Latest / Stuff You Should Know / SYSK Live from SXSW: How UFOs Work

Transcript

SYSK Live from SXSW: How UFOs Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
0:03
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
0:08
Speaker 1: from House to works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
0:16
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Bark with me as always with
0:20
Speaker 1: a little extra echo is Charles W Chuck Bryant. Hello.
0:24
Speaker 1: How are you doing, Chuck? I'm wil sir. Yeah, anything, um,
0:27
Speaker 1: slightly unusual today? Oh we are in a different place
0:33
Speaker 1: than normal. We are in Austin, Texas. Yes. Yeah, are
0:40
Speaker 1: you guys from Austin that are cheering or is that
0:42
Speaker 1: just enthusiasm? Yeah? Keep Austin weird. That's that's the motto.
0:46
Speaker 1: Is that right? So we're doing our best. I should
0:49
Speaker 1: probably say that those of you listening on your iPods
0:51
Speaker 1: Chucks talking to people who are watching this podcast right now. Yes,
0:56
Speaker 1: he's not insane. I think I got a laugh track
0:59
Speaker 1: three years. They got a laughter the Little Red Box
1:02
Speaker 1: after three years. Um. So, yes, we're doing a lot
1:05
Speaker 1: of podcasts. This is a little different for us. I'm
1:07
Speaker 1: normally not so sweaty from being stared at when we record. Um,
1:11
Speaker 1: but I'm getting a little more used to it. I'm fine. Yeah,
1:14
Speaker 1: and um, I lost my coffee, So I'm gonna get
1:17
Speaker 1: really dry. Oh you don't have coffee, I'll be okay, boy,
1:21
Speaker 1: Chuck Josh, have you ever heard of the X files? Oh? Yeah,
1:27
Speaker 1: it turns out a lot of that was true. Really Yeah?
1:30
Speaker 1: Well okay, so not the um, not the whole child
1:33
Speaker 1: healer who may or may not be like killing people,
1:36
Speaker 1: like the the compartmentalized versions of the X files, but
1:40
Speaker 1: the overarching thread with the aliens. Yeah, not not like
1:42
Speaker 1: the shape shifters. According to how UFOs work on how
1:47
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, that's probably true. Well, you know
1:51
Speaker 1: I'm a believer, are you. I'm I'm in the Fox
1:53
Speaker 1: Smolder camp. I'm okay, although he's Hank Moody to me.
1:56
Speaker 1: Now to you, uh, it's the Californication. Okay. I thought
2:00
Speaker 1: you would always be Fox Molder and now right, I
2:03
Speaker 1: see nods, he's Hank Moody. Now that's a huge, huge
2:07
Speaker 1: changeover it is. Yeah. I thought he's had a lot
2:10
Speaker 1: more fun on California. I'm sure. I'm sure there's a
2:13
Speaker 1: lot of brooding on X files and not so much
2:15
Speaker 1: dirty dirty Well okay, so, um, let me give you
2:20
Speaker 1: some examples. So the X files, Um, we're going kind
2:24
Speaker 1: of retro here, all right, because the UFOs very nineties,
2:29
Speaker 1: in very forties and even ancient ancient exactly. So, um,
2:34
Speaker 1: have you heard of the ancient Indian sanscrit scriptures? Right,
2:40
Speaker 1: thank you very much, just pep, thank you very much, Justic,
2:45
Speaker 1: I got the first peep um okay In in these
2:51
Speaker 1: ancient Indian sanscript um writings, there is a description of
2:56
Speaker 1: an airship and it actually talks about how this airship
3:00
Speaker 1: can go forward and backward and vertically very quickly, and
3:04
Speaker 1: a man can travel by sky um and in a
3:07
Speaker 1: very short time. And the weird thing is these texts
3:10
Speaker 1: were written like way before they were supposed to be airships,
3:13
Speaker 1: right yeah, it's called the them on us, and they
3:18
Speaker 1: describe things like a great flying bird made of light material. Um.
3:22
Speaker 1: They even describe a mercury engine with an iron heating
3:26
Speaker 1: apparatus underneath. So they get really specific about how it
3:30
Speaker 1: can move and how it operates. And this is not
3:32
Speaker 1: anything that should be happening oddly specific, right, yeah, allow
3:35
Speaker 1: me to continue. In twelve eleven, uh, it was written
3:39
Speaker 1: that a group of people in England were at church
3:42
Speaker 1: one day and there was a loud crash from outside
3:44
Speaker 1: of the church and they all go outside. They're all
3:47
Speaker 1: very dirty, I'm sure. Um. They go outside and they
3:50
Speaker 1: look up and there's an airship. Again. You're gonna notice
3:53
Speaker 1: airships keep popping up in this how UFOs Work podcast. Um,
3:57
Speaker 1: and it's anchored, like an an er has has dropped
4:01
Speaker 1: into the the steeple above the church and it's stuck.
4:05
Speaker 1: And so all the all the very very old timey
4:08
Speaker 1: medieval people are like, what is going on? Some guy
4:11
Speaker 1: comes down from the airship, tries to get the anchor out,
4:15
Speaker 1: is grabbed and they're about to be killed. And the
4:17
Speaker 1: bishops like, no, no, no no, just let this guy go.
4:20
Speaker 1: I don't know what his jam is. Um, so his
4:23
Speaker 1: jam sou? So they the the airship cuts rope and
4:28
Speaker 1: flies off, And I should point out it's weird, Rightah,
4:33
Speaker 1: that's weird at any time, it's weird. So a folk
4:36
Speaker 1: a folkloreist named Katherine Briggs points, I think she puts
4:39
Speaker 1: it perfectly that this is one of those quote one
4:42
Speaker 1: of those strange, unmotivated and therefore rather convincing tales that
4:46
Speaker 1: are scattered throughout the early chronicles, like basically saying this
4:49
Speaker 1: this this chronicler had no reason to just make this up.
4:52
Speaker 1: And it's just so weird how specific it is. And
4:55
Speaker 1: then we can fast forward to the nineteenth century tons
4:58
Speaker 1: of airship sightings. Nebras it was huge, Texas was huge, California.
5:03
Speaker 1: It was basically like that whole James West steampunk thing,
5:06
Speaker 1: but in the time right, so it wasn't retro. And
5:10
Speaker 1: then just this February in Jerusalem there's a big sighting.
5:14
Speaker 1: There are several videos of I didn't hear about this one, well,
5:17
Speaker 1: there are three different videos, and the founder of the site,
5:20
Speaker 1: Marshall Brain, put it to bed or he tried to um,
5:24
Speaker 1: saying like this is how it was hoaxed, not entirely convincingly,
5:28
Speaker 1: but there's supposedly a UFO over the Dome Rock in Jerusalem.
5:31
Speaker 1: And this was February, And if you go into the
5:33
Speaker 1: Mutual UFO network website every day, there's still UFO reports
5:37
Speaker 1: coming in. So the Mutual UFO Network move On. They
5:41
Speaker 1: made tons of appearances in the next file, you know,
5:43
Speaker 1: move on. They got nothing on the city who that's
5:47
Speaker 1: a little foreshadow and pomp up nice chuck um. So
5:52
Speaker 1: if you go on to the move on website, you'll
5:55
Speaker 1: see that there's still just dozens of sightings every day.
5:59
Speaker 1: So this is very much embedded in um our culture,
6:03
Speaker 1: which is why we're about to talk about it now,
6:05
Speaker 1: Chuck go that was my inge. All right, we're gonna
6:11
Speaker 1: talk about UFOs. Let's start. Uh well that was sort
6:13
Speaker 1: of the beginning, I guess, But let's start in the
6:16
Speaker 1: mid twentie century. As everyone knows, UFOs were pretty big
6:21
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties and fifties, got a lot of press,
6:24
Speaker 1: and in fact, that's when the term UFO as unidentified
6:29
Speaker 1: flying object was coined by the United States Air Force.
6:32
Speaker 1: I don't know if everyone knows that. Yeah, that's kind
6:34
Speaker 1: of that's a big one. At least some people in
6:36
Speaker 1: this room know that now. And uh, you know, unidentified
6:40
Speaker 1: flying object, flying saucer, or flying disc. What we're really
6:43
Speaker 1: talking about is alien spacecraft, right, I mean, let's let's
6:48
Speaker 1: cut to the chase. That's what upologists have been talking about, right.
6:51
Speaker 1: Is that how that's pronounced? Yes, ufology Okay, because I
6:53
Speaker 1: kept saying ufo ologists, and that's that's like saying, uh,
6:58
Speaker 1: do you refer to the I R S as the herbs? Huh?
7:00
Speaker 1: I don't know, so a fologist? Uh yeah, No, it's
7:04
Speaker 1: you fologist, not a fologist, you fologists. So the Air
7:08
Speaker 1: Force started investigating these things for real, um, and found
7:13
Speaker 1: out that five of UFO sightings are unaccounted for. The
7:19
Speaker 1: rest are explained away. You always hear weather, balloon, whatever
7:22
Speaker 1: the heck that is, or hoax, hoaxes, lightning, Yeah, lightning,
7:27
Speaker 1: any any kind of a natural weather phenomenon can be mistaken.
7:31
Speaker 1: And hoaxes is big people people like faking their photography
7:34
Speaker 1: or crop circles. Yeah. Sure. Um, so that's a pretty
7:39
Speaker 1: significant point that you just brought up, that there are
7:43
Speaker 1: some cases of UFO sightings that are out there that
7:47
Speaker 1: are um unexplained. Right, Yeah, where's the uh? I did
7:52
Speaker 1: have a statin here on that it was five. No,
7:56
Speaker 1: I have numbers, uh, twelve thousand UFO side is the
8:00
Speaker 1: Air Force research between forty and sixty nine, So it's
8:04
Speaker 1: twenty one years if my math is correct, and all
8:07
Speaker 1: but seven hundred and one were explained away. But if
8:11
Speaker 1: you ask me see that you can't explain. It's kind
8:14
Speaker 1: of a lot. That's a significant number for sure, and
8:16
Speaker 1: that's why I believe. And um, there's a guy named
8:20
Speaker 1: Jay Alan Heinek who kind of figures big into uphology. Um,
8:25
Speaker 1: he's the man or was he passed away down he's dead? Yes,
8:28
Speaker 1: he was the man um, but he's still he kind
8:30
Speaker 1: of lives on in this very long winded and detailed
8:33
Speaker 1: definition of what a UFO is. Right, you wanna you
8:36
Speaker 1: wanna take this one? Yeah? Should I read it? Can
8:39
Speaker 1: you do it in one breath? There's no way I
8:41
Speaker 1: can do it in one breath. But this is the
8:43
Speaker 1: best definition we've got from doctor kinek or Is he's
8:46
Speaker 1: an astronomers he doctor? Yeah, okay, oh yeah, the reported
8:50
Speaker 1: perception of an object or light seen in the sky
8:54
Speaker 1: or upon the land, the appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic
8:58
Speaker 1: and luminescent behavior of which do not suggest a logical,
9:02
Speaker 1: conventional explanation, and which is not only mystifying to the
9:06
Speaker 1: original percipients, but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all
9:11
Speaker 1: available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making
9:14
Speaker 1: a common sense identification if one is possible. Period. And
9:18
Speaker 1: that's one sentence, So that yeah, that says at all.
9:22
Speaker 1: So basically what he's saying is like after you know,
9:25
Speaker 1: it's it's a sighting, and it's it seems weird and
9:27
Speaker 1: then after closer examination, it really is weird. That's a
9:31
Speaker 1: UFO sighting, right. That was his first draft. I think
9:35
Speaker 1: he's like, the Air Force is like, can you get
9:37
Speaker 1: a little more specific, and he's like, no, I'm in
9:38
Speaker 1: a stronomy check on my hair. I have no time
9:40
Speaker 1: to write sentences. That makes sense to you idiots. But
9:44
Speaker 1: we say air Force because he was actually hired by
9:46
Speaker 1: the Air Force. He was a faculty member at the
9:49
Speaker 1: Ohio State University, which this article didn't say the no,
9:53
Speaker 1: but that's the right way to say. You're get really picked.
9:55
Speaker 1: Any buck eyes out there, all right? One's all unique? Yeah,
10:01
Speaker 1: and uh. In ninety eight they said, hey, dude, why
10:04
Speaker 1: don't you come work for us? We got all these
10:05
Speaker 1: weird things happening. We got a program called the Project Sign. Yeah,
10:10
Speaker 1: it was originally Project Sign. Then it became Project Grudge,
10:13
Speaker 1: which I love, and then Project blue Book was what
10:16
Speaker 1: they landed on. That's that's not a that's not a
10:20
Speaker 1: good name for a scientific investigation, you know, things a
10:22
Speaker 1: little no grudge, you know, one blue Book, imagine was
10:26
Speaker 1: before the whole auto industry thing with used cars to
10:29
Speaker 1: call no no, Little No. In fact, it grew out
10:32
Speaker 1: of that airport investigation. Yeah, very cool. That's that's how
10:35
Speaker 1: your cars rated now. So Heinek was his deal was
10:38
Speaker 1: he was a skeptic. He was hired by the Air
10:40
Speaker 1: Force not as someone to say, hey, these things are real,
10:43
Speaker 1: let's just investigate it. And he was a big time
10:46
Speaker 1: skeptic for quite a while. He was he was an astronomer.
10:48
Speaker 1: He didn't believe in extraterrestrial life anything. It's ninety eight,
10:52
Speaker 1: so he hadn't really given much thought to it. But
10:55
Speaker 1: eventually he became kind of a defector because ufology, uh,
11:00
Speaker 1: if anything is this um huge clash of the titans
11:04
Speaker 1: between people who believe in UFOs and skeptics who for
11:07
Speaker 1: them for believing in UFOs, right um, And he Nick
11:10
Speaker 1: started out as a complete skeptic and then eventually, you know, um,
11:14
Speaker 1: they basically gave them all these files and said look
11:17
Speaker 1: through these and see if this was an asteroid, if
11:19
Speaker 1: this was a comment. Basically just get rid of a
11:21
Speaker 1: big backlog to start with, right of his twelve thousand sightings,
11:25
Speaker 1: and you know, he he signed off on lots of them,
11:27
Speaker 1: and then he kept running across ones that made up
11:31
Speaker 1: the seven hundred and one inexplicable cases. Yeah. At first
11:34
Speaker 1: she called him puzzling, right, and then he he started
11:37
Speaker 1: calling him like, oh my god, this is real, and um, yeah,
11:41
Speaker 1: he became probably the most outspoken uh you faults. Uh
11:48
Speaker 1: see that was weird. Yeah that that doesn't normally happen. Um,
11:52
Speaker 1: he became one of the most outspoken you fall it
11:55
Speaker 1: just people who said, yes, UFOs are real and uh
11:59
Speaker 1: he was a position to really kind of make that
12:01
Speaker 1: claim more than anybody else. Yeah, and he found himself
12:04
Speaker 1: at odds with the Air Force. They were, um, I
12:06
Speaker 1: don't think they knew what they were getting into when
12:08
Speaker 1: they hired the scientist who was originally skeptic, And all
12:11
Speaker 1: of a sudden he starts touting these things and the
12:13
Speaker 1: Air Force is like, no, don't say these things. What
12:18
Speaker 1: was his line about skepticism not having any part in
12:22
Speaker 1: the scientific method or not? Ridicule? Ridicule. So there's another guy,
12:26
Speaker 1: if you go a little further back, the first you
12:28
Speaker 1: follogist is named Charles Fort and he was kind of
12:30
Speaker 1: a hero of mine. Um, he was a scientist. Yeah,
12:35
Speaker 1: if you if you read the Fort in Times, which
12:38
Speaker 1: is one of the greatest magazines of all time. Um,
12:41
Speaker 1: it's based on this guy's philosophy that yes, science UM
12:46
Speaker 1: is the the proper approach to explaining the universe, but
12:50
Speaker 1: you have to investigate everything incredulously or else you're just
12:53
Speaker 1: kind of a jerk, right. You can't selectively say like, well,
12:57
Speaker 1: you know, science can't really explain this right now, so
12:59
Speaker 1: it doesn't exists. It's not possible exists, and we're gonna
13:02
Speaker 1: make fun of you for even thinking that. That's not
13:04
Speaker 1: what science is about. And UM J Allen Heineck held
13:08
Speaker 1: the same views, basically that that UM, through Project Blue
13:12
Speaker 1: Book science was failing the public by not properly explaining, hey,
13:16
Speaker 1: this is a weather balloon like. You don't know what
13:19
Speaker 1: a weather balloon looks like. I don't know what a
13:20
Speaker 1: weather balloon looks like. I don't know what. They were
13:23
Speaker 1: failed at some point in time by science, and he
13:25
Speaker 1: was upset about that. And then the idea that they
13:28
Speaker 1: were keeping ridicule and scorn while not even carrying out
13:31
Speaker 1: their duty irked him to say the least. So Heinek
13:35
Speaker 1: is the guy actually that came up with the Heinech scale,
13:37
Speaker 1: which you say, what is the Heinech scale? You might
13:40
Speaker 1: know a better wait on what is exactly so we
13:45
Speaker 1: should do this every totally love this. I don't know
13:48
Speaker 1: what so nervous about. Uh. You might know the Heineck
13:52
Speaker 1: scale better as the close encounters chart. So he's the
13:57
Speaker 1: dude who invented it. And the first kind is a
13:59
Speaker 1: citing if you see it close encounter of the first kind.
14:02
Speaker 1: The second kind is a citing plus physical evidence. So
14:05
Speaker 1: like scat aliens scat uh crop circles. Sometimes they'll be
14:14
Speaker 1: like vegetation that is like disintegrated sometimes. And I didn't
14:17
Speaker 1: research this, But the spider web like things hanging from trees.
14:21
Speaker 1: What's that all about? Any idea? I couldn't find that either. Okay,
14:24
Speaker 1: apparently that happens the UFOs nearby. Well, the big palm
14:28
Speaker 1: with him is um like what they are, brittle to
14:30
Speaker 1: the touch and just disintegrate UFOs. No, the spider web
14:34
Speaker 1: like strings, it's like um, silly string. But that's been
14:36
Speaker 1: left out for many many weeks. Got you? So that's
14:39
Speaker 1: the second kind. The third kind um is observation of
14:43
Speaker 1: an antimate uh animate being. It wasn't quite right according
14:49
Speaker 1: to Steven Spield for oh, is that the third encount?
14:52
Speaker 1: Well that's the third Yeah, they did see animate being
14:54
Speaker 1: but let's get forward. After Heineck they added fourth, fifth, six,
14:58
Speaker 1: and seventh kinds. He wouldn't have at to that fourth
15:01
Speaker 1: kind is abduction, uh, and the fifth kind is bilateral
15:04
Speaker 1: contact event through voluntary human initiated cooperation. So that was
15:10
Speaker 1: really close. Encounters of the third kind should have been
15:13
Speaker 1: the fifth kind because Frands watch Ruffo in the movie,
15:17
Speaker 1: you know, sent out the he initiated attach and there
15:23
Speaker 1: was a sign for it too. He did, I don't
15:24
Speaker 1: remember what that is and did you know that was
15:26
Speaker 1: France watch Rufo I No, Rob probably did, famous director,
15:30
Speaker 1: he was in that movie. And then the sixth kind
15:32
Speaker 1: is direct injury or death, which is the least fun kind,
15:36
Speaker 1: and the seventh kind is the best because that means
15:40
Speaker 1: you are knocking boots with an alien and creating a
15:44
Speaker 1: star child. That's true. Close en counter of the seventh
15:48
Speaker 1: kind means you have sex with an alien and they
15:50
Speaker 1: get pregnant, and there is there's a There is traditionally
15:54
Speaker 1: a lot of sexiness involved with alien abductions, whether it's
15:57
Speaker 1: forced copulation at this day, neared, anal probe, whatever, there's
16:01
Speaker 1: some sort of sexuality associated with with abductions. You want
16:05
Speaker 1: to go over some of the abductions. Right, you always
16:08
Speaker 1: hear about prodding and poking and improbing, im probing, probing, Right,
16:12
Speaker 1: where are we? Well, well, let's I guess let's talk
16:15
Speaker 1: a little more about some of the characteristics of UFOs um.
16:18
Speaker 1: We talked about the strange weblike disintegrating remains um crop circles,
16:25
Speaker 1: crop circles which may or may not have been led
16:28
Speaker 1: Zeppelin's dirigible. Who knows normal mutilation is sometimes they're associated
16:32
Speaker 1: with that, and that is when you find let's say,
16:35
Speaker 1: cattle with organs removed but no signs of humans being
16:39
Speaker 1: anywhere around. We should do one on that. We should
16:43
Speaker 1: probably not um because I was looking this up and
16:46
Speaker 1: apparently some Sheriff's department in Arkansas, when this like the
16:50
Speaker 1: height of this cattle mutilation um scare um was going on,
16:55
Speaker 1: they took a cow and I imagine shot it in
16:58
Speaker 1: the head and left it where it lay, because for
17:01
Speaker 1: you know, to to really undertake this, you have to
17:03
Speaker 1: kind of kill a cow where it was and then
17:05
Speaker 1: leave it alone. But they had a dead cow for
17:07
Speaker 1: forty eight hours in this field and filmed it and
17:12
Speaker 1: and said, hey, like all of the normal stuff that
17:15
Speaker 1: a dead cow's body undergoes auto license, puture faction, like
17:19
Speaker 1: all of this can explain. Like these mutilations you're talking about,
17:23
Speaker 1: everybody just settled down, And I think it was kind
17:25
Speaker 1: of like the same um, the same group of people
17:29
Speaker 1: who were worried about Satanists kind of put a lot
17:33
Speaker 1: of stock in the animal mutilation things. So I think
17:36
Speaker 1: that one's kind of off the table. Radio and TV
17:40
Speaker 1: interference happens a lot. Car ignition failure, which of course happened.
17:43
Speaker 1: I keep looking at Rob for close and times of
17:44
Speaker 1: the third time because he's a movie nerd like me.
17:48
Speaker 1: But yeah, the car won't start, radio cuts out, lights flicker,
17:53
Speaker 1: you know, phones nearby. Yeah, there's a correlation sign. It's
17:56
Speaker 1: a correlation. Uh. And then I guess that's about it, right, Well,
18:01
Speaker 1: I got a couple of stats. Oh that's not it,
18:03
Speaker 1: trust me, that's it for that part. Uh. I looked
18:06
Speaker 1: up UFO sidings by state because I was curious, what
18:10
Speaker 1: state do you think leads the way New Mexico's good
18:14
Speaker 1: guests about a good guests out now? Think about it?
18:18
Speaker 1: Crazy people cuckoo California. I hope there's no one from
18:24
Speaker 1: California in here. You know, they know they're crazy. Sorry,
18:27
Speaker 1: but uh, seven thousand and eighty one sidings and this
18:31
Speaker 1: is a very you know, this isn't high science. This
18:33
Speaker 1: is from the Center for UFO Studies or CUPHOS. There's
18:36
Speaker 1: no move on, There're no move fine or SETI And
18:39
Speaker 1: uh number two is actually Washington State at thirty eight three.
18:44
Speaker 1: I did look up Texas because that's where we are
18:47
Speaker 1: three thousand, one seventy two. And I looked up Georgia.
18:51
Speaker 1: What do we have about a thousand? Kay and guess
18:55
Speaker 1: what state is the least? Now keep keep going. Yeah,
19:02
Speaker 1: you'll get to North Dakota, which I figure I forget
19:05
Speaker 1: they'd be lousy with it because all the I don't know,
19:08
Speaker 1: desert space seems appealing to aliens. I think everyone in
19:11
Speaker 1: North Dakota is too depressed to look up. Well that
19:13
Speaker 1: maybe there's not a lot of people there, so that
19:16
Speaker 1: may actually, you know, I have something to do it.
19:19
Speaker 1: So only a hundred and sixteen in North Dakota, and
19:22
Speaker 1: we do have a pole in here that is so
19:24
Speaker 1: outdated that we would like to conduct a live pole.
19:28
Speaker 1: Since we have what about fifty people here, I would say,
19:33
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna do this. We're gonna do this
19:36
Speaker 1: by applause, but you're not rooting for it. So don't
19:39
Speaker 1: feel like you have to go crazy if you believe
19:41
Speaker 1: in it. We just want to get a little, a
19:43
Speaker 1: little thing. So if you believe the aliens have contacted humans,
19:49
Speaker 1: just some light golf clapping, Okay, CNN says, uh, if
19:59
Speaker 1: you believe alien to have abducted humans, no braves, zero
20:06
Speaker 1: zero because CNN of the people polled and then they said,
20:11
Speaker 1: believe the government is hiding something about aliens. Wait wait, wait,
20:15
Speaker 1: let everybody come from them. Yeah, the government. I think
20:19
Speaker 1: more people think the government's hiding something and then believe
20:22
Speaker 1: a something. I don't think that works. It works. That's
20:26
Speaker 1: our first live pole. So um I found another poll
20:31
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, and the only thing I
20:33
Speaker 1: could find was, you know, do you believe that there's
20:36
Speaker 1: intelligent life that's been to Earth and contacted humans? And
20:39
Speaker 1: it was down to like, which is probably about what
20:42
Speaker 1: we got here, but that's significantly less than the sixty
20:47
Speaker 1: I think it was y two k angst And you
20:50
Speaker 1: think that had everybody like there's something going on. We're
20:52
Speaker 1: gonna die, like everyone's our computers are gonna stop. I
20:56
Speaker 1: was one of the guys, and I was like, hey,
20:58
Speaker 1: people are stupid. Nothing's gonna happen. Well, you know that
21:00
Speaker 1: I have my van packed with water and shotguns because
21:04
Speaker 1: you were living the right. Those are just my normal
21:07
Speaker 1: accouter mall so Uh, Project of Blue Book, Uh, the
21:11
Speaker 1: Air Force. Uh. Eventually in nineteen nine said you know what,
21:15
Speaker 1: We're gonna close up shop, or at least that's what
21:17
Speaker 1: they said. M hmm. Yeah, they said they were going
21:22
Speaker 1: to close up shop. Uh. And then they put out
21:24
Speaker 1: to me, what is some tricky wording with three statements.
21:27
Speaker 1: They said, no UFO reported, investigated and evaluated has ever
21:31
Speaker 1: given any indication of threat to our national security. Doesn't
21:35
Speaker 1: mean that they didn't find anything, they just didn't deem
21:38
Speaker 1: it a threat. And then there's been no evidence submitted
21:41
Speaker 1: to the Air Force at sightings categorized as unidentified represent
21:45
Speaker 1: technical developments beyond the range of present day knowledge, and
21:49
Speaker 1: there's been no evidence indicating the sightings categories is under
21:52
Speaker 1: unidentified are extraterrestrial. So like bam, boom bam, we're closing
21:59
Speaker 1: up shop by that, suckers. But that's tricky to me
22:02
Speaker 1: because all they said was classified as unidentified internally as
22:06
Speaker 1: soon as they found out, they might go, crap, let's
22:09
Speaker 1: change the They don't quantify the criteria for their categorization. No,
22:13
Speaker 1: but if they did find something right and kept it internal,
22:17
Speaker 1: they were still saying like, these were kind of so
22:20
Speaker 1: so aliens. If they're they weren't doing anything that we
22:22
Speaker 1: couldn't already conceive of, you know. Um, And I guess
22:26
Speaker 1: they were friendly at least because they weren't a national
22:28
Speaker 1: security threat. Either that or they were easily like beat
22:30
Speaker 1: up with the elbows an alien. Yeah, it's how you
22:35
Speaker 1: go at everybody. But I think it's I think it's
22:37
Speaker 1: worth pointing out this is a Department of Defense um publication.
22:44
Speaker 1: You would be very hard pressed to find the d
22:46
Speaker 1: D print and release anything that's talking about aliens today.
22:49
Speaker 1: But from nineteen to nineteen sixty nine they carried out
22:53
Speaker 1: this very famous investigation. Whether it was half hearted or not,
22:57
Speaker 1: like they were actually you know, spending tons of taxpayer
23:02
Speaker 1: money on this, and it was It's a significant moment
23:05
Speaker 1: in history where everyone believed in aliens right right now,
23:10
Speaker 1: everybody just believes that the government's hiding something, they're on something.
23:15
Speaker 1: So it moved from the government to the private sector
23:18
Speaker 1: with set, which we've mentioned is the search for Extraterrestrial
23:22
Speaker 1: intelligence and to the Center for UFO Studies. So there's
23:26
Speaker 1: a lot of work still going on. And these aren't
23:29
Speaker 1: cracked pots. Uh. A lot of them are very scientific
23:32
Speaker 1: about their research. Jodie Foster works there, right, And what
23:36
Speaker 1: they want to do is, well, not they want to disprove,
23:40
Speaker 1: they want to get to the bottom of it. Well, yes,
23:42
Speaker 1: studies very legitimate. They have funding from NASA and they're
23:45
Speaker 1: all very scientific scientists. Um and uh. They they admit
23:51
Speaker 1: their mistakes, right, Like in the late nineties, they they
23:54
Speaker 1: got um, they're the ones with the big radio telescopes, right,
23:59
Speaker 1: um and they uh, they got a signal it sounded
24:03
Speaker 1: just like that, um and uh. They it was about
24:06
Speaker 1: a million miles away from Earth and they said, well,
24:10
Speaker 1: is this gotta be aliens and million miles away? Right,
24:12
Speaker 1: And then three hours later they're like, oh no, Um,
24:14
Speaker 1: it was a sun watching observatory that's a million miles
24:18
Speaker 1: away from But they admit their mistakes and um, and
24:21
Speaker 1: they're not very sensationalist. I get the impression. So study's
24:25
Speaker 1: pretty much carrying on the uh. The they're carrying the
24:29
Speaker 1: torch now that the government shut things down, right, that's right. Um,
24:33
Speaker 1: So everybody in here is suspicious of the government. We
24:37
Speaker 1: can actually pinpoint the moment that happened. It took place
24:42
Speaker 1: in nine on July seven, there was a guy in
24:46
Speaker 1: New Mexico outside of a town called Roswell. His name
24:50
Speaker 1: is Mac Brazil, and he was a ranch foreman. Right. So, uh,
24:54
Speaker 1: he was going to check on the cattle, I guess
24:58
Speaker 1: um one day after some terrible thunderstorms the night before,
25:02
Speaker 1: and he found some weird debris and it was weird
25:04
Speaker 1: enough to breathe that he called the sheriff, and I'm
25:06
Speaker 1: sure they liked spit on the ground and talked about
25:08
Speaker 1: it for a while. Along there were strange we should
25:10
Speaker 1: mention the night before there was a bunch of strange
25:12
Speaker 1: lights in the sky, yes, and terrible thunderstorms. So then
25:16
Speaker 1: he finds the debris, right, Okay, sorry, that's an important point.
25:19
Speaker 1: It is, um. And so they the sheriff comes out.
25:22
Speaker 1: They figured they should probably call the local military, which
25:25
Speaker 1: kind of a weird step if you ask me. The
25:27
Speaker 1: military comes out, they take the debris, um, and they
25:31
Speaker 1: take it back to the Roswell Army Air Force Base
25:34
Speaker 1: and then to Dayton, Ohio, which is another weird thing
25:37
Speaker 1: to do if it's a weather balloon. Is the government
25:39
Speaker 1: eventually said it was in between. Then the guy who
25:43
Speaker 1: ran Roswell Army Air Force Base UM released a statement
25:49
Speaker 1: on July seven, saying, Um, we recovered the debris from
25:54
Speaker 1: a crashed disc and I'm making air quotes and you
25:57
Speaker 1: guys can actually see it. I don't have to just
25:58
Speaker 1: say at this time, but a crash disc was found.
26:02
Speaker 1: And then about three hours later his boss in Dallas,
26:06
Speaker 1: I believe, released another press release saying that guys inn idiot,
26:10
Speaker 1: don't listen to anything he's ever said forgetting that whole
26:12
Speaker 1: crash disc thing. Exactly. It was a weather balloon and
26:15
Speaker 1: we've taken it and flown into right Air Force Base
26:18
Speaker 1: in Dayton for some reason. But just don't look behind
26:21
Speaker 1: the curtain, everybody. And at that moment, that was when
26:25
Speaker 1: all of the seeds that have sprouted into us, going
26:28
Speaker 1: like this, when we see like a press released today, UM,
26:33
Speaker 1: that's when it happened that that first press release followed
26:37
Speaker 1: by the second one, started the the whole suspicion of
26:41
Speaker 1: the government that there was a cover up. Chuck, that's right,
26:43
Speaker 1: and there was some other hinking that's going on. There
26:46
Speaker 1: were eyewitnesses that say they saw bodies being removed from
26:50
Speaker 1: the scene by the military. Some people said that they
26:53
Speaker 1: were actually present at an alien autopsy. Uh if you
26:56
Speaker 1: remember the Fox Network did that TV show a lee
27:00
Speaker 1: an autopsy a while ago, and then it turned out
27:03
Speaker 1: that that guy said, um actually shot all this stuff
27:07
Speaker 1: in the nineties. But I swear this is the footage
27:10
Speaker 1: I saw and I'm just recreating it, and that footage
27:13
Speaker 1: is is now destroyed, but this is a this is
27:16
Speaker 1: what I saw. Come on, you need you need by.
27:20
Speaker 1: It took me for a while. It looked kind of cool,
27:21
Speaker 1: but yeah, that was a big disappointment. And um, Area
27:24
Speaker 1: fifty one, you know, is is the area now and
27:26
Speaker 1: they people believe some people believe that the government is
27:29
Speaker 1: uh still contacting aliens at Area fifty one, meeting with
27:34
Speaker 1: aliens on a regular basis, studying them. And that's why
27:38
Speaker 1: it's you know, got big fences around it. That's exactly
27:41
Speaker 1: what that's the only possible reason that it has offences
27:45
Speaker 1: around it. But we're we're gonna do a podcast probably
27:47
Speaker 1: hopefully on Area fifty one one day because that's about
27:50
Speaker 1: all we're going to talk about with that offenses Men
27:52
Speaker 1: in Black. Yeah, that's another characteristic of the UFO phenomenon, right,
27:58
Speaker 1: And then actually came out of a guy him Gray
28:00
Speaker 1: Barker's book in nineteen fifty six. He wrote, They Knew
28:04
Speaker 1: too Much about Flying Saucers and the Men in Black
28:07
Speaker 1: make their first appearance. Um. Well, Gray Barker pawned this
28:11
Speaker 1: thing off as a work of nonfiction, but it was
28:14
Speaker 1: actually fiction. Um, but that I guess came out long
28:18
Speaker 1: enough after that, the Men in Black entered kind of
28:21
Speaker 1: the the collective consciousness of Have you seen jose Chunks
28:25
Speaker 1: from outer Space? That one X Files episode where Jesse
28:29
Speaker 1: the Buddy Venture and Alex Trebek play the Men in Black. Yeah,
28:32
Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome. It's probably the best X Files episode ever. Really. Yeah,
28:37
Speaker 1: And it's a good one, isn't it? Wait did you
28:41
Speaker 1: just say Charles Nelson Riley. Charles Nelson Riley plays this
28:44
Speaker 1: author who's interviewing Molder and Scully and trying to get
28:47
Speaker 1: to the bottom of this one incident that happened, And um,
28:50
Speaker 1: it was it was very cool, good. I highly recommend
28:53
Speaker 1: it to everybody. Let's get back to it, Chuck and abductions.
28:58
Speaker 1: I think this is this is if I may tee
29:00
Speaker 1: this one up please. Uh So, I think it's kind
29:04
Speaker 1: of one thing to see something in the sky and say, well,
29:07
Speaker 1: I to UFO. But many people have done this. Ronald
29:10
Speaker 1: Reagan said he saw a UFO and as a governor
29:13
Speaker 1: of California, right yeah. Jackie Gleeson said he saw aliens
29:17
Speaker 1: because Richard Nixon took him there. That's a true story.
29:21
Speaker 1: Jackie Gleeson apparently was in Florida, married to his second
29:25
Speaker 1: wife at the time, and he came home all disheveled
29:29
Speaker 1: from something and his wife was like, what's going on, Jackie?
29:31
Speaker 1: You're not your usual sonny self. And he says, well,
29:34
Speaker 1: I can't talk about it, um wife. But later on
29:38
Speaker 1: he said that she does have a name. I can't
29:40
Speaker 1: remember it, um, what's called her Betty? But ironically he
29:43
Speaker 1: did just call her wife, he did one of these days.
29:47
Speaker 1: Um So, then he says, you know what happened is
29:50
Speaker 1: uh I met Richard Nixon, My my buddy, Richard Nixon.
29:53
Speaker 1: Jackie Gleeson was way into UFOs apparently, and Richard Nixon said,
29:57
Speaker 1: would you like to go see some aliens? The my
30:00
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon that was so they've seen it. Well, apparently
30:05
Speaker 1: he took him and saw two little two foot aliens.
30:08
Speaker 1: Little Paul said, don't tell anybody about this, Jackie Gleason,
30:12
Speaker 1: and uh he said, I will not never tell anyone.
30:15
Speaker 1: He told his wife that you can't tell anyone, and
30:17
Speaker 1: then they got divorced and she started telling everyone. Yeah. Yeah,
30:21
Speaker 1: So supposedly he seen one, and he said Ronald Reagan
30:23
Speaker 1: saw one and he was on a small cessa flight
30:26
Speaker 1: and he was governor of California at the time, and
30:28
Speaker 1: he was talking about what he saw until he realized
30:31
Speaker 1: he was talking to a reporter from the Wall Street
30:33
Speaker 1: Journal and then he was like, maybe I shouldn't say
30:35
Speaker 1: anything about that, and um, yeah, So Jimmy Carter Carter
30:39
Speaker 1: saw one. Do you want to do your Carter? I
30:41
Speaker 1: don't have a carter. He he did see one in Georgia,
30:44
Speaker 1: in rural Georgia, and he uh still talks about it
30:47
Speaker 1: to this day. Apparently ten or so years ago was
30:50
Speaker 1: the last time at Emory University Atlanta, where he teaches,
30:53
Speaker 1: he was actually still talking about it and said, dude,
30:56
Speaker 1: I saw ufo. Okay, so it's one thing to see
30:59
Speaker 1: you a foe and to talk about it at Emory
31:02
Speaker 1: or to show Jackie Glees and something weird. Right, But
31:04
Speaker 1: it's an entirely other thing. And this kind of became
31:07
Speaker 1: this spinoff of the the UFO phenomenon, and that is abductions, right,
31:13
Speaker 1: that's the money the money shot. Basically, there's this whole
31:17
Speaker 1: group of people came forward over the years, starting after
31:21
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, Ish will say um and said, yes,
31:25
Speaker 1: I've been aboard the craft. I've been engaged in alien sexiness.
31:29
Speaker 1: This is horrible. My life is suffering because of this, right. So, um,
31:34
Speaker 1: the the first abduction story, it was Betty and Barney Hill.
31:38
Speaker 1: Have you heard of them? Have you heard of them before? Then? Yes, okay,
31:42
Speaker 1: because I'm sort of into this stuff, okay, but they
31:44
Speaker 1: were the first in the early sixties, and you know
31:47
Speaker 1: they said they saw and we're not abducted initially, but
31:51
Speaker 1: then later through hypnosis started remembering these things that happened. Yeah,
31:56
Speaker 1: and there there, that was the first abduction case. It
31:59
Speaker 1: was written up in the ball Us in Globe and
32:00
Speaker 1: then there was a book called um the Interrupted Journey.
32:03
Speaker 1: Because it had a really huge impact on their lives,
32:05
Speaker 1: they started suffering psychological diservices, they're they're big problems among them.
32:09
Speaker 1: After this UM and then it was made for TV movie.
32:13
Speaker 1: Mr James Earl Jones played Barney Hill, did a great
32:16
Speaker 1: job UM and from that moment on, this kind of
32:20
Speaker 1: UM established checklist. Almost of UM traits of an abduction
32:27
Speaker 1: were generated UM things like you're you're being taken against
32:31
Speaker 1: your will, UM, you're being probed or experimented them the
32:38
Speaker 1: tractor beam tractor beam, UM, the UH, the the your noise,
32:47
Speaker 1: the the losing time was another big one, the Hills
32:51
Speaker 1: lost two hours UM and then having to deal with this,
32:53
Speaker 1: And there were actual studies of abductees in the nineties
32:56
Speaker 1: because it was such a such a weird significant thing
32:58
Speaker 1: that people were saying, like, it's consistent, which is the
33:01
Speaker 1: weird thing. UM. So this guy UH named Richard McNally,
33:05
Speaker 1: who's a Harvard psychologist, conducted some physiological experiments on people
33:10
Speaker 1: who said they've been abducted, and they showed similar symptoms
33:13
Speaker 1: to people with post traumatic stress disorder. So there's definitely
33:16
Speaker 1: something going on. But whether or not it was UM
33:21
Speaker 1: than being abducted, or if they were suffering from some
33:24
Speaker 1: other trauma is what was at the heart of the matter, right, Yeah,
33:28
Speaker 1: and there's been some pretty good explanations for what was
33:31
Speaker 1: behind this whole abduction phenomenon that's kind of died off now,
33:35
Speaker 1: which is weird if you think about it, right. Yeah.
33:37
Speaker 1: Susan Blackmore is a is a famous skeptic, and she
33:41
Speaker 1: did a little experiment in the mid nineteen nineties with
33:44
Speaker 1: a man named Michael Persinger. He's a neuroscientist, and he
33:48
Speaker 1: claims that all kinds of weird phenomenon with the body
33:52
Speaker 1: can be explained by uh, excessive firing of the temporal lobes.
33:58
Speaker 1: And so the only thing that was missing, as no
34:00
Speaker 1: one had ever really tried to replicate this in an experiment.
34:03
Speaker 1: So Susan Blackmore said, dude, took me up to this
34:06
Speaker 1: stuff and fire away unless see what happened. She said,
34:09
Speaker 1: um that she had the sensation she was being pulled
34:12
Speaker 1: stretched by her leg to the ceiling um. She was
34:14
Speaker 1: suddenly like very very angry, and then after that she's
34:17
Speaker 1: suddenly very fearful. So basically the guy proved to her,
34:20
Speaker 1: and then she went and told the world in this
34:22
Speaker 1: New Scientist article that yes, if you can mess with
34:26
Speaker 1: somebody's temporal lobe firing using magnets. Um, you you can
34:32
Speaker 1: get them to think all sorts of crazy stuff. Well,
34:34
Speaker 1: she basically at the end of the experiment said, I
34:36
Speaker 1: was so out of myself that if someone would have
34:39
Speaker 1: told me you were inducted by an alien, she said,
34:42
Speaker 1: I probably would have believed it. Right, And she's a skeptic,
34:45
Speaker 1: so it probably that's a that's a good explanation. But
34:49
Speaker 1: then you you have to ask, well, what's what is
34:51
Speaker 1: exactly exerting this magnetism on people's brains to cause this
34:57
Speaker 1: temporal lobe firing. So it's okay, I explain, and probably
35:00
Speaker 1: better than anything. Is um sleep paralysis? Right or false awakenings? Yeah?
35:06
Speaker 1: Sleep paralysis? You know, does anyone have that? Sleep paralysis?
35:10
Speaker 1: Your wife apparently that's what you wake up and your
35:14
Speaker 1: you can't move, Yeah, when you wake Your skeletal muscles
35:17
Speaker 1: are normally paralyzed while you're sleeping, but every once in
35:19
Speaker 1: a while you can wake up and your muscles don't
35:23
Speaker 1: kind of wake up first, so you can't move, but
35:26
Speaker 1: you you don't really know what's going on. Your groggy
35:28
Speaker 1: hallucinations of a company too, right, yeah, usually and very stuff, yes,
35:32
Speaker 1: and um, so it's a very fearful thing. UM. And
35:35
Speaker 1: then if you are the type to dream about sex, right,
35:39
Speaker 1: that kind of adds that probing maybe idea because the
35:42
Speaker 1: whole thing, so sleep paralysis is a pretty good explanation, um.
35:46
Speaker 1: And then the false awakening is another good one, where
35:49
Speaker 1: you wait, you're dreaming that you've woken up, and it's
35:52
Speaker 1: pretty common actually, UM. And that I think the thing
35:56
Speaker 1: that gives um gravity to this explanation is that the
36:00
Speaker 1: most extreme abduction reports UM always began with the people sleeping.
36:06
Speaker 1: Oh really yeah, so it's entirely possible if people were confused. Well.
36:10
Speaker 1: There's also correlation though between UFO sidings and what was
36:14
Speaker 1: he talking about seismic events? Is he said that, um,
36:17
Speaker 1: he believes earthquakes might trigger this magnetism and people wake
36:21
Speaker 1: up in their bed they think they're being abducted. But
36:24
Speaker 1: what about the people in the cars and out in
36:26
Speaker 1: the fields. We're not gonna figure this out right now,
36:30
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I think a good way to
36:32
Speaker 1: wrap this up is to say that we are wholly
36:34
Speaker 1: unqualified to offer any explanation of what was drawing on. UM.
36:39
Speaker 1: But at the very least, it was interesting, and it
36:41
Speaker 1: was a wild and crazy time. It was a good
36:43
Speaker 1: ride there, agreed, and I think this bears some follow up.
36:47
Speaker 1: We gotta hit area fifty one. We gotta get into
36:49
Speaker 1: the abductions a little more too. Yeah, one day. That's
36:52
Speaker 1: it you anymore. I got nothing else on this one.
36:55
Speaker 1: That's it. That's the UFOs. We thank you very much.
36:59
Speaker 1: Thank you. Let's again so um. If any of you
37:05
Speaker 1: ever want to get in touch with us, you can
37:07
Speaker 1: send us an email. I want you to wrap it
37:10
Speaker 1: up spanking on the bottom and send it to stuff
37:13
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Thank you, yeah,
37:18
Speaker 1: and then uh, thanks for coming out to on a
37:22
Speaker 1: rainy Monday morning. For moral on this and thousands of
37:28
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn
37:31
Speaker 1: more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
37:34
Speaker 1: the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff
37:37
Speaker 1: Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.
37:43
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
37:46
Speaker 1: It's ready, are you