The CIA’s UAP & Alien Research! ‘Their Brains Looked Fried’ | Stanford’s Garry Nolan

Transcript

There was this corpse which you might say that could be an alien. >> What did it look like? >> Big eyes, slightly triangular head. I took it to the world's expert in pediatric bone disorders. He said, "I don't recognize the syndromes that might have generated this. There were whole sets of the DNA that didn't seem to fit anywhere." >> Gary Nolan is one of the top 25 inventors at Stanford University.

He's also a leading researcher on unidentified aerial phenomena and mysterious injuries from potential alien exposure. >> A representative of the CIA came to my office unannounced and [music] said some of our diplomatic core intelligence officers were getting sick. They showed me MRIs and X-rays. Areas of their brains had just been fried. >> What could do that? >> An energy weapon.

I actually went out and interviewed the medical team. Several of these individuals have claimed to have interactions with UAP. >> Could it be not of this Earth? >> I can only imagine it's electromagnetic ability at a distance or it's a form of physics of the universe where [music] they can do things that we don't yet appreciate. What was surprising to me was the push back from the CIA. Oh, that's impossible.

We don't have anything like that. How do you reach into a helicopter and turn off its navigation and prevent it from attempting to launch a [music] missile and deactivate the button specifically? >> Do you think we are at risk from adversarial forces within this solar system or from outside the solar system? >> Well, first of all, >> hi, I'm Alic. >> And I'm Jonathan Cohen. >> And welcome to our breakdown. You might be able to tell what this episode's going to be about based on the t-shirt that I'm wearing and the t-shirt that Jonathan is wearing.

>> Single or taken? If you're only listening, it's a man being beamed up into a spaceship with the word taken with a check mark beside it. >> And everyone thinks that I got that shirt for Jonathan, but the funny thing is he bought it for himself. >> Sometimes you got to take yourself. And I am wearing my favorite Sedona cats being beamed up into a flying saucer. >> Why are we wearing these t-shirts today? We're wearing these t-shirts today because we're going to speak to possibly the most highly decorated, highly educated, highly sophisticated scientist and professor who also is open to and generous with how he thinks about the possibility of life on other planets being here, threatening us, looking for things from us.

Dr. Gary Nolan is a professor in the department of pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine and he's one of the foremost authorities on immunology, cancer, leukemia, autoimmunity, inflammation as well as computational and systems level approaches to immunology and cellular networks. He holds 50 US patents. He's published almost 400 research papers. He's been recognized as one of the top 25 inventors at Stanford University.

But what is most fascinating about him is that he founded the soul foundation which is an organization dedicated to unidentified aerial phenomenon. It convenes experts from academia from government and from really every discipline to conduct rigorous multiddisciplinary studies on UAPs and the broader implications. Dr. Dr. Nolan is the guy that people go to when they have material that they think might be of an alien origin.

Dr. Nolan is the one who literally analyzes metal that is brought to him as this is from a flying saucer. His laboratory has the sophistication to be able to analyze, date, and fully quantify what material is what. and he's part of the documentary that was released, Age of Disclosure, as he talks about the role that the government plays and doesn't play in how we determine what kinds of injuries can be classified as unusual and what his lab has done to address many of the injuries and damage that people's brains have exhibited when they have been placed in situations where they might be exposed to some of these phenomenon. He explores humans that have been injured and have injuries from UAPs and he studies the potential of why they may have experienced damage.

He talks about energy weapons in a way that is absolutely fascinating and posits whether or not adversarial countries could have made these weapons that people have been injured by or were they created elsewhere in a way that we don't really understand yet. We also discussed the possibility that nonhuman intelligence has monitored United States and Russia military capability. He talks about what it could be that was able to turn off the weapon system of a US helicopter. >> The notion that we may be being watched is a fascinating one and one that Dr. Nolan does not take lightly.

He's going to teach us the difference between belief and hope and data when it comes to understanding unexplained phenomenon. We're also going to talk a bit about some of the biotechnology that Dr. Nolan has developed, patented, and uses to give credence to the fact that we can analyze samples with some degree of certainty to try and figure out their origins. So, we'll talk to him about some of the technology that he's developed and that his lab has been using for decades to try and understand specimens from all over the world. We're also going to get personal with Dr.

Nolan. Something that he does not talk about a lot is his own personal experience as a child that led to his interest and his belief that there is more out there and there must be a way to find it. We're happy to welcome to the breakdown professor Gary Nolan. break [singing] it down. >> Thank you very much.

I'm really happy to be here. >> There's so many things we'd like to speak to you about which I think all fall under kind of a beautiful umbrella of the work that you do. Before we even get started with any specifics, talk about what you see your mission as in your work, in your life, and in your career. You only see this in retrospect, but um in looking at the many things that I've done over the years, I've always been interested in potential uh and and filling the gaps of what you would think of as missing potential. I hate to see potential lost.

Uh but I also like to look for what I often call is the inevitable. What is it about the data for instance in the laboratory that we're collecting today that is let's just call it prosaic uh everybody's doing it it's uh not really moving the field forward in any necessarily meaningful way. So what is it about the new kinds of data that we need to collect and therefore if you can define what that is what then are the instrumentations that you need to develop or methods to get you there even if it's going to take you two to three or even in one case five years until we get to the instrument that then can be used by everybody. >> You do some of the most intricate and elegant and sophisticated work on cells that is out there. If someone knows nothing about the kind of work you do, can you explain a little bit about the kind of lab that you run, the kind of testing you do, and what you're able to tell with the equipment that you use? >> Let's just say I began life as a geneticist, which is true.

Uh that was my original training. But as uh anybody in the field knows today uh all of the fields of things like viology, immunology, uh genetics, uh and signaling biology all kind of merge one into the other. You can't talk about one without really um touching upon aspects of of the other. The genes underly the architecture of the signaling biology in the cell which is where a lot of the magic happens and where drugs often need to be aimed. Those signaling biologies uh then determine the interactions between cells uh that for instance in the case of the immune system uh decides very often the fate of your life because it uh is the center of inflammation anti-cancer antipathogen effects uh etc.

So um I began actually in uh at Stanford uh wanting to go to a guy by the name of Stanley Cohen's laboratory who had the original what are called Cohen Boyer patents which founded uh the entire biotechnology industry and he was let's say mostly a uh a microbiologist uh working on bacteria and fungus uh but you know during what is of what is called rot ations in your first year. I happened to rotate through the Herszenberg laboratory uh who had this kind of machine still being used today called a flowcytometer that was a a merging of of the physics of light using lasers uh fluoresence rapid single cell uh analysis uh thousands of cells per second. um the collection of that kind of data and then the algorithms required to understand what that data was and of course the computers behind the scenes. I mean the computers that we used then circa 1983 could fit on your wristwatch. The training that I did with Len and Lee, Lenin Lee Herszenberg uh who co-ran their their lab really set the stage for what it was that I wanted to do because it had everything that I wanted all in one place.

complexity beyond belief, understanding at a deep level, constant technology development, and basically, you know, I think the best way to say it is that the the Hersenbergs ran their lab almost like a commune. They had a very open architecture to the kinds of people that they would take into the laboratory. It didn't matter who or what or where you came from as long as you as long as you were smart. But they also had, let's say, an ethic of taking people who would otherwise think themselves insufficient and teaching them how to be good scientists and ask questions in the right way. And so I tried as best as I could to bring that kind of modus operandi along with me into my development in the lab.

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in reading over the kind of grants that you've been given by the FDA, you know, bioagent protection and cross species immune system reference, like what what is sort of the the motivation and the application behind some of these incredible grants that you've been able to do research under? So the reason why we got those grants, including the Department of Defense grant that I got to study ovarian cancer, was because it was around the time of what is called systems level biology where we not only understood that there was a complexity of interactions not only within the cell but also between cells. The techniques that were available at the time could only look at just little slices. Whereas what was necessary and this was sort of what I call the inevitable was the development of techniques that would give you a gestalt because with the gestalt of as many components in the immune system as could be reasonably measured. It would allow you to build mathematical models of the interactions and whether such interactions or the presence or absence of certain cell types or cell states was indicative of disease outcome or where you might intervene to make the immune system better, you know, or turn off cancer's anti- uh immune system uh effects. So it was it was with that beginnings where my laboratory developed a way to look inside of cells at what are called phospho signaling states that we were able to look at surface molecules that would define the kind of immune system cell it was but then the intracellular states uh that would define the outcome and so the the the let's say the FDA grant which was for the cross species immune reference for better or worse and and I don't like it but it I sort of felt it as a it's you know it's necessary animal models are used uh and um but animals are nonhumans and we all know that and so you know you can cure we've cured every form of cancer that a mouse can have.

uh but very few of those drugs actually translate properly to humans uh because uh there are just differences on how the immune systems operate. This was actually using primates uh reesus monkeys which are closer at least to us. They're not perfect but you know nobody had the ability to look at the gestalt of all of their immune system cells versus ours. uh and the idea was can we make a onetoone or try to make a onetoone comparison of what those different cell types are so that when we use let's say a new drug on reesus monkeys uh we can understand the the bridging effect between the two and it was a successful grant but it its focus actually was on Ebola Ebola was and still is a significant threat to world health and luckily um you know there are let's call them containment strategies and there is a vaccine against it that is not going to be widely distributed but they do something called ring vaccination once something is found then they they ring the community with vaccinations to prevent its its spread. So I had a a a graduate student who had been an MIT undergrad who had actually worked in the Ebola facility at Fort Dietrich uh and so had been fully trained uh in that and this was you work in the moon suits.

You've seen kind of the movies, you know, serious stuff. And so I visited actually Fort Dietrich in the run-up to all of this. And uh you know, there were guards on every corner. Uh you weren't allowed around unattended, etc. Um the plexiglass that you could actually look into the laboratory uh was literally about that thick.

Um and um so there was it was a militaryrun facility uh where the scientists were scurrying about you know and and you know purposefully because the idea was you know we we were basically giving these monkeys Ebola and then following the course of the immune systems reaction to it and then that was the runup to testing for drugs and all the rest. And then we actually had to develop a technology that allowed us to safely get the blood out of that laboratory, ensure that we were fully killing the virus, the fela virus that Ebola is, so that we could then run it in a in a BS what would be called a BSL1 facility, biosafety level one, which is a standard laboratory. I mean, your kitchen counter is BSL1, [laughter] although I wouldn't go near your kitchen sink cuz that's probably BSL 2, [laughter] you know, if you don't clean it regularly. So, there was, you know, there was a lot of work around that. That was the bio threat, which led to later work on Zika uh and other uh emerging threat uh viruses or bacteria.

Um so, we we what I often call burned the pipeline of how to do it. uh we worked with a group at MIT uh who were doing let's say the RNA we were doing the protein we published eventually a paper in in cell on on all of this >> and and also I I should mention in addition to all of these things you also helped develop or develop the instrument platforms that could be used to process samples correct without having to transport them overseas which the reason I'm bringing it up is because I think that you know when people hear the kind of work you do Like that's amazing and people understand immune system but I don't think people understand the intricacy of what it means to have the instrumentation, the ability to experiment, the ability also to facilitate actual testing in ways that are reliable and consistent. So I just wanted to mention that because that's also something that we often don't think about. That's part of the work that you do. Well, one of the things that we developed um it was actually developed by a graduate student and then he took it out uh and commercialized it something called smart tube and it was a way to take blood uh directly put it into the tube break a couple of vials shake it and then the blood would we would not only lice the red blood cells which are not unimportant but uh we want to get to the white blood cells that are part of it but then also sterilize the blood in a way that would inactivate any viruses that might be in there.

But that is now a standard throughout the world uh for how to collect blood, save it so you can put it in the refrigerator uh or freezer uh for later analysis even decades later. Can you talk a little bit about codecs um the development of deep tissue profiling methods that these have contributed to the human cell atlas um also to the cancer cell atlases um I know it's hard to ask you to toot your own horn but I'm going to ask you to do so this is an incredibly significant achievement um can you talk a little bit about for people again who don't know what you know tissue profiling is what is the impact of of this achievement >> codeex grew out of um an earlier develop that development uh that actually we won nature's um like research some something of the year in in uh 2012 I think it was >> and um so that was sitt was actually the original instrument was developed by um a guy at the University of Toronto Scott Tanner who was a specialist in mass spectrometry he understood that it would have value in single cell analysis. Uh and so he came to me because he knew that I was kind of a guy who would take ideas and and figure out a way to commercialize them. And so it was probably one of the most successful collaborations of my career. We turned it into the premier uh immune monitoring instrument of the of the day.

uh and so because I'd come from the Herszenberg lab where when I left that laboratory three or four parameters per cell was the was the height of capability which just basically lets you say that's a T- cell that's a B cell and maybe that's a macrofase um whereas what SCF enabled us suddenly to do is to do 40 50 parameters at a time uh using a form of mass spectrometry where the labels were not fluorescent but were actually metal tags attached to antibodies. Um, so we had to develop a whole chemistry. We didn't develop a chemistry a chemist at the University of Toronto did so that we could attach these individual unique isotopes of metals. And and what that did was it suddenly let us get to that gestalt. Suddenly we could look at enough of the immune system cells at a time to give uh a state diagram of what the immune system might be doing.

We published that paper in science and uh that was uh that was sort of the beginnings of of what at least for me was this the big data explosion where suddenly we could create collect so much but what it meant that we had to do was then develop algorithms to deal with the complexity and we had to develop things such as what's called a d-dimensionalization approach to called TISNY which is a kind of a clustering approach which we which we borrowed from other fields and then adapted to what we were doing. Um, and then something called pseudo time. We were the first to develop the pseudo time to show that you could actually see trajectories of uh how immune system cells might be changing and maturing, which we then later applied to cancer and certain kinds of AML, acute myogynous leukemia. So, so okay, that was great. Um, and uh it, you know, it rocketed around the world.

Everybody wanted a a Sytoff and we actually ended up selling that company for I think 7207 million. I didn't make any I wish I made something close to that. The V the VCs and the investment bankers always managed to walk away with the majority of it. >> This is a helpful you know kind of framework for us to understand not only your skill set but also the the depth of kind of creativity that you have in your field. And you know, something else happened in 2012 that that you were involved with.

In 2012, you discussed that you had been given a piece of a body of some sort. And I'm sure that for anyone listening, it would make sense that if you want someone to analyze what is this, what's it made of, where did it come from, you would go to Dr. Nolan. Can you talk about what happened in 2012? I had discovered, let's say, the concept of UFOs on the internet. And I, like many people, I just sort of went down the the rabbit hole.

I hadn't had any prior uh particular interest in it, although I did have experiences as a as a boy, as I've often talked about, but I never followed up on that. And I just found it interesting that there was this corpse, which uh reasonably by how it looked, you might say, "Oh, wow. That could be an an alien." What did it look like? Like are we talking like the big eyes, the triangle head? >> Big eyes, slightly triangular head, but it was tiny. It was like 8 inches or so across. My first response was to go over to the head of the neonatal care unit who was a friend at Stanford.

Um, and I said, "Hey, you know, have you ever seen um babies that look like this uh you know, or that would have this?" and he said, "Well, we see lots of unfortunate uh births um that are due to genetic issues, but we happen to have on staff uh this guy who is the world's expert in bone disord pediatric bone disorders. So, here why don't I set up a meeting with him?" So, I took it to this guy uh and I had him look at it and he said, "Oh, this is interesting. you know I I don't recognize the syndromes that might have generated this but you know there are certain uh genetic disorders that could give you this part or that part or this change and so but you know I had agreed with the person who uh you know I I reached out to them they didn't reach out to me say hey I can help you figure out what this is when you're in science and as you probably know when you start crossing disciplines. Don't assume you know everything. Go find the expert to make sure you're you're right.

So he said, "Okay, well the the the picture's not enough. Here's the kind of um X-rays that I need uh at these this angle, this angle, the other angle." And I said, "Look, if if you want me to do an analysis of the DNA, I need a very small piece of um bone which might have bone marrow in it because that would be and bone. It would be great to go and do that uh because um that that would be the most likely place to be protected from contamination by bacteria. um at least until you know it uh you know in in its at that time desiccated state. >> How old was it? >> It was suggested to be very old like hundreds of years but but later I found out probably only 20 or 30 years um old.

I started the analysis of it because of the let's say the age it was only about 30 or so uh years old. We thought um there was a lot of degradation of the DNA and so it required what was called overreading uh to be able to do something with it. You know, I first got excited because there were whole let's say sets of the DNA that didn't seem to fit anywhere um and made sense. And so, you know, I was discussing with the the group that had provided me it and saying, you know, this might actually I don't know what this means. So but again as a scientist what you don't do is assume you know everything about the genetics or about even genetics even though that's my PhD.

So um I went then to the experts and as it turned out um well not only do we have the kinds of experts uh available but I had started another company with another professor at Stanford at the time the chairman of statistics along with a co- student that we had who was in computer chip design uh from the engineering department um and we developed um algorithms that we had uh encoded onto something called field programmable gate array arrays. And what FPGAAS are are basically, think of them as a blank slate of of circuitry that you could program to be just about anything. >> And FPGAAS are still used today. So they're they're um rapidly, you know, it could be a it could be a it could play a game, it could do analysis, you could code it to do statistics, etc. But you're hard coding it.

So we started this company uh with about a $10 million investment and we eventually then sold that company to Rosh diagnostics for a considerable sum. Um and actually my student uh made she made quite a bit of money because she was a she was the CEO and she was quite good. that had by the time we had collected enough of the DNA and I had then recruited a whole team of about 14 people from around Stanford enough data to h to give to then what was then the RO diagnostics bioinformatics team that had been you know basically seated by uh what we had done for them to help us assemble what's called the contig the full contig of the of the DNA uh and then to search it for anomalies that might be related to bone disorders. Uh because at that time we'd already figured out, okay, this is human. Um the the the unknown regions were actually because of DNA degradation and there were ways to fix that.

Um so it was it was human. Uh we then uh determined that it was the statistics said it was it was a girl, probably a pre-term birth. And at that point I actually started to get a little queasy. Um because now I realized that I was working with a body of somebody who had died uh and you know treat and and and yet there were people out there who still wanted it to be an alien. And so we wrote up a study and we actually got the world's again at Stanford luckily the world's expert in South American human genetics.

And what he showed was that the the alil frequencies the differences that make one racial group or ethnic group different from another showed that in fact this came from the Chilean area of South America. Um so it was clearly it had heritage from that area. Um we published the paper went through peer review. Um and you know we had all the experts on it and uh that were necessary. You know the graduate students did most of the original writing.

The professors then edited gave it enough of a of the right kind of flavor and then we published it after peer review. And you know literally the next day uh all over the world um Stanford professor uh sequences alien baby [laughter] you know which was completely not what we had done but of course that's clickbait. >> You actually had specifically taken something that people thought were alien proved that it wasn't and the headline was you sequenced an alien baby. Some of the reporters who called me um who wanted to talk said well you've debunked this. I said I didn't debunk anything.

I didn't de debunk I am not a debunker. I'm I am a scientist who are by as you just earlier prior to this said you're a skeptic. We're all skeptics. You know I don't enter something trying to prove that it is something because that that's not the scientist's mindset. The science mindset has come in with a completely open mind about it.

I would have loved for it to be an alien, but it wasn't. I would also question why would an alien have even DNA and regulatory sequences like we do. >> How would you like an alien to have DNA sequences? You know I think the most likely you know answer to even you know presence of life on earth is a form of panspermia where you know some let's say primitive organism uh could make it from one solar system to the next. I mean every piece of metal on your desk came from the heart of an exploded star. So for people to say oh you can't get from here to there.

Well everything that you are today came from the heart of an exploded star. and everything we use to you know so that became a gas and then recoales into a solar system that created planets that then made metals but I would not expect the regulatory sequences or the signaling biology that they create to have evolved exactly in parallel >> when people talk about you know their notion of aliens being these like walking talking beings that basically is like a human body with an alien head that feels feels wrong to you just from the get-go. >> Yeah, it feels wrong because I I mean it it could be that the bipedal you know for you know you know arms or legs form is a universal constant. I but I just don't I mean we only have one example of that. Well, we only have one carbon-based example of that, and there's no reason to assume that if there is other life or if there's been some seeding that it would need to even be carbon- based.

>> I mean, we look at I mean, probably the most different animal that is as smart as seems to be quite intelligent as the octopus. Um there are any of a number of bird species uh uh that have um you know pretty high level problem solving capabilities. Um they just for whatever reason didn't have the ability to form societies which is I think the society formation is what differentiates us from others and the ability to pass wisdom from one generation to the next. >> Which birds just so we can give a shout out to the smart birds? Well, parrots, a number of parrots. Um, uh, crows, uh, as example.

I mean, those are the two that just come off the top of my head. Ra ravens. Um, I love watching these there's this, you know, parrots where they give them colored balls and the the the parrot has to put the colored ball into the right colored box. Um, you know, I mean, things like that that are, you know, that show a level of understanding of form and logic. You with your capabilities can analyze let's say a body that might be alien and you can look at that on all these levels.

You also have the ability to look at many other elements and many other things. Sometimes we're presented with something that we can't explain. it seems impossible and for many people they go to one explanation but as a scientist we still have to hold open many explanations but I'd like you to talk a little bit about how you got brought into the kind of community where you became a person who has access to materials and experiences that other people are are needing you to help explain >> the original analysis of uh the Otakama specimen which is owned by somebody in Barcelona and which I think frankly should be returned to Chile for proper burial. I've said this many times once I realized what it was. this guy who was a representative of the CIA and an aerospace company, two of them, came to my office unannounced and said, "Hey, we have these we have these people that we've collected into what we call the weird bucket, civilian, diplomatic or military uh events had occurred, damage, which had sort of filtered up the chain in the medical arena and then said, "Well, we don't know what this is." and they went over to somebody who was collating in intelligence, you know, uh group uh these things and said, "Okay, we have enough of these things and they're starting to look similar to each other." Um and uh so let's figure out what's going on because some of our diplomatic core or intelligence officers were um basically getting sick and coming down with pretty severe problems.

And so, you know, literally they walked in my door uh threw a bunch of MRIs or showed me MRIs and X-rays uh of the damage which was incontrovertible. It was quite clear that if anybody had that kind of damage inside their body or inside their brain, white matter disease, they were in, you know, in trouble and they were at least correlated to these significant health uh effects. >> What's that like when the CIA walks into your office unannounced? You think it's a joke. >> Wow. >> Right.

I mean, I literally looked around, you know, my my office is, you know, on the third floor and there's like a there's a bridge between two buildings just uh and I thought, "Okay, there's a candid camera here somewhere." Um, what's going on? This is a joke. Because not only had they mentioned this, but then they also mentioned that some of these a very small subset of these individuals had claimed to have interactions with UFOs. And I just I my my brain exploded. I thought that I was already done with this issue. >> They're presenting you with a problem.

We have scans, we have MRIs, we have, you know, uh, biomemed imaging of people's brains that have damage that we cannot explain. We're kind of collecting them in this random bucket. And ops, a few of them are saying that they have also had interactions with UFOs. Got it. >> So fast forward let's say four years.

So we started collecting um we we had the original data of their medical um a person on the team who was a neurohysiologist and uh with psychiatric training went around to every single one of them uh and did a a neurohysiologic uh and psychiatric exam because especially for the ones that had claimed to see you know something weird um you want to make sure that there's not some psychological issue associated with or if there's trauma, you know, mental trauma associated with whatever it is that they thought that they they saw or heard. Um, you want to make sure that they get the right kind of treatment. Um, so what happened then, and this wasn't me, this was the medical staff, they started uh aligning the symptomology with what's called the ICD codes. Uh, these are the international code for diagnostics. So you go into a doctor and they you know they say you have Salmonella whatever and that has an associated ICD code and then that has an associated wage you can go to the insurance company um and get uh you know payback for it but it also uh allows you to then um designate well how many people in the world have this ICD code associated with them and so a syndrome is where you have a collection of let's say symptomologies that none of which alone are sufficient to call it a disease.

Like Ebola is not a syndrome. Ebola is a disease. But syndromes are like gulf war syndrome. Havana syndrome. It's a collection of symptomologies that you could have 10 of the 15 of them and that's sufficient to classify you as such.

We had already designated this what we were seeing as a uh we were calling it interference syndrome because these people were being interfered with around 2016 or so I can't remember the exact year uh Havana syndrome became in the news where it was clear that uh uh in Havana some of our diplomatic core were getting sick. People thought it was some sort of energy weapon of some kind or soundwave weapon. What was surprising to me was the push back from the community that uh not just the UA I mean not even the UAP just the the CIA and all the rest and the the general men. Oh, that's impossible. We don't have anything like that.

Meanwhile, I was already talking to people in the DoD who said, "Of course we have stuff like this. We've been developing this stuff for the last 20 years. you know, we've been developing it and we think that this is an adversary nation or uh a a a rogue party hired by an adversary nation to to do this to to us. What happened was that when we lined up the ICD codes, uh they aligned. So that was great.

So we were able to actually take let's say 90 of the hundred people that we have and just hand them over to the Havana syndrome groups that were already working within the government and say okay well these guys are yours and this is kind of how science is done. Once you've categorized something, you know, you can continue to study it, but you hand it off to the experts that are doing it. But but what is left on the table is the data off the curve. And some of them had claimed interactions with with UAP. Now, you know, we followed up with a couple of those because they were so disparit, but I actually went out and interviewed uh with the medical team, several of these individuals, just to read their body language, to hear the story uh of what it was and the body language and the stories aligned with the the the damage.

I couldn't I couldn't be there to establish veracity. I just could listen to what it was that was being said. Um, and so these people believed that this had happened to them. And that's that's enough at least for a psychiatrist to say, "Hey, there's a traumatic issue." They, you know, probably need a very at the very least therapy, you know, to deal with the whatever the trauma might or might not have been. But what was interesting was that along the way as we were looking at the brains of these individuals, we were looking for commonalities of, you know, is there a common area in the brain that's being damaged? And what we noticed was that there was an area of the brain that looked it looked like damage at the beginning.

Um, it was at the head of the codate and hypotamin and it turned out to be just a neural density. And you know there's ways that you can eventually you could kind of switch the mode of how the MRI uh data that you might have could say okay well this is actually living tissue this is not scar tissue and we're like well that's interesting because the medical textbooks don't show this level of neural density. So we then said okay well what's common about the people that had this density and uh do we see it in a normal population? So we sort of did metrics of what the density was and how dense the neural structure was and then we went to open access databases of MRIs in the world and found that yeah it's there but only at about one in a 100 or one or 200 people and yet and yet in our group of even the hundred a sizable proportion of them had it and so what was at least postulated was it wasn't that they were targeted because they had it is was that they had it because it's a is a feature of high functioning mental capability. Um it's a feature of intelligence. Uh because the area of the brain in the codipotamin sits at the basil ganglia which is one of the most actually ancient structures in the in the brain.

um that is the center of all sensory network input and is actually even at that time was called the brain within the brain. It's a subconscious processing system that your executive function of who you think you are uses to say I want to do this and then it goes and and subconscious things look at your emotions, capabilities, your surroundings, etc. and make the split-second determination of how you navigate a room at a party to avoid this person or to avoid the waiter who's about to maybe drop something. These are diplomatic core and intelligence officers. They have to use intuition.

They have to use their their skill set etc. And and what kind of turned us on to this was finding a paper in the literature uh functional MRIs that were done on um chess masters in a form of Japanese chess and asking which areas of the brain light up when people make the unexpected intuitive move. This area of the brain lit up as one of several but this area of the brain lit up. And then when you once you then say okay well intuition and then you use that as a search term in the Google suddenly you find dozens of papers already being published. In fact somebody already as far back as 2000 said that the codipotamin is the center of where intuition occurs.

>> What is a possible conclusion that one can draw when you're looking at this group right as what's going on here? This is a highly intelligent, intuitive group that either a has access to information that other people don't, or they're susceptible to information that other people are not susceptible to, or they better realize their environment uh and can put together disparit notions in ways that somebody would call intuition. It's not magic. Um it's not psychic power. It's just a processing system that is better at at taking multiple different inputs, processing the information and then coming to what should be a a successful conclusion. And you know, you can imagine in evolution this is necessary.

you know, you're walking down the path in the jungle and there's a sudden movement uh and you know, you split second determination is required to avoid the jaw of the jaguar. >> Dr. Nolan, what types of injuries were you seeing when they came to you that you were starting to investigate? >> So, the the majority of the ones that were so obvious were what are called white matter disease in in the brain. um because a lot of people were reporting confusion and and uh long-term it wasn't chron it wasn't acute it was chronic they didn't have it before and then suddenly they had it so people have often mistaken the things that I've said to say that this caused the codipotamment no it is it would that appears and we had some MRIs from people 10 20 years earlier and they had it then uh so the additional damage in their brain. If you look at MRIs or of people with multiple sclerosis, um, and we have I have somebody in my family who has it, you'll see these sort of random pockets of of just white matter.

It's called white matter disease in general, but dead tart scar tissue. Um, and so it looked like that, like areas of their brains had just been fried. >> What could do that? >> An energy weapon. >> What's an energy weapon? cuz we talk here a lot about energy like uh high vibrations. What is an energy weapon? What would that look like? >> You have one in your kitchen.

Your microwave uh oven is an energy weapon. >> I don't own a microwave. >> Not anymore. She doesn't. I took it away.

>> Okay. So So we're talking about a concentration of energy that beamed right in a way that it could do damage. Like a laser of energy. >> I wouldn't call it a laser. um laser, you know, would would burn.

Um this is something where, you know, even as far back as the as in the Soviet Union, people were claiming to get sick. And even then, people were thinking that the Soviets of the time were bombarding uh us with sound waves uh that would cause, you know, damage. uh but sub at a level of hearing where we didn't hear it but it would be enough to annoy you, you know, at the very least or cause damage. Um but when you're we're not talking about sound here, we're talking about something that would be penetrative um in a manner that would reach into the brain. I mean gamma radiation would be an example um that could reach through or x-rays you know uh I know but but at the time where because many of these people actually had been collected uh the damage had happened to them a decade ago.

Um and so you know there were no portable you know uh fa phasers like on Star Trek. Um you know there there was nothing like that. the energy requirements and the instrumentation would require at the very least a small van. It became a controversy because there was an NIH study that had been done that said this was all bunk. And then the NIH study had to be withdrawn because it turned out that some people in the government, our government had seated the uh the patient population with uh they had paid people to go into the patient population and they had basically destroyed the statistics.

now because of I think you know I I I wouldn't say my efforts but uh at least we contributed to um they're now being literally a military website for anomalous health incidents and so just like we did with UAP where we turned it from you unidentified flying objects into unidentified anomalous phenomenon. So being scientific and trying to capture a framework with verbiage that doesn't bias the uh conclusion you know especially I mean as many people have said well if if it goes into space it's not flying you know because flying requires air at least by you know our and if it goes underwater it's submerged so people came up with us but then there were so many different things that were trying to be packaged uh so unidentified anomalous phenomena But the same thing for Havana syndrome. It's now classified under anomalous health incidents uh as one category of things that could happen because what they were trying to do was capture things like Gulf War syndrome or any of a number of other things that I mean there's literally a website that tells veterans and or diplomatic corps people working with the government here's how you can get your medical issues uh paid attention to. Here's the process. I mean, it's it's now like a division of the veterans health.

>> And it's very possible that some of these things are caused by adversarial nations or governments. >> And literally in the news in the last two days, there have been claims that the US government has uh captured andor obtained uh one of these instruments from an adversary nation. I mean the the the information is very let's say sparse at this moment in time. Um but you know it's it's all over the news in the last couple of days. I want to ask something from that I heard from the age of disclosure which is extraterrestrials activated and deactivated US and Russian nuclear weapons.

Russia's were were pointed at us >> right and turned on. Yeah. and you know it suggests that there is some sort of interest in our survival. Can you talk a little bit about that quote from the documentary and give it some context? >> Here's how I'm going to deflect a little bit on that. I'm not interested in the intent or or what the purpose is.

I would be interested in the how it was done. >> I'm very interested in the how it was done and the fact that it was done. How how do we know? >> Right. How do you how do you with claimed events with pilots reach into a helicopter and turn off its navigation and prevent it from doing something? How do you reach into a pilot's uh that's attempting to launch a missile and deactivate the button specifically in a way that the the pilot's like frantically turning the thing on and nothing happens? um how do you do what was was claimed to be done you know in the you know in the in the missile ca in the missile cases um you whatever it is that you're doing you have an ability to I mean I can only imagine it's some I mean if you imagine it's electromagnetic then that's control of of electromagnetic ability at a distance that doesn't you know that that can reach through essentially a parad cage. Um, or it's a form of understanding of the physics of the universe where they can reach down underneath and do things that we don't yet appreciate.

And so that's what interests me. >> How do we know that that happened from accounts of the pilots? >> Only accounts. Only accounts. And and and and that and and that is of course the problem. Well, age of age of disclosure is I mean I said to Jonathan because we had Lou Alzando on and obviously I read his book and you know we had a great conversation with him.

I said it's all of the people that I read about now I'm seeing them in person and it it is it's it's a bit of a different flavor because as a viewer I'm trying to analyze veracity based on some subjective you know notion that I have of like I don't trust his eyes right like it's not how it works. >> Yeah. The standard of evidence for a scientist in in let's say my cohort is something I can hand to them and they can reproduce themselves. It's not a story. But interestingly, I will trust them telling me something about their biology and I don't need to go back into their laboratory and stand over the shoulder of their postoc to prove it because I can contextualize what they're telling me in the context of everything I already know about the area and say that sounds like it could be true.

I can now build models based on on that. So I'm unfortunately or fortunately as a scientist still working with that kind of a framework where I'm listening to all these stories and this story aligns with that and this thing aligns with this and if there's such evidence it's being kept. Right? So that sounds conspiratorial but enough people have come forward and saying that there is such a thing but what that means is that the the level of control over the information and the level of threat against such individuals is extreme. So I'm I'm I guess I'm just almost not interested in that. I mean and this gets back to materials.

I want to see a material put together at a level of complexity not just pure silicon with different isotope ratios. I want to see something put together that looks like technology, even if I don't even if it no longer functions, you know, atomic arrangements that we don't know how to make right now or at least we don't publicly know how to make. Well, I'm wondering how do you reconcile the number of military professionals who seem highly credible who are talking about the fact that they have seen biological material that every government in the world has retrieved aircraft and they're studying it. You know, obviously many scientists like yourself haven't seen those, but there are these claims. How do you reconcile those? All I can do is reach back to the events that I know and the people that and to say to my friends as scientists when you say there's no evidence there's bucketloads there's truckloads of evidence but evidence is not proof.

It's the evidence is contextualized data. Evidence is data where you put a hypothesis on top of that data that says the underlying data could be explained by this hypothesis and is evidence. So in a legal framework lawyers the prosecution takes evidence takes data calls it evidence of some crime. It's up to the jury to look at it and say is the preponderance of evidence contextualized as a hypothesis. The lawyers are like scientists um in this way uh that is sufficient to convict or exonerate the the the person based on the data which is so there's lots of evidence.

So don't ever let anybody say there's no evidence. There's lots of evidence, but is but evidence is not proof nor a conclusion. >> Well, and I think also it's such an important concept and one that we've been talking about really for the majority of the last year on this podcast, you know, ever since the telepathy tapes came out and so many people were like, "Tellpathy exists. I always knew it. I'm telepathic." You know, my non-verbal child is telepathic.

You know, once that came out, what we saw was that there absolutely were two buckets of people. There were people for whom that belief and that story was sufficient evidence. And then there were people for whom that was an interesting and fascinating way for us to start examining this aspect of human consciousness and communication. But that alone is not evidence, right? >> And then there was another group that said everybody you're all crazy. When does the conversation about this leap into could it be not of this earth >> and could it have existed back then when there weren't portable devices and it needed to be in a van in order to to be used? You know, I've spoken to intelligence officers who says that, you know, we we we we trace some of these vans back to through shell companies that are eventually owned by Russia, you know, or or other a couple of incidents like that.

I mean, again, those are claims. I mean, I'm not I'm not on the inside at that level, but when I talk to the people, but but I, you know, I've I've worked with the Senate Intelligence uh committee uh on it. I've written a white paper on it for them. uh I wrote a white paper uh to one of the committees uh on COVID and Wuhan uh saying they asked me what kind of facility would be required to engineer such a thing. Um and so I gave a breakdown of the kinds of you know laboratory setups etc that would be required.

I wasn't asked to analyze the data. I was just asked to say if you wanted to do it, how big of a facility do you need to accomplish it and and what kinds of instrumentation because what they were going to do within that information was to, you know, probably see if they have access to documented receipts where things were, you know, monies were moving around to do it. I have zero opinion, zero opinion on whether it was or was not engineered. Uh but certainly um you know whether it was engineered or whether it happened in that marketplace, it te it tells you the danger of uh putting animals of diverse origins that can have a common viral uh vector together because it's the mixing and matching of you know pieces of genomes from different organisms that allows for something to come together that could create um what became COVID. Whether it was done intentionally or whether it was done accidentally, it tells you mixing and matching pieces of of DNA from pathogenic viruses is not something I would ever recommend you do.

>> And this is my my anecdotal report on why I thought it had to be created in a lab. When I had COVID, it felt like a different virus every day. That's how I described it. And I instantly thought of everything I knew from genetics. It felt like something was literally clicking on and it would do its course and something else would click on and it would it literally felt like a different virus.

And I said, this was long before there was even controversy. I said, "This feels like no organic virus I've ever had." And it turns out I was right. >> But we've had these kinds of things before, right? there were the the the influenza plague uh of I don't know some of the 1920s or 1910s uh was such a a virus and we've set up almost the perfect cesspool for this kind of thing to happen where we have chickens, birds and ducks next to pigs where humans working. It all gets thrown into, you know, they all they're eating each other and, you know, and influenza is a virus with like a multipartite genome that it just makes it easy for it to swap pieces. So if you get co-infected with a bird flu and a and say a regular human flu, something from the bird could bird flu could transfer over and make a monster.

Isn't it possible that the sample set that you're looking at is simply people who already have more developed codite and contamin? >> Oh yes. Yeah. That was because they were intelligent. >> So the idea would be these people are more likely to have had this experience or it's simply the environment that they were in because of their let's say intelligence and intuition. It's an unhappy collision of intelligent people with you know in an environment where they are going to be targeted.

So so but it was a great hypothesis. So what we did was okay well let's test the hypothesis. Um let's go look at hundreds of brains. Let's just see if there's any hint of correlations in large populations that correlate connectivity in the brain with intelligence. And so we developed algorithms, you know, this was back, you know, almost 10 years ago now, started to develop algorithms that would take MRIs, take the voxels, the 3D pixels, uh, and find areas of the brain, draw, you know, draw out where the the cordate is, all the different areas of the brain and as well the trackcts between areas of the brain because information has to move from one place to another um through these through these trackcts.

uh and say okay well are there any correlations to intelligence etc. And what we used as part of our sample set were not only so-called normals but two very well metricked groups of people with uh either schizophrenia uh autistic spectral disorders um and it's all the disorder as well as they had collected the associated uh so-called normals and said okay well they've been psychologically evaluated in intelligence capability etc. And lo and behold uh on almost every of the let's say positive metrics of what we think distinguishes humans from animals uh the codepan was one of the major if not the major the codate uh was was a major um component uh in a in a statistically relevant way and we published three papers in neurohysiology journals and this was done with the modi laboratory at Harvard who she's an expert in human um uh autism. And the reason we chose those as let's say bookends is because you know on let's say the schizophrenia side there's a you know as you move towards frank schizophrenia let's say that might be actionable in a psychiatric sense you actually do start to have a movement towards creativity. Very often schizophrenics see things and connections that aren't there.

Along that axis is creativity that scientists use to see connections that other people missed. So you know let's call it neurodiversity today is the kind of general term. On the other axis is a form of focus uh and high functioning that you see in many autistics who you know can't carry on a conversation and have social disorders. let's say on the extreme side, but if you ask them what the square root of some giant number is, they can instantly give it the answer. Where does that come from? How do they compute that? So we thought that they would be great bookends uh to be able to say well you know along that axis which aspects of the brain are changing and we actually came up with at least for uh decent um let's say proposals of well here's a signature of what the brain looks like in uh in autism and here's a signature of schizophrenia which you know I mean that was let's call primitive machine learning at the time.

Um, today there are much better things where, you know, now you can start to think about diagnostics for, you know, you actually do have this. But here's something interesting that we we skipped over with the um with the codipotamin. We had within our group um individuals who were participating in the study as the scientists let's say who we know were high functioning gene you know near smart people um and so we looked at them as several of them as well as their family members and we found two things uh there were more likely to be husband wife pairs who had it [laughter] and their children were more likely to have it. >> Nerds marry nerds and then they make nerds >> and they make nerds. And so I mean to me that goes all the way back to my heritage and genetics.

>> I thought you were going to say your heritage as a nerd. >> My heritage as a nerd. And um you know so of course narcissistically I had my family tested and um you know we weren't at the top but we were on the curve going up. you know, you can, you know, there's plenty of people online on Twitter or Reddit who say I'm an idiot, you know, that's fine. Um, you know, but I I just would need to point to my record and say I might be an idiot and I might speak out of turn in many ways, but I I I do have some I do have the occasional accomplishment.

>> I wonder if you can talk about, you know, some of the metal, some of the fragments that you've looked at and you've been able to analyze. um you know I think 99.999% pure silicon and magnesium isotope ratios um that that don't match typically what we see terrestrially um talk about some of that talk about you know what kind of analysis you can do and what it means when someone says to you this is from Roswell and this is not an element that exists on this planet it has to be from another planet what's your method of approach what's your method of analysis And what can we say with any certainty? >> Once we had taken the 90 people or so who had Havana syndrome out, uh it left these 10 people with you know some claimed let's call them experiencers. Um and so that brought me in contact with uh you know other scientists serious scientists who had already been involved in the study of at the time UFOs. uh and some a couple of them claimed to have worked on programs. Now claimed I have two ways of looking at it and why I keep coming back to either the medical or the metals.

Um, if I could get a piece of something that was not made on this earth, not a there's, you know, we have access to all the elements as far as we know, except the what's called so-called island of stability where there might be elements out on beyond uh, uranium, etc. Theoretical, but I can look at things and see if they're put together in a way that humans don't know how to do currently, right? or or it would be difficult to do. Um, and so, uh, a couple of the materials that I was given, the one that I find most interesting was a piece of metal from the so-called Ubatuba event. Another one was from the Council Bluffs event, and then the third one was was a was a claimed arts parts Roswell piece, the the layered uh, material. How big are these pieces that you're analyzing? >> Well, the one from Council Bluffs, I mean, I you know, I I I recently was asked to reanalyze a piece and it was, you know, as as big as your head.

>> Wow. >> But the pieces that I analyzed were tiny. I mean, the analysis techniques use something called mass spectrometry where you can you can look at minuscule amounts of material. So, the Ubatuba was has a kind of an interesting story. So claimed fisherman sees an object glowing near the seashore uh which seems to drop something or explode.

Picks up pieces of it. Somehow it makes its way to a reporter in Brazil. Some analysis is done on it is claimed to be nearly pure magnesium. Some other pieces of it make its way down to uh Mexico also through the same reporter. But everybody says it's magnesium.

So I get a piece of the thing and we used uh a kind of mass spectrometer called uh it's a Kamika nanoims uh and it's a magnetic sector mass spectrometer. With that you can extremely precisely uh determine the ratios of elements and you can uh even elements that have the same weight because of neutron plus proton you can distinguish them because the 0.00 O something decimal point difference can actually be distinguished by this instrument. So because somebody had already told us that this was magnesium, we set the detectors to magnesium because you can only do like six or seven at a time and then we had limited time on the instrument and so we used the others for for iron. And what came out of that was interesting was that some of the Ubatuba pieces had absolutely perfect magnesium ratios >> and other had ratios that were way off. And I was like, okay, that's really weird.

And and these were all done in the same instrument at the same time, right next to each other. So it's not like somebody came in between experiments and twiddled them. And of course we did duplicates uh within the experiment and the same pieces showed the same difference. Okay. So I I've talked about that openly and Jacqu Valet has talked about it because he was the origin of the pieces that at least I got.

Um years later uh I you know um I got access to an instrument called atomic probe tomography which if you go look it up it can basically take apart um a very very small piece of a material atom by atom and determine its relative location within about five angstroms. Um not enough to determine structure but enough to give you the constituency of what's there. Um, and so we did it and it was like this is really weird. It's all silicon, but I thought I just saw, you know, five, six years, 10 years ago, magnesium. And then I I looked back at the at what, you know, at the sensitivity of the instrument and the sensitivity of the instrument was such that even if it were a minor trace element in the silicon, we would have picked it up.

I then started talking to people who had previously analyzed the magnesium component uh and said this is magnesium and they one of them actually contacted me said Gary you made a mistake I said no I didn't I got this from you know a claimed chain of evidence you got yours from a claim so maybe there were two materials maybe neither of us is wrong maybe there were two materials and they just you know made their separate ways and I got one of them and they got the other um I mean there's no doubt as to the scientific credibility of you know of Powell who did the first and swords who did the first uh analysis. So in the data that we collected from the from the atomic probe tomography apt I didn't see this God knows why I didn't um the isotope ratios of the silicon were wrong and I just like I've been sitting on that data for 5 years and I'm just kicking myself because I didn't I wasn't going looking for it right it's sort of like you you see the numbers you don't think about it um and it was only because I was working with some people in applied physics. So, uh, here at Stanford that, you know, they said, "Hey, did you check the silicon ratios and I said I looked at it and I said, "Oh, this is they're wrong. They're way off." >> What does that mean? >> Well, first of all, 99.99% pure silicon is very difficult to make. I mean we make it at the time this piece was claimed to have come from we were beginning to be able to make it and it was being used for you know silicon nanop fabrication and and actually um I don't know when solar cells were being developed but that it might have been around that time as well but it was like if we were why would you blow it up over a beach in Ubatuba first of all that kind of level so it's it's it's not proof of anything it's more here's the data Do you believe that the data was collected correctly? Now, let's ask questions.

Let's not jump to conclusions that it came from a UFO. Okay, so the ratios were so far off that as it turned out by chance, one of the guys who I was working with, a physicist of a level of understanding that he said, well, the ratios were shifted. They were shifted up. There was less of 28, more of the next one up, and more of the next one up as if they'd all been shifted up. How do you do that? You couldn't actually do it by bombarding the sample with neutrons that would that would basically force their way into the nucleus, add to it, and change it from silicon 28 to silicon 29.

He then calculated using what's called cross-section and all kinds of things the amount of energy required to accomplish that given the amount of material that we had access to and it was like way beyond what any what anybody was doing at the time or even doing today. Uh and uh so that was interesting. He then went and looked at the magnesium ratios that we saw and saw that the exact same pattern was there too. meaning meaning that even if there had been trace elements of magnesium those would also have been pushed up the scale with approximately the same neutron. Now that's just a postulate.

It's just here's the math that says that these numbers correlate. But then you have to ask okay um the the the data is real because it was collected with the mass spectrometer multiple times. You know a a human could have done nothing with neutrons or whatever could have purified each of the individual elements isotopes which we do every day these days. I mean but the scale of which is costly. >> Yeah.

And again why is it blowing up over a beach? And why would you mix it at exactly the ratio that uh conforms to what a neutron density exposure would allow? So so so some crazy Stanford scientist 30 40 50 years from then would you know be confused uh into into this. So it comes back to my big push that it's it's the data not the conclusion. >> What about the the bismouth magnesium? Can you explain what happened with that? We found some slight variations in the magnesium ratio that's that were in there, but not enough that weren't within statistical variation um and you know maybe some other ways that it was made. But what was what was interesting was the layering um and the manner in which the layering occurred. >> You found it layered in the magnesium, right? Was it oxide? >> It's between the magnesium layers.

Um, and what was really clear was that, at least even given some of the larger pieces, that the object had been exposed to either high heat or pressure. Sean Kirkpatre claims it's from a missile casing. Well, I mean, Sean, nobody makes missile casings like this. >> Yeah. And and as you say, like none of these are the smoking gun.

Like, if you're looking for if you're looking for a smoking gun, this is not it. But I do want to give you sort of a little bit of an opportunity to talk about the the Soul Foundation because you have you've co-founded um along with anthropologist Peter is it Scayfish? >> Scfish and actually David Grush as well. So we should never we should never leave David out. >> I will never leave David out. And also Avi Lobe um works with you.

He's a friend of the podcast. So we have other people in common. >> He's in the Galileo Leo project. I mean we don't work we don't work directly together. I love him and I I I I love his um his defense of asking good questions.

>> Yes. Well, tell us about the Soul Foundation. Why did you start it? What was that like? What's it been like for, you know, for you in terms of the the blowback that you might get or some of the skepticism that people have? The main reason I think for starting the um the soul foundation was to create a perimeter within which reasonable scientists or reasonable lay people uh with interest in this matter could come together without let's say you know you see some of these UFO conferences that are just they just look like circuses. Um I I I went to one once and it was like what's going on? It's this is not science. uh and you know I mean I I don't discredit what they're trying to do which is to promote knowledge.

Um it's just not the kind of conference that I'm accustomed to. And so we wanted a place uh that where if we were to hold let's say symposium or create uh let's say online communities where scientists could talk to other scientists about the ideas um and just and just rationalize it. And for me over the decade, it allowed me to um realize the kinds of rhetoric that were being used against us and the twisted forms of logic that um are traps that the likes of Mick West use. I'm sorry, Mick. Yeah, I do like Mick, but you know, it's a it's it's either intentional or just a lack of understanding of how science operates and how the the the just forms of rhetoric that you that you can use to um stun your opponent into silence um that would take so long to dissect that just are not allowed in normal scientific discourse.

Um, so I I wanted at least at the beginning when I showed up on Twitter, I I guess to teach the community to like, look, if you guys want to be taken seriously, here are the rules. Um, and here's how you do it. And then that led eventually to the formation of of soul uh which wasn't meant to be anything other really than uh a an academic resource or an academically inspired uh 501c3 to um allow people to come together uh to have rational discussion. Um, and I I've, you know, at the beginning, even before Soul, I did have people come to me and say, you know, Gary, what are you doing? And I was able to shame them into submission by saying, well, here's the it's just the data. I'm not coming to a conclusion.

Um, and my standard retort, which worked the first time, uh, that this guy cornered me at a bar and I sound, you sound more like a priest than a PhD. I mean, I might as well have thrown a bucket of cold water in his face because I said, you're dogmatic, and if you ever did anything like that uh, in a science setting, you would be excommunicated as priests might do to you. Don't put words in my mouth. First of all, don't believe everything you read in the newspapers that people claim that I have said. I I didn't say that.

Um, but you know, we allow SETI to talk about civilizations on distant stars, but the problem I have with SETI is, you know, they're happy as long as it's 400 light years away, you know, because it can never be proven or disproven, you know, and so that signal that was supposedly around one of the local stars and the planet where they thought they were seeing signatures of of life, I think it was hydrogen sulfide or something, has been published and has been dissected uh by others and suggested to be not right. >> You're walking us right into a little game. We're going to read a quote and you're going to tell us if you actually said it or believe it or not. I think an advanced form of intelligence is using intermediaries that are put here as an intelligence test to see if you can see what's in front of you for what it really is, what's behind it. So I said something like that or even if that's a direct quote but that was downstream of me saying >> got it >> that if they were here this would be so all of these things that are said miss the upstream context where I say let's play a thought game you know and so if it's the case why wouldn't you use an avatar and I've said this directly why wouldn't you use an advanced form of a drone that you put down because you know who wants to walk into the middle? We're a bunch of angry monkeys.

You know, our equivalent would be would you walk into the middle of uh you know the the an Amazonian tribe that's still known to cannibalize, you know, use cannibalism, you know, and just say, "Hi, here I am. Oh, yeah. Here's dinner." you know, um, you know, it's like it's like you would use intermediaries of some kind. Um, I mean, I suspect that, you know, when humans get advanced enough, we're not going to send, unless we somehow develop warp drive, you know, we're going to send some advanced kind of AI out there that might, you know, end up someplace. And if it needs and and it finds something that it thinks, oh, this is a civilization, it might not be and say, "Hey, here I am." because maybe they'll just say, "Oh, you're gone." You know, maybe it would, if we were advanced enough with our own AI, we would make something.

>> I mean, Robin Hansen says we're all just being held in a large pen in this uh in this planet until we, you know, try and break out of this. >> It's just a reasonable idea. in the thought experiment of we would send AI and Robin Hansen's zoo hypothesis then there is this experiment happening on earth that they are monitoring in some capacity either hoping that we survive whatever technological evolution is happening in order to gain the sophistication to send artificial intelligence or technology out into the universe uh to to contact or they're hoping that we destroy ourselves and don't become a problem. Do you have a bet on either of those? >> If there's something here, it clearly is it would be much older civilizationally than we are. See, I I always fall into this into this manner of speaking where it sounds like I'm talking about it is rather than it is just, you know, for the basis of argument, you know, let's just say that it is because you kind of have to start that way to to test.

I if if everything is, you know, indeterministic, you can never walk down any path because you've basically set up so many prior insufficiencies that you you you know, so you kind of walk down paths mentally. If I were doing it and I had a view of time that was larger and I'd already been around for 20, 30 million years, I could be patient. I mean, people have a hard time dealing with this kind of time. Look at how far we've come in a 100,000 years. Look at how far we've come in a thousand years.

So, um, someone who's been around for 20 million years, let's call them the elders or whatever, they've seen species like us come and go. I like the diversity of biology. I'd like to see what happens when we don't interfere. Right? Are there paths of evolution and kinds of intelligence that might arise that if we don't interfere if if we if if if something interfered too much, they're just making another version of themselves. But if they let us evolve a little more naturally, maybe we become an interesting partner 5 million years from now.

also and you know something we we weren't planning on touching on but I think it's I mean you mentioned it um briefly in a different context you know for people who look to expand their consciousness for people who are getting in touch with things outside of this realm of consciousness for people who are talking about you know kind of this quantum field of the experience and you know everything that has happened will happen is happening you know time is not linear all these things there's also this this beautiful kind of intersection of that of what happens when we sort of let things be. What happens if we don't have to figure everything out, but get to sort of exist and interact and sort of see what comes of it? And it is something that a lot of people find in a meditative state that they, you know, choose to focus on and and, you know, kind of double click on. You've mentioned something twice that I also was not planning on asking about, but since you mentioned it twice, I do want to give you the opportunity to talk about your childhood and what you have experienced to whatever level that you like to. circa 1967 or so. I saw little guys in my bedroom.

>> What do you What do you mean, Dr. Nolan? >> I woke up. >> You were awake. >> I I I think I was awake. >> Okay.

>> Um I saw little guys in my bedroom. At first, I thought it was my brother who was four years younger than me. Um and uh I remember not being able to move. Uh and so people would call that sleep paralysis. Okay.

Why I imagined these people or something looking in the window at me, I don't know. Uh but it wasn't until like 20 or so years later uh when I was a grad student here at Stanford, I was in a used bookstore that I pulled I was I read science fiction almost exclusively. On the cover of the book was what I had seen in my bedroom and I just about had a meltdown. I remember just dro I remember dropping the book in the middle of the in the middle of the of the used bookstore on California Avenue. Somebody wants to go look up if such a bookstore existed to disprove prove me, you know, go for it.

It was there. I can even tell you more or less where I think uh it was on California app. >> So for 20 years, you just kept you didn't say anything. You didn't tell anyone. >> Didn't tell anybody.

I remember dropping it, but I I didn't immediately turn and uh and start studying it, but it did lead me to read the books by John Mack. And in there were the same pictures. Uh and I was like, this is odd. Now, you know, this could be, you know, this could all be explained by something called, you know, the the Yungian's collective unconscious that we that we share a common mental framework. Um, that in dream states, etc., archetypes show up.

So, this could have just been an archetype of a Yungian collective unconscious, not that we're some sort of hive mind, but that we have a genetic switched to, you know, but it went on for a few weeks and my mother told me it's just bad dreams and then it stopped. End of story. Um, and uh never remembered again uh or you know, no memories of abduction or anything like that. Just just a unique moment in my life. Um, you know, another was, um, when I was a paper boy, uh, I had a pretty large paper route that covered a very large area in Connecticut.

And it was as I was walking through kind of the woods there that this object went right over my head with lights that was, you know, I mean, I didn't see anything but the lights and kind of the vague outline of it that just silently went over my head. It was at the level of the trees. How big was this? >> I estimate it to be 30, 40 feet across. It was those kinds of moments that say, "What was that?" Um, again, not proof of anything, but you know, uh, enough of a um enough of a memory that when I listen to other people tell even more detailed stories, I don't have to I don't immediately think that they're crazy. I I just like collecting the stories because the stories and the anecdotes when they all start to match up are are like, "Okay, well, why are they matching? What what is this telling us?" >> Well, and you've talked about in 1994 there was this case in Zimbabwe and I've I've seen seen the documentary about it.

You know, can you get 60 children to all tell the same simultaneous lie? No. Can you get them all to have the same report again simultaneously? It's not like they were all in the yard and had an opportunity to like let's come together with this story. And highly unusual for children of this age to be able to fabricate that. And when you think about, yeah, did they have some collective experience, which you know, historically things have happened like this, but it it's something very very specific that, you know, I I think as you're kind of giving voice to, we can't ignore it. We can't necessarily say what it is, but we know what it's not, but there's there's something here.

I mean, some people would say that you were seated with these experiences because they knew that your brain would go on to do incredible things that allowed you to have access to this level of data and analysis. Do you feel you were chosen? >> I don't. Yeah, I mean that just feels so again narcissistic. Um, I would rather that it's say that if you have a brain state or and again I'm an a form of intelligence that recognizes data off the curve and whatever that whatever that initiating event is has a the ability to recognize you seeing it. It might say, "Oh, great.

here's somebody that can see me. >> I don't know either. But I also, you know, Jonathan talks a lot about, you know, energy work and being able to sense things and certain people are intuitive and I'm always from the I'm always like I don't know what that means. I really it doesn't resonate with me. But I'm thinking like the way that people who are healers or the way that people who feel that they can see into problems you're having and extract them out.

you know, I mean, even a good psychotherapist, right? Those are people who are also tapping into something and seeing things in ways that you don't. It's kind of like it takes all types, you know? Um, but I just I can't help but wonder about that opening that you have. >> I I think one of the reasons why I'm a good scientist is uh being able to recognize data off the curve. listening to students do a presentation of their work every, you know, couple of months and they kind of flash by, they throw, they show the data and then, you know, you see it and then I wait, wait a sec, go back a few slides. What did that mean? Because if you're a scientist, you can't just use the data you like.

And I'm sorry, I'm going to use Mick West as an example. He's very good at saying this element of it proves it's a seagull, you know, and I I I'm, you know, I'm but excludes all of the other counter seagull observations that were done at the time. And that kind of cherrypicking just isn't allowed in real science. I mean, CBS News called me to try to get me to do an interview, to do a debate with him. This was just a few weeks ago, and I said without a doubt, never, because I am never I because he does this all the time, and I don't have the time to to dissect every one of the arguments, and science is not a popularity contest.

I'm not going to sit in front of an audience um which is basically some form of a of a Jerry Springer show um to to argue with somebody who who doesn't even understand the difference between data, evidence, and proof. He dares to call himself a skeptic. No, his website is metabunk. He's a debunker. He comes to the story ahead of time.

And I I don't want to pick on him, but he's a type of person that serious people just need to ignore you because like it's like I I'm a scientist. I was born a skeptic or I was trained to be a skeptic. I'm skeptic of my own ideas. >> I want to ask you one more question before we let you go and I really I would love to have coffee with you because I have many other things I want to ask you. Um, do you think that there given everything you know, everything you're gathering, everything you're seeing, everything you participated in in the age of disclosure documentary, do you think we are at risk either physically or existentially? Is there some imminent threat potentially either from adversarial forces within this solar system or from outside the solar system? for them to be a threat, they'd have to need something that we have.

>> We have you. I'm offering you up. Here's here's Gary. >> Thanks so much. Um but um well, if they if they land and open the door, I'm I'm on board.

You know, I was 65 two days ago, so uh >> happy birthday. >> I'm like I would go on that adventure. Um you know, uh but no, I I I I really don't. Um, and maybe this is just cuz I'm an optimist, but uh but I'm but I'm also practical. It's like there's there's really apart from the ecosphere, >> which we're doing our best to destroy.

>> Yeah. There's nothing here that they can't get in a thousand other places. >> Wow. >> You know, there's no resource, there's no whatever. We might want resources in the in in the African savannah, but there are certain uh animals that live there that can live nowhere else.

Uh and um so maybe we just let them let them live for as long as as they can until the climate might change so drastically. But um you know, but species come and species go because climates do change over the course of geological history. You know, I often say to people, it's like, look, in geological terms, you you you neither mattered nor will you matter, you know, across the course of of of history. It's the collective force. So, I I just um I just don't know.

I just don't see I mean, people are always like, "Oh, 2026, oh, 10 years from now, something or this or that's going to happen." Maybe. Um but if I can't control it, I'm not going to sit around worrying about it. Um, I can prepare contingencies, let's say, but I I'm not living I'm not interested in living in a post-apocalyptic world where um I can't order something from Amazon and get it the next day. All it would take any advanced society to do if they wanted to wipe us out is do what happened to the dinosaurs. Find find a big rock, point it our way, and you know that's the end of life on Earth.

and and start again. >> And that's the optimistic take from Dr. Gary Nolan. >> It's that they haven't done it yet. And so I don't think that they're that we're in any short-term danger of anybody doing it again anytime soon.

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

>> Thanks so much. It was a it was an enjoyable discussion. >> The fact that he mentioned he mentioned it twice that he had a personal experience I couldn't let it go. his experiences first of all like fascinating and wow. But the thing that struck me most was when he said that when he hears other people tell about their experiences that like something in him knows something and it's true it could be that there's a you know collective archetype that we create and this is the thing and and Jeffrey Krele who also works associated with soul foundation Jeffrey Kriple talks about this as well.

There are images that we see and people used to think a demon was sitting on your chest and that's why you couldn't move at night. You know, there's all sorts of kind of mythology historically, but goes back thousands and thousands of years and and a lot of these things have been clocked for thousands of years. He also said maybe in five million years we'd evolve to be very good partners for this advanced civilization. And I was like, we're so basic now. If I take the Robin Hansen idea sort of that we have we've posited here, the idea that aliens are some form of advanced civilization likely millions of years ahead of us and they've replaced a lot of their biology with synthetic material.

I think it goes back to the conversation with Greg Braden that right now life on Earth is at this transition point where we're gaining an enormous amount of intelligence but we're starting to augment ourselves and losing this version of what it means to be human. And I think this version is very very special. And as we evolve, there are trade-offs in that evolution. And we will lose aspects of what it fundamentally is to be alive in human form in this in this way. And so I think whatever they have lost along the way, they're wondering if we can continue our journey and progress and not have the pitfalls that they may have encountered.

>> You know what they want? reality TV. >> No, they don't. Everyone is like very civilized. There's no outrage. >> This is going to be the new way that I say no to my children when they want things.

Like they want like a new pair of bluntstones or whatever they want. It doesn't matter. None of it's going to matter. Would the aliens want your boots? No. So, you don't need them either.

>> Would the aliens want your boots? I wonder how that's going to go over. We'll report back. >> What are the What are the liaboos? Laboos. >> Laboo. >> Laboo.

>> What did you call Laboos? I love a lullaboo. >> Maybe they want that. They want those surprise laboos. But what is it? >> I'm going to admit I don't even know what that is. I don't I don't even know what a lieubu is.

I know the word. I don't know what it is. >> It looks like a a munchie wearing a rabbit suit with fangs. It's like a very big thing. I do recommend if you want to learn all the things that you should know about Dr.

Nolan's work, um, please visit the Soul Foundation. Soul spelled like the Spanish sun, s the soulfoundation.org. Um, really, really great episode, Jonathan. Um, very, very glad that we got to speak to Dr. Nolan.

If you want more about our theories about the future of humanity, we're going to give you some over on Substack to the Breaker community, which is just a phenomenal place to come and interact and get more on all of our episodes and exclusive content that we don't release anywhere else. So, come check it out. My breakdown on Substack. >> We'll see you over there. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.

It's my [music] breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two fiction and now she's going to break down. [music] So break down. She's going to break it down.