The Skeptical Help Bar - Mick West - Skeptical Help Bar with Kenny Biddle - Paranormal/Skeptical

Episode Transcript
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(00:31):
What's up everybody? Oh my goodness, I love it. I love popping
on screen and already seen a wholebunch of people watching. That's so cool.
So thank you again everyone for comingand spending your Friday night with me,
especially tonight, because it's funny tothirteen. Ho holy shit, that's
so cool. Anyway, let mesee what these comments are popping in already.

(00:55):
That's awesome. So tonight is gonnabe fun. I'm very excited about
tonight, very very excited. Ihave a guest tonight, so you won't
have to listen to me all nightlong. You'll get to hear another guy,
which is someone that I actually lookup to and I consult his work
a lot. So I'll get tothat in a second. For those of

(01:17):
you that are new here or returning, I'm going to go over the rules
as always, because there is apodcast version of this that goes out and
I want to make sure everyone isclear on the rules. So rule number
one is that this show is forparanormal related questions, any questions about ghosts
or UFOs or cryptids or religious miraclesor whatever you know, and I will

(01:40):
give you my skeptical opinion of it. It may not always be right,
but we'll try and work it through. That leads me to Rule number two
is that I don't know everything,and that's just the basic fact. So
if you ask me a question Idon't know, I will be honest with
you. I'll look it up ifI can, or I'll consult an expert,
which tonight we have a guest expert, so it'll be great. I

(02:01):
can push it on to him.Rule number three is follow the Patrick Shwayzy
Golden rule and be nice. Thisis for good discussions, good debate.
I don't mind people getting into it, but be nice. Don't be ad
dicked to each other, okay,because I'll bouch you out here. And

(02:22):
the rule number four, which isa new rule. It's not really new,
but I've been trying to incorporate thisin is if you have a question
for me or the guests that Ihave that night, please do me a
favor and put question or Q inthe beginning of your comment. And that
helps me when I go through allthe comments to pick them out and get
to them quicker, so I don'thave to go through the conversation you guys

(02:45):
are having. So let me giveyou a bio O my guests tonight and
then I'll bring them on and wecan get right to it. I hope
you have I hope you guys havequestions. Also, stand off, let
me know what you're drinking tonight.But here's the bio. So tonight,
let me get let me get throughthis. We have Mick West. Mick

(03:06):
is a writer and debunker. Heused to be a video game programmer who
now focuses on investigating and explaining conspiracytheories such as chemtrails, nine to eleven,
controlled demolition, and false flags.He also covers topics such as UFOs,
pseudoscience, flat earth, photo analysis, and quackery. I love that
word. He's the creator of contralscience dot com and metabunk dot org.

(03:31):
In twenty eighteen, he authored abook called Escaping the rabbit Hole, which
I have my autograph copy right here. Let me show you there. There's
my autograph, which is take that. Um, let me get back here.
So in April of twenty nineteen,he started a podcast called Tales from

(03:53):
the rabbit Hole, in which heinterviews conspiracy culture guests. Pretty good check
it out. He has made aplethora of media appearances as an expert analyst
on Ken trails and UFO settings,and I had the pleasure of meeting him
for the first time, I believe, in twenty sixteen at Psiicon in Las
Vegas. So if that was wrong, he'll correct me, I'm sure.

(04:15):
So please everyone welcome Mick West.What's up, buddy, Yeah, thank
you very much for that long introduction. Excellent, I've forgotten half of that
stuff. Well, you know,I had to look up your wiki page
and see what's going on. Andfirst and foremost before we get into anything
else, I want to congratulate you, my fellow fellow, on receiving your

(04:41):
fellowship from right Beckay, congratulations toyou. I know i'd see yours right
next to your head. Yep,right right there. I got money there,
boom right there, so awesome.Yes, I doesn't doesn't come with
any money, unfortunately, so Istill haven't got to the paid chill stage
of debunking skepticism. Yet we willcome. It will come. I heard

(05:06):
they say, do what you enjoyand the money will follow. And that's
what I'm doing. Keep doing it, keep doing it. But I keep
doing it. I mean, Ilove doing it. I love writing,
I love investigating these things and it'sjust I think the thrill of the chase
is really what gets me. Yeah, and just the thrill the chase and

(05:30):
then finally starving a case is justto me, it's just oh yeah,
it's so nice. Yeah yeah forme, like it's getting your teeth into
something like that is Yes, I'ma kind of I guess I have a
good personality for debugging video games,which is being obsessive about details and figuring
out exactly what went wrong when you'rewhen you're looking for a bug in the

(05:55):
game, and that kind of transferredover to investigate all kinds of weird things.
So I really like to figure outexactly exactly what is going on,
and when you actually get it,it's just it's a great feeling because you
can just you know, it's soso done once you've done it right.
People they try to explain things onthe Internet and they throughout theories or they

(06:18):
say, oh, it's probably this, or it's probably that, or I
think it's this, but they don'treally know for sure, and they don't
really do the hard work and kindof get down into the details and actually
really really figure it out. AndI think that's where the true heart of
debugging and skepticism actually is is actuallygetting to the real bossom of things rather

(06:40):
than just yeah right, yeah,And I see that a lot, and
I'm sure you do. I mean, with with your background getting into I
mean you took on chem trails,that's who the people that are in that
category. Yeah, I'm sure,um. But but it's a it's a

(07:00):
range. There's a range that peopleI know, like friends of mine,
believe in the theory to some degreebecause they don't really know very much about
it and they don't really understand it. They just think that they've heard that
the government is spraying things from somebody. Somebody told them something, right,
And then they look up and theysee these white lines being left behind planes,

(07:20):
and maybe they hadn't seen them fora few months and they hadn't really
been paying attention before, and thenthey start thinking there's something to it.
And then they see articles on thingslike weather modification, which is a real
thing, that's a real thing thatactually happens, and it happens near here.
They fly over the mountains and seethe cloud and then they think,

(07:41):
but two and two together and theythink, oh, it's a real thing.
KEM trails are real what's everybody worriedabout, you know, it's just
this thing that the government does andthey look up and see these lines in
the sky and they call them Kemptrails. So just because someone believes in
a theory doesn't mean that they're they'recrazy or more stupid. They're just kind
of mistaken. That's that's a goodway to put it. And I think

(08:03):
that's that what you mentioned there,is that like people aren't are crazy,
they're not stupid for believing in something. And I think that's a stigma that
we kind of get being skeptics,you know, because I don't know about
you, but that's one of thefirst defenses defense mechanisms that I come across

(08:26):
when we start talking about explaining things. It's it's yeah, I mean you
deal with that a lot. Yeah, And it varies by what subject you're
talking about. And I think somepeople are more touchy than others. And
I think probably the most the mosttouchy people, guess is when you're talking

(08:46):
about the subject that they feel thatthey are personal experience of not just looking
up and seeing lions in the sky, because that's just something everybody can see,
but something that they've experienced that otherpeople haven't, like they might think
they've seen UFO or they have seena UFO, they've seen something flying in
the sky that they couldn't identify,and then they see me as coming along

(09:07):
and debunking UFOs, which they seeas being an attack on their experience,
like as me calling them a liar. I'm sure you get like a similar
type of thing in paranormal investigations,where people who actually feel that they've had
paranormal visitors or paranormal experiences, orthey have psychic powers, they genuinely believe

(09:28):
that these things have actually happened andthey have witnessed a form of magic.
And if they feel that you arepouring cold water on that, that can
be seen as as an attack asthey have to tread very carefully. Right,
So ken and trails? What likeI've heard ken trails, I know
contrails. Can you explain to uswhat the difference is? I can?

(09:52):
I can please build in great depth? Well, do you know what a
hydro carbon is? Starting the deepend here? Okay, let's just dumping.
Get hydrocarbon? Very simple. Really, hydrogen is it's just hydrogen mixed
with carbon and oil. Is ahydrocarbon? You know, it's mixed together

(10:15):
in a certain molecular way. Themolecules are all lined up on whatnot,
but oil, gasoline, kerosene,jet fuel, they're all hydrocarbons. Candles,
paraffine, wax made of hydrocarbons.They're made of hydrogen and carbon.
And when you burn one of these, you're introducing a little bit of heat
and some oxygen. So you've gothydrogen, carbon, carbon and oxygen.

(10:37):
Very simple chemistry, super simple.The carbon reacts with the oxygen and makes
carbon dioxide greenhouse gas. You know, we are all familiar with carbon dioxide.
What happens when you breathe in andbreathe out, actually making carbon dioxide.
But the hydrogen in the hydrocarbon reactswith the oxygen to make H two
O hydrogen to oxide, which iswater. So when you're burning a gallon

(11:03):
of jet fuel, it seems reallycounterintuitive. If you burn a gallon of
jet fuel, you actually make onepoint three gallons of water and four gallons
of carbon dioxide if you were toliquefy it, which is yeah, kind
of a crazy thing to think of. Like you take a gallon of gasoline
and you burn it, and youend up with like a gallon and a
half of water and four gallons ofliquid COO two. That's what actually happens.

(11:24):
So when you whenever you burn something, it makes water. And you've
seen this on a cold day.If you look at what's coming out of
the back of your car, yousee this condensation. This is water from
the combustion of the of the hydrocarbonin your car. Same thing with a
plane flying up in the up inthe sky. It's very very cold at

(11:46):
high altitude, and when you burnjet fuel at a high altitude, it
usually makes enough water so that thatcondenses out into a cloud. And really
all a contrail is the white linethat's left behind a plane is just a
type of cloud, just like anyother cloud. It's actually physically almost identical
to a regular cloud, and itdoes all the same things that clouds do.

(12:09):
So sometimes you'll notice clouds they're justkind of pop up and disappear.
Sometimes clouds spread out and cover thesky. Sometimes there's clouds here, but
there's there's no clouds over there,or there's clouds with gaps, or there's
clouds in rows. So you getall these things in contrails. But with
contrails you're only seeing this one onelittle strip of cloud. So it lends

(12:30):
itself to being to being easily confused, to having people making ideas about it
that are incorrect. So people cameup with the idea that they thought that
a normal contrail should evaporate quickly becauseit's just condensation like your breath. You
know, you breathe out on acold day, your breath, well,
it makes a little clouds and thatdissipates and vanishes. So they say that

(12:52):
should happen with the contra and sothey came up with this idea, and
then they saw that some contrails actuallylasted a long time, so they said
the short trails are actually contrails,and then the long trails must be chemtrails,
which is some kind of secret sprayingplot. And then they came up
with loads of ideas as to whatthese contrails would actually these chemtrails would actually

(13:13):
be. It varied from trying topoison people or spreading nano robots, but
that the most common theory now isthat they theorize that these long trails are
being used to control the weather,like with cloud seeding, is just control
the weather. But they think it'son a much larger scale that they're actually
trying to control the world's climate andthey're trying to do something with global warming.

(13:39):
And then again you get a bifurcationin the theories. Some people think
they're causing global warming with the contrailsin order to perpetuate the big carbon tax
hoax, and some people think thatthey're trying to stop global warming with the
chemtrails so they can just keep onmaking money for a few more years until
they can get enough to build arocket ship and go to the moon.

(14:00):
So there's a whole bunch of theoriesabout them, but basically it's this idea
that contrails are some kind of secretspraying thing. So what what's the reason
behind the longer ones opposed the shorterones? What causes them to last longer
than the shorter ones? It reallyjust oils down to the humidity in the
air. It's it's a little trickyto explain, but when a contrail is

(14:26):
made, it happens in a verycold temperature minus forty degrees, which is
pop science. Minus forty degrees isthe same in fahrenheit and celsius. It's
the only temperature that's actually the same. So I don't have to specify which
one it is. So minus fortydegrees very very very very cold. You
get frostbite instantly in my work,very quickly in minus forty degrees. So

(14:50):
when you breathe out in minus fortydegrees, or if you have a jet
engine or a car engine at minusforty degrees, the water in the exhaust
condenses and then it freezes. Andthis is the key difference between like the
short trails and the long trails.If it condenses and then freezes, frozen
water is a lot harder to kindof evaporate frozen water than it is to

(15:13):
evaporate liquid water, so it staysthere for longer, and in fact,
it actually falls below a threshold atwhich is actually persistent, and it's that
threshold is a lot lower than forregular cloud formation. So you will often
see contrails in the sky where there'sno clouds, which is one of the
things that confuses people, because contrailsadd water to that local bit of the

(15:37):
sky, but everywhere else in thesky there's not enough water. But if
there's enough, if it's above athreshold, even above that, then they
will persist and they will spread becausethere's enough water in the atmosphere to freeze
more on the ice. There's notenough to make water clouds, but there's
enough to make ice clouds. Butyou can't make an ice cloud without making
a water cloud first, so thatnormal clouds don't form, So you can

(16:02):
only make it by adding water,which is why your contrails. Okay,
it gets complicated, and it's becauseit's complicated, people's brains shut down at
a certain point, and it's areal challenge to explain to people. So
you have to get someone who's actuallyreally interested in the topic if they want
to actually listen to what you're goingto say, right right, Wow,

(16:22):
I mean yeah, I can see. I mean I do see that when
I start If somebody comes to mewith a video or a problem and I
start explaining it but it gets intothat detail, you can see them shut
down and they're like, whatever,you know, I just tell me if
it's real or not. You know, yeah, talks about that. There's
a scene in Peanuts where the kidsare in school and you have the teacher

(16:47):
at the front of the class andthe teachers going, you know, what
the teachers saying is just just noiseto the kids. They don't care what
they're saying, and that's how itturns into when when you're trying to explain
things to people, so you haveto really tailor your explanation to who you're
talking to. And I know you, you're a reasonably intelligent chap with,

(17:08):
like you know, some technical knowledgeof various things, so you're not entirely
opposed to getting a technical explanation.But then there's probably people in the audience
who thought my explanation was boring orstupid. And then there's probably some of
the people who thought that it wasnot entirely correct because I skipped over a
few details. You've got to kindof tailor your explanation. That's one of

(17:30):
the big challenges of debunking and skepticism. It's not all about investigating. It's
about explaining things to people afterwards,like why did this thing happen? And
how can how can I help youunderstand why this thing happened? Right,
Yeah, that's always a challenge becauseI know when I figure something out,

(17:52):
it's like, Okay, how doI how do I transfer this? Because
there isn't a lot of technical stuffyou have to I don't want to say
dumb it down, but not everyonehas the technical background, so they won't
understand it, so you have toput it in simpler terms, and translating
that is sometimes a challenge in itself. Best, the best thing you can

(18:14):
do is to use examples if youcan, and you've got that capability here
with things like photos, you know, ghost photos, like photos of orbs
and things. You can quite oftenduplicate something that's similar and then show people
how it's how it could have happenedright, or you can you know,
if there's some kind of paranormal eventin a house, like a door opening

(18:37):
or something, then you can youcan replicate it. So when you have
the power to replicate things, that'salmost always the best way of doing it,
rather than just verbally telling them anexplanation like saying, oh, you
know, there's different air pressures anddifferent parts of the house and that makes
doors close by themselves. Yeah,that's just that's just noise to people.
But if you actually show somebody youknow, if I open this window over

(19:00):
here, then this door is goingto close, then you know, that's
a practical demonstration of theory, whichis the best way of communicating it.
I absolutely love that. I thatis my bread and butter. I mean,
I love putting out the articles,but I would rather go to I
wouldn't rather. I love doing thearticle, but I wouldn't I love going

(19:23):
out to events and conferences of eitherside, like skeptical science or paranormal stuff,
and being able to demonstrate stuff tothem. Like when when I saw
you when you did your your speakingengagement at Psicon, when you were up
on the big stage and you didyour uh you yeah, what did you

(19:44):
do? You were you were showinghow I had a lighter, I think,
yes, yeah, and I uhthe micro spears, yeah, obviously
making microspheres iron microspheres. So thisthis iron microspheres thing, like I should
probably explain what that is. Ismicrospheres are it's the lighter. So what

(20:07):
I did was I got got amagnet and I got a lighter, and
I basically demonstrated how to make thesevery very small iron spheres just on stage.
It was a little bit of acopper because they aren't exactly the same,
but the very very similar. Ifyou if maybe you striker the flint
on a on a lighter. Itook the gas out for there when I
use on stage the little sparks thatyou see are actually little pieces of it's

(20:34):
actually called perrocerium. It's the thingthat's that you call the flint is actually
perrocerium. It's not it's not flintat all. In the in the lighter
and it scraped against the steel wheeland the heat makes these sparks, and
these sparks fly off, and there'sbits of iron and them, and they
melt and they formed these little ironiron balls, which are tiny, little,
tiny, little microscopic things, likelike a few microns across. And

(20:57):
if you get a piece of paperand you can hold a magnet behind it,
and you get this and hold itin front of it, thence you
do this, it's a a fewtimes you can get a bunch of iron
microspieres. So you know, that'sjust a practically easily easily replicable demonstration.
You could look at them with amicroscope, of course after that, but

(21:18):
you know, it's it's it's showingyou something, even if it's if it's
only part of the experiment, theactual physical presence of something being done is
a lot more memorable than just talkingabout something or even seeing a YouTube video.
So if you're in person, youknow, carry around a lighter all
the time. I said, youknow, I can make iron microspies like

(21:38):
this them and it was it wasreally nice. I mean, I totally
agree with you. When you doa demonstration like that right in front of
people, it makes so much biggerimpact. Because even after your talk,
we sat down out in the lobbyand we were talking a little bit and

(22:00):
you were sitting at the table andI asked you to do it again and
whipped it out. Yeah, boomboom right there and we will see them,
and took out my phone use thephone camera to look at them.
I'm like, this is this isreally cool. You know, it really
hits at home. And I thinkmost of the audience that watches, I
think they're really into it. Theylove this technical stuff. They love the

(22:23):
deep explanations for one. I meanthey give up their Friday night to come
out or sit in front of thecomputer and watch this. So and I'm
usually giving very detailed explanations when Ican so and they keep coming back and
I always get positive feedback. SoI have no doubt the people that are
watching are into this. Oh Ihave a question. I'm gonna pop it

(22:47):
up real quick. Bob says,Mick, do you have a degree in
chemistry. There's a lot of knowledge. I have a no level in chemistry,
which is kind of like a highschool diploma. Early a high school
diploma, it's like like a thirdof one. I guess its a sixteen.
But no chemistry comes up a lot. But the chemistry I talk about

(23:10):
is very simple chemistry. It's avery simple level. You know, you
know what you know what elements are, and you know what molecules are,
you know what atoms are, andyou know what compounds are, and you
know you can mix things together.I'd say mix very loosely. You can
make compounds of things. And there'sthis and things come up during investigations,

(23:36):
like for example, in nine toeleven, people will talk about steel and
iron, and you learn that mostpeople know that steel is iron with added
carbon but having other things in itand also having things done to them like
heat treating and things like that,and that steel actually has a crystal structure
inside of it, and if thecrystal structure is a certain way, then

(23:59):
the iron can break. And ifyou've ever seen forged in fire, you
would you would pick up things likethis as well. Yes, it's a
good show. Good show, yeah, but yeah, you just pick up
things as needed for investigations. SoI started with a lot of stuff about
condensation like water, basically like whathappens how the clouds form. And I

(24:23):
have a large collection of books onclouds which is up on my my shelf.
Here, I do remember you postit or you did a video,
I think, yeah, like thisone here is from I think nineteen o
four and it's got like pictures init of things that people post now.

(24:48):
They will post pictures like this andthey'll say, well, look at those
ripples in the sky. It mustbe some kind of scale, our weapon
or something like that. And Ican I've actually taken books like this one,
and I think I should took thisbook and shown it to people,
and and it does help. Likesome people will look at a book like
this and they'll say, oh,yeah, they they have things like that.
And there's other pictures and the picturesare over one hundred years old,

(25:10):
like one hundred and twenty years old. Some of them are from the eighteen
hundreds, from from older books.I have older books that have pictures that
are in this book as well.And knowing that that that exists in an
old book, it's very difficult toargue with so the physical presence of this
book, you know, obviously thiscould be fake. But I've got I've
got ten more, ten more books. What's this one called The Physics the

(25:36):
Principles of Aerography. I'm mccadee fromthe nineteen nineteen fifties. I think it's
ancient book and it's got clouds thatpeople will look at today and say,
look, kem clouds. Yeah,in all seriousness, And if you can
show them all these old books thathave these these same clouds, it's that
same thing, the actual practical thing, this solid you know, these are

(26:00):
real books. They are old.They smell. They smell like one hundred
year old books smells like Yeah,there's that physical tangibleness of the thing that
is really, really, really useful. It's not just a website or a
YouTube video you're sending it to.It's this is literature that was printed,
like you said, like a hundredyears ago. And you know, I've

(26:22):
taken me this collection of books manyyears ago, I think like over ten
years ago now, and I madea video of it, of the collection.
I went to reach one and Iread what these books said about contrails.
Now, they only started back inthe nineteen forties because they didn't really
write much about them before the war. But from the nineteen forties onwards,

(26:44):
you've got seventy years worth of booksthat all talk about contrails and how they
sometimes they they're short, and theydissipate quickly, and sometimes they last a
long time. So giving people thatthat his oracle context, and the fact
that there's so many different books andthey all look different, you know that

(27:04):
it would be a ridiculous endeavor totry to fake them. Now, some
people are going to going to thinkthat the fake right, there's there's a
range of people, but you're notaddressing like, you know, the point
zero five percents that are just offthe edge over here. You're addressing the
larger number in the middle. Andthe people who are just coming in have

(27:25):
just heard of this theory. Youcan share them these things and you can
help them. I like the commentfrom JD amazing the government went back in
time to plant those books to throwus off track. Well, you jest,
but some people actually think that Thereare people in the chemtrail community and
adjacent who think that time travel isreal. I think there's one called Alfred

(27:52):
Weber, who's one of the guyswho co authored a famous bill and they
got into the house. He gaveit to Kassinich, Kassinich, I can't
remember his name, congressman. Andhe actually thinks that the the FBI or
the CIA went forward in time fromthe nineteen sixties and got a copy of

(28:15):
his book and took him back tothe nineteen sixties to try to prevent the
jfk assassination. It's something very convolutedtheory, but he seems to in all
serious actually believe that these things arereal, these time travelers were real,
and that he has contact with aliens, and that's there's this weird web of
time and space that we exist inthat is very malleable and not wow.

(28:41):
Basically magic exists. Essentially, that'sthe guy. There you go, Thanks,
Bob. Bob's got a question.When did the Kim trail theory come
about? And why did it comeabout? It came about in nineteen ninety
seven on Usenet. Essentially, usnet was essentially like a precursor to Facebook,

(29:07):
kind of bulletin board. People wouldchat on it, text messages for
each other, kind of like Idon't know, kind of like long email
lists essentially. Yeah, but itwas it was a bulletin board and someone
just came up with the theory andstarted talking about it and started propoting it.
Then at first it was this verysimplistic theory. The guy was obsessed

(29:30):
with JP eight jet fuel type ofjet fuel that they were experimenting with or
might have been the theoretical back then, and they thought that JP eight was
toxic and they looked up and sawthese trails in the sky and they thought,
oh, that must be the JPeight doing that. So it's the
JP eight. Guys got onto itand they they became obsessed with it.

(29:52):
Then another guy, William Thomas,wrote a book and a series of articles
I think about chem trails and Ithink it was called something like chem trails
are Real. And he was basicallyjust a bunch of urban legends essentially about

(30:14):
chem trails, Like he was sayingthat the hospitals in England are overflowing with
flu patients because of the toxic sprayingfrom the cloud and people believed it.
And he actually you put things inhis book like he who was flying along
in is playing at minus fifty degreesand he saw this trail and it shouldn't

(30:34):
have been there or something, sohe basically popularized it and it kind of
took off from there, and thenit just kind of latched onto various points
of amplification after that, like someonewould do a documentary on YouTube eventually,

(30:56):
and someone else would do a documentaryand different books a bit polish. There
was a big documentary called What inthe World Are They Spraying? By Michael
J. Murphy and that came out, I think around two thousand and eight
or something like that, and thenthe media started getting interested in it.
And that's the media gets interested ina topic like that, and they start

(31:18):
making fun of it, but itjust gets more people interested in it.
It doesn't really help having media attention, and that causes little spikes. But
recently nothing's really been happening in theKem Trail universe, and I think it's
kind of fading away. It maywell pop up again, but all these
conspiracies, these old conspiracies like nineto eleven JFK obviously, and Kem Trails

(31:41):
and things like the moon landing hoax, that they're all kind of getting folded
into, kind of becoming this substrateof accepted conspiracies. For people who are
at a higher level right, whichessentially is the people who are getting into
Quanon. Now, they kind ofbackground of being credulous and so their main

(32:06):
focus is on and what's happening rightnow out in the world. But they
all generally believe in something like KeimTrails or nine eleven being an inside job
or or Yeah, they'll definitely thinkthat JFK was assassinated, although some of
them think that JFK was actually replacedby a double and was spirited away to

(32:27):
live in an island somewhere. Also, his son, JFK Junior, same
thing happened with him. JFK Junioris supposed to actually return and take over
as the vice presidents after Trump winsthis election, but it's not working out
too well, not looking good forthat. Let's see, I got I
got a question, a good questionthat actually goes into some of what you

(32:47):
do and what your book is about. So John Michael's when someone has bought
hook line and Sinker into Kim Trails, what tactics do you use to get
them to open their mine to otherpossible explanations. Well, yeah, first
of all, you've got to tryto The first thing is it gives you

(33:10):
all the source materially in there,and we'll give you the advice that I'm
going to give you now. Butthe first step is to talk to them
about anything. It doesn't matter whatyou talk about. In fact, it
might be even best to just avoidthe topic of contrails entirely. Just try
to get a sense of, youknow, what they're about in life apart
from chemtrails, what are they Whatare their actual priorities, and like what
are their goals and things like that. And you don't ask them that,

(33:30):
you just you just chat chat tothem and get a sense of them.
You don't jump in and say,yeah, there's there's a clouds they're made
of common diockside and water, whichthey're not. But so talk to them,
keep talking to them, get goodcommunication with them. Then the next
step is to try to figure outwhat they actually believe, because if someone

(33:52):
says they think there's something to thischemtrail theory, you have no idea really
what they actually think, because there'sall these different versions of it and these
different levels of belief that people havedifferent layers of complications. So just talk
to them ask them questions. Don'ttry to tell them stuff at first,
ask them questions and feel out whatthe layer of the land is and what

(34:13):
are the things that they think isevidence. And then if you come across
something that you know is wrong andyou can show it's wrong, you can
actually supply them with the information.But you've got to do it carefully.
You've got to do it in kindof an unthreatening way. If they say
something like contrails never persist, contrailsalways rapidly dissipate, then you can ask

(34:40):
them to look at that video thatI mentioned earlier, that's the one that's
got all these these books in thathas what the books say about contrails,
and some people actually ask swayed bythat. I've heard many times of people
who have actually watched the video andthey come away questions. It doesn't mean

(35:00):
they always it doesn't doesn't always work. They doesn't they don't always come out
of it completely, but it plantsthe seed. And that kind of,
like you know, leads me intothe the last point. But like the
point that you've got to the overarches all of this is that you're not
going to get instant results if someoneis deep into a conspiracy theory. They

(35:24):
probably have like a whole bunch ofdifferent things that they think is evidence for
that conspiracy theory. And if they'refairly new to it, then they they're
probably still getting new things all thetime. So you giving them some evidence
of this one thing that is false, they still at all this other stuff
to look at, and then thenthey don't entirely believe what you just said
anyway, so that it kind ofjust like gets swept away. But if

(35:46):
you keep picking away at these thingsnicely, don't You don't know, pick
away in a nagging or a cruelway, but to do it nicely you
will actually have an effect on thelong term. Are you're constantly giving them
more a more context about what's what'sreal, what the actual reality of the
situation is, like that that thatthese planes are actually just passenger planes.

(36:09):
You can you can you can getyour your phone out and there are these
little augmented reality things which should free. Some of them are free. Some
of them like two dollars, Andyou can look up at the sky with
with your phone and it will tellyou what that plane is. So if
you see a plane that you thinkis sprying toxic chemicals. You think it's
some kind of government tanker. Youlook it up and you see it's always

(36:31):
flight American airlines like one, five, seven or whatever. And that's the
uh you know, that debunks thatone little thing. It takes this one
little thing away from them. Soyou keep doing this, you keep giving
them more and more context, andnot just these little things as well.
You can talk about broader things likehow would this even work? How what's

(36:53):
the logistics of this this set upthis chemtrail thing? Like we'll do these.
Is there a essential base where planesgo and load up with chemicals?
And do people see them fly tothat place? Because surely the people nearby
would be seeing these planes landing andtaking off all the time. Or do
they have trucks that somehow sneak itonto commercial jets? And how would that

(37:13):
work? How would you get pastthe people who work at the airport,
and how would they the chemtrail fuelfrom the nun chem trail fuel? And
what would be the point Why arethey even doing it anyway? Because we
did the science of geoengineering, whichyou can talk about, is at a
stage where we don't really know whatwould happen if we try to modify the
weather, modify the climate in thatway, you know, essentially talking about

(37:36):
the equivalent of setting off a coupleof volcanoes like super volcanoes and spraying lots
of stuff into the sky, whichhad terrible catastrophic effects in the past.
There there's a famous year in historyof the year without the sun where it
kind of stayed dark most of theday because a volcano had gone off and

(37:57):
crops failed around the world because therewas there was so much crap in.
Yeah, so you're going to becareful. So why would why would they
be doing it if the scientists don'tknow how to do it yet, why
would you think they've been doing itfor forty years? So you can raise
these broader questions and give broader contextabout the world as well as focusing in
on individual things, and just youknow, keep doing it, don't give
up, and don't lose your senseof humor and your sense of humanity,

(38:22):
and just keep being a good friendto this person and it will help.
I do like your approach, andI want to point this out on your
book and the subtitle you have it'scalled Escaping the rabbit Hole. How did
the bunk conspiracy theories using facts,logic in respect Yep, big big deal.

(38:45):
And I usually talk about this whenwhen like I do a podcast and
how do I approach people and stuffand talk about not being a dick.
You don't want to be deaful,you don't want to be confrontation or unless
they're a psychic, well not really. But you want to be nice,

(39:07):
You want to you want to starta conversation. You want to talk to
them, you want to talk withthem, not at them. But I
like that you put it in thesubtitle of about being respectful. It's important.
It is. And I wanted toget that across to people so that
they would know what the book wasabout. Like the book isn't just about
look at these silly conspiracy theorists andhere's five hundred reasons why they are wrong,

(39:30):
because that's just kind of a pointlessbook. Because if you want five
hundred reasons why the long wrong,they could just you could just look it
up on Google. It's kind ofa it's more like a structured way as
to how to approach it. Andwith this material in there as well.
And I also have you know,interviews with people who were down the rabbit
hole and got out, and thatperspective on how they got out and people

(39:52):
making fun of them wasn't wasn't anythingthat helped any of them or anybody that
i've i've i've ever talked to.And when people get out there is people
essentially get out by themselves, andyour role in helping them is to help
them get out themselves. It's notto pull them out, it's not to

(40:14):
force them out. It's by thrustingall these facts down their throats. It's
to kind of give them a foundationupon which they can step and then get
higher up out of this this metaphoricalrabbit hole. And to do that you
need to you need to understand them, which means you need to respect them

(40:35):
as people. That you've got togive them some respect that they are at
least trying to understand, which mostpeople are. Most people they're trying to
understand the world, and they aregood people, which you know, you
might think, how could that possiblygo wrong? But people try to understand,
but then they get sucked down intoa certain what we call a crippled

(40:57):
epistemology where they've got this this setof information sources around them that is just
is just feeing the nonsense all thetime, and yet they think that this
set of information sources is all true. So they've got an epistemology and not
a knowledge system around them that theythink it is true because that's all all

(41:20):
that they know and all that they'refamiliar with right now, and they've got
sucked into it. And your youryour part of your job is just kind
of to knock down the walls aroundthat that crippled deposit epistemology, garden for
one of a better word, andshow them the outside world. And a
lot of times that's the hardest thingbecause they're so resistance to outside facts.

(41:43):
You know. You see, ifyou if you're able to do like fact
checking online, you send someone toa Snopes article, people who are into
these these other spheres of knowledge willlaugh at Snopes because they think Snopes is
disinformation. Well, it's not,like you and more of the stuff on

(42:05):
Snokes is great stuff. It's verywell researched and very accurate. But they
think that it's not because they thinkthat their information sources are correct, and
your information sources are you know,whatever, fake news or disinformation or something
to pable them for the masses soyou as a friend talking to somebody,

(42:28):
sometimes you're the only link that theyhave to the real world. They've got
this this this this crippled epistemology inwhich their brains live and you're on the
outside. So if you can likegive them a little bit more information,
if it will expand their world,and every little helps, Yeah, yeah,
it does. I do like that. In reading this book, you

(42:52):
give examples you have talked to peoplethat have come out of this rabbit hole
and and it's it's fascinating to hearpeople's stories, um that are that are
down there and how they they comeout of it. And that leads into
your your podcast Tales from the rabbitHole, where you actually talk to people

(43:14):
that were into these conspiracy theories andyou get their their perspective and how they
either dug themselves out or if becauseI correct me if I'm wrong. You've
had people on that still are involvedbut although also out of them and tell

(43:35):
us about that. Yeah. Ihave that kind of full spectrum of people
on, like I have like scientistsand researchers on, like I had Elizabeth
Loftis on Once the Memory I DavidKeith, the geoengineering researchers, So I've
had like actual scientists in part becausethey work into sex. These conspiracy theories
like Elizabeth Loftis is next butt onmemory and a lot of conspiracy theories arrived

(43:58):
because someone misremembers some thing, orthey have an eyewitness accounts or something.
And we know that eyewitness accounts arevery unreliable. But that's hard to communicate
to people. But anyway, youasked about the believers who are and the
people who got out of the rabbithole. That's I usually start by asking
them what their origin story is,how they got into the rabbit hole,

(44:22):
because I think that's a great wayof starting any conversation, like with someone
you know, regardless of where theyare on their journey, understanding how they
started can be very important because itcan it gives you information and it also
helps them kind of go back andreflect upon, you know, why they
actually got into it. But it'sa nicely ncuous question, how did you

(44:45):
get into this? How did youfirst hear about chem trails or weir wolves
or whatever. And they will tellyou. Usually they will tell you that
they saw a video. Nowadays,almost invariably they'll say that they saw some
video that had some information that madethem think, and then they started researching.

(45:06):
And researching for them usually consists ofmore videos, so they will watch
one and then YouTube will suggest another, or they will go looking for these
other videos, and then they willjust get kind of pulled further down and
down the rabbit hole. And thenwith the origin story, there's all the
stuff that happens in there. Ofcourse, like you I asked them about,

(45:27):
you know, did they talk tode bankers? And quite often they
big some of them don't even knowthat debunking was a thing, or skepticism
was a thing, or that therewere all these resources that they could have
looked at. Then I asked themabout what their exit story was, and
it's quite often it's they get toa stage in their their journey where there's

(45:49):
kind of like enough pressure built upfrom them hearing things, and then it
kind of pivots about one thing.They will hear one fact that they thought
was false, they thought was true, and they now see is actually false
and they think, well, whydid I believe this one thing for so
long? You know, why didI actually think this was a fact,
Like you know, if it's aflat earth, for example, they might

(46:12):
think that ships come back into comeback over the horizon if you zoom in
with your binoculars. And then theyfinally go to an ocean and look at
it with the binoculars and they findthat it doesn't and they realized that they
were they were wrong all this time. You know, there's the various other
examples, like the chemtrail thing,like the one in the book. The
classic example was this guy who's hisentry story and his exit story were the

(46:36):
same thing. It was this thingcalled ballast barrels, which are these big
barrels of water. They look likebeer barrels, and they're on a plane
and they've got all these tubes flyingbetween them, laid out between them,
and it looks like it's a planeset up to spraak some kind of chemicals,
and so people use this as evidence. But this guy, yeah,

(46:57):
this sucked him into the theory.But then years later someone took the time
to actually explain to him what theseballast barrels actually were and that they weren't
actually chemical spraying barrels in planes forthe purpose of chemp trails. And once
he's got the real explanation and ithad got through to him, just this
one bit of it. Then thingsstart to unravel, and I think this

(47:19):
is a very common thing. Youkind of think, you know, you
push people through a certain thing andthey come out the other side. But
it's more like you kind of buildpeople up. They build themselves up to
a certain kind of fragile position,and then it just takes a shift in
perspective so they can see things ina certain way and then they start looking

(47:40):
at things and say, oh,this is wrong, if that's wrong,
or maybe I should check this out, I should do research on this.
And then I'm going to research this. And then they look up the debunking
sites, which they never looked upbefore, but now they realize that they
can be wrong about things, sothat the people that have been telling them
things can be wrong about things.It allows them to look the look up

(48:00):
these things and see what the alternativeexplanations are. And then it cascades.
They see more and more things wrong, and lots of them. The entire
house of cars collapses and they endup being turning into skeptics. Essentially,
not always, but it definitely doeshappen. So you know, don't don't
be disheartened if you don't see people'sbeliefs being diminished. When you're explaining things,

(48:28):
you're constantly giving people context, whichis putting things into the structure which
will eventually collapse at a later date. But if you keep doing it,
then it will allow them to bein that certain mindset which will allow the
whole house of cars to collapse,because they will be kind of primed to

(48:50):
question things a little bit more thanif you hadn't been there supplying them with
this information. I think one ofthe hardest things people have two set for
themselves is that they can be wrong. I think that's really it's a hurdle
because you get into these beliefs andsome people structure their entire lives around them,

(49:12):
and to find out that you're wrong. To an example from what I'm
used to is usually like ghost huntersthat I interact with are so heavily invested
in their beliefs, not only likespending a lot of their lives doing it,
but financially, they are really investedin a lot of this equipment.

(49:35):
They spend thousands of dollars. Andto be faced with something where they have
a belief or a claim and it'schallenged and found out that they were wrong.
It's it's it's a blow because it'sit's very hard to accept it because
they spend all this time, spendall this money, and now it's like,
oh shit, I was wrong aboutthat, and what else am I

(49:59):
wrong about? And I've come acrossthat a few times where you almost you
almost sense like a despair in theirvoice. Yes, and it's it's disheartening,
but it is, but they'll getover it. Yes, I think
it's the thing there is. It'sit's disappointing, but you know in a

(50:19):
year later they're going to be anew person and you know better for it.
I mean, I guess you could. You could argue. It's sometimes
you have to ask yourself, Ye, should I be disabusing this person of
their their beliefs if they get somuch enjoyment out of it. You know,
someone's some kind of casual ghost hunteror whatever and they think they see

(50:39):
sprites in the wood? Ah?I mean should you just let them have
their fun? Yeah? Is itactually a noble endeavor in any way to
to to disabuse someone's fantasis if itis not causing any harm? M It's
I usually don't. I mean,if I'm out in a crowd or an

(51:02):
event. It's not like I'm activelyoverhearing conversations and if I hear something wrong,
it's like, oh, well,whoa, you're wrong. No,
I usually wait until somebody actually approachesme and and ask for an opinion,
or come on a show like thisand ask for an opinion, and then
yes, by certainly I'll give it. Um. But yeah, that's a

(51:23):
good that's a good question. Askourselves. Is it worth it? Um?
But yeah, I mean if theyif they want knowledge, if they
want to understand something better, andI have that knowledge to provide, then
I most certainly will Yeah. Yeah, right. A lot of times there
is harm being done by these conspiracytheories, like you know, like he's

(51:45):
people people are spending money on thingslike cameras, who Whatnotuh you don Let's
say, like, what's the harmthat like people looking looking at UFOs?
People will will spend lots of moneyon fantasy long distance cameras and infrared cameras
and things like that. But yeah, people do that any way regardless of
look at birds. So the factthat they're looking at UFOs doesn't really make

(52:07):
any real difference. I think they'restill taking photographs, which is fine.
Is when people start doing things likemaking health decisions based on their conspiracy theories,
like if they think that chem trailsare poisoning them and they have to
buy some kind of chemtrail detox,which is the thing that infra wars used
to sell I think I think calledKEM defender and it has a little picture

(52:30):
of a plane leaping contrails on it. What was it? Any idea?
It was like vitamin C, amixture of vitamins and something like I don't
know, like UB of some sortwhich or something that you wouldn't think of,
probably some homeopathics. Yeah, peoplewaste the money on things like that,

(52:53):
and then that people don't vaccinate theirchildren and their children die, which
is one of the more serious impacts, or they don't vaccinate themselves, or
and then they catch COVID nineteen andtheir grandparents die. So yeah, there
were these these real consequences of thingsin the health demain which are very very
serious. And then like you yousee consequences like what we're seeing now in

(53:17):
in politics with people spreading conspiracy theoriesand a lot of that people people can
believe these conspiracy theories about politics veryvery easily, because they have all these
other conspiracy theories of the already believeall these q and armed people. They
you know, they believe in thisthis complicated theory, but they also believe

(53:40):
in in nine to eleven, anda lot of them believe in chem trials,
and a lot of them are someof them are flat earth as.
Even I saw some flat earth guysin demonstrating outside the Arizonaccounting Center. So
this whole kind of an ecosystem.And if you can kind of weed one
area of the e system, ithelps in other areas as well. But

(54:01):
if you just let everything just growaway, then it just provides this this
a this place where other things cantake root and leads to more serious problems
in the future. Do you findthat, say, a trend per se
where if a person believes say itin it like the flat earther um,

(54:22):
but they will also believe in otherconspiracy theories like nine to eleven and other
things. Is it like I guess, if they believe one, do you
find that they believe a lot morethey believe? But people people usually have
one conspiracy theory which is both theirfavorite conspiracy theory and the most extreme thing

(54:45):
that they believe like a chemtrail personwill generally believe that nine to eleven is
an inside job, and they willbelieve that vaccines are bad for you,
and they will believe that JFK wasthis sated by the CIA. But they
won't believe that the moon landing isfaked. Some of them will, but

(55:05):
you know, then then then theybecome moonlanding people who believe in it.
So there's this kind of spectrum ofconspiracies like which get more and more extreme.
You get the simplistic ones at oneend, like big farm of taking
their vaccine test results or something likethat, and then really complicated ones like
aliens actually being interdimensional visitors from outsidethe matrix who are trying to free us

(55:34):
from insulatment from the lizard child eaters. I love how you can say that
that people believe. I love howthat that strand of a string of words
came out of your mouth and astreet face. Well, there's there's so
many super weird conspiracies, like effinitelywith the mud flood conspiracies mud Flood,

(55:57):
I have not heard that. Ohlucky that it's pretty interesting. It's basically
it's kind of an alternative history.Theory. I think. I think how
it happened is that some guy noticedthat some buildings have windows that go below
the sidewalk in some cities, andthey couldn't figure out why this would be,

(56:17):
and they thought that there must havebeen a big flood at some point,
and there was a big flood andall the buildings got covered in all
this mud and they had to buildup the sidewalks, and that's why all
these buildings have these windows blow thewall. And they think that this big
flood, this big mud flood,has been covered up for some reason and

(56:43):
it's been hidden from us. Butif you look around, you see all
these clues that this mud flood happened. You'll see things like these, liking
a seattle has a part of thecity's undergrounds that could only have happened from
a mud flood. You'll see liketrees scoured away from hillside and things like
that. It's all part of thisbig mudflood that is being covered up.

(57:05):
And the whole mudflood theory then tiesinto this entire convoluted alternative reality about what
actually happened over the last one hundredyears and how history has been faked up
to a certain point. You know, there are some people that think things
like the Middle Ages never existed,or certain things in history never existed.

(57:28):
And but then you get to peoplewho think that, you know, the
nineteen twenties didn't exist, of thenineteen twenties were completely different to how we
thought of them, all, thatthe American Civil War never happened, things
like that. So there's alternative histories, but it's the sheer ridiculousness of the
evidence that they point to. Theywill actually put photos up of a city

(57:49):
street and the shower building and someof the windows go below the street,
and yeah, it's a waste oftime, But I actually look into some
of these sometimes and it's either becauseit was built on a hillside so that
some of the window naturally go tograde, or they have like kind of
a basement with kind of like alower level around, like you know you
see in New York streets you godown steps to the basement thing and it's

(58:13):
below the street level. Or thebuilding was originally a higher up building and
then you know, they came andthey put a road in, and it
was they built it up, orthey had to raise buildings around because they
had to put sewers in in thestreets, so you know, there are
actually reasons for all these things,and it does feel like a waste of

(58:35):
time looking into them, but it'skind of fun. And yeah, what's
what's most interesting is why do peoplebelieve these things? Do they actually believe
these things? It seems incredible whenyou're looking to things like like that or
flat earth that anybody could actually believeit. You automatically assume that they're just
joking when you first hear these things, so they're just you know, playing

(58:58):
some kind of game. But somepeople genuinely seem to actually believe these things.
That is fascinating. I part partof the I guess investigation or just
a conversation when someone brings up anidea, I love getting into that.
I will just play the role Idon't want to I'm wanna say. I

(59:22):
don't want to say I play playdumb, but I basically just don't try
to dmunk anything. If someone comesup with a theory that's kind of like
this, this mud flapp thing,I can't wait to look into this because
I haven't heard of it and itsounds fascinating. But I will ask questions
like I'll tell me about this becauseI want to hear why they believe it,

(59:45):
how they got into it, becauseI do find that fascinating, just
the whole psychology of that behind whythey believe it. It's it's amazing,
and you go down that rabbit holejust with that, just figuring out why
they like it. Um, Iwant to put up a comment here.
Uh, it's not a question.It's a comment from John who says,

(01:00:06):
Mick, I just bought your book. I've been looking exactly for a book
like this. I've got a fewfriends who seem to be stuck in logic
traps that they can't escape involving conspiracytheories. Thank you, awesome, thank
you, thank you. You've gotyou gotta interesting what you know by what
what you mean by logic traps?So what constitutes a logic trap? John?

(01:00:31):
Um, please comment? Explain whatyou were talking about here? And
thank you Henrick Rick, And wegot who else we got? I love
this? Mhmm, thank you,Carl got some things. I love it.
I love it. Uh, let'ssee what else up? We got

(01:00:54):
a question. So we're we're gonnaget we're gonna start moving away from chem
trails, contrails and stuff because peopleare starting to ask more more like paranormal
related questions. Let's let's start gettinginto those. Aldra, she's got a
question about what do you think aboutthe Mandela effect theories? Well, the

(01:01:16):
Mandela effect is this idea that thereis some kind of parallel timeline that is
intersecting with this timeline, and thatwe are seeing things from one timeline or
the other. And so different peoplehave different memories of the past. And
like some people think that Nelson Mandeladied in prison, some people think that

(01:01:37):
he didn't. He actually was releasedand became president, which he actually did.
This essentially is basically human excuse me, human psychology that people don't understand
how memory works. You know,Elizabeth Loftus will be a good person to
talk about this. And they assumethat their memory are correct, and no

(01:02:00):
one likes to think that their memoriesare wrong. So it's much more comforting
to think that their memories are correct. It's much more reasonable, and it
seems more correct for you as aperson to think that your memories are correct.
And so when you misremember something likeyou remember the words of the song
being a certain way, and thenyou look at the liner notes and it's

(01:02:22):
actually something completely different. You think, what's more likely that I misremembered this,
or that an alternate timeline has whiskedin and changed all the liner nests
of all these these songs into thesethese new lyrics. But my memory remains
because it's from the alternate timeline,or you know, I'm from the alternate

(01:02:43):
timeline, or they are. Andthat explanation sounds more convincing for some reason
than just being misremembering. But itgets even more convincing because you see more
and more examples of these things.And the classic one I think is the
Nielsenmandella, of course, but thenthere's the Benstein Bears, which I'm not
familiar with, but apparently a verypopular kid's book. People remember it as

(01:03:06):
being the Bernstein Bears or the BernsteinBears. Yeah, they have. They
have different pronunciations and different spellings ofit, and they think that that that's
how it was, but now it'snot that way, So how could that
be it was like that, Nowit's not. Obviously their memory is correct.
And then people actually find things likethey'll find toy Bear steam Bears and

(01:03:28):
it actually has the deep and spellingon it because people making the toys have
made this obvious mistake in spelling orpronunciation or whatever, and so they start
gathering this evidence, yeah, evidencewhich mostly consists of them misremembering things,
other people misremembering things, and thenother people misremembering things, and then reading
about that and then going back andthinking, oh, yeah, that sounds

(01:03:50):
true. I'd remember it being thatway as well. Like what did does
they just say to Luke before?Yeah, it's like there's this website set
up who say, like, there'stwenty movie lines that you remember misremember and
that's all it is. It's justyou misremembering things. But then people misremember

(01:04:14):
the same things the whole Luke,I am your father misremembering things. Everybody
has the same thing, and millionsof people have that same misremembrance of that
thing. And so if all thesepeople misremember it, then someone has the
idea that that could actually be athing. And the reason is not just
that it's a natural slip of thebrain. It's a slip of time and

(01:04:34):
alternate dimensions slipping into our reality.But it's not it's just your memory.
It's a It seems to be apopular theme in some time traveling movies and
or TV shows where somebody goes back, changes something, comes back to the
present and then they have this memoryof an alternate timeline and everyone else is

(01:04:56):
wrong. How does that even work? Though? Can't work magic? So
let's let we're gonna dive into someghost stuff here. So Moon Joey,
which is an awesome name. Theirquestion is one of the more popular beliefs

(01:05:17):
paranormal beliefs is that cold spots areintinative of spirit presence. A main argument
against this hypothesis is that it violatesthe second law of thermo dynam dynamics and
entropy. I would love to seewhy it would. Can you explain why,
Moon Joey. Why does it violatethe second lord of thermodynamics and entropy?

(01:05:39):
There you go, Well, wewill come back to that. I
guess we should say what they arethe second lord thermodynamics. I believe it's
entropy always increases, uh, thewrong order. You should look at it.
Love thermo dynamics. Let's let's lookit up. This is part of

(01:05:59):
the show, so I mean sometimesfat checking in real time. Yeah,
we're fact checking. Let's see thefirst law of second law of thermodynamics says
that entropy of an isolated system alwaysincreases. Isolated systems spontaneously evolved towards thermal
equilibrium, the state of actionum entropyof a system. More safely, the

(01:06:25):
entropy of the universe only increases andnever decreases. So entropy is essentially disorder.
The thing in the universal level isessentially things cooling down. All the
heat of the universe is settling downinto muge a flat line. But yeah,
the definition of entropy is the secondlaw of thermodynamics is the entropy decreases

(01:06:53):
in a closed system, and we'renot in a closed system, so it's
completely irrelevant, right, Okay,it doesn't mean anything, and people bring
it up all the time and saythis violates the second lot of thermodynamics.
But we're not in a closed system. We're on a planet that's being bombarded
by the Sun. And you couldargue that the universe itself is a closed

(01:07:15):
system. Unless you're living in athermos flask or you're living in some kind
of NASA capsule that's isolating you fromthe rest of the world, you're not
in a closed system. So coldspots existing doesn't violate anything. It just
means that there's a differential in heatfor some reason. Yeah, and were
driving. I mean, if youascribe that reason two ghosts, yeah,

(01:07:40):
yeah, I think you've got moreissues than simply saying it violates the second
you're law of thermodynamics, because ifyou're positing that ghosts could do anything,
then you kind of actually explain,you know, how are these ghosts doing
something? But now they don't reallyviolate the second law of thermodynamics if they
they have something. They apparently ghostshave some kind of power, they have

(01:08:02):
some kind of energy, and ifthey don't, then they don't exist.
So you could argue that, butit's kind of like almost like you're arguing
by semantics at that point, whichisn't really very useful argument and real the
real issue with ghosts is do theyexist? Nor is it possible for them
to exist? You could you canmake a fairly convincing argument from physics that

(01:08:26):
nothing could exist without you know,some kind of energy substrate that we know
of, you know, some wayof containing the energy, some way of
having storing energy locally, so itcan they be expended in some kind of
intelligent way, So you need that. But what's been posited with ghosts is

(01:08:47):
that there's a yet unknown or yetunexplained mechanism for doing that, and so
you can't say, oh, that'simpossible, because the answer then is,
oh, we just haven't discovered whatthe actual mechanism is yet. So yeah,
so no, I mean with that, UM, I would also say

(01:09:08):
that there's a lot of more simplerexplanations for the alleged cold spots. Um.
Oftentimes people don't bother to look atwindows that are open like a crack
or especially in older places, Um, that are you're talking like a hundred
years old or give or take,where there's gaps between windows and gaps between

(01:09:29):
door frames where you can get drafts. Um. Yeah. Or if the
floor like my favorite hardwood floor andthere's a few like little gaps where I
think comes in through the we havea raised foundation, Like if you if
you have some any kind of cruelspace, I raised foundation, then that's
in the summer will be cold inthe rest of the house and yeah cold

(01:09:49):
that doesn't rise, but a draftpressure can can bring that said, obviously,
there's lots of other reasons, butI think that's what he was asking
there is is there a physical wayof proving that this isn't from a guest
and no, no, there isn'treally because you know, there could be
a ghost doing it by some methodthat we do not understand. Right,

(01:10:11):
So Carol asked a question. Asa National Park Service interpretive ranger, I'm
not sure what that is. We'retold people are more often, we're told
people are more open to new ideaswhen in the national parks. Are there
other places situations where people are moreopen minded? Interesting well, probably in

(01:10:32):
the pub, having a huge rinksor anytime you come to my house.
Yeah. I think an interpreted rangeris someone who basically takes you around the
park and tells you something about thehistory, and tells you what the trees
are in the nature and things,and then discusses the plans for the national
park and the history and whatnot.Very good, very good job, Very

(01:10:56):
something that's needed, I think.But it's essentially though they're acting as teachers.
And when people are in national parks, I don't think they've become more
open minded because they're in a mysticalspace of being in a national park.
They are just usually genuinely interested inwhat's there because there's usually something like going
on, like there's there's a NativeAmerican history component to them, and then

(01:11:19):
there's the geology of the park,and then there's the nature of the park,
and then the issues of conservancy andthen land management and things like that,
And these are Anybody who visits theNational Park and takes the time to
sign up for a tour with aninterpretive ranger is going to be the type
of person who's who's interested in thattype of thing. So it might be

(01:11:41):
a little bit of a selection biasthere, and that you're just you're just
seeing people who are really interested inin in new ideas and hearing things.
People might be more open minded aboutconservation, but I don't think if you
picked a random person from the Yosemiteparking lot that you would there were necessary,
would be any more open minded thansomeone from the Costco parking lot.

(01:12:08):
All right. Carol also follows upwith another question, isn't this conspiracy culture
and indictment on our education system?No? Um, I don't think so.
I think it's possible we could dobetter, but unless you you're going,

(01:12:30):
we almost like have to structure theeducational system around preventing people from getting
tricked into these things. There's aninteresting couple of documentaries on TV at the
moment. One is called the Vowand the other one is called Seduced,
and they're both about the Nexium Cult. And the leader of the Nexium Cult

(01:12:51):
was recently just sentenced to one hundredand ninety years in prison, and he
ran this this cult where basically here recruited people into this kind of self
help pyramid scheme and they had torecruit other people, and then they became
this complicated sex cult where people werebrought in as sex slaves and branded and
things like that. But he deliberatelytargeted people who were very successful in life,

(01:13:15):
usually very well educated, and usuallyquite well off. So they were
actually the best products of our educationalsystem, and they quite often had advanced
degrees and things. And there weredoctors, actual mds who fell for this
cult. It's it's education in termsof like being better educating in the traditional

(01:13:41):
sense. I don't think is failingas the sure if people are less intelligent,
they usually more likely to get conspiracytheories. But you get all these
people who are very very intelligent people, even with PhDs, who fall for
these conspiracy theories. So you know, perhaps perhaps I might modify answer from
no to yes and say that perhapswe need to be more specific in addressing

(01:14:06):
conspiracy theories and disinformation as a topicin itself and not simply educating people better
in general. It needs to bean extra specific course that we have in
schools criticals thinking. I totally agreewith that. I've been I've been preaching
that a little bit, you know, in circle that I think critical thinking

(01:14:29):
should be taught at a young age. Get them while they're young, and
they do that. They do ita lot of schools. Actually, I
have several teachers who are friends ofmine, and they talk about they do
actually do those things, and thereare classes on disinformation. I recently talked
to a teacher and I actually helpedwith both a lesson plan and I did

(01:14:54):
a video where the kids were ableto answer ask me questions about different topic
and it was the class was aboutcritical thinking and she uses paranormal topics to
keep their interest. Yeah, it'sinteresting, like formal critical thinking. It's
something I have a mixed mixed feelingsabout it. Mixed feelings about it.

(01:15:19):
It's like something I personally don't feelthat I actually do. Personally, I
don't think I do this this typeof critical thinking that that would be taught
in schools. I feel like Ihave a propensity for digging down and looking
for explanations, and I'm very familiarwith the subject matter now, so that

(01:15:42):
allows me to talk about it andyou know, I can figure stuff out.
But then I see, like withinthe skeptical movement, people talk about
fallacies, like all these logical fallacies. Actual had a little argument with Stephen
Devella about this a few years ago, like the idea that learning fallacies is

(01:16:04):
useful, I'm not entirely sure aboutit. Is it actually useful to be
able to point out a fallacy?It's kind of useful. Like with skeptics
discussing things amongst themselves, you cansay, oh, yeah, that is
the the ego propter po hoc fallacy. Actually I don't even know what that
is because I don't really know howthe fallacies. Yeah, and you know,

(01:16:26):
non skeptics guide to the universe,they often do like, what's that
fallacy thing? Right? And Ithink, like Janeavella like said, ah,
that's it's that non sequitur, andSteve was like, Jay, all
fallacies and non sequitor because that's allthe fallacy is. It's it's done SECUITI
means does not follow, And that'sall the fallacy? Is it? Just

(01:16:47):
you know that does not follow fromwhat came before, but in various different
ways. And you can identify thesedifferent ways. And if they teach all
these ways in school, I wasnever taught all these I don't know most
of the fallacers. I know strawMan, I know Admin, I know
I still I can think of offthe top of my head. And yes,

(01:17:08):
I can deback things very well,and I can communicate things with people.
But would it would I be betterat doing it if I knew all
the fallacies and I could spot fallacies. I don't know. I'm not sure
if it's a particularly useful thing.So I'm not sure how you would teach
critical thinking in a way that's useful. Perhaps if there's somebody who's been on
a critical thinking course and then laterin life found it to be useful or

(01:17:30):
felt that it stopped them getting intoa rabbit hole, it would be a
good person to talk to. Ithink I understand where you're coming from because
I've been asked. I asked acouple of times to give information or to
hey, why don't you teach somethingon critical thinking? Like how do you
do it, and for me,it's very it's difficult to actually explain how

(01:17:54):
I employ it, Like I knowwhat it's supposed to be, but I
get it. I guess I'm thesame way as what you were explaining.
It's I know how to bring thingsout. And Yeah, if you look
up critical thinking and look up thedefinition of critical thinking and then look at
courses in critical thinking, they're alldifferent. They are all these different definitions

(01:18:16):
of critical thinking. It's like ifsome people define it as using your faculties
to consider problems, It's like whatit's just like, uh, like demanding
evidence the thing, checking sources.Definitely, you say the definition, But
where you getting this definition. Let'ssee defining critical thing from the Foundation for

(01:18:42):
Critical Thinking. Oh they would know, they would. I mean they're a
whole foundation. So this actually goesinto get out of the way hate the
pop up ads come up. Uh, critical thinking is a rich concept that
has been developing through this blah blahblah. Oh wow, this is really
long winded. There you go.It's like someone says, critical thinking,

(01:19:04):
Oh, look at up on theinst of that. So it's critical thinking
is the intellectually disciplined process of activelyand skillfully, conceptualizing, applying, analyzing,
synthesizing, and or evaluating information gatheredfrom or generated by observation, experience,

(01:19:25):
reflection, reasoning, or communication asthe guide belief and matter, matter
divisions, clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound, evidence,
good reasons, depth, breath,and fairness. That's right, that

(01:19:45):
whatever I like, so that someonecomes to you with the problem, like
instead, my friend is he playsin chem trials, and then he said,
well, just teach him some criticalthinking that will help. There he
goes, and he looks up andthis is a definition, And the definition
is basically being a genius if youjust simply be way, way more intelligent
than you are now, super disciplinedin the way you think and thinking in

(01:20:09):
a certain way that's is laid outhere. I mean words you don't actually
understand. Maybe it's more like forme, I guess some of the things
that come up, and I dotry to in some of the lectures that
I've done, you do try togo through steps that I take. I
try to narrow it down into somestep like attention to detail, what to

(01:20:32):
look for kind of how to tella good resource from a bad resource,
and stuff like that. So,yeah, critical thinking, You're right,
there's several definitions. This long windedone that I went out, I would
never I would never use because Ithink I would get to the second line

(01:20:53):
and people would just be bored andwalk away from it. But yeah,
I mean I try to define itas simply as possible. Critical thinking is
essentially it's the first word is critical, which is kind of like criticism,
and is that you you want tofind flaws and what's being presented to you,
So you're you're critiquing what is whatis coming in, So you're saying,

(01:21:17):
you know, what is the evidencebehind this thing, and you're looking
to see what is the quality ofthis evidence and who does it come from?
And does this person have a goodrecord with this type of thing?
And are the other people are themore the more than one source of information
here? But this like there's thisother stuff about using your faculties and like

(01:21:43):
applying rigor and logic and things likethat. Those are things that you can't
just tell someone to do that.You can't just say you use logic more
you can tell them to check yoursources. You can there just like very
simple rules of thumb that you cangive people, But to be intellectually rigorous
requires years and years of practice inbeing intellectually rigorous. Like I think I'm

(01:22:09):
intellectually rigorous to some degree, butI probably have huge blind spots because most
of my stuff is very ad hocand it's just doing certain things that I
find interesting. So I'm good atdoing those things, terrible at doing other
things. But you know, tobe to fulfill that description you just read
there, you would you you'd haveto be some kind of university professor,

(01:22:30):
and you know, expert engineer,and philosophy major and some kind of I
don't know, relationship counsel are allrolled into one. I teach critical thinking
in schools is a good thing,but I think we need to focus on

(01:22:54):
very practical aspects of critical thinking.I agree. I agree. I would
rather do instead of I don't knowhow to say it right, um,
because I don't want to say justteach a class as in like just stand
up there and talk. I wantto I want to have like a practical
workshop where here's a mystery, let'slet's dig into it and just go through

(01:23:19):
the steps. Let's take a brandnew mystery and just let's attack it and
everybody come along with me. Well, we'll do it, but I'm not
going to do everything for you.I'm going to offer suggestions and then look
for suggestion. We'll talk about itand you know, start doing our research
and where to look. And yougive people these little little things they can

(01:23:40):
do, these little heuristics. Um. Yeah, heuristic is a basically a
made up method in a way,just a method that works, like a
rule of firm or a little apractice that people are found to be useful
the heist and you get them topeople and then you demonstrate them working with
the amples like I'm sure you've donethings like with with photography, You've you've

(01:24:02):
done various things that you can youknow, look at the exit data,
things like that, just something youshould always do. Or you see can
you see motion blur? And ifyou see one light with a little path
around it, see if those arethe lights with a little path around its,
little little tip, little little tipslike that. Yeah, things like
that, which are you know,you're not teaching people critical thinking, You're

(01:24:24):
teaching them useful skills and little littlethings that they can actually use, practical,
practical things stuff. And this comeswith experience that a lot of the
stuff. Yeah, that came withyears of experience just looking at photos and
thousands and thousands of photos and realizing, Okay, I'm reading books and manuals

(01:24:45):
and understanding learning. Um so yeah, I totally, I totally get it.
I can. Yeah, let's see, I have a couple of questions
here. We still have what yougot about a half hour ago, which
is nice. Let's see, charlsays, have you ever have you ever
strangled someone in your mind while interviewingthem on your podcast? And if so,

(01:25:10):
does or does your chill nature extendto all? Also, do you
have plans for another book anytime soon? Wow? You are a very killed
person. Yeah. I guess Iget a little frustrated sometimes, but usually
if someone is being particularly obstinate,it's just more interesting and I just try
to kind of drill down and justfocus. And you've got to remain calm

(01:25:33):
to do that. And I dohave plans for another book sometime, but
not soon. I'm thinking of doingtwo books, one which will possibly be
a sequel to this book, buildingupon it, and then another one which
I'm thinking of doing a book onthe science of conspiracy theories. I think
the various aspects of science and howscience can be how conspiracy theories can be

(01:25:59):
used as a teach tool, becausethere's so many things I've learned from conspiracy
theories that people It's like an interestingway of presenting signs to people. M
all right, Uh, I lookforward to those. Another question, Oh
wow, you've got to put wordsin here. I'm not going to even
try to ye question from John.Besides being simple, simply true, what

(01:26:21):
separates a conspiracy like the Dreyfus affairand tusks simplest trials that actually happened,
and something like the nine to elevenconspiracies and chem trials? Well, I
mean that's uh. One is atheory and the other one is something that's

(01:26:43):
accepted reality. So the nine elevenconspiracies and chem trials are theoretical and they
have proposed evidence which has almost invariablybeen debunked. So there's nothing really outstanding
that's that's there. The Driver,the Tuskegee syphilis trials just a history the
things that happened. Now, beforethey happened, you could say this was

(01:27:05):
a conspiracy theory that came true.The Driver's affair was this French soldier was
framed in the press, I think, and Emil Zola came to his rescue
and there was this big, big, big rough haha in France about it.
Before it was settled in court orwherever. There was probably two sides

(01:27:29):
to the argument. So you couldargue that that was a conspiracy theory then,
but it's it's it's now settled.But like then the Driver's affair,
I think it was probably something thatwas a very polarizing thing in France,
and so it's kind of like this. It's just just a big argument and
one side is trying to defend somethingand the other side it's trying to attack
it, and this is a bigpublic thing and then eventually the facts come

(01:27:51):
out and they never be what reallyhappened. But that's not really what happens
with with conspiracy theories. They areusually very minority things and they're very usually
very uncomporting with reality. They don'treally fit with what's actually going on when

(01:28:11):
you look into them. Yeah,the Tuskegee syphilis experiment is something you could
very easily imagining happening, like peopledoctors giving injecting people with syphilis, injecting
African Americans with syphilis, to studythem and they're lying to them. You
know, that's something that seems veryplausible now and probably would have done back
then to the people that if theyunderstood what's going on, if they had

(01:28:34):
the information here. That's there's abig dealth of information back then, obviously.
But yeah, there's this constant questionof like, what are these conspiracy
theories that came true? But theyweren't really conspiracy theories back then. They
were bad things that happened that wererevealed, And right now we have bad

(01:28:56):
things that have been theorized that havenot being revealed. I probably never will
be I think that kind of twodifferent things. All right, So we're
winding up, and I know nobodyasked about it, but I'm going to
ask about it because you were anexpert on UFO videos, so I would
just love to hear, I guessbasically a summary, if you can,

(01:29:24):
of the summary of the of whatthe three recently famous UFO videos, the
flear or the tik Tak, thegimbal and the go Fast videos, because
I've been asked them countless times onthe show in the past. Um,
there's a few UFO enthusiasts that comeon and ask about them. So if

(01:29:46):
you could, I don't want to, I don't want to take all of
your time for this, but giveme my whistle stopped. Per version of
it, Well, the Flair incidentsis you know, it's a video.
But he actually started with like aa sighting of what was described as a
tic tac, like a like alittle little little kind of tic tac shape

(01:30:08):
with legs and this this pilot saidthat he was flying through the air and
he was vected to this position inspace, and they they got all concerned
about it. They didn't know whatwas going on. And they got there
and they saw what looked like atik tak and it was described as being

(01:30:30):
tic tac shaped with like little littlelegs coming out from underneath it. And
they said it made these these strangemovements and that they couldn't follow it,
and it was going really really fast, and then it flew off into the
distance. This was preceded by radarsightings and stuff as a much more complicated
version of the story. But thenanother pilot goes out and when he gets

(01:30:51):
there, there's no tic tac,there's no tik tac to be seen,
and but he gets a pink onhis radar and he points his camera in
a certain direction and the camera pickssomething up. Now, these cameras are
very, very very powerful. Theyhave like these hundred times zoom on them,
so they're picking up things which arelike twenty miles away, more than

(01:31:15):
that forty miles away, and ifyou just point your camera in the direction,
you might get something that's the wayoff in the distance. The flour
one video, if you look atit, it just looks like a little
black blob. You can't really seeanything there at all. It doesn't look
like a white tic tac. It'snot making any any sudden moves. And
I did some analysis showing that itwasn't making any sudden moves, and at
the end of the video it lookslike it flies off really fast, but

(01:31:38):
really it's just it's just the cameramoving. Like if I was to move
my camera, it looked like Ijust moved off to the side, but
I haven't. It's just a cameramoving. I did a lot of work
on these videos, and I havea whole YouTube channel YouTube playlist of all
the videos that I did explaining whatI think they are. So if you

(01:31:59):
wouldn't have more detail, you cango that, but I think what that
video probably was was a distant plane, and I think it's consistent with that
if you analyze it. People claimthat it's moving in the video that I
think it's actually just the camera movement. And the thing is, it doesn't

(01:32:19):
seem anything at all like this thistik tak that the guy saw earlier,
because he claimed it was like movingreally very fashion on one side to the
other and zigzagging and they're flying away, But it doesn't actually do this in
the video. Nothing actually happens.It's like the most boring video a UFO.
You can imagine. It's a littletiny, little fuzzy speck and it's
very low resolution. So I thinkpeople there are kind of conflating this rather

(01:32:45):
boring video with these other events thathappened at the same time by this guy
seeing the tik tak and the radarevents and other people claiming they've seen things.
So video itself possibly is an alienspaceship or a super fast Russian anti

(01:33:08):
gravity machine far off in the distance, But the most likely thing, based
on the video itself, is thatit's just a plane. But people like
to like to say that I'm ignoringall these other things. The thing is,
there's no the thing that actually linksone thing to the other. So
if you just look at the video, if you just analyze the video,

(01:33:29):
and it's probably a plane. That'sthe flu one video, and that happened
back in two six I think Imaybe who has four. Then there's two
other videos, go Fast and gimbal, which happened at the same time,
and it was on the same flight, same pilot, but two separate events
within the same flight. I didnot know that part. Yeah, the

(01:33:53):
first one is go Fast. You'renot sure which order they came in chronologically,
but so Fast looks like it showsthe camera's looking down, you can
see the surface of the ocean,and then it looks like something flies in
really rapidly. The guy moves thecamera around try to catch it. You
have to go back and forth afew times. Eventually it locks onto this

(01:34:13):
thing and starts tracking it. Soit looks like it's moving very very fast
over the surface of the water.And so that's how they describe it.
They say it's moving at two thurstthe speed of sound over the speed over
the water. And it shows itscold and infrared, which means that it's
got no no heat source, nono engines or anything like that. So
it's moving it possibly fast, andit's cold, so it must be some
kind of weird technology, possibly alien. But on the screen of the Go

(01:34:39):
Fast video of they actually show therange to the object and the angle down
to the object, so you canactually use those two things and the height
of the plane to figure out howhigh the object is above the water.
And it turns out it's not actuallyat water level. It's actually halfway almost
exactly halfway between the plane and thewater because it's in the middle. When

(01:35:01):
the plane moves moves past it witha camera constantly focused on it, then
the camera sees the water whiz pie, and it looks like the object is
moving over the water, when reallyit's just the plane moving past the object
and the view changes due to parallax. And this is something that the math
and it is very very simple andstraightforward. Like if you also take my

(01:35:26):
my little TikTok ufo here, I'msure I could do it with this this
camera setup. But like you,if you fly around it like this,
my head's moving relative to the object. But from my perspective, it kind
of looks like this object is movingacross my computer screen, right, I
think you did? You think youdo a video out by your pool?

(01:35:49):
Yeah, I do. I havea series of videos where I demonstrate this,
and one of the best ones Idid was I put my iPhone on
a gimbal and had it tracking theobject, and so I was up on
ladder looking down at this TikTok actuallythat they had. And if you look
down from above and just move aroundand then you play back that video and

(01:36:10):
stabilize the object, which is howit actually happens with the in the video
itself, because it's tracking it veryvery very very exactly using these little gimbal
mounted mirrors that it has inside thecamera, so it's perfectly always in the
middle of the image. It reallylooks like the object is moving where it's

(01:36:30):
not moving at all. So thenI share that video. Then I do
as another video simultaneous or the sameshot with a different camera from the side,
showing me doing this dangling it overthe pool. And I actually had
to replicate this a few weeks agofor some TV TV show that's coming out
sometime next year's Top Secrets. Ican't tell you about it though, Okay,

(01:36:56):
So yeah, that's that's something thatit's explained in the sense that it's
it's it's not it's not moving veryfast over the water, so it's not
quite so amazing, and you cando a calculation of the speed and it
turns out to be just basically probablyjust drifting in the wind, probably not
moving at all, maybe moving slightly. So it's either something like a balloon,
which is the most likely explanation becauseweather balloons radiar reflectors and they get

(01:37:20):
tracked. Or it could possibly belike a large, well insulated bird.
I think that's barely unlikely, butit's a possibility, and I wouldn't like
to take it off the list.But the most likely thing is is a
balloon. And then finally, everyone'sfavorite is the Gimball video. Now,
the Gimball video looks like a flyingsourcer, which I think makes it much

(01:37:41):
more compelling to everybody. So yousee this thing kind of it looks like
it's flying along. We have thesource shaped on here. It kind of
looks like it's flying along. Saidyou know, it doesn't actually do this.
It's in the middle of the screen. So again that you've got this
parallax at so it's it's it's youcan't tell how much it is moving and

(01:38:03):
how much is a camera moving,So it looks like it's flying along like
this, and then it kind oflike that, it does like a little
twitch like that, and it justlike this big turn and it's like,
how is that even passable? Andit ends up like straight up and down
like this, and it appears tostop. I think, what's really happening?

(01:38:23):
There is a combination of two things. So the first one is parallax.
Again just like the other thing,the way the jet is actually banking
around, it's coming up behind theobject, so at first it's flying past
it, and then it's flying towardsit, so it looks like it's slowing
down when really it's not changing speedat all. It's just the relative motion

(01:38:43):
of the jets and the angle ofthe camera, which is something that it's
very difficult to wrap your head aroundbecause these super zoom cameras that are super
stabilized and super good at tracking thingsand not something you see in everyday life,
so it was quite challenging to geta camera set it where it actually
replicates it. Then the other thingis that why is it what's this sort
of shape thing, and why isit rotating? And I think what it

(01:39:05):
actually is is a glare because it'sactually infrared, and I think it's actually
looking at a jet that is flyingaway, So you're essentially looking up the
tailpipe of the jets, so you'relooking at the very hottest part of it
in infrared. So it's essentially it'slooking like looking at a very bright light,
like a like a flashlight. Yeah, flashlights. You know they're going

(01:39:28):
in one direction, but when youlook when it's when it's going straight towards
you, it's gonna be a lotbrighter than when it's over there. And
if you take us a flashlight andyou strap it to a plane like I
have done here for some reason,and then you turn on the engines pointing
at this infrared camera in simulated mode, then you've got this very bright glare

(01:39:50):
and you can't see that. Youcan't see the plane anymore. It's hidden
behind this glare. It becomes evenmore dramatic when it's further away. You
can probably the wings poking out earlier. Better to get further and further away.
The glass is a similar size,but the plane is getting smaller.
Us to go very close you cansee the wings on either side of the
glare. Yeah, okay, furtherback you're just you're just seeing the glare.

(01:40:15):
Okay, pointed out the camera,so you know the planes that it
is big, very cool, glaiousthis big and the glare you can see
here. This glare has little littlespikes on it and it can't rete with
this one. But like it's actuallya little bit longer in the horizontal than
it is in the vertical. Butthe shape of a glare is defined by

(01:40:39):
things in the camera and the surfaceof the camera. So if the camera
is cleaned in a certain way,it's like you swipe the front of the
camera, it can make the glarebe shaped more in one direction than the
other. And so if the camerarotates, then the glare is going to
rotate relative to the to the horizon. And the way these camera a set

(01:41:00):
up very complicated. Cup don't reallyhave enough time to explain it. But
the way they're set up there ontwo gimbals, and you actually need three
gimbals to track things correctly. Sofor it to track something, it needs
to actually rotate whilst it's tracking,which means it needs to it will the
image will rotate, which means itneeds to de rotate that image internally so

(01:41:20):
that it remains the same way up. And then you get this thing called
gimbal lock where you can't traverse theforward direction if you are looking down.
I can't really demonstrate it with myhand, but I have videos demonstrating it.
So when it traverses zero degrees atsome point, the course outer gimbals,
because it has inner gimbals and outergimbals. Again, it gets a

(01:41:42):
little complicated. The course outer gimbalshave to go from this orientation to this
orientation, so it has to dothis big rotation to get past this gimbal
lock in the middle, and thatmakes the glare rotate, but it doesn't
make the horizon rotate because the glareis caused by the camera rotating, and
the horizon does rotate, but hegets rotated back by the d rotation.

(01:42:05):
Mechanisms impossible to explain in a fewminutes, like you could give me like
half an hour and the budget props, I can. I can demonstrate it,
which is why you had to makeall these videos and why so many
people think that I'm full of crapbecause they don't take the time to understand

(01:42:26):
what the argument actually is. Eveneven the people who are really interested in
the topic, like Commander David Fraverer, who is the pilot who saw the
tic tac he. He was askedabout my analysis on The Lex Fridman Show
and he basically just went, guysknow what he's talking about. Yeah,

(01:42:48):
I've been a pilot pilot for fifteenyears. These accident was a lot nicer
than that one. But he basicallydidn't actually listen to my argument. So
you couldn't really have rebudget them anyway. And I understand that. Yeah,
a little little complicated, and ifyou think I'm an idiot, why would

(01:43:09):
you spend time doing it? Soso it's a challenge. You did a
great job. I watched the videosand it was just I love it.
I loved it because of the detailthat you went into and being able to
recreate so many things. I lovethat kind of ship. So, yeah,
it's fun. I got to buildmy little, uh my little UFL

(01:43:30):
model everybody loves loves of comments thatcame by that cracked me up when it
when it came, I love that. Did you set this all up for
this? Yes, a little It'slike rigs up on my bookcase. Yeah,
what a big clamp. Oh lookat that. Wow, that's cool

(01:43:53):
behind the scenes. I love it. Yeah, So a couple more questions.
We're winding down. We've got aboutfifteen minutes. I'm not sure what
this is. Maybe you have abetter idea, So Hendrick says, my
question relates to David Fraverer and tTSA. Are these people engaging in some

(01:44:15):
kind of highly unethical guerrilla marketing campaignfor monitoring UFO Lord related products. I
wouldn't say it's highly unethical. Itseems fairly ordinary that just basically marketing things.
And I think I think to alarge extent, the people involved in
t TSA, there's just Tom Delong'sorganization that to the Stars Academy. They

(01:44:39):
actually believe that there are UFOs outthere, and they believe that David Fraber
saw a UFO. But I've heardlots of people say that David Fraber is
lying, which I always tend notto think that. I prefer to think
that they know they just made amistake, rather than they're lying. The

(01:45:01):
marketing stuff, I think they shyaway from genuine analysis and they put they
have a Discovery Channel show, let'sdo this, UFO. It's kind of
distracting. Yeah, they have,they have they have a Discovery Channel show
and it's the usual standard of ofthat type of show, and it's just

(01:45:26):
a bunch of credulous people and studioexperts who really aren't experts at all being
brought in to go, well,I don't know what they heck that there
here? Just look how FasTIS mon? But they don't actually really do any
analysis. They just they just youknow, render their opinion. Well,
I've been a fire apart for fifteenyears, you know, I've never seen
years like there, so you mustbe aliens. Nobody actually talked like that

(01:45:48):
was that of that's type of thing. They were lovely people on the show.
Sorry, Yes, I don't thinkit's an ethical particularly more than normal.
Yeah, it seems just standard.And any show on those channels,

(01:46:11):
Discovery, Geography Channel and Yeah,History Channel, you know, they're all
kind of not all not all ofa sudden that are better than others,
but a lot of them are justtheir entertainment shows, and most people know
that. The producers certainly know that. I know there was one show in
particular that was on I can't rememberwhich when it was so I'm not going

(01:46:31):
to hazard a guest where somebody toldme that the showrunner for this particular show
completely disbelieved everything that was in thisshow, and he was he was just
basically not making it up, butjust trying to present, you know,
a cool story. But yeah,they know that. Yeah, they're putting
like, look at this amazing photographof something in a lake and it's something

(01:46:54):
that was debunked three years ago orsomething, And it's kind of disheartening that
that's what TV has become. Butyeah, like the fun, fun,
drip drip of stuff. So yeah, I hear you. Another question from
Yo Zoom, Well that's a newone. Our ghost hunters also conspiracy theorist.

(01:47:14):
Do they believe there is a conspiracyby science to suppress the truth of
the soul spirit, etc. That'sit's an interesting question because like, if
you think about it, they kindof have to be because how could all
these scientists not know this, thatthis reality, Like if if psychic powers

(01:47:36):
and stuff are so common that they'rehappening all the time, how could science
be denying it? There would haveto be a conspiracy, But then how
would that work. Yes, it'sit's kind of like any kind of weird
belief like the UFO people. Youmight not think of UFOs as being a

(01:47:58):
conspiracy, but it very much isso because they all talk about disclosure and
when is the government going to admitthat UFOs are a real thing, so
that they all think that the governmentis covering something up, right, even
if it's just that they don't knowwhat these flying objects are, but they
think there's some kind of conspiracy goingon to cover things up. So yeah,

(01:48:19):
I would say they are a kindof conspiracy theorist, even if they
don't really realize it. Yeah.I hear that a lot where it's it's
science doesn't know everything science is,they don't want to test it. I
hear that a lot scientists don't wantto bother scene if ghosts are real or

(01:48:39):
if psychics are real. Yeah,I've seen that would that would challenge the
fundamental underpinnings of how we understand theuniverse, which would be the best thing
ever for science. So that's whatscientists want to do. They want to
discover the new stuff. If therewas some kind of evidence of life after
death, or evidence of psychic powers, or evidence of ethereal beings doing things
without traditional forms of energy. Thenthat would be the most amazing thing ever,

(01:49:02):
and that's what scientists would leap tostudy. But they know that there
isn't good evidence to go and lookinto these things, so there's no cover
up. I can't be bothered.It's just unfortunately, it's the standard of
evidence. Yes, I totally agree. All right. Last question, this
is from Bob. I'm going togo one step further than Kenny. What

(01:49:26):
do we have? Why do wehave a whole field of folks that believe
in ancient alien theory? What doyou think about I don't know how to
say his name. I think that'sa big hair guy, Yeah, Georgio.
He's basically entertainer. But I think, you know again, I think

(01:49:46):
he has probably some degree of beliefhimself in that type of thing. The
ancient Aliens is a phenomenon. There'sAncient Aliens conferences, There's large numbers of
people who are into the ancient Alienstheory of various forms. I think in
some ways it's almost like a combinationof two things. One, it's very
entertaining. It's fun to watch thesethings. You know, you get a

(01:50:11):
drip drip of new things, andit's like fifty seasons of it, and
another it's a more fundamental thing.It explains where we came from, and
it kind of gives sense and meaningto the universe. The aliens came to
the planet and created humans, andthat they're probably still coming to the planet

(01:50:32):
and checking up on us, andso aliens become gods and aliens replace a
religion, and religion is something thathas naturally arisen in humans because it's something
that fulfills the need in our inour minds, and so ancient aliens is
kind of a religion. Yeah,I mean, it really is. It's
it's a belief system. And thenyeah, I see I've been to I

(01:50:56):
haven't been to an ancient alien conference. I've been to move On conferences,
and it's it's it's I would Iwould venture in. I guess it's it's
interesting. Yeah, but yeah,it's very interesting, um to hear the
ideas and beliefs that are spoken about, not only just spoken about, but

(01:51:17):
spoken with such confidence be true.Yeah, and you know, you know
those different levels and I don't know, cliques within clicks, I believe you
say in America, right of ofUFO people and with paranormal people, some
people are just kind of like,oh, I want to find out what

(01:51:40):
these lights in the sky are.And some people are like I get abducted
every night by aliens in my bedroomand everything in between. And with the
paranormal. You this Facebook groups thatI'm a member of on on Facebook,
and some of them are just likeghost hunters, and some of them are
like hardcore paranormal. I think one'sactually cold called paranormal. And these are

(01:52:02):
people who you know, post picturesof the kitchen windows all the time because
they think they're seeing things in thekitchen windows. Yep. So there's there's
there's a range of people. Andthe same thing with UFOs. You know,
some people are are more kind ofhard UFO like technology and stuff like
that, and some people think thatthey are the chariots of the gods or

(01:52:24):
angelic beings from another dimension. Right, So it's an interesting, an interesting,
oh pantheon of ideas. Very cool. All right, we are at
the end, so we can wrapthis up. I've taken two hours of
your your night, so I totallyappreciate it. Um, it's great talking

(01:52:44):
to you again. I haven't seenyou for a while. UM. But
for everyone else out there, UM, do you have anything coming up?
Do you have any You mentioned thatyou you might be working on a part
two to this awesome book. Yeah, it's gonna be a while. I
think. I think my next thingis going to be getting my podcast up
and running again. Yes, goodpractice. Yeah, and I'm currently embroiled

(01:53:09):
in complicated analysis of voter returns andwhat. Yes, I figure out if
the election is a fraud or not. Yeah, I see like I'm looking
at meta bunk right now and Isee a lot the tops thumbs all.
Yes, Um, I'm learning learningstuff about elections that I never will need

(01:53:32):
ever again. So everyone enjoyed theshow. Looks like everyone had a great
time. He learned a lot,which is good. That's what the show
is about, Um, open discussionlearning. Uh, definitely, I would
suggest. I mean I usually doa book of the week recommendation, and

(01:53:53):
I think I've already recommended your bookonce, but it's worth a second recommendation
since you're on, But definitely bythis one. It's it's really really good.
I can't recommend it enough. It'sit's you. I mean, you've
watched this guy for the last twohours and everything that he is here you
get from this book, so it'sgood explanations, it's respectful, and you

(01:54:18):
get people's personal stories to go alongwith all the technical information. So it's
really really good read. I highlyrecommend it. And with that, I'm
gonna say that basic announcements, Idon't have too many things going on.
Actually, I have no events forthe rest of the year, so if

(01:54:39):
anyone has an event, I don'tthink you will because we're probably going to
go into another lockdown. But Ilove doing podcasts if you if you have
one, if you want a skepticon talk to Mick or reach out to
me, I would love to doit. Absolutely love doing those kind of
things. And let's see tomorrow night, Saturday, eight pm Eastern, I

(01:55:03):
will be on Three Tortured Souls againand we're gonna have a good show.
We're actually going to be talking aboutpoltergeists and getting into the history and science
and all kinds of things with thataround good discussion. There will be no
Skeptical help bar next week. Iknow you guys are going to be upset

(01:55:24):
about it, but I have asecret project that I'm working on and it
has to do with some online classesthat unfortunately some of the classes are Friday
night, and I have to attendso I can report on them later,
So there will be no Skeptical HelpBar next week. There will be a
three Tortured Souls tomorrow and next Saturday, so don't worry about that. And

(01:55:47):
then, if you're interested in anykind of T shirts science themed t shirts,
I have my t spring store calledScientific Skepticism. Check it out and
there's lots of designs on there.And again, the money from the purchases
goes directly back into this work.It goes to support the podcast, it

(01:56:10):
goes to support the things I haveto acquire or attend in order to report
back to you guys all on them. So every little bit helps. And
I think that's about it. I'mgoing to wrap it up, Mick.
Please stay on the line for justa moment while I hit my outro video
and which is new. I geta little new video, so I hope

(01:56:33):
everyone enjoys it. And until nexttime, everyone, never stop learning.
See you later, yeah,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Skeptical Help Bar - Mick West