The guest
Diana Walsh Pasulka: Professor of religious studies at UNC Wilmington and author of American Cosmic and Encounters, who studies UFO and abduction phenomena as a historical and religious subject.
What this episode covers
Joe Rogan and Diana Walsh Pasulka explore the idea that UFO and abduction experiences may be encounters with something objective but outside our space-time, possibly accessed through altered states of consciousness. Pasulka recounts how, as a skeptic, she was drawn into the subject after finding aerial phenomena in centuries-old Vatican records, then was invited to a blindfolded visit to a New Mexico crash-retrieval site with Stanford's Garry Nolan. They discuss government 'perception management' of UFOs, an oral 'pencils up' tradition among insiders, harassment of researchers, and engineered 'metamaterials.' The conversation ranges across Plato, psychedelics and religion, the pineal gland and the Vatican pine cone, the Shroud of Turin, Apollo astronauts hearing 'space music,' Jacques Vallee, and artificial intelligence as a possible emergent deity.
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American Cosmic
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“I called him Tyler after the character in Fight Club because that's who reminded me of he reminded me of that character in Fight Club”— Diana Walsh Pasulka
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“he goes they they had an Insider on their team... it's it's you've seen it in the X Files and I was like what”— Diana Walsh Pasulka
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The Ten Commandments
“you want to know what you know Moses looked like you just watch you know the Ten Commandments and things like that”— Diana Walsh Pasulka
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“one of the stories is the allegory of the cave where you know that allegory it's it's like the Matrix right”— Diana Walsh Pasulka
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind
“I believe he was the inspiration for the French character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind I think so yeah”— Diana Walsh Pasulka
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Big reveals from this episode
- Pasulka describes government perception-management of UFOs going back to Project Blue Book and an unwritten 'pencils up' oral tradition among insiders.
- She was invited, blindfolded and without phones, to a UFO crash-retrieval site in a New Mexico no-fly zone with 'Tyler' and Stanford's Garry Nolan.
- After beginning UFO research she was doxxed and harassed at her university, which she attributes to people affiliated with the programs.
- Garry Nolan reportedly holds parts from the crash sites that are clearly engineered, not by humans, though he won't conclude they are extraterrestrial.
- Tyler claimed the government scattered tin cans across the site in the 1950s to disguise the anomalous debris as ordinary rusted rubble.
- She handled a malleable 'frog skin' metamaterial that can be crumpled and springs back to its original form.
- Pasulka concludes the physical objects are best described as 'interdimensional objects' bearing traits of our dimension and another.
Worth remembering
- 'Tyler' works for the Space Force, holds more than 44 space-related patents, and is a multimillionaire rocket scientist.
- Insiders use the term 'pencils up' to mean a discussion is off the record and preserved only through oral tradition.
- The Vatican has a space observatory with a Scholars residence and archives holding original Kepler and Copernicus documents plus a meteorite collection.
- The massive Vatican pine cone sculpture, and the pine cone on the Pope's staff, are said to represent the pineal gland.
- John Marco Allegro studied the Dead Sea Scrolls for 14 years and argued Christianity originated in psychedelic mushroom and fertility rituals.
- Apollo 10 astronauts heard unexplained 'space music' and were reluctant to report it for fear of seeming unstable.
- Returning astronauts saw flashes of light and only reported strange phenomena collectively so none could be singled out and fired.
- Jacques Vallee worked on ARPANET, was a Rosicrucian, and may have inspired the French scientist character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
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