Somewhere in the Skies - Inside Our Obsession with Aliens: A Deep Space Dive with Becky Ferreira

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Journalist, author, and space reporter Becky Ferreira joins Ryan and Suzanne to discuss her new book, First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens. In this fascinating conversation, they explore humanity’s centuries-long fascination with extraterrestrial life and how that obsession shapes our science, culture, and imagination. Ferreira shares her insights on how the search for alien intelligence has evolved. from early science fiction dreams to real-world efforts in astrobiology and space exploration. The discussion also dives into what first contact could actually look like: Will it be a slow realization through data or a sudden encounter that changes everything? From SETI to NASA’s latest missions and the psychology behind our cosmic curiosity, this episode is a journey through science, philosophy, and the unknown—guided by one of today’s sharpest space reporters. Buy Becky Ferreira's book: https://a.co/d/fpjDKrv Please take a moment to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple. Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Email: [e-mail] YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SomewhereintheSkies Discord: https://discord.gg/NTkmuwyB4F Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ryansprague.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomewhereSkies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somewhereskiespod/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryansprague51 Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U Proud member of SpectreVision Radio: https://www.spectrevision.com/podcasts Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2025 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. #NASA #FirstContact #AlienLife #UFOs #SpaceExploration #SETI #Astrobiology Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spector Vision Radio. Hi, guys. Ryan Sprague here from Somewhere in the Skies podcast. Coming to you once again from my hotel room here in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. I am currently attending the Shag Harbor UFO Expo, incredible event that I spoke at last year. This year, just an attendee. And I am joined by my awesome friend and colleague, Paul Kimball. So we're hearing talks from all the preeminent Canadian UFO research. researchers, which in course, of course, includes Chris Stiles, the preeminent Shag Harbor UFO researcher.

And I'm also doing some filming on my Shag Harbor UFO documentary. So that's very exciting. I'll have more news on that for you guys in the very near future. But for now, you're going to hear an awesome interview that Suzanne and I did with Becky Ferreira. She is a space reporter. She's written for things like Vice Motherboard. Collider, the New York Times, you name it. She has written for them.

And she also just wrote an incredible book called First Contact, The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens. So Suzanne and I talked to Becky all about the book. It's a beautiful book. I cannot recommend it enough to you guys. It's out right now as you're hearing this. So just search for that. Search for Becky Ferreira.

We have links in the show notes to the book in all of her work. but it was a fascinating conversation. We talked all about humanity's obsession with aliens throughout the centuries. And we talked all about space exploration and what's going on right now when it comes to possibly having found ancient life on Mars and where we're heading with the James Webb Telescope and exoplanets and where we've been in the past when it comes to, you know, early space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial.

life. And it was just such a rewarding conversation. It went down past that I don't think any of us expected in the interview. And we just left that conversation feeling so invigorated and hopeful for the future of this topic of aliens and UFOs and everything in between. It's a refreshing conversation. One you don't hear often in the UFO world. So I really think you guys are going to enjoy this and you're definitely going to enjoy Becky's book. So once again, Becky Ferreira, her book is First Contact, the story of our obsession with aliens. Enjoy the interview and I'll see you next week.

Be sure to rate and review the podcast wherever you get it, Apple, Spotify. If you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, leave us a rating and review. We truly appreciate it. It means the world to us. And I will leave you as always, guys, with our mantra. Keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching. summer in disguise. Enjoy. While our government's official position is not to speculate on this subject,

we can choose to let our minds explore other possibilities to use of our imaginations. For if we consider that astroscientists agree on one point, that the possibility of life elsewhere is not only quite probable, some field is there without a doubt. Let us suppose them that these objects are real space vehicles, extraterrestrial origin and not an illusion of the mind. I'm Ryan Spratt

and you are now somewhere in the sky. This episode is brought to you by Subaru. Go further in a long-range Subaru hybrid with up to 581 miles per tank in the Forrester hybrid. Longer range, better fuel efficiency and legendary symmetrical

all-wheel drive standard. The Subaru Forrester Hybrid. Visit Subaru.com slash hybrid to learn more. Maximum range-based on EPA estimated combined fuel economy and a full tank of fuel. Actual mileage and range may vary. Now at McDonald's, a McDouble is $2.50, so you can get your gym gains on or just get

lunch for only $250. Get more value on the under $3 menu. Limit time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher for delivery. Welcome to somewhere in the skies and a very warm welcome. Of course, as always, to our moderator, Suzanne. and also to our special guest today, we have space reporter, author, so many other things.

We're going to learn all about her tonight with you guys. So for the very first time, Becky, welcome to somewhere in the skies. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. Absolutely. Now, today we're mostly going to be talking about your new book, First Contact, the story of our obsession with aliens, which is right there in front of you. You were gracious enough to send Suzanne and I in advance copy as well.

First off, I just want to say it is a beautifully constructed book, the illustrations, obviously the content, which we're going to talk about tonight. But congratulations. It's just, it's very engaging. So, yeah, I know it just came out as we're recording this October 1st yesterday. Is that right? That's right. Yeah.

Thank you so much. No, I'm so lucky to have had the design team at Workman. their famous publisher for creating like super beautiful books. So when I first saw the visual draft, you know, what it was working on it last year, I was just like, so I can't take credit for any of that. But I'm very, very excited that I got to work with such talented people on it. And it looks so pretty.

Absolutely. You know, it's one of those books where Suzanne and I can give to our significant others, our friends, our colleagues who may not really be into this, UFO and alien stuff as much as we are, and be like, hey, you want to digest. adjustable kind of, I guess, gateway into all this. Here you go. It's a perfect, like, coffee table sort of book. Not that that's, like, any less than other books.

But, yeah, it's definitely one that I think everyone will enjoy for sure. Suzanne, now I think I'm going to let you kind of lead into this. Let's get to know Becky a little bit more before we dive into the book, sound good? Sure. Sounds great. Becky, thanks so much for being here. Our listeners are going to love here. hearing from you on all this. I had some questions about background. You are a prolific writer.

Tell our listeners who all you write for and what you write about. And then I'm going to want to talk about why you write about what you write about. Oh, of course. Well, I've been a science reporter for about 15 years. And for a long time, I was at Motherboard and Vice, just doing a lot of space reporting. I really like natural sciences. So like space, earth sciences, climate change, wildlife. If nature's producing it, I like writing about it. I do get some technology stuff as well, but I've always just been really fascinated with those topics. And for the last couple years, I was working on this book and kind of rebuilding my freelance career after Vice. And so now I work for, I freelance for the New York Times and Wired and MIT Tech Review or National Geographic, all those

places, all those really fun places. And then I, my main gig is at 404, media, which I really recommend people check out if they have. And it's a journalist-owned independent site focused on internet news mostly and technology and how it intersects with our lives. And they just do amazing, my colleagues there do amazing original reporting. And I'm sort of just the science side of it. I have a newsletter called The Abstract where I round up each of the the scientific studies each week that I find the most interesting. And I really, really try hard to get off the beaten path on that and bring science studies in that nobody else is bringing in. And that's my favorite gig I've ever had in my life. It's just so much fun. So

I recommend people check that out if they want to hear about playing badminton in space or, you know, World War II munitions and what kind of life is living on them under the sea and things like that. Exactly. But she also love things like archaeology and paleontology, right? You ride on those topics? Yeah, and I think that, you know, that intersects really well, but I'm sure some of the stuff will talk later with extraterrestrials and stuff. I love the human imagination and creativity, and I love seeing how it is expressed in archaeology. I'm a huge, I've been a dinosaur fan from like two years old. I never gave it up.

I never grew out of it. So I love reporting on. Who isn't? I know, right? Like, how can you not, right? And then you get beyond the big stars like T-Rex and realize there's all these, like, super cool other people, other dinosaurs. the mix. And so I loved, I love doing those stories as well. And yeah, just, as I said, anything that

nature can come up with or the human imagination can come up with. I just, I just love running the gamut on that kind of stuff. That's so cool. Well, I want to know, like, you're a little girl and you think, oh, yeah, I want to write about space or tell me how you actually took the step in order to write about these things. Yeah, I always wanted to be a writer. And I was thinking I would go into like being a science fiction writer or something like that because I loved that world. I was raised very much with like Douglas Adams and Carl Sagan's Cosmos. So my parents were big into that kind of stuff. And I was indoctrinated from a young age with that with that mentality.

And in college I tried to like go into astronomy for a bit. But I was like, you know what? Like I can't really even choose what would be most interesting in this topic, uh, let alone the fact that I also kind of want to do paleontology and earth science and all these things. And it kind of started to dawn on me in college. like I could just be the writer that hops into other people's worlds for a day and, you know, just parachutes in and parachutes out and gets to talk about all of these kind of topics. So,

so after college I started doing mostly science reporting and I've just been doing that ever since. And I feel very lucky to be doing it. Like I think it's, you know, it's a dream job. And I feel like, a lot, you know, it can be a challenging time a lot of the time. But like, I get to talk to to people who are doing the most clever things you can possibly imagine. And it's like, I think that's been a very, it's been a source of like, just hope and optimism about humans that I think often we can be very, we can self-denigrate for good reasons. But, you know, every day I'm like talking to these people who are splitting atoms

and launching rockets. And, but, you know, you can't imagine the kind of things they can get out of a single photon of light or a tiny grain of sand, you know, the insights that you can get out of these things. So I feel very, very privileged to be able to constantly have a reminder of human ingenuity in my professional life every day. That is so cool. I'm so glad that you stuck with your vision about what you might be able to do. It certainly worked for you. God, I'm very lucky. Yeah. Competitive. Everybody does. You know, some people bail out midstream. They don't wait long enough and then they missed the dream. I think I took one astronomy course in undergrad and I'm like,

hey, if I'm going to seek aliens, I'm going to go into astronomy. And I took one course and I think two weeks in. I was like, there's a lot of math here. No thank you. Goodbye. Differential calculus was basically the end of my scientific dreams in college. I was like, oh my God. I mean, I do. I love math as a concept, but I was like, I'm never going to be able to do this professionally. I don't think. So I'm with you, Ryan. Like it's, yeah.

It was always like that, that Chris Pratt moment where he's like, when do we play with the lasers? I was there. I'm like, when do we use the telescope? When do we go to the observatory? They're like,

in two years. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, bye. Goodbye. And you realize like how much of it is data entry and like that it's, yeah. And I mean,

I think it's so cool, but it is, it is very, astronomy is grinding where, I mean, paleont, all of it is, it's,

exciting when you see it in the movies, of course. But it is very grinding work. For a good reason. It's nice to be just a sort of interloper in that world. Well, speaking of that world, including math, I would love for you to talk to our listeners about your work on the relationship of space and music. Because I think music is math. I've had this conversation with my very non-musical husband about who's very, very good at math, but cannot carry a tune or count it out in a musical melody, which I don't understand because he's so good at math and I think music is math. But tell our listeners about what you have researched in this topic. Oh my gosh, that's such a great question, Suzanne. I love that. Well, there's a deep connection.

You're totally right. Music is math. And I'm not a musician or a mathematician, so I'm not going to spout off. But there's so much interesting history of people making that connection. I'm thinking like immediately of Johannes Kepler in the 1600s who believed that the universe was a composition, a musical composition, the harmony of the spheres. And it's true, like, you know, there's a lot of really interesting musicians now. I'm thinking of some ahead, like Matt Russo in Toronto, Amir Saraj, who's at Princeton. There are mathematicians astronomers who tried to translate kind of the celestial phenomenon into musical compositions. And I think music is not, you know, it's obviously mathematical theory.

It's based on numbers and pitch and things like that. So it has a mathematical basis. But it also, because it is so universal and it moves us and it's emotional, like I think music is one of the best communication tools for math and science. And I hope people do more of that kind of intersection because it's super fascinating. And with these musical astronomical compositions, they kind of feed off the fact that planets have resonances that they think. fall into these orbital resonances that seem to mirror musical compositions and notation,

which is just, you know, the universe just apparently is a huge music lover. Right. Right. So, yeah. And maybe music at its core. I'm sure you followed some of those scientists who will attach listening devices to grasses or trees or, you know, something that we think of as an animate. And they're actually quite animate.

And there's music there. Yeah, absolutely. Or, you know, even thinking of biology and the amazing. amazing musical dynamics of whales or birds and it's clearly not a solely human phenomenon. And in fact, we're probably not as good at it as many other creatures on our planet are. So it truly is amazing. Like when we say the cultural diversity of music, that really does include a bunch of non-human species as well. Exactly.

Maybe aliens too. Right. We'll find out. I would love that. It reminds me like, do do do do do do. Yeah, exactly. Great example. I love that. It'd be great if they just like the first alien beacon that we ever get is like just a real banger of a song, you know? All right. They rock out. They rock out. That's great. It's going to, Becky, it's going to be Oasis. I just have this really bad feeling. You know what would be great is if we've already made first contact and it's the Gallagher brothers. That would be so funny.

These guys really don't get along. I don't get it. Yeah. Well, they're, you know, once from Mars, once from Venus, once from. Venus. It's just... I could go off on a whole tribe of Oasis, but I promise I won't. That's so cool. Yeah. You know, and you even hear of like music curing people or like people

with Alzheimer's will have memories come back and just beautiful things like that. And I feel like we've only scratched the surface of what this thing we call music can actually do. So yeah, it is a magical thing. All right. I'm going to veer

into the book, if that's okay with you, I love that, yeah. Our time is limited today. So I want to kind of hit some bullet points with you, Becky. The first one being, I'm on a television show that many people will know. Many love it, many hate it. It is called ancient aliens. They're in their one millionth season at this point.

It's not even ancient anymore. It's like the Pentagon UFO stuff from last year. But hey, it is what it is. But the ancient alien theory has been around much longer than the television show. you'd go back to people like Zacharias Sitchin and Eric von Denekin and stuff like that. And you kind of started the book off with the whole ancient alien thing. So why did you kind of decide to start the book with that? And what do you make of the whole ancient alien theory? Well, I kind of drafted off the success of that show a little bit. So my first chapter in the book

is sort of about where the idea of aliens come from. And so I called that ancient aliens about the idea that prehistoric humans clearly were very preoccupied with the sky and they personalized it. And there's no human culture I can think of that didn't come up with a huge canvas of stories to tell about the sky and what lives there. People assumed that things were out there. It just seems to be an innate human thing to look at the skies and be like, yeah, that's that person, that's that family. And there's a lot of, you know, the presaging, the idea of getting an alien signal in these myths because they'll be looking at comets and other kind of celestial phenomenon as an actual message from these divinities. So this goes back,

I would imagine, tens of thousands of years into our prehistory that we're assuming that we're not alone and that perhaps things are communicating with us and perhaps even some things walk among us, you know? For my own part, I think it's a really fascinating theory. I'm not deep into the lore of that. I doubt it's, I doubt in general that aliens have walked, um, have walked among us or have come to visit us. However, I don't know, I mean, it would be really, really fascinating. And I think it's, I think like a lot of the evidence presented in these theories, like can be explained by the fact that humans have great imagination for

supernatural deities of all kinds. I don't think it has to be attributable to an actual alien species. We're very good at coming up with fictional aliens as I discuss in the book. We have a whole pantheon at all times. But that being said, as a fiction, idea or as like a as a as a as a trope in popular culture I just love it I uh when I have a I have to like recommend my friend Miles Cleese book to true false which has a story that like actually has an alien coming into earth during uh during the Mesozoic period which is just like aliens and

dinosaurs to me is like that's that's such a good mix that's chocolate peanut butter you know so so I love that kind of thing um but but yeah my my general uh feel is that most like alien lore that purports to have aliens here, I feel like you're not given human imagination enough credit for that kind of stuff. But to each their own, and I certainly have been very captivated by so many stories of visitation. And so it's, it's incredible, you know, it captures the imagination for sure. Yeah. Well, and there was a term, used in the book, I think it was sky lore, which I love because there's this, this story that I thought was original that I had brought up to an archaeologist once about this ship that came from

the sky and dropped an anchor and left the anchor and this church has the anchor in their, their church somewhere. And I was like, wow, what a fascinating story. So I told this to the anthropologist and he said yeah well I can tell you that story from a thousand years before that and 20 years after the one you just told me which was so fascinating I thought I had come up with this really cool ancient alien story as it were and then you find out that this is a story that has been passed on throughout the generations different cultures and you're right um it's such a fascinating kind of jumping off point for a lot of this. Like when did these visitations possibly ever start?

And how were they interpreted at the time, I think, is huge. Yeah. Oh, it's so interesting. And it's just so funny how so many of these myths presage what euthological lore of the last century kind of, you know, you have myths like Zeus coming down and abducting people and impregnating them. You have, you know, Prometheus giving superior technology and having a punishment for that. These kind of ruts that we have narratively, we just put aliens into them in a new way. But it's clear that these are kind of preoccupations we've had for a long time.

And it makes me feel so moved to think about these ancestral skywatchers that we're all descended from, trying to explain their world and creating these amazing stories. There's just one story I include right in that sky lore. thing that's possibly there's a team that thinks that possibly the Pleiades story, you know, the story of that's the star cluster of like six sisters, seven sisters, and now there's only six visible, that maybe it has an origination of that story, like that's 100,000 years old. I've done a piece on that since then. There's a lot of pushback thinking, like, you can't actually have that story be, you know, transmitted throughout that amount of time. But it's funny because that story actually is

told by cultures that were last, you know, like it's told by Australian Aboriginal people who were separated from the rest of these cultures that tell the same story, which is why they put forward this thesis that it might be that old. So just it's really clear that we are a species that is deeply invested in the idea that personalities are in space and they may walk among us. Yeah, absolutely. Well, speaking of those people who may,

you know, think they're out there in space. You dive into kind of the early versions of like stuff we would consider, I guess, like setty today, but, you know, really early on in the 17th, 18th century, stuff like that. I mean, you talk about the Fermi paradox, you talk about the Drake equation. What are some of your favorite, I guess, moments of antiquity when it came to searching for this stuff, whether it was like the first telescopes or, and stuff like that. Like maybe your favorite personalities or favorite approaches pre, like,

what we consider today of like setting, things like that. Oh, absolutely. You know, it's, I think when you start to first get the idea of an alien as like a being that lives on a physical other planet is really interesting because it's about 2,500 years ago where this idea of cosmic pluralism comes up in the Hellenistic world. And people start talking. about the fact that, hey, these objects in the sky might be physical places. They might not be personalities. They might not be gods, you know. And so that that's a really interesting transition.

There's a, there's a lot of people, including one called Annexagoras. He's around 500 BC, who works out the actual mechanics of the lunar eclipse and is like, this is just a place. So that really starts to spark the first idea of real aliens, you know, in history where people are are talking about it in the modern way that we talk about it. And then you have the Copernican revolution, which I think is really interesting too, because Galileo sees that, you know, Jupiter has got moons of its own. This is, you know, a huge, the Earth-centric universe makes no sense if there's other planets have their own worlds orbiting them. You know, it makes it much more clear that the Earth must be orbiting the sun. And I think that's another big, interesting shift. And then

another one that I think is huge that I'll just spotlight is the microbial revolution. Christian Hoygens, the Dutch polymath of the scientific revolution, really married these ideas. Like he was observing microbes under microscopes for the first time. You always think about aliens as being something that used with telescopes. But he was like, well, if there's these invisible creatures here on Earth, like, surely there must be lots of life elsewhere. Like, we're not even sure what's on Earth, you know? So those were all kind of things that were so interesting. And, you know, it's just I think that the success,

each new successive technology really puts it into sharper focus. You know, the radio revolution of the early 20th century is a big moment for aliens too. And you have Tesla and Marconi saying, yeah, no, no, I'm communicating with Martians all the time. So it's just every new technology kind of brings in these apparitions. and but you know as we know it's the slam dunk has not has not occurred yet but we're still we're in another iteration of that journey now looking for that next michael jordan that's slam dunk i love that oh i'm so happy you i'm so happy you said tesla because a lot of people don't know that he did have a moment where he thought he was communicating with aliens i did a whole bonus episode

on that it's fascinating oh i got to look that up yeah yeah yeah yeah um I'm going to throw it over to Suzanne in just a minute, but I'm going to cover the pop culture thing. And then we're going to dive into UFOs a little bit. I know that's what our listeners crave. But pop culture. This is a big part of the book as well when it comes to how we have infused the alien question into our media, our entertainment, our literature, our music, everything, everything at this point. And you really do dive a lot into that in the book. And you come up with these three kind of bullet points of alien points.

of aliens and pop culture. You'd call it monsters, saviors, and peers. I love how you broke that down. So I'd love to know what you kind of meant by that and what role aliens do play in our pop culture overall. I mean, I think they're so ubiquitous now

that it's basically you cannot go to a summer blockbuster without it being about aliens, right? Or half the cast is aliens. It's just like at this point, they are kind of interchangeable with human characters in our pop culture. they've just completely invaded, you know, our imaginations. So, yeah, I think, you know, to touch on what we were talking about earlier,

these are just the sort of tropes that we're obsessed with anyway, the thing that can destroy us, the thing that can redeem us, the thing that will be giving us connection. So the, with monsters, of course, like the War of the Worlds and all that kind of great tradition, those stories often will have, will cast humans in a kind of bad light too, and we'll try to like interrogate how we are a monster as well, which is always fun. The War of the Worlds,

the original novel is very like that. Like, um, and, uh, savior, Superman is the ultimate idea of this, but,

uh, this is like, you can see this kind of strain coming up even in science a lot where, uh, scientists will say, well, like, imagine what we could learn.

Imagine what we could do from aliens. Like, it's an assumption that, again, like Prometheus, like they could provide some kind of superior technology that could enhance life on earth and, and make us more wiser and things like that.

So you really have that messianic kind of, thread as well. And then Peers is like the most common one, right? Your Star Trek's, your, your Marvel universes, right? The idea that you really, we're going to find someone that's like us. And I was thinking even Project Hail Mary coming out soon as a movie that's got a very good peer alien relationship in there. And that's just the idea that like maybe yeah, it will be something where we have exchanges of different types of knowledge, but essentially we will have kind of the same outlook of we want to share knowledge, we want to produce community and in the Star Trek universe and things like that, it's like very much about,

it's about human diplomacy, right? It's like those are geopolitical kind of analogs that are really fun to dig into. And there's two more that are less, that I put in the book as well, that are not as well trodden, which is the strangers, that's your Solaris and things like that, where it's like this resists categorization. It's the inability to explain the universe. There's no connection. You can't connect with them, which I always find to be a really interesting trope, but people don't do it much because people don't like not connecting. And then the subordinate, which I would say like District 9, something like that, where humans are in a power dynamic where they are abusing an alien or perhaps the alien is a pet.

Like you'd have Woola from the, from the Burroughs novels of the early 20th century, who's basically an alien dog, a Martian dog, that is just really cute and fun. So though those are the main ones. But they really do. They're so evocative, and they just kind of continue on narrative traditions that were once kind of divine, I think, in that way. Right. And you do find that bleeding into the testimony by UFO witnesses, claimed close encounter experiences, that the aliens told them to save our planet, stop using nuclear weapons, stop polluting.

Or you have, like, in the 80s and 90s, these super dark alien abduction cases. where people are kidnapped and, you know, impregnated or their baby is taken from them. Like, all this just really dark stuff. So you really do get this spectrum in the actual UFO testimony and UFO narrative out there as well, which is, it's fascinating for sure. The Summer in the Sky's podcast is free to listen to you every week. But if you would like to help support the show, we have a very active Patreon page, where you give what you think the show is worth.

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Learn more at M365 copilot.com slash work. Becky, is there an abduction case or a UFO case that you find particularly intriguing, keeps you scratching your head? I mean, I hate to go for the big one, but the Betty and Barney Hill one really makes me wonder. And just because there was so much investigation of that, and not that there was any actual evidence found at that site or anything, but the way in which they were so convinced and just like the kind of situation at that time and like the memory loss and the reporting of like stuff on their clothes and and you know all of that is so fascinating and i wish deeply we could know what truly happened uh whatever that new hampshire road was you know um and i think that it's it's also that one really digging into that before you know before writing this book i really had done a couple like you know uap UFO things here and

there but I had never really approached the deep lore and so reading more about that case and and others like that it just it's it's so fascinating and tantalizing and I you know I believe the people who are saying that something strange happened to them clearly something did it's just to not know is is really frustrating is isn't it and one of my favorite things about Betty Hill is there are lots of videos of her after the incident and way past the testing where she holds her line on what is true and what is not true. She will not let a reporter or someone asking questions move her off her truth, basically. She will stop them and say, no, that did not happen, which she reads like she's telling the truth.

Yeah, yeah. No, I, I, they seem, that's one of the reasons I find it so compelling. They seem they're not hoaxers, right? Like they're, they're saying what they feel they experienced. Absolutely. Something happened. I mean, Suzanne. and I both are UFO witnesses, but we don't claim to know what it was we saw or even barely

try to interpret it. And we've spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at this point who have claimed the same thing. And I think the most important thing is this is their truth. It's how they integrate that into their life, I don't know, their belief systems without it consuming you, you know, as it has for me some eight years later with this podcast. But here we all. are. It's working out well for you. I don't know. It seems right. They're doing fascinating work. Oh, thank you. Well, it's brought us to this conversation today, and I find that very rewarding. But yeah, I like that, that you're open to that as someone who might be skeptical of a lot of the sensational stuff in this field we call euphology, but at least willing to like

ask those big questions. So I respect that person. I mean, when you, I've seen the, you know, Navy pilot videos and the recent one with the help. Like it is, it is like, I don't know how you can look at these things. These are professional videos for military operators who are used to seeing weird things. Like, I want to know what they are. I personally don't think it's likely they're alien in origin, but they're there. You can't deny they're there. And it would be amazing to be able to, yeah, constrain whatever this is.

Like, yeah. Yeah, we have a term now in euphology. There's a there there. Yeah, that's a big step. Totally. Totally. Yeah. The evidence does point, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like, yeah, it's irrefutable footage.

And I think, you know, it's something that was really interesting for me in the book was just realizing the totally legitimate gripes from the UFO community against governmental misinformation, right? Like I had no, I had vaguely known, but then like reading the CIA reports about what they said

in the 50s and 60s, and convincing people that they were crazy and hadn't seen anything when clearly they had seen SpyCraft or something like that. So of course you're going to have this adversarial relationship and I think it's interesting that other governments like France and things

they got more open in the 70s to this and they don't really have the same I don't want to speak for all French UFO people but they don't really have that same adversarial relationship and in the past 10 years NASA and other government agencies have really tried to like take that approach but it's probably

you know, I think it's great. It's never too late, but that should have been an approach that was taken decades earlier from the beginning, right? And not trying to make people think that they're crazy. It's just interesting to me, too, that they were so afraid that these sightings would cause my psychosis and be a edge for the communists and things like, you know, it just, it's kind of reflects the paranoia of everybody at that time. It's not, it's the paranoia's in the government so much as well and jumping to conclusions. So, so yeah, it's, it's, fascinating period that whole early UFO time. I think it's I was so excited to go deep into that. Well, I think you put it best too. Like give humans some credit. They can handle a lot. They're not

going to freak. I mean, they will freak out. There's always that moment of like freak out and then acceptance. I mean, look at the things we've been through in the past decade or so with natural disasters, pandemics, everything you can possibly think of throughout the world. We are resilient creatures and I think we could accept that truth if there is a truth out there or a million different truths but anyways I apologize Suzanne please okay that's okay Becky the last part of your book addresses some of our past space exploration and our current space exploration and I was curious what you think about how we're doing in terms of our search for these habitable zones and where life might be I think it's the most exciting time it ever has been

And so much of this book is about inheriting this search from tens of thousands of years of previous ancestors. Oh, boy, wish I could send information back in time to them to be like, look what we're doing now. Because right now you have telescopes that are able to see the atmospheres of these distant exoplanets. They're beginning to turn up these potential biosignatures, which are very vague and cannot be at this point linked to life. But who knows in the future, I think especially when you have done. of those kind of potential biosignatures in these alien skies. That makes it more of a mosaic that you can assess, well, if we're seeing the same type of signature over and over again,

like this is hard to explain geologically. And then, of course, the amazing things that are happening inside of our own solar system with these missions like Perseverance, which also turned up this potential biosignature just a couple weeks ago. And so there's that. And then you have the interstellar objects age, right? The age of being able to see these fascinating objects coming through our solar system and that is going to be supercharged by the new Vera Rubin

telescope. That will be detecting dozens of those, I think, by the end of this decade. So we've had only three and only one was normal, like a normal comet. You know, obviously, Umuamu, it was a very strange object. There's natural explanations and there's the alien theory as well. But like, they're there they're you know once we have dozens of those objects uh wouldn't it be amazing to see what's coming through our so this is our first ex you know our first interstellar sample right we've never been able to study things up close that are from other solar systems uh so i think it's just like the most exciting time ever i think it's going to be really difficult to parse it and um we're going to have to take this attitude uh maybe maybe something will be like a total smoking gun

like it'll be oh look a little crawly thing on mars or something like that doubt it but you know what i mean like it's it's possible but i think it will be this really interesting study of like what is the edge of a biotic and an abiotic thing right um so and and really asking what is life and how can life have other on ramps than we've seen on earth does all life have DNA things like that like those are the questions i'm just really excited about um so it's going to be an amazing amazing amazing decade and beyond because we're just going to be flooded in these results soon. I'm ready. I think you see Al for Mork waving back.

That would be so great. That would be so great. Oh, my God. I love it. More morcs in less of these. Exactly. Yep to pods we saw in like a ride. Oh, you know, have to pause.

Oh, yeah, yeah. They're so cool, but like that terrifies me. Terrifies. Well, and that's the other thing, too, Becky, is we all. often look at these aliens in the alien literature as like, you know, bipedal creatures like us, you know, something we can relate to. But like you just mentioned, they could be so unbelievably alien, like the literal term, that we couldn't recognize them or even process it.

Or communicate. Yeah. Or communicate. That's where I wanted to go with you, Becky, actually. First Contact, the name of the book. what is like your favorite kind of hypothesis of what that would look like like do you have a favorite like we all imagine the president comes out and says we've made contact we all know that's not going to happen they've been covering up this alien UFO stuff in conspiracy theory for decades at this

point but um what do you think a first contact could look like or do you have a favorite oh man uh i the honest answer is i have no idea at all it would be really it would be I think, you know, obviously we always imagine it as some kind of beacon message that can be, you know, I think the version in contact, the Carl Sagan novel is great where you have this beacon that is telling you it is artificial. That would be so nice if aliens did that for us if they were like, here's some prime numbers. I do math too. But I think that's the mystery of it. Honestly, I try not, I love to speculate about the science fiction side of it.

and I think all of that would be really interesting. But I do feel like it's such an assumption that we have that they will be doing math or that they will have a conception of the universe that's similar to ours. I love arrival in the story that it's based on for the reason that the heptopods, you know, experienced time simultaneously. And what an interesting way to imagine like a different world view

and a different way of approaching the cosmos that they don't do arithmetic because they don't have that linear sequence, but they're very good at the much higher forms of math that that are like actual cosmological theories where there's no time zero, right? So I just, I find that super interesting.

So I guess I'm not really answering your question, but I just, I'm really excited by the mystery of it. And one other thing I really like is the telepathic aliens. I do think that, you know, that's something that's not scientific at all, but it seems to be like from hundreds of years ago, people are like, what if they just vibe check us? What if they, what does you just get a vibe across the...

I like your aura, dude. Yeah, exactly. And it's like, why not, man? I mean, it's like, maybe that's, I love that idea because we're obviously not telepathic, but, you know, why not? Like, it would be just so funny to be walking. I'm sure a lot of people think this, have to experience this, but like, we walk in across the street and like, oh, alien, like, alien contact in my head, right?

So I like that kind of science fiction trope as well. But there are some experiences who report that, though. They referred that even hearing things like this voice in their head saying, oh, she can hear us, you know, talking about the human recipient of the message, right? They're out there. Could I ask you guys what you imagine or what your favorite kind of version of first contact is? You know, I've always been a big fan of, and this might sound sobering to some people, It's not even alien.

It's us from the future. Like an advanced version of ourselves coming back. You know, you look at these androgynous aliens and maybe that's something we've either evolved or devolved into the big heads, you know. We're using our brains more than our bodies as we get further into this whole digital and AI age of everything, you know. I don't know. Or a lot of the reports of these people who have seen these aliens and their,

coming back to tell us something, it's because we have destroyed the future, ultimately, and they want to. So I always like that, that whole temporal, terrestrial theory, I guess. But, but like you said, what if time doesn't, time is a construct. So what if it doesn't even exist to these things or intelligences out there? So I don't know. That's, that's a theory I always like. I love it. Yeah. A bit more digestible in some ways. But, Suzanne, what about you? I go with the interdimensional concept where it's all, I know, where it's all connected somehow.

We might think we're watching a ghost or we might think we've had an alien again, but somehow all this is stewing around out there in the cosmos. So that's where I go. Yeah, no, that's a great one. I love it. It's like a big foot of ghost in an alien. Right. We're going to find out.

They all have the same origin, like big ghost coming out of the same rip-in the interdimensional fabric and yeah. They'll be great. A grand unified theory of the supernatural in this. It'd be great. Yeah. Hey, you zoom back far enough with anything and it's all somehow connected in my opinion. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. You had mentioned the NASA findings. A year ago, we thought we found what we believed to be signs of microbial life on the Mars surface. And so we put it out to our scientific friends to pressure test it, to analyze it, and go, did we get this right? Do we think this is signs of ancient life on Mars? And after a year of review, they've come back and they said, listen, we can't find another explanation. So this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we've ever found

on Mars. Do you think this will yield the first official possible confirmation that, like, once existed on a planet or even exists right now and we just haven't found it yet? Like, how big do you think this discovery by perseverance could be in the grand scheme of things? I mean, if they're able to bring those samples back and confirm, I mean, it's the biggest discovery probably in scientific history, right? Like, the problem is, of course, like, even on Earth, there's very ambiguous, you know, similar kind of redox reactions that have a geological or a biological origin. I do think if we are going to find life, I would expect it to come first from our neighbors

because that's just so much easier to be up close and to see. The Mars sample return mission is kind of under threat right now. There's talk of canceling it. I really hope it doesn't get canceled. It's a deeply troubled program, so I understand why people are frustrated with it. But to be able to actually get these samples back, I mean, perseverance is not able to, you know, do deep tests on these things. Like how, how amazing is it that it's found these possible biosignatures and how crazy would it be if we can't get it back to a lab, you know?

Yeah. But, I mean, imagine, like, Mars was habitable for four billion years ago. That has been confirmed, you know, that it had an atmosphere, it was wet, it was warm, it could, it had the conditions. So, so I think it's a great place to at least test microbial life. And there's even, you know, talk of potential biosignatures of, you know, it has a lot of methane gas that is unexplained on Mars, which some people think might be subterranean reservoirs of microbes that still exist. So to be able to, you know, there's one of my favorite theories, I'm sure you've heard of too, is that we're actually descended from the Martians and that they microbes started there and got transferred through pansephemia to Earth and that we came out of that, which is just,

I love it. So that would just be amazing to be able to test some of those theories we were just talking about, Does this, is this similar to microbes on Earth? Is it does it have DNA? Is it to go through the same evolutionary process? Or is there a completely different on-ramp? Transport your senses with Sol de Janeiro's limited edition perfume mist collection. At Sephora, spritz on lush notes of rainforest orchid and crisp sea breeze with hafresco Paraiso.

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will arrive there sometime mid-2030s. And that, you know, if there's life on Titan, that is going to be a completely different origin because it's hydrocarbon seas, it's not liquid water unless you're going down deep into the core. So, like, imagine that you have these, some form of life that's arising in liquid methane, you know. It's just, that would prove that life really is, I think, abundant if you're finding places at places like that. Yeah, that's so fast.

I'm glad you brought that up because that's kind of, I think, our final question for you that Suzanne had about the ethics of us going out and exploring this sort of stuff and what we could do. So Suzanne, I'll let you lead that one. I love this crossroad between non-human intelligence and ethics and how all that might work. What rules will apply? What rules will not apply? What can't be commonly understood and appreciated and therefore not honored? Those types of questions. I would love for you to tell our listeners how you're thinking about all this.

Oh, my gosh. You're speaking my language, Suzanne. I love it. I think it's one of the most pressing questions. There was just a study that came out last week that was just like, why don't we have an extraterrestrial protocol for how we're going to deal with this? Like, you know, if we're trending over Mars and potentially. So one of the one of the best examples, I think, is the Viking missions in the 1970s that landed on Mars. They were looking for life and they had a control system where they would, they would give one side of their soil sample nourishment and try to see if there was something metabolically kicking in there, some kind of micro.

And then they'd eradicate the other. They'd incinerate it. put it at like really high temperatures. So literally our human brains were going out into the universe being like, okay, you die and you live. And it's just like, I think because we really hadn't thought much about like ethically what that means, people don't think it's a big deal to kill a micrope, right? But I think we need to start asking, is that okay to do? Like, just to have your experiment be literally based on the idea that you're going to kill a bunch of malian microbes. So there's a huge discussion in ethics and the idea of like, you know, of course, bringing our own microbes to these worlds that could infect these, if they exist, these alien ecosystems really is a big problem.

And I think we do need to think about, but yeah, that what we're going to do if we encounter them to not disrupt a potentially very fragile ecosystem to say nothing of like figuring out if aliens invaded and as they do, you know, the way that they do in a movie. like we have the right to self-defense right like these kinds of it seems obviously very far-fetched and everything but when is it okay to kill an alien what what can what conditions should we be working under and i think certainly um you know the way that we've as humans kind of just completely disrupted the global ecosystem uh these are not questions that are just for i think these will be good ways to constrain how we how we work with our own earthling uh fellow brethren in the future as well It's a topic that I wish was in the news more, and I think it is really important for sure. I love thinking through this stuff.

And what do we need to do to get past the shoot first, to ask questions later concept? We're so fast for us. We're such skittish creatures. And we cannot go looking for life from a fear-based perspective. We have to have a plan of some kind of fairness, maybe even kindness and appreciation. you know, so boy, I'm right there with you. Suzanne, I want to ask you, too, like, I was surprised one of the Hellfire missile. I was like, what?

We could just shoot those? Like, you have no idea what that is? Like, what if it was an alien? I guess Suzanne that. I'm like, wait, you're showing us a UFO video, and then you're showing us just launching a missile at it without knowing where it is, where it comes from, who's piloting it. I don't understand. There's got to be a good article in that for anyone who wants to ask them. Pentagon or whatever.

Like, do we just shoot at these things now or what? Like, right. Well, to kind of play off of that, I guess to close things up, Becky, on the flip side of that, too, let's say something like the Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction did happen or that these aliens have been coming here and mutilating our animals that are experimenting on them. Like, let's say the UFO lore is true or even a sliver of it is true. Suzanne's a former attorney.

Like, how do you try an alien for kidnapping a human, traumatizing them, doing it time and time again without the human's consent, taking a baby, whatever, like causing harm to people? Maybe not even on purpose. A lot of these people have physiological effects after a UFO sighting, like radiation poisoning and stuff like that. Yeah. They might not even mean to do it, but hey, we try people for crimes that they didn't mean to do too.

So, yeah, I always like to look at it from the other side, too. Let's say some of this is real. Then what? Like, man, talk about an awkward first conversation, I guess. I don't know. That's so funny, too, Suzanne, that you have that legal background. I wonder, like, especially with these, like, how do you determine, like, intent with an alien? Right.

Exactly. It's quite a complex. seeing and there is one of my favorite anthropologist, Peter Scafers, she's probably someone you would enjoy listening to. And he's very thoughtful, as you might imagine, on these complicated, complex problems, including things like how First World Americans might react to this news versus a tribe in the Amazonian rainforest, living in isolation, basically. So the complexity is quite enormous. But in my humble opinion, we need a concrete plan, including communication, and don't shoot first kind of rules. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Total. First direct, what is it?

Prime directive? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Not that anyone in that universe ever takes it seriously. But yeah, it is, it's a good guideline, right? Yeah. I totally agree. There was a, a Iranian pilot who chased the UFO and had his weapons shot. down because he tried to fire on this UFO back in the 70s, I want to say, in Tehran. And they asked him after, like, what, if you had been able to actually communicate with that thing, that craft, that object, what would be the first thing you'd say? And it would be, and his question was, it wouldn't be, like, are you a threat? It would be, why are you here? And I liked that. It's like getting the intention and the motivation. But instead, he,

was ordered to like fire on this thing instead of asking it who are you where do you come from so that's always really stuck with me i think the the ethics of a lot of these things and how we do ultimately find everything a threat you look at the pentagon looking at UFOs they don't care about saving humanity or finding you know the cure for every disease we've ever had through these aliens uh they're looking it as a threat that's what they do so it's sad that that's kind of like at the forefront of the a faux topic now is the defense department and shooting hellfire missiles at these things. Right. And it's all militarized.

And Suzanne and I are trying to step away from that and show like what this topic could be, the hope. And I think that's what you do a lot too, is you're not just finding hope of an alien. You're finding that hope in humanity again. And we always talk about how this topic is a mirror, a reflection of us and what we aspire to sort of be. Yeah, yeah, that's why I think it's a weird-ass topic we chose to dedicate our lives to,

but it's really a beautiful one, and it asks big questions. And, you know, that's what life is. It's universal. I think you guys are spot on, and I'm so glad you're doing this, because there needs to be that positive and inquisitive, like, mindset towards it. I think just the gamut of subjects we've talked about, I'm so happy that you're continuing to reach so many people, and it is something that I think aliens are so great for being such a universal fascination.

Yes, we have very different opinions of what it means, but we all find them really, really interesting, and we all seem to kind of assume that they're there. Right. Yeah. It's a good, it's a good assumption, in my opinion, for sure. Yes. Awesome, guys. Well, the book is First Contact, The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens.

Not all obsessions are bad, guys. not all obsessions. It led to this awesome conversation today. So, of course, Becky. Last question for you. Where can we find the book and everything you're up to? Yeah, you can get it from Hachette, Amazon Pals. It's out now.

I'm very excited. I hope people enjoy it. And then to follow me, just go, I have a new newsletter called The Bex Files. So if you just Google that, it'll come out. And I'm doing that weekly. So I look forward to hopefully having more people join me on that venture too. The Bex Files. As you can see, I'm a Fox Molder fan. I was going to have an excuse to bring it up. That's so fantastic.

I knew it would come up. I knew it would come up. That's amazing. That's perfect. Yeah. We'll have links in the show notes for everything as well. So be sure to follow. Be sure to grab the book, guys. And yeah, Suzanne, any last words for Becky before we had? No, but thank you so much. Becky. Enjoyed this tremendously. I had such a great time. Thank you so much. Sure. Yes. Thank you for joining us on some more of these guys. Somewhere in the skies is part of the Somewhere Podcast universe.

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