00:00I've forgotten a lot of what we did, so no, I mean, I could recognize a certain kind of milieu,
00:09but it wasn't bringing me any flashbacks, no.
00:13Okay, okay, so you didn't ever say, I want to believe, even during shooting.
00:19I don't think I did. If I did, I'd ask for that to be cut out.
00:28Hi, very nice to meet you.
00:30Nice to meet you, too.
00:31This show is called Secrets Declassified, so who is better than you to present it?
00:37How did you come up on board with the project?
00:41Well, I guess the network and the producers thought, like you, who's better to present it than me?
00:48It came my way that way, which is kind of a flip side of X-Files conspiracy thinking, which was,
00:57is, oh, well, these are actually true documents.
01:00These are actually declassified government documents.
01:02And I think, you know, we live in a world where there is so much conspiracy thinking,
01:08it's nice to have a factual record.
01:09Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.
01:13Since we talk about Secrets Declassified, did you feel a bit like murder doing shooting or recording?
01:22Oh, no, because I'm not playing a character.
01:25I'm just hosting.
01:26I'm just hosting the show.
01:27So, I mean, some of the subject matter kind of, obviously, you know, we told, I don't know how many
01:34episodes of X-Files we did,
01:36you know, over 200.
01:37So, we're going to touch on, you know, certain conspiracies or certain, you know, governmental happenings over the years.
01:46But, to be honest, it's so long ago.
01:49I mean, I've forgotten a lot of what we did.
01:53So, no, I mean, I could recognize a certain kind of milieu, but it wasn't bringing me any flashbacks, no.
02:02Okay, okay.
02:03So, you didn't ever say, I want to believe, even during shooting.
02:09I don't think I did.
02:10If I did, I'd ask for that to be cut out.
02:12I'm not sure I did.
02:14Okay.
02:15What do you think people are so obsessed today with conspiracy theories and stories?
02:25Well, I think it's a function of the machines that we're using, you know, the phones and computers
02:31who, which kind of flatten everything into seeming like the truth.
02:40What used to be easily identifiable as bullshit is way harder,
02:47especially because algorithms will feed you stuff that you are inclined to believe.
02:52It's a pernicious kind of system that we're in where we're all becoming siloed off into different sets of facts.
03:00It's quite dangerous, obviously.
03:03We're living in a very, very strange and dangerous time, and I don't know how it ends, you know.
03:09Yeah, yeah, that's true.
03:11In fact, the show, Secrets Declassified, talks about a lot of themes throughout the two stories that you uncover.
03:20It talks about manipulation of information, too.
03:24That is a theme very, very prominent today.
03:29Yeah, for sure.
03:31I mean, obviously, manipulation of information is a human endeavor, right?
03:40That's what we do.
03:42We all have, we all leverage information.
03:45You know, we leverage secrets.
03:47We leverage gossip on a personal level.
03:50You know, that's what we do.
03:52Information is power.
03:53That's, we live in a world, obviously, our information is being spied on right now, somehow.
04:01You know, like, I'll speak a name, and the next day, I'll get an alert on my phone about that
04:08name.
04:08And I'm like, what the fuck?
04:10You know, it's like, so information is power.
04:14Information is money.
04:16So it makes perfect sense that governments are going to try to leverage information, and governments are very, very powerful
04:25collectors of information.
04:28You know, so that all makes sense to me.
04:32And it also makes sense that governments are not going to be completely transparent.
04:35You know, you, just as if you had some gossip, and you wanted to use that to your own advantage,
04:41you wouldn't tell everybody.
04:42You would tell the people that, you know, you would, you would, you would work your own little clandestine way.
04:48So, these, it's human nature to keep secrets.
04:52And when those secrets are kind of world-important, and when, when they're interesting, ridiculous, impactful, sure, 30, 40 years
05:07later, it's really fun and interesting to have the truth.
05:11Yeah, yeah, that's very true.
05:12About that, do you see yourself a bit as a conspiracy believer, or you are more driven to true stories,
05:20proved stories?
05:22Yeah, no, I believe in, I believe in facts, I believe in science.
05:28Okay.
05:29You know, I, I don't, I think obviously, well, you know, conspiracy to me sounds like a global thing.
05:41I don't believe in those things.
05:45Conspiracy to me is more like in the Marvel universe of those kind, or, or Mission Impossible, or, you know,
05:51or even the ice balls, you know, that's, it kind of, it makes for fun stories, because it's usually, there's
06:00one or two bad guys.
06:01You know, that's why it works dramatically, because if there's this global conspiracy that's harming, you know, millions of people
06:08are going to destroy the entire world.
06:10It's nice to have whatever the fuck that guy's name is, Thanos, you know, it's one guy, it's one guy.
06:14All you have to do is take out that one guy, when in fact, it's not a conspiracy, it's just
06:19human nature, which can be pretty dicey, and not evil, but, you know, selfish.
06:27And it's, it's, it's, it's many different types of people and governments coming together for their own selfish needs.
06:36It's not, oh, one bad guy, let's take him out.
06:39That's the conspiracy theory, thinking that I, that I'm not into.
06:45Yeah.
06:45Every episode of Secrets Declassified covers a team or a mission.
06:51What's your favorite episode, if you have one?
06:56I mean, I always come back to MKUltra, to me, I just love, that's the story, you know, the drug
07:02manipulation.
07:05You know, the idea of having grown up in a country where, you know, marijuana was illegal, alcohol was illegal
07:17at one point during Prohibition.
07:19You know, we have a government that, a history of being very kind of skeptical of drugs, and now to
07:27live in this world where, oh, well, now drugs are seen as, like, mind expanding from the 60s, and now
07:32again, you know, people are talking about ayahuasca, people are talking about plant medicine and all this stuff.
07:37Or even look at, like, The Last of Us, where you've got these mushrooms that are, you know, these mushrooms
07:41that are killing people.
07:42So, it's interesting to me, and to make sense, that the government would have wanted, you know, on the one
07:48hand, this forward-facing policy of just say no to drugs or whatever, and while trying to figure out, oh,
07:55how do we use this?
07:56How do we use this?
07:58How do we, how do we monetize it?
08:00How do we use it to control people?
08:02How do we use it to make better soldiers, better, better spies, whatever?
08:09You know, these are crazy, crazy thinking, you know.
08:11But fun and interesting when you realize what they were actually doing.
08:15Yeah, yeah, that's true.
08:17I'm thinking about TV shows other than The Last of Us to the second, to the Nine Perfect Strangers, where
08:24they do psychedelic trips to discover more about themselves.
08:31Or even White Lotus, you know.
08:34Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
08:37What's the mission that you discovered working on the docuseries that made you scream from the shock that you uncover
08:46throughout the series?
08:48I don't know if I, I don't know if I scream.
08:51I mean, my, I have a very, I'm very hard to shock.
08:57Was there one that, was there one that shocked you?
09:01Not one in particular, but so many for different details, different reasons, because you.
09:09What did you say?
09:10What was it?
09:12Especially the ones we, during the Cold War, because they, we discovered they did some things that seems impossible, more
09:24impossible than the mission impossible of Tom Cruise.
09:27So, maybe, maybe, yeah, yeah, very dangerous, yeah.
09:34When you realize how close, you know, how close we came, you know.
09:41And you see those agents doing that stuff that you've seen only on fictional stories that, in this case, are
09:50real stories.
09:52So, that, maybe, maybe that, for you too, this, this type of mission.
09:58Now that you mention it, now that you mention it, yes.
10:00I mean, I, I had, I had done a, I did a movie called Phantom with my friend Todd Robinson,
10:08which was about a nuclear era submarine that was found, sunk, you know, off the coast of America, a Soviet
10:17submarine.
10:18So, again, the question was always, what, why was it there?
10:22What was it doing there?
10:24You know, and, and you realize with some of the stories that we tell on this, on this show, we're
10:31just lucky that some mistake didn't happen.
10:34We're just lucky that somebody didn't try and go low or, you know.
10:41It's just nuts.
10:42I mean, when you think about, like, not that it's conspiracy, but it's like, even like air traffic control in
10:48America now, you know, it's like, it's a big issue.
10:50Because Trump is eviscerating the, the, the controllers, the, the union and everything, the workers.
10:57And you realize, yeah, it just takes one human mistake that could have these huge consequences.
11:07It's, it's, it's fun to know that that part's over, you know, with the Cold War, but it's also terrifying
11:13to know that it was happening at the time.
11:19Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's very true.
11:21In the show, reality overcome fiction, in a way, with all these stories.
11:27Do you think this still applies today, many years after that missions, that, that stories?
11:35No, no, I don't think reality overcomes fiction anymore, because I think, because I think of the way we communicate
11:43now, you know, and I think because of our phones and social media, I, I don't think we live in
11:47the same world.
11:48anymore, we don't live in a world of fact, or science, we live in a world of opinion, and conjecture,
11:58and storytelling.
12:02So I, I don't, I, as a storyteller, who has used certain factual events to inform my stories, that's what
12:14I do.
12:15But I don't try to tell you that the novel that I wrote is fact, or the show that I
12:22did is fact.
12:23I did a show called Aquarius, which was all about, like, the mass and mirrors, but it's not fact, it's
12:28storytelling.
12:30I fear, like, even 10 years, that it's been since we did that story.
12:36I don't think, um, I think that the, the notion of fact, and the notion of science has become so
12:44debased in the past five years.
12:46I don't know how we get back from it.
12:49I don't know.
12:50You present this show, but other than the X-Files, the other roles in your career, do you think maybe
12:58in a way they lead you to this project that is, uh, different from the, the, the ones that you
13:06did before?
13:08Hmm.
13:15I think, you know, not, not in terms of roles, no, not in terms of roles, but I think it
13:22kind of feels of a piece with, you know, I do a podcast now.
13:29So I, I, I'm, I'm talking, and on the podcast, which is called Fail Better, I'm talking about, it's really
13:36a philosophical podcast about what it is to fail, which is really what it is to be human.
13:41So I guess it's more of a philosophical, I feel like it's a philosophical show.
13:46It's like, okay, this is shit that happened.
13:49Now let's talk about it.
13:51You know, let's talk about what it means.
13:52Now, now that, now that we know that it's not this crazy conspiracy, let's actually talk about what it means
13:59to be human within these stories.
Commenti