Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we don't have an amazing show.
Speaker 2: For you today.
Speaker 1: Garage Graft stops bys you talk about his new book UFO,
Speaker 1: the inside story of the US government Search for Alien
Speaker 1: Life here and out there. But first we have founder
Speaker 1: of Run for Something, Amanda Litman. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: Amanda Litman.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me, Mollie.
Speaker 1: I am happy to have you. I have so many
Speaker 1: things I want to talk to you about. I know,
Speaker 1: run for Something really really well. I'm gonna let you
Speaker 1: give a like two second for the very very very few.
Speaker 2: People who don't know what run for Something is. Tell
Speaker 2: them so.
Speaker 3: Run for Something recruits and supports young, diverse progresses running
Speaker 3: for state and local office all across the country. We
Speaker 3: work with millennials and gen z who have to take
Speaker 3: back power. They're running for a state legislature and they're
Speaker 3: running for school board. We've helped elect more than one
Speaker 3: thousand people, mostly women and people of color, in nearly
Speaker 3: every state, and we're building the biggest pipeline in democratic context.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what this biggest pipeline in democratic politics
Speaker 1: looks like.
Speaker 2: Give us a few examples.
Speaker 3: Love that question. So we have just about one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand people who raise their hands to say,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about running for office. What do I do next?
Speaker 3: They are moms and teachers and scientists and veterans. They
Speaker 3: are thinking about running for school board in Florida and
Speaker 3: mayorships in Indiana and state legislature in Texas and all
Speaker 3: kinds of positions in between. And the thing I really
Speaker 3: love about them is there actually is like no uniting
Speaker 3: commonality between them beyond the fact that they really give
Speaker 3: a shit and they're going to run for office to
Speaker 3: take action on that.
Speaker 1: Okay, so tell me like one candidate who's coming through
Speaker 1: this cycle.
Speaker 4: So I'll just tell you a little bit.
Speaker 3: It's some when we work with in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: who I am a sas FID. So in Pennsylvania, there's
Speaker 3: a county called Dauphin County, which is like around Harrisburg,
Speaker 3: and they had this year their county Commission up for office.
Speaker 3: We were working to make sure we were going to
Speaker 3: recruit a pro democracy leader for that office. Because the
Speaker 3: county commissioner oversees the elections, they do things like determining
Speaker 3: how easier hard is able to cure their ballots, how
Speaker 3: people can get their votes counted, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: So we said a bunch of text messages, we did
Speaker 3: a bunch of phone calls. We able to play. Found
Speaker 3: this guy, Justin Douglas. Justin Douglas is a pastor. He's
Speaker 3: like a CrossFit athlete. He does like some work on
Speaker 3: the side to try and make some money. He had
Speaker 3: been a community neither. Yeah, like, yeah, just try to
Speaker 3: make a living. We talked about running for office, and
Speaker 3: at first he was a little resisting. He was like,
Speaker 3: maybe I'll find someone else, but ultimately decided to get
Speaker 3: in the race himself. He knocked tens of thousands of doors,
Speaker 3: raised a pretty re meaningful amount of money. He's a
Speaker 3: married dad of three. He'd been doing a bunch of
Speaker 3: advocacy for the homeless, and one of the biggest issues
Speaker 3: he wanted to talk about in this read was prison reform,
Speaker 3: because the county commission oversees the prison system in there,
Speaker 3: and there had been a number of prisoners who had
Speaker 3: died in the jail system that he wanted to bring
Speaker 3: attention to. He did things like leave lit on people's
Speaker 3: doors that said the mayor in Jaws one is still
Speaker 3: the mayor in Jaws two Local.
Speaker 2: Or a amazing.
Speaker 3: Amazing So he ends up winning this election by you know,
Speaker 3: as of last caat was maybe one hundred and forty
Speaker 3: seven votes at a fifty three thousand cast. He helps
Speaker 3: flip control of the County Commission two Democrats for the
Speaker 3: first time since World War One, so over one hundred years.
Speaker 3: He is now going to oversee, along with the criminal
Speaker 3: justice system, along with the county budget. The election in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four in a critical county in Pennsylvania, Right,
Speaker 3: and we're going to.
Speaker 1: Have safe, free and fair elections where there's no funny business.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Tell me another one also.
Speaker 3: In Pennsylvania, and it's an amazing candidates running for school board,
Speaker 3: in particular in Central York, PA, there was a county
Speaker 3: school board that had been doing a ton of book
Speaker 3: bands over the last year. They at one point gotten
Speaker 3: into some trouble for engaging with a lawyer that the
Speaker 3: Southern Property Law Center had called a hate group. And
Speaker 3: we're working with hate groups. They kept trying to ban books.
Speaker 3: They you going to put together lists that were obviously
Speaker 3: resourced from Moms for Liberty. Amelia McMillan and Benjamin Walker
Speaker 3: was who have the Run for Something candidates there, knockdoors,
Speaker 3: made calls. Amelia held a retathon to get people reading
Speaker 3: banned books and to help raise money for her campaign,
Speaker 3: and they were able to flip the school board in
Speaker 3: Central York, keeping Moms for Liberty out of power, and
Speaker 3: they were part of the hundreds of folks who beat
Speaker 3: run Moms for Liberty candidates across the country and sharing
Speaker 3: that they just ate shits so hard, which not going
Speaker 3: to dissuade them from doing the work in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four and beyond, but gives us that, you know, when
Speaker 3: we run, Lee can win. So we just got to
Speaker 3: get on the ballot in the first place.
Speaker 1: I feel like those school board elections, there were so
Speaker 1: much many victories in twenty three. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: they weren't polls, so they couldn't be talked about on television,
Speaker 1: but there were so many of these victories where like
Speaker 1: the school boards, you had these crazy Moms for Liberty people.
Speaker 2: By the way, now Moms for threesomes.
Speaker 1: And again, no dispersions, And I think everyone should have
Speaker 1: the kind of sex they want to have in the world,
Speaker 1: but I just don't want them also banning books. But
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting. There were so much of this,
Speaker 1: like we're going to go to the school boards, We're
Speaker 1: going to make sure that you can't ever let your
Speaker 1: kids read any books that have anyone who's gay in them.
Speaker 1: And there really was a kind of groundswell of normal
Speaker 1: people running for school boards, and you guys were involved
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 3: You know, Moms for Liberty had a thirty to thirty
Speaker 3: two percent win rate in November. Run for something school
Speaker 3: board cans it's one at seventy two percent. Wow, I
Speaker 3: feel like people don't think like, oh, like Republican parties
Speaker 3: investing so much in school board they're guaranteed victory. Wech
Speaker 3: hear so much about what they're doing. People want schools
Speaker 3: to be boring, they want them to be confident, They
Speaker 3: want them to think about your pay and facilities funding,
Speaker 3: and when we give them candidates to vote for, when
Speaker 3: we support candidates who can make that case, like, people
Speaker 3: don't support book bans, they want normalcy. So really, why
Speaker 3: I'm so excited about the work we're going to do
Speaker 3: on school boards in twenty twenty four and hopefully beyond
Speaker 3: because it has never been more important, and Moms for
Speaker 3: Liberty is not going anywhere. They've opened a like six
Speaker 3: thousand square foot education activism headquarters in Sarasota. They are
Speaker 3: ready to invest millions more in this. They are all in,
Speaker 3: and I do think it's worth noting that part of
Speaker 3: the reason they're going all in on this is because
Speaker 3: they know this is the kind of thing that gets
Speaker 3: people who might otherwise not be excited about the presidential
Speaker 3: actually in twenty twenty four, really excited to show up
Speaker 3: at the polls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, book banning is their choice right, is
Speaker 1: their right to choice when it comes to abortion. They
Speaker 1: really love book banning. Probably not a great sign for
Speaker 1: that party. Let's talk about like sort of down ballot
Speaker 1: stuff you're seeing in other states.
Speaker 2: One of the things that we're seeing.
Speaker 1: In the South is a kind of and especially there
Speaker 1: are some green shoots in the South of democracy.
Speaker 2: I was wondering if you could talk about that.
Speaker 3: Yes, we have some incredible folks running and that we've
Speaker 3: been working with in places like Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, even Alabama, Oklahoma,
Speaker 3: course down in Florida. Now as places see the really
Speaker 3: feel the consequences of Republican leadership like they're going too far,
Speaker 3: I think it's really worth noting like these are places
Speaker 3: where the top of the ticket is not going to compete.
Speaker 3: In many places there isn't a statewide election, so local
Speaker 3: candidates get a chance to really define what they believe
Speaker 3: in and what they stand for as a Democrat in
Speaker 3: that community. They get to knockdoors, they get to talk
Speaker 3: to voters in a really cool way, and they get
Speaker 3: to be really concrete in particularly when we're talking about abortion.
Speaker 3: These local candidates can really speak specifically, tangibly, practically about
Speaker 3: what it means to elect a Democrat, and not just
Speaker 3: any Democrat, but this Democrat who people their voters know
Speaker 3: and trust and can deliver results for them.
Speaker 1: This is like one of the things you often say,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to ask you to say it again,
Speaker 1: about why it's so important that you run people for
Speaker 1: every seat. Will you explain to us why it's so
Speaker 1: important that you run people for every seat. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to be boring, but.
Speaker 3: No, it's not boring at all. It is incredibly important
Speaker 3: to run candidates for as many offices as we possibly
Speaker 3: can one because if we don't intentionally do candidate recruitment,
Speaker 3: seventy percent of local races go uncontested any given year.
Speaker 3: That means only one candidate from either party is on
Speaker 3: the ballot. In many places, when elections go uncontested, the
Speaker 3: governing body will just cancel the election, which means people
Speaker 3: don't have a chance to build that muscle of voting.
Speaker 3: So that's a problem number one. Number two on the
Speaker 3: policy side, these local positions. You know, we think that
Speaker 3: most governing comes from DC, but that's not actually the
Speaker 3: lived experience for most people. The quality of roads you
Speaker 3: drive on, how affordable housing is, how accessible childcare is,
Speaker 3: whether restaurants can be open or closed, whether your schools
Speaker 3: are fully funded, whether you have access to abortion, how
Speaker 3: your jail system is run. All of that is happening
Speaker 3: in the state and local level. So it really doesn't
Speaker 3: matter his unus positions on the politics side. And this
Speaker 3: is the thing where I think it's it's easy to
Speaker 3: forget no one. These candidates are the bench of future leadership.
Speaker 3: So if you want better presidential candidates and better governors,
Speaker 3: you need to lact better school board members and state legislators.
Speaker 3: But two these are the people who are the most
Speaker 3: compelling messengers to their neighbors because they understand what their
Speaker 3: folks are facing. They are knocking doors, they're talking to voters,
Speaker 3: and especially for younger voters, and we keep hearing this
Speaker 3: in focus groups and in polling. Local candidates can excite
Speaker 3: them in a way that the top of the ticket can't.
Speaker 3: You have done some buddies have that some research here,
Speaker 3: and we did this in twenty twenty as well. Simply
Speaker 3: fielding a state legislative candidate in a district that didn't
Speaker 3: previously have one increases democratic turnout in that district by
Speaker 3: anywhere from half a percent to two and a half percent,
Speaker 3: which could be the margin of victory for Biden in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four. So, if you're thinking about what is
Speaker 3: the best way to help the entire party, the entire
Speaker 3: country to get good policy and make good politics and
Speaker 3: save democracy, it may be counterintually, but I think actually
Speaker 3: pretty intigularly is to support local candidate's running for office.
Speaker 1: So interesting and so important So Nevada, there have been
Speaker 1: a number of polls that show that Democrats have a
Speaker 1: weakness with a voting base that they have long counted
Speaker 1: on Latino voters and also African American voters, voters of
Speaker 1: color more generally. Do you think that there is an
Speaker 1: opportunity and there's been some you know, there's like a
Speaker 1: media narrative which says like Democrats have taken these voters
Speaker 1: for granted in a certain kind of way. Are you
Speaker 1: seeing And I think the most important thing, and certainly
Speaker 1: when you look at the South is to have people
Speaker 1: of color running things. I know that for women there's
Speaker 1: more of a barrier to entry. Can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about that and talk about recruitment efforts and
Speaker 1: talk about this because I think it's so. You know,
Speaker 1: I look at the senators from Mississippi, and I know
Speaker 1: that Mississippi is a majority minority state, and I look
Speaker 1: at their two senators and those are not representative of
Speaker 1: the people of Mississippi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have seen that recruiting candidates of color is
Speaker 3: incredibly meaningful, especially in places where it's really reflective. We
Speaker 3: saw this Virginia and the state legislature. The new speaker
Speaker 3: of the Virginia State House, which Democrats just flipped, will
Speaker 3: be the first black House speaker in the history of Virginia.
Speaker 2: That's incredibly meaningful.
Speaker 1: And by the way, insane that it's twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: and we're having this conversation.
Speaker 3: In particular Virginia, the state legislature it will now be
Speaker 3: about twenty three percent Black leaders. Virginia's Black community is
Speaker 3: about twenty one percent. We are finally starting off reflective leadership.
Speaker 3: This is because of the work that organizations like Yes
Speaker 3: New Virginia Majority have been doing. But I'll run for
Speaker 3: something that's been working in Virginia since twenty seventeen, and
Speaker 3: our slates of candidates each year have been more and
Speaker 3: more reflective of those communities. You know, it makes a
Speaker 3: lot of sense if you see a candidate who can
Speaker 3: speak authentically to the issues you're feeling, who can communicate
Speaker 3: not just like on the topics, but in a way
Speaker 3: that makes sense, like isn't forcing, it, isn't full of shit,
Speaker 3: like really you know, just like gets it, just gets it.
Speaker 3: That makes a difference in how excited you might feel
Speaker 3: and for what it's worth. Depending on how local they are,
Speaker 3: you might know them, you might be part of the
Speaker 3: same circles. The more locally offices you get, the number
Speaker 3: of voters you need to reach is much smaller, which
Speaker 3: means it's more likely that like you go to the
Speaker 3: same grocery store, you go to the same place of faith,
Speaker 3: you go to the same gym, your kids are on
Speaker 3: the same like you know, intramural soccer team, shared experiences,
Speaker 3: and like shared race or class or gender. Is not
Speaker 3: just about representation, and that's certainly important. It's about shared
Speaker 3: lived priorities and the way that it affects governing and
Speaker 3: a communication style so important.
Speaker 2: And I think that's such a good point. I mean, the.
Speaker 1: Whole goal is to have people who would live in
Speaker 1: the place represent the place.
Speaker 3: YEH want people who can really reflect the community they're
Speaker 3: trying to serve and are of that community. Like one
Speaker 3: for Something always says, we're not trying to get diversity
Speaker 3: for diversity's sake. We're trying to get diversity that reflects
Speaker 3: the diversity of the United States. That's important. And a
Speaker 3: leader in you know, a school board member in Miami
Speaker 3: might have a different kind of background than a municipal
Speaker 3: officer in Ohio. That's okay too. And that's what I
Speaker 3: think the Democratic Party so great is that it's a
Speaker 3: really big tent that can include a lot of different
Speaker 3: kinds of people. That's what makes it really harsh.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to Virginia like that was a
Speaker 1: huge victory for Democrats. I think I was personally quite
Speaker 1: anxious about Virginia and the sort of narrative we got
Speaker 1: was that Youngkin was this new kind of Republican, very
Speaker 1: good at appealing to moderates. But that's not really what
Speaker 1: happened on the ground, is it.
Speaker 3: No, not at all. As it turns out, people were
Speaker 3: really uninterested in whether a Republican party was selling, in
Speaker 3: particular when it comes to an abortion ban, which they
Speaker 3: tried so hard to pretend that wasn't what they were all.
Speaker 3: Virginia Democrats did a really good job of making it
Speaker 3: clear that if you elected a Republican state legislature, you
Speaker 3: were going to get a full ban on abortion. We
Speaker 3: also saw this in school board races. We worked with
Speaker 3: Madison Irving, who's a football coach like a county outside Richmond,
Speaker 3: who was running against a Mom's for Liberty like type
Speaker 3: candidate who wanted to abolish the public school system basically,
Speaker 3: and he said he just wanted to talk to folks
Speaker 3: about teaching your pay. You want to talk to about
Speaker 3: facilities funding, and every person he met was like, ooof
Speaker 3: thank god, I just want to not have to think
Speaker 3: about this so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that.
Speaker 1: I think ultimately one of the biggest problems with this
Speaker 1: incredible Republican fascism thing that they're into autocracy, whatever makes
Speaker 1: you feel the most comfortable is this idea people.
Speaker 2: Don't really want. I mean, they want their government to work, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, is that what you're seeing on the ground.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, they want their government to work, and they want
Speaker 3: their leaders not to be like fucking weirdos.
Speaker 2: That's my favorite line.
Speaker 3: We under estimate how weird some of the Republican candidates
Speaker 3: have become like embarcas. It's one of the only ways
Speaker 3: you can win a Republican primary right now, or can
Speaker 3: we even identify as a Republican? And I do have
Speaker 3: some amount of empathy for people who are Republican voters
Speaker 3: and feel out of sorts with their party. They feel
Speaker 3: a little politically homeless. And also you get what you built.
Speaker 3: Oh no, plants are quite my actions. When you run
Speaker 3: good folks who can point out the lunacy on the
Speaker 3: other side and can really like tell the story, it
Speaker 3: makes a difference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, so now this is like a big
Speaker 1: election coming up.
Speaker 2: What are you looking at, what is your dream?
Speaker 1: What are you excited about, and most importantly, what do
Speaker 1: you need money for?
Speaker 3: Okay, so we are excited about a couple of things.
Speaker 3: The one, we are likely to work with over eight
Speaker 3: hundred candidates this year in nearly every state. We've already
Speaker 3: endorsed more than one hundred for twenty twenty four. They're
Speaker 3: going to be running for state legislatures and city councils
Speaker 3: and especially school boards as we looked in the next year,
Speaker 3: and we want to make sure that we can support
Speaker 3: all of them in all the ways that they need.
Speaker 3: We're also doing active recruitment filing builins have already passed
Speaker 3: in some states. The work for twenty twenty four started
Speaker 3: years ago, but we are still doing recruitment up through
Speaker 3: the and the filing the lines in some places as
Speaker 3: late as June or July. Third thing, we're doing a
Speaker 3: ton of is As I mentioned school board work. We
Speaker 3: want to make sure we have the infrastructure we need
Speaker 3: to recruit candidates for school board races, only half of
Speaker 3: which happened in November. School Board elections are year round.
Speaker 3: We want to make sure we're everywhere that we need
Speaker 3: to be to stop Nocheberty. Final thing we're doing is
Speaker 3: ensuring that our candidates can really knock doors and talk
Speaker 3: to voters in a way that will gin up turn
Speaker 3: out to the top of the ticket. So being really
Speaker 3: intentional about why we're helping people. All of that takes money.
Speaker 3: And you know, Molly, I've been on the show before,
Speaker 3: We've talked about it before. It has been a really
Speaker 3: rough year for fundraising. I think everyone on the Democratic side,
Speaker 3: at least, you know, the organizations that do this work,
Speaker 3: has seen the same kind of contraction. And I think
Speaker 3: it is really scary going into what is honestly the
Speaker 3: biggest election you're yet knowing that for a lot of
Speaker 3: folks they're gonna have to cut back on their program
Speaker 3: when it's never a matter more because donors have not
Speaker 3: stepped up in a wait that allows us to comfortably
Speaker 3: do this work. That's really scary for me. It's really
Speaker 3: scary for a lot of my peers. It's really scary
Speaker 3: for our democracy. I think folks are waiting for it
Speaker 3: to feel real, Like it's hard to imagine that we're
Speaker 3: doing Trump versus Biden redux, but we are and those
Speaker 3: are the stakes. And if you have been waiting to
Speaker 3: give to any political cause, to run for something or
Speaker 3: anything else, like.
Speaker 2: Do it now, do it now.
Speaker 3: You should have done it six months ago, but do
Speaker 3: it now because people are divining their twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: budgets today if they're not already, and we need to
Speaker 3: know we can count on you so important.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Amanda. I hope you'll come back anytime.
Speaker 1: Scared Graf is author of You Have the Inside Story
Speaker 1: of the US Government, Served for life here and out there,
Speaker 1: and is a contributor at Wired magazine. Welcome Too Fast Politics, Garrett.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2: Garrett. Why UFOs discuss.
Speaker 4: I got interested in UFOs because in national security circles
Speaker 4: in Washington I started to hear serious people talking seriously
Speaker 4: about this subject. And for me, there was one particular
Speaker 4: moment that launched me on this book project, which was
Speaker 4: John Brennan, as you know, the former CIA director of
Speaker 4: former White Household and security advisor, gave an interview in
Speaker 4: December twenty twenty where he said, there are things out
Speaker 4: there that we don't know what they are. They puzzle
Speaker 4: us and some might think that this phenomenon could constitute
Speaker 4: a new form of life. And it was a really
Speaker 4: remarkable statement to me, because you know, at that point,
Speaker 4: this is twenty twenty. John Brennan had just wrapped up
Speaker 4: the better part of a decade atop the US intelligence community,
Speaker 4: and I figured, there can't be that many things that
Speaker 4: puzzle John Brennan. Like when he wakes up in the morning,
Speaker 4: if he has a question, there's a sixty billion dollar
Speaker 4: a year apparatus whose job it is to go out
Speaker 4: and find the answers to his questions. And so if
Speaker 4: he was leaving office and he was still puzzled about
Speaker 4: UFOs what the government now calls UAPs unidentified anomalist phenomenon,
Speaker 4: then that was probably a subject worthy of diving into
Speaker 4: for a book.
Speaker 2: So UFO is they're real?
Speaker 4: Well, something is real. I mean UFOs all it stands
Speaker 4: for is unidentified flying objects, and so there are definitely
Speaker 4: unidentified flying objects. What we don't know is whether any
Speaker 4: of them are extraterrestrial in origin, which is what normally
Speaker 4: people mean when they ask, you know, our UFOs real,
Speaker 4: they mean sort of our aliens visiting us. Part of
Speaker 4: what this book tried to do was pulled together the
Speaker 4: twin threads of the US military's hunt to understand UFOs
Speaker 4: here on Earth, and the evolving astronomy and science around
Speaker 4: our understanding of the universe, and the possibility of what's
Speaker 4: known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence out across the
Speaker 4: rest of the universe. And what I think you're left
Speaker 4: with at the end, or at least what I was
Speaker 4: left with when when I finished the book, is that
Speaker 4: the math is very much on the side of the aliens.
Speaker 4: That our understanding of the scope and scale and breadth
Speaker 4: of the universe in really just the last twenty years
Speaker 4: has revolutionized astronomy that we now understand. You know, as
Speaker 4: late as the nineteen nineties, we didn't know that there
Speaker 4: was a single planet outside of our own Solar System,
Speaker 4: and we now understand that effectively every star across the
Speaker 4: universe has has planets, and that many of those will
Speaker 4: fall into what's known as the Goldilock zone, the sort
Speaker 4: of range and temperature where water could exist, where atmospheres
Speaker 4: could exist, where oxygen could exist, and that across the
Speaker 4: universe there are probably on the order of about one
Speaker 4: sex tillion habitable planets, which is to say a billion
Speaker 4: trillion habitable planets, and that you know, statistically most likely
Speaker 4: our universe teams not only with life, but also probably
Speaker 4: intelligent life as well. The question is whether any of
Speaker 4: it is close enough to us that we would notice,
Speaker 4: or whether they would notice us, or one of the
Speaker 4: most interesting questions to me ends up being would they
Speaker 4: care if they found us at all? Because we have
Speaker 4: this like wonderfully human centric view that aliens would bother
Speaker 4: trying to come across the vastness of interstellar space to
Speaker 4: visit us, make friends with us, invade us, harvest our
Speaker 4: organs for energy, you know, what have you, Whereas it's
Speaker 4: quite likely that an intelligent civilization would view us with
Speaker 4: all of the interest that we view an ant hill
Speaker 4: as we walk by on the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: So we are too unimportant for aliens to want to
Speaker 1: abduct us.
Speaker 4: That's about where I end up at the end of.
Speaker 2: This feels depressing.
Speaker 4: Part of what the astronomers have really begun to figure
Speaker 4: out is that, you know, we are a remarkably young
Speaker 4: solar system in a pretty ordinary corner of a pretty
Speaker 4: ordinary galaxy, in a pretty old universe, and one of
Speaker 4: the most interesting and profound things that I came across
Speaker 4: in the course of this book, was really realizing that, like,
Speaker 4: we might have missed the intelligent life that we've only
Speaker 4: been around, you know, as humans a few ten thousand years.
Speaker 4: And you know, we're about four and a half billion
Speaker 4: year old in our solar system across a fourteen billion
Speaker 4: year old universe, and so you could have seen billion
Speaker 4: year civilizations, I mean, things far more advanced than anything
Speaker 4: that we could possibly imagine, that have risen and fallen
Speaker 4: multiple times, long before our Solar system even began to
Speaker 4: gather out of dust in the universe.
Speaker 2: What sorry, I mean, what I shouldn't say that.
Speaker 1: But so the senses there are aliens, they're not that
Speaker 1: interested in us because we're too new.
Speaker 4: We're too new, and it's not clear that anyone would
Speaker 4: have noticed our existence. I mean, when you begin to
Speaker 4: talk about the vastness of interstellar space, we just haven't
Speaker 4: been to detective for that long. Carl Sagan the famous
Speaker 4: twentieth century astronomer. He was one of the leading proponents
Speaker 4: of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, while also being one
Speaker 4: of the leading skeptics that UFOs were alien visitors here
Speaker 4: on Earth, and his argument wasn't that aliens don't visit Earth.
Speaker 4: His argument was statistically aliens probably only visit Earth every
Speaker 4: couple hundred thousand years, and that they treat Earth effectively
Speaker 4: as we would treat a rest area on the New
Speaker 4: Jersey Turnpike a stopover on the way from one interesting
Speaker 4: place to another. It's not that you know, aliens never
Speaker 4: come here, It's that the thing that you saw out
Speaker 4: your window last Thursday night was unlikely to be the
Speaker 4: day out of the last two hundred thousand years that
Speaker 4: an alien randomly stopped by.
Speaker 2: Okay, so where does this leave us now?
Speaker 4: So it leaves with the idea UAPs UFOs are real.
Speaker 4: There's something that we don't understand flying around out there,
Speaker 4: moving through our airspace and our atmosphere. It's probably not aliens,
Speaker 4: but that doesn't mean that it's not something really interesting.
Speaker 4: And to me, UFOs probably end up being four different things,
Speaker 4: which are when I talk about this, you know, I'm
Speaker 4: drawing a boundary of course around like the UFOs that
Speaker 4: really puzzle the government, because a huge percentage of UFOs
Speaker 4: and UAPs are things that are easily explainable. You know,
Speaker 4: the planet Venus, you know Starlink, satellite launches actually now
Speaker 4: account for a huge percentage of UFO sightings. But of
Speaker 4: the things that puzzle the government, some chunk of it
Speaker 4: is advanced adversary technology being tested against us. These are
Speaker 4: Chinese drone, Russian drones, Iranian drones, things like that, and
Speaker 4: we know that the Pentagon has actually uncovered some of
Speaker 4: these in trying to study UFOs. One of the things
Speaker 4: that the Pentagon has come out and said in recent
Speaker 4: years is that through studying UAP sightings, it uncovered the
Speaker 4: existence of a here to four unknown Chinese trans medium drone,
Speaker 4: which is to say, a Chinese drone that came out
Speaker 4: of the water and transitioned to flight. The second category
Speaker 4: is what you ended up with in the Chinese spy
Speaker 4: balloon flap in February, which is there's just a bunch
Speaker 4: of weird clutter up in the sky that we don't
Speaker 4: pay attention to on a daily basis. Turns out, if
Speaker 4: you set the Norad radars a little bit differently, they
Speaker 4: begin to detect a lot of what is probably mostly
Speaker 4: trash and junk in the sky. And you know, we
Speaker 4: panicked in February and sent up the world's most advanced
Speaker 4: fighter jet to shoot these things down with quarter million
Speaker 4: dollar missiles. And you know what we got, we literally
Speaker 4: wan of was a weather balloon from the Northern Illinois
Speaker 4: Balloon Brigade Meteorology Club that just sort of no one
Speaker 4: had known was up there because who.
Speaker 2: Cares to travel?
Speaker 4: Right Right, then you get into sort of the weirder categories,
Speaker 4: and I think some chunk of UAPs we're going to
Speaker 4: figure out with advancing science in terms of atmospheric, meteorological
Speaker 4: and astronomical science that we don't yet understand, things like
Speaker 4: ball like plasma, Saint Elmo's fire, things that were pretty
Speaker 4: new to the understanding of. And then there's a fourth
Speaker 4: category that to me is probably the weirdest possible stuff.
Speaker 4: And this is an area where I think we just
Speaker 4: need to be really humble about how little of the
Speaker 4: universe around us and the world around us that we
Speaker 4: actually understand. You know, the world is probably just much
Speaker 4: weirder than we give it credit for. And this is
Speaker 4: going to be a category of basically physics that we
Speaker 4: don't yet understand. We like to think that we have
Speaker 4: mastered the world, mastered the understanding of the world, but
Speaker 4: Harvard Astronomy Chair Avi Lobe who's one of the big
Speaker 4: proponents of SETI work these days. You know, he talks
Speaker 4: about how in January the world's oldest woman died. She
Speaker 4: was a French nun, she was one hundred and eighteen
Speaker 4: years old, and in her lifetime, humans learned everything that
Speaker 4: we know about relativity and quantum physics. So imagine what
Speaker 4: we will learn in another human lifetime of physics, you know,
Speaker 4: imagine what we might learn in five hundred years or
Speaker 4: a thousand years or ten thousand years of humanity lasts
Speaker 4: that long. And that this could be like really really
Speaker 4: weird stuff. I mean, this could be interdimensional travel, parallel dimensions,
Speaker 4: time travel from the past, or future wormholes, I mean,
Speaker 4: science and phys that just would bend our mind. But
Speaker 4: I think that we have to be open to the
Speaker 4: possibility that there's going to be some really really weird
Speaker 4: answers to UFOs and UAPs, and it's stuff that we
Speaker 4: might not figure out in any of our lifetimes.
Speaker 1: So in July there was a hearing and the House
Speaker 1: Oversight Hell the subcommittee hearing on UFOs, and they and
Speaker 1: sort of this supposition here was that the government knows more.
Speaker 2: Than they are telling us. Is that true?
Speaker 4: Yes, and no. The government certainly is covering up some
Speaker 4: large percentage of its own knowledge about UFOs and UAPs.
Speaker 4: Some of that is because some of these sightings are
Speaker 4: surely the government's own secret projects, our own secret planes,
Speaker 4: secret drones, secret spacecraft, and some chunk of it is
Speaker 4: adversary technology, as I mentioned. And so this is, you know,
Speaker 4: where the government gets really squirrel talking about what its
Speaker 4: sensor networks pick up and what it uncovers and detects
Speaker 4: that we don't know about. Whether the government is covering
Speaker 4: up meaningful knowledge, I'm a lot more dubious. I've covered
Speaker 4: national security for twenty years. The challenge that I have
Speaker 4: with a lot of government conspiracy theories is that they
Speaker 4: presuppose a level of competence, forethought, and planning that you
Speaker 4: don't really see on display in the rest of the
Speaker 4: work that the government does day to day. Yes, continue,
Speaker 4: Do I believe that the government could be covering up,
Speaker 4: you know, some unknown technologies that it's recovered, Yes, I do.
Speaker 4: Is it possible that there are people who work on
Speaker 4: that team who think that that technology is extraterrestrial? Maybe?
Speaker 4: Do I think that the government has concluded that at
Speaker 4: any sort of official level, probably not. And you know,
Speaker 4: one of the things that you saw the sort of
Speaker 4: so called you faux whistleblower say in that summer house
Speaker 4: hearing is that the government has been engaged in a
Speaker 4: cover up of crashed alien spacecraft and bodies that stretches
Speaker 4: back ninety years and dates back to fascist Italy. Area
Speaker 4: fifty seven, Area fifty one. Yes, yep, Area fifty one. Sorry,
Speaker 4: unless you know something particular about Area fifty seven, it's
Speaker 4: even more secret.
Speaker 2: Right, there are six more areas that no one knows about.
Speaker 4: Yes, but you know, the idea that to me that
Speaker 4: the government is covering up the biggest possible secret. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's hard to imagine something that would be more profound
Speaker 4: than the idea that the US government is hiding intelligent
Speaker 4: life elsewhere in the universe, and that they've done it
Speaker 4: successfully for decades. Seems pretty far fetched to me, just
Speaker 4: on a pure logistical level, I mean, just talking about,
Speaker 4: you know, the ability of the government to keep secret
Speaker 4: for that long.
Speaker 1: Will you explain to us that whistle blower and a
Speaker 1: little bit sort of a backstory.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a career intelligence officer named David Grush
Speaker 4: who came out this spring with a variety of claims
Speaker 4: that the US government has a secret UFO crash retrieval
Speaker 4: program that has recovered alien spacecraft and alien bodies. What
Speaker 4: he said in the House hearing, he referred to as
Speaker 4: non human biologics was the phrase that he used. And
Speaker 4: he has spoken to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.
Speaker 4: He's testified in closed door and open hearings to Congress,
Speaker 4: he's given a variety of media interviews, and to me,
Speaker 4: much of what he says and claims is consistent with
Speaker 4: what we have seen in a variety of so called
Speaker 4: whistleblowers since the nineteen eighties that are what ufologists call
Speaker 4: foth tales, not folk tales, but foth tales, friend of
Speaker 4: a friend tales, which may is sort of second hand.
Speaker 4: You know, I talked to a guy and he told
Speaker 4: me that he worked on this program, or I met
Speaker 4: someone who had seen these crafts, or you know, saw
Speaker 4: a guy in a bar and he said that he had,
Speaker 4: you know, worked on these alien bodies. And that what
Speaker 4: we have not seen come forward from Grush or really
Speaker 4: anyone else is what I would call hard documentary evidence
Speaker 4: that is able to be substantiated by outside sources. Or
Speaker 4: you know, secondary investigation, so you know that's that would
Speaker 4: be you know, documents, memos, power points. Grush says that
Speaker 4: he has given in classified settings, you know, specific locations
Speaker 4: of where these programs are being run. But there is
Speaker 4: a Pentagon office that is newly charged with basically running
Speaker 4: down the truths about the Pentagon's own UFO knowledge. This
Speaker 4: is an office that's called Arrow and has been created
Speaker 4: by Congress because Congress is wondering whether it's getting the
Speaker 4: full truth about UFOs.
Speaker 2: This guy got debunked.
Speaker 4: I don't think we can say one way or another
Speaker 4: whether he's been debunked. I think that we don't yet
Speaker 4: have the evidence that would allow us to make a
Speaker 4: real judgment about whether his claims are true. And I
Speaker 4: think that, as I said, there are logistical and historical
Speaker 4: reasons to be doubtful about at least parts of his claims.
Speaker 2: So interesting. Thank you, thank you, Garrett, my pleasure.
Speaker 4: Thanks for Jenning.
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