WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.299 Okay, so I want you to close your eyes for a 00:00:02.299 --> 00:00:05.120 second. Imagine you're walking into one of those 00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:07.400 really prestigious, you know, slightly intimidating 00:00:07.400 --> 00:00:11.599 university libraries. High ceilings, that quiet 00:00:11.599 --> 00:00:14.679 hum. Totally. You can smell the old paper and 00:00:14.679 --> 00:00:17.179 floor wax. Students are just frantically typing 00:00:17.179 --> 00:00:19.940 away. You're walking past the history books, 00:00:20.059 --> 00:00:23.460 past classic literature. You are deep in the 00:00:23.460 --> 00:00:25.600 heart of the academic establishment. It paints 00:00:25.600 --> 00:00:28.219 a very specific picture, doesn't it? Order, reason. 00:00:28.420 --> 00:00:32.920 Exactly. It feels grounded, safe. But then you 00:00:32.920 --> 00:00:35.579 take a sharp left into the Woodson Research Center. 00:00:35.659 --> 00:00:38.020 This is the special collections area at Rice 00:00:38.020 --> 00:00:40.460 University's Fondren Library. Right, where you'd 00:00:40.460 --> 00:00:43.000 expect to find... What, old manuscripts? Civil 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:45.219 War letters? That's what I'd think. But instead, 00:00:45.320 --> 00:00:47.079 you find yourself standing in front of a climate 00:00:47.079 --> 00:00:49.719 -controlled vault that holds millions, I mean, 00:00:49.740 --> 00:00:52.140 literally millions of documents on things that, 00:00:52.159 --> 00:00:54.259 well, that science says shouldn't exist. We're 00:00:54.259 --> 00:00:57.020 talking UFOs, telepathy, near -death experiences, 00:00:57.219 --> 00:00:59.380 basically what researchers call anomalous phenomena. 00:00:59.679 --> 00:01:02.659 Today, we are doing a deep dive into the archives 00:01:02.659 --> 00:01:05.019 of the impossible. And I want to be really clear 00:01:05.019 --> 00:01:07.239 here because I know what you're thinking. This 00:01:07.239 --> 00:01:10.409 isn't a bunch of... tabloid clippings or, you 00:01:10.409 --> 00:01:13.049 know, Internet conspiracy printouts. This is, 00:01:13.049 --> 00:01:15.609 and I think you'll agree, probably the most ambitious 00:01:15.609 --> 00:01:18.629 academic attempt ever to bridge the paranormal 00:01:18.629 --> 00:01:20.530 and the scientific method. That's the perfect 00:01:20.530 --> 00:01:22.069 way to put it. And the fact that it's at Rice 00:01:22.069 --> 00:01:24.769 University is so important. The mission isn't 00:01:24.769 --> 00:01:26.510 what people assume. They think it's about disclosure, 00:01:26.769 --> 00:01:29.189 right? Proving aliens are real. Exactly. But 00:01:29.189 --> 00:01:33.260 the goal is, well... It's much more subtle and, 00:01:33.319 --> 00:01:35.219 frankly, more intellectual than that. It was 00:01:35.219 --> 00:01:37.439 founded back in 2014 by a professor of religion, 00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:41.480 Jeffrey Krippel. And the whole mission is to 00:01:41.480 --> 00:01:43.959 steward these collections. Steward them. So like 00:01:43.959 --> 00:01:46.560 a caretaker. Precisely. They treat reports of 00:01:46.560 --> 00:01:49.340 the impossible with the same serious, rigorous 00:01:49.340 --> 00:01:52.079 care and preservation that they give to, I don't 00:01:52.079 --> 00:01:53.719 know, the patriots of a founding father. And 00:01:53.719 --> 00:01:55.900 the scale is just, it's hard to get your head 00:01:55.900 --> 00:01:58.450 around. Looking at this from our perspective 00:01:58.450 --> 00:02:01.530 now in early 2026, the amount of material they've 00:02:01.530 --> 00:02:04.769 collected is staggering. It is massive. As of 00:02:04.769 --> 00:02:08.990 late last year, we're talking 18 distinct collections, 00:02:09.210 --> 00:02:12.110 over a million documents. Whoa. And this matters. 00:02:12.169 --> 00:02:15.490 The Washington Library Association actually flagged 00:02:15.490 --> 00:02:19.580 this as... Like a historic milestone. They said 00:02:19.580 --> 00:02:22.620 it's the first publicly accessible archive where 00:02:22.620 --> 00:02:24.919 this kind of paranormal research is the primary 00:02:24.919 --> 00:02:27.500 focus. And that publicly accessible part is a 00:02:27.500 --> 00:02:29.719 huge deal. Usually the stuff is classified, right? 00:02:29.800 --> 00:02:32.080 It's in a Pentagon basement somewhere. Or in 00:02:32.080 --> 00:02:33.939 a private collector's garage where no one can 00:02:33.939 --> 00:02:36.300 verify anything. Which is why this deep dive 00:02:36.300 --> 00:02:38.580 is so important. We're not speculating. We're 00:02:38.580 --> 00:02:40.580 going to metaphorically open the boxes for you. 00:02:40.699 --> 00:02:42.060 Okay, let's do it. We're going to look at what's 00:02:42.060 --> 00:02:44.620 actually inside, from raw emotional abduction 00:02:44.620 --> 00:02:47.879 accounts to cold, hard files on psychic spies 00:02:47.879 --> 00:02:51.080 in the U .S. Army. And maybe the craziest part, 00:02:51.319 --> 00:02:53.960 how they're now using AI to find patterns in 00:02:53.960 --> 00:02:56.099 all this impossible data. So let's start at the 00:02:56.099 --> 00:02:58.240 beginning. How does a major university like Rice 00:02:58.240 --> 00:03:00.500 end up as the headquarters for the unexplainable? 00:03:00.659 --> 00:03:02.740 You mentioned Professor Kripal. Kripal is the 00:03:02.740 --> 00:03:05.400 academic anchor, for sure. He's a historian of 00:03:05.400 --> 00:03:07.439 religions. And he'd been building these relationships 00:03:07.439 --> 00:03:09.979 for years with Amanda Falk, who's the head of 00:03:09.979 --> 00:03:12.379 special collections. But the real spark, the 00:03:12.379 --> 00:03:15.620 catalyst, that was Jacques Vallée. Oh, Jacques 00:03:15.620 --> 00:03:17.879 Vallée. He's a legend in this field. He was the 00:03:17.879 --> 00:03:20.000 basis for the French scientist in Close Encounters 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:22.300 of the Third Kind, wasn't he? He was. But in 00:03:22.300 --> 00:03:24.860 real life, he's a computer scientist, an astronomer. 00:03:25.500 --> 00:03:28.819 Very rigorous. And around 2014, he came to Kripal 00:03:28.819 --> 00:03:31.180 with a big problem. He's sitting on a lifetime 00:03:31.180 --> 00:03:34.340 of research files on 500 anomalous events he 00:03:34.340 --> 00:03:36.939 personally investigated. And he was getting worried. 00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:39.400 Worried about what? The men in black showing 00:03:39.400 --> 00:03:41.740 up? Nothing so dramatic. He was worried about 00:03:41.740 --> 00:03:44.280 loss and commercialization. He saw his colleagues 00:03:44.280 --> 00:03:47.099 getting older and their life's work. Decades 00:03:47.099 --> 00:03:49.939 of data. was just ending up in dumpsters. Or 00:03:49.939 --> 00:03:52.419 worse. Or worse, yeah. Auctioned off to some 00:03:52.419 --> 00:03:54.180 private collector who'd lock it away forever 00:03:54.180 --> 00:03:57.460 or sold to a TV producer to make some sensationalized 00:03:57.460 --> 00:03:59.919 show. That's a legitimate fear. You spend 50 00:03:59.919 --> 00:04:02.360 years doing serious work and your legacy becomes 00:04:02.360 --> 00:04:05.539 a B -movie prop. He wanted preservation. He wanted 00:04:05.539 --> 00:04:09.419 it to be safe. So after four years, they finalized 00:04:09.419 --> 00:04:13.039 the donation in 2018. The Valet collection is 00:04:13.039 --> 00:04:15.300 really the bedrock of the whole archive. And 00:04:15.300 --> 00:04:18.709 how big is that one? It's 38 linear feet of documents. 00:04:19.069 --> 00:04:22.430 Let's put that in perspective. Linear feet. That's 00:04:22.430 --> 00:04:24.930 like a shelf of paper roughly the length of a 00:04:24.930 --> 00:04:27.329 school bus. Good analogy. Yeah. And it's full 00:04:27.329 --> 00:04:30.170 of field notes, sketches, even old computer punch 00:04:30.170 --> 00:04:32.230 cards. It's the raw data. Yeah. But here's the 00:04:32.230 --> 00:04:34.350 detail that really got me. Okay. While most of 00:04:34.350 --> 00:04:37.290 it's public, some files in his collection and 00:04:37.290 --> 00:04:39.949 in another researcher's, R. Leo Sprinkle, are 00:04:39.949 --> 00:04:42.769 under embargo. Embargo. So they're there at Rice. 00:04:43.399 --> 00:04:45.660 But you can't look at them. Exactly. Restricted 00:04:45.660 --> 00:04:47.959 by the donors because of their sensitive nature. 00:04:48.100 --> 00:04:50.519 Some are locked down until 2028, some all the 00:04:50.519 --> 00:04:53.879 way to 2031. Wow. OK, my mind immediately goes 00:04:53.879 --> 00:04:56.259 to what could be so sensitive. I mean, witness 00:04:56.259 --> 00:04:58.899 names, sure. But with Valet, you have to wonder 00:04:58.899 --> 00:05:00.639 if it's something he thinks we just aren't ready 00:05:00.639 --> 00:05:02.879 for yet. It definitely brings up that forbidden 00:05:02.879 --> 00:05:06.240 knowledge angle. But Kripal and his team. They're 00:05:06.240 --> 00:05:07.680 really trying to move away from that kind of 00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:10.819 sensationalism. Their goal is to undo the damage 00:05:10.819 --> 00:05:12.699 of the Condon Committee. I see that name pop 00:05:12.699 --> 00:05:15.339 up a lot in the source material. For anyone who 00:05:15.339 --> 00:05:18.620 doesn't know their 1960s Air Force history, why 00:05:18.620 --> 00:05:21.939 is that report the big villain here? The Condon 00:05:21.939 --> 00:05:25.779 Report was this big study the Air Force commissioned. 00:05:26.279 --> 00:05:28.899 And its conclusion was basically, nothing to 00:05:28.899 --> 00:05:31.220 see here, folks. Nothing of scientific value. 00:05:31.399 --> 00:05:33.579 Stop looking. And that just killed the field 00:05:33.579 --> 00:05:36.300 for decades. It created what people call the 00:05:36.300 --> 00:05:39.060 laughter curtain. It made it career suicide for 00:05:39.060 --> 00:05:42.680 any respectable academic to touch UFOs. So Rice 00:05:42.680 --> 00:05:44.120 is trying to tear that curtain down. They're 00:05:44.120 --> 00:05:46.459 saying, we don't care if it's weird. If it happened 00:05:46.459 --> 00:05:48.740 to a person, it's data. And they're doubling 00:05:48.740 --> 00:05:50.959 down. Last year, Kripal mentioned they're even 00:05:50.959 --> 00:05:53.040 calling it the Center for the Impossible now. 00:05:53.420 --> 00:05:56.279 They're pulling in anthropology, art, physics. 00:05:56.779 --> 00:05:59.079 Even genetics. They want to throw the whole university 00:05:59.079 --> 00:06:02.019 at this. So let's get into that data. Because 00:06:02.019 --> 00:06:05.660 a million documents sound so dry, but a huge 00:06:05.660 --> 00:06:08.459 part of this archive is just deeply personal. 00:06:09.259 --> 00:06:10.860 Let's talk about the Whitley -Striber collection. 00:06:11.279 --> 00:06:14.100 Yes. This is, without a doubt, the emotional 00:06:14.100 --> 00:06:16.839 heart of the entire archive. Whitley -Striber 00:06:16.839 --> 00:06:19.689 wrote the book Communion in 1987. It was his 00:06:19.689 --> 00:06:22.170 own non -fiction account of his abduction experiences. 00:06:22.490 --> 00:06:25.269 That book was a cultural bomb. I still remember 00:06:25.269 --> 00:06:27.730 that cover with the gray alien face. It terrified 00:06:27.730 --> 00:06:31.029 an entire generation. It did. But the book was 00:06:31.029 --> 00:06:33.970 just the beginning. After it came out, Streber 00:06:33.970 --> 00:06:37.610 became a kind of lightning rod, a confessional 00:06:37.610 --> 00:06:39.589 booth for the whole world. People who had been 00:06:39.589 --> 00:06:42.230 suffering in silence suddenly saw his book and 00:06:42.230 --> 00:06:44.310 felt they weren't alone. And they started writing 00:06:44.310 --> 00:06:46.470 to him. Hundreds of thousands of letters. And 00:06:46.470 --> 00:06:48.350 this wasn't fan mail. These were desperate letters. 00:06:48.370 --> 00:06:49.870 People writing things like, I've never told my 00:06:49.870 --> 00:06:51.769 wife this, or I thought I was going insane until 00:06:51.769 --> 00:06:54.790 I read your book. That's intense. His wife, Anne, 00:06:55.009 --> 00:06:57.970 spent years curating them. And the archive now 00:06:57.970 --> 00:07:01.209 holds about 3 ,400 of the most significant ones. 00:07:01.410 --> 00:07:03.949 That's nine linear feet of trauma. It really 00:07:03.949 --> 00:07:06.350 is. And this is where the academic value really 00:07:06.350 --> 00:07:09.449 becomes clear. A physicist might not care about 00:07:09.449 --> 00:07:12.819 a letter from a farmer in Iowa. A psychologist. 00:07:13.740 --> 00:07:17.040 A sociologist. Yeah. A historian. These letters 00:07:17.040 --> 00:07:19.959 are absolute gold. It's a hidden history. It 00:07:19.959 --> 00:07:22.060 reframes the whole abduction thing. It's not 00:07:22.060 --> 00:07:24.699 just about was the spaceship real. It's about 00:07:24.699 --> 00:07:26.759 the fact that thousands of people felt something 00:07:26.759 --> 00:07:29.500 so profoundly that they had to write it all down. 00:07:29.579 --> 00:07:32.160 Yes. It's a repository of what gets called rejected 00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:34.699 knowledge. And that theme carries right over 00:07:34.699 --> 00:07:36.699 to the John E. Mack collection. John Mack is 00:07:36.699 --> 00:07:38.920 so important because of who he was. This wasn't 00:07:38.920 --> 00:07:41.699 some guy in a van. He was a Pulitzer Prize winning 00:07:41.699 --> 00:07:44.399 professor at Harvard Medical School. Which made 00:07:44.399 --> 00:07:47.660 his interest in alien abductions so, so controversial. 00:07:47.980 --> 00:07:50.879 He risked everything, his reputation, his tenure, 00:07:50.959 --> 00:07:53.959 to treat these experiencers as patients who needed 00:07:53.959 --> 00:07:56.079 help, not as people who were just delusional. 00:07:56.220 --> 00:07:57.879 And his collection is the biggest one, isn't 00:07:57.879 --> 00:08:02.259 it? By far. It's 450 linear feet. So, to use 00:08:02.259 --> 00:08:04.300 your bus analogy again, that's a line of boxes 00:08:04.300 --> 00:08:06.839 longer than a football field. But it came with 00:08:06.839 --> 00:08:09.399 a huge, unique challenge. The privacy issue. 00:08:09.720 --> 00:08:13.040 Doctor -patient confidentiality. Exactly. These 00:08:13.040 --> 00:08:15.819 boxes are full of medical records, hypnosis session 00:08:15.819 --> 00:08:18.100 tapes, therapy notes. You can't just put that 00:08:18.100 --> 00:08:20.079 out for any student to browse. So what did they 00:08:20.079 --> 00:08:22.720 do? Just black out all the names? It was much 00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:25.060 more systematic. Corinne Austin, who was actually 00:08:25.060 --> 00:08:27.920 Mack's former assistant, became the project manager 00:08:27.920 --> 00:08:31.500 for the archives in 2024. She led this massive 00:08:31.500 --> 00:08:33.899 de -identification effort. So they had to strip 00:08:33.899 --> 00:08:36.179 out all the identifying details. Every name, 00:08:36.220 --> 00:08:38.340 every location, thousands and thousands of pages. 00:08:38.419 --> 00:08:41.639 It took years. But now a researcher can study 00:08:41.639 --> 00:08:44.899 a hypnosis transcript from 1994 and analyze the 00:08:44.899 --> 00:08:46.639 structure of the experience, but they'll have 00:08:46.639 --> 00:08:49.240 no idea who the person was. It turns private 00:08:49.240 --> 00:08:51.669 trauma into public data. Okay, so we have the 00:08:51.669 --> 00:08:54.110 emotional, personal side covered with Struber 00:08:54.110 --> 00:08:56.549 and Mack. But the archive isn't just feelings. 00:08:56.610 --> 00:08:59.210 It's got the hard power files, too. We have to 00:08:59.210 --> 00:09:01.710 talk about Project Stargate. Yes, this is where 00:09:01.710 --> 00:09:04.370 the tone shifts from close encounters to a Cold 00:09:04.370 --> 00:09:07.769 War thriller. Project Stargate was a secret U 00:09:07.769 --> 00:09:12.029 .S. Army unit started in 1972. Its purpose was 00:09:12.029 --> 00:09:14.809 to research and use remote viewing. And for anyone 00:09:14.809 --> 00:09:17.710 listening, remote viewing isn't just watching 00:09:17.710 --> 00:09:20.009 TV. What are we talking about here? It's the 00:09:20.009 --> 00:09:23.490 alleged ability to perceive details about a distant, 00:09:23.610 --> 00:09:27.789 unseen target using only your mind. Psychic spying, 00:09:27.850 --> 00:09:30.230 basically. The Army had protocols, they had target 00:09:30.230 --> 00:09:33.149 coordinates, Soviet subs, nuclear sites, and 00:09:33.149 --> 00:09:36.409 they had viewers try to sketch or describe what 00:09:36.409 --> 00:09:38.649 was there. And this wasn't just a weekend experiment. 00:09:39.070 --> 00:09:42.789 Oh, no. It ran until 1995. That's more than 20 00:09:42.789 --> 00:09:45.470 years of government funding. The collection at 00:09:45.470 --> 00:09:47.610 Rice came from Edwin May, the program director 00:09:47.610 --> 00:09:49.450 for the last decade of the project. So it's the 00:09:49.450 --> 00:09:52.370 official files? Thousands of pages of declassified 00:09:52.370 --> 00:09:55.450 documents. It's just wild to think that while 00:09:55.450 --> 00:09:57.970 the CIA was using spy planes, they were also 00:09:57.970 --> 00:10:00.029 paying people to close their eyes and look at 00:10:00.029 --> 00:10:02.470 Russia. It shows the impossible wasn't just a 00:10:02.470 --> 00:10:04.610 fringe thing. It was seen as a potential weapon. 00:10:05.149 --> 00:10:07.529 An arms race of consciousness. Absolutely. And 00:10:07.529 --> 00:10:08.909 you've got all these other collections, too, 00:10:08.990 --> 00:10:11.169 from people like Larry Bryant and Brenda Densler. 00:10:11.409 --> 00:10:14.509 Yeah. It's just this massive trove of information. 00:10:14.889 --> 00:10:16.830 Which brings us to the big question. So what? 00:10:16.929 --> 00:10:18.529 They have a million documents. Are they just 00:10:18.529 --> 00:10:20.570 sitting there for future historians or is something 00:10:20.570 --> 00:10:22.990 happening now? They are definitely not collecting 00:10:22.990 --> 00:10:27.110 dust. In 2024, Rice launched a two -year research 00:10:27.110 --> 00:10:29.730 initiative specifically to analyze this stuff. 00:10:30.309 --> 00:10:32.250 And this is where it gets really futuristic. 00:10:32.690 --> 00:10:36.090 Let me guess. AI. They are using artificial intelligence 00:10:36.090 --> 00:10:39.149 to decode the impossible. Okay, that sounds like 00:10:39.149 --> 00:10:42.669 a movie pitch. AI hunts for aliens in the library. 00:10:43.049 --> 00:10:45.649 How does that even work practically? Well, you 00:10:45.649 --> 00:10:48.970 can't feed a ghost into a computer, no. But you 00:10:48.970 --> 00:10:52.169 can feed stories into one. Think about it. Hundreds 00:10:52.169 --> 00:10:54.809 of thousands of letters. Thousands of therapy 00:10:54.809 --> 00:10:57.509 transcripts. No single person can read all that 00:10:57.509 --> 00:10:59.210 and hold it in their head. You'd miss connections. 00:10:59.490 --> 00:11:01.870 You'd get tired. But an AI doesn't get tired. 00:11:02.070 --> 00:11:04.610 Right. They're aiming it at the Streber and Mack 00:11:04.610 --> 00:11:07.789 collections. The AI can scan millions of words 00:11:07.789 --> 00:11:09.909 in an instant and look for semantic patterns 00:11:09.909 --> 00:11:12.090 a human would just never see. What kind of patterns? 00:11:12.210 --> 00:11:14.090 This gets into their core methodology. They call 00:11:14.090 --> 00:11:16.610 it a phenomenological method. This was laid out 00:11:16.610 --> 00:11:19.509 in a study in Global Policy late last year. Phenomenological 00:11:19.509 --> 00:11:22.269 method. OK, break that down for us. It's actually 00:11:22.269 --> 00:11:25.090 a brilliant tool for this kind of topic. It means 00:11:25.090 --> 00:11:28.009 bracketing the question of reality. So instead 00:11:28.009 --> 00:11:30.629 of asking, did a real spaceship land on the lawn? 00:11:31.230 --> 00:11:33.330 Which you can't answer from a letter. You ask, 00:11:33.389 --> 00:11:35.450 how did this experience present itself to the 00:11:35.450 --> 00:11:37.289 person? So they're not trying to prove it happened. 00:11:37.409 --> 00:11:39.970 They're trying to map the story itself. They're 00:11:39.970 --> 00:11:43.220 treating the narrative as the data. And the AI 00:11:43.220 --> 00:11:45.259 is perfect for this. You can look at a letter 00:11:45.259 --> 00:11:49.539 from 1975 and a hypnosis tape from 1992 and see 00:11:49.539 --> 00:11:52.940 that both people describe, say, a specific smell 00:11:52.940 --> 00:11:55.940 or a specific sequence of emotions, even if they 00:11:55.940 --> 00:11:57.980 use totally different words. It's finding the 00:11:57.980 --> 00:12:00.899 common DNA in the impossible stories. That's 00:12:00.899 --> 00:12:03.100 a great way to put it. It lets them map the structure 00:12:03.100 --> 00:12:05.120 of the impossible. And if you find a pattern 00:12:05.120 --> 00:12:07.620 that repeats across thousands of unconnected 00:12:07.620 --> 00:12:10.509 people, that tells you something profound. either 00:12:10.509 --> 00:12:12.850 about human consciousness or maybe about the 00:12:12.850 --> 00:12:15.110 phenomenon itself. And it seems like the public 00:12:15.110 --> 00:12:17.330 is finally ready for this kind of serious look. 00:12:17.429 --> 00:12:19.230 The numbers for their conferences are really 00:12:19.230 --> 00:12:22.690 high. The interest is exploding. Their conference 00:12:22.690 --> 00:12:26.950 panel videos have like 300 ,000 views. Their 00:12:26.950 --> 00:12:29.210 2025 conference, The UFO and the Impossible, 00:12:29.509 --> 00:12:31.830 had 300 people show up in person. And it's not 00:12:31.830 --> 00:12:33.730 just the usual suspects, right? Mainstream media 00:12:33.730 --> 00:12:36.610 is coming to them. That's the big shift. In 2025, 00:12:36.909 --> 00:12:40.539 they had ABC News visit. Even The Sun, the British 00:12:40.539 --> 00:12:43.000 tabloid, said to a reporter who wrote this surprisingly 00:12:43.000 --> 00:12:46.379 deep piece about it. The conversation is moving 00:12:46.379 --> 00:12:48.659 out of the fringe. It really feels like a turning 00:12:48.659 --> 00:12:51.299 point. For so long, this was all rejected knowledge. 00:12:51.360 --> 00:12:53.679 You were nuts if you talked about it. Now a top 00:12:53.679 --> 00:12:56.320 university is using AI to study it. And that's 00:12:56.320 --> 00:12:58.480 the key takeaway. The Archives of the Impossible 00:12:58.480 --> 00:13:01.220 isn't trying to make you a believer. It's a library, 00:13:01.399 --> 00:13:04.299 not a church. Its argument is just that the human 00:13:04.299 --> 00:13:06.679 experience of the impossible is a fact. People 00:13:06.679 --> 00:13:08.990 have these experiences. And that makes it worth 00:13:08.990 --> 00:13:11.610 studying. So keep an open mind, but keep it grounded 00:13:11.610 --> 00:13:13.730 in data. Don't believe everything, but don't 00:13:13.730 --> 00:13:16.029 dismiss everything either. In our age of information 00:13:16.029 --> 00:13:19.009 overload, that's such a critical skill to look 00:13:19.009 --> 00:13:20.710 at things that don't fit your worldview with 00:13:20.710 --> 00:13:23.529 curiosity instead of just immediate dismissal. 00:13:23.570 --> 00:13:25.809 That's the lesson here. We've covered a ton of 00:13:25.809 --> 00:13:29.269 ground from the vaults at Rice to psychic spies 00:13:29.269 --> 00:13:32.450 and AI detectives. But before we wrap up, there's 00:13:32.450 --> 00:13:34.649 one thought that's been nagging me. What's that? 00:13:35.200 --> 00:13:38.379 Okay. So we've established the AI is scanning 00:13:38.379 --> 00:13:41.399 millions of documents, right? Looking for patterns 00:13:41.399 --> 00:13:44.179 humans missed. Right. Connections across decades 00:13:44.179 --> 00:13:46.860 of data. But we also mentioned that some of the 00:13:46.860 --> 00:13:49.240 most important material from Jacques Vallée is 00:13:49.240 --> 00:13:52.799 locked away under embargo until 2031 because 00:13:52.799 --> 00:13:55.659 it's too sensitive. I think I see where you're 00:13:55.659 --> 00:13:58.840 going with this. If the AI is successful, if 00:13:58.840 --> 00:14:01.539 it starts to decode the deep structure of these 00:14:01.539 --> 00:14:03.740 impossible events using all the public data. 00:14:04.320 --> 00:14:06.639 What happens if it finds the answer that's currently 00:14:06.639 --> 00:14:09.659 locked away in that embargoed box? It is a chilling 00:14:09.659 --> 00:14:11.779 thought that we're building a machine that might 00:14:11.779 --> 00:14:13.399 find the secret before we're supposed to know 00:14:13.399 --> 00:14:16.139 it. And if it does, there's no embargo on an 00:14:16.139 --> 00:14:19.240 algorithm. Something to think about. Thanks for 00:14:19.240 --> 00:14:20.899 joining us on this deep dive. Stay curious.