Speaker 1: You're listening to an air wave media podcast.
Speaker 2: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before. A giant,
Speaker 2: hairy creature. Part eight, Part Matt in Luckness, a twenty
Speaker 2: four mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 2: It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 1: Monstert Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 1: I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. Don Prothero returns
Speaker 1: in this episode along with his collaborator Timothy Callahan to
Speaker 1: discuss their new book UFOs kim Trails and Aliens, a
Speaker 1: very skeptical overview of the field of uthology. As I
Speaker 1: mentioned in the interview, UFOs is a topic some people
Speaker 1: get very passionate about, some to the point of religious fervor.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that figuratively. But if you're looking
Speaker 1: for a skeptical overview of a field that's often not
Speaker 1: given a very thoughtful rebuttal from science, I think this
Speaker 1: book may be what you need. A link to it
Speaker 1: will be in the show notes at monster talk dot org.
Speaker 1: I'd like to take longer for this preamble, but I'm
Speaker 1: behind on several projects. I must send this out as
Speaker 1: it is a note about the audio quality. We had
Speaker 1: a lot of challenges getting done and ten together for
Speaker 1: this interview, and ended up having to do the interview
Speaker 1: on landline. Unfortunately, Tim had a bit of a cough
Speaker 1: and I hope he's feeling better now, but I wasn't
Speaker 1: able to remove that cough from the audio because of
Speaker 1: the way everyone was connected. So my apologies, but I
Speaker 1: hope it won't detract too much from what I think
Speaker 1: is a fund an informative conversation. Let's get to some
Speaker 1: more obstrutle today. We're welcoming Donald Protheroe and Timothy Callahan.
Speaker 1: Don is a geologist and paleontologist. He's the author of
Speaker 1: numerous books and scientific papers, including Reality Check, How Science
Speaker 1: Deniers Threaten Our Future and Abominable Science, Origins of Yetti
Speaker 1: NeSSI and other Famous Cryptids. Don's been on the show
Speaker 1: several times, and we're welcoming for the first time Timothy Callahan,
Speaker 1: who is a trained artist and has worked for more
Speaker 1: than twenty years in the animation industry, and throughout his
Speaker 1: life he's also had an active interest in science and
Speaker 1: the study of mythology and religious beliefs, and he is
Speaker 1: the religion editor for Skeptic Magazine, and together they've collaborated
Speaker 1: on a new book called UFOs, kim Trails and Aliens,
Speaker 1: What Science Says. Welcome to Monstratalk.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you, Joy.
Speaker 4: Hi guys. So this is a book that's about a
Speaker 4: lot of fringe topics. But what's the underlying theme that
Speaker 4: unites them all within your book?
Speaker 3: I could say it's probably just that we're trying to
Speaker 3: approach this topic as a very strict scientific manner and
Speaker 3: using the methods of science in a rigorous way too often,
Speaker 3: and you look at books to talk about UFOs, they'll
Speaker 3: sometimes talk about rules of reason and rules of logic
Speaker 3: and rules of scientific evidence, but it's not being explicit
Speaker 3: about it. And so one of the things we laid
Speaker 3: out at the beginning of the book is how scientific
Speaker 3: method works, and what's testable science and what's speculation, and
Speaker 3: how what quality of evidence is required to establish something
Speaker 3: in the scientific community, which is something really necessary because
Speaker 3: so much of what caused evidence for UFOs and aliens
Speaker 3: does not pass muster of scientific evidence.
Speaker 1: So I know that a lot of these themes come
Speaker 1: up on Monster Talk quite a bit, especially with the
Speaker 1: eyewitness accounts, and when things sort of get into the zeitgeist,
Speaker 1: they become spotted. Like go to example we always talk
Speaker 1: about is how Bigfoot really didn't exist as a phenomenon,
Speaker 1: but once it became part of the culture, every mysterious
Speaker 1: animal in the woods was probably a bigfoot. Is that
Speaker 1: true in your findings in the UFO world?
Speaker 3: Yeah, copycat phenomenon going on. It's basically the reality is
Speaker 3: that when you look at the history of these reports,
Speaker 3: they pretty much only date back to the late part
Speaker 3: of the nineteenth century, about the time science fiction arose,
Speaker 3: of course, and they go back of really usuals verns
Speaker 3: in some ways, and before that, if somebody saw something
Speaker 3: strange in the sky, they would call it an angel
Speaker 3: or a demon or some other kind of thing, but
Speaker 3: they wouldn't call it a UFO or an alien. And
Speaker 3: so we really UFOs and aliens are just a recent phenomenon,
Speaker 3: less than a little over a century old, and they
Speaker 3: really reflect the culture that really has sort of got
Speaker 3: given up looking for demons in the guise that we
Speaker 3: look for UFOs. And then there's a long history which
Speaker 3: Tim will I'll probably talk about them. There's a tremendous
Speaker 3: amount of copycatting. Once science fiction or science ficture magazines
Speaker 3: or television or movies introduces a particular alien meme or
Speaker 3: a particular type of spaceship it, it's copycatted and then
Speaker 3: spread through the media to all through the culture, and
Speaker 3: then everybody in that generation pretty much expects to see
Speaker 3: aliens that look like So for example, ah u Well's
Speaker 3: original aliens in the War of the Worlds looked more
Speaker 3: like octopuses or spiders, and that was maybe their earliest
Speaker 3: meme we know of from science fiction. But of course
Speaker 3: the little gray aliens we now associated well Steven Spielberg
Speaker 3: movies come from a much more recent generation. Tim you
Speaker 3: could talk about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the gray aliens probably has their origin in the
Speaker 2: episode of Outer Limits called the Balero Shield. And it
Speaker 2: was only after seeing this that Barney Hill realized the
Speaker 2: aliens were these gray aliens that before then his wife
Speaker 2: had nightmares that he had nightmares that were the aliens
Speaker 2: who abducted them, had the kind of bluish lips, dark hair,
Speaker 2: and Jimmy Duranty type noses. And then the Reptilians don't
Speaker 2: really appear until after the TV series V came on
Speaker 2: and the idea of them being shape shifting can be
Speaker 2: traced to that too, since they were mass grading as humans.
Speaker 2: I think we can probably track the Nordic aliens back
Speaker 2: to Klatu in the nineteen fifty one movie The Days
Speaker 2: is Still, where Michael Ronny is this benevolent and you know,
Speaker 2: very human looking alien.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that actually happens so often in our kind of
Speaker 1: area of concern for monsters. I've started calling them scripteds
Speaker 1: because they seem to come out of movie script Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what inspired you guys to collaborate on this book?
Speaker 2: Though?
Speaker 3: It was it was sort of a funny thing. I've
Speaker 3: just done that book, as you know, on Bigfoot and
Speaker 3: Nassy and the rest of the cryptosoology culture with Daniel Loxton,
Speaker 3: and then, you know, I've been thinking about it for
Speaker 3: a while and realized that we pretty much approach this
Speaker 3: same topic, the UFO topic, the same way we did
Speaker 3: with crypt zoology, and so I knew I could write
Speaker 3: in parts of it, but I really didn't feel I
Speaker 3: had the expertise and so many of its gigantic literature
Speaker 3: out there, and so many many different stories and places
Speaker 3: you can read the debunking of individual stories, but not
Speaker 3: all in one place, but Tim had done this for
Speaker 3: a lot of years, was Skepting magazine and actually written
Speaker 3: about a number of the more famous UFO hoaxes and
Speaker 3: other types of things which aren't really what they claim
Speaker 3: to be. So then I talked to Tim about it,
Speaker 3: and that's how we ended up collaborating. Then I went
Speaker 3: to Indiana. I ended up liking the idea the best
Speaker 3: and gave us a contract.
Speaker 4: You started the book with an introduction into the scientific method,
Speaker 4: and there's a brief look at logic, reason, critical thinking,
Speaker 4: Popper's falsifiability ideas. So is there some kind of problem
Speaker 4: with basic science literacy?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that was something that I felt was necessary
Speaker 3: because you really can't assume science literacy and almost any
Speaker 3: reading American anymore so much it's been you know, just
Speaker 3: assume them. It's not really there. And especially because you know,
Speaker 3: even people who are relatively literate and other topics and
Speaker 3: may not understand science very well because it isn't explain
Speaker 3: very clearly even in school level. And so you really
Speaker 3: have to spell out a lot of these things that
Speaker 3: are that are really way real sciences operate, because most
Speaker 3: people operate with this idea of science and scientists as
Speaker 3: there's stereotypes that they get from media, especially the white
Speaker 3: lab code and the frizzy right hair and the mad
Speaker 3: scientist stereotype, right down to the sparking vandigraph generators and
Speaker 3: the you know, bubbling beakers. That's the stereotype that we
Speaker 3: live with all the time, and most non scientists often
Speaker 3: think of scientists that way.
Speaker 2: There's also a tendency for them to say, well, here's
Speaker 2: a strange thing. You used to explain it, and they
Speaker 2: get it backwards around but that if we can't explain something,
Speaker 2: then it must be UFOs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's something we're you know, over and over again
Speaker 3: in the book Unexplained is not necessarily unexplainable and the
Speaker 3: nature of scientists that are always being an unexplained area
Speaker 3: that's on the fringe of what we've so far explained.
Speaker 3: In most cases we end up finding out what that
Speaker 3: is and explaining it. But even if we don't, we
Speaker 3: don't resort to anything paranormal as a comp out. It's
Speaker 3: always if it's not explained, it's just in the unexplained category.
Speaker 3: And that's basically and it implies into a top topic UFO.
Speaker 3: It's unidentified flying object does not necessarily mean it's unidentify
Speaker 3: a bull or it never will be identified. It's only
Speaker 3: unidentified at the time it was first seen, and people
Speaker 3: forget that's what UFO really stands for.
Speaker 1: That's I think a problem in all these Fringey forty
Speaker 1: n paranormal type fields is that so much of it
Speaker 1: comes down to an argument from ignorance. We don't know. Therefore,
Speaker 1: it's this which is really kind of a peculiar construct,
Speaker 1: yet it's universal in these fields of study, or seems
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's very true because we as you know, as
Speaker 3: human beings, we like to have answers even when there
Speaker 3: are none. And if we don't have an answer or
Speaker 3: we don't have a simple explanation for us something, we'll
Speaker 3: create it. It's very much human nature to do that.
Speaker 3: That's what mythology is based on, and so much else
Speaker 3: is based on as well. When you don't understand something,
Speaker 3: you don't have an answer, you create an answer, and
Speaker 3: that's the mythologizing of the cryptids has been that way
Speaker 3: for a long time, and really almost exactly the same way.
Speaker 3: The mythologizing of UFOs and aliens works the same way.
Speaker 3: And as Tim and I've talked about before in other interviews. Really,
Speaker 3: what this amounts to is the twentieth centuries version of
Speaker 3: creation myths and the religion of the scientific world, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, when science takes away a lot of our
Speaker 3: other gods, that we have put the UFOs and aliens
Speaker 3: in their place instead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems to be consistent with just myth making
Speaker 1: in general. And I think you actually covered that pretty
Speaker 1: specifically in there and talked about the Roswell effect.
Speaker 3: I think that was right, were you, Yeah, they call
Speaker 3: it the Roswell effect, right, Yeah, the Roswell incident is
Speaker 3: thoroughly debunked in every sense. S itce been so for
Speaker 3: a long time. But what the reality happened is that
Speaker 3: it's gotten so thoroughly built up by the fringe media,
Speaker 3: especially these late night cable shows and all this UFO literature,
Speaker 3: that people have to believe that there's something there, just
Speaker 3: because it's talked about so often, even though it's in
Speaker 3: fact the flimsiest case in the entire UFO literature. And
Speaker 3: I to SRA how flimsay was in ninety forty seven
Speaker 3: when it supposedly occurred, it was not even listed among
Speaker 3: the events that were thought to be mysterious UFO events
Speaker 3: of that year, because it was already been debunked and
Speaker 3: on to you with Forgotten and then what stay Forgotten
Speaker 3: for nearly thirty years until it was resurrected in the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies by UFO researchers.
Speaker 1: It's peculiar to me because that pattern of having the
Speaker 1: story like it's basically not that complicated of a story,
Speaker 1: but it keeps growing and growing and growing. So and
Speaker 1: I think we've talked about that a lot on here
Speaker 1: about other monstratories, but the idea that it's one of
Speaker 1: the signs that you may be dealing with myth making
Speaker 1: is that the details keep getting more and more detailed
Speaker 1: as time goes by, and more and more it just
Speaker 1: keeps expanding, and so it literally follows a folklore pattern
Speaker 1: there and the way that it gets passed around and
Speaker 1: expanded upon. So I really like the way that you
Speaker 1: talked about that. And now you did go into quite
Speaker 1: a few cases within this book, and it's been my
Speaker 1: experience that much like with monsters, the UFOs and alien
Speaker 1: stories have grown these followings of people who are super
Speaker 1: interested in the details of particular cases. Did you find
Speaker 1: it intimidating at all, knowing that if you're going to
Speaker 1: try to do a general book, you're definitely going to
Speaker 1: disappoint some people who were experts that have devoted their
Speaker 1: life to one case or another.
Speaker 2: They're going to happen. That's going to happen. It's and
Speaker 2: there's a kind of a fish story quality to these narratives.
Speaker 2: By the way, want to have the randals from Forest accident.
Speaker 2: The initial statement of Sergeant Peniston was that he got
Speaker 2: within thirty meters of the object, and then later on
Speaker 2: he actually got up and touched it, and then after
Speaker 2: that he was getting messages from it. And then a
Speaker 2: few years down the line he decided wasn't the spaceship
Speaker 2: after all, it was a time traveling craft in the future,
Speaker 2: and there was telepathically giving him binary code which he
Speaker 2: wrote down in books, you know, long books. It's very strange.
Speaker 2: And now people do get indignant when you attack and
Speaker 2: how dare you say this thing? And prickly with Varney
Speaker 2: and Betty Hill, you know there is and again it's
Speaker 2: one of those things that when you investigate it further.
Speaker 2: You investigated the Moor in Unravels.
Speaker 3: It was also on the the Rosal story, the major
Speaker 3: awitness who actually was witness. Almost everybody else that's in
Speaker 3: the UFO literature was never at the scene and did
Speaker 3: not report anything, but Major Marcel Jesse Marcel was a witness,
Speaker 3: and he was by the time the UFO researchers approached
Speaker 3: him in nineteen seventies of seventy seven, I think it
Speaker 3: was already thirty years since the incident. He'd been out
Speaker 3: of the military for a long time. He was working
Speaker 3: as a TV repairman and not making very much money.
Speaker 3: And then long come all his UFO researchers who want
Speaker 3: his story, and the more he embellishes it, the more
Speaker 3: they pay him. And so every version of his story
Speaker 3: of what happened the Area fifty one has changed and
Speaker 3: gets more and more elaborate as he supposedly remembers more
Speaker 3: details that he can then supply for these people who
Speaker 3: make these books and documentaries about Area fifty one. So
Speaker 3: it was not Area fifty one, excuse me, Roswell's. So
Speaker 3: it was a classic case of you know, you know,
Speaker 3: somehow the money enhances memory.
Speaker 4: So before we dig into a couple of particular cases
Speaker 4: in the book, you also talk about patentnicity and issues
Speaker 4: with observations and the fallibility of human perception. So do
Speaker 4: people overestimate the powers of observation and memory.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's very much the case, and that's pretty much
Speaker 3: the central case, even more so than for cryptozoology, but
Speaker 3: for UFOs, virtually the entire field rests, and with a
Speaker 3: couple of exceptions, entirely on eyewitnessed evidence in supposedly what
Speaker 3: humans have seen or heard or experienced, And so we
Speaker 3: have to tack that very directly, and one of the
Speaker 3: things we do right at the beginning the book, we
Speaker 3: have a little anecdote that opens the story, which is
Speaker 3: a famous hoax from nineteen oh nine by a hoax
Speaker 3: of the name of Wallace Tillingast, and this is through
Speaker 3: six years after the Wright brothers had flown. He claimed
Speaker 3: he had an aircraft that could fly at night, could
Speaker 3: fly at higher elevations, could fly for hours, and all
Speaker 3: these other things, and he was going to be trying
Speaker 3: to enter in an air competition in order to prevent
Speaker 3: anyone from stealing his ideas. He was orderly to fly
Speaker 3: at night, and therefore you couldn't see him do it
Speaker 3: in the daytime, and so that was planted. Also the
Speaker 3: media in New England at that time, in the lay
Speaker 3: fall of nineteen oh nine, and it wasn't you know,
Speaker 3: it was absurd to look at it now, but it
Speaker 3: was just a couple of steps ahead the technology the
Speaker 3: Wright brothers and Glenn Curtis had in nineteen nine. They
Speaker 3: had aircraft. They weren't quite able to do it that yet,
Speaker 3: but he claimed he did. And so for the next
Speaker 3: few nights after it appeared in the media, or fifty
Speaker 3: thousand people claimed they heard and saw his aircraft flying
Speaker 3: above them at night, and they claimed they saw a
Speaker 3: fly around the Statue of Liberty. They saw it in Boston,
Speaker 3: they saw it. All of these coasted at the same time,
Speaker 3: and night after night after night. This kept happening because
Speaker 3: the media kept feeding the frenzy until right before Christmas
Speaker 3: Eve nineteen oh nine, and then it was exposed and
Speaker 3: the entire oaks collapsed. And so the object lesson there
Speaker 3: is that fifty thousand people can be wrong. They can, all,
Speaker 3: because of media conditioning, believe they heard and saw something
Speaker 3: we now know was not there. And so in the
Speaker 3: book we lay out very clearly why you eyewitness evidence
Speaker 3: is pretty much the worst possible evidence from a scientific standpoint,
Speaker 3: and that it's so easily distorted, it's so easily influenced.
Speaker 3: The studies of people like Elizabeth Loftus and other psychologists
Speaker 3: have shown that humans are terrible video recorders. We remember
Speaker 3: things wrong, we put in details that didn't happen. After
Speaker 3: the time that lapses, our memories change, and we had
Speaker 3: or subtract details. And the whole idea of I was
Speaker 3: his testimony has shown that bridges you can't trust anything
Speaker 3: human see, even multiple humans, because fifty thousand people were
Speaker 3: wrong and about the New England air ship hooks, and
Speaker 3: so that pretty much did derail the entire UFO community
Speaker 3: right there, that they can't believe by witness evidence. They
Speaker 3: don't have much left. When I did this talk in
Speaker 3: front of a bunch of UFO believers a few months
Speaker 3: ago when the book first came out, that's one of
Speaker 3: the first things I did, and the guy was stunned.
Speaker 3: He didn't have anything to say because everything he wanted
Speaker 3: to talk about was was based on eyewitness testimony.
Speaker 2: Another another classic case of that, as the case of
Speaker 2: the Phoenix lights. We're very normal, ordinary people swear they
Speaker 2: saw this formation of lights and a V shape formation.
Speaker 2: The lights on the leading winning edge of this wing
Speaker 2: going over slowly over Phoenix, blotting out the stars. And
Speaker 2: you know, lots of people saw. Fortunately some people took
Speaker 2: videos of it, but the video camera does not show that.
Speaker 2: It shows lights hovering over the horizon, coming on one
Speaker 2: at a time, forming eventually a line, and then winking
Speaker 2: off one a time, exactly like what you would expect,
Speaker 2: which was the Air Force's explanation that they had dropped
Speaker 2: military flares on parachutes. And these aren't These aren't coops,
Speaker 2: these aren't Charlatans, These are just ordinary folks. We have
Speaker 2: a tendency to tell ourselves stories. The fact is our
Speaker 2: perception is our brain putting together all kinds of stuff
Speaker 2: to tell a story, you know, even you know vision
Speaker 2: for example.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's even a better sample of this
Speaker 3: pattern seeking, which of course is that humans of course
Speaker 3: are conditioned to recognize faces first and foremost among almost
Speaker 3: any pattern we can see. And there's a famous hoax
Speaker 3: where on the very first Viking missions it flew over Mars,
Speaker 3: took this very low resolution image of the Martian surface
Speaker 3: of the course of the sunlight coming into low angle,
Speaker 3: so made fairly large shadows of a hill, and you know,
Speaker 3: it sort of has two little spots and a cross
Speaker 3: line across the hill that if you stared at a moment,
Speaker 3: it's so like a simple cartoon of a face. And
Speaker 3: this con man made a living out of claiming the
Speaker 3: Martians had carved this face into the surface so we
Speaker 3: could see it, and that this is a real evidence
Speaker 3: of life on Mars. And it kept going and he
Speaker 3: made tons of money if all these people who agree
Speaker 3: with him, it looked like a face until the next
Speaker 3: mission to Mars went over, and of course the shot
Speaker 3: of the same hill from a higher resolution at a
Speaker 3: different sun angle, and it doesn't look anything like a face.
Speaker 3: And then the third time over, of course the details
Speaker 3: are even more clear, and it's clear with just just
Speaker 3: a accident of lighting and the low resolution that image
Speaker 3: the first time it was seen, and our tendency to
Speaker 3: see faces when there are none.
Speaker 1: They've adapted that story, and I believe current claims are
Speaker 1: that the what NASA nuked the monuments of Mars. I believe.
Speaker 2: So you know that's.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't want to.
Speaker 3: I guess we have robots on Mars now that aren't
Speaker 3: finding anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I wish it were true. I mean, I
Speaker 1: wish there were colonies on Mars or ancient ruins on Mars,
Speaker 1: and you know, and that would just be wonderful. It
Speaker 1: doesn't look like the geology and the evidence supports that,
Speaker 1: but even microbial life would be a really great fine
Speaker 1: And I think we'll get to some of those things,
Speaker 1: I think as we go through these topics. But what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do is kind of give people an
Speaker 1: idea of what's in your book without like spoiling it.
Speaker 1: So I think we're getting there. I do want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Area fifty one, but it
Speaker 1: seems like it's got a lot of different names, and
Speaker 1: I was hoping maybe you could help us clarify what
Speaker 1: should we be calling that place.
Speaker 3: You still call it Area fifty one. The story behind
Speaker 3: that is that right after World War II was over,
Speaker 3: Lockey was starting to build a big spy planes that
Speaker 3: were designed the course to be flown a real high
Speaker 3: elevation above Soviet missile and radar they thought, and the
Speaker 3: air stir planes at the time. And so they were
Speaker 3: looking for in a really isolated airstrip that they could
Speaker 3: use to build to test these planes. They were, you know,
Speaker 3: at the time, they were still testing Edward's Air Force
Speaker 3: Base down here in Los Angeles County, but there was
Speaker 3: too many prying eyes down here. So the Kelly Johnson,
Speaker 3: the chief engineer for Lockheed, was one of the people
Speaker 3: who took these flights and they flew out of all
Speaker 3: all this territory and so the Nevada it's adjacent to
Speaker 3: the Nevada Test Site where of course they were testing
Speaker 3: nukes at the time, and the ls Air Force Base,
Speaker 3: which is where they have the most of their bombing
Speaker 3: runs that area, and they found a strip which is
Speaker 3: called Groom Lake. It's a natural sort of air strip
Speaker 3: that they developed off or dry light, very much like
Speaker 3: Edwards wasn' when it was first developed, and it was
Speaker 3: perfect for their purpose. It's because not only was it
Speaker 3: an airstrip in the middle of nowhere, but it also
Speaker 3: had no place where you could see it from ground level.
Speaker 3: It was surrounded by mountains on all sides, so there's
Speaker 3: no way prying eyes and outside the bays could see it.
Speaker 3: The only way you could see it at the time
Speaker 3: was to fly over it, and of course they had fighter
Speaker 3: jets protecting you from flying and restricted areas. Of course,
Speaker 3: today now thanks to satellites, anybody can just type area
Speaker 3: fifty one into a Google search, you know, for Google Maps,
Speaker 3: and you can see it instantly, so one of the
Speaker 3: first hits you'll get. But at the time it was
Speaker 3: very well protected by no prying eyes to see it
Speaker 3: at any point. And once they got that it had
Speaker 3: different names depending upon where there was Air Force, the
Speaker 3: CIA you're talking to, they gave you nicknames like Paradise
Speaker 3: Ranch and things like that, and that was mostly to
Speaker 3: make the various employees of Lockheed and the Air Force
Speaker 3: feel like you were less punished than they were for
Speaker 3: living in the middle of a hell of Nevada desert
Speaker 3: with nothing for miles, and so they called it Paradise
Speaker 3: Ran to sell it to the people who had to
Speaker 3: be stuck out there. And then it basically, you know,
Speaker 3: kept on doing its purpose, which is threat to the
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties and sixties, it was top secret. No nobody
Speaker 3: was abowted to know about it except those who were
Speaker 3: on the innermost circle. And they tested first the U
Speaker 3: two spike plane, of course, the famous one that shot
Speaker 3: down n the Nrussia and Gary Powers on at the time.
Speaker 3: After that they developed the A twelve, which became the
Speaker 3: SR seven one Blackbird, which was so high so it
Speaker 3: flew ad ninety thousand feet at Mock two or Mock three,
Speaker 3: that no Soviet plane or Soviet missile or anybody could
Speaker 3: reach it. It just was completely untouchable. And they flew
Speaker 3: up there for a very long time, and then eventually
Speaker 3: they started using the base to test the Stealth Fighter,
Speaker 3: which was also developed there as well. And all those projects,
Speaker 3: of course were top secret until they eventually were, you know,
Speaker 3: somehow leaked out one way or another. And during the
Speaker 3: time they did this, of course, there were these very
Speaker 3: strange shaped aircraft with very strange lights on them. In
Speaker 3: the case of the Blackbird, those things flew over j
Speaker 3: liners at forty thousand feet and zipped past them, way
Speaker 3: above the jetliners. So they've actually explained a lot of
Speaker 3: the UFO sidings from that time in that place where
Speaker 3: basically these spyplanes higher than any normal passenger aircraft, flying
Speaker 3: very fast and looking very strange, especially if they like
Speaker 3: it them at a funny anger because they have weird
Speaker 3: shapes compared to any aircrafts that're familiar. So high percentage
Speaker 3: of the UFO sidings in that area, we're all from
Speaker 3: these biplanes that were just secret at the time. Plus,
Speaker 3: the Air Force and the CIA had an incentive to
Speaker 3: create the story about you aliens being kept there because
Speaker 3: that kept people off the real story. It's a great cover,
Speaker 3: you know. They don't want to just disavow that kind
Speaker 3: of thing because it leaves them a chance to people
Speaker 3: look in the wrong directions. They're magicians, strict a misdirection.
Speaker 3: But the whole thing was finally released. The CIA and
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen, thanks of Freedom Information Act, released almost everything
Speaker 3: that was ever done at Air fifty one. Now there
Speaker 3: are no secrets left there, and this point that maybe
Speaker 3: current aircraft that remained top secret bay still has top security.
Speaker 3: And the thing that really clinches it is not just
Speaker 3: that the Air Force and the CIA released everything, but
Speaker 3: also that the people who worked there have all come
Speaker 3: out pretty much now that they've been released, to their
Speaker 3: vows of secrecy, and they've all talked about a group
Speaker 3: of men called the Roadrunners. They're mostly lockeed engineers and
Speaker 3: Lockey pilots and people like that who did this work
Speaker 3: for the Air Force and the CIA, one of whom
Speaker 3: was my father, Clifford Protero. He worked for lockeed his
Speaker 3: entire career starting in the nineteen thirties. He retired in
Speaker 3: ninety seventy six or seventy seven, and he was at
Speaker 3: the head of taking illustration by the time he finished,
Speaker 3: and so he had top seri de clearance. And several
Speaker 3: times I remember when I was younger, he would disappear
Speaker 3: for a week and we're not allowed to ask where
Speaker 3: he was going. And then when he retired and long
Speaker 3: after he was released clear of talk about this. And
Speaker 3: I think we were watching a UFO show on some
Speaker 3: cable channel late at night, you know, when I was
Speaker 3: visiting my parents, and he was laving his head off
Speaker 3: because he said, oh, I was at Area fifty one
Speaker 3: that time, and there's nothing like that going.
Speaker 2: On at all.
Speaker 3: And that's what the older other roadrunners say as well.
Speaker 3: So it's pretty well documented. It's all entire the mythology
Speaker 3: that the secrecy created, and of course the Air Force
Speaker 3: and SAA were happy to loud to continue.
Speaker 4: You've got a very nice chapter in the book where
Speaker 4: you do detail this and you talk about Area fifty
Speaker 4: one and what's really going on there right.
Speaker 3: Right, And we actually led a skeptic society field tripped
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago in the winter time to
Speaker 3: go as close to Area fifty one as the roads allow.
Speaker 3: You know, you can't go past the security checkpoint, but
Speaker 3: we did that for the skeptic side. And there's a
Speaker 3: very funny little institution called the Alien. Little Alien on
Speaker 3: the north side of the base near Rachel Nevada, which
Speaker 3: is just a little tiny watering hole with this restaurant
Speaker 3: and motel and handful of trailer houses is all it is.
Speaker 3: And they have this amazing displays on the inside where
Speaker 3: all this UFO stuff is on the walls, and movies
Speaker 3: that film out there. Often you go a little Alien
Speaker 3: and some of them are actually used Alien in the movie.
Speaker 3: That's so legendary place and anyway, so we did an
Speaker 3: Area fifty one trip there a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: I went to Las Vegas two years ago, maybe last
Speaker 1: year for Christmas with my company and they gave us
Speaker 1: like some adventure money to go out and do different things.
Speaker 1: That was two years ago, and we went to My
Speaker 1: wife and I took off straight from the airport and
Speaker 1: hopped in a rental car and drove up to Rachel
Speaker 1: h to go check it out.
Speaker 3: Place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a long drive. Yeah, but it is, and
Speaker 1: there's really nothing there. It's like a trailer park with
Speaker 1: a gift shop. But I do love all the crap
Speaker 1: I bought. I've got t shirts and mugs and oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, I'm wearing one of mine right now.
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, they have for some reason
Speaker 3: all these dollar bills stable to the ceiling right above
Speaker 3: the bar. I don't know what the story behind that was.
Speaker 3: In out front, they have a old satellite dish that's
Speaker 3: glued to some other satellite dish and then hanging from
Speaker 3: the end of a tow truck cable and that's their
Speaker 3: their flying saucers.
Speaker 1: So so you do mention the anti Jacobsen's Area for
Speaker 1: Human book and give a really brief summary but kind
Speaker 1: of a takedown on it too. So you mentioned that
Speaker 1: because that was a very popular book when it came out,
Speaker 1: but I was a little I was a little annoyed
Speaker 1: by it.
Speaker 3: So Tim and I were both there when she defended
Speaker 3: her book in front of Skeptics Society back when it
Speaker 3: still met in Pasadena at Caltech, And so there were
Speaker 3: four hundred and five hundred people that the room was packed,
Speaker 3: and she basically, you know, spent nine percent of time,
Speaker 3: as she does in the book, just giving them more
Speaker 3: or less mundane details of all this kind of spycraft
Speaker 3: that were going on at the time. All it was
Speaker 3: just stuff she got right out of the files that
Speaker 3: were released from the Freedom Information Act. Whence this thing
Speaker 3: how open There was a book there, and so most
Speaker 3: of that was not that really controversial, and she wouldn't
Speaker 3: probably sold that many copies if she just reported that only.
Speaker 3: But at the very end of her book, this is
Speaker 3: the hooker that she got to get the media's attention.
Speaker 3: She made this sort of ridiculous claim that she'd talked
Speaker 3: to one of the road runners, one of the people
Speaker 3: who had worked there, and of course gave no names,
Speaker 3: and said this person had claimed that, in fact, there
Speaker 3: was a spacecraft and an alien body at Area fifty
Speaker 3: one which had come from Roswell and even to make
Speaker 3: a stranger and apparently, according to her story, this person
Speaker 3: claimed this person was a mute that was developed by
Speaker 3: the Nazis during the end of World War War U
Speaker 3: two and had all these strange features because they'd genetically
Speaker 3: altered it or whatever, which is sort of the real
Speaker 3: extreme of crazy, and then it had been covered up
Speaker 3: because it had flown through the spacecraft that had crashed
Speaker 3: at Roswell. So she managed to tie Roswald eight or
Speaker 3: Area fifty one and then had Nazis the whole story.
Speaker 3: So that was guaranteed to get the press attention, and
Speaker 3: if you read all of the listens, you got that
Speaker 3: time virtually all only thing that any of the reporters
Speaker 3: ever talked about was this one ridiculous story that she
Speaker 3: talked about, and of course, the minute she finished explaining this,
Speaker 3: the skeptical audience we were a part of just touring
Speaker 3: apart because you know, most everything else she reported now
Speaker 3: has been corroborated by multiple witnesses. It's not in the
Speaker 3: actual air verse reports, it's in various word runners reports.
Speaker 3: But this one was only one witness, and we're all saying, well,
Speaker 3: could it have been that he maybe he was seen now,
Speaker 3: could it have been he was pulling your leg? But
Speaker 3: she's still reported with a straight face, which I think
Speaker 3: she was laughing all the way to the bank at
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 4: So in your book you talk about some of the
Speaker 4: issues with the various types of encounters. So for a
Speaker 4: little while we'd like to discuss some of those. But first,
Speaker 4: what are those encounter types and where did they come from?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the different scales Heinich scales, Yeah, yeah, And essentially
Speaker 2: the close encounters of the first kind are just that
Speaker 2: you were within I guess fifty meters of a UFO.
Speaker 2: The second kind is that you've got some kind of
Speaker 2: physical evidence it was like the good old Bob White artifact.
Speaker 2: Third one is that you've actually met with the and
Speaker 2: the fourth kind is if you've been abducted by them.
Speaker 2: And we have a chapter on each of those kinds
Speaker 2: of encounters. So it's prettily interesting. Again when you look
Speaker 2: into the find stuff that's quite interesting but not really extraterrestrial,
Speaker 2: like the Bob White artifact, which turns out to be
Speaker 2: a stalactite forms on the inside of large stationary grinders
Speaker 2: when bits of metal that are molten and been ground
Speaker 2: off get stuck together and this thing goes. It looks
Speaker 2: very organic.
Speaker 1: So what is a close encounter of the first kind.
Speaker 2: Well, you have to get within, like I say, within
Speaker 2: I guess it's fifty meters of the ship. Maybe you
Speaker 2: see an alien or you see a ship, but you
Speaker 2: haven't got physical evidence and you don't have you haven't
Speaker 2: talked to them exactly, you've just seen them. That would
Speaker 2: be the first kind. See.
Speaker 1: The second kind is that's the where there's some kind
Speaker 1: of physical evidence, right.
Speaker 2: Physical, Yeah, And we go through that in different Some
Speaker 2: have very interesting explanations, like the Adelphos ring in canvas
Speaker 2: that these people saw something and afterwards found this glowing
Speaker 2: ring and uh the woman in the family touched it
Speaker 2: in their hand went numb. It all sounds very spooky.
Speaker 2: It turns out it's armor. Really a I'm gonna mess
Speaker 2: this arm armelia anyway. It's the fun, hilarious armilarious Yeah,
Speaker 2: that has that is bioluminescence and also produces oxalic acid
Speaker 2: as a by product, and if you touch it, it's
Speaker 2: an irritant and either cause you pain or cause the
Speaker 2: skin to go numb. And so you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: a lot of things where people don't know some obscure
Speaker 2: bit of science like not to many people know about
Speaker 2: by all themcent fungi. And so when they encounter this, uh,
Speaker 2: which which will grow fung they go out in a ring.
Speaker 2: They come from a central point and my celia go
Speaker 2: out and then die off in the center and the
Speaker 2: rain keeps expanding. Uh. Some people don't know about this.
Speaker 2: Then they see something odd that they may have seen
Speaker 2: ball lightning above it. It's possible, and you know, then
Speaker 2: there's this belief that's a it's a UFO.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you could also put crop circles in the
Speaker 3: category of physical evidence that's supposedly left behind by aliens.
Speaker 3: And the irony on cross circles, of course, is that
Speaker 3: they have very simple explanation. Almost every one of them
Speaker 3: has been acknowledged.
Speaker 2: Toby A.
Speaker 3: Oaks, you know that they all It takes a clever
Speaker 3: hoaxer with a board and a rope and a steak,
Speaker 3: and they can make all sorts of interesting patterns in
Speaker 3: any kind of crop you like, and done over and
Speaker 3: over again, and confessed by his a hoax over and
Speaker 3: over again. Yeah, there's still lots of people who take
Speaker 3: this seriously. And it's to me it's the limits of
Speaker 3: absurdity that someone imagined something would travel across these giganticular
Speaker 3: style distances only just to drop patterns in our crops
Speaker 3: and then leave without contacting us.
Speaker 2: There was another hoax where a guy sort of film
Speaker 2: of us light buzzing over it. And then forming a
Speaker 2: crop circle, and he and he saying, oh, why look
Speaker 2: at that, you know, very breathlessly, And then he did
Speaker 2: this to show how he it with hoax, because he said,
Speaker 2: I did this as a hoax, and here's how I
Speaker 2: did it, and he you know, did it with a
Speaker 2: you know, in the computer and stuff, and people's one
Speaker 2: one of the crop circle enthusiasts said, no, no, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's obviously real, as real as light was creating
Speaker 2: this crop circle with the UFO, and so Away has
Speaker 2: attempt to debunk this only heightened the belief of the believers.
Speaker 1: Hey, I know one section in the book, you go
Speaker 1: through quite a few of the alleged alien skulls or
Speaker 1: alien hybrid skulls, and it seemed like every one of
Speaker 1: them had a very good natural explanation. Don did your
Speaker 1: paleontology background come in handy and going through those.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh I had. Most of those were done by Tim.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, Tim was debunk a lot of them, mostly human
Speaker 3: skulls that have been deformed by being put in the
Speaker 3: cradle board and things like that, or various other sources.
Speaker 3: But the one that we were running into, we'd stumble
Speaker 3: onto this on the Internet, and it was claim that
Speaker 3: they had an alien skull from this place I guess
Speaker 3: in Romania, which they shows up on the internet over
Speaker 3: and over again as this supposed alien skull and hang on,
Speaker 3: the name escapes me. Now hang on here, that's right, Rudope,
Speaker 3: it's in the Romania. And the minute I saw this
Speaker 3: on an Internet, I said, what the heck, that's not
Speaker 3: a skull, you know, and not the way they oriented it.
Speaker 3: And I looked at it closer for the pictures of it,
Speaker 3: and it's a broken back half of a animal skull
Speaker 3: and it's probably either a calf or maybe a goat,
Speaker 3: and that's all there is to it. And if you
Speaker 3: know your your animal anatomy, you can see, well, they
Speaker 3: broke the snout off, that's all. So you're looking at
Speaker 3: the various cavities on the inside of the skull, and
Speaker 3: the sinus regions and the ethmoid regions that's what they're
Speaker 3: calling it, the eye sockets and all these other things
Speaker 3: they just show they don't know any anatomy. And so
Speaker 3: I got together with a Russian colleague of mine who
Speaker 3: was much closer to the sources and also really good
Speaker 3: in panetologists and he helped me get a bunch of
Speaker 3: images of a you know, he took a cowskull out
Speaker 3: and cut it up, and he shows you can just
Speaker 3: slice right through it a certain way you'll get exactly
Speaker 3: the same as the road to be skull. Then the
Speaker 3: second one that was on this almost same the same
Speaker 3: websites is one. There's another one that comes from the
Speaker 3: Cocus Mountains of Russia, and again it's claiming to be
Speaker 3: this alien skull, but if you look at it closer,
Speaker 3: you know your animal anatomy, it's just the back of
Speaker 3: the riskull of a mountain ibex of some kind. Because
Speaker 3: you can tell what's playing to be eye sockets, it's
Speaker 3: actually the basis of the horns. So it's just plain
Speaker 3: anatomical incompetence that you see. And then of course they
Speaker 3: power the internet to blow these images up, and of
Speaker 3: course both of them, well one of it may still exist,
Speaker 3: but the Rhodopey skull is claim to be lost, so
Speaker 3: there's no way ever to find out exactly what it
Speaker 3: really was, a.
Speaker 2: Lot of them, like the pealine skull, also as a
Speaker 2: mystery as they lost and the the height or depth
Speaker 2: of scientific literacy is evident when They refer to the
Speaker 2: something as part of the r Opius skull as the
Speaker 2: mouth hole. Yeah, so you know you don't have a
Speaker 2: mouth hole, you have a job on it.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was maybe just in college, we
Speaker 1: found a cow pelvis, uh that it was. It was
Speaker 1: all bleached and it made a really nice mask. We
Speaker 1: called it the butt head because he really all kinds
Speaker 1: of different different parts of a skeleton can look face like.
Speaker 1: You know, we've already have that tendency to find faces,
Speaker 1: and if you don't have the whole skeleton, it's easy
Speaker 1: to assume that parts are you know, used for different things.
Speaker 1: It goes back to the cyclops and the elephant skull,
Speaker 1: that the nasal cavity being presumed to be a giant
Speaker 1: single eyehole, that sort of thing. So the history of
Speaker 1: monsters and rotten animals is is long and deep.
Speaker 2: Ironically ironically, uh, we're not talking about a level of
Speaker 2: civilization here. I've got a great book on that was
Speaker 2: the Smithsonian Institution book, and I talked about this fossil
Speaker 2: hunter at one point where he is bringing up the
Speaker 2: fossil of a three toed horse and a Sioux Indian.
Speaker 2: This is not too long after the battle Little Big Horn,
Speaker 2: and they were newly on the reservation. This so Indian
Speaker 2: came up and looked at him, scrutinized that, and he
Speaker 2: kept on working all the guys, and suddenly the guy said,
Speaker 2: in the language of the Lakota little horse. You know,
Speaker 2: as he was, he had a sophisticated knowledge of comparative anatomy,
Speaker 2: because they've seen a lot of skeletons that he could
Speaker 2: tell this is a this three toed horse, which is
Speaker 2: very much smaller than owners, was actually a horse. And
Speaker 2: you know, probably this guy had been around and seeing
Speaker 2: the Rhodopi skull. He's oh back end of a cow skulls.
Speaker 3: Only asked Westerners that are so illiterate about anatomy. That's
Speaker 3: more crimtive people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, another fun part of the book is where you
Speaker 4: cover several prominent contactees.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: So that's the chapter on the third kind. So, would
Speaker 4: you like to talk a little bit about some of
Speaker 4: the patents that you've observed within this group of people.
Speaker 3: Good Jim, that's yours.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, I'm trying to think which we're talking about,
Speaker 2: like Georgia Damski and some of the others like Noah, Well, Uh,
Speaker 2: they quite often uh form a little cult around themselves.
Speaker 2: They uh. Georgia Damski uh led some people out of
Speaker 2: the desert and he talked about somebody, a doctor Williamson,
Speaker 2: And turns out the guy was not a doctor, uh
Speaker 2: a doctor of erny sort uh. And all these people
Speaker 2: who were supposedly uh just ordinary folks were actually already
Speaker 2: a fish in autos And he uh went over a
Speaker 2: hill and claimed came running back an hour later saying,
Speaker 2: I just talked to a man from Venus, and uh,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of credulity involved. Interesting thing is that paradoxically,
Speaker 2: the more absurd the narrative, the more outrageous the activities
Speaker 2: of a cult leader, and the more often that predictions
Speaker 2: and prophecies fail, the more it titans belief among the followers.
Speaker 2: It tends to drive off the skeptics. I had an
Speaker 2: encounter with my friend of mine and I, when I
Speaker 2: was in college, kept going by the scientology thing. We said, well,
Speaker 2: let's go in and see what it's like. And we
Speaker 2: listened to the thing, and you know, l Ron Hubbrew
Speaker 2: was on this show, British talk show, and he was
Speaker 2: he's supposed to be a neurosurgeon and a physicist, and
Speaker 2: he came across a complete boob and they had a
Speaker 2: interviewed by the success Secretary to kind of being given
Speaker 2: the meage to say that scientology has helped you already,
Speaker 2: and I I told him exactly what I thought, which
Speaker 2: was not terribly complimentary and was sort of blown off
Speaker 2: very quickly. So you know, the absurdity of the of
Speaker 2: the narrative drives off the skeptics, so you know, it
Speaker 2: sets up the belief system very well, and go for it.
Speaker 1: In your book, you talked about ancient aliens. Give some
Speaker 1: coverage for that, and I thought you hit a lot
Speaker 1: of really good stuff too. I think it's puma punku.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to pronounce that exactly punk oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and the bat the bag then battery uh in the
Speaker 1: Ezekiel's Wheel. And we also you talked about Newbiru and
Speaker 1: Sitchen and we talked about those topics. But the Ezekiel's
Speaker 1: Wheel topic I thought was really interesting because I'd heard
Speaker 1: I think Jason Coleovito had talked about that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Where the it's commonly referenced as evidence of UFOs and
Speaker 1: the Bible. In fact, there used to be a TV
Speaker 1: show called Project Blue Book, which I think was retitled
Speaker 1: Project Ufo, which was from the guy who did Dragnet.
Speaker 1: I can't think of his name right now, but anyway,
Speaker 1: that was part of the intro was Ezekiel saw the wheel,
Speaker 1: and this is the wheel he saw, and that would
Speaker 1: show a picture of a spaceship. So can you talk
Speaker 1: about what the real reference to Ezekiel's wheel imagery was about?
Speaker 2: The Only thing in Ezekiel's vision is that he saw
Speaker 2: a wheels within wheels and everything else. He saw beasts
Speaker 2: with four faces, you know, on eagles and lions and
Speaker 2: a bowl and a human and especially and they and
Speaker 2: wings and so on, all of which goes to the
Speaker 2: imagery of the Cherubim a cherub, there's a kind of
Speaker 2: an angel that could be appear as an ordinary man.
Speaker 2: It can also appear as the kind of winged lion
Speaker 2: with a human head that you see in Assyrian monuments.
Speaker 2: In orders, they had the wings of an eagle, the
Speaker 2: fore part of a lion, the back part of a bull,
Speaker 2: and a human head. So this is in orders it had.
Speaker 2: The bull is the foremost domestic beast, the lion is
Speaker 2: the foremost wild beast. The eagle is the foremost bird,
Speaker 2: and the human head gives reason. This is a type
Speaker 2: of angel. It's a symbolic representation, and the Eguel's vision
Speaker 2: is a vision of Yahweh and thrown upon the chair
Speaker 2: of them. It's just And there's just this one little
Speaker 2: thing that he says, a wheel within a wheel, and
Speaker 2: that's it. And this has been magnified by so many people.
Speaker 2: The latest one I can think of as Lewis Farakhan
Speaker 2: claiming that it's a something was made in Japan and
Speaker 2: ancient times and so on, as the Great Mother Wheel
Speaker 2: and so on and so forth, and goes into his
Speaker 2: whole racial superiority thing of the black people were white
Speaker 2: people and so on. There's nothing there. It would really
Speaker 2: help if people who were making notes off of something
Speaker 2: in the Bible would actually read the Bible itself.
Speaker 4: And so speaking of the Bible, you've got a very
Speaker 4: interesting chapter, chapter nine, which is called Praying to Aliens,
Speaker 4: and you discuss some of the UFO religious groups and
Speaker 4: their beliefs. And a number of years ago I did
Speaker 4: an investigation through CSI and it was into a group
Speaker 4: called Share International, headed by a fellow called Benjamin krem
Speaker 4: and all of his theories about space brothers and space
Speaker 4: sisters and Matreya. So can you tell us a little
Speaker 4: bit about this group and another religious UFO groups.
Speaker 2: Well, there was still around a friend of ours who
Speaker 2: is in to move on visit us and went to
Speaker 2: the uh uh their convention and uh Montreya's being uh
Speaker 2: uh you know, Benjamin kream Is is still there doing
Speaker 2: his thing and uh betraya as actually an aspect of
Speaker 2: Buddha as one of his incarnations that's to come in
Speaker 2: the future. That the theophicists boy uh I thought they
Speaker 2: had that and uh uh, and that Montreya was this
Speaker 2: young man they found in Indiana. It's turned who became
Speaker 2: Christiana Murphy. And he later on said, no, this isn't real.
Speaker 2: It's you know, he's he's been very kind to me
Speaker 2: and such, but I'm not your Montreya. And uh it
Speaker 2: of course then got folded into the UFO thanks and
Speaker 2: some betrayal would obviously come back down from the heavens
Speaker 2: and this with the our Space brothers and whatnot. So
Speaker 2: there's a great deal of religious beliefs involved in it.
Speaker 2: There's even some Christian UFO religions. The seekers in the
Speaker 2: fifties were one, and we've got now the ordance the
Speaker 2: hot Lux Lux's land for let there be light. It's
Speaker 2: there is somewhere in the black forest right now.
Speaker 1: I think it's fascinating because I knew some of the
Speaker 1: things that you covered, but some of them were new
Speaker 1: to me. I didn't realize how much of the real
Speaker 1: idea is still tied into modern UFO religious movements. And
Speaker 1: that comes from Edward Bullard Lytton, who most of our
Speaker 1: readers will know from one of two places, probably the
Speaker 1: It was a Darkened Story Knight was the intro to
Speaker 1: one of his novels, and the other one is there's
Speaker 1: a bad writing contest that they have every year about
Speaker 1: who can write the worst opening sentence for a book.
Speaker 3: He was.
Speaker 1: I don't think he was a bad writer, but his idea,
Speaker 1: of which was the Coming Race, I think it ties
Speaker 1: into theosophy, and it has ties weirdly to the Morning
Speaker 1: of the Magicians, which in turn is probably the inspiration
Speaker 1: for von Dannakin. So you get this fictional book that
Speaker 1: pushes theosophy that's tied to all these ancient astronaut religious movements.
Speaker 1: Is fascinating to me. How it all comes together where.
Speaker 2: I kind of got interested in the real thing was
Speaker 2: I saw this thing on the supposed sort of Nazism
Speaker 2: from the real society, or they had this documentary on
Speaker 2: the so called History channel. The whole thing is completely fabricated.
Speaker 2: And the Maria Orsa, who's supposed to be this beautiful
Speaker 2: woman the cold had contacted aliens and understood the real
Speaker 2: energy and so on. Is apparently it was apparently made
Speaker 2: up in warning of the magicians, and they got some
Speaker 2: portrait of some woman, and you know, you can see
Speaker 2: her on their now, but I don't know if she
Speaker 2: ever existed. It probably didn't. The only thing close to
Speaker 2: a real society is Willie Lay when he is a
Speaker 2: science popularizer in Rocket Scientist. He fled the Nazi Germany
Speaker 2: before war the World War two, and he wrote a
Speaker 2: little essay in the article in Astounding Science Fiction in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty nine. I believe it was titled Pseudo Science
Speaker 2: and Naziland, and just mentioned in passing a society called
Speaker 2: the War Heights cell shoft if I'm not massacring that
Speaker 2: too badly, which meant a society for truth who were
Speaker 2: looking for real And he said, yes, that's right. They
Speaker 2: were based on this book by Volver Lytton, and that's
Speaker 2: all he says. And out of this again, this grand
Speaker 2: edifice has been made out of nothing.
Speaker 1: Well, I think we have a really good opportunity here
Speaker 1: for a TV show for the History Channel. You ready, okay,
Speaker 1: Real Housewives of Atlantis.
Speaker 3: H I think you got to find a way to
Speaker 3: sell it somehow. So what we talked about at the
Speaker 3: beginning of our interview is pretty much does the story
Speaker 3: here that lots of ways UFO belief and UFO cult
Speaker 3: followings have lots of the trappings of religion, and they
Speaker 3: feel a need which we see also with cryptosoology. People
Speaker 3: like to have something mysterious in their life. And you
Speaker 3: find this it's sort of you know, this is the
Speaker 3: last the first time in the you know, in all
Speaker 3: of human existence is last century or so where most
Speaker 3: of the great mysteries have now been explained by science,
Speaker 3: and a lot of the mysterious religion is no longer
Speaker 3: believed by a high high percentage of people in the world,
Speaker 3: and so you find people still have that need for mystery,
Speaker 3: They still have that need for unexplained phenomena, you know,
Speaker 3: to give them a sense of meaning or give them
Speaker 3: something that they this feel isn't quite understood. And I
Speaker 3: think that drives a lot of both cryptozoology and also
Speaker 3: UFO belief. It's all this, I let you know, the
Speaker 3: paranormal is appealing, it's it's it makes it keeps people
Speaker 3: meaning some cases, it gives them something to speculate about. Uh,
Speaker 3: And we've not you know, especially with cryptosology taking care
Speaker 3: of all the supposed monsters. You know, we don't. We're
Speaker 3: war without monsters. Now somebody has to create them, and likewise,
Speaker 3: WORL without angels, we get UFOs and aliens instead. So
Speaker 3: I think that's a large part of it. And then
Speaker 3: there's also this, you know, the bigger issue that people
Speaker 3: believe anecdotal evidence. They believe I witness evidence first and foremost,
Speaker 3: and that's where this comes from, is seeing things that
Speaker 3: they claimed they saw, and therefore they believe, and then
Speaker 3: now the people listening to them are convinced. But of course,
Speaker 3: the thing we had to establish really early in the
Speaker 3: book was that that does not concert evidence of scientific nature.
Speaker 1: Tim is anything you want to add to that.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of that shows up in Paradolia.
Speaker 2: People read patterns into you know, cloud formations and done
Speaker 2: explored the you know what, the lenticular clouds that people
Speaker 2: see quite often as flying saucers or something like that.
Speaker 2: And you know, we do have a need to create patterns.
Speaker 2: We are pattern seeking pattern creating species. So that's bound
Speaker 2: to happen. And if you don't have a governor on it, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, then you can believe almost anything, which is
Speaker 2: what science is try and save us from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a recurring theme lately at the end of
Speaker 1: this year, is the idea that we keep running into,
Speaker 1: the idea that all theories are equal. And I think
Speaker 1: what science does is says no, that's not true. There
Speaker 1: is a way to filter out between what's plausible or
Speaker 1: possible and what's not possible.
Speaker 3: That's our job.
Speaker 4: So we've got a final question for you both, in
Speaker 4: particular Tim, because this is your first time on the show.
Speaker 4: We normally like to ask what's your favorite monster, but
Speaker 4: given the theme of this episode, we thought we'd like
Speaker 4: to ask you instead, what's your favorite UFO story.
Speaker 2: As far as absurdity goes. I suppose, I suppose the
Speaker 2: whole antifice of the reptillions of David Ike would be
Speaker 2: the favorite one as far as complete fantasy. I don't
Speaker 2: know if I have a favorite story beyond that.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty good one, though it is. Yeah, our
Speaker 1: last guest was self identifying as reptilian.
Speaker 4: Nicely.
Speaker 1: It's a long story, real You can listen to our
Speaker 1: previous episode to understand that it's a good story.
Speaker 4: So what about you done?
Speaker 3: Oh, I guess because my father is connected to it,
Speaker 3: I would say the area fifty one story. I mean,
Speaker 3: I have a family connection to it. My dad was
Speaker 3: actually there at the right time, So I guess you
Speaker 3: would say that's my favorite.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Well, I wish we could talk longer, but
Speaker 1: I think you've got a great book here. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a hard thing to dive into something
Speaker 1: where so many people have so many intense beliefs about
Speaker 1: such minutia. But you guys did a good job, I believe,
Speaker 1: and I think our listeners will really enjoy this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean lots of interesting facets.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard to decide what to conclude, what to
Speaker 3: leave out. It could have been twice as long easily.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I've left one or two encounters out.
Speaker 2: I thought maybe I should have put that one in
Speaker 2: but uh, you know, I could make a whole book
Speaker 2: out of just the alien of Buck from the film.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So it's well, I mean project as are
Speaker 1: many people have, right, I mean I've got to call
Speaker 1: my shelves.
Speaker 4: Right, So yeah, oh yeah, we know a few people personally,
Speaker 4: that's right, but not too.
Speaker 3: Many skeptical approaches. That was the one thing I thought
Speaker 3: different for most of the rest is that, yeah, there
Speaker 3: are a few individual books made people like Schaefer and
Speaker 3: others that attack one or two stories specifically. But what
Speaker 3: we really tried to do with this book is to
Speaker 3: be very broad in the sense that we cover almost
Speaker 3: the entire field, and something I did also with the
Speaker 3: Cryptosology book, which is introduced the rules of evidence and
Speaker 3: introduce the rules of science at the beginning, to really
Speaker 3: establish ground rules, which almost nobody really tries to do.
Speaker 3: And then we didn't have time to talk about it.
Speaker 3: But the last chapter talked about the psychology of people
Speaker 3: who believe in UFOs, which is again something you don't
Speaker 3: see a lot of other UFO group books talk about.
Speaker 3: So I think we tried to do a lot of
Speaker 3: different kinds of things that make it interesting.
Speaker 1: For people to read I think you've done a good job,
Speaker 1: so maybe some people will be getting to some of
Speaker 1: their Christmas trees or whatever they do for.
Speaker 4: Thank you for joining us, guys.
Speaker 3: All right, good luck.
Speaker 2: Monstertle.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Monster Talk.
Speaker 4: I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner.
Speaker 1: Monster Talk is the science show about monsters, and this
Speaker 1: week you heard U interview Don Prothero and Timothy Callahan
Speaker 1: about their new book UFOs kim Trails and Aliens. Monster
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Speaker 2: Ezekiel saw the wheel. This is the wheel he said
Speaker 2: he saw. These are unidentified flying objects that people say
Speaker 2: they are seeing now.