Hello, and welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. This is your host Alejandro
Rojas, and I am here with my good buddy Martin. Busy dude,
Willis. Yeah, yeah, a little bit busy out there, but that's
a good thing. Yep. Oh, I got to keep this brain busy,
boy. Yeah. If you don't keep your brain busy, it goes
to mush or dark places. Oh yeah, that's even worse. There's a
lot of dark places to go. So let's keep you busy. We'll keep
your brain busy. So, speaking of which, you know, I need
to I want to start mentioning this at the beginning of the show because I
don't mind, but I want people to know, you know, at the
beginning of the first segment of the show, here with me and Martin for
the first about twenty four minutes go over UFO news. So we're going to
have the latest UFO news in just a minute here, and then the actual
interview starts at about twenty four minutes. So sometimes people like to skip ahead,
so I want to let people know that. But let's get into the
new news first. But I do want to introduce who my guess is going
to be, and that is Mike Damonte cool name, I think, but
he is the guy who runs punk rock and UFO is a cool block.
He's also written a couple of books. Those books are punk Rock and UFOs,
Cryptozoology Meets Anarchy and then punk Rock and UFO's True Believers. So Mike
is a journalist by trade. That's what his degree is in. He's written
for the Houston Chronicle quite a bit. He was a staff writer for them.
He's still writing for them regarding music, so that's one of his big
beats, his music. He also has written for sports and other topics,
but music is kind of a big one. That's the punk rocks you know
thing in his title. But it's really helpful to talk to someone, you
know, who's a journalist and kind of his viewpoint as to, you know,
being someone's who's trained in mainstream journalism, what does he think of what's
going on right now? In fact, I've read some of his blogs and
that's why I'm having him on is that I think he's got some really interesting
perspective and things to say. Also, we talk about why punk rock and
UFOs, What does punk rock have to do with UFO? Some of us
might kind of you know, intuitively think, oh, I get what the
thing is. But we'll talk to Mike about that, and I think it's
an interesting perspective he has on that as well. He does share that in
his first book, which is about cryptozoology, because he likes other paranormal kind
of topics. And then his second book, True Believers, is actually more
focused on UFOs and kind of the UFO community and what the UFO community feels.
Now he has had his own siding and that's what has inspired him.
So he's definitely really into the topic and fiels there's something to it. So
great interview. I had a lot of fun talking to him, and we'll
have that interview coming up after the news. But first UFO news, mister
Martin, Well, today there's a lot of great stuff and actually, if
you go into the UFO headlines over at open mindst TV deals see some links
to some great stories in this one here, this is a blog by Cheryl
Costa. I know she's been on your show a number of times and she
writes for the Syracuse New Times. She does a blog there, and you
know it's been several years now on this topic of UFOs and this particular blog
I find very interesting because it's something that I talk about quite a bit actually,
and get asked about. And the title is Timing is Everything for UFO
Observations. Well, she writes this like she's actually telling the story here,
so I will go in some quotes here. As a UFO researcher and journalists,
folks frequently asked me about when people observe UFOs, I usually smile and
reply, that's not an easy answer, and she continues. After Linda Millercosta
and I built the UFO Sightings database, which we used to create our twenty
seventeen book. The title of that book is UFO Citing Desk Reference began to
process the process of analyzing the raw data on a relatively superficial level. In
twenty seventeen, we could tell you that the UFO siting reports were generally driven
by three principal factors. I find this interesting population, temperate weather, and
leisure time. There's something I never thought of, but that makes sense.
That does make sense. Yeah. Since twenty eighteen, we have had the
opportunity to dig deeper into the data, which now totals one hundred forty six
eight hundred sighting reports by utilizing some creative algorithms, we've been able to refine
our understanding of the UFO siting phenomena, and there are more factors population,
regional, seasonal weather, daily seasonal activity, and time of day. This
part here I find very interesting because she continues on here. Whenever I publish
a listing of the top states for UFO sightings, I get a lot of
social media responses that informed me the reason California is number one is because of
its population and depth. Examination of the data reveals that California is a unique
situation. California crosses nine lines of latitude, which makes the state a complex
model. As an experiment, I constructed a pseudo California using the East Coast
states, which by the same lines of latitude and similar land mass. California's
population in twenty eighteen was thirty nine point five to six million. By comparison,
the pseudo California represented on the East Coast was fifty two million people.
And guess what, the East Coast model has far less UFO sighting reports.
I really think a lot of that's weather myself, But she does talk about
that regional and seasonal weather. She goes into that and not to take too
much about this, you know, to take up too much time about this.
But you know, the daily seasonal activities, there are more sightings during
when people are busy outdoors, you know, doors doing things, baseball games,
you name it, things like that time of day. In the United
States, seventy two point six percent of the UFO sighting reports generally occurs in
the hours between four pm and midnight, and with a peak between nine and
ten pm. In essence, you know bedtime or the last smoke outside walking
the dog. You hear about that smokers and dog walkers. The hours between
midnight and four pm represent twenty seven percent of the typical days UFO sightings.
And we've noticed that after about five am, the daily UFOs sings volume is
relatively flat, about twelve point five percent of peak hours. Isn't that something?
This is all really interesting to me. So, you know when people
in cufos in Alaska, the peak months are in the dark winter months and
in the months with measures of light in the dark days, but in May,
June, and July UFO setting reports are at rock bottom. So the
summer months are mostly all daylight all the time, or white nights as they
sometimes call interesting stuff, isn't it? Are you there, Alejandro, Yes,
I think it is really interesting. Stuph. I think it's just really
hard to cut up the data, I mean in a useful way. So
for instance, mirroring the west coast with the East coast states, I don't
know that that's really accurate. And I don't I think what she's getting at
with these different geographic lines because I did look at that story is they're different
climates. You know, it changes, So I mean I think it would
be more accurate to look at specific climates, to segregate them, and then
look at those as opposed to kind of glombing big areas. Because I think
she has something. I mean, I looked at one of the latest or
at least one of the reports I have up where I agree with those people
who say population is a big deal, and when I just did it,
per population per state, California dropped to fifteen. Now, of course,
a state border is a pretty random line itself. I mean, it's just
kind of just chosen out of nowhere, you know, as political reasons and
stuff. So it's just kind of segregations of populations and stuff. So so
fifteen is still pretty high for California per pop you know, as far as
sightings per person. But then again, that's just a number of reports.
That's not good reports necessarily, And like you said, you know, I
think weather because it's nicer out in the Western States, which are higher at
least when I've put these together typically, although Maine is pretty high too.
Yeah, Maine. I forget where Maine is. When I did per population
and let's see this one's twenty fourteen, Maine was number nine. Hmm.
Okay, wow, yeah, that is pretty high. Yeah, we're very
very low population by the way. Yeah, I think it's something like three
hundred thousand. I don't even know for sure. And twenty fourteen is one
point three million. That's close to three hundred thousand, which is still pretty
low. I mean in that you know, any cities have over more yeah
than that som and in relation, California has you know, nearly it probably
has over about thirty nine million people, So I should say it feels like
there's about three hundred thousand people. Yeah, yeah, a lot of open
land, yeah, which is nice. Yeah. Yeah, so an interesting
story. I think it's a great service she does to tackle these numbers and
to look at them and then to also offer up some ideas about them in
her articles. So, yeah, that was a good one. Let's see
what else did we have out there? And headlines we have, but we
move on. Let me just just I'd like to add just one last thing.
Yeah, and you know, because I'm sure people have asked you,
you know, like when is a good time and all that, and it
is so random. I mean, that's the one thing that's the one reason
science stays away from you know, UFO researching is because of the random ways
really to show up. You can't reproduce it well. Like you said,
there's less sightings during the daylight hours and more at night. The problem with
the night things, of course sightings is that just things that are normal can
look abnormal at night. You know, when you see lights, you don't
know what the light configuration is. Very likely those lights are on an aircraft
and if it was daylight, you would be able to see that, recognize
that very quickly, or drone or what have you, So you could tell
people to look at night. The other problem with night is it's hard to
identify things, and it's even harder to photograph things, So it may be
best to tell people during the day. I just tell people they're seen everywhere.
It is. Does seem to go better, you know, better to
go to hot spots, but time putting in the time just looking up a
lot. Yeah, we're looking most people looking down at their smartphones. Yeah,
exactly and going on with their daily lives. So yeah, yeah,
So a couple of other stories out there. There's an opinion piece out there
in the Buffalo News. It's Don Paul. He writes what he believes about
aliens, and he goes over I think this is good. I know a
lot of people interested in this stuff will be frustrated because he takes a skeptical
look, but of course that's why I appreciate it. But essentially he's saying
that, you know, there are a lot of sightings, so we can't
just blow them all off. But you know, that doesn't mean that they're
all alien. And so he goes over, you know a lot of some
of the science and thoughts about if they're out there, or you know,
how could they be out there, how would they get here? All of
kind of the science around some of this stuff, And I think it's really
interesting. Don Paul, the guy who wrote the article, was a broadcast
meteorologist for thirty five or thirty four years Buffalo TV. You may say,
well, what does that, How does that, you know, qualify him
to speak on the science of this, But meteorologists, you know, do
a lot of science around I mean, first of all, they use the
dopplers, so they understand, you know, that sort of radar and everything.
And then they also do you know, they they learn a lot of
science around climate and weather and how it works. And so they also learn
over the years, you know, about the types of things that can't see,
kind of cosmological phenomena as well. So in that respect, I mean,
meteorologists are scientists, and so yeah, I think it's pretty interesting,
and I think what's great is just that he's talking about it. Right.
We're seeing a bit of that now. It seems. There was also a
big meteor in Georgia. Yeah, that's Tallahassee Democrat. Did you see that
one? I did, Yeah, I mean really lit up the sky.
That was something else. Yeah, that made the news right away. This
is a fun one. Phew. The Russians did a fly by of Area
fifty one and this was written by Tyler Rogaway. Have you had him on
your podcast. Yet how luckily I have Yes, I thought, so,
yeah, he's great. So he wrote a story. This is an interesting
one that the Russians just did a fly by of Area fifty one. Dunt
dunt dam. What are those Russians up to? But this is not like
some secret thing where they just secretly, you know, flew over and we
caught him or something. This is a regularly scheduled program where there are agreements
where they can fly over some of our stuff and we fly over some of
their stuff, you know, and we're aware of it. So, I
mean, that is the one you know, hid anything you don't want to
see. But this is a they threw. They flew one of their one
fifty four m aircraft. You know, they get real specific on this website,
but yeah, took pictures of area fifty one, and they've got some
pictures of Area fifty one and some more information about Area fifty one on this
article about this situation that really is something in the open what is it called
the Open Skies Treaty. Basically it was signed back in nineteen ninety two,
and I think it's kind of almost bizarre that this treaty exists, but that
you can actually fly over and take pictures. I mean, it seems like
we're always trying to hide things, and everyone's trying to hide things. But
in no way. I guess it's a good thing, you know, kind
of if it's a if it's an even playing field for everyone, I guess
that's a good thing. Yeah, you know, I'm sure we're still trying
to look at each other and observe and do you know, reconnaissance off of
these times. But yeah, I guess it is at least some openness as
far as and you know, I don't even know the whole history about it.
Maybe it's to make sure that you know, they can see what we're
doing with our you know, nuclear facilities and stuff like that, so we're
all on the same page and we have some openness. But it is I
felt like you, I felt kind of like, hey, it's nice to
have you know, this cooperative sort of program in the news as opposed to,
of course, so much fighting and you know, stress and a really
stressful time when it comes to the US and American relations. Yeah. What
I think is really interesting about this is it also states that a copy of
all data collected will be supplied to the host country, so they actually give
the host country what they've surveiled. Yep. So if you're sneaking to trying
to sneak on the Area fifty one, the Russians might see and say,
hey, you got some goofballs over here trying to sneak in Area fifty one.
What if they see a saucerne Yeah, hey we saw you got one
of those aliens that busted out of, you know, one of your containment
areas at Area fifty one. We got a picture here of him crawling around,
so you might want to know, this looks like a guy with Bob
Lazaar maybe yeah, oh spotting him down there. Yeah, so uh yeah,
so that's a good one. Uh. The also Billy Cox. So
this is what's funny about Billy Cox. You know who Billy Cox is?
Right? Yeah, he's in Florida, Yeah, Sarasotada. Harold Tribune is
is something. It was what he writes for. Again, he's another I
guess he's not full time there, so he kind of has to make a
living on the side. He used to be a little bit more prolific with
writing these stories. But he has a blog over there called The Void and
he writes about UFOs and it's funny because he's so well known, at least
amongst many of us in the UFO field, that I kind of took it
for granted and thought, you know, oh, he's got to be so
popular and everything. But it is kind of a little unknown thing. And
I could see why I always make fun of his titles because they don't have
UFO in them, and you wouldn't know what the hell he's writing about,
that's right. I noticed that. And he doesn't like get on social media
a lot. You can't like subscribe to an email, so you're notified when
his stories come up. Because his stories are great, So you got to
go search for him at least, you know, check back on his blog
once in a while. But it's well worth it, and I just this
is a big plug for watching his sight. Fortunately I got to meet him
for the first time in Alabama. Oh really yeah, Oh so he was
at the SEUs. Yep, he was, And he doesn't look like I
thought he would look like for some reason. I've even seen some pictures which
are hard to find. But that was kind of funny. But it was
great to meet him and he was there and he just posted yesterday an article
kind of overviewing his thoughts on the SCU presentation on the Nimetz case and some
more, a little bit more about you know, the SCU event. He's
got another article about the SEU event that he wrote, you know, a
week ago, but this one is newer. And yeah, going over to
the Nimits encounter, which was a great presentation that was done at the SCU
conference. And of course you've had Robert Powell on most recently, and I
think you're one of the few to have Robert Pooll recently because he was waiting
till he gets his Nimmetsy report out to do more interviews. But so your
listener's got some of the latest, but they can see some more and then
that presentation that they did will be shared publicly in a not too distant future
as well. Yeah, I can't wait till that's out. So, yeah,
I don't know, I didn't hear you say that the title to this
article is called drilling In. Yeah, exactly, But it's not clickbait,
that's for sure. Yeah, it's not clickbait and drilling in you'd be like,
what the heck is he talking about? And his titles are like that.
So, you know, I didn't get a lot of time to talk
to him. I would love to talk to him some more, but I
don't think that he really likes to draw attention to the fact that he writes
about UFOs. Yes, I've written him in the past, never got a
response to see if he'd come on my show, you know, But I
just don't think he's you know, I you know, you can take that
in a number of different ways. But maybe he just doesn't want to be,
you know, so known for it, but still was interested in writing
about it. Yeah, but I mean you met him, what do you
think. I think you're right, I think you know what. I don't
know. You know, we didn't get as we were. I was hoping
to have a lot of you know, one on one time with him because
I have so many questions and just to kind of connect some more. But
we never had that chance. Time just flew by. But that is an
interesting question, and he is somewhat humble about his his stuff. But yeah,
that would be a good question. But some of the examples of his
titles are kind of funny. Here's one abcd FGS. Is he talking about
Chief Force? No, he's talking about all of the acronyms and this you
know group, and this group and all of these different groups, especially lately
with these potential UFO groups, where do they lie with all these acronyms?
So pretty funny. Finally, I do want to talk about and of course
we do in the last couple of minutes here I mentioned this probably every April
Full Day, but it is I think the best April Fool's UFO story.
But this is a Virgin's UFO prank that happened in nineteen eighty nine. This
was over London. But it's a really good story where Richard Branson, the
founder of Virgin you know, the earner of Virgin Galactic and Virgin Airlines and
all of that Virgin records, of course, I think is where it started,
he pulled this UFO prank. And so we've got this article that I
posted today as well in the headlines that people can check out. But it
is a really funny prank that really scared the police and freaked a lot of
people out. But it's a pretty balloon. Yes it was a balloon.
Now you gave away with a it's a really some great pictures of it too.
This the bottom lights up in I guess it's a saucer with the dome
on the top and yeah, like you know, propulsion lights down below or
whatever it is. Sure enough, you know, this story gets out every
pretty much every April. First, somebody kind of talks about this story,
and the History Channel has an article out. Actually I linked to it.
It was it's called nine Outrageous Pranks in History, and one of those nines
is this one. And I've seen little bits of it here and there,
but they're usually just this little summary of a paragraph or two. So when
I put together this article a few years ago, I wanted to do something
that was more full, because you never get the full story. And I
wanted something with a lot of pictures because you never get you know, each
of these stories they'll have two paragraphs and maybe one picture. So I wanted
to compile a lot of pictures as well. And Virgin had written this great
thing about it a few years ago, so I wrote out a really full
piece with lots of great pictures from it. Do you know how I didn't
read through the article totally, but do you know how long this thing was
airborne for and what type of reactions that they had Oh, yeah, I
don't know how long. Oh I do know how long it was airborne,
but I can't remember right now. I'd have to review the story. But
yeah, people freaked out. There were some people who knew, but a
lot of people freaked out. And you'll see why he did this very early
in the morning. And when you look at the pictures, you'll kind of
see why people freaked out. I mean, it was a UFO, it
was very intentional to look like one. And then the lights, the way
it was lit up was very interesting as well. They did a great job.
This thing must have been really expensive. Yeah, but we're out of
time, buddy, we are c Yeah, all right, Well, thank
you so much Martin Willis from podcast UFO for joining us with the news.
My pleasure is always We are going to take a short break and then we
will be back with Mike Demante of Punk Rock and UFOs, So stay tuned.
I am happy to welcome for the first time to Open Mind GUFO Radio,
Mike Dimante of Punk Rock and UFOs. Hello, Mike, Hi,
thanks so much for having me. I was saying earlier, kind of before
we went on air, that you know, I'm really honored to be on
the show. You know, we share some mutual friends and Open Minds TV
launched the careers of you know a lot of people that I'm friends with in
this field that I kind of gotten to know, and you guys are one
of the first websites to really put this stuff out there. So thank you.
Yes, I am so happy to have you on and to talk to
you. This is kind of funny too, because I've been watching your work
ever since started working, because you started working closely, I know, with
Jason, and I remember Jason and Maureen who used to work for Open Minds.
For those who don't know coming, you know, talking about you when
they met you. And I've been wanting to connect ever since then and just
haven't had the chance and it's been so busy, but especially right now,
it's like I got to do it because the moment's right. And we'll get
into this but because of some of what you've been writing about lately, but
before we get into that, I do want to kind of talk about who
you are, what angle you're taking. So I really love that you're a
journalist because you know it's important and I understand that perspective in that world a
bit so that's what's exciting as well. But it also makes me understand that,
you know, as you've probably ran into, this is kind of a
difficult area to dip your toe in as a journalist. Would you agree with
that or have you found that to be true? Oh yeah, absolutely So
just to kind of give you some of my background, I mean, currently
I teach full time. I do my you know, UFO research on the
side, like many of us do. I'd previously worked at the Eastern Chronicle
and here in Euston, I did web producing and copy editing, I did
writing, I did reporting. I covered music and features and uh sports,
and you know, I used to remember, you know, I used to
kind of push for this stuff and it was always kind of met with,
you know, kind of like this criticism. And I remember Eric Berger,
this name kind of I was in the news in our field because he his
story on to the Stars going bankrupt became this huge thing. But I used
to work with him. We used to work together, and we got a
little Twitter banter about Bigfoot, so they decided to have us debate Bigfoot on
air. We did a Google hangout on cron dot com, which was Recent
Chronicles website and it was. It was actually very good, but the way
they presented it was still very goofy, Like we had a guy in the
background in an ape suit towards the end come out, which is kind of
funny, kind of lighthearted, but just in general, that's kind of the
way these stories were looked at. And one why is that? You know,
being a person in journalism, there is always this tendency and I'd love
to hear your perspective aswer why that happens to add something goofy, whether that
be a graphic or as we've all heard a gajillion times the X Files music.
Why why? Why is that? You know, it's hard to answer.
You know. In my first book I talked to I kind of had
a whole chapter about media literacy, and my whole thing was, you know,
a lot of times, you know, we see these stories on the
news and there's usually you know, if there's a sighting or reporting, usually
don't see much in terms of a follow up story. You have a story
and a lot of times you know it's given proper attention, but then it
dies from there. You don't have the you know, the follow up or
you know what's next, And even some of the more mainstream cases nowadays.
I mean, it's been months since we've heard you know, after the Pentagon.
You have story that was almost a year ago at this point. So
I can answered that question in terms of, you know, why do these
stories kind of die in the media just because a lot of times there's not
a follow up, because there's a lot of times there's not resources. I
mean, obviously you have certain journalists you have like like George and app for
example. He obviously has some pull where he works, so he can do
these things, but a lot of journalists don't. They kind of have to
go where, you know, go where the money is in terms of,
you know, what's going to get clicks and what are the big stories of
the day, And sometimes, unfortunately, the UFO siding is not considered a
big story of the day in terms of the you know, the playful nature
with the graphics and the musics. That's just probably somebody you know in that
department just not taking it seriously unfortunately. But I do think we're turning a
page in that sense where these stories are being taken more seriously nowadays. Now
when it comes to your colleagues, I'm sure you've heard some feedback because as
you you know, at least it's been my experience and rightfully so, I
mean, this is this thing you've got. You've got a degree in journalism.
Journalists are supposed to be skeptical, and so they are, and so
it's often, you know, you're met with some of the largest skepticism with
with fellow journalists. And absolutely that's how it should be. I mean,
you should question everything. That's the first one of the first thing I learned
in college is as journals, you need to question everything. But it comes
to the point, especially in our field, where everybody is questioning everything,
to the point where it's no one's gonna believe anything. Yeah, it's good
to have a skeptical eye, but it's gotten I mean, I've only been
involved in this field for you know, a few years. I mean,
I've been studying this stuff for my whole life, but I've only been i
guess visible and active, I guess ever since I started writing my books.
But I've always been interested in the subject. And I've noticed, you know,
these people who study this they're very jaded. And it's you know,
some of the comments you know, Facebook and Twitter, it's very synarchy.
It's very kind of back and forth. And I mean it's probably like that
in anything, but you know, this is a community that's supposed to be
coming together and you know, pushing. We're all pushing for the same thing,
and it's kind of hard to see that at times, right. And
it's kind of interesting because you know, for instance, luel Azondo, when
I talked with him earlier on, he was like, everybody has to work
together. You know, that's going to be cool to talk to everybody,
get everybody to work together. I think he's found that that's a much more
difficult task than he thought it might be. But you you felt similarly.
I remember seeing a lot of your posts that you know, we all have
to work together. Yeah, no, absolutely, And in like I said,
I don't work full time a journalism anymore, but I still have a
lot of colleagues and I've done some some local local press in Texas. And
I remember I have a buddy of mine, she's a producer for Fox twenty
six here. I was like, hey, get me on, you know,
because I was on there. I did their evening show once, but
I was like, hey, have me come in in the morning, like
be in the studio and they're like, yeah, no, like you know,
they're still kind of like hesitant, you know, regarding regarding that,
so like there's not necessarily I would say pushback, but it's you know,
there's still other things that take present over UFOs and thanks of that nature.
M H. I would like you know your perspective on this as well.
And I think this is something that a lot of the UFO community quote unquote
doesn't get completely, is that you know, as journalists, like for instance,
with you and I are with you for speaking with skeptics. You know,
your biggest the most convincing to an editor or to a fellow journalist are
your sources. Do you have any sources? And typically we don't have credible
sources, but with this new you know, Pentagon program being revealed and with
to the stars and their members, all of a sudden, we have a
huge ingest of credible sources, and I think everybody else is frustrated, Well,
why didn't anybody listen to us when we were saying some of the things
that they said, And they don't get it that they're just not no disrespect.
They don't have the background to be considered you know, a credible source.
Yeah, absolutely. And the kind of things I wrote about recently on
my website on a punk correctingfos dot com is that a lot of people don't
know, you know, journalism, journalists we rely heavily on these official titles,
and sometimes to a fault. But if somebody works for the government pentagon
and you quote them, that is an official source. Now whether they lie
or not, you know, that's not on the journalist. That's for the
audience to decide. And one of the things you know, I always try
to teach my students, because I teach journalism as well, is that you
a good story needs to show balance and you need to try to have quotes
from you know, different sources from each side of the argument or each side
of the story. But a lot of cases in our field, it's hard
because a lot of times you only get one source, or you know,
the sources the person who saw UFO, not the person who said, you
know, not that like I said, not the sheriff in town who lied
about it. You know, sometimes you know, those stories are hard to
track down. If a lot of times I report sightings, people will you
know call into me or an email into me or semi photos and I'll report
on their signings, but I don't have the time because I teach full time
and resources to go out to that town and try to track down a cop,
you know. So a lot of the times you kind of have to
go with what we have in terms of resources and time. M h.
And then it's also hard when you have finding the other side, especially when
it comes to doing your due diligence and finding a skeptic at least I find
that in that. You know, you want to find someone who's skeptical,
but if you go to let's say, a university professor, they're going to
just offhandedly dismiss without educating themselves often, and so that's not fair either,
which kind of puts you in a difficult situation. Yeah. Absolutely, I
think that that's a very fair It's very that's a very fair assumption of it,
because it's true because a lot of times, if you're going to go
to somebody who you automatically know is going to shoot down the story, then
it's like, what's the point. You want to try to get somebody who
alas provide some insight and go from there. Yeah, And I think you
made another really great point that just because we're writing about what an official says
does not necessarily mean we are validating what they say. Of course, we're
going to do our due diligence to reveal any deception or any issues that we
canna cover about these comments. But it just the fact that an official is
saying something is news that justifies it. Whether you like that or not,
even if you think you can say something better or more wise, you just
don't have the title, like you said that this person has. Yeah,
absolutely, that's the official source and that's what they're saying, and you quote
them as so. And I said, people make their judgments from there.
Now, when it comes to punk Rock and UFOs, you kind of the
punk rock part is a bit kind of like your mission statement. It fits
in to at least your perspective of this field. And I wanted you to
explain that. So this is always a great question when people ask. So
the book, the books are called punk Rock and UFOs, and obviously the
website and the brand is the same name. The idea behind it is,
you know, punk rock the way of thinking, not necessarily the music,
but the way of thinking. There's obviously this rebellious nature to it and why
do we choose to rebel against some beliefs and accept others? And I definitely
saw a parallel between I mean, what people believe in terms of religion and
political beliefs and you know, as opposed to what they believe in with UFOs
and other stuff. So it's like, you can believe in this one thing
and accept it, but this other thing is all of a sudden out of
the realm of possibilities. So it's kind of more about our process of belief.
And then also too, I mean, the punk rock scene really births
a lot of underdogs, you know, a lot of those bands and the
mentality and we are underdogs as well as researchers, and you know, this
whole community is kind of underdogs and everything that we're striving for. So one
of the things I try to do a lot with the website is and with
my second book, True Believers, is I try to give us a voice
too. Who are these people that are researching this? Why should we care?
And yeah, what what can we all do to better understand these questions?
M hm? With your second book also, I mean, is that
something that you feel that you find is this kind of rebellious nature, and
a lot of the researchers, uh, I think intrinsically, Yeah, because,
like I said, we're rebelling against this, these preconceived notions and these
you know, like these dismissive kind of comments. And you know you said
earlier with you know, the graphics on TV playing the X files in the
background, and you know, all those things are kind of dismissive, and
we've been rebelling against that for a really long time. You know, there's
some serious people involved in this research and with serious credentials. And this isn't
new. There's serious people. I've been setting this for a really long time.
Yeah. Yeah. Did you when in researching your book and doing your
interviews, what was some of the information that you felt? I mean,
I'm assuming that you learned and what was it that was the most impactful to
you that you learned. That's a great question. So one of the important
things I learned is you know, you never stop learning. You know,
the more people you talk to, the more perspective you get. And just
looking at my first and second book, it's like night and day. Like
my first book is very theory based and very kind of opinionating and it's kind
of all over the place. The second one is this this more concentrated idea
of you know, what do we need to do to kind of get more
people involved in this? And hey, these are the people who are trying
to get more people involved in this. And one of the big takeaway from
me was we all had this commonality where it all started with something that sparked
our our in yourself, you want your research this. You know a lot
of people I spoke to had a sighting or they had something and then next
thing you know, years later, they're either doing a podcast, writing a
book, a YouTube channel, or a radio show. So it's all started
with something. And I think there's something to be said there that you know,
it all starts with with with a spark. And that's actually did get
to kind of come back to my original question, which I didn't kind of
finish that whole path was what was yours spark? So I was interested as
a as a very young child about UFOs and Bigfoot and the Lockness Monster and
unexplained I see, my mom used to get me these books, these time
life books. Every month there'd be a new it was like these hardcover books.
They had these really really really nice photos inside them, and I was
just drawn to them at an early age because you know, I was I
was a comic book guy. I was a horror movie guy. So to
me, it was this is right in my alley. But at the same
time, though, there was like a mystery to it, and there was
a truth in there. There was something in there that was to me that
was nonfiction. So I was always interested in that and I never really stopped
being interested in that. But then I had my first sighting. I remember
driving home when I used to work downtown. I used to work at the
Chronicle. I was driving home and I saw the traditional white orb and then
next thing, you know, a couple years later, I'm writing about this
stuff. So that was my first sighting that I recall. So that sighting,
when did you say that was? I would say I can't remember the
exact year, but I was in the two thousands, so it's probably within
the past two I was nineteen in the past nineteen years. Yeah, I'm
older. I'm in my mid thirties, so that was probably in my twenties.
It's funny you call that older, but in the post ride, yeah,
I feel old for when it happened. But yeah, so you know,
and then so that kind of experience compelled you. Yeah, it's weird.
It wasn't something like instantly I was like, oh, I got to
write a book, you know, something that kind of just said and you
know, festered. And then I'd probably say maybe a year or two later
is when I or maybe a year later. I don't recall the timeline,
but I remember when I wrote my first book, it was just I would
get up every day. Actually know, at the time, I transitioned into
education, so I was a teacher, so I summers off so and I
believe that was my first summer off. So I'd had this routine where I'd
get up every morning, rite go to the gym, come home, research,
write some more research, go to bed. And I did that for
like basically three weeks straight, and next thing you know, I had a
book done. So it was it was very I was very involved in it
from the seeing that I started writing about it just kind of took over.
And then you started your blog just a couple of years ago, I think,
right, yeah, it was right trying to think when it was probably
it's two years old at this point, just because I felt like I needed
a continuation. I want to shore if you know, how if another book
was going to happen and when and people, you know, I wanted to
continue to write and research about it. And the way site is basically,
you know, it says on the thank cryptozoology and culture, and it's yes,
it's obviously the more traditional news stories. There's commentary. There's reviews on
there as well, So I wanted to be a little mix of everything.
You know, I always, I always like to kind of interview, you
know, the fellow researchers, people who are involved in this as well,
so people get to know them and what makes them tick, what makes them,
you know, what makes them research? And the way, you know,
even though it is a blog format and the name is punk rock at
UFOs dot com, I definitely approach them like I'm writing a serious news article
for print, just because I have that background, which I very much appreciate
and and I'm sure others do as well. But I guess, what is
your niche what do you do you see kind of a space for yourself in
this arena And I guess this arena meaning journalism and in ufosh and what is
that space? It's a great question. I'm not sure if it really technically
thought about that. But like for me, the journalism I do now is,
you know, I'm not attached to anyone. I'm basically you know,
I have my own website. I don't have an editor to answer to.
I don't have an organization to answer to. I do a music blog on
the side for the chronicles still, but that's just like for fun. But
I don't, you know, I don't have all those mechanisms controlling what I
want to do, so I'm able to still continue this research and do it
the way I want to do it. In terms of you know, this
UFO community, I think I'm just one of many newer people just getting involved
in. I'm always very honored and humbled when you know, people like yourself
and other other people asked me to be on their shows and say nice things
about me, because it's you know, that's the biggest takeaway. You know,
I wrote a book, and I haven't made any money off those books,
but I've had so many opportunities in doors open, and to me that
means more than you know, making three hundred dollars in royalties. You know,
and do you think you've what do you think you've learned, especially I
guess related to especially the community. I mean it can be kind of strange
and getting to know and you know, figuring out the space, uh and
especially kind of you know, done this through Aleasondo's experience in last year.
What was yours like? It's you know, it was great because it was
very welcoming from the start. It doesn't seem as competitive and cut through.
I mean, obviously there's people you know who are jetted, and I get
that, but Jason McKellen was the first person to reach out to me.
He was a you know, a road planet. He was the first one
to put me on and put me on a show, and automatically, I
mean we had so much in common and I felt like this, this isn't
just a colleague. This is all even though I've never met him. I
mean we talked on the phone, but like this is a friend now,
so you know, and then obviously talking about to Ryan Sprague and Eric Lukes
and some other people, and you know, it's it's very tight knit and
it's really cool how people are supportive of each other. And you know,
obviously you know there's other side of that too, where there's people who've been
doing this for a long time. They're jaded, they've been disappointed, they've
seen things not go certain ways, and I get that, but it's you
know, it's how you how you choose to respond to it, and a
lot of times, a lot of times it's you know, it's not even
worth engaging, you know, some of the people who have arguments, you
know, like one of the researchers, I'm not gonna name who it is,
but I blocked them on Twitter and I referenced them in my last article
because we got in this whole debate because this person believed that to the Stars
was a mechanism to sell alien T shirts, which is probably the worst take
I've heard on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll definitely get into
some of that because I agree that that's that gets pretty silly out there.
But what then, I guess when it comes to the phenomena itself, at
least to me, and especially as a journalist, you know, for you,
so to me, it seems like even though other journalists can't find stories,
and I kind of understand that because you've got to really kind of get
in there, especially with all the signal to noise so much noise. There
are a lot of really compelling stories to tell. Yeah, absolutely, and
not like not every story has to be necessarily huge or groundbreaking. Like I
love sharing people's stories. I had so at work, we had a professional
development day and I did a class on UFOs and crypt zoology, and I
had a teacher come up to me afterwards saying she's had experiences her whole life
and she was always ashamed to tell people, and she let me tell her
story on my website, and that was really cool because, like I said,
this isn't anything you know, it's going to make front page news,
but still someone's experience that they're sharing, and you know, once again it's
up to the audience's side whether they buy it or not. And there's other
stories like I picked up the story that Muffon passed on multiple times as this
older man who claimed to have a military experiment on him where he was fed
supposedly a serum from an alien spaceship, and everything about his story just sounds
like something out of a comic book or science fiction, Like it sounds crazy,
but you know, he was very eager and helpful to provide proof that
he was in the military. And his paperwork and his blood work, and
he had really nothing to gain from this. It's like, you know what,
I'll go for it, even though it kind of sounds out there,
But you know, I did three different stories on him, and here's a
sweet old man who wanted his story told. So a lot of times it's
giving these people a voice or an outlet for them to tell their story.
And you know, and I know that story. In fact, I was
familiar with it, and of course I did see you what you had written
about it. And those are kind of hard. How do you take those
where someone seemingly, you know, genuine has an extraordinary story to tell.
That's that's kind of a tough one to tackle. Yeah, absolutely, And
I don't take every story that people will just kind of throw at me,
and they're just person on Twitter who is just sending me stuff all the time,
and I just I just had to pass because it was so kind of
out there and a lot of it wasn't able to be so like a lot
of times, if someone pitches something to me and it sounds like something I've
heard before or something that could be possible, then of course you're am more
open minded to doing that. Story in this case, you know, it's
you kind of have to try to use your judgment and see this person's credible
in the sense that they're not trying to dupe you or deceive your audience.
So for for this one, I said, I spoke to the guy multiple
times, and he just sounded like a nice guy who wanted his story told.
And and he wasn't necessarily like a ufologist, like he didn't know a
lot of the uf post stuff. He's just like he saw the Roswell the
Coded show on CW. He's like, oh, yeah, Roswell, and
he was just kind of like, I have a story to tell. You
know, that just kind of you know, jogged back his memory. But
he didn't know a lot of cases like I told him about, you know,
Corso's book the day after Roswell and a few other ones. And a
week later he called me and said, hey, I read those books.
They were great. I had no idea. So it's you know, it's
kind of part of the sharing. Mm hmm. Well, we've got to
take a quick break. We're taking to Mike Demante of punk Rock and UFOs
dot com and uh, we'll take a short break for those of you listening
on a radio channel that you're going to hear a commercial break. The rest
of you will hear a short musical interlude and we'll be right back. You're
listening to Open Mind GFO Radio. We are back. You're listening to Open
Mind GFO Radio. I'm your host, Alejandro Rojas, and we're talking to
Mike Demante, a punk rock and UFOs dot com. And you mentioned one
of your recent stories that you had written about this gentleman with this this kind
of interesting story claiming to have been part of this military experiment where he drank
this alien serum. Now, was he convinced that it was extraterrestrial in nature?
And was he did? He say he was told that? Yeah,
he said he was told that. But he signed these NDA agreements and he's
at the point where he doesn't care violating because he's eighty four years old.
So at this point of his life, even though he's very healthy, he's
in great shape, he doesn't care anymore in terms of if he gets in
trouble and what you know, he shot a video I think probably two three
years ago he videoed his whole story and it's only been like kind of living
and on like a few message boards. That's it. Like, no,
no one's really picked it up and ran with it. So that's why I
was like, well, if this is out there, but nobody kind of
bit on it. So I wanted to be the one to bite on it
because I thought it was interesting. M And I personally feel it's good you
did. I mean, with a lot of these and people get frustrated because
I don't write about it. I just like you, you know, I
just don't have the time. It's a it's a great story to get out
there, especially if it's someone who sounds you know, to be a sound
mind and have an interesting background, but you just don't have the time.
Yeah. Yeah, And that's the thing too. You know, a lot
of us don't do this, you know, full time for a living,
so you know, it's whenever we have the time to do so. And
you know, I guess I wish I had more time to vote to you
know, doing three, three or four posts a week. You know,
now with your stories, do you necessarily make a judgment, so like,
how do you feel about, you know, whether or not this particular person
is you know, accurate that that that that actually happened. He drank an
extraterrestrial serum created by the government. Well, well, you know, it's
hard because you kind of have to trust. In that case, we'll not
trust, but you kind of have to give them the opportunity and then go
from there. He was able to send me some of his documents that I've
showed, showed to a nurse and somebody in the military, and they were
able to collaborate that yes, these are real documents, and this is his
blood work, and yes, this is extraordinary for someone his age. So
for me, you know, the fact I was able to get get a
hand of those, you know, those documents and go from there was definitely
helpful in making that decision to go forward. M hm. And you know
what's it's kind of funny as a journalist because it's there's a different perspective also
in that we don't necessarily have to know when we put together a story.
We're looking at the credibility of like the witness or or the interest in the
story, but we're not necessarily making judgments. We're looking for information that'll give
us something indicators one way or another. But at least many of us I
don't know about. If you go about it differently, but I don't judge
it. I put together the story to get it out there, and then
people will ask, well, what do you think it. I'll be like,
I don't know, and they'll be like, oh, you got to
know, you wrote about it, you got to believe in it or have
some opinion, and sometimes I just I don't know, you know, No,
absolutely, yeah, I hear it, because sometimes you have to try
to keep our personal opinions out of it too. So yeah, it's a
tough one. Mm hmm. So uh Blink one eighty two. Would you
consider them punk rock? Oh? Absolutely, obviously. You know, nineteen
ninety nine was a year where you know, you had Blank and previously had
Green Day and all those those bands that were making the mainstream were considered sellouts.
But we're like so far past that, you know, those days,
And obviously I've covered you know, I've covered their music and their career my
whole life, and I've been a big fan, and obviously they were on
the pop punk side for sure. But yeah, that's definitely was my gateway
drug and punk rock music was Blank at a really young age. Hmm.
Interesting, So it had to be especially compelling or impactful to you when you
know, after you even started using this this name punk rock in UFOs,
that Tom DeLong comes out so full on about UFOs and eventually, really and
I make this justification. I don't know if you've seen that in the articles.
And I think it's true that we wouldn't have had these Pentagon revelations without
him. Yeah, how I mean that had to be pretty a pretty big
deal for you, especially well, I mean he's never really hit his you
know, his UFO obsession. He's talked about it in interviews. Before one
of their DVDs, there's like this bonus footage of him going on like he's
drunk. He drank like a bottle of wine. Here's going on. He's
showing, you know, all the books in his house, and he wrote
a song Aliens Exists, and anyone who's listening to Angels and Airwaves, there's
very good literary references to the mysteries of the universe and kind of secret society.
So all throughout his career he's kind of been interested in this. And
you know, I'm kicking myself because I've interviewed him, I met him multiple
times, and we never I never got the opportunity to ask about this,
because at the time I was asking him about you know, Blink and when
Angels and Airwaves was here in Houston years ago, I interviewed him backstage and
it was obviously you know, I got through in some fanboy questions there,
but never at the time that I think to ask him about that. I
don't know why I should have, because now he's a really hard guy to
get in touch with. Obviously, you know, went to the Stars Academy
and things are being controlled a certain way. You know, kudos to you.
You're probably you're the first one to get mister Elizondo, so that that's
huge, and I think that's great that they're starting to come out and slowly
talk more to outlets and and be more transparent, because I think that's what
a lot of people for the past year. Yeah, that's what's been hard
too, because you know, Jason and Maureen got that great interview for Open
Minds with Tom DeLong a few years ago, and I haven't had the opportunity
to. I've got to speak with him off the record about several things in
the last few years, well, all related to all of this, but
it's all had to be off the record. And so, And it's not
because, oh, major secrets or something like that. It's just because,
rightfully so, they're being careful about how they're releasing information, and you know,
right now lose the guy who's sharing the information about the group. So
I know what you mean. And it's still I guess, you know,
did you did it really hit you how significant? And I imagine it was,
but I just kind of I'm curious about your reaction, how significant you
know these stories were, you know, back in twenty sixteen with the October
His to the Stars Academy coming out, and then soon after the Pentagon story,
I guess, how did you react to to the Stars being created?
So optimism, I guess is the best way to say. But you also
have to be skeptical too, And to this day, you know, I've
said multiple times I'm not really a fan of the business model aspect to it,
but I do say this. You know, the Pentagon uf U Foe
story was big for a lot of us because it confirms a lot of us
have been saying for years regarding secret programs. So you know, he's taken
risks his whole life and his whole career. So for him to walk away
from Blink, which was the banning created and one of the largest bands in
the world. To do this, he obviously has a lot of people involved
that have credibility, so it's kind of it was kind of exciting, you
know, just kind of see where it goes from there. And everything that
they slowly said was going to happen is slowly happening for the most part.
It may not be as fast as you know some people want or as a
specific but I always said, hey, worst case scenario if we get a
documentary TV series or a movie, or if we get you know, we
get this, like, it's not a it's not a complete loss. You
know. I think people have these these lofty expectations. You know, let
them do their work and it may take a while, but you know,
if they get people talking. You know, mister Alizondo has been all over
you know, some major meat outlet's. You know, he's been referenced in
plenty of articles, and I think, you know, he's the guy going
forward because he has so much credibility because of his his background and a lot
of He's going to be a household name sooner, sooner rather than later.
So what is shocking though, especially as as someone writing about this this all
and who's a student of kind of the history of UFO research, and it
was probably shocking to you. It was shocking to me because Tom DeLong personally
had been telling me, you know, here and there that big stuff is
coming, big stuff is coming, and even I was kind of like,
yeah, sure, we'll see, but I was not prepared for and of
course was completely shocked and still am to this day about everything that is kind
of happening at this point. Yeah, I think it's, like I said,
a lot of it's a pleasant surprise. I was never shocked by him
kind of hyping things up because he's been that way his whole career. It's
not a bad thing. That's just you know, I've interviewed him before about
blinking about angels and air waves, and he always he knows how to get
people excited about projects he's working on. Does he always deliver, I mean,
that's up to people to decide, but I always think his heart's in
the right place and he has, you know, he aims high, and
that's something I think that's very admirable. I think that's another there's another disconnect
there too, also, and let's get into that. So first, this
is a question kind of leading into this next set of questioning, is the
pacing. Like you said, people have been disappointed about information not coming out
and enough have you felt that same disappointment. Have you felt, oh,
man, they're so slow in their release of information. No, because I
understand for the Stars was still a very small operation, even though they have
a lot of big people working for them. I know in San Diego obviously
to the Stars aspect of it, the entertainment aspect of it, it's still
a very you know, very small business. It's almost family ran at this
point. But going forward, you know, I think it's going to obviously
have to grow, if you know, if the academy is going to take
off and so forth. So, and I also know how how he works.
You know, he doesn't work well with deadlines. Tom likes to work
at his own pace. That's why musically, Angels and Airwaves is his baby,
and he's able to kind of do things as he pleases. And that's
why that was a major rift with Blank that he had with the other members
of Blank. But no, I mean I think it was something like this
though intrinsically, you have to be patient because there's there's analysis that needs to
be done, you know, with these television networks as contracts, Like for
anyone who's you know, ever done television or even interviewed with producers, they
know that sometimes producers will be jung ho about a show and then the network
will sour on it or you know, or the direction will change or so
forth. So these things take time, all these things that they promised,
Like, I get it, it's gonna take time absolutely because they're not self
releasing any of this stuff. You know, there's obviously other companies and people
involved, right right, and so I it's kind of been a disconnect for
me also because I'm like you, I've been like, you know when people
say that. Recently, I was on a podcast and Steinfeld Steinfeld is his
name, but it was sort of the same thing. He's like, you
know, people are so frustrated with him, like there's nothing that's come out
since the announcement. I'm like, are you kidding? There's a ton that's
come out. And I shared that with him and how I felt, at
least from my perspective, we've been getting a lot of great information, you
know, since they've been releasing it, although there's also kind of a different
expectations with what information's coming out, and I could see that, and I
would love to hear your thoughts on this. So for instance, and it's
partially Tom's problem, and I kind of written about this as well. He
kind of set up this expectation of some really extraordinary, wild kind of revelations
that were coming, and that's what a lot of people in the UFO community
were expecting. Now, what was announced for me, from my perspective,
was just jaw dropping and amazing and the absolutely most incredible type of information I
could hear, which is that these government agencies were existed and that these ex
officials are now coming out and working with Tom DeLong. So for me,
that was great, But for a lot of others, they were wanting to
hear about the aliens at Roswell and about Dulce and all of this other stuff.
And I think they still expect that's what is coming out. Yeah,
I mean, who knows, you know, But like you said, we
have to, you know, keep our expectations to you know, was gonna
say. Tom did a little short documentary with this group called Meta. It's
like a it's like a motorcycle thing, and he referenced to the Stars as
a as an aerodynamic Oh I'm sorry, it's wrong. Words had a brain
fart. Yeah, he is an aerospace company. And it's like it's not
that yet. It's like pumped the brakes. But like that's just him speaking
and aiming high. And you know someone's gonna hear that and say, oh,
he's lying. They're not this, they haven't done this. That's just
like I said, him speaking and aiming high. So I think the first
year to the Stars, you obviously had you know, the Pentagon UFO story
and all these official people coming out, which is great and fantastic, but
then you know, no one was speaking they really want to speaking to the
media. Outside of that, you know, Tom wasn't doing any press outside
of a few main treatment outlets, and then it got pretty much shut down
after the Joe Rogan interview. And now you see Eli Zander. Now he's
coming out, he's doing some press, and now you see him showing up
to convention. So maybe there are some things that they can discuss at the
time. I don't know, but I think this is good now that they're
being more transparent because I think that was one of the main concerns with them
the first year, and they're kind of in a tough spot, and I
don't think people see that as well. And I think that you know,
in Alabama recently, Lou talked about this and that he's got to walk a
very fine line because there's certain things he cannot say he could get in a
lot of trouble for. And also he has colleagues where he doesn't want to
step on their toes. So he's kind of this de facto spokesperson, even
though he doesn't want to be, and he shouldn't be, but he's the
one everybody wants to hear from. Yeah. Absolutely, I think he's doing
a great job, and I think going forward he probably will be the spokesperson
in terms of that sense, just because like, he doesn't have to do
this, but he is. And I think a lot of people in their
community appreciate that that he's going to these conventions, you know, and a
lot of them are small, like the Alabama one. I didn't even hear
about it till like a week before. I'm like, oh, this is
a thing. But you know, I think that that speaks volumes about you
know, his his dedication. Mm hmmm, yeah, and so I think
that's been important. But also your article, So you've written about, you
know, some of the detractors, some of the people who are upset,
and you mentioned and I wanted to talk some more about, you know,
your article and kind of how you've dispelled some of the what you see in
laps of logic. So, for instance, which makes it Yeah, Tom's
got a lot of money and he is not in trouble financially, fortunately for
him, and hopefully this project does not put him in any financial jeopardy.
But yeah, he's not doing this for teas and book tales. Yeah,
because any anyone who's written a book knows you don't make money unless your names
like Stephen King. Yeah, exactly. So, but what are some of
the other, you know, arguments that you've seen that you think are kind
of invalid. Well, I think obviously it starts with there this is a
money grab or you know, oh, this is just another you know,
one of these these uh, you know, these egotistical celebrities trying to throw
their hat in the game. You know, this isn't Megan Fox hosting a
show. You know that she doesn't eat this isn't William Shatner hosting a show
he doesn't need to host. You know, this is somebody who's actively been
involved with this stuff, into the stuff for a really long time, who's
passionate about it, who's putting his money where his mouth is, and wants
to do something about it. You know, like I just said, you
know a lot of these things are common sense things that you know, why
would you leave arguably one of the biggest bands in the world to come up
with some company to fraud people. It just doesn't make logical sense. And
that it's all going to be fiction and it's all uf tayment and its all
this stuff. It's one of the I mean the things they said. You
know, they have three non fiction book series, I'm sorry, the three
books in the non fiction book series. They said, this documentary is coming
out. Obviously there's a fictional aspect of that they're doing too, But they
said that from the start. They said that before the Academy even happened,
before you know, when anything about UFOs even happened. You know, Tom
was doing his fictional series with the poet Anderson in strange times, so you
know, this isn't a affront, you know, to sell Hollywood projects.
You know, that's another thing too. And then just in terms of like
the patients, you know, these things take time. But I think that's
a logical thing. If if they have this data like they say they do,
and they're analyzing it, you would want it to go through the proper
avenues to say, you know, you wouldn't want that rushed. So let
them do their due diligence and the just see from there and be patient.
Right, And like you said earlier, there there's small group. I mean,
it's really not all of the people that are listed as team members are
full time TSA. Some of these people, I mean, I don't think
people realize I mean, Chris Mellen, some of these others. These people
come from some very very uh you know, substantial backgrounds, not being with
billionaires and everything, and they have a lot of their plate and you have
to imagine that they're taking a substantial peicup right. And some of them,
fortunately they don't need money either. I mean, for since the Melons,
they've got plenty of money still there. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Like
I said, a lot of those people are, like you said, are
set already for life in terms of money. Yeah, I mean, you
know, I don't know. I can't speak to all their financials, but
you know, Tom doesn't need money. If he wanted to, he could
probably fund a lot of this himself. But then again, you know,
that's a lot to ask. I like it. M There's a couple other
things that I wanted to ask you about. And it's also kind of to
check myself to see if I'm off on this at all, and I like
to do that a lot, but especially with you've got a journalists background.
One of the big questions out there is whether a tip had anything to do
with UFOs, And you know, there are arguments that we don't have any
documents explicitly saying that, which is true. However, we do have.
Some people have argued all we have is lose word. Well not necessarily.
We also have Harry Reid's word. We also have all of the big low
aerospace people. At least we've heard from how put Off, you know,
Eric Davis. We've heard from others who confirm that as well. And of
course, if people knew the background, which many of these people who are
making these claims do. Bigelow has been looking at the UFOs for a long
time and then was contracted to do that. So there's I don't understand any
doubt. And as a journalist, and I think this is another thing that
they're not getting as a journalist, we're looking for credible sources to say this
was a UFO program. When we have the guy who ran the program,
the Harry Reid who generated the funds for the program, and scientists who are
inside the program all confirming this. We don't need an official document. We
got the guys in the program telling us this. Yeah, no, absolutely,
I know. Even the documents that have came out, you know,
people like to argue, you know, the playing semantics was an a TIP?
Was it with a W, with a T? You know all,
you know, with the different names it was. And we have to understand
with anything the Freedom Information Act, it's partial disclosure, so things could be
redacted, So there could be things that we have not seen or they're not
disclosing. So the fact that we have a got official document that says in
big bold letters, a TIP was a one hundred percent UFO program, And
you know, I don't think that's that's the smoking gun, you know,
I think as of right now, you know, we have these people's word,
and we have some documentation that these programs existed, even though doesn't say
they were UFO and this is other things. We know that they were investigating
an almost activity, right and and so hopefully we'll get some more information out.
But you know, there's been a little bit more information we've gotten even
recently. I noticed you retweeted UFO Joe who was recent at the recent talk
by George Knapp, and George kind of filled in a few of the gaps
there and explained how he got a lot of this information from sources he cannot
share in Washington, d C. Yeah, absolutely, And I think I
mean, George Knapp is a journalist and a lot of times you're not allowed
to share your sources, or if you do, you have to get that
approved by your editor. I would think some of George Knapp's editors at Im
Mosse has no his sources. I would definitely think those are some of the
people who know him. For sure. Very few people will probably know them.
But I would argue that if he ever runs any of those stories,
that they're going to go through one of those editors first, right exactly.
And of course, as we know with journalists. They're going to be skeptical
and they're going to be hard on the information, and I'm in fact they
give a surprise. They give George so much leeway that they do to run
so many of these stories and I'm which is great because we get so much
really good information from George Knapp. Yeah, absolutely, Like you know,
he has he's been doing this forever, and he has the credibility within his
organization and as a journalist and you know throughout us so's it's really cool that
he's able to, you know, be one of those mainstream journalists. Obviously
there's Leslie Key and Ralph Blumenthal too who work for a big news out but
you know, they have the credibility and they're willing to write these articles and
their outlets are willing to support them for running it. So what's next for
you? So you've got are you working on another book? Do you are?
There? Is there another kind of angle you're looking at tackling UH in
your blog? So what's next for me? Eventually I'd like to write another
book. I have some other books, non UFO related, potentially in the
pipeline as far as my blog goes, you know, Puck rocking Foes dot
coms, continue what I'm doing and just monitoring all these stories and seeing who
I could speak to next and who wants to come to me next, And
there's possibly some other opportunities in multimedia. I don't want to kind of reveal
things. I don't know anything yet and I want to jump the gun.
But I may be able to go, you know, use some someone else's
resources to go research some things, and maybe it'll be on TV or the
internet. I don't know, but yeah, that's what's next. And you
know a lot of this is you know, I said, we have to
be patient. You know, many of us don't have the resources to go
out ourselves and you know, go hunt down uh you know, politicians and
you know break into area fifty one. So you know a lot of just
you know, we have to wait and see and go from there. Punk
rock and UFOs dot com is where everybody can find your books and your blog
is there? Are there any other u ur ls or maybe social media you
want to send people to. That's it. I mean my social media is
at Mike Demante on Twitter. I tweet obviously about the subject and my other
interests as well. If you can get past that. But yeah, awesome,
Yeah, I love the other interests as well. Thank you so much
for being on the show. Oh, thank you so much. One.
Like I said earlier, this is an honor to be on and as soon
as you asked me, I got really excited. So thank you so much.
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much to Mike Demante for being
on the show. It was more wonderful to have him. A lot of
really cool information. Be sure to check out his website punk rock and UFOs
dot com for more information and also information on how to get his book.
You can see some of his blog. You can also even got merchandise up
here. Help him out by buying some of his cool shirts and other stuff
here. Lots are really cool stuff. But anyways, I really appreciate having
Mike around. I've appreciated his blogs and some of what he's been contributing to
this conversation. And of course it's great to have someone else who's a fellow
journalist so that we can kind of share our perspective so people can understand where
we're coming from. And speaking of a lot of the cool information coming up.
The SEU, the Scientific Coalition for Youthology. So this is an organization
I've talked quite a bit about because I've been involved with working with him and
getting information out and hopefully getting access to the world of academiam and science.
And so their website is the place to go for information about the Anomalous Aerial
Phenomenon conference. So the conference they put together that went on a couple of
weeks ago, wonderful conference that Luis Elizonda was at, So explore SEU dot
org. That's the official release of information. Unfortunately, there were some people
who shared information a little prematurely. They were recording and or audio taping,
you know, the talks, and you know, some people said, well,
why couldn't we do that? And the reason is that, you know,
as we get in these conversations and I tell you guys this, sometimes
you know when and you guys know this, when you're talking with people one
on one, then you share stuff that you wouldn't share publicly. That's just
obvious, right. And if we want to get in kind of these think
tank type of situations where we're kind of talking about things and spitballing, you
know, there's going to be information that will be shared that not everybody's wanting
to share, so for instance, information could be taken out of context or
We talked with Kevin about this last week. Kevin Kanuoth one of the scientists
who was there, and he talked about how it's important that you know anything
we say or do is handled carefully and correctly, and that's why we're careful
about releasing what we're releasing, getting permission before we're doing it. That's a
professional and respectful way to do it. There's no way as a journalist that
I can go to any event and then just you know, write about things
when I was asked not to. I even then I'm even more careful to
make sure, hey, this was a topic, this was a situation that
was all clear right, And especially when you're working with scientists, you also
to make sure you're framing the information right, to make sure you're accurate,
because it's so so complicated that if you want to share with the public accurate
information and you've got to verify that you're doing it correctly. So there's a
number of reasons why that's important, and there's a number of reasons why for
the AAPC for that event really explore SCU dot org is the official outlet and
the best outlet for that information. And there's going to be more and more
coming to the website there that you'll see. So you'll see there's an AAPC
link and there'll be some more videos and information. One exciting piece of information
that's coming really soon is the Nimtz Report, So the investigation that SCU members
Peter Reality and Robert Powell did into the Nimetz case, and that's really exciting.
I got to see a little bit of a preview and a presentation they
did at the event. But they did some really great work there, talk
to many witnesses, many more witnesses and have even been heard out there.
So it's a lot of fun. So you'll be able to check that out
soon as well. Of course, as usual, please do go to the
UFO Congress and get on the email list that has kind of become that the
Facto Open Minds email list, to be honest, because as open Minds,
you know, I'm the only guy and I'm working from homeworking on open Minds.
At this point. We used to have a staff, as you all
know, people like we were mentioning earlier Jason and Maureen, but no longer.
It is just I and the website is kind of hosted remotely by John
Reo who owns the company, and there's changes that go on, and it's
not like, you know, they have a whole core company to run over
there. So like email, right now, we really just don't have an
email list ability to send out to on the open mind side, but we
do on the UFO Congress side, So we have been sending out UFO Congress
emails and we do include information and stories on open Minds as well. So
if you haven't joined that email list, please go to Ufocongress dot com and
do so. And if you are already on the open Minds list, you
will be fine because that was a joint list of the Congress and open Minds,
and so keep an eye out for that. Otherwise, other cool stuff
at the UFO Congress. There's a lot of new products there for those of
you who like UFO and alien kind of paraphernalia, clothes and junk like that.
Lots of really fun stuff there, so you can find that at Ufocongress
dot com. Otherwise, I want to thank Martin Willis for the news.
Martin Willis a podcast UFO The news that we talked about can be found on
the front page of Openminds dot tv, including that fun story from April Fools
of nineteen eighty nine where Richard Branson fulled of virgin galactic you know, kind
of fold all these people in London. Great story, so check that out
if you haven't before, but again you can find that all in the front
page of open Minds TV. Otherwise, I want to thank Caleb Hanks for
the opening and Close Music Systematics for the bumper music, and of course,
as usual, I want to thank you the listeners for being here once again.
Thank you so much for being here until next time, which will just
be next week. In case you're wondering audio smooth chuchos, you were motionless