Should the government be hiding aliens?

24:56Online, at least. And in general, you do not have a right to know everything that everybody knows. There are secrets within marriages that deserve to stay secret. What happens in other people's bedrooms, for example, is not something I even want to know. And I certainly don't deserve to know. So it's not true most generally that like the truth belongs to everyone. There are definitely some pieces of information that belong to certain people and not everybody has a right to know them. Right. So the maximalist, like all information belongs to everybody that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Sure. But I also feel like there's broader geopolitical reasons why you'd want to keep secrets.

25:35Yes, exactly. It's even reasonable for the government to keep secrets from the public. For example, how do you purify uranium in an efficient way so that you can have bomb-making materials? That's a really dangerous piece of information. And I don't think that everybody should know that. And I think it's good, actually, for the government to keep some secrets. Or, for example, if you could, using implements in your kitchen, develop a device capable of destroying the planet, and you knew that information, you probably should not share that information with the whole planet. That would be very dangerous information.

26:12And so for national security reasons, it certainly makes sense for the government to keep some secrets. Also, where are our troops right now? What are they doing? What are their biggest vulnerabilities? Like, that's not information that I deserve to know, even though those troops are out there in my name and protecting me. They can't protect me and they can't protect the public if their locations and their vulnerabilities are shared. So it makes perfect sense for the government to have some secrets, right? Not controversial. Sure. But I guess I feel different about it if I'm thinking about should the North Korean government have secrets?

26:51You know, that's less good than the U.S. government having secrets. But anyway, of course, everybody's got their own side they're rooting for. Right, exactly. And here we have an element of trust, right? We accept that the government has secrets from us. And as citizens in a democracy, we can consent to that, to this process that the government will decide what is safe to share and what is not safe to share. And in this case, at least we know about the existence of these secrets. It's like, yeah, we all know that there are nuclear weapons and we know that that information about how to build them is dangerous and we consent to that not being shared broadly, right?

27:29So we're like aware of the existence of the secret and we can consent to the secret being kept. And more generally, like, yes, the government should know where the troops are and we should not. Like we know about all these things and we agree not only that they should be secret, but that the government should be in charge of which secrets are kept and who is told them, right? So that's a level of trust we're putting in the government. But I feel like you're assuming that we know of all of the categories of things that we're not being told about. But there could be categories of things that we don't know that we're not being told about.

28:00And I guess that's the point, huh? Yes, exactly. I'm catching up. So that's the next level, right? Are there secrets that are too dangerous for us to even know of their existence? Could there be knowledge that's so dangerous we have to be protected from being told that it exists? And that's the question of this movie, right? Because in the movie, they know about aliens and the baddies are always saying, this information is too dangerous. If you told everybody about this, it would cause societal disruption and it would tear the world apart, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the argument is like, essentially, we're like being children that need to be lied to about the reality, you know?

28:42Do they go into any more detail about like what they're worried about in particular? I feel like I'm not necessarily seeing the steps between letting people know that there are aliens and the collapse of civilization. Yeah. I had the same reaction, and we're going to dig into that in a minute. Okay. But first, I think there's more to explore about this question more generally about whether the government can keep secrets about the secrets they're keeping. You know, like, even if you don't believe that the knowledge of aliens would tear society apart, can you, Kelly, imagine a secret that the government should keep from us?

29:17Something where the knowledge would be so dangerous that even admitting it exists is dangerous. All right. So you're putting me on the spot. But, well, I mean, you gave some examples earlier of, you know, like if it was possible to make a nuclear weapon in your kitchen, I would not want the government to share that. Right. And I agree that the government shouldn't share the knowledge of how to build it. But the fact that it's possible, I suppose, maybe you are you saying that even the fact that it's possible to do that? Yeah. Should be kept secret. Yeah, man, I don't think I'd want the government being like, oh, hey, we figured out a way to make nuclear weapons in the kitchen.

29:52We're not going to tell you. But we're going to leave that as an exercise for the student or whatever. So, I mean, I can imagine not wanting people to know that that is a possibility at all, for example. Yeah, that's interesting. Another category I was thinking about was panic. What information might legitimately cause panic? And you see this a lot in like the asteroid movies that I love to watch, you know. An asteroid is going to hit the Earth in five days, discovers government scientist. Should we tell everybody? Yeah. Well, knowing that the Earth is going to be obliterated in five days probably would cause a lot of societal disruption and breakdown of law and order and stuff.

30:30I still think we should tell everybody. People deserve to know that kind of stuff. Like, yes, maybe lawless gangs are now going to be roaming the streets with human heads on their motorcycles or whatever. But I would like to know if I'm going to die in five days and everybody I love. I think maybe a fuzzier question is like, well, what if scientists discover there's a 50 % chance that an asteroid is going to destroy the planet? And then you might be causing panic for no reason, right? So these are interesting scenarios without easy answers. And I think it's a worthwhile philosophical discussion and one about democracy and representation and trust.

31:07And do you trust the government to decide which secrets to keep? But I think the scenario of aliens, which we can circle back to your comment, doesn't really fall in that category. I mean, in the movie, they suggest that the ontological shock of learning that we're not the only critters in the universe capable of developing technology, and not even the only critters on Earth, because the aliens are here, that that would disrupt society. But I don't buy that. I think, yes, that would be an ontological shock. It would change our relationship with the universe. But I don't think everybody's going to be like throwing bricks through Target's plate glass windows in response.

31:49Like, does that make sense to you at all? So I agree with you. And I also feel like we should give humanity a chance to put their best foot forward and like impress us as opposed to just assuming that they're going to throw bricks through plate glass windows. But, you know, maybe that's just I like to think of myself as an optimist. And yeah, it does seem like a very different kind of question than is an asteroid coming to kill us all? Although I can imagine, like, if an influencer, for example, you know, got word and started convincing people that like literally the only reason aliens would come here is if they like thought that we were a delicious snack and a nutrient that was missing on their home planet was found in human bodies.

32:29I mean, I can imagine people creating panic. But on the other hand, I still feel like everyone has a right to know that we are not the only life in the universe. That seems like an important thing for everyone to be able to, like, handle. Yeah. And that's a really good point. I mean, the scenario where, like, look, we've just learned aliens have entered the solar system and they're going to be here in five days. That's more akin to the asteroid. Like, we don't know. Are they going to show up and shake our hands? Or are they going to nuke us from space or send us to work in the hydrogen mines? Right.

32:59That's a little scary. But the scenario in this movie is much different from that. Aliens have been here for 60 years. And we've been happily collaborating with them on scientific projects in secret for 60 years since Roswell. Or we've been waterboarding them. One or the others. Yeah. And we've been torturing them, actually. So we're the baddies. Right? And so I don't think that that scenario would set off like mass riots or upheaval or panic. It might, you know, undermine the government. The government might be voted out of power, you know, or you might need like reforms if we discover the government's been misbehaving in that way.

33:36But, you know, nobody's throwing bricks through plate glass windows in that scenario. In fact, I think it might be kind of shrugged off. Like this would not be a massive ontological shock. Yes, it's a big update to our knowledge, but it's not something we haven't considered. It's the subject of a lot of movies, and there's a lot of people out there who already believe that it's true. Lots of folks out there believe that aliens walk among us. So learning that that's true, it's fascinating and it's important, but I don't think it's as big an ontological shock as the Big Bang. Learning that the universe is expanding and was once really, really dense.

34:13or when we learned that the Earth is billions of years old or when we learned about evolution. These are huge ontological shocks that require us to update our knowledge of the universe and our place in it, our relationship with it, the context of our lives, all of this stuff. But there weren't riots in response to Darwin or continental drift theory. There were definitely social responses, but not something that would make you think like, whoa, humanity is not ready to know this stuff. So let's think about what is the worst thing that happened after one of those theories became popular. So like, I can't say that I'm, because I'm also a wet blanket.

34:55So I can't say that I've, you know, like looked up all of these and know the history of all of these right now. But like, for example, after the idea of evolution came out, eugenics followed from that idea. You know, the idea that there are some races that are more fit than others, which has no scientific basis at all. but we convinced ourselves at the time that it did. And then we did some horrible things after that theory became public. And so on the one hand, we've learned a lot. It's contributed to our understanding of the universe, but we didn't handle that information appropriately for a long time and vulnerable populations suffered the most.

35:30Does that change the way you think about all of this or is it just it's humanity's responsibility to handle the truth in a responsible way? Sometimes we fail, but we shouldn't hide the truth. What do you think? I think we have definitely behaved badly in lots of scenarios in response to the truth, but we've also behaved badly without knowing the truth. Yeah. So I think we're, I hope we're more likely to behave well when we understand reality, when our knowledge is more aligned with the way the universe actually works. I mean, I guess it's not a big surprise to say like, I'm a big believer in transparency and people should know.

36:04I mean, up to like, you know, what's going on in random people's bedrooms. But in terms of knowledge of the universe and the outputs of science, I think people deserve to know. And even if the consequences are like, look, society gets overhauled or changes, that's in response to reality. It's better to live in reality than to live in illusion. So, yeah, there can be ontological shocks, and some of those can be even kind of harsh and might lead to a reorganization of how we live. but then we're living in a way that responds to the universe and not fiction. And I think that's definitely got to be better.

36:43And I don't trust the government to make these decisions about like, look, here's a piece of information which we imagine people might respond poorly to. Like, that's definitely overreach in my book. And if we want to think more about like how my people respond to this, like think about the way people respond to current scientific results or space exploration achievements, still a lot of people out there deny that the Earth is round or that we went to the moon. So even if the government produced aliens, a lot of people would be like, nah, I don't believe it. And so I don't think that it makes sense to keep this information from people.

37:24And I don't buy the argument really at all that it would lead to chaos or riots that were somehow protecting humanity by keeping this information from us, which leads to a really interesting question, which is like, where does this idea come from that disclosure might be dangerous? Because it's definitely out there. It's a premise in this movie, and it's just sort of stated as if it was obviously true, but your initial reaction was like, huh, that doesn't make sense, and it doesn't make any sense to me. I can't make a strong argument for it. But there is an interesting history here, and I have a speculation.

38:00So here's my theory about where this idea comes from. I think it might be a load-bearing strut in the UFO conspiracy theories, right? So people who believe that aliens are here and that the government has like recovered craft and is like reverse engineering it in reality, not in the movie, right? Like today that there are aliens somewhere in a bunker or in a hangar owned by the government, And those people have a little bit of an issue, which is like, okay, if the government has this information, why haven't they shared it? Why are they keeping it a secret, right? Because the government shares scientific information all the time, right?

38:41I publish papers. You publish papers. It's all government-funded research. And so they need an answer to the question why it has not been disclosed. Okay. And so if it was too dangerous, then, okay, there's your answer, right? And in this weird way that conspiracy theories work, the lack of evidence for aliens becomes a load-bearing part of the story rather than a gap. The fact that the government has not shared any evidence, but there are some of these suggestive hints, implies that there's a cover-up. And so I think it helps support this conspiracy theory to argue that disclosure would be dangerous, and that's why they haven't told us.

39:22I personally don't think it makes a lot of sense. I'd be curious to hear from listeners who disagree with me about this. Write to me and let me know why you think it might be dangerous to disclose aliens. But I do think that it helps the conspiracy theory survive, right? Because it provides an answer to the question of why hasn't the government told us about this if they are here? And if you're thinking like, well, what if the government has worked with the aliens and now they have super dangerous new technology? Cool. But the government could still tell us about the aliens without sharing the technology.

39:59If the aliens know how to build a nuclear bomb from vinegar and baking soda, you don't have to tell us about that. You could still tell us the aliens are here, right? So it doesn't hold together for me, and I think it's a necessary part of this conspiracy theory survival. That's my theory for where this comes from. I suppose I could see the argument that, like, if you're getting secrets from the aliens, it would be easier to surprise your adversaries if they didn't know the aliens existed at all. Because then they wouldn't have, you know, crazy out-of-this-world technology on their mind as, like, something that, for example, the United States could have.

40:35So I could plausibly see that argument, maybe. But I feel like I have a lot of dear friends who work for the government, and it's hard for me to believe that anybody would not slip up and share that information that aliens exist. Yeah. So let's dig into that. Like, is it plausible for the government to keep such a secret? And I think here it's worth doing a little bit of history and understanding where some of these theories come from. Because, you know, the government has not always behaved very well. True, true. And there have been times the government has lied to us. And so the history of the disclosure movement specifically, like in reality, not in the movie, is interesting.

41:22It comes from... Actually, Daniel, I'm going to cut you off. We're going to take a break, and when we get back, that's when we'll hear about instances where the government has actually hidden stuff from us for at least some period of time.

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42:53The show is famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller. The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anyway, too, right? What do you think it is now? It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology. Danny McBride. He loves Boba. Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on, you make your own. That's great. I call him Taro Reed. That's a good name. They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Yeah. I call, I don't, I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachie Sobieski.

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45:58And we're back. And, you know, in case you were sleeping well at night, let's go ahead and have Daniel tell us about some examples where the government at least tried to keep some secrets from us. Yeah, as a way to trace, like, where does the disclosure movement come from? The people who believe that the government has alien craft and are advocating for transparency about it has interesting threads in history. And it starts with the Roswell incident, you know. So famous crash in 1947, which was not handled super well by the government. So this is July 8th, 1947. And initially there was an announcement that they had recovered a flying disc.

46:46And this was reported in newspapers nationwide. Though it may have been like a misquote of the farmer, you know, who used it as an analogy. But anyway, it was reported as a flying disc. But then very quickly, the official statement was reversed and they said, no, no, no, it was just an ordinary weather balloon. Unfortunately, this was not what was actually happening, right? This is not an ordinary weather balloon. Years and decades later, actually in 1994, right, the U.S. Air Force revealed that it was part of Project Mogul, a then-secret program that flew these long trains of balloons carrying microphones as a way to develop technology that could detect Soviet nuclear tests.

47:28So back in 1947, they didn't want to reveal, oh, hey, this is part of a secret project of Americans, not aliens, developing these new kind of objects that can fly and listen. So they lied about it and said, no, no, no, it's an ordinary weather balloon. For 50 years. I don't think they lied about it very well. And it, you know, created a lot of confusion and also the initial reports about it being a flying disc and then being labeled a weather balloon and then later admitting it wasn't a weather balloon didn't create a whole lot of credibility for the government. Yeah, I guess. So if you're trying to play the devil's advocate, I guess you could say the government at least cleared up that it wasn't alien made.

48:08Yeah. And then they kept the secret that they needed to keep for the Cold War perspective. But it is amazing. It took 50 years. I mean, you think the Soviet Union. And, well, I was going to say the Soviet Union fell in 91. And then just a couple of years later, it became announced or something like that. You still probably didn't need the secret for that long. Yeah, I don't know. But, you know, the other part of this context is like in the 70s, the public lost a lot of faith in the government. You know, we had Nixon and Watergate and discovery that the government is spying on us or is lying to us.

48:40A lot of faith was lost in the government there. And that adds to this perception of like, hey, it's totally reasonable, actually, and not conspiracy nonsense to imagine that the government is doing nefarious, sneaky, even illegal things because they had been. And so that sets the stage for this MJ-12 hoax. In 1984, there was a release of these documents called the Majestic 12. These claimed, later discovered to be a hoax and forgeries, that there was a secret committee created by Harry Truman to manage recovered alien technology and bodies. Oh. Right. And so this was catnip for people who believed that the government was lying to us because the government does lie to us and wanted to believe that they were aliens and the government was working with them.

49:28And so this framework, you know, the alien crash had crashed, the government had recovered them, a secret organization controls the evidence, and the public is being intentionally deceived. This really sank deep into a lot of people's psyche. Even though most historians and document experts analyzing it think it's very, very clear that these MJ-12 papers are forgeries. They still had a vast influence on a lot of people. So for Roswell, the inciting event was the crash. But for MJ-12, the inciting event was somebody forged papers and released it or was there? Okay. Huh. Yeah, exactly. Okay. And so then in the 90s, the term disclosure becomes widespread.

50:12And, you know, we have things like the X-Files, which taps into this feeling of like, hey, there's truth out there that you don't know, but somebody does. And it's being kept from you by shadowy government operators, right? And again, look, the government has behaved badly in lots of scenarios. And so there's reason to feel that way. And then there's the growth of the internet, which connects a lot of people who think these things and connects them to each other. And then it was in 2001 at an event by the National Press Club organized by Stephen Greer. And he created a new organization called the Disclosure Project.

50:50And this helps standardize the term disclosure as a proper noun. And so that's the beginning of like the official disclosure movement, which then blew up and became mainstream after these New York Times articles in 2017. Okay. So when I was getting interviewed for A City on Mars, and this was in like 2022, 2023, people would say to me like, well, what do you think about the recent disclosures about aliens? Do you believe that they've come to Earth? What were they talking about? Because I, again, I live under a rock with my fingers in my ears. And so I hadn't heard about these things. What were they asking about?

51:23So they're probably referring to the release of these videos in 2017 and the articles about them. There's always been discussion on the margins, but to see this reported credulously in the New York Times really made it mainstream for a lot of people. And these videos are fascinating. There's the Tic Tac video, the Go Fast video. You should go out and watch these things. And then you should also see the analysis of them by folks like Mick West and other people who try to understand, like, what are we seeing? But for a lot of people, these were treated as evidence that UFOs are real. Number one, you have Navy pilots who are not just like, you know, internet cranks.

52:03These are like highly trained folks saying that they're seeing stuff all the time that they're not understanding. And you now have these videos from some cameras on these jets showing stuff that we can't initially explain. So the government said they had like more than 100 of these videos and they only released a few. That's like a recipe for. I want to cause problems. Right. Well, it's sort of similar to the Roswell incident. Like, I'm sure that some of these videos reveal government secrets, you know, like government has the technology to see this and that. They don't want to reveal that they know how to do this.

52:35They have this kind of camera that can do these kinds of things. There's lots of reasons to keep these videos secrets that are not there are aliens in them. They could also have videos of like new, I don't know, Chinese drones that can do crazy things. And maybe we don't want the Chinese to know that we know. There's lots of prosaic possible explanations for why they might keep it secret. I actually once got a phone call from a U.S. congressperson who wanted to know, like, hey, I'm hearing stuff about these videos. What does the physics say? Like, is it possible for there to be wormholes and whatever?

53:10And I was like, sure, I'll answer those. But first, tell me what you see in these videos. It's like, what's there? You've seen all the videos. And he was like, yeah, there's nothing there that's exciting. It's all similar to stuff we've seen. So I don't know if he was revealing stuff he wasn't supposed to, and now I'm revealing it. I don't know. Anyway, clearly don't tell me any secrets. And this is the point. The government's not good at keeping secrets because it tells people like Daniel. The worst thing you could do. So anyway, that's the history of the disclosure movement. And I want to say I don't think that the government has these secrets and is keeping them.

53:43But I do believe in disclosure. I do think the government should be more transparent. I think government secrecy has created a lot of gaps and a lot of confusion and a lot of distrust, and we would all be better off if there was more transparency. So I'm definitely pro-disclosure. And I agree with you that it's implausible for a government to keep such a secret for so long. Like in the movie Disclosure Day, there's this vast network. There's people who come to work every day. There's hundreds of people who work in this organization. How can they possibly keep this secret for so long? And in fact, the movie, I think, I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, essentially argues that it's impossible.

54:23Because the whole plot of the movie is somebody who's working on the inside decides individually and unilaterally that this isn't a secret that should be kept, and they work to disclose it. And eventually that's going to happen. There's got to be a Daniel in there. Exactly. There's a Daniel in the organization. And essentially, I think it's impossible to imagine that everybody's going to agree with the mission forever. And like, think about how the government has failed to keep secrets. Like when we created nuclear technology, how long did the U.S. keep that secret? It was like less than 10 years.

54:57And Klaus Fuchs was already sharing the information between governments while it was happening, right? There you go. There's always going to be like a Snowden, right? NSA mass surveillance was revealed by Edward Snowden. You know, you got examples like the Pentagon Papers and MKUltra and stuff like this. It's hard for the government to keep secrets for very long. So the idea that the government would have a vast network of people, scientists, like PhDs, it's not that big a community. If there is a huge group of people with physics PhDs who are now working on understanding alien technology, I would know some of them.

55:33We'd all be like, hey, where did Sally go after she got her PhD? Oh, nobody's heard from Sally. Nobody knows what Sally's working on. Like, you know, there's not a missing community of PhDs working on this stuff. So I think disclosure would be inevitable. If the government had these secrets 80 years ago, we would know them by now. All right. So let's take a step back and think about if we have been consistent with our arguments across this. So, like, you know, we've been saying the government tries to keep secrets, but they're not really good at it. They pretty much always, you know, it gets revealed.

56:01But like the Roswell incident took 50 years, you know? And so like how – what makes you confident that the government hasn't been sitting on the existence of aliens for five years and the Daniel in their community hasn't come forward yet? Like what do you think about a scenario like that? Yeah, that's a good point. And I think you're right. I think if aliens had like teleported into the Oval Office yesterday, we would probably not know about it yet because the government would spend some time, and I think responsibly so, trying to understand the implications of revealing this information and taking care.

56:38So I think it's possible for these secrets to be kept briefly. I think these secrets are so shocking and the implications so vast that it's impossible for them to be kept for very long. And I think that a lot of this disclosure movement argues that they've been here for a while. They've been here since Roswell. But I agree with you that it is something that could be kept secret briefly. Yeah, but I agree. Something like aliens, especially because if you are the person who tells the world about aliens, you are a meet like your name will be remembered forever and so i feel like there's also that like level on top of it like the possibility to become absolutely stinking famous uh probably also would push you to disclose yeah and i'm pretty sure our current attention loving president wouldn't pass on that opportunity yeah i think there's something else interesting raised by the movie in disclosure day the movie spoiler alert they disclose the aliens are real right the good guys win.

57:32And the way they do it is with overwhelming evidence, not like grainy footage or even firsthand accounts from Navy pilots. Like they bring the alien on TV. They show us an alien. It's very clear. And I think that makes the point that when disclosure happens, it's going to have to be overwhelming so that no reasonable person can doubt anymore. And in that way, I think that this movie avoided a lot of the really interesting questions, you know, like, is disclosure actually dangerous? The movie doesn't discuss it at all. When disclosure happens, how do you deal with doubt? They avoided that by making it just overwhelming.

58:12You know, so the current situation that we are in, where they're like, there are some hints that something weird is going on and the government is keeping some secrets and probably it's Chinese drones or whatever, but we don't know for sure. we're in an interesting situation and people have reasonable questions and this movie doesn't address any of them at all it just imagines a scenario where we know 100 % that they're aliens and we show to the public with overwhelming data so that nobody can doubt so in that sense you know to circle back to the review of the movie like i thought the movie was fun it was well written it was well acted it's spielberg he knows what he's doing the science fiction in the movie is like It's very, very, very soft science fiction.

58:52You know, they use alien tech as a plot device. Anytime they want something to happen, they're like, well, maybe the aliens can just do that. And it avoids all the core interesting questions about aliens and disclosure and all this kind of stuff that we've discussed. But it was fun. I had a good time. And it was definitely worth, you know,$12 or whatever I paid for it. As a biologist, what I want to know is what did the aliens look like? Were they just like human bodies but green? What did they do? Yeah. So in this movie, the aliens are the canonical big head, big eye, no nose aliens with like the backward legs.

59:26Yeah. There's not a whole lot of creativity there at all. I had hoped for more, but that's all right. Okay. But, you know, there's fascinating characters and it's a story well told and definitely a good movie for a movie's sake. I don't think a great movie about disclosure. I don't think it tackles these interesting questions very well. But, you know, it was fun to watch and we got to have this fun conversation. So from that point of view, thumbs up. OK, so then let's let's bottom line your opinion. So given everything that we've talked about today, it sounds like you don't think there's good evidence for aliens that we have now, whether it's behind government closed doors or out in public, what is your bottom line on, have aliens visited us yet?

1:00:08I think it's very unlikely that aliens have come to Earth and the government knows about it and has been working with them and keeping that secret for decades. I just think that's totally implausible. And I don't think the government should keep that secret. I think if the government knows about aliens, they should tell us. I don't think there's a good argument for protect the public by not telling them or like release it in waves to slowly acclimatize us. Like we're not children. You know, we don't need to be lied to about Santa Claus. I don't think that makes any sense. I think that props up UFO conspiracy theories and does more harm than it does good.

1:00:46So if the government has aliens and that's their plan, I think it's a mistaken one. I think it's a good idea. So that's my bottom line. Okay. I mean, I guess I feel like if you hundreds of years ago had told people that aliens existed, that might be like intellectually catastrophic. So maybe this is the biologist in me, but I feel like, you know, we have thought of ourselves as like, oh, we're the only species that uses tools. But like, I just saw a video of a cow scratching its butt with a stick the other day. It's like, we're not, I feel like over time we've become a little bit more acclimatized to the idea that like, we are not quite as unique as we used to think.

1:01:23And I feel like maybe that opens us up to the possibility that there could be other amazing, intelligent organisms out in other parts of the solar system. But again, maybe that's my biology-centered opinion. And so I don't feel like we would be devastated, especially because now we know there's exoplanets out there. There's, like, so much beyond our solar system that, like, just playing the numbers game. Like, so many people have heard about the Drake equation and the updates to, like, you know, how many planets are out there that are in habitable zones. I don't think it would be as surprising to people now as it would have been hundreds of years ago.

1:01:56And I feel like any argument you could make about aliens causing like a panic and a collapse of society would apply less today than they might have a couple hundred years ago. What do you think? Well, I think you're right that the Derrick equation is going in the alien direction because all the updates increase the odds. But the skeptic in me says there's still a lot of possibilities for very tiny numbers. Yes, it's true that now we know there are planets around lots of stars and a lot of those planets are Earth-like. But it still could be that it's very rare for life to begin or for life to be complex or intelligent or technological.

1:02:35Those percentages could still be one over a trillion. We could still be alone. We have no data about that at all. So we can't make really any scientific statement about the probability for intelligent life. That's just belief, right? That's just philosophy. That's faith. That's hope. I'm on the same side of you of those belief and hope and faith, but the skeptic in me says we don't really know. And I also wonder if we can really put ourselves in the minds of somebody a thousand years ago and understand how they would react to this knowledge. because we see the world so differently than they do.

1:03:10I think it's probably impossible to honestly understand that. I did a little bit of research when I was running my book about historical writings about aliens, and I was surprised how often it came up, that people imagined aliens. Kant, for example, wrote about aliens and how they might see the world. And so I think also a thousand years ago, people were more acclimatized to the world being mysterious. Like in our day-to-day lives, there's very little that happens that's un-understandable. Like you see lightning? Yeah, we understand that. Whether it's hard to predict, but, you know, the physics is known.

1:03:48You look out at the night sky and like we know what stars are and all this kind of stuff. There are very few actual mysteries left in your everyday world. Still lots of big questions about the universe. But day-to-day, the stuff that happens, we mostly understand it. And a thousand years ago, your day was filled with mystery. Like why does this person get sick? Spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation, right? And all sorts of stuff happens. So if somebody told you, oh, there are critters living around that star, you might be like, yeah, cool, man. The world is weird. And I learn weird stuff every day.

1:04:18And none of it makes sense to me. So I think it's probably pretty hard to put ourselves in the shoes of somebody a thousand years ago. Though I would love to do that experiment, to introduce an alien to Aristotle or something. you are way too comfortable with human experimentation to return to what we were talking about at the beginning of the episode are you saying you wouldn't want to hear that podcast episode where an alien and Aristotle have a conversation I mean you would be downloading that wouldn't you yeah yeah no I would I would want to hear that yes that would be interesting all right so thanks everybody for going along this ride I do recommend this movie if you like fun movies and science fiction and aliens it's a good ride.

1:04:58But don't go into it thinking that it's a deep philosophical exploration of whether our government has aliens and whether it actually would be dangerous for the government to tell us about it. But if you are somebody who works in the government and you have top security clearance and you know about aliens, I think you should spill the beans. Oh, yes. And you can reach Daniel at questions at danielandkelly.org. Just write, Dear Daniel, we'll know who it goes to. And thanks, Daniel, for this fun episode on aliens. And let's hope that we can host the actual disclosure on a future episode. Because you and me, we are on the same level as Aristotle.

1:05:33I'm sure we're going to be at the top of their list. All right. Thanks very much, everyone.

1:05:45Thanks, everybody, for listening. Please go and do us a favor and rate the show on whatever podcast app you're using. It really helps people find us. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing Matt Kesselman he really is a wizard you can also find us online on Blue Sky, Instagram and xDNKUniverse come engage with us you can email us at questions at danielandkelly.org we really do want to hear from you and you can find our website www.danielandkelly.org where you'll also find an invitation to join our discord where everybody comes and talks about the amazing universe. And we also have the most amazing moderators.

1:06:28This is an iHeart podcast. Thanks for joining us. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed, I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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