Hello, and welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. I am your host,
Alejandro Rojas, and I have with me my good friend Martin goofball willis Yeah,
that's me sometimes, yes, quite often pretty much every show, which
is what people enjoy about. Well, I should say what some people enjoy
about the beginning of the show is are goofball antics, and so I definitely
appreciate your goofballness. Some people right right, some I think it's many.
But just to inform people, because I'm informing this for those people who don't
like it so much that to give people a little bit about the show,
we cover credible UFO news and information kind of in a journalistic way. I'm
a journalist, I write, so we look for substantiated, incredible information and
if we speculate, we're going to let you know that. At the beginning
of the show, we review the news Martin and I and then I bring
on the guest at the second and third segment. So, if you're one
of those people who do not enjoy the goofballness actually jocularity, there is these
hosts in Denver who used to always say, oh, if you don't enjoy
your jocularity, then you can just skip right up to twenty five minutes in
and get to the interview. But our guest today is MJ. Benias,
and he's great. He is a blogger, an educator, and a writer.
He's written a book, he's been a filled investigator with the Mutual UFO
Network. He's got a website called Tera Obscura. And what I like about
MJ. This is the second time I've had him on. He's definitely more
of a deep thinker. He likes the sociological and philosophical aspects of all of
this, how it affects the culture in general. And of course that's a
topic that I love myself, and this particular moment in time, I think
that's really important, especially once we get to the news, we're going to
see that. So I always love talking to MJ. And so we got
him on. He's got a new book called The UFO People, A Curious
Culture, which is kind of about all these topics that he likes to speak
on. So I know you had him on last week, right, Martin,
Yeah, the week before last, Yes, Okay, Yeah, he's
a lot of fun. He has a lot of fun. So last week
I had on Anthony la Pey and I got some feedback that I was really
screwing up his name and I was calling him Andrew occasionally when his name was
Anthony. So I apologized for that because a lap is certainly not as nice
as a la pee. Were you saying his name correctly? I did,
but that's uncharacteristic, right, normal, yeah, pronunciation. So and I
apologize for that because he was an excellent interview And and as I said in
the show last week, you know, I was traveling and I kind of,
like to be honest, ducked into the bathroom on my cell to do
the interview, and I recorded it because I record all my interviews because I
like to get my quotes exact, and because this was going to be for
print, I didn't realize and then they thought it was going to be for
audio and print, so they allowed me. So I said, hey,
I'd more than love to post this audio. So I did. And Yeah,
a lot of people really liked all of the interviews that some of us
got with him. Yeah, yeah, he is. He's very articulate and
very interesting guy. Well, it's really interesting to hear from a conventional kind
of you know, investigative journalist doing stuff like getting out there in war zones
and you know, covering military and stuff like that. It's interesting to hear
from a guy like this what he thinks about UFOs, you know, and
his reaction to the whole Pentagon UFO program and to the stars and everything.
So yeah, it was great to hear from him and his thoughts about,
you know, how he felt going into the show Undisclosed, which is going
to air Friday. It's right coming up. I can't wait, you've already
seen it. I can't wait for the series. Can't wait for episode two.
I know se screeners. Yeah, we've got to see episode one.
Martin and I we've already talked about it. I've got to review out.
We both really liked it. So excited for all of you to see it
on Friday. I shouldn't say all of you, though, because you and
I both have a lot of friends that are not in the United States.
And unfortunately, just like Project blue Book the television show, this isn't going
to launch where it's going to be accessible to people outside of the States.
There's a couple of ways you can deal with that. You can be patient
and wait. Because Project blue Book has started now in other countries. However,
a lot of people are saying, you know, if you go online,
you can do these proxies. You can use these proxy services. They're
kind of cooking in. If you do that, then you can watch them.
Wow, so they're geo blocked basically, Yes, they are geo blocked.
Wow. Interesting, I had no idea. Yeah, they do that
with TV and movies, and I don't understand the business and why they do
all that because it can be frustrating. And it is said because you know,
all of our European listeners or otherwise are can't see the show or enjoy
what we're talking about. And I know that's frustrating for them. So yeah,
see what you can do. Look into the proxy thing. Yeah,
it's only like five bucks a month or something. Yeah. You know what
I would do too, Go to open Mind's UFO news group, you know,
our Facebook group. If you're on Facebook or on Twitter, you could
do it there or any of our social media and post you know, hey,
guys, I'm in you know, this country and I'm trying to watch
the show. How how can I do it? And We've got a lot
of helpful people in there who I'm sure will pipe up I'll make sure somebody
pipes up and says, here's how you do it, so you can figure
that out. Great idea. I never even thought of that, But you're
totally right that. I always think, you know, because we can watch
it, that everyone can. But that's absolutely true. When I've been traveling,
I've seen that happen. M yeah, exactly. It is frustrating.
I've had that happen to me as well. All right, so let's go
ahead and get into the news. There's a lot a lot to talk about
there, so go ahead. I'll let you start, all right. Well,
you know, I wanted to jump right into this New York Times article
called Wow, what is that? Navy pilots report unexplained flying objects? Now,
this just aired yesterday. Leslie Kane, Ralph Blumenthal, and Helen Cooper
or I'll co authored that article that just came out. It's funny. My
son, who's more or less a skeptic of this topic, wrote me yesterday
in the middle of the day, like, look, this just just came
out, and so I thought that was pretty funny, and then later heard
from Leslie on that. But anyway, what I'd really like to talk about,
though, is a follow up article that Tyler Roguaway. I know he's
been on your show. He is on the One Zone. One thing too,
that that list of people that you just listed that wrote this New New
York Times article, they're the same crew who wrote the original New York Times
and that's an article about a tip that made a big deal. Yeah,
that's right, although I don't know, you know, I mean, I
only have this online. I don't believe it made on the front page like
the other one did. But I'm sure it's definitely getting a lot of activity,
I would imagine. So one of the things that Tyler Roguaway points out
in his article is something that was kind of well, according to his you
know, I'm paraphrasing here, but the New York Times sort of glazed over.
Is the radar tech that is key in this detection. Now this goes
back to off the East coast in like twenty fifteen. You know, the
the tic TAC, of course, was two thousand and four on the West
coast, but this is on the East coast, in between Virginia and Florida.
These pilots we're seeing these objects, and two of them have identified themselves
and one of them is Lieutenant Lieutenant Danny A. Coin and the other one
is I'm looking for his names, Lieutenant Ryan Graves. So they were both
in FA eighteen super Hornet and they are out there with this new technology and
it's called a E s A, which is active electronically scanned array, and
formally they had what was called p A P E s A, which is
a passive electronic scanned array. And the advantage that they have now with the
A S with the A E s A is it has a capability of the
advantage of it is there's different modules and it can send out several different frequencies
and that is which they were never able to do before because originally the passive
one had a single source split into hundreds of signals. So this they can
send out all types of signals. So anyway, they're picking up things that
they never picked up before. And this actually has something to do with all
the sightings that they they see now. But they did list the characteristics of
what they were seeing of up to eleven hours of flight. Now, the
one thing that I had a question. I don't know if you thought about
this, Alejandro, but if they were actually seeing this and observing it,
for eleven hours. Why didn't they I don't want to say engage, but
why didn't they go and try to get really close to it and observe what
it was doing? Well? They mean, that's what's interesting is they did
so. Apparently when these new radars came online, they started seeing these objects
similar to what like what Kevin Day and people in the Nimus reported, they
saw them at higher elevations and dropping to lower elevations very quickly. At times.
They said specifically that they saw him at thirty thousand feet twenty thousand feet
and right at the surface and you know, kind of bouncing in between,
or like you said, often sitting there for hours. And they're saying,
you know, first of all, the mechanics of something moving very quickly,
the properties an aircraft has. For instance, let's take a harrier that can
hover in places you know that jet, but it can't go very fast,
so you're it's a trade off. Whereas things that go very fast can't go
very slower they fall out of the sky. So they don't understand, you
know, this already is a characteristic that we cannot achieve to hover and go
very fast at the same time. You know, Lieutenant Graves actually refers to
that. So they're all freaked out about these things they're catching on radar.
They did try to go look at him. In fact, graves Or,
I think it was a coin, one of the pilots said that, and
they were all on the Roosevelt just so, the three of the Roosevelt,
that's the aircraft carrier they were on. He says that he went on a
couple of times to go look for them, and he found them on radar.
He got to the merge plot, you know Fravor talks about that.
That's where you're in the same space, similar area to the object, and
he could not visually see them. So at that point they didn't know what
was going on. They believed something was really there. They were thinking they
must have been advanced drones that were being tested because they're training in you know,
military training areas. But that all changed when one day one of these
things went zipping past two of the jets. So two of the jets are
flying, one in their wingman. They're one hundred feet apart, and this
object that looked like a cube with a circle around it, like a cube
in a beach ball. Some are describing it or a cube in kind of
a circular kind of force field or something. Fraver even spoke about this in
Oregon because he knows these pilots and talked to him about this event. So
it's like, yeah, these cubes and some kind of circular force field or
something like that. But this thing went zipping past them, and they told
everybody, and that freaked them all out. At that point, they were
taking this very seriously because of course, you know, that's hugely dangerous.
Plus to them, it indicated this isn't ours. None of our guys would
fly a test drone in between or anywhere near us where it could put us
in danger, So this cannot be ours. So really interesting. Tyler Roguaway
now says he's speculating. He's saying, well, it could still be ours.
Just because it accidentally hit one of our planes or got close to that
doesn't mean it's not ours. Could have been a mistake, he says,
Now, I'm not saying that it's definitely that that's the case, but we
have to keep that, we have to consider that. And he's got a
good point, you know, until we can absolutely rule out that it is
not some sort of advanced you know, secret project. We can't rule it
out. However, he makes the point that this is still extraordinary, just
like he wrote about with the Knimics encounter, because it proves that these objects
exist, that objects moving at incredible speed and using propulsion that you know we're
not used to that can do these incredible things. They're real. They've got
to be out there. Now. The question is are they ours or not?
And he agrees that, you know, the technology is so advanced it's
likely, well, it would be hard to say it's ours, but of
course it would also be extraordinary to say it's not ours. So either scenario
is kind of far fetched or at least difficult to conclude. Yeah, wow,
No, it's it's really amazing to think that it, if it is
technology, that we could be that far advanced, And it would be also
amazing that nothing was ever leaked about it, right, And that's what Fraverer
said. Uh, some people had asked, you know, well, what
do you do you think these things are ours? In fact, that was
the only question I got went in Oregon, and some of the information about
what fraver had said in Oregon at the McMinnville conference. Now you know,
over a week ago has come out, like, for instance, a video
was posted and then it was taken down. I saw that unfored doone right
away. The good part is it confirmed what I had said, because because
you know, people were saying, oh, you did Daljandra exaggerate this or
something, which I did not like. I told you, if anything,
I put it mildly. But that was taken down. Now Danny Silva and
I've got the article on the front page in the UFO headline. He wrote
an article about all of this, and he called it UFOs hovering for days,
just sitting there, and he took some quotes from Fravor and so you
could see some of what fraver says there about these hovering objects. But one
of the things he said is, and I asked, I just wanted to
hear his perspective because some of the people like one of the things that some
people had gotten frustrated with me about it is I really didn't put much stock
into this idea that it was a missile being test in the area in San
Diego when FRAVERR had his sighting, because what Fraverr describes is something sitting there.
Then as he approaches it, it matches his maneuvers and then speeds off
at a really fast speed that does not fit a missile whatsoever. So he
says that no propulsion signature, nothing right, no propulsion signature or anything.
He says that, just like these guys on the Roosevelt, his first instinct
was that much must be some sort of top secret project that was extraordinary,
and it blew his mind, but he thought that's what it must be.
But over time, he says that he felt that couldn't be the case.
He felt, as more time goes on, it's more likely not ours,
because there's no way they could keep that secret. And he even referenced a
couple projects that were black projects in the past that eventually we found out about.
And it's his belief that there we eventually find out, you know,
when time passes five ten years, we find out, but we haven't found
out about you know, these technologies, so he feels strongly they are not
ours. By the way, there are also skeptics who are talked about the
gimbal video, and it turns out it comes from the Roosevelt. So these
guys said, not only had did they try to engage them kind of getting
back to your question. You know, one of them did get that video
of the thing moving close to the water and then the other video. So
it seems like both the other two video are from this Roosevelt incident, and
that is that one is the one that was on the first New York Times
article. Also, yeah, on one of them wasn't. Then one of
them wasn't the one that's referred to as the gimbal. You see this object
that it seems to move in a weird way rotate. Some skeptics have said
that they's a regular jet and that that is just the camera moving. Even
our good buddy Mark D'Antonio that that is not indicating an object that's rotating.
Well, Fraver spoke to that and he said that's absolutely false. There's no
way. And here's his argument that they cannot rotate an aircraft as it fling
flies. He says, airplanes have something called wings. You need your wings
to fly. If you turn at a ninety degree where your wings are above
you, you're not achieving any lift and you'll fall out of the sky.
And they didn't do that right, So whatever direction your tip, Yeah,
so we see planes do that right as novices. The rest of us we
see planes go sideways like that. But he makes a point, if you're
going to do that, you have to bank, because you have to make
some g forces for your wings to create the lift. And the only people
who will do that sometimes as the Blue Angels, can do it in a
way where they kind of play with their tail, but they move slower and
they still begin to fall. But that's obviously not what this thing was doing.
So this thing was definitely not, you know, just a plane rotating
or something like that, and a lot of people have already proven that it
wasn't just the optics moving. But when you listen to fravr especially address this,
these guys work with this equipment. They know this equipment very very well,
and they know the nature of other aircrafts that they're flying with very very
well. So you get the sense that, you know, I apologize to
Mark and to others, but this guy's got a lot more experience with his
equipment and the nature of the objects that they're filming than our good buddies Mark
D'Antonio and stuff do. Yeah, yeah, right. You know, one
of the things in this article that just came out that they they when they're
describing the vehicles, they're saying that they're rotating. Right, These are all
rotating, and that's what it looks like in the gimbal, right, it
looks like something that's actually rotating. So, which is another bizarre situation.
But the part where you mentioned the cube cube going by with something rotating around
it or or or like a force field or something around it, that is
really fascinating, isn't it freaky? Even Tyler is like, this sounds like
Star Trek. It sounds crazy, but he's like, it's real. If
these pilots say it's real, it's real. These guys are pros because you
know, Tyler works with defense. That's what he does every day, writes
stories about defense and talks with pilots. So and he said he even knew
about a lot of these encounters before they were made public, just because the
word is spread inside of the community. So really interesting. Another interesting thing
is lou Elizondo was on Coast to Coast last night with George Knapp. They
talked about a few things. One of the few things they talked about is
in the second episode, there will be a map that a tip created about
UFO hotspots so that sounds really interesting. Let's see. They also addressed a
couple of things such as Lou getting attacked by different people online, you know,
and he said he said one thing that I backed up too, which
was that you know, some people, and I guess we won't mention names.
Lou didn't have said that, you know. They they that Lou and
others and TTSA has not reached out to them despite their requests, people who
are kind of questioning Lou's integrity, and that's not true. He has reached
out. He's reached out to practically everybody, and I've facilitated well, you
know, to be honest, it was Greenwald, and you know, he
did reach out to Greenwald, and Greenwald did not reciprocate unfortunately, So hopefully
that'll happen over time. But another story came out too speaking of Greenwald,
which is that the Pentagon finally admits it investigates UFOs. So there's big questions
about whether or not the Pentagon released the DoD released the UFO videos. They've
admitted they have. And now this is a big story because finally, and
we have something similar in this New York Times story, they've kind of changed
their tune. Now they are fessing up and countering what they said in the
past. And the past they said, we don't know if a tip was
UFOs. We can't tell from our paperwork, and so people are like,
see, look, they didn't even have anything to UFOs. But they made
it very clear. They also in the past said that they the a tip
programs closed and they're not looking into UFOs anymore. Well, they said a
tip was closed. Essentially, that also is not true. So they did
say come out and say that a tip was investigating UAPs and that they still
look into them and take them seriously. So this is pretty crazy. This
is pretty cool. This is the d D admitting, you know that they
did, through a tip look into UFOs and they continue to do so amazing.
Another another major you know, it's it's another really major story. It
is, and it's another admission. You know. It's another thing that well,
first of all, speaking of Leslie, a great reporter, it's another
thing that the New York Times and Leslie and the others told us to begin
with that has been true. And of course, you know, lou and
to the stars people have been telling us all all along the same stuff.
So you know, all of this stuff they've been telling us, it keeps
getting verified as being true. Another interesting thing is in this New York Times
article, the do D says that I think this quote is really important.
I'm gonna find it real quick because it's even though we're almost running out of
time, aren't we. But essentially it's a DoD saying that, yes,
people are reporting these objects, we do take them seriously. We don't know
where they're coming from. Yeah, basically says no one at the Department of
Defense is saying that the objects are as extraterrestrial and experts emphasize I wonder what
experts emphasize that earthly explanations can generally be found for such incidents can generally been
found. But they even said, we don't know who they are, where
they're coming from, and that's what we need to find out. Yeah,
so really interesting, but we're out of time. Of course, all these
stories you can find on the front page of Openminds dot tv. A couple
other good stories that are out there on all of this as well. Yeah
right, all right, well, time flies, how Martin. Yes,
as always, it is time to go, So thanks for joining us once
again and let's go ahead and talk to MJ. I am very happy to
welcome back to the show, MJ. Benaias, Hello, Alejandro, how
are you good? How are you doing? Oh I'm terrific. Thank you
very much for having me on today. Thanks for being here. It's my
pleasure. You know what I think I'm going to start off with, which
is kind of strange, but it is kind of in the moment, Stanton
Friedman. It's of course, it's very sad news that he passed. What
was Stanton Friedman? To you? Like? How did you first hear about
him? What are your like is your perspective on him and his work?
Yeah, I mean, you know, Stanton was even though he was born
in the States, he was a fellow Canadian. So as a Canadian,
you know, he was one of those UFO researchers that you know, influences
people like me. I mean, you know, there's countless countless American UFO
researchers and andthologists, but but he was sort of a different breed, and
I sort of I sort of joke. I think part of it was because
he was a Canadian. He was a very class he's very classy eupologist and
a very classy researcher. You know, he never really got into you know,
petty arguments with anyone. You know, he just sort of did his
own thing. You know, he did his conference lectures and all that,
but he always kind of maintained a sort of, I don't know, a
sort of attitude of professionalism and respect I think for other people, at least
those who who who who sort of maybe liked I don't know. At times,
I'm sure he went after a few people, but ultimately, you know,
he was sort of a class act. So I think he was a
role model for for a lot of US, especially US Canadian UFO researchers.
That makes sense. And you know what, somebody said it and I can't
remember who. Maybe it was you that they were at a conference and they're
like, I didn't really know him. The only interaction I had with him
was he walked up to me and he said, Hey, I'm glad you're
wearing a tie. You were the only two speakers wearing a tie. And
I know I wish that was me, but no, it wasn't. That's
a good one though. Yeah I remember reading that actually as well. So
yeah, so's it's a big loss and what do you think it means,
you know, since you've been looking at the over the community overall, and
kind of the effect on society that this all has, what do you think
it means to the field stands passing? Well, I mean, like I
mentioned earlier, we've definitely lost a role model. I think there there's been
and you know, there's been a lot of talk in the UFO community over
the last few days in regards to in regards to who who will replace you
know, Stanton Freedman, who will be the next Stanton Friedman? And I
think that that's that's really really sort of what this this conversation is sort of
about who who can fill those shoes? And I would say at this point,
you know, I'm not sure if anyone really can. He sort of
had his own, but it puts us, it puts the rest of us
UH to sort of the to task now that we need to kind of fill
in that this this huge gap that that he's left. You know, I
don't I didn't necessarily agree with with Stanton on his euphological beliefs. You know,
I didn't actually always agree with with how he approached UH the interpretation of
the phenomenon but it doesn't mean that that. You know, I thought he
was wrong or we just had different opinions on something, but you know I
always respected his work. He he you know, I wrote about it in
a Mysterious Universe article. You know, he was one of those funny individuals.
You know. Philip Class went after him and even you know, basically
told him, you know, I'll give you one hundred dollars for every time
you can prove this little u ufo thing right, like the MJ twelve documents,
right the typeface. You know, if you can prove the type face
on the MJ twelve documents is used in other reports and stuff like that,
you know, I'll give you a hundred dollars for every instance. And sure
enough, you know, Stanton provided him with fourteen examples of other documents that
had the same typeface, and you know, Class eventually paid him a grand
to you know, as a as a sort of okay, you know,
he made good on his bet. You know, this is this is who
the guy was. And as a community, I don't know, I don't
know if anyone else is really like that, who can kind of carry that
type of gravitas. You yeah, you know what you, and you make
a good point because you know, the good and the evil and upology.
It's kind of seemed like, oh, hello, yeah, sorry about that.
I'm gonna have to make a note fix that. But there's just some
background make a note at the time. Okay, yeah, you know it's
there's kind of the good and the evil there where there's this Stanton versus the
field class. But what your the example you gave is kind of this good
natured ribbing where you don't really have that kind of the The people on either
side these days, especially online, are are typically going at it and being
very cruel and mean to each other often. I think I think that's a
sign maybe of of what's changed. You know. I think Stanton took the
phenomenon seriously, but he didn't take it too seriously. You know, he
left room in there to laugh about it and realize that, you know,
it's just UFOs. Let's relax, you know, that type of mentality that's
a more relaxed This isn't the be all and the end all and everything.
I mean. He was also a family man, right, He had you
know, wife, kids, so at the end of the day, he
had other things in his life. That were more important than the UFO phenomenon
to him. And I think that that's what maybe for some researchers, especially
for the researchers who who are online, the UFOs have become sort of an
all consuming facet. Everything to them is UFOs and they've forgotten to just sort
of laugh at things sometimes, Like you say that good natured ribbing is no
longer just good natured ribbing. It's viewed as assault and it's viewed as harassment,
right when in reality, you know, it's just UFOs. Right,
let's just relax a little bit. We don't need to take everything so seriously.
We need to able to laugh at ourselves, and we need to go
a laugh at the phenomenon a little bit, because at the end of the
day, it is a little absurd and it is a little silly, and
that's just part of it. That's just part of the phenomenon, is just
part of the whole game, exactly. I think that you've put that very
very well and which kind of gets us to your book. So your book's
been out for about a month now and it's called the UFO People. On
the cover is another icon who, unfortunately I never got to meet before he
passed away. Who is doctor j Allen Heinik Who? Fortunately the public it's
getting to know more through the History Channel show. But you know, in
a nutshell, if someone asked you especially, and I'm sure they will and
in these interviews they probably do, I mean, who are the UFO people?
Yeah, this is this is sort of a really difficult question to answer
because the whole the purpose of the book is to try to figure out really
what the UFO community is about, or at least to sort of paint as
good a picture as possible. And what the book does, it problematizes our
interpretation of what it means to be a subculture or to be a community.
There really is no dividing line that separates sort of the UFO community or the
UFO people from really other groups. It gets really blurry. And not only
that, there's no real body or organization that governs our subculture, right we
have, our identity is very fluid and around a lot and all of that
it mixes in with other communities. So I know a lot of paranormal investigators
who are interested in UFOs. Does that make them part of the UFO community.
I know a lot of cryptozoologists who are interested in UFOs. I know
a lot of UFO enthusiasts who are interested in Bigfoot. So ultimately, you
know, there's a lot of this intermixing. And what we find is the
UFO community or the UFO people is the sort of large, very blurry mix
of people who we can kind of compartmentalize into smaller groups or smaller subcultures.
But again, it is no hard and fast line, and the book kind
of ultimately tries to call into question the very notion of ought there to be
a differentiation between a UFO community and just the general public or the mainstream.
Right. We often paint that line, we say, you know, no,
there is a UFO subculture, there is a UFO community, there's the
mainstream public. And the book kind of challenges that notion. The book calls
into question the validity of that claim and whether the mainstream is actually more involved
in in the UFO discourse than we care to think, and the UFO community
is much more involved in the mainstream. And fundamentally, how do we coexist
and how do we work together and function together. So that's one big aspect
of the book that I try to address, which you know, I love
that, and right now, I think that this perspective or this this examination
is even more important because it seems as though there is kind of a crisis
of identity of this group because you're making this argument that you know, you
all are more mainstream than you realize, and there are more mainstream in this
than than you may realize, where it seems like there are a lot of
people rebelling against that idea who are like, no, I'm a UFO person,
I'm the one with the knowledge and they don't know what I know,
right, And the book clearly sort of draws that into that sort of draws
that idea out. You know, when you kind of look at the mythologies
that exist in the mainstream about the UFO community and the UPHO phenomenon itself,
and then when you look at the mythologies that exist sort of about UFOs within
the UFO community itself as well, we realize that these mythologies kind of bounce
off one another. They're sort of symbiotic, right that world events, media,
culture, books, TV, internet, you know, posters, whatever,
all really tie into how we've interpreted the UFO phenomenon to be. And
we often compartmentalize the UFO phenomenon in all of its strangeness, into little boxes
to try and make it make sense. So, you know, we like
the notion of the grays, for example, because they're easy to understand versus
sort of a more complicated, overarching forhomenon that's kind of universal or or archetypal
in some way that we can't really master or get a grasp on. You
know, I can understand the humanoid, I can't understand some weird mystical phenomena
doesn't make sense, But often the UFO enigma occurs in weird mystical ways,
and sometimes it occurs in just a simple kind of gray showing up on your
front door. So, you know, we need to uncompartmentalize ourselves, and
we need to uncompartmentalize our ideology around the phenomenon to start making sense of it.
And the book goes into how media and how language and how culture and
how economics and politics, how history all ties into the shaping of the UFO
as an idea, and then how our community has kind of processed this mythology
over the decades. Yeah, I and it's so interesting that you say that,
And you know, I know that because we've talked before. You gravitate
towards this, this idea of you know, things are more complicated. There
could be more answers out there, but it is, you know, in
the UFO community, and I think there people say this almost its exact thing.
Why do we have to re examine because we already know, you know,
they've kind of fitted into this Star Trek world. We know there's a
reptilians, there's these guys, there's the Grays, and here's what they're doing
and why we already know this, So why do you have to question it?
And they get frustrated when they're like, well, do we really know
that? You know? No, yeah, I agree. It's when you
really start to to look at these ideas. You know, obviously you see
them appearing in the media. You see them appearing in film and television and
in books and magazines and comic books before and aff like sort of simultaneously as
they enter into the UFO community, right, you kind of see these ideas
merging and meshing. You know, we have you know, action comics or
whatever, you know, told stories about strange aliens with large gray heads.
You know, in the nineteen twenties, well before sort of grays became a
thing. So we can kind of question, you're right, how do we
know that the reptilians are real or that there's an alien human hybrid program?
Like, how do we know this? Right? And I think what we
can kind of rest on is people are having experiences, right, So people
are experiencing these strange things. People are experiencing being taken by insect like aliens
or Nordic looking type aliens or whatever. But are those experiences objectively true in
the sense that they're seeing sort of the objective reality of the situation, or
are these experiences occurring but they're being filtered through various mediums such as language and
culture and society and just like almost a hyperreal interpretation of the objectives. So
the brain is filtering information to make it make sense, because what this individual
is actually dealing with is so far removed from the human equation that it's nonsensical.
It doesn't compute in the human mind. So the human mind has to
create a sort of a false reality. Let's say you know, that's one
potential interpretation or the other interpretation is held there could be reptilians running around for
all we know, and they are right. I don't know, but unfortunately
there's not enough evidence out there to kind of rest your laurels on either thing.
We're still in kind of heavy speculation mode, as Valet sort of says,
we haven't really done the basic work yet to get to affirm understanding and
grounding in what's actually going on. So when somebody tells me, you know,
the reptilia are real, I kind of say, okay, maybe,
but have you considered that? And then you know, dot dot dot.
I can go down a lot of different paths with that person, and maybe
one of the paths is Yep, reptilians are real, but they might not
be, and they might be dealing with something else entirely. And what you
saw was a reptilian, but it might not have actually been a reptilian.
You know what I mean? Right? And it is well, your influent
is so is Vallet a big influence for you? Yeah? I would say
Valet and Keel are both incredible influences for me because they they I think,
create the most sort of I don't know, the most sensical hypothesis of the
phenomenon, because I believe the phenomenon exists, like I do believe that that
UFOs are an objective thing that exists outside of us. Some sort of intelligence
is responsible for them, whatever it is. So I'm willing to go there,
like I'm willing to go to weird things happen and it's not us.
I'm willing to stand on that stone. But after that, like beyond that
stone, I don't know where to go, right I'm not going to go
down the road of its aliens for another planet. I'm not going to go
down the road that it's interdimensional beings from some other dimension. The only road
that I can kind of see myself going down is that we're dealing with some
sort of control system, as Valet would argue, or some sort of large
paranormal system, as Valet would say, or we're dealing with with some sort
of intelligence that is maybe you know, been with us forever and it sort
of exists on a separate dimension. I don't know. Like again, right,
like, these are sort of odd roads to go down, but these
are the only ones that kind of make sense to me because I've investigated UFO
reports that range from just lights in the sky to sort of just regular prosaic
kind of events to aliens, two people seeing man sized rabbits hop out of
orbs. So you know, I've investigated some weird, high strangeness stuff and
to suggest it's kind of one option or the other doesn't make sense to me,
because something's wrong then, right, like these aliens are then messing with
us. I don't know. Yeah, well, and I think what's interesting
and what you're describing is I think really important. So for instance, you
know, there's kind of two areas. There's the unknown, and we can
either make a mythology out of it, so we're comfortable that we know everything,
or we can be more socratic about it. And that's kind of the
other side, which is you're never going to know. We don't know.
You think you know this, you don't really know that, which is kind
of where the territory Valley and Keel, especially Keel moved into, which is
not necessarily a bad thing because in the middle you have science, and there's
a danger to resting on your laurels, believing you know the truth when you
don't, even when the truth often and the research often leads you down some
weird roads like you're talking about. Because these weird stories, some of them
very credible they happen, you know, we hear these really odd stories.
Yeah, I agree, and that's why we have to, like you say,
it remain socratic. And that's a great term to use, and that's
where I tend to stand, I think, because fundamentally, you know,
we don't know, and we have to keep asking questions, and we have
to remain vigilant, and we have to remain critical. I'll never go to
someone and say, listen, you didn't have that experience, right, because
I'm not one qualified to give them Like I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist,
so I can't. I'm not inssarly qualified to deal with that. So
I will hear their story, and I'll record their story, and I'll treat
their story with the respect deserves. It's sort of their truth at the time.
But I'm also not good going to adjust my personal philosophy or my personal
opinion on the matter because of one story. Right, It's going to take
a lot more, a lot more evidence for me to do that. You're
really gonna have to convince me. And I'm going to require something beyond just
storytelling and you know, mythology to do that. So you know, I
don't want to come off sounding like a skeptic, because I'm not a skeptic.
I will, like I said, listen, and I will be respectful
and I will hear you out because you know, if you experience something,
you experience something. I'm not going to contradict that. But I'm also not
going to kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater here, right.
We need to we need to remain critical because the problem is once we stop
being critical, we start believing everything. And that's why people believe there's reptilians
in the Antarctica and they're controlling the American government, and like you know,
we go down this rabbit hole of sort of conspiratorial insanity. And that's a
problem. It makes us as a community, you know, assuming there's a
UFO community, it makes us look foolish when when these voices become the popular
voices. M h. And that's I think, you know, that's what
I love about this more intellectual kind of examination of all of this because there
are it is grey, and all of this is so complicated, no pen
intended, but you know it's very complicated in that you know, terms and
memes can arrive and these things kind of influence the way we think about things
and the way and then they can galvanize communities. Whereas, like you mentioned
earlier, and I think you have a good argument that you know, to
say there's a UFO community, as if there's this community of people and we
all have figured something out. That's not true at all, because as much
as there are those who are convinced, you know, oh, there are
grays inside of that group, you've got you know, oh that we've got
these grays. They are so wonderful and they're here to help us. And
then you have the other side. No, they're evil and they're trying to
kill us, and they're both absolutely convinced, and they're both fairly large groups.
The point being that you know that that it's hard to call, you
know, a group like that, a community with such varying ideas and such
hard stances with those ideas. No, I agree, and that's that's part
of it, right, There is no there's no agreement. Right, there's
no there's no unified notion of what the UFO is or what the source of
UPO phenomenon is. I think we all we do have an identity though,
so even those people who who say the grades are evil or the grades are
good or whatever. We all kind of have a common identity. I think
we all speak a similar language. We all understand what everyone's talking about.
So you know, when we talk, you know, if somebody says zetan,
we know what we mean by that term, or somebody says, you
know, Eve, we know what that means. Right, we all we
all share a similar lexicon of terms, so we are able to communicate as
a subculture does. So there are some aspects to us that are very subcultural
and the most sort of cultural study sense, a very traditional sense jargon being
one. We all also, I think kind of share a common mistrust of
authority. I think to at least to some extent, you know what I
mean, all of us are willing to go down that well, you know,
maybe something is you know, and it ranges right to people who are
full out the government is bad and they're arming themselves, you know, on
like this conspiratorial level, to you know, people like me who generally trust
the government but kind of don't because you know, they've done some dubious things
in the past. So you know, we kind of all have this this
kind of counter cultural bend to us, right, we all kind of look
awry at the regular daily world, at our government of authority, and we
kind of recognize that something, you know, maybe fishy, is going on
at the very least. So, you know, when we talk about the
subculture as being sort of in constant conflict, it is true. It's basically
an anarchy, but there are these little segments of similarities that we can work
together on. It's funny. This year's Contact in the Desert is a perfect
example, you know what. Hold on to that because I was thinking it'd
be great if we can start applying examples. But we've got to go to
break right now, so we'll be right back with MJ. Benias right after
this break. Those would you listening on the radio, we'll here at some
commercials. The rest we'll hear a short musical interlude. Hang on tight,
we'll be right back with Open Mind UFO Radio. Welcome back to Open Mind
UFO Radio. I am having I had a delightful conversation last time you were
on, but I'm loving this as well. We're talking to m J.
Baniyas and we're actually you know, you were talking about Contact in the Desert
and I think that'll be fun. It's to kind of practically apply some of
the things that are happening right now and how they apply to how you're looking
at things. But you were about to say, how Contacted in the Desert
is an example of what you were just describing, right, So when we
look at the range of ideas within the UFO community, sort of, you
know, like I mentioned earlier, it was it's sort of an anarchy.
However, you know, we do share similarities. Contact in the Desert is
the sort of perfect example, especially this year's Contact in the Desert, where
you have individuals who are on sort of one side, individuals such as David
Wilcock, Corey Good sharing sort of the same conference with with individuals like Jacques
Vallet and the people who will attend this conference, and there's like Contact in
the Desert is huge. Everyone sort of While there are issues between these two
notions, like in no way does Jacques Valet agree with David Wilcock, they're
they're they're not diametrically opposed, but they're pretty close, everyone still kind of
gets along, right, We all still kind of go We all talk about
our our experiences or that our research and generally there's no real bad blood.
While we might you know, not like each other and spit vitriol at each
other on the internet, generally it's it's relatively a peaceful area. Like there's
no initially fist fights breaking out in the halls of the resort because you don't
believe in the reptilians and you know, you're a cabalist in the deep state,
Like that doesn't happen, right, at least not recently. So,
so we do have some semblance of unification. We all kind of coexist together.
We all speak similar languages, we all engage with each other. Do
you hear a whistling right now? Sorry? Yeah, do do do do
do doo? That's my washing machine. Well, you know what, it
reminds me of what you're describing here, which makes a lot of sense.
It makes me think of a couple of things. First of all, it
makes me think of you know, you'll have let's say, George Knapp there
or is a great example, and then the next speaker will come on and
talk about how the media is all corrupted and you know, all of the
UFO stories in the media are the MG twelve is dictating, and you know,
we just heard from George Knap, Would you describe how he came up
with his stories. It also reminds me of you know, some of the
younger people won't remember bugs Bunny shows, but there was the wily coyote and
the sheep dog. Of course, the wily kio is trying to get the
sheep and the sheep dogs beating him up and everything. But then the whistle
would blow and they would go to the time clock and they would clock in
and say hello to each other. It's so funny. Well, and it's
so true, right, I mean literally the conference. UFO conferences are quite
interesting because you will have speakers sort of totally disagree with each other, and
then at times I wonder, you know, the audience just kind of sits
there on like nods and smiles during both and You're like, wait, how
do you agree with these? I'm confused. They're both saying the opposite things.
I don't understand why you agree, you know. So, yeah,
I do find it Numeorlesus at times, that is the one that really gets
me. I mean, people will go to election, yeah, and this
will be a guy who will be talking about well using the example that I
was using before who will talk about, Oh, the Grays are real.
I've met them and I've talked to them, and they're they're wonderful and they're
helping us out and here's what they've done to help us throughout history. And
people will come out and go, oh, my gosh, that was absolutely
amazing. And then they'll come out of the next lecture and this lecture just
said, oh, the Grays are evil, they're screwing us, they're doing
all this terrible stuff to us, and they'll come out, oh, my
gosh, I talk was amazing, and I'll ask people, well, how
can you the last speaker was saying that this person is wrong and there's no
way that they're right and had a totally different view, and people will just
kind of look at you and just say, well, I don't know,
I think there could be truth to both, right, And that's what really
That is truly a correct usage of the term of the where you believe two
different things and they're both completely opposite of each other. Cognitive dissonance exactly.
And you know people throw that term around all the time, but they completely
misuse it. They say, oh, there's cognitive dissonance because we know aliens
are real of it. People don't believe it, and it's like, no,
you know, people don't know that. That's why. It's when you
absolutely believe in two different opposite things, that's when things get screwy. It's
it's really funny, it's it's but again, it's it's the community and just
the way I think we function. Like I said, we at times want
to stick together because we have this fear that that there's sort of this larger
group outside of us, the sort of mainstream public, that that that is
on the attack, and it's not honestly true. But we we you know,
cultures will will clump together to for sort of out of self preservation.
So I think that that happens even though once we're all together inside the group,
we we like start to fight with one another, right which which you
sort of see all the time in the OVOL community. Sort of conflict that
arise between individuals and often over just like like we were talking about much earlier,
class and freedman, you know, over some ribbing that occurs and it
blows up into all out war where lines are being drawn and you need to
pick a side and you're either with us here against us, and you know,
if you don't believe in what we believe in, will name and shame
you, and like there's it becomes quite bad. Mm hmm Yep, I've
been named and shamed. Have you been name and shamed? Sure? You
help? I'm sure I have. Yeah. You know, once in a
while you say things on a podcast or something and then people go after you
and you're like, Okay, relax and then you know that that didn't help.
Like when you tell people to relax, it doesn't they don't relaxing.
Yeah, there's no winning, you know what you and you know there's another
faction of this that I'd love to hear your perspective on too. So getting
back to Vallet Vallet, you know, there's a talk I do on religion
and UFOs and I'm essentially drawing similarities. And Vallet had a great point all
the way back in the seventies when that he addressed the UN He said,
the government really has to take the lead on the research and all of this,
because if you don't, then the mythologists and the conspiracists they're all just
going to make stuff up and we're going to have UFO religions and we're going
to have a lot of confusion out there that'll be generated from the public if
you don't get involved in kind of help guide the public. But nowadays,
coming into the present, that may be viewed as a bit of a naive
kind of perception that we would want to trust the government. And then here
comes the government, Here comes Luelizondo and a tip and the Navy saying we're
going to do, you know, create these UFO guidelines. So now you
have a third party that is kind of trying to guide us. But is
this third party a guiding light or is it you know it, can this
voice be completely trusted? Right? Yeah? You know it's really murky because
a huge aspect of the conspiratorial sort of anti government nature of the UFO discourse,
A good chunk of it didn't all start, but a good chunk of
it began in the nineteen eighties after the whole Dodie Benewitz Bill Moore thing.
You had a huge sort of uproar in the UFO community because one of their
own was used as a sort of active disinformation agents and spy. Basically Bill
Moore sort of admitted and I think was eighty nine, So you had a
whole group of the UFO sort of enthusiasts and researchers who went through this era
where massive distrust was formed for the government because the belief was that the government
purposely disinforms the public on the UFO phenomenon. Tie that in with every single
kind of tropish mythology of alien bodies and bunkers, you know, Delta,
New Mexico being some massive underground cavernous you know base where aliens gun to laser
gun fights with marines like you know whatever. Right, Like this massive strange
collection of myths and stories spun out in the nineteen eighties to form really what
we're dealing with. I think today there's always been mistrust. Kiho talked about
it, but it wasn't to the same effect, I don't think as as
it occurred in the eighties and into now. And really what occurred in the
late eighties into the nineties was really the seeds of the disclosure movement. Right,
the government knows everything, not only that they have bodies, they have
you know, they have downed UFOs that they've recovered at crash sites, and
they're storing them and they're reverse engineering them, and the whole Bob Blazar thing,
right, Like, really you got to the seeds of this notion of
disclosure really started to sort of plant and take a root in the eighties and
the nineties, and now we're dealing with the full blown plant, right,
Like, we're dealing with actually a forest that is disclosure right now, this
disclosure movement right extra politics, And you know, it's really tough to pull
yourself out of that history because ultimately our culture is formed by that history.
The UFO community is formulated by those historical ideas, and now we're having to
try and disassociate ourselves from that. No one wants to be another Benowitz,
right, And no one wants to bump into another Doty, Sorry Richard,
but no one does, right, No one wants to become that guy.
Yeah, so we we there's a lot of caution, I think in the
UFO community because we've been duped before. We've been duped since the fifties,
but we've been duped before, and it really stung in the eighties. So
so I can imagine why some UFO researchers, especially those who lived through the
eighties, and we're really into UFOs in the eighties and we're kind of part
of that that that collection of people are are going to remain hesitant and are
going to remain cautious with this whole A tip you know, to the stars
thing. The younger generation, people like myself who were not involved in the
eighties, that's history. To me, It's a history lesson. It's not
something I experienced personally. So so you know, I'm going to approach it
from a different angle. Potentially, I'm not going to have the same reservations.
However, I'm also not, you know, an idiot, and I'm
not going to nationally approach it blindly either and just you know, jump into
the pool without looking what's in the water first. So so I think,
you know, you know, you're to get the long way around here to
your question. To answer it is there's there there needs to sort of still
be vigilance. I think I think we still need to kind of be critical.
We need to be open minded that we're not being duped or this isn't
some sort of government thing. But you know, we also need to kind
of pay attention to the history that that's that's been with the UFO community for
a long time. There is a history of disinformation and manipulation, to to
manage the message to manuf as Gnome Chomsky says, to manufacture our consent,
because ultimately that's kind of what a lot of UFO discourse is, right,
You're manufacturing stories so that we buy into them, right, and then we
we chase that goose versus sort of the actual objective. Right, that makes
sense? Yeah, And what inspired you to do this? What inspired you
to write the book? Well, in university, my my background is in
culture studies and critical theory and philosophy and history. So my interest is in
how communities form and how cultures form. And I've always kind of been into
UFOs and science fiction and that kind of thing. So it was kind of
just a natural progression for me. I met some interesting people. I met
Chris Rakowski, who kind of pushed me into this world. I started doing
research, realized how interesting it was, and and that, you know,
the UFO community was a very unique subculture. I am prepared to argue,
and I do argue in the book that the UFO community is is unlike all
other subcultures because we're not just we're not just about UFOs. There's a whole
bunch of other stuff going on. With the UFO community. There's there's religious
like you said earlier, sort of religious component, there's a philosophical component,
there's an economic component, there's a political component. So when we compare ourselves
to other subcultures, not many have the same not many have had the same
sort of varied array of ideologies and and and I sort of things that structure
identity like we do. So I argue sort of towards the end of the
book that we need to look at the UFO subculture differently. We are not
a subculture per se, but we're actually and I refer to us as sort
of I sort of use the term where an exoculture, because it's not that
we're alien in any way, but we sort of mirror this alien in a
sense. We are other. We're so othered from the mainstream. We kind
of challenge the mainstream and toss it on its head and force it to kind
of look at itself because we almost represent it in some weird mirror way.
So I don't want to spoil too much about the book, but that's kind
of where the book concludes, that we are so different from other subcultures that
we can't really refer to ourselves as a subculture. See, And I think
that's a great argument because something of course I'm thinking of all the time in
positioning, you know, where we position ourselves and how do I position myself
or how with open minds, how do we position open minds trying to be
a journalistic organization that is more akin to organizations that are not in the UFO
community, that are you know, news organizations. And I even find that
kind of dichotomy with my fellow people in the press, where it's kind of
like, uh, you know when it luckily they're they're usually very open,
especially the publicians and stuff, but scientists not so much. It's kind of
like they do see a difference between UFO people and other people, and it's
very odd. And even as you're speaking, I'm thinking of what are other
groups that are similar, and I can't think of one. Yeah, no,
no, I would say, there's there's not really other There's no,
there's not many other subcultures that have in their sort of structure of identity something
that could potentially invade the planet, you know what I mean, Like,
no one's really dealing with that in their subculture. So we have sort of
incredible political ideologies present in our subculture, and we often lap in these incredible
conspiratorial communities. Right. The QAnon conspiracies has some has somehow kind of integrated
into the UFO community. Right. You have sort of the Deep State and
sort of Cabbalism and Luciferianism integrating itself into the UFO community. Right, So
we're we're this odd community of individuals who have this sort of weird stuff kind
of constantly popping into it. And like I said, it often does have
political movements. There's there's I was signing to someone recently, there's the UFO.
He's a UFO guy. He's kind of an enthusiast, but he talks
about how like Marxism and communism and socialism are starting to kind of very highly
leftist ideology starting to kind of find themselves into UFO communities. So, you
know, we we we're evolving and we're changing. It's an interesting little community
we live in. It's sort of growing. I mean, it's morphing.
It's kind of like as it it this information, especially this new more credible
information. As a navy adopts, you know, kind of a pro UFO
stance. It seems like the concept of this community kind of grows and at
the same time, and maybe this is a fear with a lot of people
dissipates in a way as far as it's cohesiveness. Sure, yeah, I
agree. I think if I think if to the Stars has has sort of
shown us anything, it's that as technology improves, especially in regards to military
technology, we're starting to get evidence now of of potential you know, UFO
events or or paranormal incidents that can't just be written off as as a pilot
seeing something or as you know, a radar operative who just didn't get too
much just who hasn't gotten enough sleep, right, Like, now there's enough
technology now that we're starting to track a lot of the stuff and we're getting
a lot of corroberative evidence of different phenomena. You know, we can you
know, I'm sure we can have a debate as to you know, the
validity of some of these cases. But regardless, what's not in question is
we're getting a lot better at tracking stuff and seeing stuff. All of our
technology is getting much more conducive to seeing stuff that it shouldn't see. Right,
So, so this is going to definitely change the UFO. The UFO
discourse. Right, The TTSAS as a cultural movement has shifted the discourse already,
the uphology and UFO research is now different because of Tom DeLong, Lue
Alizondo and the rest coming together. And again we can debate whether it's better
or worse. That's not what I'm here to talk about. All I'm here
to talk about is just the discourse has shifted. Right. We now view
the UFO phenomenon differently than we did in twenty sixteen. So I think that
that we're going to see the importance of TTSA the further down in time or
the further sort forward in time we go, right, And again I want
I want to stress like what I mean by importance is their influence. And
again I don't want to talk about good or bad. I just want to
kind of talk about that they are quite an importantly sort of influential cultural organization
for our subculture. And I wrote in twenty seventeen like there's no point in
talking about whether to the Stars is good or bad. It doesn't matter.
What's going to happen though, is it's going to really change things. It's
going to change the game. And and I stated this two years ago,
and I'm happy that I'm I'm okay to kind of keep falling back on those
words because because I think I'm right, and I think it's going to play
out. We're dealing with something that that like something's begun and we're not sure
where it's going, and it's going to become totally different in five years.
The conversation we're going to be having in five years is going to be unbelievable.
I think you're right. And you know what I find interesting too is
as people kind of who view themselves, who really their identity is around all
of this UFO stuff, I think that they can they sometimes feel entitled or
at least to have to be able to say, you know, well,
you're not one of us because you weren't here in the get go and you're
a Tom DeLong follower, you know, and and you can't be one of
us. We're not accepting you. But really, when you have, especially
someone like him, who already has this very cohesive, strong community built,
and if they say, hey, we're here, there's nothing you can do
about it, They're absolutely right. There is nothing any anybody who would wish
to do something about it could do something about it, so despite how people
may want things to go. You know, it's kind of these major shifts
that are happening despite people liking them or not. Right, Yeah, I
agree that you see all these feuds online that occur right between different groups and
different individuals in the UFFUL community as to whether TTSA is good or bad or
whether their evidence is good or bad. And I personally have have been on
both sides, you know, Like, I'm perfectly fine to point out that
the chain of custody documentation on some of the stuff is still missing, or
we don't have it yet, maybe it's still classified. Whatever, the point
is, we're not really sure where some of this content comes from. And
that's a fair statement. I'm not being critical in the I think TTSA is
good or bad by saying that. I'm just simply pointing it out because I
tend to believe I'm a hack journalist whose duty it is to kind of point
that stuff out. So where people kind of get stuck though, is again
in that you're either with us or against us mentality, like you mentioned,
right, and fundamentally it doesn't matter, Like fundamentally it doesn't matter whether you're
pro TTSA or anti TTSA because that ship has sailed. Like you're at this
point, you're kind of pissing into the wind now, like you know,
like move on, right, move on because it's here and it's not going
anywhere. And at the end of the day, all the people who are
pro TT say, all the people to all the people who are ANTID say
they're not going anywhere either, right, So just stop yelling at each other.
Right, it's a distraction, Like you're clogging up my Twitter feed and
let me get to the stuff I actually need to look at in order to
do proper research or stay in touch with the people I need to stay in
touch with. So you know that that's that's my inherent my inherent beef with
with the UFO community sometimes is we waste a lot of time, I think,
going after one another for things that we can't control anymore. Right,
you know, if if if to the stars is the boulder that's rolling down
the mountain, there's no point standing in front of it because you're just gonna
get hit or you're gonna jump out of the way. You know that that
ball is rolling, so I don't know, you don't even bollow it or
anything. But yeah, I think that's an important mesage. You got to
deal because it's here. Yeah, so cool. I guess my final question
would because we're about out of time, is the future. What do you
see as a future for this UFO community or or for I guess, the
impact on that this interest in their broader society. Yeah. I think I
think we're going to see a few things. I think we're going to see,
like, like I mentioned sort of just now, ttsa's influence sort of
growing and spreading. We're going to see I think a lot more public discourse
in the mainstream concerning UFOs. What's not going to change is not going to
be discussions about you know, intelligent others or aliens or you know, anything
like that. It's going to be kind of the same status quo line of
people are seeing unidentified things in the sky. It doesn't mean it's aliens,
it's just they're unidentified. So you know, let's start looking at this a
little closer. So I think that's good. I think we're going to kind
of see that shift to a more open discourse about the fact that anomalous phenomena
occur. I think that's going to be one shift I think we're we're going
to start to see a slow decline if it's already happening of some of these
other individuals who make bold claims about you know, being soldiers on Mars fighting
blue chickens. I think we're going to start to see that stuff wane a
little bit. You're always going to have kind of the UFO religious aspect,
but I think that sort of group is going to the steam of that is
going to start depleting, and they're going to just kind of run out of
steam within the next five years or so, I think I think that people
are going to move on. Those are sort of my two predictions, at
least because I think the UFO I think we're going to go through a wave
of UFO sort of enlightenment in the next five years. I think the Scientific
Coalition for Eufology is a good move. I think they are going to maybe
shed some more light at least intellectually on the phenomenon. And I think I
think people who are interested in UFOs are going to jump on that bandwagon rather
than you know, time traveling humans and and sort of the more ridiculous aspects
of the discourse. Sorry, I don't mean it's term ridiculous the more out
there right interpretations of the discourse, because at the end of the day,
we're all kind of unified by our interest in the UFO phenomenon, and if
we can, if we can achieve that interest by looking at it in ways
that makes sense, we're going to do that versus going to ways that don't
make sense. Doesn't mean the far out stuff's going to disappear. It will
always sort of be there, but maybe ringed in a bit. I mean,
because of course you have conspiracies in in every genre of thought, and
so they'll certainly be there, but maybe just not quite as wild as it
is. Yeah, I think I think we'll see a growth of of ufology
that it is, like I said, more more reasoned, more rational,
more logical. I think I think that's going to occur. We're going to
it goes through waves. I think it's going to kind of go up and
down. So I think we're going to kind of enter that era for the
next little bit. I'm sure eventually that will go away and we'll go back
to the totally woogle like wild stuff. But you know, we're going to
enjoy for the next few years, hopefully this more rational version of pufology.
Well, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. Where's the best place for
people to go to get more MJ? And also to get your book?
Sure, so if you want to buy my book, it's available all over
where books are sold, the you know, Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
all those places. However, if you want in sort of the one stop
shop for for my content, you can go to my website which is www
dot Mjbanias dot com or my blog which is www dot terra obscurity, and
that will link to everything that I do, all my different articles, so
you can you can check those two out as well as my YouTube channel.
It's brand new, well it's not brand new, it's a couple months old
now, but my YouTube channel is the YouTube dot com forward slash Mjbanis,
or you can just go to YouTube and type in my name mjban Ice.
And I'm trying to actually get to a thousand subscribers by July thirty first,
and we're getting close. So if you're on the YouTube and you sort of
see my content, please go to my channel and click subscribe. I release
a video every Tuesday and I have my live show every Thursday called Cafe Obscure,
so there's always plenty of new stuff popping up on that channel. Well,
you know what, there was a lot I wanted to talk to you,
especially related to your YouTube and some of what you've been releasing there.
But you know what, we'll just do this again in a few weeks and
then maybe we can help generate some more likes for your page and everything there
that way. But yeah, let's do this again in a few weeks to
talk about some of those other topics. I wanted to cover the book stuff
right now. But thank you so much. That was super interesting and thanks
again for coming on the show. It has been a pleasure. It's always
an honor to be on Open Minds. Thank you. Thank you so much
to MJ for being on the show once again. Be sure to check him
out at Tara Obscura. That is Tara obscura dot net. You might even
have our time spelling that. It's te r r a second word O b
sc you are a. If you just google that, you'll find him.
I'm sure if you just google his name, you can spell his last name
b A N I A S. MJ. Benaias so I love these talks.
I mean, a lot of you are like, you know, I
want to hear more about TDSA and hate tip. Of course, we've been
beating that to death, but there's more and more news coming out on a
regular basis, Like you heard that me and Martin discussing at the beginning of
the show. However, I think this stuff is important too, self reflective,
thinking of the effect on society as a whole, and then also you
know, how we fit into things. And I think that this discussion is
really important because I think he's very insightful and this idea of you know,
this non cohesiveness when it comes into interest in these sort of things. So
I thought that was a great discussion, very insightful. So I highly recommend
that you all follow what MJ is up to and check him out at Tara
Obscura. I also want to thank those of you who are new Patreon patron
So thank you to Kevin Duncan, Frod Mark Jamie Frod. I'm not sure
if I'm spelling that. Maybe it was Froda. I'm not sure if I'm
saying that correctly, but thank you all. Anyway, we had that T
shirt giveaway last time, so that we'll be getting mailed out soon to the
winner, and then I'll be posting on patron some more stuff here soon.
Also, Now, I did say that when I went to Oregon, i'd
post some exclusive stuff. It just, you know what, It's hard for
me because I don't I like to share with everybody what I'm up to.
So I was gonna do that last bit of audio, you know, exclusive
for just my patrons, but sorry, patrons, I decided to share that
with everybody. However, I do have some cool stuff that I will be
sharing with just you all. And the cool thing about being a patron too
is you keep up to speed on everything I'm doing because I update and post
there, and then we can converse back and forth as well. It's definitely
the best way to converse with me as far as unless you send me email,
because on social media, you know, it's rare that I can get
to answer everybody who asked me questions. But so anyway, thank you so
much to my patrons. Again, we'll have more exclusive info, and for
those of you who are not patrons on my Patreon, please consider consider doing
so. Because I do giveaways, I give exclusive information and it helps me
in this business because if I'm not making money, I can't really do much.
And you know this is in defense of people who do charge. I
know a lot of you pay for Martin Willis's podcast, you know, and
I do not. You'll notice in entertainment or in media, especially in their
everybody's figuring out how to make money these days online and this stuff. You
can't get it done without money. A lot of people complain, you know,
why do we have to charge for this, that or the other.
But if we weren't charging, then it wouldn't happen. That's just the way
the world works. Nothing's for free, and not all of us are billionaires
like Bigelow or Elon Musk or something where we can spend a ton of money
and time doing this. So, you know, that's why you should anybody
that you like that's doing some good work, you know, patronize them.
Don't complain about having to pay to see one of their lectures or something.
You should be You should feel good about supporting these people and their work.
I certainly do. I buy books from these people. I love to go
on and I'm a patron for several other people on Patreon myself, so a
lot of good stuff going on out there that you have to check out.
Speaking of which, Dave Beatty, we had him on not too long ago,
filmmaker. He did this Nimics Encounter documentary. That's one of the things
that there's a link to that in the Open Minds News on the front page.
So go check that out because he just posted a new version and it's
great. He's got more witnesses and lots of cool stuff going on there.
Also the International UFO Congress. Of course there's always stuff going there. I
told you guys to buy those lamps quickly because of course they all sold out
those levitating UFO lamps at the UFO Congress store. But we will be getting
in more. Also, some of you might have noticed that we will be
at Alien Con, so I'm going to be speaking there. That's an A
and LA. But I'll be doing a bunch of talks there June twenty first
to twenty third, So that's going to be a lot of fun end as
usual, and we bring tons of stuff. So if you want to come
say hi or actually purchase this stuff from us, that's cool too. So
you'll see the UFO Congress there and me doing talks. Otherwise, let's see
what else is going on. I think that's everything, But we are posting
more and more speakers as the time goes on. We've got some more exciting
speakers to post for the UFO Congress, you'll definitely want to be there.
And if you register this week, that means the week of what is today,
the twenty seven. If you register by June first, you can use
the code save twenty uppercase save I'm sorry, save thirty uppercase save three zero
and you'll get thirty days off of multi day passes. And you'll see that
our passes are very affordable, especially compared to others out there. So this
is going to be a lot of fun. I hope you guys show up
and come say hi. It's always fun to hang out with you. That
is it for today's show. I want to say thank you to Caleb Hanks
for the opening and closed music. Thank you to Systematics for the bumper music.
Thank you to Martin Willis a Podcast UFO for joining us with the news,
and of course thank you to MJ. Benias for being a wonderful guest
yet again on the show. And of course I want to thank you the
listeners for listening. Guess what we got next week? That's right, the
big show with lou Elizondo, and so far everything's looking good. I think
it's really going to happen. So it looks like this will be the first
interview post show. So if the unidentified show is going to air on Friday,
I'm going to be interviewing him soon after that and then we'll post that
next week for you all. So thank you all so much for listening.
Until next time. Audio Smooth Turtles at mus