Richard Cox, Spiritual Journey Conspiracy |555|

Richard Cox’s new book examines parallels between conspiracy theory analysis and insights gained through spiritual development.

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[00:00:00] Alex Tsakiris: On this episode of skeptiko, a show about discernment. And conspiracy theory.

[00:00:10] Richard Cox: A core tenant of spirituality is a kind of discernment okay. To sermon about on a fundamental level of thought, like, cause for a lot of people that is a massive change in their lives to realize that their thoughts aren’t true

We really should then be able to carry that sense of discernment out of our minds and into the world and say, well, is what the government is telling me. True. It’s it’s a thought.

And in some ways I’ve been indoctrinated into this system from birth. So it’s very compelling for that reason, but I should be able to apply more discernment to that.

And a show about discernment and conspiracy theory.

[00:00:47] Clip: I’m not worried this about me, my target here. Do they know me? Who is daddy? Do they know me? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Either. Very smarter, incredibly stupid.

[00:00:59] Alex Tsakiris: I have a really good chat coming up with Richard Cox from deep state consciousness podcast. And the author of the new book contemplating conspiracy. It’s a good one stick around. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Welcome to skeptical where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers in their critics. I’m your host, Alex scarce. And today we welcome back Richard Cox. Great, great, great to have him back of this guy. If you know, if you’ve been around skeptical, we’ve done a bunch of shows over the years and, uh, I really ton of respect for him.

John, a respect for us. Very excellent podcast, deep state consciousness podcast, and. Also, I got a lot of love for this book of his new book, contemplating conspiracies excursions into undiluted madness. Richard, welcome back. Thanks for joining me.

[00:02:01] Richard Cox: Thank you.

[00:02:03] Alex Tsakiris: So this book is, is interesting, kind of a compilation of a lot of interviews.

You’ve done. I kinda, in the back of my mind, as I’m reading it, I’m having a chicken and the egg question like, did you start having the concept for the book and then do the shows off of that or vice versa? So that’s one of the things we’ll have to get into, but we’re going to do a deep dive into this cause there’s some really interesting topics, very interesting skeptical topics related to this book, but start just by telling us about the book contemplating conspiracy.

[00:02:40] Richard Cox: It comes from years ago, even being in spiritual groups, going on. And seeing everyone get along very well on the Friday evening and talk with a lot of harmony because they’d been there. Everyone had calm having similar perspectives on spirituality, on meditation, on consciousness. And it’s very exciting.

And enlivening talk about that. And then around about Saturday, lunchtime politics would come up and there’d be some shocked faces because there will be this apparent division in the room, um, between the more conspiracy minded people and the more conventionally minded. And this was not shocking for the conspiracy minded, but for the conventionally minded, suddenly they’re hearing for the first time they’ve gone to this spiritual retreat and the hearing that nine 11 was an inside job.

And they certainly didn’t expect to meet anyone there who wasn’t fully convicted as to the parallels of global warming. And now there are people who seem to be incredibly right wing because that’s all the scam apparently. This division and spirituality and that being aware of that for a long time. And then when COVID kicked off, it felt like that division had, uh, a wedge put in it and was just hammered where the people who were assessing not on the conspiratorial, the people on the conspiratorial reside in many cases became more conspiratorial.

Um, they would say with good reason, I would be inclined to agree. And then the people who are very adverse to that things suddenly took on the perspective, okay, this has gone too far. Now it was one thing when it was silly theories about this or that, but this is a pandemic it’s, uh, that these people are threatening the health and wellbeing of society, and we need to speak out against it.

So I saw the division become wider and the book. Inspired the, a lot by the philosophy of pour fire Feyerabend on the idea that we need to shift into each other’s perspectives on different perspectives to, um, be able to communicate and to be able to gain a better perspective or over perspective on truth.

So that was the kind of core thing of the book.

[00:04:45] Alex Tsakiris: Yeah. Jeez. Okay. We’re going to jump right into the skeptical section, the skeptical part of this show, because I, I kind of challenged that right from the beginning that that has any chance of working or that, that really gets at the issue. And that’s not to say cause like you and I have known each other and you know, I’m kind of.

Pushy kind of person. So when I say that, that I’m going to jump right into the skeptical part, you get that, but I have to pause for a second and say, this is really, really a good book. And it’s really, really important. , some of the points that you make and there’s some kind of fantastic things that you’ve done here, like exaggerated hangout, let’s say you Coleen, I think, and it’s such a interesting addition to the mix or your take on conspiratorial.

Reality is completely unique and new and a wonderful, even though you are careful to reference where that came from, you kind of take it another direction. This is all to say. I think you’ve done a fantastic job and that is kind of a gotcha too. Okay. Now I’m going to be skeptical on you. Yeah. In this true sense.

And this is reflective of your book. Both are true. Both are true. The reason I’m excited to talk to you is because we can have a level three conversation and what you’re describing in the spiritual made up to me, the problem I have with it is you’re making excuses for people who can’t do a level three conversation.

And to me, I’m not that interested in why people can’t do level three. I’m just interested in having level three, because I think that the solutions will come out of that. I say all that. Let me give an example, what better example than this? This is episode 3 90, 1 of skeptical where you and I were joined by Tim freak. And I’m the one who kind of initiated this. You’ve known Tim freak for a long time. Tim is, you know, fantastic guy, uh, written many, many important books known for kind of the Jesus myth kind of thing, but where you and I were pushing him on this interview is about conspiracy theory.

Let me play the clip and then we’ll chat about it.

[00:07:18] Richard Cox: On an issue like global warming at work where I do think it’s relevant to paradigm. Yeah. You need a certain depth of conspiracy to believe that global warming as a conspiracy could emerge out of that, you need a certain depth of deep state, that rabbit hole needs to go a certain way or otherwise it doesn’t make sense.

So whether it’s right or wrong, or whether you stay there or not, you need to be able to shift into seeing, okay, this is why people would think this

[00:07:41] Alex Tsakiris: tim final words.

[00:07:43] Tim Freke: Wow. When you said learn, you invited me to take part in this discussion

and

you listed all the things you wanted to talk about. I said to Richard, wow, that’s never going to happen, but it has. You’ve taken us on that journey. It’s been a while. Um, I, I wonder what people will make of being part of it and listening to it.

Uh,

it’s been wonderful. It’s been fascinating. I, you know, I, I certainly don’t want to give the, the impression that I think, um, these views are ill-informed or just unintelligent. I don’t what I, but I do what I, I think,

I think the truth is probably what Richard said earlier, which is on every side of an argument like this or discussion like this, there are people who are, well-informed

have thought things through and have reached a conclusion for a reason.

And then there’s people who. And inevitably, if you are in one side, it’s very easy to see the other people on the other side, who are the people that haven’t. So there is a lot

of people I think, in the conspiracy world who seem uninformed to the point of being unhinged, but that’s not, but I’m sure that’s true on the other side and every side, because there’s just a lot of people in humanity who are ill-informed to the point of being unhinged.

And we shouldn’t let that blind to us

so that they can be serious points

to be made. And I think Richard has functioned very well in, in bringing that through. And as somebody who thinks para logically, I think it’s

absolutely imperative to be able to see it from these different points of view. And the place I tend to end up is usually

it’s a bit of all of it.

[00:09:14] Alex Tsakiris: What are your thoughts re experiencing that?

[00:09:19] Richard Cox: I just like seeing myself of hair, but apart from that, um, it’s that clip was on my mind. That exact party view, I thought that would be the path you would play or when you brought it up.

And it was probably on my mind when I wrote the book, because that is exactly it. That’s exactly what I’m suggesting that we need to become conscious that we have these worldviews soften, but unconscious of them and that they influence the way we’re seeing things. And they influenced the way we see all the people.

So the, the undiluted, Matt, Tim,

[00:09:51] Alex Tsakiris: because Tim Wright

[00:09:55] Richard Cox: specifically on what, from his position on global warming or his.

[00:09:59] Alex Tsakiris: He’s wrong on all of them. So you can just kind of pick your, take your pick. But to me, it’s the classic classic it’s it goes back in my opinion, Richard, to what I was poking you at at the beginning, like, oh, if we can understand the other person, then maybe we can find this common ground and our paradigms will merge no Tim freak.

Isn’t going to change his position on global warming because he’s not willing to engage with the data to him. It’s. Illogical, uh, ill informed, right? Ill-informed and that he kind of throws out these platitudes that I guess everyone could be ill-informed fuck that Tim let’s get down and dirty with the data.

Look at Judith Curry and global us sea level rise, dig into the data at that level. And let’s have that discussion, but otherwise fuck your opinion. It doesn’t, it doesn’t, it isn’t relevant. No,

[00:11:03] Richard Cox: I don’t. That’s not. That’s exactly why the way I don’t see it. Okay. Because I think you’re coming in on the level of discussing data with an unawareness of the paradigm so that you can discuss data.

But if you’re trying to change, one’s mind having them see your point of view, a different point of view. I don’t think that data is going to be as effective as pointing out the underpinning of data. The thing data is arising.

[00:11:28] Alex Tsakiris: So this kind of is almost jumping us. Like we’re, we’re kind of all over the place, which I love.

It’s awesome. One of the things we’d have to talk about is what is the goal and what does it mean to be effective? Is that the goal? I don’t know that that’s, the goal is to kind of one by one win over people like Tim freak or, you know, I always have Rick Archer from boot at the cast bump on this, and he’s just, he I’ve done so many shows with men.

He just fails miserably, you know, time after time, I’m like global warming, you know, we started with the 97% consensus and he had to totally concede on that. Okay. Yes. You’ve shown me the data. I realize it’s kind of movement. And then, and then I said, , so does that change your opinion? And he goes, No. So it’s like, this is like, can we just say classic skeptical, this is back skeptical long time ago when you know, I was talking to him and you were right there, we’re talking to skeptics, you know?

And it’s like, okay, what evidence would convince you? Okay. Here’s that evidence? Has it convinced? You know? Yeah. So, because

[00:12:34] Richard Cox: then they’re still can the materials paradigm, they’re either disingenuous or they’re stalking the material paradigm. And then when you get into that, you’re so engrossed in the material function of the brain and how you can point to neurons firing that, give rise to memory.

Then you hear about this near death experience store for, well, someone must have made a mistake somewhere because we’ve almost exactly nailed down what consciousness is on the physical level. And I can see how people who are staring, like when I, I wrote like a paper on how we look at consciousness and that forced me to look much more through a materialist lens and look at how are these guys seeing it?

And by the end of it, I have more sympathy for the, I understand why they’re dismissed it all this size stuff. Now. I don’t think that’s ultimately good enough. The way I would think to approach that with them is look, you’re standing in a particular paradigm. And if you’re going to understand at all, why people find these, these ideas of near death experience compelling, you’re going to need to shift.

It’s not, you can’t get it from where you are now. And is that going to be effective or is that the goal? I don’t think it’s not the goal. Right? I don’t think anyone wants to communicate worse and have worse interactions with people of different opinions. It might not succeed. It might be like another thing that, that ultimately fails, but I think it’s a much better approach at pointing out where these divisions.

[00:13:48] Alex Tsakiris: I think we want to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. So the strength of your book is where it describes the phenomenon. And like, when you talk to, when you were speaking right there with Tim, the point that I thought you made, that was so, , really salient and he just couldn’t get it at all. And as a matter of fact, if you read his body language, he not only couldn’t get it, but he was pushing so strongly against it without saying a word.

And that was depth. You have to have a certain depth of knowledge of conspiracy. That’s what your point was. So do you want to speak to that a little bit and maybe also the prescriptive versus descriptive, if you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, this

[00:14:34] Richard Cox: is the thing that hit me when it was about 2005 and I was taking a philosophy class.

Um, we were talking about with my teacher, but like mystics, like Douglas Harding and how, when you really think that the guy that points and notices, he just, his thing was he just never face when you pointed you just, you were aware of a field of awareness rising in which all the people manifest by encounter.

That’s having a face, but then I look at myself on the screen and there’s a person talking, but that’s not how I experienced myself. So that was really interesting to be, Hey, we don’t, nobody ever experiences me the way I experienced myself and I don’t experience them the way they experienced themselves.

And then I became very interested in a philosopher called Paul Feyerabend, who, to me, it was just a drop the mic moment where he pointed out how people are occupying these different intellectual paradigms and therefore seeing the world in different ways. And, and for me, that just changed everything about the way I thought about things.

And he advocated a kind of pluralism of open to that point. I’d thought the way you approach learning something is you’ve got the one right idea, and you run with it as far as you can, and that will take you to truth. And then with a lot of the things we look at, whether it’s the materialism idealism debate, whether it’s what’s going on in the world beyond the really highly documented narrative who’s pulling the strings or what pulling the strings, the deeper level, these things are so complex that we can’t.

Get there through further study necessarily we maybe need to occupy different perspectives on it. So we’re looking at it from different angles and not necessarily condensed that down to one, but maintain a polarity of approaches. So that’s what I’m kind of the prescriptive.

[00:16:12] Alex Tsakiris: Let me just make sure I’m not kind of trying to be up to sear for no reason.

To me, the descriptive is you laying out the playing field as you do in this book, and you say, okay, you’ve been conditioned to think that conspiracy theory. And again, we’ve got to hit on that in a minute, but that conspiracy theories are wacky. What I hear you telling people is what you don’t realize is you already fully embrace the idea.

So if I was to tell you that. The United States, central intelligence department and other intelligence agencies were instrumental in the overthrowing of Iran. And you wouldn’t object to that. I would show you the data and you would just be, oh, okay. That to me is descriptive. You would describe to someone how they are not, fully accounting for what they already know.

And that is that, that is conspiratorial. That is even though it’s understood, it is not part of the official narrative of who we are as Americans, what we do, how, how our role in the world. Do you want to comment on that? Well,

[00:17:17] Richard Cox: yeah, I mean, the fascinating thing about the conspiracy to me is how open it is, right?

So on one level, I’m seeing that we can respect each other’s views. See each other positions meet common ground with all these different people and on novel level in the book I’m saying. And in addition to that, we actually absolutely know that the world is like this. Not like that. There are things we can say definitively.

We can’t necessarily say definitively about the really deep levels of who’s really pulling the strings. Is anyone pulling these things? Does it go after the lower fourth dimension? Okay. The depth that’s great for conversation, but we can say what happened in Iran in 1953, we can see what happened in Guatemala in 1955.

And this notion that when you talk to people who are kind of anti conspiracy, they’ll often throw the bone of saying some conspiracies are true. Okay. And that’s I think an incorrect statement. Okay. It’s like saying sometimes the Matthew engages in. It implies that the mafia is in legitimate business organization that occasionally, sometimes the security services might get mixed up and a bit of protection racket, but that’s not, it misunderstands the nature of the mob and what we live in with the state.

And I’m referring to the, to the USD cause there’s the current global empire. Um, it is a criminal. It’s not that it’s sometimes those criminal things. It’s mostly about running a health and social programs and sending foreign aid across the world. It’s a criminal conspiracy to project power, to project a, an ideology of dominance and to support corporations spreading across the globe.

Um, so w and I demonstrate that by I just machine gun, really examples of, I think there’s about 70 foreign interventions that have documented to be taking place in government over since world war II. So I go through a chunk of them and the reference I make to Wikipedia is I don’t actually reference Wikipedia.

I referenced people like William bloom and John filter. I say, look, you can get all this on Wikipedia. It’s like in your face, it’s in the open it’s, it’s not, it’s not a secret that the mafia has criminal organization, and there’s not a secret that the us government is also that. So that part of the argument that’s Dawn, right.

That’s established on that David Ike 100% correct. Alex Jones, 100% correctly. You can say that wrong about this stuff. The other thing, all this deeper level of stuff, you can say it doesn’t go back hundreds of years and there’s no consistency over that time period. They’re the cleanest and the shape-shifting reptilian that whatever kind of crazy things Alex Jones has come out with.

But on the basic point, they are far more correct than CNN Fox news. The BBC.

[00:19:50] Alex Tsakiris: So then that’s the lead. That’s the descriptive, let’s not bury the lead. Let’s not have a conversation with , Tim freak, where we say, gee, Tim, we really want you in this conversation because maybe you have something important to say, I think what we’re really saying what I’m really saying.

I’m not going to put words in your mouth is Tim, until you can cross this little chasm here. It’s not hard, but you have to jump it. You have to get into that. As you described it, the depth of that, and fully understand that paradigm. We’re not going to have a meaningful discussion. We’re going to have the kind of discussion that Tim engaged with at the end of that, you know, which I just, I find.

So just tiresome, you know? Well, I just. Thank you enough for the wonderful conversation. And I get that everyone has an opinion and everyone’s opinion matters. No, your opinion doesn’t matter until you embrace this thing that, that Richard just said is categorically true provable in a way that we just can’t step past step over.

[00:20:58] Richard Cox: Yeah. There’s a directionality to truth. So yeah, I’m, I’m questioning myself now what I’m saying that to the two of you, am I criticizing Tim more than you? Am I suggesting that Tim needs to do more moving than you do? Because I am more in agreement with your position. I think I’m suggesting to you what I’m saying.

That’s the more facts, more papers by Judith. Corey are not going to be in effect. Strategy for communication, because there’s a paradigm it’s like, I’m sort of criticizing your level of communication, not so content. And I suppose I’m, I’m more saying to Tim and there was a different way of seeing the world.

Cause I think you people in the conspiratorial paradigm get that. Yeah, of course you can take a more conventional view in the world. We were all kind of born into that. And if you’re a conspiracy theorist on any level or conspiracy real level, you step out of the norm, you’ve made a paradigm shift at some point in your life.

So that could be a fair thing I’m suggesting to terminate and likely there’s a paradigm shift to be made.

[00:21:58] Alex Tsakiris: Okay. Another clip. And then we’ll talk about it.

Here’s a guy interviewed, uh, just a little while back skeptical 5 25. Name is Scott Shay. And I always make the point of saying that Scott is probably a billionaire or at least close to being a billionaire. And he started this bank and a super successful guy. And I always say that because I think it’s super great that, uh, here’s a guy who’s engaging.

, doesn’t have any financial need to do it, but he does it, but here’s the point that relates more to our discussion. Oh, and I should add, so Scott, Shane came to skeptical because he had written a book about. Conspiracy theories and the dangers of conspiracy theories as they relate to, , anti-Semitic anti-science autism and stuff like that.

And he gives some very solid examples. I’ve really pushed him and he pushed back wonderfully in that, you know, there’s some wacky conspiracy theories at his Alma mater Northwestern university by this tenured professor, you know, like the, the Jews are up there in space, shooting down lasers and all that crazy stuff along with the Holocaust denier stuff, which is also just, I think fall can fall into the category of a wacky conspiracy theory.

====

[00:23:20] Alex Tsakiris: Are you aware of the modern origin of the term conspiracy?

[00:23:27] Scott Shay: No. I read Jordan Jovan, uh, briefer and croissant Kaseem who wrote about conspiracy theories. Yeah, they don’t,

[00:23:34] Alex Tsakiris: they don’t talk about it. It’s directly from a document that was released through a foyer request.

I think the New York times initiated the four year request in 76 or something like that. The title of the document. This is CIA concerning criticism of the Warren report and was drafted in 67. It was about JFK. And it was to all the media outlets back then, you remember the day media outlets, you could kind of count the ones that really mattered.

All of them were told, do not veer from the story of Lee Harvey, Oswald known lone nut assassin. And then they introduced this term conspiracy theorists as a pejorative term and use that to kind of characterize all these people. Now the upshot of that. , a lot of people don’t realize that in 1978, the house select committee on assassination. Concluded that JFK was probably a conspiracy and they’re using that softly.

They prove pretty conclusively from the evidence that it was a conspiracy. So the official position of the United States government is that JFK was a conspiracy. The real question is why does Dan rather go on w why does Dan rather go on TV and say, Hey, I can’t show you the Zapruder film because it’s too gory, but you can clearly see that his head falls forward when we all know now that we’ve seen it, that, that that’s a lie.

[00:25:06] Alex Tsakiris:

here’s my point. Not all conspiracy theories are bad and I’m a little bit concerned the way you kind of are you falling for part of the game that is in conspiracy theories, but only focusing on the silly ones, whether they’re silly ones directed at the group that you care about or the silly ones, you know, in general.

Any thoughts on that, Richard?

[00:25:36] Richard Cox: Yeah, so I wanted to address both sides of the coin in the book and not just say, okay, well, what we all need to do is make this paradigm shift into a more conspiratorial vision of the world.

And this is something where I have to say in the perspective I occupied. Meeting people who will less conspiratorial than I am. Okay. So I’m always encouraging them to have a more conspiratorial vision if you like by conspiratorial. I mean, the kind of thing we talk about with the, the U S government being a, an organized crime, not like the flat earth, um, and this will be something that’s true.

Just going back to Tim, that he would encounter people. I think who sometimes were into the more kind of fantasy for conspiracy. I would maybe see a parallel with that with the kind of fantasy for spirituality. So I think it is a concern that when people realize everything they thought they knew about the world is wrong, that they can start sliding down and down that rabbit hole and they fall and fall and fall onto their feet land on the flat earth, because it’s not necessarily obvious where to stop.

And this is where I see the parallels to spiritual awakening. When you find out everything you knew about your essential nature and consciousness is wrong, people then often begin. Ripe to be victimized by courts because he is somebody with an explanation of what it is. And I think that that’s a parallel that within conspiracy culture, that something happens, you find out that yeah, your belief in what the world is wrong and that the explanations come up from kind of conspiracy courts that can, can really poor people, , far, far, far down a rabbit hole.

[00:27:13] Alex Tsakiris: I don’t agree. Right? . And I think it’s, , it’s again, the matter of a descriptive versus prescriptive all’s we can really do is just describe as you do in the book, the instances of conspiracy and then, uh, and redefined, I think we have to first, we have to regain recap. The term conspiracy, because in all of these examples that we’re talking about, we’re not really talking about a conspiracy or I should say we’re rarely talking about a conspiracy.

What we’re talking about is just good old understanding of history or understanding of science or understanding of archeology. So in the case that we were just playing with Scott J and I was talking about JFK there’s, there’s kind of multiple layers, but the first layer is, is conspiracy theory, a conspiracy.

Like this is a conspiracy actually. And I provided the documentation for it. I said, here’s a foyer request. Here’s the previously classified document that was sent to all the media outlets that told them to characterize this information in a certain way, in order to change people’s opinion. So this is a case where the facts, the truth through the foyer requests published in the New York times reveals a conspiracy.

But in other cases, in most of the cases that we care about, whether it’s nine 11, or whether it’s JFK or whether it’s the plan, DEMEC the COVID thing. What we’re doing is we’re pointing at certain data. So in JFK, the fact that the magic bullet can’t change course in midair and veer this way in that way, and to come out unscathed is like something that we could apply science to, you know, forensic science and physics and all these other things.

And we could come to that. There’s nothing quote, unquote, conspiratorial about that science. It just upsets a certain , it’s really all, these are what we’re talking on. Every case almost is a PSYOP, and that’s what we should call them. We shouldn’t call them conspiracy theories. We should call them like a countermeasure against PSYOPs, because that’s what I think we’re really talking about.

What do you think?

[00:29:41] Richard Cox: Yeah, I can’t ignore that role. They play that this was striking to me that conspiracy theory. On the one hand is something that shatters people’s realities and opens up to a new way of seeing the world and on the other, it’s employed as a weapon to shut down that re-seeing of the world.

So I gave the example of whenever Fox or CNN eminence. And so you have someone on to talk about or feel the need to have someone to talk about address nine 11 conspiracy. They’ll always get someone who’s really far down the spectrum, like a Plains or holograms person. Okay. Um, and they’ll never have a guest on to talk about the CIA protecting the hijackers when they were in the country from, from the rest of the FBI.

So yeah, I agree. It’s a weaponized term. I think what I wanted to point to in the book was the complexity. If you can’t really point to it as being one thing, because I know, again, another parallel I noticed with spirituality is that when I would meet people who are into Advaita Vedanta or Zen, Buddhism, and been like doing kind of arduous introspection on their own consciousness for a decade or more, sometimes you’ll ask them the question of, well, how did you get in to all this.

And they’ll, they’ll go, but rather than the face, a little bit shy, and there’ll be some story about angel, crystal Reiki. Shakra hearing that went on in their youth and something that they perhaps wouldn’t feel comfortable associating with now. And there’s a parallel and conspiracy that a lot of like very erudite researchers.

I know when you ask them how they got into it, they look a bit embarrassed and it’s something about energy weapons taking the twin towers down, or whether the virtual vice is that something they firmly reject now. So I looked at something like the flat earth movement and thought, I wonder what the trajectory of people who get caught up in flat earth will be.

And I imagine most people will just move on from it and go, but living very conventional lives, some people remain in it, or there will be some people in it who transition into becoming quite interesting geopolitical researchers after having this crazy start. So it’s as if both spirituality and conspiracy theory, they both have crazy initiation myths to pull someone out of their set in stone.

[00:31:44] Alex Tsakiris: Yeah. You know, I’m not buying it. And, and I almost think that it there’s somewhat of a contradictory. With your book in what you’re saying, because I think what, you’re the ground that your book lays out, especially if we look at like the chapter on can spirituality, you know, this kind of crossover that you’re talking about between conspiracy and spirituality.

I think it forces our hand on the stuff that we have talked about so many times in the past, as it has to do with consciousness, because the full implications for consciousness, which you, again, I have to digress here for just a second. Again, Richard is another one who was nice enough to complete the skeptical survey that I sent him.

And with his permission, I’m going to publish it and the skeptical forum, because. It’s just about my favorite one ever that anyone has ever done. It’s fantastic. And all the answers are great and he gives added, you know, other answers or added stuff. So we’ll get him on the, we’ll publish it on the forum and then we’ll get them on the forum to talk more about that.

But my point is, I feel like your you’re showing this deeper understanding that consciousness kind of in a way, throws all this outs out the window. Spirituality is what I really want to say. I say consciousness for people who are atheistic leaning, and can’t really deal with it. God, God throws all of this stuff out the window, right?

God doesn’t really care about nine 11 in any way that we can discern just like God doesn’t seem to care about tsunamis or any of the rest of that stuff. It just, I mean, I kind of say that as a, as like a. That’s how the evidence falls. We don’t see any evidence that there is that. And that’s been the source of a lot of people’s frustration with their belief in God.

But the deeper part of it is it must be something more than that. So I think what you’re trying to do in this book, and you do it very successfully is kind of describe to us what it’s like to live in two worlds to have one foot in a world where a nine 11 was an inside job.

That’s just for all the evidence points, sorry. And another foot in a world that says that consciousness, the divinity God is always in play and we’re leading these rich spiritual lives. And we’re trying to figure out our path through that. And we’re not sure how these two worlds. Join or if they join it all, but in an, in attempt to describe as best we can, what the, what the field is, what the playing ground is,

we have to describe both. Am I missing the point?

[00:34:46] Richard Cox: I think that’s true. Do I do that in the book? Do I, do you think I bring spirituality that much into it?

[00:34:50] Alex Tsakiris: Well, not in a bad way. I think in a, in a great way. yes. I mean, Richard, I mean, who else is talking about? Non-duality in the conspiracy world. Do you realize what a, what an outlier you are?

Right. From the beginning, because you have that awareness and you bring that, do you don’t think that?

[00:35:10] Richard Cox: No, I do. I do talk about it. I mean, I think that the question you started our last interview, it was what, what the heck is the connection between nine 11 deep spirituality? And I think my answer, well, I dunno, it’s a good question.

Isn’t it? Is there a record? It could be nothing. It could be like everything. Um, so I make the connections between how I think stepping into the non-duality stepping into self-inquiry has, has paralleled a step into the geopolitical and that there are strong connections there. There’s connections. One is myriad the other for me.

And I think for other people who look at both spirituality and the world in very different way, I also propose that that spirituality is mirror mirroring the way they look at the world to.

[00:35:56] Alex Tsakiris: So, I don’t know that we have anything to disagree with there, except that I guess what I’m saying is I think you are so much coming from that, that maybe it comes through in ways that you don’t even realize in that you are coming at it from a spiritual first perspective.

And then you’re reflecting that back into the conspiratorial stuff. And I just think the largest part of our audience out there, and by that, I just mean. You know, there’s the whole audience and it’s mostly normies. And then there’s this sub audience that is open to this conspiracy conspiracy tutorial paradigm.

They are not coming at it from their perspective, from that perspective, they’re coming at it fundamentally from a materialist perspective, you know, from, uh, how did the buildings fall perspective? And that’s why you and I had a wonderful discussion about the spirituality link between nine 11. But I don’t think most people got that.

I mean, it was from a field was like, well, what are you even talking about? So I think that’s just in your bones because of who you are and your experience. Not for most people. No, I don’t think they’re coming at that

[00:37:07] Richard Cox: right. Well, I think there’s a couple of levels of it on one level. I’m thinking that spirituality should affect the way.

Let’s see if the word like a core tenant of spirituality is a kind of discernment okay. To sermon about on a fundamental level of thought, like, cause for a lot of people that is a massive change in their lives to realize that their thoughts aren’t true and they can step back and have a sense of separation from thoughts and say, oh, that they’re arising and they’re arising in something deeper.

That is me. And I can question like that. That’s a thought, but is it, is it true? I have that sense of separation from it and that we really should then be able to carry that sense of discernment out of our minds and into the world and say, well, is what the government is telling me. True. It’s it’s a thought.

And in some ways I’ve been indoctrinated into this system from birth. So it’s very compelling for that reason, but I should be able to apply more discernment to that. So in that way, um, spirituality, I think speaks to my approach, to all these things. And also on the sense of I should be able to, I think spirituality, you know, really should involve some ability to see all the.

Points of view if you’re just locked in your own all the time. I don’t think that that’s great. , and then it’s more challenging and we step into kind of like a spiritual meaning to these kind of events, I think.

[00:38:24] Alex Tsakiris: I think that is absolutely brilliant point.

And it’s one that I hadn’t really thought through. And as soon as you said it, I was like, whoa, that is a total shift in everything. What I heard you say is that the real core of your spirituality and my spirituality immediately confronts what we understand as the conspiratorial aspect, but would probably be better characterized as the paradigm shift thing. And like you say, kind of the non nondual, your thoughts are not who you are. You are more than the chatter in your brain and the parallels that you immediately draw that Hey, for the average person who encounters that and fully embraces it, it is the same kind of process of saying.

The plan DEMEC, wasn’t real as a bio weapon, you know, it, wasn’t what they said, uh, parallels all over the place. And I think that’s, that’s great. Uh, again, I don’t think most people are coming at it from that way, which makes what you’re doing, like enormously valuable. Cause you’re doing it. The other point of that, that I would then ask you to kind of jump into, because again, you jump into this in the book and maybe you don’t see it.

Maybe I’ll be maybe, maybe I’m wrong, but I’m kind of poking at it. The second aspect of that is that I think people in that process then also encounter re-experience. There, their wisdom tradition, history, right? Ah, I was brought up Catholic. I know what it is. I’m Muslim. I know what all this stuff is. And again, there’s that same transition, right?

It was that same paradigm crashing where it’s like, whoa, it’s not, oh, isn’t that again? It’s very different from the first one you said, cause the first one is totally internal. Right? The total internal, my thoughts kind of thing. And the other one is kind of internal, external kind of mixed. What do you think?

[00:40:25] Richard Cox: Well, just to finish up on the last point, I think a big one, depending for me, or for kind of psycho-spiritual approach to one’s own mind is to see things as arising for a reason. Okay. So, um, and even things to be quite nice. In the psyche that we can’t just caught away and throw out our shadows, the bad bits and things we don’t like inside ourselves.

Um, our, our psyche is an interconnected interdependent hole. And we have, if, if there’s something we’re really not happy with, it might be self-depreciating for thoughts. In some formula, we have to go into the underpinning of why they’re there and we’ll unravel and integrate rather than caught and shared.

And that approach just carries to the external world. So when I see something like either extreme resistance to conspiracy theory or the flat earth movement rising, , I have to, I’ve just taken the flat earth. Doesn’t seem to question me why is that a rising, w w why would people gravitate towards that and not this?

And you can say, okay, it’s a soil. Maybe it is, but there’s a pole towards that. And it’s clearly that that is something people. That is the thing. People are hungering for not saving more areas like research on nine 11 or something. So if we’re going to move through that, we have to look at it as a process of integration as we would, if we were integrating something within our own psyches.

, and so that, that was an important kind of underpinning to carry the kind of wisdom of the psycho-spiritual approach into looking at, , into a more like external interpersonal environment.

[00:41:49] Alex Tsakiris: , let me interject because , I’m not totally with you on that. I kind of have a different perspective.

Tell me what you think about, . What I was saying that you’re doing in the book in terms of that’s another paradigm shift, paradigm destruction, a moment for a lot of people who are on the spiritual journey is to realize that their wisdom tradition is, is an op,

[00:42:10] Richard Cox: right? As in what, I’m not quite sure

[00:42:12] Alex Tsakiris: Okay. So Richard, here’s what I was kind of referring to. And again, folks, this is from the book contemplating conspiracy excursions into undiluted madness, quick read. It’s more of a single it kind of book, less than a hundred pages, but it’s excellent. You can pick it up very, very, , affordably on Amazon.

We’ve already shown that page and we’ll maybe show it again. Here’s a quote from the book that relates to, I think, to the religion part where we’re talking about you, right?

All major longstanding world religions made this sacrifice to some degree, they exchanged essence for manifestation, the spiritual for the temple.

[00:42:55] Richard Cox: Yeah. So what I’m doing there is I’m going against, I suppose, a lot of my long-held perspectives that the, , I’m looking at the role of literalism. Okay. So for me, looking at religion, there’s a movement to get away from literal interpretations, which are very stagnant to me, very unfulfilling towards a more symbolic and enriching interpretation.

So I was brought up, um, as a, in the Christian churches when people were, and was given an historical narrative and a very exoteric view of the life of Jesus. And then there’s a movement to finding out this story about crucifixion, which always resonates. It has some kind of deep thing that feels like it’s deep.

And then you find out, oh, it is, there’s always a Gnostic interpretation. It reveals your true identity, that the false self. On the cross. And what I’ve been examining in that chapter is the role that the power of the opposite side of that coin, the power of like there’s the Joseph Campbell quote, where he says that spirituality dies when it is interpreted literally.

And I’ve always believed that. And that’s actually something that that’s not true at all. Is it because Christianity ditched the gutted Gnostic mystical aspect and became a very literal religion about an circle figure. And it basically took over the world. It’s got like 2 billion adherence. It doesn’t last look for 2000 years.

So it didn’t die. Joseph Campbell is clearly wrong and he’s not wrong. I understand how he’s right. But it, it’s not just a linear journey that that’s a bad thing. There is a need within the human psyche for the literal, for, to take our myths, literally to think that this event occurred on the material plane where it’s real, it makes it real towards it.

It has a different effect. And I explore the writings of. Um, Phillip K Dick in that regard and Philip K Dick’s interesting relationship with reality that when he’s writing a book like the, the man in the high tower, uh, about the, the takeover of this alternative history, whether or not he’s won second world war, and they split the country with the, uh, they don’t say to the Japanese, then he came to believe that really happened in alternative reality where he’d been to.

And he talks about that. He talks about how chilling he finds it. It takes this work of fiction and takes it to another level in terms of, or did this actually did this happen? And I suggest. Goes up if those are that then, so he introduces, what is it? Very mythical sounding concept of shape-shifting reptilians.

[00:45:30] Alex Tsakiris: Can I, can I rewind a little bit, cause I want to talk about that later, but I think we’re going to lose the thread so just with your permission, that that’s great. Cause we’ll get to shape shifting aliens next because it’s really super interesting and I know exactly the place where we can kind of cut it and make a good transition.

So here’s the point where maybe you just don’t agree with me. Maybe I’m that you wrote the book, so maybe I’m misinterpreting it, but where I was going with it was, I really loved the part that you just said earlier about this internal paradigm shift conspiracy theory that we have, where we go, oh my gosh.

My thoughts are I’m more than my thoughts and that’s feels conspiratorial, just like. JFK, you know, oh my gosh, they really did, you know, pull it. So then I was drawing a parallel with what you’re talking about in terms of religion and how they’ve made this sacrifice and how I’m kind of living out this tradition in a way that now starts to feel conspiratorial it’s real to me because it’s brought me, I’m speaking as a, uh, someone who is, has a profound Christian experience, that person would feel like, wow, this has been my whole life.

I’ve had this. I know my spirituality is real. I know my relationship with Jesus is real. What’s going on here. And I thought that’s what you were teasing out is that I think feels conspiratorial again. So do, do you agree with that? Or am I tend to take that in a wrong direction?

[00:47:08] Richard Cox: Maybe.

I’m not quite sure what you’re getting in the sense that people have a spiritual experience with Jesus. And then at some point they find the religion is wrong and they’re left with.

[00:47:20] Alex Tsakiris: You were putting it under the category of discernment, which I think is spot on and what I also heard you saying kind of reading between the lines is spiritual growth is about discernment and then understanding the nature of how these ops are influencing our life is a matter of discernment and, you know, balancing between flat earth and planned DEMEC is discernment.

So I see discernment all over the place in own awakening that comes when you realize that the Catholic church , isn’t what you were taught. You know, I mean, to me, it’s a direct parallel.

[00:48:01] Richard Cox: Yeah. We’ll be in the sense of the concept of. The town I made one of the chapters. I talk about the tower card in tarot.

It’s struck by lightning, like something enters out of nowhere, flash of lightning and the crown of the tower falls. The building goes on fire. So I take the tower as being symbolic of our thoughts, our paradigms that we build up and something interject, and it can be seeing the collapse of building seven.

It can be the recognition that the Catholic church has something other than. And what do you think it is? And all the structures that I will come tumbling down, and that can happen on a spiritual level in some way, that gets us to reflect on our inner selves or on a, on an outer level. In terms of everything I’ve told you about the world was wrong.

And often I think these things are linked and that’s where you get the con spirituality term arising from every idea we have about the world suddenly comes into question.

[00:48:52] Alex Tsakiris: . So let’s talk for a minute because it’s kind of come up a couple of times already shape-shifting aliens and I’ll share then another quote from the book contemplating conspiracy.

And this is one that you took from Tom woods and I’ll have you describe who Tom woods is, because I think it’s relevant to the quote,

but this readiness for war, like it’s some awesome video game. You’ve got to just say to people that’s just not right. It’s not right to cheer for widows and orphans being created. I mean, be a human for a change. Don’t be Dick Cheney.

Don’t be John Kerry. Don’t be all these shape-shifting lizards, by the way, once in a while, I think maybe there’s something to that because a normal person would not act like this. Okay. Break that down for us. Okay.

[00:49:43] Richard Cox: So Tom ward is an historian and economist, and he’s one of the leading figures, I would say in the libertarian movement, he ruins a podcast and

[00:49:53] Alex Tsakiris: , Harvard MBA, a very popular podcast, kind of, well-respected also take some flack, a libertarian, and also kind of a Southern, Southern pride kind of guy, which we’ll talk about in a minute.

[00:50:07] Richard Cox: Um, so what intrigued me when I heard that was David likes concept. The reptilians, which he introduces on a literal level is picked up and used on a, on a mythical level then. So you’re using this symbol of something to convey the, the inner nature of who these people are without necessarily taking it, literally

[00:50:29] Alex Tsakiris: okay.

Time out just for everybody, because this is probably not necessary. David Ike, who is he? And what is this shape-shifting reptilian thing, because you’ve really studied David Ike and you have all series on your podcast of really reading David Ike. You you’ve read David extensively.

[00:50:48] Richard Cox: So let me start that. Let me, let me say who he is to me. So I was became interested in spirituality at 18. Had some experiences that opened me up to that. So I started gravitating towards that section of the bookshop. Okay. And there there’s a book in there called the biggest secret.

I noticed one day, what’s that? What was the biggest secret? The secret, I don’t know about it. What is it? So then this it’s written by David Ike and he talks about this alternative vision of history where there’s been a secret society. You can fill in things all the way along. And I think part of me was infested on an intellectual level.

Like, could you do that? Can you construct an alternative vision of history that would hold up to scrutiny or would just go splat because I’d done a history, any level just prior to that. And I remember having these kinds of thoughts, like, we’re just, we’re just told this stuff. We don’t know if it’s true and I’m sure it is, but so this really on an intellectual level, intuitive intellectual level intrigued me.

And then that’s the book where they like introduces his concept that would have been building up for a few years. The prominent people in the power structures of the world, the Rothschild, Rockefeller family, the Royal families, certain us presidents were shape-shifting reptilians. They would go behind closed doors and shed their human skin and food.

Some magical process become full blown reptilian entities. And that’s just like, that’s incredible that someone would even write such a thing as incredible.

David, I would also write things such as the CIA tropics. Uh, such as that big bombing in Oklahoma, that a recent taken place that was a conspiracy that the U S government had been involved in all these violent, over froze off governments across the world.

And to me, all that stuff sounded really no less wild than shape-shifting reptilians. The idea that the CIA traffic frogs was completely crazy to me. Right. That was just, I could almost easier believe the queen shape shifted into a reptile in that, because that was no one had ever said anything like that.

I can’t, but I researched it as best you could in 2001 and found that, Hey, a lot of stuff, this guy says is bloomin’ true. We’re living in a very different world. What I thought we were. So what, what do you do about this reptilian thing? Where’s that going? And I still got away trying to understand the world from that kind of paradigm then from the reviews, , backed away from it.

And then we engaged with conspiracies at a later point. , I want, I was left to reflect on, in more recent. Was, you could take the position on David like that. Okay. He put some good stuff in, but the reptilian stuff is crazy or you can take the position. Three opportunities of is that’s true. , I wondered what it affected, how to me, in terms of creating that paradigm shifts, that would a book by John Pilcher or Stephen Kinzer role, w William bloom, somebody writes, I think very sensible books that document the nature of the empire.

If I had to pick one of those that would have had the effect, or did I need a kind of mythic initiation with a guy who is saying no, no, no reality is not a bit dissimilar to what you think it is. Reality is totally 100% turn on its head, completely different they’re reptiles. So I think what David like is you could look at it this way.

You know, David doesn’t look at this, you could look at it. David like is employing mythology to create an effect on somebody. And he’s strengthening that mythology by saying, and it is. Okay. Whereas Phillip Dick, okay. That goes halfway in that and says it’s true, but it exists in alternative world. So usually we like our stories nice and safe.

Okay. We like them in a fictional world where they don’t bleed into and contaminate this one. And I found that David, I was playing with literalism in that way. Fascinating. And you could sort of say Christianity did the same thing, that I’m the kind of Mythicist. Okay. So I don’t think there was an historical figure called Jesus.

At least not one that bears a close relationship to the people. The person people are worshiping in church on Sunday morning, but with the Christian Church, making him more than a symbol, a literal historical figure. He takes on a power to affect people that he, otherwise wouldn’t be. And that seems to be important to me.

So I’m playing this idea of literalism is dangerous. The tourism is kind of crazy, but do we, do we need it in some way? Cause it has this power to it. And then Tom woods, there is simply using the, um, the reptilian thing symbolically. So isn’t that interesting that whether, whether we use it literally or symbolically, we need the mythic in some way, when we’re having these conversations about politics, because you need to break out of the sense that Dick Cheney is in some way like you, or that he has the things that come out of his mouth or in any way true or representation of his goals.

And one way of doing that is to think of them as being a reptilian and human form. And in some ways that’s more accurate. I have to go propose a chapter on the question is George W. Bush shape-shifting laptop and to give away the punchline. And the conclusion is whether it is not that view of him is more accurate than the cultic followers who changed his name.

[00:55:46] Alex Tsakiris: in that chapter, you reference, , and it’s brilliantly done, , a rally led by former governor of the state. I live in California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the famous movie star, where it is truly directly parallel to a cult rally where it’s like, who is our greatest leader, George W.

Bush. Who’s going to help us get jobs, George. I mean, , you, you do a great job in the book and it’s hard to walk away from that chapter or that section and not go, oh my God, how could that have just happened right in front of her eyes and not know it at the same time, I’m wanting to go back to what you’re saying, because.

I want to kind of offer a different perspective on it. So this whole little realism versus a mythical metaphorical understanding of it, links back to your point about discernment, because what we really want is a foot in both worlds.

As I was saying before, we want a foot in the. Liberal world. And we want to foot in the mythical metaphorical, I would really say that’s the spiritual world. So the point that kind of did irk me a little bit is you never really addressed shape-shifting reptilians from a literal perspective. And I think that always has to be.

In play. And even if it, like, if you want to address, well, I do this all the time with people. Like, if you want to talk about flat earth with me, I’ll talk about flat earth. I’ll say, gee, this only takes about 30 seconds of my time to show how scientifically ridiculous and stupid it is because it doesn’t account for the fact that I can go online and see pictures of the earth updated every 10 seconds.

And I can cross correlate those with weather, pattern, photos that match and bingo. There it is. It’s clearly not. And then I can listen to the absurdity that satellites are held in air by helium balloons. And I can, I can, but I can engage with. Among literal level. And I can show that it’s not sustainable.

It doesn’t make any sense, the same way that a Holocaust. I have no problem. Then I like revisiting whole hoaxers because I like to see where their game is at what they’re at. And it’s always the same thing. You didn’t kill 6 million years. Well, he did. And I just had to go recently on the forum and cite an article, a recent article.

It said, well, here’s where we can really drive a stake in the ground and show that Hitler killed 1.5 million Jews in a hundred day period. In the death camps. So it’s like, Ooh, what are you going to do with that? And that, and what the poster, this is, get us back to the point of, I digress what the poster did with that is what I think we have to avoid doing in our little world here.

And that’s that he just ignored it and just went around and went back to his playbook standard kind of thing. And that’s what I don’t want to do with, , shape-shifting aliens as a punchline to a joke, unless you can really show me that it is a joke, but see you. And I know that there’s some parts of that narrative that are a little bit hard to dismiss, like take for example.

Shape-shifting right. Yeah. Shape-shifting. There’s a lot of traditions, wisdom, traditions that directly say shape-shifting. And when we look at the DMT experiments control experiments, shape-shifting right there, right out the back and it’s reptilians too. Right. And then if we’re willing to open up to the alien abduction literature, which we should, because there’s a lot of good work that’s been there.

That’s pretty solid. Again, what pops up other species, some of these species look reptilian. We hear that over and over again, different accounts through different ages. These things start to look interestingly important to investigate on a level beyond punchline, to a joke. Again, you understand this because you get the discernment thing.

That doesn’t mean that I believe literally what David Ike is saying is true, but by the way, David claims to have experienced this in the extended consciousness realm, which I think we have to pay some attention to too, because again, there’s other parallels and stuff like that. And I think that’s part of this discernment process is don’t be so quick to be on the side of the sensible, you know, cause they’re lost.

There are more, and you point this out in the book is that clearly that’s wrong. Like Neil deGrasse, Tyson consciousness is an illusion is much more, uh, ridiculous and absurd than shape-shifting aliens. Shape-shifting reptilians. It just, I would say that as a. Fully discernment. Matter of fact, reading of the data.

[01:01:14] Richard Cox: Yeah. So I want it, I’m doing currently in the series as you know, I’m David. I, well, I am, it’s called reading David, like, but it could really be called understanding David. Like I’ve gone back to his first book and I’m trying to explain, understand myself, how he made this intellectual journey to a place that very few people occupy and how he did it in such a public way.

And for me, I think that’s kind of therapeutic on some level to understand my own history and relationship with his work. And yeah, I’m really enjoying it. And there’s times where I can come to the fork in the road where David went one way and I can say, well, I’ve agreed with him so far, but I wouldn’t go that way.

Miss. I think he got, you know, it was the early nineties. We didn’t have an internet. I think he put too much weight on a certain set of facts that led him to believe. Th the conspiracy stretches back in a very consistent manner for hundreds of years. And I don’t see it that way, but I’m when we get to this level, I have me back in two years, Alex, I might say, oh, I’m completely wrong about that because this is a much harder level to see into then.

But w with the chapter in the book, it’s, the book is, is really written, I suppose, to people who are cynical about conspiracy. Now, it might be probably more widely read by people who aren’t right. It might be more widely enjoyed by them and more beneficial to them, but it’s written in that kind of way. So I’m phrasing the chapter as, okay.

You think David likes kind of bonkers. So thinking that George w Bush’s or anyone else’s a shape-shifting reptilian, right. Okay. Maybe he is, but he’s not as bonkers as those people, is he not by a long way. In fact, he’s got a far more accurate picture, far more accurate he’s really, if he’s wrong, he’s wrong on the physical level.

Like there’s no physical transformation into scaly reptilian skin. Uh, but on a, on an inner level, on the level of what is the consciousness of this. It’s spot on. It’s completely. Right. So you’re, you’re as wrong. Okay. Now, as to the question of like what we draw from that, well, there’s a whole spectrum of how right or wrong David, I could be.

I find it very hard to think, um, that this is something that could go on on if David could come out and say, oh, by the way, that shapes different opinions. Um, there was like a flood of whistleblowers. I worked at the Royal palace and I saw prince Philip tail poking out of his pants. And so on that then.

Okay, fine. That didn’t happen. And it’s inconceivable to me that something like this could be covered up for so long. Okay. But that’s an extreme end of the spectrum. You step one step down there does some kind of shape-shifting I’ve seen people’s faces transfigure in a way that I’m not entirely convinced is explicable through the visual system getting corrupted.

Um, and of course it’s a meditation and then it just invites in the, or the massive question. Well, If we accept as, as we do that, the validity of researchers like 2d by shell, that there is this world. We are in some way in communication, we can communicate with entities outside of what appears to be here.

We are forced right into the question of, well, how have they influenced history, right? Or all, any entities doing, um, reassuring that their grandkids on the earthly plane that everything’s nice and wonderful where they are, or are they trying to build empires through whispering in the ears of powerful political people.

Right. And you have this thing of John D, we were kind of living in the mind of John D to some extent the, um, uh, 16th century Alchemist, uh, because he was an intellectual architecture, the British empire, which flows into the American empire. So where does that come from? It comes from his scrying sessions, uh, with Edwin Kelly and a spirit claiming to be the Archangel, Michael telling him that Britain should build all these ships and go and take over the world.

So. Uh, you can’t, you can’t get out of the question. And I think that these are the really deep questions we should be asking. David, you, cause ask him, he’s going to have answers that maybe I can’t contact you go with, but I think he’s exactly right on you. Can’t ignore this part of the world.

[01:05:04] Alex Tsakiris: Yeah. See the equivalent I have with you on that is I’m not advocating a weighing of David Ike’s sole or even his.

Accuracy, , versus Neil deGrasse, Tyson or Dawkins or whoever you want to put them against Joe Rogan or whoever. , I think that’s, that’s a mistake. I think it gets us away from your excellent discernment point. I think we should hold David for each. And every point that he says and weigh each one individually, like, oh, I interview David.

I can, I really got them on him because he’s fallen into this. There is no virus. We haven’t isolated the Corona virus. That’s not a statement that holds up to scientific scrutiny and I’ll just leave it at that because I’ve covered it many times and it isn’t relevant to our conversation.

But I would say that with regard to shape-shifting aliens on that point, I would suggest he has the potential of being more right than you’re giving him a credit for.

[01:06:08] Richard Cox:

I’m very much looking forward to getting to a full assessment of how David I and a full understanding of how they came to the reptilian position.

It’s connected to the MK ultra program and to do it. Justice is quite a bit of work. So I’m hoping over the summer I’ll get that. I find the specific vision he offers of all these people in very powerful positions, consciously walking around, knowing that they are secretly shape-shifting reptilians and just putting on an acting performance for human society.

In congruent with what we know about the world, about the associations they’ve had so far, I’m only speaking to the particular way David Ike has presented. If you back off that a bit in intensity, I’m not saying that every concept of shape-shifting is incorrect. That’s something that can’t happen. And I’m certainly not saying that there are forces beyond this world that seek to influence it on a, on a global.

[01:07:12] Alex Tsakiris: Great. So that’s a great, great point. And that gets back that’s that’s discernment to me. That’s uh, and I agree with you 1000% and everything that you just said, discernment, discernment, discernment guy takes it too far. You go, no, that doesn’t hold up for the following reasons. The guy backs off it. You go, that does start fitting in with some other data sets that we have as uncomfortable as normies might be about that, , does fit in those datasets.

The other data set that we would bring into the table is the UFO and the ITI in particular and the species, there were this reptilian thing kind of reconnects. That doesn’t mean that David has done an adequate job of putting all that stuff together.

And it’s fair to call him out on that. I am saying, though, we have to then come back as you do in the book over and over again, and say final analysis. So if we’re going to weigh those two, David Ike steps forward a little bit with the shapeshifting alien thing, being a little bit more right than Tom woods, complete dismissal of it as, oh, that’s just completely wacko.

[01:08:20] Richard Cox: I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Tom doozy on the spiritual dimension of life and his, and ponder these kinds of questions of, because Sam is a super critic of the stage has been super critical of COVID policy.

And as the times gone into pondering these questions of deeper, darker forces behind it, I think it’s a question of focus the time, , being an historian and economist tends to play to his strengths that way and look at the world as being a product of the structures we set up. So if you have a central bank, you are going to have a boom bust cycle, but does not require malevolent bankers to go pull the trigger.

Now I will have the Boston, we will steal all the money. Okay. That might be there as well. But someone like Tom can point out because of his knowledge of economics, you don’t need that. We also have to think. These things are products of structures. So I think people play to their strengths in that way. Um, if I want to be argumentative in a way that maybe highlights difference in the way we’re seeing things with regard to the, um, the no virus people with COVID okay, this is something I don’t take a position on, right.

Because like I’m not a science podcaster. Um, so there’s just not my area. Okay. When I do address science, I try to address it in ways where I’m reducing it back to pure reason. Um, and also, no, one’s going to care what I think about scientific issues, right? So if I come down on once I, or that nobody cares about that.

But what I will say is that I think one of the most enlightening voices for out the pandemic has been Dr. Sam Bailey on her Odyssey channel. And I’ve drawn on a lot of this stuff to understand where the spike in the death rate comes from. So irrespective of whether this virus or not. It’s not necessarily the thing that’s causing those spikes.

Now, when you occupy a perspective that says there is no virus, you are then forced to look for all the things to account for the very real spikes. If you don’t occupy that paradigm, then you can attribute it to a virus. So to me, it’s not surprising that the best work on accounting for, um, what gives rise to the desk spikes outside of COVID, um, is someone who doesn’t believe in, in viruses.

So even if she’s wrong, I don’t know if I’d want it to change because that could affect the, what effect, the way she sees it. It might affect the output of work in the same way of David Ike, even on areas where I can see that I think has gone too far with, um, the prevalence of the Rothschild family, or I think he’s gone too far with the shape-shifting opinions.

Do I want him to change? I don’t know, because that changes the nature of his work and it changes the nature of his impact then. So I think you need these coexistence. Positions that are at odds and not comfortable each other. Like on the one hand, we want to criticize people when we think they’ve gone wrong.

On the other hand, them going wrong, highlights the world in a different way. So I’m just saying, I think it’s a complex picture.

[01:11:19] Alex Tsakiris: Nice, nice. Another point of disagreement, you know, I just think a struggle only for the truth and don’t prop up anyone who’s going about it in a roundabout way. I think it always, it always leads the wrong way.

Oh, I want to wrap this up in the next few minutes. I want to talk about this last point that you brought up, but I want to leave open the opportunity to continue this dialogue, because this is just such a, such an important topic in my opinion. And you’ve just. You’re so uniquely qualified and you’ve done such fantastic work in this area.

I think there’s many, many topics to discuss and what I’d like to propose if you’re up for it, we’ll see I’m putting on the spot live, but I think we can bring other people into this conversation and really, really interesting way. I’d love to get Tom woods on, in a three-way conversation. I would love just even if you just interviewed him and then we could talk about it afterwards and stuff like that.

So, and, and the same with who who’s, I don’t know, uh, Sam Bailey, but same, absolutely same. And talk about it. So let me have a shot at this last point that you made. And then I watching. Kind of have a chance to respond. So with regard to play to our strengths,

So if someone approaches me like Dr. Sam Bailey, I assume she’s a doctor, right?

Yeah. , or Andrew Kaufman or Tom Cowan, have a hat on this show and wants to advance this. There is no virus. The virus has never been isolated. The virus isn’t causing COVID. Then I would give it my best shot in terms of saying, well, how does that fit with the fact of that we’ve genetically sequenced the virus, you know, it just, it doesn’t, it fails.

I think, on so many important ways that I’m not with you on GM, glad you’re out there being wrong. No, I wish you would be out there being right in the

[01:13:23] Richard Cox: same. And say, well, what are the consequences? I don’t think they’re wrong, but let’s say they are, what are the consequences of not being wrong? Okay. What are the, if, if David, I didn’t believe in the shape-shifting reptilians, what are the consequences?

The consequences, the world loses this piece of literature that goes into a literal level. And I’m just saying, I’m not even saying it’s a good thing. I can’t sit here and say, oh, I’m really glad that people are wrong. Okay. Like, it will be much better if everyone was right. That seems to be true for what I am pointing out is that there will be consequences to that.

And those consequences wouldn’t necessarily be.

[01:13:55] Alex Tsakiris: Descriptive rather than prescriptive, descriptive. We just have to do our best job of understanding what it is rather than prescriptive, because prescriptive is in the domain that you and I care about. Who am R why am I here? What is my relationship to divinity?

That is really the only question that matters. And I think the journey that you’re taking us on is a skeptical inquiry to perpetuate doubt journey that leads us back fundamentally to spirituality, because that’s all that really matters. So in that I don’t need wrongness. I don’t need cute. Kind of could be doesn’t that, you know?

No, I just need truth,

[01:14:41] Richard Cox: I don’t know if you can avoid wrongness cause whatever position we take on an issue as complex as what the heck has just happened over the past two years. With COVID, we’re going to have wrongness in that. So

[01:14:52] Alex Tsakiris: you have to, you don’t have to celebrate it and elevate it to some art form.

It’s not, it’s just wrongness.

[01:14:59] Richard Cox: It’s worth the data like Sam Bailey, circles and sixties wrong and foundations. Yeah. All right. Well, we’ll, we’ll shoot for that.

[01:15:07] Alex Tsakiris: You’re awesome, man. , you can hold your own. Well, I like the fundamental

[01:15:11] Richard Cox: division and this is why I’ve always liked listening to skeptical because you interview in a different way to me where you ask these pointed questions and are very devoted to truth in that sense. And I’m much more kind of passive in the way.

So I really liked the contrast arises in this dialogue. And there’s not many interviewers who will kind of go for you that way and say, no, I don’t think that’s true. What about it? You know, so I think.

[01:15:37] Alex Tsakiris: Okay. Again, the book that you’re going to want to check out and you’re going to hear more about it on this show.

So if you feel like we haven’t done enough and we haven’t, because there’s like half my notes, we never even got to it’s contemplating conspiracy it’s by Richard Cox, again, his, , podcast, which is excellent. And has a lot of this material to his deep state consciousness podcast. Richard, what else do we want to tell people either about the book or other stuff that’s going on in your world?

[01:16:07] Richard Cox: Yeah, so deep state consciousness.com. Everything that’s going on in my world is going on there. I’ve produced a book on anarchism. Um, that’s sort of the side. It looks at those kinds of themes. I’ve um, I’ve written. Paper on consciousness and how we understand consciousness, which is freely downloadable there.

That might be interesting to her, um, skeptical and points over these themes too. Um, and yeah, the podcast is continuing to go out. I’m doing a series on the history of us imperialism at the moment. So just on the, the 1890s in America, through theater Roosevelt, the Eagle spreading its wings, um, over out of the United States and beyond, and continuing that now we’ll pull the first world war.

So that that’s kind of what I’ve got going on and I’ll be on the skeptical forum to discuss this in the coming days.

[01:16:54] Alex Tsakiris: Awesome. Excellent. Okay, folks, uh, I hope you enjoyed this one, just a fraction as much as I did cause then you will have gotten a ton out of it. Richard. It’s so great to reconnect with you and congratulations on this terrific work.

Thank you.

Thanks again to Richard Cox for joining me today on Skepta co. The one question I tee up.

Is there a link between your spiritual journey? And the mindset paradigm that goes with an understanding of analyzing modern day conspiracy theory. Let me know your thoughts,

, and since Richard and I plan on doing. A couple more in this series. I’d love to hear your thoughts about where we might take it.

So, let me hear from you. Until next time. Take care. And bye for now.

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