Speaker 1: People will say, just so you know, I'm not feeling suicidal.
Speaker 1: I love my life, and if you hear anything other
Speaker 1: about me, you'll know it's not the real deal. Because
Speaker 1: people have controversially died, and Forrestall is the first one
Speaker 1: when that happened in forty nine, and people think he
Speaker 1: was all over this UFO issue after Roswell, that he
Speaker 1: was tied into Roswell, and then later Kennedy was tied
Speaker 1: into him.
Speaker 2: Of course, don't even get me started on the twelve scientists.
Speaker 2: By the way, all of them are linked to classified
Speaker 2: nuclear and aerospace projects, who are all currently missing or dead,
Speaker 2: some by suicide allegedly.
Speaker 1: I'm bryce able. Have you ever wondered if there's a
Speaker 1: secret connection between Hollywood and UFOs.
Speaker 2: I'm Brent Friedman, and you are listening to sound, light
Speaker 2: and frequency.
Speaker 1: And in this episode, we're putting JFK and Roswell in
Speaker 1: an atom collider and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2: Then we're going to a real atom collider on the
Speaker 2: Swiss Franco border and we're going to ask some very
Speaker 2: interesting questions. Last episode, we talked about some very interesting
Speaker 2: postcards that we were sent in the mail during the
Speaker 2: whole Dark Sky's experience, which, as we talked about, set
Speaker 2: off a whole series of questions and intrigue and frankly
Speaker 2: put us into a state of paranoia. And so today
Speaker 2: what we'd like to do is start to ask why
Speaker 2: did those postcards get sent to us? And was it
Speaker 2: at all connected to specifically what we did in the
Speaker 2: Dark Sky's pilot.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm joining you today, Brent, from my San Francisco
Speaker 1: office of the Vast Stellar Productions Holdings. Anyway, I take
Speaker 1: your point about those postcards, and the purpose of today's podcast, Brent,
Speaker 1: is to ask ourselves a question. We got those cards
Speaker 1: in the middle of the summer as we were starting
Speaker 1: to shoot Dark Sky, so all it was out there
Speaker 1: was a pilot script and a bible, and so that
Speaker 1: we've always asked ourselves what was in those things that
Speaker 1: would have made anybody say, let's send semi threatening postcards
Speaker 1: to this Zabele guy so he can show him to
Speaker 1: Freedman and they can freak out. Why would that happen?
Speaker 1: And I think what you and I have decided is
Speaker 1: at least one of the leading theories. It goes back
Speaker 1: to when we were working on creating darks guys, and
Speaker 1: we said, let's try the unified field theory of conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Let's take the two greatest conspiracies of the twentieth century
Speaker 1: Roswell nineteen forty seven, JFK nineteen sixty three. Let's put
Speaker 1: them in Adam Collider and see what happens. And that's
Speaker 1: what dark Skuys was. And as you said, that's one
Speaker 1: of the things JC first told us when he met
Speaker 1: us over a year later. You got a lot of things, right.
Speaker 1: Do you think maybe he was talking about that.
Speaker 2: It's a good theory, and I think today what we
Speaker 2: need to do is put each one of those conspiracies
Speaker 2: under the microscope and examine them. And I just want
Speaker 2: to say, as a bit of a tease for later
Speaker 2: in the episode, we're going to look at a third conspiracy,
Speaker 2: or I should say a third emerging conspiracy set in
Speaker 2: the twenty first century around cern.
Speaker 1: That's a real album collider if I'm not.
Speaker 2: Mistaken, exactly, And we are going to be connecting some
Speaker 2: dots back to the formula as we move that subplot forward,
Speaker 2: So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, Bryce you
Speaker 2: had suggested, do we do a lightning round and start
Speaker 2: looking at the cultural footprint that Roswell has left since
Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 1: It is interesting to look at Roswell. It is culture
Speaker 1: right now. If you say the word Roswell to people,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like a shorthand way to say the
Speaker 1: government's lying to you, because we know the government light
Speaker 1: about something. Back in nineteen forty seven. They basically said
Speaker 1: we have a flying disc and then the next day
Speaker 1: they said, no, we don't. It was a weatherbloon. So
Speaker 1: they were lying at the beginning or the end somewhere
Speaker 1: in there. And so movies and television always picked these
Speaker 1: things up. So let's do this. You go first, tell
Speaker 1: me something you remember that you've seen where Roswell is mentioned,
Speaker 1: and then I'll give you one, and let's see how
Speaker 1: how long we can keep this going.
Speaker 2: All right, Low Hanging Fruit, Dark Skies.
Speaker 1: That's true, we've already said what that one was. I've
Speaker 1: got one that came out the same year as Dark Skys, though,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a pretty good one. And that
Speaker 1: would be literally the Rock. You remember this movie. It
Speaker 1: takes place literally at Alcatraz, which is important because I'm
Speaker 1: in San Francisco right now, and Sean Connery's involved in it,
Speaker 1: and they invoke Roswell as one of the biggest governments secrets,
Speaker 1: and they literally pair it, Brent with quote the truth
Speaker 1: about JFK. So this is all purpose. It is a
Speaker 1: great example. That is the single passport to conspiracy. If
Speaker 1: you say it, the audience absolutely understands it has to
Speaker 1: do with deep state secrets. And it's not a big
Speaker 1: part of the movie. It's just so casually invoked in
Speaker 1: the Rock. But you have to mention it because it
Speaker 1: was one of the first times where you could just
Speaker 1: go wow, didn't expect to see or hear that.
Speaker 2: Well. It's nice too, because the movie wasn't about Roswell
Speaker 2: or JFK. That was just this tossed off little piece
Speaker 2: of dialogue. It was about this guy who supposedly knew
Speaker 2: all about it. Right, you give me one, I'm going
Speaker 2: to give you a two fer oh X Files and
Speaker 2: it's spin off The Lone Gunman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. What was their take on Roswell?
Speaker 2: Their take, if I remember correctly, was it was basically
Speaker 2: a variation on a theme. It did happen, but they
Speaker 2: had a much more kind of interesting twist on the
Speaker 2: actual conspirac itself.
Speaker 1: If I recall, the best way to describe X Files
Speaker 1: with Roswell is it's some mythic cornerstone inside their larger mythology, right,
Speaker 1: It's a mythology inside of mythology. And they had one
Speaker 1: episode called EBE, which we know stands for extraterrestrial biological entity.
Speaker 1: But what's strange about it is, if I'm remembering this correctly,
Speaker 1: their deep throat tells Molder that after Roswell, he says,
Speaker 1: governments made a pack that any live extraterrestrial EBE would
Speaker 1: be killed, which sort of adds to the Roswell cosmology
Speaker 1: in a very dark way. And then in a later
Speaker 1: one they did something called The Unnatural that literally takes
Speaker 1: place at Roswell in nineteen forty seven and involves baseball.
Speaker 1: So they've literally in X Files made it serious conspiracy
Speaker 1: canon and American folklore at the same time, which I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting. I enjoyed it. The Lone Gunman. To
Speaker 1: the best of my knowledge, I don't think they ever
Speaker 1: invoke it by name. They live in a world where
Speaker 1: Roswell happened. Okay, here's another one now, eighteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: There's a lot going in the nineties. You got dark
Speaker 1: skys You Got the Rock, You Got X Files is on.
Speaker 1: And here's another big one, which we covered in a
Speaker 1: previous episode, Independence Day.
Speaker 2: Yep, No, that's a big one. I'm going to take Actually,
Speaker 2: a project you worked.
Speaker 1: On, Taken, is a great example because what happens in
Speaker 1: Taken is it is the inciting incident. I'm talking about Roswell. Now.
Speaker 1: In Taken, Roswell is the inciting incident of the entire
Speaker 1: mini series, and it launches the government conspiracy. There are
Speaker 1: ten episodes to take in and they all deal with that.
Speaker 1: I guess this is the way you would say it.
Speaker 1: In Taken. It is a multi generational launch point, right,
Speaker 1: Roswell happens, and these families are involved in it, and
Speaker 1: it goes across generations. When you hear Roswell in that series,
Speaker 1: you're invoking abduction and hybrids. But of course state power.
Speaker 1: Another one that we shouldn't miss here is Project Blue Book,
Speaker 1: which was on History Channel not long ago. They did
Speaker 1: two seasons. It's a buried origin story. They don't make
Speaker 1: tons about it. They do say it's a real extraterrestrial
Speaker 1: event that was hidden by military authority. So it's invoked
Speaker 1: a lot. But so is JFK. Frankly, in season two
Speaker 1: of Project Bluebook. JFK is a character. I mean he's
Speaker 1: literally a character. So there's that anything else.
Speaker 2: I'm going to maybe finish this up with a last
Speaker 2: unlikely one, but from our old friend Steven Spielberg once again,
Speaker 2: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I
Speaker 2: just watched it two nights ago. Okay, maybe give us
Speaker 2: a recap on how that I didn't.
Speaker 1: Honestly, I do think Spielberg is a film genius, of course,
Speaker 1: but that's not his best film. But I will say this.
Speaker 1: It begins with Indiana Jones in nineteen forty seven being
Speaker 1: at Area fifty one and he gets taken by these
Speaker 1: Soviet spies, and these guys want him to help locate
Speaker 1: the preserved body of an alien recovered at the Roswell incident.
Speaker 1: One other quick one, though, would have to be American
Speaker 1: horror story because that's very recent, that's on TV, and
Speaker 1: of course they turned it into a campy, paranoid alt
Speaker 1: history nightmare. And what's interesting about it, I thought you
Speaker 1: and I took everything but the kitchen sink of conspiracy
Speaker 1: and threw it into a blender for dark skies. But
Speaker 1: these guys took everything anything that people have ever said
Speaker 1: about anything about Roswell. Boom, it's in there. You got
Speaker 1: the presidents and they're making deals with aliens and people
Speaker 1: are levitating, and it's crazy. I guess the point that
Speaker 1: we're making here by just going through all these this
Speaker 1: was not exhaustive. And in fact, if you want to
Speaker 1: laugh instead of get all bent out of shape, I
Speaker 1: would recommend Brent that people should watch Paul. They never
Speaker 1: quite say, and Paul, by the way, that he is
Speaker 1: the original Roswell alien, but for my money is implied,
Speaker 1: hears implied. Roswell has become a cultural thing. So it's
Speaker 1: in the movies and all that. Let's talk about what
Speaker 1: it really is. First time, I was.
Speaker 2: Going to say, we've done Hollywood at least a nice
Speaker 2: fly over. Now let's do history.
Speaker 1: Okay, people like you and me, we probably know enough
Speaker 1: about Roswell that we could talk for a couple of
Speaker 1: our episodes about it before we ran completely dry. But
Speaker 1: one of the people I know very well is a
Speaker 1: guy named Don Schmidt, who is one of the researchers
Speaker 1: of Roswell. Don has been researching since the late eighties
Speaker 1: he worked for Kufos JL and Heinik was his boss
Speaker 1: for a while. He has written multiple books about it,
Speaker 1: and he has been investigating it forever, literally all through
Speaker 1: the nineties, the two thousand's, the twenty tens and now,
Speaker 1: and he has been the guy that, as he put it,
Speaker 1: was racing the undertaker, and boy did he run a
Speaker 1: good race. Because between Don and his partners, they literally
Speaker 1: have turned up hundreds of witnesses to create what I
Speaker 1: call a mosaic that tells you what's really going on
Speaker 1: or what did go on and implied what's going on.
Speaker 1: So I interviewed Don late in twenty twenty five for
Speaker 1: Need to Know, and I asked him to tell the
Speaker 1: story in a minute, is what I said. Don give
Speaker 1: me Roswell in a minute. So I've got that queued
Speaker 1: up right now. Let's just take a look at that
Speaker 1: and then see if there's anything that we need to add.
Speaker 3: I need to quickly point out what was so important
Speaker 3: about New Mexico at the end of World War Two,
Speaker 3: and within just years thereafter first atomic bomb was detonated
Speaker 3: just two hours west of Roswell, you had all the
Speaker 3: testing that captured German Vy two rockets at the White
Speaker 3: Sands Proving Grounds just to the south of that area,
Speaker 3: had ongoing atomic research at Los Alamos, and in Roswell
Speaker 3: itself you had the Roso Army Airfield, which was the
Speaker 3: headquarters of the first atomic bomb squadron in the world.
Speaker 3: So it was the hotbed of military activity research testing
Speaker 3: in the world bar none at that time. According to
Speaker 3: Project Bluebook, there were more UFO sidings in New Mexico
Speaker 3: at that time than anywhere else in the world. And
Speaker 3: wouldn't you know that, on the late evening of July second,
Speaker 3: nineteen forty seven, something crashed in the high desert just
Speaker 3: sixty five miles northwest of Roswell. Rancher would notify the base.
Speaker 3: It was the colonel based Commander William Blanchard, who woul
Speaker 3: dispatched his two intel officers to check it out. Within days,
Speaker 3: they put out a press release that they had actually
Speaker 3: captured a flying saucer within five hours. Blanchard's boss, General
Speaker 3: Roger Rainey, explained it all away as just a conventional
Speaker 3: off the show weather balloon with the radar reflector kite.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't until thirty years later that the very
Speaker 3: intelligence officer who led the investigation who was first to
Speaker 3: go investigate the crash site. He was diagnosed with terminal episima,
Speaker 3: and he broke his security oath. He went public and said, quote,
Speaker 3: being familiar with all materials, both foreign and domestic, this
Speaker 3: was nothing made on this earth end quote.
Speaker 1: I'd love that. It's so unfair. It is not fair
Speaker 1: for me to say, hey, Don, you've been studying something
Speaker 1: for many, many decades, and you've interviewed six hundred witnesses
Speaker 1: or whatever, and now just boil it down to one minute.
Speaker 1: But I thought he did a pretty good job.
Speaker 2: That's a great recap, and hopefully anyone that hadn't heard
Speaker 2: about Roswell now has the primmer on which we can
Speaker 2: build the rest of this episode.
Speaker 1: I have a book of Don's under option. It's called
Speaker 1: Witness to Roswell, and I would urge people who would
Speaker 1: like to go a little deeper and say, I really
Speaker 1: want to know some of the details here that they
Speaker 1: probably do want to read Witness to Roswell by Don
Speaker 1: Schmidt and his partner Tom Carey, who did a really
Speaker 1: good job with it. Just one thing to add to that,
Speaker 1: because there's not a lot again, there are many more details.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of testimony. When I first went to
Speaker 1: Roswell over a decade ago, Don had invited me and
Speaker 1: I was a speaker there, and Don introduced me to
Speaker 1: Frankie Rowe, who at the time was a woman I
Speaker 1: believe in her sixties. She had been thirteen years old
Speaker 1: Brent when her father, who was a local Roswell fireman,
Speaker 1: came home from having gone to the site and let
Speaker 1: her play with some of the memory medal, So she
Speaker 1: was folding stuff up and releasing it and then capturing
Speaker 1: it and doing that.
Speaker 2: Let me just interject for anyone that doesn't know. The
Speaker 2: memory metal is what is purported to have been the
Speaker 2: material that the craft was made out of that crashed
Speaker 2: that the government later said was tinfoil, But in fact
Speaker 2: everyone that dealt with it, including this girl and Jesse
Speaker 2: Marcel and several others, said that it actually had a
Speaker 2: memory to it, so that when you crunched it up,
Speaker 2: it would immediately snap back to its original form.
Speaker 1: Let me put it this way, fireman and even a
Speaker 1: thirteen year old girl know the difference between tinfoil and
Speaker 1: something that's extraordinary. And certainly Jesse Marcel, who you mentioned
Speaker 1: was the intelligence officer at Roswell, who also showed some
Speaker 1: of it to his own son that first night. And
Speaker 1: in order to believe the weather balloon as an aside,
Speaker 1: you'd have to believe that Roswell, which as Don Schmid
Speaker 1: pointed out, was the only nuclear bomber base in the
Speaker 1: freaking world at the time, that the people who were
Speaker 1: in charge of intelligence at that base, which is the
Speaker 1: most important base in the world, couldn't tell the difference
Speaker 1: between a crashed interplanetary vehicle and a weather balloon, of
Speaker 1: which they launched them regularly. But I digress back to
Speaker 1: Frankie Rowe. She told me to my face this story.
Speaker 1: She's thirteen years old. She'd been playing with this memory
Speaker 1: metal at the fire station and they were at home
Speaker 1: having dinner, and some men showed up. They drive up
Speaker 1: in the car. You've seen scenes like that before, and
Speaker 1: these people take her parents to separate parts of the
Speaker 1: house and talk to them. And then the scariest guy
Speaker 1: I believe, she said, he was a guy that always
Speaker 1: wore sunglasses right, and he had those military aviators right,
Speaker 1: and he takes her aside. And I'm not going to
Speaker 1: quote the exact quote because I don't have it in
Speaker 1: front of me. But the essence was he said, listen,
Speaker 1: little girl, you're not going to talk to anybody about
Speaker 1: what you saw and what you did, because if you do,
Speaker 1: your body will end up in the desert and Wi'll
Speaker 1: just be bones scattered to the wind, and nobody will
Speaker 1: ever know what happened to you, not even your parents. Ooh,
Speaker 1: this is a.
Speaker 2: Thirteen year old girl. This man gave this threat to listen.
Speaker 1: Let me put it this way. Why would people do
Speaker 1: that about a weather balloon, even if it was a
Speaker 1: classified weather balloon. It's hard to imagine.
Speaker 2: I'm curious, though, Bryce, when you met her years later
Speaker 2: in Oswell, how old was she?
Speaker 1: I think, if you do the math, this is probably
Speaker 1: twenty ten and she was thirteen and forty seven. Now
Speaker 1: we're really going to test our math skills.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at you. She might have been in her seventies. Okay,
Speaker 2: here's my question. I don't know if you asked her this,
Speaker 2: But had she ever told anyone this before she told you?
Speaker 2: When did she start not worrying about being bones in
Speaker 2: the desert?
Speaker 1: Exactly? I can't claim that she told me first. I
Speaker 1: heard her story only because Don Schmid said, Bryce, come
Speaker 1: over here. You need to meet Frankie. Frankie, this is
Speaker 1: bryce she had started later in her life, as many
Speaker 1: of these people do, which is what Don Schmidt was
Speaker 1: saying in Racing the Entertaining People. You don't have to
Speaker 1: quite be on your deathbed to say, screw this. I
Speaker 1: am tired of living in fear and I'm going to
Speaker 1: get clear with my maker by telling the truth about
Speaker 1: this extraordinary thing that happened to me. And that seemed
Speaker 1: to be where she was. She was a fierce and
Speaker 1: tough woman. When I met her, I did say to her,
Speaker 1: are you concerned? So I did ask her kind of
Speaker 1: your question, and she said she basically said, no, I'm not.
Speaker 1: What are they going to do to me?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I share that feeling. You had some of those
Speaker 2: same qualms before we did this exactly.
Speaker 1: You do know that? And that is that a description
Speaker 1: that would match your own about your meeting with Harrington
Speaker 1: and how you had to keep that close for so
Speaker 1: many years. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think there was always a fear that hung over
Speaker 2: ever going public. And it wasn't until I stopped worrying
Speaker 2: about death quite frankly, that I didn't care anymore, and
Speaker 2: I just felt that it is time to tell our stories.
Speaker 1: I'm glad they did. I'm glad all these witnesses have talked.
Speaker 1: And again, our podcast isn't about trying to prove Roswell
Speaker 1: to anybody. There's other podcasts that have tried to do that.
Speaker 1: We talk about film and TV and try to look
Speaker 1: into some of what has happened in the world like
Speaker 1: that and try to interpret it. We have to talk
Speaker 1: right now about what I think is the seminal film
Speaker 1: about Roswell that has been made to this point, and
Speaker 1: it's a movie that's called Oh wait, it's called Roswell.
Speaker 1: Yes it is.
Speaker 2: But one last thing I just want to put on
Speaker 2: the docket because I think it's going to inform some
Speaker 2: of what we're going to talk about with this movie,
Speaker 2: and that is that Roswell is generally considered ground zero
Speaker 2: for the UFO cover up, which is going on seventy
Speaker 2: nine years now. I think it's really interesting some of
Speaker 2: the things we're going to talk about, not just what's
Speaker 2: in the movie, but everything surrounding that movie as well.
Speaker 1: One of the great things about doing this podcast with you, Brent,
Speaker 1: is that we've said a general area we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about this, So in this case, we're saying, we're
Speaker 1: going to look into whether our JFK. Roswell connection actually
Speaker 1: could have been real, and it was out why they
Speaker 1: came to us, So you start to look into things.
Speaker 1: And I watched the Roswell movie back when it aired,
Speaker 1: and it was on Showtime back in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: and I've seen it another time in between, and I
Speaker 1: watched it last week where I found a copy of
Speaker 1: it on YouTube. It's a powerful film and it has
Speaker 1: so many behind the scenes things. But just to give
Speaker 1: people what we say is the log line, there's many
Speaker 1: ways to describe the log line. Here's the shortest one
Speaker 1: I could figure out. In nineteen forty seven, Roswell, a
Speaker 1: military intelligence officer uncovers evidence of a crashed alien craft,
Speaker 1: only to be drawn into a sweeping government cover up
Speaker 1: that will haunt him for decades.
Speaker 2: That's a good description. We're talking about Jesse Marcel played
Speaker 2: by Kyle McLaughlin.
Speaker 1: Yes, of Twin Peaks, which, by the way, just before
Speaker 1: we get in and do the Roswell thing, we could
Speaker 1: have mentioned Twin Peaks when we were doing our lightning.
Speaker 1: That's kind of thing because Twin Peaks clearly has a
Speaker 1: lot to say about aliens or not even aliens, because
Speaker 1: in Twin Peaks, the mysterious force may not be alien
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: It's a non human intelligence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like it's interdimensional. It's ancient, it's psychic,
Speaker 1: it's evil, and it's already here. And one thing I
Speaker 1: did find though, while we're researching it, they don't, specifically,
Speaker 1: the best of my knowledge, invoke Roswell in Twin Peaks.
Speaker 1: That's in the series. But Mark Frost, who I believe
Speaker 1: is the creator of co creator with co creator along
Speaker 1: with the peopleage, he wrote a book, The Secret History
Speaker 1: of Twin Peaks, and he does invoke it there. He
Speaker 1: does say that this Douglas Milford character was building a
Speaker 1: shadow blue book inside of Twin Peaks and it was
Speaker 1: based on Roswell. That kind of thing. So Roswell got
Speaker 1: its fair share of discussion then. But let's talk about
Speaker 1: that movie. You just saw it. Tell me your thoughts.
Speaker 2: I thought the recreation of the time period back in
Speaker 2: the forties was quite well done. I've always liked Kyle maclachan.
Speaker 2: I thought he was quite good overall. I really liked it.
Speaker 2: The writing, the direction, the production design, the acting. It
Speaker 2: was all top quality, and I think that what appealed
Speaker 2: to me most was that kind of emotional arc that
Speaker 2: Jesse Marcel had somebody who you know back in the
Speaker 2: forties was portrayed as a very solid and reliable intelligence
Speaker 2: officer who gets caught up in this whole thing and
Speaker 2: they make him the fall guy. He then is, as
Speaker 2: you said, haunted for the rest of his life by
Speaker 2: this choice that he made to go along with the
Speaker 2: cover up. The nice thing they do in this movie
Speaker 2: is they're jumping back and forth between the forties when
Speaker 2: this happened and later in life when he's coming together
Speaker 2: for a reunion with the five h ninth bomber squad
Speaker 2: back at the base, and him trying to as he's
Speaker 2: getting old and they imply he's close to death, trying
Speaker 2: to make sense of what happened and get some information
Speaker 2: that would close the loop for him on what really happened.
Speaker 2: Did I remember this correctly? Have I forgotten that? Like
Speaker 2: what really happened? And I thought that part of the
Speaker 2: story that a man trying to close the book on
Speaker 2: something that happened to him, possibly a bad choice he
Speaker 2: made earlier in his life, was very compelling. It was moving.
Speaker 1: Jesse Marcel's son is a character in that movie. I
Speaker 1: actually met his real son who was passed on, but
Speaker 1: he certainly suffered fools, not gladly at all, and said, no,
Speaker 1: this was not a weather balloon that dad brought home
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. It was clearly something extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Speaking of extraordinary things, though you did say it was
Speaker 1: so well written, it was written by a playwright, and
Speaker 1: I believe that is Arthur Koppitt playwright, and Jeremy Kagan
Speaker 1: was the director, but the creative force behind it was
Speaker 1: a gentleman called Paul David's. Paul David's is the one
Speaker 1: that sort of made it happen, and we'll get into
Speaker 1: that in a second. We like to say there's a
Speaker 1: story behind the story. So what you just described and
Speaker 1: the logline I gave you, that's the top level, the
Speaker 1: top of the pyramid about what it's about. But there's
Speaker 1: a story behind it. Here's one for you. The Roswell
Speaker 1: film was originally set up at HBO, but it aired
Speaker 1: on Showtime and apparently HBO's I don't know if he
Speaker 1: was the chair or the president or whatever. Michael Fuchs.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's based on a book that Don
Speaker 1: Schmidt wrote with his first partner, Kevin Randall and Michael
Speaker 1: Fuchs was on the plane back from New York and
Speaker 1: got off and they were already casting. And when he
Speaker 1: got off the plane, he said, we're not doing the
Speaker 1: movie anymore because it's too controversial. That's what Don Schmitt
Speaker 1: was told. Wow, and they dropped it. And God bless
Speaker 1: Showtime because within one week apparently it was then set
Speaker 1: up at Showtime and the entire creative team in Moss
Speaker 1: moved moved from HBO to Showtime and one other quick
Speaker 1: aside when it was at HBO. At the very beginning,
Speaker 1: HBO hired a guy named John Adam who was a
Speaker 1: stringer for Spy magazine and also for the New York Times,
Speaker 1: and they hired him at HBO to conduct an independent investigation.
Speaker 1: I've read this report. It's ninety five pages long, right,
Speaker 1: and John Adam concludes at the end of this report
Speaker 1: there are only two possibilities. A. It happened as exactly
Speaker 1: stated in the book okay, which is called UFO Crash
Speaker 1: at Roswell or b the most elaborate hoax he's ever seen.
Speaker 1: Those are the only two choices. Interesting, Yeah, here's one
Speaker 1: other factoid, the entire project got set up before the
Speaker 1: book was even written. They heard that Schmidt and his
Speaker 1: partner Randall were writing this thing, and Paul David's, who
Speaker 1: I mentioned, option this thing and set it up at HBO.
Speaker 1: So yeah, kind of behind the scenes kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on the topic of it being a hoax, there
Speaker 2: were a couple things that jumped out at me as
Speaker 2: related to eufology that I really appreciated in the movie
Speaker 2: because I knew a lot of the story at the
Speaker 2: high level, but there were some specific details that I
Speaker 2: didn't know. One was I didn't remember, or maybe I
Speaker 2: didn't even know that the Army, when they were trying
Speaker 2: to spin the whole thing as a cover up, said oh, no,
Speaker 2: the bodies that were found were monkeys. They were test monkeys.
Speaker 2: And someone in the movie has the line, well, the
Speaker 2: government didn't launch monkeys into space until fifty two, which
Speaker 2: is five whole years later, so I didn't know that
Speaker 2: they were trying to pass them off as monkeys. And again,
Speaker 2: you have an intelligence officer, you have a bunch of
Speaker 2: like very smart people, capable people that are mistaking monkeys
Speaker 2: for aliens. It's very strange. Another thing that I really
Speaker 2: liked was how they represented the Rashamon effect, and that
Speaker 2: was when they had several people trying to remember what
Speaker 2: the UFO looked like and they couldn't agree on it.
Speaker 2: They were like, oh, it was cylindrical, No it was domed,
Speaker 2: and no it was it had you know, a weird
Speaker 2: it was metal. No, it was more like a human
Speaker 2: skin or like a reptile skin. And so I think,
Speaker 2: as I've said before in various episodes, there's a subjectivity
Speaker 2: to all of these experiences, and I think that plays
Speaker 2: a big part in it. And that's one of the
Speaker 2: things that made that it feel real to me when
Speaker 2: I saw the characters not agreeing on exactly what they saw.
Speaker 1: Kind of like you and me trying to describe what
Speaker 1: kind of pants Jacon exactly. It's a great example where
Speaker 1: we both had the same experience. There are things that
Speaker 1: people don't agree on. Listen a couple of very quick factoids,
Speaker 1: But I would be remiss if I didn't throw these
Speaker 1: onto the fire here at this point because they're so interesting. First,
Speaker 1: you are right, it is such a great film. It
Speaker 1: was nominated for Best TV Movie by the Golden Globes
Speaker 1: and by the way, Don Schmid was such an active investigator.
Speaker 1: He didn't go to the Golden Globes. You know where
Speaker 1: he was. He was in the Marriott Hotel in Albuquerque
Speaker 1: because he was interviewing witnesses. So he saw it in
Speaker 1: the lobby of the Marriott. This one will kind of
Speaker 1: blow your mind. Kyle McLaughlin got the actual role. Christopher
Speaker 1: Reeve wanted to play it. Really, Christopher Reeve wanted to
Speaker 1: play it. He had read the book. And HBO did
Speaker 1: not consider him an A or a B actor. They
Speaker 1: considered him a C level actor. Wow. Hard to believe.
Speaker 2: No, I don't believe it. I thought he was a
Speaker 2: great actor.
Speaker 1: And Showtime when they took it to Showtime, they were
Speaker 1: originally pushing for Don Johnson or Ted Danson. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 1: well you can just imagine you've just seen this movie.
Speaker 1: Those are slightly different movies. Okay. And here's one that's
Speaker 1: really important. There is an autopsy scene in the film,
Speaker 1: and you get to see the gray that they're working on,
Speaker 1: and I believe there's a living one that wakes up
Speaker 1: during the autopsy. I talked to Don Schmid about this
Speaker 1: just less than a week ago. This astonished me. I
Speaker 1: had to write it down because I was like, what
Speaker 1: are you kidding me? He said, when it came to
Speaker 1: rendering the Grays, we were very strict that we did
Speaker 1: not want an accurate portrayal. Really why now, Everything else
Speaker 1: I've ever heard dancay about this movie is, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're trying to get you know, they did a great job.
Speaker 1: As you said, they time period, why the Grays, And
Speaker 1: the reason was they didn't want to make it so
Speaker 1: real that people would watch it and then claim that
Speaker 1: they were witnesses or Dad told me he had done this.
Speaker 1: They wanted something that wasn't quite right about the Grays
Speaker 1: in that film, so that they could weed out people
Speaker 1: that were bullshitting them. Interesting, really interesting. This leads me
Speaker 1: to the one that I just have been waiting to
Speaker 1: talk to you about, because here's what happens in the movie, folks.
Speaker 1: Cale McLachlan playing Jesse Marcel is talking to the people
Speaker 1: at his reunion and he's asking them to come forward,
Speaker 1: and some of them don't want to. He's sort of
Speaker 1: an investigator, as he's portrayed in the who's trying to
Speaker 1: get straight on what really happened toward the end of
Speaker 1: his life. And there are a lot of flashbacks to
Speaker 1: his experience back in July of nineteen forty seven, and
Speaker 1: while he's at this thing, Martin Sheen is one of
Speaker 1: the leads in this movie, and you keep seeing Martin
Speaker 1: Sheen with sunglasses on or without him, but he's always
Speaker 1: at a distance. He's watching him. And at one point,
Speaker 1: Martin Sheen takes Kyle McLaughlin into an airplane hangar and
Speaker 1: lays it out for it. What'd you think when you
Speaker 1: saw that scene?
Speaker 2: You know what? Honestly, it felt like a scene we
Speaker 2: would have written in Dark Skies. I loved it. I
Speaker 2: thought it was great. Well, first of all, Martin Sheen's
Speaker 2: a great actor, Kyle McLaughlin's a great actors, So seeing
Speaker 2: the two of them in this huge, enormous space having
Speaker 2: this incredible conversation felt like the climax of the movie.
Speaker 1: By the way, I think Paul David's is responsible for
Speaker 1: this scene, which is interesting because he doesn't get credit
Speaker 1: for it. He gets one third of the story credit
Speaker 1: and doesn't share regular credit, but he's the guy that
Speaker 1: came up with all this stuff. And what's so incredible.
Speaker 1: Martin Sheen plays a guy named Townshend. I believe, and
Speaker 1: it just comes pouring out of him. He lays this
Speaker 1: all out. He says, these aliens have been observing humanity
Speaker 1: for centuries. They've influenced human history, and there's a quote
Speaker 1: in Critical and Startling Ways. He says they'd been genetically
Speaker 1: altering human DNA from our very beginnings, and he even
Speaker 1: says they inspired humanity's greatest spiritual leaders. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just an avalanche, as you said, of ufology. But here's
Speaker 1: the part that is so dark Skiesian to me, okay,
Speaker 1: because we went with this kind of thing so often.
Speaker 1: Marcel reacts and he says, oh my god, you're telling
Speaker 1: me that the missing link could be the result of
Speaker 1: alien genetics, and townshend answers, I believe this information is correct,
Speaker 1: but who can really say for certain? Yes? And it
Speaker 1: reminded me of that scene you and I wrote with
Speaker 1: Loanguard talking to Bach who's running Majestic twelve. Loanguard says,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty close to the truth, and Buck says, well,
Speaker 1: the truth is overrated. Nothing is all true, John. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there's only one thing for us to put a bow
Speaker 1: on this thing with. We've complained that it's been hard
Speaker 1: to watch Dark skies. We talk about it and people
Speaker 1: I'd like to watch it, you can't. The DVD took
Speaker 1: fourteen years to get made, got made in twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: and just last year they don't make it anymore. You
Speaker 1: can't watch the DVD. You can't buy the DVD. It's
Speaker 1: not streaming anywhere. Guess what other film has that problem?
Speaker 1: Roswell it was released once, then it went away as
Speaker 1: a VHS. I believe it's been released as a DVD.
Speaker 1: You can't get the DVD right now. It's not streaming anywhere.
Speaker 1: The only place you and I were able to watch it,
Speaker 1: I believe, was on YouTube. Is that true for you?
Speaker 1: And according to Don Schmidt, again who knows what he's
Speaker 1: talking about, he said that at one time it was
Speaker 1: the highest viewed movie at military bases all around the world. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's for a period time. And guess what. Then it
Speaker 1: went away and now you can't get it.
Speaker 2: So the truth is overrated and sometimes the truth is suppressed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen, nobody wants to be the guy that's claiming
Speaker 1: they're suppressing my pride, you know, listen. I mean there's
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons why a lot of things are
Speaker 1: not available in Hollywood, right, there's distribution issues and all that.
Speaker 1: I don't want to wrap myself in victimhood here, but
Speaker 1: it is curious because both projects, which came out in
Speaker 1: the mid to late nineties, you can't watch right now,
Speaker 1: and in particular, Roswell is one that's, you know, really
Speaker 1: specific about what happened. It does a really good job.
Speaker 1: So I say, I don't care how you have to
Speaker 1: watch it. If you could watch it, yeah, I do
Speaker 1: recommend it as well. And by the way, I think
Speaker 1: that this is a conspiracy episode, so for today anyway,
Speaker 1: we can believe that our show was suppressed, just like
Speaker 1: the Roswell movie. Let's move on now to the other
Speaker 1: big conspiracy theory of the twentieth century, JFK, and how
Speaker 1: it connects to Roswell potentially. Boy, what is your take
Speaker 1: at this point when you think about what we said?
Speaker 1: First of all, I guess we have to say it
Speaker 1: though we said in that film that John Loan Guard,
Speaker 1: our main character, got a piece of the Roswell crash,
Speaker 1: got it to Bobby Kennedy, who got it to JFK,
Speaker 1: who got a message to him that said he was
Speaker 1: going to tell the story in his second term and
Speaker 1: The final scene in Dark Skies is Kennedy being killed
Speaker 1: and it being on television and Loan Guard watching it.
Speaker 2: With the implication being that he was silenced because he
Speaker 2: was going to go public about Roswell and the larger
Speaker 2: truth about UFOs. So, yes, that's what we posited in
Speaker 2: our pilot, and I think that if I look it
Speaker 2: back on it today, there's a couple things that get
Speaker 2: me thinking, are we already mentioned it once? When jac
Speaker 2: said you got a lot right, was he talking about
Speaker 2: that connection between JFK and UFOs. I think, as we
Speaker 2: talked about in a previous episode, there's a really weird
Speaker 2: factor where we put out something that we thought was
Speaker 2: fiction and now there's these little trace pieces of evidence
Speaker 2: and a lot of people connecting dots saying that they're
Speaker 2: there's truth behind what we thought was fiction.
Speaker 1: There was no Internet for us during Dark Guys. I
Speaker 1: remember in promotion you and I had to get in
Speaker 1: a car and drive to NBC where somebody allowed us
Speaker 1: to have a chat with.
Speaker 2: Little chat room.
Speaker 1: That's all I'm saying. There's no anybody leaked anything to us.
Speaker 1: We just made it up. We said, let's take JFK,
Speaker 1: let's take UFOs Adam kllider Boom. However, now that we've
Speaker 1: done that and time has passed, I have done a
Speaker 1: little looking into that, and there is something that's very
Speaker 1: true that we should say that we did not know then.
Speaker 1: And that was on November twelfth of nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: which let's do the math, ten days before JFK dies
Speaker 1: National Security Action Memorandum two seven to one. So that's
Speaker 1: referred to as NSAM two seven to one. It's JFK
Speaker 1: pushing space cooperation with the Russians, with the Soviets in
Speaker 1: order to avoid starting World War three for an unidentified threat. Now,
Speaker 1: he never comes out and says UFOs in this memorandum,
Speaker 1: and you can go look it up again NSAM two
Speaker 1: seven to one, and it's real. Nobody's doubting that. So
Speaker 1: he was concerned ten days before his death about this.
Speaker 1: Now he was motivated by fear that these misidentified objects
Speaker 1: in orbit would trigger some sort of catastrophic misunderstanding. And
Speaker 1: well he should be. I mean, we're still worried about
Speaker 1: that today. Right now. There's two other documents. They are
Speaker 1: a lot more dicey. There's a second one that's the
Speaker 1: same date November twelfth, nineteen sixty three, and it's far
Speaker 1: more controversial. This is an alleged memo that JFK wrote
Speaker 1: to CI director John McCone requesting UFO intelligence. All right,
Speaker 1: and again people debate this heartily, Brent, They talk about
Speaker 1: it all the time. Its authenticity is very unproven, but
Speaker 1: there are more people willing to say this might have
Speaker 1: been the thing. And then there's a third one called
Speaker 1: the Burn Memo, which is another highly disputed document suggesting
Speaker 1: concern with intelligence circles about Kennedy's inquiries on this. And
Speaker 1: so you got these three memos, one of which is
Speaker 1: for sure real but isn't specific to UFOs, the second
Speaker 1: of which is ify but is about UFOs, and the third,
Speaker 1: which is even more iffy but is very specific about
Speaker 1: people within the intelligence community worried about JFK. And then
Speaker 1: I'll end with this. And then there's Marilyn Monroe. What well.
Speaker 1: The other unconfirmed part of the whole JFK UFO thing
Speaker 1: is people persistently believe that JFK shared something about UFO
Speaker 1: reality with Marilyn Monroe and that she was going to
Speaker 1: go public with it, and then she got killed in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, I didn't even want to take that
Speaker 1: one on, Brent. That's too big for that's above my
Speaker 1: pay grade. But that is what people say from time
Speaker 1: to time. There's a lot to chew on. There.
Speaker 2: One other thing that I'd love to try and connect
Speaker 2: some dots here between Roswell and JFK is a character
Speaker 2: from history, not a fictional character, James Forrestall. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: he appears in the Roswell movie. But why don't you
Speaker 2: give us a quick overview on who he was in
Speaker 2: relationship to JFK. Potentially?
Speaker 1: Okay, JFK, as many people know, was in the Navy,
Speaker 1: and he went into the Navy in late forty one.
Speaker 1: I think between October of forty one and I believe
Speaker 1: something like February of forty two, he was actually being
Speaker 1: looked at by the Office of Naval Intelligence. Does that
Speaker 1: ring a bell?
Speaker 2: I've heard that somewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then he ended up being the famous guy
Speaker 1: that was the skipper of Pt. One oh nine and
Speaker 1: that historic rescue and all of that. But there was
Speaker 1: this short window where Oh and I had their hooks
Speaker 1: in him for three months or so, and then the
Speaker 1: other part of it, to go to your forestall thing
Speaker 1: is James Forstall, which I'm going to let you do that.
Speaker 1: But James Forestall was someone who was a family friend
Speaker 1: of Joseph Kennedy and actually knew the Kennedy kids from
Speaker 1: an early age. So in the same way that Harrington
Speaker 1: was someone in your neighborhood or in your viewpoint who
Speaker 1: you knew, who was a lot older and was obviously
Speaker 1: a lot more wired into things.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the interesting thing about Forestall is, as I said,
Speaker 2: he was a character in the movie and he was
Speaker 2: appointed the i think Undersecretary of the Navy, as you mentioned,
Speaker 2: he was that from forty four to forty seven. He's
Speaker 2: also been linked though to Majestic twelve. According to the
Speaker 2: official version of history, though, Forestall was admitted to the
Speaker 2: Bethesden Naval Hospital in nineteen forty nine after experiencing a
Speaker 2: bit of a mental breakdown from exhaustion and some other stuff.
Speaker 2: A few weeks later, he apparently committed suicide, or so
Speaker 2: the official story goes. A bunch of people that spent
Speaker 2: time with him around then, including his chauffeur and his
Speaker 2: replacement for the as the Defense Secretary, found him acting
Speaker 2: in good spirits, very normal, as did his nurse at
Speaker 2: that time and his psychiatric doctor. For a guy who
Speaker 2: was going to kill himself, he gave off no signs
Speaker 2: at all that he was in distress, and in fact,
Speaker 2: everyone said he seemed to be getting better. One of
Speaker 2: the things that's interesting is that because it was a suicide,
Speaker 2: there was never an autopsy'd done on him, so any
Speaker 2: suspicious or murderous behavior was never going to come to
Speaker 2: the surface because there was no reason to think anything
Speaker 2: other than suicide. Now, one of the things that is
Speaker 2: interesting about how he killed himself is he apparently took
Speaker 2: a blanket or a sheet and jumped out his window
Speaker 2: and tried to hang himself, but it didn't work and
Speaker 2: he fell to his death. Several stories below, someone raised
Speaker 2: the question, well, but as a navy veteran, he would
Speaker 2: know how to tie a knot, and he wouldn't be
Speaker 2: so incompetent be able to figure out how to hang himself.
Speaker 2: But anyway, all of that being said, I guess the
Speaker 2: question just comes up. Okay, if it wasn't suicide, why
Speaker 2: would someone want him dead. It turns out he was
Speaker 2: writing some memoirs at the.
Speaker 1: Time, and that moment of him jumping out of the
Speaker 1: window is taken on and they take the position obviously
Speaker 1: that he wasn't suicidal, as you just mentioned. That's why,
Speaker 1: by the way, a lot of people you see it
Speaker 1: on X all the time, people will say, just so
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not feeling suicidal. I love my life,
Speaker 1: and if you hear anything other about me, you'll know
Speaker 1: it's not the real deal. Because people have controversially died,
Speaker 1: and Forrestall is the first one when that happened in
Speaker 1: forty nine, and people think he was all over this
Speaker 1: UFO issue after Roswell, that he was tied into Roswell,
Speaker 1: and then later Kennedy was tied into him. Of course.
Speaker 2: Now don't even get me started on the twelve scientists.
Speaker 2: By the way, all of them are linked to classified
Speaker 2: nuclear and aerospace projects who are all currently missing or dead,
Speaker 2: some by suicide allegedly.
Speaker 1: There's just a lot of connections here. I don't think
Speaker 1: we'll ever resolve it, Brent. That's the I think that's
Speaker 1: the problem with some of these things. We talk about them,
Speaker 1: and yeah, we can go back and forth on them,
Speaker 1: but can we solve them Unless there's a smoking gun
Speaker 1: memo that exists and that has been hidden successfully for
Speaker 1: eighty years, we aren't going to know for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I think the other thing we can't know,
Speaker 2: which is frustrating, is going back to how we started
Speaker 2: the episode. What was it about our pilot that had
Speaker 2: JC say you got a lot right Now that we've
Speaker 2: gone down the rabbit hole on both these conspiracies, it
Speaker 2: seems to me that it must have had something to
Speaker 2: do with the combination of those two. As we said,
Speaker 2: that atom collider that we threw them both into, that
Speaker 2: was totally unique. At that time.
Speaker 1: Our take guarded with Roswell. We did say, let's take
Speaker 1: these two conspiracy theories put them together. But we started
Speaker 1: with Roswell and said, if you believe Roswell is a
Speaker 1: true event, and both of us did. At that time,
Speaker 1: we'd done the research and read some books and talked
Speaker 1: to some people, and we're relatively sure that you could
Speaker 1: make a strong case that Roswell was an anomalous event.
Speaker 1: Our take, though, was Roswell's real. If Roswell was real
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty seven, the national security state coming out
Speaker 1: of World War two would have had to treat it
Speaker 1: as a extremely important and be extremely worth keeping secret, to.
Speaker 2: The point that you would threaten the life of a
Speaker 2: thirteen year old girl.
Speaker 1: And possibly a president of the United United States. And
Speaker 1: so that's where we went with that whole thing. I've
Speaker 1: wrestled with this, to be quite honest, I have wrestled
Speaker 1: with this, as I'm sure you have for decades, where
Speaker 1: I've asked myself, were we really onto something or was
Speaker 1: it just coincidence and happenstance. Based on my lived experience
Speaker 1: with JC and with what I know today, I think
Speaker 1: we had a lot of things right besides just JFK
Speaker 1: and Roswell. For example, one of the things was the
Speaker 1: Navy's role in all of this, which it then goes
Speaker 1: back to Forestall and all that I think it was
Speaker 1: that That's what I think.
Speaker 2: I can't validate why JC said what he said. We
Speaker 2: didn't think to ask him. But what I can do
Speaker 2: is validate him in a really interesting way with regards
Speaker 2: to the formula. So we've talked about basically the two
Speaker 2: largest conspiracies from the twentieth century, and now let's move
Speaker 2: into the twenty first century and to something called CERN.
Speaker 2: And maybe before I get into the story, can you
Speaker 2: give us a quick recap on what CERN is.
Speaker 1: Oh God, I was afraid you'd ask me that, you know,
Speaker 1: my friend, if you were going to bring up CERN,
Speaker 1: then you have to do that, because I've run dry
Speaker 1: so far. So okay.
Speaker 2: So CERN was the largest particle phys laboratory in the world,
Speaker 2: located on what's called the Franco Swiss border near Geneva.
Speaker 2: It was established in nineteen fifty four. It uses advanced
Speaker 2: particle accelerators, including the Large Hadron Collider also called the LHC,
Speaker 2: to study the fundamental constituents of matter and the universe's structure.
Speaker 2: So big heady things they're doing there. The LHC and
Speaker 2: the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider or the RHIC have been
Speaker 2: the focus of multiple conspiracy theories because both colliders accelerate
Speaker 2: particles to near light speed before letting them smash into
Speaker 2: each other. These collisions create and show force interactions similar
Speaker 2: to what the universe was like the instant after the
Speaker 2: Big Bang. And if I'm not mistaken, are you saying
Speaker 2: that this is why people have speculated, and I underline
Speaker 2: and put in bold, speculate that somehow, when you turn
Speaker 2: on CERN, you are creating parallel universes and portal to
Speaker 2: different dimensions and all that absolutely, and there's people who believe,
Speaker 2: for various reasons, that we are not just opening portals
Speaker 2: to other dimensions, but that it's being used to summon demons,
Speaker 2: possibly even the Antichrist. Now obviously these are all just
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories, but this is out there, and I think
Speaker 2: the real concern, and interestingly to me, how this even
Speaker 2: connects back to Roswell and the nuclear bomb base, is
Speaker 2: that going back even further to the Manhattan Project. The
Speaker 2: Manhattan Project was essentially, as Don Schmidt implied, that whole
Speaker 2: area as we were looking for and trying to unlock
Speaker 2: our nuclear capabilities, was being visited by UFOs. It was
Speaker 2: the most visited area on the planet. Similarly, now today
Speaker 2: with the area of CERN, there's been tons of UFO reports.
Speaker 2: So it seems that every time we start meddling with
Speaker 2: the very fabric of nature, it brings UFOs. So this
Speaker 2: is an interesting connection between these two places. So you say, okay, well,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, how are you connecting CERN to the formula?
Speaker 2: Let me explain something.
Speaker 1: I am saying that by the way, as you said that,
Speaker 1: I'm saying, wait, how is he connecting CERN to the formula?
Speaker 2: So yes, okay, So if you remember, or if you
Speaker 2: listen to our first episode, JC, at the end of
Speaker 2: our meeting with him in the backyard of Bryce's house,
Speaker 2: scribbled out something on the back of an ATM deposit
Speaker 2: envelope and he folded it up and he handed it
Speaker 2: to me and he said, put this in a safety
Speaker 2: deposit box for about ten to fifteen years. Then if
Speaker 2: we don't make a deal, you'll know that I was
Speaker 2: for real. I did just that. I put it in
Speaker 2: a safety deposit box. There's a whole Keystone Cops situation
Speaker 2: about how it was moved from one box to another
Speaker 2: and it was almost lost. But during this time, initially
Speaker 2: I didn't realize it was lost. I thought I still
Speaker 2: had it somewhere in my possession. As we talked about
Speaker 2: the actual symbols on the envelope, what we call the formula,
Speaker 2: are inscrutable. They don't make any sense at first glance,
Speaker 2: and so I didn't really have anything to go off
Speaker 2: in terms of trying to validate this message, this cryptic
Speaker 2: message that he gave us. And as Brice said in
Speaker 2: ninety six, the Internet wasn't much of a thing. But
Speaker 2: as the Internet evolved over the next decade or so,
Speaker 2: I started on a fairly regular basis googling or searching
Speaker 2: at the time before Google even sound light and frequency,
Speaker 2: and I would do that trick where you would put
Speaker 2: those words in that order in quotations, so that the
Speaker 2: only search results I would get were ones that had
Speaker 2: those three words in that order. I didn't want something
Speaker 2: I wanted at all, and up until twenty twelve, I
Speaker 2: never got anything back. I never got any search results. Now,
Speaker 2: to clarify something, there is a quote attributed to Tesla
Speaker 2: that's similar, if you want to find the secrets of
Speaker 2: the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.
Speaker 2: But there's actually no official confirmation that Tesla or said
Speaker 2: that or wrote that, and it actually doesn't appear to
Speaker 2: have surfaced as an Internet meme until around twenty ten. Anyway,
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve, around fifteen years after The Dark Sky's
Speaker 2: premiere party, just as JC had predicted, I finally got
Speaker 2: a hit on my search for sound light and frequency
Speaker 2: and Bryce. Do you know where those search results came up? No,
Speaker 2: they came up with in reference to a white paper
Speaker 2: on cern oh Boy and the discovery of what's known
Speaker 2: then as the Higgs bosun or better known as the
Speaker 2: God particle, which is a key piece of the quantum
Speaker 2: puzzle in terms of understanding where all of matter comes from.
Speaker 2: So that article, which unfortunately is no longer online, was
Speaker 2: hosted on the cern CDs or the Official Document Server,
Speaker 2: and I should have at the time, I didn't know
Speaker 2: what would go away gotten a copy of it. But
Speaker 2: it was about what was called the Soification of the
Speaker 2: God particle. And just to explain that, that's basically where
Speaker 2: when the particles are collided in this huge underground facility.
Speaker 2: If you're interested in this, please go and do a
Speaker 2: deep dive on it. It's fascinating. Basically, it's this huge
Speaker 2: atom collider. The particles collide and every once in a
Speaker 2: while they create a new particle, and they finally created
Speaker 2: something called the Higgs bosson and it was of course
Speaker 2: being measured in every way you can imagine. And they
Speaker 2: captured the audio of that collision and they did a
Speaker 2: study of it and what was called the Soonification, and
Speaker 2: they took all of the raw data from that collision
Speaker 2: which revealed this key piece of the universe and it
Speaker 2: actually has a melodic pattern to it. So what we're
Speaker 2: talking about is essentially the soundtrack of Creation.
Speaker 1: So I say, this soundtrack on y Apple music or anything.
Speaker 2: It's online, you can find it. I think we could
Speaker 2: play a little sample of right here.
Speaker 1: Oh this is exciting. Okay, I'm ready. Excuse me, Brent,
Speaker 1: but WT Yeah, what am I listening to? Well, it's
Speaker 1: obviously a musicians interpretation of that raw data. So it
Speaker 1: was all of the sound frequency that came through had
Speaker 1: corresponding data to it, and when played as a musical scale,
Speaker 1: this is what it sounds like. So this wasn't actually
Speaker 1: what it sounded like, but this is what it looked
Speaker 1: like and how it was interpreted by musicians. What I
Speaker 1: find fascinating is that people have always said, you know,
Speaker 1: mathematics is the language of the universe, but music is mathematics,
Speaker 1: and so the idea that it's all tied together is
Speaker 1: just fascinating. You could say, well, oh, it's just a
Speaker 1: coincidence that this happened to make music notes, But when
Speaker 1: you think about it, the creation of a particle that
Speaker 1: seems to be a key element in understanding reality has
Speaker 1: its own musical signature. It implies a lot. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to explain it exactly, but it seems fantastic.
Speaker 1: The only thing that would be stranger is if it
Speaker 1: sounded like the five notes of Close Encounters.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, it isn't exactly on the
Speaker 2: level of John Williams, but if maybe if you give
Speaker 2: it to him and you let him turn it into something.
Speaker 2: Who knows?
Speaker 1: Has cern been turned on? Have we made a black hole?
Speaker 1: And are we all doomed?
Speaker 2: What is your thought of Well, similarly to the Manhattan Project,
Speaker 2: there were fears that they were going to kill us
Speaker 2: all right, trying to make a nuclear bomb. That didn't happen. Similarly,
Speaker 2: as far as we know, we are still all alive
Speaker 2: and living in reality, unless we're in an episode of
Speaker 2: Lost somehow. So I think that the real interesting thing
Speaker 2: to me is, let's go back to JC. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: gives us this piece of paper, tells us to put
Speaker 2: it away for ten to fifteen years, right in case
Speaker 2: we don't make a deal. Right, he wants to prove
Speaker 2: that he's for real. Wow, what a long tail on validation. Right,
Speaker 2: So what I have to ask, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: ask you, and I'm going to ask our listeners, how
Speaker 2: could JC in nineteen ninety six have given us a
Speaker 2: piece of paper with a phrase sound, light and frequency
Speaker 2: told us to put it away and that at that time,
Speaker 2: around fifteen years, we would have proof that he was
Speaker 2: for real. Does that How do you explain that he
Speaker 2: connected the dots somehow in ninety six to the discovery
Speaker 2: of the God particle, which proves basically the foundation of
Speaker 2: quantum physics. Is that just a coincidence? Maybe my head
Speaker 2: just exploded over that. I think it's still exploding. I
Speaker 2: don't have a good answer to that question right now, Brent,
Speaker 2: But I do have an answer to another question. People
Speaker 2: are asking if I can diverge long enough to talk
Speaker 2: about the formula, which I sometimes call the envelope because
Speaker 2: it was written on an envelope. People say, why don't
Speaker 2: you guys just put it out on the internet right
Speaker 2: now and we'll all take a look at it. And
Speaker 2: I think the answer is we're still investigating it, we're
Speaker 2: sharing it with people. We're trying to get our own
Speaker 2: act together about what we think it is. We're not
Speaker 2: hiding it. We're going to put it out there. Our plan, folks,
Speaker 2: is to do what we just did with those postcards,
Speaker 2: which if you go to our website you can look
Speaker 2: at them right now. They were out when the episode
Speaker 2: came out, and if you want to put something on
Speaker 2: your calendar, our plan right now is that on September seventeenth,
Speaker 2: we're going to do an episode of Sound Light and
Speaker 2: Frequency about the formula slash envelope. We're going to put
Speaker 2: it in that episode, we're going to put it on
Speaker 2: our website, and we're going to let everybody else take
Speaker 2: a crack at it. That sound about right, yes, and
Speaker 2: we're going to share the analysis we've collected from a
Speaker 2: number of people. And just in the intervening episodes, I
Speaker 2: want to say, as with this chapter in the subplot
Speaker 2: of the formula, there are ever more chapters to tell
Speaker 2: and I'm embracing you now. They get weirder. You're in
Speaker 2: for a wild ride.
Speaker 1: Sound Light and Frequency is an iHeart podcast produced by
Speaker 1: Stellar Productions. It's executive produced by Nick Johnson and for
Speaker 1: Stellar Jackie's Abel. Our show's music was written by Anna
Speaker 1: Stumpf and Hamilton Lighthouser, and your hosts and executive producers
Speaker 1: are Bryce Abel, That's Me and Brent Friedman. Watch the
Speaker 1: Skies