Somewhere in the Skies - MJ Banias: THE UFO PEOPLE

Episode Date: March 11, 2019

On episode 99 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, MJ Banias returns to talk about his new book, The UFO People: A Curious Culture. Part narrative journey and part cultural study, it's a challenge to the UFO subculture and the broader public to recognize that UFOs, and the people who study them, challenge societal norms, institutions, and ideology. The UFO phenomenon, real or not, abandons us to a ghostly realm where nothing should be taken for granted. Take a journey into a curious culture and meet individuals who have been reshaped and changed by the impossible. Meet the UFO people. Guest Bio: MJ Banias is an educator, writer and blogger. He was a former field investigator with the Mutual UFO Network, has been featured on multiple podcasts and radio shows, and contributes to Mysterious Universe and RoguePlanet. His work has been included in Fortean Times, FATE Magazine, and in a book entitled UFOs: Reframing the Debate. He is the author of The UFO People: A Curious Culture. He lives in Canada with his wife, two children, and a massive cat. To learn more, visit: www.TerraObscura.net Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies To watch ROSWELL: MYSTERIES DECODED for free, CLICK HERE  Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the eOne podcast network. To learn more, CLICK HERE SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is sponsored by HelloFresh. To receive 50% off your first order, use promo code: SOMEWHERE50 at checkout by visiting www.HelloFresh.ca Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I wrote a little song to remind you, Choice Hotels, get you more of the experiences. You value. The Cambria Hotels got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Cocktails up here feel just right. Is Cambria homemade? Bring a date, your team, or even your mom.

Book direct at Choiceotails.com. See you on the roof. Do you enjoy true stories of the supernatural from the people who, experienced it? Well, then you might like my show, Jim Harold's Campfire. Hi, I'm Jim, and we've been doing the show since 2009. And we talk about ghosts, cryptic creatures, UFOs, head scratchers, you name it. And you tune in and you might hear a story like this one. And as he was driving home, he encountered a shadow person who seemed to be dressed like a monk. I know that sounds very strange, but it was a solid black form and it was wearing a hooded cloak tied at the waist with the cloak up

and it had glowing red eyes. He sees this thing coming out of a really teeny abandoned cemetery. If you haven't tuned in, I hope you'll check us out. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever podcasts are heard, it's Jim Herald's Campfire, and you can find it. at Jim Herald.com. Thanks so much, and stay spooky. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. MJ, thank you so much for joining me today. It is my pleasure to be here.

It is always an honor to be on your show, Ryan. Oh, thank you so much, man. I know whenever I ask people which episodes are their favorite, way more than any other. I've gotten any conversation with you. So it is my honor to have you back on. This is going to be sort of an unofficial somewhere in the whiskey. We're both drinking water tonight.

So I guess it's somewhere in the H2O, as it were. Yeah, somewhere in the nursing a hangover. Exactly. But, you know, it's this, I think I'm going to go with this episode being titled aptly, the UFO people, because today we're going to be talking mostly about your upcoming book, The UFO People, A Curious Culture. But before we get to that, I would love to discuss your latest article over at Tara Obscura, titled is the military stovepiping UFO programs. This was really interesting, man.

Some stuff you were able to dig up and Paul Dean as well, whom I know was featured in your book heavily. This has to do it to the stars. Well, not really to the stars. More atyip and AASAP. So what was this recent article all about that you wrote over there at Terra Obscira? Sure. So Paul Dean wrote a great.

blog post and for any of your listeners who have not sort of read any of Paul Dean's work, he runs a great blog called UFOs documenting the evidence. So if you just Google that or if you just Google UFOs, Paul Dean, his blog is stupendous because he's sort of one of the few sort of UFO historians out there that does archival UFO work. So he'll dig up and he'll do FOIA requests and he'll dig up old documents and sort of piece things together. And the guy's brain, like, when you speak to him, he knows everything there's to know about the government in regards to UFOs. And he can cite, like, he can cite document numbers and department numbers and all of these

different things that, like, your brain spins when you speak to him. But he's an expert archivist. And he sort of put together via sort of old documents he had and then some recent FOIA sort of documents that came in, he started to realize that a lot of the language that the eight-tip program used, and again, that's the most recent sort of Pentagon UFO program that just was sort of talked about by the New York Times in 2017, he started to, he sort of put together that the eight-tip program and then the predecessor of the OSAP program used very similar language to that of NACC.

So Paul Deen discovered that there was this Air Force, I guess, program slash, I don't know, department called, oh God, of course I can't remember the name. The North, is it North American? I have to look it up now. Right. It's like, yeah, I totally just forgot. The National Air and Space Intelligence Center. There we go.

And they operate out of Wright Patterson Air Force Base, I believe. And their entire game is to basically, they're an intelligence organization, and they analyze foreign air and foreign space, I don't know, threats, let's say. So they're always on the hunt for intelligence regarding sort of the newest and latest technology regarding, you know, intercontinental ballistic missiles, satellites, that type of thing. But in their program sort of language, the sort of About Us section, let's say, of their department, they use very similar phrases to that of ATIP, something like advanced aerial threats. And they talk about exotic aerial threats or advanced propulsion and stuff like this. And a lot of the buzzwords that has recently come out as a result of ATIP and OssAP and the TTSA sort of media push, a lot of the lingo is similar. So what Paul Dean kind of points out is, well,

NAC has been around for quite some time since sort of the 1950s and 60s. It has had different names, but ultimately he can sort of trace the progression of this program since the early 60s and 70s. And ATIP is a relatively new program sort of starting, we think generally on 2010-ish, maybe 2012 or something to that effect. So, you know, he's kind of questions. you know, are there other organizations or other programs similar to NACSIC, similar to ATIP, and similar to A-TIP, and similar to OssAP, that sort of do exploration and examination of the UFO phenomenon, or at least advanced aerial threats that are unknown?

And that's kind of, you know, Paul doesn't speculate very much. So when he wrote his article, all he really stipulated was, you know, listen, I found similarities between the A-TIP and A-TIP and A-TIP. programs and their verbiage and lingo use and their mission statements. And they're very similar to the mission statements and jargon and lingo of NAC. So my article was sort of taking some of his information and sort of bringing it to Dr. Hal putoff of Earth Tech International as well as he's the VP of TTSA, right? Yeah, science and technology, I believe. Science technology. And just sort of, you know, presenting this to him.

saying, hey, you know, Hal, have you seen this? And what do you think of it? And can ask you a few questions about it. And Hal was good enough to sort of answer a few questions and give me a few quotes for a blog post. And ultimately, sort of according to Hal as well as according to Paul, there's clearly, you know, a lot of interest from the military and the government in regards to advanced sort of anomalous aerial phenomena. The problem is it's all very stovepiped. So all of these organizations don't necessarily know what anyone else is doing. Or if they do know, they have different objectives and different projects.

So they're interested in what everyone else is doing, but they don't talk to each other because they have different objectives. So NASIC might not really have an interest in what ATIP was doing. Or, you know, NASIC might not have an interest in what ASAP was up to. because ultimately they're sort of already doing it. And they may already have a certain set of data that they're working from and they're not going to share it with atyp because their missions aren't the same, for example. And I would assume too, like they each program is trying to get different kind of funding and everything too. So, you know, that wordage probably has a lot to do with it too.

It is interesting, though, that they do use a lot of the same wordage. Yeah. And one thing we need to be clear about in regards to Nasik, Nasik isn't like isn't looking to get funding. Like, NAC is heavily funded compared to like ATIP and OssAP. I mean, we know it's public knowledge now that the ATIP program or whatever it is, AOSAP ATIP program, whatever the actual truth behind any of that is, was only funded for about $22 million, which is, you know, a decent chunk of change. And the purpose of these programs, yeah, exactly. The purpose of these programs was to sort of write reports, like department reports on exotic physics and exotic physics and

exotic technology and anomalous phenomena fine, but it was only funded at $22 million, whereas NASICS funding is massive. Like, NASIC's funding is one unknown because it's not public. Most of their work, if not all of their work, is classified. I've emailed and contacted several people in NASIC and none of them have returned my contacts. Now, listen, I get it. I'm a nobody. But they're also not going to, right?

Ultimately, you know, what's some, you know, UFO writer, journalist wants is not on their priority list, but their funding is going to definitely be in the billions of dollars annually. But they're also responsible for keeping tabs on every other country's aerospace and space programs. So they're definitely going to have a fair share of cash. But this comes up in my book, and this is sort of why I chose to write this post. In my book, I feature a lot of interviews from individuals who were involved in the 8-2 program like Kit Green, like Hal Putoff. And they sort of both say a similar thing in the sense that when it comes to intelligence gathering regarding anomalous phenomena,

you know, the right hand doesn't always know what the left hand is doing. And when it comes to the military and the government, we're not dealing with two hands here. we're dealing with a few hundred hands and they don't necessarily talk to each other. So, you know, if there is a UFO or if there is sort of a conspiracy, let's say, regarding, you know, UAP, the conspiracy is broken up across hundreds of potential departments and no one knows what anyone else knows, right? Like there's no one grand conspiracy. The data is all over the place.

and the people who hold the data don't exactly know who else has data and what that data is. So it's all over the map. And they're not necessarily talking to each other either. It's all stove piped, basically. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I mean, you know,

I just conjure this image of like in a blind octopus. You know, it's got like every tentacle has a little bit, but nobody really knows where they're going and what they're doing and what the phenomenon represents and what thread it poses. Yeah, it's all very fascinating. And I found it really interesting that, like you said, NASIC's been going on for so long.

So clearly, this is like where the deep classified stuff is going on, whereas something like ATIP eventually became declassified, so that's why we're hearing about everything going on with that. So I can only imagine what's going on with NACC for sure. Yeah. And part of, you know, part of you may not want to know, right? Like there's also, I'm sure they deal with. It's like, you know, they have, you know, intelligence operatives who know exactly, you know,

what the Russians have or the Chinese have and you just wouldn't sleep anymore at night knowing that, you know, there's something pointed at your house. Exactly. You know, if that thing went off, you know, you don't exist. You know, I think that they probably hold a lot of secrets that probably ought to be kept secret. Exactly. Much more scarier than any, you know, little flying saucer with little green men could be, I'm sure. Yeah, that's right. Awesome. Well, okay, so moving on to your book, MJ, the title, first and foremost, is what caught my attention, which is, you know, the UFO people, a curious culture. So can you tell us how that title of your book, why you chose this, a curious culture? I love it, I love it.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. You know this. I mean, you wrote a book. So anyone who's written a book out there, you know that you start off when you start, talking to, you know, potentially a publisher or an editor about your book and you're pitching the idea. It starts off as one thing. You know, you have this. This is what I want to write. And then several years go by of you writing it. And then suddenly it's something totally different, right? Like, it's never what you think it's going to be. So I think the original title for my book was something ridiculous. Like it was like, it was going to be partially a philosophical text and partially sort of a journey book, which it still sort of is. It's a bit of a journey narrative to it, but it was like the gentleman's guide to UFOs.

And then my publisher was like, well, okay, hold on, don't use gentlemen because you're going to alienate 50% of the, like, you're right, that's totally true. I didn't think of it. Okay, let's do like the outsider's guide or something like that, right? Yeah. And it's going to be this silly title that was stupid. And it just didn't. Yeah, it was just, yeah.

So anyway, it never worked out. And I was, as I was writing the book, I started to read. realized that my book wasn't about UFOs at all. And it isn't. My book's about people, and it's about people who pursue the UFO phenomenon. And I also wanted the book to be approachable to people who both sort of pursue the UFO phenomenon with incredible belief and vigor and zeal. And I wanted my book to appeal as well to skeptics and debunkers who would sort of maybe enjoy the more sociological

aspects of the book. And I was sitting there and I was, you know, racking my brain for a title. And then I don't know what happened. I think I was looking at Mark O'Connell's website. He wrote The Close Encounters Men or something. Like I was somewhere on the internet looking at UFO step. And then I stumbled into the picture of Jay Allen Heinek standing in front of the

Waltrip motel sign outside of Piedmont, Missouri in 1973. So the famous UFO sort of historical picture. Yeah. Alan Hine. And he's standing in front of, because he went, there was a UFO flap in Missouri. And he and an associate of his by the name of Ted Phillips, who took the picture, went to investigate this UFO flap in 73. And the town, because of this flap, the motel put up this big sign that said, welcome UFO people. And it's this big billboard that Jayon Hineck is standing in front of sort of big goggle sunglasses on his face. And it's such a glorious picture because it encapsulates, I think, what the book's about, right?

Individuals who will go to some town in the middle of nowhere, Missouri, because there's UFOs there, and allocate weeks of their life to investigating it. And they're driven by something, right? Like, there's something to the phenomenon that drives people to it. Or maybe pulls people to it, I don't know. But this picture was sort of perfect. And I saw it and it just hit me. I was like, yep, there's the title right there, the UFO people.

And then the curious culture just kind of came right after because it's kind of, it just kind of flowed, I suppose. And it was great, you know, and actually the cover isn't public yet. It's almost ready. It's just kind of being finalized by the publisher. But the cover does have that photograph on it. And I was lucky enough to get in touch with. Ted Phillips and his wife who graciously gave me permission to use the photograph for the cover. So it was really neat to, you know, talk to his wife.

And when I was speaking to his wife, he's quite ill. So, you know, it was fine. And, you know, they sort of gave the book the blessing, you know. And then it was very funny. Promely, she gave me her home address and was like, I expect a copy. I was like, natural. You know, like. So.

Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it is. For those in the UFO field, it's such an iconic image of Dr. J. Allen Heineck. And like you said, it represents everything your book sort of stands for. You've got the UFO people, both being those experiencing it and those researching it. And that's kind of what really, really pulled me in. Right from the introduction of your book, you refer to the UFO phenomenon and the UFO subculture as ghosts within our everyday society. which is really cool. I've never really thought of it that way. And you use the, you sort of work off of the French philosopher, Jacques Dorita. So could you maybe run us through why you chose his foundations of philosophy? I know philosophy is a big thing with you, and that's why I love having you on, man. So why did you choose to sort of use this foundation for this subculture of uphology, I guess? Yeah. I think, you know, for your longtime listeners and all the shows I've sort of been on previously on somewhere in the skies. I think they've sort of heard me say it many times, but I'm very

confident that uphology is actually philosophy. If euphology is a thing, like I'm going to sort of argue a bit that there really is no euphology proper. But the art of engaging with the UFO phenomenon or UFO discourse is really a philosophical project. So finding a philosopher who deals with culture the same way sort of I interpret culture was was was was not easy and and and reading derida is is always a struggle because he doesn't make sense but maybe that's purposeful but his his claim I suppose is that the way we interpret reality um is all mediated by language and how we make and give things meaning um so so dare does project is um anytime you give anything meaning or definition, you are creating a reality for it.

So Derrida, I would say, listen, reality is real in the sense that, you know, things exist in the universe and, you know, objects are there. Like there is an objective reality. But without us, it really has no meaning. We apply meaning to everything around us. So a coffee cup is a coffee cup, not because of some objective coffee cupness. It's a coffee cup because we say it's a coffee cup. And in regards to his whole philosophical project,

he says, you know, whenever you deal with any meaning whatsoever in reality, you can tear that meaning down, but he terms, deconstruct it. So you can kind of go through why certain ideas we have have the ideas that sort of are in them. You know, why are, why is the masculine masculine or why is the feminine, feminine? and we can break those ideas down and see where they came from, we sort of create meaning in turn, but ultimately we can kind of start to chip away at the different layers and filters we've applied to the world around us. And he says there's sort of one thing, though, that typically defies meaning. And he sort of creates this thing as a sort of undefinable thing or an undeconstructible thing.

And he says the ghost is a great example of this, right? A specter is something that cannot be, I guess, deconstructed because it exists and it does not exist, right? Ghosts by their very nature are real and not real. They're fact and fiction. Their reality and mythology simultaneously, and we can't necessarily kind of break them down. And in his philosophical project, he's really talking about sort of not really ghosts as like the spirits of the dead. But he talks about ghosts more as sort of our shared experience. as a society, and it gets all quite philosophical, and I go through that in the book.

But to sort of quickly boil this down, the UFO community is sort of similar to his notion of the ghost. The UFO community exists and it does not exist. Very similarly, just like the UFO, the UFO exists and does not exist. It's a specter. It shows up and it disappears. To a lot of people, it's real. It's a real physical object that's tangible, that they can touch, they've been aboard that they've experienced in some way, not just seeing it, but engaging with it, communing with it in some way. But to others, the UFO is a myth. It's folk tale.

It's just lore. It's mythology, right? So the UFO exists in this dual state. And the people who pursue UFOs, you know, us, the UFO people, we're also ghosts. We sort of haunt mainstream culture and popular. culture. We have our feet in two worlds, right? We, on the one hand, we go to Starbucks and drink coffee. We drive our kids to dance class. You know, we, we buy minivans and apartments and houses, and we have day jobs, and we have a bank account and pay our mortgage. Like, you know, we live that

life, that normal daily, sort of what we would deem real life, quote unquote. But then on the flip side, we're also a group of people who believe in things that ought not to exist, right? We believe in UFOs and we believe in ghosts and we believe in potentially Bigfoot and all of these other paranormal phenomena that challenge the other side, right? They challenge the idea of you should go to Starbucks and have a mortgage and drive your kids to dance class. They challenge the very fabric of our daily lives. So how do we reconcile this, right? How do we as people who believe in flying saucers and UFOs and interdimensional beings reconcile the fact that I still like pay a mortgage and have a bank account and for some reason like go to work every day and like to what

end right um so we we get stuck in this ghostly realm this in-between realm of of our daily lives that we would say are real is real and then this UFO world that we would say is real um and they're in incredible conflict with each other um believing that there's a non-human intelligence and a phenomenon none that's real, really ought to challenge the fact that you go to work every day to earn a paycheck so you can buy Air Jordans. Like it really should challenge these ideas. It should challenge the ideas of male and female. It should challenge the ideas of race.

It should challenge all of these concepts. Because at the end of the day, what happens to a human when they come face to face with an intelligence that isn't human but is as intelligent, if not more intelligent, right? how does that alter or challenge our notions of ourselves? So that's kind of what the book dives into. And it does so with, I would want to say a lot of philosophy. I tried to keep it as simple as possible because I wanted to make it approachable. I think sometimes it gets a little too wordy, but that's kind of the point.

the UFO people are a very countercultural movement but in our counter-culturalness we sort of get lost and we end up in this ghostly realm this in between this gap world between sort of reality and mythology right right and we you know we sort of flow in and out of each sometimes with more ease than a lot of people may think you know like you said I I spend my nights

looking into this stuff and interviewing a witness who said, you know, a craft came down and they saw being piloting this. And then, and then, you know, the next day I have to go to my nine to five or whatever job. And like you said, make money to pay the bills. And the things are in such a juxtaposition that I do feel that way. I feel like I'm like floating above myself sometimes watching this weird play play out. But it's not like having that impact that it should. Someone tells me that they were abducted by aliens. That should change the paradigm right there for the person having the experience

and the person hearing it and investigating it. Yet like you say, like life goes on, these sort of cultural and society-driven norms we've created ourselves. They sort of stop that. You know, they sort of put a stamp down on these unbelievable, in many ways, things that we seem to come across. And what I really enjoyed is that you, you stress the importance of the UFO witness, which you know is like my thing. You know, that's all, that's what I, witnesses are my thing. I love them.

And many researchers, they ignore that entire aspect of UFO studies. They go right for the science. And I do not blame them for that. but in your book, what sort of importance do you put on the witness before we even get to the, the researchers and the outsiders, as it were? Yeah, well, you know, I feature, I feature, you know, one witness mainly in my book. So the beginning of my book is really my journey into the UFO subculture and then sort of following this one particular witness kind of through various, I don't want to say sort of tales,

Tales might be a good word, and her experiences. And, you know, I want to stipulate early on that I have no evidence, no physical or tangible evidence that tells me that what she experienced was real or not. Like, I just don't know. And I clearly indicate this in the book. But ultimately, that is the UFO phenomenon in general, right? There is no real tangible evidence that proves or disproves the source of the UFO phenomenon. phenomenon. I think there's enough tangible evidence out there to prove that there is a UFO

phenomenon. There's enough tangible evidence out there to prove that something weird is happening, something anomalous, but that's about it. I don't think there's any sort of tangible evidence anyone's really seen that would suggest that, you know, this is what the UFO phenomenon is caused by or whatever. So, so, you know, I want to be clear that I'm not going to present any evidence of a UFO case that's going to really be, you know, a smoking gun, let's say, in this particular case, in regards to a witness. But at the end of the day, witnesses and experiencers are really our only connection to the phenomenon.

They're the only ones who have dealt with it directly, right? So they've been made ghosts, right? I have willingly chosen to walk into this world and become a ghost as a result, right? I fully admit to, like I said, driving. My kid doesn't go to dance class. She goes to theater class. Drama class. She's three.

It's not really theater class. I have to admit. Here's a quick aside. It's a bunch of little kids who run around a room, and it's the funniest thing in the world, and they pretend. And it's, like, super cute,

but they're toddlers. So I call it theater class. Broadway isn't much different, my man. Trust me. I work that nine to five. Yeah. And I use the term theater. Like, I'm doing air quotes with my fingers right now.

But, you know, like I live in that world where I drive my kid to, theater class and I live that life. You know, I drink my coffee. But then, like you say, I come home and I deal with UFOs. So I've chosen to live this life willingly, whether it's a mistake or not, I don't know yet. But experiencers and witnesses are the ones who don't have the choice. So I have chosen to go into this ghostly realm and live in it where the experience was forced to by the phenomenon.

assuming their, like assuming their experience was caused by the phenomenon, right? Like there's going to be individuals who hoax and lie and experience mental breakdowns and illusion and stuff like that and delusion and stuff like that. So, you know, not every single UFO experiencer or abductee or contactee is 100% legitimate. By numbers alone, in no community of people is anyone sort of 100% right all the time in, any endeavor, right? So, you know, you're always going to have a doctor who's insane, for example. So in the UFO community, you're going to have a similar situation. But like I said, they are placed into this ghostly realm by the phenomenon. And for some reason, they're the ones, right? They're the ones who fall into this gap, whether it's on purpose or whether it was by accident or

or something in between, they were selected in some way. And I think the witness and the experiencer are essential to UFO studies. I think we need to sort of handle that all with kid gloves sometimes. Because like I said, I don't know if every single experiencer out there is legitimately an experiencer of something anomalous. But really, they're the bread and butter. You need them. Because without the witnesses and without the experiences,

Experiencers, there are no UFOs. And there are no alien abductions and there are no interdimensional beings or whatever you want to believe. Yep. Takes two to tango for sure. And I mean, okay. Yeah, it doesn't it? So we have, yeah, we have the, the experiencer or the witness.

We have the ones researching it like you and I. And then we have this third, you know, that make up the trio of the subculture that you've sort of coined here. And that's the general public. So I'd love to sort of tackle that. with you next man we okay so without the experiencers yes we would have nothing to study but then we have the general public who don't want to be ghosts who don't want to dip their toes into a lot of this so um would you say that's sort of like the third and final um you know benchmark to the

the subculture you know i want to be cautious right because i think i think there's a huge segment of the general public that is interested okay in in the UFO phenomenon they just don't talk about it right and that could be for a lot of reasons. Or they're interested to a point, but they have other priorities, right? Other interests. I think where we bump into the biggest issue with the general public is the general public that typically holds the reins over the media or holds the reins over, you know,

scientific grant funding or any academic. grant funding, the general public that can really be of use to getting more people looking at the UFO question, are too conservative, not politically, but too conservative, maybe economically or too conservative in their own viewpoints to pursue it. So when you look at the main reason, for example, like when you look at science, let's take scientists, for example, the vast majority of scientists, I have little doubt are incredibly interested by anomalous phenomena, whether it's UFOs or ghost sightings or crypto zoology

or parapsychology or anything. I'm sure tons of scientists are fascinated by the subject, but they don't talk about it publicly because the men and women above them who hold the purse strings are not. And when you look at scientists who get to the point where they're the ones who handle grant money or handle academic funding or project money,

they're pretty conservative, right? Like to become someone who chooses to no longer do research but fund research, you're not really a risk taker. You're the one who holds the cash to give to the risk takers. So if you already have a group of people who are relatively conservative, holding all the money,

yet you have a whole bunch of scientists who are interested, and risk takers, but know that if they go to those conservative people and say, hey, I want to study weird stuff, you know those conservative people are going to say no, right? They're going to say, no, listen, this is not what science is about. No, this is not what our university is about. No, this would look bad in the media, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So no, we're not going to give you funding. And then next time you come looking for funding, you know, that person's like, oh, wait, aren't you the guy who is interested in UFOs or aren't you that scientist, you know, The last time I spoke to you, you were really fascinated by Bigfoot.

Listen, lady, I'm not going to give you money. You know, like, I think that this happens. And I think that this is common across sort of most academics and most people. I think people are generally interested in UFOs. I mean, obviously people are interested in UFOs and ghosts and all that. You look at any media website, New York Times to the Atlantic to Huffington Post, whatever. You look at what articles get the most clicks. It's all paranormal related all the time.

because people are inherently fascinated, but those, I think, in positions of power, because they're not interested, because, again, they're generally conservative. And again,

I don't mean politically conservative, like not right-wing conservative. I mean, just conservative in general, like economically or whatever, they're not going to pursue those things openly and seriously. Yeah. So I think that,

I don't know, the general public is kind of this weird cat. They're pretty ghostly themselves, maybe, you know, like they're interested. but they can't talk about it, much like a ghost. You know, they're interested in haunting, but they don't. I don't know.

I get it. Yeah, for sure. Well, it's a good point, too, man. You look at, like, any entrepreneurs who have helped fund UFO stuff, and they're pretty ghostly. If you think about it, their names aren't out there until they're either leaked or, you know, eventually they come forward many, many years later and say, oh, yeah, I funded that, you know, that Skinwalker thing or back. Well, exactly, right? Like, I was just thinking about, like, you know, adamant. Adamantium Limited or whatever they are, Adamantium LLC, that owns Skinwalker Ranch, right?

This shadowy owner who nobody knows who it is who owns Skinwalker Ranch, right? Well, you know, if you watch Jeremy Corbell's film, the guy openly says, listen, I have a lot of businesses that would suffer if people knew, right? Because again, the people who bankroll him, the people who buy shares, the people who invest in him, investors are generally not risk takers, right? investors are very careful with money because they've grown up to be careful with money. There's very few exceptions, right, of business people who take bold risks. Oftentimes they end up being billionaires, but, you know, maybe they got lucky. I don't know. Okay, so let's put the microscope back on sort of the UFO, I guess, research and experienceer communities.

We have these issues that arise in any community or any, you know, faction or, what have you. And when you pointed out in the book that, uh, that a lot of people either choose to ignore or flat out deny is gender politics when it comes to euphology. And I found it really, really great that you cover this in depth in the book. So what made you want to tackle this? And what did you learn about gender within the UFO community? This, this, I think, of, of all of the chapters in the book, this one is going to be the most, um, like, um, this someone's going to be the most political. Like, I think people, if, yeah, listen, people within the UFO community hopefully will review my book.

And this is the chapter that they're going to say that, like, they hate because they're going to say that, like, I'm wrong, right? Because I think, I think the people, again, who review, typically the people who review UFO books are generally pretty conservative UFO researchers. Extremely. So, you know, I'm going to be, I'm going to be lamb-baseded a little bit for this one. So hopefully other aspects of the book make them happy enough to the point where they kind of overlook this and be like, oh, it's just benign being no liberal. I was sitting in a coffee shop and Mike DeMonte, who runs the punk rock and UFO's blog, posted an interview with Erica Luke's who hosts UFO Classified, right? to her radio show or her, I guess the podcast radio show, internet radio show. And in the interview, she talks about sort of the gender politics of UFOs and that it's

the community itself is, or sorry, the research community. And predominantly the community of individuals who let's say make up sort of the expert level. So not the sort of individuals like myself who are just sort of low level, UFO writers and researchers, but the UFO gurus, let's say, the vast majority of them are men, the vast majority of the individuals who own UFO-related media sites, conferences, all that stuff, are predominantly male. So she had this interview, and she talked about sort of how she was bullied by, you know, various people in various organizations related to UFOs.

And I read this article and, and, or this, yeah, this post that Mike wrote. And I was like, oh, interesting, you know, this is quite fascinating. Because again, I'm a culture studies guy and, you know, a good chunk of culture studies is gender and talking about gender and feminism. And so I contacted Luke's and I said, you know, hey, Erica, how's going? You know, I have a couple questions. And she basically gave me her story. And ultimately, we decided after kind of going through it that we were not going to put it in the book. And there was various reasons for this.

But she gave me the names of a whole bunch of other women. in the UFO community and the paranormal community who've contacted her, contacted her rather, as a result of this post and her sort of move to to discuss gender within this community. So I spoke with them,

and they were willing to give me their stories, and a lot of them went into the book, not all of them, because it's just often, there's just, you know, as a writer, you get, you know, 300 people talking to you, but you have room for, you know,

6,000 words. So, yeah, you have to really, hair it down to what, you know, one fits with the book, but also just kind of, you know, what, I don't know, how to explain it, what kind of jives well with the overall theme you're trying to, what sort of message you're trying to say. Exactly. And I mean, I could have, like I said, used anyone. But these sort of the three ladies in the book, three women in the book are Sue

Demeter St. Clair, who wrote a chapter for Robbie Graham's referring. the debate, UFO's reframing the debate, Alison Jornland, who's a paranormal investigator out of, oh man, Milwaukee, and Cheryl Costa, who wrote that super huge book, like the UFO desk reference manual or whatever it is, right? Yeah, it's like a whole book.

If you threw it at someone, it would, yeah, it'd take their head off. And it was a very interesting process to interview these women, And obviously the irony is that I'm a man, right, talking about women's issues in uphology or gender issues in uphology. Like, I totally get the irony there. But I approach the chapter more from their perspective. So it was their stories that really are the chapter.

I just kind of filled in the punctuation. But I think, you know, the UFO community is like any other community that's sort of predominantly male-dominated. Males, like UFO researchers who stand up on a stage and talk about UFOs are predominantly male. The ones who assert sort of this is my theory of UFOs or this is my evidence and this is my investigation or whatever. I think that's pretty much that is, and currently is a male game, I would say a high percentage of UFO researchers who are public in their research and, right.

books and appear on television shows and appear at conferences are male. I think you have more women involved in telling their own stories, right? You have a lot more women who talk about contact and abduction. You have a lot more women who talk about their personal experience with the paranormal. And they don't really do things like, here is UFO research. You know, this is my theory, here you go. Rather, they kind of present it more in the sense of these are the experiences I've had and I'm going to talk about them, right? And this was, I referenced a lot from a book written by Brenda Densler, who was a religious studies PhD. She wrote a book called Lur of the Lur, Lur, Lur, Ler, Ler, of the Edge. And that book was written, I think, in 2001 or 2002 or something.

But she went to a bunch of UFO conferences and did study. like she ran statistical studies and it was something to the effect of 80% of all UFO experts. The other 20% were either male and not white or women. And then it's something like 40% of all people who spoke about being abducted were women. Or no, sorry, 60% of abductees that spoke publicly about their abductions were women. And then the other 40% were male. And you can read her book. Like, I'm probably butchering her stats.

But it was quite astronomical, like how many males there were in relation to females. Now, obviously, those numbers have changed, right? It's been a long time since 2001, right? Like, you know, a whole generation has sort of gone by. But I think predominantly when you look at posters for conferences and when you look at books and when you look at media, you know, who's being featured on ancient aliens and who's being featured on various UFO-themed shows. it is predominantly a male story. And again, I don't want to spoil too much from the book because I obviously want people to buy it.

But, you know, there's one particular moment where Susan Demeter Sinclair, who wrote the chapter, the only female in the entire UFO is affirming the debate book, actually, which is interesting to note, there's only one female writer in that whole book. She expresses it pretty plainly when someone, else who was involved in that project, one of the other writers of an essay for that book project, told her sort of that her chapter was excellent and that she was, what was the expression, that she did, oh God, I'm going to, she, she worded it so beautifully in my book, that she was a, like a great example of her gender or something to that effect, right? Like, totally played

down this notion of equality and kind of said, oh, you know, you're a woman. Congratulations. You wrote a book chapter. You know, like it was so expensive. And the person, I'm sure, like the gentleman who stated this probably didn't mean anything harmful, but the very act of how they said it was harmful, right? It just shows the stereotypes that exist and it shows the discrimination that exists within the UFO community that she was sort of this shining example of her gender within the paranormal research community. And like there's tons of stories. Like my book is chock full of stories from various women who who have come forward and sort of said, yeah, you know, I was talking with this guy. He wanted me to do an interview for a TV show for his paranormal group. And, you know,

then he sent me a dick pit. You know, and you're saying, you know, like, why does this, you know, like, what does this happen, right? I laugh because I'm uncomfortable, dude. It's just, it's so true. I mean, what the female researchers deal with in this community, and probably every community, aside from euphology, quote unquote, is, you know, they're scrutinized a thousand times more than any male up on that stage. So no wonder they're hesitant to get up there and present their research. A lot of them are doing it in the shadows, you know, or, you know, through the internet so that they aren't out in public and don't get this. get this stuff that you mentioned. You know, oh, you did so good for a woman writer. Good job. It's, I, like you said, you and I, we can talk about gender politics all we want, but it's good to see that you you gave the voices to the women in the book to express it themselves. I think that's more important than anything the two of us could ever say. Yeah, I agree. I didn't want to take control too much. You know, this was a chapter that I personally, I still feel uncomfortable about only because I

I am a man who's writing about women. The problem, I think, is that there hasn't really been a lot of work published by women in the paranormal community for the paranormal community in regards to the gender politics within the paranormal community, right? Like, this really hasn't been done. And I think it needs to be, and I clearly say that in my book, I sort of say like, this is not my fight. I'll try and give voice because I have a soapbox, right? So I will let other people use my soapbox kind of thing. Please, this book needs to be written. Sort of female paranormal researchers who have to deal with issues of gender in their work.

I think is a book that needs to be written, but it's not going to be written by me because I'm not the person to do it. um alison jornland who's featured heavily in the chapter um you know kind of put it best you know men when they get up on stage or when they show up on tv or when they do youtube videos or whatever don't necessarily have to worry about the clothes they wear because other men aren't going to look at them and judge them by their outfits or judge them by their hair or whatever you know um i read a funny article where where i think was written by i can't remember who actually i'm not going to say names because i don't want to yeah i don't know who wrote it but they were talking about Dr. David Jacobs, who was the, he's the abduction research guy, who talks about

how there's an alien human hybrid program and it's all about invading the planet, right? He wrote a bunch of books. Anyway, you know, he got up on stage and, you know, he was dressed sort of like an old university professor quite sort of frazzled looking and, you know, his hair is all overplace like he's from back to the future, you know? And that's kind of what he looks like. And people, you know, they talked about not really his outfit or what he looked like. It was sort of mentioned he looked like a university professor, period.

These are his ideas, period. But if a woman stood up on stage dressed like that or like, you know, like looking like he did, right, it would be, wow, she looks totally like not put together. Like there would be severe judgment upon the appearance, right? And I think we do this in all walks of life. This isn't something that's just localized the UFO community. But you often see in the media when, you know, especially during the last election, when Hillary Clinton went on stage and she looked a little tired. People pointed it out, right? People said, oh, Hillary looks tired and blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, Donald Trump stands up on stage and it's nothing about how tired he looks or how terrible his hair is. You know, those become internet memes of the political left. But it's not really news coverage. But, you know, if Hillary Clinton is wearing the wrong color shoes for her outfit, it's pointed out. And this is, listen, like, this is not, this is, this is old hat feminism.

I'm spewing here. This is, you know, not a new, new concept. But I don't think anyone in the UFO community has really written about it. So I don't know. I guess I decided to, I don't know. I can't justify if I just did it. Well, you know, man, it's, again, it's a big part of the subculture and it needs to be pointed out. Yeah, and I think that's true.

It is a book about the subculture. And, I mean, well, since you talked about, about Jacobs and the abduction phenomenon, I would love to tackle that with you, something which I covered in detail in my own researching book, but a part of me wishes I remained as critical as you did about the abduction phenomenon as a whole. And that really came across with this story of Roy in your book. Would you mind maybe running us through a little bit of this? I know it's a big one, but this story really hit me and brought me back into, you know, what I felt when I was covering the abduction phenomenon in my own.

own work. So yeah, can you tell us a little about Roy? Sure. Yeah. Before I do, I mean, ultimately, you know, I don't know if people are abducted by aliens or not. I don't know. All I have is what people tell me, right? So, you know, I've heard lots of people tell me their stories on how they were abducted by aliens. And some of them, you know, are relatively stable, rational people there, you know, what we would say are, like, they're just people like you and I, and they have this amazing experience, frightening experience. So, so, do people get abducted by aliens, I'm going to sit on the I don't know fence because I don't know.

I'm not going to say they do. I'm not going to say they don't. So I'll leave it at that. In regards to Roy, however, Roy came to me well before I was into UFOs. And he was introduced to me through sort of another UFO researcher. I knew a friend of a friend of a friend kind of thing.

And sort of told me his story. and initially I was unsure what to think. And as I sort of spoke to Roy more, you know, he had a lot of issues in his life that, to me, indicated that maybe Roy was not having an abduction experience, but maybe the abduction experience was, I don't want to say a delusion, but a sort of a way to fill in some of the hurt that he felt as a result of events that happened in his life. Roy is obviously not his real name only because I lost touch with Roy years ago and I haven't been able to get a hold of him. His email no longer is active. His phone number is disconnected. So ultimately I wasn't able to get his permission to use his name in the book. So I just changed to Roy, which fit nicely.

and Roy was having sort of regular abduction experiences where at night in bed sort of these entities would render him unconscious and he would sort of feel an electric shock and then you know that's it and then he would wake up the next morning and you know he would have maybe sort of you know at one point he had an injury on his head but that was it you know my opinion is he just hit his head on his headboard during a dream or something like that. He just bumped his head, right? So there was no evidence really to present that he had, you know, a legitimate abduction experience. He was also undergoing sort of severe stress in his life. His wife and son recently left him. He recently sort of suffered an accident and injured himself. So he was not, he wasn't able to work anymore. And I think his life was spiraling sort of out of control. I mean, he had spent his entire life raising, you know, a son and having, being married and and building a home for himself and having a relatively stable job.

And that all kind of fell away very quickly. And it never really was expressed to me why his wife or son left. It was never really expressed to me sort of what occurred personally to Roy. But he came to me looking for answers and looking for help to make it stop and make it go away. And it sort of broke my heart, right? Roy is one of those cases that I wish I knew now what I didn't know then.

I was a lot younger. I was not experienced. I had not been a field investigator for Mufon and I hadn't talked to dozens and dozens and dozens of UFO witnesses and individuals. And I think I would have approached the whole situation all differently. But Roy was looking for answers from a uphologist.

And I have to be honest, euphologists should not be doling out any answers whatsoever because we're not qualified to because there's no qualifications. And I think Roy had some sort of mental health breakdown. And I think the abductions for him filled in a gap of something rather than nothing. He had lost everything. And I think the aliens for him were something that he could latch onto, something that he could anchor his life to. so sad man i'm like almost in tears yeah i'm not getting it is heartbreaking because um he he went

away and he found some hypnotherapist who said they were going to regress him and we're going to charge him a fortune for it um and this this hypnotherapist like i have to be honest like many hypnotherapists who involved themselves in the UFO community i'm not going to say all hypnotherapy but I think certain people who claim to be hypnotherapists and who work specifically within the UFO community on purpose know that they can prey upon an easy target. And I think Roy was an easy target because he wanted it to stop, but I'm not sure if he really did. And I think when you deal with people who engage in psychological or psychiatric sort of care, one, if they're not really psychiatrists or psychologists proper, like if they don't actually have

actual credentials from an actual university, I think that they end up doing work within our community, knowing that there's a lot of individuals within our community who have psychological concerns that need real professional help. And they act as sort of parasites within our community to to extract people's hard-earned money, and they play upon mental health issues. So I think had I known all of this back then, I would have sort of handled it all differently. And I don't know where Roy is now. I don't have any clue what he's up to. But yeah, it's one of those cases where you have an abduction victim who, in my opinion,

and again, it's my opinion. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a psychiatrist. So I could be totally wrong here. Maybe all of his experiences were 100% alien abductions. I don't know. But in my opinion, my gut feeling is that there was an issue, a mental health issue. And it breaks my heart.

You know what I mean? Like it's still one of those, he's sort of a ghost in my head. And he is, he's my red flag, right? Like if I ever meet people like him, I automatically think of him. And I'm like, this is this is not the route we need to go and you need to do this. And I'm not going to really work with you because I don't know if I'm your best answer. So it's interesting. That being said, you know, with all that being said, I have spoken to a lot of individuals who have claimed contact and abduction, who are not like Roy, who are quite stable, who have stable support.

at home, loving, caring families who are not sort of falling away but remain kind of foundations for them. So, you know, it's tough, right? You know, does that, you know, so what do I do with that? You know, what do I do with all the individuals in the UFO research I've done who are very stable and who have stable jobs, have stable families, have, you know, loving husbands and wives and children and extended families, you know, like they have dinner with the family every Sunday and everyone knows about what happened to Uncle Jim or Aunt Jenny. And everyone's fine with it and they love them anyway. And it's not a psychological issue and it's not a mental health issue.

It's like something that they believe that they experienced. You know, what am I to say that? That's not happening. I honestly don't know. I can be critical and I can, you know, I can remain objective or try to remain objective. But that's the problem with UFO phenomenon, right? And it's the paranormal in general. You don't know what's what. And anyone who says they know is a liar. Or trying to sell you something. Exactly. Yeah. What is your tagline for your cafe obscure again? That always comes to mind.

Oh, it's the keep searching for answers and never trust those who say they have them. Perfect. I love that. That's a good way to wrap the bow on the abduction phenomenon. Dude, I I struggle every day. I covered so many in my past research and book, and I've come no closer to an answer, but I have run into the same dilemma as you is, you know, you have someone like Roy, and I've met many of Roy who I, in my younger days

and naive days of research, wish I had been more careful with how I approach those things. You know, you start second-guessing everything you said to them, like, did I enable this delusion or fantasy? or gap in their life or, you know, did I help them in some way? And sometimes just getting it out there is enough for the people. And then it's not your job or responsibility to find answers for them. Just for them to get it out can be enough.

But, I mean, you know that. I don't have to tell you that. But you, but then, like you said, you meet those people, those down-to-earth, husband or wife or teacher or professor or law enforcement officer who say the same damn thing that they're... they were abducted by aliens and you're just like what the hell like you've got such a wide swath such a big spectrum of individuals claiming these things so yeah i would say nowhere to begin yeah it's really tough i think i think my my initial like whenever i engage with people who who claim contact or

abduction or any UFO witness for that matter or any witness of the paranormal i think when they when they come to me and they say, you know, this is what I saw and they describe it. And then the next words out of their mouths are, I have no idea what the hell is going on. Automatically, that for me raises like, okay, you've passed my first test in a sense, right? Like, my litmus test is you probably should sit there and say you have no clue what's going on, right? when when people come to me and say you know I experience this and I know 100% that it's aliens from this planet or it's interdimensional beings from this or it's it's um these beings from this species from this non-human organization it's the blue avians from the intergalactic federation

or it's the pleadians and like when when people start coming to me and saying that then they've sort of failed the first test in a sense right like they they are making claims of knowledge that they may not. Now, maybe the aliens told them that. Maybe the alien said, listen, I am a blue avian from the intergalactic Federation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Careful, man. You might get a copyright infringement if you keep saying blue avian.

I can't say, can I see you, can I say from the secret space program? Secret space program. Oh, careful. That's going to be added in. Secret space program. Secret space program. You are costing me a fortune, Dave. Listen, you can just send your legal bills to me.

Fair enough. Fair enough. He can't, listen, he can't sue you because he'd have to prove that they exist. So in a court of law, which you can. So you're all right. Don't worry about it. There's actually going to be... Where were we?

Yeah, the litmus test, right? I mean, I think generally people who have had legitimate contact with the phenomenon, let's just say, let's just call it the phenomenon. They will often approach the whole situation with, I have no clue what's going on. And that's why in my book I went sort of with Amy, who was a UFO witness, who I talk about a lot in the first sort of section of my book. because she

contacted me and it was like something's happening I don't know what it is I just need someone to talk to and that was it like it wasn't she wasn't looking for answers she wasn't looking for

is it aliens is it this like to this day it's still like I don't know what's happening and it's weird and I kind of wanted to stop you know like it's that kind of odd you know like it's sort of compelling

to her but it's also horribly frightening right it's like a moth to a flame sometimes right Like, you know, like you, you, you're interested because they're there, but then you're, you're like, I wish they would kind of go away too. Because it's disrupting my life. But Amy in my book has always kind of been that way. It's always been, I'm not sure what to do and I don't know what's happening.

And she's never made a claim as to what it is, right? All she knows is it's not normal. So, so that's my, that's why I think I featured her. as my experiencer slash UFO witness for most of them, even though I don't have any evidence to support her case. But, you know, I think, and this comes up in actually a future YouTube video, Ryan, that is going to come out next week to your book as well. It's just you, and I mentioned you in my next YouTube video, but on my YouTube channel,

which I'll plug later, you know, you and I are sort of anthropologists of a sort, right? Like we're storytellers. We log stories. We collect people's stories, right? and we tell them for them and because we get a soapbox, right? Somebody has decided to give you and me a soapbox to stand on. So we're going to do what we do best, which is tell stories. Because that's all we can do.

And I think that's all the phenomenon really lets us do. I think when we get too close to evidence with the phenomenon, like tangible evidence, the phenomenon changes. It shifts, right? It doesn't like when we gather too much evidence on it, which is why UFOs used to land and leave trace evidence. landing marks and they don't anymore. You know, like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

of, of, of something of, of something that, um, shouldn't exist, but does. So, as if the UFO community wasn't messy enough. Now we learn that there are people hired to disinformed and disorient all of us, researchers, experiences, everyone in between. Would you mind touching on the experiences and your inner, interactions with one of the most hated men in euphology, Richard Doty. What role did he play in UFO history and in your book? Well, okay, so if you have not heard of Richard Doty, then you should go and like Google

Richard Doty. But it's, yeah, Richard Doty is such an interesting fellow. Because when I first started talking to him and we spoke like for months on and off, You know, it would be sort of cute Facebook messages back and forth and emails. Then we spoke on the phone. Like, he's a really nice guy. And the vast majority of our conversations focused really on sort of three things. One, our love of like Eastern European food.

Like, he and I share a common, like, penchant for, like, rich Ukrainian, German, Russian, Polish, like, kill your heart food. So a lot of our conversations circled around that. And then the second thing we talked about a lot was like beer, and we had a lot of beer conversations. And he's really a fan of like dark Canadian

and European beers, like like stouts and and dark ales and that kind of thing. And then the third thing we talked about a lot were like our, the children in our lives. So he's a grandfather. So he has sort of grandchildren who, you know, he worships the ground they walk on. And I, you know, as I was talking to him, I was recently sort of a new father to my second, my second child, my son. So, you know, I was kind of growing up in this, in this environment of

being the father of now my second kid and not getting any sleep and just complaining about that, but also enjoying the fact that I had this little baby all the time that, you know, as I'm talking to him on the phone. There's this like little little guy slipping in my arms. So we often had conversations about like our, the babies in our lives, right? So it's very weird to have conversations with Richard Doty about these three things. I mean, because everything about Richard Doty is Richard Doty, the disinformation agent, the spook, the man who's responsible for the mental breakdown of Paul Benowitz, the guy who basically, you know, was an aviary member in the nine, 1980s and allegedly the falcon in the aviary like you know there's this whole UFO mythology around him

but he's like totally the most normal guy now with all that being said um richard doughty is still richard doughty and you're not always sure when he like okay so whenever we spoke about food beer and children you could easily tell he was being 100% genuine yeah right he's a family man first and almost. And then you start talking about UFOs, and then all of a sudden things change, right? Like, suddenly you're not talking to Richard Doty, the guy who you just talk to about food and beer and kids. You're now talking to Richard Doty who was an intelligence officer. And you're not sure kind of where you stand. So in one breath, you know, you're having these great sort of back and forth discourse over parochies. And then you're, then you suddenly kind of mention a UFO thing. And then all of a sudden it's,

like the tone changes, right? I don't, you know, I, I, I, I leave Richard Doty in this weird world of, like, one, I don't know. But I think that he is very guarded about his UFO, his connection to the UFO community. He doesn't like the UFO community whatsoever. He does not think he's a member of it. And more importantly, when he talks about UFOs, you don't know if he's telling you a story or a lot.

lie or the truth. And there were moments where I would ask him a question and then he would give me sort of his response and then I would basically give him evidence that counters his response and then he wouldn't talk to me for several days. Really? He'd become quite upset about it, right? Or at least, I don't know, maybe this is sort of how he plays the game. I don't know. But, you know, there were moments where he said, don't ever ask me about that again. I'm not talking about that. we're done, right? And then I'd sort of, you know, we'd be kind of hanging out and then I'd send him a cute

picture of my kid and we'd have a conversation again. So it was a long, I think it was like four or five months of on and off conversations and, you know, a lot of accusations of me not knowing the whole story and all this. And that's fine. I mean, I told him flat out list that I said, I'm not a UFO researcher, really. I'm like a cultural studies guy. So I'm not really writing a book about UFOs. And he sort of at times would be like, well, you should do your research on UFOs. And he would kind of read me the riot act because, you know, I'm asking questions that are stupid. But at the end of the day, I'm writing a book that's not necessarily for people who are sort of super versed in UFOs either. So, you know, I had to kind of get some of that basic information.

But overall, I think Richard Doty represents this, this perfect example of what the UFO community is. The UFO community is Richard Doty-esque. It's a mix of truth and fiction. It's a mix. And the phenomena like that as well, the UFO discourse is this, right? Like the entire UFO narrative, the UFO discourse is a mix of fact and fiction. Very similar to Doty. Doty himself is a mix of fact and fiction.

Nobody knows what the reality is and what the mythology is. Nobody knows what's real and what isn't when they speak to Doty about UFOs. Because that's what's been created about him and for him and maybe by him. And we are, like in a sense, Richard Doty, right? We don't know what aspects of the UFO narrative and the UFO discourse are real and what aren't. We don't know what is truth and what is misinformation or disinformation, right? When UFO experts and pundits and UFO gurus stand up there and tell us the truth, quote unquote, it's their version of the truth.

And we don't know if their version is misinformed, purposefully disinformed, or if they're just making shit up, or they're being real and legitimate, right? Like, we don't know, which is what Richard Doty is, right? We don't know where he stands because there's been so much storytelling, so much mythologizing, and so much truth kind of all interweave together. So I kind of paint Richard Doty at the end of it all as a sort of mirror of the UFO community. We don't like Richard Doty because we see ourselves in Richard Doty. Give a face to it, and then we don't have to.

blame ourselves for almost mythologizing or creating a myth. You know, it's fascinating. Agreed. And I think we have created a myth. I mean, like, ultimately we have. Because not every aspect of the UFO discourse and the UFO narrative is true. There are, I'm sure, countless cases that we deem to be, like, great UFO cases that are, like, total nonsense and bullshit. Yeah. And, like, it's just, they've just kind of become lionized.

and they've become so legendary that they've become these lynch-pign UFO cases that are at times most likely hoaxes or delusion or just mistake. But we've wanted them to be real. They've become real. Our desire for them to become authentic has made them so. We've made meaning where there isn't any. But isn't that reality? Isn't that really how we function?

Don't we make meaning all the time? Like, you know, like really is there such a thing as masculine and feminine? We've just made that up just to make ourselves feel better. I don't know. Same with race. This is a whole other conversation we could have. I wholeheartedly agree. The fact that we still have conversations in the 21st century concerning race is ridiculous.

There's no such thing as race. There's one. Like we homo sapiens are it, right? Like skin color does not indicate race. That's nonsense. But for some reason, we still have this conversation. For some reason, you know. And right now I'm currently working a Broadway production of To Kill a Mockingbird.

So this is very probably for me right now. So, you know, yes, we could tackle that issue in great depth. But we only have so much time. This is not the place. Not the place. Maybe in another somewhere in the whiskey. Yes, you get me a good, you know, that's a great idea. We should do another somewhere in the whiskey.

Yes, we will very soon. Yeah. So one of the biggest dilemmas, you know, we as UFO researchers often face, is when we're asked to present information on UFOs. We're almost always asked if we can prove aliens have visited our planet. And my answer has and always will be, no, there is not one single solid shred of evidence to prove that.

And I can, as many, can prove that UFOs exist. Unidentified aerial phenomena has been well documented for centuries. So it's always that UFO versus alien question. and I'm so happy you covered this in the book. You tried to pinpoint exactly when this relationship started. So what was that experience like, trying to sort of go to the source of when the UFO involved the alien? Yeah, man, this was, I relied on sort of expertise here.

Again, you know, I'm not a UFO researcher, like, proper, you know? Like, people call me that, and I'm not that. Like I said, I'm a culture guy. So when people ask me UFO questions, like I feel like I can kind of hold my own in a UFO conversation, but I'm not, you know, like I'm not Paul Dean or Richard Dolan or you. Like I'm not a UFO expert. Like people ask me like, oh, what do you think about this case? I'm like, I've never heard of that case. And then people like, what?

You haven't, aren't you a UFO researcher? And it's like, no. Go back into the corner. But I'm just going to go. Yeah, I'm just going to stand here. So I kind of turn to the experts. I spoke with Paul Dean about this. I was like, hey, you know, you're a UFO historian.

And of all sort of the UFO historians out there, you're like probably the best. If not, you're one of the best. There's like a good handful of great UFO historians. And so I spoke with Paul Dean, and he decided that he would contact another UFO historian by the name of Barry Greenwood. So if you're in the UFO community, like, so anyone in your audience who's a member of like the UFO community proper, Barry Greenwood's name comes with sort of significant gravitas. This guy has written books

and none of that. He's cataloged the history of UFOs and it's like damn good research. Because the guy's like a UFO academic. If there was a UFO academic out there, Barry Greenwood is it. So they decided

that to help me with this book they would sort of write a joint essay which has never been done before. A joint Paul Dean Barry Greenwood essay, so I'm happy that that happened. And more importantly, it is like the first time it ever happened is going to be in the book. So if you want to read a joint essay on UFO history by Barry Greenwood and Paul Dean, you have to buy my book. And it's spectacular.

And it's, and it's quite approachable. One thing about Paul Dean and Barry Greenwood is they're so into the history of UFOs that they could easily produce like a 20,000 page document. within days and it would be so robust and so unreadable because you'd have to be like them to read it. You know, like there'd be so much nuance you'd get lost. So they, I made them trim it down to like a meager like 1,200 words or whatever it was. And I remember talking to Paul Dean and I told him, you know, like, okay, we got to keep it to like, I think I use the expression like, yeah, listen, my publisher will give you 12. And he thought he, like, I meant 12,000 words and he was ecstatic. I said, no, no, I mean like 1,200.

And he, like, he flipped his lid, like, over the phone, you know, whatever it was. It must have been like 2 a.m. in Australia when I talked. And the squares that came out of his mouth were I was like, well, all right. So anyway, they did it. And trying to pare down, you know, all UFO history in those two brains to 1,200 words was a challenge. Yeah, I mean, you know, you know, turning whatever it is. five loaves and two fishes to feed thousands. That's a miracle, but this was something else. And, you know, really they kind of helped me frame up the modern history of UFOs and really,

really bringing a lot of evidence, especially from newspaper articles and and government reports that came out, especially in the 1940s and 50s, that I'm sure the vast majority of people in the UFO community had never heard of or have never heard of currently. Like I said, the paper that they wrote or the essay that they wrote brings out a lot of information that the vast majority of people who currently study UFOs wouldn't know about. But they really hit home this idea that the idea that UFOs came from, like flying saucers, rather, came from Mars and Venus and other sort of planets in our solar system and that they're aliens, that they're extraterrestrial, really,

began in newspaper reports and government reports from military officers who sort of like these sort of estimates of the situation where the you know they kind of said you know these are these are main probably you know extraterrestrial in some way or they're they're they're martians or whatever and these are like not public like kind of project sign project grudge project blue book ones these are sort of other smaller reports that that they cite and and it's unbelievable to read that really it was when we think about the extraterrestrial question in modern euphology

it was pretty much a government slash media push right this is what they thought was happening various officers majors and colonels and captains in the military and then sort of the journalists that published but then going further back

in my own research realizing that this actually has sort of a more even older origin and going back to the roots of an old sort of pseudo-religion called Theosophy, which was written and sort of developed by a woman named Helena Blavatsky, who was sort of a Russian aristocrat, oligarch, who kind of started her own religion, I suppose, in reaction to Darwinism and in reaction to evolution, which sort of recently occurred in the late 1800s as an idea, this idea that humanity was seeded by sort of these ancient proto races and some of them came from like venus and other planets.

So we have very early on this idea that at least in Western thinking that there were sort of these ancient races that came to our planet, seeded our planet with various proto races and then sort of from that stemmed other races and to us. And now here we are. But really we are sort of of, we have this divine spark given to us by these other, I suppose you can use the term aliens. Now, she would have never used the term aliens because the term didn't really exist in that context or extraterrestrials didn't exist in that context yet as a term. But this notion that people from other planets came to create us, a sort of a very early kind of version of ancient astronaut theory.

And really when you kind of start looking at this, and then you start tracing this lineage, this how her religion became fodder for the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s sort of comic books and amazing stories and those publications and how they kind of progressed the narrative, right? When you think about all of the alien abduction, flying saucer aliens, whatever extraterrestrials, really these stories were told in the 1930s, 1920s and 1930s. And then it kind of went further on, right, into the 1940s. And it just sort of evolved along with our culture and our society and the current anxieties and desires we had as a culture in the West. So clearly, you know, aliens in the 1950s were a response to kind of Cold War jitters and that type of thing. But when you kind of look at the extraterrestrial question, it really began in like the late 1800s as a notion. But then it wasn't until kind of the 1940s that you had sort of this official idea from the government and from the media that pushed this extraterrestrial narrative.

And what helped along the lines were all of these fictional accounts from amazing stories and these other publications that kind of promoted, oh, you know, here's a comic book story about a flying saucer and aliens. Or H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. So you had these these sort of media fictionalizations that pushed the alien narrative. And I think it kind of took hold. We like

the idea of UFOs being caused by physical extraterrestrials like you and I. I think for one key reason if they're physical like you and I, that means they're like you and I, right?

We can engage with them or if need be killed, them. And they don't, they're not so spooky, right? They're biological like we are. They, they function like we do. They think like we do. And this is why a lot of science fiction, aliens are just humans, right? Like they're very, they have a lot of human emotions and a lot of human characteristics. Look at Star Trek, for example, right? Like every single alien is basically like a human being. And they're just aspects of humans. The Klingons are our violent side and the Romulans are our like sneaky, backstabby side and the Vulcans are a logical side.

Like, you know, like, you can kind of see humanity and everything. And I think with aliens and extraterrestrials, we try to, we like that model. And I think the extraterrestrial hypothesis has really taken hold because we want to see ourselves in the other. Once you start dabbling in other aspects of UFO discourse, rather, when you start leaving the extraterrestrial hypothesis behind, when you start dealing with notions, of maybe we're dealing with something more mystical or something more divine or even something even more complicated like, you know, I don't want to use a term interdimensional, but something

that doesn't come from a human standpoint, it becomes much more frightening because it's not going to necessarily in our estimation think like us or function like us or use technology like us. It may not have technology at all. It might just be totally different. So non-human that we don't know how to deal with it or look at it or even see it. we become quite anxious and frightened by that. The book Hunt for the Skin Walker when I read it really kind of hit this home for me. And I had read sort of a lot of keel and a lot of valet. So I kind of had these ideas in my head already.

But when Colm Keller presents this notion of, you know, this portal opens up and this creature crawled out of it, right? This monster, right? Or this monster that's perched in a tree and they take shots at it and just kind of disappears or retreats and it doesn't, there's no blood or injure. You know, like, we're dealing with something totally non-human. And whether it's intelligent or not, we don't know. But because we don't know, that's frightening, right?

Aliens are not as frightening because we can pin humanity on them, where when you deal with creatures that aren't human and do not follow the rules of being human or do not follow the rules of anything, really, that we would understand, you suddenly worry about your kids playing in the backyard alone, right? Because what if that shit manifests right there in front of them? And then what do you do? Which is why I really hope it's aliens because I can reason with an alien, I think.

You know what I mean? Whereas if I have to deal with some creature crawling out of a hole and it's all distorted and weird and it's made out of shadows, it's like, oh, great, what am I going to do with this? Yeah. Yeah. What sort of name or identity do you give to something so? Oh, you know, forgive the pun alien that we can't even. Man, Ryan, you just say the right thing at the right time because I think that's, man, you just like, you know, you and I should have a TV show together.

Because you just said it, right? Like, like, what kind of name or how do you identify it, right? And I think that's the key point. You and I can identify, like, as humans, we can sort of identify a biological alien, right? We can sort of name it and attempt to possess it. And I mentioned that book. It's about control, I think. It is about control.

And we do this all the time, right? whenever we buy anything alien related, we possess the alien, right? We subconsciously allow ourselves to possess this other that we have no control over. That's why you can buy an alien sticker and put on your laptop and be like, yes, it's an alien, I own it. It kind of gives you a comfort in a sense. But if it's something that you cannot know, because it's so opposite of us, you can't identify, it, you can't have power over it, right?

I'm reminded of the in sort of the Bible and sort of the common idea of whenever a priest needs to do an exorcism, the first thing the priest needs to do is demand what the name of the demon is, right? Because once you have the name of the demon, you have control over it. So in the Bible, you have these often moments where demons are expelled from people. And the first question asked by the dispeller, and usually it's Christ, you know, it's like, who are you? Like, tell me your name. and the demon has to tell him his name. And the same thing when priests do exorcisms, they demand to know the demon's name,

and the demon eventually tells them the name. And then suddenly they can dispel the demon, right? They can exercise the demon. Yeah. Because you have power over it, right? Identifying something automatically gives you power over that thing. But if you're dealing with something so, to use the term alien is wrong,

but to identify, you cannot identify something so opposite of us if it's unidentifiable, you have zero control over it. Exactly. And I think that this is why a lot of people kind of like the ET hypothesis, because it allows that person to still have control over the unknown, and the phenomenon, I think, is a great example, something we don't have control over, and we can't identify it ever.

And it just scares the hell out of people. Absolutely, man. I mean, if we find the answer to the UFO phenomenon, I really hope it is alien. because I can't deal with anything other than that at this point. Yeah, I remember we had a conversation. I think this was on Euphimet early on. Season 1, Euphemat, you and I were on Jim Perry's show or something, right?

And I think he asked, like, you know, about the extra choice hypothesis. And I think we sort of said, you know, we'd really like it to be aliens because we can sit down and have dinner with them and have conversations, right? Where if it's anything else, we're screwed. It's so true. Well, you know, going back to that idea of power, that really resonated with me in terms of who we give power to answer these things for us. And a lot of the times that's the scientific community. You know, in asking the alien question and beyond, you covered this pretty heavily in the book, too. We view scientists as superior, you know, kind of to the rest of society

at times. And there's a lot of hardcore UFO believers who, in my opinion, ironically, are skeptical of the scientific community because they believe they are there to disprove the UFO phenomenon and live in some rigid and objective reality. It's a phantom war is what I called it in my own book that we've sort of created between us and the scientists. And I was so happy to see that you broke this down way more eloquently than I did with the work of Fritz Haber. Could you maybe tell us why you decided to use this as an example in tackling the scientific

community in your book? Yeah. Yeah, it was interesting. I think we often perceive the pursuit of science as being a purely objective act. We often view, one, the act of science as being totally objective, which I think is fraudulent, or is a false claim. And we also view sort of scientists as being objective people, which is funny because people are never objective. So we paint science as this idea that so long as it's done, well, it's always right and it's always just and it's always true. And it's funny because scientists

at the end of the day are just people. And science, all it really is is a collection of people. There's no such thing as science outside of people themselves. If people do not exist, science would not exist. And the thing, well, people is we're all incredibly subjective. We function in our daily lives and our daily lives kind of build meaning for us, right? Like I mentioned with Derrida, language forms the basis of meaning and science functions upon language. All science requires language for science to happen, for science to occur. The scientific method itself requires language in order to be a process. So if language itself is subjective, because language is subjective, we have agreed to make certain things be words and sentences and ideas and meaning.

This is purely a subjective act. How can science then be totally objective? If science's entire foundation rests upon something subjective, there's no way science can be objective. Not totally. Now, again, I'm a big fan of science. I love science, like, you know, the fact that planes fly and gravity is a thing and the earth is around, that makes me happy. So I'm not saying... Wait, wait, wait.

The Earth is round. Now we have to have a debate. No, I'm just kidding. You didn't know? So... Oh, boy. We are pushing some buttons tonight, man. Listen, if a flat earth has a problem, they can come see me.

Like, I'm not saying that science isn't important. Like, I'm a big fan of science. I'm very pro-science. But I think what we need to avoid is this notion of scientism or the dogma of science. I think often, we treat science as something that is 100% true and factual and objectively so as if it has like some outside of humanity, reality, when it really doesn't. And I use the example of Haber because, you know, Haber was this interesting cat.

He was a scientist, a chemist in, who lived in the early 1900s, late 1800s, early 1900s, and he was a German scientist, and his invention that sort of brought him great fame and a bit of fortune was he basically invented fertilizer and various pesticides and stuff like that. So even today in 2019, his invention that he created in like 1905 or whatever was, I can't remember the exact date. we still use it today in regards to fertilizing our crops. So Haver is responsible almost from a food standpoint single-handedly for allowing the human population to, one, get to its current size of nearly 8 billion people. And providing and being able to grow crops to that extent. Like our entire farming industry and agricultural life as a species since the early 1900s is a direct.

result of his invention to add nitrogen and hydrogen to fertilizer and then soil, which allows plants to grow more efficiently, healthier, and then provide more yields so more people can eat. Yet he is also known as the father of chemical warfare. So in the same breath, while he is the guy who basically has allowed billions of people to eat and live on this planet, he also single-handedly developed one of the worst weapons in in in wartime history which is um like mustard gas and chlorine gas um that was used against allied soldiers in the first world war so so um when we think about haber we often you know view from a scientific standpoint how how great he was and how his his inventions are this objective force for for good yet at the same time um when his country called upon him

to help them win a war, he very quickly became not the man who was able to feed billions of people by his invention, but to gas millions of people horribly, like where their lungs turned to liquid. So you have this interesting character in Haber

where you have a scientist who is a scientist, objective, follows the scientific method, yet is willing to use science to kill people on a massive scale, as well as feed people on a massive scale, right? Like the irony and the duality of Haber is maddening. It's in fact so maddening that his wife, we don't know what happened, we don't know the conversation they had, but as a result of him creating these awful weapons to be used against humans, she killed herself in their garden, in their in sort of their backyard. Wow. She used his service pistol and shot herself because she couldn't be married to a man who has fed the world and in the same breath, you know, kills people with chemical weapons.

And Haber himself was sort of a bit, I don't know, he was an interesting character because literally his wife killed herself and a week later he was on the battlefield testing his new weapon and he watched it be used for the first time in action against soldiers. So it would be odd to sort of have your wife confront you about your invention. She kills herself in front of you. And then you then a week later are on the battlefield watching chemical bombs being dropped on enemy soldiers and watching down in chlorine gas. It's an interesting, yeah, I'm not sure what the word is. It's an interesting version of reality you live in, right?

So the point of the whole idea is that scientists, themselves are not sort of these, these gods of objectivity. They are very much governed by the politics and the culture they live in. They're governed by their society. And if scientists were objective, they wouldn't, Haber would not have done what he did, I don't think. And I think what Haber proves is that when they're called on, you know, a scientist will work for his, his nation or his border. And in times of peace, he'll feed the world, but in times of war, he will help destroy that world.

So we get this odd slap in the face of scientific objectivity, right? There's nothing objective about science, I don't think. I think there's aspects that we can sort of say are maybe more objective, but they're not totally objective. And I want to be cautious when we talk about science because scientists are not bad people. science itself is not a bad thing, but what is bad is when science believes itself to be the only answer to anything,

and what road does that lead us down? So I want to sort of assert that the dogma of science is what's dangerous. Scientism, the religion of science, is a dangerous act, because we lose a lot of things. And unfortunately, what science quickly forgets is that it requires the rest of, of us, especially sort of us anthropologists and sociologists and philosophers to be the ethical

litmus test, right? What is science without ethics and morals? It's the atomic bomb and it's chemical weapons and it's biological warfare. Like that is science gone awry. That is when science does not have the ethical guide that it needs. And we kind of fall down this slope of really humans doing really bad things to each other when we remain completely objective. And at times, I think Haber himself, you know, viewed his weapon as an interesting project, right? You know, he would watch thousands and thousands of thousands, thousands of British and French soldiers literally being drowned in chlorine gas because they'd never experienced this weapon before. Like the first time the weapon was tested, no one knew that this was even a possibility. and then suddenly

it was like a regiment of soldiers was hit by this bomb and chlorine gas hit them and it was like no one had a gas mask right because it wasn't a weapon that was invented yet and you can imagine as Haber watching this go down was he sitting there

feeling sorry for them or was he sitting there being like oh you know I have to adjust the effectiveness of this because they're not dying fast enough you know what I mean like like is he watching ants die, right? Versus. So yeah, it's frightening to me when we view science as this subjective thing, because the problem with objectivity, one is you need the subjective. You need

people to see love and you need people to care about one another for science to be actually good. We have enough examples of science being evil, right? Not because science itself is evil, but because it behaves objectively and that's when stuff like the atomic bomb gets built. Yeah, right. And I think, you know, tying it back to the whole UFO question, you do a good job of showing that science is not the be all and all answer to the UFO phenomenon. It is going to come from the sociologists, the psychologists, the academics, the historians, the scientists in both the hard and soft sciences. It's going to come from everyone and everyone, anyone, and no one. Probably. Yeah. And the UFO, and like the UFO phenomenon, I think, is a big reflex. of our lives, right? So I don't think science is the answer to everything, period. You know, like, I think there are a lot of ways to the truth. Science is a path to get to the truth, and it's a great path.

But you need all of those other paths to kind of guide science as well, you know, because otherwise science can go often in any direction, and it can be good and it can be bad. Exactly. Well, man, I can't think of a better way to wrap up. of the idea of the book, and we really did only scratch the surface. I mean, I was furiously going through this just to, um, so that we could make this interview happen as soon as we did, because I wanted to be the first to talk about your new book. You are too. You officially win the race. Boom. See? That's, that's why I did it. I can't wait to go back and actually

dive deeper and, um, and really dig into the meat of it. So we'll have to have you back on for that. But I did want to sort of bookend this with, another endeavor that you're doing besides Tara Obscura, and that's Cafe Obscura, your YouTube channel series, which is really taken off. You're getting some really interesting people on there that we're not used to hearing from in the UFO community, which I think is very, very important. So would you mind sort of telling us a little about Cafe Obscura? I think what Cafe Obscura is, it's an extension of the blog. And I think, sometimes the blog gets maybe a little too, too heady and you kind of lose people.

And sometimes it's easier just to have a conversation sort of over audio and video and not kind of write out your thesis and then a giant essay. Because oftentimes I'll start a Terab's hero post, like my blog posts, and I'm like, okay, I'm going to do a short one, and then it ends up being like 2,500 words. And suddenly people just don't want to sit and read through that. and people are much more willing to sit through an hour-long YouTube show if they're interested. And so that's sort of how it started, was this idea just to make my content a little more approachable to sort of a more mainstream public. But then I also wanted to have a show that no one really else in the UFO community was doing.

I think that in the UFO community, there's a lot of hesitation to talk politics and to, to talk issues that some people find potentially, I don't know, like impolite. You know, people don't like talking about politics in the UFO community. People don't like talking about gender in the UFO community. People don't like talking about race and race politics in the UFO community, which is really, I think, important. These are things that I think need to be talked about. And just because no one has talked about them in the past doesn't make them any less relevant.

So Cafe Obscura is a project right now that is aimed, one, I think, at pissing people off, but two, at getting to the root of how the UFO community functions and the broader paranormal community. It's not just about UFOs. It's sort of, in general, paranormal. And to engage with interesting people in the study who don't usually get a lot of air time and who don't usually get a lot of airtime and who don't. don't often get a chance to talk about their stories and their opinions and their politics. Because at the end of the day, I think the UFO community often becomes an echo chamber. Absolutely. You know, oftentimes what happens is the same people get interviewed over and over and over again. And those are the messages that become the UFO community, really.

And when you think about, you know, how the mainstream and the popular media interprets the UFO community, it's often through the voices of a very small handful of people. The people who constantly get interviewed, the people who constantly appear on television, the people who constantly appear in magazines and in newspapers and are kind of like really are representatives to the broader community and the broader culture, pop culture. And the problem is they have their message and that's fine.

You know, good for them. That's what it should be. But the UFO community is much richer than that. We are with people who are concerned. concerned about the same things any community is concerned about. What are the issues, the political issues in our community and that we face? What are the gender issues that we face? And how do we view ourselves and how do other people view us?

You know, can we be critical of ourselves and not fall victim to just not wanting to talk about it? And I think that that's kind of what occasionally happens. I think we don't want to upset our viewership or our listenership. so we don't touch things because people will view them as offensive or just uncomfortable and they won't watch or listen. And I think that's what Cafe Obscura tries to fill in. It deals with those issues of race and gender, which is coming up next week, no, two weeks. And it deals with issues of economics and it deals with issues of class and poverty and all that within our community.

So it's an interesting little project. I know some people have told me already they don't like it. They think politics has no business in the UFO discourse. I don't necessarily agree with them. I think the UFO phenomenon itself and UFO discourse itself is political. So I think that's a nonsense claim. I think there's going to be a lot of pushback. But again, I'm sort of, I have the luxury of being a relatively small player

in the UFO field so I can say whatever the hell I want and nobody cares. So that's kind of enjoyable and freeing. So yeah, it's been interesting. I've only had maybe, what, five episodes now. And the next big one I'm having Alison Jornland on who's in my book and we're going to talk about gender politics in the UFO and paranormal communities. So that should be an interesting one to get, you know, a few feathers ruffled. But it's sort of no nonsense, no bullshit, just, you know, having a conversation like you would

over a cup of coffee and that's kind of the theme right the idea of just a couple people meeting in a coffee shop hence a cafe and um just shooting the shit about UFOs and paranormal yeah i absolutely love it and i'm seeing the youtube channel growing every week and uh the comments becoming more and more so i mean that's that's all you can ask for is people are talking it's not it's not that echo chamber any longer. So you're starting the conversations, whether it's in the blog, in the book, or on YouTube, which is great. So, I mean, I have to thank you for letting, allowing me to be the first to sort of get you on here to talk about the book. When can we expect that and where will we be able to find it? Sure. Yeah. So right now, the book is just sort of being typeset in the last,

It's in the last stages. So I'm hoping it will hit Amazon and all the other sort of major booksellers, like the online ones like Barnes & Noble and all that stuff. So anywhere you can kind of buy a book online, it should be out within, I would say, a week or two. That's kind of where we're at. So it'll either be next week or the week after is when that book will be available for purchase. And my best advice would be to follow me on social media

because I will obviously sort of be promoting it. And then all the links will be there. So you can follow me on the social medias at M.J. Benias. That's my Instagram, Twitter. And then on Facebook, you'll find me just by punching an MJ Benyis. Or you can visit my website. I've got multiple, but really where the book is kind of kind of rest as links to purchase, is just MJbenias.com.

And just kind of go there every once in a while over the next two weeks. and it should pop up once I kind of have more formal information for my publisher. But we're looking at the next week or two guaranteed. So, yeah, we're about a week and a half, two weeks away, which I'm really excited to kind of finally get it out there. But social media is the best place to kind of stay on top of that, as well as my YouTube channel. It's just YouTube.com forward slash, backslash, forward slash, M.J. Benias. So if you just YouTube.com forward slash MJ Benayas, you can find my YouTube channel there. And you can subscribe or whatever.

and I'll obviously post stuff about my book there as well. So there's a lot going to be coming out within the next two weeks concerning the book. So you can find me there. And my website, my blog, obviously, www.teraobscura.net is always kind of producing blog posts. But I've been a little slow. I've been super busy with the book and this YouTube thing. It's kind of invaded my life. So the blog posts have been coming a little slow.

I know the feeling, man. It's just overwhelming. Yeah. producing content in any genre or format is extremely time-consuming. I wish people could see how much time I actually spend editing a, you know, an hour-long episode. It could take days sometimes. Depends on the guest.

It really depends on the guest. But, you know, I'm so excited. Again, the book is the UFO people, a curious culture. I can't wait for that. And I can't wait to get you back on for our next installment of Summer in the Whiskey. So thank you again, MJ. Ryan, it's always an honor. I will listen, you shoot me a text.

I'll be on your show anytime. Doesn't matter, I'm there. Cheers. Thank you. That is it for this week's episode. Again, thank you so much to MJ Benayas for coming on again. We'll be sure to have another Somewhere in the Whiskey coming up very soon. In the meantime, you can check out all of our work at somewhere in the skies.com,

including past episodes, contact information, articles, and everything in between. We're also on Twitter at SummerSkies and Instagram at SummerSkies pod. Please take a few moments to rate, review, and subscribe to Summer the Skies on iTunes or wherever you get in your podcasts. The official Summer in the Sky's store is open at tpublic.com.

That's teepublic.com and just search for the Somewhere in the Sky store. We have plenty of cool merchandise waiting for you right now. Be sure to join me next week. for a 100th episode of Somewhere in the Skies. I can't wait to share that with you very soon. 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 One Podcast.com.