Diana Walsh Pasulka — Professor of philosophy and religion at UNC Wilmington and author of American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, and Technology. She studies belief, Catholic history, and how the UFO phenomenon functions as an emerging religion.
The gist
Pasulka and Lex Fridman explore the nature of belief, reality, and religion through the lens of philosophy (Kant, Nietzsche, Arendt) and Catholic history. She argues that belief in non-human intelligence, UFOs and UAPs, is a new form of religiosity, and that contact experiences seed religions much as they always have. The conversation links aliens, angels, muses, and technology under a single umbrella of non-human intelligence, drawing on figures like Jacques Vallee. They cover Roswell, the Tic Tac videos, Bob Lazar, psychedelics, brain-computer interfaces, the singularity, money, death, and the meaning of life.
Big reveals
- Pasulka entered the American Cosmic research as a UFO non-believer and came out agnostic, a kind of believer, after seeing physical evidence.
- She describes 'Tyler D,' an invisible insider who claims to get 'downloads' that become real technologies sold on NASDAQ for tens of millions.
- She recounts being blindfolded and driven to an alleged New Mexico crash site where they recovered materials later studied by scientists.
- On the Tic Tac videos, her UFO 'fight club' contacts believed the footage was authentic but doctored, and being spun.
- She frames angels, aliens, muses, and technology all as forms of 'non-human intelligence' communicating with humans.
- She and Tyler were sent by a billionaire to the Vatican secret archives to study levitation and bilocation canonization records.
- Pasulka rejects a non-material singularity, arguing information always needs a material host, so we won't slough off our bodies.
Things worth remembering
- Pope Benedict formally abolished the concept of Limbo in 2007, a belief that caused real anguish for over a thousand years.
- Jimi Hendrix saw his music as an 'electric church' mission, treating himself almost as a spiritual missionary.
- Rocket pioneers Jack Parsons and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky performed rituals, believing they were downloading information or opening stargates.
- ARPANET, the proto-internet, was originally described as 'augmentation of the human intellect.'
- Hannah Arendt wrote about people using 'memes' as thoughtless stereotypes decades before the term existed.
- David Bowie called the internet 'an alien life form,' a quote that opens Pasulka's book.
- A film analyst argues Kubrick's monolith in 2001 represents the screen, the technology we now live inside.
- Maria of Agrada, a 1600s Spanish nun, claimed to bilocate to the New World, where missionaries reportedly found natives already taught the faith.
- Pasulka named her pet cat Trump and her dog Putin so the two would have a companion.
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American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology
Diana Walsh Pasulka
“professor of philosophy and religion at uncw and author of american cosmic ufos religion and technology this book is one of the most fascinating” — Lex Fridman 00:00:00Find it on Amazon
Purgatory (book on purgatory)
Diana Walsh Pasulka
“people should know they have a book on purgatory that came before your uh american cosmic yes i wrote a book on purgatory” — Lex Fridman 00:10:23Find it on Amazon
The Gay Science
Friedrich Nietzsche
“the nietzsche's gay science is one of them it's one of the best books ever in my opinion” — guest 00:25:55Find it on Amazon
Arrival
Denis Villeneuve (inferred)
“one of them was the basis for the movie arrival which if you haven't seen it it's a really great movie about uh ufos” — guest 01:23:35Find it on Amazon
Stories of Your Life and Others (short stories incl. the basis for Arrival)
Ted Chiang
“the author ted chang has a lot i recommend his his writings his short stories” — guest 01:24:06Find it on Amazon
The Singularity Is Near
Ray Kurzweil
“i even assign it to my students in my classes i'm like this is this is it you know this is like a really great book of the singularity” — guest 02:25:27Find it on Amazon
Eichmann in Jerusalem
Hannah Arendt
“she writes two books which i'll recommend one is called eichmann in jerusalem where she attends the nuremberg trials” — guest 02:40:41Find it on Amazon
The Life of the Mind
Hannah Arendt
“she has another book called the life of the mind which is gigantic and frankly it's one of the best books i've ever read” — guest 02:41:44Find it on Amazon
Authors of the Impossible
Jeffrey Kripal
“his best book or the one that impacted me the most is called authors of the impossible and his writing is very much like nietzsche's” — guest 02:42:46Find it on Amazon
Mutants and Mystics
Jeffrey Kripal
“there's a great one he's written called mutants and mystics where he talks about the comic strips” — guest 02:43:48Find it on Amazon