Where Desert Skies Touch Other Worlds

Miles Spencer, author of A Line in the Sand and former host of the PBS TV show Money Hunt, takes us on an adventurous journey through the countries of the Middle East and explores the possible contiguity between ancient sites and ancient extraterrestrials.

• Miles and his co-author traced the 1,100-mile path taken by the legendary T.E. Lawrence through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria
• The landscapes of the Middle East, especially Wadi Rum in Jordan, have an otherworldly appearance that inspired science fiction like Star Wars and Dune
• Ancient monuments like the Pyramids of Giza and Temple Mount raise questions about how early civilizations achieved such engineering feats
• The Rosetta Stone, discovered in Abukir by Napoleon, unlocked our understanding of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, but also raises important questions about artifact ownership and cultural heritage
• Biblical accounts, when read literally, contain descriptions that parallel modern understandings of spacecraft and extraterrestrial contact
• The three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) share many prophets and sacred stories despite their apparent differences
• Jerusalem contains holy sites for multiple faiths within walking distance of each other, highlighting their interconnected histories
• The political boundaries of the modern Arab world were largely shaped by agreements made by the European powers during and after World War I
• Recent discoveries using ground-penetrating radar have revealed mysterious structures beneath the Great Pyramid

Whether you're fascinated by ancient history, extraterrestrial possibilities, or interfaith connections, this conversation offers thought-provoking perspectives from someone who's walked the terrain where these mysteries converge. Subscribe now for more insight into humanity's most enduring perplexities.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meeting Miles Spencer
• 7:35 Following Lawrence of Arabia's Path
• 16:32 Middle East Diversity and Religions
• 25:48 The Mysteries of Egypt and the Pyramids
• 37:44 Jerusalem: Where Faiths Intersect
• 49:15 World War I's Impact on the Middle East
• 56:26 Extraterrestrials and Ancient Sites

Transcript

Joe: 1:01

Hello everybody, thank you for joining us on Alien Talk Podcast. This is the show where we discuss all things about aliens and UFOs and, as always, where we push the limits of our understanding about subjects that pertain to the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, the presence of UFOs and perhaps even the very meaning of human life here on Earth, depending on one's perspective, of course. We explore the mysteries of the universe and the enshrouded secrets of our ancient history, constantly pondering what is out there in the far reaches of outer space, as well as what lies hidden within the deepest recesses of our own planet, of which we still have much to learn and much of what still needs to be examined more closely. So, Laurie, we have a special treat today.

Joe: 1:44

It is not often that we get the opportunity to sit down and talk with a well-known writer, successful digital media entrepreneur, senior business investor, and CEO, but today we do. Today, we get the distinct privilege of having with us the guy who co-authored the novel A Line in the Sand, that being merely one of his many accomplishments. He is also well known for having produced and hosted a TV show, money Hunt, which aired on PBS back in 1997. And that was a reality-based program that gave prospective entrepreneurs a chance to pitch their ideas to potential investors on television, with the hope of possibly getting some capital for our projects similar to the show Shark Tank.

Laurie: 2:28

Yeah, that's right, and our guest today is Mike Spencer, or sorry, Miles Spencer who some of you may remember seeing on the TV show Money Hunt, as Joe just said, but that actually ran from 1997 to 2004.

Laurie: 2:43

And he was also a venture principal at Capital Express, which is now Register. C om, an internet pioneering investment company, and he has been a business mentor for people in the tech industry for over 30 years. So, like you said, Joe, he has also co-written an adventure novel with Wells Jones called A Line in the Sand. It is about two friends who embark on an excursion through parts of the Middle East that retrace the journey taken by none other than the legendary T. E. Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia, and it was published just last year, in 2024, and is available on Amazon, both in paperback and on Kindle. So, miles, I hope we did you enough justice with our quick intro there, and I can't help but feel that we may have missed mentioning something. Anyway, it's truly an honor to have you here with us on Alien Talk Podcast, so thank you for taking the time.

Miles: 3:46

Hey, I appreciate all that. I'll agree to most everything you say. That's positive and I'm sure you skipped some of the negatives and I appreciate that as well, but it's great to have the chance to spend some time with you guys.

Joe: 4:00

Yeah, it really is a great pleasure to have you with us, miles. And to start things off, I see from your website that you are a fellow Pittsburgher. I too am from "The Burgh, a good old Steel Town. I left there after joining the Air Force in 1989. I then went off the Desert Storm. Only about a year later. I then went back home to Pittsburgh to be reassigned to a reserve unit out by Greater Pitt International Airport.

Joe: 4:26

I finished my bachelor's degree in Pittsburgh and I went back to active duty to become a commissioned officer in 1995. And I have not gone back since then, other than for a few short trips. My parents moved out here to Tucson in 2006 to be with me and my family, so I don't really have much of a reason to make my way back there very often. There's not much there for me in terms of family and friends, but I do have very fond memories of living in Pittsburgh during my youth and growing up and going to school there, good memories of family and friends, and I did enjoy it there, and I sometimes do miss it.

Miles: 5:04

I loved Pittsburgh. Of course, you know, perhaps ignorance is bliss.

Joe: 5:11

Agreed.

Laurie: 5:13

So, Miles, as you know, here on our podcast, we are interested in the.

Miles: 5:18

Two to 14 years old is a pretty fine year.

Laurie: 5:25

Yeah, breaking up there, Miles.

Joe: 5:27

Still with us. Miles, Miles. I wonder if you're hearing me. Yeah, we kind of lost you for a second there. No, you were saying about Pittsburgh.

Miles: 5:38

Yeah, I had a great time in Pittsburgh. I lived there until I was 14 years old and played football and baseball, ran around and built tree houses and delivered newspapers. There's some great songs from the 70s. Probably covers exactly what I was doing when I was a kid. I loved it. I love the Steelers, of course. I loved it, I love the Steelers, of course. And, as we were saying before, even the Pirates have hope in April, right, so it's a beautiful month.

Laurie: 6:16

This year. Yes, I agree with you on that. We're interested in the question of extraterrestrial life, and especially as it ties to the now popular and the formulated theory about ancient aliens having been present on Earth sometime far in the distant past. So many of the civilizations whose mythologies are said to hold clues about that are indeed from places like Egypt and Greece and Sumer and Babylon, which is present-day Iraq, as we all know. So I mean the Middle East and the Levant have strong archaeological and historical connections to the idea from which the whole ancient astronaut apostasis has been derived from.

Laurie: 6:59

Now, your novel A Line in the Sand is about the odyssey of two characters who adventurously trekked throughout the Middle East, in countries like Saudi Arabia, the political and social and the cultural impacts left on it by the events of World War I, particularly concerning the expeditions of T. E. Lawrence. So what about the Middle East? Do you find most intriguing? Like for many people, it is because you know it's the land of the Bible and the place where our Judeo-Christian you know-Christian traditions are rooted in. So, do you find that to have a kind of aura that draws you to it and makes you want to learn more about it, miles?

Joe: 8:01

Miles. We're not getting any sound there. Sorry about that.

Miles: 8:04

Let me give you a three-part answer at the very least. So at first, when I was listening to you, I'm thinking look outer space, right, many extraterrestrials. This is, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would say, stranger in a strange land. We're out of place here, right. And so I'm a kid from Pittsburgh, Jewish kid from Pittsburgh, and I ended up in the Middle East. It could not have been more different and indeed it was almost as if we were in outer space, right.

Miles: 8:37

As a matter of fact, if you look at Wadi Rum, that actually is the inspiration for Dune, and there are some scenes in Star Wars that are shown in Wadi Rum. That actually is the inspiration for Dune and there are some seeds in Star Wars that are shown in Wadi Rum. It's a desert in Jordan. We've been through it on camels. It's the most majestic thing, but it just looks like it's another planet. So from a topographical standpoint, it's certainly the Middle East at the belt. I've been to places like Giza in Egypt and read the cartouches there. I've been to Nazca Lines, actually in Peru, which is another place where you've seen the rock formations there. Say to yourself, or I say to myself, there is just no way this was done by regular old humans on their own on earth. You have to see these things from up high in order to appreciate them. For sure. Certainly nascon lines. So there certainly was an element of you know. Something interesting is happening here, um.

Miles: 9:40

But what really drove us to go to the middle east was that that 9-11 had happened, right, and we were trying to get our heads around. Remember curious kid from pittsburgh, pennsylvania, who, what, why, where, when we weren't getting any good answers at all from the media press. Whatever we were doing, we did read one book, seven Pillars of Wisdom, by TE Lawrence. Both myself and my co-author Wells were impressed with, even 100 years ago, how this adventure explorer, cartographer, had understood the Bedouins or the desert people and was able to translate back to the west in a way that actually, 100 years later, was proven to be very, very insightful. Unfortunately, the west didn't listen and we've got the mess that we've got here. So when we both each of us separately finished that book, we were speaking to each other and we said, like, what do we do now? And our answer was let's go. And so, as you know, we we went on the track that ended 1,100-mile an hike through the deserts of Saudi, Jordan, and Syria.

Miles: 11:05

That's very good.

Joe: 11:08

Yeah, very excellent. So you know, I have also been to the Arab world on a number of occasions throughout the 1990s, being deployed to operations Desert Storm and Southern Watch. I got to go to Saudi Arabia, kuwait, bahrain, egypt and some other countries. You know a lot of people may have forgotten about Operation Southern Watch as well as Operation Northern Watch, which, of course, were designed to control and dominate the airspace of the northern and southern sectors of Iraq and thus keep its military contained. It meant to prevent Saddam Hussein from using air power to attack the Kurds and the Shiite Muslims, and the Air Force there were on regular rotational deployments for participation in that, and it ended, of course, in 2003 when the US and its allies invaded under Operation Iraqi Freedom. And I also had the opportunity to visit Israel on a Holy Land pilgrimage with the Catholic Church, of which I was once a part of many years ago. That was an incredible experience, but it was during Desert Storm that I really developed a deep fascination with the region of the Middle East and the Levant, the Levant referring to the specific area of the Middle East that borders Eastern Mediterranean Sea. You know Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, also Cyprus and, like you guys said, it is different from the West. It's almost like a different world. As you mentioned, miles, they've shot a lot of scenes for Star Wars in the desert areas of Saudi, U. A. E. and Tunisia.

Joe: 12:39

But it's a place where we get the stories of the Bible as well, and so much of it has shaped Western religious practices and dogmas for over 2,000 years. And, as it was, I did a whole lot of reading over there. One of the things I read was Michael Yarley's biography of T. E. Lawrence and about his unique role. Like you said, he's an intelligence officer and a liaison with the Arabs, and he had a unique way of connecting with the Bedouin people, and they were involved in uprisings against the Turks during World War I. Eventually it brought about the end of the Ottoman Empire.

Joe: 13:12

But something else I read was the Bible, the entire Bible, and I just became extremely intrigued with the whole diverse and complex and remarkable history of the place of the Middle East, especially with how it is so connected with all of our understanding and beliefs about, you know, the scripture. All the stories that I learned about growing up as a Christian happened there about Moses and Solomon and Nebuchadnezzar, and all the Old Testament prophets, jesus and the apostles, and so many literary and historical figures throughout the Crusades and you know, and the Byzantine Empire, and to me it was just very enthralling to come up close to the place where so many people's faith seemed to have originated. And the Middle East really does have a special mystique to it. So, miles, it seems like you would agree with me on that. So what really inspired you to write the novel about? You know about the time of T. E. Lawrence's experience there?

Miles: 14:09

Well, we really went on a mission of understanding. Remember who, what, why, where, when, right, we weren't getting any answers. Let's go ourselves. And you mentioned religion and the beliefs in common. Well, we're in a place called Magar al-Shaykh. This is in the northwest quadrant of Saudi. It doesn't get a lot of foot traffic, I'll tell you that.

Joe: 14:33

No, I thought, yeah, it's like the surface of the Moon.

Miles: 14:37

Yeah, we were with our guide named Ali. They're all named Ali and he's very animated at this architectural dig, this archaeological dig, and it's going on and on. He's like Hold on a second. I went to church in Sewickley actually not in Beaver, but Sewickley, pa and are you saying Moses and Hagar and Ezra and Abraham, and these are all from the Bible? And Ali says yes, yes, they are, they're also from the Quran.

Miles: 15:22

And just on a whim, we had a sat phone. All right, let's call my buddy in Tel Aviv. And so we called him. He's a Talmudic scholar. I said I'm going to read 12 prophets to you that we're talking about here. Tell me how many you got. We want 12 for 12 that are in the Torah. And so in that moment I recognized the depth and the breadth of my ignorance, coming out of Pittsburgh, pa. One religion, christianity. We got the stories, we got the prophets. This must be it right. And in reality we have so much in common with the other religions of the desert. The differences are actually very slender. Now there are folks that make those slender differences into there's something worth fighting about, or worth what they think is worth fighting about. But in reality I was shocked at myself, but I was also comforted in that we have so much in common, and that was one of the pieces of understanding that we wanted to bring back to the West, like Lawrence had done 100 years ago, and that was the genesis.

Laurie: 16:40

Well, I'm jealous of both of you. I have never been to the Middle East but would love to go someday, of course, maybe after the tensions have settled down over there. But I've been to the Mexican Riviera, you know, the Yucatan to see the pyramid of Coco Khan, and to Northern Europe and been to Stonehenge. And, you know, hope to be visiting the Mediterranean, you know, sometime next year, but I think it would be great to visit all of those famous lands of the Bible. Would love to get there someday.

Laurie: 17:10

But anyway, you know, miles, joe and I also just recently published a historical science fiction novel that begins in the ancient Egypt and then the storyline then picks up in the relatively modern day world of 1947, the same year as the Roswell incident. So there is a little hint as to its plot. But it is called Betel Planet AD, relic of the Gods, and the story is centered on a startling discovery of something technological that is discovered as an old artifact from the site of an archaeological dig that turns out to be alien technology from 4,000 years ago. So it is a book that is based on the ancient alien apostasis and it is set in the Middle East. So, miles, we know that the three dominant monotheistic religions of the world Judaism, christianity and Islam you know what they call the Abrahamic faiths all got their start in the Middle East.

Laurie: 18:15

As you said. There are like similarities because they all come from the same father, father Abraham. And my question to you is do you think that there are connections between these religions and this notion about ancient extraterrestrials? And I don't know how well versed you are in the ancient alien theory but since both of these, both of these both have the region of the earth in common, this particular region, so do you believe it is possible that the stories preserved about things like the creation, the Garden of Eden, the flood, the Anunnaki, etc. Are actually nothing more than transformative stories about them?

Miles: 19:03

I think it's a very good possibility. They are transformative stories. I am amazed at how? What's the line from you to? The more I learn, the less I know? Yes, I mentioned pyramids and Gizeh. You look at some of the other. Well, I've been to Mount Ararat in I guess it's Armenia now. I've been to places that I just have a hard time believing that regular old earthlings created 1,000 years ago or 3,000 or 10, a thousand years ago, or three thousand or ten thousand years ago. Common sense tells me they had to have some hope, and I'm willing to acknowledge the possibility that that could be true, and I'm not necessarily a skeptic in terms of well, show me the proof, otherwise I'm not a believer. I'm just like you know what. The universe surprises me daily in its reminders of how little understanding and control I have over it, and the easiest way to get those reminders is to have a 13 and 11 year old kid I remember those days.

Joe: 20:36

Yeah, my kids are all grown up now, they're in their 20s. I have grandchildren, so there's a really little. But uh, I know we're coming along same and I think that's a very academically responsible approach to it. There is so much we don't know. Isaac Newton said what we know is a drop and what we don't know is an ocean. And we find that every day.

Joe: 21:01

The more curious we are, the more interested we are in finding out truth and exploring things, the more you know we open up one door and find that there's 10 more doors that still need to be opened, you know, and they're constantly finding new things that raise question to what we've held for a long time as almost dogma, as doctrine and science and religion. Take the pyramids they've now just believed they found these anomalies that they think are structures underneath the Great Pyramid, and they found it through ground-penetrating radar. And these structures are eight of them, eight large columns, I mean larger than the Eiffel Tower, and they go down almost deep into the ground, almost a bedrock past bedrock, and they don't know what they are. They believe that there's like this sort of coil that goes around each one of them. Now, of course, they haven't seen it face-to-face. This is just, you know, interpreted from data on ground-penetrating radar.

Joe: 22:03

So you know these are questions. I mean, what are these? I mean it could be nothing, they could just be anomalous readings from the rock formations, or they could be some structure there. They're not found anywhere else. If you go with the ground-penetrating radar readings, just maybe a half a mile away from the pyramids, you don't find them. So it raises a lot of curiosity, a lot of wonderment and, like you said, miles, it's like 10,000 years ago or even 5,000 years ago, how did people accomplish these things? How did they move these large stones? How did they construct something like the pyramids? How did they even conceive that we would have a difficult time constructing those things today or conceiving of them today? And yet we're saying that people before the time of even computers or the ability to create the art and designs that work that we have today, were able to conceptualize this in their minds and then build it and make it last. For how many millennia now, right, right?

Laurie: 23:08

Yep. Well, with your travels to Egypt, Miles. I mean you saw the Pyramids of Giza right, I did. What are they like up close? I mean I'd like to visit there someday one of my bucket lists.

Miles: 23:25

Yeah, awesome. Even just the stones at the base are practically unscalable. Now I have friends that climbed back in the day before they shut that all down. I have climbed the pyramids in Tenochtitlan and some of the other Mexican sites. Once again, they've shut that down as well. It used to be okay to do that, but the sheer size of them now, from my understanding, is they were also covered in sheets of gold, the three of them in that pyramid. They would typically begin building them when they were eight or 10 years old, just like, let's get going on this, guys. I mean, I hope this joke lands, but there are limitations to slave labor and how much you can get done with, so you've got to start early in the process if you want to have a big pyramid at the end of your life. So there's three of them there.

Miles: 24:29

Um, I was really impressed, not so much with the architecture of the outside, but what was going on inside. I went into some of the tombs that were publicly available. I was also able to see some of the arcs or boats that had. I mean, they basically believed you got in a boat and you passed into the other world and you see, I thought it was a Viking ship, right, this giant warship, which is basically no. This is what we're going to paddle into the afterlife with, miraculously preserved after 3-4 thousand years. So it was truly on spiraling, a little bit claustrophobic, a little cool. Even though it was 100 degrees up top, it was cool down Well, not quite a wine cellar, but cool Musty. You really did expect Indiana Jones to come walking by.

Laurie: 25:39

Hopefully him and not that huge ball.

Miles: 25:42

That's right. Well, and another thing I have to bring up, if I might the cartouche system, right, so that, frankly, looked alien to me. But what I find to be amazing, or what is frequently a debate among my friends, is that the Rosetta Stone was what decoded those languages, right, and the cartouche. But the Rosetta Stone is actually in a museum in London, right. And so the argument is well, is it better that other educated, sophisticated people get to see this because they might not get to see it in Egypt, or is it better for it to be in Egypt, where it may be pillaged or it may be stolen or no one may ever see it? Right, Existential debate.

Miles: 26:36

But what I find funny about it is that it was Napoleon who was on a mission down there that originally discovered it with Bouchard, on a mission down there that originally discovered it with Bouchard, and then he lost the Battle of Abu Bakr to Nelson and he lost the Rosetta Stone. That's how I remember that. Well, long way long story. But that key to the cartouche system in the language there, I think it's one of the greatest discoveries in modern chemistry.

Joe: 27:16

Yeah, I agree.

Joe: 27:17

I think it was 1799 that that was discovered and yes, it was, Napoleon's army that was there, and they came across it and yeah, it allowed us to kind of crack the code of hieroglyphics After so many centuries. We understood much of what they were saying and what they meant and that kind of gave us a way to understand it, at least in a rudimentary way. So, miles, when you went over there, when I went over there like into israel was in the mid 90s, and uh, I think what I was expecting was I was gonna be stepping back like in the in the time, almost like in the inanna jones movie, where you're going back and it's, it's almost like it was, you know, a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago, and instead you see that it is modernized quite a bit. Um, you know there's a lot of uh what make Tel Aviv today?

Joe: 28:13

I mean it's a very uh high tech, ultra-modern, very futuristic city. I mean, look at Dubai and Abu Dhabi, I mean these, and Doha in Qatar, these cities look like something right out of Star Wars. I mean, just the advances they've made in construction. Technology is really just tremendous. But it also kind of taints the sort of nostalgia that you have for the lands of the Bible and the lands of the Middle East, of kind of going back and having that sort of mystique stepping back in time. And we don't have that so much anymore because you know like everything is progressed. It's, um, you know, built on technology and advanced.

Miles: 28:56

It's like I know if we're allowed to disagree on this podcast, um, I'm going to say yes and no. Uh, certainly Tel Aviv. Certainly now Riyadh, right, but I can say there were a lot of towns that look like they hadn't seen a vacuum cleaner in 100 years. Yeah, we, we started in Jeddah, which is the port city which pilgrims would use to get to Mecca and Medina, and then Jeddah was beginning to modernize, which is the port city which pilgrims would use to get to Mecca and Medina. And then Jeddah was beginning to modernize, but up the coast just a little bit, was Lawrence of Arabia's first outpost, which was Yenbo, and then Al-Wajah was another one, before you got to Aqaba, right, and so I'll tell you a little story about Al-Wajah.

Miles: 29:54

We were, you know, we rolled in like midnight, one o'clock, and got a little bit of food and started walking around, around and our guide, ali, says to us you know, you want to see the outpost that Lawrence originally lived in, sure, so they were restoring it and we wanted to do these. I don't know if you've seen these Saudi homes that are along the water, but they kind of start with a small base, go up like that, maximize the breezes, going forward. There's not much. And here was a man working at 1.30, 2 o'clock in the morning. It was during Ramadan, so they sleep during the day, they work at night, they eat at night. And we looked at this place like, wow, lawrence could have actually. And we looked at this place like, wow, lawrence could have actually walked on these tiles.

Miles: 30:53

And one thing about Saudis and veterans in general you make a compliment like that. I like your belt, I like anything that's not nailed down. We complimented the beautiful tile work and, sure enough, he offered us one. Now we were in backpacks, right, we were sort of at the beginning, third of our trip, so we had another 650 miles to go. We're going to add an extra tile to our weight, but we had a brilliant idea. We broke it into pieces so that we could reassemble it once we got to the United States. But this tile was everything that signified the history of the region 100 years ago and something that Lawrence may well have blocked on himself. Funny story about the tile, however, when we got to a more modern city, which was not so much Tel Aviv but the King Hussein Bridge, on the way from Jordan/ Syria and through to the northern entrance to Israel by foot, an entrance to Israel by foot. That same tile which had been broken up, kind of looked like it could be explosives to the border patrol.

Joe: 32:17

Yeah.

Miles: 32:20

And so we went through the ringer on that. And, sure enough, you know where did you get this and what is it made of? Oh my, we got it from friends. Bringer on that. And sure enough, you know where did you get this and what is it made of? Oh my, uh, we got it from friends. Where are your friends? Saudi arabia? You have friends in saudi arabia? Yes, you do, and they gave you this.

Joe: 32:39

Yes it was very long very long checkpoint for us.

Laurie: 32:46

I can imagine, but we got it home, it's almost similar to a story we have in our novel. So, with your travels over there then, did you hear any folklore? Or did the people of that time over there did they mention anything about you know something in their ancient past stories that may be different, or what we haven't heard over here yet that might be connected to their gods or their gods, possibly PTs, or anything weird like that.

Miles: 33:25

Well certainly we had a conversation that comes to mind um again, we're in wadi rum, we're on camel uh, we're basically camping and you don't want to see stars. There is no light pollution whatsoever in the saudi and jordanian deserts, where we are amazing, and so the stars are like right on your nose yeah, you never think night could get any darker until you've been right body desert, wow wow, and so you know we began to have these conversations with.

Miles: 34:03

now this is a separate guide in Jordan and his name was Ali and he matter-of-factly believed that with stars being, that close beings came and went all the time. So it's hard to disagree with him because you could almost reach out and touch one.

Joe: 34:31

What do they say about the Kaaba in Mecca? I know they don't allow non-Muslims to enter the city, but do any of them talk about its origin, what they believe it came from?

Miles: 34:46

Yeah, we did a Christian's tour of the Kaaba in Mecca, so we got to be quite friendly with one of the highly praised princes there that managed Mecca and Medina was also the mayor of Jeddah, and his chief of staff, a guy by the name of Khaled, was also a photographer, so he had a permit to go up above in a helicopter for photography, so we had the opportunity to do that. We also took a pretty cool trip. We had the opportunity to do that. We also took a pretty cool trip to a town called Taif that, if you crane your neck from the highway, you get a pretty good view of Mecca. So that's as close as a non-believer is going to get.

Joe: 35:41

Yeah, I've heard people say about Taif if you want to see Mecca, you can go there and you can get a good glimpse, um glimpse, of it from a distance, and that's about as close as you'll get muslim more importantly perhaps for your audience, on the way to taif there's a petrol station.

Miles: 35:59

It's run by ramco because all the petrol comes from iran and it's very cheap. People should pump gas like that here, but they have a Fuddruckers burger joint, so we pull up for gas. Our buddy that was driving his name was Osama and we got a Jihadi. It's like Fuddruckers. You have Fuddruckers in the US? Like, yeah, we have Fuddruckers in the US. It's like what a name, fuddrucker, am I a Fuddruckers in the US? Like, yeah, we have Fuddruckers in the US. It's like what a name, fuddrucker, am I a Fuddrucker? You're a Fuddrucker who wants a Fuddrucker. They were just loving it. Well, you know, what was interesting about that bit and I share a little bit about that story in the book is that the four of us were able to finish like two fudrucker burgers, total and fries in a shake. Right, it was just so many. The caloric intake was so overwhelming. That's like a week's food for them. You don't know. Fudruckers in houston, texas, I think the average calorie intake is 27,700 per meal.

Joe: 37:08

Did they serve shawarma at this? Fuddruckers as well? They did not.

Miles: 37:12

No, it was a straight up. You can get shawarma anywhere else you want, but it was a straight up burger joint and we actually one pretty weird thing we do in the book, but people seem to love it. Look, we're trying to understand and share that understanding with the west, the culture and the religion and and and um the cuisine. So we actually put recipes in the back of the book and one of the recipes is for the Fuddr ucker's special sauce.

Joe: 37:49

When I was in Israel, falafel was the big treat and they make it really good over there. That and baklava is a big deal in Jerusalem and it's just wonderful food. And one of the things I like what you mentioned is, you know, when you go there it really does take you outside of your conceptualized bubble, your theological and religious bubble of what you think it looks like, and you go there and you see it is quite different. I know, when I went there on the pilgrimage, you know, now, 30 years ago, I was amazed at just the diversity of faith. It is not monolithic. There's diversity of faith.

Joe: 38:52

It is not monolithic, and that's one thing that you learn by going over there is that you know the Christian upbringing that you have. There are mosques every. Places that are significant to Christians are also significant to the Muslims. In fact, the uh, the site where, uh, Jesus is believed to have ascended into heaven, on the uh you know Mount of Olives, uh, that is a mosque. Uh, that is a, a mosque that is built there, uh, and they, they hold on to that. So, what do you think about the diversity? I mean there's more things that people even imagine over there in terms of how your faith is not monolithic.

Miles: 39:19

Well, we walked it. You mentioned Tel Aviv, which you spent some time in, but we spent most of our time in Jerusalem, and that is the epicenter of all three of these religions. And we left the King David Hotel and the concierge there warned us watch out, there's a Muslim quarter and there's well, just as an Armenian quarter, and you're much safer in, you know, staying on those. And then they looked at our passport and looked at the stamps and she, oh, never mind. So we, we went to a prayer service at the whaling wall right and observed that and then took a couple of steps to the top of the Wailing Wall.

Miles: 40:07

That is Al-Aqsa Mosque, that is the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque. It's all built upon Knights Templar, king Solomon's Temple, or at least a legend of that. And we continue on our walk and go to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus was hoping to get off of the sentence that his father had given him, and also climbed the Mount of Olives, went to Golgotha, went to Calvary as well, and that entire walk took us 20 minutes. Isn't it amazing how we read about this stuff in the Bible and watch Passion of the Christ, ben-hur, moses, these movies. It must be huge. It's tiny. It's a tiny little village. You get all these different cultures and all these different religions basically living on top of each other, these different cultures and all these different religions basically living on top of each other. And I will say this for many thousands of years they've lived on top of and next to each other without a lot of strife.

Joe: 41:21

They figured out how to make it work until recently people don't realize that, like old city city Jerusalem is only one square mile, it is actually not very big at all. I used to think Bethlehem and Jerusalem, that was really far distance, like a day's journey. It's a 10-minute flight, it's like seven miles away from Jerusalem. So, yeah, that puts in perspective. It's like you don't realize this, that like, wow, you know this journey to Bethlehem. Well, really it's just a quick ride, it's like going to the mall.

Miles: 41:54

It's like a walk. They went out for bread.

Laurie: 41:58

Well, you know that's like the story of the exodus out of Egypt into the promised land. You know there's 40 years in the wilderness that God made the Israelites wander and if you look on Google Maps, it's a six-day journey just walking. So you know.

Miles: 42:18

Right, a lot of long, a lot of long turns. And to walk around that neighborhood for 40 years and find the one place that didn't have any oil is truly exceptional.

Laurie: 42:29

Yeah, but that's where the Dome of the Rock is too right. So Jesus ascended on the Mount of Olives, and I think that's where the Muslims believe that Muhammad ascended from.

Miles: 42:41

That is. That is Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock. He ascended into heaven, uh, from there, so that Umayyad mosque, which is in Damascus, is another, uh, holy site in Islam. Of course, mecca medina, interesting story Umayyad Mosque the . We did go up to Damascus and, again, there's not a lot of foot traffic, at least from westerners, there. There was, uh, you know, you were there, just, you know, before us, uh, joseph, but you know, we're basically there when a civil war was cooking in Lebanon and in syria, one of several and so we, you know, we saw tanks with their turrets spinning more than once, and that's not a fun thing to see when you're on the wrong side of it, um, but when we get to my Admas, realize that, um, the head of um Joseph of Arimathea and one of the prophets, is actually buried in a my glass. Why do you have a Christian? Why do you have a Christian prophet here?

Joe: 43:51

Yeah, really, it's like well hi, interesting was like the, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I mean, since, uh, there's so much dispute over who gets to use it, you know, between Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic Church, Armenians, the Coptic Catholics, um, the only they couldn't settle on who has the key, who keeps the key to the place. Well, since the 1830s there's been a Muslim family who has maintained the key to the church of the Holy Sepulcher, so that, you know, no one has any kind of prioritization, you know, can't have any favoritism, so it's like we give it to somebody who's a, a third party, disinterested, um entity who holds the key. Nobody can kind of dominate the church, and that's how it was settled it was John the Baptist, by the way.

Miles: 44:39

Who's uh? Who said, is in my mosque? And how do you prove something from a couple thousand years ago? Well, the pope showed up and said yes, I think it's true. So John Paul was actually in Damascus and he signed off on it. So there you go Might be might be.

Joe: 44:59

And one of the things I really liked about your novel, miles, not only you know getting into the cultures and the topography of the Middle East, which is again a subject I'm just really fascinated with, but you also focus on the figure of Lawrence of Arabia, T. E. Lawrence, who was there during World War I. He was a British intelligence officer during that World War.

Laurie: 45:24

I.

Joe: 45:25

And that's another historical subject and historical area I'm really fascinated with is World War I. I was just wondering what are your thoughts on that era of history of World War I To me I think it's really interesting because it's like the transition into modern warfare. It's kind of the breach between the way they fought wars under Napoleon and the Austro, you know, let's say the Austro-Hungarian War and the Franco-Prussian Wars, and modern warfare, you see that transition of the old way. And then they're also getting kind of mechanized with weapons that you know didn't exist before. And of course, in the Middle East these Arab Bedouins had never seen this. So they were really offset, you know tactically. Because they didn't offset, you know, uh, tactically because they they didn't have, you know, this mechanized, uh kind of military, and they were fighting the Turks who were starting to get a little bit on the cutting edge of it at that time. So I mean, are you a like a world war one buff like I am?

Miles: 46:25

Well, I certainly am a Lawrence buff, probably read 30, 40 books on or about Lawrence. And you know you mentioned basically guerrilla warfare, which technically the name comes from Spain, but Lawrence certainly perfected it. You know, attack and disappear as if a vapor into the desert, disappear as if a vapor into into the desert. And so the turks are defending basically a railway from, uh, medina, uh, all the way back up to constantinople, not the temple and uh.

Miles: 47:04

So lawrence and the arab tribes that he had pulled together always knew where the Turks would be Right and they would, you know, and look, they purposely would not knock the railroad out, they would disable it so much that they'd slow things down. They'd loot some of the trains it's still repairable They'd probably, you know, sabotage some of the repair troops's still repairable. They probably, you know, sabotage some of the repair troops along the way. So it's just maddening, but it wasn't, you know, a massive defeat, but it was distracting and the destruction was what allowed the um um allenby's British army to attack much quicker in parallel. So I think that the up 100 years later. There you go, the name of the book.

Joe: 48:28

Right, yeah, that's good. It's saying that we'll get a lot of these. You know concepts that exist today, political concepts the Balfour Declaration, the Sykes-Picot agreement that made the boundaries that we have of Transjordan. Of course, now it's just called Jordan and Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and those lines exist because of World War One and that's why I just find it very fascinating. And in reading about the life of T. E. Lawrence, it just really drew me into it. I was like I would have loved to visit the Middle East back then, 100 years ago, before you know it ever came to the page and really see what it was like stepping back in the time.

Joe: 49:11

Uh, like, like looking at old, you know film footage of um Palestine from the 1920s and like looking at it like that is really interesting. It's like you really are going back a thousand years and it just an interesting excursion and I would have loved to have been there at that time.

Miles: 49:29

So yeah, you mentioned Balfour and you mentioned Sykes-Picot. There's a third agreement. Were you aware of the Faisal Weitzman letter? I did hear about that one, right? So, so we're covering the book, but but this is so. This is wild. This is American Lowell Thomas, right? He's basically he's the videographer who had been sent to Europe to get some good stories. There's no good stories here, it's trench warfare. It's horrible. Everyone's dying. Like all right, keep going, go check in on Allenby, right, and he meets T. E. Lawrence, and T. E. Lawrence and Lowell Thomas engineer this meeting in tent with Faisal, who, at the time, basically represented the holy they were the.

Miles: 50:21

Hessonites. They were the protectors of the holy shrines, right, and so they basically signed for Islam. Right, and so they basically signed for Islam. Hayim Weitzman is in the middle of um agitating for a Jewish state in Palestine. Right, they all get together in a tent and there's an agreement that comes out of it. This, this is large, and it basically went something like this hey, the British have promised us, the Arabs, that if we help them out and get to Damascus first, we're going to have this pan-Arab country from the Crescent Saudi Arabia all the way up to the Levant, and it'll be headquartered in Damascus. It's a wonderful city, and if the Jews want to settle in Palestine, we're fine with that, assuming the British keep their promises. There's a little written in the corner right we get all this. You can have that. The British keep their promises. It was a little pot of silver written in the corner right. If we get all this, you can have that, unless the British are lying Guess what Right Now? At the end of the day, Faisal didn't represent Islam for long.

Joe: 51:48

Well, he got to be the King of Iraq, he, and he got that position.

Miles: 51:52

he got he was a late. I mean, he was a weapon. You, you do know that he was actually like king of syria for like 15 minutes, yeah. And and then the french go like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We've been here too long, that can't happen. And Gertrude Bell and Percy Cox and some others and we were in Mesopotamia for the Brits basically said we can get him elected. Really, it's like, yeah, 99%, you know, vote in favor of Faisal. He ends up king of Iraq. Yeah, once again.

Joe: 52:32

Middle-aged white men behaving badly and a couple of ladies, Richard Bell and, of course, the British Mandate of Palestine. It went all the way to 1948. And that was very rocky and very full of upheavals. Some of them aren't even talked about today, but there were all kinds of problems with that since the end of World War I.

Miles: 53:03

And well, I guess they never really stopped, have they? You know? Look again once again in the rearview mirror it all seems like we can figure out what would have been right. So I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time back then. But I would only hope that I would have advised, if I was there back then, something slightly different and something recognizing all the tribes and all the people of the region.

Joe: 53:34

And of course, World War I and World War II, they were both hellscapes, just you know, just terrible atrocities, just a terrible epic in our human history. Those two world wars are fascinating. I love reading about them and learning about them. But my gosh, the loss of human life, the loss of human dignity that came out of it, yes, one would hope that we don't repeat that. I know we've taken efforts to prevent something like another world war, but it's been in constant commotion ever since then. So I mean, before we wrap this up, I think we kind of want to get back to the idea of extraterrestrials and their possible presence on Earth in the areas of, you know, ancient Sumer, ancient Egypt. Did you happen to get to see Mount Hermon when you were there?

Miles: 54:35

I did not. I did not see Mount Hermon. I've been to Mount Sinai and Ararat, but not Mount Hermon.

Joe: 54:45

Well, I guess Mount Sinai would be kind of in the same kind of genre of is a connection with the spiritual. I did get to see Mount Hermon from the Golan Heights or the Galilee. I see it on the other side of the sea. I got to go on heights and beyond that you can see Mount Hermon and to me it just had a real, yeah, very alien appearance. It looked like something out of this world. Yeah, very alien appearance. It looked like something out of this world. Now, I know you know it is a modernized resort area. They have ski trips up there all the time. But that is supposedly according to the Book of Enoch, where the Watchers descended from heaven and came to earth, and in the ancient alien theory this correlates to extraterrestrials descending from space to the Earth. And yeah, I have to say, seeing Mount Hermon was really impressive to me. It gave me the sense of awe, like mystique, like you know that could be from out of this world. And I was wondering, when you saw Mount Sinai did you get a similar kind of feeling?

Miles: 55:47

Oh, very much. So, I actually went to St Saint Catherine's Monastery, which is where the Burning Bush is, and did make the hike as much up, as much of uh Sinai as they allowed you. And there's this. I mean, look, some of it could be its first time, right, first time in this region, read these books. For so long I've had this feeling in in Chero and Machu Picchu and um in Mexico, in Kilimanjaro, in Egypt and, I'm sorry, in Kenya, Tanzania, um, and it's, I think, a little bit of it is the fact that I'm a stranger in a strange land. It's the first time I've set foot in this place, and so there is a mystical quality to all of it and your mind starts turning like, well, yeah, how did one guy carve two sets of tablets in stone without any help, right? Well, yeah.

Laurie: 56:54

Well, you know, I wrote about this in my first book called Let Us Descend the Biblical First Contact, and I use Mount Sinai as a perfect example of an extraterrestrial first contact with a human civilization. An extraterrestrial first contact with a human civilization. And being a detective, joe and I we really get detailed when it comes to looking at police reports and that sort of thing. So I did the same thing with my history in the Bible and being a preacher for a while and really dug into it and took it apart. And it's like a John Joel mentioned a book of Enoch where these angels, these Anunnaki, or possibly more like the Ejiki, that's descended on Mount Hermon. I think that's where Moses in the Bible is actually buried. But on Mount Sinai God gives the command. You probably remember the story from the Bible. But God gives a command to the Israelites that I'm going to show up and I'm going to reveal myself to you. And on the third day I want there to be a perimeter put around Mount Sinai and when I come I'm going to descend on the mountaintop and in the traditional view of God, he's a spirit, he's everywhere present, he's all-knowing.

Laurie: 58:10

But in the Bible, the book of Exodus, god on the third day there's dark clouds and then, from a direction, this large cloud, which is going to be described by ancient people that way, comes and hovers over the Mount Sinai. And then the Bible says and the Lord descended on Mount Sinai and smoke and fire came down as he descended on the mountaintop and covered the mountain. And then Moses and 70 of the elders went up and met with the God of Israel and he was standing inside of this cloud, on the paved platform, a paved ramp. And then they ate and drank with the God of Israel. And he was standing inside of this cloud on a paved platform, a paved ramp, and then they ate and drank with the God of Israel.

Laurie: 58:55

Now, to me that sounds like an extraterrestrial first contact described by ancient people and their vocabulary at the time not having the words to describe a cloud as a spaceship or airship or whatever. But why would a spirit descend, producing smoke and fire, shaking a mountain, which we look at any SpaceX rocket launch nowadays, or the shuttle, and you see that that's exactly what's being described, I think. What are your thoughts? I think you're bang on, yeah.

Joe: 59:35

Well, as we always like to say, it is you know, up to you, the audience, to decide on. What do you think about these ideas? We kind of just want to put the information and the evidence out there, discuss it, mull it over and let people decide for themselves. So that will wrap it for today, miles, it was a real honor to have you here. Thank you for taking the time to join us and have this discussion with us and for sharing your inspiration for your novel for everybody out there. Again, the title is A Line in the Sand. It is available on Amazon and paperback. You can also get it on Kindle. Uh, it is a is a fabulous story, uh, about two friends, um, taking a trip through the middle East and and reliving the, the, the, the tracks of, uh, lawrence of Arabia, uh, miles. It tracks of Lawrence of Arabia, miles. It seems like you're kind of playing a little bit of your own story, of your own trips there, into the novel.

Miles: 1:00:36

Is that true? Aside from the time travel, everything else is based on a true story, absolutely.

Laurie: 1:00:47

Thanks for reaching out to us, miles. Really, uh did enjoy having you on and having this discussion with you amazing you guys learned. Like I stressed, it's been fun so we're not getting late yeah, he's getting yeah on his side of the country at least thanks for staying up with us too.

Joe: 1:01:04

We have a three-hour difference where we have to keep in mind here, so everyone join us again. Next time, laurie and I are going to talk about the Atrahasis, which is a cuneiform script that was discovered in modern day Iraq and the ancient Assyrian library. Similar to the Enuma Elish, it talks about the flood myth. The Enuma Elish talks mostly about the creation myth. We're going to get more into the flood myth next time we join you in a few weeks. We'll shoot for some time, by the end of May, to have that show available. So, everybody, thank you for joining us in our discussion here with Miles Spencer. It's been an honor to have him with us and stay safe out there, everyone, and, as always, stay curious.