WEBVTT - INTERVIEW 1: Sarah Scoles 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.560 Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:14.520 Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. In late February, I 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:18.520 spoke with author Sarah Scoles. She is a freelance science 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:21.720 writer who is a contributing writer at Wired Science, a 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:25.680 contributing editor at Popular Science, and the author of two books, 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:30.680 Making Contact Jill Tarter and The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:34.519 and They Are Already Here UFO Culture and Why We 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:37.760 See Saucers. I talked to her just before the release 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:42.200 of They Are Already Here, an engaging, first person anthropological 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:48.320 look at the UFO community. I'm Toby Ball and this 0:00:48.440 --> 0:01:08.280 is Strange Arrivals. My name is Sarah Schools. I'm a 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:12.800 science journalist, a contributor at Wired magazine, in Popular Science, 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:16.240 and I write about space. First of all, I love 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:19.120 the book Your interest. It seems to be not so 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:22.520 much with UFOs themselves, but with the people who are 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:26.160 interested in UFOs and the culture that surrounds UFOs. Can 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:28.039 you talk a little bit about your interests and how 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:31.760 that interest began. Sure, I had really never paid attention 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:36.759 to UFOs from most of my life until December sixteen, 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:40.240 and I read a story in the New York Times 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:44.120 that was about this Pentagon program that had been dedicated 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:49.320 to researching what they called unidentified aerial phenomena. And just 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:52.880 starting with that story, I tried to re report for 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.520 Wired magazine all the stuff that they had said about 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:59.000 this Pentagon program and just tried to prove it true 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:02.400 or false with my own reporting. And um, since I 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.880 was coming to UFOs totally fresh, I didn't actually have 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:08.080 any knowledge of my own and so I started to 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:10.480 try to seek out people who did have that and 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:14.440 who had been either you know, on the historical side 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.720 or on the personal side of UFOs for decades before 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.680 I came into it, and I didn't really know what 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:22.640 to expect. But I had a lot of ideas I 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:27.400 think about who was obsessed with UFOs and not not 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:31.480 all of those ideas were very flattering. Um. I think 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:34.200 I mostly thought it was just straight conspiracy theorists. But 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:36.440 what I actually found out when I started talking to 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:39.840 people was that, you know, there were lots of really smart, 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:44.920 dedicated researchers who had just found this cool mystery that 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:47.200 they were really interested in and that was really hard 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:50.880 to solve. And um, so that kind of got me 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:55.320 started wondering what it was about this particular mystery that 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:57.639 that was so compelling to them. And so then I 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:01.800 found so many answers that I had to write a 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:03.960 whole book because no one wants to publish an article 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:07.200 that long. So let's actually go back a second. You 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:09.720 you said that you your introduction to it was taking 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:13.600 a look at the program that that had been going 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:18.760 on in the Pentagon sort of under the radar, UH 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:21.160 for a number of years. Maybe you could talk a 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:23.600 little bit about I believe the guy who who ran 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.000 was his name was Luis Alisando, And it didn't seem 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:30.240 quite as straightforward from what you wrote as the story 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:32.640 that people might have heard. No, I don't think it 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.440 was a straightforward story at all. UM. So, the way 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:39.360 it was initially reported, the Pentagon was running this program 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:45.240 called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which UM involved 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:51.160 one contractor called Bigelow Aerospace researching sightings and reports of 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:55.600 UFOs and UM kind of doing research adjacent to that. 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:58.920 And it was this super secretive program, as they described it, 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.200 run by a man named Luis Alazando. And when the 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:06.040 story came out, the newspaper claimed released these two videos 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:10.640 that showed UFOs and they were official US government videos, 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:12.760 and this was kind of what led that that story 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:17.760 to really take off. UM and the program they said 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.560 ran from two thousand seven to two thousand twelve, but 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:23.840 that it kept going even after that, even further under 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:26.520 the radar, and you know, all of that is pretty 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:31.039 that's a pretty incredible set of claims. And as time 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:33.479 went on, from reporting I did, and also lots of 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:37.640 other people, the story wasn't quite as linear as that. 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:41.720 The Pentagon has said it didn't release those videos, they 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:44.920 were not authorized for release. It is said that this 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:48.320 man who was supposedly the director actually didn't work on 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.599 the program at all. It has said that this wasn't 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:54.120 a UFO program at all, and so it's kind of 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:56.400 just there are lots of statements that are in direct 0:04:56.600 --> 0:05:00.479 contradiction to what was initially reported. But las Ando, I 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:04.400 think it's been on CNN and other places talking about 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:08.040 it as though it absolutely was a UFO program. Is 0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:12.919 that right? Yeah? Yeah, Louis Alizondo talks a lot about 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:15.880 how it was a UFO program, and also he goes 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:20.360 even farther and says that the program investigated crafts that 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:23.160 UM he basically said they couldn't possibly have come from 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:26.960 this Earth because they couldn't link them to any particular country. 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:29.920 So i'mplaying not just like we were looking at UFOs 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:34.800 from Russia, from Russian military or something, but UFOs from 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:38.480 outer space is the implication. And he's gone off and 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:40.719 joined I don't know if this is the time to 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:42.920 talk about this. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. So 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:49.080 Luis Alizondo retired from the Pentagon Um and from this 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:53.159 program in October seen just before the news story came out, 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:57.000 and he joined up with a private company called to 0:05:57.200 --> 0:06:00.320 the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, which is based sically. 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:03.599 What they actually do is make books and movies and music, 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:06.240 but what they say they want to do is research 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:11.480 UFOs and then eventually reverse engineer some kind of really 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:16.320 great spacecraft. And Louis Alizondo said that he left the 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:19.600 Pentagon and joined up with these people because officials in 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:23.000 the military weren't taking the threat of UFOs very seriously, 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:26.400 and so he had to leave the government and go 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:28.839 to the private sector to get anyone to listen to him. 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:31.040 And meanwhile, the government says he never worked on the 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:34.719 program at all, So right, and to the Stars Academy. 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:39.960 That's Tom Delong's organization. Yeah. To the Stars Academy is 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:43.440 run by, um, the former frontman of Blink one two, 0:06:43.600 --> 0:06:45.920 Tom DeLong. So he's and I want to get back 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:49.159 to Robert Bigelow in a second, but you you write 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:52.040 about both of them in the book and Tom DeLong. 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:54.719 It's an interesting character and it's funny because I feel 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:59.440 like people who aren't necessarily very interested in UFOs, one 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:01.880 of the things that people do know is that the 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:05.000 guy from Blink Win eighty two is into it. And 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:08.360 that's actually a response I've gotten to from people when 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:10.800 I've said, oh, I'm making this this podcast about UFOs, 0:07:10.840 --> 0:07:14.280 were like, oh, what's Tom Long going to say? So, um, 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:18.360 so can you talk a little bit about him and 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:21.760 and sort of his interest in what he's been doing. Yeah. So, 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:25.280 Tom Delong's interest in UFOs seems to go way way 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:29.400 back to kind of the band's earlier days, and Um, 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:31.800 when I was working on the book, I tried to 0:07:31.840 --> 0:07:33.960 go as far back as the Internet would let me 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:37.520 to read all these different magazine profiles of him in 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:40.560 Blink Win eighty two from years and years ago, and 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:43.560 pretty early on they start talking about how Tom DeLong 0:07:43.640 --> 0:07:45.320 used to sit in the back of the tour bus 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:49.080 reading these huge books about UFOs and conspiracy theories and 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:54.200 things like that, and you know he um. He wrote 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:59.000 a song called Aliens Exist, which is basically about having 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:01.160 an alien visit your bed room and abduct you and 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:06.200 no one believe you. Um. And then later on he 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.320 started going more public with the idea that like he 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:14.080 was holding some kind of alien secret UFO secret and 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:17.000 he was going to bring it public. I don't remember 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.880 exactly what what year it was, but I remember before 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:23.240 I was interested in UFOs at all, I read some 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:27.440 profile of him that that said, you know, I'm collaborating 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:31.560 with high level intelligence officials and working with defense contractors, 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:34.000 and I'm going to bring the alien truth to you. 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.040 And I was like, Oh, that guy, that's that's interesting. 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:41.800 Wouldn't it be great if Tom DeLong brought us aliens? Um? 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:44.079 But then then a couple of years later he brought 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:49.240 us some um complicated version of them, I guess, but um, 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:52.880 so he he went off. He he started this company 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:56.640 called to the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, and 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:00.400 it's supposed to be some kind of UFO Disclosure Project 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.439 where they have access to data about UFOs and are 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:06.280 also going to collect it and kind of analyze it. 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:09.720 And he's brought you know, people from the actual Pentagon, 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:13.560 Louis Alizondo. There's another guy on their board called Chris Melon, 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:17.520 who was like a former high level intelligence officer. Like, 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:21.400 they've got they've got serious people, even though I don't 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:25.080 really understand why. The second I think person with a 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:28.880 lot of money, uh, in the last you know, decade 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:31.520 or so, Who's who's who's put a lot of money 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:35.200 into this was Robert Bigelow, who's another kind of interesting 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:39.160 character who bought the skin Walker Ranch, which has got 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:41.880 the coolest name of any place that I've ever heard. 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:44.600 Is completely intriguing just because of that. Can you talk 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:49.160 a little bit about him? Yeah, Robert Bigelow is a 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:53.120 very wealthy man who lives in Nevada, and he made 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:56.400 a bunch of money, um in real estate and running 0:09:56.440 --> 0:10:00.120 a hotel chain, and then he went in, you is 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:03.880 that money to pursue his real interest, which wasn't budget 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:07.800 hotels but was um aliens. You know, he's gone on 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:11.440 sixty minutes, I believe, and told the whole world that 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:16.160 he believes there's an alien presence here on Earth. So once, 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:18.920 once he had amassed his fortune, he thought, you know, 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:22.320 I'm I'm going to do research into UFOs and other 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:26.480 paranormal kinds of things. So since the since the nineties, 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:31.000 he's given millions of dollars to UFO researchers, just kind 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:35.520 of funding researchers to do kind of small individual projects. 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:37.720 And then I guess the thing he's best known for 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:42.160 is reading an article in a newspaper called the Desirette 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:46.240 News about a family who owned this ranch in Utah, 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:50.160 and they said there were all these paranormal happenings. They're 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:54.240 like a giant wolf that wouldn't die when you shot it, 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:58.520 and animal mutilations and seeing UFOs and just all kinds 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:01.600 of spooky things. And he thought, you know, I would 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:05.200 like to buy that terrible spooky place and see if 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:09.080 I can research all this stuff that's going on on 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:11.560 the property. So he did. He bought it. He moved 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:15.560 some scientists in and founded a an institute called the 0:11:15.679 --> 0:11:18.520 National Institute for Discovery Science, where he was going to 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:23.640 try to investigate these things on this place that was 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:26.280 called skin Walker Ranch um and see if he could 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:29.280 get to the bottom of the what they called the phenomena, 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:32.559 which is kind of the all encompassing term for all 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:35.719 these these weird paranormal things that they said was going on. 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:42.360 And so they bought cameras and sensors and hired scientists 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:47.840 and tried to catch paranormal activity as it was happening 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:51.160 in collect actual data on it um. But they never 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:56.720 actually really got any data that they could share. Um. 0:11:56.840 --> 0:12:00.440 The you know, the sensors wouldn't work, the off that 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:02.640 was supposed to be happening, wouldn't show up when they 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:05.200 were looking, and they just kind of came away from 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:08.800 the whole experience with essentially what they started with, which 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:11.120 was a bunch of stories. A theme I think in 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:15.000 your book and we've already started talking about it is 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:20.640 this relationship between people who are interested in UFOs and 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:24.400 at least one faction of that group who really wants 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:30.359 to try and prove scientifically, um that they exist there, 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:36.360 you know, that they're actually terrestrial um. And then there's 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:41.719 sort of this weird dynamic or relationship between them and 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:47.520 then the scientific establishment, which shows very little interest in it. 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.280 And you know, you get the sense that that that 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:57.319 the UFO people um feels though the scientific establishment is 0:12:57.600 --> 0:13:02.840 almost working against them. Yeah, I think that mainstream science 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:05.880 doesn't really want a whole lot to do with uphology, 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:10.559 and that's very understandable because there really is no or 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:13.360 very little hard data to go on. Almost everything is 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:18.600 an eyewitness report and without you know, columns of numbers 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:22.560 and sensor data that you can take home and then analyze. 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:27.040 So there's really no systematic plan of investigation in the 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:30.640 way that scientists would normally want to have, And so 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:34.120 it's it's pretty legitimate that the UFOs and UFO research 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:37.120 in their current form aren't part of mainstream science. But 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:41.000 I do think then uthologists are both kind of angry 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:42.560 that they're not a part of it and that they're 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:46.880 not taken seriously. But at the same time they say 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:51.160 traditional science actually isn't adequate to do research on what 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:55.400 we are dealing with because they're too narrow minded and 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:59.120 they don't take human testimony seriously or they don't have 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:02.640 the right tools. So then they kind of reject mainstream science. 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:08.840 But then also anytime a scientist actually does show interests 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:11.480 or like if somebody has a PhD and they're speaking 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:15.920 at a conference, you can tell that you folowgists actually 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:19.240 really revere science and what to emulate it. Even at 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:22.960 the same time they're like, you don't understand me, So 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:27.560 I don't know. It's complicated both directions. I think strange 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:45.200 arrivals will return in a moment. Another tense relationship is 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:51.280 between the UFOL community and UH the US government in 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:55.440 the U S Military, And you make a you make 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:57.640 the point a couple of times in your book about 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:01.880 how there's a lot of suspicion within UFO community towards 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:04.480 the government, but that the government has, you know, in 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:07.880 many ways earned it over the years. Yeah, the government 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:12.080 hasn't really been honest or straightforward in most of its 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:17.560 dealings with UFOs or the UFO community UM, starting from 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:22.760 the very beginning. It's early Projects UM, in particular Project 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:26.920 Blue Book, which was their longest UFO investigation program that 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:30.200 went until nineteen sixty nine. Like a lot of the 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:34.200 point of it was not actually to figure out what 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:37.360 UFOs were and to solve UFO cases, but it was 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:43.160 too UM Essentially, this is what people say, UM cross 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:45.200 things off is known so that no one would have 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:48.440 to worry about them, like to to find to find 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:52.000 explanations for things, even if those explanations didn't quite fit, 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:54.520 so that people wouldn't panic that there was this kind 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:59.720 of unknown thing in the sky. UM. So there's that. UM. 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:05.200 You know, you have the canonical crashing roswell where something 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:09.960 crashed on a rancher's land UM in New Mexico. And 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:14.320 at first the official government press release said this was 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:18.320 a flying saucer, we got it, don't worry, um, And 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:20.480 then they said, just you know, just kidding, that was 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:24.000 a weather balloon. UM. And then decades later in the 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:27.920 nineties they said, just kidding, it was actually a nuclear 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:34.680 test detector experiment. There was also a CIA sponsored panel 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:39.520 called the Robertson Panel UM, and in their scientists and 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:44.960 military personnel were specifically looking at the effects that UFOs 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:49.280 and your UFO reports might have on people and chaos 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:52.600 and panic, and they essentially said, if we get too 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:56.520 many UFO reports, it might clog our intelligence channels and 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:00.320 it might cause you know, hysteria in the streets. So 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:04.439 what we need to do is essentially make propaganda to 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:07.199 tell people not to worry about UFOs. And so just 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:10.680 throughout history for decades and decades, you have these instances 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:16.200 of the government trying to manipulate public opinion and interpretation 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:20.320 of UFOs, but then also saying like we have no 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:23.360 interest in them and neither should you, And it just 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:25.919 it just leaves people feeling like they can't trust the 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.400 government on the topic, I think, and they're not wrong. 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:33.199 Another theme that seems a comp in uh in the 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:37.879 book is these people who kind of look at UFOs 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:43.040 ah rather than you know, sort of approaching it scientifically, 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:47.040 but serves you to have a more spiritual or religious 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:51.040 take on them, or or way of sort of conceiving 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:54.160 of them. And I was wondering if I could bring 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:56.760 up a few of those people and maybe have you 0:17:56.960 --> 0:17:58.639 talk about them a look, because I thought it was 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:01.960 super interesting. And one of those one of those people 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:07.119 is Steven Greer, who was talking about close encounters of 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:13.919 the Fifth kind. Yeah, Stephen Greer has kind of a 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:18.879 whole empire around him. He has made a name for 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:22.440 himself with the specific kind of contact with aliens called 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:26.439 close encounters of the Fifth kind Um, which is essentially 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:30.919 a kind of contact with aliens and UFOs that you, 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:34.080 as a human being on earth, try to initiate, like 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:39.000 you kind of send your intention and receptive nous too, 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:44.280 that experience out into the universe somehow, and then the 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:49.440 phenomenon is supposed to sense that and and appear to you. 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:53.760 And so he leads these retreats where he tries to 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:58.320 teach people to do this and it involves UM a 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:04.119 lot of meditation and um, yeah, projecting your intentions. And 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:06.280 a lot of people don't like it. A lot of 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:10.760 people think of it UM as kind of snake oil, 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:14.240 but a lot of people, um it really resonates with 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:16.560 I think because it is a kind of spiritual experience, 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.280 and it also is something that you can participate in, 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:23.200 Like you're not just a passive observer of these supposed 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:29.240 UFOs and or aliens. You are connecting your brain with 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:32.680 them somehow, And I think that appeals to people. It's 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:34.560 sort of seemed to me a little bit like the 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:39.480 Secret but for extraterrestrials it's sort of you know, envisioned 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:42.760 it and it and it might happen, or it's more 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:49.320 likely to happen. Definitely. It's like your UFO vision board. Yeah, exactly. 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:52.680 Another person that you talked to who sort of falls 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:56.639 into that spiritual realm is UM a guy named Garrett 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.680 for sure. Yeah. Garrett for sure was actually a kind 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:06.159 of famous radio astronomer who did really conventional, you know, 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:10.520 physics and astronomy work using radio telescopes and then UM 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:14.920 at some point when the search for Extraterrestrial intelligence UM, 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:19.240 which is a kind of more conventional look for broadcasts 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:22.800 from alien civilizations, when that kind of research was getting started. 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:25.280 At first he did a little bit of it himself, 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:29.560 using radio telescopes to look for these messages from aliens. 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:32.280 And then as time went by and he started to 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:36.600 hear more of the talk from his fellow astronomers, he 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:41.840 started to doubt UM their methods a little more, and 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:44.040 he thought that there was basically no chance that they 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:46.360 were going to find aliens. And so he made kind 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:49.359 of a joke conference talk where he said, instead of 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:51.800 giving these people a billion dollars to make a telescope, 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:54.760 what if you gave me some money and I just 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:57.400 sat on top of a mountain and thought about aliens 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:01.720 and that he said, it had basically the same chance 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:04.440 of success as what they were doing, and it would 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:08.600 cost essentially no money. But but then he started I 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:11.919 don't know exactly why he went down this path, but 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:16.080 then he started to kind of take that idea seriously. 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:19.480 He he read a book by a scientist named John 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:23.080 Lily who was doing some work on trying to communicate 0:21:23.640 --> 0:21:27.520 with dolphins, and he read about sensory deprivation tanks where 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:29.479 you could go in a place that's totally dark and 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:34.080 totally quiet and you're floating. Um. And this guy, John Lily, 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:36.919 had thought that he had communicated with some kind of 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:40.399 being outside of himself, and so Garrett, for sure, I 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:45.080 thought that he would try the same thing. Um. And 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:48.320 so he spent a bunch of time going in these 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:52.920 sensory deprivation tanks, and what he heard seemed to him 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:56.119 like the voices of aliens, like his joke experiment was 0:21:56.160 --> 0:22:00.919 actually working um. And then to eventually he came to 0:22:00.920 --> 0:22:03.840 the conclusion that what he was hearing was his own 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:08.040 unconscious mind and like the collective unconscious mind of of humanity, 0:22:08.080 --> 0:22:11.640 which sounds out there in a different way from from UFOs. 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:14.640 But that was kind of his his research journey, which 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:17.520 is a little like a like a seventies New Age 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:20.439 spiritual type of journey. So he kind of came to 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:24.479 this sort of young Gian view of what he was 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:27.960 experiencing was that it was, and you mentioned it in 0:22:27.960 --> 0:22:31.160 the book Experiencing the Collective Unconscious in some way that's 0:22:31.240 --> 0:22:35.160 more manifest than you would get otherwise. Yeah, he kind 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:38.040 of thought, he, yeah, he could like tap into the 0:22:38.680 --> 0:22:41.880 you know, the the ideas and archetypes of the collective 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:46.080 unconscious when he was totally removed from all other sensations, 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:49.480 and that the way that that manifested itself was this 0:22:50.320 --> 0:22:55.439 alien inside of his brain essentially. Huh. You mentioned that 0:22:55.440 --> 0:22:59.199 that he had worked with set to begin with, and 0:22:59.280 --> 0:23:02.679 I thought it was really interesting the way, and I 0:23:02.720 --> 0:23:05.080 can't I can't remember if you characterize it or he 0:23:05.240 --> 0:23:07.760 characterized the sort of attitude that a lot of the 0:23:07.760 --> 0:23:12.840 people involved in SETI now have towards the possible benefits 0:23:13.400 --> 0:23:18.639 of making contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Yeah. He came up 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:21.560 with the term the salvation school of SET, which was 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:24.879 that when SETI scientists were trying to justify all this 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:28.440 money they wanted to spend looking for aliens that might 0:23:28.480 --> 0:23:30.560 not be there, they would say, this is worth our 0:23:30.640 --> 0:23:34.320 time because this is a really big question. Are we 0:23:34.359 --> 0:23:36.960 alone in the universe. It's an almost religious question, but 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:42.040 we can investigate it scientifically, and because if we are successful, 0:23:42.160 --> 0:23:46.600 then that will mean peace on Earth because everyone will 0:23:46.640 --> 0:23:49.400 be united as Earthlings because we're all so much more 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:52.880 like each other than we are like the alien who 0:23:52.960 --> 0:23:57.520 we can't identify. And they also say that if if 0:23:57.560 --> 0:24:00.119 we make contact with an alien civilization, it will be 0:24:01.040 --> 0:24:02.959 much much older than us, and so it would be 0:24:03.000 --> 0:24:07.720 more technologically advanced, and so it would have gone through 0:24:07.840 --> 0:24:11.680 some kind of what they call it technological adolescence, which 0:24:11.720 --> 0:24:14.920 is basically where we are right now, where like at 0:24:14.920 --> 0:24:18.320 any given time we might blow ourselves up with nuclear bombs, 0:24:18.440 --> 0:24:21.800 or have so much climate change we don't survive, or 0:24:22.760 --> 0:24:26.439 things like that. And they say, the aliens who have 0:24:26.480 --> 0:24:29.080 survived that can teach us that it's possible to survive 0:24:29.119 --> 0:24:31.920 that and maybe how. And Garrett Verscher kind of looked 0:24:31.920 --> 0:24:35.320 at all of that and saw it as very religious, 0:24:35.320 --> 0:24:38.080 where instead of having a god that's going to, you know, 0:24:38.160 --> 0:24:40.000 tell you the right way to live your life and 0:24:40.480 --> 0:24:44.360 save you from all your troubles, it's this great alien 0:24:44.440 --> 0:24:48.000 society and that that's really kind of a Cold War 0:24:48.200 --> 0:24:51.199 type of type of logic, it feels like to me. 0:24:51.960 --> 0:24:54.720 And also there's actually like we don't actually know how 0:24:54.760 --> 0:24:58.320 anyone would react if we found aliens that might have 0:24:58.359 --> 0:25:00.680 no effect on the world. Maybe there will be piece. 0:25:00.920 --> 0:25:03.560 Maybe we'd all run out in the streets rioting. Nobody 0:25:03.560 --> 0:25:07.480 can actually know that for sure. In my opinion, I 0:25:07.520 --> 0:25:09.640 just thought it was it was really interesting because it's 0:25:09.680 --> 0:25:12.520 it does and you mentioned the Cold War. It it 0:25:12.600 --> 0:25:16.720 does kind of hearken back to, you know, the contact 0:25:16.720 --> 0:25:20.120 ease of the nineteen fifties that we talked a little 0:25:20.119 --> 0:25:22.920 bit about in the podcast at the very beginning with 0:25:23.080 --> 0:25:28.280