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Jan. 9, 2022 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
49:40
Edition 602 - Sarah Cruddas - On Her New UFO Tv Series

Astrophysicist, author and tv presenter Sarah Cruddas talks about her new Sky History series "UFO Conspiracies" she presents with broadcaster Craig Charles...

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast.
My name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
And I'll say it again.
I wonder what date we have to stop saying this, but happy new year.
2022 is here and we're looking forward through the windscreen, not back through the rearview mirror.
I think it's the only way, really.
Thank you very much for all of your emails.
Keep those coming.
If you have anything that you want to say about the show, a guest suggestion, whatever, go to the website, theunexplained.tv, designed and created by Adam.
Thank you, Adam.
And you can follow the link there and send me an email through there.
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Tell your friends about it.
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And it's vital that we spread the word that way.
You know, I don't have the money for marketing budgets and all the other things that people do with podcasts.
So, you know, gotta get the word out.
Tell your friends, as they say.
Now, on this edition of The Unexplained, an extended version of a conversation that was on my radio show about a new sky history series to do with UFOs.
It's called UFO Conspiracies, and it's fronted by Craig Charles, who is well known on TV and radio in the UK, as is Sarah Crudis, television broadcaster, author, astrophysicist.
I will be speaking with Sarah Crudis here about the 10 shows that she's involved in, and there are some classic cases in these shows.
Well worth hearing.
We'll discuss them on this edition of The Unexplained with myself, Howard Hughes.
Like I say, your emails, especially over the holiday period, really kept me going in the silence here.
It was really nice every day to open the inbox and see who's getting in touch and to hear from so many people once again who say I've been listening for 10 years and this is the first time I've contacted you.
That's a lovely feeling when that happens.
Please keep your emails coming.
You are part of this family and you know let's see what we can do with it all during 2022.
I'm not going to say any more now so let's get to my conversation.
This originally aired on the radio.
This is a slightly longer version of it with Sarah Crudis about the TV series on sky history starting 11th of January, running every week for 10 weeks.
The TV series is called UFO Conspiracies.
Sarah happens to be in California at the moment.
I think Sarah, we're connecting to a hotel room in Los Angeles.
Is that right?
That is correct.
I've recently emigrated to America and I'm currently in Pasadena in a hotel room.
I'm not going to lie, life is good.
I mean, what?
Are you becoming an American TV personality now?
Well, yeah, I've done shows in America before and obviously a lot of my work within the commercial space sector is here.
And yeah, it's a great country.
I'm very proud to be a new American.
Of course, I love England as well.
You look, you've been on the show a couple of times.
The last time you were on, after the show, I got a number of emails from people saying, that was Sarah.
She did our weather on the TV.
Because I think what a lot of people don't know is you used to do Look North Weather, didn't you, for East Yorkshire?
Yeah, that's correct.
East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire.
So my first job, me and my background is in astrophysics.
And then I did a post-product broadcast journalism.
And my first ever job when I was like 23 years old is I was a weather presenter with the BBC for Look North.
And we have a mutual friend in common, don't we?
A mutual colleague in common.
We do.
The man is a legend.
I think a lot of people listening to this will be aware of Peter Levy from his various stints on radio and his extensive career on the telly in Yorkshire.
I mean, the guy's an absolute legend, but you started your career with Peter Levy and I started my career with Peter Levy.
24 myself, 22 for you.
And since my listener can't see me, I can get away with that just about.
All right.
You're involved in this new series, which is airing on Sky History Tuesday, 9 p.m.
We'll give full details at the end of this, of course.
And you do this with Craig Charles.
The absolute legend that is Craig Charles and fellow scouter as well.
So, you know, you can do no wrong in my book, frankly.
So it's you and Craig Charles.
Is it kind of good cop?
I saw edition two today, but you tell me, is it good cop, bad cop?
Are you bad cop?
Well, it depends what you define bad cop.
I would say more the real life molder and scully in terms that Craig wants to believe it.
And don't get me wrong, Craig is a smart guy.
Craig is a really, I was surprised by his knowledge of space, actually, because I grew up watching Craig on Red Dwarf.
And you have a certain, you think he's going to be like a character, but Craig is really, really intelligent.
He knows his stuff.
He's genuinely curious about this.
But I would say he's more like the Fox model character, whereas I'm more like the real life gamer scullery.
Somebody say bad cop, I'm saying, you know, give me more scientific evidence because at the end of the day, there's a lot we cannot explain in the universe.
We're only just beginning to scratch the surface of what is out there.
But there's also a lot of stuff which can be explained.
And there's nothing wrong with saying, do you know what?
That is an unexplained sighting.
But actually now we've looked at it, it's got a more down-to-earth explanation because then we are left with the diamonds in the rough, the things that we cannot yet explain, which could be quite profound.
And so some may call me the bad cop.
I would just say I'm bringing a level of science to it.
But at the end of the day, we're both, you know, looking for the truth.
We're both trying to explain the unexplainable.
And this is the most thorough investigation into some of the biggest unexplained UFO sightings that has ever been conducted.
And, you know, some stuff I've been able to say, I think there's a more earthy explanation, but other stuff neither of us have been able to explain.
And that's what's so exciting about this because we are living in the best time in terms of, you know, technology and innovation and questioning what is beyond us.
You know, of all the humans that have ever existed, you know, the one thing you have in common with your ancestors from hundreds of years ago is that they looked up and they were curious, they wondered what else is out there.
But we're able to not only look up, but to reach beyond Earth and to start to explore and question what else is out there.
So it's a really exciting time for space exploration.
And it's a really exciting time in terms of answering the most profound question of all humanity, which is, are we alone?
I want to do a deep dive into the series in just a second.
But interesting, the dynamic, and I saw as I say edition two today, the dynamic between you and Craig Charles is interesting in that, you know, all liverpuglians, and I can, you know, speaking as a fully paid up one here, although I've lived elsewhere for years, you know, you never take it out of the boy.
You know, we have to have our enthusiasm curbed occasionally, and you have to inject the occasional note of yes, but it might be a meteor into it.
And I think it's vital that you do that, which brings us to a point.
Now, the series is called UFO Conspiracies.
I think there are 10 of them starting to air with edition one, logically enough, on Tuesday, the 11th of January, like we said, 9 p.m.
And it's interesting that you're doing this at this point in time, I think, because in this last year, we've seen something that I don't think, and I've looked at these things for years, off and on, I don't think we've had this before.
There is a growing confluence between scientists and those who might have called themselves serious ufologists.
For example, Professor Avi Loeb, who I'm sure that you know from Harvard University, been on this show many, many times, founded the Galileo Project, which is now actively looking in a scientific way into these things.
But the Galileo Project also incorporating a lot of people who are well known in ufology, like, for example, Luis Elizondo.
So I think, and keen to get your thoughts.
We are at a tipping point in these investigations, I would say.
Yeah, I would agree on that.
And I think there was often a lot of stigma associated with the term UFO or the term UAP on an unidentified aerial phenomenon.
But actually, if you were to look up at the night sky, for pretty much every single star you can see when you look up, we now know, and this is only in recent years, but we now know there is at least one planet orbiting around those stars you see when you look up at the night sky.
There are more planets than stars we now know in our universe.
And we know within our own very average solar system that we're a part of that although we only have one certain point of life, one planet which we're certain that life is on, and that is, of course, the planet Earth.
We know there are many likely candidates for simple life within our own solar system.
So Mars is the most obvious one, which springs to mind.
We know Mars was much warmer and wetter in the past.
And there could have likely been simple microbial life there.
There might still be microbial life there.
Europa and Enceladus, which are icy moons of planets Jupiter and Saturn, respectively, even the clouds of Venus may have the conditions for very simple microbial life to exist.
We just don't know.
But we're at this tipping point within the next decade or so.
It's a case of when, not if we'll find life independent of Earth.
And if we, for example, find evidence of past microbial life on Earth and that life that we discover, no matter how simple it is, if that life is independent of life on Earth, so you know, because there is this hypothesis that actually life on Earth was seeded by a Martian meteorite during the much younger solar system.
But if that life we find is independent of life on Earth, and we know then that we have two genesises within our one very average solar system, we know the universe is full of solar systems, those stars you see with all their planets orbiting around them, then we can start to begin to say, well, our average solar system has at least two genesises, and we know there's all these other solar systems out there.
Then the real question becomes like, what about the intelligent life?
Is it a case that, you know, because actually as a civilization, we're rather young when compared to the age of the cosmos, the age of the universe.
Are there other more evolved civilizations out there?
Are there civilizations which have come and visited us?
And while I think the term, you know, UFOs and UFology sometimes be stigmatized, it is a genuine scientific question.
There is much, you know, you mentioned the Galileo project, but there's also Project Starshot and the work of SETI as well, which is actively listening for signals from other civilizations.
The UN even has its Department of Outer Space Affairs, which tries to address the question, what would we do if we made contact with an alien civilization if we detected an alien signal?
Because we're divided on Earth nationally, but actually in the vast cosmos, we're all one.
We have more in common than we realize.
So there's lots of serious scientific investigations into this now.
It's no longer something that can be dismissed as hocus pocus or science fiction.
And I think it'd be myopic and short-sighted to say that we are alone in the universe.
The question is, are we really the most intelligent thing or is there more out there?
Or is there stuff out there which is so intelligent that it just passes us by?
You know, are we being watched?
Are we being observed?
Like, there's nothing that we can, you know, we have to look at all options right now and really think, you know, we just don't know.
The universe is not only as strange as you can imagine.
It's stranger than you can imagine.
We are living in the most exciting time to potentially answer that question of are we alone?
Indeed.
And it's one thing to discover microbial life or to think we have.
It's another thing to think that that life may have evolved into something else somewhere and may be reaching out to us.
And that is the fascinating question.
And how many steps do you have to take from the one to the other?
And if we are being visited by something more intelligent, I guess the question that you will have asked, and probably we've all asked at times, is why whatever it might be seems to be playing a cat and mouse game with us.
In other words, the sightings that we get are not, you know, they're not systematized in any way.
You can't say that you're going to see something very definite on Tuesday week at 4 p.m.
You know, they are fairly random.
And when we get reports, they are of varying degrees.
You look in the series, for example, at some of the very interesting reports and pictures submitted recently during the lockdown period by members of the public.
And also contrast those with the Tic-Tac UFOs from 2004.
I spoke on the show last week with Sean Carhill, who was on board the USS Princeton, that was one of those ships.
So, you know, these things are happening on all kinds of levels, but it makes you wonder, doesn't it?
My roundabout way of getting to the point, it makes you wonder why, if there is an intelligence that is greater than ours, why that intelligence does not make itself more apparent than it does?
Why do you think that might be?
Well, if I knew that, I feel like that would be the $50 million question.
But I think it's, you know, the best analogy that I like to use is if you were walking down the street and you saw some ants, you wouldn't stop and try and have a conversation with those ants, would you?
You know, you'd just pass them by.
And it's the same.
We could be so unintelligent, so simple, so unaware that an alien civilization just passes us by.
They notice this planet and they just pass us by.
We're like those ants that you walk by in the street.
And it might sound like an odd analogy, but it's probably the best analogy that we've got.
We just don't know.
We know so little about what it is that we're a part of.
We think our Earth and our planet is so massive and so vast and there's so much here.
But in the vastness of the cosmos, we're not even a speck.
We want to believe we're significant.
But in the grand scale of the universe, if our planet was to disappear, no one would really notice.
And that's what's frightening but also beautiful about life, I guess.
But we don't have the answers.
And when we start to get more answers, we're left with even more questions.
But that's what's so exciting about, I guess, being human and what differentiates us from the animal species we share this planet for is that urge to explore, that urge to know what is over that next hill.
But we could be on such another level to these alien civilizations.
They might just be watching us.
They might be, you know, not interested in us, just passing us by and just having a quick visit.
We don't know.
All bets are off.
Or indeed, we might be their little experiment.
Yeah, exactly.
We cannot, you know, we could be some, you know, I don't know, alien high school kids, you know, science experiment for a weekend.
We just don't know.
And it's almost mind-boggling.
It's almost like, in a way, it's like the curse of being human that we have to think about this too much.
But it's just such an exciting time.
And going back to one of your earlier points, I guess that this was something which was stigmatized for so long, but now it's becoming more and more credible.
And, you know, also there's somewhat of an embarrassment of witnesses.
And I think what was interesting during, or embarrassment of riches even, that during lockdown, people had more time on their hands.
People were able to look up.
I mentioned on my Twitter quite a lot about things you could see in the night sky.
And people were enjoying looking up at the night sky.
But just because you see something you can't explain in the night sky doesn't necessarily mean it's aliens.
And that's what's so exciting about this show, that with my scientific background and Craig's passion and enthusiasm, you know, and that Mulder and Scully kind of background, the dynamic that we have, it's about ruling stuff out as well.
Because just because we've got a lot of sightings doesn't mean they're all credible.
It's about finding those diamonds in the rough and the ones that we really can't explain.
That's what's really exciting.
It's okay to say, I saw something in the night sky and then to realize it can be explained away by science.
It's something more earthly.
I mean, often the planet Venus, you know, the brightest object in the night sky other than the moon, you know, it often gets mistaken for UFOs.
It turns out to be a planet, you know, a shooting star, you know, debris burning up in the atmosphere might get mistaken.
But it's okay to say there's an earthly explanation because that leaves us with other stuff that we can't explain.
And that makes those other sightings even more credible and even more exciting.
So I'm all for ruling stuff out, but then looking at the stuff that we can't rule out because those are those diamonds in the rough that we really need.
And there's a lot of unexplained stuff.
And maybe to go back to your point about why it's sporadic and stuff is because much of the stuff can be explained.
You know, we know so little about our Earth still, so it could be more natural phenomena.
But then there's also other stuff, which is just quite frightening that we can't explain it yet.
Yeah.
You know, the Nimitz stuff is so interesting.
The fact that the U.S. government is taking this so seriously as well.
And the fact that, you know, you've got military personnel, you've got pilots, you've got really credible people whose reputation, certainly 10, 20 years ago, would have been seriously damaged by coming forward and saying, I've seen a UFO in the night sky.
You can only imagine the nicknames, excuse me, the nicknames someone would have got for saying, you know, military personnel would have got for saying, I've seen an alien.
But now that is changing.
And then people are taking more seriously unexplained sightings, particularly from those credible witnesses, people such as pilots who spend their entire life up there in the sky.
You know, they know the sky better than anyone.
We're talking about UFOs and various other space related topics.
I'm going to squeeze in a couple of, if it's OK with you, Sarah, listener questions.
Sarah Cruddis is here from Pasadena, California.
Sarah, on the subject of the general conversation that we were having, just to tie that up now, there's been a move in the last couple of weeks, certainly the publicity for that move towards so-called optical SETI.
You know, there are people like Seth Shostak who've been listening for signals for years and years and years.
Seth's been on this show many, many times.
Sure, you've spoken with him.
He's a legend.
He is an absolute legend and a very funny guy, too, as you will have discovered.
But what about the move towards optical SETI?
Now that we have the James Webb Telescope, which launched on December 24th, up there and looking.
December 25th, Christmas Day.
Christmas Day.
Well, it was finally up there and it's, you know, it's in the process of being properly deployed right now.
I mean, do you think that optical SETI is going to help?
Do you think that being able to see more and further, farther and better is going to help in this quest?
I think the more, the better.
I think it's going to be clear.
We never, you know, James Webb is going to help us to discover more planets and more exoplanets, we call them.
And that's native planets which don't exist within our solar systems and planets which are extra solar.
So James Webb is not going to be able to, you know, we're still waiting for the full deployment and it's going to be in a place called Lagrange 2, which is almost like a solar system parking spot to enable us to see the universe like never before.
And James Webb is going to help us discover more of these extra solar planets, more extra exoplanets.
It's not going to enable us to actually see what's on the surface of the planet, but it's all going to be part of piecing together those puzzle pieces of what else is out there in our cosmos beyond our own average solar system.
Because, you know, we barely know our solar system, let alone what's out there in the cosmos, but it's going to help us identify more about those planets as well, which exist beyond Earth.
So are there, you know, the only concrete sample of life we have in this entire impossibly large universe is one.
It's all of us and all the species that we share on planet Earth.
But using James Webb and using other telescopes, we're able to understand more about new planets that we're discovering.
We're looking for water worlds, worlds where life as we know it might exist.
Of course, we also understand that life can exist in much stranger and more extreme environments.
So what we're really getting with James Webb, with optical settee, with, you know, listening for signals out there in the universe, with all these different types of searches, is more and more pieces of this cosmic jigsaw puzzle that we're trying to piece together to try and understand what it is that we're a part of.
What else is out there?
you know the meaning to our existence so to speak you know the largest most profound existential questions and of course are we alone is probably number one in that because it it changes everything for what it means to be human and religion and philosophy and everything so what we're getting and what we're going to see this century is just a an increase probably larger than you can imagine then in our understanding of the universe our understanding of what else is out there and our understanding of potential candidates for life um you know,
planets beyond our solar system, which might be candidates for alien life, and that's very exciting because then that helps with listening for signals, it can make us more direct in how we try and search out exactly what it is.
And I should mention with Seth as well, Seth features on this show, you have both conspiracies with Craig and myself, and he's just, you know, we have quite a few of the people from SETI in the US on this show looking into the Amuamur rock or rocket, as we called it, which passed through our solar system, which was the first extrasolar object ever detected.
And I think we just need more and more of these puzzle pieces, and it's just such an exciting time for exploration.
I think so.
I wish it could have been called something else other than Umuamua.
Do you know it took me three months of doing interviews?
It took me three months of doing interviews about it to be able to say it.
I don't even know if I'm saying it right, but it is Hawaiian that means first little messenger.
Do you know how I learned?
Because I got it wrong every single time and it was becoming an embarrassment for me.
I actually did it phonetically.
I put it into blocks.
Ooh, moo, ooh, moo, ah.
And once I did it that way, if you run it together quickly, you can always get it right.
That's episode 10 you're talking about with Seth Shostak.
I can't wait for that one of UFO conspiracy.
And Seth is a legend.
If you guys listen to this, don't know Seth, look him up.
He is, oh my gosh, he's just, I know you've interviewed him, Howard, but he's just incredible, isn't he?
He's just like this, this, you know, and it's such an honor to have him and the team at SETI on this show because that just adds to the credibility of this, you know, what we're trying to do.
This is no longer something which is just a niche community.
This is a very serious scientific question.
And the approach that me and Craig are taking is the most thorough investigation which has ever been done.
And we've got top experts, both in the UFO community, but also in the science community around the world to help us with this.
Now, there are 10 of these shows.
Like we said, they start on Tuesday night.
I've watched today edition two, which has given me a bit of a flavor for it.
I've also got a summary of all the other shows.
You talk a lot about military sightings, the Tic-Tac UFOs, and you have people like Nick Pope on there.
And then you go into, on a related theme, sightings by professional pilots, people whose job it is to be in the sky, people whose job it is, and life it is to observe.
And you center in this one on a case that happened off the west of Ireland, which I covered on the show when it happened a few years ago.
This was unusual in that it wasn't just the crew of one plane.
You know, there was a FedEx crew in this last year or two off somewhere above Mexico.
I think it was above Monterrey, Mexican border.
They had some kind of sighting.
But off Western Ireland, the case that you center on in this show is particularly fascinating because it wasn't just one set of air crew, a British Airways air crew, it was a Norwegian air crew and a Virgin Atlantic, I think, air crew who all encountered something deeply weird.
And you have the recordings on the show, something deeply weird in the sky off Western Ireland.
And they had a dialogue with Shannon Air Control in Ireland about it.
Now, this is an amazing case.
Yeah, it really is.
And I think when it comes to unexplained sightings, credible witnesses are really key to this.
And you can't get more credible than pilots because unlike someone who might be a passenger in your flight and you might only fly once or twice a year, so you might see something you can't explain, but a pilot will be able to say it's this or that or that.
Pilots know the sky better than anyone.
So if your pilot says they see something they can't explain, that's interesting.
When you've got multiple pilots on multiple different aircraft saying something, you know, saying they see something that they cannot explain, and they're used to seeing weather phenomena, they're used to seeing, you know, shooting stars or the planets in the night sky or the moon or, you know, how our world looks from that altitude.
But they see something that cannot be explained.
We need to take that seriously and we need to, you know, take the approach of trust and verify.
And these are trustworthy, credible witnesses who are saying they've seen something they can't explain.
And that's what's so exciting about some of these cases that we just don't have all the answers just yet.
And so that is actually one of my favorite episodes when we look at the pilot sightings, when we look at these credible witnesses and people who, as I mentioned earlier, would be almost stigmatized in the last 20, 30 years if they came forward and spoke about something like this.
But now there's more of an acceptance to say, okay, I saw something that cannot be explained.
And indeed, you talk with a guy called Ted Rowe from NARCAP, an organization that collates these reports.
And he makes precisely the point that you make, that a lot of pilots have to wait until retirement, or in the past, they've had to wait till retirement to be able to tell what they know.
Yeah, that's exactly because there's been such a stigma.
And I think, and it almost goes back to like disinformation campaigns.
If you look back into the 1960s and 1970s and Project Blue Bulk, and a lot of it was to do with, it might be military technology being tested out during the Cold War, both by the Americans and by the Soviet Union.
And there's almost like, no, you didn't see something, you're crazy.
And that's kind of had that stigma, which has been left over by.
I actually think the new terminology, sort of UFOs, but UAPs, is helping change that.
So unexplained aerial phenomena.
But the stigma is changing.
And we really need people.
You know, if you see something that you cannot explain in the night sky, there's nothing wrong with reporting it.
And there's also nothing wrong with it then being proved to be something off this earth or something which is to do with, you know, known space phenomena, because it's all about being more open and accepting the fact that we know so little about what is out there.
And it's such an exciting time.
And it's okay to look up, to wonder, to see something that can't be explained by you, but then find out it can be explained because, you know, that leaves us with all the stuff that we cannot yet explain.
So I like the fact the stigma is changing.
If you look at the world, you know, if you take the last century, you know, the 20th century, someone born in the year 1900 and say they lived for 100 years.
So they died in the year 2000.
Look what they saw in their lifetime, you know, the birth of flight, commercial aviation, two world wars, increase in medicine, surgeries, human beings in space on the surface of the moon, and then the internet era and the mobile phone, like the transformation we saw in one decade.
And then we look at the decade where we were the transformation we saw in one century.
And then we look at the century we're in now with all the advances in technology.
I mean, it might not seem like it, but we're all living in the best time.
You know, it might not seem like it all the time, but we're living in the best time in terms of technology and innovation.
And we now have the tools to start to piece together that jigsaw puzzle.
So all these, you know, reporting sightings is so important because it enables us to build up a bigger picture.
It enables us to better dismiss things, but also to say, right, these are really credible things that we cannot be explained.
And I think in order to be successful, we need to remove that stigma and to take more seriously sightings, particularly those from pilots and from military personnel.
I don't know how the production team for the series got hold of this guy.
Simon is his name.
He was in edition two, which will air in the UK, I think, 18th of January.
Simon is a man who says that he was a former air traffic controller for NATO and says, essentially, that pilots and senior military people, the brass, know about these things, but are essentially keeping them quiet.
I've got a little bit of sound from the series that the producers have allowed me to play, Sarah, so let's just hear Simon as featured in edition two.
Situations with almost mid-air collisions with the UFO in the past.
And this is not something the government wants to reveal.
Officially, you don't talk about this kind of stuff because the general rule is that UFOs do not exist.
And when they exist, you do not talk about it.
Yes, I think they exist.
They must exist.
I mean, we're not alone in the universe.
And I'm sure that they visit us.
What motivates you to come forward?
Surely you're risking yourself by speaking to us.
I'm interested in the truth.
Isn't that interesting, Sarah?
You asked him exactly the right question and he just said, I'm interested in the truth.
And there is a guy.
I don't know how the producers got hold of him, but that was a real find for the series.
And there is more of him on that show when you see it.
But there he says, you know, this is known about, people are experiencing it.
It is common knowledge.
And all we need to get is the truth.
And he's part of efforts to get that out there.
But says, interestingly, later in that conversation, that he was part of a forum and there was somebody who was monitoring that forum who said, you better watch yourself.
Yeah, and it's quite chilling listening to that footage from him as well.
I think, you know, we just don't have all the answers just yet.
And I think we need to, you know, as I said earlier, trust and verify, listen to people such as, you know, Simon, who we just heard from, and give them a platform to tell their story.
And you mentioned, you know, the producers and, you know, this was a huge team effort.
I guess like Craig and I, at the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, because with the visible face of this, but it was a huge effort from the production company, the Firecracker, as well as Sky History to really disseminate all this incredible evidence, all these incredible sightings that have been made over very many years and try and find 10 key cases and then investigate those as thoroughly as possible.
This is a serious investigation that we've done and we're looking at, you know, and I'm, as I said earlier, not afraid to dismiss things, but we're, you know, giving people like that a platform to tell their story and then that enables the audience to make up their own mind or to certainly question stuff further.
That's a really important thing to do.
Let's have a dive into a couple of the other episodes, if this is okay.
A little while ago, I did a show with a woman called Kaz Clark.
I haven't seen edition one, which is on on Tuesday, but she is the woman who is at the center of the so-called Penturk UFO sighting in South Wales.
An astonishing story that I have to say that until this year, listeners made me aware of it.
Was amazing.
You know, this doesn't sound like or look like it was some kind of military exercise, which is what it's been passed off as.
But there was a night of the most astonishing stuff that happened around some woodland in an area of South Wales.
And not just one person saw this, but it was widely experienced.
So I'm pretty delighted that you've got this on the series.
Yeah, I mean, what's so interesting about this case as well is it's multiple witnesses.
You know, what we're really looking for when we can't explain something is not just credible witnesses, but multiple witnesses, because that just changes the game in terms of like, it's not just someone who, you know, there is a slight coincidence between UFO sightings and people maybe stumbling home from the pub after one too many drinks.
But when you've got multiple witnesses saying that they've seen something that they cannot explain, it means we need to take it seriously.
It doesn't mean the answer is UFOs, aliens.
You know, in most cases, the answer is going to have a much more down-to-earth one, even if it's a military project, which people aren't willing to discuss.
But I think what's so interesting about Wales is that you have these multiple witnesses and you have something going on in the sky that frighten people and that cannot be explained.
And they're not satisfied by the explanation that they were given.
And then, of course, you talk about Rendlesham Forest in Edition 4.
Now, that's the mother and father of UK cases.
You know, twin air bases, a US one side by side, cheek by jowl with a British one, US-UK together.
Strange occurrences across two or three nights.
But the interesting thing about that, and I wonder if your program brings this up, is that there are differences of accounts of what happened.
Different people will tell you different things.
Some will say, well, there is one person who says that there was a very close encounter with a so-called download of information.
Other people will talk about strange lights, maybe some missing time.
Some people will dismiss that as being the local lighthouse just projecting its light through the trees.
Rendlesham Forest, though, endless fascination.
Yeah, I really feel like Rendlesham is almost like the UK's answer to Roswell in terms of this case.
Again, there are some people who, you know, because you've always got to, you know, it's Oakham's razor, isn't it?
The simplest explanation is often the most likely explanation.
But we do have this conflict in what could be the explanation for Rendlesham.
I don't want to go into too much detail because I need you to watch it in the show and I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but it's one of the most fascinating cases.
And I think what's so interesting about this is almost like 10 episodes for this series, UFO conspiracies, wasn't enough because there's so much out there.
There's so many cases like this where we get multiple witnesses, where we get conflicting accounts.
Could it be a case of, well, as people's memories have been changed or perhaps they've been persuaded that, no, you didn't see what you thought you'd seen, or perhaps they're fearful of actually coming forward because they might Get ridiculed.
So, I think my hope is that a show like this and a genuinely credible investigation such as this will enable people to feel less stigmatized about coming forward and to really question some of these huge cases, such as Rendleton.
So, we were just taking a deep dive, weren't we, into the series, Sarah?
I'm not going to be able to go through all of them individually.
One of them, though, that has been making the newspapers over Christmas is a guy that I spoke to a couple of years ago.
I think I've had two conversations with him now.
And if I can find them on my recorder here, I've got a little clip of him from one of my shows.
But I find this case astonishing.
PC Alan Godfrey.
This is Todmoden on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border.
The year is 1980, the same year, oddly enough, as Rendlesham Forest, which we were talking about before.
Something weird and diamond-shaped spinning above his car, possible missing time.
This guy suffered all kinds of ridicule, was also told to shut up about it.
Let's just hear a little clip from one of my shows.
This is about a minute's worth of Alan Godfrey talking about what happened after he'd started talking about it.
He was called to a meeting with a man from the ministry.
This is him.
And present in the room was a guy dressed in civilian clothing that just introduced himself as a man from the ministry.
He didn't give a name.
He had in his hand my file.
I was made to sign what we call a minute sheet, which is an eternal letter basically, maybe a report.
And I was reminded that when I joined the police force, I'd signed the Official Secrets Act.
And I was reminded, which told me in this order that I'd been given to sign, I mustn't speak about Zygmuda Damsky or my UFO encounter to the media and, you know, the words.
But that obviously wasn't a permanent ban because you're talking about it now and you've got the bucket.
Time progressed, and when I actually came out of the job, I had nothing to lose, really, because I come to the conclusion that if you're going to break the official secret site, then what you're talking about must be an official secret to start with.
They've already been in the papers, there'd already been an inquest, so it couldn't be an official secret, do you follow me?
So, Sarah, that was Alan Godfrey, an astonishing guy.
I have every reason to believe that he is completely bona fide in the story that he tells.
Interesting in the description, and I haven't seen your show on Alan Godfrey.
You discussed this as an abduction case.
Is that what you think it was?
We don't know.
That's what's so both chilling and mysterious about this still.
We just don't know yet.
And this case is over 40 years old, even before I was born, but it's still something which people still don't have the answers to.
But my hope is that as UFO sightings, as UAP sightings become less stigmatized, that we can reinvestigate these cases.
And that's one of the key things with the show, that we're using the best technology available now, technology which wasn't available in the 1980s to look back more than 40 years and to try and investigate and find answers to exactly what happened.
Because for someone like Alan Godfrey, that defined the rest of his life.
And for those related to some of these big industry, big incidents, they've defined, and sometimes not always in a very positive way, the rest of people's lives.
So we owe it to people who experienced something like that and who had the, I don't know, the guts almost to come forward and say, look, this happened to me.
I don't know what it is.
We owe it to them to keep investigating.
And this show is able to use the latest in technology and science and all the knowledge that we have that we didn't have 40 years ago to look back and to reinvestigate these kind of mysteries.
Did anybody else, as far as you're aware, experience that?
You know, Alan Godfrey is portrayed by the media as a guy on his own who was hounded by his colleagues, eventually turned to alcohol, lost a marriage.
He's now happily remarried.
But it had a lot of bad effects on his life.
But did anybody else come forward and say that they saw what he saw?
Well, you'll have to watch the show to find out.
To find out, you know, it is like, I'm so proud of the show and I'm so proud to have worked with Craig on this.
I think we are genuinely, you know, like the Moldrum Scully type dynamic, but also this is a, it's the real life Molder and Scully and we're really looking at this.
And I feel like, you know, my hope is for Alan that we're able to give him answers and to give him comfort.
And for all people who look up and see something that they can't explain that, to know that they're not alone and to know that this is now something which is being taken very seriously by governments, by the military, by scientists.
And it's something that we hope to have the answers for one day.
And yes, some stuff will be dismissed, but we are, you know, we shouldn't be arrogant enough to assume we know everything because we know so little about what else is out there.
And we just don't know.
We could find out tomorrow that alien civilizations are visiting us or are out there or it could be like 100 years from now.
We do not know for certain, but we are living in the best time to have the best chance to actually finally answer that question of are we alone?
And maybe, Sarah, this is an era where people are less inclined to explain things away.
In poor Alan Godfrey's case, people were looking for any kind of rational explanation for what he encountered.
And one of the things they said was that somebody had built this space age looking house.
I think there were a couple of them and one of them just happened to be in Todmoden.
I think I remember as a little kid seeing this thing, because I'm from the northwest of England.
My dad used to take me on drives out there.
It looked like an egg-shaped thing almost like something a smaller version of which you'd have in your kitchen.
It looked like a flying saucer, but it was a little way away from where he had the sighting.
And I can't understand how that would translate necessarily into what he experienced.
Plus, of course, there was the case of Zygmunt Adamski, who was a guy who was found on top of a coal tip.
Alan Godfrey was one of the police team that found Zygmunt Adamski and investigated that.
They still don't quite know how that guy got there.
He had some weird injuries on him.
So, you know, the whole thing is a mystery.
But like you say, what is it?
Episode 8.
We have to wait for that one, which I think will air back end of February, by the looks of this, maybe beginning of March.
Chicago.
Sorry.
So I think we knew so little.
It was only the 1990s that we discovered planets beyond our solar system.
So back in the 80s, the concept of aliens was more alien to us, I guess, for want of a better word, in terms of they just seemed easier to clasp at straws to say this could be a much earthier explanation, even if it was a kind of outlandish hypothesis.
But now, because we're starting to realize how much is out there, how many other worlds, how many other planets are out there, we've got so much more scientific evidence about what the universe is like, what other worlds are like, that actually something which might sound outlandish as an explanation back in the 1980s might not be as outlandish nowadays.
And that's what's so important about going back and reinvestigating those cases because we owe it to those people who are brave enough to come forward to look back at their case and to reinvestigate it.
You cherry-pick throughout the series, as we say, there are 10 editions of this.
Some of the greatest cases, I think if you're interested in watching edition one, I think you're going to be hooked and watch them all across the 10 weeks.
The Chicago O'Hare Airport one, Stephenville, there's a show about SETI and all the ones that we've talked about.
So well worth seeing from Tuesday.
Justify May, a couple of space questions that have been sent in by listeners, and I promised I would ask you if that's okay, Sarah.
And this one's connected anyway.
Stuart asks, could you ask Sarah her opinion about this?
With all the space junk that is now floating around in orbit, and of course, over Christmas, China and Elon Musk, I think we're having a bit of a row about this.
Do you think it's weird that we don't hear about unusual collisions if UAPs, UFOs arrive on Earth?
I think he's basically saying, if they're getting here coming through the atmosphere, then how come they don't bump into things that we've already got up there?
That's a great question, but we've got a lot of satellites which are actually in working order.
We're not, you know, we hear about these collisions, but they are still relatively rare.
And I think the problem is humans leave trash wherever they go.
So space is no exception.
And when we first went to space, it was a war for all intents and purposes.
So, you know, the consequences of leaving debris wasn't as well thought about.
It's something which is making news headlines now.
There are many companies looking at taking out the trash, so to speak, because where there's trash, there's money to be made.
So what to do with space debris is something which has been taken very seriously.
It's something which is being looked at in terms of possible solutions and also legal regulation.
It's something which you'll hear more about over the next few decades.
In terms of UFOs, we can track that stuff.
We are aware in terms of how much debris is out there.
So, and again, this is all hyperbolic in a certain way or just a hypothesis because we don't have the answers.
But should an alien spacecraft be visiting us, if they've got the technology to traverse the cosmos to reach our planet, one would assume that they have the technology to mitigate any space debris because there would have been a lot more debris in space.
But it is a really interesting thought and it's one that we should think about.
And it's one that's certainly going to become more and more of a threat as we go through this decade.
And it's something which humans are working on, but also maybe the fact that our planet is surrounded by man-made, human-made debris is another indication to an alien civilization that we're developing.
And as we send more and more craft and more and more people into space, there's more people, more technology up there to potentially see what is going on.
So the chances are greater.
Now, because of my lousy bookkeeping, I haven't actually written down who this is from, but you will know who you are.
Hello, whoever it is.
To give a summation of the question, I think basically what the question is, is the thought that what we are experiencing as maybe Tic Tac UFOs or whatever they might be might be the technology of another country.
And I think the questioner is making the point that the difficulty with that is that our technology has probably not progressed that far, but who knows what the other guy has.
Any thoughts about what we're experiencing being somebody else's tech?
Well, that's something really serious.
And this is one of the other reasons potentially that the Pentagon has come forward and said we can't explain what's in those videos, because either way, it's a national security threat to allied forces because if it's alien technology, I mean, one would assume if an alien civilization is advanced enough to cross the universe, that they've got over that kind of like seeking to destroy things,
because I know Stephen Hawking was very vocal when he was alive in saying that, you know, we should be concerned about making contact with an alien civilization because you think when civilizations have clashed on Earth, they've generally clashed.
Though one would expect, you know, in order to be a space-faring species, eating us as humans, we have to work together so that any alien civilization might be more likely to come in peace, one would hope.
But yeah, when we look at the Tic Tac incident, for example, it's either potentially a threat from alien technology or much worse, is this Chinese or Russian technology that cannot be explained, you know, and I've interviewed and we interviewed on this show quite a lot of people and witnesses to the Tic Tac incident.
And one of the guys, Kevin Day, I remember I interviewed for a few years ago, he was almost moved to tears about this because he is a military personnel.
He's sent to defend his country and he's seen something in our skies that he cannot explain.
And that, you know, he was crying.
And this is chilling.
And this is, you know, either way, it's a threat.
But yes, the possible explanation could be that it is alien technology, that it is unfriendly technology.
And that's even more of a reason for the Pentagon to come forward and say, we can't explain this.
But how likely is that?
We just do not know just yet, but it is a concern.
What we need is what the Americans call, and you'll hear a lot of people saying this around you in the States, I think, we need more transparency.
And hopefully we're going to get it.
Last question then comes from listener Gren, a regular listener to my show.
Gren says, essentially, have you had any experiences yourself?
Have you videoed anything, encountered anything of this nature?
Or are you still waiting?
I wouldn't say waiting, but no, I know, I don't look up at the night sky and wait to see something that I personally cannot explain because I'm more of the case of like, you know, there's got to be a more down-to-earth explanation.
But, you know, I haven't seen anything yet that I cannot explain.
But I do know that the universe is full of mystery and I do know that there's so much that we can't explain in the universe.
And the more things we learn about, the more things, more questions that we are left with.
So for me, it's more about that mystery and just what a privilege it is to be alive in this time, to have the technology to not only look up to the skies, but to have, you know, friends who fly to space and have the technology to be able to try and answer this most profound question of all time.
But no, I haven't seen something that I can't explain personally.
But throughout the filming of this series, throughout this investigation with Craig Charles for Europo conspiracies, there have been things and cases that I've investigated with Craig that I cannot explain to the best of my ability, even having brought in top experts, people like Seth Shostak from SETI and people from across the scientific community that cannot be explained.
And that's why this is such an exciting time, because we're left with more questions than answers.
That's the valuable thing about the show, I think, and all shows like this, that it gets people asking questions.
Just a very, very quick space one from me.
Elon Musk has been in the news in the last 48 hours or so, saying that in his view, it is likely that humans will be on Mars, will arrive on Mars, will go to Mars within 10 years.
He said that 10 years is probably longer.
It's probably going to be within 10 years.
Do you think that he is once again being over-optimistic about this?
Or do you think that that is going to happen?
I think change is happening much faster than many outside.
So I work within the commercial space sector here in the US, and I think change is happening much, much faster than most people realize.
I mean, you know, the only thing different from what we're doing in space is the playing field.
It's no different to any exploration on Earth.
Government generally goes first and then private industry follows.
And that's exactly what we're seeing within the space sector.
So going to space used to be the preserve of trillionaires.
It used to be the preserve of countries.
Now it's the preserve of billionaires and millionaires, you know, still much more wealthy than most of us.
But we are seeing a huge amount of change and a huge amount of private endeavors and enterprises and a huge amount of money to be made.
And like last month, December, I was at Blue Origin for one of my best friends, Dylan Taylor, flying to space aboard Blue Origin.
We are now living in an era where people know people who go to space.
You know, space is becoming something which is more relatable to many, many people.
So I think it might seem over optimistic to the layperson, but you just look at what SpaceX has achieved.
In 2015, they finally managed to launch a rocket, the Falcon 9, and then land it on a drone, a drone ship, a barge in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
And now it's something that is routine.
They've flown, reflown over and landed at 100 first stage boosters.
And it's something which seems like science fiction, something out of Thunderbirds, but it's now something we take for granted in terms of commercial spaceflight.
And working within the industry, there's so many people, there's so much great change, so much great opportunity that we shouldn't count anything out.
And, you know, there's bold characters, there's controversy, there's fortunes that are going to be lost, there's lives that are going to be lost, and there's things which we can't imagine, which are going to happen.
I mean, the best way of looking at it, or best comparison I like to make is look at the internet in the 1990s and look at all the companies and ideas and the world that we live in today and take for granted because of the internet.
And we couldn't even imagine the companies of today, the technology of today, 25, 30 years ago.
And it's transformed the world.
So, you know, the same thing in space is most, you know, what we're seeing now with commercial space is almost comparable to that internet age.
So we will not recognize, you know, the world and space advances in 10, 20 years from now.
Exciting, eh?
For all of us.
What a time to live through.
It is just amazing.
Yeah, we are in the best time.
Sarah, thank you so much from Pasadena for giving me your time.
Your enthusiasm absolutely fires out of our internet connection.
Sarah Kratos, Craig Charles, UFO Conspiracies premieres Sky History, Tuesday, 11th of January, 9 p.m.
Sky History is on Sky123.
Now, Virgin 270, Talk Talk 327.
All episodes will be available on catch-up services.
I should also say terms and conditions apply.
I think at the end of that, I think they got their plug.
Sarah, thank you very much indeed.
We're out of time here on The Unexplained.
Sarah Kravis and UFO Conspiracies.
More great guests in the pipeline here at the Home of the Unexplained.
So until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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