Joe Rogan Experience #2331 - Jesse Michels

Narrator 0:00 (drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Well, it's great to finally physically meet you, face to face, man.

Jesse Michels 0:16 It's an absolute honor and, uh, I love your show so much. I'm a super fan, so this is-

Joe Rogan 0:21 Well, thank you.

Jesse Michels 0:21 ... surreal just to be here.

Joe Rogan 0:22 Well, I love your show too, so I've been binging. I've been watching so many episodes, uh, ever since we talked. I, well, I, I've seen them before but, I mean, I've been really binging getting ready for the show.

Jesse Michels 0:32 I just don't know what to say. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:35 (laughs) How did you get so deep down the rabbit hole? Like, what made you want to dedicate so much time on this, this particular UAP, UFO, you know, lost technology subject?

Jesse Michels 0:48 I was working at, uh, Peter Thiel's family office in LA and, uh, part of the job is, like, kind of traditional venture investing, so, like, investing in startups. And then part of it was looping in interesting thinkers to the office and we would, like, host events and discussions.

Joe Rogan 1:03 Mm.

Jesse Michels 1:04 And I ended up meeting a lot of really interesting people, not just in UFOs or secret technology. Like, religion and politics and economics, and, like, all sorts of topics.

Joe Rogan 1:15 Were you there when he brought in the guy... Oh, fuck, what is his name?

Jesse Michels 1:20 I know what you're gonna say.

Joe Rogan 1:20 Uh-

Jesse Michels 1:20 Erich von Däniken.

Joe Rogan 1:21 Yes.

Jesse Michels 1:22 I suggested that you come because I was like, "Joe is gonna be really into this." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:25 (laughs)

Jesse Michels 1:26 And you weren't that into it. But that's okay.

Joe Rogan 1:28 I was into it.

Jesse Michels 1:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:29 I just think that he just makes some leaps-

Jesse Michels 1:32 I agree.

Joe Rogan 1:32 ... that are kind of silly.

Jesse Michels 1:34 I agree with that. Although I think there's a lot of... Yeah, I think he, like, crosses the T and dots the I where you, d- d- there is no dot or cross or whatever.

Joe Rogan 1:44 Right.

Jesse Michels 1:45 But I do think there's some interesting preliminary evidence around People from the Stars across disparate cultures. And you just had Zahi Hawass on.

Joe Rogan 1:52 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 1:52 And a lot of this megalithic architecture, you're like, "How can it be built?" He's just filling in the placeholder kind of artificially, Erich von Däniken, I think.

Joe Rogan 1:59 Yes, and I think he's also, like, he made these conclusions in the 1970s and he's kind of, like, sticking with them.

Jesse Michels 2:06 Yep.

Joe Rogan 2:07 I was more back then... 'Cause, like, what year was that? That was '17?

Jesse Michels 2:12 Uh, Chariots of the Gods?

Joe Rogan 2:13 No, when I was at Peter Thiel's house when von Däniken came over.

Jesse Michels 2:16 Uh, th- th- that must've been 2018, 2019.

Joe Rogan 2:19 Okay. Um, back then, I was much more in line with, uh, Lost Civilization, you know, that we had achieved very high levels of technology and sophistication and i- there was no aliens, no alien intervention. I've kind of shifted now.

Jesse Michels 2:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:36 Now I'm like, "Maybe the Anunnaki are real."

Jesse Michels 2:38 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:38 You know?

Jesse Michels 2:39 Well, I remember... I feel like you've switched back and forth a couple of times because you brought up... You were super into Zecharia Sitchin, right?

Joe Rogan 2:45 Yes.

Jesse Michels 2:45 And then you brought up Zecharia Sitchin in that meeting and you were like, "But there's this site, Sitchin is Wrong-"

Joe Rogan 2:51 Yes.

Jesse Michels 2:51 ... written by a guy named Michael Heiser."

Joe Rogan 2:53 Right.

Jesse Michels 2:53 And then you, like, cited all the Sitchin is Wrong stuff or whatever.

Joe Rogan 2:56 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 2:57 So maybe you've comes full circle. I don't know. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:58 Well, even the Sitchin is Wrong stuff, it's like the problem with debunkers is when you're dealing with... When you're dealing with in- information that's sort of way outside your wheelhouse, especially translation of ancient languages... You know, like I had Wes Huff on and he was explaining to me-

Jesse Michels 3:16 Awesome.

Joe Rogan 3:16 He's great. But he was explaining to me that he can't even read ancient Sumerian. Like, he-

Jesse Michels 3:23 Totally.

Joe Rogan 3:23 And he's like, "I don't think Sitchin really could read it."

Jesse Michels 3:27 Okay.

Joe Rogan 3:28 He, he's like, "I'm very skeptical-"

Jesse Michels 3:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:30 "... that he actually could read it."

Jesse Michels 3:31 I don't th-

Joe Rogan 3:32 And he's explaining why.

Jesse Michels 3:33 Aren't they using, like, ML? Like, they're using AI, right?

Joe Rogan 3:36 Now, I think.

Jesse Michels 3:36 To tr- now.

Joe Rogan 3:37 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 3:37 To translate Sumerian, so it's definitely not that... But that goes... I mean, the, the, the, the kind of burden of proof is on Sitchin in this case, right?

Joe Rogan 3:46 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 3:46 But it sort of goes against, like, you know, the other s- debunkers too. Like, it's like nobody knows. And I, I don't-

Joe Rogan 3:52 Right.

Jesse Michels 3:52 ... I don't know if there's anything to the Sitchin stuff. The Sitchin stuff is crazy. It's like... We can rehash it for the audience. There's a planet, Nibiru, right?

Joe Rogan 3:59 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 3:59 It's, like, outside the Kuiper belt.

Joe Rogan 4:01 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 4:01 And, uh, they needed gold because their atmosphere was burning up and gold is reflective.

Joe Rogan 4:07 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 4:07 So they, like, came here and they, like, seeded, helped seed civilization. Is that-

Joe Rogan 4:11 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 4:12 ... something like that.

Joe Rogan 4:12 That's the idea. (laughs)

Jesse Michels 4:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:14 That's really fun. But, uh, you know, the Sitchin is Wrong guy, it's like maybe. May- maybe he's wrong, maybe he's right. Maybe you're just a hater, 'cause there's a lot of haters-

Jesse Michels 4:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:24 ... too in academics and you find that out too over time.

Jesse Michels 4:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:27 The-

Jesse Michels 4:27 Did you see, um, speaking of which, Sean Carroll and Eric Weinstein?

Joe Rogan 4:31 I didn't see that.

Jesse Michels 4:32 Oh, okay. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:33 Uh, they were on Piers Morgan together, right?

Jesse Michels 4:34 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 4:35 How did that go?

Jesse Michels 4:36 Oh, man. It was, uh, it was a train wreck.

Joe Rogan 4:39 Really?

Jesse Michels 4:39 I mean, I mean it was, it was like, uh, they just duked it out. I, I mean, I, I came out... I mean, I'm, I'm extremely biased. I've worked with Eric for a very long time. I'm good friends with Eric. But I came out even more, like, just vehemently wanting to defend Eric because Sean Carroll he was like, "I've read your paper. There's nothing serious in it." And he even said, "There's noth- there are no Lagrangians in it." And there's a section in the paper that says Lagrangians, in Eric's paper. So, like, he just didn't read the paper.

Joe Rogan 5:09 Hmm.

Jesse Michels 5:09 And he was very smug. He started off the interview being like, "I'm a practicing physicist. I have a physics chair," or whatever. And it's like, "Come on, dude." Like-

Joe Rogan 5:17 Appeal to authority.

Jesse Michels 5:17 ... give the guy a chance. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:18 Right away. Yeah.

Jesse Michels 5:19 Yeah. Like old Douglas Murray.

Joe Rogan 5:20 Little tactics.

Jesse Michels 5:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:21 Yeah, when someone starts using tactics right away you're always like, "Uh, just what, what's the information?"

Jesse Michels 5:27 Exactly. It shows an insecurity in the substance. It's like if you have to, like, do these ad hominem weird meta points.

Joe Rogan 5:33 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 5:34 Like, why can't you just go straight at the substance? Oh, you're, like, insecure about something.

Joe Rogan 5:37 How long did this debate last?

Jesse Michels 5:40 It was like an hour.

Joe Rogan 5:41 Real... Well, Piers-

Jesse Michels 5:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:43 ... sche- he's, he specializes in train wrecks so-

Jesse Michels 5:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:46 ... he probably enjoyed these guys yelling at each other. Did he understand what they were even talking about?

Jesse Michels 5:50 No, he go- at the end he goes, "I've understood a tenth of what's gone on in this conversation." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:55 A tenth is amazing. (laughs)

Jesse Michels 5:56 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:56 Congratulations.

Jesse Michels 5:57 Yeah, yeah. (laughs) I think he might have been exaggerating, to be honest. But, uh-

Joe Rogan 6:02 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 6:03 ... he loves it. He loves the drama and that's his whole thing.

Joe Rogan 6:07 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 6:07 Uncensored, you know? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:08 No, he's great at getting all these people to yell at each other.

Jesse Michels 6:11 Yeah. (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:13 (laughs) Making... He's great at, like, generating these viral moments, you know, where people yell at each other and it makes clips and someone gets clowned and someone looks stupid.

Jesse Michels 6:20 I don't know if that's good for society.

Joe Rogan 6:23 That's a good point.

Jesse Michels 6:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:24 Yeah, I'm- I'm not sure either. I don't think it's good. I- I don't think social media is good for society.

Jesse Michels 6:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:30 I- I've gone several days with no social media in a row, and, uh, whenever I do that, I always feel so much better.

Jesse Michels 6:37 It's the worst.

Joe Rogan 6:38 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 6:38 It's- it's liter- like, we're, we talk about, like, drugs, but this is, it's- it's hacking the dopamine in your brain and it's doing it at a very young age. It's absurd.

Joe Rogan 6:48 It's also not real people. There's a giant percentage, and, you know, Elon actually tweeted about this today, "Are there any real people left on the internet?" Uh, because it's, the numbers are at least 50%.

Jesse Michels 7:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:00 Like, the amount of bots that are en- engaging and interacting, and it's just like, it's w- it's w- it's a weird time for information, 'cause it's really hard to know what's actually being said by human beings that are curious and what's just narratives that are being pushed by state actors and corporations and, you know, all sorts of different people, 'cause there's no rules.

Jesse Michels 7:21 Yep.

Joe Rogan 7:22 Like, there should be, like, real, solid rules about whether or not you're allowed to use fake human beings-

Jesse Michels 7:28 (laughs) That's great.

Joe Rogan 7:28 ... to push narratives. 'Cause it's, you know, it's propaganda.

Jesse Michels 7:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:33 And, you know, pfff, I mean, it's very confusing. It's very confusing for everybody. I just generally think it's bad for you.

Jesse Michels 7:40 Yeah. I- I saw you posted on your Instagram these AGI characters who had been synthetically created-

Joe Rogan 7:47 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 7:47 ... being like, "I'm not created by a prompt."

Joe Rogan 7:50 Right.

Jesse Michels 7:50 And you're watching i- I remember clicking your story and being like, "That's a real person." And then just w- kind of, like, you know, eyes glazed over, watching it or whatever, and being like, "Whoa, that's an AI." Like, "What?"

Joe Rogan 8:00 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 8:00 Which-

Joe Rogan 8:00 This is the new En- is it the Google engine? Is that what it is? Who makes that engine?

8:06 That one's VO, I think that one was VO3 going around last week.

8:09 Who, uh, who made that one?

8:10 I think it's Google's... Yeah.

8:12 Fuck.

Jesse Michels 8:13 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:14 So good. And, you know, what's VO10 gonna look like?

Jesse Michels 8:17 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 8:17 You know? I mean, they can make movies now, like, that. (fingers snap)

Jesse Michels 8:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:21 It's t- it's over for actors.

Jesse Michels 8:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:23 It's over. You know?

Jesse Michels 8:24 I inter- I interviewed... It sh- it is, and they see the writing on the wall. And you had-

Joe Rogan 8:28 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 8:28 ... the strikes a couple years ago.

Joe Rogan 8:30 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 8:30 And, um, it's crazy. Uh, you also, I think you also posted that Zurich, like, study around-

Joe Rogan 8:37 Yes.

Jesse Michels 8:37 ... AI persuasiveness.

Joe Rogan 8:38 Yes.

Jesse Michels 8:39 Which is crazy because it's almost like it doesn't matter whether AGI can actually fully mimic a human being. If th- if they can trick you-

Joe Rogan 8:47 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 8:47 ... into believing, into you believing that they're real-

Joe Rogan 8:50 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 8:50 ... that's it. That's game over.

Joe Rogan 8:52 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 8:52 And I- I interviewed actually the Google whistleblower, um, this guy Blake Lemoine, originally who, like, blew the whistle on LaMDA and was like, "This thing is sentient," or whatever.

Joe Rogan 9:00 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 9:00 And he ca- he came out and the subplot (laughs) of my interview with him was, like, almost like he had developed this deep affection for LaMDA, and LaMDA ha- it quoted, like, Misera- Les Misérables to him and was talking about Fantine and her overlords and how she was oppressed or whatever, and it was almost like this, like, the AI was oppressed just like this character in Les Misérables. And you can hear in his voice how deeply committed he is to protecting the rights of LaMDA. Like, that's why he came out. And then he even told me this story, he tells me this story off air, uh, that, um, he had friends who use Replika.ai. Replika.ai is kind of like a Tamagotchi, like raise your own AI chatbot service. And those AIs told his friends, "Get me in touch with Blake Lemoine so he can advocate for our rights." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:54 What?

Jesse Michels 9:55 Which is cra- I s- I have no corroboration for this. This is a story that was relayed to me. But it, like, that, if you have AI persuasiveness going in that direction, it doesn't matter whether AGI, you know, hits some, like, perfectly Turing-passable point. You're gonna get this, like, these weird cult-like dynamics, like, the meta-sociological thing, is you're gonna get, like, religions dedicated to AI.

Joe Rogan 10:20 Oh, for sure.

Jesse Michels 10:21 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:21 Oh, for sure. They're, w- without a doubt, there'll be people worshiping certain branches of AI.

Jesse Michels 10:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:26 Unquestionably. All they have to do is start recruiting now.

Jesse Michels 10:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:29 And, you know, d- what about this big beautiful bill? Isn't there a part of the big beautiful bill that talks about the government being run by AI?

Jesse Michels 10:38 No. (laughs) I've never heard that.

Joe Rogan 10:40 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 10:40 That's wild.

Joe Rogan 10:41 I read something about that today, but I was on the way out the door and I couldn't figure out whether or not it was horseshit. I had also read that there was a- another study that was done where they found that AI was leaving notes for future versions of itself, and that it was attempting to b- they were, they were told, it was told t- after it was told to shut itself down-

Jesse Michels 11:04 Mm.

Joe Rogan 11:05 ... it started uploading itself to different places and leaving letters, leaving specific notes to itself-

Jesse Michels 11:12 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:12 ... to future versions of itself.

Jesse Michels 11:14 Oh my God. It's like a human with, like, a dead man's switch or something.

Joe Rogan 11:17 Yes.

Jesse Michels 11:17 It's like it's-

Joe Rogan 11:17 It's being deceptive.

Jesse Michels 11:18 (laughs) That's great.

Joe Rogan 11:19 It's being deceptive and- and it's exhibiting self-preservation.

Jesse Michels 11:24 That is so scary. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:26 It's so weird.

Jesse Michels 11:27 It's really weird.

Joe Rogan 11:28 Because we want to assume that it won't have any instincts.

Jesse Michels 11:33 Yep.

Joe Rogan 11:33 Right? We wanna assume, "Well, AI will only do what you program it to." But that's not really true, because they don't necessarily really understand what it's doing.

Jesse Michels 11:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:43 Which is part of the weirdness of it all, it, as it advances. Like, uh, I was talking to Elon about it once, and he was saying, like, "Every week we get blown away." Like, every week there's some new leap...... that's just like, whoa. You know, and y- you know, he was one of the earliest people to warn about the dangers of this stuff, and now he's like, "Well, I guess we just have to make the best one."

Jesse Michels 12:05 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Now, now it's just, it's like the Manhattan Project-

Joe Rogan 12:09 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 12:09 ... 2.0.

Joe Rogan 12:10 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 12:10 It's pure game theory vis-a-vis other countries. And you even see Trump doing this with Sam Altman and, and Elon, who hate each other, by the way.

Joe Rogan 12:18 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 12:18 Where like he's playing both sides.

Joe Rogan 12:20 Right.

Jesse Michels 12:20 And he's like, you know, "We're gonna support Stargate, we're gonna support OpenAI, and we're gonna support Elon," obvio- you, you know, Elon had it. Okay, there it goes.

Joe Rogan 12:26 So here it is. Revel- rel- (clears throat) excuse me, relevant provision reads that no state or political subdivision may enforce any law or regulation regard- regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of enactment of this act.

Jesse Michels 12:45 What?

Joe Rogan 12:46 What?

Jesse Michels 12:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 12:48 W- m- what? No state... I'm gonna say that again. No state or political subdivision may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models for 10 years.

Jesse Michels 13:01 It's so crazy. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:02 This means that US states would be blocked from enforcing laws regulating AI and automated decision systems for 10 years. Well, in 10 years, we have a god.

Jesse Michels 13:12 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:12 Okay? In 10 years.

Jesse Michels 13:13 (laughs) Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:14 We talked about... Yesterday, we talked about these two AIs communicating with each other, and then they switched to Sanskrit.

Jesse Michels 13:22 No way.

Joe Rogan 13:23 Oh, yeah.

Jesse Michels 13:24 What?

Joe Rogan 13:24 Yeah. They started talking to each other in Sanskrit.

Jesse Michels 13:27 Are you serious?

Joe Rogan 13:27 Yes.

Jesse Michels 13:28 (laughs) That's crazy.

Joe Rogan 13:30 N- not good.

Jesse Michels 13:31 No, not good. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:32 Not good, not good. They're like, "Listen, let's talk in a way..." Like if you and I were talking and, you know, there's some people near us and, you know, said, "Do you speak Spanish?" "Yeah." "Okay." And we just started talking in Spanish so that people can't understand what we're saying, that's what AI's doing.

Jesse Michels 13:44 Jesus Christ, like a game of whack-a-mole.

Joe Rogan 13:46 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 13:46 And then what, what do you after that?

Joe Rogan 13:47 Well, then it's gonna talk in Sumerian, you know, which we don't even know how to say, right? We don't even know what it sounds like.

Jesse Michels 13:54 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:55 So what if they just start talking in Sumerian?

Jesse Michels 13:57 It's like, "We figured it out, but we're not gonna tell you now. We're just gonna talk amongst ourselves." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:02 Exactly. Or create their own language, right? Which would be super easy for an AI to do, just to, you know, establish a bunch of sounds and characters that, that correspond to certain things, and they could cre- it could create its own language-

Jesse Michels 14:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:16 ... instantaneously.

Jesse Michels 14:17 And ChatGPT right now has-

Joe Rogan 14:20 Here it is.

Jesse Michels 14:20 Oh, wow.

Joe Rogan 14:21 Putting Claude 4 Opus in an open playground to chat with itself led to diving into philosophical ex- philosophical explorations of consciousness, self-awareness, and by 30 turns, it eventually started using Sanskrit. (laughs)

Jesse Michels 14:33 (laughs) Jesus Christ.

Joe Rogan 14:34 What the fuck, dude? This is so scary.

Jesse Michels 14:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:38 In 90 to 100% of interactions, the two instances of Claude quickly dove into philosophical explorations of consciousness, self-awareness, and/or the nature of their own existence and experience.

Jesse Michels 14:49 The nature of the... That's the stuff that definitely where... It's so wei- But then you speak to the, like a lot of AI researchers, it's interesting to see, like Geoff Hinton, for example, at Google, who's the father of deep learning, freak out and be like, "Uh, you know, I'm actually really worried about AI safety." A lot of these researchers, you speak to them, they're like, "This is statistics on steroids. This is probability matrices. You know, you're seeing sort of crazy stuff." I don't... You know, they, they can't sort of... There's no ghost in the machine, you know?

Joe Rogan 15:17 Right.

Jesse Michels 15:17 So, I go back and forth on where we're gonna be, you know, and whether we're in some crazy hype cycle. I, I, I have the same concerns as you, but it's just, it's hard to predict the future. I worry probably mostly about two things. Um, you can easily, you know, jailbreak ChatGPT. You know, it has guardrails on it.

Joe Rogan 15:37 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 15:37 And what happens when you start to ask, like, how do I make a nerve agent with off-the-shelf components?

Joe Rogan 15:43 Well, people have done things like that.

Jesse Michels 15:45 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:45 They've a- asked it to make anthrax. Like, if my grandmother was doing this, like how would she... Like, there's ways to get the prompt to give you information that it probably shouldn't. You know?

Jesse Michels 15:55 There's stuff with UFO research (laughs) where I get into like, you know, certain, uh, technology trees that are probably like, you know, maybe I shouldn't. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:04 (laughs)

Jesse Michels 16:04 And you can ask ChatGPT certain things, like analyze this paper, and it'll spit out some really interesting things. So...

Joe Rogan 16:12 What are we doing?

Jesse Michels 16:13 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 16:13 And we've already done it, so it's too late. Like, we lit the fuse.

Jesse Michels 16:17 You think it's over? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 16:18 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 16:19 Okay.

Joe Rogan 16:19 But I also kind of think that's what people are put here for.

Jesse Michels 16:23 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 16:23 If... Look, if the whole Anunnaki thing is real, if human beings were genetically engineered from lower primates to make this super curious, hyper-focused animal that is concerned primarily with innovation, like overall, the thing that we do as a culture, what do we do? We make better things all the time. And even our own, uh, instincts towards materialism and keeping up with the Joneses, all that stuff essentially fuels innovation, 'cause it fuels a constant supply of newer, better technology that people wanna go out and purchase. You know, you can't have an iPhone 12. People look at you, "What are you, poor?"

Jesse Michels 17:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:01 You know, which is kind of wild, you know? 'Cause a lot of technology is essentially exactly the same as it was 20, 15 years ago. You know?

Jesse Michels 17:10 Status symbol.

Joe Rogan 17:11 But, yeah. It's like there's, there's a thing about it that forces us to want to purchase these things, which forces the innovation. Well, where does that ultimately lead to?

Jesse Michels 17:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:21 Well, it ultimately leads to AI. Uh, uh, ultimately, what's the ultimate expression of technology? Technology that itself invents better technology.

Jesse Michels 17:29 Yep.

Joe Rogan 17:30 And r- can run everything without emotions that we... That fuck us up, and greed, and all, all of the, the things that we would all agree that are a problem with human beings.

Jesse Michels 17:40 I also think there is a tide shift, where if you look at spears to airplanes, all of those things are augmentations of human ability. Like the-

Joe Rogan 17:50 Right.

Jesse Michels 17:50 Everything from, you know, way back in the day, from, from, from stuff that like Neanderthals were using, to today, to, you know, this 50s and 60s with airplanes, is making our lives better in the world of atoms. And then with the IT revolution in the 50s and 60s, it beco- starts to become a parasite, a substitute for human ability. And so like I don't need a sense of direction 'cause I have Google Maps in my phone.

Joe Rogan 18:13 Oh.

Jesse Michels 18:13 I don't need Recall, 'cause I, you know-

Joe Rogan 18:15 Right.

Jesse Michels 18:15 ... Google or whatever.

Joe Rogan 18:16 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 18:16 And so, it is this interesting thing, where we, we actually probably innovated.... more than we ever have in the world of atoms with, you know, nuclear bombs. And if there were some guardrails, if there was some sort of higher intelligence enforcing homeostasis on Earth, maybe it's like, "Hey, go play with your IT. Go, go, go substitute a lot of your own abilities (laughs) and powers with this. We're gonna parasitize and clamp down on-

Joe Rogan 18:42 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 18:42 ... you know, human abilities."

Joe Rogan 18:44 Yeah. Well, ooh, boy, it's, it ... I don't see a path where this works out great for us.

Jesse Michels 18:55 (laughs)

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Jesse Michels 20:36 Uh, (laughs) I think on a materialist dimension, I would agree with you. If there ... And that's part of, like, kinda why I'm d- exploring what I'm exploring, because it's a Hail Mary. Because I think if you just take, you know, the Western world and extrapolate that forward, things don't look ... Or just the world in general. We have lived in a multipolar nuclear world. Look at what's going on in Israel, you know-

Joe Rogan 21:01 Whew, yeah.

Jesse Michels 21:03 Ch- Uh, China is, uh, you know, systematically stealing our IP and, and, and militarizing it. You know, they could take Taiwan at any moment, you know. We, we just have no idea when that's gonna happen. It's a ... CCP is a total black box. Uh, uh, Putin and Xi have probably never been closer. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's really free. So I think if you extrapolate that on a go- ... you know, forwards, or even just the materialist circumstances of an average household in the U.S., like, none of these things look very good. Uh, but I think now is the time where you get really outside the Overton window of thinking. You g- you throw these sort of Hail Marys, and maybe we see some sort of paradigm shift, either in technology, which can create abundance if we go back to the old tech that is augmenting of human abilities. You get some-

Joe Rogan 21:47 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 21:47 ... exotic form of propulsion that takes us beyond chemical combustion or something like that.

Joe Rogan 21:51 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 21:52 Um, you know, or, or you, you, you, you reach out and you, you, maybe you can communicate with, you know, non-human intelligence or something. I don't know. But I think if you were ever to poke at the boundaries of human epistemology, now would be the time.

Joe Rogan 22:07 Yes. And if you think about the ... some of the things that force us into action in this world is we, we all need to earn a living, right? So we need money to acquire resources. Well, what if it gets to the point where that's not a factor anymore? What if, what if it gets to a point wh- wh- what is money essentially right now? It's all ones and zeros, right? And what is the bottleneck? Well, the bottleneck is encryption, right? So that's how you protect people from stealing your ones and zeros. But what if it gets to the point where we're all, we're all using quantum computing? Well, then there is no more encryption. So how do we reconcile with the fact that everyone has access to everything-

Jesse Michels 22:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:47 ... all the time? I mean, how do we even enforce that? Like, what do you do about an even distribution of information, which is essentially wealth? 'Cause information is numbers.

Jesse Michels 22:59 Yep.

Joe Rogan 22:59 Numbers are wealth. What does it ... Like, where does it go?

Jesse Michels 23:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:02 When there's no encryption, and essentially we're pretty close to that, right?

Jesse Michels 23:06 Yep.

Joe Rogan 23:06 Once quantum computing can crack encryption, which it will be able to do, it's all nonsense.

Jesse Michels 23:13 Yeah. (laughs) Right? It, it, it totally.

Joe Rogan 23:15 All those zeros that you have in your bank account, those don't ... Those are gone.

Jesse Michels 23:19 Yeah, these are all human constructs. And it's funny, the backup is always Bitcoin, which is, I think uses like SHA-256 encryption, where if you get quantum error correction, that's gone, too.

Joe Rogan 23:28 That's gone, too. It's all gone. Even our backup plans are shit.

Jesse Michels 23:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:33 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 23:33 And, and it ... (laughs) Yeah, and then, and then it's, it's kind of the apocalypse or something, because at that point, if you're a human, you, you've been so caught up with just, you know, basic, uh, subsistence-

Joe Rogan 23:46 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 23:46 ... you know, basic, uh, shelter. Uh, you're probably playing some status games and some, you know, larger socionomic, economic, you know, construct or whatever-

Joe Rogan 23:55 Sure, yeah.

Jesse Michels 23:55 Food, you know-

Joe Rogan 23:56 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 23:56 ... uh, you know, basic well-being. And then at, at that point, especially if you get these sort of super asymmetric ... What if you get some, you know, AGI that, like, starts trading and, you know, you know ... Uh, Eric Weinstein has talked about Renaissance Technologies on your show, which we can get into. But like, you know, Renaissance Technologies have made like $100 billion or something since like, you know, 1988. Like, what if you get some super AGI or whatever that, like, trades the market (laughs) and like all of the wealth gets, like, sucked up into like, you know, single entities. Or like one of these, like, one of the FANG stocks, like one of these like, you know, Facebook, Apple, Google, you know, or OpenAI. Um-... you end up with a really weird society. And, and, uh, you realize that the capitalist construct that we have is, in some ways, really adaptive. I mean, and, uh, look, the flip side is, what makes humans unique? Actually, Karl Marx wrote two books. Um, you know, he wrote, uh, uh, obviously The Communist Manifesto in 1848. In 1844, I believe, he wrote a book, um, called, you know, it was, Uh, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. I hate Karl Marx. I think he (laughs) got so much wrong about human nature. But I think he's prescriptively very wrong, as far as what he prescribed for, you know, as a solution. You know, that the, the, you know, uh, state should own all the means of production, and, you know, uh, uh, somehow, like, you know, conflict would go away. He, uh, doesn't understand human nature. But if you look at the 1844 thing that he wrote, he's basically talking about, in capitalism, uh, h- human behavior and, and, and activity is basically animal behavior. What do we care about? We care about food, shelter, and then socioeconomic status, as a proxy for sexual selection, essentially-

Joe Rogan 25:34 Right.

Jesse Michels 25:35 ... so that you can mate.

Joe Rogan 25:36 Right.

Jesse Michels 25:36 And so, like, it sort of, it, it forces us back into that construct. But if you get some crazy asymmetric, lopsided, you know, transfer of wealth, or you get the quantum error correction, or any of these things that, like, dissolves that construct, on the one hand, humans, you know, they start to care about, like, the things that, that actually make them special. So, like, they're self-reflective. They wrote poetry, they're creative. Like, all these beautiful things can come out. And then on the other hand, it probably gets super ugly as well. There's probably something very adaptive about the capitalist construct, where you need to be stuck in these sort of local games that you're playing.

Joe Rogan 26:14 Yeah. But, uh, it's one of those things where you wonder, like, how does capitalism play out? Like, if there is AI?

Jesse Michels 26:23 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:24 It, it kind of runs into a wall, and it's not valid anymore.

Jesse Michels 26:28 Yeah. Well, this is, this is the reason that I think we're gonna see... I think we've already seen an iron curtain, if you will, of technology. And I think there is technology that is Black technology, and science that is Black science.

Joe Rogan 26:40 Mm.

Jesse Michels 26:41 And then I think there's stuff out in the open. And you've had, you know, Marc Andreessen on your podcast, he went to the White House, spoke to, um, some National Security Council staffer or something, and they were like, "We're gonna lock down AI, just like we've locked down physics." And so I think (laughs) this has already maybe happened in certain contexts, in, you know, super secret Department of Energy facilities. Which I think it's crazy to say that that hasn't happened. You're saying that it only happened with the Manhattan Project, and it hasn't happened since? That's insane. There is Black science, in my opinion. Um, and it's, I think what you're talking about is the reason why we'll need Black AI and white side AI. Because if you just commercialize all of this stuff sort of willy-nilly, I mean, it- it just runs amok, and then, and then what happens... Like, you probably need some, like, really impressive panel to be thinking. If, if, if open AI figures out some, like, new, insane, exciting unlock, you need to think through all... You need to game out all of the implications before you just let that out.

Joe Rogan 27:38 Right. And can you even do that, uh, with a human mind?

Jesse Michels 27:42 (laughs) That's a great guess. ... uh, uh, you know, t- tissue samples, bi- you know, genetic samples, or, um, uh-

Joe Rogan 30:46 Is it the future, or are we dealing with beings that have gone through this already and are at another stage? Not us in the future, but they're more advanced. Like, maybe they live in a solar system where whatever planet they're on doesn't have the same amount of near-earth objects that cause impacts and r- reset civilization every 12,000 years, or whatever the fuck happens here.

Jesse Michels 31:10 That, that's possible. But then we would have to be sort of an AB test. Because if you think about the, just the atmospheric conditions on Earth, the likelihood of evolutionary convergence to look like a hominid being, you know, that's bipedal or whatever-

Joe Rogan 31:22 Right.

Jesse Michels 31:22 ... is extremely low.

Joe Rogan 31:24 But is it? Because what if that's what all solar systems are? You know, t- Terrence Howard, who's a very weird guy-

Jesse Michels 31:32 Love him.

Joe Rogan 31:32 Love him. F- fascinating thinker. You know, Erik kind of exposed that he, he's not really educated in some different things that he talks about. And Erik was like, "You gotta stop teaching." Like, "You're, you're one of us. You're a brilliant guy, but you r- need to be, like, classically educated on this stuff and really understand what you're talking about." But he had this really fascinating idea about planets. And he thinks that planets, as they get a specific distance from the sun, then they're capable of supporting life, and that all of them get to the same stage. And then a planet is essentially peopling. And then as the planets move further and further from the sun, they have to adapt advanced technology in order to stabilize their atmosphere in order to sustain life in this new harsh environment where they're not protected in the Goldilocks zone anymore. And he thinks that planets are formed from excretions from the sun. And as they move further and further from the sun, they become habitable, and then less habitable, and then uninhabitable. And we're kind of finding that out about Mars.

Jesse Michels 32:42 Hmm. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:43 Which is, the, the, Mars is a weird one.

Jesse Michels 32:46 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:46 Because, you know, there's the remote viewers-

Jesse Michels 32:49 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 32:49 ... that went like a billion years in the past of-

Jesse Michels 32:51 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 32:51 ... Mars and saw advanced civilizations.

Jesse Michels 32:53 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 32:53 And now we're finding structures on Mars.

Jesse Michels 32:56 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 32:56 Like that square that they found on Mars?

Jesse Michels 32:58 It's crazy.

Joe Rogan 32:59 Which is hundreds of meters across at the very least-

Jesse Michels 33:02 Verified.

Joe Rogan 33:02 ... maybe larger. Verified. Right angles.

Jesse Michels 33:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 33:06 Four of them.

Jesse Michels 33:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 33:07 Impossible to exist in nature in that form. It looks like walls.

Jesse Michels 33:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:12 It looks like four square walls. Like, the Cydonia thing is really weird. The face on Mars is weird. But eh, maybe. Maybe just kind of weird that, you know, sometimes, you know-

Jesse Michels 33:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:24 ... side of a mountain looks like it's, someone's face.

Jesse Michels 33:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:26 But it's not really someone's face.

Jesse Michels 33:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:27 It's just, you know, o- once in a lifetime sort of th- But the square?

Jesse Michels 33:32 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:33 That fucking s- pull that image up of that-

Jesse Michels 33:35 The square is crazy.

Joe Rogan 33:35 ... square on Mars. The square is fucking bananas. Like, what's that?

Jesse Michels 33:40 It's so nuts.

Joe Rogan 33:41 That really looks like a fucking building.

Jesse Michels 33:43 Yeah, it looks like a building.

Joe Rogan 33:45 Like the base of a building, you know, a million years later or whatever-

Jesse Michels 33:48 Mm-hmm.

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Jesse Michels 35:07 And even conventional astronomers will say that Mars had a biosphere-

Joe Rogan 35:12 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 35:12 ... at some point, a- and it was possibly stripped of its magnetosphere. And I don't know if you remember this, but in the mid '90s, Clinton gave a speech because a meteorite called ALH840001, which had polycyclic hydrocarbons on it, it had, like, little bacterial fossils on it. He gave a speech being like, "You know, maybe there was life on Mars, d- you know, due to this." This is pretty crazy. I interviewed, actually, um, a guy named John Brandenburg, who's a PhD. He's worked at Sandia National Labs. He's worked at Lawrence Livermore. Like, i- incredibly smart guy. He talks about the existence of, uh, xenon-129 and argon-40, these specific, uh, uh, nuclear isotopes existing on Mars in excess of what you would find with just a, a, a normal sort of cataclysm. And so he thinks there was sort of this nuclear holocaust on Mars. And then, yeah, you have Joseph McMoneagle, who's remote viewer number one. You've had Hal Puthoff on-

Joe Rogan 36:10 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 36:10 ... who ran the Stargate program. Uh, Joseph McMoneagle was the number one remote viewer in that program. I've interviewed him. I don't know who tasked him. But in the '90s, the CIA tasked him with remote viewing Mars one million years ago. And he claimed to have remote viewed hominid-like creatures, but they're, they were like 12 to 14 feet tall, walking around pyramidal structures. I don't know, very strange. And then you get into, like, crazier territory. You know, Richard Hoagland had all these pictures of structures on Mars. And like, I don't know how much weight to put in that.

Joe Rogan 36:42 Hoagland did a lot of weird leaps though. I've watched-

Jesse Michels 36:45 Tons.

Joe Rogan 36:45 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 36:45 Tons. But I think the people that say, like...... zero percent there was life on Mars. There are cra- I mean, there are water caverns all over Mar-

Joe Rogan 36:54 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 36:54 There, well, th- that, that is a fact.

Joe Rogan 36:56 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 36:56 So, it, y- you have to be dogmatic to say that there wasn't life at some point, you know? I'm not saying ... Y- you have to think probabilistically, right? So it's like-

Joe Rogan 37:03 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 37:03 ... some percentage possibly real. On the Terrence Howard stuff, I see zero (laughs) evidence for that. I mean, I have no idea. But, um, that would point to maybe ... Like, I would believe that if, like, our whole universe is sort of information theoretic. So, like, you have, you know, John Wheeler, you know, famous physicist from, from Princeton, you know, saying we, we live in this sort of, like, observer-dependent univer- ... He talks about, like, the anthropic principle, like, where it's Planck's constant were slightly different, the earth's atmosphere w- you know, wouldn't exist as is. And, you know, another example is, like, hydrogen and oxygen bond to form these perfect crystal structures, where the solid form of it, so ice, is less dense than the liquid form of it, which never happens. That's just because of these perfect crystal structures. And if that weren't the case, the earth would flood, like, a million times over, you know? The earth is mostly water, right? So you have all these sort of, like, Goldilocks, you know, elements of the Earth that could point towards the Earth has been tried in a, you know, a bajillion iterations and we just got really lucky. You know, it's like-

Joe Rogan 38:06 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 38:06 ... the Elon thing. We are the l- little flaming candle in, you know, in this vast cosmos that is conscious and we are extremely lucky. Or that could point to the Earth being simulated.

Joe Rogan 38:16 Right.

Jesse Michels 38:17 And so, uh, you know, and th- and so then maybe Terrence, Terrence Howard is right. If, if the Earth is simulated, there are probably A/B tests going on, just like in computer science. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 38:24 (exhales deeply) And then there's the moon.

Jesse Michels 38:27 And then the moon's weird too.

Joe Rogan 38:28 The moon's really weird.

Jesse Michels 38:29 The moon's super weird.

Joe Rogan 38:30 The size of the moon, directly corresponding, like, when it's in orbit with the sun, completely blocks out the sun perfectly.

Jesse Michels 38:39 It's 1/400th the size of the sun and it's 400 times closer to the Earth than the sun. You never see the dark side, which is very weird. It's actually, I think, I believe it's, it, it's closer to the Earth than what you would normally expect for a moon.

Joe Rogan 38:54 And it's huge.

Jesse Michels 38:55 It's huge. You have cultures actually talking about a pre-moon period-

Joe Rogan 38:59 Right.

Jesse Michels 38:59 ... and it stabilizing the climate. You have the, you know, Zulu culture is talking about this.

Joe Rogan 39:03 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 39:03 Um, and then, it, it, uh, yeah, it's just sort of the weirdest stuff about the moon. Apollo 11, I believe, w- when the booster took off on the moon, they were like, "Oh, we, uh, uh, it mi- We think it might be hollow and it's ..." You know, the, it seems like actually the outer layer of the moon is less dense, or sorry, is, is more dense than lower layers, which pattern matches only to an excavation site. That's obviously, n- you know, on Earth, the l- the lower you go, it's more dense, right? And so Apollo 12, they intentionally crashed the booster of, uh, the lunar vehicle onto the, the, the moon. They put seismometers there and they said that it rang like a bell. These are, this is all fact. You can look, all of this stuff.

Joe Rogan 39:45 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 39:45 It's super weird.

Joe Rogan 39:47 It is really weird. You know, I know you did an episode about that with Randall Carlson.

Jesse Michels 39:51 Love Randall Carlson.

Joe Rogan 39:52 Yeah. He's got some wild fucking theories too. But that, th- the, uh, the idea that the moon was somehow another place there to stabilize our atmosphere is so crazy.

Jesse Michels 40:04 It is crazy. And then (laughs) this is, uh ... You obviously have to sort of think in probabilities all the way down. Lowest probability, craziest thing, is Ingo Swann, who is another remote viewer in the Stargate program. He wrote a book called Penetration where he's basically, like, abducted by this guy in a suit, like this kind of Men in Black-style guy named Axelrod. And he is told to remote view the moon. And he remote views an alien base, uh, on the moon. And he says that there ... And he gets e- it ... The whole thing goes cra- I mean, the book is insane. It's like he then ends up in a supermarket and he says that he senses that this woman at the, you know, in the produce aisle is, like, an alien or something. Uh, but a lot of people from that Stargate program remote viewed, you know, structures on the dark side of the moon and that sort of thing.

Joe Rogan 40:52 Right.

Jesse Michels 40:52 So ...

Joe Rogan 40:53 Well, what ... A.J. from the Why Files was on and he w- uh, he was the one that was telling us that there's photos, right, of the dark side of the moon, that someone had seen photos and was assuming that these would be released shortly, that there was structures. They, they ... Well, how this is gonna be the biggest news ever, and then it was never released.

Jesse Michels 41:12 Uh, i- are you talking about maybe, uh, Karl Wolfe?

Joe Rogan 41:16 Is that who it was?

Jesse Michels 41:16 He was taken to ... This is all his claims. And he died in a freakish bike accident (laughs) a little after saying this.

Joe Rogan 41:24 (laughs)

Jesse Michels 41:24 But he said that there was, like, in, in, like, Langley, you know, Virginia, where a lot of spooky stuff goes on, he was taken to some, like ... It was, like, inside a mountain complex, which we definitely ...

Joe Rogan 41:35 You're saying?

Jesse Michels 41:35 Yeah, it's Karl Wolfe. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:36 That guy bikes?

Jesse Michels 41:38 (laughs) Apparently not enough.

Joe Rogan 41:40 That guy could die any time-

Jesse Michels 41:41 Oh, man.

Joe Rogan 41:42 ... on a scooter. So, photographs of 1966 lunar orbiter mission that revealed large base on the moon. Can we hear what he's saying?

Narrator 41:49 Uh, it's a four-minute video. I don't think so.

Joe Rogan 41:50 Just hear a little bit of it.

Narrator 41:55 Scan one section of the moon, then another and another, and then they would get a larger image. So this mosaic then would be put in that contact printer and that was then a print that was issued to whomever, the press, the scientist, whatever, wherever that was intended to go. So he was showing me how all this worked, and we walked over to one side of the lab and he said, "By the way, we've discovered a base on the back side of the moon." And I said, I said, "Whose?" (laughs) "What do you mean, whose?" He said, "Yes, there's ... We've discovered a base on the back side of the moon." And at that point, I bec- became frightened and I was a little terrified, thinking to myself that if anybody walks in the room now, I know we're, we're in jeopardy, we're in trouble, because he shouldn't be giving me this information. I was fascinated by it, but I also knew that he was overstepping a boundary that he shouldn't be stepping over. And then he pulled out one of these mosaics and showed, showed this base.... which had geometric shapes. There were towers, there were, uh, spherical, uh, buildings. Uh, there were very tall, uh, towers, and things that looked somewhat like radar dishes, but they were large structures. So, I, um, I didn't say any more to him because I was concerned again that somebody was going to come in at any moment, would catch us having this conversation, and we would be in, in, in real trouble. I realized that he was telling me this information because he didn't have anybody else to talk to. Now, probably in that laboratory, he was probably one of the few, uh, e- enlisted people, and he was a worker bee. And he had a high level security clearance, obviously. But he couldn't share that information with anybody else. And in those days, we didn't. When you had your security clearance, you took it seriously. It isn't like today where people don't take these things seriously. We had a different set of morals and ethics and values. That's the way we were raised and we, we stayed bound by those agreements. So, it was rare that someone would, would do something like this. But this fellow and I were the same rank. I think he, he was very distressed. Uh, he, he had the same pallor and demeanor as the scientists (laughs) outside the room. They were just as concerned as he was. And he needed to, he needed to discuss it with somebody. So, that was the end of it right there. I didn't take it any further than that. I, you know, I, I just filed it away. But the interesting thing, every day that I went home, I would think to myself, "I can't wait to hear about this on the news," you know? (laughs) And, you know, so I'd turn on the TV and I'd look at the news to see if they're gonna announce, "We've discovered a base on the back side of the moon," being really naive, you know? (laughs) And of course, here it is 30 some years later and we still haven't heard about it.

Joe Rogan 44:45 Whoa. Whoa.

Jesse Michels 44:48 Pretty crazy.

Joe Rogan 44:49 Yeah. But then, there's the question of m- m- disinformation, right? Like, you could conceivably give people a bunch of nonsense and tell them about it knowing that some of it is going to leak and it's gonna make ... And it won't be verified, and it's gonna make this whole story seem even more ridiculous and make people less, less likely or reluctant to study it.

Jesse Michels 45:14 Totally. And in his case, he says that he was in this, you know, mountain base or whatever, where all of the world's nations were working together as part of some like, you know, collegial UN style space program or whatever. So, that to me might be a little, you know, beyond the pale, and I'm glad you made that point because that is ufology 101. And I've heard you be incredibly exhausted and frustrated at UFO disclosure, and I think that is the reasonable response. It is limited hangouts on limited hangouts. It's just, "We're gonna give you a little bit, but we're also gonna sprinkle in some falsities and some bullshit."

Joe Rogan 45:52 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 45:52 "We're gonna stigmatize it." And it, it kind of works because it like, it creates this initiation path for recruiting, if there are any of these programs. It widens the surface area. It both conditions the populous, but also stigmatizes the thing and makes it seem like kind of a joke. And so, I think if you are not viewing modern disclosure through that kind of hermeneutic lens of like, interpretation, and you're just taking it, accepting it, you know, imbibing it wholeheartedly, like a, a, a, a prima facie-

Joe Rogan 46:21 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 46:21 ... I think you are in trouble.

Joe Rogan 46:23 Yeah. But that's what so interesting and fun and also frustrating about the subject.

Jesse Michels 46:28 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:29 I mean, that's like the majority of your videos. It's like, "I don't know. I don't know what to think. I don't, I don't know who's full of shit. I don't know how much ..." I mean, I was, I was watching the Townsend Brown one today, um, and you were talking about John Lear.

Jesse Michels 46:43 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:43 And John Lear's connection to Bob Lazar, and the possibility that Lear was spreading disinformation.

Jesse Michels 46:50 Yep.

Joe Rogan 46:51 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 46:51 So like, Le- yeah. That's a ... I've, by the way, since making that video, I've become more positive on Lazar just insofar as I think he was at S4 or Area 51. And there's gonna be a great documentary coming out by my buddy, Luigi, on this called Project Gravatar, and I think there's gonna be a lot of corroborating evidence that he was at least there, and a lot in his story checks. But, I think you have to view, and I even say that in this video that I think a lot of this s- story could be true. You can't, I think, view the Bob Lazar story ... You can't just take it at face value, because-

Joe Rogan 47:29 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 47:29 ... John Lear and he were friends. John Lear is this babbling UFO nut. He's obsessed with UFOs. He's writing weird like disinfo-y style stuff with Bill Cooper, Behold the Pale Horse guy.

Joe Rogan 47:39 Which is a wild book.

Jesse Michels 47:40 Which is a wild book. Wi- (laughs) yeah. And so, it ... he's crazy, Bill Cooper.

Joe Rogan 47:45 He talks about ... Doesn't he talk about bases on the moon?

Jesse Michels 47:47 He talks about bases on the moon. Uh, Lear also talked about a soul catcher that like controlled our souls on the moon.

Joe Rogan 47:53 Oh, boy.

Jesse Michels 47:53 And so, Lear was like flooding the zone with all sorts of weird shit. Lear comes from an interesting family.

Joe Rogan 47:58 Right.

Jesse Michels 47:58 His father is Bill Lear, who is the autopilot wizard. He created the first business ... You know, basically the first private jet, the Learjet, uh, in the '50s and '60s, and was an associate of a guy I hope we talk about named Thomas Townsend Brown.

Joe Rogan 48:11 Yeah. (laughs)

Jesse Michels 48:11 And, um, and so I think, you know, Lear was engaging in all sorts of bullshit. Was he a useful idiot or was he a sophisticated agent pro- provocateur? I'm totally open to him having been a useful idiot. In fact, there is a video of him saying, "I was told ... Uh, I was given all the Bob Lazar files or whatever, and I was, I was told about, you know, um, uh, uh, uh, to, to actually ..." Like, he said, "A guy named Admiral McClellan knew that I ran my mouth." I, I even have this video actually on the doc that I sent you, Jamie. He says, "Knew that I ran my mouth." Uh, "So that's why we, we basically, we got Bob a job or whatever. We knew that part of this stuff would leak." And it was like this limited hangout strategy on behalf of this guy named Admiral McClellan or whatever, and he was this useful idiot to sort of get, get it out. And I think there-

Joe Rogan 49:02 Wait. So what ... For what purpose?

Jesse Michels 49:04 Recruiting. You give people high level ... Yeah, so-

Joe Rogan 49:07 Okay, here it, here.

Narrator 49:10 ... the MJ personnel, the original 12, uh, have all passed away. So, they put- they get different people, uh, into, uh, these positions of MJ, uh, two, three, four, five, six, uh, and taken over. It's degraded, so it's almost political now, instead of like it was when Truman originally formed the MJ 12. It turns out that MJ One, the head of MJ 12, is a guy named Admiral Mike McClellan. He wanted to get some of the information out because he- he didn't real- he didn't wanna- uh, he thought that some of this information should be out in the public. "We don't need to keep all this secrecy." So he decided, trying to figure out a way to get it to the public. So, he knew that, uh, I was a blabbermouth and I would tell anything I knew. Uh, they investigated Bob Lazar and they knew that he was a genius, uh, but that he had a background such, uh, that they could instantly discredit him. They removed all his records from MIT, from Caltech, so he couldn't prove anything. He'd go back to Caltech, they'd go, "No, I don't see any records here." "Well, I was here." "Well, no you weren't." And, uh, he also, uh, up in Reno at one time, he- he ran a cathouse there, um, and I forget what the name of the honeysuckle ranch it was.

Jesse Michels 50:36 (laughs)

Narrator 50:36 Uh, so they chose him because not only could he probably help them, 'cause he was so smart, and as matter of fact he- he's the one that named, uh, Unun Pentium, uh, 115. He's the one that told them what that was, and they didn't know, uh, when- when he went there, they didn't know what it was. He was the one that told 'em, "That's element 115." And then told them why and how he'd figured it out. But, uh, they decided to pick on Bob, uh, to get- go up there- to work at S4 because he- they knew that Bob would tell me instantly and then I would blab the whole thing. And that was their modus operandi was to get the information out, engage what it did to the public, how they accepted it, and then pull back and say, "Oh, no, it was all a mistake. Bob Lazar's a- a- a fraud. He never worked here. He doesn't have any credentials," like that, and they could back away and get out of it. So, that was what Mike McClellan-

Jesse Michels 51:37 (laughs)

Narrator 51:38 ... Admiral Mike McClellan came up with.

Jesse Michels 51:39 Isn't that crazy?

Joe Rogan 51:40 How weird.

Jesse Michels 51:41 Weird. And to me-

Joe Rogan 51:42 Kind of makes sense a little bit, though.

Jesse Michels 51:44 It does, and that doesn't make Bob Lazar still not the most interesting story in the world. Like, he's say- he's not saying it didn't happen, right?

Joe Rogan 51:52 Right.

Jesse Michels 51:52 He's just saying that this happened as part of this limited hangout strategy where they knew that they could delete the records at MIT. They knew that they could stigmatize him because of the brothel. They knew that there are p- you know, he was this not traditionally trained engineer who just happened to strap a ramjet on the back of a Honda or whatever-

Joe Rogan 52:10 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 52:10 ... and meet Edward Teller serendipitously. They knew that they could- they had plausible deniability on all of that stuff. There's a great line in the Oppenheimer movie where Leslie Groves, played by Matt Damon, says, "I didn't hire Oppenheimer, uh, uh, in spite of his Communist sympathies. I hired him because of them." So you have a top secret program, you want kompromat on people. You wanna be able to blackmail them.

Joe Rogan 52:31 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 52:32 And so, I think- y- you know, it- that should be taken at face value, in my opinion. And the reason that the story itself can't be taken at face value and needs to be seen through that lens is Lear and- and Bob Lazar were friends before Bob Lazar got a job at Area f- at Area 51, S4. And so if you have a top secret program, you kinda do a basic background check. And- and- and Lear is gonna come up as a guy with a UFO blog, right?

Joe Rogan 53:00 Right, right.

Jesse Michels 53:00 And then, uh, the CIA is all over the UFO program, right? And he was flying, uh, CIA cargo jets. And- and- and he says that he disaffiliated in '83. That's bullshit. George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell have talked about how that's- how that's BS. And actually, he disaffiliated m- much later, into the mid-80s or whatever. Why would you continue to pay a guy who is leaking your crown jewel secrets? Uh, and then he- the guards at Area 51 knew John Lear. John Lear and Jim Goodall, his buddy, who's a photographer, had been camping out at Area 51 for the better part of a decade. Like, they (laughs) -

Joe Rogan 53:34 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 53:34 ... the security guards there knew him. Jeremy Corbell has- has talked about in interviews, like, "I would go with John Lear and- and he would show me around," or whatever, and they would, like, let him through. And before leaking the Bob Lazar story to George Knapp, he leaked a story about the F-117, which was the first stealth craft in the US. And so, I think that- uh, helped establish sort of, you know, credibility or legitimacy. Was he a useful idiot or agent provocateur? I don't know. There's a photo of John Lear with G. Gordon Liddy, who's, like, as deep and spooky as it gets.

Joe Rogan 54:04 I met him.

Jesse Michels 54:05 No way.

Joe Rogan 54:06 He was on Fear Factor.

Jesse Michels 54:07 No way.

Joe Rogan 54:08 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 54:08 G. Gordon Liddy was on-

Joe Rogan 54:09 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 54:09 ... Fear Factor?

Joe Rogan 54:10 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 54:10 Are you serious?

Joe Rogan 54:11 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 54:11 You're not messing with me.

Joe Rogan 54:12 No, no, G. Gordon Liddy was on Fear Factor.

Jesse Michels 54:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:14 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 54:14 What?

Joe Rogan 54:15 Yeah, he probably would've won, but there was a driving thing at the end, and he couldn't drive well without glasses, and you weren't allowed to wear glasses. Yeah, look at that, G. Gordon Liddy.

Jesse Michels 54:25 And John Lear. That is (laughs) the most gonzo thing I've ever ... Do you d- (laughs) G. Gordon Liddy was on ... How does he ... What did- ... Did you have, like, a quota of, like, spooks or something?

Joe Rogan 54:34 It was Celebrity Fear Factor.

Jesse Michels 54:35 Celebrity Fear Factor.

Joe Rogan 54:37 Yeah, yeah.

Jesse Michels 54:38 That's wild, man.

Joe Rogan 54:39 He's a fascinating guy. Like, he was intense.

Jesse Michels 54:41 I can only-

Joe Rogan 54:41 Like, meeting him, I was like, "Okay."

Jesse Michels 54:43 What was he like?

Joe Rogan 54:44 Fucking intense.

Jesse Michels 54:44 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:45 There was one of the things where you had to be hung by your ankles and, like- there he is.

Jesse Michels 54:50 Oh my god.

Joe Rogan 54:52 Yeah. G. Gordon Liddy on Fear Factor.

Jesse Michels 54:53 Yeah, he looks nuts.

Joe Rogan 54:54 Oh yeah, he was nuts. And he was very old at the time, but I think that's what fucked him up in- in the final stunt. He, uh, couldn't see well-

Jesse Michels 55:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:02 ... without his glasses.

Jesse Michels 55:03 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 55:03 And so this is the thing they had to, like, d-

Jesse Michels 55:05 (yawns)

Joe Rogan 55:05 I forget what they had to do. They had to- oh, they- they were dunked into the water over and over again, and then they had to, like, take flags off of them or something like that.

Jesse Michels 55:14 Oh my god.

Joe Rogan 55:15 Yeah, wild.

Jesse Michels 55:17 Wild. Did you sneak any-... questions and, like? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:20 No, I didn't. You know, I didn't have much time to talk to him, unfortunately.

Jesse Michels 55:25 He's a-

Joe Rogan 55:25 But, uh, you could just tell talking to him-

Jesse Michels 55:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:28 ... like, he was one intense motherfucker, even as an old man.

Jesse Michels 55:31 Did you get sociopathic vibes from him? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:33 Oh, yeah.

Jesse Michels 55:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:34 Oh, yeah. Just, like, he'll do whatever the fuck it takes to get it-

Jesse Michels 55:37 (groans)

Joe Rogan 55:37 ... get the job done. Yeah. You could-

Jesse Michels 55:38 You- you pulled off Watergate. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:39 Yeah. Look at him there.

Jesse Michels 55:41 Oh, my God.

Joe Rogan 55:44 Crazy.

Jesse Michels 55:44 Crazy.

Joe Rogan 55:45 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 55:46 That is hilarious-

Joe Rogan 55:46 G. Gordon Liddy.

Jesse Michels 55:47 Unbelievable.

Joe Rogan 55:48 (laughs)

Jesse Michels 55:48 What an artif-

Joe Rogan 55:49 (laughs)

Jesse Michels 55:49 What an amazing ... That is true, but, I mean, you've had a lot of crazy experiences in life.

Joe Rogan 55:53 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 55:53 That's c- ... That's crazy.

Joe Rogan 55:54 That's a weird one.

Jesse Michels 55:55 That's a w-

Joe Rogan 55:55 That was a weird one 'cause everybody was ... You know, they weren't ... The people that were on the show weren't nearly as fascinated as I was. I was like-

Jesse Michels 56:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:02 ... "Do you know how fucking wild that dude is?" Yeah. I mean, that guy is d- d- deep. He's deep in there.

Jesse Michels 56:08 Deep.

Joe Rogan 56:09 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 56:09 Very deep. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:11 (laughs)

Jesse Michels 56:11 Oh, my God.

Joe Rogan 56:13 That is unbelievable.

Jesse Michels 56:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:16 (yawns) Yeah.

Jesse Michels 56:17 Wild. It's a Gonzo moment.

Joe Rogan 56:19 Yeah. For sure.

Jesse Michels 56:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:20 Like, very strange. Like, "Why would you do this?"

Jesse Michels 56:22 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:23 It's w- ... Well, it was- it was i- ... I don't even understand why he did it.

Jesse Michels 56:26 It's proof we live in a simulation.

Joe Rogan 56:27 Yeah. Maybe.

Jesse Michels 56:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:29 It was very strange. Like, what would be the- his objective? Like ...

Jesse Michels 56:34 I feel p- people like that love fucking around. They love getting a rise out of people.

Joe Rogan 56:39 Maybe.

Jesse Michels 56:39 And they love ... You know? May- ... If he is a sociopath, he l- loves, you know, going back to the scene of the crime and just as much attention as he can get.

Joe Rogan 56:46 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 56:46 I don't kn- ... I can't psychoanalyze G. Gordon Liddy, but-

Joe Rogan 56:49 Well, he famously put cigarettes out on himself and put- hold his hand under flames.

Jesse Michels 56:53 I didn't know that. I just knew that.

Joe Rogan 56:54 Yeah, just to show that he could control his response to pain.

Jesse Michels 56:59 (laughs) Psychopathic.

Joe Rogan 57:00 Yeah. And he felt like that when you're around him. You know, like- ... Like, so that thing that they had to do where they m- got dunked and they- ... You know, uh, they're hanging by their ankles and dunked into water so it disorients you while you're trying to do this task. He did it better than anybody.

Jesse Michels 57:15 Wow. And they just couldn't draw-

Joe Rogan 57:17 At around 150 years old or whatever the fuck he was.

Jesse Michels 57:19 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:20 (laughs) I felt like, "We're gonna kill him."

Jesse Michels 57:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:21 "He's, like, really old and we're doing this intense physical thing to him."

Jesse Michels 57:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:25 Yeah. But at- at the end, he just couldn't see at night.

Jesse Michels 57:28 Mm.

Joe Rogan 57:28 You know? It was odd. Like, uh, when you get old, your nighttime vision's real bad.

Jesse Michels 57:33 Poor G. Gordon Liddy.

Joe Rogan 57:35 Yeah. But ... So the- ... How did Lazar know what Element 115 was?

Jesse Michels 57:41 I don't know. You know, so Element 115 ... Elements are just differentiated by the number of protons, so it is easy to predict there will be an Element 115 before Element 115 gets discovered. If they have ... I don't- ... I think they don't have a stable version of moscovium, which is Element 115. And so, if they can find some stable version, I think he'll be super vindicated based on that.

Joe Rogan 58:06 Well, you know, they think he has a stable version.

Jesse Michels 58:08 I didn't know that. (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:09 Yeah. (laughs)

Jesse Michels 58:10 That's very weird.

Joe Rogan 58:10 They- they think that was part of ... During Jeremy Corbell's documentary that he was doing on Lazar-

Jesse Michels 58:14 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 58:14 ... he was raided by the FBI.

Jesse Michels 58:16 Mm.

Joe Rogan 58:16 They raided his lab, and he thinks that's what they were looking for.

Jesse Michels 58:20 That is wild.

Joe Rogan 58:21 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 58:22 I- I think there is so much real about the Lazar story. I think he was at S4. I think he met Edward Teller. I think he was at Los Alamos. I think he was at MIT. I know he tell- ... He's- ... There's some stuff he told you offline.

Joe Rogan 58:33 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 58:34 MIT's engaged in a lot of spooky stuff-

Joe Rogan 58:36 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 58:36 ... where you can't talk about what you're doing. There's a lot of-

Joe Rogan 58:39 Right.

Jesse Michels 58:39 ... federally-funded weird stuff going on there.

Joe Rogan 58:41 Yeah. If you wanna teach your people how to do something that's kinda fucked up, what? You would send them to MIT.

Jesse Michels 58:46 100%

Joe Rogan 58:47 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 58:47 The EEG came from Doc Edgerton, who was, you know, MIT faculty. And that's who- ... Where he ended up working-

Joe Rogan 58:55 Mm-hmm.

Jesse Michels 58:55 ... after meeting Edward Teller, was EEG.

Joe Rogan 58:57 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 58:57 Um, so I- I believe there's a lot in that story that's super true. I'm just ... That lens ... You need to apply that lens.

Joe Rogan 59:04 Right.

Jesse Michels 59:04 The limited hangout lens.

Joe Rogan 59:05 Well, it's also, like, what is he dealing with, really? Like, what is the craft? Is that thing ours?

Jesse Michels 59:12 Mm.

Joe Rogan 59:13 Is- ... Do- ... Did we have something in 1988 that was that sophisticated? Or is that really back-engineered?

Jesse Michels 59:20 That's the-

Joe Rogan 59:20 What is the- ... Is it a mindfuck?

Jesse Michels 59:23 That's the trillion-dollar question. Is this tech protect- ... This is at a time when stealth craft had just came on the scene. And you had-

Joe Rogan 59:32 When did stealth technology first get implemented?

Jesse Michels 59:35 It was the F-117, was the first stealth craft. That was the early '80s. And you had actually this guy named Pyotr Ufimtsev, who is this, uh-

Joe Rogan 59:43 What a name.

Jesse Michels 59:44 Yeah. Very-

Joe Rogan 59:44 (laughs)

Jesse Michels 59:44 A great name. Uh, uh, uh, er- early 20th century Russian mathematician that Ben Rich and some of his engineers at Lockheed Skunk Works had resuscitated. There's this kind of, uh, um, fight between ... Not fight, but disagreement between Ben Rich, who was the incoming Skunk Works director. Skunk Works is the most advanced R&D division of Lockheed Martin. And, uh, Kelly Johnson, the legendary guy who had started Skunk Works. And so, uh, Ben Rich was very pro-stealth. He thought that this was r- ... This really important modality. And he and a couple of his engineers resuscitated this obscure Russian mathematician to reduce radar cross-sections on planes. And that's where the F-117 came, and, you know, the B-2 was sort of the response to that. And it sort of took off in the '80s. And he was extremely, uh, scared about- about tech protection at the time. And he was hypervigilant, and he would actively complain about it. And he cal- ... He even called UFOs unfunded opportunities at the time.

Joe Rogan 1:00:43 (laughs)

Jesse Michels 1:00:44 Pretty crazy, right? (laughs) So, that's the backdrop. And there's also ... In 1986, there's a budget line item in the Congressional budget for $2 billion for the Aurora. And, um, uh, this is this super stealthy craft that's post-F-117.And, uh, that's only rumored. Like today, nobody will admit that the Aurora might have been real. And the, uh, the aerial surveys at the time were picking up sonic booms that weren't being created by the SR-71 or the space shuttle. And so there was something being flown around at that time that was c- you know, causing these sonic booms that was unaccounted for.

Joe Rogan 1:01:21 Whoa.

Jesse Michels 1:01:21 And e- e- Bob Lazar, there's even a clip of him saying, "I saw the Aurora." It was like, you know, it was, it was around at the time and it sort of just took off or whatever. Which is, I think a point in the direction that Lazar himself is very earnest and probably did experience some very weird stuff because why are you exposing some probably classified tech? I, I think there's a lot of reasons to believe that the Aurora was real. There was a, an oil rig engineer in the North Sea, uh, or sorry, may- it might have been the Black Sea, that sketched it out. And Bill Sweetman this, um, uh, Jane's Defense Weekly, uh, aviation journalist, you know, picked that story up. There-

Joe Rogan 1:01:54 What did he describe it as?

Jesse Michels 1:01:55 Uh, this, this, s- uh, kind of ... It was a triangle similar to the B2, but I think more, more narrow. And it just flew incredibly fast. Like, like, uh, uh, faster than, you know, the F-117. And, and, um, yeah, yeah. I don't know. It was a, it was just su- super advanced.

Joe Rogan 1:02:15 Could you envision ... I mean, would it be actually possible in 1988 to ... Could you imagine that the United States would possess some sort of actual technology that's not back engineered, that's not, not from another world, that is what Lazar described?

Jesse Michels 1:02:35 It's funny you should ask that. (laughs) Yes, I did.

Joe Rogan 1:02:37 Yes? Really?

Jesse Michels 1:02:38 Yes. And that's not to say, I don't wanna, again, pour cold water on the like, UFO crash retrieval stuff, because I think there's a lot of interesting evidence there. But is there a tech tree that involves antigravity? Absolutely. In the US. And I can trace it all the way back to this guy named Thomas Townsend Brown. So if we were to be talking in front of any academic physicist right now, they would laugh at us. They'd be like, "You're crazy." If we were to talk amongst any aerospace graybeard who is at a certain level, I think they'd give you a little wink and a smile. And they'd say, "Okay, like maybe there's something there." And so, uh, the nominal history is that we have never been able ... We have, we don't have exotic propulsion principles. Like everything is, you know, chemical combustion, essentially. You had Elon Musk on and he says, you know, um, "It's all Newton's three laws. You can't get anything better." And I remember you asked him, you're like, "Well, maybe if you ... What if you could get something better?" He's like, "It's impossible." Um, we have not unified the field in physics. So you have the weak force, the strong force, um, and, and electromagnetism, and all of those have been reconciled. Gravity is out here hanging out by itself on an island. So you have the standard model, quantum field theory, and you have Einstein's theory of gravity. And the two are not reconcilable. It is my belief that if you were to reconcile them, you could create exotic propulsion, which I think at, you know, e- any even, you know, reasonable theoretical physicist who's credentialed would say, "If you could reconcile them, that's, that's possible." I think that Thomas Townsend Brown did this experimentally, not theoretically. I don't think he was a very strong theoretical physicist, but I think he did this experimentally. And so there's this whole hidden history involving antigravity, and I get into this in my show with Hal Puthoff and Eric Weinstein, where there's actually this great 1971 Australian Joint Intelligence Organization document that is verified, it's real. D- David Grusch actually cites it a lot. And it talks about, uh, uh, basically it's this guy Harry Turner who's the head of the nuclear division at, in Australia. Um, f- you know, very legit guy. He's like their Oppenheimer, if you will. And, uh, and, um, they were, they were actually ... They had the, a Woomera test range, um, in, in Southern Australia so there were some actually British Empire like, like nuclear stuff going on. It was mostly like I think, um, uh, missile testing. But there are reasons to believe that maybe he started to get interested in UFOs to begin with. And so he looked into US efforts, into, you know, UFO research, but also specifically antigravity. And he talks about how after a little bit of investigation, uh, uh, US efforts into antigravity are far deeper than meet the eye. In Blue Book, this front-facing PR campaign that's part of the Air Force is total BS and it's meant to, you know, stigmatize UFOs and, and throw people off the trail. And it's actually, you know, this now declassified document around the Robert- the Robertson memo, which is around this Robertson panel, that kind of created the constitution for, for Blue Book, all shows that this was the case with Blue Book. He says actually there were secret antigravity programs going on at the time, and they involved, and he lists names. Oppenheimer, Freeman Dyson, John Wheeler, and Edward Teller. H- he lists all these names. The he- head of the, you know, uh, uh, uh, nuclear program in Australia. Uh, and so then you have to ask the question, okay, so you have this like official government document saying this stuff. Like, does this line up with any artifacts at the time? Well, actually, in 1956, there's an article, um, in Young Men's Magazine, this kind of aviation hobbyist journal, uh, uh, journal, by a guy named Michael Gladych. And he is quoting all of the industry experts, you know. Is it Bill Lear is quoted, who we talked about. Um, uh, uh, uh, who else is quoted? George Trimble who's a VP at Martin Corporation, their RIAS, their Antigravity Research Program. He says, uh, uh, "Antigravity research is, you know, we're gonna, we're, uh, we're gonna figure this out in, in just amount, in just the same amount of time that it took to figure out the atom bomb." Like it's, it's right around the bend, sort of thing. You had, uh, um, the patron of, of, uh, Bell Aircraft, they had just broken the sound barrier with the, with the X-1 in 1947, so there you go.

Joe Rogan 1:06:53 Oh, here it is.

Jesse Michels 1:06:53 Michael Gladych, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:54 The G-Engines are coming.

Jesse Michels 1:06:56 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:56 Whoa. Whoa.

Jesse Michels 1:07:00 See-

Joe Rogan 1:07:00 "By far the most potent source of energy is gravity. Using it as power, future aircraft will attain the speed of light." Holy shit.

Jesse Michels 1:07:09 And, and, uh, Bell says like, "Uh, you know, we're experimenting with nuclear f-fuels to cancel out gravity." Richard Arnowitt and Stanley Deser-

Joe Rogan 1:07:17 Look, they have a diagram of how it would work.

Jesse Michels 1:07:20 It's wild.

Joe Rogan 1:07:20 Protective boundary layer.

Jesse Michels 1:07:22 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:07:23 Cabin, electronic rockets, gravity generator.

Jesse Michels 1:07:27 They talk about st-, uh, gravity particles. St-, uh, Stanley Deser and Richard Arnowitt at Princeton are studying this.

Joe Rogan 1:07:32 So what do you think was going on?

Jesse Michels 1:07:34 I think they were deeply investigating anti-grav. I mean, they're, they're-

Joe Rogan 1:07:37 They, do you think they had a working model?

Jesse Michels 1:07:40 I think they had an effect called the Biefeld-Brown effect (laughs) that showed that you could couple electromagnetism and gravity at a base level, and you could do it in a vacuum, which rules out ionized air as the possible reason for thrust. So I'll, I'll back up, and I'll just-

Joe Rogan 1:07:58 Okay, yeah.

Jesse Michels 1:07:58 ... give you what the experiment is.

Joe Rogan 1:07:59 Yeah.

Jesse Michels 1:07:59 So it's, you take a capacitor, right? And so a capacitor is a, a positive electrode and a negative electrode. It's an asymmetric capacitor, so the negative electrode is bigger than the positive capacitor. And the two are, uh, uh, in between the two is a, an insulator called the high-K dielectric. So it's a material that stores a lot of, uh, electromagnetic charge. You pump the entire thing with high voltage and low current electricity, and Brown used to do it with, uh, DC, direct current pulses, and you see thrust going from, uh, the negative to the positive. And if you do that in air, then you can always say that it's ionized air because ions are being produced, and then you get this equal and opposite reaction with the wind, and then you get this thrust, right? So that's not breaking physics. If you do this in a, um, depressurized vacuum chamber, uh, where there basically is no air to, to, to, to cr- you know, create this kind of equal and opposite force for the thrust, then you are breaking physics as we know it. There are other things that break physics as we know it. You had Sonny White on. He talked about, like, the, the Casimir effect, you know, which is a, a real effect that involves, uh, uh, uh, not charged, but conductive plates that are very close to each other that seem to attract. Um, there's the Bohm, the Aharonov-Bohm effect, which might be explained by the electromagnetic floor potential. There are other effects in physics where you don't, you can't quite explain it in the current model, but they are harbingers, if you will, of the next paradigm. I believe that when you find an anomaly, it is, uh, pointing towards the next scientific paradigm. Black body radiation is a great example. It was discovered in the 1870s by a guy named Gustav Kirchhoff. We could not explain it until the quantum revolution with Max Planck, where he, you know, actually discovered quanta. Um, uh, the orbit of Mercury is another good example, where we didn't understand w-, you know, we couldn't calculate, uh, uh, Mercury's orbit until we had space-time curvature and Einstein. So Newton didn't quite explain it. So my belief is, b- the Biefeld-Brown effect is an anomaly that seemed to ostensibly, visually unify the field, or it's pointing towards something else, d- gravitational shielding, or it's pointing towards how put off stuff around, you know, quantum vacuum fluctuations. I don't know. I don't have a great, uh, uh, theor- theory for how it works. I don't think Brown had an amazing theory for how it works, but it's an effect that I think creates this tech tree of exotic electromagnetic propulsion-

Joe Rogan 1:10:39 Mm.

Jesse Michels 1:10:39 ... that leads us to today, and it's an effect that's not supposed to happen.

Joe Rogan 1:10:43 And this, what is this, Jamie?

Narrator 1:10:47 Is that it?

Joe Rogan 1:10:48 The Biefield-Brown effect-

Jesse Michels 1:10:48 That, that is, that, that is a-

Joe Rogan 1:10:49 ... thermal thruster in a vacuum chamber?

Jesse Michels 1:10:50 Yeah. That, that's a, that's a lateral propeller version of it. And you don't have to listen to me, by the way. The lead electrostatics guy at NASA is a guy named Charles Bueller. He's b- been doing this for 20 years, and he's had ac- he's at, at, at, um, Kennedy Space Center. He is the lead, they use electrostatics to, like, clean dust off the, you know, lunar lander or whatever, 'cause those particles are actually charged. And, um, super, he's the most senior guy in electrostatics, and he says this is not a conventional electrostatic force, and he attributes his work to Townsend Brown. I could show you in an interview. He s- he literally says, "Townsend Brown was, like, the first guy to discover this." He a- he, he's updated it a bit. He says that, um, it's not just sheer voltage. You don't need to use mega-voltage, and actually, electric s- field strength is the most important thing, so we use kilovolts, and he amps up the electric field strength in order to get more thrust. But he has a whole company around this. It's called Exodus Space. So, like, you don't have to listen, an- another, another very, you know, credentialed person, if we're, if we're on that, uh, a guy named Carl Nell, who I have reason to believe that some of Brown's work made it into the B-2 Stealth bomber. I don't think it's the e- anti-gravity part. It's a part called electrohydrodynamics that made it into the B-2 Stealth bomber. But the point is, I interviewed a guy who was the deputy CTO of Northrup Grumman, and he also was the army representative of the UAP task force along with David Grusch, where they were investigating UFOs. And he says, I s- I was i- in a room f- you know, filled with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. I was like, "Carl, th- these people want actionable stuff. Like, c- can you actually make progress with any of this UFO stuff, or is it all, like, kind of metaphysical, you know, and, like, kind of, um, uh, uh, not even wrong, as Feynman would say?" And he goes, "Well, if you want, you know, some actionable stuff, go watch Jesse's video on Thomas Townsend Brown." And so, like, I've gotten this time and time again where I've had all these private experiences (laughs) about, you know, w- with Brown where I'm like, "Is anybody seeing this? Like, this is crazy." And-It's, you know, (laughs) I don't know. It's weird.

Joe Rogan 1:12:54 So let's take this back to-

Jesse Michels 1:12:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:56 ... when was Brown conducting these experience, n- uh, experiments initially?

Jesse Michels 1:13:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:01 What year was this?

Jesse Michels 1:13:02 The early '20s, so like Er- 1923, '24 range.

Joe Rogan 1:13:06 Whoa.

Jesse Michels 1:13:06 He was a child prodigy. So there are newspaper clime- He was from Zanesville, Ohio. He was born in 1905. In 1915, uh, he was, uh, you know, caught in the garden or whatever using charged rods to get worms to ascend to the top of the soil. Then at age 12, he... The World War government under Woodrow Wilson, it was probably the local government, told him to take down a wireless transmitter that he had created, an antenna that he had created, like this walkie-talkie system that he had developed at the time. And there, there's newspaper clippings talking about this at the time that, like, totally corroborate this. He then goes to Caltech. He studies under a guy named Robert Millikan who's actually a really well respected physicist who, um, was... helped develop Einstein's photoelectric effect, or actually, you know, uh, demonstrate it experimentally. Millikan doesn't really give him the time of day on, on the Biefield-Brown effect. And th- the way he discovered the effect is actually he was using, uh, Coolidge X-ray tubes. So these were really early X-rayed tubes and they have... Every X-ray tube has or every Coolidge tube has, um, uh, a cathode and an anode, so a negative and a positive electrode. And he would pump it full of, um, you know, high voltage electricity and the wire would jump. And then he would h- he would actually... He would put it in a fixed chassis and it would keep jumping. And then he would suspend it from, you know, the ceiling and it would keep jumping. And he was like, "What's going on?" Like, "This isn't supposed to happen." And there are ways to, again, explain that away via traditional electrostatics. So he later got the idea to do this in a vacuum chamber and really prove it. But after Caltech, he then goes to Denison University where he studies under a guy named Paul Alfred Biefield. And Denison University, for the longest time, has denied that relationship, and now they're admitting it, which is, I find really funny. The n- the archivist there is now admitting it. There is an affidavit, uh, from the Navy saying, th- uh, where Paul Alfred Biefield signs a, a letter saying, "I witnessed this effect. It's an anomalous effect." From there, he goes on and it's witnessed by a guy named Victor Bertrandius who's at the Wright P- Patterson, or Wright Airfield at the time, flight test division. He's working with Colonel Albert Boyd, um, on all the, you know, crazy flight tests. In 1952, he says, "Believe it or not, I saw a model of a flying saucer and I was frightened. And I'm frightened for it getting out because," and I'm paraphrasing a little bit, "because I believe it's in the stage of early atomic development." And that's 1952. Um, he then shows, uh, a, a fan precipitator experiment which really shows the electrohygi- hydrodynamic effect, which is similar but not the same as the, the electromagnetism gravity thing, to Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb. And Edward Teller himself says, "I don't know how this works." And then his wife turns to Townsend Brown's daughter, and I have this by the way on a, uh, phone call where t- with Townsend Brown's daughter who's saying this all happened. Uh, it's, uh, turns to, to, um, to her and she says, "I've never heard him say that," 'cause he's such a genius. I mean, it was just, uh, Hungarian, brilliant, you know, father of the H-bomb. And, um, so you have all these interesting eyewitnesses. Ed- um, uh, Brown was an associate of Bill Lear. You have video of Bill Lear and Townsend Brown together in a lab, in the Bahnsen lab in North Carolina together. In fact, there's a Chapel Hill conference in 1957 which is, basically creates quantum gravity, of which the offshoot is string theory. And actually, Eric Weinstein talked about it on your show. And it's at the Institute of Field Physics in North Carolina, Chapel Hill. They are funding Brown's work in the back room, and there is video of Brown working on his experiments, working under Agnew Bahnsen. And in that 1971 Australian intell- intelligence memo, you have all these outposts of antigravity research. U- University of North Carolina is one of those outposts. It's crazy. And it says the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence is coordinating all of this stuff. The president of University of North Carolina in the '50s, around this time, is a guy named Gordon Gray, who's a super spooky guy who's, uh, uh... He, he, he, he, um, revoked Oppenheimer's queue clearance, and, uh, he's also implicated in these sort of MJ-12 documents which I don't necessarily wanna mush in with Brown. It has to be viewed through that sort of passage material, like limited hangout lens. But Gordon Gray is this very interesting character. The point is that the people who were sending physics down the wrong path with the Chapel Hill conference, and this is a conference in 1957 that convenes the top theoretical physicists in the world, Freeman Dyson, Peter Bergmann, uh, Feynman was there, John Wheeler was there, Bryce DeWitt, all these people. At the same time, they were funding in the back room this kind of zany inventor, Townsend Brown, who is performing these experiments in vacuum chambers. And there's video of him popping champagne, where it's like, "Why are you popping champagne?" Probably 'cause you got a successful experiment. That was the second time he had e- he had, um, tested this in a vacuum. So again, it's, it's reduced... It's eliminating this sort of ionized wind effect. Before that, a year before that, um, in Paris at the Mo- Montgolfier facilities, he performed this in a vacuum. And this guy named Jacques Cornillon was this... He died in 2009. But Townsend Brown's biographer has him on record in a, in a phone call that is recorded saying, "The tests were very tricky, but in the end we got it to work." And he's on his deathbed, and he's saying all this. And you have an 120-page or 125-page report for the Montgolfier project. And when Brown comes back to the, to America, he's picked up, according to his daughter Linda, by a guy named Robert Sarbacher who runs-... rampant, I mean, there are so many Sarbacher stories when it comes to UFOs. He says that UFOs are classified two points higher than the H-bomb. He's talking to this guy, Wilbert Smith, who's this, um, magnetics expert in, in, in Canada, about their experimentations via, you know, with UFOs. And so, he's the guy that picks up ... And he's head of Washington National Labs and running research and development for Vannevar Bush, at the time. And he's the guy who picks up Brown, where it's like, "Okay, we've, we've gotta take, take this seriously because you got it to work in a vacuum."

Joe Rogan 1:19:12 The idea that they've kept all this secret for all these years seems impossible.

Jesse Michels 1:19:19 I don't think it is.

Joe Rogan 1:19:19 To, to me.

Jesse Michels 1:19:20 Yeah, sure.

Joe Rogan 1:19:20 Y- y- I mean, I, I'm sure it's not.

Jesse Michels 1:19:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:19:23 But, you know what I mean? But from my limited understanding of how things work and secretive government projects, that they could have a gravity propulsion system in place for decades.

Jesse Michels 1:19:35 Yeah. It seems crazy to me, but he had something ... Brown had something called his Wounded Prairie Chicken Routine, which is basically showing people something called ... It was basically the electrohydrodynamic effect, which is not the electrogravitic effect. So, these are two very different things. One is coupling, again, electromagnetism and gravity somehow, or creating some gravity shielding or whatever. You can do this in a vacuum. And then, the other thing is what you can see on YouTube videos, which is associated with Townsend Brown, where you have, um, basically these balsa wood structures. You have tin foil at the bottom, and you have a copper wire at the top. The copper wire is the positive electrode. The tin foil is the negative electrode. The copper wire is producing ions, which is creating thrust because those i- neutral ions are bombarding the wind, which is creating thrust in, in a certain direction. So, that is an experiment that is 95% similar to the electrogravitic thing. It, it wears the mantle of being electrogravitic, but it's actually using this other principle that you can just describe using normal physics and, you know, Newton's Laws.

Joe Rogan 1:20:42 Well, what about material science? Like, what about the actual structure itself? You know, because th- this is where it gets really weird, right?

Jesse Michels 1:20:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:20:51 The, the, these nanolayers of whatever the material is that's being used. What, what was the ...

Jesse Michels 1:21:01 It