Dan sits down with cultural anthropologist, PhD candidate, and graduate instructor, Maya Cowan, who’s carving new ground by studying UAPs through the lens of human culture, language, and ethics.
From her family’s history with paranormal experiences to teaching one of the first university courses on UAP, Maya explores what it means to decode the unknown – whether it’s ancient DNA, the Peruvian mummies, or the star people of Indigenous traditions.
Together, they dive into the ethics of studying the unexplained, the power of stigma in academia, how politics impacts knowledge, and why our future may depend on cultivating empathy and collaboration across cultures.
Remember to be curious – the universe is bigger than we know!
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Chapters:
00:00:00 – Intro
00:00:53 – Maya’s background
00:01:55 – Would you volunteer to study Non-Human Intelligence? / Anthropology & the military
00:03:28 – Maya’s path to studying UAP
00:05:29 – Personal encounters with the unknown
00:06:18 – Coudld encounters run in the family?
00:08:20 – Why did you study anthropology?
00:11:14 – How much would it cost to study an ‘alien body’?
00:13:49 – Reasons for bravely stepping into the UAP field
00:14:47 – Improving academic study of UAP
00:16:40 – Peruvian Mummies / Scientists vs ‘UFOlogy’
00:19:50 – Repatriating ancient artefacts / Can the Nazca mummies legally be studied in the USA?
00:24:45 – Settler colonialism & first contact
00:27:00 – How politics influences knowledge creation
00:31:05 – Indigenous ideas about UAP
00:33:05 – Understanding indigenous myths & stories
00:35:39 – Learning from indigenous peoples
00:36:45 – Deciphering languages
00:37:54 – Approaching non-verbal languages
00:39:45 – Does language change our view of the world (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis / Arrival)
00:41:40 – Fingerprints of intelligence in different species (Zipf’s law)
00:43:58 – What does UAP mean for the future of humanity?
00:45:20 – US Government & UAP
00:46:05 – How to better unite humanity
00:46:44 – What does it mean to be human?
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