Hi, I'm Willow Belden and you're listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories in the outdoors.

For many of us, science and religion seem to be mutually exclusive.

Like if you believe in evolution, you don't also believe in creationism.

But what if the lines are less clear than that?

On this episode, we have a story about an atheist psychologist and about something that happened to him on a beach in Mexico, which cast his whole understanding of the world into question.

And no, this is not a coming to Jesus story. Instead, it's a story about uncertainty, about the eerie

coincidences in life that can't really be explained through science. And finally, it's about what

happens when you lose your best friend.

From Mexico City, producer Maya Croft has the story.

My dad met his best friend David when they were in grad school. It was the 1960s and they were

both studying to become psychologists.

A walked into class and there he was. Little guy, five feet one, a bit overcompensating

for his size or a little bit of blustery. Very intelligent. I had a motorcycle. David had a motorcycle.

You remember that movie Easy Rider with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda? That's kind of how I picture them back then.

On a Friday, we'd get stone and then we would take LSD and be up all night long, sleep half the next day. I spent a lot of my time lying on his floor giggling.

We would go outside and look at the stars in his backyard.

And David would look up at the stars and we'd look for UFOs.

And then we'd go to class the next day and we spent the whole year that way.

After they got their PhDs, they both became psychology professors and had kids

and traded in their motorcycles for sedans.

By the time I was born, they'd quit doing acid and started smoking cigarettes,

but otherwise things were pretty much the same between them.

...