May 18, 2025 • 21 mins
This recap episode features an interview with Robert Bigelow, a successful businessman known for Bigelow Aerospace, who also holds a deep fascination with unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. Bigelow discusses how his interest in UFOs began with a dramatic close encounter experienced by his grandparents in 1947. He also shares his own childhood experiences, which he initially dismissed as dreams but later connected to abduction phenomena after researching the subject. The conversation further explores historical UFO sightings, including the Phoenix Lights incident and the Nimitz Tic Tac event, highlighting the increasing public awareness and the challenges of official acknowledgement. Finally, the transcript touches upon the concept of survival of consciousness beyond bodily death, Bigelow's efforts to investigate this through his Bigelow Institute for Conscious Survival, and related topics such as psychic mediums, automatic writing, and the potential for verifiable evidence of an afterlife.
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(00:00):
Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Today, we're taking a deep dive
into a really compelling conversation.
That's right. From the Joe Rogan Experience
episode Hashtag 1612. The guest was Robert Bigelow.
Of Bigelow Aerospace fame, yeah,but also someone with this
lifelong deep fascination with UFOs.
And our goal today for you listening is basically to pull
(00:23):
out the key moments, the, you know, the big insights from that
chat. Make it kind of digestible,
right, Without getting totally lost in the weeds.
Exactly. So where does his interest even
start? It's pretty personal,
apparently. Oh yeah, it's not just academic
for him, it goes way back to hisgrandparents.
May 1947 near Las Vegas. May 47, Wow.
OK, So what happened? Well, they were driving and
(00:45):
suddenly this this object fills their windshield.
Fills a windshield like a close.Super close.
They thought it was a burning plane.
Honestly, they thought they wereabout to crash and die.
Oh man. And then just like that, it
shoots off. Unbelievable speed gone.
And he heard this story growing up.
He heard it from his mom, actually, when he was about 10.
His grandparents, well, they didn't really like talking about
(01:07):
it. Untenable, I guess.
Yeah, I bet. And May 47, that puts it right
before Roswell, right in KennethArnold.
Exactly. June 47 was Kenneth Arnold
sighting the Flying Saucers, then Roswell in July, and even
before that you had the Foo Fighters in World War. 2 So 47
was kind of heating up. Big time.
And there was all this speculation, Bigelow touches on
(01:29):
it about whether, you know, dropping the atomic bombs, the
nuclear tests. Like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, then
the US and Soviet tests. Right.
Whether that somehow like sent up a flare got their attention.
The Trinity test maybe being thefirst big signal.
So his family's crazy experiencefits right into that whole
historical moment. Yeah, it's not in a vacuum.
(01:49):
It really grounds his interest, you know?
OK, but it wasn't just his grandparents, he had his own weird
stuff happen. He did, yeah.
Starting pretty young, like 7 or8.
He calls them silly dreams, but they sound specific.
Also, he kept seeing these threefigures, short, robed, no real
faces or hands or anything discernible.
Just these shapes. OK, that's creepy.
(02:11):
And the kicker is, this was before TV in Vegas.
It wasn't like he was seeing aliens in comics or movies and
then dreaming about them. Right, no cultural reference
point for these images. Exactly made them totally
inexplicable to him at the time.And he just bottled this up.
For decades, didn't even tell his wife.
It was only much, much later when he started researching
(02:31):
abduction stories. OK, he started seeing parallels.
He considered, you know, maybe there was a connection to those
childhood things. But he also says he's kind of OK
not knowing for sure. Prefers not to pin it down.
That leads into the whole abduction topic.
Then he mentions John Mack's work.
Yeah, Mack used hypnotic regression and a lot of people
describe similar scenarios. He also brings up the Roper
(02:52):
pole. The one suggesting what a few
percent of people had experiences that fit abduction
patterns. Something like that.
Yeah, a surprisingly large number if you take it at face
value. But hypnotic regression?
That's tricky territory, isn't it?
The whole false memory debate. Absolutely.
That's the big criticism, that the therapist, even
unintentionally, could lead the person implant ideas.
(03:13):
It's a real concern. So how does Bigelow square that?
Well, he mentions working with hypnotherapist who are
apparently super careful not to lead, and he observed subjects
sometimes correcting the therapist's suggestions under
hypnosis. Oh, interesting, like pushing
back? Yeah, which he felt suggested
maybe it wasn't all suggestion that there could be genuine
recall happening. They also talk about screen
(03:36):
memories. Right where the mind supposedly
covers up a traumatic event withsomething more mundane.
It's definitely complex, but youknow what's really compelling?
Comparing later accounts to the Betty and Barney Hill case.
From the early 60s, yeah, beforethe whole alien abduction thing
really hit pop culture. Precisely their descriptions,
the beings they saw, the whole scenario.
(03:57):
It predates all the movie tropes.
That gives it a different kind of weight maybe.
And then you look at Travis Walton's story decades later.
And the similarities are just eerie.
Different people, different times, but overlapping details.
It makes you think you know. OK, let's shift to sightings
people actually saw, like in public.
Kenneth Arnold again. What exactly did he see?
(04:19):
He was a pilot, a businessman, flying his plane near Mount
Rainier. I think saw nine objects. 9 and
they were saucer shaped. He described them more like
boomerangs or manta rays, skipping like saucers on water,
moving incredibly fast, way faster than any known aircraft.
Then and he was a credible guy, right?
A pilot knows what's normally upthere.
(04:40):
Exactly. Not easily fooled.
His sighting really kicked things off publicly, and Bigelow
points out there were other sightings later by military
people high-ranking. Officers job it is to know
what's flying around. He even mentioned something
recent. Yeah, a text from Dan Crenshaw
about American Airlines pilots reporting something spectacular.
It keeps happening. And maybe we just hear about it
more now. Everyone's he's got a camera
(05:02):
phone. That's definitely part of it.
Way more eyes on the sky, way more ways to record things
compared to the 40s or 50s. Which brings us to the Phoenix
Lights in 1997. That was huge.
Massive thousands of people saw it.
Not just little lights, but thisenormous dark V shaped or
boomerang shaped structure moving silently over the city.
(05:23):
A structure, not just lights. That's a key distinction.
Absolutely. People were describing something
solid blocking out the stars waybigger than any conventional
aircraft. And the news kind of downplayed
it at first. It didn't get the wall to wall
coverage you might expect initially.
Then you had the governor, Fife Symington.
Ohio Yeah, the weird press conference with the guy in the
alien suit. What was that about?
(05:44):
Trying to lighten the mood? Maybe.
But years later, Symington admitted he saw the object
himself. Called it otherworldly.
Wow, so he saw it, knew it was real, but did the whole alien
costume thing anyway. Seems like it, Bigelow suggests.
It was probably Symington's personal call trying to prevent
panic. Maybe not some big government
conspiracy, Which? Gets us to the government angle.
(06:05):
Are they hiding stuff? Why so quiet?
Well the general thinking is if these things aren't ours and
they aren't in other countries, then admitting that opens a huge
can of worms, right? So reluctance is may be
understandable. Until 2017, the New York Times
article that felt like a shift. Huge shift front page story.
Navy pilots like David Fraver talking about the Tic Tac
(06:28):
encounter. Official Pentagon videos
released. That had to change things.
Definitely. It massively reduced the stigma.
Suddenly it was OK for serious people, military pilots, to talk
about this stuff publicly in a major newspaper.
Made it much harder to just dismiss everything.
And Bigelow sees that change filtering down even into
science. He says so he thinks the
(06:50):
scientific community is much less dismissive now than, say,
20 or 30 years ago, more willingto at least consider the
possibility. Maybe shows like Ancient Aliens,
even if they're speculative, helped keep the conversation
alive. Could be part of it, yeah.
Just more exposure overall. Now Bigelow himself, he didn't
just research UFO's, he built rockets or space habitats.
(07:11):
Right, Bigelow Aerospace, it's kind of an amazing pivot from
hotels and real estate to UF OS and then cutting edge space
tech. Talk about following your
interests. So the B330, what is that?
It's an expandable space habitat.
Think inflatable modules for space stations or maybe even
lunar bases. They built full scale
(07:32):
engineering units. Inflatable.
Is that safe? Well, expandable is maybe a
better word. It launches compressed and then
expands. And yeah, they put tons of work
into making it tough. COVID unfortunately hit the
project hard, caused a shutdown.But the deck is real.
Oh yeah, they actually have a smaller test module beam
attached to the ISS right now. I've been there for years.
TRL 9 top level readiness. And this whole idea started
(07:55):
because NASA cancelled somethingsimilar.
Exactly. NASA had a project called
Transhab back in the 90s, cannedit.
Bigelow thought the concept was brilliant and basically decided,
fine, I'll do it myself. Wow, did he just pick up NASA's
plans? He got the license for the basic
patent, but apparently they had to develop all the actual
architecture, the engineering, everything from scratch took 20
(08:15):
years. And the testing must have been
intense. Oh absolutely.
Leak tests, pressure tests, blowing them up intentionally to
find weaknesses, even hyper velocity impact tests like
shooting stuff at them really fast to simulate space debris.
And radiation. Big problem in space.
Yeah, the B330 hall is pretty clever.
There are multiple layers of materials like Vectran with gaps
(08:37):
in between. It's designed to break up and
absorb radiation better than just a solid chunk of metal.
Even worked with Robert Boussard, the fusion guy.
Yeah, they collaborated on some fusion propulsion ideas.
And get this Boussard apparentlyhad his own lifelong UFO
sighting experience, too. Small world, huh?
So Bigelow's working with NASA on the habitats, but he says
(08:58):
NASA isn't the place to go for UFO info.
Pretty much. He's clear that while he learned
a ton about conventional space stuff from NASA, the agency and
most of the mainstream science world just isn't focused on UFOs
or ET. Why not fear of ridicule?
That's part of it. He suggests.
Also just lack of time, resources.
Scientists are focused on their specific research, their
(09:19):
careers. Getting involved in UFO stuff
can be risky professionally. He mentioned brown bagging.
What's that? Like, scientists might be
interested privately, maybe readbooks or articles at home brown
bagging it, but they won't talk about it openly at work.
Don't want to jeopardize their reputation.
Which leads to this feeling of frustration, like the tech in
(09:39):
these UFO reports is just so farbeyond us.
Yeah, he uses the analogy of us still being at the fire engine
stage compared to whatever propulsion these things might
have. It's a vast gap.
Even with guys like Musk and Bezos pushing rocketry forward.
He respects what they're doing immensely, but acknowledges it's
still fundamentally conventionaltech compared to, you know, the
(09:59):
Tic Tacs maneuvers or something.We're just not there yet.
Not even close. Maybe.
OK, let's pivot to someone really controversial.
Yeah, Bob Lazar and Area S4. Right.
This starts with the kind of funny story Bigelow tells about
being out in the desert near Area S4 with Lazar and George
Knapp the journalist. The Mylar balloon incident,
Yeah. They let go a radar reflective
(10:20):
balloon just messing around and apparently it caused quite a
stir. Scrambled Security shows how
sensitive that area is. So Lazar's claim he worked
inside Area S4 back engineering alien craft.
That's the core of it, said He. Worked on propulsion systems.
Encountered element 115. Which wasn't officially
discovered back then, right? Only theoretical.
(10:42):
Exactly. That's a key part of why some
people find his story compelling.
He also claimed he got kicked off the project partly because
they found out his wife was having an affair which he didn't
even know, and they worried about his stability.
And then he went public, took people out to watch alleged test
flights. Right.
It's an absolutely wild story, Bigelow says.
He was skeptical at first. But he came around.
(11:04):
He says over time, and especially seeing George Knapp's
investigative work digging into Lazar's background and claims
he's become more inclined to believe there's truth to it.
What about element 115? Does Bigelow know its
properties? He doesn't claim detailed
knowledge, just notes the significance of Lazar naming a
theoretical element that was later synthesized.
And the holographic book Lazar saw some kind of 3D info
(11:26):
display. Yeah, another really out there
detail supposedly showed historical info.
Including the idea that humans were genetically engineered by
aliens using primates. That's what Lazar claimed was in
the book, that our evolution wasaccelerated or guided.
A pretty staggering concept if true.
Which kind of loops into thinking about humans generally.
(11:49):
We are pretty weird compared to other animals on earth.
Our tech obsession. Yeah, that constant drive to
tinker, to make better stuff. Yeah.
Where is it all heading? They touch on the technological
singularity idea. The point where AI or tech just
zooms past our control. Potentially, and the concern
Bigelow raises is our wisdom, our ethics, our spiritual side
(12:10):
keeping pace. He uses the Klingon analogy.
Tech savvy, but maybe not so mature otherwise, right?
Are we becoming like that, so focused on the gadgets and the
power that we forget about the, you know, the internal stuff of
the values? Doesn't seem like we're making
huge strides in balancing the two, does it?
That's a worry. The gap might be widening.
OK, so from UFOs and advanced tag, the conversation shifts
(12:31):
again to something maybe even more fundamental.
The second Holy Grail, as Bigelow calls it.
Besides, are we alone? The other huge question is does
consciousness survive death? Mind versus brain, Does anything
of us carry on after the body stops?
It's the ultimate question, right?
Driven by loss, by curiosity, bywondering what happens next.
(12:54):
Pretty much every culture and religion has tried to answer it.
But can you approach it scientifically or is it always
just belief? That's the challenge.
How do you measure or prove something like that?
They talk about near death experiences, Ndes.
Yeah, the common reports people have after being clinically dead
and revived feelings of peace, leaving the body, seeing lights,
meeting beings. But couldn't that just be the
(13:15):
brain doing weird things as it shuts down DMT release or
something? That's definitely a counter
argument. They acknowledge that some
psychedelic drugs can mimic aspects of Ndes, like the story
about Larry Hagman taking LSD and losing his fear of death.
But Bigelow points to the sheer number of NDE reports millions
worldwide, across cultures, and specifically the out of body
(13:36):
experience differences OBE's. Where people report seeing
things they shouldn't have been able to see, like details of
their own resuscitation from a viewpoint above their body.
Exactly. Cases where people supposedly
recall verifiable details from while they were unconscious.
Those are harder to explain away, just as brain chemistry.
But interpreting them is still tough.
Language fails. Maybe beliefs color the memory?
(13:59):
For sure, and people are often afraid to even talk about them.
Fear of ridicule is huge. So how could you get proof
verifiable information? That's the key, they suggest.
Could someone bring back specific information during an
NDE that they couldn't possibly have known otherwise?
That would be compelling. Which leads inevitably to
(14:19):
psychics and mediums. Always a touchy subject.
Yeah, Rogan is understandably skeptical here.
Lots of fraud in that field. But Bigelow doesn't dismiss it
entirely. No, he believes some are
genuinely gifted. Calls them world class
performers in a way. Thinks it's possible to get
verifiable info, but you need tofind legitimate ones.
He says he knows one who does readings for free.
(14:40):
Yeah, mention someone he considers very good who doesn't
charge, which he sees as a sign of sincerity.
They even joke about why so manymediums seem to be women.
OK, what about automatic writing?
That's where someone writes supposedly without conscious
control, may be guided by a spirit, or in a trance.
Seen it in movies, does it happen?
(15:02):
There are lots of accounts, somehistorical, of people producing
sophisticated texts, sometimes in languages they don't know.
Bigelow hasn't done it himself, but knows the literature.
Easy to fake though, right? Subconscious writing.
Absolutely, but again, the claimis that sometimes verifiable
information comes through that the writer shouldn't know.
They mentioned cross correspondence too.
(15:23):
It's that like multiple mediums unaware of each other receive
fragmented messages that only make sense when put together.
Suggests an external source. Still sounds hard to prove
definitively. Could be telepathy between
living people like Musk wants todo with neurolink.
Right. You need really rigorous testing
to rule out other explanations. It's incredibly complex.
(15:44):
All this LED Bigelow to start his own thing right?
B ICS. Yep, the Bigelow Institute for
Consciousness Studies formed just last year, he said,
specifically to fund and encourage research into
consciousness survival. Why start his own institute?
Apparently he'd pitched researchto another organization and got
turned down, so he decided to just create the platform
(16:04):
himself. And the first big splash is this
essay contest. Yeah, best evidence for the
afterlife. Huge prize money, half a million
for first place. Wow, who can enter?
People with relevant backgrounds, clergy, paranormal
TV producers, detectives who've used mediums, academics and
related fields. They want serious attempts to
(16:25):
compile evidence. 25,000 word limit judged by a panel of
experts. OK, evidence.
What's the standard? He compared it to court beyond a
reasonable doubt. He did draw that analogy,
focusing on credible witnesses and evidence.
But Rogan pushed back, right. Proving murder is different from
proving the afterlife. We know murder happens.
The afterlife is. Unknown.
Exactly. It's not an apples to apples
(16:46):
comparison. The baseline reality is
different. How did Bigelow respond?
He focused on the idea of acquiring information you
shouldn't possibly know. Said that kind of specific
verifiable data point should be considered strong evidence.
And he shared a personal story. About a medium mentioning
specific music played for his wife when she was dying in the
(17:06):
hospital, music he himself had forgotten about.
He found that very specific detail compelling, offered to
connect Rogan with the medium. So where do they land on belief
versus skepticism? Rogan mentioned the James Randi
challenge. Right, Rogan stated his view
clearly open mind, but needs solid proof and as far as he
(17:27):
knows, no psychic has ever passed a truly rigorous
scientific test like Randy offered.
Bigelow didn't agree. He argued the Randy challenge
wasn't always fair or properly designed.
Basically, they agreed to disagree on whether definitive
proof exists yet. But Bigelow still invited Rogan
for a reading. Yeah, put the offer out there.
Let him judge for himself, OK? Complete change of pace.
(17:48):
What's this about a Lamber doodle?
Yeah, that's Bigelow's nickname for his car, an orange
Lamborghini Urus. An SUV?
Lambeau. Yep.
Super fast, 640 horsepower, all-wheel drive.
He finds it more controllable than his Corvette Stingray,
which he says has almost too much power.
Russell Peters has one, too. Apparently Bigelow actually
(18:08):
bought 21 to keep one to auctionfor charity for the Cleveland
Clinic gala run by Larry Ruvo. Expensive car though.
Nice. OK, back to the weird stuff.
Physical evidence. Middle fragments from crashes.
Yeah, that old chestnut reports of weird alloys, super thin
layered material, stuff that seems beyond what we can make.
(18:28):
But no definitive proof it's alien.
No big press conference. Nope.
It's usually described as anomalous material.
Understudy maybe, but no consensus or official
confirmation of extraterrestrialorigin.
Just weird stuff. Speculation about what it was
for. Maybe part of a craft?
A bowl was mentioned. Still mostly stories and
anecdotes like Lazar's. Pretty much the concrete,
(18:50):
publicly verifiable stuff is thin on the ground.
And the idea is this stuff mightbe held by corporations or
governments. Yeah, as corporate treasure or
national treasure. Yeah, hugely valuable if you
could figure out how it works and replicate it.
Maybe they pull it out every fewyears, see if our tech is caught
up enough to understand it. That's the speculation, but
maybe even now we're still way behind whatever tech is embodied
(19:12):
in those materials. What about bodies?
The Roswell story always includes bodies.
It does and they touch on that plus the Jackie Gleason story.
Gleason and Nixon. Nixon showed him alien bodies at
a base. That's the legend.
Supposedly Gleason was shaken up, even tried to recreate what
he saw in his backyard later. Who knows if it's true, but it's
a persistent story and. The pilot, Papi Henderson, flew
(19:34):
wreckage and bodies from Roswell.
Another piece of the Roswell lore details like small coffins
being ordered, the size of the debris field, questions like why
use two planes to fly debris if it was just a weather balloon.
It all adds to the mystery. So after all this UF OS
consciousness strange materials,where does Bigelow stand on like
(19:56):
a God force, a creator? He keeps an open mind, basically
says I don't think it's impossible.
Admits he doesn't know what caused The Big Bang.
Leaves room for mystery. Which fits, right?
Acknowledging the limits of our knowledge seems key to exploring
all this stuff. Absolutely.
Whether it's UFOs or consciousness, there's so much
we just don't understand yet. So wrapping this up, quite a
(20:17):
journey we took there following Rogan and Bigelow from that
family UFO story in 47. Through his own weird dreams,
The whole abduction debate, Credible sightings like Phoenix.
His aerospace work, the B 330, The skepticism about NASA and
UFOs. Bob Lazar, Element 115 The
Nature of Consciousness ND ES mediums.
All the way to the BICS essay contest, trying to find evidence
(20:40):
for the afterlife. It's a massive range of topics.
Really covers the big questions,doesn't it?
Are we alone and what happens when we die?
Plus, what tech might be out there?
We tried to pull out the highlights for you, give you a
sense of the conversation from his grandparents shock to his
own deep dives into these mysteries.
Yeah, the personal drive behind his interest is clear, both with
UFOs and consciousness, and the BACS contest shows he's putting
(21:03):
serious resources into that second question now.
Definitely encourage you. If you're intrigued to keep
digging, maybe check out the original JRE episode.
Think critically about all this.And maybe a final thought to
leave you with If even some of this stuff is real, the advanced
tech hinted at by UFO's, the deep puzzle of consciousness
maybe surviving death, what doesthat mean for how we see the
(21:24):
world? What basic ideas about reality
might need a serious rethink?
Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Today, we're taking a deep dive
into a really compelling conversation.
That's right. From the Joe Rogan Experience
episode Hashtag 1612. The guest was Robert Bigelow.
Of Bigelow Aerospace fame, yeah,but also someone with this
lifelong deep fascination with UFOs.
And our goal today for you listening is basically to pull
(00:23):
out the key moments, the, you know, the big insights from that
chat. Make it kind of digestible,
right, Without getting totally lost in the weeds.
Exactly. So where does his interest even
start? It's pretty personal,
apparently. Oh yeah, it's not just academic
for him, it goes way back to hisgrandparents.
May 1947 near Las Vegas. May 47, Wow.
OK, So what happened? Well, they were driving and
(00:45):
suddenly this this object fills their windshield.
Fills a windshield like a close.Super close.
They thought it was a burning plane.
Honestly, they thought they wereabout to crash and die.
Oh man. And then just like that, it
shoots off. Unbelievable speed gone.
And he heard this story growing up.
He heard it from his mom, actually, when he was about 10.
His grandparents, well, they didn't really like talking about
(01:07):
it. Untenable, I guess.
Yeah, I bet. And May 47, that puts it right
before Roswell, right in KennethArnold.
Exactly. June 47 was Kenneth Arnold
sighting the Flying Saucers, then Roswell in July, and even
before that you had the Foo Fighters in World War. 2 So 47
was kind of heating up. Big time.
And there was all this speculation, Bigelow touches on
(01:29):
it about whether, you know, dropping the atomic bombs, the
nuclear tests. Like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, then
the US and Soviet tests. Right.
Whether that somehow like sent up a flare got their attention.
The Trinity test maybe being thefirst big signal.
So his family's crazy experiencefits right into that whole
historical moment. Yeah, it's not in a vacuum.
(01:49):
It really grounds his interest, you know?
OK, but it wasn't just his grandparents, he had his own weird
stuff happen. He did, yeah.
Starting pretty young, like 7 or8.
He calls them silly dreams, but they sound specific.
Also, he kept seeing these threefigures, short, robed, no real
faces or hands or anything discernible.
Just these shapes. OK, that's creepy.
(02:11):
And the kicker is, this was before TV in Vegas.
It wasn't like he was seeing aliens in comics or movies and
then dreaming about them. Right, no cultural reference
point for these images. Exactly made them totally
inexplicable to him at the time.And he just bottled this up.
For decades, didn't even tell his wife.
It was only much, much later when he started researching
(02:31):
abduction stories. OK, he started seeing parallels.
He considered, you know, maybe there was a connection to those
childhood things. But he also says he's kind of OK
not knowing for sure. Prefers not to pin it down.
That leads into the whole abduction topic.
Then he mentions John Mack's work.
Yeah, Mack used hypnotic regression and a lot of people
describe similar scenarios. He also brings up the Roper
(02:52):
pole. The one suggesting what a few
percent of people had experiences that fit abduction
patterns. Something like that.
Yeah, a surprisingly large number if you take it at face
value. But hypnotic regression?
That's tricky territory, isn't it?
The whole false memory debate. Absolutely.
That's the big criticism, that the therapist, even
unintentionally, could lead the person implant ideas.
(03:13):
It's a real concern. So how does Bigelow square that?
Well, he mentions working with hypnotherapist who are
apparently super careful not to lead, and he observed subjects
sometimes correcting the therapist's suggestions under
hypnosis. Oh, interesting, like pushing
back? Yeah, which he felt suggested
maybe it wasn't all suggestion that there could be genuine
recall happening. They also talk about screen
(03:36):
memories. Right where the mind supposedly
covers up a traumatic event withsomething more mundane.
It's definitely complex, but youknow what's really compelling?
Comparing later accounts to the Betty and Barney Hill case.
From the early 60s, yeah, beforethe whole alien abduction thing
really hit pop culture. Precisely their descriptions,
the beings they saw, the whole scenario.
(03:57):
It predates all the movie tropes.
That gives it a different kind of weight maybe.
And then you look at Travis Walton's story decades later.
And the similarities are just eerie.
Different people, different times, but overlapping details.
It makes you think you know. OK, let's shift to sightings
people actually saw, like in public.
Kenneth Arnold again. What exactly did he see?
(04:19):
He was a pilot, a businessman, flying his plane near Mount
Rainier. I think saw nine objects. 9 and
they were saucer shaped. He described them more like
boomerangs or manta rays, skipping like saucers on water,
moving incredibly fast, way faster than any known aircraft.
Then and he was a credible guy, right?
A pilot knows what's normally upthere.
(04:40):
Exactly. Not easily fooled.
His sighting really kicked things off publicly, and Bigelow
points out there were other sightings later by military
people high-ranking. Officers job it is to know
what's flying around. He even mentioned something
recent. Yeah, a text from Dan Crenshaw
about American Airlines pilots reporting something spectacular.
It keeps happening. And maybe we just hear about it
more now. Everyone's he's got a camera
(05:02):
phone. That's definitely part of it.
Way more eyes on the sky, way more ways to record things
compared to the 40s or 50s. Which brings us to the Phoenix
Lights in 1997. That was huge.
Massive thousands of people saw it.
Not just little lights, but thisenormous dark V shaped or
boomerang shaped structure moving silently over the city.
(05:23):
A structure, not just lights. That's a key distinction.
Absolutely. People were describing something
solid blocking out the stars waybigger than any conventional
aircraft. And the news kind of downplayed
it at first. It didn't get the wall to wall
coverage you might expect initially.
Then you had the governor, Fife Symington.
Ohio Yeah, the weird press conference with the guy in the
alien suit. What was that about?
(05:44):
Trying to lighten the mood? Maybe.
But years later, Symington admitted he saw the object
himself. Called it otherworldly.
Wow, so he saw it, knew it was real, but did the whole alien
costume thing anyway. Seems like it, Bigelow suggests.
It was probably Symington's personal call trying to prevent
panic. Maybe not some big government
conspiracy, Which? Gets us to the government angle.
(06:05):
Are they hiding stuff? Why so quiet?
Well the general thinking is if these things aren't ours and
they aren't in other countries, then admitting that opens a huge
can of worms, right? So reluctance is may be
understandable. Until 2017, the New York Times
article that felt like a shift. Huge shift front page story.
Navy pilots like David Fraver talking about the Tic Tac
(06:28):
encounter. Official Pentagon videos
released. That had to change things.
Definitely. It massively reduced the stigma.
Suddenly it was OK for serious people, military pilots, to talk
about this stuff publicly in a major newspaper.
Made it much harder to just dismiss everything.
And Bigelow sees that change filtering down even into
science. He says so he thinks the
(06:50):
scientific community is much less dismissive now than, say,
20 or 30 years ago, more willingto at least consider the
possibility. Maybe shows like Ancient Aliens,
even if they're speculative, helped keep the conversation
alive. Could be part of it, yeah.
Just more exposure overall. Now Bigelow himself, he didn't
just research UFO's, he built rockets or space habitats.
(07:11):
Right, Bigelow Aerospace, it's kind of an amazing pivot from
hotels and real estate to UF OS and then cutting edge space
tech. Talk about following your
interests. So the B330, what is that?
It's an expandable space habitat.
Think inflatable modules for space stations or maybe even
lunar bases. They built full scale
(07:32):
engineering units. Inflatable.
Is that safe? Well, expandable is maybe a
better word. It launches compressed and then
expands. And yeah, they put tons of work
into making it tough. COVID unfortunately hit the
project hard, caused a shutdown.But the deck is real.
Oh yeah, they actually have a smaller test module beam
attached to the ISS right now. I've been there for years.
TRL 9 top level readiness. And this whole idea started
(07:55):
because NASA cancelled somethingsimilar.
Exactly. NASA had a project called
Transhab back in the 90s, cannedit.
Bigelow thought the concept was brilliant and basically decided,
fine, I'll do it myself. Wow, did he just pick up NASA's
plans? He got the license for the basic
patent, but apparently they had to develop all the actual
architecture, the engineering, everything from scratch took 20
(08:15):
years. And the testing must have been
intense. Oh absolutely.
Leak tests, pressure tests, blowing them up intentionally to
find weaknesses, even hyper velocity impact tests like
shooting stuff at them really fast to simulate space debris.
And radiation. Big problem in space.
Yeah, the B330 hall is pretty clever.
There are multiple layers of materials like Vectran with gaps
(08:37):
in between. It's designed to break up and
absorb radiation better than just a solid chunk of metal.
Even worked with Robert Boussard, the fusion guy.
Yeah, they collaborated on some fusion propulsion ideas.
And get this Boussard apparentlyhad his own lifelong UFO
sighting experience, too. Small world, huh?
So Bigelow's working with NASA on the habitats, but he says
(08:58):
NASA isn't the place to go for UFO info.
Pretty much. He's clear that while he learned
a ton about conventional space stuff from NASA, the agency and
most of the mainstream science world just isn't focused on UFOs
or ET. Why not fear of ridicule?
That's part of it. He suggests.
Also just lack of time, resources.
Scientists are focused on their specific research, their
(09:19):
careers. Getting involved in UFO stuff
can be risky professionally. He mentioned brown bagging.
What's that? Like, scientists might be
interested privately, maybe readbooks or articles at home brown
bagging it, but they won't talk about it openly at work.
Don't want to jeopardize their reputation.
Which leads to this feeling of frustration, like the tech in
(09:39):
these UFO reports is just so farbeyond us.
Yeah, he uses the analogy of us still being at the fire engine
stage compared to whatever propulsion these things might
have. It's a vast gap.
Even with guys like Musk and Bezos pushing rocketry forward.
He respects what they're doing immensely, but acknowledges it's
still fundamentally conventionaltech compared to, you know, the
(09:59):
Tic Tacs maneuvers or something.We're just not there yet.
Not even close. Maybe.
OK, let's pivot to someone really controversial.
Yeah, Bob Lazar and Area S4. Right.
This starts with the kind of funny story Bigelow tells about
being out in the desert near Area S4 with Lazar and George
Knapp the journalist. The Mylar balloon incident,
Yeah. They let go a radar reflective
(10:20):
balloon just messing around and apparently it caused quite a
stir. Scrambled Security shows how
sensitive that area is. So Lazar's claim he worked
inside Area S4 back engineering alien craft.
That's the core of it, said He. Worked on propulsion systems.
Encountered element 115. Which wasn't officially
discovered back then, right? Only theoretical.
(10:42):
Exactly. That's a key part of why some
people find his story compelling.
He also claimed he got kicked off the project partly because
they found out his wife was having an affair which he didn't
even know, and they worried about his stability.
And then he went public, took people out to watch alleged test
flights. Right.
It's an absolutely wild story, Bigelow says.
He was skeptical at first. But he came around.
(11:04):
He says over time, and especially seeing George Knapp's
investigative work digging into Lazar's background and claims
he's become more inclined to believe there's truth to it.
What about element 115? Does Bigelow know its
properties? He doesn't claim detailed
knowledge, just notes the significance of Lazar naming a
theoretical element that was later synthesized.
And the holographic book Lazar saw some kind of 3D info
(11:26):
display. Yeah, another really out there
detail supposedly showed historical info.
Including the idea that humans were genetically engineered by
aliens using primates. That's what Lazar claimed was in
the book, that our evolution wasaccelerated or guided.
A pretty staggering concept if true.
Which kind of loops into thinking about humans generally.
(11:49):
We are pretty weird compared to other animals on earth.
Our tech obsession. Yeah, that constant drive to
tinker, to make better stuff. Yeah.
Where is it all heading? They touch on the technological
singularity idea. The point where AI or tech just
zooms past our control. Potentially, and the concern
Bigelow raises is our wisdom, our ethics, our spiritual side
(12:10):
keeping pace. He uses the Klingon analogy.
Tech savvy, but maybe not so mature otherwise, right?
Are we becoming like that, so focused on the gadgets and the
power that we forget about the, you know, the internal stuff of
the values? Doesn't seem like we're making
huge strides in balancing the two, does it?
That's a worry. The gap might be widening.
OK, so from UFOs and advanced tag, the conversation shifts
(12:31):
again to something maybe even more fundamental.
The second Holy Grail, as Bigelow calls it.
Besides, are we alone? The other huge question is does
consciousness survive death? Mind versus brain, Does anything
of us carry on after the body stops?
It's the ultimate question, right?
Driven by loss, by curiosity, bywondering what happens next.
(12:54):
Pretty much every culture and religion has tried to answer it.
But can you approach it scientifically or is it always
just belief? That's the challenge.
How do you measure or prove something like that?
They talk about near death experiences, Ndes.
Yeah, the common reports people have after being clinically dead
and revived feelings of peace, leaving the body, seeing lights,
meeting beings. But couldn't that just be the
(13:15):
brain doing weird things as it shuts down DMT release or
something? That's definitely a counter
argument. They acknowledge that some
psychedelic drugs can mimic aspects of Ndes, like the story
about Larry Hagman taking LSD and losing his fear of death.
But Bigelow points to the sheer number of NDE reports millions
worldwide, across cultures, and specifically the out of body
(13:36):
experience differences OBE's. Where people report seeing
things they shouldn't have been able to see, like details of
their own resuscitation from a viewpoint above their body.
Exactly. Cases where people supposedly
recall verifiable details from while they were unconscious.
Those are harder to explain away, just as brain chemistry.
But interpreting them is still tough.
Language fails. Maybe beliefs color the memory?
(13:59):
For sure, and people are often afraid to even talk about them.
Fear of ridicule is huge. So how could you get proof
verifiable information? That's the key, they suggest.
Could someone bring back specific information during an
NDE that they couldn't possibly have known otherwise?
That would be compelling. Which leads inevitably to
(14:19):
psychics and mediums. Always a touchy subject.
Yeah, Rogan is understandably skeptical here.
Lots of fraud in that field. But Bigelow doesn't dismiss it
entirely. No, he believes some are
genuinely gifted. Calls them world class
performers in a way. Thinks it's possible to get
verifiable info, but you need tofind legitimate ones.
He says he knows one who does readings for free.
(14:40):
Yeah, mention someone he considers very good who doesn't
charge, which he sees as a sign of sincerity.
They even joke about why so manymediums seem to be women.
OK, what about automatic writing?
That's where someone writes supposedly without conscious
control, may be guided by a spirit, or in a trance.
Seen it in movies, does it happen?
(15:02):
There are lots of accounts, somehistorical, of people producing
sophisticated texts, sometimes in languages they don't know.
Bigelow hasn't done it himself, but knows the literature.
Easy to fake though, right? Subconscious writing.
Absolutely, but again, the claimis that sometimes verifiable
information comes through that the writer shouldn't know.
They mentioned cross correspondence too.
(15:23):
It's that like multiple mediums unaware of each other receive
fragmented messages that only make sense when put together.
Suggests an external source. Still sounds hard to prove
definitively. Could be telepathy between
living people like Musk wants todo with neurolink.
Right. You need really rigorous testing
to rule out other explanations. It's incredibly complex.
(15:44):
All this LED Bigelow to start his own thing right?
B ICS. Yep, the Bigelow Institute for
Consciousness Studies formed just last year, he said,
specifically to fund and encourage research into
consciousness survival. Why start his own institute?
Apparently he'd pitched researchto another organization and got
turned down, so he decided to just create the platform
(16:04):
himself. And the first big splash is this
essay contest. Yeah, best evidence for the
afterlife. Huge prize money, half a million
for first place. Wow, who can enter?
People with relevant backgrounds, clergy, paranormal
TV producers, detectives who've used mediums, academics and
related fields. They want serious attempts to
(16:25):
compile evidence. 25,000 word limit judged by a panel of
experts. OK, evidence.
What's the standard? He compared it to court beyond a
reasonable doubt. He did draw that analogy,
focusing on credible witnesses and evidence.
But Rogan pushed back, right. Proving murder is different from
proving the afterlife. We know murder happens.
The afterlife is. Unknown.
Exactly. It's not an apples to apples
(16:46):
comparison. The baseline reality is
different. How did Bigelow respond?
He focused on the idea of acquiring information you
shouldn't possibly know. Said that kind of specific
verifiable data point should be considered strong evidence.
And he shared a personal story. About a medium mentioning
specific music played for his wife when she was dying in the
(17:06):
hospital, music he himself had forgotten about.
He found that very specific detail compelling, offered to
connect Rogan with the medium. So where do they land on belief
versus skepticism? Rogan mentioned the James Randi
challenge. Right, Rogan stated his view
clearly open mind, but needs solid proof and as far as he
(17:27):
knows, no psychic has ever passed a truly rigorous
scientific test like Randy offered.
Bigelow didn't agree. He argued the Randy challenge
wasn't always fair or properly designed.
Basically, they agreed to disagree on whether definitive
proof exists yet. But Bigelow still invited Rogan
for a reading. Yeah, put the offer out there.
Let him judge for himself, OK? Complete change of pace.
(17:48):
What's this about a Lamber doodle?
Yeah, that's Bigelow's nickname for his car, an orange
Lamborghini Urus. An SUV?
Lambeau. Yep.
Super fast, 640 horsepower, all-wheel drive.
He finds it more controllable than his Corvette Stingray,
which he says has almost too much power.
Russell Peters has one, too. Apparently Bigelow actually
(18:08):
bought 21 to keep one to auctionfor charity for the Cleveland
Clinic gala run by Larry Ruvo. Expensive car though.
Nice. OK, back to the weird stuff.
Physical evidence. Middle fragments from crashes.
Yeah, that old chestnut reports of weird alloys, super thin
layered material, stuff that seems beyond what we can make.
(18:28):
But no definitive proof it's alien.
No big press conference. Nope.
It's usually described as anomalous material.
Understudy maybe, but no consensus or official
confirmation of extraterrestrialorigin.
Just weird stuff. Speculation about what it was
for. Maybe part of a craft?
A bowl was mentioned. Still mostly stories and
anecdotes like Lazar's. Pretty much the concrete,
(18:50):
publicly verifiable stuff is thin on the ground.
And the idea is this stuff mightbe held by corporations or
governments. Yeah, as corporate treasure or
national treasure. Yeah, hugely valuable if you
could figure out how it works and replicate it.
Maybe they pull it out every fewyears, see if our tech is caught
up enough to understand it. That's the speculation, but
maybe even now we're still way behind whatever tech is embodied
(19:12):
in those materials. What about bodies?
The Roswell story always includes bodies.
It does and they touch on that plus the Jackie Gleason story.
Gleason and Nixon. Nixon showed him alien bodies at
a base. That's the legend.
Supposedly Gleason was shaken up, even tried to recreate what
he saw in his backyard later. Who knows if it's true, but it's
a persistent story and. The pilot, Papi Henderson, flew
(19:34):
wreckage and bodies from Roswell.
Another piece of the Roswell lore details like small coffins
being ordered, the size of the debris field, questions like why
use two planes to fly debris if it was just a weather balloon.
It all adds to the mystery. So after all this UF OS
consciousness strange materials,where does Bigelow stand on like
(19:56):
a God force, a creator? He keeps an open mind, basically
says I don't think it's impossible.
Admits he doesn't know what caused The Big Bang.
Leaves room for mystery. Which fits, right?
Acknowledging the limits of our knowledge seems key to exploring
all this stuff. Absolutely.
Whether it's UFOs or consciousness, there's so much
we just don't understand yet. So wrapping this up, quite a
(20:17):
journey we took there following Rogan and Bigelow from that
family UFO story in 47. Through his own weird dreams,
The whole abduction debate, Credible sightings like Phoenix.
His aerospace work, the B 330, The skepticism about NASA and
UFOs. Bob Lazar, Element 115 The
Nature of Consciousness ND ES mediums.
All the way to the BICS essay contest, trying to find evidence
(20:40):
for the afterlife. It's a massive range of topics.
Really covers the big questions,doesn't it?
Are we alone and what happens when we die?
Plus, what tech might be out there?
We tried to pull out the highlights for you, give you a
sense of the conversation from his grandparents shock to his
own deep dives into these mysteries.
Yeah, the personal drive behind his interest is clear, both with
UFOs and consciousness, and the BACS contest shows he's putting
(21:03):
serious resources into that second question now.
Definitely encourage you. If you're intrigued to keep
digging, maybe check out the original JRE episode.
Think critically about all this.And maybe a final thought to
leave you with If even some of this stuff is real, the advanced
tech hinted at by UFO's, the deep puzzle of consciousness
maybe surviving death, what doesthat mean for how we see the
(21:24):
world? What basic ideas about reality
might need a serious rethink?
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