Hello, and welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. I'm your host, Alejandro Rojas, and we have with us as usual, Martin cooled as Ice, willis and willing to sacrifice? Are willing to sacrifice? That kind of rhymes because it's kind of a rapper thing, old as ice, so because you're freezing out there. But we have a special guest on another person who is cooled as ice, which is Lespiegel in New York. Helloly, hello both of you. Why am I more of a special guest than Martin is?
Well, Martin's are not regularly, so by definition, you're a special guest. Okay, So I'm the irregular special guest. Okay, yeah, irregular special guests is a good way to put it. So, Uh, you guys are out there on the east where it's freezing. I think it's like seventy degrees. It's sunny here. We had a bit of a warm spell, which is so funny. And that's what people don't realize. It's global global Uh, you know, warming is really better explained as climate change.
It just means the weather's getting weird. Man, That's exactly right. Well, and lately I know you're right, I don't think we can use the term global warming anymore. For us here on the East, it's it's more appropriate to say it's global freezing. Yeah, you guys are freezing your your you know, WhatsApp are you guys surviving? Though? You're doing okay? Yeah, it's almost like hibernation time though, you know. I mean it was minus twenty two degrees fahrenheit. And when I woke up this morning at
seven o'clock, mm hmm. And I think I think Central Park here in New York last night broke a record for most frigid temperature. Really, I'm not sure if that was. Yeah, and we're like about two or three days they say from fifty degrees hitting New York. Well, well fine, I mean really, I don't know what how many scarves I need to put on on any given day now, or how many jackets I will tell you. I mean, you know, thank God for bttoms and tops thermal underwear
because it really helps. Yeah. I was in Colorado for a few days and I wish I had it because that's what I would be wearing these days. My blood's so thin, I cannot have no resistance to the cold. It's awful. I'm I'm sure. In fact, I said, if I'm gonna live anywhere, it's got to have palm trees or I won't be there. I have palm trees, but the indoor, Nah, that doesn't count. So let's move on to the guest. I always announced who the guest
is. Of course we already know. It's Lee Spiegel, formerly of the Huftington Post. Now you're working on a cool documentary project with James Fox, who's been on the show. You know he does, and I think, many people's opinions a couple of the best documentaries on this topic ever. Yeah, really good stuff. So everybody's really excited for this new one. Lee has also been involved with so many other things, been involved with media and
journalism for many, many years. Interviewed one of the first to interview people like astronauts and others about UFOs, worked with Heinik and Ballet and all of these important names. If you don't know who those people are at google it. But yeah, Lee's got a lifetime of experience in journalism and especially in UFOs. So very exciting. Always good to have you on the show, Lee, and this show in particular, I love we're going to be talking
about the year in review. And for me, this is kind of like Christmas. It's kind of like opening packages, because you know, I don't know what stories you guys are going to talk about, and so I'm always excited to hear which stories you all are going to bring up. But we'll get to that Before that, Let's go ahead and start with some of the news. So Martin of course is our news dude and starts us off with some of the latest news and what you got there, Martin, Well,
I'm going to be talking today about the mystery of the alien megastructure. How star has been cracked. Yeah, the case has been cracked. Wa wah whah. Now there are several articles out there about this, but I gathered some quotes from this recent article by Nadia Drake from the National Geographic just in a nutshell the you did. Yeah, she was in Hungary with us for
the National Geographic thing. I got to spend some time with her. Totally not into UFOs or open to the idea at all, which is funny because it was brought up not by me, someone else. But yeah, she's very cool. She's got a PhD. And she was a ballerina in like this big group and which both are just amazing accomplishments on their own because if you know, professional ballerinas go through a lot, but very cool person just wanted to do that quick shout out. Sorry, wow, no that's great.
So just in a nutshell, this all began back in twenty eleven when citizens scientist with the Planet Hunter's Project were sorting through the data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft, and they spotted the signatures of more than twenty three hundred planets during its four year primary observations. You know, as the planet's pass the stars, they have a dip or a blip in their stars light. But the dips Kepler recorded from Tavi Star didn't correspond to anything remotely like the planet shadowy
fingerprint should. Instead, they appeared to be more intense and entirely random.
Once alerted to this star formerly KIC eight four six two eight five two, astronomers couldn't come up with a reasonable explanation for what they were seeing, So the hypothesis they ranged from a swarm of comets orbiting the star to dusty debris dusty debris disk surrounding a black hole between the star and Earth, to material within our own solar system, which I had never realized before, or the stellar of fluctuations in Tabby Star. And finally they came up with alien megastructures.
Of course, you and I, Alejandro, I've talked about that a number of times times since then. So when they first began to propose this, the Seti Institute monitored the dimming star for signs of transmissions from alien life. They even pointed one of the planet's most sensitive radio telescopes at the star, hoping to hear murmurs from a civilization, but instead they heard nothing.
And that's too bad. So astronomer Tabitha boyan Tabby Star named after launched a Kickstarter campaign and she pulled in more than one hundred thousand dollars and to harness the power of a variety of ground based instruments, and her goal was to catch the star in the act of demming and get a better look at why what might be blocking the light in real time. So they began the observations back in twenty sixteen. It continued through two thousand, I mean through December
twenty seventeen, and in May of last year, she got lucky. Tabby got lucky. Her star began to dim, so almost immediately nearly a dozen telescopes on Earth swiveled to stare at it. Scientists furiously collected data and in nearly every wavelength of light, so after many months and four distinct dips,
the star was no longer visible to telescopes in the northern hemisphere. So now after this her and more than two hundred collaborators have analyzed the data from the last twenty two months and report in the Astrophysical Journal Letters that the dust is that dust is responsible for the dip, and that the alien megastructures are not responsible for the depth. No alien megastructures. Yeah. Yeah, And it's interesting because I was like, well, how could they tell in one of
the ways which makes sense. They can tell us by looking at the different frequencies of lights and how the dust filters the light. So of course it's not completely opaque dust. You can light goes through it, and so the analyzing the light that goes through it, they were able to confirm that it is dust, and they wouldn't have been able to confirm it though without Tabby's Kickstarter, So because she raised those funds, they were able to point more
satellites and analyze it. So the mystery solved. However, I think the silver lining, and I'd love to hear what you guys think, is that they were open. I mean, it was their first scientific paper that in their list of hypotheses was aliens. So it wasn't you know, the conspiracy people saying this. It was a scientist showing that they are really open to
these possibilities. Oh yeah, yeah. And we're at a point now scientifically and historically where finally we can say that there are scientists who are kind of bending in this direction of the possibilities, that we're not alone. And it's like it's like a breath of fresh air to realize that this is going on. And I think the public should be told this as often as possible because we're we've come out of a out of many years, many decades of the
the skeptics and the debunkers putting all of this stuff down. Uh it, you know, it's it's as though we're still someone living in the days of you know, Isaac Newton and Galileo and these people who made initial observations of the universe, and you know, some of them were practically stoned to death because they dared to think and consider what might be happening around us. Uh, and so where we are now at the point where people are beginning to
think this. And for me, one of the stories, and again this was not UFO related, but in April, was a great story that I
love to bring this up. Time magazine put out its annual issue. It's a list that they put together called the one hundred most influential people in the world, and three of these people were scientists, and one of them, this woman named Natalie Batalha is with NASA's Ames Research Center in California, and she, in fact is she's the director of the little Kepler spacecraft that's been discovering all these amazing planetary bodies and reasons for us to think about what's going
on out there. I mean, since I was looking up some of the statistics, since Kepler was launched in two thousand and nine, it has found almost fifty fifty one hundred possible planets and twenty five hundred have been confirmed. And that's like, that's a lot. We've come a long way in making these kinds of assumptions that we have all these planets. Well, and she's
an alien hunter and I think that's a great point. I think that it's so cool that you brought this up because those scientists you talked about her and I think another are essentially looking for life in space, so they're alien hunters, which is so cool. Well, she made When Time magazine made these awards, they did a three way interview with them, and when they interviewed
Natalie, they she said something that was very telling. She basically said that these new planetary or exoplanet discoveries are changing how we look at the universe. And then she said something I'm going to quote her because I love the quote. She said, you know, we look up the sky and instead of seeing stars, we see other solar systems, because now we know that every star in the sky has at least one planet. End quote. I mean,
really, it's an interesting quote. But it has been argued. People have debated that quote, whether that's accurate or not, whether some stars don't have planets, but they all agree that there are many more planets than are stars, and most stars have planets, So I wonder about that. Yeah,
I've gotten a lot of feedback on people debating that quote. Yeah, and I think it would be it's interesting if anybody who likes to go out on a summer or winter evening and just kind of look up at the stars at night, especially if you're in an area where you can see the Milky Way. It's an interesting eye opening concept to think to yourself like, wow, look at all those stars, and then remind yourself, oh, I'm
looking at a lot of solar systems. Yeah. Yeah, you know, even if you just think the majority of these are solar systems, when you're looking out and just see millions and millions, billions and billions of stars,
it's like, it is mind boggling. I love that quote too, and that first time I read it was in your story on this and I was just like it was probably it hit you me, like it did you where it's like, yeah, it changes your perspective that, Wow, I'm looking at gobs and gobs of solar systems, and how could you know these solar systems not have life? They've got to, right, Yeah. I mean many of the odds are the statistical odds are so high and so important.
And even if you live someplace like I live in Queens, New York, where you're lucky even to see the moon on some light but if like all of a sudden, like you have to see coming through the clouds or the overcast, if you see a star, I could say, wow, that that could be a solar system that I'm looking at. Yeah, it's it's like it's almost the basis of so much science fiction that we're all a part
of. Yeah, yeah, cool, that's amazing. Now all hundred you have to know about the Kepler. I know that the wheel, you know, stopped functioning and it was out of commission. Did they and they were going to try to fix that remotely? Do you know if that? Do you know anything about that? Uh? You know what. I don't know what the status is on that, do you lee? I don't, No, I really don't. I haven't looked up anything involving Kepler in a while.
I didn't know if it was malfunctioning at all. Although even if there is a malfunction on Kepler, there are other ways that scientists and astronomers are able to detect planets without the use of Kepler, right, just by simply using ground based astronomical devices. But they still they also have a lot of data to comb through because it just gathered so much data. Yeah, and I guess, like you said, one of the wheels was is broken,
but they do have at least two remaining functional wheels. It's just limited, I guess, and its movement now. But I know this year we've got more planet detectors going up in space, so we should learn more this year. So the next story, you got another story for us, Marty, No, no, you go ahead and move on to the next one. All right, Well, I will bring up I will bring up one other one that we wrote about recently that brought up some debate, and just for
the folks listening, we of course this New York Times story. This Pentagon program is a big story. Our last couple of shows have been on it, and we'll be talking more about that one in the last segment because there's a lot to talk about. But here's one piece of new information that had come out. This came from this is on Open Mind to that TV and it came from one of our contributors, Andres Mueller, who has his own
German website. He's kind of a German paranormal researcher, although he focuses on the science of all of this stuff. So he did something cool. So one of the mysteries is the Nimetz case. So we had Robert Polin talking about Nimetz and how in outside of San Diego in November of two thousand and four. You know, there was this sighting. Soon after it happened, or a year or two after it happened, one of the pilots who was involved wrote about it on a blog, an F eighteen pilot who chased this
thing. But the mystery is this, And now that the New York Times article came out to the stars on their website posted two of allegedly three videos they have, and one of them is this Nimetz video. So now we're able to confirm that this ir video that has been online for a while is from the Nimts incident. But the question that people have been asking ever since
this video was leaked online is how did it? Who leaked it? How did this video get online in the first place, because it's been online for like a couple of years now and nobody is quite sure where it comes from. Well, one person had done some research and they found the trace the
video back to a server from a film company in Germany. And these guys do two D and three D animation, which led some people to believe, especially before it was confirmed, that perhaps this whole thing was hoaxed, or it was at least a video that they had made for a movie or something like that. We did get a confirmation, you know, offline, from a couple of people that it was real, and now we do know it's real because you know, it was released by the guy who worked for the
Department of Defense. However, how did it get leaked online is still a question that that is out there. So what Andres did was get a hold of this German company and say, hey, guys, you know, how did you get that video and get it online. They looked at their server, they saw that the video was on their server and they said they don't know. They asked past employees and some others, you know, why that
video was there or how it got there. They think just one of their people downloaded it and it was just on their server because that person had downloaded it. So they're not sure who downloaded it though, and how it was on their servers. But they said it had nothing to do with anything they were doing, so they certainly did not fake it or it's none of their projects or anything like that. And we I mean, we can be pretty confident now that we have this, you know, video out from the DoD.
So it was just interesting and it was good for Andreas to follow up on this. And some people have got upset and said, this is ridiculous, we know it's real, Well would you post this stuff and cast out? We're not casting down, it's just you have to do your due diligence that we have to find out, you know, and we still don't know how this video got leaked in the first place. So here here's here's an idea that's related to this that I wanted to talk to you both about.
It's it's the it's the whole thing about how do we how do we feel about all of the UFO videos that are coming out of the woodwork that would work known as YouTube. Every day the numbers increase, the claims increase that this is the best UFO footage ever, and now there's competition between many of the of the sites that are putting these things out there. They're suing each other. It's like, isn't it enough? Or have we created a monster
here? And it will never be enough because the public just wants to see this stuff, whether it's real or not, I don't know. Yeah, I think it's the ladder. The public wants to see it as long as it gets hit, especially the and the hoaxed one. The fake ones get the most hits, it seems. So if there's a demand, you know, in our capitalist country, people are going to look to exploit that demand and make some money off of it. So that's going to continue to happen.
And I think people get disappointed with me a lot because they'll send me a picture of or a video and expect me to get excited about it. But even if it's a great video, even if I can verify that it's real, a video alone is not enough. You need a lot of supporting data and info like in this DoD case, you know, at least with this Knimitz case, we've got. That's why it's such a hard nut to
crack. And you haven't heard any debunking at least at this point. There's been little but nothing, you know, substantial that I've seen, and the mainstream certainly hasn't proposed any debunking, meaning like New York Times or Washington Post or some of these people I've reported on it. What they've done is is interviewed the witnesses. But the witnesses are very credible. You know. All of this comes with a whole package of evidence, which is what you need
these days. With film and with video and a video by itself on YouTube anonymously placed there, you can't really do anything with that, right Yeah. I mean I remember talking to Bruce mcabe when I first started doing my show, and he said, you know, the video or the photo is secondary.
The witnesses first, A great point. I used to get frustrated with mccabee, just like I get frustrated with Mark D'Antonio now, because macabee used to be the primary mof on photo analyst and now it's Mark and they they will look at the video and analyze it and push everything else out to the side. And I used to get frustrated because I'd say, well, what about this witness and that witness. This is all part of the evidence. And his point was, I'm looking at the video for what data the video
can give me? Can I use this video as physical evidence? Does this data say definitively this is an unknown object, which is a very very high bar to meet. You know, it's difficult to prove something like that, And unfortunately this video cannot stand alone, just like the Flair video all by itself cannot stand alone. To prove an unknown object, you need all this supporting evidence. So they make great points. You know that that is really
important. So that gives you an idea of the value of that piece of evidence. And just like in this Nimtz case, really the value of the video is low compared to all the other evidence, such as you know that the DOOD has investigated it, that you have all of these pilots, career pilots, you know, F eighteen pilots and such who have witnessed it.
All of that is better information than the Flair video. Well you know, yeah, and you make you just made a really good point too about how it's no matter how good a video might look, it's not as important as the competency of those who report. And yet I was looking through some older accounts the other day. Hey, I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to ask you to hold that, not because I'm about to go to break. So we'll be right back and Lee will tell us more about his thoughts on the
video. But we do have to do a break right now. If you're listening on KGr, you'll hear a commercial break. Be sure to check out some of these people that sponsor KGRA and keep them on the air. If you're listening to the podcast, you'll hear a short musical interlude, and after that we'll be right back with Martin and Lea and we'll talk about the best stories of twenty seventeen. Stay tuned, we'll be talking to you soon. Welcome back to Open Mind's UFO Radio. I am your host, Alejandro Rojas,
and I am here with LESE. Beagle and Martin Willis, and we were talking about, you know, one of these videos from the NIMTZ UFO case, and Lee you were making a point about video data. But then I got distracted listening to this very nice musical interlude. It was wasn't it lovely? Go? Did you forget your point? I wouldn't blame you,
you know, I was. I was starting to say that I was looking back at one of the most famous cases of all time, the Tehran Iran case from nineteen seventy six, where a couple of Jeff Pider pilots were scrambled because they were they were sent to go up and see what was in the skies that was buzzing around, and both pilots reported seeing the object, and they both reported having their instrumentation malfunctioning and their communications were malfunctioning, and when
one of the pilots attempted to fire a missile at the UFO, it wouldn't fire, but he reported that the UFO fired something back at him. So I'm thinking, well, okay, if these are reliable jet fighter pilots, what do we make of this? And the thing that I was reading chimed right in and said, both Phil Class and James Oberg, arch skeptics and debunkers both agreed that what these pilots were chasing was the planet Jupiter. See
that's what I'm talking about. You. That's the problem. No matter how competent or reliable an eyewitness is, especially a jet fighter pilot who should know what he's looking at. Why do we get this? Still? Why are we chasing the Moon and Jupiter? I don't understand this. You know who frustrates me the most with those type of comments is James Oberg. Because James Oberg, I think he's great. I'm a big fan space writer, and he actually reads open minds. And we'll comment occasionally, but and he is
open to the idea. That's why he's so interested in these websites and stories. But you know, I don't know how he could buy into such a silly explanation on I guess he probably has a paper he's written where he justifies it. But I guess we better move on to the top stories of the year though twenty seventeen. So let's what we'll do is like we usually do, one at a time, We'll talk about a story, what we think is one of the top stories, and then we'll all talk about it.
But let's go ahead. You know what, Martin, We're going to start with you, buddy. No, we did that last year. Well we want to do it this year. Oh, jump In, that's okay unless you unless you have another visitor who's going to join us. Okay, Well, Martin, you're you hesitated, and and now your your moments gone, go ahead. Well, you know, I think for all of us, one of the big stories of the year, which which just knocked everybody's socks
off, made everybody stand on their heads doing loopholes. This thing came out in May and it involved an interesting interview on sixty Minutes with Robert Bigelow like, Oh my god, did this thing go viral so fast? Uh? That one, you know, he was giving a tour I think the reporter was Lara Logan and and they were touring his Aerospace Industries factories in Las Vegas, and in fact, which many people don't realize, on the side of
one of the buildings of his company is a gigantic alien. That's his logo. But they were walking through and he was showing various pieces of space equipment, spacecraft and technology that he's now working with NASA that he'll be building things that will be either attached to the space station or maybe be used to go to the Moon and perhaps set up something on Mars. I mean, he's
a guy who's got the money, who can do it. And then the conversation changed and about the middle of the episode where she started to ask him about UFOs and she just began it by saying, do you believe in UFOs? And he said, yeah, I'm absolutely convinced, and that's all there is to it. You know, that's basically his attitude and even aliens. He was like, you know, oh, she's like, are we going to find him? And she's like, well, we don't have to go
anywhere to find him. They're here. And she's like, do you think aliens are here? And he's like, yeah, I mean he puts it like that, like duh, which is oh funny that he is just so certain. And then I don't give a damn what they think. Exactly, yeah, you know, he said, he said, and he's probably true. He said, I've spent millions and millions and millions. I've probably spent more as an individual than anybody else in the United States has ever spent on
this subject. And so when then she said, well, is it risky for you to say that in public that you believe in UFOs and aliens? And that's when he said, I don't give a damn. I don't care. Well, what's funny is we know now some of that money he spent was not his, It was the governments money. Yeah, you know, and he doesn't care. And he and he said that it's not going to make any kind of a difference to people. Uh, it won't change reality
of the reality that that he knows. And he basically said, you don't have to go anywhere into outer space to look for aliens. It's right under our noses here, and so he has a really interesting point of view where he's basically saying, I've spent my own money on this, I know what I know, and i don't care what people believe, and I'm just gonna
spend my time putting spaceships together for NASA, you know. And there's so much now that we have this new news behind the scenes that we could see going on that he was shy about getting into all of this UFO stuff where
he's been shy about talking about it. In fact, this interview from what I hear, was done a year prior, and he was not happy about it being held onto and then released it when it was because he's in the middle of these negotiations with NASA, which is really important because Trump just said We're going to the Moon because China and Russia are putting bases on the Moon.
The only person who has a plan for a base on the Moon currently that's working with NASA is Bigelow. So he might be the guy right now NASA works with. So and not only that, it probably gave him some credibility when they said, well, aren't you a UFO guy? His retort, it can be sure I am, but I'm working with the DD on this project, and which adds credibility to his hunt on UFOs. So yeah,
really interesting. And the other thing about him that many people don't know, and it's up to guys like you know, the three of us to kind of put this information out there, is that several years ago he purchased a ranch in Utah called the Skinwalker Ranch because the family that lived there were having incredible paranormal experiences that just couldn't be explained easily away, and the word got back to Bigelow and he bought the ranch, and he set up a
whole scientific crew to go there with equipment to photograph whatever they could photograph to see if it was UFO based, if it was something else based. And in fact, the very first night that he owned this ranch, our mutual friends John Alexander decided to spend the night there alone. Yeah, because he's he's a guy who's like a former in Vietnam, he was a former eighteen unit commander. Nothing scares this guy and he wanted to go there to s
Yeah. Yeah, I got an interview with him about this, but we got a lot of stories to go on too, So Okay, Well, all I'm saying is that the connection is that that Robert Bigelow is a key person to watch, whether he does anything about the UFOs or not, He's there, always present, and he's going to be a newsmaker in twenty eighteen. I'm certain of that. But yeah, Martin, if you have any you know, last minute comment on that story, or if you want to
move to your story, well no, just quickly. I just want to say that I've heard that he is not willing to give anyone any interviews about what's going on or what he had to do with a d D at this point. Yeah. Good, I don't know if you've heard that. Yeah, No, that's true. He's given no one, not even his good buddy George Napp reported out of Las Vegas, right right, Okay, your story, Okay, Well, I I was looking through and I you're talking
about videos earlier. So I decided that I was going to try to find what I thought was the best UFO video of the year. And you and I had talked about this, Alejandro at some point, and that that was back in July. I think it was July first of last year, and it was the title of that particular story was UFO Witnesses capture Shining Disc and that's on Canada Day, and that was at the Toronto waterfront, and so
it was a couple. They were celebrating Candidate Day. As I said, They're on the waterfront, and all of a sudden, the man happened to look up and he saw something flash. Well, he took this great video. I think I remember us talking about Alejandro, but I think it's probably the best video that I saw all year long. It's like a perfect disc.
He says that he saw it actually orbiting, actually moving. You can't really tell that from the video, at least the size is at But so they were watching this video and it kept I mean they were watching this disc and it kept going in and out, and you can see that clearly, like absolutely vanishes and then comes back. And you know, one of the best things about this is that all of a sudden they saw a black helicopter come and it looked like it was following it. And those darn black helicopters
they always seem to show. I'm kind of skeptical that that helicopter was related, but I really do think that this is an interesting video. It's circular with a little hole in the middle, kind of like a doughnut. That's right, which is indicative though of being very out of focus. But still it did have some weird movement. It is very it's a great video. It's a fun video. And you know what, I don't think anybody really
felt like they figured out what it was. Yeah, one time they had mentioned that you can hear them talking among each other and they're saying, or the wife is saying, or the girlfriend is saying, I think that's uh, it could be a drone. And then later on she's no, way that was a drone, you know. But at first, oh, you know what the move on case I'm looking now. Luckily the mofine investigator made a comment on the story. I forgot about this. They concluded it was
the iss really yeah, and it looked like that. How about that? So it must have been the angle of the sun hitting it, yeah, and going in and focus. When the camera goes in and out of focus, it can make some weird things too. Well, that story was a real dud. No, that's it's an interesting video, and you know, it's a good example how a lot of these things get figured out. But oh, Yeah, that's right. I mean I've always wondered, you know, if we can find out the conclusion of these and so I guess we
now do have that. Mm hmmm right, all right, all right, So my story, my turn. Okay, here's mine. This is the first one. There's a few good stories I felt, but mine is especially being here in Phoenix and the Phoenix Lights being such a big deal. Is Kurt Russell coming out this year and saying he saw the Phoenix Light. So part of the mythology, the mythos switch to the Phoenix Lights is that there was a private pilot that Witch said reported seeing the lights. So Kurt Russell's
story is and this was in an interview on BBC. It's called The One Show, and he was doing an interview with Chris Pratt for Gardens of the Galaxy Too, which was a great movie. I loved it. And so the you know, the British guy, he makes a big deal and he brings out what he says is his top secret file and he's like, we have this top secret file and he said, did you guys know that you know the Phoenix and Phoenix there was this big sighting that happened in the nineties
and there was a pilot who said that he saw him. And Kurt Russell says, I am aware of that, and here's the tail numbers on that
aircraft. And I know that because I was that pilot. So he says he came home one day and he's doing some stuff and Goldie Hawn is watching a show on UFOs and they start talking about the Phoenix Lights and they start talking about this pilot who had said that he had seen the UFO and he's like, oh my gosh, that sounds familiar because he's like, I flew my son to Phoenix about that time and we reported a UFO and so he looked in his records, his flight logs, and sure enough it was on
that day at that time, and he's like, wow, I'm that guy. So yeah, Kurt Russell, now and this is part of the you know, even at the UFO Congress last year, we were celebrating the anniversary twenty fifth anniversary of the Phoenix Lights and or is it twenty at twentieth anniversary, Yeah, and we didn't know about this, so this is new since then. This was in May actually, about the same time that Bigelow did his interview or it was aired. Kurt Russell came out with this news.
So that's a really cool one. I like that one. Now, Alejandro, did he get into great detail of what he observed from the angle he was at. Not really. They said they saw some mysterious lights. At first, they didn't think much of them, or at least he didn't, but then they as they were flying in, they kept looking and they couldn't figure out what they were. I think it did say they were in like a V four. Yeah, he said in a V shape, that they
were over the airport or near the airport. Uh, that they were a uniform in pattern. He didn't go into a lot of uh information, but that that's about what he said. I see. You know, one of the things that people talk about is the enormous size of it, and that's one of the things I, you know, was most curious about. Mm hmm, Yeah, that supposedly the thing's really cool big, and he did say it was large, you know, V shaped six lights that they saw.
It was. There were so many reports I remember that that I found intriguing where people described and it was at night, but it was it was so big. They said they knew it was big because it blocked out their their visual uh you know, of the stars above it, because it just it was so big that it got in the way of the stars. Yeah. That's that's that's a big object. Yeah. So that's a fun story, fun one for from from from this year, Lee at your kard.
In February, Uh, there was there was an item from Fox News, and so I'm assuming that since it was on Fox News, our newly our newly inaugurated President Trump probably was aware of this story because he loves Fox News. In the science section on Fox News, they had a headline that said UFO sightings hit an all time high. According to a report, it kind of got buried, I guess in the news and I don't know if many other people besides Fox reported it. But according to this story, the data
for this story came from the National UFO Reporting Center. Isn't that our friend
Peter Davenport. Yeah, so apparently it's it's all the work that he's done and all the compilations he's done, and the findings came up with some news statistics which said that UFO was visiting Earth at an all time I'm high, and that the sightings are most common in the United States, and it was put together by a doctoral student in applied cognition at a place called George Mason University, and he basically he wrote up his findings based on the information from
Davenport's initial data. So it's interesting, he says, the UFOs have been popping in into our reality, with over one hundred thousand reported sightings on record over the past one hundred plus years. Interesting, interesting numbers. I forgot about that story that that is a good one. That was a cool one. Yeah, And just to just to recap, for the year, Muffon had a total of five six hundred and thirty reports and new Fork and that
was up six percent. New Fork, however, was down six percent, which I think is kind of ironic at four thousand, six hundred and sixty five. And of course, as we all know, some of those reports come in from past years and people just report them, you know, right right right. Yeah, that's a good one. That is interesting. And I have a follow up for that one, but it's Martin Stern. Oh no, no, go ahead and follow up. We can go out a word. That's that's cool, Martin. You always give up your turn.
But I'll just say I'll just add to that because one of mine was. And I give her so many props. As Cheryl Costa Hirol Costa wrote her book, Oh Yeah, the UFO Signing's Desk Reference that came out in April, and it was funny they wrote this story because she did a lot of work shopping around and getting attention for her book, and she did a great job. The New York Times, practically all of the big media had covered
some of the statistics from her book. And it's cool because you know, everybody, every local reporter, when you talk to them, they say, Okay, that's interesting, but what about local what's happening in my area? And that's what her book answers. Everybody can look up and say, hey, look in my particular error area, there's this many sightings. So there have been so many stories throughout the years, generated not just by her book,
but her getting out there and promoting her book. And I think she's done a spectacular job. And it really got UFOs in the news all year long. That's right. And I was looking at that myself to talk about that. And also she had an article come out in the New York Times. You know, so yeah, the one we're going to talk about wasn't the first one this year, right, all right, your next story,
Martin. All right, So I'm just reporting this one because I think this is a great citing nothing fantastical in any type of way, but this was a because the reason I like this one is because it was a very long lasting and unusual sighting and it was also by multiple witnesses. So this was
in Dallas and they were watching actually multiple objects. The witness was outside walking the dog at eleven pm, this is back in June of twenty seventeen, and observed a white light that looked like a star at first, and here I quote, I realized the light was moving back and forth east to west very fast and appeared to be slowly moving down. The witness stated, I
went inside and got everyone to come out. We grabbed binoculars, and you could see the light was attached or tethered to something large and shaped like a triangle. The light appeared to drag the triangle across the sky and back again, but it was descending. And then as the object came closer, the witness could see the triangle was big and black like a wing, and there was an attachment between it and the light, and he goes on to say
they watched for an hour and went inside and posted on Facebook. I think that's kind of funny, hoping that someone may go outside themselves and take a look at it in their area. Instead, he got a lot of amusing comments. So they continue back out and was hoping other people in the neighborhood w wake up. But after two hours, the objects moved directly over their heads and they laid down the front lawn with her and sharing their binoculars,
trying to see what it was. And they tried to take videos and pictures, but all you could see was the light and not the thing being pulled around. At two am, two other objects appeared. Now they had different lights. I should say that these other the first objects had like red lights and these other ones had red and green, which of course is what you would think on an aircraft. Well, after the total objects of four,
they didn't appear to be dragging anything. But they watched this thing until four o'clock in the morning, and they reported it to their local CBS station and they said they have no idea. Yeah, that was their only response. So the videos, no videos were included or anything. But I think that was a really good sighting last year. Yeah, I mean that one would just anecdotal, but I guess it is interesting. Triangles, of course,
are sponded so often, but we're running a long time lead. You can lea why don't you name a couple if you want, and we'll just uh. We we had. We did this story at hof Post in March about how two Harvard scientists were suggesting that aliens maybe using giant radio beams to travel through the cosmos, like using giant interstellar sales, if you will, uh.
And I like the story because because it was like they were Harvard University scientists and they were saying that there are these things that are known as fast radio bursts or or FRBs, and they've been detected mostly in very distant galaxies, and the two scientists are suggesting this is evidence of how aliens may be traveling from one place to another, and these are radio bursts that can propel their sales to great distances. And we've only seen maybe a handful in the
last ten years, only maybe seventeen have been reported. But since we have so many possible new other galaxies to look at, we can see these things from very distant galaxies, and they're saying that if we can see one of these radio bursts that's so far away, that means it's the brightest thing that we've ever imagined seeing because of the distances that takes for that light to get from here to there. We're almost out of time for this segment. OK,
so we're going to have to go to break. But yeah, fast radio bursts on my list too, because these are these signals that are detected and the Breakthrough listen this new thing put up by this rich guy in Russia. They listened to a few more, and even though some were identified as a microwave in one of the listening posts, the others have not been explained, so still a mystery. And even SETI and those conservative guys are looking
at this one really weird. But we've got to go to break. If you're listening on KGRA, you're going to hear some commercials for a couple of minutes. If you're listening on the podcast, we'll just have a short musical interlude and we'll be right back. Hello and welcome back to Open MINDGUFO Radio. I'm your host, Alejandro Rojas, and I'm here with Lee Spiegel and Martin Willis and real quick stories of the year. I'm gonna cheat. I'm
gonna name a couple stories here that I thought were really good. First of all, Jimmy Kimmel interviews George Bush about UFOs. So that's really interesting George Junior, and he was very elusive. He asked, did you look at secret UFO files? He's like maybe, he said, my daughters are really
into it. They asked me too, and he said, well, if you would you share that information with your daughters if you had some He said no, and he said as he said, well, now that you're out of office, you can do what you want, right and Buss says, Chue, but I'm not telling you. So it was a really interesting conversation.
Another one which is really cool is James Fox. You know, he let us air some video of his interview with Fife Simington that people hadn't seen before, and that was really cool at the UFO Congress and we put that out to the news. What was interesting about this is Simington said that he did tell the Pentagon about this, and the Pentagon knows and they're looking into this stuff. So that's pretty interesting. He said they wouldn't talk to him
about it, but he knows that they're looking into it. And then Newsweek was a lot of fun because Newsweek had a special edition out this year called Life Beyond Earth question Mark and you would think it would be full of science and stuff, which it was, but more actually, probably eighty percent of it is UFOs. And they recommended this radio show. The only podcast they recommended was this one. If they were aware of yours, Martin, they
probably would have talked about yours too. But okay, and now we want to get to the big story, which of course is blah blah bah. This new group at the Pentagon was the Department of Defense was looking for UFOs. So let's outline this really quick. Late last year we found out that Tom DeLong was speaking with some through the Wiki leaks, some very high level people, air Force generals, people that you know work at Luckheed skunk Works,
and John Podesta, the guy running Hillary Clinton's campaign. Because he was speaking to people at such high levels, we awarded him at the UFO Congress the UFO Researcher of the Year. Well, it made a lot of news. It made somewhat of a big splash when the wiki leaks had UFO stuff on him, and then our thing went viral and he made a ton more news, and Tom DeLong told our people that he's going to have some big news coming out soon. What was weird about this is that Tom DeLong.
It was weird that he was talking to these guys because he talks about how he believes aliens are bad and that we're back engineering alien technology. So moving along, we didn't hear anything for months. Everybody's way, when is this news coming? Finally in October, Tom DeLong announces this new group that he's putting together, a very impressive group of people, scientists, people that have worked in defense intelligence, some people we've never heard of, but one of
them being this lou Elisondo. He said he worked on a UFO project in the DoD. That piqued my interest. I'm like, what the heck. I talked to Leslie Kane, I had her on the show, and she was like, you know, this is incredible, But it seemed like it didn't make any news. Little did we know behind the scenes. New York Times, Washington Post, Political all picked up on it, and we're working on stories. So finally the New York Times comes out with their story about
a month later. What was it in December actually that they came out seen yep, December sixteen. They write their story about Lou Alizondo, and we find out this project is amazing, that this project existed, that Harry Reid along with other senators, got this project funded all the way back into two thousand and what six, And then we find out that big Low was contracted and a lot of this you know, work went into was contracted out to
Bigelow. Alizondo claims that they retrieved a piece of the craft, and then they came out with a couple videos and really talked about this knimics case. So I guess first ideas about it, let's start with yu LEI. Well, the thing about the case I think that made the biggest impression on me was that, first of all, I thought that the video that was released was a little too short, and I'm I'm assuming that most people felt the
same way. It's like, show us more. I wanted to see how the object left, but we were just kind of left hanging there and the video ended that that was a surprise to me. But the other thing that I think I'm correct about this. Not in any of the news items or news statements or quotes that were issued by the Pentagon or anyone into the Department of Defense. No one actually said we started this project in two thousand and
seven because we thought there might be an extraterrestrial relationship here. All that they said, and it almost felt like a bit of a cover story to me, was well, we believed in the reliability of a lot of our jet fighter pilots, because why wouldn't we believe them? And there were enough reports so that we started to think, well, maybe the Russians or the Chinese have developed their own super secret technology that's more advanced than what we have.
We should start a program and investigate it and spend taxpayers twenty two million dollars and let's see if we can determine if this is another country's technology, and if so, then that would be some cause for possible threat of our national security. That was the story, that was the cover story, as I put it, that they came out with. Nobody actually said, where we've
spent five years looking into this on the possibility that could be extraterrestrials. I thought that was a little interesting and a lot of people didn't pick up on that. Well what do you think? Yeah, but I don't think they should have said that, because that's not what the project was. I don't get that impression at all that that would I don't know why they would say that, and it would be damaging to what they're doing to say that.
Although there is a little bit of an implication in that Bob Bigelow is the guy that the money was given to. Bob Bigelow of course said he believed in aliens not too long ago, you know, not too much earlier. I thought it was interesting that Harry Reid said another person that inspired him to create this Funness project was John Glenn had told him years ago to look into UFO's John Glenn, of course, being the astronaut who was the first man
to orbit the Earth, very important person. We've never heard he's been interested in this topic, but he said, there are some very credible reports. You really should look into this. It's important. So yeah, I don't think it's it's not about aliens. I don't know why they would say it's about aliens. Do you get the impression it is about aliens? Well,
I guess when when the whole story broke. I think that that's what the public was taking from this, like, oh, Pentagon releasing his top secret UFO study group, Oh, you know, must it must be aliens. And when they showed the video, it actually showed an object that looked like it could be doing impossible things in the middle of the screen. Well, I can't possibly be something that's put together by another nation on Earth. It
must be aliens. I mean that's the implication that I think most people gut from this one. I feel that they haven't been strong enough. Leslie has been doing this quite a bit, but I think that you know, a lot of the media people try to get him to talk about aliens, and they shouldn't. I mean, this is about investigating UFOs. The data will lead us to whatever conclusion there may be, but we don't have enough. Like Jacques Vallet says, you know, you're good buddy, a good,
good researcher, that we have to let the data guide us. Martin, what do you think, Well, I think it's interesting. I spoke with Stan Friedman the other day and he actually had a different take on that. I was actually kind of surprised. He was said, you know that he says, I only am accountable for myself, and he says, I was never afraid to say that some UFOs are alien spacecraft, and he's saying that he thinks that they should have not worried so much. That was, you
know, that Stan's opinion. I actually I have a clip here of just what I am him what he thought about the whole thing, and I'd like to play that now. It's fifty seconds. Yeah, here it goes well. I was frankly, enormously surprised. I was delighted. I thought it was handled very well. I was surprised. As a matter of fact. I had heard Tom DeLong. I'd read his book, and I knew he
seemed to be short on evidence a lot of story. But I think he handled this release extremely well, and the other guys with him, Elsondo and so forth. I was very impressed. It's the most impressive single UFO event I've seen in a very long time, and I was very pleased about it. I had calls about it. I mean, there were a lot of things that we didn't talk about, that they didn't talk about, but still it looked like a whole new ballgame, to tell you the truth. Yeah,
nice quote. You know, and I do you feel it is a brand a whole new ballgame, And I'd like to hear your thought on this in that it really has changed. I think public perception going into this new year. The media is very open to the UFO topic. And I think that we were already headed there. We've talked about as science was into the alien thing and stuff, but now they're taking it very seriously, which is
interesting. Yes. Also, I've been corresponding with Ralph Blumenthal, who is one of the people that was you know, wrot broke the first story. And by the way, there's been over over fifty seven primetime news reports about after the New York Times article broke, which I think is quite amazing. That's what you're call going viral. Yeah, so yeah, I think it is a whole ball game. And you know, people outside of the UFO
field are actually talking about this. And you know, I mentioned you al Hundo briefly on a phone call that I had a friend that you know, is far removed from the UFO field, and he says, when I asked him about it, he says, oh, yeah, the government spent twenty two million. It's kind of funny the different things that people will you know, you know, on that point, that's a great thing, you know,
you bring up this twenty two million on that point. It's interesting because Chris Mellen was on Coast to coast of George Nap and I when this news came out, and he made the point that twenty two million dollars is nothing when it comes to a government program. That's just very You can't he said, I think you can't change a truck tire for that amount of money. And then John Alexander said something similar, and then when Tyson Dyson, uh,
what's its? Well, the scientists can't the grass dice and was on CNN with Don Lemon and he said the same thing. He said, really, twenty two million isn't much. And even though he didn't think that there was any proof there were aliens yet, there was some interesting evidence that they haven't met that bar. But he did say it's worth it that we should be looking into these sorts of things. It makes sense. And I'm surprised
he actually said that. Mm hmm. I was really surprised too. But let me ask, did either of you find it odd or part of that whole ridicule factor again? A couple of days. I think it was just a few days after the story broke in December during this White House press conference, when one of the reporters stood up and asked the Secretary Huckabee about these reports of UFOs. There was immediate snickering in the entire room, you know. And I didn't know if I was pissed at that or if I just
expected that that's what would happen. But it's like, really, is the media getting more interested or are they just still laughing it all away? Well, these are White House reporters, Yeah, and I think a lot of going on there. Yeah. The White House reporters are I think a little bit different because credibility is so high, especially right now when they're being attacked over everything that they say. I think they're very very careful of staying in
this realm of what's very very substantiated or attempting to. So they're careful about what they talk about or get into because they can be used against them. And you know, as you know, Lee, you're looking for substantiated evidence when you're writing about this stuff, and those guys probably don't know much about
the story or that there is some credible information there. But what's interesting about that is that the White House has made no comment and we really haven't heard much from the DoD as far as official comments, and there's a lot of conspiracies and things going out there. Again, I like to use the data that we have, but it seems a were caught off that they have. Not the White House nor the DoD have really figured out how to respond yet.
Maybe they're hoping this story goes away, but I don't think it is. Yeah, I don't know. If you both remember, you know, when Hillary Clinton was on the campaign trail last year, you know, and she took every opportunity to say, if you elect me president, I'm going to release those classified documents, and not once did any of that come up in any of the debates. And I was astonished by that. Yeah,
I'm surprised too. Getting back earlier, I was talking about Ralph Blumenthal, and when I was corresponding with him this morning, he said that he's not making you know, he's not going to be on the media any type of media for a while. And then at the end he says, because we have some more reporting to do, right So that's pretty exciting. And as for what's coming up, which is really important. So luckily I'm going to have Leslie on in the next week or two whenever she gets, you know,
whenever she has a moment. She said, I'll be the first at least UFO person she talks to. It's frustrating that we get segregated into this UFO realm thing. Yes, but there is an issue there. You're right, yeah, and it's it's wrong. I mean, it's frustrating because you know, this is you should be speaking to the people who are going to be the ones who are going to be supporting you, I feel. But anyway, there's a couple of things. First of all, we need to
get that third video. Supposedly there's a third video, so we know that news is coming. Not only that, people like Robert Powell were told that government didn't have any information on this Knimtz case. Now that this has come out and you know, Lou shared all that information, now they're saying they do have information that they are going to share. So and no doubt people are asking about the program and a lot of information and putting in foyer requests.
So we're going to receive all of that information coming up here. One thing also is where did these videos come from? How did he get permissioned to release these videos? And we need more about those videos. The Washington Post I did a story an interview with the Sun about this because they were told that there was some confusion about these videos and that Defense Intelligence did not
release any videos. And The Washington Post wrote kind of that Lou Elizondo had released these videos under a bit of a false pretense, that the videos were released for educational purposes and safety purposes, not to show that there was a
UFO program, which he did he used them for. But I was told and the Sun, Fox News picked up that story in some other places, and then I got some feedback from the group, and I can't reveal a whole lot that that was false, that the Washington what they wrote was false. If that's true, that's a huge mistake and it means a Washington Posts we can't trust everything that they wrote in their story. The best piece of I guess the writing we have is from the New York Times, and then
we have these personal interviews with Lou and Leslie and witnesses. So there's a lot more to come, that's right. The David fraverer, the commander that was was flying, that was the witness. I'm not sure if either one of you checked out his most recent interview. He gets really into detail what happened on the limits. Mm hmm. Either one watch that. I don't know if I've seen the most recent, but I've seen several of his interviews
in the last couple of weeks. Yeah. The one part I'd like to just briefly talk about is and I'm glad that there's not a lot of debunking out there. It's because you'd almost expect it, you know. I know James Oberg you talked about him earlier. I watched a new segment he was on and he basically is saying, you know, it was he was basically saying negative things about it, saying it's very similar to you know, Leslie Kane's Chilean you know UFO and that ended up being a you know, a
jet moving away, and he says, this video is so similar. And you know what, he's wrong about that because that video, the aircraft was I believe, fifty miles away and this is a total different ballgame. M h And not only that, the witness testimony, money we have is way different in this instance where you have so many witnesses of the entire Nimtz group. Another interesting thing is that, you know, there's there's this Facebook site
and we posted that Open Mind's UFO News the group on Facebook. One of our admins, Finn, had found it. There's this Facebook group for the Pennsylvania, one of the ships in the Knimets group, and they were one of them as it. Yeah, and there are people on board and there it's their discussion. It's people who had been you know, stationed on that ship, and a lot of them are talking about, oh I remember when that happened. That was really incredible, and they're talking, they're conversing amongst
themselves about witnessing this thing. So there were so many witnesses and the whole idea of this tictac ufo. Robert Powell when he investigated it, they said they told him they were surprised because they asked one of the navy guys about this and he said, oh, the tictac ufo, Yeah, I know all about that, and so it is a big deal. It seems like at least among the people involved and others in the navy. That's right.
Yeah, and I. The last time I had Robert Powell on I had he he alerted me saying, have you seen that comment under the YouTube video of our show? And I said no, And it's actually there's a witness, a Navy pilot that supposedly he's following up with. That should be interesting if there's more, you know, more people coming out and talking about it. Yeah, pretty cool stuff. Well we're out of time. Last ye.
Yes, I would like to say, because it hasn't been brought up yet and you've both been mentioning Robert Powell, I would like people to know about something that I believe is going to be important with all the things we're talking about. It's a new organization that our friend Alejandro Rojas is primarily responsible for putting together. It's called the Scientific Coalition for Ufology. And I would like you, Alejandro to tell us about that. Yeah, I mean I'm
a part of the group. So essentially, these are the guys that got together to research this Puerto Rico case from Aguadilla, Robert Powell and some others Morgan Biel, Larry Kate, Rich Hoffman, Carl Paulson. Those are the main group and what they decided to do is kind of spin off because they wanted to do some more hard science and more serious, careful, credible investigation. So they've kind of spun off from move On to create this, to
have this group grow bigger and to do more. And it is exciting because they've got a lot of great people involved, a lot of scientists. You can go to their website SUU online to look for it, but just put in like seu UFOs and you'll find it. But yeah, it's a great group and I'm excited for what they're going to do in the future because these are all people who are hard workers. Every day they're discussing and looking into stuff. So this case, among others, are going to be some really
cool things that they'll be working on. And Lee, you've joined us to help with media stuff. So yeah, I think this is going to be great. Great, I'm glad. I'm glad you mentioned it, all right, And Martin, you have any last thoughts. No, I thought it was a very interesting year at the end of the year especially, and I'm really really excited to see what happens in twenty eighteen. Yeah, and it's
been fun today. Yeah, Yeah, a game changing year. I mean we have not had the government admit they're investigating UFOs and that they've discovered unknowns for since nineteen sixty nine. A very big deal. So those of us who have been saying, yes, the government is looking into this even though they say they're not and kind of getting laughed at, it's been validated that indeed. They have so really great year. And thank you both for joining me. Oh my gosh, just time flies. It feels like a few
seconds instead of a whole hour. So well, thank you, thank you both. Yep, thank you guys. Thank you so much to Martin Willis and Lee Spiegel Verbing on the show. They are awesome. Don't forget you can catch Martin Willis on podcast UFO. Lee has a lot of projects in the pipeline, some cool stuff. Right now he's working on James Fox's latest documentary, so that's going to be really exciting. He did Out of the Blue and I know what I saw, two of the best documentaries out there,
so very cool stuff. Also, I want to tell you about the UFO Congress. It is getting really close. It's only a month away, and we've got some really cool stuff. Go to Ufocongress dot com to see some of the speakers, and we have some surprises in store that we still haven't let people know about because you know, we've got to get the latest news integrated into the conference somehow, and with that being so hectic, of course, it's going to be a little bit difficult for us to get all
those final arrangements, but it will be exciting. So go to ufocongress dot com and register right away. Otherwise, thank you to Caleb Hanks for doing the open and close music, and thank you. Oh, by the way, I should mention Openminds dot tv of course, is where you're going to find all that news that you heard throughout the show, so Openminds dot tv. We get really busy this time of year, so there's less stories than usual, but we'll have more up. In fact, I'm going to write
something. I'll have something up by the time this comes out, So lots of really cool stuff and some more cool stuff on the horizon. You'll have to wait for the future to see that. But finally, I want to thank you all for listening. Until next time, Audios, move chatos.