AJ Gentile: Creator and host of The Y Files, a YouTube channel with roughly 4.7 million subscribers that explores weird science, conspiracies, and unexplained phenomena, narrated alongside a talking cartoon fish named Hecklefish. A former TV host, producer, editor, and writer who launched the channel in 2020 after leaving Los Angeles.
What this episode covers
AJ Gentile explains how The Y Files grew out of his lifelong love of weird stories and his format of hyping up a legend before debunking it. He and Rogan work through a long list of mysteries: Operation High Jump and Nazi Antarctica, Project Blue Beam, the Grand Canyon's off-limits zones, and especially crop circles, where AJ argues the woven nodes and complex geometry of some can't be faked with boards. They dive deep into UFO lore, government disinformation campaigns (Richard Doty, Hal Puthoff), Bob Lazar and element 115, and the moon-landing controversy. The conversation pivots to a hard critique of COVID-era censorship, the discrediting of scientists, and government secrecy generally. It closes on ancient civilizations, the Great Pyramid as a possible power plant, Atlantis and the Richat structure, and the idea that humanity may have risen and been knocked back down many times.
Recommended on this episode
Fingerprints of the Gods
Graham Hancock
“I was so pumped cuz I'd read his book in the 90s. I read Same. Yeah. Fingerprints of the Gods. Amazing book”— Joe Rogan
The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt
Christopher Dunn
“the better thing is to just buy Chris's books and and read the science. Oh, don't be a sheep.”— AJ Gentile
Mirage Men
John Lundberg
“created a documentary called Mirage Men, which an excellent documentary. It's mostly about Richard Dodie and his disinformation campaign”— AJ Gentile
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon
Bart Sibrel
“I had seen a funny thing happen on the way to the moon. Which what year was that? Great documentary.”— Joe Rogan
Call of Duty
Activision
“you know like what do we do? I play Call of Duty. It's fine. It's a great game, but you know what I'm saying?”— Joe Rogan
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Ancient Apocalypse
Graham Hancock
“it's a shame that he's marginalized, but I like that Netflix is stuck by him and keep pumping those out.”— AJ Gentile
War Is a Racket
Smedley Butler
“if you read Wars a Racket by Smemedley Butler, that was 33. General Butler.”— AJ Gentile
The Three-Body Problem
Liu Cixin
“It's Lucian Sha who wrote the threebody problem and all those. Oh dark forest theory says that if you attain a certain level of technology”— AJ Gentile
The Twilight Zone
Rod Serling
“And it just got in the Twilight Zone. We watched as kids. It was like required watching from dad in the old black and whites”— AJ Gentile
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
Samsung
“imagine showing up with uh a a brand new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra with Gorilla Glass, you know, in the thin frame”— Joe Rogan
Ivermectin
Merck
“calling it horse dewormer was so stupid because everybody knows used on humans. Oh, Ivormectton's in my cabinet.”— Joe Rogan
Big reveals from this episode
- Both Rogan and AJ reveal they have quit drinking, AJ for over two and a half months, and say they feel clearer and have just as much fun.
- AJ says crop-circle research flipped him: woven stalk nodes and metallic spheroids convinced him roughly 1% can't be explained by hoaxers with boards.
- Claims Bill Moore, who brought the Roswell story public, admitted he was fed disinformation by the government and was booed off the stage at MUFON in 1989.
- AJ recounts that researching the 'hollow moon' left him convinced 'the moon is weird,' even if not literally a hollow spaceship.
- Rogan floats Eric Weinstein's theory that an overqualified physics department tied to a hedge fund could be a cover for hidden advanced physics.
- AJ names Bob Lazar as the most credible whistleblower because he never profited, and notes the FBI raided Lazar mid-documentary supposedly seeking element 115.
- Asked gun-to-the-head, AJ says he'd bet 'we went to the moon without people,' admitting he flip-flops on the moon landing.
- AJ admits he lost his temper and cried while making his DARPA episode, which he dedicated to his Agent Orange-afflicted father-in-law.
Worth remembering
- HAARP in Alaska is described as an antenna array, costing hundreds of millions, capable of ionizing parts of the upper atmosphere.
- The first reported crop circle dates to 1678, blamed on the 'mowing devil' after a farmer cursed his oat field.
- The Tunguska airburst flattened millions of trees over Siberia in 1908 and left no impact crater.
- The asteroid Apophis, about 375 m across, will pass within roughly 32,000 km of Earth on April 13, 2029, closer than the moon.
- The sun is about 400 times larger than the moon and roughly 400 times farther away, making total solar eclipses appear nearly perfect.
- Neanderthals had larger brains than modern humans and made flutes, art, and needle-sewn clothing, yet were defeated by smaller, weaker humans.
- AJ links Lyme disease to a possible lab leak, tracing it to escaped ticks near Lyme, Connecticut and Operation Paperclip Nazi bioweapon scientists.
- AJ cites footage of a NASA scientist saying the agency 'lost' the technology to return to the moon and didn't write it down.
- The Giza power-plant theory claims the King's Chamber resonates at 440 hertz producing an F-sharp chord, with granite generating piezoelectricity.
- Rogan notes Manhattan would be covered in vegetation within a century and washed away within 100,000 years, explaining why ancient tech could vanish.