Know Thyself
E178 - Jesse Michels: What UFO Sightings Reveal About Power, Technology, and the Unknown | Jesse Michels
13 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the significance of UFO sightings near nuclear sites?
For whatever reason, UFOs seem to show up consistently around nuclear installations, and they're all like, we don't know how the hell this happened. There's some sort of phenomena at play. My extraordinary claim is, like, there's something worthy of investigation here. But ignoring the evidence, I think that's a tragedy. So you hear of all these abduction cases, like...
Let's admit that we're seeing stuff in the sky. You're sort of poking holes in the dam that is the existing paradigm. Just following the data takes you to extremely epistemically weird places, no matter what. This is kind of a laundry exclusive here. We're probably not at the top of the food chain and there's like something else going on.
Sheesh.
It's really unlikely that they look like not only us, but they look like what a conventional evolutionary biologist would say humans look like in the future. But until people see a full-scale craft, I think they'll be skeptical and they have the right to be. In fact, there are good reasons to believe they're not aliens from other planets and they're actually more connected to mankind.
Looking to ancient stories can be really illustrative of what is possibly going on today. All right, well, if there's any aliens listening right now, hit your boys up. We've got some questions. Let's go, yeah.
What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the podcast. Today, we're joined with a journalist and researcher who has an incredible grounded energy about him exploring quite existential topics from UFOs to non-human intelligence to the limits of what we think about reality. And I'm just extremely excited to dive into this conversation with Jesse Michaels.
Thank you for being here, man. Thank you, Andre. I'm very happy to be here.
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Chapter 2: How do UFO encounters challenge our understanding of reality?
I've been a fan of your show for a while, so this is very cool for me.
One of my favorite things to do on the podcast is get to see people's work that I admire online, that I see. You've been producing some incredible documentaries. You're releasing, what, monthly? Now it's weekly, which is kind of crazy.
Wow, yeah. That's a lot of output. It's a lot of output, and thank you for calling them documentaries. Some of them do include a little more B-roll and editing, and so it's definitely intense, and we'll see if we can keep up that pace.
Yeah.
Thank you. Yeah, man.
No, it's incredible work and I have not done a topic or a podcast on this topic solely because I feel like there are a lot of people with interesting intentions or maybe just don't have the level-headedness that's required to explore such a topic.
And for most people, I think this topic feels a bit impractical in a sense where it's not necessarily what is needed most for their life, you know, to dive into these deep rabbit holes.
it is also one of the most existential topics of if we are alone in this universe, you know, and I think Arthur C. Clarke is, is quoted about, you know, both being equally terrifying, either us being alone or not in this universe.
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Chapter 3: What historical evidence supports claims of non-human intelligence?
And so what's your, what's your perspective on that? Just to start as we, you know, begin to peel back the layers here, um, how this topic for most seems like, uh, I think you've been quoted.
Yes. Yeah, totally. I always try to not be actually an evangelist of the topic in person when I see people because and sometimes they don't even know I'm like in the UFOs for like a long period of time until it organically comes up or they like see I have a YouTube channel or something. I do think it's. maladaptive may be a strong word, but like not, uh, immediately practical for a lot of people.
And I think like a lot of the stuff you cover on, on your channel around spirituality and tools to, you know, help, you know, uh,
Chapter 4: Why is there skepticism regarding UFO evidence?
uh your spiritual practice daily i think a lot of that stuff is actually kind of more concrete and more actionable uh you know if you have maslow's hierarchy of needs you'd put that like first right uh you'd put like the existential questions about like what is the nature of reality like up up at the very top and like you alluded to at the beginning uh you know of of your intro it attracts a
all sorts of, you know, grandiosity complexes, people with these sort of autobiographical, like, you know, I'm a star seed who was sent here. I'm the only one, by the way, no one else is, you know, the person and I'm here to enlighten humanity. And, um, and so it's, it's full, it's, it's full of, of landmines, the space, to be honest. Um, having said that, You are a starseed.
Having said that, I am from Arcturus, actually. Now, having said that, I do think there are a few people or a subset of people, I think, in society who care about, like, what is this soup that we're swimming in called reality? What is this? And they get into kind of esoteric physics. And you're obviously in the subset, clearly, because I watch your show.
Love the soup.
Hey, you love the soup. You want to know what is the what is the substrate in which we are kind of operating? And so you've had Donald Hoffman on and you explore why, you know, seeing reality for what it is, is actually maladaptive from like a, you know, survival standpoint.
I think there's this felt sense for a lot of those people and people generally that our understanding of reality is incomplete and off. And I think if you start kind of in that epistemically humble, like with that sort of claim, then I think beings between man and God are a part of that.
Or beings, you know, if you don't believe in God, above man and the kind of, you know, the chain of consciousness command or, you know, the hierarchy, so to speak, I think is a part of that.
And I think there are all these empirical observable anomalies, both in science and that the military have observed, you know, that, you know, aerospace executives are talking about now that people in the highest ranks of, you know, American intelligence are now discussing very openly that point to our reality being just much trippier than meets the eye.
specifically with respect to us not being alone in the universe and non-human intelligence being real. And so, again, maybe not adaptive for somebody day to day, but if you want to understand what is going on on kind of a higher level, I think it's dogmatic if you're not incorporating that into your model.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of the Greys, Nordics, and Reptilians in UFO lore?
You're like, you're always chasing this thing that you never quite grasp. And it's almost like this control system, which is using these intermittent reinforcement techniques and synchronicities, which we now know synchronicities do create dopamine, which leads you through life in this specific way that maybe you were supposed to lead or whatever.
And so, again, it brings this whole new cut on the UFO story, which I do think becomes... a little more personable and actionable than like, you know, crafts that, you know, have anti-gravity or whatever. Yeah.
Yeah. But before we dive deeper in there, could you lay out the different, like, what is the history of the Greys, for example, versus the Nordics, versus the reptilians, versus, and what is the correlation between what is perhaps, because our brain is very much so a prediction machine, and what is being entrained from media versus vice versa?
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, the outer limits thing is interesting. And sometimes I wonder, I mean, if this is all shadow play, if you take the Don Hoffman thing at face value, which I'm not saying that's necessarily true, but say it is. And so you have some sort of higher platonic reality and like a lower reality.
in that kind of worldview, you'd have like guardians, which are, you're seeing this sort of, you know, the shadows on the wall. You're seeing the simulacra of the objects. You're not seeing the objects themselves. And then you get into this thing where,
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Chapter 6: How do historical experiences shape our understanding of extraterrestrial beings?
you have these memes in your head. And how do you gain a meme library? How does that occur? And are those meme libraries just based on organic things that you're seeing in reality through life? Or are they shaded by media itself? And Clearly, it's somewhat shaded by media.
Again, I think if you get into the extreme extrapolation of this would be that we are living in some low-level simulation, and there is a Guardian class that is literally managing the abduction cases themselves as far as our low-level perception or recollection of what occurs. And you have to entertain that. I don't know. That's really nutty territory. As far as the history of the Greys...
you know, the kind of, uh, uh, really premier, you know, prime example of an abduction experience is the, the Betty and Barney Hill. There is September of 1961. They were in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and they were on their way, actually a road trip to, um, uh, Niagara Falls.
Chapter 7: What role does consciousness play in the perception of reality?
And, uh, they, they were an interracial couple, you know, normal, cool people. And, uh, they were, I think at a diner and, uh, they were, they were driving away from the diner and, um, They see this light in the sky and they're like, what the hell is that? And it seems like Betty is more afraid and Barney is more attracted to whatever this thing is. And they drive after it.
And eventually they come to a certain stop and they see it. It lands. Beings seem to come out. And I should say, by the way, again, it's one of those cases where they have missing time. Betty has like marks on her dress or whatever that she comes back with and doesn't know what happens. And then a lot of the actual recollection of, you know, the core experience comes out in a hypnotic regression.
But I think that is really when grays were introduced into the zeitgeist was, was probably 1961. But again, it's this weird thing where outer limits is also playing around that time. So around that time, I think is when, you know, great grays were introduced and, Nordics, it's tough. I mean, you could go back to like the Theosophical Society of like, you know, late 19th century.
You know, I'll revise my gray thing. Like Aleister Crowley, who's like a very dark figure, talk about left-hand path, you know, part of the OTO in Pasadena in L.A., Like he drew this figure he called Lamb, which looks kind of like a gray alien. And, you know, he claims he like summoned this thing that came from like a portal. It's probably demonic knowing him or whatever.
And so like maybe he's kind of the original gray guy. You could say actually, you know, connected to Aleister Crowley. Jack Parsons has an experience. Jack Parsons is basically like the godfather of American rocketry. He founds JPL. And he would do these tests, these rocketry tests in the Mojave Desert. And they were known as the Suicide Squad. And he ended up blowing himself up.
You know, crazy, interesting, mad scientists in American history.
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Chapter 8: What insights can we gain from personal UFO experiences?
And there's a great a book called Strange Angel about him that I recommend everybody read. But he sees this like Nordic looking being in the desert. And it's almost, and I think he says that she's from the planet Venus. And so that's like one of the first kind of archetypal like Nordic experiences. But you have going back to the theosophical and anthropological
philosophical kind of, you know, root races and civilizations, you have this idea of the Hyperboreans or whatever, these sort of like conscientious towards the earth beings that were, you know, part of some destroyed cycle. And they're the first root race is the Hyperboreans. So... it's hard to really trace like the kind of origin point of a lot of these things.
I think they're archetypal and sort of a Jungian sense and exist across civilizations and across societies in the human psyche. You know, even like reptilians, you could really go back to like, you know, ancient Hinduism and, you know, battles in the sky or whatever. And then there are definitely modern instantiations. So it's really hard to kind of pinpoint, but Yeah.
Where they were seated and are they being reinforced by culture? Clearly they're being reinforced by culture, but is there some objective reality to them too? Probably, you know? Yeah. I think it's like a lot of reality itself where it's the interplay between kind of preconceived notions and thoughts and then the thing itself.
There's something – like there's some middle path between extreme materialist reductionism and we are a happy accident. You, Andre, are just a bunch of atoms that bounced off of one another in a way that emerged into you. Like that's crazy to me. But then the other side is like everything is like –
drenched in meaning and there's some middle path and i don't quite know what the answer is but i was hoping you could enlighten us well no i mean it's one of one of your other guests who is far superior than i is like a spiritual thinker will be able to do that
You are in a weight class of your own, man. I feel like you're crushing it. Your recall of information is absolutely astounding. And I just love how passionate you are about all of this too, man. It makes it so lively and engaging to talk about. Now, there's a couple different avenues here.
There's one, which is like sort of the Hoffman understanding of the headset analogy, how we do not see our brains through the cameras of our eyes, do not see reality in the way that we historically have thought neurologically. Rather, our brains are prediction machines. There's this great book, The Experience Machine, by Andy Clark, who kind of elucidates this a bit.
How our brains co-create reality. We literally predict and guess in our brains and then kind of meet halfway from the sensory input. And it's fascinating because... There's this quote I think I saw in one of your videos about how the eyes only see what the mind is ready to comprehend.
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