So I don't think any time has been more malleable than the one that we're sitting in right now. That's true. Do you think human nature has changed significantly? Yeah, that's interesting.

I always find this interesting thing. People go like, hey, we're just like us. Those ancient Egyptians were just like us. And I'm like, yes, some extent but no too i'm like i look at their look at their art and look at what they did and it's they clearly couldn't be seeing the world the way we did they couldn't the mind must have been different

a human nature has to have changed too no look there's been enlightenment without with yeah but now i mean human nature has changed because an awful lot of questions that we have asked about our world has been answered. I mean, we used to believe in a god of the Nile. And, you know, there used to be Apollo dragged the sun across the sky and Artemis dragged the moon. We have become smarter, wiser. We've answered a ton of questions. But at the end of the day, do we still like the guy who lives across the street from us? Because he still has that stupid boat up on, you know. We do not like him. Can you not? And also, he's always screaming at the kids to stay off his lot. The kids play in the front yard for crying,

you know. You think that guy was back in ancient Rome? Get off my lawn. Same exact. Same guy. Get off the floor. Yeah.

There is always going to be someone who walks into the room and says, hey, I'm in charge here. Yes. And there's going to be somebody who says, okay, okay, great. I'm glad you're in charge. And there's going to be somebody else who says, who put you in charge? No, no, no. How come you're in charge? Isn't that human nature in a nutshell i mean kind of like that i was in uh uh i went to egypt which was amazing um uh life altering and we're showing around the the great pyramids and the sphinx okay i've never been and uh look i just saw the movies you know, I saw, you know, I said, Charles Anderson movies, you know, that's all it is. That's what I saw. So I'm essentially operating on that speed of understanding. I know the very old, and it's hilarious because when you you go see, like, for example, the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids, by the way, that are right there. You can see them from your hotel. They're right there, right? They're right there. Outside the city. There's a pizza hut, literally. You can look at the Sphinx and you turn around and look at the parking lot and there's a pizza hut right across the street from the Great Sphin. So we're there, and it's everything that's supposed to be. But the fellow who is showing us around is an American, and he's an archaeological engineer, right? And he went, the first time that he went there, he was a younger man. And he was a proponent or advocate, or he essentially studied the works of Edgar Cayce and Mind Dynamics. And it was all about the cosmic power of these mysterious structures and what do they mean and what creatures built them and what power. So that's why he went there with a bunch of those types who are going to go there and celebrate. Oh, we're going to go to the birth of this great cosmic force that is the pyramids and the sphinx. Because you could have been in 1500 BC in Egypt and have had no idea who built those things. We do not know who built them. They were already ancient. So this guy goes as an archaeological engineer, and he spent about seven minutes in the throes of the great cosmic force that was there. And in the eighth minute, he told himself, oh, I see how they built these things. Oh, really? The stones are very specifically placed, you know. And so right then and there, I viewed that as like, well, yeah. Because if you can't figure out how it got there, you're going to probably swallow anything. Oh, sure. My great-grand, this god or this king commended me in order to do it. But the fact is, people worked really hard and put it up.

Well, the actual achievement itself is miraculous. And

not to keep coming back to my Paul Giamatti reference library here, but what happened in Philadelphia and in other places as well. Yes. And in fact, you know, Harari makes this point between the Code of Hanarabbi in 1776 B.C. and the Declaration of Independence in 1776 A.D. And just says, look, this is thought. This is work. It's the same thing. Hammurabi just said, this is what it's going to be. But you guys, you and John Hancock and all those cuckoo kids, all those nutty kids, you know, arguing and stuff like that. They actually implemented. But what went into it? What went into it was a lot of thought, a lot of arguing, a lot of compromise, a lot of I give up, just keep it as it is, you know. And change a couple words and I'll be happy. And it ends up being so. What was the most malleable moment when Hammurabi, you know, put down his code or that day in 1776 or the day before yesterday? It's

interesting that people forget about that moment is that the idea of independence from a monarchy like that was not, it was invented somewhat in that form of independence. There had been earlier forms, but they'd all led to a new invention. It wasn't a sort of foregone conclusion. Well, here in America, a

guy came in and said, hey, I'm the king of all you guys. And somebody in America said, oh, yes, you are. Thank you for being our king. And then a bunch of other guys said, well, who made you king?

Who made you king? I don't think so, sir. I would argue that, you know, the Harari thing is sort of the Enlightenment project. And you see this in books like by Steven Pinker, and I get that. But I would argue that the mindset of the Code of Hammurabi, which is an eye for an eye, you know, is still in me. It's still in you. It's still in all of us. like the state and we have laws and justice, but in there is Tony Soprano who wants, you know, justice for his daughter, you know, now, and he's not going to wait for the state to do it. And it's like, both these are riding in our heads, you know, as we go forward. It's weird. So Steven, I'm asking

you, has human nature changed since

those days? No, I'm with you on that. But that's more kind of basic animal behavior in some ways, eye for an eye and sort of like territorialism.

I think it's human too. No, you think that's more human? Well, yeah, attachment to your kids and what you do for them, it's super, it's animal and human, I think. Uh-huh.

It's rude. Animals have put real nice spins on savagery. We are animals, yeah. Now, Tom, actually, you played an astronaut. Yes, I do. So you know all about space and stuff like that. Are you a guy who buys into UAPs and UFOs? I'm just interested to know what you think of that. But I'm interested, are you a skeptical guy, first of all? Okay,

yeah, yeah. I'm willing to give anybody a certain amount of credence up to a certain, somewhere on my test of, you know, authenticity versus what's the word? Probability. Like I read there was recently, and maybe you might know something about this. Supposedly there's something about a very specific parallel, one of the lines of longitude across America that for some reason, this particular parallel has an awful lot of UFO reportings on either side of it or something like that. There's all kinds of stuff like that, sure. Okay, all right. So I picked up a guy's book about that because I said, well, great. You know, let me read about that. And I'm going to say that there was so little recorded data. It was all, a guy saw this and someone heard this and someone read this. Blah, blah, blah. And so there's, oh, no, no, no, I saw it. No, it was read. There's photographs that show it. There's an official report about it. Then I say, and where is, oh, well, you know, it's blah, blah, blah. But out of all of this stuff out of you know i'm gonna argue with somebody who was flying an airplane and a jet at a supersonic speed and saw something they couldn't explain i think that i'm gonna say this uh 99.9 percent of this is look it was a weather balloon like i remember when hbo first started off they would all have these these these movies about you know roswell or you know and here's a thing and it was a cover-up and i remember reading this thing a guy found a piece of material that you could crumple it up

that's a roswell yes and

then you would put it on you would put it down on a table and would it unfold. And you know what? I was able to do the same exact thing with a hot pad and a sponge. I took a sponge, and I crumpled it up, and I put it down. I'd say he's a skeptic. It's the perfect rectangle that it was. All right, okay. Okay, okay, okay. So you're

generally skeptical.

I'm not, I'm saying, hey, dude, there's mysteries out there, Jack. There are super duper mysteries, but remember the face on Mars? That was a big thing. Remember there was a, without a doubt, hey, that's a face on Mars. That is a face on Mars. There it is. Eyes, nose, a bit of little, kind of looked like Wilson the Volleyball, kind of looked like that. Yes, it did look like Wilson the Volleyball. It did look a little bit like that. Yes, it did. And then about three years later, they did a Passover, took a picture again, and it was just this mishmash or something. Got blown away like a sandcastle. I know you're

friends with Obama, and I'm just sort of picturing him taking you aside like, Tom, we really do have the craft in a hangar. We need you to, yeah. You ever got that kind of— I never

got that level of honesty out of the man. Yeah, right. It's—I

don't—yeah, I mean, I, I certainly, yes, I, I'm with you in that. It's like, and definitely there seems to be something even weirder going on because you do suddenly have Pentagon. I mean, not just guys who've left the Pentagon, but you have people saying strange things. people saying strange things. I do have, I have a hard time going to the place if there's an alien cadaver in Nevada and stuff like that. I mean, it, and the guy recently was talking about, he went in one of these ships and it was defied all known laws of physics. It was bigger inside than it was outside. Well, could they

land at Pico and Westwood for crying out loud? Can they, can they sit down, you know, in, you know, in Midtown Manhattan and let us know they're there. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it's part of like the human psyche to see things in the sky because we've been doing it since the Bible, you know, and to also sort of have this longing for like, well, maybe there's intelligence out there and there's this kind of human longing. Yeah.

Well, it's the world's greatest game of operating. You're in a coffee shop in Ames, Iowa, or Dalhart, Texas. And someone comes and says, yeah, I saw a meteor last night. Did you see it? I was out and I just walked the dog. And they were, what did I say? I saw a streak across the sky. It looked like a match. Why the Southern accent? I don't know. No,

it's good. I'm buying it. Then somebody else says. Sam Hank's doing it. I'm buying it 100%.

Oh, yeah. You know, Lisa came in. Lisa Ammerman came in the other day, and she saw a streak across the sky. And you know what? I heard that thing landed just a little outside of Moline. And then someone else comes in. You know, I heard from Rachel that Lisa told her that a streak landed across the sky and something landed in Moline. And dang, if it was about the size of a Volkswagen bus and had doors on the side, you know. It just, you know, spins right along. Well, it's collective.

Yeah, the collective delusion begins to really gain a lot of momentum when everybody starts participating. I'm

going to tell you right now, Paul Giamatti, there are people out there. There are people out there that served you a dish of your favorite ice cream somewhere. And they have turned that brief interaction with you into something much greater than it. No, you're absolutely right. Paul Giamatti came in for a cup of Rocky Road, and he was really

pissed off about something. And you weren't. You weren't just, you know. Absolutely right. No, that's a very good, that's an excellent analogy. In which case, I'll come back

to you again. Stephen asked my, has human behavior changed over the course of the millennium? That's that thing that Stephen and are fascinated

by, though, is that's imagination, too. It's like your imagination begins to just endlessly. You know, that goes back again to the cognitive revolution,

because there was one way of looking at lions at the water hole, right? We went down to the water hole and there were lions at the water hole. So we turned around and came back. Yeah. Then there's somebody who has the imagination to say, you know, last time we went down to the water hole, there were lions. Maybe we shouldn't go today, right? But the next step in cognitive, in that cognition, is I sense that there are lions at the water. Do you have, who are you going to, you might not doubt any of those people, right? And from there, you get into someone that's going to say, we better not go because Christy says there are lions at the waterhole

and somebody else says, how does she know? Thank God Christie's here. But that's that thing. That's an interesting thing you're always talking about, Steve, which is that imagination is a function originally as this kind of like warning system as a kind of like assessing sort of danger and assessing your environment. The lion at the water hole, the crocodiles.