Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show. My name is Matt. They call
Speaker 1: me Ben, and we're joined as always with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul Mission Controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you,
Speaker 1: You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. Matt. This, uh, this was very
Speaker 1: close to being one of those episodes where we might
Speaker 1: have we might have run into some trouble, you know,
Speaker 1: because we're touching on something that's controversial for a lot
Speaker 1: of people and close to the hearts of many of
Speaker 1: our listeners. We are we're also, I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: topic that I think has invaded all of our minds
Speaker 1: from young ages. I think there's a time in many
Speaker 1: of our lives when the concept of some other intelligence
Speaker 1: from some other place far far away, either visits for
Speaker 1: just interest reasons or for some very specific purpose. And
Speaker 1: and I think that concept um when it digs into
Speaker 1: your subconscious and your conscious deeply enough as at least
Speaker 1: it has mine, UM, you become I wouldn't say obsessed,
Speaker 1: but you you become fixated a bit on the idea
Speaker 1: of either we are completely alone or there there are
Speaker 1: things out there far beyond our understanding, and good god,
Speaker 1: that's either terrifying or amazing, right right, what's that old
Speaker 1: that old quote that either either think being true is
Speaker 1: terrifying exactly. So it's when you mentioned that, because according
Speaker 1: to a twenty nineteen pole from insiders insider dot com,
Speaker 1: which of course is you know, not pure research or anything,
Speaker 1: it seems like one in five US residents don't just
Speaker 1: believe that extraterrestrials exist somewhere out there, which is almost
Speaker 1: a mathematical certainty, right, they believe that aliens, physical extraterrestrials
Speaker 1: have actually visited this planet of ours at some point.
Speaker 1: That's right, folks. Today we are returning to the fascinating,
Speaker 1: controversial topic of UFOs. Longtime listeners, you will remember this
Speaker 1: is a point of contention on this show. What is
Speaker 1: a UFO? It is literally anything in the sky that
Speaker 1: is both an object and cannot be conclusively identified. It's
Speaker 1: tricky here because the concept of UFOs, at least in
Speaker 1: the West, is fundamentally inseparable from the concept of stra terrestrials, right,
Speaker 1: And so many times, through a variety of outlets, we
Speaker 1: see these two we see these two things conflated, and
Speaker 1: we see a We see a vast range of investigative
Speaker 1: endeavor going into identifying these unidentified flying objects. Some of
Speaker 1: this is maybe breathless, little sensationalistic. Uh, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking kind of the ancient aliens vibe you might see
Speaker 1: on the History Channel. And then some other stuff is
Speaker 1: is highly uh, highly objective, I would say, more on
Speaker 1: the skeptical side, uh, and taking an academic approach. We're
Speaker 1: aiming to do that today. But wait, Matt, you might
Speaker 1: be saying, pump your brakes. Ben. You might have followed
Speaker 1: up with you guys. Are you guys are a cracker
Speaker 1: jack researchers, But who are you to tell us about
Speaker 1: the the nuts and bolts science, you know, some of
Speaker 1: the engineering behind and chemical substances that would be you know,
Speaker 1: part and parcel of these claims of UFOs or of
Speaker 1: these claims more specifically recovered artifacts. Well, dear friends, you
Speaker 1: would be absolutely correct, and that is why Matt, Paul
Speaker 1: and I are not diving into this rabbit hole. Alone.
Speaker 1: We have a very special guest that we would like
Speaker 1: to welcome to the show, Christopher Cogswell, the host of
Speaker 1: the Mad Scientist podcast. This is a comedy show on
Speaker 1: the history and philosophy of pseudoscience that he does along
Speaker 1: with his fantastic co host Marie Mayhew. Chris, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for coming on the air with us today. Oh guys,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Been a longtime fan. So I'm
Speaker 1: really uh, kind of nerdon out over here getting to
Speaker 1: come on the show. Oh, come on, you have expertise.
Speaker 1: As we just outlined in that introduction to you. We
Speaker 1: are very much the ones here in the position of
Speaker 1: being excited to talk to you. We're just some guys.
Speaker 1: So look, we're gonna jump right into it. Um Like,
Speaker 1: tell us, tell us exactly what your background is. Why
Speaker 1: tell us more about what you've done. Why we believe
Speaker 1: that you are an expert on this subject. So my
Speaker 1: background is in So I first went to school at
Speaker 1: the University of New Hampshire. I received a Bachelor's of
Speaker 1: Science degree in chemical engineering and also philosophy, and in
Speaker 1: my you know, I've always sort of had a lifelong
Speaker 1: interest in um in these kinds of subjects. You know.
Speaker 1: The joke I used always tell whenever I give a
Speaker 1: talk on this stuff or I speak in public about
Speaker 1: this is you know um. One of the main questions
Speaker 1: I always had was, why was it that my grandma
Speaker 1: who wasn't otherwise you know, very very intelligent woman. She
Speaker 1: spoke like five different languages, is um. She came here
Speaker 1: with her family from Italy, you know, with nothing and
Speaker 1: built a family that now includes you know, people that
Speaker 1: are you know, living successfully, and you know, it's just
Speaker 1: it's it was so wild to me and just not
Speaker 1: understandable why she would both be so smart and capable
Speaker 1: and have such a firm grasp of history and science
Speaker 1: despite her lack of education coming from you know, Croatia
Speaker 1: and then to Italy and whatever, but then also have
Speaker 1: her belief that you know, climate change was a Chinese
Speaker 1: hoax or or or that you know, um, or that
Speaker 1: she had this crazy she had this crazy idea. I
Speaker 1: don't know where she picked it up, but he used
Speaker 1: to drive my family wild. She had this idea. So
Speaker 1: she was a diabetic, and she had this idea that
Speaker 1: if you put lemon juice into things that were sweet,
Speaker 1: it would for some reason. Negate all of the sugar,
Speaker 1: you know. So I'll never forget. We were we were
Speaker 1: on a road trip with her up to Michigan and
Speaker 1: visit my cousin, and we stopped at a dairy queen
Speaker 1: and she got this huge thing of vanilla ice cream
Speaker 1: and she squirted. She used to carry lemon juice with her,
Speaker 1: and she squirted the lemon juice on the ice cream
Speaker 1: and it was like, you know that scene from The
Speaker 1: Nanny where she puts like the bagel, two bagels on
Speaker 1: top of a slice of pizza and she's like, the
Speaker 1: body doesn't know. That was essentially my grandma's view of nutrition,
Speaker 1: you know. Um So, anyway, so that was always really
Speaker 1: fascinating to me. So I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: doing kind of you know, research and reading everything else
Speaker 1: about this subject of pseudoscience and why people believe incorrect
Speaker 1: Incorrect is maybe a too strong word for a subject
Speaker 1: like the UFO subject, let's say, but why do people
Speaker 1: believe things that are either patently untrue or seemed to
Speaker 1: fly in the face of reason? And so uh. I
Speaker 1: then went on to get a PhD in chemical engineering
Speaker 1: from Northeastern University in Boston. My research project, they're UM
Speaker 1: focused on the use of nanomaterials for UM for advanced
Speaker 1: capture catalysis and UM just essentially pulling things that are
Speaker 1: hard to get out of the air or water or
Speaker 1: different environments, UM, capturing those in efficient ways, and then
Speaker 1: being able to upgrade those two usable chemicals. So the
Speaker 1: most famous cases that is carbon dioxide UM. So capturing
Speaker 1: CEO two from the atmosphere, which where it's in very
Speaker 1: low concentrations is challenging and difficult UM. And then so
Speaker 1: that part is hard to capture part is difficult, But
Speaker 1: then actually converting that useless carbon in the CEO two
Speaker 1: form into a usable chemical feedstock like a polymer based
Speaker 1: you know, a monitor or whatever, that's even a bigger challenge.
Speaker 1: So those are sort of the applications I looked at.
Speaker 1: But the work that I did specifically was on the
Speaker 1: creation of layered nanostructured materials or material reals that could
Speaker 1: be after synthesis UM edited in some way, so you
Speaker 1: could apply a chemical uh, you know, heat or temperature
Speaker 1: or a change in pH or electromagnetism or something and
Speaker 1: make the materials shaped or chemical properties change in the
Speaker 1: desired way. So the example I give is like almost
Speaker 1: like an accordion. Right when it's in its normal state,
Speaker 1: the accordion is kind of pushed together, right, and it's
Speaker 1: a small volume. But if you apply forced to either side,
Speaker 1: you can get the accordion to expand. Right. With chemicals
Speaker 1: you can do well. With some materials, you can do
Speaker 1: almost the same thing. Right, the idea of I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've used the kind of you know trick from when
Speaker 1: you were a kid or even now as an adult.
Speaker 1: You can't open up the you can't open up a
Speaker 1: jar with a metal lid, so you put it under
Speaker 1: hot water, right to expand the metal. That's that's the
Speaker 1: metal itself, those bonds expanding due to the application of temperature. UM.
Speaker 1: That's basically what I worked on was a lying things
Speaker 1: like that in specific ways to create things that would
Speaker 1: be useful um at the bulk chemical scale. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like we're on the same page. One time
Speaker 1: for the Science Fair, I made this thing that looked
Speaker 1: like a volcano, but get this, it was no magma involved.
Speaker 1: So it's basically you, me and Houdini. Uh maybe maybe
Speaker 1: Nicola Tesla, I don't know, but that that aside you
Speaker 1: and one thing that I think is um is key
Speaker 1: to effective communication is that use of metaphor and analogy
Speaker 1: that you you just uh, you just presented to us.
Speaker 1: Because one thing that would be an immediate question for
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the audience today would be,
Speaker 1: all right, this guy, this guy has a PhD Chemical
Speaker 1: engineering from Northeastern. He has intense background, he's a subject
Speaker 1: matter expert. Uh. Why why has he decided to make
Speaker 1: a podcast? You know? Is uh? And you and I
Speaker 1: have talked about this a little bit off air. Uh.
Speaker 1: Did you did you find yourself inspired by a specific case,
Speaker 1: did you find yourself inspired by the format? Or you know,
Speaker 1: what was what's your origin story? What's like act two
Speaker 1: of this origin story that leads you into what will
Speaker 1: what would become the Mad Scientists podcast? Right? When did
Speaker 1: I realize I must dress up like a bat to
Speaker 1: fight crime? Yes, exactly right, I will use their fear
Speaker 1: against them. So really, what it was? So like I said,
Speaker 1: I my family um is really steeped in I would
Speaker 1: say the kind of old world traditions of you know,
Speaker 1: superstitions and you know, religion in my family was almost
Speaker 1: always more like magic in a weird way. And my
Speaker 1: mom um in particular loved that stuff, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: we were always watching horror movies together and she did
Speaker 1: tarot cards and uh astrology and all this stuff. And
Speaker 1: on top of that you had my grandma who would
Speaker 1: make these kinds of you know, weird concoctions of lemon
Speaker 1: juice and other random ingredients. Um, because Dr Oz told
Speaker 1: her that they would make her live to a you
Speaker 1: know whatever it was. Right. So, Um, we always had
Speaker 1: that kind of background in our family, and it never
Speaker 1: really made sense to me because again, we are otherwise
Speaker 1: very intelligent people, right, Um, So trying to understand, trying
Speaker 1: to understand what that line was, and then also seeing
Speaker 1: also seeing I suppose that there were things that we
Speaker 1: consider there were things that me, as someone in the sciences,
Speaker 1: would outright consider to be ridiculous. That if you looked
Speaker 1: at them from from the standpoint of say philosophy or
Speaker 1: sociology or anthropology or these other fields. You know what
Speaker 1: a scientist or someone in the hard sciences might call
Speaker 1: a soft science, Right, if you look at them from
Speaker 1: those perspectives, they stop being ridiculous. You know. One of
Speaker 1: the hot topics in the UFO field right now is
Speaker 1: this idea of um, the idea of like out of
Speaker 1: body experiences almost right, and kind of using your consciousness
Speaker 1: to contact entities and whatever. And so you see this
Speaker 1: in documentaries like the d MT Molecule documentary of Netflix,
Speaker 1: and you know it's all over the place. Right, That
Speaker 1: idea goes back thousands of years, right, this idea of
Speaker 1: having almost like a a spiritual experience to meet with
Speaker 1: other entities. And although from the standpoint you say, you know,
Speaker 1: materialist um science, it doesn't make sense, right, how could
Speaker 1: your consciousness transcend this physical barrier and everything else? From
Speaker 1: the standpoint of philosophy, um, that's that was kind of
Speaker 1: the status quo for most of human history, was the
Speaker 1: idea that something like that made total sense. Right. If anything,
Speaker 1: our consciousness being the collection of a random assortment of molecules,
Speaker 1: um would have been the extreme position and the position
Speaker 1: that didn't make sense. So understanding how that transition happens,
Speaker 1: I think is really important because it pseudoscience has an effect,
Speaker 1: It has a policy effect. Right. Um, we just saw
Speaker 1: the Australian brush buyers go completely out of control. Right,
Speaker 1: people still believe that that is not you know, the
Speaker 1: misinformation around that is intense, right, It was arson, It
Speaker 1: was you know, all these other options, but not that
Speaker 1: it's the thing that the science is considered to be
Speaker 1: the cause. Right, So combating pseudoscience, knowing why people believe it,
Speaker 1: and also understanding those periods, and there's there's plenty of
Speaker 1: them in the history of science where we transition from
Speaker 1: science to pseudoscience and vice versa, right, cases where scientific
Speaker 1: establishment became pseudoscience. Understanding those transitions and why societies accept
Speaker 1: certain scientific ideas or technological ideas is really important. Agreed. Agreed,
Speaker 1: there's a It's strange because one thing that we often
Speaker 1: find in our own our our own research rabbit holes,
Speaker 1: is that more than a few things that would be
Speaker 1: considered fringe theories or conspiracy theories or what have you
Speaker 1: actually qualify as folklore, you know. And there their stories
Speaker 1: that we tell ourselves. And of course, you know, there
Speaker 1: is a definition of a great story, at least for
Speaker 1: the human species, regardless of genre. Uh. And it may
Speaker 1: not be said explicitly or so nakedly all the time,
Speaker 1: but the mark of a good story for every single
Speaker 1: audience member is that they walk away feeling this was
Speaker 1: ultimately in some way about me. That's and that's like
Speaker 1: the folklore aspects. You know, we see the evolution from
Speaker 1: We've talked about this before. This is very old hat,
Speaker 1: I think to Matt n Eye to you as well, Chris,
Speaker 1: we've talked about the beat by beat similarities between the
Speaker 1: stories of alien abductions and stories of people being abducted
Speaker 1: by the fay or fairies, right or the the unseen
Speaker 1: world of some sort. So we know that there is
Speaker 1: We know that there is an an underlying ancient narrative.
Speaker 1: Something about the human mind and the way we categorize
Speaker 1: and the way we uh synthesize and digest the world
Speaker 1: around us, something about that makes us compels us to
Speaker 1: create these stories or to um even even if those
Speaker 1: stories are just interpretations of true events. But now, to
Speaker 1: steal a line for Fox News, now, more than ever,
Speaker 1: we are in a situation where we can bring to
Speaker 1: bear methodology, We can bring to bear uh millennia of
Speaker 1: of hard one scientific progress. And that's something that we
Speaker 1: wanted to dive into with you today. Uh, Matt and
Speaker 1: I have have a couple of things we wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you. Now, this is all this is all completely
Speaker 1: again your your expert here. This is all completely going
Speaker 1: to be up to you. How you want to respond. Uh,
Speaker 1: we just we just want your your opinion on things.
Speaker 1: And if there's ever something Paul, you might have to
Speaker 1: bleep me here. If there's ever something we ask along
Speaker 1: the way today where you say, well, what do you
Speaker 1: think about blah blah blah and you think it's bulls
Speaker 1: that's five and just say that's total malarkey, be and
Speaker 1: it will be perfect. So one of the un I
Speaker 1: don't know, Matt, do you wanna do you want to
Speaker 1: kind of start? Okay, So just jumping straight into this
Speaker 1: because I am fascinated by the the kind of cutting
Speaker 1: edge that we know of in material science, in in
Speaker 1: in chemicals and every just everything from physics, everything that
Speaker 1: we know on this planet as humans, the knowledge of
Speaker 1: technology that we have in its current state, and the
Speaker 1: cutting edge of that, and how we kind of take
Speaker 1: that cutting edge and vision of the future to explain
Speaker 1: the versions of possible extraterrestrial technology, Like perhaps if there
Speaker 1: was an intelligence species let's say several millennia or maybe
Speaker 1: even millions of years ahead of us from a technology perspective, um,
Speaker 1: what kinds of physical phenomena would they be exploiting in
Speaker 1: order to have much higher technology than we have, right, Um,
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna start with what I know what
Speaker 1: kind of per plays me as a layman. So I
Speaker 1: want to just ask you about super conductivity, about materials
Speaker 1: that that show these property or have these properties, and
Speaker 1: how perhaps that could play some role in advanced technology,
Speaker 1: either now or in the future. Sure, So, first of all,
Speaker 1: I guess I want to speak to something that you
Speaker 1: said kind of be your preamble to the the ultimate
Speaker 1: question on super connectivity, right, which is this idea of
Speaker 1: understanding the science or trying to fit our own view
Speaker 1: of science to what we expect an extra terrestrial civilization
Speaker 1: to be like? Right, Yeah, one of the one of
Speaker 1: the funniest things that I We do this on the show,
Speaker 1: um occasionally, and I love doing this whenever I talk
Speaker 1: to somebody who's you know, since doing the show and
Speaker 1: now kind of going to conventions and speaking to people
Speaker 1: and being you know involved is as involved as a
Speaker 1: skeptical scientists can be allowed to be in evolved in
Speaker 1: these things. Um. I really love hearing, you know, when
Speaker 1: someone tells you a story that is clearly you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's like watching the Jetsons, right, It's like and
Speaker 1: I'm not just saying that because my last name is Cogswall,
Speaker 1: so you know, my progeny will create a wonderful space
Speaker 1: empire for all of us. But um, you know, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no problem. There's a there's something really funny about the
Speaker 1: idea of how did they think the future would look
Speaker 1: when they were doing the Jetsus. You know, for some
Speaker 1: reason they still thought we were making like we were
Speaker 1: still producing machines with people, right, Like the guy in
Speaker 1: the Jetsons worked at a cog factory where or he
Speaker 1: worked at a Sprocket factory. That's crazy, you know robots
Speaker 1: would you know the we had these uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of how technology should look in the future.
Speaker 1: It's always actually a really good tell for these UFO
Speaker 1: cases that they're not true, right, So one of them
Speaker 1: that's really funny, and it comes up a lot on
Speaker 1: any Chilians, is this idea of a nuclear weapon being used.
Speaker 1: Why do we assume that they don't have better weaponry
Speaker 1: than that, or why would they need weaponry? You know,
Speaker 1: if they're able to phase through walls and stuff, can
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like, it's just crazy right. Um. So, anyways,
Speaker 1: in terms of in terms of kind of where sciences
Speaker 1: in terms of super connectivity and superconductors and all these
Speaker 1: other things. They're kind of a couple of areas where
Speaker 1: I guess I would say the challenges currently exists that
Speaker 1: are I mean hopefully going to be solved in some
Speaker 1: fashion in our lifetimes. The first one is the fact
Speaker 1: that we don't really have a fundamental grasp right now
Speaker 1: of how electrons transfer through materials efficiently, or or kind
Speaker 1: of how they even really transfer. We have a general
Speaker 1: idea writing medals and things, and we know that is
Speaker 1: electrons are being So electrons sit in If you remember
Speaker 1: from school, you were probably taught that electrons it in
Speaker 1: something like almost a planetary model, right where the nucleus
Speaker 1: is the center of the universe. It's like the sun,
Speaker 1: right or the center of the Solar system, I should say,
Speaker 1: So the nucleus is like the Sun that's really heavy.
Speaker 1: And then around that nucleus are electrons orbiting in different
Speaker 1: energy levels. Right, that's kind of true. They don't really
Speaker 1: sit in energy, they don't really orbit that. They exist
Speaker 1: in things called orbit tolls. So they do orbit around.
Speaker 1: But the the shape is not circular, it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: defined by their probability fields. Um. But anyways, that's that's
Speaker 1: really not the important point here. The important point we're
Speaker 1: going to get more into probability fields because that's a
Speaker 1: whole other thing. But I'm super excited. So as the
Speaker 1: electron gets excited, it jumps into a higher state, and
Speaker 1: then it can become de excited and then it will
Speaker 1: go down. So they call these bands, right, So an
Speaker 1: electron can be excited to jump into a conduction band
Speaker 1: and then it will be able to transfer. But as
Speaker 1: it transfers, it leaves behind an electron hole a place
Speaker 1: where an electron should be. But maybe isn't right. There
Speaker 1: are materials that hold those properties, right, And that's like
Speaker 1: with things um. That's like with computer chips. Right, how
Speaker 1: we write memory and or how we hope to write
Speaker 1: memory and quantum computers is you would have a space
Speaker 1: where a quanta should be, but it's not right because
Speaker 1: of transport or whatever. But what we don't really know,
Speaker 1: or what we we are currently still trying to understand,
Speaker 1: is how to really efficiently um control the materials properties
Speaker 1: themselves to make transfer possible in the ways that we
Speaker 1: would need. And what is it that makes something become
Speaker 1: super conductive. What is it about the magnetic structure, the
Speaker 1: electronic structure of the material that causes it to become
Speaker 1: super conductive UM? And so part of that study or
Speaker 1: part of those sorts of materials are we have the
Speaker 1: ability now to build materials essentially atom by atom. Right,
Speaker 1: we can use ultrahivac chambers or autonical area position or
Speaker 1: other methods where UM, you can build a crystal lattice
Speaker 1: as you would like to. Crystal lattice is just the
Speaker 1: structure that a crystal solid material with a crystalline form
Speaker 1: exists in UM. We can actually control that growth. And
Speaker 1: so building those materials and trying to understand the you know,
Speaker 1: what effect would a silicon um a silicon phase next
Speaker 1: to a you know, UM, I don't know whatever, some
Speaker 1: other kind of ceramic phase. What effect would that have
Speaker 1: on conduction of electrons? Right? What effect dold that have
Speaker 1: on the super connecting properties. That sort of testing is
Speaker 1: going on across the country, and it's it's super interesting,
Speaker 1: and frankly it's above my pay grade. Wow. I didn't
Speaker 1: go into I didn't go into physics specifically because I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't understand what electron hole is I'm
Speaker 1: not going to worry about it. Have chemicals, not atoms,
Speaker 1: and not electrons. Let's pause here for a word from
Speaker 1: our sponsor, and we've returned. It's somewhat inspiring, is it
Speaker 1: not to to think that these sorts of questions may
Speaker 1: have answers? Uh that, and well, they certainly do have answers,
Speaker 1: but that we may discover these answers within our individual lifetimes.
Speaker 1: That's to me, that's that's fascinating, assuming we don't burn
Speaker 1: the whole shebang down, right but right, but this so okay,
Speaker 1: So that's the real life provable version of where we are.
Speaker 1: I especially appreciate the point you made, Chris, about how
Speaker 1: we're we're sort of projecting what we know as humans
Speaker 1: onto any hypothetical extraterrestrial society. That that point about the
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon stayed with me, because of course, if we
Speaker 1: only had spears and we were making up a story
Speaker 1: about a superior your civilization, they would have the biggest
Speaker 1: and best spear, right exactly. It wouldn't even be a spear, though,
Speaker 1: it would be something completely different that you have no
Speaker 1: concept of. That's what it just everything. But that's why,
Speaker 1: that's why stories of super weapons and like the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: where things like weapons that never broke, weapons that never
Speaker 1: went dull right, you know they had no It wasn't
Speaker 1: even like, oh they imagined what a gun would be
Speaker 1: or you know, um anything like that. You know, it
Speaker 1: was just they were like, oh, what if our spears
Speaker 1: never broke, but if they never went dull um, that
Speaker 1: would be a super weapon. Yeah, but what about via
Speaker 1: Maana's Chris come on right, right, right? Yeah, the flying right,
Speaker 1: the flying carpets of death with a nuclear raised. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I can say it genuinely intrigues me. That
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that I or doesn't mean that I
Speaker 1: believe that that's precisely what it was. I think it's
Speaker 1: just such an intriguing concept that was somewhat explored, um
Speaker 1: but not fleshed out in any kind of material way.
Speaker 1: But does it ever does it ever make you wonder
Speaker 1: if it's just being described in the understanding as we're
Speaker 1: talking about this, but it was some kind of um
Speaker 1: more than natural phenomena like teology. Yeah, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: genuinely like, I'm wondering if like, when you're thinking about
Speaker 1: that philosophically and you pull yourself out a little bit
Speaker 1: of the scientific mind. Um like does that does that
Speaker 1: give you pause at all or does it make you
Speaker 1: go down a rabbit hole? Or do you just kind
Speaker 1: of push it away as like that's obviously not what
Speaker 1: this is. Yeah, well so honestly, one of the one
Speaker 1: of the things, you know, one of the first books
Speaker 1: on this subject that I really you know, besides like
Speaker 1: the you know, Time Life, right, like those kinds of
Speaker 1: kids books. Are you talking about Mysteries of the Unknown,
Speaker 1: Because if you are, sir, I thank you to treat
Speaker 1: that ground series. I know, it's a listen, it's close
Speaker 1: to a lot of our hearts, and it's very important
Speaker 1: as as a work of scholarship. I'd say it's very
Speaker 1: it's you know, the book series that launched a thousand podcasts. Um.
Speaker 1: The one of the first books on this that I
Speaker 1: really read seriously was actually Eric von Danikin's Chariots of
Speaker 1: the Gods. And I love the idea, you know, because
Speaker 1: it is it's fascinating, it's so intriguing, and especially especially
Speaker 1: when you know, like twenty thirty years ago, when um,
Speaker 1: when I was growing up reading those you know, we
Speaker 1: didn't we really didn't know a lot or I should
Speaker 1: say this knowledge of the Mayan civilization and these other
Speaker 1: civilizations was pretty limited in terms of what I had
Speaker 1: access to. You know, So reading these things and reading
Speaker 1: about like the pyramids, um, you know, the pyramids, the
Speaker 1: angles and the pyramids coming together in this function that
Speaker 1: made pie this special numb or I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, that had to be Aliens. And then you
Speaker 1: just find out that like pie is defined as the
Speaker 1: ratio of angles in a triangle, and it isn't as
Speaker 1: interesting anymore. That being said, the problem with the idea
Speaker 1: is it becomes. And this is the problem of a
Speaker 1: lot of paranormal ideas generally, is it becomes it basically
Speaker 1: falls into a fallacy that's similar to the fallacy or
Speaker 1: similar to the argument style that um Descartes used in
Speaker 1: his famous meditations on first Philosophy. And so the the
Speaker 1: argument essentially is, and I'm sure you all know this,
Speaker 1: cogito ergo sum right is the famous phrase that decart said,
Speaker 1: which translates to I think therefore I am so that
Speaker 1: specifically references he he had this thought experiment, and he
Speaker 1: was working at a time where he was trying to
Speaker 1: determine philosophers. Generally, we're trying to determine what could you
Speaker 1: know about the universe, about the world around you that
Speaker 1: came just from pure logic, just from rationalism, right, that
Speaker 1: didn't require experimental work or knowledge gained from outside of you.
Speaker 1: And so philosophers called this a priori knowledge, right, as
Speaker 1: opposed to knowledge a gain from the world, which is
Speaker 1: called a posterior eye knowledge. What they cart determined was
Speaker 1: So he goes through this this you know, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty short read, and it's a really interesting work, I'd say,
Speaker 1: But so he goes through this kind of this lengthy
Speaker 1: discourse about, well, my eyes are wrong all the time
Speaker 1: about stuff, right, Like, I get tricked. There's optical illusions.
Speaker 1: I don't see things all that well from far away,
Speaker 1: even though things are there. Um, I have dreams, right,
Speaker 1: I have all of these things. I misremember things all
Speaker 1: the time I have there There seems to be something
Speaker 1: about my my you know, sensory apparatus that sight and
Speaker 1: hearing and taste and feeling everything else that can be tricked.
Speaker 1: And so he positive this idea of what's called decards
Speaker 1: demon which is the idea that imagine that before all
Speaker 1: of the sensory input gets to you, right, so these
Speaker 1: you're seeing something from far away. That information is traveling
Speaker 1: to you, but right before it gets to you, there's
Speaker 1: a demon who changes it in a way that makes
Speaker 1: it into what the demon wants you to see. Could
Speaker 1: you discern that that was happening another way of right,
Speaker 1: the answer is no, and that's why. Well so, and
Speaker 1: that's what and that's what Descartes said, right was the
Speaker 1: only thing therefore that I can know really in any
Speaker 1: way is that I must exist somewhere, because I'm even
Speaker 1: thinking in the first place, right, so, because I'm thinking
Speaker 1: I must exist somewhere. That's the only thing that I
Speaker 1: can know. And then you know, um, as you know,
Speaker 1: as I assume, decart packed up his books and was like,
Speaker 1: I'm done, I don't have the work. Ever again, I
Speaker 1: did it and figure it out. The only thing I
Speaker 1: can know? Um that same argument, Stallard, That issue, I
Speaker 1: would say applies to the ancient astronaut theory. You know,
Speaker 1: it becomes a point where it's like, okay, well, now
Speaker 1: we know that, for instance, the Pyramids, the stones that
Speaker 1: built the pyramids, we know from basic physics that that
Speaker 1: a team of like ten people could move one of
Speaker 1: those huge stones. You know, they would use tools, they
Speaker 1: would use rollers and things, but it's not impossible that
Speaker 1: they would move them. So then they say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: maybe then the Aliens didn't build the pyramids, maybe they
Speaker 1: just use them for something mysterious. And then we find out, well,
Speaker 1: the pyramids were used for X, Y, and Z, and
Speaker 1: they were constructed this way because of this, And every
Speaker 1: time we find more answers, they they kind of pushed
Speaker 1: the goal posts back, and they say, well, no, you know,
Speaker 1: it's getting to the point where, you know, next season
Speaker 1: ancient aliens are gonna be talking about how the Aliens
Speaker 1: came down and helped us shimmy the stones over. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like the stuff that the aliens would have to
Speaker 1: do get smaller and smaller every year as we learn
Speaker 1: more and more about the Age world and about these sites.
Speaker 1: And eventually, though at the at the root of that argument,
Speaker 1: you could always ask, well, who taught the aliens to
Speaker 1: do that stuff? Then? If if the aliens came and
Speaker 1: taught us how to build the pyramids and Moi and
Speaker 1: everything else, who taught the aliens other aliensis? And so
Speaker 1: eventually someone has to do the kind of basic science
Speaker 1: that we're saying humans did, So what's the point of
Speaker 1: the aliens in that in that argument? Then? Right, there
Speaker 1: is no point of them in that argument. They go away.
Speaker 1: And it's the same argument that comes up with things
Speaker 1: like say what Jeb Card would call the grand unified
Speaker 1: field theory of the paranormal of the paranormal unified field
Speaker 1: theory UM, this idea that you know, well, in UFO cases,
Speaker 1: when you see a UFO you're being abducted or something.
Speaker 1: The reason that all those cases are different is because
Speaker 1: the aliens are changing what you experience and see to
Speaker 1: be what they want you to remember. Well, decardes demon right,
Speaker 1: we did that already, we didn't like, we already had
Speaker 1: this argument um and it you know, it worked out
Speaker 1: great for Decard. But I don't think you could make
Speaker 1: the same point now and it would work out as
Speaker 1: well for you. So it just it becomes an argument
Speaker 1: that and that happens a lot of times in these fields.
Speaker 1: And it's because in my mind at least, it's because
Speaker 1: these fields are not linked to a real academic history. Right,
Speaker 1: there are things that people have, there are there are
Speaker 1: actual scientists that are working on the question of what
Speaker 1: a UFO abduction really is and what I mean by
Speaker 1: that is something like, for instance, you can ask, if
Speaker 1: this is a hallucination of some sort, then it would
Speaker 1: appear that there are thousands of people in the United
Speaker 1: States and you know, even more across the world having
Speaker 1: the same sort of hallucinatory experience. Well, what of the
Speaker 1: physical action that causes that experience, what's the what's the
Speaker 1: mechanism in the brain if nothing else? Exactly right? And
Speaker 1: and and it turns out that just like with other
Speaker 1: types of delusions or thinking errors or whatever, people have
Speaker 1: similar people have similar because we live in this in
Speaker 1: a world that's kind of shaped, you know, for humans,
Speaker 1: we have similar fears, right um, we have similar anxieties,
Speaker 1: we have similar things that we imagine. You know, we
Speaker 1: may not want to think that way necessarily, but there's
Speaker 1: a reason that there are certain phobias, are certain types
Speaker 1: of dreams that are common. It turns out that maybe this,
Speaker 1: the abduction experience, is another one of those common things
Speaker 1: that is, for some reason fear hole to humans that
Speaker 1: happens due to a chemical imbalance or something or whatever.
Speaker 1: Right um, those kinds of questions are things that we
Speaker 1: can ask seriously, we can ask scientifically, And that one
Speaker 1: kind of presupposes the reality of the situation, right, the
Speaker 1: reality of the event itself in question. But there are
Speaker 1: questions that we can ask that don't presuppose that. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: there are thousands of people again, and we've met you know,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm sure you guys have met them, right,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, Ben, you've met them when we
Speaker 1: went to the conference together. I've met many of them
Speaker 1: myself too. There are people who legitimately believe that they've
Speaker 1: they've had a terrifying experience with something from the stars,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, that is not in dispute, right. What
Speaker 1: is a dispute is the reality of that underlying thing.
Speaker 1: But there is still a really, you know, a very
Speaker 1: real group of people who spend money on things that
Speaker 1: are harming them. You know, hypnosis sessions and herbal t
Speaker 1: you know, keys with crystals, you know, whatever in them,
Speaker 1: and all kinds of junk. Right. There are people take
Speaker 1: being taken advantage of. There's a philosophical question I think
Speaker 1: there that is it ethical to let them be taken
Speaker 1: advantage over that way? And a lot of those people, frankly,
Speaker 1: you know, they vote. A lot of those people make
Speaker 1: decisions for the rest of us right, Um, with their
Speaker 1: with their votes and with their political donations and with
Speaker 1: their activism and everything else. So getting a grasp on that,
Speaker 1: getting and getting an understanding of well, why do people
Speaker 1: believe these things? What effect does that have on their
Speaker 1: other beliefs about science or psychology or whatever, and and
Speaker 1: how does that affect the world that we all live in?
Speaker 1: You know, Again, those are important questions that people are
Speaker 1: starting to grasp with, grapple with now. Um that it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of starting to have an effect. You know,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, not believing in climate change, it didn't
Speaker 1: really have an effect. Right when an entire country is
Speaker 1: a flame, Um, it seems to mean more. We're gonna
Speaker 1: take a short break here. We'll be right back with
Speaker 1: Chris Cogswell right after this. And we're back with Chris Cogswell. Well,
Speaker 1: I would I agree with that. I would also I
Speaker 1: would also advance that just a bit to say that
Speaker 1: there are there are things that seemed uh completely unreasonable
Speaker 1: to believe in or to give any serious credence to
Speaker 1: uh twenty or thirty years ago, that now are now
Speaker 1: are accepted as fact one of the one of the
Speaker 1: and this is outside of the realm of the hard science.
Speaker 1: But UH. One observation that we've always made about the
Speaker 1: term conspiracy theory is that it it is often used
Speaker 1: to UH or the term fringe. They're often used to
Speaker 1: reduce the credibility of something such that it is put
Speaker 1: on the level of UH, like on the level of
Speaker 1: the idea that the United Kingdom is run by these
Speaker 1: descendants of reptilian aliens and for some reason they're just
Speaker 1: old pills UH, because that's what they do. But but like,
Speaker 1: for instance, years ago, a specific example saying that a
Speaker 1: large amount of the so called illegal drug trade was
Speaker 1: financed by state actors and UH financially aided by international
Speaker 1: banking cartels. People people did say, that's crazy, that's cockamami.
Speaker 1: It turns out that that was very much the case,
Speaker 1: if not across the planet all the time, there are
Speaker 1: at least several examples where that provably was true. And
Speaker 1: in one of the reasons I think that the realm
Speaker 1: of science UH is unique and different in regard to
Speaker 1: this search for the truth is that we are able to,
Speaker 1: regardless of our personal beliefs, we are able to reproduce experiments,
Speaker 1: We were able to make observations that are consistent once
Speaker 1: we understand all the variables involved. But I would also
Speaker 1: I would also ask you this, this is the that
Speaker 1: Sorry for that Ted talk guys, I just had to
Speaker 1: get that out there. But but but I have to
Speaker 1: I have to ask you this. This is one of
Speaker 1: the questions that we always love to ask people who
Speaker 1: do have scientific acumen. Do you believe that it is
Speaker 1: possible the US or some other state actor has uh
Speaker 1: created uh technology that would be considered you know, uh
Speaker 1: more sophisticated than anything publicly available, Like is the Are
Speaker 1: all these stories that we hear about suppress technology true?
Speaker 1: And if so, to to what degree? You know? Like
Speaker 1: we know we know that they're approving cases of say
Speaker 1: um UFOs later turning out to be classified aircraft, right,
Speaker 1: but a particular alloy or something that's only available at
Speaker 1: a particular place in a skunkwork somewhere that you cannot
Speaker 1: find anywhere else. Yeah, So, what is there credence to that?
Speaker 1: And if so, how far does it go? What's the
Speaker 1: uh kind of asking you to be our our canary
Speaker 1: in the critical thinking coal mine? Here? Let me yeah? Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: so has there ever been anything that you heard of
Speaker 1: where you said actually that uh yeah, that that is
Speaker 1: suppressed technology or is or would you say most of
Speaker 1: it is more like you know campfire stories. No, well,
Speaker 1: so I mean so, well, first off, I just want
Speaker 1: to say, you're talking about the reptails, like that's not
Speaker 1: the truth, and I don't so I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: they're clearly reptiles. Look at the eyes. Um. Um. The
Speaker 1: well in reality, right that science is always like so
Speaker 1: there's this idea in the sciences, and actually it's it's
Speaker 1: becoming a bigger and bigger issue. Um. Started really being
Speaker 1: an issue in psychology in um, like the early to
Speaker 1: late tens, right, they're not twenty times to two thousands,
Speaker 1: right up to like twenty ten, let's say, And then
Speaker 1: it started to bleed over into other fields. Um, it
Speaker 1: turns out that science science has a crisis right now.
Speaker 1: That's that's occurring with reproducibility, and the scope of the
Speaker 1: problem in some fields is really bad. Right. So in
Speaker 1: psychology almost a very small number of papers turned out
Speaker 1: to be reproducible. So, in other words, that process that
Speaker 1: you're saying, where if you do an experiment with scientific
Speaker 1: rigor in your lab and then you publish it I
Speaker 1: should be able to replicate those experiments. It turns out
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of interest in publishing replication reports
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen, So p will haven't been replicating experiments really,
Speaker 1: and so now it's starting to as that technology transitions
Speaker 1: from the lab into industry, UM, companies are realizing, oh
Speaker 1: my god, we're wasting Like I think the last figure
Speaker 1: I saw was it something like fifty of their research
Speaker 1: and development budget in some in some fields, right, biotechnologies,
Speaker 1: when one example, in particular, pharmaceuticals is one example, UM
Speaker 1: of their research spend in a given year is wasted
Speaker 1: on reports that cannot be reproduced, that are not usable science. Right.
Speaker 1: So that that is a really real problem affecting the
Speaker 1: sciences right now. So that's that's and that's why you
Speaker 1: see so many UM in the news and things. You know, oh,
Speaker 1: cancer has been solved, right, you know, cancer has been cured.
Speaker 1: We've we figured out a way to cure cancer. And
Speaker 1: then that never makes it to the marketplace, right because
Speaker 1: those papers that are so wonderful that seemed to cure cancer.
Speaker 1: First off, it's like curing a single type of cancer
Speaker 1: in a specific mouse genetic line. You know, you under
Speaker 1: various specific conditions and everything else and whatever. Um. But
Speaker 1: also a lot of those papers like, uh, there's a
Speaker 1: reproducibility test done um on cancer research in particular, it
Speaker 1: was something like papers couldn't be reproduced. Now, this was
Speaker 1: back in like again the early two thousand's, right, and
Speaker 1: it's gotten it seems to have gotten more stringent and better.
Speaker 1: But that's it's still a problem. Right. So that's the
Speaker 1: first thing, and it's it's not something that science podcasts
Speaker 1: really talked about because it's kind of like the science
Speaker 1: is dirty secret right now. Um. But it's a huge
Speaker 1: issue in terms of the The reason I bring it
Speaker 1: up though, not to just go on a wild tangent
Speaker 1: um from my own ted talk um. Science is always
Speaker 1: and it depends on the field, but science is usually
Speaker 1: like the academic sciences are usually at minimum tend to
Speaker 1: like twenty years advanced of what we have out there
Speaker 1: in the marketplace, you know. Um. And so the parts
Speaker 1: of science were were really good, the public tends to
Speaker 1: get wrong. They tend not to know about, and the
Speaker 1: parts that were actually pretty bad at they also tend
Speaker 1: to be misinformed about. So give me an example, right,
Speaker 1: molecular modeling, So actually modeling a chemical UM reaction taking place?
Speaker 1: How many chemicals do you think we can react at
Speaker 1: once on a computer and have it work in like
Speaker 1: a sensible amount of time? But I'll say a day
Speaker 1: just modeling a reaction, modeling a simple reaction and one
Speaker 1: equals two chemicals interacting. Yeah, let's say like A plus
Speaker 1: B gives you C. Okay, Okay, I understand that. Thanks easy, right? Chemical? Easy? Um?
Speaker 1: So I'm let's how about this give me I don't know,
Speaker 1: I was gonna I was gonna shoot really low, just
Speaker 1: because it does seem like it is more complex than
Speaker 1: I'm imagining it. Okay, I'll because it's it's a hard
Speaker 1: question to ask. It's a hard question to answer in
Speaker 1: the first place, because it's like how many apples do
Speaker 1: I have in my bucket? Like, um, it's not many.
Speaker 1: It's not many molecules that we can model at once. Um.
Speaker 1: And when we do model them, we model them really simply, right.
Speaker 1: We do either something like, um, we know that A
Speaker 1: plus B goes to C. We also know CE can
Speaker 1: go to five other things. We know that A plus
Speaker 1: C can go to a couple of things. You know
Speaker 1: that B plus C can go to a couple of things.
Speaker 1: So we kind of build it out that way where
Speaker 1: it's almost more like a almost like the way Google
Speaker 1: searches work. Right, it builds out almost like a neural net.
Speaker 1: Not only a neural net, but you know, it builds
Speaker 1: out like almost like a tree branch graph. And then
Speaker 1: based on that, just based on pure probabilities of how
Speaker 1: many of these things result in product A, how many
Speaker 1: resulting product B, how many result in products. See, we
Speaker 1: do something like a Monte Carlo simulation, and we just say, well,
Speaker 1: that's what we're gonna get, right, where there's a cheap
Speaker 1: it's the highest percentage chances we end up with chemical
Speaker 1: d at the end of this reaction. So that's what
Speaker 1: your prediction will happen, right, But it turns out chemistry
Speaker 1: is really complicated. Right. When something reacts, it doesn't just
Speaker 1: magically happen it. It reacts because the molecules strike each
Speaker 1: other and there's enough force there. There's a forces kind
Speaker 1: of the wrong word, but there's enough energy in the
Speaker 1: collision that a reaction can occur, a bond can break,
Speaker 1: and then another bond can form. Right. That's super complicated.
Speaker 1: Um And suddenly it's suddenly chemistry is a lot less
Speaker 1: like doing those kind of simple Mono Carlo simulations of
Speaker 1: you know, we have this many possible reactions and these
Speaker 1: many possible reactions, et cetera. It turns a lot more
Speaker 1: into something like modeling the crashing of cars right as
Speaker 1: right of one of Carlow cars. Right, Yeah. Um, it
Speaker 1: suddenly becomes you know, you just taken account momentum and
Speaker 1: position and you know, do you model one dimension or two,
Speaker 1: two or three or right? How do you do all
Speaker 1: of that? Um? It's really it gets really complicated. We
Speaker 1: can't model past like a very simple reaction at this point.
Speaker 1: Our computers aren't fast enough, there's not enough processing power,
Speaker 1: and frankly we don't know enough about how those reactions
Speaker 1: happen really, right. Um. The one group that's really doing
Speaker 1: work like this, they're basically doing those kinds of Monte
Speaker 1: Carlo simulations um out of m I T you know,
Speaker 1: but actually modeling like a physical chemical reaction happening between
Speaker 1: two species that we don't study in the lab. Just
Speaker 1: predicting based on their structure what reactions will happen. That's
Speaker 1: basically been the same like we've been doing that the
Speaker 1: same way since like the eighteen eighteen nineties, you know,
Speaker 1: when the periodic table of normal elements was essentially established. Right,
Speaker 1: So that part we're really bad at. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: building alloys, building materials at the atomic scale, we're really
Speaker 1: good at that. That we've been able to do for decades, right,
Speaker 1: So making a ton, you know, a single layer thick
Speaker 1: of gold that sits in between you know, sandwich between
Speaker 1: two atomically thick layers of silver that attaches to a
Speaker 1: silicon wafer. UM to test that surface conductivity or something.
Speaker 1: That stuff we've been able to do since essentially since
Speaker 1: we were young kids, you know, UM, nano engineering has
Speaker 1: been possible. It's it's funny. Actually, the material that I
Speaker 1: ended up working on in my PhD UM the m
Speaker 1: C M twenty two m P chemical, which is Mobile
Speaker 1: Corporation matter number twenty two and then P stands for precursor.
Speaker 1: That chemical was actually developed the year that I was born,
Speaker 1: like thirty miles from my house in New Jersey, UM
Speaker 1: at at an ex On mobile plant or research and
Speaker 1: development plant. I'm sure we've been polluted the water anywhere
Speaker 1: at any time in Jersey. That's fine. Oh no, I've
Speaker 1: got a couple of extra fingers. But it's fine, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it really helps in the lab um. But
Speaker 1: you know that that stuff we're really good at, like nanoengineering,
Speaker 1: material synthesis, material analysis, understanding, of those sorts of things
Speaker 1: we're really strong at. So I would say in terms
Speaker 1: of you know, the gup, you know, we don't have
Speaker 1: like an anti gravity ray. We don't have a UFO someplace,
Speaker 1: right That's that's that's very very unlikely. I swear, I
Speaker 1: swear there is not a CI agent here with a
Speaker 1: knife to my throat. Um. You know that that level
Speaker 1: of technology, know that there's no I don't think there's
Speaker 1: really any evidence that we have that right now in
Speaker 1: the public space. However, the stuff that we can do
Speaker 1: with the lab scale is is so far out of
Speaker 1: the general realm of knowledge for most people that I
Speaker 1: would argue that every man on the street, you know,
Speaker 1: has no sense, really has no way of saying what
Speaker 1: it is actually starting tofically possible right now, because we're
Speaker 1: it's so far outstretched. What makes it into industry at
Speaker 1: this point, I see? And that problem is of course
Speaker 1: historically compounded by the UH, by the errors of pop
Speaker 1: side reporting at times. Right, going back, going back to
Speaker 1: your cancer in one line of a very specific cancer
Speaker 1: in a very specific line of lab mice appears to
Speaker 1: have been mitigated to some degree in this specific application,
Speaker 1: with all other things controlled. And then of course cut
Speaker 1: to daily mail forty eight hours later, cure for cancer. Uh.
Speaker 1: Laboratory refuses to release the further details, right, probably because
Speaker 1: they're waiting for their paper to publish. Um. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that makes sense. It sounds like the argument then, is
Speaker 1: is less one of nefarious activity and uh or it's
Speaker 1: also an argument at least in part, that the average
Speaker 1: person is just not plugged into that world and there
Speaker 1: has to be a high level of attrition from successful
Speaker 1: laboratory work too widespread commercial and military application. Is that
Speaker 1: about exactly? Yeah? I mean you know a good example
Speaker 1: that actually I actually used this example a lot in UM,
Speaker 1: I just used this example a lot of my daily life.
Speaker 1: I guess i'd say, is what what year do you
Speaker 1: think the first laser beam was was done in a laboratory?
Speaker 1: When do you think the first laser was developed? Uh? One,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one. I'm gonna go eighteen, all right, split
Speaker 1: the difference. It was like ninety was we had a
Speaker 1: functioning laser beam in a laboratory, right, it was somewhere
Speaker 1: around there. The first the laser beam actually making it
Speaker 1: to the marketplace, though, The first time that technology made
Speaker 1: to the marketplace of like everyday people was nine. And
Speaker 1: what is its application? It was used And it wasn't
Speaker 1: even really a public application. It was used for cutting.
Speaker 1: It was a COEO two laser for cutting of of metal.
Speaker 1: It was used in welding and metal cutting. Right. The
Speaker 1: first the first commercial use of a laser beam actually
Speaker 1: like in the public sphere was in barcode scanders in
Speaker 1: the UM. So this technology that Einstein worked on, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? This is like, this is a
Speaker 1: technology that changed the world as we knew it. UM
Speaker 1: was was around for like sixty years earlier than most
Speaker 1: people realize, you know, UM, and it's still stuff that
Speaker 1: you know. That's that's the kind of argument that I'd
Speaker 1: say it is really happening here is that first off,
Speaker 1: science is not Science is not very good at communicating
Speaker 1: with the public. Right, That's that's problem one, Like scientists aren't.
Speaker 1: First off, scientists don't necessarily consider it to be part
Speaker 1: of their job right to communicate with the public, because
Speaker 1: the public is not really the people. In some ways,
Speaker 1: the public is funding the science right through your tax dollars. Um,
Speaker 1: But science as a whole, I would argue, doesn't really
Speaker 1: feel like it's their responsibility to communicate to the public generally.
Speaker 1: And that's a huge problem because it lets things like
Speaker 1: these pseudo scientific ideas and everything else affect the way
Speaker 1: that science gets done and the way that science is
Speaker 1: funded and just people's everyday lives. You know, Um, the
Speaker 1: government shutdowns that happened in the United States, they're like,
Speaker 1: they're very, very detrimental for science. You know, when those
Speaker 1: when that happens, people sell lines are dying, people's people's
Speaker 1: experiments are not going finished, you know, because their funding
Speaker 1: comes from the government in many cases. So it is
Speaker 1: a serious thing. And again, I think we're just starting
Speaker 1: to realize the reverberations that a general population distrustful of
Speaker 1: the sciences, distrustful of experts generally, but also just misinformed
Speaker 1: in many cases. Um, you know, science can't Scientists cannot
Speaker 1: sit in their ivory tower and just expect that it's
Speaker 1: not you know, we're not going to feel the earthquake,
Speaker 1: uh affect us so uh, I want to I want
Speaker 1: to now with that context, with that lay of the land. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I would like to ask you for a gut
Speaker 1: check on some specific things, right, mysterious things proven or
Speaker 1: disproven to some degree. Are they real or not? Or
Speaker 1: could they be in the future? Uh? First up, all right, man,
Speaker 1: don't hate us cold fusion? Yes, no, in the future.
Speaker 1: What's going possible? What are your thoughts? So for listeners
Speaker 1: that don't, I guess for people that don't really know
Speaker 1: what cold fusion is, and I'm assuming you're I mean,
Speaker 1: I know you guys, Yeah, you know, it's general knowledge
Speaker 1: at this point, right, Um. But the basic idea is
Speaker 1: currently what new clean energy does is fission, which is
Speaker 1: two atoms rather an atom split in right into two
Speaker 1: separate things. If it's physical material, it will undergo fission
Speaker 1: and break up into two things. So uranium decays into
Speaker 1: two things, and then that decay releases energy that we
Speaker 1: then used to turn water into steam and then power
Speaker 1: a steam turbine. Right. That that's how we get the
Speaker 1: energy out of the nuclear reactor. Fusion, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: would be two small molecules coming together and making a
Speaker 1: bigger one or not molecules, but atoms interacting coming together
Speaker 1: and make a bigger one, releasing far more energy UM
Speaker 1: and then of it being cold, fusion would be doing
Speaker 1: that in a way that it could happen act say
Speaker 1: like a room temperature right UM, where it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to happen at the core of the sun. UM. Physics
Speaker 1: isn't a weird spot right now, guys. Physics isn't a
Speaker 1: really weird spot. Physics is kind of a at a crossroads. WHOA,
Speaker 1: you're saying, there's a chance I'm saying I'm saying that.
Speaker 1: I'm saying that string theory didn't really pan out the
Speaker 1: way that a lot of people thought it would, and
Speaker 1: our understanding of kind of the atomic structure UM has
Speaker 1: sort of stalled. We we've kind of known as much
Speaker 1: as we've known since. And I'm not I'm not a
Speaker 1: physicist by training, right I'm I'm a chemical engineer, so
Speaker 1: more of like material science, I guess really would be
Speaker 1: if you had to put a hat on me. UM.
Speaker 1: But physics has kind of sat in the same position,
Speaker 1: you know, since maybe really two thousands. Physics hasn't had
Speaker 1: any really big major breakthroughs, and that's because it's getting
Speaker 1: more and more energetically costly and just literally economically costly
Speaker 1: to do the experiments that are needed to do um
Speaker 1: for people to come to some kind of understanding. So
Speaker 1: I would say that maybe cold fusion is a hard maybe,
Speaker 1: let's say, right, but but but here's the thing. If
Speaker 1: we could do it, how would we even harness that energy? Right? Um?
Speaker 1: Nuclear power plants today are huge, right there, big fatilities.
Speaker 1: I mean they're not you know, they're not like generous
Speaker 1: like a crazy you know, amount of space needed or
Speaker 1: anything else. But um, they're quite large. They have public
Speaker 1: sentiment against them generally, I would say, Right, And this
Speaker 1: is where that intersection between kind of politics and science
Speaker 1: and economics and sociology and all these other things, this
Speaker 1: is where this all comes into play. Maybe cold fusion
Speaker 1: could happen. If it does happen, would we even put
Speaker 1: it into development? If we did discover cold fusion, would
Speaker 1: we even use it? I think somebody would. Somebody would
Speaker 1: attempt to think somebody. It would probably either be a
Speaker 1: private institution or a country that developed it, similar to
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project, where it would be coveted in and
Speaker 1: the belief would be This is just my opinion, but
Speaker 1: the belief would be that all countries are all powers
Speaker 1: are also you know, at this cutting edge of development,
Speaker 1: and they are soon going to find out or you know,
Speaker 1: we cannot let anyone else find out, like a first
Speaker 1: past the post kind of thing. And that's what it
Speaker 1: feels like to me. Definitely could happen. Right, But this
Speaker 1: is actually part of that argument. This is part of
Speaker 1: the argument that happens a lot in these kind of
Speaker 1: far out their fields, with these kinds of crazy technologies. Right.
Speaker 1: One really famous example of a pseudoscience that is kind
Speaker 1: of stuck around for a long time because the military
Speaker 1: keeps funding it for god knows what reason is zero
Speaker 1: point Energy research. Right, similar kind of idea in that
Speaker 1: the promise of it is that we would end up
Speaker 1: with basically a limitless source of energy. Right, we end
Speaker 1: up with with a perfectly if you know, almost more
Speaker 1: than perfectly efficient system that's pulling energy essentially out of
Speaker 1: the void. The vacuum space breaks you know, every law
Speaker 1: of thermo dynamics. It's completely wacky. But um, it's such
Speaker 1: a big promise, and you know, it's not very costly
Speaker 1: to investigate, because you just need a pen and paper
Speaker 1: and some knowledge of calculus. Um that you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's all theoretical at this point, so it's not really
Speaker 1: a hard spend, right, But um, that idea even right again,
Speaker 1: if we did have just think about the the societal
Speaker 1: impact that would have. Right if we if we developed
Speaker 1: cold fusion immediately all of the geopolitics around the Middle
Speaker 1: East goes away. Do we think that we would stick
Speaker 1: around in the Middle East if we didn't need oil anymore?
Speaker 1: That seems unlikely, right. Would we worry about North Korea
Speaker 1: anymore if if we had, if we had, or would
Speaker 1: we think about them the same way? If we suddenly
Speaker 1: had the ability to produce a near infinite source of energy,
Speaker 1: what would our responsibility then be to poor countries where
Speaker 1: they don't have the resources to produce infinite energy. G
Speaker 1: it's not going to cost us anything to transmit it
Speaker 1: to them because it's infinite. Right, there's an infinite source,
Speaker 1: So it doesn't really matter anymore how much efficiency it
Speaker 1: takes to transport energy because we don't care, right, we
Speaker 1: can just dial up the other side. Um. All of
Speaker 1: those things are like huge, huge questions and huge issues,
Speaker 1: And I think that there are a lot of the
Speaker 1: reason why these energy technologies are stopgap a lot of
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, actually one of the first, one
Speaker 1: of the first papers I wrote about this stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, since when I when I chose grad
Speaker 1: school and chemical engineering, I kind of you know, you
Speaker 1: have to at a certain point, you gotta pick. You're
Speaker 1: sitting there in the philosophy classroom, like, am I gonna
Speaker 1: go for the philosophy PhD or chemical engineering PhD? I
Speaker 1: went with chemical engineering, but I'm hoping one day to
Speaker 1: go back to get the philosophy one. But anyways, the
Speaker 1: one of the papers I wrote about this sort of
Speaker 1: subject in the kind of philosophical realm was looking at
Speaker 1: the United States. We've always lagged behind Europe in adopting
Speaker 1: energy technologies because we have a lot more resources, like
Speaker 1: a lot more natural resources. So the United States, Europe
Speaker 1: was almost done with coal by the time we started
Speaker 1: using it because we had so many trees that we
Speaker 1: could just burn them. We just didn't matter to us.
Speaker 1: The same thing is true about why we haven't adopted
Speaker 1: really nuclear energy the same way that some other countries
Speaker 1: have renewable energy. Right, we have so much space and
Speaker 1: so much water, um that it you know, having a
Speaker 1: dirty coal plant in your town or you know, in
Speaker 1: some part of the middle of nowhere in you know,
Speaker 1: um wherever, right, it doesn't have the same effect it
Speaker 1: does if it's in the middle of Dresden or the
Speaker 1: middle of Berlin or Paris. So weird. My road close
Speaker 1: to my house is called Dresden and I totally had
Speaker 1: that And sorry, there has nothing to do with anyways.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so so there's a lot of stuff to
Speaker 1: think about there, But so cold cold fusion. I think
Speaker 1: I think it's a maybe that we would developed the
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna learn more about the underlying science
Speaker 1: that would make something like that possible. I just don't
Speaker 1: I personally actually don't think that there would be enough
Speaker 1: economic driving force to make it become something that industry
Speaker 1: picks up. At present. I've got one more for you
Speaker 1: that we're getting out, uh, silicon based life. Go oh,
Speaker 1: an easy one, an easy one. Yeah, we thought, honestly,
Speaker 1: do you it's theoretically possible. It's I'm I wondered from
Speaker 1: just with your chemical background, if you imagine, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously you can't prove it or not, but perhaps the
Speaker 1: likelihood that somewhere on some distant plane silicon was the
Speaker 1: chemical that brought forth life. So UM, it's yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that it's definitely a possibility. Right for listeners or
Speaker 1: for people that don't necessarily kind of get why silicon
Speaker 1: would be a good option. UM, I suggest you, if
Speaker 1: you're not driving or like doing something important right now, UM,
Speaker 1: pull up a periodic table on on the internet, and
Speaker 1: look at where carbon sits on the periodic table. Right,
Speaker 1: So carbon sits in M. Carbon is element number six,
Speaker 1: and so it sits in AH. It sits essentially in
Speaker 1: column fourteen, right, Um. Right underneath carbon is silica, right, silicon. Um.
Speaker 1: The reason that we think silicon could be another source
Speaker 1: of kind of the chemistry of life like carbon is
Speaker 1: is because they're in the same that same column of
Speaker 1: the periodic table. Right. Elements that are in that same
Speaker 1: elements in the same um column have the same electronic
Speaker 1: configuration in the same valence shell or outermost shell of electrons,
Speaker 1: and that's the shell that actually undergoes chemistry. So that's
Speaker 1: why we think silicon might have similar properties to carbon,
Speaker 1: and that it can bond in kind of a tetrahedral shape. Um,
Speaker 1: it might be very amenable to things like polymerization. And
Speaker 1: we actually know that silicon does essentially undergo polymerization. That's
Speaker 1: how we made most of my materials in school. Um. Anyways,
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's a it's a possibility, right,
Speaker 1: But we also have a very we have a very
Speaker 1: stringent view again of what life constitutes, you know. So, um,
Speaker 1: we tend to think that an alien species is going
Speaker 1: to need to digest food in a similar way that
Speaker 1: we do. We assume that they'll talk, that they'll they'll
Speaker 1: use sound waves to communicate to one another. We assume
Speaker 1: that they'll have you know, legs and arms, right, and
Speaker 1: usually they'll have two of them that just a little
Speaker 1: bit smaller and a little bit greater. There's got big
Speaker 1: bulbous weird heads. Um. We assume that they we assume
Speaker 1: that they see. We assume that they don't they only
Speaker 1: have five senses, they don't have more senses than we do,
Speaker 1: or they don't have less, right. All of that are
Speaker 1: huge assumptions, and so we make the same kind of
Speaker 1: assumptions with our chemistry to in some way the idea
Speaker 1: of it being like a silicon based life form. Um.
Speaker 1: We assume that that would mean something like the kind
Speaker 1: of amino acids and the DNA structure and everything else
Speaker 1: would form um where just silicon replaces carbon. And that's
Speaker 1: certainly one possibility. But we have no concept of what
Speaker 1: causes really consciousness. Right. It's one of the biggest it
Speaker 1: is the biggest unanswered question for and kind of the
Speaker 1: last hill on which metaphysics will die. Is this idea
Speaker 1: of consciousness if you take the material and I've said
Speaker 1: this word before, materialist, right, The materialist view in the
Speaker 1: sciences is this idea that, uh, everything reduces down to
Speaker 1: the interactions of atoms. So your emotions, if we had
Speaker 1: a powerful enough computer, your thought, know, you think of
Speaker 1: a red ball bouncing if we hit a powerful enough computer.
Speaker 1: The materialist, the pure materialist, would argue that we could
Speaker 1: just by modeling the interactions of all of the atoms
Speaker 1: and all of the molecules inside of your brain, we
Speaker 1: could replicate that thought in an artificial being, and we
Speaker 1: could therefore cause you to have thoughts too by affecting
Speaker 1: your neural networks in different ways and whatever. A non
Speaker 1: materialist or someone who's not so inclined to believe the
Speaker 1: materialist point of view would say that you your consciousness
Speaker 1: does not seem to reduce fully down to those interactions
Speaker 1: of atoms. Right there are there are properties of the
Speaker 1: mind and of the world that don't reduce down to
Speaker 1: their individual parts. So, um, how would your neural network
Speaker 1: or how would the interaction of the atoms inside of
Speaker 1: your brain explain the pain you feel when remembering a
Speaker 1: painful moment. It's easy mirror neurons. I get it, totally understand.
Speaker 1: So abstracted, it's so abstracted from you know, Adam A
Speaker 1: interacting with Adam B and causing molecules see to be produced.
Speaker 1: That's a chemical that causes it. You know, it's so
Speaker 1: abstracted at that point that is really hard to conceptualize
Speaker 1: that that might be the link. So we don't. We
Speaker 1: don't even know that they need. You know, what if
Speaker 1: we find out in fifty years, in ten years, in
Speaker 1: two years, whatever, What if we find out that consciousness
Speaker 1: is just caused by I don't know, you know anything,
Speaker 1: you know, we can pick anything that we want to
Speaker 1: be the cause of consciousness. I believe it was originally
Speaker 1: mushroom cult. Uh, they got into some psilocybin. I think
Speaker 1: that's where it came from, pretty sure. But you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm saying though right like it, it could be we
Speaker 1: might not recognize life, um because we don't have the
Speaker 1: way to communicate with it, right, Vickenstein said famously, if
Speaker 1: a lion could speak, we wouldn't understand it. That's a lion,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. They think they have our chemistry, um,
Speaker 1: forget an alien that you know, might be silicon based
Speaker 1: or whatever. So I don't know. I mean, it's definitely possible,
Speaker 1: and I think it'll be really interesting as we get
Speaker 1: better chemistry to kind of try to build some of
Speaker 1: those building blocks and see if they do interact in
Speaker 1: the same way. And you know, um, we're kind of
Speaker 1: it's kind of a weird situation right now where the
Speaker 1: public generally believes in all this stuff is being possible
Speaker 1: um and and that's kind of bore out by the
Speaker 1: statistics that you quoted at the beginning and everything else.
Speaker 1: Um And science is taking some of it more seriously
Speaker 1: than it would have before, but not in the way
Speaker 1: that kind of the UFO community would want them to,
Speaker 1: you know. So there you know, it's not there's not
Speaker 1: scientists coming out onto the lawn of the White House
Speaker 1: and be like, you know, aliens are real. You know
Speaker 1: your uncle was right the whole time. UM, at least
Speaker 1: they're coming out, they're coming out and saying, like, you know,
Speaker 1: the chances of their being life developing on another planet
Speaker 1: is so you know, the the chance of it not
Speaker 1: happening is so small that we have to take into
Speaker 1: consideration that it could be the case. Absolutely, and this
Speaker 1: this at this point, Christopher, unfortunately we are we are
Speaker 1: getting the signal from mission control. My friend, we've said
Speaker 1: too much for today. So before the UH to say
Speaker 1: hello to the c I a guy who's got the
Speaker 1: v Sallie that night figure throat UH, and hello to
Speaker 1: our intern at the n S A Steve UH. This
Speaker 1: has been This has been fantastic. This has been a
Speaker 1: very broad look at a number of different things. And
Speaker 1: I like that we're ending on a more uh inspirational note.
Speaker 1: You know, we truly are at a crossroads. So I
Speaker 1: I have a motion for the table, which today is me,
Speaker 1: Matt and everybody listening. Okay, I proposed we uh we
Speaker 1: promote Christopher Cogswell from from guests on stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know, to our to our our our
Speaker 1: team of scientific consultants. Right science consultants are you okay
Speaker 1: with that? You're comfortable with that? Man? Do I get
Speaker 1: a pin? Uh? We're working on the pen. And to
Speaker 1: be honest, great okay. Soft note a lot of the
Speaker 1: stipend is in ben bucks and it is and it's
Speaker 1: based it's a Germanium based uh metal. But don't worry,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be fine. Yeah. So seriously, we would love
Speaker 1: to we we would love to dive in more to
Speaker 1: these to these topics in future episodes. Matt and I
Speaker 1: have a list of stuff we didn't quite get to today,
Speaker 1: but hopefully there's always another podcast in the future. So
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Christopher Cogswell. The podcast is the
Speaker 1: add Scientists Podcast. Uh, Chris, Where can people learn more
Speaker 1: about you? Your co host and the show on the
Speaker 1: on the social meds. So you can go to the
Speaker 1: mad Scientist podcast dot com. You can also find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter at mad Scientists Podcast. Um, I'll be the
Speaker 1: one arguing with the UFO guys. That's right, that's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: super fun. You can find us on Facebook. Um, you
Speaker 1: can always you know, find us the Mad Scientist Podcast.
Speaker 1: Our logo is pretty pretty easy to recognize. Um, it's
Speaker 1: like an explosion of science stuff. With being relooking or
Speaker 1: it's a jackal aandarn face. So go check it out. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: find us anywhere. Man. We're always happy to have people
Speaker 1: come on and talk and guys, I'd love to come
Speaker 1: back on any time you want me. Hey, we're we're
Speaker 1: certainly interested. We didn't talk about the Black Nights satellite.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about cases that you couldn't explain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we like, you're the closest thing you've come to experiencing
Speaker 1: that line in between magic and technology. Yeah, we guys,
Speaker 1: we we got so much stuff another. We have so
Speaker 1: much for another episode. You let me know when I'm
Speaker 1: coming back on. Great. You were talking about abduction theories
Speaker 1: and I was like kind of crouched on my seat
Speaker 1: here waiting to bring up sleep paralysis and the topics
Speaker 1: we brought up. I didn't. We didn't hit any of that.
Speaker 1: It's all good. Well, we'll just have everybody go through
Speaker 1: hypnotic regression and convince them that they did in fact
Speaker 1: here that other episodes. Yes, so plant some memories. That's
Speaker 1: a little ethical even for me. Yes, this ends our episode,
Speaker 1: but not our show. Please do check out the Mad
Speaker 1: Scientists podcast. We believe you will enjoy it. You can
Speaker 1: also continue the conversation with our favorite part of the show.
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