WEBVTT - How Project Blue Book Worked, Pt I 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:03.400 Welcome to Stuff. You should know a production of My 0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:12.560 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:15.800 I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Choke Brian over there, 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:18.479 and there's Jerry over there. She s all dressed up 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:22.880 in a silver jump suit as usual, a jump suit. 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:26.239 I said, I pulled it out. Should we edit that 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:28.640 out and retake it? No? I think we should leave it? Uh, 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:32.560 Jerry behind the scenes stuff everyone. Jerry sometimes has to 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:36.040 get what's called room tone, which means she has to 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:40.080 roll tape digitally and we have to be completely silent 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:42.159 for a few moments. We get the tone of the 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:46.840 room for I don't know, purposes of magic. And every 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.280 time she's done that, we always have the urge to 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:53.800 giggle or fart or be six year old. So she 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:56.760 looks at us sternly the whole time during that five 0:00:56.880 --> 0:00:59.080 or six seconds of room. Man, it's so funny. I 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:01.240 don't know what that instat does. And that's just like 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:03.560 we can't sit here for five seconds and not speak 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:06.040 without cracking a joke. We've got a bit of the 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:08.399 class clown in us, I think is what it is. 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:11.800 I sure did still do. Oh yeah, Were you a 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:15.040 class clown? Really? Yeah? But on the downland, Like I 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:17.480 wouldn't fire out something for the whole class to hear 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:20.160 unless I knew it was like comedy gold. But I 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:24.000 would work my circle around me, you know. Yeah, you're 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:27.520 a regional act. I was fairly disruptive, okay, but it 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:29.520 was always fun. So teachers liked me. But they were 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:31.880 just like, just shut up though? Sometimes? Were your parents 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:33.959 were educators so you knew where the line was? Right? 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:37.759 Were you going over the line because you could get 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:40.600 away with it? No? I mean they weren't teachers. I 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:42.840 mean that's actually that's not true. My dad was the principle. 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:45.279 But I didn't start real cutting up till high school. 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:47.960 I got you. Why are we talking about this? I 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:50.960 don't know. I'll tell you why, chuck, because it reminds 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:54.440 me of Henny Youngman. It just so happened to be 0:01:54.560 --> 0:02:00.480 around the peak of his career on June four seven. 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:05.240 Did you fact check that? Okay, because then we're going 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:08.000 to get a letter. Henny Youngman's career peak was in 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:13.359 you morons, you do get paid during a government shutdown? Oh? Yeah? 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:15.560 And are we going to correct that now or should 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:17.160 we do it a listener mail, No, we might as 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.760 well correct it now. Yeah, so I got it wrong 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:23.600 big time, and we heard from apparently everybody. Nine thousand 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:26.919 of our million listeners are government employees who worked through 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:30.200 the last shutdown, because all of them email in and said, hey, 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:33.200 by the way, whether you worked or not, if you 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:36.960 were furloughed, you were. You got back paid this time. 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:39.919 But you we were right. It does take an act 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:42.720 of Congress. That doesn't happen automatically. What does this take 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:45.880 an Act of Congress? Yes, it does. So we got 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:48.200 that one wrong. I got that one wrong. Chuck went 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.760 along with it for the went along for the usual. Yeah, sure, yeah, 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:53.359 that sounds good. Josh, whatever you say, I want to 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:57.320 get your back you know, I appreciate that. So anyway, um, 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:01.360 back on j seven, it was a very important day 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:07.480 because you can use this day to basically pinpoint the 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:13.240 moment that America's just ongoing fascination with UFOs and by extension, 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:19.200 aliens began. It did not exist basically before that time. Yeah. 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:22.640 Why do you think that is? Because I think a 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:24.280 a skeptic and we're gonna talk a lot in this 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:28.040 episode about skeptics and believers. For lack of a better word, 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:32.440 Skeptics would say, like, while all of a sudden, that 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:35.360 UFOs just start appearing, right, And I think there are 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:38.720 some answers to that. Oh yeah, like I don't know, 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:41.880 maybe they just found it or maybe they just decided 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:45.040 to start poking around our airspace. Well, that presumes that 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:49.880 there is actual like UFOs and extra, yeah they do. 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:52.800 You have another explanation for if there isn't a they, Well, 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:58.280 maybe just um newspaper I mean, were there no like 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:03.280 even newspaper reports pre I know all of it began 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:05.440 on June ninety all right, Well then my answer is 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:09.640 the aliens started their business then on that day, Okay, 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:11.560 and I mean there would have to be a basically 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:15.280 a day zero if that ever really did start somewhere? Yeah, 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.400 why not seven? Who knows? They may have been zipping 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:21.680 around with the dinosaurs maybe, but the dinosaurs didn't put 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:25.000 that on the news. Nope, did they see that. Well, 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:27.680 they didn't preserve any of their own news reels. At 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.520 the very least that's true for me. The explanation is 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:36.480 mass hysteria, dogs and cats living together, that kind of stuff. Alright, 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:39.040 So on June there was a man named Kenneth Arnold. 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:43.600 He was a pilot to private pilot, not a private 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:47.600 in the army who was a pilot, private sector pilot. 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:51.960 I think that really got across with the private pilot. Uh. 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:54.680 And he had a good reputation. He wasn't some uh 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:57.719 he was known around town as a respectable business guy. 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:01.840 And he was flying near Washington Mount Rainier and he 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:04.920 was looking for down plane. I guess he was a 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:06.919 search and rescue guy. Hey, I think he was just 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:10.880 helping out maybe a similar pre civil air patrol. It 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:13.720 was or right around the time that it started, Okay, 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:15.279 but even still, I think he was just being like 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:17.680 a good samaritan. He had his own plane and was 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:21.520 helping like and he saw and this is a quote, 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:26.760 uh nine saucer like things flying like geese in a 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:31.760 diagonal chain like line, and estimated the speed of these 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:36.320 uh saucer geese to be twelve hundred miles per right, 0:05:36.520 --> 0:05:39.280 which really is pretty funny. Well, at the time he 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:41.800 must have been going probably about fifty miles per hour 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:47.279 in his old little prop plane. UM. So part that 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:50.160 was really saying something you wouldn't hardly be able to 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:52.960 see it, I would think, so he he lodges this 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:57.440 report and um, within just a few hours, this is what. 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:00.680 I don't know how this happened, but within a few hours, 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:04.040 the Associated Prescott wind of this. Yeah. The AP is 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.640 a wire service, which means like they do the reporting 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.160 and they send it out to newspapers for syndication, and 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:14.120 newspapers just print what the AP wrote all over the country. 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.000 So the AP picking it up made it national news 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:21.760 almost the same day, basically that this man had seen something. 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:25.200 And in this AP report, the writer coined the term 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:29.120 flying saucers. Yeah, because Kenneth Arnold had called them saucer 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:32.760 like things that we're flying, and he went, let me 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:36.200 just rearrange this in a way that's a little more 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:41.200 gravy flying what flying? What he saw a saucer geese 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:45.719 like goscer geese. Flying saucers worked, And it was a 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:49.719 big deal, and all of a sudden, everyone starts seeing, Um, 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:52.320 we didn't call him UFOs yet. Just keep your pants on, 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:56.479 we'll get there flying saucers, flying saucers or flying discs. Right. 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:00.480 There was even in the San Francisco Chronicle headline that 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:05.120 said flying saucer seen in most states. Now, so that 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:10.520 headline was printed on July seven. Kenneth Arnold saw his 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:16.080 sighting on June, a couple of weeks at tops and 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:19.640 within that time, like so many reports happen that basically 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:23.360 every state had I had a report of a flying saucer. 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:27.480 Now pretty amazing. It was like a floodgate opened. Yeah, 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:29.760 which if you're in the United States Air Force at 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:34.400 the time, is problematic because they were in charge of 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:37.760 security for for anything not on the ground in the 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:40.400 United States. Yeah, the air space. Yeah, I guess I 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:44.120 could count the sea and that's the Navy. So yeah, 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:45.920 I was trying to say it in a more clever way, 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:51.280 but I think they're there, Yeah, you're airspace, and like, 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:53.680 what are we gonna do here? Uh? Is this a 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:56.480 threat to America? Like do we need to start legitimately 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:59.960 investigating this stuff? Right after Pearl Harbor, the Cold War 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:02.360 is starting to heat up a little bit and people 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.000 are freaked out and we need to see what's going 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:07.880 on at least. Yeah, people were a little jittery, yeah 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:12.120 over that in that decade in particular, So the Air 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:15.720 Force does decide that it needs to do something, um, 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.000 especially at the behest of a guy named Lieutenant General 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:23.600 Nathan Twining, who was the commander of Air Material Command, 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:27.480 and he wrote a memo titled Flying Discs, and he 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:30.120 basically said, we need to figure out what is the 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.040 deal with all this because these reports that are coming 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:37.440 in are describing things that shouldn't be possible. So let's 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:41.080 look into this. And he had enough clout that a project, 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.880 an Air Force project was created named Projects Sign. Yeah. 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:48.880 This is the first of what will be several projects 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:54.120 which culminated in you know, I think the final one 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:56.400 was just shut down like six or seven years ago, 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:01.640 like officially well twelve. I don't know if it's technically 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:05.480 related to SIGN, but it followed in the mean, I mean, 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:10.360 just projects investigating UFOs by the US government. Yes, like 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:14.360 officially designated investigations. Yeah, that the one you're referring to 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:18.120 was supposedly shut down in two twelve, but some claim 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:21.200 it was never really shut down, as it's usually the case. 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:25.360 So this project Signed technically was originally called Projects Saucer. 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:28.720 Not bad, It's okay. I like projects Signed cooler or more? 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:32.480 It sounds cooler. Um, yeah, don't you think it sounds 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:35.160 very mysterious? Well, yeah, I'll give you that. What is 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:37.880 it related to it's not as good as the next one, 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:40.720 but we'll look at that. Okay. So Projects Signed is 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:45.080 associated with right Patterson Air Force Base. It's assigned to it. 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:47.520 The project is run out of right Field at the time, 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:51.000 outside of Dayton. And if you're a u fologist, you 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:53.200 would say, well, of course it's right Patterson. That's where 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:56.640 they reverse engineer all the alien technology. So of course 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:59.520 that's where they would investigate it. And they actually do 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:05.480 reverse engineer technology at right Patterson Air Force Base. Then 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:08.040 they have since like World War One when a down 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:11.840 German biplane was captured and they took it to Dayton 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:14.240 and said, figure out how this works. That's a really 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:18.800 interesting job. And project sure, I think reverse engineering stuff 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.200 because it's basically copying. I mean I get why they 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:24.760 call it reverse engineering because you're starting at the end 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:28.200 and going backwards. But just to be handed like here 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:32.080 is an enemy, um whatever, it could be a weaponto 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:35.959 yeah whatever, and say, just figure out how it works 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:38.200 so we can build one if we want to, or 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:40.000 if it's not worth our time, then at least we 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:42.640 know how it works exactly, or we can come up 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:45.160 with measures to counteract it, or yeah, how can we 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:48.120 destroy this or copy this? What kind of potatoes are 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:51.000 they using in there? Those new potatoes, they'll put a 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:56.360 hole right through you new potato caboose? Oh yeah, that man? 0:10:56.720 --> 0:10:58.480 Was that a real band? Or when you made up? 0:10:58.480 --> 0:10:59.960 I can't remember it was real. It's like a little 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:04.400 hipie shake Ban's right. So, uh, the long and short 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:07.840 of it is anytime right. Patterson has mentioned that's when 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:10.360 the you know, who's the one guy that everyone the 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:14.520 meme always posts Aliens man? The other guy from Ancient Aliens? 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:17.240 Is that what it was from which I knew his name? 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:18.840 Do you remember? That's one of the first things that 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:21.599 Aaron Cooper did of us? Oh really was us? Is 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:24.480 the Ancient Aliens guy? One of the first stuff you 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:29.080 should know? Meme copies after Van Nostran's era ended. After 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:33.480 Van Nostran's Reign of Terror, Cooper picked up the thread, 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:36.760 so it might say bean Nostrans continues today his reign 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:41.800 of terror. Yeah, just not photoshop based. So um yeah, 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:43.840 if it's right, Patterson, then people are gonna think there's 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:46.599 something going on there. And like you said, there was 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.600 a lot going on there, including very secret projects that 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:52.480 are still going on there. I supposedly that's where they 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:56.599 took the Roswell UH flying saucer, which also happened in 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:00.079 n A lot of people connect those dots, but it 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:04.240 apparently Roswell and the crash and aliens didn't really become 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:08.440 part of like cultural consciousness until the eighties. UM. Anyway, 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:13.160 So and so Project Signs going on, and in a 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:16.800 year after or the following year after Kenneth Arnold first 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:20.600 had a sighting UM, they released a document called the 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:23.480 Estimate of the Situation. And this is these are Air 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:27.480 Force personnel working on Project Signs, okay, and they get 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:31.559 together and they say, you know what, UM, we don't 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:35.520 think that based on some of these these UM, these 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:40.400 sightings and in particular what we consider very credible witnesses 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:45.360 describing very incredible things, that that they have any kind 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:50.040 of origin in US or even USSR technology, and there's 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:54.160 a possibility that these are extraterrestrial in origin. And that 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:57.360 was the basis of this estimate of the situation that 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:01.000 they handed off to UH Air Force, the Air Force Brass, 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:03.760 and the Air Force Brass said, are you out of 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:06.640 your mind? So in the end, the report basically said 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:10.600 we can neither confirm nor deny the very famous line 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:14.040 that everyone uses these days, which basically means there's something 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:17.760 going on. Yes, but remember we we found the place 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:22.320 where that first was cool the Glomar Explorer, right, and 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:24.480 that wasn't until the sixties. So I think this is 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:29.360 somebody using an anachronism here. Yeah, I mean, I don't 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:31.320 think it necessarily said that in the report, but that 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:34.000 was the upshot. Basically they just said it with different 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:38.880 words back then. So, um, here's the deal. Though, there 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:40.840 were a lot of people that worked on this thing 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.520 that uh would have probably confirmed. It was kind of 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:47.720 split between people like, maybe there's something going on here 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:50.960 and people that just didn't think so and probably didn't 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:52.440 want to deal with it. Yeah. I didn't have a 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:55.079 sense of just how evenly split it was, but there 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:57.640 were definitely people working on the projects who said they're 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:01.640 extraterrestrial in origin and other people who said, no, there's 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:04.880 we just don't understand it. The Air Force brass like 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:07.280 I said, said, are you guys crazy? You actually made 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:10.560 this document and got their hands on all the copies, 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:13.040 destroyed them all And as a matter of fact, the 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:15.320 Air Force has always denied that the estimate of the 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:19.080 situation ever existed, and that any understanding that it did 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:22.640 exist came from people who did work on Project sign 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:24.560 who said, no, this, this did exist, and this is 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:27.400 what it said, and this is the reaction it got. Yeah, 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:29.400 it's kind of hard not to like because we're both 0:14:29.440 --> 0:14:32.560 fairly skeptical, but it's hard not to go down that 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:36.040 conspiracy trail a little bit. Yeah, when you hear stuff 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:39.920 like that report never existed and people that worked on 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:42.520 it like, no, it totally existed, and here's what it said, 0:14:42.800 --> 0:14:45.320 here's what it was called. And you know, they just 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:48.960 basically incenterate the thing. You had a copy, I saw 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:52.280 you made the little flower doodles on it. It's hard 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:54.000 enough to go down that road, it really is. And 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:55.760 that's kind of part of the problem with all this 0:14:55.840 --> 0:15:00.720 is because there's this um you know, this huge, massive 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:06.560 public um viewing of all of this stuff, reports, suggestions, 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:08.920 it becomes a thing, and at the same time, as 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:12.760 we'll see, the government is simultaneously investigating it and then 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:16.640 denying it, and it created kind of a weird headlock 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:19.800 on on the nation's psyche. Yeah, so there was one 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:24.840 um sighting in Project Signs book and report that doesn't 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:29.400 exist that most everyone was like pretty impressed by. And 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:34.600 that was the uh chills or chillis Childs why did 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:39.200 witted witted? I'm going with childs witted the child's witted 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:42.240 UFO encounter. And that was an Alabama in July of 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:46.280 And this is the beginning of what you will see 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:49.480 as a recurring thing where it's not you know, the 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:53.560 drunk farmer in the field or the college students students partying, 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:57.400 you know in a cul de sac. It's like military 0:15:57.400 --> 0:16:00.480 pilots or airline pilots, like people that are trained to 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:04.840 understand aviation and know what doesn't look right. Uh. And 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:08.440 this one was to Eastern Airlines pilots. Uh. They were 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.160 flying a d C three and they said they nearly 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:15.280 collided with um. And here's the quote a strange torpedo 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:18.160 shape plying object that looked like quote one of those 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:22.280 fantastic flash Gordon rocket ships in the funny papers. It 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:25.720 didn't really help the legitimacy, but the fact that these 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:27.720 guys described it, that they were so bread at the time, 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:30.000 that they were both trained commercial pilots, it really did 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:32.480 impress a lot of people working on sign and it 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:34.840 did kind of give them this confidence that there may 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.680 be something going on that we don't understand here and 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:40.240 we need to investigate this. Right But for the Air 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:44.320 Forces part General hoyit Vandenburg said no physical evidence, no 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:48.640 case exactly, and and he's the one who allegedly ordered 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:52.280 all of the copies of the estimate destroyed, and he 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:57.720 also basically ordered from on high, look, all of this 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:02.680 can be explained something them how, some way, using our 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:07.119 current understanding of science, go make that happen. It's what 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:11.359 came to be known as the conventional explanation paradigm, which 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:14.919 I put this together long enough ago now that I 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:17.080 can't remember if that's an actual thing or if I 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:21.119 coin that. Oh the EP. Yes, it sounds official to me. 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:22.879 It does when you say it that way. But I 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:26.880 also have a very dry style, so it's entirely possible 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:29.960 I came up with that. But that is there are 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:33.400 three things, basically three causes of why somebody might think 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:37.440 they have seen a alien ship under the c EP 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:41.959 under the EP mass hysteria and hallucination, which is what 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:45.800 you think, dogs and cats, hoax, which is that's super 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:49.080 easy to believe that someone Plenty of those have happened. 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:54.240 You remember crop circles. Uh. And then misinterpretation of known objects, 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:57.400 which is a very big bucket that you can toss 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:00.760 things into if you're the military. Yeah, because there's a 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:04.040 lot of weather phenomenon or celestial phenomenon and you can 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:06.239 just make stuff up and say they were looking at 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.520 this rubber bands? What it was rubber bands? How are 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.000 you going to prove otherwise? You'll note, though, in all 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:15.639 three of those explanations, there are none of them say 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:21.639 extraterrestrials or even secret unknown technology, right, because that's not 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:26.560 conventional or an explanation. While it is an explanation, but 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:29.280 it's not conventional, but it doesn't fit the paradigm. It 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:32.119 does not Uh. And then they actually worked with the 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:35.840 Saturday Evening post Um which everybody was reading at the time, 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:39.080 and they did a two part article which debunked flying saucers. 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:43.480 And this was sort of the beginning of um kind 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:45.800 of like a not kind of like very much a 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:51.160 pr campaign to debunk flying saucers. Should you take a break? 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:53.280 I think we should chuck. We've reached the break part. 0:18:53.680 --> 0:19:21.679 All right, We'll move on to Project Grudge right after this. Okay, 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:24.560 So here's the thing though, the Air Force, even if 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:28.480 they really genuinely were like, no, man, there's no such 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:31.800 thing as aliens. Whatever this is, it's just it's just 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:35.120 Americans being freaked out about the Cold War. Okay, let's 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:37.440 just call it that. This is the Air Force brass talking. 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:41.000 I'm doing my best impression of them. Um. They still 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:43.600 needed to investigate him, because the Air Force is charged 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:47.960 with protecting US airspace and there are reports coming in 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:51.119 on a daily basis from all over the country of 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:57.119 unidentified objects flying saucers flying through American airspace. So they 0:19:57.160 --> 0:20:01.719 still needed to investigate this. But the Air Force decided 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:04.760 they could investigate it on their own terms, and so 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:09.560 Projects sign was dissolved and replaced by what this is 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:14.240 your favorite name for Project Grudge, which is named so 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:16.960 exactly why, you think, because they didn't want to be 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:19.720 messing with this stuff, they should have called it Project 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:24.800 Uh are you freaking kidding me? Are you joking right now? 0:20:24.920 --> 0:20:29.120 I gotta do what do you hear yourself? Um? Yeah, 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:30.720 that was a sort of That was the attitude in 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:32.399 the Air Force at the time. You didn't want to 0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:35.919 get assigned. There might have been like one person that 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:38.040 was super into it. I think they were a handful, 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:41.199 but generally you didn't go into the Air Force to 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:43.320 do this, and you were probably irked if you were 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:46.560 assigned this duty. Yeah. I got the impression that this 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:50.159 was something like being stationed in Greenland or Siberia or 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:54.399 Alaska or something like that. Probably not Siberia. That Greenland's nice. No, 0:20:54.520 --> 0:21:00.679 it's not. Alaska's lovely, okay, depending on all right, uninhabited Canada, Oh, okay, 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:04.280 can it is great? Anyway, I got the impresson this 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:06.640 is like a backwater assignment where if you ticked off 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:09.760 your your commanding officer, that's they would put you on 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:13.240 Project Oh you should have said South Georgia. Okay, yes, 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:18.960 the worst place in the world. So uh yeah. You 0:21:19.040 --> 0:21:22.440 call this the Dark Ages of Air Force UFO investigation 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:28.960 because Project Grudge was um the basic tenant there was. 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:33.120 We're here to debunk these claims, not so much investigate, 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:37.080 but just a debunk. Right, Not only do these have 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:40.000 some sort of conventional explanation, even when they seem like 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:42.520 we don't they don't, We're still going to give them 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:45.600 a conventional explanation because that's it. Because these are not 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:49.960 extraterrestrials and we're sick of this s word. Yes, that's 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:53.159 what the Air Force said, that's right. Uh. And one 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:56.879 of the people they hired as a civilian scientist consultant 0:21:56.920 --> 0:22:00.520 was a man named very important figure in this whole story, 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:05.880 j Allen Heinek from the Ohio State University. You did that, huh? 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:08.800 And he is a prominent astronomer. Does that make you 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:13.399 mad a little bit? I'm not sure why either, but 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:18.760 it does. Uh. He was a prominent astronomer and he 0:22:18.840 --> 0:22:23.760 was recruited specifically to be chief of debunker And that's 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:26.840 how we saw his role for sure too, especially initially, 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:31.199 so he was a UFO skeptic UM to him, he 0:22:31.240 --> 0:22:33.640 really kind of fell in line with that mentality that 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:37.600 everything could be explained as a hoax or a misunderstanding 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:42.600 or a misidentification. UM. But he was also a scientist 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:45.360 in his you know core. Yeah, he was a very 0:22:45.400 --> 0:22:50.200 well respected astronomer, and he believed that this should still 0:22:50.440 --> 0:22:56.639 be investigated, especially cases where somebody who was like a 0:22:56.640 --> 0:23:00.840 trained pilot or an astronomer or a meteorologist or somebody 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:05.359 had seen something um and and reported it and that 0:23:05.480 --> 0:23:11.199 it seemed incredible. Those incredible sightings by incredible people that 0:23:11.280 --> 0:23:14.080 was kind of the confounding thread that wound through these 0:23:14.119 --> 0:23:17.840 decades of investigation of UFOs. Yeah, and the other thing 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:20.240 too that you gotta remember about Heineck was he was 0:23:20.560 --> 0:23:24.400 very much the face of this debunking and uh, it's 0:23:24.440 --> 0:23:27.200 a role that he would grow to loathe over the years, 0:23:27.800 --> 0:23:30.280 to say the least, because we'll get to some of 0:23:30.359 --> 0:23:33.000 the more ridiculous explanations. He was the one that had 0:23:33.040 --> 0:23:35.800 to pare it the stuff out. Yeah, you know, they'd 0:23:35.840 --> 0:23:37.399 shove him out there, would be like, I don't know, 0:23:37.400 --> 0:23:39.199 and then all of a sudden realized there were cameras 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:43.399 in his face and he'd say, yo, everyone. That's what 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:46.119 he was famous for, was that his intro linue. That's 0:23:46.119 --> 0:23:49.760 how it started every press conference. So one of his 0:23:50.040 --> 0:23:52.760