The Dark UFO Agenda with Nick Pope

On this edition of the show, Nick Pope joins me to talk about UAPS, and alien disclosure. Nick is a well known figure and commentator on all things UFOs. As a former agent of the British Ministry of Defense for 21 years, Nick had some strange reports arrive at his desk, which led him down the path of looking into the UFO phenomena. Nick has some ideas about alien disclosure and what it could mean for humanity, as well as asking the more foreboding question: if aliens are peaceful, why haven't they announced their presence yet?

Show Notes:

Nick Pope's Website
Ancient Aliens Live Tour
X/Twitter
Rendlesham Forest Book
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Several ecnally nine Flying Doctor, Flying Dip that are out there.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Extra read Laura.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Larry uh, hairy creature with arms and hang down. Besides
it's you know, bore down on the side cartunity and
he said he's called come not anything from question.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
You're listening to the Strangeology Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Floren,
and this is your place to explore the weird, strange
and unexplained, from cryptids and creatures, the paranormal, aliens and UFOs,
forbidden knowledge, ancient mysteries, conspiracies and more. All right, folks,

(01:03):
welcome back to the show. Today's episode is going to
be one for the books. Before we get started, make
sure to follow Strangeology on all of the socials for
more content, and make sure to sign up for our
newsletter over on strangeology dot com. Links will be in
the show notes as always, and if you're watching this
episode over on the YouTube channel, please subscribe to the

(01:23):
channel if you haven't yet, It helps out a ton
when you do. Also, right before we start here, Strangeology
is on substack now, so the podcast feed is there
along with more content. So if you're over there, definitely
give me a follow as well, so there's been a
lot going on in the world of UFOs and UAPs,

(01:44):
as well as talk of potential disclosure, as well as
these secret programs that the government has been running for
decades now that suggest they're aware of something unexplained going
on in our skies, in our oceans. And now I
have a guest for today's episode who is really the

(02:05):
perfect person to offer his perspective on all of these matters,
someone you've probably heard of and if you've got your
finger on the pulse of ufology. So today I have
the privilege of chatting with Nick Pope. For twenty one years,
Nick worked for the UK Ministry of Defense and for
much of the early nineties he was posted to a

(02:27):
division where his responsibilities included researching and investigating the UFO
phenomenon to assess the defense, national security and the safety
of flight implications. Nick is a regular media commentator on UFOs,
the unexplained and conspiracy theories as well. He's one of
the leading contributors to Ancient Aliens and also moderates Ancient

(02:51):
Aliens Live, which is the live touring stage show based
on the TV series that we all know and love
so really glad to have you on the show today. Nick.
I'm curious about your background in the Ministry of Defense.
What led you working for the mod and eventually assuming

(03:11):
the role of investigating UFOs for the UK government.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Well, the Ministry of Defense, I used to joke it
was the family firm. My father was in the Ministry
of Defense as a very senior government scientist, and I
had always growing up been intrigued by his work, not
least because he said so little about it. So you know,
normally people maybe sort of talk a lot about things

(03:40):
that they do, and my father was always very tight lipped,
and it made me think, well, what's going on that
he can't share this even with family. And also I
was intrigued by the idea of working not there's anything
wrong with this, but working not for a corporation where
you're really working for somebody else's profit margin, looking for
my country. So, after you know, my education, I was

(04:06):
looking around for things to do and my father, I
joke about this now, sort of tapped me on the shoulder,
which is a sort of term that's sometimes used in
the UK. You get a tap on the shoulder, someone
has a discreet word with you. And my father said
why don't you put an application in. Well, I was
a little I had mixed feelings. I was wary because

(04:29):
I thought, well, you know a lot of people will
say it's nepotistic, but also the standards, it would almost
be a like counterintuitive. They would set the bar even higher.
So I thought, well I would. I would have a
lot to live up to as well. I mean, my
father was very senior, but I thought, well, this is

(04:50):
what I've always been intrigued by. Let's let's give it
a go. And I did, and I served as a
civilian employee of the Ministry Defense, which is the equivalent
in the US would be the DoD. I served there
for twenty one years. They move you around a lot,
and in nineteen ninety one I was due for a move,

(05:12):
a certain vacancy became available, and that was the so
called UFO Desk. And you know, I did that for
the next three years of my life. But of course,
the fact that we're still talking about this after all
this time and I'm still involved, it profoundly and deeply

(05:32):
impacted my life's journey.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, thanks for sharing your introduction into the
whole world. Was it something that you were aware of
when you took the position, or was it kind of
a surprise on your end that this was the kind
of stuff that was going to be coming across your desk.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Well, the odd thing is that back in the day,
the Ministry of Defense telephone directory, which was probably about
two inches thick, and was itself quite a highly classified
document because it had for a detailed descriptions of people's jobs.
So you would you would go I OWNO to the

(06:14):
Department of Naval Warfare and you would read job descriptions
and it would say Commander Smith does updating of the
NATO War Books, submarine launch code, you know, et cetera,
et cetera. It went into quite some detail, and people

(06:36):
would leaf through this, particularly those of us at at
the junior managerial rank, who were right at the beginning
of managerial careers executive careers. We would leaf through this
and we would look through all these detailed job descriptions,
and there was one and it just said UFOs that
was all it said. So of course everyone was like,

(06:59):
what's that? And I never thought, I mean, it was
just a million to one chance that I was due
for a move at exactly the time that that vacancy
came up that I was slotted into that particular position,
but I had no previous interest in the subject, no
knowledge about it, and aside from seeing just UFOs in

(07:19):
the telephone directory under the job description, I didn't even
know that the mod was doing this.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Wow, that's really interesting. It's just kind of a shot
in the dark as to what you were getting involved with. Now,
can you go through maybe your typical day in that job,
like what did it involve?

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Well, I know this is a horrendous cliche, but there
really wasn't a typical day because it was events led.
I'll come onto that in a minute. But one thing
that I should say about that particular posting, Like I mentioned,
I was at the junior managerial rank at the time,
which was called executive officer. It's really just, you know,

(08:04):
the start point for anyone who has aspirations to get
to the senior positions. So unlike a lot of people
at that level, I found myself because it was such
a niche subject, such a deep specialist subject. I found

(08:27):
myself very quickly because there was no one else who
could really be that as what's called the SME the
subject matter expert. So what that meant in practical terms,
is that even if like sec Death got asked about
this in the British Parliament and asked, you know, obviously

(08:51):
executive staff for a briefing and a draft reply, that
would come to me. And that was an extra ordinary
amount of responsibility for someone at the junior managerial rank
to be the SME on any subject, because normally the
SME W would sit at a much higher rank and

(09:13):
there would be more people doing it. But UFOs, as
I say, it was such a niche subject. You needed
to be such a deep specialist to untangle your Rendlesham
forests from your Roswell's and retrievals from your reverse engineering
and all of that. That really the buck stopped with me.

(09:37):
So part of my job was research. Part was investigation.
I could spend a day drafting material for the Press office.
If the public affairs folks had gotten inquiries from the media,
they would have come to the SME and said, hey,
answer the question, and you know we must be truthful,

(09:58):
but we must try and you know, get these people
off our backs. Frankly, so I might be doing that.
I might, as I say, be drafting something that set
Death would use in British Parliament, replying to members of
Parliament who might have raised questions on this. I might be,

(10:20):
you know, obviously I said it's events led. We got
two or three hundred cases each year. I might be,
you know, up to my eyes in trying to get
to the bottom of a particular case or cases. I
might be doing a bit of background research, trying to
cement my position as sme. You know, you never stop learning.

(10:41):
So we have files on this going back to the forties.
I had to read them all, digest them all. Sometimes,
you know, maybe pick up a few threads that were
not picked up at the time. I might be doing that.
I might be doing something completely It sounds really mundane,
but we were a public facing program like blue Book.

(11:02):
People knew that we existed and what we did. Most
of our reports came from the public, so I might
I might be dealing with correspondents from the public, or
even a school kid doing a school project on UFOs.
And it sounds silly, but you would actually put a
little bit more resources into something like that than you

(11:24):
might think. Trying to help us.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, yeah, well that's uh, that's that's great. That's interesting.
I mean, just you know, having a every day is different,
keeps things interesting.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
It's I love and I always loved events led jobs
where you never knew what was going to happen, and sometimes,
of course you would joke about it. You would be
it would be five o'clock on a Friday afternoon, you
would be just clearing your desk, getting ready to go,
and the phone would ring. I mean not not just

(12:00):
when I was on the UFO desk, but any number
of other things that I did in my mood career,
whether it was financial policy, counter terrorism, personnel, whatever it was.
The phone would ring, and you would think, well, you
can't leave it because it's like defense of the realm,

(12:20):
important stuff. So you pick up the phone and three
hours later you're still still sort of immersed in some problem,
thinking I wish i'd left five minutes earlier. Somebody else
could have picked it up.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Right right, Well, it's interesting to hear you know that.
You know, it's kind of it was kind of like
any any job, right, you know, five o'clock on a
Friday afternoon, But then you get sucked into doing more
stuff because obviously it was an important job now it was.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
And I should just say, of course I'm joking. Well,
half joking about that. We always there were always pages
and they could always call you at home, so you
were you never really completely off to you to your advantage,
right right, he'll find you.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
They'll find yeah, and now with today you really they
can find you anywhere with the cell phone of course. Yeah. Now,
when you were at the UFO desk, how often was
it that there were high level military or government officials
that would show up and would be genuinely concerned about

(13:27):
UFO reports and the potential to national security threats? And
you know, was there ever a moment where you felt
like the truth behind this, at least at that time,
was was too big to disclose to the public.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
We weren't actually sitting on what you and I might
call a smoking gun. So with hand on heart, I'm
saying to you today, we didn't have in the UK, yeah,
crashed ships, biologics, anything anything like that. So we were

(14:07):
never able to really say in a definitive sense, we
know this is extraterrestrial or whatever the explanation is. You know,
some people say time travelers, from the future, other dimensions,
whatever it might be. We did not have a smoking
gun that would have proven beyond reasonable doubt the existence

(14:30):
of non human intelligences. What we did have, and this
speaks to your question, is consistently, over the years reports
of structured craft in the UK's air defense region which
were clearly capable of speeds, maneuvers, and accelerations beyond the

(14:54):
cutting edge of our aviation technology, and of any aviation
technology is possessed by the United States, the Soviet Union
soon to be Russia, China, any allies or adversaries, and
of course, through partnerships and alliances and through intelligence gathering

(15:20):
when it comes to adversaries, we always had a pretty
good idea of what the cutting edge of aerospace technology was.
And these things that showed up in our airspace seen
by our pilots, tracked on radar, filmed on well back
in my day, like gun camera footage. Now it would

(15:43):
be forward looking in for red and occasionally these things well,
I won't go there, but I'll say that obviously former
Director of National Intelligence has said that these things do
show up on satellite from time to time, so I'll
just I will attribute that remark to him. So suffice

(16:06):
to say, when you've got something like that, that's why
we viewed this as a potential national security threat. And
you know, in the military and in government and in
the intelligence community, there's actually an equation that defines threat
threat equals capability times intent. Well, we knew that, as

(16:31):
I've just outlined that the capability was very high value.
The intent was completely unknown x because to steal a
quote from Lou Alizondo, we didn't know who was behind
the wheel. So in that yeah, in that situation, you

(16:53):
can't solve the equation. And as we always used to say,
it's better to assume there's a threat and then and
be relieved if one doesn't materialize, then assume that isn't
a threat and get caught out if it suddenly comes
from left field.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Right right, Yeah, there's a lot of factors with that
for sure. For sure. Now, obviously the UK didn't have
one hundred percent concrete proof for you know, biologics or
downcraft that we know of. But are there any incidents
or reports that came across your desk that that you

(17:31):
can talk about that stood out as potentially otherworldly, beyond
our ability, like something that you couldn't explain that just
kind of you know, in your memory, is there anything
that really stood out?

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Yeah, let me pick out a couple of cases, one
because it took place right in the middle of my
posting on the UFO to ask and this this was
a way of sightings that took place over a period
of about six hours late on March thirtieth and in
the early hours of March thirty first, nineteen ninety three.

(18:13):
And we had multiple witnesses, dozens of witnesses, all independently
reporting from different locations in the UK, a lot of cops,
a lot of military personnel on guard patrol.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
One.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
I think the first report came in at about eight
thirty at night in the evening from a a man
who was leading a group of scouts on a hike,
if I recall correctly, and he described how this thing
was huge. He said, it's like two remember the old

(18:55):
concord supersonic passenger jet.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
It was like two.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Concords pasted together somehow.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
And then there was a report from a a rancher
and he talked about this UFO landing in his field
and then when he went there, he thought that the
thing had landed or maybe even crash, but all like
landed because it seemed like a controlled descent. When he

(19:29):
got there, there was nothing to be seen, but all
I think all the cows in the field were standing
in a complete perfect circle, just facing each other, a
huge circle, just completely silent. So that was kind of

(19:50):
like a bit of an X file. Then we had
two military bases that were directly overflown by this craft
RAF that's Royal Air Force Shrawberry and Cosford, and a
patrol of Air Force police saw it at Cosford low

(20:14):
over the base and at Shawbury. Shawbury was actually the
last report that night, and that came in at two
forty in the morning, and it came from the meteorological
officer and he described a huge triangular shaped craft moving
very slowly over the base, maybe no more than thirty

(20:37):
or forty miles an hour, low frequency humming sound that
he said was deeply unpleasant. He said he could feel
it reverberating through his body as well as hear it.
He said, rather like getting too close to a base
speaker at a rock concert or something. He said, a
narrow beam of light fired down from the UFO and

(20:59):
was tracking by ackwards and forwards as if it was
looking for something. This thing was maybe two hundred feet
above the ground, he said, midway in size between a
a C one thirty transport aircraft and a Boeing seven
four seven, and suddenly, from a speed of maybe no
more than thirty or forty miles an hour, this thing

(21:19):
just accelerated away to the horizon in an instant with
no sonic boom. So there's another of Louella Zondo's so
called five observables. Decades before he introduced people to that term.
We knew about it, of course in government. But there

(21:40):
you are. And when I spoke to him on the phone,
maybe at about eight o'clock eight thirty, so really just
just six hours later, maybe I swear his voice was
almost still shaking as he was telling me about this.
And he finished up by saying, Nick, I've served eight

(22:01):
years in the Air Force. I work with with military jets,
fast attack helicopters, you know, the whole range. He said,
let me tell you, I've never seen or experienced anything
like this ever in my life. So what can you
do with a case like that? You know, obviously we investigated,
but we we drew a complete blank. And that's that's

(22:25):
the sort of you know that there are other cases
like that over the years, the spectacular ones like that.
The Crown jewels so to speak.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Right right, Yeah, it makes me think of like the
Calvine photo from from Scotland that was making the rounds
a few years ago. You have this, you know, something
is up in the sky, and you know, no one
can really say what it was or what it wasn't
and there's no way to really really discern exactly what

(22:56):
it was other than it's an unknown and sure, and we.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Had of course a enlarged poster sized reproduction of one
of the six photos taken a Calvin on our office
wall for many years. It's subsequently disappeared, of course, and
you've heard the story of course of the retired RAF

(23:24):
press officer Craig Lindsay, who has given an image to
a number of ufologists in the UK. And you know
I have not publicly commented on the authenticity of that,
and the reason, the reason is that every time I
do an interview, of course, whether it's you know, whatever

(23:47):
it is, whether it's TV news, documentary, podcasts or live event,
doesn't matter. I am still bound by my Non Disclosure Act.
The fact that I've left the MOD is irrelevant. The
NDA binds me for life and I cannot preempt anything

(24:08):
that the Ministry of Defense may or may not say
on this. So the reason I can talk about UAP
is that the mod has declassified and released a lot
of its files on this subject, many of which I wrote.
So it's fine for me to talk about things that
have been declassified. It's fine for me to talk about

(24:30):
things that have been unclassified. But I can't anticipate things,
and the Ministry of Defense has not commented on Prague
Lindsay's Calvin image, so I can't. But the story, the
story of Calvin is absolutely true. And the photographs which

(24:50):
we looked at at the Ministry Defense, they were also
examined by imagery analysis experts in the intelligence community. There
was a unit called JARIK, which stood for let me think,
Joint Air Reconnaissance and Intelligence Center. I think it's been
retitled now, but these are the deep specialists in looking

(25:14):
at photos and videos and being able to sort of
say is this genuine? Is this not? What does it show?
How big is it? What can we tell about the technology?
And they said these six photos were completely genuine and
showed a fairly hefty diamond shaped craft. Now there's no

(25:36):
getting away from the fact that this sighting was just
two days after Sadam Hussein A crossed the border into Qait.
So you know, obviously that raises more than a possibility
that with Calvin we are looking perhaps at secret prototype

(25:57):
aircraft or drones, that that sort of thing. I mean,
I was taught never to believe in coincidences, but I'd
probably better not go too far down that road.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Sure, sure, well that's very interesting to hear all of that.
So obviously the subject of UFO's UAPs is a very
big topic. People often say, how could governments keep something
like this, like alien life visiting Earth? How could they

(26:29):
keep it a secret? Do you think there's do you
think there's like a compartmentalization going on between governments, whether
in the UK or the US or elsewhere in the world.
And is it so compartmentalized that even the most high
ranking officials in the government are even aware of the

(26:51):
full picture of this phenomenon.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Well, I should say, first of all, the governments keep
secrets all the time, very well, and a lot of
I say, I often hear people say, oh, you can't
keep a secret, you know, particularly in the modern era.
Absolutely of course you can. And we the media and
the public only talk about secrets which have leaked out,

(27:16):
but there are plenty that never do. And the protection
you give information is in direct proportion to the damage
that would be done if it leaked out. But think back,
I mean historically to something like the Manhattan Project where
thousands of people were working on the atomic bomb and

(27:39):
not a whisper of this leaked out and until you know,
they dropped it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And that was
something where there were thousands of people actively working on it,
special towns being constructed, families being relocated across the United

(27:59):
States States, and still it didn't leak until basically they
disclosed it by using it. So there's a really good
historical example. And if anyone thinks that that can't be
done and isn't being done now, and in a situation
where the numbers of people would be far less, you know,

(28:25):
it's inconceivable to me that people still have this. Oh,
you can't keep a secret when governments keep the secrets
all the time. It's another historical example, but the breaking
of the German codes during the Second World War, the
Enigma machines. People have this misconception that we broke the

(28:47):
codes in about nineteen forty one forty forty one, and
people falsely seem to believe that it all came out
in nineteen forty five at the end of the war,
or Haha, we've broken your codes. Absolutely not. People were
very concerned that that would lead to all sorts of issues.

(29:09):
But more to the point, those innique machine machines were
still being used by a lot of South American countries
and we were reading their mail, and so the fact
that those codes had been broken didn't really get made
public till the late sixties early seventies. So there's a secret,

(29:31):
high high value secret that was kept for years and
years and years. So of course if there is if
there is this smoking gun on UAP, as plenty of
people in the know, some of the whistleblowers who are
who they say they are, have testified under oath to Congress,
then of course you can keep that secret, and it

(29:53):
would just need a few key people here and there.
And this isn't unique to UAP. You see, with any
highly classified subject you have this kind of two tier system. Firstly,
you have the classifications themselves, and if you put top

(30:14):
secret on something, you really limit it. But then you
have the need to know principle, and that's this whole
idea that you mentioned about compartmentalization, people working in silos,
and so you can have a huge subject that really
only a handful of people across government know about, whether
it's UAP or whether it's other things relating to nuclear secrets,

(30:40):
counter terrorism spies at very high level who are passing
information where obviously if that leaked, they would be tortured
and executed. So governments can and do protect secrets all
the time.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Yeah, yeah, that's uh, take that one to the bank everyone,
I mean, that's there you go. Now, do you think
there is any kind of coordinated effort between different governments
of the world to keep the public in the dark
on this or is everyone kind of doing their own thing.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Back when I was doing this job in the nineties,
there was very little international collaboration and there still is
not much. It's actually quite surprising and counterintuitive. Britain always
likes to talk about the special relationship between the UK
and the US. Well, there was no information exchange on UAP.

(31:47):
It's only in the last two years that we've seen
this change subtly, just in one very interesting area. Now,
obviously the unit in the US government that has the
lead for this is ARROW, the Pentagon's All Domain Anomaly

(32:09):
Resolution Office. Well, in May of twenty twenty three, ARROW
called a meeting held at the Pentagon, and this was
the so called UAP Working Group or UAP Caucus. But
what's interesting about it is that it was a derivative of,

(32:32):
or part of, the wider five Eyes Intelligent Sharing Alliance,
which of course is the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom,
Australia and New Zealand. So we know that there was
this five Eyes UAP meeting in the Pentagon, and we

(32:53):
know that, of course the other five eyes nations went
I found out and authorized to say, because this part
was unclassified, the two officers from Defense Intelligence, which is
basically military intelligence in the Ministry Defense. Two officers from

(33:16):
Defense Intelligence attended that meeting at the Pentagon. So so
that is that to answer your question, that is the
degree of international cooperation and it's taking place, as I say,
under this sort of umbrella, so to speak, of the
Five Eyes Intelligent Sharing Alliance.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Interesting. Interesting, Yeah, that's because you're going to wonder is
there a motivation to you know, what would the motivation be.
I would think that you know, the US wants to
kind of be in the lead of you know, disclosing,
not disclosing, having having the information available. But it's interesting

(34:02):
to hear that there's a little bit more cooperation now
than there used to be.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
But yes, I mean the US clearly, if you call
the meeting, if you chair the meeting, if you host
the meeting, you're in the driving seat. So this is clearly,
even though the Five Eyes is an alliance, when it
comes to UAP, certainly the US is in the lead.
And let's be clear about it. If we are dealing

(34:30):
with non human intelligence, and if we do have some materials,
the first nation on Earth to figure that out is
going to be king of the hill. So there are
some pretty high stakes. And of course, let's not forget
China and Russia both have programs looking at this, which

(34:51):
obviously we're not sitting down and having friendly meetings with them.
They're doing their own thing, And we absolutely don't want
a situation where an adversary figures this out first, not
least because any technology, this this advanced, if this is
what we're dealing with, can almost certainly be weaponized by

(35:14):
virtue of the fact that it will doubtless involve generation
of large amounts of energy.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
For example, right right, Yeah, there's definitely some heavy implications
for you know, who wins this type of arms race
per se. But kind of going off on a little
bit of a sideline, you know, we're talking about the
terminology here. UFOs has been you know, the terminology that

(35:44):
was used for a really long time decades and in
recent years really since the tic tac UFO video was declassified.
The twenty seventeen article in New York Times by Leslie
Keene really UAPs kind of become the new go to terminology.

(36:05):
Can you kind of give an idea of, you know,
what's why the change for this the terminology and how
we refer to this phenomenon.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Well, I don't understand too boastful, but I did that,
So let me kind of rewind a little. In the
early nineties, when I was doing this job at the
Ministry of Defense, we recognized that we had a problem.
It was fine to use the phrase UFO with the

(36:37):
public and the media, but when we wanted senior engagement
within the Ministry of Defense, when we were trying to
say to people up the chain of command, look, we
need this to be seen not as some quirky little
kind of mystery, but we need it to be seen
for what it is, potential national secure threat. You just

(37:03):
could not get people to engage on it because the
term UFO had so much pop culture baggage associated with it,
science fiction, conspiracy theory, crazy stories. So we needed to
rebrand it and change the conversation. And the way we

(37:25):
did that. We did not invent the term UAP, but
it had been used as far back as the late
forties by the US government, but it had completely fallen
out of use. Well, we resurrected it, and like I say,
not with the public and the media, but internally we

(37:46):
said we need to look at the UAP issue. And
people were like UAP, and obviously it sounds more like
a science problem a defense problem. So we did it
quite deliberately, and in June of twenty eleven, I'd long
since left the Ministry Defense, but I got a invitation

(38:09):
to fly to This was before I moved to the
US permanently in twenty twelve. I got an invitation to
attend a meeting in Washington, DC in June of twenty eleven,
and I can't name the attendees but there was a
former presidential Chief of Staff present, there was a former

(38:34):
CIA director present, a whole bunch of kind of government
military intelligence community type folks, and I briefed them on
the British government's program. I told them about the Rendallsham
Forest incident, which is Britain's most famous UFO case before

(38:57):
my time, but it still loomed large. I told them
about the Cosford incident, which we discussed. I think I
told them about Calvin. They already knew about that. Of course,
we did talk to the US about these sorts of things,
but to my surprise, they were most interested in this
flipping of the narrative and rebranding of the topic. And

(39:21):
of course, fast forward, as you say in your question,
to twenty seventeen and to everything going on now, and
it's all uap uap uap And when it first came out,
somebody asked one of the Navy spokespeople, Hey, what's this
UAP thing? And the response was, we borrowed the term

(39:44):
from the Brits. So I was instrumental in actually bringing
that change to the US. And of course that change
had far reaching consequences because nobody in Congress, because of
the stigma that attaches itself off to the term UFO.
Nobody in Congress was going to touch UFO, but they're

(40:05):
quite happy to touch you ap and that's where we are.
So it's it's it's a very interesting part of the
story and a part where where I can sort of
claim direct personal involvement in in having helped over this forward.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, that's very interesting to kind of hear the history
of that term and and how how it's shifted now
to to being a term that you know, uh, makes
it be taken more seriously by by those in charge.
And obviously we have people in the in the US

(40:43):
government now that are taking on this kind of thing
like anapolinone. Luna. Now, in talking about this phenomena that
we seem to have, you mentioned that the term UFO. Oh,
it's kind of a fringe concept. No one wanted to
touch it. There was too much stigma attached to it.

(41:06):
But now we have some government acknowledgment going on, and
especially with whistleblowers such as David Grush and more recently
Jacob Barber who have come forward. They've either told their
story through the news or testified in front of Congress.

(41:28):
You know, what's going on to really allow these people
to come forward, to share their stories, to share their
knowledge of what they can share, because obviously there's NDAs
involved in all of that.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Well, all these people are being very careful. So whether
it's David Grush testifying to Congress or Lou Alezondo writing
his book, all these people are going to this Pentagon
unit called DOPSA, which stands for Defense Office of Pre
Publication and Security Review. Because these people are patriots, they

(42:05):
don't want to put something out that's classified that's going
to help an adversary, as we were discussing earlier, So
they know there's a line. They're careful not to cross it.
On the other hand, they think that there are things
that are being overclassified or misclassified, and it's about finding

(42:27):
that balance, so they are treading carefully. Of course, all
these people are thoroughly vetted. People say, oh, you know,
who is this David Grush. Well, nobody gets anywhere near
testifying in Congress without being thoroughly vetted by Congress. They

(42:49):
go to the Pentagon, to the intelligence community and they say, hey,
look we've got this guy. Is he who he says
he is? Did he do what he says he did.
And yeah, when j Stratton was heading up the UAP
Task Force, which was of course one of the bodies
that came before Arrow, J Stratton was the one who

(43:12):
tasked David Grush with going around to the different parts
of the intelligence community, the military, the government, and all
the different agencies. And Jay said to David Grush, go
find out who knows what. So when David Grush testifies,
I spoke to forty people who told me of the

(43:32):
reality of this. This isn't some sort of tattle down
at the local bar. This is him doing his job
on the UAP Task Force as tasked by the Director
Jay Stratton. So so these people are, like I say,

(43:52):
are who they say they are, did what they said
they did. And this is a process and it's still
going on obviously now, and we've had interest. We've had
both classified briefings and public hearings in both the Senate
and the House, and within that we've had it in

(44:13):
the Armed Services committees, the intelligence committees, the oversight committees,
and now we have this new You mentioned ann Apaulina Luna. Well,
of course, as you know, just a few weeks ago
she was appointed to head up this Task Force on
the Declassification of Federal secrets. They're currently looking at JFK

(44:36):
doing a lot of interesting stuff on that right, not
my area of expertise, but of course I'm following it
with interest. Next up, I think is going to be UAP.
And what's really interesting is just about a week ago,
Representative Eric Berlson said announced that he had hired David

(44:57):
Grush as a special advice So David Grush, you know,
and there has been some pushback, obviously from elements in
the intelligence community. But now David Grush is going to
get his security clearance back because basically the House Oversight
Committee and the Task Force have said to the Pentagon, hey,

(45:19):
this guy's working for us. He needs his clearance back.
Make it happen. And everyone in the new administration is
obviously wanting not to make waves, particularly because this task
force it has a dotted line relationship, but to a
very real extent, of course, it stems from an executive

(45:42):
order that President Trump signed in the Oval Office on
the very first day of his second term. So no
one wants to go against what the President is clearly
minded to do on this. So we're in a very
exciting fast moving period right now where you could say
that these people, people like Grush really are sort of

(46:06):
gamekeeper turn poacher, but turned gamekeeper again. Now that he's
working for Congress as a special advisor to someone who
sits both on the House Oversight Committee and on the
New Task Force.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Wow, well, that's very interesting to hear about about David Grush.
I hadn't heard much about, you know, anything really since
his testimony in front of Congress, and I know there
was there was talk where he was kind of being
a little bit harassed by some some some people on
the edges. But that's really good to hear that he

(46:43):
is getting his clearance back and is going to be
in an advisor position for for all of this. This
is a that's really some very interesting news for sure.
Now another question that I've got, and this is something
that I always see people asking here, people asking with

(47:06):
this alleged crash retrieval program that David Grush has talked
about others as well. I know a lot of people,
a lot of people ask this all the time. If
there is an extraterrestrial civilization that's advanced enough to traverse
light years across space, what's up with them? Crash landing

(47:29):
on Earth. Do you have any ideas or perspectives about this?

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Sure, I mean people say, and I hear it as
a sort of skeptical sound by it sometimes why would
UFOs crash? Well, why wouldn't they? Our aviation technology has
advanced unbelievably since the right flyer first flu And you

(47:56):
could say there were aircraft crashes in the early days
of flight, but there are still crashes, even though we
now have things like stealth fighters and stealth bombers, but
there are still crashes. So advancing technology does not somehow
magically make you invulnerable to something going wrong, whether it's

(48:20):
pilot error, human error, a catastrophic lightning strike, a collision,
you know, whatever, it might be just deliberate sabotage. So
there's probably no point in time or in engineering terms,

(48:44):
where technology suddenly magically becomes invulnerable and nothing will ever
go wrong.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
Right, Yeah, I mean that's a fair point. However advanced
you are, yeah, yeah, you never know something could go wrong,
especially after the.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
More the more complex something is, in one sense, the
more things there are that could go wrong.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Right. Yeah, that's a really good point. That's a really
good point. Now there's this idea of disclosure obviously, that
we've been drip fed pieces of the truth over many years,
and now we have whistleblowers coming out, but it's not

(49:34):
like a full disclosure. Aliens aren't landing on the White
House lawn. I mean, how long do you think this
kind of if it's happening, which it seems like it is,
this you know, slow leak of information, how long has
this been going on?

Speaker 1 (49:52):
Well, you could say that obviously there have been UFO
sighting since almost the dawn of time, and people have
always seen strange things in the skies, and people who
have always told stories about entities coming down from the
heavens with smoke and fire, imparting knowledge and wisdom to

(50:16):
our ancestors. I mean, that's ancient astronaut theory. Of course,
the modern UFO era you could say started. I suppose
most people would probably settle on nineteen forty seven with
Kenneth Arnold's flying Sources, and then Roswell two or three

(50:36):
weeks later. In terms of acclimatization, you could look at
some of the science fiction movies, you know, for the
day the Earth stood Still in nineteen fifty one, for example,
Classic Tale of somebody another civilization coming in peace, humans

(50:58):
reacting in fear and you know, with violence and the
message that this is not acceptable if we're to take
our place on the wider stage in the cosmos. And
so I don't know, I'm not sure. I don't know
whether there's an acclimatization program as a formal thing or not.

(51:22):
But even if there isn't, we certainly have been and
are being acclimatized because now, whether it's through science fiction
or whether it's through all the things that we've discussed,
like that the US Navy videos, the New York Times
running the story of the congressional engagement. People are on
board with this, I don't think. And Colonel John Alexander,

(51:44):
who has looked at this in the past, pointed out
he said, you don't scare people, shock people by telling
them something they already believe. And I think if you
particularly would the younger generation of people, people say, oh,
why don't young people come to UFO conferences because to them, yeah,

(52:07):
alien's fine, that's you know so what yeah, right, and
so it just needs but you're right, you know, we
still don't have formal disclosure, which which would be you know,
my fellow Americans, people of the world. We're not alone
President in the Oval Office one one evening on live TV.

(52:31):
But of course the unknown factor in all this is
the Nhi itself or themselves, because they clearly hold the
whip hand here and so maybe it's not our call.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yeah, that's something to ponder for sure, with an advanced
race of beings who you know, are able to traverse
the universe, where we are still very much a fledgling
civilization on the Kardashev scale.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
But if that's what we're dealing with, if they want
to disclose, they will disclose. If they whether that's you know,
landing on the White House lawn or appearing in orbit,
or sending a message to every single individual on planet
Earth at the same time in their own language, whatever
it is, they can do it. But if they don't

(53:29):
want to do it, then then it's not going to happen.
Like I say, they're they're holding if you look at
this as a sort of high stakes card game, they're
holding the aces here as you would expect. I mean,
you know, clearly, if they are coming here and we
can't get there, which we're nowhere near doing. We were

(53:52):
you know, a long way off from viable interstellar travel,
then clearly they're calling the shots.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely, definitely a good point, which, yeah,
there's been talked too about and this made me think
of this with Colonel Carl Nell. Had David previously about
this risk for catastrophic disclosure during all the hearings recently,

(54:23):
you know, do you think there's a chance of that
and what are the implications you know, if just disclosure happens,
whether just catastrophic you know, something leaks out or not.
I mean it sounds like, you know, whatever this intelligence
is might not let it happen, but you know what

(54:43):
would happen. Are we psychologically prepared? Maybe the younger generation is,
but for everyone else, you know, what happens in that moment?

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Well on definitions, definitions vary, but I think broadly speaking,
you could say that controlled disclosure would be the gradual
acclimatization of people to the reality of this, the gradual
drip feeding of information, and then at some stage the

(55:18):
icing on the cake. Like I say, my fellow Americans,
people of the world, we're not alone. And some people,
of course say we are living through that right now,
and some people have even put a date on it
and said that that icing on the cake might come in,
say twenty twenty seven. I think some people say twenty

(55:39):
twenty six, but you know who knows. So that's controlled disclosure.
Catastrophic disclosure is it all comes out at once. The
carefully made plan to do it gently just fails, and
for some reason it all gets dumped into the public
domain at once, possibly by an adversary who would then

(56:04):
use it for geopolitical leverage. So that's catastrophic disclosure. Now
as to what the implications of both would be, they
would both be profound. I mean every aspect of our lives,
both individually and collectively, would change. Politics, religion, science, technology,

(56:30):
the economy, philosophy, arts, and entertainment. There is no field
of human knowledge or experience that wouldn't be impacted deeply
by this. And obviously you know intuitively that some are
going to be easier than others. The very difficult one,

(56:54):
obviously is religion. Religion divides us, starts literal wars, leads
to intolerance and hatred and terrorism and violence and things
like that at its worst. At its best, of course,

(57:16):
it can be a force for good education, charitable work,
and such like. But inevitably, with something like this, I
think it would be like throwing gasoline on the fire.
And so that's why these subjects need very careful thought.

(57:39):
And if anyone does have it in their power to disclose,
they have to think this through very carefully. And here's
here's an example which is a little bit controversial, but
I'm going to throw it in anyway, if anyone is considering,
and I'm talking about people in government, let's about the gatekeepers.

(58:03):
If they're working through this controlled disclosure plan, but they're
nervous about things like religion, panic in the streets, those
sorts of things, divided country. If they announced it, if
the president announced it right now, half the people would
probably not believe it and say that it was fake news,

(58:25):
you know. So, But anyone working through this as a
gatekeeper will be saying, do we have in recent years
anything that could serve us a sort of template for
how this might go down? Did anything else come suddenly
and unexpectedly from left field and upend our lives? And
if it did, how did we cope with it? And

(58:48):
the answer, of course is yes, we do have an example,
and it's COVID. And as to the answer to the
question how did we all cope with it? Not very well.
We lost our collective minds over it. And so I
can see, I absolutely can see and agree that anyone

(59:14):
saying let's just dump it into the public domain and
see what happens with COVID in mind with the hysterical
reactions that we saw with the unprecedented government overreach. I mean,
if you if you had in twenty nineteen predicted you know,
some of the things that we're going to unfold in

(59:35):
twenty twenty and twenty one, people wouldn't have believed you.
And yet here we here we are. It's now history,
although some people are trying to kind of rewrite and
forget that history. So my message is that I do
understand the caution because because if we react with hysteria

(59:59):
and you are in fear to a pandemic which was
hardly new. We'd had them before, we knew intellectually that
we would have them again, there are government contingency plans
for them. If we reacted like that for an infectious disease,
how on earth are we going to react if if
we get disclosure of an NHI, particularly if it comes

(01:00:25):
with a dark side as it well might, because if
disclosure was easy, we'd have done it by now. So
the fact that we haven't tells me it's not easy.
It's hard, And that leads to the question why would
it be hard? Because I suggest there is something about
it that's a little bit dark side, a secret to

(01:00:45):
terrorble to be told.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Yeah, that's something to think about. Yeah, for sure. There's
definitely a lot of a lot of ideas about what
this NHI is, and it could be one or the
other or all of the above. What do you lean
towards with what this is? Obviously there's the extraterrestrial hypothesis,

(01:01:13):
but there's also been a lot of ideas being thrown
around about it being inter dimensional. What's your perspective on that?

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Well, again, all these ideas would probably have been dismissed
as science fiction a few years ago, but now are
increasingly been mainstreamed. Even the idea of time travelers from
the future coming back to change something because things have
gone down a dangerous path or an unpleasant path and

(01:01:45):
somebody's trying to change that. So all these possibilities are
on the table. But if you ask me what I
lean towards, I occasionally speculate, Well, what if it's none
of the above, What if it's something completely different? We
use words like alien, not really realizing the full implications

(01:02:08):
of what we're saying. But I'm talking about what if
it the phenomenon is something so fundamentally different, or so
fundamentally above and beyond us, that it would be like
comparing us to microbes, for example, And in those situations,

(01:02:29):
we would have neither the words to describe these things,
nor the brain power the imagination to even conceive of
the reality of what we're dealing with. And yet, in
a universe fourteen billion years old, there might be civilizations

(01:02:51):
out there are billion years ahead of us, And what
might that look like? People talk about AI and the singularity,
and some people speculate we're about to hit that tipping
point where AI evolves beyond its programming, becomes sentient, designs

(01:03:12):
increasingly better versions of itself, and evolves into something else. Well,
what if that's happened countless times elsewhere in the universe.
Biological civilizations arise, they develop machines and computers, and AI
and their singularities were a billion years ago. Well, what

(01:03:34):
might that have evolved into by now? And what if
that's what we're dealing with.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a possibility. I Mean, there's so
many things that could be going on, but that's definitely
there's some huge implications for that, especially with our own
development of artificial intelligence, and be the potential risks versus

(01:04:02):
benefits of you know, what happens to our civilization when
AI gets to that point. It's very interesting to think about,
for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Noweah, interesting and a little bit scary, as you say,
like most things in life. When I was working at
the Ministry Defense, we were taught to look at every situation,
every new development through the lens of threats and opportunities.
And I suspect that AI is not unique. It will

(01:04:37):
bring opportunities and it will bring threats. We've just got
to manage that, navigate it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Right while we can. Yeah, well we can for sure. Definitely.
One thing I wanted to circle back to, and you
had briefly touched on it before and kind of diving
in to the ancient aliens realm of this. All this
phenomena seems to have been around humanity for a very

(01:05:09):
long time. Do you think there's a connection between ancient
civilization's ancient prehistoric humanity and this phenomena, do you think
it has potentially shaped or you know, nudged us in
certain directions versus others in terms of human development.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
A few years ago, I would have probably said that's
not my subject. But I'm now in the very fortunate
position of moderating. As you said in your intro, Ancient
Aliens Live. And we've done about eighty shows over the
last three years all around the United States, and of
course going on to bringing that live stage show to

(01:05:59):
people means that I'm on the road with Georgio Suculas,
William Henry and depending who's on the tour at the time.
But we've had David Childress, We've had Travis Taylor, we
now have Jason Martel, and of course these people, particularly Georgio, William,

(01:06:20):
David and Jason, are very much sort of ancient astronaut
theorists and immersed in that. And I must say they've
They've made me look at this with fresh eyes, and
I think what I remember when I was a kid,
we were told, oh, the oldest civilizations on Earth are

(01:06:42):
like the Babylonians, the Sumerians. Civilization goes back about five
thousand years, but after it, after that, that's it. There's
nothing else. And now what we're finding out about places
like Bill Beckley Tepe and some of the other tepe's
in Turkey, and suddenly we're talking about oh yeah, well
that's twelve thousand years ago, but you know what the heck,

(01:07:03):
that doesn't matter. Move along, nothing to see, you wonder.
We're finding out more and more about our ancestors and
in many ways how sophisticated they are, and all is yours,
you know, and the team are asking, is is it
that much to suggest that, like everyone in life, our
ancestors might have had teachers who imparted a little bit

(01:07:28):
of knowledge to humanity, science, medicine, law, agriculture, and you know,
ancient astronauts. Of course, say yes, absolutely, that's what's happened.
And when you look at some of the whether it's geoglyphs, petroglyphs,

(01:07:51):
monuments and structures that incorporate sophisticated geometric mathematical concepts. We're
still finding out things about the pyramids. Obviously I don't
I'm still you know, still undecided about this new pyramid.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Oh yes, the big story.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
Yeah, but there's no getting away from the fact that
we've we've all seen these videos of scientists, archaeologists sending
little miniature robots up some of the shafts and finding doors.
It wouldn't surprise me if there are more hidden chambers
in the pyramids, for example. So yeah, I think there's

(01:08:36):
no smoke without fire, and these these things are worth
our time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Yeah, agreed, Agreed. There's always there's new knowledge to be
found out about for sure. And yeah, definitely I have
a keen interest on that myself. But it's uh yeah,
always been, always been on my radar for everything, and
go Beckley Teppee definitely has shifted, shifted the world of

(01:09:04):
archaeology on its head. But tying also into you know,
I I I've covered uh just briefly to talk about
rendal Shim. You know, you wrote the book on on
Rendal Shim, which I have somewhere on my shelf back there.
Uh and you know there there's uh the coordinates that

(01:09:26):
Jim Jim Peniston, he got the binary download and some
of the coordinates that were that were given were towards
this this mythical land called High Brazil off the coast
of Ireland. And you know, I was I was wondering
you know, what, what are your thoughts on that, you know,

(01:09:49):
in in the perspective of there's been a lot of
talk about UFO bases in the oceans. Do you think
there could be like a relation or a connection there,
especially with this the UAP that that happened, that that
came down at Rendelsham all those years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
There could be. And of course that that mysterious binary
code message that Jim Peniston effectively got when he touched
the side of the craft. There also when when a
computer scientist decoded this this series of ones and zeros,

(01:10:31):
not only did coordinates for this mysterious high Brazil, the
so called Celtic Atlantis come out, but also the coordinates
included again the pyramids, the Great Pyramids at Giza, Giza
so and the Nascar lines and various other ancient sacred

(01:10:55):
sites where humans have have gathered and worshiped for any
So it's very interesting. I frankly don't really know what
to make of it. On the one hand, it's almost
too good to be true. It's like a sort of
you know, ancient astronauts theory bucket list with all these sites.

(01:11:20):
But you know, I I think we'll continue to look
at that, and you know, maybe maybe deeper in code
breakers can can find another message. I mean you you
often have a message within a message. So so we'll see.

(01:11:41):
It's going to take people way smarter than me to
figure that out.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
Yeah, yeah, we'll see what happens with all that. Uh well, uh,
we're we're just about well, I guess we're beyond beyond
the top of the hour now. I've been so immersed
in this conversation, Nick, this has been great. I wanted
to give you a second to promote any upcoming events

(01:12:06):
that you have coming and all that to my audience.
You know, you've got ancient Aliens, there's contact in the desert,
all that. So if you want to lay some stuff
out for people to check you out, that'd be great.

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
Sure. Well, I have a couple of films out at
the moment. One called Alien Awakening just dropped. I have
another one that's going to be called Aliens from the
Abyss The Dark Side of Disclosure, or maybe Aliens from
the Abyss the Dark Side of the UFO phenomenon. I'm
not quite sure which title we're going with the Ancient

(01:12:43):
Aliens life tour continues. I've got some three three more
dates in April one in May, we're adding ones for
the fall, so if anyone wants to come and see
us and meet us after the show, Ancient Aliens Life
Tour dot com for that. And then, as you say,

(01:13:05):
Contact in the Desert, which is always a huge gathering
of like minded folks. I mean, dozens of internationally recognized speakers,
people like George Nori, George Knapp, Richard Dolan. You know,
it's a sort of who's who of the UFO UAP world.

(01:13:30):
And I will be there. I'm going to be doing
I'm going to be doing a lecture, a workshop, a
couple of panels. But of course the great thing about
Contact in the Desert is it's just such a sort
of beautiful location, very nice hotel in Palm Springs. Everyone
just mingles freely, and most evenings, once the formal commitments

(01:13:57):
have finished, you can find a lot of the sakers
just hanging out at the bar and shooting the breeze
with whoever wants to come by. And so it's a
great opportunity to meet and mingle, whether it's between the speakers,
the attendees or whoever. And that's going to be I

(01:14:17):
think it's what May May twenty ninth to June second,
so contacting the Desert dot com for that all sorts
of fun things happening there, So that's definitely something to
look forward to.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And for listeners out there, I'll be
there as well, so we'll maybe we'll cross paths. Nick,
I'm sure I absolutely you there. Well, yeah, were there
any other website or any other books you wanted to
shout out real quick?

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
Sure, I'll just say my website is Nick Pope dot net.
And the social media platform that I use for most
things day to day I'm most regularly posting on with
all my news and updates is x formerly known as Twitter,
where my handle is at nick popemod.

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
Great well, Nick, thank you so much for coming on
the show today. Really glad to have you. We'll have
to do this again sometime when there's some other very
interesting updates in the world of UFOs and UAPs.

Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
Sure thing, And if I don't see you before, I'll
see you at Contact in.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
The Desert, Yes you will. Hey, great, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
Okay, all the best.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
Yeah, all right, thanks again to Nick Pope for coming
on the show today. It seems that many interesting developments
as of recent in the UFO and UAP world are

(01:16:00):
leading to something imminent and that things are going to
get a lot more interesting from here on out. But anyways,
I'll have all of Nick's links in the show notes,
and thank you for listening to the show and hanging
out with me today. There's a lot more to come.
Make sure to mark your calendars for Contact in the Desert,

(01:16:22):
happening in Indian Wells, California, from May twenty ninth through
June second. I am going to be there hanging out,
and I'm also going to be hosting a live podcast
episode there, which is gonna be a wild time. Who
I'm interviewing is still TBA, but I promise it'll be
out of this world. And now I'm also going to

(01:16:45):
be speaking at Contact in the Desert for a presentation
on Monday, June second. It's probably going to be a
little bit more low key, as all of the main
event stuff usually happens on Saturday and Sunday, but it'll
still be great. It's actually the first time I'm going
to be speaking in front of an audience at an event,

(01:17:08):
and who knows, maybe I'll start doing more of that
at Future events as well, but if you're looking to
go to Contact in the Desert, make sure to get
tickets now before it sells out, and lodging as well.
I'll make sure to have some links in the show
notes for that. As always, I want to give a

(01:17:29):
huge thank you out there to everyone who checks out
the Strangeology podcast shares it with friends and family. Helps
me out a ton when you do that. The Strangeology
Podcast really wouldn't be possible without the support of listeners
like you. To any advertisers or companies out there looking
to collaborate with the Strangeology Podcast or if you would

(01:17:50):
like to be considered for an interview on the show.
If you're an author, an expert, a researcher, a contactee experiencer,
please send all of your inquiries to info at strangeology
dot com. I'd love to hear from you. And just
another quick reminder to make sure to give me a
follow over on all of my social media accounts if

(01:18:12):
you're looking for more content from me and random updates
if you're missing the show. In between episodes, I'm most
active over on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, of course, posting
short form factoid videos and all that kind of stuff.
But you can also find me on x threads, now, Substack,
and Blue Sky as well. All of those links will

(01:18:33):
be in the show notes and Strangeology can use all
the help it can get, So if you want to
help support the show and what I do, you can
sign up to become a channel member on my YouTube
channel four five dollars a month, which gets you access
to bonus segments of podcast episodes in the form of
Strangeology Beyond, which has whole other research topics from the

(01:18:57):
main episode of that day or extended guest interviews. You
also get early access to new episodes that are also
ad free as well, and I'm working on expanding the
back catalog of all of my bonus content over on YouTube.
It's gonna take a little bit, but slowly and surely

(01:19:17):
we'll get everything up there and up to date now.
You can also support me by signing up over on
Mypatreon at patreon dot com. Forward slash Strangeology, hire tiers,
unlock more perks like early access to new episodes and
long format videos which are also ad free, just like
over on YouTube, and of course you also get access

(01:19:37):
to Strangeology Beyond the members only portion of the show.
There's also things like a thirty percent off permanent merch discount,
as well as exclusive members only merch voting power for
topics I cover, behind the scenes, bonus content, and more so,
if you want to join a growing community of like
minded people who love the strange and Unexplained, it's a

(01:19:59):
great place to be. I appreciate the support so much,
and the more of it I get, the more content
I can create for everyone out there who loves this stuff.
And to those members out there, past and present, thank
you so much for your support and your continued support.
And speaking of merch, don't forget about my shop over

(01:20:19):
at Strangeology dot etsy dot com if you're looking to
pick up some fourteen shirts, stickers, prints, and gear. I've
got designs on all sorts of stuff. I do all
my own artwork, and I've recently updated the shop with
a few new designs. I'm always trying to add more
as I have time with my busy schedule, so definitely

(01:20:40):
check that out and keep checking back. Any of the
proceeds from the merch shop goes towards keeping the podcast
going and keeping Strangeology HQ up and running, so definitely
check that out. Links will be in the show notes,
and that's all for now. Unfortunately, there won't be a

(01:21:01):
Strangeology beyond interview extension this week, as scheduling and timing
didn't allow me to take extra time with Nick Pope
today or to come up with a topic to chat about.
Since there's so much going on with the weekly episode
release schedule, we're going to have to switch things up
for a little bit to have the bonus segments be

(01:21:24):
something more like once a month or as often as
I can leading up with all the prep work I
have to do for contact in the Desert and everything
else going on with my home renovation stuff. So thank
you for your patience and bearing with me preemptively for
all of that. We're going to try to get back
to a regular thing with the bonus content episode extensions,

(01:21:48):
but for now we're doing the best we can, and hey,
weekly episode releases is pretty good. I've been wanting to
get to this point for a while and hopefully we
can keep that velocity up. But anyway, as I always say,
until the next time, take care of yourselves and each
other and keep it Strange