Dr. Michael Brein The Travel Psychologist and Ufologist

"You have to give them the opportunity to express themselves," says Michael Brein, and that's what I hope to have accomplished in this interview. Michael Brein is referring to his interviews with people who have experienced the paranormal. Michael discusses his books and opinions about travel as Nolan asks questions about cultural competence, how religion affects psychology, and what Michael's experience with the Peace Corps was like.

You can find all of his work on his website michaelbrein.com.

As always, you can listen to the episode on all major listening platforms via Anchor. This is a great conversation for intermediate English learners as we speak much slower than usual.

I rely on paid subscriptions to make this possible. As a paid subscriber, you can support the show and become part of the conversation. The transcripts are free to all members to help more English learners. I encourage English learners to discuss the language and content in my English classes. I also share my expertise in intercultural competence for business English.

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00:00:00.380 --> 00:00:03.520 [Voices] Inescapably, inescapably.</v>

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[Nolan] Inescapably, foreign. Welcome to Without Borders.</v>

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This is the podcast for nomads, expats, third culture kids, immigrants,

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or anyone else that feels inescapably foreign. Today I'm here with Dr.

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Michael Bren, aka, the travel psychologist.

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So Michael is also an author, lecturer, travel storyteller,

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adventurer and publisher of travel books and guides. Oh, and remember, um,

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if you are new to the show, you can always access the

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transcript at www.withoutborders.fyi. Well,

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let's get into it. Michael, how are you doing today?

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[Michael] Uh, great. Thanks for having me as a guest.</v>

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[Nolan] I'm excited to have you as a guest. I've been, uh,</v>

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doing a lot of research the past few days about you and your work. Um,

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so Michael, where, where are you right now?

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[Michael] I'm on Bainbridge. I, uh, off of Seattle,</v>

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off across the sound. When you look at a map,

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you'll see there's a division of Washington State,

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and I'm on the same area where the Olympic Peninsula is,

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where the National Park, Olympic National Park is.

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[Nolan] Yes, I'm familiar. Beautiful area because I, I grew up in British Columbia,</v>

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so I I also lived in Vancouver for a long time. Um,

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so both West Coasters, I guess. Uh, where did you grow up, Michael?

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[Michael] No No, I grew up in Pennsylvania and, uh,</v>

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00:01:31.290 --> 00:01:32.900 part of my, uh,

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history is I eventually moved to Hawaii to do my doctorate.

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I thought if I'm going to do a PhD, uh,

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I couldn't find a better place at the time to dedicate five years

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to working on a PhD than the beaches and beach parks of

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[Nolan] Yeah, I, I have some questions about that as well,</v>

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because I'm also curious about the paper you wrote. Now,

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I know it was a long time ago, so we don't have to get into all the details,

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the paper Intercultural Communication and the Adjustment of a

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00:02:12.780 --> 00:02:15.390 Sojourner or how, what's the word?

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00:02:15.680 --> 00:02:16.910 [Michael] Uh, Sojourner.</v>

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[Nolan] Sojourner or Traveler, right. [laughter] Um, but Michael,</v>

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but before we get into that, you are the man that coined the,

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the phrase travel psychology. And that was in 1965,

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and now if someone googles travel psychologists,

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they'll see some other people pop up as well.

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And it seems to be a growing field, especially in the, um,

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in the social sciences. Um, now me,

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I'm more familiar with the term cultural psychology. Right.

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Which started in the 1920s with the, the Soviet Russians, l uh,

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Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria. Oh, goodness. Um,

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you distinguish between cultural psychology and travel psychology?

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[Michael] Well, I don't, that's okay. That's it. I mean, simply stated,</v>

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thinking of all things, travel, psychology, um,

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which is not so much dealing with specific cultures,

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but basically trying to ferret out and understand better

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what is it about our psychological makeup that

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uh, does this affect the way we interact with people today?

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Being able to get along with people all over the globe is,

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is critical. And I think, uh, at the time I started it,

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people were aware of intercultural, uh,

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It really surprised me that no one else really before me

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focused on the whole concept of what is traveling all about and,

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and how is it so important in our lives.

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I just couldn't believe at the time that nobody else

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was really studying this. They were studying aspects of it. So, for example,

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I worked for the University of Hawaii Peace Corps program where American

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Peace Corps volunteers would go around the world and help, uh, with,

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uh, other cultures, uh, supporting them.

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These were generally, at the time, younger people full of, uh,

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wanting to go help peoples of other countries.

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And the University of Hawaii had a Peace Corps training program.

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So I thought, wow, I should get involved with that. And I did. And,

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uh, I wrote some papers about my experiences with that.

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That began my learning of what it's about to study the

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how travel affects us and how we affect others.

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[Nolan] Yeah. Um, and and when you were doing the,</v>

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the Peace Corpse, uh, when you were at Peace Corpse Volunteer,

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that also led you to study Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian,

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and even Tongan, correct?

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I wish I had actually become a Peace Corps volunteer and gotten sent overseas,

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but I was part of the psychology staff at the University of Hawaii.

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I sat in with the trainees and studied Tongan because foreign

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languages was a passion for me. And so I loved doing it.

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And the funny thing was, I was the best [laughter],

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I was the best speaker [laughter] among all the volunteers. I mean,

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it was just nice. And I pale’d with the, um, uh, instructors.

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I became sort of like a teacher's pet, so to speak.

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So sometimes they came over to Honolulu because the training sites took place

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on the island of Molokai, which is a neighbor island.

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we'd go have a beer together and talk a little Tongan and a little English,

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are there any words or expressions that you remember that you find difficult

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Because it's something I like talking about with the guests on this show who are

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multilingual. Um, like for me, I speak Spanish and Flemish,

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and there just are some words that you can't directly translate.

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You have to provide a bunch of context for people to kind of get what it is.

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So I was wondering, are there any interesting Tongan expressions or words or?

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[Michael] Yeah. You know, I have to say, I'm, I'm a bit rusty.</v>

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[Nolan] Oh, yes. Sorry to put you on the spot. I realize it's a, a time ago. But.</v>

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[Michael] You know, things like, uh, you know, you've done things,</v>

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[inaudible] uh, it's just an expression pop up into my mind.

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And Tongan was fairly similar to Samoan

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and, uh, I could have chosen the Samoan program to work with, but,

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uh, for some reason I had chosen the Tongan. Uh, but like you,

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you were talking about my history a little bit. I studied, uh,

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a few other languages. For example,

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when the University of Psychology department, uh,

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a leftover fellowship that somebody had to quit

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and they said, would you like this fellowship? I said, sure, I'll take it.

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And that included the ability to study Chinese,

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uh, a whole summer language course of two,

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the equivalent of two years of Chinese. And I loved that. And,

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and I feel I did pretty well. And a funny anecdote,

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I was only auditing the course. So the instructor called me up and said,

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Michael, Michael, you did so well in the spoken part of Chinese,

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but you did take the final exam in written Chinese

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the written Chinese was just too hard to stuff into a whole

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summer with what, with learning to speak.

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I wanted to learn to speak more than I was concerned with reading it.

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thank you so much for calling me and warning me that you'd have to fail me in

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cuz I didn't take the written exam on written language of

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Chinese. And I said, I'm only auditing the courses.

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I'm not taking them for credit. And he went, he was so relieved,

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it was so nice of him to call me. But, uh, and I took, uh,

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Indonesian, I got a little grant to study the equivalent of two years of,

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of Indonesian, but if you don't use 'em, you lose 'em.

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So I got a little rusty, and every once in a while, I'll speak a little German,

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a little Spanish, a little French, uh, some Russian.

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I have three years of college Russian,

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but I don't often get to use them all the time.

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And this is what's so wonderful about being a Peace Corps volunteer,

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is the language training they give you.

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You get to go to the country if you're lucky,

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you don't have a bad case of culture shock.

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just at the point where you need the understanding of the nonverbal

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aspects and the interpersonal aspects of interacting with people,

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you're still not good enough in the language and you're not getting it.

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And your interactions, you get depressed. That's called culture shock.

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And when you finally overcome that and turn it all around,

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you become more fluid in the language. You're getting along with the people,

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You're understanding them and you're adjusting better and you're happier.

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All of us that go overseas, excuse me,

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get a little touch of it and, uh, you just have to bear with it and overcome it,

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and then you do just fine. That's just a little aspect of travel psychology.

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in travel psychology or in cultural psychology as well,

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they do talk about culture shock and, um,

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the adjustment period and how it can vary from person to person.

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Now what, what are some tricks you would give people to,

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um, shorten this culture shock period,

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or to adjust in ways that might make it a little bit easier?

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[Michael] Uh, fortunately, uh,</v>

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time and motivation and excitement are on your side

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because when you're traveling, uh, you just open yourself up more.

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If you are eager to delve into and immerse yourself into a

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it's lucky that the travel experience just suddenly cracks

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Suddenly you realize it's the most exciting and quickest way

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to learn. When you're an excited traveler,

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you have all this new stimuli coming in from every direction and

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deeply ingrained in your personal being in your mind is,

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today is the first day of the rest of my travel life.

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And here's what I think helps us all.

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And that is the notion that when you're eager and you're excited

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and you have all these new exciting experiences and you're open to it,

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uh, there's no better quicker way to learn.

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Cuz you're constantly getting reinforced by making good decisions.

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you make an effort to speak to somebody you don't fully

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understand and appreciate the, the menus and the foods.

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But if you just explore, which is why you're there to explore,

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you are there when you're traveling to be all that you can be,

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to personally have these new experiences and the excitement of the successes

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and the effect the successes have on you,

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far exceeds the little failures that we all have. Little failures,

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we overcome them. Fortunately, when we're traveling, they're not too,

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too serious. It's just more serious when you're spending a longer time.

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Now, I don't know your personal experience, so I'd like to ask you,

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but how long have you been in Spain?

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[Nolan] Um, I've been here two years. Well,</v>

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there was a year where I was going back and forth between Belgium and Spain. Uh,

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but I've been here for two years now.

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[Michael] Did you experience some of these periods of time when you felt, oh my gosh,</ v>

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I'm not understanding everything and [laughter]

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[Nolan] No. Uh, but that's because I'm a little bit of a, an anomaly.</v>

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I was pretty much born on a plane [laughter] I was born in, uh, um,

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chillis, south America and San Santiago.

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Then a year later I was an Antwerp, Belgium.

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And then a year after that I was in Canada and my parents took me a different

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[Michael] And look, if you look at the life you're leading, uh, I,</v>

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I imagine there's nothing more exciting, uh,

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than the life that you're experiencing and you're living all these things that a

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lot of us need to deal with more if we're not lucky enough to have

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been born in another culture where the language is coming fast and furious

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and you're learning it as a kid. There's nothing like that.

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00:13:52.310 --> 00:13:53.290 [Nolan] And yeah, well,</v>

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I I didn't speak Spanish beforehand because I was only in Chile as a baby.

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And then with my parents, I spoke Flemish, um, yeah,

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it was Flemish and then I grew up speaking English,

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so I did have to learn Spanish here in Spain. And I'm still learning. Um,

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yeah, uh, I'm enjoying it. I love language as well,

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but it's definitely more of a struggle than I thought. Um, but yeah, I,

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I'm definitely an advocate for people getting out there and experiencing new

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I'm proud and I feel fortunate for the fact that I was able to live in so many

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But there are definitely psychological phenomenon and problems as well.

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With being a third, third culture kid. I've definitely had identity issues,

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um, sometimes still do. Right. I'm constantly struggling to find out where my,

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where I might be rooted. And at this point, I don't feel really rooted anywhere.

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Um, but that also makes me feel, feel like a world citizen,

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00:14:54.970 --> 00:14:57.550 [Michael] That's, uh, that's great.</v>

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And that's what I love about travel is I'm on my way to developing

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myself somewhat as more of a world citizen.

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We need more people who have this world citizenship

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Then if many of us were more like this,

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I think we would have, uh, more peace in the world. But, you know,

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that's just a little bit of philosophizing.

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[Nolan] Yeah, no, I, I agree. I mentioned this on a another show,</v>

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and even though I do think there's a role for patriotism, uh,

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like I think sports would be boring as hell if it wasn't for patriotism.

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Uh, but that's not to be confused with nationalism, right?

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I think that's something that people have to avoid.

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And I think travel is one of the things that can, can, um,

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dismantle nationalism, uh, what, what do you think?

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[Michael] Oh, I totally agree with you. Uh,</v>

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that's where my learning and traveling is, has brought me,

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uh, that exact, uh, conclusion. Absolutely.

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[Nolan] Um, now here, just to start from the beginning, cause I,</v>

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I do want to get into your new books, but, um, I,

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I was curious about the paper your, uh, that was published in the prestigious,

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00:16:16.090 --> 00:16:18.320 uh, Psychological Bulletin, right?

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So intercultural communication and the adjustment of a Sojourner. Um,

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so I know you're right about the social patterns of behavior and personality

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traits you noticed when studying expats, immigrants. And, um,

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I'm curious to know a little bit more about these social patterns and

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personality traits that you noticed with people who are,

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are keen to kind of live a nomadic lifestyle.

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[Michael] There's nothing like being shocked in a pleasant way when you're traveling.</v>

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I just re recall one time when I was crossing a straight Morocco and here

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crossing oppositely coming into the direction, uh, where I was,

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whose whole face and body was covered except for her

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eyes. You know, it is sort of like fast forward,

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it's a, in an analogous way, uh, how many of us,

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00:17:14.780 --> 00:17:17.050 whether we were aware of it or not,

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we're facing other people during the covid epidemic.

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We might as well have just been looking at someone who just showed a pair of

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And all of a sudden when she and I passed one another,

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into a, a, a pleasant fit. Like, oh my God,

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I had no other way to read our interaction.

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And then our interpersonal behavior, other than she winked at me.

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I think that this was a very modern day woman in

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Morocco just covered up as it was around that period of time.

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And Morocco, it's less so today. And I started imagining, I mean,

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I never had any interaction with or beyond that, but I started to think,

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my gosh, you know,

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that's tabula rasa blank tablet when you're, uh,

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faced with another person and you do not have all the different ways

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or accused of understanding or even beginning to interact with

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I'm sure I smiled in my flabbergasted way,

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and I'm sure she was left with an opinion,

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probably laughed and probably thought, oh, the poor, poor guy. He just hadn't,

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he didn't have a clue really how to react to me. And, uh,

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so our worlds then separated. And that was a,

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a stunning moment in my life that got me to thinking how much we

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take for granted in our interactions with people, and how few,

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how few people really appreciated the fact that

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most of their interactions with people,

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let's say in their own cultures, were so automatic,

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so pre-programmed, so regulated,

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And then that had me starting to think more, well,

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isn't that a little bit more of what it's like when you're,

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find yourself totally into a new country,

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a new culture where you haven't interacted that much with the people.

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How much do we take for granted from what comes

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from living in a like America or Chile or

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00:19:48.560 --> 00:19:53.170 where suddenly we realized, well,

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there's much more to what's going on between people.

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And there's nothing like covid to let you see,

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suddenly to realize that, my goodness, I'm taking so much for granted. You know?

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And you're smiling under your mask and you realize suddenly, oh, oh,

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00:20:11.270 --> 00:20:12.510 they don't see me smiling,

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but they may see my eyes doing something a little bit.

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00:20:16.280 --> 00:20:20.870 So I began to focus on my,

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uh, doctoral dissertation for a second on the, uh,

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00:20:24.990 --> 00:20:27.860 human use of space, uh,

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and the specific little study that I did,

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because you can only do a teeny tiny fraction of anything when

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you're doing a, a thesis for your master's or your PhD. And I decided,

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would it be possible to measure human attitudes with a ruler?

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Uh, you know, I should have played that up more, uh,

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when I was writing my dissertation, but I would've been jumped on, jumped upon,

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uh, the faculty who were gonna, uh, challenge me with good,

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interesting questions to defend, circle, defend my dissertation.

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Uh, but that was fun for me. I really got into it. I.

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[Nolan] This is something you accomplish it. How, how can you.</v>

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[Michael] Oh, I did, I did it. I, it didn't take me that long. Uh,</v>

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I knew early on that the best way to do a doctoral thesis was to collect your

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data in the quickest amount of time that you could.

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So I had use of one section of the cafeteria at the

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University of Hawaii for inviting my subject, my guests, uh,

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the participants who volunteered probably for course credit as well,

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So I had 78 people arranging a little collection of

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symbols, maybe political figures, uh, uh,

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friend, acquaintance, stranger as a checkpoint.

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00:21:53.000 --> 00:21:54.680 Cause I predicted that friends,

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if I asked you to place myself on a little sticker on a field that I was gonna

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ask you questions to make up a story about the characters. And then I asked you,

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uh, okay, now place an acquaintance, now place a stranger.

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And I measured the distance between their placement of these stickers and the

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concept of myself. And I predicted, for example,

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that friends would be placed closer to the concept of me, myself,

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and I, than a stranger would. And that was a little check and balance. So yes,

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and I did little sets of different concepts.

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[Nolan] And did you notice any differences between people who were from, uh,</v>

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a collectivistic background versus an individualistic background?

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00:22:37.480 --> 00:22:39.830 Because of course, there are, uh,

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differences with how easy it is to penetrate an in, um, an inner circle, right?

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00:22:44.830 --> 00:22:47.550 An individualistic, uh, cultures.

359
00:22:47.550 --> 00:22:49.870 It's quite easy to —

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[Michael] That's a very good question. Very good question. And fortunately,</v>

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living in Hawaii where you had different people of different cultural

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backgrounds, you might get some of these differences.

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So I'd had Japanese Americans, Japanese Hawaiian Americans,

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Japanese American backgrounds in Hawaii as she would've Chinese, Korean,

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00:23:13.830 --> 00:23:18.440 Samoan. Uh, but I, I showed that, uh,

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the differences between peoples was fairly consistent

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the concepts that you liked or that you disliked, uh,

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were all always placed closer to okay,

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no matter what cultures you were from.

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So that was like a law of the universe that, uh,

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those that you have more positive regard and affect towards are going to be

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closer to you. So when I did that paper, getting back to that paper,

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intercultural communication and, uh, the adjustment of the soldier,

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that was really what were some of the factors that influenced,

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uh, your, uh, interactions with people of different cultures?

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One aspect of that was the whole concept of psychological distance,

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physical distance, conversation, distance,

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the amount of touching and physical bodily interactions that we have,

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how far apart we stand. And there I saw differences.

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00:24:22.940 --> 00:24:23.750 For example,

383
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I found that people of South American origins

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generally had closer interacting distances, uh,

385
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between themselves and others. And we interpret that differently.

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And in this study of collecting different studies together, I found,

387

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for example, in my own life experience,

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I went to Mexico as a high school student. Uh,

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we had a trip to Mexico and, uh, you know, friends take, uh,

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video and films and movies of one another in the culture. And I never,

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I'll never forget, I was standing on the steps of, uh,

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the big cathedral in Mexico City and the vendors,

393
00:25:06.610 --> 00:25:10.840
uh, that sell you items that travelers l like to get, you know,

394
00:25:11.410 --> 00:25:12.120 uh, I,

395
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I kept noticing he was moving into my space and I was always moving

396
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backwards. And that the film showed me moving away, moving in, moving away.

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And whether I was conscious of it at the time,

398
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I didn't really know the social science behind it,

399
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but I realized that Mexican people tended to talk a

400
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little bit closer to one another, uh, than, uh, non-Hispanic.

401
00:25:38.720 --> 00:25:41.700
And, and there were different kinds of predictions.

402
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I saw the same sort of thing operating a little bit with Scandinavians,

403
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having further, uh, conversational distances, uh,

404
00:25:51.460 --> 00:25:53.540 English people, the same thing.

405
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And I didn't really know it until I started learning all this research that

406
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they constantly are adjusting their spatial interactions as a cultural thing,

407
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because they need to be closer. That's how they were raised, born and raised.

408
00:26:08.320 --> 00:26:12.860
And sometimes it can be misinterpreted as cult, uh,

409
00:26:12.890 --> 00:26:17.100 colder, less, uh, personal. Uh,

410
00:26:17.100 --> 00:26:21.020
and these are subtle interactions that color or interactions.

411
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So the intercultural communication,

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the adjustment of soldier included not only distance,

413
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uh, interactions, but, uh, social, psychological,

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uh, interaction too. So it covers a lot of things. And by the way,

415
00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:43.130
anyone who wants to read this paper absolutely, for free, no charge,

416
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just go to my website and look up intercultural communication.

417
00:26:47.960 --> 00:26:51.240
You should find it. I have a little play on words.

418
00:26:51.240 --> 00:26:55.950
I call it travel psychology university. It's just,

419
00:26:56.020 --> 00:26:59.910

I have a few things that are more academic. Uh,

420
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but feel free to go there and take a peek.

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[Nolan] And I think the paper is 106 on your website, right?</v>

422
00:27:05.310 --> 00:27:08.830 Because I think you have 1, 102, 103.

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[Michael] There's different things. Yeah. I, I think it may be 106 </v>

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And just keep in mind, at the time you're a graduate student,

425
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if you're lucky enough to get an article, uh,

426
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published in a prestigious university, uh, I mean, uh, uh,

427
00:27:25.950 --> 00:27:30.100
what are they called? Uh, there's a term for juried,

428
00:27:30.330 --> 00:27:32.700 kind of juried, um,

429
00:27:33.450 --> 00:27:38.090
paper that's really an accomplishment for a graduate student..

430

00:27:38.090 --> 00:27:42.450
Can I get to an anecdote that some of people in the audience will appreciate

431
00:27:42.640 --> 00:27:43.770 more than others?

432
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But the first day I went to the University of Hawaii,

433
00:27:48.870 --> 00:27:49.690 the first day,

434
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they introduced the students one at a time to a big circle full of

435
00:27:55.230 --> 00:27:56.970 instructors. So you're,

436
00:27:57.300 --> 00:28:01.570
they're all sitting around you and you're the only student in it at that

437
00:28:01.570 --> 00:28:06.410
particular time, and they want to get to know you. So all eyes are upon you.

438
00:28:07.410 --> 00:28:11.710
And, uh, so two of the faculty members asked me a question,

439
00:28:12.380 --> 00:28:17.320
what are you here to study? Oh, okay. Valid question.

440
00:28:17.320 --> 00:28:21.240
It would introduce me to the group of faculty members. I said,

441
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I'm here to study the psychology of travel.

442
00:28:25.470 --> 00:28:29.450
I swear to you that's exactly what I said. Well, so happens.

443
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These two people that asked me this question were serious

444
00:28:34.320 --> 00:28:38.930
animal behaviorist psychologists. What does I mean by that?

445
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They studied animal behavior and controlled experiments,

446
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for example, most people think of that as rats running mazes.

447
00:28:49.020 --> 00:28:52.930
So these psychologists study the behavior of animals,

448
00:28:53.780 --> 00:28:58.330
uh, how that may compare to human behavior. Well, I wanna tell you,

449
00:28:58.720 --> 00:29:01.650
I was not an animal research psychologist.

450
00:29:01.920 --> 00:29:06.130
I never handled a rat in any of my psychology courses.

451
00:29:06.830 --> 00:29:11.290
And so I said, I'm here to study the psychology of travel. Well,

452
00:29:12.870 --> 00:29:16.260 one of them said to me,

453
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in front of all these faculty members, there's no such thing as that.

454
00:29:21.930 --> 00:29:25.380
You can't study the psychology of travel here.

455
00:29:26.730 --> 00:29:28.350
[Nolan] But I find that so strange. Like,</v>

456
00:29:28.350 --> 00:29:32.950
why wouldn't they have heard about Lev Vigotsky and Alexander,

457
00:29:33.880 --> 00:29:35.510 uh, Luria and

458
00:29:35.510 --> 00:29:39.150
[Michael] Of course, they were animal behavioral psychologists.</v>

459
00:29:39.150 --> 00:29:44.060
They were not interested so much in human behavior as animal

460
00:29:44.340 --> 00:29:48.850
behavior, as odd as I may sound. But wait, I said, number one,

461
00:29:48.850 --> 00:29:53.130
I may have stood up and I may have pointed right to them.

462
00:29:54.520 --> 00:29:59.290

I said, number one, who are you to define what this field is all about?

463
00:29:59.390 --> 00:30:04.090
Can you imagine doing that as a graduate student to these faculty members?

464
00:30:04.680 --> 00:30:07.650
I said, if that's your attitude, I don't think I want to be here.

465
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And I got up and I walked down to that room and I thought to myself, my God,

466
00:30:12.850 --> 00:30:16.190
how could you do such a stupid thing? But wait, I'm almost finished.

467
00:30:16.890 --> 00:30:21.550
Two other faculty members ran behind me, tapped me on the shoulder.

468
00:30:21.550 --> 00:30:23.350
And they said, you get back in there.

469
00:30:23.540 --> 00:30:27.710
Just because they said that doesn't mean the rest of us agree with them.

470
00:30:27.850 --> 00:30:31.860
And these are the more humanistic, uh, psychology professors.

471
00:30:31.860 --> 00:30:36.780
So that's really how I started the subject matter of the study of the

472
00:30:36.780 --> 00:30:37.940 psychology of travel.

473

00:30:38.510 --> 00:30:42.660
[Nolan] Oh, okay. And was, cause I, I know you mentioned in your,</v>

474
00:30:42.660 --> 00:30:47.220
the beginning of your book, you also mentioned Dr. Herbert b Weaver. Uh,

475
00:30:47.220 --> 00:30:49.820
was he a faculty member at that time as well?

476
00:30:50.420 --> 00:30:52.520 [Michael] Yes, he was. And he was,</v>

477
00:30:53.050 --> 00:30:56.400
he was involved with the visitor industry in Hawaii.

478
00:30:56.490 --> 00:30:58.920
He was one of those people that thought, okay,

479
00:30:59.150 --> 00:31:03.600
here's somebody that's interested in some of the things I'm doing, and wow,

480
00:31:03.870 --> 00:31:08.520
psychology of travel. This is a terrific thing. And he became my mentor,

481
00:31:09.910 --> 00:31:12.660
uh, during my psych psychology studies there.

482
00:31:13.740 --> 00:31:17.110
[Nolan] Okay. Because I'm, I'm curious about one thing, cuz obviously this is,</v>

483
00:31:17.110 --> 00:31:20.390
this is quite an old study and I'm not a hundred percent sure if it's,

484
00:31:20.390 --> 00:31:24.830
it's still applies today. And I'm wondering what you think, cuz he looked,

485
00:31:25.160 --> 00:31:26.870 um, uh,

486
00:31:26.870 --> 00:31:31.350
his findings were that Catholics and Mormons had significantly more

487
00:31:31.670 --> 00:31:35.830
negative attitudes towards abortion than either, uh,

488
00:31:35.830 --> 00:31:39.750
Protestants or those with no religious preference.

489
00:31:40.050 --> 00:31:41.590
[Michael] And that was Herbert Weaver.</v>

490
00:31:42.080 --> 00:31:46.690
[Nolan] Yeah. Yeah. Well, from what I could find, and I found it interesting because,</v>

491
00:31:47.500 --> 00:31:52.050
um, well America on average is more Protestant than, than Catholic.

492
00:31:52.710 --> 00:31:57.130
And I think the abortion laws, especially right now, are just fucked up.

493
00:31:57.260 --> 00:32:00.210
Usually I have a little bit more respect for, um,

494
00:32:00.730 --> 00:32:03.050
[laughter] when cultures have certain, uh,

495
00:32:03.050 --> 00:32:06.890
different views about abortion and things like that. But in the case,

496
00:32:06.900 --> 00:32:08.130 in the US I,

497
00:32:08.240 --> 00:32:12.730
I don't respect it as much because I feel like it's just gone backwards. Um,

498
00:32:12.730 --> 00:32:14.410
but anyways, the other reason I was,

499
00:32:14.440 --> 00:32:19.010
I founded an interesting finding is because something else I heard is that

500
00:32:19.010 --> 00:32:23.610
Protestants are on average more likely than Catholics to show the

501
00:32:23.610 --> 00:32:27.450
fundal fundamental attribution error. Uh, so that's the,

502
00:32:27.450 --> 00:32:32.410
the tendency to see behavior as reflecting individual dispositions rather

503
00:32:32.410 --> 00:32:36.490
than social context and roles. It's like, based on that,

504
00:32:36.800 --> 00:32:38.690 I would think that Catholics,

505
00:32:38.800 --> 00:32:41.960

since they might not have the fundamental attribution error,

506
00:32:42.030 --> 00:32:45.540
that they might be more open to understanding it.

507
00:32:45.540 --> 00:32:48.100
But it seems like that's not the case. Uh,

508
00:32:48.100 --> 00:32:50.860
I was wondering if you have any insight on this, because, uh,

509
00:32:50.860 --> 00:32:54.180
I knew that you had a personal connection with Dr. Herbert. So.

510
00:32:55.580 --> 00:32:57.530 [Michael] No, you know, I did not</v>

511
00:32:59.150 --> 00:33:04.110
interest myself or focus on that aspect of human behavior at

512
00:33:04.110 --> 00:33:07.910
all. I really didn't, I was not interested in that.

513
00:33:08.300 --> 00:33:12.600
I was more interested in basically, uh,

514
00:33:12.600 --> 00:33:16.360
what happens to an American in another culture. You know,

515
00:33:16.360 --> 00:33:20.040
you can't study everything. You can only, uh,

516

00:33:20.040 --> 00:33:23.000
limit yourself to the sorts of things that you were interested in.

517
00:33:23.230 --> 00:33:27.760
I was more interested in intercultural intercultural interactions.

518
00:33:27.760 --> 00:33:31.800
Hawaii was a place where you had people from all different kinds of cultural

519
00:33:31.800 --> 00:33:32.633 backgrounds.

520
00:33:32.910 --> 00:33:37.600
I know that religion has played some part in the history of, uh,

521
00:33:38.070 --> 00:33:41.810
development, social development in Hawaii. Uh,

522
00:33:41.920 --> 00:33:46.570
I was not often thrilled with, uh, what some of the,

523
00:33:47.180 --> 00:33:50.450
uh, white man's organized religions, uh,

524
00:33:50.870 --> 00:33:55.330
did in their influence, uh, throughout Pacific cultures, uh,

525
00:33:55.380 --> 00:33:58.570
as Europeans did to the Native Americans.

526
00:33:59.120 --> 00:34:03.650
I was not interested in those subjects as much as

527
00:34:03.950 --> 00:34:08.330
the psychological topics that pertain to people as a general rule,

528
00:34:08.940 --> 00:34:12.050
uh, across the board. So I didn't focus on any of that.

529
00:34:12.200 --> 00:34:17.170
I don't think I ever discussed with him those papers. And frankly,

530
00:34:17.170 --> 00:34:21.610
I wasn't even in aware of what you were just telling because, uh,

531
00:34:21.960 --> 00:34:24.010
I didn't necessarily delve into his,

532
00:34:24.600 --> 00:34:29.420
his own personal research when he did his graduate work also in Philadelphia.

533
00:34:29.970 --> 00:34:33.420
[Nolan] Well, that's fine. We, we can get into more of than, than what you were,</v>

534
00:34:33.420 --> 00:34:37.500
what you're Yeah. More, um, an, an expert on, so when it comes to inter

535
00:34:39.060 --> 00:34:41.380 cultural, um, interactions,

536
00:34:41.380 --> 00:34:45.140
it often makes me think of intercultural competence, right?

537
00:34:45.140 --> 00:34:49.340
Which is important for businesses and just people in general. Uh,

538
00:34:49.340 --> 00:34:52.580
so what are some of this interesting notes that you could give the listeners

539
00:34:52.580 --> 00:34:57.580
about intercultural competence? Um, now I know that's a very broad question,

540
00:34:57.580 --> 00:34:58.820 but just any interesting note,

541
00:34:58.820 --> 00:35:01.580
whether it be certain things that we should know when going to China,

542
00:35:01.580 --> 00:35:04.500
certain things we should know when going to Japan, certain things,

543
00:35:05.340 --> 00:35:06.260 whatever pops in your head.

544
00:35:06.290 --> 00:35:11.100
[Michael] Well, now recall, uh, a lot of my research, once I graduated,</v>

545
00:35:11.950 --> 00:35:15.420
uh, I finished with graduate school and for example,

546
00:35:15.420 --> 00:35:20.220
went to teach for the University of Maryland oversees

547
00:35:20.820 --> 00:35:25.100 European program, uh, being in, uh,

548
00:35:25.100 --> 00:35:28.900

Spain for total three different terms, Southern Spain.

549
00:35:30.150 --> 00:35:34.200 Uh, I began to interview people.

550
00:35:35.060 --> 00:35:40.010
I thought the way I was going to really learn about psychology of travel would

551
00:35:40.010 --> 00:35:43.690
be to ask people. So I began to interview people.

552
00:35:43.690 --> 00:35:46.210
I interviewed upwards to a couple thousand people,

553
00:35:46.670 --> 00:35:50.050
and I would ask them questions, uh, way back then,

554
00:35:50.050 --> 00:35:52.970
when I began in the sympathies, even till today,

555
00:35:52.970 --> 00:35:57.850
I tend to ask the same sorts of questions. Uh, they tell a story, for example,

556
00:35:58.620 --> 00:36:01.170 of how, uh, they were,

557
00:36:01.350 --> 00:36:05.330
and lots of people were vulnerable to being pickpocketed,

558
00:36:06.390 --> 00:36:10.540
uh, and why, and, uh, they were pickpocketed how they handled themselves,

559

00:36:11.140 --> 00:36:14.230
what they learned from the experience of being pickpocketed.

560
00:36:14.700 --> 00:36:16.880
And then I asked them, if you don't mind,

561
00:36:16.880 --> 00:36:19.440
would you go back and recreate the experience?

562
00:36:19.740 --> 00:36:23.320
How and what would you do differently now? So, uh,

563
00:36:23.470 --> 00:36:27.120
many of the interviews were based on hearing, uh,

564
00:36:27.360 --> 00:36:31.480
personal experiences through interviews, and then, uh,

565
00:36:31.870 --> 00:36:36.870
having them explain what happened to them and then asking them what what they've

566
00:36:36.870 --> 00:36:40.290
learned about that and what they would do.

567
00:36:41.780 --> 00:36:44.510
[Nolan] Okay. So I'm, I'm just wondering, what are some specific, uh,</v>

568
00:36:44.510 --> 00:36:48.470
pointers that you could give people? You know, like for instance, in Canada,

569
00:36:48.680 --> 00:36:51.470 in Japan, um, Slovakia,

570
00:36:51.470 --> 00:36:55.270
these are all places where you have to take off your shoes before you go inside.

571
00:36:55.840 --> 00:36:57.950
Uh, little pointers like that, or, you know,

572
00:36:57.950 --> 00:37:01.390
like thumbs up in some cultures means great jobs and other cultures,

573
00:37:01.390 --> 00:37:04.990
it can mean fuck you. Um, so it's any pointers like this.

574
00:37:05.480 --> 00:37:09.970
[Michael] Oh yeah, uh, hundreds of these things.</v>

575
00:37:10.260 --> 00:37:14.090
Uh, pulling up specific examples is not the easiest thing,

576
00:37:14.520 --> 00:37:18.340 but the arrival experience. Uh,

577
00:37:18.340 --> 00:37:21.780 just a simple activity of arriving,

578
00:37:22.330 --> 00:37:26.370
coming from home where you are running, uh,

579
00:37:26.370 --> 00:37:28.850 largely on automatic, uh,

580
00:37:29.040 --> 00:37:33.810
I like to think of culture as a mosaic of lots of little

581
00:37:33.810 --> 00:37:37.090
tiles, little pieces fitting together like puzzle pieces.

582
00:37:37.510 --> 00:37:41.290
And it's a fabric of interlocking influences.

583
00:37:41.490 --> 00:37:46.010
Everything that defines, now, let's just say, uh,

584
00:37:46.010 --> 00:37:48.970
being back at home in America, you're readily automatic.

585
00:37:48.970 --> 00:37:52.010
You don't think of what you're doing. You interact with people,

586
00:37:52.160 --> 00:37:55.210
you're not aware of the conversations distances.

587
00:37:55.210 --> 00:37:59.210
You're not aware of how much you will touch somebody else,

588
00:37:59.500 --> 00:38:04.290
or how much you'll look directly in their eyes. It's all automatic. Alright?

589
00:38:04.290 --> 00:38:09.050
What happens when you have an all night flight? This is just an example of,

590
00:38:09.050 --> 00:38:11.290 of the starkness of the contrast.

591
00:38:11.510 --> 00:38:15.370

You land in Schiphol in Amsterdam,

592
00:38:15.380 --> 00:38:18.170 or you land in, uh, Rome.

593
00:38:18.550 --> 00:38:22.930
And then you take the train from these airports to the downtowns.

594
00:38:23.070 --> 00:38:27.010
And what you don't realize is because you're still, you're tired.

595
00:38:27.360 --> 00:38:31.880 You're just not thinking about things

596
00:38:32.030 --> 00:38:36.960
that you should observe and take more for, uh, less for granted.

597
00:38:37.330 --> 00:38:41.520
So when you, uh, suddenly get onto that train,

598
00:38:41.520 --> 00:38:45.200
that may be crowded with people, if somebody bumps you,

599
00:38:45.860 --> 00:38:49.830
what do you think? You think, oh, uh, what you would normally think back home,

600
00:38:49.830 --> 00:38:54.600
oh, excuse me, sorry. And you move away and, uh,

601
00:38:54.880 --> 00:38:59.230
you find your wallets missing and you have no idea that you were

602

00:38:59.970 --> 00:39:03.300 targeted because of your,

603
00:39:04.490 --> 00:39:05.660 into their minds.

604
00:39:05.660 --> 00:39:09.820
Total lack of awareness of having arrived

605
00:39:10.620 --> 00:39:15.530
in a place that, uh, and behaving totally automatically like you behave at home.

606
00:39:16.040 --> 00:39:19.050
It's so simple for these people to distract you.

607
00:39:20.480 --> 00:39:22.230 It happens so often.

608
00:39:23.020 --> 00:39:27.950
I talked with a correspondent of a famous worldwide magazine in

609
00:39:27.950 --> 00:39:32.830
Rome who was pickpocketed it three times and mugged once. Uh,

610
00:39:32.830 --> 00:39:37.080
he wasn't aware of it. Now you're not aware of it. And that's.

611
00:39:37.080 --> 00:39:39.880
[Nolan] That's how does this tie into cultural competence?</v>

612
00:39:41.170 --> 00:39:45.370
[Michael] Cultural competence is suddenly becoming more alert,</v>

613
00:39:45.370 --> 00:39:49.170
more aware of your surroundings, and looking around, for example,

614
00:39:49.170 --> 00:39:53.890
looking and thinking, uh, how are these people interacting me with me?

615
00:39:54.060 --> 00:39:56.990 Am I protecting myself now?

616
00:39:56.990 --> 00:40:01.520
They don't even think of it until often when it's too late.

617
00:40:01.660 --> 00:40:04.960
And that's why they become victims because they don't expect it.

618
00:40:04.960 --> 00:40:09.320
They're not aware of it. They're not doing things, uh, to become more aware.

619
00:40:09.570 --> 00:40:10.560 In the very beginning,

620
00:40:10.560 --> 00:40:15.520
I just use that as an example of the stark contrast of arriving somewhere

621
00:40:15.520 --> 00:40:19.440
totally new when you're just behaving in your normal way,

622
00:40:19.550 --> 00:40:22.050 that you need to, for example,

623
00:40:22.160 --> 00:40:27.090
look at the hands of a clock in the 15 minute segments

624
00:40:27.120 --> 00:40:30.050
around the clock. Like to see secret service people.

625
00:40:30.890 --> 00:40:35.180
[Nolan] And I guess not being aware of these things can lead to some quite funny</v>

626
00:40:35.180 --> 00:40:39.180
stories, uh, which you have a lot of in Idiots Abroad.

627
00:40:40.030 --> 00:40:42.940
So for the listeners, um, who are interested in it,

628
00:40:42.940 --> 00:40:46.820
it's a collection of 85 comedic short stories. And, uh,

629
00:40:46.890 --> 00:40:51.380
from over 2000 interviews as there are stories like Dances with

630
00:40:51.450 --> 00:40:55.260
Tigers Fruit de la Mer uh, the Browns whore House,

631
00:40:55.260 --> 00:40:59.180
hotel [laughter] shit, eating pigs of Goa. Um,

632
00:40:59.180 --> 00:41:02.060
now of course you don't need to retell an entire story,

633
00:41:02.060 --> 00:41:06.140
but I was wondering if you could just give some highlights to entice the

634
00:41:06.140 --> 00:41:07.620

listeners to read the work.

635
00:41:07.620 --> 00:41:10.220
[Michael] Well, I'd like to tell about, uh,</v>

636
00:41:10.220 --> 00:41:14.860
my experience of being a complete idiot abroad, if you know I'm okay, uh,

637
00:41:14.860 --> 00:41:17.740
because, uh, it was a learning experience for me.

638
00:41:18.080 --> 00:41:22.180
I'm traveling with two friends to Europe in 1964.

639
00:41:22.390 --> 00:41:23.420 We rent a car.

640
00:41:23.970 --> 00:41:28.780
None of us have had any experience in Europe prior to that. Uh,

641
00:41:29.010 --> 00:41:32.620
I don't say we're unintelligent, we're intelligent, uh,

642
00:41:32.620 --> 00:41:35.050
people who want to interact and make friends and,

643
00:41:35.350 --> 00:41:37.770
and have as much fun and experience as we can.

644
00:41:38.140 --> 00:41:42.450
So the first thing is we're in a hotel along the French room along the French Rivera.

645

00:41:42.820 --> 00:41:46.330
We figure, oh, let's go have a picnic. Let's have a picnic lunch.

646
00:41:46.330 --> 00:41:50.530
We buy wine and cheese and bread like you cannot get anywhere else.

647
00:41:50.920 --> 00:41:55.290
Then in France, and take us all back to our hotel.

648
00:41:55.550 --> 00:41:58.490
And I see, oh, there's a, an appliance in here.

649
00:41:58.490 --> 00:42:01.970
The perfect place to chill our wine. We pack,

650
00:42:02.060 --> 00:42:05.490
we pack this round little thing, uh, with ice, that's,

651
00:42:05.490 --> 00:42:09.370
you turn the faucets on and it's sports water. What is this? All right.

652
00:42:09.370 --> 00:42:13.250
We pack our bottles of wine in ice. The girls, uh,

653
00:42:13.250 --> 00:42:16.650
at the time come in to clean the rooms. They see, uh,

654
00:42:16.650 --> 00:42:21.370
these bottles packed with ice in the bidet and didn't know what a bidet was.

655
00:42:21.600 --> 00:42:26.210
Well, a bday is for, uh, basically bathing, uh, your private parts.

656
00:42:26.540 --> 00:42:29.810
It has nothing to do with washing your feet or packing of ice.

657
00:42:29.810 --> 00:42:33.370
Every time we came back, back and forth to the South Hotel that grows,

658
00:42:33.370 --> 00:42:36.610
just fell on the floor laughing. You cannot do,

659
00:42:36.790 --> 00:42:39.730
you do not book the bottles of wine in there.

660
00:42:42.210 --> 00:42:46.650
That is not for chilling your wine. All right, well, that was a rude lesson.

661
00:42:46.650 --> 00:42:49.050 Learned. Maybe that same night.

662
00:42:49.150 --> 00:42:53.730
I'm not going to say if it was immediately that same night we go to a restaurant

663
00:42:53.950 --> 00:42:57.330
and we couldn't read the menus. We had no idea what was what.

664
00:42:57.860 --> 00:43:02.530
So I put on my dark glasses because I knew this was be really embarrassed—

665
00:43:02.530 --> 00:43:07.490
Embarrassing. And we move our fingers and we stop on a menu and we'd choose

666
00:43:07.690 --> 00:43:10.750 steak tartar. Steak tartar

667
00:43:11.100 --> 00:43:14.870
I don't know how many people in the listening audience know what that is,

668
00:43:14.870 --> 00:43:19.710
but they're more sophisticated today than we were in 1964.

669
00:43:20.470 --> 00:43:25.230
Okay, bring us steak, tartar. And um, here comes, uh,

670
00:43:25.410 --> 00:43:29.990
raw horse meat. That's what steak tartar is. And we didn't know that.

671
00:43:30.300 --> 00:43:31.710 Excuse me for one second.

672
00:43:32.260 --> 00:43:34.950
[Nolan] Well, it can be with beef too, but [laughter]</v>

673
00:43:35.970 --> 00:43:39.680
[Michael] Um, so anyway, it comes and we ask, what is this?</v>

674
00:43:40.480 --> 00:43:45.460
And they say, uh, steak tartar is raw horse meat

675
00:43:45.720 --> 00:43:50.060
And they mix in the mustard in the greens. And I thought it was delicious.

676
00:43:50.520 --> 00:43:51.860 The other two guys go,

677
00:43:52.460 --> 00:43:56.020

cream and fury and anguish and raise their hands up in the air.

678
00:43:56.150 --> 00:43:59.140
We will not eat this uncooked food.

679
00:43:59.710 --> 00:44:03.660
We do not eat food that is not cooked. Cuz it was raw horsey.

680
00:44:03.890 --> 00:44:06.780
I thought it was fantastic. I, again,

681
00:44:06.780 --> 00:44:10.820
I had my sunglasses on and I tried to distance myself from my two

682
00:44:11.020 --> 00:44:13.380 traveling friends as best I could.

684
00:44:13.730 --> 00:44:16.520
So I've been in idiot of abroad a few times,

685
00:44:16.520 --> 00:44:20.760
but I've also discovered things. I discovered, for example,

686
00:44:21.070 --> 00:44:24.600 a a uh, ripoff, uh,

687
00:44:25.310 --> 00:44:29.800
scam that, uh, was being played on American service people,

688
00:44:30.610 --> 00:44:33.390 uh, taking a bus to, uh,

689

00:44:33.520 --> 00:44:38.350
to the American military installation on the Black Sea cuz I taught there for

690
00:44:38.350 --> 00:44:42.630
the University of Maryland. And I figured, and I saw this, uh,

691
00:44:42.630 --> 00:44:46.350
scam being played out right in front of me. Uh,

692
00:44:46.350 --> 00:44:51.110
and with me being the victim and I didn't manage to figure it out and

693
00:44:51.370 --> 00:44:55.950
get personal satisfaction, I confronted them with this. What they did is they,

694
00:44:56.600 --> 00:45:00.610
uh, rushed me off of a bus from Istanbul,

695
00:45:01.380 --> 00:45:04.650 uh, to a bus station in this train,

696
00:45:04.650 --> 00:45:07.290
in this transportation system area.

697
00:45:08.080 --> 00:45:12.140
And they charged me for a ticket and they put the ticket in my hand.

698
00:45:12.140 --> 00:45:14.020 They put me on this bus.

699
00:45:14.490 --> 00:45:19.180
They just managed my whole experience of arriving in the bus and being

700
00:45:19.180 --> 00:45:22.950
put on a bus with a higher price tag of the,

701
00:45:22.950 --> 00:45:26.950
of what they charged for the fair. And then they took us off the bus.

702
00:45:26.950 --> 00:45:29.510
There was a couple people before the bus left,

703
00:45:29.700 --> 00:45:34.470
took the piece of paper out of our hands that had the higher price ticket

704
00:45:35.300 --> 00:45:40.120
and substituted the true price tickets of a different bus agency,

705
00:45:40.240 --> 00:45:44.070
which was a lot less and put us back on the bus.

706
00:45:44.240 --> 00:45:49.230
So I put two and two together, I figured it out. I ran out to the, uh,

707
00:45:49.410 --> 00:45:53.510
guy who perpetrated this thing on me. And I said,

708
00:45:53.700 --> 00:45:57.790
more or less finger pointing, cuz I did speak Turkish. I knew a few words.

709
00:45:58.220 --> 00:46:02.990
I said, you give me this much Turkish lear back,

710
00:46:03.040 --> 00:46:07.770
or I go to the police, which wasn't really a clever thing to do.

711
00:46:08.910 --> 00:46:12.960
It's risky. And he opened the door slowly and I thought, oh my God,

712
00:46:12.960 --> 00:46:17.720
maybe a gun is coming out, maybe a knife. But it was a 10,

713
00:46:17.720 --> 00:46:22.440
uh, you know, a Turkish money that he gave back to me after he had cheated me.

714
00:46:22.660 --> 00:46:25.720
And I realized it did this to many, many,

715
00:46:25.720 --> 00:46:29.320
many Americans who had no idea about it, didn't speak Turkish.

716
00:46:29.660 --> 00:46:33.320
And next took advantage. Now I met many, many Turks that I liked.

717
00:46:33.320 --> 00:46:37.840
I'm just using an example where I was scammed and I figured it out,

718
00:46:38.410 --> 00:46:40.640
uh, which is not always an easy thing to do.

719
00:46:41.250 --> 00:46:43.140
[Nolan] Yeah. And that's another one of your books, right?</v>

720
00:46:43.140 --> 00:46:45.020 You have the the Scams and.

721
00:46:45.620 --> 00:46:50.180

[Michael] Scams and Con Games. I have actually, uh, yeah, one book on that.</v>

722
00:46:51.050 --> 00:46:53.710
[Nolan] And then another book, uh, what I wanna mention as well,</v>

723
00:46:53.710 --> 00:46:56.510
because it's completely d well not completely different,

724
00:46:56.510 --> 00:46:58.510
but it's different is the Road to The Strange,

725
00:46:58.510 --> 00:47:03.270
because you're not only a travel psychologist, you're also a UFOlogist,

726
00:47:04.200 --> 00:47:08.110
um, right. And you've been the state director for the mutual UFO network.

727
00:47:09.270 --> 00:47:13.020
So, uh, when, when you describe the Road to Strange,

728
00:47:13.020 --> 00:47:17.380
you talk about paradigm shifters, both, both in travel,

729
00:47:17.910 --> 00:47:20.380
um, and supernatural experiences. So I'm,

730
00:47:20.380 --> 00:47:24.260
can you tell us a little bit more about what these paradigm shifters are?

731
00:47:24.330 --> 00:47:27.700
[Michael] Yeah, let's go right to the usual U F O network,</v>

732

00:47:28.270 --> 00:47:31.330 which was a, a group of, uh,

733
00:47:31.680 --> 00:47:36.650
people who thought there was something going on with the U F

734
00:47:36.650 --> 00:47:41.530
O experience from the early forties on this organization began

735
00:47:41.530 --> 00:47:44.930 around, uh, the early 1960s. Uh,

736
00:47:44.930 --> 00:47:47.730
there were a couple of engineers that started.

737
00:47:47.900 --> 00:47:52.860
So you had some scientists and engineers and people lay people who thought

738
00:47:52.860 --> 00:47:57.620
there was something to possibly to the U F O phenomena.

739
00:47:57.840 --> 00:48:02.140 And many of, uh, your viewers, uh,

740
00:48:02.140 --> 00:48:03.500 may notice these days.

741
00:48:03.500 --> 00:48:07.500
There's a sudden interest by the Pentagon and the Navy,

742
00:48:08.470 --> 00:48:09.020 uh,

743
00:48:09.020 --> 00:48:13.940
because of UFO types of experiences that have happened to carrier groups,

744
00:48:14.790 --> 00:48:18.820
uh, that pilots started talking, there's things happening. Well,

745
00:48:18.850 --> 00:48:23.700
that's a paradigm shift in a sense where now suddenly the Pentagon

746
00:48:23.920 --> 00:48:28.860
and military services are taking notice of a subject manner that was

747
00:48:28.900 --> 00:48:31.720 routinely ridiculed, uh,

748
00:48:31.720 --> 00:48:36.360
in the history leading up to the two, the early two thousands,

749
00:48:37.010 --> 00:48:37.370 uh,

750
00:48:37.370 --> 00:48:42.280
because there was an alleged crash of a craft that took place in

751
00:48:42.280 --> 00:48:47.000
Roswell the first day, right after that time, that crashed place,

752
00:48:47.300 --> 00:48:52.080
the general of the Army Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico said,

753
00:48:52.080 --> 00:48:54.600 Hey publicists in the local papers,

754
00:48:56.370 --> 00:48:59.780 UFO Alien Craft crashes in Roswell.

755
00:49:00.440 --> 00:49:05.340
And the next day, the Pentagon shut it down and they, uh,

756
00:49:05.610 --> 00:49:09.060
played it down. So a par uh, let me tell you about the paradigm shift.

757
00:49:09.770 --> 00:49:13.340
A paradigm is among other definitions,

758
00:49:13.340 --> 00:49:17.900
the way that you view the world, the, the way you as a goldfish,

759
00:49:18.710 --> 00:49:21.860
uh, view your world in the goldfish bowl around.

760
00:49:22.470 --> 00:49:27.370
If you are fortunate enough to get out of that goldfish bowl and notice that

761
00:49:27.370 --> 00:49:30.010
there are other things that are not built into your world view,

762
00:49:30.010 --> 00:49:31.490 the way you look at the world,

763
00:49:32.200 --> 00:49:36.880
such as in the old days when we thought the earth was the center, the, uh,

764
00:49:36.880 --> 00:49:41.400

of the, uh, the universe. Uh, but it turned out the, uh,

765
00:49:41.400 --> 00:49:46.040
earth was not the center of our, our particular solar system. The sun was,

766
00:49:46.100 --> 00:49:50.920
and we were not as central to the universe as we originally thought we were.

767
00:49:50.920 --> 00:49:52.320 That's a paradigm shift.

768
00:49:52.320 --> 00:49:57.290
That is a major shift in your philosophical way of looking at

769
00:49:57.290 --> 00:50:01.090
the world, looking at the universe in the UFO field,

770
00:50:01.680 --> 00:50:06.610
this guy that started MUFON, UFO network,

771
00:50:07.320 --> 00:50:09.250 said to all the researchers,

772
00:50:09.250 --> 00:50:12.890
of which there were in different states who collected and studied and

773
00:50:12.890 --> 00:50:16.970
interviewed people who claimed to have these experiences. He said,

774
00:50:16.970 --> 00:50:20.970 bring to me the cases that had, uh,

775

00:50:20.970 --> 00:50:25.610
nuts and bolts. We only want to know about craft. Okay?

776
00:50:25.610 --> 00:50:30.520
So as time went on the sixties, the, I'm sorry, the, uh, uh, yeah,

777
00:50:30.520 --> 00:50:33.280
sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, uh,

778
00:50:33.280 --> 00:50:35.760
all of a sudden people began to realize, you know,

779
00:50:35.990 --> 00:50:40.680
people are claiming to have some experiences maybe with entities of

780
00:50:40.680 --> 00:50:42.920 different kinds. Are these, uh,

781
00:50:43.500 --> 00:50:46.940
space aliens or are these different dimensions?

782
00:50:47.160 --> 00:50:51.940
Are these possibly beings intelligences from our future? Now,

783
00:50:51.940 --> 00:50:56.940
all of a sudden, people started talking about the universe being a matrix, uh,

784
00:50:57.750 --> 00:50:58.370 uh,

785
00:50:58.370 --> 00:51:03.020
sort of a computer consciousness is now central to the way the org

786
00:51:03.460 --> 00:51:07.700
universe is organized. Well, there were people in the UFO field,

787
00:51:07.700 --> 00:51:12.650
there was a Harvard professor of psychiatry, uh, who was claiming,

788
00:51:12.650 --> 00:51:12.890 you know,

789
00:51:12.890 --> 00:51:17.010
people are reporting experiences of possibly being taken a board craft.

790
00:51:17.010 --> 00:51:21.570
What's that like? What's that about? How can that be? And he, the profess,

791
00:51:22.450 --> 00:51:25.310
yes, he was a, a professor at Harvard of.

792
00:51:25.700 --> 00:51:26.710 [Nolan] What's his name? Who.</v>

793
00:51:26.710 --> 00:51:30.230
[Michael] Who? John Mack. M a c k, John Mack.</v>

794
00:51:30.460 --> 00:51:33.350
They tried to get throw John Mack out of Harvard.

795
00:51:34.300 --> 00:51:38.110
They sued him. He sued them back, and he won his case.

796
00:51:38.110 --> 00:51:40.750
They could not throw him out of Harvard. He was saying,

797
00:51:40.750 --> 00:51:44.950
these people are reporting things, uh, that ha are very similar to one another,

798
00:51:44.950 --> 00:51:48.510
and I don't think they're lying. And then others came along,

799
00:51:48.720 --> 00:51:53.230
an artist from New York City, Bud Hopkins, h o p k i n s,

800
00:51:53.330 --> 00:51:56.630
who published some books. I knew him personally. He, uh,

801
00:51:57.000 --> 00:52:01.790
he did at least 1500 interviews of people that also claimed they

802
00:52:01.790 --> 00:52:06.110
had experiences with intelligences that are behind some of this.

803
00:52:06.130 --> 00:52:10.950
And all of a sudden the people in the UFO field, including the guy that,

804
00:52:10.950 --> 00:52:13.190
uh, formed the MUFON organization,

805
00:52:13.370 --> 00:52:16.030
was now broadening his way of looking at things.

806
00:52:16.100 --> 00:52:19.070
This is not strictly a nuts and bolts thing.

807
00:52:19.400 --> 00:52:23.510

We have to look at the reports of what people are saying, uh,

808
00:52:23.510 --> 00:52:27.310
about their potential interactions, uh, with them. So to me,

809
00:52:27.310 --> 00:52:31.870
this was all a kind of expanded travel psychology in a way.

810
00:52:32.420 --> 00:52:36.510
I thought as a teenager, I thought there was something important about this.

811
00:52:36.980 --> 00:52:41.750
I became a psychologist interested in travel psychology, uh,

812
00:52:42.060 --> 00:52:46.690
that just paralleled in a, uh, co parallel way,

813
00:52:47.060 --> 00:52:51.770
my interest in ufology because I thought if

814
00:52:51.770 --> 00:52:53.970
there is a phenomena like that's happening,

815
00:52:53.970 --> 00:52:58.770
that may be about intelligences that come from elsewhere or else

816
00:52:58.770 --> 00:53:01.210
when, and I don't know where they come from,

817
00:53:01.690 --> 00:53:05.380
that's also related to my interest in, uh,

818

00:53:05.840 --> 00:53:10.200
experiences of people with different cultures and beings,

819
00:53:11.130 --> 00:53:13.800
uh, on the earth. You know, it's just a form of travel.

820
00:53:14.930 --> 00:53:17.940
[Nolan] I see the connection there for sure. Uh, now Michael,</v>

821
00:53:17.940 --> 00:53:19.900
we are coming up on an hour and, um,

822
00:53:19.990 --> 00:53:21.980
of course these episodes are always round an hour.

823
00:53:21.980 --> 00:53:25.960
So just to bring these two together with, um, uh,

824
00:53:25.960 --> 00:53:30.840
the ufoologist, uh, UFO aspect and, and also the travel.

825
00:53:31.820 --> 00:53:36.630
I think both kind of connect to this idea of a mystical experience.

826
00:53:36.630 --> 00:53:41.270
Sometimes travel can feel mystical sometimes. Um, well,

827
00:53:41.270 --> 00:53:46.190
whether people believe in, uh, extraterrestrial life or not, um,

828
00:53:46.660 --> 00:53:50.670
I think it does connect to a mystical experience in a way.

829
00:53:50.670 --> 00:53:53.140 And the, the mystical,

830
00:53:53.450 --> 00:53:57.940
I think is something that we're kind of losing touch with nowadays.

831
00:53:59.300 --> 00:53:59.900 Um,

832
00:53:59.900 --> 00:54:04.170
so I was wondering what you think about this and how you can kind of wrap this

833
00:54:04.490 --> 00:54:06.610
up together with this feeling of the mystic.

834
00:54:07.420 --> 00:54:10.750
[Michael] I want. I would like to say that, uh,</v>

835
00:54:11.120 --> 00:54:13.230
in my wrote a strange book series,

836
00:54:14.140 --> 00:54:17.430
I did two original books with that, with a,

837
00:54:17.430 --> 00:54:21.190
a woman that was very well known in this subject matter, became a friend.

838
00:54:21.190 --> 00:54:24.670
And she wanted to co-author with me a couple of books. And we lost her.

839
00:54:24.950 --> 00:54:28.510
She passed away a couple years ago. So I continued the Road to Strange.

840
00:54:28.850 --> 00:54:33.710
The next book was my collection of interviews with people who claim to

841
00:54:33.710 --> 00:54:38.600 have either or paranormal or UFO

842
00:54:38.600 --> 00:54:41.920 experiences. And I interviewed in depth,

843
00:54:41.920 --> 00:54:46.880
maybe 40, 42 of these people. And I include myself as one.

844
00:54:46.880 --> 00:54:49.040
I have not had UFO experiences,

845
00:54:49.040 --> 00:54:53.200
but I've had a lifetime of paranormal and psychic things happening to me.

846
00:54:53.550 --> 00:54:58.080
I interviewed these people in depth, in depth. I published a book called,

847
00:54:58.370 --> 00:55:00.080 uh, the Contiguous Universe.

848
00:55:00.260 --> 00:55:04.720
And that's a study of all these people from different walks of life and the

849
00:55:04.720 --> 00:55:08.280
sorts of different kinds of experiences and try to look at that,

850
00:55:08.280 --> 00:55:13.120

try to understand that. You can look at that one. The next one is I just called,

851
00:55:13.810 --> 00:55:15.640 uh, the, uh, the wrote to Strange,

852
00:55:16.470 --> 00:55:20.880
a psychic reader with a lady reading a glowing sphere,

853
00:55:21.140 --> 00:55:23.000 you know, on a table. Uh,

854
00:55:23.000 --> 00:55:27.680
and this was just my future collection of people's experiences of

855
00:55:27.680 --> 00:55:31.640
all different kinds of paranormal and ghost experiences,

856
00:55:32.020 --> 00:55:36.680
not the the alien type stuff, which was, uh, my book on UFOs,

857
00:55:36.730 --> 00:55:41.670
uh, uh, the Road to Strange UFOs, so on for it. Right?

858
00:55:41.700 --> 00:55:46.670
That sums it up. I was open-minded to this. I see these things are important.

859
00:55:47.280 --> 00:55:50.790 My contribution, uh, both in, uh,

860
00:55:50.790 --> 00:55:54.990
coming up with the term travel psychology and being a ufologists

861

00:55:55.090 --> 00:55:58.750
psychologist. I think I paved a little new ground, uh,

862
00:55:58.840 --> 00:56:03.750
by being willing to listen to what people have to say because there's two

863
00:56:03.750 --> 00:56:08.750
mantras if that I abide by if, but one of these is true.

864
00:56:09.340 --> 00:56:12.510
What then? And there's so many of these, I believe are true.

865
00:56:12.650 --> 00:56:16.190
You have to be open to expanding the paradigm.

866
00:56:16.690 --> 00:56:20.630
And the other one is, uh, I know what I saw.

867
00:56:20.860 --> 00:56:25.290
I know what I saw. I know what I, I fucking saw. You know,

868
00:56:25.290 --> 00:56:26.970 a lot of people, uh,

869
00:56:26.970 --> 00:56:30.050
you have to give them the opportunity to express themselves.

870
00:56:30.390 --> 00:56:34.570
Not everything is believable. Not everything is true. But some of it is.

871
00:56:35.150 --> 00:56:38.490
And until we accept and study and look into this,

872
00:56:39.320 --> 00:56:42.700
our paradigms are going to be right there and flat earth man.

873
00:56:42.880 --> 00:56:45.660
You wanna stay on the flat earth, be my guest.

874
00:56:46.090 --> 00:56:50.500
I prefer to explore just like a traveler into the unknown,

875
00:56:50.670 --> 00:56:54.460
whether it be just another country and I have a lot to learn,

876
00:56:54.670 --> 00:56:59.100
or whether it's another being from another part of the universe

877
00:56:59.750 --> 00:57:02.760
that would sum it up. I'm it. I study that.

878
00:57:03.660 --> 00:57:07.200
[Nolan] All right, Michael. Well thank you very much. And to the listeners, remember,</v>

879
00:57:07.200 --> 00:57:12.200
you can go to withoutborders.fyi to find a transcript and find

880
00:57:12.200 --> 00:57:16.040
some more interesting articles on cultural psychology and some more travel

881
00:57:16.040 --> 00:57:18.600
stories. You can also check out Michael's website.

882
00:57:18.600 --> 00:57:22.040
There will be a link in the description. Alright, tune in next time.

883
00:57:22.480 --> 00:57:24.480
[Michael] Thank you. Thanks for having me.</v>

683
00:44:13.840 --> 00:44:16.860
[Nolan] Yes. So the listeners know if you do get steak tartar in France,</v>

684
00:44:16.860 --> 00:44:18.940
it's usually not horse meat, it's beef.

685
00:44:19.040 --> 00:44:22.820
[Michael] But okay. So it's, has that changed a little more recently?</v>

686
00:44:23.930 --> 00:44:27.560
[Nolan] Uh, well it's just kind of always been the case with steak tartar, but it, it,</v>

687
00:44:27.560 --> 00:44:30.800
you can get it with, uh, horse meat as well, I assume. I, I,

688
00:44:31.190 --> 00:44:32.960
I wasn't aware of it until I read it,

689
00:44:32.960 --> 00:44:35.720
but I know that people eat horse meat here in Europe.

690
00:44:36.040 --> 00:44:39.800
[Michael] Probably in America. Uh, you can get it too. I've heard that. You can get it.</v>

691
00:44:39.890 --> 00:44:42.440
So I've been in idiot abroad a few times,

692
00:44:42.440 --> 00:44:46.600
but I've also discovered things. I discovered, for example,

693
00:44:46.870 --> 00:44:50.640 a a uh, ripoff, uh,

694
00:44:51.270 --> 00:44:55.800
scam that, uh, was being played on American service people,

695
00:44:56.690 --> 00:44:59.360 uh, taking a bus to, uh,

696
00:44:59.490 --> 00:45:02.360
to the American military installation on the Black Sea,

697
00:45:02.580 --> 00:45:06.680
cuz I taught there for the University of Maryland. And I figured,

698
00:45:06.680 --> 00:45:11.280
and I saw this, uh, scam being played out right in front of me.

699
00:45:12.050 --> 00:45:17.040
Uh, and with me being the victim and I didn't manage to figure it out and

700
00:45:17.300 --> 00:45:21.920
get personal satisfaction, I confronted them with this. What they did is they,

701
00:45:22.570 --> 00:45:27.540
uh, rushed me off of a bus from Istanbul, uh,

702
00:45:27.670 --> 00:45:30.460 to a bus station in this train,

703
00:45:30.660 --> 00:45:33.380
in this transportation system area.

704
00:45:34.250 --> 00:45:38.070
And they charged me for a ticket. They put the ticket in my hand,

705
00:45:38.070 --> 00:45:39.990 they put me on this bus.

706
00:45:40.460 --> 00:45:45.430
They just managed my whole experience of arriving in the bus and being put

707
00:45:45.720 --> 00:45:50.440
on a bus with a higher price tag of the, of what they charged for the fair.

708
00:45:50.820 --> 00:45:52.960 And then they took us off the bus.

709
00:45:52.960 --> 00:45:55.600
There was a couple of people before the bus left,

710
00:45:55.830 --> 00:46:00.400
took the piece of paper out of our hands that had the higher price ticket

711
00:46:01.230 --> 00:46:06.010

and substituted the true price tickets of a different bus agency,

712
00:46:06.170 --> 00:46:09.880
which was a lot less and put us back on the bus.

713
00:46:10.050 --> 00:46:12.680
So I put two and two together, I figured it out.

714
00:46:13.190 --> 00:46:15.440 I ran out to the, uh,

715
00:46:15.580 --> 00:46:19.480
guy who perpetrated this thing on me and I said,

716
00:46:19.670 --> 00:46:23.720
more or less finger pointing, cuz I didn't speak Turkish. I knew a few words.

717
00:46:24.190 --> 00:46:28.880
I said, you give me this much Turkish clear a back,

718
00:46:28.890 --> 00:46:33.860
or I go to the police, which wasn't really a clever thing to do.

719
00:46:34.720 --> 00:46:39.130
Yeah, it's risky. And he opened the door slowly and I thought, oh my God,

720
00:46:39.130 --> 00:46:44.010
maybe a gun is coming out, maybe a knife. But it was a 10 do, uh,

721
00:46:44.010 --> 00:46:48.330
you know, a Turkish money that he gave back to me after he had cheated me.

722

00:46:48.550 --> 00:46:51.490
And I realized it did this to many, many,

723
00:46:51.490 --> 00:46:55.370
many Americans who had no idea about it, didn't speak Turkish.

724
00:46:55.710 --> 00:46:59.490
And Nick took advantage. Now I met many, many Turks that I liked.

725
00:46:59.490 --> 00:47:03.770
I'm just using an example of where I was scammed and I figured it out,

726
00:47:04.340 --> 00:47:06.610
uh, which is not always an easy thing to do.

727
00:47:07.190 --> 00:47:09.920
[Nolan] Yeah, and that's another one of your books, right? You have a lot, the,</v>

728
00:47:09.920 --> 00:47:10.960 the Scams and.

729
00:47:10.960 --> 00:47:14.840
[Michael] One Plus Scams and Con Games. I have actually the, uh, yeah,</v>

730
00:47:14.980 --> 00:47:16.240 one book on that.

731
00:47:17.150 --> 00:47:19.930
[Nolan] And then another book, uh, what I wanna mention as well,</v>

732
00:47:19.930 --> 00:47:22.450
because it's completely d well not completely different,

733
00:47:22.450 --> 00:47:24.490
but it's different is The Road to The Strange,

734
00:47:24.490 --> 00:47:29.130
because you're not only a travel psychologist, you're also a U UF ologist,

735
00:47:30.130 --> 00:47:34.080
um, right. And you've been the state director for the mutual U F O network.

736
00:47:35.290 --> 00:47:39.120
So, uh, when, when you describe the Road to Strange,

737
00:47:39.120 --> 00:47:44.120
you talk about paradigm shifters, both, both in travel, um,

738
00:47:44.120 --> 00:47:46.160
and supernatural experiences. So I'm,

739
00:47:46.160 --> 00:47:50.240
can you tell us a little bit more about what these paradigm shifters are?

740
00:47:50.340 --> 00:47:53.680
[Michael] You know, let's go right to the usual U F O network,</v>

741
00:47:54.280 --> 00:47:57.280 which was a, a group of, uh,

742
00:47:57.630 --> 00:48:02.560
people who thought there was something going on with the U F

743
00:48:02.560 --> 00:48:07.320
O experience from the early forties on this organization began

744
00:48:07.320 --> 00:48:10.960 around, uh, the early 1960s. Uh,

745
00:48:10.960 --> 00:48:14.200
there were a couple of engineers that started it.

746
00:48:14.200 --> 00:48:19.090
So you had some scientists and engineers and people lay people who thought there

747
00:48:19.090 --> 00:48:23.520
was something to possibly to the U F O phenomena.

748
00:48:23.700 --> 00:48:27.920 And many of, uh, your viewers, uh,

749
00:48:27.920 --> 00:48:29.520 may notice these days.

750
00:48:29.520 --> 00:48:33.720
There's a sudden interest by the Pentagon and the Navy,

751
00:48:34.610 --> 00:48:34.960 uh,

752
00:48:34.960 --> 00:48:39.880
because of UFO types of experiences that have happened to carrier groups,

753
00:48:40.730 --> 00:48:44.720
uh, that pilots started talking. There's things happening. Well,

754
00:48:44.720 --> 00:48:49.480

that's a paradigm shift in a sense where now suddenly the Pen Pentagon

755
00:48:49.940 --> 00:48:54.800
and military services are taking notice of a subject matter that was

756
00:48:54.840 --> 00:48:57.700 routinely ridiculed, uh,

757
00:48:57.700 --> 00:49:02.300
in the history leading up to the two, the early two thousands.

758
00:49:02.950 --> 00:49:03.310 Uh,

759
00:49:03.310 --> 00:49:08.180
because there was an alleged crash of a craft that took place in

760
00:49:08.180 --> 00:49:13.140
Roswell the first day, right? At, at that time that crashed place,

761
00:49:13.480 --> 00:49:18.300
the general of the Army Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico said, Hey,

762
00:49:18.550 --> 00:49:20.540 publish this in the local papers.

763
00:49:22.350 --> 00:49:27.310
U f o alien Craft crashes in Roswell. And the next day,

764
00:49:27.310 --> 00:49:30.950
the Pentagon shut it down and they, uh,

765

00:49:31.620 --> 00:49:35.190
played it down. So a par uh, let me tell you about the paradigm shift.

766
00:49:35.900 --> 00:49:39.270
A paradigm is among other definitions,

767
00:49:39.270 --> 00:49:43.870
the way that you view the world, the, the way you as a goldfish,

768
00:49:44.680 --> 00:49:47.790
uh, view your world in the goldfish bowl around.

769
00:49:48.280 --> 00:49:52.780
If you are fortunate enough to get out of that goldfish bowl and notice

770
00:49:52.980 --> 00:49:56.180
that there are other things that are not built into your worldview,

771
00:49:56.180 --> 00:49:57.660 the way you look at the world,

772
00:49:58.130 --> 00:50:02.810
such as in the old days when we thought the earth was the center, the, uh,

773
00:50:02.810 --> 00:50:07.370
of the, uh, the universe. Uh, but it turned out the, uh,

774
00:50:07.370 --> 00:50:11.850
earth was not the center of our, our particular solar system. The sun was,

775
00:50:11.870 --> 00:50:16.330
and we were not as central to the universe as we originally thought

776
00:50:16.540 --> 00:50:18.450 we were. That's a paradigm shift.

777
00:50:18.480 --> 00:50:23.420
That is a major shift in your philosophical way of looking at the

778
00:50:23.420 --> 00:50:26.940
world, looking at the universe in the U f O field.

779
00:50:27.630 --> 00:50:31.000
This guy that started Muon Muon Mitchell,

780
00:50:31.000 --> 00:50:35.280
that U f O network said to all the researchers,

781
00:50:35.280 --> 00:50:39.000
of which there were in different states who collected and studied and

782
00:50:39.000 --> 00:50:42.800
interviewed people who claimed to have these experiences. He said,

783
00:50:42.800 --> 00:50:46.960 bring to me the cases that had, uh,

784
00:50:46.960 --> 00:50:51.560
nuts and bolts. We only want to know about craft. Okay?

785
00:50:51.570 --> 00:50:56.480
So as time went on the sixties, this, I'm sorry, the, uh, uh, yeah,

786
00:50:56.480 --> 00:50:59.240
sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, uh,

787
00:50:59.240 --> 00:51:01.680
all of a sudden people began to realize, you know,

788
00:51:01.870 --> 00:51:06.720
people are claiming to have some experiences maybe with entities of different

789
00:51:07.000 --> 00:51:10.740 kinds. Are these, uh, space aliens?

790
00:51:10.740 --> 00:51:12.900 Are these different dimensions?

791
00:51:13.120 --> 00:51:17.190
Are these possibly beings intelligences from our future?

792
00:51:17.490 --> 00:51:21.590
And all of a sudden people started talking about the universe being a matrix,

793
00:51:22.480 --> 00:51:23.910 uh, uh,

794
00:51:24.220 --> 00:51:29.030
sort of a computer consciousness is now central to the way the org

795
00:51:29.470 --> 00:51:33.670
universe is organized. Well, there were people in the U F O field,

796
00:51:33.670 --> 00:51:38.610
there was a Harvard professor of psychiatry, uh, who was claiming,

797
00:51:38.610 --> 00:51:42.890

you know, people are reporting experiences of possibly being taken aboard craft.

798
00:51:42.890 --> 00:51:45.730
What's that like? What's that about? How can that be?

799
00:51:46.110 --> 00:51:49.510
And he got the profess yes. He was a,

800
00:51:49.510 --> 00:51:53.870
a professor at Harvard of, what's his name? Who, who? John Mack.

801
00:51:54.430 --> 00:51:59.310
M a c k, John Mack. They tried to get throw John Mack out of Harvard.

802
00:52:00.260 --> 00:52:03.990
They sued him. He sued them back, and he won his case.

803
00:52:03.990 --> 00:52:06.550
They could not throw him out of Harvard. He was saying,

804
00:52:06.550 --> 00:52:11.070
these people are reporting things, uh, that ha are very similar to one another,

805
00:52:11.070 --> 00:52:14.470
and I don't think they're lying. And then others came along,

806
00:52:14.640 --> 00:52:19.190
an artist from New York City, bud Hopkins, h o p k i n s,

807
00:52:19.290 --> 00:52:22.550
who published some books. I knew him personally. He, uh,

808

00:52:22.920 --> 00:52:27.790
he did at least 1500 interviews of people that also claimed they had

809
00:52:27.790 --> 00:52:32.230
experiences with intelligences that are behind some of this.

810
00:52:32.330 --> 00:52:37.190
And all of a sudden the people in the U f O field, including the guy that, uh,

811
00:52:37.550 --> 00:52:41.990
formed the Muon organization, was now broadening his way of looking at things.

812
00:52:42.060 --> 00:52:44.990
This is not strictly a nuts and bolts thing.

813
00:52:45.280 --> 00:52:49.350
We have to look at the reports of what people are saying, uh,

814
00:52:49.350 --> 00:52:53.550
about their potential interactions, uh, with them. So to me,

815
00:52:53.550 --> 00:52:57.830
this was all a kind of expanded travel psychology in a way.

816
00:52:58.380 --> 00:53:02.470
I thought as a teenager, I thought there was something important about this.

817
00:53:02.940 --> 00:53:07.550
I became a psychologist interested in tra psychology, uh,

818
00:53:07.820 --> 00:53:12.810
that just paralleled in a, uh, co parallel way,

819
00:53:13.220 --> 00:53:18.130
my interest in ufology because I thought if there

820
00:53:18.130 --> 00:53:19.930
is a phenomena like that's happening,

821
00:53:19.930 --> 00:53:24.930
that may be about intelligences that come from elsewhere or else when,

822
00:53:25.080 --> 00:53:27.200
and I don't know where they come from,

823
00:53:27.660 --> 00:53:31.390
that's also related to my interest in, uh,

824
00:53:31.930 --> 00:53:36.050
experiences of people with different cultures and beings,

825
00:53:37.060 --> 00:53:40.370
uh, on the earth. You know, it's, it's a form of travel psychology.

826
00:53:40.780 --> 00:53:43.750
[Nolan] I see the connection there for sure. Uh, now Michael,</v>

827
00:53:43.750 --> 00:53:46.430
we are coming up on an hour and the, of course,

828
00:53:46.430 --> 00:53:47.950
these episodes are always around an hour.

829
00:53:47.950 --> 00:53:51.950
So just to bring these two together with the, uh,

830
00:53:51.950 --> 00:53:56.790
the ufologists, uh, UFO aspect and, and also the travel.

831
00:53:57.730 --> 00:54:02.460
I think both kind of connect to this idea of a mystical experience.

832
00:54:02.460 --> 00:54:07.380
Sometimes travel can feel mystical sometimes. Um, well,

833
00:54:07.380 --> 00:54:12.140
whether people believe in, uh, extra address to a life or not, um,

834
00:54:12.650 --> 00:54:16.620
I think it does connect to a mystical experience in a way.

835
00:54:16.620 --> 00:54:19.050 And the, the mystical,

836
00:54:19.360 --> 00:54:23.690
I think is something that we're kind of losing touch with nowadays.

837
00:54:25.010 --> 00:54:25.690 Um,

838
00:54:25.690 --> 00:54:30.400
so I was wondering what you think about this and how you can kind of wrap this

839
00:54:30.400 --> 00:54:32.560
up together with this feeling of the mystic.

840
00:54:33.370 --> 00:54:36.700

[Michael] I want. I would like to say that, uh,</v>

841
00:54:37.070 --> 00:54:39.180
in my wrote to Strange book series,

842
00:54:40.050 --> 00:54:43.260
I did two original books with that, with a,

843
00:54:43.260 --> 00:54:47.260
a woman that was very well known in this subject matter, became a friend.

844
00:54:47.260 --> 00:54:50.860
And she wanted to co-author with me a couple of books. And we lost her.

845
00:54:50.860 --> 00:54:54.460
She passed away a couple years ago. So I continued the roads Estr.

846
00:54:54.800 --> 00:54:59.660
The next book was my collection of interviews with people who claimed to

847
00:54:59.660 --> 00:55:04.590 have either or paranormal or u f O

848
00:55:04.590 --> 00:55:05.423 experiences.

849
00:55:05.610 --> 00:55:10.310
And I interviewed in depth maybe 40, 42 of these people.

850
00:55:10.570 --> 00:55:14.990
And I include myself as one. I have not had U f O experiences,

851

00:55:14.990 --> 00:55:19.150
but I've had a lifetime of paranormal psychic things happening to me.

852
00:55:19.500 --> 00:55:23.910
I interviewed these people in depth, in depth. I published a book called,

853
00:55:24.160 --> 00:55:25.910 uh, the Contiguous Universe.

854
00:55:26.010 --> 00:55:30.910
And that's a study of all these people from different walks of life and the

855
00:55:30.910 --> 00:55:34.630
sorts of different kinds of experiences and try to look at that and try to

856
00:55:34.630 --> 00:55:39.070
understand that. You can look at that one. The next one is, I just called,

857
00:55:39.760 --> 00:55:41.590 uh, the, uh, the Rote to strange,

858
00:55:42.340 --> 00:55:46.630
a psychic reader with a lady reading a glowing sphere,

859
00:55:46.930 --> 00:55:49.070 you know, on a table. Uh,

860
00:55:49.070 --> 00:55:53.990
and this was just my fuge collection of people's experiences of all

861
00:55:53.990 --> 00:55:57.590
different kinds of paranormal and ghost experiences,

862
00:55:58.010 --> 00:56:02.990
not the the alien type stuff, which was, uh, my book on UFOs, uh,

863
00:56:03.750 --> 00:56:07.460
uh, the Road to Strange UFOs, so on for it. Right?

864
00:56:07.460 --> 00:56:10.660
That sums it up. I was open-minded to this.

865
00:56:11.130 --> 00:56:15.620
I see these things are important. My contribution, uh,

866
00:56:15.620 --> 00:56:16.740 both in, uh,

867
00:56:16.740 --> 00:56:20.940
coming up with the term travel psychology and being a ufologists

868
00:56:21.000 --> 00:56:24.680
psychologist. I think I paved a little new ground, uh,

869
00:56:24.810 --> 00:56:29.640
by being willing to listen to what people have to say because there's

870
00:56:29.640 --> 00:56:34.640
two mantras if that I abide by if, but one of these is true.

871
00:56:35.270 --> 00:56:38.400
What then? And there's so many of these, I believe are true.

872
00:56:38.460 --> 00:56:42.160
You have to be open to expanding the paradigm.

873
00:56:42.660 --> 00:56:46.640
And the other one is, uh, I know what I saw.

874
00:56:46.870 --> 00:56:51.250
I know what I saw. I know what I fucking saw. You know,

875
00:56:51.250 --> 00:56:52.970 a lot of people, uh,

876
00:56:52.970 --> 00:56:55.970
you have to give them the opportunity to express themselves.

877
00:56:56.310 --> 00:57:00.290
Not everything is believable. Not everything is true. But some of it is.

878
00:57:00.910 --> 00:57:04.490
And until we accept and study and look into this,

879
00:57:05.380 --> 00:57:08.640
our paradigms are going to be right there on the flat earth. Man.

880
00:57:08.820 --> 00:57:11.600
You wanna stay on the flat earth, be my guest.

881
00:57:12.070 --> 00:57:16.440
I prefer to explore just like a traveler into the unknown,

882
00:57:16.610 --> 00:57:20.280
whether it be just another country and I have a lot to learn,

883
00:57:20.490 --> 00:57:25.160

or whether it's another being from another part of the universe

884
00:57:25.890 --> 00:57:28.740
that would sum it up. I'm it. I've studied that.

885
00:57:29.580 --> 00:57:33.120
[Nolan] All right, Michael. Well thank you very much. And to the listeners, remember,</v>

886
00:57:33.120 --> 00:57:38.120
you can go to Without borders.fyi to find the transcript and find

887
00:57:38.120 --> 00:57:41.840
some more interesting articles on cultural psychology and some more travel

888
00:57:41.840 --> 00:57:44.440
stories. You can also check out Michael's website.

889
00:57:44.640 --> 00:57:48.200
There will be a link in the description. Alright, tune in next time.

890
00:57:48.680 --> 00:57:50.440
[Michael] Thank you. Thanks for having me.</v>