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I'm Amanda Knox, and you're listening to Hard Knocks.

Music. Amanda Knox, and you're listening to Hard Knocks.

In this week's episode of Old School, I revisit my conversation with Dr. Michael Shermer,

the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine.

Our conversation covers a wide range of topics about the nature of belief in skepticism with a primary focus on UFOs and aliens. We talk about why people want to believe in things like aliens, and we discuss Michael Shermer's book, Conspiracy, Why the Rational Believe the Irrational. Enjoy.

All right, it's so great to get back in the booth with you.

Last time it was me for your podcast, this time, you for me.

And I feel really lucky because I feel like I don't get to talk to people about

UFOs that much. Yeah, that's probably not in your wheelhouse, but we can talk about whatever

you want. I mean, abductions are kind of in my wheelhouse a little bit. Oh, well, that's right. Yeah,

yeah. Well, actually, a lot of it, particularly the alien abduction

phenomenon, is pure psychology. It's sleep paralysis, most likely, and it's, you know, experiences

that people have when they're asleep. You know, they're not actually going anywhere outside of their

mind. And it's an interesting phenomenon. Some non-trivial percentage of the

population has sleep paralysis where they wake up in the middle of the night. Their bodies are

somewhat paralyzed or they feel paralyzed. They can't move, but they wake up. It's like a waking

dream or a lucid dream. And then there's a weird sense, presence component to it in which it feels like there's this, you know, kind of dangerous, threatening being or agent of some kind of monstrous kind of figure.

In the room, you can't quite make out a face.

It's often described.

So the culture kind of tells you how to fill in

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