1
00:00:12,119 --> 00:00:30,079
Hi, everyone, Welcome to the
show. This is Martin Willis your host,

2
00:00:30,480 --> 00:00:35,079
and this is a rerun today.
Now, I got to admit that

3
00:00:35,240 --> 00:00:39,399
I've always been able to do a
show no matter what, whether I was

4
00:00:39,439 --> 00:00:44,640
traveling overseas or in other parts of
the country. But this week, on

5
00:00:44,719 --> 00:00:49,000
the twenty ninth, it's just impossible. I just couldn't figure out a way

6
00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:52,520
to do it. So this is
a rerun. This is Ralph Bloomenthal after

7
00:00:52,560 --> 00:00:57,200
he wrote the Vanity Fair article back
in twenty thirteen. Now, I just

8
00:00:57,240 --> 00:01:00,320
did a day calculator. He was
on my show two thousand, some two

9
00:01:00,399 --> 00:01:03,719
hundred and forty nine days ago.
So I hope a lot of you this

10
00:01:03,760 --> 00:01:07,599
will be the first time. Well, actually, I'm glad if you listen

11
00:01:07,680 --> 00:01:12,400
to the show when you did.
If you're back, so you can't remember

12
00:01:12,400 --> 00:01:15,040
everything you said after all this time, I don't think. But anyway,

13
00:01:15,480 --> 00:01:19,519
it's an interesting interview and I hope
you enjoy it. I apologize for not

14
00:01:19,760 --> 00:01:23,680
having a fresh show for everyone this
week, but we'll be back next week

15
00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:30,280
with a Rizwan Verk on technology and
entrepreneurship. Should be an interesting show.

16
00:01:30,680 --> 00:01:34,000
Thanks so much for listening, and
we'll see you next week. And here's

17
00:01:34,000 --> 00:02:07,959
my guest. I have Ralph Blumenthal
on Skype. How are you, Ralph,

18
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:10,639
I'm flyin Maudie. Thank you,
thanks so much for agreeing to be

19
00:02:10,680 --> 00:02:15,400
on the show. I understand this
is the first show you are on about

20
00:02:15,439 --> 00:02:19,840
your recent article and vanity fair it
is. That's great, I got the

21
00:02:19,919 --> 00:02:23,520
scoop. Well, you're a lucky
man, and so am I to be

22
00:02:23,599 --> 00:02:30,520
interviewed by you. So the article
name is alien Nation, have humans been

23
00:02:30,599 --> 00:02:37,759
abducted by extraterrestrials? And it's mostly
about John Mack. I have to ask

24
00:02:38,199 --> 00:02:40,520
a number of questions. First one
comes to mind. You have had a

25
00:02:40,560 --> 00:02:46,240
prestigious career. Have you had any
ridicules so far for this article? Well,

26
00:02:46,280 --> 00:02:51,319
a few emails came in. I'm
used to that, but actually I

27
00:02:51,400 --> 00:02:57,520
was surprised by the positive reaction.
I think everyone was so relieved to find

28
00:02:57,639 --> 00:03:02,719
a so called mainstream journalist treat the
subject seriously that I was quite flattered by

29
00:03:02,800 --> 00:03:07,479
the outpouring of positive reaction. Oh
that's great. I was hoping it would

30
00:03:07,599 --> 00:03:10,560
encourage you, you know, stay
at what you're doing, but at least

31
00:03:10,840 --> 00:03:15,479
do a little more exploring. I
think you did. It's a wonderful article.

32
00:03:15,919 --> 00:03:20,800
And this is in Vanity Fair,
so one of the most major magazines

33
00:03:20,840 --> 00:03:23,719
in the country. It's pretty exciting
to see this article. Well, thank

34
00:03:23,719 --> 00:03:28,280
you. Yes, it's on the
website. Actually, they couldn't get it

35
00:03:28,319 --> 00:03:34,840
into the magazine fast enough for the
upcoming summer gathering in Newport of you know

36
00:03:34,919 --> 00:03:38,360
of the experiencers, the abductees who
meet, who meet there every year,

37
00:03:38,919 --> 00:03:42,919
So rather than try to update it
with another gathering, because I intended to

38
00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:46,560
one last July, they decided to
get it right up on the site.

39
00:03:46,719 --> 00:03:51,759
But it's a very active site.
It had quite a while ago, twenty

40
00:03:51,800 --> 00:03:58,719
five thousand individual page views and two
thousand shares, so it really seemed to

41
00:03:58,759 --> 00:04:01,199
have hit a nerve. Yes,
I bet so. You've heard mostly from

42
00:04:01,360 --> 00:04:06,719
the UFO community. Have you heard
from other colleagues. No, I really

43
00:04:06,919 --> 00:04:10,960
must say I've heard. Well,
a lot of my friends did see it,

44
00:04:11,360 --> 00:04:15,319
and we're a little surprised that I'd
be writing about this. We can

45
00:04:15,319 --> 00:04:20,240
talk about that. But also there
was quite a reaction in the UFO community,

46
00:04:20,680 --> 00:04:25,480
as you know as well as anyone. It's a very tight knit group.

47
00:04:25,560 --> 00:04:29,079
It very it's disparate, but people
keep in touch with each other and

48
00:04:29,120 --> 00:04:33,959
whenever there's a development PROO con there's
a lot of sharing back and forth,

49
00:04:34,279 --> 00:04:39,160
so everybody tries to keep on top
of things. And when this article came

50
00:04:39,160 --> 00:04:43,199
out, it was immediately sent back
and forth. I could almost see it,

51
00:04:43,279 --> 00:04:47,680
you know, flying through the cosmos, and I was getting responses from

52
00:04:47,720 --> 00:04:53,680
all over the place. Yes,
I write away a past guest. Actually,

53
00:04:53,839 --> 00:04:57,839
just last week, Leslie Kane connected
with me right away and said,

54
00:04:57,879 --> 00:05:00,439
you have to get a hold of
this guard right away, and so I

55
00:05:00,519 --> 00:05:04,279
was really excited that you responded so
quickly. Well, thank you. Leslie

56
00:05:04,319 --> 00:05:09,079
is one of my favorite people.
You know, she is so clear eyed

57
00:05:09,160 --> 00:05:15,279
and sober about the whole UFO things. She's brought so much important investigative attention

58
00:05:15,319 --> 00:05:21,399
to the subject and high, high
credibility. So she really is one of

59
00:05:21,439 --> 00:05:26,800
my favorite people. We did an
article together for the Huffington Post on these

60
00:05:27,839 --> 00:05:32,959
Chilean episode, a very strange flyover
that went so fast and it was only

61
00:05:33,000 --> 00:05:38,439
caught on film, but a she
as somebody I highly respect. Wow,

62
00:05:38,639 --> 00:05:43,279
that's great. Have you had an
interest in the subject for quite a while?

63
00:05:43,800 --> 00:05:48,839
Well, As I said in some
of my proposals, I've talked to

64
00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:53,920
a number of publishers. Now As
a kid, I was very interested in

65
00:05:53,959 --> 00:05:58,480
science fiction growing up in the fifties. It was really the big thing.

66
00:05:58,519 --> 00:06:04,120
I mean, UFOs were suddenly on
the agenda, and I gobbled up everything

67
00:06:04,120 --> 00:06:10,439
by Ray Bradberry and Isaac Asimov.
So as a kid, I was certainly

68
00:06:10,480 --> 00:06:15,839
interested in it. But my interest
came later when I picked up a copy

69
00:06:15,959 --> 00:06:20,639
of a. John Mack's Passport to
the Cosmos, and it was about two

70
00:06:20,680 --> 00:06:26,079
thousand four or five, and I
said, Gee, this is a guy

71
00:06:26,120 --> 00:06:30,000
I'd like to interview someday. I
was already an established correspondent for the New

72
00:06:30,079 --> 00:06:33,959
York Times, and the next thing
I heard he'd been killed in London.

73
00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:40,800
So that's really where my interest started. I see. Yeah, there's there's

74
00:06:40,800 --> 00:06:44,279
a little bit of controversy about his
death, you know, I mean it

75
00:06:44,360 --> 00:06:47,199
was kind of an unusual circumstances,
probably just an accident, but still a

76
00:06:47,199 --> 00:06:51,120
little unusual. Well, I have
satisfied myself that it was an accident,

77
00:06:51,759 --> 00:06:55,560
I know. I mean, there
are a lot of conspiracies out there,

78
00:06:56,000 --> 00:06:59,839
but it is important to stick to
the facts. And while you can never

79
00:07:00,199 --> 00:07:02,639
a negative, I must say I've
talked to the family, I've looked over

80
00:07:02,680 --> 00:07:09,639
the police reports and there's nobody serious
out there anymore who thinks it was any

81
00:07:09,720 --> 00:07:14,680
kind of anything else than a tragic
accident. And the driver was drunk,

82
00:07:14,680 --> 00:07:18,519
he admitted that. And John was
very tired. He was coming back from

83
00:07:18,519 --> 00:07:24,120
a talk in London and he stepped
out of a subway station underground station,

84
00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:29,120
was not used to the traffic patterns, looked the wrong way and was hit

85
00:07:29,199 --> 00:07:34,680
and died almost instantly. So I
think while the circumstances was so strange and

86
00:07:34,759 --> 00:07:41,199
unusual, given his notoriety at that
point, particularly his fight with Harvard,

87
00:07:42,079 --> 00:07:46,600
there was immediately speculation that it was, you know, a hit or assassination.

88
00:07:47,040 --> 00:07:51,160
But I'm absolutely convinced, and so
is everyone else who's looked at the

89
00:07:51,199 --> 00:07:56,480
subject seriously, that it was just
an accident. Yeah. I've heard of

90
00:07:56,519 --> 00:08:00,959
a lot of people getting in accidents
in England in particular, you know,

91
00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:03,000
looking the wrong way, you know, just regular car accidents and things,

92
00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:05,759
because it's so used to, you
know, the right handed traffic. He

93
00:08:05,879 --> 00:08:11,199
was very tired. He had gone
to talk about the great fascination of his

94
00:08:11,279 --> 00:08:16,439
life, which was te Lawrence of
Lawrence of Arabia. He'd written a book

95
00:08:16,439 --> 00:08:20,079
that won the Pulit Surprise in nineteen
seventy seven, so he'd gone to give

96
00:08:20,120 --> 00:08:24,480
a talk on Lawrence. He was
up late. It was very emotional for

97
00:08:24,560 --> 00:08:26,279
him. It was sort of a
lot of strange things. And it was

98
00:08:26,279 --> 00:08:33,000
the anniversary just about to the day
of his father's death in a vehicle accident.

99
00:08:33,080 --> 00:08:37,159
His father was killed in Vermont in
a car accident coming home from their

100
00:08:37,200 --> 00:08:45,840
summer home. And there's also a
lot of interesting things after he was hit

101
00:08:45,879 --> 00:08:50,000
and killed. People who had visitations
from him or say they did so.

102
00:08:50,759 --> 00:08:56,840
He was getting very interested in survival
life after death. And this almost seemed

103
00:08:56,039 --> 00:09:03,879
talor made for his research in that
he himself, according to associates, appeared

104
00:09:03,879 --> 00:09:09,200
to them with messages after he died. So in that sense, it was

105
00:09:09,360 --> 00:09:13,639
kind of an extension of his life's
work. Wow, let's talk about the

106
00:09:13,759 --> 00:09:16,879
Rhode Island event. Was that the
first time, the end the only time

107
00:09:16,879 --> 00:09:20,399
you've ever gone it is? Yeah, I had talked to Let's see,

108
00:09:20,440 --> 00:09:28,000
this is how I got onto it. As I started interviewing Max associates,

109
00:09:28,399 --> 00:09:33,919
they were telling me that he showed
up periodically at a convention every year in

110
00:09:35,080 --> 00:09:41,200
Newport, Rhode Island, hosted by
this woman who was a fairly prominent Newport

111
00:09:41,279 --> 00:09:48,960
resident whose grandfather had had a mansion
there, part of Old Newport actually,

112
00:09:48,799 --> 00:09:52,559
and so I was kind of interested
in that, but I never thought of

113
00:09:52,720 --> 00:09:56,879
going until last summer. I was
in New Hampshire and I was not far

114
00:09:56,919 --> 00:10:01,559
away, and I was talking to
the woman who hosts these gatherings. Her

115
00:10:01,600 --> 00:10:07,720
name is Annekoolier. She has a
B and B in this beautiful mansion on

116
00:10:07,720 --> 00:10:11,600
the Newport waterfront, and she said
I should come and attend, and it

117
00:10:11,679 --> 00:10:16,919
seemed an invitation too good to pass
up because a lot of these experiences,

118
00:10:16,639 --> 00:10:22,799
as you know, Marty, are
very publicity averse. They're not looking for

119
00:10:22,840 --> 00:10:28,639
attention. Contrary to what you know. Outsiders often believed that these are either

120
00:10:28,759 --> 00:10:35,360
hoax or publicity seekers, fabricators looking
for attention. It's quite the opposite.

121
00:10:35,360 --> 00:10:39,039
They're very troubled people based on what
has happened to them. They were in

122
00:10:39,120 --> 00:10:43,000
troubled before, but they were troubled
as a result of what they went through,

123
00:10:43,600 --> 00:10:48,399
so they are not looking particularly for
attention. But she invited me to

124
00:10:50,200 --> 00:10:52,559
come and meet with them, and
I had met many of them already.

125
00:10:52,279 --> 00:10:54,960
I thought it was a wonderful opportunity, which had turned out to be.

126
00:10:56,080 --> 00:11:00,159
It anchored the peace in vanity fair
because it gave it a focus. So

127
00:11:00,200 --> 00:11:05,440
it was a good device for telling
the story. But it was also very

128
00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:11,279
important to me to meet not only
experiencers, but scientists who were there,

129
00:11:11,840 --> 00:11:18,879
Scientists, astrophysicists who showed up,
the director of a hospital in Boston who

130
00:11:18,919 --> 00:11:24,159
had all kinds of anomalous psychic experiences. So that that's the story on Newport.

131
00:11:26,159 --> 00:11:31,840
You speak in your article about when
Mac was on Oprah with some experiencers.

132
00:11:31,039 --> 00:11:35,279
Did you have you ever seen tape
of that? Have? I have?

133
00:11:35,120 --> 00:11:41,240
Very interesting because first of all,
it was fairly early in Oprah's television

134
00:11:41,320 --> 00:11:48,600
career, and she you could see
already what a good interviewer she was.

135
00:11:48,639 --> 00:11:54,279
She was a bit skeptical, but
she was very accepting of these very strange

136
00:11:54,399 --> 00:11:58,759
stories. So not only was there
Mac talking about the phenomenon, but he

137
00:11:58,840 --> 00:12:05,519
had a group of people, young
people who told very straightforwardly of their extraordinary

138
00:12:05,559 --> 00:12:13,639
experiences taken aboard a craft and meeting
these beings and losing, you know,

139
00:12:13,720 --> 00:12:18,960
missing time, the whole syndrome.
So the fact that they were talking about

140
00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:26,919
it so casually and so lucidly,
and that there were no visible signs of

141
00:12:26,960 --> 00:12:31,840
insanity. I mean, it was
all very forward and Oprah was really impressed.

142
00:12:33,039 --> 00:12:35,320
Yeah, I would like to see
that tape now, you know,

143
00:12:35,360 --> 00:12:39,399
I was wondering if there was any
type of ridicule or something during that tape,

144
00:12:39,840 --> 00:12:43,759
or how the audience reacted. Basically, the audience was. It was

145
00:12:43,879 --> 00:12:52,200
pretty accepting and I think quite fascinated. Oprah would indicate her skepticism by a

146
00:12:52,320 --> 00:12:58,919
raised eyebrow or quizzical look, and
her intro actually is interesting. She said,

147
00:13:00,799 --> 00:13:07,200
you know, we have here,
you know John mac He believes that

148
00:13:07,279 --> 00:13:11,799
people have been abducted by aliens.
He believes that they have had children with

149
00:13:11,879 --> 00:13:18,600
aliens. So she was you know, you could see her skepticism there.

150
00:13:18,679 --> 00:13:22,840
But the audience was quite supportive,
especially once they had a chance to hear

151
00:13:22,840 --> 00:13:28,320
these people. You know, one
of the things I've seen a documentary on

152
00:13:28,960 --> 00:13:33,399
that I thought was pretty fascinating is
when he went to Africa, when he

153
00:13:33,440 --> 00:13:35,759
was interviewing those children. You mentioned
that briefly here. You know, it

154
00:13:35,799 --> 00:13:39,840
wasn't really abductions, but what an
amazing story that is. Well, it

155
00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:46,279
is one of the most I mean, the whole canon of alien abduction,

156
00:13:46,519 --> 00:13:54,039
as you know, revolves around certain
very powerful stories. One is the story

157
00:13:54,080 --> 00:13:58,840
of Betty and Bonney Hill, and
one is the Linda Napolitano Brook so called

158
00:14:00,360 --> 00:14:05,759
Bridge abduction, the Alleghash incident.
So there are a number of things that

159
00:14:07,120 --> 00:14:11,879
you know were particularly that loom large
in the history of the abduction phenomenon,

160
00:14:13,399 --> 00:14:18,320
and one of them certainly is the
incident at Rua in Zimbabwe. And as

161
00:14:18,360 --> 00:14:22,720
I sort of tell it in the
Vanity Fair Story and tell it and hope

162
00:14:22,759 --> 00:14:26,679
to tell it in greater length in
a book, Mac at the time was

163
00:14:26,759 --> 00:14:33,799
being persecuted, I think is the
only way to describe what Harvard was putting

164
00:14:33,840 --> 00:14:41,840
him through. They'd subjected inquisition for
his willingness to entertain the reality of alien

165
00:14:41,879 --> 00:14:46,840
abduction. And while he was being
subject to all these hearings at Harvard,

166
00:14:48,200 --> 00:14:54,200
he got a call or his office, initially from a BBC correspondent in outside

167
00:14:54,279 --> 00:15:00,000
Harare, Zimbabwe, that a children's
school had had some kind of an episod

168
00:15:00,039 --> 00:15:05,679
so a visitation of a Ufo and
the children saw beings which they reported to

169
00:15:05,720 --> 00:15:11,200
the school authorities, and it had
become quite a story in Zimbabwe, and

170
00:15:11,480 --> 00:15:16,279
Mac, despite all the troubles he
was going through at Harvard, dropped everything

171
00:15:16,320 --> 00:15:22,039
and with his research partner, flew
to Zimbabwe to talk to these kids themselves,

172
00:15:22,200 --> 00:15:30,279
and Mac and his associate interviewed dozens
of these kids and they all had

173
00:15:30,440 --> 00:15:33,279
the same story that they saw this
craft come down. It was either hovering

174
00:15:33,360 --> 00:15:39,039
or landed, and they saw two
or three beings as small dark figures in

175
00:15:39,799 --> 00:15:46,879
form fitting outfits, and they were
communicating telepathically with the children, and the

176
00:15:46,960 --> 00:15:50,720
children were very troubled by it,
and they all had similar story, which

177
00:15:50,759 --> 00:15:54,120
was interesting. It was hard to
imagine that these kids could make all this

178
00:15:54,360 --> 00:15:58,159
up and keep their stories consistent,
right, And that's really the basis of

179
00:15:58,200 --> 00:16:03,279
that story, which is very very
powerful. Yes, getting back to your

180
00:16:03,399 --> 00:16:07,600
career now, you actually were involved
in writing in Vietnam. Yeah, I

181
00:16:07,720 --> 00:16:12,840
was a New York Times correspondent Vietnam. It was early in my career and

182
00:16:14,480 --> 00:16:18,440
I had been a correspondent in West
Germany at the time, and then they

183
00:16:18,480 --> 00:16:22,279
sent me to Vietnam. It was
pretty much the high point of the war

184
00:16:22,840 --> 00:16:26,679
sixty nine, a year after ted
I was fascinating. I was in Vietnam,

185
00:16:26,720 --> 00:16:30,440
covered a lot of the war,
and then when the war shifted or

186
00:16:30,440 --> 00:16:37,200
spread to Cambodia, when Prince and
it was overthrown, and Cambodia sort of

187
00:16:37,279 --> 00:16:41,080
joined the war on the American side, which was kind of a disastrous decision

188
00:16:41,120 --> 00:16:45,440
for them. They got drawn into
it. And I covered that pretty much

189
00:16:45,480 --> 00:16:52,039
from the beginning and then left about
the time, said Sidney Schanberg came in

190
00:16:52,200 --> 00:16:56,799
and covered the arrival of the Khmer
Rouge, which became, of course,

191
00:16:56,559 --> 00:17:00,919
his wonderful movie The Killing Fields.
Let's see, I've just wonder if we

192
00:17:00,919 --> 00:17:04,480
should talk a little bit more about
your career in general. What do you

193
00:17:04,519 --> 00:17:11,039
think, Well, that's fine.
I think it's very important for you know,

194
00:17:11,119 --> 00:17:14,519
listeners to know that, you know, I come to this not as

195
00:17:14,559 --> 00:17:18,559
a proponent or an advocate, at
least I didn't start off that way.

196
00:17:18,559 --> 00:17:22,039
I don't think I've become an advocate. I still consider myself a reporter,

197
00:17:22,799 --> 00:17:26,279
um and I think that I hope
that that's the strength of my reporting,

198
00:17:26,839 --> 00:17:33,400
that I come to it as a
reporter. And the one thing, uh,

199
00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:37,519
you know, I've really stuck in
my investigative reporting. Over the years,

200
00:17:37,559 --> 00:17:42,119
I've been involved in a lot of
political exposes for The New York Times.

201
00:17:44,160 --> 00:17:49,400
My training is to stick to the
facts, and I think I hope

202
00:17:49,480 --> 00:17:56,599
that what I've brought to this story
is a adherence to the facts, an

203
00:17:56,680 --> 00:18:02,799
openness to to to hear things and
to understand things, but also in innate

204
00:18:02,880 --> 00:18:04,920
skepticism. I don't believe anything anyone
tells me on the face of it,

205
00:18:07,119 --> 00:18:10,880
and that everything has to be tested, right. I think what is lacking

206
00:18:11,039 --> 00:18:15,359
is the one word you just mentioned
out there is the openness to at least

207
00:18:15,400 --> 00:18:18,039
investigate. And it's like a breath
of fresh air to have someone like you

208
00:18:18,519 --> 00:18:22,240
actually investigate something like this. Well, you know, I sort of took

209
00:18:22,279 --> 00:18:29,519
my cues from John mac who also
described at great length in his books and

210
00:18:29,559 --> 00:18:33,279
all his interviews how he came to
it as a skeptic. It's an interesting

211
00:18:33,319 --> 00:18:38,039
story. He was brought up as
a scientist. His whole family had been

212
00:18:38,160 --> 00:18:45,519
eminent physicians at Harvard. His training
was science. He was he had to

213
00:18:45,519 --> 00:18:49,880
be a medical doctor before he could
be a psychiatrist, so he trained.

214
00:18:51,480 --> 00:18:55,359
I have a photo of him conducting
an autopsy. Yeah. He was a

215
00:18:55,400 --> 00:18:59,599
man of science, and he was
an activist, a social activist. He

216
00:18:59,640 --> 00:19:03,279
believed in, you know, ending
nuclear weapons, and so politically he was

217
00:19:03,279 --> 00:19:11,480
certainly on the left, but he
was a strictly a man of science and

218
00:19:11,039 --> 00:19:19,119
when he eventually started learning about these
unusual, this anomalous world. He had

219
00:19:19,160 --> 00:19:26,240
taken breathwork training with Stanislav Groff and
his wife, and he had learned well,

220
00:19:26,240 --> 00:19:30,119
I mean psychiatrist deal and hypnosis and
alternate states. All the time.

221
00:19:32,920 --> 00:19:37,519
He was always aware that there were
some hidden corners of the human mind,

222
00:19:38,599 --> 00:19:47,000
which every psychiatrist knows. But he
began experimenting himself. He tried some psychotropic

223
00:19:47,079 --> 00:19:52,640
drugs, hallucinogenic drugs, and he
was surprised at the things they brought out

224
00:19:52,680 --> 00:19:59,039
in him. He had had a
very traumatic youth. His mother died when

225
00:19:59,079 --> 00:20:04,720
he was seven months old. His
father remarried, but he always missed his

226
00:20:04,839 --> 00:20:11,279
mother. So a lot of these
issues came out when he was experimenting with

227
00:20:11,359 --> 00:20:14,279
drugs. So he knew that there
were sort of hidden corners of the human

228
00:20:14,319 --> 00:20:18,279
mind, but nothing prepared him for
the letters that Bud Hopkins showed him.

229
00:20:18,759 --> 00:20:23,559
When Mac met Bud Hopkins, and
Hopkins said he'd been getting these letters from

230
00:20:23,599 --> 00:20:29,079
people who had been abducted or said
they'd been abducted, and Mac looked at

231
00:20:29,079 --> 00:20:32,200
them and was trying to figure out
what was going on. He didn't believe

232
00:20:32,200 --> 00:20:34,640
it either. Do you know how
they first met. Yeah, Mac had

233
00:20:34,680 --> 00:20:40,400
been dabbling in some of these interesting
groups like est on the West coast.

234
00:20:40,440 --> 00:20:45,839
You know, it was an era
of great experimentation, sexual experimentation, you

235
00:20:45,880 --> 00:20:49,079
know, psychiatric experimentation. All these
things were going on in the fifties and

236
00:20:49,160 --> 00:20:55,599
sixties, great opening up. And
he was an ego participant. And there

237
00:20:55,640 --> 00:21:02,599
was a woman in one of these
groups on the coast California who knew Bud.

238
00:21:03,359 --> 00:21:10,200
Bud Hopkins was a very accomplished artist
who had himself seen a UFO on

239
00:21:10,279 --> 00:21:14,920
Cape Cod in the sixties and had
written about it. And this woman became

240
00:21:14,960 --> 00:21:21,119
a kind of a bridge between Mac
and Bud Hopkins. She told Max she

241
00:21:21,160 --> 00:21:22,599
had met Mac I guess on the
coast and said, there's this guy,

242
00:21:22,640 --> 00:21:27,519
Bud Hopkins was really interesting. You
should meet him. So Mac said,

243
00:21:27,559 --> 00:21:32,720
he always remembered the date it was, you know, in nineteen eighty I

244
00:21:32,759 --> 00:21:37,680
believe, and he went to visit
Bud and Bud showed him these letters.

245
00:21:37,720 --> 00:21:41,799
So that's how it came about.
I see in the article you wrote you

246
00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:48,279
talked briefly about the Brooklyn Bridge UFO
abduction. Do you know more details about

247
00:21:48,359 --> 00:21:51,480
that. I've heard about that,
but I've never really well, I do.

248
00:21:51,640 --> 00:21:56,640
It's really one of the most sensational. That's certainly a fair word to

249
00:21:56,759 --> 00:21:59,880
use cases that have ever come up. I mean, of course, the

250
00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:07,119
Hill's story is very sensational. They're
all sensational. There's not an abduction story

251
00:22:07,160 --> 00:22:11,720
that's not. But the Linda Apoloitis
I called her by her real name,

252
00:22:11,039 --> 00:22:15,680
which he gave me permission to do. Bud Hopkins gave her a pseudonym in

253
00:22:15,759 --> 00:22:19,880
his book. But I'll give you
the story very quickly. A major world

254
00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:23,880
figure. This is in Bud Hopkins
telling of the story. A major world

255
00:22:25,000 --> 00:22:30,119
leader was on his way downtown to
a meeting with two bodyguards. His car

256
00:22:30,240 --> 00:22:33,720
suddenly came to a stop under the
FDR Drive at the East side of Manhattan,

257
00:22:34,319 --> 00:22:38,000
and they didn't know what was wrong
with the car. They stopped and

258
00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:44,279
got out and were looking around and
again. This is according to the story

259
00:22:44,319 --> 00:22:48,880
told in Bud Hopkins book and the
story that Linda later told me. The

260
00:22:48,440 --> 00:22:55,279
world leader and the two bodyguards saw
a spacecraft hovering over a building near the

261
00:22:55,279 --> 00:23:00,240
Brooklyn Bridge. To their amazement,
they saw a figure come out of the

262
00:23:00,279 --> 00:23:07,640
window levitate out of the window,
followed by three to join three small beings

263
00:23:07,680 --> 00:23:11,640
who had come out of the spacecraft. They all floaded toward the spacecraft.

264
00:23:11,039 --> 00:23:15,359
The spacecraft then shot over the East
River, over the Brooklyn Bridge and plunged

265
00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:21,920
into the water. That was the
story. There were apparently there were some

266
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:26,680
witnesses on the Brooklyn Bridge drivers whose
cause had also stalled. There were witnesses

267
00:23:26,680 --> 00:23:32,119
at the New York Post printing plant
anyway, And in his book Witnessed,

268
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:36,920
Bud Hopkins tells this story. And
later when I met Linda, the woman

269
00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:44,160
who was supposedly levitated out of her
window, she confirmed the story to me.

270
00:23:44,200 --> 00:23:47,839
At least in her experience, this
is what she remembered. You often

271
00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:52,680
under hypnosis, it's very hard to
recover these memories because they're very clouded.

272
00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:56,519
Anyway, I you know, there
was no way, in the context of

273
00:23:56,559 --> 00:24:00,319
this article, or even in a
book of my own, that I could

274
00:24:02,240 --> 00:24:07,039
completely check out the story. It's
become kind of controversial because different people have

275
00:24:07,160 --> 00:24:15,920
claimed it was a hoax, and
it's really spread a very lively debate online.

276
00:24:15,279 --> 00:24:21,759
But at least I was able to
talk to Linda and the world figure

277
00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:26,720
who Bud Hopkins never identifies in his
book, but is identified in other articles

278
00:24:26,759 --> 00:24:33,200
online supposedly the former Secretary General of
the United Nations, via Perez Daquire,

279
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:37,880
who was on his way to a
meeting. I did get the chance through

280
00:24:38,079 --> 00:24:45,000
a news colleague to get some questions
to Daquire, who's now retired in Peru,

281
00:24:45,720 --> 00:24:49,799
and he was asked about this whole
episode, and his responses were quite

282
00:24:51,400 --> 00:24:53,920
enigmatic. He said he didn't really
remember. He didn't deny it, but

283
00:24:55,000 --> 00:25:00,400
he said he has no interest in
these types of stories. But it was

284
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:06,519
not exactly a flat denial. It's
a very peculiar story, to say the

285
00:25:06,599 --> 00:25:11,519
least. At least I was able
to track down some of the figures as

286
00:25:11,519 --> 00:25:18,240
like Linda for example, and Leslie
Kane, who was close to Bud Hopkins,

287
00:25:18,359 --> 00:25:22,279
has a lot of his original research, and I was able to confirm,

288
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:26,319
you know, some of the outlines
of the story. So again,

289
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:32,640
that's the so called brooklyn Bridge abduction. And the story goes on that Linda

290
00:25:32,799 --> 00:25:37,880
was taken to a strange place,
some beach, and one of the people

291
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:41,000
she was abducted with came back with
some of the sand. But it had

292
00:25:41,039 --> 00:25:47,119
been tested, and as usual in
these stories, it's inconclusive. There's never

293
00:25:47,839 --> 00:25:52,759
enough physical proof to be persuasive.
That's one of the mysteries of the whole

294
00:25:55,160 --> 00:26:00,599
you know, UFO and alien abduction
phenomena. No one has ever been able

295
00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:06,400
to come back with incontrovertible scientific proof. There's always tantalizing things. There's little

296
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:12,200
cuts that heal quickly. There's witness
sightings that coincide with abductions. You know,

297
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:21,039
there's a pattern of evidence of fragmentary
evidence that falls short of controvertible proof.

298
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:23,240
That's the way it seems like it's
always been. Since you've written this

299
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:30,079
article, have you considered what you
would do if someone contacted you and started

300
00:26:30,079 --> 00:26:36,079
relaying their abduction experience to you.
Where you would go with that? Well,

301
00:26:37,079 --> 00:26:41,839
you know, some people have actually
contacted me. They've also contacted you

302
00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:45,480
know, they told me they've been
in touch with other you know groups and

303
00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:49,640
had talked to MAC at the time. So I would definitely talk to them.

304
00:26:49,759 --> 00:26:55,160
I frankly, I've interviewed a few
of them for what I hope will

305
00:26:55,200 --> 00:26:59,240
be my book. So I've heard
these stories firsthand myself. I've you know,

306
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:03,079
tested checked them out. I've talked
to other people. For example,

307
00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:07,480
there's a young woman in Massachusetts who
told me all kinds of stories and she

308
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:11,559
told me about an episode where she
felt she was abducted from her bedroom,

309
00:27:11,599 --> 00:27:15,400
and I talked to her, you
know, to check it, to verify

310
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:19,799
it. I talked to her husband. They've since separated, but they're in

311
00:27:19,839 --> 00:27:25,920
good terms, and he was What
struck me particularly is he's a police officer.

312
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:30,400
He was able to confirm some of
the details. He was as very

313
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:33,079
common as you know. He was
kind of paralyzed, he couldn't move,

314
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:37,599
but he saw the flashing red light, he felt the presence in the room,

315
00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:45,119
he felt her struggling when she was
abducted. So here's a police officer,

316
00:27:45,880 --> 00:27:48,839
you know, with some degree of
credibility, still working as a as

317
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:53,160
a law enforcement officer, who confirmed
some of the outlines of the story.

318
00:27:53,559 --> 00:27:56,839
So I have talked to quite a
few of these people, and wherever possible,

319
00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:02,640
you tried to get outside con information. It's very difficult, as you

320
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:07,359
know, and again it always falls
short, you know, full of scientific

321
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:12,480
proof. But I'm happy to hear
these stories and meet with people and just

322
00:28:12,559 --> 00:28:18,400
listen to them. Would you attend
any other like for instances an experiencers conference.

323
00:28:18,480 --> 00:28:21,240
I'm right in my neighborhood up in
Portland, Maine. This September.

324
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:23,480
Would you ever consider attending one of
those? I would? I mean,

325
00:28:23,519 --> 00:28:27,160
I know there are a lot of
these conferences. There's the mouf On conference

326
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:33,200
that you know every year. There
are a lot of groups meeting, and

327
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:36,640
the hard part is, you know, to keep up with all of it.

328
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:41,960
And as you know, there's also
it is a kind of a mixed

329
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:45,160
bag. I mean, there's some
groups are more credible than others, and

330
00:28:45,319 --> 00:28:49,440
one I think has to be careful
to, you know, focus I have

331
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:57,599
to be careful for was my effort
on the more reliable rewarding of the conferences

332
00:28:57,680 --> 00:29:02,519
or so, because there's so many
of them. But for example, I

333
00:29:02,599 --> 00:29:10,960
talked in my article about the famous
abduction conference at MIT that took place in

334
00:29:11,039 --> 00:29:15,119
the nineties. It was extraordinary put
on by David Jacobs and David Pritchard,

335
00:29:15,359 --> 00:29:22,039
and MIT was the shall we say, reluctant host. It did open its

336
00:29:22,079 --> 00:29:26,640
doors to this very prestigious, high
level conference where a lot of papers were

337
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:33,119
presented and the issue was looked at
from various perspectives. So that became its

338
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:37,279
own book by CCB. Bryan,
the great writer who wrote Friendly Fire,

339
00:29:37,599 --> 00:29:42,319
he wrote a book Close Encounters of
the Fourth Kind, just about that conference.

340
00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:48,599
I wish I had attended that Prince
at Harvard, at the Harvard Divinity

341
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:53,039
School. Not open to outsiders,
but a conference of a lot of professionals,

342
00:29:53,519 --> 00:29:59,720
including Mac, to look at this
problem and issue and see what the

343
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:03,960
make of it. So, yes, there are conferences I think that are

344
00:30:03,039 --> 00:30:07,480
very worth attending. You mentioned briefly
a book. Do you have something?

345
00:30:07,519 --> 00:30:11,200
Do you have something in mind?
Do I've been trying for the longest time

346
00:30:11,759 --> 00:30:18,839
to to sell a book on John
Mac. It has not been easy because

347
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:26,680
of the mindset that we were talking
about. There's a lot of hostility I

348
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:30,200
would say more than skepticism, hostility
in the publishing community. Even though books

349
00:30:30,279 --> 00:30:36,799
keep coming out about you know,
UFOs and abduction and movies. For sure,

350
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:47,039
the mainstream publishing community is quite skeptical
or hostile, and Mac was not

351
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:52,599
seen as enough of a figured to
anchor a book. So I've had a

352
00:30:52,599 --> 00:30:56,039
lot of difficulties selling it as an
idea. I think in the end I'll

353
00:30:56,039 --> 00:31:00,599
prevail. I have some interest now, I think I know where I'm going

354
00:31:00,640 --> 00:31:04,559
on it, and I think the
Vanity Fair article really helped show the interest.

355
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:10,240
But it has not been easy.
I bet we're getting near the end

356
00:31:10,279 --> 00:31:14,119
of the show here, have you
had any of these type of experiences or

357
00:31:14,119 --> 00:31:18,799
your family that you're aware of.
No, I've really searched my memory because

358
00:31:18,839 --> 00:31:22,319
a lot of these experiences are deeply
buried, as you know, and often

359
00:31:22,359 --> 00:31:27,119
come out only in connection with something
else. But I can't say i've ever

360
00:31:27,559 --> 00:31:34,599
I have I've never seen a UFO
that I can remember, and I'm glad

361
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:41,839
I have not had these troubling experiences
because I know how people suffer. As

362
00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:45,640
you know, they tend to occur
in families. So if you're grandparents and

363
00:31:45,759 --> 00:31:48,799
parents have had abduction type experiences,
you are more likely too, and that

364
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:52,240
has not been a pattern of my
family. It tends to happen early in

365
00:31:52,279 --> 00:31:57,680
life, not late in life.
So it's as if these beings or whatever

366
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:02,079
they are, are following people from
generations, which might be some kind of

367
00:32:02,119 --> 00:32:06,279
study, but it does seem to
be. That seems to be the pattern.

368
00:32:06,359 --> 00:32:08,880
So in my case, No,
And as I say, from what

369
00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:16,880
I've seen about the deeply traumatic effects, I can't say I'm sorry I have

370
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:22,480
not been singled out or had these
experiences because they're very, very difficult.

371
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:30,839
I've been rereading Whitley Strieber's book and
how he was tortured by his experiences.

372
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:36,240
They're very trouble, you know.
The outs and skeptics are always trying to

373
00:32:36,279 --> 00:32:44,119
make a link between these experiences and
mental illness. Is to the extent these

374
00:32:44,160 --> 00:32:47,519
people are mentally disturbed, it's what's
happened to them as a result of their

375
00:32:47,559 --> 00:32:54,279
experiences. They're not mentally disturbed and
conjuring up these experiences. They're perfectly normal

376
00:32:54,319 --> 00:33:01,079
people until they encounter these inexplicable events, and then they're thrown off center.

377
00:33:01,839 --> 00:33:07,079
As you would, Mac found that
many people hoped to be told that they

378
00:33:07,079 --> 00:33:13,240
were insane way they could deal with
what had happened to them. So when

379
00:33:13,279 --> 00:33:16,519
he gave them the bad news that
they were not crazy, that as other

380
00:33:16,599 --> 00:33:22,599
people have had these same experiences and
there were witnesses and something had happened to

381
00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:28,359
them in some dimension, they were
even more troubled because they lacked any system

382
00:33:28,559 --> 00:33:32,359
for processing that information. Well,
sure is a mysterious phenomenon. It is,

383
00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:36,559
and that's the thing it'll I think
it will remain mysterious for a long

384
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:40,960
time to come. I'm very pessimistic
that we're close to a solution. I

385
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:45,240
think it's just something we're going to
have to keep studying. That's right,

386
00:33:45,559 --> 00:33:49,240
Ralph, you've been amazing. I'm
so glad that you've written this article,

387
00:33:49,359 --> 00:33:52,119
and I hope to see your name
in print a number of times in the

388
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:54,960
future about this well, thank you
so much for having me. It's a

389
00:33:55,000 --> 00:34:00,000
great pleasure. Yes, all right, that was back in May up thirteen,

390
00:34:00,559 --> 00:34:06,039
and this is July twenty ninth,
twenty nineteen. And yes we did

391
00:34:06,079 --> 00:34:09,079
see his name in print again,
and that was the New York Times article

392
00:34:09,119 --> 00:34:15,199
of course, with Leslie Kane back
in December of twenty seventeen. So we're

393
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:20,159
going to be back next week with
a great guest, Rizwan Verke. We're

394
00:34:20,159 --> 00:34:24,840
going to be talking about entrepreneurial ship
and technology, UFOs and a lot more.

395
00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:51,400
Thanks for listening everyone, and remember
to keep your eyes to the sky. Att
