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The Alien Abduction Phenomenon of the Mid-20th Century · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Ben's here again too. It's pretty much the
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: new status quo, which I have to say I like
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: a lot, and that makes the stuff you should Know.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Oh. I was about to say Jerry might get her
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: feelings hurt, but you know she won't even hear that.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: No, not a chance.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: If she's not, you know, overseeing that episode. It's not
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: like she goes, oh, I should listen in.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I got to keep up with these guys. They're
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: so hilarious. That's not a Jerry thing to think.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, especially when it's more alien stuff.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we've done a lot of alien stuff and by god,
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: every second of it's been amazing. And I don't think
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: this is going to be any different.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: No, it's been a while, though we haven't. I feel
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: like we kind of had a little grouping of those,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: you know, ten years ago or something.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: I think it was like last year, but we did.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Was it really?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: No, it was probably like within the last two years.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: We did that two parter on Project blue Book.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Oh sure, I just remember years ago at Comic Con.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Did we do an alien thing there.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: We did one on UFOs. Yeah, yeah, for sure, that's.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: That's a brave thing for us to do at Comic
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Con for sure.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: A lot of experts there. Yeah, yeah, So yeah, today
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: we're talking about something that definitely has a lot to
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: do with aliens, a lot to do with UFOs, but
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: also really has a lot to do with social psychology,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: in sociology and history as a strange moment in time
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: where there was a you can almost call it a trend,
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: And I want to say right from the outset, we
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: are in no way, shape or for mocking anyone who
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: believes that they were abducted. After researching this, I fully
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: understand that people who who believe they were abducted by
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: aliens are traumatized by that experienceience and show all the
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: symptoms of a traumatic experience, and then on top of
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: that had the indignity of not being believed by anybody
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: and probably talk down to fairly frequently. So we're going
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: to try not to talk down. So I'm not in
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: calling it a trend. I'm not trying to diminish the
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: experience of anybody who's ever who believes they were abducted,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: and that it had an impact on their lives. But
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: there was a period in time from about the nineteen
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: sixties and seventies through to the nineties where there were
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: a lot of people running around claiming to have been abducted.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. It's fascinating because it dawned to me
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: when I was researching this, like, I just I haven't
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: heard one of these in a long time.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: No, And I looked up and saw a bunch of
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: different places that people attribute that to the advent of
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: ubiquitous camera phones.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Uh, that's inconvenient.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. You can be like, nope, this is what
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: you saw. So it dried up at almost the exact
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: same time.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right, that makes a lot of sense.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: But before that there was like people have been seeing
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: weird stuff in the sky and being like UFO for
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: a while. But in our Project blue Book episode we
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: found like the moment it really kicked off, and that
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: was June twenty fourth, nineteen forty seven, and we talked
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: it up to a guy named Kenneth Arnold who was
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: a I think an amateur pilot or like a hobbyist
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: who saw what came to be considered the first flying saucer.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the alarming thing about this was he clocked
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the speed at about sixteen hundred miles an hour, which
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: is at the time, you know, easily three times faster
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: than anything else could fly. And this is where the
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: term saucer came from. He said, they flew like a
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: saucer would if you skipped it across the water. And
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: so that's kind of where that term came from. And
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: this is you know, this is just after World War
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Two and it's not like any no one had ever
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: claimed to have witnessed anything before this, but basically pre
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: this date it was one hundred percent well maybe not
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: hundred percent, who knows, but most people were saying like, oh,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: that's just you know, some enemy technology or something that
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: we don't know about.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So Kenneth Arnold kicked off what you characterize as
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: like the modern UFO movement, I guess right.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as in, there's an alien driving not a Russian.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, good point.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And also the thing that really bolstered it within days
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: of that, within two weeks, the Roswell Crash happened, which
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: a lot of people say that's the advent of the
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: idea that aliens are actually visiting us and that the
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: government is covering it up right, So those two things.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: It was a one two punch in nineteen forty seven,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: in the summer of nineteen forty seven that really kind
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: of just debuted aliens to the world. And one of
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: the things is we'll see with abduction narratives or stories
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: or claims, they usually have a very dark, bad thread
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: to them. They're not a positive experience, and aliens have
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: kind of gotten in large part like that kind of
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: view by the public. If there are aliens out there,
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: it's not entirely clear that they are benevolent or kind.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: But that's not how it was at the outset, was it.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we can chalk that up to a dude named
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: George Adomski. I guess Adamski, Yeah, he was. He immigrated
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: from Poland and he founded a group called the Royal
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Order of Tibet in southern California in the thirties. He
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: was a teacher of philosophy. He was, you know, he
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: was kind of out there a little bit, and in
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two he claimed that he met an alien
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: named Orthan, which is I mean, it's got to be
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: the inspiration from orson from work from work.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Right, probably because these were really popular books at the time.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it just sounds like you're saying morek
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: calling Orthon with a lisp, yeah, or how I say
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: it now with my tooth.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: It's like Tyson calling Orthan.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: But his narrative was a bit different. He was like, Hey,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: this alien Orthan was a beautiful man. He had a
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: high forehead, he had hair which is, as you'll see,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: pretty unusual from the grays that follow, and a uniform
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: on a brown uniform, and you know, was telepathic, could
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: like speak to him basically through his brain and brought
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: a message of peace, saying, hey, I'm from Venus and
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: you guys should stop with the nuclear weapons.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Right. So this was like how people kind of viewed
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: aliens visiting us at the time, Like this guy was
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: writing these books like they were nonfiction and people were
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: eating them up.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: So there was this idea that aliens are kind of cool,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: they're more advanced than us, and they have our best
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: interests in mind. And then that took a serious, like
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: left turn just a few years later in the late fifties,
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: when a farmer in Brazil named Antonio vs. Boas claimed
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: that he had been taken aboard a spaceship and a
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: damski later claimed that he had been on a spaceship too,
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: But this was pretty new stuff that he had basically
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: been abducted and forced to have sex with what he
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: admitted was an attractive alien, but was a bit turned
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: off by the fact that she barked during sex and
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: then returned to his farm. And this was a this
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: is a brand new this is new ground essentially that
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Boaz had started to trod.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, I mean, this is I couldn't find
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: an earlier one that mentioned any kind of you know,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: sexual assault going on, right, was this the first one
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: from what I could tell? Yes, all right, so he
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: was of course, went to a doctor, They examined him.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: They said, he's probably making this whole thing up. But
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: there was a group a UFO, an early ufology group,
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  Speaker 1: that published this experience anyway, and in nineteen sixty five
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  Speaker 1: it ran in an international journal called Flying Salcer Review,
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  Speaker 1: which I get to copy of one of those, and
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you know, people all over the
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: world are hearing this story and this sort of you
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: know was happening in you know, it was international, but
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: it wasn't It didn't hit The American public quite liked
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: this story of Betty and Barney Hill, which really really
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: kicked things off here in the States.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, because his thing came out in the Journal in
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five and the Hill the Hills had an
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: experience in nineteen sixty one. They are widely seen as
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: the first credible abductees. If you believe that kind of stuff,
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: you probably are focused on Betty and Barney Hill. They
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: were an interracial couple in nineteen sixty one in New Hampshire.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Betty was a social worker and Barney was a postal officer,
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  Speaker 2: and they had taken a delayed honeymoon to Montreal and
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: were on their way back when they noticed that they
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: were basically being chased by a light in the sky.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: And when they grabbed their binoculars and stopped and got
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: out of the car, they could actually see that it
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: was essentially a flying saucer and that aliens were looking
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: at them through the windows. And the next thing they know,
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  Speaker 2: it's five am. They're pulling into their house about three
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: hours later than they had expected to, and Barney's shoes
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: were scuffed and Betty's dress was torn and they didn't
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: know what had happened, but they were genuinely bothered by
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: the experience.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, we'll dive in a little bit
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: more with them. But the reason that you mentioned that
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: they were an interracial couple is because they were doing
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of work for civil rights and stuff like that.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: So they all that to say, they had no reason to,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: in fact, every reason not to kind of come forward
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: with this crazy story given their positions of doing like this,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: you know, great civil rights work, because you know, it
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: would just all of a sudden people would call them
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: kooks and probably cast doubt on, you know, the genuine
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: good work they were doing. So they had no reason
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: to make something like this up.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: And everything to lose too.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, everything to lose. So they're trying to figure out
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: and make sense of what had happened to them, because again,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: as you'll see with all these stories, whether or not
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: this happened or not almost does it matter in some cases,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: because the trauma that's visited upon them afterward is very
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: much real, just like any kind of potential false memory.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: So Betty starts researching, goes to the library and starts
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: looking at books from the ni CAP which we've talked
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: about before. Yeah, NIGHTCAP the National Investing Aations Committee on
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Aerial Phenomenon and that's you know, that was some retired
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: military officers and you know UFO enthusiasts who had gotten
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: together this you know, pretty early research group. And afterward
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: they were, you know, they were suffering from PTSD, especially
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: the husband he was he had pretty severe anxiety from this.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah he did. Betty had trouble sleeping, Barney had a
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: bunch of anxiety. They just they were affected by this
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: experience and they had this missing time that they knew
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: they couldn't account for, and they wanted to know what happened.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: So they were they were earnestly trying to look for
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: somebody to help explain what had happened to them and
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: why their lives were affected. First, they went to the
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: military and followed official channels because this is when Project
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Blue Book was an actual thing, and like you were
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: encouraged to report any UFO citing to the military because
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: they were investigating it. And the military was like, you know,
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: this is not an important story, sorry, guys, we can't
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: help you. So they turned to their and apparently their
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: church was like this is way out of our league. Yeah,
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: maybe you saw God. And they're like, Noah, wasn't God.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: They're like, yes, sorry, we can't help you either. So
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: they turned to psychiatry, and a psychiatrist named Benjamin Simon
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: agreed to help them. And this is a time where
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: you were there was a good chance you were going
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: to be hypnotized if you were on a psychiatrist's couch.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: This is the early to mid nineteen sixties. And so
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: they were hypnotized over a series of sessions, and all
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, these these memories have been repressed, that
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: covered that chunk of time where that they couldn't account
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: for started to come forward.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: That's right, which was abduction. Yeah, little great creatures. You know,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: this is the sort of the beginning of the stereotypical
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: gray as we know them, gray, little skinny bodies, the
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: big heads, the big oval eyes. They brought them on
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: board the spaceship and did the you know, the usual
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff, which is, let me probe you, let
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: me sample you. Apparently they put a needle into Betty's stomach,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: which is what they assumed was like a pregnancy test.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: They were very entranced by Barney's dentures, and then they
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: wiped their memories out. I guess men in black style,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: and that's where the lost time comes from. And these
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: were like, these were real deal, super emotional hypnosis sessions
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: with a very qualified psychiatrist. But even after all that,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the psychiatrists Sigmon was like, I don't know, I think
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: they have a shared delusion going on exactly.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So he was like, you guys weren't abductive, but
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: you both believe you were abducted and it's having an
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: effect on you. He actually drilled down a little further
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: and suggested that it was actually latent racial tensions that
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: existed in their marriage that they were equipped to deal
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: with and were purposely kind of subverting into these weird
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: you know, alien face fans. But that really that's what
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: it was. And they were like, no, dude, you're wrong,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: we were abducted. All of these memories are real. And
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: he's like, have you heard of false memories? And the
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Hills were like, no, we haven't, and they just kept
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: moving on. So the psychiatry couldn't help them either. And
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: as they went further and further along trying to get answers,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: they kind of were pushed further and further out of
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: the mainstream and toward the fringes, where they were welcomed
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: with open arms.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, of course, the story got published. In nineteen sixty five,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: a guy named John Lutriel from The Boston Traveler reported
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: on this UPI picks it up, and then a guy
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: named John G. Fuller made it into a book in
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six called The Interrupted Journey Colan Two Lost
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Hours Aboard a Flying Saucer, which eventually became a TV
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: movie in nineteen seventy five called The UFO Incident, which
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: you can watch on YouTube if you want to see
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: a relatively young and you know, pretty in great shape
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: James Earl Jones movie. Did you watch it? I'd kind
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: of scrub through it looking for the good stuff.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: I didn't watch it this time. I watched it when
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: I was younger, for sure.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it like most of the movie, like eighty five
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: percent of it, looks like it takes place in the
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: psychiatrist's office, for sure. And I didn't see just scrubbing
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: through any good alien stuff till kind of toward the end.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: I guess they were just wanted to wait to for
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: the big reveal or whatever. But Stelle Parsons's plays the
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Wife and Barnard Hughes from Doc Hollywood. He was the
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: old doctor in Doc Hollywood played Simon. And it was
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: a big deal movie. And it was like, you know,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: it's a t moo movie at a time when TV
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: movies were big. It's if you're around these days and
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: you're not familiar with how things were back then, a
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: big TV movie like this could be a sort of
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: a national phenomenon.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Because I mean, you had a very limited amount
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: of choices of what to watch on any given night.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: So if there's a big TV movie, they promoted the
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: heck out of it, and all the the whole country
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: could be talking about it for the next couple of weeks.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: You'd be reading about it in the newspaper. It would
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: be a big deal, right, So yeah, and this was
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: a big deal too. You mentioned that there wasn't much
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: alien stuff in there, and apparently Betty Hill was very
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: disappointed that James Earl Jones and the producers had kind
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: of taken this story that to her was a legitimate
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: alien abduction story and used it to explore the themes
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: of like interracial marriage, civil rights, being black in a
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: largely white state Barney's general experience as being a black
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: man in the in the sixties, and she was like, yeah,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: that probably has something to do with it, but really
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: we need more aliens, right. It had a huge hard
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: to argue with that exactly. And it had a huge
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: effect too because it kicked off so everything we know
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: about alien abductions, the whole narrative, the whole thread, all
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: the claims that followed are based largely on Betty and
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Barney Hill's experience.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it should come as no surprise that after
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: that movie airs, a lot more of these stories start
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: to pop up. Very famous one just a couple of
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: weeks later after the movie aired nineteen seventy five, is
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: when the logger Travis Walton in Arizona was you know,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: beamed up into that spaceship became a movie Fire in
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: the Sky in nineteen ninety three. He was gone for
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: about a week, came back said that he was examined
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: by what we would now call the Grays, a little
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: short baldies. Yeah, and it just, you know, things really
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: start to ramp up, almost in lockstep with stories ramping up,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: if that makes sense, Like we're kind of feeding each other.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. By the way, Travis Walton was roundly exposed as
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: a hoaxter and so was everybody in his group. And
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: they saw it attributed to his boss, the head of
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: this logging company, wanting to get out of an unlucrative
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: contract with the federal government, so they concocted this story.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: It's a good way to do that.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is so seventies. You know that, that's how
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: you would get out of a movie contract.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Uh, not a bad movie, though, Fire in the Guy
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: was pretty good.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: I never saw it.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's that bad. D B.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Sweeney, Yeah, was he on Saturday Night Live? Why do
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: I think that?
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Uh? You're thinking there was another swinge Julius Sweeney.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: I know, but I thought dB sweet Sweeney was too.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'm conflating Julius Julius Sweeney and G. E. Smith
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: and Saturday Night Live Band and coming up with dB.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: SWEENEYH Maybe so G Smith was great?
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I saw G. Smith and the Sara Night Live
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Band backing up halland Oates at the first ever concert
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: I ever saw.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Now, my friend I knew you went and saw Hall
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: of Oates. I did not know that G. Smith was
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: in the SNL band? Was the band?
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Yes? And the I think it was the sect player
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: who wore like the floor length mink coats, like the
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: whole shebang. It was like the tick of Ala abandoned.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: That's who was touring with Hall.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: And Oates, and Oates was like, can you tone it down?
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Can get rid of that coat?
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: It's competing with my hair and mustache.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: All right, I think we should probably take a break. Yeah, yeah,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: all right, and we'll be right back and talk about
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: more grays right after this. All right. So that was
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies, but basically from the fifties
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: on through the seventies, there were all kinds of encounters
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: and there were a lot of different kinds of aliens
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: that people were reporting, ranging from a headless wing bat
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: kind of thing in England to a pointy eared, glowing
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: eyed creature in North Carolina. And this is when UFO
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: research groups, who very much want people to believe that
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: UFOs and aliens are real, I get the feeling behind
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: the scenes are like, guys, we got to consolidate around
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: to look here because all these weird aliens that people
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: are reporting are not doing ourselves are any favors. Basically,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: so can we settle on the Grays and they did.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that somehow or another, that is exactly how
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: it happened, and it ended up in mainstream pop culture
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: being adopted like that, where Like, as the Grays became
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: more and more widespread, it was like a positive feedback
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: where more people portrayed aliens as the Grays because that's
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: what aliens looked like, and it just kept spreading from
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: there until the general streamlined understanding of what aliens looked
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: like was the Grays over time. And I just want
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: to point out that probably the greatest X Files episode
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: of all time, Jose Chunks from Outer Space, turns this
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: process on its head, where there are two gray aliens
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: that turn out to be human actors in costumes who
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: themselves have an actual legitimate alien encounter with an alien
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: that looks like one of the just bizarre kind from
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: the fifties. It's like has fur, it's a cyclops with
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: a horn, and it has like a chicken legs, and
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: that's like the actual alien. And I just think that's
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: just as sharp as can be, that they took that
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: thread and just twisted it around.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I don't remember that episode. I was not an X
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Files watcher at the time when it aired. Huh. I
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: got into it in the uh. Although when did it stop,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: you know, like the early two thousands. Okay, well what
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I did it was syndicated while it was still going then,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: I guess because I started watching reruns and syndication in
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: like ninety seven, and don't I don't even know if
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I kind of started at the beginning and watched it
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: all the way through. But when I was living in
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: New Jersey, I ended up watching a lot of X Files,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: so then enjoyed it quite a bit.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: This is a standalone episode. You don't have to know
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: anything that's going on to and joy. Yeah. Yeah, if
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: you do know what's going on, it's even more enjoyable.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: But jose Chung is this science fiction author who has
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: a book or something called from Outer Space, and he's
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: played by Charles Nelson Riley. There's stories of the Men
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: in Black showing up, and the Men in Black are
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: played by Alex Trebek and Jesse the Body Ventura as themselves,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: but they're Men in Black. Oh yeah, it's an amazing episode.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: It's so great, So.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I definitely don't remember that one.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: You need to go see it. It's really worth all right,
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: it's worth your forty four minutes of your time.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Were you into X files from the beginning, like Live
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Run or whatever?
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Pretty much?
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah when I watch it now, though I used to
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: when originally I was like, God, get this stupid monster
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: stuff out of let's get back to the alien right.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Now as a grown up, I'm like, that alien conspiracy
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: thing is so played out. I really enjoy the Monster
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: of the Week episode. Yeah more.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the mix of the two was kind
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: of what made it so great.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very smart, all right.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: So the other thing we should mention about the Grays
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: is that when Betty at one point they had her
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: recreate a star map that the aliens who captured her
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: had shown her, and when she described what she had seen,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of people said, it sounds a lot like
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Zeta Reticuli, which is a star system about thirty nine
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: light years from Earth. And so you might hear them
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: called Grays, but if you ever hear any anyone in
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: the in the BIZ, I guess refer to the aliens
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: as Zeta reticulans. That comes from that.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like we said, a lot of the just the
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: basics of alien abduction stories were founded by the Hills,
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: unaccounted for missing time, being abducted, being probed just yeah,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: exactly all that stuff originally with the Hills, but it
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: formed the basis or foundation that other people that come
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: just kind of slowly built on. And there was one
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: person who contributed quite a bit, an artist from New
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: York named Bud Hopkins, who said that he had a
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: close encounter. I guess it would be the second kind
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: where they just saw like a flying saucer over Cape
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: cod But it was enough, it was enough of an
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: experience that he kind of became, I don't know if
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: obsessed as the right were, but deeply interested in the
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: idea of UFOs and aliens. So he started kind of
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: researching the whole thing and ended up writing a book
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty one called I Got to Take a
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Deep Breath Missing Time. Colon documented stories of people kidnapp
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: by UFOs and then returned with their memories or race.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he didn't want to leave anything to chance as
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: far as people misunderstanding what his book was about.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Colan, does that make sense.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Right, Colan, I'm talking about aliens, baby. So that was
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: a pretty big book and it established that pattern that
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: we've been talking about of these abduction stories where you
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: see the UFO and sometimes you don't remember anything and
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: you just wake up in bed or whatever. Not accounting
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: for the time there was a young woman in the book.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: It was the first time that anyone had claimed to
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: have been abducted twice, a young woman named Virginia Horton
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: when she was six, so I guess she was a
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: little girl then and then at sixteen years old. And
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: this also follows a pattern in the second one, she
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: followed a deer into the woods and then woke up
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: at home with a bloody nose and following an annial
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: into the woods. As a story that pops up kind
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: of quite a bit. You're talking about alien abduction.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. So one of the other things that Bud
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Hopkins contributed was the idea that people were being repeatedly abducted.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Some people were, and that he's like, probably what's going
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: on is they're being impregnated and then you know, they
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: give birth and then this hybrid alien human baby is born,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: and that's really what's going on.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Here, and that they take that baby daily.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think he also suggested that this was
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: for the benefit of the human race that this was
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: that they were actually benevolent as brutal or I guess
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: uncomfortable as their tactics may have seemed.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So things are really cooking at this point.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Finally we get to a very very popular book. Those
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: guy named Whitley's Streber, who was a writer already in
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: this really helped, you know, the fact that he was
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: already a writer and had like the backing of publishers
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: get this book out there. But he was a horror
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: and science fiction writer and an eighty seven published the
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: book Communion, which had if you look up the cover
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: of Communion, the illustration that was done by Ted Jacobs
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: along with you know, Striber, because he was like, this
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: is what I saw. You got to draw this that
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: that is as stereotypical alien head as you could imagine
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: on the cover of this very popular book.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like if the Grays had kind of been percolating
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: throughout pop culture, this is like where all that all
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: those different threads got pulled into one alien image and
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: then from that moment on, that's essentially what the Grays
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: looked like that cover illustration. Because it was just such
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: a widely read book and Streiber says and always has said,
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: from what I can tell, he's never broken character. If
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: this was a hoax, He's never ever even intimated that
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: it was. He's He said that until he started realizing
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: that he had been abducted, he had never really been
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: much into aliens, had never done much research, so he
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: was giving the impression that all of his accounts were fresh.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: He went into him fresh, like George Costanzo right, he
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: didn't know what he was talking about when he was
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: writing about this. This was a legitimate memory. And as
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: he remembered more and more and more, he realized that
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: this had been going on since childhood, and the entire
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: chunks of his life were fabricated memories that had been
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: implanted by the aliens that abducted him to cover up
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: the memories of his actual abductions and what they were
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: doing to him on their ships. And so in addition
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: to that cover alien of the image of the Grays.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: One of the big things that Whitley Striver contributed to
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: the whole I guess phenomenon is the idea of screen
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: memories that now no longer was it just missing time.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: You might not be missing time, You might not even
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: remember having been abducted, but you just knew you'd been abducted,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: and if you thought about it enough, or if you
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: went and tried to get to the bottom of your
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: repressed memories, those screen memories would fall away and the
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: true memories of your abduction would bubble up to the surface.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was a very, very big book. It
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: became a movie in nineteen eighty nine, a Christopher Walkin movie.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I saw it back then. I don't
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: know if I saw it in the theater or not.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: It feels like a VHS movie to me, Yeah, for sure.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: But Walkin played him. If you look up the trailer
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: on YouTube, it's a terrifying trailer. It's really unsettling. You
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: should watch it. With the music and everything. They portray
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: it as like a horror movie basically. But he is
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: one that also Stryverer, that is, who never also claimed
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: like officially that they were space alien. He was just like, hey,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: this happened to me. I'm not saying there's space aliens necessarily.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: He actually said they could come from another dimension, or
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: maybe it could be something else. I know. In one
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: of our UFO episodes, I talked about the fact that
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: there are some people who think that the Grays are
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: just humans from the future. Yeah, and that's what we
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: eventually evolved to look like because our brains get bigger
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: and bigger, so our heads bigger, and the actual outer
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: ear is superfluous to the real hearing mechanism, So that's
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: why they don't appear to have ears or noses. They
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: just have ear holes and nose holes. And you know,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: as we go on, the eyes are supposedly getting bigger
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: as we evolve, So that's you know, that's one theory.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Right or another one is that they're from another dimension,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: not necessarily from space. One of the other things that
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Striver contributed was the idea that you would be probed
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: anally or sexually in some way, shape or form. Remember
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Boas the Brazilian farmer, was the one who contributed being
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: sexually assaulted aboard a spaceship the UFO exactly, But apparently
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: most scholars trace the anal probe trope to Whitley Striber.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: He said that there was a large object with a
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: network of wires on the end that was inserted into
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: his rectum. And what's interesting is that bears a strange
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: resemblance to what Barney Hill claimed too. He said that
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: he had been anally probed and that there was a
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: needle with a network of wires or something along that line.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: He didn't use that exact phrase, but that it had
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: been left out of the book by John G. Fuller,
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: that detail had it was only it was only it
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: only showed up in a nineteen sixty five Nightcap report,
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: So it wasn't well known at the time. Although it's
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: entirely possible that if Whitley Striver was a hoaxer, you
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: can imagine as a writer, he would have done enough
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: research to go back and read a nineteen sixty five
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: report about the quintessential abduction experience.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And as far as the anal probe goes, I've
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: given this a lot of thought over the years, uh huh,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: and so like why that's always a thing, And the
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: only thing I could come up with is that, you know,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: there are only so many holes. There are only so
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: many areas of entry in your body, you know. Yeah,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: And there are reports of you know, nose probes and
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: bleeding noses and stuff like that, And I think the
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: the hidden quality, the hidden nature of the butthole might
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: entice aliens to be like you know, there they see
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: the nose, they see the ears, they see how the
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: obvious ones, and then there's like ooh, there's a hidden one, right,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: like what treasure awaits us?
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's universal, not just among humans but around the universe,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: Like what is in that butthole? Yeah, that's a great
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: good stuff. I like that. Uh so, yeah, that's that's
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: just kind of like a little like a lot of
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: people chuck that up to Whitley Striber, which may or
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: may not be Yeah, correct, but that is interesting. That
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: was nineteen eighty nine that the movie community came out,
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: what'd you say, nineteen eighty seven for the book that
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: had a huge effect. The X Files, like we said,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: came along and took all this stuff. Like if you
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: watch the X Files back then or now or whenever,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: all of this is just so familiar. Like Chris Carter
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: apparently read up on the abduction phenomenon and just turned
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: it into different plot lines, right, so yeah, pure goal. Yeah,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: and so that just spread it out into the pop
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: culture even further. And then there was a guy named
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: John Mack who was the head of Harvard's psychiatry department,
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: who was far and away the most credentialed person to
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: come out and say I'm pretty sure these people are
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: telling the truth in some way, shape or form.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And everyone was like, sure, you want to come
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: out with us?
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he did very bravely. He was one of
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: those people who railed against science just kind of having
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: its own dogma, keeping its head in the sand about
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: things that couldn't explain. He didn't like that very much,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: so that kind of fit with his vibe from what
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: I can tell, But he kind of lent a little
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: bit of legitimacy, especially if you were on the fringes.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: The fact that he was saying the stuff just gave
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: you so much support. Right then.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he had a book in ninety four about thirteen
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: different abduction cases called Abduction colon Human Encounters with Alien Parentheses. Btw,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I teach at Harvard.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Right, did I mention? Yeah? So I say we take
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: another break and come back and talk about what scholars
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: who don't buy the fact that these are actual alien
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: abductions make of all this.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets pretty interesting after this.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: I think, Okay, Chuck, there's a couple of nuts and
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: bolts things you should know about UFO subculture and it's
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: so extensive, and it's been around for so long, and
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: the people who are into it are so into it
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: that just by glossing over it, we're probably gonna get
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: stuff wrong, or we're just going to walk past some stuff.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: We're not experts, We've never claimed to be experts, and
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: we're not experts of UFO subculture, So just want to
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: caveat that. Probably should have said that at the outset
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: of this episode. But in UFO subculture, from the research
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: I've seen, there's a you can kind of divide people
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: into two groups. One are contactees people who have met aliens,
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: and the other is abductees, and those are people who
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: have been taken by it millions. And if you'll remember
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: back to our Project blue Book episode, there was an
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: astronomer named Jay Allen Heinek who was a debunker of
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: UFOs until he just became a true believer. He's the
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: guy who came up with the close encounters classifications. Yeah,
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: he left off with close encounters of the third kind contact.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: What abductees brought to that was close encounters of the
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: fourth kind, where you were taken against your will into
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: a spaceship. And among those two different groups there's two
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: very different views of aliens between contact e's and abductees.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, if you're a contactee, you're much more
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: likely to relate a positive experience. Basically, I think a
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: lot of the contactees I've read that they feel like
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: they're like a feeling of being chosen, like in a
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: good way. Abductees, it's kind of the other way around.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: There's all kinds of stories of probing, non consensual encounters,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: medical procedures going on. You know, all the stuff that
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: you hear about shoving things in different holes of your
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: body are not positive experiences for most abductees. And it's
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: really interesting. I think that the contact ease can feel
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: like chosen or touched. Where's the abductees feel violated?
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: It is super interesting. There's also kind of a subgroup
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: of abductees. Those are the people who have no memory
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: of being abducted, but they're sure that they were abducted.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: They probably have unaccounted time in their life that they
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: can look back on and think like what happened there?
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: They just get the sense that they're abducted too.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Right, So yeah, which is interesting.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: It is super interesting. The thing is this is really
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: really important. I saw this in a lot of different
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: places with people who research UFO abductees. They say that
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: there are definitely people who are hoaxters. Yeah, there are
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: definitely people who have like serious mental illness and are
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: actually delusional, but that by and large, on the whole,
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: UFO abductees are sane, sincere, genuine people who truly believe
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: that they were abducted by aliens and whose lives have
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: been in a lot of cases wrecked by it because
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: they display the symptoms of trauma. They have post traumatic
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: stress disorder symptoms from being abducted. And so if you're like, well,
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't really buy any of this as
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: being alien in nature, Like how would you explain it?
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: And so sociology and psychology have said about trying to
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: explain it, neither ones really kind of rung the bell fully.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Yet, Yeah, for sure, there is there as plenty of
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: research that's been done, even though they haven't you know,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: like you said, they haven't come to it like a
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: great conclusion about it. But abductees their memories. The idea
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: is like, if you're an abductee or you claim to
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: be an abductee, then you're probably more prone to false memory,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: and there are some different tests they can do. One
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: is called the Deese Rodiger McDermott task DRM, and that's
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: where they give you a bunch of words that are
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: sort of linked together, but there's a one word. They
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: call it a lure word that's missing. So lyvia put
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: together an example of snooze, blanket, snore or dream pillow bed.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: They don't use the word sleep in there, very key,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: but obviously that's the one word that's missing. And the
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: people that are asked to sort of recount this and
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: if they insert the missing word that there was never mentioned,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: like if they say sleep, then they're saying, all right, well,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: you're more susceptible to a false memory because we never
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: said sleep.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: So there, Yeah, that's exactly how they present it to
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: yeh at the end of the study. It's very humiliating,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: but yeah, that's kind of one of the general premises
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: that people who believe that they were abducted by UFOs
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: and whose lives are really affected by it negatively just
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: are more susceptible to generating false memories, and some research
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: backs that up. There have been studies that show that
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: they do report more critical lower words than other people.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Who don't believe they were abducted. Other studies say, we
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: tried the same thing and found no difference whatsoever between
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: the two, but we did find differences in other psychological
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: traits like disassociativity, like having like reality seems unreal to you, absorption,
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: which is a predisposition to get deeply immersed in sensory
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: or mystical experiences, the likelier to have paranormal beliefs, likelier
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: to believe that they have psychic abilities, fantasy proneness, difficulty
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: differentiating between fantasy and reality, and a tendency to hallucinate.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: And that so these people are like, no, it's not
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: a proneeness to developing false memories. It's all these other
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: traits that are basically they're luring these people into this
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: kind of fantasy world that they're not distinguishing from reality,
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: and that that essentially has become part of their life
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: to them, they've adopted that as part of their life.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: Those seem to be the two dominant rival psychological explanations
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: for this.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's another sort of not sort of it
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: sounds incredibly cruel. Test that was done, or a study
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: rather when they got kids together either seven or eight
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: year olds or eleven and twelve year olds, and they said,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: you were abducted by an alien when you were four
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: years old. In fact, here's your mom and she's gonna
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: reinforce this by telling you this happened. And here's a
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: fake newspaper. Well they don't say fake, but here's a
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: newspaper report that talks about these abductions being you know,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: pretty calm, and it's totally made up, of course. And
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: then if these children go on to describe a lot
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: more detail about the memory of being abducted when they
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: were four years old, then their classified as having false memories.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: And I just I can't believe that they were allowed
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: to get away with doing it.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, from what this one, I think a British Psychological
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: Association or society article found that they could find two
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: studies that tried to implant false subduction memories into kids.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: One was from nineteen eighty four and they actually ascribed
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: abductions to basically suppressed or repressed memories of being born.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: And then this one from two thousand and nine with
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: Oatgar and friends, right, and like, yeah, it's deeply unethical,
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: and they debriefed the kids. They said, no, this is
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: all just a study or whatever, so you don't walk
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: around thinking like this actually really happened to you, but
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: who knows if that really worked. But it raised a
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: really important point, really as unethical as it was, showed
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: how easy it is for false memories to be implanted,
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: especially if you are being told that by someone in
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: a position and of authority like your psychologists or therapists
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: or psychiatrist. Right. Yeah, And there's a really big rift
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: in the field of psychology and psychiatry between whether you
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: whether traumatic memories can be repressed, and if so, that
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: means they can probably be recovered through good therapy, or
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: if you don't actually repress traumatic experiences, and that if
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: you do try to recover memories, what you remember is
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: going to be false memories that are accidentally implanted. So
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: that whole premise that you have missing time, and that
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: if you go see a therapist who's sympathetic and understands
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: what you're going through, they will help you recover those memories.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: It strongly suggests that all those are our false memories,
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: even though again they're causing real legitimate pain in these
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: people's lives.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And I know we talked about this
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: and maybe Project Bluebrik Book, but some others as far
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: as what else this could be why you're having these
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: false memories, and sleep paralysis always seems to come up.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: We did an episode on this. About fifteen percent of
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: the population experiences it. It's when you wake up in
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: the middle of the night. You can't move, You might
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: hear some buzzing sounds, you might see flashing lights. You
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: almost always, it seems like, see pretty frightening shadowy figures
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: in your room, maybe hovering above you or at the
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: foot of your bed. So sleep paralysis could explain some
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: of this, or theoretically it could. And then another one
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: which is interesting as far as the hypothesis goes, is
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: magnetic disturbances by plate tectonics that are causing hallucinations. And
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: this is what's really interesting to me, distorted recollections of
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: meta procedures while you're under anesthesia, like as you're going out.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: I think anyone who's ever done the twilight sleep thing
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: for some you know or major you know surgery, When
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: you're fully under that six or seven seconds where you're
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: laying there with the bright light above you and people
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: hovering over you, it gets weirder and weirder, and people
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: think that this could be associated with that because a
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: lot of the people who had reported abductions had undergone
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: surgery recently.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty pretty interesting as far as coincidences go.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: That's anesthesia awareness, and I think I think we did
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: a whole episode on it. The idea that you can
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: have memories if you're not under quite enough, and that
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: if it's a medical procedure, yeah, you could remember that
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: as aliens, you know, probing you or whatever.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, that's what it feels like.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well guess so for sure, I just remember being like, man,
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: I'm so wasted, reminding myself like, oh yeah, I'm allowed
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: to be These people got me wasted, right. Sociology, for
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: their part, has done some study too, and just kind
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: of quickly what they've come up with is that if
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: you are very religious, you're probably less likely to believe
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: in aliens and even less likely to believe you were
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: abducted by aliens. But if you are untrusting of the government,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: you're far likelier to no surprise, yeah, to believe that
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: you were abducted by aliens.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And also the
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: fact that who is it Joseph O. Baker's a sociologist
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: who studies this stuff a lot, and he's like, post Watergate,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: you saw a lot of this stuff happening, and that's
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: you know, when a lot of people have had big
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: distrust of the government. So it sort of there's a
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: correlation there at least for sure.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: And then I say we wrap it up on that
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: study by Bud Hopkins, the artists who've gotten real deep into.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Abduction lore, Yeah, let's do.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: It, Okay. So in the nineties Bud Hopkins worked with
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: some academics and came up with like a legitimate random
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: survey that sought to see how many of the population,
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: like what percentage of the population believes they were abducted,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: And they came up with a like five like a
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: questionnaire that got to the bottom of whether somebody felt
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: like they had experienced five different aspects of abduction, right
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: waking up paralyzed, with a sense of strange presence in
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: the room, losing an hour or more of time that
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: lost an accounted for a time. Feeling of flying could
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: also correlate with witchcraft. Seeing strange lights in a room
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: and then finding odd scars on your body and being
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: like I have no idea where the scar came from.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So they did that this in the early nineteen nineties.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: They did some they know, controlled the data or did
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: some controlling for the data, and they found that two
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: percent of the sample had four of those five related
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: experien variance has happen to them, which is about three
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: point seven million Americans. That number, I think at UFO
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: ologists and you know, people who study this stuff say, now,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: you know that number is really really high. It's probably
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: more like thousands, but three point seven million people experience
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: at least for of those five things.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people. So a lot of people
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: use that in like articles and stuff on that, like,
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: three point seven million is a big number. But yeah,
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: I just want to point out they they had a
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: really ingenious way of separating out the fibers from the outset.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: One of the questions was, you know, does the word
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: trondant mean have special meaning for you? And about one
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: percent of respondents said, yep, that really does you know
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: what I'm talking about? And Trondon is a made up
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: word that they used to catch fibers. And I think
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Trondon is like a really great band name too, especially
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: because of the background it.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Has Yeah, Space Rocket, good one.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: You got anything else? Yeah, Yeah, I mean, the whole
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: thing's still ongoing. There's plenty of people out there who
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: believe they were abducted, and psychology is still struggling to
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: get to the bottom of it fully, So hopefully it will,
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: so it can help all those people whose lives are
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: affected by it negatively.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And at the very least we've gotten some fun
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: movie and TVs out of.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: There for sure. If you want to know more about
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: alien abductions, there's a lot to read out there, and
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: you can do that. And in the meantime, we're just
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: going to go ahead and have a listener mail.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Hey, guys, been listening since twenty thirteen. Since then, you've
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: been with me through college graduation, brain surgery, a wedding,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: COVID at, my teaching career, IVYF and.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: Our new baby Wowee.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Since Amber was born in last July, and catching up
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: on missed episodes. In August twenty twenty three, I think
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: you had a couple of EPs about language acquisition. This
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: is so in my wheelhouse because I'm a middle high
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: school Spanish teacher and it maybe think of this anecdote
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: relating to language act posician frequently pepper Spanish into my
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: daily vocabulary. And I also hate squirrels. This is right
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: up your alley, Josh. I frequently refer to them in Spanish.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: One day last summer, I asked my husband, who is
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: a gringo, what he thought the Spanish word for squirrel was.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: He hesitated and then guessed, bendejo. I'll let you look
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: up at that word actually means, but it's definitely not squirrel.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: After listening to the Para Social Relationship episode, I got
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: too embarrassed to tell you this anecdote anecdote right away
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: after the language episodes, but I decided to send it
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: anyway now. Currently listening to the twenty twenty three Halloween
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: special and hope to be caught up by June. And
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: that is from Becky Hill.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Becky, and congratulations to you and your
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: husband on the birth of Amber. And from what I
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: know about bendejo, like that's a pretty accurate.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: Term for squirrel.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay, if you want to be like Becky and
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: get in touch with us and just share some great
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: stuff about your life, we love to hear that. You
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: can send it off in an email to Stuff Podcast
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: favorite shows.