Somewhere in the Skies - Micah Hanks: Building a Better UFOlogy | Truth, Myths & the Future of UAP Research

Episode Date: April 24, 2017

On Episode 02 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan talks about the mysterious case of a young man that has supposedly gone missing in Brazil. Left behind in his bedroom is a conspiracy theorist's dream come true; cryptic messages, occult-like symbols, a series of self-published books completely in code and a large, hand-made statue of a 16th-century philosopher. This entire story is made all the more intriguing after learning the young man was obsessed with aliens, a hand-painted portrait left hanging on the wall showing him dressed as the late philosopher, and an alien being holding him on the shoulder. Is this story the mystery of the year? Or is it an intricate prank or performance piece set to fool the online community? Next, we hear from Ryan's guest, noted author and radio personality, Micah Hanks. They speak about a fascinating UFO sighting that Hank's personally researched and investigated, and then they dig deep into the famous Cash/Landrum UFO case and the mysterious Frederick Valentich disappearance. They round out the conversation looking at the work of Allan Hendry, an investigator for the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) throughout the late 1970s, whose work alongside J. Allen Hynek resulted in his book, The UFO Handbook: A Guide to Investigating, Evaluating and Reporting UFO Sightings. Please take a moment to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple. ANOMACON 2025: http://www.anomacon.com 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] 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. #UFOlogy, #UAPs, #Disclosure, #MicahHanks, #UFOResearch, #AlienDisclosure, #UFOsightings, #UAPPhenomenon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms apply. One, two, three, me off a piece of... Have a break. Have a Kit Kat. Spectrevision Radio. 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 our imaginations. For if we consider that astro-scientists 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, then, 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. Concerned by what he saw, you know, with what he saw, he was worried. He sounded confused. Then as he described what the aircraft was doing, you know, I became a little bit concerned too. I had streamed out as to his safety. Flying a single-engine airplane over water, lost communication in such strange circumstances. I put an alert phase on the aeroplane, and once that had elapsed, we then went to the distress phase stage, and that was the commencement of the search.

There's been no recovery of any wreckage. Of course, he has gone, so we're left with an open case, which sounds very much like he did encounter something very mysterious. And there's no other conclusion that I can come to other than that. The voice you just heard was that of Steve Roby, the Flight Tower Service operator out of Melbourne Flight Air Service. On October 21, 1978, Frederick Valentage was piloting his Cessna airplane over Bass Strait, heading south-eastwardly for King Island.

This is when he radioed Steve in a controlled panic, stating that something anomalous was not only following his aircraft, but was now flying directly above it. The lentage described the object as rather large, cigar-shaped, metallic, with the green light pulsating from it. It passed over his plane and then vanished out of sight. Moments later, it returned and was once again dangerously close to the Lentage's aircraft, the last words of his transmission were his fathers.

Quote, it is hovering and it's not an aircraft. This is when the transmission went dead, and Frederick Lentage and his plane were never seen again. This strange case of a possible UFO and disappearance of a pilot has gone down in the annals of ephology, both controversial and deeply mysterious. Personally, it has fascinated me for decades. And when I learned that today's guest actually spoke with the girlfriend of Lentage, I knew I had to hear from him. But we'll have more on today's guest in just a moment.

So I do have a news story for you guys this week, and I want to get your thoughts on this, because I honestly don't know what to make of this, but I've been following it for a couple weeks now. This case comes out of Rio Bronco in Brazil on March 27th when news outlets started to report that a young

man, Bruno Borges, had been reported missing by his parents. To preface this, he'd apparently always had a fascination with both the occult and aliens. So, apparently, Borges' parents came home from vacation, and when they tried to enter the young man's bedroom,

it was locked. They were finally able to pry it open, and what they saw was absolutely jaw-dropping. Now, they did record what they walked into, and it can be viewed online now, so I'll post a link to the video of this. It's deeply fascinating, to say the least. So, apparently, Borges had covered the walls of his bedroom with coded text and extremely detailed diagrams. Also, set out on a table where these series of self-published books written in code and numbered. The strangest thing, however, was in the center of

of the bedroom a massive statue had been erected of Giodonno Bruno, a 16th century philosopher and theorist who was eventually burned at the stake for his proclamations of outer space and exoplanets, which could possibly harbor alien life. An artist rendering also was found hanging on a wall of the bedroom, which was assumed to be that of Borges, dressed as the philosopher, with an alien creature putting his hand on Borges' shoulder. While this is all deeply mysterious. It left so many questions. The first being why his siblings

hadn't noticed he was doing all of his work in the bedroom and not letting them in. So his sister explained that he locked himself in the room for 24 straight days, saying that he was working on a, quote, project, and that he was not to be disturbed. So while they knocked on the door to check on him sporadically, he always said he was fine and to leave him alone.

When his parents arrived home from vacation and learned of all this, they broke into the room and made this discovery. As of right now, as I'm recording this April 21st, Borgas is still reported missing. Many believe that once the books he'd lied out on the table, once they're decoded, it will lead to his reappearance. But local authorities are working with the parents and with Interpol to try to find him. But they are also working with decoders to try to unravel the mysterious and cryptic men. messages he left behind. Social networks have been going crazy on this case, everything from debating its authenticity to trying to decode the strange symbols and diagrams he left on the walls of the bedroom. People are also theorizing as to why Borges did this in the first place. Some

suggesting he may believe he is channeling the work of Giordano Bruno and continuing his work. think that he may have been taken by an alien race to finish his work, while the people back here on Earth decipher his books. It's all very speculative and extremely strange. So one of my listeners, Curran, recently brought to my attention a couple developments in this case. Apparently, a childhood friend of Borges, one Thalas Voscoscos, told Brazilian news outlets that he actually helped Borges encrypt the text in the books, and that he was tasked with transcribing the books from Portuguese into this secret code.

The text supposedly ponderes the meaning of life and how Borges had been given a, quote, mission to write the books. But the friend remains mystified to just exactly what this mission is, or who is giving it to Borges. Investigators have managed to track down the artist who created the statue in the room. His name is Jorge Wifesplat, and his beliefs are that Borges is in fact a real, incarnation of Giordano Bruno. So this case just seems to become crazier and crazier as small bits of the puzzle are being put into place. But the real question is, if any of this is genuine.

My hesitancy with this from the start is that not many mainstream news outlets are covering this case. Not that that proves it to be disingenuous because of this, but with a young man missing and this terribly strange thing going on, Let's be honest. Entertaining mysteries, you'd think the news outlets would be cobbling this up. So many believe that the occult-like aspects of this all is somehow connected to a shadowy society, the Illuminati, and that they're attempting to keep it all under wraps until Borges makes his return to the world. Others believe it's all some sort of performance piece, seeing how far the story can spread. Now, if that is the case, then I fell for it, but Glide Sinker.

Because this story, to me, it just gets creepier and creepier, and I want to keep following it. So, I guess we'll just have to wait and see if Bruno Borges ever returns, or what the exact messages in these series of books he's written truly mean. But I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on this entire situation. Is it a genuine head scratcher? Is this young man some sort of astro-projecting, reincarnated philosopher meeting with aliens? Or is this all complete bullshit? Send your thoughts to Sprague at Somewhere In The Skies.com

or join our active Facebook page, Somewhere in the Skies podcast. You can also tweet to the show. The handle is at Somewhere Skies. And if you're listening on YouTube, let us know what you think in the comments below. Setting this story on the skeptical debate shelf for now, let's get to today's guest. Micah Hanks is an author, researcher, podcaster, lecturer, and radio personality, whose work addresses a variety of areas, including history, politics, scientific theories, and unexplained phenomena. He is the author of several books, including the ghost rockets, magic, mysticism,

and the molecule, and the UFO singularity. Today, I speak with Micah about some of the most intriguing UFO cases to date, including the one you heard about at the top of the intro. We also speak about the work of perhaps one of the lesser-known but most influential individuals to apply science to the study of UFOs. We even touch on Micah's approach completely reshaping and re-interpreting the classification system of UFO reports. So, without further ado, let's get to the interview with Micah Hanks. Let's do this, Leroy Jenkins. Oh man, what a great way to start it. Guys, I'm here with Micah Hanks, my good buddy, researcher.

And Micah, a lot of people might not know this, but you actually wrote the forward to my book somewhere in the sky. So I thought it was very appropriate to have you on as one of my first guests on this endeavor that I'm embarking on. So, brother, thank you so much for coming on today. Oh, well, it's my pleasure, of course. And, you know, it was also a pleasure to be able to write that forward, you know, for your first book. I've done a lot of forwards for different people.

But, you know, you've always been a special guy since the very first time you reached out. And, you know, we actually had that opportunity, although I regret terribly missing your lecture this year at the UFO Congress. I wasn't able to get out there as I had planned to initially. I was trying to get the entire Graelian team out there and it just didn't come together. But that said, you and I had gotten to hang out at a previous Congress years back. And then subsequently, I during a travel to New York, was able to meet up with you and Peter Robbins, you know. And I talk about in that forward, of course, for those who haven't read it, and you should. But don't just read the forward.

Read the entire book because Ryan wrote the rest. I talked about, you know, traipsing around New York and having hot chocolate with you and Peter Robbins. Although, I hope you don't mind me bringing this up. but there is a bone I have to pick with myself here because, you know, I mentioned that, and I had referred to Pete seeing JFK at one point in his early life. And I think, you know, it may have been misconstrued as though Peter had met John F. Kennedy when, in fact, I mean, he described very, you know, vividly for you and I that day, standing there and meeting eye to eye with him, but he didn't meet JFK.

So I just wanted to kind of clarify that because, you know, I've had a few people. ask about that. Peter Robbins, Matt JFK? He is someone who has had a very sincere appreciation for JFK and has collected a lot of memorabilia about him. And so that was a very, you know, poignant experience for him because that occurred, of course, you know, a short time before the assassination, probably within a matter of months. I think he was campaigning at the time. But yeah, Peter described for you and I standing there as a youth and he said that JFK would work a crowd with his eyes. And it was something that as a politician who was a extremely good at him that he locked eyes with JFK. So it wasn't maybe exactly a meeting,

but I think that my wording may have misconstrued as that. So just for clarification, and of course, with due reverence to our good pal, Peter, great guy. Oh, thanks, man. Well, you know what? I mean, myself included, like, that's things that can be often overlooked pretty easily. And, And, you know, maybe we misheard one another or we were taking a sip of cocoa at that time. But it's funny, you know. Peter even told me one time, quote by Samuel Clemens, the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug. So you got to love that. That's poetry right there.

Well, everything Peter Robbins says is poetry. He is one of the most thorough individuals that I've ever met or known. and we were in Minneapolis together last spring. And as we were standing out there, and although it was spring, it was frigid cold. I remember it was so cold we were standing out there, and he was having a cigarette. And if I seemed antsy, it must have been having nothing to do with what he was talking about,

but just the chilly wind. And Pete, of course, you know, being a New Yorker yourself, you're the same. You're probably more used to that cold wind, and he was standing there just completely unmoved, unaffected, and telling this elaborate story. And here I am, I don't handle heat well, but I live in the South where it's so hot and I'm freezing. I mean, I was just frozen.

So I, you know, I've got so many good Pete stories and I know you do too. So he's just a wonderful guy. And that's why I wanted to bring that up just because, again, I think me personally, and I know it's the same for you, I kind of look to him as one of the most well-rounded and knowledgeable scholars on the UFO phenomena, having spent a lot of time going through newspaper archives and having, again, really tried to wonder. understand the meaning of words and the way that words convey or what words convey about the UFO subject. You know, he has talked about tracing the giggle factor. You've heard him talk about that, right?

Absolutely. I mean, I've even accompanied him a few times at the New York Public Library, where we've gone through the microfiche and the newspaper articles. And Peter is the kind of guy where... Life experience is an excellent teacher. It's time you get the recognition you deserve for those hard-earned lessons. Purdue Global values the experience working adults bring to the table. Whether you're interested in a rapidly growing field like cybersecurity,

business, nursing, or any of Purdue Global's other 170 programs, earning the credentials you need may be faster than you think. Try our experience calculator to see if you could be eligible for course credit and start your comeback today at PurdueGlobal.edu. A library is the sanctuary rather than the internet. And I think there's something to be said for that. There are things we're going to find, you know, in the annals of the bookshelves that we won't find in the piles and piles of garbage on the internet. So like yourself, I do find Peter as my mentor in specific.

And just a wealth of information, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And again, just one of the most thorough guys. I read a review of one of his lectures by a skeptic, and it was a very mean review because the guy was talking about how boring the UFO subject was in observing Peter talk about it. I'm thinking you're missing the point, though, because I love it when people who are of a skeptical ilk complain when somebody is thorough

if they're going to look at facts in history about something, or if a scientist, for instance, comes out like Brian Sykes and says, you know, I think we should actually apply some science to the study of something like Bigfoot. There's a recent DNA study that's been announced. I don't think it's been conducted, but they plan to sample water from different parts of the famous Loch Ness in Scotland to see if there is any biological residuum that we might be able to attribute to an unknown species. And again, it's interesting. There are people of a skeptical ilk.

I would call them more doubters or debunkers. Or perhaps, as Sharon Hill has called them, denial. These kinds of individuals, they don't want to see science being conducted or thorough research with certain subjects because their mind has already been made up. And so the very thing that a serious hardened denialist would criticize someone like Peter for is what makes him such a good researcher. It's what makes him so strong. It's what makes him so revered in the community and what makes him such a powerful individual because, again, his mind is like a steel trap and his attention for details, I'll never understand how anyone could look at that and say that's not a good thing. It's the best thing and he's the best at it.

Oh my God, dude. I mean, I can't remember what I had for breakfast, but this guy is recalling what people were wearing, you know, when he was 12, 13, 14 years old. And he met, you know, a famous actress on Broadway or he met this, this academic. It's incredible. Did he meet those academics or did he see them at a distance? We're going to have to get his word on that. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Well, I can't wait to come back up and visit and see you and P. We're long overdue for some more hot chocolate. Heck, we could even do coffee or tea this time. Let's get crazy. Let's just get a little nuts, for sure. All right, my man. So, I mean, I first came across your work through your book, The UFO Singularity, which we can definitely dive into a little bit if you'd like.

But what really struck me was there was a, case that you covered in chapter four of the book about a gentleman named Mike Reese and uh this really caught my attention and I'd love if you wouldn't mind if we could kind of bring our listeners a little taste of what that case was walk us through it and what you made of this well yeah and in fact I'm still in touch with Mike and I regret that on uh St. Patrick's day which last St. Paddy's day you'll recall of course on your other fine podcast I was celebrating with you and your co-hosts. This year, I was busy, busy, busy, busy, and I wasn't able to get out of the house at all.

And it so happened that, I mean, everybody was in Asheville that day, and they were all saying, hey, you got time to catch up, have a drink or something. So I didn't get to meet with Mike, but he happened to be in town. And I need to get back with him and let him know we're long overdue. Because he and I are still in touch. And how we met was, like yourself, he actually found me through the podcast, not the book. Okay. And he ended up in that book, though, the very book that you mentioned. Mike, he reached out and he said, I love your podcast, The Grayleian Report.

And I have been listening for a while. And he said, I haven't talked about this in years, but I thought you might be the right kind of guy to tell about a UFO experience if you'd like to hear about it. And I said, yeah, sure. And he said, he had all but forgotten about this and never talked about it anymore because this experience was just so surreal. But he was not the only witness. and there were a lot of interesting elements of corroborations. So getting down to the nuts and bolts, so to speak, I'll just preface this by saying that 1973 is when this occurred.

And right there toward the end of 1973, there were a lot of significant UFO reports that have kind of been gone over and rehashed over the years. And so I wanted to discuss this because, in my book, The UFO Singularity, I wanted to talk about what Mike Reese experienced because it not only coincided roughly with that, period, 1973. I mean, the Pascagoula abduction of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, that was a big one,

but there were others too right around that time. It was not only timely, but it was a case that was, I think, as interesting as any of those, and yet had never been discussed, because as we often see, and you talk about this kind of thing a lot in your book, Ryan, a lot of people, when they've seen these kind of things, they second guess themselves, they are worried what people will think about what they have to say, and they don't come forward and talk about it. So, so, so, Mike hadn't talked about this and asked, could I come to you and discuss what I saw back in 73? Would you be interested? I said, sure. And I thought he's going to talk about a light in the sky. And boy, it was anything but just a light in the sky, although the case began that way.

It was probably in late November, 1973. He couldn't remember the exact night, but we tried to work all that out. And I traveled with him to the location where he saw this, which was Locust Grove, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. But he actually, I think, lived in an area called Forest Park and was en route from Atlanta. back to Forest Park and passing through this area Locust Grove. And there's what's known as the Bill Gardner Highway that you can get onto and then you get back

on the interstate and everything. And he had been driving north on Highway 2342. And again, it was probably after midnight. And he sees again a bright white light off in the distance, which he said he would have thought it was a helicopter, but he couldn't place it. He said there was just something about it that wasn't quite right. Something seemed

off about the movement of the object. It's sort of like if you're out at night and you, if you can spot celestial bodies, like, for instance, first we'll say a star further out, you're going to notice what's called scintillation, a twinkling, and this is what causes the twinkling effect of the stars, whereas our own solar bodies here within our solar system, the actual planetary bodies most prevalent usually are going to be Venus or Jupiter or Saturn, they're not going to have that kind of scintillation. They're closer. Their actual planets, they're reflecting sunlight, and they're, you know, in terms of proximity much closer. So he said that the

the appearance of the light, you might liken to scintillation or something, but there was also this kind of an awkward, almost aberrant kind of movement. And as he's watching this thing move through the air, he misses his turn intentionally and starts heading in the direction of the light. And so his wife and his sister and their children, I think he said his firstborn and also his sisters, two little children, very small. And I don't think they would have remembered this. They were in the vehicle. And so altogether, there were three adult observers who were awakened, who were aware at this time. As his wife had been in the front passenger seat with him,

his sister in the back seat, and they were all saying, Mike, what are you doing? You just missed your train. He says, well, I just need to, I want to see what this was. Something about that light wasn't quite right. As he's getting closer, and again, keep in mind, I met him here in North Carolina,

and we drove all the way down to Atlanta, and we went and we retraced these steps. So as I am driving up the highway with him, he points to the same little row of trees, and sure enough the same power substation on the left side of the road headed north is still there. And he said as we were coming, you got to keep in mind it's late at night. So the bright light of whatever this object was, it had stopped moving. It was now hovering roughly over the area where this power substation directly ahead of us was.

And we're able to see the light beaming through the trees, but we can't make out anything yet. And he said, I was getting so excited. The anticipation building as I'm coming up on this object, you couldn't imagine. And then as he gets close enough to this thing, lo and behold, he pulls up, he swerves off the side of the road. We parked exactly where he presumes again, decades ago that he had actually pulled up off the road. And he leaps out of the car because directly over this power substation,

he is able to see a, and this is interesting, okay? A lot of UFO cases involve amorphous objects. A lot of them involve triangles. From time to time, you'll also get elliptical kind of objects. There aren't very many that really are good. what I would call saucers or discs. And the reason I point that out is because, again, although Jay Allen Hineck first instituted that terminology back in the 19,

he may have used it as early as the 1950s, but really the 1960s is when it kind of became canon, so to speak, to euthology. The daylight disk designation referred to a range of different objects of different appearance, not just discs. And the whole thing of flying saucer was in reference to, the mode of transportation or the movement, okay, the locomotion of the objects observed by Kenneth Arnold, not the actual description of their shape initial.

That's a whole different thing we could get into later, but it's important to point that out here because what Mike Rees saw was a distinctly disc-shaped object, and it was hovering. He said that there were lights all around the perimeter that were going in a sequence of red, green, blue, red, green, blue, like that, and that he was able to observe this thing hovering for several minutes. Now he said I, I swerve over, you know, park the car and I jump out and I see this thing. And he said, I was so excited. And I asked him. I said, what did you do? Did you just stand there and look? He said, oh, I jumped up and down. I was waving my arms trying to get its attention. And he said, I just wanted to know who was on board. And he said, what do you think they were from? And he says, I don't know. They could have been from out there. But he said, I don't know, they could have been from out there. But he said, I don't know. They could have been from out there. But he said, I don't know. They could have been from out there. But he said, something about this object, being able to see it and not just hear about this kind of thing. He said his father was always interested in the unusual and that he had had things like Fate Magazine laying around when he was a kid. But he said, this object defied all

expectations. It didn't seem otherworldly, but then again, it was unlike any aircraft or any kind of device, machinery, anything that he had ever seen or could conceive of existing on earth. And so he said, something told me this was perhaps an earthly technology. Nothing about this said this is so far out. It's got to be aliens. But then again, I mean, that was me jumping up and down looking at this thing, not reading about it in a magazine. Now, his wife and his sister were terrified, and they were screaming at him, get back in the car. They were so frightened. And when I met with him back in probably 2011 for dinner, his wife at the time, they had divorced, unfortunately, but she wasn't present, but his sister did come out that night.

And she was able to confirm that the details that Mike had given me were correct. And he provided not only a full written report, but then we also met and discussed it. His stories never changed. There had never been weird, crazy, you know, additions or anything like that. He did say that at the time he worked for the Georgia Division of Transportation and that the next day at work, he suddenly had a headache and got sick, physically sick. and had to be taken to the infirmary. And, yeah, they told him that he had suffered from an ocular headache, and that was all. But again, I wondered, I mean, what might have caused this headache?

Because we do is we're going to look at a little later with another UFO case. I think we're going to be discussing. There are people who, after they have observed a UFO at close distance, they will suffer physical effects that are typically not very good, right? So the other thing that was so sad was that Mike had a good friend that he worked with there at the DOT, and he started to describe this the next day. And he said that they talked about space and astronomy and things like that all the time. As he began to describe the object that he saw, he says his friend, his eyes widened,

and he said it was the most palpable sense of, what would you call it? I guess, I mean, it was just this guy thought that Mike was nuts and literally almost just didn't want to have anything to do with him anymore after this experience. and he said it was those kinds of experiences when I would try to talk to somebody about this and they would absolutely shun me I just shut up and I just quit talking about it but he said I did right after it happened I did contact the local news station there in Atlanta

and they said they'd gotten all kinds of reports of people who had been driving that night over on the adjacent interstate because he watched the object and it hovered for several minutes and then it began to drift off probably what would have been to the west over in the direction of the interstate and he said I knew as I was watching this thing

move in that direction, people out there driving on the highway had to have seen it. And sure enough, they'd gotten a couple of reports there at the news station that he said. But again, nobody seemed to really report on this because it just seemed, oh, you know, crazy. So, you know, that was his report. And one of the things that I found extremely interesting about it was the sequence of the colors that were moving around the periphery of the object. Because again, that red, green and blue, you've got to keep in mind that red, green, and blue are the primary colors as far as light goes, whereas with pigments it's yellow green or I'm sorry yellow red and blue. When you combine those three primary,

this is referring to what's called additive light theory, essentially, you combine those three colors of the primary spectra and you get white light. And he described initially having seen the thing at a distance as resembling a white light that he said something about it was weird. Again, that sort of scintillation but not. And what that said to me was, I mean, this is an obvious clue about the,

the mechanism and the locomotion of this object, what was propelling through the sky. I asked him, I said, was there any evidence of this object turning, counterclockwise or otherwise? And he said he could really discern. He said that the lights moving in sequence might have given that appearance, but he said it was too difficult to discern because the actual exterior of the craft looked like a kind of brushed silvery gray, very dark, but metallic.

And, of course, in those conditions, very little could be discerned. But the other interesting thing about it, again, is this object hovering over a power substation. In other euphological literature, we hear about this kind of thing often, Ryan, UFOs that hover over power substations or over nuclear facilities. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, the Maelstrom Air Force Base incident comes to mind first and foremost. But yeah, please elaborate. Well, just to be briefly, I'll give you another recent example. John Greenwald of the Black Vault has for years done a fabulous job obtaining government documents. about UFOs. And again, I don't understand the mentality of people who would turn their nose up at this alleged

phenomenon when you can go and you can read these documents. The most recent had been, I think, the nuclear regulatory commission. He had set an FOIA request to them, and they finally sent back a series of documents that referred to a incident that occurred around 1986 where a triangular-shaped aircraft had been traveling down the Missouri River, about 150 feet, I believe, that memory serves above the water. And it hovered. outside the intake of this nuclear facility. And the first night, there had been only one member of the security staff who had observed it. He tells a bunch of the other people the next day, what happens? You guessed it.

They all laughed. They didn't believe him. Well, lo and behold, they say lightning doesn't strike twice. That may be the case. But UFOs occasionally do return to the same location once again. And in this instance, the very next night, he's out there. There are other guards on duty, some of them the ones who had laughed the night before. And they see this thing coming back down the Missouri.

once again and it hovers next to the intake for several minutes then turns around and goes back up the river. This time they were able to get a bunch of people out there. They all saw it. See, that's interesting. Whenever I hear, I don't know about you, Micah, but when I hear about repeatability of these UFO events night after night, that's when my skeptical lens comes on and I do begin to wonder if this is something conventional, if this is something man-made or possibly some sort of weather anomaly due to the consistency of it. What do you make of that idea that, you know, if this thing is happening over consecutive nights, you could look at something like even the Bentwater's case, that it's happening over and over again. Is this whatever it is surveilling the area constantly, or is this possibly some sort of consistent anomaly?

It's difficult to say in this region where I live, we have the Black Mountain Range a little further south of Asheville, where I am. And in the Black Mountain Range, particularly around the area called the Limbaugh Gorge, it's one of the most beautiful scenic wilderness areas. Really, I think, on the eastern United States, and it's one of the largest gorges, which they would call a canyon out west, but the largest east of the Mississippi. And I think that the geological features present there are probably a big part of what is behind the mechanism, if you want to call it that, behind what's known as the Brown Mountain Lines. There is some variety of earthlight phenomena that occurs there. And I have seen very good photographs over the years. You know, I've been down there and I've had a couple of experiences where there may have been things that I also observed myself. and I know that sounds very dozy weight.

There may have been things you observe, but again, what I've seen has never been on par with the things that people have described that they have seen. I mean, I'm talking. People have said they've seen large, bright, white, beach ball-shaped, orbs of light that ascend into the air. They usually come off of one of the adjacent ridges. Sometimes they will travel over the gorge and come in their direction and hover and things like this. See, I've never had that happen.

But a lot of people describe that down there in the Longville Gorge. So the Brown Mountain Phenomena, again, that seems to be a recurring, natural phenomena. And there are scientists like my friend, Dr. Oh gosh, I almost said Albert Goodier. That's a different scientist friend of mine. This is Daniel, Dr. Daniel Caten, who's an astronomer there at App State. He's, again, a very skeptically minded person who has admitted that he got into a point of cynicism about Brown Mountain because he spent so many years not seeing anything. Until last year, when they had a pair of remote web cameras that were positioned

on different ridges, which allowed them to observe the brown mountain, the primary brown mountain ridge for which the phenomena is named, although, again, I've said it shows up in different parts of the gorge, but he was able to actually obtain two different pieces of footage that show up an apparent transient light phenomena over that ridge from different angles. And this is really excited him, because it seems, although that it's like something kind of similar to ball lightning, that there is, again, this unique repeatability about that region. So, yeah, it does seem to happen, and I, again, would think that rather than being something that's a, you know, an aircraft or something, a technology, that a lot of this stuff is indeed probably more likely to be, you know,

a variety of natural earthly phenomena. But then you have something like Bentwaters, which really that case is so crazy. And you spent a lot of time looking into that. And so as Peter Robbins, a lot of people, again, that's a politically difficult one to discuss right now because there's so many different opinions. But I'll say this, because, again, all I'm really trying to, you know, express there's, there's so much about, you know, Rendlesham that there's too much to get into right now. But again, the fact that there was something that occurred over several consecutive nights, that was interesting.

But that didn't sound to me like it was in likelihood some kind of earthlight phenomena or something along those lines. What was described did seem to be something that was more, it appeared technological in origin, but it was extremely exotic in its manner. So, you know. Yeah. Make a bit what you will, I guess. We'll definitely have a special show just dedicated to Rendell Show.

I might have you on for that. Well, I kind of want to go back. And for those listeners who aren't familiar, they can definitely read more about Mike's experience in your book, The UFO Singularity. Great book. One of the first I read on the topic got me interested in your work. But what I want to sort of touch on is that physiological aspect, Micah, of. how a UFO event can physically alter people. And one of my favorite cases is the Caslandrum case, 1980.

And I know that you have some pretty interesting, not determinations, but theories on what we might have been dealing with in terms of this case. Could you maybe give us a brief recap of what this case was and what you possibly believe it could have been? Yeah, again, it's very difficult to kind of come to a determination because as with a lot of these UFO cases, there was for years the assertion that we had all kinds of physical proof. You know, there had been burns and scorch marks and things on the road there near Dayton, Texas, where this incident occurred. Again, a unique historical footnote is that this cash landerum incident did occur, I mean, right around the same time as the Rendlesham Forest incident.

I mean, yeah, it was literally right there around that same time within just a couple of days. So that's an interesting thing to me because as we saw with the Mike Reese experience that coincided with a like a little flurry of what I consider to be fairly good quality UFO incidents that occurred there in the latter part of 1973, we had the same kind of thing happening at the latter part of 1980. And I don't mean to say that that means that there's a connection to be made between what happened at Rendlesham Forest and what was observed by Betty Cash and Vicki Landrum. But again, that is interesting that these two happen around the same time. Their experience was December 29th, 1980. Betty Cash had been driving her car. It was an Oldsmobile Cutlass, and joining her in that vehicle had been Vicki Landrum, and then her grandson, who was seven years old at the time, Colby.

Colby has appeared on a number of UFO programs and has been interviewed because Betty and Vicki, of course, have since passed away. And Betty had suffered from the onset of cancer in her life. and whether or not we can directly attribute that to what unfolded that night in 1980. We don't know, but again, the narrative goes like this, that they were driving along this road, which was on its way into Dayton, Texas, which is where they lived. And they had been going out to try and have dinner, I think, and then they were going to play bingo, but it was right around the Christmas holidays there between Christmas and New Year, which is significant about this case.

Because not only was that the reason that bingo places weren't open, but this also is the problem that we have with trying to understand, you know, a military component as it relates to this case. They're driving along it shortly after 9 o'clock. The road there that they were traveling winds a good bit. And the important thing also to remember is that they're kind of like the Mike Reese's case. Again, there were trees that probably coniferous forest that line both sides of the road. And they at some point see through the trees in the distance ahead of them a light.

and this light had been at about treetop level. As they get up closer to it, this thing is hovering essentially over the road, and they're able to pull up, and they actually stop the car. Betty Cash decides to get out of the vehicle. Now, there are descriptions of this object that describe it as being diamond-shaped, okay? But the initial descriptions don't seem to necessarily explicitly say that this thing was diamond-shaped. They merely say that it was a bright light hovering over the road and that if anything, the light was so bright that it didn't allow for a clear discernment of the shape. But Colby, again, seven years old at the time had said that he believed that the thing appeared to be diamond shaped.

And later, you begin to see that the descriptions given by Cash and Landrum began to kind of match that description that it seems to have originated with Colby. Yeah. Interesting. I did not know that. Well, yeah, and see, that's an important point. I think that we've got to bring to mind here because the, uh, As a matter of fact, there's a really good podcast, but website that I'd like to make reference to. The website is blue blurry lines.com, okay? And that website, although it focuses primarily on the cash landrum situation,

I don't think that that's the only case that it deals with. And the researcher, of course, who does that website, Kurt Collins, I've interviewed him before. He's one of the most well-rounded researchers and has even to a much greater degree than I have. has looked into the cash landrum incident. So, you know, people should definitely check up blue blurry lines.com and read some of Kurt Collins' research, great stuff. And the most recent post, by the way, was made on March 31st of this year. So it's well-kept website,

and it's also up to date. So that said, it was Kurt Collins who had brought to my attention the fact that these early descriptions of the object that was seen there over the highway. and then the later description of this is kind of a triangular shaped or rather a diamond shaped craft and they don't necessarily jive. That's a common feature among a lot of these UFO cases.

Again, Kenneth Arnold initially described objects that their locomotion reminded him of like a disc skipping across the water, a saucer or a stone if you flip it and skipped it across the water. And so the press started calling these things, flying saucers, low and behold. And then within a few months,

and I'm not trying to say this to again take away from what Arnold saw because I believe he probably did see something several somethings in fact but after a few months he began to also say that the objects may have been disc shaped also but at least one of them appeared to have kind of a flying wing appearance so he kind of updated his memory and I think that with the cash landerb incident that may have happened also but so again coming back to the night of the incident we have this light hovering over the highway we can at very least agree to say that there was definitely something producing illumination Betty got out of the car

She stood and she watched it for a number of minutes. When she tried to get back into the vehicle, she said that the metal handle of the door burned her hand, and she had to use the part of her coat to be able to open it. And she said that despite the fact that it was late December, and even as far south as in Texas, it can get chilly down there, especially at night in December. But she said that the heat produced by this thing was enough such that she could have stood out there.

I mean, it was hot. She said it felt like a hot, humid summer day. That's how much heat being produced. She tries to get back into the vehicle. and they observe as the object begins to kind of move away and toward the forest what appeared to be several Chinook helicopters that kind of it gives the impression the way that the circumstances were described that they were escorting the object out of the area.

Betty, having gotten out of the car within the next 24 to 48 hours, began to suffer what appeared to be symptoms consistent with exposure to non-ionizing radiation. Now, there are a variety of different ways. this might happen or what different varieties this could be without getting into the science of non-hionizing radiation and what different varieties there are and what they can do. This kind of an exposure to radiation could certainly cause such things as perhaps a sun's like a sunburn-like phenomenon or effect on the skin and also could, you know, theoretically could probably also cause a certain sickness like radiation poisoning. Whatever the case, Betty seemed to suffer these effects.

Vicki Landrum and Colby to a lesser degree, and remember, they didn't get out of the vehicle. Right. So with regard to this case, I mean, exactly what was seen, they went to the Air Force. They had tried to seek, you know, help for their medical conditions, especially Betty Cash. The problem was that they said, of course, at that time during the holidays, that there had been no known military operations occurring, and none of their Chinooks, none of those helicopters should have been out and flying. Now, there are two ways we can interpret that. This means that there was some sort of military operation that those regional facilities could not account for. And therefore, perhaps this had nothing to do with that region.

Although, again, that's the problem that many researchers over the years have had the biggest perhaps is if there were these genetic helicopters, not only seen by cash and landrum, but also there had been, I think, a former, I think it was a former law enforcement officer, or at very least an off duty, who, along with his wife driving along, they said that they didn't see any kind of anomalous, being lighter aircraft, but they certainly saw helicopters moving together. So there were people who had said that they'd seen these helicopters that night, apart from Cash and Landrum, but nobody can account for where they came from. That's one of the biggest problems with the case. So the other way that we might interpret this is, and is it fair to ask, was there something

that was going on that the military did not want to release, and they have not released information about an actual valid operation that was underway that night? Again, Cash and Landrum, when they first saw this thing, they had likened it in this eschatological fashion to being like the end of the world. They said, we weren't sure what was going on. There's this bright light. We thought maybe the world was ending. Right. Later on, I think Betty Cash had phrased it differently and said, you know, we don't know that it was necessarily aliens or something from another planet. But, I mean, whatever this was, I mean, you know, we'd like to know, we'd like answers because, you know, we've been affected by it mentally, perhaps, but more obviously physically too. And this resulted in a lawsuit, am I correct?

Yeah, that's right. I think that this is one of these famous UFO instances where the people who had claimed damages from this, yeah, it did absolutely result in a lawsuit. Now, that's the funny thing is that, again, I'm really troubled by the mentality of skeptics that would assert such things as the following. And I've actually seen this. Now, I want to say Robert Schaefer did not say this himself. He did an article on his website. And I like Robert OK. He was there that same year you and I were there at the International UFO Congress, and he wrote a fairly unfriendly blog post about my lecture. And so I just ran up to him and I said, hey, listen, you know, I'm not what you made me out to be. And if I have an opportunity to reach out and, you know, directly engage, especially at an event, you know, a skeptic and talk with him, we often find that we have a lot more in common than we differ on. So this is no way me attacking Bob Schaefer, but somebody of skeptical ilk commenting on a, blog post he did at his website, bad UFOs, in relation to this case, had said that Betty Cash had probably laid under a heat lamp to achieve the burned appearance and then drank toxic chemicals, household cleaners and things, nearly killing herself so as to fake the effects

of radiation poisoning because they were trying to extort money out of the government. Okay, that's one theory. Now, that's more likely you see than them seeing a UFO because we have no evidence of aliens. and therefore it's more likely that this was just a, you know, a hoax, a heist, they were just trying to get money. The skeptical mind, not all skeptics do this, by the way. No, I'm very skeptical. I call myself a skeptic, but I don't go fabricating cockamamie stories that offer a quote-unquote believable explanation just to try and detract from the idea that something out of the ordinary was observed. And I don't think that what was observed was necessarily all that out of the ordinary.

Again, if you want my speculative opinion on what was observed, it was probably something along the lines of a high-yield thermal emission device, possibly something. And there are patents that exist for devices like this, although the few that I've observed are probably, again, just a handful of those which might be perhaps not only out there, but also some of which may be in use and have been tested by military agencies. Why they were doing this test right around Christmas, that's anybody's guest. And again, there is no documentation that supports that theory. So that's why I have to say this is speculative, because again, people said that they saw Chinooks in the air that that night. That doesn't jive with the official records. We've never been able to really, to my knowledge, at least reconcile those two issues. But there are such things as patents that describe a thermal emission device.

And I wrote a blog about this a while back that suggests that an object perhaps that would be used for the very quick inflation of large hot air balloon or something like that might be useful. When I compared notes with Kurt Collins about that, he said, well, no, that's very interesting. Michael because he said in those initial descriptions given by cash and Landrum rather than the the diamond shape that Colby kind of described and that they later started talking about when they were asked about that and what it looked like they said it was if anything balloon like oh okay so to my way of thinking I wondered if there if there might not have been something that was again capable of a lot of energetic output it It would seem to suggest that whatever the source of this energy was capable of causing these burns and the ensuing radiation sickness-like issues.

But then there have been other researchers like Brad Sparks who had suggested that because there was no direct evidence of radiation found in the environment, in the general locality where that incident took place, he said he couldn't conceive of that sickness being induced by anything but something chemical. So, you know, again, I think that part of the problem that we're looking at here is, What caused Betty Cash and also the Landrums to fall ill, is there any evidence that that really was something in terms of a source of radiation? Could it have been something else that would have caused similar effects? And would that rule out the nuclear component altogether? So those are some of the issues that we face with that case. But again, it really infuriates me, Ryan, when people say, oh, well, they did this to themselves.

They were trying to get money. Right. I mean, you and I both know there's very little money to be had as a researcher. I would assume there's not much to be had being an experienceer either. You have everything to lose, in my opinion. You know, maybe you get lucky. You strike a movie deal or something. But, I mean, to risk your entire mortality to do this just seems a little insane to me.

But who knows? I mean, we don't have either of these individuals here any longer, as this is often the case with many UFO incidents, to tell us their side of the story anymore. We have Colby, and that's about it. So, you know, it will go down in the annals of UFO history is one of the more compelling cases, for sure. But will we ever find an answer?

Frustratingly, we often never do. And in this case, we probably won't either. But, you know, again, talking about people who profit from euphology, I mean, I will acknowledge my own, you know, to an extent, I have a certain degree of distaste. for UFO events, and this coming from a person who in the past has coordinated some fairly large events myself, let's not forget. I haven't done any of that in recent years because it's more trouble usually than it's worth. And also my ideology has changed a good bit too.

I used to kind of think it was more like, oh, let's just get a bunch of people who we may not necessarily agree with and just get them all together because, you know, for both educated and also for entertaining purposes, this will be of merit. And then I get the kind of feedback from people. I couldn't believe that you would associate with Eric von Dhanockner, that you would associate with this person or that person. To me, you know, seeing something that I would consider, for instance, Ryan, to be complete bunk, you know, I can still find that subject interesting. But when I hear somebody discussing a very fringe claim or something very far out, it just makes me want to investigate those claims more skeptically myself.

It does it. Oh, wow, I'm suddenly brainwashed. And I believe that, you know, humankind was seated by aliens that visited back in, you know, the dawn of civilization, whatever the case. You know, again, I think it's fine to have an interest in things that you may not also believe in

because culturally those things nonetheless are significant. Now, that said, there are issues I definitely have with like the culture, not the culture, I'm sorry, the industry will say of euphology, okay? Let's put on a great big event. Let's sell a bunch of books. Let's sell a bunch of DVDs.

Let's make a lot of money. But then again, on that side of things, you don't usually make a lot of money. And what do people go to these events for? Well, they're interested in the subject. Is it wrong or should people be disallowed to have an interest in this subject? Just because some people are naysayers and think that there's nothing to euphology, I think when you really break it down on those terms, you start seeing how absurd it is,

the efforts to try and discredit people, like, for instance, and there's a great example, Travis Walton. Travis Walton has sold books. He does speaking engagements. He's often paid for them. But if you sit down and you talk to that guy, he is just as interested in this stuff as you or I. He's extremely approachable, very friendly. No, I don't think he's a con man.

And like so many people who go to these kind of events, Travis is looking for answers. Philip Class, of course, was convinced that, well, Travis was just trying to make money. Everybody, in his view, was just trying to make money. Let's see how we can pull the wool over people's eyes and win the National Inquirer, you know, $5,000 UFO championship or whatever. I mean, I don't think that every person who says that they see something unusual. is just making stuff up for money. And like you correctly said, there are far better ways to become,

you know, not only famous or to make money, but to make lots more money than faking a UFO incident. Absolutely. You know, and I'm glad you brought that up, man, because, you know,

yes, there are so many people who come to these events to have conversations, to have debate, to, or to solidify their own beliefs. And while this can be,

you know, detrimental at times. It can also be revelatory for some individuals. But what I think a good thing you brought up is that the skeptical side of it. We often look at skeptics as the enemy and the further I've gotten into this topic, as I'm sure you have, the more I realize that skepticism is not only essential. It's healthy and it actually helps your research. I mean, if we were just constantly going down rabbit holes of, you know, witness testimony and, you know, the more of a religious side of just belief, where is that going to get us? So I'm very happy to hear you bring up the idea of skepticism. And we'll get into that a little bit later in terms of a certain book that you brought to my attention.

But there is one more case I can't not talk about. And this is one you and I have talked about. And what I heard about on your podcast actually recently. And that's the case of Frederick Valentage. And I covered this case on a show on the travel channel recently. And in doing that, my research came from A, your podcast, B, the glory of the internet, and my New York Public Library here. Could you sort of run us through this extremely compelling case of a pilot

who possibly saw something of unearthly origin? Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, congratulations and glad to hear that you've been talking about this on television, because again, it's a case that's near and dear to my heart. I will warn people, it's important not to allow yourself to become emotionally attached to your work, although often it does happen. And so I kind of think that, you know, you have to be able to use your, I liken it to a hard drive that has separate partitions, and each partition can have a different operating system. there is, for instance, my rational, cold, hard logical mind, and then there is my mind that is open to the spiritual, you know, and those things unseen yet felt in the rarest of instances of the human experience. And I think that, you know, those things don't have to necessarily conflict with each other.

And these days, this attitude is simply that, oh, well, you know, we have to say, you know, black is black and white is white, day is day, night is night. Everything is just so two-dimensional. and I don't think that that does justice to the complexity of human thought and experience. Okay, that said, I don't look at the Valentich disappearance as a open-and-shut, black-and-white kind of UFO case.

And I also, this is one of these instances where my own personal connections to individuals directly involved with the case, not the pilot, obviously, because he disappeared, but his girlfriend at the time, who's become a good friend of mine, you have to make that distinction between being a friend. and being, you know, caring for someone like that.

And then also looking logically at the case. So there's our disclaimer. Frederick Voltaicich, you know, he had been flying a Sassna 182L over the Bass Strait. It was 21st of October 1978. And as he's flying south, his intended route had been to kind of fly southwest along the coast and then due southeast to King Island. There's some weird aspects to this case because the flight log that he'd filled out of course, describes a flight path and whatnot, but he left much later than what the flight plan

had stated. The lights on the runway at King Island were never turned on because they had not apparently been notified by Valentich that he was planning to fly there. That was considered strange. What essentially happens is, is he's flying that evening. He is taking off, you know, shortly before, I guess shortly before dark. And I think while he's flying, it was. wasn't completely black dark out, although it was beginning to get dark. It seems what Valentich was trying to do, he had a test coming up, and he was trying to get some night flying hours in, which he didn't have a lot of. So being a somewhat inexperienced nighttime pilot, I think definitely is something that

figures into this case and what may have happened to him. But as he's flying down on his course for King Island, Melbourne air traffic control begins receiving communications from Valentich, and he is identified, of course, as Delta Sierra Juliet. And he's contacting Melbourne and saying, Melbourne, do you have any traffic at this altitude? And they've got, I think at this time, they've got Valentich on the radar. I think later on, I think he also may not have been on the radar. But at that point, they had him, and they said, we don't have any traffic at your altitude, but he's describing some sort of an object, some sort of a green light or some object with a green light on it.

It's flying and it's kind of going in circles. And at one point he describes that it is orbiting him and he is orbiting it. In other words, it seemed to be that he was flying in a circle and that this aircraft was kind of, you know, apparently kind of keeping pace with him in this orbiting fashion. Which is what led Robert Schaefer to consider whether indeed that orbiting flight movement that he was describing, whether or not he might have actually been going into what's called a death spiral. That's horrific. You think about it. Now, there is a distinct possibility that whatever happened to Valentich that night, I mean, involved a crash and that the wreckage was never found. Heck, you know, if a plane like MH370 can vanish and we can't find it after all of the resources and all of the effort in that search, you know, I don't think it would be difficult for a 182 L. Sessna to do the same. Now, what Valentich begins to describe during this, this famous dialogue between Melbourne Air Traffic Control, and he is,

this object that, you know, kind of takes off and then it comes back. And at some point, he asks Melbourne Air Traffic Control again about this object. Then he says, Melbourne, this, the object is directly above me. The object's directly above me. And it's, it's hovering, it's not an aircraft. And then this is where it really gets, I mean, cold-blooded eerie, I think, because the recording, which was released to family members, and there were two Mufon investigators in the United States who also reviewed the recording, and we'll come back to that in a moment. But what the public has access to, of course, of the transcripts, on the recording, it was said that there was about 17, well, I'm sorry, 14 seconds of metallic scraping noise after he says

it's hovering and it's not an aircraft. And then the story goes that they lost contact with Valentage. So, yeah, I'd always been fascinated with that case, Ryan. And at one point, one of my listeners in Australia wrote to me and said, hey, Micah, you know, I got a friend who was Freddy's girlfriend when he went missing. I think that you, you know, you two should catch up and talk. Wow. And, you know, at first it didn't even dawn on me what this person was saying because they said,

on Freddy's girlfriend? Who's Freddy? Where? And I remember reading that email and going to sleep and then getting up the next morning and going back and rereading the email. And I'm like, oh, Freddie, Freddie, Frederick Valentage. So he says, yeah, Rhonda is a good friend. She works here with me.

And, you know, she said that she would be happy. to talk to you. So we arranged for a Skype and a brandy glass in hand and here in my bunker. It was late at night on my end and then of course early morning in Australia where she and her husband Joe were and they were sitting there drinking coffee and you know and see the the trees and stuff and the sunshine in the background. It was really sweet. We had this great conversation and I talked with Rhonda about just all sorts of different things in relation to this case. She has kept every newspaper clipping. She has I mean scrapbooks full of stuff about this case. not only for her emotional attachment to it,

but I mean, it's fascinating because Rhonda, like so many, she had this personal experience. She may not have seen a UFO, but she knows the story, and she was, of course, she called it an interrogation, but she was interviewed by the Air Authority there in Australia

because they were trying to find out if anybody knew anything about Valentage, and they had to look at all possibilities, and they couldn't rule out the possibility that maybe he had planned his disappearance or something like that. And I have heard those anecdotal reports of people. There was one in which a person claimed that they were in, I think it was the Bahamas,

but they met a guy who claimed he was Frederick Valentich. There's very little in the way of substance, let alone validity, I think, to those stories. But they do come up from time to time. Rhonda, on the other hand, she has no idea what happened to him, but she certainly took an interest in UFOs thereafter. And one of the things that's weird, Ryan, is that a few years ago, the Austrian government did post its files on the Valentian case online. and a number of us downloaded those and read the file.

I have a copy of them myself. And they described Valentage as being kind of depressed, dark, not a Friday night type. They quote Rhonda saying. And when I talked with her, I said, you know, was he a depressed kind of person? Do you think that that could have contributed to this? You know, could it have been a suicide? And she said, you know, he wasn't really like that. And I've read those documents that you're talking about.

And I know what they said that I said. And yeah, I might have said he wasn't exactly a Friday night type, but he wasn't depressed. He wasn't a loner. Anything like that. I mean, she said, we love to go dancing. You know, he was very, you know, well-dressed, you know, very, you know, fashionable. He would come in. He was very friendly when he would come in and see her at work and he would talk with people and things like that.

She said that the strangest thing, though, had less to do with Freddie, and it had to do with an incident that occurred about a year after he vanished. She was in a department store where she looked at the time. And a gentleman comes up to her. And he says, I remember you, you're Rhonda Rushden. You were Freddie's girlfriend. And she didn't recognize him. Well, he was with the authority.

and he had been one of the people who had helped with the interview of Ronda Rush. And he seems to indicate to her that the recording that was released to Guido, Valentich, his father, that there was, well, and this is what's funny. They described that recording as being an edited recording, the edited recording of the dialogue with air traffic control was released. And I'd always wonder, okay, what do they mean by edited, right? Yeah. What didn't they hear? And this conversation, right? Yeah, where Rhonda's talking with this fellow, he seems to indicate that after the metallic scraping noise,

that after that portion of the audio, that there may have been further dialogue, which is not on the transcripts and presumably not on the tape that was released. Now, so I asked for clarification, I said, hold on. Are you telling me that there's allegedly more to that recording? And she said, that was the impression that I was given during this conversation. But nobody's been able to hear this. but we do know that what was released to the very few who have copies was described as an edited tape. Okay.

That's weird. Another strange thing is that the Valentich family had written a book, apparently, about the case, which was stolen. And it was, again, the book that they wrote was just a manuscript that they had in their home, but somebody came into the home and stole the manuscript. Stole that. And they never found out who. I asked Rhonda, did she have any idea who it might have been? And she said, well, in likelihood, that was probably, you know, some journalist who wanted to be able to, you know, have a scoop or something like that.

So they didn't allege that there was some government conspiracy. But I didn't think that that was kind of unusual that the family's own personal account of life after Freddie disappeared was stolen from them and taken and never recovered. Yeah. And the other thing I asked her to as I said, you know, listen, what do you think about, you know, him flying later? And she said, you know, here's the thing. That was our three-month anniversary. I was supposed to be on the plane with him. She said, I was supposed to be flying with him that night,

but I didn't get off work in time, called my mom and dad, begged him to come get me. They had plans so they couldn't come get me. We didn't have cell phones back then, so I couldn't call Freddie. The reason he seems to have left late was because he had been waiting on Rhonda. And imagine, I mean, had she been with him, she might have vanished too.

The way that the circumstance worked out, Ryan, I mean, it's just so strange because, again, it was heartbreaking for her because he vanishes and they never find Freddy again, and Rhonda and the family. just had to learn to cope with that. But she had initially been planning to be on that flight with him. And she said, we were going to fly down and then come back and we were going to go out to dinner.

Which is funny because, again, one of the skeptical theories offered by Philip Class had been that perhaps he had a girlfriend down there on King Island. Oh, yeah. Well, I guess Rhonda was going to go meet the girlfriend, huh? Yeah, right. Well, that also begs the whole question of, you know, him planning some sort of suicide or disappearance, you know, unless he was so depressed and angry, that she didn't show up, that he just left without her. It sort of shows us that, you know, he wasn't planning on making this trip alone. So, yeah, it does bring up a lot of questions for sure.

Yeah, I did ask her one other thing, too. I said, you know, Rhonda, did you ever fly with him before that? She said, oh, yeah. I said, how many times? And she said, probably 30. Wow. And I said, yeah, I said, can I ask you a question? I mean, when you were with him in the plane, had he ever done any kind of stunt flying anything like that?

She said, look, I know what you're wondering about. Were we ever upside down? Because one of those theories had been that he'd been flying upside down, I didn't realize he was upside down and crashed into the ocean. And the light he saw and mistook for a UFO was the light of the cockpit, of his own aircraft, the light of the cockpit there reflecting off of the ocean below him. She said he did loop-de-loops and zero-gis and all these other kind of things. She described a variety of different things that Valentich likes to do when he would fly.

And she said, so yeah, I mean, I'd been in the plane with him before when we had flown upside down. Trust me, you know when you're upside down. And she said specifically that in that kind of an aircraft that the radio, the mic would be dangling upside down if he'd been flying. So, you know, the impression I got from her is that, first of all, she was never interviewed by any of these skeptics and that she has just as many questions as the rest of us. But really, what can we say he describes seeing something strange? she went missing, he and his plane were never found. That's all we could really say about that case, but to try and make all these, again, what I think are absurd, speculative theories about the girlfriend or the suicide attempt

or all these strange things that he might have been secretly planning. And they never once, the skeptical thinkers who have proposed these theories, they never once went and interviewed Rhonda themselves. And what happens to me, of course, is somebody hears portions of the interview that I did with Rhonda, and they said, Micah, you've gotten too close to this case. you've allowed yourself to get too close to the case because you became friends with one of the witnesses. I said she is a friend now

but when I interviewed her I was looking for answers and I don't think that actually doing what nobody else did and asking her about certain details of that case I don't think that that undermines the integrity of the research it if anything adds to it in ways that people like Philip class they didn't bother to

they just made stuff up. Ironic isn't it? So Iran. It really is. They either made it up or they didn't take the time. And, you know, our good buddy, Stan Friedman, always says, you know, the skeptics always use, my mind is made up. So, well, I mean, such a compelling case. Like, speaking of class, he referred to this book that I want to talk about with you

as one of the most significant and useful books on UFOs ever published. Now, for someone like Philip J. Class to say that, that means something. and you brought this up to me, you sent me a picture of the cover, and you said, you've got to get this book. And that was by astronomer Alan Hendry. I want to sort of talk about what this book is about and how it can relate to where we're heading in terms of euphology these days. We've got a lot of, a lot of, I guess, pathways that uphology is taking, whether it's scientific, whether it's from the soft sciences. whether it's from a cultural standpoint, a contactee standpoint, the possibilities are endless.

But this seems to be a strictly scientific approach. Could you tell us a little bit about this book by Mr. Hendry and why it means so much to you? Yeah. This is a book that I will mention this book to so many people. And, I mean, some of the most revered UFO researchers of modern times had never heard of this. They might have heard of the author.

Now, Alan Hendry, of course, he was, I think his minor was an astronomy. He was actually a commercial artist. And like me, this may sound strange because in the context of a discussion that's very specific and really picking over the details about, you know, a number of UFO cases, which Hendry did, and I would argue in a much more scientific fashion than anyone probably before or after him. But I take it that he was also somebody who had sort of a passing interest in UFOs like I do. That may make no sense. But again, the range of stuff I'm interested in,

UFOs are like the pinky finger on the hand, okay? But anything that I'm interested in, I try to be thorough with it. And so often I'm invited on shows like this, and we will talk about UFOs. And then the next thing I see is, you know, some skeptics written a blog post talking about eophologist Micah Hanks.

I never claimed to be a euphologist. And Alan Hendry, for at least a few years, was a euphologist. What he did was essentially while there was a period that the Center for UFO Studies under J. Allen, during the 1970s, while I had some decent funding for scientific studies of UFOs, they had time for a full-time employee.

And so Alan Hendry became that employee. I think that Heinek had said that he favored Henry because he did have some background in astronomy. And again, that minor. But yeah, his primary focus and actual commercial profession was he was an artist. His wife, on the other hand, actually, was an astronomer and I think had a Ph.D. Yeah. Yep. So, yeah, and she often would have.

by the way, with various investigations. So what Henry would do essentially is he manned the phone line there at the Center of UFO Studies, and he would, I mean, nine times out of ten, he would be able to very easily rule out UFOs. And he discusses how he, when I say rule them out, he makes the distinction between the unidentified flying object and then the IFO, the identified flying object. and in his book that he wrote in 1979 called the UFO Handbook, which no longer in print to my knowledge, but you can still get copies on Amazon used copies. It's a very thorough book.

It describes everything that he would go, I mean, the entire list, he would run the gamut from, this was a popular one back in the day, advertising planes. And occasionally I'll get UFO reports even these days where people say, I mean, I saw this UFO. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen, but it was so strange, Micah.

it was advertising pizza hunting. And I've actually had people say that they saw UFOs that seem to be like flashing letters that said pizza hut. And I said, that was an advertising plane. And incredibly, people have never seen this. They don't know what an advertising plane is. Well, that was, I think, you know, a lot of those cases, maybe a majority. These are what a lot of people described as being UFOs. I suspect that the famous UFO seen by John Lennon there in New York may have been one too.

And I know that that would probably anger a lot of people to try and seemingly diminish the importance of that report. But I think any good UFO case deserves to be studied. And if we can identify what it was, all the better. So again, that may be what Lennon saw in his famous encounter. But Alan Henry would call the air traffic control operators in the region in question. He would sometimes travel to the scene. He would personally investigate and sometimes use field equipment that included, you know, guide your counters and things like this.

and he seriously did very good scientific research and documented the majority of these UFOs and was able to identify them. But as is typically the case in euphology, there was that distinct minority of cases that really seemed to constitute something strange. And there are these great chapters in that UFO handbook he wrote,

one of them after the whole range of classifications of different things that might be misidentified as UFOs, the IFOs. He has the IFO message, and he breaks it all down and kind of looks at it as a statistician, and then he starts making correlations and starts examining what we take from people who think they've seen incredible things, when in fact we now know what they actually saw,

and we know it couldn't have been what they described. Then he looks at the UFO phenomena and does a whole separate chapter that's titled the UFO message. This is some of the best writing I've ever come across on interpretive analysis of the truly unexplainable UFO cases in which he goes into all the range of different kinds of possibilities and things that may be afforded us. And it seems that like a good scientist should be, Alan Henry was very skeptical. In fact, Stanton Friedman told me last February. He said, oh, he was just too

skeptical for me. But I would say Henry was also extremely open-minded. I mean, he never shut the door on the idea of humanoids and possible non-human entities and things. I mean, he, he described, and he rather than forming opinions, he, you know, he collected facts, he reported. And then he tried to interpret and he tried to use science at all times to do that. And, you know, again, even Philip Class was able to look at that book and say, well, this is one of the most important books on this subject that's ever been written. And yet, hardly anybody these days seems to even remember who Alan Henry was because, again, he worked for the Center for UFO studies. He did some great research. He got out of eventually. He's no longer active. I don't know

if Henry's still around. I've thought of trying to see if I could look him up and if he would be willing to even privately just chat because I know he doesn't appear on podcasts and nobody ever invites him. And here's arguably one of the best UFO researchers of all time and, you know, he's completely overlooked. He's got a Wikipedia page at least. Yeah, sadly, that's all we usually get when people, you know, sort of step out of this field is Wikipedia. But, you know, one of the things that caught me most, Michael, was in an article you talked about Hendry saying something to the fact. of even if sociology is the ultimate explanation of UFO reports, the implications may be just as important.

What do you make of that? Does that lend any credence to your approach to studying the UFO phenomenon? Yeah, absolutely does, Ryan. Absolutely. And I'll tell you why, because there have been times throughout history. I think this is a great way to phrase this. There have been times throughout history where we might, whether we see something over like a UFO, or whether we dream something or whether we just imagine something,

there have been a lot of instances throughout history where we will have an idea. And every idea has an inspiration, whatever that inspiration may be. And then that idea may go on in an abstract way. And I think Hendry probably understood this very well being an artist. But that inspiration through abstraction leads to creation and even innovation. And as far as UFOs go, I mean, I will be fascinated. of belief in the possibility of alien life visiting Earth and, you know, even exotic kinds of aircraft and other modes of transportation. Because, I mean, it might be debatable, especially

based on their, you know, on their operation and observed operations that, you know, if any of these extremely anomalous UFO cases that remain unexplained are indeed representative of what people described seeing at the time that this occurred. I mean, it might even be debatable whether these aircraft. I would say rather than being aircraft as we know them, these may be objects that move through the air, but not exactly aircraft. That's I think we're dealing with something

that could be a lot more complex than the kinds of technologies that we know and that we're used to dealing with and that are familiar with and that we're capable of, you know, understanding and replicating. So that said, let's say that there is no UFO. And let's say that this is something that

through misidentification and all kinds of other things that a belief system of sorts has been built around and that maybe as we're becoming a more technologically proficient society, we're moving slowly away from that. Let's say that that's the case and that again, there's nothing but that sociological component. But our belief in something that didn't exist has nonetheless had a profound influence on our culture and may have even influenced varieties of innovation and technologies. And then you get into the realm of some of these, what again some would call government UFOs. If indeed these aircraft have been designed and have been built,

and they resemble things that have appeared, you know, in the pulp magazines and the sci-fi mags and the novels and stuff from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. I mean, it very well may be that, again, we have created our own UFO phenomena, which has its very real anomalous attributes as well as elements of secrecy associated with it. And at some point, it becomes very difficult to say whether there is or is not a phenomena, because however you look at it, it seems to be something that was an observation that out of abstraction, has led to whatever reality you want to attribute to it, what we call the UFO reality today. Absolutely. And we know that people like Carl Jung and Jacques Valet have looked at this as well, the whole post-war anxiety aspect of all this.

Is it all something of the mind? And if it is, you know, what can we extrapolate from that? I know in an article touching on Hendry's book that you brought up something that I've never really thought about, And that's that we're searching for answers about what UFOs are. And we're not paying attention to the information we're actually gleaning from the scientific approach. And, you know, the discoveries that are being made about what UFOs are not is also interesting and essential. Would you agree with that if that made any sense?

It made perfect sense. And yes, I would. Okay. And the other thing, too, Ryan, is I don't think. And this is why I wanted to, I think some people may have misunderstood. I'll say that because I think that that's more accurate rather than friendly. The other term I might have used is they might have mistaken. But no, I think some people will probably see my article and they'll say, oh, you know, Mike is just, you know, he's read Hendry's book and now he's just regurgitating what Hendry wrote. Well, actually, if you, the essay that you're talking about, which, you know, of course, appears in a volume, you've contributed a fine essay.

as well. And this is Robbie Graham's upcoming anthology, which having not been released yet, we won't say too much, but UFO is reframing the debate. I think it's okay to name that here. And Robbie's a fabulous guy. And we've got a lot of other great authors who contributed to this volume. So I wasn't just trying to take up the, you know, the, you know, the rain for, for Alan Hendry and just carry on in his footsteps because nobody else would. What I was trying to do with this essay, which actually I propose an entirely different classification system for UFOs in this essay. And I also provide my own modern updated list of what you might call potential IFOs, because I think that the important thing about being able to rule out those things, which are not what we want to try and determine,

which are truly anomalous phenomena, I mean, if that is something to be determined. I mean, I don't think we should enter UFO studies hoping for one thing or another. I mean, it's okay to hope, but if you're going to really be scientific, don't have a preconception and allow that to lead your study. You've got to try and be completely cold, rational, skeptical, and unbiased. Even, again, many scientists, the majority of them these days have a hard time doing that. And that's why I don't think we've made good progress on UFOs because people have made up their minds either for or against the subject before they enter the study. Let's really just try and leave our biases and opinions at the door and let's just do the science, you know. nobody really these days, well I can't say nobody, but hardly anybody these days is really doing that.

Alan Hendry did. So the first point I'm trying to make is that, look, this is the model. And we have a lot more information and a lot of better technology at our disposal today than we did in the 1970s when Henry was doing this. Can we do no better? So first, here's the model. Here's what one was able to do with, again, archaic implementation by today's standards. shouldn't we be able to do better when we've got an era in which these multifunctional devices called smartphones are carried around in everybody's pocket we all have a decent camera we all have flight tracking radar in our pocket or you can if you download actual flight radar 24 i have that app i recommend other people get it it's easy to determine whether what you've seen was a iridium flare satellite or if it was the international space station you can get the sputnik app and

you can monitor both of those kinds of manmade objects that are in earth orbit i mean you can you can use your smartphone is a veritable, transportable, UFO tracking station. And yet we, with all this technology at our disposal, have so few people doing good science to study UFOs. So that's the crux of the article is how do we bring science back to this subject? If we want to reframe the debate on UFOs, maybe we should start from scratch, but you know what, we've got a lot more tools to take with us this time.

Absolutely. I think it's both a gift and a curse in this technological age for sure. But, yeah, I mean, this idea of the UAP, I think, is where we're heading. You know, the term sort of hit mainstream when Hillary Clinton brought it up. But, you know, there have been many researchers using this term for a while now, that we are dealing with phenomena in the sky or possibly on the ground and in the water that we can't explain. That doesn't necessarily mean it's in solid object. And also, we both know that the term UFO comes with so much bad.

baggage, was coined by the U.S. government themselves, the Air Force in particular. So this idea of moving towards a more UAP-centric study, I think, is, it's exciting. And I was very happy to see you using that term. It's one I'm nervous to use in my own writing and research. But I'm getting there, brother, gathering the courage. Well, it's okay. And, you know, I mean, maybe it's not even about courage. I've had people come to me and say,

you know, Mike, I notice you use UAP an awful lot these days. Are you trying to sanitize the study of UFOs by using Slash? This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer, Gina Carrano, in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best heavyweight in the world, Frances Ngano,

versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Ronda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. A highly different term that has less stigma attached to it. And I can't say that that's not a part of it. But what I will certainly say is that

if you actually look at those designations and you do consider those stigmas. Again, I say UFO and people think spaceship. But that's not what a UFO is. And when Edward Ruppold, who was the first, you know, head of Project Blue Book, he proposed that term and coined it also back in the day. A funny little side note, by the way, he didn't say it should be pronounced UFO.

He said it is to be pronounced UFO. It didn't seem to really stick, although some people, especially in the UK and other parts of Europe, you'll hear them say that more often, although there's also the ovny variety and a number of other things too. But with regard to the idea of the UFO, I say UFO. And I've had skeptics, I mean, I wish I could say fellow. skeptics. I've got many people who are fellow skeptics. And I would dare to consider myself one of the most skeptical people in the so-called UFO community who does not identify himself as a debunker. Okay. But, and I'm, if anything, I'm right there in line with Alan Henry. So I'd like to think that if people like Philip Class liked Alan Henry, I don't care if they would have liked me or not,

but I hope that they would have recognized my mentality on this as being similar to Hendries. But that said, again, I say UFO and I've had people try to argue. with me. Well, you may say that it means this or that, but we all know what somebody means typically when they say UFO. And if I come back and say, but that's not what it was intended to mean, it is intended to mean unidentified flying object. That doesn't matter because they said, well, we know you meant spaceship. It's incredible. The varieties of different interpretations that people use. So how is UAP any better? Well, unidentified aerial or unexplained aerial phenomenon, I think is a proper term, but I think it kind of goes back and forth. Unexplained aerial

phenomena does at least allow for or account for a variety of different things that may not be an object per se. I don't know that you would call ball lightning or some similar weather or meteorological or atmospheric manifestation an object per se. I just think that UAP is a slightly better catch-all term in reference to the broad range of phenomena that we are describing when we discuss UFOs, although that term is still very popular. I do think that it is a little more stigmatized and a little less a little less bendable, a little less flexible in terms of the variety of phenomenal for studying. Absolutely.

You know, and maybe one day we'll move away from it. Only time we'll tell. But like you said, within Robbie's book and beyond, we are trying to reframe that debate. And we've only begun to erase the whiteboard and start again. But I think it's exciting. I think we've got a long way to go. And I think you're one of those people who are really bringing new questions to the table, Micah. I got to ask you, brother, what are you working on?

What should we expect next over at the Grallion Report? There's always so much going on. I mean, I'm working on a secret book project right now with a co-author friend, which I've said very little about. You're one of the very few people who does know much about it. And one of the reasons why it's secret, it's nothing clandestine, so speak. It's just a project that is well outside the scope. of UFOs and UAP. Now with regard to the UAP

subject to something that I do hope to be putting together a book about sometime I hope within the next year. This will be kind of a follow-up to a book I wrote a couple of years ago called Ghost Rockets. Ghost Rockets, of course, dealt with varieties of UAP

that very closely resemble missiles, rockets. Again, it starts with the history of what was going on in Scandinavia in 1946 shortly after the war. But, It's, I think it goes much deeper than that. And, you know, of course, I was able to collect a lot of information leading right up to the present where similar torpedo-like or missile-like objects, I mean, by all intent, I borrow that classical, euophological term, ghost rockets for these, but I'm referring to a continuation of phenomena, whether or not they are all indicative of the same phenomena. And the most fascinating case of all that I discussed in that book is a case that I didn't realize this until recently, Ryan, but there was an incident in no.

November, I believe of 1995. I know it preceded the TWA Flight 800 crash. And there were a number of crews aboard aircraft. There was a Lufthansa flight, a British Airlines flight, and they were all in communication with Boston Air Traffic Control and saw a object. They said that had a green light on the front and seemed to be, or a white light on the front, and then it had a green trail it was producing. Everybody said it was just a meteor, but the pilots and the crew all said this thing was flying. It stayed in the air, maintained a horizontal trajectory. It looked more like an object, not like a meteor. The radar people said that they were

actually that may not have been the case that they were able to see it, but they were able to confirm its appearance by multiple aircraft. Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center had obtained a transcript of it, but I just found out that the audio is available on YouTube, so people should be on the lookout for that. It's just fascinating. So I'm

hoping to do a follow-up to that book that will look at mystery satellites, objects that were in Earth orbit since the 1950s. Before we had the tech to be able to put them up there and the continuation of claims of strange things seen in orbit in the years following and even going back to the 19th century too so anyway i don't want to get long-winded i've already done plenty of that so that's that's the basic just though and then there's finally this other enduring mystery i'm working on i can't say too much about that at the present time but i hope to have another book out about a strange and somewhat euphological something going on

done there in Chile. It's a fascinating of you. Yes, a very active area for sure and also one who's willing to come forward with the information they have. So there's right there that's got to help. Do you have any special events or anything coming up? You know, I've got

a couple of cruises that I'm going to be doing in September and November and those are the ancient mysteries cruise where I'll be giving an archaeological lecture which will have something to do and this is letting a little of the cat out of the bag, but that lecture will have to with this primary book project I was talking about.

And then in November, the mysteries cruise that I'm doing with my good pal and fellow podcaster, Jim Harold. That is going to be really fun, but I'm going to be doing a discussion about my other interest, which is true crime, which involves some of its strange disappearances. I think that really the blentage disappearance is one that kind of got me into that. But I've looked at a lot of non-euphological disappearances, too. and that is something of course popularized a lot by David Pilates but I think that on the true crime side of thing there are also a lot of unsolved crimes like the DB Cooper skyjacking case all of these kind of things they just fascinate me so that that will be the subject to the lecture on the mysteries crews and then you and I I believe in August are going to be in Canada together at a event right yes we are yep I just signed away on my my time off requests for work for that. Very excited.

Yeah, please tell people about that. Yeah, well, of course, you know, our good friend Paul Kimball is one of the one of the coordinators who's going to be putting this on. Initially, they'd wanted me to, in the context of whatever I discussed, also kind of talk about Roswell a bit because Roswell, you know, the 70th anniversary is going on. And they're going to be doing a festival in Roswell that I may or may not be attending. We'll have to see.

There are some other things on the books possibly, but I have to wait for confirmation on that. but I think Paul has asked that I talk about something a little different, as it turns out, which I think will be great, and it's going to be a little different kind of an approach to things in the context of all the stuff that we hope we'll all be studying there together. So I'm just glad to know that you'll be there, and we'll be headed up to Nova Scotia and doing some unethological talking later this summer. Yes, very much so. I haven't been that far up north in a while, so it'll be refreshing and in the summer, nonetheless,

which will be good. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, awesome, Micah. So, Brother, where can we find out more about what you're doing? Yeah, I mean, you know, my podcasts, of course, are at Graelian Report. That's G.R. and the word alien, which is a dual reference to aliens, but also, you know, the search for the Holy Grail, which has always been interested in, you know, that's been a fascination of mine since childhood. So Graelian, word I created. Anyway, so GraelianReport.com is the podcast, but if you go to Micahanks.com, you can get information about all the other stuff I'm doing.

And I do a news and current events podcast too called Middle Theory, which is at Middle Theory.com. So you can find all the aforementioned at those three locations. And yeah, definitely check out what I'm up to. Awesome. And I am a member of the Grailenex gang. So for those you don't know, Michael also has a subscriber-based show that is definitely worth the price of admission. Let me tell you. I love getting those extra treats every week in my iTunes box.

So check that out at his website. as well. And again, Micah, I can't thank you enough, brother, for coming on for one of my first interviews of this new endeavor. And again, couldn't think of a better person. So, truly an honor. And we'll talk soon. My pleasure. And you're a fine interviewer. So much continued success as you go forth and podcast, okay? Thanks so much, man. Take care. You too. I hope you enjoyed today's interview with Micah Hanks. And please do check out his weekly

radio show, the Grayland Report on the KGRA network, or subscribe to it on iTunes. While you're there, make sure to subscribe to Somewhere in the Skies, and please rate and review the show. It helps more than you know. If you have any questions, comments, or guest suggestions, you can reach me at Sprague at somewhere in the skies.com. Well, that's it for episode two. I'll see you here next Monday. And remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the skies.