First up this week, we’re unpacking some statistics about American belief in a grab bag of paranormal buzzwords, followed by a richly deserved take-down of a rhetorically lazy debunking documentary (which also happens to be splattered with AI slop), and then finally (blessedly) discussing an esteemed neurobiologist’s convincing claim that DMT aliens are real.

Highlights:

* A big Gallup poll shows that believe in paranormal phenomena is strongly correlated with distrust of institutions

* There are literally more self-identified witches (~1.5 million) than Presbyterians (~1.4 million) in America, representing massive growth from 8,000 self-described Wiccans in 1990

* "Witch" originally meant "skilled with medicines and charms" but became associated with "ugly, crabbed, malignant woman" by the 1400s—misogyny dressed as spirituality

* Also: "Old wives' tales" is just another way to dismiss feminine wisdom, while Tolkien wrote "pay heed to the tales of old wives—they alone keep in memory what was once needful for the wise to know"

* Gender is a spectrum, not an oppositional binary, but a spectrum of complementary forces

* New York Post reporter Steven Greenstreet's “Pentagon Ghost Busters” documentary uses classic schoolyard bully tactics to dismiss UAP experiencers

* Lazy rhetoric: attacking people for being Mormon, speaking at Bigfoot festivals, or having NDEs instead of addressing their actual claims

* If something you're reading makes you mad, that's probably what it was designed to do

* Me Too for UAP experiencers

* J.B. Pritzker's wisdom: "The kindest person in the room is often the smartest"—cruelty reveals intellectual laziness and fear-based thinking

* Neurobiologist Andrew Gallimore's book "Death by Astonishment" argues that DMT aliens are real non-human intelligences, not brain hallucinations

* People consistently report similar alien encounters, impossible architectures, and receiving unknowable information during DMT trips

* Gallimore doesn't think human brains are capable of fabricating "entirely non-human worlds in such exquisite and dynamic detail"

* Rather, DMT might activate brain regions that connect us to outside entities using our own neural world-building tools as interface

* Ego Death in 30 Seconds: DMT "obliterates our most cherished assumptions about who we are, where we are, and how advanced we really are"

* PS - A quick reminder that we're joining a podcast network soon, which means ads are incoming, but paid subscribers will always get ad-free episodes.

So much more at ggupodcast.substack.com

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