Inquiry with Kelly Chase

Recorded live on August 2nd, 2026 at the historic Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, this episode of Inquiry brings Kelly Chase together with SpectreVision co-founder and SpectreVision Radio director Daniel Noah for a deeply personal conversation about the emotional, spiritual, and psychological dimensions of anomalous experience. Both begin with their own unlikely paths from skepticism into direct experience, tracing the strange accumulation of events that forced them to reconsider what they thought was possible—and the equally strange sense of mission that emerged in the aftermath.

From there, the conversation turns toward fear, trauma, and the transformative nature of the anomalous. Kelly and Daniel explore why contact can be terrifying even when it isn't necessarily understood as threatening, the relationship between trauma and anomalous experience, and the ways shame and secrecy can isolate experiencers from the very communities that might help them make sense of what is happening. If disclosure means revealing something that was hidden, they ask what it costs to disclose not only classified information, but the most vulnerable and difficult-to-communicate parts of ourselves.

Finally, the conversation asks whether the prevailing cultural idea of "Disclosure" may be missing the heart of the phenomenon entirely. Craft, bodies, government testimony, and physical evidence may be part of the story, but for experiencers the deeper rupture is often interior: a confrontation with consciousness, the immaterial world, and the limits of what we can know. Kelly and Daniel explore the radical loneliness of learning to discern truth for yourself, the strange networks forming between experiencers, telepathy and individuality, creativity as a form of disclosure, and the possibility that transformation requires us to expose both our greatest gift and the wound from which it emerged.

Topics explored: UFO disclosure | anomalous experience | experiencers | Daniel Noah | SpectreVision Radio | Philosophical Research Society | direct experience | skepticism | contact experiences | downloads | sense of mission | experiencer networks | fear and the paranormal | trauma and the anomalous | adverse childhood experiences | shame | secrecy | abuse | courage | vulnerability | personal disclosure | spiritual transformation | consciousness | evidence and subjective experience | John Keel | Operation Trojan Horse | Whitley Strieber | Communion | Diana Pasulka | Encounters | cultural stigma | disclosure narratives | the immaterial world | radical loneliness | discernment | telepathy | individuality | creativity | the Fool | the shaman | humiliation | the hero's journey | death and rebirth | the gift and the wound | human transformation

Inquiry with Kelly Chase is brought to you by SpectreVision Radio.

Produced in partnership with Voltage.fm.

Referenced In This Episode

Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences — D.W. Pasulka

Communion: A True Story — Whitley Strieber

Operation Trojan Horse — John A. Keel

The Mothman Prophecies — John A. Keel

Support The Show

Patreon: inquirywithkellychase.com

Substack: inquirywithkellychase.substack.com

Connect with Kelly

Website: kellychase.media

X: @kellychasemedia

Instagram: @kellychasemedia

TIMESTAMPS

04:01 Why Disclosure Matters

07:01 Kelly Becomes Experiencer

11:33 Daniel Awakens to Paranormal

14:26 The 2021 Download

19:48 Coming Out Publicly

22:38 Recognizing the Anomalous

24:06 Fear and Contact Signs

29:34 Trauma as the Phenomenon

34:18 Shame And Secrecy

37:15 Courage To Speak

38:26 Mission And Return

42:19 Disclosure Is Devastating

44:33 Media Suppression History

49:11 Why Nobody Cares

52:10 Experience As Evidence

55:38 Loneliness And Discernment

59:11 Humiliation And The Fool

01:03:11 Hero Journey Closing

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Today I’m sharing an episode of my friend Robin Lassiter’s phenomenal podcast Earth: A Love Story. If you like what you hear, I hope that you’ll subscribe to Robin’s podcast.

Earth: A Love Story

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Get tickets for the August 2nd show in LA at the Philosophical Research Society

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Inquiry with Kelly Chase and Earth: A Love Story are brought to you by SpectreVision Radio

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This episode began as an investigation into Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays, propaganda, psychoanalysis, and the hidden machinery through which modern perception management came to be. But somewhere along the way, it became something much more personal.

In Starlight Sickness, Kelly traces the strange lineage between Freud’s abandonment of the seduction theory, Bernays’s engineering of consent, and the ways power moves harm out of view by relocating it into the minds of the harmed.

From the origins of modern public relations to the hall of mirrors inside ufology, this episode asks what happens when the tools we use to interpret reality also become the tools used to obscure it. How do we practice discernment without losing trust in our own perception? How do we make room for complexity without allowing complexity to become fog? And what does accountability look like when the story you were living inside begins to collapse?

In light of recent allegations against her former best friend and creative partner Jay Christopher King, Kelly turns the same questions back on herself, beginning the process of untangling what happened, what she believed, what she may have gotten wrong, and what this community is owed now.

This is an episode about gaslighting, trauma, consent engineering, ufology, and the terrifying difficulty of finding solid ground in a world built to manage perception.

Topics explored: Sigmund Freud | Edward Bernays | propaganda | psychoanalysis | gaslighting | consent engineering | perception management | public relations | the unconscious | repression | seduction theory | the Oedipus complex | Jeffrey Masson | Freud Archives | Emma Eckstein | Wilhelm Fliess | institutional betrayal | therapeutic language | expert authority | trauma | memory | interpretation | accountability | narrative control | invisible government | torches of freedom | United Fruit Company | Guatemala coup | ufology | experiencer communities | anomalous experience | sexual trauma | abduction narratives | vulnerability and power | Jay Christopher King | The Experiencer Group | spiritual abuse | trust and betrayal | epistemic instability | discernment | reality testing | | truth and coherence | symbols and meaning | systems of control | manufactured consent | moral injury | the hall of mirrors

Referenced in this Episode:


Addressing the Allegations Against My Former Creative Partner, Jay Christopher King


Starlight Sickness — Helico Tele


Propaganda — Edward Bernays (1928)


The Engineering of Consent — Edward Bernays (1947)


The Aetiology of Hysteria — Sigmund Freud (1896)


The Interpretation of Dreams — Sigmund Freud (1900)


Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality — Sigmund Freud (1905)


The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory — Jeffrey Masson (1984)


Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition — David Bakan (1958)


Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator — Ryan Holiday (2012)


I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell — Tucker Max (2006)

Support The Show

Patreon: inquirywithkellychase.comSubstack: inquirywithkellychase.substack.com

Connect with Kelly

Website: kellychase.mediaX: @kellychasemediaInstagram: @kellychasemedia

TIMESTAMPS

05:27 Propaganda and The True Ruling Power

09:20 Freudian Ick10:58 Jeffrey Masson, Heretic

13:18 Sigmund Freud and The Source of the Nile

17:49 Wilhelm Fliess, A Passionate Friendship

19:55 Emma Eckstein and The Stronger Sex

22:06 A Little Sleight of Hand24:21 The Oedipus Complex and The Nucleus of Neuroses

32:02 The Baby and the Bathwater

33:21 Trust the Experts

34:44 You Can’t Do Anything With This Information

37:54 The Torches of Freedom

40:31 The Coup

43:11 A Koan

48:15 The Abstract Becomes Horrifyingly Personal

52:21 Responding to Jay Christopher King’s Statement

01:01:03 Fall 2023

01:05:21 The Epistemic Black Boxes of Ufology

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What if the worldview functioning as an opiate today is not religion, but its absence?

In this field notes episode of Inquiry, Kelly Chase examines atheism not as a private belief or philosophical conclusion, but as a very recent mass cultural formation that now functions as the default worldview of educated Western society. Beginning with Marx’s famous claim that religion is the opiate of the masses, she asks whether modern secular materialism may now be serving a similar sedating function by making vast areas of human experience feel intellectually off-limits.

From there, the episode turns toward elite metaphysics. The public is often told that materialism is the rational, mature, evidence-based position, yet many of the people and institutions shaping the future take seriously spirituality, consciousness, simulation theory, mysticism, ritual, and esoteric frameworks. The question is not whether any single belief system is true, but whether citizens trained to dismiss the symbolic and metaphysical have been given a map that cannot represent the terrain power is actually navigating.

Finally, the episode considers the empirical and philosophical pressure points inside strict materialism: the hard problem of consciousness, near-death experience research, the PEAR Lab at Princeton, Dean Radin’s work at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and anomalous findings that are usually met not with rigorous refutation but with studied disregard. These findings are not treated as proof of any particular metaphysics. They are treated as evidence that the question remains open, and that a genuine skeptic should apply suspicion not only to extraordinary claims, but to the dominant worldview that decides in advance which claims are allowed to count.

Topics explored: Marx and religion | opiate of the masses | atheism as ideology | secularization | materialism | consciousness | the hard problem | non-material reality | elite belief | WEF and spirituality | Silicon Valley mysticism | simulation theory | René Girard | Peter Thiel | Elon Musk | Bohemian Grove | ritual and power | Skull and Bones | esotericism | operative metaphysics | near-death experiences | PEAR Lab | Dean Radin | anomalous cognition | mind-matter interaction | dogma and skepticism | worldview enforcement | social sanction | epistemic humility | the metaphysics of power

Inquiry with Kelly Chase is brought to you by SpectreVision Radio.Produced in partnership with Voltage.fm. 

Referenced In This Episode


A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right — Karl Marx (1843/44)


The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000 — Callum G. Brown (2001)


Religion’s Sudden Decline: What’s Causing It, and What Comes Next? — Ronald F. Inglehart (2021)


The Role of Faith in Systemic Global Challenges — World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Role of Faith (2016)


Faith, the Internet and Improving the State of the World — World Economic Forum (2016)


Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness — David J. Chalmers (1995)


Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands — Pim van Lommel et al. (2001)


Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World — Robert G. Jahn & Brenda J. Dunne (1987)


Experiments Testing Models of Mind-Matter Interaction — Dean Radin (2006)


The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena — Dean Radin (1997)


Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World — René Girard (1978)


I See Satan Fall Like Lightning — René Girard (1999)

Support The Show

Patreon: inquirywithkellychase.com

Substack: inquirywithkellychase.substack.com

Connect with Kelly

Website: kellychase.media

X: @kellychasemedia

Instagram: @kellychasemedia

TIMESTAMPS

00:27 Braving Belief Talk

01:26 Atheism as Opiate

02:22 How New Secularism Is

04:21 Elites Aren't Secular

07:03 Materialism's Blind Spots

08:35 Anomalies and Dogma

10:01 Social Enforcement of Belief11:53 A Better Skepticism

12:37 Waking Up to Metaphysics
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Why do anomalous experiences so often arrive in the wake of trauma? And what happens when the people who understand that connection decide to use it as a weapon?

This episode of Inquiry follows trauma as the hidden throughline connecting UFOs, consciousness, psychological operations, and the engineering of belief at scale. Kelly Chase starts with how human perception actually works, drawing on Donald Hoffman's "The Case Against Reality," James Madden's umwelt and über-umwelt from "Unidentified Flying Hyperobject," and Jeffrey Kripal's Filter Thesis, then grounds it all in the predictive processing model of the brain and Karl Friston's free energy principle. The picture that emerges is unsettling: trauma doesn't only wound a person, it makes them porous, loosening the filters that hold consensus reality in place.

From there the conversation turns toward how that vulnerability has been exploited. It traces belief manipulation from the 1980 "From PSYOP to MindWar" paper by Michael Aquino and Paul Vallely, through MKULTRA and Operation Mockingbird, to the declassified reality of Operation Northwoods and the manufacturing of consent. It brings in Jacques Vallée's control system hypothesis and Colm Kelleher's concept of bidirectional mimicry to ask whether human institutions and the phenomenon itself may be using the same lever: disruption, destabilization, and the reshaping of belief in the rupture's aftermath.

Then it turns the dread on its head. Research on openness to experience and Post-Traumatic Growth suggests the architects of mass stress made a critical miscalculation. Trauma creates openings, and openings go both ways. You can crack the shell of consensus reality to make people malleable, but you cannot control what hatches.

Topics explored: Trauma and anomalous experience | experiencer patterns | the Filter Thesis | Donald Hoffman | perception as interface | umwelt and über-umwelt | James Madden | Jeffrey Kripal | predictive processing | Karl Friston | free energy principle | belief malleability | shattered assumptions | meaning violation | belief engineering | MindWar | Michael Aquino | Paul Vallely | psychological operations | MKULTRA | Operation Mockingbird | cognitive sovereignty | bidirectional mimicry | Colm Kelleher | black triangle craft | Jacques Vallée | control system hypothesis | Operation Northwoods | manufactured consent | openness to experience | Post-Traumatic Growth | consciousness-level immune response | non-human intelligence | contact experiences

Inquiry with Kelly Chase is brought to you by SpectreVision Radio.Produced in partnership with Voltage.fm. 

Referenced In This Episode


The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes — Donald Hoffman (2019)


Unidentified Flying Hyperobject: UFOs, Philosophy, and the End of the World — James Madden (2023)


How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else — Jeffrey J. Kripal (2024)


The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge — Jeffrey J. Kripal (2019)


"The Free-Energy Principle: A Unified Brain Theory?" — Karl Friston (2010)


"Trauma or Drama: A Predictive Processing Perspective on the Continuum of Stress" — Valery Krupnik (2020)


"Predictive Processing and the Varieties of Psychological Trauma" — Sam Wilkinson, Guy Dodgson & Kevin Meares (2017)


"Assumptive Worlds and the Stress of Traumatic Events" — Ronnie Janoff-Bulman (1989)


Shattered Assumptions: Towards a New Psychology of Trauma — Ronnie Janoff-Bulman (1992)


"PTSD as Meaning Violation: Testing a Cognitive Worldview Perspective" — Crystal L. Park, Mary Alice Mills & Donald Edmondson (2012)


"Making Sense of the Meaning Literature: An Integrative Review of Meaning Making and Its Effects on Adjustment to Stressful Life Events" — Crystal L. Park (2010)


From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory — Paul E. Vallely & Michael Aquino (1980)


MindWar: The New Battle for the Mind — Michael Aquino (2016)


Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification — U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (1977)


MKULTRA Collection — CIA Reading Room


Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book II (Church Committee Report) — U.S. Senate (1976)


Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (Operation Northwoods) — Joint Chiefs of Staff (1962)


"The Anxious State: Stress, Polarization, and Elections in America" — The Conversation (2025)


"Politics Is Taking a Toll on People's Well-Being" — Psychology Today (2025)


"Stressful Life Events and Openness to Experience: Relevance to Depression" — Chiappelli et al. (2021)


"The Social Psychology of Responses to Trauma: Social Identity Pathways Associated with Divergent Traumatic Responses" — Orla Muldoon et al. (2019)


"Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence" — Richard Tedeschi & Lawrence Calhoun (2004)


"The Post-Traumatic Growth Approach to Psychological Trauma" — Richard Tedeschi (2023)


"Confidence in U.S. Institutions Down; Average at New Low" — Gallup (2022)


2025 Edelman Trust Barometer — Edelman (2025)

Support The Show


Patreon: inquirywithkellychase.com


Substack: inquirywithkellychase.substack.com

Connect with Kelly


Website: kellychase.media


X: @kellychasemedia


Instagram: @kellychasemedia

TIMESTAMPS

04:12 Trauma and The Anomalous

07:01 Perception Is an Interface 11:05 Umwelt and Uber Umwelt

14:05 Kripal and Filter Thesis

18:27 Predictive Brain and Trauma

23:11 Belief Becomes Malleable

28:08 MindWar Doctrine

32:36 MKUltra and Mockingbird

36:58 Mimicry and Control System

42:17 False Flags and Consent

46:09 Algorithms as Trauma Engine

49:23 Openness and Growth

55:59 Consciousness Immune Response

57:18 Closing and Next Steps

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