Somewhere in the Skies - Michael Ian Black: We've Got UFOs!

Episode Date: July 16, 2023

On episode 326 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan heads to London for a very special one-on-one interview with actor, comedian, and writer, Michael Ian Black. Black is best known for being an original member of MTV's sketch comedy show, The State. He was also featured on Comedy Central's Stella, Viva Variety, and Reno 911. He also starred in the entire Wet Hot American Summer franchise and has traveled the world doing stand-up comedy. He's hosted several podcasts and has published numerous books. But recently, he's started writing extensively about UFOs on his Substack. So naturally, Ryan had to take advantage of Black's sabbatical in London. They talk about Black's personal UFO sighting, why his interest in the topic has re-emerged, and his thoughts on all the latest UFO revelations. It's a cosmic conversation with the OG M.I.B... Michael Ian Black! Subscribe to Michael Ian Black's Substack: https://michaelianblack.substack.com/ VOTE for us in the People's Choice Podcast Awards: http://www.podcastawards.com Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Book your Cameo video with Ryan at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Official Store: CLICK HERE Buy Somewhere in the Skies coffee: https://bit.ly/3rmXuap Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Email Ryan directly at: [e-mail] Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryansprague51 Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Read Ryan’s Articles by CLICKING HERE Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Copyright © 2023 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed. Pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash Spotify.

Terms apply. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host Ryan Sprague. And I want to take a moment to thank our new Patreon subscribers. Special thanks to Kimberly P. Max F. Paul T. Teresa D. Chuck S. Neal D. Vulcans Cross.

Jared R. J.D.C. Bradley J.H. Andrew A. Noah M. Victoria Z. Scott F. Ramesh L. Joe G. Mark H. Ryan L. Rebecca D. Pat McKay. UAP researcher. Bruce Soh. Arcane Industries. Lauren R. Chris. Thomas H. Thomas F. Jason L. Lenora. Tom M. Keith T. and Brian W.

Again, a huge thank you to each and every one of you for supporting somewhere. the skies. Also a special shout-out to our Apple premium subscribers as well. Unfortunately, Apple does not give us names of those who subscribe to our premium content there, but you know who you are, and I thank you again for your support. And if you're not subscribed to either of these, I hope you'll consider it today. Our Patreon and Apple supporters truly are the Element 115 fuel that keeps our sports model flying saucer of a podcast thriving and surviving. So again, thank you to all of you for your support. And now, on with the show.

Michael Ian Black is an actor, comedian, and writer. He's best known for being an original member of MTV's improv show, The State. He was also featured on Comedy Central's Stella and Viva Variety and Reno 9-1-1. And he starred in the entire Wet Hot American Summer franchise. He's traveled the world to, stand-up comedy, has written for television and film, and has published numerous children's and adult books. But recently, he started writing extensively about UFOs on his substack. So, naturally, I hopped on a train from Scotland to London for a one-on-one sit-down with the OG

MIB, Michael Ian Black. Michael, welcome for the very first time to somewhere in the skies. Thank you. I was thrilled to get the invite. Yeah, so, I mean, I have been in this UFO field for a really long time. And, you know, throughout the years it's been very static. You hear the same two, three people talking about it. And I was, like, the youngest person involved with this topic, like going and speaking at conferences and everything. And it was the same UFO cases over and over.

You know, Roswell and, you know, Rendezhou-Forest. UFO case here in England. And then 2017 hit and the world just exploding with the UFOs. It went mainstream. It caught us all off guard. And it seemed

that a lot of people in all different walks of life were starting to get interested in the topic. And you were one of those individuals who I started seeing kind of starting to talk about UFOs, which was really refreshing. You know, kind of growing up,

been watching you on television and the movies and stuff and now here you were like on twitter talking about my main passion and um it it just blew me away and i saw that you had recently moved to england uh yeah i'm i'm here temporarily temporarily a sabbatical let's call it okay okay cool that was actually my first question for you what kind of brought you here to Linden? What made you want to come here? Well, my wife who's outside this room and I have two kids who are now grown. They're in college and I wasn't working and it just seemed like while we're young enough, why don't we try living abroad for a little bit?

So our original plan was to live in Italy for a year, but we couldn't get the permits in time, the visas in time. So we were there for three months. and then we had to leave the EU because we didn't have the visa so the UK was kind of the only place we could go so we thought well we'll just come to London for a little while so we're here cool

how did I get to ask how do you like it? I like it I don't love it I like it it's a lot like living in New York where I'd live for 10 years so it you know it doesn't have the same sort of it doesn't feel foreign enough maybe like one of the great things about living in Rome was that it you know really was entering a different culture I don't speak the language I was I felt like I was learning a lot every day.

Here it just sort of feels like I'm living my normal life, which is fine and fun, but it doesn't have that same sort of heightened excitement that I was getting in Italy. Right, yeah. I did New York for almost 13 years. And coming here, it really was, my fiancee calls it America Light.

Yeah. Like everything's just a little cleaner, a little nicer. A lot more polite. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's cool. That's cool. I'm glad you're enjoying it over here. I've been here for about a year.

And it's been a good rest, I guess, from America. I don't know how long we're going to be here. But for me, as a UFO researcher, it's been really cool to kind of come somewhere where it wasn't Pentagon UFO programs. It wasn't Project Blue Book. It's a whole other country with their own baggage when it comes to this whole UFO topic. And is the passion the same here as it is in the States or less? with the individual people yes however they'll be the first to say

their government has absolutely no interest their mainstream media BBC won't touch it and if they do it still has kind of that stigma behind it you'll hear the X-Files music that side-eyed glance from a news anchor whereas in the States like as you know every night you're seeing something

on choose you know Main Street media outlet, CNN, Fox, they're all covering it in a very serious manner, which I'll tell you, eight, nine years ago was not the case. Oh, no. You would be laughed at if you were on TV talking about UFOs or saw a UFO.

So I think that's slowly making its way over here, as most things do from America. So I think a lot of countries are starting to kind of take their position on it, whether from a national security stance or politically, it's been an interesting transition. So, yeah, I look forward to where it goes. I'm trying to do my best over here. It's probably a good place to be just because it hasn't quite broken here,

so you can be on the forefront of that. I'm trying. I'm trying, man. But the real reason I wanted to talk to you today is because you've been putting out some really good articles. on your substack that I and other UFO researchers have been paying close attention to. Your voice is so refreshing

when it comes to hearing about these things because it's the same, like I said, people talking about it. We kind of live in this echo chamber. So to have someone like yourself who has an interest in the topic but isn't like living, breathing, sleeping it.

I'm very much outside of this community. What do you make of that community? I'm interested to hear with someone on the outside. My sense is, like any community, it runs the gamut from people who are, you know, grounded in data and research to people who are just fucking out there. And, you know, I want to say like, you know, like the instinct would be to go, these people are fucking out of their minds.

But at the same time, like anybody who goes down this rabbit hole, the deeper. you get into it, the more your mind expands. And you're sort of like, well, wait a second, like, it's hard to dismiss anything as too far out there. You can say things are less likely than other things. And you can say, I think you're probably misinterpreting what you're seeing or experiencing. But because the hypotheses for what this phenomenon actually is are so vast. And in a lot of cases, impossible to prove or disprove, at least at this point, I'm, I'm far less likely to dismiss anybody out of hand. So dismissing, that's another thing I kind of wanted to touch on with you.

I want to rewind a little bit because one of the first articles I read was you stating that you possibly had your own UFO setting. Is that something you'd be willing to do? Sure. I mean, it's a fairly mundane UFO setting as far as these things go. There's only one odd element, which I'll talk about. I was in high school. I must have been a senior in high school, either right at the end of my senior year or maybe in the summer after my senior year. I was with my girlfriend and best friend. We were coming back from the movies. This is in New Jersey. Driving back, we lived in a kind of wooded town, driving back through the woods. And I saw. saw, we saw what looked sort of like a fireball, sort of reddish, orangeish, moving sort of slowly

across the sky, too low to be, you know, like a meteor or something. It didn't, in my memory, it wasn't that far above the tree line. My initial thought was it might be like a small plane crashing. But there was no sound. And I wanted to follow it, but we couldn't, because, because there were trees, you know. And so we sort of watched it as far as, as long as we could. And then my next memory of that is waking up the next morning and checking the local newspaper to see, like, had a plane crashed. And there was nothing. So that's the end of the sighting.

But what's weird about it, at least in my mind, is the fact that none of us ever talked about it again. Like we never said, like, to each other, hey, wasn't that crazy, that thing we saw last night? And years later, like within the last year, I was talking to my kids about this. And I said to them, I was telling them this story. And I said, I bet if I ask my ex-girlfriend, who I'm still in periodic contact with, if she remembers this, she'll say no. And I don't know why I thought that. But I believed it. And so I texted her.

And I was like, hey, do you remember this? She's like, no, I don't remember this at all. I would remember that. And I'm like, yeah, you would remember that. why wouldn't you remember that? So I'm like, so I'm left with this problem. Is that a real memory? Is that a false memory?

Did I just imagine that? If not, why doesn't, if it's real, why doesn't she remember it? And if it is, if it's not real, why do I believe it to be real? Like, to my knowledge, I have no other false memories in my life. I've never encountered anything like that. I was talking to Dave Foley about this. And he said there is this expression in the UFO community called emotional dampening where people often don't talk about it. And he was recounting, it's now public, but this had just happened to him, his own experience with Jeremy Corbell, where they were out.

And Jeremy, and he saw a UFO, is the first time Jeremy had ever seen anything like that. And they had that same kind of emotional dampening thing where Jeremy didn't think to take out his phone. Didn't think to record it. And it was that same, like, weirdness around it. That same, like, weird behavior around it. So that's it. I mean, that's my, that's the entirety of my UFO experience. Other than one time I was on LSD and we looked up and we saw something like, yeah, that's, I can dismiss that.

That would be easily dismissed. Yeah. In the best of it was. That's so fascinating you bring that up. Because, I mean, at this point, I've traveled the world interviewing UFO witnesses or people who have claimed even things up to close encounters and alien abductions. It really runs the spectrum. And a lot of people claim the same thing. Like, I didn't think about taking photos.

Like, they were so in the moment. And I often think whatever these phenomena might be, that's what they want. They want you in your shoes. in that moment more immediate than ever and just like experiencing this thing I had a sighting when I was a kid with my dad and it was kind of the same thing like it stuck with me

the memory was so vivid and terrifying that I it was very traumatic to be honest but my father like totally forgot it like blacked out of his mind you know come 2017 which we'll get to is when he and I like sat down at a bar and central New York had a couple Beersen really talked about it and the memory started coming back to him. So I do find it fascinating

that a lot of people have, you know, what Dave Foley called it, or even this idea of like a screen memory. Like these phenomena might want you to block it out. You don't know what happened within those fleeting moments of when an experience happened. But I do find that fascinating. Even the Phoenix Lights incident, you know, thousands of people saw it. But a lot of them say, It was weird. After I saw it, I kind of just shrugged my shoulders and went inside and nobody talked about it, even though it was this massive thing that, you know, presumably thousands of people saw. So I don't know what to make of it.

But I did find that aspect to your sighting pretty fascinating. Yeah, I find it interesting, too, just psychologically. Like, I just, that's the part that, you know, whatever, it's that, it's that weird paradox of, did I see something, did I not see something? And that inability to account for that reality, I can only imagine how people who have missing time, for example, must feel. You know, just that sense of dislocation. And, you know, for me, it's a tiny, tiny thing.

But for somebody who experiences it in a more profound way, I can't imagine what it does. Right. It really comes down to, like, how you decide to, integrated into your life. You know, like for me, clearly it changed the entire path of my life. I wanted to be a baseball player.

That's all I wanted to do. And now I'm like, 28 years later, I'm here interviewing you. And you, what, 5'8? Yeah, about pushing it. And your athletic skills are what? At this point, about

zero. To be honest. But, yeah, that was... So maybe they were, pushing you in that direction. They were leaning. They were like, you know what, Ryan? Maybe head towards this way.

Yeah. It's like that John Travolta movie phenomenon, right? And with the light. Well, okay. So let's move to 2017. Now, I know a lot of your rediscovered interest in UFOs really started when a lot of people did when this came out. What was that like for you, hearing when that story broke in the New York Times? It was almost the same experience because I was reading this.

So, you know, from my whole life, I'd been interested in UFOs. It's not, it's not, it wasn't like me seeing one. That wasn't the first time I'd been interested. Like, I had been interested as a kid and all the way through. But my interest waned, I think because of what you described. It's like, okay, we're seeing the same cases. Nothing seems to be moving forward. You know, I don't know.

I don't know what to make of this, if anything. And I started to find myself, basically. basically in skeptic mode, being like, you know, this just doesn't seem to be going anywhere. This is all probably explicable. You know, I'd been, I had read the CDB Brian book, Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind, pre-2017. I had been following the sort of alien abduction thing, just trying to make sense of it, trying to understand what it was.

So, like I had, you know, like a toe dipped in these waters. But then when the article broke, I, remember reading it and going, this is, I don't know if it's quite ontological shock, but it, you know, it's, it's creeping up there. But what was weird to me was the nonreaction of the rest of the world. Like, I sort of thought it would, it would blow up like a bomb. But for months and months and months, it seemed like nobody was really paying any attention to this.

And I was, I was asking people on me, did you see? this thing where the Pentagon's basic thing, yeah, if it was a real. And it seemed like for the longest time, people either hadn't read it or were just indifferent to it. And I don't know. It made me I guess I kind of shrugged my shoulders

at it ultimately. I guess I just sort of felt like, I guess people don't care about this shit, you know? And still don't, to a large degree. I mean, most people don't, particularly, which I guess is okay. But for me, it was really, it was really like a bomb. went off. And so from that point on, I started paying much closer attention, you know,

and I've been following the updates and I've been doing, quote unquote, my own research, or at least just getting back into the field, you know, deeper into it. And trying to understand all the different sides of it. There's a lot of sides. There's a lot of sides. And what's been interesting to me personally about it is how, how. it has opened my mind up to maybe a lot of different life aspects that I wasn't that keen to be receptive to. Touching on religion, consciousness, all of, you know, sort of larger paranormal stuff. And with most of it, I couldn't tell you today where I fall in terms of belief system.

but I'm very interested in how people are experiencing life now and the myriad ways that people are just encountering reality, whatever that is, and how they're processing life. Like to me, that's the most interesting thing of all of this. Yeah, I remember interviewing this guy from Harlem, lived in Harlem his whole life, total like hard-ass dude, blue collar, wasn't religious at all, and had what he believed was, I guess, you could say it was like an abduction experience where, you know, he woke up and kind of your prototypical gray beings were there

and were guiding him along their craft or what have you. And they showed him symbols. And he interpreted it as prayer. hands with like a lightning bolt through it. Um, and this kept happening, like this same dream or experience kept happening to him. And he eventually kind of processed that into, um, like prayer healing in a way. And all of a sudden dropped his entire life in New York City and became like a pastor at a church. And he kind of attributes all of this to these weird experiences he had, whether they're alien or angelic or some people think demonic, it completely changed his entire perspective,

this entire, I guess, spiritual being. So you do have to wonder, you know, like could some of these experiences be connected to religion? You look at something like the work of like Diana Walsh Pesoka, who's a religious professor who leans heavily kind of into that theory. that a lot of this does have to do with religion or religion. Has to do with this. What do you make of that idea?

Like, aliens could be, have kind of started our major religions. I know that's a little out there, but... At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV! Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free.

The truth is our city. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. It's no less plausible than anything else. You know, it's like I know her work.

I've read American Cosmic. I've watched her being interviewed. And the parallels that she does. draws between mystical and religious experiences and classic sort of abduction experiences or encounters are profound. You know, when one, when I have looked into the history of this stuff and you, you see, you know, I'll display my own ignorance, but the paintings from like the 15th century that show, you know, these things, was the German painting.

And, and you listen to someone like Dan Walspessalkar, talk about how similar descriptions of alien encounters are with religious encounters with saints or angels or whatever it's hard

it's hard to draw different conclusions than she's drawing that these are similar if not the same experiences what does that mean does it mean that there are actual physical experiences that people are having or is it something that we generate ourselves I don't know I don't think anybody knows

at this point, but it's powerful to me. These are, and it seems totally reasonable that somebody who had had an experience like this would discuss it, would mythologize it, that it could become a thread in sort of the tapestry of religious life,

as humans know it. I don't know. That's the safest answer. I think any of us can give. Well, in terms of knowing, I mean, I recently spoke to Luis Elizanda, the former director of the Pentagon

UFO program, and he was telling me, you know, it was so damn hard to investigate these things within, you know, the infrastructure of the government. Funding, obviously, being the biggest problem

with any government program. But the religious Extremity, extreme religiosity of a lot of his superiors who said, dude, stop looking into this. It's demonic. Like, you shouldn't be doing this. And he ran up against that time and time and time again, which is crazy to think, you know, we talk so much, at least in America, about church and state and this and that. And now you even have it, like, within a government-funded UFO program where, like, these religious extremists are like, stop doing this. You shouldn't be doing this.

So you can't say that they're not connected. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah. I mean, obviously the Pentagon and the military is traditionally a fairly conservative institution. It draws heavily from the South and from communities where religion plays a larger role than maybe in the general population of America. So it's not surprising to me that you might bump up against that kind of resistance. It is surprising to me, though, that sometimes. somebody of a high enough rank in the military wouldn't at least want to understand the national security implications of this stuff, even if it is demonic and be like, hey, do we have to fight demons now?

Like, you'd want to know that. I don't, you know, but, you know, if you believe in your heart that even talking about this stuff is going to open some portal to hell, I mean, yeah, I guess you would discourage somebody from looking into it. But that's a weird take to me. But, you know, what I don't doubt in any of this, or in most of this, is people's sincerity. And that's, that I think is an important part of looking at the phenomena is understanding that, for the most part, 99% of the people that you're going to talk to are sincere in whatever they're talking about. Unless you have somebody who has some sort of counter-narrative or is purposely sowing disinformation or just trying to make a buck, whatever. is most people, I think, are sincere in their experiences or in their desire to understand. So when somebody says, hey, you're dealing with demons here.

Like, that's not my belief system, but I believe that they're sincere about it. And it's worth knowing more about that. Yeah. The sincerity really shuns through, I think, with pretty much everyone I've spoken to. Like, I know I've been lied to. I know I've been bullshitted. I know some people are fantasy prone or, uh, and things like that. And it's, it's hard.

It's, it's challenging to kind of navigate your way through a field made up of such, uh, ambiguity, I guess. Um, which is also beautiful. Because like you said, like, you can interpret these things in so many different ways. But how do you ever find answers to it is kind of where I'm at? I've been chasing this mystery half my life. I'm no closer knowing what the hell of UFOs are. I don't know if I ever will be. That's why the article was so interesting in 2017,

because here for the first time, we were seeing, okay, here's video of something. Here's some tangible ones and zeros that we can look at. Here are some names and faces associated with this. Here's a former majority leader of the Senate going, yeah, this is real. We're putting money into this. this, that was the first time that I felt like I could look at something and attach names,

and attach video, and had the imprimatur of the government on it, whether or not you believe the government is another thing. But for me, as a citizen, it's like, okay, the U.S. government is saying this. At the very least, that's fascinating. Even if it's not true, why the hell would they be saying this? Right. it's mystifying that we're at a point now where you know you can look at things like Project Blue Buck

back in the 50s and 60s okay you know this is post-World War two going into the Cold War of course they're going to want to look at this stuff in our skies that shouldn't be there from a national security standpoint and kind of coming away from it saying there's nothing to it we've explained mostly I think it was 700 something cases they weren't able to explain which is still a large amount.

That's a lot. But they were able to explain most of it. Instead, we're done funding this. Like, it's not a threat. Over. And then we come to find out, you know, the Pentagon had covertly been investigating. And now it's like out in the open.

We have this new Arrow group who are looking into this. Again, from a national security standpoint. So what do you make of that? Now that we have a newly established, established program within like the Department of Defense in the U.S. investigating these. On the face of it, I go, that's great. On the face of it, I go, that's unbelievable progress.

Here are, you know, let's call them a blue ribbon committee of people with the proper backgrounds investigating these stories. Obviously, I know within the UFO community, there's a lot of weariness about it. There's a lot of people thinking it's a smokescreen. They're going to end up covering up. They don't have the right access, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But just pulling back from all of that, isn't it a profound step forward that the United States government is saying, hey, we need to figure out what this stuff is. Not only do we acknowledge it's real, we're setting up an entity to study it combined with, you know, what NASA is doing now publicly for the first time, as far as I know, you've got prominent senators.

being very vocal about it. You've got at least a handful of Congresspeople being vocal about it, talking about it. I don't know if it's crossed the point of no return or not, but it certainly feels that way where you're not going to be able to stuff this genie back into the bottle and go, yeah, it was just swamp gas anymore. It just doesn't seem like that's a possibility. So then the question in my mind is, okay, so then where is this leading? Because I have to believe that, the other David Grush is out there who have testified already. They're saying things that must support what David Grush is saying, or you wouldn't have somebody like Marco Rubio out there saying the opposite.

Rubio is saying, yeah, there's other people who have talked to me, and they say what he's saying. He wouldn't put his reputation on the line if he didn't have some certainty about what he's being talked. hold. I don't think Kristen, Kirsten, Kirsten, I always get those mixed up. Jilla Brand would do the same. So I feel like as a consumer of this stuff, I'm being sort of led down the garden path a little bit. And I feel like, you know, I feel like there is a kind of quiet disclosure, soft disclosure happening,

step after step after step. But I don't know where that leads. It doesn't seem like anybody knows where that leads at this point. That Michael Schellenberger article that came out that supported what Grush was saying but went further. I don't know. You know, I certainly believe when, you know, somebody like Ross Colthard says, I've been talking to these people. They're saying the same stuff. I believe him. I believe his sincerity.

So there's enough pings out there that are all sort of. pointing in the same direction that makes me think, okay, this is a real, this is a real thing that's happening. This is a real nuts and bolts experience that people are having. Does it lead to actual craft? I don't know. Does it lead to actual bodies of entities? I don't know. But it seems like that's where we're heading. And to me, like with the 2017 article, like that's the biggest story in human history. And so, you know, when I jokingly say on Twitter, for example, you know, okay, Trump got indicted, can we get back to the UFOs?

Right. Like, I'm mostly being serious there. Like, this is so much bigger than any sort of clickbaity news story of the day. Yeah. And why aren't more people interested in it? And is that sort of collective emotional damp? going on, I suspect maybe it is. I think you're right.

And I think I don't like to get too conspiratorial on my show, surprisingly, for a UFO podcast. But you look at when a lot of these things were kind of dropped in the United States, in the mainstream media. You know, 2017 article was a big surprise. But like you said, society kind of moved on. Like, I have to go to work the next day. I don't know how I'm going to pay this bill.

What are we having for dinner? Not like, oh my God, like UFOs. And then you look at like the first Pentagon UFO report came out like right in the middle of the pandemic. Or you look at now this whole David Grush story, which we'll get, we'll get a little into, comes out. Should be again, like earth shattering information. You know, it made waves. I haven't, I worked with the debrief, the site that. that dropped that article, and it hit the same numbers that the New York Times article did,

which is insane to think. This little kind of niche website was able to accomplish that, but still, like, if I were to ask, you know, someone on the street right now in London, do you know David Grushes? They'd be, what are you talking about? And you have the whole thing going on in Russia and Ukraine. So you do have to wonder, like, is there some sort of street? strategy of dropping these things at certain times. I often wonder that because when you have nations that have different,

we don't know what other nations have in terms of technology. You know, China is rapidly increased their military budgets, their craft. I mean, look at these objects that have been over the United States for God knows how long now, and we're just finding out about it. You do have to wonder, at least I do, what is the game here with the Pentagon? What do they want other nations to think about what we're doing with all this UFO stuff?

And what do they want their own public to think? So I do feel like there's this weird chess game going on. Has that ever crossed your mind? Yeah. Hey guys, Ryan here. When I'm not making The Somewhere in the Sky's podcast, I am listening to podcasts. And one of my favorites, since the very beginning, has and continues to be, the paranormal podcast with Jim Harold.

Do you like conversations about UFOs, ghosts, cryptids, and the unexplained? The paranormal podcast, which launched in 2005, is the longest-running podcast of its type on the internet. The show harkens back to the best of paranormal media over the years. Shows like In Search of and Unsolved Mysteries. My favorite aspect of the show is that every week it's something completely different, which for someone who lives, breathes, and sleeps UFOs, it's so refreshing to learn about other mysterious topics as well. But don't get me wrong, Jim's interviews on the UFO topic are also top-notch.

Whether you're a veteran UFO researcher or brand new to the topic, Jim's interviews always set the standard. for objective and insightful conversations. He's interviewed everyone from Jacques Valet to the late Great Stanton Friedman. And that is just the start. And for you superstitious listeners out there, I have been honored to be a guest on the paranormal podcast a whopping 13 times. Luckily, I'll be coming back on soon to change that number.

So please do me a personal favor and tune in to the paranormal podcast on Apple Podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to somewhere in the skies. It seems to me, and I could be wildly incorrect, that for the Pentagon to basically be orchestrating a huge sci-op on the American population feels as implausible as the other explanation, which is they're telling the truth. both because it's just so outlandish and also because it's illegal. Like they can't do that. You know? Like you can't just, you can't just. And about such a like bizarre topic to just be like, hey, UFOs are real.

And here's a dude who worked in the program and he's going to, he's going to say that we have 12, you know, we have a bunch of recovered crap. and we're going to hold hearings and we're going to establish this office to deal with it. Like, what? Like, why would you possibly do that? And let's just say that's true. Like, this whole thing was a sci-op? Then that becomes the biggest story in American history. Like, what the fuck was that, you know?

Like, whatever's true is bizarre. Whatever's true is so out there that, we're living in interesting times as the saying goes. My preference would be that we have UFOs and the UFOs are real, but if the other thing is true, I'm almost as equally fascinated by that. I want to know that story also. Yeah. Right.

And, you know, like talking to these people who were part of these programs, like that sincerity, like you mentioned earlier, does come through. when you're looking these people in the eyes and they're telling you I've touched something like a material from something that is not from here and that can mean you know a hundred different things I believe that I do I believe they believe I guess kind of like we said earlier

that sincerity shows through I think there are people within the government David Grush Luis Elizondo I have been told we will be getting more whistleblower coming forward. They feel empowered now to do this properly through legal channels. That they do believe what they're

actually saying. They're not being told go out and play this weird puppet game of chess with the public. So yeah, I tend to agree with you. Either story, like you said, would be historic and would change everything. Well, think about

I mean, like, that would bring down a government. If it were to come out that the Pentagon just made this shit, it up. Like, people are going to jail, I feel like, over that. Like, presidents are falling over that. Like, that's, that's no small thing. I don't think. I don't think. And what could possibly be the motivation? Because if your, if your goal is to fool China or to fool Russia into thinking we have something we don't have, it seems like there are back channel ways to do that. It seems like there are ways that you can manipulate sort of this sort of underground intelligence stream that

we know is going out there for them to pick up and try to decipher as opposed to just going with a with a megaphone UFOs like that just seems crazy to me right that's such a good point yeah uh i yeah i don't know where like you said i don't know where it's all heading but i'm here for it man i'm riding the wave it's been the most interesting time for a UFO researcher it will continue to be um you mentioned NASA one of the things that cracked me up was in your article where you talked about NASA's recent panel, they did. And how fucking boring it was. Yeah.

Which I guess we should have sort of expected, but four hours. They live shoot nothing for four hours. And I fell asleep like 10 times. I think the most interesting part was really when Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of Arrow, showed up. Right. And out of nowhere, and I want to kind of. transition to this a little bit later is he said yeah i just had a meeting with the five eyes and we talked about all this and that's when like i think all the ufo people's ears perked up there

the five eyes this kind of mythical thing we'd heard about with all these different intelligence agencies in different um you know sort of eurocentric countries uh get together and talk about intelligence and that a ufo program was now doing that that really got our attention um So now we know this government program is working with NASA and kind of putting all the heavy work onto them. Like, you're NASA. You should be looking into UFOs. So what do you make of NASA's role in all this from a scientific perspective? I don't have a scientific perspective. I'm not smart enough to have a scientific perspective. But I think that I, as an entity, I think NASA is kind of interesting because, you know,

They're a public-facing space exploration institution. But it seems like they're almost certainly involved in more sort of quasi-military or directly military, quiet stuff. I've never known, I don't think any of us know, sort of where the dividing line is there. They're not supposed to be a military organization. it's impossible for me to believe that they don't have a sort of military, that they don't have military applications associated with them. I've never understood why, I guess I do understand, why they've never expressed sort of any public interest in UFOs before.

Clearly, you know, they want to be taken seriously as scientists, and up until very recently, I guess if you had said UFO, that would tend to diminish their credibility. So I guess I understand that. But, you know, clearly they have like astrobiologists on staff and they study weird xenotypes and they go to the bottom of the oceans to look at what kind of worms can survive and, you know, volcanic vents and shit like that. So you go, all right, like they're clearly interested in all of this stuff. I did think it was cool that they were brought into this. I did think it was cool that NASA is now a part of this conversation.

I also think it's necessary that they're part of this conversation. And I did think it was heartening in a way that the conference was so boring. Like it was it was heartening in a way because you go, oh yeah, they're just like bureaucrats like talking about bureaucratic shit. So that to me says UFOs are now mainstream and are now absorbed into the sort of public or the scientific consciousness, the scientific mainstream where they're going, yeah, we just need more, we need better data sets. And that's what we're going to do. We're trying to get better data sets. And here somebody's going to talk about how we're going to get better data sets. And you're like, Jesus Christ, this is boring.

But it was heartening to me, you know, because they weren't out there making noises. They were being very sort of, it seems like, purposely deliberative and boring the way you would want scientists to be. And then Sean Kirkpatrick is like, yeah, and we got these flying orbs that are going around. You're like, okay, well, let's go back up to that for a second. Yeah. And I mean, there were some good moments in there. I mean, you have them even kind of debunking one of the Navy UFO videos. Right.

The thing we've been told was the go fast. Right. Now became the go slow. They said it was traveling like 20 miles per hour, 40 miles per hour. So there was some benefit to that. Like, it shows that they're actually taking it seriously. And serious can be boring. And like you said, bureaucracy to be smart.

I would think serious should be boring for the most part. You know, like, I've no interest in getting into the lab and doing the work. Like, I'll wait for the headlines. I'm fine with that. I want you to be deliberative. I want you to be boring. I want you to, you know, take your time and get this thing right. Exactly. So that was, that was reassuring to me. It was. Well, I guess that leads us up to today.

David Grush, this whistleblower comes forward. His credentials are insane. Like if you look at what this guy's done, who he's worked with, the people who are actually vouching for him, it does truly make you wonder. And the implication of if he's lying, like you said, these people can go to jail. Their reputations are, I mean, his reputation's gone. Let's be completely honest. Unless all of this is proven and he becomes this, you know, hero of, not only the UFO community, but like humanity. Yeah. You know, in so many words. Do you think we're going to see more of these people coming forward? Do you think this like house of cars is going to fall, sort of? All I know is what I digest, which is apparently, yeah, apparently there's what, four other whistleblowers who are sort of

lined up to come forward. Many, if not all of them, have already testified. I imagine once that happens, other people might feel empowered to come forward. Where does it go? I don't know. You know, and supposedly, this next wave of whistleblowers are the firsthand people, are the people who are in the room are the people who have touched the craft or dealt with the entities or whatever it is. You know, one of the things that I think I've understood about the UFO community over the few years that I've been paying attention to it is that there's always the rug being pulled out from under you. You always walk right up to the line and someone's like, well, maybe not this time.

So I think I'm wary enough to not like have my hopes. particularly raised that this will be resolved in a concrete way. But I'm certainly primed to hear whatever anybody has to say who's well credential, then would be in a position to know. Like, that to me is, yeah, fascinating. Watching it unfolding and watching an unfolding almost in real time, as you say, like every day now when you turn on the news or you, you know, you just read whatever UFO community boards that you read,

you're going to see something most likely pushing the narrative a little bit forward. It's great. I mean, it's the greatest story in history if it is born out to be true. But let's say it is born out to be true. Let's say we have these craft. To me, that's when the story actually begins. Like right now, we're just leading up to the story, the story of how. we get to the story, if any of this is born out to be true, then, you know, then everything

just blows so wide open. Because then we're in a position where our fundamental understanding of who we are has to be re-evaluated, if not utterly changed. I was going to ask you what, you know, this word in euphology of, of, disclosure. What does that look like to you? I mean, we always envision like the president coming out. White House law and UFO landing, blah, blah, blah. What is, how big is that word in terms of what it would do? I've never really thought about for me what the definition of disclosure would look like. Sure, you could have Biden or whoever the next president is coming out and saying,

hey, we've got these craft. They're created by non-human intelligence. We've had them since X-State. We've known about them since X-State. That obviously would be the sort of marquee disclosure moment. I guess I have a hard time imagining that happening. I don't know why. Maybe because the kind of shock in awe of that would be so overwhelming for people

that I wonder whether we are in the midst of disclosure right now, that it is about the sort of slow unraveling of the truth. You take people up to this point, they sort of digest that for a little bit, you take them to this point, you let them digest that for a little while. That to me seems the more likely way to do it, until you get to a point where a president can come out and say, everything that you've heard about, I can confirm. And then people can be like, okay, you know,

it's like it's still going to be weird, but maybe not as weird as it would have been if they'd landed on the White House lawn to use the cliche. So I think that's what disclosure is. I think we're in the middle of it or in the beginning stages of it. I think that's my sense of what's happening. I could be wrong. I think disclosure maybe is happening right now.

Yeah. I think you're right. I think we're in the infant stages of something like that. The acknowledgement is huge for so long. And again, we often look at this from the U.S. government perspective. There's world governments everywhere. Like, it would be much bigger than just this one country's acknowledgement and dissemination of information on it. You do have to wonder, like, what knowledge does do the five eyes have?

What knowledge does China, Russia, whatever, insert country here. You truly have to wonder, like, globally what that would look like. It's profound. It really is. And I think you're right. It wouldn't be as marquee as we would all sort of hope. I mean, that would be fun. It would be fun.

I mean, I feel like that's a take a day off from work kind of day. Hell yeah. Marky version. Two last questions. Entertainment is a huge influence. Western entertainment on, like, the whole world. There's no getting around that. And the UFO subject and Hollywood, I guess, have had a strange marriage for very long.

I always use the example of, like, top gun was created to recruit young men into the Air Force. So, like, there was a reason this movie was made and a purpose and an agenda, quote unquote. And you look at some of the early movies that came out about flying saucers back in the 50s, 60s, based on purported actual events. So I guess that is my question. What role do you think the entertainment industry plays in all this? I mean, kind of coming from that world and then seeing how it's played out in movies, TV, pop culture. What role do you think entertainment has in maybe that, even that disclosure, I guess? Well, there's a couple different ways to look at it.

The first is I was and continued to be naive in a lot of ways. Like, it never occurred to me as somebody sort of entering this industry that it would be, manipulated by the U.S. government to further its own aims. But of course it has been, you know. The example you just gave is perfect. But then you go, okay, so what's the story behind, you know, Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Like, was there, was Spielberg like in contact with anybody about moving this story one way or another?

or was it just sort of created whole cloth out of his mind? You know, I know there are people in UFO circles who think this, there was some deliberate action there. That there was something, a bigger agenda at play. I don't know. That's one way. That's one side of this. The other side, the side that maybe I'm more interested in, is the way. culture reflects itself and shapes itself.

So you get something, you get Kenneth Arnold looking, you know, seeing a flying saucer. Suddenly that term, flying saucer is in the public consciousness. Of course, some smart-allicky Hollywood screenwriter is going to be like, the day the flying saucers came, you know, and it's an artist board on, and here's the flying saucer, and here's Ernest Borgne on, and are they fend or foe? and then that gets reflected back into reality of what people believe they are seeing, which then gets reflected back into popular culture. And it turns into a kind of back and forth that not only sustains the narrative and the mythology,

but also helps to create it. So how much of our reality is self-generated? I think that's a legitimate question. how much of let's say contact or these experiences are outside in or inside out how much of it

how deep does it go within our relationship to reality how much are we creating reality itself you can distill that into pop culture but I think it maybe raises sort of larger questions thanks yours too What does RAV stand for anyway? To me, it's the remarkably advanced vehicle.

Really? To me, it's the runway approved vehicle for its amazing style. What about remarkably adaptable vehicle because of its versatile cargo space? Or really admired vehicle? Oh, or really awesome vehicle. It really is the recreational activity vehicle. The stylish 2026 Toyota RAP4 Limited. What's your Rav for?

Absolutely. It raises so many questions. I mean, I've always looked at, like, you know, the entertainment industry likes to put that mirror back on us. You see a lot of movies now coming out about time travel, wishing we could go back and change things. That's happened a lot in the past, but you are seeing it play out in a lot of these big budget movies coming out right now. And you do have to wonder, like, is this kind of our want, our need to go back and change things, whether it's the pandemic we lived through or or you know, came out on the other side through,

not clearly unaffected or a war going on, several wars. They're at the world at a constant rate. You do have to wonder, you know, that mirror of being put back on. Yeah, I feel like I'm seeing,

maybe I'm not, maybe it's just the kind of thing that I'm drawn to in terms of pop culture, but I feel like there is a movement artistically towards the same questions that I'm asking here, which is what is the nature of our reality, how much of it is a construct, how much of it is, like what even it, like what is, what is foundationally reality?

And I feel like you see that expressed in a lot of different ways. I mean, even something like Oppenheimer, I feel like is doing that, where you're creating a godlike machine. you're fundamentally changing reality. And then, you know, jokingly, Barbie is doing the same thing. Barbie is saying, here's this unreal thing that we're bringing into reality. How do they affect each other? It's a stupid example. But it, but, you know, and this, and, you know, the sort of jokes that are sort of being pinged back and forth comparing Barbie and Oppenheimer are funny.

but there is actually some overlap there. There is some thematic overlap there. You know, I don't know what to make of any of it. And maybe you can, maybe, you know, you can look at a lot of different forms, artistic forms. And, you know, if you want to interpret it through that lens, maybe you can. It just happens to be what I'm interested in at the moment. So, you know, I may just be bringing my own biases towards it.

I bet no, I think that's a great example. You have these movies that you think would never have anything in common, kind of melding together to make us really question things. And I think you're right. I've interviewed a lot of comedians, actors, musicians on this show. And those tend to be the people, creative people, who aren't afraid to ask the ridiculous questions. Well, we trade in ridiculousness. That is our livelihood. Exactly.

Well, what role do you think comedy plays? in a lot of this. I mean, Dave Foley's been on the show and talked about this. It seems to be a lot of comedians could gravitate towards the UFO subject. And I find that fascinating. If I had to guess, and I don't know how many comedians are interested in this or musicians or actors in general. I haven't talked to many of them about it. if I had to guess, it probably draws in people who are sort of living on the fringes anyway

in terms of the way that they think about the world, the way that they want to approach the world. So much of comedy, for example, is about pushing boundaries and understanding where those boundaries are. And as we said from the very beginning of this conversation, this stigma around UFOs, that you know stigma is a boundary that's taboo once you walk up to that line and comedians are about taboo comedians are about looking at taboo and and trying to understand like what is it about it that makes it um something that people are afraid to talk about why can't we move into this subject UFOs just happens to be one of those subjects i i imagine musicians probably feel similarly that you

you know, obviously the most prominent being tombed along, where I think a lot of people in the arts get into the arts because the world doesn't make sense to them. And UFOs don't make sense. Yeah. They just don't make sense. So of course, we'd be drawing to that. I love that. I can't think of kind of a better way to kind of wrap that up. Um, well, okay, last question for you. Do you have a favorite case? Anything you could really hang your hat on in the world of UFOs that kind of really makes you? And on top of that, what's your favorite theory out there about what these things that don't make sense could possibly be? I don't know that I have a favorite case, but a couple I think are really, I mean, so many of them are.

They're all interesting. But the Zimbabwe school kids won. that one I think is just fascinating what did they I mean they all agree the kids were there they saw this thing they all agree on what they saw they draw decades later

they're hanging they're staying with the story so what was that what was that experience what did they see you got multiple witnesses all credible no reason for them to lie what was that that I think is fascinating I think the Phoenix Lights thing is fascinating for similar reasons you've got

it's a major American city. People are looking up. They're seeing this thing. You've got a governor coming out there, poo-pooing it, making fun of it, then turning around and going, yeah, I don't know what that was. Like, I guess what's interesting to me about these cases are not only that they happen and that they happen with multiple witnesses in the case of the school kids, maybe a dozen or two dozen, in the case of Phoenix, thousands. What's interesting to me, me about cases like that is not even so much what happened to them, but the reaction around them. Nobody talks about the Phoenix lights thing outside of UFO communities. It happened in

Washington, D.C. in what, 1952 or something? Nobody talks about that. I didn't even know about that. Why don't, when people say, why don't the White House, why don't the UFOs come down in the White House long? Well, they did. Why are we talking about that? There's so many of those cases. And yet they just get filed into the cabinet of, yeah, we don't know. Close the file. You know, flares. Close the file. I don't know.

I don't think it was flares, you know? We have a UFO landing in front of these school kids. Beans come out. Hey, man, how you doing? Takes off again. Those kids, they're now adults. They still maintain. What they saw was what they saw.

Just file it away. I don't know. I don't know what to make of it. I don't know what to make of. I don't know what to make of people who weren't interested in that. I don't know why that doesn't spark the same level of fascination in most people that it does with you and with I and with other people who are interested in this stuff. To me, there's nothing, I can't think of anything more interesting, more fascinating, more profound than these questions. and the ancillary questions that they produce.

It's such a rich subject. I would be very surprised if in the next few years you couldn't major in this in college, that there won't be a UAP studies degree. There should be, or whatever you want to call it, anomalous studies degree. Like, there should be departments devoted to this thing because the world is so much richer and more complex and diverse than we know.

You can look at any number of sort of ancillary topics and know that to be true. I mean, you can go from the James Webb Space Telescope to quantum mechanics to neodeath experiences. to the effects of meditation, to consciousness studies. All of it is worthy of study. All of it is sort of is right on the fringes of our understanding of the nature of reality. And somebody like me suspects all of it is connected. So how is it connected? Is it connected?

I mean, start with that obvious question. How much of the fabric of what we understand to be reality is connected. Like, what the hell are we living in? What the hell is this? It's the fundamental question of humanity. And UFOs just give us a different way of looking at it. It's a lens. Yeah.

I love that. Man, I, that's it. My drop right there, Michael Ian Black. I can't think of a better way to sort of end this. You and I are going to start the first university mythology while we're here in London, so be on the lookout for that, guys. But other than that, Nick, can you tell us,

what do you got going on? Nothing, I'm unemployed. That's why I'm in London. That's a perfect way to put it. Yeah, that's why we're all here. Awesome. Well, if people do want to read your work, where can they find what you're up there? Well, I write about UFOs on occasion on my substack.

Michael Ian Black is what it's called. You know, I'm on Twitter. I'm just sort of out there. You can see me perform my tour doing stand-up, not UFO-related stand-up. Yeah. So I'm, you know, I'm available. Awesome. I can't thank you enough.

Like, it was so awesome to finally meet you. Like I said, off-air, huge fan. Thanks. My whole life. And the fact that you're now talking UFOs, not a world I ever. thought I would see. So if UFOs have done anything, it's definitely changed my paradigm and

my perception of a Hollywood comedian. No, I just love, I love finding people who are interested in this stuff because my wife, who's out there right now, is just like UFOs again? I'm like, yeah, sorry. I know. I know that feeling. Trust me.

My partner knows that feeling. Very well, too. So, Michael, I got to thank you today. Oh, no, my pleasure. Thanks, Ryan. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network.