UFOs, Aliens, Antigravity & Government Secrets - Jesse Michels - #982

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
An interest with UFOs is maladaptive to most people. How so?

**Jesse Michels** (0:06)
Oh yeah, you're quoting me on, I think, Danny Jones. I think in some ways, and this actually speaks to, we're on Modern Wisdom here, I think a lot of what people should be focused on is the lower end of Maslow's hierarchy. Like it's like subsistence living, paying taxes on time, putting food on the table, being basically healthy. And then I think at a certain point, then you start to care about this sort of more like existential, you know, who are we, what's our place in the universe? You know, what is humanity's place in the cosmos? And so that's why I think in some ways it's maladaptive because if you don't have that lower end sort of figured out, it's like why focus on this sort of, you know, really crazy pie in the sky stuff.

**Chris Williamson** (0:50)
That's so interesting that you think people have sort of taken the stairlift to the top of Everest, that's the hierarchy of needs. It's like if you're asking, are we alone in the universe but you haven't got a steady job or your health's in the toilet or you don't have a community of people around you, you're probably focusing on the wrong things.

**Jesse Michels** (1:10)
100%. In fact, I think a lot of people focus on it as a circumvention of reality itself. It's an escape mechanism. And so you want to get abducted or taken away on a UFO or something.

**Chris Williamson** (1:21)
Better than this fucking place.

**Jesse Michels** (1:23)
Yeah, right. You want to throw a Hail Mary because things aren't going well on a base level. And so I think for those people, they should probably just focus on the core issue. If they have a marital problem or something, go focus on that.

**Chris Williamson** (1:36)
Well, that's an interesting question. What is the avatar in 2025 of somebody who's interested in UFOs? Because, you know, there's kind of a, and I wonder why this is the case when I think about UFOs. I always think about sort of the 60s and the 70s.

**Jesse Michels** (1:53)
Yes.

**Chris Williamson** (1:54)
That's kind of the golden era of abductions and stories and Roswell and like, that's kind of where my mind goes to.

**Jesse Michels** (2:02)
Yes.

**Chris Williamson** (2:03)
But you're a good example of someone who's super smart and is knee deep in all the research for this stuff. Something tells me you're probably a little bit non-typical.

**Jesse Michels** (2:14)
Yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (2:15)
But like, who is the avatar for the UFO investigator now, or the Monday morning quarterback?

**Jesse Michels** (2:23)
I think it's radically shifting. So I think even five, 10 years ago, it would have been like you go to this contact in the desert. Is this convention for UFOs? It used to actually take place in the actual desert. People started to get heat strokes and stuff, and now it's indoors. But it's all like, it's a lot of Crystal Healers from the Southwest sort of vibe. It's people who are, and I love a lot of these people. They live in Sedona or something, or in some of these small towns across the US, and they've had family experiences, or they're just a little more woo-woo, and that's what got them into this stuff. I think that's dramatically started to change. A good example is certain people you've had on, you've had on Eric Weinstein, my old colleague. We worked together at Teal Capital, you know, Peter Teal's family office. You know, a very sort of conventionally successful guy. You had Tulsi Gabbard on. She's the now, you know, director of national intelligence who oversees all of the intelligence agencies. And she has stated, as part of her mandate, that she wants to look into UFOs. Like, this is, and I've actually spoken to her. And she is explicitly very interested in this topic. And so I think that, plus a bunch of whistleblowers, there's David Grush at the National Geospatial Agency and NRO, and has kind of a very kind of typical and impressive...

**Chris Williamson** (3:46)
Less of a sort of crusty granola crowd.

**Jesse Michels** (3:48)
Yes, exactly. I think that has destigmatized it for a lot of people. And you're starting to see high agency, Silicon Valley, just, you know, average people start to get into the topic.

**Chris Williamson** (4:00)
Whatever happened with UAPs? Is UAPs and UFOs? Because there was a brief period where we went there. You know, it was like people of color, colored people, and then we went back to people of color.

**Jesse Michels** (4:09)