Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. In late February, I
Speaker 1: spoke with author Sarah Scoles. She is a freelance science
Speaker 1: writer who is a contributing writer at Wired Science, a
Speaker 1: contributing editor at Popular Science, and the author of two books,
Speaker 1: Making Contact Jill Tarter and The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Speaker 1: and They Are Already Here UFO Culture and Why We
Speaker 1: See Saucers. I talked to her just before the release
Speaker 1: of They Are Already Here, an engaging, first person anthropological
Speaker 1: look at the UFO community. I'm Toby Ball and this
Speaker 1: is Strange Arrivals. My name is Sarah Schools. I'm a
Speaker 1: science journalist, a contributor at Wired magazine, in Popular Science,
Speaker 1: and I write about space. First of all, I love
Speaker 1: the book Your interest. It seems to be not so
Speaker 1: much with UFOs themselves, but with the people who are
Speaker 1: interested in UFOs and the culture that surrounds UFOs. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about your interests and how
Speaker 1: that interest began. Sure, I had really never paid attention
Speaker 1: to UFOs from most of my life until December sixteen,
Speaker 1: and I read a story in the New York Times
Speaker 1: that was about this Pentagon program that had been dedicated
Speaker 1: to researching what they called unidentified aerial phenomena. And just
Speaker 1: starting with that story, I tried to re report for
Speaker 1: Wired magazine all the stuff that they had said about
Speaker 1: this Pentagon program and just tried to prove it true
Speaker 1: or false with my own reporting. And um, since I
Speaker 1: was coming to UFOs totally fresh, I didn't actually have
Speaker 1: any knowledge of my own and so I started to
Speaker 1: try to seek out people who did have that and
Speaker 1: who had been either you know, on the historical side
Speaker 1: or on the personal side of UFOs for decades before
Speaker 1: I came into it, and I didn't really know what
Speaker 1: to expect. But I had a lot of ideas I
Speaker 1: think about who was obsessed with UFOs and not not
Speaker 1: all of those ideas were very flattering. Um. I think
Speaker 1: I mostly thought it was just straight conspiracy theorists. But
Speaker 1: what I actually found out when I started talking to
Speaker 1: people was that, you know, there were lots of really smart,
Speaker 1: dedicated researchers who had just found this cool mystery that
Speaker 1: they were really interested in and that was really hard
Speaker 1: to solve. And um, so that kind of got me
Speaker 1: started wondering what it was about this particular mystery that
Speaker 1: that was so compelling to them. And so then I
Speaker 1: found so many answers that I had to write a
Speaker 1: whole book because no one wants to publish an article
Speaker 1: that long. So let's actually go back a second. You
Speaker 1: you said that you your introduction to it was taking
Speaker 1: a look at the program that that had been going
Speaker 1: on in the Pentagon sort of under the radar, UH
Speaker 1: for a number of years. Maybe you could talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about I believe the guy who who ran
Speaker 1: was his name was Luis Alisando, And it didn't seem
Speaker 1: quite as straightforward from what you wrote as the story
Speaker 1: that people might have heard. No, I don't think it
Speaker 1: was a straightforward story at all. UM. So, the way
Speaker 1: it was initially reported, the Pentagon was running this program
Speaker 1: called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which UM involved
Speaker 1: one contractor called Bigelow Aerospace researching sightings and reports of
Speaker 1: UFOs and UM kind of doing research adjacent to that.
Speaker 1: And it was this super secretive program, as they described it,
Speaker 1: run by a man named Luis Alazando. And when the
Speaker 1: story came out, the newspaper claimed released these two videos
Speaker 1: that showed UFOs and they were official US government videos,
Speaker 1: and this was kind of what led that that story
Speaker 1: to really take off. UM and the program they said
Speaker 1: ran from two thousand seven to two thousand twelve, but
Speaker 1: that it kept going even after that, even further under
Speaker 1: the radar, and you know, all of that is pretty
Speaker 1: that's a pretty incredible set of claims. And as time
Speaker 1: went on, from reporting I did, and also lots of
Speaker 1: other people, the story wasn't quite as linear as that.
Speaker 1: The Pentagon has said it didn't release those videos, they
Speaker 1: were not authorized for release. It is said that this
Speaker 1: man who was supposedly the director actually didn't work on
Speaker 1: the program at all. It has said that this wasn't
Speaker 1: a UFO program at all, and so it's kind of
Speaker 1: just there are lots of statements that are in direct
Speaker 1: contradiction to what was initially reported. But las Ando, I
Speaker 1: think it's been on CNN and other places talking about
Speaker 1: it as though it absolutely was a UFO program. Is
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah? Yeah, Louis Alizondo talks a lot about
Speaker 1: how it was a UFO program, and also he goes
Speaker 1: even farther and says that the program investigated crafts that
Speaker 1: UM he basically said they couldn't possibly have come from
Speaker 1: this Earth because they couldn't link them to any particular country.
Speaker 1: So i'mplaying not just like we were looking at UFOs
Speaker 1: from Russia, from Russian military or something, but UFOs from
Speaker 1: outer space is the implication. And he's gone off and
Speaker 1: joined I don't know if this is the time to
Speaker 1: talk about this. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. So
Speaker 1: Luis Alizondo retired from the Pentagon Um and from this
Speaker 1: program in October seen just before the news story came out,
Speaker 1: and he joined up with a private company called to
Speaker 1: the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, which is based sically.
Speaker 1: What they actually do is make books and movies and music,
Speaker 1: but what they say they want to do is research
Speaker 1: UFOs and then eventually reverse engineer some kind of really
Speaker 1: great spacecraft. And Louis Alizondo said that he left the
Speaker 1: Pentagon and joined up with these people because officials in
Speaker 1: the military weren't taking the threat of UFOs very seriously,
Speaker 1: and so he had to leave the government and go
Speaker 1: to the private sector to get anyone to listen to him.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, the government says he never worked on the
Speaker 1: program at all, So right, and to the Stars Academy.
Speaker 1: That's Tom Delong's organization. Yeah. To the Stars Academy is
Speaker 1: run by, um, the former frontman of Blink one two,
Speaker 1: Tom DeLong. So he's and I want to get back
Speaker 1: to Robert Bigelow in a second, but you you write
Speaker 1: about both of them in the book and Tom DeLong.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting character and it's funny because I feel
Speaker 1: like people who aren't necessarily very interested in UFOs, one
Speaker 1: of the things that people do know is that the
Speaker 1: guy from Blink Win eighty two is into it. And
Speaker 1: that's actually a response I've gotten to from people when
Speaker 1: I've said, oh, I'm making this this podcast about UFOs,
Speaker 1: were like, oh, what's Tom Long going to say? So, um,
Speaker 1: so can you talk a little bit about him and
Speaker 1: and sort of his interest in what he's been doing. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: Tom Delong's interest in UFOs seems to go way way
Speaker 1: back to kind of the band's earlier days, and Um,
Speaker 1: when I was working on the book, I tried to
Speaker 1: go as far back as the Internet would let me
Speaker 1: to read all these different magazine profiles of him in
Speaker 1: Blink Win eighty two from years and years ago, and
Speaker 1: pretty early on they start talking about how Tom DeLong
Speaker 1: used to sit in the back of the tour bus
Speaker 1: reading these huge books about UFOs and conspiracy theories and
Speaker 1: things like that, and you know he um. He wrote
Speaker 1: a song called Aliens Exist, which is basically about having
Speaker 1: an alien visit your bed room and abduct you and
Speaker 1: no one believe you. Um. And then later on he
Speaker 1: started going more public with the idea that like he
Speaker 1: was holding some kind of alien secret UFO secret and
Speaker 1: he was going to bring it public. I don't remember
Speaker 1: exactly what what year it was, but I remember before
Speaker 1: I was interested in UFOs at all, I read some
Speaker 1: profile of him that that said, you know, I'm collaborating
Speaker 1: with high level intelligence officials and working with defense contractors,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to bring the alien truth to you.
Speaker 1: And I was like, Oh, that guy, that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be great if Tom DeLong brought us aliens? Um?
Speaker 1: But then then a couple of years later he brought
Speaker 1: us some um complicated version of them, I guess, but um,
Speaker 1: so he he went off. He he started this company
Speaker 1: called to the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, and
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be some kind of UFO Disclosure Project
Speaker 1: where they have access to data about UFOs and are
Speaker 1: also going to collect it and kind of analyze it.
Speaker 1: And he's brought you know, people from the actual Pentagon,
Speaker 1: Louis Alizondo. There's another guy on their board called Chris Melon,
Speaker 1: who was like a former high level intelligence officer. Like,
Speaker 1: they've got they've got serious people, even though I don't
Speaker 1: really understand why. The second I think person with a
Speaker 1: lot of money, uh, in the last you know, decade
Speaker 1: or so, Who's who's who's put a lot of money
Speaker 1: into this was Robert Bigelow, who's another kind of interesting
Speaker 1: character who bought the skin Walker Ranch, which has got
Speaker 1: the coolest name of any place that I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: Is completely intriguing just because of that. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about him? Yeah, Robert Bigelow is a
Speaker 1: very wealthy man who lives in Nevada, and he made
Speaker 1: a bunch of money, um in real estate and running
Speaker 1: a hotel chain, and then he went in, you is
Speaker 1: that money to pursue his real interest, which wasn't budget
Speaker 1: hotels but was um aliens. You know, he's gone on
Speaker 1: sixty minutes, I believe, and told the whole world that
Speaker 1: he believes there's an alien presence here on Earth. So once,
Speaker 1: once he had amassed his fortune, he thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm going to do research into UFOs and other
Speaker 1: paranormal kinds of things. So since the since the nineties,
Speaker 1: he's given millions of dollars to UFO researchers, just kind
Speaker 1: of funding researchers to do kind of small individual projects.
Speaker 1: And then I guess the thing he's best known for
Speaker 1: is reading an article in a newspaper called the Desirette
Speaker 1: News about a family who owned this ranch in Utah,
Speaker 1: and they said there were all these paranormal happenings. They're
Speaker 1: like a giant wolf that wouldn't die when you shot it,
Speaker 1: and animal mutilations and seeing UFOs and just all kinds
Speaker 1: of spooky things. And he thought, you know, I would
Speaker 1: like to buy that terrible spooky place and see if
Speaker 1: I can research all this stuff that's going on on
Speaker 1: the property. So he did. He bought it. He moved
Speaker 1: some scientists in and founded a an institute called the
Speaker 1: National Institute for Discovery Science, where he was going to
Speaker 1: try to investigate these things on this place that was
Speaker 1: called skin Walker Ranch um and see if he could
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of the what they called the phenomena,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the all encompassing term for all
Speaker 1: these these weird paranormal things that they said was going on.
Speaker 1: And so they bought cameras and sensors and hired scientists
Speaker 1: and tried to catch paranormal activity as it was happening
Speaker 1: in collect actual data on it um. But they never
Speaker 1: actually really got any data that they could share. Um.
Speaker 1: The you know, the sensors wouldn't work, the off that
Speaker 1: was supposed to be happening, wouldn't show up when they
Speaker 1: were looking, and they just kind of came away from
Speaker 1: the whole experience with essentially what they started with, which
Speaker 1: was a bunch of stories. A theme I think in
Speaker 1: your book and we've already started talking about it is
Speaker 1: this relationship between people who are interested in UFOs and
Speaker 1: at least one faction of that group who really wants
Speaker 1: to try and prove scientifically, um that they exist there,
Speaker 1: you know, that they're actually terrestrial um. And then there's
Speaker 1: sort of this weird dynamic or relationship between them and
Speaker 1: then the scientific establishment, which shows very little interest in it.
Speaker 1: And you know, you get the sense that that that
Speaker 1: the UFO people um feels though the scientific establishment is
Speaker 1: almost working against them. Yeah, I think that mainstream science
Speaker 1: doesn't really want a whole lot to do with uphology,
Speaker 1: and that's very understandable because there really is no or
Speaker 1: very little hard data to go on. Almost everything is
Speaker 1: an eyewitness report and without you know, columns of numbers
Speaker 1: and sensor data that you can take home and then analyze.
Speaker 1: So there's really no systematic plan of investigation in the
Speaker 1: way that scientists would normally want to have, And so
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty legitimate that the UFOs and UFO research
Speaker 1: in their current form aren't part of mainstream science. But
Speaker 1: I do think then uthologists are both kind of angry
Speaker 1: that they're not a part of it and that they're
Speaker 1: not taken seriously. But at the same time they say
Speaker 1: traditional science actually isn't adequate to do research on what
Speaker 1: we are dealing with because they're too narrow minded and
Speaker 1: they don't take human testimony seriously or they don't have
Speaker 1: the right tools. So then they kind of reject mainstream science.
Speaker 1: But then also anytime a scientist actually does show interests
Speaker 1: or like if somebody has a PhD and they're speaking
Speaker 1: at a conference, you can tell that you folowgists actually
Speaker 1: really revere science and what to emulate it. Even at
Speaker 1: the same time they're like, you don't understand me, So
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's complicated both directions. I think strange
Speaker 1: arrivals will return in a moment. Another tense relationship is
Speaker 1: between the UFOL community and UH the US government in
Speaker 1: the U S Military, And you make a you make
Speaker 1: the point a couple of times in your book about
Speaker 1: how there's a lot of suspicion within UFO community towards
Speaker 1: the government, but that the government has, you know, in
Speaker 1: many ways earned it over the years. Yeah, the government
Speaker 1: hasn't really been honest or straightforward in most of its
Speaker 1: dealings with UFOs or the UFO community UM, starting from
Speaker 1: the very beginning. It's early Projects UM, in particular Project
Speaker 1: Blue Book, which was their longest UFO investigation program that
Speaker 1: went until nineteen sixty nine. Like a lot of the
Speaker 1: point of it was not actually to figure out what
Speaker 1: UFOs were and to solve UFO cases, but it was
Speaker 1: too UM Essentially, this is what people say, UM cross
Speaker 1: things off is known so that no one would have
Speaker 1: to worry about them, like to to find to find
Speaker 1: explanations for things, even if those explanations didn't quite fit,
Speaker 1: so that people wouldn't panic that there was this kind
Speaker 1: of unknown thing in the sky. UM. So there's that. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, you have the canonical crashing roswell where something
Speaker 1: crashed on a rancher's land UM in New Mexico. And
Speaker 1: at first the official government press release said this was
Speaker 1: a flying saucer, we got it, don't worry, um, And
Speaker 1: then they said, just you know, just kidding, that was
Speaker 1: a weather balloon. UM. And then decades later in the
Speaker 1: nineties they said, just kidding, it was actually a nuclear
Speaker 1: test detector experiment. There was also a CIA sponsored panel
Speaker 1: called the Robertson Panel UM, and in their scientists and
Speaker 1: military personnel were specifically looking at the effects that UFOs
Speaker 1: and your UFO reports might have on people and chaos
Speaker 1: and panic, and they essentially said, if we get too
Speaker 1: many UFO reports, it might clog our intelligence channels and
Speaker 1: it might cause you know, hysteria in the streets. So
Speaker 1: what we need to do is essentially make propaganda to
Speaker 1: tell people not to worry about UFOs. And so just
Speaker 1: throughout history for decades and decades, you have these instances
Speaker 1: of the government trying to manipulate public opinion and interpretation
Speaker 1: of UFOs, but then also saying like we have no
Speaker 1: interest in them and neither should you, And it just
Speaker 1: it just leaves people feeling like they can't trust the
Speaker 1: government on the topic, I think, and they're not wrong.
Speaker 1: Another theme that seems a comp in uh in the
Speaker 1: book is these people who kind of look at UFOs
Speaker 1: ah rather than you know, sort of approaching it scientifically,
Speaker 1: but serves you to have a more spiritual or religious
Speaker 1: take on them, or or way of sort of conceiving
Speaker 1: of them. And I was wondering if I could bring
Speaker 1: up a few of those people and maybe have you
Speaker 1: talk about them a look, because I thought it was
Speaker 1: super interesting. And one of those one of those people
Speaker 1: is Steven Greer, who was talking about close encounters of
Speaker 1: the Fifth kind. Yeah, Stephen Greer has kind of a
Speaker 1: whole empire around him. He has made a name for
Speaker 1: himself with the specific kind of contact with aliens called
Speaker 1: close encounters of the Fifth kind Um, which is essentially
Speaker 1: a kind of contact with aliens and UFOs that you,
Speaker 1: as a human being on earth, try to initiate, like
Speaker 1: you kind of send your intention and receptive nous too,
Speaker 1: that experience out into the universe somehow, and then the
Speaker 1: phenomenon is supposed to sense that and and appear to you.
Speaker 1: And so he leads these retreats where he tries to
Speaker 1: teach people to do this and it involves UM a
Speaker 1: lot of meditation and um, yeah, projecting your intentions. And
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't like it. A lot of
Speaker 1: people think of it UM as kind of snake oil,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people, um it really resonates with
Speaker 1: I think because it is a kind of spiritual experience,
Speaker 1: and it also is something that you can participate in,
Speaker 1: Like you're not just a passive observer of these supposed
Speaker 1: UFOs and or aliens. You are connecting your brain with
Speaker 1: them somehow, And I think that appeals to people. It's
Speaker 1: sort of seemed to me a little bit like the
Speaker 1: Secret but for extraterrestrials it's sort of you know, envisioned
Speaker 1: it and it and it might happen, or it's more
Speaker 1: likely to happen. Definitely. It's like your UFO vision board. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Another person that you talked to who sort of falls
Speaker 1: into that spiritual realm is UM a guy named Garrett
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. Garrett for sure was actually a kind
Speaker 1: of famous radio astronomer who did really conventional, you know,
Speaker 1: physics and astronomy work using radio telescopes and then UM
Speaker 1: at some point when the search for Extraterrestrial intelligence UM,
Speaker 1: which is a kind of more conventional look for broadcasts
Speaker 1: from alien civilizations, when that kind of research was getting started.
Speaker 1: At first he did a little bit of it himself,
Speaker 1: using radio telescopes to look for these messages from aliens.
Speaker 1: And then as time went by and he started to
Speaker 1: hear more of the talk from his fellow astronomers, he
Speaker 1: started to doubt UM their methods a little more, and
Speaker 1: he thought that there was basically no chance that they
Speaker 1: were going to find aliens. And so he made kind
Speaker 1: of a joke conference talk where he said, instead of
Speaker 1: giving these people a billion dollars to make a telescope,
Speaker 1: what if you gave me some money and I just
Speaker 1: sat on top of a mountain and thought about aliens
Speaker 1: and that he said, it had basically the same chance
Speaker 1: of success as what they were doing, and it would
Speaker 1: cost essentially no money. But but then he started I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly why he went down this path, but
Speaker 1: then he started to kind of take that idea seriously.
Speaker 1: He he read a book by a scientist named John
Speaker 1: Lily who was doing some work on trying to communicate
Speaker 1: with dolphins, and he read about sensory deprivation tanks where
Speaker 1: you could go in a place that's totally dark and
Speaker 1: totally quiet and you're floating. Um. And this guy, John Lily,
Speaker 1: had thought that he had communicated with some kind of
Speaker 1: being outside of himself, and so Garrett, for sure, I
Speaker 1: thought that he would try the same thing. Um. And
Speaker 1: so he spent a bunch of time going in these
Speaker 1: sensory deprivation tanks, and what he heard seemed to him
Speaker 1: like the voices of aliens, like his joke experiment was
Speaker 1: actually working um. And then to eventually he came to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that what he was hearing was his own
Speaker 1: unconscious mind and like the collective unconscious mind of of humanity,
Speaker 1: which sounds out there in a different way from from UFOs.
Speaker 1: But that was kind of his his research journey, which
Speaker 1: is a little like a like a seventies New Age
Speaker 1: spiritual type of journey. So he kind of came to
Speaker 1: this sort of young Gian view of what he was
Speaker 1: experiencing was that it was, and you mentioned it in
Speaker 1: the book Experiencing the Collective Unconscious in some way that's
Speaker 1: more manifest than you would get otherwise. Yeah, he kind
Speaker 1: of thought, he, yeah, he could like tap into the
Speaker 1: you know, the the ideas and archetypes of the collective
Speaker 1: unconscious when he was totally removed from all other sensations,
Speaker 1: and that the way that that manifested itself was this
Speaker 1: alien inside of his brain essentially. Huh. You mentioned that
Speaker 1: that he had worked with set to begin with, and
Speaker 1: I thought it was really interesting the way, and I
Speaker 1: can't I can't remember if you characterize it or he
Speaker 1: characterized the sort of attitude that a lot of the
Speaker 1: people involved in SETI now have towards the possible benefits
Speaker 1: of making contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Yeah. He came up
Speaker 1: with the term the salvation school of SET, which was
Speaker 1: that when SETI scientists were trying to justify all this
Speaker 1: money they wanted to spend looking for aliens that might
Speaker 1: not be there, they would say, this is worth our
Speaker 1: time because this is a really big question. Are we
Speaker 1: alone in the universe. It's an almost religious question, but
Speaker 1: we can investigate it scientifically, and because if we are successful,
Speaker 1: then that will mean peace on Earth because everyone will
Speaker 1: be united as Earthlings because we're all so much more
Speaker 1: like each other than we are like the alien who
Speaker 1: we can't identify. And they also say that if if
Speaker 1: we make contact with an alien civilization, it will be
Speaker 1: much much older than us, and so it would be
Speaker 1: more technologically advanced, and so it would have gone through
Speaker 1: some kind of what they call it technological adolescence, which
Speaker 1: is basically where we are right now, where like at
Speaker 1: any given time we might blow ourselves up with nuclear bombs,
Speaker 1: or have so much climate change we don't survive, or
Speaker 1: things like that. And they say, the aliens who have
Speaker 1: survived that can teach us that it's possible to survive
Speaker 1: that and maybe how. And Garrett Verscher kind of looked
Speaker 1: at all of that and saw it as very religious,
Speaker 1: where instead of having a god that's going to, you know,
Speaker 1: tell you the right way to live your life and
Speaker 1: save you from all your troubles, it's this great alien
Speaker 1: society and that that's really kind of a Cold War
Speaker 1: type of type of logic, it feels like to me.
Speaker 1: And also there's actually like we don't actually know how
Speaker 1: anyone would react if we found aliens that might have
Speaker 1: no effect on the world. Maybe there will be piece.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'd all run out in the streets rioting. Nobody
Speaker 1: can actually know that for sure. In my opinion, I
Speaker 1: just thought it was it was really interesting because it's
Speaker 1: it does and you mentioned the Cold War. It it
Speaker 1: does kind of hearken back to, you know, the contact
Speaker 1: ease of the nineteen fifties that we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about in the podcast at the very beginning with
Speaker 1: George Adamski who said he was visited by this beautiful
Speaker 1: person from Venus, who said, we're keeping eye on you
Speaker 1: were really advanced, and we want you to be spiritually
Speaker 1: better and more peaceful, and we're worried that you're gonna
Speaker 1: destroy each other and all this, and it was clear
Speaker 1: that he was making up this whole story, but it
Speaker 1: was the same idea that these sort of advanced extra
Speaker 1: rationals are have these lessons to teach us about how
Speaker 1: to live together and live peacefully and be respectful of
Speaker 1: the planet and all that stuff. And to um had
Speaker 1: that kind of your today, Well, I thought was it
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting. Definitely, Yeah. I mean it's not very
Speaker 1: different from Jesus getting born and saying like be nice
Speaker 1: to each other. You spend a lot of time in
Speaker 1: the book and in real life sort of going to
Speaker 1: visit these places where UFO people gather. So you go
Speaker 1: to Roswell, you go to a Buffon conference, you go
Speaker 1: it's close to Area fifty one, is you can get
Speaker 1: you go to the was it the Alien watch Tower?
Speaker 1: And I was wondering, do you have any thoughts about
Speaker 1: the fact that these sort of institutions exist and people
Speaker 1: come to them, and what sort of that cultural significance is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the sites like that are almost if if
Speaker 1: we're continuing the spiritual train of thought, there are a
Speaker 1: little like pilgrimage points where they're like important points in
Speaker 1: this particular subculture that people can come visit and um
Speaker 1: maybe how a meaningful experience while they're there, and then
Speaker 1: most importantly interact with other people who kind of understand
Speaker 1: where they're coming from, which I think was the biggest
Speaker 1: common factor between move On meetings, the UFO Watchtower and
Speaker 1: UM Roswell. I guess um, I didn't really see very
Speaker 1: many people at Area fifty one, But if you if
Speaker 1: you go to a place that is known for UFOs
Speaker 1: or aliens, um you know that the other people around
Speaker 1: you kind of have that same interest at some level,
Speaker 1: whether they're serious like you, or if they just have
Speaker 1: a casual interest, like they're probably not going to just
Speaker 1: make fun of you or tell you you're crazy, and
Speaker 1: so I kind of feel like people go there and
Speaker 1: like pay homage to this interest, have a little fun,
Speaker 1: and then also can maybe speak more freely with each
Speaker 1: other than they can in real life. At least that
Speaker 1: was what I noticed when I was there. Well, it's great.
Speaker 1: Do you have any last thoughts or things you wanted
Speaker 1: to convey that you learned that you thought were particularly
Speaker 1: that we haven't talked about. Let's see. I think so.
Speaker 1: There's a thing a historian named Greg Gigan who's at
Speaker 1: Penn State told me when I was very first getting
Speaker 1: into the subject, which was that when UFO belief in
Speaker 1: the general population gets like stronger, people more interested than
Speaker 1: they used to be, it's usually when other stuff isn't
Speaker 1: going well, which we could argue it's not in the
Speaker 1: world right now, like things are pretty precarious. There might
Speaker 1: be a global pandemic, people are afraid of nuclear war,
Speaker 1: and so when all that is going on, if you
Speaker 1: have this other like powerful thing to turn to and
Speaker 1: be interested in. A it's distracting and you can kind
Speaker 1: of project your fears onto it, or if you're going
Speaker 1: the other direction, you can think, like the study people
Speaker 1: like maybe that's something that will save me. And it's
Speaker 1: just interesting to kind of have looked in the past
Speaker 1: and seeing that wave go up and down, and then
Speaker 1: to see it kind of rise up again just in
Speaker 1: the past few years. I hope you enjoyed this week's interview.
Speaker 1: Next week, on a second bonus episode of Strange Arrivals,
Speaker 1: I talked with Stephanie Kelly Romano, an associate professor of Rhetoric,
Speaker 1: Film and Screen Studies at Bates College. She has gathered
Speaker 1: narratives from over three people who believe they were abducted
Speaker 1: by aliens, and has written on how these stories helped
Speaker 1: make sense of issues of race, control, rights, and identity.
Speaker 1: In terms of an example, for raise, I think that
Speaker 1: just the fact that experiencers talk about a multiplicity of
Speaker 1: types of aliens and that the aliens have different characteristics. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the little gray aliens that are so popular
Speaker 1: in pop culture are oftentimes those beings that are worker beings.
Speaker 1: They don't necessarily have personality they're not particularly developed, are
Speaker 1: advanced in a lot of ways. Technologically, certainly they are,
Speaker 1: but they're very focused on conducting experiments or doing that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, whereas people also talk about Nordic aliens,
Speaker 1: and Nordic aliens have a tendency to be more human looking,
Speaker 1: and they are characteristically Caucasian and blonde, and those aliens
Speaker 1: are the ones that are compassionate. Those aliens are the
Speaker 1: ones that are kind. There have been a bunch of
Speaker 1: different studies or a couple articles anyway, that talk about
Speaker 1: gray aliens as being kind of the combination of black
Speaker 1: and white, right, and so this ambiguous racialized mixture, But
Speaker 1: also the fact that the advanced aliens of Caucasian I mean,
Speaker 1: coupled with ancient alien theories, which are inherently racist in
Speaker 1: some ways, race is clearly underneath it all. The fact
Speaker 1: that any non westernized, non colonized society couldn't have made
Speaker 1: whatever it is, the Pyramids and Nascal lines, whatever, and
Speaker 1: they needed to have help from extraterrestrials, but westernized Caucasian
Speaker 1: societies didn't is a little questionable. Strange Arrivals is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and grim and mild from
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey. This episode was written and hosted by Toby
Speaker 1: Boll and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Thane, with
Speaker 1: executive producers Alex Williams, Matt Frederick and Aaron Manky. Betty
Speaker 1: Hill was portrayed by Gina Rickike. Barney Hill was portrayed
Speaker 1: by Jason Williams. Special thanks to the Milms Special Collections
Speaker 1: and Archives at the University of New Hampshire, John Horrigan,
Speaker 1: w y A M in Norwich, Connecticut, John White, and
Speaker 1: David O'Leary, the executive producer of the History Channel's dramatic
Speaker 1: series Project blue Book. Learn more about a show over
Speaker 1: at Grimm and Mile dot com. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.