March 31, 2011 • 37 mins
In this episode, Josh and Chuck ditch the studio and head west -- south by southwest, in fact -- to record a live podcast in Austin, Texas. Tune in and learn more Stuff You Should Know about SXSW and UFOs.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House to works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Bark with me as always with
(00:20):
a little extra echo is Charles W Chuck Bryant. Hello.
How are you doing, Chuck? I'm wil sir. Yeah, anything, um,
slightly unusual today? Oh we are in a different place
than normal. We are in Austin, Texas. Yes. Yeah, are
you guys from Austin that are cheering or is that
(00:42):
just enthusiasm? Yeah? Keep Austin weird. That's that's the motto.
Is that right? So we're doing our best. I should
probably say that those of you listening on your iPods
Chucks talking to people who are watching this podcast right now. Yes,
he's not insane. I think I got a laugh track
three years. They got a laughter the Little Red Box
(01:02):
after three years. Um. So, yes, we're doing a lot
of podcasts. This is a little different for us. I'm
normally not so sweaty from being stared at when we record. Um,
but I'm getting a little more used to it. I'm fine. Yeah,
and um, I lost my coffee, So I'm gonna get
really dry. Oh you don't have coffee, I'll be okay, boy,
Chuck Josh, have you ever heard of the X files? Oh? Yeah,
(01:27):
it turns out a lot of that was true. Really Yeah?
Well okay, so not the um, not the whole child
healer who may or may not be like killing people,
like the the compartmentalized versions of the X files, but
the overarching thread with the aliens. Yeah, not not like
the shape shifters. According to how UFOs work on how
(01:47):
stuff works dot com, that's probably true. Well, you know
I'm a believer, are you. I'm I'm in the Fox
Smolder camp. I'm okay, although he's Hank Moody to me.
Now to you, uh, it's the Californication. Okay. I thought
you would always be Fox Molder and now right, I
see nods, he's Hank Moody. Now that's a huge, huge
(02:07):
changeover it is. Yeah. I thought he's had a lot
more fun on California. I'm sure. I'm sure there's a
lot of brooding on X files and not so much
dirty dirty Well okay, so, um, let me give you
some examples. So the X files, Um, we're going kind
of retro here, all right, because the UFOs very nineties,
(02:29):
in very forties and even ancient ancient exactly. So, um,
have you heard of the ancient Indian sanscrit scriptures? Right,
thank you very much, just pep, thank you very much, Justic,
I got the first peep um okay In in these
(02:51):
ancient Indian sanscript um writings, there is a description of
an airship and it actually talks about how this airship
can go forward and backward and vertically very quickly, and
a man can travel by sky um and in a
very short time. And the weird thing is these texts
were written like way before they were supposed to be airships,
(03:13):
right yeah, it's called the them on us, and they
describe things like a great flying bird made of light material. Um.
They even describe a mercury engine with an iron heating
apparatus underneath. So they get really specific about how it
can move and how it operates. And this is not
anything that should be happening oddly specific, right, yeah, allow
(03:35):
me to continue. In twelve eleven, uh, it was written
that a group of people in England were at church
one day and there was a loud crash from outside
of the church and they all go outside. They're all
very dirty, I'm sure. Um. They go outside and they
look up and there's an airship. Again. You're gonna notice
airships keep popping up in this how UFOs Work podcast. Um,
(03:57):
and it's anchored, like an an er has has dropped
into the the steeple above the church and it's stuck.
And so all the all the very very old timey
medieval people are like, what is going on? Some guy
comes down from the airship, tries to get the anchor out,
is grabbed and they're about to be killed. And the
(04:17):
bishops like, no, no, no no, just let this guy go.
I don't know what his jam is. Um, so his
jam sou? So they the the airship cuts rope and
flies off, And I should point out it's weird, Rightah,
that's weird at any time, it's weird. So a folk
a folkloreist named Katherine Briggs points, I think she puts
(04:39):
it perfectly that this is one of those quote one
of those strange, unmotivated and therefore rather convincing tales that
are scattered throughout the early chronicles, like basically saying this
this this chronicler had no reason to just make this up.
And it's just so weird how specific it is. And
then we can fast forward to the nineteenth century tons
of airship sightings. Nebras it was huge, Texas was huge, California.
(05:03):
It was basically like that whole James West steampunk thing,
but in the time right, so it wasn't retro. And
then just this February in Jerusalem there's a big sighting.
There are several videos of I didn't hear about this one, well,
there are three different videos, and the founder of the site,
Marshall Brain, put it to bed or he tried to um,
(05:24):
saying like this is how it was hoaxed, not entirely convincingly,
but there's supposedly a UFO over the Dome Rock in Jerusalem.
And this was February, And if you go into the
Mutual UFO network website every day, there's still UFO reports
coming in. So the Mutual UFO Network move On. They
made tons of appearances in the next file, you know,
move on. They got nothing on the city who that's
(05:47):
a little foreshadow and pomp up nice chuck um. So
if you go on to the move on website, you'll
see that there's still just dozens of sightings every day.
So this is very much embedded in um our culture,
which is why we're about to talk about it now,
Chuck go that was my inge. All right, we're gonna
(06:11):
talk about UFOs. Let's start. Uh well that was sort
of the beginning, I guess, But let's start in the
mid twentie century. As everyone knows, UFOs were pretty big
in the nineteen forties and fifties, got a lot of press,
and in fact, that's when the term UFO as unidentified
flying object was coined by the United States Air Force.
(06:32):
I don't know if everyone knows that. Yeah, that's kind
of that's a big one. At least some people in
this room know that now. And uh, you know, unidentified
flying object, flying saucer, or flying disc. What we're really
talking about is alien spacecraft, right, I mean, let's let's
cut to the chase. That's what upologists have been talking about, right.
Is that how that's pronounced? Yes, ufology Okay, because I
(06:53):
kept saying ufo ologists, and that's that's like saying, uh,
do you refer to the I R S as the herbs? Huh?
I don't know, so a fologist? Uh yeah, No, it's
you fologist, not a fologist, you fologists. So the Air
Force started investigating these things for real, um, and found
out that five of UFO sightings are unaccounted for. The
(07:19):
rest are explained away. You always hear weather, balloon, whatever
the heck that is, or hoax, hoaxes, lightning, Yeah, lightning,
any any kind of a natural weather phenomenon can be mistaken.
And hoaxes is big people people like faking their photography
or crop circles. Yeah. Sure. Um, so that's a pretty
(07:39):
significant point that you just brought up, that there are
some cases of UFO sightings that are out there that
are um unexplained. Right, Yeah, where's the uh? I did
have a statin here on that it was five. No,
I have numbers, uh, twelve thousand UFO side is the
(08:00):
Air Force research between forty and sixty nine, So it's
twenty one years if my math is correct, and all
but seven hundred and one were explained away. But if
you ask me see that you can't explain. It's kind
of a lot. That's a significant number for sure, and
that's why I believe. And um, there's a guy named
Jay Alan Heinek who kind of figures big into uphology. Um,
(08:25):
he's the man or was he passed away down he's dead? Yes,
he was the man um, but he's still he kind
of lives on in this very long winded and detailed
definition of what a UFO is. Right, you wanna you
wanna take this one? Yeah? Should I read it? Can
you do it in one breath? There's no way I
can do it in one breath. But this is the
best definition we've got from doctor kinek or Is he's
(08:46):
an astronomers he doctor? Yeah, okay, oh yeah, the reported
perception of an object or light seen in the sky
or upon the land, the appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic
and luminescent behavior of which do not suggest a logical,
conventional explanation, and which is not only mystifying to the
original percipients, but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all
(09:11):
available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making
a common sense identification if one is possible. Period. And
that's one sentence, So that yeah, that says at all.
So basically what he's saying is like after you know,
it's it's a sighting, and it's it seems weird and
then after closer examination, it really is weird. That's a
(09:31):
UFO sighting, right. That was his first draft. I think
he's like, the Air Force is like, can you get
a little more specific, and he's like, no, I'm in
a stronomy check on my hair. I have no time
to write sentences. That makes sense to you idiots. But
we say air Force because he was actually hired by
the Air Force. He was a faculty member at the
Ohio State University, which this article didn't say the no,
(09:53):
but that's the right way to say. You're get really picked.
Any buck eyes out there, all right? One's all unique? Yeah,
and uh. In ninety eight they said, hey, dude, why
don't you come work for us? We got all these
weird things happening. We got a program called the Project Sign. Yeah,
it was originally Project Sign. Then it became Project Grudge,
(10:13):
which I love, and then Project blue Book was what
they landed on. That's that's not a that's not a
good name for a scientific investigation, you know, things a
little no grudge, you know, one blue Book, imagine was
before the whole auto industry thing with used cars to
call no no, Little No. In fact, it grew out
of that airport investigation. Yeah, very cool. That's that's how
(10:35):
your cars rated now. So Heinek was his deal was
he was a skeptic. He was hired by the Air
Force not as someone to say, hey, these things are real,
let's just investigate it. And he was a big time
skeptic for quite a while. He was he was an astronomer.
He didn't believe in extraterrestrial life anything. It's ninety eight,
so he hadn't really given much thought to it. But
eventually he became kind of a defector because ufology, uh,
(11:00):
if anything is this um huge clash of the titans
between people who believe in UFOs and skeptics who for
them for believing in UFOs, right um, And he Nick
started out as a complete skeptic and then eventually, you know, um,
they basically gave them all these files and said look
through these and see if this was an asteroid, if
this was a comment. Basically just get rid of a
(11:21):
big backlog to start with, right of his twelve thousand sightings,
and you know, he he signed off on lots of them,
and then he kept running across ones that made up
the seven hundred and one inexplicable cases. Yeah. At first
she called him puzzling, right, and then he he started
calling him like, oh my god, this is real, and um, yeah,
(11:41):
he became probably the most outspoken uh you faults. Uh
see that was weird. Yeah that that doesn't normally happen. Um,
he became one of the most outspoken you fall it
just people who said, yes, UFOs are real and uh
he was a position to really kind of make that
(12:01):
claim more than anybody else. Yeah, and he found himself
at odds with the Air Force. They were, um, I
don't think they knew what they were getting into when
they hired the scientist who was originally skeptic, And all
of a sudden he starts touting these things and the
Air Force is like, no, don't say these things. What
was his line about skepticism not having any part in
(12:22):
the scientific method or not? Ridicule? Ridicule. So there's another guy,
if you go a little further back, the first you
follogist is named Charles Fort and he was kind of
a hero of mine. Um, he was a scientist. Yeah,
if you if you read the Fort in Times, which
is one of the greatest magazines of all time. Um,
it's based on this guy's philosophy that yes, science UM
(12:46):
is the the proper approach to explaining the universe, but
you have to investigate everything incredulously or else you're just
kind of a jerk, right. You can't selectively say like, well,
you know, science can't really explain this right now, so
it doesn't exists. It's not possible exists, and we're gonna
make fun of you for even thinking that. That's not
what science is about. And UM J Allen Heineck held
(13:08):
the same views, basically that that UM, through Project Blue
Book science was failing the public by not properly explaining, hey,
this is a weather balloon like. You don't know what
a weather balloon looks like. I don't know what a
weather balloon looks like. I don't know what. They were
failed at some point in time by science, and he
was upset about that. And then the idea that they
were keeping ridicule and scorn while not even carrying out
(13:31):
their duty irked him to say the least. So Heinek
is the guy actually that came up with the Heinech scale,
which you say, what is the Heinech scale? You might
know a better wait on what is exactly so we
should do this every totally love this. I don't know
what so nervous about. Uh. You might know the Heineck
(13:52):
scale better as the close encounters chart. So he's the
dude who invented it. And the first kind is a
citing if you see it close encounter of the first kind.
The second kind is a citing plus physical evidence. So
like scat aliens scat uh crop circles. Sometimes they'll be
(14:14):
like vegetation that is like disintegrated sometimes. And I didn't
research this, But the spider web like things hanging from trees.
What's that all about? Any idea? I couldn't find that either. Okay,
apparently that happens the UFOs nearby. Well, the big palm
with him is um like what they are, brittle to
the touch and just disintegrate UFOs. No, the spider web
(14:34):
like strings, it's like um, silly string. But that's been
left out for many many weeks. Got you? So that's
the second kind. The third kind um is observation of
an antimate uh animate being. It wasn't quite right according
to Steven Spield for oh, is that the third encount?
Well that's the third Yeah, they did see animate being
(14:54):
but let's get forward. After Heineck they added fourth, fifth, six,
and seventh kinds. He wouldn't have at to that fourth
kind is abduction, uh, and the fifth kind is bilateral
contact event through voluntary human initiated cooperation. So that was
really close. Encounters of the third kind should have been
the fifth kind because Frands watch Ruffo in the movie,
(15:17):
you know, sent out the he initiated attach and there
was a sign for it too. He did, I don't
remember what that is and did you know that was
France watch Rufo I No, Rob probably did, famous director,
he was in that movie. And then the sixth kind
is direct injury or death, which is the least fun kind,
and the seventh kind is the best because that means
(15:40):
you are knocking boots with an alien and creating a
star child. That's true. Close en counter of the seventh
kind means you have sex with an alien and they
get pregnant, and there is there's a There is traditionally
a lot of sexiness involved with alien abductions, whether it's
forced copulation at this day, neared, anal probe, whatever, there's
(16:01):
some sort of sexuality associated with with abductions. You want
to go over some of the abductions. Right, you always
hear about prodding and poking and improbing, im probing, probing, Right,
where are we? Well, well, let's I guess let's talk
a little more about some of the characteristics of UFOs um.
We talked about the strange weblike disintegrating remains um crop circles,
(16:25):
crop circles which may or may not have been led
Zeppelin's dirigible. Who knows normal mutilation is sometimes they're associated
with that, and that is when you find let's say,
cattle with organs removed but no signs of humans being
anywhere around. We should do one on that. We should
probably not um because I was looking this up and
(16:46):
apparently some Sheriff's department in Arkansas, when this like the
height of this cattle mutilation um scare um was going on,
they took a cow and I imagine shot it in
the head and left it where it lay, because for
you know, to to really undertake this, you have to
kind of kill a cow where it was and then
leave it alone. But they had a dead cow for
(17:07):
forty eight hours in this field and filmed it and
and said, hey, like all of the normal stuff that
a dead cow's body undergoes auto license, puture faction, like
all of this can explain. Like these mutilations you're talking about,
everybody just settled down, And I think it was kind
of like the same um, the same group of people
(17:29):
who were worried about Satanists kind of put a lot
of stock in the animal mutilation things. So I think
that one's kind of off the table. Radio and TV
interference happens a lot. Car ignition failure, which of course happened.
I keep looking at Rob for close and times of
the third time because he's a movie nerd like me.
But yeah, the car won't start, radio cuts out, lights flicker,
(17:53):
you know, phones nearby. Yeah, there's a correlation sign. It's
a correlation. Uh. And then I guess that's about it, right, Well,
I got a couple of stats. Oh that's not it,
trust me, that's it for that part. Uh. I looked
up UFO sidings by state because I was curious, what
state do you think leads the way New Mexico's good
(18:14):
guests about a good guests out now? Think about it?
Crazy people cuckoo California. I hope there's no one from
California in here. You know, they know they're crazy. Sorry,
but uh, seven thousand and eighty one sidings and this
is a very you know, this isn't high science. This
is from the Center for UFO Studies or CUPHOS. There's
(18:36):
no move on, There're no move fine or SETI And
uh number two is actually Washington State at thirty eight three.
I did look up Texas because that's where we are
three thousand, one seventy two. And I looked up Georgia.
What do we have about a thousand? Kay and guess
what state is the least? Now keep keep going. Yeah,
(19:02):
you'll get to North Dakota, which I figure I forget
they'd be lousy with it because all the I don't know,
desert space seems appealing to aliens. I think everyone in
North Dakota is too depressed to look up. Well that
maybe there's not a lot of people there, so that
may actually, you know, I have something to do it.
So only a hundred and sixteen in North Dakota, and
we do have a pole in here that is so
(19:24):
outdated that we would like to conduct a live pole.
Since we have what about fifty people here, I would say,
all right, we're gonna do this. We're gonna do this
by applause, but you're not rooting for it. So don't
feel like you have to go crazy if you believe
in it. We just want to get a little, a
little thing. So if you believe the aliens have contacted humans,
(19:49):
just some light golf clapping, Okay, CNN says, uh, if
you believe alien to have abducted humans, no braves, zero
zero because CNN of the people polled and then they said,
(20:11):
believe the government is hiding something about aliens. Wait wait, wait,
let everybody come from them. Yeah, the government. I think
more people think the government's hiding something and then believe
a something. I don't think that works. It works. That's
our first live pole. So um I found another poll
in two thousand and eight, and the only thing I
(20:33):
could find was, you know, do you believe that there's
intelligent life that's been to Earth and contacted humans? And
it was down to like, which is probably about what
we got here, but that's significantly less than the sixty
I think it was y two k angst And you
think that had everybody like there's something going on. We're
gonna die, like everyone's our computers are gonna stop. I
(20:56):
was one of the guys, and I was like, hey,
people are stupid. Nothing's gonna happen. Well, you know that
I have my van packed with water and shotguns because
you were living the right. Those are just my normal
accouter mall so Uh, Project of Blue Book, Uh, the
Air Force. Uh. Eventually in nineteen nine said you know what,
We're gonna close up shop, or at least that's what
(21:17):
they said. M hmm. Yeah, they said they were going
to close up shop. Uh. And then they put out
to me, what is some tricky wording with three statements.
They said, no UFO reported, investigated and evaluated has ever
given any indication of threat to our national security. Doesn't
mean that they didn't find anything, they just didn't deem
(21:38):
it a threat. And then there's been no evidence submitted
to the Air Force at sightings categorized as unidentified represent
technical developments beyond the range of present day knowledge, and
there's been no evidence indicating the sightings categories is under
unidentified are extraterrestrial. So like bam, boom bam, we're closing
(21:59):
up shop by that, suckers. But that's tricky to me
because all they said was classified as unidentified internally as
soon as they found out, they might go, crap, let's
change the They don't quantify the criteria for their categorization. No,
but if they did find something right and kept it internal,
they were still saying like, these were kind of so
(22:20):
so aliens. If they're they weren't doing anything that we
couldn't already conceive of, you know. Um, And I guess
they were friendly at least because they weren't a national
security threat. Either that or they were easily like beat
up with the elbows an alien. Yeah, it's how you
go at everybody. But I think it's I think it's
worth pointing out this is a Department of Defense um publication.
(22:44):
You would be very hard pressed to find the d
D print and release anything that's talking about aliens today.
But from nineteen to nineteen sixty nine they carried out
this very famous investigation. Whether it was half hearted or not,
like they were actually you know, spending tons of taxpayer
money on this, and it was It's a significant moment
(23:05):
in history where everyone believed in aliens right right now,
everybody just believes that the government's hiding something, they're on something.
So it moved from the government to the private sector
with set, which we've mentioned is the search for Extraterrestrial
intelligence and to the Center for UFO Studies. So there's
(23:26):
a lot of work still going on. And these aren't
cracked pots. Uh. A lot of them are very scientific
about their research. Jodie Foster works there, right, And what
they want to do is, well, not they want to disprove,
they want to get to the bottom of it. Well, yes,
studies very legitimate. They have funding from NASA and they're
all very scientific scientists. Um and uh. They they admit
(23:51):
their mistakes, right, Like in the late nineties, they they
got um, they're the ones with the big radio telescopes, right,
um and they uh, they got a signal it sounded
just like that, um and uh. They it was about
a million miles away from Earth and they said, well,
is this gotta be aliens and million miles away? Right,
(24:12):
And then three hours later they're like, oh no, Um,
it was a sun watching observatory that's a million miles
away from But they admit their mistakes and um, and
they're not very sensationalist. I get the impression. So study's
pretty much carrying on the uh. The they're carrying the
torch now that the government shut things down, right, that's right. Um,
(24:33):
So everybody in here is suspicious of the government. We
can actually pinpoint the moment that happened. It took place
in nine on July seven, there was a guy in
New Mexico outside of a town called Roswell. His name
is Mac Brazil, and he was a ranch foreman. Right. So, uh,
(24:54):
he was going to check on the cattle, I guess
um one day after some terrible thunderstorms the night before,
and he found some weird debris and it was weird
enough to breathe that he called the sheriff, and I'm
sure they liked spit on the ground and talked about
it for a while. Along there were strange we should
mention the night before there was a bunch of strange
lights in the sky, yes, and terrible thunderstorms. So then
(25:16):
he finds the debris, right, Okay, sorry, that's an important point.
It is, um. And so they the sheriff comes out.
They figured they should probably call the local military, which
kind of a weird step if you ask me. The
military comes out, they take the debris, um, and they
take it back to the Roswell Army Air Force Base
and then to Dayton, Ohio, which is another weird thing
(25:37):
to do if it's a weather balloon. Is the government
eventually said it was in between. Then the guy who
ran Roswell Army Air Force Base UM released a statement
on July seven, saying, Um, we recovered the debris from
a crashed disc and I'm making air quotes and you
guys can actually see it. I don't have to just
(25:58):
say at this time, but a crash disc was found.
And then about three hours later his boss in Dallas,
I believe, released another press release saying that guys inn idiot,
don't listen to anything he's ever said forgetting that whole
crash disc thing. Exactly. It was a weather balloon and
we've taken it and flown into right Air Force Base
in Dayton for some reason. But just don't look behind
(26:21):
the curtain, everybody. And at that moment, that was when
all of the seeds that have sprouted into us, going
like this, when we see like a press released today, UM,
that's when it happened that that first press release followed
by the second one, started the the whole suspicion of
the government that there was a cover up. Chuck, that's right,
(26:43):
and there was some other hinking that's going on. There
were eyewitnesses that say they saw bodies being removed from
the scene by the military. Some people said that they
were actually present at an alien autopsy. Uh if you
remember the Fox Network did that TV show a lee
an autopsy a while ago, and then it turned out
(27:03):
that that guy said, um actually shot all this stuff
in the nineties. But I swear this is the footage
I saw and I'm just recreating it, and that footage
is is now destroyed, but this is a this is
what I saw. Come on, you need you need by.
It took me for a while. It looked kind of cool,
but yeah, that was a big disappointment. And um, Area
(27:24):
fifty one, you know, is is the area now and
they people believe some people believe that the government is
uh still contacting aliens at Area fifty one, meeting with
aliens on a regular basis, studying them. And that's why
it's you know, got big fences around it. That's exactly
what that's the only possible reason that it has offences
(27:45):
around it. But we're we're gonna do a podcast probably
hopefully on Area fifty one one day because that's about
all we're going to talk about with that offenses Men
in Black. Yeah, that's another characteristic of the UFO phenomenon, right,
And then actually came out of a guy him Gray
Barker's book in nineteen fifty six. He wrote, They Knew
too Much about Flying Saucers and the Men in Black
(28:07):
make their first appearance. Um. Well, Gray Barker pawned this
thing off as a work of nonfiction, but it was
actually fiction. Um, but that I guess came out long
enough after that, the Men in Black entered kind of
the the collective consciousness of Have you seen jose Chunks
from outer Space? That one X Files episode where Jesse
(28:29):
the Buddy Venture and Alex Trebek play the Men in Black. Yeah,
it's pretty awesome. It's probably the best X Files episode ever. Really. Yeah,
And it's a good one, isn't it? Wait did you
just say Charles Nelson Riley. Charles Nelson Riley plays this
author who's interviewing Molder and Scully and trying to get
to the bottom of this one incident that happened, And um,
(28:50):
it was it was very cool, good. I highly recommend
it to everybody. Let's get back to it, Chuck and abductions.
I think this is this is if I may tee
this one up please. Uh So, I think it's kind
of one thing to see something in the sky and say, well,
I to UFO. But many people have done this. Ronald
(29:10):
Reagan said he saw a UFO and as a governor
of California, right yeah. Jackie Gleeson said he saw aliens
because Richard Nixon took him there. That's a true story.
Jackie Gleeson apparently was in Florida, married to his second
wife at the time, and he came home all disheveled
from something and his wife was like, what's going on, Jackie?
(29:31):
You're not your usual sonny self. And he says, well,
I can't talk about it, um wife. But later on
he said that she does have a name. I can't
remember it, um, what's called her Betty? But ironically he
did just call her wife, he did one of these days.
Um So, then he says, you know what happened is
uh I met Richard Nixon, My my buddy, Richard Nixon.
(29:53):
Jackie Gleeson was way into UFOs apparently, and Richard Nixon said,
would you like to go see some aliens? The my
Richard Nixon that was so they've seen it. Well, apparently
he took him and saw two little two foot aliens.
Little Paul said, don't tell anybody about this, Jackie Gleason,
and uh he said, I will not never tell anyone.
(30:15):
He told his wife that you can't tell anyone, and
then they got divorced and she started telling everyone. Yeah. Yeah,
So supposedly he seen one, and he said Ronald Reagan
saw one and he was on a small cessa flight
and he was governor of California at the time, and
he was talking about what he saw until he realized
he was talking to a reporter from the Wall Street
Journal and then he was like, maybe I shouldn't say
(30:35):
anything about that, and um, yeah, So Jimmy Carter Carter
saw one. Do you want to do your Carter? I
don't have a carter. He he did see one in Georgia,
in rural Georgia, and he uh still talks about it
to this day. Apparently ten or so years ago was
the last time at Emory University Atlanta, where he teaches,
he was actually still talking about it and said, dude,
(30:56):
I saw ufo. Okay, so it's one thing to see
you a foe and to talk about it at Emory
or to show Jackie Glees and something weird. Right, But
it's an entirely other thing. And this kind of became
this spinoff of the the UFO phenomenon, and that is abductions, right,
that's the money the money shot. Basically, there's this whole
(31:17):
group of people came forward over the years, starting after
nineteen sixty five, Ish will say um and said, yes,
I've been aboard the craft. I've been engaged in alien sexiness.
This is horrible. My life is suffering because of this, right. So, um,
the the first abduction story, it was Betty and Barney Hill.
(31:38):
Have you heard of them? Have you heard of them before? Then? Yes, okay,
because I'm sort of into this stuff, okay, but they
were the first in the early sixties, and you know
they said they saw and we're not abducted initially, but
then later through hypnosis started remembering these things that happened. Yeah,
and there there, that was the first abduction case. It
(31:59):
was written up in the ball Us in Globe and
then there was a book called um the Interrupted Journey.
Because it had a really huge impact on their lives,
they started suffering psychological diservices, they're they're big problems among them.
After this UM and then it was made for TV movie.
Mr James Earl Jones played Barney Hill, did a great
job UM and from that moment on, this kind of
(32:20):
UM established checklist. Almost of UM traits of an abduction
were generated UM things like you're you're being taken against
your will, UM, you're being probed or experimented them the
tractor beam tractor beam, UM, the UH, the the your noise,
(32:47):
the the losing time was another big one, the Hills
lost two hours UM and then having to deal with this,
And there were actual studies of abductees in the nineties
because it was such a such a weird significant thing
that people were saying, like, it's consistent, which is the
weird thing. UM. So this guy UH named Richard McNally,
who's a Harvard psychologist, conducted some physiological experiments on people
(33:10):
who said they've been abducted, and they showed similar symptoms
to people with post traumatic stress disorder. So there's definitely
something going on. But whether or not it was UM
than being abducted, or if they were suffering from some
other trauma is what was at the heart of the matter, right, Yeah,
and there's been some pretty good explanations for what was
(33:31):
behind this whole abduction phenomenon that's kind of died off now,
which is weird if you think about it, right. Yeah.
Susan Blackmore is a is a famous skeptic, and she
did a little experiment in the mid nineteen nineties with
a man named Michael Persinger. He's a neuroscientist, and he
claims that all kinds of weird phenomenon with the body
(33:52):
can be explained by uh, excessive firing of the temporal lobes.
And so the only thing that was missing, as no
one had ever really tried to replicate this in an experiment.
So Susan Blackmore said, dude, took me up to this
stuff and fire away unless see what happened. She said,
um that she had the sensation she was being pulled
stretched by her leg to the ceiling um. She was
(34:14):
suddenly like very very angry, and then after that she's
suddenly very fearful. So basically the guy proved to her,
and then she went and told the world in this
New Scientist article that yes, if you can mess with
somebody's temporal lobe firing using magnets. Um, you you can
get them to think all sorts of crazy stuff. Well,
(34:34):
she basically at the end of the experiment said, I
was so out of myself that if someone would have
told me you were inducted by an alien, she said,
I probably would have believed it. Right, And she's a skeptic,
so it probably that's a that's a good explanation. But
then you you have to ask, well, what's what is
exactly exerting this magnetism on people's brains to cause this
(34:57):
temporal lobe firing. So it's okay, I explain, and probably
better than anything. Is um sleep paralysis? Right or false awakenings? Yeah?
Sleep paralysis? You know, does anyone have that? Sleep paralysis?
Your wife apparently that's what you wake up and your
you can't move, Yeah, when you wake Your skeletal muscles
are normally paralyzed while you're sleeping, but every once in
(35:19):
a while you can wake up and your muscles don't
kind of wake up first, so you can't move, but
you you don't really know what's going on. Your groggy
hallucinations of a company too, right, yeah, usually and very stuff, yes,
and um, so it's a very fearful thing. UM. And
then if you are the type to dream about sex, right,
that kind of adds that probing maybe idea because the
(35:42):
whole thing, so sleep paralysis is a pretty good explanation, um.
And then the false awakening is another good one, where
you wait, you're dreaming that you've woken up, and it's
pretty common actually, UM. And that I think the thing
that gives um gravity to this explanation is that the
most extreme abduction reports UM always began with the people sleeping.
(36:06):
Oh really yeah, so it's entirely possible if people were confused. Well.
There's also correlation though between UFO sidings and what was
he talking about seismic events? Is he said that, um,
he believes earthquakes might trigger this magnetism and people wake
up in their bed they think they're being abducted. But
what about the people in the cars and out in
(36:26):
the fields. We're not gonna figure this out right now,
I was gonna say, I think a good way to
wrap this up is to say that we are wholly
unqualified to offer any explanation of what was drawing on. UM.
But at the very least, it was interesting, and it
was a wild and crazy time. It was a good
ride there, agreed, and I think this bears some follow up.
(36:47):
We gotta hit area fifty one. We gotta get into
the abductions a little more too. Yeah, one day. That's
it you anymore. I got nothing else on this one.
That's it. That's the UFOs. We thank you very much.
Thank you. Let's again so um. If any of you
ever want to get in touch with us, you can
(37:07):
send us an email. I want you to wrap it
up spanking on the bottom and send it to stuff
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Thank you, yeah,
and then uh, thanks for coming out to on a
rainy Monday morning. For moral on this and thousands of
(37:28):
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn
more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff
Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House to works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Bark with me as always with
(00:20):
a little extra echo is Charles W Chuck Bryant. Hello.
How are you doing, Chuck? I'm wil sir. Yeah, anything, um,
slightly unusual today? Oh we are in a different place
than normal. We are in Austin, Texas. Yes. Yeah, are
you guys from Austin that are cheering or is that
(00:42):
just enthusiasm? Yeah? Keep Austin weird. That's that's the motto.
Is that right? So we're doing our best. I should
probably say that those of you listening on your iPods
Chucks talking to people who are watching this podcast right now. Yes,
he's not insane. I think I got a laugh track
three years. They got a laughter the Little Red Box
(01:02):
after three years. Um. So, yes, we're doing a lot
of podcasts. This is a little different for us. I'm
normally not so sweaty from being stared at when we record. Um,
but I'm getting a little more used to it. I'm fine. Yeah,
and um, I lost my coffee, So I'm gonna get
really dry. Oh you don't have coffee, I'll be okay, boy,
Chuck Josh, have you ever heard of the X files? Oh? Yeah,
(01:27):
it turns out a lot of that was true. Really Yeah?
Well okay, so not the um, not the whole child
healer who may or may not be like killing people,
like the the compartmentalized versions of the X files, but
the overarching thread with the aliens. Yeah, not not like
the shape shifters. According to how UFOs work on how
(01:47):
stuff works dot com, that's probably true. Well, you know
I'm a believer, are you. I'm I'm in the Fox
Smolder camp. I'm okay, although he's Hank Moody to me.
Now to you, uh, it's the Californication. Okay. I thought
you would always be Fox Molder and now right, I
see nods, he's Hank Moody. Now that's a huge, huge
(02:07):
changeover it is. Yeah. I thought he's had a lot
more fun on California. I'm sure. I'm sure there's a
lot of brooding on X files and not so much
dirty dirty Well okay, so, um, let me give you
some examples. So the X files, Um, we're going kind
of retro here, all right, because the UFOs very nineties,
(02:29):
in very forties and even ancient ancient exactly. So, um,
have you heard of the ancient Indian sanscrit scriptures? Right,
thank you very much, just pep, thank you very much, Justic,
I got the first peep um okay In in these
(02:51):
ancient Indian sanscript um writings, there is a description of
an airship and it actually talks about how this airship
can go forward and backward and vertically very quickly, and
a man can travel by sky um and in a
very short time. And the weird thing is these texts
were written like way before they were supposed to be airships,
(03:13):
right yeah, it's called the them on us, and they
describe things like a great flying bird made of light material. Um.
They even describe a mercury engine with an iron heating
apparatus underneath. So they get really specific about how it
can move and how it operates. And this is not
anything that should be happening oddly specific, right, yeah, allow
(03:35):
me to continue. In twelve eleven, uh, it was written
that a group of people in England were at church
one day and there was a loud crash from outside
of the church and they all go outside. They're all
very dirty, I'm sure. Um. They go outside and they
look up and there's an airship. Again. You're gonna notice
airships keep popping up in this how UFOs Work podcast. Um,
(03:57):
and it's anchored, like an an er has has dropped
into the the steeple above the church and it's stuck.
And so all the all the very very old timey
medieval people are like, what is going on? Some guy
comes down from the airship, tries to get the anchor out,
is grabbed and they're about to be killed. And the
(04:17):
bishops like, no, no, no no, just let this guy go.
I don't know what his jam is. Um, so his
jam sou? So they the the airship cuts rope and
flies off, And I should point out it's weird, Rightah,
that's weird at any time, it's weird. So a folk
a folkloreist named Katherine Briggs points, I think she puts
(04:39):
it perfectly that this is one of those quote one
of those strange, unmotivated and therefore rather convincing tales that
are scattered throughout the early chronicles, like basically saying this
this this chronicler had no reason to just make this up.
And it's just so weird how specific it is. And
then we can fast forward to the nineteenth century tons
of airship sightings. Nebras it was huge, Texas was huge, California.
(05:03):
It was basically like that whole James West steampunk thing,
but in the time right, so it wasn't retro. And
then just this February in Jerusalem there's a big sighting.
There are several videos of I didn't hear about this one, well,
there are three different videos, and the founder of the site,
Marshall Brain, put it to bed or he tried to um,
(05:24):
saying like this is how it was hoaxed, not entirely convincingly,
but there's supposedly a UFO over the Dome Rock in Jerusalem.
And this was February, And if you go into the
Mutual UFO network website every day, there's still UFO reports
coming in. So the Mutual UFO Network move On. They
made tons of appearances in the next file, you know,
move on. They got nothing on the city who that's
(05:47):
a little foreshadow and pomp up nice chuck um. So
if you go on to the move on website, you'll
see that there's still just dozens of sightings every day.
So this is very much embedded in um our culture,
which is why we're about to talk about it now,
Chuck go that was my inge. All right, we're gonna
(06:11):
talk about UFOs. Let's start. Uh well that was sort
of the beginning, I guess, But let's start in the
mid twentie century. As everyone knows, UFOs were pretty big
in the nineteen forties and fifties, got a lot of press,
and in fact, that's when the term UFO as unidentified
flying object was coined by the United States Air Force.
(06:32):
I don't know if everyone knows that. Yeah, that's kind
of that's a big one. At least some people in
this room know that now. And uh, you know, unidentified
flying object, flying saucer, or flying disc. What we're really
talking about is alien spacecraft, right, I mean, let's let's
cut to the chase. That's what upologists have been talking about, right.
Is that how that's pronounced? Yes, ufology Okay, because I
(06:53):
kept saying ufo ologists, and that's that's like saying, uh,
do you refer to the I R S as the herbs? Huh?
I don't know, so a fologist? Uh yeah, No, it's
you fologist, not a fologist, you fologists. So the Air
Force started investigating these things for real, um, and found
out that five of UFO sightings are unaccounted for. The
(07:19):
rest are explained away. You always hear weather, balloon, whatever
the heck that is, or hoax, hoaxes, lightning, Yeah, lightning,
any any kind of a natural weather phenomenon can be mistaken.
And hoaxes is big people people like faking their photography
or crop circles. Yeah. Sure. Um, so that's a pretty
(07:39):
significant point that you just brought up, that there are
some cases of UFO sightings that are out there that
are um unexplained. Right, Yeah, where's the uh? I did
have a statin here on that it was five. No,
I have numbers, uh, twelve thousand UFO side is the
(08:00):
Air Force research between forty and sixty nine, So it's
twenty one years if my math is correct, and all
but seven hundred and one were explained away. But if
you ask me see that you can't explain. It's kind
of a lot. That's a significant number for sure, and
that's why I believe. And um, there's a guy named
Jay Alan Heinek who kind of figures big into uphology. Um,
(08:25):
he's the man or was he passed away down he's dead? Yes,
he was the man um, but he's still he kind
of lives on in this very long winded and detailed
definition of what a UFO is. Right, you wanna you
wanna take this one? Yeah? Should I read it? Can
you do it in one breath? There's no way I
can do it in one breath. But this is the
best definition we've got from doctor kinek or Is he's
(08:46):
an astronomers he doctor? Yeah, okay, oh yeah, the reported
perception of an object or light seen in the sky
or upon the land, the appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic
and luminescent behavior of which do not suggest a logical,
conventional explanation, and which is not only mystifying to the
original percipients, but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all
(09:11):
available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making
a common sense identification if one is possible. Period. And
that's one sentence, So that yeah, that says at all.
So basically what he's saying is like after you know,
it's it's a sighting, and it's it seems weird and
then after closer examination, it really is weird. That's a
(09:31):
UFO sighting, right. That was his first draft. I think
he's like, the Air Force is like, can you get
a little more specific, and he's like, no, I'm in
a stronomy check on my hair. I have no time
to write sentences. That makes sense to you idiots. But
we say air Force because he was actually hired by
the Air Force. He was a faculty member at the
Ohio State University, which this article didn't say the no,
(09:53):
but that's the right way to say. You're get really picked.
Any buck eyes out there, all right? One's all unique? Yeah,
and uh. In ninety eight they said, hey, dude, why
don't you come work for us? We got all these
weird things happening. We got a program called the Project Sign. Yeah,
it was originally Project Sign. Then it became Project Grudge,
(10:13):
which I love, and then Project blue Book was what
they landed on. That's that's not a that's not a
good name for a scientific investigation, you know, things a
little no grudge, you know, one blue Book, imagine was
before the whole auto industry thing with used cars to
call no no, Little No. In fact, it grew out
of that airport investigation. Yeah, very cool. That's that's how
(10:35):
your cars rated now. So Heinek was his deal was
he was a skeptic. He was hired by the Air
Force not as someone to say, hey, these things are real,
let's just investigate it. And he was a big time
skeptic for quite a while. He was he was an astronomer.
He didn't believe in extraterrestrial life anything. It's ninety eight,
so he hadn't really given much thought to it. But
eventually he became kind of a defector because ufology, uh,
(11:00):
if anything is this um huge clash of the titans
between people who believe in UFOs and skeptics who for
them for believing in UFOs, right um, And he Nick
started out as a complete skeptic and then eventually, you know, um,
they basically gave them all these files and said look
through these and see if this was an asteroid, if
this was a comment. Basically just get rid of a
(11:21):
big backlog to start with, right of his twelve thousand sightings,
and you know, he he signed off on lots of them,
and then he kept running across ones that made up
the seven hundred and one inexplicable cases. Yeah. At first
she called him puzzling, right, and then he he started
calling him like, oh my god, this is real, and um, yeah,
(11:41):
he became probably the most outspoken uh you faults. Uh
see that was weird. Yeah that that doesn't normally happen. Um,
he became one of the most outspoken you fall it
just people who said, yes, UFOs are real and uh
he was a position to really kind of make that
(12:01):
claim more than anybody else. Yeah, and he found himself
at odds with the Air Force. They were, um, I
don't think they knew what they were getting into when
they hired the scientist who was originally skeptic, And all
of a sudden he starts touting these things and the
Air Force is like, no, don't say these things. What
was his line about skepticism not having any part in
(12:22):
the scientific method or not? Ridicule? Ridicule. So there's another guy,
if you go a little further back, the first you
follogist is named Charles Fort and he was kind of
a hero of mine. Um, he was a scientist. Yeah,
if you if you read the Fort in Times, which
is one of the greatest magazines of all time. Um,
it's based on this guy's philosophy that yes, science UM
(12:46):
is the the proper approach to explaining the universe, but
you have to investigate everything incredulously or else you're just
kind of a jerk, right. You can't selectively say like, well,
you know, science can't really explain this right now, so
it doesn't exists. It's not possible exists, and we're gonna
make fun of you for even thinking that. That's not
what science is about. And UM J Allen Heineck held
(13:08):
the same views, basically that that UM, through Project Blue
Book science was failing the public by not properly explaining, hey,
this is a weather balloon like. You don't know what
a weather balloon looks like. I don't know what a
weather balloon looks like. I don't know what. They were
failed at some point in time by science, and he
was upset about that. And then the idea that they
were keeping ridicule and scorn while not even carrying out
(13:31):
their duty irked him to say the least. So Heinek
is the guy actually that came up with the Heinech scale,
which you say, what is the Heinech scale? You might
know a better wait on what is exactly so we
should do this every totally love this. I don't know
what so nervous about. Uh. You might know the Heineck
(13:52):
scale better as the close encounters chart. So he's the
dude who invented it. And the first kind is a
citing if you see it close encounter of the first kind.
The second kind is a citing plus physical evidence. So
like scat aliens scat uh crop circles. Sometimes they'll be
(14:14):
like vegetation that is like disintegrated sometimes. And I didn't
research this, But the spider web like things hanging from trees.
What's that all about? Any idea? I couldn't find that either. Okay,
apparently that happens the UFOs nearby. Well, the big palm
with him is um like what they are, brittle to
the touch and just disintegrate UFOs. No, the spider web
(14:34):
like strings, it's like um, silly string. But that's been
left out for many many weeks. Got you? So that's
the second kind. The third kind um is observation of
an antimate uh animate being. It wasn't quite right according
to Steven Spield for oh, is that the third encount?
Well that's the third Yeah, they did see animate being
(14:54):
but let's get forward. After Heineck they added fourth, fifth, six,
and seventh kinds. He wouldn't have at to that fourth
kind is abduction, uh, and the fifth kind is bilateral
contact event through voluntary human initiated cooperation. So that was
really close. Encounters of the third kind should have been
the fifth kind because Frands watch Ruffo in the movie,
(15:17):
you know, sent out the he initiated attach and there
was a sign for it too. He did, I don't
remember what that is and did you know that was
France watch Rufo I No, Rob probably did, famous director,
he was in that movie. And then the sixth kind
is direct injury or death, which is the least fun kind,
and the seventh kind is the best because that means
(15:40):
you are knocking boots with an alien and creating a
star child. That's true. Close en counter of the seventh
kind means you have sex with an alien and they
get pregnant, and there is there's a There is traditionally
a lot of sexiness involved with alien abductions, whether it's
forced copulation at this day, neared, anal probe, whatever, there's
(16:01):
some sort of sexuality associated with with abductions. You want
to go over some of the abductions. Right, you always
hear about prodding and poking and improbing, im probing, probing, Right,
where are we? Well, well, let's I guess let's talk
a little more about some of the characteristics of UFOs um.
We talked about the strange weblike disintegrating remains um crop circles,
(16:25):
crop circles which may or may not have been led
Zeppelin's dirigible. Who knows normal mutilation is sometimes they're associated
with that, and that is when you find let's say,
cattle with organs removed but no signs of humans being
anywhere around. We should do one on that. We should
probably not um because I was looking this up and
(16:46):
apparently some Sheriff's department in Arkansas, when this like the
height of this cattle mutilation um scare um was going on,
they took a cow and I imagine shot it in
the head and left it where it lay, because for
you know, to to really undertake this, you have to
kind of kill a cow where it was and then
leave it alone. But they had a dead cow for
(17:07):
forty eight hours in this field and filmed it and
and said, hey, like all of the normal stuff that
a dead cow's body undergoes auto license, puture faction, like
all of this can explain. Like these mutilations you're talking about,
everybody just settled down, And I think it was kind
of like the same um, the same group of people
(17:29):
who were worried about Satanists kind of put a lot
of stock in the animal mutilation things. So I think
that one's kind of off the table. Radio and TV
interference happens a lot. Car ignition failure, which of course happened.
I keep looking at Rob for close and times of
the third time because he's a movie nerd like me.
But yeah, the car won't start, radio cuts out, lights flicker,
(17:53):
you know, phones nearby. Yeah, there's a correlation sign. It's
a correlation. Uh. And then I guess that's about it, right, Well,
I got a couple of stats. Oh that's not it,
trust me, that's it for that part. Uh. I looked
up UFO sidings by state because I was curious, what
state do you think leads the way New Mexico's good
(18:14):
guests about a good guests out now? Think about it?
Crazy people cuckoo California. I hope there's no one from
California in here. You know, they know they're crazy. Sorry,
but uh, seven thousand and eighty one sidings and this
is a very you know, this isn't high science. This
is from the Center for UFO Studies or CUPHOS. There's
(18:36):
no move on, There're no move fine or SETI And
uh number two is actually Washington State at thirty eight three.
I did look up Texas because that's where we are
three thousand, one seventy two. And I looked up Georgia.
What do we have about a thousand? Kay and guess
what state is the least? Now keep keep going. Yeah,
(19:02):
you'll get to North Dakota, which I figure I forget
they'd be lousy with it because all the I don't know,
desert space seems appealing to aliens. I think everyone in
North Dakota is too depressed to look up. Well that
maybe there's not a lot of people there, so that
may actually, you know, I have something to do it.
So only a hundred and sixteen in North Dakota, and
we do have a pole in here that is so
(19:24):
outdated that we would like to conduct a live pole.
Since we have what about fifty people here, I would say,
all right, we're gonna do this. We're gonna do this
by applause, but you're not rooting for it. So don't
feel like you have to go crazy if you believe
in it. We just want to get a little, a
little thing. So if you believe the aliens have contacted humans,
(19:49):
just some light golf clapping, Okay, CNN says, uh, if
you believe alien to have abducted humans, no braves, zero
zero because CNN of the people polled and then they said,
(20:11):
believe the government is hiding something about aliens. Wait wait, wait,
let everybody come from them. Yeah, the government. I think
more people think the government's hiding something and then believe
a something. I don't think that works. It works. That's
our first live pole. So um I found another poll
in two thousand and eight, and the only thing I
(20:33):
could find was, you know, do you believe that there's
intelligent life that's been to Earth and contacted humans? And
it was down to like, which is probably about what
we got here, but that's significantly less than the sixty
I think it was y two k angst And you
think that had everybody like there's something going on. We're
gonna die, like everyone's our computers are gonna stop. I
(20:56):
was one of the guys, and I was like, hey,
people are stupid. Nothing's gonna happen. Well, you know that
I have my van packed with water and shotguns because
you were living the right. Those are just my normal
accouter mall so Uh, Project of Blue Book, Uh, the
Air Force. Uh. Eventually in nineteen nine said you know what,
We're gonna close up shop, or at least that's what
(21:17):
they said. M hmm. Yeah, they said they were going
to close up shop. Uh. And then they put out
to me, what is some tricky wording with three statements.
They said, no UFO reported, investigated and evaluated has ever
given any indication of threat to our national security. Doesn't
mean that they didn't find anything, they just didn't deem
(21:38):
it a threat. And then there's been no evidence submitted
to the Air Force at sightings categorized as unidentified represent
technical developments beyond the range of present day knowledge, and
there's been no evidence indicating the sightings categories is under
unidentified are extraterrestrial. So like bam, boom bam, we're closing
(21:59):
up shop by that, suckers. But that's tricky to me
because all they said was classified as unidentified internally as
soon as they found out, they might go, crap, let's
change the They don't quantify the criteria for their categorization. No,
but if they did find something right and kept it internal,
they were still saying like, these were kind of so
(22:20):
so aliens. If they're they weren't doing anything that we
couldn't already conceive of, you know. Um, And I guess
they were friendly at least because they weren't a national
security threat. Either that or they were easily like beat
up with the elbows an alien. Yeah, it's how you
go at everybody. But I think it's I think it's
worth pointing out this is a Department of Defense um publication.
(22:44):
You would be very hard pressed to find the d
D print and release anything that's talking about aliens today.
But from nineteen to nineteen sixty nine they carried out
this very famous investigation. Whether it was half hearted or not,
like they were actually you know, spending tons of taxpayer
money on this, and it was It's a significant moment
(23:05):
in history where everyone believed in aliens right right now,
everybody just believes that the government's hiding something, they're on something.
So it moved from the government to the private sector
with set, which we've mentioned is the search for Extraterrestrial
intelligence and to the Center for UFO Studies. So there's
(23:26):
a lot of work still going on. And these aren't
cracked pots. Uh. A lot of them are very scientific
about their research. Jodie Foster works there, right, And what
they want to do is, well, not they want to disprove,
they want to get to the bottom of it. Well, yes,
studies very legitimate. They have funding from NASA and they're
all very scientific scientists. Um and uh. They they admit
(23:51):
their mistakes, right, Like in the late nineties, they they
got um, they're the ones with the big radio telescopes, right,
um and they uh, they got a signal it sounded
just like that, um and uh. They it was about
a million miles away from Earth and they said, well,
is this gotta be aliens and million miles away? Right,
(24:12):
And then three hours later they're like, oh no, Um,
it was a sun watching observatory that's a million miles
away from But they admit their mistakes and um, and
they're not very sensationalist. I get the impression. So study's
pretty much carrying on the uh. The they're carrying the
torch now that the government shut things down, right, that's right. Um,
(24:33):
So everybody in here is suspicious of the government. We
can actually pinpoint the moment that happened. It took place
in nine on July seven, there was a guy in
New Mexico outside of a town called Roswell. His name
is Mac Brazil, and he was a ranch foreman. Right. So, uh,
(24:54):
he was going to check on the cattle, I guess
um one day after some terrible thunderstorms the night before,
and he found some weird debris and it was weird
enough to breathe that he called the sheriff, and I'm
sure they liked spit on the ground and talked about
it for a while. Along there were strange we should
mention the night before there was a bunch of strange
lights in the sky, yes, and terrible thunderstorms. So then
(25:16):
he finds the debris, right, Okay, sorry, that's an important point.
It is, um. And so they the sheriff comes out.
They figured they should probably call the local military, which
kind of a weird step if you ask me. The
military comes out, they take the debris, um, and they
take it back to the Roswell Army Air Force Base
and then to Dayton, Ohio, which is another weird thing
(25:37):
to do if it's a weather balloon. Is the government
eventually said it was in between. Then the guy who
ran Roswell Army Air Force Base UM released a statement
on July seven, saying, Um, we recovered the debris from
a crashed disc and I'm making air quotes and you
guys can actually see it. I don't have to just
(25:58):
say at this time, but a crash disc was found.
And then about three hours later his boss in Dallas,
I believe, released another press release saying that guys inn idiot,
don't listen to anything he's ever said forgetting that whole
crash disc thing. Exactly. It was a weather balloon and
we've taken it and flown into right Air Force Base
in Dayton for some reason. But just don't look behind
(26:21):
the curtain, everybody. And at that moment, that was when
all of the seeds that have sprouted into us, going
like this, when we see like a press released today, UM,
that's when it happened that that first press release followed
by the second one, started the the whole suspicion of
the government that there was a cover up. Chuck, that's right,
(26:43):
and there was some other hinking that's going on. There
were eyewitnesses that say they saw bodies being removed from
the scene by the military. Some people said that they
were actually present at an alien autopsy. Uh if you
remember the Fox Network did that TV show a lee
an autopsy a while ago, and then it turned out
(27:03):
that that guy said, um actually shot all this stuff
in the nineties. But I swear this is the footage
I saw and I'm just recreating it, and that footage
is is now destroyed, but this is a this is
what I saw. Come on, you need you need by.
It took me for a while. It looked kind of cool,
but yeah, that was a big disappointment. And um, Area
(27:24):
fifty one, you know, is is the area now and
they people believe some people believe that the government is
uh still contacting aliens at Area fifty one, meeting with
aliens on a regular basis, studying them. And that's why
it's you know, got big fences around it. That's exactly
what that's the only possible reason that it has offences
(27:45):
around it. But we're we're gonna do a podcast probably
hopefully on Area fifty one one day because that's about
all we're going to talk about with that offenses Men
in Black. Yeah, that's another characteristic of the UFO phenomenon, right,
And then actually came out of a guy him Gray
Barker's book in nineteen fifty six. He wrote, They Knew
too Much about Flying Saucers and the Men in Black
(28:07):
make their first appearance. Um. Well, Gray Barker pawned this
thing off as a work of nonfiction, but it was
actually fiction. Um, but that I guess came out long
enough after that, the Men in Black entered kind of
the the collective consciousness of Have you seen jose Chunks
from outer Space? That one X Files episode where Jesse
(28:29):
the Buddy Venture and Alex Trebek play the Men in Black. Yeah,
it's pretty awesome. It's probably the best X Files episode ever. Really. Yeah,
And it's a good one, isn't it? Wait did you
just say Charles Nelson Riley. Charles Nelson Riley plays this
author who's interviewing Molder and Scully and trying to get
to the bottom of this one incident that happened, And um,
(28:50):
it was it was very cool, good. I highly recommend
it to everybody. Let's get back to it, Chuck and abductions.
I think this is this is if I may tee
this one up please. Uh So, I think it's kind
of one thing to see something in the sky and say, well,
I to UFO. But many people have done this. Ronald
(29:10):
Reagan said he saw a UFO and as a governor
of California, right yeah. Jackie Gleeson said he saw aliens
because Richard Nixon took him there. That's a true story.
Jackie Gleeson apparently was in Florida, married to his second
wife at the time, and he came home all disheveled
from something and his wife was like, what's going on, Jackie?
(29:31):
You're not your usual sonny self. And he says, well,
I can't talk about it, um wife. But later on
he said that she does have a name. I can't
remember it, um, what's called her Betty? But ironically he
did just call her wife, he did one of these days.
Um So, then he says, you know what happened is
uh I met Richard Nixon, My my buddy, Richard Nixon.
(29:53):
Jackie Gleeson was way into UFOs apparently, and Richard Nixon said,
would you like to go see some aliens? The my
Richard Nixon that was so they've seen it. Well, apparently
he took him and saw two little two foot aliens.
Little Paul said, don't tell anybody about this, Jackie Gleason,
and uh he said, I will not never tell anyone.
(30:15):
He told his wife that you can't tell anyone, and
then they got divorced and she started telling everyone. Yeah. Yeah,
So supposedly he seen one, and he said Ronald Reagan
saw one and he was on a small cessa flight
and he was governor of California at the time, and
he was talking about what he saw until he realized
he was talking to a reporter from the Wall Street
Journal and then he was like, maybe I shouldn't say
(30:35):
anything about that, and um, yeah, So Jimmy Carter Carter
saw one. Do you want to do your Carter? I
don't have a carter. He he did see one in Georgia,
in rural Georgia, and he uh still talks about it
to this day. Apparently ten or so years ago was
the last time at Emory University Atlanta, where he teaches,
he was actually still talking about it and said, dude,
(30:56):
I saw ufo. Okay, so it's one thing to see
you a foe and to talk about it at Emory
or to show Jackie Glees and something weird. Right, But
it's an entirely other thing. And this kind of became
this spinoff of the the UFO phenomenon, and that is abductions, right,
that's the money the money shot. Basically, there's this whole
(31:17):
group of people came forward over the years, starting after
nineteen sixty five, Ish will say um and said, yes,
I've been aboard the craft. I've been engaged in alien sexiness.
This is horrible. My life is suffering because of this, right. So, um,
the the first abduction story, it was Betty and Barney Hill.
(31:38):
Have you heard of them? Have you heard of them before? Then? Yes, okay,
because I'm sort of into this stuff, okay, but they
were the first in the early sixties, and you know
they said they saw and we're not abducted initially, but
then later through hypnosis started remembering these things that happened. Yeah,
and there there, that was the first abduction case. It
(31:59):
was written up in the ball Us in Globe and
then there was a book called um the Interrupted Journey.
Because it had a really huge impact on their lives,
they started suffering psychological diservices, they're they're big problems among them.
After this UM and then it was made for TV movie.
Mr James Earl Jones played Barney Hill, did a great
job UM and from that moment on, this kind of
(32:20):
UM established checklist. Almost of UM traits of an abduction
were generated UM things like you're you're being taken against
your will, UM, you're being probed or experimented them the
tractor beam tractor beam, UM, the UH, the the your noise,
(32:47):
the the losing time was another big one, the Hills
lost two hours UM and then having to deal with this,
And there were actual studies of abductees in the nineties
because it was such a such a weird significant thing
that people were saying, like, it's consistent, which is the
weird thing. UM. So this guy UH named Richard McNally,
who's a Harvard psychologist, conducted some physiological experiments on people
(33:10):
who said they've been abducted, and they showed similar symptoms
to people with post traumatic stress disorder. So there's definitely
something going on. But whether or not it was UM
than being abducted, or if they were suffering from some
other trauma is what was at the heart of the matter, right, Yeah,
and there's been some pretty good explanations for what was
(33:31):
behind this whole abduction phenomenon that's kind of died off now,
which is weird if you think about it, right. Yeah.
Susan Blackmore is a is a famous skeptic, and she
did a little experiment in the mid nineteen nineties with
a man named Michael Persinger. He's a neuroscientist, and he
claims that all kinds of weird phenomenon with the body
(33:52):
can be explained by uh, excessive firing of the temporal lobes.
And so the only thing that was missing, as no
one had ever really tried to replicate this in an experiment.
So Susan Blackmore said, dude, took me up to this
stuff and fire away unless see what happened. She said,
um that she had the sensation she was being pulled
stretched by her leg to the ceiling um. She was
(34:14):
suddenly like very very angry, and then after that she's
suddenly very fearful. So basically the guy proved to her,
and then she went and told the world in this
New Scientist article that yes, if you can mess with
somebody's temporal lobe firing using magnets. Um, you you can
get them to think all sorts of crazy stuff. Well,
(34:34):
she basically at the end of the experiment said, I
was so out of myself that if someone would have
told me you were inducted by an alien, she said,
I probably would have believed it. Right, And she's a skeptic,
so it probably that's a that's a good explanation. But
then you you have to ask, well, what's what is
exactly exerting this magnetism on people's brains to cause this
(34:57):
temporal lobe firing. So it's okay, I explain, and probably
better than anything. Is um sleep paralysis? Right or false awakenings? Yeah?
Sleep paralysis? You know, does anyone have that? Sleep paralysis?
Your wife apparently that's what you wake up and your
you can't move, Yeah, when you wake Your skeletal muscles
are normally paralyzed while you're sleeping, but every once in
(35:19):
a while you can wake up and your muscles don't
kind of wake up first, so you can't move, but
you you don't really know what's going on. Your groggy
hallucinations of a company too, right, yeah, usually and very stuff, yes,
and um, so it's a very fearful thing. UM. And
then if you are the type to dream about sex, right,
that kind of adds that probing maybe idea because the
(35:42):
whole thing, so sleep paralysis is a pretty good explanation, um.
And then the false awakening is another good one, where
you wait, you're dreaming that you've woken up, and it's
pretty common actually, UM. And that I think the thing
that gives um gravity to this explanation is that the
most extreme abduction reports UM always began with the people sleeping.
(36:06):
Oh really yeah, so it's entirely possible if people were confused. Well.
There's also correlation though between UFO sidings and what was
he talking about seismic events? Is he said that, um,
he believes earthquakes might trigger this magnetism and people wake
up in their bed they think they're being abducted. But
what about the people in the cars and out in
(36:26):
the fields. We're not gonna figure this out right now,
I was gonna say, I think a good way to
wrap this up is to say that we are wholly
unqualified to offer any explanation of what was drawing on. UM.
But at the very least, it was interesting, and it
was a wild and crazy time. It was a good
ride there, agreed, and I think this bears some follow up.
(36:47):
We gotta hit area fifty one. We gotta get into
the abductions a little more too. Yeah, one day. That's
it you anymore. I got nothing else on this one.
That's it. That's the UFOs. We thank you very much.
Thank you. Let's again so um. If any of you
ever want to get in touch with us, you can
(37:07):
send us an email. I want you to wrap it
up spanking on the bottom and send it to stuff
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Thank you, yeah,
and then uh, thanks for coming out to on a
rainy Monday morning. For moral on this and thousands of
(37:28):
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn
more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff
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