April 28, 2025 • 62 mins
Miles Spencer, author of A Line in the Sand and former host of the PBS TV show Money Hunt, takes us on an adventurous journey through the countries of the Middle East and explores the possible contiguity between ancient sites and ancient extraterrestrials.
• Miles and his co-author traced the 1,100-mile path taken by the legendary T.E. Lawrence through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria
• The landscapes of the Middle East, especially Wadi Rum in Jordan, have an otherworldly appearance that inspired science fiction like Star Wars and Dune
• Ancient monuments like the Pyramids of Giza and Temple Mount raise questions about how early civilizations achieved such engineering feats
• The Rosetta Stone, discovered in Abukir by Napoleon, unlocked our understanding of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, but also raises important questions about artifact ownership and cultural heritage
• Biblical accounts, when read literally, contain descriptions that parallel modern understandings of spacecraft and extraterrestrial contact
• The three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) share many prophets and sacred stories despite their apparent differences
• Jerusalem contains holy sites for multiple faiths within walking distance of each other, highlighting their interconnected histories
• The political boundaries of the modern Arab world were largely shaped by agreements made by the European powers during and after World War I
• Recent discoveries using ground-penetrating radar have revealed mysterious structures beneath the Great Pyramid
Whether you're fascinated by ancient history, extraterrestrial possibilities, or interfaith connections, this conversation offers thought-provoking perspectives from someone who's walked the terrain where these mysteries converge. Subscribe now for more insight into humanity's most enduring perplexities.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Joe (00:02):
Hello everybody, thank you for joining us on Alien Talk
Podcast.
This is the show where wediscuss all things about aliens
and UFOs and, as always, wherewe push the limits of our
understanding about subjectsthat pertain to the existence of
extraterrestrial intelligence,the presence of UFOs and perhaps
even the very meaning of humanlife here on Earth, depending on
one's perspective, of course.
(00:23):
We explore the mysteries of theuniverse and the enshrouded
secrets of our ancient history,constantly pondering what is out
there in the far reaches ofouter space, as well as what
lies hidden within the deepestrecesses of our own planet, of
which we still have much tolearn and much of what still
needs to be examined moreclosely.
So, Laurie, we have a specialtreat today.
(00:45):
It is not often that we get theopportunity to sit down and talk
with a well-known writer,successful digital media
entrepreneur, senior businessinvestor, and CEO, but today we
do.
Today, we get the distinctprivilege of having with us the
guy who co-authored the novel ALine in the Sand, that being
merely one of his manyaccomplishments.
He is also well known forhaving produced and hosted a TV
(01:11):
show, money Hunt, which aired onPBS back in 1997.
And that was a reality-basedprogram that gave prospective
entrepreneurs a chance to pitchtheir ideas to potential
investors on television, withthe hope of possibly getting
some capital for our projectssimilar to the show Shark Tank.
Laurie (01:29):
Yeah, that's right, and our guest today is Mike Spencer,
or sorry, Miles Spencer whosome of you may remember seeing
on the TV show Money Hunt, asJoe just said, but that actually
ran from 1997 to 2004.
And he was also a ventureprincipal at Capital Express,
which is now Register.
C om, an internet pioneeringinvestment company, and he has
(01:54):
been a business mentor forpeople in the tech industry for
over 30 years.
So, like you said, Joe, he hasalso co-written an adventure
novel with Wells Jones called ALine in the Sand.
It is about two friends whoembark on an excursion through
parts of the Middle East thatretrace the journey taken by
(02:15):
none other than the legendary T.
E.
Lawrence, also known asLawrence of Arabia, and it was
published just last year, in2024, and is available on Amazon
, both in paperback and onKindle.
So, miles, I hope we did youenough justice with our quick
intro there, and I can't helpbut feel that we may have missed
(02:39):
mentioning something.
Anyway, it's truly an honor tohave you here with us on Alien
Talk Podcast, so thank you fortaking the time.
Miles (02:47):
Hey, I appreciate all that.
I'll agree to most everythingyou say.
That's positive and I'm sureyou skipped some of the
negatives and I appreciate thatas well, but it's great to have
the chance to spend some timewith you guys.
Joe (03:01):
Yeah, it really is a great pleasure to have you with us,
miles.
And to start things off, I seefrom your website that you are a
fellow Pittsburgher.
I too am from "The Burgh, agood old Steel Town.
I left there after joining theAir Force in 1989.
I then went off the DesertStorm.
Only about a year later.
I then went back home toPittsburgh to be reassigned to a
(03:24):
reserve unit out by GreaterPitt International Airport.
I finished my bachelor's degreein Pittsburgh and I went back to
active duty to become acommissioned officer in 1995.
And I have not gone back sincethen, other than for a few short
trips.
My parents moved out here toTucson in 2006 to be with me and
my family, so I don't reallyhave much of a reason to make my
(03:46):
way back there very often.
There's not much there for mein terms of family and friends,
but I do have very fond memoriesof living in Pittsburgh during
my youth and growing up andgoing to school there, good
memories of family and friends,and I did enjoy it there, and I
sometimes do miss it.
Miles (04:05):
I loved Pittsburgh.
Of course, you know, perhapsignorance is bliss.
Joe (04:12):
Agreed.
Laurie (04:14):
So, Miles, as you know, here on our podcast, we are
interested in the.
Miles (04:19):
Two to 14 years old is a pretty fine year.
Laurie (04:26):
Yeah, breaking up there, Miles.
Joe (04:28):
Still with us.
Miles, Miles.
I wonder if you're hearing me.
Yeah, we kind of lost you for asecond there.
No, you were saying aboutPittsburgh.
Miles (04:39):
Yeah, I had a great time in Pittsburgh.
I lived there until I was 14years old and played football
and baseball, ran around andbuilt tree houses and delivered
newspapers.
There's some great songs fromthe 70s.
Probably covers exactly what Iwas doing when I was a kid.
I loved it.
I love the Steelers, of course.
(05:01):
I loved it, I love the Steelers, of course.
And, as we were saying before,even the Pirates have hope in
April, right, so it's abeautiful month.
Laurie (05:17):
This year.
Yes, I agree with you on that.
We're interested in thequestion of extraterrestrial
life, and especially as it tiesto the now popular and the
formulated theory about ancientaliens having been present on
Earth sometime far in thedistant past.
So many of the civilizationswhose mythologies are said to
(05:38):
hold clues about that are indeedfrom places like Egypt and
Greece and Sumer and Babylon,which is present-day Iraq, as we
all know.
So I mean the Middle East andthe Levant have strong
archaeological and historicalconnections to the idea from
which the whole ancientastronaut apostasis has been
(05:59):
derived from.
Now, your novel A Line in theSand is about the odyssey of two
characters who adventurouslytrekked throughout the Middle
East, in countries like SaudiArabia, the political and social
and the cultural impacts lefton it by the events of World War
(06:27):
I, particularly concerning theexpeditions of T.
E.
Lawrence.
So what about the Middle East?
Do you find most intriguing?
Like for many people, it isbecause you know it's the land
of the Bible and the place whereour Judeo-Christian you
know-Christian traditions arerooted in.
So, do you find that to have akind of aura that draws you to
(06:49):
it and makes you want to learnmore about it, miles?
Joe (07:02):
Miles.
We're not getting any soundthere.
Sorry about that.
Miles (07:05):
Let me give you a three-part answer at the very
least.
So at first, when I waslistening to you, I'm thinking
look outer space, right, manyextraterrestrials.
This is, as Sir Arthur ConanDoyle would say, stranger in a
strange land.
We're out of place here, right.
And so I'm a kid fromPittsburgh, Jewish kid from
(07:28):
Pittsburgh, and I ended up inthe Middle East.
It could not have been moredifferent and indeed it was
almost as if we were in outerspace, right.
As a matter of fact, if you lookat Wadi Rum, that actually is
the inspiration for Dune, andthere are some scenes in Star
Wars that are shown in Wadi Rum.
That actually is theinspiration for Dune and there
are some seeds in Star Wars thatare shown in Wadi Rum.
It's a desert in Jordan.
(07:48):
We've been through it on camels.
It's the most majestic thing,but it just looks like it's
another planet.
So from a topographicalstandpoint, it's certainly the
Middle East at the belt.
I've been to places like Gizain Egypt and read the cartouches
there.
I've been to Nazca Lines,actually in Peru, which is
(08:12):
another place where you've seenthe rock formations there.
Say to yourself, or I say tomyself, there is just no way
this was done by regular oldhumans on their own on earth.
You have to see these thingsfrom up high in order to
appreciate them.
For sure.
Certainly nascon lines.
So there certainly was anelement of you know.
(08:38):
Something interesting ishappening here, um.
But what really drove us to goto the middle east was that that
9-11 had happened, right, andwe were trying to get our heads
around.
Remember curious kid frompittsburgh, pennsylvania, who,
what, why, where, when weweren't getting any good answers
(09:00):
at all from the media press.
Whatever we were doing, we didread one book, seven Pillars of
Wisdom, by TE Lawrence.
Both myself and my co-authorWells were impressed with, even
100 years ago, how thisadventure explorer, cartographer
(09:21):
, had understood the Bedouins orthe desert people and was able
to translate back to the west ina way that actually, 100 years
later, was proven to be very,very insightful.
Unfortunately, the west didn'tlisten and we've got the mess
(09:43):
that we've got here.
So when we both each of usseparately finished that book,
we were speaking to each otherand we said, like, what do we do
now?
And our answer was let's go.
And so, as you know, we we wenton the track that ended
1,100-mile an hike through thedeserts of Saudi, Jordan, and
(10:06):
Syria.
That's very good.
Joe (10:09):
Yeah, very excellent.
So you know, I have also beento the Arab world on a number of
occasions throughout the 1990s,being deployed to operations
Desert Storm and Southern Watch.
I got to go to Saudi Arabia,kuwait, bahrain, egypt and some
other countries.
You know a lot of people mayhave forgotten about Operation
(10:29):
Southern Watch as well asOperation Northern Watch, which,
of course, were designed tocontrol and dominate the
airspace of the northern andsouthern sectors of Iraq and
thus keep its military contained.
It meant to prevent SaddamHussein from using air power to
attack the Kurds and the ShiiteMuslims, and the Air Force there
were on regular rotationaldeployments for participation in
(10:52):
that, and it ended, of course,in 2003 when the US and its
allies invaded under OperationIraqi Freedom.
And I also had the opportunityto visit Israel on a Holy Land
pilgrimage with the CatholicChurch, of which I was once a
part of many years ago.
That was an incredibleexperience, but it was during
Desert Storm that I reallydeveloped a deep fascination
(11:13):
with the region of the MiddleEast and the Levant, the Levant
referring to the specific areaof the Middle East that borders
Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
You know Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, also Cyprus and, like
you guys said, it is differentfrom the West.
It's almost like a differentworld.
As you mentioned, miles,they've shot a lot of scenes for
(11:37):
Star Wars in the desert areasof Saudi, U.
A.
E.
and Tunisia.
But it's a place where we getthe stories of the Bible as well
, and so much of it has shapedWestern religious practices and
dogmas for over 2,000 years.
And, as it was, I did a wholelot of reading over there.
One of the things I read wasMichael Yarley's biography of T.
E.
Lawrence and about his uniquerole.
(11:57):
Like you said, he's anintelligence officer and a
liaison with the Arabs, and hehad a unique way of connecting
with the Bedouin people, andthey were involved in uprisings
against the Turks during WorldWar I.
Eventually it brought about theend of the Ottoman Empire.
But something else I read wasthe Bible, the entire Bible, and
I just became extremelyintrigued with the whole diverse
(12:20):
and complex and remarkablehistory of the place of the
Middle East, especially with howit is so connected with all of
our understanding and beliefsabout, you know, the scripture.
All the stories that I learnedabout growing up as a Christian
happened there about Moses andSolomon and Nebuchadnezzar, and
all the Old Testament prophets,jesus and the apostles, and so
(12:42):
many literary and historicalfigures throughout the Crusades
and you know, and the ByzantineEmpire, and to me it was just
very enthralling to come upclose to the place where so many
people's faith seemed to haveoriginated.
And the Middle East really doeshave a special mystique to it.
So, miles, it seems like youwould agree with me on that.
So what really inspired you towrite the novel about?
(13:04):
You know about the time of T.
E.
Lawrence's experience there?
Miles (13:10):
Well, we really went on a mission of understanding.
Remember who, what, why, where,when, right, we weren't getting
any answers.
Let's go ourselves.
And you mentioned religion andthe beliefs in common.
Well, we're in a place calledMagar al-Shaykh.
This is in the northwestquadrant of Saudi.
It doesn't get a lot of foottraffic, I'll tell you that.
Joe (13:34):
No, I thought, yeah, it's like the surface of the Moon.
Miles (13:38):
Yeah, we were with our guide named Ali.
They're all named Ali and he'svery animated at this
architectural dig, thisarchaeological dig, and it's
going on and on.
He's like Hold on a second.
I went to church in Sewickleyactually not in Beaver, but
(14:03):
Sewickley, pa and are you sayingMoses and Hagar and Ezra and
Abraham, and these are all fromthe Bible?
And Ali says yes, yes, they are, they're also from the Quran.
(14:23):
And just on a whim, we had a satphone.
All right, let's call my buddyin Tel Aviv.
And so we called him.
He's a Talmudic scholar.
I said I'm going to read 12prophets to you that we're
talking about here.
Tell me how many you got.
We want 12 for 12 that are inthe Torah.
And so in that moment Irecognized the depth and the
(14:48):
breadth of my ignorance, comingout of Pittsburgh, pa.
One religion, christianity.
We got the stories, we got theprophets.
This must be it right.
And in reality we have so muchin common with the other
religions of the desert.
The differences are actuallyvery slender.
(15:09):
Now there are folks that makethose slender differences into
there's something worth fightingabout, or worth what they think
is worth fighting about.
But in reality I was shocked atmyself, but I was also
comforted in that we have somuch in common, and that was one
(15:29):
of the pieces of understandingthat we wanted to bring back to
the West, like Lawrence had done100 years ago, and that was the
genesis.
Laurie (15:41):
Well, I'm jealous of both of you.
I have never been to the MiddleEast but would love to go
someday, of course, maybe afterthe tensions have settled down
over there.
But I've been to the MexicanRiviera, you know, the Yucatan
to see the pyramid of Coco Khan,and to Northern Europe and been
to Stonehenge.
And, you know, hope to bevisiting the Mediterranean, you
(16:03):
know, sometime next year, but Ithink it would be great to visit
all of those famous lands ofthe Bible.
Would love to get there someday.
But anyway, you know, miles, joeand I also just recently
published a historical sciencefiction novel that begins in the
ancient Egypt and then thestoryline then picks up in the
(16:25):
relatively modern day world of1947, the same year as the
Roswell incident.
So there is a little hint as toits plot.
But it is called Betel PlanetAD, relic of the Gods, and the
story is centered on a startlingdiscovery of something
technological that is discoveredas an old artifact from the
(16:48):
site of an archaeological digthat turns out to be alien
technology from 4,000 years ago.
So it is a book that is basedon the ancient alien apostasis
and it is set in the Middle East.
So, miles, we know that thethree dominant monotheistic
religions of the world Judaism,christianity and Islam you know
(17:12):
what they call the Abrahamicfaiths all got their start in
the Middle East.
As you said.
There are like similaritiesbecause they all come from the
same father, father Abraham.
And my question to you is doyou think that there are
connections between thesereligions and this notion about
ancient extraterrestrials?
(17:33):
And I don't know how wellversed you are in the ancient
alien theory but since both ofthese, both of these both have
the region of the earth incommon, this particular region,
so do you believe it is possiblethat the stories preserved
about things like the creation,the Garden of Eden, the flood,
(17:56):
the Anunnaki, etc.
Are actually nothing more thantransformative stories about
them?
Miles (18:04):
I think it's a very good possibility.
They are transformative stories.
I am amazed at how?
What's the line from you to?
The more I learn, the less Iknow?
Yes, I mentioned pyramids andGizeh.
(18:27):
You look at some of the other.
Well, I've been to Mount Araratin I guess it's Armenia now.
I've been to places that I justhave a hard time believing that
regular old earthlings created1,000 years ago or 3,000 or 10,
a thousand years ago, or threethousand or ten thousand years
(18:50):
ago.
Common sense tells me they hadto have some hope, and I'm
willing to acknowledge thepossibility that that could be
true, and I'm not necessarily askeptic in terms of well, show
me the proof, otherwise I'm nota believer.
I'm just like you know what.
(19:12):
The universe surprises me dailyin its reminders of how little
understanding and control I haveover it, and the easiest way to
get those reminders is to havea 13 and 11 year old kid I
(19:32):
remember those days.
Joe (19:37):
Yeah, my kids are all grown up now, they're in their 20s.
I have grandchildren, sothere's a really little.
But uh, I know we're comingalong same and I think that's a
very academically responsibleapproach to it.
There is so much we don't know.
Isaac Newton said what we knowis a drop and what we don't know
(19:58):
is an ocean.
And we find that every day.
The more curious we are, themore interested we are in
finding out truth and exploringthings, the more you know we
open up one door and find thatthere's 10 more doors that still
need to be opened, you know,and they're constantly finding
new things that raise questionto what we've held for a long
(20:21):
time as almost dogma, asdoctrine and science and
religion.
Take the pyramids they've nowjust believed they found these
anomalies that they think arestructures underneath the Great
Pyramid, and they found itthrough ground-penetrating radar
.
And these structures are eightof them, eight large columns, I
(20:43):
mean larger than the EiffelTower, and they go down almost
deep into the ground, almost abedrock past bedrock, and they
don't know what they are.
They believe that there's likethis sort of coil that goes
around each one of them.
Now, of course, they haven'tseen it face-to-face.
This is just, you know,interpreted from data on
ground-penetrating radar.
(21:04):
So you know these are questions.
I mean, what are these?
I mean it could be nothing,they could just be anomalous
readings from the rockformations, or they could be
some structure there.
They're not found anywhere else.
If you go with theground-penetrating radar
readings, just maybe a half amile away from the pyramids, you
don't find them.
So it raises a lot of curiosity, a lot of wonderment and, like
(21:29):
you said, miles, it's like10,000 years ago or even 5,000
years ago, how did peopleaccomplish these things?
How did they move these largestones?
How did they constructsomething like the pyramids?
How did they even conceive thatwe would have a difficult time
constructing those things todayor conceiving of them today?
(21:49):
And yet we're saying thatpeople before the time of even
computers or the ability tocreate the art and designs that
work that we have today, wereable to conceptualize this in
their minds and then build itand make it last.
For how many millennia now,right, right?
Laurie (22:09):
Yep.
Well, with your travels toEgypt, Miles.
I mean you saw the Pyramids ofGiza right, I did.
What are they like up close?
I mean I'd like to visit theresomeday one of my bucket lists.
Miles (22:26):
Yeah, awesome.
Even just the stones at thebase are practically unscalable.
Now I have friends that climbedback in the day before they
shut that all down.
I have climbed the pyramids inTenochtitlan and some of the
(22:46):
other Mexican sites.
Once again, they've shut thatdown as well.
It used to be okay to do that,but the sheer size of them now,
from my understanding, is theywere also covered in sheets of
gold, the three of them in thatpyramid.
(23:08):
They would typically beginbuilding them when they were
eight or 10 years old, just like, let's get going on this, guys.
I mean, I hope this joke lands,but there are limitations to
slave labor and how much you canget done with, so you've got to
start early in the process ifyou want to have a big pyramid
at the end of your life.
So there's three of them there.
(23:30):
Um, I was really impressed, notso much with the architecture of
the outside, but what was goingon inside.
I went into some of the tombsthat were publicly available.
I was also able to see some ofthe arcs or boats that had.
(23:51):
I mean, they basically believedyou got in a boat and you
passed into the other world andyou see, I thought it was a
Viking ship, right, this giantwarship, which is basically no.
This is what we're going topaddle into the afterlife with,
miraculously preserved after 3-4thousand years.
(24:11):
So it was truly on spiraling, alittle bit claustrophobic, a
little cool.
Even though it was 100 degreesup top, it was cool down Well,
not quite a wine cellar, butcool Musty.
(24:32):
You really did expect IndianaJones to come walking by.
Laurie (24:40):
Hopefully him and not that huge ball.
Miles (24:43):
That's right.
Well, and another thing I haveto bring up, if I might the
cartouche system, right, so that, frankly, looked alien to me.
But what I find to be amazing,or what is frequently a debate
among my friends, is that theRosetta Stone was what decoded
(25:06):
those languages, right, and thecartouche.
But the Rosetta Stone isactually in a museum in London,
right.
And so the argument is well, isit better that other educated,
sophisticated people get to seethis because they might not get
(25:27):
to see it in Egypt, or is itbetter for it to be in Egypt,
where it may be pillaged or itmay be stolen or no one may ever
see it?
Right, Existential debate.
But what I find funny about itis that it was Napoleon who was
on a mission down there thatoriginally discovered it with
(25:47):
Bouchard, on a mission downthere that originally discovered
it with Bouchard, and then helost the Battle of Abu Bakr to
Nelson and he lost the RosettaStone.
That's how I remember that.
Well, long way long story.
But that key to the cartouchesystem in the language there, I
(26:11):
think it's one of the greatestdiscoveries in modern chemistry.
Joe (26:17):
Yeah, I agree.
I think it was 1799 that thatwas discovered and yes, it was,
Napoleon's army that was there,and they came across it and yeah
, it allowed us to kind of crackthe code of hieroglyphics After
so many centuries.
We understood much of what theywere saying and what they meant
(26:37):
and that kind of gave us a wayto understand it, at least in a
rudimentary way.
So, miles, when you went overthere, when I went over there
like into israel was in the mid90s, and uh, I think what I was
expecting was I was gonna bestepping back like in the in the
(26:58):
time, almost like in the inannajones movie, where you're going
back and it's, it's almost likeit was, you know, a hundred
years ago or a thousand yearsago, and instead you see that it
is modernized quite a bit.
Um, you know there's a lot ofuh what make Tel Aviv today?
I mean it's a very uh high tech,ultra-modern, very futuristic
(27:19):
city.
I mean, look at Dubai and AbuDhabi, I mean these, and Doha in
Qatar, these cities look likesomething right out of Star Wars
.
I mean, just the advancesthey've made in construction.
Technology is really justtremendous.
But it also kind of taints thesort of nostalgia that you have
(27:39):
for the lands of the Bible andthe lands of the Middle East, of
kind of going back and havingthat sort of mystique stepping
back in time.
And we don't have that so muchanymore because you know like
everything is progressed.
It's, um, you know, built ontechnology and advanced.
Miles (27:56):
It's like I know if we're allowed to disagree on this
podcast, um, I'm going to sayyes and no.
Uh, certainly Tel Aviv.
Certainly now Riyadh, right,but I can say there were a lot
(28:21):
of towns that look like theyhadn't seen a vacuum cleaner in
100 years.
Yeah, we, we started in Jeddah,which is the port city which
pilgrims would use to get toMecca and Medina, and then
Jeddah was beginning tomodernize, which is the port
city which pilgrims would use toget to Mecca and Medina.
And then Jeddah was beginningto modernize, but up the coast
just a little bit, was Lawrenceof Arabia's first outpost, which
was Yenbo, and then Al-Wajahwas another one, before you got
(28:49):
to Aqaba, right, and so I'lltell you a little story about
Al-Wajah.
We were, you know, we rolled inlike midnight, one o'clock, and
got a little bit of food andstarted walking around, around
and our guide, ali, says to usyou know, you want to see the
(29:11):
outpost that Lawrence originallylived in, sure, so they were
restoring it and we wanted to dothese.
I don't know if you've seenthese Saudi homes that are along
the water, but they kind ofstart with a small base, go up
like that, maximize the breezes,going forward.
(29:32):
There's not much.
And here was a man working at1.30, 2 o'clock in the morning.
It was during Ramadan, so theysleep during the day, they work
at night, they eat at night.
And we looked at this placelike, wow, lawrence could have
actually.
And we looked at this placelike, wow, lawrence could have
(29:53):
actually walked on these tiles.
And one thing about Saudis andveterans in general you make a
compliment like that.
I like your belt, I likeanything that's not nailed down.
We complimented the beautifultile work and, sure enough, he
offered us one.
Now we were in backpacks, right, we were sort of at the
(30:17):
beginning, third of our trip, sowe had another 650 miles to go.
We're going to add an extratile to our weight, but we had a
brilliant idea.
We broke it into pieces so thatwe could reassemble it once we
got to the United States.
But this tile was everythingthat signified the history of
(30:43):
the region 100 years ago andsomething that Lawrence may well
have blocked on himself.
Funny story about the tile,however, when we got to a more
modern city, which was not somuch Tel Aviv but the King
Hussein Bridge, on the way fromJordan/ Syria and through to the
northern entrance to Israel byfoot, an entrance to Israel by
(31:07):
foot.
That same tile which had beenbroken up, kind of looked like
it could be explosives to theborder patrol.
Joe (31:18):
Yeah.
Miles (31:21):
And so we went through the ringer on that.
And, sure enough, you knowwhere did you get this and what
is it made of?
Oh my, we got it from friends.
Bringer on that.
And sure enough, you know wheredid you get this and what is it
made of?
Oh my, uh, we got it fromfriends.
Where are your friends?
Saudi arabia?
You have friends in saudiarabia?
Yes, you do, and they gave youthis.
Joe (31:40):
Yes it was very long very long checkpoint for us.
Laurie (31:47):
I can imagine, but we got it home, it's almost similar
to a story we have in our novel.
So, with your travels overthere then, did you hear any
folklore?
Or did the people of that timeover there did they mention
(32:09):
anything about you knowsomething in their ancient past
stories that may be different,or what we haven't heard over
here yet that might be connectedto their gods or their gods,
possibly PTs, or anything weirdlike that.
Miles (32:26):
Well certainly we had a conversation that comes to mind
um again, we're in wadi rum,we're on camel uh, we're
basically camping and you don'twant to see stars.
There is no light pollutionwhatsoever in the saudi and
(32:46):
jordanian deserts, where we areamazing, and so the stars are
like right on your nose yeah,you never think night could get
any darker until you've beenright body desert, wow wow, and
so you know we began to havethese conversations with.
now this is a separate guide inJordan and his name was Ali and
(33:12):
he matter-of-factly believedthat with stars being, that
close beings came and went allthe time.
So it's hard to disagree withhim because you could almost
reach out and touch one.
Joe (33:32):
What do they say about the Kaaba in Mecca?
I know they don't allownon-Muslims to enter the city,
but do any of them talk aboutits origin, what they believe it
came from?
Miles (33:47):
Yeah, we did a Christian's tour of the Kaaba in
Mecca, so we got to be quitefriendly with one of the highly
praised princes there thatmanaged Mecca and Medina was
also the mayor of Jeddah, andhis chief of staff, a guy by the
(34:11):
name of Khaled, was also aphotographer, so he had a permit
to go up above in a helicopterfor photography, so we had the
opportunity to do that.
We also took a pretty cool trip.
We had the opportunity to dothat.
We also took a pretty cool tripto a town called Taif that, if
(34:34):
you crane your neck from thehighway, you get a pretty good
view of Mecca.
So that's as close as anon-believer is going to get.
Joe (34:42):
Yeah, I've heard people say about Taif if you want to see
Mecca, you can go there and youcan get a good glimpse, um
glimpse, of it from a distance,and that's about as close as
you'll get muslim moreimportantly perhaps for your
audience, on the way to taifthere's a petrol station.
Miles (35:00):
It's run by ramco because all the petrol comes from iran
and it's very cheap.
People should pump gas likethat here, but they have a
Fuddruckers burger joint, so wepull up for gas.
Our buddy that was driving hisname was Osama and we got a
(35:20):
Jihadi.
It's like Fuddruckers.
You have Fuddruckers in the US?
Like, yeah, we have Fuddruckersin the US.
It's like what a name,fuddrucker, am I a Fuddruckers
in the US?
Like, yeah, we have Fuddruckersin the US.
It's like what a name,fuddrucker, am I a Fuddrucker?
You're a Fuddrucker who wants aFuddrucker.
They were just loving it.
Well, you know, what wasinteresting about that bit and I
(35:41):
share a little bit about thatstory in the book is that the
four of us were able to finishlike two fudrucker burgers,
total and fries in a shake.
Right, it was just so many.
The caloric intake was sooverwhelming.
That's like a week's food forthem.
You don't know.
(36:02):
Fudruckers in houston, texas, Ithink the average calorie
intake is 27,700 per meal.
Joe (36:09):
Did they serve shawarma at this?
Fuddruckers as well?
They did not.
Miles (36:13):
No, it was a straight up.
You can get shawarma anywhereelse you want, but it was a
straight up burger joint and weactually one pretty weird thing
we do in the book, but peopleseem to love it.
Look, we're trying tounderstand and share that
understanding with the west, theculture and the religion and
(36:35):
and and um the cuisine.
So we actually put recipes inthe back of the book and one of
the recipes is for the Fuddrucker's special sauce.
Joe (36:50):
When I was in Israel, falafel was the big treat and
they make it really good overthere.
That and baklava is a big dealin Jerusalem and it's just
wonderful food.
And one of the things I likewhat you mentioned is, you know,
when you go there it reallydoes take you outside of your
conceptualized bubble, yourtheological and religious bubble
(37:13):
of what you think it looks like, and you go there and you see
it is quite different.
I know, when I went there onthe pilgrimage, you know, now,
30 years ago, I was amazed atjust the diversity of faith.
It is not monolithic.
There's diversity of faith.
(37:53):
It is not monolithic, and that'sone thing that you learn by
going over there is that youknow the Christian upbringing
that you have.
There are mosques every.
Places that are significant toChristians are also significant
to the Muslims.
In fact, the uh, the site where, uh, Jesus is believed to have
ascended into heaven, on the uhyou know Mount of Olives, uh,
that is a mosque.
Uh, that is a, a mosque that isbuilt there, uh, and they, they
hold on to that.
So, what do you think about thediversity?
I mean there's more things thatpeople even imagine over there
(38:16):
in terms of how your faith isnot monolithic.
Miles (38:20):
Well, we walked it.
You mentioned Tel Aviv, whichyou spent some time in, but we
spent most of our time inJerusalem, and that is the
epicenter of all three of thesereligions.
And we left the King DavidHotel and the concierge there
warned us watch out, there's aMuslim quarter and there's well,
(38:40):
just as an Armenian quarter,and you're much safer in, you
know, staying on those.
And then they looked at ourpassport and looked at the
stamps and she, oh, never mind.
So we, we went to a prayerservice at the whaling wall
right and observed that and thentook a couple of steps to the
(39:07):
top of the Wailing Wall.
That is Al-Aqsa Mosque, that isthe courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
It's all built upon KnightsTemplar, king Solomon's Temple,
or at least a legend of that.
And we continue on our walk andgo to the Garden of Gethsemane,
where Jesus was hoping to getoff of the sentence that his
(39:30):
father had given him, and alsoclimbed the Mount of Olives,
went to Golgotha, went toCalvary as well, and that entire
walk took us 20 minutes.
Isn't it amazing how we readabout this stuff in the Bible
and watch Passion of the Christ,ben-hur, moses, these movies.
(39:51):
It must be huge.
It's tiny.
It's a tiny little village.
You get all these differentcultures and all these different
religions basically living ontop of each other, these
different cultures and all thesedifferent religions basically
living on top of each other.
And I will say this for manythousands of years they've lived
(40:13):
on top of and next to eachother without a lot of strife.
Joe (40:22):
They figured out how to make it work until recently
people don't realize that, likeold city city Jerusalem is only
one square mile, it is actuallynot very big at all.
I used to think Bethlehem andJerusalem, that was really far
distance, like a day's journey.
It's a 10-minute flight, it'slike seven miles away from
(40:44):
Jerusalem.
So, yeah, that puts inperspective.
It's like you don't realizethis, that like, wow, you know
this journey to Bethlehem.
Well, really it's just a quickride, it's like going to the
mall.
Miles (40:55):
It's like a walk.
They went out for bread.
Laurie (40:59):
Well, you know that's like the story of the exodus out
of Egypt into the promised land.
You know there's 40 years inthe wilderness that God made the
Israelites wander and if youlook on Google Maps, it's a
six-day journey just walking.
So you know.
Miles (41:18):
Right, a lot of long, a lot of long turns.
And to walk around thatneighborhood for 40 years and
find the one place that didn'thave any oil is truly
exceptional.
Laurie (41:30):
Yeah, but that's where the Dome of the Rock is too
right.
So Jesus ascended on the Mountof Olives, and I think that's
where the Muslims believe thatMuhammad ascended from.
Miles (41:42):
That is.
That is Al-Aqsa Mosque, theDome of the Rock.
He ascended into heaven, uh,from there, so that Umayyad
mosque, which is in Damascus, isanother, uh, holy site in Islam
.
Of course, mecca medina,interesting story Umayyad
Mosque the .
We did go up to Damascus and,again, there's not a lot of foot
(42:02):
traffic, at least fromwesterners, there.
There was, uh, you know, youwere there, just, you know,
before us, uh, joseph, but youknow, we're basically there when
a civil war was cooking inLebanon and in syria, one of
several and so we, you know, wesaw tanks with their turrets
spinning more than once, andthat's not a fun thing to see
(42:23):
when you're on the wrong side ofit, um, but when we get to my
Admas, realize that, um, thehead of um Joseph of Arimathea
and one of the prophets, isactually buried in a my glass.
(42:44):
Why do you have a Christian?
Why do you have a Christianprophet here?
Joe (42:52):
Yeah, really, it's like well hi, interesting was like
the, the Church of the HolySepulcher.
I mean, since, uh, there's somuch dispute over who gets to
use it, you know, betweenEastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic
Church, Armenians, the CopticCatholics, um, the only they
couldn't settle on who has thekey, who keeps the key to the
(43:12):
place.
Well, since the 1830s there'sbeen a Muslim family who has
maintained the key to the churchof the Holy Sepulcher, so that,
you know, no one has any kindof prioritization, you know,
can't have any favoritism, soit's like we give it to somebody
who's a, a third party,disinterested, um entity who
holds the key.
(43:32):
Nobody can kind of dominate thechurch, and that's how it was
settled it was John the Baptist,by the way.
Miles (43:40):
Who's uh?
Who said, is in my mosque?
And how do you prove somethingfrom a couple thousand years ago
?
Well, the pope showed up andsaid yes, I think it's true.
So John Paul was actually inDamascus and he signed off on it
.
So there you go Might be mightbe.
Joe (43:59):
And one of the things I really liked about your novel,
miles, not only you know gettinginto the cultures and the
topography of the Middle East,which is again a subject I'm
just really fascinated with, butyou also focus on the figure of
Lawrence of Arabia, T.
E.
Lawrence, who was there duringWorld War I.
(44:22):
He was a British intelligenceofficer during that World War.
Laurie (44:25):
I.
Joe (44:26):
And that's another historical subject and
historical area I'm reallyfascinated with is World War I.
I was just wondering what areyour thoughts on that era of
history of World War I To me Ithink it's really interesting
because it's like the transitioninto modern warfare.
It's kind of the breach betweenthe way they fought wars under
(44:48):
Napoleon and the Austro, youknow, let's say the
Austro-Hungarian War and theFranco-Prussian Wars, and modern
warfare, you see thattransition of the old way.
And then they're also gettingkind of mechanized with weapons
that you know didn't existbefore.
And of course, in the MiddleEast these Arab Bedouins had
never seen this.
So they were really offset, youknow tactically.
(45:09):
Because they didn't offset, youknow, uh, tactically because
they they didn't have, you know,this mechanized, uh kind of
military, and they were fightingthe Turks who were starting to
get a little bit on the cuttingedge of it at that time.
So I mean, are you a like aworld war one buff like I am?
Miles (45:26):
Well, I certainly am a Lawrence buff, probably read 30,
40 books on or about Lawrence.
And you know you mentionedbasically guerrilla warfare,
which technically the name comesfrom Spain, but Lawrence
certainly perfected it.
You know, attack and disappearas if a vapor into the desert,
(45:54):
disappear as if a vapor intointo the desert.
And so the turks are defendingbasically a railway from, uh,
medina, uh, all the way back upto constantinople, not the
temple and uh.
So lawrence and the arab tribesthat he had pulled together
always knew where the Turkswould be Right and they would,
(46:16):
you know, and look, theypurposely would not knock the
railroad out, they would disableit so much that they'd slow
things down.
They'd loot some of the trainsit's still repairable They'd
probably, you know, sabotagesome of the repair troops's
still repairable.
They probably, you know,sabotage some of the repair
troops along the way.
So it's just maddening, but itwasn't, you know, a massive
(46:37):
defeat, but it was distractingand the destruction was what
allowed the um um allenby'sBritish army to attack much
quicker in parallel.
So I think that the up 100years later.
(47:24):
There you go, the name of thebook.
Joe (47:29):
Right, yeah, that's good.
It's saying that we'll get alot of these.
You know concepts that existtoday, political concepts the
Balfour Declaration, theSykes-Picot agreement that made
the boundaries that we have ofTransjordan.
Of course, now it's just calledJordan and Iraq and Saudi
(47:50):
Arabia, and those lines existbecause of World War One and
that's why I just find it veryfascinating.
And in reading about the lifeof T.
E.
Lawrence, it just really drewme into it.
I was like I would have lovedto visit the Middle East back
then, 100 years ago, before youknow it ever came to the page
and really see what it was likestepping back in the time.
(48:12):
Uh, like, like looking at old,you know film footage of um
Palestine from the 1920s andlike looking at it like that is
really interesting.
It's like you really are goingback a thousand years and it
just an interesting excursionand I would have loved to have
been there at that time.
Miles (48:30):
So yeah, you mentioned Balfour and you mentioned
Sykes-Picot.
There's a third agreement.
Were you aware of the FaisalWeitzman letter?
I did hear about that one,right?
So, so we're covering the book,but but this is so.
This is wild.
This is American Lowell Thomas,right?
(48:52):
He's basically he's thevideographer who had been sent
to Europe to get some goodstories.
There's no good stories here,it's trench warfare.
It's horrible.
Everyone's dying.
Like all right, keep going, gocheck in on Allenby, right, and
he meets T.
E.
Lawrence, and T.
E.
Lawrence and Lowell Thomasengineer this meeting in tent
(49:14):
with Faisal, who, at the time,basically represented the holy
they were the.
Hessonites.
They were the protectors of theholy shrines, right, and so
they basically signed for Islam.
Right, and so they basicallysigned for Islam.
(49:38):
Hayim Weitzman is in the middleof um agitating for a Jewish
state in Palestine.
Right, they all get together ina tent and there's an agreement
that comes out of it.
This, this is large, and itbasically went something like
this hey, the British havepromised us, the Arabs, that if
we help them out and get toDamascus first, we're going to
(50:03):
have this pan-Arab country fromthe Crescent Saudi Arabia all
the way up to the Levant, andit'll be headquartered in
Damascus.
It's a wonderful city, and ifthe Jews want to settle in
Palestine, we're fine with that,assuming the British keep their
(50:27):
promises.
There's a little written in thecorner right we get all this.
You can have that.
The British keep their promises.
It was a little pot of silverwritten in the corner right.
If we get all this, you canhave that, unless the British
are lying Guess what Right Now?
At the end of the day, Faisaldidn't represent Islam for long.
Joe (50:49):
Well, he got to be the King of Iraq, he, and he got that
position.
Miles (50:53):
he got he was a late.
I mean, he was a weapon.
You, you do know that he wasactually like king of syria for
like 15 minutes, yeah.
And and then the french go likeno, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We've been here too long, thatcan't happen.
And Gertrude Bell and Percy Coxand some others and we were in
(51:17):
Mesopotamia for the Britsbasically said we can get him
elected.
Really, it's like, yeah, 99%,you know, vote in favor of
Faisal.
He ends up king of Iraq.
Yeah, once again.
Joe (51:33):
Middle-aged white men behaving badly and a couple of
ladies, Richard Bell and, ofcourse, the British Mandate of
Palestine.
It went all the way to 1948.
And that was very rocky andvery full of upheavals.
Some of them aren't even talkedabout today, but there were all
(51:55):
kinds of problems with thatsince the end of World War I.
Miles (52:04):
And well, I guess they never really stopped, have they?
You know?
Look again once again in therearview mirror it all seems
like we can figure out whatwould have been right.
So I suppose it seemed like agood idea at the time back then.
But I would only hope that Iwould have advised, if I was
there back then, somethingslightly different and something
(52:26):
recognizing all the tribes andall the people of the region.
Joe (52:34):
And of course, World War I and World War II, they were both
hellscapes, just you know, justterrible atrocities, just a
terrible epic in our humanhistory.
Those two world wars arefascinating.
I love reading about them andlearning about them.
But my gosh, the loss of humanlife, the loss of human dignity
(53:00):
that came out of it, yes, onewould hope that we don't repeat
that.
I know we've taken efforts toprevent something like another
world war, but it's been inconstant commotion ever since
then.
So I mean, before we wrap thisup, I think we kind of want to
get back to the idea ofextraterrestrials and their
(53:24):
possible presence on Earth inthe areas of, you know, ancient
Sumer, ancient Egypt.
Did you happen to get to seeMount Hermon when you were there
?
Miles (53:36):
I did not.
I did not see Mount Hermon.
I've been to Mount Sinai andArarat, but not Mount Hermon.
Joe (53:46):
Well, I guess Mount Sinai would be kind of in the same
kind of genre of is a connectionwith the spiritual.
I did get to see Mount Hermonfrom the Golan Heights or the
Galilee.
I see it on the other side ofthe sea.
I got to go on heights andbeyond that you can see Mount
Hermon and to me it just had areal, yeah, very alien
(54:08):
appearance.
It looked like something out ofthis world.
Yeah, very alien appearance.
It looked like something out ofthis world.
Now, I know you know it is amodernized resort area.
They have ski trips up thereall the time.
But that is supposedlyaccording to the Book of Enoch,
where the Watchers descendedfrom heaven and came to earth,
and in the ancient alien theorythis correlates to
(54:29):
extraterrestrials descendingfrom space to the Earth.
And yeah, I have to say, seeingMount Hermon was really
impressive to me.
It gave me the sense of awe,like mystique, like you know
that could be from out of thisworld.
And I was wondering, when yousaw Mount Sinai did you get a
similar kind of feeling?
Miles (54:48):
Oh, very much.
So, I actually went to St SaintCatherine's Monastery, which is
where the Burning Bush is, anddid make the hike as much up, as
much of uh Sinai as theyallowed you.
And there's this.
I mean, look, some of it couldbe its first time, right, first
time in this region, read thesebooks.
(55:09):
For so long I've had thisfeeling in in Chero and Machu
Picchu and um in Mexico, inKilimanjaro, in Egypt and, I'm
sorry, in Kenya, Tanzania, um,and it's, I think, a little bit
of it is the fact that I'm astranger in a strange land.
(55:31):
It's the first time I've setfoot in this place, and so there
is a mystical quality to all ofit and your mind starts turning
like, well, yeah, how did oneguy carve two sets of tablets in
stone without any help, right?
(55:52):
Well, yeah.
Laurie (55:55):
Well, you know, I wrote about this in my first book
called Let Us Descend theBiblical First Contact, and I
use Mount Sinai as a perfectexample of an extraterrestrial
first contact with a humancivilization.
An extraterrestrial firstcontact with a human
civilization.
And being a detective, joe andI we really get detailed when it
(56:15):
comes to looking at policereports and that sort of thing.
So I did the same thing with myhistory in the Bible and being
a preacher for a while andreally dug into it and took it
apart.
And it's like a John Joelmentioned a book of Enoch where
these angels, these Anunnaki, orpossibly more like the Ejiki,
(56:41):
that's descended on Mount Hermon.
I think that's where Moses inthe Bible is actually buried.
But on Mount Sinai God givesthe command.
You probably remember the storyfrom the Bible.
But God gives a command to theIsraelites that I'm going to
show up and I'm going to revealmyself to you.
And on the third day I wantthere to be a perimeter put
around Mount Sinai and when Icome I'm going to descend on the
(57:04):
mountaintop and in thetraditional view of God, he's a
spirit, he's everywhere present,he's all-knowing.
But in the Bible, the book ofExodus, god on the third day
there's dark clouds and then,from a direction, this large
cloud, which is going to bedescribed by ancient people that
(57:25):
way, comes and hovers over theMount Sinai.
And then the Bible says and theLord descended on Mount Sinai
and smoke and fire came down ashe descended on the mountaintop
and covered the mountain.
And then Moses and 70 of theelders went up and met with the
(57:45):
God of Israel and he wasstanding inside of this cloud,
on the paved platform, a pavedramp.
And then they ate and drankwith the God of Israel.
And he was standing inside ofthis cloud on a paved platform,
a paved ramp, and then they ateand drank with the God of Israel
.
Now, to me that sounds like anextraterrestrial first contact
described by ancient people andtheir vocabulary at the time not
(58:06):
having the words to describe acloud as a spaceship or airship
or whatever.
But why would a spirit descend,producing smoke and fire,
shaking a mountain, which welook at any SpaceX rocket launch
nowadays, or the shuttle, andyou see that that's exactly
(58:27):
what's being described, I think.
What are your thoughts?
I think you're bang on, yeah.
Joe (58:36):
Well, as we always like to say, it is you know, up to you,
the audience, to decide on.
What do you think about theseideas?
We kind of just want to put theinformation and the evidence
out there, discuss it, mull itover and let people decide for
themselves.
So that will wrap it for today,miles, it was a real honor to
(59:00):
have you here.
Thank you for taking the timeto join us and have this
discussion with us and forsharing your inspiration for
your novel for everybody outthere.
Again, the title is A Line inthe Sand.
It is available on Amazon andpaperback.
You can also get it on Kindle.
Uh, it is a is a fabulous story, uh, about two friends, um,
(59:21):
taking a trip through the middleEast and and reliving the, the,
the, the tracks of, uh,lawrence of Arabia, uh, miles.
It tracks of Lawrence of Arabia, miles.
It seems like you're kind ofplaying a little bit of your own
story, of your own trips there,into the novel.
Miles (59:37):
Is that true?
Aside from the time travel,everything else is based on a
true story, absolutely.
Laurie (59:48):
Thanks for reaching out to us, miles.
Really, uh did enjoy having youon and having this discussion
with you amazing you guyslearned.
Like I stressed, it's been funso we're not getting late yeah,
he's getting yeah on his side ofthe country at least thanks for
staying up with us too.
Joe (01:00:05):
We have a three-hour difference where we have to keep
in mind here, so everyone joinus again.
Next time, laurie and I aregoing to talk about the
Atrahasis, which is a cuneiformscript that was discovered in
modern day Iraq and the ancientAssyrian library.
Similar to the Enuma Elish, ittalks about the flood myth.
(01:00:26):
The Enuma Elish talks mostlyabout the creation myth.
We're going to get more intothe flood myth next time we join
you in a few weeks.
We'll shoot for some time, bythe end of May, to have that
show available.
So, everybody, thank you forjoining us in our discussion
here with Miles Spencer.
It's been an honor to have himwith us and stay safe out there,
(01:00:50):
everyone, and, as always, staycurious.
Hello everybody, thank you for joining us on Alien Talk
Podcast.
This is the show where wediscuss all things about aliens
and UFOs and, as always, wherewe push the limits of our
understanding about subjectsthat pertain to the existence of
extraterrestrial intelligence,the presence of UFOs and perhaps
even the very meaning of humanlife here on Earth, depending on
one's perspective, of course.
(00:23):
We explore the mysteries of theuniverse and the enshrouded
secrets of our ancient history,constantly pondering what is out
there in the far reaches ofouter space, as well as what
lies hidden within the deepestrecesses of our own planet, of
which we still have much tolearn and much of what still
needs to be examined moreclosely.
So, Laurie, we have a specialtreat today.
(00:45):
It is not often that we get theopportunity to sit down and talk
with a well-known writer,successful digital media
entrepreneur, senior businessinvestor, and CEO, but today we
do.
Today, we get the distinctprivilege of having with us the
guy who co-authored the novel ALine in the Sand, that being
merely one of his manyaccomplishments.
He is also well known forhaving produced and hosted a TV
(01:11):
show, money Hunt, which aired onPBS back in 1997.
And that was a reality-basedprogram that gave prospective
entrepreneurs a chance to pitchtheir ideas to potential
investors on television, withthe hope of possibly getting
some capital for our projectssimilar to the show Shark Tank.
Laurie (01:29):
Yeah, that's right, and our guest today is Mike Spencer,
or sorry, Miles Spencer whosome of you may remember seeing
on the TV show Money Hunt, asJoe just said, but that actually
ran from 1997 to 2004.
And he was also a ventureprincipal at Capital Express,
which is now Register.
C om, an internet pioneeringinvestment company, and he has
(01:54):
been a business mentor forpeople in the tech industry for
over 30 years.
So, like you said, Joe, he hasalso co-written an adventure
novel with Wells Jones called ALine in the Sand.
It is about two friends whoembark on an excursion through
parts of the Middle East thatretrace the journey taken by
(02:15):
none other than the legendary T.
E.
Lawrence, also known asLawrence of Arabia, and it was
published just last year, in2024, and is available on Amazon
, both in paperback and onKindle.
So, miles, I hope we did youenough justice with our quick
intro there, and I can't helpbut feel that we may have missed
(02:39):
mentioning something.
Anyway, it's truly an honor tohave you here with us on Alien
Talk Podcast, so thank you fortaking the time.
Miles (02:47):
Hey, I appreciate all that.
I'll agree to most everythingyou say.
That's positive and I'm sureyou skipped some of the
negatives and I appreciate thatas well, but it's great to have
the chance to spend some timewith you guys.
Joe (03:01):
Yeah, it really is a great pleasure to have you with us,
miles.
And to start things off, I seefrom your website that you are a
fellow Pittsburgher.
I too am from "The Burgh, agood old Steel Town.
I left there after joining theAir Force in 1989.
I then went off the DesertStorm.
Only about a year later.
I then went back home toPittsburgh to be reassigned to a
(03:24):
reserve unit out by GreaterPitt International Airport.
I finished my bachelor's degreein Pittsburgh and I went back to
active duty to become acommissioned officer in 1995.
And I have not gone back sincethen, other than for a few short
trips.
My parents moved out here toTucson in 2006 to be with me and
my family, so I don't reallyhave much of a reason to make my
(03:46):
way back there very often.
There's not much there for mein terms of family and friends,
but I do have very fond memoriesof living in Pittsburgh during
my youth and growing up andgoing to school there, good
memories of family and friends,and I did enjoy it there, and I
sometimes do miss it.
Miles (04:05):
I loved Pittsburgh.
Of course, you know, perhapsignorance is bliss.
Joe (04:12):
Agreed.
Laurie (04:14):
So, Miles, as you know, here on our podcast, we are
interested in the.
Miles (04:19):
Two to 14 years old is a pretty fine year.
Laurie (04:26):
Yeah, breaking up there, Miles.
Joe (04:28):
Still with us.
Miles, Miles.
I wonder if you're hearing me.
Yeah, we kind of lost you for asecond there.
No, you were saying aboutPittsburgh.
Miles (04:39):
Yeah, I had a great time in Pittsburgh.
I lived there until I was 14years old and played football
and baseball, ran around andbuilt tree houses and delivered
newspapers.
There's some great songs fromthe 70s.
Probably covers exactly what Iwas doing when I was a kid.
I loved it.
I love the Steelers, of course.
(05:01):
I loved it, I love the Steelers, of course.
And, as we were saying before,even the Pirates have hope in
April, right, so it's abeautiful month.
Laurie (05:17):
This year.
Yes, I agree with you on that.
We're interested in thequestion of extraterrestrial
life, and especially as it tiesto the now popular and the
formulated theory about ancientaliens having been present on
Earth sometime far in thedistant past.
So many of the civilizationswhose mythologies are said to
(05:38):
hold clues about that are indeedfrom places like Egypt and
Greece and Sumer and Babylon,which is present-day Iraq, as we
all know.
So I mean the Middle East andthe Levant have strong
archaeological and historicalconnections to the idea from
which the whole ancientastronaut apostasis has been
(05:59):
derived from.
Now, your novel A Line in theSand is about the odyssey of two
characters who adventurouslytrekked throughout the Middle
East, in countries like SaudiArabia, the political and social
and the cultural impacts lefton it by the events of World War
(06:27):
I, particularly concerning theexpeditions of T.
E.
Lawrence.
So what about the Middle East?
Do you find most intriguing?
Like for many people, it isbecause you know it's the land
of the Bible and the place whereour Judeo-Christian you
know-Christian traditions arerooted in.
So, do you find that to have akind of aura that draws you to
(06:49):
it and makes you want to learnmore about it, miles?
Joe (07:02):
Miles.
We're not getting any soundthere.
Sorry about that.
Miles (07:05):
Let me give you a three-part answer at the very
least.
So at first, when I waslistening to you, I'm thinking
look outer space, right, manyextraterrestrials.
This is, as Sir Arthur ConanDoyle would say, stranger in a
strange land.
We're out of place here, right.
And so I'm a kid fromPittsburgh, Jewish kid from
(07:28):
Pittsburgh, and I ended up inthe Middle East.
It could not have been moredifferent and indeed it was
almost as if we were in outerspace, right.
As a matter of fact, if you lookat Wadi Rum, that actually is
the inspiration for Dune, andthere are some scenes in Star
Wars that are shown in Wadi Rum.
That actually is theinspiration for Dune and there
are some seeds in Star Wars thatare shown in Wadi Rum.
It's a desert in Jordan.
(07:48):
We've been through it on camels.
It's the most majestic thing,but it just looks like it's
another planet.
So from a topographicalstandpoint, it's certainly the
Middle East at the belt.
I've been to places like Gizain Egypt and read the cartouches
there.
I've been to Nazca Lines,actually in Peru, which is
(08:12):
another place where you've seenthe rock formations there.
Say to yourself, or I say tomyself, there is just no way
this was done by regular oldhumans on their own on earth.
You have to see these thingsfrom up high in order to
appreciate them.
For sure.
Certainly nascon lines.
So there certainly was anelement of you know.
(08:38):
Something interesting ishappening here, um.
But what really drove us to goto the middle east was that that
9-11 had happened, right, andwe were trying to get our heads
around.
Remember curious kid frompittsburgh, pennsylvania, who,
what, why, where, when weweren't getting any good answers
(09:00):
at all from the media press.
Whatever we were doing, we didread one book, seven Pillars of
Wisdom, by TE Lawrence.
Both myself and my co-authorWells were impressed with, even
100 years ago, how thisadventure explorer, cartographer
(09:21):
, had understood the Bedouins orthe desert people and was able
to translate back to the west ina way that actually, 100 years
later, was proven to be very,very insightful.
Unfortunately, the west didn'tlisten and we've got the mess
(09:43):
that we've got here.
So when we both each of usseparately finished that book,
we were speaking to each otherand we said, like, what do we do
now?
And our answer was let's go.
And so, as you know, we we wenton the track that ended
1,100-mile an hike through thedeserts of Saudi, Jordan, and
(10:06):
Syria.
That's very good.
Joe (10:09):
Yeah, very excellent.
So you know, I have also beento the Arab world on a number of
occasions throughout the 1990s,being deployed to operations
Desert Storm and Southern Watch.
I got to go to Saudi Arabia,kuwait, bahrain, egypt and some
other countries.
You know a lot of people mayhave forgotten about Operation
(10:29):
Southern Watch as well asOperation Northern Watch, which,
of course, were designed tocontrol and dominate the
airspace of the northern andsouthern sectors of Iraq and
thus keep its military contained.
It meant to prevent SaddamHussein from using air power to
attack the Kurds and the ShiiteMuslims, and the Air Force there
were on regular rotationaldeployments for participation in
(10:52):
that, and it ended, of course,in 2003 when the US and its
allies invaded under OperationIraqi Freedom.
And I also had the opportunityto visit Israel on a Holy Land
pilgrimage with the CatholicChurch, of which I was once a
part of many years ago.
That was an incredibleexperience, but it was during
Desert Storm that I reallydeveloped a deep fascination
(11:13):
with the region of the MiddleEast and the Levant, the Levant
referring to the specific areaof the Middle East that borders
Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
You know Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, also Cyprus and, like
you guys said, it is differentfrom the West.
It's almost like a differentworld.
As you mentioned, miles,they've shot a lot of scenes for
(11:37):
Star Wars in the desert areasof Saudi, U.
A.
E.
and Tunisia.
But it's a place where we getthe stories of the Bible as well
, and so much of it has shapedWestern religious practices and
dogmas for over 2,000 years.
And, as it was, I did a wholelot of reading over there.
One of the things I read wasMichael Yarley's biography of T.
E.
Lawrence and about his uniquerole.
(11:57):
Like you said, he's anintelligence officer and a
liaison with the Arabs, and hehad a unique way of connecting
with the Bedouin people, andthey were involved in uprisings
against the Turks during WorldWar I.
Eventually it brought about theend of the Ottoman Empire.
But something else I read wasthe Bible, the entire Bible, and
I just became extremelyintrigued with the whole diverse
(12:20):
and complex and remarkablehistory of the place of the
Middle East, especially with howit is so connected with all of
our understanding and beliefsabout, you know, the scripture.
All the stories that I learnedabout growing up as a Christian
happened there about Moses andSolomon and Nebuchadnezzar, and
all the Old Testament prophets,jesus and the apostles, and so
(12:42):
many literary and historicalfigures throughout the Crusades
and you know, and the ByzantineEmpire, and to me it was just
very enthralling to come upclose to the place where so many
people's faith seemed to haveoriginated.
And the Middle East really doeshave a special mystique to it.
So, miles, it seems like youwould agree with me on that.
So what really inspired you towrite the novel about?
(13:04):
You know about the time of T.
E.
Lawrence's experience there?
Miles (13:10):
Well, we really went on a mission of understanding.
Remember who, what, why, where,when, right, we weren't getting
any answers.
Let's go ourselves.
And you mentioned religion andthe beliefs in common.
Well, we're in a place calledMagar al-Shaykh.
This is in the northwestquadrant of Saudi.
It doesn't get a lot of foottraffic, I'll tell you that.
Joe (13:34):
No, I thought, yeah, it's like the surface of the Moon.
Miles (13:38):
Yeah, we were with our guide named Ali.
They're all named Ali and he'svery animated at this
architectural dig, thisarchaeological dig, and it's
going on and on.
He's like Hold on a second.
I went to church in Sewickleyactually not in Beaver, but
(14:03):
Sewickley, pa and are you sayingMoses and Hagar and Ezra and
Abraham, and these are all fromthe Bible?
And Ali says yes, yes, they are, they're also from the Quran.
(14:23):
And just on a whim, we had a satphone.
All right, let's call my buddyin Tel Aviv.
And so we called him.
He's a Talmudic scholar.
I said I'm going to read 12prophets to you that we're
talking about here.
Tell me how many you got.
We want 12 for 12 that are inthe Torah.
And so in that moment Irecognized the depth and the
(14:48):
breadth of my ignorance, comingout of Pittsburgh, pa.
One religion, christianity.
We got the stories, we got theprophets.
This must be it right.
And in reality we have so muchin common with the other
religions of the desert.
The differences are actuallyvery slender.
(15:09):
Now there are folks that makethose slender differences into
there's something worth fightingabout, or worth what they think
is worth fighting about.
But in reality I was shocked atmyself, but I was also
comforted in that we have somuch in common, and that was one
(15:29):
of the pieces of understandingthat we wanted to bring back to
the West, like Lawrence had done100 years ago, and that was the
genesis.
Laurie (15:41):
Well, I'm jealous of both of you.
I have never been to the MiddleEast but would love to go
someday, of course, maybe afterthe tensions have settled down
over there.
But I've been to the MexicanRiviera, you know, the Yucatan
to see the pyramid of Coco Khan,and to Northern Europe and been
to Stonehenge.
And, you know, hope to bevisiting the Mediterranean, you
(16:03):
know, sometime next year, but Ithink it would be great to visit
all of those famous lands ofthe Bible.
Would love to get there someday.
But anyway, you know, miles, joeand I also just recently
published a historical sciencefiction novel that begins in the
ancient Egypt and then thestoryline then picks up in the
(16:25):
relatively modern day world of1947, the same year as the
Roswell incident.
So there is a little hint as toits plot.
But it is called Betel PlanetAD, relic of the Gods, and the
story is centered on a startlingdiscovery of something
technological that is discoveredas an old artifact from the
(16:48):
site of an archaeological digthat turns out to be alien
technology from 4,000 years ago.
So it is a book that is basedon the ancient alien apostasis
and it is set in the Middle East.
So, miles, we know that thethree dominant monotheistic
religions of the world Judaism,christianity and Islam you know
(17:12):
what they call the Abrahamicfaiths all got their start in
the Middle East.
As you said.
There are like similaritiesbecause they all come from the
same father, father Abraham.
And my question to you is doyou think that there are
connections between thesereligions and this notion about
ancient extraterrestrials?
(17:33):
And I don't know how wellversed you are in the ancient
alien theory but since both ofthese, both of these both have
the region of the earth incommon, this particular region,
so do you believe it is possiblethat the stories preserved
about things like the creation,the Garden of Eden, the flood,
(17:56):
the Anunnaki, etc.
Are actually nothing more thantransformative stories about
them?
Miles (18:04):
I think it's a very good possibility.
They are transformative stories.
I am amazed at how?
What's the line from you to?
The more I learn, the less Iknow?
Yes, I mentioned pyramids andGizeh.
(18:27):
You look at some of the other.
Well, I've been to Mount Araratin I guess it's Armenia now.
I've been to places that I justhave a hard time believing that
regular old earthlings created1,000 years ago or 3,000 or 10,
a thousand years ago, or threethousand or ten thousand years
(18:50):
ago.
Common sense tells me they hadto have some hope, and I'm
willing to acknowledge thepossibility that that could be
true, and I'm not necessarily askeptic in terms of well, show
me the proof, otherwise I'm nota believer.
I'm just like you know what.
(19:12):
The universe surprises me dailyin its reminders of how little
understanding and control I haveover it, and the easiest way to
get those reminders is to havea 13 and 11 year old kid I
(19:32):
remember those days.
Joe (19:37):
Yeah, my kids are all grown up now, they're in their 20s.
I have grandchildren, sothere's a really little.
But uh, I know we're comingalong same and I think that's a
very academically responsibleapproach to it.
There is so much we don't know.
Isaac Newton said what we knowis a drop and what we don't know
(19:58):
is an ocean.
And we find that every day.
The more curious we are, themore interested we are in
finding out truth and exploringthings, the more you know we
open up one door and find thatthere's 10 more doors that still
need to be opened, you know,and they're constantly finding
new things that raise questionto what we've held for a long
(20:21):
time as almost dogma, asdoctrine and science and
religion.
Take the pyramids they've nowjust believed they found these
anomalies that they think arestructures underneath the Great
Pyramid, and they found itthrough ground-penetrating radar
.
And these structures are eightof them, eight large columns, I
(20:43):
mean larger than the EiffelTower, and they go down almost
deep into the ground, almost abedrock past bedrock, and they
don't know what they are.
They believe that there's likethis sort of coil that goes
around each one of them.
Now, of course, they haven'tseen it face-to-face.
This is just, you know,interpreted from data on
ground-penetrating radar.
(21:04):
So you know these are questions.
I mean, what are these?
I mean it could be nothing,they could just be anomalous
readings from the rockformations, or they could be
some structure there.
They're not found anywhere else.
If you go with theground-penetrating radar
readings, just maybe a half amile away from the pyramids, you
don't find them.
So it raises a lot of curiosity, a lot of wonderment and, like
(21:29):
you said, miles, it's like10,000 years ago or even 5,000
years ago, how did peopleaccomplish these things?
How did they move these largestones?
How did they constructsomething like the pyramids?
How did they even conceive thatwe would have a difficult time
constructing those things todayor conceiving of them today?
(21:49):
And yet we're saying thatpeople before the time of even
computers or the ability tocreate the art and designs that
work that we have today, wereable to conceptualize this in
their minds and then build itand make it last.
For how many millennia now,right, right?
Laurie (22:09):
Yep.
Well, with your travels toEgypt, Miles.
I mean you saw the Pyramids ofGiza right, I did.
What are they like up close?
I mean I'd like to visit theresomeday one of my bucket lists.
Miles (22:26):
Yeah, awesome.
Even just the stones at thebase are practically unscalable.
Now I have friends that climbedback in the day before they
shut that all down.
I have climbed the pyramids inTenochtitlan and some of the
(22:46):
other Mexican sites.
Once again, they've shut thatdown as well.
It used to be okay to do that,but the sheer size of them now,
from my understanding, is theywere also covered in sheets of
gold, the three of them in thatpyramid.
(23:08):
They would typically beginbuilding them when they were
eight or 10 years old, just like, let's get going on this, guys.
I mean, I hope this joke lands,but there are limitations to
slave labor and how much you canget done with, so you've got to
start early in the process ifyou want to have a big pyramid
at the end of your life.
So there's three of them there.
(23:30):
Um, I was really impressed, notso much with the architecture of
the outside, but what was goingon inside.
I went into some of the tombsthat were publicly available.
I was also able to see some ofthe arcs or boats that had.
(23:51):
I mean, they basically believedyou got in a boat and you
passed into the other world andyou see, I thought it was a
Viking ship, right, this giantwarship, which is basically no.
This is what we're going topaddle into the afterlife with,
miraculously preserved after 3-4thousand years.
(24:11):
So it was truly on spiraling, alittle bit claustrophobic, a
little cool.
Even though it was 100 degreesup top, it was cool down Well,
not quite a wine cellar, butcool Musty.
(24:32):
You really did expect IndianaJones to come walking by.
Laurie (24:40):
Hopefully him and not that huge ball.
Miles (24:43):
That's right.
Well, and another thing I haveto bring up, if I might the
cartouche system, right, so that, frankly, looked alien to me.
But what I find to be amazing,or what is frequently a debate
among my friends, is that theRosetta Stone was what decoded
(25:06):
those languages, right, and thecartouche.
But the Rosetta Stone isactually in a museum in London,
right.
And so the argument is well, isit better that other educated,
sophisticated people get to seethis because they might not get
(25:27):
to see it in Egypt, or is itbetter for it to be in Egypt,
where it may be pillaged or itmay be stolen or no one may ever
see it?
Right, Existential debate.
But what I find funny about itis that it was Napoleon who was
on a mission down there thatoriginally discovered it with
(25:47):
Bouchard, on a mission downthere that originally discovered
it with Bouchard, and then helost the Battle of Abu Bakr to
Nelson and he lost the RosettaStone.
That's how I remember that.
Well, long way long story.
But that key to the cartouchesystem in the language there, I
(26:11):
think it's one of the greatestdiscoveries in modern chemistry.
Joe (26:17):
Yeah, I agree.
I think it was 1799 that thatwas discovered and yes, it was,
Napoleon's army that was there,and they came across it and yeah
, it allowed us to kind of crackthe code of hieroglyphics After
so many centuries.
We understood much of what theywere saying and what they meant
(26:37):
and that kind of gave us a wayto understand it, at least in a
rudimentary way.
So, miles, when you went overthere, when I went over there
like into israel was in the mid90s, and uh, I think what I was
expecting was I was gonna bestepping back like in the in the
(26:58):
time, almost like in the inannajones movie, where you're going
back and it's, it's almost likeit was, you know, a hundred
years ago or a thousand yearsago, and instead you see that it
is modernized quite a bit.
Um, you know there's a lot ofuh what make Tel Aviv today?
I mean it's a very uh high tech,ultra-modern, very futuristic
(27:19):
city.
I mean, look at Dubai and AbuDhabi, I mean these, and Doha in
Qatar, these cities look likesomething right out of Star Wars
.
I mean, just the advancesthey've made in construction.
Technology is really justtremendous.
But it also kind of taints thesort of nostalgia that you have
(27:39):
for the lands of the Bible andthe lands of the Middle East, of
kind of going back and havingthat sort of mystique stepping
back in time.
And we don't have that so muchanymore because you know like
everything is progressed.
It's, um, you know, built ontechnology and advanced.
Miles (27:56):
It's like I know if we're allowed to disagree on this
podcast, um, I'm going to sayyes and no.
Uh, certainly Tel Aviv.
Certainly now Riyadh, right,but I can say there were a lot
(28:21):
of towns that look like theyhadn't seen a vacuum cleaner in
100 years.
Yeah, we, we started in Jeddah,which is the port city which
pilgrims would use to get toMecca and Medina, and then
Jeddah was beginning tomodernize, which is the port
city which pilgrims would use toget to Mecca and Medina.
And then Jeddah was beginningto modernize, but up the coast
just a little bit, was Lawrenceof Arabia's first outpost, which
was Yenbo, and then Al-Wajahwas another one, before you got
(28:49):
to Aqaba, right, and so I'lltell you a little story about
Al-Wajah.
We were, you know, we rolled inlike midnight, one o'clock, and
got a little bit of food andstarted walking around, around
and our guide, ali, says to usyou know, you want to see the
(29:11):
outpost that Lawrence originallylived in, sure, so they were
restoring it and we wanted to dothese.
I don't know if you've seenthese Saudi homes that are along
the water, but they kind ofstart with a small base, go up
like that, maximize the breezes,going forward.
(29:32):
There's not much.
And here was a man working at1.30, 2 o'clock in the morning.
It was during Ramadan, so theysleep during the day, they work
at night, they eat at night.
And we looked at this placelike, wow, lawrence could have
actually.
And we looked at this placelike, wow, lawrence could have
(29:53):
actually walked on these tiles.
And one thing about Saudis andveterans in general you make a
compliment like that.
I like your belt, I likeanything that's not nailed down.
We complimented the beautifultile work and, sure enough, he
offered us one.
Now we were in backpacks, right, we were sort of at the
(30:17):
beginning, third of our trip, sowe had another 650 miles to go.
We're going to add an extratile to our weight, but we had a
brilliant idea.
We broke it into pieces so thatwe could reassemble it once we
got to the United States.
But this tile was everythingthat signified the history of
(30:43):
the region 100 years ago andsomething that Lawrence may well
have blocked on himself.
Funny story about the tile,however, when we got to a more
modern city, which was not somuch Tel Aviv but the King
Hussein Bridge, on the way fromJordan/ Syria and through to the
northern entrance to Israel byfoot, an entrance to Israel by
(31:07):
foot.
That same tile which had beenbroken up, kind of looked like
it could be explosives to theborder patrol.
Joe (31:18):
Yeah.
Miles (31:21):
And so we went through the ringer on that.
And, sure enough, you knowwhere did you get this and what
is it made of?
Oh my, we got it from friends.
Bringer on that.
And sure enough, you know wheredid you get this and what is it
made of?
Oh my, uh, we got it fromfriends.
Where are your friends?
Saudi arabia?
You have friends in saudiarabia?
Yes, you do, and they gave youthis.
Joe (31:40):
Yes it was very long very long checkpoint for us.
Laurie (31:47):
I can imagine, but we got it home, it's almost similar
to a story we have in our novel.
So, with your travels overthere then, did you hear any
folklore?
Or did the people of that timeover there did they mention
(32:09):
anything about you knowsomething in their ancient past
stories that may be different,or what we haven't heard over
here yet that might be connectedto their gods or their gods,
possibly PTs, or anything weirdlike that.
Miles (32:26):
Well certainly we had a conversation that comes to mind
um again, we're in wadi rum,we're on camel uh, we're
basically camping and you don'twant to see stars.
There is no light pollutionwhatsoever in the saudi and
(32:46):
jordanian deserts, where we areamazing, and so the stars are
like right on your nose yeah,you never think night could get
any darker until you've beenright body desert, wow wow, and
so you know we began to havethese conversations with.
now this is a separate guide inJordan and his name was Ali and
(33:12):
he matter-of-factly believedthat with stars being, that
close beings came and went allthe time.
So it's hard to disagree withhim because you could almost
reach out and touch one.
Joe (33:32):
What do they say about the Kaaba in Mecca?
I know they don't allownon-Muslims to enter the city,
but do any of them talk aboutits origin, what they believe it
came from?
Miles (33:47):
Yeah, we did a Christian's tour of the Kaaba in
Mecca, so we got to be quitefriendly with one of the highly
praised princes there thatmanaged Mecca and Medina was
also the mayor of Jeddah, andhis chief of staff, a guy by the
(34:11):
name of Khaled, was also aphotographer, so he had a permit
to go up above in a helicopterfor photography, so we had the
opportunity to do that.
We also took a pretty cool trip.
We had the opportunity to dothat.
We also took a pretty cool tripto a town called Taif that, if
(34:34):
you crane your neck from thehighway, you get a pretty good
view of Mecca.
So that's as close as anon-believer is going to get.
Joe (34:42):
Yeah, I've heard people say about Taif if you want to see
Mecca, you can go there and youcan get a good glimpse, um
glimpse, of it from a distance,and that's about as close as
you'll get muslim moreimportantly perhaps for your
audience, on the way to taifthere's a petrol station.
Miles (35:00):
It's run by ramco because all the petrol comes from iran
and it's very cheap.
People should pump gas likethat here, but they have a
Fuddruckers burger joint, so wepull up for gas.
Our buddy that was driving hisname was Osama and we got a
(35:20):
Jihadi.
It's like Fuddruckers.
You have Fuddruckers in the US?
Like, yeah, we have Fuddruckersin the US.
It's like what a name,fuddrucker, am I a Fuddruckers
in the US?
Like, yeah, we have Fuddruckersin the US.
It's like what a name,fuddrucker, am I a Fuddrucker?
You're a Fuddrucker who wants aFuddrucker.
They were just loving it.
Well, you know, what wasinteresting about that bit and I
(35:41):
share a little bit about thatstory in the book is that the
four of us were able to finishlike two fudrucker burgers,
total and fries in a shake.
Right, it was just so many.
The caloric intake was sooverwhelming.
That's like a week's food forthem.
You don't know.
(36:02):
Fudruckers in houston, texas, Ithink the average calorie
intake is 27,700 per meal.
Joe (36:09):
Did they serve shawarma at this?
Fuddruckers as well?
They did not.
Miles (36:13):
No, it was a straight up.
You can get shawarma anywhereelse you want, but it was a
straight up burger joint and weactually one pretty weird thing
we do in the book, but peopleseem to love it.
Look, we're trying tounderstand and share that
understanding with the west, theculture and the religion and
(36:35):
and and um the cuisine.
So we actually put recipes inthe back of the book and one of
the recipes is for the Fuddrucker's special sauce.
Joe (36:50):
When I was in Israel, falafel was the big treat and
they make it really good overthere.
That and baklava is a big dealin Jerusalem and it's just
wonderful food.
And one of the things I likewhat you mentioned is, you know,
when you go there it reallydoes take you outside of your
conceptualized bubble, yourtheological and religious bubble
(37:13):
of what you think it looks like, and you go there and you see
it is quite different.
I know, when I went there onthe pilgrimage, you know, now,
30 years ago, I was amazed atjust the diversity of faith.
It is not monolithic.
There's diversity of faith.
(37:53):
It is not monolithic, and that'sone thing that you learn by
going over there is that youknow the Christian upbringing
that you have.
There are mosques every.
Places that are significant toChristians are also significant
to the Muslims.
In fact, the uh, the site where, uh, Jesus is believed to have
ascended into heaven, on the uhyou know Mount of Olives, uh,
that is a mosque.
Uh, that is a, a mosque that isbuilt there, uh, and they, they
hold on to that.
So, what do you think about thediversity?
I mean there's more things thatpeople even imagine over there
(38:16):
in terms of how your faith isnot monolithic.
Miles (38:20):
Well, we walked it.
You mentioned Tel Aviv, whichyou spent some time in, but we
spent most of our time inJerusalem, and that is the
epicenter of all three of thesereligions.
And we left the King DavidHotel and the concierge there
warned us watch out, there's aMuslim quarter and there's well,
(38:40):
just as an Armenian quarter,and you're much safer in, you
know, staying on those.
And then they looked at ourpassport and looked at the
stamps and she, oh, never mind.
So we, we went to a prayerservice at the whaling wall
right and observed that and thentook a couple of steps to the
(39:07):
top of the Wailing Wall.
That is Al-Aqsa Mosque, that isthe courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
It's all built upon KnightsTemplar, king Solomon's Temple,
or at least a legend of that.
And we continue on our walk andgo to the Garden of Gethsemane,
where Jesus was hoping to getoff of the sentence that his
(39:30):
father had given him, and alsoclimbed the Mount of Olives,
went to Golgotha, went toCalvary as well, and that entire
walk took us 20 minutes.
Isn't it amazing how we readabout this stuff in the Bible
and watch Passion of the Christ,ben-hur, moses, these movies.
(39:51):
It must be huge.
It's tiny.
It's a tiny little village.
You get all these differentcultures and all these different
religions basically living ontop of each other, these
different cultures and all thesedifferent religions basically
living on top of each other.
And I will say this for manythousands of years they've lived
(40:13):
on top of and next to eachother without a lot of strife.
Joe (40:22):
They figured out how to make it work until recently
people don't realize that, likeold city city Jerusalem is only
one square mile, it is actuallynot very big at all.
I used to think Bethlehem andJerusalem, that was really far
distance, like a day's journey.
It's a 10-minute flight, it'slike seven miles away from
(40:44):
Jerusalem.
So, yeah, that puts inperspective.
It's like you don't realizethis, that like, wow, you know
this journey to Bethlehem.
Well, really it's just a quickride, it's like going to the
mall.
Miles (40:55):
It's like a walk.
They went out for bread.
Laurie (40:59):
Well, you know that's like the story of the exodus out
of Egypt into the promised land.
You know there's 40 years inthe wilderness that God made the
Israelites wander and if youlook on Google Maps, it's a
six-day journey just walking.
So you know.
Miles (41:18):
Right, a lot of long, a lot of long turns.
And to walk around thatneighborhood for 40 years and
find the one place that didn'thave any oil is truly
exceptional.
Laurie (41:30):
Yeah, but that's where the Dome of the Rock is too
right.
So Jesus ascended on the Mountof Olives, and I think that's
where the Muslims believe thatMuhammad ascended from.
Miles (41:42):
That is.
That is Al-Aqsa Mosque, theDome of the Rock.
He ascended into heaven, uh,from there, so that Umayyad
mosque, which is in Damascus, isanother, uh, holy site in Islam
.
Of course, mecca medina,interesting story Umayyad
Mosque the .
We did go up to Damascus and,again, there's not a lot of foot
(42:02):
traffic, at least fromwesterners, there.
There was, uh, you know, youwere there, just, you know,
before us, uh, joseph, but youknow, we're basically there when
a civil war was cooking inLebanon and in syria, one of
several and so we, you know, wesaw tanks with their turrets
spinning more than once, andthat's not a fun thing to see
(42:23):
when you're on the wrong side ofit, um, but when we get to my
Admas, realize that, um, thehead of um Joseph of Arimathea
and one of the prophets, isactually buried in a my glass.
(42:44):
Why do you have a Christian?
Why do you have a Christianprophet here?
Joe (42:52):
Yeah, really, it's like well hi, interesting was like
the, the Church of the HolySepulcher.
I mean, since, uh, there's somuch dispute over who gets to
use it, you know, betweenEastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic
Church, Armenians, the CopticCatholics, um, the only they
couldn't settle on who has thekey, who keeps the key to the
(43:12):
place.
Well, since the 1830s there'sbeen a Muslim family who has
maintained the key to the churchof the Holy Sepulcher, so that,
you know, no one has any kindof prioritization, you know,
can't have any favoritism, soit's like we give it to somebody
who's a, a third party,disinterested, um entity who
holds the key.
(43:32):
Nobody can kind of dominate thechurch, and that's how it was
settled it was John the Baptist,by the way.
Miles (43:40):
Who's uh?
Who said, is in my mosque?
And how do you prove somethingfrom a couple thousand years ago
?
Well, the pope showed up andsaid yes, I think it's true.
So John Paul was actually inDamascus and he signed off on it
.
So there you go Might be mightbe.
Joe (43:59):
And one of the things I really liked about your novel,
miles, not only you know gettinginto the cultures and the
topography of the Middle East,which is again a subject I'm
just really fascinated with, butyou also focus on the figure of
Lawrence of Arabia, T.
E.
Lawrence, who was there duringWorld War I.
(44:22):
He was a British intelligenceofficer during that World War.
Laurie (44:25):
I.
Joe (44:26):
And that's another historical subject and
historical area I'm reallyfascinated with is World War I.
I was just wondering what areyour thoughts on that era of
history of World War I To me Ithink it's really interesting
because it's like the transitioninto modern warfare.
It's kind of the breach betweenthe way they fought wars under
(44:48):
Napoleon and the Austro, youknow, let's say the
Austro-Hungarian War and theFranco-Prussian Wars, and modern
warfare, you see thattransition of the old way.
And then they're also gettingkind of mechanized with weapons
that you know didn't existbefore.
And of course, in the MiddleEast these Arab Bedouins had
never seen this.
So they were really offset, youknow tactically.
(45:09):
Because they didn't offset, youknow, uh, tactically because
they they didn't have, you know,this mechanized, uh kind of
military, and they were fightingthe Turks who were starting to
get a little bit on the cuttingedge of it at that time.
So I mean, are you a like aworld war one buff like I am?
Miles (45:26):
Well, I certainly am a Lawrence buff, probably read 30,
40 books on or about Lawrence.
And you know you mentionedbasically guerrilla warfare,
which technically the name comesfrom Spain, but Lawrence
certainly perfected it.
You know, attack and disappearas if a vapor into the desert,
(45:54):
disappear as if a vapor intointo the desert.
And so the turks are defendingbasically a railway from, uh,
medina, uh, all the way back upto constantinople, not the
temple and uh.
So lawrence and the arab tribesthat he had pulled together
always knew where the Turkswould be Right and they would,
(46:16):
you know, and look, theypurposely would not knock the
railroad out, they would disableit so much that they'd slow
things down.
They'd loot some of the trainsit's still repairable They'd
probably, you know, sabotagesome of the repair troops's
still repairable.
They probably, you know,sabotage some of the repair
troops along the way.
So it's just maddening, but itwasn't, you know, a massive
(46:37):
defeat, but it was distractingand the destruction was what
allowed the um um allenby'sBritish army to attack much
quicker in parallel.
So I think that the up 100years later.
(47:24):
There you go, the name of thebook.
Joe (47:29):
Right, yeah, that's good.
It's saying that we'll get alot of these.
You know concepts that existtoday, political concepts the
Balfour Declaration, theSykes-Picot agreement that made
the boundaries that we have ofTransjordan.
Of course, now it's just calledJordan and Iraq and Saudi
(47:50):
Arabia, and those lines existbecause of World War One and
that's why I just find it veryfascinating.
And in reading about the lifeof T.
E.
Lawrence, it just really drewme into it.
I was like I would have lovedto visit the Middle East back
then, 100 years ago, before youknow it ever came to the page
and really see what it was likestepping back in the time.
(48:12):
Uh, like, like looking at old,you know film footage of um
Palestine from the 1920s andlike looking at it like that is
really interesting.
It's like you really are goingback a thousand years and it
just an interesting excursionand I would have loved to have
been there at that time.
Miles (48:30):
So yeah, you mentioned Balfour and you mentioned
Sykes-Picot.
There's a third agreement.
Were you aware of the FaisalWeitzman letter?
I did hear about that one,right?
So, so we're covering the book,but but this is so.
This is wild.
This is American Lowell Thomas,right?
(48:52):
He's basically he's thevideographer who had been sent
to Europe to get some goodstories.
There's no good stories here,it's trench warfare.
It's horrible.
Everyone's dying.
Like all right, keep going, gocheck in on Allenby, right, and
he meets T.
E.
Lawrence, and T.
E.
Lawrence and Lowell Thomasengineer this meeting in tent
(49:14):
with Faisal, who, at the time,basically represented the holy
they were the.
Hessonites.
They were the protectors of theholy shrines, right, and so
they basically signed for Islam.
Right, and so they basicallysigned for Islam.
(49:38):
Hayim Weitzman is in the middleof um agitating for a Jewish
state in Palestine.
Right, they all get together ina tent and there's an agreement
that comes out of it.
This, this is large, and itbasically went something like
this hey, the British havepromised us, the Arabs, that if
we help them out and get toDamascus first, we're going to
(50:03):
have this pan-Arab country fromthe Crescent Saudi Arabia all
the way up to the Levant, andit'll be headquartered in
Damascus.
It's a wonderful city, and ifthe Jews want to settle in
Palestine, we're fine with that,assuming the British keep their
(50:27):
promises.
There's a little written in thecorner right we get all this.
You can have that.
The British keep their promises.
It was a little pot of silverwritten in the corner right.
If we get all this, you canhave that, unless the British
are lying Guess what Right Now?
At the end of the day, Faisaldidn't represent Islam for long.
Joe (50:49):
Well, he got to be the King of Iraq, he, and he got that
position.
Miles (50:53):
he got he was a late.
I mean, he was a weapon.
You, you do know that he wasactually like king of syria for
like 15 minutes, yeah.
And and then the french go likeno, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We've been here too long, thatcan't happen.
And Gertrude Bell and Percy Coxand some others and we were in
(51:17):
Mesopotamia for the Britsbasically said we can get him
elected.
Really, it's like, yeah, 99%,you know, vote in favor of
Faisal.
He ends up king of Iraq.
Yeah, once again.
Joe (51:33):
Middle-aged white men behaving badly and a couple of
ladies, Richard Bell and, ofcourse, the British Mandate of
Palestine.
It went all the way to 1948.
And that was very rocky andvery full of upheavals.
Some of them aren't even talkedabout today, but there were all
(51:55):
kinds of problems with thatsince the end of World War I.
Miles (52:04):
And well, I guess they never really stopped, have they?
You know?
Look again once again in therearview mirror it all seems
like we can figure out whatwould have been right.
So I suppose it seemed like agood idea at the time back then.
But I would only hope that Iwould have advised, if I was
there back then, somethingslightly different and something
(52:26):
recognizing all the tribes andall the people of the region.
Joe (52:34):
And of course, World War I and World War II, they were both
hellscapes, just you know, justterrible atrocities, just a
terrible epic in our humanhistory.
Those two world wars arefascinating.
I love reading about them andlearning about them.
But my gosh, the loss of humanlife, the loss of human dignity
(53:00):
that came out of it, yes, onewould hope that we don't repeat
that.
I know we've taken efforts toprevent something like another
world war, but it's been inconstant commotion ever since
then.
So I mean, before we wrap thisup, I think we kind of want to
get back to the idea ofextraterrestrials and their
(53:24):
possible presence on Earth inthe areas of, you know, ancient
Sumer, ancient Egypt.
Did you happen to get to seeMount Hermon when you were there
?
Miles (53:36):
I did not.
I did not see Mount Hermon.
I've been to Mount Sinai andArarat, but not Mount Hermon.
Joe (53:46):
Well, I guess Mount Sinai would be kind of in the same
kind of genre of is a connectionwith the spiritual.
I did get to see Mount Hermonfrom the Golan Heights or the
Galilee.
I see it on the other side ofthe sea.
I got to go on heights andbeyond that you can see Mount
Hermon and to me it just had areal, yeah, very alien
(54:08):
appearance.
It looked like something out ofthis world.
Yeah, very alien appearance.
It looked like something out ofthis world.
Now, I know you know it is amodernized resort area.
They have ski trips up thereall the time.
But that is supposedlyaccording to the Book of Enoch,
where the Watchers descendedfrom heaven and came to earth,
and in the ancient alien theorythis correlates to
(54:29):
extraterrestrials descendingfrom space to the Earth.
And yeah, I have to say, seeingMount Hermon was really
impressive to me.
It gave me the sense of awe,like mystique, like you know
that could be from out of thisworld.
And I was wondering, when yousaw Mount Sinai did you get a
similar kind of feeling?
Miles (54:48):
Oh, very much.
So, I actually went to St SaintCatherine's Monastery, which is
where the Burning Bush is, anddid make the hike as much up, as
much of uh Sinai as theyallowed you.
And there's this.
I mean, look, some of it couldbe its first time, right, first
time in this region, read thesebooks.
(55:09):
For so long I've had thisfeeling in in Chero and Machu
Picchu and um in Mexico, inKilimanjaro, in Egypt and, I'm
sorry, in Kenya, Tanzania, um,and it's, I think, a little bit
of it is the fact that I'm astranger in a strange land.
(55:31):
It's the first time I've setfoot in this place, and so there
is a mystical quality to all ofit and your mind starts turning
like, well, yeah, how did oneguy carve two sets of tablets in
stone without any help, right?
(55:52):
Well, yeah.
Laurie (55:55):
Well, you know, I wrote about this in my first book
called Let Us Descend theBiblical First Contact, and I
use Mount Sinai as a perfectexample of an extraterrestrial
first contact with a humancivilization.
An extraterrestrial firstcontact with a human
civilization.
And being a detective, joe andI we really get detailed when it
(56:15):
comes to looking at policereports and that sort of thing.
So I did the same thing with myhistory in the Bible and being
a preacher for a while andreally dug into it and took it
apart.
And it's like a John Joelmentioned a book of Enoch where
these angels, these Anunnaki, orpossibly more like the Ejiki,
(56:41):
that's descended on Mount Hermon.
I think that's where Moses inthe Bible is actually buried.
But on Mount Sinai God givesthe command.
You probably remember the storyfrom the Bible.
But God gives a command to theIsraelites that I'm going to
show up and I'm going to revealmyself to you.
And on the third day I wantthere to be a perimeter put
around Mount Sinai and when Icome I'm going to descend on the
(57:04):
mountaintop and in thetraditional view of God, he's a
spirit, he's everywhere present,he's all-knowing.
But in the Bible, the book ofExodus, god on the third day
there's dark clouds and then,from a direction, this large
cloud, which is going to bedescribed by ancient people that
(57:25):
way, comes and hovers over theMount Sinai.
And then the Bible says and theLord descended on Mount Sinai
and smoke and fire came down ashe descended on the mountaintop
and covered the mountain.
And then Moses and 70 of theelders went up and met with the
(57:45):
God of Israel and he wasstanding inside of this cloud,
on the paved platform, a pavedramp.
And then they ate and drankwith the God of Israel.
And he was standing inside ofthis cloud on a paved platform,
a paved ramp, and then they ateand drank with the God of Israel
.
Now, to me that sounds like anextraterrestrial first contact
described by ancient people andtheir vocabulary at the time not
(58:06):
having the words to describe acloud as a spaceship or airship
or whatever.
But why would a spirit descend,producing smoke and fire,
shaking a mountain, which welook at any SpaceX rocket launch
nowadays, or the shuttle, andyou see that that's exactly
(58:27):
what's being described, I think.
What are your thoughts?
I think you're bang on, yeah.
Joe (58:36):
Well, as we always like to say, it is you know, up to you,
the audience, to decide on.
What do you think about theseideas?
We kind of just want to put theinformation and the evidence
out there, discuss it, mull itover and let people decide for
themselves.
So that will wrap it for today,miles, it was a real honor to
(59:00):
have you here.
Thank you for taking the timeto join us and have this
discussion with us and forsharing your inspiration for
your novel for everybody outthere.
Again, the title is A Line inthe Sand.
It is available on Amazon andpaperback.
You can also get it on Kindle.
Uh, it is a is a fabulous story, uh, about two friends, um,
(59:21):
taking a trip through the middleEast and and reliving the, the,
the, the tracks of, uh,lawrence of Arabia, uh, miles.
It tracks of Lawrence of Arabia, miles.
It seems like you're kind ofplaying a little bit of your own
story, of your own trips there,into the novel.
Miles (59:37):
Is that true?
Aside from the time travel,everything else is based on a
true story, absolutely.
Laurie (59:48):
Thanks for reaching out to us, miles.
Really, uh did enjoy having youon and having this discussion
with you amazing you guyslearned.
Like I stressed, it's been funso we're not getting late yeah,
he's getting yeah on his side ofthe country at least thanks for
staying up with us too.
Joe (01:00:05):
We have a three-hour difference where we have to keep
in mind here, so everyone joinus again.
Next time, laurie and I aregoing to talk about the
Atrahasis, which is a cuneiformscript that was discovered in
modern day Iraq and the ancientAssyrian library.
Similar to the Enuma Elish, ittalks about the flood myth.
(01:00:26):
The Enuma Elish talks mostlyabout the creation myth.
We're going to get more intothe flood myth next time we join
you in a few weeks.
We'll shoot for some time, bythe end of May, to have that
show available.
So, everybody, thank you forjoining us in our discussion
here with Miles Spencer.
It's been an honor to have himwith us and stay safe out there,
(01:00:50):
everyone, and, as always, staycurious.
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