Diana Pasulka

The conversation opens on Travis Walton, described as a logger in Arizona in the 1970s who says he was abducted by aliens. According to the account given here, the men he was with saw him get hit by a beam of light, panicked and drove off, then turned back to get him. By then he and the craft were gone. He disappeared for five days and came back with what is described as an "insane story."

Both speakers say they believe him. Their reasons are that he has told the same story for decades "without any variation," that the group took polygraph tests, that the young men involved reportedly "hated each other" (so a coordinated hoax seems unlikely), and that Walton testified that it happened. The belief still comes with a hedge: "I don't know what happened."

Pasulka separates the facts from the meaning Walton has given them. The facts have stayed fixed, but the interpretation has moved. He first saw the beings as malign ("He didn't enjoy being abducted") and later wondered whether "maybe something spiritual happened." Pasulka says they haven't seen a recent interview, so they don't know where his view stands now. They mention a current interview that puts Walton across from Bob Lazar.

On what is new, Pasulka says the government has been releasing UFO files "since May, 2006," as the transcript renders the date. They describe advocates who treat the releases as a form of disclosure and who also want the president to publicly acknowledge the phenomena.

Then Pasulka brings up J.D. Vance's recent appearance on the show, where Rogan pushed back on Vance calling these phenomena demons. Pasulka hesitates to say the word and adds a disclaimer: they are speaking "as a private individual" and do not represent their university. They point to Vance's experience as the reason. In their telling, Vance was honest, and "demons" became the headline.

Pasulka says they have done Catholic history their whole life and began studying UFO experiences in 2012. Rogan says Vance didn't give a satisfying reason for calling the beings demons, and Pasulka offers to fill it in. Vance, they argue, is speaking from Catholic theology, which has long sorted anomalous phenomena into categories because "A lot of weird stuff happens within the history of religions."

Supernatural: events seen as unexplainable miracles from God. Pasulka's example is a terminally ill person who prays for a saint's intercession and recovers in a way doctors can't explain. Natural: events that can be explained within nature, such as hurricanes. Preternatural: events that can't be explained but don't rise to the supernatural. Pasulka says Catholics have used this category since at least the medieval period.

Pasulka's argument for the category's relevance is historical. If UFOs are here now, "most likely they've been around for a long time," so earlier observers needed categories for them just as people do today. Citing Thomas Aquinas, they say the preternatural covers angelic beings, demonic beings (fallen angels) and other unseen created things. Some preternatural experiences, they argue, resemble modern abduction reports: beings that appear and disappear and seem able to read minds. That, Pasulka says, is the category Vance was "trying to get at."

When Rogan asks why anyone would call these beings demons, Pasulka starts with uncertainty: "the fact is, is that we don't know." Their claim is about analogy, not identity.

it is beyond a doubt that there's a pattern match between people who have these experiences and people who have demonic experiences. That's an analogy, but that doesn't prove that they're identical.

Pasulka says the match lies in what people report experiencing. That includes things appearing and disappearing, luminous lights and aerial phenomena, beings that seem to read minds, and a sense that the beings put thoughts into people's minds. Someone who knows Catholic history would recognize these features, Pasulka says, but "we can't say that it is" the same situation. Their conclusion stays limited: "We don't know that they're demons. But it warrants an investigation, I think, into the similarities."

Rogan objects that "demon" suggests evil: possession, murder, stealing souls. The UFO encounters he describes seem different. They involve superior intelligence and technology and telepathic communication, but the beings "don't seem to have, vicious intentions." He suggests the word may just be an old label that people used when they didn't have words for what they were experiencing. Pasulka grants the point and says they would have agreed with it "before 2016."

Pasulka explains what changed their mind with an example: Skinwalker Ranch. They say people well known in UFO circles work there, and that they first heard about it around 2013 from Gary Nolan. Friends of Nolan's working there had asked him to come study the anomalous phenomena, which they linked to UFOs. Nolan declined because, in Pasulka's account, "it's really negative."

The specific worry was what Pasulka calls the hitchhiker effect, where the frightening activity tied to a haunted-seeming place "follows you home." Rogan says he has heard of it, possibly under the name hitchhiker syndrome. Pasulka says they met many people with UFO experiences who had this happen to them. Their conclusion is qualified: "not all UFO experiences are like that, but enough of them are like that for me not to ever have one."

This, Pasulka says, is why they came to see the preternatural as "still the best category that we have for looking at this." The category doesn't assume the phenomena are negative. Even for Catholics some of it is "actually really positive." The difficulty they point to is that humans have trouble telling which is which, and that the phenomena "could be deceptive."

Pasulka cites Gary Nolan on Tucker Carlson "like four years ago or something." Asked what these beings say, Nolan answered: "oh, they lie. They're deceptive." Pasulka says they have talked with Nolan about this too. They stress that Nolan is not affiliated with any religion and has no religious stake in the question.

Rogan asks for specific examples. Pasulka first describes how a Catholic priest would approach such cases: using established criteria for the preternatural, looking for deceit and for negative effects. They add that some people view abductions as positive and others don't. Pasulka says about a thousand people have told them their experiences. Without naming anyone, they describe one experiencer who "regularly gets prophetic messages, some of which come true, most of which are not true." Their account of the harm is that early hits build trust, later misses follow, and someone who goes public ends up associated "with falsehood and deceit."

Rogan asks whether mental illness has been ruled out, and Pasulka answers "Of course, of course." Pasulka says prophetic information arrives in several ways: seeing things, apparent mind-to-mind transmission from beings, and dreams. They add that similar reports appear in angelic events like Marian apparitions as well as in abductions. Rogan pushes on dreams. He contrasts a mundane dream (Godzilla, a skateboard, hiding in a cousin's basement) with a supposedly inspired one and asks how a person who has both can tell which is which.

Pasulka responds that Western culture lumps all dreams together, while other cultures, and the West at times, have distinguished types of dreams. Their examples are Joseph in the Hebrew Bible, who could tell prophetic dreams apart, and an Australian group's concept of "the dream time" (the group's name is garbled in the transcript). They also note that Travis Walton is not mentally ill. Rogan answers that Walton isn't the one having prophecies, and Pasulka concedes that Walton is one who doesn't.

Rogan returns to his central point. If guidance arrives in a dream, how does anyone know it comes from an entity and not just a dream, and how is deception distinguished from imagination? Pasulka says many abductees "won't make that distinction" because they've never experienced anything like it, and that their own position is caution: "be careful because we don't know if it's true or if it's not." After a sponsor break, Pasulka answers Rogan's question directly: "That's the good question. I don't know."

Pasulka then describes Nolan's claim modestly. Nolan is "taking data" showing that people are told wrong information, and he is "not trying to make a big claim." This leaves a gap the exchange doesn't close. Wrong predictions are presented as evidence of deceptive beings, but neither speaker establishes that a being is the source rather than the experiencer's own mind. Rogan says the discussion is "very frustrating," and Pasulka acknowledges his frustration.

Pasulka restates their aim as explaining what Vance meant by referring to a long-standing theological category, one they consider "actually quite useful in adjudicating what's going on" in experiences today. They say they wouldn't want these experiences for themselves or anyone else. When Rogan asks whether they'd want to meet an alien, they answer: "Not the aliens that people seem to be meeting."

The segment opens with Joe Rogan saying he would happily meet non-human beings if they wanted to meet him. He reasons that they "don't seem to steal you" and "They just interact with you." He describes Diana Pasulka as someone who writes books about aliens. She narrows that description: she writes about the religion about aliens. She also stays agnostic about what the phenomenon is. It "might not be extraterrestrial". It could be interdimensional, or it could be "something that's of a superior intellect that's been here all along," possibly within "the category of the preternatural."

Yeah, we don't know what it is. It might not be extraterrestrial.

Pasulka bases her reluctance on what people have told her in her research. If the beings are the ones described by people who told her "I wish this never happened to me," she says, then "no, I don't want to meet them." Rogan replies that people have different tolerances for experiences, and that some who say this may simply be unable to handle it. Pasulka points to fighter pilots such as David Fravor. She acknowledges they are not saying they wish it had never happened. Her point is that they still describe the objects as dangerous-looking, and they hope the craft are not enemy technology.

If our enemies have this technology, it's done. It's game over.

Pasulka's framing is that the objects are frightening if they are an adversary's technology. If they are not, they are "definitely something that we should take notice of." She then mentions an Australian report of a pilot who disappeared after encountering something in the sky.

Pasulka is open about how little she remembers of the case. She says "I can't actually remember what it is," and she doesn't know whether the pilot disappeared with his aircraft. Rogan says he wishes she knew more. The details then come from a lookup read aloud during the show. The transcript spells the pilot's name several ways (Valentike, Valentique, Valentic, Valenti). The commonly used spelling is Frederick Valentich.

The first account read aloud says that in 1978 a 20-year-old Australian pilot took off on a routine training flight over Bass Strait. He then reported a strange aircraft hovering above him "with four bright lights and metallic surfaces moving at impossible speeds," before saying "it's not an aircraft." According to that account, his Cessna was never found despite extensive searches, and no trace of him was recovered. Radar had detected another object in the area. The account says no one knows whether he crashed, got lost or "encountered something far more mysterious."

A second set of details adds more:

At 7.06 p.m., he contacted Melbourne air traffic controller Steve Roby (as read) to report an unidentified aircraft trailing him at about 4,500 feet. He described a long, shiny, metallic object with a green light that appeared to be orbiting above him, moving at high speed and "playing some sort of game." His engine became "rough idling and coughing." His final words were: "that strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again. It's hovering and it's not an aircraft." The transmission ended with 17 seconds of metallic scraping or keying sounds, then silence.

The two accounts don't fully match. The first describes four bright lights and metallic surfaces, and the second a long metallic object with a green light. Nobody on air reconciles them. Both come from material looked up during the show, not from Pasulka's own research.

The conversation stays light. Pasulka tells Rogan, "You can go meet that one, Joe." Someone, apparently Rogan, imagines the pilot "in a cool place right now" in another dimension, with the beings explaining the future of the universe to him. There is also a running joke about Rogan's coffee coming out ice cold ("Maybe it's aliens. They're deceiving us."). It turns out the start button was never pressed.

The case leads to a real limit on what Pasulka can share. People give her information she can't discuss, often because they ask her to keep their experience private. Even anonymised disclosure isn't an option for her, and she notes that she knows who these people are. She says pilots and families of pilots have told her things similar to the Valentich account, though "not as dramatic maybe," and she concludes that "it looks pretty grim."

I have a lot of information that people impart to me that is, that I can't actually talk about