Speaker 1: Hello, everybody, Chuck here, take me to your leader. Other
Speaker 1: things ets might say, Happy Saturday. This episode is called
Speaker 1: how Area fifty one Works. It's from June thirteenth, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and you know, we get into it. We chop it up,
Speaker 1: as they say, all about Area fifty one.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 3: there's Charles w Chuck Brian over there, and there's Dylan
Speaker 3: the guest producer again. And this is stop should Know,
Speaker 3: the podcast about Chuck some pretty heady stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I could have sworn we did this one. No, what
Speaker 1: do we do roswell no UFOs?
Speaker 2: Yes we did that at a comic con or something, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah we did. We did it live. I've never been
Speaker 3: satisfied with that one.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 3: Maybe we'll redo it one day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is good, this Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: I think this kind of covers some ground that I
Speaker 1: didn't think I was surprised by.
Speaker 2: This is what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too, And I think the thing that I
Speaker 3: would wager you were surprised about, which I was definitely
Speaker 3: surprised about was just how mundane the explanations for what
Speaker 3: goes on at Area fifty one probably.
Speaker 2: Is yeah, secret government research the end.
Speaker 3: Right, but it probably doesn't have anything to do with
Speaker 3: reverse engineering, alien technology and the secret seat of the
Speaker 3: one World government, the Majestic twelve, probably isn't located there.
Speaker 2: No, probably just bombs and planes.
Speaker 3: Probably it makes sense. And if there is a conspiracy
Speaker 3: going on, the one conspiracy theory I saw for Area
Speaker 3: fifty one that made the most sense to me is
Speaker 3: that it's actually meant to be a distraction or has
Speaker 3: developed into a distraction for some other place that no
Speaker 3: one even.
Speaker 2: Knows about Area fifty Maybe, yeah.
Speaker 3: Maybe hopefully they're not quite that on the nose, but
Speaker 3: it's possible.
Speaker 2: All right. So let's go back in time, I guess.
Speaker 1: To World War two, and well, first of all, Area
Speaker 1: fifty one, just to geographically level set, it's less than
Speaker 1: one hundred miles from Las Vegas in.
Speaker 2: Nevada, South South Nevada.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's six hundred square miles and it's basically if
Speaker 1: you look at it on Google Earth, it looks like
Speaker 1: a you know, big airfield with a bunch of buildings.
Speaker 3: So the I think the whole restricted airspace that's part
Speaker 3: of like the test range and the air base and
Speaker 3: all of that stuff. Yeah, the Area fifty one is
Speaker 3: located in. I think that's six hundred square miles. I'm
Speaker 3: pretty sure Area fifty one itself is no more than
Speaker 3: sixty square miles.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure, just like the It's not like they're
Speaker 1: six hundred square miles of buildings.
Speaker 3: Right, it's just what Yeah, the installation that people think
Speaker 3: of as Area fifty one is part of a larger, huge,
Speaker 3: big chunk of the American desert in Nevada.
Speaker 2: Right, So.
Speaker 1: Next to Area fifty one is what's what you were
Speaker 1: kind of talking.
Speaker 2: About, the Nevada Test Site.
Speaker 1: And this is where for about ten or eleven years,
Speaker 1: the Atomic Energy Commission was setting off nuclear bombs underground,
Speaker 1: above ground and really sort of figuring out how to
Speaker 1: kill a lot of people very easily and sort of
Speaker 1: the most dangerous way you could imagine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you could see this from Vegas, Like they
Speaker 3: would have parties when they were doing the test, because
Speaker 3: Vegas is like eighty miles away or something like that,
Speaker 3: and they would have like atomic cocktails and viewing parties
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. And people watch them shoot off bombs. Unbelievable, right,
Speaker 3: But this is obviously a part of the country that
Speaker 3: the government would be very interested in keeping people away from,
Speaker 3: not just for the bombs, but because of the fallout
Speaker 3: the radiation, but also the fact that they're testing like
Speaker 3: super sensitive military equipment and weapons, right, like atomic bombs.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like previous to this, it was just land. There were
Speaker 1: silver mines, there was cattle and wildlife. But then in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty the government said no, this is ours, and
Speaker 1: we're going to train bombers here.
Speaker 2: And there was a big bombing range and they.
Speaker 1: Were split into different numbers, and that's where the number
Speaker 1: Area fifty one comes from, which seems I don't know
Speaker 1: about arbitrary, but no one knows if it really matters
Speaker 1: why it was named Area fifty one.
Speaker 3: No, I think it was. If you look at old
Speaker 3: bombing range maps, the area where Area fifty one is
Speaker 3: located was denoted as area fifty.
Speaker 2: One Between fifty and fifty two, it is probably the answer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's basically from what I saw, that was it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's another part of this story. With World War two,
Speaker 1: and this is Germany. They were a bit ahead of
Speaker 1: US as far as jets go, jet airplanes, the United
Speaker 1: States is like, this won't do it all. So we're
Speaker 1: going to get kind of put the gas on our
Speaker 1: jet development. And in nineteen forty three, Lockheed said was
Speaker 1: tasked with developing a jet fighter plane you can use
Speaker 1: a British jet engine, and they tasked engineer Kelly Johnson said,
Speaker 1: get a team together. He got a team together and
Speaker 1: they delivered the P eighty Shooting Star, which is one
Speaker 1: of the coolest looking old jets.
Speaker 2: All these planes are just amazing looking.
Speaker 3: Agreed, very very cool. It's a good idea when we
Speaker 3: talk about a new jet or something, go look it
Speaker 3: up as we're talking about because most of them are
Speaker 3: pretty boss looking.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've never been a plane guy, but I'm getting more
Speaker 1: and more into it.
Speaker 3: Is that right? Yeah, I want to do a stealth
Speaker 3: bomber episode one day.
Speaker 2: Okay, possibly the coolest plane.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Kelly Johnson was just that right there. Delivering
Speaker 3: America's first jet on like undertime and under budget was
Speaker 3: huge and he became a legendary engineer right off the bat.
Speaker 3: And they I think Lockheed said, hey, how would you
Speaker 3: like to keep this pace up? We'll give you, your
Speaker 3: team of elite engineers, whatever funding you need, whatever resources
Speaker 3: you need, just ask you can have it, and you
Speaker 3: just keep developing stuff really quickly for us, and we
Speaker 3: will put you at the cutting edge of aviation research.
Speaker 3: And so Kelly Johnson and his team eventually became known
Speaker 3: as the Skunk Works, which is legendary in aviation engineering
Speaker 3: because they developed a whole bunch of really cool stuff.
Speaker 3: But also they had a pretty great name too that
Speaker 3: was fairly intriguing. But they were the first ones to
Speaker 3: kind of basically develop agile project management from what I understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was all out of the what was
Speaker 1: own a Site one, which was in Burbank, California, just
Speaker 1: sort of a suburb of LA But then in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four they said, you know what we need now
Speaker 1: is a spy plane. The CIA wants a spyplane. We
Speaker 1: want something that can fly above radar and photograph Soviet
Speaker 1: military bases missile installations. We're going to name it, because
Speaker 1: we name everything Project aquatone. And that's where Johnson and
Speaker 1: his team developed the U two. The Skunkworks team, but
Speaker 1: they couldn't do this at Site one anymore because it
Speaker 1: had to be super super secret obviously because it was
Speaker 1: a spy plane, so they needed a different place, and
Speaker 1: that's where that sort of all converges onto this testing
Speaker 1: site in Nevada.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Kelly Johnson, CIA officer named Richard Bissel and a
Speaker 3: couple of pilots started scouting locations for where they could
Speaker 3: develop this in super super secret and they they went
Speaker 3: to look at the old Nevada Test Range and specifically
Speaker 3: the thing that attracted them was a dry salt lake
Speaker 3: called Groom Lake. And one of the pilots recounted taking
Speaker 3: some like sixteen pounds shot put balls and dropping them
Speaker 3: on the ground to see just how sandy the ground was,
Speaker 3: and he said it was solid as a tabletop. This
Speaker 3: lake was the dry lake. They were like, this will
Speaker 3: probably do. And there's a lot of reasons why it
Speaker 3: would do, not just because there was a dry lake
Speaker 3: bed that was as hard as concrete, but because it
Speaker 3: was in an area that was already off limits to
Speaker 3: the public. The airspace was already restricted, it was remote,
Speaker 3: there were two mountain ranges that shield the test site
Speaker 3: from view. So this area, what became known as Area
Speaker 3: fifty one, was just perfect for developing a super secret
Speaker 3: spy plane in Super Secret and so the CIA and
Speaker 3: the skunk Works team say this will do. Let's take
Speaker 3: this place over.
Speaker 1: Did I ever tell you about one of the most
Speaker 1: fun things I ever got to do as a PA?
Speaker 3: What wait, didn't were you arrested by Eric a Strada?
Speaker 2: Is you're gonna say, oh no, that's stop. Ten Okay.
Speaker 1: We did a car shoot on a dry like bed
Speaker 1: and death Valley nice and they had like a big,
Speaker 1: huge line of cars in a row, all driving in
Speaker 1: perfect synchronicity, and the director wasn't happy, and they were like,
Speaker 1: we want all the dust is behind them. He went,
Speaker 1: I want dust in front of them. So the ad
Speaker 1: ran and grabbed the keys to a Mustang, threw them
Speaker 1: to me, and he said, get in that Mustang and
Speaker 1: drive one hundred feet in front of them as fast
Speaker 1: as you can, fish tailing and doing donuts and stuff.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 1: I was like me, yeah, oh man, it was so
Speaker 1: much fun because this is a dry lake bed. It's
Speaker 1: like there's just no fear of hitting anything or flipping,
Speaker 1: like you.
Speaker 2: Could just do whatever you wanted. It was wonderful.
Speaker 3: That's cool.
Speaker 2: It was so much fun.
Speaker 3: Did you didn't hit a jack rabbit or anything, just
Speaker 3: a couple.
Speaker 1: No, it was fine. It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So what was the last thing he said.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the last thing, Well, I was talking about how
Speaker 3: amazingly perfect Area fifty one is for developing a super
Speaker 3: secret spy plane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they called it Paradise Ranch, and the locals
Speaker 1: around there they were used to because of all the
Speaker 1: atomic bomb testing. It kind of worked out because they
Speaker 1: weren't gonna First of all, I was in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere, but even the nearby communities, the ones that
Speaker 1: were close enough, it just wasn't on anyone's radar because
Speaker 1: they had always been doing weird things out there, so
Speaker 1: it's not like it pricked up anyone's ears. So it
Speaker 1: was kind of the perfect cover to be there at
Speaker 1: Paradise Ranch doing these development of these spy planes and.
Speaker 2: Stuff, right right.
Speaker 3: So, but in addition to that, the cover story initially
Speaker 3: that the CIA produced was that they were a team
Speaker 3: of bomb experts, yeah, who were cleaning up unexploded munitions
Speaker 3: from the time when it was used as a bombing range.
Speaker 3: So that was why that was the story they used
Speaker 3: for why there was a sudden appearance of like trucks
Speaker 3: and people when there hadn't been really much of anything
Speaker 3: there before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were also natural barriers. There were a couple
Speaker 1: of mountain ranges that kind of shielded it from view.
Speaker 1: It was already remote, the airspace was already restricted. And
Speaker 1: then Eisenhower came along and signed Executive Order one zero, six, three,
Speaker 1: three and nineteen fifty five, which basically extended the airspace
Speaker 1: over Area fifty one, and then in nineteen fifty eight
Speaker 1: a public Land Order made this basically said that this
Speaker 1: area doesn't exist anymore. Right, it's not on maps, it's
Speaker 1: not acknowledged. And this is one of the huge reasons
Speaker 1: why cite to the ranch Area fifty one has been
Speaker 1: so And we'll see later things have changed a little
Speaker 1: bit in recent years. But just for the government to say, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about, over and over again,
Speaker 1: it's sort of crazy making it is.
Speaker 3: But like they would, as we'll see later, they will
Speaker 3: they would say an open court, the place where this
Speaker 3: person claims to work does not exist, like in court,
Speaker 3: and the judge would just be like, what do you what?
Speaker 3: How are we going to get around this? This is
Speaker 3: a real problem. But from what I read, Chuck originally
Speaker 3: Area fifty one was a CIA installation, and around nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy it transferred hands to the Air Force. But from
Speaker 3: what I could tell, up until that point, or at
Speaker 3: least the first several years in the mid to late
Speaker 3: fifties and early sixties, no one had any idea that
Speaker 3: Area fifty one existed. They did a really good job
Speaker 3: of keeping that place a genuine secret, not an open
Speaker 3: secret like it became later on, but a real secret.
Speaker 3: And one of the ways that they did that was
Speaker 3: they from what workers later said in like testimony in
Speaker 3: court cases, is that like they would be interrogated at
Speaker 3: gunpoint to see if they were actually spies. There were
Speaker 3: all sorts of like weird loyalty tests and things like that.
Speaker 3: And while they were working on the U two spyplane
Speaker 3: in particular, they kept that secret so serious that if
Speaker 3: you were out there working and you had nothing to
Speaker 3: do with the utube program, you were just a worker,
Speaker 3: you were working on a different program, they would move
Speaker 3: you indoors, close the doors, close the blinds on the
Speaker 3: windows before rolling the U two out or testing it,
Speaker 3: like you were not allowed to be outside or look.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was pretty like remarkable. Like within Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: They even had.
Speaker 2: Subsecurity protocols in place.
Speaker 1: I kind of just figured like, if you were in there,
Speaker 1: then you had access to the alien room, right, you know,
Speaker 1: all the good stuff.
Speaker 3: Right. But think about that, because to even be on
Speaker 3: the base or in Area fifty one, you had to
Speaker 3: have the highest level of security clearance you could possibly have, yeah,
Speaker 3: just to work on there. And even if you had that,
Speaker 3: you still couldn't see the U two spy plane or
Speaker 3: know that it existed or hear people talk about it.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't even let Bono in on it.
Speaker 3: Nope.
Speaker 2: So that was a terrible joke.
Speaker 3: It was really bad. I was really home. We can
Speaker 3: get around that one.
Speaker 1: So the U two spy plane was great until it wasn't.
Speaker 1: And that was when Francis gary Powers was shot down
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty and the plane was all of a
Speaker 1: sudden in the hand of the Soviets, and they basically
Speaker 1: were like, well, that's the end of that. You can't
Speaker 1: have a secret spy plane anymore once it's in the
Speaker 1: hand of the Soviets. And it was also a big
Speaker 1: deal because the American people all of a sudden knew
Speaker 1: that the US government is definitely doing things in total
Speaker 1: secret and developing technology that no one knows about.
Speaker 3: It was a surprise to everybody, not just the Soviets,
Speaker 3: but also the American public, Like you were saying, too,
Speaker 3: look to see if this was looked upon by historians,
Speaker 3: is like the point where Americans realized that the government
Speaker 3: did things in secret that the American public didn't know about.
Speaker 3: And I didn't see anything like that. So I don't
Speaker 3: know if this is an ed comment or what, but
Speaker 3: it makes sense. And certainly people didn't know that the
Speaker 3: U two spyplane existed. The CIA did a really good
Speaker 3: job of keeping it secret, but when it was out,
Speaker 3: it was pretty humiliating for the US. And it was
Speaker 3: also a big deal that this spy plane was shot
Speaker 3: down because Eisenhower had approached Krutchev Khrushchev and said, hey,
Speaker 3: why don't we maintain an open airspace policy to one
Speaker 3: another so we can keep tabs to make sure that
Speaker 3: either side is keeping our word with our armament treaties
Speaker 3: and the stuff we're doing. Like we're enemies, but maybe
Speaker 3: we should kind of be able to keep tabs one another,
Speaker 3: and Khrushchev said, no, there's not going to be any
Speaker 3: open airspace policy, and so the United States went and
Speaker 3: developed this U two spy plane instead, and when it
Speaker 3: got shot down flying over restricted airspace of an enemy,
Speaker 3: that's an act of war and it could have gone
Speaker 3: way differently than it did, but instead it was a
Speaker 3: big humiliation for the United States. And instead of just
Speaker 3: kind of tucking tail and running, the guy who was
Speaker 3: in charge of it for the CIA, Richard Bissel, went
Speaker 3: to the government and said, Hey, I've got an idea.
Speaker 3: Let's get even more secret and develop an even more
Speaker 3: secretive plane under an even more secretive project. And that
Speaker 3: the government said, Hey, let's do it. We're scared of
Speaker 3: the Russians. We'll double down. We'll triple down if you want, buddy,
Speaker 3: And that became Project ox Cart.
Speaker 1: That's right, And that was a black project, and it
Speaker 1: was so secret and so concealed that no one was
Speaker 1: even allowed to know how much money was being spent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a big turning point here.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: I mean, this kind of started the era that we
Speaker 1: still live in today, in which the military just dumps
Speaker 1: money into secret projects where there's that that don't exist
Speaker 1: as far as anyone knows, and that there's very little
Speaker 1: oversight for right, exactly interesting.
Speaker 3: Yea, And apparently it was this Richard Bissell's idea.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's take a break old Dick Bissell
Speaker 1: and we'll get back to Dick Bissell and the rest of.
Speaker 2: Ox Cart right after this.
Speaker 1: Stop.
Speaker 2: So, one of the problems with I.
Speaker 1: Guess it's not a problem if you're comfortable with dumping
Speaker 1: money into a project. But one of the I guess
Speaker 1: expenses of a super super secret project is that it
Speaker 1: just costs a lot more background checks, take time, and
Speaker 1: cost money. Putting something in a super remote location costs
Speaker 1: money having extra security forces, and it all just costs
Speaker 1: a lot more money. I mean, it's a serious multiplier
Speaker 1: on costs to do something that quote unquote doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: Right. But in addition to that, chuck too, is just
Speaker 3: the fact that the technology that was being developed was
Speaker 3: so cutting edge just by definition required even more money
Speaker 3: on top of the extra money for it being so
Speaker 3: super secret.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So ox Card eventually led to the SR seventy one Blackbird,
Speaker 1: another amazingly cool plane.
Speaker 3: Probably the coolest of all time if you ask me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I said the Stealth Barmber earlier. But the SR
Speaker 1: seventy one is that it was pretty awesome, although there
Speaker 1: is another one later on that I'll mention.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll go ahead and say the Bird of Prey
Speaker 2: stealth jet.
Speaker 3: You like that one, Huh, that's pretty cool. It looks
Speaker 3: a little bit like a super cool tongue depresser. You
Speaker 3: know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: I know what a tongue depresser is.
Speaker 3: This looks like that, a flying gray tongue depressor. It's
Speaker 3: like a popsicle stick though, right, yeah, but wider.
Speaker 1: Okay, But the SR seventy one Blackbird definitely not a
Speaker 1: popsicle stick.
Speaker 3: No, No, it's just cool. Plus it doesn't hurt the
Speaker 3: fact that Gi Joe Well Cobra technically had the SR
Speaker 3: seventy one Blackbird as one of their planes.
Speaker 2: That's funny.
Speaker 1: So Oxcart they needed better infrastructure basically, and it was
Speaker 1: they couldn't just pour money into the development of the
Speaker 1: jet at this point. They had to really update all
Speaker 1: the facilities, expanding on land, expanding more restricted airspace. Even
Speaker 1: that happened in nineteen sixty two, and it just sort
Speaker 1: of I think ingrained the super permanence of Area fifty one.
Speaker 3: And also like the fact that like the government said, no, okay,
Speaker 3: this was a humiliating thing to ever you two shot down,
Speaker 3: rather than maybe we'll just kind of take another tack.
Speaker 3: They really went further down the path of just completely
Speaker 3: secret black projects and they developed some pretty amazing stuff there.
Speaker 3: The uh I think you were saying, they Bird of
Speaker 3: Prey that was from the nineties.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I think it's cool looking.
Speaker 3: The F one to seventeen Nighthawk, that's the one that's
Speaker 3: like a single wing stealth bomber.
Speaker 1: I believe, yes, And this is also where they take
Speaker 1: and like if you capture an enemy plane, you will
Speaker 1: take that to Area fifty one to check out as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's another program at Wright Patterson Base in Dayton
Speaker 3: that's like set up specifically for that. But I wonder
Speaker 3: if this is like even more highly sensitive. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but yeah, they've captured MiGs before, captured
Speaker 3: radar systems and they reverse engineered them there, which will
Speaker 3: come in a play later on. And then there was
Speaker 3: another one called the Tacit Blue Stealth Bomber. So basically
Speaker 3: any stealth aircraft, whether it was the stealth Blackhawks or
Speaker 3: the stealth bombers that were developed from the sixties onward
Speaker 3: it was probably developed and tested in super secrecy in
Speaker 3: Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: Right, So, like I said, this made it just sort
Speaker 1: of a shop that they that wouldn't close. Essentially at
Speaker 1: this point in nineteen ninety three, there's an area known
Speaker 1: as Freedom Ridge, very ironic name because Freedom Ridge was
Speaker 1: taken by the government.
Speaker 2: Right and closed off to the public.
Speaker 1: And this is where tinfoil hats used to gather with
Speaker 1: their binoculars to try and check out things.
Speaker 2: And they said to no more. Freedom Ridge is now ours.
Speaker 3: It's called get out of here Ridge. Yeah, shot on
Speaker 3: site Ridge.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: So if you are like get to the aliens, what
Speaker 3: are you guys even talking about the aliens in Area
Speaker 3: fifty one as synonymous as they are now, and they
Speaker 3: are synonymous. The highway that Area fifty one one is
Speaker 3: off of, that the road to Area fifty one is
Speaker 3: off of, has been officially renamed by the state of
Speaker 3: Nevada as the Extraterrestrial Highway. It's Highway three oh five.
Speaker 3: As synonymous as this base is with aliens and UFOs,
Speaker 3: that's actually relatively recent. It was operating for a good
Speaker 3: twenty five thirty five years, I think, before aliens became
Speaker 3: tied to Area fifty one, And there's actually a moment
Speaker 3: in time that you can point to where it happened.
Speaker 3: And it happened on a broadcast in May of nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty nine, almost just passed thirty years ago on KLAS,
Speaker 3: the local Las Vegas TV network. I'm not sure what
Speaker 3: network affiliate they are, but they had like their five
Speaker 3: o'clock news, and on it they interviewed a guy who
Speaker 3: was anonymous, went by the pseudonym Dennis, and he basically said, Hey,
Speaker 3: I'm doing a lot of weird stuff out there at
Speaker 3: Area fifty one. Let me tell you all about it.
Speaker 1: His name, his real name was Bob Lazar, and he
Speaker 1: Have you seen interviews with this guy?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did you see the more recent one?
Speaker 3: No, but the one where he said I think it
Speaker 3: was a good idea, that one.
Speaker 1: No, I'm talking about there was one just from a
Speaker 1: few years ago.
Speaker 2: No, it's I gotta say.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not a conspiracy guy at all. But
Speaker 1: when you listen to Bob Blazar talk today, he just
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like some.
Speaker 2: Crackpot or a weirdo, or like he would be lying.
Speaker 1: He hasn't like made money off of this or like
Speaker 1: he's basically like, listen, man, I kind of wish this
Speaker 1: wasn't attached to my name because I'm trying to run
Speaker 1: a business in Michigan and it doesn't help that people
Speaker 1: think I'm some ufo kook.
Speaker 3: Bob Lazar is alien apples.
Speaker 2: And he's.
Speaker 1: Oh good, and he said, but he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: everything that I told you was true, though, and that's
Speaker 1: just the deal, you know, and I don't care if
Speaker 1: anyone believes me.
Speaker 3: He's kind of like that though too. In the early interviews,
Speaker 3: at the very least, he's very calm and not at
Speaker 3: all kookie or anything like that. It's specifically the stuff
Speaker 3: he was talking about that was, yeah, so compelling.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So his story is then you can go watch this
Speaker 1: stuff for yourself and see it all. But he basically
Speaker 1: explains how he's an engineer and he was working on
Speaker 1: reverse engineering flying saucers, essentially alien spacecraft and alien technology,
Speaker 1: and at one point he was in a room and
Speaker 1: they left him alone with all these files that describe
Speaker 1: alien technology and alien autopsies and all of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty remarkable to listen to. It didn't make
Speaker 1: the hugest waves because it was nineteen eighty nine. It
Speaker 1: was a local news station at first, it didn't, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then it was picked up by Japan oddly enough,
Speaker 1: and after it went to Japan, it went kind of worldwide,
Speaker 1: and before you know it, the whole area just sort
Speaker 1: of became Alien Central.
Speaker 2: And this is we should point out.
Speaker 1: This also has a lot to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that in the seventies and eighties did the United States
Speaker 1: kind of went ufo nuts.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, man, there are so many great books at
Speaker 3: the time that were coming out that claimed everything from
Speaker 3: like UFOs were responsible for the Muta Triangle, or Atlantis
Speaker 3: was populated by UFOs, or the Nazca lines were for UFOs,
Speaker 3: or the Egyptians built the Pyramids with the UFOs. All
Speaker 3: that stuff came out of the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this all kind of coincided with Lazarre having his
Speaker 1: news interview and it really just kind of changed everything.
Speaker 3: It did, right, So he kind of like came out
Speaker 3: at a time when America was primed to really believe it.
Speaker 3: But if you think about it, like everything you hear
Speaker 3: about and think about from about Area fifty one today
Speaker 3: did not exist pre nineteen eighty nine, Pre Bob Blazar.
Speaker 3: It all started with Bob Blazar, and the reason why
Speaker 3: everybody wasn't just like so, he's just some nut who
Speaker 3: came out and said this stuff. Who cares? How did that?
Speaker 3: How did that become truly cemented with Area fifty one?
Speaker 3: Is that Weirdly some of the stuff he talked about
Speaker 3: kind of held water, Like he would talk about just mundane,
Speaker 3: day to day stuff that went on at Area fifty
Speaker 3: one that seemed to be able to be correlated from
Speaker 3: locals like it held up. There was a there was
Speaker 3: a scanner once. He said that you would get in
Speaker 3: and out of rooms by scanning your hands and it
Speaker 3: would scan the bone structure of your hand. That was
Speaker 3: how you were identified and could come in and out
Speaker 3: of rooms. And supposedly somebody found years like thirty years later,
Speaker 3: mentioned of something like that in some declassified report about
Speaker 3: Area fifty one. He also this is it really kind
Speaker 3: of legitimized him. He would take people out on Wednesday
Speaker 3: nights and at the time he would say, I never
Speaker 3: saw what time it was, but at the time he
Speaker 3: said it would happen, lights would rise up in the
Speaker 3: sky and they would do all sorts of ufoi kind
Speaker 3: of stuff, and the fact that he knew about these
Speaker 3: schedules really kind of added legitimacy to his claims.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the new interview that I saw, he was
Speaker 1: explaining some of that anti gravitational propulsion technology that the
Speaker 1: Aliens had supposedly used that he was supposedly assigned to
Speaker 1: reverse engineer, and he was sort of walking the person
Speaker 1: through it that was in the room, and he was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he said, we had this thing. It was sort
Speaker 1: of like half a basketball and when you went to
Speaker 1: put your hand on it, he was like, there was
Speaker 1: this It was like bringing two magnets, you know, opposite
Speaker 1: poles to opposite poles that repel.
Speaker 2: And he said, that's kind of what it felt like.
Speaker 1: And he said, so we would drop like a golf
Speaker 1: ball and it would just you know, skirt off to
Speaker 1: the side without hitting it and as if it had bounced.
Speaker 1: And the way he was describing it, I was just like,
Speaker 1: this guy just seems so credible, right, It was so
Speaker 1: like shocking. I didn't know what to expect. I thought
Speaker 1: he was I thought he was not going to be credible.
Speaker 3: I guess right. I didn't see the interview with him,
Speaker 3: but I read about that technology. And by the way, everybody,
Speaker 3: you can erase your email. It's like poles that repel
Speaker 3: each other. Chuck, Not, okay, the anti gravity technology was
Speaker 3: talking about. It was basically saying, like around the craft
Speaker 3: or whatever that they were reverse engineering, it would bend gravity,
Speaker 3: so this could just move right through space basically at
Speaker 3: light speed. That's the big suspicion among ufologists who follow
Speaker 3: this stuff is that they were reverse engineering light speed
Speaker 3: aircraft that was propelled using anti gravity technology on engines
Speaker 3: that were matter antimatter engines. And back in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: nine you couldn't There wasn't an Internet to start with,
Speaker 3: but even if there was, you couldn't find stuff like
Speaker 3: descriptions of anti gravity craft at the time. So for
Speaker 3: this guy to just come out and start talking about
Speaker 3: this in an authoritative way, yeah, he's an enigmatic figure
Speaker 3: for sure, But he was also one whose credibility was
Speaker 3: questioned right out of the gate too.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I mean he said that he went to
Speaker 1: MIT and to Caltech.
Speaker 2: There are no records of him being a student.
Speaker 1: The conspiracy theorists will say, like, you know how easy
Speaker 1: it is for the government to wipe that clean?
Speaker 3: Do you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, I don't know, is that easy. So
Speaker 2: that's what they will say.
Speaker 1: They will also say that they also got in touch
Speaker 1: with his professors to make sure they never.
Speaker 2: Talked and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's when I get a little bit like,
Speaker 1: you can't have hundreds of people or thousands of people
Speaker 1: involved in some big, massive cover up like someone's gonna talk.
Speaker 3: You're just not thinking big enough. I agree with you.
Speaker 3: That's when it kind of starts to get hinky for me.
Speaker 1: But he did disappear, and I mean not disappear, disappear, disappear,
Speaker 1: but he uh, I mean, it's not like he was like,
Speaker 1: all right and now I'm going to go make all.
Speaker 2: The money on this right exactly.
Speaker 1: Like he moved and tried to start like a regular
Speaker 1: business and tried to just not be in the public eye.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he did, which I think adds to his credibility
Speaker 3: even more, you know a little bit. Uh, let's take
Speaker 3: our last break and then come back, shall we. Let's
Speaker 3: do it, but let's promise we're going to come back. Okay, right, stop, okay, Chuck,
Speaker 3: So Bob Blazar comes along just starts spouting out at
Speaker 3: the mouth about all the crazy alien stuff that's going
Speaker 3: on at Area fifty one, and then he kind of
Speaker 3: like fades into the background for a while, and everybody
Speaker 3: else kind of took it from there. If you have
Speaker 3: anything to do with government conspiracies or believe in UFOs
Speaker 3: or aliens or whatever, all that stuff started to get
Speaker 3: saddled little by little onto Area fifty one. And one
Speaker 3: of the things that pretty early on got connected to
Speaker 3: Area fifty one, but almost across the board. Any reasonable
Speaker 3: source or skeptical source will say, like the two have
Speaker 3: nothing to do with one another. Is Roswell and Area
Speaker 3: fifty one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Roswell crash in nineteen forty seven, when something
Speaker 1: crashed a gentlemen found pieces of an air well, pieces
Speaker 1: of some kind of unidentified object, and it became ufosnrol.
Speaker 2: Later it was said to be a weather balloon, but first.
Speaker 3: The army said it was a flying disc. Right, that
Speaker 3: kind of change things.
Speaker 2: You've seen the pictures, right.
Speaker 3: Sure, I mean it looks like I've seen that one
Speaker 3: famous picture of the guy crouching with what looks like
Speaker 3: just some balloon material. Yeah, right, But you know, he
Speaker 3: was just a stooge for the government, and that was
Speaker 3: just a prop that they came up with. So the
Speaker 3: Roswell crash happens in nineteen forty seven, there's no way
Speaker 3: Area fifty one would have been associated with it. The
Speaker 3: whole mythos around Roswell is that there was a UFO
Speaker 3: crash that happened, some aliens survived, or at the very
Speaker 3: least their bodies were recovered, depending on who you ask,
Speaker 3: and the UFO and the aliens alive or dead were
Speaker 3: taken for further study to wear Area fifty one. Area
Speaker 3: fifty one back in nineteen forty seven, when the Roswell
Speaker 3: crash happened, was not even on the CIA's radar. It
Speaker 3: was a that basically a defunct airstrip and a nuclear
Speaker 3: testing range still, so there wouldn't have been any place
Speaker 3: to take the aliens in the first place. And then secondly,
Speaker 3: after the Roswell crash happened, the idea of an alien
Speaker 3: an alien crash having taken place there, that didn't come
Speaker 3: about until like the eighties too, so really people started
Speaker 3: to kind of catch on to this a little late.
Speaker 3: So probably Area fifty one in Roswell have nothing to
Speaker 3: do with one another. And let's not forget that they're
Speaker 3: like eight hundred miles apart too, even though to everyone
Speaker 3: in America and really the rest of the world outside
Speaker 3: of the Southwest thinks they're like right next to.
Speaker 1: Each other, I think, so, you know, yeah, So there
Speaker 1: have been a lot of crazy theories over the years.
Speaker 1: The very most basic are, like you just said, like,
Speaker 1: there's alien corpses there, alien technology there, and the US
Speaker 1: military has been studying the stuff and trying to perfect
Speaker 1: everything from time travel to light speed travel. Right, fine,
Speaker 1: that's the basic ground zero approach.
Speaker 3: Don't forget interdimensional travel too. Why not another one? I saw?
Speaker 3: There's some pretty pretty low hanging fruit that I love.
Speaker 3: The moon landing was faked.
Speaker 2: There, ah, sure?
Speaker 3: And then after that, right, but then after that Kubrick
Speaker 3: was executed on site and replaced by a clone.
Speaker 2: Well, that clon did some great work.
Speaker 3: He did better than Barry Linden.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, I love Berry Linden.
Speaker 3: I've never seen it, so I currently hate on it.
Speaker 3: It's amazing weather control experiments. That's probably the most believable
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 2: Sure, clouds eating sure, why not?
Speaker 3: Well? Why not? And then there's like stage two of
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is, there are aliens that clock in every
Speaker 1: day at Area fifty one and work side by side
Speaker 1: with us in harmony.
Speaker 3: In harm many in order to build like an alien
Speaker 3: human hybrid race. Maybe sure. And if all this sounds familiar,
Speaker 3: I will bet that you watched a pretty hefty amount
Speaker 3: of X Files. Oh yes, because they really tapped into
Speaker 3: this stuff. They basically just appropriated it for plot lines.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, which is great. I love the X Files.
Speaker 3: But it was just I guess Chris Carter used to
Speaker 3: hang out with like uphologists or something just to get ideas.
Speaker 1: Did he really he had two of yeah, or he
Speaker 1: is one himself. I don't know much about it. Maybe so,
Speaker 1: maybe so so. And then of course, if you even
Speaker 1: ramp that up a little bit more, that this is
Speaker 1: all part of a giant conspiracy to create a one
Speaker 1: world government that is human alien run right.
Speaker 3: And that's where that Majestic twelve I mentioned at the
Speaker 3: beginning comes in. They are supposedly a panel of academics,
Speaker 3: elite scientists. There's twelve of them who were impaneled by
Speaker 3: Eisenhower after the Roswell crash, or I guess it would
Speaker 3: have been Truman, I think still, and they were put
Speaker 3: together just the cream of the crop to basically go
Speaker 3: contact the aliens and basically broker a meeting I guess
Speaker 3: between the President and the aliens. And they managed to
Speaker 3: leverage this to catapult themselves into status of actual people
Speaker 3: who run the world. So they're the ones who are
Speaker 3: forming this one world government. And that is where Area
Speaker 3: fifty one, or that's where it's located. The seat of
Speaker 3: this government is located underground in Area fifty one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This next one is a little more recent and very kooky,
Speaker 1: and it's the notion that Hitler and Stalin got together
Speaker 1: and hatched a plan to undermine the United States in
Speaker 1: World War two by distracting us about the threat of
Speaker 1: an impending alien invasion. And they would do this by
Speaker 1: building a fake spaceship filling it with mutant children that
Speaker 1: Joseph Mingola created and filled the spaceship with those kids,
Speaker 1: and then the craft crashed in a storm, and that
Speaker 1: was the Roswell incident.
Speaker 3: Right, it was meant to land, and then these mutant children.
Speaker 2: Come out speaking Germans.
Speaker 3: Right. Supposedly, the mutant children who were the aliens that
Speaker 3: were found in the Roswell crash had huge heads and
Speaker 3: giant eyes. They were basically like the grays of alien
Speaker 3: legend right, and that Stalin and Hitler were inspired by
Speaker 3: the public's reaction in America to the World War of
Speaker 3: the World's broadcast. They wanted to incite that kind of
Speaker 3: panic by actually creating this fake alien invasion.
Speaker 1: With all the drugs. Hitler was on after we know
Speaker 1: this now, who knows?
Speaker 3: He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. It's
Speaker 3: a great idea. Man, what else you got? What else
Speaker 3: you got? What else can we do? Slands like mellow
Speaker 3: he tried CBD.
Speaker 2: He's like, no, that's the one thing I haven't tried.
Speaker 3: He got any right, I'll be I'll mix well with
Speaker 3: everything else.
Speaker 2: So this is this is obviously not a thing either.
Speaker 3: Well, this is from a book by an author named
Speaker 3: Annie Jacobson, I believe, and she this book came out
Speaker 3: in twenty eleven, and she based this whole thing on
Speaker 3: an alleged Area fifty one insider who was her source,
Speaker 3: who said that he worked on a project that had
Speaker 3: to do with this somehow, some way, but that this
Speaker 3: was where all this alien stuff came from. It was
Speaker 3: a it was a hoax by the Nazis and the Soviets.
Speaker 3: Weird thing is is there is another guy out there
Speaker 3: who supposedly has a different source who tells the same story.
Speaker 3: But this other source says that this is it was
Speaker 3: all fake. That I saw the files myself, but I
Speaker 3: believe that it was meant to be a test of loyalty,
Speaker 3: or to see how I would react working at Area
Speaker 3: fifty one to files like this and be like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, this is real, this is real. I can't
Speaker 3: believe this is this is actually real. I guess to
Speaker 3: see how gullible you were and therefore how trustworthy you.
Speaker 1: Were, right, which could explain Bob blazar situation too, because
Speaker 1: he was supposedly in a room full of files he
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't have seen.
Speaker 2: Either, right, So that's you probably failed the test.
Speaker 3: You got three different sources who supposedly worked at Area
Speaker 3: fifty one. Technically, I should say, because we'll get email
Speaker 3: Bob Blazar worked at S four, which is an even
Speaker 3: more secret installation that's attached to Area fifty one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you got.
Speaker 3: Three people who allegedly worked in Area fifty one who
Speaker 3: all tell a story about basically being left in a
Speaker 3: room with files that contained information about aliens. Whether it
Speaker 3: was a hoax, or real or whatever. And maybe that
Speaker 3: is because that kind of correlates with the idea that
Speaker 3: there were like gunpoint interrogations to verify your allegiance to
Speaker 3: the government or the military or whatever. Maybe that is
Speaker 3: something they tried there. Yeah, it doesn't make the actual
Speaker 3: aliens real. It just makes the presence of the files real,
Speaker 3: that's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Area fifty one today as it truly exists.
Speaker 1: If you're driving down Highway three seventy five, there's an
Speaker 1: unmarked dirt road between mile markers twenty nine and thirty
Speaker 1: or I guess thirty and twenty nine, and you turn.
Speaker 2: On that road.
Speaker 1: It's twelve miles on a dirt road, and you'll get
Speaker 1: to a gate and there'll be warning signs all along
Speaker 1: saying restricted areas, sort of like close encounters type stuff.
Speaker 1: There will be cameras and sensors everywhere, so don't think
Speaker 1: you're like getting away with anything.
Speaker 3: No, there's mics that listen to your conversation. You were
Speaker 3: under as close surveillance as you've ever been in your
Speaker 3: life from what I understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are guards, of course, and they will
Speaker 1: say I'm sorry, turn around and drive back to the
Speaker 1: highway and if you.
Speaker 2: Persist a little bit, then you will get arrested.
Speaker 1: If you're around the perimeter area kind of walking around
Speaker 1: with your binoculars, they will probably come and take your
Speaker 1: binoculars and tell you to leave, or drive you back
Speaker 1: to the highway, or maybe smash your face in and
Speaker 1: bury you in the desert.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a sign that says use of deadly forth
Speaker 3: forces authorized.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure, but there's.
Speaker 3: From what I've seen, there's never been an incident that
Speaker 3: where that actually happened. You're much more likely to get
Speaker 3: handed over to the local cops who will slap you
Speaker 3: with a several hundred dollars fine, sure, if you give
Speaker 3: them any kind of guff and don't leave immediately when
Speaker 3: they tell you to.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Kind of the cool thing about Area fifty one, there are, obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are civilian workers that work there. It's
Speaker 1: a huge facility that apparently is still growing because you
Speaker 1: can look at satellite photographs and year by year it
Speaker 1: seems to be getting bigger and bigger with more buildings.
Speaker 1: If you work there, and I mean they have to
Speaker 1: have everything from food services to custodial services, to plumbing
Speaker 1: and electricians and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And all of those people have the highest possible security
Speaker 3: clearance an American can have.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, So they don't drive down that dirt road
Speaker 1: and just go to the gate and say how you doing, Rick,
Speaker 1: and they go come on in Jane. They go to
Speaker 1: McCarran Airport in Las Vegas and they all get on
Speaker 1: a big basically air taxi. It's a seven thirty seven
Speaker 1: passenger jet that fly. They call them the Janet Jets.
Speaker 1: It's under the cassign Janet. They're white with the big
Speaker 1: thick red stripe. You can look it up online, and
Speaker 1: they that's how they get to work every day. They
Speaker 1: fly everyone in on a seven thirty seven and you.
Speaker 3: Can see them on the tarmac. They just get in
Speaker 3: with the regular planes. It's just look for the giant
Speaker 3: seven thirty seven that are white with the red strip.
Speaker 2: And pretty cool.
Speaker 3: No logo, no nothing. They don't actually have a name,
Speaker 3: like you said, They fly under callsign Janet. So people
Speaker 3: have tried to figure out forever what Janet means. There's
Speaker 3: an idea that it's just another non existent terminal stands
Speaker 3: for that her Joint Air Network for employee transportation. But
Speaker 3: if you go visit the Nevada Aerospace Hall of Fame.
Speaker 3: They tell the story that there was a commander of
Speaker 3: Area fifty one named Richard A. Sampson from nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: nine to seventy one, and he chose his wife's name,
Speaker 3: Janet to identify the commuter shuttles. That's sweet, and that's
Speaker 3: that's the most romantic, super secret government story of all.
Speaker 1: So we kind of teased earlier on that the government
Speaker 1: is no longer saying like, I don't know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, Like, no, this satellite image that we're all
Speaker 1: looking at of buildings, I don't see anything but dirt.
Speaker 1: That's all changed a little bit now because a lawsuit
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen nineties there were a group of
Speaker 1: workers from Area fifty one that sued the government because
Speaker 1: of the it's an environmental disaster there or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe that's changing now, but it had been for many,
Speaker 1: many years because of the fact that it's a black
Speaker 1: project and so unregulated that they were just basically doing
Speaker 1: everything like dumping hazardous waste and burning it in trenches
Speaker 1: and people were there just inhaling these fumes, right and
Speaker 1: getting really sick. And a guy named Robert Frost that
Speaker 1: worked there in employee had a lot of really bad
Speaker 1: health problems. Doctor said, you were suffering from some kind
Speaker 1: of a really bad chemical reaction, and in order to
Speaker 1: treat it, we need to know what it is. And
Speaker 1: the government said, sorry, we can't tell you that, and
Speaker 1: he died.
Speaker 3: He died, and some other coworkers filed this lawsuit. One
Speaker 3: of them ended up dying too, and they finally got
Speaker 3: to like a Nevada I think, a federal circuit court
Speaker 3: that said, no, you guys don't have a right to
Speaker 3: know what you've been exposed to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they weren't looking for money. They just wanted to
Speaker 1: know what was killing them.
Speaker 3: And the reason that they had no legal right to
Speaker 3: know was and this is that trial that I was
Speaker 3: referring to earlier, where the government representatives were saying, we like,
Speaker 3: the place that they're talking about doesn't exist. Sorry, So
Speaker 3: imagine like trying to just get past that barrier, right,
Speaker 3: You're suing the government to find out what they were
Speaker 3: burning that made you sick, but the government's in court saying, like,
Speaker 3: the place that they're talking about doesn't even exist. That's like,
Speaker 3: that's obstacle one. But the whole reason that they were
Speaker 3: burning this stuff in the first place is because Area
Speaker 3: fifty one operates under what's called the mosaic theory, and
Speaker 3: the mosaic theory is that any little piece of information
Speaker 3: a spy gets his or hands on could be fit
Speaker 3: together with other information to provide a larger picture of
Speaker 3: what's being done at Area fifty one. And as a result,
Speaker 3: nothing can come out of Area fifty.
Speaker 2: One like the chemical that's killing the people, right.
Speaker 3: Or computers that go in and are used once they
Speaker 3: get decommissioned. They get put in this pit and these trenches,
Speaker 3: and every two weeks they go out there with jet
Speaker 3: fuel and everything that's been put into the trenches over
Speaker 3: the last two weeks gets doused with jet fuel. It's
Speaker 3: set on fire with road flares, amazing, and whatever is
Speaker 3: in that smoke the workers get exposed to because for
Speaker 3: some reason, they built the trenches upwind of this this
Speaker 3: installation rather than downwind, and so people were exposed to
Speaker 3: this every two weeks for years and years and years,
Speaker 3: and things like you know, anti radar paint. The jet
Speaker 3: fuel that they're using is an accelerant. I'm sure wasn't helping,
Speaker 3: but just all sorts of exotic materials that was super
Speaker 3: super classified. This is what was killing these people, making
Speaker 3: them sick exactly, And the government said, no, this is
Speaker 3: just too classify. These people can't know. They're just going
Speaker 3: to have to go off and die untreated because we're
Speaker 3: not going to say publicly what they were exposed to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's where it stood that case.
Speaker 1: They did, finally, finally in that case say okay, there's
Speaker 1: an area fifty one.
Speaker 3: I know, the whole courtroom went out for beers that
Speaker 3: day afterwards, So.
Speaker 2: There's a thing there.
Speaker 1: And that's really all we can say, sorry, is there's
Speaker 1: a thing there.
Speaker 2: But that was the very first sort of.
Speaker 1: Insight into the just that admission that there was something
Speaker 1: there was the first time that had ever happened, which
Speaker 1: is in the mid nineteen nineties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you were saying, like people would point the
Speaker 3: satellite images of the place and you can see that
Speaker 3: it's growing now, like you can see it on like
Speaker 3: Google Maps.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is really new.
Speaker 3: Because it wasn't very long ago where all the satellites
Speaker 3: in space were controlled by the government, and the government
Speaker 3: could control what ended up in satellite images, so they
Speaker 3: blocked out anything any image of area fifty one, but
Speaker 3: as private firms started launching their own satellites, it became
Speaker 3: basically impossible. So just little by little, it's becoming to
Speaker 3: the point now where they're like, yes, they acknowledge something's there. No,
Speaker 3: you can't know what's going on. There is basically the
Speaker 3: status quo.
Speaker 2: Now pretty much.
Speaker 3: So that's Area fifty one. And sorry, we kind of
Speaker 3: took the government tack here and didn't really go all
Speaker 3: in on the alien theories. But I just don't think
Speaker 3: that's what it is. If you want to know more
Speaker 3: about Area fifty one, I guess just start reading about it.
Speaker 3: There's some pretty interesting stuff out there. And since I
Speaker 3: said that, it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 2: This is about nicknames. This is from Rob Bob.
Speaker 3: Oh Yeah, I love this one.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, my name is Rob Bob, Rob and Bob
Speaker 1: combined into a singular form like Jim Bob.
Speaker 2: But better.
Speaker 1: My mom has explained to me that it started when
Speaker 1: I was about six months old. I was a really
Speaker 1: chunky kid, like in the ninety ninth percentile for weight.
Speaker 1: They felt like no other nickname like Robbie or Bobby fit,
Speaker 1: so they started calling me Rob Bob. Many years later,
Speaker 1: I meet my wife, which is almost eight years ago now,
Speaker 1: and quickly found out that her favorite writer is Richard Wright.
Speaker 1: Since reading his novel Native Son, has wanted to name
Speaker 1: her kid Richard to honor the impact he had on
Speaker 1: her life. She had visited his grave in parison as
Speaker 1: every book he ever published. When she met me, I
Speaker 1: told her about my super nicknames that I had wanted
Speaker 1: to call my kid because you see, my father is
Speaker 1: William Bill for short. But now since we came up
Speaker 1: with these weird names, I call my dad will Bill
Speaker 1: to bug him. This leads me to why I have
Speaker 1: always wanted to name my child Richard since high school.
Speaker 1: Then we would in order to have a will Bill,
Speaker 1: a Rob Bob, and a Rickdick, all in three generations
Speaker 1: of awesomeness. Wife does not approve and thinks we should
Speaker 1: look elsewhere for name ideas.
Speaker 2: With great admiration Rob Bob and Rachel.
Speaker 3: Nice. Thanks Rob Bob, good luck with that with your quest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think Rick Dick is going to fly
Speaker 2: in your household.
Speaker 3: I don't think so either. Rachel may have the cooler
Speaker 3: head here, I think so. Well, if you want to
Speaker 3: get in touch with this, like Rob Bob, did, We
Speaker 3: would love that. You can go on to stuff youshould
Speaker 3: Know dot com check out our social links there, or
Speaker 3: you can send us an email to stuff podcast at
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio dot com.
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