Welcome to Open Minds Radio with Alejandro Roja. Open Minds Radio is the UFO
news authority, presenting evidence and the latest news regarding the UFO phenomenon. Here's
your host, Alejandro Roja. Hell, it's Alejandro. How's it go in?
It is Alejandro Ross and we are here to talk about the UFOs.
This is Open Minds Radio and here it open Minds. We are your UFO
news authority. How cool are we? How cool are you? I want
to you know, I thought I haven't told the listeners how freaking cool they
are in a long time, but we have some cool listeners. I'm so
happy that you guys are tuning in and listening on a regular basis, because
it's really what it's all about is sharing with the thousands of people out there
I know who are really into this subject and want to know more about everything
when it comes to it, and hear from all of these different people.
And it's also great to be able to get so many different people on the
show to talk to you about this stuff. I had so much fun with
Nick Redburn last week, and this week is another great guest. This is
Micah Hanks, and Micah Hanks runs a website called the Gray Alien Report,
and he was actually in an article on Open Minds that was kind of about
the youth and their involvement in UFO research, and so that's what we wanted
to talk to Micah about. He also has a book called Magic, Mysticism
and the Molecule, The Search for Sentient Intelligence from Other Worlds. What a
cool name for a book. So we're going to talk to him about his
book as well. And he's like in his twenties, upper twenties, but
that is pretty rare for this field because, as you know, a lot
of the people that I'm talking to on the radio show are older, you
know, and I think part of it is that, you know, until
you retire, sometimes you don't have time to write books and do a lot
of research. So we have a lot of older people and me and Mike
are going to talk about some of the other differences and why there are differences
and what are the differences. A lot of the older people are saying,
oh, you know, there aren't people come doing to our lectures, or
or I just had a conference and there wasn't a lot of people there or
something. But you know, that to them makes them think that the youth
aren't involved, but they are. You know, you're listening to the show,
you're podcasting, we're social media. You know, you guys are watching
our Twitters and our Facebook, and we know you're out there because we have
tons of followers, which gives me a chance to plug the Facebook. Don't
forget you know, all of our Facebook out there. The UFO Think Tank,
We've got a ton of them. We've got Open Minds Magazine, We've
got our Open Minds Forum. You have Jason McClellan, our Jason open Minds.
You have Maureene Open Minds. What else You've got open Minds TV?
Twitter, you have Paranormal Reporter Twitter, you have UFO Daily News Twitter.
So we're out there all over the social world, and that's where the youth
are, I think, which is great. It's just a new and different
way to interface with people and taking advantage of that is where we can continue
the conversation with all the sections of the population, and I think that's wonderful
and that's what me and Michael will be talking about been a little while.
But first, of course, we always talk about UFO News and we bring
this quirky little guy called Jason on to talk to us about the UFO news
of the week. And he's here, ladies and gentlemen, it's wonderful.
Jason McClellan. How are you, hello, Alejandro? I am wonderful.
How are you good? Not too bad? Doing well? Not too bad
or well good? All right, we'll stick with that, my friend.
Well, hello, everyone, this is your Open Mind's News Brief for Monday,
December fifth, two thousand and eleven. Well, we'll start off with
a story about a Hollywood producer named Jay Herbert Klein, and he claims that
he has proof that UFOs exist. That is the claim he makes in his
new book Beyond Hollywood, a memoir of fate, luck and the Unexplained and
Living the American Dream. The book was announced last week via press release from
International Film Arts, a production company founded by Klein and his business partner,
movie star John Hall. According to the press release, Klein and Hall invented
things together, including a square anamorphic lens that Klein believed quote could photograph the
invisible UFOs, alien life forms, energy fields, and other unexplained phenomena.
The pair reportedly shot thousands of photographs using their special lens, and Quote frequently
captured images that could only be called out of this world. An example was
explained in the press release. The most notable example occurred in nineteen seventy seven,
when Klient Hall witnessed a test flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise at Edward's
Air Force Base near the Mojave Desert in California. From his season of viewing
Section, Hall photographed the Space Shuttle before, during, and after the flight.
When Hall developed the film, he discovered that the photographs included images of
what appeared to be energy fields UFOs and humanoid forms that had been invisible to
the naked eye. Studding stunted his discovery, Hall submitted the images to one
of the nation's leading manufacturers of photographic equipment, and the company's expert could find
no explanation for the unusual phenomena visible in the photos. Hall died in nineteen
seventy nine, and Klin kept the photographs in a safe place until deciding to
write his memoir. Clin recently stated, I'm finally ready to share my incredible
story with the world. The two hundred and ninety six page book features approximately
one hundred photos taken by Clinen Hall, including many amazing shots of Unexplained Phenomena
Beyond Hollywood, A memoir of fate, Luck, the Unexplained, and Living
the American Dream is available now at Amazon and Alejandro. I've got to say,
I am a little more than halfway through with this book, but I
am engrossed in it right now because it does talk quite a bit about UFOs
and other mysterious things in photography. But it's just a cool book in general,
because this guy was a big time Hollywood producer back in the golden age
of Hollywood, and his just stories of rubbing elbows with some of the Hollywood
grades. You know. There's a great story about Frank Sinatra of hijacking him
for his fortieth birthday. He just ran into Frank Sinatra. Frank Sinatra said,
meet me at the airport, and this guy said, why, I'm
busy. Where are we going? And Frank said, I'm going to show
you how to cut loose. So the guy said, you can't say no
to Frank Sinatra. So he went to Turpurbank airport met Sinatra, had no
idea where he was going, and then he got to hang out at Sinatra's
exclusive club, got to see the rat Pack perform and that's how he celebrated
his fortieth birthday. How cool. But he's got all these great stories.
He was very good friends with Jane Mansfield, and you know these big names.
Someone my age, you know, probably means less to than someone of
Antonio's age. But you know, people who watched all of these classic movies
back in Hollywood's golden era would love the stories in here just for the sake
of Hollywood in history. But then getting into some of the strange stories about
technology that he and his partner developed, and his partner developed a lot of
interesting technology before they formed their partnership, he was involved with Howard Hughes and
alleges that he created some technology that rubbed certain people the wrong way and was
actually stolen, like perpetual motion machines that Howard Hughes had built. These uh,
he was possibly involved, but no, his his partners partner had invented
a perpetual motion machine a car that ran off water and that car was mysteriously
stolen. So so there are some interesting stories in this book. So this
book is mostly about his life about what percentage of it is, well,
it's it's his story of of his his UH experiences in Hollywood, and probably
probably about half of the book talks about, you know, the mysterious stuff
that this this camera photograph and and different UFO stories and things like that.
Now it says there's like hundreds of pictures, right, like a hundreds of
the photos total in the book. Okay, but not all of the photos.
And no, they're not all of UFOs and strange things. There are
some of these photos in the book and they show things that look like you
know, apparitions, ghosts. There are some that look like they could be
UFOs in the sky. They're pretty interesting. But like I said, I
haven't finished finished the book yet, but I find it pretty exciting so far.
Well, what do you think of the pictures? Well, I think
some of them are pretty fascinating, especially some of the apparitions. They look
really bizarre. And again, these are things that we're not seeing when the
photos were taken, and they were only visible with this special lens. With
what the guy did who invented this lens which took side by side, you
know, just seconds apart photos with a regular lens and this special lens that
he invented, and so the special lens would pick up on things the regular
lens didn't. I wonder what took him so long, because they took these
pictures like in the seventies or something. Right, that's right, it's from
the seventies. But they seemed very hesitant because they didn't want it getting out.
It seems like they didn't want to tell people about it, you know,
for fear of ridicule, or perhaps because of these other projects this guy
had been involved in and certain people had already kind of been headed in for
him. So interesting, but I don't know. It's an interesting story,
and you know, these people were some major players in Hollywood. Yeah.
Cool. This guy was a big time inventor too, so it's a very
interesting story. I do suggest reading the book. It's it's fun so far,
but the pictures are mysterious and worth checking out. Cool, very cool,
and I think you would like it, Alejandro, Yeah, it sounds
neat all right. In other news, we have more UFO petitions. We
talked briefly about this last week, but in early November, the White House
officially responded to two UFO petitions on their wea the People section of the White
House website. The White House stated that the quote US government has no evidence
that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted
or engaged any member of the human race. Authors of the petition, as
well as some supporters of the petitions, were hoping for a different response.
As we discussed last week, Stephen Bassett oft the Paradigm Research Group, who
authored one of the initial petitions, announced his follow up petition that was submitted
to the WEA the People section of the White House website on December first,
calling for quote the Obama administration to demand a full congressional investigation of ufoet disclosure
efforts by the Clinton ostp the Rockefeller Initiative. But Bassket's petitions have received criticism
for their combative wording and conspiracy oriented nature. A new petition that went live
last week takes a different approach. Hollywood writer producer Bryce Zabel and UFO historian
author Richard Dolan are the authors of the petition, calling for the White House
to quote investigate unidentified areas phenomena as reported by citizens, police, astronauts,
pilots, and the military. The detailed description of the petition reads, searching
for microbes on Mars and radio signals from space is not enough, we must
explain unidentified aerial phenomena or UAP right here on Earth. For six decades,
worldwide, credible witnesses, including President Carter and Reagan, have consistently described objects
with flight capabilities beyond our technology. UAP are often verified by radar and even
seen at nuclear sites by military officers. Given the national security implications, the
United States should conduct an independent investigation. This inquiry must transparently review the key
unsolved UAP reports with access to classified documents. It must have the power to
call witnesses and grant immunity. The findings should be publicly presented. So these
two petitions are currently live on the People section of the White House website and
as of this morning, I believe the Bassett petition had about fifteen hundred signatures
and the Dolan Zabel partition has about one thousand. Yeah, that's what I
saw not too long ago. So we'll see what happens. Twenty five thousand
signatures is a lot. I've got the a banner at UFO Daily News dot
com for the Dolansabel one because I like the wording. I think, you
know, you've got to kind of take some baby steps here and at least
get them to talk about UFOs in general before going all the way to the
et idea. And they're listening to me as a co sponsor on the side,
and I'm so proud of that, And so I think that's our best
shot to get a decent answer from the White House. I'm not so sure.
And I keep getting the feedback that people are a little confused with the
wording for the basket one. But really, you know, people sign both.
It doesn't hurt to sign both. If you appreciate them both and you're
into this object, go ahead and sign them both. That's that's awesome,
that's cool. So you know, no need to pick one over the other
or kind of scratch your head over it. So it's exciting. We'll see
what happened. I mean, they upped the ante or that the We certainly
have a tall road to cline, I guess. And yeah, you know,
already the fifth of December and they've only got twenty five more days.
So yeah, twenty five days, so that's about one thousand a day.
So come on, people, you're out there, they're listening to the show.
Yeah, if all of our listeners signed the petition, they would have
like half, we get more a lot more listeners in that on a monthly
basis, or at least listened to the show. Yeah, we can start
two petitions and fill them up, yep. But yeah, good luck to
them. We'll see what happens. Again, twenty five thousand is a big
number to get you and after five days or slightly more for the Brice Able,
I think there's went live on November thirtieth. I'm not sure, but
yeah, to only have one thousand after that many days, we've got to
pick up the pace. Yeah, so get out there, you know,
I mean, go ahead and sign it. It's fun. I mean,
you can see. We'll see what happened. And I do know that we
received many messages. They don't know. I'm not sure why people contacted us
with this issue, but there were a lot of issues reported to us about
the White House, about the way the people website, people reporting the page
timing out or not loading or giving them an error or something like that.
We have many people contact us with issues like that. But again, it's
not our petition, it's the white it's the White House website. They deal
with all the technical stuff. So if you try to sign the petition and
can't contact them, so your vote counts. Yep. Check it out.
All right, We'll move on to another story, Alejandro. And this is
a topic you and I discussed frequently on the show, and I like pointing
out these stories. Many journalists and people in the general public hold the inaccurate
belief that the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe an enterprise conducted
only by overweight sci fi dorcs living in their parents' basements. The reality is
that respected scientists from around the world have been actively searching for extraterrestrials for decades.
A recent article published in Space Daily contained a wonderful quote, most scientists
think that we are not alone in the universe. Many of NASA's missions involved
searching for science of life in space. NASA released a publication on September twenty
eleven titled the Global Exploration Roadmap, which outlined plans to explore our Solar System,
and the first objective listed on this roadmap is quote search for live.
NASA also recently launched their latest Martyrs rover, the World's largest or the world
Yeah, the world's largest extraterrestrial explorer, that will comb the red planet's surface
looking for signs of life. But aside from NASA, scientists at universities and
major research institutions are actively participating in the extraterrestrial search. An article published last
week in Harvard University's daily newspaper, The Harvard Crimson accurately states quote discovering extra
trustrial life is not a new goal on Mankind's to do list. The field
of astrobiology, the study of and search for life in the universe, has
gained momnsum in recent years, and new academic programs in the field are appearing
at universities around the country, and just last week, NASA and the Library
of Congress announced the establishment of the Borough Bloomberg NASA Library of Congress Chair in
Astrobiology, housed within the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.
According to the Harvard Crimson, Harvard physics professor and electrical engineer par Horowitz
is a leading figure in the search for intelligent extra trustrial life. He was
one of the early pioneers at the SETI Institute, which was founded by Frank
Drake, a doctoral alumnus of the Harvard Astronomy Department. Horowitz's SETI work primarily
involved using radio telescopes to listen to signals from aliens. Technology. There's another
Harvard professor, David Charbono is one of the world's leading experts on exoplanets,
and according to the Harvard Crimson he believes that within three years, man will
likely discover habitable planets on which life could thrive. Wow, and Harvard is
just one example illustrating the reality that leading scientists are participating in the search for
extraterrestrial life. At the point you and I tried to drive home, Alejandro,
I love that quote like that you had highlighted there that you know most
scientists, because you and I discussed that last week. I loved that quote
so much. Most scientists believe that intelligent extra for life is out there because
often when people the media are writing these stories, they have the impression that
that's not the case. When that is the case. It certainly is.
And you know, to build on that last story, there was an announcement
from NASA today that they discovered an alien planet within its host star's habitable zone
at a press conference today. As I said, this planet Kepler twenty two
B. That's a planet we've mentioned on the show before. Is the first
planet to be discovered in the habitable zone, the region where liquid water could
exist on the planet's surface. The discovery was made by NASA's planet hunting Kepler
space telescope, which also just discovered more than one thousand new planet candidates.
In February two thy eleven, the Kepler team reported fifty four potential planets in
the habitable zone, but of those fifty four, Kepler twenty two B is
the first to be confirmed. According to space dot Com, of the total
twenty three hundred and twenty six candidate planets that Kepler has found to date,
two hundred and seven are approximately Earth sized. More of them six hundred and
eighty are a bit larger than our planet, falling into this super Earth category.
Including Kepler's latest discoveries, the current number of candidate planets inhabitable zones of
their stars is forty eight, but again those are just candidates. Only Kepler
twenty two B has been confirmed. Kepler twenty two B orbits a star similar
to our own, and space dot Com explains that scientists believe the discovery of
this planet brings us quote one step closer to finding a planet like our own,
one which could conceivably harbor life. Cool. I like the way you
say habitable. Habitable, just kind of have to let that one role otherwise
you're going to flubb Yeah, exciting, we said habitable on this show so
many times, so yeah, kind of kind of have some practice inable.
But I have a story here all one hundred that is breaking news, breaking
news here on Open Mindes Radio, the same story that all our colleague Antonio
Juneus just broke today. And he just finished writing this story before the show
started. I haven't had a chance to get it posted to our website a
couple of minutes to tell us about it. But the story will go live.
You can check it tomorrow. But a German citizen, Frank Reiitmeier,
was bothered by the fact that citizens of other nations like France, England,
Canada and the US could access some government UFO files, but Germany's government hasn't
made the UFO files available to the public. He specifically wanted to access the
confidential study prepared by the research services of the Department of Science and Foreign Relations
of the German Funstead the Federal Parliament. So what did Frank do? He
sued the government and the Berlin Administrative Court fighted with him on the matter.
On the matter, the defendant, the German Federal Parliament, is of course
appealing the ruling. But this guy basically wanted to see this UFO study that
had been leaked some time ago, this study from two thousand and nine,
and the court decided that because all the guy wanted to do was read it,
there was nothing wrong with that. So they're ordering the Federal Parliament to
release this study for people to read. Yeah, that's pretty cool that he
sued the government in one. We'll see what happens next though, because just
because you see the government and win doesn't mean you're going to get what you
want. Unfortunately. That is so true. Interesting, Yeah, an actual
government being sued over UFO file. So yeah, it's cool because I thought
that that story was not true. I had read a little blurb that right,
but it was very vague, and so it's great that Antonio did some
more research and you guys or there'll be a story up by tomorrow, right
And yes, tomorrow tomorrow, very early morning, it will be on our
website Openminds dot tv. Yes, all the credit goes to Antonio Juneus on
this. I was with you. I thought at first this story was fake
because the initial source I saw, the English source was not a very credible
source. But he did more digging and found that this is all over German
news right now, all over the major media. Cool, so it's gonna
be a great story. Check it out on open minds dot Tv. He
really did an in depth as much as he could into this story. So
sweet. All right, Well, Alejandro, that is it for the news.
Remember to check out all these stories and so many more at openminds dot
tv, your source for UFO related news. I'm Jason McClellan, your Open
Minds News correspondent, and you've been briefed back to Julejandro theank you Jason a
couple other things. Just before we get into our interview, I give you
an update on my Huffington Post stories. I wrote one on the Ridley Scott
and I think Jason had well. Jason had written one that we talked about
last week, and so I expanded on the whole Ridley Scott and the ancient
aliens theory and how that theory helped to inspire that a lot of the new
movie. Promethea said he's doing an alien Universe movie doesn't like to call it
a prequil, but it's about the space jockey, so it's kind of cool.
And then I'm writing another one on Spilberg. There's some stories out there
about Spilberg and Et and how at first his idea that these Et was going
to be a bad guy and a mean little critter. And we'll go more
into that because it's based on his idea for what he wanted to do real
alleged alien k So you can read more about that too. Very cool.
Maybe we'll talk more about it next week, but we want to get into
the interview, so let's go ahead and get Micah on the phone. I'm
really happy to be talking to him. I am happy to have on the
show. Micah Hanks, Mike, are you there, absolutely, Allehandra,
thank you for having me on. Well, you know, I first came
across some of your material from Ryan Sprague, who writes for Open Minds magazine,
and he had included you in an interview about UFOs and the current state
of things and kind of taking you as one a younger perspective on things because
as you know, you know, for the most part, the crowd is
a little older I mean, what do you think, what do you think
the differences are between the age in researchers. Well, I'll tell you this,
many of my mentors in the field, you know, have been people
like Brad Steiger, you know, Lauren Coleman. Because, as many of
the listeners may know, although I'm primarily, you know, kind of concentrated
on the field of uphology, I do dabble in other areas and over the
years have had a lot of different interests. Brad Steiger, who I mentioned,
is one who's very much in that kind of you know domain in terms
of, you know, really having a hand in all different areas of the
unexplained. But again, you know, Brad of course also edited the official
publications of Project Blue Book when they were released as a mass market paperback,
so you know, he also was well known as a eupologist. But you
know, when we look at the demographics, so to speak, and the
age differences between people, I think that the thing is is that in this
modern society, while there are a lot of younger researchers like myself and I'm
only twenty eight years old, that really blows a lot of people away with
that, I guess just because I don't put that out there a whole lot,
and there is a preconception that most people who are doing this are probably
going to be middle aged, you know, maybe in their forties or older.
I think that it may have something to do with, you know,
kind of the media and the way that media is presented, and the way
that culture has kind of wrapped itself around that these days, with social networking
and things like that. You know, I noticed that younger people maybe aren't
more involved in things like politics and the like, but they certainly are involved
today in a very different way than how they were several decades ago. I
think it's very much the same thing also with you know, unexplained phenomenon and
upology alike. I think that people aren't involved, maybe any less, perhaps
not anymore, but it's a different kind of involvement, and I think that
it's more generalized as a result of, again, the way that media tends
to kind of approach these sorts of subjects and the availability of social media and
social networking websites. People put things out there. It's kind of anecdotal.
It's entertaining, but a lot of people don't take it incredibly seriously, you
know, to be somewhat of the younger age group. You know, I
pride myself and being one who does try to take it very seriously and from
a pretty journalistic approach to studying this sort of thing. Yeah, that's what
I thought was interesting about Ryan's story. He interviewed a lot of people and
kind of, like you said, I agree with you and some of the
things you were saying. Nick Pope, who although he's kind of one of
the old school guys, I think he has a more modern view of things.
But like you said, it's not that there's not people involved. I
think there are. I think with the ratings from some of these television shows
like Ancient Aliens or you know, fact or fake that the audience is there.
The people are there, but they're looking at things differently. You know,
you have people who I love to death. But he was the perfect
representative of kind of the raute old guy almost. And I can say that
because I know he has a great sense of humor. But Jim Mars in
that story was kind of the guy. Oh the kids don't pay attention.
If they would quit getting on their computer and look up from their computer or
their phone once in a while, they'll discover things. And a lot of
people are looking at in the crowds at the conferences and that that the meetings,
and they're saying, where are the young people? But that's not their
things. You know, they don't want to go and sit in a lecture
as much as they want to read stories. Like what you do? You
know you do podcasting, you do online? So do we and we do.
There are these large online audiences and you're able to reach a lot of
people. Yes, absolutely, And I have to say again, you know,
tossing an endorsement out here real quick. Your website is one of the
very best on the web. You know, I've enjoyed it thoroughly, even
prior to this interview. And the other thing too is that, you know,
I think that the podcasting element this is so important because people there is
such a great demand these days for audio content or you know, video content
as well. But I think that audio is still kind of kind of has
its own niche we'll say, because people are really interested in having things that
they can download, you know, at their own leisure, on demand,
as they say, and take it with them. You know, Terrestrial radio
is always going to I think, have you know a certain following because you
know, it's free and people can jump in their car and they can turn
on radio. But with the availability of podcasting and the ability to download audio
in all different kinds of genres and formats onto your smartphone or onto your iPhone,
your iPad or whatever, and take it with you on the road,
you know, I think that, you know, or take it with you
on a job, take it with you to the gym anyplace, you know.
I think. You know, I even get emails from people who listen
to my podcast, The Grailean Report, and they're like, yeah, we
sit around you know, we listened to it together, you know, my
wife and I right every Tuesday night. You know. So it's great because
I think that there is an accessibility that this provides for people, and that
makes the podcasting format particularly important because people will seek it out and they will
take it with them and they will listen. They're not going to miss it
because they know where to find it and they can listen whenever they want to.
Yeah, it blows my mind. We put a lot of effort,
like you know, we did the UFO Congress that used to be involved with
movefin and we'd do that conference. We'd put a lot of effort into those
conferences and you would have you know, like for instances, last year we
had a thousand to two thousand people at the UFO Congress. That was great.
But we on a weekly basis with the podcast we Meet, we reach
much much, much more people than that. And even though it's kind of
quiet and in the background, really this is where you know you're you're we're
reaching masses on a regular basis and there are those people out there. Oh
yes, absolutely, most certainly, and any way that people can be reached,
I think that's important. I mean, and a great example of this
is Richard Dolan, you know, has just together a brand new and I'm
sure you probably were going to bring this up, but the new petition,
which I think, in my personal opinion, is worded so well it will
get around a lot of the semantic arguments that were brought forth, you know,
following the first you know, petition that the Paradigm Research Group put out.
Richard Dolan's done this and he's got videos up on the on the web
and what I'm sincerely hoping including two podcasts like this and my own and others,
you know that people will tap into their to their crowd, to their
fan base and the listenership, and that they'll say, no, listen,
this one could be taken seriously. Go check it out. It's worth your
time to take five minutes, you know, sign up sign this petition.
You know, I'll just be frank with you. I didn't take the first
one incredibly seriously because of the wording it. It kind of jumped to the
conclusion and used that extraterrestrial word. UFOs may represent extraterrestrials for all we know,
But the thing is that scientifically we have to also play by the rules
of the establishment, who aren't going to endorse that kind of an idea openly.
When you use the term UFO, that's a much harder thing to discount.
It's a much harder time you're going to have saying that UFOs don't exist,
because we do see things in the sky, and there are government documents
that are released every year around the world that detail that. This new petition
I think is going to do a much better job. And what I hope
is that you know, the podcasts and that the crowds you know who download
these kinds of programs you know well, will be educated and you know,
hear about this and that they'll be encouraged to go and sign that petition.
This one might actually get somewhere. You know. I was going to bring
that up because it is, especially among the listeners we have here, a
little controversial, you know, because you know, people have their different perspectives
about this field and which perspective to take and how to go forward. And
I was going to ask you because you know, I talked with Nick Redfern
last week and we'll more into that, because I know you guys have some
similar perspective on things. But the I feel like you when I saw and
I had, you know, Stephen Bassett on and we talked about it,
I did feel like you said that, you know, working with the establishment,
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think that there are
some some things that we can accomplish by doing that, and when we are
kind of stepping forward. And I was challenging Bassett, you know, if
you went to let's say, one of these politicians and and you had to
tell them there is group for extraterrestrial visitation, what would you cite? And
he kind of said, I'd send him to the web to the to the
internet because there's so much evidence. You have to be really more particular and
more, you know, send me more exact I think, and I agree
with you with this new petition. It's getting at more of the root of
just sticking to that there is an existence of a phenomena, and there we
have. We do have some very very very credible photographs, witnesses in a
much stronger case that the phenomena exists in the first place, and the mainstream
hasn't gone there yet. So let's take that first step. Oh absolutely,
I agree with you one hundred percent. You know, again, if if
someone were to ask me if you needed to try and convince, you know,
an elected official or someone like that that UFOs existed, well, you
know, again, first of all, I'm not going to use that expression
extraterrestrial because I think that there are too many cultural stigmas attached to that.
I also recognize that if I'm going to go speak to my congressman or my
senator for instance, you know, and I bring up UFOs, they have
a cultural obligation, by virtue of being in politics, to be very dismissive
toward those kinds of statements and those kind of approaches from the media and from
their constituency. I mean, that's just how it is. You know.
We've had a few exceptions. I think Barry Goldwater, of course, you
know, had taken quite an interest in uf and a number of US presidents,
Bill Clinton, you know, had had of course, you know,
asked to think I think it was web hubble, you know, and Jim
Mars talked about in his in his book Rule by Secrecy. He said,
I want you to find out two things, you know, who killed JFK
and what's going on with UFOs. Jimmy Carter also asked about it. Ronald
Reagan, you know, said that he had followed on when he was governor
of California and Carter's interest and from you know, an incident that had occurred
with him when he was the governor of Georgia. So there have been politicians
that have been interested. But culturally that is something that I think that again,
in that mainstream political spectrum, you're encouraged to down play. So again,
you know, you have to be very careful. And I don't think
it's a bad thing at all. In fact, I think we cannot look
at it as a bad thing in terms of you know, quote unquote playing
by their rules. We have to in order to progress. And so,
first of all, if anyone told me you've got to convince Politician A that
there is evidence, you know, supporting, like you said, Alejandro,
some sort of phenomenon, the first thing I would say is, well,
we don't use the extraterrestrial term. We realized that there is indeed a stigma
attached to that. But you can talk about UFOs all day, and I'm
not going to direct them to something as ambiguous as the Internet. I'm going
to say, listen, go to and I'll give you a link. Go
to the nssa's website where they have disclosed a multitude of documents about UFOs,
and you guys have some excellent articles about those at your website. You go
to the FBI dot gov website. They also have a portal to Unexplained Phenomenon
that deals with a variety of things, not just UFOs. The Central Intelligence
Agency also has one. If these varying branches of intelligence within our own US
government have already taken an interest in these subjects and have already disclosed some information
about them. That's all the evidence that these elected officials should need, and
if anyone doesn't take that seriously, then they're not taking the intelligence gathering process
seriously at all, because these intelligence organizations are the very ones who've laid the
groundwork and who have engaged in that sort of research for decades already. Yep,
that's a good point. Now that we're on this subject of these petitions,
of course, Bassett is putting out a second petition, and his is
focus around calling for congressional investigations into what you had mentioned, Bill Clinton and
his interests along with that with Rockefeller, who was really trying to get Bill
Clinton to do more research. How do you feel that the wording of the
Bryces Abel Actually and Richard Dolan petition is better than that? Well, they
don't ever say extraterrestrial in their petition, and I was reviewing both documents earlier
today. I'll tell you this the new petition that the Paradigm Group has released
against his UFO slash et this time, I don't think they made, you
know, much emphasis on the UFO angle in the first petition at all.
It was almost entirely references to extraterrestrials and the like. Now they kind of
realized because you know, among others. You know, another contributor to the
Huffington Post was Leslie Kane who said, look, you know, using that
word extraterrestrial over and over and over again in that petition, what did you
expect the response was going to be. And I think that you know,
they've kind of caught when of that and realized now that you know, things
have to be kind of reworded in a way that's a little more palpable if
they want to get an official again, an official response. Dolan and Bryce's
petition I think is better because it although it says UFOs and UAP referring only
to unidentified you know, aerial phenomenon and you know, flying objects that cannot
be identified, they never make mention of extraterrestrial life, except for the opening
sentence, which talks about, you know, looking for life on Mars and
things like that isn't enough. And I agree, while there's a potential that
UFOs may represent extraterrestrial life, we can't rule that out. We just don't
have, according to our own scientific methodology, evidence that supports that. Now,
there's a lot of kind of circumstantial evidence that points us in that direction.
But like Michio Kaku has said it's funny. I saw him during an
interview and they asked him, they said, you know, you say UFOs
exist. Does this mean that extraterrestrial life exists? And he says, well,
yes, And the thing is is that we've looked at all these different
options and the most likely is that some of these UFO sidings do indeed involve
an intelligence from you know, outside planet Earth. And so he said,
so the anchor asking the questions said, well, doctor Kaku, does this
mean that we have proof of et life elsewhere in the stars? And he
says, well, no, not at all, because we don't have,
you know, a biological sample. You know, we can't we don't have
something that we can extract DNA from, and so without that, we still
don't have proof. And that's pretty well worded. Again, it's very likely
that some UFO phenomenon could represent extraterrestrial intelligence from outside our planet. But the
thing is is we don't have that biological sample to our knowledge to support that.
And when we asked for that very thing in the last petition, we
saw what the White House response was going to be. So we have to
take things one step at the time. UFO is the keyword. That's the
word that is used throughout the petition by Dolan, and I think that that's
going to be more effective than actually garnering attention. You know what. I
think you brought up a great example there with mitchi Okaku, because here we're
talking about a mainstream scientist, and I think the thought process that you know,
you shared right there, it's similar to the thought process that mainstream science
is going to take if they take UFO seriously, and that is to first
look at the phenomena, look at the likely because that's what you know.
If we are able to make people take that first step, especially mainstream science,
to take UFO seriously, I think then they will come up with our
hypothesis as a hypotheside or how do you say, multiple seeds you know,
as to what this phenomena might be all about. And I think everybody would
agree that the extraterrestrial hypothesis seems kind of one of the forefront it's, you
know, the first possibly most likely explanation. I think that'll come to the
surface by itself. You don't have to shove that down people's throats. I
think it's it's an natural occurrence, Although when it comes to UFOs, there
are other ideas about what might be behind some of this phenomena. And we
talked about this quite a bit with Nick g Redfurn, and I know you
have some unique perspectives there as well. I know you look at paranormal all
around, not just UFOs. What are your ideas on how likely the extraterrestrial
hypothesis is the answer or what are the other possibilities. Oh, I'll tell
you this again. To be skeptical, I always like to draw this distinction
between things. If you say you're a skeptic and you have an interest in
the paranormal or the unexplained, I think that rodolphan first of all, people
who are the quote unquote believers, And this is a game where you start
to see how much culture is associated with all this. People who are,
you know, quote unquote believers will kind of point the finger at you and
say, oh, great, you know you're one of these guys trying to
disprove everything. When we're skeptically minded, this doesn't mean that we have to
try and disprove anything. What that means is that we cannot commit ourselves to
belief without evidence to support it first. That's really all that means. So
when I look at circumstances with regard to, you know, studying a multitude
of different phenomenon, I try not to, you know, gravitate toward a
conventional notion of what any particular phenomenon may be when there's not hard scientific evidence
to back that up. I love it when people come up to me,
and this happened just the other day. You know, someone on the web
had talked about, how, you know, my podcasts, for instance,
are garbage because I'm talking about UFOs and things like that, and the reason
that it's garbage is because there's no scientific evidence to substantiate anything you're talking about.
Well, first of all, there certainly is evidence to substantiate UFOs.
We've already gone over where you can find that evidence, so let's not be
redundant here. But the thing is that, again I pointed out to this
individual, I said, I've never made the claim, and this is what
this person asserted. They said that, you know, there's no proof that
these things are extraterrestrial, and if anything, they're probably secret government craft.
And I said, well, you know, if you listened to my podcast,
you would know, as my listeners do that. I don't accept,
you know, this, this conventional notion that UFOs absolutely, without question represent
extraterrestrial intelligence, you know. And again the reason why is because there's not
scientific evidence that supports that. I, you know, respect the likelihood,
but I don't commit to belief. Now that said, when we look at
the other alternatives, well, what could they be? Then? As stated
by this individual and by many others, and I've even gravitated toward this sum
myself in the past, there probably are a number of government projects, you
know, secret government projects that involved you know, advanced aircraft and even weaponry
and things like that that have at times been mistaken for And you really can't
mistake something for something else that you don't know what the the alternative is to
begin with, you know, we call all these things UFOs. A secret
government craft by virtue of being unidentified is also a UFO. There's the physical
anomaly angle that can be appended to this as well, the notion that for
whatever reason, there may be what we might call extraterrestrial or even interdimensional intelligences
that could be in some way, shape or form interacting with our dimension or
if you want to remove dimensions from the equation altogether. It could be you
know, some sort of some sort of intelligence, some sort of sentient consciousness
trying to contact our three dimensional perspective from kind of a higher level of reality,
perhaps you know, pre material level of reality. So Jacques Vallet has
gotten into some of this, and also an associated mind by the nome of
doctor Maxim Camera and these kind of approaches to studying UFOs, I think,
force the mind to reconsider the possibilities and thereby expand our own notion of what
not just any particular phenomenon may be, but what our role is three dimensional
organic beings in reality as we perceive it may be. And I have gravitated
more and more toward that approach, to trying to understand the greater reality and
how UFOs play into that. And when you look at it from that perspective,
I found that you will tend to notice that there are a lot of
really nuts and bolts reports that to me are without question some kind of intelligently
controlled technological craft and probably originating from here on planet Earth. There are a
number of reports that are far stranger and can't be so easily explained. But
again this points too, I think something that is, if anything, something
that will force us to kind of redefine our perspectives on reality and in order
to greatly appreciate this and of course to understand it and it's totality. Eventually
more people are going to have to think like that, in my opinion,
and it's not going to get us anywhere. It continues saying that UFOs don't
exist in that this no evidence for them, because that simply isn't the case
either. Yeah, you know, when some of these points that you bring
up some of the a lot of people will and some of the listeners may
get frustrated that, you know, people aren't test adhering to this extra treasural
answer and that's it, and that's all there is. But I think there
is something we can learn from science is that when you don't know what something
is, it's very dangerous to pin it down and say this is what it
is until you have that proof of what's going on. Because often we've seen
in science that when they observe as phenomena, you put forward theories, and
sometimes some theories get very popular. Dark matter, for instance, we don't
know what the heck that is. There's so much disagreement. But the media
is always talking about dark matter. Dark matter. We don't know that that
exists. We don't know the answer towards these phenomena that they're seeing with gravity
and space, and the answers that we find are typically much much more complicated
than we ever could have imagined. And I certainly agree that you know,
that could be the case in dealing with the UFO phenomena or abduction and these
other phenomenas that people are experiencing. Oh absolutely, And with regard to abduction,
I'll just say this to keep it short, that although many people who
have claimed to have been abducted have been you know, also people who claim
that they've been taken aboard what appeared to be a flying saucer or other you
know, similar aircraft describing UFO reports, I think that again it can even
get dangerous. And see this will probably sound absurd to a lot of people
who've read and followed ufology you know, for a number of years, like
myself, even a number of decades, But I think that it can become
dangerous when we look at alien abduction solely as some kind of phenomenon that is
directly associated with UFOs, Because we cannot necessarily draw a parallel between the two.
Now, I will say that, you know, there are some abduction
reports that are very compelling. The Hickson encounter there from Pasco Goula, what
was it a Mississippi back in nineteen seventy three, where Charles Hickson and Calvin
Parker were abducted. That they'd been sitting on a and this is well known,
so I don't have to get into all the details. But they were
sitting, of course, on a pier, and they were fishing next to
a bayou. Saw a blue light. The first thing to point out here
is that, you know, again according to FAA standards, you're not supposed
to have blue lights. Typically on aircraft you'll see red and green and white
lights. But again, this blue object comes down, hovers over the bayou,
and then these beings come out, They approach Hickson and Parker, take
them on board, and you know, perform these kind of examinations on them
and then release these gentlemen. They weren't unlike a lot of you know,
stories told by abductees Hickson and Parker. They weren't you know, lying in
their beds at night. They didn't, you know, have a missing time
period of From the part of me, I think that they became very disoriented
during this experience because of the terrifying nature of it. But they literally were
sitting there, they saw the object come down, they were taken aboard,
and then they were brought back by these strange looking, slightly anthropomorphic beings,
and they were both so scared afterward that they first said, you know,
we're not going to tell anybody about this, So that was you know,
and then they of course werelnded and went to the sheriff, and only after
going to the newspaper. You know, they were going to try and get
the story out, and it was all over the ap the next day that
these two minute allegedly been taken aboard an object from space. But a lot
of abduction reports don't begin the same way that Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson's story
did they. You know, the abductee typically is lying in bed, they
might feel a presence, they may wake up on board the craft. There
are a number of instances where people literally have the experience and there's no mention
of a flying saucer. But you know, I think that it's difficult again
looking at the multitude of data out there, it becomes difficult not to associate
those two. And I'm not saying that they aren't related, but what I
would say is that if we want to understand the phenomenon better, we should
probably look at them independently before we consider, you know, lumping them all
together and saying that this is the sum totality of what we understand about UFO.
As part of it is that there are these aliens that take people on
board these spaceships. For all we know, there may not be any kind
of a you know, an alien gray as we know what this could be.
And this is getting kind of far out there, but I think it's
worthy of speculation. It could be that an advanced intelligence literally projects images of
abduction encounters into the mind of an alleged abductee, because the attempt at communication
with a three dimensional being like a human in relation to this advanced intelligence may
be so great that this wouldn't even be something that would be perceptible without the
apparent intrusion in a physical sense into that individual's reality. And so it could
be that the entire abduction scenario is actually a kind of a holographic area or
a mental construct that, although it's indeed very terrifying strange for many people,
it's something that humans can relate to better in terms of trying to reconcile with
a greater intelligence than our own. Now I'm just speculating, but that again
is one interpretation. If we are indeed going to have some sort of interaction
with a greatly, greatly more advanced intelligence than ours, in all likelihood,
we wouldn't recognize it as being an intelligence to begin with unless they came down
to our level. And I'll bring up Michio Kaku's one of his examples again.
Here he says, you can see an entire colony of ants by the
side of the road, and they're going up to their business. They've got
their little nest and everything two feet from a major highway, and they're virtually
unaware of the fact that there is a vastly greater technologically oriented intelligence that's winning
by them literally just two feet away. So very well, maybe the same
for humans. That there could be a vastly more intelligent species that is constantly
interacting with us, but they have to level with us in such a way
that we can perceive them, and that could be the very summation of the
abduction experience for all we know, but we really don't, and therefore we
have to kind of break things apart. And I advocate looking at abduction and
UFO reports separately from one another for that reason, right, And I agree
as far as when you have an abduction experience that doesn't include a UFO siding
like some do, like you mentioned Hickson, there are others. There's Pasca,
Goula, Betty and Barney Hill. But and however, like you said,
many of those situations don't. The other problem that I have is a
lot of people seem to kind of brush off it's hard to reconcile that the
messages that people get during these experiences or in simple contact E cases, they're
different. There's it's not like the you know, the general what happens to
them is similar. However, the message is in the details of who these
beings are and why they're here and where they come from are always vastly different.
And sometimes people will come to me saying, well, why don't you
talk more about this case, Why don't you believe in this case? Why
don't you believe in that case? And it's not that I don't believe in
any of them. I'm open to all of it. But how can I
put all my eggs in one basket or put my eggs in all these different
baskets in these when the story the stories don't jive. How can all of
these different things be true? Absolutely? And the other thing too, is
that so many of the abduction reports, in terms specifically of the information that
is supplied to the abductee, it often is so personal in terms of the
significance of the information with regard to the individuals received it. I mean,
a classic example that has been mentioned so many times is what was described in
The and Recent Affair, the book by Ray Fowler, which talked about how
Betty the abductee herself was literally taken to what she perceived to be an alien
environment. I'll stop sort of setting a planet, but it very well may
have been, you know, at least in her perception it was, and
that you know, there were little alien crititors crawling all around and everything,
and she was taking kind of up this conveyor belt that brought her before a
large bird that then caught on fire turned into you know, I think a
pile of ashes from which this worm crawled out and then she heard a voice
speak to her and use obviously what were obviously Judeo Christian overtones and references to
God and Jesus. And of course Betty, as I recall, being a
devout Catholic, it's very interesting to me that she had this profound Christian experience,
and even the symbology associated with the bird burning up that sounds very much
like the legend of the phoenix, which in early Christian iconography was representative of
the rebirth that is associated with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So
you know, that, I think is a good example of how so often
the information imparted to the contact teas of the abductees is very deeply personal and
even has spiritual and religious overtones that have direct pertinence to their belief system,
and that is necessarily something that I think should take away from the nature of
the experiences. But I think what it certainly calls us to question is indeed
what the nature of the communication is and if there is any need really for
looking at these messages delivered by alleged alien occupants of these UFOs in terms of
being some sort of a systematic message that is being delivered to humankind. It
doesn't, like you pointed out already, it doesn't seem to be that that's
the case. There is a great variety in terms of the things that are
being delivered. I think, you know, yeah, those are some good
points. And getting back to your speculation and talking about you know how you
had this speculation that you were talking about, but it's informed speculation. I
don't think it's a bad thing. And kind of to be apologetetic of the
scientists perhaps a bit is that one of the things that you say you're interested
in on your website is I say psychology, and a lot of people get
frustrated when because you're kind of touching on that now people mentioned psychology and that
there could be something going on within the person that is affecting their experience.
Of course, some of the psychologists believe that their experiences are completely internal and
there is no external component. I think it's important to look at that aspect.
I do believe there is an external component, but that these things are
mixing, and people get frustrated with that. I know, like I said,
on your site, you talked about being interested in psychology. Why do
you think the psychology is important when looking into this phenomena. Psychology is important
because if we try and take psychology out of the equation, and philosophy too
is in terms of a methodical process of inquiry that we would hope to use
to understand nature and reality around us. If you take the function of the
human mind out of the equation, what is there? What else is there?
At all? We have to look at things from the psychological perspective,
because everything is inherently based on and in truth, really, it's entirely reliant
on human interpretation of the phenomena being witnessed, and therefore we have to take
into consideration, first of all, the limitations of the human emotions, because,
for instance, often when someone has a UFO encounter, it's a very
emotional experience for them. Some people are in awe of what they're seeing.
Some people are utterly terrified. Some people have described, you know, feeling
other emotions, you know, a cosmic sense of love and unity. Some
people have gotten the distinct impression that they were being controlled by something the levolent.
So, you know, when we take into consideration the range of the
emotions and the way that the emotions and people's emotional stability and their own comfort
with a given situation will influence their perception of that circumstance. We have to
take into very serious consideration the psychology underlying because this is the best way that
we can. Again, I think that a lot of people are wary of
psychology, and I'll say this first, because you know, although psychology is
a scientific attempt to trying to understand the workings of the mind and human perception,
there are also a lot of you know, very varieties of interpretation within
the you know, subdivisions if you will, within you know, the school
of psychology itself. You know, the union perspectives, who archetypes and things
like that are the Freudian concepts that you know, have so much to do
with, you know, sex and the like. So I think that a
lot of people will say that this has been disproven, and this is disproven,
and therefore we can't really rely on a whole lot of the information that
has been brought forth in terms of psychological attempts at understanding humanity and the human
mind. But the truth is is that while the perspectives will vary and they
will be very different from one another and even contradict one another, they may
not be entirely incorrect. I think that each perspective from a psychological, scientific,
religious, anything, you know, are going to have a grain of
truth. And we have to take all these things into consideration. So yes,
psychology I think is integral to understand strange phenomenal because it has everything to
do with the way the human mind will attempt to reconcile with what it is
experiencing m And you know, I think that's important for us to understand because,
like you mentioned, with some of the inherent problems of psychology, it
is a very new science and we're still trying to figure out a lot behind
that and what motivates us and how we work. I mean, hypnotherapy is
a fairly new thing and how that works. If it works, it certainly
in my experience, does work. But why and how is still being looked
at and can we trust it to you know, be using court for example.
But I think that if we're talking about even if people believe we are
being approached by an advanced civilization, that they would know those things as well.
I mean, think if they're just trying to implant a simple idea of
peace and love and peace, and they send you that message we're all going
to come up with our own elaborate scenario around this message, and that could
be one of the answers why that this information is so different. But of
course this message could be coming to us from some other source than an extraterrestrial
I mean, I agree with you that it's psychology is something that we do
have to look at. And that's one reason I really appreciated John Max's work,
and that sure he believed that perhaps this phenomena was a non physical phenomena,
but the non physical parts are not something to ignore. That's key right
there. That is absolutely key because while there may not be an entirely physical
component to abduction, that does not rule out the potential for there to be
some kind of an intelligent interaction between humankind and another intelligence. I don't think
that that that you know, rules out the possibility at all. And the
very thing is is that you know again when you when you mentioned, for
instance, hypnosis, hypnosis has been shown to have an interesting effect. People
for instance, will say, this can be hypnotized. They can be taken
into what is apparently an altered state of consciousness where they can sometimes recall certain
information. But there's a very terrifying susceptibility in the in the mind of the
hypnotized to to you know, suggestion from the namely from the hypnotist. That's
what's been shown so many times in the past. And the thing is that
while hypnotism clearly is a process that that has certain you know, repeatable and
expected by products and effects, it's not something that is fully understood and therefore
it is not something that is by any means reliable either. But if you
look at uphology and specifically abduction research, you know, let's take into consideration,
uh, the the uh, the work of Bud Hopkins, the late
Bud Hopkins, you know, with intruders and his his books about alien abduction
and his sessions with people who he eventually began to hypnotize himself and spent time,
you know, helping recover memories regarding UFOs and alien productions. It certainly
isn't something that we can rule out that this is indeed what was going on,
and that many of these people actually were having remembrances of some sort of
circumstance. It may not have been entirely physical, as mac kind of gravitated
toward. But what's really concerning to me, is that so much of what
we understand as the abduction phenomenon is not only rooted in Hopkins's own research,
but also in the methodology that was used to obtain those results. And if
hypnotism is not something that, like you'd said, Alexandra, it cannot be
used in a court of law because of the unliability factor. Can we really
base our entire knowledge base of a particular phenomenon, whether it the abduction or
anything else, satanic ritual abuse, you know, super soldier, mind control,
all these different things that are supposedly recovered through hypnosis. Can we utilize
hypnosis as a reliable method for justifying this kind of information? I just simply
do not think that that is the case. I don't think that we can.
And though we can't discount the courts of people and their claims and their
perception of strange events, I don't think we can substantiate those claims through the
use of something we don't understand like hypnosis. You know, it's really exciting
to have this conversation, and they have a similar conversation with Nick Redfern last
week, because I think what it does is open up a lot more possibilities
and a lot more research that has to be done in this field. I
think a lot of people feel that, you know, this kind of talk
has taken a step back, that you know, we already figured out decades
ago that UFOs are ets and ET's are visiting us, and now we need
the government to admit this because they know that's true too. But I think
you know, what a lot of people are doing, at least of our
generation, is stepping back and taking another look at this and saying, wait
a sec there could be a lot more answers here. And I'm hopeful,
and I want to hear what you think of the possibilities of this even happening.
Are I'm hopeful that there will be a lot more Michiocagoos to come.
And when you get a lot more Michiocucus, and you use him a lot
because you're obviously familiar with his work, and so am I. And he's
a hero because he looks as an open mind. But when you get all
those guys together, I think in the future that and hopefully in the in
the you know, sooner rather than later, we will have scientific inquiry and
perhaps a funded study in this field. And if that happened. I think
these are some of the areas that they're going to need to look into.
Do you think it's possible for that in you know, our environment, that
a scientific organization could take this on, if that's even possible or what are
your thoughts there? It certainly is possible, It certainly certainly is possible.
I'm glad that you asked that question, Alejandro, because that's a very important
subject to address it, and it calls in question also the the history of
upology and you know, official organization's attempts at trying to, you know,
scientifically reconcile with a phenomenon that not only is very difficult to understand, but
is entirely observable, you know, by virtue of the witness, the often
very vivid eyewitness accounts, and these these observations recount objects that are obviously disobeying
our known laws of physics. So when we talk about UFOs and we talk
about the scientific establishment trying to reconcile with that, you look all the way
back to the late nineteen forties when the Air Force began serious investigation with regard
to UFOs. And I'm not talking about Roswell here per se. I'm talking
about, you know, the Air Force, Jay Edward Rupel, of course,
you know whoever saw the beginnings of Project Blue Book and the Air Force's
official inquiry into reports of UFOs. If you read especially the first edition of
the Report on Unidentified Flying Objects that Rupolt wrote, he points out a lot
of schisms within even the Air Force's off let alone various other branches of government.
You know, there were many in the Air Force who were trying to
downplay the idea of UFOs. And then ruperlt here's the guy who was overseeing
Project blue Book, coming forth writing a book about this and pointing out the
way that the idea was, you know, widely downplayed by a number of
you know, we'll say heavy hitters within his own organization and within other areas
of government as well. Blue Book nonetheless was attempting to gather information about UFOs
and look at everything logically and scientifically. But the earliest interpretations of UFOs as
extraterrestrial phenomenon stem from those years, and I would be quick to point out
to people that this, of course, was also a time prior to our
own exploration of space as humans, we hadn't gone to the moon, yet
ourselves, and early in the reports of the Project Blue Book, you see
hents its scientists who are trying to understand how a extraterrestrial intelligence might literally be
able to come to Earth. One of the issues that they were having trouble
with with with understanding was get this, how a technological spacecraft could literally survive
re entry into Earth's atmosphere. And they were talking about this, and some
of the theories that were thrown up about the anomalist green fireballs seeming throughout the
Midwest and the late nineteen forties was that these were actually probes. Get this,
extraterrestrial craft might park outside Earth's atmosphere and send probes down, given them
the understanding that these probes first of all, probably would not want to be
something that could be recovered later by Earthlings, And so some scientists rupeled recounts
for US were proposing that maybe they were sending probes down that were intended to
begin to burn up as they entered Earth's atmosphere, that they would gather certain
climactic or rather atmospheric and climatic data about Planet Earth as they injured our atmosphere,
then they would burn up eventually in that way, no one would be
able to recover an alien artifact and their presence wouldn't be known. So these
are the kind of theories that were put out. And all this came prior
to our own exploration of space, going to the Moon and things like this.
We were trying to deal with hurdles that appeared to be hurdles at the
time. And of course now it's rather commonplace to send a satellite or a
space shuttle into space and then bring it back to Earth through you know,
the atmosphere and the re entry process. So, you know, as our
science has gotten better and better, we can look at the past and the
way that we have you know, studied UFOs and we can see that,
you know, we've we've grown in leaps and bounds, and yet we can
What we seem to fail to do is to notice the preconceptions that stem from
that era. Now I'm not saying again that UFOs are not extraterrestrial, but
I think that a lot of that perspective comes from that early period prior to
our own space exploration, and that we may have influenced ourselves in ways that
we didn't realize by speculating. Now that said, as blue Book went along.
Blue Book was you know, I think that they really had good intentions
For a long time there within the University of Colorado, UFO project came on
board with Edward Condon. Arthur Koestler in his book Janus has a compinium in
the back, or an appendix rather called UFOs Carnival of Absurdity, and he
points out in that brief essay regarding UFOs, and the funny thing about that
is that I picked that book up because I'm a fan of Coastler's writing The
Roots of Coincidence and some of these things that don't have any direct relation to
UFOs. I bought Janis in a used bookstore because I liked The Roots of
Coincidence and his other writing. And he was a Hungarian journalist who primarily had
interest in, you know, science and politics and things like that, but
also wrote every now and then about strange phenomenon in psychology. Lo and behold,
my surprise. You know when I opened this book and in the back
there's this appendix that has to do with UFOs, and in that he points
out the way that many who were involved with the Convent Committee were intentionally downplaying
the idea of UFO reports by wording the reports in such a way that didn't
do so overtly, but that they suggested that the mental capacity, or the
perception or the mental state of the witness might be questionable. And then,
of course, when the Convent Committee released their official report, it stated that
although there may be some merit to the idea that there are UFOs, we
don't stand to gain anything from studying them scientifically. What a narrow minded statement,
or at least it should be interpreted as that. But for whatever reason
the Condon Committee came to this conclusion, Project Blue Book was shut down,
and forever after, it seems the media has continued to portray UFOs along the
lines of what these two organizations worked so hard apparently to do, and that
was to discredit And I don't think that Project Blue Book and intentionally all along
tide to discredit ufology, but many in the Air Force had during those years,
as evidenced by what Rupold has already said the Conting Committee. You know,
again, you can look at these sorts of documents, and I'd recommend
Arthur Koessler's book Janus to anyone because it's got that appendix in the back.
It will tell you all about that. And there are other researchers you know
all about this too who've talked about it. Robert Hastings has mentioned this kind
of thing too. These organizations, for whatever reason, found it thought it
was a good idea to downplay the idea of UFOs, make it look like
something that was less likely in the public eye. And since the nineteen sixties
the scientific establishment has followed suit continue to pursue it that way. You know
now why that is and how we could stand a gain from dismissing a subject
is beyond me. I don't know how that could be perceived by anyone as
being productive, knowing the rate of expansion of technology that we are seeing before
us today. So could science do something and could science try to understand this
phenomenon? Yes, And this is something that I think was put very best
by a researcher who's not incredibly well known these days. He wrote a book
back in the nineteen nineties called Dark White. His name is Jim Schnabel,
but he still has a blog that he talks about UFOs and abduction on from
time to time, and he mentioned that he thinks the very best thing that
uphologists like myself could do is rather than trying to come to determinations about the
scientific nature of UFOs ourselves, we should try and put information out in such
a way that will make it attractive to the scientific establishment again, so that
they will take the subject seriously as it was once taken seriously, you know,
in the Golden years, so to speak, and so that people will
come back to a meaningful attempt at trying to understand the phenomenon. And once
we do that, I have no question as to whether or not science can
apply logic that will help us learn about the phenomenon. We just have to
get them to take seriously the very idea like we once did. Yeah,
it's great that you bring that up, because I agree just so wholeheartedly with
all of that that that I like you bringing up the Golden years too,
because I always refer to that and don't want people to forget these early days
and Rupelt's book, especially that you mentioned, which you can go download for
free everybody. And this is a first early report on blue book. And
you see this evolution of these people taking this phenomena very seriously. Many in
the Air Force and scientific community very quickly jumping to the extraterrestrial answer or that
theory and going that way, which is an interesting insight. But then you
also see this kind of morphing where all of a sudden the Air Force felt
embarrassed by the whole thing and tried to push it away, and you see
Rupeelt even kind of doing the same thing. And then you have, like
you said, the Condon Report happening. And I think we've kind of been
in this dark age, is at least when it comes to the mainstream science,
where they felt, you know, that they can't touch this subject because
in the loose credibility, and that's what I hope that we come to the
end of that cycle and finally that gets played out to where people can see
there is a lot of credible information and to be able to move forward,
like you said, like we used to do, because back then there were
a lot of scientists taking this very seriously and this is all documented by Rupelt
and others back then, and then it all disappeared, Oh absolutely. And
Rupert was the very one who said at the conclusion of that first edition of
the report unidentified flying objects. I mean that was a term he coined,
by the way, but said at the end of that first edition that you
know, within the next few decades, he was certain that the advancements in
technology would bring the the apparent mystery of UFOs much closer to earth, and
he said, we'll solve the mystery within the next few decades. I'm certain
right, and I think that he would have been right had it only not
been for the fact that the very organizations that he'd been associated with and those
to come later would succumb to what I think and see. I think a
lot of people tend to look at this in terms of whether there's a government
conspiracy to hide this information. Now that very well may be the case.
We know that government organizations have certainly, you know, had an interest in
this and have undergone an inquiry into trying to solve these mysteries and investigate these
reports themselves. I'll also point out that a lot of these government files are
eventually released, some of them by Freedom of Information Act, some of them
you know, without the with without the need for you know, civilians,
you know, demanding to information. A lot of government UFO files have been
released very you know, willingly and you know, posted at these various websites.
You know, these organizations as I've mentioned earlier. So the thing is
is that I think we would have probably come to a better understanding of UFOs
had it not been for the fact that some of these organizations that followed Rupled,
you know, would succumb to this idea that if we cannot prove it
and understand it, we have to dismiss it. You know, it's kind
of like a like like a game of superiority. You know, we can't
be bested by something, and when science doesn't explain it, and our rather
when our science okays as previously or as presently understood and accepted, if if
our version of science right now can't explain this, then we cannot accept it.
We have to literally place it outside of what we agree on as calling
reality. And that seems to be what happened. That seems to be exactly
what the circumstance has been in that UFOs for most people are maybe a subject
of passing interest. But if you start having a serious conversation like we're having
right now, you know, the average bear will tend to kind of laugh
and shrug it off because they just can't take this as something that is truly
an absolute, real, everyday part of our reality, you know. And
and what many people say is it's going to take them landing on the White
House front lawn, you know, before it will be. But I don't
know that that's ever going to happen either, you know, I just don't.
Right we certainly you know, haven't seen that. But what we can
do, hopefully is get it taken seriously to the point where conventional science does
look into it, because I think, you know, unfortunately the people out
in the public, we don't have the resources to truly look into this matter
as much as it needs to be looked into. And that's what's more important.
More important than the President coming out I think and saying you know,
UFOs are here, aliens are here. More important is an organization put together
to do some research to figure out what's going on here. Even if they
have to start to look at some of the secret documents are try to pry
open, there's still enough information for the public that something can start to be
looked at. There's a group in France you know, that has done that,
and they're part of their official Space Agency, and they keep coming to
the conclusion that it's a real phenomenon and it could be extraterrestural nature. They're
very scientific about it, so they don't say it definitely is, but it
could be if we had that here. I just think personally, and you
know, I'd like to hear why you think the study of this build is
so important but one to gain technology and a better understanding of physics, but
also I think it opens up It makes the world, i think, a
bigger and more wondrous place to know that there are all of these things out
there, magical if you will, that exists in this world, that it's
not so mundane and humdrum, and we're not trapped in this everyday kind of
repetitiveness and just what's on television, that there's a whole world out there to
explore, a never ending mysteries for us to hopefully discover one day. Absolutely,
I think that that is the case, and that you know, one
day, one day, whether by our own design or you know, whether
it be you know, forced upon us, we will come to those kind
of conclusions, those kind of realizations, I'll say, because it's going to
be right in our face at some point. I think that the reason for
that is because you know, in terms of especially if UFOs it is and
you know this is brought to the table ad nauseum. But uh, the
the idea of Clark's law that any you know, Arthur C. Clark's third
law, specifically that states that any sufficiently advanced technology perceived by lesser advanced technology
will perceive it as magic. The truth is is that if we as advanced
and technologically you know, savvy as we are right now, or perceive ourselves
as being as you know, when we perceive something that is so much more
advanced than us, it is difficult for us to reconcile with and even incorporate
that again as I'd set into our very reality. So I think that in
the future, as we become more technologically advanced, it's going to become less
and less easy for us to escape the reality, the fundamental reality that constitutes
UFOs and a variety of other different kind of strange phenomenon. And to take
one more thing into consideration too, you know whether or not you you know,
support the absolute literal truth of what Whitley Strieber wrote in the book Communion.
He makes some very philosophical, you know, some very very brilliant philosophical
statements in that book, and one was that you know, after his interaction
with what he perceived as being you know, these beings. I don't think
he ever called them extraterrestrial, but he referred to them as you know,
non human beings. He had wondered if indeed that these things, though more
advanced than us, were terrified of humans because of our peers, our ability
to advance our own technology and perhaps at a rate that was catching up to
their own maybe our own you know, accumulation of technological advancement was was you
know, expanding at such a rate you know, greater than cumulative or rather
greater than exponential, and that they were afraid of humans for the very reason
that we might catch up to them. And if I don't know that that's
indeed the case, This was some of Streever's own speculation. But if we
go along, you know, following that argument, indeed, you know,
in the next twenty to thirty years, with the rate of growth of technology,
you know, something that there's a lot of empirical data to back this
up. I mean, whether or not you support you know, literal interpretations
of what they call a technological singularity to occur in the next you know,
half a century sometime. You know, books like Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is
Near It very least, will provide a lot of empirical data that supports the
notion that you know, technology is trending not toward you know, cumulative growth,
you know, on an exponential scale, but truly it greater an exponential
growth. And therefore it's going to be a situation, I think very soon
that our technology is going to bring us face to face literally with a variety
of different strange phenomenon and then we will be forced to reconsider you know,
our place and their place as well in what we call reality, because it
won't be something we can ignore any longer. At that point. That's pretty
damn exciting. Yeah, I think so. I agree. No, it's
great. I agree with you regardless of with Strieb whether you believe a story
or not. He's got an excellent mind. And you know, I was
going to bring up earlier kind of what Einstein had talked about, being talking
about imaginative speculation and how important that is to science, and science without imagination
is going to get nowhere because you can't. You have to have the imagination
to come up with a hypothesis. In the first place to go down the
route. And that's what's I think great about a lot of what you're talking
about here. Imagine if that speculation about some of the very many other possibilities
we could be dealing with here. Absolutely, So I do want to ask,
now that we're kind of getting to the end, what got you into
all of this? What got me into all this? You know, the
long story short, I was probably you know, kindergartener, first grade,
and my parents were always, you know, kind of interested in this sort
of thing. I think my mom, you know, was more interested in
you know, folk tales and you know, stories of ghosts and hauntings in
the life. Whereas my father, of course, you know, he speaks
many languages, and he you know, majored in classics when he went to
college, and so he studied Latin, Greek and Hebrew and things like that,
and therefore takes a much more historical and cultural interest, you know,
or that kind of perspective in terms of his interest in strange phenomenon. I
don't think for either of them that it was like a lifelong passion and something
that they wanted to pursue like it has become for me. But they nonetheless
introduced me to those ideas of very early age. You know, I kept
asking, you know, I was like a little bulldog, you know,
you know, biting at the ankles and everything, just wanting to know more
about this. And so I think my father finally came to the conclusion that
it would be a good idea to its, you know, to expose me
to some books about this. One of them was Ray Fowler's UFOs Interplanetary Visitors,
Ivan Sanderson's book Abominable Snowman Legend Come to Life, and a few others
were among the books that I was first. And these were pretty I mean,
these were thick, you know, mass market paperback, you know,
I mean adult reading books, and I at first, you know, probably
couldn't do much more than look at the pictures and have them be read to
me. But by the time I was in second or third grade, you
know, and this is where I got interesting. My interest in this phenomenon
literally, I think, you know, helped me grow and progress, you
know, as a student in elementary school. At very least my teachers were
like, you know, some of them loved it because they were like,
you know, he is reading right now, he's in second grade and he's
reading in a fifth grade or sixth grade level. And some of the teachers
when I got to third grade, specifically, one of my teachers really didn't
like it because she said, although he might be reading, you know,
so much better than the other students in the class right now, and he
and this kind of spread too. I generally tended to be a lot better
with everything, except for you know, math, that didn't come until much
later. But you know, my third grade teacher literally had a parent teacher
conference, I think, and pointed out to my mom and dad her concern
about my interest in the subject of UFOs, and they put studies like that
and everything, and my mom and dad kind of looked at her blankly and
said, well, he's reading, isn't he. You know, so they
they went to that for me. And you know, I just always was
interested in it from a young age. But about the time I turned about
twenty one, I started getting serious about things in terms of, you know,
I wanted to be a writer. And you know, at first,
I a lot of writers who I've spoken to have read this particularly pivotal work
at Stephen King's book on writing. When I was in college, my very
first semester, I found that book in the basement of the library, and
I would never check it out. I would always just go and sit in
the basement of the library every day in between class as is, when I
didn't have other work I was doing. Anytime I had downtime, I would
just read from that book. And I literally read the entire book there in
the library from day to day without ever checking it out. It was like
that was the place that was supposed to be read in the presence of all
this knowledge on all these you know, shelves and all these books and manuscripts
and documents and things like that. And when I picked that book up and
I finished it and everything, I thought, well, you know, now
it's it's setting stone. I'm going to write, you know, thrillers and
fiction and things like that. And boy, let me tell you, I
tried, but I could never get the hang of it. I'm not you
know, maybe one day it'll it'll coalesce and come together. But I was
never the fiction writer I had hoped to be. But I subsequently began to
work with Joshua P. Warren and his Lemur research team a bit, and
I started helping out with some conferences he did here in western North Carolina,
and I had a lot of ideas and through some of those conferences, I
met people like Lauren Coleman, Phillis Galdy of Fate magazine and a few others,
and I shortly after that began to submit articles to Fate and other magazines
and that's where things come took off from there, and then I guess it
was three or four years ago I started the website, the Grailian Report,
and that's kind of been the the crux of my interest for the last several
years. And still writing literally every single day about this, you know,
and it's very much become something that I think, will you know whether or
not I want it to be now it's going to be a lifelong passion.
Well, you've definitely got an act for writing titles, because you have written
a book and it has a very compelling title, Magic, Mysticism and the
Molecule, The Search for Sentient Intelligence from Other Worlds. Tell us a little
bit in a nutshell, if you can. That's always difficult for an usher
About the book, Well, the book deals with altered states of consciousness and
people's attempts at contacting what appeared to be sent intelligences through various mediums you know,
throughout the centuries. And it's broken into three you know sections, as
the title indicates, you know, the history of magical practices, the use
of mystical processes and things like that, and then of course psychedelic and entthhogenic
molecules to achieve those kinds of things. So yeah, in a nutshell,
all through states of consciousness and attempts at contacting non human intelligence. Mm hm.
So kind of some of the ideas like it inspired I guess by maybe
people like Graham Hancock who talk a lot about that sort of thing. Yeah,
you know, Daniel Pinchback, Graham Handcock, Terrence McKenna. A lot
of those folks are very uh, you know, influential, especially in terms
of the entheogenic approach to that. You know, people who read the Magical
and the and the mystical portions of the book will notice that I probably referenced
John Keel and people like that, you know, more so than the popular
you know, authors in the psychoonaut fields and things like that. And it's
strange a subject for me, especially because when I became compelled to write that
book and of course I was not then into today, I'm still not a
user of psychedelic substances myself, you know. As a journalistic approach to this,
you know, I wasn't someone who was wanting to write about personal experiences,
and many people told me that that's what I needed to do. But
I thought, in order to maintain journalistic integrity, could write about the subject,
not become the subject, you know, And so that's that's what I
did. And there are a number of book projects right now underway. I've
got a lot of things I'm working with. One in particular that my publisher
and I've been going back and forth. There's been a complete proposal. It
does have to do with UFOs, and we're now beyond the first stages of
the of the proposal and we're kind of reworking the idea right now. So
hopefully sometime in twenty twelve, I'll have more information about that for folks as
well. Okay, sounds exciting, and so where people can go just so
they know Gray Alien Report. Just in case you're not sure how to spell
that, and I know how you may be struggling with that, It is
g R A l i E N Report. So GR alienreport dot com and
that's where you can read your writing, get information about your book and some
other things. That's it, absolutely and thank you so much, Alejandro.
It's been a fantastic time talking with you. Any opportunity to have good,
insightful conversation with folks like yourself, it's my pleasure. Well great, because
you know, I had a lot of fun talking to you. I love
the perspective and it always gets me excited to hear someone else in this field,
some other people that have new and different ideas on how to approach things.
And I think this is going to be important in the future because I
think there is a future beyond you know, the typical upology that we've seen
in the past, and I'm excited about that. So it's great to talk
to you, and I'll definitely be calling on you again anytime, my friend,
anytime. Oh right, it was great to hear from Micah. What
a cool dude, huh, he's really neat. So I had a lot
of fun talking to him, and I look forward to speaking and working with
him very much in the future. So what a few great interviews we had
Micah. Before that, we had Nick Redburn and then we had Betty Okerell
before that. All authors, and guess what, we're going to keep it
up next week. We're going to have another author and this is Mac Maloney
and he just wrote a new book called UFOs in Wartime, a brand new
book. You can find that on Amazon. UFOs and Wartime. So Mac
Maloney next week, UFOs and Wartime. I gotta say it three times to
make sure you get it. Don't forget to visit Openminds dot tv and ufodailynews
dot com for the latest in UFO news. Thank you all so much for
listening, and we'll talk to you next week. People. Adios.