Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart three D
Speaker 1: Audience for full exposure listen with headphones. In October, in
Speaker 1: the midst of the pandemic, I spoke by zoom with
Speaker 1: author Colin Dickey. He is the author of ghost Land
Speaker 1: about American haunted houses, and teaches at National University. I
Speaker 1: spoke with him about his latest book, The Unidentified Mythical Monsters,
Speaker 1: Alien Encounters and Our Obsession with the Unexplained. I'm Toby
Speaker 1: Ball and this is Strange Arrivals. My name is Colin Dickey.
Speaker 1: I am the author of The Unidentified Mythical Monsters, Alien
Speaker 1: Encounters and Our Obsession with the Unexplained. So how did
Speaker 1: you come to write this book? Like what one interest
Speaker 1: led you to to do in the research and then
Speaker 1: in the writing. Um. I think I've always been interested
Speaker 1: in the way in which a set of beliefs to
Speaker 1: ideas which you could maybe call sort of like fringe beliefs, um,
Speaker 1: you know, for for lack of a better term, the
Speaker 1: stuff that's not taken seriously by by mainstream science or
Speaker 1: journalism or religion or or kind of you know, the
Speaker 1: usual kind of authorities, and and thus gets sort of
Speaker 1: shunted into the side in terms of you know, superstition
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. Um. But but I found
Speaker 1: that that those kind of beliefs often really whether or
Speaker 1: not one beliefs that they're true or not, they have
Speaker 1: a pretty enormous effect on culture and and and the
Speaker 1: way you know, the world works, and you know, they
Speaker 1: have sort of material effects. And I've found that it
Speaker 1: seems necessary to talk about these things again, not necessarily
Speaker 1: in terms of are they real or all they are
Speaker 1: they you know, fake, although you know, that's an interesting question,
Speaker 1: but but more so like what do these beliefs do
Speaker 1: in in the world and how do they affect the
Speaker 1: world around us? Um, you know, even for those of
Speaker 1: us who don't necessarily believe in these things. And I
Speaker 1: you know, my my previous book, ghost Land in American
Speaker 1: History and Haunted Places was similarly based around this question
Speaker 1: of you know, I think whether or not you believe
Speaker 1: that ghosts exists, it's sort of undeniable that the sort
Speaker 1: of language of of ghosts and haunted places are are
Speaker 1: things that sort of drive American culture and sort of
Speaker 1: say a great deal about our history. So I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of how I gradually sort of got more
Speaker 1: and more interested in these kind of you know again
Speaker 1: quote unquote fringe topics for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: did you have sort of a central thesis for this book, which,
Speaker 1: for people who haven't read it is, you know it
Speaker 1: um it encompasses sort of a variety of different you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote fringe topics, including cryptids and UFOs. Is there
Speaker 1: some sort of central organizing thesis you have, Well, it's funny.
Speaker 1: It's started out so so this this book in particular,
Speaker 1: in the wake of the election. UM. You know, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of discussion about the ways in which
Speaker 1: social media companies like Facebook had had been responsible directly
Speaker 1: or indirectly for pushing a lot of conspiracy theories into
Speaker 1: the mainstream. And you know, at the time, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's undeniably true, and I think that
Speaker 1: these companies have a real obligation that they aren't taken seriously.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I wanted to push back
Speaker 1: on the idea that the rising conspiracy theories was somehow
Speaker 1: unique to a social media era and UM, and what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do was to do a kind of
Speaker 1: genealogical history in some sense of UM you know, a
Speaker 1: set of French beliefs and or you know, conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: And in the beginning I cast a pretty wide net. So,
Speaker 1: you know, my the first draft of the book, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, had everything from you know, anti submitted conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories like the Protocols of the Elders Desigon to um,
Speaker 1: you know, flat Earth spiracy theories, as well as UM
Speaker 1: cryptids and UFOs and and as I worked through the
Speaker 1: material and kind of you know, worked on the book,
Speaker 1: I I've found that I kind of didn't want to
Speaker 1: go that wide. I wanted to kind of narrow it down,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, so I started to kind of
Speaker 1: pair back my my list of subjects. But I couldn't
Speaker 1: quite get away from the fact that that the three
Speaker 1: topics that ended up being sort of the driving force
Speaker 1: of this book, UM, you know, not just cryptis and aliens,
Speaker 1: but also the lost continents of Atlantis and Lamaria UM
Speaker 1: all were kind of interrelated in some form historically. You
Speaker 1: know that that you know, the the rise of the
Speaker 1: modern UFO movement comes out of um, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: Ray Palmer's magazine Fate, and Ray Palmer before that had
Speaker 1: introduced the world to the Shaver mysteries and um, you know,
Speaker 1: the Shave of the with these sort of kind of
Speaker 1: sci fi but maybe supposedly true things about these sort
Speaker 1: of weird underground races that controlled, you know, our mind
Speaker 1: and thoughts and that sort of thing. And and Palmer
Speaker 1: had had titled the first installment of the Shaber Mysteries.
Speaker 1: I remember Lamuria, so sort of I couldn't get two
Speaker 1: UFOs without first talking about Lamiria, this sort of fabled
Speaker 1: lost continent sort of the Pacific Ocean version of Atlantis
Speaker 1: that you know, has a long history in and of itself.
Speaker 1: So this is a long answer to your question, but it,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it did start with a kind
Speaker 1: of wide net. And I found these kind of three
Speaker 1: topics intertwining in such a way that I wanted to
Speaker 1: try and figure out a way to account for them,
Speaker 1: a kind of you know, a kind of hypothesis that
Speaker 1: would that will encompass these kind of three areas and
Speaker 1: why they seem to be so interrelated to one another.
Speaker 1: So while you're talking it, you know, there there are
Speaker 1: certain figures in the book who seemed to drive, um,
Speaker 1: certain of these ideas. Do you have any sense about
Speaker 1: like why certain ideas like make it into sort of
Speaker 1: wider fringe belief while others kind of die on the vine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that that again, I mean I that
Speaker 1: was one of the questions that really drove me to
Speaker 1: try and sort of figure out why, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: how this book was going to work, and sort of
Speaker 1: figure out like why does you know, for example, one
Speaker 1: of the things I talked about in the book, that
Speaker 1: the Gloucester Sea Serpent was this extremely well documented cryptic
Speaker 1: siting um in the the eighteen teens, I think eighteen
Speaker 1: seventeen um that has been more or less ignored by
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of kind of you know, mainstream
Speaker 1: understandings of cryptics in favor of the Lockniff Monster and
Speaker 1: Bigfoot and um, you know a couple of others. So,
Speaker 1: you know, partly I was just like, you know, why
Speaker 1: was this thing, which which by any objective standards is
Speaker 1: much more well documented than than Bigfoot or the Yeti
Speaker 1: or whatever. Nonetheless, um kind of get you know, place
Speaker 1: second fiddle. So yeah, so I really wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of try and understand in those and I think what
Speaker 1: I found, um was that in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: these beliefs are you know, these Um, these beings, these objects,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them, light up a kind
Speaker 1: of central kind of narrative that works for the person
Speaker 1: who believes in them, you know, I mean I think
Speaker 1: that's that's a kind of abstract way of saying that.
Speaker 1: I mean, they they do, they do something for people.
Speaker 1: They they explain the world in a way, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think for for everyone who actually has
Speaker 1: you know, has had a UFO sighting in some form
Speaker 1: and another. Um, there are a bunch of other people
Speaker 1: who haven't, but who you know, and to to quote
Speaker 1: the X files want to believe because the idea of
Speaker 1: you know, UFOs will uh, it's it's pleasing, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the possibility is exciting, or you know,
Speaker 1: what it says about our relationship to the government sort
Speaker 1: of checks out in their belief, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: like it it does something for them in a way
Speaker 1: that goes beyond I think just you know, the question
Speaker 1: of of documentary evidence. So you've got you've got a
Speaker 1: long narrative section on UFOs. Since can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about sort of your take on that you know,
Speaker 1: history and timeline. Yeah, I mean, the idea that there
Speaker 1: are unidentified objects in the sky. I mean those that
Speaker 1: that belief goes back you know, millennia, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean you can find it in you know, ancient Greek
Speaker 1: and Roman writing. So it's it's it's not as though
Speaker 1: when Kenneth Arnold sees, um, you know, seven bat wing
Speaker 1: shaped silver objects flying over Mount Rainier, that that's the
Speaker 1: beginning of um, you know, UFO sightings by any means.
Speaker 1: So so to start there is in some sense a
Speaker 1: little bit arbitrary, but it also is the moment at
Speaker 1: which those strange objects in the sky become crystallized as
Speaker 1: a certain kind of thing, you know. But prior to that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean again you can go back millennia
Speaker 1: and you you have objects in the sky which are
Speaker 1: you know, omens or their signs from God's or whomever
Speaker 1: you know, And and that's sort of one stable narrative trajectory, right,
Speaker 1: um you know, or they are you know, sort of
Speaker 1: magical in some sense or another. And what happens in
Speaker 1: is that suddenly these things are no longer considered to
Speaker 1: be I guess, supernatural. They're they're sort of they're sort
Speaker 1: of paranormal while also being sort of scientifically plausible. And
Speaker 1: I think that sort of changes how we start to see,
Speaker 1: you know, what a UFO is or what a thing
Speaker 1: in the sky might be in a way that's that's
Speaker 1: sort of new and different. So there's this sort of
Speaker 1: progression of I don't know, sort of sort of conceptualizing
Speaker 1: what the UFOs are like. You kind of start off
Speaker 1: with the contact e these who you know, by modern standards,
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like, seem a little quaint. Um,
Speaker 1: But there's you know, past that or beyond that, there's
Speaker 1: this sense that, um, that that people's ideas about UFOs
Speaker 1: and how the government's dealing with them are um, reflective
Speaker 1: of sort of what's going on in government in non
Speaker 1: sort of fringe things and people's perceptions of that. And
Speaker 1: I think you brought up in the book, you know, Vietnam,
Speaker 1: uh CO, Intel, pro Watergate, Um. You know, there are
Speaker 1: lots of examples. Um, So what what was your what's
Speaker 1: your sense of that? Yeah, I mean one of the
Speaker 1: things that that became really early on, you know, clear
Speaker 1: to me really early on, is I think that in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, you know, belief in encryptids parallels
Speaker 1: belief in you know, parallels of belief in UFOs, and
Speaker 1: you see that again in terms of just you know,
Speaker 1: who believes what and that kind of stuff. But but
Speaker 1: very early on it also was made clear to me
Speaker 1: that there's there's one really specific way in which they're different.
Speaker 1: Is that, you know, you either believe in the Lockness
Speaker 1: sponsor you don't. But what you you don't believe that
Speaker 1: the Lockness monster is the existence of the Locknes sponsors
Speaker 1: being covered up by the government, Whereas if you believe
Speaker 1: in UFOs, almost by default you believe that the government
Speaker 1: knows more than they're letting on and it's being um,
Speaker 1: you know, hidden from us in some some fashion. And
Speaker 1: I found that to be again, you know, considering that
Speaker 1: both of these ideas you know, prior to World War Two,
Speaker 1: we're pretty synchronous, you know, in terms of the shape
Speaker 1: of of of the narrative that a company of these
Speaker 1: beliefs suddenly in the wake of World War two, and
Speaker 1: and for me, I think really in the wake of
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project, which was this incredibly successful attempt to
Speaker 1: keep a completely unknown and unknowable and world changing technological
Speaker 1: weapon entirely out of the public eye until it was used, right,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, like you know, the the amount
Speaker 1: of secrecy required to keep the Manhattan Projects secret, and
Speaker 1: the success that they had, you know, sort of gave
Speaker 1: the world a sense that, um, you know, and specifically Americans,
Speaker 1: well you know that that the American government was capable
Speaker 1: of doing absolutely unheard of things in utter secrecy. And
Speaker 1: you know, and again, I don't think it's a coincidence that,
Speaker 1: you know, so much of the modern UFO lore is about,
Speaker 1: you know, the deserts of New Mexico and Nevada and Arizona.
Speaker 1: You know, precisely where you know, the Manhattan Project was
Speaker 1: located outside of Santa Fe, Right, So, um, so I
Speaker 1: think that that the Manhattan Project suddenly makes the the
Speaker 1: the idea that the government is capable of of covering
Speaker 1: up something beyond belief quite plausible. And so the arrival
Speaker 1: of of you know, the kind of modern UFO myth
Speaker 1: really becomes to reflect that idea that it is absolutely
Speaker 1: within the realm of plausibility that the government has uh
Speaker 1: these sort of secret, supernatural, paranormal things going on at
Speaker 1: all times, and and it's only a matter of time
Speaker 1: before we all know about them. You know. One of
Speaker 1: the things that that you cover in your book is
Speaker 1: the story of Paul Benowitz and William Moore and and
Speaker 1: Richard Doughty, And what what's your sense of how that
Speaker 1: fits into what you were just talking about the story
Speaker 1: of Paul Bennowit's again, I mean, you know, so so
Speaker 1: what I was just talking about, you know, is is
Speaker 1: I think UH sort of a credulity among people about
Speaker 1: what the government is capable of doing, you know, the
Speaker 1: lengths of UH secrecy that that it can sustain, which
Speaker 1: which frankly, I myself have difficulty going there a lot
Speaker 1: of the times because you know, I mean I look
Speaker 1: at actual conspiracies, like something like Watergate. You know, Watergate.
Speaker 1: As soon as you know, Woodward and Bernstein and the
Speaker 1: New York Times started asking questions about Watergate, the whole
Speaker 1: thing fell apart. You know, it was, you know, barely
Speaker 1: two years later before Nixon resigns. Right. So It's like,
Speaker 1: once you actually start asking around about government secrets, it's
Speaker 1: usually the case that if they are big enough, UM,
Speaker 1: and they are momentous enough, you'll find people who can talk.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, you know, you you you can
Speaker 1: find secretaries, you can find janitors, you can find bookkeepers.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody knows something that you know, it is
Speaker 1: willing to talk. So that's why I've always been somewhat
Speaker 1: skeptical about, you know, some of this sort of more
Speaker 1: outlandish government conspiracy theories. And then I came across the
Speaker 1: story of Paul Benowitz, and I was frankly flabbergasted by
Speaker 1: the depths of cynicism and um uh sort of disdain
Speaker 1: with which a you know, a government operation would treat
Speaker 1: um not just an American citizen, but a a veteran
Speaker 1: and someone who you know worked for the government and
Speaker 1: deeply loved his government. And this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: as Paul Benowitz began, you know, living on the edge
Speaker 1: of Curtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, began to see
Speaker 1: things above the skies of Curtland Air Force Base and
Speaker 1: photographing them and distributing them to you know, his UFO believer,
Speaker 1: you know networks the government. It seems to me, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, what I presume is the most sort of
Speaker 1: Okam's Razor example, you know, explanation is that there was
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, top secret craft of some
Speaker 1: kind being you know, um, I don't know tested out there,
Speaker 1: you know, but that that the Air Force could have
Speaker 1: Paul called in Paul Benewitz and said, you know, look
Speaker 1: what you saw was classified, and you, being a good patriot,
Speaker 1: we're just going to ask you to just you know,
Speaker 1: stop sending out those those images. You know. And I
Speaker 1: have no reason to think that Paul Benowitz, who's who's
Speaker 1: not only was a patriot, but his livelihood. His company
Speaker 1: was a Air Force contractor, so there's no reason he
Speaker 1: would have sacrificed his livelihood. Um, But they don't do that. Instead,
Speaker 1: they say, we are going to pump this guy with
Speaker 1: an elaborate campaign of disinformation to the point where, you know,
Speaker 1: they gave him a computer that they said was receiving
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial communications of unknown origin and could he help them,
Speaker 1: you know, decode any of it and so and then
Speaker 1: they just bombarded this computer with just gibberish that they
Speaker 1: were broadcasting from across the street to make him think
Speaker 1: that he was getting alien signals, you know. And so
Speaker 1: you know, things like that, where it's just this very
Speaker 1: bizarre and elaborate, sustained campaign to take a you know,
Speaker 1: a law abiding and patriotic American citizen and basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: more or less drive him crazy, you know, like to
Speaker 1: to like push him to the point where nobody would
Speaker 1: take him seriously because he was advancing these wild and
Speaker 1: unverifiable um theories about aliens, and that just seems to me.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a it's a really sad and tragic story.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's so much like pathos involved in there.
Speaker 1: And also I think it does speak to a kind
Speaker 1: of weird cynicism that that seems to drive some levels
Speaker 1: of the U. S. Government. Yeah, you know, it just
Speaker 1: seems so unnecessary. Like you were saying, I was struck
Speaker 1: by that too. It's like, this seems like a lot
Speaker 1: of effort two do something that's completely unnecessary, and you know,
Speaker 1: with malintent. I guess you know my take in some sense,
Speaker 1: as they were testing out to see what they could
Speaker 1: get away with, you know that that again it was
Speaker 1: not only was it unnecessary, but I think that there
Speaker 1: was some elements um, you know among um you know,
Speaker 1: the Air Force intelligence officers involved of like you know, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know what happens if we do this, you know,
Speaker 1: like it was it was a little sort of guinea
Speaker 1: pig experiment that they carried out on this this unwitting
Speaker 1: uh you know, a guy who ended up, you know,
Speaker 1: really really suffering through what seems like, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of a lot of the hallmarks of of you know,
Speaker 1: clinical psychosis as a result. So, and I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: read like a brief part and this is actually um
Speaker 1: is in the context of cryptid hoaxes, but I thought
Speaker 1: it was sort of widely applicable. It's a you're you're
Speaker 1: talking about Kevin Young's maxim quote hoax has proved that
Speaker 1: believing is seeing end quote. Whatever is in those documents
Speaker 1: is what you choose to put into them, whatever you
Speaker 1: need them to be. And you pick up the quote again.
Speaker 1: The hoax is rather a kind of coded confession, revealing
Speaker 1: not only a deep seated cultural wish, but also a
Speaker 1: common set of themes or faints or strategies that add
Speaker 1: up to a ritual that that seems to me to
Speaker 1: be fairly certainly widely applicable to almost all the stuff
Speaker 1: that you're talking about in here. Oh yeah, and and definitely,
Speaker 1: I mean, and you know, Kevin Kevin Young's book for
Speaker 1: for those of you who don't know it, Bunk is
Speaker 1: absolutely fantastic. What Young is interested in is is particularly
Speaker 1: hoaxes that that reflect American ambivalence about race. So you know,
Speaker 1: various white authors who of you know, published fake memoirs
Speaker 1: as you know, uh, you know, black or Native American
Speaker 1: writers or something like that, and then have been sort
Speaker 1: of found out and that kind of stuff. And so
Speaker 1: so what Young is sort of tracing, which I think
Speaker 1: is is really valuable and important, is the way in
Speaker 1: which as that Coaches sort of implies, you know that
Speaker 1: that the idea that a hoax is a kind of
Speaker 1: attempt to make a myth into reality. You know that
Speaker 1: if you have a kind of and again this is
Speaker 1: sort of you know, his argument, not not so much mine,
Speaker 1: but I'm paraphrasing his argument, which I agree with that
Speaker 1: you know, if you have a sort of narrative about
Speaker 1: up inner city crime or urban poverty or whatever, and
Speaker 1: then a white person comes along and writes a memoir
Speaker 1: as a black person sort of burying out these these
Speaker 1: myths and these sort of misconceptions, then you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's what the hoax is there to do. The hoax
Speaker 1: is there to sort of make the false thing look true.
Speaker 1: And and so with my book, you know, when I'm
Speaker 1: moving into you know, things like cryptos and UFOs, I
Speaker 1: mean there's a lot that I talked about where I
Speaker 1: don't I don't have any evidence to to believe that,
Speaker 1: you know, a given story as a hoax. I don't
Speaker 1: have a I don't have a good explanation. I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot that remains unexplained, and so I, by
Speaker 1: no means want to assert that the you know, the
Speaker 1: whole field is full of hoaxes. But you know, we
Speaker 1: do have a number of very obvious documented hoaxes. And
Speaker 1: in fact, um, you know, one of the again, one
Speaker 1: of more tragically you know, weird stories is this guy
Speaker 1: and Calsco Montana who buys a gilly suit, which is
Speaker 1: a you know, sort of extreme camouflage where you know,
Speaker 1: the suit is supposed to make you look like a
Speaker 1: pile of leaves, you know, so you can sort of
Speaker 1: lie prone and you know, be a sniper or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: and he wears the suit and he wanders out onto
Speaker 1: the freeway at night, hoping that a motorist will catch
Speaker 1: just a glimpse of him and um and believe it
Speaker 1: to be a big foot you know. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's a bigfoot hoax thing. But um, he uh he
Speaker 1: gets hit by uh not one but two cars actually
Speaker 1: ends up dead, you know, it ends up you know, killed.
Speaker 1: And so there's this this really strange sort of story about,
Speaker 1: you know, an attempt to create a hoax, to kind
Speaker 1: of gin up a belief in a thing which this
Speaker 1: person knows to be false that ends up backfiring in
Speaker 1: this horrible way. And so I think that when you
Speaker 1: catalog a lot of the history of of hoaxes, you know,
Speaker 1: um UFO photos where where it's sort of clearly a
Speaker 1: hub cap or side view mirror or something like that,
Speaker 1: and you you sort of aggregate all of them in
Speaker 1: this kind of kind of compendium, which you get is
Speaker 1: again and again a sort of aching desire to make
Speaker 1: a thing true at all costs, even to the point
Speaker 1: of sort of you know, inventing the whole the thing
Speaker 1: from whole cloth. That's interesting going back to the whole
Speaker 1: Doughty in Benewits. You know, one of the big differences
Speaker 1: that although it's a big hoax, is that he you know,
Speaker 1: it's not coming from this sort of sincere hope to
Speaker 1: make something that you wish was real, have other people
Speaker 1: also believe it's real. It's just this absolutely cynical exercise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a good point. And yeah, and at the
Speaker 1: same time it makes me think just you know, what
Speaker 1: you're saying just makes me think it's But it's also
Speaker 1: an attempt to see, like how I guess I guess
Speaker 1: the thing is, the more people desire something to be true,
Speaker 1: the easier it is to to feed them lies. Right,
Speaker 1: you know that, you know, the people buy things because
Speaker 1: they they want to believe that they're true. And so
Speaker 1: I feel, like with with Doughty trying to sort of
Speaker 1: spread these these hoaxes throughout the UFO community, is also
Speaker 1: a sense to see, like, you know, how deep is
Speaker 1: you know, quote the Beachies, how deep is this love?
Speaker 1: You know, like how um, how easy will it be
Speaker 1: to get people to believe this? Because that becomes an
Speaker 1: index of how strong the belief is. And it turns
Speaker 1: out that, you know, until Bill Moore kind of you know,
Speaker 1: gave his maya culpa, the belief was really strong. People
Speaker 1: were were desperate even to the point to you know,
Speaker 1: accepting things that that didn't hold up under any scrutiny whatsoever,
Speaker 1: but they accepted them to be true because you know,
Speaker 1: that strong desire to to have the thing be real.
Speaker 1: Another thing that you bring up that I thought would
Speaker 1: be would be interesting to the people who are listening.
Speaker 1: Is this idea of stigmatized knowledge. I realize I'm kind
Speaker 1: of pulling a term out of the book, but do
Speaker 1: you yeah, I mean this again, this is a really
Speaker 1: this is this is difficult for me to kind of
Speaker 1: part because I find myself often on both sides of
Speaker 1: this in some ways. And you know, again, when I
Speaker 1: was when I was trying to sort of make sense
Speaker 1: of the genealogy of some of these believes, I kept
Speaker 1: coming back to this period at the end of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century when um, you know, scientific sort of uh
Speaker 1: methodology and thought becomes kind of institutionalized, right, So you
Speaker 1: have the rise of PhD programs, which don't exist in
Speaker 1: America before the eighteen seventies. You have the rise of
Speaker 1: professional organizations, so you know, you can't just be can't
Speaker 1: just be a country doctor anymore. Now you have to
Speaker 1: belong to the you know, American Physicians Association or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, you know, and so so things sort of
Speaker 1: get ossified in these these institutions. And I think in
Speaker 1: some ways I think that's good, you know, prevents you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, quacks from you know, taking people's money
Speaker 1: for you know, dubious medical practices. It it allows you
Speaker 1: to make scientific discoveries that you know at scale, which
Speaker 1: you know are are are much easier to do in
Speaker 1: a kind of you know university with you know, grant
Speaker 1: funding or in you know whatever. Yeah, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Um, But it also then creates this kind
Speaker 1: of a group of outsiders who who rightly or wrongly
Speaker 1: feel that they are not going to be taken seriously
Speaker 1: because they're not part of this institution and um, and
Speaker 1: that their contributions should be considered just as valid. And
Speaker 1: so through through what I found is sort of um.
Speaker 1: You know, this period of kind of the institutionalization of
Speaker 1: science is when you first get the rise of uh,
Speaker 1: you know what I what I call in the book
Speaker 1: and what you know as they were known then cranks,
Speaker 1: you know, these these people like ignacious Donnelly, who was
Speaker 1: not an archaeologist or an anthropologist or or did he
Speaker 1: do any field work, but he he writes the book
Speaker 1: you know, on Atlantis, the first sort of modern book
Speaker 1: on Atlantis, arguing that is a real place that you
Speaker 1: know it existed, and that it's sunking to sea and
Speaker 1: and you know, he has no scientific basis for this,
Speaker 1: but um, he's not daunted by this, and it turns
Speaker 1: out to be you know, pretty popular. And so this
Speaker 1: institutionalization of science also gets the rise of cranks, who
Speaker 1: are people on the outside of science arguing for scientific
Speaker 1: knowledge and fact and so, you know, so stigmatized knowledge
Speaker 1: I think sort of sort of comes out of that
Speaker 1: that divide. I mean, you know, what do you do
Speaker 1: with this stuff which is sort of outside of the
Speaker 1: bounds of acceptable science and and thus not going to
Speaker 1: be taken seriously in a kind of mainstream scientific discourse.
Speaker 1: Like on the one hand, I think that's that seems good,
Speaker 1: that seems right. Um, you know. Um, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: science is only as ever as good as the scientists
Speaker 1: who who do the science right, so that you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, science gets it wrong all the time,
Speaker 1: and we depend on a kind of external system of
Speaker 1: checks and balances to make sure that. You know, that
Speaker 1: kind of institutionalized science is in itself making you know,
Speaker 1: dangerous airs a fact and judgment, which it is often
Speaker 1: capable of doing everything from you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: eugenics to uh, you know, you name it, and so
Speaker 1: so I think that it's On the one hand, I
Speaker 1: find myself often sort of skeptical of a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that falls under that category of stigmatized knowledge. I
Speaker 1: also find it a really vital and valuable sort of arena,
Speaker 1: precisely because it offers one of the few kind of
Speaker 1: you know, checks we have against you know, an institutionization
Speaker 1: of science that might be, uh, you know, prone to
Speaker 1: its own problems. It's interesting you quote um Don Donderie
Speaker 1: in the book, and I had a fairly long conversation
Speaker 1: with him for the first season of Strange Arrivals, and
Speaker 1: a fair amount of it was about sort of the
Speaker 1: frustrations of trying to do scientific research on UFOs and
Speaker 1: how there's just there's it's just not part of science, right,
Speaker 1: There's there's no grants you can get, there's no place
Speaker 1: that's gonna peer review papers about UFOs. That it just
Speaker 1: sort of exists in this in this place, and you know,
Speaker 1: he was sort of expressing his frustration and trying to
Speaker 1: get anybody to take it seriously for those reasons. On
Speaker 1: the one hand, I think that's a valid you know,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a valid complain And you know, I
Speaker 1: saw also saw that a lot with um luckness monster believers, right,
Speaker 1: you know that you know, uh, it's not it's not
Speaker 1: cheap to trawl the bottom of lockness with you know,
Speaker 1: a sonar array looking for unidentified large creatures. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: it takes takes funding, you know, and and mainstream science
Speaker 1: is not going to pay for that funding, and thus
Speaker 1: it you know, it doesn't get done and becomes a
Speaker 1: sort of circular argument where you know, people say, well,
Speaker 1: we have no scientific evidence, but we're also not going
Speaker 1: to pay for the scientific inquiry that might turn up
Speaker 1: that evidence. And I get that that is sort of frustrating.
Speaker 1: The flip side is, um the cost of doing that
Speaker 1: kind of of research has actually plummeted with the you know,
Speaker 1: it's just the increases in sort of technological cheatment and
Speaker 1: you know what you can accomplish and document with a
Speaker 1: freaking iPhone, you know, to say nothing of ten dollars
Speaker 1: or whatever worth of high tech equipment when we get
Speaker 1: you quite far. And so we we both see on
Speaker 1: the one hand the sort of sense of like, well,
Speaker 1: we're not we're not sort of putting enough money into
Speaker 1: you know, possibly finding these discoveries. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: We're also at a point, I think, technologically where these
Speaker 1: discoveries actually don't take that much money anymore, and when
Speaker 1: we're still not finding them. So all right, well, uh,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your time. This is awesome. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. Yeah, thanks for reaching out. Thanks, have
Speaker 1: a good uh rest of your day. Yeah, youtuo, thanks
Speaker 1: a lot. Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: three D Audio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
Speaker 1: This episode was written and hosted by Toby Ball and
Speaker 1: produced by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Same, with executive producers
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, Matt Frederick, and Aaron Mankey. Learn more about
Speaker 1: Strange Rivals over at Grimm and Mild dot com, and
Speaker 1: find more podcasts from my heart Radio by visiting the
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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.