Dr. Garry Nolan: UAP, NHI, DNA, and the Origins of Life

Transcript

You are listening to the official podcast of the Mutual UFO Network. [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] Welcome once again to the official MUON podcast. I'm Richard Beckwith. What happens when one of the world's most accomplished scientists turns his focus to one of its greatest and most forbidden mysteries? Dr. Gary Nolan is a distinguished professor in the department of pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine.

His day job is revolutionizing our understanding of cancer and the immune system. He's developed innovative instruments and technologies leading to over 350 research articles, 50 US patents, and the founding of numerous multi-million dollar companies. Stanford has even honored him with a lifetime achievement award. But Dr. Nolan is also driven by a question that has captivated humanity for centuries.

Are we alone in the universe? As we all know, his interest in this subject isn't purely academic. As a young boy delivering newspapers, he saw an object pass silently and inexplicably right over his head. An experience that personally convinced him that there was truly something to investigate. Applying the same scientific rigor that made him a leader in his field, Dr. Nolan investigates what he calls the data off the curve, the unexplained anomalies where he believes true discoveries are made.

He was approached by representatives from the CIA to analyze the mysterious medical injuries of pilots and diplomats. Cases that included the first individuals we now know as Havana syndrome patients as well as a small subset who claimed to have experienced harm from UAP encounters. He has analyzed alleged UAP materials, publishing the world's first peer-reviewed paper on the subject and finding evidence of industrial processes and anomalous isotope ratios that defy easy explanation. To professionalize the study of this phenomenon and move it beyond its ridicule, Dr. Nolan co-founded the Saul Foundation, a think tank bringing together top minds from academia, government, and science to tackle these profound questions headon.

He is a scientist who believes in data, not dogma. He is a pioneer who argues that stopping people from asking questions is what is truly unscientific. Today we have the great honor of speaking with the man who stands at the intersection of groundbreaking science and the ultimate unknown. Dr. Gary Nolan, welcome to the MUON podcast.

>> Thank you very much. Been looking forward to this all week. >> I've been looking forward to it for a really long time. Uh I've been wanting to have a discussion with you about uh as much as we can learn about what you've learned about the subject of UAP and and NHI and uh our audience you know a good portion of it is a nuts andbolts kind of audience but we're also very familiar with the notion that uh the earth is of some interest to non on human intelligences that uh perhaps these u NHI if you will have been here for a uh very long time. And so the question comes about, you know, uh are we b being visited as it were by aliens as you know some of our nuts and bolts folks would would see it or uh is this something that is uh much deeper that goes to the uh the evolution of our planet perhaps even the um the evolution of our species.

Right. So I think um we need to take it back a step as to differentiating and learning to differentiate uh what our personal beliefs and personal conclusions are about the entire matter of NHI versus at least for me what is scientifically credible and or provable. Um, you know, I think your audience especially is is extremely well educated on these matters. Uh, but uh, you know, at least from my point of view, I probably won't be telling them anything they don't know. But this is more about uh how I've been approaching the matter as a scientist and how I've been approaching the matter through say the sole organization or other relationships that uh I have with many of the other uh the cottage industry of organizations that exist now.

I mean muon of course being uh one of the oldest and as well beyond a cottage. Uh so um you know I I think you know as I as I stated at one point on uh Alec Clo's uh in at his investment meeting where I said you know what do I think is the chance that aliens are here? What what percentage would I give? My answer was 100%. uh as a personal belief um not as a fact. Uh so you know the only way that I can uh think about that is you know what what what have I seen and what all fits together into a package that makes sense because we're all humans are always looking to find a way to tell a story um or at least organize information as a story. So the only way that I can make sense of it is that uh whatever this is given the uh what's the right way of say given let's say the technology that it seems to represent uh the manners in which humans are allegedly interacted with besp speaks of uh something which is at least thousands of years beyond us, if not millions of years beyond us.

And if you take a further step back, as others have started to do, in a universe that is 14 billion years old, uh the chance that other civilizations might have uh arisen that are well in advance of our own uh is high. Uh right. I mean, given the fact that we're already starting to see evidence of, let's say, uh, you know, the remains of of what might be something biological on Mars, the I think it's the, uh, Perseverance, um, lander has been seeing that, what we think might be going on around the moons of Jupiter and Uranus. Uh, so whatever it is, certainly had the opportunity to get here. um even given conventional rocket speeds, you know, given a billion years, you can be all over the galaxy, you know, at 10,000 mph by the simple von Newman uh approach.

So, we can definitely dispense with the question of can they be here? Yes, they can be here. And yes, if they are here, they're obviously well in advance of our technology. The next question is who and what is here? Uh what is their purpose relative to humanity if any? Are we their purpose? My you know my my feelings is that they started on the other side of the galaxy several hundred million years ago and they're here now. They didn't they didn't get here just to find humanity. They got here and humanity arose.

while they were doing whatever it is that they were doing. Now, part of your question uh sort of subsumes the uh underlying question of well, if they are here, how are they interacting with us? Are they here to help us? Are they here to to hinder? Are they here to uh change us, you know, for some other agenda? I I don't know. Uh, and I don't think we'll frankly ever know in at least in our our lifetimes. So, um, >> is it possible is it is it possible, Dr. Nolan, that that we are not simply talking about, uh, one civilization, but perhaps many different civilizations on many different levels of technology that have an interest in our planet for one reason or another.

>> Yes. And I I've said this before. I think that you know there seems to be data uh and speculation or evidence in so far as evidence is a hypothesis and not proof of anything uh that whatever these things are they might be in tension with each other. You hear lots of stories around this and you know just as you relayed uh if there is some kind of hierarchy of uh intelligences with different capabilities uh it it's not as if they all sit around some council table somewhere and come to an agreement uh like the United Nations I I can't even imagine or >> the federation >> or the federation or what have you that there are likely you know if anything multiple agendas and And I don't think we're the focus of any of them of of any of them really. I think at at best we're somebody's side project um or we're uh you know not in the way but they're they're going about their business and to the extent that they interact with us.

everything from, you know, just interested in what we're doing to maybe stopping us from walking off a cliff that that they can foresee that we yet can't. >> Mhm. Let's let's talk a little bit about um a field that we have in common which is um biology and genetics and molecular biology. When I was in school uh many many years ago, I worked in a molecular veriology lab and we were working uh to isolate a protein in tobacco plants called P68 which had uh some relationship to our understanding at that time to the human immune system. But we were extracting the attempting to extract and isolate the protein from tobacco plants.

And so what I'm what I'm asking you now about is highly conserved >> C was like some overexpression vector. >> Um I I can't answer that question. I haven't been involved in the in the >> Was it tobacco mosaic virus um >> that you were using? >> I I I cannot recall. It's been it's been I got my degree in 1990. Uh and so uh it's been quite some time but I I just remember the the lab that I was in and you know the the we were running gels you know to isolate we would tag the protein >> and this was a human protein.

>> No this was a tobacco protein but it had to Yeah. But it had a human analog. >> Okay. Yeah. >> Okay.

And so what I what I'm asking you about here is highly conserved sequences and the potential of of panspermia and the possibility that we may be related genetically on some fundamental level to virtually every living thing in uh in the known universe just by virtue of the fact that we have this uh these this DNA in ourselves that that somehow allows us to arise from just you know basic uh simple chemicals. So is that is it possible that we may have sequences in our in our own genes that we have in that would be in common with other species in the universe? >> Yeah, I mean I mean so again let's go back to the beginning. What were the first atoms that arose uh after the you know the big bang? um you know uh hydrogen >> hydrogen >> obviously uh but then carbon, nitrogen, oxygen sulfur >> through magnesium. Those are those are the first things that arose you know carbon, oxygen, nitrogen uh is essentially 90% 99% of what humans are made of. So the seeds of what was possible whether they had become complex uh organic molecules yet were available almost at at the very first formation of a sun that went supernova.

So you know carbon you know carbon nitrogen and all the heavy metals. So everything that could be seated was available. Uh uh it would the first things that were available are what we're made of. So what that means is as soon as life could happen uh that the possibility uh was there for it to occur. And you might actually have multiple different domains of um organic hereditary uh lines that you know you might have one line that happened in one part of the big bang after that those galaxies expanded another in another line.

So that we're not all necessarily related but we all are at least if we're organic. uh at the level of carbon, nitrogen etc. So the sequences of something on the far side of the other universe might be very different from us but still are made of the same constituents. So there might be local domains of organic hereditarily related um materials and you know there's there's this fascinating paper uh that came out uh talking about uh the Moors law of uh genetic complexity where uh they were basically positing that over evolutionary time there were uh uh increases in genetic complexity. For instance, the Cambrian explosion or the the Cambrian uh evolutionary explosion of all the various forms happened because the modules that create different tissues and capabilities all suddenly had reached a level of Lego complexity that they could be put together in many different ways.

Um and so this complexity uh doubled over I don't know some tens of millions of years each time. And if you this was all speculation but if you look at the complexity of what uh mamalian and all the upper life forms that we know now and then you go back to the lower and lower life forms and the complexity of genetics, you end up creating a line that actually goes back uh and crosses the zero point at around 9 billion years ago. Well, that's interesting. >> Yeah. Because what that is is uh speculative evidence that uh whatever we came from arose 9 billion years ago.

So it's to your point. >> Yeah. >> So the counterpoint to that is that complexity doesn't double in a linear fashion but that the complexity on earth perhaps arose exponentially and then started going linear. So you know this 9 billion year crossover point is if you just assume linearity but if if suddenly complexity arose and then went quickly and then became linear then you don't have then you don't have evidence of uh of penseria per se >> but when I try to explain this to some of my lay uh friends is says look everything you're made of and especially All the metals that you're wearing say as jewelry etc came from the heart of an exploded star that became gas and then recondensed as dust which then condensed into planets that then arose uh and in a way or the planets then allowed for the arisal of life. So, if it took that long for all of this, there's plenty of time uh to imagine that life could have hitchhiked uh on some of these rocks along the way uh even if it was extremely primitive.

Uh so my expectation is that if we were to look uh around at least our local if we had the opportunity to look at the local star clusters around us um and if there was life there it would be somehow similarly related to us uh if Penspermia acted. But you might go to let's say the Andromeda galaxy and find that in fact there's a whole different lineage of at least carbon based life life forms. So you know I think it's a it's just a fascinating thing to think about. I mean, I can't wait for somebody to please land a land lander on one of the moons of of Jupiter or the other planets that have frozen oceans underneath and please scoop up some of that snow uh and and put it in a, you know, melt the snow uh add maybe a touch of organics and see if anything starts swimming around. Yeah, I I'm I'm particularly interested in the uh in the interior of Europa and perhaps the interior of Io where there may be a a vast ocean that's you know powered by the the central uh volcanic forces inside of the the planets and the movement around Jupiter.

I would think that there might be some really fascinating life forms uh in in those oceans that are a little more difficult to access than the than the surface of another moon without sending >> I've seen I I've seen some papers and proposals for how to find that. And one of them it was fascinating. I don't know if I could ever find it again. Um involved sending uh something with uh a a nuclear heated core. >> Yeah.

uh that would on the way down drop off transponders uh and leave the transponders there. So, you know, cuz you you're probably unlikely to get a a you know, a um fiber optics to follow you the mile or so into the ice that you need to go, >> right? >> Uh but and then hopefully then that drops into actual water uh underneath. And I would hope to see some some stuff maybe swimming around, but >> they might be able to get some stuff from the surface. I guess there's some sort of a subsurface uh extrusion on occasion out under the surface. >> Oh, yeah.

I certainly imagine that. Yeah. Didn't they have um some water jets that they've seen? >> Yeah, I think there's actually a couple of actually I got I'm not sure what body I'm thinking of, but there are a couple of pretty prominent jets uh coming out of it. But but I want to get back to our discussion about about uh conserved sequences and and DNA. And so certainly um the the basic constituents of life carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and some of the other uh important uh uh enzyme co-actors if you will uh were there from the beginning of time.

And and so what is the commonality of DNA or what would you think that the commonality of DNA uh throughout the universe would be or the use of DNA as a way to replicate? It seems to me that that that's a highly efficient way to maintain uh memory over a long period of time and to be used as a replication mechanism. So what would be the possibility that that DNA is an analog across the universe or something akin to it? Yeah, I mean I I I I think it's pretty obvious. I mean the answer is yes. I mean the the the the open-handed question is you know the kirality of the DNA um and the kirality of the proteins >> and explain that for our audience. It has to do with the orientation of the molecules, right? One is a left and one is a is a right.

And so there may be >> yeah the the it's yeah in chemistry as you know it's it's called kirality. Um and uh you know or in in lay it's often called mirror life. >> Mhm. >> I mean there's actually a an argument ongoing in the in the scientific community as to whether or not we dare even try to make mirror life. I mean it's within our p it's within our capability now to do it.

Um and the worry of course is it would become the equivalent of of the gray sludge uh self-replicating nanites. So it' be something that we wouldn't be able to to uh stop deal with and stop. So you know so stop do stop research into it now. Um, so yeah, I think whether there are alternative ways to encode information, I mean, sure, there's there's there's you could still use nucleotides and have a different code, I suspect. Um, but interestingly, as others have shown, the code is almost perfectly aligned with uh its function.

So whether that was let's say um whether that was just a function of of evolution and selection that uh imposed efficiency on the system uh or whether that was designed as some people would say uh there's a paper out there called the wow signal uh in DNA which posits that the code was designed um and they go through a lot of interesting mathematics ical arguments but I I have no way to you know to validate it. I think it's an it's a very interesting question. Um you know but it it once you establish a code in any you know uh life form like the early life form it it's hard to go back and rewrite it. So you sort of get stuck with what you got. Um it's uh it's kind of a uh founder it's called in in the ecosystem world in ecology it's called the founder effect.

>> Mhm. >> That once you once you establish with a certain formalism of how the uh genes are talking to each other. It's not easy to go back and rewrite the code. you can mess with the code a little bit and you know Nobel prizes are given you know fairly regularly uh around at least in the early days around uh how you um you know the the information flow from DNA to RNA to protein uh you know when they found that actually RNA could go back to DNA that was David Baltimore and Howard Teman won the Nobel for that and actually David who was my uh postoc mentor just recently passed away uh and uh I mean he was a giant in the field uh of open-minded thinking. So uh you know I I do think we have to be um aware of of that.

You know it it it it crosses over into a conversation that I see quite a bit uh online about whether there's any evidence that human DNA was tampered with. Um, and there's some supposed paper out that I looked at the data and I I and what they were saying. I'm like, well, it that so far that's not convincing. Please put it into a peer-reviewed format. Uh, and then let's have the conversation.

Is this about the big bang of the brain kind of a thing or or uh you know the fact that you know I because I I see quantum speciation as as something that takes place you know o over periods of time where you you go along with the species for a while and then all of a sudden it advances very quickly but it just has to do perhaps with a series of mutations or something of that nature. Right. >> Yeah. I think you know I I think if there's a sudden leap in capability uh because of you know I mean DNA rearranges you know all the time and mistakes are made all the time uh and if suddenly that leads to a a let's call it a technical leap in the genetic capabilities then that species is going to rapidly fill all of the niches. So I I don't see that uh that sudden change as being um indicative of intervention.

Uh I mean it it could be uh it's evidence for it but it's not proof of it. So you always need to keep it on the table. Um but when there are sufficient alternative explanations I I don't think we should go down too many rabbit holes. I mean I think people are welcome to do whatever they want to do to prove it. I mean science you know and Nobel prizes uh are are given you know uh on the basis of people pursuing a truth that they thought was real and it becomes uh evident that it had importance well beyond just the simple problem they were asking you know and that's the basis of which the you know the nobells are are given I mean the one that was given yesterday actually I I I know one of the one of the guys the guy who was hiking.

Um uh and uh he didn't find out that he got the the Nobel um until he got back into uh into radio range or cell phone range. And actually, I was just texting with him last night and he said, "I haven't gotten 300 emails uh in my in an entire year, never mind day." So, you know, it was it was it was welld deserved um for what what he got. >> Actually, it was on the immune system that he and two others shared the prize. >> That's that's wonderful. I I as we talk about this, I'm I'm drawn to another subject which I kind of gave you a little bit of warning I might want to talk about which is uh the notion of bioentrism.

And it seems to me and so you you may be familiar with Dr. Robert Lonz's theory that he shares with a couple of other uh folks that um you know uh our universe uh and you know the the environment in which we live appears to be uh sort of fine-tuned to life. And and that and that the reason for that is that u because there can't be a universe without life that life is essential to the existence of the universe because the universe must be observed you know the the you know and so we start talking about you know quantum wave function collapse and all these things and but it but it leads you know to this question about uh you know whether life is essential to the universe and and what consciousness is how do we do we all you know do we are all all share some piece of it are we like the shard of a of a hologram each and every one of us with the one consciousness and you know what what do you what do you think about that >> yeah actually interestingly over a decade ago I had this conversation with um Haluto off about what's the you know uh you know what's the minimal uh unit of consciousness sufficient to create um a uh an observable event that collapses the wave function. Uh and he said that's a great question. We don't know.

Uh and this was actually um there was a meeting that you know a bunch of us regularly had every well every uh six months or so. Um that where Eric Davis had been uh putting forward the notion that uh the universe started when the first particles became quantum entangled. And once they became quantum entangled that was essentially uh and the recognition of that that was essentially the start of the universe and it was the seed that you know created what it was. It was an interesting idea. Um and it was I I'm probably completely uh destroying what it was that Eric was trying to say.

But that is what led me to what you just mentioned uh sort of in parallel thinking about you know is the universe designed for us or is the universe created because the fundamental particles that finally found their way to exist out of the nothingness of of reality uh formalized into uh a universe that had the rules, you know, right down at the plank level for how particles would interact that allowed for life to form. Because when you think about what each of these particles are doing, they're almost like little pieces of software >> and units of interaction. So it's it's it's very easy to take a step back and say the computer the universe is a computer because the rules you know of these objects that are really just nothingness and waveforms uh look like look like a the most advanced computer program you could ever imagine. I mean at least that's what I the way I think about it. Wouldn't Wouldn't you agree that that uh virtually everything that we know when you when you break it down uh to its most ba basic components the subatomic particles and so forth that everything in our in our existence can be reduced essentially to a computation right >> yes yeah um >> which gives rise to the notion of is do we live in a simulation or is there a sim are we living in a simulation >> yeah I mean I I I just don't like that I mean personally I just don't I I just don't like that term as a simulation.

A simulation of what um you know whether we're a sim a simulation implies that you're not real um as opposed to saying that reality is a computer program that allows for us to exist. I mean, call it what you want, but a simulation of what is, I mean, it's a it's a very flippant term in my mind. And so, you know, a simulation of something, a simulation of somebody else's reality or a subset of somebody else's reality, you know. >> Yeah, I I understand. I think some some people would say uh well that we're that we're uh you know fundamentally we have a soul that it that that we are in fact you know conscious eternal beings that we you know aren't necessarily uh you know defined by the physical bodies we find ourselves in and that the simulation is essentially a way for you know the eternal portion of us to experience uh you know the passage of time uh you know all those other things that we we don't experience as eternal souls.

That's almost a religious sort of a perspective. But did what do you think about that? >> Um I'm sorry. Please repeat that. >> Yeah. Then I I was just wondering, you know, some people uh look at it like we're, you know, we are eternal.

Each of us have an eternal soul. >> And I think some of the evidence bears that out that there is something, you know, non-cor corporeal about us. >> Uh that continues over a period of time. I mean it may be that the that the simulation that we are in fact the designers of the simulation ourselves so that we have something to do. >> Yeah.

I mean it to to say that we have souls implies one of two I'd like to think that we do but implies one of two things. um that our current reality as we understand it with the particles etc that we talk about to the extent that we understand it at all um are sufficient to explain how consciousness uh might uh continue after death and there's plenty of near-death experience uh you know related stories you know I you know I I I believe that the people who say that that happened feel that it happened to them. I don't know if I don't know if it's if it's real. Or you you basically say that our reality is a subset of something greater and that the soul sits outside uh at the periphery in some other level of reality. Uh, and I think there's plenty of people who who think that that's what's going on or or or believe that they have had interactions with something in that other space.

Now, somebody listening might say, "Well, that's crazy." Um, well, I my my counter to that usually is, okay, well, are you religious? Do you you know, do you believe where's heaven and where's hell? it, you know, even as long ago as 2,000 years or whatever, we believed in other realities that were outside of the mortal realm. So, uh whether that's true or not, I I don't know. But, you know, it's it's it's food for food for thought. Uh certainly, and you know, at least religions used it as uh as a means of consequence, right? that if you don't do the right thing, you won't go to the right place afterwards. >> Right? >> Um let's let's talk about consciousness relative to the uh to the uh NHI issue.

Now, I can I can tell you from just from my own experience with an individual that I know that uh went to a crash site and uh this individual went down into the crash into the crater. He was allowed, he was actually a security guy, but was allowed down into the crater just, you know, probably uh not the wisest thing, but he was allowed down in there to just take a look at it. It was a a large craft that had crashed in the area in an area in the southwest. I won't say precisely where it was. >> Uh but uh he touched the craft and he said that uh he immediately got a feeling like uh like the craft was talking to him and it said and it said, "You shouldn't be here." And so it it it it scared the holy hell out of him and he got up got up out of there because because he sensed that the craft itself was alive and conscious and speaking to him.

Have you heard of this phenomenon? >> I've heard of this kind of thing. There's two possibilities there. One, the the craft is uh truly conscious. Then so then you have to figure out okay how does how does metal uh or whatever is within the construction of the object become conscious? Where is the seed of the consciousness in that craft? >> Yeah. >> If if it's if such an idea is real.

>> Um or is the is the craft you could say is the craft a super advanced AI? I mean these days we're having a hard time even knowing whether or not Chad GPT or Grock is conscious. So imagine a civilization which is again a million years or even 10,000 years ahead of us. Imagine where we're going to be in 10,000 years. We could probably create a craft that is for all intents and purposes uh intelligent enough to seem like it's conscious. Right? I mean, so it's it's to to to me the essential question is is is consciousness some some fundamental feature of the organization of the brain or can it be embodied in other kinds of complex structures? Yeah, that that that that that begs the question clearly about what the the nature of consciousness is.

But to to me it seems that uh consciousness on a certain level involves the possibility of um of two minds uh communicating without necessarily using uh a you know a language you know a telepathy if you will. I I was fortunate enough to to become very close to a colleague of uh of Dr. Putoffs, a guy by the name of Dr. Stannislav Ojac, who was also a good friend of Inggo Swans. >> And uh and he was involved in all those SAI experiments at SRRI many many years ago.

And uh the what fascinated me about that and about consciousness is it seems to me that there is a an ability for consciousness to extend beyond uh the confines of the mind. And so I'm not I mean you know as well as I do that that no one's been able to absolutely prove that but that there does seem to be a high correlation between you know well a high correlation of people being able to uh you know perhaps uh tell what a card is going to be before it's overturned. you know there there so there so there there is some evidence there to indicate that we do have some component of our minds that extends beyond uh its physical confines. Would would you agree with that? >> Yeah, I have no problem with that. I mean you know we're we're we're sitting in a as we just discussed a complex substrate of reality down at a level below which we can't even perceive.

you know, the gluons and etc. the the particles uh of reality. Um, and time we don't even fully understand. And so to imagine that you your your your your brain is not seeing or your consciousness is not seeing an instant of time, but is seeing a um a space on either side of time. It's both seeing a little bit into the past and a little bit into the future.

So you can imagine say a bell curve of of how far into the future any individual can can see. Uh you know and uh whether that's just a minute or whether that's just a second uh or longer I I don't know what the what the answer is. But it doesn't bother me to think that our perceptions and how we think of it as an instantaneous moment might actually be a small window. >> Mhm. You've you've identified a um a a neural structure uh in the brain that seems to be common among folks who uh have higher levels of intuition.

Mhm. >> Can you explain that to our audience? >> Sure. So um the the suborgan of the brain within which this structure was seen or found um is called the basil ganglia. Uh and the basil ganglia is an ancient structure. It goes back evolutionarily to you know even you know way back to when mammals first be began.

And I don't I I I'm assuming that reptiles also have it, but I haven't ever actually looked into that. Um, but it's an area of the brain that uh originally actually uh in science, you know, back in the 90s and early 2000s was thought to be involved only with motor movement that it was the command, it was the command center for motor movement. Uh but as people began to think more about that idea, they realized, well, motor movement can't happen without the decision of where you want to move. Motor movement can't happen unless you're receiving information from the environment to tell you where you are in 3D space to move. So it became obvious that this was a center where at least the decisions of subconscious movement are are made or they they're processed here.

Um and so to whatever extent intuition means uh a decision made with sparse information. Uh this area of the brain would be the one that that would be necessary for it from an evolutionary standpoint because you you want the reflex of oh my god uh something is about is about to jump out of the bushes and eat me. Uh that can't be a that can't be a conscious decision. It's got to be an instantaneous one and and and that's where the codate patamon comes in because that is actually known to be the processing center. So at the same time that Kit Green and Jacqu filet and others and I were looking at these this group of patients that Kit had collected from the intelligence community and the um military who had been supposedly harmed by something.

We were looking at the brains and kit was doing volutrics because we'd noticed that there was this dense area that actually wasn't obvious in the literature. I mean it's there but the density was higher amongst these individuals. And so Kit, it really was Kit who came to the conclusion that uh well these people the commonality is high functionality. um at the very least intellectual functionality uh and that their jobs the better they were intuitively at accomplishing something the better would be the outcome. Um and so uh this area of the brain became a target of focus for us and we we said in our intuition was this is where intuition happens and when you went into the literature suddenly you find in the medical literature a lot of uh speculation that this is where intuition happens not intuition magic intuition processing uh And it had been shown that you know this area lights up when when certain uh you know intuitive decisions with sparse data are are made.

So to the extent that we wanted to follow it up uh properly uh we did studies uh I did a a study with a lab at Harvard the Modi lab at Harvard that does work on autism uh and brain structures. uh we finally published three papers on this where we went out and got uh the MRIs of uh few hundred people with different levels of autism, different levels of schizophrenia and so-called normals. So you basically you have nor normals whatever that means and then you have the neurode divergence on either side because we felt that um and it had it previously been shown by others that uh changes to the brain structure in this area were related to uh things like schizophrenia and autism. So, you know, schizophrenia and autism are kind of perception, you know, I I would think of schizophrenia as a perception management issue, whereas, you know, how are you interpreting your world, whereas um autism seems to be about uh you know, and I'm probably going to get in trouble for saying this, seems to be about decision making uh and focus. And so you would expect a variation in a human population to to have this.

Actually, I saw a paper recently about how it was saying that autism uh is the the the early forms of autism is actually one of the reasons why humanity succeeded because it gave us certain capabilities uh and focus. Whereas you know on the other side schizophrenia is about creativity. Uh and so to the extent that those are managed within a population, you you as a group have sufficient diversity within to to succeed as a tribe, let's say. But of course, there's always the extremes where it goes into into pathologies. Um >> so so this this intuition that you were that you were talking about, it's not necessarily uh you know, magical.

Uh it it simply has to do with with the uh perhaps an evolutionary advantage that uh these individuals may have because of their ability to make uh uh more acceptable intuitive decisions or they're just better at it than others are. >> Yeah. And you know, but if you if you then want to ask the question, if you hypothesize that sigh exists in whatever form you want to imagine it, you know, remote viewing or telepathy or what have you, um, you would need to work with this center of the brain. because the information is going to come in is going to have to be processed and you know the the cardipotaman uh area of the brain is actually called the brain within the brain it's it's where all the decisions are made uh and where the you know your executive function says I want to do this uh and then uh somewhere in your subconscious but the cardipotamment is deeply involved with it the the ordering of what you should do is all worked out um so evolution almost always works by overlaying function uh onto previously existing elements, right? You you you don't invent a whole new area that would be sigh. You would use what's already there and try to overlay and augment uh what's already there with new capabilities.

Mhm. >> Um and so it would make sense then that uh the uh codate pataman is uh would be involved. And so when we did all these brain studies, we in fact saw conclusively and statistically that the codipotamin was certainly involved with intelligence. Uh and uh but it wasn't alone. Uh, and even as Kit had begun to do some of further work, he'd already said, this was around 2015, 2016 before I got involved with the Modi lab, um, he said, "Look, I'm already beginning to see compensatory changes in some of these individuals, which makes sense that if if you have an information processing system uh, in the codipotamin, which is doing more, well, it can't just do more and keep it there.

It has to relay it to other parts of the brain. So there have to be both neural tracts as well as receiving or transmission stations around the rest of the brain that are able to deal with the additional information that say the codipotamment can can provide. In fact indeed in our paper uh papers three of them we saw evidence as Kit had alluded to in his preliminary results of exactly this compensation that other areas of the brain would be uh larger or smaller depending upon uh the complexity of what we were seeing in the codic attainment. But overall uh the codate was sort of the the principal component number one in all of our studies. >> Is is it possible? >> I find that interesting.

>> Is is consciousness uh taking place in the uh quantum interactions uh that are taking place uh like in the synapses of the brain? you know, I mean, clearly, you know, the atoms that make up our brain, the molecules that make up our brain, they they are also, you know, subject to the laws of physics. And so is that is that where consciousness is taking place is somewhere in the in these quantum interactions uh like in the synapses or or what do you >> I mean I if you want to talk about consciousness as a purely material thing that exists within our current known realm uh you know the the um prevalent hypothesis in the world is that uh it's happening between the synapses now within a subset of the community, you know, as represented by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hammerov. Uh their um postulate is that there is insufficient computing capability uh within the even the high complexity of the of the brain as it as we understand it. Um and they of course are making certain assumptions about what computation is required to create consciousness. uh whereas >> so they're looking at the brain as a like a modulator or a transducer of consciousness.

Right. >> Right. I mean they they postulate that actually at least some of the computation of what we think of as consciousness is happening in the microtubules. Uh and part of the evidence that they have which is not proof but it's evidence that it turns out that several of what we think of as anesthetics which are were thought previously to actually bind in the lipid rafts on the cell membranes and that was what caused anesthesia and loss of consciousness. Um in fact also bind to the microtubules.

Um, so that's interesting because you know that's what they're saying is saying look there's a there's a perhaps causal observation here that you know changing the lipid rafts might change membrane potentials and and that's how let's say conventional neurohysiologists think about consciousness. uh it make it'll make them they may be more squishy or or less squishy and and that changes the membrane potentials uh as opposed to what Hammeroff and Penrose are positing that at least some of the computation is done on the microtubules and you know as we come to understand microtubules more there's quite a bit of interaction uh in the brain and things binding to the microtubules and they're not just they're not just a support structure to keep the cells shape So I, you know, neither side has the means yet to prove the argument. >> Uh, one last question before we go. I know you have some things that you need to attend to, but um, uh, I'm interested just to get back to the the MHI question. Uh I I think you've reached the conclusion that based on your own personal observations what you that you think that there is a 100% chance that that we're involved with nonhuman intelligence and that they may not be really interested uh in us at all.

Uh and so are we uh merely a a passing species on this planet for terms of long-term observation or um is it possible and you know getting back to this u uh location in the brain that we were talking about that uh there may be certain NHIS that are interested in the lineage of these individuals uh and that uh people who are uh taken, if you will, sometimes uh uh sort of that sort of follows families. Could it be because they're interested in in just those individuals or are they following individuals because there may be uh uh either a product that they're getting from them or uh that it is necessary to follow a lineage in order to study the effect of certain in the environment on a species. So you start way back when with with one individual or with a few individuals and you follow the lineage of that individual so you have a baseline to work from to determine how the environment is affecting the the organism. >> Yeah. I mean I don't think you need to necessarily intervene in say the genetics or the reproduction of those individuals to be to say that you're interested in following them.

I mean, you know, I have plants in my greenhouse outside that I've been hybridizing for fun for, you know, for for decades, you know, trying to change and and follow them. um you know whether there's a purposeful need for it and uh whether we're a product I mean that gets into into I I think it that allows for unfortunately the kind of hyperbole that that people want to use to scare the be Jesus. You know those are campfire ghost stories and maybe they're real. I mean I you know I I I do I never discount what people say that they experience. I mean, I experienced, as many people know, as I've talked about openly, what appeared to be little guys in my bedroom as a kid, you know, was it a dream? I don't know, you know, uh, but it was, you know, in accordance with what other people have been talking about for decades as well.

So, you know, I had no idea what what grays were. And it wasn't until I saw Whitley Striber's book and the cover uh in sometime in my 20s that the whole memory of those days came back to me. Um and so uh you know but but I also want to correct something about where I say that there's 100% chance. >> Yeah. >> Is 100% chance doesn't mean that I'm saying it is.

I'm saying, you know, from a statistical standpoint, it could be up to 100%. And I have no problem believing that it would be true. So there's a subtlety there that of course was missed by all the newspapers that reported it around the world that Stanford professors say they're 100% here. >> Yeah, probably story. >> I understand the distinction.

>> A student of mine, Chinese from Beijing, his parents were also scientists. really one of my best students ever. And um at his graduation, his parents came all the way from Beijing. This was just a couple of years ago. And his mother wanted a picture with me.

And uh I said, "That's nice." You know, sure. Uh let's get a picture. Go. You all in your in your academic regalia. And uh she turned and says, "Yeah, I really want to show all my friends uh the that I was with the Stanford professor who said aliens are here." I'm like, "Oh, great.

You didn't want the picture because I spent six years teaching your son. You wanted the picture because you wanted to tell your friends that, you know, you spoke to the Stanford Press doing >> got your picture with the alien guy." >> Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. That's okay.

I'm sure she was also interested in in in how actually I you know to be fair um with my students I feel that they teach me as much as I teach them. You know it's a it's something done together and I really have to learn. I'm sorry. >> I understand Dr. Nolan and I appreciate it and I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being here and uh I'll be back in just a few moments with some afterthoughts.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] The Soul Foundation is a institute of research that funds and guides um uh research in sciences, the social sciences, the humanities and that also produces uh policy and advisory research that is aimed to illumin and help us clear up what's going on with the UAP issue and also prepare us to deal with the social implications of it. >> I come from a tradition in science of taking from multiple different fields of science and thought simultaneously and synthesizing them into something new. You create and you invent. I'm a tinkerer by nature. And so here we are tinkering with uh the reality of what this might actually mean.

We also are putting together what we call a whole of society approach that engages all institutions and kinds of people so that we can deal with what may promise to be a very worldchanging issue uh in a way that involves everyone. >> Here you now have s uh everybody realizing that it's possible to talk about this uh and that they're not going to be booed out of the room. >> When history looks back on this age, it will see two kinds of scientists. those who defended the borders of what was known and those who walked straight into the darkness. Dr.

Gary Nolan belongs to the latter. He came from a world of precision, microscopes, gene sequencing, the immune systems hidden wars. Yet, he dared to apply the same rigor to questions most institutions still fear to ask. What began as a boy's quiet encounter on a newspaper route became a lifelong pursuit of the forbidden frontier. The study of non-human intelligence and its intersection with human consciousness itself.

Nolan's path embodies the next phase of scientific evolution, curiosity without dogma. His work bridging molecular biology and the philosophy of mind shows us that discovery begins where certainty ends. It was in that liinal space that the soul foundation was born. A consortium of scientists, philosophers, and policymakers determined to study UAP and consciousness with the same seriousness once reserved for particle physics or cosmology. But soul is more than a think tank.

It is a declaration that inquiry itself must be free, a new kind of science, unafraid of mystery, willing to build bridges between government secrecy and open knowledge. In the quiet corridors of academia, in the encrypted chatter of defense networks, and in the imaginations of those who still dare to look up souls presence, signals that the conversation has finally begun. As Dr. Nolan reminds us the universe is a vast computation, an unfolding code written in hydrogen, carbon, and curiosity. The question is no longer whether we are alone, but whether we are ready to meet what waits for us inside the equations.

And when that day comes, when the first undeniable proof stands before us, history will trace the moment of reckoning to those who refused to turn away from the impossible. To the scientists who saw the truth not as property but as responsibility. To the visionaries who built institutions like the Soul Foundation where courage and intellect converge. Because science without courage is silence. And silence in a universe this alive is the one thing humanity can no longer afford.

Thank you to Dr. Gary Nolan and thank you for joining us once again. Please remember to like, share, and subscribe. We'll see you next time right here on the official MUON podcast.