Jesse Michels is an American media host, producer, and venture investor best known as the creator of American Alchemy, a long-form video and podcast series focused on unconventional ideas in science, technology, history, and culture. He hosts the program’s interviews and also writes and produces documentary-style episodes.

Michels studied history at Columbia University before working in technology and venture capital. Interview profiles identify an operations role within Google’s Research and Machine Intelligence organization, production work on Eric Weinstein’s podcast The Portal, and several years at Peter Thiel’s Los Angeles family office. Michels has described the family-office job as a mix of startup investing and bringing outside thinkers together for private discussions on technology, politics, economics, religion, and other emerging subjects.

That background shaped American Alchemy’s original focus on founders, scientists, writers, and heterodox thinkers. As the series developed, Michels devoted more of its coverage to UAPs, alleged secret technology, aerospace history, consciousness research, and government disclosure. His programs often pair extended interviews with historical narration, archival footage, public documents, and visual explanations intended to make dense or unfamiliar subjects accessible to a general audience.

Michels gained wider recognition in UAP media through his September 2023 film and extended interview with former intelligence official David Grusch. Written and produced by Michels in collaboration with Yes Theory, the film presented Grusch’s background and allegations after his public emergence and congressional testimony. Michels has since interviewed public officials, scientists, historians, skeptics, journalists, military and intelligence witnesses, researchers, and people advancing extraordinary claims.

Michels describes his approach as probabilistic and influenced by venture investing: investigate potentially consequential ideas before deciding whether they are true, look for overlooked connections, and remain willing to revise a position as new information appears. His own commentary is generally open to non-human-intelligence and hidden-technology explanations, while his guest list also includes skeptical and competing viewpoints. This combination of access, detailed historical framing, and curiosity about frontier subjects has made him a prominent bridge between technology culture and contemporary UAP discourse.