Skeptoid #800: To the Stars
A strange radio broadcast from a very unique group of VIPs being whisked away on a UFO. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A strange radio broadcast from a very unique group of VIPs being whisked away on a UFO. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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Music From A Spaceship
00:10:11
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| Once again, it is a hundredth episode of Skeptoid, this one being number 800. | |
| And longtime fans know what that means. | |
| It's a musical episode. | |
| But today's is a little bit different in that it may be the first piece of music you've ever heard that was not produced on Earth. | |
| Today, with special cooperation from our friends at NASA, we're bringing you a Skeptoid song from a spaceship. | |
| One that is, even as we speak, rapidly accelerating away from this planet. | |
| That's today on Skeptoid. | |
| A quick reminder for everyone, you're listening to Skeptoid, revealing the true science and true history behind urban legends every week since 2006. | |
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| I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com. | |
| To the stars. | |
| We have some breaking news to report. | |
| I'm sure you've all heard that what appears to have been an alien flying saucer spent several days landed on the U.S. Capitol lawn. | |
| Today, that craft seems to have taken off. | |
| When news crews arrived this morning, it was nowhere to be found, only three shallow depressions in the ground from its footpads. | |
| The question everyone has been asking is, where did it go? | |
| Today we have that answer. | |
| Reports are that within the span of only a few minutes, the craft dashed around the nation, visiting several U.S. cities. | |
| According to military radar, it then flew straight up, left our atmosphere, and has for the past few hours been on a direct vector toward the star Zeta Reticuli. | |
| But even that's not the very latest news. | |
| NASA is currently giving a press briefing, and we've just had an incredible report that we are actually receiving a radio transmission from that spaceship. | |
| Let's listen in. | |
| A very famous astronomer is in fact confirming that for us right now. | |
| I am a famous astronomer, and I can confirm that this radio signal is coming from an alien spaceship. | |
| I'm sorry, we have to break away from that, as there's a new report just in from some of those cities the spaceship visited before leaving Earth. | |
| It appears that at least five people have been abducted and taken away. | |
| We're now getting the identities of the abductees. | |
| And oh my goodness, running my eye down the list, it appears that they include many prominent members of the UFO community. | |
| Now we're cutting back to the press briefing where they've just announced they're now going to play the audio from that radio transmission. | |
| Let's listen in. | |
| Man, this is some kind of wild trip. | |
| That sounded like Tom DeLong, the former guitarist of Blink 182 who became a UFO conspiracy theorist and founded To the Stars Academy to produce comic books, music, and TV shows promoting his belief in alien visitation. | |
| Oh, and I think we're hearing someone else. | |
| Oh, I didn't think a Tic Tac had this much room inside. | |
| That, I believe, was Luis Elizondo, who worked for a time for billionaire Robert Bigelow, promoting three Navy UFO videos, but describes it to the press as having worked for a secret Pentagon UFO program. | |
| Are there seatbelts in this thing? | |
| That sounds like Leslie Keene, longtime author and promoter of Alien Visitation and the Afterlife, who co-authored the famous New York Times article with her colleagues to promote Bigelow and Elizondo's claim of a Pentagon UFO program in an apparent effort to make belief in aliens more mainstream. | |
| Notably, Keene and Elizondo are reportedly the main characters in a new dramatization of their life story on HBO, which will, no doubt, portray them as courageous whistleblowers who, quote, uncover the government's covert UFO program. | |
| Apparently, this craft uses a gravity drive system, so without inertia, we shouldn't need any seatbelts. | |
| And that must have been Hal Putoff, a parapsychologist best known as the lead researcher looking for ghosts and interdimensional beings at Bigelow's Skinwalker Ranch. | |
| Yes, the one from TV. | |
| And I think we're hearing one more voice coming through. | |
| Write down the specs, Hal. | |
| I'll call up Harry Reed and have the Air Force build us one just like it. | |
| I recognize the voice. | |
| That was the big man himself, Robert Bigelow, the bankroll behind this whole group and their decades-long quest to persuade the public that UFOs are not only real, but are also the same interdimensional phenomenon as poltergeists. | |
| And now I think we're getting something else. | |
| It sounds like, could that be a concertina? | |
| If I'm hearing this right, it sounds like these accidental shipmates might be starting to sing a sea shanty. | |
| Oh, how awful. | |
| The poor deers must be out of their minds with fear. | |
| My name is Tom, and I am the Habom, and I'm also a space out bro. | |
| I quits my band just to understand what they don't want us to know. | |
| It's that aliens live among us now, you can bet Tiger. | |
| So I'm fighting back with my website called To the Stars Ahokahami. | |
| To the stars we go on this UFO to a galaxy brightly aglobe. | |
| They're taking us to space to alien base. | |
| To the stars on a UFO. | |
| They call me Lou and I'm in the news cause I worked at the Pentagon. | |
| Or so I say, it's kind of vague, but over me the networks fawn. | |
| I am known for three UFO videos. | |
| They're debunked, but that's only a snag. | |
| Just don't double check, cause my story's a wreck. | |
| If my lips move, it's a red flag. | |
| To the stars we go on this UFO, to a galaxy brightly aglobe. | |
| They're taking us to space to alien base. | |
| To the stars on a UFO. | |
| I'm Leslie Keene. | |
| I'm a writing machine. | |
| Got my story in the New York Times. | |
| Now the whole world knows about Lou's videos. | |
| And you'll see us on Amazon Prime. | |
| I have written a book about the afterlife and some more about UFOs. | |
| Cause it's all real, as I'll reveal in a movie on HBO. | |
| To the stars we go on this UFO to a galaxy brightly aglow. | |
| They're taking us to space to their alien base. | |
| To the stars on a UFO. | |
| My name is Hal, and I'm your pal. | |
| If you claim to be a psychokinetic, I'll believe whatever, and I'm yours forever. | |
| If you say you're electromagnetic, bring on aliens, poltergeists, ghosts, and greys, for my mind is open so wide. | |
| I'll write a paper to prove them all. | |
| My degree makes them bona fide. | |
| To the stars we go on this UFO to a galaxy brightly aglo. | |
| They're taking us to space to an alien base. | |
| To the stars on a UFO. | |
| I'm big alo, spending lots of dough, like a kid in a candy store. | |
| At my skinwalker ranch, I give carte blanche to find aliens, demons, and more. | |
| Then I got my hands on some federal funds, paid my guys to find UFOs. | |
| My latest search is the afterlife, coming soon now, I suppose. | |
| To the stars, we are this UFO, to a galaxy brightly aglo. | |
| They're taking us to space to their alien base. | |
| To the stars on a UFO. | |
| It sounds like we're losing the signal. | |
| Yes, the NASA spokesperson has just announced that the spaceship is no longer transmitting. | |
| Well, that was certainly something you don't hear every day. | |
|
Feeding The Rational Trolls
00:02:32
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| But if we heard it a little more often, the world might get slightly more rational each time. | |
| But that's not where we are now. | |
| The newspapers and cable channels continue to produce fictional crack pottery in order to garner more clicks and eyeballs under the guise of honest reporting. | |
| And they will continue to do so as long as we all keep clicking and watching. | |
| Clicking the clickbait is still just another way of feeding the trolls, interdimensional though they may be. | |
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| It's easy. | |
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| I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com. | |
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