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Inquiry with Kelly Chase

Inquiry with Kelly Chase

By: Kelly Chase
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Inquiry with Kelly Chase is an investigative podcast about how we know what we know—and what happens when official reality stops making sense. Drawing on the history of psychological operations, ufology, psi phenomena, consciousness research, and anomalous experience, Kelly Chase investigates the places where reality misbehaves—because those are the places where it most often tells the truth. Presented by SpectreVision Radio This is also where you can find the archive for Kelly's previous shows—Cosmosis and The UFO Rabbit Hole. Kelly Chase is a writer, researcher, executive producer, and public speaker whose work focuses on anomalous phenomena, consciousness, and narrative. She is the writer and executive producer of Cosmosis: UFOs & A New Reality, the host of Inquiry with Kelly Chase, and the former host of The UFO Rabbit Hole, and has been featured in UFO Revolution (TMZ) and Beyond (Bad Robot). Her work centers fidelity to firsthand testimony, ethical storytelling, and intellectual rigor over spectacle. Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • [Field Notes] Atheism Is the Opiate of the Masses: Probing The Blind Spots of Secular Certainty

    [Field Notes] Atheism Is the Opiate of the Masses: Probing The Blind Spots of Secular Certainty
    Jun 12 2026
    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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    17 mins
  • The Weaponized Wound: Trauma, Belief Engineering & the Fatal Flaw in the Control Mechanism

    The Weaponized Wound: Trauma, Belief Engineering & the Fatal Flaw in the Control Mechanism
    Jun 3 2026
    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 ...
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Addressing the Allegations Against My Former Creative Partner, Jay Christopher King

    Addressing the Allegations Against My Former Creative Partner, Jay Christopher King
    Apr 30 2026
    I recently received an email from an individual who said they wanted to share a concerning series of online interactions they had with my former creative partner, Jay Christopher King. This person shared that they are an experiencer who started a correspondence with Jay on Instagram after seeing him on Cosmosis. They allege that, in the course of this conversation where they also shared vulnerable details of their history, Jay crossed sexual boundaries and sent an explicit photo. Screenshots were shared with me in support of these claims. They said they were reaching out because they were concerned by the brazenness of this behavior, particularly given that Jay is a public figure. And given his role working with vulnerable people in The Experiencer Group, they were concerned that others might be at risk. I initially didn’t believe it. Jay is someone I have worked with very closely over the last three years. He’s been my business partner and my closest friend. We have spoken extensively about his work as the director of The Experience Group, and had many conversations—often initiated by him—about how vulnerable people can be when processing anomalous experiences, and how important it is to maintain clear boundaries and ethical standards. It is only because we’d had these conversations at length that I was ever comfortable recommending that people join The Experiencer Group. I did not think it was possible that the person I knew could have done something like this. But as someone who has been the victim of sexual assault that went unpunished, and as a woman in this community who has publicly endorsed Jay as someone safe, this was not something I could ignore. From the moment I first allowed for the possibility that this might be true to the time I was on the phone with a woman sharing another deeply distressing account involving Jay was just a few hours. I have since heard from multiple women who have described concerning behavior. These stories are not mine to tell. But I want to be clear about the nature of what has been reported to me: I have heard from multiple individuals who have described concerning experiences, including allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior involving Jay. Some of these accounts come from individuals who describe having approached him while seeking support for their anomalous experiences. I cannot independently verify these accounts, but given their seriousness, I felt it was important to take immediate action. I am taking the necessary steps to permanently sever all ties with Jay The Cosmosis podcast, “Inquire Anomalous Presents” content, and any content featuring Jay has been permanently removed from all public feeds Production of Season 2 of Cosmosis has been permanently suspended At the time of this posting, I’m still not sure what’s going on with season 1 of the docuseries, but I will not be promoting it moving forward. I am devastated and mortified to have to come to the community that has inspired, held, uplifted, supported, and, at times, truly saved me, and tell you this. This is my greatest nightmare, and I’m sitting with the heartbreak and complexity of having given my endorsement to Jay over these past few years. For that, I want to apologize to the entire community, and to the experiencer community, in particular. I want to thank the person who reached out to me with the initial allegations. Your bravery and intuition broke a spell and helped a lot of people—including me. And thank you to the other brave women who have shared your stories with me in the interest of helping others. You all have my eternal gratitude. I am here for you, and you have my full support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    4 mins
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