Somewhere in the Skies - MJ Banias: SOMEWHERE INSIDE SKINWALKER RANCH

Episode Date: February 10, 2020

On episode 147 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, MJ Banias returns for a special volume of Somewhere in the Whiskey! We hear all about MJ's recent trip to the highly secretive and mysterious Skinwalker Ranch. How did he gain full access and what did he see, hear, and learn while exploring the property? Then MJ and Ryan discuss the possible alien materials that TTSA and the U.S. Army are now in possession of, and then they go down the cultural rabbit-hole that is Ufology. It's a wide-ranging discussion fueled by some smooth bourbon and rye!  Read MJ's VICE articles at: https://www.vice.com/en_us/contributor/mj-banias Follow him on Twitter @MJBanias For tickets to Contact in the Desert, use the promo code: CLICK HERE Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at www.CWseed.com Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the eOne podcast network. To learn more, CLICK HERE Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms apply. Today on the show, we're going inside Skinwalker Ranch with M.J. Benayas. I sort of flattered to ask him. I mean, listen, I said, you're a scientist. You work on this weird paranormal ranch. Like, what do you think about this? And he said, well, okay, first of all, you know, paranormal isn't necessarily the word I would use, right? You know, he says, the ranch has anomalies. Science has anomalies. We're just trying to figure out what these anomalies are. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprigg.

Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host, Ryan Sprigg. And this is a long-awaited volume of Somewhere in the Whiskey. Past guest, M.J. Benayas shares a healthy dose of bourbon with me as we chat all about his recent private tour of Skinwalker Ranch. This highly secretive and mysterious ranch in Utah has been the subject of intense speculation, scientific examination, in every type of weird phenomena you could possibly think of. Once owned by billionaire Robert Bigelow, and studied by leading science. scientists in their fields, the ranch was eventually sold to a new owner. And that owner recently

gave MJ full access to the ranch and what is currently going on there. We talk all about MJ's experiences at the ranch, what he left feeling, and of course we dig deep into UFOs as well. And as always, the more we drink, the more honest we get. So grab your drink of choice and join us for this volume of Somewhere in the Whiskey. Welcome to another long-awaited and requested volume of somewhere in The Whiskey. That's right, our good friend of the show and enemy of the state of uphology, M.J. Pinaeus, is back. What do you drink it, my friend? It's always a pleasure to be here.

Tonight's drink of choice is, it's another Crown Royal special. It's their Northern Harvest, which is sort of tough to get outside of where I live, but they had a special release in, I think it was in 2016. So I saw some kicking around and it won Best Whiskey in the World or something in 2016. So I'm enjoying a nice local Canadian rye. I was going to say, yeah, is it a rye? It's got to be if it's a crown for sure. Yeah.

I got a Clayton Distillery, Clayton, New York bourbon with me here. Very limited batch. It's good, man. It's been keeping me warm this winter. So keeping me warm in this winter and warm in the field of uphology, which I feel has been pretty cold lately. It's, it, euphology has become an alcoholics paradise. You need to definitely drink in order to stay alive in it. So it's, it's, yeah, it's been a fun year.

It has and I don't know how I went almost, uh, what, God, I had you when the book, when your book came out. That's the last time we've spoken. So it's been a long time being sober since then. So I'm looking forward for this. Excellent. Me too. Mm-hmm.

Well, speaking of which, you caught me mid, uh, mid-sip there. Um, a lot has happened since we last spoke, a new, decade has been ushered in both in the real world, as we know it, and in the UFO world. And a lot in 2019. So before we kind of dive in here, man, with just some randomness that is somewhere in the whiskey, what's some of your favorite stories from 2019 to come out of the UFO world? Anything really stick out to you? Well, okay.

I mean, 2019 has really been the year of To the Stars. So it's really tough to avoid that. I think there's been a lot of stuff concerning to the stars, concerning the ATIP program out of the Pentagon. There's been a lot of kind of back and forth from the Pentagon as to what exactly ATIP was. There's been just a lot of UFO community drama. The UAP Expedition guys, they've been kind of a big deal recently. So there's been a lot of interesting things that have happened.

I think my favorite stories that came out for me was the sort of the UFO sort of Silicon Valley sort of investors who came out and started talking about some of the stuff that they're doing related to UFOs and how there's a big push in Silicon Valley in California about a bunch of guys who are just sort of really into the UFO stuff and they're you know kind of dabbling in it a little bit the UAP expedition people from Kevin Day and all of his crew kind of doing a big project out in the Pacific Ocean there off the coast of California to kind of look for UFOs. That's a fun story. I think overall 2019 has been the year where UFOs have really taken a big step towards legitimacy. I think 2017 was sort of the beginning of that, but I think 2019 has

been the year where we've had lots of press about UFOs, not just related to TTSA, other projects too. But this notion that scientists, PhDs, academics are starting to look at UFOs, not just as something that's crazy, but something that's, you know, maybe something we ought to put time and attention and some resources into. So, yeah, for me, 2019 has been a good year. It was. It really was a few steps forward. But, you know, then we take one step back with storm Area 51 so right what were your thoughts on that i i didn't want to go there but i got to know what you think man oh okay so storm area 51 was a was a big story i followed um because i was doing stuff for vice for them uh in or in regards to stormy 51 so there's a lot happening um and just the

the intrigue and the politics of of putting this stuff together um you know you had counties declaring states of emergency so that they could call in, you know, funds to help, you know, bring in people to remove, you know, drunks and bring in medical care and fly people out if they need. Like it was, people were expecting pandemonium. And it didn't happen. There was no pandemonium. But it goes to show how quickly something can go viral and how quickly it gets blown out of proportion and how many people take it seriously, like, leading up to it. Like, there was so much drama in regards to the little alien and the stuff getting canceled and then move to Las Vegas. Like, oh, my gosh, the phone calls I was getting at, like, random times of the night from people in Nevada being like, oh, dude, you know, this is happening now.

We're moving the party here. And it's like, oh, God, it's like three in the morning. What are you doing? Canada. I don't care. Yeah, yeah. But I was reaching out to all of them, right, because I was writing articles of advice. So for them, they viewed it as a bit of publicity and whatever.

So we had to kind of be careful because there's a lot of people who were involved in some of those projects that you're like, wow, okay, these guys are serious sort of promoters in Vegas. And they definitely have connections to maybe some organizations that, you know, I don't necessarily want to be involved with when it comes to, you know, other activities in Las Vegas. So it was, yeah, it was an interesting ride. An unfortunate, I think, the whole Storm Area 51 thing. I'm kind of happy it went away in, you know, in hindsight. Yeah, it's probably for the best. I mean, there are certain people who are hoping this would be like a huge thing and it would become annual and we'll have a storm area 51 every year. And maybe we will.

Who knows? I know the guy who started the original Facebook group, he wants to like do this yearly. I don't blame him, but it did sort of just kind of fizzle the response to it in the media was less than, I'd say, positive or exciting after the event. And you're right, it kind of just faded into obscurity. And like you, I kind of just completely forgot about it. So maybe it's for the best. We have much more important things to focus on and worry about. And I guarantee you none of the stuff we're talking about is going on at Area 50.

That's right. Yeah, I think it's just best left alone at this point, this storm area 51 nonsense. Yeah. Well, okay, so this is kind of the big one that I wanted to talk to you about today. I'm Jay. This is somewhere in the whiskey, but I'm going to be calling this one somewhere inside Skinwalker Ranch. And this was an article you just came out with recently. I know leading up to this, you had kind of, you and I had been talking off the record for a little bit. And I knew you were up to something, but I didn't know quite what. And then boom, you dropped this on us. How the hell did this come about writing a vice article about going inside Skinwalker Ranch? It all began, it must have been under a year ago for sure, like eight or nine months ago. I was, I was up to something. And I was, I was doing some research. And I just

sort of bumped into, you know, possibly, you know, figuring out who, you know, the owner of the ranch was and and and you know I I quietly reached out and just said hey how's it going you know and just kind of testing the waters and dipping my toe in and you know what solely happened over time was you know the the email kind of turned into another email and then it turned into you know a phone call and and basically over a few months, you know, we started chatting and, you know, it just kind of worked out, I guess. That's kind of the best way to put it. It's, I'm sure, you know, you know, the problem is once you start talking to a journalist, right, you kind of start waiting into those waters of, you know, when does this become a story and when do I become

the subject of the story, right? Yeah. So, so I think there was a sort of end game always in, in play to kind of do a story on Skinwalker Ranch. Because I was really fundamentally interested in what was going on there. You know, we all kind of know what used to go on there in regards to the Bigelow program under Bass and Nids. And, you know, it's all quite public. The book Hunt for the Skinwalker. Obviously, you know, Jeremy Corbell's film kind of recapitulating on all that and just kind of,

you know, showing us a few more snippets of. information. But from that book, we kind of had a general picture. We don't have any data, obviously, but we had a general picture of the stuff that was kind of going on on the ranch. But no one really knew, and, you know, the Corbell film didn't really get into it as to what was going on post-2016 when the ranch got sold. I was really curious. Like I had heard rumors about people who were involved. I had heard rumors about, you know, some of the things they thought were going on and they were very much not convinced that this was some sort of, you know, paranormal or sort of spiritual thing. This is, you know, maybe something more scientific, maybe some

natural phenomena we don't understand. So I found it really compelling, right, that you had a team that came to the ranch that was not necessarily viewing it as the place where there's bulletproof wolves running around. But more as, you know, we have these weird events. So let's try and figure it out in a purely sort of observational scientific way. And that's kind of what the article goes into. And yeah, that's kind of how it happened. It was a very slow burn, but it pays off in the long run, I guess. Yeah.

And I mean, what were those first moments like when you got to the ranch? I mean, this is something that most of us have and probably never will experience. I mean, you had a pretty thrilling-esque, it seems dramatic. entrance into the ranch itself. So what was that like first stepping ground on the ranch? Yeah, I have to be honest. It was a weird experience because, you know, I personally am a, you know, the UFO community kind of knows me as a skeptic. And I'm actually not that skeptical, but I'm, I'm very critical. Let's put it that way. So in my brain, right, I have this obvious kind of weird disconnect. I'm standing sort of or we're rolling up in in in the vehicle. And I'm like,

okay, listen, it's just a ranch. Like, it's just a ranch in Utah, right? Like, there's nothing here. This is silly, right? Maybe there's some weird stuff happening, but, you know, there's no crazy wolves or shape-shifting men or aliens. Like, this is not a thing. So the rational logical part of my brain is like, this is just nonsense. So, okay, here we go. I'm going to go on some one's farm basically. But then as you're pulling up and as you're seeing all the mesas and all that, you know, I'm having this moment of like, holy crap, like I've been researching this now for probably two or three years, really, really researching it for the last few months.

Like, I'm finally here and I roll up to the gate. And then there's that, that weird moment that, that rational part of your brain starts to kind of slip away and you start kind of going, well, what if? Like what if this place is like dangerous? Like what if these signs are here for an actual reason? You know, what if people are getting hurt? What if there are bulletproof wolves and what if I bump into one? Right.

Like, you know what I mean? Like you start going through this, this fear, right? This psychological manipulation, let's say. And immediately I get out of the vehicle and, you know, I meet the security guard who's a really nice guy. And then this big black dog like runs up to me. And it's just the nicest animal you've ever met in your life. But you're on Skinwalker Ranch. So when you see this black mass moving towards you from the distance, you're like, oh, no, it's happening.

It's started already. Right. What is how? You know, does everyone see that dog? You know what I mean? Like, that's what it was. So, you know, this very nice dog runs up and we become fast friends. But it's, you know, it's weird.

It's really weird because your brain tries to juggle with the very real objective reality that it's just a ranch. and the very mythological stuff that exists on that ranch and the stories you've heard. And I have been honest, there were moments where I was on there, especially in the old homesteads, where you're kind of walking through them. And it's the middle of the day, but they're very dark. Like the windows are so small and they're so dilapidated, everything's so dark in there. You know, there were moments where I walked into one of those buildings and like I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach like something was going to jump out, like something else was in there. I was going to turn the corner and there it was going to be, right?

Like in every horror movie. But, you know, again, it's probably just psychological, but it's still there, right? The fear is still very real. So it's a very eerie place, but it's also incredibly beautiful. And I think that's one thing that we really want to caveat here is it's not some dark, horrible place. It is a beautiful piece of land. And like I sort of said in the article, like I could just grab a tent and my camping bag and I could live there for week just exploring and just live outside because that's how beautiful it is.

That beauty sort of comes from the history of the area and the, you know, the Native Americans that live there. So what was that like getting that side of it besides the, you know, the UFOs and the high tech stuff that's now being tested there, which I'd like to touch on a little bit if you're willing to. But what was it like talking to someone from the area? Yeah, so, so, The Uinta Basin is home predominantly to, like, the Ute tribe. And they're a very, very small group. There's only like 3,000 Ute left. I think there's actually less than that.

So they kind of, the reservation is sort of this, this checkered series of spots that run through the basin. So it's not like the whole Uinta Basin is one giant sort of section of Ute reservation land. It's sort of spotted pieces of the basin are our Ute reservation land, and there's these weird chunks that aren't in America. and then there's this other chunk that's, you know, Ute Reservation Land. So when you speak to the Ute, a lot of people in the basin have claimed to have seen strange things and, you know, lights in the sky and whatever. So I think that there's something to that narrative.

I think there's something to the people who live in the basin and the stuff they see and the weird experiences they have. Once you start speaking to the tribe in an official capacity, so I reached out to their sort of admin office, they were very quick to kind of point out a few things. The first one being that the Navajo were never in the Uinta Basin. So this whole stuff of skin walkers and the land being cursed would not have probably occurred in the basin itself because there never would have been Navajo people living in the basin, at least not according to the Ute tribe in any official sense. So the woman I was dealing with from the Ute, she's the sort of the cultural protector, cultural liaison for the tribe. She said, you know, you have to kind of note that in your article, you know, the Navajo never really were in the basin. Now she said, you know, that being said, we don't really have historical records.

So is it possible that, you know, a group of Navajo did live in the basement basin temporarily, you know, maybe? But, you know, it's more than likely they didn't. Navajo land was like 400 miles south of the basin, which is quite a distance away. However, when I spoke to the Navajo, and again, in an official capacity, because there's no Navajo really in Utah until you kind of go deep into the southern section of Utah, which is again 400 miles away from the ranch. The Navajo kind of had a story where, you know, yeah, skinwalkers are a part of our culture. And they're not for the Ute. The Ute. The Ute don't have skinwalkers in their mythological folklore, I guess, or in their religion.

Skinwalkers are a predominantly Navajo thing. The Navajo said, you know, we do have a lot of stories of skin walkers. We do have a lot of oral traditions of when the sort of the newcomers from the United States started showing up, right? Like the settlers moving from the east into the west into the United States, you know, there were a lot of instances we have in the oral tradition where, you know, these were desperate times. So, you know, the Navajo would rely on desperate measures sometimes in order to try and hold on to what was theirs. And the Skinwalker was sort of one of those very desperate measures that were occasionally and rarely taken, but were taken in sort of oral stories told by the Navajo. So she said, you know, is it possible that the Uinta Basin was cursed by the Navajo with the Skinwalker?

You know, it's possible. She said it's, we don't know for sure, but it's possible. So I sort of rested it on that because really the big. answers nobody actually knows very much about sort of the Skinwalker idea in the basin itself. So it's an interesting kind of weird mystery. And I'm not really sure if we're going to get to any real answer here because a lot of people don't want to talk about it either. And I think that's kind of a big part of it. That being said, people do have a lot of stories in the basin of weird events. So I think, you know, we need to sort of separate maybe these two ideas. I think maybe separating

the Skinwalker, the Navajo Skinwalker mythology, sort of put that in one pile and then the weird events on the rancher in the basin, that's sort of a separate pile. And we just need to kind of understand that the link between them is very tenuous. So I would just sort of, that's how I'd conclude that statement. That's good, man. It's just like us spending most of our time separating the UFO from the alien. I mean, there could be all different phenomena not happening, not because of this skin walker lore. But you did mention, you know, people don't want to talk about it and make the findings public or even what's going on there. And that came in the form of Bigelow. We never found out really what was going on when he was, when he owned the ranch. But,

you know, under this new owner who remains anonymous, that was kind of, you know, the deal you made with him. You would not reveal his identity. And he'd let you on to the ranch. And he'd let you on to the ranch, there were some people who were willing to come forward and say, look, I'm working there. I'm working at the ranch. I'm doing experiments and we're investigating. So who were these individuals that you met with at the ranch who actually went on the record? And what sort of studies are they doing there now at the ranch? This is like, none of us really know what's going on there. But you got to see it firsthand. It's crazy. Yeah, it's the vast, I mean, The ranch has a pretty good-sized group of people working on it.

So there's two people who live on the ranch full-time. It's their home. Candice Lind and Tom Lewis, they live on the ranch full-time. It's basically they take care of it. Really great couple. They love it there. And they spoke to me about sort of their feeling on the ranch being that they live on it full-time. the overall feeling, I guess, is, is at least for Tom and Candice, the ranch is a sort of, they kind of refer to it as being alive.

They don't mean it in a literal sense. Like, it's not like it's some living entity, but they kind of have like, you know, it's a piece of land that has a feeling to it, right? And they can, they've been living on it now for about, I think, eight months or so. they've kind of figured out the ranch has moods, I guess you could sort of describe it as, right? A lot of strange, maybe odd things start happening. They just kind of get the gut feeling. Maybe we should just take off. And they kind of, you know, they'll take a day or two off.

They'll go to town and they'll, you know, check in a hotel and they'll take some time to go shopping maybe in Salt Lake City. And, you know, they'll step away from the ranch for a few days. And then they come back. And they've got, you know, obviously other, you know, they've got lives of their own. So sometimes they get away for work or whatever. So they're kind of the living caretakers. They're there all the time, except once in a while. One person who I met in Salt Lake City, who is a friend of theirs and a friend of the owner,

sort of describe the ranch as a sort of like a beehive. If you leave the beehive alone or you respect it, the bees are fine and they just mind its own business. If you kind of start poking the beehive a little bit or you get too close to it, it comes alive, right? And the bees will get very frustrated with you. So that was sort of their description. But they're going to have a very different philosophy because ultimately they have to live on it. So that's their interpretation. The key sort of player in all this, at least on the science front, is a gentleman named Eric Bard.

Really amazing individual. This guy can build anything like electronic or like scientific equipment. This guy is a jam. He is sort of the principal investigator on the ranch. He is a background in physics. He is a partner in a company that provides equipment to place like NASA and other U.S. national labs. And this has sort of become his baby.

2016 onward he was brought in and basically sort of given the task of your job is to observe the ranch all the time. And what he's done is he's created a very constant. complicated and intricate and elegant network of video cameras, EMF monitoring stations, weather monitoring, radio monitoring stations, transponder monitoring stations for aircraft. And it's all interconnected. So he's built this complicated observation system for the ranch. The ranch is basically, most of it is under constant surveillance.

And basically anytime anything happens on the ranch, he knows about it. He jokingly calls the ranch Eden and he sort of you know, again, comically kind of explain, you know, I have my eyes everywhere. I'm like God and there's like, you know, I can keep track of Adam and Eve

and the devil at all at all moments, right? So he's a very interesting character and he's very humble and he's also probably one of the most rational people I have ever met. I mean, I sort of flattered to ask him. I mean, listen, I said you're a scientist. You work on this

weird paranormal ranch. Like, what do you think about this? And he said, well, okay, first of all, you know, paranormal isn't necessarily the word I would use, right? You know, he says, the ranch has anomalies. Science has anomalies. We're just trying to figure out what these anomalies are. And ultimately, that's his project. And at this point, they're not doing testing. So I think we need to be really clear. When Bigelow ran the ranch pre-2016, the vast majority of his staff did testing. So they would leave random objects lying around in toys and and magnetic sort of games in an attempt to communicate with whatever they believed was on the ranch. And they believed it was some sort of entity, right?

Like the Bigelow Project was very much concerned with proving that there was an intelligence present on the ranch. Eric Bard's philosophy or his project is very different. He is here just to observe. To track all of the anomalies and see if there's a pattern. And basically with that pattern, we can then move forward. forward with a theory or a hypothesis, a hypothesis and then a theory as to what's maybe going on here, right? So they've logged a good chunk of odd occurrences, you know, from people seeing strange things, people experiencing injuries, massive fluctuations in electromagnetic fields

to the point where sometimes it's incredibly dangerous to humans, like you're being cooked. So they have all this stuff. And, you know, it all kind of clumps to. together in data sets, right? So we have this sort of, you know, somebody sees something strange. We cross-check it with the flight transponders. We cross-check it with the EMF. We cross-check it with any tectonic activity and whatever. And if it all kind of culminates into, okay, at exactly this moment, you had four people see something. One person felt sick. You had the EMF detectors going crazy. We had tectonic vibrations, infrasonic vibrations occurring. And the cows were going nuts. Something weird happened, right? Because then it went away.

So what was that? Right? And they've got sort of multiple instances of these where you have multiple weird moments happening. Unfortunately for Eric, he sort of says, you know, we just don't have enough data yet. So we've been doing this for roughly two years, but there's just not enough of it to come up with some sort of conclusive, you know, it happens every Wednesday at 2 p.m. kind of thing, right? Like there's just not enough data to make a conclusion yet. So his project is continuing. Observe the ranch, collect data.

That's all we can do at this point. I have to ask, did it ever come up that being like sort of one of the scientists working on the ranch now? Did he ever converse with those who worked with Bass? Or does he have any of the data or information that Bigelow had when he was there? Is that something they would pass on to the new owners or the new people working there? Or is this completely separate and we're kind of starting from scratch? Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, in hindsight, I wish I put that in the article, but I actually didn't.

And like, I'm kicking myself now. So for the record, I'll stay it on your show. When Bigelow sold the property, he handed them the keys, and that was it. There was a conversation between Bigelow and the current owner. They spent the day together talking about sort of the ranch and other things. But none of the data from the OSAP, Bass study. went to the new owner. So they're starting basically from scratch.

I think there's some hesitation as well, because I don't know necessarily if the current ranch team necessarily views some of the data, you know, as being from the Bastas as being sort of totally legitimate, right? So I was speaking to Brian Arnold, who's the security guard at the ranch. And he sort of informed me, you know, when they first got there, there were these sort of glass boxes. everywhere and inside were toys blocks like the ABC blocks that you give to babies

you know very sort of magnetic sort of sticky letters that could be moved around and you know they very quickly got the impression like okay these guys in the bass era we're trying to communicate with this the entity on the ranch I guess you could refer to it right the intelligence so there were all these kind of toys lying around in these weird fish tanks

basically and they very very very quickly tore them down. And they were like, you know, listen, you're dealing with stuff that can potentially injure people. Like, why are you giving it baby toys to play with? Right. Like this, to them, the new team was sort of, this was really strange.

I think maybe to some of them was sort of very unscientific. You know what I mean? You haven't proven there is an entity. So why are you trying to communicate with it, right? The current project is we don't know what's going on, right? The current project isn't to prove that that there is some intelligence on the ranch. project is just simply observe the ranch because of the reported phenomena or the reported phenomena that occur there. We can start making, you know, speculative guesses as to what it is

later once we have the data because right now we just don't. So this is, this was sort of the the big reveal, I guess, that never made into the article. But no, Bass still has all of its data. And it is not really bound to share it with anybody. And I don't think it's ever going to. So I think all of the data from the Nid's bass days, that stuff is locked up and it's gone. Like it's it will never see the light of day, at least not currently. You know what I mean? It's going to take a miracle to get it out of there. Yeah, I don't see that happening anytime soon, especially when you have former employees making claims that, and I got it, I want to get your opinion on this, that they were actually the test subjects. They were the ones being,

tested on the ranch. What do you make of this whole idea? Several researchers have brought this forward that the people working under bass were actually guinea pigs for whatever paranormal phenomena is going on there. It's hard to put it into words. But yeah, what do you make of all that? Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting. I don't think it's beyond the realm of possible. Well, yeah, there's two claims. And I want to be really clear and differentiate them here. I think it's within the realm of possibility that during the bass days, the idea and this has been sort of proposed by a lot of people, you know, Colonel John Alexander, for example,

mentioned this in one of his talks, that the, you know, and again, there's this belief that the ranch is home to some intelligent entity, that this thing is sort of like, it has precognition and it knows about the people coming on the ranch or whatever. So the idea that an individual, when they step on the ranch, the intelligence on the ranch will sort of,

look at that individual and decide how to react to it, right, or react to them. I can see in the bass era that being a thing. So I can see the bass team being like, okay, let's put a bunch of guys on the ranch and see what happens. And then if nothing happens, we pull them out and we put a new bunch of guys on the ranch. Or we swap people out, right? And the people on the ranch become the sort of, to use the word guinea pigs is interesting. to you, they become kind of that which motivates the ranch to behave in whatever way they're trying to

have it behave. I can see that being a legitimate sort of bass idea. I mean, let's be honest, Robert Bigelow is an interesting character. We know a lot about his business dealings. We've had a lot of testimony from people who used to work at Bigelow Aerospace and the conditions that they've worked under are incredibly stressful. They signed very complicated NDAs. I mean, he's a generally fairly paranoid individual. So could this be, is this within the realm of his thinking? Maybe. The other theory that I've heard is that it was a weapons test site.

So Bass, Ossap, all of that Skinwalker Ranch was basically a sham designed to put people into an area in the middle of nowhere and then have Bigelow or some other contractor test weapons on those people. So like weapons made in the United States. of America to be tested illegally on American citizens. That I've heard as well. And I think that's a bit of a stretch only because there's no evidence to really prove that occurred.

So maybe it did. And, you know, maybe the ranch is also haunted by a giant spaghetti monster. I mean, it's possible. But it doesn't mean it's true. And I think we need to be really cautious because I'm not willing to really go down that road. I'm not willing to go down the road to say that the ranch was an illegal test site where the American military or private military contractors were firing non-lethal, you know, ray guns at American citizens. Like, I just, I don't know.

It's a little out there, I think. And we have to be really cautious. You can't just kind of start throwing on the internet that this stuff's happening and saying it's true because that's a great. way to get like slap with a lawsuit. And and definitely as a journalist, I would never make the claim that like, you know, Robert Bigelow purposefully, you know, tested weapons on, on American citizens, unless I had really strong compelling evidence to prove it was the case, right? Because that would just be completely irresponsible as a journalist. So I want to be really careful and cautious, you know, were the the people on the ranch during the Basties sort of guinea pigs for

something. I don't know. Is it possible they were sort of used like there's something paranormal on the ranch so let's just put guys on the ranch and see what happens. Yeah, sure, maybe. Paranormal stuff doesn't typically happen if there's no one around. So he needs someone around, I guess. Good point. Right. If a tree falls in the forest, so always. Yeah, if, you know, if, yeah, if there's no one to see a UFO, is there a UFO? So, yeah, it's, it's, it's really that's sort of the big question. Currently, in the 2016, the current ownership, that's not at all sort of in the plan. Like, there's no real idea or notion that, like, the people are guinea pigs. The staff do where they're like fitbits, like heart rate monitors and just sort of trackers, right, like when they're

on the ranch. And it just logs heart rate, blood pressure, that type of stuff. And again, it's simple. you know, if somebody has a strange experience or they see something, what's their body doing during that moment, right? So what's their heart rate? What's their blood pressure? So that is sort of occurring on the ranch currently. But it's also kind of a safety protocol, I think. The ranch is a big place. So if you have someone way out, you know, on the south side of the ranch, which is quite far away from the main area and suddenly their blood pressure drops, you know, they could have passed out, you know what I mean? And they're really far away. And, you know, you need to be. And, you know, you know, you need to be. And you need. to get potentially, you know, EMS out there as quick as possible. So that's kind of part of it. But apart from that, yeah, that's kind of the extent of what they're up to. And I mean, that's sort of, I think, where we can leave it in terms of Skinwalker Ranch is we don't know what we're dealing with. I don't think anyone who studied it truly does. And we're all guinea pigs to the phenomena.

So, I mean, that's what it is. So there's some amazing stories that I think some of the people working on the ranch had to tell in your article. But we will leave that to the reader to check those out. But kind of wrapping up the Skinwalker part, MJ, what did you sort of, what was your impression leaving the place? I mean, did your thoughts or opinions change at all? Did you have anything that kind of really piqued your interest or, yeah, change in anyway?

What was that like? How'd you come out on the other side? In reality, UFOs were seen by people from all walks of life. every day all around the world. They've also been officially investigated by the U.S. government and by governments of several other countries, too. That's just a small element of what makes the strange UFO topic so incredibly fascinating and fun to explore. That's what we do on the UFO podcast, Unknown. I'm Jason McClellan, and I invite you to explore the weird and wonderful world of UFOs with me and my friends and colleagues on Unknown. Unknown is available on Apple

podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, IHeart Radio, Spotify, and all the usual podcast places. The main thing was I was really surprised one at how rational everyone was, right? Like you expect that the people who work on the ranch would be a little, you know, like they would be into the UFO thing or they would be into the paranormal thing or they would sort of be people like us, right? Who have some sort of already well-established basis and interest and sort of entrenched. you know, euphological or paranormal idea in them,

right? And they're not. These are just normal people who work on and live on this ranch and they're just kind of doing a job

or they're doing it because they love it. And that's it. It was weird to have that. All of, this is what I'm trying to get to in the long way. All of the stories

and the mythology, the stuff from Nids, the stuff from the book and the documentary hunt for the skinwalker. All of that very speculative, mythological,

incredibly sort of magical stuff is really just stories. And we need to approach Skinwalker Ranch as a place that's housed a lot of myth and a lot of stories in the last few decades.

But the work that's being done there, the science that's being done there, is not about those stories. right? It's not about those myths. So when you think about what they're doing, it is a scientific project. It's not designed in any way to prove that, you know, monsters exist. It's designed to simply catalog any anomalies that occur on the ranch purely free from the weird, bizarre stories. And I think I walked away wanting to tell that story or that,

narrative because ultimately we have a lot of people who are willing to push the more mythological and more paranormal aspects because it sells and what they're doing is is not necessarily something that that sort of sells right if they're doing science and and a lot of times the science is more boring than the stories of wolves and and portals and mysterious creatures emerging from them so Yeah, that was kind of the walk away, right? There's a lot of stories, and we need to kind of put those in one category. And then what actually is happening on the ranch on a daily basis is a different category. And we need to kind of keep those two things separate.

Absolutely. You know, if they cross paths eventually good, but if not, like, that's what it's all about. Yeah, well, that's, it's amazing. I'm so happy you were granted access and you were able to. tell us the grounded story of what's going on there instead of all these, you know, first, second, third, fourth, fifth hand stories that we've heard throughout the years. So I love it. I hope people will check that out. That is over at vice.com inside Skinwalker Ranch, a paranormal hop bed of UFO research. So people definitely check that out. I'm going to take a sip of whiskey here because we're going to move on to another company investigating and looking into some exotic, materials. So here we go. Oh, man, I need a drink. This one's rougher than I thought. Not your article. I apologize. My whiskey.

The article is very well played. Well played. All right. So we're moving on to an article you wrote over at Vice Motherboard, and that's UFO researcher. Explains why she sold exotic metal to Tom Tolong. Now, this, yeah, this one comes from, you know, the, the news that to the Stars Academy is now working with the Army, another branch of the military. You know, first the Navy, now the Army's getting involved. God knows when the Air Force is going to say anything. But, yeah, what was this one all about, man?

Linda Moulin-How is connected to this. Yeah, yeah, give me, give this one to me, if you don't mind talking about metamaterials. Yeah, it's funny, the metamaterial thing, so I guess for the people who are kind of new to this, There's been a lot of movement recently in the UFO community about sort of exotic metal and alloys and whatever. But really, this stuff dates back to the 70s. I mean, there's been discussion in the UFO world about strange pieces of metal that have been discovered since the 70s, they've fallen off UFOs or whatever.

And they have sort of odd properties or strange properties. And what kind of resurface recently was, I have. And this is the funny thing, right? Because very early on, I remember there was a bunch of stuff. It was like 2016 or early 2017 where Jacques Valet was doing a lot of research into meta materials and he was working with Gary Nolan. And then there was, you know, Linda Moulton Howe. She had her metamaterial stuff. And then you had obviously sort of the TTSA crowd kind of rolling out basically saying, oh, we've got some meta materials too. And there was kind of this, there was like, three or four parties, right, who had metamaterials. And at first, everyone kind of thought they were working together, right? There was, because Gary Nolan was part of TTSA. Valet was kind of early involved in the TTSA project and then kind of quickly left before they began.

But he was involved. He wrote the foreword, for example, to one of the books. So you have this weird conglomeration of individuals, the sort of invisible college, as it were, who had all of these strange, alleged UFO bits. And then 2017 happened into 2018, and they kind of all scattered into different directions. So I think Valet sort of took his medal and went home. And I think after a couple months, you know, Gary Nolan followed him.

And then Linda Moulton Howe took her medal and went home and did her own thing. This reminds me of pogs. I'm not going to lie right. All the kids got mad and they took their balls and went home, right? And then TTSA kind of took their medal and one. And it was, everyone was kind of like, yeah, these are, you know, as it happens with UFOs, right? Everyone has their little corner and they want to stick to it. So, so I guess what eventually happened was we had this, this history that kind of got presented by Linda Moulton Howe that, that she was working closely with Dr. Hal Putoff, as well as a few other scientists in, in about 2012, 2010, 2009.

She had these sort of bits of strange metal commonly referred to as arts parts because they were given. into Art Bell from coast to coast back in the day. And there's kind of a whole weird UFO 1947 crash recovery story connected to them that can't really be sort of objectively proven. So we have to sort of take all that as a bit of a story. At this point, we don't really have any super dupe evidence. Yeah, to kind of prove super duper.

That's my word of the day. It's because the whiskey's kicking. We don't really have incredible evidence to sort of say, Yeah, this is definitely recovered from a UFO. But anyway, she was working with Hal Putoff in the early, you know, 2010s. And this medal was kind of being studied constantly by Earth Tech sort of off and on. And the Institute for Advanced Science or something, whatever, he runs out of Texas. So kind of off and on Hal Putoff had these medals and he'd ship them back to Linda and back and forth.

Anyway, it eventually came down that they basically ran out of tests that they could run. Every single test came back inconclusive. They couldn't, you know, they didn't know what this metal was. It wasn't doing what it allegedly was supposed to do, which was float on its own. So they sort of ran out of tests. And I think it was in 2018, Hal and Linda spoke to each other. And I think Steve Justice was involved or Jim Semivant. My mind's blanking.

But they figured that they're actually. is a place that still has one more test that we can run on this metal. The problem is the device or the machine required is so expensive and so unique that really only a few places in the United States have it and the best place is the United States Army. This piece of equipment that is owned by the Army that can basically pump, I guess, some sort of frequency through this metal at a certain level that should technically make it float and Linda Moulton Howe was ultimately presented with the option to kind of work with TTSA or or sell them the metal but the problem was because of the lab that would be required it was a

it's a like a secret lab like a top secret lab so you require security clearance that's all I'm trying to say it's not top secret but in order to get in you would require a security clearance and Linda Moulton Howe doesn't have one so she wouldn't be able to- Are you kidding me at this point in her career? Yeah I know she would be able to get in to kind of be there when this stuff happens and whatever. So she, you know, whatever, she ultimately decided to sell the metal to TTSA for the poultry sum of $35,000. Now, in, you know, in hindsight, when I sort of asked for like why $35,000 for this metal, she said, well, you know, I've had it for now, you know, several decades. I've probably put about $35,000

into it from shipping it around the country and travel and whatever. So she says, I just want my money back. So I was like, that's a fair answer. I respect that, yeah. Yeah, it's not, you know, it's not a crazy thing. And in fact, she commented, she said they were actually surprised. Like, they thought she would have asked for like 100 grand or something. And I was like, why didn't she?

And she's like, ah, and she just burst out laughing. And I probably like, it's like, oh, shit, I should have asked for 100 grand. But, you know, the ultimate kind of point here is, is she sold them this medal. And now this medal is basically going to be tested by the, create a deal with the United States military to develop, I guess, sort of novel technology. And ultimately, I think the intention is to see if this thing floats, which is what the claim has always been in regards to this piece of metal. Right. So this could ultimately be the technology that Tom DeLong wants to make a spaceship with,

I guess. Or that the army could use to weaponize something. I'm always interested, and we brought this up on a past episode with, you know, the people over at the unknown podcast of these materials always seem to make their way back to the military somehow. No matter who is in possession of them at one point, it always comes full circle and they seem to make it to the military. So I do find this interesting. I find it interesting too. You spoke to Chris Cogswell in your article about, you know, he's done a lot of chemical engineering himself. And he doesn't really think there's much to these alloys, which if someone like Chris is making these claims, yet, you know, to the stars is saying this is one of the most,

you know, scientifically profound earth-changing technologies we've come across. I do have to wonder, like, where is that line in between? Is it really what to the stars is making it out to be? Or what are we dealing with here? You know, I'm not sure if to the stars sort of totally knows either. I think on their end, they are able to secure a deal. with the United States Army, which means resources, right? It's not cash, but it means access to equipment, which is worth a lot.

And it's also like top shelf equipment. So there's, I'm sure, an end game here, right, to develop stuff, at least in some way. I don't know for sure. But I think from the United States Army's end, I mean, you need to think, to the stars has a relatively large presence, I mean, comparative to other UFO organizations. UFO organizations have always sort of been of interest to the national security sort of apparatus, right? For a lot of reasons, they attract certain types of people. A lot of ex-vets, ex-vets, a lot of ex-military current vets, you know, find themselves sometimes in sort of UFO groups or UFO communities

because maybe when they were working, you know, in the military, they saw something or experienced something. I think for the military to the stars is valuable because ultimately it's going to have this kind of drag net effect, right? Where it's going to kind of say, listen, we want all of your weird stuff, UFO stuff, send it to us. And out of that potentially, you know, somebody has some piece of some, you know, Chinese helicopter that no one's ever seen before that's made out of some weird material, that's stealth or something. And, you know, they can reverse engineer it on our end, right? You have potential for weird novel material that no one's seen before because it fell off of something. Not necessarily a UFO, but a foreign drone or something like that. And you basically just have this large data collection sort of platform that is TTSA that can kind of yank not only information from people, but also, you know, materials that may have fallen off things.

you know, not necessarily alien things, but very human advanced things that maybe our military wants to get their hands on. I'm excited to see where this is all heading. I know this season on Unidentified, the History Channel show, they're going to be going deep into the meta materials and the Adam Research Project. So that'll be interesting to see. But again, it's just, sorry, the train's going by out my window. I'm sure you can hear it. That's New York for you, baby. This is the problem recording in New York.

Anyways, yeah, I think, you know, things like what to the stars is doing and getting all this information out to the mainstream is just moving the needle forward. And, you know, there's a few more articles that you wrote that I think are also contributing to moving that needle forward. And that was one from popular mechanics and one for vice, sort of both having to do with Project Blue Book and, you know, the Project Blue Book television series. the one in popular mechanics, you really traced the entire history of the governments and the Air Force involvement in studying UFOs. And I love the title of this. Fifty years ago, the Air Force tried to make UFOs go away. It didn't work.

So you were able to get two players in the whole Heineck story in one article, which I'd never seen done before. And that's Mark O'Connell, the guy who wrote the biography on Heinek. and also David O'Leary, who was our guest last week, who is doing the Project Blue Book television series. And we know that they don't really see eye to eye when it comes to how Heineck is portrayed. So how are you able to get these two in the same article? Did they even know they were going to be in it together? And what prompted you to write this one? Certainly not.

I would never tell them that they were in the same article. Yeah, no, yeah, there has been some, I guess, drama between them. Not really like, it's not like drama, drama. It was just, you know, there's been some disagreements as to how the Heinek character and how that whole narrative has been sort of portrayed. But Blue Book has always kind of been an interesting, you know, it's always been interesting for people within the UFO community to know. And as you kind of dig deeper into UFOs, you realize that a lot of the stuff we're dealing with now was dealt with by Heineck and Rupelt and all those other guys in the 1950s and 60s. So I think what Blue Book opened up for me was how sort of historically cyclical UFOs are. Things kind of come into vogue and then they disappear and then they come back.

You know, I think for me, the most compelling piece of that entire article was sort of learning and realizing that the purpose of Blue Book fundamentally was to not, you know, study UFOs, but to get rid of sort of the cultural. implications they would have for our popular culture and for the way people thought, you know, you had this entire climate of Cold War era, UFO, alien movies, you know, invasion of the body snatchers. And they worked as this

as this sort of anti-communist propaganda, but then what starts to occur is, is they start to blend and mix with people's sort of legitimate UFO encounters. and people very quickly kind of leave behind the Cold War mentality, and they start thinking in the exact opposite way you want them to think. And what you see in the 1950s is a huge rise of sort of very, very new age, spiritual, very left-leaning, you know, verging on communist socialist, you know, UFO cults and groups that are

kind of preaching, we have to love everybody, and nuclear war is bad, and we should disarm weapons and care about the environment and love mother nature. I mean, from the military's perspective, this is like what you don't want, right? You don't want massive lovins occurring with, you know... They're out of business. Yeah, exactly, with the Russians and, you know, you don't want any of this, right? You want to maintain a sort of decorum of, you know, you're on this side, therefore you should act like it.

And Blue Book was, I think, designed to start kind of dealing with some of the more larger cultural implications. I'm not sure if, you know, I mean, obviously UFO events did occur and people saw strange things. So I don't want to discount that. But Blue Book never really came to to any sort of conclusions apart from the fact that, yeah, people see things and we don't know necessarily what they're seeing. And that's all we can kind of assert at this point, right? Weird, you know, weird shit happens. That was the sort of the final conclusion of all of the Blue Book reports, the Condon committee, all that stuff. Weird stuff happens. However, it has no. no relevance to science and it has no relevance to the national security of the country,

according to these sort of reports, right? The only problem they faced and really the big takeaway from Blue Book was that the military and the government and predominantly intelligence agencies should sort of monitor UFO groups for subversive activity. And I think quickly the military and the intelligence community learn that UFO groups are really a big problem. And I touch on this a lot in my book, right? The UFO community thinks about the world kind of differently than maybe the more mainstream subcultures.

We sort of view the potential that we're not at the top of the food chain and there's better ways to live our lives. And maybe organizing ourselves by state is not how we ought to do things. And we have these weird subversive ideas often in the UFO community. about how government ought to be or sovereignty or whatever. So Blue Book, I think, tried to address that, right? Like, we need to monitor these people because they're thinking dangerous thought that we don't want them to think in 1950s and 60s America. So it was a lot of fun to kind of dig into those ideas and into that research to talk

more about the cultural aspects of Blue Book, which is something the UFO community doesn't do very much, right? We look at the cases, we look at the UFO events, what do people see? Right. We don't often think about the more cultural. aspects of maybe the politics that motivated, for example, Blue Book to occur or or Blue Book to be shuttered. So it was kind of interesting to negotiate some of those waters with, especially a lot of UFO people who are very much not interested in the culture,

right? They're totally like the cultural aspects of euphology are dumb. Just tell me about, like, tell me what it looked like, right? Like, that's all they want to know. So, yeah, it was a fun story to write. That sort of bled into another article you wrote later on. This came out around when season two of Project Blue Book was premiering and this is one over at Vice that is titled Hollywood's UFO stories are becoming way more realistic

and your subtitle here is what really got my attention. The Pentagon admits UFOs are real. So Hollywood is making a flurry of movies and TV shows about how we should look for them. So what is this one about MJ and what prompted you to write this one?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because having now been part of that Hollywood machine pumping out UFO and, you know, paranormal content. You and I have seen both sides of it now. So what is that? What is this one all about? Yeah. So I'm going to full disclosure on this one.

I was contacted by the PR people at history saying that season two of Blue Books coming out. And do you want to interview Aiden Gillen? Oh, yes. And I was like, Little Finger? Yeah. I want to talk to him. And so I had no, I had no, you know, this article was not something I was going to write. And so I pitched to Vice and Vice.

I said, like, listen, they want me to interview, you know, Little Finger from Game of Thrones. I could do an article about Aidan Gillen and we can talk about Blue Book and blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, not interested. You know, like, that was kind of their response. Because they were like, listen, it's not really a show we cover. You know, nobody really cares about Project Blue Book as a TV show, like, at least not in the mainstream. Like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a relatively niche, right? It was the number one new drama on television last season.

What are the, what do you think in Vice? Right. I know. And it was just, it's just not in their world, right? And, you know, they're a bunch of New Yorkers. So, whatever. Anyway, stupid New Yorkers. So, so I, I was like, okay, how do I turn this into something, you know, that I still get to

interview Aiden Gillen and I still get to do sort of my job with Vice, which is sort of to talk about UFO culture. So I came up with this half-baked. idea. And, you know, it turns out it worked out. But I got to interview Aidan Gillen, which was pretty cool for like 20 minutes. We just talked on the phone. And he's a super chill guy. And he swears like a sailor. And we just talked about UFOs and politics and what it's like to, you know, be on TV or whatever. And the fact that, you know, he grew up watching, you know, like, close encounters with the third kind. He thought it was a sweet movie. And like, you know, he knows a lot about it. He's not really a UFO person, though. So he doesn't really pay very

much attention to our community, apart from just, like, press stuff. Probably for the best, yeah. Yeah, I said it, yeah, it's a good idea. But I think what happened is after I spoke to him, I immediately had the urge, like, I got to call Robbie Graham, who wrote Silver Screen Saucers, and he's sort of the UFO community's kind of movie TV expert when it comes to how the UFO culture merges with Hollywood. This guy knows everything about that subject. So it was really great to talk to him after and kind of piece this article together.

Because I think what you see is a shift in the way aliens are being portrayed, I think, in film. Not so much in like The Avengers or anything like that. I don't mean like Disney. But I think more in the reality TV space, more in shows like Project Blue. book, right? It's starting to bridge the gap much more coherently between UFO events that people experience in sort of in real life and how Hollywood gets involved in this, right? You saw this for sure with close encounters the third kind, but there's been a lot of gap years, right? We're starting to kind of merge these ideas. I think the arrival and contact are great examples of this progression,

into taking UFOs and aliens and the idea of contact, not the film, but like the concept of contact with something else, as being a legitimate issue humanity may have to deal with in the near future. So I'm not saying that, you know, Project Blue Book, the TV program is realistic by any means. But the way Hollywood is pivoting to UFOs, it's pivoting in a much more serious way. I think our subculture is only getting bigger. We're not as niche as we used to be. So I think that there's a market there that maybe people didn't take seriously before.

I think, you know, previously the thoughts of the UFO community didn't really matter. Whereas I'm not sure if they matter completely yet, but I think you need to start getting people on board within the community because they're, like, our community is really the gatekeepers of sort of the history and the culture of the phenomenon, right? the narrative of the phenomenon. We're kind of the keepers of the stories in a sense. And if you don't have us on board, you know, we kind of find a way to tear you down. We're self-policing, right?

So I think there is a sort of shift happening. And I think Project Blue Book is just a sort of step, right? It's just another stone in the path that we're sort of moving closer to a better merging of what the phenomenon is like and what people experience. and how Hollywood and the media portrays that. I see this wave, I guess I'll put it, much differently from, let's say, you know, the early 90s or so when you had shows like sightings or a lot of these earlier shows

covering these topics back when abductions were like the hot thing of the time. Very sensationalized and, you know, a little goofy and, you know, sort of going down the whole. horror realm when it comes to these things. Whereas now you have in, you know as well as I do, networks and production companies reaching out to the UFO community like never before, being like, look, we want to make a new show, but we want the actual cases and we want to take it seriously. And you can't ask for more than that from Hollywood.

You know, whether their motives are altruistic or not, they usually are not. of, you know, just getting the information out there. But you do see a shift happening in the mainstream as well of taking these things much more seriously. You look at all the Navy stories and everything. So I think you're right. I think we, UFOs, as you say in the article, are the hot ticket right now. And that's not a bad thing.

And I think if the UFO community embrace that now more than rejecting it, they'd realize, huh, this is our chance. like this is our chance for our subculture to become culture again. Sure. And to, you know, really show people why we spend our time doing this. And yeah, I look forward to seeing where it goes and what comes out of it. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because what still occurs, though, is, I think Hollywood. And they haven't fully adapted to our worldview yet.

I think they still want to produce shows, though, that they know how to produce. Yeah. Right. And that's kind of the biggest hurdle is getting executives who work at, you know, larger networks or larger cable companies or cable companies, like cable stations, whatever you want to call them, TV channels, cable channels. You know, like, these executives book shows, you know, about house flipping. and in the same breath book shows about UFOs.

So they don't know really anything about our community. Not really, right? They're just looking for the next big TV show. So I think the inherent problem is they're still trying to kind of get their beats, you know what I mean? Like the way it used to be, right? We got to do these sort of five-act or four-act shows. There's got to be the conclusion.

We've got to have the big reveal. Like it follows that pattern, which is unfortunate. Because I don't think they've fully. adapted or realized that that's not really how it works. This is why I think like a show like Hellier, which was done by the Newkirk's, right, on YouTube and on Amazon Prime, whatever, their own kind of personal idea, I think is really successful. I think they're kind of starting to show what, you know, paranormal content could be.

I'm not saying Hellyer's perfect, but it's definitely bizarre and it's definitely beautiful. and I think that that's kind of what UFO and paranormal programming kind of needs to start being like. It's not about getting your beats all the time. It's not about getting your conclusion perfectly wrapped every time because there's no UFO case that's been perfectly wrapped unless it's been proven a hoax, right? Right? You know, like the Mothman case ended in like 1968, but it's still a thing, right? Like people are still seeing Mothman in West Virginia every once in a while. So clearly it's not concluded.

So, you know, or in Chicago or wherever, right, people seeing Mothman all over the place. So, you know, you have this weird continuance that, that unfortunately the Hollywood and Los Angeles still haven't kind of adapted to. So, so it's, I agree it's changing, but I'm not sure how it's, I'm still kind of seeing the inherent problem in, in this type of programming, you know. Yeah, it is a constant struggle. And, you know, you can beat your head on the desk all you want with these execs and everyone in Hollywood and try to, like, convince them that the actual story is good enough. Trust me, it's entertaining enough than to, you know, try to create a false narrative or drama around it. But I think both of us have had some learning experience when it comes to that aspect of it. at all. But you brought up two words, MJ, that really struck a chord with me. And it relates to

a talk you're going to be giving at Contact in the Desert. And that's Culture and Contact. And this is a lecture you're going to be giving in, what is it, late May, early June in California. Can you tell us maybe a little about what you're going to be talking about there? Yeah, sure. I think what my ultimate goal is, and hopefully it's, it's, it's, totally counter to what contact in the desert wants or thinks it's going to get from me. No, I want to talk about the UFO community as a group and how it influences culture and how culture influences the UFO community. So how stuff like, you know, politics and philosophy and, you know, race and gender and all of the concerns we have in, in sort of everyday society are baked into the UFO community and how we sort of deal with that

and then kind of link it to the broader idea that the UFO community has always had, which is this notion of contact with another intelligence, right? So how do the cultural implications and the cultural ideas we have as a group kind of move into this world where, you know, we are potentially encountering some sort of non-human intelligence? So my intention is to not use the word alien or extraterrestrial at all in my lecture. Because I think what we need to start avoiding within UFO conferences, within UFO discourse, is coming to those big conclusions without having the evidence talking about aliens or extraterrestrials or ultra-terrestrials or interdimensional beings or whatever. I think we need to start kind of exploring the UFO phenomenon as being a cultural.

one. We need to sort of observe it and we need to understand why UFO narratives occur the way they do and why they often mimic the cultural landscape that they're kind of born in. And then maybe that will start helping us piece together sort of the enigma of UFOs. So that's kind of the main idea. I want to talk about how humans interact with each other and how that relates to how we would possibly interact with something that isn't human. So that's sort of the purpose of the lecture. So I hope to offend a significant amount of people at contact in the desert because I'm going to tell them, you know, I think first and foremost, everything you think you know is just like storytelling. And that's fine. We just need to kind of be aware of that. I'm not saying, you know,

experiences don't happen. I think they do. I think people do have strange experiences. But we don't know what those experiences are, not really. And I think that that's what we need to start. addressing, right? We don't actually know what these experiences are. And it's odd that they kind of reflect our cultural anxieties all the time. So I think if there is a non-human intelligence playing with us in some way, it's using us and our cultures, our cultural sort of ideologies and paradigms and frameworks to mess with us. Maybe not in a bad way, but just that's what it's using to engage with us in however it engages what, it engages us in. with, that's confusing. It uses our cultural ideologies, frameworks, and paradigms to create a place for

itself to manifest so it can engage with us. Maybe that's the better way to saying it. Right. I mean, that might be all it has to communicate with us. So that's fascinating, man. I can't wait to hear that lecture. I know I'm going to be hosting a panel that you're going to be a part of, but you're also giving a workshop, too, on teaching us how to write about the paranormal. So could you maybe tease this a little bit, like, of how you're going to do this one? Yeah, this is actually really funny because I kind of pitched this this workshop a long time ago. And recently someone referred to me as like a hack paranormal journalist. And I kind of took significant offense to that.

And I was like, wait, I guess I am technically a paranormal journalist. And because that's really what I focus on, right? So I sort of had this weird gut reaction. And then I was like, you know what? Actually, yeah, you know what, asshole? Yeah, I am a paranormal journalist. Go to hell. You know what I mean?

Damn proud of it. Yeah. So the workshop is, it is going to be predominantly about how I think we ought to start writing more about paranormal content. But we need to start writing about it in clever ways that we can sneak it into mainstream parts of sort of society, right? There is no shortage of paranormal content out there in the world. There's tons of websites and blogs and all that stuff. the inherent problem is it tends to fall down sort of the rabbit hole I just talked about in sort of the lecture point is that we start to attribute our own kind of cultural paradigms to it. So we start talking about ghosts and aliens and demons and and various other entities and whatever.

And really, we don't know what is actually going on. So how do we approach the paranormal and how do we write about it in ways that appeal to. to that idea of, you know, we're not really sure, but it's worth investigating because people have weird experiences. How do we kind of translate that into a more mainstream framework so that if you do want to write more about the paranormal, your work will be attractive to sort of the broader community outside of paranormal culture, outside of UFO culture. Because we often kind of get stuck in being very euphological or very paranormal. and to the rest of the world, they just, like, frankly, don't care, right?

Not everyone knows the history of our sort of collective narratives. And they just can't be bought there. They've got to drive their kids to dance class and, like, get their Starbucks. So, so obviously they've got bigger fish to fry, right? So kind of starting to bridge those gaps a little more and just kind of writing better about paranormal subject matter so that it's more accessible to people. So that's what my workshop's about. So anyone who is out there and kind of has always considered, you know, maybe I should start a blog about UFOs or the paranormal or ghosts or Bigfoot or whatever.

You know, how can I write it so that I don't sound like a crazy person? You know, my workshop will kind of provide you maybe some insight as to how I did it. And, you know, if there's a path to be followed there, if there's kind of a guide to be followed there, you know, hopefully it works out for you and you can do it. You know what I mean? 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 ours. 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. Oh, yeah, I'll be at that workshop for sure. I know I could use a brush up on how to accurately

portray these topics in a accessible way, because, you know, we do get caught in these echo chambers. And, you know, even with my podcast episodes or YouTube videos, I forget, you know, there are people out there that are going to be hearing these names we always bring up for the very first time or this case from this year. And you got to keep that in mind because you do want to reach a larger audience. You do want to make it more mainstream. So how do we do that? So I'm happy to see that someone is out there who can teach us how to do what you did and write for these websites who, you know, kind of shuddered away from these topics for so long. Yeah, I mean, when all this stuff started and I started pitching to to Vice and Power Mechanics and all, like, I pitched to everybody.

80% or 85% of the time I would get no response. There would be another 10% of the time where they'd be like, okay, tell me more. And then they'd be like, nah, not interested. And it was really the reason was because I was pitching very euphological content that to the editor who was reading the pitch basically said, I have zero clue what you're talking about. This sounds dumb. And then they would just like delete the email, right?

So the idea is to learn how to tie in news and current events and mainstream stuff into your content. that it becomes palatable for editors and whatever. As well as just plain, old-fashioned, you know, you need evidence before you can publish anything, which is, you know, again, for a lot of people at contact in the desert, some of the guests who are speaking, who have their own blogs and websites publish things that are totally wacky and have zero evidence to support them. But, you know, it's going to be interesting conversation with the attendees to see if they can

like, you know, point out, oh, hey, this guy has a website and it's silly and it doesn't make sense. It's like, yes, it's because there's no evidence. And, you know, like having those conversations as well, I'm trying to pick apart some stuff. I think it'll be fun. Oh, yeah, it's going to be an interesting weekend for sure. It'll be both our first times at Contact in the desert. We're also going to be sharing a table together, signing, selling books, which is going to be awesome. And I'm sure we'll have plenty of content to bring to everyone on May 29th, 3,000. June 1st of this, I guess, spring, yeah, this spring in Indian Wells, California. So that's going to be fun. Yeah, I'm really excited to go. I'm really excited to meet people who are in this

community who I just don't ever get to meet because I'm all the way up here in Canada. I'm, I'm excited to have my life threatened. I'm sure it's going to happen. Like, I'm, you know, I'm going to be called the CIA shill. Like, I'm really excited for all these sort of moments in my life that I can finally say happened. So that's when you know you've made it. Yeah, exactly. man. Well, MJ, where can we find out more of what you're up to, man? And do you have anything coming up that you can sort of tease to us? Or, yeah, what's going on in your UFO world? Oh, man. Well, my, uh, the last time we spoke, I had a YouTube channel. I still have a YouTube channel, but it hasn't been updated in a long time. Just with writing and, and all of the

stuff I'm up to. It's just way too difficult to keep a YouTube channel going. So, um, it's kind of been pushed to the wayside. I know I've made a lot of promises to bring it back, but right now, it's just not in the card. So if you still want to subscribe, you can see all my old content. I'm sure I'll start kind of posting videos kind of eventually sort of piece by piece, but really everything can be found at my website. It's m.J.benayas.com, which kind of links to everything. You can follow me on Twitter at MJ Benayas, Instagram, Facebook. I'm on all the social media's. My blog, terraobscura.net, is still up and running. You can get to it through MJ Benyus.com. I am looking actually to bring in some more guest writers. Again, it's tough

to keep a blog going as well as write for vice and popular mechanics and other publications. So it's kind of in this weird stasis. I recently had a great piece by a gentleman named Chris Blake, who is African American and spoke about what it's like to be sort of of African American in the UFO community and why people don't believe him because he's black. This was a very interesting kind of piece he did. So if you want to check that out by Chris Blake, it's called the pattern and the phenomenon on Terabstura. It's a sweet, sweet cultural UFO piece and it deals with race relations.

And I have to be honest, it's probably my favorite piece on Terabstura. And like I've written most of those pieces and I hate them compared to what this guy produced. I would say check that out. If you do have, and it's kind of an all call, if you do have some ideas for writing, you're into the more cultural aspects of UFOs, not necessarily telling me about your UFO siting or what it looked like more,

kind of how culture and media influences UFOs, I would love to have more guest posts. So if you're out there, you can just shoot me an email, you can get me through Twitter, or you can just email me at Tara Obscura blog at gmail.com. And just find me online. You'll find me email. Yeah, I would love to get more guest posts on Terabscura.

As for me personally, lots of articles. I have a couple articles coming out probably this week or next week on Vice. I have a popular mechanics piece coming out on John Keel very shortly. Yeah, one about a UFO cult. David Wilcock, Corey Good, are you listening? I'm sure they are. As well as a few other interesting pieces in the near future. So there's always stuff coming out.

out. And yeah, you know, thanks very much for letting me plug away. Absolutely, man. And we can't forget the UFO people, a curious culture available on Amazon. Again, one of the best contributions to the field in a very long time. Oh, shut up. Ah, shucks. I'm just saying that because I've got to share a table with you for three days. Yeah, well, listen, you'll be happy when, like, all of your enemies show up and I'm the only one who has your back. You'll be happy to have me there. It's so true.

We're going to have to bring our flag jackets, that's for sure. Yeah. Oh, MJ, dude, it is always a pleasure to kick back some whiskey with you. This has been a very long-awaited and overdue session of Summer in the Whiskey. So as always, I have to thank you for coming on Summer in the Skies. It's always a pleasure to be here. Thank you. That's it for this week's episode.

Again, my thanks to MJ for coming on. Be sure to check out all his work over on fun. and popular mechanics. Check out our Patreon campaign with over 50 bonus episodes right now. To become a patron and to receive many rewards in return, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Please consider subscribing, rating,

and reviewing somewhere in the skies wherever you get your podcasts. It helps us gain visibility and find new listeners. Follow us on Twitter at SomewhereSkies and Instagram at SomewhereSkies pod. My special thanks to the E1 Podcast Network, Roke Planet, and to you for listening. I'll see you here next week,

and remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching, Somewhere in the Skies. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network. To learn more, visit Entertainment Onepodcast.com.