WEBVTT - Mylar Batman 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.240 Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart three D Audio. 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:14.840 For full exposure, listen with headphones. This is the last 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:18.200 episode of season two. We will be releasing a number 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:21.239 of bonus episodes with full interviews with some of the 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:24.759 people featured on this podcast, as well as others who 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:27.560 bring an interesting perspective on the issues we've looked at 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:31.680 this season. I also sat down with Alex Williams to 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:35.479 be interviewed about both seasons of Strange Arrivals for his 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:41.040 podcast Ephemeral. Alex is an executive producer of Strange Arrivals 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:45.760 and his creative input has been invaluable. This episode of Ephemeral, 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:49.880 titled simply UFOs, looks at some of the same things 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:53.040 the first two seasons of Strange Arrivals did, but in 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:56.760 a completely different way. You can hear it now by 0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:00.720 searching for Ephemeral on the I Heart radio app or 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:04.720 wherever you listen to podcasts, and listen at the end 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:11.319 of this episode for a sneak preview. Closer to home 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:15.600 in Marietta, Washington, you will experience slip terror of Bigfoot. 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:19.720 It all began on the night of June six. Rita 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:25.000 Graham was sitting on our couch watching TV. Suddenly a giant, 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:29.440 hairy hand crashed through the window and groped about. The 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:32.600 monster was next seen by Tom Stern and three days 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:35.840 later in a boy scout camp. In all, the small 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:43.720 town experienced twelve encounters within thirty days. Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.720 the Luckness Monster just three of the monsters you will 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:53.080 see in The Mysterious Monsters, A shocking look into man's 0:01:53.160 --> 0:02:07.880 encounters with the unknown. The Mysterious Monsters. H I'm Toby 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:24.080 Ball and this is Strange Arrivals, Episode thirteen my Lar Batman. 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:34.640 On July, the Invernous Courier, a newspaper in Scotland, reported 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:38.840 an incident involving Mr and Mrs Spicer, tourists from London. 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:43.639 As they drove along the banks of Loch Ness. It 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:48.320 was horrible, an abomination. About fifty yards ahead we saw 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:52.560 an undulating sort of neck, and quickly followed by a large, 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:57.120 ponderous body. I estimated the link to be thirty ft. 0:02:57.400 --> 0:03:02.120 Its color was dark elephant gray. It crossed the road 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:06.080 in a series of jerks, but because of the slope, 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:10.120 we could not see its limbs. Although I accelerated quickly 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:12.720 towards it, it had disappeared into the loch. By the 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.760 time I reached the spot, there was no sign of 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:19.560 it in the water. I am a temperate man, but 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:22.440 I am willing to take any oath that we saw 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:25.880 this loch Ness beast. I'm certain that this creature was 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:30.240 of a prehistoric species, likely spurred by a new road 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:33.560 that allowed for better views of its waters. This was 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:36.440 just one of a number of sightings of something in 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:42.560 loch Ness. In December n the British newspaper The Daily 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:46.560 Mail commissioned a filmmaker and big game hunter named Marmaduke 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:52.440 Weatherall to find the Lochness Monster. On December, he discovered 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:55.600 footprints on the shore that he said, we're from a quote, 0:03:56.240 --> 0:04:01.480 very powerful, soft footed animal about twenty ft long. This 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:04.840 turned out not to be true. They were in fact 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:08.880 made using a dried hippopotamus foot that served as a 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:13.040 base for an ash tray or umbrella stand. Weather All 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:20.200 was humiliated four months later. In April, a physician from 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:24.120 England named Robert Kenneth Wilson claimed to take a photograph 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:26.600 of what appeared to be the neck and head of 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:31.200 some prehistoric looking creature emerging from the water. This became 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:35.239 known as the Surgeon's photo, and it is the iconic 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:39.560 photo of the Lockness Monster. And this wasn't the only 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:43.360 case where a piece of visual evidence caught the public's imagination. 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:47.680 Mysterious creature is roaming this wilderness, the creature that has 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:52.800 confounded scientists, baffled investigators, and captured the imagination of millions 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:55.680 of people. We've all heard of the reported sightings of 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:58.559 this creature, a creature most of us know as big Foot. 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:01.280 We've read about it and our newspapers, and heard about 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:04.320 it on radio and television. And some of you, like me, 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.599 might have been skeptical about these reports, wondering how it 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:11.400 could be possible for a sizeable population of eight foot 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:14.800 five monsters to live among us on the edge of 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:19.560 our industrialized society. I was skeptical. I was also tantalized 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:22.080 by what I heard, so I decided to find out 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:28.600 for myself whether Bigfoot was fact or fiction. In October 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:32.880 of nineteen seven, thirty three years after the Surgeon's photo, 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:37.839 Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin were riding horses along Bluff 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:42.760 Creek in Humboldt County, California. Patterson was in the midst 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:45.960 of attempting to film a movie based partly on actual 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:51.560 stories of a group of cowboys tracking a sasquatch. Patterson 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:54.640 may have already done some filming over Memorial Day weekend, 0:05:55.080 --> 0:06:00.680 which would become important. Later in the early afternoon, Patterson 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:04.040 and Giblin claimed they saw a figure standing or crouching 0:06:04.120 --> 0:06:08.880 by a stream. Patterson dismounted, grabbed his camera from a 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:12.359 saddle bag, and chased the creature, who had begun to 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:16.320 retreat from the two men and their horses. The beginning 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:19.320 of the film, which lasts just less than a minute, 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:23.560 is confused and jiggli as Patterson runs with the camera 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:27.240 in hand, but there's a several second shot of this 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:31.279 ape like creature striding away from Patterson, turning to look 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:35.560 back at him, and then continuing on. For most people, 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:38.719 this is the image that comes to mind when someone 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:43.839 mentions Bigfoot or Sasquatch. I bring these two examples up 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:47.240 because the advent of photography and film created a new 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:51.640 kind of folklore, one that is particularly important to UFOs 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:55.520 because it is one thing to hear about someone seeing 0:06:55.560 --> 0:07:00.200 a huge, seemingly prehistoric creature in a lake, or even 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:02.320 foot ape that walks like a man deep in the 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:06.680 woods of the Pacific Northwest. But having a visual artifact 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:12.320 makes the story vastly more compelling Utah State University folklore 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:17.800 professor Lynn McNeil. Then we start adding in not just 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:22.040 the narratives, not just the stories, but this additional media 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:25.440 that comes to us from this particular time in our culture, 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:29.520 where there's more everyday people out there with cameras. There's 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:33.360 more visual media than just textual. We're able to capture 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:37.400 things and share them with each other in unprecedented ways, 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:40.920 and that changes how we talk about this stuff. I 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:43.920 don't think there's any question that the surgeons photo and 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:47.680 the Patterson film are critical pieces of the Locknest Monster 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:52.160 and bigfoot folklore's They are the first or among the 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:54.680 first things you think of when you think about these 0:07:54.720 --> 0:08:00.000 two legendary creatures. But here's the thing, they're both almost 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:05.840 definitely hoaxes. The Surgeon's photo is nearly always shown cropped 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:10.440 to accentuate the image of the creature. The uncropped photo 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:13.760 includes the far shore and a wider expanse of lake, 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:18.600 and suddenly, with this context, the creature doesn't look so large. 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:24.720 In fact, two men Marmaduke. Weather all Son and Stepson, 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:28.520 both at different times, confessed that they had helped in 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.440 creating a hoax to get revenge on the Daily Mail 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:35.440 for its treatment of Marmaduke after the Hippo foot incident. 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:39.840 According to them, it was a small model maybe two 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:43.880 ft high, placed on a toy submarine and then photographed 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:49.080 the enlisted Wilson, the English doctor, through a mutual friend 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:52.520 to give the photograph authenticity it wouldn't have had if 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:57.480 it had come from someone in the weather all family. Similarly, 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:01.920 there are questions about the Patterson film. Without getting too 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:04.960 deep into the weeds, there's an issue about the dating 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:08.440 of the film, because there were very few labs that 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:11.680 could develop the kind of film he was using. Critics 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:14.800 question whether Patterson could have recorded the footage on the 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:17.559 date he says he did and have it developed by 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:20.760 the time it was made public. They point to the 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:23.560 filming of the movie that took place over Memorial Day 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:26.679 weekend and note that Patterson would likely have had a 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:31.200 bigfoot costume for those scenes, the implication being he filmed 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:35.720 a hoax video at the time. Further, and more damning 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:39.040 biologists who have looked at the film note that the 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.959 Bigfoot doesn't have a realistic physiology and is most likely 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:47.520 a man in a costume. But regardless of the authenticity 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:51.600 of what was filmed, these two visual artifacts are critical 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:56.280 parts of their respective folklores. Photos and videos, of course, 0:09:56.679 --> 0:10:00.839 are also very important parts of the UFO folklore, especially 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:05.360 recently with a number of unclassified UFO videos released by 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:10.160 the Pentagon. The ranks of UFO videos and photographs have 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:14.640 also been plagued by hoaxes well. There is no single 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:17.920 image that has the iconic power of the Surgeon's photo 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.800 or the Patterson film. Two early photographs that set the 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:26.679 expectation for the stereotypical flying saucer were taken in nineteen 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:30.560 fifty just outside the town of Sheridan, Oregon, by a 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:34.400 farmer named Paul Trent. These photos have come to be 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:39.040 associated with a larger town not far from Sheridan called McMinnville. 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:43.320 It's one thing to trust your neighbor when he's like 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:46.920 I saw some weird lights over my farm and then 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:49.640 I lost three hours of my day. I don't know 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:51.400 what happened, but I woke up in a ditch and 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:53.840 I had all these bruises. You know, you tell me 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:56.280 what that means. It's another thing when your neighbor tells 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:58.520 you that same story and then shows you a photo 0:10:58.600 --> 0:11:02.720 that he took, and you're like, oh, yeah, I can't 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:05.080 explain what those lights are. They don't look like an airplane, 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:08.120 they don't look like anything I'm familiar with. That word 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:13.320 of mouth culture is now being bolstered by additional things. 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:17.240 The sighting occurred at seven thirty in the evening on 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:21.960 maybe eleventh. Here's Evelyn Trent, who first saw the object, 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:26.840 describing what happened. I had to look up and I've 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:30.520 seen this thing and I ran into the house. You'll 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:33.079 know about it. We went one look after a camera 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:35.040 and I with the other way after a camel the 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:37.640 green above the let's we found it. The best thing, 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:39.280 I have to say, It would be just about the 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:42.760 size of the shoes without any strings ing not I said. 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:44.839 It was all flat on the bottom and it was 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:48.400 still recolored. I was about to lunking it, but there 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:51.959 was no smoke, no noise either. What we just suppose 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:55.160 the let the flight wires away and I just you know, 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:57.959 the distance and stuff. I just don't know if it 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:01.040 could have hovered for a while and all just like that, 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:04.440 and he's just a picture, and right, just the picture. 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:06.559 He ran the film the re rose in order to 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:10.439 take another one, and as his turn, and just to 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:15.840 folve very The two photos are taken from similar, though 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:19.600 not identical vantage points. In the lower left of the 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:22.560 frame is a house or shed with an oil tank 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:26.680 set on the side that faces the camera. An expanse 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:29.760 of sparsely wooded flat land ends at what appeared to 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:34.040 be low hills in the distance. Not far away. On 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:36.559 the right side of the frame is a telephone pole, 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:39.440 and wires can be seen going from the pole in 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:44.880 each direction. In the foreground, electrical wires hang across the 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:48.400 top of the frame. An objects seems to hover in 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:51.360 the air in the center of the shot. In the 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:54.360 first photo, the object is tilted down to the right 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:58.720 and away from the camera, and enlargement shows what seems 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:01.760 to be a flat circular or bottom and perhaps a 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:05.680 kind of rounded dome on top. In the second photo, 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:09.160 the object is still tilted somewhat to the right, but 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:12.200 is no longer tilted away, and you can see that 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:16.280 the top section is raised and flattened like a mesa, 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:18.480 and there's a point that sticks up from the middle. 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:22.520 As you heard Evelyn Trent say, she thought it was 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:26.280 roughly the size of a parachute. The photos were a 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:31.120 sensation and taken to be genuine. The Condon Committee undertook 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:34.600 a scientific study of the photos and found no evidence 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:37.840 of a hoax. In the conclusion to the section on 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:42.920 these photos, the researcher, an astronomer named William Hartman, wrote, 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:46.560 this is one of the few UFO reports in which 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:51.760 all factors investigated geometric, psychological, and physical, appeared to be 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:56.120 consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object silvery 0:13:56.360 --> 0:14:00.559 metallic disc shaped tens of meters in diameter, and evidently 0:14:00.600 --> 0:14:05.240 artificial fluid in sight of two witnesses. It cannot be 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:09.000 said that the evidence positively rules out of fabrication, although 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:12.120 there are some physical factors, such as the accuracy of 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:15.920 certain photometric measures of the original negatives, which argue against 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:21.040 the fabrication. This validation by the United States government let 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:26.000 the photos a greater degree of legitimacy. Now it's the government. 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:29.040 Now it's an institutional element of our culture who we 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:34.240 know isn't joking around, and they're taking it seriously, and 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.800 they're producing documents and they're gathering photos, and you start 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:40.280 to go, okay, wait, hey, wait a minute, like the 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:46.480 authority that institutions lend to the already powerful word of 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:51.360 mouth consensus of folklore is really something that you can't underestimate. 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:55.320 In his section on the mc minville photos in the 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:59.200 Condon Report, Hartman had noted that it was possible that 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:03.640 this was a hope. Another possibility can be considered, however, 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:07.240 the object appears beneath a pair of wires, as is 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:12.280 seen in Plates twenty four. We may question, therefore, whether 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:14.600 it could have been a model suspended from one of 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:19.280 the wires. This possibility is strengthened by the observation that 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:22.000 the object appears beneath roughly the same point in the 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:25.040 two photos, in spite of their having been taken from 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:29.800 two positions, and in fact this may have been what happened. 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:34.760 Skeptical investigator Robert Shaefer has shown that the lightning conditions 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:38.040 and the photos indicate that the shots were taken around 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:41.480 eight twenty in the morning, not seven thirty in the evening, 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:46.520 as the trends claimed. French researchers published a technical paper 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:49.720 showing that the physics of the positions of the object 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:52.880 in the two photos indicate that it is a small 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:56.880 model hanging from the electrical lines in a light breeze 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:01.200 a short distance from the camera. A researcher named Joel 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.120 Carpenter suggested that the object was a mirror from an 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:08.560 old truck. The post war era saw an increase in 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:12.240 the ability for people to produce or consume visual culture. 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:17.360 Cameras became increasingly easy for non professionals to use, and 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:21.760 the influence and presence of television, of course grew exponentially. 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:25.360 So we start to see people think in terms of 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:28.640 images more than words, and that of course has only 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.480 grown thanks to the Internet and our ability to now 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:33.840 combine images and words in all sorts of new ways. 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:37.080 But we see folklore reflect that. We suddenly start getting 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:41.080 genres of folklore that scholars referred to as xerox lore 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.960 and facts lore, and we get things like visual legends, 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:47.600 so instead of telling a story, we just get an 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:52.480 image of something. And you can see how something like UFOs, 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:58.040 something that's relying on visual input or photography or you know, 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:01.200 mapping and things like that. The ability to share that information, 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:03.680 the ability to pass around that evidence, just gets that 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:11.040 much stronger. In an organization called To the Stars Academy 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:15.080 released three videos taken by Navy pilots in two thousand 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:19.320 and four and two thousand fifteen showing blurry images of 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:22.320 things in the sky that the audio released along with 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:27.200 the videos indicated could not be identified. The videos were 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:29.560 posted on the websites of The New York Times and 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:34.200 The Washington Post, accompanying stories about a secret Pentagon project 0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:40.720 allegedly investigating UFOs rebranded as u a p s Unexplained 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:46.439 Aerial Phenomena. This story, to some degree is still unfolding, 0:17:46.880 --> 0:17:48.800 and I'm not going to argue about the merits of 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:52.840 the videos, but what strikes me is how indistinct they are. 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:56.160 The objects in these black and white videos are either 0:17:56.240 --> 0:18:00.639 blobs the result of heat detecting cameras, or dots moving 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:04.040 against the background. There's no way you could see the 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:08.360 films and then describe the objects in them. Contrast that 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:10.399 to a still photo that was put out to the 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:14.600 Internet by a newly formed online magazine called The Debrief 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:17.760 that shows a photo taken from the rear seat of 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:21.560 an F A eighteen super hornet of a metallic object 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:27.159 in the sky. Supposedly, the Defense Department was stumped. The 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.160 object is in the distance, but it's clear to see 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:34.480 you can describe what it looks like. In fact, you 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:37.240 can describe it well enough that it took practically no 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:40.760 time for the Internet masses to not only identify it 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:44.600 as a milar balloon, but as a batman my lar balloon. 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:49.680 But while this photo was quickly explained, the previous three 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:52.800 videos exists in that realm we've talked about throughout this 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:56.920 season where no single explanation has been accepted by the culture. 0:18:57.640 --> 0:19:00.639 So it lives in that folklore realm. But there is 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:03.919 attached to the videos a sense that the Department of 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:07.920 Defense has legitimate questions about them, and this is important 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:13.000 when people evaluate them. When we start to see any 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:17.400 sort of institutional acknowledgement of that, like the declassified reports 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:19.320 that have come out from the U. S. Military of 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.760 we caught these things on camera, what are they? We 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:26.720 don't know, that sort of admission from that level of authority, 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:31.960 and just bam, suddenly a whole slice of people who 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:35.479 previously were maybe on the skeptical side, are now just 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.080 like WHOA. That was what was missing for me. That 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:40.439 was the resonant piece that's going to get me to 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:44.280 take this seriously again. And so it's an ever shifting landscape, 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:47.960 but one in which we can stand back and see 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:51.760 really big themes, but we can also zoom in and 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:57.200 see really really specific, small scale symbolic moments that are 0:19:57.440 --> 0:20:03.960 generating that larger theme. So these videos have been absorbed, 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:07.800 at least at this moment, into the larger UFO folklore. 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:12.480 But what accounts for our continuing fascination with UFOs when 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:16.359 the culture loses interest in so many other paranormal phenomena 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:38.119 after the break? Why have UFOs maintained their place in 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:41.479 our culture while other paranormal interests seemed to come and go. 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:45.680 One answer, of course, is that there might be more 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:49.960 to the UFO phenomenon the just stories. Maybe we are 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:56.560 being visited again, Lynn McNeil. We know that belief doesn't 0:20:56.600 --> 0:21:00.879 stick around for no reason, and we know that one straightforward, 0:21:00.960 --> 0:21:05.119 if hard to accept answer is perhaps people keep talking 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:08.680 about UFOs because people keep seeing them, because they're they're 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:11.680 they're real, people are having encounters. That is a possibility 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:16.080 that it does us no service to discount. When we wonder, wow, 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:18.280 why do people keep talking about this? It's like, Wow, 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:21.800 why do people keep talking about Bigfoot may because they 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:24.560 keep seeing him. You know. That's one answer that we 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:29.920 don't need to erase. But what explains it if UFOs 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:33.600 aren't real? After all, we don't have the kind of 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:36.760 evidence that you'd expect from a phenomenon that has been 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:39.760 going on for at least three quarters of a century. 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:43.760 Let's say that we cannot confirm the existence of UFOs. 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:46.720 We don't have one that most of us know of, right, 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:49.639 We don't have one to look at to take apart 0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:53.520 to dismantle, to analyze with what tools are available to us? 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:57.359 Why do we keep telling this story? Clearly there's some 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:03.280 beneficial outcome of leaving in this possibility, not meaning always positive, 0:22:03.320 --> 0:22:07.240 but meaning it serves us in our psychological and social needs. 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:13.800 On August six, the first nuclear weapon to be used 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:18.399 in war was detonated above Hiroshima, causing destruction at a 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:23.760 scale unimaginable before that moment. In an instant, an estimated 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:27.600 eighty people were killed and tens of thousands more would 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:31.040 die in the days to come. Everything within a two 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:36.760 kilometer radius of the detonation site burned. The destruction was 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:40.080 on a scale that had previously been thought only possible 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:46.159 by gods. Now though through technology, man had acquired that power. 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:51.120 What did that mean? How could fallible humans be trusted 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:58.640 with that kind of destructive potential? After people, and particularly Americans, 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:03.399 were confronted with the fierce, nearly supernatural power afforded to 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:07.399 them by technology, less than two years after the bombing 0:23:07.400 --> 0:23:12.520 of Hiroshima, Kenneth Arnold saw objects flying around Mountaineer and 0:23:12.600 --> 0:23:16.400 debris was found on Mac Brazil's ranch outside Roswell, New Mexico, 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:19.879 and this became the form that this strain of folklore 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:23.440 would take. The reality is is that folklore is a 0:23:23.520 --> 0:23:27.199 really contemporary form of cultural expression. Yes, it comes from 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:30.240 the past, but the whole point of it being folklore 0:23:30.320 --> 0:23:36.280 is that it keeps itself relevant by adapting and changing dynamically, 0:23:36.960 --> 0:23:40.439 so that when it was relevant in the past, it 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:44.720 can adjust to become relevant now. So, yeah, folklore dies out, 0:23:44.720 --> 0:23:47.600 folklore disappears. For a long time, people thought of folklore 0:23:47.640 --> 0:23:50.399 as the survivals of a past age. And what we 0:23:50.520 --> 0:23:52.840 now know is that it's not so much that it's 0:23:52.960 --> 0:23:57.240 dying out. It's that it's changing its face in order 0:23:57.280 --> 0:24:03.120 to keep up the early days of the modern UFO era. 0:24:03.359 --> 0:24:07.720 Explicitly acknowledged the centrality of the new destructive forces in 0:24:07.840 --> 0:24:11.840 human hands. The so called contact e s were people 0:24:11.880 --> 0:24:15.600 who in the nineteen fifties claim to have interactions with 0:24:15.800 --> 0:24:19.800 very humanlike beings from outer space that brought messages of 0:24:19.880 --> 0:24:24.879 peace and concern over the development of nuclear weapons. Here's 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:28.880 Aaron Gallias, hosts of the Saucer Life podcast, talking about 0:24:28.920 --> 0:24:32.480 the most famous of the contacts, a man named George 0:24:32.480 --> 0:24:38.760 adam Ski. In nineteen fifty two, George Adamsky has a 0:24:38.800 --> 0:24:43.080 meeting in the desert with a being from a flying saucer. 0:24:43.480 --> 0:24:47.800 He's from the planet Venus, and he communicates through gestures 0:24:47.840 --> 0:24:52.440 that the Venusians are concerned because of atomic explosions they've 0:24:52.480 --> 0:24:56.840 detected coming from the Earth. These other civilizations have already 0:24:56.880 --> 0:25:00.480 passed beyond this stage of development that Earth is in, 0:25:01.240 --> 0:25:05.280 and this might spell doom for the balance of the 0:25:05.280 --> 0:25:10.159 Solar System. The same message was delivered by Claw to 0:25:10.800 --> 0:25:14.040 an alien visitor in the classic science fiction film From 0:25:15.600 --> 0:25:19.320 the Day the Earth Stood Still. If you threaten to 0:25:19.440 --> 0:25:23.080 extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced 0:25:23.119 --> 0:25:27.240 to a burned out cinder. In fact, many of the 0:25:27.359 --> 0:25:30.480 encounters we've looked at this season have taken place near 0:25:30.560 --> 0:25:35.639 nuclear facilities. Roswell is near White Sands Missile Test Range, 0:25:36.200 --> 0:25:39.399 site of the first atomic bomb test, and R F. 0:25:39.520 --> 0:25:43.760 Bentwaters in Curtland Air Force Base, both house nuclear weapons. 0:25:44.640 --> 0:25:49.919 The link is unmistakable. But why. Part of folklore development 0:25:50.200 --> 0:25:53.159 is the adaptation of traditional stories to a framework that 0:25:53.200 --> 0:25:57.800 makes sense in the context of the times. If we 0:25:57.840 --> 0:26:02.800 want to look at the legend of the UFO visitor, 0:26:02.920 --> 0:26:07.159 where we have odd, often vaguely humanoid, sometimes a little 0:26:07.160 --> 0:26:11.720 extra tall, slender creatures descending from the sky or perhaps 0:26:11.720 --> 0:26:15.399 emerging from another dimension to interact with humans, often to 0:26:15.480 --> 0:26:18.600 kidnap them, often to interfere with their bodies in some way. 0:26:18.960 --> 0:26:23.399 We've just described centuries of fairy lore, you know, other 0:26:23.640 --> 0:26:29.200 creatures slender, humanoid, mysterious, powerful, emerging from the mists, taking 0:26:29.280 --> 0:26:31.600 us away. Being kidnapped by the fairies and taken by 0:26:31.600 --> 0:26:34.840 the fairies is a longstanding tradition. So if we want 0:26:34.840 --> 0:26:38.800 to call that UFO lore, we could very very easily. 0:26:40.480 --> 0:26:44.040 This modification of existing stories to fit the context of 0:26:44.080 --> 0:26:47.960 a culture or a time is a common phenomenon in folklore. 0:26:49.600 --> 0:26:51.960 So the term actually that folk has use for this, 0:26:52.080 --> 0:26:56.440 which I love, is eco typification. It's borrowed from botany, basically, 0:26:56.480 --> 0:27:00.000 the study of plants and the way that they immerge 0:27:00.080 --> 0:27:04.600 urge differently, even though it's the same species in two 0:27:04.640 --> 0:27:10.240 different climate and geological and geographical environments, because it's being 0:27:10.320 --> 0:27:14.040 responsive to its context, and so folklore is seen as 0:27:14.080 --> 0:27:17.080 operating in that same way. You can have the same story, 0:27:17.200 --> 0:27:19.600 the same legend, the same fairy tales, show up in 0:27:19.640 --> 0:27:23.400 two different places, and it's going to be morphologically distinct. 0:27:24.640 --> 0:27:27.960 Morphology is the study of words and how they relate 0:27:28.040 --> 0:27:32.240 to other words in the same language. Syntax studies the 0:27:32.280 --> 0:27:38.760 structure of sentences. Morphology studies the structure of words. Because 0:27:38.800 --> 0:27:41.159