In Part 1 and Part 2 of this interview series with Werner Herzog, we covered a lot of ground. There was his new film, “Ghost Elephants,” the 2005 documentary, “Grizzly Man,” fear, God, close calls with death, mountaineer Reinhold Messner, and more. Here, in this third and final part, Herzog touches on his acting, writing and poetry and how it rates to film directing, his interest in meteorites, his thoughts on UFO's, and what's next for him. Following are edited excerpts from a longer Zoom conversation. Jim Clash: You are a renaissance man of sorts, acting, writing books and poetry, dabbling in opera - all in addition to your filmmaking. Werner Herzog: I've followed a vision from early on. Actually I started out there, and all of the books I've written so far in my opinion have a more direct connection with audiences than do my films. In fact, I believe the books will outlive my films. In many of my predictions, I've been wrong [laughs]. Clash: Keeping with your tradition of offbeat film topics, did you ever think of doing a straight documentary about UFO's in addition to your alien fiction movie, "The Wild Blue Yonder”? Herzog: It's good for sci-fi movies and for all of the new-age crazies and collective paranoia. Let's make wonderful movies about it [laughs]. Of course, we have not encountered aliens on our planet yet. Clash: One of your more recent films, “Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds,” deals with the subject of meteorites. I'm curious - do you collect them yourself? Herzog: No, I do not collect them. But while I was doing the film, I got two little meteorites as a present from people out in the field. Herzog: I started another film two weeks ago in Mexico, and have already shot a few days there.

This French event, often called their version of the Oscars, honored him with a lifetime achievement award for his work in comedy and beyond. Carrey has been semi-retired since around 2018, focusing on painting, writing, and personal life away from Hollywood's glare. His appearance marked a big moment, but it quickly turned into a debate about whether the man on stage was really him. Social media exploded with theories, memes, and heated discussions. Fans pointed to his changed look and demeanor as proof that something was amiss. Yet, major outlets like Variety and People confirmed it was indeed Carrey, based on official photos and reports from the event. The buzz shows how much people still care about this star, even after his break. The César Awards drew a star-studded crowd, but Carrey's presence stood out because he rarely does events these days. Organizers praised his career, highlighting roles in Dumb and Dumber, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Sonic the Hedgehog. Attendees included his daughter, Jane Erin Carrey, and her son, Jackson, adding a family touch to the night. This nod to fans reminded everyone of his playful side, but it also fueled speculation when clips hit the internet. French media outlets covered it extensively, noting his connection to the country through ancestors from Saint-Malo who moved to Canada generations ago. Carrey's team had hinted at the appearance beforehand, but the live moment caught many off guard, leading to instant shares on platforms like X and TikTok. On X, posts like "That's not Jim Carrey, who is this impostor?" Some claimed his eye color looked off in low-light clips, while others speculated about plastic surgery or fillers. Conspiracy theories took off, with people suggesting a body double or even a clone, tying it to Carrey's past comments on reality in interviews and films like The Truman Show. One popular thread analyzed his speech patterns, arguing the French accent hid a "fake" voice. Memes flooded feeds, showing side-by-side shots with captions like "Jim Carrey 1.0 vs. Supporters of the theories referenced Carrey's reclusive years, implying Hollywood replaced him.. Getty Images provided high-res photos from the event, and journalists on site interviewed attendees who confirmed his identity. Outlets like Deadline reported no doubts from organizers or peers. Carrey's appearance changes make sense given his age and lifestyle. Speculation about cosmetic work remains unconfirmed, but it's common among stars. His calmer demeanor aligns with public statements about seeking peace after burnout. Family members present, like Jane, further verify the moment. Online experts debunked clone claims as baseless, noting how lighting and angles distort perceptions in viral clips. Carrey hasn't addressed the rumors directly, but his history of ignoring tabloid noise suggests he might find it amusing.

The death of Jean Perera Sinnappa is one of Malaysia's most haunting cold cases, and more than four decades later, it remains officially unsolved. Jean Perera, a widow with three children, was found dead in 1979, with some reports stating she had been stabbed 10 times. A man, Karthigesu Sivapakiam, her brother-in-law and lover, was with her that night but was found unconscious beside their white Fiat 125. They were discovered by two Malaysia Airlines aircraft engineers driving home after completing their shift at Subang International Airport, as they passed a secluded underpass about 5km away. He later told police they were heading home after hanging out and had stopped by the roadside for him to relieve himself when he was suddenly attacked by a group of men. A police search of their home uncovered a bundle of love letters allegedly exchanged between Jean Perera and a Sri Lankan doctor, Narada Warnasurya. This led investigators to suspect she may have been killed after her affair was exposed. About 20 days later, Karthigesu was arrested and charged with murder on May 9, 1979. Although he denied knowledge of the affair, an eyewitness, Bandhulanda Jayathilake, a relative of Jean Perera and friend of Karthigesu, testified that Karthigesu had allegedly told him, "…that b***h did not deserve to live." They also argued it would have been impossible for him to kill Jean Perera and clean himself at a nearby pond within the 17 minutes before the body was discovered. On August 1, 1980, the court found Karthigesu guilty of murder and sentenced him to death. Bandhulanda confessed that he had lied under oath and falsely implicated Karthigesu, claiming he had been pressured by several people, including Jean Perera's grieving family — an allegation the family later denied. On May 31, 1981, the Federal Court allowed Karthigesu's appeal and granted a full acquittal, citing insufficient evidence linking him to the murder. Bandhulanda, meanwhile, became the first person in Malaysia convicted of perjury and was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. He died after serving only two years. Additionally, he is to be referred to the Immigration Department for deportation upon the completion of his prison te... He said his family "hardly goes out nowadays" after the attack.

Podcaster Nate Cornacchia has said that Israel was behind John F. Kennedy's assassination and the global war on terror Weeks before Graham Platner promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theorist in a now-deleted social media post on Thursday, the controversial Maine Senate candidate appeared on a popular YouTube show whose host has spread specious claims about Jews and Israel. Platner faced blowback this week for boosting a social media comment about a looming war with Iran by Stew Peters, a neo-Nazi influencer who has frequently espoused antisemitic tropes and engaged in Holocaust denial. Platner's team said the post was made in error and “immediately” removed it after learning it elevated a “despicable account.” In late January, however, Platner sat for a lengthy online interview with Nate Cornacchia, a retired Green Beret who has also promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories. Near the end of their hour-long conversation, Platner, a fellow military veteran, called himself “a longtime fan” of Cornacchia's YouTube channel, “Valhalla VFT,” and said it was “an absolute pleasure being” on the show. Cornacchia, whose show claims nearly 500,000 YouTube subscribers, has in recent months helped stoke a burgeoning far-right conspiracy theory alleging that Israel was involved in the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Two days before speaking with Platner, for instance, Cornacchia went on a podcast hosted by Jake Shields, a former mixed martial arts fighter who is now a prominent Holocaust denier, and pointed to what he described as “huge links” connecting Israel to Kirk's killing. “Charlie Kirk said that he was tired of being bullied by his Jewish donors” and that he “no longer could support the pro-Israel cause, and he was dead 48 hours later,” Cornacchia added on the show, where he also agreed with Shields' assertion that President John F. Kennedy had “probably” been assassinated in a covert “venture between the CIA and Mossad,” the Israeli intelligence agency. In addition, Cornacchia has suggested that the global war on terror was conducted “on behest of Israel” and claimed Israel would benefit if another 9/11-style attack were carried out during the tenure of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, saying it would help to drum up Islamophobic sentiment and lead to another foreign military entanglement in the Middle East. The conservative YouTube commentator has also questioned why George Soros' son Alex was seen posing for a photograph with Mamdani on the night of his election. “You may immediately be thinking, ‘Oh, well, of course, that's because Soros funds all the socialists,'” Cornacchia said of George, a Jewish billionaire donor to left-wing causes and a Holocaust survivor who is often a target of antisemitic attacks. His team did not respond to a request for comment on Friday about Cornacchia's antisemitic remarks. The 41-year-old Senate candidate, who is running in a competitive Democratic primary to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), faced skepticism from critics last fall after he denied knowing a tattoo that was on his chest for years closely mirrored a Totenkopf, the skull-and-crossbones icon adopted by an infamous Nazi SS unit. Still, even as he maintains a commanding polling advantage in the Maine Democratic primary against Gov. Janet Mills, Platner's explanation of the tattoo — combined with past and recent online blunders — is raising questions about whether he can weather scrutiny in a general election that party leadership views as key to reclaiming the Senate majority. Mills, for her part, strongly hinted at such doubts in a snarky X post on Friday. “For what it's worth,” she wrote, “I don't have any tattoos.” The full ‘What We Are Watching' updates are available only for paid subscribers.Please log in if you already have a subscription, or subscribe to access the latest updates. A paid subscription is required to access this exclusive content.

When trained military pilots, radar operators, and air traffic controllers report something they cannot explain, it is difficult to dismiss as imagination. With the rising global interest in UFOs and Donald Trump's order to declassify government records, these five watershed encounters still lack a universally accepted explanation. As per Robert Powell of the Scientific Coalition for UFOlogy, around 6,000 encounters are reported annually by pilots, military personnel, radar operators, and civilians. These cases made headlines because trained, credible observers could not explain what they witnessed. On July 19, 1952, ATC Edward Nugent spotted seven unidentified objects over secure airspace near the Pentagon. According to History.com, Air Force Intelligence Director Major General John Samford reportedly described the observations as made by "credible observers of relatively incredible things”. Widely known as "Britain's Roswell," this December 1980 incident unfolded near two UK Air Force bases in Suffolk, England. US military personnel reported a glowing craft with multicoloured lights moving through the trees, alongside scorch marks and depressions in the ground. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt recorded his observations live on audiotape, making it one of the most documented UFO sightings in history. On November 7, 2006, a metallic saucer-shaped object hovered silently over O'Hare International Airport. The FAA dismissed it as a weather phenomenon without launching an investigation. In November 2004, USS Nimitz fighter pilots tracked a white, Tic Tac-shaped object 100 miles off the San Diego coast. On November 19, 2023, unidentified lights were reported near Imphal airport, even though the authorities did not confirm any hostile activity or airspace breaches. Authorities later said no national security threat was detected, calling it a standard response to unidentified flying objects. Area 51 became central to America's UFO secrecy because its classified aircraft tests were often mistaken for unidentified flying objects. The government's silence fueled UFO sightings and alien theories. Each of these incidents shares three consistent traits - multiple credible witnesses, radar corroboration or physical evidence, and official explanations that fail to satisfy investigators. As per HowStuffWorks, common features include unusual flight characteristics that cannot be attributed to known aircraft or natural phenomena. The recurring inability to resolve these cases is itself a pattern that researchers consider significant.

Tyson provides a scientific reality check on what he calls “aliens of our ignorance,” discussing the logistics of government cover-ups and why our smartphone-saturated world still lacks definitive proof of extraterrestrial visitors. It's an essential guide for anyone looking to separate science fiction from cosmic reality. Are We Being Distracted by UFO Files? PIERS MORGAN: Well, many cynical people have pointed out that the imminent release of the UFO files is a very convenient distraction for a President who's fighting many fires with some justification. The same people are concerned that given recent precedent, the UFO files might end up looking something like this. But all politics aside, the prospect is tantalizing. We could be about to see real evidence of aerial phenomena which even the brightest minds in government have been unable to explain. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke earlier this year about UFOs performing implausible maneuvers above sensitive government sites. We're talking about rapid acceleration, extreme speeds, trans medium travel. Things which defy the laws of physics as we know them. All of this conjures excitable talk about both the serious threat to national security and a vast new frontier for science. And it comes at a time when space is firmly back in our hearts and minds. Elon Musk is talking about building AI data centers in space. Jeff Bezos has a plan to move toxic pollutants into space. And no, it's nothing to do with Katy Perry. The question is, are we truly entering a new era of unprecedented discovery and exploration or are we all getting a bit carried away? Well, I can't think of anyone better to talk to about this, to answer the big questions with some big answers than the astrophysicist and author of the impeccably timed forthcoming book, Take Me to Your Leader, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Neil deGrasse, great to have you back on Uncensored. NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, Piers, it's always good to chat with you. PIERS MORGAN: So, look, let's just cut to the quick. Do you think we're going to be shown evidence of them? NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Well, let's separate that question into two parts. One of them is, might there be extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe? What are the ingredients of life as we know it? It turns out those ingredients are the most common chemically active ingredients in the universe. Our galaxy has several hundred billion stars, and there may be as many as a trillion galaxies. And life got underway on Earth almost as quickly as it possibly could have, within about 100 million years. So more than 90% of Earth's existence, it has had life. So you just add all that up and you say no one who's done the math is in denial of there being some kind of alien life somewhere, or perhaps everywhere in the universe. That's a different question from asking, have intelligent aliens come and visited us here on Earth. PIERS MORGAN: Right, so what's the answer? NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You got to earn the answer. So it comes down to — let's back up just a moment. There was a day before we understood much about the physical universe. And it was very easy to ascribe nature and the goings on in nature to gods — God or gods. So a storm would whip up in the ocean, and that was Poseidon wreaking havoc on your town. Maybe somebody did something bad, the lightning bolt would strike. So things we didn't understand, the power of a deity was ascribed to it. And philosophers have called that the “God of the gaps.” And it persists even to this day in many people's thinking. Today, what I find is many people see things they don't understand. A light in the sky that moves in a way they can't predict or foresee, and they credit aliens. So in my book, I've just introduced a new term: “aliens of our ignorance.” So there's something you don't quite understand — aliens. And it becomes a very convenient way to account for mysteries. So it's a very, very sophisticated, highly intelligent, incredibly well informed response, actually answering the question. So my more direct question, Neil deGrasse Tyson, is have you seen anything yourself in your entire life where you thought that to me, looks like evidence of extraterrestrial, genuine alien life? NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It's a great question. There's a case where, for example, the planet Venus — which is white cloud-shrouded, and it's the nearest planet to Earth — is bright not only because it's near, but because it's white, reflects sunlight, and it's near the sun on each side, in the morning or in the evening. If you ever hear of the “evening star” or the “morning star,” they're referring to Venus. So there was a time when there was a police car that was tracking a UFO, calling it in, and they were saying, “The UFO's darting left and right and we're tracking it.” And it turns out they were tracking Venus on a road that itself was curving. And they were not conscious of the fact that they were the ones swerving. They were thinking the UFO — Venus to them, because it's a UFO to them, they don't know what they were looking at — that that's what it was doing. So there are these reports of things people see where if you knew better, you would be able to explain it, and then you wouldn't call the police department. But just because you don't know what it is and it's doing things that are mysterious to you, and you use the “U” for Unidentified Flying Object — or as you know, the United States rebranded that as UAP, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. They're talking about the same thing, of course. You just say, “I don't know what it is. Let's investigate it further.” Which I'm all for. PIERS MORGAN: A lot of the speculation, I guess, in the last hundred years was fueled by Roswell in the 50s, by this fabled Area 51 at the US Air Force facility in Southern Nevada, and so on. I imagine you've either been there or know people who have. What is the truth about Roswell, Area 51? NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: I'm not authorized to come in for — just kidding. PIERS MORGAN: You're pleading the Extraterrestrial Fifth. NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So, just to back up for a moment. What I explore in Take Me to Your Leader is all the ways aliens might visit us, could visit us, may have visited us, and just unpack what might be alien science, alien technology, even alien powers — powers they might wield that we don't biologically. And so you can approach that question with guardrails on the conclusions you might jump to. And the guardrails, because the laws of physics as we experience them here on Earth, it turns out, apply across the universe and across time. It's not an assumption, it's a measurement that we have made, so we get to constrain what's going on here. And so now getting more directly to your question. I can say that if the government is stockpiling — let's assume the government is stockpiling aliens. Let's ask a whole other set of questions. If they're doing that, let's say at Area 51 or anywhere, no one is leaking that information. So many people who are sure that the US government is a big, bloated, inefficient bureaucracy simultaneously will declare that it's masterminding a major cover-up when thousands of people are in on it and keeping a secret. And all I can think of is Benjamin Franklin's edict from his almanac where he said, back in the early 1800s, he wrote: “Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” This is just a blunt understanding of human nature. The government, of course, keeps secrets that no one even cares about. So it's the ones that you really care about. And how about the janitor that could have just slipped an iPhone photo of the alien and then immediately posted it? So we can ask the question, because every one of us has a smartphone on our hip capable of high resolution photos and videos. So either the aliens are only coming to Earth to visit our military installations and the US government — I mean, maybe they just care about our military. But if we were under alien invasion, it seems to me that would get crowdsourced because everybody would take pictures of it and you wouldn't need hearings. No one would have to swear they're telling the truth. Could you just bring forth the alien? What Did Obama Really Mean About Aliens? PIERS MORGAN: Well, there are two things I would say to that, which I think are interesting. So Marco Rubio and others implied in the Age of Disclosure documentary that some information is hidden from even the President of the United States, which I suspect may be true. But then we have the extraordinary situation of President Obama, who was president for eight years, just casually asked at the end of an interview last week with Brian Tyler Cohen about whether aliens are real. They're real, but I haven't seen them. And they're not being kept in — what is it, Area 51. There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States. PIERS MORGAN: And Obama replied, yeah, he thinks they're real. Now, when the President of the United States, who's been in that job for eight years, when one of those guys says he thinks aliens are real — notwithstanding, he backtracked a bit afterwards — but in that moment, everyone goes, “Whoa, whoa, what? Should We Trust Politicians on Scientific Discoveries? NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Yeah, I don't see why people credit politicians with having deep insights into scientific discoveries of the universe. That's odd to me as a scientist, because anyone who is going to discover an alien, it's going to be a scientist looking up with our thousands of telescopes that we have around the Earth. PIERS MORGAN: But wouldn't you — okay, but on that point though, Neil, wouldn't you then feel compelled as a scientist to immediately inform the president? NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: So that's the whole point. The title of my book is Take Me to Your Leader. So the alien comes down and says, “Take me to your leader.” Who do you take it to? Do you take it to the elected official who doesn't know science, or do you take it to a science agency where you have cryptographers and biologists and chemists? Or the alien, having eavesdropped on our signals, might think the actual leaders are Taylor Swift or some other pop culture figure. So the point is, it's an interesting dilemma you might have. I would simply say that if an alien came up to me and told me to take it to its leader, I would take it to the nearest science conference and we would engage in conversation and later on inform the government. In that interview with Obama, he says, “Yeah, aliens are real.” I didn't interpret that as “we are stockpiling aliens.” He's scientifically literate enough to know that in the universe there are likely aliens. I didn't view that as him leaking secrets or anything. The Alien Cover-Up Debate and Government Credibility And he's a lawyer, by the way, who even more knows the difference between how you phrase things. And him actually responding directly to are aliens real? NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay, I, since no one in government has presented an alien, I did not immediately think the government has aliens. How can you continue to think that when in the film, in the documentary Disclosure. I don't want to confuse the documentary with the Steven Spielberg movie that's about to come out. The Spielberg movie is called Disclosure Day. In that documentary, there's a no end train of people talking about aliens. Especially since the President, if there is a cover up, is going to be in on the cover up and someone who's sneaking information out is not. And so the fact that people listen to what presidents say as though it is the truth, I've never understood that at all. PIERS MORGAN: Could it be that aliens, could it be that aliens are coming to our planet and identifying as humans? I mean, could Elon Musk, who joked about being an alien, could he actually be an alien, double bluffing us? He doesn't come across as particularly human. Could it be that if you were a superior alien force, would you send a bunch of Elon Musks along and just, you know, blend in and then slowly take over? NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay, there's a way to test for that. And that is you line up everybody who's a little suspicious looking. You'd be on the list in their headquarters. And they look a little different — like Michael Jackson was one of them. I remember in one of the frames. And so the way to do that is get the most alien likely imposter you can find. Just bring him into the lab and take a blood sample. If the heart is in the wrong place, if he's got green blood instead of — that would mean it's based on copper instead of iron. So now if they are human physiologically and the alien is just duping us, then you just kind of — there's no way to tell. If the alien made a perfect human, then as far as we're concerned, they're human, of alien manufacture. But there's no way for you to know because you constructed the example to be such that there's no way to know, so that you can continue to believe that aliens are among us. This is Conspiracy Thinking 101, where you invent an account that allows you to continue to think what you'd like, even if the direct evidence isn't there. Or if there's a gap in the evidence, you gap it yourself so that you can continue to believe. So I came to conclude that it's almost a belief system because no one is — like I said, if you bring forth the alien, I don't need your testimony. PIERS MORGAN: I would argue that given we know nothing about aliens from what you're saying, then all theories about them, potentially are conspiracy theories. I mean, we can say as you've done and Obama stated when the fury blew up about his comments, well, it makes sense that there would be other stuff out there — that in itself is a conspiracy theory. You're just supposing that it's highly unlikely. And I would agree with you, I would buy into this theory that it's just very unlikely that in the universe we're the only living entities. So, but everything by definition would be a conspiracy theory until there's any factual evidence. Because the difference is — okay, so what you're asking, I think you're asking is whether the fact that scientists who have done the calculation have pretty high confidence that there are aliens out there. And by the way we are looking, we have major observing programs, helped in large measure by the James Webb Space Telescope, to look for evidence of aliens. And by the way, to the scientist, an alien is any kind of biota or it could be microbial. So we'd be happy if we found anything, not just, you know, the kind that would come here in a spaceship. And now we're motivated to search — that somehow that's a conspiracy theory because we're testing our conclusions. The UFO people are declaring, we've been visited. And so they arrive at their conclusion, gapping the absence of evidence. PIERS MORGAN: You talk in the book, which is a fascinating read, but you talk about the etiquette we should consider if we ever do meet an alien. Just give me a little bit of that. And so this gives us a range of our creativity. And how much thought have we put into that? For example, the alien comes down and wants to hang out with you, and you say, “Excuse me, I need to spend the next one third of Earth's rotation in a semi comatose state. I'll be back to you in eight hours.” That's gotta come across kind of just — and then the whole world is just semi comatose, not even sort of awake. They're just — you can poke them and nothing happens. In China, it's more of a bow where you hold your own hand. So that's not even all around the Earth. But if they happen to have some appendage sticking forward, you don't just grab it and shake it. And so just leave your assumptions at home and go there with no assumptions at all. And the alien — making this up, of course — suppose the alien had a little bit of dog in it. All right, if an alien did that, you say, “Wait, what?” But maybe that's normal for aliens. So I spent a whole chapter exploring how we are alien to aliens, because I don't think people gave that enough thought. NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You know what else I would do? I would leave behind everyone who thinks Earth is flat or does not recognize that science is a path to objective truth. Because we want to leave a good impression on the aliens. And if they see members of your species that are totally out of it, that could leave a bad impression. Because I don't want the alien to phone home and say, “There is no sign of intelligent life on Earth.” I want to give him the best chance that they can say nice things about us in the report. AI as Our Own Alien Creation: Should We Be Afraid? PIERS MORGAN: Are we building our own alien force through AI and robots? I mean, a lot of very bright people are getting very concerned that AI will ultimately learn to self design. And that when it does, it may well take a view that humans are pretty useless. They spend eight hours a day in comatose conditions, for example. And they might, if they get smart — which they're getting very smart very quickly — just go, “Well, let's get rid of them.” But I mean, on a serious point, do you worry about that? So let me take one step back and then two steps forward to that question. So one step back is we measure how great AI is by how well it imitates our intelligence, hence artificial intelligence. And by the way, who said humans are intelligent? Okay, so is that the measure of intelligence? If an alien came, would it judge us to be intelligent? If it built a spaceship across the galaxy, chances are we got nothing on these aliens. And they'll look at our attempts to make a computer program that can imitate us or be a little smarter than us, and they'll just laugh, because human intelligence is a low bar. If you have a computer beating human intelligence and an alien is looking at that, it's like, “What? We can program that in an afternoon. Little alien junior in our basement is programming that.” So I don't necessarily see human intelligence as the measure of things, just for those reasons. Just step back and ask — a quick example here is: our closest genetic relative is the chimp and we're like 2% different in DNA. Well, then we're prone to say what a difference that is. Well, imagine a life form that's 2% vector beyond us, that we are beyond the chimp. What would we look like to them? The smartest among us would match their toddlers. Stephen Hawking to them — “Oh, that's cute. He can do it in his head like little alien Timmy Zork Jr. over here who's just home from preschool.” So I don't view AI with humans as the metric as something that is cosmically significant. Now more directly to answer you — yeah, AI, once it has its own agency, that's the scary part. Then what would it think of humans? Might it make us their pet, for example? And then I thought about that — we kind of don't want that, of course, but look at how we treat our pets. We know humans will step over homeless other humans in the street to go home and cuddle with their pet dog, their pet cat. So maybe being the pet of an alien is not so bad, if our behavior towards pets is any indication. If they otherwise see us the way the agents in The Matrix — that we are a virus on Earth that we need to get rid of — that could be bad. So maybe we should start behaving better in anticipation of that day. PIERS MORGAN: But do you think AI is capable of self designing? Do you think it can get to that stage? In my life, I've written maybe 50,000 lines of code, but that was long ago. And so its powers are only growing exponentially. If it could design itself, that's a game changer right there. And the question, but here's what I would ask AI is like in a computer. There's all these robots that people are designing. You know, it's the human form really. With two feet easily get knocked over. Three legs are on the ground at any given moment. And so it's stable the whole way. Okay, so our form is not a thing that should be emulated. Now maybe you just make mobile AI. Is it going to hang out at the beach and watch a sunset and compose a poem on that? I don't see that in line as what's going to come. And so we have to train it to have that bit of sort of humanity and humility about its own knowledge and its own place in our world. I've said this many times, but I did, as you did, one of the last interviews with him before he sadly died. But I did ask him what's the biggest threat to mankind? And he said, “When AI learns to self design, that's it.” So I just hope he didn't give a caveat as to whether it was going to self design. He just said that would be the moment. Ray Bradbury, Terminator, and the Guardrails of AI One of my favorite quotes is from this sci-fi writer, Ray Bradbury. And I met him only once and I confirmed with him that it's a legit quote. Apparently a woman once came up to him and said, “Mr. Bradbury, why do you write these stories about apocalyptic futures? Is that where you see humanity headed?” And he says, “No, I write those stories so you know to avoid them.” And when you look at the number of alien movies we have drawn from the creativity of our most creative storytellers, so many of them have bad endings. Take Terminator, really out of the box on that one. So we have been warned by our own media, our own movies, we have been warned. Here are the guardrails to prevent that from happening. And even Isaac Asimov with his famous three laws of robotics. The first law is, if you're designing a robot, the robot must never harm humans. The second law is the robot must never allow harm to happen to humans if their intervention could prevent it. I'm reciting these for you only to tell you that Isaac Asimov, as early as the 1950s, knew that you have to put guardrails on your creation. And to the extent that there are no guardrails, I love the title of this book that came out recently. And so we just — the guardrail part is what's important. AI and Geopolitics: A New Cold War? NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Let's just think about briefly geopolitically. Once the realization that there are no winners in an all out nuclear exchange, then people came to the table and started reducing the stockpiles. So if we tell the world, if anyone builds this super intelligent AI, this AGI — Advanced General Intelligence AI — if anyone builds it, that's the end of us all. Then maybe we can come together with world wisdom, the wisdom of the ages, that tells us no one should have in their hands something that can destroy the world. I mean, I would say that the thing I'd be wary about would be a nefarious person or group who managed to get the most brilliant AI scientists in the world and get them into a dungeon somewhere and have genuinely malicious, nefarious intent on ending the world. So it's not just the malicious intent. If you get someone who doesn't care if they die, then there's nothing they're protecting. And that's — you're right, these people exist among us in our species. So yeah, I don't have a good answer for that. PIERS MORGAN: No, I was hoping you did. Maybe the alien will have a good answer. PIERS MORGAN: It could be the alien. I love talking to — I could talk to you for hours, but we're running a bit out of time. So my understanding of this is they've got this mission going up, I think in a couple of weeks. It's a 10 day crewed test flight around the moon scheduled for 6th of March. It will take astronauts further into space than anyone's been before. I mean, it seems extraordinary that we haven't been back to the moon in so many decades. Is it important that we do get back to the moon? NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Well, let's remember why we went to the moon in the first place. It's the next thing.” We were scared witless by the godless communist who had already put up a satellite — Sputnik — who put up the first non-human animal. And if we're lagging behind our adversary, that doesn't bode well geopolitically. Even if he did lack charisma, that's not why we stopped going to the moon. The geopolitical forcing of that decision evaporated. So why didn't we stay on the moon? You know how many scientists went to the moon? Do you know which moon mission that was? So why don't we go back to the moon? China says they're going to put Taikonauts, their version of an astronaut, on the moon. Then all of a sudden we say, “Oh, why don't we go back to the moon? That sounds like the right thing to do.” And we don't mention the geopolitical forcing because that looks crass. And so Trump won in 2016, he brings in Artemis, which, by the way, is a really woke name for the space program, because Artemis was the female twin sister of Apollo. And because NASA transcends politics in the sense that there are 10 NASA centers scattered into eight states, and you go general election to general election, they go four red, four blue. It's a mixture of the political spectrum. So that if someone says, “I don't want to go into space,” you cannot deduce whether they are Republican or Democrat with that answer. So what that means is NASA's presence in the American culture actually transcends politics. So Trump says, “We're going to go back to the moon,” and then Biden comes in and says, “We're keeping this Trump program.” Everybody likes to hate Trump when you're on the left, unless we're going back into space to show the world who and what we are relative to everybody else. So that program has been in place since the mid-2010s, and we're continuing it back into Trump's second term. But part the curtains and you read history. So if you go to the moon while it's a little farther than average and you make a big loop orbit around it, when you're on the other side of that figure eight, then you're the farthest. It's an incremental record that's being set. I like the fact that we're going back to the moon more than I care that they're setting a distance record, personally. But they're going to the South Pole because that's where there might be water left over from comet impacts. Just finally, if I had the unlimited power to let you do any exploration anywhere in the universe, but you can only have one trip, what would you do? PIERS MORGAN: One trip anywhere in the universe. I'd like to move through time and be witness to the formation of the moon, when a Mars-sized protoplanet slammed into Earth, creating a ring system around Earth like Saturn, that would coalesce and form. That would just be an amazing thing to watch. We know how to make wormholes, by the way. We're just missing the substance that would allow it. We need a substance that has negative gravity, because gravity brings things together into one place. A wormhole has to pry it apart. So you need a negative gravity substance. We don't know if it exists in this universe or any other. If it did, we can make wormholes, pry open the fabric of space and time, step through. Unlike what they show in the movies where it's like a water slide ride — that's not it. You just step through and get to another destination. NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You just step through. And you can connect the back of your refrigerator to the grocery, and the grocer can peek and say, “Oh, you need some more eggs.” They just pop it in, close back the wormhole. And so for me, if I had unlimited resources and unlimited access to unlimited laws of physics, the wormhole would be at the top of my list. I encourage everyone to go give it one last plug. NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Oh, I'm uncomfortable doing it, but okay. If you really want to know how to think about aliens, it's a primer for that first alien encounter so you won't be taken by surprise. PIERS MORGAN: Just Visiting: Take Me to Your Leader, out in May. I believe it's a cracking read, Neil. NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Thank you very much, too. The only boss around here is me. If you enjoy our show, we ask for only one simple thing. And we'll do it all for free. 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Questions were raised about Tommaso Cioni's teaching history and credentials online amid the ongoing search for Nancy Guthrie. This would make him one of the last people to see her before she was taken. Besides, Cioni and Annie reportedly live close to Guthrie's Catalina Foothills house. Further, former News Nation journalist Ashleigh Banfield had reported that authorities were considering Cioni as a suspect. This has long been quashed and Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos issued a clarification that none of the Guthrie family members are suspects in the case. Also Read | Nancy Guthrie: Tommaso Cioni, Luke Daley's cars in focus after neighbor shares ring camera video from day of kidnapping However, speculations around Cioni and Annie have persisted, even as family insiders have expressed belief that an apology might be in order for subjecting them to such doubts. One person asked “where did Nancy Guthrie son in law achieve his teaching credentials”, while another questioned “Did Tommaso Cioni take a leave of absence from teaching?”. Grok shut down speculations about a leave of absence, saying “No, there are no public reports, news updates, or statements indicating Tommaso Cioni has taken a leave of absence from teaching 6th-grade science and AP Biology at BASIS Oro Valley School in Tucson. However, the AI chatbot noted that Cioni's teaching credentials were not a matter of accessible public records. The speculation about Cioni comes even as an independent investigative reporter claimed that a group wanted to add a supernatural element to the Guthrie case. Jonathan Lee Riches, or JLR, an independent reporter covering the Guthrie story on the ground wrote on X that a group planned to do a ‘spirit box'. “A group just informed be that they are coming to Nancy Guthrie's home on Saturday night at 10pm to do a spirit box,” he wrote on X. It is a modified radio scanner which such individuals believe can be used to communicate with spirits by rapidly scanning through frequencies to create white noise and static. Shuvrajit has over seven years of experience covering US, India, and world news. An English Literature postgraduate from Jadavpur University, Shuvrajit started off covering entertainment and gaming. There were brief periods away from the media industry, with short stints in ed-tech and academic editing. For work, Shuvrajit enjoys dabbling with data visualization, editing tools, and AI chatbots. Outside work, he can be found doomscrolling or cheering on his football team.Read More

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — A jury awarded $10 million in damages Friday to a University of Idaho professor who sued a Texas woman for defamation over fabricated claims she repeatedly made on social media that the academic was responsible for the Moscow college student murders. The jurors deliberated for just under two hours before handing down their decision, which awarded professor Rebecca Scofield 10 times what her attorneys asked for in their closing statement. Scofield, 40, testified this week during a four-day federal trial over monetary damages that she developed severe anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and intense nerve pain throughout her body as a direct result of the false public accusations. The Moscow resident said the physical and emotional impacts have made it difficult for her to work in her position as chair of the U of I's history department, and also caused irreversible reputational harm. RELATED | Jury weighs damages after tarot card TikToker falsely accused professor of the Moscow murders About two weeks into the investigation of the four students' stabbing deaths in November 2022, defendant Ashley Guillard, 41, of Houston, created a series of videos she posted to TikTok in which she blamed Scofield for the murders. Guillard — who made her first visit to Idaho and represented herself at trial — believes herself to have psychic abilities and testified that she read tarot cards to try to help solve the shocking homicides that upended the rural college town and generated international attention. Guillard's readings led her to Scofield, she said, and her videos continued with similar unsubstantiated accusations all the way up until August 2025. Without evidence, Guillard posted photos and contact information for Scofield with claims she had an affair with one of the female victims and tried to cover it up by ordering her death. The seven-member jury, composed of four women and three men, ruled unanimously in favor of the dollar figure directed to Scofield. The financial total outstrips some other recent high-profile civil cases in Idaho. On the last day of trial Friday, Guillard presented her defense and called just one witness — herself. Guillard then cross-examined herself in a question-and-answer format before jurors. Guillard began her defense with a deep dive into her background as an Army veteran who later earned bachelor's and master's degrees in fields related to business and human resources. She said she decided to leave her husband and pursue spirituality full time, during which time she first learned about tarot, as well as various religions and other beliefs, including numerology, which assigns relationships between numbers and life events. She practiced on herself and by watching reality TV shows to predict their outcomes. “There was a moment where it felt like I lost ownership of my face and my name, and it was no longer stitched to my body,” Scofield testified, contending with her emotions. He pleaded guilty to the crime in June 2025 in a deal to avoid the death penalty and is now serving four life sentences with no chance of parole at Idaho's maximum security prison south of Boise. In the professor's civil suit, Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Raymond Patricco for the District of Idaho already ruled for Scofield in June 2024. This week's jury trial at the federal courthouse in Boise, also overseen by Patricco, was held to determine how much money Guillard was required to pay Scofield in economic and non-economic damages. Two female jurors also had ties to the case: One had previously seen some of Guillard's TikTok videos about Scofield when they first posted; the other has a younger brother who attends the U of I and knew one of the four murder victims, she said. She called to the stand expert witnesses on public relations and Scofield's therapist the past two years who diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues. The professor and her family were not granted the chance to process the tragedy with their grieving community and feel as connected to Moscow, where they chose to make their home, Scofield's husband testified. With each witness, Guillard — in her role as her own attorney — challenged their testimony in sometimes testy back-and-forths that had to be refereed by the judge and court staff. “You created the threat by calling her a murderer when she was not,” said Scofield's mother, Margie Scofield, raising her voice at Guillard on Thursday. “She's been harmed in so many ways, beyond accounting. More than three years later — seven months after Kohberger was sentenced for the Moscow student murders — at the federal courthouse in Boise, Guillard and Scofield came face to face for the first time. They spoke only when Guillard cross-examined Scofield on the stand, and locked eyes. “You spoke lies into a camera, about me and my husband,” Scofield told Guillard. I don't know how anyone could not feel threatened by that level of interest from someone they had never met.” RELATED | A TikTok personality countersued U of I professor after killings. Our stories are produced to inform and serve the public.