Hello, and welcome to the show. I'm Martin wilishire host and I hope
you're happy and healthy and safe, and we have a great show for you
this evening. And the first segment we have, and I'm really excited to
say this, we have Alejandro Rojas coming out. He's checking in for just
a little bit and after that we're going to play a trailer and introduced our
next guest, which is Philip Mantel, and he'll be discussing the new series
that he's in the name of that is called Alien Topsy the Search for Answers
and a little spoiler here he knows what the answers are in that one,
but it's a It should be really interesting and how he came about, all
of the information and all the hurdles he had to go through. It should
be a really great series. And our second segment, or I should say
the last two segments, we have Sarah Scoalis and she is to discuss her
new book. They are already here UFO Culture and why we see Saucers and
I really do expect that to be a very interesting conversation, So looking forward
to that. Check out this week's blog. And that's by Charles Lear and
the name of that it's called Borderland Science and UFOs and that's over at podcast
ufo dot com. And while you're there, anyone can support the show,
and I do thank everyone that does. Couldn't do it without you, thank
you very much. But we are on Patreon and that link is over there
on the new bar. Lastly, I am I'm a person that likes to
work all the time and I'm not working. I'm like you or most of
you out there should say, some people really are still working, but I'm
not. So to keep myself from going stir crazy, I'm a former galleried
artist, so I decided to paint again. And here, if you're on
YouTube, you can see this is my latest, one of my latest creations,
and it's called Loan Witness. And the next one that I am doing
is called mass Sighting. And let me pull that up in just a second.
Here, let's see and that is right here. And so that one
is Matroshka dolls. Over in Russia, everyone has these little nesting dolls,
and so I've always kind of been baffled by that. And what if a
UFO went over outside a window and the only witness to it was those silly
metroshcus. Anyway, my art website is Martin Willis art dot com. Go
check it out, you peruse it, and hopefully you'll see some interesting things
over there. And you know what, that is really enough from me tonight
and my good friend Alejandro. I'm so glad to see you back. Yes,
hello, good buddy. Hey there, So you are doing good these
days, you're isolating like us all, but it's really good to have you
here. And we don't have that long. So let's get right into what
we can talk about. Okay, we'll get into a couple of things.
You can say, I got my hat on because I've got the COVID here
because i've been you know, haven't got the cut in a couple of months.
So it's getting to kind of yeah, strigling crazy. But yeah,
So a couple of things I wanted to come on and talk about. First,
the SEU, the Society for the Study of New AP or the Scientific
Coalition for the Study of for UAP studies. I know it is a tricky
one. It's a study. It is a mouthful, that's a I've never
screwed it up that badly though, And of course I do it live here
for your audience. But yeah, anyway, a great organization of science minded
people that are looking into this topic, and their conference was canceled, just
like so many have been. They were going to have one this summer.
The last one was great of course, with Alesando, Kevin Canuth, some
other great speakers. They're displaying some of the science around you know, this
topic. So what they've decided to do, and you and I are helping
them do this, is to have speakers live do a live stream where people
can ask questions, they can kind of do a short synopsis of a topic.
So we're gonna have they're going to be about an hour long. First
thirty minutes it's going to be them doing their lecture or presentation. The last
half will be Q and A from the audience that are live chatting there,
just like they're doing here right now. So that'll be fun. You and
I will be mostly in the background making sure everything's working and making it all
happen. This first one is going to be Robert Powell, and this is
going to be exciting. It's going to be Wednesday, which I guess is
tomorrow from when don't know. It's a week it's May six a week Yeah,
no, oh is it it is tomorrow? Oh my god, you
better get ready. But oh man, yeah, okay, yeah. So
it's tomorrow six pm on East coast, So that makes it like what two
pm my time with the time zones here in the Pacific. Yeah, and
uh and so that's what time it's going to be. It's going to be
on the SEU YouTube page. Martin's going to have a link below, so
you guys can check that out to definitely be there. The Ubatuba materials anomalous
materials that were found. Some people believe it's part of the UFO. We'll
see what Robert says. He's done his own research on it. Yeah.
Um. Other Wise, I did want to comment real quick if I got
a minute, oh four more minutes or so. Sure. Nice. So
here's what I wanted to say. I think it's important to remember, of
course, everybody's aware of these the DoD has come out to say that these
navy videos are real and that they've just authorized the release of them. I
think perspective is really important with all of this. And the perspective is the
New York Times verified those videos veracity when they wrote their article back in twenty
seventeen. So although it's great that they came into the DoD has kind of
come clean on this. You know, they're saying that they just really authorized
them, you know, the other day to be released. Not really.
That is highly highly debatable, as sleights like Kane about it, and she
said she won't do an interview, But they stand by their reporting, and
their reporting has stand the test of time. Those videos were verified by The
New York Times. We had the people directly involved with capturing those jet fighter
videos, including some of the jet fighter pilots involved that we're testifying back then,
Kevin Day, the radar expert. We have all these people to verify
those videos are real, so we know they're real. So what we've seen
with the Navy and the DoD is their response to the release of these videos,
and the DoD has not been so good. The Navy has been great.
They're like, hey, we take you AFO seriously, this is a
big deal to us. We verify those videos are real. The DoD has
been denying everything and they've had to change their story. And here again they
originally said the d D had nothing to do with those videos. Those videos
weren't real. Now they're having to go back and say they are real with
that little dab at. Elesando still the guy who ran that a tip program
saying that they weren't unauthorized before. However, Elesando has provided the DD nineteen
ten or actually George Knapp was able to leak that and that was verified as
real. Also, we have email correspondence between Elsando and the Navy where the
Navy's like, okay, yeah, fine here they stamped that form cleared for
public consumption or a very similar term, and so those are out. So
I think that's an important perspective, is that we see how this is all
rolling out, and it's been kind of good because it keeps the story going,
getting in the public and of course right now where everybody's kind of trapped
and watching the news, this story's blown up into something big and so many
more people are interested in what's going on. So that's true. Let's kind
of keep that in mind. Yeah, and another thing, you know,
I mean along those same lines, it's like I've been contacted by people that
know I do this show but have no interest in UFOs, and it's like
it's kind of filling in the gaps where that twenty seventeen story kind of missed
a certain segment of people, and it's catching some more of those people that
never saw the first one. Yeah, people need things in chunks. And
the NYQ story was really rich with facts and details and everything. This is
very simple. This is here's some video. They're real have at it.
And I think those simple messages are easily for the public to consume, and
they have more lengths, right right, Well, hey, thank you Alejandro,
and we'll see you tomorrow. And yes, ye see you tomorrow,
see you tomorrow, and everyone, as Alejandro said, just go ahead and
check out and the links and the show notes and that live stream will be
there for tomorrow's show on the SEO. Thanks again, Alejandro, my pleasure.
Thank you, all right, talk to you soon. Talk. This
is the Army airfield in Roswell, New Mexico, but in the summer of
nineteen forty seven, something definitely crashed just outside of town. Years later,
it remains of missing dog being studying the alien autopsy film for fourteen years.
If this was, you know, a crush based vehicle from wherever that it
is the most momentous, if I, in human history. It's like having
a jucsaw puzzle with bits missing. It's the case that will not die.
It is shrouded in mystery. The cover up began right from day one.
It became a personal matter for me. A letter cross my desk that would
change things forever. Here was now the opportunity I've been looking for for fourteen
years. The game was a foot. The flying head and bound and the
United States Air Force have changed their explanation at least three or four times.
Perhaps in the desert of Roswell, New Mexico, in nineteen forty seven,
we had first contact with beings not of this Earth. Information still comes to
light. An eleven page document was dumped online. Hold the alien autopsy memo.
What we're doing is we're placing it into the public domain. The same
period is please invest the game. He owes it to Mundine to tell his
story. The Amnion autopsy film is a hoax. That's not the end of
the story. All right, So Philip, what an amazing trailer that is.
That's pretty exciting. Can't wait to watch the series. Yeah, thank
you, Marching, You know it's I think the trailer does its job,
and hopefully the series will do exactly that as well. Yeah, and right,
and you know during the show, I mean during the trailer itself,
you say, um, you know, so it's a hoax and that is
the that to me, that's one of the most interesting parts of this because
it was so convincing, just a quick, um, you know, story
about my own self during that time. I remember walking through my living room
seeing the alien autopsy on the news and looking at it and just going,
oh, my goodness, and this is this is real. This is really
you know, they're really here. Wow. And then I went outside and
worked on the house so the world didn't crash like so many people. Uh
you know, I mean I thought about it for a long time and just
thought, wow, you know, this is there's really something to this.
And you know how many I mean that must have had like an everlasting effect
on a lot of the world because that went everywhere. Yeah, I did
watch it. I mean, you know, it begun twenty five years ago,
and despite all my work, they're still arguing about it now. That
are still people believe it's it's it's the genuine article, right, And actually
you and I had the conversation yesterday. There's still some people in the UFO
community that are talking about it as if it's real now, and we'll get
into this a little bit more, but I think there was some type of
resurgence maybe last year sometime where people were talking about it again, what was
all that about? Yeah? Last last year there was two email threads that
were dumped online, one of which was from two thousand, two thousand and
one, and it was addressed to Bigelow. Bob Bigelow, the US billionaire.
Now, at that time he had his own official study group, which
was called NIDS National Institute for Discovery Sciences. Number of people he employed there
was doctor Halpotsof, doctor Colm Keller, doctor Eric Green sorry Eric Davis,
and of course the main one was doctor Christopher Green. He's also known as
Kick Green. Now Kick Green formerly worked for the CIAA. He is a
medical doctor, a PhD. And in this eleven page email thread, basically
they are clarifying statements he's made previously. Those statements were pretty much all about
the alien autopsy film. Now, in one statement, he says, back
in nineteen eighty seven, so KAT eight, he had an official briefing at
the Pentagon where he was shown a film that was exactly the same as the
alien Autopsy film we all know and love, you know. And he then
went home to give his own professional medical opinion about the alien Autopsy film and
what we see or don't see on it. And he even mentions right near
the end of having some dealings with the gentleman who mooted it, Raised Santilly
and some of his staff, and he basically said they weren't very nice and
they weren't too bright either, you know. So that's what the resurgence of
interest was. Even Ray Santilli came out of hiding. I did a couple
of interviews saying I knew the big documents somewhere that would prove my film Israel.
And of course they didn't prove that. They are one man although he
is a you know, a gentleman and a scholar and an educated man,
they are just one man's opinion. And even I going to mention in this
email thread, I remember being contracted by coom callerher back at that time,
and all I did was actors like of Liaison, put him in touch with
Ray Samtilly and leave him to get on with it. Martin, Now,
how did this originally say come across your desk, or did you run into
someone that started talking about this how all that happened? No, well,
I mean the film came out in nineteen ninety five, but the story really
starts in nineteen ninety. At that point, one of the jobs I did
was press officer for the British UFO Research Association, and a letter cross my
desk from a company called the Milling Group next in London, signed by Race
Antilly. But they were asking if we could help, you know, with
a general UFO documentary. I wrote back, you know, this is the
days before email and the Internet, and sent them some information and then we
had some conversations myself and Race Sentilly. It was clearly didn't know much about
the UFO subject, and then out of the blue he said, well,
Philip, you know I actually have film of the UFO crash at Roswell,
and you know the creature has been dissected autopsied. So my immediate reaction is
will show me still the argument when or the discussion when? Yes, I
can no account. So I eventually met Race Sundi in London. He told
me this story of being in the States looking for old music clips of the
rock and roll stars before they were famous, you know, Elvis and and
so on, because his business was music. And he said he bought a
piece of Elvis film from an old boy. He was out of copyright,
so he just paid cash and everything was okay, he says. And this
old boy said, well, you know, before I was a freelance camera
man, I was in the military. And in nineteen forty seven I was
taken to Roswell and I filmed the UFO crash and you know, the dead
aliens. Are you interested? So Santilis and I went to his home.
He got these these canasters of film out, put them on a projector,
showed me them on the wall. I looked around the house. I could
see his photographs have been uniform and things like that. I phone Kodak because
there's an edgecode on the film and they said, yeah, that's nineteen forty
seven. And he said, I agreed to buy it cash. No questions
asked, you know, no names involved. So I came. I just
said, well, that's a great story, ray, but show me yes
I can No, I can't. So in the end I said I'll forget
it, you know. So we jumped forward to nineteen ninety five and I
was sent a VHS cassette which was the movie Roswell. Starting Carl mcclack learned
it was released, he I believed by Sony Music Sony, and I thought,
I wonder if that Santilly chapstill claims to have that Roswell footage. So
took out his business card, which had kept phoned him. In said yeah,
of course I do, Phillip, but you don't believe me. That's
well, I can't believe until you show me. Okay, make an appointment
with my secretary and come on down. I'll live two hundred miles north of
London. So I did that. My wife and I went down and Hey
Presto in his office. He started to show us the film, and over
the coming weeks and months, showed us other film as well. So I
asked Ray what his intentions were to do with it Martin then he said,
well, I'm going to put it on home video. I'm gonna make my
own little documentary and you'll be able to buy it in your local store or
you can, you know, buy a copy direct from me. So I
asked him because one of the other things I did I was beautiful as conference
organizer. Well, already at the conference organized for August of that year.
This was now around about April time, and I said, we show it
at our conference, and he said, okay, well we shook hands.
He said, will you help me with my documentary? Of course, Now,
I thought, Martin, you know, we need to get this out
into the public domain. You know, I was confident that if we got
it out into the public domain, somebody might come forward and say, yeah,
that's that's real. That's my grandfather he told me about this story.
Or no, that's me, it's a fake. I'm one of the actors.
And it was filmed in such and such studio, and in the meantime,
you know, the story slipped out into the public domain via the media,
and that's when the various television companies became involved. And of course,
eventually they actually did turn up at our conference and show it for the first
time in public, took you know, questions from the audience, and the
following day it was shown on television around the world. In the United States,
it was alien Autopsy Fact or fiction on Fox. So popular was it,
Martin, they ordered the producer to immediately make two more extended editions of
it. You know, and you know, we went to China, it
went to Rossia, you know, the Arab continent. I mean, it
went everywhere, and it just you know, took off. It was almost
like a life form of its own, Martin. It just world. And
so when when did things start falling apart? When did you start seeing the
cracks in this, in this whole thing and realized there was something fishy with
it? Well, like I said, it became quite personal. I was
I was accused of being raised until his accomplice, being paid tens of thousands
of pounds by him. And but what in reality what I was doing,
Martin, I was being I was supporting rate of his face and in public,
but behind closed doors or trying to get to the truth. And it
was a special effects company in the US that give us the first indications.
They were called the really Dangerous Company. They looked at the film frame by
frame, you know, and then they set out a list of things for
you to look for and at what time to look at it. You know.
So when I'm where and you saw these little things, didn't prove it
was a hope sort of fake Martin, What it did it gave you the
indication that there's something not right here, you know. So I went on
from that and like I said, that our five different types of five different
films involved here. We have one which is called the tent footage, which
is shot in a dark room with a couple of guys behind it. There
are two different autopsy films, one of which has been released on television.
Then we have the debris film, which a girl has been shown on TV.
And then we even have an alleged interview with this mysterious cameraman. So
there are five different films, so you had to look at them all separately
and trying because they all tell a story in their own right Martin. So
as soon as we've got some information on one and then moved on to the
next one and the next, but we didn't know favidence to show that there's
definitely wasn't something right here. But we didn't have that final breakthrough to prove
it. I knew early on that right sound till he didn't make this film.
It just wasn't that type of manner. He never made anything, Martin.
He would buy things and sell it and license it and sub license it,
but he never actually made anything himself, you know. He would get
old sixties pop groups and have them reformed and re record some of their old
songs. You know. So again it was nothing new, so come around
two thousand and six times, so a long time afterwards, so untill he
made a movie called Alien Autopsy. And I've got a name of a gentleman,
but I only had his first name. I've even got the name of
the sculpture involved, and his name was Spiros. Out of the blue,
Spiros stepped forward, and his name is Spiros Malaris. He's got many strings
to his bow as a young man who was trained as a motor mechanic.
He's a filmmaker, he's a magician. He is a very good artist in
his own right. He's a businessman. And Spiros again makes soundilly quite by
accident, and sound till he told him the same wild story he told me.
And Spiros has a wicked sense of humor, you know, And just
so happens, his best friend was a Royal Academy trained sculpture. His name
is John Humphries. And he said to sound till me and my friend can
make you a real autopsy film. And they went away and did it.
They made it in Spirossa's sister's apartment in London, which was being renovated at
the time, so it didn't make any difference if they made a bit of
a mess. You know, it was already in a mess. And the
budget for it was thirty five thousand pounds. And the reason there's two autopsy
films, for example, is the first one they made has a mistake in
it, which they didn't realize until after they'd made it. So they'd still
got the you know, the cast for the dummies, so they put another
dummy. You make it overnight, and they went back the next day and
they've been burgled. And this is he imagine the look on the burglar's face
when he walked in and saw that. So they got the next dumbing out
that had a fault on it, which is a big hole in its leg
because there was an air pocket. But there was no time normally left to
do anything, so they improvised. They went to the butchers and stuck some
bones and some bits of stuff in it and burnt it. That's why you
see a big hole in the creature's leg. Wow. And the rest,
as they say's history. Wow. Yeah, we're just out of time here,
but real quickly he's made has he made like millions of dollars on this
until he made millions around the world marching the millions of dollars. It's a
good investment. Yeah, I guess so. And and you really can't say
fraud because he could say it's, you know, for entertainment or whatever.
I don't know how all that works, but I know he's never been charged
or anything. But how can someone actually see this? It's we do have
a link in the show notes, so anywhere this podcast is even on YouTube,
that link is there. But how can you want to tell the listening
audience out there where they can see it? Documents you series Gold Alien Autopsy
Search for the Answers. It's on iTunes as we speak, an we'll be
going on Amazon Prime shortly. Excellent. All right, thanks so much,
Philip, always great, great fun talking to you. You take care of
all right? Okay, hanging everyone, We'll go right back, all right,
welcome back to the show. I'm very excited to announce our guest,
Sarah's goals. And she's a Denver based freelance science writer, contributing writer at
Wired Science and a contributing editor at Popular Science. She's also the author of
the book Making Contact with Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and also
this book we're going to be talking about tonight they are already here, UFO
Culture and Why We See Saucers. And she was previously an associate editor at
Astronomy and public education officer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Green Bank,
West Virginia. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you for having me.
I love to get people. I'm going to say kind of on the
outside. There are a lot of people that are on the show that you
know, are in a lot of people's shows and that are just I don't
want to say making the circuit, but you know along those lines, they're
they're, um, you know, on a lot of different shows and kind
of have a theme. But I saw your book, I didn't get a
chance to read it. I didn't get your book yet. It sounds really
interesting. So you you kind of looked at this subject from the outside and
kind of jumped in. I know you had a sighting. Do you want
to talk about that and introduce yourself please? Sure? Yeah, my name
is sarah' skills. Like you said, and I cover space news, astronomy,
satellites, Earth observation, basically anything that happens in space, which actually
relates to the sighting that I had, which is at the start of the
book. It was in the fall of twenty seventeen, where I'm sure a
lot of people remember, there was a solar eclipse whose path went across the
US, and I traveled with some friends to Wyoming to go see it.
And yeah, we spent all day hiking, watched the eclipse, which was
incredible. Not a UFO, but a good sighting. And then at the
end of the night, we couldn't have a fire because you know, wildfires,
and so we were just sitting outside watching the stars in the freezing dark,
and all of a sudden we see we see a thing and it looks
like a satellite. But then all of a sudden, this searchlight just kind
of sweeps across us and then seems to stop right at us, like a
tractor beam or something that's going to take us up. And you know,
I had never really thought very much about UFOs before, although I've been involved
in reporting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and I was just like,
oh, my gosh, all this time I've been not paying attention to this
topic, and then now here I am, I'm going to be I'm going
to be a witness to something. And then if a few minutes later,
I happened to be with a bunch of scientists and we all kind of deduced
that it was actually in a ridium communications satellite, which kind of flares when
the sun and the sun and you and the satellite are all in the right
position, and it just looks like it's got a spotlight right on you,
which is it's very cool, even though it's not technically a UFO. Yeah,
I've actually I know exactly what you're talking about. You know, when
they hit the even though it's dark. You know, it's a little confusing
to people, but it's dark, but they're still catching The reason you see
them at all is because they're catching some sunlight. And then when they hit
if they can be really they can reflect really really brightly. So I can
see why you were confused by that. But let me just ask you this
right off the top. Do you think people really do see something sometimes that
it's totally unexplainable. Um, I definitely think people see things that they can't
explain. I think it's really hard to determine whether those things are totally unexplained
double but I have I have no doubt that lots of people see lots of
things that they can't explain, and that you know, in every official study
that's been done, there remains some percentage of UFO sightings that can't be explained
as far as we know, either due to lack of data or due to
lack of explanation. So I guess I'm kind of agnostic, but I definitely
think that people in good faith see see things they can't explain. Yeah,
and it sounds like in your book you kind of explore all sides of ufology.
I know you were at the Phoenix UFO Congress in Phoenix. I didn't
meet you there, but I was there at the same time. You talk
about that in your book going there and what kind of an experience it is
to go to one of those conferences, and I'm not sure I think you
were going to another one as well. How many have you gone to in
total? I think I've only been to two, and that was the biggest
one, but and I've been to some more like local or regional, smaller
meetings, but just two big conferences, and that the Congress in Phoenix I
went to just like a month or a month and a half after I started
paying attention to UFOs at all. So it was a very big awakening for
me. Yeah, and it is there is like a culture effect. And
this is you know, part of a book. And I'm sure that's,
you know, part of the reason you wrote it because you can see there's
you know, there can be it can be almost like a religion, and
in some type of ways that how some people will follow, you know,
like a certain I don't want to say cult like um person, but there
are there are some people out there that do have that kind of effect and
people really really listen to that person, whether they're right or wrong. So
but it sounds to me that you you looked into this at all different levels,
and so what did you find, um well, in terms of the
people, I mean, I think what really was interesting to me about the
International UFO Congress itself, especially as an introduction to the whole thing, was
that there were different groups of people, whether they were skeptics or debunkers,
or kind of moderate people or the true believers more on the religion profit side
of things like like you mentioned, but that they were all in the same
place, all listening to the same talks and not punching each other, And
especially in I guess early twenty eighteen when that was happening, it was kind
of novel at the time to see people with very different opinions kind of getting
getting along. Um. And so yeah, I think those those three groups
all play an interesting and important role in upology. And the the true believer
side, who I would say, at least in my opinion, mostly are
true believing about the extraterrestrial hypothesis. You know, people get a lot out
of that, like spiritually or personally and have a community and a belief system,
and I think there's there's value and that, but they might not be
willing to look at the look at evidence that contradicts whatever they're thinking. Um.
And then I feel like the people in the middle, the moderates um
kind of uh, are the ones who are really good at putting UFOs in
context, in history and cultural context and kind of able to look at the
other two sides in a little more of an objective way. And then there's
the the the debunker side, for lack of a better word. And I
know a lot of people in uphology don't like that side, but I kind
of think of it a little bit like UFO peer review, where every field
needs somebody whose job it is to point out the flaws in something. Yeah,
um, that would be that would be very helpful. Um. I
had a scientist on this show, Kevin ganeuth Um. I'm not sure if
you know of him, very very nice guy, very very good, and
he's you know, his attitude is like, you know, if there really
is something to this, he wants to be on the ground level, you
know where where he's right there ready, And so I think it's it's fascinating.
And then, you know, on the other side, when it gets
to UM you mentioned debunkers, it brings me up to a thought of Mick
West His you know a debunker Meta I can't think of the name Meta something
is the name of his UM website, and he is, uh, he's
debunking the last three video of the three videos that were released by you know,
the Pentagon as as they're all airplanes, and you know, a lot
of times he makes total sense on his debunking, and he does really good
diagrams and all that but this one, he's off on this one. And
UM. The reason I say that is, you know, for instance,
would the government, even would the Pentagon actually say, you know, yes,
these are indeed unidentified um And and Mick would have the answer. I
don't. I don't think that that's going to happen. And the airline,
you know, the fighter pilots that saw what they saw, all that,
it's all. It's all interesting. But you know, Um, like you
said, there are different sides. Yeah, and I mean I think,
yeah, even even if you find flaws in Mick West or any other debunkers
explanations, I feel like that's that's good too. And also he would he
would want that, I think. And it I feel like it pushes If
somebody says you're wrong and I'm right, then that kind of pushes the other
side to say, no, here's here's my reason why you're wrong and I'm
right. And I feel like it maybe stirs up a little bit of healthy
debate. M Yeah, that that does make sense. When you were looking
into this topic, did you go back in time or did you stay contemporary?
I went back in time a bit. Um. I there's one chapter
that's all about the early governmental programs um mostly Blue Book, but also the
ones that preceded it. And then also a little bit of the history of
M. Robert Bigelow's interest in UFOs and the paranormal. Yes, and that
that does come up on this show quite a bit. And what did you
what were your thoughts about Bigelow and his his interest and skin Walker Ranch and
all that needs. Yeah, so, yeah, Bigelow is a very interesting
figure because he's this in respectable businessman who has you know, contracts with NASA
technology on the International Space Station. And I think for that reason, he's
able to have this interest in UFOs and the paranormal and still be taken seriously
as as a business person. And so he's been able to use that and
use his money to fund a lot of research into these topics that he finds
personally interesting. And it has seemed like, at least from the outside,
and he didn't want to be interviewed for the book. That didn't happen,
although I would have liked to. But you know, the idea was always
let's go about this scientifically, Let's get the right technology, let's gather this
data, let's get you know, a large scale effort going in a way
that hasn't really existed before. And I think that is admirable. I think
that is a good goal. But my problem with it, after investigating it
for a while is that the rest of us never see that data. Sometimes
we get books about what was found, but it only does so much good
if you collect data and then you don't release it. I think that's been
the complaint of a number of people about that particular um, you know,
uh situation you're talking about, and and mine too. I think I agree
with you there, Um you know, what good is you know, like
for I had Kurt Collins on recently who talked about his uh big gloves association
with moufon and collecting all the you know, all the data, paying for
it during when he was getting funding and all that, and but what is
what good is all of that information? If it's compiled somewhere and never sees
the lighted day, it doesn't do anyone any good. Um, And then
you know, he's on I can't remember was it sixty minutes or he was
on one of these interviews where he said, you know, I've spent more
money on UFOs or this topic than anyone in the world. You know that
type of thing, and you know, they're here, they're you know,
it's happening and blah blah blah. But then again, that's it. We
don't really have, you know, it's kind of it's kind of empty because
we don't have any of that information, and so you just kind of hit
it brick wall when you looked into that. Really, yeah, yeah,
pretty much, I only have the publicly available information that everybody else has.
Really, I would I would love to see the data, and I would
love for him to release it, even if it doesn't show what he or
others hoped it would show. I think it would be useful to the community.
And also that's how that's how science works. And if if these sorts
of studies want to be thought of as science, then they have to be
open and transparent. Yeah. I've said a number of times on this show
that this is such a you know, UFOs are so fleeting, they're unpredictable
when they happen. I had a sighting that I couldn't explain. And when
it happens like that, how are you going to repeat it? You know?
I mean, that's that's the tough part. One of the reasons science
doesn't get involved. And the other is, you know, I've had this
discussion with scientists and it kind of boils down to if you can't solve something
within a certain amount of time, no one is going to fund you.
And what are your thoughts about that as a science writer, Yeah, I
think that's I think that's true. Funding agencies like the you know, the
National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health or any of the national organizations
in the US, I'll want you to be able to deliver results and data
on a reasonable timeline. And then also scientists have to publish papers to remain
employed and get tenure and things like that. So if you're not producing results,
not only are you're you're not going to get money, but nobody's going
to hire you to do things. And that's that's actually something that the SETI
community, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence community, has run into a lot.
They have largely had to be funded by private donors for that very reason because
they're not they're not producing positive results in the same way that other fields might.
And then also it means that young researchers historically haven't really gotten involved because
they need to build up their publication record, and there's just not a way
too. And so it makes sense that that you know, ufology being even
one more step removed from that would be the same. So like to say,
if someone did have a lot of published papers and all of a sudden
they took an interest in this topic, do you think they would be more
able to move ahead than someone just getting started? Yeah? I do,
especially if you know, if a just had tenure at a university or something.
You know, the purpose of tenure is so that you can have intellectual
freedom to pursue whatever kinds of controversial topics that you want and have job security.
So once you've established yourself and gotten to that point, which for a
lot of people doesn't happen until they're, you know, in their forties,
then they might be able to do it. And I think you you know,
you see some version of that among very established scientists. Like I don't
know if you all talked about this on the show ever, but the I
always am worried when I pronounced it, the Amamua, the the space rock
that the chair of Harvard Astronomy said, maybe that's a spaceship, Like there's
there's a reason, Yeah, there's a reason that the chair of Harvard Astronomy
was allowed to say that and keep his job, but if a grad student
said it, they just would not. And so yeah, I think,
yeah, people in powerful positions can do things like that. And that was
like an extra stellar, I mean outer stellar, another solar system or another.
It came elsewhere and you know, oblong shaped and strange and I think
it was even moving strangely, like tossing or something. I'm not sure what
it was doing, but yeah, that that is interesting. Um, you
know, I listened to some astronomy you know, it's called Astronomy Cast and
and then you know, I also listened to what Seth Shawstak his show Big
Picture Science. To listen to that sometimes and it's really interesting how something can
show up and it's so unusual and seems like it has to be or possibly
could be extra terrestrial, and then there's an explanation and it's just the explanation
is we've never seen this before. There's a lot of that happening, and
we'll still happen, I'm sure, Yeah, definitely, But that and that's
why I feel like even though even though sometimes debunking is it can be mean
spirited like coming trying to see if more conventional explanations might fit first before jumping
to another conclusion is useful, I think. And in the end, if
there's something truly extraordinary, then it would it stands up to that and you
can find out that the like the next space rock is a spaceship and not
a not an extra solar object. Right. Um, So December sixteenth,
I think it was twenty seventeen, the New York Times comes out with the
article. And this was shortly after you was in it, shortly after you
started thinking about this topic, and yeah, that was really good time to
jump in if Yeah, it was just a few months after the solar eclipse,
right, And how what do you think that? What do you think
about the the change that has made since that has happened? Yeah, I
think, Um, I mean a lot of things have have totally changed,
And I mean I have my reservations about that article, which I think will
probably talk about at some point. But whatever else it accomplished it you know,
it made UFOs mainstream and it made them official, like this was a
Pentagon program, this is the New York Times. It made them a topic
that was you know, verifiable in some ways and able to be talked about
in polite, intellectual society, and then has also kind of ushered in even
more things at the you know, official political level. There are classified briefings.
The Navy has issued those new guidelines about how to report UFOs like it's
it's gotten a lot of governmental action, and then you know, in the
years since also a lot of mainstream press attention and and uh yeah, very
reputable people talking about them in in a way without what at least study scientists
called the giggle factor of just laughing it all off. Yeah, yeah,
it really changed up. I was right here when all that was happening,
and I saw the changes in And one of the authors of that was on
not too many weeks ago, Leslie Kane, And uh, you know,
so I caught what you said there. You said you had some there was
some things about the article. So let's hear what your your thoughts are.
Um, well, when when I first read the article, I thought,
you know, if this is, if what this article is implying is true,
this is you know, some of the biggest news in history, because
at least in my opinion, the article kind of implied that they did not
come from here that they came from out there and that that the Pentagon was
studying that, and I thought, um, you know, this is something
I would like to look into, and so I just kind of started going
through the story um for Wired magazine. It was an assignment for Wired,
um line by line, trying to figure out what the pieces of evidence were
for each thing that was in there, and UM, you know, there
were there were some red flags for me at the at the beginning, Like
when I first started talking to the Pentagon, they said that they had not
released these videos, which, as you and I'm sure most of your listeners
know, has been kind of a year's long debate that has just kind of
been wrapped up with the with the new official Dood statement that came I think
last week, um or maybe the week before. It's hard to tell time
these days, it is, I know, every day it's the same Um
yeah yeah, um, I yeah, I I. I actually traveled to
the Pentagon to try to get some confirmation on you know what what the program
was studying. Wow, yeah yeah yeah. I had just gotten um a
new airline credit card and had a bunch of miles for free, like you
do when you sign up. So so I just got a last minute of
flight, and yeah, I was trying to sort out what, you know,
what the program's goals were. They would never confirm to me that that
Louis Elizondo, who the article said was the director of the program, even
worked for it. No one could find his resignation letter that was quoted in
the article, and so it just, um, yeah, it just still
started to seem a little bit fishy to me on both sides. Yeah.
Yeah, you know, when I had Leslie on, we were talking about
how careful that that article took two months. I believe she said to actually
write and get out because they're so so careful on fact checking on a story
like that. You know, maybe some stories they don't need anywhere near that,
but that one, like you said, is such a big story.
So they really really tried to cover all the bases. And I know there's
some back and forth. There's been, you know, I've had John Greenwald
on the show. Um, there's um some things that he's uncovered, and
he's actually you know, showed emails um that we're a spokesperson said, you
know, Lewis Alexando did not you know, work here or whatever it was.
But then that was reversed. There was some there's some back and forth,
and there's been many times I guess that there's been misquotes. So it's
really really hard to understand what is real and what is not when it comes
to all this. Yeah, definitely, And that was that was the only
conclusion I could come to when I was writing about it for the book,
is that, um, you know, the Pentagon has reversed itself a few
times on whether it was a program that studied UAP, what their Alexando worked
for them, things like that, and and just the story always, the
official story always keeps changing, and it's um, I feel like now and
throughout history, it's always been in in someone's interest to keep everything um and
not. Yeah, I'm not sure why. I wish I knew why,
but yeah, yeah, I've thought that, you know, perhaps there is
a part of the government compartmentalized or something that might know something, but I
don't, you know, I mean, there's no way, there's no way
to tell. And I had, um, Chris Mellon, who's uh you
know, was part of the DoD on this show of a couple of years
ago, and you know, he said something along the lines well, if
something goes private, then they are not subject congressional um, you know,
evaluation or anything like that. And so in other words, he was just
sort of hinting that something, you know, some information or whatever may go
private and uh, you know, to to protect it. But I don't
know, you know, I mean, um, I was My son was
asking me questions yesterday and I told him about them. I can't remember what
year it was, but there was a dummy warhead that went up, and
um, there was a telescope camera that caught this disc you know, shooting
you know, raise at it a dummy disk and the guy taking the video
didn't even know about it until he got called in. And uh, you
know, I was told that this didn't happen and you know, kind of
go away type of thing. Um, and that that video exists somewhere.
Videos from the Nimits case incident they exist somewhere if you had to. I
don't know what you think about speculating, but if you did, where would
you think something like this would would end up? Where would it go?
And people say there's you know, Roswell stuff somewhere. You know, I
don't know about any of that. Yeah, I don't know if I know
enough about government file cabinets to know where they would be. UM, but
UM, yeah, I I mean I would be very interested in things like
the full videos from the nimits and then also things like the radar returns.
And it's kind of it's kind of what we were just saying about Robert Bigelow,
like if this this data exists, and it's kind of very frustrating that
it's that we don't have it. And yeah, I don't know where it
would be. But UM, you mentioned John Greenwald a minute ago and his
book UM about the um alleged government cover up of UFOs documents and number of
times that the government has tried to bury various things like, um, I'm
not remembering exactly which document it is, but he tried to get some original
records UM without redactions and it turned out that those have been destroyed and only
the redacted versions existed. Yeah, and so I mean there's there's tricks like
that, And UM, it is true that governments don't always want information to
be public, often don't want information to be public. You could you could
speculate too that you know, I've often thought that the Air Force or you
know now the Navy, as as we know, the Navy is also involved
in these type of things or encounters or whatever that they probably it's possible that
they know as much as we do, which is nothing. And yeah,
and if that's the case, then I can see why they'd want to hide
things because they can't say that they're they're protectors of the sky, you know
basically. So yeah, and uh I yeah. One of the I read
some you know, anthropological studies of upology while I was um working on the
book, and that is something that seemed especially true in the Cold War two
is the part of the reason that the Defense Department didn't want people to pay
that much attention to UFOs was because it put them in a bad light that
there were these things just flying around that they didn't know what they were,
couldn't detect, and couldn't shoot down. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Yeah,
I think the last thing they ever want to do is try to shoot
one down, whatever it is, however it got here. So what do
you think of the you know, so you were in this when all of
a sudden, Tom DeLong is out there and he's starting you know, TTSA
and that from from all of us, not just from someone kind of coming
in from the outside. Um is interesting to say the least. And so
what are your thoughts on what they are doing or trying to do us?
Yeah, I mean that that was one of my initial concerns with the New
York Times reporting was that it was exactly pretty much exactly time to when to
the Stars put up its website and put up these videos, and just it
concerned me that it seemed like a coordinated pr campaign for what they were doing
while they were raising money. And I mean, I think a lot of
people had high hopes for what they would do. You know, they we're
trying to raise money, and at least at the beginning, we're promising to
reverse engineer some kind of amazing aerospace technology that they at least implied was going
to be uIP related. But I also think a lot of people, including
people who invested in them, are disappointed right now that most of what they
have produced is entertainment. And I saw the other day they released a new
mobile billboard for emergency services, and I think, you know, they didn't
raise as much money as as they were hoping to. And yeah, I
think there's skepticism, including from me that they have always just intended to be
an entertainment company. But I do you think that Tom DeLong, based on
all the research I've done, is a is a true believer with a true
interest in the topic. Like I went back as far as I could and
in archives from when he was first starting to get famous for being in Blink
one eighty two, and I mean starting in the nineties. His bandmates were
talking about him reading UFO books on the tour bus and getting really obsessed with
it, going out to Area fifty one. And I think that his interests
is genuine, even if his interpretations are sometimes misguided. Yes, And there
was some there was some back and forth on Twitter the other night with our
with Alejandro Rojas actually who was just on earlier, and he was basically kind
of telling them, hey, look, you know it's it's you're not really
letting the UFO community in until you need them, and why is you know,
why is there a gap? And he actually had people like Tom DeLong
responded to him, Leu Alexander responded to him, and so did Chris Mellon.
So they all kind of responded to him and say, yeah, you're
right, you know, we've got to build a bridge type of thing,
and so we're not, um, you know, we're not shutting everyone out
that type of thing, which I thought was good. You know, maybe
something will happen out of it. So they were saying that this is kind
of the groundwork while they built things up and then that will come later.
Or they said they were saying they needed to reach out to the community more.
Yeah, they needed like some type of bridge out to the community more.
And um, you know a lot of people I can understand a little
bit of why they're hesitant, but they shouldn't, you know, just seal
us off and away and all that. But but they had received so much
criticism that you know, there was there was some jealousies, and there was
something people making really good points on why they didn't like them. And the
entertainment factor I think confuses everyone. Confuses me, even though I've had it
explained to me several times. It's a way to raise money, but it
just to me, it just kind of muddies the water of what they're trying
to do. But I suppose they have to survive somehow. Yeah, yeah,
No, I am interested to see what happens next. And I'm also
very interested to see what comes of their cooperative research agreement with the Army to
look into the meta materials that they had. I hope those results become public
because that would be a concrete thing, especially in that the people who invested
could could see the work that they're doing. That's more along the lines of
what was promised. Right. You mentioned Area fifty one earlier. What do
you think of Area fifty one. I went out there a couple of times
for the book. To me, there's not very much of a story for
the alien or flank saucer side of things. Most of what we have just
really comes from Bob Lazar's account of what happened. And UM, I know,
I know people have different opinions. My opinion is that he is not
a credible source, and so there's really nothing else that we have the supports
of that hypothesis, but there is a lot to show that there is very
interesting aerospace work that's going on there. Um. And so when I went
out there, which was October of twenty eighteen, UM, you know,
I didn't really expect to see very much. And as soon as we got
there, my sister and my friend and I we saw these orange orbs just
hovering in exactly a disc shape that would appear and disappear and appear, disappear.
It was very cool. Um they were flare exercises, so some military
jets dropping flares in patterns. But it made me really understand why the area
has like a lore around it. And um we did we did see.
Um actually this is still a UFO to me. In the sky kind of
fully somewhere between a quarter and a half of the sky filled up with these
little white dots that were arranged in a very linear pattern, just rows and
columns of dots that kind of just appeared out of nowhere, moved in unison
and then disappeared. Birds. No, no, no, sometimes people see
no. I'm bringing up a point because sometimes there's high altitude birds that will
get way way up there almost you know, a mile's high up in the
sky, and then the sun hits them when they all turn their wings and
they appear and then and then when they turn away they disappear when they turn
the other way. So it's very high altitude Swarmer birds are all the time
are mistaken for UFOs, which I think is really interesting. Okay, interesting
yeah, these were at night, so oh it was at night. It
was a night. Yeah, well that theory. I love that theory though.
No, the guy who the guy who lived in town and watched as
all the time thought they were probably like a fleet of drones, autonomous drones
playing all together in formation. Yeah, there was quite a drone thing going
on not far from you. You're in the Denver area, and I am
did you follow any of that when those drones were a little bit? Yeah,
I wasn't doing any reporting on it, so I wasn't following it that
closely. What the last I heard that there was a conclusion that it was
kind of some version of mass hysteria where people just it was only a few
drones and people just started you know, seeing more and more. But I
think there was more to the story after that hypothesis. I don't know what
it was though, I haven't followed it. I haven't followed it for I
had just you know, looked at it a little bit. But yeah,
that's really interesting. So Area fifty one. You're talking about, um Bob
Lazar and I get I get mail every time I say this. I really
my stand on Bob Blazar is this and I welcome your your rebuttals, but
is that I do not believe that Bob Lazar's story. And there's a lot
of people that I like that do believe his story, but it's just it's
just too much. And then, you know, I believe, you know,
with the last movie that Jeremy Corbell made, and I like Jeremy,
we talk now and then, but I feel like I'm being forced to believe
Bob Lazar's story, and the more that happens, the more I'm not convinced.
And when he had a chance to ask his mother basic questions, he
didn't ask them, like you know, what do you think of your son
going to MT or you know, anything like that. None of those questions
ever came up. So it was like a missed opportunity, if you ask
me. But anyway, I like George Knapp, I like Jeremy Corbell,
but I don't buy Bob Lazar. And I welcome your emails because I know
they're going to come. Yeah, But the genius part I think about Bob
Blazar's story is that no one can totally falsify it because it involves a government
cover up. So if he says I attended MIT and MIT says no,
you didn't, then then you can always say, you know, the government
erased his records or he says they're reverse engineering a spaceship in S four And
if the government says no, we're not, then you can just say,
oh, you're lying because you don't want us to know the truth. So
there's there's no way to just actually prove it wrong. And I think that's
why it has such legs too. You know, I have a friend that
doesn't even pay attention to the UFO topic at all, but he knew about
Bob Bazaar and he got in that very argument with me about it. You
know, why couldn't they erase his records? And you know, really so
anyway, Yeah, I don't know, um, but I think that's you
know, that's just one of those things. It's gonna you know, two
hundred years from now, they'll probably still be talking about Bob Blazar stories.
He made his mark, Yeah, that's for sure. And as far as
you consider like someone's either UFO believers, I'm there's a m I'm not really
sure if that's the right term. Would if someone asked me if I'm a
UFO believer, because I'd say you know their UFOs exist. I'm not sure
what they are, so that doesn't really make me a believer when you mean
the topic. When you say the word believer, you're talking about someone that
thinks they're extra trust or is that kind of where that that statement comes from.
Yeah, I think mostly that's what I mean when I say that,
or any anyone who thinks they know any answer for sure about the nature or
origin of UFOs. In my mind, I call people like you who believe
UFOs exist, or people like me who say, you know, people see
UFOs whatever they are. I think of that as as a moderate, an
interested moderate who you know, is more compelled by trying to find the answer
to the question that there's this like persistent mystery that's very interesting and you want
to get to the bottom of it, whereas someone who is a believer thinks
they already have gotten to the bottom of it, and so they're motivated by
something different. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, I mean it is
an interesting topic. I mean I've been doing this for coming out to nine
years now, doing this show, and I still love doing and it's still
very interesting, and I actually really enjoy talking to someone like you that has
such an interesting take on this. But I want to talk to you about
the subtitle of your book, and it's why UFO culture and why we see
saucers? Why do we see saucers? Well, I don't exactly know,
even though that's the title of the book. If I exactly knew, i'd
have to put myself in the believer camp. But good point. Yeah,
I mean, I think, I mean, one answer to the question is
that there are things that people see in this guy that they can't explain in
the reason that we, you know, traditionally or canonically think of them as
flying saucers is because that's what they were called at the beginning of this modern
era of unidentified flying objects, and so everything that came after there's some amount
of imprint from that history. And so yeah, I mean, the first
answer is that there are strange things that people see. Um. I think
people also kind of want to see strange things in the sky. I would
love to see another thing that I couldn't explain, for instance. Um.
And so there's a little bit of the like the seeking element of it,
and then there's the you know, classified government project element of it. We
see things that exists in our terrestrial, but we don't know how to explain
them because we don't have security clearances, um, although I certainly wish I
did, and so kind of just just all over the map. So the
book was, at least in my mind, every chapter kind of takes a
look at um UFO interest from a different from one of those different lenses,
through the lens of history, or through the lens of the military, or
conspiracy, or religion, or or some just different different take on on where
you AFOL culture came from. When you we're out there writing this book,
did you speak to anyone that just was a plain witness that somehow you stumbled
across them and they said, hey, you know, I had a UFO
sighting and let me tell you about it. Did that happen, Yeah,
it happened quite a bit. And so the people I mos who mostly appear
in the book are names who are probably familiar to a lot of your audience,
who are UFO ploggers or prominent figures at Moufon or things like that.
But what was actually most interesting to me was when I would tell people I
knew that I was working on this book, either scientists, you know who
I was interviewing for other articles or just friends, and to find out how
many people I knew had had a sighting. I didn't meet anyone who was
like, yes, something hovered, hovered up above me and I saw an
alien pilot and a bunch of you know, led lights around the outside.
But a lot of people who just you know, saw a strange light that
they couldn't explain and never forgot it. And pretty much any time I brought
the book up in a group of five or six people, there would be
somebody who I knew who had had an experience who had never told me about
it before, just because it's something a lot of people don't talk about.
I think, Yeah, you know, when you're out there and you're talking
to people, you'll find that there are so many people that had, you
know, a siting, or if not them, their brother or you know.
I've told this story before I was in I was working cataloging. I
do fine arts and the antiques, and I was cataloging in an auction gallery
and the secretary of the auction gallery I told her she said something, she
was looking for something information and I said, well, go to my website.
And what I meant was my appraisal website and she found my UFO website
was all, my god, let me tell you about my story. And
she had this triangle UM hover over her car and she was with her aunt
and her mother, and she got out of the car and she said it
was just dad, silent, right over the top of the car, and
then all of a sudden it just shot off, you know, and that
that I love those stories because it's someone that you know, moves on with
her life and is not, you know, involved in the UFO community,
except they had the experience and you know what was it? Yeah? Yeah,
And I think I think the latest poll the latest UM I can't remember
if it's a pew pollar, a gallop pull, but it is something like
one in six people have seen a UFO. Yeah, yeah. And you
know, whether it can be explained or not, you know, that's that's
always a tricky part. And you know there are people that really do try
to figure all that stuff out. You know, it's one of those things,
guilty to proven innocent, that type of thing. What do you think
is the most interesting of all the UFO encounters that you looked into. M
That's a good and hard question. M. I mean, I don't hold
any conspiratorial opinions about Roswell, but I went into the book not knowing very
much about the history of it, and I find it. I find the
back and forth on it very interesting. You know, there was this crash,
A rancher found it, a press release from the military saying it was
a flying saucer, a walking back of that, and then this whole story
about it emerged decades later after it it kind of disappeared, and I find
that really fascinating, the enduring nature of that, how something can just disappear
and be resurrected based on um, you know, witness accounts and even in
the face of however many hundreds of pages that Roswell Report document is that I
read and never want to read again. Um just um, yeah, that
that that's something that you know, that's something verifiable that that happened. And
I don't happen to think that it was a crash of an alien spaceship,
but um, it is something. We have debris for it. That's like
a concrete moment in history that changed UFO culture forever. And so for that
reason, I think that's interesting. Yeah, And to me, before this
book, it was just you know, Roswell the Alien Place, and that's
literally all I knew about it before I started. Yeah. Yeah. One
of the things that's really interesting that Stanton Friedman used to bring up a lot
is that, you know, the government lied five times. I think he
said, he used to say either four or five times where they've changed their
story completely and so many different um, you know, that is really fishy,
especially you know the one in the nineteen nineties when they said that those
beings that were found were crash test dummies, which of course did not get
used until nineteen fifty two. Night they were not in use in nineteen forty
seven, So that was the last known lie that I've heard about it,
you know. Yeah, I mean I think and Yeah, another big conclusion
that I came out of all the research with is there's there's like a real
and legitimate reason why people doubt the governments or the military and intelligence community story
on UFOs and their interest in UFOs and everything like that is because there there
are a lot of instances, which I know I already mentioned John Greenwald's book,
but a lot of like very hard, hard nosed instances what we can
see, um officials not being honest or reversing the story and changing it.
And we can see that with with a tip also right now, right,
yeah, you under you understand why conspiracies start is because there are conspiracies at
some level. Yep. And I think I think Area fifty one may work
well as a conspiracy because it is you know, for one thing, it's
you know, going back to that, it's highly secret, and anytime anything's
highly secret, conspiracies kind of grow on their own. But I think I
don't think they mind that because um that you know, when they're doing work
on experimental craft that may act like nothing we've ever seen. You know,
then it'll get pushed off as you know, alien technology and you know the
Russia won't even care about it, you know that type of thing. Yeah.
So no, it's good cover. Yeah, it's good cover. Yeah.
Um. And as far as uphology goes, do you think that um,
as far as someone that is just getting into this topic like you did
not that many years ago, Um, where do you think a good place
for someone that is just starting to learn all this? Because I say this
on every show I have a lot of new people to this topic. Where
would you say is a good safe place to look. That is a that
is a hard question. Not YouTube, so not you definitely not YouTube.
Not read it. Yeah that's true. Uh, let's see for for a
background. I really enjoyed. I don't know how many people want to read
a master's thesis, but there's a very good master's thesis by a person who
used to work at NASA named Diana Palmer hoyt Um. And it's interesting because
she used to, you know, work work for the man at NASA.
But it is a very good summary of the history of official research programs and
also the way that um, you know, traditional scientists interact with upology.
So I feel like it's a good way to get get grounded um in the
history and then also with the place in science. And it's called UFO critique
UM. And I think I think she comes out it really fairly UM and
UM yeah, it takes it takes a good critical look. UM. When
I was getting started, I read I read the books by um the people
used to run government programs, like like Jail and Heinek and um the public
books that came out after the programs. But UM, yeah, mostly stay
away from the internet, I think. But where would you recommend oh,
oh, now you're gonna turn around me. RuPaul wrote a book that is
a go to book. I don't have it, and I mean have it
over there somewhere in the bookshelf. But I know that's a very very good
book for someone that is just getting started. And I you know, I
do recommend that, and um, you know books, Um, you know,
books can be really good. You know, the older books, a
lot of them aren't have a lot of really good, um information in them,
and so I would recommend that. And J. L. Hinek I've
never read anything of his, but I'm sure that it's it's fascinating. He
was a fascinating man. And the whole thing, I mean, what do
you think about his situation where here he is working for um, you know,
the Air Force, and then he takes the turn where he goes,
well, there really is something to this that's pretty interesting, isn't it is?
It is very interesting? Yeah? Yeah, and um, I yeah,
I wish I could talk to him. I don't know exactly what to
make of it, but I mean it makes it makes sense that if you
were just constantly bombarded by witness accounts from credible people and you couldn't solve all
of them. And also the people above you were encouraging you to just explain
them away that that would turn Churney toward them, toward towards the side of
believing that there was something to all this. There was the famous swamp gas
should find that on YouTube where he talks about swamp gas and how it reacts
and all that, and that was one of the things that he was explaining
away that he gets so much grief about and one of the reasons why he
kind of went the other way to his son. So but anyway, Yeah,
Paul hi Nick and Joel hi Nick were on this show both and every
once in a while, I'll talk with Polly's a great guy and a lot
of fun and I hope to get him back on this show again. As
far as you did a book with Jill Charter or was it about Jill Charter?
I saw she was in the title. Yeah, it was about Jill
Tarter. It was about Jill Tarter. Yeah, it was a biography of
Jill Tarter. I see that, Oh, I see, I see.
She's an interesting woman. And and also at the SETI is she still at
the setting now? She has retired, but she's still on the board and
at least last I checked and she was still going into the office a bunch.
I did invite her on this show, I don't know, two or
three years ago, and she said, no, Steth will be glad to
join you, and he did. Yeah. Yeah, she's mostly handed the
hand of the reins to him on the UFO topic. But yeah, yeah,
and you know his his I want to say, closed mindedness on the
UFO topic. It must also be kind of interesting to you. I don't
know if you've paid attention to what he says about UFOs or not, have
you. I haven't seen the latest. I've heard a few interviews with him
where he does talk about it, But um, what what is his stance
these days? Um? He basically says that he needs like the whole wing
of the Smithsonian Museum to be full of UFO debris before he'll believe in them,
believe that they're here. I don't think that's ever I don't think that's
ever going to happen. Um. But he's pretty close minded to the idea
that it's a possibility, um, that that we've um are visited. And
you know, I basically confronted him, I would understand that because you wouldn't
get any funding if they were here, you know, that type of you
know back and forth we had. That's fair. Yeah, yeah, no,
UM. It's interesting. I'm not remembering the author of the paper,
but there is a very good an anthropology or sociology paper about UM. A
concept called boundary work in science, which is where scientists have to erect these
borders around what's what's proper science and what's not. And that is that that
sometimes keeps out UM keeps out things in a way that is not actually scientific,
like closing yourself off totally to the possibility that we are being visited on
no U is actually just as unscientific as saying I know for sure that we
are being visited. Like to dismiss things or things like taking evidence of or
sorry, what is it absence of evidence as evidence of absence m yeah,
yeah, And and things like that just logical fallacies that scientists wouldn't make if
they were talking about their own fields that they do make to dismiss uphology,
that's right. And you know I mentioned to Seth, you know, well
what about you know, dark matter and dark energy? You know, we
there's nothing we can hold in our hands, and he said, you know,
there's plenty of evidence for them out there, but I still think that
we don't really know what it is and um or we may it may be
something totally different than what they're expecting it to be. I don't know,
but I forget what the percentages, but it's really really high of what's supposed
to be out there. Is dark matter, Yeah, it's yeah, I
don't remember the exact percentage either, but I mean it's more than ninety percent
that's dark matter and dark energy, so which is really hard to explain.
No, I mean, I think I think science is probably I don't know
that it's wrong about those things, but I'm sure there's lots of stuff that
we think is true right now or that we're about to get to the bottom
of that we're just not not correct about it all. Just like we've always
thought throughout history that we were on the cusp of understanding lots of things and
there's always been more to discover. So now that's true in astronomy, right
right. Did you any any part of your book goes into like the pop
culture aspect of you know, influence of UFOs or why why people might be
seeing them UM a bit kind of mixed in, mixed in here and there
UM. And I think the times it comes up biggest UM are in talking
about setting setting expectations and people having expectations or ideas about what it is they're
seeing or talking about. Like when I went out to Area fifty one,
the guy who lives there, um not in Area fifty one but in Rachel,
Nevada. His name is yorg Arnum talk to us about how, you
know, movies give people the idea of what a UFO looks like and what
it is they're seeing, and then also that it is Aliens. So every
time there's a UFO in a movie, it is Aliens. And so that
kind of sets us up for this X like it's they're they're basically synonymous to
the average person, not to a moderate ufologist, but to the average person
walking around, the two are exactly the same thing. And I think that's
the biggest legacy of pop culture. Yeah, yeah, I think it's it's
it really is too bad, And the reason why a lot of people are
uncomfortable with using the term UFO, they want to use UAP or something like
that because of kind of the association that people have, you know, with
the two. Now I'm opening up the phone lines and the south the line
is available and that number is eight five five four seven two five four eight
three, And we have a screener. Bill will be screening the phones tonight.
So again that's eight five five four seven two five four eight three.
And where was I going with that up versus UF? Yeah? Yeah,
so I think you know, it's really hard to kind of separate the two
because of what you were saying. But if you have to speculate again,
I'm not sure if you're a speculator, Um, what do you think the
possibilities are of the unexplained? You you mentioned that there's you know, uh,
usually things can be explained in your opinion, but you know, what
do you think the possibilities of the unexplained could be? Um? You mean
what what they could be explained as? Yeah? Um, yeah, that's
a good question. Um. Yes, since I'm not much of a speculator,
so with the caveat that, I have no idea, um, but
I sure officially, UM, I mean there is the option that I also
I'm sorry, my dog is to making weird noises behind me, but I
love uh, you know a classified project of are of the US or some
other country. UM and UM. I mean I think historically that's been the
case for at least for at least some amount of truly strange UFOs Um people
talk about strange atmospheric phenomena. Although that's that's a little like swamp gas um
and UM. I mean then there's there there are misidentified very normal things like
um, you know, seeing seeing a plane at a weird angle or a
bunch of planes coming at the same angle. UM And then I mean,
I I am not, says Shastak. And so I wouldn't. I don't
completely rule out the extraterrestrial hypothesis. I I when I started the book,
I would have um ruled that out one hundred percent. And now I would
say that I only UM, I think it's ninety nine point nine not um
the case. But there I don't know, and it's a possibility. And
if you had to, if you had to argue against that, they could
be extraterrestrial in and I again, I don't say that they are because I
have no idea what they are, what's piloting whatever it is that seems to
be piloted um um. So you know what if you had to, I
forget where I was actually going with this. So if you, um,
if you take away that they're extraterrestrial, um, other other thoughts that you
know you have thought about, you know, I mean some people are thinking
they're possibly from another dimension because of their weird acting, you know, coming
in and out of sight and things like that, and then some people think
they might be time travelers. Um. Have you looked into all those thoughts?
Um? I know those thoughts are out there, I haven't deeply looked
into them myself, and I think for me just started thinking about those a
lot, I would have to. I think that physicists would have to come
up with series that would, you know, explain how that could be possible,
which which is a flawed argument because it can be possible whether physicists know
that it is or not. But but for me to really be thinking about
them, I feel like I would need some kind of theoretical framework for how
it would work beyond just an idea. Well, that's that's good. Um.
We have Scott Scott's on the line from Montana. Scott, welcome to
the show. Thank you, Martin. Are you underwater? Sorry? The
phone's very very garbly. Uh, go ahead, fire off a question.
Okay, it's about Roswell. I'm curious if, if if she has seen
the Archives where Stanton Freeman interviews Gerald Anderson, who was there with his dad
and his uncle when he was six, saw the saw the broken up saucer,
and saw the He said, there are four aliens who are dead,
what was wounded, and one seemed to be Okay, they're about four foot
tall, but he was there. He's pretty convincing. He was interviewed in
nineteen ninety one. I haven't I haven't read that that one, um,
but I will welcok, you do it on YouTube? Oh sorry, a
video? Okay, Well, then I will watch a couple of mount for
the National Archives. The interview, the the uh when he got to what
he called those guys, the the guy that brought the coffins, you ran
the uh ran the yet Yeah, yeah, Scott, I hate I hate
to do this too, but we have a really really bad connection. So
um, but thank you for your call. Thank you Morton, thank you.
All right, I'm not sure what's going on. Hopefully that won't happen
with the next callar, but that line is open and it's uh eight five
five four seven two five four eight three. And uh yeah, Boswell is
one of those things that you know you were talking about earlier, but it
just keeps It's like the Energizer Bunny, it just keeps going. And I
don't know if you've ever heard about the Roswell Festival. Yeah, I went
there the Yeah, I went there. Yeah, that must have been an
experience. I've never been. Oh you should go once once we're allowed to
gather again. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, but it's a
lot of craziness there, true, right, Yeah, definitely, there is
a lot of craziness out on the main street. But I think the secret
is the serious talks are upstairs and the museum going on at the same time.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And no, I have
never I have never gone to that. I hope too someday, like you
said, when things change and we can actually do stuff like that, that
line is open again. Sorry eight five five four seven two five four eight
three. And when you were researching this book, did you go at all
into people that are claiming to be abducted. I did not, really.
I did a lot of reading about it, but in the end I decided
and Originally I had planned to do a chapter about it, but I thought
it was very important to me when I was working on this book not to
come into it in a way where I was like making fun of anyone's experiences
or beliefs, are taking advantage of them in any way. And I didn't
feel confident that I could present an abduction story in a way that was respective
to someone, whether it was a traumatic experience or a cool experience. And
so in the end I decided to, um leave it out. Yeah.
Yeah, I had said many times that I was on the fence about,
um, you know, all these abductions that are happening, but there are
some that are just pretty darn convincing, that are really really interesting. You
know, the Travis Walton case, Betty and Barney Hill, um and my
friend down in uh in the South Pascagoula incident. Um, you know,
there's just some that are just in the Alagash incident, that's another one that
is really fascinating. So there's some that are just uh, really really interesting,
and UM, I can't discount I can't discount them. Um. I
have all often wondered if people are you know, all these people are being
abducted. You know, that's that's a that's a tough one. It's it's
hard to understand why this would be happening, um. And you know,
then I speak to someone, for instance, in Switzerland and they don't have
any reports of them at all. You know, it's really strange, um.
You know. And I don't want to say it's a cultural thing.
I don't know. I don't know what it is. But some people will
will debate that, saying that the army made a deal with them, with
the aliens. That yeah, with Eisenhower. Eisenhower another another one of those
things you can't prove wrong, that's true. But yeah, no, I
I really enjoyed reading the book Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind about the conference
that was held at Harvard in um I think the nineties to um to understand
what was going on with with this and brought a bunch of abductees together with
researchers at Harvard. And yeah, I would be interested if someone would do
that again. One of the one of the most I think one of the
most amazing encounters of them all is the Ariel's School in South Africa. I
don't know if you've looked into that with the sixty two school children. Yeah,
just a little bit. I'm not overly familiar. But well, when
you talk about Harvard, there was John mckinvaulved with interviewing those children right after,
which is fascinating. Randy Nickerson has put together that film called The Ariel
Phenomenon that it's coming out this year. We were talking the other day and
he's not sure what he's going to do with that. It was going to
be a theatrical release. Now it doesn't look like that's going to happen,
but I said, hey, look you have a captive audience. Get it
out soon again. But so that is going to be a movie worth watching
when that is done. He spent nine years putting that movie together and he
is very, very fussy. It's going to be a great, a great
movie. We have someone I believe I've talked to him before, Steve from
Oregon. Welcome to the show. Stephen, Hi, guys, I hike
Sarah. Really great show, really interesting guests. It's refreshing to hear somebody
who has, you know, what I consider common sense reservations when it comes
to upology and with the whole New York Times story and you know, I
think the pilots are very compelling, the videos are very compelling, but the
whole tps A thing, it kind of gets sideways in it. I like
the way to kind of characterize it as a look like a PR, a
coordinated PR event, and I think there's a lot of truth to that.
Also. I like your skepticism on Bob LAZARUM. My questions are, so
you seem like you're real well read on this and you're interested in this,
but you kind of sit, you know, slightly on the edge. You're
kind of like me. I like the word you use, agnostic. And
so how do you follow what are your sources for news? Um? And
how do you follow the topic? H yeah, UM, that's a that's
a good question. I think it's it's hard, like we were talking about
earlier, especially finding credible sources, but especially since I've been interested not just
in you know, what's what's a UFO, but in what the research community
is doing. I UM, I lark on Facebook forums like UFO updates,
UM, in the the UFOs reddit, and then um for following a tip
and that whole saga. I actually just have a Google alert for that,
so Google sends me every news source that comes up on that, so I
can keep up with all of the the updates, and then UM, I
look to uh UF for bloggers like uh Jeff Brewer, Kirk Collins, who
I think you just had on the show, UM, Keith Bastfield, Roger
Glassell, and I just kind of have a collection of blogs who's whose updates
I follow, So I've kind of tried to tried to find who whose idea
is kind of aligned with mine, and then of course some some that don't
and keep keep track of it. I would like to suggest just them to
could jump in just a second. I'd like to suggest Kevin Randall's blog.
He's very very well balanced, very good. I don't know if you've ever
read any of his stories. Yeah, all right, are you have another
question, Stephen? That's real quick. So there's a couple of stories UFO
events that have been like super credible, like the flight out of Alaska where
they captured the radar data and they captured air traffic control from two different towers,
from a military, from from the public power, and and John I
can't remember his name, he he had all the UFO data and and he
had it on paper at all the radar papes everything. Yeah, yeah,
exactly, that was the case. When you come across cases like that,
what does that do for you in terms of moving you more into the I
want to say believer category. Um, yeah, I mean I find those
to be the most exciting because those are the ones that seem to be true
mysteries. And as a as a journalist and also as a human being,
real complicated, open questions are the ones that are most fascinating to me.
But I would say they don't move me more to the believer side, except
like I believe it happened. I believe we don't know yet what it is.
I don't necessarily believe that we can't know what it is or that it
has to be something extraordinary. But I find them exciting from just like the
solving solving a mystery perspective. And I think it was actually Kurt Collins who
said to me the first time we talked for the book that UFOs are like
the ultimate problem to solve, because they're just it's very compelling, it's very
complicated, and it's hard to get to the bottom of and I would love
nothing more than to be able to explain something like that with an extraordinary explanation,
I think. All right, And is there one case that, like
you would put it your most compelling M that's a hard question, UM.
I mean I think the one I spent the most time with that I believe
is at least still still unresolved. As one John Greenwald told me a about
that was what first got him into things, which was the nineteen seventy six
um I Ran incident, which for a while was cited UM in you know,
air force publications as an example of when pilots can expect to encounter something
they can't explained, and how that's just normal, and so that was that
was very interesting to me that it was lower kind of even within the air
force. All Right, all right, very interesting. Really enjoyed the discussion.
Great, thank you for listening. Thank you, Thank you for the
call, Steve, and take care. Talk to you next time. All
right. We have another caller. UM. It doesn't appear to be screened
yet, UM, so I'll ask you this question. It is he just
wrote screened, UM, And it's Kim Kim calling from Texas. Welcome,
Welcome to the show. Kim, Kim there, Cam you there, Cam,
Are you there? All right? UM? Something's wrong. So Bill,
if you're listening up, can you can you check to see what's going
on with that line? That's Kim calling from Texas. So while he's checking
into that, I might have to hang up. There may be no way
that Bill can go back in there. Yeah, all right, So let
me ask you this. If you you were saying that you think maybe one
percent chance that they could be m extra trust or or some of them or
maybe a few of them or whatever, it would only take one to make
you know, that giant leap, that giant step. But what would what
is your argument against them that they wouldn't be here? The disc um?
Yeah, I mean so I don't know if I would characterize it as an
argument that they wouldn't be here, just that it would take a lot to
prove that that's what they are. And in terms of what would make it
hard that yeah, the distance, um, you know, building either a
spaceship much faster than we can imagine or something multi generational. And then also
the motivation like why why come to a little old Earth when there's so many
planets out there? Um? Are we just that interesting? How they pick
us? If it's stuff like Roswell why are they crashing? Think they crossed
the universe, Um, things like that. But um, I mean,
I know that's an argument that a lot of scientists make to dismiss UFOs as
a topic, that it's that it's too far and it's not possible. But
I think it's really impossible for us to imagine what a civilization much older than
us would be capable of, or what they what they might want to do.
Um, you know that's not we can't actually know that right right.
Um. You know, I've as I said to Seth Shostak, maybe they
figured something out about physics that we haven't even We don't even have a clue
about yet at this point, especially like you just said, they could be
you know, we're very young, you know there, our solar system is
very very young, so you know, they even you know, can you
imagine a hundred years from now with our technology, you know, the way
things are going. We're gonna try kemmy called back. We're going to see
what happens. Kem. Are you there? Yeah, I'm here. How
you doing, Matt? Good, good to hear you this time? Good?
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, I'm married through Listen. I'm just
wanting to call it. I may miss something in this conversation that what I'm
here enough about is the physics involved what you know, the TSA paracraft and
everything. I think people kind of blow that off a little bit. They
don't, I don't understand the physics involved in those crafts are I mean,
it's amazing. We have nothing like that. I just want to hear your
comments on that. Yeah, so Kim, I'm going to take you off
the air so you'll listen to you to that because they were a little bit
of a phone problem there, but we'll answer that on this side. Thank
you, all right, thank you, Yeah, all right, go by
m sou. One of the characteristics that he's talking about and that has come
up on this show was the radar data showing of these tic TACs actually creating
um G force of fifteen hundred, which is just unheard of. No craft
that we know of that we could build good stay together, you know,
and take that type of force, you know, going five thousand miles an
hour and uh and less than you know one second to the just above the
ocean floor, I mean the ocean surface, um you know, just really
truly amazing. So I guess his question is what about the physics. Yeah,
what about the physics? Um? I mean I haven't seen that specific
calculation of the G force, and um, if that's true, then it
would definitely take some explaining and it is hard to imagine us coming up with
something like that in the amount of time that we had. I also think
that there's a lot of context missing from the videos, like we don't have
the beginnings, we don't have the ends, we don't have the hard data
to go with them. So it's actually really hard, I think, from
from a physicist perspective, to draw conclusions about about what is actually going on
and make those kinds of calculations in a way that you can really back up
and so um, yeah, I and yeah, it would be hard to
account for for fifteen hundred geez. But I do think that, I mean,
for decades and decades there has been terrestrial technology that is far beyond what
any of us know about who don't work in militaries. But mostly what I'd
like to see is more data to understand more about what the videos are actually
showing versus what we can actually just infer from from videos. And again,
like I mentioned before, somewhere out there that exists. You know, there's
a really good footage from those tech taks that's not the FLR that is you
know color you know video that a guest on this show briefly, Chase and
Turner was on, um that actually that actually saw that video playing, according
to him, and yeah, I mean that technology. I understand what you're
saying about technology that we have no idea that does exist secret tech technology.
But um, it doesn't explain why people were seeing things um and and on
radar at five thousand miles an hour, you know, forty years ago,
you know, you know, nineteen So so anyway, we are at the
end of our show. Can you tell the listener where they can find your
book? Uh? Sure, if you go to my website www dot Sarah
Skulls scols dot com. Um, there should be links to all the different
places you can buy it, I know right now during the pandemic. Amazon
is a little slow, so understandably, so there's other options on there about
where you can get it, including your local bookstore. Excellent. Okay,
well, thank you so much. I really really enjoyed tonight's show. It
was a lot of fun. Yeah, thank you for having me, all
right, you take care you two. Yeah. Bye, all right everyone.
So that's it for the show. Tonight. Next week we have Mark
D'Antonio and it should be a good show. He's always a lot of fun.
He's a good friend as well. And I want to thank everyone so
much for listening, and I want to thank you for supporting the show.
Remember to go over to podcast ufo dot com and check out the blog over
there and everything else. And so that is it again, Thank you very
much everyone, and remember to stay socially distanced and keep your eyes to the sky.