Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and love all Things Tech. And we're making Wednesdays the
Speaker 1: new Fridays, just like Loki did on Disney. Plus that
Speaker 1: being said, we're going to be moving a classic episode
Speaker 1: to today Wednesday, because the episode I am currently working
Speaker 1: on is not just technical, it also has a lot
Speaker 1: of historical elements to it, and it's involving a lot
Speaker 1: of digging around in old articles and putting things together,
Speaker 1: and I'm just running a little behind. So our classic
Speaker 1: episode is moving up from Friday to Wednesday, and we're
Speaker 1: going to do an episode called the Mythology of Area
Speaker 1: fifty one. Area one, of course, being the most famous
Speaker 1: secret facility in the world. It is a place that
Speaker 1: is connected to all sorts of different legends, from aliens
Speaker 1: to crazy military experiments and more. And so this episode
Speaker 1: really goes in to explore that I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: We are in fact going to be concluding our trilogy
Speaker 1: of episodes about Area fifty one in parts one and two.
Speaker 1: If you haven't listened to them, already. We really went
Speaker 1: over the history of the facility and what actually goes
Speaker 1: on there and covered everything from the reason why it
Speaker 1: was built in the first place to the various spy
Speaker 1: planes and different technologies that were tested at that facility.
Speaker 1: This episode, we're looking at the crazy yes, sir, we
Speaker 1: are looking at all of the rumors, conspiracy theories and uh,
Speaker 1: let's just say unsupported anecdotes to be diplomatic. That's very diplomatic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so quick rundown, just so that we're all on
Speaker 1: the same page. Area fifty one, also known as Groom Lake,
Speaker 1: is a facility. It's out in Nevada. It's near the
Speaker 1: what Well. It's near the Nevada Test Site, where a
Speaker 1: lot of nuclear tests were held, in fact, some during
Speaker 1: the lifetime of Very fifty one. Uh. It is uh
Speaker 1: run by the CIA and the Air Force. Lockheed is
Speaker 1: essentially the main contractor that does work there. It's not
Speaker 1: the only one. We've seen some other aircraft from different
Speaker 1: companies tested at that facility as well. And the whole
Speaker 1: purpose of it is to be remote from everywhere else
Speaker 1: so that secret tests of top secret spy technology can
Speaker 1: happen without anyone learning about it. Because, as we've said,
Speaker 1: if you want to be an effective spy, part of
Speaker 1: that means people can't be aware of the tools that
Speaker 1: you have at your disposal, right Yeah, And which, as
Speaker 1: we say, that's why it is in a Goldilocks zone
Speaker 1: for its for its purpose, right Yeah. One of my
Speaker 1: favorite points that you made in the previous episode, I
Speaker 1: believe was the first installment, was that this was just
Speaker 1: far enough away to be so inconvenient to get to
Speaker 1: that people people wouldn't try. Yeah, it was. It's a
Speaker 1: remote desert location on a dry lake bed, and so
Speaker 1: it was close enough where you could get supplies from
Speaker 1: places like Las Vegas, which is less than a hundred
Speaker 1: miles away, but far enough away where you know your
Speaker 1: your casual traveler is unlikely to stumble upon it, especially
Speaker 1: once you start posting lots of warning signs with scary
Speaker 1: wording on it warning people away. Now, the fact that
Speaker 1: it is remote, the fact that you do have these
Speaker 1: signs that warn people away, uh, the fact that you
Speaker 1: have to bring people in to work at this facility,
Speaker 1: and most of them are commuting in maybe on a
Speaker 1: weekly basis, which means you have to figure out how
Speaker 1: do you transport them from some place like Las Vegas
Speaker 1: to the actual facility itself. All of that means that
Speaker 1: you're leaving just enough traces to really start to peak
Speaker 1: people's interests. Right, Yeah, it's tantalizing. Oh and uh, point
Speaker 1: of order for the listeners out there, Jonathan, we should
Speaker 1: probably tell everybody check out the first two episodes of
Speaker 1: this before you listen to this one. Right, it will
Speaker 1: make this make I can't say more sense, but you'll
Speaker 1: at least understand the references. Yeah. So so, yeah, we've
Speaker 1: got just enough information for the typical person to say,
Speaker 1: I really want to know what's happening there. And because
Speaker 1: of the security uh features that are in place, including
Speaker 1: roving bands, which we'll talk about a little bit later,
Speaker 1: of security personnel, uh, it means that you end up
Speaker 1: having to fill in a lot of gaps. And when
Speaker 1: that happens, when people are given the leeway to try
Speaker 1: and fill in like that, there's the big here, there
Speaker 1: be dragons on the map. That's where you get the dragons. Right,
Speaker 1: You're like, well, I don't know what's out there. It's
Speaker 1: probably dangerous, so we're just gonna slap dragons on it
Speaker 1: and call it a day. Yeah, which is you know,
Speaker 1: at heart of valuable instinct to have, right, it's it's caution.
Speaker 1: But what's happened here is that as we're gonna see um,
Speaker 1: one thing with a grain of truth such as oh
Speaker 1: there's something I'm not allowed to go see, uh, became
Speaker 1: embellished and then exaggerated. And many times the people saying
Speaker 1: these things sincerely do believe this. They're not hucksters, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this isn't necessarily someone who's trying to get a
Speaker 1: book deal or trying to get on the talk show circuit.
Speaker 1: It maybe someone who has just enough information to leap
Speaker 1: to some conclusions that are not supportable. And also we
Speaker 1: should say there are times where people make guesses where
Speaker 1: either they latch onto something that is actually true or
Speaker 1: they've got part of the story. So just because something
Speaker 1: is a few arie or a rumor or a conspiracy
Speaker 1: of some sort doesn't mean that there's nothing there. Right.
Speaker 1: So here's a great example, and it's one of the
Speaker 1: more grounded, no pun intended examples of the mythology around
Speaker 1: Area fifty one, there's the myth that there is a
Speaker 1: giant subterranean network of UH tunnels and facilities that are
Speaker 1: underneath the ground. So that way, when you get that
Speaker 1: overhead view of Area fifty one, keep in mind Area
Speaker 1: fifty one is restricted airspace that goes all the way
Speaker 1: up into space. But there are satellites since the nineties
Speaker 1: that have taken multiple images of that area. So if
Speaker 1: you know that, in fact, you're going to be photographed
Speaker 1: from space there, that seems logical that you would want
Speaker 1: to go underground, right, So you can understand why people
Speaker 1: would say, oh, well, it makes sense. You you want
Speaker 1: to have that secrecy, You can no longer depend upon
Speaker 1: it above ground, so you have to go below. But
Speaker 1: this raises some logistical issues, right, Yeah, how do you
Speaker 1: build an underground base and keep it quiet? Especially as
Speaker 1: we said in the history podcast, Uh, the construction workers
Speaker 1: that were taken out there probably would have known something
Speaker 1: about it because they would have been the ones digging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and digging is a big deal. You're talking
Speaker 1: about subterranean network. That's a lot of earth that you
Speaker 1: have to move. And only do you have to move it,
Speaker 1: you then have to figure out what do you do
Speaker 1: with the earth you have taken. You know, when you
Speaker 1: when you create a whole, that dirt doesn't just magically disappear, right,
Speaker 1: you have to put it someplace. And so that's that's
Speaker 1: a logistical issue, and it's an enormous type of endeavor
Speaker 1: to undertake. I mean, imagine having to create something a
Speaker 1: network of tunnels that is stable enough to support the
Speaker 1: weight of whatever is above it. Uh not to mention
Speaker 1: the idea of like level upon level of subterranean layer
Speaker 1: like Dr Evil style. It's it's an enormous task and
Speaker 1: it would have required such a huge investment and manpower.
Speaker 1: Let alone, I don't even think about the cost financially,
Speaker 1: just the practical manpower necessary to make it. It's not likely.
Speaker 1: And there there are some rumors that go so far
Speaker 1: as to suggest that there are there's an entire underground
Speaker 1: network of tunnels that connect various bases together. Yeah, and really,
Speaker 1: when you think of the engineering challenge that represents and
Speaker 1: the construction that is required, you realize that while it
Speaker 1: might be technologically possible for us to do it, it
Speaker 1: is not really feasible to do it secretly where you
Speaker 1: have not left any trace at all in the whole
Speaker 1: process right now. And I think that's really good distinction,
Speaker 1: because it's not just plausible, but it is probable that
Speaker 1: there is some sort of below the ground construction at
Speaker 1: Roswell in excuse me, area fifty one, in that when
Speaker 1: you build things, there might be a basement, there might
Speaker 1: be a safe room something like that. But that is
Speaker 1: a far far cry from uh, what what do we
Speaker 1: have here? What's what's the biggest record? Jonathan fifty stories stories? Yeah,
Speaker 1: imagine a fifty story skyscraper, but underground. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen a skyscraper being built, you know, this
Speaker 1: is a process that takes some time. And we we
Speaker 1: here at hell stuff works. We moved into this. You know,
Speaker 1: we're in an office that has recently, over the last
Speaker 1: maybe five or six years, seen a lot of growth
Speaker 1: with the buildings around us, and so we've actually watched
Speaker 1: year over year as skyscrapers were being built, and it
Speaker 1: takes a really long time. Uh. And I know people
Speaker 1: would say, yeah, but this is a top secret establishment,
Speaker 1: you know, you they'd really pour a lot into it.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen the government at work, the US
Speaker 1: government at work, speed is not one of the adjectives
Speaker 1: you would typically use. Right where if the US everyone
Speaker 1: is a superhero, it would probably not be the flash.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone knows that maybe the Blob. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was gonna go safe with Captain America. Well, all right,
Speaker 1: I was he I was merely going to all the villains.
Speaker 1: I was thinking the Blob or maybe the Jugger, not
Speaker 1: you know, the Juggernauts. Cool though, that's a different podcast.
Speaker 1: We We've got to get to one of the one
Speaker 1: of the biggest things here, the biggest conspiracies we hear
Speaker 1: about with Area fifty one. Well, first off, spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: the real conspiracy is are their secret spy planes? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what it's for. And that's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that is the first off, the fact that
Speaker 1: that can even be possible, it's kind of right now.
Speaker 1: We talked in the last couple of podcasts about some
Speaker 1: of the the aircraft that were under development there that
Speaker 1: remains secret a good twenty years after they had finished testing,
Speaker 1: and that's when they were unveiled. Uh. There was one
Speaker 1: that that I think had a run from three to
Speaker 1: eighty five something like that, and it wasn't it wasn't
Speaker 1: acknowledged by the government until ninety six, which was the
Speaker 1: first time anyone outside of that that program had seen it.
Speaker 1: Um And I think that was maybe Tacit blue. But
Speaker 1: it was one of those that just when you saw
Speaker 1: the aircraft, you thought, wow, what a weird looking thing.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that this remained secret. Granted they only
Speaker 1: built two of them, and they were under strict rap
Speaker 1: over at one. It never got further out from from
Speaker 1: that area, Like even the tests would be done at night,
Speaker 1: so it limited when the potential of even being spotted.
Speaker 1: But they were the genuine articles of conspiracy were indeed
Speaker 1: spotted in the sky. And that brings us to as
Speaker 1: we were saying, the biggest part of the area, are
Speaker 1: you talking us? Yeah? Yeah, Officially unidentified flying objects UFOs
Speaker 1: more often than not, uh, they are attributed to being
Speaker 1: alien as an extraterrestrial in nature, Area fifty one features
Speaker 1: heavily and tons of different alien stories, both both the
Speaker 1: kind that we see on the big screen, like Independence Day,
Speaker 1: the famous sequence where they go down to Area fifty
Speaker 1: one where they have uh, not just aliens, but they're
Speaker 1: they're hardware that has been studied for years, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's revealed that a lot of technology we depend upon
Speaker 1: today has been reverse engineered from this alien technology. Still
Speaker 1: can't build a decent spaceship though, no, we can't build
Speaker 1: a decent spaceship. However, we have figured out that you
Speaker 1: can introduce a computer virus as long as you have
Speaker 1: an Apple MacBook laptop, which to this day, to this day,
Speaker 1: my friend, that's still that's still bothered me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: spoiler alert again, guys. But but yeah, so, so people
Speaker 1: people started seeing UFOs, and it is correct to call
Speaker 1: them that because I think there's one of the distinctions
Speaker 1: that we're about to make, right. A UFO unidentified flying
Speaker 1: object is simply that. Yeah, it just means that you
Speaker 1: personally cannot identify what that object is. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's unidentify a ball. It may very well be that
Speaker 1: there's a small group of people who know exactly what
Speaker 1: that object is, like the like the stealth technology we
Speaker 1: were just talking about. Those stealth programs when they were
Speaker 1: under development, were strict secrets and only a few people,
Speaker 1: relatively few people knew about them. Anyone outside that who
Speaker 1: would have seen one of these aircraft flying around, naturally,
Speaker 1: they would not be able to identify it. There was
Speaker 1: no correlative they could say, oh, this looked like a
Speaker 1: such and such. These things look really crazy. So calling
Speaker 1: it a UFO is perfectly fine, you cannot identify it. Calling.
Speaker 1: Making the leap from UFO to a IN is a
Speaker 1: little bit of a problem. So this brings us to
Speaker 1: probably the most famous alien incident in all of the
Speaker 1: United States history. Something that is that factors into numerous,
Speaker 1: I'd say dozens, if not hundreds, of different conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: the Roswell incident. Now, Roswell is in New Mexico, which,
Speaker 1: for those of you who are not in the United States,
Speaker 1: is a completely separate state from Nevada. It's in a
Speaker 1: completely different place. And you know, sometimes there's a pet
Speaker 1: peeve of mine, Jonathan, is that people often conflate Area
Speaker 1: fifty one or Groom Lake and the incident in Roswell, Right,
Speaker 1: and so two things that these are incidence separated both
Speaker 1: in space and time. Right, Roswell, New Mexico is hundreds
Speaker 1: of miles away from Area fifty one, like almost a
Speaker 1: thou miles away, And I think it's somewhere around eight
Speaker 1: hundred miles away and eight actually one thousand, four hundred
Speaker 1: sixteen kilometers according to Google Maps. Thank you Google Maps
Speaker 1: for letting me know how far apart Roswell, New Mexico
Speaker 1: in Area fifty one are. That's exactly it. Uh So,
Speaker 1: by the way, don't don't rely upon Google Maps for
Speaker 1: turn by turn directions to Area fifty one. You know
Speaker 1: you'll just end up in Las Vegas. Did you Did
Speaker 1: you do it by d I did it by by driving,
Speaker 1: although walking would have been hilarious. Walking would have been like,
Speaker 1: at this point people are going to ask you to
Speaker 1: turn around? Uh so, or at this point you've probably
Speaker 1: died of dehydration. So the other thing I said was
Speaker 1: that their separated by time. The Roswell incident happened on
Speaker 1: July second, nineteen seven. So for those of you who
Speaker 1: listened to our first episode about Area fifty one, you
Speaker 1: remember that it was the mid nineteen fifties when the
Speaker 1: c i A settled on Groom Lake as the the
Speaker 1: future home of Area fifty one. It was when construction began,
Speaker 1: So this is almost a decade apart when of these
Speaker 1: two events. So then you have the The actual story
Speaker 1: of the Roswell incident is that some people in Roswell,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, I saw some strange floating objects that they
Speaker 1: could not identify un identified flying objects. Sometimes they're referred
Speaker 1: to as being kind of disc shaped, but part of
Speaker 1: the problem is that we're so far distanced from the
Speaker 1: initial event that the story has not remained consistent through
Speaker 1: all the different retellings. Yeah, and I can speak to
Speaker 1: a little bit of that because we have we have
Speaker 1: some copies of the newspaper articles that changed, and because
Speaker 1: they changed. Uh, there's a very interesting thing here. It's
Speaker 1: the interpretation of that. Uh, people who believe that there
Speaker 1: was some sort of extraterrestrial incident. Somebody, somebody managed to
Speaker 1: drive a spacecraft well enough to get to Earth but
Speaker 1: not well enough to stay above Earth, right, and then uh,
Speaker 1: the news found out about it and they got shut
Speaker 1: down there to change their story or did they just
Speaker 1: correct the reporting when they had more information. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a good question, Like did did some gentlemen wearing
Speaker 1: black suits and sunglasses show up at the newspaper and
Speaker 1: say you need to you need to address this. I mean,
Speaker 1: and Jonathan, that's possible. But if it happened, it wasn't
Speaker 1: because of aliens, That's right, So get moving on. We're
Speaker 1: talking about the crash. Just spotting these objects in the
Speaker 1: air wasn't the only thing that happened with Roswell incident.
Speaker 1: What specifically went on from there was that some people
Speaker 1: found debris on the ground and it was described as
Speaker 1: being shiny and metallic in nature. No one was really
Speaker 1: sure what it was actually made of at the time,
Speaker 1: and so this this incident started to become embellished upon
Speaker 1: over time. In fact, there's some versions of the story
Speaker 1: where they didn't just find physical debris from some flying object,
Speaker 1: but also bodies. And this is where we get into
Speaker 1: the alien stuff, where supposedly there were these bodies of
Speaker 1: creatures that had unusual features and they were whisked away
Speaker 1: by the government. Uh. And ultimately some people say that
Speaker 1: that's they went to Area fifty one. The purpose was
Speaker 1: not to study strange materials, although we did eventually get
Speaker 1: some Soviet aircraft at Area fifty one where they were
Speaker 1: tested like the bigs, But it's not meant to be
Speaker 1: a scientific laboratory. That's not the purpose of Every fifty one.
Speaker 1: So it would make no sense to send any kind
Speaker 1: of extraterrestrials there. It also doesn't make sense to send
Speaker 1: extra terrestrial bodies to a place that hasn't been built yet.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a big one. That's a it's a
Speaker 1: bump in the Yeah, it's a little bit of a
Speaker 1: little bit of a problem with the story. Now what
Speaker 1: the official story from the government was that the debris
Speaker 1: came from weather balloons and that there were no bodies.
Speaker 1: In fact, that we should stay right now, there's no
Speaker 1: evid it's at all that anyone ever came across a body.
Speaker 1: That was something that was added to this story over time. Yeah, sorry, guys.
Speaker 1: That autopsy on YouTube is most likely a hope. It's
Speaker 1: it's yeah, there there are some special effects UH experts
Speaker 1: who have actually commented on it and somewhat derisively. So
Speaker 1: we're like, like, they should have hired me. I could
Speaker 1: have done a much better job. But there is there
Speaker 1: There is no no hard evidence that there was even
Speaker 1: from the debris they found when they were looking at it,
Speaker 1: because there really was debris, right and they really did
Speaker 1: find it, but they didn't find enough to have built
Speaker 1: an entire thing, yeah, to carry a person. You know this.
Speaker 1: So the official story from the government was at these
Speaker 1: were weather balloons. They were meant specifically to UH to
Speaker 1: study the weather at high altitudes. Now, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: that's not the real story. But we will get to
Speaker 1: there in a second. We'll be back to talk about
Speaker 1: more mythology of Area fifty one in just a moment. So, uh,
Speaker 1: this was one of those things where people were saying,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like any weather balloon I've ever seen,
Speaker 1: which is true. It did. I've seen both balloons and
Speaker 1: the weathers, and this is neither of those two things.
Speaker 1: So moving on to the the you know, kind of
Speaker 1: looking at the story another way. One version of this
Speaker 1: that I was not aware of until a friend of
Speaker 1: the show, Nate Lenkson, he's the editor of Wired Dot
Speaker 1: Code Dot uk. Uh. He he turned me on to this.
Speaker 1: I had never heard about this. It's a book written
Speaker 1: by Annie Jacobson called Area fifty one and Uncensored History
Speaker 1: of America's top secret military base. Now full disclosure, I
Speaker 1: have not read this book yet. I read a synopsis
Speaker 1: of the book and a synopsis of the story we're
Speaker 1: about the cover, So this may not actually be accurate
Speaker 1: to the book itself. I want to make that clear.
Speaker 1: I've also heard that most of the book is pretty
Speaker 1: much what we covered in our first two episodes of
Speaker 1: the podcast, a very thorough description of the history of
Speaker 1: Vera fifty one. But there's a section apparently devoted to
Speaker 1: the Roswell incident and every fifty one supposed involvement in that,
Speaker 1: in which the story gets even weirder, I think than aliens.
Speaker 1: And this story involves Nazis and communists, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's only missing Indiana Jones to make it really a
Speaker 1: Hollywood film. So the story that she tells according to
Speaker 1: a source, I don't know what her source was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a source. I don't know if she names the source
Speaker 1: in the book. The synopsis, I said, said anonymous, But
Speaker 1: again I haven't read the book. But according to the synopsis,
Speaker 1: the story is that a Nazi doctor, Joseph Mingla, actually
Speaker 1: the s S officer who survived the World War two
Speaker 1: and then and then eventually escaped to South America, that
Speaker 1: Mingola had worked on behalf of Joseph Stalin doing these
Speaker 1: horrific procedures on children, resulting in children around the age
Speaker 1: of twelve with abnormally shaped heads, large eyes that are
Speaker 1: of an odd shape, and that the whole idea was
Speaker 1: that they were going to pilot some simple aircraft to
Speaker 1: fly around the United States and land and essentially star
Speaker 1: crap up, yeah, scare people, Yeah, exactly, this idea that
Speaker 1: they would this idea that they would fake aliens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in order to create a panic, essentially doing a war
Speaker 1: of the World's type event, uh, one step closer to
Speaker 1: reality or of the world's For those who don't remember
Speaker 1: or don't know what this is, um, it was a
Speaker 1: an Orson Wells project, a radio program that was portrayed
Speaker 1: in such a way that people who tuned in, without
Speaker 1: knowing that it was actually a fictionalized radio program, began
Speaker 1: to think that there was actually, uh, an alien invasion happening.
Speaker 1: It was this sort of famous little blip on the
Speaker 1: radar of of people freaking out because they weren't aware that,
Speaker 1: in fact, it was a fictional account, uh, something that
Speaker 1: we still see today, uh with things like Mermaids. At
Speaker 1: any rate. That's enough commentary on that. But yeah, the uh,
Speaker 1: the story that she relays is that Mingola had done
Speaker 1: these these horror horrific procedures and that the bodies found
Speaker 1: at the Roswal incidant, which remember, there was never any
Speaker 1: evidence that bodies were found were in fact human children
Speaker 1: that then were whisked away. I think there are some
Speaker 1: big problems with this particular story. Problem. No one Mingola
Speaker 1: was on the run from the Soviets, he did not.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Soviets were the ones who were who
Speaker 1: were approaching when Hitler committed suicide, right, they'd rather than
Speaker 1: be captured by the Soviets. Um Hitler committed suicide, and
Speaker 1: Mingola was trying to escape with records that he had,
Speaker 1: uh he had created at Auschwitz. Um So, he eventually
Speaker 1: escaped Germany. He did at one point go back into
Speaker 1: Soviet occupied territory in order to retrieve some of these documents,
Speaker 1: but he evaded capture and eventually escaped to South America
Speaker 1: and then moved around quite a bit while Uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was being he was being pursued by agents both
Speaker 1: Soviet and American. And so it's unlikely that he would
Speaker 1: have collaborated with Joseph Stalin and certainly unlikely that he
Speaker 1: would have been allowed to escape. Yeah, the Soviets. Um So,
Speaker 1: that already is a problem. Secondly, it would be a
Speaker 1: real problem that the idea of people being fooled long
Speaker 1: enough to not realize these were humans, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then there's the other there's the other question. Why would
Speaker 1: they crash there and not in a more occupied place.
Speaker 1: Why not in New York City or something like that why, um,
Speaker 1: you know they probably get spotted. But then also, and
Speaker 1: this this is a cruel thing to say, but why
Speaker 1: would you specifically need that one very evil man to
Speaker 1: do that sort of operation? Right? Exactly, It's not like
Speaker 1: if you're going to if you're going to do something
Speaker 1: so inhuman, uh is there I mean, narratively it's a
Speaker 1: great story in the sense that there only one person
Speaker 1: is this twisted to pull this off? But in reality
Speaker 1: we know, unfortunately that's not the case that if you
Speaker 1: really did have the the will to do something this horrible,
Speaker 1: you could probably do without having to to go after
Speaker 1: the devil himself. Right, I mean, the whole story is
Speaker 1: is meant to appeal to our dark imaginations, and it's
Speaker 1: a terrible thing, but it's also one of those things
Speaker 1: that you could say, yeah, I can imagine this actually
Speaker 1: playing out in some way. Ultimately, you also have to
Speaker 1: ask the question, what's the effect you're going for? If
Speaker 1: the effect you're going for is to cause a panic,
Speaker 1: I can't think of anything that would have caused a
Speaker 1: bigger panic than having Soviet airmen being able to land
Speaker 1: in U. S. Territory without any alien cover story. You
Speaker 1: don't need that to cause a scare. There's really no
Speaker 1: benefit here, like the the the entire operation does not
Speaker 1: seem to have an actual return on investments, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense from that perspective either. So the Nazis
Speaker 1: that are involved in in some other conspiracy theories about
Speaker 1: Avery fifty one, like the the UFOs that are seen
Speaker 1: are product of, you know, Nazi experiments towards the close
Speaker 1: of the war. And a lot of that comes from
Speaker 1: a very real, uh and kind of frightening thing that
Speaker 1: the United States did with Operation paper Clip, which you
Speaker 1: know about when they brought over some surviving scientists from
Speaker 1: Germany right right right when you're when you're when you
Speaker 1: get the rockets scientists specifically who worked over in Germany
Speaker 1: to then come to the United States and continue their
Speaker 1: work in science and and rocketry and specifically, but now
Speaker 1: they're working for a different boss. They're working with the
Speaker 1: United States government, uh and partly because they're getting guarantees
Speaker 1: from the U. S Government that they won't be tried
Speaker 1: as criminals for their work for the Nazi regime. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's certain real, real things that were happening in history
Speaker 1: that we're probably enough to help fuel this kind of
Speaker 1: conspiracy here in the United States. But you know, you
Speaker 1: didn't have to look far to see real instances of
Speaker 1: some pretty shady dealings on both sides, uh, but without
Speaker 1: having to make stuff upright and now, Also one thing
Speaker 1: that didn't help the government's case, and as far as
Speaker 1: their official story goes, is that it turned out they
Speaker 1: they were telling the truth, but telling it slant, as
Speaker 1: Emily Dickinson would say, right they were. They were not
Speaker 1: weather balloons that were being uh deployed out over in
Speaker 1: New Mexico. There were balloons though, Yeah, there were balloons
Speaker 1: that were part of a spy program called Project Mogul,
Speaker 1: which was a top secret experiment using high altitude balloons
Speaker 1: that were carrying microphones. And the idea was the microphones
Speaker 1: would be able to detect sounds from Soviet nuclear tests,
Speaker 1: so that we in the United States would have a
Speaker 1: clue when that was going on, and we that would
Speaker 1: help us kind of know how far along the Soviets
Speaker 1: were with their nuclear program compared to our own nuclear program.
Speaker 1: So there was again this need for secrecy. We didn't
Speaker 1: want the Soviets to know that we, in fact had
Speaker 1: developed this technology to listen out for uh, these these
Speaker 1: sound waves, um, because we didn't want them to try
Speaker 1: and come up with different ways of testing their nuclear
Speaker 1: arms and therefore hiding it from us, so reverse engineering
Speaker 1: it and hearing what we're doing exactly. That's also another
Speaker 1: another good point. So the cover story of weather balloons
Speaker 1: was necessary to protect the secrecy of the spy program,
Speaker 1: but it had nothing to do with aliens. It had
Speaker 1: everything to do with spying it. Maybe it might have
Speaker 1: even been to the government's benefit that people were latching
Speaker 1: on to the aliens story because it took attention away
Speaker 1: from what it was really meant to do. So there's
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of incentive upon the government's part
Speaker 1: to come out and say specifically, guys, no, it's not aliens,
Speaker 1: because it helped keep the attention away. But you don't
Speaker 1: want it to You don't want that story to run
Speaker 1: rampant either, because it could legitimately causing either a panic
Speaker 1: or just a growing distrust in the government itself. Sure,
Speaker 1: and they don't need any help. That's regardless of what
Speaker 1: what what your political beliefs are. We speaking of beliefs,
Speaker 1: this is going to be a lot of fun for
Speaker 1: me personally, I think for you too. Because one thing
Speaker 1: that always keeps the Area fifty one legends alive is
Speaker 1: that there. It seems like every year there's someone who
Speaker 1: comes out and says, well, I was person exit place.
Speaker 1: Why I know the truth, Ryan, Now I will finally
Speaker 1: reveal it. And you're thinking of someone specific in this case, right,
Speaker 1: I am specifically thinking of Bob Lazar. Yeah, Robert Lazar
Speaker 1: or Bob Lazar, who claimed to have worked on a
Speaker 1: project in which the military had come into possession of
Speaker 1: alien technology, and his job was to reverse engineer that
Speaker 1: al and technology to learn how it works so that
Speaker 1: we could take advantage of that tech here on Earth
Speaker 1: and thus kind of leap forward what would normally be
Speaker 1: the process of developing TEX so instead of you know,
Speaker 1: constantly testing and improving and refining, we could jump straight ahead,
Speaker 1: you know, skip eight steps in that process and jump
Speaker 1: straight to you know, miraculous smartphones that react to our touch,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And so he claimed that he
Speaker 1: had worked at a facility that was near Groom Lake,
Speaker 1: so not technically at Area fifty one, but adjacent to it.
Speaker 1: It was the real secret place. It's called S four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's so secret that it didn't even get a
Speaker 1: full name. Um, it just gets a letter and a
Speaker 1: number of designation and it's he said that it housed
Speaker 1: no fewer than nine spacecraft. Uh. Here's the thing that
Speaker 1: a lot of his his claims to his background don't
Speaker 1: check out right. Like he he claims to have advanced
Speaker 1: degrees from m I. T and from cal Tech, but
Speaker 1: there's no record of him there. Now. Granted, some people
Speaker 1: say that that's evidence of the conspiracy. Yeah, that in fact,
Speaker 1: this shows that the government was so interested in keeping
Speaker 1: it a secret that they have wiped clean his background.
Speaker 1: Although to do that you would also have to white
Speaker 1: clean the memories of every professor and every student who
Speaker 1: would have also attended. And you see that this this
Speaker 1: kind of domino effect. How how wide those ripples would
Speaker 1: have to go in order for this to remain an
Speaker 1: effective secret? It becomes unmanageable at some point. Wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be easier at this point? My question would be for
Speaker 1: many of these cases is why did someone go to
Speaker 1: so such great links to keep you alive? Because from
Speaker 1: from a government's perspective, we know that if they're picking
Speaker 1: one kind of skull degree, they'll pick the easier one,
Speaker 1: which is usually an assisted fall off a building or
Speaker 1: something like that. You know, assassination is just off the table, right,
Speaker 1: then that can ever be done? Like, yeah, how do
Speaker 1: you how do you uh, if it did come down
Speaker 1: to there's this one person who has tons of information,
Speaker 1: like it's essentially Snowden. Yeah, there's Edward Snowden of Area
Speaker 1: fifty one, who is ready, he has access to all
Speaker 1: the information. He's ready to spill the beans. Um, and
Speaker 1: you want to discredit him, you don't go to every
Speaker 1: single person in his past. Don't tell anybody about this, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just not practical, right, It's it's it
Speaker 1: would be a monumental task. So essentially what we're getting
Speaker 1: round too is that lazars Um his claims to his
Speaker 1: his credentials are suspect, right, and that that is a
Speaker 1: very diplomatic way to put it. Of course, you know,
Speaker 1: we're also showing that his side of it is that
Speaker 1: someone is a racing his past to discredit him. As
Speaker 1: as you said, you know, Jonathan, recently, Mr Lazar in
Speaker 1: the past few years went uh back into the public
Speaker 1: eye now I mean, I guess more into the mainstream
Speaker 1: public eye, and he was asked to react to the
Speaker 1: CIA's official admittance uh of area fifty ones existence, which
Speaker 1: as we know, it didn't happen for a little while.
Speaker 1: And uh he said he was not impressed because this
Speaker 1: was a very tiny baby step forward. I think that's
Speaker 1: the quote he used. And uh he was waiting for
Speaker 1: them to reveal S four, which is the site he
Speaker 1: says he worked at reverse engineering these things. Now, he
Speaker 1: has many, many claims. Uh. He speaks at length about
Speaker 1: interspecial politics, about injuries he's suffered by technology that we
Speaker 1: won't hear about for several decades. Uh. But I I
Speaker 1: really like the point you made that. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the other things people who believe him see his proof
Speaker 1: is um what they perceive as a inexplicable jump in technology,
Speaker 1: right right, Well, the truth is that if you look
Speaker 1: at any technology closely enough, you will see incremental improvements.
Speaker 1: It's very, very rare that we have someone come out
Speaker 1: with a brand new piece of technology that has no
Speaker 1: precedent to it, right, Yeah, exactly, Television, perfect example. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you look at these things like television was really building
Speaker 1: upon the developments of radio, and you think, okay, well
Speaker 1: what about Tesla and Marconi. Well they were working on
Speaker 1: research that had preceded them as well. These are all
Speaker 1: if you if you really dig down into it, you know,
Speaker 1: you look at the invention of the light bulb, you
Speaker 1: look at all of these sort of inventions that we
Speaker 1: we take for granted. We like the stories that say
Speaker 1: this inventor came up with this idea and implemented it,
Speaker 1: and now it exists and before it never did. Usually
Speaker 1: the truth is much more complicated, with lots of different
Speaker 1: things leading into that invention, including earlier invention that may
Speaker 1: not have been practical but showed a working concept, and
Speaker 1: then this other inventor like Thomas Edison comes along and
Speaker 1: takes that takes that concept and makes it practical. So
Speaker 1: now it's something that we can actually use as opposed
Speaker 1: to just a cool idea, but we didn't know how
Speaker 1: to to you know, capitalize on it. So you know,
Speaker 1: I think most of the advances we've seen over the
Speaker 1: over the decades have been examples of this where people
Speaker 1: have made incremental improvements and maybe grab together multiple pieces
Speaker 1: of technology and then and then package them in such
Speaker 1: a way that it's a really compelling piece of tech.
Speaker 1: But if you break it down component by component, you
Speaker 1: start to see the actual process of this creating something,
Speaker 1: refining it, tweaking and putting it out again, refining it again.
Speaker 1: I don't see any enormous leaps where someone has jumped
Speaker 1: well ahead of everywhere else. Maybe Claude Shan and his uh,
Speaker 1: his computer science with using binary logic, his approach to
Speaker 1: computer science was pretty much fully formed. But that's kind
Speaker 1: of similar to Albert Einstein and his theories of relativity.
Speaker 1: These were ideas that both men had developed over years,
Speaker 1: and then they presented them as complete pictures. So to us,
Speaker 1: the outsiders, it looks like a person just came up
Speaker 1: with a brilliant process, fully formed instantaneously. The truth is
Speaker 1: it actually took several years to build that up, and
Speaker 1: even then they were building on previous thoughts and knowledge.
Speaker 1: They were just incorporating it in a new way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what about the lasers. Okay, so lasers are an issue, right, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought up lasers. One of the things
Speaker 1: that have has often been attributed to Area fifty one
Speaker 1: is energy weapons. So this ties into the strategic defense initiative,
Speaker 1: often referred to derisively as star wars. Yeah, this was
Speaker 1: the Graham in the nineteen eighties, and I promise that
Speaker 1: I will do an episode about the Star Wars program
Speaker 1: that will go into full detail. I know, I've got
Speaker 1: a lot of listeners who have asked me to do it,
Speaker 1: and I really want to at some point, but it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a little bit further down the road. But
Speaker 1: it's um. You know. The whole idea was that it
Speaker 1: was going to be a system that would shoot down
Speaker 1: incoming i C b M S intercontinental ballistic missiles. This
Speaker 1: was the height of the Cold War nineteen eighties. I mean,
Speaker 1: propaganda was ridiculous in both the Soviet Union and the
Speaker 1: United States. I grew up in that era, and I remember,
Speaker 1: like the Russians being the bad guys all the time,
Speaker 1: you know, from from uh everything from Red Dawn to
Speaker 1: Rocky four. So anyway, um, or was it three? It
Speaker 1: might have been three Rocky three? Uh. At any rate,
Speaker 1: the the idea here was that the energy weapons that
Speaker 1: would shoot down these missiles were supposedly under development at
Speaker 1: Area fifty one. Again not really the purpose for Area
Speaker 1: fifty one. I mean you could you could understand them,
Speaker 1: uh testing such a vice because that is kind of
Speaker 1: what they were doing. But they were mostly testing airborne things,
Speaker 1: not not ground to air technology. It was mostly aircraft
Speaker 1: that they were really focusing on, and not offensive aircraft,
Speaker 1: just spycraft. Yeah, I mean, there are some of the
Speaker 1: drones they worked on probably had offensive but yeah, it
Speaker 1: was it was mostly again, it was mostly reconnaissance type stuff.
Speaker 1: We've got more to say about the mythology of area
Speaker 1: fifty one after this quick break. So then you have
Speaker 1: the weather control devices, another very popular conspiracy theory of it. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, we don't have any technology powerful enough
Speaker 1: to control the weather. Weather is an incredibly chaotic system
Speaker 1: that we do not fully understand it. Before you can
Speaker 1: under before you can really control something, you have to
Speaker 1: at least have some understanding of how it works. Now,
Speaker 1: people have conducted experiments with weather manipulation, things like influence it,
Speaker 1: like seeding clouds, that kind of thing. But even this,
Speaker 1: we can't be fully sure how effective they are, right,
Speaker 1: Because here's the problem is that you can't you can't
Speaker 1: have a scientific consensus on whether or not something is
Speaker 1: effective unless you're able to have a control group. And
Speaker 1: you can't really have a control group with whether I
Speaker 1: mean you can you can have as close to the same, uh,
Speaker 1: kind of elements in play in two different and two
Speaker 1: different instances, and one you seed the cloud and one
Speaker 1: you don't, and then you see how much rain results.
Speaker 1: But even then again, whether it's such a complex system
Speaker 1: that you can't you can't be completely certain that the
Speaker 1: seeding is the effective agent, right, And you know the
Speaker 1: problem with whether is it's a chaotic system that is
Speaker 1: one massive cluster of systems. So any two points you
Speaker 1: pick are ultimately in the same system, so are they
Speaker 1: really is there a control tough and stuff. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, you know things like HARP, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure you guys have talked about, which was designed
Speaker 1: to to actually look at interactions in the ionosphere. Now,
Speaker 1: the isonosphere around Earth can conduct electricity. In fact, when
Speaker 1: we get a big electrical impulse in there from something
Speaker 1: like a solar flare or coronal mass ejection, it can
Speaker 1: make the auroras at the polls really active because that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of the convergence point for this electric field.
Speaker 1: And uh, and so there's certainly things that interact with
Speaker 1: atmospheric um phenomena, but we still can't control the weather there.
Speaker 1: Now it doesn't help. I'm just gonna be honest with you, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: it does not help uh to dispel any of the
Speaker 1: speculation about places like HARP, you know, when it was
Speaker 1: an operation, because the descriptions from from the government and
Speaker 1: from HARP about what they were doing we're just cartooniously
Speaker 1: vague in some ways. So, yeah, it's a high frequency
Speaker 1: active auroral research program, which already you're you're thinking, they're
Speaker 1: at least a couple of words in there that I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely sure what they're supposed to mean. Um. And
Speaker 1: it really was about beaming energy into the ionosphere. To
Speaker 1: the goal for HARP, at least on the government side,
Speaker 1: that the military funded side, was can we use the
Speaker 1: ionosphere as a conduit through which we can communicate with
Speaker 1: distant vehicles like submarines that are under the water. I mean,
Speaker 1: they really were hoping that this would be a way
Speaker 1: of doing that. The scientists at HARP were mostly thinking,
Speaker 1: if we can keep getting funding for what we want
Speaker 1: to do, which is to study the ionosphere, then we
Speaker 1: should try and keep that door open for the possibility
Speaker 1: that this could be a communications tool, even if we
Speaker 1: don't think it will really work. So um, which happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's essentially what happened with HARP. And then eventually
Speaker 1: the military said, you know what, we're done and they
Speaker 1: pulled the funding. So that was the story of HARP. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of those same stories apply to Area fifty one,
Speaker 1: but there's no evidence that there were any weather control
Speaker 1: systems under development. There's certainly no evidence that anything ever
Speaker 1: did any actual weather manipulation. So uh yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: just doesn't that doesn't really fly. Um. And then if
Speaker 1: there's a piece of tech and science fiction, there's a
Speaker 1: chance that there's at least some story out there that
Speaker 1: there's something like that underdevelopment at Area fifty one. You know,
Speaker 1: warp coils, teleporters, phasers, whatever you want to think about.
Speaker 1: I realized I was focusing mainly on Star Trek there,
Speaker 1: but but really all of that has at some time
Speaker 1: or another been attributed to area. Warp drives, uh, teleportation devises, lightsabers, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: thank you. No, we've got story guards, you know, we've
Speaker 1: got there. So moving on another another host of conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories around Area fifty one don't have so much to
Speaker 1: do with what was actually going on at the facility,
Speaker 1: but rather the mysterious chef do we organizations that were
Speaker 1: behind it all. Yeah, like the real life Smoking Man exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these conspiracy theories involve organizations that
Speaker 1: have no official um uh designation, or they don't they
Speaker 1: aren't officially acknowledged by the government, right. So some of
Speaker 1: them have a designation, but they're not you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're not in any government files because that's how secret
Speaker 1: they are. And alleged designation. Yeah. So here the big
Speaker 1: one for area of fifty one at least is the
Speaker 1: Majestic Twelve. Majestic twelve is a group that existed many
Speaker 1: years ago, according to the conspiracy lore, and included people
Speaker 1: like President Truman as well as the head of CIA
Speaker 1: and also like top businessmen, like essentially the most powerful
Speaker 1: people in the United States at that time, and that
Speaker 1: their purpose was to solidify power and control worldwide, right
Speaker 1: like this was gonna be like the Trilateral Commission was
Speaker 1: often referred to as being the secret organization for these
Speaker 1: sort of purposes, which is not what it was for
Speaker 1: um uh. There are other organizations that are meant to
Speaker 1: be like think tanks that have often been kind of
Speaker 1: compared to this sort of the Majestic Twelve however, is
Speaker 1: one that appears to have been completely fabricated. Uh. There
Speaker 1: was a UFO enthusiast named William L. Moore who produced
Speaker 1: papers that he claimed proved the group's existence, But a
Speaker 1: lot of people who have looked at these papers have
Speaker 1: said that they don't hold up to scrutiny, That the
Speaker 1: signatures that are there appeared to have been copied from
Speaker 1: other documents and then pasted into them into the Majestic twelve,
Speaker 1: the MJ twelve papers, uh, and that there does not
Speaker 1: appear to be any sort of evidence supporting the existence
Speaker 1: of such an organization. So if your organization isn't real,
Speaker 1: then chances are it's not actually the secret one behind area.
Speaker 1: So the so, the the idea that has become you know,
Speaker 1: common currency in a lot of these beliefs is that
Speaker 1: in J twelve did exist, but was had its world
Speaker 1: rocked when news of the extraterrestrial crash in hit them.
Speaker 1: And then they've they've spent the next few decades, um,
Speaker 1: you know what, more and more I think maybe X
Speaker 1: files was inspired some of these well, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's very like m J twelve shares a lot of
Speaker 1: the same kind of traits as other shadowy, conspiratorial uh,
Speaker 1: most likely fictional organization. It's a trope. It's right up
Speaker 1: there with things like the Illuminati, for example. Uh. Then
Speaker 1: you have some real people who really do exist that
Speaker 1: have kind of helped fuel the mystique around Area fifty one,
Speaker 1: not necessarily, you know, purposefully setting out to define the mystique,
Speaker 1: but they're part of it. And those are the Camo dudes.
Speaker 1: That's that's what the folks in the Area fifty one
Speaker 1: u biz, the people who like to watch Area fifty one,
Speaker 1: not the ones who are actually working there. What they
Speaker 1: referred to these guys as Camo dudes because they tend
Speaker 1: to be wearing a desert camouflage outfits. You know, they're
Speaker 1: out in Nevada, so they're wearing these these kind of
Speaker 1: desert cam outfits. They travel in pairs, usually in in
Speaker 1: four wheel drive vehicles, and they are, uh, the perimeter
Speaker 1: guards essentially is what they serve as. So if someone
Speaker 1: starts to come close to the Area fifty one borders,
Speaker 1: then they may end up encountering a pair of these
Speaker 1: Camo dudes who tend to not appear to be military.
Speaker 1: The best guess is, in fact, they are probably part
Speaker 1: of some contract group that ends up doing security for
Speaker 1: things like military installations. So not not official military personnel,
Speaker 1: but rather private citizens who are part of a contractor
Speaker 1: and their job is to um to firmly suggest to
Speaker 1: people that they should go somewhere else rather than than
Speaker 1: try and get footage of the area. I have a
Speaker 1: quotation for you from an incident. This is published in
Speaker 1: the Huffington's post. A UFO conspiracy film crew was detained
Speaker 1: at gunpoint at the Air fifty one Gate in two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve. Here's here's the quotation. According to a crew member,
Speaker 1: a camouflage dress guard carrying an M sixteen told a
Speaker 1: member of this team, we could make you disappear and
Speaker 1: your body will never be found. Uh. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and say maybe they're playing it up, but the
Speaker 1: point is that, yes, you're not supposed to be there.
Speaker 1: As we said in the first PEW podcast, don't don't
Speaker 1: try to go you guys. Yeah, most of the most
Speaker 1: of the reports I've read didn't have a point where
Speaker 1: the the Camo dudes were actively aiming weapons in their direction,
Speaker 1: but rather they were they were visibly armed. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's one thing, you know. I was certainly they were armed,
Speaker 1: but they weren't. I don't remember reading a whole lot
Speaker 1: of them either brandishing their weapons like as far as
Speaker 1: I recall, most of the incidents involved their weapons being holstered.
Speaker 1: But they have in the past, according to a lot
Speaker 1: of reports, confiscated film back when film was a thing,
Speaker 1: or demanded to have various equipment turned over to them.
Speaker 1: Because again, the facility is all about spy aircraft, so
Speaker 1: you don't want footage leaking of either the facility or
Speaker 1: the aircraft that are under development there. Um, So it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily that big of a mystery, but the fact
Speaker 1: that you have these guys who are not easily identifiable
Speaker 1: as belonging to a specific United States government organization, that
Speaker 1: definitely adds to that mystery. And they're not identifying themselves.
Speaker 1: And also to be candid in in some cases not all,
Speaker 1: but in some cases if you were making a film,
Speaker 1: then you want to have that sort of con flick.
Speaker 1: So it it's also possible that in some cases these
Speaker 1: are the threat as it is as it is is
Speaker 1: um embellished, or it's possible that people are purposefully agitating
Speaker 1: the guards. Yeah, it's it's definitely without being there. We
Speaker 1: can't say for sure, but that but but both scenarios
Speaker 1: seem to be plausible to me, Right, I don't know
Speaker 1: what really unfolded. It may be that the truth is
Speaker 1: somewhere in between those two those two scenarios, right, But
Speaker 1: you can't accidentally end up there, no, you purposefully We're
Speaker 1: trying to get there. And this is clearly an area
Speaker 1: that is off limits. Uh, and is you know, is
Speaker 1: legally off limits? Some people are and you know, we
Speaker 1: talked about that in the second episode of the history
Speaker 1: about how Area fifty one gets a whole lot of
Speaker 1: legal leeway um in in ways that other places in
Speaker 1: the United States simply do not, and that that will
Speaker 1: also adds to this curiosity we have of Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: I think we've really covered kind of what drives that,
Speaker 1: the fact that, you know, human beings are curious, right,
Speaker 1: we want to know things. When we see something that
Speaker 1: we do not understand, Often one of our earliest responses
Speaker 1: is how does that work? Or what is going on here?
Speaker 1: What's really happening? Unless it's really scary, and which is
Speaker 1: where's the closest exit? And can I run faster than
Speaker 1: ben Um because you don't have to run the fastest, No,
Speaker 1: just faster than the slowest person. As long as I'm
Speaker 1: not the slowest person in the office, I'm still got
Speaker 1: a chance. Yeah, So I can certainly see and I
Speaker 1: feel it too. I mean I certainly have this curiosity
Speaker 1: about Area fifty one. Heck, just just going from the
Speaker 1: baseline most mundane description of what's going on there, there's
Speaker 1: still so many questions like, how do they how do
Speaker 1: they really maintain that level of secrecy. How much does
Speaker 1: the typical worker at Area fifty one know about what's
Speaker 1: going on? How do they make sure that people working
Speaker 1: on one project remain oblivious to everything else that's happening.
Speaker 1: How do they schedule these things? What is it like
Speaker 1: being a pilot for one of these aircraft? I mean,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of questions that we don't have
Speaker 1: the answers too. So I think, uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun tackling this this subject, and
Speaker 1: I think it really did merit the three episodes because
Speaker 1: it is such a touchstone for everything from the political
Speaker 1: ideology from the nineteen fifties forward to just a pop
Speaker 1: culture you know touchstone, right, It's it's like that's that's
Speaker 1: the go to for science fiction. Now I have a
Speaker 1: question for you. Absolutely when and now that we have,
Speaker 1: along with the rest of the tech stuff audience explored
Speaker 1: stem discern the the ideas and the reality and the
Speaker 1: miss very fifty one, I have to ask you, what
Speaker 1: would you do if one of the you know, if
Speaker 1: one of the strangest things turned out to be true.
Speaker 1: You know, I like to I would like to think
Speaker 1: that I'm the type of skeptic who, when presented with
Speaker 1: incontrovertible evidence that something I believe to be true is
Speaker 1: in fact not true, and that something I thought was
Speaker 1: just purely made up is in fact the truth, that
Speaker 1: I would be able to accept it. Saying that and
Speaker 1: actually doing it are two different things, right, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's how I would truly react. I'd like
Speaker 1: to think that if suddenly there was just pure evidence
Speaker 1: that in fact the Roswell incident involved aliens, and that
Speaker 1: the aliens were in fact Holstad Area fifty one, and
Speaker 1: all of these crazy conspiracy theories were actually true, I
Speaker 1: like to believe that I would be able to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I never would have bought into this,
Speaker 1: but it turns out it was right. And I was wrong.
Speaker 1: I'd like to think I could do that. I think
Speaker 1: you would. I like, okay, incontrovertible evidence then would have
Speaker 1: to be something like aliens landing at your house and
Speaker 1: saying like, hey, guys, have you seen our buddies? They
Speaker 1: showed up maybe I don't know, you know, seventy earth
Speaker 1: years ago something around there. Yeah, they checked their watch
Speaker 1: for seventy earth years ago and they're big fans of
Speaker 1: text stuff, and so they heard that we had done
Speaker 1: an episode. Yeah, I feel like you're the kind of
Speaker 1: guy would go, huh, well, yeah, okay, I guess let
Speaker 1: me let me call my boss. I would be like,
Speaker 1: some of um, all right, Well, it turns out I
Speaker 1: was a big fat head and I was wrong about everything.
Speaker 1: That's not everything. But also, yeah, it is true that
Speaker 1: there is, at least there are several conspiracies that we're
Speaker 1: at work at Area fifty one, and we've we've explored those,
Speaker 1: and I guess what what I would want people to
Speaker 1: take away from this is that there really is amazing
Speaker 1: strange science fiction, action thriller movie level stuff there. It
Speaker 1: just may not be what people are claiming. It is, right,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it's you know, not interesting. It certainly is,
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's really again an evidence of human
Speaker 1: achievement for both an engineering side and just a secrecy
Speaker 1: keeping side, because it's really hard to keep those secrets.
Speaker 1: So I do suspect that they do that by managing
Speaker 1: how many people are allowed to know any one thing
Speaker 1: at any one time, otherwise you know, loose lips. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that classic episode of tech Stuff. I
Speaker 1: really enjoy reading, writing researching about Area fifty one. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite articles I ever wrote for How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works back when I was writing for them, was on
Speaker 1: how Area fifty one works. It was also one of
Speaker 1: my longest articles I ever wrote, to the point where
Speaker 1: my editor was suggesting that I cut out a couple
Speaker 1: of segments, but I felt like it really added, you know,
Speaker 1: some character and flavor to the piece, so I fought
Speaker 1: for it and ultimately it all went in. I honestly
Speaker 1: don't know if that paid off. I was not looking
Speaker 1: at the analytics for that article. Maybe people dropped off
Speaker 1: way before then, but it was it was a fun
Speaker 1: experience and I'm glad we got a chance to revisit
Speaker 1: it tomorrow. You will have a new episode of Smart
Speaker 1: Talks with IBM in this feed, and then on Friday
Speaker 1: you will hear the episode that I've been working on
Speaker 1: but has so far been a little slow to come together.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you what it's about just yet, except
Speaker 1: I'll say, Darlin, it's better downwards wetter under the sea.
Speaker 1: But that's as much as I can say. All right.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should cover on
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, whether it's a technology, a company, a trend
Speaker 1: in tech, you know a specific product, maybe let me
Speaker 1: know send me a message. Best way to do that
Speaker 1: as on Twitter. The handle for the show is text
Speaker 1: stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
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Speaker 1: your favorite shows.