Tales From The Rabbit Hole

Mick West
  • 4.5 (92)
  • PERSONAL JOURNALS
Tales From The Rabbit Hole

Tales from the Rabbit Hole is an interview-style podcast focusing on people whose lives have been affected by the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Guests will include both former and current believers in a variety of conspiracy theories, as well as debunkers, skeptics, and the investigators of those theories. I’m Mick West, a debunker. I wrote the book Escaping the Rabbit Hole – How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories using Facts, Logic, and Respect. This book came from my experiences running Metabunk – a debunking forum. Over the years I realized simply presenting corrections to people is not enough. We need effective communication, and we can’t do that if we don’t listen to and talk with each other. I’m hoping this podcast will help bridge that gap.

  1. JAN 26

    Episode 58: Peter Bergen – Kirkpatrick, UFOs, and the Pentagon

    Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, and the host of the Audible podcast “In the Room with Peter Bergen.”  He recently interviewed Sean Kirkpatrick, the former head of the Pentagon UFO investigation office, AARO.  We chat about UFOs, National Security, Self-licking ice cream cones, and aliens.

    30 min

  2. 08/25/2023

    Episode 57: Alex Dietrich, Clouds, Critical Thinking, and UFOs

    Alex Dietrich served a 20-year career as a Naval officer and fighter pilot with two combat deployments. She was also deployed to Afghanistan as an Infrastructure reconstruction engineer.  She then transitioned to academia, serving as a Naval Science Instructor and then a Military professor, teaching, among other things, Critical Thinking, Leadership, and Ethics.  Alex is best known to the public as one of the pilots who witnessed the famous Tic-Tac UFO when flying off the USS Nimitz in 2004. She’s appeared on 60-Minutes, CNN, and other shows to discuss her experience and its implication for flight safety and national security.

    1h 36m

  3. 10/22/2021

    Episode 56: Robert Bartholomew – Havana Syndrome and Mass Psychogenic Illness

    Robert Bartholomew has a PhD in Medical Sociology, and is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He’s an expert in Mass Psychogenic Illness and the co-author with Rober Baloh of the book “Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria” Havana syndrome is a loose set of fairly generic symptoms that are being blamed on some kind of attack. It started with personnel at the US embassy in Havana, but has since spread around the world. Dr Bartholomew thinks it’s an example of Mass Psychogenic Illness – people are being asked to look for odd health events and strange sounds, and so of course they find them. But there really no good evidence of any kind of attack. Bartholomew thinks the intelligence community is largely aware of this, but an unbiased examination is being avoided for political reason. Dr Bartholomew’s website – https://rebartholomew.com/

    57 min

  4. 08/10/2021

    Episode 55 – Professor Avi Loeb: The Galileo Project

    What is a University professor doing investigating UFOs?  Professor Avi Loeb of Harvard University heads the Galileo Project, which seeks (in part) to identify the nature of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by establishing a network of telescopes and instruments with the goal of obtaining the first unambiguous clear photos of UFOs. We talk about the demarcation between science and pseudoscience, the rationale for the project, the challenges it will face, and how it all fits into Professor Loeb’s personal philosophy. The Galileo Project: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo Transcript https://otter.ai/u/abtJtNRU8RbBdUeUu50j9pb7m7Q

    1h 6m

  5. 08/05/2021

    Episode 54 – Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko: Pastels and Pedophiles

    Mia Bloom is Professor of Communication at Georgia State University with a PhD in political science from Columbia University. Sophia Moskalenko is a research fellow at Georgia State University and a researcher at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.  Together they wrote the book Pastels and Pedophiles – Inside the Mind of QAnon.  We discuss how the book came about, the historic roots of the QAnon conspiracy theory, how QAnon has changed with the “Save the Children” narrative to attract more women, and what tangible steps can be taken to help individuals and to help improve the overall situation.

    1h 12m

  6. 06/24/2021

    Episode 53 – Jason Colavito – UFOs and the Invisible College, How Did We Get Here?

    Jason Colavito is an author and journalist with a focus on “alternative archeology” and, more recently, the UFO cultural phenomenon. In May 2021, he wrote the article: “How Washington Got Hooked on Flying Saucers” in the New Republic, describing how “a collection of well-funded UFO obsessives are using their Capitol Hill connections to launder some outré, and potentially dangerous, ideas.” Jason’s historical research into the underpinnings of the current UFO/UAP flap is a vital component in understanding what is going on, and how we find ourselves in this situation. Going back to the 1960s and 70s, he traces a path from Jacque Vallée’s extradimensional hypothesis and Hal Puthoff’s paranormal research, through Robert Bigelow’s wide-ranging involvement via Harry Reid, to the current efforts of Luis Elizondo and Chris Mellon.   How Washington Got Hooked on Flying Saucers – https://newrepublic.com/article/162457/government-embrace-ufos-bad-science

    1h 3m

  7. 03/11/2021

    Episode 52 – Luis Elizondo – UFOs, UAPs, AATIP, and TTSA

    Luis Elizondo is a former senior intelligence official, a disclosure advocate,  a national security expert, and the former director of the Pentagon’s UFO/UAP Program (AATIP). We talk about his work in those capacities and also discuss the history and analysis of the three US Navy “UAP” videos. Interview conducted on March 11, 2021

    1h 1m

  8. 03/10/2021

    Episode 51 – Michael: Post Inauguration QAnon Catchup

    Michael is a “follower” of Q, in what is commonly known as the QAnon conspiracy theory. I first talked to him one year ago, February 2020. We met on Twitter discussing UFOs, but had a long discussion about QAnon. Michael thought for sure that Trump would win the election, and was quite hopeful about the prospects of a massive wave of arrests of the supposed child-abducting elites. Since he made some predictions, we agreed to meet again, which we did on Feb 22, 2021. We discussed what did an did not happen, and Micahel good-naturedly tried to convince me (at some length) that there was actually something to Q. We also very briefly discuss UFOs. Youtube version here

    1h 48m
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4.5
out of 5
92 Ratings

About

Tales from the Rabbit Hole is an interview-style podcast focusing on people whose lives have been affected by the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Guests will include both former and current believers in a variety of conspiracy theories, as well as debunkers, skeptics, and the investigators of those theories. I’m Mick West, a debunker. I wrote the book Escaping the Rabbit Hole – How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories using Facts, Logic, and Respect. This book came from my experiences running Metabunk – a debunking forum. Over the years I realized simply presenting corrections to people is not enough. We need effective communication, and we can’t do that if we don’t listen to and talk with each other. I’m hoping this podcast will help bridge that gap.

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