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Headline edition July 8th 1947. The Army Air Forces has announced that a flying disc
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has [music] been found and is now in the possession of the army.
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However, there have been a certain percentage of this volume of reports that have been made by credible
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observers of relatively incredible things.
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Uh there is very compelling evidence that we [singing] uh we may not be alone. Whatever that means.
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There's a whole fleet of them. Look on the NSA.
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All they do is American public and global public finally understands UFOs are real
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[music and singing]
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non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed.
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Well, John, welcome back to the show. How's things been?
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Great. Uh, good to be back, Vinnie. Uh it's been a few months since we last chatted. Been very busy on a number of fronts including uh with the publication
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of Unhidden's preparedness plan and a lot's going on with um disclosure or steps towards it and so a voice that
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says we need to be careful and we need to look after people along that way. I think that's very much needed.
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Yes, I agree completely and it does seem like disclosure is just everywhere at the moment whether it's in the news, in entertainment and and obviously of
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course in the UFO community. But John, I'd like to start because you know for anyone who may not have seen you on any previous podcast, if you could just give
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us a bit of information about yourself and Unhidden as well.
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Yes. So briefly, I'm a physicist by origin. I work as a management consultant in and around construction
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and technology and therefore I'm not straight out of central casting to be running uh significant UAP related organization.
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It goes back to uh my frustration at not being able to have conversations around UAPs. Why does the stigma mean we can't
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have those conversations and the importance of better mental health and care for people around the topic? And so Unhidden is an
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organization that focuses on mental health uh to some extent on physical health and on public health around UAPs
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around um disclosure although we've got no evidence beyond what anybody else has as to what may be out there. But the point is whatever's happening pre or
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post disclosure, we should be kinder, more caring, more compassionate, and we should look out for and look after each other's health around the topic. So we
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have a a a medical advisory board at the heart of what we do made up of doctors and clinical psychologists, which again I think makes us pretty unique in the in the UAP world.
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Indeed. And you also have some of the luminaries from the UFO world involved as well. Could you list off a few of those for us? I think it it helps bolster the credibility as well.
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Well, yes, on the on the one hand, you're right. Our credibility comes from having a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a fellow of the Royal
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College of Physicians, uh two GPS, uh etc., professors of this, professors of that on a medical advisory board. But we
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also have, and it's I think very much to their credit, showing how they believe in people and the people aspects of the
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topic. We have um uh retired Admiral Tim Galedet. Uh we have uh former uh Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich. We
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have um Jacqu uh Valet. And we have Jay Stratton as our ambassadors and and
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active contributors to Anhidden. That ain't a bad list, is it Vinnie? That's that's not not too shoddy. It's pretty good in my eyes. Absolutely.
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Yeah. Incredible. Incredible. So, we're here really to talk about this preparedness plan uh that that Unhidden
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released in the past few weeks um which I am going to link the direct link to in the description of this video. I urge anybody to go and read it. It's it's an incredible piece of um documentation.
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But [clears throat] where did the idea come from uh for the paper?
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When one looks at the importance of health and care in and around the UAP topic, one starts at one end with
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individuals. Those being experiences who've had unusual and in some cases upsetting experiences or indeed anybody
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any individual that's concerned about what's coming out of of the the news.
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You know, you're watching uh CNN at 4:00 and Representative Luna's look talking about interdimensionals. you know, there
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might be some people out there who might get a little concerned about that. So, that's at the individual level and that was really the subject of our mental
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health report that came out in 2024, how to provide better care and support for for those people. But the third uh group of people who might need care and
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support is anybody affected by a disclosure announcement were one to happen. It's interesting to think about
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Steven Spielberg's film um movie Disclosure Day. No, not too many spoilers, but the clue is in the title,
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Disclosure on a Day. And the scenes at the end of everybody uh staring at their phone, staring at their screens, there's
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a a a an airport shot where the baggages are just going round on the carousel because everybody's so consumed by this news. What happens next? What happens on
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the day after disclosure day? And what can we do using good public health principles to try and make the harm to
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try and make the problems that disclosure might cause a little bit less affect fewer people and for that harm of
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those individuals affected being um rather rather less. And governments prepare for pandemics, disasters,
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industrial accidents, why don't they or why shouldn't they u prepare for disclosure? Uh we think they we think
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they should. And what we've done in the PL in the preparedness plan is first of all we've looked at what the research says about good public health practice
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and how should one design a program and then secondly what does that program look like to reduce the impact of
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disclosure on individuals and to provide a sort of surge capacity for support for individuals affected. And just to
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develop that a little bit further by analogy from public health perspective, we think about a vaccination program.
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That's what one would use to reduce the number of people affected by influenza, let's say, and reduce the uh the
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severity of the um of the the disease in those who are infected. We haven't got a vaccine for disclosure. We haven't got a
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vaccine against ontological shock. So we've thought about in the paper what measures and mechanisms we can to reduce
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do to bring forward to reduce that sort of level of harm. And then the second part of the public health response for something like a pandemic is the surge
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capacity of the people who need uh care and support. So in the UK we had at the time of COVID something called nighting go hospitals which were those pop-up
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hospitals to provide that extra capacity. um the mental health capacity, the well-being capacity might be
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overwhelmed with disclosure. So, how do we build that surge capacity uh with therapists and counselors through
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self-help and indeed through conversations with each other? And I think that's at the heart of what an hidden is all about. It goes back to the
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fundamental principles of encouraging better conversations. And in a post-disclosure world, that's really what we're going to have to look out for
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and look after each other. Better, more positive conversations. And it's really interesting that the final word in the
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Spielberg movie is listen, which of course is absolutely at the heart of the best conversations where there's active
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and good listening. Maybe there's a bit of advice for us all in that.
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Yes, indeed. Indeed, you know, this is obviously a UK based organization, but do you think the the document applies to
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a global audience, let's say, you know, because depending on culture and uh you know, is does it apply to people in a
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third world country? How how does it fit into that framework?
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Well, to uh to answer that question, first of all, um Unhidden is now both a UK organization and a US organization.
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So 4 months ago, we set up Unhidden, Inc., which is um 501c3 uh registered in
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in Delaware. And that's really important so that there are no barriers between Unhidden, having conversations with the US government. We're not seen formally
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as a as a UK organization, as a foreign agent. So we we're a US organization, a UK organization. We have US directors of
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of our Unhidden, Inc. And that makes the conversations we need easier because uh you know we don't need new medicine uh
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for preparedness planning because we understand or doctors understand anxiety, trauma, PTSD, depression, the
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mental health um symptoms and ways of of of tackling that. In many cases, we don't need new organi we don't need new
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organizations. You know, the contingency management disaster planning uh world exists. In the US, there's the Health
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and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, FEMA, and other organizations. In the UK, we have the UK
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Health and Security Agency. Um, and we have a a contingency planning through our cabinet office with their resilience
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um directorate. So, we've got the mechanisms. The key thing is is can we can we engage? We've also as unhidden we've got an Australia group not
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formally incorporated. So we're of the 186 countries in the world, we're covering three. I think it's going to be
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a a worldwide challenge uh managing everybody through a disclosure experience if it happens. There'll be all sorts of different cultural nuances.
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Uh but I think the starting point of the principles of of public health and if you like better conversations will will
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stand well. And who knows which will be the first government uh to engage with a preparedness plan. We're very pleased.
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We, as a result of other uh podcasts I've done, we've just been contacted by two psychiatrists based out of Japan.
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And it would be very interesting, wouldn't it, to engage with the Japanese government who are very forward thinking in terms of their willingness to embrace
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UAPs uh formally uh to see whether something could be done um in Japan around preparedness planning. We'll see. Early days.
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Yes, indeed. That's that's a very positive. I mean, I suppose like, you know, the way I was thinking it, if you had, I don't know, let's say, someone in Africa, I suppose if they read this
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preparedness plan, they could still get plenty of takeaways just from reading the document without even having to engage with with, let's say, Unhidden or
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or or a similar organization. So, I think it it would be a positive either way.
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I mean, if if we step through I mean, it's a it's a sort of framing point into um a bit of bit of substance if I share.
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If we sort of step through what we're what we're really recommending and you'll be able to see um how how globally applicable that is. I mean
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there are two overarching things that we recommend. First of all um we're only going to be able to build the co coalition of organizations and
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individuals that are needed to take this forward if we can reduce stigma. uh you know the giggle factor means that the key organizations responsible for
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preparedness planning uh are not prepared to engage and there's a really troubling and interesting um 2024
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article by Yingling and Yingling um which says 69% of academics are too
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frightened to undertake work uh academic study and research into UAPs because of fear of social ridicule.
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So the first thing we need to do is to to drive down stigma and make it easier for people to engage and you know it's a
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pretty toxic thing for governments to to run with. So we recognize that civil society organizations like Unhidden need to make the early running but we're tiny
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and we need the organizations who have the clout the roles and the responsibility and the funding to come on board. Um so that's that's the first thing. The second thing is we don't
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really understand all that much around ontological shock. And what's going on in the report is we're saying we're looking at disasters. We're looking at Granful. We're looking at Fukushima.
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We're looking at Hurricane Katrina. And we're looking at the prevalence of mental health issues, particularly PTSD
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in the population. And we're using that as a proxy for the the level of difficulty that there might be around ontological shock by way of disclosure.
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But that's not a perfect um analogy, not a perfect read across. So how do we get more information both about ontological
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shock itself and mechanisms for treating it? So that requires serious research.
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And one of the groups that we think we should study more and support more in that regard is experiences. They are the
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people who may have uh frontline real upfront and and personal onlogical shock. So what works for them? And one
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of the things we're doing at Sanh Hidden is we're running a a pilot of a conversations group for experiences in
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Australia actually to try and understand what's working from a conversational point of view and how we could
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prospectively roll that out at scale in a post-disclosure world. So understand more about ontological shock, reduce
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stigma. Um we need to build more in the way of trusted voices both pre and post-disclosure. So post disclosure, one
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of the big challenges will be how in any shape or form is information managed and
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how do we stop um uh unfounded rumors uh flying around the world? And a 2018
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study by MIT Labs showed that false news runs around social media something like three times more quickly than than the
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truth because it's more exciting and it sets off more uh endorphins and people are more likely to repost. So disclosure
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happens let's say and suddenly all these rumors go around the world who would you trust to give you true fair unbiased
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information on which you can rely that's a really important and difficult question and it's really important that there is that mechanism in place we have
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to build those trusted voices now so that they're available I've been asking people who would you trust for information around UAP disclosure and
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the response has been interesting somebody suggested the pope Somebody suggested King Charles.
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Somebody suggested another British royalty of sorts, Sir David Atenburgh.
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For your American audience, he's a very uh distinguished naturalist, TV presenter, and somebody who's about 97, isn't he? I mean, he's No, I think he's just turned 100.
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Really? Well, bless you. Bless you, Sir David. I did meet him on on one occasion when I was working in the um in the civil service, and he was a lovely, lovely man then, I'm sure. or so now.
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But but but who are the who are the trusted voices? Tim Peak, um uh Brian Cox. Uh so that's important and coming
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forward as a way of trying to reduce stigma and make it easier for people to engage with this topic. We need to encourage more trusted voices to talk
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about this without being fearful and without um uh you know feeling that this is something that's going to going to
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damage them. Um I was on a um a work call shortly before this um and uh the
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the work um colleague who was looking uh behind me was going, "Oh, let's have a look what's on your bookshelf." "Oh,
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UFOs. You got quite a lot of book about UFOs." And I went, "Yeah, yeah." And your point is um we should be more
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prepared to to stand up and um own our um interest in uh UFOs and UAPs. And I'm
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just going to draw the distinction between stigma and shame. So we're trying to get a reduction in stigma to make it easier for people and
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organizations to engage. Stigma is what society as a whole says is or is not um uh suitable and and accepted. There's some good reasons why we have stigma.
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There are some things which we don't want people to to to do in in public and that's that's that's all fine. Um shame is what you feel as an individual and I
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can choose to be shamed by my involvement with UAPs or not and for the last four years I've chosen not to not
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to feel shame and if more people uh particularly those in the UAP community are more willing to take that conscious decision. I'm not ashamed of my
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sensible, databased, caring, compassionate interest in UAPs and are more willing to try and have conversations with people about it, one
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conversation at a time, reduce shame, have the conversations, reduce stigma.
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That's the way it goes. So, um I invited the the colleague to take the conversation around UFOs further, but
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no, we we then talked about uh projects and and that was fine, too.
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Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean just going back to the paper I mean how does one even begin to put something like that together you know who was involved
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and and what was the sort of time scale on on on that?
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So we we built a a team um we built a a group which we called our ontological
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security advisory group of academics from a range of disciplines including I
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was very pleased about this um professor um uh John Elliot uh from St. Andrews
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University who runs the SETI um network and um one of the things about that is
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18 minutes
we established our good credentials not as being advocates for UFOs or aliens or
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they're here sort of a thing but advocates for a process and the meeting of minds with SETI was that they put an enormous amount of work into their
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protocols and they m Sir Martin Garrett published professor Sir Martin Garrett in the University of Manchester ister led the publication of a new set of SETI
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protocols around two weeks ago. Uh these govern what would happen if there's a some sort of a signal found. Who who do
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you call? When do you call? What sort of balance of probability do you need? How do you avoid false positives? So enormous amount of effort into protocols
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for what to do if they get a positive signal. They put no effort into and nobody's put any effort into uh how what
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are the protocols for supporting society. And so they see that missing link. That's a sort of an aside as to as to building building the team, a group
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of academics. Our our paper is not um uh strictly peer-reviewed, but we have a a
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group of academics who've supported. We also built um uh a level of scrutiny and integrity sitting behind it. So at the
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heart of the paper is what's called a health needs assessment, which is a uh a standard practice in public health.
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Makes a lot of sense. So what is the problem you're trying to solve? Uh what is the need that you're trying to meet?
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What uh parts of the population are affected and and how much? We talk a little bit about where that came out and and and there are some interesting
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numbers to share. But uh there is an academic paper available as a preprint that sets out all the assumptions behind
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that health needs assessment uh priest delator uh at low mass 2026.
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Uh so we've been very clear where our um assumptions and calculations have come from the strengths and weaknesses of
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that and we put that through the academic scrutiny of an academic paper that sits behind it. So uh that's where the the the effort and the inputs come
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from. We have a great group of doctors and clinical psychologists and you know when something needs to be done you find
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a way. So it's taken 9 months or so and runs to 60 pages. Um, it's just a start
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though. We will move on. Fingers crossed. We will have an academic conference or at least a conference at a
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major US university in February. We think a university environment will make it easier for organizations to come
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along to talk on the first day about onlogical shock on the second day about preparedness planning and out of that will come a review of the report that we
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put together and the facilitative actions and uh you know no plan uh survives contact with first contact with the enemy we'll have version two of the
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plan version three and version four and so it will go on provided we can start to build the coalition and get people to engage.
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Excellent. Uh you know we talk about all these highly uh academic uh um individuals and health care
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professionals that have been you know associated and working with unhidden.
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Have they had to go and research and familiarize themselves with the UFO subject?
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In some cases, it's really interesting when you start talking to people about
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the UAP topic. I'm sure you and your listeners find this. You talk to somebody who is not familiar with the
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subject at all, but is sufficiently open-minded. They're they trying to find a way to show encouragement to one's
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21 minutes, 39 seconds
position from the UAP perspective. And they something they say something, well, you know, the universe is a pretty large place. you'd have to be quite arrogant
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to think that we were the only intelligent beings in the universe. So, they're trying to find a way to engage with the idea of of non-human intelligence, but in a very sort of
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tentative way. And then as they start to read more and they they start to get into the subject you know down the rabbit hole um they come and in terms of
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the academics um you know there are a number who resolutely hold the position
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which is unhidden stated position of being slightly highuting phrase ontologically ambivalent. You know we
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don't know what the um the cause of the sightings is and we've got no evidence of the existence of non-human intelligence. What we do have copious
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evidence of is the fact that people are affected and harmed. You know, you you the evidence comes from sitting down
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across the table from an experiencer, looking into their eyes and their face and seeing that, you know, the profoundity of the experience and the
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wonder and the dislocation of not being believed and and the wanting to be vindicated and validated. That's a level
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of of of harm that you can see person to person. So we've got plenty of evidence uh of the people affected and harmed
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evidence in our physical health um paper of physical harm and uh we can see how harm will come from ontological shock at
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scale with disclosure if that happens and so the need to preempt and build strategies for for that. Um so yes that's uh that's where we are with that.
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And do you I mean does the paper identify a particular group of people who you would imagine might struggle the most with ontological shock?
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Well yes and this takes us back to what I was hinting at a couple of questions ago of the health needs assessment. So the way we did that is we identified
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seven possible high-risisk groups um and we did a deli scoring method on two axes. One of those was um uh physical
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safety and the other was ontological security. And four groups emerged as as particularly high risk. And those four
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groups are first of all uh people with strong religious beliefs.
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Secondly and quite interestingly um people with strong science, technology, um engineering, medicine uh connections.
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Um and we see some in the the STEM community uh resolutely holding out for the fact that there's nothing to see
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here. Interestingly, those that kind of come across uh Neil Degrasse Tyson
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[laughter]
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having been strongly resolutely uh there's nothing to see here that now there might be it's all all interesting but uh scientists um so the literature
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suggests uh have a strong personal connection and identification with the existing scientific paradigm. So if that
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is challenged, their own worth, their own position is is challenged. They're also extremely articulate, intelligent,
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and are able to argue back. And the very famous um uh um scientist, he of the
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constant uh plank uh described that it's not uh sufficient or not easy to argue
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that a new scientific paradigm should be embraced. you kind of need to wait for all the existing people who hold the old paradigm to sort of die off or retire.
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And we we will remember that Einstein never embraced quantum mechanics and you know took a while for him to fade down
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and others to to fade out before that absolutely became the the overarching and dominant view. Uh the other two groups who are we think are potentially
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at higher risk are vulnerable um people generally and one of the things about um uh the research that we've done on
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25 minutes, 33 seconds
public health a very iconic public health paper by a man called Michael Marmmet in 2010 called fair society
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25 minutes, 41 seconds
healthy lives and he notes that for every major emergency disadvantaged communities experience disproportionate impact to slower recovery because
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they've got less access to financial resources, social resources are less able to ask for help. And I think of
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25 minutes, 56 seconds
this when uh friends or uh colleagues in the UAP community go, "Oh, unhidden. You're just getting in
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the way. Just rip off the band-aid. I'm ready." Um you know, just rip off the band-aid. There are two things about that. First of all, the phrase rip off
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the band-aid, it does rather assume it's quite a minor inconvenience. You know, like, okay, hurt for 5 seconds and then
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it's gone. if you're asked um a different question. So um do you want to have your leg amputated now or do you want to wait half an hour for the
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anesthetist to arrive? And are those same UAP people going just cut off the leg, cut off the leg now. So um you know that framing is important and I think
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it's a bit of a false analogy to rip off the band-aid. Um the the second point is they might be right that they're perfectly able to absorb the impact.
26:45
26 minutes, 45 seconds
they wouldn't be affected. But the research shows more vulnerable people are less able to do so. So there'll be other people down the street with existing mental health conditions or
26:54
26 minutes, 54 seconds
more socioeconomic disadvantages who may be less able. So you know be careful.
26:59
26 minutes, 59 seconds
Rip off the band-aid might be fine for you but not be for others. And then the fourth group, it's a long answer because they're good question. Fourth group of
27:07
27 minutes, 7 seconds
people who might be adversely affected are experiences because first of all it might bring back the recollection of the
27:15
27 minutes, 15 seconds
trauma that they had but secondly they might be more than a little bit hacked off that they've been told for 30 years there was nothing to see here and
27:23
27 minutes, 23 seconds
actually no it turned out that this was real all along. I mean you might be a little bit peeved I think so those four groups and just to finish off on the
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27 minutes, 31 seconds
health needs assessment and why we've done it and what it is and what it isn't. So this is not a prediction of who is going to be affected and the
27:40
27 minutes, 40 seconds
level of people who are affected. It's what we call a stress test. So our population calculations based on those
27:47
27 minutes, 47 seconds
four groups suggests that between 3.5% and 10.6% of the adult population could
27:55
27 minutes, 55 seconds
need some sort of psychosocial support after disclosure. In UK terms, that's between 1.9 and 5.7 million people. uh
28:03
28 minutes, 3 seconds
it wouldn't be proportionately the same in the US because there'll be different factors. And when you compare those figures between 1.9
28:12
28 minutes, 12 seconds
and uh 5.7 million people against the capacity for mental health support in the NHS annual NHS's national health
28:20
28 minutes, 20 seconds
service for your US listeners different in the US um the annual NHS mental health referrals total 5.2 million in a
28:29
28 minutes, 29 seconds
whole year. So 5.7 million adults were affected and needed social support. That is more than the entire NHS mental
28:37
28 minutes, 37 seconds
health referrals in a year. Point being, is this a potentially a small problem or is this a large problem? Could be a
28:44
28 minutes, 44 seconds
large problem and therefore it's worth people like the Cabinet Office resilience directorate taking a serious look at this. It was like five people
28:51
28 minutes, 51 seconds
who might be affected. Who cares? But five million people and one of the positive things is the Cabinet Office commissioned a study in in 2021 by the
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29 minutes, 1 second
Royal Academy of Engineering looking at the way they were calculating the risks to go in the national risk assessment
29:08
29 minutes, 8 seconds
and they've moved much more in the direction of embracing hard to quantify high impact risks. So we're hoping uh
29:17
29 minutes, 17 seconds
there will be sensible engagement on the back of our preparedness plan with either or both of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Cabinet Office to
29:25
29 minutes, 25 seconds
say in a dispassionate way is disclosure risk something that can and should be evaluated using the Royal Academyy's risk assessment methodology and does it
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29 minutes, 34 seconds
qualify as a high enough impact risk to feature on the um uh national risk assessment and equivalent risk
29:41
29 minutes, 41 seconds
assessments exist in the US. Wouldn't that be a thing if the risk of disclosure appeared on the Cabinet Office risk assessment? I'm not saying
29:49
29 minutes, 49 seconds
we're going to get to that point anytime soon, but why wouldn't you step through the methodology and the serious nature of our calculations and our health needs
29:57
29 minutes, 57 seconds
assessment and see what the methodology says? This could be sufficiently important. It would be kind of negligent not to do so, wouldn't it? Uh that's our
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that's our thought process and we'll see where we get to.
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Excellent. Yeah. Really really interesting.
30:13
30 minutes, 13 seconds
So John, does the paper look at how disclosure is delivered and received?
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30 minutes, 19 seconds
Because obviously we hear the phrases catastrophic disclosure and controlled disclosure. So how does the the variables pan out there?
30:29
30 minutes, 29 seconds
So we do have three scenarios in the paper. Uh scenario one is the revelation
30:36
30 minutes, 36 seconds
about of microbial life on an exoplanet light years and light years away. Maybe
30:43
30 minutes, 43 seconds
not so uh big a big a deal. Scenario two is uh some sort of signal. We sort of classify that as you know they're out
30:52
30 minutes, 52 seconds
there but again maybe uh many many light years away. And then scenario three is is closer to home. And of course one of
31:00
31 minutes
the challenges of all of this is uh uh the the variance on what disclosure might be are you know huge multifarious
31:09
31 minutes, 9 seconds
almost almost sort of infinite um there's a particular word that I think is really important uh that is in the
31:16
31 minutes, 16 seconds
UAP um uh lexican and that's threat and it makes a big difference if there is an
31:23
31 minutes, 23 seconds
actual perceived threat from disclosure as opposed to if it's it's sort of abstract you know, and there are people out there who say, you know, they're all
31:32
31 minutes, 32 seconds
really nice and and and that that's a big dynamic. We say people who put out
31:40
31 minutes, 40 seconds
um the threat narrative and alarm people should do so well do so very very much at their at their peril and their shame.
31:49
31 minutes, 49 seconds
And the human brain works in such a way that if you uh are presented with a low-level threat, it switches on your
31:56
31 minutes, 56 seconds
lyic system, your flight or fight thing, it's actually quite hard to turn it off unless you actually do some flight or fight. So this general sort of anxiety
32:04
32 minutes, 4 seconds
thing, this general sort of threat thing 2027 or whatever it might be, books that are called imminent, whatever, whatever,
32:12
32 minutes, 12 seconds
you know, whatever that means, not very helpful. So the threat word we we don't make much of in the paper but is is clearly important. What um what is the
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32 minutes, 21 seconds
case is whilst there are an infinite number of uh varieties of disclosure the the health responses to that and the health needs are pretty well understood.
32:31
32 minutes, 31 seconds
you know, we're talking about anxiety, we're talking about depression, we're talking about trauma, PTSD, and we need
32:39
32 minutes, 39 seconds
to overlay a little bit of a layer of what's ontological shock do and how does it change that. But, uh, doctors,
32:46
32 minutes, 46 seconds
counselors, psychologists, therapists understand how to deal with patients with those sorts of shocks. What we find, of course, back to our old friend
32:55
32 minutes, 55 seconds
stigma, is that people have all sorts of frightening experiences all the time.
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33 minutes
Um, but if you were to see a nasty road traffic accident or a mugging on the tube and you would go to seek support from friends and family, they would go,
33:08
33 minutes, 8 seconds
"Oh, that's terrible. You poor chap. You know, you want to go for a pint? Do you want to go for a coffee? How are you feeling?" If you say you've seen um, you know, a strange object in the sky, you
33:17
33 minutes, 17 seconds
don't get that support. You get the opposite. You're a liar. You're nasty. We don't want to know you. Shame on you.
33:23
33 minutes, 23 seconds
Those sorts of things. So uh but the the the medical aspects of the sort of psychosocial support that's needed is
33:31
33 minutes, 31 seconds
known about um at the time of the um uh the what should we call them drones inverted commas over Lake and Heath um
33:40
33 minutes, 40 seconds
uh and there was a lot of concern in the local community our um Dr. Dan Weaver, a general practitioner in South Wales and
33:47
33 minutes, 47 seconds
others of the Unhidden Medical Advisory Board, put together a 12-point plan for sort of self self-help uh to help people
33:55
33 minutes, 55 seconds
who might be anxious by what was going on. And they were very simple and straightforward things. Get off social media, box breathing is a good thing. Go
34:02
34 minutes, 2 seconds
and do something you enjoy. Get outside, spend time with friends and family, sing a song. I mean, you know, that might sound really glib, but the way in which
34:10
34 minutes, 10 seconds
we reassure ourselves and reassure others and we show, you know, compassion and care. Um, we've been doing that
34:17
34 minutes, 17 seconds
since we sat around cave in caves telling stories around campfires or whatever. Uh, we've just got to be got to be willing to do it and willing to listen.
34:29
34 minutes, 29 seconds
And does the paper also look at, you know, we talk about disclosure day and the day after disclosure. So there's that kind of instant need for the
34:37
34 minutes, 37 seconds
ontological shock that kicks in and will affect a lot of people. But what about years down the line, a year, five years, 10 years? Because you know that
34:45
34 minutes, 45 seconds
obviously some people would probably naturally adjust to it completely different to others who who may struggle.
34:53
34 minutes, 53 seconds
Well, it's a very good point and what the research shows is that the um mental
35:00
35 minutes
health need is greatest between about 3 to 6 months after the event that's caused it. So, people are actually quite
35:08
35 minutes, 8 seconds
uh comfortable for a while. It gets worse um uh around 3 to 6 months and then tails back uh between sort of 6
35:17
35 minutes, 17 seconds
months and and two years. So um building the capability not just for the day after disclosure or the month after
35:24
35 minutes, 24 seconds
disclosure but for all of that period is is really important. Um and then you know then where would we be two years
35:33
35 minutes, 33 seconds
after that we would be in a sort of post post-disclosure world. There'd be much more absorption of the information and of course where we would go is there
35:41
35 minutes, 41 seconds
would be two groups in society. There would be people who remembered what life was like before disclosure. And there would be people who'd known um nothing
35:49
35 minutes, 49 seconds
other than disclosure. Um it's a long time ago, but my a few years a few years ago, my daughter came to me and she
35:56
35 minutes, 56 seconds
said, "Hey dad, did you know that um there was a time before the internet?" Yes. Yes. And you know, children in the
36:04
36 minutes, 4 seconds
future be going to their parents and say, "Hey, hey dad, hey mom, did you know there was a time before disclosure, before we knew that with non-human
36:11
36 minutes, 11 seconds
intelligence existed." And one of the things I would sort of just circle back on that is it's actually quite comforting that for the vast majority of
36:20
36 minutes, 20 seconds
the time that humans have been sentient and living in communities, they have been very very comfortable about
36:28
36 minutes, 28 seconds
cohabiting, as they would have seen it, with non-human intelligence. What I mean by that is if you ask someone in ancient Rome or ancient Greece, does non-human
36:35
36 minutes, 35 seconds
intelligence exist? They'd say, sure, they live on that mountain over there.
36:38
36 minutes, 38 seconds
There's Zeus and there Venus and you know, we manage our risk by do these offerings and prayer and whatever it is.
36:47
36 minutes, 47 seconds
In medieval or TUDA times, do you believe in non-human intelligence? Yes.
36:51
36 minutes, 51 seconds
Angels, demons, you know, all these sorts of all these sorts of things. And it's only in the last well or maybe even
36:58
36 minutes, 58 seconds
in the last hundred years but certainly since sort of the age of enlightenment um that we've really abandoned that and
37:06
37 minutes, 6 seconds
I think it's really interesting that a key thread of the UAP topic is the religious aspects and the potential
37:14
37 minutes, 14 seconds
rediscovering or reinterpreting uh religious themes and religious um histories. the work of Dina Pasulka for
37:22
37 minutes, 22 seconds
example, we just have to go we may have to go through uh a point of change where we go back to how we have been for most
37:30
37 minutes, 30 seconds
of our existence of recognizing that we're not alone but that transition point could be pretty difficult and um
37:38
37 minutes, 38 seconds
uh you know quite awkward for for society as a whole. Indeed. Indeed.
37:45
37 minutes, 45 seconds
So let's talk about the you know since the papers come out. What was the initial how was it received at first or or or even since?
37:54
37 minutes, 54 seconds
So, we're very pleased with the coverage. We we put the effort into this. So, it didn't just happen by chance, but I think we've had 240,000 views of our initial um post on Twitter.
38:07
38 minutes, 7 seconds
So, whether that counts as going viral or not, it's certainly quite a quite a good number. We've had some some good um
38:14
38 minutes, 14 seconds
uh coverage on um uh podcasts. The frustration, as you'll anticipate, is
38:21
38 minutes, 21 seconds
when we go beyond the UAP community into um the establishment UK health um
38:29
38 minutes, 29 seconds
security agency, Department of Health, um uh local authority, um uh contingency
38:37
38 minutes, 37 seconds
planning people, home office, cabin office, the level of response we get is still very low. So the probability of
38:43
38 minutes, 43 seconds
getting an answer from at all out of bits of government is is low. The chance of it being any more than um thank you
38:51
38 minutes, 51 seconds
for your letter [laughter] comments of which have been noted. But there are some bright spots. Some u professional bodies are engaging with us. Some parts of government are
39:00
39 minutes
engaging with us. And so that's the thing. So if I had one um plea for your listeners is just spend a moment or two
39:08
39 minutes, 8 seconds
thinking where there might be some parts of government who could or should be engaging with um the whole question of
39:17
39 minutes, 17 seconds
preparedness planning for the possibility of disclosure. And if you know someone, an uncle, a cousin, a friend, uh a neighbor down the road who
39:25
39 minutes, 25 seconds
just happens to be head of health protection at um exit uh exit college or whatever, that would be wonderful. Um
39:34
39 minutes, 34 seconds
and uh you can reach unhidden via our website or my email is um uh johnhheaden.org.
39:42
39 minutes, 42 seconds
If we mobilize the UAP community, uh the power of that network is huge and it only takes a few people in those
39:50
39 minutes, 50 seconds
establishment positions, academia, government, professional bodies, health providers who are willing to engage and suddenly we're up and running and we
39:58
39 minutes, 58 seconds
move away from if you like ever so slightly the echo chamber of the UAP community into the rest of society and particularly those organizations. It's
40:07
40 minutes, 7 seconds
their job. It's their job to keep us safe. It's their job to prepare and we're I hope helping them by leading the way of this is important. This is how
40:16
40 minutes, 16 seconds
you might do it. But they have to pick that up because it's their job. That's what they do.
40:21
40 minutes, 21 seconds
How do you how would you deal with somebody who may look at this and say, "Well, what's the point in preparing for something that's probably never going to happen?" You know, uh, you know, people
40:30
40 minutes, 30 seconds
pushing back on it or or or criticizing it. Let's say, you know, well, this is so extreme talking about aliens and that
40:38
40 minutes, 38 seconds
that in a way you're spreading fear just by suggesting this. How do you deal with that?
40:44
40 minutes, 44 seconds
Well, so there's there's a couple of um uh things in what you've said. You know, there's a suggestion that we're just spreading fear. And I work in
40:52
40 minutes, 52 seconds
construction. Um we do seismic qualifications of buildings uh to um make them less susceptible to
41:00
41 minutes
earthquakes. In other words, preparing for earthquakes is a good thing. It should make people feel um more safe,
41:07
41 minutes, 7 seconds
reduce fear. Talking about earthquakes um you know, it's is a good thing.
41:12
41 minutes, 12 seconds
Similarly talking about this in a positive let's prepare and reduce risk and be prepared. I think it's hard to argue that that's um that's
41:20
41 minutes, 20 seconds
fear-mongering in terms of whether it happens or or doesn't happen. What we say to that is um there are advantages
41:28
41 minutes, 28 seconds
in preparing for these different sorts of risks that society faces paradigm shifting revelations and if um NHI uh
41:39
41 minutes, 39 seconds
contact is is never forthcoming but we prepared we would have learned a lot for other um ways in which society has to
41:46
41 minutes, 46 seconds
adapt to strange things for example the rise of artificial general intelligence or something else that that comes along
41:54
41 minutes, 54 seconds
sort of out of the blue. So the investment in understanding more about how to prepare for psychologically challenging revelations is an investment
42:02
42 minutes, 2 seconds
that society will benefit from way beyond disclosure. I'll just share one one story. I had a lovely conversation
42:09
42 minutes, 9 seconds
with a man called Seth Shostac who is the senior astronomer at SETI.
42:15
42 minutes, 15 seconds
And I said to him, you know what what if the um aliens were going to land on the White House lawn on um Tuesday morning?
42:23
42 minutes, 23 seconds
He said, "What?" I said, "What what what should we do?" And he said, "Well, my my advice would be get some snacks in." In other words, there's nothing there's
42:31
42 minutes, 31 seconds
nothing we can do, you know, and just sort of go for go for the ride. Well, our argument would be that might be right if you're asking somebody on the
42:40
42 minutes, 40 seconds
Friday what should happen about the aliens on the Tuesday. But, uh, if you've got weeks, months, years, maybe decades to prepare, there is a lot more
42:48
42 minutes, 48 seconds
you can do. And you can also get a wider range of snacks if you've got a bit more time as well. So he's a lovely lovely very generous man. He made me made me smile. Get get some snacks in.
43:00
43 minutes
That's wonderful. Great to hear. So going forward now the paper's out there, you know, hopefully, you know, it keeps continue spreading around and and
43:09
43 minutes, 9 seconds
gaining some momentum there. But what comes next for Unhidden? What comes next for disclosure? I suppose how do you
43:18
43 minutes, 18 seconds
personally see the the road that we're on?
43:22
43 minutes, 22 seconds
Yeah. So I mentioned earlier the wish uh and I think the wisdom of trying to engage with the various organizations
43:31
43 minutes, 31 seconds
disaster recovery contingency planning public health organizations that um in a university setting. So the idea of
43:38
43 minutes, 38 seconds
setting up um uh our conference uh in early 2027 at a major US university
43:45
43 minutes, 45 seconds
there'll be a lot of work in that unhidden for the various facilitative actions in the paper and hidden can't do
43:52
43 minutes, 52 seconds
do all of them can't even do many of them we are the convenor and the the bringer together there are some things
43:58
43 minutes, 58 seconds
we can do we can build a um uh uh self-help advice we can develop the unhidden conversations group further us
44:07
44 minutes, 7 seconds
a concept to how to set up conversation groups uh and supportive groups in a in a structured way. And interestingly, as
44:15
44 minutes, 15 seconds
part of the research um the the the largest organization providing conversational help at scale um is
44:24
44 minutes, 24 seconds
Alcoholics Anonymous, a structured conversation um which people buy into that structure that at any one time they support about
44:32
44 minutes, 32 seconds
a million people. uh and how does that fit with the scale of the need for support for disclosure? I mean uh your
44:40
44 minutes, 40 seconds
listeners will have different views but I don't think we could say that a million was going to be anything anything like enough. And then the third thing that we're going to continue to do
44:48
44 minutes, 48 seconds
is to continue to push the importance of the human people medical care aspect of
44:56
44 minutes, 56 seconds
things. Um this was um and I think still is Carl Nell's fifth line of effort, the
45:03
45 minutes, 3 seconds
care and support uh aspect, but it's still a little disappointing. So there was the Disclosure Foundation's um
45:11
45 minutes, 11 seconds
conference in Washington, was it Thursday of last week? I forget quite when it was that there's a paper that's come out that arguing that there are
45:19
45 minutes, 19 seconds
three tracks for disclosure. One, releasing high quality scientific evidence. to publishing government's intelligence assessments of UAP
45:27
45 minutes, 27 seconds
capabilities and strengthening whistleblower protections. That's the third one. Uh our line is over and over.
45:34
45 minutes, 34 seconds
What about a fourth one around uh preparing people in society for the consequences of disclosure and somehow
45:41
45 minutes, 41 seconds
the disclosure organizations always emit that. So I think we have this
45:49
45 minutes, 49 seconds
important and and unique role to keep championing uh the the importance of preparedness and and care and we'll
45:56
45 minutes, 56 seconds
continue to do that in so far as we're allowed to and and we get the opportunity at conferences and otherwise to make that point. So very welcome to
46:04
46 minutes, 4 seconds
come on your podcast again and say people matter and part of the UAP uh dialogue and preparedness and planning
46:12
46 minutes, 12 seconds
should be around people and care and it's not an either or. It's not we can either prepare people and deal with the care and health side or we can do
46:19
46 minutes, 19 seconds
disclosure. We can do both. And uh to choose another couple of Cwords instead of it being um uh uh controlled
46:27
46 minutes, 27 seconds
disclosure or uh catastrophic disclosure, how about a caring and compassionate disclosure? That's what we want in addition to uh uh the
46:37
46 minutes, 37 seconds
information uh coming out as and when it needs to and does.
46:41
46 minutes, 41 seconds
Yeah, I like that caring and compassionate disclosure. And I just want to reiterate to everybody watching or listening, please go and click the link below for the paper and read it for
46:50
46 minutes, 50 seconds
yourselves because I think everyone will get their own individual takeaways from it. But it's a wonderfully written and obviously well researched and presented
46:58
46 minutes, 58 seconds
document. So John, going forward, where can people follow along with what Unhidden is up to?
47:04
47 minutes, 4 seconds
So uh follow us on X. We are um uh our Twitter handle or whatever the phrase is
47:11
47 minutes, 11 seconds
is unhidden health. Our website is www.unhidden.org and you can get access to our mental
47:20
47 minutes, 20 seconds
health report, our um our uh uh physical health report and clearly the preparedness plan. And the preparedness plan is a little micro site just doesn't
47:29
47 minutes, 29 seconds
just have the um preparedness plan itself. It has the health needs assessment. It has the academic paper and it has the two or three page press
47:37
47 minutes, 37 seconds
release if you want a sort of a quick start version of things. Um, and there's also, um, a red button there with the
47:44
47 minutes, 44 seconds
word, um, donate on it. Um, and don't be afraid to look up in the dictionary if you don't know what donate means. And,
47:51
47 minutes, 51 seconds
uh, um, people who press that button are very welcome. We, um, uh, obviously uh, need uh, um, support, financial, etc. to
48:00
48 minutes
to move forward at the scale that we would like to do. And our conference in uh, early 2027, uh, the money for that doesn't grow on trees. So please do come
48:09
48 minutes, 9 seconds
and have a look on our website, send us a message, follow us on Twitter and encourage uh a people matter based approach to uh UAPs.
48:17
48 minutes, 17 seconds
I will make sure all the links are in the description. Thank you Vinnie. I know you will.
48:21
48 minutes, 21 seconds
John, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure talking with you and thank you for all the work you've been doing. It's highly appreciated.
48:28
48 minutes, 28 seconds
Great conversation as always. All the best to you Vinnie. Bye for now. Bye-bye now.