Neil deGrasse Tyson: Bring Out The Aliens!

In the cold open Tyson says that if the government had aliens and wanted to hide them from a president, the president would not know.

But if you have the aliens and you don't want the president to know, the president's not going to know.

Tyson says depictions of gods (Medusa, a floating Jesus with beams, Jesus walking on water) could pass for aliens, so imagining aliens is the same impulse as imagining gods: picturing beings beyond ourselves.

what are our images of deity? Many of them could pass for aliens.

In a played clip, Obama says aliens are real but he has not seen them; per Tyson's paraphrase, they are not kept at Area 51 unless a conspiracy hid them from the president.

They're real, but I haven't seen them.

Obama's remark was the scientifically literate position (aliens are probable somewhere), and the public turned it into a claim that the US government holds aliens.

They took his statement that sure there are aliens out there and turned it on to the US government

In a played Air Force One interview clip, Trump says he does not know if aliens are real and that Obama gave classified information.

Well, I don't know if they're real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information.

The host says Trump stoked the idea of aliens and shortly afterwards the UFO files release was announced; the clip he just played shows Trump saying he does not know if they are real.

Trump seemed to stoke the idea that there is aliens. And then from that, shortly after, we had the UFO files announcement.

A clip, apparently of Trump, responds to the UFO files release with 'Sure, great. Bring them out. I love it.'

Sure, great. Bring them out. I love it.

A May search-interest peak for aliens coincided with a Pentagon release of UFO files that week and with Tyson's book Take Me to Your Leader (released May 12); no file ids or contents are discussed.

So that one of those peaks in May in part was because there were files released that week by the Pentagon and dare I suggest my book was released in May on May 12th.

Tyson says high-ranking whistleblowers (former intelligence officers and military) gave sworn testimony in Congress, which is why he decided to engage with the topic.

I saw these highranking whistleblowers come forward in Congress, sworn testimonies, whistleblowers, former intelligence officers, former military folk.

Because the witnesses are official government people rather than anonymous farmers, testimony about UFOs must now be taken up 'a notch'.

no longer can you discount the testimony the way you might have done so before with the farmer in the back 40

The decisive evidence would be a physical alien specimen; once shown, belief questions end, as with elephants, which nobody is asked whether they believe in.

If you're saying you got an alien in the shed in the back 40, just bring it out. And the moment you do that, no one will ever have to ask again, do you believe in aliens?

In absolute brain size humans rank about fourth, behind whales, dolphins or porpoises, and elephants.

So, if aliens came to Earth and they knew that brains are important, we'd be like fourth on their list for who they want to talk to.

An operational definition of 'intelligent life' for the alien question may require technology (radio, spaceflight), under which the Roman Empire would not count.

Operational definition of intelligence might include your ability to communicate across space or your ability to build a spaceship to move.

One hypothesis for the lack of visitors ('if aliens are everywhere, where are they?') is that interstellar travel is too hard.

So maybe there are intelligent aliens out there, but space travels too hard. So they haven't come to visit us.

The congressional UAP hearings drew bipartisan participation, which Tyson sees as rare agreement in Washington.

We had Republicans sitting right next to Democrats asking questions about aliens.

Most released UAP video is monochromatic and low resolution, and Tyson, having seen most of it, finds none of it compelling beyond a point of redundancy.

Typically, it's monochromatic and very low resolution as this is.

Most UFO sightings have natural explanations (cloud formations, lightning, twilight conditions, misidentification), but some remain unexplained and Tyson is comfortable with that.

Even UFO enthusiasts of the most severe kind would agree that most sightings of what we call UFOs have natural explanations

Tyson finds the Tic Tac video interesting because he cannot explain it, and the pilots' reported shock adds to it; he describes the object as moving and 'gimbaling' in frames.

Well, cuz I don't know what it is. I'm a scientist. We are attracted to things with that we don't know or understand.

Tyson says whistleblowers have testified that the US has aliens, alien crash parts and reverse-engineered alien technology.

people have testified we have aliens, that we have alien crash parts, that we have reverse engineered alien technology

The public is ready to see an actual alien because Hollywood has prepared us, and Tyson expects the encounter to be charming rather than frightening.

Of course, we're ready. Hollywood has prepped us for decades for this day. I think it'll be charming.

An alien is unlikely to be humanoid, since most life on Earth (oak trees, worms, lobsters) is not humanoid; Hollywood aliens are actors in costume.

I would be most surprised if the alien was humanoid.

Tyson says whistleblowers have said, under oath in Congress, that they have met aliens.

until you had whistleblowers saying they've met aliens under oath in Congress and not the drunkards coming out of the bar at 2:00 a.m.

Reported alien sightings divide into archetypes: little green men (1950s and 60s), the grays (more common today), Arcturians, Lyrans, Sirians, tall whites and insectoids, about a dozen in his book.

So they divide into archetypes. So little green men that's, you know, we had a lot of those back in the 50s and 60s.

People who have taken DMT often report seeing or meeting beings like the insectoid alien archetypes.

They often site seeing or meeting these types of

English-speaking countries report vastly more alien sightings than other cultures, which Tyson attributes to a reporting culture, not aliens preferring English speakers.

English- speakaking cultures have reported many more alien sightings than other cultures vastly more sightings which is a little weird

A test of shared DMT encounters would be whether one person can glean information from the entity that matches another person's independent information; absent that, it is not evidence.

So let's do experiments on that to see if can can one person experience an insect insectoid, glean information from that that psychedelic alien that matches someone else's information.

His book Take Me to Your Leader reframes assumptions about aliens, with examples such as an alien finding sleep baffling, handshakes being unsafe with unknown appendages, and aliens landing in Los Angeles concluding the dominant life form is the automobile.

What this book tries to do is reccast all of your assumptions about what an alien would think of us and about what we would think of an alien.