Somewhere in the Skies - Greg Eghigian: History of a Cultural Phenomenon

Episode Date: May 1, 2017

On episode 03 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan brings up a recent New York Times article that actually takes the UFO topic seriously. It features the recent release of The U.F.O Sightings Desk Reference, a compendium book created and published by Cheryl and Linda Costa. Ever wondered what type and how many UFOs are reported in your state, city, and town? This book will definitely satisfy your curiosity.  Check out the New York Times article HERE. ​Ryan then speaks with Greg Eghigian, Associate Professor of Modern History at Penn State University. They dive deep into a paper Greg has had published, titled, Making UFOs Make Sense: Ufology, science, and the history of their mutual mistrust. The conversation moves to examining the historical and cultural impact the entire UFO phenomenon has had and the influence that sub-culture brings to the topic. They end the conversation detailing some exciting work Greg will be doing in Washington D.C. as the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History. While there, he'll be researching the history of UFOs and exchanging ideas with colleagues who work in aerospace history. It's a refreshing and hopeful interview for the past, present, and future of UFO research. Greg's will be giving several talks in London, UK, in early May. For more information, CLICK HERE Guest Bio: Greg Eghigian, is Associate Professor of Modern History at Penn State University, where he conducts research and teaches about the history of the human sciences and medicine. He is presently writing a history of UFOs and alien contact as a global cultural phenomenon in the 20th and 21st centuries. He also runs the noted blog, The UFO Past, which explores the global history of the UFO and alien contact phenomenon. You can contact him via his office email: [e-mail] Please considering subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show on iTunes and wherever applicable. If you have guest or topic suggestions or a personal story to share, please email: [e-mail] Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Facebook Group: HERE Check out Ryan's book, Somewhere in the Skies: A Human Approach to an Alien Phenomenon, by CLICKING HERE 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

I'm Ryan Sprague, and this is somewhere in the skies. I was called into the meeting on Thursday. The panel members were seated around this table. It was a rather somber and impressive occasion, actually. I was a junior member, and I remember feeling considerably nervous and apprehensive about being in front of this powerhouse of scientists. But then for the past four years, I had been scientific advisor to the U.S. Air Force on this very problem. There were two films that were of particular interest to the panel at that time.

One was a film taken by a Navy officer while on vacation in Utah, near Tremontan, Utah, and the other was a film taken in Great Falls, Montana by the owner of the local baseball team. The Utah film had already been subjected to some thousand or so man-hours of analysis by the Navy's photographic interpretation laboratory. I came away from the meeting and from the room with the distinct feeling, however, that the panel had deliberately moved to debunk the whole subject and not to give it the serious scientific attention which it deserved. The voice you just heard was that of Dr. J. Allen Heineck,

noted astronomer, professor, and scientific advisor to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force under Project Science, Project Grudge and the best-known Project Blue Book. But as we heard, Heineck was also brought in to contribute his time and skills on a committee known as the Robertson panel. This panel was funded by the CIA in 1952 in response to widespread UFO reports. The panel concluded that most UFOs could be explained as misidentification of mundane aerial objects, and the remaining minority could, in all likelihood, be explained with further

their study. Not only that, but they believed that a public relations campaign should be undertaken in order to debunk UFOs and reduce public interest in the entire subject. Heinek disagreed that many of these reports were mundane, having spoken to and investigated hundreds of UFO accounts. He gradually went from skeptic and debunker to an open-minded believer. He would eventually found QFOS in 1973, a UFO research. organization working outside of government jurisdiction. Many organizations like this would follow, working alongside mainstream scientists in an effort to find answers to these UFO sightings that were happening all over the world.

But a blurry line had seemingly been drawn between the UFO world and the scientific world. Stigma and ridicule being the main cause. But when had this ridicule and mistrust truly began? When people as prominent as Dr. Heinek are involved with UFO research, does it not constitute a serious study without a debunking agenda? And how does the history of UFOs play a role in the overall discourse of what we consider uphology? Later in the show, we'll hear from a professor of modern history at Penn State University

on just that. But first, I want to talk about an article that recently came out in the New York Times. on April 24th. It was written by Ralph Blumenthal and featured the work of Cheryl Costa, a colleague of mine who also haws from my hometown of Syracuse, New York, Go Orangeman. The article caught my attention because it is extremely rare for the UFO topic to be covered in the New York Times, let alone be taken as seriously as it is here. The article is titled, People Are Seeing UFOs Everywhere, and this book proves it. Okay, so it's not the most...

eloquent headline of all time, but it gets right to the point. UFOs are reported all over the world, but Cheryl and her spouse Linda have undertaken the arduous task of compiling the first ever comprehensive statistical summary of close encounters, organized county by county in each state and the District of Columbia from the years 2001 to 2015. It is literally a book of charts and graphs in which they've published in book form, called UFO sightings desk reference.

They were able to obtain their data from two organizations, Mufon and the National UFO Reporting Center. When asked why she decided to take on this project, Cheryl stated, we are doing the government's job for them. We wanted to do our bit for disclosure. It's something the government should have been doing. We're doing scientific research.

What's crazy is not being willing to look at research. Now, I spoke to Cheryl the day this article released, and she told me that this article could really open people's eyes to the proliferation of UFO reports across the country from county to county, city to city, and state to state level. And I completely agree with her on this. Not only that, but the book even breaks down the type of UFOs reported, the times and the exact locations.

If you've ever wanted to know what's what with your state, city, and town in terms of UFOs, I can't recommend adding this book to your UFO library. enough. And if this article has anything to prove, it's that mainstream media, with all its faults, is willing to tackle the UFO question, even if the work is being done on a civilian level, just like Jay Allen Heineck and so many others across the world, like Cheryl. I'll post a link to the article in the show notes and wanted to personally congratulate Cheryl and Linda on this achievement and on the release of this essential reference book. We'll have them on to discuss in the near future. Now for today's guest, Greg Ageekian is Associate Professor of Modern History

at Penn State University, where he conducts research and teaches about the history of the human sciences and medicine. He is presently writing a history of UFOs and alien contact as a global cultural phenomenon in the 20th and 21st centuries. He also runs the noted blog, The UFO Past, which explores the UFO and alien contact. phenomena. Today, we talk about the mistrust between UFO researchers and the mainstream scientific community, and we put the question forward as to why academia and historians in particular seem to have shied away from the entire UFO subject. So, without further ado, let's talk to Grega Geekin. Today, we're going to hear from an unconventional guest in the best of ways, guys, and someone

whose work I have come to deeply respect in a field that frankly sorely needs it and that is mr greggiegean associate professor of modern history at penn state gregg thank you so much for joining me today sure i'm happy to be here yeah so we've connected a few times now i did feature you in the book uh in a section that doesn't get brought up often and that was the chapter in my book uh based solely around science verse uphology and i had found a really good article that you'd written for uh the public understanding of science journal. And that's how we connected.

And then we once again connected in Arizona. That was a very serendipitous thing that I wasn't expecting. Yeah, that was. That proved to be really neat, right? Well, I'm sure we'll get to how you and I met there and what we were doing at some point down the line. Absolutely. Yes, we will. Well, I guess a good way to start is I have to ask, as I'm sure, some of the listeners are very interested.

How does a professor of modern history get involved with the UFO topic? What were you thinking, man? I've had some people ask me that. Well, I'll give you the long version. How's that? The long version is actually, I think, you start out with my youth. Okay. So like so many people I know who get involved or who talk about getting interested in UFOs

an alien contact and all that stuff. It all began when I was a kid. I was utterly, utterly fascinated with this stuff growing up. I'm old enough to say that we're talking about the late 60s and the 1970s. And I could not stop reading about the stuff, wanting to hear about this stuff. And for me, it was this sense of discovery. It was this sense of here was a riddle. What is this? Is this something that is genuine? If it is something genuine, what does it all add up to?

And that's where I think I initially, in a sense, got the bug. But from there, really what happened was then I also became exposed to debunkers. people like Carl Sagan, who were, who I would, I now sort of see as much more of a kind of a historically, much more of a moderating figure, but we might get to that at some point. Even people like Phil Klaus and people like that. And that too interested me. I was, I was really curious about that. And so I read a lot about their stuff.

I loved hearing interviews with them. I even got to see Carl Sagan once at a local university talk. Yeah, that was, that was. great. That was fantastic. And, you know, very naturally curious person. Obviously, that's why I guess I ended up becoming an academic. And that's where I really was interested, I got interested in this stuff. And I will say that as time went by, as I went, got into, after high school and into college, the interest kind of waned. And my interest went in other kinds of directions and things. So now fast forward many, many years and fast forward to a few years ago, a colleague of mine,

who I really respect in this great research, approached me. We were talking. We were actually on a panel together. And one of the things you've got to know about me is I kind of wear a number of different hats. I'm a historian of science and medicine, but I also am a historian of modern Europe and modern Germany. And there are a lot of people who don't know anything about my life as a historian of science and only know me as a historian of Germany. And she was on a panel with me, and she was giving this paper on this really interesting topic about this interesting, odd kind of charismatic figure after World War II running around Germany, proselytizing the Germans. And she was saying that it was part of a project that she was working on with somebody that

It was a history of the occult in Germany. And I came to her after that and I said, you know, I've always wondered, did Germans, did the whole UFO thing ever happen in Germany? She's like, I have no idea. Why don't you write something on that? And I said to her, I think I said, oh, I don't have time for that. I've got other things I've got to do at all. But, you know, it triggered something in me. And I thought, well, let me just look into it.

And I started digging around. And in fact, I found all this stuff about the first reports of UFOs and the first reports in Germany after World War II and in the 1950s. And I ended up writing an article on it. I ended up sending it to her and said, you know what? I've written this up. But I don't think any of it has to do anything with the occult for you. I don't think you're going to find it really particularly germane. And she said, yeah, yeah, it's not.

So I sent it off to another. place but but that's when I started working on that I started talking with friends and I and I remember one friend in particular and he said you know you ought to work on a whole history of the whole UFO thing I was like no I can't do that and he said why not and he said yeah you're right why not and for me it's been in a sense it's not just for me this kind of curious new subject matter to get into. For me, it's kind of almost like going home. I now read and pouring over things I remember encountering when I was much younger, now with the eyes of an adult, but also with the head of a historian. And so for me, it's kind of an interesting phenomenon for me personally, because

I come back to something that I once remember pouring over in a lot of detail. But now I do it of kind of a different way. And that's kind of, for me, in part the enthusiasm I have. Wow. That's such an interesting way to look at it, Greg. I know, I don't know if you feel the same way, but yes, I became struck and fascinated by this topic at a very young age as well when, you know, your imagination is just running wild. You're seeing these images of flying saucers and books, and you're imagining the people piloting these or where they come from. And then as you get older and your skeptical lens starts to come in, you know, that that'll happen. But then that core phenomenon, that core fascination with UFOs, I should say, it remains. And there are parts of it

that remain. And that's what I find most fascinating, that even as you grow older and you become more, I don't want to use the word cynical, but skeptical, I think would be the perfect word. There are those fascinating mysteries that still remain. Yeah, I think so. I think so. Yeah. And that's that to me is part of what it keeps sparking this interest and triggering it. And and and and to now also do what I do, right? Because my, my, my, I come to this as a historian now, um, with years of experience of writing on a variety of subjects, uh, as I have done over the years. And, um, what for me, what, that what I'm doing is something that, of course, I never back then when I was younger,

I never thought of it in these terms. But in a sense, what I do is to really ask historical questions about all the different participants in this drama surrounding UFOs. So I am interested in putting, if you will, everybody who has sort of been engaged in this, topic, you know, in some form or another that's relevant, obviously, not literally everybody, but put them and all of us, really, under the microscope. And by that, what I mean is I want to ask questions about who became interested in these kinds of things. How did they become interested in when? How did those interests change over time? And that means looking at the history of uphology, for instance, and seeing how it transformed and changed over time,

looking at not just the reports about alien contact over the decades, but how people responded to those in different ways over time. And then added to that, the other thing that I don't think I sense them, but now in retrospect, I realize I was doing myself, is to also appreciate the fact that when you write the history of UFOs and the history of the UFO phenomenon, you also have to include in that the history of the scientific community, the history of debunkers. And how about the history of just plain old folks, I guess, who were like you and me growing up, right, who are just kind of curious about this stuff, right? I will say right off the bat, I have never seen an unidentified.

I've seen things I didn't understand, maybe I couldn't tell what they were in the sky, but I'd never seen anything that would have struck me as a flying saucer in my life. But I was absolutely curious, phenomenally curious about all this stuff. So in part, you also have to add those types of folks into the conversation of how this phenomenon was understood and how those understandings changed over time. So for me, the UFO phenomenon is what I think one might call in some sociological circles a world. The world of UFOs with all of these kinds of casts of characters, all involved, all playing a part in this drama that is played out over now, what is it, almost seven decades since the Kenneth Arnold citing. Right.

Well, let's sort of unravel of that, Greg. In your opinion, that understanding or that that scientific look at this phenomenon, when did you, in your research, come to find that the scientific institutions, when they started taking this topic seriously, if ever? Yeah, it's a really, it's an interesting issue. It all depends on how we want to understand what it is that the scientific community was in. interested in. So one could say that scientific institutions have either never or rarely shown any kind of interest in the UFO phenomenon. I don't think that's really the case, but one could somewhat make that argument in the sense that most of the major scientific institutions, you know, the bodies and organizations and the major institutions of higher learning universities, right? Most of them for for many, many decades, or at least the first few decades, tended to just simply neglect the topic of UFOs and alien contact. They didn't really tend to make any kind of major pronouncements on the subject.

they didn't hold have scientific commissions that were formed or anything like that to study the phenomenon and generally the kind of tacit assumption was that this stuff is so silly or so ridiculous that we don't really need to get into it what you what I found was in certain places what you'd find say in the 50s was oftentimes an astronomer or an astrophysicist might be asked by a journalist about a citing or about some phenomenon, and then they would sort of chime in on the subject. That, you sees that starting to change some in the 1960s. I think in the 60s and 70s is probably in some ways a kind of a heyday when you start to see academic scientists who work in in this in an area that would be relevant directly germane to the

to the whole question of extraterrestrial visitation. You start to see them demonstrate more interest in it. You do have people like James McDonald in the 1960s playing a prominent role. You see even people like Carl Sagan expressing interest in this in this subject. You get of course the development in the United States in 1966 is the founding, the setting up of the Condon Committee that was funded by the Air Force, a very controversial panel that meets and studies the subject for two years. I know most uphologists are quite critical of the work of that committee, quite rightly so, I think probably in the end. But even after that, you know, 1969, the American Association for the Advancement of Science with Carl Sagan, Thornton Page,

organize a panel on the subject of UFOs. So there is a phase in which certain kinds of leading figures and even leading institutions do say this is worthy of study. This is worthy of analysis. Now, if we understand and we think of the UFO phenomenon in the sense I said before, the world of UFOs, then what is clear is that it's social scientists of various kinds who have since probably, I'd say, right around the mid-1960s, have shown a great deal of interest in this and have taken it seriously as a sociological phenomenon. So we have anthropologists, sociologists, social psychologists, clinical psychologists of various kinds, folklorists who have written numerous, numerous articles over the decades since, like I say, the mid to late 1960s, looking at UFO organizations, the perception of UFOs and the psychophysics of the phenomenon, analysis. of the kinds of tales that are recounted by contactees, people like that. All of that has been studied in a great deal of depth and continues to go on.

So in that sense, people take the phenomenon sociologically seriously, but they don't necessarily take seriously the claims that, in fact, aliens are visiting us in these machines. There's a third way, however, I would say, in which you'd have to say that scientists have almost always taken this stuff seriously. And that is with regard to the possibility of their being extraterrestrial life and to thinking about what communication with those beings would be like, what the probabilities of an engagement with them would be at any particular period of time. We know that historians of science have shown that dating back to the ancients, the general tacit assumption of, yeah, tacit assumption, and something is quite explicit assumption of most astronomers, was that, in fact, other planets were inhabited.

And really, when you look in, say, even in the 19th and early 20th century, it was widely accepted that probably planets within our solar system were inhabited by intelligent civilizations. And so that already was there. And there was already in different periods of time, but particularly say, if you look at the inner war years in the 1920s, actual attempts were sort of or projects were sort of set in motion to think through and to explore the possibility. How might we communicate with these intelligent means, particularly with people who believe that Mars was inhabited by intelligent civilizations? And so there are all sorts of ideas were put forward to how we might do that, how we might communicate using all sorts of lenses. that might set some light in that direction in some way, or the use of radio was seen as a possible way

of at least hearing something from these other planets. And so by the time you get to the 1960s, for instance, you already have this kind of idea established. Well, with radio astronomy that's developed after the war, after World War II, you then have set up for yourself all the conditions that are ripe for what's, going to be established at the beginning of the 60s, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the SETI project. The SETI project, and I find this very fascinating, and I don't know if people

like Seth Shustak and others really talk about this much, but the SETI project and the kinds of ideas that it has historically been playing with, and the kind of motivations of the people involved in SETI over the decades bears a great, great deal of resemblance with uphology in my view. And there's a way in which I think SETI as a project and SETI as not just a project and having a purpose, but as something that also carries with it a set of values, right, is something that has a lot in common with euphology. And so I think that that's one of those.

places where you have to say SETI, people involved in SETI, people involved in uphology, actually in many ways have a lot more in common than maybe often as seen as being the case. Right, yeah, we always tend to

to separate these two. I know many quote unquote euphologists who won't even look at the work of SETI. They think it's a waste of time. They believe that this possible non-human intelligence is already here visiting the planet.

And again, Greg, like you said, that is an entire sociological can of worms to open. But what I find most fascinating, too, is this idea that the UFO can be connected to any hard science, any soft science, even, you know, in your case, in terms of history. We can connect this topic to almost anything in our society. And that is, in my opinion, an extremely powerful thing, no matter what the source of these UFOs are or even the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. Yeah, yeah. No, that's absolutely the case. I mean, you have to realize that no matter whether or not you think that these sightings reflect a, reality of extraterrestrial visitors or not. No matter where one is on the spectrum on those kinds of issues of the range of different views

that are out there on the subject, the phenomenon raises all sorts of questions for us. At the very start, right, as you sort of are hinting at, right, the whole issue of extraterrestrial intelligence civilizations raises all of these questions about who we are, how unique we are, are we terribly unique? How does evolution work elsewhere, right? It raises questions about communication. How do we communicate with beings from another world when we don't even have any clear sense of what they are, how they operate, what they look like in many cases, right?

So that you end up having to also, however, reflect back on you. yourself. And this is something that comes from a lot of my research that I've done over the years on other subjects. And that is the idea that oftentimes when we deal with a phenomenon like we're dealing with here, that is something that in which there's a great deal of unclarity, there's a great deal here that is fuzzy, very, very fuzzy. What we're going to invariably do is to project a lot of ourselves into that phenomenon. It's inevitable. It's inevitable.

I don't see that as a quote-unquote bad thing. It just simply is the reality of what we do as human beings. And so in that sense, right, the UFO and alien contact phenomenon is in many ways a kind of a roar shock test for all of us and for us as a community of human beings, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, when you become so deeply embedded in something, it's going to be a lot of, ultimately affect your life and influence your work moving forward, I would assume.

Yeah, exactly. And that's, you know, that's another thing that I would, I would point out about this connection with SETI. There's a, I recently read a really interesting, unpublished dissertation by a fellow by the name of Arthur, I don't, I want to pronounce his name right, Arthur Fricka or Arthur Frickie, who wrote this in the early 2000s at Rensselaer Polytechnic. It's a really fascinating dissertation, which he looks at SETI, but looked at it in connection also with uphology. And he made a really interesting point that is so obvious. It was one of those duh moments when I thought to myself, like, wow, how come I never really thought about that? And that is, he said, about SETI was that SETI's major issue and major sort of challenge was all. Also, the very nature of its project, which was that SETI for all the time that it's existed since the 1960s, right?

It has never once ever had any positive result, right? So far, they've gotten nothing. So when SETI tries to raise money, when SETI tries to engage the public and the value of what they're doing, they actually have nothing to show for it. And that wasn't a critic. critically. He said, but what this does is this sets up a dynamic for SETI. SETI must now generate enthusiasm for something for which it can offer no real concrete evidence of the very of the very thing that legitimates the project itself.

Uphology has had a somewhat similar problem over the years, right, in that sense. No concrete, you know, the classic one, right? Why doesn't a UFO just plop down on the White House long time. So that to me is kind of intriguing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, in terms of that, I want to sort of dive into this idea of the mistrust, as you've written about in the past, between, you know, the scientific community and what we can, I guess, consider UFO researchers or possibly investigators. You wrote an entire paper on this topic of when and how this mistrust really began and why why why that happened and where that takes us in furthering you know UFO research well yeah and so this I became very curious about

looking at the kind of I think what has to say it's been historically fairly rampant in if we sort of divide up the, what I would, you know, it can be difficult sometimes put these things in neat little boxes. But uphology on the one hand, an academic science on the other. That's not to say there aren't eophologists who aren't themselves academic scientists, but what I'm saying is I'm talking about the uphology activity that's done outside of the halls and institutions of academia. And there's, there has been this sort of mutual mistrust. And for me, as a historian, we don't take anything for granted. Nothing is taken for granted. And what we do is we tend to, our kind of assumption is that when something, when there's a set of relationships or an

institution that's out there, that we don't just simply accept it as a given, but rather look at how it was made, how it was created. What is the process? And that's what I was interested in. What is the process by which mistrust was sown in different communities. And I think the thing that that struck me was to see that in a sense that mistrust between the academy, right, the ivory tower and on the other hand, uphology, comes, it has come about, I think, A, it's come about through a set of processes. So for starters, it came about over the course. of the 1940s and 1950s really generated by what was really the initial distrust. And that was the distrust of the Air Force in the case of the United States or the defense ministry

in the case of the United Kingdom. But the ways in which information about UFOs was strictly guarded, need to no basis, kept from the public as part of concerns about national security. So these military institutions that dealt with information about UFOs as intelligence, right, naturally folded into their concerns about keeping information classified rather than spreading that information for it. And that is when you look at the initial sort of issue of mistrust. That's what it really centered upon for many uphologists was government officials and authorities. Over time, as scientists began to speak out and speak against this and to also shut out.

out uphology from the halls of the academy. I think that's when you start to see this distrust start to play, I think, somewhat of a greater role in the relations between these two sets of communities, if you will. And that's the thing, and that this is the second thing, the B part, is that that mistrust, I think I concluded, was not really the result of really euphologist distrusting science. I don't think that's it. I don't think the evidence shows that at all.

But rather, this emerged because, in a sense, the academics and the uphologists have historically, in a sense, talked past one another, that their research projects have led them in different directions so that it's based on, and to some extent some misunderstanding, some mutual misunderstandings. But it's also, it also reflects the fact that, and I think this is the interesting thing, is that what I started to discover is something that colleagues of mine in sociology of science have also discovered about other communities where there's a fair amount of, say, skepticism or downright cynicism about academia, is that that is rooted in less a skepticism or a distrust of science on the part of uphologists than a distrust of scientists, right?

That that's the problem, that they believe, they historically have believed scientists are elitist or scientists are people who are guarding their privileged or scientists are close-minded, that kind of stuff. But the assumption that many people in academia have, the people who are interested in UFOs or people who have worked in uphology are anti-science, that I don't think there's a lot of evidence for. I think it's just the opposite. And I don't know what your experience is. But I find that most people interested in uphology are really quite interested in science.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, you look at the civilian research organizations, and that is literally their mission, their mantra, is to look at this topic from a scientific viewpoint. and to try to find some sort of repeatable evidence to bring forward. Yeah, I completely agree on that. And then you have psychologists looking at it from their angle. And so, you know, we could go in circles on that whole aspect. But, yeah, I don't see a distrust between the scientists and eophologists, as it were.

I do see a lack of acknowledgement from the academic level at some points. but that is where someone like you comes in and says there is a place for this, especially in your field of history. And if you don't mind, Greg, I'd love to bring up this piece that you wrote for the Queen Mary Center for the History of Emotions called UFOs and historians. I want to talk about how as a historian you can bring something to the UFO topic and have it been taken seriously. Could you run us through what you cover in this piece? Yeah, so what I wanted to write about and sort of speak to is something that, as I say in it, that might be the most curious thing of all in the UFO phenomenon.

And it's not a particular case. It's not a sighting. It's not any, it's not a photograph. It was when I started to embark on this project, it was the realization that the last and only time an academic historian, somebody trained in history and working at a university as a historian, the last and only time anybody has written a book on this subject in English was in 1975, David Jacobs, who I know is going to be familiar to a lot of your listeners. David Jacobs' book, which is standing right here on my desk in front of me, the UFO controversy in America, right?

Very good book. Still stands the test of time. It's a really quite a good book on the subject, really remarkable. And then there's silence. That to me was interesting and remains interesting because for me sort of the question I sort of talk about this is it's peculiar. It's peculiar for two reasons. One is because the world of UFOs, as I was calling it earlier, the U.F.O. UFO and alien contact phenomenon since World War II has been a major preoccupation, a major endeavor for decades.

Historians don't tend to neglect something that big, right? Why, I can't imagine. It would be like neglecting pop music, right? You don't say, I'm not going to study pop music, we're not interested. You say, but it's a hugely important part of the post-war world. So that's kind of odd. But then what also doubly made it, makes it strange to me is that there are all of these other communities of scholars, as I was just mentioning before, who in fact have studied this.

The folklorists, the people who work in literary studies, religious scholars, sociologists, social psychologists, they've all looked at this phenomenon. They've all explored it. So for me, it sort of led me to make really two kinds of observations. One was to say what I think is some of the things that we can do as historians. And one was to, again, raise this question, why are the historians so silent? Why are we? Why is my tribe so strangely silent on this subject when so many other people in the social sciences and humanities aren't?

And so that's kind of where I went with this in that regard. That's really interesting. Well, I love to. I'll definitely link the listeners to those examples that you found. It's fascinating. It really is. Well, you brought up, you know, the fact, Greg, no certain case or, you know, incident that occurred. But I do kind of want to touch on that.

In your research, what, are there any cases you've turned to where it really stuck out to you that there is a obvious anomalous phenomenon happening. You know, there's, there are a million answers to every UFO case. Let's be honest. But what do you turn to that it really makes you personally feel, wow, there is something to this and it possibly may not be from here? Boy, that's a good question. I can't, I can't say there's any particular individual case that makes me feel that way. I think more the case, I think what I will see, and as you can imagine, and, you know, anybody who is interested in uphology does this all the time. So I'm not doing anything that euphologists haven't been doing for decades. But, you know, I go through so, so many cases as I

read and I comb over the archives and look at cases. And in some ways for me, it's these really, really, really innocuous things. These things that I will read that are from, you know, some small newsletter in Ohio in 1953 or, you know, or something I read in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, 60s from the, uh, uh, uh, France or Sweden, right? And it's just a small little piece. Um, sometimes those to me are, are, in fact, kind of the most engaged. for me.

But the other part of it, I would say, it's probably when you get this kind of sense of the cumulative effect of hearing so many stories. I think that's when you certainly sit there and have to say that it's difficult to say that some one explanation, right, is going to explain this. You know, uphologists have for a long time right now, right, have criticized Phil Klaus for his attachment to the ball lightning thesis. There's no question that one explanation doesn't do it for these kinds of things. I do think what I would say is this. What I find interesting as a historian is I'm interested in what people, other people, what people at different times have found compelling.

So that to me is what's kind of interesting in that regard, right? So when I read, I'm often less interested in, or not at all interested, to be honest, in trying to persuade myself one way or the other about the origins of these things or what was somebody seeing. In many ways, that to me is not centrally important. What's important for me is to unpack what it is if I'm reading it, particular uphologist from a particular particular period of time, I'm interested in knowing what he or she found particularly compelling. What in that particular case did they find compelling in one form or another? That to me is very, very interesting. And so kind of that's, that's in the end what I really track,

is are those kinds of things. So I'm not kind of, I'm not trying to divert away from your question, but I guess it has to do probably with the mindset in which I go in and I read this stuff, right? Absolutely. It's that I think of it in these terms. And so that is what's constantly on my mind. Yeah. And like you mentioned, just the profundity of reports and cases out there can really lead one to not make a determination or find a source, but to, you know, wonder what could be out there and what it all means. Well, in terms of, you know, those academics, you mentioned David Jacobs, for one, highly controversial when he worked at Temple.

I know that he was given some flack for the work he'd done. What do you make, Greg, of this whole idea of the ridicule factor within euthology? And in terms of the academic world, I would say, how do we move past that? Yeah. So the ridicule thing is something I have increasingly become quite fascinated with. And I've started to work through some of my ideas about it because it's another one of these things that is so ubiquitous in the history of the UFO and alien contact phenomena that nobody has ever thought, I think, taking it seriously to consider what role does it play in all of these things? I mean, yes, people talk about the fact, well, of course, it means I kept quiet about this, or it means, you know, you do have the recent article, a relatively recent article, God, I'm blanking on their name,

but the two political scientists who've written about the UFO taboo and have talked about it in that way. But to me, I'm really interested in the function of what role ridicule play. in helping to shape how uphology operates, how people who are engaged in UFO, who have UFO and alien contact interests, engage with one another, engage with the outside world. That to me is very important stuff. It's a social historical phenomenon that needs to be understood. So in part, I would sit there and I would say to some extent, ridicule is, I think, in all likelihood, something that is never going to be eliminated from this. And that is because this is

what people do who have, you know, really different opinions about any subject is ridicule. I mean, just think about one's political views and one's relatives who don't agree with you about your politics. And you know right away that ridicule will always be with us. I think in academia, I think one of the ways we need to do it, and I do this quite a bit in my own work, because one of the things I do, in fact, do is try to persuade colleagues to consider this thing and this phenomenon and the people engaged in the work of UFO research to take them seriously, to take this as a serious engagement with knowledge in a way that is on par with other things. It's not to say you have to say you agree with it or even like it, but it is to sit there and acknowledge that this is another human endeavor to know the world around us.

And that to me is to value it on that basis. So I think one of the ways you do that is to do the work I'm doing. It is to have these kinds of engagements, engagements like you and I have and these kinds of ways of talking with one another to get a better. appreciation of what we're all up to so that maybe we can avoid some of the misunderstandings we had. The other thing that I find really interesting and that I'm sort of thinking through is to understand one other thing. And that is to really appreciate that ridicule doesn't just exist outside of euphology, right, from the outside from academics or lay people who think this is all nonsense. It exists right there within uphology, right? I mean, one of the things that has caught my

eye is dating back from almost the very beginning. Uphologists after Uphologists, and you probably had this experience too if you talk to people, especially privately, right? Virtually every ufologists will say or UFO researcher will sit there and they will tell you about the stuff they work on and the people who they read know, and then they will say something like, now, you know, I don't have a lot in common with those nut jobs or those crackpots, right? So many folks in the UFO research community themselves, right? Yes. Cast aspersions on others, ridicule other people within that community. And that to me is also interesting as a historical phenomenon about what role does that play in helping to shape some of the

conflicts and the divisions, right, that have been a chronic part of UFO uphology over the decades, right? That's one of those things that helps to, in fact, create that fractious environment that at different times has certainly hurt the public image of UFO research over the years. So that to me is also intriguing, the role of ridicule in that regard. Yes, we are our worst enemies at times. And I, I'm sure that goes for any scientific field or endeavor, even within academia. There's always this internal fighting or internal debate going on, which can be healthy at times. I mean, as long as it's a civil discourse.

But I think what you really hit on, Greg, is that word consideration. It's not, you know, persuading someone to some absolute truth that you have the answer. And if you don't agree with me, you're just wrong. You're playing wrong. It's considering the possibility, let's say, of the UFO phenomenon being real and possibly being of an extraterrestrial origin or not, and just understanding that and asking questions. I think that's key and where that ridicule starts to decay. And like you said, I don't think it'll ever go away completely.

We will never all be on the same page, especially when it comes to this topic. But I think you hit it on the head, man, considering the possibility and opening a people's eyes and just having a conversation. Yeah, exactly. I mean, for me, for me, I see this all, you know, it gets back to what we were talking about earlier, about how the whole world of UFOs touches on so many different aspects of how we understand ourselves and the world around us. If one understands all of us involved, whatever it is, and we could talk about it, you know, not even just science and UFOs. We could talk about almost any subject.

It is to, you know, I know people, for instance, I mean, I love sports. I love watching that, you know, sports are rooting for my teams. I know people who absolutely hate it, absolutely hate it, and don't get it and say, I will never understand how a grown man can sit there and shout his lungs out at his hockey team winning or losing. But it is to appreciate that, to sit there and say that is fair. But it is to sit there and say, well, you know that this is yet another one of these aspects of what makes us human beings in our and cultural life, right? These institutions, these endeavors of ours to enjoy ourselves, to be curious about the world, to commune with others, right?

There's all sorts of dimensions of these things that we're engaged in. And so, you know, I'm not much of a gardener. I don't pack garden and all, but I know there are people who do it. And they can tell me all about why they love being out in their garden all day. So to me, I'm curious about that. And instead of ridiculing the gardener for gardening and not, you know, watching sports with me, I think that same kind of mentality needs to be there. You put it right.

It's about consideration. But it's also to my mind. It's about connecting what I would think all of us who are interested. and studying things like UFOs or the history of uphology are interested in, is that we're curious. We're curious people. We want to know something more about the world. And we go into it not entirely clear where this is going to take us.

That to me is something that should be the foundation of consideration. Doesn't mean it's the end point. We may, in fact, have completely disparate views in the end. But if we come back to that time and time again, revisit that in our conversations, I think that to me is the key to what is a civil, as you put it, a civil conversation, a civil discussion, even if we vehemently disagree when we reach our conclusions. Yes, very well put. Well, Greg, you're going to be having some civil conversations in England soon. Am I correct? Yeah.

Yeah. This is very exciting when I heard about this. I do receive your newsletter, which will also link to. Where are you heading, my friend? What are you going to be talking about in England? So, yeah, I've got a series of talks I'm giving in London. I'm going to be actually doing an interview with some very fascinating folks at Burbank University of London, right, if I'm not mistaken, college of London. But Burbeck, there's a project there called the Hidden Persuaders Project, which is engaged in, has been doing research in the history of various Cold War efforts aimed at persuading people or moving people to do one thing or another.

So they do everything from advertisement to subliminal messaging, hypnotism, sigh phenomenon. They're looking at the history of that during the Cold War, and they're going to be interviewed. me for their website. But I'm going to be giving a number of different talks. One is going to be at the, yeah, sponsored by the Queen Mary Center for the History of, Center for the History of Emotions, that looks at the history of the UFO phenomenon through the kind of prism of suspense. And And what I mean there is that I think for so long, for the, for the folklorists, I talked about all these people who have studied the history of the UFO phenomenon, what's, what's dominated the scene has been this image that, that UFO, the interest in UFOs and the preoccupation

with a particularly in, say, the 1950s and 60s into the 70s, was really built around people who were paranoid. But it's built on a kind of a nervousness and anxiousness and fears of the Cold War and anxieties. And that those anxieties then translated into conspiracy theories and men in black and all of that. I wouldn't say that's entirely wrong. But I would say that is a very, very incomplete picture of both, I think, the Cold War, but also an incomplete picture of euphology, right? because not everyone, and in fact, I would argue that maybe most euthologists have not been

believers in conspiracy theories, and also don't sort of emphasize these dark sides of things. And so my argument is that it misses the reality that when you particularly look at any given time, but especially this very period of time that people tend to glom on to, it was actually a period in which people were outright, you know, delighted, enthused, excited, found it exhilarating, right, that UFOs were out there, that the possibility that these vehicles were being manned by aliens, that a new dawn was a, a new age was dawning. These kinds of things are being missed and neglected in that. So I began to think more about how can we frame the historical sensibilities of the time?

that helped shape this phenomenon in those early years. And that's when I started to realize that the sentiment that really dominated the Cold War, but I think also dominated, particularly those early decades, really I think all the way up into the 80s in the history of UFO research, was less anxiety and fear than suspense than that sense of what is going on. What are they? And I often tell people, I came to that idea when I was looking at UFO photographs.

You know, take a look at some of your favorite flying saucer photographs from that age. There they are, and they just sit there, right? And they kind of, they're frozen in time. You may not know much about the context of the photograph. And it just seems to be begging for answers and saying to you, who am I? What am I? Is this real? Is this a hoax?

Is this genuine? If it's genuine, is it man-made? All of these questions. That to me is the key to understanding, I think, the allure and the reason why so many people were fascinated with UFOs, particularly in the earliest decades, say that first generation of folks interested in UFOs, it was that sense of mystery, that sense of where is this going? how is this going to end? And that to me is what I want to capture.

So that's one of the talks I'm giving is going to be on that. Doing another one also at another center at University of College of London, this is a center for the history of psychological disciplines, on what I call looking at the history of how alien contact became pathologized, I'm putting it. In other words, how is it that, I put it another way. I start with looking at John Mack, the great figure of John Mack, of course, innovator and abductee research.

And, you know, of course, people have asked subsequently within the psychiatric community, like, you know, why did he get involved with these people? How did he become involved with these people? And why did he believe them? And those are all fair enough questions to ask, to be sure. And a lot of people have addressed it. I have kind of flipped it around. My question is like, why were these people finding him?

Right. Why is it that they went to John Mack? If they are people, alien, if they are people who had contact with alien, it was a genuine, real experience, they believed, right? They didn't believe that they were having hallucinations or maybe they thought they might be doing so. But in any event, what's intriguing to me is why is it that they're at his doorstep? Why are they in the room with a psychiatrist? That indicates something's happened. And particularly if you look at it historically, right?

Look at the contact ease of the 50s. Look at the people, as I do in this paper, I look at some of the people who were talked about. also into the 1960s. The number of people who ever are talked about ever visiting a clinician, a psychiatrist after their experience, is very, very nominal, right? The number who do that is nominal. You have the big figures, right? You have people like Betty and Barney Hill who end up doing it. Patty Price ends up doing this, right? But it's a small number of people. So something changed, right? We go from a world where people who say they had contact with aliens

don't in fact feel like this requires any kind of clinical intervention to by the time we get into the 80s and 90s, right? And it explodes. It explodes. And now Bud Hopkins, David Jacobs, Leo Sprinkle, right, John Mack, all of them are engaged in hypnotic regression.

All of them have a dimension in which they are looking at this as something that requires a kind of therapeutic intervention of some kind. How did that get? How did that happen? How did we get there? That's what that paper is about. I explore how it is that we get from point A to point B. Wow, that is fast.

I might have to get a plane ticket over there. I'll actually be there a few weeks after that. I may have to reschedule Greg. That sounds absolutely fascinating. you. Well, you know, besides your trip to England, you're going to be in D.C. for a while. I learned that you're going to be doing a fellowship there. This is so exciting. Could you tell us a little bit about this if you don't mind? Yeah, sure. So I am going to be the Charles A. Lindbergh chair in aerospace history at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum for the second half of this year. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. So I'll be at the Air and Space Museum. where I'm going to really be doing two things.

One, I'll be doing some research, conducting research, using their library, but I'll also be looking, because they're based in D.C. at the Carl Sagan papers, which apparently are massive, as you can imagine. But I'll be looking at Carl Sagan paper and trying to look at some of his work at engagements with uphologists and the UFO phenomenon. I'll be writing as well. But really the best part of it is an opportunity to be hanging out with and exchanging ideas with some of the world's best historians of space and space exploration. And anyone interested in aerospace history in general there, they have a bevy of top-notch historians, frankly, people who know far more about aerospace history than I do.

So it's an opportunity for me to work with really some of the world's best historians. And sort of, you know, pick their brains about some of my observations about these things. There's some people who, you know, and we're talking about people who, you know, for instance, are experts on the history of rocketry, folks who are experts in the history of astronomy, people who have done some really great work on the popular history. the culture, the history of popular culture surrounding space and space exploration. All of these things are vital to this project I'm working on. And so I'm really looking forward to being able to sit around with people who have so much experience, so much knowledge about these things, who can give me critical comments and

reflect on my own work and hopefully refine my arguments a little better than they are at this stage of the game. Wow, that sounds great. I mean, great. I highly respect what you're doing both in and out of uphology. I think you really are tapping into something that not many people have done. And I do consider you a pioneer in that sense of moving this field forward by looking at the past and seeing what we can learn from that. That is what history is after all. Well, where can we find out more about the work you're doing and keep up to date with all of this? Well, you can see I have a blog. It's called the UFO Past, and my URL is UFOPast.com. And there I more or less intermittently post information about some things that are going on, like these talks and stuff that I'm giving in London. But every now and again, I'll post a brief little essay in there about something I'm working on or post something that's interesting. like an exhibit that I've heard about that's up there.

And yeah, so anything historical about UFOs I'm interested in. So please come on and sign up and subscribe so you can be updated in your email on a regular basis whenever I have something new to post. That's so great. Well, we will definitely post links for your talks coming up for our friends in England and of all of Europe, actually. And Greg, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to do this today. I know you're a busy man and the fact that you could sit down with us for an hour or

of talk UFOs. It was highly refreshing and excites me about the future of moving forward with Uphology. So thank you so much for joining you. My pleasure, Ryan. Always great talking with you. Well, that's all I got for you this week, guys, for episode three. If you enjoyed

today's show, I'd absolutely love if you'd consider rating and reviewing the show on iTunes, or wherever the hell you happen to listen from. And please, also consider sharing the show across your social networks. I'm so unbelievably amazed at how much the show has grown only three episodes in.

And with your help, we can continue to grow each and every week. So thank you for your constant support. If you have any guest or topic suggestions or a personal story you'd like to share, you can email me at Sprague at Somewhere in the Skies.com. You can also join our active Facebook page, Somewhere in the Skies podcast. We're also on Twitter at Somewhere Skies. That's it. I'll see you here next Monday.

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