The Mad Future with Chris Cogswell

Is there any truth to the stories of mysterious, unidentified alloys, secretly held in some hidden bunker straight out of the Indiana Jones films? How far along has our species actually come with nanotechnology, and could a government really suppress space-age tech, hiding it from the masses? Join the guys as they sit down with chemical engineer Christopher Cogswell, host of the Mad Scientist Podcast, to dive into the science behind these claims and more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome

(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt. They call
me Ben, and we're joined as always with our super
producer Paul Mission Controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. Matt. This, uh, this was very
close to being one of those episodes where we might

(00:46):
have we might have run into some trouble, you know,
because we're touching on something that's controversial for a lot
of people and close to the hearts of many of
our listeners. We are we're also, I mean, it's a
topic that I think has invaded all of our minds
from young ages. I think there's a time in many
of our lives when the concept of some other intelligence

(01:10):
from some other place far far away, either visits for
just interest reasons or for some very specific purpose. And
and I think that concept um when it digs into
your subconscious and your conscious deeply enough as at least
it has mine, UM, you become I wouldn't say obsessed,

(01:33):
but you you become fixated a bit on the idea
of either we are completely alone or there there are
things out there far beyond our understanding, and good god,
that's either terrifying or amazing, right right, what's that old
that old quote that either either think being true is

(01:55):
terrifying exactly. So it's when you mentioned that, because according
to a twenty nineteen pole from insiders insider dot com,
which of course is you know, not pure research or anything,
it seems like one in five US residents don't just
believe that extraterrestrials exist somewhere out there, which is almost

(02:19):
a mathematical certainty, right, they believe that aliens, physical extraterrestrials
have actually visited this planet of ours at some point.
That's right, folks. Today we are returning to the fascinating,
controversial topic of UFOs. Longtime listeners, you will remember this
is a point of contention on this show. What is

(02:41):
a UFO? It is literally anything in the sky that
is both an object and cannot be conclusively identified. It's
tricky here because the concept of UFOs, at least in
the West, is fundamentally inseparable from the concept of stra terrestrials, right,

(03:01):
And so many times, through a variety of outlets, we
see these two we see these two things conflated, and
we see a We see a vast range of investigative
endeavor going into identifying these unidentified flying objects. Some of

(03:24):
this is maybe breathless, little sensationalistic. Uh, you know, I'm
thinking kind of the ancient aliens vibe you might see
on the History Channel. And then some other stuff is
is highly uh, highly objective, I would say, more on
the skeptical side, uh, and taking an academic approach. We're

(03:46):
aiming to do that today. But wait, Matt, you might
be saying, pump your brakes. Ben. You might have followed
up with you guys. Are you guys are a cracker
jack researchers, But who are you to tell us about
the the nuts and bolts science, you know, some of

(04:07):
the engineering behind and chemical substances that would be you know,
part and parcel of these claims of UFOs or of
these claims more specifically recovered artifacts. Well, dear friends, you
would be absolutely correct, and that is why Matt, Paul
and I are not diving into this rabbit hole. Alone.

(04:29):
We have a very special guest that we would like
to welcome to the show, Christopher Cogswell, the host of
the Mad Scientist podcast. This is a comedy show on
the history and philosophy of pseudoscience that he does along
with his fantastic co host Marie Mayhew. Chris, thanks so
much for coming on the air with us today. Oh guys,

(04:51):
thanks for having me. Been a longtime fan. So I'm
really uh, kind of nerdon out over here getting to
come on the show. Oh, come on, you have expertise.
As we just outlined in that introduction to you. We
are very much the ones here in the position of
being excited to talk to you. We're just some guys.
So look, we're gonna jump right into it. Um Like,

(05:14):
tell us, tell us exactly what your background is. Why
tell us more about what you've done. Why we believe
that you are an expert on this subject. So my
background is in So I first went to school at
the University of New Hampshire. I received a Bachelor's of
Science degree in chemical engineering and also philosophy, and in

(05:36):
my you know, I've always sort of had a lifelong
interest in um in these kinds of subjects. You know.
The joke I used always tell whenever I give a
talk on this stuff or I speak in public about
this is you know um. One of the main questions
I always had was, why was it that my grandma
who wasn't otherwise you know, very very intelligent woman. She

(05:58):
spoke like five different languages, is um. She came here
with her family from Italy, you know, with nothing and
built a family that now includes you know, people that
are you know, living successfully, and you know, it's just
it's it was so wild to me and just not
understandable why she would both be so smart and capable

(06:19):
and have such a firm grasp of history and science
despite her lack of education coming from you know, Croatia
and then to Italy and whatever, but then also have
her belief that you know, climate change was a Chinese
hoax or or or that you know, um, or that

(06:40):
she had this crazy she had this crazy idea. I
don't know where she picked it up, but he used
to drive my family wild. She had this idea. So
she was a diabetic, and she had this idea that
if you put lemon juice into things that were sweet,
it would for some reason. Negate all of the sugar,
you know. So I'll never forget. We were we were
on a road trip with her up to Michigan and

(07:02):
visit my cousin, and we stopped at a dairy queen
and she got this huge thing of vanilla ice cream
and she squirted. She used to carry lemon juice with her,
and she squirted the lemon juice on the ice cream
and it was like, you know that scene from The
Nanny where she puts like the bagel, two bagels on
top of a slice of pizza and she's like, the
body doesn't know. That was essentially my grandma's view of nutrition,

(07:23):
you know. Um So, anyway, so that was always really
fascinating to me. So I spent a lot of time
doing kind of you know, research and reading everything else
about this subject of pseudoscience and why people believe incorrect
Incorrect is maybe a too strong word for a subject
like the UFO subject, let's say, but why do people

(07:44):
believe things that are either patently untrue or seemed to
fly in the face of reason? And so uh. I
then went on to get a PhD in chemical engineering
from Northeastern University in Boston. My research project, they're UM
focused on the use of nanomaterials for UM for advanced

(08:08):
capture catalysis and UM just essentially pulling things that are
hard to get out of the air or water or
different environments, UM, capturing those in efficient ways, and then
being able to upgrade those two usable chemicals. So the
most famous cases that is carbon dioxide UM. So capturing
CEO two from the atmosphere, which where it's in very

(08:32):
low concentrations is challenging and difficult UM. And then so
that part is hard to capture part is difficult, But
then actually converting that useless carbon in the CEO two
form into a usable chemical feedstock like a polymer based
you know, a monitor or whatever, that's even a bigger challenge.
So those are sort of the applications I looked at.

(08:53):
But the work that I did specifically was on the
creation of layered nanostructured materials or material reals that could
be after synthesis UM edited in some way, so you
could apply a chemical uh, you know, heat or temperature
or a change in pH or electromagnetism or something and

(09:13):
make the materials shaped or chemical properties change in the
desired way. So the example I give is like almost
like an accordion. Right when it's in its normal state,
the accordion is kind of pushed together, right, and it's
a small volume. But if you apply forced to either side,
you can get the accordion to expand. Right. With chemicals

(09:33):
you can do well. With some materials, you can do
almost the same thing. Right, the idea of I'm sure
you've used the kind of you know trick from when
you were a kid or even now as an adult.
You can't open up the you can't open up a
jar with a metal lid, so you put it under
hot water, right to expand the metal. That's that's the

(09:53):
metal itself, those bonds expanding due to the application of temperature. UM.
That's basically what I worked on was a lying things
like that in specific ways to create things that would
be useful um at the bulk chemical scale. So yeah, yeah,
I feel like we're on the same page. One time
for the Science Fair, I made this thing that looked

(10:14):
like a volcano, but get this, it was no magma involved.
So it's basically you, me and Houdini. Uh maybe maybe
Nicola Tesla, I don't know, but that that aside you
and one thing that I think is um is key
to effective communication is that use of metaphor and analogy

(10:38):
that you you just uh, you just presented to us.
Because one thing that would be an immediate question for
a lot of people in the audience today would be,
all right, this guy, this guy has a PhD Chemical
engineering from Northeastern. He has intense background, he's a subject
matter expert. Uh. Why why has he decided to make

(11:05):
a podcast? You know? Is uh? And you and I
have talked about this a little bit off air. Uh.
Did you did you find yourself inspired by a specific case,
did you find yourself inspired by the format? Or you know,
what was what's your origin story? What's like act two
of this origin story that leads you into what will

(11:29):
what would become the Mad Scientists podcast? Right? When did
I realize I must dress up like a bat to
fight crime? Yes, exactly right, I will use their fear
against them. So really, what it was? So like I said,
I my family um is really steeped in I would
say the kind of old world traditions of you know,

(11:51):
superstitions and you know, religion in my family was almost
always more like magic in a weird way. And my
mom um in particular loved that stuff, you know. Uh,
we were always watching horror movies together and she did
tarot cards and uh astrology and all this stuff. And
on top of that you had my grandma who would

(12:13):
make these kinds of you know, weird concoctions of lemon
juice and other random ingredients. Um, because Dr Oz told
her that they would make her live to a you
know whatever it was. Right. So, Um, we always had
that kind of background in our family, and it never
really made sense to me because again, we are otherwise

(12:36):
very intelligent people, right, Um, So trying to understand, trying
to understand what that line was, and then also seeing
also seeing I suppose that there were things that we
consider there were things that me, as someone in the sciences,
would outright consider to be ridiculous. That if you looked

(12:59):
at them from from the standpoint of say philosophy or
sociology or anthropology or these other fields. You know what
a scientist or someone in the hard sciences might call
a soft science, Right, if you look at them from
those perspectives, they stop being ridiculous. You know. One of
the hot topics in the UFO field right now is
this idea of um, the idea of like out of

(13:21):
body experiences almost right, and kind of using your consciousness
to contact entities and whatever. And so you see this
in documentaries like the d MT Molecule documentary of Netflix,
and you know it's all over the place. Right, That
idea goes back thousands of years, right, this idea of
having almost like a a spiritual experience to meet with

(13:41):
other entities. And although from the standpoint you say, you know,
materialist um science, it doesn't make sense, right, how could
your consciousness transcend this physical barrier and everything else? From
the standpoint of philosophy, um, that's that was kind of
the status quo for most of human history, was the

(14:03):
idea that something like that made total sense. Right. If anything,
our consciousness being the collection of a random assortment of molecules,
um would have been the extreme position and the position
that didn't make sense. So understanding how that transition happens,
I think is really important because it pseudoscience has an effect,

(14:25):
It has a policy effect. Right. Um, we just saw
the Australian brush buyers go completely out of control. Right,
people still believe that that is not you know, the
misinformation around that is intense, right, It was arson, It
was you know, all these other options, but not that
it's the thing that the science is considered to be

(14:46):
the cause. Right, So combating pseudoscience, knowing why people believe it,
and also understanding those periods, and there's there's plenty of
them in the history of science where we transition from
science to pseudoscience and vice versa, right, cases where scientific
establishment became pseudoscience. Understanding those transitions and why societies accept

(15:10):
certain scientific ideas or technological ideas is really important. Agreed. Agreed,
there's a It's strange because one thing that we often
find in our own our our own research rabbit holes,
is that more than a few things that would be
considered fringe theories or conspiracy theories or what have you

(15:33):
actually qualify as folklore, you know. And there their stories
that we tell ourselves. And of course, you know, there
is a definition of a great story, at least for
the human species, regardless of genre. Uh. And it may
not be said explicitly or so nakedly all the time,
but the mark of a good story for every single

(15:57):
audience member is that they walk away feeling this was
ultimately in some way about me. That's and that's like
the folklore aspects. You know, we see the evolution from
We've talked about this before. This is very old hat,
I think to Matt n Eye to you as well, Chris,
we've talked about the beat by beat similarities between the

(16:22):
stories of alien abductions and stories of people being abducted
by the fay or fairies, right or the the unseen
world of some sort. So we know that there is
We know that there is an an underlying ancient narrative.
Something about the human mind and the way we categorize

(16:42):
and the way we uh synthesize and digest the world
around us, something about that makes us compels us to
create these stories or to um even even if those
stories are just interpretations of true events. But now, to
steal a line for Fox News, now, more than ever,
we are in a situation where we can bring to

(17:06):
bear methodology, We can bring to bear uh millennia of
of hard one scientific progress. And that's something that we
wanted to dive into with you today. Uh, Matt and
I have have a couple of things we wanted to
ask you. Now, this is all this is all completely
again your your expert here. This is all completely going

(17:29):
to be up to you. How you want to respond. Uh,
we just we just want your your opinion on things.
And if there's ever something Paul, you might have to
bleep me here. If there's ever something we ask along
the way today where you say, well, what do you
think about blah blah blah and you think it's bulls
that's five and just say that's total malarkey, be and

(17:50):
it will be perfect. So one of the un I
don't know, Matt, do you wanna do you want to
kind of start? Okay, So just jumping straight into this
because I am fascinated by the the kind of cutting
edge that we know of in material science, in in
in chemicals and every just everything from physics, everything that

(18:15):
we know on this planet as humans, the knowledge of
technology that we have in its current state, and the
cutting edge of that, and how we kind of take
that cutting edge and vision of the future to explain
the versions of possible extraterrestrial technology, Like perhaps if there

(18:37):
was an intelligence species let's say several millennia or maybe
even millions of years ahead of us from a technology perspective, um,
what kinds of physical phenomena would they be exploiting in
order to have much higher technology than we have, right, Um,
So I'm just gonna start with what I know what

(18:59):
kind of per plays me as a layman. So I
want to just ask you about super conductivity, about materials
that that show these property or have these properties, and
how perhaps that could play some role in advanced technology,
either now or in the future. Sure, So, first of all,

(19:21):
I guess I want to speak to something that you
said kind of be your preamble to the the ultimate
question on super connectivity, right, which is this idea of
understanding the science or trying to fit our own view
of science to what we expect an extra terrestrial civilization
to be like? Right, Yeah, one of the one of

(19:42):
the funniest things that I We do this on the show,
um occasionally, and I love doing this whenever I talk
to somebody who's you know, since doing the show and
now kind of going to conventions and speaking to people
and being you know involved is as involved as a
skeptical scientists can be allowed to be in evolved in
these things. Um. I really love hearing, you know, when

(20:05):
someone tells you a story that is clearly you know,
it's it's like watching the Jetsons, right, It's like and
I'm not just saying that because my last name is Cogswall,
so you know, my progeny will create a wonderful space
empire for all of us. But um, you know, yeah, no,
no problem. There's a there's something really funny about the

(20:26):
idea of how did they think the future would look
when they were doing the Jetsus. You know, for some
reason they still thought we were making like we were
still producing machines with people, right, Like the guy in
the Jetsons worked at a cog factory where or he
worked at a Sprocket factory. That's crazy, you know robots

(20:47):
would you know the we had these uh, you know,
the idea of how technology should look in the future.
It's always actually a really good tell for these UFO
cases that they're not true, right, So one of them
that's really funny, and it comes up a lot on
any Chilians, is this idea of a nuclear weapon being used.
Why do we assume that they don't have better weaponry
than that, or why would they need weaponry? You know,

(21:08):
if they're able to phase through walls and stuff, can
you know what I mean? Like, it's just crazy right. Um. So, anyways,
in terms of in terms of kind of where sciences
in terms of super connectivity and superconductors and all these
other things. They're kind of a couple of areas where
I guess I would say the challenges currently exists that

(21:29):
are I mean hopefully going to be solved in some
fashion in our lifetimes. The first one is the fact
that we don't really have a fundamental grasp right now
of how electrons transfer through materials efficiently, or or kind
of how they even really transfer. We have a general
idea writing medals and things, and we know that is

(21:52):
electrons are being So electrons sit in If you remember
from school, you were probably taught that electrons it in
something like almost a planetary model, right where the nucleus
is the center of the universe. It's like the sun,
right or the center of the Solar system, I should say,
So the nucleus is like the Sun that's really heavy.
And then around that nucleus are electrons orbiting in different

(22:14):
energy levels. Right, that's kind of true. They don't really
sit in energy, they don't really orbit that. They exist
in things called orbit tolls. So they do orbit around.
But the the shape is not circular, it's it's you know,
defined by their probability fields. Um. But anyways, that's that's
really not the important point here. The important point we're

(22:36):
going to get more into probability fields because that's a
whole other thing. But I'm super excited. So as the
electron gets excited, it jumps into a higher state, and
then it can become de excited and then it will
go down. So they call these bands, right, So an
electron can be excited to jump into a conduction band

(22:56):
and then it will be able to transfer. But as
it transfers, it leaves behind an electron hole a place
where an electron should be. But maybe isn't right. There
are materials that hold those properties, right, And that's like
with things um. That's like with computer chips. Right, how
we write memory and or how we hope to write
memory and quantum computers is you would have a space

(23:17):
where a quanta should be, but it's not right because
of transport or whatever. But what we don't really know,
or what we we are currently still trying to understand,
is how to really efficiently um control the materials properties
themselves to make transfer possible in the ways that we
would need. And what is it that makes something become

(23:40):
super conductive. What is it about the magnetic structure, the
electronic structure of the material that causes it to become
super conductive UM? And so part of that study or
part of those sorts of materials are we have the
ability now to build materials essentially atom by atom. Right,
we can use ultrahivac chambers or autonical area position or

(24:02):
other methods where UM, you can build a crystal lattice
as you would like to. Crystal lattice is just the
structure that a crystal solid material with a crystalline form
exists in UM. We can actually control that growth. And
so building those materials and trying to understand the you know,
what effect would a silicon um a silicon phase next

(24:24):
to a you know, UM, I don't know whatever, some
other kind of ceramic phase. What effect would that have
on conduction of electrons? Right? What effect dold that have
on the super connecting properties. That sort of testing is
going on across the country, and it's it's super interesting,
and frankly it's above my pay grade. Wow. I didn't

(24:45):
go into I didn't go into physics specifically because I
was like, I don't understand what electron hole is I'm
not going to worry about it. Have chemicals, not atoms,
and not electrons. Let's pause here for a word from
our sponsor, and we've returned. It's somewhat inspiring, is it

(25:09):
not to to think that these sorts of questions may
have answers? Uh that, and well, they certainly do have answers,
but that we may discover these answers within our individual lifetimes.
That's to me, that's that's fascinating, assuming we don't burn
the whole shebang down, right but right, but this so okay,

(25:35):
So that's the real life provable version of where we are.
I especially appreciate the point you made, Chris, about how
we're we're sort of projecting what we know as humans
onto any hypothetical extraterrestrial society. That that point about the
nuclear weapon stayed with me, because of course, if we

(25:56):
only had spears and we were making up a story
about a superior your civilization, they would have the biggest
and best spear, right exactly. It wouldn't even be a spear, though,
it would be something completely different that you have no
concept of. That's what it just everything. But that's why,
that's why stories of super weapons and like the Middle Ages,

(26:18):
where things like weapons that never broke, weapons that never
went dull right, you know they had no It wasn't
even like, oh they imagined what a gun would be
or you know, um anything like that. You know, it
was just they were like, oh, what if our spears
never broke, but if they never went dull um, that
would be a super weapon. Yeah, but what about via

(26:40):
Maana's Chris come on right, right, right? Yeah, the flying right,
the flying carpets of death with a nuclear raised. Yeah,
I know, I can say it genuinely intrigues me. That
doesn't necessarily mean that I or doesn't mean that I
believe that that's precisely what it was. I think it's
just such an intriguing concept that was somewhat explored, um

(27:02):
but not fleshed out in any kind of material way.
But does it ever does it ever make you wonder
if it's just being described in the understanding as we're
talking about this, but it was some kind of um
more than natural phenomena like teology. Yeah, I mean, I'm
genuinely like, I'm wondering if like, when you're thinking about

(27:25):
that philosophically and you pull yourself out a little bit
of the scientific mind. Um like does that does that
give you pause at all or does it make you
go down a rabbit hole? Or do you just kind
of push it away as like that's obviously not what
this is. Yeah, well so honestly, one of the one
of the things, you know, one of the first books

(27:46):
on this subject that I really you know, besides like
the you know, Time Life, right, like those kinds of
kids books. Are you talking about Mysteries of the Unknown,
Because if you are, sir, I thank you to treat
that ground series. I know, it's a listen, it's close
to a lot of our hearts, and it's very important

(28:07):
as as a work of scholarship. I'd say it's very
it's you know, the book series that launched a thousand podcasts. Um.
The one of the first books on this that I
really read seriously was actually Eric von Danikin's Chariots of
the Gods. And I love the idea, you know, because
it is it's fascinating, it's so intriguing, and especially especially

(28:28):
when you know, like twenty thirty years ago, when um,
when I was growing up reading those you know, we
didn't we really didn't know a lot or I should
say this knowledge of the Mayan civilization and these other
civilizations was pretty limited in terms of what I had
access to. You know, So reading these things and reading

(28:50):
about like the pyramids, um, you know, the pyramids, the
angles and the pyramids coming together in this function that
made pie this special numb or I was like, oh
my god, that had to be Aliens. And then you
just find out that like pie is defined as the
ratio of angles in a triangle, and it isn't as
interesting anymore. That being said, the problem with the idea

(29:12):
is it becomes. And this is the problem of a
lot of paranormal ideas generally, is it becomes it basically
falls into a fallacy that's similar to the fallacy or
similar to the argument style that um Descartes used in
his famous meditations on first Philosophy. And so the the

(29:35):
argument essentially is, and I'm sure you all know this,
cogito ergo sum right is the famous phrase that decart said,
which translates to I think therefore I am so that
specifically references he he had this thought experiment, and he
was working at a time where he was trying to
determine philosophers. Generally, we're trying to determine what could you

(29:56):
know about the universe, about the world around you that
came just from pure logic, just from rationalism, right, that
didn't require experimental work or knowledge gained from outside of you.
And so philosophers called this a priori knowledge, right, as
opposed to knowledge a gain from the world, which is

(30:16):
called a posterior eye knowledge. What they cart determined was
So he goes through this this you know, it's a
pretty short read, and it's a really interesting work, I'd say,
But so he goes through this kind of this lengthy
discourse about, well, my eyes are wrong all the time
about stuff, right, Like, I get tricked. There's optical illusions.
I don't see things all that well from far away,

(30:38):
even though things are there. Um, I have dreams, right,
I have all of these things. I misremember things all
the time I have there There seems to be something
about my my you know, sensory apparatus that sight and
hearing and taste and feeling everything else that can be tricked.
And so he positive this idea of what's called decards

(31:01):
demon which is the idea that imagine that before all
of the sensory input gets to you, right, so these
you're seeing something from far away. That information is traveling
to you, but right before it gets to you, there's
a demon who changes it in a way that makes
it into what the demon wants you to see. Could

(31:21):
you discern that that was happening another way of right,
the answer is no, and that's why. Well so, and
that's what and that's what Descartes said, right was the
only thing therefore that I can know really in any
way is that I must exist somewhere, because I'm even

(31:42):
thinking in the first place, right, so, because I'm thinking
I must exist somewhere. That's the only thing that I
can know. And then you know, um, as you know,
as I assume, decart packed up his books and was like,
I'm done, I don't have the work. Ever again, I
did it and figure it out. The only thing I
can know? Um that same argument, Stallard, That issue, I

(32:04):
would say applies to the ancient astronaut theory. You know,
it becomes a point where it's like, okay, well, now
we know that, for instance, the Pyramids, the stones that
built the pyramids, we know from basic physics that that
a team of like ten people could move one of
those huge stones. You know, they would use tools, they
would use rollers and things, but it's not impossible that

(32:25):
they would move them. So then they say, okay, well,
maybe then the Aliens didn't build the pyramids, maybe they
just use them for something mysterious. And then we find out, well,
the pyramids were used for X, Y, and Z, and
they were constructed this way because of this, And every
time we find more answers, they they kind of pushed
the goal posts back, and they say, well, no, you know,
it's getting to the point where, you know, next season

(32:47):
ancient aliens are gonna be talking about how the Aliens
came down and helped us shimmy the stones over. You know,
it's like the stuff that the aliens would have to
do get smaller and smaller every year as we learn
more and more about the Age world and about these sites.
And eventually, though at the at the root of that argument,
you could always ask, well, who taught the aliens to

(33:08):
do that stuff? Then? If if the aliens came and
taught us how to build the pyramids and Moi and
everything else, who taught the aliens other aliensis? And so
eventually someone has to do the kind of basic science
that we're saying humans did, So what's the point of

(33:30):
the aliens in that in that argument? Then? Right, there
is no point of them in that argument. They go away.
And it's the same argument that comes up with things
like say what Jeb Card would call the grand unified
field theory of the paranormal of the paranormal unified field
theory UM, this idea that you know, well, in UFO cases,

(33:51):
when you see a UFO you're being abducted or something.
The reason that all those cases are different is because
the aliens are changing what you experience and see to
be what they want you to remember. Well, decardes demon right,
we did that already, we didn't like, we already had
this argument um and it you know, it worked out

(34:12):
great for Decard. But I don't think you could make
the same point now and it would work out as
well for you. So it just it becomes an argument
that and that happens a lot of times in these fields.
And it's because in my mind at least, it's because
these fields are not linked to a real academic history. Right,
there are things that people have, there are there are

(34:34):
actual scientists that are working on the question of what
a UFO abduction really is and what I mean by
that is something like, for instance, you can ask, if
this is a hallucination of some sort, then it would
appear that there are thousands of people in the United
States and you know, even more across the world having

(34:56):
the same sort of hallucinatory experience. Well, what of the
physical action that causes that experience, what's the what's the
mechanism in the brain if nothing else? Exactly right? And
and and it turns out that just like with other
types of delusions or thinking errors or whatever, people have
similar people have similar because we live in this in

(35:20):
a world that's kind of shaped, you know, for humans,
we have similar fears, right um, we have similar anxieties,
we have similar things that we imagine. You know, we
may not want to think that way necessarily, but there's
a reason that there are certain phobias, are certain types
of dreams that are common. It turns out that maybe this,
the abduction experience, is another one of those common things

(35:43):
that is, for some reason fear hole to humans that
happens due to a chemical imbalance or something or whatever.
Right um, those kinds of questions are things that we
can ask seriously, we can ask scientifically, And that one
kind of presupposes the reality of the situation, right, the
reality of the event itself in question. But there are

(36:03):
questions that we can ask that don't presuppose that. Right. Um,
there are thousands of people again, and we've met you know,
I know, I'm sure you guys have met them, right,
I know, I know, Ben, you've met them when we
went to the conference together. I've met many of them
myself too. There are people who legitimately believe that they've
they've had a terrifying experience with something from the stars,

(36:27):
you know. Um, that is not in dispute, right. What
is a dispute is the reality of that underlying thing.
But there is still a really, you know, a very
real group of people who spend money on things that
are harming them. You know, hypnosis sessions and herbal t
you know, keys with crystals, you know, whatever in them,
and all kinds of junk. Right. There are people take

(36:50):
being taken advantage of. There's a philosophical question I think
there that is it ethical to let them be taken
advantage over that way? And a lot of those people, frankly,
you know, they vote. A lot of those people make
decisions for the rest of us right, Um, with their
with their votes and with their political donations and with
their activism and everything else. So getting a grasp on that,

(37:10):
getting and getting an understanding of well, why do people
believe these things? What effect does that have on their
other beliefs about science or psychology or whatever, and and
how does that affect the world that we all live in?
You know, Again, those are important questions that people are
starting to grasp with, grapple with now. Um that it's

(37:31):
it's kind of starting to have an effect. You know,
twenty years ago, not believing in climate change, it didn't
really have an effect. Right when an entire country is
a flame, Um, it seems to mean more. We're gonna
take a short break here. We'll be right back with
Chris Cogswell right after this. And we're back with Chris Cogswell. Well,

(37:59):
I would I agree with that. I would also I
would also advance that just a bit to say that
there are there are things that seemed uh completely unreasonable
to believe in or to give any serious credence to
uh twenty or thirty years ago, that now are now

(38:19):
are accepted as fact one of the one of the
and this is outside of the realm of the hard science.
But UH. One observation that we've always made about the
term conspiracy theory is that it it is often used
to UH or the term fringe. They're often used to

(38:42):
reduce the credibility of something such that it is put
on the level of UH, like on the level of
the idea that the United Kingdom is run by these
descendants of reptilian aliens and for some reason they're just
old pills UH, because that's what they do. But but like,

(39:04):
for instance, years ago, a specific example saying that a
large amount of the so called illegal drug trade was
financed by state actors and UH financially aided by international
banking cartels. People people did say, that's crazy, that's cockamami.

(39:26):
It turns out that that was very much the case,
if not across the planet all the time, there are
at least several examples where that provably was true. And
in one of the reasons I think that the realm
of science UH is unique and different in regard to

(39:47):
this search for the truth is that we are able to,
regardless of our personal beliefs, we are able to reproduce experiments,
We were able to make observations that are consistent once
we understand all the variables involved. But I would also

(40:08):
I would also ask you this, this is the that
Sorry for that Ted talk guys, I just had to
get that out there. But but but I have to
I have to ask you this. This is one of
the questions that we always love to ask people who
do have scientific acumen. Do you believe that it is
possible the US or some other state actor has uh

(40:32):
created uh technology that would be considered you know, uh
more sophisticated than anything publicly available, Like is the Are
all these stories that we hear about suppress technology true?
And if so, to to what degree? You know? Like
we know we know that they're approving cases of say

(40:56):
um UFOs later turning out to be classified aircraft, right,
but a particular alloy or something that's only available at
a particular place in a skunkwork somewhere that you cannot
find anywhere else. Yeah, So, what is there credence to that?
And if so, how far does it go? What's the
uh kind of asking you to be our our canary

(41:19):
in the critical thinking coal mine? Here? Let me yeah? Yeah, So,
so has there ever been anything that you heard of
where you said actually that uh yeah, that that is
suppressed technology or is or would you say most of
it is more like you know campfire stories. No, well,
so I mean so, well, first off, I just want

(41:40):
to say, you're talking about the reptails, like that's not
the truth, and I don't so I'm a little bit
they're clearly reptiles. Look at the eyes. Um. Um. The
well in reality, right that science is always like so

(42:04):
there's this idea in the sciences, and actually it's it's
becoming a bigger and bigger issue. Um. Started really being
an issue in psychology in um, like the early to
late tens, right, they're not twenty times to two thousands,
right up to like twenty ten, let's say, And then
it started to bleed over into other fields. Um, it

(42:24):
turns out that science science has a crisis right now.
That's that's occurring with reproducibility, and the scope of the
problem in some fields is really bad. Right. So in
psychology almost a very small number of papers turned out
to be reproducible. So, in other words, that process that

(42:45):
you're saying, where if you do an experiment with scientific
rigor in your lab and then you publish it I
should be able to replicate those experiments. It turns out
there's not a lot of interest in publishing replication reports
that doesn't happen, So p will haven't been replicating experiments really,
and so now it's starting to as that technology transitions

(43:07):
from the lab into industry, UM, companies are realizing, oh
my god, we're wasting Like I think the last figure
I saw was it something like fifty of their research
and development budget in some in some fields, right, biotechnologies,
when one example, in particular, pharmaceuticals is one example, UM

(43:27):
of their research spend in a given year is wasted
on reports that cannot be reproduced, that are not usable science. Right.
So that that is a really real problem affecting the
sciences right now. So that's that's and that's why you
see so many UM in the news and things. You know, oh,
cancer has been solved, right, you know, cancer has been cured.

(43:50):
We've we figured out a way to cure cancer. And
then that never makes it to the marketplace, right because
those papers that are so wonderful that seemed to cure cancer.
First off, it's like curing a single type of cancer
in a specific mouse genetic line. You know, you under
various specific conditions and everything else and whatever. Um. But
also a lot of those papers like, uh, there's a

(44:12):
reproducibility test done um on cancer research in particular, it
was something like papers couldn't be reproduced. Now, this was
back in like again the early two thousand's, right, and
it's gotten it seems to have gotten more stringent and better.
But that's it's still a problem. Right. So that's the
first thing, and it's it's not something that science podcasts
really talked about because it's kind of like the science

(44:33):
is dirty secret right now. Um. But it's a huge
issue in terms of the The reason I bring it
up though, not to just go on a wild tangent
um from my own ted talk um. Science is always
and it depends on the field, but science is usually
like the academic sciences are usually at minimum tend to

(44:55):
like twenty years advanced of what we have out there
in the marketplace, you know. Um. And so the parts
of science were were really good, the public tends to
get wrong. They tend not to know about, and the
parts that were actually pretty bad at they also tend
to be misinformed about. So give me an example, right,
molecular modeling, So actually modeling a chemical UM reaction taking place?

(45:20):
How many chemicals do you think we can react at
once on a computer and have it work in like
a sensible amount of time? But I'll say a day
just modeling a reaction, modeling a simple reaction and one
equals two chemicals interacting. Yeah, let's say like A plus

(45:42):
B gives you C. Okay, Okay, I understand that. Thanks easy, right? Chemical? Easy? Um?
So I'm let's how about this give me I don't know,
I was gonna I was gonna shoot really low, just
because it does seem like it is more complex than
I'm imagining it. Okay, I'll because it's it's a hard

(46:05):
question to ask. It's a hard question to answer in
the first place, because it's like how many apples do
I have in my bucket? Like, um, it's not many.
It's not many molecules that we can model at once. Um.
And when we do model them, we model them really simply, right.
We do either something like, um, we know that A
plus B goes to C. We also know CE can
go to five other things. We know that A plus

(46:27):
C can go to a couple of things. You know
that B plus C can go to a couple of things.
So we kind of build it out that way where
it's almost more like a almost like the way Google
searches work. Right, it builds out almost like a neural net.
Not only a neural net, but you know, it builds
out like almost like a tree branch graph. And then
based on that, just based on pure probabilities of how

(46:48):
many of these things result in product A, how many
resulting product B, how many result in products. See, we
do something like a Monte Carlo simulation, and we just say, well,
that's what we're gonna get, right, where there's a cheap
it's the highest percentage chances we end up with chemical
d at the end of this reaction. So that's what
your prediction will happen, right, But it turns out chemistry
is really complicated. Right. When something reacts, it doesn't just

(47:12):
magically happen it. It reacts because the molecules strike each
other and there's enough force there. There's a forces kind
of the wrong word, but there's enough energy in the
collision that a reaction can occur, a bond can break,
and then another bond can form. Right. That's super complicated.
Um And suddenly it's suddenly chemistry is a lot less

(47:34):
like doing those kind of simple Mono Carlo simulations of
you know, we have this many possible reactions and these
many possible reactions, et cetera. It turns a lot more
into something like modeling the crashing of cars right as
right of one of Carlow cars. Right, Yeah. Um, it

(47:54):
suddenly becomes you know, you just taken account momentum and
position and you know, do you model one dimension or two,
two or three or right? How do you do all
of that? Um? It's really it gets really complicated. We
can't model past like a very simple reaction at this point.
Our computers aren't fast enough, there's not enough processing power,

(48:14):
and frankly we don't know enough about how those reactions
happen really, right. Um. The one group that's really doing
work like this, they're basically doing those kinds of Monte
Carlo simulations um out of m I T you know,
but actually modeling like a physical chemical reaction happening between
two species that we don't study in the lab. Just

(48:35):
predicting based on their structure what reactions will happen. That's
basically been the same like we've been doing that the
same way since like the eighteen eighteen nineties, you know,
when the periodic table of normal elements was essentially established. Right,
So that part we're really bad at. On the other hand,
building alloys, building materials at the atomic scale, we're really

(48:59):
good at that. That we've been able to do for decades, right,
So making a ton, you know, a single layer thick
of gold that sits in between you know, sandwich between
two atomically thick layers of silver that attaches to a
silicon wafer. UM to test that surface conductivity or something.
That stuff we've been able to do since essentially since

(49:20):
we were young kids, you know, UM, nano engineering has
been possible. It's it's funny. Actually, the material that I
ended up working on in my PhD UM the m
C M twenty two m P chemical, which is Mobile
Corporation matter number twenty two and then P stands for precursor.
That chemical was actually developed the year that I was born,

(49:43):
like thirty miles from my house in New Jersey, UM
at at an ex On mobile plant or research and
development plant. I'm sure we've been polluted the water anywhere
at any time in Jersey. That's fine. Oh no, I've
got a couple of extra fingers. But it's fine, you know,
I mean, it really helps in the lab um. But
you know that that stuff we're really good at, like nanoengineering,

(50:05):
material synthesis, material analysis, understanding, of those sorts of things
we're really strong at. So I would say in terms
of you know, the gup, you know, we don't have
like an anti gravity ray. We don't have a UFO someplace,
right That's that's that's very very unlikely. I swear, I

(50:25):
swear there is not a CI agent here with a
knife to my throat. Um. You know that that level
of technology, know that there's no I don't think there's
really any evidence that we have that right now in
the public space. However, the stuff that we can do
with the lab scale is is so far out of
the general realm of knowledge for most people that I

(50:47):
would argue that every man on the street, you know,
has no sense, really has no way of saying what
it is actually starting tofically possible right now, because we're
it's so far outstretched. What makes it into industry at
this point, I see? And that problem is of course
historically compounded by the UH, by the errors of pop

(51:10):
side reporting at times. Right, going back, going back to
your cancer in one line of a very specific cancer
in a very specific line of lab mice appears to
have been mitigated to some degree in this specific application,
with all other things controlled. And then of course cut

(51:31):
to daily mail forty eight hours later, cure for cancer. Uh.
Laboratory refuses to release the further details, right, probably because
they're waiting for their paper to publish. Um. Okay, so
that makes sense. It sounds like the argument then, is
is less one of nefarious activity and uh or it's

(51:53):
also an argument at least in part, that the average
person is just not plugged into that world and there
has to be a high level of attrition from successful
laboratory work too widespread commercial and military application. Is that
about exactly? Yeah? I mean you know a good example

(52:14):
that actually I actually used this example a lot in UM,
I just used this example a lot of my daily life.
I guess i'd say, is what what year do you
think the first laser beam was was done in a laboratory?
When do you think the first laser was developed? Uh? One,
nineteen fifty one. I'm gonna go eighteen, all right, split

(52:39):
the difference. It was like ninety was we had a
functioning laser beam in a laboratory, right, it was somewhere
around there. The first the laser beam actually making it
to the marketplace, though, The first time that technology made
to the marketplace of like everyday people was nine. And
what is its application? It was used And it wasn't

(53:02):
even really a public application. It was used for cutting.
It was a COEO two laser for cutting of of metal.
It was used in welding and metal cutting. Right. The
first the first commercial use of a laser beam actually
like in the public sphere was in barcode scanders in
the UM. So this technology that Einstein worked on, you

(53:23):
know what I mean? This is like, this is a
technology that changed the world as we knew it. UM
was was around for like sixty years earlier than most
people realize, you know, UM, and it's still stuff that
you know. That's that's the kind of argument that I'd
say it is really happening here is that first off,
science is not Science is not very good at communicating

(53:48):
with the public. Right, That's that's problem one, Like scientists aren't.
First off, scientists don't necessarily consider it to be part
of their job right to communicate with the public, because
the public is not really the people. In some ways,
the public is funding the science right through your tax dollars. Um,
But science as a whole, I would argue, doesn't really

(54:08):
feel like it's their responsibility to communicate to the public generally.
And that's a huge problem because it lets things like
these pseudo scientific ideas and everything else affect the way
that science gets done and the way that science is
funded and just people's everyday lives. You know, Um, the
government shutdowns that happened in the United States, they're like,

(54:29):
they're very, very detrimental for science. You know, when those
when that happens, people sell lines are dying, people's people's
experiments are not going finished, you know, because their funding
comes from the government in many cases. So it is
a serious thing. And again, I think we're just starting
to realize the reverberations that a general population distrustful of

(54:53):
the sciences, distrustful of experts generally, but also just misinformed
in many cases. Um, you know, science can't Scientists cannot
sit in their ivory tower and just expect that it's
not you know, we're not going to feel the earthquake,
uh affect us so uh, I want to I want

(55:16):
to now with that context, with that lay of the land. Uh,
and I would like to ask you for a gut
check on some specific things, right, mysterious things proven or
disproven to some degree. Are they real or not? Or
could they be in the future? Uh? First up, all right, man,
don't hate us cold fusion? Yes, no, in the future.

(55:39):
What's going possible? What are your thoughts? So for listeners
that don't, I guess for people that don't really know
what cold fusion is, and I'm assuming you're I mean,
I know you guys, Yeah, you know, it's general knowledge
at this point, right, Um. But the basic idea is
currently what new clean energy does is fission, which is

(56:02):
two atoms rather an atom split in right into two
separate things. If it's physical material, it will undergo fission
and break up into two things. So uranium decays into
two things, and then that decay releases energy that we
then used to turn water into steam and then power
a steam turbine. Right. That that's how we get the

(56:23):
energy out of the nuclear reactor. Fusion, on the other hand,
would be two small molecules coming together and making a
bigger one or not molecules, but atoms interacting coming together
and make a bigger one, releasing far more energy UM
and then of it being cold, fusion would be doing
that in a way that it could happen act say
like a room temperature right UM, where it doesn't have

(56:47):
to happen at the core of the sun. UM. Physics
isn't a weird spot right now, guys. Physics isn't a
really weird spot. Physics is kind of a at a crossroads. WHOA,
you're saying, there's a chance I'm saying I'm saying that.
I'm saying that string theory didn't really pan out the
way that a lot of people thought it would, and

(57:09):
our understanding of kind of the atomic structure UM has
sort of stalled. We we've kind of known as much
as we've known since. And I'm not I'm not a
physicist by training, right I'm I'm a chemical engineer, so
more of like material science, I guess really would be

(57:31):
if you had to put a hat on me. UM.
But physics has kind of sat in the same position,
you know, since maybe really two thousands. Physics hasn't had
any really big major breakthroughs, and that's because it's getting
more and more energetically costly and just literally economically costly
to do the experiments that are needed to do um

(57:53):
for people to come to some kind of understanding. So
I would say that maybe cold fusion is a hard maybe,
let's say, right, but but but here's the thing. If
we could do it, how would we even harness that energy? Right? Um?
Nuclear power plants today are huge, right there, big fatilities.

(58:18):
I mean they're not you know, they're not like generous
like a crazy you know, amount of space needed or
anything else. But um, they're quite large. They have public
sentiment against them generally, I would say, Right, And this
is where that intersection between kind of politics and science
and economics and sociology and all these other things, this

(58:38):
is where this all comes into play. Maybe cold fusion
could happen. If it does happen, would we even put
it into development? If we did discover cold fusion, would
we even use it? I think somebody would. Somebody would
attempt to think somebody. It would probably either be a
private institution or a country that developed it, similar to

(59:01):
the Manhattan Project, where it would be coveted in and
the belief would be This is just my opinion, but
the belief would be that all countries are all powers
are also you know, at this cutting edge of development,
and they are soon going to find out or you know,
we cannot let anyone else find out, like a first
past the post kind of thing. And that's what it
feels like to me. Definitely could happen. Right, But this

(59:24):
is actually part of that argument. This is part of
the argument that happens a lot in these kind of
far out their fields, with these kinds of crazy technologies. Right.
One really famous example of a pseudoscience that is kind
of stuck around for a long time because the military
keeps funding it for god knows what reason is zero
point Energy research. Right, similar kind of idea in that

(59:46):
the promise of it is that we would end up
with basically a limitless source of energy. Right, we end
up with with a perfectly if you know, almost more
than perfectly efficient system that's pulling energy essentially out of
the void. The vacuum space breaks you know, every law
of thermo dynamics. It's completely wacky. But um, it's such
a big promise, and you know, it's not very costly

(01:00:08):
to investigate, because you just need a pen and paper
and some knowledge of calculus. Um that you know, it's
it's all theoretical at this point, so it's not really
a hard spend, right, But um, that idea even right again,
if we did have just think about the the societal
impact that would have. Right if we if we developed

(01:00:29):
cold fusion immediately all of the geopolitics around the Middle
East goes away. Do we think that we would stick
around in the Middle East if we didn't need oil anymore?
That seems unlikely, right. Would we worry about North Korea
anymore if if we had, if we had, or would
we think about them the same way? If we suddenly
had the ability to produce a near infinite source of energy,

(01:00:52):
what would our responsibility then be to poor countries where
they don't have the resources to produce infinite energy. G
it's not going to cost us anything to transmit it
to them because it's infinite. Right, there's an infinite source,
So it doesn't really matter anymore how much efficiency it
takes to transport energy because we don't care, right, we

(01:01:13):
can just dial up the other side. Um. All of
those things are like huge, huge questions and huge issues,
And I think that there are a lot of the
reason why these energy technologies are stopgap a lot of
the time. I mean, actually one of the first, one
of the first papers I wrote about this stuff. Um.
And you know, since when I when I chose grad

(01:01:33):
school and chemical engineering, I kind of you know, you
have to at a certain point, you gotta pick. You're
sitting there in the philosophy classroom, like, am I gonna
go for the philosophy PhD or chemical engineering PhD? I
went with chemical engineering, but I'm hoping one day to
go back to get the philosophy one. But anyways, the
one of the papers I wrote about this sort of
subject in the kind of philosophical realm was looking at

(01:01:56):
the United States. We've always lagged behind Europe in adopting
energy technologies because we have a lot more resources, like
a lot more natural resources. So the United States, Europe
was almost done with coal by the time we started
using it because we had so many trees that we
could just burn them. We just didn't matter to us.

(01:02:18):
The same thing is true about why we haven't adopted
really nuclear energy the same way that some other countries
have renewable energy. Right, we have so much space and
so much water, um that it you know, having a
dirty coal plant in your town or you know, in
some part of the middle of nowhere in you know,
um wherever, right, it doesn't have the same effect it

(01:02:41):
does if it's in the middle of Dresden or the
middle of Berlin or Paris. So weird. My road close
to my house is called Dresden and I totally had
that And sorry, there has nothing to do with anyways.
So yeah, so so there's a lot of stuff to
think about there, But so cold cold fusion. I think
I think it's a maybe that we would developed the

(01:03:01):
I think we're gonna learn more about the underlying science
that would make something like that possible. I just don't
I personally actually don't think that there would be enough
economic driving force to make it become something that industry
picks up. At present. I've got one more for you
that we're getting out, uh, silicon based life. Go oh,

(01:03:23):
an easy one, an easy one. Yeah, we thought, honestly,
do you it's theoretically possible. It's I'm I wondered from
just with your chemical background, if you imagine, I mean,
obviously you can't prove it or not, but perhaps the
likelihood that somewhere on some distant plane silicon was the

(01:03:47):
chemical that brought forth life. So UM, it's yeah. I
think that it's definitely a possibility. Right for listeners or
for people that don't necessarily kind of get why silicon
would be a good option. UM, I suggest you, if
you're not driving or like doing something important right now, UM,
pull up a periodic table on on the internet, and

(01:04:11):
look at where carbon sits on the periodic table. Right,
So carbon sits in M. Carbon is element number six,
and so it sits in AH. It sits essentially in
column fourteen, right, Um. Right underneath carbon is silica, right, silicon. Um.
The reason that we think silicon could be another source

(01:04:33):
of kind of the chemistry of life like carbon is
is because they're in the same that same column of
the periodic table. Right. Elements that are in that same
elements in the same um column have the same electronic
configuration in the same valence shell or outermost shell of electrons,
and that's the shell that actually undergoes chemistry. So that's

(01:04:53):
why we think silicon might have similar properties to carbon,
and that it can bond in kind of a tetrahedral shape. Um,
it might be very amenable to things like polymerization. And
we actually know that silicon does essentially undergo polymerization. That's
how we made most of my materials in school. Um. Anyways,
I think that it's it's a it's a possibility, right,
But we also have a very we have a very

(01:05:17):
stringent view again of what life constitutes, you know. So, um,
we tend to think that an alien species is going
to need to digest food in a similar way that
we do. We assume that they'll talk, that they'll they'll
use sound waves to communicate to one another. We assume

(01:05:40):
that they'll have you know, legs and arms, right, and
usually they'll have two of them that just a little
bit smaller and a little bit greater. There's got big
bulbous weird heads. Um. We assume that they we assume
that they see. We assume that they don't they only
have five senses, they don't have more senses than we do,
or they don't have less, right. All of that are

(01:06:00):
huge assumptions, and so we make the same kind of
assumptions with our chemistry to in some way the idea
of it being like a silicon based life form. Um.
We assume that that would mean something like the kind
of amino acids and the DNA structure and everything else
would form um where just silicon replaces carbon. And that's

(01:06:22):
certainly one possibility. But we have no concept of what
causes really consciousness. Right. It's one of the biggest it
is the biggest unanswered question for and kind of the
last hill on which metaphysics will die. Is this idea
of consciousness if you take the material and I've said

(01:06:44):
this word before, materialist, right, The materialist view in the
sciences is this idea that, uh, everything reduces down to
the interactions of atoms. So your emotions, if we had
a powerful enough computer, your thought, know, you think of
a red ball bouncing if we hit a powerful enough computer.

(01:07:05):
The materialist, the pure materialist, would argue that we could
just by modeling the interactions of all of the atoms
and all of the molecules inside of your brain, we
could replicate that thought in an artificial being, and we
could therefore cause you to have thoughts too by affecting
your neural networks in different ways and whatever. A non

(01:07:25):
materialist or someone who's not so inclined to believe the
materialist point of view would say that you your consciousness
does not seem to reduce fully down to those interactions
of atoms. Right there are there are properties of the
mind and of the world that don't reduce down to
their individual parts. So, um, how would your neural network

(01:07:51):
or how would the interaction of the atoms inside of
your brain explain the pain you feel when remembering a
painful moment. It's easy mirror neurons. I get it, totally understand.
So abstracted, it's so abstracted from you know, Adam A
interacting with Adam B and causing molecules see to be produced.

(01:08:13):
That's a chemical that causes it. You know, it's so
abstracted at that point that is really hard to conceptualize
that that might be the link. So we don't. We
don't even know that they need. You know, what if
we find out in fifty years, in ten years, in
two years, whatever, What if we find out that consciousness
is just caused by I don't know, you know anything,

(01:08:39):
you know, we can pick anything that we want to
be the cause of consciousness. I believe it was originally
mushroom cult. Uh, they got into some psilocybin. I think
that's where it came from, pretty sure. But you know what,
I'm saying though right like it, it could be we
might not recognize life, um because we don't have the
way to communicate with it, right, Vickenstein said famously, if

(01:09:03):
a lion could speak, we wouldn't understand it. That's a lion,
you know what I mean. They think they have our chemistry, um,
forget an alien that you know, might be silicon based
or whatever. So I don't know. I mean, it's definitely possible,
and I think it'll be really interesting as we get
better chemistry to kind of try to build some of
those building blocks and see if they do interact in

(01:09:25):
the same way. And you know, um, we're kind of
it's kind of a weird situation right now where the
public generally believes in all this stuff is being possible
um and and that's kind of bore out by the
statistics that you quoted at the beginning and everything else.
Um And science is taking some of it more seriously

(01:09:48):
than it would have before, but not in the way
that kind of the UFO community would want them to,
you know. So there you know, it's not there's not
scientists coming out onto the lawn of the White House
and be like, you know, aliens are real. You know
your uncle was right the whole time. UM, at least
they're coming out, they're coming out and saying, like, you know,
the chances of their being life developing on another planet

(01:10:12):
is so you know, the the chance of it not
happening is so small that we have to take into
consideration that it could be the case. Absolutely, and this
this at this point, Christopher, unfortunately we are we are
getting the signal from mission control. My friend, we've said
too much for today. So before the UH to say

(01:10:34):
hello to the c I a guy who's got the
v Sallie that night figure throat UH, and hello to
our intern at the n S A Steve UH. This
has been This has been fantastic. This has been a
very broad look at a number of different things. And
I like that we're ending on a more uh inspirational note.

(01:10:56):
You know, we truly are at a crossroads. So I
I have a motion for the table, which today is me,
Matt and everybody listening. Okay, I proposed we uh we
promote Christopher Cogswell from from guests on stuff they don't
want you to know, to our to our our our

(01:11:17):
team of scientific consultants. Right science consultants are you okay
with that? You're comfortable with that? Man? Do I get
a pin? Uh? We're working on the pen. And to
be honest, great okay. Soft note a lot of the
stipend is in ben bucks and it is and it's
based it's a Germanium based uh metal. But don't worry,

(01:11:38):
it's gonna be fine. Yeah. So seriously, we would love
to we we would love to dive in more to
these to these topics in future episodes. Matt and I
have a list of stuff we didn't quite get to today,
but hopefully there's always another podcast in the future. So
thank you very much. Christopher Cogswell. The podcast is the

(01:12:00):
add Scientists Podcast. Uh, Chris, Where can people learn more
about you? Your co host and the show on the
on the social meds. So you can go to the
mad Scientist podcast dot com. You can also find us
on Twitter at mad Scientists Podcast. Um, I'll be the
one arguing with the UFO guys. That's right, that's right. Uh,

(01:12:22):
super fun. You can find us on Facebook. Um, you
can always you know, find us the Mad Scientist Podcast.
Our logo is pretty pretty easy to recognize. Um, it's
like an explosion of science stuff. With being relooking or
it's a jackal aandarn face. So go check it out. Um, yeah,
find us anywhere. Man. We're always happy to have people
come on and talk and guys, I'd love to come

(01:12:44):
back on any time you want me. Hey, we're we're
certainly interested. We didn't talk about the Black Nights satellite.
We didn't talk about cases that you couldn't explain. Yeah,
we like, you're the closest thing you've come to experiencing
that line in between magic and technology. Yeah, we guys,
we we got so much stuff another. We have so

(01:13:06):
much for another episode. You let me know when I'm
coming back on. Great. You were talking about abduction theories
and I was like kind of crouched on my seat
here waiting to bring up sleep paralysis and the topics
we brought up. I didn't. We didn't hit any of that.
It's all good. Well, we'll just have everybody go through
hypnotic regression and convince them that they did in fact

(01:13:27):
here that other episodes. Yes, so plant some memories. That's
a little ethical even for me. Yes, this ends our episode,
but not our show. Please do check out the Mad
Scientists podcast. We believe you will enjoy it. You can
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(01:13:49):
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(01:14:10):
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(01:14:44):
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