Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Evolutionary biologist, complexity thinker and UAP experiencer Michael Garfield joins Tim Adalin for a dialogue on UFOs, entity encounters, and the strange territory where consciousness studies, evolutionary biology, complex systems, the ontologically shocking, information theory and the imaginal meet.
Can we engage the alien and the strange without becoming impotent, in a way that actually matters for how we live, belong, and make sense together?
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Stay in touch with Voicecraft by subscribing on Substack here: timadalin.substack.com
Connect with Michael at on Substack @ michaelgarfield.substack.com
And locate the rest of his work here @ https://linktr.ee/michaelgarfield
And find his YouTube channel here @michaelgarfield
Access the shownotes & learn more about Voicecraft podcasts, events, courses and membership network @ voicecraft.io/content/e146-uap-and-disclosure-for-experiencers-and-skeptics-michael-garfield-in-dialogue-with-tim-adalin
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Chapters
0:00 Intro
2:26 Meeting the strange where you are: evolutionary biology & the UFO
4:52 Telos, self-organisation & ontological shock
8:23 Integral philosophy & the Buddhist tetralemma
22:11 Has it become sayable? Psychedelics, channeling & attentional capitalism
26:47 Three frames: psyop, projection & the external other
38:23 The economy in ontological shock & noise in machine learning
40:52 Noise, precognition & retrocausal information
43:15 Metabolic ontology & the ecodelic
45:42 A psychedelic the whole civilisation is taking at once
49:54 Decoding animal communication & the interiority of plants
52:00 The self as the strangest alien
53:16 Kant, the noumenon & the limits of perception
55:42 Is there a "there" to break through to?
1:00:27 Dreaming, the imaginal & communication across time
1:04:40 A hermeneutics of imagination (William Irwin Thompson)
1:08:41 Danny Sheehan & a new faculty of perception
1:12:25 Flatland & higher-dimensional reality
1:24:42 Jacques Vallée's last word on disclosure
1:38:01 The stakes: The Big Others
1:44:03 "You can't do anything with it": impotence & relevance
1:57:30 Becoming planetary & emotion-projection weapons
1:59:59 Paranoid vs metanoid
2:07:16 Games, value capture & why consensus reality isn't enough
2:11:18 Closing Stories: Contact experiences
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Michael Garfield is a writer, artist, and award-winning futurist committed to fostering vital conversations on human-technology evolution and emerging planetary culture.
Trained in evolutionary biology and reconstructive postmodern philosophy, his career has carved a singular path through paleontological fieldwork with "dinosaur heretic" Robert Bakker, complex systems science communication at The Santa Fe Institute, innovation research at Mozilla, community management at The Long Now Foundation, and twelve years of performing and speaking on the international festival circuit. The founder and host of the Future Fossils, Humans On The Loop, and (formerly) Complexity podcasts, he has also produced over a hundred hours of original music, illustrated more than four hundred scientific papers, and written for dozens of publications including Aeon Magazine, Big Think, H+ Magazine, and Reality Sandwich. He is also a faculty member at Weirdosphere and the Communications Director for The AI Capabilities & Alignment Consensus Project.
Additional resources mentioned by Michael in this episode:
Hear more of Michael's experiences on the @dannyjones podcast @ youtu.be/H0kzIsmZpqs
realitystudies.co/p/michael-garfield-ai-deepfakes-rewilding-reality
michaelgarfield.substack.com/t/the-phenomenon
Miguel Fuentes on epistemic randomness
mdpi.com/1099-4300/16/8/4489
Some related writing from Michael: michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/noisy
---
Listen to the full intro song by Cantrips titled 'The Big Break' @ youtu.be/Qaj-stBL4W0
Evolutionary biologist, complexity thinker and UAP experiencer Michael Garfield joins Tim Adalin for a dialogue on UFOs, entity encounters, and the strange territory where consciousness studies, evolutionary biology, complex systems, the ontologically shocking, information theory and the imaginal meet.
Can we engage the alien and the strange without becoming impotent, in a way that actually matters for how we live, belong, and make sense together?
---
Stay in touch with Voicecraft by subscribing on Substack here: timadalin.substack.com
Connect with Michael at on Substack @ michaelgarfield.substack.com
And locate the rest of his work here @ https://linktr.ee/michaelgarfield
And find his YouTube channel here @michaelgarfield
Access the shownotes & learn more about Voicecraft podcasts, events, courses and membership network @ voicecraft.io/content/e146-uap-and-disclosure-for-experiencers-and-skeptics-michael-garfield-in-dialogue-with-tim-adalin
---
Chapters
0:00 Intro
2:26 Meeting the strange where you are: evolutionary biology & the UFO
4:52 Telos, self-organisation & ontological shock
8:23 Integral philosophy & the Buddhist tetralemma
22:11 Has it become sayable? Psychedelics, channeling & attentional capitalism
26:47 Three frames: psyop, projection & the external other
38:23 The economy in ontological shock & noise in machine learning
40:52 Noise, precognition & retrocausal information
43:15 Metabolic ontology & the ecodelic
45:42 A psychedelic the whole civilisation is taking at once
49:54 Decoding animal communication & the interiority of plants
52:00 The self as the strangest alien
53:16 Kant, the noumenon & the limits of perception
55:42 Is there a "there" to break through to?
1:00:27 Dreaming, the imaginal & communication across time
1:04:40 A hermeneutics of imagination (William Irwin Thompson)
1:08:41 Danny Sheehan & a new faculty of perception
1:12:25 Flatland & higher-dimensional reality
1:24:42 Jacques Vallée's last word on disclosure
1:38:01 The stakes: The Big Others
1:44:03 "You can't do anything with it": impotence & relevance
1:57:30 Becoming planetary & emotion-projection weapons
1:59:59 Paranoid vs metanoid
2:07:16 Games, value capture & why consensus reality isn't enough
2:11:18 Closing Stories: Contact experiences
---
Michael Garfield is a writer, artist, and award-winning futurist committed to fostering vital conversations on human-technology evolution and emerging planetary culture.
Trained in evolutionary biology and reconstructive postmodern philosophy, his career has carved a singular path through paleontological fieldwork with "dinosaur heretic" Robert Bakker, complex systems science communication at The Santa Fe Institute, innovation research at Mozilla, community management at The Long Now Foundation, and twelve years of performing and speaking on the international festival circuit. The founder and host of the Future Fossils, Humans On The Loop, and (formerly) Complexity podcasts, he has also produced over a hundred hours of original music, illustrated more than four hundred scientific papers, and written for dozens of publications including Aeon Magazine, Big Think, H+ Magazine, and Reality Sandwich. He is also a faculty member at Weirdosphere and the Communications Director for The AI Capabilities & Alignment Consensus Project.
Additional resources mentioned by Michael in this episode:
Hear more of Michael's experiences on the @dannyjones podcast @ youtu.be/H0kzIsmZpqs
realitystudies.co/p/michael-garfield-ai-deepfakes-rewilding-reality
michaelgarfield.substack.com/t/the-phenomenon
Miguel Fuentes on epistemic randomness
mdpi.com/1099-4300/16/8/4489
Some related writing from Michael: michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/noisy
---
Listen to the full intro song by Cantrips titled 'The Big Break' @ youtu.be/Qaj-stBL4W0
