And it hits me, Oh my gosh, this is at triangle. You
know, there's explanation for everything that occurred in the randallsham Pars incident. It
doesn't involve aliens at all. It was completely silent. It comes right over
our heads. Classics also really stunning into clearly. He turned over to my
father and held his hand, and he looked in his eyes and said,
we're not alone. Welcome to Podcast UFO for our live show. During the
show, feel free to participate live in our chat room, and don't forget
to like us on our very active Facebook page. Hello and welcome to the
show. I'm Martin Willisher, host. I'm really excited about tonight show.
We have a professor of history Penn State, professor Greggigean hopefully I pronounced that
close, and he is has been doing some excellent work. We're going to
be talking about that basically, on the history of UFOs and you know,
the whole phenomena in general. And let's see what else next week. Mac
maloney and I'll be in studio of mc maloney. Once again, some people
didn't really care that much for it because it was kind of a four or
five people and we're all kind of chatting and having I was having a lot
of fun, but I guarantee you we are going to talk about the UFO
topic. So that's next week. We'll be in studio and Exeter, New
Hampshire with Mac maloney and team. And also he's going to give away I
think he said seven. His publisher is giving way seven books. So we're
going to have callins and people can win a free book. That way,
just in time for Christmas, and let's see. I want to thank everyone
that helps out with the show. I really do appreciate that. We absolutely
could not do it without you. The show is expensive and you help by
supporting the show for two dollars or more a month. All that informations on
podcast UFO dot com and we are live on KGr A Radio and you can
all we'll see it over on our website and it's also on our guests website
tonight as well. I saw that and on YouTube and podcast UFO dot com.
Then on Thursdays we're over at the Dark Matter Digital Network Thursday nights.
I think it's up seven pm Eastern Standard time, but I'm not really sure
about that. It's changed a little bit over there. So anyway, all
good. We are ready to roll and Alejandro, welcome to the show.
Hello, Hello, thank you so much. I'm excited for your show.
This is going to be a good one. Your guests, and I got
to say hi for a second there, Greg, but I didn't get to
say more about how I really am excited that you're doing this interview. It's
great to have you here. Yeah. Yeah, I was telling him earlier
that you and I actually his name came up during one of the news things
that we were discussing, and that's kind of where this led. So it's
it's really really going to be fascinating to hear his side. And you two
actually met when I got snowed out of Phoenix. He made it out there
from Pennsylvania, and you're two met briefly at one of your I think it
was twenty sixteen or something like that. I know it's a missed opportunity on
my part, mostly because I get so swamped and crazy. And it's funny
because you know, I'll get to meet some really cool people and they'll introduce
themselves and I'll make a mental note, which doesn't work very well because my
mental notes don't don't last very long, and they just kind of disappear into
the ether by the time my head hits the pillow and I'm up and running
the next day. So the amount of information that I learned and forget at
those conferences is is pretty large. Soon is the one that slipped through my
mental fingers. Yeah, someone said to me one time, a short pencil
is better than a long memory. That is a great saying. I love
that saying. Yeah, yeah so, but I'm also guilty of the same.
And you know, you meet a lot of people, and it's always
fun out there and Phoenix getting to meet all those great people, yeah,
and hanging out with them. We're getting old, buddy, getting hold you
go at all this white hair. I know by the day it's switer.
So what's going on in the UFO world. I have a few exciting UFO
stories for you, so I'll try to get through these as quickly as possible.
The first couple aren't as exciting. People I think get kind of bored
of us to bunking UFO signings. But that's not why I talk about these
sightings. The reasons why I talk about them is because they're in the news.
You'll probably see them and before you're you know, you're at the water
cooler talking to your buddies about it. You hopefully will then get my information
be able to say or even better, you know, one of your buddies
and those you're into UFOs and they come walking up and they say, hey,
I saw a UFO on the news. And if you're like, well,
actually, you'll seem really smart. So it's about education, right,
Yeah. I don't think we talked about this one before, but in Texas
there's been a little bit of a do made about this picture. So this
lady went outside to take a picture of the sunset and actually she got a
little bit of video two and you see what looks like a almost like a
glowing saucer there. But it actually, given my experience and I actually did
talk to Mark D'Antonio, I think we even mentioned this maybe last week.
No, that was something else actually, but it looks like a part of
a contrail and or just a cloud. Of course, a contrail left by
an airplane essentially is creating a cloud, and especially at sunset, you know,
that's what makes sunset so beautiful. They light up the clouds because of
the angle of the sun and different. And so this piece of what appears
to be either part of a contrail or just a cloud sitting there is getting
light lit up very brightly, so it looks fantastic. And even in the
short clip it doesn't move at all, and which would also indicate a clouds.
So contrails, clouds or there's those are things to watch out for when
you're looking at this sort of thing. The next stories are yeah, no,
no, you can already move on from that up It just reminds me
a few weeks ago, I was driving along and again it was like late
in the afternoon and there was there was patches of clouds, and one look
so tempting for me to take a picture. I just wanted to see what
it would look like, but of course I was driving, but I wanted
to see if it would look like a UFO, because it definitely looked like
something like that. Up in the sky there was a bunch of little short
clouds and with the sun hitting them, I was thinking the same thing,
and I saw that image you're talking about, and yeah, it does look
like a disc at first, but that's you're probably nailed it. That's probably
what it is. Yeah, and you know, We see this a lot
because a lot of times the reporters are the people taking the accounts, are
not necessarily pros at looking at all this stuff, like like they don't look
at it on a regular basis like we do, so they're not able to
identify it. They think it looks pretty neat, and they know that if
they put it out there, people are also going to get really excited about
it, And sure enough, that's what's happened here, that a lot of
people have gotten excited about this lady who caught a UFO during the sunset.
But just so you're aware, and of course it's always good for us to
speak to these because these are the questions we get, Hey, what about
that thing in Texas? What about this here or there? More Tom DeLong
news, And this actually doesn't have to do with to the Stars, his
organization that's investigating UFOs. This has to do with his own personal research.
So some of you may know that Tom DeLong has been doing his own research
for a long time and he's developed, you know, kind of his ideas
into a few different scripts and stories out there. Some of them are graphic
novels, and in particular, he has a graphic novel is essentially a name
for a comic book. Another more sophisticated name for a comic book. He's
got one called Strange Times, and he says it was even inspired by his
website Strange Times, which of course was done years ago. And you may
not know this, but he would post Open Mind stat TV stories there often
with our permission, because you know, we loved working with him way back
then when that's when we developed our relationship. But he developed this graphic comic
which is kind of about the skateboard kids who find all of this weird stuff
about UFOs and everything, and TBS has picked it up, so it's going
to be a television series. There was a rumor out there that it was
going to be a cartoon, kind of an adult cartoon, but I think
that might have been an assumption because this is based off a graphic novel.
Other stories out there make it look like it it'll be live action, so
actual actors and everything out there. So I'm not quite sure if it's going
to live action or not, but definitely a series is going to be made
based off of Tom de Belong Strange Times, which is kind of his idea,
you know, this piece set of youth for his idea of what's going
on with UFOs and everything. So this ought to be interesting and obviously he's
extremely excited about it. So that's pretty interesting. Huh. Yeah, that's
really a turn of careers, isn't it, think about right? I know,
but that's what he's wanted, you know. And the good thing about
this is at least it's an outlet for him to get out his ideas,
because some of you may notice he has not really been He was very vocal,
especially early last year or yeah, essentially early last year we're still in
twenty eighteen. But then once this New York Times article came out, and
once he started this to the Star's Academy to do serious research, he's really
taken a backseat, at least when it comes to vocalizing or sharing his opinions
on this topic. Instead, he's been kind of allowing his researchers and work.
We've heard more from Louise Alzando than anybody really in the last year because
they're doing very careful work. So he's making sure he's not tainting the waters
there. So I'm sure he appreciates finally having this outlet for his idea is
about the topic. You know, you don't you know, there's a lot
of people that kind of bash you know, Tom DeLong. But one thing
I got to tell you, you don't see him trying to grab any of
the glory that the December sixteenth article you know, had in the New York
Times, really, you know, I mean there's those mentioning of course lou
Alesando's you know, featured in that, but there's not really a lot going
on when it's in fact, it was his efforts that actually, you know,
made these things come forward. Really exactly, it was his efforts completely.
That's why I've you know, most of my articles I've been from that
angle is here's this organization, but you know, it's this rock star who
made this all happen. And it really was his efforts. If he wouldn't
have had this platform, this to the Stars Academy than Alesando, for Alesando
to join and then have this outlet to be able to share, we might
still not know about this secret Pentagon, you know UFO project that is ongoing,
and I mean there aren't there's new information to be discovered about this project
on a regular basis, and I could share with you. Even recently I
talked with George Knapp and he is, you know, still looking into this
and he's prepared to release more information too. So this is the you know,
the fruit that keeps on giving, and we're going to get more and
more information as time goes on. So stay tuned because it's very exciting times
with all of this. And this is kind of exciting too because I think
this next story I'm going to get to kind of has allowed to happen because
of these new revelations that Tom DeLong helped inspire. And that is you've probably
seen in the news a lot about this nat A scientist who's saying we need
to look into aliens. This all started with a Fox News story and actually
he's come out to say, well, Fox News didn't get it right,
and they didn't actually interview him before they release the story, but they did
watch a lecture in a paper that he did for SETTI, the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, where he was arguing essentially that aliens could have visited here,
we don't know, and that we need to take UFO stories seriously and
do some serious research to figure out if that's the case. They he feels
that the Fox story that came out kind of gave the impression that he believes
definitively that you know, aliens have been here and it's something we need to
prove, and that's why people need to pay attention. He's correcting to say
that, No, what I'm saying is it's entirely possible. And because of
that reason, that's why we need to take this information seriously, because there
could be discoveries made by information and evidence and physical evidence that we have right
here on the planet, which I think makes complete sense. And it's one
of the frustrating things that when it comes to SETTI. Of course, you
have debated Shostack that leads scientists for SETI on your show, but they you
know, Shostak does an excellent job. And I do a lecture astronomers and
UFOs, and it's funny I do. I start with talking about how great
Shostak is, but him being a bonehead is what inspired me to do this
lecture because of a couple of things he says, as astronomers a f uf
us, we're here. Astronomers would see him, and it's kind of a
silly thing because astronomers have seen UFOs, So that's the nature of that lecture.
But he argues so strongly and so convincingly that the universe must be,
you know, teeming with life, yet they can't get here. And that's
frustrating. Part is that if there are if the likelihood of extraterrestrial civilizations,
intelligent ones, is so high and the odds are so high that they're out
there, then it would lend to it would seem intuitively obvious that the possibility
that we've been visited in the past, or even potentially being visited now,
it is a possibility. Perhaps we don't have strong evidence to say that that
is certainly happening, but it's you know, their argument lends to and sets
the base a very strong one for the argument that it's a possibility. And
that's what this scientist is out there trying to say. Because it's possible,
we need to take the possibility seriously, and we need to investigate any potential
evidence showing that this has occurred or is occurring. You know, the guests
I have I'm going to talk to him about Setti because I've heard him talk
about that subject, and one of the things he says is, you know,
they basically have as much evidence as we do to get their funding,
you know, which is a great point. And over the years, you
know, they have not had much in the way of fruits for their efforts.
So I think that they would admit that that we don't have any evidence
over all of these years. Same could be said of UFO research, although
some people have argued that in the UFO research arena there's been more that has
been gained. And I think if you look at the Pentagon program and the
evidence that Louis Alesando has put forth, which is only a fraction of the
information that they gathered because as he says, he hasn't been given the liberty
to share any more information. You know, there's definitely a strong case to
be made that at least there are mysterious occurrences that have happened that could potentially
kind of like the other scientists Columbano is his name, by the way,
proposed at there there's enough there to look at, um to begin to explore.
Yeah, absolutely, And then you know there's supposedly thousands of trace cases,
you know, where there was some type of yeah, I mean evidence,
I don't personally, there's there's potential trace cases. But the French this
is kind of uh these Japan the French UFO organization that is under their space
program, that those are their most important cases. It's they're handful of cases
where they do feel that there have been physical trace evidence. And they do
have cases where they feel, you know, plants for example, have been
affected by electromagnetic effects that proved to them that there have been at least some
physical contact of some sort. And when that sort of evidence piles up,
it's something to look at, right, Alajandro, thank you so much,
my pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right, and I'll talk to
you next week. Actually, I won't talk to next week. Next week
I'll be in studios, so sorry, it's not going to be next week,
so I know it's gonna be after Christmas. All right. On YouTube
you can see the sad face, all right, Helejunter, you take care.
I'll talk to you soon. All right. You do have a great
show, all right, thank you. So our guest tonight I'm real excited,
is Professor Greggigeon. He's a professor of history at Penn State University,
where he specializes in history of science and medicine. He's written and taught extensively
about the topics as the history of disability, the history of crime and prisons,
and the history of madness. And I actually saw some of his lectures
online on that very interesting. Most recently, he's embarked on writing the history
of UFO and alien contact phenomenon with an eye toward understanding its rise and development
worldwide. He's received funding for his research from the American Philosophical Society, the
American Historical Association, NASA, and the Smithsonian Institute. Wow, welcome to
the show. Great, great, Thanks, I'm glad to be here.
Yeah, excellent. So I have to I guess I'm gonna have to ask
right off the batum, why UFOs? How did you get how did you
fall out? Professor of history? How did they fall into UFOs? Or
how did they fall into you? Yea, they felt well, you know,
there's there's the there's the sort of more long range sort of answer,
and the short range answer. The the the kind of long range answer is
that I, like so many people, particularly of my generation, as you
can tell, I've got my share of gray hair, I grew up,
I grew up and was utterly, utterly fascinated with UFOs, and aliens and
the literature, and so I as a as as a kid, I couldn't
get enough of this stuff, and so I would read everything I could read
about. I would watch any TV specials. I remember really vividly that series
back and I guess that was the seventies Right in Search of with und Right,
and Um. I would read about this stuff. Was utterly fascinated with
it. But I also got really interested too, and in reading like the
Debunkers too, you know. I was fascinated with hearing from Philip Class.
I was loved Carl Sagan. I still remember vividly going to my father taking
me to see a Carl Sagan lecture he was visiting. I grew up in
upstate New York and he was visiting, and that was just utterly so I
was fascinated with it, and it was for me it was um, you
know, I think about it in retrospect, I tell people in many many
ways. UM, my interest in the study and the reading about UFOs and
UFO literature, I think was the beginning of my becoming a professor of history.
I mean, I really it was my introduction to thinking about big questions,
investigating things, uncovering lifting up rocks and uncovering stories, trying to be
critical but trying to be open, all these kinds of things. In a
sense, I realized I kind of was learning by my experience doing that,
and so that's where I first became interested in it. But I have to
say then I kind of moved on to other things, and as you can
tell, I started to study and research other kinds of fields, but I've
always been interested in the history of science and medicine. And then what happened
was a few years ago I was on a panel at a conference on a
completely different subject with a colleague of mine, and she was working on a
book project that was going to involve a bunch of people writing about the occult
and the occult particularly in and after Nazi Germany in Germany, and it was
some fascinating stuff. And I said to her offhand, I said, you
know, I always wondered, did did that whole UFO thing like ever take
place in Germany? You know? Was that ever a big thing there?
She's like, I have no idea, but if you ever wanted to write
on it, we would love to publish whatever you're writing. I'm like,
well, I don't have time for that, well, it kind of stuck
in my crawl. I just had this thing and I kept it's an itch
I had to scratch. And so I started doing some research on my own
with a database that I had at the university library and started looking into the
early kinds of experiences of people reporting UFOs in Germany in the forties and fifties.
And I found all this stuff and I was fascinated with I ended up
writing something up about it. Didn't actually ever get published in that book,
because in the end it was not related enough, but I followed that and
then you know, as I was ready to take on a new project,
a friend of mine said, hey, why don't you do this, Why
don't you jump into there, because you find this stuff fascinating. I'm like,
yeah, I don't know. There must be so much that's been written
on it. And that's when I kind of discovered that, guess what,
academic historians, you know, people of my tribe have shown almost no interest
in the subject whatsoever. I mean, we have David David Jacob's book in
what nineteen seventy five, Michael swords it is a PhD in history, and
he's written on stuff though I don't know that he's ever really, Mike,
I don't think he's ever written a whole book on the history of the funnel.
So that was it, and I thought that's really strange, and so
I thought, yeah, this sounds like something that's worthy. It's interesting to
me, and it's a chance to go back and look over things that really
had a real big impact on me and during many formative years in my life.
And now I can go back and look over this stuff. I've got
this sort of the eye and the ears of historian to sort of be my
guide as I go through all this. Why would you think that there is
such a trepidation and actually someone with your background, you know, just shying
away from from the topic as is it the old ridicule factor? Yeah right,
I mean I think that that is there, and that has been there.
Okay, there's no question about it that that people historians are an interesting
group of people. Where an interesting group of people, but there is a
level in which they have sometimes played things pretty you know, hold their cards
close to the vest and don't sort of venture out into some topics and areas.
It can take some time for those things to take place, but that's
said, that's said. The funny thing to me is that, you know,
we his stories are kind of unique in that going into this. If
you look since say the late nineteen sixties and other kind of academic groups,
the UFO phenomenon has been studied by everything from you know, meteorologists, anthropologists,
scholars of religious studies, folkloreist, psychologists say, a whole bunch of
people. So we are kind of odd in that we've kind of steered clear
of this thing, and it's a bit of it still is kind of a
bit of a mystery to me, because there's no trace of anybody ever sort
of publicly coming out and saying, hey, nobody should study this stuff or
nobody should look into this stuff. It's more of a kind of thing that's
gone around unstated, and and that's why, in a sense, the question
has to be, why have you know, historians of all people been so
nervous about going into something when you know, we've long since gone into all
sorts of topics that seem to be controversial or maybe make people nervous when they
sort of discuss it. So to me, it's always been a little odd
in that regard. There are people now who are doing it more, and
now it's a topic where actually there's a whole group of young people in PhD
programs in both here the US and in Canada who are starting to take this
up as a historical project. But it's taken this long. It's taken this
Okay, we'll jump back to that. We're actually at break time right now,
so all right, everyone, So we're going to take a little break
here, and my guests tonight is Professor Gregg, and we'll be right back
all right. Yeah, we'll pick that back up after the break because I
think that's fascinating. I do want to talk about that. So have you
during the break. I don't really see any questions up there right now,
but have you had a ridicule from colleagues at all about about this interest?
You know, I cannot say I've ever gotten anything along those lines. I've
never gotten that I've there are times I feel like I get maybe I've raised
eyebrow from somebody. More often than not, the most I've received, I
think are I can think of some instances where I think I had some people
who I think thought this always rather frivolous. You know, why aren't you
studying the things that really matter, right, you should be studying you know,
kings and queens and wars and politics and things like that. And I
always tell people I've done a lot of that, and it's not to say
that this stuff doesn't actually, you know, have consequences and is meaningful.
And part of what I argue with those people is that, in fact,
no, in fact, the story of the flying saucer phenomenon and claims of
alien contact and all of that that takes place after World War Two has been
a very momentous event in human history, and it's had real impacts on all
sorts of things, ranging from politics to the ways in which we think about
scientific expertise. So for me, I would make the sort of counterargument to
those people that I know, I think this stuff is is equally interesting and
important is that stuff. But on the whole, the reactions and responses I
have gotten from most of my colleagues is excitement. They all find it pretty
cool. Well, and actually, if if we could figure out what those
things are, who's driving the craft, so to speak, I think that
would be one of the biggest answers, you know, very very very important
answer. You know, of course, I don't expect to actually know about
that anytime soon. You know. Along those lines, I heard someone from
the nineteen I think it was late forties or early fifties. It was a
black and white film, and he was an older gentleman, and he was
saying, I just hope I get to know in my lifetime, you know
what the UFO, if it's aliens or not or something. He said something
like that, Yeah, no, it's true, it's true. I mean
recently I was doing some stuff writing and maybe we'll get a chance to talk
about it. But you know, this is we are at the fiftieth anniversary
of the issuing of the final report of the Condon Committee back in nineteen sixty
nine, sixty eight, sixty nine, and I was writing, I was
writing something up about all that, and was looking at those very early weeks
and months as the Condon Committee started its work in nineteen sixty six, and
if you look at the coverage, what people were saying is that kind of
thing. It's there was huge expectations, real excitement about my god, we're
finally going to have the answers. We're finally going to have people look into
this, and and so that to me was fascinating. It was to see
that that people from all sort of walks of life saw that as a great
opportunity which actually was played down. There was one professor and that was at
the Colorado University, Colorado or something like that. Right, yeah, all
right, welcome back. My guest tonight is Professor Greg. I'm gonna say
it wrong, Gigoryan. Can you say your name? Plaiggig Giggeon Giggeon,
got it? Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Don't worry about it.
Yeah, yeah, that seeing the name spelled out scares me, okay,
Greg, Professor Greg m So, right before we went to break, you
were talking about there are some actually younger people looking into the top again,
Um, did you say that they're they're the PhD's No one. I know
that there's been some thesis I've talked to, uh stand Freeman told me there
was a few few students that have run their thesis and something to do with
UFOs. Is this what's going on? Do you think? Yeah? I
mean what I what I see is a lot of I'll tell you what a
lot of the younger people who are working on this topic are really interested in
is a lot of them I know are working on looking at how the government
and militaries responded to this stuff. Particularly, they're looking in the nineteen fifties
and sixties. A lot of their researches, they're interested in this. They're
interested in trying to figure out how this stuff um uh sort of set in
motion, uh investigative bodies and agencies UFO desks as they're called in a place
like the UK, right, how they respond, how they the extent to
which they took this stuff seriously or didn't take it seriously, and then also
how they tried to uh play this all out visa via the media, right
and all that kind of stuff. So that's kind of what they're working a
lot of them, I know, are working on. Wow, that's that's
interesting. And you know, it's funny when you go to like you you're
out at Phoenix, you went to the conference out there, and you don't
see a lot of young people actually attending. You know, maybe it's something
they look more or less online. And that's as far as it gets.
I'm not sure, but they're like gathering at I mean, there are a
few. I'm not saying I'm not saying there aren't any, but there's just
a few compared to you know, a lot of people with the same type
of hair. You and I have great hairy No I think. I think
you're right. What you're saying is confirmed by other people elsewhere. You know,
I do because because this project involves looking at at at sort of development
outside the United States, I talk to a lot of connections with a lot
of UFO researchers in Europe, for instance, and I hear this from people
in Sweden. I hear this from people in Italy, I hear this from
researchers in Great Britain, that they all are having that experience that, as
one guy said to me in Sweden, it is really hard to get young
people involved like we once did. They all go to the Internet. They
all sort of that tends to be the place that attracts them. And while
that that means they may still be very interested in this stuff, but on
the other hand, what it means is they don't tend to be part of
organizations. They don't tend to be a part of that community in the same
way that things used to be. Right And so I hear this from a
lot of the veterans right who sort of lament that kind of change happening.
Yeah, the only thing I've talked to a lot of people because I'm also
in the fine art and antiques, I'm an appraiser, and and I've talked
to a lot of people saying that young people are just not interested. They're
not going to any events like, um, you know, the the shows,
the antique shows and things like that. But um, but what I
have seen a great surgeon is comic cons. There's tons of young people at
comic cons, you know, and that's somehow it's the pop culture hook you
know that gets gets them inviroved. And I can't remember who it was.
It may have even been Alejandro that actually went to a comic con and set
up a booth about niphos and was successful. So yeah, yeah, I
would I would think that would do it. And and and I think probably
the gaming community too, right because again exactly a huge, huge, Yeah.
So those those are two areas where I could see connections and sort of
these. Yeah. Yeah, one of the what do you think of some
other reasons why this subject is neglected when it comes to you know, academics.
Yeah, well, I mean I think, um, I think there
I think one of the things is um the sense that there is how shall
I put it, no sort of sense or guidance you get from the main
stream of academic communities who would naturally gravitate towards this topic. That is to
say, people like astronomers, people like astrophysicists, chemists, whatever it might
be. No major organization, no sort of large number of people in the
field who have sort of stood up and said this demands all sorts of investigation,
um uh through and investigations that are going to involve federal funding or funding
from sort of the typical kind of sources you get, who then are going
to after they get this funding, then present their research and peer reviewed journals,
in other words, follow the basic principles of academic research that all of
us end up doing who were in this line of work. Right, nobody
really has done that and is doing that. The Condon Committee that was formed
in the nineteen sixties, right, and that issued its final report fifty years
ago, you know, was actually tasked with assessing that very question. I
mean, if you look at the original sort of task for that committee,
Condon himself says, we were tasked not to decide whether this was of importance
national security importance, he said, because the military has already said that's not
important. He said. What we were tasked to do is to decide whether
the government should think about investing money and investigating this stuff. And the conclusion
we came to was no. And in a sense that became sort of the
moment in which it was kind of a definitive answer on the question, at
least viewed from the perspective of many. And so that meant, therefore,
all the kinds of research that gets done gets done the way it gets done
now, which is right, privately gets done by you know, folks who
are associated with to the stars, right, or it gets done by just
a lot of average you know, folks who are just interested on their own,
who do all the legwork on their own, right right. I think
that's it's it. Yeah, pardon me. Brian in the chat room has
written this question here. Considering the strong evidence for government disinformation and cover up
is witness testimony the only historical access point to the UFO topic. How does
that affect your research? Yeah, that's a good question. Uh so,
you do have the witness testimony, but there's actually quite a lot. I
mean, one of the one of the things I had not expected when I
got into this was to realize not just how much material is out there and
available. Anybody who goes and investigates UFOs right knows that there's a lot of
stuff, especially in the age of the Internet. But what one of the
things I found was that ufologists, people who had dating back to the very
earliest ones back in the nineteen fifties, are amazing archivists. They all,
almost all of them, kept all these files and records of their research.
And naturally they were doing it right because they were trying to connect dots,
right, they were trying to see what if there's a pattern to these things,
and so most all of them would keep these not only large amounts of
information that they were tracking right, either they were getting it through their local
organization if they were involved in an organization and people they were interviewing, or
they would keep newspaper clips or or anything along these lines. But they would
also keep them very well organized. And so one of the things we have
is a large number of personal papers of UFO researchers, many of whom now
are long gone, right, who aren't around anymore. Um, you know,
Gordon Creighton, for instance, in the UK right who was one of
the big big right. Their papers aren't available in archives, so you can
now go into that material and see the kind of correspondence that these people had
with people who are writing them saying, hey, this is something I've seen
or here's some photographs I've taken. So, um, we do have the
kinds of things of material that Brian's talking about, you know, from from
say Project blue Book or whatever, right from these sort of military archives or
the UK Defense Ministry. That material is there, but we also now have
all these other materials, um, and they just keep growing. We have
more and more of it. Some of the stuff is even online. Um,
so you can go back and look at files from uh, you know,
the organization appro or files from people who worked for nyecap right in ways
that I wasn't really possible, um, I think twenty years ago, because
a lot of people who've been involved now are retiring or have passed away.
In the sense for a lot of those folks is we want to leave that
information for history right for people to go and look at. So that's that's
a lot of what we get to to look at and utilize for sort of
getting a better understanding of sort of the history of the UFO phenomenon. I'm
going to be my upcoming guests up soon as Dave Marler and hey, up,
he has a research library and uh and Albuquerque and that's right outside of
Albuquerque and it's open for anyone to do research at we're gonna be talking about
that and um and he's yeah, given my regards, I've met, We've
met, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So. And also you mentioned
Sweden, the class fun in Sweden, they have a wonderful library there.
And I saw on your website that you went to Italy. Pretty jealous so
that you get to go over there and see their library there. You want
to talk a little bit about that. It was in Turin or how do
you say where it was? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was in
Turin, and Eduardo Russo invited me. I had a chance to chat with
him and several other of the kind of the veterans involved in UFO read I
mean, my god, a lot of them have been active since the nineteen
seventies working but your christ quite right. The turin Um Research Center in library
is really second I mean in this way, at least Eduardo talked about it
with me, it certainly looked that way. To me, is is second
only to the one in Sweden, in North Shopping Sweden in terms of its
size, in terms of the amount of material they have, and in both
places, what you what you see when you go to these places, First
of all, as you have these amazingly friendly, kind and generous people who
will sort of open up the place to you, give you a sense of
what's there, and then let you dig around. But what you also see
is a remarkable collection of material cerial, as I say, ranging from you
know, the personal papers of UFO researchers who want to make sure that all
this stuff that they did gets preserved. But you also have also the important
work of collecting entire periodicals, right Matt, UFO magazines, UFO newsletters of
not just national organizations but also local ones, the kind of things that frankly
tend to disappear over time. Right, that stuff is absolutely invaluable for anybody
who wants to do historical research and reconstruct the way people used to go about
doing things. That to me is really cool stuff. To Yeah, I
was to take a look at so so well documented and you know there are
you know, just in what I do. As far as appraising and things
like that, I know that so many things get tossed out, like they
say that you know, Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer for you know, twenty
five years and people have deeds up and they're attic, they have no idea,
they're signed by Abraham Lincoln, you know, a three or four thousand
dollars signature, you know type of thing. Um, So a lot of
things do get just plane tossed out. And I think of, for instance,
Paul benowits case. I don't know if you've ever heard of Paul Benowitz
in uh in New Mexico. Um, but anyway, you know, I'm
sure there's a lot of documents in that family, and um it it ended
very poorly for him. So, um, no one really wants to go
in and try to talk to the family about you know, trying to get
information. But yeah, it's great to preserve it. And again the show
I'll be doing with Dave Marler will be discussing a lot of that. So,
M as far as what do you consider some of the really interesting historical
cases that are pretty solid and you know, made an impression on you.
Yeah, So you know what I always say to folks is for me,
what what what interests me? And I get particularly sort of excited about the
geeky historian here is uh, you know, I get it. I get
excited by by certain figures or certain kinds of moments in history where I feel
like there is a sort of a meeting or a kind of an intersection of
a lot of different forces. That often means forces that are in a collision
course and and they maybe provoke a kind of a breuja right about. So
a lot of those things are the things that sort of get my attention.
I mean, I'm I'm kind of fascinated, for instance, especially with say
something like them the Betty and Barnie Hill abduction case, right, which in
many ways, right a lot of people see is sort of the first the
first case. We know it wasn't the first case, but but it's the
one that gets all the attention, particularly in the United States. And in
a sense the case itself is intriguing. But what's really kind of striking to
me about about this case that that you know, sort of comes to the
public public attention. I think only watch sixty five, nineteen sixty five,
nineteen sixty six, even though it was supposed to have taken place several years
earlier. Is that you have kind of this intriguing thing, which is that
you've got the Hills and their experience. You've got them going to Donald Kehoe
and people in Nightcap for assist stance in making sense of this, and then
they sort of conduct their own investigation. You then have this famous journalist at
the time, another kind of an unsung person in the history of UFOs is
John Fuller, who I heard you just talking about Exeter, right, and
who wrote the sated Exeter right, but then he writes the Interrupted Journey.
Who really makes that case is the key to making that case what it was
by writing it up in a book that is absolutely riveting right in a way
that probably Barney and Betty could not have done. So you needed this sort
of journalist figure to sort of do that. But then what's kind of intriguing
to me about it is that while this becomes a best selling book, while
it gets lots and lots of attention, by and large, the interesting thing
is you don't get a lot of stories of alien abduction until in the mid
to late part of the nineteen seventies. You don't get a lot of people
saying similar things. You don't get you know, the kind of dig on
this is that that well, what this does is it creates a model for
copycats and people who are going to mimic it. Right, but you don't
have that that doesn't really happen. It takes about ten years for you to
start to see the emergence of things that you know, Travis Walton, right,
the Travis Walton story that then takes place, for instance, and it's
it shares some elements of this stuff, but it's not the same kind of
a story. So I find to me what's kind of interesting is both the
way in which that that that story about the scenario of alien abduction that comes
with the Hills takes shape. But I'm also kind of intrigued by this sort
of lag, this sort of almost ten year period in which there's not anything
else that sort of gets people's attention on the same scale for another ten years
or so. Why how is that that that happens? What is it about
that case or how it was written up, or or how people sort of
moved on to other topics that meant that this case really doesn't take the sort
of assume the stature it does until really the nineteen seventies and eighties, and
that's when the Hills case really becomes kind of the cause celeb right in terms
of alien abduction stories. Right, their movie came out. I can't remember
exactly what year it was, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so it
takes it really doesn't sort of take on that kind of stature. Um.
And you know, you could say the same thing about Roswell, right.
Roswell wasn't a big story for many decades, right until Stan Friedman sort of
made it into one and sort of and rediscovered the story. Right, So
that that kind of that's a kind of an intriguing sort of lesson in the
way in which things can emerge, then disappear, and then re emerge again
as sort of getting on people's radar. Right. I asked Stan last time
I spoke with him if he thought that the Roswell story would have come out
if he did not have that situation where, you know, where he stumbled
into the whole thing. You know, it was actually he was waiting at
a radio station and the topic just came up to talk to um. You
know, Uh, that's kind of how that whole thing happened, and I
think he said that he thinks it would have come out just you know,
just eventually and probably would have you know, but who knows. Yeah,
And so what do you think of that? Do you think that that whole
thing has been blown way out of proportion? Or what do you think about
Roswell in general? Yeah, I mean I think I think the Roswell case
is again, so I look at things again. I look at things pretty
differently. You know. One of the things I always tell people, whether
I'm talking to you know, professor sort of physics and astrophysics, or talking
to somebody who's had a UFO experience, or talking to somebody like Stan Freed,
I tell everybody the same thing, which is that my approach to this
stuff is I just stand. I'm I'm an outsider in a sense. Okay.
I do not go about picking sides trying to decide is this real or
is or is this something to debunk or is this something to promote and say
people need to take more, take this more seriously. My approaches is really,
for lack of a better more journalistic, if you will, right,
And so, what I'm kind of interested in when I look at a case
like Roswell is the kind of pr about it, right, and particularly at
the moment the pr about it. It's it is a case in which clearly
secrets were being kept about about an event that took place in an area where
the military was active. Right now, that is not an unusual thing to
happen, right, This is what the military doesn't. It particularly does those
things in the wake of World War Two. I think what we often forget
is the kind of secrecy and the resistance to talking about anything related to military
technology, military investigations and all that we associate with. The Cold War was
a phenomenon that precedes the Cold War. It was something that was a big
part of World War Two, and so when things start to bleed into the
Cold War in those mid nineteen forties, there's just a carryover that takes place.
It's kind of the default setting of the military is always deny everything,
right, It's just deny everything. And so in a sense, I've often
looked at that and said, that kind of response to me doesn't read as
conspiracy. To me, it reads as, you know, this is just
what we do. We don't like to share information about the things that go
on, you know, on our basis or in our encampments, right,
And so to me, when when it comes to these concerns that people have
about why why don't we get more information? Can't we get more information?
What I see and what I read is a kind of a situation in which
the authorities in question clearly had reasons because they were playing around with all sorts
of new technologies that they didn't want the Soviet Union to have any awareness of.
They are going to concoct things, they are going to change their stories
if it means it creates a little more cloudies up the picture in some way.
And so I think that adds a lot of fuel to the fire.
At adds a lot of fuel to the fire, definitely. And after the
war, you know, the everyone did take the government very seriously and um,
you know the oath very seriously and um, you know, so there
was a lot of that. So we are ready to go into break and
UM, we'll see if we have some questions coming up. So all right,
so everyone hang in there. We'll be right back right after these messages.
So let's see. I'm looking to see if we had any other,
um, any other questions. So have you heard of John Greenwald. Someone
mentioned him in the chat room. Um, he has released a lot of
Freedom of Information Act documents. You know, I'm going to say hundreds of
thousands of documents. He's really you know you talk about he's he's on the
younger side, and so he's doing this all digital. Yeah, So there's
a lot of information because of him and so uh and a lot on historical
cases. So I will tell you that after after we go back, we're
going to open the phone minds too, so if anyone wants to call in,
we'll be taking calls a little bit later on. So let's see.
I do have a question, um, some histories from Do you ever look
into any of the histories from M pertaining to the Bible and Aliens? That's
a question in chat Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, you know,
because I think what's intriguing is they're right aft very soon, very very
soon after them the whole appearance of the first flying saucers at the Kennel Kenneth
Arnold sighting in forty seven. Within the span of just a few years,
you do get people who start to say that that UFOs are of direct relevance
to religion and to the Bible, right, and you get that who counts
one are theologians actually, it's actually real, honest to God theologians in both
Protestant and Catholic churches who are asking questions and say that if these are aliens,
this raises all sorts of theological questions, Right, are these people saved?
Who are they? Are they? Are they? Are they the equivalent
of fallen angels? Or are they perhaps you know, beings who have there,
who are actually living in paradise and who are now visiting us. I
mean, there's actual, in the nine early nineteen fifties, real serious discussions
about this among theologians. But then what you also get are people and there's
a very famous Russian figure by the name of Agrest who does the research on
this, who basically starts to say, I think we need to look at
documents like the Bible and like archaeological evidence and look for any indications that these
might be alien in nature and origins. Right, So that kind of line
of questioning, that kind of thing opens up actually already in the early nineteen
fifties, I think, is when Aggress starts to do this stuff a way
before Eric von Danighen and people like that he's doing this decades beforehand, and
so it does lead to people to start too. And if you look at
a lot of UFO periodicals in the fifties, there's already a lot of people
who are very, very interested in drawing those connections and seeing are there ways
to see evidence in the Bible that might reflect back on what's happening to us
today and vice versa. Might UFOs be a give us a way to revisit
some of those passages in the Bible. So there's a story to be told
about those connections and the way that gets sort of minted in the early fifties
and sixties. I see, Yeah, well we're coming back in about twenty
second. But someone did have a question about your thoughts on ancient aliens.
But I don't think we're going to have time to cover that in this break.
We will carry that into the show itself, right, That sounds good,
So we will again. We'll be taking calls right after we go back
live, and sometimes people call and sometimes they don't. We'll see what happens.
All right, welcome back. My guest is Professor Gregg. How do
you like that? I like that? Yeah, So we're having a good
time we're talking about the history of UFOs, and earlier on we UH with
Alejandro, I was talking about SETI. I heard your take on Setti,
and I wanted to discuss that a little bit, what you thought in general,
And I think I believe I heard you say you think there's some type
of parallel between uphology and SETTI, and so I'd like for you to discuss
that if you would. Yeah, I think there is. I mean,
so you know, SETTI born in the basically right around the turn of the
nineteen sixties, so right around right fifty nine sixty sixty one, that group
that forms UM that becomes this you know Frank Drake and Carl Sagan among others
who are involved in that UM. If you look at at at SETI in
the way SETI plays out, it's it's really intriguing, particularly when you think
about it historically for a couple of reasons. One is UM similar to UFO
UFO. You fall churchers who have this idea that maybe what we do is
we can try to detect signals that are being sent sent to us or it
might possibly be being sent in our direction. UM. They they're walking a
tightrope because a lot of people in their community are thinking this is kind of
crazy. This doesn't seem to be normal kind of science to us, So
they're kind of having to walk this kind of tight rope um. And and
that's something similar to what you see in uphology is is this question is you
know, sometimes, hey, is this line of investigation really warranted? Is
this may be a bit on the margins that kind of thing. But what
you also get to my mind is the interesting thing about SETI is that that
that for all of the work that's been done and all of the thinking about
it, SETI basically has been as a scientific venture, been not terribly well
funded relative to other kind of big scientific projects, similar ufology, which has
always been under under financed and underfunded um and that it has basically not,
of course, had any real positives to show for it, right, It
hasn't had any major findings. And in fact, this has if you look
at the history of SETI when it's it's basically went before the government to try
to get funding, this has been one of the hurdles it has historically faced
is why would we finance you when we don't get results? And I think
that what the argument I think I keep I kept seeing when you look at
it is well, but what happens when we do if we find something,
it'll be well worth it. But yes, this is a bit of a
needle in a haystack haystack kind of a project, and so we get that.
Yeah, so in a way, you know, ufology and SETTI they
have they share a very similar fate to one another. Um and they do
sort of a play at a game in which a lot of what they have
to do is to, in fact, try to make a case to UM
funders, to people who have some money, and also to make their case
to the public directly right, that's where they really have to make their case.
They keep saying, well, this close, were this close. We
have a caller on the line. Call her your first name and where you're
calling from. Hey guys, it's Christopher from Phoenix, Arizona. Hi Christopher,
welcome to the show. You have a question for our guests? Yeah,
yeah, thanks for taking my call. On a subject that I find
confounding often is cattle mutilation. And I don't I know a lot of people
talk about UFOs. People who aren't really interested in UFOs will sort of think
about or talk about et and that kind of stuff in a vague way.
But I almost hear no one outside of the hardcore sort of paranormal or ufology
even knowing about this cattle mutilation thing, which is so weird it's almost hard
to think about. It's hard to talk about it so macabre, but you
know, it just seems like something very odd is happening. And I'm just
curious what your guest, if it, had anything to say about that or
any thoughts on that. Gay Yeah, yeah, wow, that's neat.
Yeah. I mean what's interesting about that is is the stories of um of
cattle, of cattle mutilation or actual a lot of you also get stories of
cattle abductions, right, actually precede the whole sort of flying saucer phenomenon that
emerges in the nineteen forties. Um, you have in in you know,
there's a very very famous incident that a lot of people have written about and
talked about of a big airship scare in the late eighteen nineties, right,
Um, And what we know is some of the stories that were told about
these strange airships that supposedly were appearing all across the United States is that there
were several cases in which supposedly witnesses saw um their cattle or at least one
cow being sort of taken up by like ropes or something by this airship,
um um and um. And that that that that becomes sort of part of
that kind of lore that surrounds that particular scare. But you what we also
know from from people who study folklore, particularly of peasant communities, rural communities,
is that this this this kind of idea that that cattle are being attacked,
mutilated, kidnapped, stolen, and things like this by uh, not
just your average rustlers, right, but by something mysterious or by perhaps an
animal or a beast of some kind is something that goes back very very early
in history. Um. And I've heard folklore's talk about it, saying that
what it has a lot to do with is that these are stories that are
supposed to be kind of warnings to people who of course live in live typically
particularly the small peasant farmer. Dating say, if you think about the Middle
Ages or something, are living basically like hand to mouth, and so the
idea that cattle could be destroyed or harmed or killed, old or mutilated in
some way becomes part of a story about how precarious, how insecure life life
on these farms were, particularly back in those days, right. And so
what I find kind of interesting about it, therefore, is that the stories
about cattles being endangered, right, and that possibly being endangered by things that
are not entirely human, are in fact stories that date back hundreds and hundreds
of years. Actually, Wow, interesting, Yeah, I don't I don't
know that. Yeah, it's really interesting. Thanks, because you want to
think of Oh that's fine, yep, thanks thanks for calling no, no,
go ahead continue, you were starting to say something, go ahead.
Oh, I was just gonna make a last note here. But we often
think of key and we want to project onto them that they must be highly
sophisticated, of course, from traveling and that sort of thing. So then
when you think, why would they care about a cow or a dog?
Don't they already know everything there is to know about cattles and dogs or whatever
cattle might have been taken. So it really sort of it does drive a
wedge intellectualate for me. What I try to think about, why would I,
this sophisticated being want to why would they keep searching through that? But
I guess we have to imagine that there's a lot of different species that we're
being visited by. They have different interests and so on. So but yeah,
fascinating stuff. Thanks for taking my call. Appreciate it all right,
thank you for the call. Yeah, thanks, thank you. So one
of the things that I was thinking about, you've written about the history of
the mutual mistrust between you followed just scientists and government agencies. Can you tell
where you think this mistrust comes from? Yeah, I mean it's there,
right, We know it's there. We know it played out in sometimes rather
serious ways, right, because we know historically from a very early phase in
in you know, already in nineteen forty nine and nineteen fifty, right,
someone like Donald Kehoe, who ends up, of course being most well known
for not just his books, but for being the director of Nightcap, the
big, the big national organization in the fifties and sixties. Already back then
he's he's saying that there's there's a lot of mistrust on the part of government
officials and military officials the people like himself. And we also know that the
government actually did spy on UFO researchers and organizations in the nineteen fifties and nineteen
sixties. So there's been a lot of mutual mistrust all around in these issues,
and I think a lot of it has to do with, in a
sense, I think a misunderstanding of the motivations of a lot of the people
involved. I think that on the part of you know, scientists who are
in the academic realm, I think they have his historically viewed the subject not
just simply as kind of frivolous and maybe even downright for many of them,
silly, but I think they viewed the people who did UFO research and who
are interested in this subject as people who are anti science, people who are
attacking science and have no patience for it, and one to basically embrace what
they people like the debunker in the fifties Donald Mensal called superstition. And I
think the reality is when you look at the history of UFO research and the
people who have been mostly interested in this subject for the most part, these
are excuse me, these are people who actually are really really interested in science,
who are deeply I think quite well informed about science. They're not anti
science at all. A very few people I've met are anti science who are
interested. I think it's just the opposite and by the same measure, I
think a lot of UFO enthusiasts and people who are UFO researchers have tended to
view the kind of skepticism of scientists and people you know in my kind of
line of work as people who um dismiss these kinds of claims that people make
because they just they view witnesses and they view claimants as as as dumb or
stupid or or or hoaxers or things. And I think that actually is quite
wrong. I think that in fact, a lot of a lot of people,
particularly by the nineteen sixties and seventies, who are in the academic field
who look at this kind of stuff actually believe that most people are being actually
quite sincere, and that witnesses are oftentimes seeing something, that people are having
experiences that are bewildering or outright scary. Um. But that what they do
is they believe there might be all sorts of other explanations that can help inform
that right. Um. So, I think in a sense, the mutual
mistrust comes from the fact that that, for lack of a better term,
what often happens is people are talking past one another um that that it's actually
an inability to communicate effectively that is, in large large part results in this
kind of distrust that everybody has for the other side, if you want to
put it that way. Yeah, yeah, interesting. So as far as
as far as the someone had put a question up just before we came back
from the break and what your thoughts were on like ancient times, you know,
so to speak, ancient aliens. But um, you know, I
mean I I have thoughts on that myself. I just think we're just as
far as a human you know, existence is just a small sliver of time,
you know, for instance. So yeah, so, um, we
haven't really talked much about the actual alien topic itself, but um, so
do you want to just discuss what your thoughts about like if we're being visited,
were we being visited in ancient times as well? Yeah? Well,
you know, I a former colleague of mine actually did some research on this,
a guy by the name of Garrett Fagan, who unfortunately passed away a
few years ago. But uh in ancient Roman historian it had done some stuff
on this, and and you know, his argument and about this was that,
um, when you look at this stuff, is that it doesn't add
up. Is that his argument, and a lot of his collaborators in this
project that he worked on, um uh say that by and large a lot
of the kinds of arguments to be made about this involved incorrect uses of evidence,
um, ignoring other kinds of evidence that's out there, so that it
becomes at best the kind of a speculative kind of argument about things. Um.
I'm not an archaeologist, so I'm never going to complain to know about
how archaeology sort of can sort of inform us about this stuff. I think,
to me, what what is intriguing is the the the notion of invoking
aliens to understand um, certain artifacts, right, the creation of the pyramids,
for instance, or or other kinds of things that that we consider remarkable
or Unusualuel, right, that that date back to ancient times. Um.
It is part, part, part of an argument that is high kind of
a working assumption in it, and that working assumption is always, of course,
that the aliens would come and visit us have to be remarkably advanced,
right, the only way they could ever get here and to do the kinds
of things that we still find impossible to do as human beans. Right,
we still are trying to figure out, can we really get to march right?
To make that work? Well, these beings would have to be so
advanced that they would then of course be responsible for in fact, these great
innovations in human history. And I think what some people would argue is what
that means is therefore it seems to be an undervaluing of human beings. Aren't
we a little more widely? Aren't we a little craftier than that? Some
people would all argue, can't we? Don't we show the ability to in
fact these things innovate, develop advanced technologies in ways without the assistance of these
beings from another planet, And so you kind of get this interesting argument.
I think that's sort of underneath all this. It's really about this question about
what are human beings really capable of? Right? How how good are we
at at at seeing ourselves technologically and scientific any given period of time. That's
kind of what I find kind of entreating in those discussions, right wow.
Yeah, Um, you know, as far as the uh, the topic
of one thing we haven't we haven't really discussed much of, and that is
you know, and I'm always the first to say that um a UFO doesn't
necessarily mean that it's alien, you know. I mean we I'm talking about
the you know, UFOs that are unexplainable. UM. No one as far
as I know, really knows for sure, but you seem to have enough
of an open mind to think that it's a possibility as far as us being
visited. UM. Alejandrotioned earlier on that I had. I had a debate
a long time ago with Seth Shustak from SETI, and basically the thought is,
you know, the thinking and human terms, they can't get here from
there, you know. UM. And I remember asking him something, well,
maybe they figured something out in physics that we have not even touched upon
yet or something like that, and he actually said, well, it's possible,
but unlikely. And so what are your thoughts of you know, the
thing always comes up as the distance thing, What are your thoughts about that
if we actually are being visited by a distant intelligence? Yeah, I mean,
you know, it's interesting that you talk about what Sech Shustak told you,
that that refrain is a refrain. I've seen also in kind of uh,
in the archival materials that I've looked at surrounding the crowd who worked on
SETI, sort of that original crowd and the people were working in the seventies
and eighties on it. M I a year ago, for instance, I
was looking through Carl Sagan's papers in Washington, DC and some of his personal
letters and things like that, and one of the things that I saw in
there that struck me as as kind of reflected my own sort of take on
things was some correspondency was having with one of the involved in study. So
this is not them talking in public, and they were both saying to one
another basically, Um, look, I don't see any kind of reason at
this stage with the evidence we have that allows me to sort of say in
any any with any kind of certainty that this is happening or that this has
happened. But if one day it happens, it will it won't surprise me.
If we find the evidence, or if one day it happens, it
wouldn't surprise me. And that's kind of the attitude that they had about it,
right. Um. I think we sometimes remember people like Carl Sagan and
as the great debunker. I don't know if that's your impression, but you
know, he was kind of a little more open minded about these things that
he's often given credit, I don't know, what do you? What do
you? What's your take? Well things, and that there is a paper
that he wrote in the sixties where he actually was saying, there's a probability.
I don't know if you've ever stumbled across that. I don't know that
one now. Yeah. But also there is a there is a story.
Now. I don't know how you know solid this story is, but a
he was on stage with I don't want to say with Stan Freedman, but
someone that was around for a long time, and they had a quiet conversation
supposedly, and he basically said, well, I think a lot more about
it than I ever talk about it. In other words, that he said,
and I'll you'll never catch me talking about it, you know. So
he's afraid it was a career killer obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, Well, you know, I've I've looked at some of this material,
particularly in the sixties when he was just really fresh. He was a
greenhorn at that stage of his career in the late sixties, and I've seen
his interactions with some of the older colleagues who were physicists and astronomers, and
a lot of them were very upset with the way in which he was willing
to engage in discussions with UFO researchers. And I still remember one letter he
had an exchange with one Harvard astronomer who basically said, I'm paraphrasing now,
Carl, stopped doing this. It's going to kill your career. You're you're
never going to get a good, serious job if you keep doing this,
you're looking ridiculous. And his response was, I believe in dialogue. I
believe in conversation. And it's one of the things I really respect about Sagan
was he was always interested in the idea that we don't shut down conversation,
we open up conversation. I think that kind of reflects my own sort of
ethos. Yeah, if I had some time, I could jump on the
computer and try to find that article. I think I posted a link to
it on my website at one time. But it was surprising UM. And
yeah, and it's too bad that it is actually a career killer for UM,
for you know a lot of people. And one of the questions I
had a scientist on one time and I said why, I asked, some
point blank, why do you think it is so hard on someone's career and
no one can get funding for it. And he said kind of like what
you addressed about Set. He said, people want results and if there can't
be an endgame where there's a result, um, they're not gonna They're not
gonna, you know, put up some money for it. Which is surprising
that Set he actually, you know, keeps getting funded private funding, actually
you know, for for most of it. Right now, yeah, right
right now, I mean, and it is something along the now. Again,
what's kind of intriguing is you look at my research and you have to
say, well, this is interesting. I've had I've had a lot of
the more senior UFO researchers out there say to me. I had one.
I had one who will remain nameless, who said to me, Greg,
does the Smithsonian know exactly what your research is about? Oh yeah? And
I said, I said yeah, oh yeah. I said yeah, I've
got massive funding for this stuff. I mean, and I think the reason
why is because I don't think this stuff any longer has the same kind of
stigma it had attached to it back in Again, I think the seventies and
eighties when it was I think a lot of this stuff was viewed as you
know, the enemy, as I say, as a kind of the enemy
of good science. But I think the other part of it is I am
a historian. I do approach this stuff historically. I'm not in the business
of, as I say, telling people what to think about whether things are
have alien origins or sources to them are not. I'm not in the business
also of spending my time debunking claims. My job and my role is something
different, right In a sense, it's it's far more modest than any of
those things are that I'm just trying to capture and recover how it is that
people have gone about understanding and making sense of this over time. As I
tell people, I research the researchers. That's kind of what I do.
I'm interested in that kind of that kind of question, and so I think
in that sense it's seen as quite legitimate to ask questions about what, as
I have argued in my research, is really one of the one of the
most impressive global movements of the late twentieth century, and the one that's been
basically neglected by so many people in my field. Right, That to me
is kind of intriguing, And I think that's what I think is the reason
why now, a lot of these institutions don't see this as problematic as as
as a problematic field to sort of get into and to look at. I
did have in my notes I did want to ask you, how did you
go about getting funding from the Smithsonian and NASA. Yeah, well, I
started going into these you know, once I got into this project and I
started to make the determination that I wanted to pursue this as a book,
I knew I was going to need funding to do this. This this is
a huge problem. How else do am I going to get overseas to Sweden
and work with those fabulous people over at the Archives for the Unexplained and to
Italy and places like that. It was going to take a lot of time.
It was going to take a lot of effort for me to get and
to do the traveling I needed to do. So I knew I was going
to need funding, and then it was for me a question of now where
do I go for um um um those those kinds of funds. Who who
were the likely places to do that? And for that It's going to be
the kind of institutions that fund history of science, the kind of stuff that
I've done over the years, But so the first place I actually turned to
was to go look at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, who really offered
me my first grant possibilities because there I wanted to work with their collections,
and there's where they have Edward Condon's papers, they have Phil Closs, the
great debunker phil Classes papers, Donald Menzel and other of the great sort of
debunkers of the nineteen fifties and sixties. And from there that off afforded me
the possibility to say to then other funders, well, look, I'm very
serious about this stuff. I've got I've started to publish the results of my
research, but to really finish this I need other possibilities. And so that's
when I got involved and applied for some funds through the American Historical Association and
this NASA grant, And then I had the great opportunity to be to serve
as the Charles A. Limbergh Chair in Aerospace History over at the National Air
and Space Museum last fall at the Smithsonian, and so there because I had
gotten to know some of the great aerospace historians that are there. I mean,
is there another place in the world that have so many of these fabulous
people who do aerospace history. So because I've made those connections and showed people
the way in which I want to approach this subject and think about it,
all along the way, I've had nothing but people encourage me, give me
support, open up there, you know, their time to me and give
me, you know, let me sit there and not just talk their ears
off, but also get advice from them about how to go about doing some
of the things I'm doing. It's just been absolutely remarkable. So I have
felt like from my standpoint, doors have opened. I get open doors from
people, and people share their time and their their their wisdom with me all
along the way. And that's from all sides. Frankly, from everybody I've
encountered. I've rarely had a door shut in my face. Do you think
it, um, that you have a pretty good advantage because of your um
your status as a professor of history too. Yeah, yeah, I think
that's absolutely the case. Um. I have told people, uh that I
don't know that I would have undertaken this project, say, I don't know
twenty twenty five years ago in my career, um Um, I think I
might have been nervous about would people take me seriously, would they wonder about
what I'm up to or something like that. But I I in the you
know, in the in that period of time, I've taken on so many
other projects that that that have taking me in completely other different avenues, as
you well know. And the thing is about at two things. One is
that is that in doing so, I've picked up all sorts of skills,
right and research skills, and an ability to look at an archive in a
way that I didn't have twenty five years ago. So part of it is
I I where people know that I know how to go about and do rigorous
empirical research right historical research. But the other part of it is having earned
a reputation from my colleagues and from people who work in the history of science
and medicine who know me and know the kind of of ways I go about
doing things and how I do it in a really serious, sober fashion.
I think it's in that sense one's reputation not just having the name professor of
his, you know, as part of your title, but having that background,
that experience, having proven myself you know, over many years, that
I think is what really matters to people. And uh that that that.
So in that sense that has both served me well both in terms of opening
doors but also in terms of helping me take advantage when people open the door,
I know what to do once those doors have been opened. Right.
Well, being in the digital age, you know you talked about earlier,
how you know there's the paper trail basically of of UFO researchers. Now it's
everything's digital. Do you think that's going to change the landscape as far as
research in the future. Yeah, I think so. Oh, I think
no question about it. That the accessibility to so many records, to so
many things means that just about anybody can take this stuff on and wrap their
heads around it pretty quickly. Now out. It also means, however,
that what the digital age is also done is as were we all are,
I think painfully aware, right, is that it's created a kind of a
flood of information and data Like where do you begin? I'm sure you've experienced
this whenever you wanted to go in maybe and look at something and said to
yourself, oh my god, like where where do I begin? And also
where and when do I stop? Because it's so much. Yeah, there's
the truth, and where's where's the untruth and um, yeah, and when
it comes to places like YouTube, you know, what percentage of the you
know videos can you actually consider that are something? Yeah? And it is
a big problem because I think there there there is reason to be to question,
um, you know this is this to me is also very much a
part of my professional and even personal but but certainly my professional code or ethos,
right, is you always have to be skeptical about your sources of information.
It doesn't mean you inherently don't believe it, but what you have to
always be asking yourself is where does this come from? Who designed it?
For what purposes? Why is it there? How did it get there?
Right? Those are the questions I would do this if I was studying a
completely other kind of subject matter. These are the things that you have to
do as anybody doing serious historical research is always always be questioning the material and
triangulating right, constantly seeing do I get confirmation of this information from other places
that will allow me to say with relative certainty, ah, this document is
trustworthy or this document has some problems. Right. That kind of stuff is
necessary, And you're right, the Internet doesn't always make that easier. It
actually oftentimes makes it more complex, more difficult to do, right because there's
so much of this information and a lot of times it can be kind of
mutually contradictory. Right, Yeah, I muddied the water, so to speak.
Um yeah, yeah. Um So as far as h as far as
the history of do you consider that, um, pop culture place apart in
you know, people paying attention to I mean, I saw the great article
you had written, the blog on comic book covers. Um, So do
you think that played a part and what people thought they were seeing or any
part of that? Yeah, I mean I think, I think, I
think we have to say that pop cululture and the media has always had a
pronounced influence on what's going on and what people are seeing, what people are
talking about, and these kinds of things. Um Uh. It goes back
to, to some extent what we were talking about out earlier year that if
you look at the history of ufology, that by and large the way in
which m UFO researchers have tried to get their message across us and reach people,
how to get people to take it from seriously has been publicizing the stuff
and getting people's public attention. But we also know when you do the research,
you find out that that dating back already to the nineteen fifties, what
most UFO researchers did back in the fifties, sixties, and seventies into the
nineteen eighties to get their information that they would then utilize to analyze material,
right and to analyze data, was to in fact, tracks news stories,
to track newspapers. They all had news clipping files. So so it's directly
having an impact that in that way on UFO researchers. But we certainly know
that certain images, right, certain kinds of ideas that we have in our
minds about aliens, for instance, comes to and is derived from these sort
of popular images we have out there. So if you were to ask people
to describe what they thought aliens and what people reported aliens looked like, say,
in the nineteen fifties, when the contact these were telling stories, they
were very very different kinds of descriptions than the things you're going to get when
you ask people in nineteen nineties what they look like. And a lot of
that has to do with the ways in which popular culture sort of portrayed aliens,
whether that was in movies or whether that was in the popular press or
the tabloid press, and that has an impact, and so I think you
can track that as part of the way in which the general public as a
whole sort of think about try to understand these kinds of things. Now,
as far as historically the identification of what people are seeing, I want to
talk a little bit about that because there are cases that do go way back
about triangles. Again, Dave Marler is a person who, um, who's
going to be talking about that coming up soon, um in a show.
But um, so triangles were very rare, but they there were a few
sightings and then there was the the disc, the cigar shape, all that.
Um, I think it's it's pretty amazing. Now it seems like there's
more triangle sightings than than anything else. And you know, how could you
know again talking about um, you know, these aren't new models that are
coming out obviously, you know, or something like that. Um, did
you ever look into any aspects of the shapes of what people are seeing?
Yeah? Yeah, I have. Actually, I mean so one of the
one of the things that's kind of intriguing is there too, you see in
kind of the stories that circulate, right, And that's where that's what a
lot of the stuff I focus on because when we go to earlier periods,
we often don't even have direct witness testimony. We have stories that circulate in
the media. But if you take a look at, for instance, some
of the earliest in the nineteenth century, some of the earliest stories about strange
as they would call them back in the day, strange airships right, that
people have witnessed, it's really interesting how this stuff tends to track and follow
whatever the technologies of the time were, so excuse me. So, for
instance, one of the earliest earliest cases that was brought to my attention by
a colleague of mine was a story from the eighteen thirties that took place in
I want to say, oh Io or Indiana, among a group of Mormons
who had had had seen who claimed that they had seen or maybe it was
later. In any event, what they claimed to have seen was a strange
airship with all sorts of family members dead family members on it. But the
way this airship was described was it looked like a steamboat, right, because
the steam engine was the thing that people saw in those days, and that
was what you witnessed. So airships are described as looking like steamboats, right,
in running around on the skies. Fast forward many decades later, you
got around the turn of the century, around right before World War One,
when there are several kinds of scares that go on, particularly in Britain.
What do people say that they see. They say they see Zeppelin's and they
describe dirigible like kinds of things that are going around and so the same thing.
That's kind of interesting when you talk about the ghost rockets scare in Sweden
in nineteen forty six. Right, it's not just rockets of that are seen,
as you probably know, other things are also seen, but but rockets
is the rockets and missiles are the things that are most described landing in the
lakes in the lakes. Yeah, it's fascinating stuff, but again not a
surprise given that a number of very very well publicized famous incidents during War two
in which V one and V two rockets fell on Sweden. Looks like his
skype went out and hang on everyone, let me try to get him back
on the show. The phone line is open if someone would like to call
in, and I'm going to try him on his phone. It's who can't
get through that way? Hello? There you are so well, we'll go
the rest of the show on the phone here, I'm not sure what to
what happened to stype. So we were talking about airships and things like that,
basically yeah, yeah, yeah, so so those so those shapes,
yeah so it So it is intriguing to me to to to see how these
um, these these shapes uh can very often link up and connect with you
know, the technologies at the time, right, the things that are getting
the most attention. Um, they often sort of had that kind of role
that they played. Um when you look at it sort of the long history
of it. UM. I think also, um, I do I do
understand that, and that is that is really bizarre, and that that kind
of makes you wonder that if part of what people are seeing is imagination,
you know, I mean, what where else could you go with something like
that? Yeah, I mean I think it's certainly that's going to be the
argument of of of people who are really skeptical about claims and witnesses who claim
to have seen you know, uh, ghost rockets or or or flying saucers
or things like that. Um. But you know the counter argument that you
read in the ufone literature, going back again from the early times of it
was that. Well, but maybe this isn't so surprising because people will describe
things and talk about things in the terms that are available to them at any
given point in time, right, Um, So you in fact are going
to to see things that that look that way. Right. So, uh,
you know, you have apparitions in the sky, you know, when
when when there's a um something like an eclipse for instance, or there's a
meteor shower, or there's some sort of atmospheric phenomenon, say in the Middle
Ages, people will describe seeing, um, you know, a blazing cross
in the sky. Um, And people will say that, you know,
maybe the explanation for that is is not that necessarily somebody people actually saw across,
but rather what they're describing is a phenomenon that is um needs that seems
odd, seems strange and anomalous. They need to make sense of it,
and so the best thing that they come up with to describe it is across.
Right. Um. It's the same way right with Kenneth Arnold, I
don't everything I've ever seen, he says, he never really described them as
flying saucers. Put per se, he saw them in a very different kind
of shape. But you could tell that he's he's having trouble describing what he's
seeing, right, Um, and so you seek you try to find things
to latch onto that will help make sense of it. I think that that
that that is where the you know, history meets up with experience in a
way that's often something that somebody themselves who's reporting the stuff is unaware of,
right right, right, yeah, yeah, Um, I know they were
sort of they sort of had like wings or something, if I remember,
right, or they sort of unusually unusual shape and h bat like or something.
Yeah. Yeah, that describes it pretty well. So um, and
that that is it is very interesting. A lot of people have tried to
speculate, you know, why all of a sudden all these sightings were happening
at the time, and um, you know stand Freedman, who I brought
up in a few times on the show so far. You know, his
speculation of that is at the um, you know, the explosion of the
nuclear weapons and uh you know, going back to World War two and nineteen
forty five and you know the tests before that, and uh yeah, what
does he say, The kids found the found the matches, you know,
and he thinks because there is it is strange how all of a sudden,
you know, starting in nineteen forty seven was a barrage of sightings and right
one right after the other, and then um, you know, in nineteen
fifty two was another major year where there was so many sightings and ye,
so what do you think about that? Why there were so many sightings up
right starting in forty seven? What have you thought about that? Yeah?
No, I mean I would agree, I mean the thing, the thing
to some extent with what Sam Friedman is saying. So what what you again,
when you look at sort of the evidence of like the material, what
people were talking about and people were trying to make sense of and to think
about this, it's really really kind of intriguing me. And you see this
going on not just in the United States. I've written about this kind of
as I talked about I think earlier about this experience in places like Germany,
and I've seen some stuff about England as well. What's going on when you
look in nineteen forty six with the Ghost Rocket scare and then forty seven,
in those first few years is a really interesting thing, is that people are
truly truly mystified as to what's going on and I don't just mean the general
public. You can see intelligence agencies are mystified as to what's going on.
Everybody's sort of looking at one another saying, what is this? What's going
on? And so you see for a while, for several years, kind
of all sorts of theories are being put out there to explain it, with
some people saying, you know what, this has got to be the Soviets.
It's got to be the Soviets. They got to be experimenting with weapons
they captured from the Nazis, and then other people saying, no, no,
no, it's not the Soviets, they're not doing it. It's got
to be the Americans. It's got to be the Americans playing with some of
their new toys that they have and that they don't want to admit it.
And then you see if other people say no, no, no, no,
this is just people in a panic, right, there's they're all.
During World War Two, there were all sorts of bump you know, air
raid panics that went on, right even while people were in fact being bombed,
you could still have moments where just a rumor would strike panic in a
city. Right about the potential for that, So that what this is is
nothing more than a kind of mass hysteria. And everybody's seen missiles and flying
saucers when nothing's there, So all sorts of things are floating around. But
what's interesting is that when you finally get the argument made by Donald Keyhoe,
I mean, he's kind of the key figure in nineteen forty nine, nineteen
fifty about this. Keyhoe is the one who really makes this argument. He
says, the evidence shows that those people in government who believe that these are
aliens, excuse me, are in fact convinced that what's set this in motion,
and the reason they're visiting us now with such frequency is because of these
nuclear explosions, right as as as Friedman says, right, it's that it's
that they've they've seen that we have atomic technology now, and particularly atomic weapons
now, so that they are now sort of conducting a kind of reconnaissance trying
to get a better sense about who we are and what we're capable of and
whether contact is possible. This becomes another theory that's thrown around, So so
you really do kind of have a whole bunch of people all sort of coming
up with theories. They oftentimes mutually contradict one another, but all of the
theories keep coming back to the same theme about war, about particularly the Cold
War, and particularly about the potential for sort of nuclear holocaust, and that
that that's sort of the constant theme that you see running through it. So
a lot of I think a lot of the big sightings oftentimes come around the
time when there are particular sort of changes in the Cold War, right,
particular moments of a lot of heat, if you will, right. And
I'm sure you've looked into also m vie the connection between nuclear weapons and UH
and you know, the disarming of them and all these different things during sightings,
which is another fascinating aspect of it. Yeah, I think one of
the you I asked before about about pop culture, and you know, one
of the other things I've wondered about. I don't know what your thoughts are
about this. I mean, there's you know, a very common argument is
that you know, when when movies like um uh, Close Encounters, Close
Encounters and et came out, you had this sort of big uptick of sightings.
But I've read elsewhere from other sources that say that didn't happen, But
in fact, it didn't spark any great, that's right, big uptick,
and is that's the cases that you're that's uh. I think I think you're
right because that was put out there, but it was it was really just
bunk. I mean, there was nothing to back it up as far as
you know. The settings are like move on does record the amount of sightings
and all that has for many years and there was no real spike in that.
Now there may have been there. There are such cases when like Hanger
one came out all of a sudden the sightings were really high, but a
lot of the sightings reported were for historical sightings in other words, not ephemeral
to the times people would say, well, you know they're watching this on
TV. I never heard a move on Now I'm gonna talk about my sighting
T years ago and so there. Yeah, yeah, the reports came in
like that. So yeah, it does have an effect on um at least
people you know, paying more attention. So yeah, I think so,
I mean we know that we know that about the X files, right,
the X files had had a definite, definite impression on people. And I
think the other thing is we know with the X files, I think what
the X files did that a lot of movies weren't able to do because it
was it was on for so long, it could follow different kinds of plot.
It really introduced people to a lot of those kinds of theories that existed
back in those days, right back in the back in the nineties, that
a lot of people were not aware of, right, who had never been
exposed to. Um, uh, you know these kinds of uh, these
sort of very very dark, right, the dark sort of dark theories that
that I don't think got much exposure until really the X Files brought those to
the front, to front and center, right and to people's attention, right
right. Um, So, I'm we're gonna leave the number up there for
just a minute. We only have Wow, we only have four minutes left
of the show or so. Yeah, so we will take one quick call
if someone like to call in. Otherwise otherwise we're not gonna take any calls,
um for the rest of the show, the rest of the four whopping
minutes. So, um, what about did I we started to talk?
I believe we started to talk about are you doing a documentary? Yeah?
So I've been working on this with a with a friend and a colleague of
mine. He's a documentary filmmaker here at Penn State by the name of Richie
Sherman. Um, And uh, yeah, a few years ago and I
was talking with him about this project and He's like, you know, I'm
fascinated with this stuff, and I've always been very interested in it, do
you you know? Um? And as we sort of hung out and talk
more about it, we sort of started to explore this idea, well,
what if we sort of take this this kind of topic and theme and think
about doing a documentary on it, and so um that's what we did.
And in fact, our first our first sort of filming we did was at
that congress in twenty sixteen in Phoenix, and we just showed up. I
think the only time. The only person I had talked to in advance was
probably Ryan Ryan Sprague and and there were a few other people, and that's
but we just showed up. And, as I said, another example where
people just open up and are so generous with their time. You know,
I showed up. I just started introducing myself to folks. Um asked Alejandro
if it was okay if we did some filming. He said absolutely, and
then just sort of, uh, you know, started talking to people like
Stan Freedman and and Kathleen Marden and people like that, UM and Ryan and
and interviewed folks and just and so our approach to this is it's kind of
open ended. We to be will be really honest with people. We are
still very much in these sort of U what is this all add up to
the phase of things? Um? Uh? You know, I've been mostly
interested in and talking to people, um about their their lives in in in
and UFOs and and particularly people you know like stand Freedman, who who've got
a lot of experience, have a have a long track record of involving themselves
in this stuff. So kind of asking about how they got involved in these
things, what led them to it, how have things changed over the course
of their lives? Um, what are they thinking now? What do they
think the future looks like? These kinds of questions the sort of get a
sense of So in a sense, it's it's got it's what I guess we'd
call oral history. UM. But uh, you know, my my friend
Richie the filmmaker, I leave all that stuff up to him. He's the
expert on that. Um Uh. He keeps saying, I want more action,
we need more action. He wants he wants to see people running around
and doing more things. Thanks historian of me, Like, yeah, he
wants to see something I got, I said, Rich, we can go,
we can go on a field investigation. But all all of the people
I talked to who do field investigations will tell you, right, ninety nine
percent of them are pretty you know, undramatic, Right, that's true.
They don't tend to involve a lot of you know, damn it, let's
get in the car and get over there, right now, pronte right,
Yeah, it's unfortunately there's not a lot of great X file moments, right,
that's more kind of pain taking research. Yeah. Yeah, we're just
about we're out of time. Basically, if you could just tell someone how
they could find you and your website UFO passed right dot com. Yeah,
yeah, I have a website which I post sometimes sporadically more when I have
some more time and the semester isn't rough. But ufopass dot com. You
could also check out my site, my page on the Penn State Department of
History, and you'll see there. Just look me up Greggy Giggeon. And
I'm always interested in hearing anything historical, so if people have information or had
experiences, for instance, with some of the more well known figures in the
history of UFO research, and particularly those folks who are now long gone and
we can't speak with them anymore. I'm always interested in hearing stories. All
right, we're out of time. I'm sorry. Thanks so much. It
was it was a real pleasure. I really appreciate it. Thank you,
I appreciate it. Okay, everyone, so thanks for thanks for tuning in,
and we'll be back next week. We're going to be in studio in
EXE, New Hampshire, and thanks everyone. I really appreciate it. And
remember to keep your eyes to the sky.