Steven Young, PhD Academia to Alchemy

[Speaker 1] (0:00 - 1:32) All right, everybody, welcome to the final episode of Here for the Truth for 2024. We've had an incredible year with some amazing conversations, many highlights for sure. So thank you so much for being here, sticking with us, listening. Thank you for feeling what we're doing. And thank you for, I guess, just all around your support and the engagement. It definitely means a lot. As always, this program is brought to you by our membership community, Friends of the Truth. Our podcast is powered by you guys. So if you love what we do, and if you want to support on a deeper level, please head to friendsofthetruth.co to become a premium member. It can also be accessed from hereforthetruth.com. And we're offering a lot of value in return for your support as well. Today we have Stephen A. Young joining us. He has a PhD in theoretical physics, in nuclear physics. And he's written an incredible book called The Fool's Wisdom, which was released this year, which is a blend of his journey with alchemy and how that understanding has led him to challenge many of the things he learned during his tenure in academia, including atomism, including mainstream cosmology, and much more. This is just an all around dynamic conversation, which again, requires an active mind, but we know that our audience is there for sure. So without any further ado, guys, please enjoy this episode and have an amazing new year. [Speaker 2] (1:33 - 1:39) You are now listening to The Year for the Truth Podcast, hosted by Joel Graffiti and Yerasimos. [Speaker 1] (1:42 - 37:42) Stephen A. Young is an author, musician, and national philosopher known for his music headflux and his book, A Fool's Wisdom, Science, Conspiracies, and the Secret Art of Alchemy. With a PhD in theoretical physics, Stephen has forged a unique path, blending science, spirituality, and music. After leaving academia, he produced over 100 tracks, performing globally and earning a dedicated following. From 2015 to 2018, he delved into shamanic traditions and alchemical studies in Central America and Hawaii, inspiring his creation of Audio Alchemy, a fusion of hermetic teachings and music production, which he taught through workshops and retreats. In 2024, after more than two years of development, Stephen published his first book, A Fool's Wisdom, which re-examines the modern scientific paradigm through an alchemical lens, challenging the contemporary materialistic worldview. The book quickly became a number one bestseller in Western philosophy on Amazon US. Now based in Scotland with his wife and three children, Stephen continues to expand his work at the intersection of science and spirituality, exploring alchemical philosophy and the transformative power of sound and music. Stephen, such a pleasure to have you here, man. Thanks for being here. Thanks very much for having me, guys. It's a pleasure. Oh, pleasure's all ours, dude. One way we always like to kick off these podcasts, especially with first-time guests, is we want to kind of dive deep into your personal hero's journey. So I guess, garnering from early experiences, what were some of the major catalyzing moments in your life that you think led you down this path and evolved into what now is? Well, I mean, yeah, that's a good question. I mean, there's, yeah, like funny things. I mean, like, well, the way things are now where the position I'm in now where I'm challenging science, you know, I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't gone to university and done a degree and a PhD. I wouldn't have felt compelled to really put everything into this as I am now. But I remember, it's funny, way back, like, you know, quite young, I must have been maybe about 10 years old or something. We got this magazine pack through the door, you know, you get those like special magazines they'd send out for like six months, like collector's edition stuff. And it was all about mysteries and science, you know, I remember that was the first time I saw like Albert Einstein, and, you know, the curving of space time and black holes and all these like all this stuff. And I was like, wow, you know, I really, I really want to do this. And so yeah, I really started paying attention in physics and maths at school. And those were like my favorite subjects. And, you know, I just kept going with it really, I was like, I want to learn more, I want to learn more. And so I went and did an undergraduate in physics, I started out astrophysics, but then I switched to theoretical physics. Because I wanted to get more into all the quantum stuff. And, and then when I finished my degree, I was just like, you know what, I just want to keep on learning, you know, just keep on going. So I got a PhD in nuclear physics. And, you know, that took me up to like the age of like 25. So yeah, and then at that point, I kind of, you know, walked off the cliff from academia into the real world. And, and then yeah, things like there, you know, getting a real job and, and then starting to make music and things like this. Life took a different turn. I had, you know, always been into music from the youngest age. But it was kind of I always thought it was just something that had to be just like a hobby, you know, just something that was, yeah, you know, just just a bit of fun. But then as the years went on, I started to feel like, no, this is actually something I can do something that has real value, something I can do for a living. And I eventually quit my job in 2010. And just devoted myself to, you know, making music every day, and just see where it would take me, you know, it was a it was a bit of a leap of faith, really. But no regrets. Yeah, it was the right decision. Steven, what, what was it in you that went, okay, I've put all this time, all this energy, all these resources going down this path. And then something in you goes, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk away from this. Like, what was it that inspired that move? Um, well, I suppose there was, there was a lack of jobs, essentially, when I finished my PhD in 2004. I was six months, I spent looking for work. And, you know, I was pretty open to doing anything, I just wanted to sort of use the skills that I'd learned and use the knowledge I'd learned, you know, I didn't really mind how I was going to be using it. But I applied for a lot of jobs and find there was just no appetite, it was just no use, or the knowledge and the skills that I'd been learning. And so eventually, I get a job in IT consultancy, working on basically mobile payments, like NFC, you know, the NFC chips you got on your phone. So I was doing like a lot of the early testing on NFC payments and stuff like that. And I was I was pretty, pretty boring work. And I knew it was, you know, kind of totally unrelated to everything I'd done at university. And it wasn't really satisfying me creatively or spiritually. So I, you know, I spent the whole time just fantasizing about quitting my job and, you know, pursuing my passion, which had always been music. And actually, with electronic music, it is an application of physics, you know, a lot of ways that you're working with wave equations, synthesizers. I mean, a synthesizer is a perfect example of an application of real physics, you know. So I kind of felt like I was doing physics to a degree when I was working on electronic music. It was very heady and I'm always dealing with wave equations and, you know, things like that. So. Awesome, man. Where did your interest in, I guess, deeper studies in, I guess, this whole concept of understanding of alchemy begin? Yeah, well, I heard a quote yesterday, actually, from Carl Jung, he said, alchemy is not something you look for, it's something you encounter. And yeah, I guess that, you know, it really gave me goosebumps when I heard it because, you know, I didn't know I was looking for alchemy. I didn't know alchemy was the answer I was like seeking and all that. You know, I came out of academia with a head full of, you know, contemporary scientific knowledge. And then I got into things like psychedelics and shamanism really through the music path, you know, because that's where that sort of led, you know, looking at like raving and, you know, dancing and all this, like, where did that come from? It's like it takes you back to these like shamanic traditions of like taking medicines and dancing around the fire and all this kind of thing. So it led me down that road, kind of blew my mind and humbled me, actually, and made me realize that I don't know a damn thing about how the world works. I can't explain any of this, you know, with my long education. I couldn't explain really anything that was going on in a shamanic setting or a psychedelic experience. And yet those seem to be like so real, so magical and mystical. And so I knew I had to like, I had something fundamentally wrong. And, you know, at the time, I suppose I thought we needed new science, right? We need a new science, you know, we need new physics, we need new biology, new this. But when I started reading alchemy, I was like, oh, we don't actually need new science. There is an ancient science that seems to explain everything perfectly well. But it's been hidden. Can you explain for our audience, because I feel like that's a phrase you hear often, alchemy, alchemy, alchemize, do this, do that. Like, what does it mean from your standpoint? What is alchemy? Well, I mean, it comes down to transformation. I like to call it the science of transformation, although it gets many different words and phrases like the arts and the great work. And, you know, there's many different sort of grandiose terms for it. I think the science of transformation or the art of transformation works well because it's a science in which, you know, everything is viewed as consisting of the four fundamental elements, fire, earth, air and water, and some mixture or some transformation of those elements to make all the various things we see in creation. And it teaches us how to transform, how to create things. You know, it has a creative aspect to it. There's like seven steps in alchemy, seven processes, which they talk about it in relation to chemistry, because chemistry is rooted in alchemy, of course. But actually these seven processes from chemistry are applicable to any kind of work, like whether you're making music or writing a book or doing sculpture or cooking or starting a business or whatever, you'll find that the steps in alchemical work can be applied to any kind of process, not just chemistry. And so I find it was speaking to me in a musical sense. When I first started alchemy, I'm like, this is telling me about music. I'm like, everything in music has a correspondence in alchemy. Music is a kind of alchemy itself. You're transforming something into music. You know, you start with nothing and through a series of processes, you end up with something, right? A song. And it's a transformational process that you go through. And so the first thing I did when I learned about alchemy was to create a seven step process for making music. And I called that audio alchemy. And then I started teaching that in retreats and workshops and stuff. And that was many years ago now, like eight, nine years ago. So I've been on quite a journey with it since then. But I think that's the thing, people encounter alchemy and then they see their own work in the alchemy. So like with me, because I was doing music, I read alchemy and I'm like, wow, alchemy is all about music. But if you take, for example, Carl Jung, he was a psychologist. He encountered alchemy and then he realized, oh, alchemy is all psychology. So he made the correspondence between psychology and alchemy. And I've made the correspondence between music and alchemy, excuse me. And funnily enough, we both have the same surname and we're Jung and Jung. There's no connection beyond that. It's just a strange thing. But yeah, I agree. Carl Jung is a big figure in contemporary alchemy. You know, he sort of came to it and it helped him figure out a lot of his theories and stuff. Let me ask you this. Did you, you know, your book, your recent book that you published, A Fool's Wisdom, you have two parts to it where you talk about, you know, a variety or five main elements of scientism that you kind of break down. And then part two, you go into alchemy. So did you discover alchemy first and then that led you to start exploring all these different elements of materialism and let's say debunking them from your point of view? Or were you going down, let's say the rabbit hole of like, what's going on in this world? You know, I'm questioning that. Oh, and here's alchemy. Oh, that fits in nicely and explains things that I'm exploring. Like what came first, the chicken or the egg? Yeah, well, I suppose like the materialism, you know, the psychedelics and the shamanism and all that really like shattered the materialist sort of atheist worldview that I had when I left university, you know, because I mean, that's essentially what you're getting indoctrinated with when you go through all that. I mean, it's atheism and it's like, you know, it's like deep atheism. And I talk about how all these theories in physics all have a corresponding philosophy or like a religious sort of belief that they correspond with. But so I, yeah, at first I started to realize, okay, I believe in God. I'm not an atheist anymore. I'm not a materialist. There's more to this world. I believe in spirit. I believe in soul. But then after that, I did come to alchemy, but I then came to the flat earth stuff around about 2016, which was a few years after I started looking into alchemy. And actually it kind of, it worked together nicely because I knew that the ancient alchemy was geocentric. But I just thought, well, everything was geocentric basically before heliocentrism came along, you know, that's no surprise. But when I started looking at all the stuff against heliocentrism and against gravity, all the questions and criticisms of those theories, it actually, I came to a geocentric point of view, I think quite easily because I realized, alchemy was geocentric and that pre-existed modern science. And so it gave me something to basically fall back on, if you like. So yeah, I guess that was around 2016, 2017. And then yeah, in like 2020 is when I began studying, you know, germ theory, looking into virology and stuff. And I think really learning the way people looked at the virology and the evidence of viruses taught me a lot about logic. And I was able to look, take that and look at quantum physics and look at atomic physics and nuclear physics with that same level of scrutiny with which, you know, we'd been researching virology. And I just find a lot of the same errors, you know, a lot of the same fallacies, the same like lack of evidence, the reification fallacies, like circular logic, like all these same problems that we see in the virology thing, I was finding are also in quantum physics and atomic physics. And so I felt inspired to write a book that touched on all of that, all of those theories in physics, chemistry, and biology, and sort of exposed the criticism against them because we don't get, we're getting told the criticisms, we just get told as if it's a fact. And then we're not given any challenges to them, you know, so. Can you get into atomism? Before we go there, there definitely seems to be like a common theme among these branches of science where, you know, there is, you look deeper and ultimately you get to the bottom of and you realize this is actually all theory. It's not really built upon reality or empirical evidence. What is it that you think gives rise to like these incredibly complex ideas, which aren't really a match for reality, but then it kind of takes over and becomes, you know, the standard, the agreed upon consensus. Like this continues to happen among different branches when people go in and experiment reality, you know, especially within mainstream science understanding. So like on a philosophical side, what do you think is it that gives rise to like this process where we seem to be drifting further away from reality with modern science? Yeah. Well, I, you know, I was coming at it from the inside out, right? For someone with the indoctrination kind of trying to like figure my way out of it. And I suppose I just thought like people had got it wrong, but you know, they tried their best and they got it wrong. But then the deeper you get into it, it does seem like actually it was set up. It was a conspiracy. You know, there was people who actually wanted things to be this way. And, you know, with the atomism you asked about. So I suppose the atomism is the foundation of all modern theories and physical theories, because they all assume that everything is made from atoms. And, you know, when I started looking into that and really trying to find out, anyone actually really proven that, really isolated it, you know, really like concrete evidence that an atom is a real thing? Because I know I did like eight years of study into quantum physics and atoms and stuff like that. And I never saw any evidence of the existence of an atom or an electron. It was just assumed. When you're being taught this stuff in university, like, are they saying that these are assumptions, that these are theories, there's not real concrete evidence, or is it just, you know, taught as if, you know, it is the reality? Yeah, I mean, it's taught as if it is the reality. I mean, the thing with atoms and electrons is like they're said to be material. They're said to be like units of matter. Matter can be like held in the hands, it can be like isolated, it can be worked with. And what I find is like these atoms and things you can actually work with, except in a mathematical way, like in the blackboard or on a computer simulation. And, you know, yeah, there's various experiments that, you know, they will say, oh, this experiment, this effect, you know, shows that there must be an atom or whatever. But, you know, I find I could, you know, debunk those. And in some cases, often it's just one experiment, right, that was done like 150 years ago by some guy and they're like, oh, he did it, he showed it. And then we just assume, and then after that is assumed to be true. Yeah, he's like, that's what I'm so curious about, like that time, 150 years ago, what was the foundational piece of evidence or scientific study? Like with virology, you have, I think, John Franklin Enders experiment of what, 1953 or 54, whatever the time was of that. And then everyone's just like, okay, cool, this is it. Let's just go from this foundation, even though he had questions, he wasn't a hundred percent sure in his original studies, they weren't like, okay, this is 100% the way it is. And yet someone comes along and goes, hey, this is the thing. Let's just tell everyone in all the schools that this is the thing. And now you don't have to question it. Like one mind back then would go, let me take a look at this initial study and start asking some questions. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I'm so curious how that manifests. That's what gets me is how like, there's not, there's not more people questioning it in this timeframe, in this, in this period, you know, like, how does that become such a monstrous paradigm? Like, I think I could almost get it now, a hundred years later, how people wouldn't question as much because it's like, well, this is how it's been for a hundred years. But in that time period, you would think there'd be like, just like with probably heliocentrism and geocentrism back then, there were probably, there were schools of individuals or people that were like, no, we're geocentrists. And then it's like, no, we're heliocentrists. And then one theory wins out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was definitely being debated like 400 years ago, you know, like I talk about Robert Flood in the book, you know, and he was writing to Kepler and, you know, expressing disapproval of heliocentrism just as it was, you know, being proposed and stuff. So yeah, we're going back about 400 years now, but yeah. Asking like, you know, what, you know, what experiment was it, or what is the thing that got everyone believing in atoms? Well, we'll say a number of things. It's an idea that goes way back, but it's actually Einstein that his, you know, Einstein, right? One stone is what it means in German. I'll come back to that in a second, but one of his things that you don't hear so much about is Brownian motion. You heard of that? No. No. Maybe you wrote it in your book. I heard of it. Yeah. No, I didn't even mention it in my book. I didn't even think to like, someone brought it up recently and I was like, Brownian motion. Yeah. I'll look into that. And well as anyway, so that was the first thing that Einstein did as a physicist. And it's basically the motion. If you look, if you look at like a sample under the microscope, like you can see like little things like wiggling around, like in a gel or a liquid or something like that. There's like a little motion, like a random like wiggling. And that's what they call like Brownian motion. Anyway, Einstein came up with a theory that it was happening due to the movement of atoms. So he came up with, you know, a simple model of atoms and how the jiggling of atoms produces the jiggling that you see under the microscope. And then people are like, that's settled. The debate on atoms is now settled. And you know, so it's fine. So it was actually Einstein and Brownian motion that is supposed to have settled the debate on atomism and made it such that we can assume it to be true. And of course, it's also his relativity that's supposed to have settled the debate on gravity and also his E equals MC squared, which is supposed to have settled the debate over. You know what's really curious to me is why growing up somehow we all just believe that Einstein is the smartest man that ever lived. Like he really is heralded and paraded around as like the brightest mind, the person that's given the most, you know, to the field of science, et cetera, et cetera. Like how much of that from your understanding is true? And because now is there some link going on with this guy being indoctrinated to us as the guy that can't be questioned? And also maybe some of his theories not really, you know, holding as much weight as we may first think. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's strange and they totally worship him. I mean, like, oh, like literally like Einstein is like God in the physics world. But, you know, he never built anything. I, you know, it's, I feel like as time's going on, like the only real measure of a theory is whether or not it can be used to build anything or fix any problems, you know, make the world better for people. And it's been over a hundred years since Einstein came up with relativity and these things, and we still cannot build anything with it. I mean, it's just a completely abstract idea with no use, but they will say, oh, there's, you know, it allowed them to make some predictions about this and that and the other thing, but very sketchy evidence actually for Einstein's theory. So. And pop culture too plays a role too. I mean, how many movies about Einstein? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I was thinking the other day that this one stone thing, Einstein, one stone and, you know, in masonry and free masonry, like the, there's the foundation stone or the cornerstone, right. Which is like the first one that gets laid when you're building something. And everything is, everything's been built on Einstein. Like this whole, like, you know, infinite expanding universe, you know, the whole model of the cosmos that we are taught now is actually built on the theories of Einstein, be it Brownian motion, atomism, relativity, gravity, heliocentrism, or, you know, equals MC squared nuclear theory, the bomb, all that, like all this stuff is actually built on Einstein. He is like the foundation stone of the whole sort of theoretical temple as it were. So if someone were to ask you, Stephen, okay, you got your, you know, your degree and PhD physics, nuclear physics, theoretical physics, what are your thoughts on Albert Einstein? Like what would you, how would you respond? I think it's a fraud. Yeah. I think the, yeah, I think it's, it's a fraud or at least it's a deflection or distraction, you know, like this, this thing with like esoteric and exoteric, like every sort of like organization, I mean, consider a corporation, for example, right. They're going to have things that they say to the public and then things that they say to each other internally, completely different, right. The stuff that they say to the public and then the stuff that they say internally. And so I think this is happening. Hello. What we get is we get the exoteric message, the stuff that they want to put out that they want to put out to the public, but then what they're talking about internally is like a secret. And so I think Einstein is a distraction or a deflection from, you know, true, true science, probably from, from religion, even, you know, from morality. I mean, one of the things with relativity is that it corresponds with model relativism. It's actually the same thing. So you know, relativity isn't just some theory about like space and time. It's actually the idea that there's, there's nothing absolute in the universe, right? There's nothing is stationary. Everything is moving. Nothing is absolutely up or absolutely down. You know, up and down is relative. Movement is relative. Space and time is relative and truth itself is relative as well. That's, you know, that's really what's encoded into the relativity theory is that truth is not an absolute thing. It's relative to the observer. And this is model relativism. And it basically means that right and wrong is up to you to decide. God has no preference. It's like you decide what's right and wrong. And I think that's a bit of a slippery idea. Hey, quick question. Cause we, we get asked this all the time and we go on other podcasts because our podcast is called here for the truth. So if someone were to say to you, what is truth? Like, how would you answer that? What is truth? Well, yeah, I'd say it's something eternal. Well, there's true. What is true? I think is eternal and unchanging. And then I think truth is our honest opinion of what is true. I had to put it that way. So yeah, what is true is just there forever is on forever and unchanging. And then truth is our opinion on what is true. But well, so we'll think about it in terms of like, what is fundamental? So when I was studying physics, I wanted to know what is fundamental, what is everything made from, you know, what's, what does it really come down to when you really get to the bottom of things and they tell you, well, it's electrons, protons, and neutrons. Everything is made from electrons, protons, and neutrons. That's what's really fundamental. And then they'll say, oh, but there's the fundamental forces as well. So there's gravity and there's the nuclear force and the, the, the nuclear strong force, the nuclear weak force and the electromagnetic force. These are the things that are fundamental. But I'm going to start looking into alchemy and looking at what's fundamental as well. It's fire, earth, air, and water that's fundamental. It's the Zodiac that's fundamental. It's the sun and the moon that's fundamental, right? That these things, and, and suddenly what's fundamental becomes these things that are, that we can see, that we can work with, that we can relate to instead of these abstract particles that existed, you know, tiny scales of reality that we can't penetrate, you know, unseen. They're tangible. Like all of a sudden reality gets built upon a bedrock and your knowledge of reality gets built upon a real foundation and a real bedrock, as opposed to assumptions that actually I can't see and I can't feel, you know? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So it was very empowering. It was just like, I started to see everything as being made from fire, earth, air, and water, which is very clarifying because you can see how things work. I feel I can understand how anything works because I understand fire, earth, air, and water. But when I was in an atomic sort of mindset, it was hard to figure out how things work because they seemed so complicated because I was thinking of it at an atomic level. But when you think of it at an elemental level, it's actually much more simple to comprehend and work with. Yeah. Real quickly. Well, maybe not real. You want to ask? Here you go first. I've got a quick side question. So before you mentioned the seven stages of alchemy, I find the number seven very interesting. You know, we got obviously, it shows up so much in nature and cosmology, seven colors of the rainbow, the phases of the moon, continents, seas, you know, biological cycles, chakras, like it goes on and on and on with the number seven, the first prime number. Well, what is the importance of the number seven in your understanding? Well, I wrote a whole chapter on my book, but you know, I still don't know if I can tell you the answer to that. Yeah, it obviously just, you know, it comes up a lot. It's four plus three. So you've got your four elements in alchemy plus your three principles. And the seven steps actually come from that. So there's a process for each element and a process for each of the three principles. So that sort of adds up to seven. But people like Manly P. Hall have said like seven is like the number of God, you know, and we have the seven holes in the head, or which I talk about in the book, which I didn't learn until I was about like 40 years old. And I thought, wow, you know, all these years I've known that I've got five fingers and, you know, 10 fingers and 10 toes, but I never knew I had seven holes in my head. I didn't know that. So just now. Three, four, five, six, seven. Oh, wow. It's pretty cool. It's just a really fundamental number in that sense. You know, because otherwise you're like, well, what, what other sevens is there in the body? You know, I mean, I can't think of any other sevens off the top of my head, off the top of my head, but the right there is like, you know, the number seven is like as close to you as it could possibly be. Yeah. And then we see like the seven chambers in the heart, seven chambers in the brain, this kind of thing. So there's like a seven, there's like a seven fold structure that's found in a lot of these, you know, fundamental life forms in nature. It seems to be favored in some way or have some magical. Musically as well, right? Seven musical notes. Seven musical notes. Yeah. Yeah. Although seven is a weird number in musical harmony. The seventh harmonic is not used in music, right? It's like you use the other ones, but the seventh is really weird. So there's definitely, yeah, there's a lot of interest about the number seven, but the seven steps, as I say, I went all in with the seven steps and it really, it's made to create, for me, it made creativity so much more accessible and understandable because I went from, again, coming from an atomic, you know, theoretical physics background, I was, I couldn't understand creativity. I was not making music at that time, right. But I was looking at people who were making music, people who were making art. And I was like, how the hell are they doing this? Right. A creative human being is just like the most wonderful thing. And when I was in my science brain, I just could not figure out how people were able to create these things, you know. But I really just had to like throw myself into it and just start experimenting. And that's really the essence of The Fool, right. That's the trial and error, just throwing yourself into something, leap of faith, and keeping going with it. Yeah. I love that earlier on when you mentioned in your journey leaving academia, you use the analogy walking off the cliff, you know, and immediately The Fool came to mind in that regard as well. You know, it's like, I'm walking off this cliff, I'm going on my own journey now. I don't know what's there, but I'll figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. That was the question I was going to ask. Why did you call the book A Fool's Wisdom? Yeah, well, that was it that came actually, you know, after 2020 and all that, you know, I felt like a total fool, you know, I think maybe a lot of us did, but I, you know, been going for 10 years full time, making music and going to music events. And I mean, I've been doing all this research as well, but I think a lot of the research was felt very abstract until 2020. And then it all became very real. Do you know what I mean? You're just like, holy crap, like conspiracies are real, you know? And yeah, so sorry, what was the question again there? Well, I was just saying, why did you call the book A Fool's Wisdom? Just to carry on with what we were just saying about The Fool card, etc. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. So I felt like a bit of a fool. And, you know, I also recognized that this fool, the character of The Fool was, it seemed like me, like you were talking about the hero's journey. Yeah. Every time you go to a music gig, I don't know if you guys play music or you do gigs or shows or whatever, but like, that is a hero's journey in itself, just like, you know, leaving the comfort of your home, flying on a plane to another country, performing a show and coming back again. I mean, it's a perfect little hero's journey. You know, there's like the guardian of the threshold, you know, is the person who like welcomes you into the new country and like takes you and all that. I've done that like hundreds of times, really kind of understood that hero's journey and The Fool card. Every time I look at The Fool card, I feel like that's me going off to a gig. So yeah, I find myself relating with The Fool in a lot of ways. But I wanted to really just own it and be like, you know what, I am a fool. I've done some foolish things. But, you know, I have some wisdom as well, because as we learned from The Tarot is that The Fool is the first path, sorry, the first step on the path to wisdom. Yeah. And you're willing to live with uncertainty, you know, which I think is embodied in that Fool card as well. It's like, I don't need the concrete, the supposed concrete conclusions of academia and the masses and the crowds to be validated. Like, I'm willing, you know, it's a duty to be part of the experiment for real, as opposed to assuming the scientific dogma, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. The leap of faith. I mean, like the Indiana Jones, right? The, what was it? The third Indiana Jones movie or maybe it's the first one. The Crusade. Yeah. When he takes the leap of faith, he walks off the cliff and then there's a bridge that like catches him. Yeah. You know, that's so important because, I mean, a lot of people are like, oh, I don't know how I can get out of my situation. I don't know how I'd managed to do this if I left my job and all that kind of thing. And the thing is, you can't imagine at all what your, what life is going to throw at you. Like the moment you actually make the time and the space, you know, you quit it or whatever, quit what you're doing and just say, I'm going to devote myself to this. It's like every day will present new opportunities that you just can't imagine in the beginning, you know? So it is a real leap of faith. You just got to stick with it. You're speaking our language, you know, everything we do, so much we talk about in the podcast, even in our group coaching work is like, you have to have the courage and the self-esteem to take that leap of faith. And then when you do take that leap of faith, this is where I think the magic happens and unseen forces come to support you on that journey. And as you live more in alignment with what this essence is within you. Yeah. Yeah. Unknown friends come and find you. [Speaker 3] (37:43 - 37:43) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (37:44 - 37:44) Yeah. [Speaker 3] (37:44 - 37:44) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (37:45 - 44:18) So you said earlier, you got your PhD in nuclear physics. Yes. Can we talk a little bit about that? I mean, people, you know, you see sometimes online like, oh, nuclear bombs are fake. It's a psyop. This isn't, that didn't really happen. Like from your point of view, what is the atomic bomb? Sure. Well, I think it's basically just a big bomb, you know, like, you know, cause the, the atomic nuclear thing, I mean, they were called atomic bombs first or H bombs or nuclear bombs, you know, they've got lots of different names that make them sound like they're different bombs, but I mean, you know, an explosion is an explosion, but what makes it nuclear? Well, what's supposed to make a nuclear is the existence of a fallout and nuclear fallout, like after the blast, which causes all the surrounding area to decay and fall apart. And basically, you know, rot for the next like thousand years, right? This is what, you know, nuclear bombs are supposed to do. But, you know, you go in and look at, okay, well, what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And you're like, well, they just built the, built the whole thing back again, like right after the war, there was no nuclear fallout. And, you know, there's a guy called Michael Palmer who did a study that claimed that it was mustard gas and napalm that they actually used in those bombs. So, you know, it sort of opens the possibility. It's okay. It was a big bomb, but it wasn't nuclear. So then it's like, okay, well, if those blasts weren't truly nuclear, then have there been any bombs that were truly nuclear or were they just big explosions? And then, you know, you start looking at all the footage and stuff like that. And a lot of that footage of the blasts, it seems to be fake. It's like, how did the camera, the camera didn't even shake, you know, like this, the camera didn't melt or the film didn't, you know, there's lots of, if it was actually nuclear radioactivity blasting at that camera, like the, there would have been some damage, you know. So a lot of that stuff sort of starts to look really fake. And then there's the whole story of nuclear power, where apparently this isn't as dangerous as we've been told. And there was a guy, Galen Windsor, who, you know, would go around like eating uranium and telling, he worked in the nuclear power stations and he would drink from the coolant water and go swimming in the reactor water and all this kind of stuff. And his, all his staff would basically work bare hands, no protection, absolutely fine. They loved their jobs. They were using uranium and plutonium with no ill effects whatsoever. And then, I can't remember what year this was now, we might have been in the fifties, just like government comes down with heavy, like safety regulations. Suddenly you're not allowed to touch this stuff. You're only allowed like 10 minutes of exposure a day. You've got to wear all this stuff and there's got to be all this protection and yada yada. And, but he maintains it was all perfectly safe. All those safety concerns were actually just there to hide the technology as it were, or hide the knowledge of these powerful materials like uranium, which seemed to be able to glow and give off heat for a long period of time, which is how they, you know, how they heat the water in the reactors to generate the steam to get the turbines going. You know, uranium does have this special property, but it's kept under heavy regulation. So what causes nuclear power, if we're questioning the existence of the atom? Yeah. So it's basically just uranium in water, which is heating the water and the water is turning to steam and driving turbines, which is giving you electricity. What they do- It seems a lot more simple than- The kettle. A nuclear power station is basically a kettle, like a giant kettle. But you know, when, when, when they explain it to you, they take you into the quantum world, right? They don't explain it to you in the real world. They don't say, Hey, we're just going to put the uranium in the water and you know, create the steam and drive the turbines. They're like, no, we're, we're going to be splitting the uranium atoms with thermal neutrons and, you know, creating a chain reaction and all this kind of stuff. But yeah, they take you into the quantum world of particles and stuff and explain it to you there, rather than just explaining what's actually going on in the real world. Yeah, I do. I do. There seems to be so much just fear-based programming, fear-mongering, even when you think about, quote unquote, virology. Like, I wonder if everyone in these so-called virology labs just like ripped off their fucking, you know, suits and all the freaking, you know, whatever they are, tubes of sucking air out of their little labs. And they were like, yeah, we're just going to do some experiments and look at some shit underneath the microscope and see what's- and they just go home and have dinner with their families and they're totally fine. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also like just this incredulous over-complexification of all this stuff, which, you know, then it gives people the feeling that, oh, it's only a select few of people who are able to like go through the processes necessary to understand what's really going on. When like each time I have these conversations, it's like there's a simplicity to the truth of it. Yeah, totally. Yeah. There is a simplicity. And yeah, I guess, like I say, like the way with quantum physics, they always have to take you into the quantum world to explain things to you. That was something I started to become more and more aware of as the years went on. And it's, you know, in the book, I call it sophistry. You know, it is like a kind of magic when you ask someone to explain something and then they actually take you into another world, an imaginary world, explain it in terms of imaginary objects. And then you're just like, okay, okay. Yeah. [Speaker 2] (44:19 - 44:20) It's like quantum. Yeah. [Speaker 1] (44:21 - 44:35) Sorry, go, go, go. I was saying it's like witchcraft. Yeah. Well, even the word quantum is used. Everyone's taking that word quantum health, quantum this, quantum that. I just feel like it's become part of our like daily lexicon. And no one knows what the fuck it means. [Speaker 2] (44:36 - 44:36) No one knows what the fuck they're saying. [Speaker 1] (44:38 - 57:48) Quantum healer. This is a quantum biohacking device. Like it's like you just throw this word in front of something to sound like more evolved than whatever came before. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And I mean, I'm, you know, guilty as charged. Yeah. I mean, I was like, I had the PhD. I was like, oh, quantum this and quantum that. And, you know, quantum everything. But yeah, I mean, like everything is quantum if you think about it, because quantum physics is supposed to explain, you know, all the matter, the behavior of matter. So it kind of like seeps into everything and then people can just say, oh, this is quantum, that is quantum. So would you say, you know, people say virology, pseudoscience, would you say quantum physics is like the same, like pseudoscience? Yeah. I mean, well, there's aspects to the work in the sense of, you know, you're able to like predict the outcome of a measurement. You know, I mean, I did, you know, the stuff I did in my PhD wasn't all complete nonsense. You know, I did actually manage to predict the outcome of an experiment with a theory, but the subtle sort of thing in there, and I haven't really covered this. I didn't really cover this in the book or anything, because it's just a bit too in depth. But basically what I found was that the prediction was made entirely with wave mechanics, right? So most actual real physics, when people are doing real physics calculations that work, it all comes down to wave mechanics, right? Sine x, cos x, all that kind of stuff, right? You're actually like using wave equations, multiplying waves together, integrating them and so on. And that's how you make like predictions in the real world, because everything is vibration. And that's how it works. But the problem in physics is particle physics. And this is the thing that the insistence that everything is made from these little particles. This is what makes physics so complicated and what leads to all these like paradoxes. So like the double slit experiment that, you know, people have been asking me to do a video on this recently. So I'm going to do eventually. But that's one of the first things people learn about in quantum physics. And it's supposed to show them that there is this dual nature between waves and particles where they can behave like one some of the time and the other some of the time. But, you know, the thing is, it's just waves. Actually, the experiment happens just with waves. There's no particles at all. And, you know, the only reason that there's any kind of paradox is because they're insisting on the existence of the particle. If that makes any sense, you know, they're telling you that they're doing this experiment with particles, but there's actually no proof that they are doing an experiment with particles. Like I've only ever seen the experiment done with lasers at waves, you know. So if we are questioning the atom paradigm, what kind of goes in its place from an, I guess, an old science perspective? Ether. Yeah, so atoms replace ether. So ether was the preceding theory or view of the cosmos. And it's a fluid, essentially, like a very fine fluid that penetrates and permeates everything. It's like the substance of space itself. So the theory of atoms, if you like, kind of granulizes the ether up into these little balls. It's like taking something continuous and making it into something discrete. And actually, that's what the word quantum means, kind of. It means like, you know, breaking something up into like little pieces or like little steps. And yeah, so the ether was a theory that's, I mean, it's universal. It was common to all cultures. You know, it wasn't invented by anybody, as far as I can tell. It's just a, you know, like the zodiac, like the elements. It just goes back to antiquity, the stuff that's just been there since the beginning. So ether, though, is a spiritual substance. It's a substance in which everything comes from, like everything is connected to, like, you know, the one thing that we all come from. So ether has spiritual connotations. But atomism, because it's all just little balls flying around in space, means everything is separate. Everything is sort of disconnected or actually even unable to connect. They say the atoms can't actually touch each other, right? Because they have these repelling forces. They repel each other, yeah. Yeah, it's like we're all alone, basically, in an atomic worldview. And, you know, things like God, the creator, the spirit itself, or the human soul, those have been completely taken out of atomism. So in the alchemical worldview, those are part of it. The human soul is right at the center of everything, you know, spirit is real, creator is real, ether is real. But with atomism, no spirit, no soul, no creator, just atoms. And that's the basis, just atoms, like nothing else. The atoms came into existence, and then the atoms assembled themselves into molecules and cells and creatures and so on. It was the atoms that made everything. God didn't make anything. There was no first man, no first woman, literally atoms just fumbled themselves into life through trial and error and evolution and all the rest of it. So it is basically just atheism. They've taken the divine and replaced it with the atom. And well, they say they've taken Adam as well, like, you know, because they say we're all made from atoms. We're all atoms, right? But we're actually, we're all Adams. It's like, because if Adam was the first man, and all human beings are made from Adam, then we're all Adams, right? We're all made from Adams, if you like. But then they flip it around and say we're made from atoms, which is just this abstract concept. Yeah. So would you consider yourself a creationist then from that perspective? Yeah, yeah, I think so. I came around to creationism more as a result of being an artist than anything else, because I was like, just really admiring natural beauty and found it to be just so perfect that I just began to see everything as a work of creation, you know, like the cosmos, the plants and animals and the human being itself seem to be like very careful acts of creation rather than just these things that just cropped up by chance. Yeah, go for it. Well, no, I'm just, I try to get my head around that. Like, who did the creating? Like, who went dog or wolf or human or, you know, like, leaf? Like, I just, it's just, it's amazing. It's a mystery. And I love the mystery, but still, sometimes I get into like, how and who and what, you know? Yeah. Well, I think about the first one, right? Because the evolution theory completely washes over the issue of the first, right? Like, who's the first man, the first lion, the first wolf, the first octopus, right? Like, they're like, oh, you don't have to think about that. It doesn't matter. It's just, they just evolved like all together, you know? But the issue of the first is really important. You know, every creation is able to reproduce after its own kind, right? So, it created, the first one was created with the ability to reproduce, as it were. And so, you know, God, if you like, would have only needed to create one lion, one wolf, and so on. And I think that's what they mean by a totem, right? That's what it's meant by like a totem animal. It's like the one, the first animal, the first stone, if you like, that all the animals came from. So, are you sticking your flag in the ground that the chicken came before the egg? Oh, you know, my children are convinced the chicken came before the egg. The reason I think maybe the egg came first is because I think the universe is shaped like an egg. I'm not sure. If the actual like cosmos itself is shaped like an egg, then technically the egg would have came first. Speaking of that, I think even within like the globe skeptic community, there are different thoughts, different views, like outer space is completely fake. Like, what's out there? Like, do you believe in the firmament? And then what's outside of that from your perspective? Yeah, you know, I do believe in the firmament, but I don't have any hard evidence of it, but it just seems like the most sensible way to construct a realm, if you ask me. Like, you know, it seems like it has to be enclosed. You know, I'm convinced it must be enclosed and actually hermetically sealed, so no water or air can get in or out. But the thing with the firmament is light can still pass through, right? So the firmament will let light through, but it won't let air or water or earth through it. Like a terrarium, or you've seen those guys that, there was a guy who like built a garden in a jar in like and it's like still going today. Yeah. And it's like the light gets through the glass, but the air and the water stay inside and can't get out. And the whole thing is able to keep going and going. And it seems to me that that's probably, you know, how the realm works. But, you know, until we can go down to Antarctica and see if there is actually, you know, does the dome come down and join to the ice or is it much bigger and there's other worlds out there. The problem with the idea of like land beyond Antarctica is that they'd have to have another sun and moon essentially, because our sun and moon doesn't go beyond the 66th parallel. So if there's land beyond Antarctica, it'd have to have its own sun and its own moon. I mean, you're literally talking about a whole other world technically. So there's land beyond Antarctica. Well, speaking of Antarctica, there's an experiment going on in, I think, two weeks, the final experiment. Have you heard of that? Yeah, I've heard of that. Yeah. Where some people that are, you know, proponents of the globe have invited globe skeptics or quote unquote flat earthers to come down to do an actual experiment to see if you can actually see the sun, not light, but the sun for 24 hours. And if you can, that does poke holes in the flat earth model. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, well, I think it's highly unlikely that there's a 24 hour sun in Antarctica, because I think if there was, it would have been one of the first things we would have learned when, you know, questioning the globe. It's like, because it would have just, it would have just nailed it. And, you know, the idea that we're going to discover in 2024, there's a 24 hour sun in Antarctica seems like, no, it's like we would have, we would have known it already. It would have been observed just like the one in the North. It's very easy to go to the North and observe the 24 hour sun. But the idea that in the South, we were only going to do it for the first time in 2024. I don't know. I don't think it's going to happen, but I mean, may stay light for 24 hours, but I don't believe that the sun will be visible in the sky for 24 hours. But if I'm wrong, then I got to do some serious reevaluating of the models. But it doesn't, it doesn't prove the globe though, because there's so many other points, right? It's like, there's not, it's not a killer of the flat earth model, but it would certainly force some rethinking of things. Well, it kind of kills the consensus flat earth model, doesn't it? At least the consensus one. Yeah. I mean, yeah, well it would, I mean, I mean, we're talking purely hypothetical at this moment, of course. Yeah. And I want to, I want to add a caveat that this episode is actually going to come out after the experiment as we're recording a few in advance, just for those listening. Oh, that'll be interesting. Yeah. When I think rumble fire, it'll just be like, oh, good one. We did this 24 hours, we never knew all this time. The journey of the fool, bro. [Speaker 2] (57:50 - 57:53) Now a short break from the episode. [Speaker 1] (57:53 - 58:27) Hey guys, just a quick interjection. This episode was recorded on December 2nd and on December 15th, the final experiment did take place and all parties involved, globe proponents and globe skeptics have confirmed that a 24 hour sun is visible in Antarctica. They visited Union Glacier and they've all confirmed that they can observe it moving counterclockwise for 24 hours. So what this means and the implications of it, we look forward to discussing in future episodes. [Speaker 2] (58:28 - 58:30) Back to the episode. [Speaker 1] (58:31 - 1:36:32) But you know, I'm just interested in the truth anyway. Yes, exactly. What it is, as long as we learn the truth, but you know, that's, that's going to be interesting for sure. Yeah. I think it's a Witset, Austin Witset, is he going? Yeah, I think there's three, as of now, there are three people that align more with the flat earth model that are going down, I think maybe eight or something. It's 11, it's 11 to three. And yeah, Witset is one of them. Yeah. Yeah. Other people decline for their own reasons. But yeah, I'm curious, you know, like this is, to be honest, this is a subject that I haven't really delved into until I met Mark Gober, who's a dear friend of mine. And then I read his book and I know he, he cites you a lot in his book as well, in your book, A Fool's Wisdom. And we had him on the podcast and we had a great, great episode with him. And, you know, it's, I like people who poke holes at the conventional paradigms. And I like what I really appreciate is people who also stay open to not knowing and open to, you know, changing their minds and not being so definitive of like, I know the 100% truth, you all are retards. And that's, I think an issue you get, whether it's in, you know, debating cosmology or virology is that people need to feel so certain. And I say this often, I'm going to continue to say it for any people that just, you know, watch this podcast for the first time and watch other ones. Like there's no space for like, I may be wrong. Yeah. And I think it's necessary. Yeah, for sure, man. I mean, and, you know, with, I mean, with my book, I mean, I came across, you know, I wrote it with confidence, but that was a confidence that came to me after like years and years of looking into this stuff. And, you know, I held it back for a long time as well, because I went through years of being unsure and doubting myself and, you know, all this kind of thing. But yeah, by the time I got to like 2022, I felt just like really, really clear about a lot of things. And I thought, you know, I just have to say what I say with confidence. Yes, it challenges the status quo. And if I'm wrong, then I've got to eat humble pie and I'm prepared. Totally. And I think that's the great way to go about it. You know, I think people should be convicted in what they believe based on, you know, their studies based on what they've researched. It's more like interpersonal dynamics and conversations that I've witnessed where I feel like people don't have a certain level of consciousness or I don't know, emotional health to communicate with one another or to disagree with one another. And I think that's an issue that I see all around. Yeah, for sure. And I didn't want to get, you know, taken up in that because I watched a lot of the debates online and people throwing shit at each other over all these like theories and stuff. And a lot of it can get very personal and sort of deep, you know, things like virology and sickness and all that can get very deep and personal. But, you know, yeah, I think it's like time for truth. You know, I mean, I don't have you know, I believed in all these things not that long ago. You know, I believed in the globe. I believed in viruses and vaccines and all that, like, not that long ago, like, you know, 10 years, 15 years, like, and I don't like to judge people based on their beliefs, because in my experience, beliefs change, you know, throughout life, you know, people change their beliefs, or it might be some real stubborn folk who stick with one belief their whole life. But in my experience, most people actually their beliefs change that, you know, throughout their lives. So you can't be too hard on someone for being where they're at. I believe, you know, that we're all capable of transformation, right, and learning and improving our understanding. So yeah, I don't come down hard on anyone who doesn't believe the same as me, because I was there as well. And I believed it all. Yeah, yeah. Just to stay on this topic a little bit, because I'm curious your thoughts, people that talk about flat Earth, or, you know, how all the different ways the Earth is moving around the sun, within the galaxy, free falling, etc. People that argue against that will be like, well, you can't feel, you can only feel deceleration or acceleration, not constant motion. Where are they coming from when they say that? And what are your thoughts on it? Yeah, so in Einstein's theory of relativity, it's, there's a principle that states that there are no stationary reference frames in the universe, which is basically just a fancy way of saying that nothing is stationary. And that basically, if you're traveling at a constant speed, it's indistinguishable from being at rest. And that's like the founding principle of relativity. So basically, what that means is that the Earth could be traveling through the universe at a million miles an hour, and it would be indistinguishable from being completely at rest. So it's the theory of relativity that allows people to believe that they are whizzing through the cosmos, spinning this way and that way, and not feeling any of it. It's relativity that allows them to believe that. And now I don't know if everyone who believes they're spinning through the universe knows that's the reason why they believe it. But that's the only intellectual justification for believing in motion that you cannot measure, cannot feel. The only justification is the theory of relativity. And again, so I think that's one of the reasons why Einstein has held up so high is to keep that belief going. Yeah. So would you say that the aether is in constant motion? Well, yeah. So I think like water, it can swirl and vortex and that kind of thing. But yeah, so there could be a flow, for example. Have you seen those diagrams of the human body with all the spirals around it showing the flow of aether through the human body? I think so. Yeah. You see it's spinning around. I think that's why we have a handedness. So most people right-handed, for example, it's like your right hand is stronger, more precise, more accurate. I think that means that your aether is spinning clockwise, right? So when you swing your right hand, you're swinging with the flow of aether. When you swing your left hand, you're going against the flow of aether, right? So it could be the opposite. You could be spinning the opposite way if you're left-handed, for example. But so I think, yeah, like the aether is swirling. And when you're going with the flow or against the flow, you'll feel it. I think that's why we have that sort of sidedness or handedness on our body. And this could also be why things fall. I mean, like people say about gravity, right? They often say there's no gravity, that it must still be a force because things fall. Why do things come back down? Why don't they just hang up in the air or like stay in the air or whatever? Well, if we are inside a toroidal field, like the energy is coming in from the top and down in from the top, that would mean there was a flow, the aether was flowing top down. And maybe that's why things prefer to fall instead of like going up, right? Because that is actually the energy is coming out and in and down again. So that could create like a downward flow in the aether. Does that relate at all to like density or I think I feel like I've heard people talk about like if gravity isn't what we think it is, that maybe density or buoyancy or electromagnetism, does that make sense at all? Yes, yes. So with density and buoyancy, the thing is, this is something we can control, you know, we can change the density of an object and it will affect its buoyancy. So more dense it will sink, less dense it will float, right? So it's like an independent variable. It's something we can control and measure. We know that if we change it, it will affect whether this thing goes up or down. So you're relating, you're saying like something that might be less dense than aether would float? Or less dense than air. Yeah. Well, like a hydrogen balloon or a helium balloon. You know, that kind of, you attach a helium balloon to an object and then the whole new object then becomes less dense than air and then it goes up. But if you do it in water, for example, you know, obviously add more density and something that will start to sink in the water, less density, it will float to the top. So it's something we can control, something we can measure. But force, as in the force of gravity, is actually not something we can measure and not something we can control. It's an abstract quantity, a calculated quantity. And, you know, a lot of people say there has to be a force, right? There has to be a force that's moving things up and down. It's like, but force is an abstract quantity that is calculated from things we can measure, like acceleration or density or things like this. But force is not a real concrete thing in the real world. And it's a subtle point. It's like in logic, it's called the reification fallacy. And it's when we take something abstract and believe as if it's something concrete. And this is what we've done with the force of gravity. The force of gravity is just an equation. It's just a number. It's just a number, but we believe in it as if it's a concrete agent in the universe that's like acting and doing stuff, right? It's like, but it's just a number. So, in your understanding, what are the planets? And would you say they're within the system or outside the system? Yeah, good question. I mean, the planets, I get more understanding about the planets from looking at their actual names, you know, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, all that, and looking into the Greek mythology, the stories of those characters and the archetypes and so on. I learned more about the planets that way than I ever learned about from astrophysics. I mean, you know, astrophysics is so technical and low level, and there's just so many assumptions built on top of assumptions. You know, they've taken essentially quantum physics, transported it to outer space, mixed it up with gravity and, you know, made all these theories of the stars and everything. And it's absolutely useless science in every way. I mean, astrophysics is real pseudoscience, I think, of the highest order. But what are the planets? I mean, I don't know, they're named after gods, aren't they? And they're sources of light, and they're distinct from all the other sources of light in the sky because they wander backwards and forwards, they retrograde and stuff. And they're considered fundamental in alchemy, because all the other stars are fixed. All the other stars go in fixed circles, but those ones, the planets, wander in their paths. And so those ones are said to be the rulers of the realm. Those are the ones who are conducting the changes that are going on on the earth below, if you like. Everything else is just like a fixed pattern, you know, like a machine, as it were, but the wandering planets are- Like gods, right? Yeah. Well, they are named after gods. Yeah. And so do you think they're within the firmament or outside the firmament? Um, good question. With the firmament assumption, obviously. Yeah. Well, if the firmament's a glass dome, I don't know if you've seen those videos that Dave Weiss has shown where he'll, you know, get like a glass bowl and just shine a flashlight over the glass bowl and move it in a circle. And then you look on the glass bowl and it looks like the sun. It looks just like the sun, right? And all it is, is the focal point of the light from the flashlight reflecting off the curved glass looks exactly like the sun. And you can do it with any light, basically, and it will always look like the sun. You could use a candle, flashlight, your mobile phone. The reflection off the glass always looks like a sun. So, you know, that was, uh, and, you know, Dave Weiss, I asked him about this and, you know, it was him that said, well, maybe the sun isn't an object. Um, maybe it's just a focal point of light on, on the firmament. And, and so, yeah, so that's tend to be what I'm thinking these days is that it's a focal point of light on the glass. Coming from where? Someone's up there with a torch. Yeah. Well, I mean, imagine a massive flashlight. I gotta keep my eyes on all of you. Yeah. Well, maybe that is the, that is the light of God, right? So maybe there's just one light, um, outside of the firmament, maybe just one light ultimately, but that is, uh, reflecting and reflecting into all these different angles through a curved piece of glass or something. Um, and that's why we, we look up, we see many lights all with their own angles, but perhaps they all, they all just come from a single source that would be, I mean, I'm purely speculating here, but, um, that's kind of what I'm thinking, but I don't know. I don't think of them as objects anymore. Even, even the planets, you don't think of the planets as objects? No, I still think it, yeah. It's more likely to be like a projection, uh, of some kind or, uh, an angle of light or a reflection of light. Um, this, yeah, I, I, I'm not. So, so do you question, like, I get it. A lot of the, like the, the images of outer space, et cetera, you know, the CGI, whatever, but like some of the high quality photos of the planets that we've seen, like, is there a bit harder to dispute and that people are seeing through telescopes repeatedly, like the colors and the shapes of Jupiter, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, yes. Yeah. No, there are, yeah. Telescope images, like ground-based telescopes. Yeah. And yeah, Saturn looks like Saturn and Jupiter. Uh, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, yeah, but there's, there's ones that are allegedly taken from space images that are allegedly taken from space that are, you know, those are the, those are the questionable ones. Um, but yeah, you know, Jupiter and Saturn, you know, they do appear to have a structure, uh, and what they call the moons. Um, again, calling them moons is a bit of a, you know, so they say that Jupiter has moons around it. Right. But that's based on the assumption that the earth is a planet and that the moon is going around the earth. Right. So, so that the idea of Jupiter having moons is based on the heliocentric model. Is based on our, our mainstream view of our moon. Yes. Yeah. And based on the theory of gravity and the astrophysics that calculates how far away it is and then, you know, all this stuff. But so I'm not saying it doesn't have structure and that it doesn't have color. You know, I've seen it through a telescope. I know that that's there. Um, I'm just questioning whether it's actually a material object, like an actual like solid thing that you can stand on or walk on or shake its hand or whatever, or whether it's actually just a point of light that said just a point of light that's, you know, going in circles. I mean, you think of those like up lighter things like disco lights, you know, you can put one in the center of the room and there's just one bulb inside the light. And then it's got this dome with all these holes on it and then shines a different beam of light and then circles around, you know, so something like that. I mean, it could be, it could just be something like that. I don't know. Yeah. I hear you just from, for me, like it doesn't correlate in terms of like the, the, again, the specific shapes and structures that we see when we look at these planets, you know, like why is it, if it's one light, like why are they different? You know, in that way, obviously there's a mystery there, but you know, that doesn't. For sure. Yeah. I definitely don't, don't have all the answers there. Yeah. I mean, I just, you know, I just came to be skeptical of the, you know, the, the space programs and the, the pictures taken from outer space, but yeah, the ground-based telescope images are good. But I don't think they show, you know, they don't tell you how far away it is or how big it is or whether it's a solid object. They're just showing you an image. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a fan of capitalism. Okay. I believe capitalism works on a fundamental level, et cetera. I understand like characters like, you know, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, whatever they, they have their, you know, it's questions circulating these figures, et cetera, et cetera. But like on a fundamental level for something like space X, I just don't see how someone like Elon would invest that much money into space exploration as a kind of like, as, as, as a hoax or like as a, as a conspiracy on some level, I believe that he genuinely thinks, you know, whether he's right or wrong, that there is exploration should be done. There is exploration that is accessible. He's walking around with his Occupy Mars shirt. I think he genuinely thinks that Mars can be, you know, visited, et cetera. So like from your perspective, like, do you think that, you know, these people are part of some larger ploy, you know, to provide, to continue this illusion around space and planets, et cetera, et cetera, or do you think they just don't know? What's your perspective on that? That's a great question, honestly. Yeah. And it was one that was coming up more and more. It was like kind of irking me because I, you know, I go on X, I mean, I don't post on there, but I go in there to, you know, to gather and I see Elon Musk in the space X posts and everything. So, I mean, I'm not, I'm not a hater and I'm not going to say he's a bad guy or anything like that. He obviously works very hard. But what I came to realize was that like all his businesses are defense contract, defense contractors, all of them. And Mars is an acronym. Mars is actually an acronym. It stands for military auxiliary radio systems. You can look that up. It goes way back. So military auxiliary radio systems, Mars is the US government, like military communication backup system. It was originally, you know, ham radio operators, like amateur ham radio operators who would listen in on all the military calls and they would help out the military. And their role was to provide the backup communication system if the standard channels were taken out in war or whatever. Well, I think now that has been updated and what Elon Musk is building is actually with X, he's building the biggest intelligence gathering network in the world, right? So because it's a free speech platform, it's now given him, think of the Intel we can gather from it, right? And AI and all that kind of stuff. So I think X is part of this Mars military auxiliary radio system, because if you think wifi and internet equipment is the new radio, right? Radio is not radio waves, it's communications. It's about dominating communications. So you've got SpaceX, which is, well, you've got Starlink, which is I believe drones that he's sending up in the air, not satellites. And I think the drones are being launched from the rockets as one of the ways that they're being launched as the rockets are sending up and the drones are launching from the rockets. And this gives, again, the US military power to go anywhere on earth and have a instant high bandwidth connection. So he's got Tesla. Cybertruck is basically a military vehicle. I mean, it's bulletproof. He's got the Boring Company for making deep underground military bases. Every one of Elon Musk's companies is a defense contractor. So the idea that he's a civilian who's just doing all this stuff because it's cool is, I think, a hoax. So I think, again, it's the esoteric and exoteric. So on the outside, SpaceX, they're pretending or they're saying that they're going to go to Mars. What they mean is total military dominance for the US across the world, like control all communications with Starlink. I think they're not telling us the whole story, right? Yeah. And that was my query. I just don't believe there's purposelessness behind it. You don't pour money into something for no... I don't believe just to continue the hoax, but that is an explanation, I guess. Think about it. Yeah. Those rockets, they just go nowhere. Like how much money they spend on rockets. I mean, I saw him the other day said that to get to Mars, they're going to need a 1000x improvement in rocket technology. And it's going to be 40 years at 25 billion a year. I mean, you really got to have money to burn. We're not learning anything from any of these experiments, right? They're just testing engines and testing rockets and making the rocket bigger than the last rocket and all this kind of stuff. I'm thinking he must be doing something with the rockets. Well, there's only one thing you'd be doing. I mean, either use them to shoot something because rockets are basically giant fireworks. Either use them for missiles or use them to like launch things from in the upper atmosphere. And I mean, I looked into it and it looked like, yeah, some of these rockets are basically full of Starlink drones. And so they're using the rocket to go up high and then launching the drones from the rockets. And the thing is, these drones could potentially stay up there and not have to come down, you know, like you think of like a solar powered drone that's above the clouds. There's no cloud break. It's got full access to the sun all day long. You can have drones up there that never even have to come down. They get all the power they need while they're up there. So, yeah, I think it's part of a US military effort to take control of the whole world's communications. And yeah, so just the one final point on that. So the Space Force, you know, the Space Force that Trump set up in 20, and everyone thought it was a joke. They're just like, oh my God, you know, it's ridiculous. There was a show on Netflix that like completely took the piss out of it. Really funny comedy show, Space Force on Netflix. Worth a watch if you haven't seen it. But anyway, I just thought it was ridiculous at the time. You know, I was a flat earther back then as well. So I thought it was all just fake. But then I started looking to go to the Space Force website. I'm like, you know, this kind of looks legit. Like they really have like put some effort in, you know, what's going on here. And so my theory now is that it's actually just a front for the Air Force. So space is air, right? Space is air. I mean, that's the correspondence. So it looks like a Space Force on the website, but when you actually look at all the jobs and everything, it's like, it's all Air Force jobs. And you know, the Air Force is not just about airplanes. It's also about communication. So it's about air travel. It's about communication. And I think basically Trump set up a new Air Force and has been actually, it looks like that's been active and they've been hiring people, probably good people as well. Not like woke people like the other military. There seems to be this like fake military and then there's other military, like a secret military. I'm not sure what's going on there, but you get what I'm saying. I get it, man. I get her. Because the military wouldn't come out and tell the whole world what they're doing, would they? That would just be ridiculous. Like no company would do that. So they have an exoteric story, which is we're all going to Mars on a rocket one day, but they're actually, what they're really doing is they're setting up all this technology for the United States to basically dominate world politics. Which again, I'm not necessarily opposed to. I mean, it's like someone's got to do it, you know? But I'm not saying anyone's like good or bad here, but I think that that's what's going on. Yeah. Fascinating, man. I mean, lots of questions, obviously, and ultimately who knows? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you think he's got the robots now as well, right? An army of robots, like the neural- And it's like, again, begs the question, how can you be doing so much? How can you have your hands in so many different companies and pies that all seem to be really, really productive? There's probably more to it. Yeah. He's not a civilian. That's the thing. You can't have that many defense contracts and be considered a civilian, but people still talk about him as if he is. He's just like this sort of civilian entrepreneur guy, but he's clearly involved in the US military at a very, very deep and critical level, you know? So yeah. And again, yeah, is he doing it all? Is he even- Yeah, that's right. The guy in a mask, right? A lot of the time you're seeing Musk is actually a double or a clone or a guy in a mask. He's tweeting 100 times an hour while running 10 different companies. And apparently a top three player in the world in Diablo 4. You've got to spend a lot of time playing games to get that good instead of trying to run all these companies, I think. He says it helps him to focus. Yeah. Who knows? I know. It's weird. Elon Musk phenomenon could be a whole thing with many people behind it and AI and all kinds of things that just make him seem much, much bigger than he is. But I don't know. It is a mystery. Steve, what are you focused on right now? I mean, I know you said you're doing a lot of research. Yeah. So actually I've just finished the second edition of my book, which I had to do just given it's been eight months now. And so I had a lot of time to reflect on it and update with some changes. I mean, the grammar and stuff wasn't great. I have to be honest, Steve. I have to be honest. I read your book and I'm like a stickler for grammar and punctuation. And I was like, I think I messaged a friend who was a mutual friend of ours. I was like, I love the book, but like someone needs to fix the spelling or grammar. So that's good. I wasn't too bad with the spelling. It was more of the grammar. Yeah. The grammar. Yeah. The grammar. Yeah. Like, you know, not using full stops often enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I had a lady reached out. She was a proofreader, like a court, you know, proofreader for the law course. She's like retired now and stuff. And she was like, I love the book, but she's like, you know, I'm happy to do you like a full review and stuff. Amazing. For free. So, yeah. So she sent me all the suggested changes and everything. And so I went through it and I've added in some like fixes and like updates and some new references and a few clarifications here and there. There were a few little mistakes I've made as well, which are fixed now and I've updated the cover as well. So. So yeah, I'm going to try and get out of this week. Amazing. You know, in time for Christmas and everything. But yeah, it's greatly improved in that department. I think people such as yourself who notice stuff should definitely feel the improvement. And there's other people who are like, I didn't see any mistakes. I'm like, oh, they were there. But it's also a good lesson, too. And I've had to learn this because as Joel, sometimes I could be a little too hardcore with like minute details. And it's like, what's the substance of the book? You know, like you can look past some of this stuff because there might be some people who can't read this, you know, the punctuation and grammar. And it's like, well, you're missing a lot of gold. That being said, in a perfect world, it's nice to keep things super tight. But yeah, I'm looking forward to the next edition to come out. Yeah, I didn't. Yeah, because I didn't run it through a publisher and editor and stuff like that. I was like, oh, I'm going to do it all by myself. You know, that's our post-pandemic attitude where it's like, I have to do everything by myself. I can't trust anyone to do anything. You know, you might need to add an eighth stage to the alchemical process. If you should. But yeah, at the same time, I knew there would be errors in the book as well. Like every author I've ever spoken to had said it, like the first thing that you learn after you publish the book is all the mistakes you put in it, you know? So yeah, I was intending to do that anyway, just to let it breathe for a while and then, you know, make an update. But anyway, so yeah, it's a lot more tight now. I'm going to get it uploaded this week and sort of relaunch it anyway as a second edition. So it's only natural to, like you said before, as a human being, you're changing beliefs. And so like, you know, you're writing a book based on the state that you're at for two years, three years, four years, and then it gets published, it gets put on the world. And then, you know, five years later, you may be a different person. And so you can, you know, edit the book. I mean, I think I was talking to Mark and he's like, you know, I've written six, seven books in the last six years. And, you know, he's like, oh, yeah, there's some things I would change in the books that have come before based on where I'm at now, you know, which makes sense. But yeah, it shouldn't stop someone from creating and putting something out there. And I think so often people get to that place where it's like, it's not perfect. I'm not perfect. When will I be perfect? And when that day comes, then I could do something. And it's like, just do it. Yeah, I mean, I had a lot of perfectionism with music, you know, like just spending like ages, like going over, you know, every microsecond and trying to make it like absolutely flawless. And, you know, with the book, I knew I could have gone on for a while, you know, fixing it and adding more and improving it and stuff like that. But as I was coming up for that April 1st, I just sort of spontaneously said, I'm like, I'm going to release it on April 1st, no matter what. And so, yeah, I just I just went for it. Warts and all. That's great, man. Well, thank you for your contribution. I love the book. I haven't finished it. I still have some of part two to finish reading, but I think anyone that has a curious, open and active mind will get so much value from it. And I always say this, like I do always I do appreciate people that have come from the world of academia that do have certain letters after their name that then maybe see the light in a new way. There just feels like an extra layer of credibility, even though there maybe shouldn't be. But there seems to be because you've kind of been in that world and been, quote unquote, indoctrinated in that world and then have gone on your own journey, your continuous journey, and have come to new realizations and conclusions. And I think it's a nice juxtaposition that I think provides a unique insights for people. Yeah, you know, that's I mean, because I spend a lot of time, you know, shitting on the stuff that I learned at uni. But actually, it's because of the ideology, you know, it's the ideology that I become opposed to. But, you know, I didn't, I didn't hate my teachers, you know, I didn't hate learning, you know, I probably wouldn't have been able to write a book. If I hadn't written a PhD thesis, you know, I spent three years writing a thesis, like, you know, the trait, the brain training and the stuff that I learned along the way, is all good. And I wouldn't be the man today if I didn't do it. But yeah, it's the ideology, as I've come to learn is really this this atheistic, sort of humanist, secular ideology, which is, it's not rooted in truth. It's kind of a Yeah. So anyway, I mean, so a lot of that stuff, you could say was like pedagogical, you know, just for teaching purposes, right? Just for brain training, and learning how to think and all that kind of stuff. And from that point of view, okay, it was good, it was worth doing. But yeah, from And it's a reference point of what came before and what you've learned and what your beliefs were. And then you come across something new, and you can kind of go, wait, this makes more sense. You know, this seems like it's solidified in more sound logic. Whereas if you didn't, you know, you might not have that same reference point to then educate and communicate through your writing in the way that you do. Yeah, well, I mean, it seems apropos to quote, the great Bruce Lee, take what is useful, discard what is not, and what is uniquely your own, you know, and that's, that's, that's an alchemical process in and of itself. That's brilliant. I love Bruce Lee, and I've not heard that quote. But that's exactly it. Yeah, take what is useful. And, you know, I find there was very little I could take that was useful. Yeah, on my education. Other than these kind of skills, like how to write, or, you know, like the wave equations and all that I used to in music. Yeah, yeah. Steve, man, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. I've personally loved this conversation. And yeah, appreciate this unique path that you're paving out and the knowledge that you're providing. How would you best like to direct our audience at this time? I know you got your music going, your book going, you can just shout out the websites or the platforms where people can access your content. Sure. Well, my website is stephenyoung.uk. And a Stephen with a V. You can find everything on there. I just started a YouTube channel a few months ago. I'm making videos for YouTube, which is a new thing for me. You know, I've also written books and made music, but I wasn't really much of a video guy. But I'm doing my best to get into it and start making videos for YouTube. So yeah, if you want to follow this, probably the best place to follow me now. We'll have those links below. And it's people can search Head Flux on Spotify or Apple Music, or is that how they access your music? Yeah. Yeah, Head Flux is still available everywhere. Even though it's not my primary focus at the moment, the music is out there and it's all available at headflux.com as well as, you know, streaming sites and music download sites and so on. And Stephen, for someone that wants to buy your book, you know, the current iteration, they can just buy right now. But then the addition to you say... By the time this comes out, addition to it will be out it sounds like for sure. Yes. You said it'll be a few weeks. Yeah. Yeah. I think the second edition will be out before the podcast drops. Yeah. And would they order on Amazon or your website or does it not matter? Yeah. So you can order on Amazon or from my website. If you want the book to be signed by me with a personal note and shipped by me, then you can order on my website. But otherwise, it's best to get it from Amazon. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks again, man. Everyone else, thank you for listening. Take care. Guys, thank you so much for listening. That's it from us for 2024. But not to worry, there'll be another episode next week in 2025. I love having these conversations. And thank you for all the support and engagement. We'll be announcing some dates for Rise Above The Herd shortly, which is our 10-week group coaching program. If you would like to join the waitlist to get first dibs on one of the 12 spots available, you can head to riseabovetheherd.co or again, all these offers are accessible from hereforthetruth.com as well. These episodes are powered by our premium membership community, Friends of the Truth. If you want to hang out with us, have conversations, have direct access to us, to us on community calls, and to an awesome array of knowledge plus 100 plus hours of previously recorded members-only content, then you can become a premium member via hereforthetruth.com, press the membership button or at friendsofthetruth.co. All right, y'all. Take care.