Somewhere in the Skies - BONUS HOLIDAY UFO ROUNDTABLE!

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

On a very special Holiday edition of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan joins Micah Hanks, Jason McClellan, and Maureen Elsberry for a roundtable discussion about... you guessed it...UFOs! Originally broadcast on The Gralien Report, hosted by Micah Hanks, the discussion finds all the participants recalling their all-time favorite UFO cases and the one book they would recommend to anyone interested in the UFO topic. It was a fun, booze and caffeine-fueled discussion, guaranteed to ring in the New Year the right way; with friends and the ever-enigmatic mysteries that lay somewhere in the skies! Have a very Happy Holiday season and a bright and brilliant New Year!  The Gralien Report: CLICK HERE Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Opening and Closing Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with eOne Entertainment SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is sponsored by HelloFresh. To receive 50% off your first order, use promo code: SOMEWHERE50 at checkout by visiting www.HelloFresh.ca Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best heavyweight in the world, Frances Ngano versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific Time. Hey y'all, Ryan Spreck here.

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To contribute and to learn more, visit www.patriot.com backslash SomewhereSkies. Thank you for your support. And now on with the show. Of course, we talk about UFOs playing on this show. It's a subject near and dear to my heart. I have always enjoyed it,

but I'm interested in it more than just for reasons of enjoyment. Some of the questions I have about UFOs include, is the study of UFOs something that's worthwhile in the broader sense? I mean, can we learn things from this study? And so I wanted to do a special roundtable with some friends where we would have some fun, but we would actually have some serious discussion about the merits of UFO research. You know, some of the things that we might stand to gain from studying it, what we may have already learned, and what the state of affairs in the UFO community is at present.

So joining me are three of my favorite people, full disclosure here. And we're going to call this a rogue planet roundtable today, because all three of the folks here are contributors to Rogue Planet. If you don't know what that is, I'm sure you'll find out here in mere a moment. So we'll go ahead and lead off with Jason McClellan, my man, my friend. And I believe the founder of Rogue Planet, it's a podcast, it's a website, and it's really kind of a state of mind. Welcome to the show, my man. Well, thank you, Micah.

It's exciting to be back on the show, and I've missed you, buddy. I have missed you, too. Trust me, we're going to do this more often. Also joining us, another Rogue Planet contributor, another wonderful friend of mine, Ms. Maureen Ellsbury, how are you? I'm great. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you so much for ringing that Sasquatch Nutcracker in a hot time. Oh, yeah, you know it.

That's the kind of thing that we. I mean, you've got to have the right gear if you're going to have a serious discussion like this. But no serious discussion on UFOs would be complete without another friend and fellow podcaster, also a rogue planet contributor, Mr. Ryan Sprague of the Somewhere in the Skies podcast. How you doing, my man? I'm doing great, Mike. I'm doing great, Mike. on my second cup of the world's strongest coffee.

So I'm hyper and ready to talk about whatever you want, my man. Let's do this. Let's talk about that coffee for a moment. What is the deal with this coffee you keep talking about? I've got to try some of this. Absolutely. I stumbled upon this on the East Coast. A couple years ago, it's called Death Wish Coffee.

So it's right there in the name, man. The World's Strongest Coffee. I don't know what makes it that way, but I can definitely attest that after one cup of this, if you do not have something to eat, you're going to be shaken like a leaf, man. So definitely check them out if you can, deathwish coffee.com,

shameless plug, I guess. But I love it, man. I thought it would be perfect for someone like you. Sounds like some delicious sludge. Yes, it is. It is darker than midnight. I can tell you that much. That's right.

Straight from the troughs in the back of the Mosisley canteen on Tatooine, we have Death Wish coffee, not Death Stick coffee, by the way. But, well, you know, I am a coffee drinking. definitely going to check that out because, I mean, this sounds like something I would really enjoy. My only question is, are we talking about dark and strong in terms of the roast or in terms of the caffeination? Both, absolutely both. I mean, I'm usually a light to medium roast guy myself being a barista here in Los Angeles. I know my stuff about coffee, but when I first

had this one, it hit me like a ton of bricks, man. It's so dark, so bold. So if that's your thing, I think you're really going to enjoy it. And it is from one to 100 within seconds. Wow. Okay, cool. Well, I'm going to remember that. Now, Maureen, of course, you're in Seattle. That's kind of like the coffee capital of the West Coast.

So, I mean, I'm presuming you're also a coffee drinker, right? Unfortunately, so the amount of coffee I go through at work is insane, but I'm trying to get a little bit more into the tea this winter. I kind of balance myself out. Uh-huh. I hear you. Well, I tried that, too. It doesn't work.

save yourself the trouble, stick with the coffee. You'll thank me later, my friend. Hey, listen, for folks at home who don't know what Rogue Planet is, normally you'd say that for the end of the conversation, but Jason, I want to come over to you for a minute, and just kind of have you tell us about Rogue Planet because all of you guys are contributors to that endeavor. My brother also has been a contributor to Rogue Planet over the years.

I'm sure I'll probably contribute some stuff, including a plug for you right now. So, hey, let's hear about it. What is it, and what is its relevance to UFOs and sci-fi and all the stuff that you guys talk about? Absolutely. So Rogue Planet is our weird company that we started all the way back in 2013, I guess. And this is our media company, is the simple way to put it. But more creatively, it is our weird and wild world, just where we explore all of the strange. We like to say that we explore and celebrate all the strange. So we're talking about UFOs. We're talking about Bigfoot. We're talking about Bigfoot. We're talking about ghosts. Just anything weird and wild, just the mysteries of the universe, we're all exploring them together, and that's what Rogue Planet does.

I love it. And part of the reason I love it is because, you know, I try to be a very critical thinker, very skeptically oriented. But, you know, I find that there's this kind of a weird breakdown where, you know, I could be as skeptical as I can be at times, but I can't dismiss all of the evidence that we see in terms of, let's take a subject like I know we're going to get into your UFOs. you can maybe explain 99%. And I think that the best researchers out there are of a similar kind of skeptical mindset, but then there are those minority of reports that don't seem to have a simple explanation. And so the weird divide that I see is that people who go to the far extremes of ideological skepticism, I mean, I feel like there's a leap in logic that's involved there. I mean, for instance, and I want to ask you guys all here in a moment about your favorite UFO cases

and also the best book on the subject that you would bring to the table to get the conversation started. Kind of like a who is your daddy and what does he do kind of a thing here. But for me, I'll lead off and tell you, the case that comes to mind for me that is kind of a groundbreaking landmark case that makes us all kind of have to step back and go look. I don't think we can easily deny that there's a phenomena here. Is the 2000 St. Clair County UFO incident from Illinois? and this of course involved several police officers from different departments throughout southern Illinois late in the evening or actually early in the morning all observing and some of them at fairly close range a large triangle shaped UFO now the thing is if it were a one-off and they were all saying they're seeing some sort of a strange object that had never appeared in other instances in UFO literature in terms of the size the dimensions the appearance and certain characteristics of its of its flight or behavior you know that would be one thing but this is a kind of of UFO, these large triangles, and of course, maybe the best book on this subject was written by David Marler. I guess Flying Triangles, an estimate of the situation was that book. I recommend it

to everybody out there interested in UFOs, but to me that was like that benchmark where it's like, okay, look, not only do we have law enforcement sightings, not only do we have their real-time audio recordings that were released in the police dispatch, not only do we have a book like David's where he talks about the radar data that was not only requested by some agency, that information wasn't released to him, but I mean, an agency, some government agency requested radar data from the nearby airport. But there were also civilian sightings, too, that came out years later. And what it all seems to point to is not only a consistent kind of UFO, but very credible reports from law enforcement officers. And yet I continue to see people who are ideological skeptics go, it was just a blimp.

Nothing to see here. So I really like people who embrace the strange, but who go about looking at these things in a way that says, hey, what can we learn from them? So I want to go to each of you guys now. do you have favorite UFO cases and maybe a book that comes to mind? Maureen, let's start with you. Ladies first. Favorite case, the reason why it's a favorite or what you think we learn from it, and then a book you think everybody should read. That's a really tough one because there's a lot of cases where I was really intrigued by and followed really closely, but that I don't necessarily have made up opinion really strictly.

Like, I believe this is really unusual or maybe there's an explanation. but one that really hasn't been talked about a lot that we covered back in 2009 and I honestly don't know if there's been an update because this was largely covered in Spanish and I would like to look into this further it was this cigar-shaped object that passed over a dam in Argentina

and about 100 people witnessed it and it caused the entire town blackout like a few minutes later and cell phones were having problems and it caused all this electrical interference. And it was published a bit about in the papers, but there is really not much research that's been done since then. And people feel free to send me information if this case has been solved and identified

because I haven't found anything about it again. But I think I'm really fascinated by these cases that are open-ended that we don't actually have answers for still that seem to somehow disappear into, you know, the Netherlands, like the Chicago A Herre incident or in, what was that, 2008? I believe so. You know, all these sightings that we still don't have like a logical explanation for that we're cited by lots of people. Now, whether it's extraterrestrial in nature or government, we don't know.

and for that reason, one of my favorite books on the subject, not necessarily my favorite, I cannot answer that question. Is Leslie Kane's books, UFOs, pilots, and generals go on the record? She covers a lot of these cases. And I think the reason I'm citing this book is because if somebody who isn't very well versed in the UFO phenomenon or, you know, the strange at all, picks up this book, they're going to read it and say,

wow, this is actually something interesting and doesn't sound crazy. You know, a lot of UFO books, you start reading it and you say, what the hell is this? You know, so I think that's my suggestion to like, especially people just getting into it, is read something that makes you question it and leads you a little bit deeper down the rabbit hole in a easily digestible way. Very well said. I love that book too. And, you know, Leslie was kind of, I mean, not only really a trailblazer in terms of the modern approach to this subject by writing a book and not being a career uphologist or somebody who does the lecture circuit or something, but rather being a reporter who was interested in this and who wanted to cover this in a very strictly journalistic capacity. I mean, she really set a precedent when she wrote that book, but then also was instrumental with regard to the New York Times article being a co-author that essentially brought to public attention.

It may not have been the first place where the so-called Pentagon UFO program was mentioned, but it certainly brought it to a broad audience in a respectable periodical like the New York Times. So Leslie Keene is just a truly a trailblazer to me in every capacity. But the thing I love about that book is right there in the beginning. She says, look, we're not trying to tell you that these things are extraterrestrial, but merely that that is one interpretation. And even though I have really strayed further and further from that over the years, some of the more recent dialogue on this subject has kind of caused me to go, but, you know, until we know exactly what we're dealing with, I guess that has to remain on the table.

It is maybe you could say at least as likely or more likely an interpretation of some reports than, you know, than a lot of other pet theories that exist. So, I mean, she's been very careful in how she says, look, we need to not completely dismiss that. We just need to be careful in making that connection. So really, I mean, we don't know what UFOs are. This is a subject that is interesting, and I think it's worthy of further study. And she's done probably the best job communicating back to the public. So I completely agree. Ryan, let's come over to you.

A favorite book and a favorite case that really is kind of instructive or for other reasons you find it to be important. Sure. I mean, as for cases, I think for me, back in 2013, I sent one of my first FOIA requests for any information on UFOs. and most of them came back with nothing, but I landed the 1976 Tehran UFO incident. That was the one that I actually got documentation back on. And for anyone in your audience that doesn't know about this case, this happened in Tehran, Iran, back in 76,

where a bunch of people started reporting seeing these bright, brilliant lights in the sky over the city, and they actually sent out some F4 phantoms to look into this, to see what it was. The pilots went up, saw this bright object, all their instrumentation started to fail. They headed back to base, and then they sent up the lieutenant, Parvice Jafari, to investigate himself. He wanted to go up there and see what was going on. He goes up, and he has the same problem. His instrumentation starts to fail. Communication back at the base, you know, got really, really bad at the time. And he started tailing this object. To him, it was diamond-shaped, very bright, and another smaller object actually descended from the large. larger object, started following his plane. And he had, you know, kind of a dog fight with this thing. It actually locked on to him at one point. He does a negative dive, outmaneuvers the thing,

gets a lock on it, and then it disappears out of sight. They go and investigate this the next day, and they can't find anything. But because our planes were being loaned to, I ran at the time, the DIA and a lot of our intelligence agencies did get involved. And they wanted to do their own investigation. So I was able to get Defense Intelligence Agency documentation on this event, and this was many, many years after Project Blue Book was closed, so we know they actually were investigating UFO events after Project Blue Book closed. So I always look at this one, man, in terms of documentation, in terms of pilot witnesses. And this is it for me. This is the one that I always go to. What it was? I can't tell you. Unfortunately, we lost Parviz Chafari a couple years ago,

but he has gone on record. He spoke at the National Press Club about this event, and I still go to it when anyone asks me, what is a documented case to look at where something actually happened? So that's it for me. In terms of a book, I actually have one that's upcoming in 2019, and that's American Cosmic by Diana Pesalka. This is an amazing book that I had the privilege of getting a copy of recently to review.

And she is a religious studies, professor, I believe in North Carolina, of all places. And it's a book about the study of the subject of UFOs and sort of the belief that we put around that. You know, she's interviewed tons of religious scholars, scientists. She's met with some people that we know now as the invisible college, this group of scientists who come together every year to discuss the UFO phenomenon sort of in the shadows. And the book is called American Cosmosmosmosmosmosmosmosmosmosmosmosmosmos. And the book is called American Cosmic UFO's Religion and Technology. It was a fascinating read if you're one that really wants to look at the sort of cultural aspect of uphology and everything in between. I highly

suggest checking it out. And it's going to release in February of this upcoming year. Fascinating. I really want to see that also. Maybe we'll have to get her on the podcast, too, to talk about that. Jason, before we come over to you, I want to make a couple of points, too, about the Tehran incident, because that one's always fascinated me as well. Ryan, I didn't know that you had actually obtained additional information pertaining to that via FOIA. So kudos to you. Again, that's one of the most interesting areas of UFO research right now where we are continuing to find new things. I've spoken with you, of course, just now about that. But of course, in the past on this show, I've had Paul Dean on, and he found two similar instances with programs that date back to the

Vietnam era have fear and lethal chaser with the names of these Vietnam era studies where basically they were trying to ascertain what these strange egg-shaped objects that gave of blue light as they flew at incredible speed over the Viet Cong, you know, some of the actual battlefront during the conflict. I mean, what these things were. They were trying to determine if this was some sort of enemy technology. They were pretty, you know, quickly able to determine this was not something that the enemy possessed, but they couldn't identify these aircraft. And they had all kinds of different state-of-the-art technology for that time, including, or including laser technology and telescopic arrays, all kinds of things that they were using to try and track

and discern information about what these objects were. And so again, when we saw the conclusion of Project Blue Book in around 68, there were obviously iterations of government studies, even if they were limited in scope, that continued in the decades there after leading right up to the Pentagon program. But the question I always have about these cases, with regard to like Tehran, for instance, we have the little object that comes off of the main primary aircraft

and then begins to kind of play cat and mouse. You see that an awful lot in UFO literature, where someone will begin chasing an unidentified aircraft or object, and then the object will circle back around and get behind them, where it will go directly for them and be on a collision course. What's that all about? I mean, is it completely just a tactical maneuvering? Is there a curiosity?

One has to wonder exactly what the mindset of the, what do you call it, a pilot? We don't know, but, I mean, what is the motive or the intention of the aircraft when they do this? For me, man, I honestly think it's the probe of a person. probe. I think the main mothership, as we'll call it, is a probe sent here maybe to monitor us. I don't know. If we're going to get really hypothetical and say it is alien, maybe that's it. And then this is another object coming out to scope out the surrounding circumference of the possible threat to itself. I don't know. I know that's a little out there. But again, I'm on my third cup of this coffee here. Well, you know, again, the hypothesis of these aircraft being probes of some kind coming from a larger mothership that may even be outside of Earth's atmosphere. I mean, that goes all the way back to the early days of uphology. So it's not a new idea, but it was an interesting one at the time it was put forth. I still find it interesting today.

Again, we just need to look at all the possibilities. A skeptical interpretation of that incident was that there was simply a planet, Venus, probably. That was the light, and that the equipment malfunction was just because there were rickety old jets. U.S. made aircraft, by the way, but they basically had equipment failings. You know, that happens all the time in government. Guys, nothing to see here. Jason, my man, let's talk about your favorite case and then the book that you'd recommend, too. I think I'd probably go with Colaris.

Coleris is a Brazilian island, and there was a wave or flap, I guess, of UFO incidents that took place there around 1977. and this is one of the freakier UFO cases, UFO instances, because these UFOs physically harmed people. They were balls of light. They shot lasers at people and burned skin and caused paralysis and other health issues. Government was called in, the military, because the nearby villages where people were freaking out,

they didn't know what to do, so they wanted military assistance. So the military came in and launched this operation to figure out what these things were that were flying around in the skies and shooting people. So the military conducted an investigation there. The military operatives themselves witnessed these UFOs. Some of them diving in and coming out of the water, just really remarkable stuff. Allegedly, they also got hundreds of photos and video of these things, too.

That has been heavily researched, heavily documented. I think some of the government files on that operation have come to light now. I haven't personally seen them, but I know that researchers in Brazil have been working with the government for years trying to get some of that stuff out to the public. AJ J. J. J. J. J. Jvayard is one of those individuals in Brazil who worked tirelessly with the military to get that stuff out. The general who, I think he was the general, who was leading that investigation at the time, He is now deceased, but I think he was very vocal about the whole flap as well.

So he went on record talking about it. But again, one of the weirdest to me, one of the freakyest, because when you hear about UFO, UFO sightings, UFO cases, it's usually somebody saw a UFO and that was that. But when you have these UFOs physically attacking people, that's where it gets freaky. Absolutely. What about a book? A book. Would it be tacky?

See, I think it would be tacky for me. on this show to suggest the UFO singularity. It would be tacky. All right. So I won't go there. But, you know, not to be a cheater, but I have to echo what Maureen said. That's always my go-to when people ask about a UFO book. I always refer people to Leslie Cain's, UFOs, generals, pilots, and government officials

go on the record because that is a very straight-laced, just, you know, straightforward book about credible people in their own words talking about their personal experiences and these aren't just random people that nobody knows these are high-ranking military and government officials and pilots so their testimony lends a little more credibility like Maureen said it's more digestible

to the general public and I think it's a great entry like Maureen said to start going down that rabbit hole but it is a very very easy entry into UFO studies and you paints the picture of, hey, this isn't just some crazy thing that only a few weirdos or claim to have seen UFOs.

All these high-ranking military and government officials are also seeing these things. Yeah, again, I couldn't express to you how glad I am that two of our panelists here from Rogue Planet have recommended that book because I think it should be the go-to for the modern era.

It's a very strict and sober kind of look at what this phenomenon could be. It's not a bunch of speculation. I want to come back to the Caloris case here in just a second here, because that was mentioned by one of my favorite UFO researchers of the last several decades in one of his books and also a book that I would recommend. But you know, you mentioned a book that I wrote, the UFO singularity. And it's funny because that was a really speculative book. And yet, of course, the books that I tend to recommend are much more objective and almost go about UFO studies in a journalistic and also is a historical method, you know, or they imply a historical methodology, as Leslie Kane did. and also as David Marla does with his triangle UFO's book.

But, you know, I feel in a lot of ways, like with the UFO singularity, almost failed in terms of trying to get my point across. And I'm sure I may have critics out there that would laugh and rejoice at hearing me say that. But let me qualify my statement, you know, because I think that, you know, in looking at this phenomena, we all too often go to the whole ET and extraterrestrial, you know, the ETH or the E.T. hypothesis that that is the best and most likely explanation. for UFOs. It may or may not be. Again, I say it remains on the table. I'm not so sure that it's the only hypothesis we should be looking at. And so, you know, I wrote a book that was looking at other

hypotheses. But again, I'm the kind of person. I don't know about you guys. Maybe you guys can talk about this. But I like to put forward ideas for sake of conversation so that we can try and reorient our thought about a subject without necessarily endorsing it and saying, therefore, that is what I think these things are. I guess what I took for granted with my own writing on this subject is that most UFO researchers who are speculative do tend to kind of marry their own belief system to what they're talking about. I don't. I never really have because I don't know what these things are. So that's the reason I really, I'm with you on the Leslie Keene book because she doesn't commit to any theories.

But there is a side to this where I think we do need to speculate because we haven't quite figured out what this phenomena is. And science does proceed in such a way that sometimes we have to speculate and form hypotheses. but then we also have to institute a test for falsehood. We have to be able to falsify our theories so that we can rule out what is least likely and work toward a more probable conclusion. With UFOs, I haven't seen a whole lot of methodology, and I haven't seen a whole lot of careful consideration put toward this subject over the last several decades in the context of a collective group of euphologists

saying, look, let's all come together and let's try to reach a consensus. on what we think this is. Some people would argue that, no, no, come on. They all think it's aliens, but obviously they don't. I mean, I think that there's so much divided opinion about what this phenomena represents. Marian, I'll come over to you for a moment. I mean, is there some way maybe that we could, that we could try to orient our thought on this subject a little better that we can find common ground and therefore as a community kind of say, okay, we as the UFO community, we all kind of have different ideas, but we think this is what's most likely. How can we do that? I wish that we possibly could, but I think that currently the way people's mindsets is a lot of the time within the UFO community is I believe what I believe.

And so I'm going to set out to prove that this, my theory is true, which is not the way it should be. What it should be is like you said, let's all try to figure out what this is. That's the way to solve it. Yeah, it'd be great if, you know, I think outside of, of, you know, the mutual UFO network who has some process within how they investigate things, there should be, I think, like,

hey, let's all get together. We're a young guard of UFO researchers, you know, and develop a process. And let's all try to figure this out. Let's break the research up. You take this angle.

You take this angle. Let's rule out all the possible explanations before we settle on something. Let's try and figure this out. It'd be great if we could. could do more like, you know, SETI even does crowdfunded research. But unfortunately, within this community, we have that personal prejudice that people have on their own beliefs, so to speak. And I'm not sure how we fight against that.

I think it would have to be, because I guarantee you, let's say we work out this process and the five of us, there's not five of us, the four of us, you know, analyze, case and we break up research and we reach out to other people in the community and we come to a conclusion based on all of our research and we present that to the general public i guarantee you we're going to have people um coming back and saying no that's not it it's definitely aliens or it's definitely this they visited me and this happened and i know everything and you know nothing so I think that's the biggest problem within the research community currently. Yeah, I think it extends to, I mean, even the sciences.

I remember seeing a article by then, I guess he was the editor of the Lancet Journal. And he had said that unfortunately, a lot of what we publish could be called pseudoscience because he said the peer review process is not always working in terms of scientific accuracy at often is working in terms of bias confirmation on part of the peer reviewers. And he said, that's not good science. We need to try and find a way around this. I see it's less often discussed in relation to science journals. But if you go online and just do a search for problems with peer review and problems with scientific inquiry, there are countless articles that will show up. So, I mean, I would just say that UFology is no different in that regard. It's simply that, at least

in mainstream scientific circles, you know, when science is being applied, slide to the study of natural phenomenon in our universe. What scientists do try to find is, well, in addition to a test for falsehood, and they falsify their results and work toward conclusions in that way, then they eventually come to a consensus and peer review helps reach that. So, again, it's problematic for me because I wouldn't want to say that science or the scientific method has failed us with UFOs, but I do think that the problem seems to be twofold, that, hey, there's plenty of anecdotal evidence suggestive of some sort of phenomena. And yet for some strange reason, for the longest time, the consensus attitude has been

that what the scientific method leads us to is that Kites, weather balloons, and stars, or planets can explain all these cases. That seems extremely illogical to me. I want to come back, as I said, Jason, to the Kalaris Brazil cases, because in terms of people who have tried to apply science to this subject, there was one who wrote about that case, and he included photographs of his investigations and went there on site to look into it. This was, of course, Jacques Valet, and he talks about this in his book, Confrontations. Now, no UFO researcher is perfect. I get it. But Jacques Valet was a man who tried to look at this subject scientifically. He tried to bring science to this, and he was kind of, if not led to any specific conclusions. He was led away from the ET

hypothesis with his own investigation in the cases like that and myriad others that he looked at over the years. I mean, Jacques Valet kind of made some news this year because he basically said, I'm leaving for good this time. And he also said, you know, the UFO community coming back to what Maureen was talking about, it's just too vain. There doesn't seem to be enough in terms of serious research among this community for it to justify me wanting to be involved. Do you have any thoughts about Jacques Valet or, or, you know, some of his perspectives warranted or unwarranted, in your opinion? Well, he's certainly an individual who has spent so much time. And he's a investigating this mysterious phenomenon and related phenomena. And I highly value his opinion on things.

We've certainly seen, you know, a bit of metamorphosis over the years with new, new thoughts, new ideas, and changing opinions. But that's to be expected when you continue investigating something. I mean, if you're not open to letting your ideas be changed, then you've already made up your mind and your research is sort of futile at that point, right? As far as him claiming that he's done with UFO, he's done with research, I will see, but I understand that too.

I mean, after investing so much time into this topic and not really getting, you know, 100% confirmation of anything back, not getting any of your speculation, any of those answers found, it's frustrating.

And that's really what exploring the unknown is all about. You're most likely, not going to get 100% confirmation of thoughts that you put forward. It's always going to be this endless chase. I happen to love the chase. That's what makes it fun for me. I like the constant exploration of the unknown, hoping to find answers, but knowing that I most likely won't ever get those answers.

Well, and I think we also know for a fact that we have not seen the last of Jacques Valet with UFO stuff. We will be seeing him soon with stuff. So just keep your eyes peeled. Yeah, I've heard some whispers as well. And I hope, you know, again, that we will continue to hear from Jacques Valley, wherever he may appear. Because for my own part, he's kind of my favorite UFO researcher. Again, he's not infallible in his judgments.

He hasn't figured out what it's all about. He has had to resort to speculations at times like others, too. But, I mean, I always enjoyed his books. Dimensions, confrontations. And my favorite, I think, really, of them all is the third one, Revelations. was valet at his most skeptical. But I mean, those books, anyone who has not read the so-called Alien Contact trilogy, please check those out. Again, a guy who, you know, for all any Ufologies or any individual's shortcomings, he really, truly tried to bring a scientific approach to this.

And truly, I think, also achieved one thing, if nothing else, that was thinking outside the box. Ryan, I want to come back to you for a moment because with valet on our minds here, you had kind of mentioned the invisible college, you know, the idea of people behind the scenes. who are interested in uphology. I know from my own experience, I've got a lot of friends in academia and people who have backgrounds in government, things like this,

who are very interested in this subject, but they can't really go on record and talk about it publicly, and there are obvious reasons why there's still that cultural stigma. Do you think that maybe with the current environment, the shift that we saw since last December, the knowledge of the Pentagon UFO program,

which we'll talk a little more about here in a moment, but do you think that as a result of Leslie Keene's reporting on this and some of the cultural shift that we've seen, that it's becoming any more acceptable for people in academic or government positions, or people in positions with education, whatever else, the business sector. Can people credibly talk about this publicly now? Or are we getting any closer to a point where they can? Oh, absolutely.

I mean, I've sort of deemed this to the star syndrome, as we've heard. You know, people are more comfortable talking about this topic, Especially mainstream media. I mean, we have so many scientists and people working for NASA who have written papers in the past, God, five months about these things. You look at the Omuamua thing, and you have credible scientists hypothesizing this could be alien. Now, of course, that's what mainstream media latches onto, that word alien, when there's many other hypotheses out there as well. But I do see a shift. I do see this topic.

the ridicule factor shedding. And I look forward to seeing more credible scientists, academics coming forward. I mean, we recently learned there's going to be a course taught on uphology. There's one already here in California, and there's many others that are going to be making the college circuit soon. So I think it's really interesting that shift that's happened since this story came out. Again, I don't think it's going to bring us any closer to an answer. but like Jason said, that journey is worth it for me. I mean, you know, open minds couldn't do it to the stars. I doubt they're going to do it.

We can't solve the UFO mystery. I don't see that being the most important thing about all this. I see the journey and our personal revelations as that most important thing in all of this. So, yeah, that's where I stand on that. As with any good hypothetical that I'm not completely willing or ready to marry my entire thought process too. I mean, I'll just put it out there. it there have been times where I've thought about, well, again, really, we'll borrow a term that Valet used, the control mechanism idea. What if UFOs are a control mechanism? And in that regard,

I might kind of riff on that without explicitly, you know, putting it how Valet did when he talked about it. But I have wondered if whatever this phenomenon is, whatever its ultimate importance were, if all that humans could possibly learn from it, were actually just studying it, thinking about it and then the result of our thinking about this phenomena could actually lead to advancements in science. For example, let's say that all UFOs are really just swamp gas, the planet Venus, you know, Kites, weather balloons and all this stuff. I mean, I really don't think that's the most logical conclusion. But if they were, and nonetheless, there was a cultural phenomena where people thought they were seeing aircraft that could do extraordinary things. And

then we try to replicate those things. I mean, look, once again, to the stars, with or without UFO's existing, one of their stated objectives is to try and create this technology now. What if scientific advancement results from our misperception of a phenomena? And what if ultimately the UFOs don't even have to exist for them to have tremendous significance on the furtherance of the sciences? And eventually, the path that that's going to take us on in the future is humanity. With you being the guy behind rogue planet, primarily, Jason, why don't we come over to you on that one? The influence that UFOs could have on us, whether or not they exist. Your thoughts? I think we've already seen it. I mean, look, look how much UFOs have influenced popular

culture. I think, I don't know whether it's bad, but it certainly is in fact. It's caused the whole industry. I mean, UFO lore is so massive, but, you know, look at Hollywood, look at a nice roundtable we're having now. You know, it fuels some conversations. so much thought, so much just guessing and hypothesizing about what could be. But I think UFO research has gotten entirely too overly complicated at times and too simplistic and others. But I do like to remind people that in thinking about this unknown thing, these random things that are flying around in our airspace, they don't all, and most of the most of the

most likely won't all have the same explanation. They're not necessarily and most likely aren't related, as many people like to say the easy answer, oh, it's all related, it's all the same thing. Well, that's an assumption. We don't know that. And if we're bringing extraterrestrials into it, it's very unlikely.

If there are extraterrestrial spacecraft scene all over the globe all the time, it's possible they're all from the same extraterrestrial. But again, that's just a guess. Yeah. So there's a lot of assumptions going on, and really that's all we can do is make assumptions. But in doing, we need to be conscious of making those assumptions. And like you said, Mike, it's important to be that objective observer, the objective researcher, keep that journalistic mind and the cautious skepticism and value the truth more than our personal beliefs.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, speaking of personal beliefs, this is something that's kind of been bothering me a little bit. I started off with the news of the Pentagon UFO program. Luis Elizondo, his involvement, you know, now working with Two the Stars, Tom the Long, somebody that I think everybody here is well familiar with and is, you know, in some capacities even worked with. But I think that the concern I began to have a few months ago, and it is kind of continued to kind of fester since then has been that, again, with the extraordinary work that Jeremy Corbelle and others have been doing with his documentarian approach to this, you know, going to these individuals and working with people like respected journalist George Knapp reporting on this and putting new information out there, archival footage and data and things like this with regard to the Skimwalker Ranch and Bob Bigelow's involvement and all this.

One thing that definitely, and by the way, again, I can't say enough good things about Corbelle and his work right now. He's done such a great job with his documentaries. But one of the things that's kind of brought to light is Bob Bigelow's involvement in all this. And of course, that was also brought to our attention by Harry Reid and some of the others who were really helping to secure the funding for the Pentagon UFO program. So where's the problem here? Well, here is one of my concerns. There's so much focus put on the fact that the Pentagon was studying UFOs. But we also know that a lot of that money was given to guys like Bob Bigelow and that he outsourced through Mufon.

We know, at least, to a fairly good degree, what kinds of research Mufon was doing. It's not to say that it was bad, but I mean, I don't think we can say that they learned a whole lot more about this phenomena. than any of us are talking about or know about right here. I'm a little skeptical of the idea that there was information that Mufon or anybody else, Bigelow, whoever, obtained that was then being sent back to the Pentagon, or let alone that the Pentagon had its own independent government side studies that were being done irrespective of all the aforementioned that has brought forth any new knowledge about UFOs.

And if we look at, for instance, the footage from the USS Nimitz incident, fascinating story, but even with this high-tech, I mean, extremely complicated, visual system known as the Raytheon at Fleer system that's being utilized by the Navy Jets in question. Highly advanced technology and yet the footage that we have still doesn't really help us piece together many more pieces of the puzzle. Am I wrong to say that I'm concerned about the hype that has really kind of followed the reporting on the Pentagon UFO program? Is there more to this story or is there actually maybe a lot less than has been made by those who've been talking about it? Maureen, let's start with you.

What are your thoughts about the whole program and really the efficacy and the merit of it? I think that, unfortunately, a lot of the program, the idea behind it, you know, have we advanced our research? No. However, I think the merit of it is getting the public to take it more seriously, which will in turn advanced studies as we go along. At least we hope, you know, we have a lot more people looking at this seriously. and, you know, the fact of the matter is, is the government's been studying UFOs for, you know, since the beginning of time, so are other countries.

You know, there are a ton of official public organizations that are in other countries that are researching UFOs. And I know that even just recently, Lou El-Zondo announced, well, hinted that perhaps we might see a public UFO study here in the near future from our government. Right. Whether that actually happens or not, you know, doubtful. So in terms, yes, there's a lot of effort and a lot of money going into things and we're not, we're still treading water, basically.

But I think there's merit to it in the sense, like I said, that it is bringing a more positive eye on the phenomenon. on and people are starting to realize that, you know, the idea isn't crazy that there are unknown objects flying around and we don't know what they are, are they extraterrestrial, are they military or what's going on? Because as far as I'm concerned, any object we don't know what it is flying around our aerospace is a potential threat. Is it a threat?

We don't know what it is. So, yeah, I think it's a fine line. So we're, I think, analyzing how that money is being spent and, yes, was move on the right place for Bigelow to be, you know, outsourcing work to, probably not because there's a lot of bias within the organization. I'm always one of those people that, you know, send it to, like, if you're sending samples of metal objects or something that you think might be possibly extraterrestrial in nature, don't send it to a lab where the person is active in the UFO phenomenon because you're setting yourself up for failure in that case, I think, personally. You know, I think there has to be so much objectivity and research within this whole field of study that we have to be very careful where we're putting our dollars.

I don't know. That's my two cents on it. I completely agree. And just two things I want to say. One, Louis L.L.L.E.L.L.L.L. Alizondo, you know, I think he's been a fantastic spokesperson. Every media appearance I've seen him do, he's done a remarkable job talking about, you know, what little we know, but, you know, again, phrasing this in terms of, look, we're not saying they are this, but there are two points we need to keep in mind that we can't identify them and that, yes, whatever that is, even if there's no apparent threat that's been indicated in terms of the actions or capabilities, nonetheless, this is something that should be of national security importance. And it's shifted my whole

perspective. I mean, I really look at UFOs primarily now as, you know, a subject of national security interest, even though there is no apparent threat. Or maybe I should say no threat apparent. But again, we still have to look at this in those terms. Ryan, I want to come over to you. I mean, again, your general thoughts on the efficacy of the Pentagon program and related studies and maybe the best that we've seen out of it or the worst. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I would have to agree. I think this A-TIP thing has been highly exaggerated. I recently spoke to John Greenwald, our FOIA expert at this point. When he dug for anything on A-TIP, he found almost nothing.

And that's not to say the program didn't exist. We know it existed. But to John's credit, he was able to find out that, you know, the media was the one pushing that this was advanced aerospace threat identification, whereas the actual program was aviation threat. So right there, right immediately, the mainstream media was pushing something else. They were making it bigger than it had to be. Jason and I have discussed $22 million.

That's nothing. Absolutely nothing. In terms of Luis Alizando, again, yes, I agree. He's a really good spokesperson, but we have seen some blunders with this whole to the stars thing, you know, the putting up of CGI hoaxed images and little things like this. but I will speak for Jason here and he brought up this really good point to me that I didn't think about. You know, Luis Alizondo is not a UFO historian. He was hired to investigate current threats to national security in terms of these UAPs. So I think we have to keep that in mind that our head of the UFO program, he's not a UFO historian. He's not going to know every little hoaxed photo or detail to every historical UFO case.

So I think they have the best of intentions to the stars. I really, really believe that. And I think they are pushing this topic forward and getting it out there in terms of how important the actual A-TIP program is. Not much. And that's kind of where I lay in terms of that. But what are we getting out of it? A hell of a lot more than I think A-Tip ever did. So that's where I'll leave it.

Yeah, yeah. And, Jason, before I come back over to you, too, I agree. I think that the most proactive feature of this entire affair has not been what they actually achieved with said program, which seems, by the way, to have been kind of like a, I don't want to say that there was no such program, you know, but then again, how better to keep something out of the purview of FOIA than to not actually designate a program and give it an official name, which might in part, and I don't know that I've heard anybody else put it quite that way, although there's definitely been talk about that kind of idea that there may not have been one singular affair. official name or acronym because of course it first came out advanced aerospace that later was changed to aviation but then of course paul dean and i talked about this and a number of others have touched on it to the idea that there was this advanced weapons systems application program which was almost predecessor or an umbrella that encapsulated the whole at-tip thing so again the fact that we can't decide on the official name or whether there was one organization or if its name changed or the

purview or the focus changed seems to indicate to me that there was almost an intentional amorphous element to it, how better to be able to keep it off the books. And hey, like John Greenwald said, he hasn't managed to get anything via FOIA. But then again, our good friend Alejandro recently told me that I think he had filed an FOIA request as well and was told that there were like 400 or 500 requests about that same subject ahead of him. We may still be waiting on those results for a while for all we know. Paul Dean told me the same thing. There are a lot of people asking, we may have to wait and see if anything else is forthcoming. But Ryan, I definitely agree with you that even if we can't say that the scope of the program itself has given us new

information, the cultural impact of knowledge of it has seemed to shift the direction of UFO. Well, actually, I should say that in terms of making it like a household name, UFOs are kind of not only becoming something that people talk about again, but once again, there's a bit of a credibility factor. It's at least improved somewhat. Jason, it's a little sad, though, isn't it, that it takes knowledge of a government program looking at UFOs to get people to feel like they can talk about it again. Yeah, that's right.

But, you know, I mean, anytime there's a big blowup of a UFO-related story in the media, that gets people talking. I can't tell you how many times just this year, this past year, there were great UFO stories in the media, and people, I would have people at work come into my office and want to talk to me about, you know, what I thought about the UFO story. Yeah. It's just cool that that happened in a public setting, you know, completely removed from UFOs. And a lot of these people, I don't think they had any idea that I'm involved in UFOs. They just wanted to talk about it. But certainly, once they found out, the floodgates have opened. That happens.

But I find this whole program and the news of it fascinating and how rapidly it spread and really the effect it had on the UFO community. You know, I think that's where much, if not most, of the conversation about this has happened. And again, we come back to a lot of speculation, a whole lot of speculation. and people love to jump all over things that Lou Alizondo says and read, in my opinion, way too much into them, certainly more than I think he's intending. And to Ryan's point of, you know, lose knowledge on the UFO subject, again, it wasn't his job to be a UFO expert. He was just a person who allegedly was in charge of running this program of looking into

these potential threats. But, you know, even just, I think it was recently, I will say last night, is that as when we're recording this, it happened last night. George Knapp did, wrote a interview that he did with Lou Elizondo, a recent interview. And Lou mentions about how, you know, something big could potentially be a potential, like Morian at an investigation program in 2019, we'll see. he also mentioned how something about the volume of military like airplane encounters and things that are happening and documented like this was some new secret revelation we already know that

but for lou somebody who's just stepping his foot into full-time UFO guy uh this is all new and exciting to him even when he first stepped out on the stage and started talking about how we now know the phenomena is real. Well, yes, for people who have been researching UFOs, for any period of time, we know that UFOs exist. Like, that is not a new thing to us, and this has been going on for a very long time, and the government has investigated it. We know that already, but for somebody new stepping into this, all these things are big newsflash exciting things. So when I hear Lou speak, that's how I'm viewing his statements, is as somebody new coming into this, really, digging into it and finding out how much there is to this phenomenon, how big it is, and how many

reports we have from credible people. I like it. In other words, he could just as easily say, I'm not a euphologist, I just happen to investigate UFOs. That's right. That's right. No, I like that. And maybe we could all benefit a little bit from remembering that nobody is really a complete expert on UFOs. There are people who are experts on the anecdotal history of sightings. They're who have applied science to it, but there's an awful lot about this subject that we don't know it'd be awful hard, I think, to be an expert in it. But this may be the closest we have come, at least

within the last couple of hours in my little sphere of existence, to having an expert UFO panel. And so I want to thank my panelists from Rogue Planet, and wish you all happy holidays. Before I turn you all loose, really quickly tell me about what's going on for you in the new year and where people can find you online. Maureen, we'll begin with you.

Okay, I can be found atrogelnet. TV and Twitter at Maureen Ellsbury. same with Instagram. Working on in the new year, we're starting spacing out back out, our web series that Jason and I have ran for years, and I'll be working on some books and hopefully getting some time to actually do some in-field research

because it's hard to find time these days. That's right. You only find time when you can make it. Trust me, I know the feeling. So great to hear, by the way, that spacing out is coming back. I've always enjoyed that show and the mutual endeavors you guys. have done. So best of luck with that in the new year. Mr. Sprague, by the way, tell folks where they can

find your fabulous podcast and anything else that you're working on. Absolutely. Everything can be found at somewhere in the skies.com. I am coming up to my 100th episode, so I never thought I'd make it that far. So that's exciting. But yeah, just like Maureen said, working on some book projects, moving back to the East Coast. So I'm looking forward to bringing my research back there. And the last thing I'll say is look for me on your TV screens in January. I can't say much else, but

that's all they're letting me say right now. So I'll leave it at that. Yeah, Ryan's going to be in Project Blue Book. He plays J.L. and Hinex. I love it. My gosh. Well, I'm really excited about that show, by the way. There's going to be all kinds of great UFO content coming out in 2019.

But Jason, I'm sure you can probably contribute to a little of our advanced knowledge about some of those projects, including the ones that you're working on. What's going on for you in the new year? Pretty much the same. Working on some book projects, some of which I'm writing, some publishing. Rogue Planet is

doing some book publishing coming soon. Got some conferences, conference appearances coming up. Those will be announced shortly. I'm going to be doing some speaking engagements with Mr. Sprague, some with Wayne Ellsbury. And we've got some video projects

up our sleeves too. Excellent. I'm looking forward to all of it. One New Year's resolution I'll leave you guys with, we've got to do this more often. It's been far too long. I never get to see you guys or talk to you enough. And so I hope that with all the eventing and planning and publishing and promoting and all kinds of interesting ideas that are coming forth in the new year, that we'll be able to do a little more of it together. So thank you all for being here, being a part of this panel and for being friends and compatriots of mine in this ever-perplexing field of study. Thank you so much, Michael.

Thank you. Somewhere in the Skies is produced. by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network. To learn more, visit Entertainment One Podcast.com.