Young physicist Deep Prasad is building a company, but there’s something else that he refuses to ignore. In an interview with investigative reporter George Knapp, Prasad explains his interest in UFOs and goes into detail about a very unusual experience. Previously unaired. Recorded Feb. 18 at the UFO Mega Con in Laughlin, Nevada.

George Knapp: Deep, not your first UFO conference, but first time speaking at a conference. Are you excited?

Deep Prasad: Very excited.

Knapp: Give me the thumbnail sketch. What are you going to talk about?

Prasad: Okay, so I’ll be suggesting a new field of study and trying to sort of outline how this field would work. So, let’s look at the current subjects of the universe that we have. We have science, philosophy, math and language. Those are the four core subjects, right? And each subject describes a different aspect of the universe. Language is communication. Philosophy is the study of the nature of nature itself, right? The nature of nature, whereas physics is more … and science in general is more about the physicality. The problem though, is that with the phenomena, it doesn’t fit neatly into any of these boxes. It doesn’t fit neatly, as we also have annoyingly and painstakingly have discovered in our own research. Doesn’t also fit into parapsychology either, though, or any of those fields. And so I think what we need is an entirely new subject that’s dedicated to just the study of the phenomenon. If you look at the scientific method and science in general, it really came from the Greeks. And since then, nothing changed for much … for over 2,000 years. Right? So it’s time to create our own method, equivalent to the scientific method, tailored to the phenomenon.

Knapp: Yeah, because so much is excluded from the scientific method, the scientific paradigm.

Prasad: Exactly.

Knapp: They just don’t take it seriously.

Prasad: No, they don’t. And, you know, part of it is this obsession that if we can’t repeat it in a lab, it’s not real. And I think that’s such a flawed logic, right? The universe is so much more complex than that.

Knapp: It hurts people’s respect for science I think when you tell them, “Alright, that thing you saw, that’s not true. That’s not real.”

Prasad: Very true. That’s a great point. Yeah, exactly … it’s a problem if humans start losing trust in their scientists, right? And they start antagonizing them, because that’s what scientists do to themselves. So you’re absolutely right about that.

Knapp: You’ve learned a lot. You’ve had a crash course in ufology, and what the sociology of ufology is like, right?

Prasad: Yes, sir. absolutely.

Knapp: I mean, it can be incredibly hostile.

Prasad: Yes. Oh, absolutely. I’ve dealt with some nasty trolls.

Knapp: You try to brush it off, but it hurts. It sticks, right?

Prasad: Sometimes. It certainly does.

Knapp: What have you been hit with? I mean, they don’t know who you are. You’re a newcomer. You have a lot of followers and fans who are interested in your perspective. And that threatens some of the people who’ve been around for a while.

Prasad: I can see that. Yeah. So, I think the two most common things … The first one is some people were saying that I’m just doing this for attention, like I’m trying to publicize myself. And I think that’s flawed logic, because there’s a million different ways that I could have done that. It’s silly to think that me making up a story about aliens, for example, is how I would want to be known. It’s just not. I’m doing it because it’s time to remove the stigma. It happened to me. Like, I can’t lie to myself and other people. Yeah.

Knapp: I’m going to ask you about your experience in a moment. But was that what drew you to the topic? Your experience? Or were you already interested?

Prasad: I was already interested, but not nearly as much as I was after the experience. So I had taken on an interest about three months before this experience happened. And that’s why … So, by the way, my first tweet … I was on Twitter before this whole UFO stuff. I was tweeting about other stuff like physics, business stuff, engineering, and my followers were specifically just physicists and some venture capitalists in there. And I remember how nervous I was the first time I put out a tweet related to UFOs. And you know what that first tweet was that I put out? It was about how I believe Bob Lazar and #LazarTruth. And I said like, stigma is for chumps. That’s exactly what I said in the tweet.

Knapp: I can imagine the response to that.

Prasad: Yeah. Well, I had private messages. One of my mentors, he was like, “What are you doing?” Like, “This is suicide, career suicide. Are you crazy?” And now he’s actually on my side. Now he sees, like, we talk science. He knows that I didn’t actually just randomly turn insane. Like, he still knows I’m that same person. And yeah, he’s a very pivotal person in his part of the world, too. One of the top physicists.

NEXT STORY: The experience: Deep Prasad reveals details of his encounter