Gods, Ghosts & UFOs

Losing Ourselves in Good TV

Ever since we watched Pluribus, we’ve been wanting to talk about it on the pod. Both of us have been wrestling with the concept of ego-death and the ultimate merging of all consciousness, and the core conceit of this show seems to tackle those very same themes. So, really, how could we not talk about it?

We get into the so-called vampire problem in philosophy, the idea of coercion vs surrender, and why that one ritual conversion scene with the little girl was so incredibly disturbing to us.

Is losing your “self” really the whole point of spirituality? Or is is just the ego? But also what is the ego? Is it even real?!

As always, don’t expect any solid answers, but if you want to take a stroll around the questions with us, come on down!

Highlights:

Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, ex-X-Files) delivers another high-concept sci-fi masterpiece

The premise

The immune few

The Buddhist/Christian tension

Nirvana as “annihilation of the drop into the ocean”

The hive mind as a character

Ritual as theater

The Vampire Problem

Coerced vs. voluntary ego death

Communism, the Law of Consecration, and how to actually make them work

Obedience vs. compliance (Deirdre Green)

AI parallels

A Pluribus plot theory about that, uh, virus

We must have a will in order to surrender it

The ego is already dying a thousand times a day

Acting, improv, and parenthood — all practices of sacrificing plans for presence

“Greater love hath no man than this…”

And in the epilogue…

Mallory in middle school

Our personal versions of hell

Happiness extraction at Disneyland

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SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions.

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Pretty soon, we’re gonna have a little summer break. Among other things, it’s because Mal is shooting a movie and Jordan is moving his family from LA to Cedar City, Utah.

But that’s not really what this episode is about. What it’s about is what happens when you make things that nobody asked you to make. Mal just finished the first draft of her first solo screenplay. Also, she’s been writing music alone in dark rooms for years and only recently felt like it was time to show anyone. Jordan wrote a novel once by telling himself he wasn’t allowed to write anything for anyone else to read, and rediscovered the passion he’d lost decades ago.

Mal says she can’t quit the film industry without trying to make this movie first, and she’s defining success as having genuinely gone for it. Jordan says the thing you create can’t be valuable to other people unless it’s first valuable to you — which is also why AI can’t make art. Because AI doesn’t need it.

Well, we sure do.

Highlights:

What’s coming up…

Life on a film set

Why Jordan gave up on directing

Oscar Wilde on the blessing and curse of being an artist: you never become anything

Mal finished the first draft of her first solo screenplay

Sandboxes

Freelance artist life

Stop and Go - Mal’s first feature, made during the pandemic with a friend

Writing songs in dark rooms for therapy

Writing a novel for the same reason

“It can’t be genuinely valuable for other people if it is not first valuable to the person who’s creating it”

Why AI can’t make art

Jordan’s imminent move away from LA to Cedar City, Utah

Mal is operating on spiritual logic right now

The podcast “forces me to challenge the more deeply worn grooves”

Epilogue topics: Mal’s suspicion that she is a “tongue genius,” modern food science, and why food, money, and sex are the three most embarrassing topics

And in the epilogue…

Is Mal a tongue genius?

The absurdity of modern food science

Why food, money, and sex are the three most embarrassing topics

***

SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions.

spectrevisionradio.com

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Mal’s been slammed, so Jordan rounded up a bunch of good stories to serve up like a pile of gifts on a platter.

First, why are people shining lasers at walls while tripping on DMT?

Next, we need to discuss the fact that JD Vance is on record believing UFOs are actually demons. What does that even mean? (Hint: it probably doesn’t mean anything about UFOs or demons.)

After that, an ancient Greek geek out about what might be the first recorded case of a haunted house.

Finally, were there really thousands of dead giants buried in Ohio?

Who knows! We certainly don’t. But also, do we even want to?

We’re here for the magic, the mystery, and the egregious political exploitation of Christianity.

Highlights:

People are using lasers to see simulation source code while tripping on DMT

Why “proof negates the point” when it comes to spiritual experience

We are the Headline Generation: we form opinions from fragments and live by them for years

Trickster NHIs are everywhere! (probably)

Even getting led into a snake pit might be for your good

Mal is remarkably morally relativistic for a God girl (ok not really)

JD Vance, the Vice President of these United States, says, on record, UFOs are demons

Jordan says weaponizing the resurgence of Christianity is “the closest thing to evil” he knows of

Pliny the Younger’s haunted house in Athens — possibly the oldest ghost story on record

Hauntings with tidy conclusions are rare

Quantum microtubules, waveform collapse, and why biological determinism can’t account for the way life meets you

A 1798 homestead sitting on top of 3,000 ancient graves in Ohio

An eight-foot-tall woman buried in copper jewelry

“Give me the giant queen laser”

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Kelly Chase was a materialist and an atheist.

Then on a random Saturday morning in August 2021, something reached into her mind and showed her what she’s come to refer to as The Good — coherence, beauty, truth — whatever it is that allows creation to exist. The experience completely changed her life.

But here’s the problem: she also knows that whatever did this to her could also make her happy about it. And as someone who values her personal freedom more than almost anything, it’s frightening to suspect that something fundamentally rewired her without her consent.

This is the epistemic paradox of gnosis, or, in other words, knowledge that is supposed to be self-authoritative, but that you still have to figure out how to test.

How do you build a life on something you can’t prove? And if you can’t, what exactly are you supposed to build on instead?

Highlights:

Kelly Chase is the host of Inquiry (formerly Cosmos, formerly The UFO Rabbit Hole Podcast) — find her at kellychase.media

Mal couldn’t make it, thanks to business travel and a conspiracy of misfortune

“Semantic anarchy” — words don’t mean the same things across tribes anymore

What turned Kelly into an experiencer: an out-of-body, out-of-time connection to a higher intelligence that changed everything she believes

From lifelong materialist and atheist to a spiritual convert to The Good

Plato’s Republic and the allegory of Er

Experience without consent (does being happy about it make it ok?)

Kelly’s precognitive dreams

The IRVA conference in Mexico

Precognitive dreams vs. regular dreams

The epistemic paradox of gnosis

The preface paradox, the lottery paradox, and the paradox of the knower

The Mormon parallel: revelation is basically the Mormon word for gnosis, and discerning true revelation has been the church’s ongoing problem for 200 years

Are feelings of unconditional love emotional manipulation?

The Enlightenment is an oxymoron

The cultural dominance of the “dead universe cosmology”

If your cosmological foundation breaks down, you’re desperate for a replacement — and there are people happy to sell you one

Control systems

What the elites believe about souls

Brother Richard on human utilitarianism

The Law of One and the left hand path vs. the right hand path — Kelly argues America’s default values are left hand path, along which the ultimate purpose is self-expression

Is there such a thing as a true cosmology?

The imperative to judge for oneself

The missing character in Plato’s Cave — who drags the prisoner out?

“Gnosis is a great starting point. It’s a terrible ending point.”

Tools of Discernment

“It can’t just be vibes”

And in the epilogue…

Is yearning for the divine evidence of the divine?

Worship as technology

Supernatural love (of your enemy)

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SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions.

spectrevisionradio.com

linktr.ee/spectrevisionsocial

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Welcome to season two.

This week: a dad in North Yorkshire set up CCTV after his cat refused to go downstairs. The footage is pretty convincing — toys moving, doors swinging, skateboards clattering. Except he’s a video game developer. And it’s 2026. And we genuinely cannot tell anymore what’s real on the internet.

Which is the actual problem. Not whether this particular video is real, but the fact that we’ve reached a point where even governments are using AI-generated footage to prove their leaders are alive.

And then of course there's the deluge of predictions, prophecies, and institutional claims that 2026 is the year everything changes. SLASH IS ALREADY CHANGING.

So okay, what do we do with that?

The answer is boring. And also the only one that works.

Highlights:

Bunch of interviews coming up, and then a GGU summer break — details TBA

Story of the father of two in North Yorkshire who fled his home after a bunch of poltergeist incidents

But also he’s a video game developer?

AI has permanently broken video evidence

The Netanyahu coffee shop video, etc

The Princess Kate Photoshop incident

Jordan’s essay on 2026 predictions

Dozens of unrelated sources pointing at 2026 as a turning point: Carl Nell, Gary Nolan, Lou Elizondo, John Ramirez, Chris Bledsoe, the astrological community, Ray Kurzweil

Most predictions are unfalsifiable or already wrong — the more dramatic the claim, the vaguer it tends to be

The Bledsoe prediction (Easter, “a new knowledge”) and the Regulus-Sphinx alignment

But 2026 actually is extraordinary: AI, UFO disclosure, potential WWIII, deepfakes dissolving consensus reality, globalism fracturing, religion surging back

Maybe the seers are just seeing reality as it really is

Brené Brown on parenting (it relates!)

The collective ego story

Whatever you’re procrastinating, stop

On finally starting a daily meditation practice (good job, Jordan! Mal has thoughts)

Kelly Chase on control systems

Economic anxiety is Jordan’s personal vulnerability, but everyone has a soft spot where apocalyptic messaging hooks them

Viktor Frankl

Learning unconditional kindness for the present moment

You can’t future proof your life. Lots of coders who future-proofed by learning to code are out of work right now

What do we do??? The boring answer is the right one

And in the epilogue…

Squaring Mormonism with…everything else

Does religion lead to or protect against spiritual enslavement? (Yes.)

The correlation between certainty and death

***

SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions.

spectrevisionradio.com

linktr.ee/spectrevisionsocial

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On March 17th, a seven-ton space rock broke apart over Ohio. A week later, a guy named Jeff had a dream that told him exactly where to go to find a piece of it.

Nothing about this meteorite is special other than that Jeff really really wanted to hold a piece of space in his hands, and a dream showed him where it was. But what about all the people who dream about something for years and nothing ever happens? Why do some prayers get answers and not others?

We don’t have the answer. But the question gets us to suffering as a teacher, to the Hebrew origin of the word “Satan” (which just means impediment), and to the idea that maybe wanting something your whole life and never getting it is its own form of divine expression.

Also: this is Tom’s last episode.

He’s leaving the show to pursue something that’s, in his words, something calling him imperiously. He read us the opening of The Wind in the Willows to explain why. He says the show transformed him.

Likewise, Tom.

And the show will go on. Our mission will be the same: to joyfully explore all the things they said weren’t real.

And in the open epilogue…

How an abusive inner critic won’t let you accept compliments

The relationship between shame, addiction, and problem-solving

Why holding two contradictory truths at the same time is the path to a higher vibration existence

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Mal’s roommate Candice is the kind of person you kind of just believe, even when she’s telling you about seeing literal ghosts and UFOs.

Which makes her the perfect guest on this week’s episode of Gods, Ghosts & UFOs, the podcast about all the things they said weren’t real.

Highlights:

Candice Gutierrez, Mal’s roommate and longtime friend

An amber orb sighting near BYU, around 2010–2011, the night before finals

Other witnesses

Strange, impossible, perspective-breaking movement

Trying to explain it to other people

The Phoenix Lights connection

Working on the show Ancient Aliens, who told her to self-publish a book if she wanted to get on the show

Similarities to Brown Mountain Lights in North Carolina

Real UFOs always get weird

“Welcome to adulthood. Here are aliens.”

Tom notices the Lotería cards on Candice’s wall, and has a wild story about them

Candice’s bonus story: A Disneyland teenage girl ghost

Tom invites Emrys to tell her Disneyland story (Space Mountain, hooded figure with black eyes, time dilation, violent visions, eery silence, many witnesses)

It was “something wearing a child”

Tom reiterates his Disneyland theory

And in the open epilogue…

GGU origin story

Our faith so-called journeys

Deconstructing the problem of evil

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SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions.

spectrevisionradio.com

linktr.ee/spectrevisionsocial

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Highlights:

How the Mexican City Mannequins inspired this episode

Ushabtis: ancient Egyptian figurines (2600–2100 BC) placed in tombs to do labor in the afterlife, in place of killing servants

The Louvre Doll: a bound female clay figure pierced with 13 needles

Kolossoi: ancient Greek defensive effigies designed to contain hostile spirits

Victorian mourning dolls: wax effigies made at funerals with the dead child’s hair and clothing

What did Mal do to her Cabbage Patch doll?

Robert the Doll

“It was like a metal bar running down my back... That doll was listening to us”

The connection to an apparition of a biracial girl

Robert exhibits both Type A and Type B inhabitation, and he might be the only one

Thousands of apology letters at the museum from visitors who took photos without asking permission

Poppets

The Nkisi tradition from the Congo

Connection to the movie Weapons

How Robert the Doll became haunted (possibly) — he might be a mourning doll?

The Free Robert the Doll campaign

The Kuleshov Effect

Projecting consciousness onto human-shaped forms

Tsukumogami and vengeful yokai

The Hyakki Yagyō, the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons

Djinn in Islamic tradition

The etymology of pandemonium

Michael Singer on not resisting the snake

Knowledge vs respect

And in the epilogue…

Mallory’s gluten-free experiment

Suspicious exercise equipment at the gym

Pros and cons of Western vs Traditional Chinese Medicine

Some of the grossest words we know

To help you share this episode, we picked out three moments we all loved and tied them up with a little copy/paste-able bow.

“Mal made herself a poppet” (~9:40) — Mal put a lost tooth into her Cabbage Patch doll’s mouth as a child, and Tom points out she was accidentally participating in an ancient ritual of fixing a part of yourself into an effigy.

“Don’t go up the stairs!” (~12:12) — Why Victorian mourning dolls never seemed to get haunted, and how human carelessness drives the plot of every horror movie.

“It’s not a monster story. It’s an ecosystem.” (~58:11) — Tom’s synthesis after connecting Mexico City mannequins, the Night Parade, jinn, and tsukumogami: when humans leave, something adjacent that was always there fills the space.

And then of course there’s this neat little thing we made, if you want to send someone one of our more popular past episodes:

The Sharing Kit

***

SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions.

spectrevisionradio.com

linktr.ee/spectrevisionsocial

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business!

Our SECOND EVER Open Epilogue!

Monday, March 23, at 1pm PST / 4pm EST.

All paid supporters will get an email invite with a link.

Be one of them!

Episode highlights:

Mal watched 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time, and talked about it every day for three weeks

Stanley Kubrick’s astonishing team and the mind blowing scale of the project

He tried to purchase preserved human embryos from a Chicago biological supply company for research

He applied for insurance from Lloyd’s of London against the discovery of extraterrestrial beings before the film’s release

The movie came out in 1968, a year before the moon landing, with basically two pictures of Earth from space to work from

Shots that still hold up 60 years later

What makes this movie transcendent

Why Kubrick told actors not to emote

The book and the movie were written simultaneously by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, then diverged at the end

Clarke was a techno-optimist atheist who envisioned transcendence through technology; Kubrick saw something darker

The bad news monolith

Also: the phone in your pocket

Is evolution terrifying? Is it good?

Kubrick collapses linear time

Moon landing was…probably real

97% of people can’t identify human-made vs ai-gen music

A friend who spent 20 years making about 500 songs — AI makes a thousand in an afternoon

The communal difference between art and AI slop

Provenance is the point

The porn-pocalypse — news, politics, food, music, everything is porn now

When we dehumanize art we don’t experience anything

Why the viola is out of tune on purpose

The Great Man theory of history is stupid

The idea that you can’t make art because you don’t meet criteria for profitability is “the worst way to treat yourself”

Idolatry is worshipping the thing you make

The two basic human needs

Speaking of which… another Open Epilogue on March 23rd!

And in the epilogue…

Grand Theft Auto cheat codes

How to achieve the bliss of absolute focus

A fierce and exhausting debate about patriarchy

We picked out three moments we all loved and tied them up with a little copy/paste-able bow.

“Everything is porn now” (46:18) — Jordan defines porn: taking something real, subtracting everything except one sensation, and reproducing it at scale for profit — and applies it to news, politics, food, movies, music…everything. We’re living in a porn-pocalypse.

“The viola is slightly out of tune” (49:39) — Tom explains that orchestras sound beautiful precisely because they’re not perfectly in tune, in a gorgeous defense of imperfection as the actual source of beauty.

“Is the terror because it’s bad, or because everything has to die?” (~28:00–27:20) — Mal wonders if maybe the dissonant horror the monolith inspires isn’t a warning, it’s just what evolution feels like from the inside.

Or just open up The Sharing Kit

***

SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions.

spectrevisionradio.com

linktr.ee/spectrevisionsocial

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you love this episode and want to share it with someone, we made it easy.

Just scroll down to “Share this episode…” and pick a great moment to courageously copy and paste.

Highlights:

Rabbi Rami Shapiro is the author of nearly 40 books and co-director of the One River Foundation — find him on Substack

“Religions are like languages. No language is true or false. The more languages you speak, the more nuanced your understanding of life becomes. Yet it is silence that reveals the ultimate truth.”

Rami’s spiritual journey through Zen Buddhism and how he became a “zen rabbi”

Why ten years of meditation practice didn’t work

You already have it

The point isn’t to be enlightened, it’s to be a decent human being

Genesis 12:1 in Hebrew is telling the reader to journey inward and free yourself from conditioning

“be a blessing to all the families of the earth”

Narratives as addictions, Overeaters Anonymous, and Purim cookies

“Narratives Anonymous” anyone?

“Who’s craving the cookies?” (hint: not the one who’s aware of the craving)

Heschel’s architecture of time

Space is about having, time is about being

“Being is infinite.”

Good luck selling The Gospel of Thomas

Tom’s researching and writing a book on the suppressed non-dualism running through all Abrahamic religions

The divine feminine: wisdom (Hochma) in Hebrew, Dao in Chinese, Mary as Theotokos

Rami’s constant mantra

How the ego gets in the way writing

Rami moved to Nashville and his ego told him to stop playing guitar

The spiritual insights of Rami’s 10-year-old grandson

And in the epilogue…

The true Hebrew translation of what the burning bush said to Moses

How your body literally spells the name of God

What Jews and Coca-Cola have in common

We picked out three moments we all loved and tied them up with a little copy/paste-able bow.

“Because it doesn’t work” (~11:00) — Rami tells his Zen teacher he’s been meditating for ten years and nothing’s happening. The teacher says “because it doesn’t work.” Rami: “Why didn’t you tell me that ten years ago?” Teacher: “You wouldn’t have believed me.”

“Who’s craving the cookies?” (~25:13) — Rami uses his Overeaters Anonymous experience and a kitchen full of Purim cookies to demonstrate self-inquiry in real time.

“We’ll just keep waving” (~58:20) — Rami’s ten-year-old grandson processes the idea that God is like an ocean and arrives at his own theology of death and hope in about thirty seconds.

Also, if you want to send someone one of our more popular past episodes, here's a Sharing Kit we made just for you.

***

SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions.

spectrevisionradio.com

linktr.ee/spectrevisionsocial

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices