Danny Jones Podcast - #176 - Aliens are Still Abducting People

March 6, 2023 - Danny Jones Podcast

02:13:29

#176 - Aliens are Still Abducting People | Randall Nickerson

# uap investigations tim leach tic tac alien abductions area 51 conspiracy theories david fravor dr john mack gary nolan government cover ups grabby aliens great filter hal putoff jacques vallee media censorship mkultra robert bigelow robertson panel skunk works

Randall Nickerson examines the 1994 Zimbabwe abduction case, where Dr. John Mack found consistent physical scars defying schizophrenia diagnoses amidst political violence and academic discrediting efforts. The discussion analyzes UAP investigations, contrasting U.S. skepticism with South African military openness, while noting NASA's data withholding despite FOIA requests. Speakers debate whether governments suppress evidence to maintain control, referencing the Robertson Panel's weaponization of stigma against researchers versus recent pilot testimonies. Ultimately, the episode suggests that media monetization and controlled narratives obscure the truth, urging a shift toward scientific analysis of radar videos rather than ridicule. [Automatically generated summary]
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Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo

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Significant Close Encounters 00:07:00
	Your film is basically based on the most significant close encounter in modern history.
	Is that right?
	I think it is definitely up there.
	I would say that.
	You know, it's definitely a very.
	You know what makes it interesting and valuable is somebody rolled a camera back in 94.
	A lot of people did to interview people and document what happened.
	That I've never seen in any other case where there's so much.
	Interview evidence, you know.
	So, when did you first become aware of this case?
	And not only how long ago did you find out about it, but also could you basically give a rundown of what happened in Rua, Zimbabwe in 1994?
	Yeah, I'll give the rundown just so people understand what this event was.
	It was in 1994, September 16th.
	It was a Friday morning, about 10 30 in the morning.
	The incident, Was reported by a schoolyard of children.
	And they had witnessed this thing in the sky, and then they saw it sit down behind their playground and watched it and saw these little creatures come out.
	And a lot of bizarre things they were witnessing that they didn't quite understand that comes out through the interviews.
	And then one of these creatures approached them.
	And there was some kind of communication attempt of some kind.
	And that's when all the kids, there was a whole bunch of things that happened that there was a sound that was heard that really spooked everybody at that point.
	And they all went running into the staff meeting that was going on at the time at the school.
	That's what kind of what spooked the kids, you mean?
	Yes.
	The sound.
	Well, according to several of the witnesses, yeah.
	What was that sound?
	How do they describe it?
	They described it like one of the interesting descriptions is like a mechanical bee sound, like a buzzing of bees.
	Yeah.
	There were two sounds that were really distinctly heard.
	There was that, this buzzing sound that, you know, people have, it's the same description, but different, you know, different descriptions of the same thing.
	And then there's a high pitched sound that happened.
	That's separate from this other lower buzzing sound that they heard.
	So that's what was reported.
	So when the BBC started to go immediately to look at this, the war reporter from BBC, Tim Leach, he.
	Oh, he was a war reporter.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	I didn't even know that.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, he covered all kinds of atrocities in Africa.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, he was pretty, he was already pretty scarred by the time he hit Ariel, to be honest.
	It's hard.
	That's a hard job, man.
	So when did you first learn about it?
	1995.
	Oh, you learned about it the following year.
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	Because I had seen the videos, John Mack, I was familiar with him.
	I don't know if it was at an office or something I saw the first time I saw these kids.
	I'm like, and it was also on Sightings that same year.
	And on Sightings, what's Sightings?
	Sightings was an old program about UFOs back in the 90s, 80s, and 90s.
	So, yeah, that was the first time I saw it.
	And I was struck by it because I'm like, what are those kids talking about?
	They're definitely telling the truth about something.
	And that's what it stuck in my mind.
	So, when the opportunity came up in 2007 to do a movie about it, I already knew what the material was.
	Not all of it.
	Actually, I was pretty surprised how much of it.
	The material there was, not just from John Mack, but other people that have interviewed these kids.
	So, and then there, you know, there were adults.
	You know, it wasn't just children, it was adults that witnessed this craft around the area.
	A woman that lived very close to the school witnessed it in the morning.
	Pilots witnessed it the night before.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	People don't know that.
	There were a bunch of sightings around.
	Rua Zimbabwe leading up to a week leading up to that day, right?
	Right.
	It goes back.
	And it was on the news.
	They reported it on the news.
	Yeah.
	And, you know, when you're doing a doc or you're investigating something, you have to look at everything.
	And, you know, one of the big things I looked at was what was going on in space?
	You know, what were the space programs doing?
	And actually did FOIAs to, you know, Strategic Air Command, did FOIAs to NASA.
	You did.
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	I spent quite a bit of money on FOIAs because they were beyond the, you know, when you request a ton of data, they start charging you money.
	Right, right.
	And what made you want to start doing these FOIAs?
	Well, because I, you know, when I was digging into what was going on in space at the time, you know, and I heard about this Russian satellite that went up and a rocket body came in on that Wednesday night.
	And I thought, oh, that's interesting.
	That's pretty important.
	And, uh, You know, I interviewed a whole bunch of people that witnessed something on that Wednesday night at different times.
	And it's, you know, very possible that that's what they, some of those people saw was a rocket body.
	And then there's another group of people that I don't know what they saw, you know?
	So that kind of was, you know, it was good to go down that avenue because that's all I knew at the time.
	And then I started to meet people that had seen it on the next night that were pilots.
	You know, that witnessed it from the air.
	And that was not involved in any meteorite activity because I interviewed astronomers.
	You know, I wanted to do my due diligence on this whole thing as far as what really happened here.
	You know, how long did it take?
	How long did you spend?
	How long did it take for you to conduct all these interviews and travel and do all this work and this research for this movie?
Pilots Witnessing Events 00:04:22
	15 years.
	15 years you worked on this movie.
	Mm hmm.
	It's a long time.
	It's a long time.
	Yeah.
	I mean, you know, the investigative part of it, I mean, it never stopped, but the major part of it, I went to Africa for a year and first trip was nine and a half months.
	That's when I first, you know, found the school with Nikki Carter, who's a journalist in Africa.
	And she had interviewed the kids also way back in 94.
	And then, you know, found that I could find these kids.
	There's a woman named Robin Jurd that deserves a lot of credit for that because she helped me set up a Facebook right away.
	She's a woman in Africa and she just donated her time.
	And we started getting in touch with these same kids that were at Ariel.
	So then the second trip was, and then I started interviewing the kids that first trip.
	The second trip I went.
	How old were they the first time you interviewed them?
	Late 20s.
	Late 20s.
	Yeah.
	Because the kids that it happened to were between the ages of six and 13.
	Right.
	Which is a pretty wide range, you know?
	It's a good 100 kids, anyway, that.
	Went running into that staff meeting.
	So, yeah, and the second trip was more, you know, traveling to England, different countries, Canada, across the United States, because most of the kids left because of the political unrest in Zimbabwe.
	You know, even in 2008, when I went, I wasn't even supposed to be in that country.
	There was a state, you know, there was a warning out by the State Department because of the political violence that was going on.
	And when I flew out of Zimbabwe, The State Department was on my plane.
	They were sitting right next to me.
	No way.
	And they wanted, they actually said to me, they said, Hey, if you learned anything, could you come and talk to us?
	Because I was out in the woods.
	You know, I was out on farmlands, you know, way out of the city.
	That's when that New York Times reporter ended up in jail, like for three months.
	I'm not even aware of this.
	What happened?
	He was reporting on the political violence and he stayed in Harare in a hotel and they put him in jail.
	Because they didn't want any Western journalists covering this.
	So I had cameras.
	I'm out in a shack in Rua, like an hour or so out of the city, and praying that I can get out of the country without them taking my tapes.
	That's how it was.
	Yeah.
	And knowing that people were being, you know, brutally, you know, what happens is they go into a village and they, you know, they.
	Threatened people and violence is committed.
	If you don't vote for the right person, this is what's going to happen.
	That's what that was going on.
	Wow.
	Yep.
	That was pretty heavy.
	So, a lot of these kids at the time you went, you, when you interviewed them in their 20s, they were out of there.
	They were in England.
	Yeah.
	They went to Australia, England, Germany.
	They went all over the world.
	You know, I got to say, they were really smart kids.
	I have to say that.
	Like they were educated really well and a mixed, diverse group, you know.
	Yeah.
	Every color, every religion was really part of that school.
	It was pretty amazing, actually.
	Was that sort of like a privileged school for people with money?
	It was, yeah, it was started by farmers because they didn't want to, they were sending their kids to Harare, the city, to go to school.
	So the farmers decided, we want to build our own school.
	So they were, you know, white farmers predominantly and political families in Zimbabwe.
	It was a private school, but they also, They had to bring in the children from the villages locally.
	So it was kind of mixed very well.
	Right.
	You had privileged people, you had sort of middle class people, and you had very poor people.
	Yeah.
	But they did a beautiful job.
	I mean, it's an amazing school still to this day.
Building Schools in Zimbabwe 00:15:10
	But you don't see the white population there anymore.
	That's predominantly Shona.
	Which is the local tribe in Zimbabwe.
	At what point during the process of making this thing did you like it?
	If you spent 15 years on it, there had to have been something that kept going because usually people don't spend 15 years working on a project like this.
	Like, what kept you going through all of it?
	Obviously, this was like self funded.
	Yes.
	Well, yeah, it was initially self funded and fundraisers actually through the John Mack Institute in the beginning.
	They were helping me to, you know, they wanted me to do a 30 minute DVD of just John Mack's interviews of the children.
	And, uh, The more I looked into it, I'm like, you know what?
	There's a bigger story here, you know?
	So, yeah, I started investing my own money into it.
	And then, you know, at one point, I'm like, I think I understand the story.
	Right.
	And then I kind of was like, it was maybe another two years.
	I'm like, I got it.
	Okay.
	I've really got the story here.
	And were you finding new evidence or new people involved or?
	Yeah.
	I mean, the further I kept digging, you know, the more people I found.
	I got on the radio in Africa, which was really great.
	Nikki Carter helped me do that.
	And that brought a lot of people forward, you know, the pilots and people that were, that never forgotten what they'd seen.
	A lot of the kids also, a lot of other witnesses, you know, that contacted me from those radio interviews.
	So why did it take 15 years?
	I mean, it was, you know, The first seven or eight was just investigative, and then I it's like, how do you tell it?
	How do you tell the story?
	And then that was the difficult choice make a standard UFO doc, or you know, the hard part was doing it without narration, you know, and have the people say it, talk about it themselves.
	You know what I mean?
	Yeah, oh yeah, that was so difficult.
	That's the hardest movie I think you can make as far as a doc because they have to say it, right?
	And they do, and you have to have so much material just to be able to, right.
	To have all that work, you know?
	Yeah, to string it together and put a story together.
	Yeah.
	That's the most difficult part.
	You said Tim Leach was the BBC journalist who was the first one to report on this case, right?
	Yes.
	Do you know what it was that drew him being a war reporter?
	What made him want to chase this story?
	He was all right.
	He just got back from covering, I believe it was the atrocities that were going on in Zimbabwe.
	They were killing people and throwing them in mines.
	Because of the politics at the time.
	So he was coming back from that and he started hearing about these reports about the people seeing stuff in the sky, things in the sky that didn't make sense whatsoever.
	And then, so he was covering that and then Ariel happened and he heard about that.
	Somebody called him, one of the parents actually did, of one of the children.
	And he went and was the first one on the scene.
	Yeah.
	He called a UFO researcher because he was said he was out of his.
	Ball game.
	He had no idea what to do.
	He called Cynthia Hind and then Cynthia Hind recommended that he call Dr. John Mack because he was, you know, prominent and he was researching these types of events.
	At that time, Dr. Mack was doing this, you know, seeing how widespread this phenomenon was outside of the United States.
	Because for a long time, people think, oh, thought it was just a U.S. phenomenon.
	Right.
	You know.
	And then he started traveling South America, Africa, and finding out the same things are happening all over the place.
	Now, did you sit down with Tim?
	Or was he?
	What did you, what sort of insight did you get from him by sitting down with him personally?
	He was so funny.
	Yeah, he's like kind of a weirdo.
	Oh, definitely.
	I mean, he was just like, he used to photograph, he used to be the photographer for the Rolling Stones.
	Like his history is really interesting.
	So a movie should be done about that guy.
	Yeah.
	Like, yeah.
	I mean, he's been shot.
	He lost.
	What?
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	No, he was for real.
	Um, He just made me laugh all the time.
	I spent about a week with him.
	Did this case get him into the whole UFO thing, whole UFO world subject, whatever you want to call it?
	Yeah, it did.
	And it cost him.
	It really did.
	It cost him his job.
	What?
	At BBC.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	How so?
	Because they, well, from Tim's words, he's like, they don't want to, you know, they thought he was on wacky weed.
	You know, that's what he says himself.
	You know, he's writing the editors of BBC, like, hey, this is really happening down here.
	And they were, they just didn't want to talk about it.
	He, the way he put it, he's like, you know, there's certain things you don't talk about.
	And one of, and he learned that in war, like, you don't show really what happens in warfare.
	He, he went on about that.
	You mean like as far as like violence and gore?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Right.
	Like what we just saw, you know, in Ukraine.
	That's what he's talking about.
	We saw some video recently, like everybody did.
	That was just horrific, but that's the stuff they were holding back for a long time that he was shooting, but they'd never play it on TV.
	Um, and he was always upset because, like, well, how do people don't even understand what war really is unless you really see how brutal and gruesome it is?
	How are we going to sell it when people see how violent, deadly, and devastating this is?
	Yeah, so the UFO thing was a shock to him, he never stopped.
	Thinking about it, he died in 2011.
	Um, it was probably within a year when I interviewed him.
	No way, yeah, yeah.
	I really wish he got a chance to see this film.
	And what year did John Mack die again?
	2004.
	2004.
	So, did you ever talk to him?
	Yes, I didn't interview him, but I did speak with him.
	Yep, what was that like?
	Uh, he was brilliant, he was kind of on another plane in a way, kind of felt like he was ahead of his time.
	Um Yeah, he was.
	I mean, the only person, the only people that could really talk with him about things were people that really had a lot of clinical knowledge and experience, like he did.
	Yeah.
	And that's a very few amount of people, you know, and they sure weren't open minded at that time.
	They thought John Mack had lost his mind, and, you know, they were pretty brutal to him.
	Yeah.
	It's weird to see.
	How they were able to, like we were talking about before we started the podcast, how they were successfully able to destroy his reputation because of this, because they didn't want to be quote unquote associated with this sort of woo woo topic that it would sort of discredit the universities or discredit academia in some way.
	It's just kind of silly.
	To be honest with you, like I think if they, like it's like what happened with Galileo and Copernicus.
	Yeah.
	You know, how long did that take for them to actually be.
	You know what they are actually saying to be accepted, it took like hundreds of years, really, for everybody to get on board.
	The Catholic Church apologized in 1992 for what they did to him.
	Yeah.
	You know?
	And that was, and I'm not nothing against the Catholic Church or any, it's just that it was mindset.
	Like, this can't be real.
	We're the center.
	You know, new information is too disturbing for us.
	You know?
	One of the big things about science is you have to study material objects, everything has to be objective, and we're studying the material world, and we think about things in a certain way.
	And when you're studying something that has to change your whole frame of mind and the whole way of solving problems, then it's sort of just like intuitively counterproductive.
	It's counterproductive to science in general with the way that we study things and the way that we analyze things.
	The way he was doing it was more of a personal, subjective way.
	Because he's sitting down with these people who are quote unquote these abduction experiencers.
	What did he call them?
	He had a certain term for these people.
	He called them experiencers.
	Yeah.
	That was his term.
	They were experiencers of this abduction phenomenon or contact or any kind of like close encounter with these things.
	Yeah.
	And for a guy, a Pulitzer Prize winning Harvard psychiatrist, having hundreds and thousands of people writing him about these experiences he was having and having him sorting through the whole.
	Thousands of these things, picking certain ones and sitting down and talking to these people and trying to get them to replay their experiences.
	How do you analyze that?
	Because all you're doing is just listening to somebody recall something in their brain.
	There's nothing material.
	You can't measure anything.
	Well, I mean, there were scars, stuff like that, that was clinical.
	You know what I mean?
	Like something that could be photographed, something that was repeated.
	Meaning, like some of these people claim that they were brought up into some sort of enclosed object and some sort of experiments were done on them or like poking or prodding.
	Yep.
	And there was a consistency between a lot of these people with certain scars, you're saying?
	Yeah.
	That's true.
	And I think he saw that.
	I think other investigators saw that.
	But what John's claim was, being a very well trained psychiatrist, having written books about.
	You know, dreams and nightmares and addiction.
	Like he covered the whole spectrum depression, like suicide.
	He wrote about everything.
	And he had been seeing clients for 50 years or however many, you know.
	So, but his thing was like these people are behaving and telling their story like people that have had a real experience.
	It doesn't fit, it didn't fit any of the classical diagnoses for, uh, Mental illness, or you know, at that time, well, actually, it was before that time they were saying that these people were schizophrenic that were seeing, you know, having contact with some other weird species, right?
	And it went to, you know, false memory and you know, all these different diagnoses.
	Well, it's hard.
	I mean, what year?
	I mean, he was studying this stuff in the 80s and the 90s, right?
	So he started in 90, I think it was.
	In the middle of the year 1990.
	Okay, so he started in 1990 publicly studying this.
	Well, he didn't necessarily, he wasn't convinced at that point.
	He just got exposed to, you know, a group of people that were, a friend of his introduced him to some.
	He's like, Is that Heineck?
	No, that was actually Hopkins, Bud Hopkins.
	Oh, Bud Hopkins.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And a female fellow psychologist or psychiatrist that brought him to Bud.
	I think that's how it happened.
	And that was in 1990.
	And then he started.
	And who was Bud Hopkins for people who aren't familiar?
	Bud Hopkins, he started, he was an artist, you know, back in like with DeCooney and who's the guy that put speckles on?
	I forget his name.
	Sorry.
	Yeah.
	Pollock.
	Pollock.
	Yeah.
	Jackson Pollock.
	Jackson Pollock.
	So he was, he grew up with those guys and like, you know, went to college with those guys.
	And he was one of those artists from that genre.
	I mean, Bud Hopkins has art at the Guggenheim, all over, he's all over the place.
	And he had seen something in 1964 himself with his wife, and he never forgot about it.
	And then one of his neighbors had reported something, and he wrote a piece for the New York Times editorial.
	I think it was the Sunday.
	I'm not sure what it was.
	It was definitely in the New York Times.
	But it got a lot of press, and it got a lot of people calling him.
	But he ended up Writing a book called Missing Time that was about these events.
	And that was, I think, in seven, it was way in the early days.
	So he became a pretty well known researcher of this phenomenon.
	So him and John Mack linked up and they started comparing stories?
	No.
	I think it was this psychiatrist friend of John's that said, You have to meet this guy and you have to meet the people he's.
	Hearing from.
	And that's what John did.
	He went down, he thought they were going to be crazy and, you know, he'll be able to easily diagnose them.
	And that wasn't the case.
	These were like people that had jobs and careers, weren't public, you know.
	So I think that's what I think his clinical, he couldn't rule it out as, he couldn't rule it to be something that was easily definable in any way.
	I think that's really what it comes down to.
	Like, I try to put myself in his shoes back in that time in the 90s, being a, like I said, Pulitzer Prize winning Harvard psychiatrist and deciding I'm going to jump into alien abductions and talk about this publicly.
	It's like, it's almost knowingly career suicide because you know the stigma involving it.
	Just look where we are, fast forward to where we are right now.
Clinical Perspectives on Abductions 00:15:13
	If you want to, if you want to start a podcast or if you want to, Write books about just alien abductions, people aren't going to take you that seriously in general.
	Obviously, a lot of people will, but generally, most people won't.
	You're going to get eye rolls from left, right, everywhere.
	But the funny thing is, though, you can talk about the UFO topic now because the New York Times is, the Pentagon is, everyone's Navy fighter pilots are seeing these things, they're talking about it.
	So the UFO subject is not really stigmatized.
	Yeah.
	But there's a huge leap between talking about UFOs and talking about alien abductions.
	It's very true.
	Yeah.
	And he, you know, he had, and he's John Max said it himself about, you know, committing professional suicide.
	You know, that's he knew what he was doing, but he also knew.
	I think what he knew was just that, you know, it was the what do you do in that situation?
	He says that himself.
	Like, what do you do when you see something?
	You know, it's not a medical, you know, a mental diagnosis or, you know, a psychological diagnosis or anything else or some other trauma that's reappearing.
	You know that it is what it's being presented as.
	What do you do with that?
	Do you just not say anything?
	How was he able to decipher?
	Whether it was just sort of a constructed, fabricated story or whether it was actually relived trauma.
	Was there any sort of like distinction he was able to make to analyze that?
	Yeah, I think it, you know, over time, I think it's just experience.
	You see different behaviors of different people.
	That's what you're trained to do.
	You know, that's what he was trained to do.
	With children and adults to find out what the truth really was, you know.
	Um, so yeah, I don't, and I think you know it's still here, whatever this phenomenon is, it hasn't gone away, it's never gone away.
	It was here before John Mack was here or anybody else was here, it was still going on, it was being reported, and we still don't have a clear answer about it, you know.
	Well, a lot of people talk about it.
	And nobody talks about it.
	Nobody wants to talk about it.
	It's disturbing.
	I mean, really, that's what it's disturbing.
	The first interview I ever heard about anything like this that kind of like made me like pause and take a deep breath was like the Travis Walton story.
	When I heard him explain that, I was just like, holy shit.
	Like, I was like, my bullshit detectors were out and ready to fucking pick up on anything.
	But it seemed very, the way he described it and the way his stories stayed consistent really kind of.
	Fucking blew me back in my seat.
	And there were witnesses like Travis.
	There were five witnesses.
	I believe it was five other guys.
	They've never changed their story.
	They watched it happen.
	And, you know, I've talked with, I mean, that man, he's another person who's really put himself out there, you know, for reasons that don't benefit him, you know, in the long run.
	It hasn't benefited him to talk about this, really, you know, and it's.
	I mean, who's making millions of dollars in the UFO field?
	You know what I mean?
	Like, what's History Channel?
	That's true.
	Okay.
	That's different.
	Yeah, that's true.
	But yeah, that's it.
	You know, there's a lot of people that feel like, and I've run into so many, you know, just in the process of doing this movie who, you know, they feel like it's just important that humanity knows that there's something else out here.
	Hmm.
	Did John Mack ever meet with Travis Walden or interview him or do a session with him?
	Do you know?
	I'm not, I don't know for sure about Travis.
	I don't think so just because of their distance away from each other, but it could have happened.
	What was some of the biggest criticism or critiques of John Mack with his colleagues or with anybody?
	Like, what was the biggest pushback against him and his credibility?
	Because you said they were successfully able to destroy his credibility.
	What?
	I think they did that in the press.
	It was kind of childish in a way.
	Like they just called them wacko macko and just told, you know, they just, I think there were a lot of, well, the people that were really concerned were alumni.
	That's how it really got raised.
	And then also the school itself, the dean.
	We're talking Harvard?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And, you know, John Mack had submitted a document for the New England Journal of Medicine, a paper written about this, what he was, you know, working on, saying this is not a mental illness.
	And, you know, they would not publish it.
	They wouldn't publish it.
	And it ends up that guy who was ahead of the New England Journal of Medicine was the guy going after him from Harvard.
	Like, really?
	Within six months.
	Wow.
	So that's pretty interesting that those were connected and they just didn't want to talk about this at all.
	Now, when you were doing your documentary, you interviewed a lot of his colleagues and as well as a lot of the alumni from Harvard, correct?
	Yes.
	What sort of sense did you get from talking to those guys?
	I mean, I can't imagine they were.
	Did you talk to anybody who.
	Thought talked negatively about that about him, or was it all just sort of people who loved him and supported him?
	Well, a lot of the people that talked negatively were public, so I could get that data, you know, those interviews and stuff like that.
	So I didn't really need to, it was all said pretty openly through interviews or newspaper articles.
	People really, but it, you know, what I it really looks like to me now, and probably it's just people couldn't even go there.
	Didn't want to go there, and they were really disturbed that somebody in their you know circles was going there to think way outside, you know, what was reasonable in their minds.
	Now, it's like the whole Oxum's razor thing, you know, whatever that's simplest explanation is likely the one, um, which is usually true, but maybe not so in this case, you know, yeah, like some of the other guys, they were just happy.
	Floating in the shallow end, and they didn't want to go risk their lives and go into the deep end where John was working because it would be too dangerous for them for their careers.
	And it was just like, what's you know, I think John, trade off.
	Yeah, I think he had accomplished so much by that point.
	He didn't care, he didn't care on some level.
	There, that's another thing too that you see a lot in academia is the people that come from these universities who end up publishing works and getting lots of attention and media attention.
	There's a lot of jealousy.
	With their colleagues.
	And a lot of people try to like shoot them down and talk negatively about them because they are in the spotlight.
	And then you have to question, like, you see it all the time on the internet nowadays.
	People start talking about certain subjects.
	They realize they get a lot of attention and a lot of money from talking about certain subjects or certain topics, positively or negatively.
	And they just sort of like fall down that rabbit hole and they just keep chasing that and they just go in one direction.
	So, That's a legitimate question you could ask about John Mack.
	Is that did he just see this thing, study it for a little bit, realize he's getting a lot of attention, and just sort of lean into it because of, hey, I'm getting on Oprah.
	You know, I'm writing all these books, making all this money off these books.
	Everyone wants to interview me.
	I'm a huge public figure.
	What's the point of just stopping this and doing something else, even if he's not super interested in it?
	You know?
	No, I just don't see that.
	I mean, I don't think he was very.
	Moved by it, you know, because he was, you know, interviewing people, you know, all the time and talking with people about, you know, that what they had seen.
	There were witnesses to that.
	So he talked to the witnesses.
	It wasn't like, yeah, no, I don't think he was ever into it for, he was already famous.
	Right.
	He already had a huge following in a circle of friends at Harvard.
	That's true.
	This didn't help him with that.
	Right.
	It didn't help him.
	Good point.
	He took a real hit for, I mean, that's why a lot of people respect him now, is because he risked everything.
	You know, what the question is whether he was right or wrong.
	Well, we're still dealing with the same thing, it hasn't gone away.
	Those people are still talking about it.
	There's more events that are being publicly, finally, you know, revealed.
	And I think, you know, what's the big deal?
	It is a big deal.
	Like, if there's another species out there, it is a big deal.
	But what's the point in waiting?
	You know, like, I think our evolution, if we had known when this first occurred, when human beings really first came across them, and they had told everybody else, we would not be in this position we're in now.
	What do you mean by that?
	I just feel like that.
	I think that people weren't told about this for a long time.
	That there was another species out in this universe.
	Yeah, but who would know about it other than people who experienced it personally?
	Because even if you are that person, how can you?
	I mean, I would, well, it's not a person, it's an organization.
	You know, I mean, there's plenty of people that can talk to you about the military and they're what they've been pulling out for since 1941, anyway.
	And it's a really, so they didn't, they decided not to tell us, the rest of us.
	And you're saying that there's people in the military or organizations that know about, And are familiar with these abduction phenomena that they take it seriously?
	Well, it doesn't even matter what the event is, whether it's a contact event or a sighting.
	In my opinion, it's the fact that there's another species out there, period.
	So, I mean, that's a big deal.
	And there's government and there's military agencies that know for a fact this is true.
	Yeah.
	I'm not saying anything new.
	I mean, Pentagon's talking about it.
	They're looking at all the old records in the you know Blue Book, you know Project Grudge, Project Sign before that Roswell 1941, Missouri.
	I mean, there's a Roswell's been debunked pretty much, right?
	No, no, not at all.
	I thought that had pretty much been, I thought, I thought it was basically when I say debunked, what I mean is like JFK's assassination, everybody knows that there was some foul play involved, and that the CIA, if you really dig into JFK, people know that.
	The CIA was somewhat involved in that if you look at the fucking, if you follow the evidence, right?
	So, if you look at Roswell and you follow the evidence, you follow the history, the interviews of the guys that were there, there's obviously a cover up with Roswell.
	That's what I meant by saying debunked.
	Like, I don't mean like the balloon story is real.
	I mean, the balloon story has been debunked.
	Right.
	That's what I mean.
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I actually went and talked to some of the people that live around there, you know, long, this was back a long time ago.
	And, Because I was curious.
	Like, I'll hear about something, but I want to go there and talk to the people that live there.
	You know, like with the Phoenix Lights, I went to the police station and talked to the police and said, What happened with this?
	What do you think?
	And they were like, Yeah, no, this really happened.
	I don't know what it was, but it was huge.
	You know, that's what they said.
	So I think decisions were made by people that we shouldn't know about this.
	The rest of us shouldn't know about this.
	And I can understand how they would have made that decision.
	I just think it was a really bad decision because it changed our evolutionary path.
	How do you think they made that decision?
	Because they were concerned about how everybody would react.
	Mm hmm.
	How do you think people would react?
	I think they're going to be pretty freaked out for a while.
	Yeah.
	But what would be the consequences of being freaked out?
	Like, so how would that affect society, do you think?
	How do you think it would affect governments?
	I think it.
	Governments.
	That's the problem, right?
	I think that's the problem is who's, you know, the churches have been in charge now.
	And then it's sort of transitioned into science.
	John Mack talked about this.
	A lot of other people talked about this.
	There's nothing new I'm talking about.
	It's.
	But it's who's really going to be in if it's revealed that there's another species out there that's way more evolved than us that we can't catch up to.
	You know, who's in control then?
	You know, who's going to get that respect of power?
	I think that's a really good question, tough question to think about.
	I think overall it's probably best for us because.
	We're going to get, you know, we're not going to.
	I think we'll end up pulling together as one planet because we know there's something else there that's not us as human beings.
	I think that's likely going to be the end result, but it's going to, people are going to be in shock for a while for sure.
	A lot of people explain these abductions as if like they're advanced beings from another planet or another star system.
	But there's also a group of these abductees who claim that this has some sort of religious context to it.
	Some sort of spiritual or religious context, as if these are like angels.
	Right.
	I mean, it's pretty interesting to look at, you know, the Bible.
	I used to, you know, I read the Bible twice through and I always flipped through it.
	And when you think about this whole topic and then look back at the Bible, that's pretty interesting.
	Like, what were they seeing?
	You know, how are they interpreting what they were seeing?
	Right.
	Because they didn't have the tech we have and the understanding of science.
	Right.
Religious Contexts of Sightings 00:02:53
	Exactly.
	When John Mack talked to the children from Rua, Zimbabwe, what was his?
	I'm sure this is part of what you talked to him about.
	Like, what was his initial reaction to talking to these children?
	And had he spoken to children in the past that have had similar experiences?
	He had.
	Yep.
	I think it was just, it was more, it was confirmative for him that, you know, it was just the same description, the same emotional.
	Impact.
	All of the stories were so similar, but they weren't exactly the same.
	True.
	Which kind of like that hashes out the idea that they were just trying to prank the school teachers.
	Yeah.
	Because a lot of them had different perceptions of what was going on.
	Or one girl claimed that when she looked into the big eyes, she was getting thoughts of technology being bad.
	And when the other girl looked into the eyes of the thing, she got this whole thing about the environment.
	It seemed like they had two.
	Different narratives or two different experiences.
	The physical experience was the same.
	What they saw was the same, but what they thought about was different when they looked at these things.
	I thought that was pretty interesting.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It was subjective, you know, like every, depending on where the person was, what their perspective was, it was very, you know, from whatever perspective they had.
	I think that, you know, the technology thing that was said to one, you know, however that was done.
	I mean, I love the way she says it.
	Like it came into my conscience, you know?
	Yeah.
	How, She didn't know anything about the word telepathy or anything like that, but that's what she was describing in a sense.
	But they were talking about the same thing in a way.
	Like it wasn't like, you know, one was about, or several were about what was going to happen to us if we keep going down this path.
	And the technology thing was this is why.
	Like you're.
	That's what I see is like.
	Our technology.
	We've grown really fast and done amazing things, but we don't have the responsibility to, you know.
	Yeah, the interesting thing about it is when it took place in the 90s was like the Cold War, developing nuclear arsenals all over the country, all over the world, testing nukes.
	And there's a lot of like, there's a book, a great book written about this called UFOs and Nukes, which talks about the basically the generals who were in charge of these warheads.
	These intercontinental ballistic warheads that saw and reported flying saucers coming up, shooting beams down into the missile silos.
Nuclear Silo Incidents 00:10:08
	I think there was another famous case in Europe or England somewhere where there was like the US's biggest stronghold of nuclear weapons that was housed in Europe.
	What was it called?
	Brendelsham Forest.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Yep.
	Where a bunch of the officers, as well as a, I think it was one of the guys who sits in like the air traffic control tower.
	Said he saw this thing and they explained how it just basically moved like a laser pointer in the sky.
	It makes me think immediately about how we handle herds of animals in the wild or conservatism or conservatories, right?
	Nature conservation.
	Conservation.
	Yeah.
	Conservation.
	And how we keep the population down because they're going to get out of hand, overpopulate, and they're going to end up dying of disease.
	So we cull them.
	You know, and we've learned a lot about culling, what not to do.
	Like in Africa, they used to cull the elephants and they'd kill all the old ones.
	Right.
	So, what would happen was the younger ones had no wisdom, no teachers, and they'd go in and trample villages.
	So, now when they cull elephants, they don't take out all the old ones.
	They, they, they go in.
	Cull elephants?
	Yeah.
	I thought elephants were severely underpopulated, like almost on the verge of extinction.
	Not, not, I mean, they're getting there.
	That's for sure.
	Because of the poaching in Africa.
	That's, that's mainly, yeah, that's, that's true.
	It's mainly the rhino that's really, and the rhino too.
	Yeah.
	The rhino's, I think, way worse off than the elephant, but the, I think they're both really bad.
	Everything is.
	Even lions are on the list now.
	I mean, it's really sad what's happening.
	You know, we're just friends that are in, you know, paleontology that I know.
	It's like, dude, we're in the sixth extinction event.
	We're in it.
	It's already happening.
	We're losing species left and right.
	Yeah.
	That's not a good thing.
	How many events are there, like this Rua case, where somebody saw some sort of being like come out of a craft and try to communicate with them?
	Adults or children or anything?
	Oh, there's tons.
	Yeah.
	There's a lot.
	There's a lot.
	But not many where there's like lots of witnesses who corroborate each other, right?
	Less so.
	Yeah.
	You have a, there's that less so mass sightings, they call them, where you have multiple, you know, over 10 or 15 witnesses.
	Even that's a lot.
	There's plenty of incidents where there's two or three people.
	Yeah.
	Like the Travis Walton case.
	Yep.
	I mean, even Travis, that's five people other than himself.
	Yeah.
	That's a unique event.
	That was a unique event.
	But yes, other schools, yeah.
	Part of the deep dive on Ariel was where else has this happened?
	So one of the places was Wales, a place called Broadhaven in Wales, where 1976 or 77, I believe it was 77, these children reported seeing this craft out behind their school.
	And so I went there, went to Wales, talked to the people.
	You know, nobody wanted to go on camera because they had already been on camera and already had all this ridicule.
	And, you know, now they were in their 40s, mid 40s, early 50s.
	And they were just like, what's the point?
	Nobody's going to believe us anyway.
	That's what they said to me.
	And I talked to the headmaster and also retrieved all their drawings that they drew when they were kids.
	Oh, wow.
	Yeah.
	And it was a primary school.
	It was kind of odd because I'm driving there.
	What does that mean, primary school?
	Primary school is like, you know, from.
	I mean, for me, it was like from first grade to sixth grade.
	Okay.
	You know?
	Okay.
	Just not used to that terminology.
	Yeah.
	It's elementary school.
	Okay.
	So it means like what, under 12 years old?
	Basically.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Before junior high.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So there was one in Russia.
	There's one I was aware of in Chile where actually there's video of, like recordings of the witnesses.
	Oh, children.
	They're speaking Spanish, but it's still like Ariel was the one that's interesting about Ariel.
	It was so documented.
	That's what makes it unique.
	Yeah.
	If those people didn't record.
	Those interviews at that time, and there were six different organizations, people that did that, it wouldn't be, we wouldn't be talking about it.
	You know, it was those people.
	And, you know, what was amazing is every single one of those person had kept everything after all that time.
	They're like, this, whatever happened here is important.
	And they kept their notes, kept their videos.
	Why do you think they were so open about it compared to everyone else?
	What was with that?
	What was with the openness?
	I think it was the kids.
	But there's kids in every other case and lots of other cases too where they didn't talk about it.
	Why did those kids specifically?
	Why were they so open?
	The kids themselves?
	The kids or the people around them, just in that event.
	Like you just said, there's no other event where the kids were so open as far as doing drawings, having conversations, recording about it.
	Everyone else just kind of shut up and didn't talk about it.
	Like you said, what's the point?
	But these people in Rua, these kids in Rua, for some reason, they were just, whether it be the people they were surrounded with or whether it was John Mack, but it seems like they were they.
	We were more encouraged to be open about it.
	No, I mean, in Wales, they were open about it.
	Okay.
	It just, you know, for whatever reason, and I think it was the quality of the kids, to be honest with you, and that some of the kids, I'm not quite, that's the wrong word.
	I think the kids affected people.
	The kids that spoke about it at Ariel really affected people because they were, you, You knew they were not lying.
	Yeah.
	Everybody tells you that.
	I haven't met anybody that says, yeah, no, those kids were lying.
	It doesn't matter what they saw, right?
	They could have seen anything, right?
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like they were, whatever they were telling the truth, you can argue about what they saw, but you can't argue with the fact that everything about them, their body language, their eye movements, I had people look at that specifically.
	Like, are these people telling the truth?
	Body language, eye movements, hand movements.
	Right.
	Is there any deception here?
	There's a whole paper being written right now about that.
	Um, that's really that's going to be interesting.
	Who's writing it?
	I can't tell you that.
	Come on, man.
	I can't, not not not me a sneak peek.
	It, I can't tell you that because, but it you'll it's going to be pretty amazing.
	Um, just because it's just so professional, you know.
	It's, it's uh, do you have any idea when it will be out?
	I don't, okay.
	But I, um, I've seen some of the drafts and I'm like, yeah, thank you for looking at this.
	Really, like I saw it, but it's great to have professionals who do this all the time.
	You know, have their expertise and hear what their comments are and get it peer reviewed and all that.
	So that's, yeah.
	But people have come forward.
	You know, I guess the hard part is we just, nobody, we really don't take this serious.
	We don't know what to do with it.
	The hard part, the hardest thing about it is it's like the agent involved in this phenomena is almost just like, Poking us and toying with us, and deliberately staying on, deliberately giving us just enough evidence for people who are willing to believe it, but not enough for the skeptic.
	Right.
	And it seems like, I don't know what, how could you have any evidence, like other than somebody having some scars and saying, hey, look, my scar is similar to his scar and he has the same story?
	Or, I mean, How do you come up with how do you get past that barrier for people to take it seriously?
	How do people eventually come to take this seriously?
	I think we have to see that.
	I think there's some efforts and some movements, if you want to call it that, about stuff that we've retrieved.
	Like metal?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I don't know if you've heard about it.
	People have been discussing it.
	Yeah, I know.
	I know like Jacques Valet has been studying some of these materials and Gary Nolan.
	Yep.
	And there's a whole big thing about these crash retrievals, you know, globally.
	That's going to be interesting, you know, like, what did they have?
	But when, and they didn't, of course, they're not going to share it with us because, A, it's a national security thing.
	They don't want any other country to have any piece of this.
	But it's also like, you know, anything that shows life outside this planet is going to change everything, whether it's a, you know, a piece of, You know, a meteorite from Mars, you know, that comes in that has a little microbe in it.
	They've been very cautious even about that.
	They don't want to open that door.
	Um, because it's such a big deal.
	We, I mean, we have an example of that with, you know, when I was talking about Galileo and, and, um, that whole thing, you know, where people's consciousness changing to say, we're not the center, you know, we're not the center of it all.
	And this is another step.
	John Mack talked about a lot of other people who talked about it.
	Like this next step that we're going to, Likely have to take whether we like it or not is that we're not the top dogs.
	Something else is.
Cautious Government Responses 00:09:43
	That's hard.
	I don't think it's that hard for most people.
	I think it's harder for people in power.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	I think most people, like the majority of the population, I don't think would be that devastating for them.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You think?
	But, you know, when it comes to people like people in control of governments that want to control the population and paint a certain narrative to, for whatever it may be, for money or power, it may not be the best for them.
	But then, you know, you got people at The topic, even the president doesn't know about this.
	You have a new president every four to eight years, there's no way they're telling the presidents everything.
	Yeah, you know, and then you said, So you said you did a bunch of FOIA requests.
	Who did you send these FOIAs to?
	And then, like, what sort of revelations did you come to after reading through these?
	And what did you discover?
	Because one of the big things about FOIA requests is you can't.
	You can't do that to Lockheed or Boeing.
	You can't handle a FOIA request to a private aerospace company.
	That's correct.
	Even the shuttle has tons of private, you know, I couldn't.
	Can't send one to SpaceX, can you?
	Well, I was very specifically targeting certain things that were going on at the time.
	But I was also told by NASA and I was told by, you know, it wasn't Strategic Air Command.
	They were.
	Interestingly, when I requested the information about the rocket body on that Wednesday night, That's the only thing they didn't give me any information on or data.
	The rocket body.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, the thing that sent up that Russian satellite from Balkan R.
	Yeah.
	So, anyway, they, but it was just interesting.
	Like the very thing that I really wanted to know about, they didn't give me any information about.
	And I called them.
	I said, why didn't you give me?
	That's what I'm interested in.
	And that was a very interesting conversation.
	Um, And the answer was it was already public.
	I was like, okay, but why, you know, you didn't track it?
	Why didn't you track it?
	I mean, it tracked everything else.
	Anyway, but yes, on a lot of these missions, they're private.
	There's private experiments, private space things that you, even when you FOIA, like you're saying, you can't get that because that does not belong to NASA.
	It doesn't belong, it belongs to this private company.
	Right.
	So, you can't get the info.
	So, what, you know, what it does make you wonder what else is going on out there.
	And that's how you keep it quiet is keeping it private.
	Do you think that all governments of all countries are keeping it as private and locked away as we are in the U.S.?
	Or are there other countries that are more open about this?
	Oh, yeah.
	There's a lot.
	Everybody's more open than we are.
	Every country that I've talked to in the militaries of other countries are.
	You know, anybody in politics, they're like, it's you guys.
	What do they say about the whole phenomenon?
	That we're the key to it.
	That we know, we know, we know, we know the most.
	Our country knows the most out of any country on this planet about it.
	Huh.
	And interestingly, we're not, we're the least, we have the most, what do you call it, ridicule and disbelief in this country.
	Other people, other countries are much more open about it.
	Yeah.
	That's weird.
	It is.
	When I heard it, I was in South Africa talking to an Air Force base, talking to the commander with a lieutenant colonel.
	And he says, What are you doing here?
	The answer's in your country.
	Why bother?
	Why are you here?
	And he told me quite a few things.
	And I was just like, My mind just got blown.
	First of all, he was talking to me about it openly about this phenomenon being very real.
	And they see it on who was this guy?
	He was a commander in the Air Force base, an Air Force commander.
	Yep.
	He was commander of the whole base.
	Oh, wow.
	With a lieutenant colonel who was a female.
	What sort of things was she saying?
	He was saying, and she supported him about what they see on radar.
	Okay.
	Anything with the naked eye or just mainly radar?
	I mean, they were referring only to radar at that point, but they said that we can tell what these things are.
	Actually, I got to tell you this because it blew my mind.
	You know, when I heard this, I was like, what?
	They're like, we can tell the difference between the American version, the Russian version, and the real thing.
	Really?
	And I'm like, what are you guys talking about?
	The American version, the Russian version, and the real thing.
	Mm hmm.
	Meaning there's technology that we have and that they have, and there's technology that someone else controls.
	And you can easily tell the difference.
	Really?
	Mm hmm.
	These are military guys, like straight laced him and her.
	And I couldn't believe they were so open with me.
	Do you think that Tic Tac stuff and the stuff off the East Coast, do you think that's military or do you think that's.
	No.
	What do you think it is?
	I have no idea.
	You don't think it's anything that we have?
	No.
	I don't.
	I mean, we're good.
	We're the best on the planet, but this is, you know, the guys that witness this, the pilots, you know, a lot of these guys, They're dealing with a lot of our latest stuff.
	I mean, they're some of the best in the world.
	And they know where the cutting edge is, or at least they have an inside scoop, I would say.
	People.
	Yeah.
	So not that they know everything that's on the cutting edge or anything, but they would know whether we're even capable of this stuff.
	And why?
	I mean, that's not what you do when you develop new technologies.
	You don't.
	Show it like that.
	Right.
	And they, and then another interesting thing that, um, one Ryan Graves brought up to me the other day when he was in here is the first time Commander Fravor saw the Tic Tac was in, I'm going to fucking forget the date.
	I want to say it was like 2008, 2009, something like that.
	Can you find out the date of the Tic Tac thing?
	2004.
	2004.
	Okay.
	So way before that.
	And then, The other ones like the Go Fast video and the Gimbal video were, you know, the years those were like 10 years after 2015.
	So, if we had that technology, why would we be testing it for that long of a period of time?
	It's the same thing people were reporting in the 40s, right?
	And it's they're testing it in like the busiest airspace in the United States.
	So, if the United States Air Force or the military or any of these crazy dark, you know, government organizations that we have were testing this, they wouldn't be testing it there and they wouldn't be testing it for a 10 year period, right.
	I mean, they do test things for long periods of time for sure, but this has been going on for so long.
	And it's the same thing.
	It's the same type of behavior, the same type of warping physics as we know it in a way, and time.
	Just bizarre stuff that we're just beginning to like kind of get a grasp on.
	Like, oh, this is possible.
	In my opinion, you know, it's my opinion.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I got to say, I'm really, I just, for those guys to speak out was a really big deal.
	Yeah.
	You know, I have to salute.
	Those people, because, you know, again, those are more people putting their butts on the line.
	And why would they do that?
	There's no upside for them.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, it's definitely a safety issue.
	That was one of the concerns of Ryan Graves because he was, you know, in charge of safety on his ship.
	And when he almost got fired and he almost went to jail for doing that because he was still active military.
	I don't think Commander Fravor, he was already retired when he talked about it.
	But Ryan Graves was still active.
	And I remember he said that they.
	Brought him to the Pentagon and they set him down with a bunch of people and they were grilling him for a while in an attempt to not only get information from him, but intimidate him.
	So it's scary, man.
	Are there still phenomena like what happened in Rua, like sightings like this and abduction stories coming out today?
	Because really, the landscape we live in is far different from what it was during that time in the 90s.
	It is.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I keep an ear to the ground on that stuff, but it's, you know, it's nothing I'm personally investigating at all.
	It's just what I'm hearing other people, their work, some stuff going on, some pretty incredible events in Canada.
Threads Through Experiences 00:02:33
	I mean, I don't think anything's really changed.
	I think what's happened is, and I think this is a good thing that, There's organizations like there's people actually trying to help these people by taking their stories, and that's it, you know, just recording them and taking them seriously.
	And the fact that the people that have seen these things have a really hard time.
	It's not like, you know, you see one of these things and you get on with your life and nothing happens.
	You go through, I mean, I saw it with the Ariel kids and other cases, like it's really difficult because it blows your mind.
	Sense of reality out of the water.
	And all of a sudden you have to look at your world and, like, whoa, what?
	Either I'm crazy or I did see that.
	And if I did see that, then that means the world is not what I thought it was.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, there's this whole other aspect that nobody's told me about or told us about.
	It's almost like they got lucky because they have at least, they have each other that all saw the same thing.
	If you're a one person that had this crazy experience and you don't know who to talk to, that's tough.
	That's got to be traumatizing to relive that.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	No, I think in a way they are lucky.
	And interestingly, though, they really rarely ever talk about it with each other, which I found with other people that had had encounters.
	Like they, it was so disturbing to them individually that they didn't want to communicate about it with each other, even though they both were there or three of them or four of them were there at the same time it happened.
	But it was so disturbing to all of them that they don't want, they'll, They'll talk about it for like maybe 30 seconds and then just move on because they don't want to sit with it because it's that disturbing.
	But I think, you know, that's it's an that was kind of an older generation of people.
	It's kind of interesting to see the younger crowd of people growing up and just they grew up with that idea in their head, you know, or the movies that were out and stuff like that.
	They're more open minded, you know.
	What was I know, I know, Mac, John Mac didn't finish, get to finish or come up with.
	Any sort of conclusion to his study of this, but what were his ideas as to why these things were happening?
Intelligent Species Observations 00:03:11
	And what were some of the most common threads throughout these experiences people were having?
	I know one of them was some sort of like he talks about some sort of breeding program or some sort of like where these beings were sort of like doing some sort of sexual.
	Reproduction, reproductive experiment with people.
	He talked about that in his Passport to the Cosmos book in the beginning.
	Yeah.
	But he said that that was like a common thread a lot of the experiencers had this same thing, this same thing that they would talk about when he put them into this sort of like meditative state and talk to them.
	Right.
	Well, he had it with people that didn't even go into that.
	I mean, people just reported that it was consistent.
	And, you know, it's just, it was more on the level of scientific.
	Exploration, do you know what I mean?
	Like, like we do, we go out, it's the same kind of thing.
	I see it as we do all kinds of things to other species on this planet.
	I mean, some horrible things, yes.
	And we, I love that somebody told me that analogy of like, you know, we some people like we spend what billions of dollars on our dogs here, and in other countries, they eat them, yeah, right.
	How funny is that?
	It's just, yeah, it's true, yeah.
	So, I just I know it all sounds weird, but if you step away from it and look at it from like, oh, it's just another species looking at us as another species that is not maybe that as smart as we think, they may be doing a lot of things.
	I think there really is something to the term ultra terrestrial that compared to extraterrestrial, meaning from what I understand, is just not from this earth, ultra terrestrial, meaning not from this dimension, meaning they're interdimensional.
	Beings that can choose when they want to be, when they want to step into our reality and when they don't, and when they want to remain in other dimensions.
	I found that kind of fascinating.
	I've never heard about that talked about other than Alex Jones until I read John Mack's book.
	Yeah.
	I think it's, I mean, people are like, oh, maybe they're us traveling in time backwards and.
	Yeah, time traveling.
	Yeah.
	There's all kinds of different theories.
	To me, it's like, it doesn't matter.
	It's just something else more intelligent than us, more evolved than us.
	That's what matters.
	It doesn't matter really where they come from, it's that they come from outside of us.
	So I kind of don't get up into those.
	I hear them and I think about those ideas, but I just think, well, it's just something from the outside.
	That's the thing I always come back to it's something that's from the outside coming in that's more intelligent than us.
	That's a new thing.
Trust and Spiritual Interpretations 00:03:52
	So, these kids, they're now in their 30s from Zimbabwe.
	Do they all have the same sort of feeling?
	Like, what is the vibe in the room with them on this?
	When you start to ask them about this, like, what is the 30,000 mile up overview or takeaway from the whole experience for them?
	What do they think it meant?
	What did it mean to them?
	It's very, it depends on where I think where the person is in the process of.
	Dealing with it.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, there's certain people that don't want to even think about it still.
	They just go on, they just live their lives and keep their head down and go to work.
	Right.
	And there's others who I think have a really good grasp and have some just profound thoughts about what it meant.
	You know, how anything that sticks out to you?
	Yeah.
	A few people that stick out to me and things they've said in the interviews.
	And Which to me revealed, like, wow, this person has really thought about this and the implications of it, the bigger picture of it, how they were involved.
	I guess, you know, when you asked me about like what was in the room, like everybody I interviewed about this, there was like a deep feeling in the room.
	Like, it wasn't, this wasn't a light thing for any of those people to talk about.
	I had to build trust, you know, there's a lot of, they were afraid, I'm sure, I know this.
	That I was going to make a fool out of them, or, you know, they were very concerned about that.
	But there was a very deep, with every single person I interviewed, like I could feel it.
	Like this was no small deal for them.
	That's, I do know that.
	And it's weird as a filmmaker, you feel like, God, I'm sorry I exposed you.
	You know, sorry, sorry I brought this up again in your life because I know it's not a small thing.
	Yeah.
	You know, like I'm sorry I had to make you think about this.
	But I think it's important for the rest of us.
	Is it, is the experience or their memory of the experience like religious at all to them?
	Awesome.
	But it's not in the positive, it's more in the negative.
	Like this was the devil or, you know, interestingly.
	Yeah.
	Maybe it doesn't, maybe it's not the case for them, but like in any of the people that you've interviewed, did it sort of like, Give them or sort of like change the trajectory of their lives, or is it more so like what you just explained?
	They kind of just keep their heads down and forget about it and keep going about their work.
	No, I think it changed a lot of people's lives.
	I interviewed the parents of a lot of the kids and asked them what changed with their children when this happened.
	And one dad had twin kids that were went to Ariel, and he said, like, you know, anything was possible after that.
	And so they moved, his kids moved to America, went to college, like, and they were from, they were native Shona.
	From the village, you know.
	So it, and that I've heard that from other parents of kids, like that they, this experience taught them that anything is possible.
	And that was like the biggest thing that I found.
	And not all of them took that, you know, some people were very disturbed by it.
	Some people took it in a religious manner, depending on their upbringing, their parents, everything.
Insects as Alien Beings 00:06:57
	It's really complicated, actually.
	The interpretation of it.
	Like, whatever, you know, whatever these things are, this other species is, whatever it is, that's one thing.
	And then there's the whole how the human being interprets it with their belief systems and their ideas.
	Right.
	Then that's when it gets, that's kind of actually been hard because I've been trying to figure that out.
	It's like, okay, this is what everybody reports.
	And then there's this other part that this is their interpretation of it.
	Right.
	Like, even the messages, I think, well, How did that come about?
	You know, like the messages that they got, you know, from these creatures.
	Is that, you know, I'm not saying this is true.
	I just wondered, like, well, maybe when a human being goes into this kind of event where they're confronted with another species that's more intelligent than them, do they start to think about their own environment, their own cage?
	You know what I mean?
	Like, I just wondered that, you know, like, wow.
	Just as a, yeah.
	How does that change your mind?
	Like, how does that change the framework of your way of thinking when something like a concept as simple as, I'm not the most intelligent thing here?
	Yeah.
	That's a great question because we've never dealt with it.
	That's interesting.
	We're still wild.
	And this is, I've told people this, they think I'm probably crazy, but it's like, we're still wild animals.
	We've never been tamed by another species.
	Right.
	And we don't think we're wild animals.
	Or have we been tamed by another species and we're not aware of it?
	That's a disturbing thought.
	But yeah, maybe.
	Very possible, right?
	Very.
	That's the problem with a more like us with animals.
	Like we're tricky.
	You know, I can make light come out of my hands, you know, with a flashlight and animals are pretty like, what the hell?
	It spooks them.
	Because it's like magic.
	Like ants.
	Ants don't see us.
	We're so giant.
	We're so big.
	We can do whatever we want.
	We could, we could fucking build a city around an ant pile and they would never see it.
	All they're doing is just fucking building their colony and serving the queen ant and doing their, they're keeping their heads down and they're going to work.
	Like they don't see us.
	And what doesn't matter what we do, it's not going to change.
	They're not thinking about it.
	Like they're completely unaware of us doing anything.
	You know what I mean?
	Like maybe it's the same thing with us.
	Maybe there's that big of a gap between us and the next most intelligent creatures out there.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I used to do a lot of photography of ants and anthills, and I would have my foot this far above their anthill, could have gone like this.
	They just carrying on.
	But when you start to pick a few of them out, like take a few of the ants, they start somehow that word gets out and they start to panic.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	I did my insect research for macro lenses.
	That was actually interesting for years, insects.
	But yeah, it's, I guess we don't think about it, I guess human beings have a really hard time.
	I know I had for a long time and still do because sometimes I just don't want to think about it.
	It's like just pulling back and seeing the wider picture of, you know, how, what we are.
	I mean, we live on a very small planet.
	It's 8,000 miles across, 24,000 miles in circumference.
	And then we only live in a space of three miles where we can breathe.
	That's a very small cage we actually live in.
	But it's big enough for us not to realize it's a cage.
	Right, right.
	And we've broken out in the last, what, 70 years since the space program?
	We broke through that.
	I mean, that's a kind of a weird way to look at it, but if I was another species from the outside looking in, I'd say, ah, we need to pay attention to these guys.
	They're moving out into the bigger space.
	Hmm.
	Yeah, that's interesting.
	You know, it's really going back to what we see and what we don't see.
	It's just so weird how we have come so far and we've advanced so far technologically, but we don't see anything else.
	You would imagine if the universe was full of life and there was another civilization as advanced as we are, we would see something with all these expanding civilizations.
	Have you heard of Robin Hansen?
	He talks about this concept called grabby aliens.
	He wrote a paper called The Great Filter.
	I think it was a book or just a paper he wrote called The Great Filter.
	And I'm going to try my best to explain this, but it's going to be butchered.
	But he basically explains the lifespan of a star.
	And I believe it's like four or five trillion years and how long it takes for bacteria to become advanced life.
	And there are six basic filters.
	Or, in stages, life has to pass through to become intelligent.
	And very rarely does it make it past the sixth filter.
	And we have.
	And he uses the metaphor of cancer, right?
	So, like in our bodies, we have all these cells, and a cell has to go through six specific stages to become a cancer cell.
	And typically, cancer cells only evolve in human beings later in life.
	So, only after I think it's like.
	80 or however many billion years this planet has been around.
	What is it like?
	4.6.
	4.6 billion years.
	So his whole concept is that 4.6 billion years is nothing in the span of the lifetime of a star, which is 5 trillion years.
	So he's basically saying we've become advanced so fucking early.
	It makes sense.
	It only makes sense.
	That there has to be other civilizations out there.
	Yeah.
	You know, what you were saying about like us not seeing these things, like that's kind of what changed the Navy's thing.
	They upgraded their radar.
Perception in the Bedroom 00:05:07
	That was a big deal.
	Like, I think we were forced to do that because we had to keep up with China and what was going on globally.
	But that's what happened.
	We upgraded our radar and we started seeing them.
	Right.
	Very clearly.
	It's like, oh.
	And then there's another effect where, You know, people don't notice things until you point them out.
	You know, like a lot of times, if people won't notice details about things until you bring it up, right?
	Like, see that dew on the grass, that icy, you know, whatever.
	And they won't even be looking or never notice it until they, after you say it.
	And then they start paying attention.
	Yeah.
	Like, oh, you know.
	Yeah.
	That's an interesting phenomenon, too.
	Like, perception.
	Perception.
	You know, like when you buy a new car, you're starting to look for a new car and you look at this car you like, you want to get this, all of a sudden you see them everywhere.
	True.
	That's perfect.
	That's a perfect example.
	Yeah.
	Perfect.
	It's real, right?
	Yeah, it is.
	So, that's, you know, how much do we see?
	And we're evolving our sensor technology like crazy.
	And geez, it's an exciting time, to be honest.
	We're learning a lot.
	Wow.
	But this whole topic is mind blowing.
	Have you had a lot of people reach out to you since you released your movie?
	I had to stop answering my email because within like two months, I had 100,000.
	Yeah, it was 53,000 emails.
	You know, not all of it was people reaching out by any means, but I was just overwhelmed, you know, and phone calls and texts.
	And the most important ones were, you know, people saying thank you for validating my experience.
	That was, I mean, you can get no better letter than that, or better note, or better email than that.
	Because, you know, people were saying, you know, that's what they were just.
	Because there's a lot of people that have been through something similar that have never had a voice, you know, or have never been taken seriously.
	And they appreciated this the way this film approached it.
	Because it wasn't, you know, and I'm not trying to sell UFOs or anything.
	It's just like I'm telling a story that happened, you know.
	And that's the why, one of the reasons they like it also.
	It's like there's nothing to push here.
	Has anybody you ever talked to or interviewed that went through one of these experiences had multiple experiences?
	That's something I noticed in Travis Walton's podcast with Joe Rogan.
	He talked about something happened with his son or something.
	He was like very hesitant to bring it up towards the end of the interview.
	Wow, I didn't.
	I missed that.
	Interesting.
	I forget exactly what happened, but something.
	Okay, I remember what it was now.
	He said that he woke up one night in the middle of the night.
	And then, you know, again, it's really hard to because with some of these people, when I listen to them talk, I can kind of.
	Hear their ego talking.
	So I'm not saying that's Travis's case, but some people have this idea in their head that they are the chosen ones or they're more important than anyone else.
	Correct.
	So they have these dreams or they construct these things in their heads that this for sure happened to me.
	And whether it's because they like the attention or they like talking or they like hearing themselves, whatever it may be, that's always in the back of my mind.
	But regardless, what Travis mentioned towards the end of the interview, which He was very hesitant to talk about that one night he found himself sleepwalking and he woke up.
	He said he woke up in a full sprint down his hallway, running to his son's bedroom.
	And then when he got to his son's bedroom, he said he found his son hanging off the edge of the top bunk.
	You know, those rail, like protective railings on top bunk?
	He said he found his son, like his body had fallen off and his neck was stuck in there and he was like suffocating.
	And he said, if he hadn't got there in the next 60 seconds, his son would have died.
	But he related that.
	He related it to his experiences with his abduction.
	He said that there's something there.
	There's something happening.
	Why would I wake up in a full sprint towards my son's bedroom?
	Wow.
	But there's, I've noticed that with, I talked to another guy who I had on this podcast who wrote a book up there.
	It's called The Messengers.
	His name is Mike Clellan.
	And he talked about his experiences.
	He said that he's gone through many of these experiences too.
	And it sort of parallels what Travis Walton was talking about, where it's now when you have these throughout your life, these deep, meaningful experiences, you kind of just like lump them together into this like supernatural, spiritual sense.
Shattering Worldviews 00:04:08
	I think that's a choice.
	You know, in my opinion, like even the ego part of it, if you know, there are people that I know that I believe genuinely have encountered these things, but it depends what the human, like the person does with it.
	You know, like a lot of people that take it to a spiritual place or they take it to an egocentric place is kind of, in my view, I think it's a defense, you know, a way to deal with it or a way to have all the answers when you don't have any, right?
	Like, that's the thing about this whole thing.
	I think anybody will really tell you if you ask them, like, they've got 10 million questions.
	You know, they don't have a lot of answers.
	But people try because they need to keep their mind together.
	So they'll create the story they need to create in order for it to make sense so they can live on their life.
	Right.
	You know, because it is that shattering.
	Not, you know, it is, John Mack called it ontological shock, the breaking of your worldview.
	Right.
	The shattering of your worldview, everything you believe is no longer in question all of a sudden because you just got this new piece of information that's gigantic.
	And how do you survive knowing that?
	How do things have the same value when you know that?
	So I think there's a lot of, you know, I've seen people get out there and they talk about this and they put it in religious context or spiritual context.
	And I'm like, you know, that's interesting, but I don't know if you have to even go there.
	I think you might be going there to keep it together.
	You know what I mean?
	Because the real truth for me, when I look at it, is like, it's just, that's just the way it is.
	I don't have to, I mean, and what's wrong with just having a million questions, not having all the answers?
	It's a very uncomfortable place to be.
	I had to put myself in that position over and over and over in this, making this doc.
	Like, all right, let's just pull back, not try to control it, not try to, you know, make it one thing or the other.
	Let's just take it for what it is.
	And what does that mean?
	And the conclusion I always come to is like, we've got a lot of questions to answer.
	Like, we could keep the entire population on the planet busy for a long time trying to get to the bottom of these questions.
	Did John Mack ever talk to Betty and Barney Hill, or was that before him?
	Let's see.
	Maybe this is something that we should look up, Austin.
	Well, I know Bud Hopkins did, David Jacobs, I'm sure, did.
	John Mack was alive for a long period.
	I'm sure they must have had contact at some point.
	But by that time, I forget to go.
	He would have put that in his book, Abductions, right?
	He would have.
	He would have.
	And he had talked to a lot of people.
	The people, when he did abduction, he chose particular cases to point out particular things and the way different people were handling it.
	Like in that book, there was a lot of different ways people were.
	Handling it in their own lives to address it spiritually or, you know, just raw reality.
	You know, there's different, it's human perspectives, human interpretation and belief system.
	Really, boy, I mean, John Mack spoke about that, and so does a lot of people have about just the worldview.
	And when it's shattered, you tend to grasp onto things that make you feel safer.
	Yeah, I'd be interested to find out if he ever talked to them.
	I'm sure he did, because I had met Betty Hill, I think it was in '96.
	She was chain smoking like crazy.
Addressing Civilizations Questions 00:14:52
	Oh, really?
	I met her with a friend of mine.
	And she was, she died like a year after that.
	Oh, wow.
	And I know her granddaughter actually is doing a lot of research on this subject.
	Her granddaughter's a UFC fighter, I think.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Well, the other granddaughter is a, works for Mutual UFO Network.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah.
	She's like, what's your name?
	Kathleen.
	Kathleen.
	Martin.
	Kathleen Martin.
	Okay.
	She's a great, she's a good person.
	Pull her up, Kathleen Martin.
	This is what he pulled up previously.
	We were talking about those grabby alien civilizations.
	This is the work of Robin Hansen.
	And what does it say?
	There are two kinds of alien civilizations.
	Quiet aliens don't expand or change much, and then they die.
	We have little data on them, and so must mostly speculate via methods like the Drake equation.
	Loud aliens, in contrast, visibly change the volumes they control.
	And just keep expanding fast until they meet each other.
	As they should be easy to see, we can fit theories about loud aliens to our data and say much about them as S.J. Olson has done in seven related papers.
	And he links all the papers.
	Well, that's interesting.
	I mean, yeah, so like that graphic that he has there, I guess that this represents all the different alien civilizations in the universe.
	And eventually they will all just be touching one another and there will be no more room for people.
	For new civilizations or new species to come up because the universe will just be full.
	Boy, there's a lot of space out there.
	Yeah.
	Well, it's like, I think, you know, again, I always go back to what I know, which is wildlife.
	And, you know, if you give them an opportunity, they're going to move into that area, you know?
	Exactly.
	That's what we do.
	Yeah.
	That's what human beings do.
	We try to grab more and gain more resources and control more, we expand.
	Naturally, it's what we do.
	And, you know, it's funny he compared it to malignant cancer.
	It's like these alien civilizations.
	He's right about the quiet ones too, because, you know, how we just discovered a reef, you know, I think it was in the Atlantic, where this whole like community of creatures we've never seen before, you know, or not this type have been living forever, for a long time, you know, for a long time.
	And they didn't spread or go, you know what I mean?
	They created their own little quiet biosphere.
	They're happy.
	They didn't need to expand.
	Like, yeah.
	So he's right.
	Cause I was wondering, I kind of disagreed with the quiet, but you know what?
	There's examples of that in our own world.
	If they became grabby, they wouldn't let their kind travel out to other civilizations because they would understand that if they went there, they would take control.
	Of whatever is there and start some sort of a new civilization that would threaten their civilization.
	So, they purposely wouldn't allow expansion.
	Bees do that.
	Right.
	But then, how do you explain UFOs, though?
	So, do they let certain, do they let out certain sort of hall monitors outside of the civilization to go to other stars to make sure other civilizations aren't becoming quote unquote grabby and aren't expanding too much and making sure they don't destroy a planet?
	I have no idea.
	That's the question.
	It's like we have to.
	Address like what is it?
	A, what are these things?
	What part of a civilization are we seeing?
	I mean, it may be there.
	I was laughing.
	It may be somebody said a long time ago, maybe it's just their kids.
	You know, this is their kids' science experiment.
	You know, it's not their main adults that are doing different things, you know, but that's very possible with a highly advanced species, you know.
	What are we seeing?
	What part of their species are we seeing?
	The science guys?
	Or what?
	And how big is that?
	I mean, there are so many questions that we have to address, I think.
	And I think there's plenty of data out there that this has been going on.
	That's just we're not willing to talk about it yet.
	That's really how it looks.
	We're just not ready.
	And we're getting there.
	Now, you said like some of the biggest correlating physical things that.
	Like people that John Mack found talking to all these people were scars on the body.
	Were there any other sort of like implants or anything?
	Yes.
	Or like things that can't be explained?
	Yeah.
	Like what?
	Things that were under the skin of the person.
	I think Roger Lear, who I don't really know too much about, but he was doing the deep dive on those types of phenomena that were happening to these same people.
	Mm hmm.
	They'd have scars on their body and they'd have things that would come out of their body, you know, that were underneath the skin or whatever.
	And he was analyzing them.
	I mean, somebody else has to do that work.
	Right.
	You know, some people have been doing it.
	Right.
	And I guess kind of what there isn't is this like a group of people working together, you know?
	In this field, everybody seems to be working on their own and doing their own thing.
	There's not like a university saying, hey, let's look at this and everybody look on, you know, that's missing in this phenomenon.
	But I think that's changing.
	I think people, there's the Scientific Coalition on UAPs that's out of Alabama, really great organization of scientists that are really addressing this stuff.
	That's probably where we're going to see a lot of the breaking news other than the Pentagon.
	And what do you think?
	I mean, I'm kind of curious.
	Like, the Pentagon came, you know, or the Intelligence Committee came pretty far out there saying, we think these things are, we don't know what they are.
	We don't think they're trying, you know.
	And then they sort of came out with a second report and kind of walked it back a little bit.
	That's the smart.
	Of the more sightings, they had over 500 documented cases.
	Well, that was the interesting thing.
	Like, oh, they get even more cases, but they're sort of like, oh, maybe balloons, you know.
	Yeah, a lot of it was junk, they said.
	And there was even one New York Times.
	Which is probably true.
	Yeah.
	But it doesn't explain all of it.
	There was also a New York Times article, Austin, maybe you can find this, where they actually said it was one of the recent ones where they talk about the additional reportings coming out of over 500 documented cases, which came out what was that, three weeks ago, four weeks ago, a month ago, maybe?
	They said that some sort of analysis was done on that Go Fast video that claims, and they claimed in the article that thing was only going like 40 miles per hour, which I find kind of odd.
	Yeah, I'd have to like listening to those pilots' reactions.
	Yeah, they're having a truck, they're having trouble locking on to something at 40 miles an hour.
	Yeah, no, do you know the gear on those things?
	Oh, yeah, I mean, it's incredible.
	Yeah, no, I mean, I just from personal looking at that video and looking at the waves and and what those are swells, right?
	You know, that's a long distance, yeah.
	And that thing to me looks small, you know, really small and moving very quickly, but you know.
	I mean, who's analyzing it?
	That's really the question.
	You know, whoever's going to have their opinion, what's their background?
	What's their.
	Yeah, scroll down.
	A large number of incidents remain unexplained in the new report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, potentially fueling further speculation.
	Scroll down.
	Sean Kirkpatrick, that's one of the guys that Ryan talked about, who I think is one of the guys that he met in that first when they first sent him to the Pentagon after he came out.
	He's the head of the Pentagon Task Force for examining unexplained incidents.
	Said officials are setting up mechanisms to make sure that no American government testing or classified programs like futuristic or secret stealth aircraft or drones is the cause of these mysterious reports.
	Yeah, the problem with the New York Times is they don't like, they're skirting the big idea here.
	Like, they're skirting the main point of all of this.
	Like, all they want to do is focus on these little things.
	Like, on the first thing they came out with, they only focus on little A tip.
	They didn't focus on the big question, like, what are these?
	I think it's on purpose, you know?
	Yeah.
	The slow walkout.
	Like, it's a really deep conversation, and they want to just, I think there are people that would just want to.
	You think there's editors?
	Do you think there's people that are kind of controlling or controlling the editing of these articles that are posted on giant publications like the New York Times that are tied into the government or tied into certain agencies that are trying to control the narrative?
	Or that are saying whether the editors at these publications consciously are aware if they're being controlled or not, could there be people at what, for example, the CIA that are saying, like, we suggest you change this because you could endanger a lot of people or you could endanger national security if you put it this way or if you focus on this thing?
	Do you think that that's possible?
	I haven't seen that, but I would do that if it was me.
	I'd control the narrative and how it's released.
	Yeah.
	Because it's a big deal.
	It's going to affect everything.
	So I would really want to be in control of how it gets out to the public.
	That just makes sense to me.
	I would do the same thing because it's not.
	And I don't have any examples of that.
	I do know quite a few people that are involved with the press releases and stuff.
	And I don't see any.
	I think there's an awareness actually in the press.
	That this has to be taken slowly.
	Other people, otherwise, people are just not gonna.
	It seems like it feels like there is, right?
	Yeah.
	And I think it's wise.
	It feels like they're following a script almost.
	Like they know what act they're in and they know what's going to happen in act three and act four and act five and they have to plan accordingly.
	Yeah.
	I mean, first of all, you got to talk about these things that are in our atmosphere, you know, that do pose a potential threat to safety.
	I agree with that.
	Then we get down further down the road and talk about what are those things doing here?
	What are they?
	Where are they from?
	Then we get down to.
	Who's piloting those things?
	Or, you know, this is down the road.
	And the conversation gets deeper.
	And then the deeper, you know, we'll get to the place where, like, okay, we've been hearing about this for a long time and we thought these people were crazy.
	Well, you know, it's funny.
	But we can't go there straight away.
	It's fascinating, too, when you think about the snowball effect that is happening with industry, with basically the monetization of the subject.
	The more, just by giving us an Inch in the New York Times, then look what happens on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel.
	Now they're getting so much more attention on these shows that they're making, and people are taking it seriously because people see that the Pentagon's talking about it and the New York Times is talking about it.
	So now there's so much more money being made, so much money on the table to be made on this subject.
	And the more films like yours that come out, and other people who make films like this that are getting more attention, and more people from government, bureaucrats coming out about it, senators coming out about it.
	It enables just the industry to balloon more.
	And that balloon, it's like a fucking positive feedback loop.
	The more money that gets siphoned into this subject, the more pressure goes on the government to talk about it and come out about it.
	The problem is, how do we know if it's true or not?
	That from the government's perspective, like from whatever they come out with, how do we know how much deception is coming out and how much of it is real?
	You know, it's almost like I'm a cynic to the point where whatever they say, I feel like the opposite is true sometimes.
	Yeah, there's usually two.
	Two agendas going on at the same time.
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's something we should just talk about.
	Like, what is conspiracy theory?
	You know, we use that word so casually, but it's asking like conspiracy things that don't go away for a long time.
	There's probably a reason why they don't.
	Or, you know, people like, oh, no, no one's spying on us.
	And then you have people, whistleblowers, come forward and tell us things that, you know, Are no longer conspiracies, you know?
	Right.
	So, Jeffrey Epstein.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, one of the biggest ones, right?
	Boy.
	Yeah.
	That's a huge one.
	Yeah.
	What's the funny, the famous one?
	It's who he knew.
	It's who he knew, the names he knew.
	Yeah.
	And I, whatever, what's her name, Giselle?
	Gaylane Maxwell.
	Yeah.
	I worry about her.
	Well, she just doesn't even know her.
	And I'm not, I don't agree with what she did, but I'm like, yeah, I'd be really concerned for my life because of who you knew.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	The famous quote about conspiracy theories is the biggest difference between the truth and a conspiracy theory is six months.
Advanced Government Projects 00:15:38
	That's good.
	Just give it time.
	Truth always comes out, even if it takes a hundred years or hundreds of years sometimes.
	Yeah.
	And then we're like, oh, we used to think that was crazy.
	Now it's accepted, you know?
	Yeah.
	One of the biggest.
	You know, I think one of the most important things to happen in the evolution of technology or humans is like this podcasting thing because it's kind of like broken through the main television narrative that people have been so tuned into for whatever 50 years.
	It's very controlled, like even the UFO thing.
	Like, yeah, there are people making money on this.
	It's not me, it's not small guys, it's big companies.
	It's important though.
	I think it's important that money is made on the subject.
	I agree with that.
	I do agree with that.
	I just, it's interesting who's kind of controlling it.
	It is.
	I've been watching it for a while.
	What do you mean when you say who's controlling it?
	Just who has the power and the money to bring shows out about this?
	Yeah, I think it's changing.
	Podcasts are changing that.
	You're right, changing that whole environment.
	You know, people, a lot of people get their news from podcasts.
	Yeah.
	Instead of the news.
	Yeah.
	Which is, it's great to have that other perspective, like a different perspective.
	Not that all the news is out there as well researched or, but you get an alternate opinion, which is valuable just to have, just to have maybe, well, maybe, you know, let me look at it from this angle instead of being fed.
	Right.
	You know, yeah, boy, so fascinating talking with you.
	Have you ever looked into those bases out in Nevada, like Area 51 or S4?
	Have you ever talked to anyone who's been to those bases or spill the beans?
	Yeah, I'm a little hesitant for good reason.
	Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of the answers are out there, to be honest.
	Really?
	I'm going to get my ass kicked for saying that.
	Yeah, I don't think it's a joke.
	I don't think it's conspiracy or anything.
	I'm just very careful about that topic.
	I've heard some crazy stories about those.
	I mean, obviously, there's the Bob Lazar thing, but I've heard also some people have told me some stories about people they know who have worked there, like military people who have been there.
	And, like, just had conversations with some of the science guys, science researchers or engineers that were in the cafeteria.
	And, you know, just had conversations and some weird, weird things that I never would have expected.
	It's the cutting edge of us, of our country.
	It's our secret programs.
	So, there's a lot of national security that has nothing to do with other species.
	I guess that's kind of the issue I saw something yesterday.
	Where there was like this big hauling truck with this fucking like flying saucer looking thing on the back of it.
	Have you seen that on Twitter?
	That was a long time ago, right?
	Yeah.
	They said it was like Skunk Works or something.
	That's Lockheed.
	What the hell is Skunk Works?
	That's Lockheed's.
	Oh, it's a company Lockheed owns or something?
	No, it's Lockheed Skunk Works.
	I mean, they built the A 12 and, you know, all their spy planes.
	Oh, okay.
	Skunkworks is like their.
	Skunkworks, the official pseudonym for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs, ADP, formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects.
	It is responsible for a number of aircraft designs, highly classified RD programs, and exotic aircraft platforms.
	Known locations include the United States Air Force Plant No. 42 and the United States Air Force Plant 4.
	Most notably, a majority of classified testing is thought to be conducted at sites such as the Nevada Test Site.
	Huh.
	They're known for the P 38 Lightning, which was developed in 1938.
	Wow.
	Fascinating.
	Yep.
	Yeah.
	So pull up the video of that object getting like a flying saucer at Skunk Works.
	You know, you saw it.
	What do you think that was?
	That's a good question.
	People were like joking about it, like making fun of the video or something on Twitter.
	When I was reading the comments, they were just like laughing at it.
	I have no idea.
	I saw it and I'm like, well, I mean, it's not very difficult to spoof that.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	I mean, someone would have to really.
	Get a lot more data on it to really do you know who?
	Um, I'm sure you do.
	Um, put off is his last name.
	What's his first name?
	Hal Al Put Off.
	Hal Hal Put Off.
	I remember watching a video where he was, and I guess for context, he was the head of one like Project Blue Book or something.
	Is that what it was?
	He was in charge of Project Blue Book or was it one of the other projects?
	That was uh, Alan Hynek.
	He wasn't in charge of it, but he worked.
	I don't think Alan was head of it.
	Um, Hal was involved in um.
	You have to look them up on Wiki.
	It's fascinating.
	Like he's talking about, you know, physics of some real wild stuff back in the 60s.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	This is a picture of the.
	Okay.
	There it is.
	Yeah.
	Full screen that thing.
	Yeah.
	That looks like one of our advanced projects.
	Look at that.
	Is there a video of it?
	Or can you go to the next?
	Click the arrow to the right on the bottom.
	Yeah.
	That looks like our stuff, dude.
	Look at that thing.
	Looking okay.
	So they take the picture, someone took a picture, and they basically figured out that it was some sort of test range.
	But judging by the tree and the big scaffolding in the background, that doesn't look like any sort of like jet.
	There's no jet output, you know what I mean?
	Like, there's no that we can see that we can see from the image.
	Yeah, yeah, that to me, that's an advancement on what we already have been doing.
	It's just more aerodynamic.
	So, pull up, I'll put up, I'll put off.
	How?
	H A L. H A L P T O F F.
	Yeah, I watched a video where he was talking about, I think it was like one of the Weinstein brothers was asking him about anti gravity.
	And he was like, basically, yes, we have, there's private organizations that have figured out anti gravity and they aren't sharing it with modern academia.
	Probably true.
	That was fucking wild to hear.
	Yeah, that man's a genius.
	I've spoken with him a few times.
	Have you really?
	Yeah.
	And I've been honored to do so.
	You know, like, man, I'd love to spend more time with that man.
	He just knows so much and a lot, I'm sure, that he can't even say.
	What did you guys talk about?
	Boy, can't really talk about that.
	I mean, I'm not trying to be, I just, it was kind of a private conversation.
	Was it in regards to your film at all?
	Yeah.
	That's actually how we got.
	So you were doing research and you reached out to him or?
	No, I knew somebody that knew him.
	And I just made it a point to reach out to him and speak to him about a few things.
	Were you trying to confirm certain stories, or was there anything that had anything to do with the narrative of your film specifically?
	No?
	No, it was a wider phenomenon.
	And kind of my underneath or.
	Behind the film, you know, I was really trying to find out who knows about this.
	Who knows about this?
	You know, someone's got it now.
	So I went and did a lot of exploration into people like that and other people in the military that would be in the know about this.
	So that was kind of a big drive.
	And I did not come back doubting that people knew this.
	Yeah.
	So something that he was aware of.
	I mean, I can't speak to that.
	How could he not be aware of the phenomenon?
	But I'm sure he was.
	I think he is, of course.
	Well, I think a lot of people are at this point.
	Something shifted.
	And I really think it was, in my personal opinion, and I may be wrong, but I think a lot of the people that were initially involved in this project, you know, discovery and research are all dying now.
	And they did a really poor job of transition.
	You know what I mean?
	Like bringing in new people and keeping the same level of secrecy.
	Right.
	I think they lost it.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	I mean, maybe in four years, this will all make sense.
	But I mean, it really depends because, you know, when you do the deep dive on something, nobody really gets it until they do also that same deep dive.
	How?
	Until later.
	Hal worked really closely with that billionaire dude.
	His name just gave me, was it, what was his name?
	Bob something.
	Yes.
	Bigelow.
	Bigelow.
	Robert Bigelow, who's been deeply invested.
	See, he's one of the guys, when I listened to him talk, I was just like, I had bullshit detectors going off left and right.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Interesting.
	You know, when he starts talking about like poltergeists and remote viewing, like you start to lose me.
	That's just my personal bias.
	I kind of agree with that in a way.
	I mean, I'm nothing against Bob or anybody, but I just think like this phenomenon of these crafts, whatever they are, this other thing that we don't know or understand, probably is going to lead us to understand all those other phenomena, you know?
	And we don't need to be talking about that yet.
	Like, I kind of agree with that.
	Like, we don't need to be talking about that yet because it's just, People just write it off, you know.
	They're like, How would it lead to some other things like this?
	How would they be connected?
	Um, I think because of physics and because of another species understanding and being able to manipulate things that we're just learning exist, um, and control things that, uh, and telepathy and things like that.
	I mean, the whole idea of.
	What do you call it?
	You know, remote viewing.
	Yeah.
	I mean, what is that?
	That's basically where did they get the idea?
	Yeah, that is interesting.
	Where did they get the idea?
	And why would they invest all the kind of money they did into it unless they knew it was proven?
	Like that something else had done it.
	Well, it's sort of like in the realm of when you talk about things like MKUltra mind control, right?
	Like it's something that they maybe heard that another nation was doing militarily or strategically for war.
	Sure.
	And then we figured out, we thought, oh God, we got to figure this out quick.
	You know, it seems like that's the same thing with all of this stuff.
	It's like it all comes down to, it all boils down to war or national security.
	Yeah, which is pretty much.
	That's what funds everything.
	That's where all the money is, right?
	And where's that money going, really?
	You know, probably to the space program.
	I would imagine.
	You know, this is kind of, this may sound strange, but I think about this a bit.
	Like back in the early days, you know, when if this, you know, just I'll be ginger about it.
	Like, you know, that we under we finally had an example of a species that survived beyond its planet and evolved far, far, far beyond us, right?
	Like, that's a big deal.
	Like, it's a proof of concept, you know, like we have an example of a species that's evolved further than us that has gotten off their planet.
	So, like any good scientist would do, would be we need to copy that model.
	We need to follow that model because we know it's successful, right?
	Beyond us.
	But that may, so I wonder, like, well, maybe that's what we did.
	And we've had all these technological revolutions and everything else.
	But that's what.
	This other species' path was that may not have been what our path was meant to be.
	I wonder about that, but I understand like, okay, we've got a successful example of another species, let's follow exactly what they did, let's duplicate them because we know it's successful, but we're not the same, we haven't evolved in the same way, we don't have the same elements on our planet.
	You're saying that hypothetically, this could have happened a long time ago, that we discovered some sort of advanced.
	Being and technology, and we decided that we wanted to alter our trajectory.
	Yeah.
	And that could be what these beings were communicating to these kids that, like, you guys are evolving down the wrong path.
	Like, technology, like, your tie to technology and the way you guys are advancing is not on the right path.
	I mean, I haven't thought.
	I'm trying to understand, like, how your mind is sort of tying all of your experiences and all your work together.
	Like, Yeah, I have a, you know, you just have a lot of different thoughts, you know, and you, you, in this, you know, they're theoretical, like they're speculative, and, but you, it's good to entertain it just to go down those roads and say, This is all speculation.
	What's there?
Altering Human Trajectory 00:11:49
	Of course.
	You know, I mean, I think the most exciting thing, to be honest, is to, is the potential that we could grow leaps and bounds, you know, by, by learning something that's already Plotted out all the planets that's already out there.
	They know what the populations are, what the wildlife on that planet is, or the life on that planet is.
	I mean, boy, we could take a huge jump in our evolution.
	And it's kind of in line with the same, the opposite of what I was just saying about how following another species because they are successful.
	I think it is something that has to be carefully done with the understanding like these people, these things have evolved in a totally different way.
	Right.
	And that may not be the best thing for us.
	Right.
	And the technology question, if we go back to that, well, here we are building nuclear reactors on the ocean.
	Right.
	Which we know is going to, you know, every time we have one of those natural disasters like Fukushima.
	All the garbage, all the pollutants that went out into that ocean from that event, we keep having that.
	The ocean is not going to survive.
	There's concern about that, you know, by oceanographers, by, you know, the acidity level.
	I think it's the acidity level in the ocean.
	Anyway, that's a whole nother topic, but it's a box full of questions.
	And I guess the only thing I really would love to see done is people ask more questions and we start to investigate things.
	Things and find out because we're not, we don't have it figured out, that's for sure.
	What do you think needs to happen to make the world take this subject more seriously?
	I think it's going to have to come from some pretty big people, you know.
	I really do.
	I think that's going to lay the groundwork for the financial assets and assets like that we already have to be.
	Redirected to looking at this phenomenon.
	I know it already has been done, but it's not being shared with us.
	And I guess that's the big problem.
	And maybe they're right.
	Maybe they're, you know, people, this is something people don't really want to know.
	And that's the big question, right?
	I mean, why?
	Like, why don't you just let's move?
	Let's do it.
	Okay, we're not alone.
	Great.
	Let's move on.
	Yeah.
	I think once we understand that, We're going to deal with our issues as a species way better than we have because we're not, we're going to be, because there's something from the outside.
	We've never really had that.
	You know, not, it's always been spiritualized or religiousized or something.
	But just plain matter of fact, there's another animal.
	And one of the kids, one of the Arrow kids said that to John Mack during an interview.
	He said, So what do you think?
	You know, John Mack asked him, So what do you think about it?
	And the kid says, There's other animals out there.
	I thought that was brilliant.
	It's so simple, but there's other animals out there.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	Didn't make the movie.
	So many great cuts.
	That's amazing.
	We could do a mini series, like four episodes, easy with the amount of interview.
	I mean, there's so much material.
	You know, it's so wild that there's, you know, all of this talk about this and all of this evidence and recounts of experiences and videos, radar videos, but there's still not a fucking picture, a real, like there's pictures of these things far away, like the guy in Australia, but there's no real, like, definitive evidence of these fucking beings or these crafts that you can look at.
	And be analyzed, say, not CGI.
	This is real.
	That's amazing to me that they've eluded this.
	I think they're there.
	I think they're being analyzed by some really good people.
	So when they do publicize these videos and these photographs, they're going to have like papers that come along with them that are so extensive about every little detail.
	I know that exists.
	So it's there.
	I just, it's, it's being, it's going to be presented in a very different way, you know, you know, more scientific, not just put on YouTube.
	Right.
	But analyzed by really good people.
	And, uh, I mean, there's plenty of people who have said we've got, we've, we've already got the, that evidence.
	It's just, yeah.
	But what, how far does it go?
	Do you believe the story, the, do you believe the, um, the story of, Jackie Gleason, the president taking him to see the alien at Homestead Air Force Base, where he's like, because he knew Jackie.
	You know that story, right?
	I do know that story.
	Who was the president?
	I always forget the president.
	Was that Eisenhower?
	No, I think it was Nixon.
	It was Nixon.
	The interesting part about those kind of stories is they persist.
	You know, I'd like, you know, if I wanted to know about that story, I'd like to go to Jackie Gleason's family.
	Yeah, his wife talked about it.
	Or Nixon.
	Oh, she did?
	Yeah.
	Well, yeah.
	She talked about it.
	She said she knew her husband had always been.
	Obsessed with the UFOs.
	They even bought a fucking house shaped like a flying saucer.
	That's how obsessed he was.
	And I think it was in upstate New York.
	And she said that after he came home from that trip with Nixon, he sat down and he was just like, look ghost white in the face.
	That's appropriate.
	And he basically said that he said, don't let anyone ever tell you that this shit is not real.
	Because she said that he was just in a catatonic state when he got back and he told her about his experience.
	Wow.
	That's interesting.
	But it was interesting to hear that.
	Yeah.
	I mean, it's one of the biggest secrets on the planet.
	And, you know, people, human beings have egos.
	It's like, well, hey, I want to show my buddy this.
	It'll blow his mind.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, who's he going to tell?
	Nobody's going to believe him.
	I mean, especially.
	Right.
	Nobody's going to fucking believe him.
	That's the great thing about it, too, because you can keep a secret because no one's going to believe you.
	And they propagated that since 1953, since the Robertson panel.
	They propagated making people look like fools and laugh at them.
	Stigma.
	They pushed it.
	They made the stigma.
	Right.
	They created it.
	They weaponized it.
	Yep.
	And it still exists even today.
	It's amazing how well that worked because they're working on the unbelievable in that line of like, yeah, that's so unbelievable.
	I can't, I'll just laugh about it.
	Right.
	Don't take it seriously because it's, Heavy.
	Yeah.
	That's just really, I mean, I kind of like look at everybody in the field right now.
	It's like, wow, we're just kind of, you know, pieces in a puzzle that's probably going to go on for hundreds of years before we actually, you know, have a significant.
	Hopefully, it doesn't take that.
	I mean, I never thought we'd be at this point.
	You mean you never thought we'd get this far?
	Never thought in your lifetime.
	I'd never thought in my lifetime that I'd see what we've seen in the last four years.
	Pilots, Top Gun guys, like, yeah, they don't come out.
	They don't come out talking about aliens ever.
	And they have.
	F 15, F 18 pilots, F 15 pilots, F 22 pilots.
	You know, these guys are so well trained about what, you know, and they, you know, they see the officers at those nuclear bases talking about it publicly.
	Yeah.
	There's no upside for them.
	How do you discredit those guys?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Guys in charge of the nuclear codes.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	They're making shit up.
	Yeah.
	What do they say that literally like it, it, it, It sent the nuclear activation to the rocket or to the nuke and like initiated like a countdown sequence that they had no control over and then just shut it off.
	I didn't hear that.
	I just know that they completely disabled, you know, like 10 separate missile silos and they couldn't figure out.
	And at the same time, they were witnessing this crazy craft hovering above the silos.
	Above the silos.
	And these guys were 20 floors underneath, you know.
	And they all testified about it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's the interesting thing, too.
	Like people that have testified at the press club, people that are testifying behind closed doors in Congress for the Intelligence Committee.
	I mean, that's a big deal.
	We haven't heard half of that yet.
	You know how the minority report, you have the minority report and the majority report.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	They have the public version and then the classified version because they don't want to reveal.
	National security secrets.
	That's what took the report so long.
	You know, this last report that came out late was the DIA going through everything.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Making sure.
	It's a crazy world out there, man.
	Yeah.
	But at least we get to sit here and talk about it.
	I have fun.
	No, it's really cool.
	Yeah, me too.
	And I appreciate the.
	We've been deep diving.
	It's kind of interesting.
	Yeah.
	It's really.
	New thoughts, new ideas, new things to think about.
	And I just hope we get somewhere.
	It's been a long time that we've been dealing with this topic.
	It would be nice to actually see us progress and move beyond ideas or ridicule and just like, let's actually look at this.
	Me too, man.
	Because what's, I mean, my concern personally is like, if we don't, we're losing time.
	You know, if there's another speak, what's their deal?
	What are they up to?
	Right.
	The longer we don't know that, the worse off we'll be, potentially.
	I'm not saying it's a bad thing, good.
	Who knows?
	I have no judgment about that.
	It's just we should know as much as we can, as soon as we can.
	Couldn't agree more.
	Yeah.
	Tell people listening andor watching where they can find your movie and anything else, anything more to do with your work online, on social media, et cetera.
	Oh, yeah.
	So it's at aerialphenomenon.com is a website.
	And then you can get the movie there.
	We're also on Amazon and iTunes and all the streaming platforms at this point.
	ArialPhenomenon.com.
	That's the website.
	And then I'll link it below for people that want to see it.
Where to Watch the Film 00:00:34
	Yeah.
	And I highly recommend it.
	Very good movie.
	Thanks.
	A lot of good people put a lot of time into it, and a lot of people volunteered their time to do it.
	Yeah.
	I mean, there's so many people that eventually will be thanked for their efforts because people let me stay in their houses for, you know, when I was in Africa.
	Man, people were just amazing because they knew, like, you know, I wasn't some corporation driving this, it was hard.
	Cool, man.
	Good stuff, man.
	Yes, sir.
	I appreciate it again.
	You too.

Chapters

00:00:10 Significant Close Encounters
00:07:10 Pilots Witnessing Events
00:11:33 Building Schools in Zimbabwe
00:26:43 Clinical Perspectives on Abductions
00:41:56 Religious Contexts of Sightings
00:44:50 Nuclear Silo Incidents
00:54:59 Cautious Government Responses
01:04:42 Threads Through Experiences
01:07:15 Intelligent Species Observations
01:10:27 Trust and Spiritual Interpretations
01:14:20 Insects as Alien Beings
01:21:17 Perception in the Bedroom
01:26:25 Shattering Worldviews
01:30:33 Addressing Civilizations Questions
01:45:26 Advanced Government Projects
02:01:05 Altering Human Trajectory
02:12:54 Where to Watch the Film