Skeptiko 15 Year Anniversary Special |541|

Al Borealis host Skeptiko 15 year anniversary special.

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[00:00:00] Alex Tsakiris: On this episode of skeptiko an anniversary show. With some very special guests.

[00:00:09] Al Borealis: welcome to skeptical where we explore controversial science and spirituality There’s Al Borealis from forum Borealis who sprung this surprise party on me.

[00:00:24] Rupert Sheldrake: I feel that Alex’s interviews went in greater depth than almost any others in this area

[00:00:30] Alex Tsakiris: There’s the incredible Rupert Sheldrake.

Who plays an important part in the origin story of skeptiko. you’ll hear more from him in just a minute.

And you’ll also hear from some other friends I’ve met along the way. Here’s Greg Carlwood from higher side chats.

[00:00:49] Greg Carlwood: And if a person is not going to factor consciousness into their scientific work or their model of reality, then of what value is it really just as any true analysis of power or historic events or business has to factor in conspiracy or it’s probably grossly inaccurate. Well, you hold people to these points with extreme consistency.

And it’s a beautiful thing.

[00:01:13] Alex Tsakiris: Uh, that’s a good one. . And here’s Gordon White from rune soup.

[00:01:18] Gordon White: I don’t remember when or how I found skeptical, but it was about a decade ago. Alex’s voice and his quest, uh, and his continuous seeking were just eyeopening and wonderful

[00:01:34] Alex Tsakiris: And here’s Darren and Graham from Grimerica.

(—–)

[00:01:37] Darren: Hey Alex, coming at you from grime America, Darren and Graham just wanted to wish you a happy 50th anniversary,

[00:01:45] Graham: yeah. Thanks Alex. I mean, he’s been so helpful for us, Aaron. I mean, he’s been great. , he was one of those guys that gave us a chance and supported us along the way.

[00:01:52] Alex Tsakiris: And then just, when you think you’re listening to a good old four hour. Yes. It’s four hours. Anniversary show. A fight breaks out in the bathroom.

[00:02:05] Alex Tsakiris: I can’t let go of this, Miguel. I can’t let go of mature.

What’s who’s been on your show. 

[00:02:09] Miguel Conner: Yeah, I have faith in Mitch. He’s a, he’s a, he’s a good guy.

[00:02:14] Alex Tsakiris: I’m going to have more to say about that clip in a minute as well.

But I first want to say how thankful I am . To Al Borealis from forum Borealis for putting this together, I never would have done something like this. And I don’t know how many people will be interested in listening to four hours of it, but it was a really, really special treat and a special honor to go back and walk through this skeptical project that I’ve been on.

So before we get to the show that L’s put together, I wanted to just make a couple of points about the Rupert Sheldrake clip and the Miguel Connor clip, because.

In true anniversary fashion, if you’re going to have two clips that provided kind of bookends to what the show’s all about. Those would be yet. I mean. In Rupert’s clip, he talks a lot about the whole thing we did way back in the day with Richard Wiseman, where we had this intense, scientific debate.

With Wiseman and these other skeptics that just expose these people. Here’s how Rupert puts it.

[00:03:18] Rupert Sheldrake: . I mean, just an extremely misleading operation, but Alex really went into this, you know, he interviewed Richard Wiseman.

He interviewed me, he read the various papers. And then in one of the programs, he had us on together in a kind of debate and, you know, no one else had done that. I mean, for example, Michael Sharma’s skeptic column in scientific American or the skeptical Inquirer or skeptical claims in the newspapers and the media, you only hear that side.

And at one stage you remember the lake James, Randy was always going around saying, he’d got this million dollar prize for anyone who could share your psychic phenomena. And he used this as a media stunt and the rank and file of the skeptic movement.

It would reiterate his claims if it’s so good. Why don’t, why do you claim the million dollars? So, um, Alex did actually try and claim the million dollars. He, , found a dog that knew it. Tony was coming home and in, in the United States, , he did some filming. He did some experiments and then he got in touch with James Randy saying he’d like to enter the contest.

He called this dog new and his own. He was coming home and this was based on my own work, on the create. , And Randy who’d lied about doing experiments whose own, which he never did and lied about analyzing my data, which he never saw in detail. It was obviously rather reluctant to get involved.

[00:04:50] Alex Tsakiris: So that’s really what skeptical was all about. That’s the origin of skeptical, and I’m certainly very proud of that and proud of all the fantastic frontier scientists that I was able to connect with and bring to people who needed to hear that information.

But this anniversary show also provides a look at where skeptical is now and where it’s headed, because about three and a half hours into this Miguel Connor from an bike Gnostic radio, who graciously. The joins us. To congratulate and do the anniversary show.

Gets dragged into the discussion about what is really driving me right now. And that is how do we seek and understand truth on both a personal level and in the public domain.

I can’t let go of this, Miguel. I can’t let go of mature.

What’s who’s been on your show. Who, when I asked mature what’s if he’s a Satanist, he said, yeah. And then I said, here in writing, you’ve said, one of your inspirations is Michael . And he says, yeah. And then I said, yeah, but Michael Aquino has been outed as a pedophile at the Presidio

(—)

[00:06:02] Miguel Conner: Yeah, I have faith in Mitch. He’s a, he’s a, he’s a good guy. And he’s a good friend.

So , I’m sure Mitch will come around. And of course he talks a lot about many of his heroes that have that he’s had. So I think, uh, we’ll just see where this goes, but, uh, yeah,

[00:06:17] Alex Tsakiris: It’s not going anywhere. All this information has been out for years and the guy is a Satanist, so, you know, whatever that means to be publicly a Satanist and to publicly defend a queen.

Oh, again, this is where we differ a little bit. Awesome. I still love you. I still love all your work, but I think the litmus test thing as uncomfortable as people are with that idea. Yeah. I think there are litmus tests out there. , if you don’t understand that nine 11 was an inside job, I mean, that’s a litmus test.

Your worldview is somewhat limited or you’re trying to deceive in the case of Mitch Horwitz, he knows better about acquaint. Oh, he just wants to mislead people that, that this well-known Satanist Mike Lithuania was not who he said he was. And that’s the only

[00:07:05] Miguel Conner: part that gets you. Right. I think it’s the pedophilia parts.

That’s the

[00:07:09] Alex Tsakiris: list. It’s the Satanism part because the do without wilt, as you correctly pointed out, I think that is the abomination on spirit, on divinity, on the light. That, that is really what matters whatever Satanism is again, and it can only be defined by a totally corrupt Christian understanding of it.

, but the only way to understand it as it understand it as deception. As darkness as whatever those other, you know, we all know the tools in the playbook, you know, do what they’ll wilt, all those things, but it’s darkness it’s to bring you away from the light.

So going forward, you can definitely count on the truth thing. Which leads into the evil thing and leads into the conspiracy thing, as well as the science thing. You can count on all of that being front and center in terms of what the show is all about.

And as I was mulling, all that over, it reminded me of a line from an old Mac Miller song.

I was looking for what was looking for me.

I think Mack was looking for the wrong things, but the line works equally well. If you’re looking for the right things, if you’re looking for truth, if you’re looking for the light. The light and the truth will find you.

[00:08:30] Alex Tsakiris:

And with that and with the final.

Big big, thanks to all of you. Who’ve listened to and contributed to this show and all the amazing guests I’ve had on this show that have. Just added so much to me personally, to my personal growth in a way that I just always imagined that this show would do. I just have to give a big, big hug of gratitude.

All right. Al 15 year anniversary show coming up.

(—–)

[00:09:03] Al Borealis: (—-) welcome to skeptical where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host Al Borealis standing in for Alex today, uh, sees otherwise preoccupied with an interview as we speak and upper pole on this episode, we welcome our first time guests, namely the Yogi godfather of indie podcasts, Mr.

Skeptical himself, Alex Securus. But before we kick off the show, listen to this. I don’t

[00:09:42] Clip: have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows. Things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth banks are going bust Chucky. Let’s keep a gun under the counter.

There’s nobody anywhere seems to know what to do. And there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs lost some local news. Chasta tells us that that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad, worse than bad. They’re crazy.

It’s like everything. Everywhere is going crazy. So we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller. And all we say is, please at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel belt and radios. And I won’t say anything.

Just leave us alone. Well, I’m not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to ride. I don’t want you to write to your Congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression on the inflation and the Russians.

All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say I’m a human being. God damn it. My life has value.

So I want you to get up. Now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it and stick your head out and yell. Hi, he was mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore,

[00:11:12] Al Borealis: even if you’ve never seen the 1976 movie net Rook, you know, the line delivered by the one honest and use man Harwood to be played by Peter Finch.

I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore. Crystallizes the anger and powerlessness felt by the individual who has no recourse, optional plan trapped in a system of rice, corruption and control. Uh, sounds familiar, Alex, and, and welcome to the show by the way. Welcome

[00:11:45] Alex Tsakiris: you sneaky devil. You sneaky did.

[00:11:49] Al Borealis: So do, do we have to like, uh, explain the metaphor

[00:11:53] Alex Tsakiris: here or, well, you know, you know, like we were just chatting about a minute ago. We could probably go really. And to that. And cause there’s some spiritual implications with that too, you know? I mean, what are we supposed to do? Are we really supposed to get angry?

And given that, that was a movie from way back then and it still reverberates today. What does that say about our situation that we think is so new and unique and cracked it just for us? I don’t know, man, you know, that’s the whole, a deep into the rabbit hole that we’re going to

[00:12:26] Al Borealis: go for sure. And usually you line up these kind of video clips to reflect on the guests.

And I think like if you go back to the seventies, of course, nobody did what this, uh, character in the movie did, but in the movie there wasn’t at least one honors newsman. And while we may look back at their clumps clumsy way, he wanted to, I mean, he managed to get everyone after the windows and that’s this butterfly effect, you know, like more Goldberg told you in a recent interview.

And so I kind of think of you in, you’re not angry like him, but you are trying to shake people out of the sleep and you are seeking truth. And uh, I also think you have influence, uh we’ll we’re gonna review that today. Actually. Now I have to say before we really get going here is that Alex is completely oblivious of most of today’s show.

He gave me the full power to do it my way. And so we were going to try to limit the, like you said, when you inflate, someone’s ego, the ass kissing the bribery. I don’t know the English word, but you know what I mean? But if something like that happens, it’s not Alex fought. Okay. As oblivious as the listener.

[00:13:47] Alex Tsakiris: Well, I’ve been instructed by you to stay within some very narrow guidelines. So I’m always trying to engage with you because I love our dialogue so much, but I’ve been told just to

[00:13:59] Al Borealis: shut up. So that’s mainly to do yup. Today. I’m just a robot. I’m going to try not to dominate this thing. Let’s start by something that maybe many listeners are not so aware of.

And that’s your background? I’m talking about the pre skeptical. I mean like, like me, you’re a rather private guy, but you, you share whatever you want. I think there’s some key. Experiences at least that would be interesting for people who love the show to know about, because I think it has informed, I mean, we are all a sum total of our experiences.

Right. And you, you didn’t have a career in radio before you started this, so, so how, how on earth did you end up or I should say, what on earth did you do before skeptical?

[00:14:43] Alex Tsakiris: Well, yeah, it was really just a business guy, but even before, so I went to school and I got an undergraduate degree in computers, computer science, and then I got an MBA and my college was really, I have a football, I had a football scholarship and I was very focused on playing football and that was kinda my thing, my life, you know, but I was, I did manage to get the undergraduate degree in the MBA.

And then I went to work for a consulting company, Pricewaterhouse, a big eight accounting firm. And I was doing computer programming basically for hire, you know, they put you in a Brooks brothers suit and then all of a sudden they can bill you out for astronomical amounts of money. So you’re

[00:15:25] Al Borealis: sat in a cubicle. Oh yeah, I’ve done that too.

[00:15:30] Alex Tsakiris: You know, w that’s more of a, where I worked as kind of a work for hire thing, you know? So they would rent you out, you know, when you go to Ralston, Purina or Anheuser-Busch, I was in St. Louis office in the United States in St. Louis, Missouri. And, you know, these were the large, you know, fortune 100 clients that we had.

So, and then I got, uh, I, so I was doing that. And then I wound up in Alaska on a job for the state of Alaska. You

lived in Alaska. I did in Juno. That’s hardcore. Yeah, it was great. And, uh, but I really decided that this corporate thing and the cubicle thing, I mean, I didn’t understand it, that I didn’t understand the soul crushing part, but I understood the soul crushing part.

You know what I mean? Like, I think so many people can relate to this. You know, you don’t exactly. You can’t exactly put your finger on what’s wrong with this because you’re doing what you were been programmed to do. And you know, what everyone’s telling you is success. You know? So I was trying to look for a way out.

I said, you know what? I’ll go back to school. I’ll get a PhD.

[00:16:36] Al Borealis: I can teach her, hang on, hang on. I, at this point you already had taken a degree in what subjects.

[00:16:42] Alex Tsakiris: So it was undergraduate in computer science and then a master’s in business administration. Uh, a business guy. So I decided to go back PhD. The primary goal of the PhD was not anything academic or intellectual.

It was like, Hey, get a PhD in business. And you can kind of make really decent money as professor it’s high in demand, dah, go to the university of Arizona. So I start teaching computer science classes while I’m getting my PhD in information systems. And then I stumbled across this thing, artificial intelligence.

And I ran into, um, a guy happened to be, you know, I never made this connection, but it was a Norwegian guy and we became really good friends, Oystein and Norwegian. Then he had a similar background to me. And he had worked for an accounting firm like I had. And, uh, we both were fascinated with AI and we started kind of cobbling together, a curriculum in artificial intelligence.

And then, so that’s what we’re doing. I was off and running and then I got into it and I got a couple of, uh, uh, uh, opportunities to go and teach at corporations. The first one was Texas instruments, you know, the defense contractor, you know, but, uh, a lot of bright people there and they said, Hey, come on in and teach our engineers about artificial intelligence.

We want to do that. And that led to a job at DuPont. And I had all these corporate clients and I was making a lot of money relative at the time, you know, I thought, wow, you know, screw the PhD. You know, it was a couple of years into it. I’m going to be a multimillionaire and, you know, time with this AI stuff.

So I left and I started a company called myPath technologies in Dallas, Texas. And, uh,

[00:18:38] Al Borealis: and you invented stuff, you’re an inventor or what’s an inventor.

[00:18:42] Alex Tsakiris: Well, I saw that again, you know, I just saw that as the intellectual property play, the IP play, you know, you’re referring to like, uh, mark Gober that’s what he used to do is, is, is essential in high tech.

So I don’t know if I was in a vendor as much as from a business standpoint, protecting your intellectual property. Right. Is your intellectual property is a smart move. So I applied for patents and I got some patents and all the rest of that. But again, my play was just about the money. Just about getting paid.

Yeah. No it wasn’t, but surely

[00:19:15] Al Borealis: you must have given thought to the corner because the concept of artificial intelligence was new back then. That’s when it started basically. And I mean, I mean, of course the concept has been imagined by people, but that’s when people started to working with something that could go in that direction.

Did you, at that point, because you went that it was before you had explored consciousness and all this, you, you probably didn’t make your mind up for sure. On stuff, but did you have any thoughts about if it ever could be like a real sentiment. And you believe that back then? No,

[00:19:51] Alex Tsakiris: I didn’t because the AI at that point was so weak and so lame, and it was really kind of just, it was very hype.

And for people who were really into information systems and computer science, they saw it as hype. They said, this is just computer programming. It’s being relabeled as artificial intelligence.

[00:20:10] Al Borealis: Uh, as, as cliff, I said, uh, he says trash in trash out, something like that.

[00:20:15] Alex Tsakiris: Well, th there’s there’s that aspect of it.

The other aspect of it is if anyone who’s ever used a spreadsheet, um, you know, realizes two things that one, like the spreadsheet is good for doing stuff that would be really hard to do manually, you know, adding up numbers in a column like they’ve had to do since the Babylonian times or whatever, you know, it’s really great at that.

But the other thing that it becomes something of its own beast, if you will, because now you can start doing forecasting, but just a simple spreadsheet that would be completely impossible. And that causes from a consciousness standpoint for you to imagine problems that you never would have imagined because now you have that tool and the same thing goes on with AI.

So now you amp that up times a thousand because that’s how much do factors greater it is now an AI is reaching some places that no one had had really anticipated. And we’re not really sure what the implications of those are, you know? Um, so all that is, is an interesting, separate discussion, but at the time, no, I was just, you know, looking into, uh, I D I just saw it as an opportunity really, as a business operator.

[00:21:32] Al Borealis: Um, well, with quantum computing, that’s a game changer. So we have to watch that sport and see how it develops. But I’m still, I’m still, uh, leaning towards no, it’s not going to be, it’s not going to be sent you aren’t in any way, shape or form, but if they can make them so refined that we can’t tell the difference that I believe.

So they become like, it may be a robot, right? And you think you’re interacting with a human being, but it’s just a super advanced computer program. There’s no scent young life or consciousness.

[00:22:07] Alex Tsakiris: Yeah. That already goes on today. You know, if you ever, if you ever trade stocks, I would do the example I always use.

If you trade stocks, you were competing with a robot, an AI robot. If you

[00:22:21] Al Borealis: realize specific tasks, chess,

[00:22:23] Alex Tsakiris: chess poker, but this is for money, right? If you go online and you play online poker for money, you’re competing with a robot, not all the time, but you’re likely to run across a robot. So, and that’s where it really pops up.

People think of it as a, robot’s gonna walk up to you and serve you tea. Well, no, the first time you’re going to encounter a robot and you already are in counting a robot is when you go onto your screen. Cause that’s where they’re the best. So again, stock trading, you know, any, anything, you know, how long you wait in line on for technical support or, you know how, whether you’re, we all see it in advertising, you know?

And so all that stuff is where AI is just it’s it’s not even worth discussing it’s potential. It’s already here. It will further and further encroach. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but you know, yeah. We’re already there.

[00:23:16] Al Borealis: Yeah. Well folks, you will be so happy that you’re name today. See you already got the free business idea, get a super good poker robot, put them in your account and make him play all the different online competitions, et cetera, and just earn money.

Very good business ideas. Right. But you had other values or I should say thought processes then just business back then because, uh, we all know Rupert Sheldrake was essential in, in getting skeptical off the ground, but there is a story between. That’s happened and you deciding to become rich, uh, and you actually manage that.

I mean,

[00:23:59] Alex Tsakiris: the thing, the other thing is that’s that again, you know, this is so awesome for that you’re doing this and it’s, it’s flattering and it’s almost also fun, you know, to go through all this stuff. But the, the parallel path I was on that you can relate to and probably resonates with the skeptical show is I was Yogi.

I was a Yogi. I don’t know why, but I knew I was drawn to this stuff. And like I said, a couple of times, you know, I’m sitting in a little 400 square foot apartment in Dallas, Texas, very small crappy apartment with no rent because I’m an entrepreneur startup and I’m putting all my money into my business.

And at the same time, I’m doing correspondence courses with Yogananda, the author of autobiography of a Yogi. And, you know, it’s pretty obscure stuff if you’ve ever looked at, if you take those books, if you read his book, autobiography, autobiography of a Yogi and invited to do the correspondence courses, which, you know, I’ve been down to the center.

I now live, like I ride my bike, uh, many days up to a little peak where I look out over it. Yogananda’s uh, Ostrom wow. It’s, it’s unbelievable. This connection that I have, and I do

[00:25:11] Al Borealis: yoga, is he, is he burned in, in California? I don’t

[00:25:14] Alex Tsakiris: think he is. Um,

[00:25:18] Al Borealis: you’re not engrave. Yeah, of course.

[00:25:19] Alex Tsakiris: Yeah. Yeah. So, and, and he has several centers.

He has a center in LA, but he has a really significant one in Encinitas, California, near where I live. And it’s really beautiful. And as a Lotus flower, and there’s a yoga, uh, cafe, uh, or Swami’s cafe right across the street. And you know, when I talked to , who we’ll probably talk about in the show, funny thing is, and funny thing, you know, coincidences, so I’m interviewing Riz and fantastic genius, MIT computer scientist game, AI experts, simulation theory expert.

And he goes, Hey, I was just, and this is before I’d give him the whole yoga thing. He goes, I was just contracted by an American Indian publisher with an American connection to do an autobiography, to do a biography of yoga. And I said, so then I told them the whole thing, my connection to Yogananda. I said, when you come down and let me know, well, you know, it’s right up the road, we’ll go to the Swami’s cafe.

So I didn’t see it as particularly unusual that I had this intense, you know, pull towards yoga. And at the same time I was all about the money and that I was doing, I was an entrepreneur and I’m doing the correspondence classes, but that’s was, that’s what I was about. So it was like, as soon as I had a chance to cash in my business, I was like, great.

That’s out of the way. Now, now back to the stuff that I really want to explore, which is, you know, who am I, why am I here? And as much as I was at Yogi, I was skeptical of all that crap because yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:56] Al Borealis: Let me add a couple of things because we’re going to leave that subject matter just on Yoganonda. He was also a Freemason in NCA it into free Masonic order now did not know that no, most people don’t, but this was in the time it remember when the skeptics had this ultra reach where they were so visible in everywhere, and this must have been that time, right?

Yes. Right. So you got drawn into that, uh, those debates that was happening

[00:27:29] Alex Tsakiris: there. Oh yeah. It was a big part of, of, of what my show wound up being about initially, not because of, I was pointed in that direction, but as soon as you started to explore any of this stuff, you encountered these people in a very major way.

And I don’t want to step three, four steps ahead, but boy, I look back on what we’re all, what all that was about. And I see it completely differently than I did at the time. And I think that vantage point, which you and I have talked about has really been brought into focus by the plan. DEMEC more than anything else.

It’s kind of,

[00:28:09] Al Borealis: we all took them more seriously than they just serve. But, um, but back then, uh, when, uh, I mean you, I mean in skeptical, you went into the whole problem with a no nonsense businessman’s attitude, which is fantastic. It’s the same with the mark Ober that I actually interviewed yesterday. I mean, I’ve never had a guest who so succinct and to the point who should have to fight with the guests over the road, he answers your question.

Exactly as you asked it, and then he’s done, he said to his defense. Yeah. I’m used to being in board meetings. So I’m thinking, I’m thinking you took some of that. No nonsense approach, uh, into skeptical, but I actually, that’s going too far. Uh, you must have discovered Rupert Sheldrake at some point. Um, and that

[00:29:00] Alex Tsakiris: conflict I did well, the way I discovered Sheldrick is kind of, as you’re talking about you, Noel have different personalities and then we’re, uh, personalities are shaped by our training.

You know, so my training both as a computer programmer and as a business person was pragmatic. Uh, like you say, kind of sort through the bullshit, which you’re surrounded by in business. I mean, a lot of people that are not in business don’t realize that, but I mean, you just surrounded by that. You either learn how to sort through it very quickly or you’re just, or you don’t get very far, you’re just plowed under.

So I, you get Sheldrick, you understand children Sheldrick is that, that energy in a lot of ways, cell Sheldrick is a nice guy, but he’s kind of a no bullshit guy, you know, and he doesn’t suffer fools mildly and, but in a very polite way. So I just liked the matter of fact way that he talked about this stuff and I was drawn to that.

And at the same time, Dean Raden, I mean, again, the coincidence thing versus, you know, right. Timing thing. But my first two interviews were with Dean Raden and Rupert. Yeah. Back then

[00:30:16] Al Borealis: to top that. Yeah, of course. But back then, I don’t think Reagan was, I mean, he was very well known in academic circles back then, uh, shell record already gotten a name outside of those circles, but, um, okay, so you discovered this thing and, and, um, I think you were in touch with shell Rick too, before you launched a show.

[00:30:38] Alex Tsakiris: I actually, I got in touch with Sheldrick and I said, somebody needs to. Somebody needs to be interviewing you more and getting your opinions out there. And he said, why don’t you do it? Right. And I said, I don’t, I don’t know anything about that. I’ve never done. I don’t do that, but we’ve got to get somebody else.

[00:30:54] Al Borealis: Right. We have, I actually have a lined up your, your explanation of how it all started and it’s listened to that. And then, uh, okay. And then Nicole meant, but you know, since Sheldrick was such a crucial figure to get it started, I wonder what take he would have on it. You know what let’s use the power of imagination as one says.

So if Rupert was with right now, I would simply ask him, how would you describe the inception of skeptical. As well as evolution. And what message would you have for Alex? Take it away, Rupert?

[00:31:27] Rupert Sheldrake: Yes. Well, so the thing is, I can’t say very much about his recent activity, you know, because I don’t follow podcast smarts because I don’t drive cars or jog or anything.

So, um, I do watch YouTube so a bit, but not. Um, so I haven’t been following the skeptic podcast in detail. So when I look at the website, it seems that his scope is now considerably broader and he’s dealing with political type issues as well as the mayor skeptics situation. But, um, no, I’d be happy to talk about things like that.

I do know a bit about, so, um, long time ago I was running a website called skeptical investigations.org, which has now changed its name some years ago to skeptical about skeptics. And the reason I was doing that was that, um, I was just really annoyed that the way that these so-called skeptics, so basically dogmatic, materialists were getting away with murder.

They were pretending to be. The voice of the science establishment and the voice of science and reason they were taken seriously by the media. They were always appearing on least on British media in American media. And they’d had a well-funded campaign through the committee for skeptical inquiry or psych opposite then was the committee for the scientific investigation of claims of the paranormal.

Um, you know, well-funded way of trying to dominate the media and to keep anything about power psychology out of serious media and the educational system and dominate Wikipedia. Well, all of that was something really annoyed me and, and I thought there has to be a countervailing voice. And so, uh, with a group of other people doing research in these areas, we started this website, skeptical investigation was to investigate skeptics and the, and their organizations not to write polemics, not to be rude or have pastoral attacks, but simply to have dossiers just showing how little scientific credibility and most of them have.

And, um, you know, how flawed their arguments are and how uninterested they are in reasoning and evidence, even though they claim to be. So anyway, um, Alex read this, uh, website and read articles on it and he got in touch with me and said he liked this approach and was very helpful. And what could he do to get involved?

And the one to launch he could do to get involved with the website, because, you know, he could have written some articles, but he had plenty of time and energy. Um, and that would have been a slightly, a waste of his energies. And I forgotten whether he brought it up or whether I did, we had some telephone calls and I suggested, or he suggested a podcast dealing with these kinds of themes.

I forgotten whose idea it was in the first place, but anyway, It became a cop podcast. And, um, he did it very well. I mean, he really went in depth into these various topics. And so anyway, he launched the skeptical podcast. And then, um, he, at one stage I met, I’ve only met him once in person and he was doing a film about consciousness.

I was teaching at the Aslan Institute in California and he came by and we did an interview there for his film. Uh, one of the problems with the interview was that the ocean waves were so loud that it was slightly hard to hear what either of us were saying. Um, because it was right by the Pacific ocean anyway, that’s so, so it started really with Alex contacting me before he started skeptical, you know, discussing the general situation what’s going on.

And at that time, um, as you might know, he wasn’t particularly against the skeptics. He thought they might be right. I think he genuinely wanted to find out who was right. The people who did psychic research and claimed there were phenomena really happening, like the sense of being stared at and telepathy and dogs that they were in their owns or coming home or, um, whether the skeptics were riots and that the whole of this was trashed, diluted pseudoscience.

And, um, he was genuinely keen to find out. And so he interviewed people on both sides. And I think that as a result of that, he fairly soon realized that actually the skeptics didn’t have very much to say except denialism and denunciation. And, um, in some cases, um, misleading claims, I feel that Alex’s interviews went in greater depth than almost any others in this area because he was not trying to just put one side.

He was trying to look at the other side. And for example, I had a long running dispute with Richard Wiseman who claimed that dogs didn’t they’re when they’re in this were coming home, even though when he does an experiment with the dog I was working with, he got the same results as me that actually confirmed my data.

And there’s been a lot written since then about his misleading claims and, uh, the way he managed to get his claims all over the newspapers as if he totally debunked this phenomenon when he confirmed it. I mean, just an extremely misleading operation, but Alex really went into this, you know, he interviewed Richard Wiseman.

He interviewed me, he read the various papers. And then in one of the programs, he had us on together in a kind of debate and, you know, no one else had done that. And it was really helpful, um, to have a forum in which people could hear both sides of this argument, because normally in the skeptic, uh, media, I mean, for example, Michael Sharma’s skeptic column in scientific American or the skeptical Inquirer or skeptical claims in the newspapers and the media, you only hear that side.

And, um, so it was really, um, unusual to have a forum where both sides could be heard. And I think that’s one of the great strengths of, um, Alex and his whole project. Alexandra is that not only the skills of interviewing people and the energy to make this podcast work, but, um, he has also had various proactive enterprises, more like an investigative journalist.

I mean, there’s something about his style, which is that of a good investigative journalist. And at one stage you remember the lake James, Randy was always going around saying, he’d got this million dollar prize for anyone who could share your psychic phenomena. And he used this as a media stunt and the rank and file of the skeptic movement.

It would reiterate his claims if it’s so good. Why don’t, why do you claim the million dollars? So, um, Alex did actually try and claim the million dollars. He, um, found a dog that knew it. Tony was coming home and in, in the United States, um, he did some filming. He did some experiments and then he got in touch with James Randy saying he’d like to enter the contest.

He called this dog new and his own. He was coming home and this was based on my own work, on the create. Um, And Randy who’d lied about doing experiments whose own, which he never did and lied about analyzing my data, which he never saw in detail. It was obviously rather reluctant to get involved. And so he simply didn’t reply to emails.

He tried to fob, uh, Alex off. I mean, I can tell the story better than me. Um, but basically it became very clear that he had wanted nothing to do with this investigation and dismissed it as a stupid, um, uh, inquiry. And, um, you know, I think at one stage he told Alex and he, he got better things to do than listen to stupid dog stories.

Um, so far from being open-minded and inquiring into the phenomenon as his many of his supporters thought he was. So this was a genuine scientific endeavor. Um, he basically only wanted to expose and debunk people at this price, which we never intended to award. And it was also very questionable if he actually had the million dollars, even in prejudice, he claimed not to have it actually an actual, uh, bank deposit, but claimed that a lot of people had pledged to give it if called upon to do so.

All that was very questionable at the point, she was Alex called his bluff by actually having a research project that would have qualified for the prize and then finding, um, Randy back out and try and dismiss it. And that was a very powerful investigation. No one else had done that. And a lot of people were frightened of Randy, um, and addicts called his bluff and it was a great thing to do.

And I think he did a great job. Uh, I think so. And, um, I think he really did help change the culture. I mean, the, the skeptics have been a lot less, um, aggressive, um, the area where they’re still completely in control and where they do the most harm I use Wikipedia and anything, nothing anyone’s done has managed to solve that problem.

Even Alex hasn’t solved the Wikipedia problem because as you know, they’ve captured the biographies of people like me and all the pages to do with Paris, psychology and psychic research. They’ve defined Paris psychology as a pseudo science and therefore. Everything to do with it is dismissed and to write it.

Uh, they just, they they’re very keen to describe me as a power psychologist, which I’ve never claimed to be. I, I call myself a biologist, but the reason they do that is because on, on Wikipedia, parapsychology is defined as pseudoscience. So calling someone a power psychologist basically classifies them as a senior scientist and they’re still getting away with it.

Um, it will take more than Alex to change the culture of Wikipedia I’m afraid, but I hope he’s changing the culture surrounding it in such a way that it does eventually change. My message to Alex is thank you and keep up the good work. We really need independent voices, people with real curiosity and intelligence who are prepared to look at controversial issues, um, without being a polemicist on who have an open-minded approach.

And I think it’s very important to model that. And there are very few people in the world doing this. So I’m really pleased Alex has done it. And I very much hope he’ll continue.

[00:42:33] Al Borealis: Of course, that was Dr. Chad wreck himself who was happy to phone in to deliver his comment to this anniversary show. Okay. So we got his take on that, Alex, I suppose you can confirm his, his description of how it proceeded.

[00:42:51] Alex Tsakiris: I am. I am grinning from ear to ear. It’s like an, like, you know, the connecting with an old friend and, uh, what a giant, we, we. It’s been said, you know, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Rupert Sheldrick is just such a giant and just someone who’s stood up to that. I’m itching, itching, itching to talk about this topic, but I feel like we’re going to, it would propel us too far forward,

[00:43:19] Al Borealis: especially to the skeptics.

We getting back to them and we stay locked the inception of skeptical.

[00:43:24] Alex Tsakiris: And, and the, the one thing that I, that I’d throw out as a teaser for anyone is I remember when Rupert and I met in and his wife was there too. Who’s a very, very accomplished, uh, therapist and very intelligent woman. And, uh, the topic of Randy came up and one of the things that came up from them, which totally caught me by surprise again.

And here’s the hint spoiler is that Randy was somehow involved with pedophilia or some kind of, oh my

[00:43:57] Al Borealis: God, they were onto him

[00:43:58] Alex Tsakiris: back then they were onto him back then. And they didn’t say, they said it in a, they said it in a way, I want to make sure that I’m not like, well, they just said it in kind of an off the cuff.

Well, you’ve heard the rumors about him and little boys or boys or young men or whatever. I forget the exact phrase, but it was just that it was all that stuff is, so that is so pre Epstein and pre, you know, a pizza gate and all that stuff. It just had a different impact. And I remember hearing that and I’m going, why would they be saying that these are super credible buttoned down British people.

I’m surprised that they’re disclosing something unless they really know something. So even though they’re saying it in a kind of, which I think he generally was, you know, and I think it was actually his wife. He said it is just, it’s a rumor, you know, it’s not like I’m confirming it. And now I’m spreading that rumor, but it’s 15 years later and all this stuff has come out on Randy.

So I feel like I’m not more than a rumor. Yeah. I don’t feel like I’m violating any confidence here other than to say that that was a rumor that was circulating. At that point and they had some awareness of it.

[00:45:09] Al Borealis: Hmm. Well, that’s super interesting. Um, yeah, he’s a matter of fact guy and, uh, he pointed out a very important thing.

He said that he got impression that you were sincerely inquiring you weren’t there to have an agenda, but find out. And, and that’s, you know, I told you before, I never, I never listened to podcasts before I started my podcast back in 15, but of course some small drips had reached me. And I remember back at that time when there was this big skeptic brouhaha, then.

So Matt episodes of skeptical reached me. There was people in my circle who listened to it. So especially through Facebook, right. And I have to say Alex skeptical, especially in the beginning, it was like a public core, right? Kind of people. I knew spiritual people who are a little academic agnostic people, and even eighties were following you in the beginning.

And everybody was like, you know how people are tribal lists, right. And even back then they were especially on this issue. So I think the different sides, those who had defined a sites, they were very excited because they wanted to have a probably sure their side would win. And then there were all the people in between, which were more my friends, uh, who were sincerely excited to, to find out because then people really picked up that you are going to get like share.

Rick said, he said that event, many forums for both sides. And they’re going to get back to that too, because that’s a huge problem. But you managed in the beginning to do that. So I guess you planned already, when you talk with, uh, shell Rick, about launching a podcast, I guess you already planned, done to get him on, not at the first.

[00:47:00] Alex Tsakiris: Right. Well, again, you know, when I first approached him, I was like, you need to do a podcast. And he’s like, I don’t know how to do that. And I go, well, it’s easy, you know, we’ll just hire somebody and we’ll get somebody. And he’s like, okay. But, and, and Rupert’s really great at this in a very, very, uh, positive way of kind of pulling people in and then giving them he’s tremendously.

As you can hear, he’s a Jew, he’s a very straightforward guy, but he’s extremely generous of spirit. You know? Like he would never be one, not to credit someone for something that they did the opposite. You know what I mean? He’s done so much and he’s crediting other people, which is, again,

[00:47:41] Al Borealis: I think it’s rather humble for a scientist is yeah, he

[00:47:45] Alex Tsakiris: is.

So he is, he’s a light bear. You know, he is gladiator of the light. It just comes through that’s who he is. That’s who, that’s what I want to be. That’s who you are. That’s our, those are our models in, in life and our culture. But anyways, so it was purely that of saying, Hey, you ought to do this. This isn’t hard.

You could do it again. I’m a tech guy. So I’m like this isn’t hard. And he’s like, I don’t know how to do that. I’m not a tech guy. I go, okay, I’ll do it. And I said, well, we’ll hire someone to do the interview. And the first guy contacted do the interview. We did a terrible job. I was like, well, I know I can do a lot better than that.

So then there, there, yeah. And the

[00:48:22] Al Borealis: seat. Yeah, you got a passion, but just, I mean, back in two Tufts and seven podcasts hadn’t taken off. I mean, people knew what it was, but it wasn’t the same thing. Did you listen already then to Joe Rogan and stuff? How did you even understand

[00:48:36] Alex Tsakiris: that? I was into all that stuff I was into, you know, I was the on, I dunno again, I’m not going to ask you questions, but I was in the lifelong learning mode.

So I was like recording radio interviews. And so I thought I could listen to them on my, you know, little Walkman kind of MP3, Walkman kind of thing, you know? And then when podcasting came out, I was like, great, I’m already doing this. Let’s do some more. It wasn’t like a big, you know, this is

[00:49:04] Al Borealis: no big transition.

No it wasn’t. But were you aware of, so Lilly podcast shows, I mean, I know many media show mainstream media shows are important costed, I guess that’s how it originated that there was an archive for mainstream media shows, but were you also listening to mayor. Port Costa, like Joe Rogan back here. I think you Rogan was going

[00:49:29] Alex Tsakiris: already then.

No, I don’t think he was. I mean, as soon as that stuff started to happen, I was all over it. Yeah. I mean, cause yeah, it was a small little community and that was what I wanted. I was interested in the content. So I was looking for the content wherever I could find it. I was like a lot of people at the time were, and that’s how they found Skepto because there wasn’t a lot of this kind of content out there.

[00:49:50] Al Borealis: Yeah. Okay. I’m looking now. I’m fact checking us as we speak. Um, damn you started before Rogan man. He started December 24. That’s Christmas Eve, 2009.

[00:50:06] Alex Tsakiris: No. Okay. Yeah, that sounds right. Wow.

[00:50:09] Al Borealis: See, when I call you the godfather, it’s not an exaggeration man. Okay. But let’s just be clear here. The first, uh, skeptical podcast was aired January 7th, 2007.

So in other words, you already started in late 2006 now. Okay. We are actually a few weeks on overtime for the birthday, but um, let’s uh, let’s check. Oh, what? It sounded like. This is you introducing the first skeptical show.

[00:50:46] Alex Tsakiris: I’m Alex and I’m going to be your host at least on this first episode of the show.

I say that because one of the purposes of this first episode is to find other like-minded people who want to join the skeptical team. First, let me tell you what skeptical is all about. There’s a problem today with the way science gets reported, the way it gets packaged and delivered. And most of all, the way it gets filtered by a few loud voices that seem to dominate the conversation.

Now I’m coming at this perspective as a non-scientist a computer guy, a guy who dug into the science behind some of the biggest new discoveries of our time was pretty amazed at what I found. Take, for example, our guest on this episode, Dr. Rupert Sheldrick, here’s a top-notch scientist, a guy who received his PhD at Cambridge.

And I spent the last 25 years doing experiments, publishing peer reviewed papers and doing all the stuff that good scientists do. Very, very impressive stuff. The only problem with Dr Sheldrake’s work is what he’s discovered, namely, that there’s a field of awareness or a memory that permeates our consciousness and that this field explains things like collecting.

Now as soon as you mentioned something like leprosy or a psychic phenomenon, God or reincarnation, a lot of scientific people immediately shut down or go on the attack without ever looking at the data without ever engaging in intelligent dialogue. And that’s something we hope to change on this show with your help and with the help of scientific experts on both sides of these issues.

We’re going to create an open, honest, intelligent discussion about new scientific discoveries, especially those that go against what the mainstream media is willing to give serious attention to.

[00:52:29] Al Borealis: Yeah, I guess this was so long ago. It was before your voice had cracked, but you, we can hear here are your intentions and man, you actually achieved what you set out to do.

This is the evidence we just heard what you said now, before we recommend to pawn anything further. I also want to play a corporate of other clips, uh, where you describe how it all stops. And by the way, folks, when I play back clips of previous, all skeptical stuff, I’ve speeded up for practical reasons.

So he doesn’t talk that quick and hectic as it sounds, it’s just for practicality, but let’s hear how you, because there was this dude, personal friend of you, I think who managed to squeeze you for the same thing I managed to now, namely, to get you to show up to a, I think it was like a 200 show anniversary.

Yes. And it was very useful. Uh, you basically said everything there is to say back then, and the difference between now and then of course is you have much, much time behind you. So of course you have further perspectives and we are going to get back to that, but let’s just hear what you said in show. I think it was show 200 about how it all started.

This is like Alex’s version of what we heard shell Rick say,

[00:53:52] Alex Tsakiris: well, you know, I started out as a listener. I’ve always been very interested in not only these topics, but in general in the idea that I can learn, I can get better. I can improve by absorbing the knowledge from other people. So I was a listener and I became quite interested in the whole idea of parasite, ecology, and kind of paranormal phenomenon, just at a very casual level, like anyone who watches TV that eventually led me to Dr.

Rupert Sheldrick, who is guests number one of skeptical. And the conversation I had with Rupert was along the lines of, Hey, this is interesting. Why isn’t any. Talking about this in a serious way, interviewing these researchers and analyzing what they have to say versus what people who oppose them have to say.

And he said, I don’t know. And I said, well, we ought to make that happen. And I’m willing to fund this, you know, let’s hire somebody to go to the shop. And that was really how it started as I was going to fund a show because I’m not a producer of any sort, and I’m not a radio guy or anything like that.

Well, we went down that path and I asked Rupert for suggestions of who might be good for the show. And, and that kind of played out. And it’s like, so many things you hear about, you know, there wasn’t anybody. So I stepped in and, and to do it. And after a couple of shows, really, I was pretty well hooked on doing it.

And I was hooked on the fact that if I tried to subcontract this out, it wouldn’t really fit what I was looking for. I wouldn’t get the questions that I want asked and answered those wouldn’t come on the table because everyone does bring a different perspective to these things. So that’s really how it all started.

[00:55:33] Al Borealis: And a quick one about his personal motives,

[00:55:37] Alex Tsakiris: you know what I’ve said repeatedly to people, and I’ve had to say it so that I can remind myself of it and gain as much humility as I can. And that’s that, this is my journey. You know, this is my little trick, this skeptical show and the opportunity to provide this on the internet in iTunes and thousands of people and all that, Hey man, that’s just a little tricks.

I get to call these people up and talk to them because if I just called them up and talk to them, I want to talk to me. So the idea of a show and a regular schedule and a continuation of it or anything like that is just for me, an outgrowth of this desire to talk to folks. And so those are just the, that’s just a vehicle that allows me to keep talking to the people I want to talk about.

It’s just, I’m just on this journey. Yeah,

[00:56:27] Al Borealis: indeed. I can relate to that as support customer myself. I mean, it’s pretty close to my own little tips plus free books. Of course. Yeah. So, so you’ve pretty clearly said it there, by the way, that anniversary show 200. There was this a friend of yours who, who learned you into that, right?

Tim deli. Yes. Right, right. And I really recommend that for four people. Uh, although most of it you’re going to hear today. Uh, but it was really clarifying, very interesting to get a deep, well at peek behind the curtain of the show. But here we have it. I think, uh, one of the very clear things that comes off here is, you know, the sincerity you went into the matter with, and with your eyes on the boards today, people start podcasts because they want to make money or they want to make a name for themselves or whatever.

Right. Or propaganda for something. So it’s pretty rare the way you incepted it. And I’m so early, I can’t get over how early I, yeah. That alone is a kudos. Yeah. I don’t know. Yeah. Okay. So let’s also play a clip here about, uh, one of the key things about skeptical and in some ways, at least when it comes to production, I have some views on this.

Um, the, um, let’s see what you say about it.

[00:57:54] Alex Tsakiris: So there are a lot of business rules or lessons that I’ve learned that I think inform my decisions and skeptical. And one of them is that this idea that do what you love and the money will follow is really a load of crap. I mean, I don’t think that’s true. And I think the way that applies to podcasting is if I wanted to apply my time in my mental resources, towards increasing capital, I wouldn’t do it by five casting, not to say that some people haven’t found a way to monetize it and stuff like that.

But I don’t, that’s not one, that’s not my goal. And two, I don’t think it’s a very good way to make money, but it’s not my goal. It’s not what this thing’s about.

[00:58:40] Al Borealis: So-so doc, you said already then, and we’re going to fast forward to a much more recent. I think it’s a mesh of different comments, but this is a more recent.

And I want to play that back to back with that 200 show comment, because people, if they pay attention, they’ll see that you are really reiterating that idealism. That it’s all about seeking more ways to get the word out too. I mean, it’s all about the subject matter. Not about you, not about money and this is, and people make books.

For example, often you hear this. I used to just make it a book to make money. Of course, nobody ever made money from books in modern times, but, but even here, you’ll see, it’s all about the focus

[00:59:30] Alex Tsakiris: I book is done. Why science is wrong about almost everything is done. It’s out, it’s printed. It’s here on my desk.

And with the announcement of the book, I of course want to thank all of you for the help and support that you’ve given me with the skeptical project that’s led to this book. And also for many of the ideas that have really been formulated through my interaction with you. I have to tell you, one of the things I’m most excited about with the book is using it as a vehicle to connect with more people.

It’s always exciting to be able to share what I’ve learned to share some of this new science, and I’ve already begun to do that. I’ve completed a couple of interviews on the book and they’ve been great. And it’s so fun to talk to people. Who’ve never heard about some of this stuff before and expose it to them for the first time.

Just like I said, a minute ago, that’s really working out. I have several more scheduled and I wanted to reach out to all of you. If you know of other outlets where I can go on and talk about this book and get these ideas out there, please let me know. I’m particularly keen to talk to groups that might not be initially super receptive, but might be able to find some points of synergy where we could kind of shoe horn our way in there.

I really would like to talk to skeptics about the book. I’d love to talk to mainstream science types, love to talk to mainstream media types. And I’d love to talk to atheists, of course, Christians and all sorts of folks. If you have any ideas along those lines, or if you’re a blogger or a podcast or have those kinds of connections, let me know.

That’s just going to be exciting to me. And it’s going to be fun to get that out there. And as I do get that out there and go through that process. I want to let you know that I’ve set up a website tomorrow, less Chronicle, that journey of the rollout of the book and talking to these different groups, join me in this new, slightly different path that I’m embarking on.

So as you probably know, from listening to this podcast, I really enjoy these interviews. I gained so much by talking to all these really interesting people. And then I really enjoyed bringing it to you and getting your feedback and growing in that way. One of the things I regret is that I wish I could do more.

I do one every two weeks. Sometimes I sneak another one in there and you’ll always hear me lamenting about, wow. You know, I wish I could get more out, but it just gets to be a lot less fun to try and crank out one a week. I don’t know how some people do it. I mean, between the lining up guests, booking guests, interviewing, editing, transcribing, doing all that, it becomes like a job and not wants to have to go to via job, but I do want to bring more content.

Out. I think there’s a lot of information in these topics that we cover that I’d like to see shared more and brought into the dialogue about what’s going on with consciousness, spirituality, skepticism, and science around these topics that we talk about. So that’s why I’ve kind of redesigned the website to make it more one shareable, but also more open to other kinds of information and content beyond just these interviews that I do.

I’d like you to help me find more content and help me publish more content. There are some really, really bright, skeptical people out there. There’s some really good writers, a lot better writers than I am. So let’s kind of combine forces. Let’s find a way for you to help me bring bore content through the skeptical website, to people who are interested in this content.

Again, as before there was no advertising on the site, there was no moneymaking possibility for this site. It’s just outflow of money from me, for the server and all the rest of that stuff, which is fine. It’s not a huge expense. And the real goal is just to get this information out there and to further this dialogue about these topics.

[01:03:32] Al Borealis: Okay. So look, man, this is crucial because I’m not sure you are aware of it from your own position because it’s always easier to see clearly other outside and yourself, but the fact that skeptical is completely non-commercial or you just, like you said, you’re just spending money on it. You want to avoid it becoming a job.

I can relate to that in fact, twice I’ve seriously considered stopping podcasting. Understand. So I want you to say something about how you avoided. I mean, how can you go for 15 years and not getting tired of it? Um, I mean, I suspect I know the answer, but you get to answer that, but I would just want to say that the fact that you have never had any focus on my name, not just from the lack of greed position, I mean, you didn’t have to, right.

I mean, most people have to, but I think that has brought a particular, um, how you say it in English, not a standard, but, um, Uh, quality and honesty. That is very hard. At least even people who are relying on let alone advertisement, but just like me who get listeners paying me. Okay. I’m not turning the big corporation breathing down my neck, but I have some kind of poke bull is demand that I have to cater to.

You don’t have to steal. You’re trying to engage with people all the time and you are, and we’re going to talk more about that, but I think it’s so important for them, for the integrity, I think is the word I’m looking for the integrity or for this skeptical journey comment.

[01:05:15] Alex Tsakiris: I mean, I don’t want to come out too far cause I could go in a million million different directions.

You know, I really used to, to kind of get jumped three steps ahead, and then we can maybe fill it in. I always referenced this, but I remember hearing Shirley McClain many years ago, say we’re all entertainers and she’s talking. And she is known for kind of being at the forefront of presenting some very cutting edge information about, uh, uh, spirit traveling and all sorts of different kinds of stuff at that, which is very serious stuff and very in keeping with extended consciousness stuff.

And she’s really pushed on that. And she says, look, we’re all entertaining each other, which seems to diminish her message. And then I was very resistant to that. I’m like, no, dammit, I’m not about entertainment. I’m about truth seeking and sharing that truth with other people who are truth seeking. And as time has gone on, I’ve come to understand the other part of it too, which is that on a very, uh, spiritual level, we’re all here to entertain each other.

We’re all here to be that light, you know, to have that light that is always there to come through us and to reach other people. And the only way to do that is to tell the truth. You can’t do that if you’re. If you’re lying or faking, but the other thing is you do have to log away entertaining people is not a bad thing.

So I’m not against that. I’m just not very good at that. I find myself much more comfortable with just being direct. And, uh, I, I think I’ve turned off a ton. I know I’ve turned off a ton of people over the years and, and, but that’s gotta be, that’s gotta be okay with regard to quitting. I’ve thought about it many times.

I think about it all the time. It’s like all the time. Oh, now I shouldn’t say all the time. That’s an exaggeration, but I think that’s part of the yoga process. That’s part of the ice bath process. You know, it’s like the reason I get in that 35 degree water multiple times a week or in the ocean when it’s cold enough, multiple times a week is because I don’t want to do it.

It’s like a guy Brett, to put that Marine. He said, you know, it’s an obnoxious thing to say, but he’s jogging in the rain. And some woman rolls down her window and says, why are you doing the some fat woman drinking, eating French fries says, why are you doing that honey? And he says, I’m doing it cause you’re fucking not.

That’s obnoxious. And I don’t want to be obnoxious, but I understand the vibe I’m doing it because I know this is what my soul needs. Maybe your soul needs something different, but my soul needs the truth. It needs for me to be actively engaged in seeking the truth. So, you know, that’s,

[01:08:03] Al Borealis: that’s my, I would use the word infotainment in, in both your, in my case rather than entertainment, but.

Yeah, because I inadvertently it gets entertaining now. And then, especially when we are going to get back to that, the more confrontation or show us. But no, this is interesting because yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a part of your Yogi, isn’t it? Part of that journey. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:08:28] Alex Tsakiris: It’s the non dual, it’s the non dual thing, you know, why are any of us doing anything?

You know? So what

[01:08:36] Al Borealis: are, so then that this is meaningful. I mean, this is me. You don’t need attention. You don’t need a money. You don’t even need a connections, but it’s what you get out of doing the show. It’s what everybody pretends is their driving force. But in your case, it actually is, and it has to results.

Like you say, E Ville put off lots of people. One of the reasons, just one or the more evident reasons too, but one of the reasons is people aren’t that interested in truth. But the other thing is that it will also some people who do use a cliche vibrates at that frequency will recognize this because you’re seeking the truth, but to seek the truth, you have to be honest, you have to live in truth as much as we can.

And that comes through that you are a sincere seeker. And I think that’s key. It’s there, it’s a, it’s a same thing that puts some people off that makes others recognize, like, this is the real thing. This is his integrity. You understand what I’m in?

[01:09:42] Alex Tsakiris: I do. And that’s super nice and complimentary, but the other part of this, well, it, it, it’s true, but there’s another part of it too.

And that that’s, that I’m wrong a lot. And I have been wrong a lot and people were probably rightfully, uh, kind of put off by me because they were right and I was wrong. So you gotta keep, you gotta keep it

[01:10:05] Al Borealis: real. That’s not the most. No, no, no. That’s not the usual reason people are put off by you that they were right.

Or you were wrong and you were arrogant about it. And later, I mean, one thing is that you actually don’t admit when you’re wrong. People can’t even handle doing that. Well, so you are honest about evolving, right.

[01:10:24] Alex Tsakiris: You know, I mean, I do, I do kind of, I agree with you cause I don’t want to kind of be fronting, you know, like, um, because I’ll tell you what I genuinely like.

And I I’ve met other people who are like this. You are like this, when we’ve spoken, you know what. And no one likes to be wrong. I don’t like to be wrong, but I kind like to be wrong. I kinda like to beat, I kinda like when somebody really shows me where I’m off course, because then it allows me to get on course, you know, I was just editing an interview today that I’m doing with a guy and it was on the whole agenda, 21, 20 30.

Great reset. And I got to say going into it, I was a little bit yada, yada, you know, come on. And at the end of it, I was like, no, this guy has really done the work and he’s there in Missoula, Montana. And there are the laws and they’re on the books and I’m like, boom, you know, course correction for me. I love that.

I might look a little bit silly in that, you know, I didn’t kind of know it going in, but gosh, what a gift to know stuff that you

[01:11:27] Al Borealis: didn’t know. Yeah. That’s because again, it goes back to, this is why we’re so important. I think to play those clips, because it goes back to the fact that there’s no ego in the source of your Virchow in your quest.

I’m not saying you don’t have any ego. Of course you do. And that Eagle probably takes some people off. I think that’s better to say and the dead honesty, because you’re not supposed to, especially now in this cancel culture taboo, nobody can handle it. Anything, let alone an honest conversation where, where the ice are at the ball and not at the player.

Yes. So you lose out just for the culture, but that’s what I mean, it’s when you are seeking truth, of course you want to learn something new because we don’t know. Everybody doesn’t know everything. So I, I exactly know what you mean when you discover that. But the reason most people don’t want like to be wrong is because they invested their ego in something, there was a tribal thing and now they’re exposed and then they feel embarrassed as they should because the ego should never get in, in, in the first place.

But we can go off on this tangent forever, but I think it’s just important to people notice it there. Uh, by the way you mentioned your book, I suppose we should also bring light to the fact that you have, you haven’t made two books per today, um, as a result of the skeptical journey. Yes.

[01:12:55] Alex Tsakiris: Why science is wrong about almost everything and why evil matters, how science and religion and.

A big one.

[01:13:03] Al Borealis: Yeah. Oh, that big one, but both of these books are the interesting thing. The format of the books it’s, they are actually like a literary version of your show. You are putting in stuff from the show there and going through, but they also reflect different periods. And we’re going to get back to that too.

It’s going to be a lot of, we’re going to get back to it today, folks. Yeah. They both reflect different periods of your show, like, uh, and I’m going to expose in detail because I’ve analyzed it. So I know now you have four arrows of skeptical. We’re still at arrow one, so it’s a bit early to bed, but let’s just take it now since the books are up and the evil book is from yeah, it’s between era three and four as I’ve analyzed it.

But I want to ask you, do you think that it would be a new book like that in the future? And if so, can you venture a guess at the topic or is that too

[01:14:02] Alex Tsakiris: early? No, I’d really like to do a book on Christianity and religion. And I think it’s just, I just discovered a couple of really interesting things and I’ve shared them all on the shows many times.

It’s I can, I think people get tired of it, but I think it’s fundamental, fundamental to what I keep bumping into.

[01:14:23] Al Borealis: Yeah, you’re going to, I mean, that’s opening a can of worms. If you’re going to do that, don’t be biased. Uh, because you’ve had a, a particular angle. Uh, I don’t know if it’s deliberate, but it’s from the guests you have like one angle is Jesus never existed.

I’m on the other camp. Not only did he exist, but the historical Jesus was a super interesting guy. You know what? Get the book. It’s probably expensive and rare, but, but you can handle that and get the book called, uh, a search for the historical Jesus. It’s not the only one I would recommend that gives you an although angle into it, but it’s a good one, uses a lot of rare

[01:15:03] Alex Tsakiris: sources.

You mentioned that last time when we were talking and I glanced at it and I think I’ve covered a lot of that material. I’m happy to go through it again and to dive into it again. I think when we get to that part of the, this conversation to me, the missing piece there, that just derails everything and it almost derailed our conversation right here is that when you approach it, like I just did.

And I just forget sometimes because you can’t give people a 10 minute speech, but I’m all about Christ consciousness. I’m all about people having a personal issue. When people talk about Christians, talk about, I have a personal relationship with Jesus. I go right onto that. That makes total sense to me.

As a matter of fact, all the 500 shows I’ve done suggests that there is an extended consciousness realm. And in that extended consciousness realm, you can, and many people report have a relationship with Jesus. That seems to be the data. I don’t know what that means. I really don’t. I don’t know what that means, but that’s the data, if I’m going to be fair.

So when I say about that, I’m not really not talking. I I’m really not talking in the way that most people get offended by their faith. What I’m talking about is fucking Josephus is a PSYOP. And if we can’t, if we can’t, it’s like so many of these things, if we crack them, then the whole thing looks different.

If there is such a thing as social engineering, and if religion has been for the longest time, the centerpiece, the prize, the fulcrum point for that, then we better fricking focus on that until we really have a handle on it. The same thing with, you know, back when we were talking about the skeptics in that if the goal really was to derail that understanding that we are more.

I’ve been biologic robots in a meaningless universe. If that really was the goal. And if, if James, Randy, who really had tremendous influence, unbelievable, tremendous influence. And if he really was a CA cutout, which is how it looks, when you really put all the pieces back together, then that looks totally different.

Now the whole thing looks totally different and I love Rupert Sheldrick and he’s an awesome person, but he’s got to get to that point too. And he’s got to either say, well, that’s bullshit. You know, or he’s got to say, wow, that has some that has some real possibility. That does make me think differently about what I live through.

It’s like you, and I’ve had this conversation again, stop, I’m busting up your thing here and jumping ahead. But the conversation you and I had were about Gloria Steinem and, you know, Gloria Steinem comes, she’s the woman’s movement. She’s responsible for the woman’s movement. Key figure. Right? Well, she’s CIA, but then what a lot of people don’t realize, it’s not like she was running the women’s movement and then the CIA approached her.

No, no, no, no, no. She was Hey. And they said, why don’t you go do the woman’s movement? So can you really look at the women’s movement and not factor that in? You have to know the same thing. That’s what I’m saying about Christianity. If you don’t lead with the potential, that, that is an example of social engineering.

That is an example of a site that is an example of a way to

[01:18:20] Al Borealis: control all religions,

[01:18:22] Alex Tsakiris: all religions, all religions are because it’s why wouldn’t you, it’s just a slam dunk. It’s a

[01:18:28] Al Borealis: business. I feel better, but it’s funny because now you understand why my slogan is paradigm expansion, but you’ve been describing paradigm shifts here because that’s what happens when you get that missing piece.

Suddenly the whole puzzle looks different. Right. But, um, I would say, um, about what you just said. Yeah. Jesus can still be an egg Grigor even if people meet him. So that’s not evidence in my book, that’s some people meet him. I mean, people can meet the spaghetti monster. It doesn’t mean it’s actually okay.

But

[01:18:59] Alex Tsakiris: there’s two ways to spin that. And you know, I just really listened to the excellent series of shows you did on Eggers. And I learned a lot because that hasn’t really been a focus of mine. But when you, when you really look at that whole. Way of thinking about extended consciousness and that we are co-creators of reality kind of thing, then I think it’s and you look at the, the flexibility of that.

There must be in space time, you know, and again, back to the core thing of that’s what, that’s one of the implications, Rupert shelter X work, that’s certainly a direct implication to Dean Raven’s work. They’re proving it experimentally six Sigma reload results. Dean Raden that no dog time-space is not what you think.

So as soon as you do that, then the whole, that also throws a lot of gum in the whole historical Jesus, 2000 years ago, this happened, then this happened and do you know this guy? Yeah. I just have to loosen up on a lot of that stuff.

[01:20:01] Al Borealis: Um, okay. We have to move on. I have to be strict with the clock here. We have all those topics to cover, but here’s an important one we can mention on this clip is on the community and skeptical forum.

[01:20:18] Alex Tsakiris: The forum was actually started by a skeptical listener and he just, he’s a guy who stepped forward and said, Hey, let me run a forum for a skeptic. I won. I was like, great. Which is, you know, one of the things that has always been in the back of my mind about skeptical is that’s idea of a community project, not just me, but people are interested in these topics.

Often don’t have a lot of other outlets. I love to engage with those people and get them involved in the project that is skeptical. So at the same time, I’ve never been involved in a forum before I was involved in skeptical. So I don’t really know I’ve had to learn. Myself, what that interaction is like, and, and really how you relate to people and how all that evolves.

But for me, it’s been a tremendous experience and I’ve learned so much from people who’ve engaged with me in the forum and either have ideas or you get into these long, sometimes lengthy, back and forth. And I’ve grown tremendously from the forum. And besides I’ve gotten a lot of ideas for guests from the forum as well, which by the way, I value greatly.

And I really appreciate those folks who come to the skeptical forum and share their ideas. Many folks have told me that it’s one of the most intelligent, thoughtful forms that they’ve encountered on the web. I tend to agree. I’ve gained so much out of it. If you haven’t. I hope you’ll take this new opportunity to check it out.

[01:21:41] Al Borealis: Amen. And hallelujah, I’m so impressed by that forum, even though one of the few times, I mean, I’ve been, I’ve been lurking there I’ve been reading. I don’t have time to engage in forums. I did manage to be sucked in a shale for the insurance industry, uh, had a back and forth with him. But in general, I’d say let’s skeptical.

Forum is much more important to your project than mine. I have a forum. I mean, my show is called forum, but if you put up my forum and your forum next to each other, mine looks like an orphanage. Whereas whereas yours is like a super effective a university. We both managed to get intelligent people on board.

I say that, right, but it’s still a feat. The, you are forum is informing. I think your show, at least historically it is much more than my forum is mine. Comment to the forum and the community.

[01:22:38] Alex Tsakiris: W it’s the form. Just like I just said there, I kind of repeat all that. It, it kind of, I would say the, one of the frustrations I have for me is it kind of wanes and rises and people come and leave.

And I have people that I’ve met that I have these deep relationships with and even relationships with outside of the forum. Eventually it grows into that. And then they go away, you know, and that’s totally fine. I get that. You should be able to just go away. It’s no longer useful to you or you’re thinking of something else, but I’m always a little bit surprised and a little bit, you know, like, Hey man, how come you’re not, how come you’re not coming in?

Like you had so many good ideas. And the other thing is there’s different styles that you have to adjust to on the forum. What I like to do is share information, Hey, I saw this link, what do you think of this? I saw this. And a lot of people like to share more personal kind of, and I try and kind of, I sometimes get frustrated with that, but that people have a need an outlet.

And now, you know, the last couple of years going on, it’s like, but there’s a lot of other places also that people go and share stuff. So it over time. Yeah.

[01:23:48] Al Borealis: Plus plus remember, I mean, when did you start the forum? Yeah. I mean, as soon as they show a lot

[01:23:53] Alex Tsakiris: of years ago, I mean, it’s, I don’t know.

[01:23:55] Al Borealis: Probably. Yeah, but was it very recent after you started the show?

Yeah. Within a couple of years. That makes sense. Because I don’t know if you remember this and I can’t pinpoint when it was, I think it was may have been to Testament 12 or something, but that’s so important because internet was full of forums. Right. Then at some point the forums went and Facebook write up everything at the same time.

Right. Let’s global. Right. Except I think France or Russia. So still been places where they have their own kind of internet they had to back then. So you remember the same thing, right. And that hurts so that your forums even survived. That is pretty interesting because people just stopped using of course, no, it’s the opposite.

Now people are immigrating from Facebook except for the geriatrics, but. That was a period.

[01:24:45] Alex Tsakiris: I know it’s interesting. You know, it’s interesting. Just kind of in this little tidbit way, this historical phase here, there, there were a bunch of people that broke off of the forum and started their own forum because they weren’t happy with where I was.

I forget what exactly the beef

[01:25:00] Al Borealis: was, but the skeptics wasn’t

[01:25:02] Alex Tsakiris: it. No, no, no. It was, um, you know, there’s a lot of different ways to be skeptical of. Um, yeah, it was really kind of pair of psychology kind of people who didn’t think it wasn’t

[01:25:13] Al Borealis: that, wasn’t it a listener who to begin with did this, it

[01:25:18] Alex Tsakiris: wasn’t you.

Yeah. Stephen. So, so he started it and then eventually a group kind of broke off and I think they didn’t like the, I think they were still engaged in the skeptical versus pear. They wanted to continue the, you know,

[01:25:34] Al Borealis: skeptic at one point.

[01:25:36] Alex Tsakiris: Exactly. You know, that there is that there are these things called skeptics and they have a scientific point of view.

And then there’s these other people, you know, who have a different point of view and it’s bullshit. It’s rubbish. Skeptics really don’t have a point of view. They have an agenda, you know, it’s kind of like, we’re fine. And that’s why I say that. I said at the very beginning to tip the hand, the plan demic brings that into focus.

Right. So now you look at the plant DEMEC and you go, well, that was never science to begin with and you go, oh, but then why did they do it like that? Oh, it was a plan demic. Well, th the same is true. Like, so if you go all the way back, like we’re talking about, uh, Richard Weizmann and Rupert Sheldrick and dogs that no.

Can I go off on that story a little bit? Uh,

[01:26:26] Al Borealis: no, wait a minute, because, because yes, but not now it is coming. Okay. I want you to account for that, but, um, uh, let me just say though that remember my, my, uh, allegory last time we had a regular show about demo and talk,

[01:26:44] Alex Tsakiris: remind me, I’ll be in to

[01:26:45] Al Borealis: the bone and top roll door.

You know, when, when you start by the foot of the mountain, there’s a million people running around and flirting in different paths, right? The higher up you go, the more the path shrinks. Well, It’s easy to start by the foot of the mountain and say, Hey folks, yeah, I’m going on a truth. Quest two will join me, everyone.

Yay. Right. So in the beginning you’re a huge congregation, but the higher up you come, the more people will fall off because you show determined to get to the mountain top. You’re not being learned from all sorts of distractions on the way that most people do, they lose their head, whatever. So of course you’re going to lose folks, but as you progress, you always are going to meet so much.

Oh, what are you coping around here for? Oh, well I was looking for the path, uh, up, well, you made it this far. Join me on and on. We’ll go higher. So you, you pick up people on this skeptical journey away. That’s my adjusted metaphor from, from the one I used to in the end of the year show, but you know what we have to move on.

That is an

[01:27:51] Alex Tsakiris: awesome, awesome

[01:27:52] Al Borealis: metaphor. Allegory. Yeah. Okay. Let’s move on because there’s another thing that people are not so aware of. And that’s the experiments.

[01:28:03] Alex Tsakiris: I have another brief update for you. If you recall. On the last episode of skeptical, we talked a little bit about the global consciousness project and how we’ve gotten involved with that.

A little bit. One of the other projects that regular listeners will know that we’ve been involved with for a long time is some of the research of Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. His research has been fascinating to me and I, and I’ve always admired his clear thinking, his forthrightness and his willingness to, I guess, buck the critics.

He’s certainly taken his share of criticism for really nothing else than just, uh, expressing unconventional ideas. And as you know, that’s not the way scientists supposed to work. So a couple of years ago, I got involved with Dr. Sheldrick and tried to help with the dogs that no experiment. Now, in the process of working on that experiment, I had a chance to correspond with Dr.

Sheldrick many times over the last year or two, and have found him to be a very busy guy, but a very open guy and very willing to support other people getting involved in his research. And for that reason, I most recently have kind of picked up on another project that he’s been involved with and that’s the telephone telepathy experiment.

And I’m in the very beginning stages of trying to help Dr. Sheldrick put together a website that would automate the process of telephone telepathy testing. That’s a tongue twister.

[01:29:25] Al Borealis: So you have very good at your timing. It was the next topic I had, but look, I know you run science experiment. You mentioned here the global consciousness thing, and then it’s the dog things that you wanted to mention.

So, because you picked up so many listeners who weren’t with you back then. So I want you to, to account for these experiments you are flirting with, which is also pretty unique, uh, you know, associated with the podcast

[01:29:54] Alex Tsakiris: that frickin you’re unbelievable. I had totally forgotten about all this, but yeah, I was, I was just like, but you know, some of the dogs didn’t know just to recap for people.

Well, Dr. Rupert Sheldrick started getting letters. He’s a biologist and he’s interested in animals. And he started getting letters. He had proposed this idea of morphic, uh, morphic fields that carry information. And that can explain a lot of psychic phenomenon. And people said, Hey, maybe that explains the fact that my dog knows when I’m coming home.

And he started getting a lot of these letters. So he decided to investigate it seriously, scientifically. And he ran an experiment, a series of experiments. It’s not difficult to experiment to do if you’re a Cambridge biologist. And you’re a smart about science. You know, you put a video camera on the dog, you put a video camera on the owner, you send the owner out and then you call the owner and you say, come on home.

And you see if the dog reacts, right. So. He had done a series of experiments and, uh, the story I was going to tell before, and I’ll, I’ll make that one short so I can get to the other one about the experiments. Is it done these experiments and published them. And then there was this quote, unquote skeptic Richard Wiseman, who was kind of like, I guess you’d say like a Neil deGrasse Tyson of England at the time, at least the most public, the most Outfront, you know, being interviewed by all the TV stations and all that about radio.

[01:31:32] Al Borealis: It was as a dating coach psychologist.

[01:31:36] Alex Tsakiris: He has called it, his politics. His qualifications were legit, you know, but anyways, he came in and he said,

[01:31:42] Al Borealis: prior to

[01:31:43] Alex Tsakiris: this, he came in and, and, and he, one thing that really got Sheldrick and for a good reason, shelter kick in this open spirit of, of inquiry allowed Wiseman to use his whole video camera set up and the whole experimental setup, you know, which again, it’s, it’s nice, but he certainly didn’t have to do that.

He’d like, look, if you want to test this, go test it on your own. But no, he gave him the whole thing. He went in there and totally changed the protocols. He faked it. He deceived people-wise mudded and he rigged it. So that the thing didn’t come out the way that it was to give people just a little bit of the background on that, it’s like a shelter experiment was predicated.

Now India, that the dog was demonstrating this weighting behavior when the owner was coming home and he defined what the waiting behavior is, it’s going by the window. So it’s pretty easy. Is he by the window? Is he not by the window? You know, arbitrarily Richard Wiseman came in and said, no, no, no, no. I’m only going to count it.

If the dog goes over the window and stays there for two minutes, at least two minutes, that’s the only time it counts. And then he went and got a negative or a no result. And he published his work and sheltered. Wait a minute, maybe the dog smelled something over there and was distracted and went off for five seconds and came right back to the window.

Doesn’t it still count? No, no, no, no. Arbitrarily it has to be two minutes. So I say that level

[01:33:04] Al Borealis: of detail changing the criteria after I started it’s it’s

[01:33:08] Alex Tsakiris: exactly. And I’m getting you to that level of detail because that’s what I did on skeptical. I had hours and hours and hours of explaining just how deceptive this was.

But after Sheldrick had done the experiment, I was like, well, hell again, naive. But like, I’ll, let’s do it. Let’s replicate it. Let’s just replicate the crap out of it because now I’m pissed off. You know that now this is clearly scientific deception. I’m pissed off. I’m like, let’s replicate this. So I tried to replicate it.

I hired, again, I put some money at the university of Florida. This guy was really. Uh, he was doing research with canines, with dogs and we set it up and did that. And we got some results, but his heart wasn’t really in it. He was a skeptic and I in the show, I document all those times that we did it and stuff like that.

This is not a bad guy, but not really playing it straight up. So I said, okay, I’ll do it myself. And I actually, you can still find online on YouTube. I found some woman with a dog in California that I think from the video clearly demonstrates that waiting when they’re coming home behavior. But it does take a little bit more effort than just me remotely.

Part-time running an experiment like that. I spent a considerable amount of time and effort bought cameras. Computers interviewed people, tried to elicit people to do

[01:34:37] Al Borealis: that. I heard in one show, you even Elfa to send a computer to someone, buy them a completed.

[01:34:44] Alex Tsakiris: I sent a, I sent probably 10 computers. Hey,

[01:34:47] Al Borealis: I volunteered to pretend to do an experiment, send me a laptop.

[01:34:51] Alex Tsakiris: I had somebody, you know what this was before I was into

[01:34:55] Al Borealis: take

[01:34:55] Alex Tsakiris: advantage. Well, it’s funny because again, you know, you talk about the four phases and I don’t know what your four phases are, but one of the phase where I am firmly at now, just because it’s the accumulation is that there is the it’s about energy and it’s about positive light, energy and negative energy in the dark energy.

And I don’t fully understand that dark energy, but I have come to accept that it’s real. And it really is very troubling for people. One of the computers that I gave away, all of us remember this, this woman called me from a Craigslist ad and said, oh yeah, I’ll do it. I got a dog who does that? You know, dah, dah, dah.

I said, okay, I’ll go. I’ll bring the computer over and show you how to set it up. Oh, I walked into this little apartment in ocean beach and there was a group of people there. And it was one of the few times in my life where I just felt a darkness, darkness come over. And these people were all kind of shady on the doing drugs and stuff like that.

Right. It’s like, I just want it to get the hell out of there as quickly as I could. And the only other, the only other place I’ve felt that energy like that is in a prison in Yuma, Arizona, an old 1890s prison that you can still tour. And there’s this one black and room where they used to hold people in isolation.

And that’s, I wasn’t there when I was doing the dogs that, no, that was not on my radar. And it is now

[01:36:33] Al Borealis: interesting, but that wasn’t the only experiment. We just heard the sighting and, and, and globally, I

[01:36:39] Alex Tsakiris: think I was laid low. Right. It’s like, I just thought that would solve it. I thought that would fix it. I thought that would, like Rupert was saying,

[01:36:46] Al Borealis: well, that goes through a motivation, but, but, uh, did you, I mean, I’ve attained, you should say no, but did you involve others too?

Or was it you doing it from your home? Or how did this

[01:36:58] Alex Tsakiris: work? Oh, anyone who would D yeah, I hired some people along the way, you know, kind of part-time people, but actually high-end. Wow. Yeah. But not, not a huge thing.

[01:37:07] Al Borealis: And didn’t you pay a skeptic researcher. I think you even paid a skeptic researcher. I think you mentioned

[01:37:14] Alex Tsakiris: that to me.

No, cause that was, I mean, at that point, it doesn’t take long to really see the foolishness of the skeptics. I mean, they were just predict. Yeah. Yeah. They’re

[01:37:23] Al Borealis: going to get to them. Yeah. You’re going to get to them soon, but I think you’re involved with a researcher at some point. I can’t remember squeeze your, your brain cells now.

Yeah,

[01:37:32] Alex Tsakiris: yeah. No, no. The guy at Florida. Yeah. The guy at university of Florida, right? Yeah. No, no. Yeah. It, he wasn’t a skeptic per se. He was just part of academia. So he was by definition. Yeah. Of that paradigm. Like he used to say he just had a completely different paradigm, but he was willing to take a little bit of money and do the,

[01:37:53] Al Borealis: and the global consciousness project.

Is that the start a Dean raid and stuff. No one starts again.

[01:38:01] Alex Tsakiris: Yeah. That’s where they have the little random number generator kind of thing.

[01:38:06] Al Borealis: And that’s this sigh experiment mentioned, right? Yes. Okay. Well at least you walk, as you talked, it’s not money or again, we can claim to doing this. I think this is, is kudos for, for trying your dog.

Okay. Let’s move on. Now. People are aware of it. Uh, I have another fun, little clip for you.

[01:38:29] Greg Carlwood: Alex, my man, the humble stoner hosted the higher side chats. Greg Carl would hear toasting you to one hell of a 15 year podcasting ride of excellence that you’ve been on. Very few folks can say they’ve been podcasting for 15 years.

So kudos to you. I can’t remember exactly what the first skeptical episode I heard was, but I’ve obviously appreciated you for years early interviews with Rupert Sheldrake were so great to have found. Of course my favorite ones are the confrontational ones. You are a master at that and Hey, the truth is the truth.

Let’s get at it. And if a person is not going to factor consciousness into their scientific work or their model of reality, then of what value is it really just as any true analysis of power or historic events or business has to factor in conspiracy or it’s probably grossly inaccurate. Well, you hold people to these points with extreme consistency.

And it’s a beautiful thing. Plus I love the range of guest reactions to a little bit of that. Classic skeptical pressure tells you a lot about a person, but that said, we have definitely had some great times going out for lunch and talking shop. You’ve always been great on and off the air and cheers to another 15 years of podcasting glory.

If the gods will it. And one of the greats, I’m lucky to know.

[01:39:56] Al Borealis: Yeah, that was the very brilliant Greg call would from the highest side chats. I must say. I mean, even this little, this little ad break, add feature that so professional, either that guy’s a natural born genius or he spends a lot of energy making it right. I mean, to get very good products. And that’s one of the things, you know, I’ve complained about this before.

I’ve that so many podcasters they’re so Lacey and they don’t give a damn and they don’t think so, actually you are kind of among them. You don’t spend too much energy on getting the shape of it, but you spent all that good energy on the content and the goals. At least you have that. And you bother with having a little jingle and now you’re starting with the movie clips.

So, so I can’t, I can’t really spank you too much about this, but there’s so many who are just, they just don’t give it. Even if there’s a 22nd gap of silence, they don’t even edit that out. Now, Greg, on the other hand, maybe this is one of the keys to his success because he’s the one, one of the more successful in this area.

I think what little I’ve heard from him, I haven’t heard that much, but you can’t avoid hearing THC. What Lynn levered such a good production and even makes its own music anywhere. You and him go back some years, don’t you? Yes. And it was super aware on the journey. Did you become, because one of the things this clip goes to show that you, I call you the God for the, one of the reasons is not just that you were early out, but you, that you such a spider, you connect with so many people, you know, everyone who is anyone in this field.

I know you live in the same tone as Greg. So how long do you go back and how did you guys discover each other?

[01:41:44] Alex Tsakiris: I don’t know exactly how far back we go, but, um, I reached out to Greg. I thought he was doing just great stuff and you know, I was, I was a fan and we connected just on a bunch of different levels.

It was super great to hear him there. And I’ve been on his show a couple of times and you know, it’s just, it’s just cool. It’s fun to, to connect like what we’re doing here with this self, sweetie. It deal all this stuff. So great. You’re such a guy, but anyways, You don’t realize how unique it is to find people that collect on these kinds of topics and these kinds of issues.

So it wasn’t hard. It was very natural because he is, he is a true seeker. You know, he is a fricking truth seeker. I mean, he’s right there with me on the skeptical jury.

[01:42:32] Al Borealis: Like you said, he raced well, many good points. Some of them you touched already, but he mentioned one important thing that’d be finally going to get to, he started one of his favorites, things where your confrontations with the skeptics, you remember what I said?

Right? I said, I like to say of the skeptical one. Oh. And to the most entertaining shows there is when you go head to head with one of these dense figures, whereas the more enlightening shows are when you have a so-called friendly interview, but that’s my assessment. Now, uh, let’s hear how you described on the fanatical pseudo skeptics.

[01:43:20] Alex Tsakiris: Those are like two different universes. I mean, one of the things that skeptical did again, because I came in this from the outside, I saw naturally that these two things fit together. If the skeptics guide to the universe and skeptical and Skepta and all the rest of them are talking about parasitology, I’ll be in, in a disparaging way.

Then naturally they’re going to want to dialogue with those researchers. And I was naive enough to think that they actually did what I found is that they don’t, but they really want is to be left in their little island over there and their little world. And talk about these things among themselves. I think that’s wrong headed.

I mean, how can you say you really want to have, you want to engage in an intellectual kind of free thought critical examination of these things without looking at the other side, it seems silly yet. That is the landscape. They really don’t want to interact with anyone. I guess I bridged that a little bit, but then anyone who’s been around the show for awhile, as you know, that becomes tedious, tiresome and worn out pretty soon too, because there’s not a lot of real interaction there with the hardcore skeptics and atheists, they just kind of have this party line kind of thing.

That’s hard to penetrate. What is effective is going to, I guess the level two people behind that, the mainstream researchers. In the field who more or less. Echo a lot of those same skeptical materialist atheist kind of worldview things and kind of pulling them into a of this kind of debate and dialogue I think is fruitful and will remain fruitful for as long as I want to do it.

Oh, I’ve tried. I’ve pursued Steve novella a half dozen times since then. So I used to respond, although very slowly to my request, eight doesn’t respond anymore, which has been the case over and over again with skeptics and they lose an argument and they run away. I mean, that sounds kind of harsh, but it really is the truth.

They’re there just should be so much more engagement with these issues in a debate format. It really doesn’t wash the skeptical position at the end of the day. It doesn’t hold. I mean, I’m here. I will engage debate, whatever you want to call it. Anyone anywhere, anytime. I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t do the same.

I mean, if you think your ideas hold up, you gotta say, Hey, bring it on. And I think this has become an issue for me lately, mainly because what I’ve seen unfolding in the Rupert Sheldrick week, a pedia drama. Now, for those of you who don’t know what’s going on there, Rupert Sheldrick is a Cambridge biologist cause some mildly controversial ideas about this thing called morphic residence.

Well, for whatever reason, he’s gained the ire of the skeptical community, if you will. And they’ve all gotten together and just kind of taken over his Wikipedia page and turned it into a total mess. And when a couple of folks went in there and tried to clean it up and trying to add some other references to give it a more neutral point of view, they just ran them right out a week, a PDF, which I have to say, I predicted.

And I told these guys that’s exactly what it’s going to happen because I think people are on the outside, don’t understand the nastiness that goes on inside of certain aspects of the skeptical community and, and how unrelenting they are in this kind of fanatical point of view.

[01:46:45] Al Borealis: Yeah. And that was, that was the glow version of describing this fact in my view.

But the thing is you started sincerely with inquiring and at some point I suspect pretty early, you realized what’s what here. And I remember it because you are big in the beginning in terms of numbers. Not just because there wasn’t that many port costs, because you were one of the unique forums where you brought together the different sites, not as our primitive lady, aerator entertainment thing more as a truth seeking thing.

And my, my theory is that when skeptics, we call them skeptics say, of course you have skeptics, but these fanatics, they don’t mind really. If there are going to be on a tribal Glazier to battle kind of thing, especially if they know that the other side is usually a religious nutcase, because they are easy to, to get these cheap shots from so-called expose so that they will do.

But when they see, I don’t know if you’re aware of this yourself, but I have noticed this when they realize even if they know who you are already, but when they realize that you’re not there for your ego and you’re not there to fight, and you’re not there to just give them an advertisement platform, all of those things they like, but you’re sincerely inquiring for the truth with scientific tooths.

That’s too much for them. That’s, what’s freaks them out that more than anything, the follow the data pointed to the science is why they fail you. It’s not because you’re a good debater and can get some quick sheep points in quick shorts. They can handle that. They do the same, but the whole, the whole paradigm crumbles when it’s not like, oh, we’re not here to do our parties and fight.

We had to actually find the truth. That’s like, look, everybody understands. If it’s the whole, this witness, you’re always witness. Yes. If he’s going to convert you and no problem, he will, he will come. If it’s going to be to applaud him. Yes, he will come even a battle. But if it’s truth, if it’s, yeah. You know, when you always witness was founded and look, here’s the original Bible, you had an, all the, no they’re going to, it’s all sectarian freak out Scientologists.

What you’ve got to tell me that her blood was involved with OTO. I’m out of here. You understand what I mean?

[01:49:20] Alex Tsakiris: And, uh, again, I’m so tempted to go to level three, which is where we usually go. So I’ll reign that in and just say, I think what has happened in the last two years brings all the. In focus in a different way that you and I are just now kind of wrapping our head around and you know, it’s, it’s the kind of the skeptic, the skeptics always say so many brilliant things only.

They don’t realize they’re brilliant because they’re the exact opposite of the way they interpret them. But you know, it really is an issue of why people believe weird things fundamentally it’s, it’s why people believe weird things. So skeptics believe weird things. They believe that you’re, you’re not conscious.

They believe that you’re a biological robot, a meaningless universe, even though everything they know, our whole world tells them differently. They believe it. That’s a very weird thing to believe. They believe that they should focus on some science and completely ignore other science. That’s a weird thing to believe.

Religious people, even like you said, you just said it, you know, you can kind of say, do you really think that the Koran where it says that you can take women as slaves and do whatever you want with them and then they, but they have to wear a veil. Do you think all these rules, it say with Judaism and all these rules, you got to dance around three times and don’t touch electronics.

Does any of that really make any sense? No, but so why do people believe weird things, which is the title of a book that I think Schermer one of those people wrote in it’s the opposite again? So their thing was like, why do people believe in ghosts and extended consciousness while what a weird thing?

It’s like, no, that’s not weird.

[01:51:07] Al Borealis: At the same time, they believe that you can upload human consciousness to a computer and they believe that a computer can be sent him. That’s just as with,

[01:51:18] Alex Tsakiris: well, and as you, and I know that probably isn’t really what they even care about there. Any E anyway, uh, I think the transhuman, his agenda is really much more about other.

Uh, oh,

[01:51:34] Al Borealis: sure, sure. But, but they need the materialist paradigm as a useful idiot to implement that agenda. Yeah. We all know that. Yeah. So, but it is famous. Some of this shows where you had, uh, had to have with some of these skeptics are infamous or famous, whatever you want to choose. But I remember even, even people, you know, I said, uh, many people in my circle back then were listening to you and I picked up some shows via Facebook then.

But I remember after a while, when you started to realize what was going on and that really hard being her, the transition from skeptical one or to two oh, but you didn’t just lose skeptics as listener. You even lost agnostics and people who was at the pro, let’s say Sheldrake side because, and you touched upon it, what they want at an expected.

And we’re used to what’s this, you should, gladiator battle, uh, is stuck in stupid debate that you’re going to elaborate on late in a later clip. So they couldn’t handle that. You moved on from stuck on stupid. Uh, I wanted it to take it to level two or skeptical to old. Do you agree with that? I

[01:52:53] Alex Tsakiris: totally agree with it.

And I’m itching to ask you what you think that is about why people remain married to a debate. Maybe it’s because they feel like comfortable that they’ve won that they want to stay in that. Okay. We’re, we’ve won that. So we, I don’t get it.

[01:53:10] Al Borealis: Uh, I think you actually speculate about it in one of the clips I have lined out and I think you’re on the money there, but nah, it’s just one of those things.

If people are habitual, maybe they came into it with that format and they didn’t like, I don’t think those in the beginning realized it was going to become a real journey. Right. Usually if people make something work, you know, don’t fix it if it works. So, um, I think that’s too much for. So if, if I’m used to having a Netflix, like romantic comedies, I sit and watch their or whatever.

And then suddenly they started pushing a lot of conspiracy documentaries I’m out of here. You know what I mean?

[01:53:57] Alex Tsakiris: Hey, Hey, it’s I think you’re spot on with that. It’s uh, you know what, again, it’s the two quotes back to the Shirley McClain. It’s all about entertainment. And the other is the very famous, fantastic Canadian media, just mystic Marshall McLuhan.

The medium is the message. You know why he said you don’t read the Sunday times back when there was a newspaper, you get into it like a warm bath. Well, we can all relate to that. You sit down to watch the ballgame. It’s really not about the teams, although you’d like to think it is. It’s about the whole experience, the memories.

I used to do this with my dad. This is my couches where I sit it’s the whole experience. So when he comes along and says, you know, foreign Barry Ellis is about this and the next thing you do, and you say, well, you know what? I just learned this. So now form Horry, Alice has to change because what I thought I knew, I now know something different.

People are like, oh, what about that spot? I sit on the couch. I used to always watch.

[01:54:59] Al Borealis: Right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well put, but this really is the transition from skeptical one or two to, oh, and the next clip. It’s one of the longer ones, but I titled it trouble in paradise. Not about the data. Big question as driving points.

I think you explained very succinctly here. How come the transition from one to two? Oh, happened. So let’s listen to that.

[01:55:27] Alex Tsakiris: Well, I think you’ve kind of pinpointed really a turning point in the show, at least in my mind. And that’s that I had this idea of starting out that it’s about the data. You know, this is science after all.

And science is concerned with measurement and data and evidence. And my thought was, Hey, look, let’s just try and get our arms around the data. Let’s get good data. And then any reasonable person will be able to sort that out and decide one way or another. And I pretty quickly got an idea that maybe that wasn’t as simple as I thought, and that there were other things going on the whole thinking with how we can remain completely married to these beliefs and to this interpretation of the data that just doesn’t fit with just the kind of common sense understanding of it really sent me in a different direction and saying, you know what?

It’s not about the data. It’s really about everything else. It’s about why we believe what we believe, how our belief systems develop, how our belief systems change. And until we really figure that stuff out, then all this stuff about the data is more or less a sideshow. When I do those shows of the reaction is usually polarized.

There’s so many people and this always surprises me who are proponents believers. If you will, who are really offended. I mean, they just don’t like controversy. You can see, and they don’t like this kind of confrontational battling it out kind of thing. And that always surprises me. I don’t know how you really get to the bottom of things that you care about deeply or that you have strong opinions about without having a little bit of friction.

And while I don’t seek those shows out, and I don’t think those need to be the main focus of skeptical, I do feel a need to revisit those topics every now and again, because one of the conclusions that I came to in this, Hey, it’s not about the data it’s about everything else is there’s a question I think in the back of everyone’s mind, which is how can this be?

I mean, here’s this guy or here’s this group of people who are saying fundamentally the scientific model that we have is flawed. And the immediate question you have to be. How can that be? Wait a minute. I have this iPhone five here. That is a Testament to how great science is. So don’t tell me science is wrong.

How can this be? So I think we have to occasionally go back and revisit that and really look hard at what the other folks have to say. The folks who say, no, you are a biological robot. Life does have no meaning. And it’s all about machines. I think we do have to go back and give them the floor every once in a while and hash that out with them, to me at a very kind of deep, personal level.

I always wondered why everyone wasn’t interested in these topics. Why I always wondered why, why these weren’t the first and foremost questions on everyone’s mind. I mean, most of us spend so much time on ridiculously silly things of the weather or sports or news or all the rest of that. When the big questions are, who are we really?

What happens to us after we die? How are we related to not only each other, but the universe? I mean, these are big, big, big questions. And I guess I always had a sense of, Hey, am I not getting the newsletter here? I mean, does everyone else know the answers to these? Cause why isn’t, why isn’t this foremost on everyone’s mind.

And then you, you kind of get into life and you want to make a living and you want to have a family and all that. We all understand that. And you say, Hey, I can’t deal with all those things right now. They don’t seem to be pressing as, as much as the mortgage payment of the car payment is. So I kind of put them through the.

To me. They always seem to be the questions that I wanted to come back to. So that really is the driving force of skeptical along with the idea that I had all along because of my business experience. And that was the idea that I can learn. I can get better. I can improve because I was someone who, despite having the right academic background and education background was failing pretty miserably at business.

Before I kind of went on a massive kind of learning campaign in terms of how to make myself better and how to improve in that. So I kind of took that self-improvement idea and that self-improvement success that led to business success and said, Hey, I can bootstrap myself into knowing the answer to these big, big questions.

And that’s really been, I guess, the driving force of skeptical. So

[02:00:08] Al Borealis: first I call this clip trouble in paradise for two reasons. Number one, you smelled a racked, which is why you moved from skeptical one or to two old. But also like we just said, some listeners, they have a trouble in paradise for them too, that you moved on higher up the mountain.

So they fell off. But let me ask you, when you started to understand what’s what, when it comes to these skeptics materialists about when did that happen? How early did you became convinced? I mean, first time, I guess you thought it was a one off second time you talk with such a guy, I guess you, you suspect that a pat them, but when you never managed to talk with anyone at the truth level and sincere level and scientific level that you were natively expecting, then obviously it became clear.

So how early did that happen that you became convinced and was that really the impetus to move to S to skeptic or to not being stuck on stupid debate?

[02:01:12] Alex Tsakiris: It was pretty early because in those first interviews, I was able to kind of get to the point where I could directly confront these people. You know, you’re interviewing Steve novella from Yale university.

Who’s a podcast, or, but he’s also a neuro surgeon or not a neurosurgeon. What is he? Neurologist neurologist at Yale university. And he’s screwing that the data is screwing it up. He’s not giving him the data and then he messes it up. I go, you must sit up. He goes, oh yeah, it did mess that up. I’m sorry. And he’s got skeptic Ray Hyman on there from Dr.

Ray Hyman, from Oregon who is passed away, but I hadn’t passed away. We looked through his files. He was CIA. Oh, isn’t that interesting. But it was, I knew it was bullshit, but here’s the point that I guess I accepted, uh, what’s still a lot of people say when you speak to them today, which is, you know, if I just had an interview with Dr.

Bruce Greyson it to Bruce Grayson is phenomenal. Stuck. Talk about standing on shoulders. 40 years has been instrumental in advancing near-death experience science, but just like, Hey, Bruce, It’s a fucking conspiracy. What are you talking about? Obviously, this is a rigged game because it’s easier to control people if they think our biological robot meaningless universe.

So that’s, what is the impediment to any real traction with near death experience science, but he wouldn’t go there very, very reluctant to go there and yes, he wouldn’t go there. He goes. So, you know, he goes to one funeral at a time thing. He goes, no,

[02:02:47] Al Borealis: he told us, he explained, how does he, uh, he must know he’s a power psychologist.

He must know as a written game. So how does he rationalize it?

[02:02:54] Alex Tsakiris: I think he rationalizes it. I mean, where we’re, I’m going with this and where you are comfortable going with it, which I’ve come to understand that this is again, you know, your mountain metaphor is his analogy is perfect because when you get into the conspiracy stuff, which we’ll get into it, then goes a different level where people go, no, no, no, no, no, no.

That’s not. That’s not, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not the world I live in. I don’t live in that world. I don’t live in that world. So when you tell somebody like Bruce Grayson, he immediately runs the whole thing. He goes, wait a minute. You mean the guy that I sit with at lunch, who’s been fear for 20 years.

He might, it might be more than just he’s. Ah, he is a rigid old guy that won’t change his beliefs. It might be more than that. It might be that he’s been somehow influenced or engineered to think a particular way for a particular reason, to satisfy a particular agenda. That is very, very hard for the scientist to think of.

And it is a Stockholm syndrome kind of thing, right? Stockholm syndrome. It’s like, these are my friends and they just had me over to a big, a celebration dinner, like the one we’re having here and they gave me an award and stuff like that. Now I’m going to go piss on them and say, yeah, but you guys are liars and you deceive people here and you did this.

I, I can’t, I don’t feel besides the fact that I’ll lose my job. I mean, I’m not only is my job. I’ll lose my prestige. I’ll lose all this.

[02:04:28] Al Borealis: Yeah. But, uh, but there’s no doubt that in the beginning you have a very, um, respectful of them in, in terms of, I mean, you’re always respectful when you talk with people too, but I mean like you.

Really thinking that they had something to say, and you wanted to listen to, you wanted to give them a chance, so you didn’t start out debunking scientism, but you’ve quickly realized that it’s not a 50, 50, it’s actually one side is right. The other wrong, which sometimes happens. Right. And

[02:05:03] Alex Tsakiris: then you, the other thing, the other thing, and I think you, you just hit on it before with, with what you said.

I mean, I did really think it was about the data. So from again, from my business standpoint, you know, you realize that some people like Heineken and some people don’t like Heineken, some people like Amstel, which has also made behind it. But, you know, that’s, that’s the way that it is. And you can’t get in there and say, gee, you know, what’s wrong with you for not liking Heineken beer.

You know what I mean? So there are differences that, that people have. And I thought, fundamentally, if it’s about the data, then I’ll dance the dance, you know, and we’ll, I’ll listen to your points and we’ll go through this and it’ll be about the data and we’ll sort it out. And that’s what science is about.

So that went on for quite a while, because again, what’s looming here in this story that we’re telling is I didn’t understand conspiracy. I was not open to that at all. I didn’t believe any conspiracies. I thought they were all bunk, which is what most people thought up until a couple of years ago you got hit with,

[02:06:06] Al Borealis: well, even before, like I said, I, like I said to mark yesterday, I said to him, you know, what’s the difference between reality and conspiracy theory.

Let’s see if you, he knew the answer. What’s the answer. I don’t know, minimum six months,

so right. But my point is just, you, you, you realized that one side is wrong. One is right. You realized consciousness is key. You realize scientism is bunk. And it isn’t. That really isn’t that really, when we enter a skeptical too, Yes, because then you went off on a surfing of topics like near death experience.

I mean, you, you, like you said, in the former clip, you sometimes revisit old topics and that’s great. So even today, you, you, you will still have skeptics on if it fits the, the, the, whatever you’re doing, and there are willing, that’s one of the problems that they’re running away, they won’t get done. That will absolutely.

[02:07:06] Alex Tsakiris: Yeah. T to emphasize that point, I seek them out. I mean, it’s harder now because it’s even harder people, that whole environment, the environment has changed. You know, I used to get accused of sandbagging people because I’d reach out to these skeptics and they would go no further than researching the names skeptical.

And they’d say, this is going to be, this is going to be an easy interview and they’d come on. And I wasn’t intentionally trying to sandbag

[02:07:32] Al Borealis: them as their own laziness. It’s intellectualized,

[02:07:36] Alex Tsakiris: if you’re not, if you’re not able to do that. But I did score a lot of interviews with people who would normally not engage in, and that was the reason for it.

But I constantly reach out to people who have an opposing view and try and get them on the show. And it’s sometimes successful. But are you going to talk about Patricia Churchland and Ben Radford?

[02:07:55] Al Borealis: Um, burn is going to be mentioned by you very briefly. And, uh, I like, uh, you know, this is going to be a foreign Borealis show too, not just a skeptical show and you should, I have like under foreign Borealis, I rant, but at the end of this show today, I’m going to just play a meshed slimmed Worshan of your clip called five things you should know about skeptical because that’s those five things is what is valid today.

And there, I think you mentioned briefly Ben, but you can, you can remind us what was the church plan thing about, I

[02:08:30] Alex Tsakiris: got to tell you, I tell this story because it’s so much, uh, in, in my mind, and it was one of those that really did kind of, I don’t know, it did change things in terms of, I got a lot of. A lot of people from a lot of different places contacted me after the show.

And it, it, it did make a certain impact. You know? So Patricia Churchland is a very, very well-known and highly regarded in academia for this kind of what she called neural philosophy. And it’s kind of this blending of religion and neurology and all the rest of this stuff. And she was an academic, which also leads show the point.

You know? So I was talking to skeptics, people who are just skeptics, like, we’ll talk about Ben rad for disarray. I write for a skeptic magazine. I a story. But then I was talking to a lot. Academic, Steve Novell is not, he’s a skeptic, but he’s not really a skeptic. He’s a Yale neurologist. I mean, you can’t, that’s, that’s pretty, pretty high up there.

And Patricia Churchland, is it UC SD university, California, San Diego highly respected school where she was at the time and she’s doing this neuro philosophy thing anyways. Oh, it’s remember this. So I called her up and you know, I was cordial at the beginning. She agreed to come out. She didn’t know what was going to hit her.

Oh,

[02:09:47] Al Borealis: oh, I know the show you talking about, oh, people, you need to look at them. Go on, go on. So

[02:09:54] Alex Tsakiris: she, she just has really kind of had a high-end mighty kind of thing, which kind of early may. So I kind of just was very direct with her. I wasn’t at all unpleasant or unprofessional, but I just said, but you know, you’ve quoted, uh, Dr.

noted cardiologist from the Netherlands who had published a very groundbreaking book on near death experience 20 years. And he’d done all this research, published many peer review papers. I said, you’ve misquoted. And she goes, oh really? It crumbles. She totally fakes. And she goes, oh no, his total net Metta.

I go, yeah, I can read you the quote, if you like, and I can read you what he said after it, she goes, oh, and then she hangs up. So I call her back. I call her back, what are you doing? What are you doing? I mean, these people, they, they are dumb in a certain way. Like from a business standpoint, you just learn this stuff, like, like you would let then nerds in that situation.

If you’ve messed up your deal and then somebody and you hang up on the guy and he calls you back, you don’t answer the freaking phone. No, she answers the phone.

[02:10:58] Al Borealis: I surely don’t pretend that you didn’t hang up.

[02:11:03] Alex Tsakiris: She answers the phone and pretends like she didn’t hang up. And I think she thinks that I’m going to like, just move on.

I go, okay, well, let’s get back to that quote that you misquoted in your book. And she hangs up again and I called her a third time and she did, she answered. And then she kind of just wormed her way out of the interview,

[02:11:23] Al Borealis: but yeah, Macy to listen to it because I don’t, they care about, well, I think how they are perceived the

[02:11:30] Alex Tsakiris: believability.

I think, I think they’re, you know, when you said there’s this, there was this spectrum of people out there and you did a good job of my remembering of how it was of in terms of people all over the board, in terms of, you know, parapsychology and kind of doubting is this the whole, you know, proposition that we’re talking about here of is science fundamentally, uh, dogmatic in a way that it shouldn’t be, it’s not wrestling with the data.

That was really an open question. And when people were confronted by Patricia Churchland, this kind of noted academic completely crumbling, when she’s confronted directly with the question, I think it caused a lot of people to hesitate and go, wow. I really, I really am standing on very shaky ground. When I, when I advanced this position.

[02:12:22] Al Borealis: And it was kind of more intelligent because what she did, she too crumbled, but she will pretended that the attitude she met with is her default attitude. She was like, no, no, I never said that. No, she was running away from them. No, no, I don’t know anything. Yeah. She tried to grasp desperately onto her academic integrity.

So you couldn’t bust her because she was, she was on burstable. Cause she, she, she yielded all claims and all, but of course, as soon as she’s out of there and she goes on one of these pro skeptic shows, then she’s right back to, to their misleading ed dishonest at

[02:13:03] Alex Tsakiris: digital. That’s what I busted her on.

That’s what I busted her on. And I think it was very effective it’s because that is incredibly deceptive to come on and say, well, you know, where I pushed her on, on that is the say, uh, that I said, are you aware of this research? And it was the research of Dr. Jeffrey Long. And she goes, to be honest with you, I haven’t stayed up to date on that research enough to comment on it, which is like, uh, a pseudo real answer.

Like it, hear that from a scientist, you go, wow, that person’s legit. You know,

[02:13:35] Al Borealis: if it’s a gift to you though, because you could hit that in the head with every other skeptic after that to try to use her as an out. Well, I could also,

[02:13:44] Alex Tsakiris: I could also hit her with it because six months later she was out doing her same PowerPoint presentation on how near death experience was easily debunked by this and that.

So she had directly contradicted herself in a fundamental way. So yeah. It’s yeah, yeah. There, there were a lot of, uh, a lot of good ones there, way back, but it was a different, it’s a different time back when I thought that there was a realness to that. And also I often wondered about Susan Blackmore in terms of.

You know, because you, you mentioned the word useful idiot. And I think that it’s really important. My friend TOSA VAT, well has done a great job of this over the years, talking about there’s the lifetime player, there’s the part-time player. And there’s the useful idiot. The civil lifetime player is the Gloria Steinem, which we referenced, you know, she was recruited into CIA or maybe even Jeffrey Epstein.

You know, now they have the they’ve come out and said, you know, the gifted child kind of thing, maybe groom from a super young age, you know, all that stuff is all like whole different level of this stuff. And I’m not saying that Susan Blackboard, but I’m saying there’s a range of people who are groomed for this kind of role that is going to be manipulated.

And then there’s, that’s the lifetime player. Then there’s the part-time player. It’s like, Hey, I need this op I need this thing done. You know? And maybe it’s a James, Randy stumbled into the police station. Cause they caught him. I was

[02:15:10] Al Borealis: always thinking, yeah,

[02:15:12] Alex Tsakiris: exactly. They caught him making illicit phone calls with underage kids under aged boys, which they did.

And they got them. They put them in the room and they go pal, you are going to the place where you don’t want to go. Cause I tell you what they do with pedophiles in that place. And he just goes, oh, what do you want? And they go, okay, I’ll tell you what you want when we call you answer. When we tell you what to do, you do it.

So is that I’m not saying, I don’t know if any of that’s true. I just know you can go listen to the tapes with James, Randy, you can draw your own,

[02:15:46] Al Borealis: but he’s just an example. Anyway, we get your points black

[02:15:48] Alex Tsakiris: more, but that’s the part-time player, but then where I was really trying to go. So there’s the part-time player.

And then there’s the useful idiot, you know, which for our best guests is, I hate to say it, but that Dr. Patricia Churchland, she doesn’t, she doesn’t want to wear that. She’s viewing out such nonsense. That is completely in line with some party line that someone has decided is the you’re a biological woman, meaningless universe paradigm.

She doesn’t even understand that she’s propping that up. She just is by her default.

[02:16:20] Al Borealis: Yeah. And, and, and this isn’t even speculation. It’s this exact same playbook going on in mainstream media. You know, a manufacturing consent, I believe is the title of the book of, uh, Mr. What’s is called a darling of the left, um, lingual and the professor, um, Very old Jewish American guy.

What’s his name? It’s not Soros. Is it? No, he’s a Mo oligarch. I’m talking about an academic manufacturing concern. This is book

[02:16:50] Alex Tsakiris: consent or dissent consent or manufacturing

[02:16:52] Al Borealis: consent. Yeah. That’s what the media does he revealed and right. Did you get his name? Oh yeah. Chomsky, Noam Chomsky. So he, he, he revealed the whole playbook.

It works like this. If you are a moron where there were the wrong ideas, then you are an employee with the right ideas. So, so I would hire that guy out of journalism school or whatever, because he has the right attitude, the right ideas and I’ll sponsor. So it’s not like I’m telling every newscaster you’re in an, a huge conspiracy here.

Okay. You have to. No, no, he just, yeah. I’m here for my career and okay. These are the talking points for today. Okay. Well, let’s go. And he believes he’s free to do him say what he wants, because whatever he says is going to be exactly the narrative that the powers that be in this case, let’s say the owner of Fox news or CNN wants him to say so.

So the conspiracy here is, is actually just a little segment, a little fragment of the whole kind of game. If you see what I mean. So I like that thing. Lifetime player, bottom player, and useful idiots. And I would say most of them are useful ideas. Then the second biggest group is the pot thumb players, the blackmailing files.

And then you have the smallest, the most essential group of, or full-time actors. We have to move on. Now, Alex, in the next clip is kind of in the same line. My next clip is just when you skeptical point to always consolidate it. Here you are debunking, scientism and explaining why consciousness is key. And that’s a difference from what you would do in the first hundred shows or whatever.

No, you had taken that journey over, over the bridge, burnt the bridge behind you. You’re taking a stand, you call me Clara to saying what’s

[02:18:48] Alex Tsakiris: what. One of the topics. I think that has been a recurring theme of the show is how we communicate about these topics in the court of public opinion, if you will. And a lot of people will kind of have a knee jerk reaction when I mentioned God or when I mentioned believer, when I mentioned any of these things.

And when I’m pressed, like in the forum, I’m quick to acknowledge that I don’t know what God means. I don’t, I don’t have any specific idea of a guy in a beard or anything like that, but I’m using a shorthand reference to kind of shoe horn us into the public debate. I mean, the big debate is science versus religion.

Whether we like it or not, that’s, what’s out there. That’s, what’s socially relevant in terms of the discussion. So in that sense, okay, I’m a believer. If you want to divide the world into skeptics and believers, I’ll gladly take the side of believer. I don’t think that term means anything to me other than it means if we’re going to engage in this dialogue and there has to be sides, this is the side I’ll take for purposes of this discussion.

Scientific materialism is a failure. I mean, it’s a failed proposition. It was a good proposition. I think the evidence is overwhelmingly suggested that that just doesn’t hold up. And I think with it, atheism falls down the drain as well. So I think those propositions are falsified. So yeah, that would push me to whatever other category you want to call it.

You know, I’m going to be closer to that other side. I don’t think the middle holds here. I don’t think, oh, I’m agnostic. I just have questions about this. I don’t think it holds. And the reason it doesn’t hold is because you have to make a decision every day in the way that you live your life. We live in a material.

World a materialistic economy and materialistic society. That is the predominant worldview that’s placed upon you. If you do nothing, you are there by embracing materialism. So you can’t say I’m removed from this discussion. You’re in the middle of it. You’re the fish you’re in the water. The water is all around you.

So you can’t say I’m agnostic. Your life is your choice. And I’ve had numerous conversations along these lines. If the middle doesn’t hold there really isn’t a middle ground. Life forces us to choose one way or another. You know, one of the things I’ve come to appreciate about this biological robot scientific materialism that I bash repeatedly because it’s so strongly ingrained and meshed in our culture, and yet it doesn’t hold up.

And that just kind of galls me from, from a critical thinking standpoint, how can something so wrong have such traction? So I’m always bashing it on the other hand, especially lately I’ve come to appreciate how hard and difficult it is to get beyond that and how reassuring it is to fall back on the notion of materialism.

I mean, everything gets really, really fuzzy when you kind of go into this post scientific materialism realm. And by that, I mean, what is reality? I mean, if consciousness is fundamental, so, right. So this debate of biological robots is that, you know, you’re just a robot, you’re just a machine. And the counter theory is that in somehow in some way, we don’t understand this thing of consciousness.

This MI this ghost inside the machine is fundamental. So matter. Isn’t fundamental consciousness is fundamental. That’s one hypothesis. Well, what does that really mean? It means that all these ideas of measurement, all these ideas of reality. Are now have to be put on hold so we can no longer in that world.

Talk about reality or talk about our experience or talk about things like time. It all kind of falls apart. So in that sense, what I’ve said before in, in, I think it holds is that, Hey, I’m in a play this little game with you called consensus reality. And we’re going to pretend that this desk that I’m tapping on is real is solid.

Even though we know it’s 99.9 9 9, 9, 9%, nothing. It appears solid to me. You can see it. I can see it. We’re going to call this reality. And in that same way, we’re going to call all these things that we debate about reality. And we’re going to call skeptics on this and this and that, but at the same time, while we’re doing that, we have to acknowledge that that might all be just kind of a game, if you will.

And there may be a bigger, larger truth out there that we’re not really dealing with when we talk about things in that way, and that’s pretty abstract, but I think you can see where I’m going and why it’s necessary to kind of talk out of both sides of your mouth. When you talk about skeptics versus believers or scientism or even scientific evidence.

[02:23:46] Al Borealis: Of course, when I look at the shows lined up chronologically, it’s pretty obvious that in the beginning, you’re, you’re, you’re doing this, um, both sides things and, and slowly but surely realizing what’s what, but at this period in part two, you deep diving into their consciousness is key type of shows. So I said, that’s the hallmark of skeptical, too old that you left the old, uh, I’m going to be the judge of the debate here and see who’s right now.

You’re fully immersed, exploring. You found truth on one side. Now you’re deep diving into that. Do you agree with that description? Yes. No. I want to ask you, you mentioned that someone started the forum. We mentioned this friend of yours who interviewed you, but, um, I didn’t get to ask you about the open source science website.

Uh, I sent you one, but I don’t think that’s the same one. It looks weird. Or the one I sent you on telegram. So if you could explain briefly this open source science

[02:24:58] Alex Tsakiris: thing, science, I think we kind of covered before. So I had this idea that there could be, the experiments could help this situation and that if we threw more data at it.

[02:25:09] Al Borealis: Oh, okay. So that’s the vehicle you did experiments. Exactly. Right? Right. But didn’t you cooperate with someone

[02:25:15] Alex Tsakiris: there? I kept trying to pull people in. Yeah. I’ve tried to full service.

[02:25:22] Al Borealis: No, Annelies seven toilet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[02:25:25] Alex Tsakiris: I mean, she’s, she’s super nice. I haven’t stayed in contact with her again.

This is, did

[02:25:31] Al Borealis: you, did you stay in contact with a stain then a waging boy? Uh,

[02:25:34] Alex Tsakiris: you know, I’ve talked to him no, over the years. Just a couple of times I made, he went down a different, he went down a different path, but, uh, yeah, I talked to him at, at one point, you know, it’s, it’s just funny. I mean, this has been such an awesome, awesome part of my life.

And like I was telling you about the form. I love the people come in and then move out or people come in and they’re there because I offer them a little bit of money to go do something and then they moved out or they weren’t really that interested or they didn’t have the say. Yeah. I mean, I’m crazy about, you know, this guy, so that all happens.

You know, that’s just, you know, as far as shouting out, I mean, the people that I am just, um, I’m just indebted to, and I feel like have just shaped me, not just the show it’s shaped me. Cause that’s what it’s really all about. Are some of the tremendous guests that I’ve had on, you know, are usually really,

[02:26:28] Al Borealis: really did you have like, like you had some people who I know one was a hosting and I mean, even Gordon that’s hosted a show, but you have

[02:26:37] Alex Tsakiris: had guests.

I’ve like, yeah. I mean, multiple people have guest hosts. I love for people to guess. Those. I love for people to get involved in reaching out to people who might want to be on the show, but that was kind of later in the game, you know, after you do it a few hundred times, you’re like, I want other people to have that.

To have that fun, not that fun, but that feeling of wanting to know something and then finding out that it’s somewhat knowable. You know, if you, if you go and you pursue the truth, like we’re talking about, sometimes you find it and that’s kind of a real kind of thing. So, but anyways, yeah, my buddy, um, from, uh, down there in Florida state has hosted a couple of shows for me

[02:27:26] Al Borealis: to go into you’d phone number 200.

[02:27:28] Alex Tsakiris: No, no, no. Uh, this guy is, he’s a professor, Dr. Rich Greco is the guy who has done multiple shows for me. And it was really, really

[02:27:36] Al Borealis: helpful. Yeah. He, the guy who did the Sherman thing with you, he really nailed Sherman.

[02:27:42] Alex Tsakiris: Remember

[02:27:43] Al Borealis: that one? I think it was shown number three or four very early. Oh no, no, it was, it was so weird because I was listening to it.

You didn’t say, I mean you, how much it was back then, but from out of nowhere and all the voice started to ask questions of Schermer what the fuck happened. I met her in a different, you know what I mean? Like him for a while, and then we forgot all about you and then suddenly you came in at the end. So, uh, that was a chat at least.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess. Um, yeah. Is there anything else to say about the second period because this guy you made short 200, I think already then you’ve, uh, moving on to starting to move on to skeptic or three. Oh, not long after that, but that guy, he did a very useful thing. He divided typical skeptics.

They’re like stuff like this, but he divided your show systematically in percentages. And Andy, he S where 25% back then, because you did, uh, you had huge wave and just, you have to go to oh, anything to do with a death. Yes. Let’s just NDE. And that’s interesting, right? Because you start out and materialism or spiritualism and whatever, and then, you know, the next level of at the mountain is of course, okay.

We have to go to death because that’s. That’s the secret. That’s where everything is. So the death period is completely logical as the next step of, of, uh, truth seeking and a consciousness consciousness is key consciousness, death reincarnation.

[02:29:19] Alex Tsakiris: Can I interject something? Yeah, sure. I’m just going to it. Uh, I love where you went with that, but you almost take it from more of a kind of mystic standpoint.

Cause I think that’s your background and that’s your understanding. And I kind of come around full circle in that. I didn’t exactly see it that way. I saw it as an, as an extension of the science. So the science that Dean Raden was doing and Rupert Sheldrick was doing was to me conclusive evidence that materialism, the proposition fails, like I said, but it wasn’t exactly penetrating.

Like we’re saying, you know, it wasn’t getting through why isn’t everyone else getting the message, getting the newsletter on that. So I thought, wait, this is really more of a way that’s, uh, kind of indisputable, right? So one of the pillars of materialism is that consciousness is a phenomenon of the brain.

So therefore when you die, consciousness must end. Here are people coming back and again from a medical and they’re coming at it from a medical standpoint, which is kind of interesting because medicine kind of bypasses in a way, some of the science bullshit and just says, Hey, you know, you live or use your dye, you heal your arm or you don’t.

So they had a little bit of a different perspective, but they were directly getting to this question and I saw it as a more effective way of really answering this question. In a convincing way that commits other people. The circle back to the mystic part, I think is that now I realize that that’s why the mystics focused on death.

That’s why when you become a Yogi, the first thing you do is you go look at the funeral Pyre and you’ve watched the ashes and you meditate there for days and days. Cause eventually it gets through to you. That materialism is,

[02:31:11] Al Borealis: is just, I joke I am not my body, et cetera. I’m not my feelings, but yeah, totally.

That’s that was your focus, your perspective. But I’m just seeing it in Burt’s perspective. That is so natural that the next step is to explore. And when you explore all that stuff, obviously that will, because you look, whatever was your motive in the first part, it led you to the second part, skeptical one.

Oh. Had to come before skeptical to, oh, it’s because of the experiences you had in skeptical one. Oh, that you went over to skeptical 2 0 1. Uh, we went to the same happened in skeptical too. Oh, what you experienced there? Led you to skeptical three. Oh and with three. Oh, I mean, well, you’ll see what I mean, but obviously when he, not even that help you, ain’t hitting people in the head with indisputable evidence.

Yeah. And you realized consciousness is key and nobody was listening. Everyone was out for lunch. So no, not actually. Everyone let’s listen to the next clip.

[02:32:18] Darren: Hey Alex, coming at you from grime America, Darren and Graham just wanted to wish you a happy 50th anniversary, 15 years. And uh, I don’t know how many episodes, not enough, but congratulations buddy.

[02:32:33] Graham: Yeah. Thanks Alex. I mean, he’s been so helpful for us, Aaron. I mean, he’s been great. You know, I remember when we first started this thing in 2013, he was episode. I think he came on our show episode 29. Um, and then I think he followed us after that. Cause he was, he was pretty helpful. He gave us a chance, you know, he was one of those guys that gave us a chance and supported us along the way.

You know, like we couldn’t do it without guys like Alex sort of saying, Hey, you guys are on the right track here, go for it, you know, hundred percent. And I’m sure we’re not the only ones. And uh, here’s the 15 more years. I mean, I’m actually, I think this year I’m going to get down to San Diego. So maybe this’ll be the year I finally get to meet up.

I was looking through emails going back 10, 11 years ago. Um, I was cause Alex was one of these guys where, uh, I’d email him pitching to him about UFO’s. Cause I think he sloughed off your votes. It was a couple of podcasts I was listening to and I was like, oh man, he’s got to treat that. And then he, and then he turned around on it and like 2012, he was like, oh yeah, it’s time to, to hit this topic of UFO’s kind of thing.

But I will always appreciate it. Being able to communicate with the host of this show, who’s got all these scientists on and he’s like sort of battling, you know, kind of at the front lines against this. You know, what we knew at the time was sort of a battle over consciousness and he was just on the front lines and I went through this whole phase of skeptical podcasts.

I went through UFO’s and paranormal and the skeptic skeptic’s guide to the universe, you know, those, those guys. And then I just got disgusted, by the way, they’re just ridiculing people that would have sightings or strange experiences. And then of course Alex was right sort of in the middle, you know, he was like, he was just following the data, looking at strange experiences.

That’s fine on one end, but not ridiculing people that, uh, that had these experiences. I mean, he would sort of more ridicule the dogma of science and the scientists that are holding this together. You know, like Charles Fort would say the, uh, you know, this, this dog, the narrator always has this little attic.

You know what dude? Cause Alex would fit right in with fourths, like four it’s a philosophy. I think. I mean, cause Fort was fighting the battle that Alex was fighting back then in the early 19 hundreds still going and it’s still going, this is the crazy thing. And I can’t tell if we’re winning or not. I mean, we are now we are now in a certain way.

We are, you think we’re losing, this is a, this is a change I used it. I mean, I’m talking about more specific materialism, new atheist battle. When that one, right before we lose a big one. I’m very glad

when this little battle, I don’t have turned out to a vintage trap. I’m optimistic as well. That whole movement fell apart in the last 10 years, you know, the ones that were pushing back the new atheists and sort of the skeptic, the skeptical crowd. I think that PZ Myers kind of went off the deep end. I think that was great.

That was like a paradigm. I remember being able to, I was. So all these people, uh, that the Hudson valley, cause we were talking, I wasn’t at that Hudson valley. Oh you weren’t. Oh yeah. I, I, I asked BZ mess, uh, a question with the mic in front of the whole crowd about like, so all these people talking about the Hudson, because there was this Hudson bay flat, right?

The UFO. I mean, that was one of the biggest, most under an episode us, congratulations, Alex. Here’s to 15 more years, buddy. I might go to San Diego this year. I think he’s somewhere down around there. So

[02:36:19] Al Borealis: of course that was Darren and Graham Graham, Graham Graham, and Darren from grime America, they touched up on a few interesting things. But before that they go, so a bit back, 2013, they said that’s how did you get in touch with

[02:36:37] Alex Tsakiris: these guys? They reached out to me, they had, they had listened to the show. They were fans of the show.

Hmm.

[02:36:42] Al Borealis: The David talking, I think Graham said the same thing to me that you’ve been helping them. Uh, and I think that’s like, I think many people have that impression because you’re starting to see a stick that’s typical for a idealist. Uh, and people aren’t used to that, I guess. So you’re very supportive of, of other people and other people’s projects.

It’s like, you’re coming from a place of surplus, not scarcity. It’s called a new business for those who don’t know, the old businesses is scarcity driven. Right. It’s the competition. And you have to like sabotage for each other, et cetera. But when you have the new business kind of frame of mind and you know that no, no, no.

The more the merrier. So, um, I don’t know if that’s even on your radar, but that’s completely in harmony with how you’re, you’re acting with other people. So they are very appreciated in or your, your contribution.

[02:37:41] Alex Tsakiris: Well, that’s awesome. You know, like we’ve kind of said a couple of times it’s to be a light, bringer would be all that any of us could ever do in our highest contribution.

So I don’t always do that. I’m not perfect, but that’s my goal. Yeah.

[02:37:59] Al Borealis: But it’s telling, because these guys, you know, I look at the first guy we had on here. No, the second guy, Greg Colborn he called himself. He said, ah, hi, stolen or something. Yeah, kind of, kind of bet your damn professional, Greg

[02:38:23] Alex Tsakiris: is front and on his front and on that, ain’t he?

[02:38:26] Al Borealis: But these two guys, I haven’t heard much of them, but I’m actually going on their show soon. So I’m going to do my research. They come off as more like laid back stoners and I don’t mean to insult them if they’re not into that kind of thing at all, that I’m just saying they, they more look, look like they’re.

Should I say more relaxed in their approach to the well

[02:38:49] Alex Tsakiris: there they’re Canadian. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Canadian snow. I mean, there are, you know, how many great Canadian, uh, comedians, err and entertainers. I mean, that culture breeds a certain notice that I don’t know why. Cause, cause they’re, they’re just, there’s a warmth about Graham and Darren, there’s a genuineness about them and like, you know, the, the part I thought you were going to pull out of that is like, Hey man.

Yeah, I didn’t, I wasn’t woken to the

[02:39:17] Al Borealis: UFO. No I don’t. None of that is the part I’m going to, I just wanted to give them a little kudos before we go back on, on track. So let’s do that. Yes. They’ve appointing out there, even nagging you about it. And I think the uniform really is, uh, you know, skeptical three, oh, now you doing all the inquiries that’s possible.

And from your two O experience, you realize shit, this rabbit hole goes much deeper than I thought this is when you are false and conspiracy becomes high up on your radar. If you can put it like that, because notice what they were talking about, the battle, the paradigm battle, very funny, uh, how they pointed it out.

In fact, before you even command, I want to play a very brief clip. Listen to this.

[02:40:10] Alex Tsakiris: Before we celebrate, you know, the coming paradigm shift. I think we have to take a good look at even this brief little snippet of history and learn a lesson from that and be very cautious in our optimism that there is going to be a lot of change.

I don’t see a lot of evidence for it. Then again, in a recent interview with Dr. Mario Beauregard, I asked him that question directly, and I thought he had a very strong argument for the fact that there is this change and he’s a neuroscientist in Montreal. And he says, Hey, at my university, at my conferences in the, in the journals that I publish in, I definitely see a shift, a change in the openness of these ideas in the last 10 years.

So maybe I’m being too pessimistic, but isn’t it a little bit strange that we can walk down this path and we can all have this conversation about belief about what’s important and what we know. And we have a tendency, no matter how many times we bring it up to gloss over the reality that we live in a world in a society that has made these kinds of topics taboo.

So that leads me to one question. And that is why are so many of the topics we talk about on skeptical taboo

[02:41:25] Al Borealis: and mind you, this was said before you went deep into UFO’s and conspiracies. So even from the completely legitimate stuff, evidence-based mainstream academic stuff that you were flushing out, still taboo, can’t go there.

Of course, that didn’t stop you from going deeper, but, but do you agree with me that skeptical three O is when your focus is shifting over to the really and death

[02:41:56] Alex Tsakiris: were really kind of comes in line with a lot of the work that you’ve done? I think, yeah,

[02:42:00] Al Borealis: I agree. And, and that’s when I, I think that’s when we connected to,

[02:42:05] Alex Tsakiris: well, you know, what’s funny and it’s funny listening to the Darren and Graham thing.

It’s like. I think that I was, I was never worried about intellectual respectability. You know, I wasn’t worried about the taboo topics that then no one would, but I was somewhat influenced by the little bit of the Stockholm syndrome thing. A little bit of the, you know, don’t go it’s, it’s like, um, it’s like a guy once, once told me and I love this.

This is so true. He said, there’s a crazy line. There’s a crazy line. And you don’t want to go past it. And then he proceeded to tell me that his crazy line was underground basis years ago. Recounting the story to someone else saying now I know there’s, there’s pretty substantial, very substantial. I would say evidence for underground basis.

And then you can take the really exaggerated stories. And maybe those aren’t true. And maybe those are misinformation, but there’s a lot of other ones where they got the fence, you know, and they see the cars driving into the mountain and stuff like that. And they videotaped it and stuff like that. So not to get too far.

[02:43:16] Al Borealis: It’s funny how random his, his line was, but that’s the thing. Exactly. Yeah,

[02:43:21] Alex Tsakiris: exactly. Yeah. Go on. So, so I, I was, at that point, I was at that point of really pulling back a little bit and saying, you know what, if, if I do cross that crazy line, what’s perceived to be a crazy line. It is going to be another line.

And it’s, that is a chasm. That’s not a line, it’s a chasm. And once you jump over to the other side, it’s like unbelief, mountain analogy. You’re using, there’s a lot of people that are going to come up. They’re going, no, man, don’t go there. No thanks. I’m not jumping that line.

[02:43:55] Al Borealis: Yeah. The overtone vendor is controlled by the powers that be right.

That’s education and institutions to media. And it’s been threatened by internets, which is why they’re now are extending operation Mockingbird to the internet. Well, they’re doing all the time, but no, they’re screwing that tight, the screws on social media, but that’s the very narrow Overton window that the public can afford.

And then you have individuals and they usually have a Overton window. That is a little bit. Then the public one, but it can go in many different directions. Some people can have like a pulley. You can have like people who are aware of the political conspiracy, but there may be 80 wrists. They have no idea.

You see what I mean? So you have very many, I see, see the same with Sheldrake. He is aware that Vicki PRD is hijacked by this, this crazy fanatical gang, but he’s aware of it in his field. Yes. He’s not aware that except same thing is happening every or the field, which can be regarded as controversial somehow for powerful interests.

Not who won, uh, you know, the football game and 2015 the championship. No, no, no. Oh, you can rely on Wikipedia, but political stuff, social stuff, you name it, even a prime pedophelic stuff. You name it. So people don’t know that the Overton window is gigantic really well. If you

[02:45:27] Alex Tsakiris: story quick story, that was fundamental to shifting things for me.

So once you cross the chasm and you go, okay, I’m willing to, I’m willing to go there, right? The evidence for an an, you know, grandma’s so right to call me out for that, because I knew that the UFO thing was real and I wasn’t really willing to go there fully. I wasn’t able to, I wasn’t willing to fully engage with that because.

I just felt like I wasn’t ready. You know, I wasn’t ready. And when I said the UFO thing, it’s the ITI thing too. Cause I was amazed. People would go with the UFO thing and then they’ll go. Yeah. But I just can’t get over the, I can’t get to the abduction thing. Right. I can’t get the

[02:46:06] Al Borealis: ETF. That’s one line. Then the next line after there is abductions,

[02:46:10] Alex Tsakiris: it’s like I was flying around in those things anyways.

But what I was going to say, as you relate to the social media, I remember. So the, and the conspiracy thing, the first thing I wake up to is JFK. Cause there’s like these million old things I would. And then I remember I told the story a million times. I don’t know if you ever played this clip out, I’m sitting on the edge of the bed after I’d watch like 40 hours a day of cave videos and saying to my wife, I said, wow, you know, that’s, I guess it, it really was a conspiracy.

I said, but like this nine 11 thing, oh, I could never go there. You know? So obviously nine 11 to anyone who doesn’t know, obviously conspiracy, obviously an inside job. And I remember one of the guys I was finding

[02:46:49] Al Borealis: the patient version is also conspiracy theories undisputed.

[02:46:55] Alex Tsakiris: But one of the people in this guy was on the show and he’s done some great work.

His name is Luke, Luke red Koski. And he tremendous, yeah, we are changed on the streets. He’s done unbelievable work over the years. Fantastic guy. But I remember Luke red Koski way back. This is at least seven years ago, maybe 10, but at least at least seven years ago, he’s the first guy who pointed out the demonetization and the shadow banning.

And it happened to him and he demonstrated it. He said, here’s my YouTube channel. He goes, well, This thing, doesn’t it no longer generates any revenue and I’ve called YouTube on it and I’ve emailed and they just don’t say anything. But here’s the point of my story. I remember being out in Silicon valley and, uh, made in this guy, I’m not gonna mention his name, but this guy is really a pretty top notch guy.

He had a lot of connections with some serious Silicon valley people, you know, like Google and that kind of stuff. He knew some people at pretty high level, you know, and I was telling him this because I had now been awoken to the conspiracy game. And I was remember, he’s like, no, that just, that just isn’t true.

That just can’t happen. They would never do that. Google would never do that. It’s fundamentally against everything. They believe it. Now that that’s not even, that’s acknowledged, that’s acknowledged that we shadow ban people, brag about it. They brag about it. It’s so in your face. So this is part of this evolution that anyone goes through who seeks the truth.

If there is a, if there is a moral to this story, or if there is some theme or some arc to this story of skeptical, it’s that this is one of the things you encounter. You keep thinking, you know, oh, I’ve crossed this hill. So now I’m, I’m there, you know? And then you say, well, I wonder what’s over that next hill.

And then you cross that one. And then you realize that it never really ends. And it’s really the journey that you’re on, which is what it was all

[02:49:02] Al Borealis: about it. Yeah. Like he said too, he said that, uh, and I always mess up this quote, but basically you can’t distinguish between the path the way and they go, they are one.

In other words, of course, the means doesn’t justify. Uh, how would you say it in English? Golden the end doesn’t justify the means. It goes through that too, because the means is reflecting of your end it’s it’s, it’s like that all the quotes is a Buddha. One of these wise people said, if you want to know your, your former life, look at the life you’re living.

Now, if you wanna know your future life, look at it, live your living. Now it’s their turn they’ll know. Right? And that’s, it’s being informed by what happened before. And it’s informing where you’re going. And that’s the thing, because this is a callback to what you said in the beginning. When I was kudos in you for having this merciless, honest, sincere, no other agenda, just getting to the bottom of the truth.

So it worked and you realized bum, it’s an artificial. It’s a stuck on stupid debate. Let’s move on bomb. Number two, right now, your deep dive into the oil exciting signs on the one side, the consciousness, the death, everything. And you realize also the game is rigged because you’re not getting any traction.

You’re not why aren’t they canceling the question of who’s right. And what’s what, why aren’t everybody just saying now? Yes, consciousness is key. And that’s why I would say the former clip, which ended. Why is everything we do taboo? I would say that was like the last echo of skeptical two. Oh and skeptical three.

Oh, you were to describe like this.

[02:50:49] Alex Tsakiris: I feel that the skeptical show has gone through a couple major revisions. I always think of skeptical 1.0 as being follow the data, wherever it leads. And that was me thinking that science and skepticism was, were pretty much of a straight up game. And we just had to dig into the science and we’d get the answers that we need.

And there’s some truth to that. But I think what it led to was a greater. That I call skeptical 2.0, at least to myself, I call it that. And that was about, it’s more than the data. It’s about the larger culture of science. It’s about deception conspiracy. It’s about the way the world works and the motivations of the individuals involved.

And we’ve explored that a great deal on skeptical and it’s led to some interesting places. So with that, I kind of see the show moving towards skeptical 3.0, the data collective, how you and I can learn from each other and crowdsource this journey that I’ve been talking about that I have been on, but really I’ve been on it with you.

Because as you know, if you follow the show, especially recently, I’ve relied more and more on skeptical listeners to suggest guests and you guys have done a fabulous job of that. There’s been some great emails that really are much better than I could write to entice people to join me on the show. And they’ve led to some really great interviews that I’ve grown a lot from, but I want to take it one step further.

Now I’ve opened up a thread on the skeptical forum, so I can take advantage of this incredible collective knowledge of the skeptical listeners. And hopefully you can help guide me and we can work together to figure out what direction I should take this interview. And I think that has two benefits. One, obviously I can be better informed and ask better questions.

But the other thing that I really want to get to is I’ve noticed so many times in the skeptical interviews that it’s really the second interview or the follow-up to the first interview where some of the main medias issues really get resolved. It’s the interview 2.0, if I can stretch the revision metaphor a little bit further, but I think that’s where all the action happens.

And what I’m hoping is that by you participating in helping me formulate the ideas for these upcoming interviews, we can work together. We can maybe even collect some information, have an exchange with the guests, so we can actually have a pre email interview through the form and then really get to some of the meaty stuff in the show.

And I think the question here is, what direction should we take skeptical. As we evolve towards this skeptical 3.0, then I’m talking about a couple of areas I want to pursue further. And they really have a tendency to polarize people or maybe more accurately to really put people off. But one of the nice things about doing a show like this and not caring too much about growing your audience as much as you can or appealing to a certain crowd is that you don’t have to worry if people are put off by these topics.

But one topic is UFO’s and ETF hypothesis. I think it’s central central. I’ve explored it a little bit in terms of how that might relate to consciousness, what those reports mean. But I think wrestling that to the ground and figuring out as best you can, what the reality of that is, is central to answering these big picture questions.

[02:54:26] Al Borealis: Yeah. And I call this clip on skeptical three O community inputs and extending into the deep end, summing up a little what we already said, but, um, uh, you did, you touched on two things. I want us to comment upon here. Now. One of them is you have experimented with various formats, haven’t you? Because sometime I go about some of your early shows was super short and I guess you didn’t have much compression back then because there was many podcasts.

So I guess the 20 minutes show could fly back then. Although, of course, to be fair in general, they were about an hour. But I remember when we connected you very like you, you were very swayed, enticed by the idea of having long form. And when I listened also to. Because all these statements of Alex that I’m playing today, or like, um, announcements or commentaries that he has given at certain turning points in the show.

And so, um, uh, in many of them you are thinking aloud. Yes. Uh, and that’s also very, very unique thing with your show that you’ve always tried to include the listeners and the skeptical, uh, gang, but you’re are like looking for different ways to do things. Uh, it’s it, I think it’s related to what we already talked about, that you, for example, that you’re doing experiments in parallel with a show that’s very unique.

So it’s like, you’re always, it’s not just that you’re trying to look for new topics. You also trying to look for new ways and vehicles and we’ll get to some, even more loud about projects a little later. But right now it looks to me as if you’ve been open to experimenting with the format to well,

[02:56:18] Alex Tsakiris: yeah.

And, uh, you’re right to point out that when I did first time, I did, we did some interviews. I interviewed you, I think first, and then you interviewed me. I can’t remember, but, or maybe you had interviewed me. I can’t remember. But yeah, I, I was very, very, uh, interested in what you had done and how you had done the long form interviews.

And it just opened my eyes because again, it’s like so many things, you know, you have a block, you go, oh yeah, nobody wants to listen to more than an hour. And then you see somebody who just really opened somebody up and it goes, and it grows.

[02:56:56] Al Borealis: Yeah. But you have taken note is that the second show is often the breakthrough.

Exactly. But you did one always shows

[02:57:04] Alex Tsakiris: well, because, but again, see that’s where you kind of learn from other people. And I learned from you. So I thought. My mindset was, yeah, you need more time, but you can’t do it more than an hour. You can’t do it more than an hour at a time. And what you’ve shown with these kind of deep dive kind of things, and then Brogan really broke the mold to no one thought they could do that thing.

And I don’t think you were copying from Rogan. I think you guys

[02:57:34] Al Borealis: both, I wasn’t aware of him when I

[02:57:35] Alex Tsakiris: started it. Right, right. So anyways, you know, you, you understood that in a way that I didn’t understand. And the other thing I discovered is second shows don’t work. They don’t work. Two shows don’t work. It doesn’t that that idea for the format doesn’t work.

What does work is the longer show where you kind of let people

[02:57:55] Al Borealis: spend an hour to, to, to wear them down and then open up.

[02:58:01] Alex Tsakiris: That’s a

[02:58:02] Al Borealis: business secret.

[02:58:03] Alex Tsakiris: Yes, it

[02:58:04] Al Borealis: is. No, but I learned one thing from you. I learned very late, unfortunately, and I’m trying to implement it now and that’s let their guests empty himself for the first part of the interview.

Let them say all the stuff without interrupting. And then you can start to tangle where they just much more and, and do their so-called interruptions and even push them a little, et cetera. I don’t know if that’s a deliberate I’ve asked you before. You never give a clear answer. I don’t know if that’s a deliberate model you used or if it just grew to their authority, if it’s you just unconscious, but it’s brilliant, man.

And I’m going to copy it then and try to do it more like that in my, my long form shows. Nice.

[02:58:47] Alex Tsakiris: Yeah. I don’t know that I’ve always followed that, but you’re definitely right. I’ve learned that the hard way, you know, everybody’s like that, you know, I mean, it’s,

[02:58:56] Al Borealis: I would say everybody, people do these in completely

[02:58:59] Alex Tsakiris: different ways.

Everybody needs, everybody needs. What it does is when you go on a show and you’ve been on enough shows and you’re probably not like this because you do a show, but if you’ve just written a book and you don’t do a lot of shows, one of your big frustration, one of your big anxieties is am I going to get a chance to get my message out?

Right? So if you kind of, if that happens at the beginning, then it kind of shifts. Like you’re saying, you know, then there’s a shift and people go, okay. Yeah, I got my message out and he plugged the book and he asked me questions about the book. Okay. So now he’s asking me other stuff. Okay. I can let my guard down.

[02:59:35] Al Borealis: Right. I always make sure when it’s like more like a bull king, like I know the guy at the other end is doing the rounds because it’s a new book. I mean, I’m not, uh, advertisement shows. I’m not having them on for that. But when that that’s one of their agendas, um, I always say to them, and of course at the end of the show, we’re going to plug the book and we go in and plug all the books and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So that they know that he calmed down. But I’ll tell you one time you didn’t do that. I mean, in that format that I talked about, uh, and perhaps that can explain some of the outcome of the show and that’s when you had on the very fascinating sweet man called Tom what’s his name? The guy who was, I mean, he has a wa talking about the deep end.

He was allegedly abducted by aliens. And, uh, he was in everything is CAA Whitley Strieber

[03:00:32] Alex Tsakiris: yeah,

[03:00:32] Al Borealis: yeah. You didn’t do it there.

[03:00:35] Alex Tsakiris: Which one hit. I remember.

[03:00:36] Al Borealis: I mean, you had several, the one that was turned a little funny, where you wanted to go full roam and uses on him and he could relate so much to,

[03:00:46] Alex Tsakiris: you know, what I got, I don’t know this is going to be boring as heck for people, just all these old stories, but Whitley’s a very recent story in terms of skeptical and Whitley Strieber is a super important person in our culture and our whole entire culture.

He is super, super important guy. He wrote the book communion, which was a phenomenal international bestseller, but it wasn’t just the best seller. It was a culture changer. It was in the bookstores and people walk by and they saw that picture of an alien and they went, oh my God, it brought back memories of them being abducted in this happened so many times.

Well, Whitley has a very interesting background too. Whitley was MK ultra man. And like, if people can’t get there, like, like we’re doing this whole retrospective, you know, kind of thing, which is so awesome. But like, I would have, I could have never used those words, you know, 10, 15 years ago he was MK ultra.

I could have never said it with just the matter of fact way I’m saying it now, but it’s the truth. And that’s what he says. That’s what he says happened to him. And then you can say, well, he’s making that up. That’s not credible. Well, it would be less credible. If we didn’t have concrete evidence that they were MKL drink all sorts of people.

Some of them went out to be serial killers and you know, all the rest of this stuff. So once you start unpacking that, and then you put that into the lens of E T, you know, then you’ve got this other thing, but then you got to listen. You got to go full, skeptical on it. You say Whitley that doesn’t give you a pass for then hypothesizing that the Roman collapse was due to environmental racism in the same kind of thing we’re facing with global warming today, full stop global warming.

Isn’t supported by the science, the science doesn’t support that all those islands, they said they were going to be flooded. They’re not flooded. They’re still there. But Antarctica, go look at the satellite photos of the ice. There’s more ice there now than there was 30 years ago or 25 years ago when our

[03:02:54] Al Borealis: no, but now it’s changed.

You know, because then they don’t have to, the

[03:02:59] Alex Tsakiris: point is the same Whitley Strieber is phenomenal person. He’s a cult, culturally. He’s super important. And what he’s done and he’s telling the truth, but he’s not right about, he’s not right about the room in history. He’s not right about Jesus, if he is right.

I mean, maybe he’s right. Maybe he’s wrong. I don’t know, but he’s got to stand up and he’s got to take the grilling. And I think he was really surprised cause we’re getting along and all this other stuff and I go, wait,

[03:03:27] Al Borealis: yeah, you had an old before with a more harmonious into you. But I think my point was just that you were there waiting from the formula there.

So maybe if he had to be, he was frustrated that he couldn’t tell you what the book was about. You, you didn’t seem interested in that. So if he had gotten that first period to empty himself, then you’d go, you’re set for summer and maybe it would be different, but it was just an example. Maybe it’s not important.

Maybe

[03:03:55] Alex Tsakiris: it would the, the point being, I know what you’re saying with regard to that, but it’s like one of my pet peeves, this is more inside baseball podcast or stuff. Is that people who feel like, uh, because they’ve written a book that all the questions, you know, have to be. We’re directly out of the book.

You know, I always remember when I interviewed a Colonel, a Colonel John Alexander, who is super interesting, super, super interesting guy and important guy in the whole UFO thing. And I did a very fair job on his book. And then I kind of grilled him on some really, really hard quotes. He got really mad at me at the end.

And he said, I know people in this kind of thing, but you know, my thing was like, Hey, you got a shot, right? I pumped your book. I promoted your book. I announced your book a bunch of times you got your part. Now I got my part. I get to ask my questions. Same with Whitley really was the same with Whitley Whitley.

If you let him he’ll go on and on and on like, like it’s just like, this is the way it is. Cause I wrote it down in a book. Well, not exactly.

[03:05:03] Al Borealis: Yeah, no, there’s a, there’s always a little quid pro quo in those settings. I agree. But my point is that at three O was digging deep into conspiracies, into UFO’s into all these taboos, uh, that exist there.

And I would say the transition to four O is mod. There’s an important nuance. I think you think you’re still stuck the three? Oh no, you’re not. You’re at four. And I’ll explain you what four O is. But before that, listen to this

[03:05:35] Alex Tsakiris: many congratulations to Alex and happy birthday skeptical, you don’t look a day over nine.

[03:05:42] Gordon White: Uh, yeah, this is Gordon from ruin soup. And just thinking back, I guess, on my skeptical journey. And I can’t even remember when it began, uh, I don’t remember when or how I found skeptical, but it was about a decade ago. Uh, and I remember when I did, because I was still having those long London commutes, uh, Alex’s voice and his quest, uh, and his continuous seeking were just eyeopening and wonderful on, uh, I got two hours a day, uh, which means by the time I found a skeptical eye, uh, I was able to plumb the back catalog and, uh, and really, and really, you know, keep up to date with it ever, uh, ever since then.

And so it’s, I mean, this is an amazing achievement and I guess. Being a podcaster as well. One of the things that I guess I take most from my journey with, or experience with skeptical is really inspiration. I suppose, what I love about skeptical and Alex in general is that he has the guests that he wants to have.

He has the discussions that he wants to have. Uh, and, and he goes on the quests that he wants to go on. And that, you know, as a, as a fellow creator is, is really, really inspirational. It doesn’t skeptical, never falls into that formulaic format of someone’s got a book out and then they do the rounds of shows that might happen.

But generally it’s the things that Alex wants to explore and Alex wants to talk about. And I think that’s why we all stick with it, right? Because we are following along with a sincere seeker with no other motivation other than the seeking. So once again, congratulations many happy returns, happy birthday to one of the best podcasts out there.

And, uh, and long may it

[03:07:41] Al Borealis: continue, of course that’s scored and white from the brilliant blog slash podcast ruined soup. It’s it’s funny, Alex, because we talk about the other guys, like if Gordon is very dry and if the grim Erica forks is on the polar opposites, very loose, then, uh, I, I would put Greg Callwood, uh, somewhere in between those two poles.

[03:08:12] Alex Tsakiris: Maybe you don’t. Okay. No, no, it’s it’s, it’s fine. It’s so it’s so awesome hearing from these people. Uh it’s it’s so, so nice to you to do this.

[03:08:23] Al Borealis: So what was your, I mean, Gordon, even, I know I’m doing it now, guest hosting, how did he end up guest hosting? How did you connect Gordon just

[03:08:31] Alex Tsakiris: reached out. Like he said, he had heard the show and you know, it, it was topics he was interested in and

[03:08:37] Al Borealis: yeah, it was, he had the, his famous blog then, or no

[03:08:41] Alex Tsakiris: Gordon, let me correct.

That let me correct. That he might’ve had. No, I don’t think he hit, I’m almost sure he didn’t have ruined soup, but he definitely didn’t have a podcast or had done

[03:08:49] Al Borealis: any interviews because he thought that when I started in 15 and he got

[03:08:54] Alex Tsakiris: interested in it and I was like, he was a little bit hesitant and I said, Hey, why don’t you do.

Why don’t you guest host skeptical as kind of a way to kind of,

[03:09:04] Al Borealis: so he did that before he launched his own. Right. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, because I know he had his famous blog that people are following. People were big on blogs and all this, but a little older this than now, while they still kind of are.

But blogs were a big thing for a while. Very hyped. He had some success with this and then he went full podcost and I I’m not to put words in his mouth, he spoke for himself, but he didn’t mention the word inspiration. And I do think you’ve influenced a lot of people out there when they started all of the people we’ve heard from long started after you.

I mean, most, most of the incidents started after you.

[03:09:46] Alex Tsakiris: So Gordon, Gordon, as soon as you, as soon as you kind of dip into stuff, see Gordon’s brilliant. And his writing is phenomenal. And I always, I always thought his blog was fantastic and I like his podcast too. But his writing is just really the thin red line.

I really was really a bummer when he, uh, when he ended that little newsletter that he used to do, but still a lot of great

[03:10:11] Al Borealis: stuff. Yeah. And the reason I wanted to play him now was that he is symbolic, I think off skeptical for, or because if in three, all you, you have realized the game is rigged. No, you want to explore all these crazy.

Thanks. You want to go behind the crazy line that you do very well in three, but in 4 0 8 becoming more existential. No, you know, it’s a conspiracy. No, you have to understand why is the game rigged? Why is there so you becoming more philosophical? I perceive you meeting me in this space. And Gordon I think is a good representative of that space.

And, um, let’s just, you guys just listen to your account of skeptical for, or existentialism and philosophy as I call it. You do it by asking for essential question. Bear with us folks. It’s one of the last clips, but it’s, it’s a long one, but it’s an excellent one. It really, it really narrows everything down for your journey up to this point here, when you read this four essential

[03:11:24] Alex Tsakiris: questions.

For questions that are driving me right now, in terms of what I’m thinking about. With future shows. And as I’ve said all along about skeptical, I’ve always viewed this as my personal journey shared with you, but that’s holding something back because it’s really a collective journey. Your input in your feedback really does make this an interactive process for me.

But I like to hold on to the idea that this really is by personal journey and I decide where it goes. So if you’ll allow me that little kind of egocentric kind of thing, I’m going to hold on to what I think are the four questions that are driving me forward in terms of skeptical at this point, question number one, are we biological robots in a meaningless universe, as you know, from listening to this show?

That really isn’t the question for me anymore. I mean, it really was my question initially, a few years back, but now the question for me is how can this still be propped up as a real question among what are supposed to be the intellectual elites of science? It’s really a strange, strange situation. And I think we have to continue to dive into that question head on, you know, head on, not just keep, proving them wrong, baby, proven them wrong, but saying how and why are they promoting such nonsense?

So that’s question number one. Ready for question number two. And it’s an absolute huge one. Is there a reality is our normal and I’m using air quotes, their psychological state to be this experience of fundamental Discontentment. And actually, I don’t even know how anyone can deny that. I mean, that’s just everywhere.

That’s our culture is. But the second part of the question is really the most significant and that is, is there a way to change that? And let’s mirror that to the first half of the first question. The question I didn’t ask, are we biological robots and meaningless university answers, obviously? No, we’re not.

So we have this condition we’re in this predicament and then is this predicament that our mind has created this continual dialogue of fundamental dissatisfaction with the way things are. And is it possible to change that state, that consciousness? Is it possible to raise it? Of course, this is what so many spiritual teachers throughout time have been telling us is possible that there is a way to transcend that state.

And I’m holding back from the, any kind of talk about extended consciousness at this point, right? I’m trying to confine it to our reality if you will. And all these terms are you can shoot holes in them as we all know, but these first two questions have to do with our reality. So again, question two. Is, is it possible to awaken out of that state of perpetual dissatisfaction, perpetual Discontentment with that internal dialogue that’s going on in our head?

I think that’s an important question. That’s questioning. So the next two questions that are driving the skeptical mission at this point have to do with this extended consciousness thing that I always talk about. Again, the words don’t exactly match up extended from what I mean, well, what are we to make of this reality and the other reality, and why would we have this kind of dualistic that’s extended this isn’t all those problems, but you get what I mean?

Right? So the third question is this transcending of time and space. So we understand at this point that there is this extended reality, there’s an NDE reality and OBE reality and ITI reality. Psychodelic DMT reality. If we stay with three letter acronyms, what is our relationship between this reality and that reality, and more importantly, if that other reality, if one of its key characteristics is that it transcends space and time, then what does it tell us about this reality that is confined to space and time?

And does it suggest as I think it might, that this reality is a lesser reality, if you will lesser in the sense that it’s further away from the ultimate reality. And again, don’t pick on my words here because there’s no words to talk about this stuff, but the basic concept is there seems to be a lot of evidence pointing us to the ultimate paradigm shift that we really are looking at things from the wrong end of the telescope.

We are in the unreal reality of time and space continuum, where things have been locked down to work a particular way. So we get this particular experience, but anyone who’s outside of that says, yeah, you guys are on this little tiny tip of this huge iceberg and that’s okay. You can get that experience, but don’t get too attached to it because it’s really such a small part of the overall thing.

So that is, I think the third question for me is what is the relationship between this space time reality that we occupy and we play this science game in and we play this skeptical dialogue questioning game in what is the relationship between the, that reality. And some of these extended realities that we will never know, but we do get bits and pieces fragments of information back from, so we do get information back from in the science.

We do get information back from ITI contact. We do get information back from OBE. So I’m asking, you know, what happens if we filter that information through one very narrow filter? And that is what is the relationship between our reality and the larger reality. That’d be kind of the third question. And the fourth question is very much related to that and the demonic part is gonna rattle a lot of folks I’m sure, but it is kind of interesting how this brings us back full circle in a way.

So if the opening question was not, are we biological robots in a meaningless universe, but how does such a ridiculous meme remain intellectually viable? I think Gordon is kind of trying to answer that question and saying, Hey man, that’s the program, that’s the demonic game, but I broadened it a little bit and say, the question for me is what is the role of deception in this process?

And I like, all of us am reluctant in some ways to go there because I’m not sure it’s the right question, but we keep bumping into that reality, that Gnostic reality, that I will create better than the creator gods, because the creator gods are really making a mess of things. So there’s so many layers to that because as appealing as that Gnostic sensibility is it doesn’t really give us any hope of transcending outside of this little street fight.

Certainly not in the way that we talk about, for example, in the he experiences and the potential that maybe exists for something that truly does transcend that back alley brawl between the creator gods and those of us who want to create better than them. So bringing that back to the question is what is the role of deception in all of this?

Why is there deception? Why is there evil as we’ve talked about many times on this show, and I think this question is I’m stating it here for me, it gets to the deeper question of the nature of this evil, because it’s one thing to say that there’s evil in the world and that’s an evildoer as our ex president for many years ago, George Bush.

And again, I’ve tried to bring it to more of a personal journey of who are we, why are we here? Why are we clearly being deceived at various points in this process? What is the purpose of that? How, who does that serve and why does that seem to be so much a part of the processes and tricksters and all the rest of that almost at every turn.

So there’s four questions for you. There are four questions for me, I should say, because as I said, those are the four questions that are on my mind and are for the most part, driving my thoughts and ideas in terms of who I’m talking to right now and who I want to talk to. And it isn’t always of course a perfect fit because sometimes somebody pops up and I wanna talk to them and they come on the show, but I do feel good sharing with you, these ideas and these directions.

And what’s on my mind along those lines,

[03:19:55] Al Borealis: you understand, uh, why I associate, you even mentioned Gordon there. So four essential questions representing skeptical four. Oh, because here, as we just heard you going food, philosophy, food existentialist, you really taking it to another level than before. And I’d say another example, I think, or that kind of, uh, like, like I associate Gordon to that kind of level you’re operating on now, but also your other friend.

Um,

yeah. And I

[03:20:34] Miguel Conner: think, hello? Yes. I agree. I’m a good fit for skeptic go four point. Oh, how’s it going?

[03:20:42] Al Borealis: Welcome to the show.

[03:20:43] Alex Tsakiris: Maybe got Magellan here.

[03:20:46] Miguel Conner: It’s a bot. I am a boss. You just

[03:20:49] Alex Tsakiris: came

[03:20:50] Miguel Conner: for the cake. It’s prerecorded. But since I’m a Precog I’ll guess every I know everything you’re going to say. I

[03:20:59] Alex Tsakiris: find it is so awesome to have you here.

This. Oh, somebody has to do this for, for you and for everybody really it’s been so great. It’s, you know, reconnecting with all these people and that’s, it’s super great. So yeah.

[03:21:15] Al Borealis: Yeah. We were just, at that point, know that Miguel corner from who just entered the chat and we were just talking about how skeptic has evolved to what we call 0.4.

Oh. And I was just saying, I think Gordon white kind of represents that level of operation, but I think you do too Miguel 0.4. Oh, is Alex’s going much more deeper into existential and philosophical issues than I used.

[03:21:43] Alex Tsakiris: Well, see, you’re talking to a guy who started from that standpoint, so we’re trying to work, trying to bring Miguel back down to our rural he’s out there, fighting the Arcons.

And we’re just trying to meet, we’re trying to meet in the middle somewhere between this grounded worldly pursuits of truth. And this existential, there is no truth kind of thing.

[03:22:15] Miguel Conner: Nothing is true. Everything’s possible. Everything’s permitted. Sorry, but, uh, yeah, that’s where the fun is. I mean, obviously I’ve always thought she was doing philosophical stuff.

I know. Um, same with Al I don’t see a, I really don’t see a separation. I think we’ve always been sort of wholistic in this view. Uh, I mean, I’ve done plenty of shows recently on, um, simulation theory brought some scientific people. So, uh, that’s the beauty of being able to podcast once a week or so.

[03:22:48] Al Borealis: Yeah.

But how did you discover skeptical Miguel?

[03:22:52] Miguel Conner: Uh, I started listening here and there and people started offering and then Alex invited me. I actually looked on the YouTubes and it was 2015 and let’s admit it at first. I thought skeptic goes an atheist show. I thought it was so, uh, it was only later if you, uh, after appearing on his show, if you read licks later, I was like, oh man, this dude is not a new atheist.

I like him even more. I liked him the first time I was on his show, but it was nice to see that it was far from it.

[03:23:23] Alex Tsakiris: Coffee. What was it? Coffee. Cigarettes. And

[03:23:25] Miguel Conner: gnosis yeah, that’s how it started. And then, I don’t know. I had a dream years ago and I wrote a short story, like when I was like 20 years old, still Catholic and I called it, it was a bite and it was this sort of space adventure.

And for some reason I decided to change the name. So, and, um, but that was a while ago. Yeah. In 2015, when I met you, it was already a film by. Well, I

[03:23:51] Alex Tsakiris: remember you way back in the day of coffee, cigarettes and gnosis and you had that scruffy

[03:23:56] Al Borealis: look, I reminded you stalk Miguel.

[03:23:59] Miguel Conner: Um, I started putting out podcasts probably 2006, but I mean was part of free thought media, which was, it really was a new, the new atheist organization.

But again, the enemy of my enemies, a friend, so they were very happy to have me on and I just started putting out shows here and there. But again, it wasn’t really until 2018 that I started going full time with it before it was just sort of, I was one of those periodic gold podcasters I showed here, find a guests there and so forth.

So it’s amazing how time flies I guys,

[03:24:37] Alex Tsakiris: I don’t know if it’s amazing or not.

[03:24:39] Miguel Conner: I don’t know if there’s a better world or not. I think the world wouldn’t matte in 2016, that’s when the trickster started. So, but it’s been, it’s been a lot of fun, even more fun.

[03:24:51] Al Borealis: Yeah. We have listening to a feature from the grim America guys and they were talking about, you know, It looked as if we were winning the battle prior to his XDN, uh, at least in terms of the skeptical crowd, then you ate tests, but then a much, certainly we realized, oh, this was just a battle.

It wasn’t a war. Now we realized we were in the

[03:25:15] Miguel Conner: war. Yeah. Yeah. Now the war has started, but I think we are winning. I mean, I think it’s obvious. I remember even talking to Gordon around that time, Gordon was saying materialism is dead and it is dead. Uh, I think, uh, the science group, it was, I mean, I had new atheist friends and around 2016, they were telling me, look, uh, my friends had Mythicist Milwaukee.

They were telling me, look, we’ve got to pivot because the reason rally isn’t getting people, the sweet talking gigs are not there. Yeah. Yeah. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve punched out, uh, Orthodox religions and the fundamentalists really well, but now we’re dying. So we need to pivot to, um, free speech issues and so forth.

And obviously guys, you know, shysters like Sam Harris and those guys have moved on to other pastures. The thing is 2016, suddenly everything became so politicized. And that’s the danger because what’s the saying in an authoritarian society, everything is political. And that is an ice that all three of us, if we’ve pretty much avoided the politics, we’ve kept our eye on the ball and stayed out of the distractions that are out there instead of just going with the herd.

[03:26:33] Alex Tsakiris: Well, I’d have to disagree with you, which I’m good at doing on the materialism is dead. And I think that anyone who thinks materialism is dead, just doesn’t understand the extent to which these guys have bullets in their gun that they haven’t even, you know, not only haven’t even fired, they haven’t even loaded them in the gun yet.

And I think what’s happening now with, uh, with the re-emergence of the recycling, the rebooting, as they say, in the movies of climate and, uh, of the global warming scam is, is evidence of that. And I think what they’ve done with the full frontal assault on science with the plan DEMEC is going to be cycled back around and in a subtle way is going to.

Reenergize the materialism debate by not even making it center stage, it’s going to be completely off the stage, but you can’t really get to any of these issues, any of these global issues, anything as global in it, you, you can’t get into the global plan DEMEC or global warming or any of that stuff without materialism materialism.

Isn’t hasn’t been defeated.

[03:27:46] Al Borealis: Yeah. But, but, but look, uh, I think you said this yourself, Alex, in an interview, I’m thinking it was you, you said, uh, yeah, we may have wondered a debate, you know, the, the battle, but they’re still controlling the institutions like the like Wikipedia. They’re still controlling that they, they want to debate anyone anymore, especially not after you’ve exposed

[03:28:09] Alex Tsakiris: them.

You know, you ref, but you referenced the interview that I did with Mario Beauregard 10 years ago. And it’s funny, Dr. Mario Beauregard from Montreal and where he said he was optimistic 10 years ago, this is right directly to this point that his speech, his talk on the intersection between spirituality consciousness and how that was a direct contradiction to materialism was gaining more traction.

It was gaining acceptance within academia, just interviewed the guy. What he’s now said is that he realizes what a rigged game was and what a false promise it was that openness and particularly, you know, as it relates to maybe some of the more conspiracy conspiratorial stuff that you and I have done, and Miguel has touched on over the years is he sees the connection with MK ultra and MK ultra was deeply embedded within McGill in, in Quebec.

And just in general, Quebec being, you know, kind of, uh, uh, Vichy Vichy supporting in world war two and direct deep connections to MK ultra programs. So, and T to imagine, and to romanticize about the idea that these guys have kind of given up on the materialism, that you’re a biologic roadblock, there is no divinity in you sort of bother trying to access it.

I just don’t think they’re anywhere close to that. I think they have a different, a million different ways of spinning it. And I think, uh, I think Satanism is a perfect way of really spinning. Materialism in a way, if you listen to what, like Mitch Horowitz, who I had on the show, and he’s a defender of Michael , who is the verified, you know, over and over again, pedophile.

And, and he, you know, that is, that is another new thoughts, spin of materialism. That gets him to kind of the same point, you know, which is, don’t worry about your divinity. It’s, it’s, it’s more complicated than that. And let me, let me tell and let me slip in the transhumanism with it in a way, so that doesn’t exactly sync up with exactly where McKell is at, but it’s why I’ve always loved and respected Miguel’s work is because he’s deeply.

Enmeshed in exploring these topics. So I just stole the mic there, ma Miguel. So please tell me what you think about that. Cause I’m always interested in what other people are thinking. So what’s going on with you in that? Yeah.

[03:30:35] Al Borealis: And particularly Miguel, tell us what you’re thinking about a queen on Michael Aquinnah thing.

Alex is pretty decided on that.

[03:30:42] Miguel Conner: Yeah, I think I would probably lean in towards where Alex is on it. I haven’t delved as deeply as he has, but, uh, the evidence seems pretty strong right there and it doesn’t, uh, not looking good, but, uh, things definitely change. I mean, but I think at the same time, you, the biological robot, I mean, we do live in an era where Marianne Williamson and I actually ran for president and had some traction.

We do live in a time when somebody like, I don’t know, a Jordan Peterson can, regardless of what you think and sell a millions of books on a sort of a ladder de union kind of attitude. So I think things are going in, but, but yeah, I think that the narrative or the, the hypno, the hypnotizing magic has changed.

I think it’s gone from biological robot to, you will own nothing and like it, you will eat bugs and live in a pod. So I think they’re sort of taking it with the big brother will take care of you instead of, uh, you’re really nothing. So just be Debachi’s

[03:31:51] Al Borealis: w we live in a time where some Harris is meditating and we living in a time where a bunch of Neil deGrasse Tyson is admitting to a paradigm, uh, you know, the simulation thing complete science week.

Well, wasn’t fiction, but complete, should I say, I mean, some of these in new fad paradigms that the desperate materialists are clinging to now are actually much more wacko than some traditional stuff. Uh, the number of dimensions and really how the regular old stream materialist paradigm is breaking apart, but they don’t realize themselves.

I think the philosophical depths of what they’re adopting and flirting with now, uh, because there never been a very good philosophers anyway, but when you really examine it, uh, we’ve managed. I mean, it’s a completely different, so, so there has been movement. I’m not talking about winning and losing here, but change.

[03:32:54] Alex Tsakiris: But here, here’s the point. And we’re kind of getting off of the whole thing that we’ve been doing for the last three hours on this awesome thing that you’ve done for me now, which is so super, but like maybe if people were to get a sense of what skeptical is about, I can’t let go of this, Miguel. I can’t let go of mature.

What’s who’s been on your show. Who, when I asked mature what’s if he’s a Satanist, he said, yeah. And then I said, here in writing, you’ve said, one of your inspirations is Michael . And he says, yeah. And then I said, yeah, but Michael Aquino has been outed as a pedophile at the Presidio and the army report.

And then we can go and read these declassified documents where he sued the army to not say he was a pedophile. And the army said, nah, there’s so much evidence. We have all this evidence. We have direct testimony of that. That shows that you lied and shows that you brought kids into your house and you and your wife was he arrested?

Well, he, he was not, he was not, but the point is he was, but if, is that the measure by which we’re going to, uh, you know, evaluate these things, the truth would be. Hidden in exactly the way that it’s hidden. I think it’s significant that the army was not willing to back down. And as a matter of fact, when, out of the way to say that, think of that.

This is Colonel Michael, highly, highly connected in many different ways with people that we’ve already talked about on this show. So what’s going on with the Satanism and materialism connection and materialism is just the, like you said to say, you will have nothing to do. You will be happy is exactly mirrors.

You’re a biologic robot in a meaningless universe. I mean, you are a biological robot. So the connection between that and Satanism, I say Satanism, when I use Satanism, I always have to add the caveat. I don’t know what Satanism means. I mean, I’m not, I don’t believe in the Christian dogma doctrine, which is the origins of that term.

But I understand that, you know, Mitch Horwitz is not standing on any kind of historically solid ground when he says that Michael is a tremendous influence. And then when I put the pedophile pedophilia stuff out there, he’s like, no, no, no, no, that isn’t true. That isn’t true. Now the evidence is overwhelming.

That it’s true. So I think the one thing that gets that I’ve bumped into with, uh, with, with human Gail lately is I think the truth telling part of this is on one hand, very slippery because we all know that there is no ultimate truth, but on the other hand, I think we need to clean up our community and we need to clean up the truth or community in a number of ways.

But part of it is, nah, you’re, you’re, you’re responsible for saying stuff that doesn’t pan out. And, um, I’m glad that I nail mature what’s to the cross.

[03:35:55] Miguel Conner: Yeah. I mean, I like to think of, I mean, I always liked to stay more as a historical person. I don’t want us to get too much into having our own sort of cancel culture.

I get annoyed when a cult is tried to cancel Allister Croley because again, I just saw, I like to read history. I like to see how these figures impacted the stream of esoterica in the mainstream. I mean, people were making arguments about Mohammad having a nine year old daughter or, uh, I mean, every of these figures was definitely mixed.

I mean, you know, I love Carl Yoon had affairs with his wives, said some really stupid things about, uh, other figures, Philip K Dick was pathological in a mess. Uh, so I try, I mean, I’m sorry, I don’t feel we should even ignore. These figures are part of a stream, their had their values. And the last thing I want to do is sort of a cut them out, like some sort of style and photograph.

I mean, again, I can’t judge Mitch because queen ode does nothing for me. I just see him as another historical figure. I’m not a fan of the church of Satan because I think, uh, one thing the biggest danger of the mall is the nihilism. I think that’s what new atheism and Satanism, and even, you know, you’d be careful Zen, Buddhism and others.

They do bring a form of nihilism. And that’s where the danger is because not only are we biological robots, but then suddenly if we’re biological robots that nothing matters, then we can really be in moral or be manipulated to do in moral things to others. And, uh, sort of live this, uh, de botched this Dibaj life would nothing matters.

We can be that’s what the mark he’s decide said. He was an atheist. And it said, the only thing that matters in life is pleasure. And we can just do anything we want to each other. And it won’t matter to me. That’s the biggest danger right there.

[03:37:59] Alex Tsakiris: Well, I’m with you on that. And this is actually an interesting discussion for you during the show L cause this is where I’m at right now.

I’m with you philosophically I’m with you in terms of the esoteric and the mystical understanding, which is impossible to always needs to have all doors open, but we also have to acknowledge deception. And I think we have to call out deception when we see it. And this, this has been particularly brought into focus by the last two years, shut up and wear the mask.

Well, what’s the science to support that idea, take the jab. What’s the science in terms of, and so when we, when we tell a total affront on science and we extend that to a total assault on truth and on history, I think we have to hold the ground there. So I’m all for all the cool, thanks, Mitch. Horwitz is fascinating guy.

He’s incredibly articulate and well-spoken, and he’s written some wonderful books, but he’s not truthful about a queen. Oh, he’s not processing it. He’s not processing it in a way that obviously is conforms to the historical facts. And when he doesn’t, when somebody doesn’t do that, then you have to question what is behind that?

Why are they, you know, we can all fumble and not be informed. And then we get informed and we get smarter and we say, oh gosh, I made such a mistake. Why is he not course correcting? And why do we see that again? And again, that’s all what the today’s news is all about. Right? Oh, let’s move on to the next thing.

We don’t have to admit any mistakes. We’ve made that to me is a sure sign of. The, the op that is the op so yeah, I mean, no, we have to call these people on truth, telling they do have to find the truth and they do have to tell the truth or we should be suspicious of their motives. What do you think, Miguel?

[03:39:58] Miguel Conner: Yeah, I have faith in Mitch. He’s a, he’s a, he’s a good guy. And he’s a good friend. I mean, I remember there was a time, I think it was 2015 60. Yeah. That time when the cancel culture and the dividing conquer propaganda was being ramped up and people were going after and ran really big time. Uh, they were just kind of trumping, not trumping up.

They were bringing historical facts, but without context, you know, on some clickable articles on the internet. And I remember Mitch writing of, even though Mitch is like very left leaning, very, I mean, he openly admits he loves Carl Marx, but he wrote this very sober, wonderful long article about an ran.

And he said, these are her good parts, which I admire these other parts. I do not admire, but let’s look at the, the whole package and let’s see, and ran for it is she’s not the existential threat to civilization that left, this would like to see, but she’s also not the savior that a lot of libertarians and so forth would like to end.

He did the same with, uh, what’s his name? James Randy was the, um, yeah, the, the big time atheist when he passed away, except he got, he got a rake over the coals by the atheist community and he stood up for his conviction and he said, no, this is what I did. This is the good parts, the bad parts, the questionable parts and everything else.

So I think, um, I’m sure Mitch will come around. And of course he talks a lot about many of his heroes that have that he’s had. So I think, uh, we’ll just see where this goes, but, uh, yeah, I agree that

[03:41:39] Alex Tsakiris: it’s not, it’s not going anywhere. All this information has been out for years and the guy is a Satanist, so, you know, whatever that means to be publicly a Satanist and to publicly defend a queen.

Oh, again, this is where we differ a little bit. Awesome. I still love you. I still love all your work, but I think we do. I think the litmus test thing as uncomfortable as people are with that idea. Yeah. I think there are litmus tests out there. I mean, if you think, if you don’t understand that nine 11 was an inside job, I mean, that’s a litmus test.

Your worldview is somewhat limited or you’re trying to deceive in the case of Mitch Horwitz, he knows better about acquaint. Oh, he just wants to mislead people that, that this well-known Satanist Mike Lithuania was not who he said he was. And that’s the only

[03:42:30] Miguel Conner: part that gets you. Right. I think it’s the pedophilia parts.

That’s the

[03:42:35] Alex Tsakiris: list. It’s the Satanism part because the do without wilt, as you correctly pointed out, I think that is the abomination on spirit, on divinity, on light on the light. That, that is really what matters is the dis the whatever Satanism is again, and it can only be defined by a totally corrupt Christian understanding of it.

So it’s corrupt. It is a meaningless term from the beginning, but the only way to understand it as it understand it as deception. As darkness as whatever those other, you know, we all know the tools in the playbook, you know, do what they’ll wilt, all those things, but it’s darkness it’s to bring you away from the light.

And that’s, to me, that’s what Michael Aquino represents. His whole life represents that. And it’s, he’s a sad, pathetic figure. I mean, he’s not like a scary guy. He’s just he’s passed, but his whole history is pathetic and his whole family is, but that, I mean, it’s, it’s just very, very sad, sad kind of thing.

But we have to call darkness when we see darkness and we have to call light and we can be wrong sometimes, but I think we have to make those distinctions. Those are the most important distinctions. There is light. There is darkness.

[03:43:50] Al Borealis: Yeah. Look, first off, I haven’t looked into the queen or guy, so all I have to go by is what you said.

Uh, I liked your guest. What’s his name? Mitch? Yes. Mitch Horowitz. Is that the name? Correct? Yeah, so, and he, he is, so, yeah, I agree. I got a very good impression of him. He seemed very nuanced and nuances is what we need here. Like Miguel points out, but he sounded like he was sincerely disagreeing video. And I think you say he was lying, but that’s remember when you say that you’re actually implying that someone is saying the opposite of what they know or what they really believe.

And, and, and of course that happens. But when you’re saying we have to call out our own, I agree with you, but not in the way you seem to mean now because you seem to be on some kind of moral crusade. It’s impossible to get everyone on board on that. Anyway, I believe we have two independent media. I have to call out themselves and each other for these reasons.

Number one, we cannot leave it to the debunkers and the mainstream, and you see how they’re treating Rogan and everything. They have agenda that their entire starting point is a lie and manipulation. But if we do it with ourself, people re recognize it’s a truth purification process. It’s we, we are the independent media is trying to get to the bottom of whatever we are talking about.

And a part of that must be to afford to disagree and to call each other out and not withstanding also bashing or BS or ops, like for example, flat earth, because otherwise the models they are being presented, the mainstream public overtone window, which is completely bullshit going nowhere, materialism or nothing, and love it.

And then as a scary kind of come to us, come to the public over to a window, because look at what’s going on over there. And then they put up the boogie man. So that’s how they started with Alex Jones, right? To who is easy. You can take anything out to context. So Meranti has, and every bond would run to the mainstream.

Uh, but if you sit down with Alex Jones, you first, you sedate him. Then you ask him to bring all your sources. Then you say, we have five hours, Alex. No explain why frogs are gay. Then he wants to come off like a mad man, but I’m saying, let us do it and not leave it to them because then people will see it’s a, it’s, it’s an that’s part of the success of skeptical.

Like we talked about in the beginning that unlike all the, all the people who went to the battle of gladiators, oh, I’m fighting for my tribe. You’re going in there with a truth agenda. And that’s, that was recognized by money. And that also was scared away money, including the skeptics, because they’re not used to talking with someone who was actually sincere.

Yeah. Let’s look at the data. Okay. Let’s see what this means. You understand what I mean? I

[03:46:54] Alex Tsakiris: disagree. I

[03:46:54] Al Borealis: disagree. Yeah. But did you understand it? My points

[03:46:57] Alex Tsakiris: of course, I understand it, but, so

[03:47:00] Al Borealis: what did you disagree with? Let’s hear.

[03:47:03] Alex Tsakiris: The subtlety that we’re talking about right now is what’s most important to me right now, because I don’t think this is an impossible, this is kind of discernment that you’re looking for is impossible to achieve.

I think that the plan DEMEC has forced us to sort through this stuff on a, on a, just on a scale of 10, from what we used to be. So we’ll go back to Michael and I can send you both. If you want the, the excellent website where the guy has broken down, all the, uh, you know, Michael equina was personally identified him and his wife were identified by 60 witnesses, children in the Presidio childcare center in San Francisco, the evidence was so strong that they were able to get a search warrant for his house.

When they got it into his house, they found exactly what the kids said was all painted black and red, an altar out of bones, and they had all, they found pornographic films and videos. And you asked a great question. How was he ever convicted? No, he wasn’t. Why wasn’t he convicted? Maybe because he was a Colonel in the army with connections of how this pedophilia and Satanism had infiltrated in so many ways.

It is not believable to me that Mitch Horowitz, as intelligent as he is, is not aware of this evidence. That is not that I’m willing to accept that maybe that’s true. But I would say that the burden of proof would be strongly on anyone who maint is intelligent as him has as well read as him who doesn’t have that information.

So that’s where I kind of draw the line with both you and Miguel, where you go, oh, you know, he’s a good guy. He sounded

[03:48:57] Al Borealis: like he was, yeah. The old skeptical would have him back on as first, send him the evidence after the first show. And then having that, going to confront him

[03:49:06] Alex Tsakiris: gladly. I’ve offered to have him back out.

He would never, never come back on all these people. They never come back on. Of course not. Are you.

[03:49:15] Miguel Conner: No, I read your first book. I know you had people come back on after a disagreement. I’d have to read it. Why science is wrong about everything. There’s a few that you do mention in your first book. I printed out the emails, you know, we had a disagreement let’s con let’s do this again.

So there’s a couple of people who did come back and skeptical.

[03:49:38] Alex Tsakiris: Yeah, well, you know, that was back in the day when it was about like research papers in parapsychology, in a narrow thing, the culture issues and the deeper esoteric issues and really the spiritual issues and these issues of evil and darkness versus light.

Uh, my experience is no, those people do not. Mitch Horowitz is welcome at any time to come on and talk about the specifics of the Colonel Michael acquaint case. Colonel is really the most important figure, definitely deep connections to MK ultra deep connections, to all sorts of mind control experiments.

That should really be the focus, not his Satanism Satanism and his pedophilia it’s that this was kind of, and still is. We must assume a significant part of. Whatever it takes kind of military mentality, or we don’t even know what, how, how far that reaches. But yeah, I can

[03:50:41] Al Borealis: believe that because did you see the recent CIA revelations that a bunch of people in CIA when pedophiles and criminals and they weren’t even charged?

The first thing that happened was that they lost their jobs. I think one of them lost their jobs where they did, they did go to court with one SEAA employers, but that was because he had mishandled sensitive, classified information. That’s why they went after him. So,

[03:51:10] Alex Tsakiris: but Al we have to stop saying, this is my opinion.

And I’m calling Miguel out here too on this. Nice. He came out to do a nice wish me, well kind of thing. Do you know what? No, he just cause he’s a nice guy. And just because he wrote a nice piece on and ran, does it mean that he’s telling the truth here? And he has to tell the truth all the time, 100% of the time, that is our obligation.

And if we’re not telling the truth, 100% of the time, then we must have a different agenda. The agenda is to intentionally deceive or mislead. There’s this kind of.

[03:51:51] Al Borealis: Yeah. I mean, tell the truth. I mean, you can tell the untrue without intention, but uh, I’ll give the comment to Miguel.

[03:52:00] Miguel Conner: Uh, yeah. I’m I don’t know what to say.

I just came to say happy anniversary, man.

Yeah, we get into a Michael at Aquino. Uh, I don’t know what else to say. I mean, uh, okay. What’s the, okay. Why don’t again? I feel one thing that has to be said is we also have to talk about definitions. Well, it is Satanism. What are we looking for? How deep it is because Alex, you get, you’re talking. You’re saying the important thing is the MK ultra.

But to me, the important thing is the pedophilia and that’s what needs to be brought into, or we need to define these terms. What are you looking for? Because the temple of set, I know people in it, they’re good people, it’s a Neoplatonic organization. It doesn’t even focus on Satanism. And again, we go round and round.

What is Satanism? There’s different strains of Satanism, uh, throughout history. There’ve been different strains of Satanism from the, I love the prince of darkness. I want to kill to the more, uh, Luciferian. And of course the church of Satan today is simply a humanistic. Uh, well, I don’t, I don’t personally, I don’t like their agenda.

I think they do more damage than good, but, uh, they do claim to be a humanist agenda that simply sees Satan as the symbol of rebellion against the establishment.

[03:53:21] Alex Tsakiris: I get all that. It gets down to a matter of, if you accept the idea that there are there, that there is a darkness, there is a dark force. There is a dark energy in some people for various reasons are drawn to that.

Do you accept that idea or do you not accept the idea of a light and a dark

[03:53:42] Miguel Conner: we’ve had conversations? I mean, all of us cast a shadow, all of us have the potential darkness within us that could go off at any.

[03:53:50] Alex Tsakiris: Right. So when we’re drawn to the dark, that’s not good to keep things really simple. And when we see people who have a life that is basically immeshed in and has fallen victim to the darkness over and over again, these are not people we want to prop up and say that that’s the right thing.

We feel sorry for them. Like you feel sorry for Mike. Look, we know he’s pathetic person. Yeah. But Alex,

[03:54:16] Miguel Conner: I mean, here’s an example. For example, you know, I loved when I was younger individuals like Jim Morrison or Frank Zappa, I thought they were great. They inspired me. So some of their music and poetry saved my life made.

And I guess you can make an argument, maybe took me down drugs, but whatever it is very impactful people in my life and other people. So now I read, you know, of course you get older, you find out a lot, mother, these mother fuckers were part of a military MK ultra. There were part of the machine to hypnotize humanity, but you know what?

I still liked their music. I still liked their message. I still have a place in my heart for them. Even if I’m like you, sons of bitches were part of the, you were part of the darkness. So it’s, it’s pretty complicated that way. I mean, I’m sure you’ve got it yourself.

[03:55:09] Alex Tsakiris: Well, I do in that way, but Miguel had really isn’t that complicated because you’re telling the truth.

You’re not saying that I’m such a fan of Jim Morrison that I can’t accept that his father had these deep military intelligence connections. You’re telling the truth. That’s all I that’s all I want is.

[03:55:29] Al Borealis: But like I said earlier today, truth isn’t high in stock despite the party speechless. Um, but it is the driving force of your show and oh, a little sideshow here illustrates skeptical for, oh, because you’re going full esoteric.

That’s my point for skeptical four or the direction you had to anyway, which is why I kind of liked this as the Asian with Miguel and Gordon. I look, I have one more clip to play.

[03:55:59] Alex Tsakiris: That’d be, we have to let Miguel go, because if you want to talk about being sandbagged and ambushed, this is, this is an example.

I invite somebody on for one reason and then totally turn it around.

[03:56:12] Al Borealis: Yeah. But that wasn’t planned. I mean, neither were divorced. I

[03:56:15] Alex Tsakiris: know. I’m just, I’m just kidding. Cause I, I, I so love and respect Miguel and I grilled him pretty hard there on, on mature wits, but I won’t stop. Um, I stand by whatever, all the

[03:56:26] Al Borealis: things I said, but he doesn’t, I have to go.

He can, he can stay for a while. We just have one more

[03:56:30] Alex Tsakiris: clip. Well, we should, we should give him the opportunity to go. He’s been, he’s been very generous with his time.

[03:56:36] Miguel Conner: Oh, I’m good. I wanted to listen to this clip. It’s all good. It’s all good. I mean, as Jim Morrison said, no one here gets out alive, so we might as well enjoy each other’s company.

Cause it ain’t going to last,

[03:56:48] Alex Tsakiris: you know, and the other interesting thing about Jim Morrison, what does it mean to be the. Of that. How much was it really within his? No, it’s very complicated at the same thing is true with a queen on his background and his parents horrible, horrific, horrific. So he is a victim as well

[03:57:07] Miguel Conner: as the, yeah, I mean, these, these, again, monsters are created, nobody wakes up one day saying I want to cause on toll damage to humanity and Rob people of their dignity and destroy civilizations.

These things are, I mean, you’ve done plenty of shows on that, Alex, you know, the satanic Colts, I mean the lead have to blackmail rape abuse each other to keep each other trained and honest, you know, honor amongst thieves. So yeah, you have to feel compassion for individuals like Jim Morrison and other of the tools of the, this wickedness in high places, I

[03:57:44] Al Borealis: worked in psychiatry and one of the first things I learned when working with abused children was that three or four abusers are abused, were abused.

So yeah, it’s maybe what a Christian is called the heritage sin. Is that the English word for it? That the bad vibes going generation by

[03:58:05] Miguel Conner: generation? Yeah, yeah.

[03:58:08] Al Borealis: Yeah. We directly translated for Norwegian heritage sin, but before we play the last clip and comment upon that, it’s kind of connected actually. Uh, but we were talking about calling all this out.

You didn’t comment upon that, Alex, you just wanted us to agree that this chap is a Satanist, but don’t you agree really that we need to keep each other honest in independent media and that we need to create a climate where there’s it’s okay. Because remember the cancel culture and the politization the bullshit left right.

Narrative when it’s all about bottom top, remember all of that stuff. And also the, uh, oh, I’m too sensitive to hear what you’re saying. Oh, that is artificially created for. Those who set the agenda. If you want to look at what it, what happens when nobody tries to intervene, then look at internet from its inception until 2015.

It was like I said before, it was an anarchic state and it worked and everything we know came from that. Right. And so free speech freedom also means that it’s okay to disagree. So, so what do you, what do you guys think about that? That we should clean up our own area on our premises?

[03:59:28] Alex Tsakiris: Well, I just think we just have to be committed to the truth and telling the truth and not worrying about, you know, oh, he’s such a good guy.

I’m friends with him, you know, there’s a bunch of people that I’ve had over the time and the relationships that they don’t always work out because I’m pretty vocal about saying this is the truth. I’ve discovered if this upsets you. Or if this means we can’t be friends anymore, I’m sorry, but I have to pursue the truth.

I can’t pull up because we’re friends.

[04:00:06] Al Borealis: Yeah. But, but that goes together with making it okay. To disagree. I think we need to teach people that that’s okay too, because when people are not identified with illusions, like their emotions or their thoughts, I

[04:00:22] Alex Tsakiris: just think a lot of this, a lot of this shit about cancel culture is, is bull is obviously bullshit.

It isn’t that hard. The discernment. Way, it’s not that hard. It’s it’s it’s you get that? You got to let other people say stuff and you also get, if people say really, really stupid stuff, you don’t, you’re not obligated to sit there and be subjected to it, you know? So I think we have a real good sense, a much better sense of where that line is drawn than what we pretend when we hear about, oh, you know, cause the cancel culture is just that they’re just banning people.

They’re just censoring people completely. So we get it. Let, let my Gail in there.

[04:01:02] Al Borealis: Yeah. But he muted

[04:01:04] Alex Tsakiris: him. So,

[04:01:04] Miguel Conner: um, you know, and muted now. Uh, well, I mean the cancel culture, I think is also about thought control a herd mentality, dividing conquer. It’s a totally, it’s a lot more complicated than that. I don’t know about yeah.

Policing each other. I think the truth is there. I mean, all three of us have our podcasts and these are our homes. This is our voice. This is where we get to say what we want to say and explore things that we want to explore. And our views are always going to be changing as Marcus or alias said, uh, two things in life to live by let reason guide you and change your mind.

So we are going to evolve in these things. I mean, but there are many prodigal sons out there look at bringing in Jordan Peterson. He bought into everything. He made his choice and he got, you know, twice evacs locked downs. He went with everything and he went as far as he could with it and finally said, okay, this is it.

I was lost in the wilderness. Now I’m done. And I’m putting my foot on the sand. So sometimes there are, um, there are going to be prodigal sons out there just like I’ve been a prodigal son before. Um, but as far as policing each other, I don’t know. Um, I don’t know. I mean, again, we have to, we really need to get down with definitions of what things are and everything else.

I know Alex obviously has been exploring it with the idea of evil and that’s a topic that’s complicated in itself that could take years to untangle. Um, so yeah, that’s really a, that’s all I got on this topic really.

[04:02:45] Al Borealis: Okay. Let’s move on then. And I’ll play a nuclear. This is a mesh of three different statements of call it.

Clip on giving voice, discovering all the shows, experimenting with joint

[04:02:57] Alex Tsakiris: projects. Which is the other impetus of the show that really remained sound and true to this day is that there’s a lot of really important thinkers out there who don’t get air time. I think that’s really, probably less true now than when I started, because there’s been a growth on the internet of shows like mine or shows in this general topic area that now cover these topics more thoroughly, which is fantastic.

I think that’s great. I’d love to be obsolete at some point. We’re going to, one of the things that’s interesting about the medium of podcasting is that these things live forever in time. And it’s one of the real fun things for me is getting emails from folks who say, Hey, I just discovered the show on episode 140, and I’ve decided to go back and listen from the beginning.

And I think, wow, that’s so great. I mean, that’s, I’ve done that so many times in exploring something and getting interested in it and then finding that there’s this library that I can go back and listen to project was supposed to be a much grander project where I would bring you some of the ideas from some of the podcasts that I most admire.

And I think are really changing our understanding of truth and reality. I have some in various stages of development, so people really, really like it. I’ll try and push forward with that. But I basically abandoned that project because it just didn’t have any legs to it.

[04:04:27] Al Borealis: So here, first you talk about giving voice, but now there’s so many others. I wouldn’t mind getting obsolete. Well, that statement could just be made before the sensor of time, because now we’re back to scratch. No people are being canceled left, and right. So now we really need a few shows that still doesn’t self sensor like that.

And then you talk about discovering all the shows, the back catalog. Of course, I recognized that from when I discovered I’m skeptical and I suspect you did the same discovered my show, Alex, and maybe Miguel did the same. And then you talk about projects. And that’s interesting because that’s a callback to what we talked about earlier, Alex, that you’ve been trying, you’ve been doing experiments, you’ve experimented with the format you’ve moved on in terms of subjects, you turn it into books and you even, I’ve tried to move and experiment with all the mediums.

And I guess that’s the face you’re not completely done with it yet. So,

[04:05:31] Alex Tsakiris: and what’s funny. Yeah, it’s funny. Cause we’re talking to a guy right here,

[04:05:35] Al Borealis: Miguel Conex, who was involved in that. I

[04:05:37] Alex Tsakiris: know exactly. Cause I had this idea to do, to really bring just these incredibly gifted and deeply thinking. People like Miguel, who I hope you can see.

One of the things I love is that I don’t exactly sync up with Miguel on everything, but I fundamentally sync up with Miguel on the most important heartfelt. The spirit felt kind of things. And I was so moved to that, that, you know, we tried to do this thing, truth bump, and I hired a guy supposed to be a really good guy, go out and film Miguel back when he lived in Chicago.

And I heard another guy in Russia who was very talented and did some graphics and stuff like that. And I ate my lunch. I made it realized just how hard it was to put something like that together that you know, and, and the one we did, the one that I did and I published with Miguel on YouTube, it was, I thought it was really good.

And I thought it showed a L it’s just Miguel. But yeah, I think what did you think of that, of that video?

[04:06:45] Miguel Conner: I think it went, I think it came out really well. I enjoyed it, the graph, the

[04:06:52] Alex Tsakiris: mute, but I don’t know that it really, I don’t know that it accomplished. What we wanted to accomplish is, is do you think it was a springboard for people to get into a on bite or do you think we need those kinds of things are now it’s just, there’s so much.

I just think people have to find it organic.

[04:07:11] Miguel Conner: Yeah, I agree. I mean, the advantage is that we can experiment all we want, why this is the golden age of podcasting. Podcasting is talk about moving culture and giving people choices and everything. So we can play along. We can fail, we can tweak, but the it’s beyond the algorithm.

This is truly a, a stream of the collective unconscious. I was, I mean, in our lifetimes, we really thought Google was God, the closest or the closest thing to the demiurge. The Supreme being of our culture last year is the first year where Google is no longer. The number one site it’s actually Tik TOK video is killing the search engine car.

I mean, imagine that people probably never thought they would live in this world because Google is, it’s like, again, it’s God, it’s ubiquitous. It’s what we use every day. And now it’s fallen and people are, are an experts are saying, it’s not just, you know, video and tick talk and there, but it’s podcasting.

That’s where people are going more than Wikipedia, more than other places. And people can discern, they can listen to this podcast and not podcasts. And people email me. I wanted to learn about this subject and that subject. So it’s a good time. And so. Uh, with truth bomb. Again, we can experiment, we can go to video, we can do more YouTube.

We can try this, that it’s all our voice will continue. And you’ve got to, you’ve got to take those risks here and there and learn from them. That’s for sure.

[04:08:48] Al Borealis: Yeah, but Miguel, you know why this is the golden edge report, cost rights. And on the answer to that is also the same answer to what will happen.

Next. The reason it obviously is that it’s an lost area, not being controlled and censored, which is why

[04:09:06] Miguel Conner: this is an RSS feed. It’s out there. You stream it. Everybody gets it. No, no gatekeepers. No for podcasting.

[04:09:15] Alex Tsakiris: Yeah. Haven’t you know, it’s

[04:09:18] Al Borealis: still free, but how would you noticed, uh, the campaign that’s ramping up?

Not just against Rogan, eh, mainstream is calling. Yes. And the reason is that YouTube used to be like, oh, remember guys, I started at YouTube and YouTube was a clone Dyke back in the day,

[04:09:36] Miguel Conner: it was the wild west.

[04:09:39] Al Borealis: It was, and it was even better than podcasting because we were been paid instead of paying, no, they’re going to crack down on podcasts.

If they’re going to succeed with the great recession, whatever you want to call it, they can’t have this little, this huge space out there. That’s not controlled by algorithm and censorship and all that stuff. So it’s calming guys. It’s calming, but we better enjoy it while we can, because yes, it’s still a lost free space.

[04:10:07] Miguel Conner: Well, that’s why it’s better to adapt. I mean, go to places like rock fin, Odyssey. I mean, and like you said, they have to take down. Yeah. They have to take Rogan down first. That’s it right now. He’s got Teflon.

[04:10:26] Alex Tsakiris: I don’t, who knows censorship. This is

[04:10:30] Miguel Conner: important.

[04:10:32] Al Borealis: Yes. And he read quiet. Well, but, um, go ahead. No, no, you wouldn’t say something.

[04:10:38] Alex Tsakiris: No. Oh. I mean, we’ll, we’ll see, we’ll see. It’s a constantly evolving thing. I think what, what the guys are w with, uh, podcasting 2.0 are trying to do is tremendous and it’s, uh, an attempt to kind of circle.

What we know is coming. So yeah, it’s a very tech conversation if you want to get into

[04:10:57] Miguel Conner: it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s still the same theme of controlling the narrative and all that, and it’s gotten away from the lead or the establishment. So that’s why, and they’re trying, but right now there’s they don’t, uh, they don’t have a good plan because again, it’s an RSS feed and it goes through apple.

It goes through all these other places. Yes. I know apple is more centralized, but apple has been very good of just letting all this information fly out. If there’s any place I’ve gotten strikes before. It’s all on YouTube, only on YouTube. If I had my videos taken down and, uh, even, well, YouTube is turning into a disaster

[04:11:38] Al Borealis: yeah.

After Google Chromecast it. And of course it’s a regular game because those who own the big platforms is to see them on the, those who advertise on those platforms and all the same who owns the mainstream media. So it’s the same owners. And of course they don’t, they panicked when they realized that everyone is turning away from one part of their industry and Emily television and newspapers onto YouTube, especially YouTube.

So they as YouTube because otherwise they would be paying us for ruining their mainstream media. They are paying it’s their products, their advertisement products, and then paying us with advertisement on their platform. So it was a suicidal model for them in their kind of paradigm where they want total control.

Right. So, yeah, we’ve been flushed out and yeah, podcasts is the last bastion, precisely as Miguel says, it’s much harder to control, but I’m sure they’re going to find out. Let them

[04:12:47] Alex Tsakiris: try.

[04:12:51] Miguel Conner: What if, like what blogging was 10, 15 years ago, everybody had a blog. There was a lot of controversial blogs. People went to the common sections to fight, uh, and all that. And then it sort of as has mutated more, instead of video has mutated more into the podcasting format and that’s really exploded, uh, because of the it’s hard to control and people really are thirsty for finding information and trying to understand what’s going out there or finding voices out there they can relate to.

I mean, podcasting is so extensive from cooking to short story interpretations. I mean, everything you want, you really have it at a fingertip, but with a very human expression or feel, these are real people who are behind the microphone, who you can connect in a way you couldn’t with other aspects of the internet.

[04:13:46] Al Borealis: Okay. That that’s one of the things you’re Rogan. And Alex has in common that everybody who tunes into that, those podcasts immediately recognize that this is a guy on a truth quest. It’s a sincere fellow who is not driven by the ego or not truth quest. And that’s the, uh, key to success. I, I guess, Alex, the difference between you is that Royal again, is content with staying down at the foot of the mountain.

This is a callback to a metaphor we used earlier. So you forgiven, if you don’t get this Miguel, but Rogan is, is, is running around the mountain while you are insisting on going to the mountain top.

[04:14:31] Alex Tsakiris: Yeah, I’m very reluctant to comment, you know, because Joe Rogan is in such a different class than the tiny little shows that we do.

And it’s just a whole different dynamic. And I think the only

[04:14:43] Al Borealis: difference is the number of people tuning in.

[04:14:45] Alex Tsakiris: What do you mean? Well, I don’t know. I just think that’s, uh, everyone wants to, you know, I don’t know. We don’t even know where that whole thing is going to go and I don’t know if he’s good or good or bad or anything you got to say.

Great, great. What he’s accomplished is clearly been overall good.

[04:15:04] Miguel Conner: Yeah. I don’t listen to it much. I’ll be honest. I mean, I’m just like any Joe, I look at the guests first. I go, okay. The guests, if I’m interested, I’m interested. That’s the beauty of it. Same with any, any other podcast or what’s the guests.

What I think their chemistry will be like, and then make my decision. So, but he does. It’s amazing. Cause he does put out a lot of content. He’s always done, you know, three to four podcasts a week, three hours. I don’t know how you, I mean, that takes quite a bit of constitution. Plus the research you have to do on the side.

Each one of us probably spends quite a bit on, uh, hours on one single guest, one single week and that’s a lot of work and he’s just, you know, consistent long. And uh, again, he just takes, he asks questions, but he shows his humanities as well. I did this and I, it reminds me of this and so forth. Hmm.

[04:16:01] Al Borealis: He can be corrected on air without, uh, letting his ego free goats.

Like the guest said, he’s a big boy. So, uh, yeah, there are parallels there. I’ll have one more question. Topical question, and then we’ll wind down. Uh, it has to do with you folks and it’s weird, Alex. I’m not sure if you Miguel, uh, have you COVID UFO’s

[04:16:27] Miguel Conner: yes, definitely. I have covered UFOs probably once one out of every 30 shows or 20

[04:16:33] Al Borealis: shows in connection with narcissism, right?

Yeah.

[04:16:37] Miguel Conner: I mean, cause Gnosticism is like to some have said the original star or UFO code.

[04:16:43] Al Borealis: Yeah, well, me and Alex, like you, you’re not a youth for show, but we’ve touched it, but maybe I’m wrong, Alex, but it’s funny because like I said, I think you’re heading in the esoteric direction. That’s always where people under that’s the talk of the moment.

And if you like, and you would expect them with the consciousness approach that I would have on, let’s say Graham Hancock for that take on the UFO approach. Right. But no, instead my main focus has been on the human space programs. The classified space programs are human made flying sources. If you’re like an Alex, we would expect the same that you two would have that perspective, but you’ve had, you’ve had to eat tea alien kind of perspective, which is kind of weird because both of us are so rooted in the, I mean, it goes without saying that that would be the first model to explore, right?

The paradigm dimension of consciousness thing, comment to that.

[04:17:46] Alex Tsakiris: Oh man. I mean, we could do two hours on, on that. I, I think that, uh, here, here’s my take and I have an interview coming up with, uh, just a fantastic person. His name is, uh, Robert Hastings, if you’ve heard of him, but he’s the UFO and nukes guy he’s been doing the work for 40 years.

And then he just came out a couple of years ago and acknowledged that he was an abductee and that he’s had contact for his whole life and his mother, even as a spouse, he suspects has contact from the stories he told he was reluctant to come out and say that because of. The reaction he would get from the nuts and bolts part of the UFO community, which you’re kind of alluding to there.

But there’s an interesting juxtaposition there because his UFO in nukes information, his research is some of the most compelling research for the reality of the nuts and bolts reality of craft that fly over nuclear basis and disarm missiles. And that we don’t know how they’re doing it, but we have multiple observers, both above ground and below ground.

And they disable all the missiles, which is obviously sending some kind of message about what they think about our technology and the what we’re so proud of. And then lo and behold, the iron curtain comes down. The Sylvia it’s come down and we find in their secret UFO files that they had the same experience.

Only there, the UFO’s turned on the missiles Ukraine, and they said, they are, what are you going to do in 10 minutes, count down. You’re going to destroy the earth. And then the UFO’s shut off the missiles. So anyone who wants to kind of pull the UFO thing into the consciousness realm, which I’m you have to, because there’s a consciousness element to it.

There’s telepathy there there’s, pre-cognition there, there’s all these other things there. You have to start by saying whatever this reality is, whatever this consensus reality is, they’re definitely a part of.

[04:19:49] Miguel Conner: Could we space Nazis,

[04:19:54] Alex Tsakiris: Nordics.

[04:19:58] Al Borealis: Yeah. That space nausea to join forces with Arco

[04:20:01] Miguel Conner: and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Watch out. Yeah. The UFO thing is the elaborate. It’s such elaborate. It’s its own labyrinth itself. It’s like, woo.

[04:20:12] Al Borealis: Yes, indeed. I hate that.

[04:20:14] Alex Tsakiris: I hate that. It’s like everything is a labyrinth. We’re just, but we can nudge closer to the truth.

That’s that’s my final. That’s my final shot. My final parting shot is yes.

[04:20:28] Miguel Conner: Yeah. I don’t think so. I mean, I think on a cursory look, anybody, and again, we’re talking about honesty and truth. Alex, you can tell. An hour or two, and at the very least you’ll come by and say, you know what? The official narrative of nine 11 is bullshit.

Same with Kennedy, just two hours. Okay. Let’s, I’ll give you five hours, that’s it. And it’s so obvious now. With the nuts and bolts of nine 11, who’s behind it and all that that might take, but it doesn’t it know with you a foes, there’s like a million ways we could go into it and see it. And I mean, it just, I think we’re talking about different realms here.

[04:21:08] Alex Tsakiris: That’s exactly, to my point. How, how in your estimation is it, is it different? I just gave you an example of just the kind of nine 11 ish or JFK ish data. Robert Hastings interviewed over a hundred, uh, high ranking, many of them, high ranking, but credible military personnel who saw the UFO’s and the nukes.

So why, why is that? Not at the same, it could be a

[04:21:36] Miguel Conner: breakaway civilization. This could be the Nordics. It could be a good laugh about the space Nazis. It could be many parts. It could be aliens from a certain planet. See what I’m saying? There’s a million.

[04:21:52] Alex Tsakiris: No, I, I don’t, because I think you’re applying a completely different standard.

I mean, you could, you could apply that same standard of something completely outside of our consensus reality to nine 11, right?

[04:22:04] Miguel Conner: Oh, well, yeah, we could go down there. Yeah, I guess we could go down that rabbit hole, but, uh, yeah. Yeah. Good. A it could have been a mystical ritual sometimes. That’s what I lean towards some sort of mass satanic ritual, but that ties in with the government.

[04:22:22] Alex Tsakiris: Yeah, but I think there’s a built in bias that we’ve accepted to question the UFO and the alien contact in a way that doesn’t cause doesn’t conform to the same standards in terms of evidence and acceptance of it that we do in these other fields that within this kind of truth or community that we are okay with.

So we’re okay with saying, okay, I got the basic narrative on nine 11. It was an inside job. We seem less okay with saying, I got the story on UFO’s their spacecraft that come here that travel at unbelief that defy our laws of physics. We don’t know where they’re coming from. Exactly. We don’t know who’s behind them.

Exactly. But that is a reality in our consensus reality in the same way that the videos we saw in building seven and the big hole they have there in New York is a consensus reality that we, that we accept.

[04:23:21] Al Borealis: So, so do you think that anything it’s possible to, to uncover the truth of anything

[04:23:29] Miguel Conner: we need evidence of the spacecraft we need?

I know we need a spacecraft here that we can look at and Roswell, obviously.

[04:23:37] Al Borealis: Yeah. But that, that doesn’t necessarily, doesn’t explain you a force. It may explain a little part of the phenomenon, but Graham Hancock will throw a book at your head, which it doesn’t explain. Yeah, Jack

[04:23:50] Alex Tsakiris: filet is the person. Yeah, but what people forget is that jock filet walks around with a piece of alien spacecraft in his pocket and he’s analyzed it with the most powerful

[04:24:03] Al Borealis: of dualistic.

He’s not either, or

[04:24:07] Alex Tsakiris: the point is when, when people want to go the full, uh, consciousness blob thing for UFO’s it’s just to, not, to me, it just looks so much like another, another block, another, you know, I can’t go there. I can’t cross that crazy line kind of thing. Again, I just point to the UFO and nukes thing.

The, the concrete evidence is overwhelming in any other’s case, we just say, okay, that’s a reality. We don’t understand the details of it, but it is a reality that they have come and visited these sites.

[04:24:40] Al Borealis: But remember what you were forced, or you have force are just a generic, oh my God, no, it’s just a term for everything we don’t know yet.

I’ve

[04:24:49] Miguel Conner: seen you post things were space. They were from space. It was wild. And even Jack valet, you know, again, going full blown Gnostic. And he does say, I always ignore their ontological reality at your own peril. In other words, he’s warning people. You will go insane if you go. Yeah, if you, they are real and they are tangible, but that’s about it.

But the rest is really up to us.

[04:25:14] Al Borealis: It’s much easier to know what isn’t true when it comes to these tanks. Like we know the official narrative of JFK or nine 11 is not true. Okay. But after that, Alex, you can’t say it’s a clean thing. Everybody agrees. I just had Joseph Farrell on or nine 11. And, and he’s introducing a third layer beyond the inside job thing, which also Webster top you do.

So people know, of course we don’t do we, because we don’t know. We know what’s not really. The sedation they’re offering us. That’s bullshit. But then the hard work of finding out what is real and in that area, yes, it’s very legitimate to, to explore all those urban aspects, but I, I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as, uh, you know, what you did in the beginning of skeptical, namely immediately revealing, exposing the skeptics and their agenda and, and, and the way the manipulate data, et cetera.

Yes. We can do that in terms of finding out what’s not true. You did that with skeptics. So yeah, that part of the reality they tried to sell as is bullshit, but then finding out what is true. You still own that quest you still, even though you explore near death experience, you explore power psychology, you know, consciousness is key, but is that a closed chapter?

Have you figured it out? No, of course not. And I think the same, we are doomed, uh, for the same when it comes to UFOs.

[04:26:42] Miguel Conner: Yeah. Is this a also, uh, as, uh, experts or scholars said, you know, the best arguments, the best argument, let’s say feral comes with the best argument for nine 11. And this is like, oh my God. I was like, this is it.

That does not invalidate the second best argument or the third best, or the fourth. Those arguments still exist and have to be held up until more data comes in event. You know? So these arguments, uh, there’s nothing wrong with four or five strong arguments or even two or two strong arguments into weak ones.

They’re all part of the, they, they matter, they all matter.

[04:27:22] Al Borealis: Yeah. Let, let me say a Miguel that you know, that I realized something. I forgot to tell my guests yesterday, mark Goldberg, we were discussing the show is going to be called a case for Liberty, but I forgot to say something that you reminded me of now.

And that’s the incredible important ability to suspend judgment. It’s completely lacking today, especially in America, but the whole culture is, is sick. People. Don’t don’t care about truth. They want to be right. Whether they’re even if they’re wrong, right, but you don’t have to make a verdict of everything you can.

If I don’t know, I put it on a shelf and I’m either open to it or a wait until I get more data. Like you said, that’s the best approach. It’s not the same as agnosticism because that’s a gross. If you’re agnostic, then you’re a chicken. You don’t want to relay. You don’t want to take an, a stand here. We are taking stands where we can take a stand based on experience and data.

But some fields are just so huge. Some fields are maybe too huge for a human being to really decode, but we don’t have to make up our minds about everything all the time. We can wait and see while we’re continue to explore it. If you see what I mean, okay. Maybe it’s self-evident in this company, but if you look out there, nobody almost is practicing,

[04:28:45] Miguel Conner: not in this country.

It’s like you said, it’s either, or, and you have to circle your wagons around an issue and reject everything else. Instead of again, look at all the arguments and see where they go. I mean like tarred Terria my gut tells me that tartare argument is a bunk, but I’m slowly gathering data. I’m slowly, I’m eventually gonna interview somebody on it.

And I’m open-minded who knows.

[04:29:14] Al Borealis: Okay. Yeah, no comment from you, Alex. Then I think we’re going to wind down this thing. Um, we’ve been on a journey and all the skeptical journey on this last segment with Miguel was perfect because it illustrates where skeptical is to day we’re on all the time, which is my last question.

Uh, and then let’s say good night. Where do you think today, Alex, that skeptical is going?

[04:29:38] Alex Tsakiris: I think I, I do think that this conversation in my grilling of Miguel and also it wasn’t just the grilling of Miguel. It was the space that Miguel had. During that man, that’s that to me is the conversation that needs to happen, where someone can, someone can hear and respond and move towards truth, because it’s always about

[04:30:05] Miguel Conner: truth.

Right? Grilling God, you should marry somebody Hispanic. You don’t know.

Yeah.

[04:30:13] Al Borealis: He’s spoiled. He married a therapist. Goddammit. Anyway, guys, it’s been fun. Thank you for, for doing this. It was super fun and I hope it was entertaining for people and enlightening. And notwithstanding after this, you should definitely have a pretty clear case of what skeptical is.

[04:30:36] Alex Tsakiris: I

[04:30:36] Miguel Conner: had fun. It was a

[04:30:37] Alex Tsakiris: blast.

Oh, you’re the best. Thank you so much for doing

[04:30:40] Al Borealis: this. Okay. It’s officially over guys.

[04:30:43] Alex Tsakiris: Run to the bathroom and then I got an appointment I’m already, but thanks again. And Miguel, thank you so much for jumping

[04:30:50] Miguel Conner: in here. Anytime guys. It was a lot of fun. We’ll talk soon. Okay.

[04:30:54] Al Borealis: Let’s see guys. See you guys. Bye Manny.

Thanks to all the good people who contributed to the show today, we’ve closed this session with Alex letting you in on the five essential things you need to know about skeptical, which is an interesting summary that crystallizes the current version of the show. But first, a quick fact check. I made the statement in part one that your gun under was also amazing.

However, I got my Swami’s mixed up. I was actually referring to Viva Cananda. Now all that’s clarified. Leave the last word to Alex.

[04:31:41] Alex Tsakiris: The five things you need to know about skeptical. The first thing you should know about skeptical is that I approach skeptical as my personal journey towards answering the biggest questions about life.

Who are we? Why are we here? And most importantly, how should I live my life based on those questions mainly so that I can keep talking to the people I want to talk to, which of course includes you. And that’s also why you’ll never see any advertisements on skeptical. You’ll never hear me ask for any donations or anything like that.

The show is really about my personal journey. I’m not trying to get anywhere with it. I’m not trying to advance any cause run for office, create a name for myself or anything else. I just want to do my best to answer these questions and along the way, share my journey with everyone else. The second thing you should know about skeptical is that the show is about following the data, wherever it leads, or at least it started out that way.

But let me digress into that for a minute. The point I wanted to make here is that when I started out, I had this idea that if I wanted to find out about this stuff, even this really big stuff, like questions about who I am, I, that I could just go out and find the data. I could go talk to the very best experts I could go.

Then talk to critics of those experts. And then critics of those critics, I could follow the data wherever it led. And I would get to some sort of answer and to a certain extent that works. But I have to tell you that in the process of doing that, following the data, wherever it leads, I came to the realization that it’s not just about the.

It’s about all the other stuff. And this has turned out to be a really important part of my little skeptical journey here, because it opened me up to two things. One that people can have worldview differences that dramatically alter their ability to objectively look at data. And number two, it pushed me beyond that to then ask the question of whether or not that process of worldview formation is always under our control or whether there are other influencers that are trying to manipulate our worldview.

It’s a topic that I’ve returned to several times because it does seem to keep popping up. So this idea that it’s not just about the data, it’s about all the other stuff has been a reoccurring theme on skeptical. So I don’t know what you want to call that misrepresentation, uh, misremembering a lie. I don’t know what kind of words you want to throw at it, but it’s stunning, but it would be more stunning if it hasn’t happened over and over and over again on this show.

And we have countless examples in, all you have to do is go through the archives and listen to Richard Wiseman and listened to Ray Hyman and listen, even to even Devela listen to James Randi. I mean, it’s a consistent pattern. We can’t even call Ben out for being, especially over the top in terms of misreporting, this stuff it has to do with the bias, the world view, it clouds their vision in there, just like the fanatical, conservative religious folks that they so despise that can’t get past the obvious problems in their logic.

It’s the same situation repeated over and over again, where I started out with the idea of following the data, wherever it leads and was smacked in the face by the realization that it’s not about the data, it’s about all this other stuff that causes people to have entrenched worldviews, entrenched belief systems, and then fight and resist any change or any challenge to those.

So, I guess that rolls right into 0.3 of what you should know about skeptical. And that is that what I’m really about is getting past these stuck on stupid debates as I call them. And then I’ve found turns out to be pretty hard to do, because we are surrounded by an immeshed in a lot of stuck on stupid debates.

One example of this that we’ve spent a good deal of time talking about on this show because in various forms, it seemed to keep popping up again. And again, is the do Christians or substitute any religion you like in there? No, the true path to God or are atheist, right? So there is a good stuck on stupid debate for you.

And I say that because as far as I can tell both sides have some pretty darn stupid argument. These did know a use nails in the arc debate are the kind of debates I don’t want to have. I mean, I guess there are some real archeological questions there and I want to be open to hearing some of that stuff, but it’s pretty much in the shallow end of the pole when it comes to these, who am I questions?

Because to really understand why I think this is a stuck on stupid debate. We have to look at the other side of the table. Who’s sitting across from us and that is the atheist. Who’s built his house on a very Sandy foundation. And that is the belief that consciousness, that is the sum total of your human experience.

Consciousness is an illusion created by a biological robot. You of course, being that biological robot. Now this statement, which have often repeated on skeptic code, but let me break it down for you because it’s really a mashup of two of the most popular atheist thinkers of our time. That is philosopher Dr.

Daniel Dennett, who famously said, consciousness is an illusion and Dr. Richard Dawkins, who of course said that humans are biological robots. Now we’ve explored at great lakes on skeptical. How atheists often liked to run from these philosophical underpinnings that prop up atheism, just like Christians, like to run from the literal Noah’s Ark thing.

But I would suggest to you this ambivalence, this not knowing whether I should embrace the core beliefs of my group in this case, embrace consciousness is an illusion created by biological robots or whether I should run from it is really at the core of these stuck on stupid debates, because I think it demonstrates the cognitive dissonance that we go through when we’re drawn into these kinds of debates, that prop up all the time on skeptical, when it comes to near death experience science, suggesting that there’s some deep brain activity that’s undetectable by EEG that could explain the complex, deep, hyper lucid experiences that people are having, where they’re seeing things outside of their body, in other rooms while their eyes are closed and.

Now to suggest that is to say that everything we know about how the brain works is wrong. Using some dead Noah’s Ark have nails logic, because, Hey, we don’t have a model for the brain. That explains how you can see with your eyes closed or about how you can hear conversations in a hallway, three floors down while you’re on a gurney being resuscitated.

Heck we don’t even have a model for how you can be having these experiences and not have an EEG going off like crazy. So to suggest that, oh, don’t worry, boys. We’ll figure all this out eventually. And that sounds some sort of alarm based on the data that does, except that near-death experiences are happening and that they are happening during a time when the EEG is flat.

So not to announce that as some kind of enormous mystery that requires our immediate and serious attention. And instead to shift the focus on these deep brain probes is a, did Noah’s Ark have nails moment. It’s shifting the focus away from a topic that you don’t feel really comfortable addressing so that you can kind of grind on something that’s really pretty mean.

And that leads me into 0.4 of things you should know about skeptical. And that is that if skeptical is about moving past these stuck on stupid debates, these did Noah’s Ark have nails kind of debates. Then what kind of dialogues am I looking to have? But one of the things that really drives me motivates me, excites me is all the interesting questions that lie beyond these debates.

And there are so many of them and I want to get to them. I’m less interested in whether or not Sam Parnia. His new aware study will win over some of the atheist skeptics who are still on the fence about the reality of near-death experience. What I’m interested in is comparing near-death experiences with other experiences with extended human consciousness, whether they be a DMT induced hallucination, or a Kundalini experience or a UFO encounter.

That’s the kind of question that lies beyond the whole consciousness is an illusion of a biological robots, stupid stuff. Now to get to that next level kind of discussion, I’m going to have to circle back from time to time to revisit my assumptions. And I have to be aware and honest about the fact that consciousness is an illusion of a biological robot thing I’m talking about happens to be the dominant scientific paradigm.

So we can’t pretend it doesn’t cast a huge shadow on any serious scientific conversation we might have. I don’t want to pretend that’s not true. And similarly, I want to be real about our cultures Judeo-Christian roots. And now that can cast a shadow on all conversations we might have about the spiritual implications we might discover when we go beyond this extended human consciousness.

So I’m going to need to circle back and re-examine some of our spiritual traditions and religious traditions from time to time as well. And I’m sure I’ll do that in future shows. And then finally, on this point, I think I also have to be realistic and accept that this path that I’m on is not going to be wildly popular.

And most folks have a worldview belief system that’s dominated either by this scientific materialistic, Neo Darwinism, atheism kind of thinking or this true believer, religious status quo kind of track. And since I’ve come to believe and understand that both are based on some pretty crippling assumptions.

I got to accept that at bed. People are going to probably be confused about where I stand or, and this seems to happen a lot as you know, darn right hostile to me, trampling all over their sacred, cherished beliefs about science and or spirituality. And that brings me to the fifth and final point that you should know about the skeptical show.

And that is that the reason I do skeptical is so that I can connect with you so that I can create this community with other people who share my beliefs and interest and desire to kind of figure out these problems. It’s going to take a village for me to figure out who I really am. And that’s why at various times in the skeptical show, I’ve tried to engage with other people to either come on and guest hosts with me or participate in other ways in the show, or get involved with various projects.

I like that. I think that community building is a part of not just the skeptical show, but part of my path and what I want to do on this journey.

[04:43:10] Al Borealis: That’s it hope you enjoyed this stroll down memory lane. Thanks for staying with us. Take care and bye for now. 

(music: Tomie’s Bubbles Candlegravity). [box]