1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:03,200
And it hits me, Oh my
gosh, this is at triangle. You

2
00:00:03,240 --> 00:00:06,719
know, there's explanation for everything that
occurred in the randallsham Pars incident. It

3
00:00:06,960 --> 00:00:11,960
doesn't involve aliens at all. It
was completely silent. It comes right over

4
00:00:12,039 --> 00:00:18,000
our heads. Classics also really stunning
into clearly. He turned over to my

5
00:00:18,079 --> 00:00:20,440
father and held his hand, and
he looked in his eyes and said,

6
00:00:20,480 --> 00:00:29,320
we're not alone. Welcome to Podcast
UFO for our live show. During the

7
00:00:29,399 --> 00:00:33,600
show, feel free to participate live
in our chat room, and don't forget

8
00:00:33,640 --> 00:00:37,960
to like us on our very active
Facebook page. Hello and welcome to the

9
00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:41,759
show. I'm Martin Willisher, host. I'm really excited about tonight show.

10
00:00:41,920 --> 00:00:49,039
We have a professor of history Penn
State, professor Greggigean hopefully I pronounced that

11
00:00:49,320 --> 00:00:54,479
close, and he is has been
doing some excellent work. We're going to

12
00:00:54,520 --> 00:00:58,159
be talking about that basically, on
the history of UFOs and you know,

13
00:00:58,240 --> 00:01:03,200
the whole phenomena in general. And
let's see what else next week. Mac

14
00:01:03,280 --> 00:01:07,920
maloney and I'll be in studio of
mc maloney. Once again, some people

15
00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:10,879
didn't really care that much for it
because it was kind of a four or

16
00:01:10,879 --> 00:01:14,640
five people and we're all kind of
chatting and having I was having a lot

17
00:01:14,680 --> 00:01:18,799
of fun, but I guarantee you
we are going to talk about the UFO

18
00:01:18,920 --> 00:01:23,120
topic. So that's next week.
We'll be in studio and Exeter, New

19
00:01:23,200 --> 00:01:27,680
Hampshire with Mac maloney and team.
And also he's going to give away I

20
00:01:27,719 --> 00:01:32,680
think he said seven. His publisher
is giving way seven books. So we're

21
00:01:32,719 --> 00:01:36,280
going to have callins and people can
win a free book. That way,

22
00:01:37,040 --> 00:01:41,560
just in time for Christmas, and
let's see. I want to thank everyone

23
00:01:41,599 --> 00:01:44,879
that helps out with the show.
I really do appreciate that. We absolutely

24
00:01:44,920 --> 00:01:49,200
could not do it without you.
The show is expensive and you help by

25
00:01:49,439 --> 00:01:53,120
supporting the show for two dollars or
more a month. All that informations on

26
00:01:53,280 --> 00:01:59,760
podcast UFO dot com and we are
live on KGr A Radio and you can

27
00:01:59,799 --> 00:02:02,959
all we'll see it over on our
website and it's also on our guests website

28
00:02:04,040 --> 00:02:08,960
tonight as well. I saw that
and on YouTube and podcast UFO dot com.

29
00:02:09,120 --> 00:02:15,639
Then on Thursdays we're over at the
Dark Matter Digital Network Thursday nights.

30
00:02:15,680 --> 00:02:20,800
I think it's up seven pm Eastern
Standard time, but I'm not really sure

31
00:02:20,960 --> 00:02:23,520
about that. It's changed a little
bit over there. So anyway, all

32
00:02:23,599 --> 00:02:28,400
good. We are ready to roll
and Alejandro, welcome to the show.

33
00:02:29,520 --> 00:02:31,400
Hello, Hello, thank you so
much. I'm excited for your show.

34
00:02:31,439 --> 00:02:35,159
This is going to be a good
one. Your guests, and I got

35
00:02:35,199 --> 00:02:38,360
to say hi for a second there, Greg, but I didn't get to

36
00:02:38,439 --> 00:02:40,840
say more about how I really am
excited that you're doing this interview. It's

37
00:02:40,879 --> 00:02:46,560
great to have you here. Yeah. Yeah, I was telling him earlier

38
00:02:46,680 --> 00:02:51,159
that you and I actually his name
came up during one of the news things

39
00:02:51,240 --> 00:02:54,800
that we were discussing, and that's
kind of where this led. So it's

40
00:02:55,039 --> 00:02:59,719
it's really really going to be fascinating
to hear his side. And you two

41
00:02:59,719 --> 00:03:04,520
actually met when I got snowed out
of Phoenix. He made it out there

42
00:03:04,800 --> 00:03:08,039
from Pennsylvania, and you're two met
briefly at one of your I think it

43
00:03:08,120 --> 00:03:13,400
was twenty sixteen or something like that. I know it's a missed opportunity on

44
00:03:13,520 --> 00:03:16,159
my part, mostly because I get
so swamped and crazy. And it's funny

45
00:03:16,159 --> 00:03:21,199
because you know, I'll get to
meet some really cool people and they'll introduce

46
00:03:21,280 --> 00:03:24,840
themselves and I'll make a mental note, which doesn't work very well because my

47
00:03:24,960 --> 00:03:31,000
mental notes don't don't last very long, and they just kind of disappear into

48
00:03:31,080 --> 00:03:35,879
the ether by the time my head
hits the pillow and I'm up and running

49
00:03:35,960 --> 00:03:39,159
the next day. So the amount
of information that I learned and forget at

50
00:03:39,199 --> 00:03:44,800
those conferences is is pretty large.
Soon is the one that slipped through my

51
00:03:45,400 --> 00:03:50,360
mental fingers. Yeah, someone said
to me one time, a short pencil

52
00:03:50,479 --> 00:03:54,000
is better than a long memory.
That is a great saying. I love

53
00:03:54,080 --> 00:03:59,919
that saying. Yeah, yeah so, but I'm also guilty of the same.

54
00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:01,439
And you know, you meet a
lot of people, and it's always

55
00:04:01,479 --> 00:04:05,080
fun out there and Phoenix getting to
meet all those great people, yeah,

56
00:04:05,520 --> 00:04:12,120
and hanging out with them. We're
getting old, buddy, getting hold you

57
00:04:12,240 --> 00:04:15,840
go at all this white hair.
I know by the day it's switer.

58
00:04:15,720 --> 00:04:20,279
So what's going on in the UFO
world. I have a few exciting UFO

59
00:04:20,360 --> 00:04:24,360
stories for you, so I'll try
to get through these as quickly as possible.

60
00:04:24,399 --> 00:04:28,680
The first couple aren't as exciting.
People I think get kind of bored

61
00:04:28,720 --> 00:04:31,800
of us to bunking UFO signings.
But that's not why I talk about these

62
00:04:31,879 --> 00:04:35,079
sightings. The reasons why I talk
about them is because they're in the news.

63
00:04:35,519 --> 00:04:40,439
You'll probably see them and before you're
you know, you're at the water

64
00:04:40,480 --> 00:04:46,319
cooler talking to your buddies about it. You hopefully will then get my information

65
00:04:46,439 --> 00:04:48,720
be able to say or even better, you know, one of your buddies

66
00:04:48,800 --> 00:04:51,360
and those you're into UFOs and they
come walking up and they say, hey,

67
00:04:51,439 --> 00:04:54,680
I saw a UFO on the news. And if you're like, well,

68
00:04:54,800 --> 00:04:58,959
actually, you'll seem really smart.
So it's about education, right,

69
00:04:59,360 --> 00:05:02,519
Yeah. I don't think we talked
about this one before, but in Texas

70
00:05:03,959 --> 00:05:08,879
there's been a little bit of a
do made about this picture. So this

71
00:05:09,040 --> 00:05:13,319
lady went outside to take a picture
of the sunset and actually she got a

72
00:05:13,360 --> 00:05:17,920
little bit of video two and you
see what looks like a almost like a

73
00:05:18,399 --> 00:05:25,759
glowing saucer there. But it actually, given my experience and I actually did

74
00:05:25,839 --> 00:05:29,560
talk to Mark D'Antonio, I think
we even mentioned this maybe last week.

75
00:05:29,759 --> 00:05:33,199
No, that was something else actually, but it looks like a part of

76
00:05:33,279 --> 00:05:38,519
a contrail and or just a cloud. Of course, a contrail left by

77
00:05:38,560 --> 00:05:45,120
an airplane essentially is creating a cloud, and especially at sunset, you know,

78
00:05:45,360 --> 00:05:48,480
that's what makes sunset so beautiful.
They light up the clouds because of

79
00:05:48,560 --> 00:05:54,959
the angle of the sun and different. And so this piece of what appears

80
00:05:55,000 --> 00:05:59,199
to be either part of a contrail
or just a cloud sitting there is getting

81
00:05:59,279 --> 00:06:02,879
light lit up very brightly, so
it looks fantastic. And even in the

82
00:06:03,000 --> 00:06:08,800
short clip it doesn't move at all, and which would also indicate a clouds.

83
00:06:08,839 --> 00:06:14,199
So contrails, clouds or there's those
are things to watch out for when

84
00:06:14,319 --> 00:06:17,040
you're looking at this sort of thing. The next stories are yeah, no,

85
00:06:17,160 --> 00:06:20,000
no, you can already move on
from that up It just reminds me

86
00:06:20,120 --> 00:06:24,879
a few weeks ago, I was
driving along and again it was like late

87
00:06:24,959 --> 00:06:30,120
in the afternoon and there was there
was patches of clouds, and one look

88
00:06:30,839 --> 00:06:32,399
so tempting for me to take a
picture. I just wanted to see what

89
00:06:32,399 --> 00:06:34,879
it would look like, but of
course I was driving, but I wanted

90
00:06:34,879 --> 00:06:39,040
to see if it would look like
a UFO, because it definitely looked like

91
00:06:39,240 --> 00:06:41,680
something like that. Up in the
sky there was a bunch of little short

92
00:06:41,759 --> 00:06:46,319
clouds and with the sun hitting them, I was thinking the same thing,

93
00:06:46,519 --> 00:06:50,120
and I saw that image you're talking
about, and yeah, it does look

94
00:06:50,199 --> 00:06:54,040
like a disc at first, but
that's you're probably nailed it. That's probably

95
00:06:54,079 --> 00:06:56,959
what it is. Yeah, and
you know, We see this a lot

96
00:06:57,040 --> 00:07:00,480
because a lot of times the reporters
are the people taking the accounts, are

97
00:07:00,519 --> 00:07:04,120
not necessarily pros at looking at all
this stuff, like like they don't look

98
00:07:04,160 --> 00:07:08,079
at it on a regular basis like
we do, so they're not able to

99
00:07:08,160 --> 00:07:11,600
identify it. They think it looks
pretty neat, and they know that if

100
00:07:11,600 --> 00:07:14,639
they put it out there, people
are also going to get really excited about

101
00:07:14,680 --> 00:07:16,399
it, And sure enough, that's
what's happened here, that a lot of

102
00:07:16,439 --> 00:07:20,120
people have gotten excited about this lady
who caught a UFO during the sunset.

103
00:07:20,279 --> 00:07:25,439
But just so you're aware, and
of course it's always good for us to

104
00:07:25,480 --> 00:07:28,720
speak to these because these are the
questions we get, Hey, what about

105
00:07:28,759 --> 00:07:32,639
that thing in Texas? What about
this here or there? More Tom DeLong

106
00:07:32,879 --> 00:07:36,639
news, And this actually doesn't have
to do with to the Stars, his

107
00:07:36,839 --> 00:07:44,360
organization that's investigating UFOs. This has
to do with his own personal research.

108
00:07:44,560 --> 00:07:47,079
So some of you may know that
Tom DeLong has been doing his own research

109
00:07:47,160 --> 00:07:51,120
for a long time and he's developed, you know, kind of his ideas

110
00:07:51,560 --> 00:07:56,800
into a few different scripts and stories
out there. Some of them are graphic

111
00:07:56,920 --> 00:08:01,680
novels, and in particular, he
has a graphic novel is essentially a name

112
00:08:01,759 --> 00:08:07,079
for a comic book. Another more
sophisticated name for a comic book. He's

113
00:08:07,120 --> 00:08:11,040
got one called Strange Times, and
he says it was even inspired by his

114
00:08:11,160 --> 00:08:16,800
website Strange Times, which of course
was done years ago. And you may

115
00:08:16,879 --> 00:08:20,040
not know this, but he would
post Open Mind stat TV stories there often

116
00:08:20,720 --> 00:08:24,720
with our permission, because you know, we loved working with him way back

117
00:08:24,800 --> 00:08:28,839
then when that's when we developed our
relationship. But he developed this graphic comic

118
00:08:28,920 --> 00:08:33,240
which is kind of about the skateboard
kids who find all of this weird stuff

119
00:08:33,240 --> 00:08:37,639
about UFOs and everything, and TBS
has picked it up, so it's going

120
00:08:37,679 --> 00:08:41,240
to be a television series. There
was a rumor out there that it was

121
00:08:41,279 --> 00:08:46,039
going to be a cartoon, kind
of an adult cartoon, but I think

122
00:08:46,120 --> 00:08:50,360
that might have been an assumption because
this is based off a graphic novel.

123
00:08:50,759 --> 00:08:54,159
Other stories out there make it look
like it it'll be live action, so

124
00:08:54,320 --> 00:08:58,840
actual actors and everything out there.
So I'm not quite sure if it's going

125
00:08:58,879 --> 00:09:03,000
to live action or not, but
definitely a series is going to be made

126
00:09:03,360 --> 00:09:07,000
based off of Tom de Belong Strange
Times, which is kind of his idea,

127
00:09:09,080 --> 00:09:11,919
you know, this piece set of
youth for his idea of what's going

128
00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:16,200
on with UFOs and everything. So
this ought to be interesting and obviously he's

129
00:09:16,240 --> 00:09:20,240
extremely excited about it. So that's
pretty interesting. Huh. Yeah, that's

130
00:09:20,279 --> 00:09:24,080
really a turn of careers, isn't
it, think about right? I know,

131
00:09:26,240 --> 00:09:28,639
but that's what he's wanted, you
know. And the good thing about

132
00:09:28,720 --> 00:09:33,440
this is at least it's an outlet
for him to get out his ideas,

133
00:09:33,879 --> 00:09:37,799
because some of you may notice he
has not really been He was very vocal,

134
00:09:37,559 --> 00:09:43,759
especially early last year or yeah,
essentially early last year we're still in

135
00:09:43,799 --> 00:09:46,639
twenty eighteen. But then once this
New York Times article came out, and

136
00:09:46,720 --> 00:09:50,879
once he started this to the Star's
Academy to do serious research, he's really

137
00:09:50,960 --> 00:09:58,120
taken a backseat, at least when
it comes to vocalizing or sharing his opinions

138
00:09:58,159 --> 00:10:03,240
on this topic. Instead, he's
been kind of allowing his researchers and work.

139
00:10:03,320 --> 00:10:07,600
We've heard more from Louise Alzando than
anybody really in the last year because

140
00:10:07,639 --> 00:10:11,840
they're doing very careful work. So
he's making sure he's not tainting the waters

141
00:10:11,919 --> 00:10:16,840
there. So I'm sure he appreciates
finally having this outlet for his idea is

142
00:10:16,879 --> 00:10:20,159
about the topic. You know,
you don't you know, there's a lot

143
00:10:20,200 --> 00:10:24,279
of people that kind of bash you
know, Tom DeLong. But one thing

144
00:10:24,320 --> 00:10:26,480
I got to tell you, you
don't see him trying to grab any of

145
00:10:26,519 --> 00:10:31,799
the glory that the December sixteenth article
you know, had in the New York

146
00:10:31,840 --> 00:10:35,080
Times, really, you know,
I mean there's those mentioning of course lou

147
00:10:35,679 --> 00:10:41,519
Alesando's you know, featured in that, but there's not really a lot going

148
00:10:41,559 --> 00:10:43,879
on when it's in fact, it
was his efforts that actually, you know,

149
00:10:45,000 --> 00:10:50,159
made these things come forward. Really
exactly, it was his efforts completely.

150
00:10:50,759 --> 00:10:52,679
That's why I've you know, most
of my articles I've been from that

151
00:10:52,840 --> 00:10:58,039
angle is here's this organization, but
you know, it's this rock star who

152
00:10:58,120 --> 00:11:01,000
made this all happen. And it
really was his efforts. If he wouldn't

153
00:11:01,039 --> 00:11:05,519
have had this platform, this to
the Stars Academy than Alesando, for Alesando

154
00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:09,320
to join and then have this outlet
to be able to share, we might

155
00:11:09,600 --> 00:11:16,000
still not know about this secret Pentagon, you know UFO project that is ongoing,

156
00:11:16,320 --> 00:11:20,399
and I mean there aren't there's new
information to be discovered about this project

157
00:11:20,480 --> 00:11:24,559
on a regular basis, and I
could share with you. Even recently I

158
00:11:24,679 --> 00:11:28,960
talked with George Knapp and he is, you know, still looking into this

159
00:11:28,080 --> 00:11:33,799
and he's prepared to release more information
too. So this is the you know,

160
00:11:35,159 --> 00:11:37,120
the fruit that keeps on giving,
and we're going to get more and

161
00:11:37,240 --> 00:11:43,720
more information as time goes on.
So stay tuned because it's very exciting times

162
00:11:43,399 --> 00:11:48,159
with all of this. And this
is kind of exciting too because I think

163
00:11:48,240 --> 00:11:52,600
this next story I'm going to get
to kind of has allowed to happen because

164
00:11:52,720 --> 00:11:56,440
of these new revelations that Tom DeLong
helped inspire. And that is you've probably

165
00:11:56,559 --> 00:12:01,360
seen in the news a lot about
this nat A scientist who's saying we need

166
00:12:01,399 --> 00:12:09,159
to look into aliens. This all
started with a Fox News story and actually

167
00:12:09,240 --> 00:12:11,120
he's come out to say, well, Fox News didn't get it right,

168
00:12:11,200 --> 00:12:16,720
and they didn't actually interview him before
they release the story, but they did

169
00:12:16,840 --> 00:12:20,279
watch a lecture in a paper that
he did for SETTI, the Search for

170
00:12:20,440 --> 00:12:26,279
Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, where he was
arguing essentially that aliens could have visited here,

171
00:12:26,440 --> 00:12:33,000
we don't know, and that we
need to take UFO stories seriously and

172
00:12:33,279 --> 00:12:37,679
do some serious research to figure out
if that's the case. They he feels

173
00:12:37,720 --> 00:12:43,200
that the Fox story that came out
kind of gave the impression that he believes

174
00:12:43,559 --> 00:12:50,519
definitively that you know, aliens have
been here and it's something we need to

175
00:12:50,240 --> 00:12:54,679
prove, and that's why people need
to pay attention. He's correcting to say

176
00:12:54,759 --> 00:12:58,600
that, No, what I'm saying
is it's entirely possible. And because of

177
00:12:58,720 --> 00:13:03,240
that reason, that's why we need
to take this information seriously, because there

178
00:13:03,360 --> 00:13:09,279
could be discoveries made by information and
evidence and physical evidence that we have right

179
00:13:09,360 --> 00:13:13,720
here on the planet, which I
think makes complete sense. And it's one

180
00:13:13,759 --> 00:13:16,399
of the frustrating things that when it
comes to SETTI. Of course, you

181
00:13:16,559 --> 00:13:22,159
have debated Shostack that leads scientists for
SETI on your show, but they you

182
00:13:22,240 --> 00:13:28,080
know, Shostak does an excellent job. And I do a lecture astronomers and

183
00:13:28,200 --> 00:13:31,200
UFOs, and it's funny I do. I start with talking about how great

184
00:13:31,240 --> 00:13:35,159
Shostak is, but him being a
bonehead is what inspired me to do this

185
00:13:35,320 --> 00:13:39,879
lecture because of a couple of things
he says, as astronomers a f uf

186
00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:43,279
us, we're here. Astronomers would
see him, and it's kind of a

187
00:13:43,320 --> 00:13:48,639
silly thing because astronomers have seen UFOs, So that's the nature of that lecture.

188
00:13:48,759 --> 00:13:54,759
But he argues so strongly and so
convincingly that the universe must be,

189
00:13:56,120 --> 00:13:58,759
you know, teeming with life,
yet they can't get here. And that's

190
00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:05,840
frustrating. Part is that if there
are if the likelihood of extraterrestrial civilizations,

191
00:14:05,919 --> 00:14:11,360
intelligent ones, is so high and
the odds are so high that they're out

192
00:14:11,440 --> 00:14:16,639
there, then it would lend to
it would seem intuitively obvious that the possibility

193
00:14:16,759 --> 00:14:20,720
that we've been visited in the past, or even potentially being visited now,

194
00:14:22,360 --> 00:14:26,279
it is a possibility. Perhaps we
don't have strong evidence to say that that

195
00:14:26,480 --> 00:14:33,240
is certainly happening, but it's you
know, their argument lends to and sets

196
00:14:33,320 --> 00:14:39,919
the base a very strong one for
the argument that it's a possibility. And

197
00:14:39,120 --> 00:14:43,480
that's what this scientist is out there
trying to say. Because it's possible,

198
00:14:43,600 --> 00:14:50,240
we need to take the possibility seriously, and we need to investigate any potential

199
00:14:50,399 --> 00:14:54,440
evidence showing that this has occurred or
is occurring. You know, the guests

200
00:14:54,480 --> 00:14:58,279
I have I'm going to talk to
him about Setti because I've heard him talk

201
00:14:58,320 --> 00:15:01,759
about that subject, and one of
the things he says is, you know,

202
00:15:01,879 --> 00:15:05,559
they basically have as much evidence as
we do to get their funding,

203
00:15:07,320 --> 00:15:11,720
you know, which is a great
point. And over the years, you

204
00:15:11,840 --> 00:15:16,080
know, they have not had much
in the way of fruits for their efforts.

205
00:15:16,200 --> 00:15:18,480
So I think that they would admit
that that we don't have any evidence

206
00:15:18,519 --> 00:15:24,840
over all of these years. Same
could be said of UFO research, although

207
00:15:24,399 --> 00:15:28,600
some people have argued that in the
UFO research arena there's been more that has

208
00:15:28,679 --> 00:15:33,159
been gained. And I think if
you look at the Pentagon program and the

209
00:15:33,279 --> 00:15:37,240
evidence that Louis Alesando has put forth, which is only a fraction of the

210
00:15:37,399 --> 00:15:43,080
information that they gathered because as he
says, he hasn't been given the liberty

211
00:15:43,159 --> 00:15:46,600
to share any more information. You
know, there's definitely a strong case to

212
00:15:46,639 --> 00:15:52,639
be made that at least there are
mysterious occurrences that have happened that could potentially

213
00:15:54,519 --> 00:15:58,480
kind of like the other scientists Columbano
is his name, by the way,

214
00:15:58,919 --> 00:16:03,559
proposed at there there's enough there to
look at, um to begin to explore.

215
00:16:06,279 --> 00:16:10,600
Yeah, absolutely, And then you
know there's supposedly thousands of trace cases,

216
00:16:11,720 --> 00:16:14,519
you know, where there was some
type of yeah, I mean evidence,

217
00:16:15,279 --> 00:16:19,240
I don't personally, there's there's potential
trace cases. But the French this

218
00:16:19,440 --> 00:16:26,799
is kind of uh these Japan the
French UFO organization that is under their space

219
00:16:26,039 --> 00:16:32,480
program, that those are their most
important cases. It's they're handful of cases

220
00:16:32,799 --> 00:16:37,039
where they do feel that there have
been physical trace evidence. And they do

221
00:16:37,240 --> 00:16:41,679
have cases where they feel, you
know, plants for example, have been

222
00:16:41,679 --> 00:16:47,200
affected by electromagnetic effects that proved to
them that there have been at least some

223
00:16:47,399 --> 00:16:52,360
physical contact of some sort. And
when that sort of evidence piles up,

224
00:16:52,399 --> 00:16:56,200
it's something to look at, right, Alajandro, thank you so much,

225
00:16:56,360 --> 00:17:00,159
my pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right, and I'll talk to

226
00:17:00,200 --> 00:17:03,120
you next week. Actually, I
won't talk to next week. Next week

227
00:17:03,159 --> 00:17:06,160
I'll be in studios, so sorry, it's not going to be next week,

228
00:17:06,240 --> 00:17:12,039
so I know it's gonna be after
Christmas. All right. On YouTube

229
00:17:12,079 --> 00:17:15,039
you can see the sad face,
all right, Helejunter, you take care.

230
00:17:15,039 --> 00:17:18,319
I'll talk to you soon. All
right. You do have a great

231
00:17:18,359 --> 00:17:22,680
show, all right, thank you. So our guest tonight I'm real excited,

232
00:17:22,920 --> 00:17:27,240
is Professor Greggigeon. He's a professor
of history at Penn State University,

233
00:17:27,319 --> 00:17:33,440
where he specializes in history of science
and medicine. He's written and taught extensively

234
00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:38,359
about the topics as the history of
disability, the history of crime and prisons,

235
00:17:38,440 --> 00:17:42,759
and the history of madness. And
I actually saw some of his lectures

236
00:17:42,839 --> 00:17:48,680
online on that very interesting. Most
recently, he's embarked on writing the history

237
00:17:48,759 --> 00:17:55,519
of UFO and alien contact phenomenon with
an eye toward understanding its rise and development

238
00:17:55,599 --> 00:18:00,519
worldwide. He's received funding for his
research from the American Philosophical Society, the

239
00:18:00,599 --> 00:18:06,720
American Historical Association, NASA, and
the Smithsonian Institute. Wow, welcome to

240
00:18:06,759 --> 00:18:10,000
the show. Great, great,
Thanks, I'm glad to be here.

241
00:18:10,279 --> 00:18:14,359
Yeah, excellent. So I have
to I guess I'm gonna have to ask

242
00:18:14,480 --> 00:18:18,480
right off the batum, why UFOs? How did you get how did you

243
00:18:18,559 --> 00:18:22,839
fall out? Professor of history?
How did they fall into UFOs? Or

244
00:18:22,880 --> 00:18:26,319
how did they fall into you?
Yea, they felt well, you know,

245
00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:30,400
there's there's the there's the sort of
more long range sort of answer,

246
00:18:30,480 --> 00:18:36,680
and the short range answer. The
the the kind of long range answer is

247
00:18:36,759 --> 00:18:41,759
that I, like so many people, particularly of my generation, as you

248
00:18:41,839 --> 00:18:45,759
can tell, I've got my share
of gray hair, I grew up,

249
00:18:45,920 --> 00:18:52,559
I grew up and was utterly,
utterly fascinated with UFOs, and aliens and

250
00:18:52,440 --> 00:18:59,319
the literature, and so I as
a as as a kid, I couldn't

251
00:18:59,319 --> 00:19:03,200
get enough of this stuff, and
so I would read everything I could read

252
00:19:03,279 --> 00:19:07,079
about. I would watch any TV
specials. I remember really vividly that series

253
00:19:07,559 --> 00:19:11,920
back and I guess that was the
seventies Right in Search of with und Right,

254
00:19:12,519 --> 00:19:17,400
and Um. I would read about
this stuff. Was utterly fascinated with

255
00:19:17,559 --> 00:19:22,400
it. But I also got really
interested too, and in reading like the

256
00:19:22,960 --> 00:19:30,200
Debunkers too, you know. I
was fascinated with hearing from Philip Class.

257
00:19:30,319 --> 00:19:34,279
I was loved Carl Sagan. I
still remember vividly going to my father taking

258
00:19:34,319 --> 00:19:38,160
me to see a Carl Sagan lecture
he was visiting. I grew up in

259
00:19:38,599 --> 00:19:48,039
upstate New York and he was visiting, and that was just utterly so I

260
00:19:48,440 --> 00:19:52,240
was fascinated with it, and it
was for me it was um, you

261
00:19:52,319 --> 00:19:56,680
know, I think about it in
retrospect, I tell people in many many

262
00:19:56,759 --> 00:20:03,039
ways. UM, my interest in
the study and the reading about UFOs and

263
00:20:03,200 --> 00:20:07,119
UFO literature, I think was the
beginning of my becoming a professor of history.

264
00:20:07,640 --> 00:20:15,079
I mean, I really it was
my introduction to thinking about big questions,

265
00:20:15,519 --> 00:20:22,960
investigating things, uncovering lifting up rocks
and uncovering stories, trying to be

266
00:20:22,119 --> 00:20:26,279
critical but trying to be open,
all these kinds of things. In a

267
00:20:26,400 --> 00:20:32,039
sense, I realized I kind of
was learning by my experience doing that,

268
00:20:32,119 --> 00:20:34,039
and so that's where I first became
interested in it. But I have to

269
00:20:34,119 --> 00:20:37,640
say then I kind of moved on
to other things, and as you can

270
00:20:37,720 --> 00:20:41,440
tell, I started to study and
research other kinds of fields, but I've

271
00:20:41,440 --> 00:20:47,039
always been interested in the history of
science and medicine. And then what happened

272
00:20:47,240 --> 00:20:51,400
was a few years ago I was
on a panel at a conference on a

273
00:20:51,440 --> 00:20:56,519
completely different subject with a colleague of
mine, and she was working on a

274
00:20:56,680 --> 00:21:00,720
book project that was going to involve
a bunch of people writing about the occult

275
00:21:00,240 --> 00:21:07,119
and the occult particularly in and after
Nazi Germany in Germany, and it was

276
00:21:07,279 --> 00:21:11,039
some fascinating stuff. And I said
to her offhand, I said, you

277
00:21:11,160 --> 00:21:15,640
know, I always wondered, did
did that whole UFO thing like ever take

278
00:21:15,799 --> 00:21:19,960
place in Germany? You know?
Was that ever a big thing there?

279
00:21:21,279 --> 00:21:22,599
She's like, I have no idea, but if you ever wanted to write

280
00:21:22,640 --> 00:21:26,880
on it, we would love to
publish whatever you're writing. I'm like,

281
00:21:26,000 --> 00:21:30,480
well, I don't have time for
that, well, it kind of stuck

282
00:21:30,559 --> 00:21:33,599
in my crawl. I just had
this thing and I kept it's an itch

283
00:21:33,680 --> 00:21:40,119
I had to scratch. And so
I started doing some research on my own

284
00:21:40,240 --> 00:21:45,240
with a database that I had at
the university library and started looking into the

285
00:21:45,440 --> 00:21:51,759
early kinds of experiences of people reporting
UFOs in Germany in the forties and fifties.

286
00:21:52,359 --> 00:21:55,920
And I found all this stuff and
I was fascinated with I ended up

287
00:21:55,960 --> 00:21:59,480
writing something up about it. Didn't
actually ever get published in that book,

288
00:21:59,519 --> 00:22:03,119
because in the end it was not
related enough, but I followed that and

289
00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:07,119
then you know, as I was
ready to take on a new project,

290
00:22:07,759 --> 00:22:11,000
a friend of mine said, hey, why don't you do this, Why

291
00:22:11,039 --> 00:22:15,640
don't you jump into there, because
you find this stuff fascinating. I'm like,

292
00:22:15,319 --> 00:22:18,200
yeah, I don't know. There
must be so much that's been written

293
00:22:18,279 --> 00:22:22,839
on it. And that's when I
kind of discovered that, guess what,

294
00:22:25,160 --> 00:22:30,359
academic historians, you know, people
of my tribe have shown almost no interest

295
00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:34,279
in the subject whatsoever. I mean, we have David David Jacob's book in

296
00:22:34,400 --> 00:22:41,119
what nineteen seventy five, Michael swords
it is a PhD in history, and

297
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:44,599
he's written on stuff though I don't
know that he's ever really, Mike,

298
00:22:44,680 --> 00:22:48,279
I don't think he's ever written a
whole book on the history of the funnel.

299
00:22:48,480 --> 00:22:52,200
So that was it, and I
thought that's really strange, and so

300
00:22:52,359 --> 00:22:56,680
I thought, yeah, this sounds
like something that's worthy. It's interesting to

301
00:22:56,799 --> 00:23:02,079
me, and it's a chance to
go back and look over things that really

302
00:23:02,119 --> 00:23:07,079
had a real big impact on me
and during many formative years in my life.

303
00:23:07,119 --> 00:23:08,839
And now I can go back and
look over this stuff. I've got

304
00:23:08,920 --> 00:23:14,160
this sort of the eye and the
ears of historian to sort of be my

305
00:23:14,319 --> 00:23:18,079
guide as I go through all this. Why would you think that there is

306
00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:25,480
such a trepidation and actually someone with
your background, you know, just shying

307
00:23:25,519 --> 00:23:30,880
away from from the topic as is
it the old ridicule factor? Yeah right,

308
00:23:30,559 --> 00:23:34,119
I mean I think that that is
there, and that has been there.

309
00:23:34,319 --> 00:23:41,759
Okay, there's no question about it
that that people historians are an interesting

310
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:45,119
group of people. Where an interesting
group of people, but there is a

311
00:23:45,319 --> 00:23:52,599
level in which they have sometimes played
things pretty you know, hold their cards

312
00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:56,279
close to the vest and don't sort
of venture out into some topics and areas.

313
00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:00,480
It can take some time for those
things to take place, but that's

314
00:24:00,519 --> 00:24:04,240
said, that's said. The funny
thing to me is that, you know,

315
00:24:06,759 --> 00:24:10,319
we his stories are kind of unique
in that going into this. If

316
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:15,599
you look since say the late nineteen
sixties and other kind of academic groups,

317
00:24:15,640 --> 00:24:23,559
the UFO phenomenon has been studied by
everything from you know, meteorologists, anthropologists,

318
00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:30,000
scholars of religious studies, folkloreist,
psychologists say, a whole bunch of

319
00:24:30,079 --> 00:24:34,119
people. So we are kind of
odd in that we've kind of steered clear

320
00:24:34,279 --> 00:24:38,759
of this thing, and it's a
bit of it still is kind of a

321
00:24:38,839 --> 00:24:45,240
bit of a mystery to me,
because there's no trace of anybody ever sort

322
00:24:45,279 --> 00:24:48,599
of publicly coming out and saying,
hey, nobody should study this stuff or

323
00:24:48,799 --> 00:24:52,279
nobody should look into this stuff.
It's more of a kind of thing that's

324
00:24:52,279 --> 00:24:56,440
gone around unstated, and and that's
why, in a sense, the question

325
00:24:56,559 --> 00:25:00,680
has to be, why have you
know, historians of all people been so

326
00:25:02,039 --> 00:25:07,160
nervous about going into something when you
know, we've long since gone into all

327
00:25:07,279 --> 00:25:14,400
sorts of topics that seem to be
controversial or maybe make people nervous when they

328
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:17,960
sort of discuss it. So to
me, it's always been a little odd

329
00:25:18,039 --> 00:25:21,920
in that regard. There are people
now who are doing it more, and

330
00:25:22,079 --> 00:25:26,079
now it's a topic where actually there's
a whole group of young people in PhD

331
00:25:26,240 --> 00:25:32,880
programs in both here the US and
in Canada who are starting to take this

332
00:25:33,039 --> 00:25:36,519
up as a historical project. But
it's taken this long. It's taken this

333
00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:38,319
Okay, we'll jump back to that. We're actually at break time right now,

334
00:25:38,880 --> 00:25:42,920
so all right, everyone, So
we're going to take a little break

335
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:48,079
here, and my guests tonight is
Professor Gregg, and we'll be right back

336
00:25:48,240 --> 00:25:52,559
all right. Yeah, we'll pick
that back up after the break because I

337
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:57,559
think that's fascinating. I do want
to talk about that. So have you

338
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:02,200
during the break. I don't really
see any questions up there right now,

339
00:26:02,279 --> 00:26:07,559
but have you had a ridicule from
colleagues at all about about this interest?

340
00:26:07,960 --> 00:26:14,920
You know, I cannot say I've
ever gotten anything along those lines. I've

341
00:26:14,960 --> 00:26:19,319
never gotten that I've there are times
I feel like I get maybe I've raised

342
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:26,359
eyebrow from somebody. More often than
not, the most I've received, I

343
00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:32,319
think are I can think of some
instances where I think I had some people

344
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:36,599
who I think thought this always rather
frivolous. You know, why aren't you

345
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:40,119
studying the things that really matter,
right, you should be studying you know,

346
00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:45,160
kings and queens and wars and politics
and things like that. And I

347
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:48,480
always tell people I've done a lot
of that, and it's not to say

348
00:26:48,519 --> 00:26:52,880
that this stuff doesn't actually, you
know, have consequences and is meaningful.

349
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:56,839
And part of what I argue with
those people is that, in fact,

350
00:26:56,920 --> 00:27:04,319
no, in fact, the story
of the flying saucer phenomenon and claims of

351
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:10,319
alien contact and all of that that
takes place after World War Two has been

352
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:15,759
a very momentous event in human history, and it's had real impacts on all

353
00:27:15,839 --> 00:27:19,960
sorts of things, ranging from politics
to the ways in which we think about

354
00:27:21,039 --> 00:27:26,240
scientific expertise. So for me,
I would make the sort of counterargument to

355
00:27:26,279 --> 00:27:29,599
those people that I know, I
think this stuff is is equally interesting and

356
00:27:30,119 --> 00:27:34,400
important is that stuff. But on
the whole, the reactions and responses I

357
00:27:34,519 --> 00:27:41,039
have gotten from most of my colleagues
is excitement. They all find it pretty

358
00:27:41,039 --> 00:27:45,519
cool. Well, and actually,
if if we could figure out what those

359
00:27:45,079 --> 00:27:51,279
things are, who's driving the craft, so to speak, I think that

360
00:27:51,279 --> 00:27:55,640
would be one of the biggest answers, you know, very very very important

361
00:27:55,680 --> 00:28:00,119
answer. You know, of course, I don't expect to actually know about

362
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:07,119
that anytime soon. You know.
Along those lines, I heard someone from

363
00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:10,359
the nineteen I think it was late
forties or early fifties. It was a

364
00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:14,119
black and white film, and he
was an older gentleman, and he was

365
00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:18,000
saying, I just hope I get
to know in my lifetime, you know

366
00:28:18,319 --> 00:28:22,160
what the UFO, if it's aliens
or not or something. He said something

367
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:25,880
like that, Yeah, no,
it's true, it's true. I mean

368
00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:30,680
recently I was doing some stuff writing
and maybe we'll get a chance to talk

369
00:28:30,720 --> 00:28:33,359
about it. But you know,
this is we are at the fiftieth anniversary

370
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:38,720
of the issuing of the final report
of the Condon Committee back in nineteen sixty

371
00:28:38,839 --> 00:28:44,559
nine, sixty eight, sixty nine, and I was writing, I was

372
00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:51,079
writing something up about all that,
and was looking at those very early weeks

373
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:56,720
and months as the Condon Committee started
its work in nineteen sixty six, and

374
00:28:56,799 --> 00:29:00,559
if you look at the coverage,
what people were saying is that kind of

375
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:07,240
thing. It's there was huge expectations, real excitement about my god, we're

376
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:11,440
finally going to have the answers.
We're finally going to have people look into

377
00:29:11,519 --> 00:29:14,680
this, and and so that to
me was fascinating. It was to see

378
00:29:15,319 --> 00:29:18,200
that that people from all sort of
walks of life saw that as a great

379
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:25,200
opportunity which actually was played down.
There was one professor and that was at

380
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:29,680
the Colorado University, Colorado or something
like that. Right, yeah, all

381
00:29:29,759 --> 00:29:33,240
right, welcome back. My guest
tonight is Professor Greg. I'm gonna say

382
00:29:33,240 --> 00:29:41,599
it wrong, Gigoryan. Can you
say your name? Plaiggig Giggeon Giggeon,

383
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:44,759
got it? Yeah, I'm sorry
about that. Don't worry about it.

384
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:51,960
Yeah, yeah, that seeing the
name spelled out scares me, okay,

385
00:29:52,039 --> 00:29:56,519
Greg, Professor Greg m So,
right before we went to break, you

386
00:29:56,559 --> 00:30:00,359
were talking about there are some actually
younger people looking into the top again,

387
00:30:00,920 --> 00:30:03,759
Um, did you say that they're
they're the PhD's No one. I know

388
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:11,880
that there's been some thesis I've talked
to, uh stand Freeman told me there

389
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:15,960
was a few few students that have
run their thesis and something to do with

390
00:30:17,079 --> 00:30:19,759
UFOs. Is this what's going on? Do you think? Yeah? I

391
00:30:19,839 --> 00:30:23,240
mean what I what I see is
a lot of I'll tell you what a

392
00:30:23,319 --> 00:30:27,759
lot of the younger people who are
working on this topic are really interested in

393
00:30:29,240 --> 00:30:34,640
is a lot of them I know
are working on looking at how the government

394
00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:40,960
and militaries responded to this stuff.
Particularly, they're looking in the nineteen fifties

395
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:44,720
and sixties. A lot of their
researches, they're interested in this. They're

396
00:30:44,799 --> 00:30:49,400
interested in trying to figure out how
this stuff um uh sort of set in

397
00:30:49,559 --> 00:30:56,160
motion, uh investigative bodies and agencies
UFO desks as they're called in a place

398
00:30:56,240 --> 00:31:03,000
like the UK, right, how
they respond, how they the extent to

399
00:31:03,079 --> 00:31:06,880
which they took this stuff seriously or
didn't take it seriously, and then also

400
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:11,039
how they tried to uh play this
all out visa via the media, right

401
00:31:11,359 --> 00:31:14,960
and all that kind of stuff.
So that's kind of what they're working a

402
00:31:15,039 --> 00:31:17,880
lot of them, I know,
are working on. Wow, that's that's

403
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:21,400
interesting. And you know, it's
funny when you go to like you you're

404
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:23,599
out at Phoenix, you went to
the conference out there, and you don't

405
00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:27,039
see a lot of young people actually
attending. You know, maybe it's something

406
00:31:27,119 --> 00:31:30,839
they look more or less online.
And that's as far as it gets.

407
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:36,559
I'm not sure, but they're like
gathering at I mean, there are a

408
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:40,160
few. I'm not saying I'm not
saying there aren't any, but there's just

409
00:31:40,279 --> 00:31:42,759
a few compared to you know,
a lot of people with the same type

410
00:31:42,799 --> 00:31:48,400
of hair. You and I have
great hairy No I think. I think

411
00:31:48,640 --> 00:31:52,880
you're right. What you're saying is
confirmed by other people elsewhere. You know,

412
00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:59,880
I do because because this project involves
looking at at at sort of development

413
00:32:00,240 --> 00:32:04,480
outside the United States, I talk
to a lot of connections with a lot

414
00:32:04,559 --> 00:32:10,839
of UFO researchers in Europe, for
instance, and I hear this from people

415
00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:15,960
in Sweden. I hear this from
people in Italy, I hear this from

416
00:32:16,359 --> 00:32:22,200
researchers in Great Britain, that they
all are having that experience that, as

417
00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:27,079
one guy said to me in Sweden, it is really hard to get young

418
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:31,039
people involved like we once did.
They all go to the Internet. They

419
00:32:31,079 --> 00:32:36,880
all sort of that tends to be
the place that attracts them. And while

420
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:40,759
that that means they may still be
very interested in this stuff, but on

421
00:32:40,839 --> 00:32:44,440
the other hand, what it means
is they don't tend to be part of

422
00:32:44,599 --> 00:32:47,119
organizations. They don't tend to be
a part of that community in the same

423
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:51,640
way that things used to be.
Right And so I hear this from a

424
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:54,640
lot of the veterans right who sort
of lament that kind of change happening.

425
00:32:55,039 --> 00:32:59,319
Yeah, the only thing I've talked
to a lot of people because I'm also

426
00:32:59,359 --> 00:33:01,880
in the fine art and antiques,
I'm an appraiser, and and I've talked

427
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:07,640
to a lot of people saying that
young people are just not interested. They're

428
00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:12,519
not going to any events like,
um, you know, the the shows,

429
00:33:12,559 --> 00:33:15,200
the antique shows and things like that. But um, but what I

430
00:33:15,319 --> 00:33:21,880
have seen a great surgeon is comic
cons. There's tons of young people at

431
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:25,359
comic cons, you know, and
that's somehow it's the pop culture hook you

432
00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:30,279
know that gets gets them inviroved.
And I can't remember who it was.

433
00:33:30,319 --> 00:33:32,680
It may have even been Alejandro that
actually went to a comic con and set

434
00:33:32,799 --> 00:33:40,240
up a booth about niphos and was
successful. So yeah, yeah, I

435
00:33:40,319 --> 00:33:44,480
would I would think that would do
it. And and and I think probably

436
00:33:44,519 --> 00:33:49,480
the gaming community too, right because
again exactly a huge, huge, Yeah.

437
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:52,839
So those those are two areas where
I could see connections and sort of

438
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:59,799
these. Yeah. Yeah, one
of the what do you think of some

439
00:34:00,079 --> 00:34:06,400
other reasons why this subject is neglected
when it comes to you know, academics.

440
00:34:07,839 --> 00:34:13,119
Yeah, well, I mean I
think, um, I think there

441
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:22,599
I think one of the things is
um the sense that there is how shall

442
00:34:22,599 --> 00:34:29,639
I put it, no sort of
sense or guidance you get from the main

443
00:34:29,920 --> 00:34:34,480
stream of academic communities who would naturally
gravitate towards this topic. That is to

444
00:34:34,559 --> 00:34:39,000
say, people like astronomers, people
like astrophysicists, chemists, whatever it might

445
00:34:39,079 --> 00:34:45,719
be. No major organization, no
sort of large number of people in the

446
00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:52,039
field who have sort of stood up
and said this demands all sorts of investigation,

447
00:34:52,800 --> 00:35:00,320
um uh through and investigations that are
going to involve federal funding or funding

448
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:04,519
from sort of the typical kind of
sources you get, who then are going

449
00:35:04,599 --> 00:35:08,760
to after they get this funding,
then present their research and peer reviewed journals,

450
00:35:09,039 --> 00:35:14,960
in other words, follow the basic
principles of academic research that all of

451
00:35:15,079 --> 00:35:19,679
us end up doing who were in
this line of work. Right, nobody

452
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:23,840
really has done that and is doing
that. The Condon Committee that was formed

453
00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:29,159
in the nineteen sixties, right,
and that issued its final report fifty years

454
00:35:29,199 --> 00:35:35,360
ago, you know, was actually
tasked with assessing that very question. I

455
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:37,599
mean, if you look at the
original sort of task for that committee,

456
00:35:38,159 --> 00:35:44,840
Condon himself says, we were tasked
not to decide whether this was of importance

457
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:47,239
national security importance, he said,
because the military has already said that's not

458
00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:52,440
important. He said. What we
were tasked to do is to decide whether

459
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:58,199
the government should think about investing money
and investigating this stuff. And the conclusion

460
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:01,159
we came to was no. And
in a sense that became sort of the

461
00:36:01,400 --> 00:36:06,159
moment in which it was kind of
a definitive answer on the question, at

462
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:09,480
least viewed from the perspective of many. And so that meant, therefore,

463
00:36:09,599 --> 00:36:14,480
all the kinds of research that gets
done gets done the way it gets done

464
00:36:14,519 --> 00:36:17,599
now, which is right, privately
gets done by you know, folks who

465
00:36:17,599 --> 00:36:22,920
are associated with to the stars,
right, or it gets done by just

466
00:36:22,079 --> 00:36:28,480
a lot of average you know,
folks who are just interested on their own,

467
00:36:28,519 --> 00:36:30,639
who do all the legwork on their
own, right right. I think

468
00:36:30,719 --> 00:36:37,199
that's it's it. Yeah, pardon
me. Brian in the chat room has

469
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:42,679
written this question here. Considering the
strong evidence for government disinformation and cover up

470
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:47,679
is witness testimony the only historical access
point to the UFO topic. How does

471
00:36:47,760 --> 00:36:52,719
that affect your research? Yeah,
that's a good question. Uh so,

472
00:36:53,159 --> 00:36:57,480
you do have the witness testimony,
but there's actually quite a lot. I

473
00:36:57,519 --> 00:37:00,280
mean, one of the one of
the things I had not expected when I

474
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:07,119
got into this was to realize not
just how much material is out there and

475
00:37:07,199 --> 00:37:12,639
available. Anybody who goes and investigates
UFOs right knows that there's a lot of

476
00:37:12,679 --> 00:37:15,039
stuff, especially in the age of
the Internet. But what one of the

477
00:37:15,159 --> 00:37:22,079
things I found was that ufologists,
people who had dating back to the very

478
00:37:22,159 --> 00:37:29,920
earliest ones back in the nineteen fifties, are amazing archivists. They all,

479
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:35,079
almost all of them, kept all
these files and records of their research.

480
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:38,800
And naturally they were doing it right
because they were trying to connect dots,

481
00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:43,239
right, they were trying to see
what if there's a pattern to these things,

482
00:37:43,679 --> 00:37:49,679
and so most all of them would
keep these not only large amounts of

483
00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:53,239
information that they were tracking right,
either they were getting it through their local

484
00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:57,840
organization if they were involved in an
organization and people they were interviewing, or

485
00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:02,039
they would keep newspaper clips or or
anything along these lines. But they would

486
00:38:02,079 --> 00:38:07,039
also keep them very well organized.
And so one of the things we have

487
00:38:07,679 --> 00:38:15,159
is a large number of personal papers
of UFO researchers, many of whom now

488
00:38:15,239 --> 00:38:17,960
are long gone, right, who
aren't around anymore. Um, you know,

489
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:22,000
Gordon Creighton, for instance, in
the UK right who was one of

490
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:30,920
the big big right. Their papers
aren't available in archives, so you can

491
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:35,639
now go into that material and see
the kind of correspondence that these people had

492
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:37,960
with people who are writing them saying, hey, this is something I've seen

493
00:38:38,039 --> 00:38:42,880
or here's some photographs I've taken.
So, um, we do have the

494
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:47,440
kinds of things of material that Brian's
talking about, you know, from from

495
00:38:47,519 --> 00:38:53,199
say Project blue Book or whatever,
right from these sort of military archives or

496
00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:59,320
the UK Defense Ministry. That material
is there, but we also now have

497
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:01,360
all these other materials, um,
and they just keep growing. We have

498
00:39:01,519 --> 00:39:05,519
more and more of it. Some
of the stuff is even online. Um,

499
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:09,159
so you can go back and look
at files from uh, you know,

500
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:15,000
the organization appro or files from people
who worked for nyecap right in ways

501
00:39:15,079 --> 00:39:20,679
that I wasn't really possible, um, I think twenty years ago, because

502
00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:24,079
a lot of people who've been involved
now are retiring or have passed away.

503
00:39:24,119 --> 00:39:28,280
In the sense for a lot of
those folks is we want to leave that

504
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:32,320
information for history right for people to
go and look at. So that's that's

505
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:37,320
a lot of what we get to
to look at and utilize for sort of

506
00:39:37,360 --> 00:39:43,679
getting a better understanding of sort of
the history of the UFO phenomenon. I'm

507
00:39:43,719 --> 00:39:46,559
going to be my upcoming guests up
soon as Dave Marler and hey, up,

508
00:39:46,760 --> 00:39:52,920
he has a research library and uh
and Albuquerque and that's right outside of

509
00:39:52,960 --> 00:39:55,800
Albuquerque and it's open for anyone to
do research at we're gonna be talking about

510
00:39:55,840 --> 00:40:02,159
that and um and he's yeah,
given my regards, I've met, We've

511
00:40:02,199 --> 00:40:06,159
met, oh yeah, yeah,
yeah. So. And also you mentioned

512
00:40:06,239 --> 00:40:08,920
Sweden, the class fun in Sweden, they have a wonderful library there.

513
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:14,199
And I saw on your website that
you went to Italy. Pretty jealous so

514
00:40:14,280 --> 00:40:17,719
that you get to go over there
and see their library there. You want

515
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:20,960
to talk a little bit about that. It was in Turin or how do

516
00:40:21,039 --> 00:40:23,760
you say where it was? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was in

517
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:30,599
Turin, and Eduardo Russo invited me. I had a chance to chat with

518
00:40:30,760 --> 00:40:36,519
him and several other of the kind
of the veterans involved in UFO read I

519
00:40:36,559 --> 00:40:38,280
mean, my god, a lot
of them have been active since the nineteen

520
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:47,559
seventies working but your christ quite right. The turin Um Research Center in library

521
00:40:49,239 --> 00:40:52,199
is really second I mean in this
way, at least Eduardo talked about it

522
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:55,000
with me, it certainly looked that
way. To me, is is second

523
00:40:55,039 --> 00:40:59,920
only to the one in Sweden,
in North Shopping Sweden in terms of its

524
00:41:00,119 --> 00:41:04,159
size, in terms of the amount
of material they have, and in both

525
00:41:04,280 --> 00:41:07,239
places, what you what you see
when you go to these places, First

526
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:12,800
of all, as you have these
amazingly friendly, kind and generous people who

527
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:15,119
will sort of open up the place
to you, give you a sense of

528
00:41:15,159 --> 00:41:21,000
what's there, and then let you
dig around. But what you also see

529
00:41:21,119 --> 00:41:28,320
is a remarkable collection of material cerial, as I say, ranging from you

530
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:30,960
know, the personal papers of UFO
researchers who want to make sure that all

531
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:36,280
this stuff that they did gets preserved. But you also have also the important

532
00:41:36,320 --> 00:41:42,920
work of collecting entire periodicals, right
Matt, UFO magazines, UFO newsletters of

533
00:41:43,920 --> 00:41:49,599
not just national organizations but also local
ones, the kind of things that frankly

534
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:57,760
tend to disappear over time. Right, that stuff is absolutely invaluable for anybody

535
00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:02,159
who wants to do historical research and
reconstruct the way people used to go about

536
00:42:02,320 --> 00:42:07,719
doing things. That to me is
really cool stuff. To Yeah, I

537
00:42:07,800 --> 00:42:13,559
was to take a look at so
so well documented and you know there are

538
00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:17,119
you know, just in what I
do. As far as appraising and things

539
00:42:17,199 --> 00:42:21,400
like that, I know that so
many things get tossed out, like they

540
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:24,480
say that you know, Abraham Lincoln
was a lawyer for you know, twenty

541
00:42:24,519 --> 00:42:29,000
five years and people have deeds up
and they're attic, they have no idea,

542
00:42:29,039 --> 00:42:31,239
they're signed by Abraham Lincoln, you
know, a three or four thousand

543
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:36,400
dollars signature, you know type of
thing. Um, So a lot of

544
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:39,280
things do get just plane tossed out. And I think of, for instance,

545
00:42:39,360 --> 00:42:43,440
Paul benowits case. I don't know
if you've ever heard of Paul Benowitz

546
00:42:43,960 --> 00:42:47,599
in uh in New Mexico. Um, but anyway, you know, I'm

547
00:42:47,639 --> 00:42:52,960
sure there's a lot of documents in
that family, and um it it ended

548
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:58,719
very poorly for him. So,
um, no one really wants to go

549
00:42:58,880 --> 00:43:01,079
in and try to talk to the
family about you know, trying to get

550
00:43:01,320 --> 00:43:06,360
information. But yeah, it's great
to preserve it. And again the show

551
00:43:06,440 --> 00:43:08,679
I'll be doing with Dave Marler will
be discussing a lot of that. So,

552
00:43:09,239 --> 00:43:15,800
M as far as what do you
consider some of the really interesting historical

553
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:20,360
cases that are pretty solid and you
know, made an impression on you.

554
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:23,280
Yeah, So you know what I
always say to folks is for me,

555
00:43:23,679 --> 00:43:28,440
what what what interests me? And
I get particularly sort of excited about the

556
00:43:28,639 --> 00:43:31,599
geeky historian here is uh, you
know, I get it. I get

557
00:43:31,679 --> 00:43:40,039
excited by by certain figures or certain
kinds of moments in history where I feel

558
00:43:40,119 --> 00:43:45,000
like there is a sort of a
meeting or a kind of an intersection of

559
00:43:45,079 --> 00:43:51,199
a lot of different forces. That
often means forces that are in a collision

560
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:57,000
course and and they maybe provoke a
kind of a breuja right about. So

561
00:43:57,199 --> 00:44:00,320
a lot of those things are the
things that sort of get my attention.

562
00:44:00,639 --> 00:44:07,000
I mean, I'm I'm kind of
fascinated, for instance, especially with say

563
00:44:07,119 --> 00:44:13,599
something like them the Betty and Barnie
Hill abduction case, right, which in

564
00:44:13,679 --> 00:44:16,280
many ways, right a lot of
people see is sort of the first the

565
00:44:17,039 --> 00:44:22,000
first case. We know it wasn't
the first case, but but it's the

566
00:44:22,079 --> 00:44:25,440
one that gets all the attention,
particularly in the United States. And in

567
00:44:25,559 --> 00:44:30,440
a sense the case itself is intriguing. But what's really kind of striking to

568
00:44:30,639 --> 00:44:37,440
me about about this case that that
you know, sort of comes to the

569
00:44:37,519 --> 00:44:42,239
public public attention. I think only
watch sixty five, nineteen sixty five,

570
00:44:42,360 --> 00:44:45,360
nineteen sixty six, even though it
was supposed to have taken place several years

571
00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:51,880
earlier. Is that you have kind
of this intriguing thing, which is that

572
00:44:52,119 --> 00:44:57,880
you've got the Hills and their experience. You've got them going to Donald Kehoe

573
00:44:58,119 --> 00:45:01,400
and people in Nightcap for assist stance
in making sense of this, and then

574
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:07,159
they sort of conduct their own investigation. You then have this famous journalist at

575
00:45:07,199 --> 00:45:12,880
the time, another kind of an
unsung person in the history of UFOs is

576
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:16,360
John Fuller, who I heard you
just talking about Exeter, right, and

577
00:45:16,599 --> 00:45:22,159
who wrote the sated Exeter right,
but then he writes the Interrupted Journey.

578
00:45:22,079 --> 00:45:29,280
Who really makes that case is the
key to making that case what it was

579
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:35,519
by writing it up in a book
that is absolutely riveting right in a way

580
00:45:35,639 --> 00:45:38,880
that probably Barney and Betty could not
have done. So you needed this sort

581
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:44,840
of journalist figure to sort of do
that. But then what's kind of intriguing

582
00:45:44,920 --> 00:45:50,920
to me about it is that while
this becomes a best selling book, while

583
00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:54,199
it gets lots and lots of attention, by and large, the interesting thing

584
00:45:54,360 --> 00:46:00,079
is you don't get a lot of
stories of alien abduction until in the mid

585
00:46:00,199 --> 00:46:05,559
to late part of the nineteen seventies. You don't get a lot of people

586
00:46:06,639 --> 00:46:09,159
saying similar things. You don't get
you know, the kind of dig on

587
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:13,199
this is that that well, what
this does is it creates a model for

588
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:15,559
copycats and people who are going to
mimic it. Right, but you don't

589
00:46:15,760 --> 00:46:21,760
have that that doesn't really happen.
It takes about ten years for you to

590
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:25,480
start to see the emergence of things
that you know, Travis Walton, right,

591
00:46:25,559 --> 00:46:29,840
the Travis Walton story that then takes
place, for instance, and it's

592
00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:32,719
it shares some elements of this stuff, but it's not the same kind of

593
00:46:32,760 --> 00:46:37,000
a story. So I find to
me what's kind of interesting is both the

594
00:46:37,159 --> 00:46:44,039
way in which that that that story
about the scenario of alien abduction that comes

595
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:49,159
with the Hills takes shape. But
I'm also kind of intrigued by this sort

596
00:46:49,159 --> 00:46:52,840
of lag, this sort of almost
ten year period in which there's not anything

597
00:46:52,960 --> 00:46:58,519
else that sort of gets people's attention
on the same scale for another ten years

598
00:46:58,639 --> 00:47:01,760
or so. Why how is that
that that happens? What is it about

599
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:07,760
that case or how it was written
up, or or how people sort of

600
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:13,079
moved on to other topics that meant
that this case really doesn't take the sort

601
00:47:13,119 --> 00:47:16,039
of assume the stature it does until
really the nineteen seventies and eighties, and

602
00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:22,679
that's when the Hills case really becomes
kind of the cause celeb right in terms

603
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:28,480
of alien abduction stories. Right,
their movie came out. I can't remember

604
00:47:28,559 --> 00:47:34,000
exactly what year it was, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so it

605
00:47:34,159 --> 00:47:37,079
takes it really doesn't sort of take
on that kind of stature. Um.

606
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:40,199
And you know, you could say
the same thing about Roswell, right.

607
00:47:40,320 --> 00:47:46,199
Roswell wasn't a big story for many
decades, right until Stan Friedman sort of

608
00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:51,960
made it into one and sort of
and rediscovered the story. Right, So

609
00:47:52,119 --> 00:47:54,239
that that kind of that's a kind
of an intriguing sort of lesson in the

610
00:47:54,360 --> 00:48:00,280
way in which things can emerge,
then disappear, and then re emerge again

611
00:48:00,360 --> 00:48:04,400
as sort of getting on people's radar. Right. I asked Stan last time

612
00:48:04,440 --> 00:48:07,920
I spoke with him if he thought
that the Roswell story would have come out

613
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:14,360
if he did not have that situation
where, you know, where he stumbled

614
00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:16,239
into the whole thing. You know, it was actually he was waiting at

615
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:22,239
a radio station and the topic just
came up to talk to um. You

616
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:25,360
know, Uh, that's kind of
how that whole thing happened, and I

617
00:48:25,440 --> 00:48:28,559
think he said that he thinks it
would have come out just you know,

618
00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:34,599
just eventually and probably would have you
know, but who knows. Yeah,

619
00:48:34,880 --> 00:48:37,920
And so what do you think of
that? Do you think that that whole

620
00:48:37,960 --> 00:48:42,400
thing has been blown way out of
proportion? Or what do you think about

621
00:48:42,480 --> 00:48:47,199
Roswell in general? Yeah, I
mean I think I think the Roswell case

622
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:52,559
is again, so I look at
things again. I look at things pretty

623
00:48:52,599 --> 00:48:57,000
differently. You know. One of
the things I always tell people, whether

624
00:48:57,079 --> 00:49:02,360
I'm talking to you know, professor
sort of physics and astrophysics, or talking

625
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:07,280
to somebody who's had a UFO experience, or talking to somebody like Stan Freed,

626
00:49:07,519 --> 00:49:12,440
I tell everybody the same thing,
which is that my approach to this

627
00:49:12,599 --> 00:49:15,920
stuff is I just stand. I'm
I'm an outsider in a sense. Okay.

628
00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:22,440
I do not go about picking sides
trying to decide is this real or

629
00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:28,000
is or is this something to debunk
or is this something to promote and say

630
00:49:28,119 --> 00:49:31,559
people need to take more, take
this more seriously. My approaches is really,

631
00:49:32,320 --> 00:49:36,360
for lack of a better more journalistic, if you will, right,

632
00:49:36,559 --> 00:49:38,880
And so, what I'm kind of
interested in when I look at a case

633
00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:45,719
like Roswell is the kind of pr
about it, right, and particularly at

634
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:52,159
the moment the pr about it.
It's it is a case in which clearly

635
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:57,639
secrets were being kept about about an
event that took place in an area where

636
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:02,159
the military was active. Right now, that is not an unusual thing to

637
00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:07,519
happen, right, This is what
the military doesn't. It particularly does those

638
00:50:07,639 --> 00:50:10,880
things in the wake of World War
Two. I think what we often forget

639
00:50:12,519 --> 00:50:21,039
is the kind of secrecy and the
resistance to talking about anything related to military

640
00:50:21,119 --> 00:50:27,039
technology, military investigations and all that
we associate with. The Cold War was

641
00:50:27,079 --> 00:50:30,000
a phenomenon that precedes the Cold War. It was something that was a big

642
00:50:30,119 --> 00:50:35,480
part of World War Two, and
so when things start to bleed into the

643
00:50:35,559 --> 00:50:40,360
Cold War in those mid nineteen forties, there's just a carryover that takes place.

644
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:45,519
It's kind of the default setting of
the military is always deny everything,

645
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:51,159
right, It's just deny everything.
And so in a sense, I've often

646
00:50:51,239 --> 00:50:53,559
looked at that and said, that
kind of response to me doesn't read as

647
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:58,760
conspiracy. To me, it reads
as, you know, this is just

648
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:04,280
what we do. We don't like
to share information about the things that go

649
00:51:04,480 --> 00:51:08,199
on, you know, on our
basis or in our encampments, right,

650
00:51:08,639 --> 00:51:15,320
And so to me, when when
it comes to these concerns that people have

651
00:51:15,639 --> 00:51:20,039
about why why don't we get more
information? Can't we get more information?

652
00:51:20,440 --> 00:51:23,239
What I see and what I read
is a kind of a situation in which

653
00:51:24,199 --> 00:51:30,000
the authorities in question clearly had reasons
because they were playing around with all sorts

654
00:51:30,039 --> 00:51:36,280
of new technologies that they didn't want
the Soviet Union to have any awareness of.

655
00:51:37,440 --> 00:51:42,280
They are going to concoct things,
they are going to change their stories

656
00:51:42,360 --> 00:51:46,000
if it means it creates a little
more cloudies up the picture in some way.

657
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:50,159
And so I think that adds a
lot of fuel to the fire.

658
00:51:50,280 --> 00:51:53,199
At adds a lot of fuel to
the fire, definitely. And after the

659
00:51:53,320 --> 00:51:59,480
war, you know, the everyone
did take the government very seriously and um,

660
00:51:59,719 --> 00:52:02,719
you know the oath very seriously and
um, you know, so there

661
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:08,000
was a lot of that. So
we are ready to go into break and

662
00:52:08,599 --> 00:52:13,960
UM, we'll see if we have
some questions coming up. So all right,

663
00:52:14,079 --> 00:52:16,679
so everyone hang in there. We'll
be right back right after these messages.

664
00:52:17,280 --> 00:52:20,760
So let's see. I'm looking to
see if we had any other,

665
00:52:21,119 --> 00:52:25,320
um, any other questions. So
have you heard of John Greenwald. Someone

666
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:29,840
mentioned him in the chat room.
Um, he has released a lot of

667
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:34,840
Freedom of Information Act documents. You
know, I'm going to say hundreds of

668
00:52:34,920 --> 00:52:38,280
thousands of documents. He's really you
know you talk about he's he's on the

669
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:45,079
younger side, and so he's doing
this all digital. Yeah, So there's

670
00:52:45,119 --> 00:52:51,880
a lot of information because of him
and so uh and a lot on historical

671
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:58,360
cases. So I will tell you
that after after we go back, we're

672
00:52:58,400 --> 00:53:00,880
going to open the phone minds too, so if anyone wants to call in,

673
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:07,320
we'll be taking calls a little bit
later on. So let's see.

674
00:53:08,280 --> 00:53:15,159
I do have a question, um, some histories from Do you ever look

675
00:53:15,199 --> 00:53:21,119
into any of the histories from M
pertaining to the Bible and Aliens? That's

676
00:53:21,159 --> 00:53:23,840
a question in chat Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, you know,

677
00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:31,519
because I think what's intriguing is they're
right aft very soon, very very

678
00:53:31,639 --> 00:53:39,719
soon after them the whole appearance of
the first flying saucers at the Kennel Kenneth

679
00:53:39,840 --> 00:53:45,159
Arnold sighting in forty seven. Within
the span of just a few years,

680
00:53:45,719 --> 00:53:53,960
you do get people who start to
say that that UFOs are of direct relevance

681
00:53:54,360 --> 00:54:00,559
to religion and to the Bible,
right, and you get that who counts

682
00:54:00,719 --> 00:54:06,440
one are theologians actually, it's actually
real, honest to God theologians in both

683
00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:14,079
Protestant and Catholic churches who are asking
questions and say that if these are aliens,

684
00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:20,519
this raises all sorts of theological questions, Right, are these people saved?

685
00:54:21,320 --> 00:54:23,800
Who are they? Are they?
Are they? Are they the equivalent

686
00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:30,920
of fallen angels? Or are they
perhaps you know, beings who have there,

687
00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:34,320
who are actually living in paradise and
who are now visiting us. I

688
00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:37,719
mean, there's actual, in the
nine early nineteen fifties, real serious discussions

689
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:44,559
about this among theologians. But then
what you also get are people and there's

690
00:54:44,559 --> 00:54:51,000
a very famous Russian figure by the
name of Agrest who does the research on

691
00:54:51,119 --> 00:54:54,599
this, who basically starts to say, I think we need to look at

692
00:54:54,800 --> 00:55:01,199
documents like the Bible and like archaeological
evidence and look for any indications that these

693
00:55:01,320 --> 00:55:07,639
might be alien in nature and origins. Right, So that kind of line

694
00:55:07,679 --> 00:55:14,679
of questioning, that kind of thing
opens up actually already in the early nineteen

695
00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:17,280
fifties, I think, is when
Aggress starts to do this stuff a way

696
00:55:17,360 --> 00:55:23,199
before Eric von Danighen and people like
that he's doing this decades beforehand, and

697
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:27,440
so it does lead to people to
start too. And if you look at

698
00:55:28,039 --> 00:55:31,280
a lot of UFO periodicals in the
fifties, there's already a lot of people

699
00:55:31,320 --> 00:55:37,519
who are very, very interested in
drawing those connections and seeing are there ways

700
00:55:37,639 --> 00:55:43,320
to see evidence in the Bible that
might reflect back on what's happening to us

701
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:47,159
today and vice versa. Might UFOs
be a give us a way to revisit

702
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:51,760
some of those passages in the Bible. So there's a story to be told

703
00:55:51,800 --> 00:55:55,039
about those connections and the way that
gets sort of minted in the early fifties

704
00:55:55,119 --> 00:55:59,679
and sixties. I see, Yeah, well we're coming back in about twenty

705
00:55:59,719 --> 00:56:04,039
second. But someone did have a
question about your thoughts on ancient aliens.

706
00:56:04,119 --> 00:56:07,880
But I don't think we're going to
have time to cover that in this break.

707
00:56:07,199 --> 00:56:12,280
We will carry that into the show
itself, right, That sounds good,

708
00:56:13,199 --> 00:56:17,000
So we will again. We'll be
taking calls right after we go back

709
00:56:17,119 --> 00:56:22,320
live, and sometimes people call and
sometimes they don't. We'll see what happens.

710
00:56:22,760 --> 00:56:25,280
All right, welcome back. My
guest is Professor Gregg. How do

711
00:56:25,320 --> 00:56:30,960
you like that? I like that? Yeah, So we're having a good

712
00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:37,840
time we're talking about the history of
UFOs, and earlier on we UH with

713
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:40,559
Alejandro, I was talking about SETI. I heard your take on Setti,

714
00:56:40,639 --> 00:56:44,559
and I wanted to discuss that a
little bit, what you thought in general,

715
00:56:45,079 --> 00:56:47,800
And I think I believe I heard
you say you think there's some type

716
00:56:47,840 --> 00:56:53,360
of parallel between uphology and SETTI,
and so I'd like for you to discuss

717
00:56:53,400 --> 00:56:58,000
that if you would. Yeah,
I think there is. I mean,

718
00:56:58,800 --> 00:57:05,679
so you know, SETTI born in
the basically right around the turn of the

719
00:57:05,840 --> 00:57:08,639
nineteen sixties, so right around right
fifty nine sixty sixty one, that group

720
00:57:08,760 --> 00:57:15,239
that forms UM that becomes this you
know Frank Drake and Carl Sagan among others

721
00:57:15,920 --> 00:57:22,199
who are involved in that UM.
If you look at at at SETI in

722
00:57:22,239 --> 00:57:25,480
the way SETI plays out, it's
it's really intriguing, particularly when you think

723
00:57:25,519 --> 00:57:31,519
about it historically for a couple of
reasons. One is UM similar to UFO

724
00:57:32,159 --> 00:57:40,840
UFO. You fall churchers who have
this idea that maybe what we do is

725
00:57:42,239 --> 00:57:46,360
we can try to detect signals that
are being sent sent to us or it

726
00:57:46,440 --> 00:57:50,920
might possibly be being sent in our
direction. UM. They they're walking a

727
00:57:51,000 --> 00:57:54,440
tightrope because a lot of people in
their community are thinking this is kind of

728
00:57:54,599 --> 00:58:00,119
crazy. This doesn't seem to be
normal kind of science to us, So

729
00:58:00,519 --> 00:58:05,559
they're kind of having to walk this
kind of tight rope um. And and

730
00:58:05,960 --> 00:58:09,599
that's something similar to what you see
in uphology is is this question is you

731
00:58:09,679 --> 00:58:15,320
know, sometimes, hey, is
this line of investigation really warranted? Is

732
00:58:15,400 --> 00:58:17,840
this may be a bit on the
margins that kind of thing. But what

733
00:58:19,000 --> 00:58:22,199
you also get to my mind is
the interesting thing about SETI is that that

734
00:58:22,559 --> 00:58:27,199
that for all of the work that's
been done and all of the thinking about

735
00:58:27,199 --> 00:58:31,840
it, SETI basically has been as
a scientific venture, been not terribly well

736
00:58:31,960 --> 00:58:37,239
funded relative to other kind of big
scientific projects, similar ufology, which has

737
00:58:37,280 --> 00:58:45,000
always been under under financed and underfunded
um and that it has basically not,

738
00:58:45,599 --> 00:58:49,440
of course, had any real positives
to show for it, right, It

739
00:58:49,599 --> 00:58:53,639
hasn't had any major findings. And
in fact, this has if you look

740
00:58:53,679 --> 00:58:59,920
at the history of SETI when it's
it's basically went before the government to try

741
00:59:00,079 --> 00:59:04,119
to get funding, this has been
one of the hurdles it has historically faced

742
00:59:04,320 --> 00:59:07,440
is why would we finance you when
we don't get results? And I think

743
00:59:07,519 --> 00:59:12,840
that what the argument I think I
keep I kept seeing when you look at

744
00:59:12,880 --> 00:59:16,320
it is well, but what happens
when we do if we find something,

745
00:59:16,559 --> 00:59:20,760
it'll be well worth it. But
yes, this is a bit of a

746
00:59:20,880 --> 00:59:24,239
needle in a haystack haystack kind of
a project, and so we get that.

747
00:59:24,519 --> 00:59:30,400
Yeah, so in a way,
you know, ufology and SETTI they

748
00:59:30,480 --> 00:59:36,119
have they share a very similar fate
to one another. Um and they do

749
00:59:36,440 --> 00:59:40,559
sort of a play at a game
in which a lot of what they have

750
00:59:40,840 --> 00:59:46,400
to do is to, in fact, try to make a case to UM

751
00:59:47,960 --> 00:59:52,960
funders, to people who have some
money, and also to make their case

752
00:59:52,000 --> 00:59:55,400
to the public directly right, that's
where they really have to make their case.

753
00:59:55,559 --> 01:00:00,559
They keep saying, well, this
close, were this close. We

754
01:00:00,639 --> 01:00:02,239
have a caller on the line.
Call her your first name and where you're

755
01:00:02,239 --> 01:00:07,920
calling from. Hey guys, it's
Christopher from Phoenix, Arizona. Hi Christopher,

756
01:00:07,000 --> 01:00:09,920
welcome to the show. You have
a question for our guests? Yeah,

757
01:00:12,119 --> 01:00:15,719
yeah, thanks for taking my call. On a subject that I find

758
01:00:15,840 --> 01:00:22,119
confounding often is cattle mutilation. And
I don't I know a lot of people

759
01:00:22,280 --> 01:00:24,719
talk about UFOs. People who aren't
really interested in UFOs will sort of think

760
01:00:24,719 --> 01:00:29,320
about or talk about et and that
kind of stuff in a vague way.

761
01:00:29,360 --> 01:00:35,000
But I almost hear no one outside
of the hardcore sort of paranormal or ufology

762
01:00:35,599 --> 01:00:39,920
even knowing about this cattle mutilation thing, which is so weird it's almost hard

763
01:00:39,960 --> 01:00:44,199
to think about. It's hard to
talk about it so macabre, but you

764
01:00:44,320 --> 01:00:46,719
know, it just seems like something
very odd is happening. And I'm just

765
01:00:46,800 --> 01:00:50,880
curious what your guest, if it, had anything to say about that or

766
01:00:50,880 --> 01:00:54,880
any thoughts on that. Gay Yeah, yeah, wow, that's neat.

767
01:00:55,519 --> 01:01:02,880
Yeah. I mean what's interesting about
that is is the stories of um of

768
01:01:04,079 --> 01:01:08,559
cattle, of cattle mutilation or actual
a lot of you also get stories of

769
01:01:08,800 --> 01:01:15,599
cattle abductions, right, actually precede
the whole sort of flying saucer phenomenon that

770
01:01:15,719 --> 01:01:20,880
emerges in the nineteen forties. Um, you have in in you know,

771
01:01:20,960 --> 01:01:23,119
there's a very very famous incident that
a lot of people have written about and

772
01:01:23,199 --> 01:01:28,280
talked about of a big airship scare
in the late eighteen nineties, right,

773
01:01:28,800 --> 01:01:31,440
Um, And what we know is
some of the stories that were told about

774
01:01:31,480 --> 01:01:37,239
these strange airships that supposedly were appearing
all across the United States is that there

775
01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:45,400
were several cases in which supposedly witnesses
saw um their cattle or at least one

776
01:01:45,519 --> 01:01:51,519
cow being sort of taken up by
like ropes or something by this airship,

777
01:01:52,039 --> 01:01:55,920
um um and um. And that
that that that becomes sort of part of

778
01:01:57,079 --> 01:02:00,599
that kind of lore that surrounds that
particular scare. But you what we also

779
01:02:00,719 --> 01:02:07,519
know from from people who study folklore, particularly of peasant communities, rural communities,

780
01:02:07,039 --> 01:02:13,960
is that this this this kind of
idea that that cattle are being attacked,

781
01:02:14,239 --> 01:02:20,360
mutilated, kidnapped, stolen, and
things like this by uh, not

782
01:02:20,559 --> 01:02:24,920
just your average rustlers, right,
but by something mysterious or by perhaps an

783
01:02:25,000 --> 01:02:30,239
animal or a beast of some kind
is something that goes back very very early

784
01:02:30,400 --> 01:02:35,639
in history. Um. And I've
heard folklore's talk about it, saying that

785
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:38,360
what it has a lot to do
with is that these are stories that are

786
01:02:38,400 --> 01:02:45,760
supposed to be kind of warnings to
people who of course live in live typically

787
01:02:45,920 --> 01:02:49,679
particularly the small peasant farmer. Dating
say, if you think about the Middle

788
01:02:49,719 --> 01:02:53,559
Ages or something, are living basically
like hand to mouth, and so the

789
01:02:53,719 --> 01:03:00,960
idea that cattle could be destroyed or
harmed or killed, old or mutilated in

790
01:03:00,119 --> 01:03:07,800
some way becomes part of a story
about how precarious, how insecure life life

791
01:03:07,880 --> 01:03:10,880
on these farms were, particularly back
in those days, right. And so

792
01:03:12,480 --> 01:03:16,320
what I find kind of interesting about
it, therefore, is that the stories

793
01:03:16,440 --> 01:03:23,039
about cattles being endangered, right,
and that possibly being endangered by things that

794
01:03:23,159 --> 01:03:28,440
are not entirely human, are in
fact stories that date back hundreds and hundreds

795
01:03:28,440 --> 01:03:31,719
of years. Actually, Wow,
interesting, Yeah, I don't I don't

796
01:03:31,719 --> 01:03:37,599
know that. Yeah, it's really
interesting. Thanks, because you want to

797
01:03:37,639 --> 01:03:40,800
think of Oh that's fine, yep, thanks thanks for calling no, no,

798
01:03:40,840 --> 01:03:44,000
go ahead continue, you were starting
to say something, go ahead.

799
01:03:45,199 --> 01:03:47,880
Oh, I was just gonna make
a last note here. But we often

800
01:03:49,000 --> 01:03:52,199
think of key and we want to
project onto them that they must be highly

801
01:03:52,239 --> 01:03:55,440
sophisticated, of course, from traveling
and that sort of thing. So then

802
01:03:55,480 --> 01:03:59,199
when you think, why would they
care about a cow or a dog?

803
01:04:00,440 --> 01:04:02,960
Don't they already know everything there is
to know about cattles and dogs or whatever

804
01:04:03,400 --> 01:04:08,519
cattle might have been taken. So
it really sort of it does drive a

805
01:04:08,599 --> 01:04:11,800
wedge intellectualate for me. What I
try to think about, why would I,

806
01:04:11,960 --> 01:04:15,199
this sophisticated being want to why would
they keep searching through that? But

807
01:04:15,320 --> 01:04:19,320
I guess we have to imagine that
there's a lot of different species that we're

808
01:04:19,320 --> 01:04:24,480
being visited by. They have different
interests and so on. So but yeah,

809
01:04:24,599 --> 01:04:27,519
fascinating stuff. Thanks for taking my
call. Appreciate it all right,

810
01:04:27,719 --> 01:04:31,519
thank you for the call. Yeah, thanks, thank you. So one

811
01:04:31,559 --> 01:04:35,119
of the things that I was thinking
about, you've written about the history of

812
01:04:35,239 --> 01:04:41,239
the mutual mistrust between you followed just
scientists and government agencies. Can you tell

813
01:04:42,039 --> 01:04:45,920
where you think this mistrust comes from? Yeah, I mean it's there,

814
01:04:46,119 --> 01:04:53,639
right, We know it's there.
We know it played out in sometimes rather

815
01:04:53,840 --> 01:04:59,719
serious ways, right, because we
know historically from a very early phase in

816
01:05:00,599 --> 01:05:03,400
in you know, already in nineteen
forty nine and nineteen fifty, right,

817
01:05:04,159 --> 01:05:09,400
someone like Donald Kehoe, who ends
up, of course being most well known

818
01:05:09,519 --> 01:05:13,000
for not just his books, but
for being the director of Nightcap, the

819
01:05:13,119 --> 01:05:17,920
big, the big national organization in
the fifties and sixties. Already back then

820
01:05:18,119 --> 01:05:24,480
he's he's saying that there's there's a
lot of mistrust on the part of government

821
01:05:24,519 --> 01:05:29,599
officials and military officials the people like
himself. And we also know that the

822
01:05:29,679 --> 01:05:35,519
government actually did spy on UFO researchers
and organizations in the nineteen fifties and nineteen

823
01:05:35,599 --> 01:05:42,320
sixties. So there's been a lot
of mutual mistrust all around in these issues,

824
01:05:42,440 --> 01:05:45,079
and I think a lot of it
has to do with, in a

825
01:05:45,199 --> 01:05:51,360
sense, I think a misunderstanding of
the motivations of a lot of the people

826
01:05:51,480 --> 01:05:57,000
involved. I think that on the
part of you know, scientists who are

827
01:05:57,039 --> 01:06:02,280
in the academic realm, I think
they have his historically viewed the subject not

828
01:06:02,440 --> 01:06:08,880
just simply as kind of frivolous and
maybe even downright for many of them,

829
01:06:09,000 --> 01:06:15,079
silly, but I think they viewed
the people who did UFO research and who

830
01:06:15,119 --> 01:06:18,719
are interested in this subject as people
who are anti science, people who are

831
01:06:18,880 --> 01:06:27,119
attacking science and have no patience for
it, and one to basically embrace what

832
01:06:27,280 --> 01:06:32,239
they people like the debunker in the
fifties Donald Mensal called superstition. And I

833
01:06:32,320 --> 01:06:36,280
think the reality is when you look
at the history of UFO research and the

834
01:06:36,360 --> 01:06:42,119
people who have been mostly interested in
this subject for the most part, these

835
01:06:42,159 --> 01:06:46,239
are excuse me, these are people
who actually are really really interested in science,

836
01:06:46,519 --> 01:06:53,000
who are deeply I think quite well
informed about science. They're not anti

837
01:06:53,079 --> 01:06:56,760
science at all. A very few
people I've met are anti science who are

838
01:06:56,800 --> 01:07:00,480
interested. I think it's just the
opposite and by the same measure, I

839
01:07:00,559 --> 01:07:06,880
think a lot of UFO enthusiasts and
people who are UFO researchers have tended to

840
01:07:08,039 --> 01:07:13,679
view the kind of skepticism of scientists
and people you know in my kind of

841
01:07:13,800 --> 01:07:21,159
line of work as people who um
dismiss these kinds of claims that people make

842
01:07:24,280 --> 01:07:30,800
because they just they view witnesses and
they view claimants as as as dumb or

843
01:07:30,920 --> 01:07:34,159
stupid or or or hoaxers or things. And I think that actually is quite

844
01:07:34,199 --> 01:07:38,960
wrong. I think that in fact, a lot of a lot of people,

845
01:07:40,360 --> 01:07:45,360
particularly by the nineteen sixties and seventies, who are in the academic field

846
01:07:45,400 --> 01:07:48,079
who look at this kind of stuff
actually believe that most people are being actually

847
01:07:48,159 --> 01:07:55,400
quite sincere, and that witnesses are
oftentimes seeing something, that people are having

848
01:07:55,639 --> 01:08:00,599
experiences that are bewildering or outright scary. Um. But that what they do

849
01:08:00,800 --> 01:08:05,519
is they believe there might be all
sorts of other explanations that can help inform

850
01:08:05,719 --> 01:08:10,199
that right. Um. So,
I think in a sense, the mutual

851
01:08:10,280 --> 01:08:14,159
mistrust comes from the fact that that, for lack of a better term,

852
01:08:14,320 --> 01:08:18,199
what often happens is people are talking
past one another um that that it's actually

853
01:08:19,199 --> 01:08:26,920
an inability to communicate effectively that is, in large large part results in this

854
01:08:27,159 --> 01:08:31,239
kind of distrust that everybody has for
the other side, if you want to

855
01:08:31,239 --> 01:08:36,159
put it that way. Yeah,
yeah, interesting. So as far as

856
01:08:38,359 --> 01:08:42,800
as far as the someone had put
a question up just before we came back

857
01:08:42,880 --> 01:08:46,720
from the break and what your thoughts
were on like ancient times, you know,

858
01:08:46,880 --> 01:08:50,680
so to speak, ancient aliens.
But um, you know, I

859
01:08:50,800 --> 01:08:57,239
mean I I have thoughts on that
myself. I just think we're just as

860
01:08:57,279 --> 01:09:00,279
far as a human you know,
existence is just a small sliver of time,

861
01:09:00,640 --> 01:09:05,720
you know, for instance. So
yeah, so, um, we

862
01:09:05,800 --> 01:09:13,359
haven't really talked much about the actual
alien topic itself, but um, so

863
01:09:13,520 --> 01:09:16,560
do you want to just discuss what
your thoughts about like if we're being visited,

864
01:09:17,119 --> 01:09:21,960
were we being visited in ancient times
as well? Yeah? Well,

865
01:09:23,359 --> 01:09:27,880
you know, I a former colleague
of mine actually did some research on this,

866
01:09:28,159 --> 01:09:30,279
a guy by the name of Garrett
Fagan, who unfortunately passed away a

867
01:09:30,359 --> 01:09:35,640
few years ago. But uh in
ancient Roman historian it had done some stuff

868
01:09:35,680 --> 01:09:41,239
on this, and and you know, his argument and about this was that,

869
01:09:41,880 --> 01:09:45,000
um, when you look at this
stuff, is that it doesn't add

870
01:09:45,079 --> 01:09:49,319
up. Is that his argument,
and a lot of his collaborators in this

871
01:09:49,520 --> 01:09:55,239
project that he worked on, um
uh say that by and large a lot

872
01:09:55,359 --> 01:10:02,720
of the kinds of arguments to be
made about this involved incorrect uses of evidence,

873
01:10:03,439 --> 01:10:09,000
um, ignoring other kinds of evidence
that's out there, so that it

874
01:10:09,119 --> 01:10:14,680
becomes at best the kind of a
speculative kind of argument about things. Um.

875
01:10:15,760 --> 01:10:18,880
I'm not an archaeologist, so I'm
never going to complain to know about

876
01:10:19,000 --> 01:10:24,960
how archaeology sort of can sort of
inform us about this stuff. I think,

877
01:10:25,079 --> 01:10:34,760
to me, what what is intriguing
is the the the notion of invoking

878
01:10:34,920 --> 01:10:42,479
aliens to understand um, certain artifacts, right, the creation of the pyramids,

879
01:10:42,520 --> 01:10:45,840
for instance, or or other kinds
of things that that we consider remarkable

880
01:10:46,000 --> 01:10:50,560
or Unusualuel, right, that that
date back to ancient times. Um.

881
01:10:53,840 --> 01:11:00,000
It is part, part, part
of an argument that is high kind of

882
01:11:00,479 --> 01:11:03,079
a working assumption in it, and
that working assumption is always, of course,

883
01:11:03,439 --> 01:11:10,760
that the aliens would come and visit
us have to be remarkably advanced,

884
01:11:10,920 --> 01:11:14,319
right, the only way they could
ever get here and to do the kinds

885
01:11:14,359 --> 01:11:16,560
of things that we still find impossible
to do as human beans. Right,

886
01:11:16,600 --> 01:11:20,680
we still are trying to figure out, can we really get to march right?

887
01:11:20,760 --> 01:11:24,399
To make that work? Well,
these beings would have to be so

888
01:11:24,640 --> 01:11:30,119
advanced that they would then of course
be responsible for in fact, these great

889
01:11:30,399 --> 01:11:34,920
innovations in human history. And I
think what some people would argue is what

890
01:11:35,079 --> 01:11:41,359
that means is therefore it seems to
be an undervaluing of human beings. Aren't

891
01:11:41,359 --> 01:11:44,760
we a little more widely? Aren't
we a little craftier than that? Some

892
01:11:44,960 --> 01:11:49,880
people would all argue, can't we? Don't we show the ability to in

893
01:11:50,039 --> 01:11:56,479
fact these things innovate, develop advanced
technologies in ways without the assistance of these

894
01:11:56,600 --> 01:12:00,640
beings from another planet, And so
you kind of get this interesting argument.

895
01:12:00,000 --> 01:12:04,680
I think that's sort of underneath all
this. It's really about this question about

896
01:12:04,960 --> 01:12:10,000
what are human beings really capable of? Right? How how good are we

897
01:12:10,119 --> 01:12:16,880
at at at seeing ourselves technologically and
scientific any given period of time. That's

898
01:12:16,960 --> 01:12:20,960
kind of what I find kind of
entreating in those discussions, right wow.

899
01:12:21,279 --> 01:12:25,960
Yeah, Um, you know,
as far as the uh, the topic

900
01:12:26,800 --> 01:12:30,560
of one thing we haven't we haven't
really discussed much of, and that is

901
01:12:32,119 --> 01:12:36,439
you know, and I'm always the
first to say that um a UFO doesn't

902
01:12:36,479 --> 01:12:42,199
necessarily mean that it's alien, you
know. I mean we I'm talking about

903
01:12:42,239 --> 01:12:45,800
the you know, UFOs that are
unexplainable. UM. No one as far

904
01:12:45,880 --> 01:12:50,520
as I know, really knows for
sure, but you seem to have enough

905
01:12:50,560 --> 01:12:56,880
of an open mind to think that
it's a possibility as far as us being

906
01:12:57,000 --> 01:13:00,760
visited. UM. Alejandrotioned earlier on
that I had. I had a debate

907
01:13:00,840 --> 01:13:06,279
a long time ago with Seth Shustak
from SETI, and basically the thought is,

908
01:13:06,800 --> 01:13:12,199
you know, the thinking and human
terms, they can't get here from

909
01:13:12,279 --> 01:13:15,239
there, you know. UM.
And I remember asking him something, well,

910
01:13:15,239 --> 01:13:19,119
maybe they figured something out in physics
that we have not even touched upon

911
01:13:19,239 --> 01:13:23,600
yet or something like that, and
he actually said, well, it's possible,

912
01:13:23,880 --> 01:13:28,079
but unlikely. And so what are
your thoughts of you know, the

913
01:13:28,239 --> 01:13:30,479
thing always comes up as the distance
thing, What are your thoughts about that

914
01:13:30,640 --> 01:13:38,640
if we actually are being visited by
a distant intelligence? Yeah, I mean,

915
01:13:39,000 --> 01:13:43,920
you know, it's interesting that you
talk about what Sech Shustak told you,

916
01:13:44,880 --> 01:13:49,279
that that refrain is a refrain.
I've seen also in kind of uh,

917
01:13:49,680 --> 01:13:55,479
in the archival materials that I've looked
at surrounding the crowd who worked on

918
01:13:55,600 --> 01:13:59,520
SETI, sort of that original crowd
and the people were working in the seventies

919
01:13:59,560 --> 01:14:02,640
and eighties on it. M I
a year ago, for instance, I

920
01:14:02,720 --> 01:14:09,239
was looking through Carl Sagan's papers in
Washington, DC and some of his personal

921
01:14:09,399 --> 01:14:13,720
letters and things like that, and
one of the things that I saw in

922
01:14:13,840 --> 01:14:18,920
there that struck me as as kind
of reflected my own sort of take on

923
01:14:19,119 --> 01:14:27,159
things was some correspondency was having with
one of the involved in study. So

924
01:14:27,279 --> 01:14:30,640
this is not them talking in public, and they were both saying to one

925
01:14:30,680 --> 01:14:36,279
another basically, Um, look,
I don't see any kind of reason at

926
01:14:36,359 --> 01:14:40,880
this stage with the evidence we have
that allows me to sort of say in

927
01:14:40,960 --> 01:14:45,960
any any with any kind of certainty
that this is happening or that this has

928
01:14:45,000 --> 01:14:51,560
happened. But if one day it
happens, it will it won't surprise me.

929
01:14:53,119 --> 01:14:56,319
If we find the evidence, or
if one day it happens, it

930
01:14:56,399 --> 01:15:00,760
wouldn't surprise me. And that's kind
of the attitude that they had about it,

931
01:15:00,960 --> 01:15:03,960
right. Um. I think we
sometimes remember people like Carl Sagan and

932
01:15:04,239 --> 01:15:08,960
as the great debunker. I don't
know if that's your impression, but you

933
01:15:09,039 --> 01:15:12,520
know, he was kind of a
little more open minded about these things that

934
01:15:12,600 --> 01:15:14,399
he's often given credit, I don't
know, what do you? What do

935
01:15:14,479 --> 01:15:16,319
you? What's your take? Well
things, and that there is a paper

936
01:15:16,399 --> 01:15:21,399
that he wrote in the sixties where
he actually was saying, there's a probability.

937
01:15:21,399 --> 01:15:26,000
I don't know if you've ever stumbled
across that. I don't know that

938
01:15:26,119 --> 01:15:29,840
one now. Yeah. But also
there is a there is a story.

939
01:15:29,960 --> 01:15:33,399
Now. I don't know how you
know solid this story is, but a

940
01:15:34,239 --> 01:15:39,039
he was on stage with I don't
want to say with Stan Freedman, but

941
01:15:39,159 --> 01:15:44,720
someone that was around for a long
time, and they had a quiet conversation

942
01:15:44,880 --> 01:15:47,479
supposedly, and he basically said,
well, I think a lot more about

943
01:15:47,520 --> 01:15:50,760
it than I ever talk about it. In other words, that he said,

944
01:15:50,800 --> 01:15:54,479
and I'll you'll never catch me talking
about it, you know. So

945
01:15:54,640 --> 01:15:58,720
he's afraid it was a career killer
obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

946
01:15:58,840 --> 01:16:02,840
yeah, Well, you know,
I've I've looked at some of this material,

947
01:16:02,920 --> 01:16:06,560
particularly in the sixties when he was
just really fresh. He was a

948
01:16:08,319 --> 01:16:12,359
greenhorn at that stage of his career
in the late sixties, and I've seen

949
01:16:12,560 --> 01:16:16,520
his interactions with some of the older
colleagues who were physicists and astronomers, and

950
01:16:16,720 --> 01:16:21,840
a lot of them were very upset
with the way in which he was willing

951
01:16:21,960 --> 01:16:27,760
to engage in discussions with UFO researchers. And I still remember one letter he

952
01:16:27,800 --> 01:16:31,479
had an exchange with one Harvard astronomer
who basically said, I'm paraphrasing now,

953
01:16:31,840 --> 01:16:36,720
Carl, stopped doing this. It's
going to kill your career. You're you're

954
01:16:36,760 --> 01:16:40,479
never going to get a good,
serious job if you keep doing this,

955
01:16:40,640 --> 01:16:45,880
you're looking ridiculous. And his response
was, I believe in dialogue. I

956
01:16:45,039 --> 01:16:49,840
believe in conversation. And it's one
of the things I really respect about Sagan

957
01:16:50,039 --> 01:16:55,760
was he was always interested in the
idea that we don't shut down conversation,

958
01:16:55,840 --> 01:16:59,119
we open up conversation. I think
that kind of reflects my own sort of

959
01:16:59,199 --> 01:17:01,720
ethos. Yeah, if I had
some time, I could jump on the

960
01:17:01,760 --> 01:17:04,720
computer and try to find that article. I think I posted a link to

961
01:17:04,800 --> 01:17:09,520
it on my website at one time. But it was surprising UM. And

962
01:17:10,159 --> 01:17:14,840
yeah, and it's too bad that
it is actually a career killer for UM,

963
01:17:15,319 --> 01:17:17,840
for you know a lot of people. And one of the questions I

964
01:17:17,960 --> 01:17:21,119
had a scientist on one time and
I said why, I asked, some

965
01:17:21,319 --> 01:17:26,359
point blank, why do you think
it is so hard on someone's career and

966
01:17:27,359 --> 01:17:30,640
no one can get funding for it. And he said kind of like what

967
01:17:30,760 --> 01:17:34,000
you addressed about Set. He said, people want results and if there can't

968
01:17:34,000 --> 01:17:39,159
be an endgame where there's a result, um, they're not gonna They're not

969
01:17:39,239 --> 01:17:41,760
gonna, you know, put up
some money for it. Which is surprising

970
01:17:41,800 --> 01:17:45,680
that Set he actually, you know, keeps getting funded private funding, actually

971
01:17:45,720 --> 01:17:48,199
you know, for for most of
it. Right now, yeah, right

972
01:17:48,800 --> 01:17:53,920
right now, I mean, and
it is something along the now. Again,

973
01:17:54,000 --> 01:17:57,800
what's kind of intriguing is you look
at my research and you have to

974
01:17:57,880 --> 01:18:00,520
say, well, this is interesting. I've had I've had a lot of

975
01:18:00,840 --> 01:18:05,119
the more senior UFO researchers out there
say to me. I had one.

976
01:18:05,880 --> 01:18:10,439
I had one who will remain nameless, who said to me, Greg,

977
01:18:11,199 --> 01:18:15,359
does the Smithsonian know exactly what your
research is about? Oh yeah? And

978
01:18:15,560 --> 01:18:17,159
I said, I said yeah,
oh yeah. I said yeah, I've

979
01:18:17,199 --> 01:18:21,680
got massive funding for this stuff.
I mean, and I think the reason

980
01:18:21,880 --> 01:18:30,159
why is because I don't think this
stuff any longer has the same kind of

981
01:18:30,119 --> 01:18:34,680
stigma it had attached to it back
in Again, I think the seventies and

982
01:18:34,800 --> 01:18:40,600
eighties when it was I think a
lot of this stuff was viewed as you

983
01:18:40,720 --> 01:18:43,800
know, the enemy, as I
say, as a kind of the enemy

984
01:18:43,960 --> 01:18:48,159
of good science. But I think
the other part of it is I am

985
01:18:48,199 --> 01:18:54,159
a historian. I do approach this
stuff historically. I'm not in the business

986
01:18:54,399 --> 01:18:59,920
of, as I say, telling
people what to think about whether things are

987
01:19:00,800 --> 01:19:03,680
have alien origins or sources to them
are not. I'm not in the business

988
01:19:03,800 --> 01:19:10,680
also of spending my time debunking claims. My job and my role is something

989
01:19:10,800 --> 01:19:15,439
different, right In a sense,
it's it's far more modest than any of

990
01:19:15,560 --> 01:19:20,560
those things are that I'm just trying
to capture and recover how it is that

991
01:19:20,760 --> 01:19:26,479
people have gone about understanding and making
sense of this over time. As I

992
01:19:26,640 --> 01:19:30,000
tell people, I research the researchers. That's kind of what I do.

993
01:19:30,960 --> 01:19:34,119
I'm interested in that kind of that
kind of question, and so I think

994
01:19:34,159 --> 01:19:41,439
in that sense it's seen as quite
legitimate to ask questions about what, as

995
01:19:41,560 --> 01:19:45,520
I have argued in my research,
is really one of the one of the

996
01:19:45,640 --> 01:19:51,520
most impressive global movements of the late
twentieth century, and the one that's been

997
01:19:51,680 --> 01:19:56,880
basically neglected by so many people in
my field. Right, That to me

998
01:19:57,039 --> 01:20:00,079
is kind of intriguing, And I
think that's what I think is the reason

999
01:20:00,199 --> 01:20:05,600
why now, a lot of these
institutions don't see this as problematic as as

1000
01:20:05,800 --> 01:20:11,039
as a problematic field to sort of
get into and to look at. I

1001
01:20:11,159 --> 01:20:13,520
did have in my notes I did
want to ask you, how did you

1002
01:20:13,640 --> 01:20:17,800
go about getting funding from the Smithsonian
and NASA. Yeah, well, I

1003
01:20:18,640 --> 01:20:23,119
started going into these you know,
once I got into this project and I

1004
01:20:23,199 --> 01:20:27,000
started to make the determination that I
wanted to pursue this as a book,

1005
01:20:27,920 --> 01:20:31,279
I knew I was going to need
funding to do this. This this is

1006
01:20:31,319 --> 01:20:35,079
a huge problem. How else do
am I going to get overseas to Sweden

1007
01:20:35,439 --> 01:20:40,960
and work with those fabulous people over
at the Archives for the Unexplained and to

1008
01:20:41,119 --> 01:20:45,000
Italy and places like that. It
was going to take a lot of time.

1009
01:20:45,119 --> 01:20:47,439
It was going to take a lot
of effort for me to get and

1010
01:20:47,520 --> 01:20:50,640
to do the traveling I needed to
do. So I knew I was going

1011
01:20:50,680 --> 01:20:54,960
to need funding, and then it
was for me a question of now where

1012
01:20:55,079 --> 01:21:00,159
do I go for um um um
those those kinds of funds. Who who

1013
01:21:00,199 --> 01:21:02,439
were the likely places to do that? And for that It's going to be

1014
01:21:02,640 --> 01:21:08,399
the kind of institutions that fund history
of science, the kind of stuff that

1015
01:21:08,439 --> 01:21:13,159
I've done over the years, But
so the first place I actually turned to

1016
01:21:13,399 --> 01:21:17,399
was to go look at the American
Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, who really offered

1017
01:21:17,439 --> 01:21:21,399
me my first grant possibilities because there
I wanted to work with their collections,

1018
01:21:21,640 --> 01:21:27,479
and there's where they have Edward Condon's
papers, they have Phil Closs, the

1019
01:21:27,560 --> 01:21:30,840
great debunker phil Classes papers, Donald
Menzel and other of the great sort of

1020
01:21:30,960 --> 01:21:36,119
debunkers of the nineteen fifties and sixties. And from there that off afforded me

1021
01:21:36,199 --> 01:21:41,760
the possibility to say to then other
funders, well, look, I'm very

1022
01:21:41,840 --> 01:21:45,920
serious about this stuff. I've got
I've started to publish the results of my

1023
01:21:45,000 --> 01:21:48,880
research, but to really finish this
I need other possibilities. And so that's

1024
01:21:48,920 --> 01:21:57,640
when I got involved and applied for
some funds through the American Historical Association and

1025
01:21:57,720 --> 01:22:01,920
this NASA grant, And then I
had the great opportunity to be to serve

1026
01:22:02,000 --> 01:22:09,640
as the Charles A. Limbergh Chair
in Aerospace History over at the National Air

1027
01:22:09,720 --> 01:22:15,079
and Space Museum last fall at the
Smithsonian, and so there because I had

1028
01:22:15,479 --> 01:22:19,279
gotten to know some of the great
aerospace historians that are there. I mean,

1029
01:22:19,880 --> 01:22:25,279
is there another place in the world
that have so many of these fabulous

1030
01:22:25,359 --> 01:22:30,359
people who do aerospace history. So
because I've made those connections and showed people

1031
01:22:30,439 --> 01:22:33,479
the way in which I want to
approach this subject and think about it,

1032
01:22:34,840 --> 01:22:39,359
all along the way, I've had
nothing but people encourage me, give me

1033
01:22:39,479 --> 01:22:44,720
support, open up there, you
know, their time to me and give

1034
01:22:44,800 --> 01:22:47,000
me, you know, let me
sit there and not just talk their ears

1035
01:22:47,039 --> 01:22:50,720
off, but also get advice from
them about how to go about doing some

1036
01:22:50,840 --> 01:22:56,199
of the things I'm doing. It's
just been absolutely remarkable. So I have

1037
01:22:56,359 --> 01:23:01,279
felt like from my standpoint, doors
have opened. I get open doors from

1038
01:23:01,399 --> 01:23:06,119
people, and people share their time
and their their their wisdom with me all

1039
01:23:06,199 --> 01:23:10,680
along the way. And that's from
all sides. Frankly, from everybody I've

1040
01:23:10,800 --> 01:23:14,439
encountered. I've rarely had a door
shut in my face. Do you think

1041
01:23:14,479 --> 01:23:18,680
it, um, that you have
a pretty good advantage because of your um

1042
01:23:19,159 --> 01:23:26,319
your status as a professor of history
too. Yeah, yeah, I think

1043
01:23:26,359 --> 01:23:32,239
that's absolutely the case. Um.
I have told people, uh that I

1044
01:23:32,560 --> 01:23:39,319
don't know that I would have undertaken
this project, say, I don't know

1045
01:23:39,520 --> 01:23:43,600
twenty twenty five years ago in my
career, um Um, I think I

1046
01:23:43,760 --> 01:23:48,920
might have been nervous about would people
take me seriously, would they wonder about

1047
01:23:48,960 --> 01:23:53,840
what I'm up to or something like
that. But I I in the you

1048
01:23:53,920 --> 01:23:57,119
know, in the in that period
of time, I've taken on so many

1049
01:23:57,199 --> 01:24:03,199
other projects that that that have taking
me in completely other different avenues, as

1050
01:24:03,279 --> 01:24:08,600
you well know. And the thing
is about at two things. One is

1051
01:24:08,760 --> 01:24:13,640
that is that in doing so,
I've picked up all sorts of skills,

1052
01:24:14,159 --> 01:24:17,000
right and research skills, and an
ability to look at an archive in a

1053
01:24:17,079 --> 01:24:20,960
way that I didn't have twenty five
years ago. So part of it is

1054
01:24:23,239 --> 01:24:31,319
I I where people know that I
know how to go about and do rigorous

1055
01:24:31,560 --> 01:24:36,640
empirical research right historical research. But
the other part of it is having earned

1056
01:24:36,680 --> 01:24:42,239
a reputation from my colleagues and from
people who work in the history of science

1057
01:24:42,319 --> 01:24:45,960
and medicine who know me and know
the kind of of ways I go about

1058
01:24:46,079 --> 01:24:50,520
doing things and how I do it
in a really serious, sober fashion.

1059
01:24:53,000 --> 01:24:59,720
I think it's in that sense one's
reputation not just having the name professor of

1060
01:24:59,800 --> 01:25:03,319
his, you know, as part
of your title, but having that background,

1061
01:25:03,760 --> 01:25:09,359
that experience, having proven myself you
know, over many years, that

1062
01:25:09,520 --> 01:25:14,039
I think is what really matters to
people. And uh that that that.

1063
01:25:14,279 --> 01:25:17,399
So in that sense that has both
served me well both in terms of opening

1064
01:25:17,479 --> 01:25:21,600
doors but also in terms of helping
me take advantage when people open the door,

1065
01:25:21,840 --> 01:25:25,800
I know what to do once those
doors have been opened. Right.

1066
01:25:26,199 --> 01:25:29,680
Well, being in the digital age, you know you talked about earlier,

1067
01:25:30,199 --> 01:25:33,960
how you know there's the paper trail
basically of of UFO researchers. Now it's

1068
01:25:34,079 --> 01:25:39,039
everything's digital. Do you think that's
going to change the landscape as far as

1069
01:25:39,359 --> 01:25:45,560
research in the future. Yeah,
I think so. Oh, I think

1070
01:25:45,600 --> 01:25:49,720
no question about it. That the
accessibility to so many records, to so

1071
01:25:49,840 --> 01:25:57,720
many things means that just about anybody
can take this stuff on and wrap their

1072
01:25:57,760 --> 01:26:00,479
heads around it pretty quickly. Now
out. It also means, however,

1073
01:26:00,640 --> 01:26:05,239
that what the digital age is also
done is as were we all are,

1074
01:26:05,439 --> 01:26:10,960
I think painfully aware, right,
is that it's created a kind of a

1075
01:26:11,079 --> 01:26:16,359
flood of information and data Like where
do you begin? I'm sure you've experienced

1076
01:26:16,399 --> 01:26:20,119
this whenever you wanted to go in
maybe and look at something and said to

1077
01:26:20,399 --> 01:26:25,119
yourself, oh my god, like
where where do I begin? And also

1078
01:26:25,119 --> 01:26:29,199
where and when do I stop?
Because it's so much. Yeah, there's

1079
01:26:29,279 --> 01:26:32,399
the truth, and where's where's the
untruth and um, yeah, and when

1080
01:26:32,399 --> 01:26:36,600
it comes to places like YouTube,
you know, what percentage of the you

1081
01:26:36,680 --> 01:26:45,720
know videos can you actually consider that
are something? Yeah? And it is

1082
01:26:45,800 --> 01:26:49,640
a big problem because I think there
there there is reason to be to question,

1083
01:26:50,079 --> 01:26:54,079
um, you know this is this
to me is also very much a

1084
01:26:54,159 --> 01:27:00,000
part of my professional and even personal
but but certainly my professional code or ethos,

1085
01:27:00,119 --> 01:27:06,000
right, is you always have to
be skeptical about your sources of information.

1086
01:27:06,359 --> 01:27:11,800
It doesn't mean you inherently don't believe
it, but what you have to

1087
01:27:12,039 --> 01:27:15,439
always be asking yourself is where does
this come from? Who designed it?

1088
01:27:15,640 --> 01:27:19,880
For what purposes? Why is it
there? How did it get there?

1089
01:27:20,279 --> 01:27:26,279
Right? Those are the questions I
would do this if I was studying a

1090
01:27:26,359 --> 01:27:29,920
completely other kind of subject matter.
These are the things that you have to

1091
01:27:30,039 --> 01:27:36,479
do as anybody doing serious historical research
is always always be questioning the material and

1092
01:27:38,279 --> 01:27:44,039
triangulating right, constantly seeing do I
get confirmation of this information from other places

1093
01:27:44,119 --> 01:27:47,760
that will allow me to say with
relative certainty, ah, this document is

1094
01:27:48,000 --> 01:27:53,399
trustworthy or this document has some problems. Right. That kind of stuff is

1095
01:27:53,520 --> 01:27:58,640
necessary, And you're right, the
Internet doesn't always make that easier. It

1096
01:27:58,840 --> 01:28:03,359
actually oftentimes makes it more complex,
more difficult to do, right because there's

1097
01:28:03,479 --> 01:28:08,159
so much of this information and a
lot of times it can be kind of

1098
01:28:08,279 --> 01:28:12,439
mutually contradictory. Right, Yeah,
I muddied the water, so to speak.

1099
01:28:12,960 --> 01:28:16,880
Um yeah, yeah. Um So
as far as h as far as

1100
01:28:17,039 --> 01:28:24,239
the history of do you consider that, um, pop culture place apart in

1101
01:28:25,600 --> 01:28:30,039
you know, people paying attention to
I mean, I saw the great article

1102
01:28:30,119 --> 01:28:33,760
you had written, the blog on
comic book covers. Um, So do

1103
01:28:33,840 --> 01:28:40,000
you think that played a part and
what people thought they were seeing or any

1104
01:28:40,039 --> 01:28:45,159
part of that? Yeah, I
mean I think, I think, I

1105
01:28:45,239 --> 01:28:50,039
think we have to say that pop
cululture and the media has always had a

1106
01:28:54,000 --> 01:28:59,119
pronounced influence on what's going on and
what people are seeing, what people are

1107
01:28:59,199 --> 01:29:03,039
talking about, and these kinds of
things. Um Uh. It goes back

1108
01:29:03,119 --> 01:29:08,359
to, to some extent what we
were talking about out earlier year that if

1109
01:29:08,399 --> 01:29:15,239
you look at the history of ufology, that by and large the way in

1110
01:29:15,399 --> 01:29:23,680
which m UFO researchers have tried to
get their message across us and reach people,

1111
01:29:23,760 --> 01:29:27,079
how to get people to take it
from seriously has been publicizing the stuff

1112
01:29:27,079 --> 01:29:30,800
and getting people's public attention. But
we also know when you do the research,

1113
01:29:30,920 --> 01:29:35,439
you find out that that dating back
already to the nineteen fifties, what

1114
01:29:36,680 --> 01:29:42,359
most UFO researchers did back in the
fifties, sixties, and seventies into the

1115
01:29:42,439 --> 01:29:47,760
nineteen eighties to get their information that
they would then utilize to analyze material,

1116
01:29:48,039 --> 01:29:53,680
right and to analyze data, was
to in fact, tracks news stories,

1117
01:29:53,720 --> 01:29:58,239
to track newspapers. They all had
news clipping files. So so it's directly

1118
01:29:58,359 --> 01:30:03,279
having an impact that in that way
on UFO researchers. But we certainly know

1119
01:30:03,600 --> 01:30:09,159
that certain images, right, certain
kinds of ideas that we have in our

1120
01:30:09,279 --> 01:30:16,279
minds about aliens, for instance,
comes to and is derived from these sort

1121
01:30:16,319 --> 01:30:21,239
of popular images we have out there. So if you were to ask people

1122
01:30:21,560 --> 01:30:27,720
to describe what they thought aliens and
what people reported aliens looked like, say,

1123
01:30:27,840 --> 01:30:30,960
in the nineteen fifties, when the
contact these were telling stories, they

1124
01:30:31,000 --> 01:30:34,359
were very very different kinds of descriptions
than the things you're going to get when

1125
01:30:34,399 --> 01:30:39,520
you ask people in nineteen nineties what
they look like. And a lot of

1126
01:30:39,600 --> 01:30:45,600
that has to do with the ways
in which popular culture sort of portrayed aliens,

1127
01:30:45,920 --> 01:30:48,199
whether that was in movies or whether
that was in the popular press or

1128
01:30:48,279 --> 01:30:51,399
the tabloid press, and that has
an impact, and so I think you

1129
01:30:51,479 --> 01:30:57,800
can track that as part of the
way in which the general public as a

1130
01:30:57,920 --> 01:31:02,279
whole sort of think about try to
understand these kinds of things. Now,

1131
01:31:03,359 --> 01:31:11,199
as far as historically the identification of
what people are seeing, I want to

1132
01:31:11,239 --> 01:31:14,880
talk a little bit about that because
there are cases that do go way back

1133
01:31:14,960 --> 01:31:18,239
about triangles. Again, Dave Marler
is a person who, um, who's

1134
01:31:18,239 --> 01:31:21,319
going to be talking about that coming
up soon, um in a show.

1135
01:31:21,720 --> 01:31:27,359
But um, so triangles were very
rare, but they there were a few

1136
01:31:27,439 --> 01:31:31,359
sightings and then there was the the
disc, the cigar shape, all that.

1137
01:31:31,960 --> 01:31:36,800
Um, I think it's it's pretty
amazing. Now it seems like there's

1138
01:31:38,560 --> 01:31:43,199
more triangle sightings than than anything else. And you know, how could you

1139
01:31:43,319 --> 01:31:47,159
know again talking about um, you
know, these aren't new models that are

1140
01:31:47,239 --> 01:31:50,680
coming out obviously, you know,
or something like that. Um, did

1141
01:31:50,760 --> 01:31:55,720
you ever look into any aspects of
the shapes of what people are seeing?

1142
01:31:56,560 --> 01:31:59,720
Yeah? Yeah, I have.
Actually, I mean so one of the

1143
01:31:59,800 --> 01:32:02,960
one of the things that's kind of
intriguing is there too, you see in

1144
01:32:03,119 --> 01:32:08,600
kind of the stories that circulate,
right, And that's where that's what a

1145
01:32:08,680 --> 01:32:13,079
lot of the stuff I focus on
because when we go to earlier periods,

1146
01:32:13,119 --> 01:32:16,520
we often don't even have direct witness
testimony. We have stories that circulate in

1147
01:32:16,600 --> 01:32:23,359
the media. But if you take
a look at, for instance, some

1148
01:32:23,520 --> 01:32:30,079
of the earliest in the nineteenth century, some of the earliest stories about strange

1149
01:32:30,119 --> 01:32:32,640
as they would call them back in
the day, strange airships right, that

1150
01:32:32,960 --> 01:32:39,279
people have witnessed, it's really interesting
how this stuff tends to track and follow

1151
01:32:40,079 --> 01:32:45,199
whatever the technologies of the time were, so excuse me. So, for

1152
01:32:45,319 --> 01:32:50,039
instance, one of the earliest earliest
cases that was brought to my attention by

1153
01:32:50,119 --> 01:32:58,079
a colleague of mine was a story
from the eighteen thirties that took place in

1154
01:32:58,399 --> 01:33:03,920
I want to say, oh Io
or Indiana, among a group of Mormons

1155
01:33:04,479 --> 01:33:11,439
who had had had seen who claimed
that they had seen or maybe it was

1156
01:33:11,560 --> 01:33:17,000
later. In any event, what
they claimed to have seen was a strange

1157
01:33:17,159 --> 01:33:23,319
airship with all sorts of family members
dead family members on it. But the

1158
01:33:23,399 --> 01:33:27,680
way this airship was described was it
looked like a steamboat, right, because

1159
01:33:27,760 --> 01:33:30,439
the steam engine was the thing that
people saw in those days, and that

1160
01:33:30,560 --> 01:33:34,560
was what you witnessed. So airships
are described as looking like steamboats, right,

1161
01:33:34,680 --> 01:33:42,079
in running around on the skies.
Fast forward many decades later, you

1162
01:33:42,159 --> 01:33:45,800
got around the turn of the century, around right before World War One,

1163
01:33:45,600 --> 01:33:50,520
when there are several kinds of scares
that go on, particularly in Britain.

1164
01:33:51,319 --> 01:33:55,920
What do people say that they see. They say they see Zeppelin's and they

1165
01:33:56,000 --> 01:34:00,239
describe dirigible like kinds of things that
are going around and so the same thing.

1166
01:34:00,279 --> 01:34:03,920
That's kind of interesting when you talk
about the ghost rockets scare in Sweden

1167
01:34:03,920 --> 01:34:09,479
in nineteen forty six. Right,
it's not just rockets of that are seen,

1168
01:34:09,560 --> 01:34:13,520
as you probably know, other things
are also seen, but but rockets

1169
01:34:13,640 --> 01:34:16,760
is the rockets and missiles are the
things that are most described landing in the

1170
01:34:16,880 --> 01:34:23,039
lakes in the lakes. Yeah,
it's fascinating stuff, but again not a

1171
01:34:23,159 --> 01:34:31,000
surprise given that a number of very
very well publicized famous incidents during War two

1172
01:34:31,239 --> 01:34:39,600
in which V one and V two
rockets fell on Sweden. Looks like his

1173
01:34:39,720 --> 01:34:44,039
skype went out and hang on everyone, let me try to get him back

1174
01:34:44,079 --> 01:34:47,840
on the show. The phone line
is open if someone would like to call

1175
01:34:48,000 --> 01:34:53,079
in, and I'm going to try
him on his phone. It's who can't

1176
01:34:53,079 --> 01:34:57,680
get through that way? Hello?
There you are so well, we'll go

1177
01:34:57,840 --> 01:35:00,960
the rest of the show on the
phone here, I'm not sure what to

1178
01:35:00,800 --> 01:35:05,119
what happened to stype. So we
were talking about airships and things like that,

1179
01:35:05,760 --> 01:35:10,840
basically yeah, yeah, yeah,
so so those so those shapes,

1180
01:35:10,920 --> 01:35:15,960
yeah so it So it is intriguing
to me to to to see how these

1181
01:35:15,439 --> 01:35:21,479
um, these these shapes uh can
very often link up and connect with you

1182
01:35:21,560 --> 01:35:26,520
know, the technologies at the time, right, the things that are getting

1183
01:35:26,800 --> 01:35:30,920
the most attention. Um, they
often sort of had that kind of role

1184
01:35:31,000 --> 01:35:34,600
that they played. Um when you
look at it sort of the long history

1185
01:35:34,640 --> 01:35:40,359
of it. UM. I think
also, um, I do I do

1186
01:35:40,600 --> 01:35:43,800
understand that, and that is that
is really bizarre, and that that kind

1187
01:35:43,840 --> 01:35:47,880
of makes you wonder that if part
of what people are seeing is imagination,

1188
01:35:48,319 --> 01:35:50,359
you know, I mean, what
where else could you go with something like

1189
01:35:50,479 --> 01:35:56,119
that? Yeah, I mean I
think it's certainly that's going to be the

1190
01:35:56,279 --> 01:36:02,159
argument of of of people who are
really skeptical about claims and witnesses who claim

1191
01:36:02,199 --> 01:36:09,000
to have seen you know, uh, ghost rockets or or or flying saucers

1192
01:36:09,119 --> 01:36:13,680
or things like that. Um.
But you know the counter argument that you

1193
01:36:13,800 --> 01:36:16,960
read in the ufone literature, going
back again from the early times of it

1194
01:36:17,640 --> 01:36:24,840
was that. Well, but maybe
this isn't so surprising because people will describe

1195
01:36:25,039 --> 01:36:29,720
things and talk about things in the
terms that are available to them at any

1196
01:36:29,760 --> 01:36:33,279
given point in time, right,
Um, So you in fact are going

1197
01:36:33,359 --> 01:36:39,600
to to see things that that look
that way. Right. So, uh,

1198
01:36:39,960 --> 01:36:43,840
you know, you have apparitions in
the sky, you know, when

1199
01:36:44,119 --> 01:36:49,880
when when there's a um something like
an eclipse for instance, or there's a

1200
01:36:50,039 --> 01:36:57,479
meteor shower, or there's some sort
of atmospheric phenomenon, say in the Middle

1201
01:36:57,520 --> 01:37:01,399
Ages, people will describe seeing,
um, you know, a blazing cross

1202
01:37:01,520 --> 01:37:04,640
in the sky. Um, And
people will say that, you know,

1203
01:37:04,880 --> 01:37:12,159
maybe the explanation for that is is
not that necessarily somebody people actually saw across,

1204
01:37:12,279 --> 01:37:18,119
but rather what they're describing is a
phenomenon that is um needs that seems

1205
01:37:18,199 --> 01:37:23,439
odd, seems strange and anomalous.
They need to make sense of it,

1206
01:37:23,680 --> 01:37:28,000
and so the best thing that they
come up with to describe it is across.

1207
01:37:28,199 --> 01:37:30,479
Right. Um. It's the same
way right with Kenneth Arnold, I

1208
01:37:30,520 --> 01:37:34,960
don't everything I've ever seen, he
says, he never really described them as

1209
01:37:35,159 --> 01:37:39,960
flying saucers. Put per se,
he saw them in a very different kind

1210
01:37:40,000 --> 01:37:44,520
of shape. But you could tell
that he's he's having trouble describing what he's

1211
01:37:44,520 --> 01:37:47,800
seeing, right, Um, and
so you seek you try to find things

1212
01:37:47,880 --> 01:37:51,159
to latch onto that will help make
sense of it. I think that that

1213
01:37:51,479 --> 01:37:57,640
that that is where the you know, history meets up with experience in a

1214
01:37:57,720 --> 01:38:01,840
way that's often something that somebody themselves
who's reporting the stuff is unaware of,

1215
01:38:02,079 --> 01:38:06,600
right right, right, yeah,
yeah, Um, I know they were

1216
01:38:06,760 --> 01:38:11,880
sort of they sort of had like
wings or something, if I remember,

1217
01:38:12,000 --> 01:38:18,000
right, or they sort of unusually
unusual shape and h bat like or something.

1218
01:38:18,159 --> 01:38:21,399
Yeah. Yeah, that describes it
pretty well. So um, and

1219
01:38:21,640 --> 01:38:26,359
that that is it is very interesting. A lot of people have tried to

1220
01:38:26,399 --> 01:38:30,439
speculate, you know, why all
of a sudden all these sightings were happening

1221
01:38:30,520 --> 01:38:34,039
at the time, and um,
you know stand Freedman, who I brought

1222
01:38:34,119 --> 01:38:36,680
up in a few times on the
show so far. You know, his

1223
01:38:38,079 --> 01:38:42,760
speculation of that is at the um, you know, the explosion of the

1224
01:38:42,960 --> 01:38:46,960
nuclear weapons and uh you know,
going back to World War two and nineteen

1225
01:38:47,199 --> 01:38:53,079
forty five and you know the tests
before that, and uh yeah, what

1226
01:38:53,159 --> 01:38:56,279
does he say, The kids found
the found the matches, you know,

1227
01:38:58,279 --> 01:39:01,680
and he thinks because there is it
is strange how all of a sudden,

1228
01:39:02,039 --> 01:39:08,000
you know, starting in nineteen forty
seven was a barrage of sightings and right

1229
01:39:08,199 --> 01:39:11,239
one right after the other, and
then um, you know, in nineteen

1230
01:39:11,399 --> 01:39:16,720
fifty two was another major year where
there was so many sightings and ye,

1231
01:39:17,399 --> 01:39:19,960
so what do you think about that? Why there were so many sightings up

1232
01:39:20,199 --> 01:39:24,640
right starting in forty seven? What
have you thought about that? Yeah?

1233
01:39:24,720 --> 01:39:30,159
No, I mean I would agree, I mean the thing, the thing

1234
01:39:30,800 --> 01:39:35,960
to some extent with what Sam Friedman
is saying. So what what you again,

1235
01:39:36,039 --> 01:39:40,079
when you look at sort of the
evidence of like the material, what

1236
01:39:40,319 --> 01:39:45,319
people were talking about and people were
trying to make sense of and to think

1237
01:39:45,359 --> 01:39:48,199
about this, it's really really kind
of intriguing me. And you see this

1238
01:39:48,399 --> 01:39:54,479
going on not just in the United
States. I've written about this kind of

1239
01:39:54,560 --> 01:39:59,079
as I talked about I think earlier
about this experience in places like Germany,

1240
01:39:59,119 --> 01:40:03,359
and I've seen some stuff about England
as well. What's going on when you

1241
01:40:03,479 --> 01:40:08,840
look in nineteen forty six with the
Ghost Rocket scare and then forty seven,

1242
01:40:09,239 --> 01:40:16,079
in those first few years is a
really interesting thing, is that people are

1243
01:40:16,520 --> 01:40:21,399
truly truly mystified as to what's going
on and I don't just mean the general

1244
01:40:21,479 --> 01:40:27,600
public. You can see intelligence agencies
are mystified as to what's going on.

1245
01:40:28,479 --> 01:40:32,239
Everybody's sort of looking at one another
saying, what is this? What's going

1246
01:40:32,319 --> 01:40:38,239
on? And so you see for
a while, for several years, kind

1247
01:40:38,239 --> 01:40:42,439
of all sorts of theories are being
put out there to explain it, with

1248
01:40:42,640 --> 01:40:45,000
some people saying, you know what, this has got to be the Soviets.

1249
01:40:45,039 --> 01:40:48,800
It's got to be the Soviets.
They got to be experimenting with weapons

1250
01:40:48,880 --> 01:40:53,399
they captured from the Nazis, and
then other people saying, no, no,

1251
01:40:53,560 --> 01:40:56,199
no, it's not the Soviets,
they're not doing it. It's got

1252
01:40:56,319 --> 01:40:59,560
to be the Americans. It's got
to be the Americans playing with some of

1253
01:40:59,600 --> 01:41:02,119
their new toys that they have and
that they don't want to admit it.

1254
01:41:02,279 --> 01:41:04,520
And then you see if other people
say no, no, no, no,

1255
01:41:04,840 --> 01:41:09,239
this is just people in a panic, right, there's they're all.

1256
01:41:09,399 --> 01:41:15,039
During World War Two, there were
all sorts of bump you know, air

1257
01:41:15,479 --> 01:41:19,239
raid panics that went on, right
even while people were in fact being bombed,

1258
01:41:19,359 --> 01:41:24,479
you could still have moments where just
a rumor would strike panic in a

1259
01:41:24,640 --> 01:41:28,880
city. Right about the potential for
that, So that what this is is

1260
01:41:28,960 --> 01:41:34,359
nothing more than a kind of mass
hysteria. And everybody's seen missiles and flying

1261
01:41:34,439 --> 01:41:41,600
saucers when nothing's there, So all
sorts of things are floating around. But

1262
01:41:41,760 --> 01:41:46,279
what's interesting is that when you finally
get the argument made by Donald Keyhoe,

1263
01:41:46,319 --> 01:41:50,079
I mean, he's kind of the
key figure in nineteen forty nine, nineteen

1264
01:41:50,199 --> 01:41:55,720
fifty about this. Keyhoe is the
one who really makes this argument. He

1265
01:41:55,760 --> 01:42:02,359
says, the evidence shows that those
people in government who believe that these are

1266
01:42:02,479 --> 01:42:10,640
aliens, excuse me, are in
fact convinced that what's set this in motion,

1267
01:42:10,720 --> 01:42:15,560
and the reason they're visiting us now
with such frequency is because of these

1268
01:42:15,680 --> 01:42:19,159
nuclear explosions, right as as as
Friedman says, right, it's that it's

1269
01:42:19,239 --> 01:42:27,039
that they've they've seen that we have
atomic technology now, and particularly atomic weapons

1270
01:42:27,199 --> 01:42:31,119
now, so that they are now
sort of conducting a kind of reconnaissance trying

1271
01:42:31,159 --> 01:42:36,239
to get a better sense about who
we are and what we're capable of and

1272
01:42:36,359 --> 01:42:43,039
whether contact is possible. This becomes
another theory that's thrown around, So so

1273
01:42:43,239 --> 01:42:49,199
you really do kind of have a
whole bunch of people all sort of coming

1274
01:42:49,319 --> 01:42:54,319
up with theories. They oftentimes mutually
contradict one another, but all of the

1275
01:42:54,439 --> 01:42:59,720
theories keep coming back to the same
theme about war, about particularly the Cold

1276
01:42:59,760 --> 01:43:03,039
War, and particularly about the potential
for sort of nuclear holocaust, and that

1277
01:43:03,239 --> 01:43:06,680
that that's sort of the constant theme
that you see running through it. So

1278
01:43:06,760 --> 01:43:13,439
a lot of I think a lot
of the big sightings oftentimes come around the

1279
01:43:13,560 --> 01:43:16,920
time when there are particular sort of
changes in the Cold War, right,

1280
01:43:17,039 --> 01:43:21,279
particular moments of a lot of heat, if you will, right. And

1281
01:43:23,000 --> 01:43:30,159
I'm sure you've looked into also m
vie the connection between nuclear weapons and UH

1282
01:43:30,880 --> 01:43:34,720
and you know, the disarming of
them and all these different things during sightings,

1283
01:43:35,359 --> 01:43:41,479
which is another fascinating aspect of it. Yeah, I think one of

1284
01:43:41,520 --> 01:43:45,279
the you I asked before about about
pop culture, and you know, one

1285
01:43:45,319 --> 01:43:47,720
of the other things I've wondered about. I don't know what your thoughts are

1286
01:43:47,800 --> 01:43:51,880
about this. I mean, there's
you know, a very common argument is

1287
01:43:53,000 --> 01:44:00,760
that you know, when when movies
like um uh, Close Encounters, Close

1288
01:44:00,880 --> 01:44:04,840
Encounters and et came out, you
had this sort of big uptick of sightings.

1289
01:44:05,239 --> 01:44:10,000
But I've read elsewhere from other sources
that say that didn't happen, But

1290
01:44:10,159 --> 01:44:14,319
in fact, it didn't spark any
great, that's right, big uptick,

1291
01:44:14,479 --> 01:44:17,760
and is that's the cases that you're
that's uh. I think I think you're

1292
01:44:17,840 --> 01:44:24,119
right because that was put out there, but it was it was really just

1293
01:44:24,279 --> 01:44:28,279
bunk. I mean, there was
nothing to back it up as far as

1294
01:44:28,359 --> 01:44:31,000
you know. The settings are like
move on does record the amount of sightings

1295
01:44:31,039 --> 01:44:35,319
and all that has for many years
and there was no real spike in that.

1296
01:44:35,760 --> 01:44:42,520
Now there may have been there.
There are such cases when like Hanger

1297
01:44:42,560 --> 01:44:46,159
one came out all of a sudden
the sightings were really high, but a

1298
01:44:46,279 --> 01:44:51,880
lot of the sightings reported were for
historical sightings in other words, not ephemeral

1299
01:44:51,920 --> 01:44:56,000
to the times people would say,
well, you know they're watching this on

1300
01:44:56,119 --> 01:44:59,760
TV. I never heard a move
on Now I'm gonna talk about my sighting

1301
01:44:59,800 --> 01:45:02,439
T years ago and so there.
Yeah, yeah, the reports came in

1302
01:45:02,600 --> 01:45:08,600
like that. So yeah, it
does have an effect on um at least

1303
01:45:08,640 --> 01:45:12,960
people you know, paying more attention. So yeah, I think so,

1304
01:45:13,159 --> 01:45:15,840
I mean we know that we know
that about the X files, right,

1305
01:45:15,920 --> 01:45:20,039
the X files had had a definite, definite impression on people. And I

1306
01:45:20,119 --> 01:45:23,520
think the other thing is we know
with the X files, I think what

1307
01:45:23,600 --> 01:45:27,680
the X files did that a lot
of movies weren't able to do because it

1308
01:45:27,840 --> 01:45:31,039
was it was on for so long, it could follow different kinds of plot.

1309
01:45:31,319 --> 01:45:40,760
It really introduced people to a lot
of those kinds of theories that existed

1310
01:45:40,840 --> 01:45:44,119
back in those days, right back
in the back in the nineties, that

1311
01:45:44,319 --> 01:45:46,119
a lot of people were not aware
of, right, who had never been

1312
01:45:46,199 --> 01:45:50,359
exposed to. Um, uh,
you know these kinds of uh, these

1313
01:45:50,439 --> 01:45:55,039
sort of very very dark, right, the dark sort of dark theories that

1314
01:45:55,399 --> 01:46:00,159
that I don't think got much exposure
until really the X Files brought those to

1315
01:46:00,279 --> 01:46:04,079
the front, to front and center, right and to people's attention, right

1316
01:46:04,239 --> 01:46:08,399
right. Um, So, I'm
we're gonna leave the number up there for

1317
01:46:08,520 --> 01:46:11,520
just a minute. We only have
Wow, we only have four minutes left

1318
01:46:11,560 --> 01:46:14,840
of the show or so. Yeah, so we will take one quick call

1319
01:46:14,920 --> 01:46:17,279
if someone like to call in.
Otherwise otherwise we're not gonna take any calls,

1320
01:46:17,800 --> 01:46:21,119
um for the rest of the show, the rest of the four whopping

1321
01:46:21,199 --> 01:46:27,439
minutes. So, um, what
about did I we started to talk?

1322
01:46:27,479 --> 01:46:31,640
I believe we started to talk about
are you doing a documentary? Yeah?

1323
01:46:31,800 --> 01:46:36,199
So I've been working on this with
a with a friend and a colleague of

1324
01:46:36,319 --> 01:46:41,039
mine. He's a documentary filmmaker here
at Penn State by the name of Richie

1325
01:46:41,119 --> 01:46:45,520
Sherman. Um, And uh,
yeah, a few years ago and I

1326
01:46:45,640 --> 01:46:48,119
was talking with him about this project
and He's like, you know, I'm

1327
01:46:48,159 --> 01:46:54,359
fascinated with this stuff, and I've
always been very interested in it, do

1328
01:46:54,479 --> 01:46:58,159
you you know? Um? And
as we sort of hung out and talk

1329
01:46:58,239 --> 01:47:00,239
more about it, we sort of
started to explore this idea, well,

1330
01:47:00,319 --> 01:47:04,039
what if we sort of take this
this kind of topic and theme and think

1331
01:47:04,079 --> 01:47:09,319
about doing a documentary on it,
and so um that's what we did.

1332
01:47:09,399 --> 01:47:13,039
And in fact, our first our
first sort of filming we did was at

1333
01:47:13,119 --> 01:47:17,159
that congress in twenty sixteen in Phoenix, and we just showed up. I

1334
01:47:17,600 --> 01:47:20,720
think the only time. The only
person I had talked to in advance was

1335
01:47:20,960 --> 01:47:28,159
probably Ryan Ryan Sprague and and there
were a few other people, and that's

1336
01:47:28,239 --> 01:47:31,680
but we just showed up. And, as I said, another example where

1337
01:47:31,720 --> 01:47:36,359
people just open up and are so
generous with their time. You know,

1338
01:47:36,720 --> 01:47:43,359
I showed up. I just started
introducing myself to folks. Um asked Alejandro

1339
01:47:43,399 --> 01:47:45,319
if it was okay if we did
some filming. He said absolutely, and

1340
01:47:45,960 --> 01:47:50,560
then just sort of, uh,
you know, started talking to people like

1341
01:47:50,680 --> 01:47:57,880
Stan Freedman and and Kathleen Marden and
people like that, UM and Ryan and

1342
01:47:58,279 --> 01:48:02,720
and interviewed folks and just and so
our approach to this is it's kind of

1343
01:48:02,800 --> 01:48:06,279
open ended. We to be will
be really honest with people. We are

1344
01:48:06,359 --> 01:48:11,520
still very much in these sort of
U what is this all add up to

1345
01:48:11,800 --> 01:48:15,600
the phase of things? Um?
Uh? You know, I've been mostly

1346
01:48:15,720 --> 01:48:24,159
interested in and talking to people,
um about their their lives in in in

1347
01:48:25,079 --> 01:48:30,720
and UFOs and and particularly people you
know like stand Freedman, who who've got

1348
01:48:30,720 --> 01:48:34,920
a lot of experience, have a
have a long track record of involving themselves

1349
01:48:34,960 --> 01:48:40,840
in this stuff. So kind of
asking about how they got involved in these

1350
01:48:40,960 --> 01:48:45,000
things, what led them to it, how have things changed over the course

1351
01:48:45,039 --> 01:48:47,039
of their lives? Um, what
are they thinking now? What do they

1352
01:48:47,079 --> 01:48:50,880
think the future looks like? These
kinds of questions the sort of get a

1353
01:48:51,000 --> 01:48:55,760
sense of So in a sense,
it's it's got it's what I guess we'd

1354
01:48:55,800 --> 01:49:00,680
call oral history. UM. But
uh, you know, my my friend

1355
01:49:00,760 --> 01:49:02,960
Richie the filmmaker, I leave all
that stuff up to him. He's the

1356
01:49:03,039 --> 01:49:06,960
expert on that. Um Uh.
He keeps saying, I want more action,

1357
01:49:08,239 --> 01:49:14,000
we need more action. He wants
he wants to see people running around

1358
01:49:14,199 --> 01:49:18,159
and doing more things. Thanks historian
of me, Like, yeah, he

1359
01:49:18,319 --> 01:49:20,920
wants to see something I got,
I said, Rich, we can go,

1360
01:49:21,279 --> 01:49:26,199
we can go on a field investigation. But all all of the people

1361
01:49:26,279 --> 01:49:30,119
I talked to who do field investigations
will tell you, right, ninety nine

1362
01:49:30,159 --> 01:49:33,640
percent of them are pretty you know, undramatic, Right, that's true.

1363
01:49:33,640 --> 01:49:36,880
They don't tend to involve a lot
of you know, damn it, let's

1364
01:49:36,920 --> 01:49:40,680
get in the car and get over
there, right now, pronte right,

1365
01:49:40,800 --> 01:49:44,640
Yeah, it's unfortunately there's not a
lot of great X file moments, right,

1366
01:49:44,800 --> 01:49:49,159
that's more kind of pain taking research. Yeah. Yeah, we're just

1367
01:49:49,279 --> 01:49:54,680
about we're out of time. Basically, if you could just tell someone how

1368
01:49:54,720 --> 01:50:00,279
they could find you and your website
UFO passed right dot com. Yeah,

1369
01:50:00,359 --> 01:50:03,600
yeah, I have a website which
I post sometimes sporadically more when I have

1370
01:50:03,760 --> 01:50:08,960
some more time and the semester isn't
rough. But ufopass dot com. You

1371
01:50:09,079 --> 01:50:15,279
could also check out my site,
my page on the Penn State Department of

1372
01:50:15,399 --> 01:50:18,199
History, and you'll see there.
Just look me up Greggy Giggeon. And

1373
01:50:18,960 --> 01:50:27,000
I'm always interested in hearing anything historical, so if people have information or had

1374
01:50:27,079 --> 01:50:31,479
experiences, for instance, with some
of the more well known figures in the

1375
01:50:31,640 --> 01:50:35,760
history of UFO research, and particularly
those folks who are now long gone and

1376
01:50:35,840 --> 01:50:41,039
we can't speak with them anymore.
I'm always interested in hearing stories. All

1377
01:50:41,119 --> 01:50:43,720
right, we're out of time.
I'm sorry. Thanks so much. It

1378
01:50:43,800 --> 01:50:46,159
was it was a real pleasure.
I really appreciate it. Thank you,

1379
01:50:46,520 --> 01:50:50,680
I appreciate it. Okay, everyone, so thanks for thanks for tuning in,

1380
01:50:51,159 --> 01:50:55,319
and we'll be back next week.
We're going to be in studio in

1381
01:50:55,359 --> 01:50:58,680
EXE, New Hampshire, and thanks
everyone. I really appreciate it. And

1382
01:50:58,800 --> 01:51:00,600
remember to keep your eyes to the
sky.