HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hi. It's me, Henry Zebrowski from Last Podcast on the Left. We're here with Ed Larson.
ED LARSON
How you doing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also from Last Podcast on the Left. We are here at Contact in the Desert, one of the biggest UFO conferences in the world, if not the biggest.
ED LARSON
I feel like it has to be the biggest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's one of the biggest.
ED LARSON
There's bigger ones than this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. But I wanna go to those because it's been fun. But we're here with a very special guest. I'm so glad that you're here. I've been reading your work and reading your words and hearing your mouth for many, many years. And it's very nice to see you in clothes, sitting here in a conference room, alive.
NICK POPE
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really great.
NICK POPE
Clothes are good. I always come clothed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Clothed is... Honestly if you were nude, I would just understand that's a part of your belief system. This is Nick Pope. He is a journalist, former civil servant, and author. And you worked for the UK Ministry of Defense at the UFO desk from '91 to '94. Correct?
NICK POPE
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And that was, man, 29 years ago?
NICK POPE
Yes, my gosh. Time flies. But yeah, my job there was basically to investigate the sightings and assess any defense, national security, and safety of flight issues.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is very, very interesting. I want to get into all of this.
ED LARSON
Is someone else doing your job now?
NICK POPE
Officially no. Because the British government claimed that at the end of 2009, after having done this for nearly 50 years, they terminated the program. But I've heard fairly reliable sources basically say, look, they're still in the game. Someone's doing something. And what actually got really announced literally yesterday was that the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology is actually doing a study on how it would be announced if we find life beyond Earth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This actually fits into a bunch of questions we already had.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I wanted to start first with a just straight up, you've been at Contact in the Desert every year. How much has it changed over this time period? Like in terms of just like UFO cons in general. Because you run the gamut, right, of all of these various like UFO cons. What would you call it, like anomalous thought conventions?
NICK POPE
Yeah, alternative belief.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
Yeah. Though there are some conferences really just focus almost exclusively on UFOs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
NICK POPE
But even within that, some people say well UFOs, what about alien abductions? What about crop circles? Things that people think are connected with this. But some conferences are a little bit more new age, they get into kind of spirituality, consciousness, crystals, that kind of thing.
ED LARSON
There's some crystals here.
NICK POPE
There are some crystals, yeah. Pretty impressive ones.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely. Very like athletic-looking 60-70 year old ladies losing their minds out there, man. Loving it out there.
ED LARSON
This is their Mecca.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is their Mecca. This is a crazy... Have you ever been into... Does George Noory get drunk in public?
NICK POPE
I think that's classified information.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just wanna know! I haven't seen him around. People were like have you seen George? I was like I haven't seen George yet, I want to see him.
NICK POPE
Well I can neither confirm nor deny.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
NICK POPE
No, I haven't seen him yet either. I'm sure he's here somewhere. But it's just huge and I've been doing things myself. I've been doing some interviews, I've been doing a workshop where I did an Ask Me Anything. But to answer your question, I think there's two things. Firstly, this event, Contact in the Desert, has steadily grown over the years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
I mean it is huge. I think one big media outlet called it the Woodstock of UFOs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. A lot of tie-dye.
NICK POPE
Great quote. But the big change actually was that the conference used to be held at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center. So it was kind of literally Contact in the Desert.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
NICK POPE
Not contact in the hotel by the desert.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Contact at Palm Springs. Yeah.
NICK POPE
And the Joshua Tree Retreat Center is great. It's a brilliant place, really great atmosphere. But sometimes the air conditioning was a little cranky. And when it went down, we began to lose some of the older people.
ED LARSON
Oh for sure.
NICK POPE
Keeling over.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I legitimately think it would probably kill a lot of the clientele here.
ED LARSON
I had to pick someone up off the floor earlier today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why are you doing that?
ED LARSON
Because they passed out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Really?
ED LARSON
Yeah. We shouldn't even be talking about this but yeah, someone... It was too hot, people aren't drinking their water.
NICK POPE
Right.
ED LARSON
We got plenty of water for you, Mr. Pope.
NICK POPE
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, he's covered in water.
NICK POPE
Hydrate.
ED LARSON
Made sure that you had Voss and VP, so you have your options.
NICK POPE
But I live in Tucson.
ED LARSON
So you know what you're doing.
NICK POPE
So I know about heat. And my wife, Elizabeth, she described 70 degrees as freezing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's where I come from, that's me now.
NICK POPE
Right. Usually with an expletive before it. Blankety-blank. That's blank freezing, yeah. And I'm with her on that. I hate it when you go into hotel rooms and someone set the thermostat to like 65-66.
ED LARSON
That's me.
NICK POPE
The temperature, it creeps. It used to be 68. Now I've noticed more and more it's like 66-60. Well we probably, this is not what you want to talk to me about.
ED LARSON
No, it's fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll talk about this for the rest of the interview.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is my favorite because honestly you've talked about UFOs for a long time and our audience is super interested in this. But we'll get to the subject. When you worked at the UK Ministry of Defense, you say you investigated sightings. Like what does that entail? Like when you investigate something, like what was the process that you'd go through?
NICK POPE
First you'd get all the information and date and time of sighting, location, direction in which it was seen, description, estimated height, speed, angle of elevation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
NICK POPE
Prevailing meteorological conditions, all of that. And then you just start to kind of, well first of all you apply a bit of common sense-
ED LARSON
Yeah.
NICK POPE
And say look, we've been doing this since 1953, we've got huge databases. What does it sound like it might be? Because most of these things of course turn out to be misidentifications.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. A lot of balloons.
NICK POPE
Yeah. And so you do that. But then in terms of the methodology, radar is a big part of a government UFO investigation. So you reach out to your Air Force colleagues and say hey, let's get the radar tapes. I'd like to check this location, this time. What have we got? So we do that. Then if we have a photo or a video, I would go to the intelligence community imagery analysts, leverage their resources and capabilities and say number one, is this a real photo or has someone faked it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
NICK POPE
Number two, if it's real, what can you tell me about it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, like what information can you pull from it?
NICK POPE
Yes. And sometimes if it's a picture at night of just a light in the sky, the answer is not very much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
NICK POPE
But if you have a daylight photo, particularly if you have some of the background in so that you can triangulate, you can start to calculate distance from the lens, height, diameter, that sort of thing. And then you can look at the structure and say well look, how does it fly? Because a lot of these things don't have the conventional... No fuselage, wings, tail, engine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
NICK POPE
But is there something there that could tell you something about the aerodynamics, the propulsion system, the energy source, that sort of thing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well now they just recently talked about there has been breakthrough in this concept of quote unquote "propulsionless travel" using electricity where I guess you magnetize like the air underneath the plane wings. A guy explained it to me very thinly in an email. But as I was reading through... But it does seem like we're kind of heading towards that direction where the technology our military is making certain to kind of look like UFOs and act like UFOs.
NICK POPE
Oh yeah. And at any given time, there will be things being developed and test flown that are somewhere between 10 and 20 years ahead of what's publicly announced. And some of those things for sure look like they come out of a sci-fi movie. I mean can you imagine, for example, a pilot who happens to see a B-2 stealth bomber back in say the early 80s before they were revealed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
They would think my gosh, that's a UFO.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess one of my big push backs with like... I believe there's a mixture of all of it within the phenomena. That there's technology that we don't understand, there's some nuts and bolts aliens, maybe that concept might be real, like UFOs visiting here, interdimensionality, the idea that they are on top of us right now. I think it's all very interesting. But I wonder nowadays, like the idea of the government making things that look like UFOs to act like UFOs or to sort of ape that. How long do you think that's been going on? And why would you... They always say that they are seeing it over like cities or they're seeing it in populated areas. And why would they test top secret technology in places where people would even be able to see it?
NICK POPE
Well partly that might be to see how those people react.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
It's a kind of test as it were. But generally speaking, you're right, generally we don't test top secret equipment-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
Anywhere other than really remote areas like Area 51 of course or areas out over the sea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
And usually at night. Reason being obviously you don't want somebody in a city getting a great high resolution film or photograph and then publishing it. And the next thing, Chinese or Russian or both military intelligence say hey, great, we've got everything we need, thanks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, thanks. That's the part we were missing.
NICK POPE
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Ten of those, please.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How do you feel about like how the US Navy was kind of like... Now there's obviously the influx of all of these reports and people seeing stuff and talking about how they've always saw stuff out in the deep ocean. Like do you think that that could possibly be military tech that we're seeing? Because there's a little bit of this kind of cat and mouse game that we're doing with Russia and China. It does seem like it's kind of just playing out more so in the news than in real life.
NICK POPE
I think you have it right when you say it's a mix of things. And in fact in June 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published a preliminary assessment of the phenomenon. And they said look, there is not a single answer to this that explains all of these things. There are different things going on in our skies and under our oceans. Some of it absolutely will be censor errors.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
Some of it will be our own tech, some of it may be tech belonging to an adversary, and some of it may be something else. So I think all of those explanations that are... None of this is mutually exclusive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Now when you're working, you're investigating all these different incidents, how often is it doctored? Like how often is someone sitting there and like making a video on their computer in computer graphics and CGIing a UAP? Does that happen often?
NICK POPE
It does. But when I was doing that job for the government, we didn't get much of that. And we could tell because of course we had, I mentioned, intelligence community imagery analysis experts and things.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
NICK POPE
People didn't try and hoax us much probably because seriously they thought we would send around the men in black or something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
NICK POPE
And yeah, they might well have gotten a knock on their door. Just like wasting police time is an offense.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
NICK POPE
You don't want to mess around with us. And so that may be a factor. But more generally with the civilian research community and just generally out there on the internet, absolutely. And of course stating the obvious, AI is going to make that 100 times worse.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Oh absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Much, much, much harder to discern what is real and what is not real.
NICK POPE
Yes. Although I think that in a way it's like first you have a missile, then you have an anti missile, then you have an anti anti missile.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
NICK POPE
The way to tell whether something is AI or not is to develop an AI program to answer that question.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then we're going to have to get rid of that AI. We're gonna have to hire Harrison Ford, he's going to have to do Blade Runner 9, and he's going to have to kill that AI.
NICK POPE
Yes.
ED LARSON
All he does is crash spaceships and airplanes. In real life and in movies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all he does. What was the attitude of the government when you were working for them? Like how did they treat you guys in the UFO department? Like I know people call you the Real Fox Mulder, which honestly must make you very excited.
NICK POPE
Yeah. No, that was fun. And of course life imitates art, art imitates life. Eventually of course I met David and Gillian and Chris Carter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's awesome. Did Gillian say hello to you? Did she talk to you?
NICK POPE
Yeah. I had been doing some work, I do some... Sometimes because of my government background on this, I do some spokesperson work on sci-fi movies and video games.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like consultancy stuff?
NICK POPE
Yeah, consultancy, spokesperson.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Awesome.
NICK POPE
So I did some work on the second X-Files movie and I got to meet them all at the UK premiere of that. So that was fun. But yeah, how were we treated? Yeah, pretty... I mean in one sense, I know this sounds crazy and it isn't, but it was just another government job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
NICK POPE
But of course when you walk down the corridors, people did whistle either the theme from The Twilight Zone or The X-Files.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, sure.
NICK POPE
But also of course complete strangers would come up to you and whisper to you in the canteen. (whispering) Is it true?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a lot of power.
NICK POPE
(whispering) Have we got the aliens?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just being like (whispering) honestly I'd probably be getting paid more.
NICK POPE
(whispering) You can tell me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whispering) If there was an alien, I'd probably get a raise. If you could maybe ask somebody else if there's aliens, that'd be great.
ED LARSON
I have an interesting question that just occurred to me before this interview. You worked for the British government. What would happen if a very public landing happened in the middle of Britain?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like in front of Buckingham Palace, a UFO lands. Who gets the call?
ED LARSON
Who investigates?
NICK POPE
It would in the first instance probably have to be the Ministry of Defense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
NICK POPE
Because the first question from the Prime Minister downwards would be is there a potential threat here?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
And if there is, what could we do to mitigate that threat? So you could not have a situation where the Ministry of Defense was not involved at some level.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you think that's an issue with all of this altogether? That all of the interest comes from our weapons sections and our military sections? Like does that how we view the entire phenomena?
NICK POPE
It does. And it's a very interesting question because the answer to it is most countries that have run and are still running UFO programs embed those programs either in their DOD-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
Or in their military. France is the only country that I can think of off hand, they actually embed their UFO program in their space agency. So it's a different model. And absolutely of course if scientists are leading it, it's done a very different way and there's a different mindset to if the military are doing it. Because with the military, the two questions are always is it a threat? And can we acquire some of this technology, whatever it is, and weaponize it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
NICK POPE
And stop it getting into the hands of an adversary who might also weaponize it? Which by the way explains a lot of the UFO secrecy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
NICK POPE
But to answer your question, it's interesting because it goes back to that point about the fact that the British government is now doing this study into how it would be announced-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
If we find... Now they're thinking more along the lines of what if the James Webb space telescope finds something. But of course it reads across into any number of other scenarios including the kind of landing on the White House lawn or in front of Buckingham Palace.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I feel like in America we would choose like... We're like all right, The Rock, you gotta go say hello to these aliens, they're looking for your autograph. Like I feel like it would be... That's what my mind imagines. Like you have a general, The Rock, Terrence Howard, they go down to go talk to the aliens and that would be like a peaceful society.
NICK POPE
Wait, surely we get Morgan Freeman because then he does the kind of announcement in those silky tones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. And that's how we do. They came all the way from Zeta Reticuli.
NICK POPE
He's done it in movies, so maybe he'd do it for real. No but look. In real life, first as I say, you would have to gather information, find out very quickly is there a threat? If there is, what can we do about it? But very, very quickly. And your scenario that happens in Britain, the British Prime Minister and if it was the US, the President, would have to address the nation, hopefully to reassure the people that everything's fine. And we saw, interestingly people would say how would that look? We have kind of a blueprint for it. It's funny, it's not a movie. It's in 1996, remember that Martian meteorite that they found in Antarctica?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! Yes.
NICK POPE
And they thought, now they've kind of walked it back but NASA thought at the time that it was evidence of fossilized but microbial life. President Clinton went out into the rose garden and he gave a speech. And you can still see it in the archive and it's out there. And he said something like ladies and gentlemen, one of the biggest and most profound questions that we can ask as humans has come a step closer to being answered. Subject to further scientific validation, we will move forward with this and this is very interesting. So we've got the blueprint of what it might look like.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, he must have taken Monica out on such a fun date that night. Because that's such a fun time. I can't imagine. Because I feel like it would be... I don't think it would cause panic anymore. I think at this point-
ED LARSON
Well it doesn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I just think that we were a little bit worried about sort of a religious panic. I know that that was like one big thing because especially in the US government, there's an evangelical stripe throughout our military.
NICK POPE
There is and some of them think that the UFO phenomenon is demonic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
NICK POPE
And that therefore you shouldn't engage with it because engaging with it feeds it by giving it energy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And that's scary to them so they don't want to engage.
ED LARSON
If it came out of a volcano it would be demonic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yeah. It would be interesting. But I also think that the way that information is disseminated right now, I don't know if people would believe it.
NICK POPE
That's another really interesting thing. We are so divided politically that if the president was to say, my fellow Americans, people of the world, we are not alone... Everyone who supports the other political party would say this is fake news, this is a false flag alien invasion, they're going to do a space patriot act, take away our freedoms, etc. But let me... You said that you don't think people would panic these days. And up until fairly recently, I went along with that. I was very much well kind of 'War of the Worlds' panic in the streets, run for the hills. That's probably not. Let me play devil's advocate-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
NICK POPE
And say two or three years ago, the world kind of lost its collective mind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
NICK POPE
And we tried to shut down the world because of something that although it was new, it was not unanticipated. I'm talking of course about COVID.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
And it's not like governments all around the world didn't have contingency plans for global pandemics. They did and they still do. And yet what happened? Everything in those contingency plans went out of the window. Nobody anticipated how society would be torn apart by aggressive debates about masks, vaccines, lockdowns, and other mandates. And like I say, we had a collective meltdown and tried to shut down the world. If we did that for something where we had the contingency plan and we've had pandemics before, I'm not so sure that there wouldn't be panic if suddenly we got up close and personal, landing on the White House lawn, aliens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also the truly unknowable thing about the human psyche is that I think you'd see patches of people, like let's say you had a full scale biological alien invasion, there'd be like chunks of people that would like be on the aliens' side. There'd be people that would be on the government's side.
NICK POPE
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There would be people who would not think that it's happening.
NICK POPE
This is an absolutely true story because I mentioned I worked on some movies. I had some involvement with and did some interviews about Independence Day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
NICK POPE
When they did the test screeners of that, at the bit where the White House got blown up, some people started cheering.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean yeah.
NICK POPE
So yeah.
ED LARSON
Well that guy, he's blown up the White House in like four different movies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's so excited to blow up the White House.
NICK POPE
And the only thing that's been blown up and destroyed more than the White House is the Golden Gate Bridge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They love blowing that up.
NICK POPE
Every single... It's been earthquakes, aliens, Godzilla.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
NICK POPE
What am I forgetting? More.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They go right for it, I don't know why. I think it's because of Rice-A-Roni.
NICK POPE
That's the San Francisco snack.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Now do you think that if there was contact, like official contact and people from another planet or aliens from another planet came here, do you think there's anything to be scared of?
NICK POPE
There might be. In a universe nearly 14 billion years old, there might be civilizations out there a billion years ahead of us. And as Arthur C. Clarke always said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
And even if they come here with altruistic or neutral purposes, who's to say that something might go wrong?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mars Attacks is my favorite, when they release the birds. Yeah.
NICK POPE
But they give us gifts of technology. And what the first thing we're gonna do with that technology? Weaponize it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
And if it's technology a billion years ahead of anything we've got, well heck, we'd crack this planet open like a nut.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
NICK POPE
So yeah, there is potentially something to be concerned about. I think government looks at everything through the lens of two questions. What are the threats? What are the opportunities? Those questions would arise, do arise with UFOs, and would arise with first contact just the same as they would arise with anything else.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Because if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
NICK POPE
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's what they want to do. After all these years of working in this industry, I don't even know what you call this, school of thought, has anything gotten clearer to you? Because I have found in just in my time of reading that I describe myself as a Robert Anton Wilson across the board agnostic, where I no longer fully believe in a single thing. Now you do twice the amount that I have. Where are you at now? What do you think is going on?
NICK POPE
Some things have gotten clearer. I mean if you think back to before that kind of groundbreaking New York Times article in December 2017-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
NICK POPE
Before that time, we didn't even know for sure that the US government had a program still looking at this. We knew that they had Project Blue Book back in the 50s and the 60s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
But we didn't even know there was a program. Well now at least people may not like what they say or believe some of it but we have now acknowledgment that there have been these programs. We know their names, we know the names of some of the people who ran them. We have some of the the videos, we have those three F-18 forward-looking infrared videos that have been released. We have some declassified reports. NASA have done a study, the Pentagon has done several reports, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has done reports. So yeah, we have more data.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
We also have outside organizations like the Galileo Project run by Professor Avi Loeb at Harvard, getting involved with this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's doing crazy work.
NICK POPE
He's doing great work. Because a few years ago, scientists and academics were afraid. This was like a third rail, you didn't touch it. It was career suicide. Now you've got heavyweight internationally renowned astrophysicists like Avi Loeb talking openly about this and openly researching and investigating it. So we have moved forward. But of course, as is always the case when you have more data, sometimes you just have more questions too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
New questions arise for sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
In science, you have to conduct experiments to find out if things are true or not.
NICK POPE
Yeah.
ED LARSON
So if you're not even conducting the experiment, then how are we supposed to ever be prepared if anything does happen?
NICK POPE
Exactly. And we need more scientists in this because the scientific method absolutely, particularly in terms of things like repeatability of course, does not arise with a lot of the data in the UFO field.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
But it needs to if this is to truly become mainstream. I mean the subject has come out of the fringe and somewhat into the mainstream.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The one thing though is that does the subject hold up to the spotlight? Because that's the one issue I find as someone who's also wanting to help push UFOs into the mainstream is that then you start to realize, oh, there's some stuff in here that is like either real crazy, it's hard for people to maybe wrap their brains around, or there's some weird stuff in the bottoms of ufology that's like bad.
NICK POPE
Yeah. Completely. Look, let's make no bones about it, there is some material that gets brought into the UFO field which is just plain wrong. And there are some people who attach themselves to the subject who are kind of either frankly crazy or just making it up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
For whatever reason. And there's a range range of reasons, it could be financial, it could be attention seeking, it could be just the satisfaction of trying to put over a practical joke on people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now people think a lot of ufologists are just excited to party with Tom DeLonge.
NICK POPE
Well yeah. But that's why we need the scientific method in this field more than we currently have it. So we need more scientists involving themselves. And we need also to apply, and this is a failing I think in the system more generally. but we need better critical thinking in terms of things like locating and citing proper sources.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. That would be my number one thing.
NICK POPE
Internet literacy essentially.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, exactly. Not hey, I found something on the internet so it must be true.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See also I'm a person that I ironically embrace out their ideas and then more and more as I get older it starts to become something I get into. And also that's the problem sometimes.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
NICK POPE
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just like the weirdo ideas.
NICK POPE
But people should push back against it. And not all of it will stand up to the spotlight, to go back to your point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
And that's good because if it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, to the spotlight, throw it out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
NICK POPE
And then let's focus in on the things where we do have good data. The more we can throw out and say you know what, we've looked at that and it's wrong, we can eliminate it. It's like, I don't know, a crime. Like one of these movies where there's a murder and lots of suspects.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
NICK POPE
Well the more suspects you can eliminate, the closer you get to the real culprit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. That's really, honestly this has been great. First of all, we've learned a lot from you. You're a very intelligent man. But we're about to ruin it.
NICK POPE
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So we're just gonna end it with our game. We just want to know more about you.
NICK POPE
Okay.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So this is plumbing the depths of your soul.
NICK POPE
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With Inside the Aliens' Studio.
NICK POPE
Okay.
ED LARSON
Inside the Alien, yes. And I don't know if you've ever seen James Lipton or not before but we will do a bad impression of him.
NICK POPE
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's not assuming that you know or have seen James Lipton because you're also British.
NICK POPE
Okay. I'm not sure I have. But okay.
ED LARSON
All right. What is your favorite word?
NICK POPE
Wife.
ED LARSON
Ooh, very nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's not going to see this. What is your least favorite word?
NICK POPE
It's two.
ED LARSON
Okay.
NICK POPE
Or it's three or four, is it? Closing time or the bar is closed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I'm talking about.
NICK POPE
I'm sorry, sir. The bar is closed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sorry, sir. That's a sentence. That's my least favorite sentence.
NICK POPE
No, least favorite word. If it's a single word, hate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
NICK POPE
Because everything else that's bad, war, torture, prejudice; everything probably stems from hate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. My least favorite word is plump. I hate that word.
ED LARSON
What turns you on?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It doesn't have to be sexual.
ED LARSON
It does not have to be sexual.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not what makes you hard.
ED LARSON
Is it the Voss water?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What interests you?
NICK POPE
This is a question about fetishes. No, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
List your fetishes.
NICK POPE
I am gonna take this question in the more general sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Please, please.
NICK POPE
Although it does read across, intelligence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. What turns you off?
NICK POPE
Closed mindedness.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah. This is a fun one. All right. What is your favorite curse word?
NICK POPE
It's, and I'm probably gonna mispronounce it, but obviously-
ED LARSON
We'll help.
NICK POPE
Yeah, thank you. It is the one, and I was only recently introduced to it because congressional representative Tim Burchett who is very engaged in the UFO field uses it, and it's a Southern one, it's the gad dumnit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gad dumnit!
NICK POPE
Yes. And maybe it's slightly different-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is it gad dumnit?
NICK POPE
I think it's that one.
ED LARSON
Gad! It's very Yosemite Sam.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, that is.
NICK POPE
It's that one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a very purely American expression. Gad dumnit! Next.
ED LARSON
What sound do you love?
NICK POPE
I'm going to be very corny again.
ED LARSON
Please.
NICK POPE
Same theme. The sound of my wife's voice.
ED LARSON
Aw.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, I mean you don't gotta suck up to her. What is your least favorite sound?
NICK POPE
Oh that's easy, it's the fingers on the chalkboard thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
NICK POPE
And that's interesting. I don't know what neurologists, neuroscientists say about that. Why it is. I think it's to do with a crying baby.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
NICK POPE
Evolutionary biologists have said it's hardwired into us to be alerted by that so that we can protect the babies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
NICK POPE
And there's something about that. Yeah. So that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I'm always trying to nurse the babies that I see crying outside. And no one likes it.
NICK POPE
Let me kind of qualify that. So my answer to the question is the fingers on the chalkboard but a baby on a long haul flight-
ED LARSON
Oh yeah.
NICK POPE
Kind of that's the same thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They should be kept in the hold.
ED LARSON
Yeah, that's what the bathroom's for.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They should be kept in the bottom, yeah, they should be underneath the plane.
ED LARSON
All right. What profession other than your own would you like to have?
NICK POPE
When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a cop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
NICK POPE
And if I had my time again and had to do something else, I think I'd be a cop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
NICK POPE
And I would want, maybe I just watch too many TV shows, but I would want to then become a detective looking at the most serious of cases, the homicides
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I see you in like a Punisher shirt with the Oakleys and like the backwards trucker hat.
NICK POPE
I would be the guy who opens the door after closing it and says just one last thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One last thing. One of my favorites. What is a profession you would not want to try?
NICK POPE
Probably anything that involves heights.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
I don't think I would want to be a lineman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's also considered the number one most dangerous job in America.
NICK POPE
I mean yeah, not only is it heights but it's cables.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
So it's kind of like a double whammy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, none of that.
ED LARSON
But yet you researched the thing with the most heights.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's on the ground.
NICK POPE
I'm on the ground.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
So yeah, a lineman. But also something else that I would not like would would be sewage working.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, septic guys.
NICK POPE
Septic, yeah.
ED LARSON
Someone's gotta do it though.
NICK POPE
Smells, fumes, stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. This is the last one.
NICK POPE
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If Heaven exists and god is there and when you enter into the pearly gates, what do you wish he or she would say to you?
NICK POPE
That is a hard one. I think something like welcome, Nick, you did good.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all I want to hear as well.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Henry, you did well. Mor. Pope-
NICK POPE
Did you live a good life? Because yeah, that would be it. That would encapsulate-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He would know.
NICK POPE
He would know. Or she. Or it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You would know if it's all real. But it might just be total blackness.
NICK POPE
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well this has been great, honestly. Nick Pope, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for having time with us. Is there anything else you wanna plug? Is there any book or-
ED LARSON
Do you have a book or-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Socials or anything you wanna plug?
NICK POPE
My website, for those that want to know a bit more about my background and my work, is nickpope.net.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got it.
NICK POPE
And my Twitter, just changed to X, might change back to Twitter because Elon's apparently thinking about that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He can't decide.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah.
NICK POPE
That's the social media platform I use most. And my handle there, is it handle?
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
NICK POPE
Is @nickpopeMOD. Which of course the MOD is the Ministry of Defense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
NICK POPE
So @nickpopeMOD.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely. We'll harass you on Twitter.
ED LARSON
Socials.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm saying Twitter.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm saying it, I don't care.
ED LARSON
You do what you wanna do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm going back. Thank you, Mr. Pope.
NICK POPE
Thank you very much.
ED LARSON
Thank you.
NICK POPE
It's been great chatting with you both.
ED LARSON
It's been great chatting with you too. And say hi to your wife, Scully, for us.
NICK POPE
I will do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Say hi to your wife for me!