Micah Hanks, UFO and Paranormal Journalist

Welcome to Open Minds Radio with Alejandro Roja. Open Minds Radio is the UFO news authority, presenting evidence and the latest news regarding the UFO phenomenon. Here's your host, Alejandro Roja. Hell, it's Alejandro. How's it go in? It is Alejandro Ross and we are here to talk about the UFOs. This is Open Minds Radio and here it open Minds. We are your UFO news authority. How cool are we? How cool are you? I want to you know, I thought I haven't told the listeners how freaking cool they

are in a long time, but we have some cool listeners. I'm so happy that you guys are tuning in and listening on a regular basis, because it's really what it's all about is sharing with the thousands of people out there I know who are really into this subject and want to know more about everything when it comes to it, and hear from all of these different people. And it's also great to be able to get so many different people on the show to talk to you about this stuff. I had so much fun with

Nick Redburn last week, and this week is another great guest. This is Micah Hanks, and Micah Hanks runs a website called the Gray Alien Report, and he was actually in an article on Open Minds that was kind of about the youth and their involvement in UFO research, and so that's what we wanted to talk to Micah about. He also has a book called Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule, The Search for Sentient Intelligence from Other Worlds. What a

cool name for a book. So we're going to talk to him about his book as well. And he's like in his twenties, upper twenties, but that is pretty rare for this field because, as you know, a lot of the people that I'm talking to on the radio show are older, you know, and I think part of it is that, you know, until you retire, sometimes you don't have time to write books and do a lot

of research. So we have a lot of older people and me and Mike are going to talk about some of the other differences and why there are differences and what are the differences. A lot of the older people are saying, oh, you know, there aren't people come doing to our lectures, or or I just had a conference and there wasn't a lot of people there or something. But you know, that to them makes them think that the youth aren't involved, but they are. You know, you're listening to the show,

you're podcasting, we're social media. You know, you guys are watching our Twitters and our Facebook, and we know you're out there because we have tons of followers, which gives me a chance to plug the Facebook. Don't forget you know, all of our Facebook out there. The UFO Think Tank, We've got a ton of them. We've got Open Minds Magazine, We've got our Open Minds Forum. You have Jason McClellan, our Jason open Minds. You have Maureene Open Minds. What else You've got open Minds TV?

Twitter, you have Paranormal Reporter Twitter, you have UFO Daily News Twitter. So we're out there all over the social world, and that's where the youth are, I think, which is great. It's just a new and different way to interface with people and taking advantage of that is where we can continue the conversation with all the sections of the population, and I think that's wonderful and that's what me and Michael will be talking about been a little while.

But first, of course, we always talk about UFO News and we bring this quirky little guy called Jason on to talk to us about the UFO news of the week. And he's here, ladies and gentlemen, it's wonderful. Jason McClellan. How are you, hello, Alejandro? I am wonderful. How are you good? Not too bad? Doing well? Not too bad or well good? All right, we'll stick with that, my friend. Well, hello, everyone, this is your Open Mind's News Brief for Monday,

December fifth, two thousand and eleven. Well, we'll start off with a story about a Hollywood producer named Jay Herbert Klein, and he claims that he has proof that UFOs exist. That is the claim he makes in his new book Beyond Hollywood, a memoir of fate, luck and the Unexplained and Living the American Dream. The book was announced last week via press release from International Film Arts, a production company founded by Klein and his business partner,

movie star John Hall. According to the press release, Klein and Hall invented things together, including a square anamorphic lens that Klein believed quote could photograph the invisible UFOs, alien life forms, energy fields, and other unexplained phenomena. The pair reportedly shot thousands of photographs using their special lens, and Quote frequently captured images that could only be called out of this world. An example was

explained in the press release. The most notable example occurred in nineteen seventy seven, when Klient Hall witnessed a test flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise at Edward's Air Force Base near the Mojave Desert in California. From his season of viewing Section, Hall photographed the Space Shuttle before, during, and after the flight.

When Hall developed the film, he discovered that the photographs included images of what appeared to be energy fields UFOs and humanoid forms that had been invisible to the naked eye. Studding stunted his discovery, Hall submitted the images to one of the nation's leading manufacturers of photographic equipment, and the company's expert could find

no explanation for the unusual phenomena visible in the photos. Hall died in nineteen seventy nine, and Klin kept the photographs in a safe place until deciding to write his memoir. Clin recently stated, I'm finally ready to share my incredible story with the world. The two hundred and ninety six page book features approximately one hundred photos taken by Clinen Hall, including many amazing shots of Unexplained Phenomena Beyond Hollywood, A memoir of fate, Luck, the Unexplained, and Living

the American Dream is available now at Amazon and Alejandro. I've got to say, I am a little more than halfway through with this book, but I am engrossed in it right now because it does talk quite a bit about UFOs and other mysterious things in photography. But it's just a cool book in general, because this guy was a big time Hollywood producer back in the golden age of Hollywood, and his just stories of rubbing elbows with some of the Hollywood

grades. You know. There's a great story about Frank Sinatra of hijacking him for his fortieth birthday. He just ran into Frank Sinatra. Frank Sinatra said, meet me at the airport, and this guy said, why, I'm busy. Where are we going? And Frank said, I'm going to show you how to cut loose. So the guy said, you can't say no

to Frank Sinatra. So he went to Turpurbank airport met Sinatra, had no idea where he was going, and then he got to hang out at Sinatra's exclusive club, got to see the rat Pack perform and that's how he celebrated his fortieth birthday. How cool. But he's got all these great stories. He was very good friends with Jane Mansfield, and you know these big names. Someone my age, you know, probably means less to than someone of

Antonio's age. But you know, people who watched all of these classic movies back in Hollywood's golden era would love the stories in here just for the sake

of Hollywood in history. But then getting into some of the strange stories about technology that he and his partner developed, and his partner developed a lot of interesting technology before they formed their partnership, he was involved with Howard Hughes and alleges that he created some technology that rubbed certain people the wrong way and was

actually stolen, like perpetual motion machines that Howard Hughes had built. These uh, he was possibly involved, but no, his his partners partner had invented a perpetual motion machine a car that ran off water and that car was mysteriously

stolen. So so there are some interesting stories in this book. So this book is mostly about his life about what percentage of it is, well, it's it's his story of of his his UH experiences in Hollywood, and probably probably about half of the book talks about, you know, the mysterious stuff that this this camera photograph and and different UFO stories and things like that. Now it says there's like hundreds of pictures, right, like a hundreds of

the photos total in the book. Okay, but not all of the photos. And no, they're not all of UFOs and strange things. There are some of these photos in the book and they show things that look like you know, apparitions, ghosts. There are some that look like they could be UFOs in the sky. They're pretty interesting. But like I said, I haven't finished finished the book yet, but I find it pretty exciting so far. Well, what do you think of the pictures? Well, I think

some of them are pretty fascinating, especially some of the apparitions. They look really bizarre. And again, these are things that we're not seeing when the photos were taken, and they were only visible with this special lens. With what the guy did who invented this lens which took side by side, you know, just seconds apart photos with a regular lens and this special lens that he invented, and so the special lens would pick up on things the regular

lens didn't. I wonder what took him so long, because they took these pictures like in the seventies or something. Right, that's right, it's from the seventies. But they seemed very hesitant because they didn't want it getting out. It seems like they didn't want to tell people about it, you know, for fear of ridicule, or perhaps because of these other projects this guy had been involved in and certain people had already kind of been headed in for

him. So interesting, but I don't know. It's an interesting story, and you know, these people were some major players in Hollywood. Yeah. Cool. This guy was a big time inventor too, so it's a very interesting story. I do suggest reading the book. It's it's fun so far, but the pictures are mysterious and worth checking out. Cool, very cool, and I think you would like it, Alejandro, Yeah, it sounds

neat all right. In other news, we have more UFO petitions. We talked briefly about this last week, but in early November, the White House officially responded to two UFO petitions on their wea the People section of the White House website. The White House stated that the quote US government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted

or engaged any member of the human race. Authors of the petition, as well as some supporters of the petitions, were hoping for a different response.

As we discussed last week, Stephen Bassett oft the Paradigm Research Group, who authored one of the initial petitions, announced his follow up petition that was submitted to the WEA the People section of the White House website on December first, calling for quote the Obama administration to demand a full congressional investigation of ufoet disclosure efforts by the Clinton ostp the Rockefeller Initiative. But Bassket's petitions have received criticism

for their combative wording and conspiracy oriented nature. A new petition that went live last week takes a different approach. Hollywood writer producer Bryce Zabel and UFO historian author Richard Dolan are the authors of the petition, calling for the White House to quote investigate unidentified areas phenomena as reported by citizens, police, astronauts,

pilots, and the military. The detailed description of the petition reads, searching for microbes on Mars and radio signals from space is not enough, we must explain unidentified aerial phenomena or UAP right here on Earth. For six decades, worldwide, credible witnesses, including President Carter and Reagan, have consistently described objects with flight capabilities beyond our technology. UAP are often verified by radar and even

seen at nuclear sites by military officers. Given the national security implications, the United States should conduct an independent investigation. This inquiry must transparently review the key unsolved UAP reports with access to classified documents. It must have the power to

call witnesses and grant immunity. The findings should be publicly presented. So these two petitions are currently live on the People section of the White House website and as of this morning, I believe the Bassett petition had about fifteen hundred signatures and the Dolan Zabel partition has about one thousand. Yeah, that's what I saw not too long ago. So we'll see what happens. Twenty five thousand signatures is a lot. I've got the a banner at UFO Daily News dot

com for the Dolansabel one because I like the wording. I think, you know, you've got to kind of take some baby steps here and at least get them to talk about UFOs in general before going all the way to the et idea. And they're listening to me as a co sponsor on the side, and I'm so proud of that, And so I think that's our best shot to get a decent answer from the White House. I'm not so sure. And I keep getting the feedback that people are a little confused with the

wording for the basket one. But really, you know, people sign both. It doesn't hurt to sign both. If you appreciate them both and you're into this object, go ahead and sign them both. That's that's awesome, that's cool. So you know, no need to pick one over the other or kind of scratch your head over it. So it's exciting. We'll see what happened. I mean, they upped the ante or that the We certainly

have a tall road to cline, I guess. And yeah, you know, already the fifth of December and they've only got twenty five more days. So yeah, twenty five days, so that's about one thousand a day. So come on, people, you're out there, they're listening to the show. Yeah, if all of our listeners signed the petition, they would have like half, we get more a lot more listeners in that on a monthly basis, or at least listened to the show. Yeah, we can start

two petitions and fill them up, yep. But yeah, good luck to them. We'll see what happens. Again, twenty five thousand is a big number to get you and after five days or slightly more for the Brice Able, I think there's went live on November thirtieth. I'm not sure, but yeah, to only have one thousand after that many days, we've got to pick up the pace. Yeah, so get out there, you know, I mean, go ahead and sign it. It's fun. I mean, you can see. We'll see what happened. And I do know that we

received many messages. They don't know. I'm not sure why people contacted us with this issue, but there were a lot of issues reported to us about the White House, about the way the people website, people reporting the page timing out or not loading or giving them an error or something like that. We have many people contact us with issues like that. But again, it's not our petition, it's the white it's the White House website. They deal

with all the technical stuff. So if you try to sign the petition and can't contact them, so your vote counts. Yep. Check it out. All right, We'll move on to another story, Alejandro. And this is a topic you and I discussed frequently on the show, and I like pointing out these stories. Many journalists and people in the general public hold the inaccurate belief that the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe an enterprise conducted

only by overweight sci fi dorcs living in their parents' basements. The reality is that respected scientists from around the world have been actively searching for extraterrestrials for decades. A recent article published in Space Daily contained a wonderful quote, most scientists think that we are not alone in the universe. Many of NASA's missions involved

searching for science of life in space. NASA released a publication on September twenty eleven titled the Global Exploration Roadmap, which outlined plans to explore our Solar System, and the first objective listed on this roadmap is quote search for live. NASA also recently launched their latest Martyrs rover, the World's largest or the world Yeah, the world's largest extraterrestrial explorer, that will comb the red planet's surface

looking for signs of life. But aside from NASA, scientists at universities and major research institutions are actively participating in the extraterrestrial search. An article published last week in Harvard University's daily newspaper, The Harvard Crimson accurately states quote discovering extra

trustrial life is not a new goal on Mankind's to do list. The field of astrobiology, the study of and search for life in the universe, has gained momnsum in recent years, and new academic programs in the field are appearing at universities around the country, and just last week, NASA and the Library of Congress announced the establishment of the Borough Bloomberg NASA Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, housed within the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

According to the Harvard Crimson, Harvard physics professor and electrical engineer par Horowitz is a leading figure in the search for intelligent extra trustrial life. He was one of the early pioneers at the SETI Institute, which was founded by Frank Drake, a doctoral alumnus of the Harvard Astronomy Department. Horowitz's SETI work primarily

involved using radio telescopes to listen to signals from aliens. Technology. There's another Harvard professor, David Charbono is one of the world's leading experts on exoplanets, and according to the Harvard Crimson he believes that within three years, man will likely discover habitable planets on which life could thrive. Wow, and Harvard is just one example illustrating the reality that leading scientists are participating in the search for

extraterrestrial life. At the point you and I tried to drive home, Alejandro, I love that quote like that you had highlighted there that you know most scientists, because you and I discussed that last week. I loved that quote so much. Most scientists believe that intelligent extra for life is out there because often when people the media are writing these stories, they have the impression that that's not the case. When that is the case. It certainly is.

And you know, to build on that last story, there was an announcement from NASA today that they discovered an alien planet within its host star's habitable zone at a press conference today. As I said, this planet Kepler twenty two B. That's a planet we've mentioned on the show before. Is the first planet to be discovered in the habitable zone, the region where liquid water could

exist on the planet's surface. The discovery was made by NASA's planet hunting Kepler space telescope, which also just discovered more than one thousand new planet candidates. In February two thy eleven, the Kepler team reported fifty four potential planets in the habitable zone, but of those fifty four, Kepler twenty two B is the first to be confirmed. According to space dot Com, of the total twenty three hundred and twenty six candidate planets that Kepler has found to date,

two hundred and seven are approximately Earth sized. More of them six hundred and eighty are a bit larger than our planet, falling into this super Earth category. Including Kepler's latest discoveries, the current number of candidate planets inhabitable zones of their stars is forty eight, but again those are just candidates. Only Kepler

twenty two B has been confirmed. Kepler twenty two B orbits a star similar to our own, and space dot Com explains that scientists believe the discovery of this planet brings us quote one step closer to finding a planet like our own, one which could conceivably harbor life. Cool. I like the way you

say habitable. Habitable, just kind of have to let that one role otherwise you're going to flubb Yeah, exciting, we said habitable on this show so many times, so yeah, kind of kind of have some practice inable. But I have a story here all one hundred that is breaking news, breaking news here on Open Mindes Radio, the same story that all our colleague Antonio Juneus just broke today. And he just finished writing this story before the show

started. I haven't had a chance to get it posted to our website a couple of minutes to tell us about it. But the story will go live. You can check it tomorrow. But a German citizen, Frank Reiitmeier, was bothered by the fact that citizens of other nations like France, England, Canada and the US could access some government UFO files, but Germany's government hasn't

made the UFO files available to the public. He specifically wanted to access the confidential study prepared by the research services of the Department of Science and Foreign Relations of the German Funstead the Federal Parliament. So what did Frank do? He sued the government and the Berlin Administrative Court fighted with him on the matter. On the matter, the defendant, the German Federal Parliament, is of course

appealing the ruling. But this guy basically wanted to see this UFO study that had been leaked some time ago, this study from two thousand and nine, and the court decided that because all the guy wanted to do was read it, there was nothing wrong with that. So they're ordering the Federal Parliament to release this study for people to read. Yeah, that's pretty cool that he

sued the government in one. We'll see what happens next though, because just because you see the government and win doesn't mean you're going to get what you want. Unfortunately. That is so true. Interesting, Yeah, an actual government being sued over UFO file. So yeah, it's cool because I thought

that that story was not true. I had read a little blurb that right, but it was very vague, and so it's great that Antonio did some more research and you guys or there'll be a story up by tomorrow, right And yes, tomorrow tomorrow, very early morning, it will be on our website Openminds dot tv. Yes, all the credit goes to Antonio Juneus on this. I was with you. I thought at first this story was fake because the initial source I saw, the English source was not a very credible

source. But he did more digging and found that this is all over German news right now, all over the major media. Cool, so it's gonna be a great story. Check it out on open minds dot Tv. He really did an in depth as much as he could into this story. So sweet. All right, Well, Alejandro, that is it for the news. Remember to check out all these stories and so many more at openminds dot

tv, your source for UFO related news. I'm Jason McClellan, your Open Minds News correspondent, and you've been briefed back to Julejandro theank you Jason a couple other things. Just before we get into our interview, I give you an update on my Huffington Post stories. I wrote one on the Ridley Scott

and I think Jason had well. Jason had written one that we talked about last week, and so I expanded on the whole Ridley Scott and the ancient aliens theory and how that theory helped to inspire that a lot of the new movie. Promethea said he's doing an alien Universe movie doesn't like to call it a prequil, but it's about the space jockey, so it's kind of cool.

And then I'm writing another one on Spilberg. There's some stories out there about Spilberg and Et and how at first his idea that these Et was going to be a bad guy and a mean little critter. And we'll go more into that because it's based on his idea for what he wanted to do real alleged alien k So you can read more about that too. Very cool. Maybe we'll talk more about it next week, but we want to get into the interview, so let's go ahead and get Micah on the phone. I'm

really happy to be talking to him. I am happy to have on the

show. Micah Hanks, Mike, are you there, absolutely, Allehandra, thank you for having me on. Well, you know, I first came across some of your material from Ryan Sprague, who writes for Open Minds magazine, and he had included you in an interview about UFOs and the current state of things and kind of taking you as one a younger perspective on things because as you know, you know, for the most part, the crowd is a little older I mean, what do you think, what do you think

the differences are between the age in researchers. Well, I'll tell you this, many of my mentors in the field, you know, have been people like Brad Steiger, you know, Lauren Coleman. Because, as many of the listeners may know, although I'm primarily, you know, kind of concentrated on the field of uphology, I do dabble in other areas and over the

years have had a lot of different interests. Brad Steiger, who I mentioned, is one who's very much in that kind of you know domain in terms of, you know, really having a hand in all different areas of the unexplained. But again, you know, Brad of course also edited the official publications of Project Blue Book when they were released as a mass market paperback,

so you know, he also was well known as a eupologist. But you know, when we look at the demographics, so to speak, and the age differences between people, I think that the thing is is that in this modern society, while there are a lot of younger researchers like myself and I'm only twenty eight years old, that really blows a lot of people away with that, I guess just because I don't put that out there a whole lot, and there is a preconception that most people who are doing this are probably

going to be middle aged, you know, maybe in their forties or older. I think that it may have something to do with, you know, kind of the media and the way that media is presented, and the way that culture has kind of wrapped itself around that these days, with social networking and things like that. You know, I noticed that younger people maybe aren't more involved in things like politics and the like, but they certainly are involved

today in a very different way than how they were several decades ago. I think it's very much the same thing also with you know, unexplained phenomenon and upology alike. I think that people aren't involved, maybe any less, perhaps not anymore, but it's a different kind of involvement, and I think that it's more generalized as a result of, again, the way that media tends to kind of approach these sorts of subjects and the availability of social media and

social networking websites. People put things out there. It's kind of anecdotal. It's entertaining, but a lot of people don't take it incredibly seriously, you know, to be somewhat of the younger age group. You know, I pride myself and being one who does try to take it very seriously and from a pretty journalistic approach to studying this sort of thing. Yeah, that's what

I thought was interesting about Ryan's story. He interviewed a lot of people and kind of, like you said, I agree with you and some of the things you were saying. Nick Pope, who although he's kind of one of the old school guys, I think he has a more modern view of things. But like you said, it's not that there's not people involved. I think there are. I think with the ratings from some of these television shows like Ancient Aliens or you know, fact or fake that the audience is there.

The people are there, but they're looking at things differently. You know, you have people who I love to death. But he was the perfect representative of kind of the raute old guy almost. And I can say that because I know he has a great sense of humor. But Jim Mars in that story was kind of the guy. Oh the kids don't pay attention. If they would quit getting on their computer and look up from their computer or

their phone once in a while, they'll discover things. And a lot of people are looking at in the crowds at the conferences and that that the meetings, and they're saying, where are the young people? But that's not their things. You know, they don't want to go and sit in a lecture as much as they want to read stories. Like what you do? You know you do podcasting, you do online? So do we and we do. There are these large online audiences and you're able to reach a lot of

people. Yes, absolutely, And I have to say again, you know, tossing an endorsement out here real quick. Your website is one of the very best on the web. You know, I've enjoyed it thoroughly, even prior to this interview. And the other thing too is that, you know, I think that the podcasting element this is so important because people there is such a great demand these days for audio content or you know, video content

as well. But I think that audio is still kind of kind of has its own niche we'll say, because people are really interested in having things that they can download, you know, at their own leisure, on demand, as they say, and take it with them. You know, Terrestrial radio is always going to I think, have you know a certain following because you know, it's free and people can jump in their car and they can turn

on radio. But with the availability of podcasting and the ability to download audio in all different kinds of genres and formats onto your smartphone or onto your iPhone, your iPad or whatever, and take it with you on the road, you know, I think that, you know, or take it with you on a job, take it with you to the gym anyplace, you know.

I think. You know, I even get emails from people who listen to my podcast, The Grailean Report, and they're like, yeah, we sit around you know, we listened to it together, you know, my wife and I right every Tuesday night. You know. So it's great because I think that there is an accessibility that this provides for people, and that makes the podcasting format particularly important because people will seek it out and they will

take it with them and they will listen. They're not going to miss it because they know where to find it and they can listen whenever they want to. Yeah, it blows my mind. We put a lot of effort, like you know, we did the UFO Congress that used to be involved with movefin and we'd do that conference. We'd put a lot of effort into those conferences and you would have you know, like for instances, last year we had a thousand to two thousand people at the UFO Congress. That was great.

But we on a weekly basis with the podcast we Meet, we reach much much, much more people than that. And even though it's kind of quiet and in the background, really this is where you know you're you're we're reaching masses on a regular basis and there are those people out there. Oh yes, absolutely, most certainly, and any way that people can be reached,

I think that's important. I mean, and a great example of this is Richard Dolan, you know, has just together a brand new and I'm sure you probably were going to bring this up, but the new petition, which I think, in my personal opinion, is worded so well it will get around a lot of the semantic arguments that were brought forth, you know, following the first you know, petition that the Paradigm Research Group put out.

Richard Dolan's done this and he's got videos up on the on the web and what I'm sincerely hoping including two podcasts like this and my own and others, you know that people will tap into their to their crowd, to their fan base and the listenership, and that they'll say, no, listen, this one could be taken seriously. Go check it out. It's worth your time to take five minutes, you know, sign up sign this petition. You know, I'll just be frank with you. I didn't take the first

one incredibly seriously because of the wording it. It kind of jumped to the conclusion and used that extraterrestrial word. UFOs may represent extraterrestrials for all we know, But the thing is that scientifically we have to also play by the rules of the establishment, who aren't going to endorse that kind of an idea openly. When you use the term UFO, that's a much harder thing to discount.

It's a much harder time you're going to have saying that UFOs don't exist, because we do see things in the sky, and there are government documents that are released every year around the world that detail that. This new petition

I think is going to do a much better job. And what I hope is that you know, the podcasts and that the crowds you know who download these kinds of programs you know well, will be educated and you know, hear about this and that they'll be encouraged to go and sign that petition.

This one might actually get somewhere. You know. I was going to bring that up because it is, especially among the listeners we have here, a little controversial, you know, because you know, people have their different perspectives about this field and which perspective to take and how to go forward. And I was going to ask you because you know, I talked with Nick Redfern last week and we'll more into that, because I know you guys have some

similar perspective on things. But the I feel like you when I saw and I had, you know, Stephen Bassett on and we talked about it, I did feel like you said that, you know, working with the establishment, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think that there are some some things that we can accomplish by doing that, and when we are kind of stepping forward. And I was challenging Bassett, you know, if you went to let's say, one of these politicians and and you had to

tell them there is group for extraterrestrial visitation, what would you cite? And he kind of said, I'd send him to the web to the to the internet because there's so much evidence. You have to be really more particular and more, you know, send me more exact I think, and I agree with you with this new petition. It's getting at more of the root of just sticking to that there is an existence of a phenomena, and there we

have. We do have some very very very credible photographs, witnesses in a much stronger case that the phenomena exists in the first place, and the mainstream hasn't gone there yet. So let's take that first step. Oh absolutely,

I agree with you one hundred percent. You know, again, if if someone were to ask me if you needed to try and convince, you know, an elected official or someone like that that UFOs existed, well, you know, again, first of all, I'm not going to use that expression extraterrestrial because I think that there are too many cultural stigmas attached to that.

I also recognize that if I'm going to go speak to my congressman or my senator for instance, you know, and I bring up UFOs, they have a cultural obligation, by virtue of being in politics, to be very dismissive toward those kinds of statements and those kind of approaches from the media and from their constituency. I mean, that's just how it is. You know.

We've had a few exceptions. I think Barry Goldwater, of course, you know, had taken quite an interest in uf and a number of US presidents, Bill Clinton, you know, had had of course, you know, asked to think I think it was web hubble, you know, and Jim Mars talked about in his in his book Rule by Secrecy. He said, I want you to find out two things, you know, who killed JFK

and what's going on with UFOs. Jimmy Carter also asked about it. Ronald Reagan, you know, said that he had followed on when he was governor of California and Carter's interest and from you know, an incident that had occurred with him when he was the governor of Georgia. So there have been politicians that have been interested. But culturally that is something that I think that again, in that mainstream political spectrum, you're encouraged to down play. So again,

you know, you have to be very careful. And I don't think it's a bad thing at all. In fact, I think we cannot look at it as a bad thing in terms of you know, quote unquote playing by their rules. We have to in order to progress. And so, first of all, if anyone told me you've got to convince Politician A that there is evidence, you know, supporting, like you said, Alejandro, some sort of phenomenon, the first thing I would say is, well,

we don't use the extraterrestrial term. We realized that there is indeed a stigma attached to that. But you can talk about UFOs all day, and I'm not going to direct them to something as ambiguous as the Internet. I'm going to say, listen, go to and I'll give you a link. Go to the nssa's website where they have disclosed a multitude of documents about UFOs, and you guys have some excellent articles about those at your website. You go

to the FBI dot gov website. They also have a portal to Unexplained Phenomenon that deals with a variety of things, not just UFOs. The Central Intelligence Agency also has one. If these varying branches of intelligence within our own US government have already taken an interest in these subjects and have already disclosed some information

about them. That's all the evidence that these elected officials should need, and if anyone doesn't take that seriously, then they're not taking the intelligence gathering process seriously at all, because these intelligence organizations are the very ones who've laid the groundwork and who have engaged in that sort of research for decades already. Yep,

that's a good point. Now that we're on this subject of these petitions, of course, Bassett is putting out a second petition, and his is focus around calling for congressional investigations into what you had mentioned, Bill Clinton and his interests along with that with Rockefeller, who was really trying to get Bill Clinton to do more research. How do you feel that the wording of the

Bryces Abel Actually and Richard Dolan petition is better than that? Well, they don't ever say extraterrestrial in their petition, and I was reviewing both documents earlier today. I'll tell you this the new petition that the Paradigm Group has released against his UFO slash et this time, I don't think they made, you know, much emphasis on the UFO angle in the first petition at all. It was almost entirely references to extraterrestrials and the like. Now they kind of

realized because you know, among others. You know, another contributor to the Huffington Post was Leslie Kane who said, look, you know, using that word extraterrestrial over and over and over again in that petition, what did you expect the response was going to be. And I think that you know, they've kind of caught when of that and realized now that you know, things have to be kind of reworded in a way that's a little more palpable if

they want to get an official again, an official response. Dolan and Bryce's petition I think is better because it although it says UFOs and UAP referring only to unidentified you know, aerial phenomenon and you know, flying objects that cannot be identified, they never make mention of extraterrestrial life, except for the opening sentence, which talks about, you know, looking for life on Mars and things like that isn't enough. And I agree, while there's a potential that

UFOs may represent extraterrestrial life, we can't rule that out. We just don't have, according to our own scientific methodology, evidence that supports that. Now, there's a lot of kind of circumstantial evidence that points us in that direction. But like Michio Kaku has said it's funny. I saw him during an interview and they asked him, they said, you know, you say UFOs

exist. Does this mean that extraterrestrial life exists? And he says, well, yes, And the thing is is that we've looked at all these different options and the most likely is that some of these UFO sidings do indeed involve an intelligence from you know, outside planet Earth. And so he said, so the anchor asking the questions said, well, doctor Kaku, does this mean that we have proof of et life elsewhere in the stars? And he says, well, no, not at all, because we don't have,

you know, a biological sample. You know, we can't we don't have something that we can extract DNA from, and so without that, we still don't have proof. And that's pretty well worded. Again, it's very likely that some UFO phenomenon could represent extraterrestrial intelligence from outside our planet. But the thing is is we don't have that biological sample to our knowledge to support that. And when we asked for that very thing in the last petition, we

saw what the White House response was going to be. So we have to take things one step at the time. UFO is the keyword. That's the word that is used throughout the petition by Dolan, and I think that that's

going to be more effective than actually garnering attention. You know what. I think you brought up a great example there with mitchi Okaku, because here we're talking about a mainstream scientist, and I think the thought process that you know, you shared right there, it's similar to the thought process that mainstream science is going to take if they take UFO seriously, and that is to first look at the phenomena, look at the likely because that's what you know.

If we are able to make people take that first step, especially mainstream science, to take UFO seriously, I think then they will come up with our hypothesis as a hypotheside or how do you say, multiple seeds you know, as to what this phenomena might be all about. And I think everybody would agree that the extraterrestrial hypothesis seems kind of one of the forefront it's, you know, the first possibly most likely explanation. I think that'll come to the

surface by itself. You don't have to shove that down people's throats. I think it's it's an natural occurrence, Although when it comes to UFOs, there are other ideas about what might be behind some of this phenomena. And we talked about this quite a bit with Nick g Redfurn, and I know you have some unique perspectives there as well. I know you look at paranormal all around, not just UFOs. What are your ideas on how likely the extraterrestrial

hypothesis is the answer or what are the other possibilities. Oh, I'll tell you this again. To be skeptical, I always like to draw this distinction between things. If you say you're a skeptic and you have an interest in the paranormal or the unexplained, I think that rodolphan first of all, people who are the quote unquote believers, And this is a game where you start

to see how much culture is associated with all this. People who are, you know, quote unquote believers will kind of point the finger at you and say, oh, great, you know you're one of these guys trying to disprove everything. When we're skeptically minded, this doesn't mean that we have to try and disprove anything. What that means is that we cannot commit ourselves to

belief without evidence to support it first. That's really all that means. So when I look at circumstances with regard to, you know, studying a multitude of different phenomenon, I try not to, you know, gravitate toward a conventional notion of what any particular phenomenon may be when there's not hard scientific evidence to back that up. I love it when people come up to me,

and this happened just the other day. You know, someone on the web had talked about, how, you know, my podcasts, for instance, are garbage because I'm talking about UFOs and things like that, and the reason that it's garbage is because there's no scientific evidence to substantiate anything you're talking about. Well, first of all, there certainly is evidence to substantiate UFOs. We've already gone over where you can find that evidence, so let's not be

redundant here. But the thing is that, again I pointed out to this individual, I said, I've never made the claim, and this is what this person asserted. They said that, you know, there's no proof that these things are extraterrestrial, and if anything, they're probably secret government craft. And I said, well, you know, if you listened to my podcast, you would know, as my listeners do that. I don't accept, you know, this, this conventional notion that UFOs absolutely, without question represent

extraterrestrial intelligence, you know. And again the reason why is because there's not scientific evidence that supports that. I, you know, respect the likelihood, but I don't commit to belief. Now that said, when we look at

the other alternatives, well, what could they be? Then? As stated by this individual and by many others, and I've even gravitated toward this sum myself in the past, there probably are a number of government projects, you know, secret government projects that involved you know, advanced aircraft and even weaponry and things like that that have at times been mistaken for And you really can't mistake something for something else that you don't know what the the alternative is to

begin with, you know, we call all these things UFOs. A secret government craft by virtue of being unidentified is also a UFO. There's the physical anomaly angle that can be appended to this as well, the notion that for whatever reason, there may be what we might call extraterrestrial or even interdimensional intelligences that could be in some way, shape or form interacting with our dimension or

if you want to remove dimensions from the equation altogether. It could be you know, some sort of some sort of intelligence, some sort of sentient consciousness trying to contact our three dimensional perspective from kind of a higher level of reality,

perhaps you know, pre material level of reality. So Jacques Vallet has gotten into some of this, and also an associated mind by the nome of doctor Maxim Camera and these kind of approaches to studying UFOs, I think, force the mind to reconsider the possibilities and thereby expand our own notion of what not just any particular phenomenon may be, but what our role is three dimensional

organic beings in reality as we perceive it may be. And I have gravitated more and more toward that approach, to trying to understand the greater reality and how UFOs play into that. And when you look at it from that perspective, I found that you will tend to notice that there are a lot of really nuts and bolts reports that to me are without question some kind of intelligently controlled technological craft and probably originating from here on planet Earth. There are a

number of reports that are far stranger and can't be so easily explained. But again this points too, I think something that is, if anything, something that will force us to kind of redefine our perspectives on reality and in order to greatly appreciate this and of course to understand it and it's totality. Eventually more people are going to have to think like that, in my opinion,

and it's not going to get us anywhere. It continues saying that UFOs don't exist in that this no evidence for them, because that simply isn't the case either. Yeah, you know, when some of these points that you bring up some of the a lot of people will and some of the listeners may get frustrated that, you know, people aren't test adhering to this extra treasural

answer and that's it, and that's all there is. But I think there is something we can learn from science is that when you don't know what something is, it's very dangerous to pin it down and say this is what it is until you have that proof of what's going on. Because often we've seen in science that when they observe as phenomena, you put forward theories, and sometimes some theories get very popular. Dark matter, for instance, we don't

know what the heck that is. There's so much disagreement. But the media is always talking about dark matter. Dark matter. We don't know that that exists. We don't know the answer towards these phenomena that they're seeing with gravity and space, and the answers that we find are typically much much more complicated than we ever could have imagined. And I certainly agree that you know, that could be the case in dealing with the UFO phenomena or abduction and these

other phenomenas that people are experiencing. Oh absolutely, And with regard to abduction, I'll just say this to keep it short, that although many people who have claimed to have been abducted have been you know, also people who claim that they've been taken aboard what appeared to be a flying saucer or other you know, similar aircraft describing UFO reports, I think that again it can even

get dangerous. And see this will probably sound absurd to a lot of people who've read and followed ufology you know, for a number of years, like myself, even a number of decades, But I think that it can become dangerous when we look at alien abduction solely as some kind of phenomenon that is directly associated with UFOs, Because we cannot necessarily draw a parallel between the two. Now, I will say that, you know, there are some abduction

reports that are very compelling. The Hickson encounter there from Pasco Goula, what was it a Mississippi back in nineteen seventy three, where Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker were abducted. That they'd been sitting on a and this is well known, so I don't have to get into all the details. But they were sitting, of course, on a pier, and they were fishing next to a bayou. Saw a blue light. The first thing to point out here is that, you know, again according to FAA standards, you're not supposed

to have blue lights. Typically on aircraft you'll see red and green and white lights. But again, this blue object comes down, hovers over the bayou, and then these beings come out, They approach Hickson and Parker, take them on board, and you know, perform these kind of examinations on them and then release these gentlemen. They weren't unlike a lot of you know, stories told by abductees Hickson and Parker. They weren't you know, lying in

their beds at night. They didn't, you know, have a missing time period of From the part of me, I think that they became very disoriented

during this experience because of the terrifying nature of it. But they literally were sitting there, they saw the object come down, they were taken aboard, and then they were brought back by these strange looking, slightly anthropomorphic beings, and they were both so scared afterward that they first said, you know, we're not going to tell anybody about this, So that was you know, and then they of course werelnded and went to the sheriff, and only after

going to the newspaper. You know, they were going to try and get the story out, and it was all over the ap the next day that these two minute allegedly been taken aboard an object from space. But a lot of abduction reports don't begin the same way that Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson's story did they. You know, the abductee typically is lying in bed, they

might feel a presence, they may wake up on board the craft. There are a number of instances where people literally have the experience and there's no mention of a flying saucer. But you know, I think that it's difficult again looking at the multitude of data out there, it becomes difficult not to associate

those two. And I'm not saying that they aren't related, but what I would say is that if we want to understand the phenomenon better, we should probably look at them independently before we consider, you know, lumping them all together and saying that this is the sum totality of what we understand about UFO. As part of it is that there are these aliens that take people on board these spaceships. For all we know, there may not be any kind of a you know, an alien gray as we know what this could be.

And this is getting kind of far out there, but I think it's worthy of speculation. It could be that an advanced intelligence literally projects images of abduction encounters into the mind of an alleged abductee, because the attempt at communication with a three dimensional being like a human in relation to this advanced intelligence may be so great that this wouldn't even be something that would be perceptible without the

apparent intrusion in a physical sense into that individual's reality. And so it could be that the entire abduction scenario is actually a kind of a holographic area or a mental construct that, although it's indeed very terrifying strange for many people, it's something that humans can relate to better in terms of trying to reconcile with a greater intelligence than our own. Now I'm just speculating, but that again

is one interpretation. If we are indeed going to have some sort of interaction with a greatly, greatly more advanced intelligence than ours, in all likelihood, we wouldn't recognize it as being an intelligence to begin with unless they came down to our level. And I'll bring up Michio Kaku's one of his examples again. Here he says, you can see an entire colony of ants by the

side of the road, and they're going up to their business. They've got their little nest and everything two feet from a major highway, and they're virtually unaware of the fact that there is a vastly greater technologically oriented intelligence that's winning by them literally just two feet away. So very well, maybe the same

for humans. That there could be a vastly more intelligent species that is constantly interacting with us, but they have to level with us in such a way that we can perceive them, and that could be the very summation of the abduction experience for all we know, but we really don't, and therefore we

have to kind of break things apart. And I advocate looking at abduction and UFO reports separately from one another for that reason, right, And I agree as far as when you have an abduction experience that doesn't include a UFO siding like some do, like you mentioned Hickson, there are others. There's Pasca, Goula, Betty and Barney Hill. But and however, like you said,

many of those situations don't. The other problem that I have is a lot of people seem to kind of brush off it's hard to reconcile that the messages that people get during these experiences or in simple contact E cases, they're different. There's it's not like the you know, the general what happens to them is similar. However, the message is in the details of who these beings are and why they're here and where they come from are always vastly different.

And sometimes people will come to me saying, well, why don't you talk more about this case, Why don't you believe in this case? Why don't you believe in that case? And it's not that I don't believe in any of them. I'm open to all of it. But how can I put all my eggs in one basket or put my eggs in all these different baskets in these when the story the stories don't jive. How can all of

these different things be true? Absolutely? And the other thing too, is that so many of the abduction reports, in terms specifically of the information that is supplied to the abductee, it often is so personal in terms of the

significance of the information with regard to the individuals received it. I mean, a classic example that has been mentioned so many times is what was described in The and Recent Affair, the book by Ray Fowler, which talked about how Betty the abductee herself was literally taken to what she perceived to be an alien

environment. I'll stop sort of setting a planet, but it very well may have been, you know, at least in her perception it was, and that you know, there were little alien crititors crawling all around and everything, and she was taking kind of up this conveyor belt that brought her before a large bird that then caught on fire turned into you know, I think a pile of ashes from which this worm crawled out and then she heard a voice

speak to her and use obviously what were obviously Judeo Christian overtones and references to God and Jesus. And of course Betty, as I recall, being a devout Catholic, it's very interesting to me that she had this profound Christian experience, and even the symbology associated with the bird burning up that sounds very much like the legend of the phoenix, which in early Christian iconography was representative of

the rebirth that is associated with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So you know, that, I think is a good example of how so often the information imparted to the contact teas of the abductees is very deeply personal and even has spiritual and religious overtones that have direct pertinence to their belief system, and that is necessarily something that I think should take away from the nature of

the experiences. But I think what it certainly calls us to question is indeed what the nature of the communication is and if there is any need really for looking at these messages delivered by alleged alien occupants of these UFOs in terms of being some sort of a systematic message that is being delivered to humankind. It doesn't, like you pointed out already, it doesn't seem to be that that's the case. There is a great variety in terms of the things that are

being delivered. I think, you know, yeah, those are some good points. And getting back to your speculation and talking about you know how you had this speculation that you were talking about, but it's informed speculation. I

don't think it's a bad thing. And kind of to be apologetetic of the scientists perhaps a bit is that one of the things that you say you're interested in on your website is I say psychology, and a lot of people get frustrated when because you're kind of touching on that now people mentioned psychology and that there could be something going on within the person that is affecting their experience. Of course, some of the psychologists believe that their experiences are completely internal and

there is no external component. I think it's important to look at that aspect. I do believe there is an external component, but that these things are mixing, and people get frustrated with that. I know, like I said, on your site, you talked about being interested in psychology. Why do

you think the psychology is important when looking into this phenomena. Psychology is important because if we try and take psychology out of the equation, and philosophy too is in terms of a methodical process of inquiry that we would hope to use to understand nature and reality around us. If you take the function of the human mind out of the equation, what is there? What else is there?

At all? We have to look at things from the psychological perspective, because everything is inherently based on and in truth, really, it's entirely reliant on human interpretation of the phenomena being witnessed, and therefore we have to take into consideration, first of all, the limitations of the human emotions, because, for instance, often when someone has a UFO encounter, it's a very emotional experience for them. Some people are in awe of what they're seeing.

Some people are utterly terrified. Some people have described, you know, feeling other emotions, you know, a cosmic sense of love and unity. Some people have gotten the distinct impression that they were being controlled by something the levolent. So, you know, when we take into consideration the range of the emotions and the way that the emotions and people's emotional stability and their own comfort

with a given situation will influence their perception of that circumstance. We have to take into very serious consideration the psychology underlying because this is the best way that

we can. Again, I think that a lot of people are wary of psychology, and I'll say this first, because you know, although psychology is a scientific attempt to trying to understand the workings of the mind and human perception, there are also a lot of you know, very varieties of interpretation within the you know, subdivisions if you will, within you know, the school

of psychology itself. You know, the union perspectives, who archetypes and things like that are the Freudian concepts that you know, have so much to do with, you know, sex and the like. So I think that a lot of people will say that this has been disproven, and this is disproven, and therefore we can't really rely on a whole lot of the information that has been brought forth in terms of psychological attempts at understanding humanity and the human

mind. But the truth is is that while the perspectives will vary and they will be very different from one another and even contradict one another, they may not be entirely incorrect. I think that each perspective from a psychological, scientific, religious, anything, you know, are going to have a grain of

truth. And we have to take all these things into consideration. So yes, psychology I think is integral to understand strange phenomenal because it has everything to do with the way the human mind will attempt to reconcile with what it is experiencing m And you know, I think that's important for us to understand because, like you mentioned, with some of the inherent problems of psychology, it is a very new science and we're still trying to figure out a lot behind

that and what motivates us and how we work. I mean, hypnotherapy is a fairly new thing and how that works. If it works, it certainly in my experience, does work. But why and how is still being looked at and can we trust it to you know, be using court for example. But I think that if we're talking about even if people believe we are being approached by an advanced civilization, that they would know those things as well.

I mean, think if they're just trying to implant a simple idea of peace and love and peace, and they send you that message we're all going to come up with our own elaborate scenario around this message, and that could be one of the answers why that this information is so different. But of course this message could be coming to us from some other source than an extraterrestrial I mean, I agree with you that it's psychology is something that we do

have to look at. And that's one reason I really appreciated John Max's work, and that sure he believed that perhaps this phenomena was a non physical phenomena, but the non physical parts are not something to ignore. That's key right there. That is absolutely key because while there may not be an entirely physical component to abduction, that does not rule out the potential for there to be some kind of an intelligent interaction between humankind and another intelligence. I don't think

that that that you know, rules out the possibility at all. And the very thing is is that you know again when you when you mentioned, for instance, hypnosis, hypnosis has been shown to have an interesting effect. People for instance, will say, this can be hypnotized. They can be taken into what is apparently an altered state of consciousness where they can sometimes recall certain information. But there's a very terrifying susceptibility in the in the mind of the

hypnotized to to you know, suggestion from the namely from the hypnotist. That's what's been shown so many times in the past. And the thing is that while hypnotism clearly is a process that that has certain you know, repeatable and expected by products and effects, it's not something that is fully understood and therefore

it is not something that is by any means reliable either. But if you look at uphology and specifically abduction research, you know, let's take into consideration, uh, the the uh, the work of Bud Hopkins, the late Bud Hopkins, you know, with intruders and his his books about alien abduction and his sessions with people who he eventually began to hypnotize himself and spent time,

you know, helping recover memories regarding UFOs and alien productions. It certainly isn't something that we can rule out that this is indeed what was going on, and that many of these people actually were having remembrances of some sort of circumstance. It may not have been entirely physical, as mac kind of gravitated toward. But what's really concerning to me, is that so much of what we understand as the abduction phenomenon is not only rooted in Hopkins's own research,

but also in the methodology that was used to obtain those results. And if hypnotism is not something that, like you'd said, Alexandra, it cannot be used in a court of law because of the unliability factor. Can we really base our entire knowledge base of a particular phenomenon, whether it the abduction or anything else, satanic ritual abuse, you know, super soldier, mind control, all these different things that are supposedly recovered through hypnosis. Can we utilize

hypnosis as a reliable method for justifying this kind of information? I just simply do not think that that is the case. I don't think that we can. And though we can't discount the courts of people and their claims and their perception of strange events, I don't think we can substantiate those claims through the

use of something we don't understand like hypnosis. You know, it's really exciting to have this conversation, and they have a similar conversation with Nick Redfern last week, because I think what it does is open up a lot more possibilities and a lot more research that has to be done in this field. I think a lot of people feel that, you know, this kind of talk has taken a step back, that you know, we already figured out decades ago that UFOs are ets and ET's are visiting us, and now we need

the government to admit this because they know that's true too. But I think you know, what a lot of people are doing, at least of our generation, is stepping back and taking another look at this and saying, wait a sec there could be a lot more answers here. And I'm hopeful, and I want to hear what you think of the possibilities of this even happening. Are I'm hopeful that there will be a lot more Michiocagoos to come.

And when you get a lot more Michiocucus, and you use him a lot because you're obviously familiar with his work, and so am I. And he's a hero because he looks as an open mind. But when you get all those guys together, I think in the future that and hopefully in the in the you know, sooner rather than later, we will have scientific inquiry and perhaps a funded study in this field. And if that happened. I think these are some of the areas that they're going to need to look into.

Do you think it's possible for that in you know, our environment, that a scientific organization could take this on, if that's even possible or what are your thoughts there? It certainly is possible, It certainly certainly is possible.

I'm glad that you asked that question, Alejandro, because that's a very important subject to address it, and it calls in question also the the history of upology and you know, official organization's attempts at trying to, you know, scientifically reconcile with a phenomenon that not only is very difficult to understand, but is entirely observable, you know, by virtue of the witness, the often

very vivid eyewitness accounts, and these these observations recount objects that are obviously disobeying our known laws of physics. So when we talk about UFOs and we talk about the scientific establishment trying to reconcile with that, you look all the way back to the late nineteen forties when the Air Force began serious investigation with regard

to UFOs. And I'm not talking about Roswell here per se. I'm talking about, you know, the Air Force, Jay Edward Rupel, of course, you know whoever saw the beginnings of Project Blue Book and the Air Force's official inquiry into reports of UFOs. If you read especially the first edition of the Report on Unidentified Flying Objects that Rupolt wrote, he points out a lot of schisms within even the Air Force's off let alone various other branches of government.

You know, there were many in the Air Force who were trying to downplay the idea of UFOs. And then ruperlt here's the guy who was overseeing Project blue Book, coming forth writing a book about this and pointing out the way that the idea was, you know, widely downplayed by a number of you know, we'll say heavy hitters within his own organization and within other areas of government as well. Blue Book nonetheless was attempting to gather information about UFOs

and look at everything logically and scientifically. But the earliest interpretations of UFOs as extraterrestrial phenomenon stem from those years, and I would be quick to point out to people that this, of course, was also a time prior to our own exploration of space as humans, we hadn't gone to the moon, yet ourselves, and early in the reports of the Project Blue Book, you see hents its scientists who are trying to understand how a extraterrestrial intelligence might literally be

able to come to Earth. One of the issues that they were having trouble with with with understanding was get this, how a technological spacecraft could literally survive re entry into Earth's atmosphere. And they were talking about this, and some of the theories that were thrown up about the anomalist green fireballs seeming throughout the

Midwest and the late nineteen forties was that these were actually probes. Get this, extraterrestrial craft might park outside Earth's atmosphere and send probes down, given them the understanding that these probes first of all, probably would not want to be something that could be recovered later by Earthlings, And so some scientists rupeled recounts for US were proposing that maybe they were sending probes down that were intended to

begin to burn up as they entered Earth's atmosphere, that they would gather certain climactic or rather atmospheric and climatic data about Planet Earth as they injured our atmosphere, then they would burn up eventually in that way, no one would be able to recover an alien artifact and their presence wouldn't be known. So these are the kind of theories that were put out. And all this came prior to our own exploration of space, going to the Moon and things like this.

We were trying to deal with hurdles that appeared to be hurdles at the time. And of course now it's rather commonplace to send a satellite or a space shuttle into space and then bring it back to Earth through you know,

the atmosphere and the re entry process. So, you know, as our science has gotten better and better, we can look at the past and the way that we have you know, studied UFOs and we can see that, you know, we've we've grown in leaps and bounds, and yet we can What we seem to fail to do is to notice the preconceptions that stem from

that era. Now I'm not saying again that UFOs are not extraterrestrial, but I think that a lot of that perspective comes from that early period prior to our own space exploration, and that we may have influenced ourselves in ways that we didn't realize by speculating. Now that said, as blue Book went along. Blue Book was you know, I think that they really had good intentions For a long time there within the University of Colorado, UFO project came on

board with Edward Condon. Arthur Koestler in his book Janus has a compinium in the back, or an appendix rather called UFOs Carnival of Absurdity, and he points out in that brief essay regarding UFOs, and the funny thing about that is that I picked that book up because I'm a fan of Coastler's writing The Roots of Coincidence and some of these things that don't have any direct relation to UFOs. I bought Janis in a used bookstore because I liked The Roots of

Coincidence and his other writing. And he was a Hungarian journalist who primarily had interest in, you know, science and politics and things like that, but also wrote every now and then about strange phenomenon in psychology. Lo and behold,

my surprise. You know when I opened this book and in the back there's this appendix that has to do with UFOs, and in that he points out the way that many who were involved with the Convent Committee were intentionally downplaying the idea of UFO reports by wording the reports in such a way that didn't do so overtly, but that they suggested that the mental capacity, or the

perception or the mental state of the witness might be questionable. And then, of course, when the Convent Committee released their official report, it stated that although there may be some merit to the idea that there are UFOs, we don't stand to gain anything from studying them scientifically. What a narrow minded statement,

or at least it should be interpreted as that. But for whatever reason the Condon Committee came to this conclusion, Project Blue Book was shut down, and forever after, it seems the media has continued to portray UFOs along the lines of what these two organizations worked so hard apparently to do, and that was to discredit And I don't think that Project Blue Book and intentionally all along tide to discredit ufology, but many in the Air Force had during those years,

as evidenced by what Rupold has already said the Conting Committee. You know, again, you can look at these sorts of documents, and I'd recommend Arthur Koessler's book Janus to anyone because it's got that appendix in the back. It will tell you all about that. And there are other researchers you know all about this too who've talked about it. Robert Hastings has mentioned this kind

of thing too. These organizations, for whatever reason, found it thought it was a good idea to downplay the idea of UFOs, make it look like something that was less likely in the public eye. And since the nineteen sixties the scientific establishment has followed suit continue to pursue it that way. You know now why that is and how we could stand a gain from dismissing a subject

is beyond me. I don't know how that could be perceived by anyone as being productive, knowing the rate of expansion of technology that we are seeing before us today. So could science do something and could science try to understand this phenomenon? Yes, And this is something that I think was put very best by a researcher who's not incredibly well known these days. He wrote a book

back in the nineteen nineties called Dark White. His name is Jim Schnabel, but he still has a blog that he talks about UFOs and abduction on from time to time, and he mentioned that he thinks the very best thing that uphologists like myself could do is rather than trying to come to determinations about the scientific nature of UFOs ourselves, we should try and put information out in such a way that will make it attractive to the scientific establishment again, so that

they will take the subject seriously as it was once taken seriously, you know, in the Golden years, so to speak, and so that people will come back to a meaningful attempt at trying to understand the phenomenon. And once we do that, I have no question as to whether or not science can apply logic that will help us learn about the phenomenon. We just have to

get them to take seriously the very idea like we once did. Yeah, it's great that you bring that up, because I agree just so wholeheartedly with all of that that that I like you bringing up the Golden years too, because I always refer to that and don't want people to forget these early days and Rupelt's book, especially that you mentioned, which you can go download for free everybody. And this is a first early report on blue book. And

you see this evolution of these people taking this phenomena very seriously. Many in the Air Force and scientific community very quickly jumping to the extraterrestrial answer or that theory and going that way, which is an interesting insight. But then you also see this kind of morphing where all of a sudden the Air Force felt embarrassed by the whole thing and tried to push it away, and you see Rupeelt even kind of doing the same thing. And then you have, like

you said, the Condon Report happening. And I think we've kind of been in this dark age, is at least when it comes to the mainstream science, where they felt, you know, that they can't touch this subject because in the loose credibility, and that's what I hope that we come to the end of that cycle and finally that gets played out to where people can see there is a lot of credible information and to be able to move forward, like you said, like we used to do, because back then there were

a lot of scientists taking this very seriously and this is all documented by Rupelt and others back then, and then it all disappeared, Oh absolutely. And Rupert was the very one who said at the conclusion of that first edition of

the report unidentified flying objects. I mean that was a term he coined, by the way, but said at the end of that first edition that you know, within the next few decades, he was certain that the advancements in technology would bring the the apparent mystery of UFOs much closer to earth, and

he said, we'll solve the mystery within the next few decades. I'm certain right, and I think that he would have been right had it only not been for the fact that the very organizations that he'd been associated with and those to come later would succumb to what I think and see. I think a lot of people tend to look at this in terms of whether there's a government conspiracy to hide this information. Now that very well may be the case.

We know that government organizations have certainly, you know, had an interest in this and have undergone an inquiry into trying to solve these mysteries and investigate these reports themselves. I'll also point out that a lot of these government files are eventually released, some of them by Freedom of Information Act, some of them you know, without the with without the need for you know, civilians,

you know, demanding to information. A lot of government UFO files have been released very you know, willingly and you know, posted at these various websites. You know, these organizations as I've mentioned earlier. So the thing is is that I think we would have probably come to a better understanding of UFOs had it not been for the fact that some of these organizations that followed Rupled, you know, would succumb to this idea that if we cannot prove it

and understand it, we have to dismiss it. You know, it's kind of like a like like a game of superiority. You know, we can't be bested by something, and when science doesn't explain it, and our rather when our science okays as previously or as presently understood and accepted, if if our version of science right now can't explain this, then we cannot accept it. We have to literally place it outside of what we agree on as calling

reality. And that seems to be what happened. That seems to be exactly what the circumstance has been in that UFOs for most people are maybe a subject of passing interest. But if you start having a serious conversation like we're having right now, you know, the average bear will tend to kind of laugh and shrug it off because they just can't take this as something that is truly

an absolute, real, everyday part of our reality, you know. And and what many people say is it's going to take them landing on the White House front lawn, you know, before it will be. But I don't know that that's ever going to happen either, you know, I just don't.

Right we certainly you know, haven't seen that. But what we can do, hopefully is get it taken seriously to the point where conventional science does look into it, because I think, you know, unfortunately the people out in the public, we don't have the resources to truly look into this matter as much as it needs to be looked into. And that's what's more important. More important than the President coming out I think and saying you know,

UFOs are here, aliens are here. More important is an organization put together to do some research to figure out what's going on here. Even if they have to start to look at some of the secret documents are try to pry open, there's still enough information for the public that something can start to be looked at. There's a group in France you know, that has done that, and they're part of their official Space Agency, and they keep coming to

the conclusion that it's a real phenomenon and it could be extraterrestural nature. They're very scientific about it, so they don't say it definitely is, but it

could be if we had that here. I just think personally, and you know, I'd like to hear why you think the study of this build is so important but one to gain technology and a better understanding of physics, but also I think it opens up It makes the world, i think, a bigger and more wondrous place to know that there are all of these things out there, magical if you will, that exists in this world, that it's not so mundane and humdrum, and we're not trapped in this everyday kind of

repetitiveness and just what's on television, that there's a whole world out there to explore, a never ending mysteries for us to hopefully discover one day. Absolutely, I think that that is the case, and that you know, one day, one day, whether by our own design or you know, whether it be you know, forced upon us, we will come to those kind of conclusions, those kind of realizations, I'll say, because it's going to

be right in our face at some point. I think that the reason for that is because you know, in terms of especially if UFOs it is and you know this is brought to the table ad nauseum. But uh, the the idea of Clark's law that any you know, Arthur C. Clark's third law, specifically that states that any sufficiently advanced technology perceived by lesser advanced technology

will perceive it as magic. The truth is is that if we as advanced and technologically you know, savvy as we are right now, or perceive ourselves as being as you know, when we perceive something that is so much more advanced than us, it is difficult for us to reconcile with and even incorporate

that again as I'd set into our very reality. So I think that in the future, as we become more technologically advanced, it's going to become less and less easy for us to escape the reality, the fundamental reality that constitutes UFOs and a variety of other different kind of strange phenomenon. And to take one more thing into consideration too, you know whether or not you you know, support the absolute literal truth of what Whitley Strieber wrote in the book Communion.

He makes some very philosophical, you know, some very very brilliant philosophical statements in that book, and one was that you know, after his interaction with what he perceived as being you know, these beings. I don't think he ever called them extraterrestrial, but he referred to them as you know,

non human beings. He had wondered if indeed that these things, though more advanced than us, were terrified of humans because of our peers, our ability to advance our own technology and perhaps at a rate that was catching up to their own maybe our own you know, accumulation of technological advancement was was you know, expanding at such a rate you know, greater than cumulative or rather greater than exponential, and that they were afraid of humans for the very reason

that we might catch up to them. And if I don't know that that's indeed the case, This was some of Streever's own speculation. But if we go along, you know, following that argument, indeed, you know, in the next twenty to thirty years, with the rate of growth of technology, you know, something that there's a lot of empirical data to back this up. I mean, whether or not you support you know, literal interpretations of what they call a technological singularity to occur in the next you know,

half a century sometime. You know, books like Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near It very least, will provide a lot of empirical data that supports the notion that you know, technology is trending not toward you know, cumulative growth, you know, on an exponential scale, but truly it greater an exponential

growth. And therefore it's going to be a situation, I think very soon that our technology is going to bring us face to face literally with a variety of different strange phenomenon and then we will be forced to reconsider you know, our place and their place as well in what we call reality, because it won't be something we can ignore any longer. At that point. That's pretty damn exciting. Yeah, I think so. I agree. No, it's

great. I agree with you regardless of with Strieb whether you believe a story or not. He's got an excellent mind. And you know, I was going to bring up earlier kind of what Einstein had talked about, being talking about imaginative speculation and how important that is to science, and science without imagination is going to get nowhere because you can't. You have to have the imagination to come up with a hypothesis. In the first place to go down the

route. And that's what's I think great about a lot of what you're talking about here. Imagine if that speculation about some of the very many other possibilities we could be dealing with here. Absolutely, So I do want to ask, now that we're kind of getting to the end, what got you into all of this? What got me into all this? You know, the long story short, I was probably you know, kindergartener, first grade, and my parents were always, you know, kind of interested in this sort

of thing. I think my mom, you know, was more interested in you know, folk tales and you know, stories of ghosts and hauntings in the life. Whereas my father, of course, you know, he speaks many languages, and he you know, majored in classics when he went to college, and so he studied Latin, Greek and Hebrew and things like that, and therefore takes a much more historical and cultural interest, you know,

or that kind of perspective in terms of his interest in strange phenomenon. I don't think for either of them that it was like a lifelong passion and something that they wanted to pursue like it has become for me. But they nonetheless introduced me to those ideas of very early age. You know, I kept asking, you know, I was like a little bulldog, you know, you know, biting at the ankles and everything, just wanting to know more

about this. And so I think my father finally came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to its, you know, to expose me to some books about this. One of them was Ray Fowler's UFOs Interplanetary Visitors, Ivan Sanderson's book Abominable Snowman Legend Come to Life, and a few others

were among the books that I was first. And these were pretty I mean, these were thick, you know, mass market paperback, you know, I mean adult reading books, and I at first, you know, probably couldn't do much more than look at the pictures and have them be read to me. But by the time I was in second or third grade, you know, and this is where I got interesting. My interest in this phenomenon literally, I think, you know, helped me grow and progress, you

know, as a student in elementary school. At very least my teachers were like, you know, some of them loved it because they were like, you know, he is reading right now, he's in second grade and he's reading in a fifth grade or sixth grade level. And some of the teachers when I got to third grade, specifically, one of my teachers really didn't like it because she said, although he might be reading, you know, so much better than the other students in the class right now, and he

and this kind of spread too. I generally tended to be a lot better with everything, except for you know, math, that didn't come until much later. But you know, my third grade teacher literally had a parent teacher conference, I think, and pointed out to my mom and dad her concern about my interest in the subject of UFOs, and they put studies like that and everything, and my mom and dad kind of looked at her blankly and

said, well, he's reading, isn't he. You know, so they they went to that for me. And you know, I just always was interested in it from a young age. But about the time I turned about twenty one, I started getting serious about things in terms of, you know, I wanted to be a writer. And you know, at first, I a lot of writers who I've spoken to have read this particularly pivotal work

at Stephen King's book on writing. When I was in college, my very first semester, I found that book in the basement of the library, and I would never check it out. I would always just go and sit in the basement of the library every day in between class as is, when I didn't have other work I was doing. Anytime I had downtime, I would just read from that book. And I literally read the entire book there in

the library from day to day without ever checking it out. It was like that was the place that was supposed to be read in the presence of all this knowledge on all these you know, shelves and all these books and manuscripts and documents and things like that. And when I picked that book up and I finished it and everything, I thought, well, you know, now it's it's setting stone. I'm going to write, you know, thrillers and fiction and things like that. And boy, let me tell you, I

tried, but I could never get the hang of it. I'm not you know, maybe one day it'll it'll coalesce and come together. But I was

never the fiction writer I had hoped to be. But I subsequently began to work with Joshua P. Warren and his Lemur research team a bit, and I started helping out with some conferences he did here in western North Carolina, and I had a lot of ideas and through some of those conferences, I met people like Lauren Coleman, Phillis Galdy of Fate magazine and a few others, and I shortly after that began to submit articles to Fate and other magazines

and that's where things come took off from there, and then I guess it was three or four years ago I started the website, the Grailian Report, and that's kind of been the the crux of my interest for the last several years. And still writing literally every single day about this, you know, and it's very much become something that I think, will you know whether or not I want it to be now it's going to be a lifelong passion.

Well, you've definitely got an act for writing titles, because you have written a book and it has a very compelling title, Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule, The Search for Sentient Intelligence from Other Worlds. Tell us a little bit in a nutshell, if you can. That's always difficult for an usher About the book, Well, the book deals with altered states of consciousness and people's attempts at contacting what appeared to be sent intelligences through various mediums you know,

throughout the centuries. And it's broken into three you know sections, as the title indicates, you know, the history of magical practices, the use of mystical processes and things like that, and then of course psychedelic and entthhogenic molecules to achieve those kinds of things. So yeah, in a nutshell, all through states of consciousness and attempts at contacting non human intelligence. Mm hm. So kind of some of the ideas like it inspired I guess by maybe

people like Graham Hancock who talk a lot about that sort of thing. Yeah, you know, Daniel Pinchback, Graham Handcock, Terrence McKenna. A lot of those folks are very uh, you know, influential, especially in terms of the entheogenic approach to that. You know, people who read the Magical and the and the mystical portions of the book will notice that I probably referenced John Keel and people like that, you know, more so than the popular

you know, authors in the psychoonaut fields and things like that. And it's strange a subject for me, especially because when I became compelled to write that book and of course I was not then into today, I'm still not a user of psychedelic substances myself, you know. As a journalistic approach to this, you know, I wasn't someone who was wanting to write about personal experiences,

and many people told me that that's what I needed to do. But I thought, in order to maintain journalistic integrity, could write about the subject, not become the subject, you know, And so that's that's what I did. And there are a number of book projects right now underway. I've got a lot of things I'm working with. One in particular that my publisher and I've been going back and forth. There's been a complete proposal. It does have to do with UFOs, and we're now beyond the first stages of

the of the proposal and we're kind of reworking the idea right now. So hopefully sometime in twenty twelve, I'll have more information about that for folks as well. Okay, sounds exciting, and so where people can go just so they know Gray Alien Report. Just in case you're not sure how to spell that, and I know how you may be struggling with that, It is g R A l i E N Report. So GR alienreport dot com and that's where you can read your writing, get information about your book and some

other things. That's it, absolutely and thank you so much, Alejandro. It's been a fantastic time talking with you. Any opportunity to have good, insightful conversation with folks like yourself, it's my pleasure. Well great, because you know, I had a lot of fun talking to you. I love the perspective and it always gets me excited to hear someone else in this field, some other people that have new and different ideas on how to approach things.

And I think this is going to be important in the future because I think there is a future beyond you know, the typical upology that we've seen in the past, and I'm excited about that. So it's great to talk to you, and I'll definitely be calling on you again anytime, my friend, anytime. Oh right, it was great to hear from Micah. What a cool dude, huh, he's really neat. So I had a lot of fun talking to him, and I look forward to speaking and working with

him very much in the future. So what a few great interviews we had Micah. Before that, we had Nick Redburn and then we had Betty Okerell before that. All authors, and guess what, we're going to keep it up next week. We're going to have another author and this is Mac Maloney and he just wrote a new book called UFOs in Wartime, a brand new book. You can find that on Amazon. UFOs and Wartime. So Mac Maloney next week, UFOs and Wartime. I gotta say it three times to

make sure you get it. Don't forget to visit Openminds dot tv and ufodailynews dot com for the latest in UFO news. Thank you all so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next week. People. Adios.