WEBVTT - Alien Abduction Experience, Part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:14.280 Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:16.919 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Seger. 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:20.159 And this is the second part of our episodes on 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:23.079 alien abduction. Now, if you haven't listened to the first part, 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:25.280 I highly recommend you go back and listen to that. 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:28.360 That's where we really established the grounding for what we're 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:32.479 talking about here. What is the common narrative surrounding alien 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:35.960 abductions and then what is the more common sort of 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:39.280 scientific explanation for what's going on. We looked at false 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:43.800 memory and plantation. We talked about ideas surrounding sleep paralysis, 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:46.000 things like that. This episode is going to be more 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:50.400 focused on the cultural fabric surrounding the twentie century and 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:53.280 how it kind of led us to this experience really 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.480 being popular between the sixties leading up to the nineties 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:59.080 and then kind of fading out after that. Yeah, and 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:02.960 this is a yeah, this this is a really chewy 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:06.920 part of this, uh, this exploration of of alien abduction, 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:09.000 Because on one hand, if you're looking at it from 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:11.479 a purely skeptical point of view and saying, yes, this 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:15.440 is just uh, you know phenomena occurring within the brain. 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.319 This is the memory, false memories and memory distortions. Then 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:21.480 you still have to say, well, how does this narrative 0:01:21.480 --> 0:01:25.039 get stitched together? Where does this ultimately absurd narrative come 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:29.600 together of these sort of embryonic creatures arriving and flying 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:33.080 ships and uh in sticking probes into our bodies? Like 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:34.920 where does this come from? And what does it say 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:37.679 about the culture from which it emerges? And even if 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:41.720 you're not skeptical on all of this, if you're more 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:45.040 of a believer, like even some of the believers, uh, 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:50.160 you know, voice their concerns about about the various cultural 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:56.400 and media elements that could be coloring alleged actual abduction experiences. 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:59.360 There's like a weird feedback loop going on, which came 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:02.800 first the alien abduction or the science fiction after it? 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:05.800 And then you know what I kept thinking of was 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:07.840 that they they talk about how this really started in 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:10.320 the forties, right, And then I was thinking about the 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:13.639 nineteen fifties was really that big boom in comic books 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:17.520 for like science fiction e horror kind of comics where 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:21.040 like Mars attacks style aliens would come there earth, right, 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:24.680 and like have like, uh, what those like weird ray guns, 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:28.000 you know, stuff like that. Science fiction was exploding and 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:30.680 and and also this this rap That's one of the 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:33.679 big things I think is that the twentieth century is 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:36.639 the ground from which all of this emerges, and it's 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:41.280 a time of just such rapid advancement technological advancement, like 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:43.560 this is the this is the the century in which 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:47.040 humans split the atom. Uh, this is this century where 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:51.720 the distances between the various corners of the earth shrank 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:56.800 and the advent of of of transportation, technology, mass communication 0:02:57.360 --> 0:02:59.520 uh comes together. And then it's it's also just a 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:03.480 time of enormous social change. And as we all know, 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.320 like when there's enormous social changes that that's occurring, you know, 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:11.440 rather swiftly. Uh. This this creates um, This can create anxiety, 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:14.919 this can create this certainly creates hope. But it's going 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.200 to have a cultural effect on people as they're trying 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:21.399 to come to terms with what the world is doing 0:03:21.400 --> 0:03:23.399 and what the world is becoming and how they fit 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:27.560 into that world. Right. And the way that these cultural 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:31.120 effects seem to be taking places through what we referred 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:35.120 to briefly in the last episode as false memories, Right, 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:37.440 This is the terminology that's being used to describe this. 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:43.120 Psychologists believe these stories, they're they're distorting things like childhood 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.960 memories where an alien is standing in for a person 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:50.240 who abused the the abductee. Right. But then this has 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:53.880 been countered by abductee as you say, well I never 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:57.880 experienced child abuse, right, And then you've got false memory 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:02.000 implantation as an idea that it's not that you're remembering 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:06.600 something that didn't happen, it's that during the the therapy 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:08.880 session in which you were trying to figure out what happened, 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:13.920 somebody accidentally implanted a false memory. There. It's that easy. Yeah. Now, 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:17.440 one of the possible explanations that I I I'm not 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:20.479 saying i'd buy into this. I think it's an interesting 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:25.480 read on what could be occurring. This comes from psychologist 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:29.120 Frederick the Malmstrom. Yeah. So, in in this theory that's 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:32.880 presented by Melmstrom, the abductees are remembering their births and 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:37.120 the spaceship that they're seeing is actually a symbol of 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:40.240 their mother's birth canal. Now again, here's another one that's 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:43.480 been refuted by abductees because they say, well, I want 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:47.000 under a cesarean birth, So how would I possibly remember 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:49.080 the birth canal? Why would you possibly have any trauma 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:52.039 about that? Yeah? Exactly. You know who would have loved 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:57.360 this theory? Huh giga, Yeah, yes, very much so. But 0:04:57.360 --> 0:04:59.039 but you know, when you break down the science of it, 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:01.200 I think it has a lot going forward because you 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.840 have to consider newborns have limited visual capabilities. They can't 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:08.320 see very far or in very much detail, and color 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:14.159 distinctions barely register. So this stigmatism smears the images that 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:16.440 they behold. So what do they see when they look 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:18.800 at their mom's face. They see two large, dark eyes 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:21.840 and an otherwise blurred and colorless face. So you can 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:24.680 make the argument that when that you know that that cooing, 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:27.440 wide eyed baby is looking up at you, mom or 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:32.160 dad or anybody getting caregiver, they're seeing a gray alien 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:35.400 staring down at them. And so the argument here is 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:39.479 the other we're we're drawing on that that old memory, 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:43.120 that's that's sort of rising to the surface. Uh, perhaps 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:45.400 in combination with any number of the scenarios that we 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:48.560 discussed in part one, something to remember the next time, 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:50.400 like a friend or a co worker brings in a 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.960 newborn and everybody just huddles around that newborn and just 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:56.160 you know, gets right on top of it in its 0:05:56.200 --> 0:06:02.400 personal space. You are potentially creating a future alien abductee experience. Yeah, 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:05.080 that kid's gonna end up just being addicted to XCOM 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:09.520 based on what he experienced here today. But actually getting 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:12.880 into the false memory implantation aspect here, it's important to 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:16.800 recognize that hypnotherapists that are involved in this, they're actually 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:19.080 earnest about their desire to help a patient. I think 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:21.359 it's really easy for us to say, like either or 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:25.640 the patients lying or the hypnotherapist is like maliciously manipulating them. Right, 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:28.840 that doesn't seem to be the case. But experimental psychology 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:32.800 is shown that it's actually relatively easy to implant false 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:37.240 memories in an individual's mind, and in the study, researchers 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:40.200 were able to implant false memories of getting lost in 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:43.760 a shopping mall in participants. Another two thousand and one 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:47.520 study showed that even when events were unlikely, for instance, 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:51.719 an abduction by aliens, they can be implanted as false memories. 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:57.240 Suggestive information presented to the participants can actually increase the 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:01.120 plausibility of us Supposedly imply possible event to them. And 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:04.440 this was further shown in a two thousand nine study 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:08.279 by Utgar, Candele, and merkel Bach oh and also Wade 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.880 for four authors there, and they showed that you can 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:16.800 implant false memories of alien abduction by paying special attention 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:21.320 to the way that participants described the event during an interview. 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:23.920 And what they would do is they this also seems 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:28.480 crazy to me. Uh. They used children as participants, and 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:31.680 I wrote in the notes what they would take kids, 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:35.400 and they showed them the event during an interview. They 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:38.520 showed them these fake newspaper articles and that would allow 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:42.440 them to implant memories of alien abduction being a thing. 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:45.960 Then the kids, these were seven to twelve year olds, 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.520 and thirty three percent of them developed false memories during 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:53.119 the first interview. Then they did a secondary interview, another 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:57.200 six percent developed false memories. The younger children were more 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:00.520 likely to develop false memories and the older chidren were 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:04.400 But then get this, children were equally likely to develop 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:08.240 a false memory about alien abduction as they were to 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.880 develop a false memory about choking on candy. So they 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:14.320 had a control group where they were trying to also 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:18.360 implant memories of them choking on candy It worked the 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:22.880 same way, so the unlikelihood didn't seem to be a factor. 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:24.440 Why do you have to just throw in from my 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:28.600 own experience that the memories of small children. It's strange 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:31.800 because I'll take my my my son to school, pick 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:33.920 him up, and I'll say, hey, what what do you 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:36.120 do today? I don't know, I don't remember, like just 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:38.160 note and then he'll say, hey, do you remember that 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:41.680 dead spider we found like three years ago? You know, 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:44.280 bring up this this this minute memories like why are 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:45.719 you believe? Why do you remember that? Why are you 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:48.920 remembering it now? And then there's also there also be 0:08:49.000 --> 0:08:51.920 there also incidents where there will there will be false memories. 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:55.520 Either it will be something that he doesn't remember but 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:57.600 we have told him about, and then he ends up 0:08:57.880 --> 0:08:59.719 he thinks he has a memory of it, or will 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:01.800 be some thing that he just kind of completely fabric 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:04.360 like he knows it happened, and then he has a 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:06.600 memory that he's put together off it. And I think 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:08.959 if we, if each of us thinks back to our 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:13.080 earliest memories, we run into that that situation. You have 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:16.079 to ask yourself, is this something that I actually remember happening? 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:19.240 Is this something that my parents told me about, and 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.040 I'm kind of I've made a memory out of being 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.080 told what I should have experienced. Yeah, I've been thinking 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:28.800 about this lately. Um, My sister's grandfather in law just 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:32.319 passed away, and she's been trying to explain to her 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:35.400 three year old son they live in that they lived 0:09:35.400 --> 0:09:38.000 in the house with her grandfather in law, and she's 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:41.160 trying to explain to her son where papa went. And 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:44.600 he's three. He doesn't have an understanding of the difference 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:47.800 between life and death, right, he's still struggling with that concept. 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:53.160 So she says to him, Papa is in heaven. Now, um, 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:56.080 you know that it gives him an idea of like, Okay, 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:59.400 there's this physical place called heaven that that he went to. 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:02.360 I'll see him again there or something like that, right, 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:05.800 And but she's having a really hard time with it. 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:08.160 And then he'll he'll occasionally like walk in the living 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:10.400 room and be like, where's Papa, And then he'll go, 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:13.640 He'll he'll self correct and he'll go, oh, wait, that's right, 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:16.840 He's in heaven. And then just kind of, you know, 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:20.560 trod on and keep doing his little kids stuff, and uh, 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:25.040 it keeps making me think, like, well, from my experience, 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:27.240 I don't really retain any memories from that age, But 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:30.120 is this something that he's going to remember later on 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:32.520 in his teenage years and he'll be like, oh, yeah, 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:36.480 like I had this firmly embedded idea of heaven as 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:40.760 a as a place on earth kind of intended. Well, 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:43.720 you know, I actually I know somebody who had you know, 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:46.960 similar everybody has situations I think where and I'll remember 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:49.240 the family dies while the child is too younger really understood, 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:51.360 and so they told him all of that, you know 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:53.520 this individuals in the sky now, like he went to 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:56.400 the sky. But I think it ended, if I remember correctly, 0:10:56.440 --> 0:10:58.480 it ended up making the child a little afraid, more 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:00.679 afraid of roller coasters because they did not want to 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:02.760 go into the sky. That this guy was like where 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:09.000 everybody who had died? So creepy idea. Yeah, well, alright, 0:11:09.040 --> 0:11:12.000 So all of this stuff leads scientists to the conclusion 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:15.959 that the improbability of an event isn't actually a leading 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:20.520 factor in false memory implantation success. And this leads us 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:23.200 back to good old McNally and Clancy, who we talked 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:26.560 about a lot last episode. They researched memory function in 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:30.880 women who believed they had recovered memories of childhood's sexual abuse, 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:34.600 and they actually found that such victims were more likely 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:38.920 to create false memories of non traumatic events when they 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:42.720 were visiting in the laboratory then women who had always 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:47.160 remembered being sexually abused or women who had never been abused. 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:51.480 So to study this further without unethically inserting false memories 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:54.280 of trauma into people, this is why they got into 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:57.760 the alien abductee study business. So they said, let's amass 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:01.680 a group of people who have these memories but that 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:05.080 they're unlikely to have actually occurred. Uh. And I want 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:07.640 to note here to very little of the research on 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:13.200 alien abductions actually focuses on the practice of the hypnotherapy itself. 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:16.440 Um So the like broader review of all this stuff 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.320 essentially recommends, look, we need to do further research until 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:24.360 the dynamics of hypnotherapy before we really understand the full 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:28.240 parameters of what's happening here now. In part one of 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:30.559 this two partner on alien abduction, we we talked a 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:34.280 good bit about media scripts cultural scripts, the idea that 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:40.480 when something strange occurs, you have these pre existing narratives 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.400 to draw upon to explain it, be it something to 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:48.000 be you know, magical ferries or ghosts or alien abduction, 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:52.080 and uh, there's a there's actually an interesting argument here that, like, 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:54.400 it's easy to get lost in the space age sci 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:57.120 fi aspects of alien abduction and think, well, this is 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:00.920 something wholly new. This is something that they just you know, 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:03.280 appears in the wake of the Second World War and 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:07.640 becomes the new cultural script for paranormal experience. But it 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:09.920 has a lot in common with older models as well. 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:12.760 And this is explored in a in an article titled 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:14.960 He's making me feel things in my body that I 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:19.080 don't feel. This is by Patricia Felicia Barbado and it 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:22.199 was published in the Journal of American Culture the subtitle 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:26.080 The Body as Battleground in Accounts of Alien Abduction. So 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:30.520 she makes the case that the late twentieth century alien 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:35.959 abduction stories essentially powered by the seventeenth through nineteenth century 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:41.199 American obsession with the Native American captivity narrative. So, I 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:43.040 don't know if everyone's familiar with this. If you've watched 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:44.840 a lot of Westerns, you may have come across this, 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:48.480 And certainly if you've if you've studied history. I imagine 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:50.720 this has come up on stuff you missed in history 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:55.920 class o our sister podcast, Uh here at how stuff works. 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:00.360 But basically, you had you had these these in students 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:04.120 where and then the resulting tales and of course fictionalizations 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:08.360 in many cases where a Caucasian woman was abducted and 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:12.319 brutalized by by Native American tribes and in many cases 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:16.680 absorbed irreversibly into their culture. I want to say this 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:20.520 comes up in the the the John Wayne movie The Searchers. 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:24.080 I've never seen The Searchers, but I immediately jumped to 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:26.520 a more recent movie Bone Tomahawk, which you and I 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:29.800 both sort of enjoyed. Yeah, that plays on a similar narrative, 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:32.840 the idea that the you know, the the cultural other, 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:35.840 the barbaric cultural other, has come and taken someone away. 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:39.360 And there's a lot of fictionalization there. But of course 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.800 there were incidents of of things like this occurring, and 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.520 then there were the the the idea of reclaiming someone 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:48.280 from that ended up being far more problematic because either 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:52.560 they were irreversibly assimilated into that culture to varying degrees, 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:55.080 or there was just there was at the very least 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:57.920 a lot of trauma had taken place. Uh maybe the 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:01.280 most like popular film that people would be familiar with 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:04.040 that that that this trope showed up in his Dances 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:10.040 with Wolves, because, um is Mary McCormick. Her character his Caucasian, 0:15:10.320 --> 0:15:12.720 and she's been living with a native tribe since she 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.880 was a kid, like basically raised among them. Yeah, okay, 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:18.440 so I either haven't seen her, it's been so long 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:20.160 that I don't remember anything about it. But yeah, I 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:22.200 think that that very much plays on it. And the 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:24.720 thing is that these there were accounts of these abductions 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:28.080 published in the thousands, so this is like the Boogeyman 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:30.520 of that time. Yeah, yeah, it was everywhere. And um 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:32.840 so the idea here is the captive woman in these 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:35.680 accounts serves as a kind of physical battleground for the 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:39.520 premise of noble white superiority over the you know, the 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:43.880 dark savage tribal other from beyond the frontier. So the 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:48.280 racist boundary here only exists artificially, of course, but the 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:52.120 captivity experience tears apart the fiction in no time. Yeah. 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:55.440 So here's what Barbados has to say. Quote. But while 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:59.480 accounts of alien abduction present us with stark racial, spatial 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:03.480 and culture world differences human and alien, Earth and outer space, 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:07.960 technology and nature that are reminiscent of Indian captivity narrative. 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:10.560 They do so only to turn our attention to the 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:15.280 way that the captive's body completely fails to impose boundaries 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:19.320 between them. It's interesting like that, like we used to 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.680 other human beings that were from different cultures, and then 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:27.360 we hit this point in the twentieth century where I mean, 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:29.440 it's not to say that we don't demonize other people, 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:33.480 because we certainly still do, but that we became sort 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:35.520 of more of a you know what if you want 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:39.240 to call it global village enough that you could sympathize 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:42.320 with most other cultures, so then the other ing had 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:46.440 to turn into something outside of Earth. Yeah. So I 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:49.480 mean that's that's just one one example of the kind 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:53.200 of like deep cultural and analyzes that that they can 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:56.520 and do take place concerning the alien aductive narrative, like 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:58.160 not only where does it come from, but why does 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:01.720 it have so much so much power over us? I mean, 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:03.800 you get into this a lot with with fiction, right 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:07.119 where you have like revenge tales. Revenge tails have always 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:10.600 been popular. The revenge tale itself hasn't really changed, but 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:13.640 it we just continually update it for our our modern 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:18.640 our modern world and whatever the latest technological or cultural 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:20.760 trend happens to be. Yeah, this is true. I think 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:23.800 you could probably like look at any year's worth of 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:26.439 films and you can like drop a pin and be like, Okay, 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:30.119 there's the revenge tail of the year, right, Like I 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:33.000 guess this year's would be like Atomic Blonde. Yeah. I 0:17:33.000 --> 0:17:35.520 haven't seen it yet, but but it just me I 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:37.840 want to see a like a version of The Searchers 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:41.639 with alien abduction, but not cowboys versus aliens. Something I 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:44.520 think you. I think you just like like opened up 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:47.600 a bank account for somebody in Hollywood. All right, Well, 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:49.159 on that note, let's take a break and when we 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:53.000 come back, we will we'll dive deeper into the angst 0:17:53.000 --> 0:18:00.640 of the twentieth century. All right, we're back. So there's 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:04.399 this twenty sixteen Boston Globe article that had a really 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:08.200 interesting take on the alien abduction phenomena, and it found 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:12.560 the following themes were essentially social currents that all fed 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:17.440 into alien abductions over the last few decades. The first 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:21.560 one we already mentioned space exploration in the fifties and sixties. 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.760 Then you've got the Cold War that's inspiring a fear 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:28.720 of invasions. You get stuff like invasion of the body snatchers, etcetera. 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:32.560 And then out of body experiences that we were having, 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:35.640 whether it be from mysticism or from drugs. Oh yeah, 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:37.720 I mean when you factor in the rise of the 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:40.959 counterculture movement and psychedelic experience on top of all of 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:45.280 this totally, and then the nineteen eighties fear of strangers. 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:46.919 And this is something that was easy for me to 0:18:46.960 --> 0:18:49.040 forget because you know, we grew up in the eighties, 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:53.680 but obviously it wasn't like that before then, right there. Uh, 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:56.480 But there were so many stories about child abduction and 0:18:56.520 --> 0:18:59.679 sexual molestation being reported in the news that this became 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:02.720 like a common cultural narrative. So you get all four 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:05.760 of those together, you you, you know, stir them up 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:07.879 in a pot together, and you get a perfect brew 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:12.280 for alien abduction stories. Now here's an interesting thing again, 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:15.120 X Files fan over here. I didn't know this. Apparently 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:18.960 Chris Carter was at San Diego Comic Con one year. 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:20.879 Chris Carter is the guy who was the showrunner and 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:23.399 creator of The X Files and he said, you know 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:26.280 why the show stopped working, It was because of nine eleven, 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:30.040 And he said the mood wasn't right anymore, that like 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:33.800 there was something about nine eleven that made the like 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:38.320 the magic of the X Files stick that was gone. 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:41.399 I don't know, I've watched a lot of X Files. 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:43.480 I think the show would pretty much petered out. Well, yeah, 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:48.800 it's not like we we abandoned magical the narratives after exactly. Mean, 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:52.160 certainly there was probably more of a mean, did did 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:54.480 stuff like uh, what was it twenty four? Did that 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:57.359 come out post nine level? Yeah? I'm pretty sure. So 0:19:57.359 --> 0:19:58.679 maybe there was. I could see where there was an 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:03.439 opening for for stories that sort of you know, delivered 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:05.600 the type of content that might resonate more in the 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:08.120 wake of nine eleven. But certainly we still were into aliens, 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:10.440 were still into ghosts, and I mean all the ghost 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:12.680 Hunter shows seemed to have come sprung up in the 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:16.080 wake of very much. Did you ever watch that show Fringe? 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:18.560 I I watched a little of it. It looked it 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:20.160 was one of those shows that that looked really cool, 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:22.160 but I just didn't get hooked in it. It was fun. 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:24.480 It took me a while to like really get cemented 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:26.920 into it. But once I'd say, like after the second season, 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:30.560 I was like a die hard follower of it. But um, 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:35.040 that show did a good job of taking nine eleven's 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:40.200 trauma and mixing it in with the like general paranormal 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:43.879 stuff that the X Files was playing around with. Yeah. Um, 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:46.160 And I think that that is probably part of why 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:48.600 I was successful. But also I have to say, Chris 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:52.560 Carter uh just wasn't writing great stuff anymore. Man. I mean, 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:55.400 if you saw any of that X Files revival last year, 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:57.920 like all the episodes that he wrote were just like 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:02.080 cringe worthy, Whereas like the other guys who came back 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:04.119 to some of the best work, like Darren Morgan who 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:08.080 was talking about Last Time, Glenn Morrigan, and um, I 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:13.159 believe it's James Wong. Okay, Well, you know another source 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:15.320 that that I was looking at in terms of figuring 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:18.920 out the cultural residents of all of this, uh is 0:21:19.080 --> 0:21:22.399 a wonderful paper and this is available online if you 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:24.679 look it up. It's called is It Tomorrow or Just 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:28.560 the End of Time? UFO Culture and Cultural Anxiety, And 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:32.640 this is by Connie Smarris and she's primarily a photographer 0:21:32.640 --> 0:21:34.919 and video artist based out of l A. But she 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:37.840 put together this wonderful paper that it references a lot 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:40.320 of like deeper literature on it, but I think she 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:44.040 does a wonderful job which is sort of summarizing what's 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:45.960 some of what might be going on. Yeah, I read 0:21:45.960 --> 0:21:48.359 over part of this too, and from my perspective, it 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:50.840 looked like she was doing the opposite of what the 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:55.919 literature review was in academia. She was reviewing the phenomena, 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:58.840 but not looking at all the like academic articles, but 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:03.040 more looking at the speriential narratives and compiling them together. 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:06.760 So she was part of the article she was pointing to. 0:22:07.359 --> 0:22:11.399 Intruders Foundation funded Roper Pole in Truders Foundation is a 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:14.320 you know, a group that was you know, aligned with 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:18.679 alien abduction experiences and you know, the study of them, Uh, 0:22:18.840 --> 0:22:22.040 anyway to determine the percentage of the US population abducted 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:24.399 by aliens and some of the we already hit on 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:27.040 some of the big findings that have come out over 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:30.080 the year in terms of percentage of the population that's 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:32.879