteson?

  developing these new kind of objects that can fly and listen. So they lied about it. And they said, no, no, it's an ordinary weather balloon.

• 44:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  For 50 years.

• 44:55Daniel Whiteson?

  I don't think they lied about it very well. And it, you know, created a lot of confusion. And also the initial reports about it being a flying disc and then being labeled a weather balloon, and then later admitting it wasn't a weather balloon, didn't create a whole lot of credibility for the government.

• 45:11Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, I guess. So if you're trying to play the devil's advocate, I guess you could say the government at least cleared up that it wasn't alien-made.

• 45:17Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 45:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  And then they kept the secret that they needed to keep for the Cold War perspective. But it is amazing. It took 50 years. I mean, you think the Soviet Union, well, I was gonna say the Soviet Union fell in 91, and then just a couple of years later, it became announced or something like that?

• 45:31Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 45:32Kelly Weinersmith?

  You still probably didn't need the secret for that long.

• 45:34Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, I don't know. But you know, the other part of this context is like, in the seventies, the public lost a lot of faith in the government. You know, we had Nixon and Watergate and discovery that the government is spying on us or is lying to us. A lot of faith was lost in the government there. And that adds to this perception of like, hey, it's totally reasonable, actually, and not conspiracy nonsense to imagine that the government is doing nefarious, sneaky, even illegal things, because they had been, right? And so that sets the stage for this MJ12 hoax. In 1984, there was a release of these documents called the Majestic 12. These claimed, later discovered to be a hoax and forgeries, that

• 46:18Daniel Whiteson?

  there was a secret committee created by Harry Truman to manage recovered alien technology and bodies.

• 46:24Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh.

• 46:24Daniel Whiteson?

  Right? And so this was catnip for people who believed that the government was lying to us, because the government does lie to us, and wanted to believe that they were aliens and the government was working with them. And so this framework, you know, the alien crash had craft, the government had recovered them, a secret organization controls the evidence, and the public is being intentionally deceived. This really sank deep into a lot of people's psyche, even though most historians and document experts analyzing it think it's very, very clear that these MJ12 papers are forgeries. They still had a vast influence on a lot of people.

• 47:04Kelly Weinersmith?

  So for Roswell, the inciting event was the crash. But for MJ12, the inciting event was somebody forged papers and released it? Or was there?

• 47:13Daniel Whiteson?

  Yes.

• 47:13Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay, huh?

• 47:14Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 47:15Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay.

• 47:16Daniel Whiteson?

  And so then in the 90s, the term disclosure becomes widespread. And you know, we have things like the X-Files, which taps into this feeling of like, hey, there's truth out there that you don't know, but somebody does. And it's being kept from you by shadowy government operators, right? And again, look, you know, the government has behaved badly in lots of scenarios. And so there's reason to feel that way. And then there's the growth of the internet, which connects a lot of people who think these things and connects them to each other. And then it was in 2001, at an event by the National Press Club, organized by Stephen Greer, and he created a new organization called the Disclosure Project.

• 47:59Daniel Whiteson?

  And this helps standardize the term disclosure as a proper noun. And so that's the beginning of like, the official disclosure movement, which then blew up and became mainstream after these New York Times articles in 2017.

• 48:12Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay, so when I was getting interviewed for A City on Mars, and this was in like, 2022, 2023, people would say to me like, well, what do you think about the recent disclosures about aliens? Do you believe that they've come to Earth? What were they talking about? Because I, again, I live under a rock with my fingers in my ears. And so I hadn't heard about these things. What were they asking about?

• 48:33Daniel Whiteson?

  So they're probably referring to these release of these videos.

• 48:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay.

• 48:36Daniel Whiteson?

  In 2017 and the articles about them. You know, there's always been discussion on the margins, but to see this reported credulously in the New York Times really made it mainstream for a lot of people. And these videos are fascinating. You know, there's the Tic Tac video, the Go Fast video. You should go out and watch these things. And then you should also see the analysis of them by folks like Mick West and other people who try to understand like, what are we seeing? But for a lot of people, these were treated as evidence that UFOs are real. Number one, you have Navy pilots who are not just like, you know, internet cranks. These are like highly trained folks saying that they're seeing stuff all the time that they're not understanding.

• 49:17Daniel Whiteson?

  And you now have these videos from some cameras on these jets showing stuff that we can't initially explain. So the government said they had like more than 100 of these videos and they only released a few.

• 49:28Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's like a recipe for, I want to cause problems.

• 49:32Daniel Whiteson?

  Right? Well, it's sort of similar to the Roswell incident. Like, I'm sure that some of these videos reveal government secrets, you know, like government has the technology to see this and that. They don't want to reveal that they know how to do this. They have this kind of camera that can do these kinds of things. There's lots of reasons to keep these videos secret that are not, there are aliens in them. They could also have videos of like new, I don't know, Chinese drones that can do crazy things. And maybe we don't want the Chinese to know that we know. Like, there's lots of prosaic possible explanations for why they might keep it secret. I actually once got a phone call from a US congressperson.

• 50:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  Wow.

• 50:10Daniel Whiteson?

  Who wanted to know like, hey, I'm hearing stuff about these videos. What does the physics say? Like, is it possible for there to be wormholes and whatever? And I was like, sure, I'll answer those, but first tell me what you see in these videos. It's like, what's there? You've seen all the videos. And he was like, yeah, there's nothing there that's exciting. It's all similar to stuff we've seen. So I don't know if he was revealing stuff he wasn't supposed to. And now I'm revealing it? I don't know. Anyway, clearly don't tell me any secrets.

• 50:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  And this is the point, the government's not good at keeping secrets. Because it tells people like Daniel.

• 50:42Kelly Weinersmith?

  The worst thing you could do.

• 50:44Daniel Whiteson?

  So anyway, that's the history of the disclosure movement. And, you know, I want to say, I don't think that the government has these secrets and is keeping them, but I do believe in disclosure. I do think the government should be more transparent. I think government secrecy has created a lot of gaps and a lot of confusion and a lot of distrust. And we would all be better off if there was more transparency. So I'm definitely pro-disclosure. And I agree with you that it's implausible for a government to keep such a secret for so long. Like in the movie Disclosure Day, there's this vast network, there's people who like come to work every day. There's like hundreds of people who work in this organization. How can they possibly keep this secret for so long?

• 51:27Daniel Whiteson?

  And in fact, the movie, I think, I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, essentially argues that it's impossible. Because the whole plot of the movie is somebody who's working on the inside decides individually and unilaterally that this isn't a secret that should be kept, and they work to disclose it. And eventually that's going to happen.

• 51:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  There's got to be a Daniel in there.

• 51:46Daniel Whiteson?

  Exactly. There's a Daniel in the organization. And, and essentially, I think it's impossible to imagine that everybody's going to agree with a mission forever. And like, think about how the government has failed to keep secrets. Like, when we created nuclear technology, how long did the US keep that secret? It was like, less than 10 years.

• 52:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, and Klaus Fuchs was already sharing the information between governments while it was happening, right?

• 52:11Daniel Whiteson?

  There you go. There's always going to be like a Snowden, right? NSA mass surveillance was revealed by Edward Snowden. You know, you got examples like the Pentagon Papers and MKUltra and stuff like this. It's hard for the government to keep secrets for very long. So the idea that the government would have a vast network of people, scientists, like PhDs, and it's not that big a community. If there is a huge group of people with physics PhDs who are now working on like, understanding alien technology, I would know some of them. We'd all be like, hey, where did Sally go after she got her PhD? Oh, nobody's heard from Sally. Nobody knows what Sally's working on. Like, you know, there's not a missing community of PhDs working on this stuff. So I think disclosure would be inevitable.

• 52:54Daniel Whiteson?

  If the government had these secrets 80 years ago, we would know them by now.

• 52:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right, so let's take a step back and think about if we have been consistent with our arguments across this. So like, you know, we've been saying, the government tries to keep secrets, but they're not really good at it. They pretty much always, you know, it gets revealed. But like, the Roswell incident took 50 years, you know? And so like, how, what makes you confident that the government hasn't been sitting on the existence of aliens for five years? And the Daniel in their community hasn't come forward yet? Like, what, what do you think about a scenario like that?

• 53:26Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, that's a good point. And I think you're right. I think if aliens had like, teleported into the Oval Office yesterday, we would probably not know about it yet. Because the government would spend some time, and I think responsibly so, trying to understand the implications of revealing this information and taking care. So I think it's possible for these secrets to be kept briefly. I think these secrets are so shocking, and the implication is so vast, that it's impossible for them to be kept for very long. And I think that a lot of this disclosure movement argues that they've been here for a while. They've been here since Roswell. But I agree with you that it is something that could be kept secret briefly.

• 54:07Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, but I agree, something like aliens, especially because if you are the person who tells the world about aliens, you are a meat, like, your name will be remembered forever. And so I feel like there's also that like, level on top of it, like, the possibility to become absolutely stinking famous, probably also would push you to disclose.

• 54:26Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, and I'm pretty sure our current attention-loving president wouldn't pass on that opportunity.

• 54:30Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 54:31Daniel Whiteson?

  And I think there's something else interesting raised by the movie. In Disclosure Day, the movie, spoiler alert, they disclose the aliens are real, right? The good guys win. And the way they do it is with overwhelming evidence. Not like grainy footage, or even firsthand accounts from Navy pilots. Like, they bring the alien on TV. They show us an alien. It's very clear. And I think that makes the point that when disclosure happens, it's going to have to be overwhelming, so that no reasonable person can doubt anymore. And in that way, I think that this movie avoided a lot of the really interesting questions. You know, like, is disclosure actually dangerous? The movie doesn't discuss it at all.

• 55:15Daniel Whiteson?

  When disclosure happens, how do you deal with doubt? They avoided that by making it just overwhelming.

• 55:21Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 55:21Daniel Whiteson?

  You know, so the current situation that we are in, where they're like, there are some hints that something weird is going on, and the government is keeping some secrets, and probably it's Chinese drones or whatever, but we don't know for sure. We're in an interesting situation, and people have reasonable questions. And this movie doesn't address any of them at all. It just imagines a scenario where we know 100% that they're aliens, and we show to the public with overwhelming data, so that nobody can doubt. So in that sense, you know, to circle back to the review of the movie, like, I thought the movie was fun. It was well-written. It was well-acted. It's Spielberg. He knows what he's doing. The science fiction in the movie is like, very, very, very soft science fiction. You know, they use alien tech as a plot device. Anytime they want something to happen, they're like, well, maybe the aliens can just do that.

• 56:07Daniel Whiteson?

  And it avoids all the core interesting questions about aliens and disclosure and all this kind of stuff that we've discussed. But it was fun. I had a good time. And it was definitely worth, you know, $12 or whatever I paid for it.

• 56:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, as a biologist, what I want to know is, what did the aliens look like? Were they just like, human bodies but green? What, what did they do?

• 56:26Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, so in this movie, the aliens are the canonical, big head, big eye, no nose aliens with like, the backward legs. Yeah, there's not a whole lot of creativity there.

• 56:37Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh.

• 56:37Daniel Whiteson?

  At all.

• 56:39Kelly Weinersmith?

  I had hoped for more, but that's, that's all right. Okay.

• 56:42Daniel Whiteson?

  But you know, there's fascinating characters and it's a story well told and definitely a good movie for a movie's sake. I don't think a great movie about disclosure. I don't think it tackles these interesting questions very well, but you know, it was fun to watch and we got to have this fun conversation. So from that point of view, thumbs up.

• 57:00Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay. So then let's, let's bottom line your opinion. So given everything that we've talked about today, it sounds like you don't think there's good evidence for aliens that we have now, whether it's behind government closed doors or out in public. What is your bottom line on, have aliens visited us yet?

• 57:17Daniel Whiteson?

  I think it's very unlikely that aliens have come to earth and the government knows about it and has been working with them and keeping that secret for decades. I just think that's totally implausible. And I don't think the government should keep that secret. I think if the government knows about aliens, they should tell us. I don't think there's a good argument for protect the public by not telling them or like release it in waves to slowly acclimatize us. Like, we're not children. You know, we don't need to be lied to about Santa Claus. I don't think that makes any sense. I think that props up UFO conspiracy theories and does more harm than it does good. So if the government has aliens and

• 57:57Daniel Whiteson?

  that's their plan, I think it's a mistaken one. It's a good idea. So that's my bottom line.

• 58:03Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay. I mean, I guess I feel like if you hundreds of years ago had told people that aliens existed, that might be like intellectually catastrophic. So maybe this is the biologist in me, but I feel like, you know, we have thought of ourselves as like, oh, we're the only species that uses tools. But like, I just saw a video of a cow scratching its butt with a stick the other day. It's like, we're not, I feel like over time, we've become a little bit more acclimatized to the idea that like, we are not quite as unique as we used to think. And I feel like maybe that opens us up to the possibility that there could be other amazing, intelligent organisms out in other parts of the solar system. But again, maybe that's my biology centered opinion. And so I don't feel like

• 58:43Kelly Weinersmith?

  we would be devastated, especially because now we know there's exoplanets out there. There's like so much beyond our solar system that like, just playing the numbers game, like so many people have heard about the Drake equation and the updates to like, you know, how many planets are out there that are inhabitable zones. I don't think it would be as surprising to people now as it would have been hundreds of years ago. And I feel like any argument you could make about aliens causing like a panic and a collapse of society would apply less today than they might have a couple hundred years ago. What do you think?

• 59:16Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, I think you're right that the Drake equation is going in the alien direction because all of the updates increase the odds. But skeptic in me says there's still a lot of possibilities for very tiny numbers. Yes, it's true that now we know there are planets around lots of stars and a lot of those planets are earth-like, but it still could be that it's very rare for life to begin, or for life to be complex, or intelligent, or technological. Those percentages could still be one over a trillion. We could still be alone. We have no data about that at all. So we can't make really any scientific statement about the probability for intelligent life. That's just belief, right? That's just philosophy.

• 1:00:00Daniel Whiteson?

  That's faith. That's hope. I'm on the same side of you of those, you know, belief and hope and faith, but the skeptic in me says we don't really know. And I also wonder if we can really put ourselves in the minds of somebody a thousand years ago and understand how they would react to this knowledge. Because we see the world so differently than they do. I think it's probably impossible to honestly understand that. I did a little bit of research when I was running my book about historical writings about aliens. And I was surprised how often it came up, you know, that people imagined aliens and Kant, for example, wrote about aliens, you know, and how they might see the world. And so I think also a thousand

• 1:00:41Daniel Whiteson?

  years ago, people were more acclimatized to the world being mysterious. Like, in our day-to-day lives, there's very little that happens that's understandable. Like, you see lightning? Yeah, we understand that. Weather is hard to predict, but you know, the physics is known. You look out at the night sky and like, we know what stars are and all this kind of stuff. There are very few actual mysteries left in your everyday world. Still lots of big questions about the universe, but day to day, the stuff that happens, we mostly understand it. A thousand years ago, your day was filled with mystery. Like, why does this person get sick? And

• 1:01:15Kelly Weinersmith?

  Spontaneous generation.

• 1:01:17Daniel Whiteson?

  Spontaneous generation, right? And like, all sorts of stuff happened. So if somebody told you like, oh, there are critters living around that star, you might be like, yeah, cool, man. The world is weird. And I learn weird stuff every day and none of it makes sense to me. So I think it's probably pretty hard to put ourselves in the shoes of somebody a thousand years ago, though I would love to do that experiment, to introduce an alien to Aristotle or something.

• 1:01:39Kelly Weinersmith?

  You are way too comfortable with human experimentation, but to return to what we were talking about at the beginning of the episode.

• 1:01:46Daniel Whiteson?

  Are you saying you wouldn't want to hear that podcast episode where an alien and Aristotle have a conversation? I mean, you would be downloading that, wouldn't you?

• 1:01:53Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I would, I would want to hear that. Yes. That would be interesting.

• 1:01:58Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. So thanks, everybody for going along this ride. I do recommend this movie. If you like fun movies and science fiction and aliens, it's a good ride. But don't go into it thinking that it's a deep philosophical exploration of whether our government has aliens and whether it actually would be dangerous for the government to tell us about it. But if you are somebody who works in the government and you have top security clearance and you know about aliens, I think you should spill the beans.

• 1:02:24Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, yes. And you can reach Daniel at [email protected]. Just write, Dear Daniel, we'll know who it goes to. And thanks, Daniel, for this fun episode on aliens.

• 1:02:35Daniel Whiteson?

  And let's hope that we can host the actual disclosure on a future episode.

• 1:02:39Kelly Weinersmith?

  Because you and me, we are on the same level as Aristotle. I'm sure we're going to be at the top of their list.

• 1:02:46Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. Thanks very much, everyone.

• 1:02:54Daniel Whiteson?

  Thanks, everybody for listening. Please go and do us a favor and rate the show on whatever podcast app you're using. It really helps people find us.

• 1:03:02Kelly Weinersmith?

  Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing Matt Kesselman.

• 1:03:07Daniel Whiteson?

  He really is a wizard. You can also find us online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and X, D and K Universe. Come engage with us.

• 1:03:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  You can email us at [email protected]. We really do want to hear from you.

• 1:03:22Daniel Whiteson?

  And you can find our website, www.danielandkelly.org, where you'll also find an invitation to join our Discord, where everybody comes and talks about the amazing universe.

• 1:03:34Kelly Weinersmith?

  And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is an iHeart Podcast. Thanks for joining us.

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